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Album Review: Cat Power – Sun [Matador]

On 09/04/2012

If you do even a little bit of reading about Cat Power’s new album Sun, you’re almost guaranteed to be exposed to a few key details. Yes, the album was written in the wake of her breakup with actor Giovanni Ribisi. Yes, her finances wound up in shambles and she nearly had to declare bankruptcy. She plays almost every instrument on the album and produced it almost entirely on her own because she didn’t have money to pay other people. Let’s also not forget about her battles with alcoholism and stage fright, to the point where up until a few years ago going to a Cat Power show involved the risk of it not happening at all or shutting down early. You’ll hear all these things, many of which are intended to provide back story and increase your interest in the final product that is this new record. What you can really call them are distractions from what’s actually happening in the music. Forget what you’ve read before this and throw away your expectations. Chan Marshall has just pulled a 180 on us, and there’s no way to prepare for it.

Okay, so maybe “180” and “no way to prepare” are a little extreme in the case of Sun. After all her last album of original material, The Greatest, was a sonic shift in itself, as she recruited Louisiana’s Dirty Delta Blues Band to fill out her sparse acoustic guitar or piano arrangements in very classic ways. She also conquered her stage fright and became an enigmatic frontwoman exuding confidence and stability even though her personal life was anything but. While her sound has evolved again and the backing band is gone, Marshall puts her confidence on display more than ever before on the new album. Its cover features her with a rainbow shining across her face, and that plus the album title push forward the idea that these songs are the calm after a stormy career thus far. They sound that way too, beaming with more positivity and excitement than ever, and stepping out from the shadows of a black and white past into the full-on technicolor of 2012. This is the first Cat Power album to ever sound like it belongs in this particular era, and that step away from classic or more traditional sounds serves her even better than you might expect.

A very small part of how Sun sounds is likely due to the work of Phillipe Zdar, a French dance producer who’s worked with everyone from Phoenix to Cut Copy to Beastie Boys. He mastered this record and made small production tweaks to it without being too heavy handed or glossy. Its lack of shine actually adds to the overall charm of these songs, which otherwise might have suffered from sounding too clean-cut. Marshall’s very hands-on approach to this album probably benefits her in the long run, and it’s all the more admirable how far she steps outside her comfort zone to evolve. After recording a number of songs for this record and playing them for a friend, Marshall decided to toss them out because she was told they sounded sad and “like old Cat Power.” To her, this new album isn’t supposed to be anything short of a rebirth, a signal that her life and priorities have changed. The dynamic scope and lyrics of Sun go a long way towards proving that too.

On the Cat Power song “Colors and the Kids” off her 1998 classic Moon Pix, Marshall sang, “When we were teenagers, we wanted to be the sky.” Now much older and wiser, she echoes a similar sentiment on Sun‘s opening track “Cherokee,” with a chorus of, “Bury me, marry me to the sky.” While the more recent “sky” reference is actually about death, you can use the metaphor of marriage as a union where two become one to tie it in referentially to the earlier song. Stylistically though, “Cherokee” more calls to mind “Cross Bones Style” in both tempo and lyrical structure. The mechanical drum beat and the repeated mantra that is the chorus are equally gripping in both songs, though “Cherokee” goes places and innovates in a different sort of way. Starting with the electric guitar, then adding piano through the verses, the electronica elements show up in the chorus to take things to a whole new level complete with some chainsaw-like effects and even an eagle cry that may or may not be cheesy. No matter, because the song works as one of the poppiest and most engaging Cat Power songs to date.

The first third of Sun is actually very aesthetically pleasing and hit-oriented. Warbling synths and skittering beats feel right at home alongside some grinding electric guitar on the title track. Of course the lyrics also include a not-so-sly reference to the classic Beatles tune “Here Comes the Sun.” The light piano pop of “Ruin” is actually deceptive as the lyrics are about social justice and starvation, with a hook that includes the lines, “Bitchin’/ Complainin’/ From people who ain’t got shit to eat.” On “3,6,9” synths and handclaps lead an awfully catchy hook that sounds like it should be used in a future hip hop song. There may or may not be a reference to Lil Jon’s “Get Low” or Shirley Ellis’ “The Clapping Song” in the lyrics, but Marshall insists she wrote them after waking up with a really bad hangover, which makes sense with references to wine and the subtle suggestion of alcoholism. AutoTune also gets a little cameo via some of the vocal overdubs and at the very end of the song, where she quite indistinguishably repeats two words that many speculate are “Fuck me.”

Sun‘s midsection is more challenging on the ears as it moves away from easier pop melodies and into a slower, more experimental range. The record actually needs songs like “Always on My Own” and “Human Being” to keep you on your toes a bit and show off some extra artistic flourishes. Not everything works perfectly, but credit goes to Marshall for what’s really an admirable effort. By the time “Manhattan” kicks in with its lonely drum machine beats and looped piano chords, you’ve been transported to a different but no less important final third of the album. The buzzy and robotic “Silent Machine” adds some much needed energy to things after a few downtempo tracks, but it’s the 11 minutes of “Nothin But Time” that makes the biggest statement on the entire record. Written for the teenage daughter of her ex Giovanni Ribisi, the song is an ethereal pep talk that’s inspired and passionate and bears the markings of a classic track like David Bowie’s “Heroes.” Iggy Pop contributes some guest vocals on the second half of the song, and the way he shouts, “You Wanna live!” is like a slap in the face to anybody that’s ever considered killing themselves. Amid the many positive messages Marshall tries to push out there on this album that speak of the human condition with the vibe that we’re all in this together, it’s perhaps this most direct and deeply personal track that offers the best and wisest guidance. Very few tracks that soar upwards of eight or so minutes are actually worth the time to listen all the way through, but this is one that’s absolutely worth the investment.

While “Nothin But Time” would have made a fitting end to Sun, “Peace and Love” provides one last jolt of…something. It’s not an overtly weird song, but the electric guitar bounce and the very rhythmic way Marshall recites the lyrics turn it into an almost hip hop track. There’s not really an ounce of sincerity in it unlike so much of the rest of the record, and you can almost envision Marshall smiling and winking while she spouts out lines like, “100,000 hits on the internet/ But that don’t mean shit.” Such levity is welcome, because though you can’t really say the album is heavy-handed and dark in the least, it still lacks genuine fun to go along with the positive vibes. For once, it’s great to hear a Cat Power record that moves past everything she’s created in the past. Moon Pix and You Are Free are just two of a few important records in Cat Power’s nine album oeuvre, granted that status because of the times in which they were released and the emotion and grace in Marshall’s vocals and lyrics. Sun doesn’t deserve praise because it breaks the mold, but because it does so without fear and a reliance on anything or anyone. Also because it does everything well. Marshall proves herself to be a talent that can defy expectations and surprise us even seventeen years into her career. That’s a rarity worth celebrating.

Cat Power – Ruin
Cat Power – Cherokee

Buy Sun from Amazon

Album Review: Passion Pit – Gossamer [Columbia]

By Faronheit

On 08/13/2012

In album review, BNM, music

Most of the world probably thinks that Passion Pit are a fun synth-pop band. Go to one of their shows, and you’ll dance, sing and jump around with a smile on your face. Hear one of their songs on the radio and there’s a good chance you’ll sing along mindlessly only to have a chorus stuck in your head for hours afterwards. But how much do you really know about Passion Pit? How closely have you listened to their songs and taken to heart what’s being said in the lyrics? We so often listen to music as an escape or a distraction from our own lives that we can forget somebody’s heart and soul might have been poured into a song or album. That’s particularly true of pop music, which is more often thought of as a disposable treat. It’s the equivalent of auditory candy, never actually substantial or healthy enough to constitute a musical meal. Not every pop song or pop record is as light and fancy free as it might appear on the surface however, and it’s only through seeing that depth that we can truly begin to understand music as an art form. As the frontman for Passion Pit, Michael Angelakos writes songs about his own life. The initial Passion Pit recordings that formed the Chunk of Change EP were written and pieced together in Angelakos’ bedroom by himself, in an attempt to win the affections of a girl. There’s both a sweetness and a sense of desperation coming out of it, and though it caught on like wildfire with music lovers via Myspace, the girl it was about didn’t feel the same way and things didn’t work out. With the loss of that girl came success, and all the pressures that came along with it. Over the course of a year, the band would secure a major label record deal and put out their debut album Manners to widespread critical acclaim. Singles like “Sleepyhead” and “Little Secrets” were radio hits as well, and the band toured in larger and larger venues.

