Category: album review Page 8 of 22

On 11/21/2011

Korallreven – As Young As Yesterday (ft. Victoria Bergsman)
Korallreven – Sa Sa Samoa (ft. Julianna Barwick)

The Swedes really know what they’re doing when it comes to nostalgic pop. Point to anyone from Peter, Bjorn and John to the Shout Out Louds and The Radio Dept. and there’s plenty of evidence to support such a statement. One of the latest Swedish imports to hit the worldwide music market is Korallreven, an electro-pop duo that’s also coincidentally a side project of Daniel Tjäder from The Radio Dept. Given that band’s increased success and critical acclaim over these last few years, crafting tighter and better songs than ever before, there’s the hope that Korallreven might take on some of those same qualities. Like any good side project however, it seeks to form its own distinct identity. Tjäder and his Korallreven cohort Marcus Joons took their time in crafting their first full length, partly due to wanting to make the highest quality songs possible and partly because The Radio Dept. were doing quite a bit of touring, something they hadn’t done much previously. With the end of 2011 looming close and nearly 2 years of sporadic work put into it, “An Album by Korallreven” crept into the marketplace in the hopes of soundtracking your holiday season.

Okay, so “An Album by Korallreven” doesn’t have any holiday affiliation to it, outside of being released the week before Thanksgiving. If you wanted to forego the traditional Christmas songs and put it on instead, it might make for a nice respite, and the general warmth of the record certainly provides comfort with the outside temperatures plummeting. Sonically Korallreven falls into the same category as a number of bedroom electro-pop acts that have already released albums in 2011. Using Air France or jj (or The Tough Alliance and Tanlines if you like) as strong examples, the songs on “An Album by Korallreven” play in the quieter electronica pool, taking a relaxed approach to beats while still playing around with pop-infused hooks that won’t let you go. It’s not quite fast enough to dance to much of the time, but it’s gorgeous and remarkably addictive instead. Such feelings make sense, given the entire project was first conceived while Joons was taking a holiday in Samoa. A quick Google image search for the South Pacific island for those unfamiliar with it will yield thoughts of pure paradise filled with crystal clear waters, pure white sandy beaches, waterfalls and palm trees as far as the eye can see. Weather-wise, it’s about the exact opposite of Sweden, and it most assuredly has inspired many a creative mind. But the island permeates so much of this record, from the Samoan-like backing choirs to the song title “Sa Sa Samoa” to the consistent use of the word Samoa in the lyrics to a number of songs. Between that and the chanting of, “A dream within a dream” on “Keep Your Eyes Shut”, you’re stuck in a gauzy haze for the album’s entire 45 minutes.

The idea of spacing out or falling into an altered state while listening to “An Album by Korallreven” is very nice and very tempting, but not always simple to accomplish. Most of us are busy people with things to do, and if you turn on this record as backing music it’ll function as purely pleasant and unmemorable. Such is the flaw of an album such as this. There’s nothing outright bad about it, things just kind of stagnate after a short bit and never fully wake up again. Even if you do sit down and focus on these very lush songs individually, what this record is really missing is heart. It’s all glossy postcard beauty without actually feeling the sun on your skin or the sand between your toes. The equivalent of visiting Hawaii but only on a layover where you never get to leave the airport. The most redemptive and enticing moments on the album come courtesy of guest vocalists. Victoria Bergsman has a great resume that includes being a former member of The Concretes, a current member of Taken by Trees and taking a most memorable guest vocal turn on Peter, Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks”, and she very much makes her presence felt on this record via the opening song “As Young As Yesterday” along with a reggae/Balearic turn on “Honey Mine”. Both are two of the record’s best moments, along with Julianna Barwick’s looped vocal turn on “Sa Sa Samoa”. But Korallreven also prove they know how to write a strong song without a guest vocal, as previous singles “The Truest Faith” and “Loved-Up” prove.

What “An Album by Korallreven” lacks more than anything else though is progression. Yes, these 10 songs are diverse enough to make them individually stand out, but stylistically there’s not a ton of variation. For a duo that have been working on this debut full length for over two years, they’re still at that same spot where they first grabbed everyone’s attention all that time ago. They’re offering no new twist or appear to be truly challenging themselves in any way whatsoever. Granted, much of their sound involves heavily drawing upon the past, but they don’t sound like they’re having a whole lot of fun doing it. Instead they feel coldly committed to establishing mood and hooks rather than offering the listener a more engaging and spontaneous experience. They do a great job with it, but in this day and age we’re going to need just a little more from them to make it truly stand out from their similar counterparts. For a dead of winter warm-up record though, you could definitely do worse.

Buy “An Album by Korallreven” from Amazon

Album Review: Caveman – CoCo Beware [Magic Man!/Original Recordings Group]

On 11/17/2011

Buy “CoCo Beware” from Amazon

There’s something to be said about going it alone. Most bands wallow in genuine independence, going unsigned either because they’ve yet to be discovered or are simply not good enough to become courted by record labels. As much as people claim that the record industry is dead in the water and that the current model of music distribution is broken, the fact remains that at least 90% of music coverage is devoted to “signed” artists. They have people paid to do PR for the artists they represent, so emails get sent out, phone calls are made, CDs are mailed, and the writers create the coverage in response. Most artists don’t have the time or funds to do all that hustling themselves. What’s rare are the artists that earn a significant amount of buzz via their own homegrown independent efforts, and then say no to labels when they come calling. Such is the case with Brooklyn’s own Caveman. They’ve only been around for a couple years, but have steadily built a fan base courtesy of playing everywhere around New York with high profile indie bands such as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Here We Go Magic and Cursive. Their dynamic live show matched with a powerful set of songs has drawn the attention of many high profile publication as well as a few record labels, but the band is devoted to their fans first and foremost. After eyeing a number of potential deals, the chose to go the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah route and stay independent. They formed their own record label, called Magic Man!, and first unleashed their debut album “CoCo Beware” digitally in September with the physical release arriving in stores this week. They’re playing a big role as one of the breakout bands of 2011, and if you’re not already in the know, now’s the time to start shifting your attention in Caveman’s direction.

Caveman’s sound is at once easy to recognize yet difficult to describe. That may be because they tend to come across like a hybrid of a few different bands. If you go simply from “CoCo Beware”‘s opening track “A Country’s King of Dreams”, the tribal drums and vocal harmonies will probably bring to mind Animal Collective. They’re a little too clean and pop-perfect to fully sell such a comparison though, which should be a comfort to those that find Animal Collective too obtuse. Others may argue the band oversimplifies things. There’s nothing wrong with casting your net for a wider audience provided you don’t dumb it down, which Caveman does not. There’s a great sense of front-loading on this album with the smooth synth-infused chug of “Decide” and the Real Estate-meets-The Dodos vibe on “My Time” both bearing the marks of catchy singles, but the stylistic twists the band undergoes over the course of 10 tracks keep you engaged even when things slow down. There’s a common thread of James Mercer musical projects via “Old Friend”, which sounds like a Shins song filtered through the more psychedelic and synthetic lenses of Broken Bells. The result feels a little more exhilarating than it has any right to be. The spacey guitars and intensely harmonized backing vocals feel like they were ripped straight from Grizzly Bear’s playbook on both “Great Life” and “December 28th”, though you definitely get the sense those guys would have done a little more with each of those songs. The final three tracks on the record play up the psychedelic side of the band a little more, which is why “Easy Water” has a MGMT-like thing going for it, “Thankful” touches on some Talking Heads and closing track “My Room” could be placed on a mixtape next to virtually anything from Here We Go Magic.

With all this name dropping going on, where’s Caveman in all this? Just because they can do a great job sounding like a number of different bands doesn’t mean they should be regarded with the same love and respect. What stands out the most in spite of all the similarities is that the songs on “CoCo Beware” are pretty damn good. These guys know how to write a hook, and sometimes that’s all you need. Plenty of bands try to imitate their heroes or imitate a certain sound that’s “hot” at the moment, in the hopes of gaining success from it. You don’t need talent to slap together a bunch of songs that sound like The Beatles. You need talent to make people believe they’re listening to The Beatles when they’re not. Play a Caveman track for a friend unfamiliar with the band, but who has a reasonable grasp on musical knowledge. It could be virtually any song on the album, save for maybe the instrumental “Vampirer”, which moody and cool as it is, stands out simply because it is an instrumental. Ask that friend what band he or she thinks is playing. An answer should come relatively quickly, though it will be the wrong one. For fun you can also see how long you can continue to lie to them and claim it’s the other band they named. The grand point is that on their debut album, Caveman are still actively seeking an identity. They’ve got bits and pieces of one, and have wrenched a number of very good songs out of it, but that air of distinction isn’t fully developed at this point. Most assuredly it will come with time and as their fan base continues to grow. Most likely the fans will dictate the direction they move in from here. At this very moment though, Caveman are a promising young band with plenty of life ahead of them. Even more if their live shows continue to earn raves from friend and foe alike.

MP3: Caveman – Old Friend

Caveman – Decide

Caveman – December 28th

Album Review: Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness [Arts & Crafts]

On 11/14/2011

Los Campesinos – By Your Hand

Most bands that survive for at least a few records almost always have one of those “game changing” albums during which they make a radical adjustment to their sound. The thinking is that the shift in direction will keep the band themselves from getting bored while challenging current fans and courting new ones. Musical trends change too, and sometimes a band doesn’t want to sound like they’re “behind the times” or are desperate to sound like whatever’s hot at the time. These shifts are all the more noticeable the higher profile the band is, which is why U2’s transformation in the 80s was so noteworthy, and why Radiohead’s move towards all-out electronica on “The King of Limbs” resulted in a lot of backlash (see also: the knife twist between “OK Computer” and “Kid A”). But sometimes a band changes their sound in the most organic way possible: slowly developing it record by record. Such truths are most evident provided you’ve been keeping up with a band from song 1, and the younger the band members are at the time, the better. Such is the case with Los Campesinos!. The Welsh collective first came to everyone’s attention via 2007’s “Sticking Fingers Into Sockets” EP, then a bunch of fresh-faced college dropouts with pop culture obsessions and heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics. Their sound was undeniable winsome indie pop, complete with glockenspiels galore, shout-along lyrics and choruses that were catchy as all get-out. The exclamation point at the end of their name said it all, along with song titles such as “You! Me! Dancing!” and “We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives”. Such fun and addictive simplicities were maintained on the band’s 2008 full length debut “Hold On Now, Youngster”, but very shortly thereafter things began to change.

Several months after the release of their first full length, Los Campesinos! released the 10-track “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed”, a limited edition “mini album” containing all new songs that was recorded a couple months prior during a brief break from touring. The title alone said volumes about it, but track titles like “Miserabilia” and “Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1” also helped to spell it out for you. The quick tempos, shouty choruses and glockenspiels all began to take a back seat to heavier guitar work and singer Gareth Campesinos’s hyper-literate lyrics. Their sly, winking humor was largely replaced by astute commentaries on the pitfalls of relationships be they romantic, friendly or familial. Think of these transitional stages like a child growing into an adult, with those first couple pieces of music containing an almost child-like innocence, the “mini album” getting darker and dirtier as puberty set in, and then their last full length, 2010’s “Romance Is Boring” parlaying that growth into young adulthood. What are some of your main goals between the ages of 18-25? Drinking and fucking tend to be the two most easily associated with the era, and that last album had both, though much more of the latter. It should come as no surprise then that the band decided to title its fourth (or third, depending on what qualifies) long player “Hello Sadness”. You get one quick guess as to what the general mood of the record is.

For those playing the home game, if you said the mood of “Hello Sadness” was sadness, you would be correct. You win the award for Most Obvious Correct Answer. And while the lyrics do paint an overwhelming portrait of sad-sackery, the good news is the music doesn’t fully embrace that same sentiment. Listening to a bunch of heartbroken or suicidal songs in which the tempo goes overly heavy will likely put you in the same sort of mood the album evokes, and not a lot of people want to listen to albums that bring them down both verbally and sonically. That’s one of the biggest hurdles “Romance Is Boring” faced, and though the band handled the darker stuff extraordinarily well, that record dragged much more than it soared. The cute keyboard-spattered “By Your Hand” opens “Hello Sadness” and it it immediately pushes back against the downer vibe on the last record with one of the band’s catchiest melodies to date. The lyrics may be all about hoping a girl will kill you rather than break your heart, but the instruments bounce along with such zeal it almost makes the experience seem pleasant. The full band sing-along of the chorus is classic Los Campesinos! by now, and while it’s not the sugar rush of a past opener like “Death to Los Campesinos!”, it maintains a bright appeal in spite of its morbidity. Even the title track, with the sentiment of, “goodbye courage/hello sadness” chugs along like a modern adaptation of 80s dark-tinged pop classics, the bass line akin to some New Order gems and Gareth’s vocals take on an almost Robert Smith-esque quality paired next to his Dickensian imagery.

Speaking of Gareth’s vocals, he’s matured them along with the band, pulling away from some of his trademark yelps and not trying to stretch his range beyond what he’s capable of. The result is better control and power, a wise choice given he’s not sharing lead singing duties as much since Aleks left the band (this is their first record without her). While Gareth has always been a fine singer given the outpouring of dramatic shit he spouts off from song to song, this is the first Los Campesinos! record where all his vocals emote in exactly the way they need to. He spits fire on “Hate for the Island”, adopts a snotty punk attitude on “Songs About Your Girlfriend” and is frought with worry on “Baby I Got the Death Rattle”. Given that this record was written and recorded reportedly after Gareth suffered a pretty big break-up, these songs are probably that much more personal to him and you can largely hear it in his voice. It’s a shame then that his lyrics aren’t quite what they used to be. For a band that once even titled a song “We Are All Accelerated Readers” and then pretty much proved it with hyper-literate witticisms that commented on eveything from Rousseau to “Jane Eyre”, there’s a certain sense that things are a bit blander and less clever on “Hello Sadness”. The cleverness factor may be down a bit, but the smart wordplay largely remains intact. It’s difficult to criticize lines such as, “Your body above me, sobbing down/My cheeks wet from your tears/They extinguish each of the burning thread veins/Flow down to my ears/Now they rest in two tiny reservoirs/That overfed the wedded canals” when the images they conjure up are impressively powerful. Even the most depressing lines about death are made that much more engaging to listen to because of the way they’re phrased. “My memories are sepia/But the photograph is not/An historian is fucking with them/As deadly as garrotte”, he sings on “Every Defeat A Divorce (Three Lions)”. You might need a dictionary to truly understand what he’s getting at, but that’s also part of what makes the lyrics so damn good. Some might argue the use of such challenging vocabulary is really Gareth’s way of bragging about how smart he is, but by that same token none of the classical authors felt the need to “dumb down” their words. That’s not to say Gareth is on par with classic literature, but most assuredly nobody else is penning songs quite like him these days.

Perhaps the reason that Los Campesinos! toned down their sillier bits is because like any full grown adult the days of goofing around are largely over. Then again you’re only as young as you feel, and we all probably know a few people over the age of 40 that could use a bit of maturity. It’s not like the band is all of a sudden filled with middle-aged adults either. They’ve yet to reach their late 20s but come across like they’re twice that age. Have they grown up too much, too fast? Their albums have all logically progressed from one into the next, but would they have been wrong to have stayed lighter and poppier for another record or two? Probably not, and given that “Hello Sadness” is a relatively serious adult album, where can they go from here? That will probably be most dependent on whatever headspace Gareth is in at the time. At least on this latest effort they’ve found their pop edge again. There really hasn’t been much to call single-worthy on the band’s last two efforts (even as there have been singles), which is why “By Your Hand” and the title track seem a little like a sonic regression to their earlier days. The overall balance of the record is a little off too, with the front half bringing far more energy and hooks while the back half is a more subdued and depressing affair. The key transitional moment and true crux of the album comes via “Every Defeat A Divorce (Three Lions)”, a five minute electric guitar-heavy excursion that is both harsh and gorgeous, lively and stagnant. It stands as a great testament to just how far Los Campesinos! have come in four short years, and is also a gentle reminder that as much as it crushes our spirits, sometimes sadness is worth welcoming into our lives.

Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness

Buy “Hello Sadness” from Amazon

Album Review: Atlas Sound – Parallax [4AD]

Atlas Sound – Terra Incognita

On 11/11/2011

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

And so the trend continues. Between his main band Deerhunter and his solo side project under the moniker Atlas Sound, Bradford Cox has released at least one album per year since 2007. That’s not even counting various EPs or the 4 collections of Atlas Sound bedroom demos he released for free last year. The guy’s brain must be a songwriting factory, churning out lyrics and new ideas for songs every few hours. He also appears to know quite well what works and what doesn’t, as evidenced by how increasingly impeccable both projects have gotten over time. Each Deerhunter and Atlas Sound record has been an improvement on the one before it, even though neither project has been around quite long enough to earn “veteran” status. Not only has Cox become a better songwriter through it all, but sonically the arrangements have gotten more complex while largely playing with minimalism and ambient noises. In other words, he proves there’s a way to do more with less. That’s the case more than ever with Atlas Sound’s third record “Parallax”, a lonely and adrift record that carefully treads the line between psychedelia and somber pop.