Such popularity and praise are the dreams of many musicians, but Angelakos doesn’t quite feel that way. Fortune and fame can bring out the worst in some people, and the pressure it can put on the artists can only add to that. In the three years since Passion Pit released their last album, the band has not stopped working, which turned out to be to their detriment. Unknown to most except those very close to Angelakos, he’s been diagnosed as bipolar for a few years now. While he has taken plenty of medication to help manage the roller coaster highs and lows the disorder brings, he still has severe bouts of depression and has attempted or thought about committing suicide on several occasions. He’s spent the last few years in and out of mental health facilities, and much to the chagrin of his record label, spent months trying and failing to make progress on new music as he dealt with these issues. Most recently, the band has been forced to cancel many of their tour dates so Angelakos can work on some of his symptoms. He maintains the band will try and tour as much as possible for now, however it’s unlikely that will continue for a whole lot longer. There’s a distinct impermanence affixed to Passion Pit’s work now, and the hope is they make the most of it. From all this pain and strife and difficulty comes Gossamer, the band’s second album. If you failed to fully grasp or take seriously some of the darker moments on Manners, hopefully this new record pushes you to more closely examine and think critically about what these songs are about before blindly jumping around and memorizing the hook.

The first single and opening track on Gossamer is “Take A Walk,” a light and bouncy number about how Angelakos’ parents struggled financially when he was growing up. It’s a fun-sounding song about a not-so-fun topic, which is how most of the album goes. There’s something just a little off about that track though, and it has nothing to do with lyrics and everything to do with structure. The verses and chorus don’t mesh as well as they should, creating an imbalance that diminishes its overall effectiveness. It may bear the band’s signature sound but doesn’t ignite as intended. The following track “I’ll Be Alright” is a far better example of Passion Pit 2.0. Filled with skittering synths and a hyperactive melody, its hook may not have incredible staying power but it’s complex oddities can still give you a total sugar rush. Yet all that betrays what the song is actually about, which is about his battles with depression and how it’s affected his romantic relationships. “Well I’ve made so many messes/And this love has grown so restless/Your whole life’s been nothing but this/I won’t let you go loveless,” he sings in the chorus, trying to tell his girlfriend he’ll be fine without her. Of course when he talks about drinking and taking pills and manipulating people to selfishly get his way, you get the sense that might not actually be the case. He’s had a change of heart by the end of the song, instead of telling her to leave, he now says he won’t let her unless he knows he’ll be alright. That’s not a very nice thing to do to somebody – jerking them around like that – but that’s almost par for the course sometimes for people with emotional problems. Angelakos being able to acknowledge that is a great sign though, with the hope of learning from such lessons.

If Gossamer has one sure fire hit on it, “Carried Away” is it. The verses build perfectly to the gigantic jump around chorus that’s both airy and memorable. The topic du jour this time is a much more universal one too, playing up the disparity between rich and poor. At the end of the final verse, Angelakos leads what’s sure to be a live staple chant of “We all have problems,” suggesting that no matter if you’re rich or poor, mentally stable or instable, that nobody is in great shape all the time. The album’s first ballad, the R&B jam of “Constant Conversations,” finds his relationship in bad shape due to excessive alcoholism. “I’m just a mess with the name and the price/And now I’m drunker than before babe/Told me drinking doesn’t make me nice,” he bemoans knowingly. Those same issues surface again via “On My Way,” only this time they come off even more sad and desperate than before. While he proposes in the chorus that they get married to “consecrate this messy love,” he later makes the argument that, “We’re both so broken, long done hoping/Is that we’ll stumble upon our love again.” It comes across as a plea to spend your life with somebody because you’re both screwed up to the point where nobody else would want you. Lines like, “All these demons, I can beat them” and “Everyday’s another chance” shine glimmers of hope across the track, as do the various glockenspiels, bells and xylophones, which help make it sound like Sigur Ros turned pop. Yet one of the key things about this album is that despite the platitudes that strive to create positive vibes in bad situations, we’re never entirely sure that Angelakos truly believes in himself or what he’s saying.

The most positive and uplifting moment on Gossamer comes almost right at the end of the album with “It’s Not My Fault, I’m Happy.” It’s certainly not the poppiest moment on the record, but it’s one of those slower sort of anthem-ballads where people raise their lighters (or cell phones) to the sky and sing along like they truly believe in the lyrics. Instead of ending on that high note, the final track on the album is “Where We Belong,” which is about Angelakos’ suicide attempt a few years ago. With pulsating electronic beats and dramatic violins as the instrumental backing, his tone comes across as very reflective as he recounts the experience (“And then I’m lifted up/Out of the crimson tub/The bath begins to drain/And from the floor he prays away all my pain”). He has said in interviews that in his mind the archangel Gabriel was present with him at the time, hence the line, “Do you believe in me too, Gabriel?” The last line of the entire album is, “All I’ve ever wanted was to be happy and make you proud.” The “you” in that is likely his fiancee, but could also be anyone from his family, friends or it might even be directed right at the listener. Angelakos might never be able to be truly happy the way that he wants to be, but at the very least with Gossamer he’s created something that he can and should be proud of. Hopefully he keeps seeking proper treatment and is able to get the help he needs. Smart, challenging and emotionally stirring pop records like this don’t come along often, so the longer he’s around and able to make them, the luckier we are to hear them.

Passion Pit – Take a Walk

Passion Pit – I’ll Be Alright

Buy Gossamer from Amazon

Snapshot Review: Purity Ring – Shrines [4AD]

By Faronheit

On 07/31/2012

In album review, BNM, class of 2012, music, snapshot review

According to the dictionary, a purity ring is a “type of promise ring that pledges abstinence.” In more plainspoken terms, by wearing a purity ring you promise to not have sex until you get married. As many who wear purity rings will claim, the wait is worth it. How fitting then for a band calling themselves Purity Ring to make us wait a long time before releasing their first full length album. First appearing in early 2011, they began releasing single after single, like a trail of breadcrumbs to keep us interested and engaged. It helped that they were really good songs, too. Describing their sound can be a little difficult, but it’s fair to say they’re like a more pop-driven version of The Knife or Crystal Castles, pairing skittering hip hop-esque electronic beats with often masked female vocals. The duo of Corin Roddick and Megan James are responsible for the project. Roddick handles the instrumental side, and James does vocals and lyrics. Their first single “Ungirthed” did just about everything right, fusing together little electro plinks with surges of bass, and James’ vocals playfully floating above it all. It was fun and surprisingly addictive, which was a trend that continued with additional singles like “Belispeak” and “Fineshrine.” A grand total of five out of eleven songs off their new album Shrines were released leading up to it, and there wasn’t a weak track among them. Now with the whole thing available for your consumption, the great news is that their previous success wasn’t a fluke. Even the non-singles carry hints of being potential future singles, and this record is so jam packed with them it can be a challenge to pick out the highlights. On any given day you might fall in love with “Crawlersout,” only to have “Lofticries” dig its claws into you the next time around. That’s a good sort of problem to have, though for fans that have been keeping up with the band since 2011, some of those earliest tracks will always be considered noteworthy moments. Newcomers to the Purity Ring bandwagon may initially find inspiration in certain songs, though the entire record might start sounding like an amorphous blob after awhile. Such a reaction is completely natural given that the template tools used to make this album don’t really change from track to track. Even the lyrics are thematically similar, filled with vibrant body imagery. “Sea water is flowing from the middle of my thighs,” James sings at the start of “Crawlersout.” The very next song is “Fineshrine,” where she encourages somebody to “cut open my sternum and poke my little ribs around you.” From the ringing ears and clicking teeth of “Ungirthed” to the sweating lips and starving hips of “Saltkin,” and even to the album cover featuring disembodied hands and lungs, Purity Ring are very easy to figure out, even if their distinct sound and lyrics can be challenging. It’s the angle they approach each melody and hook that makes the difference, rewarding close listening. If Shrines has a failure, it comes via the mid-album oddity of “Grandloves.” Isaac Emmanuel of Young Magic shares vocal duties with James in what feels like an ill-advised duet where he tries on his best computer-glitchy Beck impersonation. The song’s not bad by any means, but really more pedestrian and uninspired than everything that surrounds it. Otherwise it’s a very impressive debut from a band that continues to change and evolve with time. It might take them a few years to finally generate a follow-up LP, but if history is any indication, we’ll be hearing a new song or two or five before then. If it’s anywhere near as good as what we’ve been given on Shrines, it truly will have been worth the wait.

Buy Shrines from Amazon

Listen to me talk about Shrines on a podcast.

Album Review: Frank Ocean – Channel Orange [Def Jam]

By Faronheit

On 07/23/2012

In album review, BNM, class of 2012, mp3, music

Frank Ocean’s sexuality shouldn’t matter. Why his revelation that he’s bisexual has made so many waves (pun intended) is because people working in the hip hop and R&B genres are often considered intolerant of anyone who’s not 100% straight. There’s a fair amount of anti-gay rhetoric and hurtful slang used in tracks without even blinking an eye or somebody speaking out against it, and so for Ocean to come out in that sort of environment takes an incredible amount of courage. He’s weathered the storm quite well so far, though the realities of his situation might be a bit different than what we’re seeing through the eyes of the media. Now let’s just hope he doesn’t get stereotyped because of it, or made an unofficial spokesperson for all things bisexual or homosexual in the music community. The ultimate hope is that if you make great art that people will see past any labels and appreciate it solely for what it is. The great news for Ocean is that his newest album Channel Orange does exactly that, transcending topical, musical and many other boundaries to help make it one of the most fascinating and exciting full lengths of 2012 so far.

Whether you’ve been paying close attention to the R&B and urban styles of music the last few years or not, chances are you’ve become aware that the increased popularity of AutoTune has been both a help and a hindrance to music in general. At its best, AutoTune is another creative tool that can be used to take vocals or accent tracks in ways many never thought possible until now. At its worst, it’s an annoyance, detracts from the humanity in a song, and allows singers to cheat by taking their vocals to places they couldn’t otherwise go on their own. Ocean doesn’t use AutoTune on Channel Orange, nor is it apparent that he needs to. His vocals are smooth as silk, and his range is far more vast than you might expect. Listening to opening track “Thinkin Bout You,” Ocean holds a pretty even keel together until the chorus hits. Reacting to being wounded by a love interest, he flips into a soaring falsetto that makes for an impressive emotional outpouring of his pain. Sad though it may be, it’s also one of several very catchy songs on this record.

The lightly bouncing and effortless “Sweet Life” celebrates the excess associated with being rich, ultimately settling on the very addictive creed of, “Why see the world/when you’ve got the beach?” But that sort of reaction isn’t meant to be taken at face value, instead it’s more about the search for meaning beyond what money and the song’s title describe. Similarly, “Super Rich Kids” uses a plodding piano chord that sounds like it was ripped from Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets” to both mock a life of massive weath and relate to the consistently greedy emptiness it causes. “A million one, a million two/a hundred more will never do,” he sings like a man trapped in a prison of money from which there is no escape. As a 24-year-old still in the earliest stages of his career, Ocean isn’t nearly at the point yet where he could be considered a financial heavyweight. These songs aren’t so much personal stories or feelings he’s describing, but rather character morality tales that are always human and surprisingly relatable. “Crack Rock” turns a drug addict into somebody we can sympathize with, while “Lost” is about the personal relationship between a drug dealer and a drug mule, how they may love each other but can’t stop using one another either. Love and religion intertwine on “Monks,” where the passion a crowd has for a musician parallels that of a deity, the Dalai Lama and Buddhism being the example used. Thematically similar but all the more devastating is “Bad Religion,” where he likens unrequited love to a cult because of its exclusivity, obsession and inability to give anything back to you. The line in the chorus, “I can never make him love me,” is thought by many to be related to the letter he wrote about his attraction to a man that didn’t feel the same way. Whether or not that’s actually the case, the frustration and sadness in his voice is very, very affecting.

Lyrical content and stories aside, Channel Orange also has plenty to offer in terms of composition. This is not your standard R&B slow jam style record. Ocean is offering up so much more than contemporary leaders of the genre like R. Kelly and Usher are trying these days. The risks he’s taking have more in common with Kanye West’s last album, the near perfect My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, than almost anything else around. If that record set a new bar for hip hop, Ocean’s seeks to set a new bar for R&B. He’s taking many of the greats such as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Prince, and applying some of their best qualities in mind to tracks that are extremely modern in body. The organ and spoken word opening of “Bad Religion” is eerily reminiscent of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” but moves in a polar opposite direction with the entrance of mournful piano chords and dramatic orchestration. Southern style rhythm guitar and church organ blend quite effortlessly with drum machine beats on closing track “Forrest Gump,” and together they give the song a tenderness that betrays a line like, “I wanna see your pom-poms from the stands.” If you really want to understand what this record is all about and see how Ocean has turned R&B on its head, look no further than “Pyramids.” The sprawling, nearly 10 minute track moves from ambient electronica to dancefloor synth-pop to a soulful slow jam to a psychedelic guitar solo without ever sounding out of place or clumsy. Altogether it’s unlike anything else in music today, and it’s that much more brilliant because of it.

If Channel Orange has one problem, it’s sticking with the time honored tradition of adding interludes between a few songs to expand its overall length and track listing. Some of them, like “Fertilizer” and “White,” serve more like brief sketches of songs and glimpses of potential wasted. The bookend tracks titled “Start” and “End” feel even more pointless, the former using the sound of a Playstation powering on while the latter has the sound of somebody getting out of their car and walking into their house. Only “Not Just Money,” featuring a woman talking about how there’s more to life than dollars and cents as she struggles to feed her family, actually feels appropriately used. It’s sandwiched in between “Sweet Life” and “Super Rich Kids,” emphasizing the moral lessons they’re looking to teach. Outside of those shrug-worthy and mostly pointless moments, everything else about this album is ironclad and near perfect. While it lacks the same theatricality and reinvention, Channel Orange can be favorably compared to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust record. Following on the heels of his controversial 1972 interview in which he confessed to being gay (which later turned out to be…not so much), Bowie was on the verge of calling it quits. Coupled with the legendary Ziggy Stardust however, Bowie’s profile rose significantly and he became the powerful force in music that many look up to today. Ocean is only getting his career started, but with the revelations about his sexuality and the excellence of this new album, you can almost see the same sort of career trajectory emerging. Time will tell for sure if that holds true, but for the moment this looks like the true birth of the next music superstar.

Frank Ocean – Pyramids
Frank Ocean – Sweet Life

Buy Channel Orange from Amazon

Album Review: Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan [Domino]

By Faronheit

On 07/09/2012

In album review, BNM, music, pitchfork music festival, pitchfork music festival 2012

One of the most fascinating things about Dirty Projectors is how they continually evolve with each new record. It’s been almost 10 years since the band released The Glad Fact, which at the time really wasn’t much more than frontman Dave Longstreth and Yume Bitsu’s Adam Forkner playing oddball songs people had trouble describing. Things got even more fun in 2005 with The Getty Address, a concept “opera” that was about the destruction of the environment, 16th century explorer Hernan Cortes, and featured a main character named Don Henley. There was dense orchestration mixed with some more modern R&B beats that certainly gave it a unique feel and sound. When people started to earnestly pay attention to this eccentric and sometimes brilliant band was in 2007 with the release of Rise Above. The record was an attempt by Longstreth to re-interpret the classic Black Flag album Damaged track-by-track, in spite of not having listened to it in over 15 years. His focus also shifted away from epic, orchestral arrangements and more towards dense polyrhythms and visceral vocal harmonies. Band membership was somewhat streamlined too, and after working with a wide variety of people including members of Vampire Weekend, Dirty Projectors became a more comfortable five piece with people Longstreth actually seemed to care about. The real challenge was getting people to care too. Such wild musical ambitions often made for difficult results, and the critical love the band received didn’t exactly earn them a huge increase in fans. They are the sort of band best described as “not for everybody.” On their last album Bitte Orca however, they went a long way to help rectify that stigma by moving in a more accessible art-pop direction. Key elements such as West African-inspired guitar lines and offbeat percussion remained, but never had the band produced something that was so light, airy and altogether fun to listen to. After years of wandering through a desert of his own wildly strange vision, Longstreth had finally found the balance needed to take the band to the next level of success.

That was three years ago, and since then restlessness has once again gotten the better of Dirty Projectors. Never content to do the same thing twice, or even keep the same lineup for too long, there have been a few changes made in preparation for the release of the band’s new album Swing Lo Magellan. Keyboardist and singer Angel Deradoorian has taken a hiatus to focus on other projects, and drummer Brian McOmber left the band, with Mike Johnson taking his place. A close listen to the new single “Gun Has No Trigger” also yields some clues as to what’s in store on the new record. The arrangement is best described as minimal, with an unwavering beat and light flourishes of bass guitar being the only instruments used beyond Longstreth’s lead vocal and the harmonies of Amber Coffman and Haley Dekle. The poppy, R&B-like flavor of “Stillness Is the Move” off Bitte Orca is nowhere to be found. In fact, not one song on Swing Lo Magellan even comes close to that level of funky, resonating catchiness. That’s not the point though, because this is a fresh batch of songs written with different intentions in mind. Whereas the last album was very self-conscious by carefully reappropriating certain sounds in creative ways, Longstreth has called the new material deeper and more personal, but also more playful with an emphasis on writing great individual songs rather than leaning on an overarching theme. Instead of retreating from the more pop sensible and accessible song structures, the band drives even further towards them. The way they do it varies from song to song, as do the styles somewhat, but when you’re anchored by distinctive guitar playing along with equally distinctive percussion and vocal styles, those constants do great work keeping everything pretty uniform even when they’re anything but.