The cover of “Parallax” tells you so much about what the record itself is like, both sonically as well as emotionally. Cox’s face is halfway hidden in shadow as his hand gently caresses a vintage microphone nearby. First and foremost, this is the first time Cox has appeared unobscured on an album cover. The last Atlas Sound record “Logos” featured a shirtless Cox with a blinding white light in place of his head on the cover. That he’s in clear focus here says volumes, even if it that wasn’t the point. See, the earliest days of both Deerhunter and Atlas Sound featured a far more timid and introverted Cox. Guitars and vocal effects often buried Cox’s singing which was pretty restrained in the first place. Listen to Deerhunter’s “Cryptograms” from 2007 and then last year’s “Halcyon Digest” and you’ll notice a world of difference in the vocals. As Cox’s confidence in his voice has grown, so has his presence in the mix. He’s clearer than ever on “Parallax”, keeping the vocal effects to a minimum and putting more of a range on display. Placing your face on your album cover also is a strong display of confidence, as more than ever people know the exact person responsible for the music they’re hearing. He’s no longer a frail body with a glowing head. It also indicates that perhaps this is the most personal of all the records he’s done, the one he feels best represents his own headspace or personality.

In recent interviews, Cox has admitted that lasting happiness continues to elude him, and that dark cloud that constantly hangs over him partly manifests itself in the shadowy cover, but also in the music itself. Quiet acoustic numbers like “Modern Aquatic Nightsongs” and “Terra Incognita” drift along with a certain listlessness, but it’s songs like “Doldrums” and “Flagstaff” that truly revel in ambient and downtrodden textures. It may not be the happiest stuff in the world, but it is exceptionally beautiful and maintains a consistency that “Logos” never fully achieved. Balancing that darkness out are a few brighter moments, such as opening track “The Shakes”, which is a gorgeous pop song about the ugly topic of being bored with fame and fortune. Album centerpiece “Mona Lisa” is a work of super catchy art and in many ways an opposing emotional force to that of “The Shakes”. It is in many ways the best moment on the entire album, certainly the one that will stick with you in the end, but lyrically speaking it leaves something to be desired. While most of the other songs are remarkably descriptive and specific in nature, “Mona Lisa” skates by on vagaries and gets away with it, largely thanks to how exceptional everything else about it is. Other louder and in many ways brighter moments on the record come via “Angel Is Broken” and the closing “Lightworks”, both of which feel like sonic slaps in the face following much quieter cuts. Those jarring transitions would typically take away from an otherwise coherent mood or feeling established by most records, but in this particular case the elements are similar enough that the impact is softened even as the energy and noise might suggest otherwise.

If we’re keeping Bradford Cox’s two bands separate from one another in the idea that they each hold their own distinct identities and sonic palettes, it’s relatively easy to say “Parallax” is the best Atlas Sound record so far. It is also in many ways the best thing that Cox has ever released on the whole, at least from a songwriting and vocal standpoint. His ever-increasing confidence as an artist has only led to growth in every aspect of his music-making, though viewing things from a wide perspective might yield fewer noticeable changes. The moves he’s made have largely been subtle and small ones, but progress is still being made the way it needs to for any artist. Compared to his last Atlas Sound record “Logos”, “Parallax” is not only a more solid listen from front to back, but Cox is also far less reliant on guests than he used to be. Panda Bear brought a lot of his style to the song “Walkabout” on the last album, and Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier collaboration with Cox on “Quick Canal” yielded Stereolab-like results. The only noteworthy guest on “Parallax” is MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden, and he just played piano on “Mona Lisa”. It doesn’t REALLY sound like a MGMT song, in spite of its psych-pop greatness. To put it another way, this is the first Atlas Sound album that genuinely feels like an Atlas Sound album. Now we’re left wondering – if he can pull off something this great on his own, what can we expect from the next Deerhunter record, especially if you think “Halcyon Digest” was one of the best records of 2010? If the pattern of Cox unleashing at least one new record a year continues, we’ll probably find out in 2012.

Buy “Parallax” from Amazon

Album Review: Cass McCombs – Humor Risk [Domino]

On 11/09/2011

Buy “Humor Risk” from Amazon

Nobody is telling Cass McCombs that he should pursue a career in stand-up comedy. One listen to anything off his last couple records will tell you that the guy sounds clinically depressed. He could use a little lightening up. The irony is that some of our best comedians are severely depressed individuals. They use humor as a coping and defense mechanism, an escape from their otherwise dark lives, be it an abusive parent or navigating schoolyard politics. If somebody makes you laugh you’re less inclined to want to attack them verbally or physically. There’s also a sense of escapism in comedy, because the time spent performing makes you feel validated and appreciated. Watch the very darkly funny TV show “Louie” and you’ll get a great idea of how there’s depth and morbidity behind so much of what we laugh at. Cass McCombs is by no means music’s answer to Louis C.K., but some of his songs are intended to have undercurrents of comedy to them in spite of their pitch black outlook. Even by titling his album “WIT’S END” earlier this year the intention was not to evoke frustration, as it fits into the common phrase “I’m at my wit’s end”. He meant it more in a literal sense, as in the end of wit. Naturally, there was nothing funny about it (or so it would seem). A mere few months later however, McCombs is arguably in a different mood. As a companion piece to that, he’s now putting out his second long player of 2011, this one titled “Humor Risk”. It’s by no means a barrel of laughs, but if you can comprehend a whole lot of subtle witticisms, there are a fair number of moments on this album that will make you smile.

“Love Thine Enemy” is “Humor Risk”‘s opening track, and it examines the titular Biblical sentiment from a realist’s standpoint. “Love thine enemy but hate the lack of sincerity,” McCombs intones. Hopefully you’re able to grasp the funny part of that line, showing off how we may do what we’re told in spite of a strong distaste for it. Elsewhere McCombs has a little fun as part of a rather dark tale involving a drug smuggling operation run through the postal service on “Mystery Mail”. After seeing police descend on his house as he was returning home, the main character goes on the run only to have “the smirk is wiped from my smile/I was arrested for hopping a turnstile”. Upon being sent to prison, he contacts his cross-country drug smuggling partner Daniel, who has also been caught. “Daniel was indeed in the lion’s den/not the only lion killer in a California state pen,” McCombs amusingly intones, very much comparing his fate to that of the Biblical saint. He brings that reference back around again minutes later after his friend is killed in prison, singing, “Daniel was a good guy but a saint he ain’t”. Perhaps the most weirdly amusing track on the record though is “Meet Me at the Mannequin Gallery”, in which the main character seeks to get a mannequin made in his image, and is told a philosophical story by the gallery secretary intoning that not everybody has the distinctive features required to make a good mannequin. It’s a very WTF topic to spend a song on, but it does make for a great demonstration of how not every song needs to be an all-out pity party.

One of the kindest things you could say about “WIT’S END” was how thematically sound it was. That record may have been dark and depressing and slow, but the tone very much matched up and held steady from start to finish. “Humor Risk” runs more of the stylistic gamut. The balance between more uptempo numbers and somber folk songs works well enough here, even when the lyrics don’t always match up. “The Same Thing” is a sunnier acoustic melody, but it examines the dichotomy between love and pain, arguing that such differences are essentially nonexistent. Meanwhile the nearly 8 minutes of “Mystery Mail” is markedly upbeat rock and roll for a song that’s all about drugs, prison and death. Then again, those same topics and rocking melodies worked wonders for Johnny Cash. When you reach a slice of heavy depression like “To Every Man His Chimera”, it may feel like it belongs on the last record, but McCombs’s completely over-the-top vocal performance provides a sly wink against the uber-serious grain.

The grand point of course is that while a number of these new songs aren’t the epitome of lighthearted humor, even some of the more depressing moments are punctuated with energy and playfulness that makes them much more instantly likable. In that way this record also serves as a nice counterpoint to “WIT’S END”, though they’re not complete opposites of one another. This is the easier record to digest, actually perhaps the most normal and commercially viable McCombs has ever gotten over his six previous records. Yet the pleasantries and morbid rib ticklers also vary enough to make them seem like a piecemeal collection rather than a cohesive whole. The songs on “Humor Risk” were recorded in a number of locations around the country, part of the same sessions that yielded “WIT’S END”. This is far better than a b-sides or outtakes collection and none of these songs miss their mark by much, but there’s no real anchor holding the whole thing together. It’s freeing while simultaneously a little disappointing and difficult to engage with given McCombs’s past material. Hopefully next time he can get the balance just right. If he needs some help with that, perhaps he should call Morrissey. I hear that guy has a regular stand-up gig at the morgue.

Click past the jump to stream the entire album for a limited time.