Swing Lo Magellan begins with Longstreth clearing his throat. It turns out to be the first of many raw “sounds of the studio” that appear on the album. “Unto Caesar” contains the most obvious use of the technique, with Coffman and Dekle asking, “When should we bust in the harmonies?” right in the middle of a verse, and later commenting on the lyrics with, “Uhh, that doesn’t make any sense, what you just said.” Such off the cuff moments actually lend the record quite a bit of levity and sharply reduce the impression that Longstreth is a bit anal retentive when it comes to song arrangement. Is almost everything else pieced together in an almost ironclad fashion? For the most part, but that’s another point Longstreth is trying to make: music should inspire you and relate to you rather than simply existing in a vacuum of your own complacency. Songs like “Offspring Are Blank,” “About to Die,” “Just from Chevron” and “Impregnable Question” tackle the big topics of birth, death, environmental disaster and love, because if you write about trivial things you’ll get trivial responses to your music. The whole thing is very nicely summed up at the end of the record with “Irresponsible Tune,” where Longstreth adopts a ’50s style croon and a lone acoustic guitar to make his case. “Without songs we’re lost/and life is pointless, harsh and long,” he espouses with the same sort of tender conviction that’s so effective across the rest of the album. Even if he sang it as though he didn’t believe it, that doesn’t make the words themselves any less correct.

What makes Swing Lo Magellan such a compelling listen is that you’re never able to put it into a box or describe it to someone easily. If you’ve heard a Dirty Projectors record before then you’ve probably got a reasonable grasp on what they sound like, even if words fail you. Opening track “Offspring Are Blank,” for example, is extremely organic in its initial approach, the melody created via humming voices and the rhythms sustained by handclaps. Three kids on a school playground can recreate it, no instruments needed. Until the chorus, that is, when the sky cracks open and the electric guitars and drums come to life next to Longstreth’s soaring vocal. The dynamic shift from quiet to loud and back again calls attention to the verse-chorus-verse nature of the song while also sucking you in with a dynamite hook. On a different side of the spectrum, “Just From Chevron” has no chorus or hook, and plays out as a story where Coffman and Dekle narrate the beginning and end while Longstreth belts out a meaty lead role through the middle portion. It’s a unique way to put together a song, but the lyrics about a dying oil employee’s final words are what sell and justify its existence. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Dirty Projectors get a little psychedelic, “Maybe That Was It” is a guitar-heavy dirge that’s one of the most normal things the band has ever done. There’s nothing inherently weird about it outside of some light effects applied to Longstreth’s vocals, yet such a straightforward approach almost leaves the song sounding like the odd man out. When you’ve got a record full of handclaps, alien-like harmonies and various electronic bric-a-brac, avoiding such things can give you the impression there’s something wrong.

Similar things could be said about the title track. Longstreth’s relaxed vocal is paired with a lightly strummed acoustic guitar and a very standard, unflinching snare rhythm. As he waxes poetic over those 2.5 minutes of folk, there’s something almost Dylanesque about it. That brings up a great point: Dave Longstreth and Bob Dylan have quite a lot in common. Both are very odd and mysterious creatures, about whom we know everything and nothing at the same time. The attitudes and opinions we’re supposed to glean from the songs themselves are nearly useless, because either the lyrics are too strange to make any sense out of, or the times we do understand will be contradicted in the next song or record. Interviews are awkward, and often classified as train wrecks. Yet in description, people tend to use the words “ahead of his time.” At the end of it all, the one thing we can remain sure of is that be it Longstreth with Dirty Projectors or Dylan and his band, we will always keep expecting the unexpected. It may not always work out or be the easiest to digest, but at least they’re still trying to reach that next level of greatness. That’s more than can be said about a vast majority of artists making music today.

Dirty Projectors – Gun Has No Trigger

Buy Swing Lo Magellan from Amazon

Album Review: Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do [Epic]

By Faronheit

On 06/27/2012

In album review, BNM, music

Fiona Apple is best classified as an eccentric. She’s been that way ever since her first album Tidal came out in 1996 and the video for “Criminal” was damaged, dark, skeletal, and above all memorable. That record and song catapulted her to a level of fame that isn’t handled well by everyone, let alone 19-year-olds with a history of mental and physical trauma. So you get awards show speeches claiming that the “world is bullshit” and tours get cancelled because of “personal family problems.” Even though she returned in 1999 with her sophomore album When the Pawn… which only further solidified her already large fan base, incidents like her meltdown at a show in NYC persisted to the point where she pretty much vanished entirely from the public eye. She said in interviews years later that she thought about retiring from music, and probably would have had things gone a little differently.

What wound up happening was that Apple recorded a number of songs with her friend Jon Brion in 2002-3, and the tracks were submitted to her label shortly thereafter. It’s still unclear if Sony refused to release the Extraordinary Machine album because it wasn’t commercially viable, or because Apple herself asked them not to because she was unhappy with how the songs turned out. Nevertheless tracks leaked onto the internet anyways in 2004 and 2005, and fans finding out the album had already been completed, launched a “Free Fiona” campaign to give it a proper release. Apple says she was moved by the fan support, and Mike Elizondo was brought in to officially complete the record, rebuilding many of the old tracks from scratch and producing a couple new ones as well. Despite lacking a true single, Extraordinary Machine still did reasonably well for her, selling almost half a million copies. Tours with Coldplay and Damien Rice kept her busy through much of 2006, and after a string of dates with Nickel Creek in 2007 she once again retreated into the darkness, nobody knowing exactly when or if we’d see or hear from her again.

One of Apple’s favorite things to do in L.A. is dropping in and playing a set at Largo, which she’s done a number of times. Jon Brion has a weekly residency there, and she’ll show up and mess around with him. She was performing there last November and after a fan asked if she’d play something new, she said she couldn’t remember how to play anything off her new album because it’s been done for a year. Recalling the mess leading up to Extraordinary Machine, things moved a bit quicker this time. No demos were leaked and no tracks were re-cut. Epic Records head L.A. Reid promised in January that the album would be out soon, and five months later here we are. The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do is not the longest title Apple has ever affixed to one of her records, but it’s still more of a mouthful to say compared to anything else released recently. This fourth long player has her teaming up with percussionist and producer Charley Drayton to make a raw and uncompromising collection of songs the likes of which she’s never quite done before. It’s not a huge directional shift that’s set to redefine her trademark sound, but a few small adjustments have been made to emphasize her particular strengths that much more.

Apple could well have gotten away with making The Idler Wheel… an entirely a capella record, and judging by the way most of the songs progress, that’s probably how it started anyways. Her voice comes first, percussion second, and piano or other instrumental flourishes third. Such an emphasis on singing means she can wrench every single painful or joyous moment out of a lyric and push it straight into your own heart. On opening track “Every Single Night,” her voice quivers and lowers to almost a whisper when singing the lines, “I just wanna feel everything.” There’s an almost childlike innocence about it, one that’s carefully balanced against her riled up anger in the chorus, as she practically shouts, “Every single night’s a fight with my brain.” Much of the record does find her battling with her personal demons. “Don’t let me/ruin me/I may need a chaperone,” she ominously sings on “Daredevil”. Those feelings only spiral down further as the song progresses, and eventually she throws a temper tantrum, demanding, “Look at! Look at! Look at! Look at me!” with such throatiness you can envision tears of anguish streaming down her face. Yet in spite of the emotions that bleed through her voice, on “Left Alone” she claims to be more in control of those things than ever. “I don’t cry when I’m sad anymore,” she confesses with a calm and even-toned demeanor that nearly betrays the scat-jazz melody built around it. Mentally drained from searching for a reason for her solitude, Apple ultimately concludes she’s sabotaging herself. “How can I ask anyone to love me/when all I do is beg to be left alone,” she cries out.

When she’s not eviscerating herself over her own perceived flaws, Apple largely sticks to the familiar topic of good relationships gone bad. Of course when you tear up your voice yelling lines like, “I ran out of white doves’ feathers to soak up the hot piss that comes from your mouth every time you address me,” as she does on “Regret,” there’s nothing familiar or normal about it. Things don’t get much better on “Valentine,” where the sprightly chorus has the lines, “I root for you/I love you,” but the verses detail a love that has gone stale. “While you were watching someone else/I stared at you and cut myself,” she bemoans somberly. Not everything on The Idler Wheel… is sad, angry or disturbing though. The piano melody of “Jonathan” brings with it feelings of dread, but the lyrics are tender and sweet. Apple wrote the song about her ex-boyfriend Jonathan Ames and has nothing but nice things to say about him. “Werewolf” is in essence a break-up song, but it puts a positive spin on things by taking an equal blame perspective and a bright outlook for the future, where “We could still support each other/all we gotta do is avoid each other.” The sound of children playing that comes in near the end of the track emphasizes the somewhat playful vibe but also adds a tinge of sadness as an expression of lost youth, innocence and a time when love was the easiest and most organic thing in the world. Similar qualities are taken on by “Anything We Want,” which is uncharacteristically optimistic at the start of a relationship that really could go anywhere. Closing track “Hot Knife” builds off that vibe in an even more celebratory way. As Apple gushes over a great relationship, harmonies build atop one another in an off-kilter fashion, each singing a different part of the song until it’s a bird’s nest of voices and you can barely make out a word. The drums fade, and the last 30 seconds are just those vocals alone, each one competing for your attention and representing the many sides of Fiona Apple.

Vocals and lyrics aside, one of the biggest keys to the success of The Idler Wheel… is Drayton’s percussion work. He gets extremely inventive with how the rhythms are put together on the album, quite literally pulling from the kitchen sink for inspiration. When some artists say they experimented with percussion outside of traditional drums by hitting objects they found around the house, you can’t always tell that’s the case. Given the sparse arrangements on this album though, every bit comes through with forceful purpose. Light double taps on a bass drum mimic a heartbeat on “Valentine.” The rhythmic push and pull on “Jonathan” could very well be that of an office copy machine spitting out page after page just slightly offset from the driving piano melody. Shoes scraping against pavement create the march-like pace on the sprightly “Periphery,” and “Anything We Want” features pots and pans and a host of other hollow metal objects being tapped with a stick. The album credits also mention that a pillow was hit for percussionary purposes as well, however it’s not exactly clear when and where that happens (not that it matters). All of it contributes to the record’s unique charms, of which there are many. Apple has never made an album quite like this before, and it represents a seismic shift in the way we perceive her both professionally and personally. She’s still the same unbalanced and somewhat damaged girl we met over 15 years ago, but now more than ever she’s in control of her demons. A new sense of freedom comes along with that, and she takes full advantage of it. Those looking for the next “Criminal” or “Fast As You Can” will be left sorely disappointed. But if you pay close attention to the lyrics and allow yourself to fully engage with these songs, you’ll find a wealth of power, beauty, anger and tragedy poured out with the intent of reaching even the most hardened of hearts. It might not be the easiest thing to listen to, but nothing this brilliant ever is.

Fiona Apple – Every Single Night

Fiona Apple – Werewolf

Buy The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do from Amazon

Snapshot Review: Japandroids – Celebration Rock [Polyvinyl]

By Faronheit

On 06/06/2012

In album review, BNM, mp3, music, snapshot review

Japandroids are a band with an expiration date. The Vancouver duo crafted their last album Post-Nothing with the thought they’d be breaking up soon thereafter, having not found success in the relatively unsupportive music scene of their hometown. That record was in essence a mission statement from two guys that had nothing left to lose and wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. Well, it seems that glory found them, because their song “Young Hearts Spark Fire” did as its title described and ignited the passions of rock fans across the globe. The entire album actually did wonders for the band, and two years of touring with large crowds suddenly made returning to a much more normal, non-music life a far less appealing option. As much as they dislike recording, it remains an essential part of any artist’s shelf life to keep generating new material. So with the exact same collection of people, instruments and rules they had on their last album, Japandroids set out to see if lightning could strike twice. Celebration Rock is the result. While the artwork, 8 song track list and running time might well have been photocopied from Post-Nothing, the songs themselves represent a very important progression for the band. First and foremost, the very internal and personal nature of the songs has been excised to focus on bigger emotions and an outward projection. The tortured thoughts of two guys on the verge of imploding their band have been replaced by songs about other people, possibly you, that want to live and party and lust and take revenge – sometimes all at the same time. The music plays along with that vibe too; there’s a distinct hunger and energy present in Brian King’s guitar riffs and Dave Prowse’s drumming that’s designed for bigger and better things. Whereas before they were making music for themselves, now they’re making it for their fans. Opening track “The Nights of Wine and Roses” sets the tone perfectly for the rest of the record, saying we’re all drinking and smoking and spending time with friends while waiting for the big and important moments in our lives to finally arrive. The lesson learned in the end is that those big and important moments are the ones where you’re waiting. The supercharged kick in the teeth that starts the album holds up in all its headbanging, devil horns and mosh pit glory through “Fire’s Highway”, “Evil’s Sway” and an effervescent cover of Gun Club’s “For the Love of Ivy”. They truly epitomize what the album’s title is all about. At the halfway point however, a shift takes place that changes the dynamic of the record. Rather than racing for the finish line in blistering fashion, they temper the energy only slightly and go for more of an emotional and nostalgic approach. “Adrenaline Nightshift” evokes some of the best moments The Replacements ever had sonically while tapping into abstract imagery like “a blitzkrieg love and a Roman candle kiss” and espousing that “there’s no high like this.” A similar mentality is tackled in “Younger Us”, reflecting back on youthful indiscretions with a bunch of “remember when”‘s and “thinking that this feeling was never gonna end.” But those two tracks really wind up as stepping stones for “The House That Heaven Built”, a crossroads at which the band’s intense instrumentals and recent lyrical prowess collide at their peaks. As the song chugs along with sheer purpose, King sings like he’s just achieved a newfound clarity and confidence in his life and wants to pass such wisdom onto us. “If they try to slow you down/tell ’em all to go to hell,” he professes like a man that has broken through all of his boundaries and is utterly ecstatic at the possibilities that lie before him. If that doesn’t suck you in, the hook most assuredly will. Celebration Rock ends on a ballad, or at least something that turns the speed and noise down from 11 to maybe a 9.5. “Continuous Thunder” is about the electricity between two people and the question of whether they can salvage their tenuous relationship. It might not be the happiest song on the record, but it does strive to keep the same sense of boldness and conviction as everything else. As the guitars finally drift off gently into that good night, the album’s final seconds are the same as its first: the sound of fireworks. We use those pyrotechnics only in the most joyous and exclamatory circumstances, such as weddings or after a home run in baseball. On Celebration Rock, Japandroids knock one out of the park.

Japandroids – The House That Heaven Built

Buy Celebration Rock from Amazon

Album Review: Beach House – Bloom [Sub Pop/Bella Union]

By Faronheit

On 05/22/2012

In album review, BNM, music, pitchfork music festival

In the span of six years, Beach House have gone everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Their 2006 self-titled debut was met with warm embraces by virtually everyone that heard Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand’s soft and somber take on bedroom pop. The interweaving of carefully plucked electric guitar and lackadaisical keyboards next to Legrand’s emotional vocal style made for a grand base to build off of, and that’s essentially what they’ve spent their last couple records doing. Their popularity has continued to increase with each new effort, and in late 2009 they signed a new record deal with major indie label Sub Pop that only bolstered that profile more. It helped that their third record Teen Dream turned out to be one of 2010’s best, sending their subdued melodies skywards with all the grace of a freshly lit firework. The moving parts remained the same, but the dynamics had changed. It stands to reason that album put the band at a precipice, and the only way they could go from there was down. The real surprise is that their new record Bloom does nothing of the sort. If anything, the album title alone suggests that Beach House has finally blossomed into one of the most talented bands making music today. That the music is tighter and better than ever before only helps to prove that.

Perhaps the first thing you should know about Bloom is that you probably won’t fully grasp its power from a single listen alone. It’s a complicated piece best experienced in one 60 minute chunk rather than in singles or jumping around to perceived highlights. Each track is in many ways its own highlight, but together they build upon one another both instrumentally and emotionally. The main contrast with Teen Dream is that record primarily took the idea of a break-up and spent each track hashing and rehashing through the scars left behind. Great (and sad) though it was, the central idea often tried to cram too much into one song, and the consistent commentary on being mentally wounded by another person seems rather simplistic in retrospect. That was sort of the idea though, as Legrand and Scally said in interviews for that last album. They felt as if their first two records were a bit too slow moving and emotionally terse, and the idea with the third one was to open up a wider expanse with greater heft. Successful though it was, the thought of “too much, too fast” also applies quite well. Bloom seeks to smooth out those not very rough edges by keeping the big songs but trying to do less with them. They’re no longer shoving a truckload of food for thought down your throat in 3 minutes, but instead are exercising portion control.