Album Review: Lou Reed & Metallica – Lulu [Warner Bros]

On 11/01/2011

Buy “Lulu” from Amazon if you dare

“Lulu” isn’t worth the few sentences I’m going to write about it. It is bad to the point of hilarity – a shameless collaboration between two artists well past their primes and taken with the utmost sincerity. To be fair, both Lou Reed and Metallica probably thought they were crafting the world’s greatest art-metal album and in the face of incredibly bad reviews will angrily claim that people don’t “get it”. Maybe we don’t, but fans of either or both artists will likely find nothing but disappointment across these 2 discs and nearly 90 minutes of excess and spoken-word curios. The inspiration for the project come from playwright Frank Wedekind, who wrote a series of staged productions about a woman seeking fame and fortune but instead winds up as a prostitute. It explains many of the batshit crazy lyrics that Reed atonally speak-sings for the duration of the record. Meanwhile Metallica try and throw some heavy metal firepower to back Reed’s disaffection, and James Hetfield pops up on the microphone now and then to try and add a little vocal color. He turns out to be more of an annoyance and distraction than a help in that case. There is so little redeeming about “Lulu” that you’ll likely have trouble getting through it from start to finish. The most entertaining part of listening through it at least once is because just when you think it couldn’t get any stranger, it does. With that, I’d like to present the 10 most jaw-dropping lyrics on the record, each individually worth its weight in comedy gold coming from Reed’s mouth:

“I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski…in the dark of the moon.” – Brandenburg Gate

“I want you on the floor/and in a coffin, your soul shaking/I want to have you doubting/every meaning you’ve amassed” – The View

“If I waggle my ass like a dark prostitute, would you think less of me and my coagulating heart?” – Pumping Blood

“I swallow your sharpest cutter/like a colored man’s dick/blood spurting from me/blood spurting from me” – Pumping Blood

“Tie me with a scarf and jewels/put a bloody gag to my teeth/I beg you to degrade me/is there waste that I could eat/I am a secret lover, I am your little girl/please spit into my mouth/I’m forever in your swirl” – Mistress Dread

“I puke my guts out at your feet/you’re more man than I/to be dead to have no feeling to be dry and spermless/like a girl” – Frustration

“Puny body and a tiny dick/a little dog can make you sick” – Little Dog

“The female dog don’t care what you got/as long as you can raise that little doggie face to a cold-hearted pussy/you could have a taste/a taste of what the big dog got” – Little Dog

“We do love to look upon your perfect body/the hair on your shoulders/the smell of your armpit/the taste of your vulva and everything on it/we all really love you/and you have no meaning” – Dragon

“I’m clawing your chest til your collarbone bleeds piercing your nipples til I fight them off/I scratch your face and bite your shoulders/way above caring/way above caring in your Kotex jukebox” – Dragon

These lyrics alone tell you more about “Lulu” than I ever could. To write paragraphs and paragraphs about this record would be as much of a waste of time as listening to it. This is by no means the worst record I’ve ever heard, but it’s easily the worst thing I’ve heard so far in 2011. I’d tell you to avoid it at all costs, but that’d probably push some to pick up a copy. It’s like a parent telling a teenager to stay away from a certain boy or girl because they’re trouble, and in some way that makes that boy or girl all the more compelling. So I’ll close with a video. Listening to “Lulu” may potentially cause the following to happen to you:

Album Review: Justice – Audio, Video, Disco [Ed Banger Records]

On 10/31/2011

Justice – Audio, Video, Disco (Single Edit)

When you examine it really carefully, hopefully you come to the understanding that the French electronica duo Justice are really just two guys that know how to market themselves really well. They’ve adopted a style all their own, both musically and visually, that is excessive in most every way. The leather jackets, the sunglasses, the blindingly bright live show (hence the sunglasses), and songs that demand to be played at volumes higher than any doctor would recommend as healthy. The poor mixing doesn’t do much to help them either, but it still doesn’t stop songs like “D.A.N.C.E.” and “DVNO” from becoming indie dance hits and raising their profile to the point where they’re nearly ready to headline a music festival. And to think all that came from just their first record, titled “†” and otherwise pronounced “Cross” when speaking about it. With the other, vastly more popular French electro duo of Daft Punk working on things like film projects or soundtracks to “TRON” sequels with a rare tour date here and there, a certain void has been left these last several years that nobody has really volunteered or attempted to fill. On their way up, Justice certainly aren’t objecting to the positive press they’ve been getting for their music, because even as everything about it feels exploitative and obvious, the band possesses a certain winking charm through it all. Think of them like a really gorgeous person you can’t help but stare at, maybe even lust over, yet after a brief conversation with them you realize they’re dumber than a box of rocks. Not somebody you’d want to spend all your time with or get involved with long term, but if you’re able to shut them up and just stare for awhile, hooking up for a few hours isn’t out of the question. Justice has tended to be the auditory version of that, getting tiresome, obvious and even a little annoying after awhile. When you’re on that dance floor just looking to have fun for a short bit though, their music seems like a great idea. So a few years and a whole lot of touring later, Justice has finally polished off their sophmore record, “AUdio, Video, Disco”. If you were hoping the duo was going to get harder, better, faster or stronger this time, prepare to be sorely disappointed.

Mid-March was when Justice first unleashed the song “Civilization” on the world, primarily as a sign that they were still alive and presumably were preparing a new full album’s worth of material rather than just a one-off single. A portion of it essentially premiered in an Adidas commercial, a sign of exactly what sort of headspace the duo appeared to be in going forward with their careers. While the song still carried many of the laser beam-like synths that made “†” a club favorite, it marked the start of something a little bit different for Justice – closer attention paid to song structure, which ultimately meant more careful development and build-ups to payoffs rather than throwing you into the dance pool from note one. “Civilization” takes a minute of psych-pop swirling before the chorus finally slams into high gear, and even then actual verses calm the dance storm while some smooth piano work closes things out rather gracefully. Across the track’s 3.5 minute duration, the hook only comes around twice. Previous Justice singles pushed the idea that repetition was the key to memorability, which is perhaps why “Civilization” doesn’t particularly stick with you. In fact, barely anything on “Audio, Video, Disco” is pure enough dance pop to strike at the pleasure center of your brain, and that’s a problem when your fans have come to expect exactly that.

There’s some sense of brilliance at the heart of this record though, and it largely stems from how challenging these songs are to enjoy. The title track is a great indicator of exactly how far these guys have come and the perfect display of how they should have composed the entire album. The hook is consistently repeated, but goes through a series of sonic changes that range from heavy dancefloor beat to light and airy and nearly a capella. In essence it is a microcosm of how the full record goes, dancing one minute, held in suspended animation the next, and indulging in progressive fantasies after that. The problem is they make these shifts from track to track instead of within a single song. The primary influence on this record appears to have changed as well, moving away from the club environment just a bit to embrace a much more classic rock feel. Guitars have suddenly become a huge part of Justice’s sound, and inventive beats come second. You can absolutely hear The Cars’ influence on “Newlands” or Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” (with some flute) in “On’n’On” or Roxy Music’s riffage on “Brianvision”. Place some Queen-style march-like beats along with some synths behind these melodies and they become some sort of hybrid that’s not quite dance and not quite rock either. All these genres are blending together anyways these days, right? In essence yes, but such style twists are only effective if you know how to use them right. For the majority of “Audio, Video, Disco”, they do not know how to use them right.

You can’t blame Justice for wanting to expand on their sound and try something new. After all, their sound was somewhat novel on “†”, but if they tried to make the same thing as a sequel it’d sound bland and repetitive. Pop stars and DJ types from Skrillex to Deadmau5 have all adopted a similar style, sharply taking away its more unique aspects. “Audio, Video, Disco” avoids that trap, but winds up ineffective anyways because they fail to Frankenstein these disparate sounds into a genuine juggernaut. What it wants to be and what it is are two different things, and die hard fans of the first record will likely be left out in the cold, wondering what happened to this great electronica duo. For others, this can be considered a stepping stone for Justice. That’s not to say they’ll be trying out full-fledged arena rock next time around, but maybe they’ll use this new record as an opportunity to learn what works and what doesn’t so they won’t repeat their mistakes next time. Some artists go through growing pains on their way to brilliance, and this just might be theirs. At least the party vibe is still present, even if you can’t always d-a-n-c-e along to the b-e-a-t of every song.

Buy “Audio, Video, Disco” from Amazon

Album Review: Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto [Parlophone]

On 10/28/2011

Buy “Mylo Xyloto” from Amazon

Simply put, people love to hate on Coldplay. It’s so easy to do, and their massive popularity places a huge target on their backs. Most simply, their reputation has been harmed since the band’s inception because they’ve been marketed incorrectly. From their arrival courtesy of 2000’s “Parachutes”, they were painted as an alternative rock band that was like a more pleasant and marketable version of Radiohead. At the time, alt rock was actually developing in the opposite direction – rap rock became this huge phenomenon (that everyone would soon regret) and it was no surprise to hear something like Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie” one minute and Coldplay’s “Yellow” the next. The closer reality was that Coldplay fit in perfectly with the adult contemporary audience, next to bands like Train and Barenaked Ladies. That of course would eventually catch on and open up a whole new realm for the band popularity-wise, yet their ties to alternative remained intact. Even into 2006 you could hear the immensely schmaltzy “Fix You” on rock stations, most of them hoping to use the band’s arena status as a springboard to more listeners. Those that like Coldplay might stick around and listen to this new Incubus track, even if they’ve never heard of Incubus before. Anyways, by painting Chris Martin and the boys in that harsher rock and roll light, they became singled out for a lack of masculinity in their sound. Cap it off with one of the more famous lines to come out of “The 40 Year Old Virgin”: “You know how I know you’re gay? You listen to Coldplay.” That about sums it up. You know who’s not complaining about all the vitriol hurled Coldplay’s direction? Coldplay. Their music keeps selling, and at this point they’re one of the main gauges as to the health of the music industry. If a Coldplay record doesn’t sell “x” number of copies, the industry is in trouble.

By now, most of us know what Coldplay is all about, and can make our own decisions as to their worth in our own lives. But there remains a small sector of people that continue to light a candle for the band, holding out hope that they’ll ditch the stadium-sized and emotionally universal melodies in favor of something obscure, pure and altogether challenging. Hiring Brian Eno to produce your album practically comes off as a statement of intent that you’re looking to get pushed creatively, and while their last record “Viva La Vida” certainly patterned things in the right direction, they never strayed too far from their path, either afraid to alienate too many fans or because their label wouldn’t let them. The positive is that Coldplay appear to know the fundamental flaw in their music and are working within the realm of reason to try and earn the respect of more intense music lovers. They want to be known less as a band that cranked out hit after hit and more as a band that made great albums. With that in mind, they once again entered the studio with Eno to try once again to find a sound that pleases both critics and fans. They exited with “Mylo Xyloto”, the title and artwork both of which bear an eerie similarity to U2’s 1993 Eno-produced record “Zooropa”. Given how much the songs on records like “A Rush of Blood to the Head” and “X&Y” seemed to invite direct comparisons with U2’s grandiosity, here was yet another parallel that felt par for the course from a band such as this. Ignoring the superficiality of it all though, this new album pulls one over on us by sonically shying away from the bombast and overt drama of Bono & Co. while still very much maintaining their status as a crowd-pleasing arena band. It would seem that there are many layers to this Coldplay onion, but take comfort that they’re not repeating themselves and only some of those layers will make you cry (tears of sadness or auditory pain, depending on personal tastes).

“Mylo Xyloto” is a name concocted of pure fiction, and it theoretically fits into a story concept that Coldplay appears to be wary of talking about. They want to emphasize that while the songs on the record tell a happy love story between two characters known as Mylo and Xyloto, this does not define the music itself, nor should you be placing close analysis on the lyrics searching for plot points. What the band is trying to say is that these songs are upbeat and passionate without that heavy layer of sap they’ve often been known to espouse. That, and maybe they started with this grandiose tale, put some effort into developing it out, and then kinda sorta forgot about it halfway through writing the record. You can’t really tell either way, it just seems odd how the concept is mentioned only in passing like a closely guarded secret or something they’re looking to shove under the rug. But upbeat love songs? That’s not being kept quiet, and with good reason. This is Coldplay’s happiest album to date, and that playful nature definitely makes it a little easier to stomach. Even a song you’d expect to be a crier, “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall”, goes for celebratory live show staple even as the dreadful lyrics and painful titular analogy threaten its very existence. At least the ballads like “Us Against the World” and “Up in Flames” come across as genuine and heartfelt rather than blatant and emotionally manipulative as has been the case on the band’s last two records. It’s a nice reminder that this band can still do lovely and intimate without completely overselling it.

For those that know and love Coldplay’s anthemic side, there’s plenty for you on “Mylo Xyloto” as well. Clearly the hope was for “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” to continue the band’s trend of strong singles, and while it has served its purpose, you get the feeling it’ll wind up being treated the same way as tracks like “In My Place” and “Trouble” have been – swept under the rug when the truly huge one hits. On “A Rush of Blood to the Head”, that was “Clocks”. On this record, it may be new single “Paradise”. It’s formula Coldplay, and its chorus is one of the easiest things in the world to remember and sing along to (complete with requisite “whoas”), even if you’ve never heard it before. The propulsion of opener “Hurts Like Heaven” screams with inspirational energy and a call to action, and it’s a remarkably well constructed track even if the platitudes don’t make any sense half the time. You can naturally expect it to be a future single as well. A pair of darker and quite frankly cooler tracks in the form of “Charlie Brown” and “Major Minus” bring a much more masculine energy to the band, something that this record needed to buck the feather-light touches of their last couple efforts. It would appear that Brian Eno has done this band quite a bit of good, his fignerprints throwing an interesting wrench into their otherwise big and rather plain sound. Some reverb here, some Auto-Tune there, a bit of ambience in between and Coldplay starts to come across as smart for the way they never fully repeat themselves and provide subtle auditory twists on the same framework. You definitely can’t call them stupid or even wholly untalented because while they’re not diving head first into rampant anti-commercial experimentalism, they’re making a conscious effort to keep you guessing while remaining true to their gigantic fan base.

Not every experiment that Coldplay tries works out for them. Ironically, the one track on “Mylo Xyloto” that feels like the band was aiming for a sure fire hit is the one track on the record that turns out the worst. Pretty obviously pointing to the idea that they’re not in any way an alternative rock band, Coldplay did a one-off collaboration with a pop star. The song is called “Princess of China”, and it features Rihanna on guest vocals. Here is where their label gets stars in their eyes, upon the mention of the words “crossover hit”. You’ve got the adult contemporary market covered, your Top 40 fans, and your hip hop and R&B fans. In other words, here’s a song that can introduce Coldplay to a whole new sector of people that might not have liked them before, and by parallel, the same goes for Rihanna. Here’s the thing – the collaboration feels forced. A number of Coldplay songs actually lend themselves to more beat-driven, club atmosphere, and you can hunt down some remixes to support that point, so the issue isn’t so much a formatting or “different worlds” one. It’s primarily that they secure a big name guest star in Rihanna and then barely do anything with her, vocally or otherwise. Not only that, but on a record that largely explores the band’s lighter, more playful side, this song feels like everyone is all business. The t-shirt and jeans vibe gets turned in for 4 minutes of suits and ties. It doesn’t ruin the overall feel of the record, nor does it sound entirely out of place, but it is a little bit of a head scratcher compared to the company it keeps. Undoubtedly you’ll be hearing “Princess of China” as a single before this album fades from memory, so here’s your advance warning to prepare accordingly.

Listening to “Mylo Xyloto” is a decent reminder that Coldplay’s career is marred with tragedy. Okay, so multi-million dollar bank accounts is less tragic for them and more tragic for those of us that feel they don’t deserve it, but haters can take some pleasure in knowing the band will likely never make a truly great record. Sure, they can write and have already written a ton of great pop songs so far in their careers, but in doing so they’ve had their legacy set out in front of them. They’re trapped in the world of arena rock and the mainstream pandering that requires, whether they like it or not. You can choose to believe that Coldplay wanted this, practically begged for it, and are now “living the dream”, but cursory examinations of both their interviews and their records seems to indicate that they’re in a constant struggle with their own identities. Specifically, they want to be Radiohead or R.E.M. or U2. They want a blank check to write whatever record they feel like writing, no matter how oddball or experimental, in the hopes of earning worldwide critical acclaim as well as the success to back it up. Few artists have found that magic combination where you can be artistically pure AND popular. Coldplay only has one of those things, and they’ve got too much to lose should they try and earn the other. So we get something only slightly left of center, about as much rebellion as they can afford without catching some odd stares from long time fans. Their label might have outright rejected “Mylo Xyloto” if it were a tougher listen. Knowing the existential dilemma this band is dealing with, it’s tough to punish them too harshly for attempting to innovate and keep people guessing. Here is yet another Coldplay album that is moderately different than everything that came before it. At this point it’s just nice to know they’re still trying.

Album Review: Real Estate – Days [Domino]

Real Estate – Green Aisles

On 10/25/2011

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

As we learned from a string of (primarily) West Coast bands in the last couple years, summer is no longer a time of year. It’s actually a feeling and has a distinct sound – something that can be created with relative ease if you know what you’re doing. The lackadaisical warmth glowing off of records by bands like Best Coast, Tennis, The Drums, Beach Fossils, The Morning Benders and Wavves could make even the most brutal of winters seem that much more bearable. It was like taking a mental vacation to the beach. Real Estate also fell into this category, though the boys are from New Jersey. The cover of their 2009 self-titled debut album had what appears to be some triangle-shaped thatch hut with bright blue skies behind it. Their first single was titled “Beach Comber”, and it was a delightful romp through the sand filled with people tanning and playing volleyball and frisbee and that one guy who carries around a metal detector searching for buried treasure. The rest of the album follows suit, even as the closing track “Snow Days” recounts “February down by the shore” where the “waters never freeze/despite the ice and snow”. They can’t stay away from the beach even in the middle of winter. 2011 has seen the beach-bound sound fall a little by the wayside, the result of overexposure more than anything, but that doesn’t mean a great record can’t push through such challenges. Real Estate’s sophmore album “Days” tries with grace and polish to reinvigorate our love for that partly cloudy sound, and it’s amusingly apt that they waited until the fall, where the swim trunks and surf boards are traded for jackets and heaters, to release it.