The lyrical ideas and concepts that Legrand sings about are better organized and clearer on the whole, even as they tackle more abstract subject matter. What do you do and how do you feel about the loss of innocence in your youth? Can you hang onto those qualities that brought you such joyful moments as a kid? How does the divorce of your parents or your sibling falling victim to disease affect your life? Those aren’t lighthearted topics, but Beach House have never been a lighthearted band. Still, like any good memory bank there are thoughts on good times too; those fever dream moments that put a calm smile on your face. There’s an intimacy to them as well, because the emotional response such nostalgia triggers is unique to your own personal experience. This record does a fantastically subtle job of lending itself to become exactly what you want it to be at certain times. In that respect its brilliance lies with how much of yourself you invest in it. As a kid, did you ever have a toy or stuffed animal that you spoke to and had very personal “conversations” with? You hay have shared things with that inanimate object that nobody else knows about even today. Yet that toy or stuffed animal was manufactured in a plant somewhere and there were millions more like it shipped around the world to kids who also shared their unique hopes and fears with them. What we were looking for then was a sympathetic ear that passed no judgment and didn’t talk back. Bloom is kind of like the adult version of that. You can’t hug an mp3 (even if you can do that with a CD or vinyl record) or go on adventures with it, but you can listen carefully as Legrand’s voice draws you in and puts you at ease. Her words, though dark at times, are plainspoken and broad enough to give you the impression she’s singing to you and only you. “What comes after this momentary bliss?” she asks into the void on “Myth”. Instead of pondering that future, perhaps it’s best to simply enjoy the present.

For all the emotion and careful arrangement that went into making Bloom such a solid, singular piece of music, it winds up being Beach House’s most pop-friendly work to date. The verse-chorus-verse structure is in full effect on each track, and the hooks are hammered remarkably hard to make sure they stick in your head. Listen to the album enough times and you’ll be able to hear the chorus of almost every song in your head simply by reading its title. Strong as they all are, it’s “Wild” that earns the first spot on the mantle next to the band’s other classic tracks like “Master of None”, “Gila” and “Zebra”. Scally’s guitar work bounces off the figurative walls as the synths glide just beneath them with all the grace of a piece of ice on a hardwood floor. The drum machine motors along in classic Beach House style, and Legrand’s vocals both soar and ache at the same time. Somewhere around the middle of the record, it’s tempting to get lost in tracks like “The Hours” and “Troublemaker”, both of which don’t quite have the same effect as everything leading up to them. The purpose those songs serve though is to build towards the next peak. Like any number of post-rock bands that start a song quietly and get louder until the tension results in the bursting of a musical dam, that moment arrives in all its glory on “Wishes”. It’s a remarkable track on its own, but when paired with the couple songs leading into it there’s just a little more shimmer and sparkle in its step.

In more ways than one, shimmer and sparkle is a great way to describe Bloom as a whole. The experience of listening to it is akin to viewing a sunset on a placid lake or running through a lawn sprinkler on a hot summer’s day. Its gauzy beauty envelops you in its arms and comforts as much as it unsettles lyrically. Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand have found a way to make their already established sound come off as fresher and more gorgeous than ever before without sacrificing their best qualities. Very few artists have it in them to conjure up such a brilliant record in the direct wake of what many believed was a career watermark a mere two years earlier. This is their 1-2 punch like Radiohead’s OK Computer and Kid A or The Beatles’ Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. People will not only be talking about this album for the rest of 2012, but likely well beyond it too. For a record whose title and subject matter are all about the impermanence of life, love and relationships, Beach House have made something that may just last forever.

Buy Bloom from Amazon

Album Review: Spiritualized – Sweet Heart Sweet Light [Fat Possum]

By Faronheit

On 04/23/2012

In album review, BNM, music

Jason Pierce has Lived. He’s earned that capital “L” because of the multitude of things he’s experienced over the course of his 46 years. When he formed Spacemen 3 30 years ago, the band’s motto was: “Take drugs to make music to take drugs to.” He was true to his word there, and that mentality largely carried over when he started Spiritualized some years later. Things went well for awhile, and Spiritualized hit their high point in 1997 with the release of Ladies and Gentlemen…We Are Floating in Space. It was somewhere around 2005 when life began to turn upside down for Pierce. Not feeling well, he checked into the hospital where doctors diagnosed him with double pneumonia. He was in the Accident & Emergency ward for quite awhile getting better, hooked up to all sorts of machines and even reportedly died a couple times. After such a harrowing experience, he fleshed out the partly recorded Songs in A&E, with quite a few allusions to death and sickness. Things were fine for awhile, that is until last year, when Pierce went to the doctor for a routine check-up and found out his liver was quickly failing. Years of drug abuse had taken its toll, and he was rushed into treatment almost immediately. Instead of going the more traditional route towards healing, he chose an experimental drug treatment that would be far less harsh on his body. Confined to his house during that time, he chose to write and record the next Spiritualized album. The result is Sweet Heart Sweet Light, and it’s quite possibly the best thing Pierce has put together in a decade and a half. It would seem that any sort of drugs, legal or illegal, are the Perfect Prescription to making a great Spiritualized record.

If you’ve ever taken the time to give a close listen to any Spiritualized album, you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the project. The album titles Ladies and Gentlemen…We Are Floating in Space and Amazing Grace are equally great descriptors of the band’s sound, which is a mixture of psychedelia, gospel and blues. Seven albums in, you’d think the sounds and thematics might change. In some ways they have, with certain records emphasizing certain aspects more than others. For example, Songs in A&E had a fragility and precarious emotional core to it that wasn’t present on any of the band’s other albums. Pierce also used that record to focus more on religion and death than usual, and his other favorite topics of drugs, girls and redemption took on a less prominent role. Sweet Heart Sweet Light could well be considered a return to normalcy, but Spiritualized have never been a truly normal band. The reason they’ve been able to get away with maintaining a modestly even sonic keel is because there’s not really anybody else that sounds similar. Yet like all of the band’s past efforts, this new one has small qualities that help it to stand out from the rest of the catalogue. Most specifically, Spiritualized has never sounded more pop-friendly. First single “Hey Jane” is one of the catchiest things Pierce has ever come up with, even as it’s about three times longer than your average pop song. Around halfway through it reaches a breaking point, devolving into nearly nothing before coming back faster and more powerful than ever. That’s another distinctive quality of this album: it’s nearly the antithesis of Songs in A&E by exuding a confidence and strength that feels refreshing. It’s almost as if living through double pneumonia and fighting for his liver pushed him into treating every day like it could be his last. One gets the impression that Pierce would rather go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

A close lyrical analysis of Sweet Heart Sweet Light somewhat tempers the idea that this record is indeed life-affirming. “Sometimes I wish that I was dead/cause only the living can feel the pain,” he sings at the start of the soulful “Little Girl”. That sentiment is tempered by the song’s chorus though, which advises the titular girl to make the most of the time she’s given. On the epic and orchestral “Too Late” amid warnings about how love can break your heart, Pierce confesses in a moment of pure clarity that he, “Won’t love you more than I love you today/and I won’t love you less but I’ve made my mistakes.” The tenderness and devotion are touching, even when faced with the reality that we’re relentlessly flawed human beings. Shades of Neil Young circa “Heart of Gold” or The Rolling Stones circa “Wild Horses” are all over the ballad “Freedom”, with the plodding piano and acoustic guitar pairing providing a beautiful base for a chorus that begins with the relatable, “Freedom is yours if you want it,” but ends with the somber, “Made up my mind/to leave you behind/cause you just don’t know what to feel.” Where this record truly rings triumphant though is in the nearly 8-minute finale of “So Long You Pretty Thing”. Not only does it have the makings of an exhilarating torch song, but like “Hey Jane” it has one of the most memorable refrains of a Spiritualized track to date. As it begins its slow fade out, the glorious chorus still going, you kind of get the impression that it could have gone on for another five minutes like that and wouldn’t be any worse for the wear.