For those familiar with Real Estate’s debut album, you know it was a rather ramshackle lo-fi effort, recorded on the cheap and collecting a number of songs written in the band’s earlier days. In that sense there was an unpredictability and rawness to it, which was partly charming but also proved imperfect. “Days” seeks to correct that by upping the recording quality to a standard layer of sheen and pulling together 10 tracks that have all been written and recorded within a small time frame. The result is added beauty and a welcome cohesion that creates additional depth for a band that might otherwise have run out of ways to keep us interested. In a way all these songs are instrumentally cut from the same cloth and utilize the same instruments in the same way each time, but the melodies and tempos are just variable enough to avoid falling into a bland or whitewashed template and remain individually memorable. A big part of that comes via the serpentine guitar work of Matt Mondanile, whose work on tracks like the instrumental “Kinder Blumen” and the 7+ minute closer “All the Same” make for interesting detours from the band’s poppier side. And through all these rather laid back yet hypnotic melodies, the band never sounds like they’re trying to do too much or too little. Nothing feels over-long or extraneous, as if they’ve whittled each track down to only the barest of essentials. Such a balance is not easy to come by, and it’s a big part of what makes “Days” work so well.

The lyrical cues on this record largely keep with Real Estate tradition, as on opening track “Easy” where there’s talk of “floating on an innertube in the sun” and running “around the fields”. The guitars jangle and light touches of xylophone bring an added sparkle next to the dayglow vocal harmonies. The shimmery “Green Aisles” speaks of “aimless drives” through the tree canopys and street lights of suburbia as part of a “careless lifestyle”. If you’ve ever done exactly that, not only will this song trigger said memories, but it comes across like a soundtrack to them as well. The immense relatability to the stories and images presented in these songs is part of the album’s charm, and even if you grew up in a big city surrounded by crime, there’s a certain idealized aspect in these songs that functions well as escapist fantasy too. If nothing else, there are moments such as “It’s Real” and “Out of Tune” that worm their way into your brain and stay with you, even as you become enamored with other tracks on the record. They’re not all highlights, but they’re all purposeful and enjoyable in their own way, and there’s not much more you could ask for.

With “Days”, Real Estate lives on to fight another day. That’s not meaning to suggest they’re fated to eventually wind up in the post-hype bin with hundreds of other artists, but their sound at the moment doesn’t lend itself to long-term sustainability. There’s only so much lazy day nostalgia you can take, and as with any good thing there are bound to be copycats to dilute the potency of what’s already being done. Real Estate is fortunate that off their debut they had something with which to improve upon. They made all the necessary upgrades, and have outdone themselves thanks in no small part to the sheer talent of each and every band member. Hopefully those same guys will be able to spark yet another wave of creative innovation for next time, because much like summer itself, the winds change and those once green aisles of trees turn brown and lose their leaves.

Real Estate – It’s Real

Buy “Days” from Amazon

Album Review: M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming [Mute]

M83 – Intro (ft Zola Jesus)

On 10/20/2011

In album review, BNM, music

90% of double albums are failures. In more recent years, everyone from Foo Fighters to the Red Hot Chili Peppers have attempted to show off creatively by unleashing multi-disc efforts. Some claim the music is all thematically sound, tied to a concept or something else, and therefore entirely necessary to extend beyond your traditional single album length. Others say they went into the studio and got far more recorded than anticipated, and because everything was so great, instead of cutting tracks they just left it as-is, bleeding it out into dual records. You’ve also got a band like Radiohead, who made “Kid A” and released that, then followed up 8 months later on with “Amnesiac”, essentially more new songs from those same sessions but contextually different. A staggered release schedule forming two separate albums tends to be the smarter move, particularly in this day and age when albums are largely down for the count and singles reign, the attention span of music fans growing increasingly shorter by the day. Still, there is the occasional double album that works, generating enough positive response to go down with the status of “legendary”. We’re talking Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” or the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. It was reportedly that Pumpkins record which served as the main inspiration for M83’s main man Anthony Gonzalez to craft his own double album “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming”. This may be one of the worst times in music trends to unleash 73 minutes of music intended to be heard in one sitting, but let’s just be thankful somebody has the balls to keep trying anyways.

The first thing you look for in any double album is filler. Instrumental tracks? That’s typically the first sign of filler, but if you know M83 then you also know they do a fair share of instrumentals on their single disc records. Their electro-synth sound is built to where instrumentals can be not only welcome, but sometimes encouraged. One listen to “Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts” will teach you all you need to know about M83 and instrumentals. There’s somewhere around a half dozen instrumentals spread across the 22 total tracks here, and almost all of them are wholly engaging or serve a particular purpose other than apparent filler. This isn’t a record with an overarching theme or concept holding it all together, outside of just a generalized dream state it otherwise seeks to achieve. Yet there are so many big pop songs and dramatic ballads that transitional pieces and more minor moments are almost required as balance. “Train to Pluton” or “Fountains” may not be the most exciting or brilliant pieces of music, but they are fully functional set-up pieces and never really hurt the overall pacing that gets established. You can also look at moments like “Where the Boats Go” and “When Will You Come Home?”, the former which aids the adjustment from the red hot “Reunion” into the massive drift that is “Wait” and the latter which serves as the start of a trio of songs that effortlessly blends the first disc with the second.

Long time fans of M83 should automatically feel comfortable with “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming”, as the 80s synth-pop motifs continue to permeate everything Gonzalez touches. That’s his thing, crafting a soundtrack to an imagined version of his teenage years. The last record “Saturdays=Youth” felt like musical accompaniment to a long-lost John Hughes film, and while there’s still some resemblance to that on the new double album, it comes across as far less cinematic in nature. That doesn’t mean it’s any less expansive or epic though, as it’s tough to call 74 minutes of music minimal or small. But those bigger, arena-style melodies were explored in a similar fashion on “Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts”. To bring out the full M83 past album retrospective, fans of “Before the Dawn Heals Us” will find the darker, more urban pop of that record bearing an influence here as well. Darkness would be a theme on this record, as any record with the word “dreaming” in its title hopefully implies sleeping and night time. Despite all this looking back providing a “complete picture” of what M83 has been all about, there’s still the future to be concerned with. In response to that, Gonzalez has taken to expanding the number of instruments on this record to include the occasional saxophone (“Midnight City”) or flute (“New Map”) while pushing his own vocals into entirely new territory.

Past singles like “Kim & Jessie” or “Don’t Save Us From the Flames” provide great reference samples featuring Gonzalez keeping his vocals restrained at an almost whisper-like level. It becomes apparent from the very first track on the new album, the aptly titled “Intro”, that those days of calmly reserved, passive singing are over. Gonzalez’s voice may not be the most impressive thing when he’s belting out songs at full volume as his newfound range and key reveal some limitations, but you’ve got to give him credit for laying it all out there. He sounds a full octave higher than he used to, now fully up-front and brimming with confidence, taking the reins like he’s ready to conquer the world. For once his singing matches the scope of his arrangements, which is probably why cuts like “Midnight City” and “Steve McQueen” also make for some of M83’s best songs to date in a catalogue dense with highlights already.

If you’re not prepared for it, “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” might seem like a chore to listen to from start to finish. There’s so much material to digest that it can be a little overwhelming at times, making it that much harder to become enraptured with important moments because there are quite a few. To Gonzalez’s credit he spreads them out fairly evenly to continually engage the listener for the duration, though the first five tracks of each disc can feel like a pileup of pure sonic delight. There may not be a storyline or abstract concept linking these tracks together, but like the two halves of “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”, each separate disc has a sonic counterpart on the other. Consider them then like fraternal twins – different, but inextricably linked to one another. The more carefully you listen, the more obvious it becomes. It would seem then that going the double album route has worked out remarkably well for M83. Count this was one of those rare cases where a multi-disc effort is worth the time and money you invest in it. There are not really any bad songs in this bunch either, and even the child’s spoken word moments of “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” can’t derail the momentum this beast generates for itself. Will it go down in history as one of those rare double albums that still gets talked about 5, 10 or 50 years down the line? Probably not, if only due to technology. Up until the early 00s, album releases were regarded as events, and people’s options were confined to physical mediums such as vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs. You couldn’t really skip any tracks on The Beatles’ “White Album” because at the time that luxury didn’t exist. With the advent of the digital era, not only are people skipping or cherry picking, but access to music itself has become so fluid there’s far more music to take in than any one person can even begin to digest. Hence the rise of the single, so we can listen to that song and get on to the next artist. But here’s a piece of work that while created today is distinctly 80s in sound and scope. If you’re a child of the 80s or earlier decades, that’s something you can understand, even as you may have a hard drive filled to the brim with other music. Calm yourself down and set aside 74 minutes to take in “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” at least once in full. Hopefully it will speak to you and maybe even reinstill a faith in the long player. The death of the album (single or double) has been greatly exaggerated, and M83 makes for some great evidence in support of that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try and find the exact time when this album and the film “The NeverEnding Story” sync up perfectly.

M83 – Midnight City

Buy “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” from Amazon

Album Review: Bjork – Biophilia [Nonesuch]

On 10/18/2011

Buy “Biophilia” from Amazon
Buy the Biophilia app from iTunes

You’ve got to admire Bjork’s courage. She is consistently looking for new ways to innovate and challenge her fans, the same of which can’t be said about almost anybody else. Perhaps the closest and most recent example of forward-thinking technology mixed with music was when Damon Albarn composed an entire Gorillaz album, “The Fall”, on an iPad. Not much has been done since then, either due to lack of ambition or in more likely cases, lack of money by which to apply and use these new technologies. Music may be on an ever-increasing path towards digital distribution methods, but taking it beyond that realm is scary, unexplored territory for most. Bjork wallows in the scary and unexplored though. That not only goes for her eccentric outfit choices, but everything in and around her music too. Back in 2008 and essentially just before the start of the “3D craze”, Bjork released a 3D music video for her track “Wanderlust” off her last record “Volta”. That was highly interesting in itself. Now in 2011, she’s once again trying something innovative. You can get her new record “Biophilia” through traditional means such as CD, vinyl and mp3, but if you’re more adventurous you can pick up an iPad application that features interactive digital elements for each individual track. If you’re wealthy, there was also a super-fancy “Ultimate Art Edition” of the record that you could have ordered (it’s no longer available for sale) that featured an lacquered and silkscreened oak box filled with 2 discs of music, a 48-page cloth-covered book with thread-sewn pages, and 10 chrome-plated tuning forks that are each adjusted to the tone of a track off the album. That bad boy would have run you $800 if you so desired to spend it, and it was yet another way to explore the unique world that Bjork has created around herself.

For all the intricate and forward-thinking ways you can engage with “Biophilia”, it’s all no good if the music is crap. With so much energy being put into developing iPad apps or special colored tuning forks, have the songs lost their top priority in this arrangement? Or as a counterpoint, does the creation of an entire universe around a record deepen and enhance what’s already there? Admirable as her past efforts have been, Bjork hasn’t had an especially great record since “Vespertine” ten years ago, and there’s a certain sense that while the way she distributes her music is ever-changing, the songs themselves aren’t. The titles themselves tell you a lot of what you need to know, most of them single-word environmental elements such as “Moon” or “Thunderbolt” or “Virus”. Yes, the lyrics keep that same thread going, casting broad strokes to match the broad concepts. “To risk all/is the end all/and the beginning all,” she sings on opening track “Moon”. What exactly it means is for you to figure out. She makes more sense on “Cosmonogy”, telling the many different stories about how the universe came into existence, from the Big Bang to God emerging from a black egg. At least she uses some of the Earth and space motifs as metaphors for more relatable things such as life and love and intimacy. Destructive as “Virus” may be, it’s ultimately a love song seeking connection. “Like a virus needs a body/As soft tissue feeds on blood/Someday I’ll find you/The urge is here”, she sings amid the music box melody. The hope is simply to avoid becoming completely devoured as she “feed(s) inside you”. Meanwhile “Mutual Core” takes the movement of tectonic plates, those that are responsible for the global shifting of countries as well as disasters such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions, and tries to push two people into an emotional Pangaea. We can shift our own plates around to try and clear a space to our hearts to link up with another, but we all have personal volcanoes that erupt from time to time, and those can do serious damage to two bodies linked by one core. Not everything on “Biophilia” is blatant symbolism for something else, but the tracks that do push that angle tend to be better off than the ones that don’t.

Lyrics aside, the backing instrumentals on “Biophilia” have their own issues as well. There’s plenty of engaging moments, such as the super repetitive and naturally addictive single “Crystalline”, which starts off delicately enough with some innocent chimes but eventually descends into a heavy drum’n’bass rhythm in the final minute that’s simply killer. The mellotron on “Mutual Core” keeps the track firmly grounded, until the volcano eruptions occur, at which point the pace and tension builds as some gritty electro beats explode outwards and upwards before it all settles down once again. Twists and turns like that help to make the song one of the finest moments on the record. And though it fails to push into another gear, the customized gravity harps that populate “Moon” create the right atmosphere even as the lyrics are something of a failure. After a remarkably interesting start to the record however, there’s a certain stagnation that begins to permeate most everything from “Dark Matter” onwards. There’s organ and strings and a number of electronic beats that show up on “Hollow”, but the whole time it just drifts along completely formless and seemingly unaware of where its headed or when it might stop. A number of things were thrown at a wall in the hopes something would stick, but ultimately nothing did. For tracks like “Sacrifice” and “Thunderbolt”, it feels like a basic melody was created and then held for most of the duration, leaving Bjork’s vocals to do any sort of heavy lifting. She’s more than capable of hitting whatever notes she likes with those incredible vocal chords, but there are moments where it feels like she’s trying too hard to make a song more engaging by showing off that range. The more organic she can make it feel, the better.

If you’re paying attention to Bjork only for her music, “Biophilia” is yet another in her string of releases these last several years that doesn’t quite deliver on the excitement of her earlier records. Technology junkies willing to fork over the $10 for an album’s worth of iPad apps may enjoy this record quite a bit more thanks to the interactive element, because playing around with lightning bolts and colorful balls carries a certain degree of satisfaction along with it too. The whole thing is very well put together and is visually gorgeous as well, akin to many of Bjork’s music videos. Keeping the songs and the apps together places limits on the ease of which you can hear the music, which we may need to remind ourselves comes first and foremost. Actually she may also need to remind herself that the music comes first and foremost. Yet it remains a challenge to separate Bjork the person, all of her visually striking costumes and futuristic ways of applying her music to new formats, from the songs she creates. If she were to strip away all the dazzling bits from her persona and were to simply release a record like any other artist, might that be the spark she requires to get her songwriting and composing mojo back? There’s only one way to find out, and unfortunately there’s no app that can do it for her.

Album Review: Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire [Capitol/Pax-Am]

On 10/11/2011

Buy “Ashes & Fire” from Amazon

January 14, 2009: Ryan Adams posts a missive on his website. In it, he explained a decision to quit making music and blogging, citing a number of reasons including being away from loved ones while on tour, health issues, intense pressure and criticism from the media/fans/record labels, and the general loss of his dignity. He had come down with Meniere’s Disease, which affects the inner ear and causes everything from vertigo to tinnitus to hearing loss to general balance trouble. That’s not an easy thing to deal with, particularly as a musician. As part of stepping away from music, Adams got engaged to and then quickly married his long-time girlfriend Mandy Moore. and for awhile it seemed he was making good on his word and had fully quit the music industry.Yet in spite of that, Adams kept tooling around behind the scenes to pump out plenty of previously unreleased music for fans. Last spring Adams put out a heavy metal record called “Orion” on vinyl only via his Pax-Am label. The album was reportedly one of many things Adams recorded prior to his quitting music. Then came “Cardinals III/IV”, a compilation of unreleased material from his time with The Cardinals from back in 2006. Rumor had it there was plenty more material where that came from. If you truly believed that Adams was done with music though, it must have come as something of a surprise when just last month he announced that he was releasing a brand new solo record and would be going out on tour in support of it. “Ashes & Fire” is the title of the new album, his first official release without The Cardinals since 2005. His time with The Cardinals may be officially over, but apparently he intends to carry on making music in whatever capacity he so desires.

Early reports about “Ashes & Fire” seemed to suggest that this was a record in which Ryan Adams returns to his roots. That is to say, he’s taking the much more plainspoken, man-and-his-acoustic-guitar approach rather than something that has the full force of a band behind it or is largely electric in nature. Clearly then, it’s not quite the livelier alt-country sound he’d established with The Cardinals, nor was it the more electrified rock approach he pushed on his last solo releases “Love Is Hell” and “Rock N Roll”. No, to get that sparse, rootsy folk sound, he’d need to return to his first two records, “Heartbreaker” and “Gold”. As luck would have it, they’re also his two most popular and best records to date. In taking on such a task there’s are some inevitable flaws that go along with it. The Ryan Adams of 10 years ago is by no means the Ryan Adams of today. The sad, introspective young man has been replaced by a much more content and married guy on the verge of middle age. The headspace is different, for one. Trends in music have changed too, though honestly there’s probably always a place for a smart, Dylanesque folk singer. But there’s also the thought that perhaps Adams is backtracking with the very purposeful idea of reclaiming success and widespread popularity, that the progressive musical strides he’s made over the last decade apparently mean little to nothing to him. Adams’ last several records may not have been very good, but that doesn’t mean they were devoid of good ideas or new twists on old sounds. There may be a certain comfort in returning to your old stomping grounds, but is there really a point if you’re not going to apply a fresh perspective to it rather than simply revert to your prior ways? These are all things that should be asked of “Ashes & Fire” from the very beginning, and that’s not even bringing up Adams’ frustrations with record labels and fans.