Given Pierce’s temprament and health battles the last several years, it’s worth mentioning that Sweet Heart Sweet Light might just be the last Spiritualized record. His liver is apparently fine now, or at least functional enough with the aid of drugs that he won’t die for a long time. Still, it’s been a rough decade so far, and maybe the next big bodily problem will be the one that finally does Pierce in. Let’s try not to be pessimistic and hope he finds a way to live another 46 years. But besides the physical problems though, Pierce has really started to appreciate the brilliance of his back catalogue. In the wake of touring around Songs in A&E, he was asked in 2009 to perform the Spiritualized classic Ladies and Gentlemen…We Are Floating in Space in its entirety at London’s Royal Festival Hall for an ATP event. Later that year, and months before that performance, a 3-disc Legacy edition of the record was released containing a wealth of demos and other odds and ends. Between compiling all that and performing what would ultimately become a handful of shows featuring that record, Pierce better understood what made it so special, beloved and praised. It pushed his own standards for making music higher as a result, and Sweet Heart Sweet Light is what he felt finally met those new expectations. Funny then that for most of the recording and mixing he was in a prescription drug-fueled haze that often left him mentally confused to the point where he kept calling the album Huh? because it was easier. If he’s this great while tripping on substances, you’ve almost got to wonder if health and clarity would help or hurt the final product. Either way, it’s also very possible Pierce will stop making music once he feels like he cannot top himself and contribute something truly great to the music world. With this new album being nearly a personal best and certainly one of 2012’s finest, one can only hope there’s so much more where this came from.

Spiritualized – Hey Jane

Buy Sweet Heart Sweet Light from Amazon

Album Review: Screaming Females – Ugly [Don Giovanni]

By Faronheit

On 04/06/2012

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

Screaming Females have been something of a hit-or-miss band. Okay, so their misses have never been far off the mark, it’s just most of their records lose focus from time to time. In many ways that comes with the territory of crafting blistering punk rock, because it’s a messy genre that requires creative execution to avoid becoming repetitive. Kudos do go to Screaming Females for nicely fleshing out their sound over their last couple albums, moving further away from their namesake description and into a more melodic and structured direction. It’s gone a long way towards giving the band depth many thought they never had without sacrificing their intensity or killer guitar work. And though their name is plural, the trio only has one female member in frontwoman/lead guitarist Marissa Paternoster. She’s a one woman wrecking ball though, with the personality and skill of about three people. Bassist King Mike and drummer Jarrett Dougherty do their best to stay out of her way both on record and on stage, which is the smart move to make. That’s not to say they aren’t useful or essential members of the band. They provide the framework upon which Paternoster builds her kingdom, and my what a kingdom it is. Thanks to their fifth album Ugly, they’re more in control than ever of their sound and destiny.

By most accounts, Screaming Females are only adding to the legend that is Steve Albini. The guy has made some legendary punk records on his own the last couple decades, but these days he seems to be the go-to guy for bands looking for that gritty, yet clean-cut sound. He somehow knows just the right amount of polish to add so there’s a faint glimmer sparkling beneath the mud. Cloud Nothings earned the Albini treatment earlier this year with their record Attack on Memory, and for all the complaining they’ve done about the guy since, the album is one of the best 2012 has to offer so far. Screaming Females have yet to go on an anti-Albini rant, but from the way that Ugly turned out, they won’t have any reason to. Of course it helps greatly the band’s music is well in line with Albini’s producing style, as there are plenty of examples where the opposite is true and things don’t go so smoothly. Paternoster’s guitar and vocals are front and center, exactly where they need to be, but without losing the spiky bass lines or intense drumming in the process.

Paternoster shares a lot of qualities with Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney/Wild Flag/Portlandia fame. Not only do the two share similar hairstyles and complexions, but they’re musical soulmates too. The intense, menacing voice of Paternoster matched with her equally fierce guitar playing are unique qualities held by very few but very talented musicians, Brownstein being key among them. For those upset with Sleater-Kinney’s hiatus just as they were churning out some of the best punk rock of their careers, Screaming Females do quite the incredible job filling that void. It was almost kismet the way S-K went on hiatus in 2006, the same year Screaming Females self-released their debut album. Feel free to argue in favor of Wild Flag being the heir apparent to S-K’s crown instead, given that Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss are principal members. What Wild Flag lacks is the same attack dog mentality and sheer intensity of S-K, though there are flashes of it from time to time on their debut album. Screaming Females absolutely have those qualities, and they’ve never been more potent than on Ugly.

The main shift the band has made on this new album is directly towards commercial accessibility. It’s a matter of focus, really, not to mention the skill required to come up with dynamic hooks. Ugly is filled to the brim with those, the choruses slamming you time and time again until you can’t help but get them trapped in your head. If anything, this album suffers from a glut of catchy songs, and the way they overlap one another is a small cause for alarm. The charm of “It All Means Nothing” is slightly dulled by how “Rotten Apple” forces its way into your brain immediately afterwards. The crunchy 90’s rock of “Crow’s Nest” is tossed aside as soon as “Tell Me No” races past the starting line. There are certainly worse problems to have, and of course one of the good things about it is that different things will jump out at you after each listen. So you may not become addicted to “Red Hand” the first 10 times through, but it’ll finally hit you on the 11th. There are a few moments that genuinely stand out on their own every single time though, and that’s mostly because they offer some variation compared to the rest of the record. “Leave It All Up to Me” goes a little heavier than some of the other songs, and playfully dissolves into nearly nothing before building itself back up again for one more run at the chorus. Closing track “It’s Nice” comes as described actually, a complete 360 from the rest of the record, bringing in acoustic guitars and a full string section for a grandiose moment of beauty. After all the grime and riffs from the prior 13 tracks and 51 minutes, here’s a final respite that proves this band can do more than rock out with their pseudo cocks out.

If Ugly has a piece de resistance, it comes in the form of the 7.5 minute dirge “Doom 84”. The riffs are heavy and intense enough to rival some of Zeppelin’s finest work, and the solos in the middle of the song are head-bangingly good. If you want to know exactly why Screaming Females are so impressive and ballsy, this is the song that will fully sell you on the idea. How they’re able to fill the track with so much noise it hurts while only being a spare three-piece is a mystery for the ages. That sentiment could be applied to the entire record, actually. Whatever their methods, the band and this album go a long way towards proving that rock and roll isn’t anywhere close to being dead. In fact, it’s quite alive and kicking. Ugly might not be a life-changing record or even the best record of a still-young 2012, but it’s huge for Screaming Females. After languishing for the last few years as underground punk rock heroes with a mindblowing live show, here’s proof they’re truly ready for the spotlight. Now it’s up to us to shine it in their direction.

Screaming Females – It All Means Nothing

Buy Ugly from Amazon

Album Review: Chromatics – Kill for Love [Italians Do It Better]

By Faronheit

On 03/30/2012

In album review, BNM, mp3, music

The journey of Chromatics’ new record Kill for Love is a fascinating one. Upon gearing up for a follow-up to the group’s 2007 record Night Drive, main man Johnny Jewel began talks with director Nicolas Winding Refn about crafting an 80’s-style synth pop soundtrack for his next film. The finished product was a little movie from last year some might remember called Drive. You know, that one where Ryan Gosling plays the ultra-cool driver who falls in love with his neighbor and basically goes on a killing spree to keep her safe. Yeah, that one. Anyways, upon completing work on the soundtrack to the film, Refn decided it wasn’t quite what he was looking for, and wound up using a score primarily composed by Cliff Martinez. Still, a couple of Jewel tracks still wound up on the soundtrack under the names of his three projects Chromatics, Glass Candy and Desire. The rest of the music was left on the cutting room floor.

At the end of last year, Jewel released Symmetry – Themes For An Imaginary Film, a 2.5 hour, 37 track project developed over 3 years as a conceptual tangent between Chromatics, Glass Candy, Mirage and Desire. In spite of the cover showing off the dashboard and steering wheel of a car, Jewel asserted that record was not the rejected Drive soundtrack. He has not said the same thing about this new Chromatics album Kill for Love. Of course he just generally hasn’t mentioned the film at all in relation to this record. Yet the back cover art has the album’s title written in the same font used in Drive‘s opening credits, and that’s just one of a few eerie parallels. The whole thing runs 90 minutes and 17 tracks too, not much shorter than the film itself. It might be fun to try and sync the two up if you’ve got some time on your hands, but it’s probably better just to make it the soundtrack to your own life.

See, Kill for Love, like much of Chromatics’ music, is best experienced while driving at night (I wonder why their last album was titled Night Drive). Get in your car, find an open highway or a country road, and hit the gas with this album pumping through your speakers. It’s not the sort of album you need to pay close attention to over its duration, but rather functions best as a way to enhance whatever it is your doing. The street lights blur into a monochromatic streak, the engine purrs just a little more smoothly, and even the most beat up clunker of a car will somehow seem more badass than before. Something about this music just brings those dark qualities to life, and makes the listening experience that much more special.