The pressure is on Adams with “Ashes & Fire”, and not just because he doesn’t have a full band backing him up anymore. Though distributed through Capitol Records, this is the first record Adams has had total control over in awhile. Not that he was bending to the whims of executives at Universal Records the entire time, even if he implied as much in the blog post where he quit music. At first glance though, “Ashes & Fire” is a very interesting, if not lightly flawed record that is pretty much the best thing he’s done in years, even if it comes nowhere close to those gorgeously auspicious introductions we got with his first two albums. “I’m just looking through the rubble/trying to find out who we were,” Adams bluntly states on opening track “Dirty Rain”. He may be talking about a failed relationship, but the sentiment doubles as he attempts to rekindle the romance he once had with his fans. The very hushed and pure acoustic guitar and vocal opening of the track is heartening as well, a reminder of the days when it truly was just Adams doing all the work. Some light organ gets sprinkled in towards the end, but doesn’t distract from the overall song’s temprament, which is a good thing. Not so great is the production on the record, which to be fair is great overall but possibly just a little too polished. You can hear the occasional breath taken between words or the sound of fingers sliding up and down the neck of a guitar, but a record such as this truly benefits from raw and essentially minimal production. By no means does it have to be lo-fi to the point where the recording sounds damaged, but a more roughshod feel just works better in folk recordings such as this one. At least producer Glyn Johns doesn’t make Adams sound inhumanly perfect, so it makes the album easier to connect with a wider audience.

For the casual Ryan Adams fans, “Ashes & Fire” has a couple faster tempo tracks to help make a traditionally slow and sad trip a little less so. The title track isn’t going to get you energized for the day ahead, but it will get your toe tapping at least a little. The biggest overall track on the album comes from “Chains of Love”, which skips along good-naturedly and incorporates a string section that feels reminiscent of something you might hear on “Gold”. It’s no “New York, New York” or even “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)”, but the adult contemporary crowd should find some satisfaction with it as the most marketable, radio friendly thing here. “Lucky Now” also was smartly chosen as the album’s first single, as it doesn’t quite have the energy, but remains one of the record’s best slow burners with a hook that sticks with you more than anything else. The track also contains one of the record’s other begrudgingly backwards-looking lyrics, as this time Adams asks, “Are we really who we used to be?/Am I really who I was?” That aside, the positive message contained within the song is that time and love can heal wounds, among other things. It’s a testament to Adams’ path as a musician, from his depressed, heartbroken and drug-influenced early days through his cleaned up, sober married life today.

The biggest difference between the Ryan Adams of 2001 and the Ryan Adams of 2011 is how he writes his songs. The personal demons and issues have been set aside for the most part, making way for more abstract thoughts and third person narratives. Along with the title “Ashes & Fire”, there are plenty of other elements that make their way into these songs, from “Dirty Rain” to “Rocks” and the “Invisible Riverside”. Those are just the song titles, but the lyrics are about those things too, along with light and shadow and a few other similar bits. They’re mostly used in metaphor, and there’s a lesson or two to be learned from them as well if you pay close enough attention. Yet most of the lyrics are broad about nature, seeming to say a whole lot but in reality saying very little. Too often he relies on old or bland cliches to get his point across, when he used to do exceptionally well with the turn of a phrase. At least he’s not giving us platitudes or rhetoric that pretends to be intelligent. In that respect, it’s better than his records with The Cardinals. Actually there’s a lot of things about “Ashes & Fire” that make it better than almost all of what he’s put out in the last decade. Ryan Adams was almost always a better musician when on his own versus when he’d collaborate with a full band (not speaking of the Whiskeytown days). For a guy that appears to be ready to start the third phase of his career, this record isn’t a bad way to kick it off. Adams may not reclaim the critical praise and fan base he once had, but there’s still an unerring sense he’s got plenty of great music left to give the world.

Click past the jump to stream the entire record (limited time only)!

Album Review: Zola Jesus – Conatus [Sacred Bones]

On 10/10/2011

Buy “Conatus” from Amazon

In some respects, it’s helpful to have a dictionary on hand when listening to Zola Jesus. Essentially the moniker under which Nika Roza Danilova operates, Zola Jesus has a tendency to use big or scientific words for song and record titles. Last year, she released the “Stridulum” EP and an expanded version of that which was lovingly called “Stridulum II”. The title is remarkably obscure to find a meaning to, but reportedly it’s a Latin word that means the sound a bird or an insect makes when rubbing its wings together. The vocabulary fun continues on the new Zola Jesus record “Conatus”, the title of which is another Latin term referring to the inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. More on that later. Other fun track titles on the new record include “Hikikomori”, a Japanese word meaning a reclusive person, and “Ixode”, which is a genus of hard-bodied ticks. Let it be known that Zola Jesus is doing more than just schooling you in dark pop melodies. Do you need to know the deeper meanings behind these titles in order to fully understand what they’re trying to accomplish? Nah. It’s likely that Danilova simply chose those words because they look and/or sound cool, not because they had an influence on a particular sound or lyric. Don’t write the record off as somebody trying to sound smart to mask glaring idiocy either – “Conatus” excels no matter if you’re using 10 dollar or 10 cent vocabulary.

If you’re familiar with past Zola Jesus efforts, “Conatus” comes across like a slight upgrade in a number of ways. Her sound is often described as gothic, with strong pop sensibilities and heavy synth/industrial tones. If Lykke Li and Natasha Khan (aka Bat for Lashes) were to have a blonde-haired musical baby, Zola Jesus would be the result. You could say the same thing about Siouxie Sioux and Kate Bush. It’s also a little surprising what with her similarities to these other pretty popular acts that she isn’t achieving that same level of success. Perhaps the new record will change that. The arrangements are bigger and more dramatic than ever, and Danilova’s voice is much clearer and up-front compared to past recordings. She belts it out to the rafters with some tour-de-force singing that is highly emotional and passionate. That sort of power comes from being a trained opera singer, even if the style of music she makes is pretty far removed from your traditional opera.

After the echo-laden, electro-glitch minute-long “Swords” provides a lovely intro to the record, “Avalanche” pairs heavy drum machine beats with ominous synths. It is by no means a thrilling, club-ready hit, and its eventual descent into a capella vocals during the final minute very much keeps to that mentality. Not every album needs to start in a fun and or even commercially viable fashion, and the first two tracks are more darkly beautiful than they are easy to like. That’s only a problem if you choose to make it one. Things go industrial on first single “Vessel”, and amid the electro-squelches and heavy piano, you can’t help but feel that Trent Reznor would greatly appreciate the track. The verse-chorus-verse structure of the track also goes a long way towards making it more likable and catchy in the face of abject oddity, particularly as the track dissolves into chaotic static in the final 45 seconds. The pulsating synths of “Hikikomori” are paced briskly enough to make the track a potential club hit, even as it wallows in despair the entire time. It’s just the beginning of a remarkably energetic midsection of the album, one that slowly moves out of its depressing funk and into something a little warmer and a little brighter, though Danilova’s intensity and focus never really lets up. “In Your Nature” is fascinating in particular for Danilova’s wounded and vulnerable vocals, along with its liberal use of strings, which aren’t as widely used across the rest of the record. The saddest moment on “Conatus” strikes right near the end, where the piano ballad “Skin” sounds a whole lot like somebody hitting rock bottom. When Danilova sings, “I’ve had enough”, she emotes it with such pain that it’s not hard to believe she’s truly given up. That pain finally overwhelms her completely on closing track “Collapse”, with a trance-like synth dominating the melody, she keeps coming back to the line, “It hurts to let you in”. Yet in spite of the agony it causes, she still surrenders herself over to it because it provides relief. Call it self-abuse if you like, but sometimes we all need to let our dark sides have free reign to keep us sane.

Where “Conatus” ultimately winds up in trouble is in commercial viability. No, easily likable music is not a requirement for success nor does it make a record better or worse. The moody vibes that dominate this album are largely offset by strong beats and interesting melodies. It’s the structure of the songs themselves that feel formless at times that bring a very wandering nature to the record. That’s funny because this is the first Zola Jesus album that exudes confidence and power, and the first where Danilova seems to fully know what she’s going for. There’s a glue that makes “Conatus” feel like a whole thematic journey from darkness to light to murky resolution, but there are missing chorus detours and unbalanced verse dark alleys on that path providing the occasional mixed signal. For the most part though, this record shows growth for Zola Jesus. It is, as the Latin word title of the record means, something that has the inclination to continue to exist and enhance itself. This might not be the work that finally graduates Danilova to the big leagues of the darkwave subgenre, but she’s certainly on her way.

Zola Jesus – Vessel

Zola Jesus – Seekir

Album Review: Feist – Metals [Interscope/Cherrytree]

On 10/06/2011