Kill for Love starts off in a remarkably fascinating way: with a cover of a classic Neil Young song. “Into the Black” is a piano and electric guitar driven rendition of Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” with singer Ruth Radelet behind the microphone. It’s not an easy song to cover and walk away from unscathed, and the mere fact they attempted it is a bold move on their part. Their rather brash confidence actually winds up retaining strong ties to the pure emotion of the original, which is a way of saying they didn’t completely fuck it up. The gears shift almost immediately after that, and straight into the territory Chromatics and Johnny Jewel are best known for – synth pop. The title track, complete with bubbling synths and a 4/4 rhythm, shines like a beacon of pop beauty rivaling some of New Order’s finest moments. Radelet’s passionately wounded vocal sets the tone best, weaving a tale of pills, booze, love, murder and desperation into something devastatingly relatable. If this record has one true high point, though arguably there are several, it comes from that title track.

This album is quite front-loaded with the most pop-heavy material, and together they create an impressive streak of hit after hit. “Back from the Grave”, “The Page” and “Lady” all shine individually, and 2/3rds of that trio already have full music videos to their names, intended as early leaks to build excitement for the new album. The real meat and potatoes of Kill for Love arrives with the 8.5 minute Italo house jam “These Streets Will Never Look the Same”. The beats pulse and the piano pounds, the main source of support being an Autotuned male vocal with a hook to die for. Just as you start to think the track is running out of steam at the halfway point, it devolves down to the most basic beat before rebuilding itself with a twist of lime to add a little zest in all the right places. That serves as a transitional piece into a much slower, instrumental part of the record.

“Broken Mirrors” and “The Eleventh Hour” make for 10+ minutes of drifting beauty, with slowcore single “Candy” sandwiched in between as a buffer to keep you from completely zoning out. Piano and synth ballad “Running From the Sun” has all the drama of daybreak on the streets of the city. The sunlight may bring sadness as the signal telling you it’s time to go home after a night of driving, but there’s also an innate beauty that comes along with that small light on the horizon. “You are the black sky/always running from the sun,” Radelet sings on “Birds of Paradise”, the female counterweight to the male themes of “Running From the Sun”. The boy and girl are entangled in this tragic romance, wishing they could be free of the darkness permeating their lives. As the record drifts towards its melodramatic conclusion, the pace picks up again with potential future single “At Your Door”. Hard times have fallen on the boy and girl, dreams have been shattered and he seems hesitant to continue on. “You know love never turns out/the way we all plan/but the door is still open/so give me your hand,” Radelet urges, though her pleads appear to fall on deaf ears. “There Is A Light Out On the Horizon” features a sad voicemail from a girl hoping to hear back from her boyfriend, but he promptly deletes the message as if he wants nothing to do with her anymore. So the story leaves her waiting on “The River”, reflecting on what is, what was and what could still be if he’d just come back to her. As with so many things in life, a happy ending is not guaranteed.

Kill for Love ends not with a bang, but more with a whisper. It’s a long one though, as “No Escape” somberly drifts along for 14 minutes that seems to be a meditation on the tragic themes of the story told. As it washes over you, there’s an almost post-rock sort of serenity that can be achieved if you’re in the right frame of mind. There is no epic crescendo that feels like a glorious explosion of beauty, but the way the track shimmers and fades shows just enough signs of life to offer hope at the conclusion. The sun is rising on a new day, and though it may mean the end of this particular night drive, the warm, dim glow of the dashboard against a pitch black sky is never too far away. Chromatics have crafted themselves something of a masterpiece. It enhances and throws some variation into the style established on their last album without ever sounding boring or staid. There are pure pop moments and pieces to dance to, matched equally by ambient balladry frought with emotion. All of it is sequenced perfectly to maximize its impact. Ideally you should listen to Kill for Love from start to finish without interruption, while cruising around a city with no place in particular to go. Throw on your scorpion jacket and grab your toothpicks, because tonight we’re going for a Drive.

Chromatics – Into the Black (Neil Young cover)
Chromatics – Kill for Love

Buy Kill for Love on iTunes
Buy Kill for Love on CD from Italians Do It Better

Click past the jump to stream the entire album!

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Snapshot Review: Perfume Genius – Put Your Back N 2 It [Matador]

By Faronheit

On 02/29/2012

In album review, BNM, mp3, music, snapshot review

After a criminally ignored debut album “Learning” in 2010, Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) is back with a graceful sophmore effort titled Put Your Back N 2 It. Kitschy and fun as that title may be, the music contained within is anything but. Those familiar with his first record will find many of the same or similar painful topics tackled once again with serene grace and aplomb. Physical and mental abuse, drug addiction and sexual trauma are all parts of Hadreas’ world, as they are parts of so many others’ as well. On “Learning” he fully embraced that darkness, which often made the record difficult to listen to. It was the warmth of his sparse, lo-fi piano arrangements that helped to turn these ugly moments into bearable ones. He’s cleaned up his sound quite a bit, expanded his instrumental palette just a little, and injected a touch of positivity to his lyrics to help make Put Your Back N 2 It feel like a good cry and a warm hug. On “Dark Waters” he comforts a victim of molestation with the quavering words, “I will take the dark part of your heart into my heart.” Hadreas also pushes for strength in sad times on “No Tears” by singing, “I will carry on with grace/Zero tears on my face.” Songs such as “All Waters” and “Hood” deal with love in all its forms, the former a meditation on the acceptance (or in some cases non-acceptance) of homosexuality in our world today. A 16-second promotional video for the album, which featured Hadreas being cradled like a baby in the arms of gay porn star Arpad Miklos, wound up being pulled from YouTube under the controversial excuse that it was promoting mature sexual themes (there was no nudity in the video). That’s more tragic than the song itself. Instrumentally speaking, Hadreas keeps things pretty simple: almost every track is either a piano ballad, a quiet acoustic guitar number, or a murky synth soundscape. Only moments like the title track and “17” dare to incorporate some violins and cello to flesh out arrangements for dramatic effect. So much of the emotion on this record is contained within Hadreas’s vocal performances, which at times quake in the precious style of Antony Hegarty and Stephin Merritt or gently whisper with the heft of “Seven Swans” era Sufjan Stevens. Few people have dared to make an album so brave, honest and topical, and that’s a big reason why Put Your Back N 2 It is such a success. With two excellent albums now under his belt, it appears that Perfume Genius is certainly living up to the second part of his name.

Perfume Genius – Dark Parts
Perfume Genius – All Waters
Perfume Genius – Hood

Buy Put Your Back N 2 It from Amazon

Album Review: Grimes – Visions [4AD/Arbutus]

By Faronheit

On 02/21/2012

In album review, BNM, class of 2012, mp3, music

Claire Boucher is nothing if not productive. As the singular force behind the musical pseudonym Grimes, she has released four full length records in the last 2 years. That started with 2010’s Geidi Primes, blossomed into Halfaxa later that year, and then continued building with Darkbloom last year. If you’ve heard approximately zero of those first three records, don’t beat yourself up too much; they sit and taunt from the deepest of deep levels in Canada’s underground electro scene. That is to say they were impressive and influential enough to earn Grimes some attention, but difficult and unfocused enough to keep her out of the spotlight for all practical purposes. Each of those first three albums was intended to play up a different side of her influences, and none of them were really all-encompassing efforts. Boucher herself has basically called them practice records for the real thing, which has finally resulted in her brand new album Visions complete with a brand new home on indie stalwart label 4AD. The end product is a remarkable and rather breathtaking skew on traditional pop music and electronica, complete with a supremely psychedelic edge that slices deep into your emotional reservoir even as it prods the pleasure centers of your brain with seductive beats and hooks.

The first thing you should know about Grimes is that she’s a producer before she’s a musician. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, but the whole point of mentioning it is because it affects the way she puts together songs. In fact, Boucher is doing what so many other forward-thinking artists are doing these days, which is attempting to break the rules of traditional songwriting and composing through the use of technology. At its core, Visions is a record created by a voice and a keyboard. Listening to it, there’s almost no way you’d realize that given all that’s going on. Virtually everything is run through some sort of filter or effect, and portions of songs are dubbed and overdubbed and smashed atop one another like some sort of sonic sandwich. Credit goes to Boucher for knowing when to stop adding more, because in more than a few cases it feels like the depths of some of the songs could be infinite. Her restraint is admirable and a great sign that she knows what she wants and tweaks it ever so slightly until she gets there. The ultimate result is a record that’s equal parts pop music and ambiance, pleasure and pain, not to mention human and computer.

The first track on Visions is “Infinite Love Without Fulfillment”, and it immediately lays out what to expect for the rest of the record. Lasting a mere 96 seconds, it confounds traditional song structure while maintaining a very danceable rhythm and sugar-sweet vocals. Boucher’s voice takes on 3 distinct personalities on the track, and they intermingle with one another with no regard for decency or clarity, to the point where it becomes like trying to listen to a single conversation in a room full of talking people. In spite of the perceived vocal confusion and the challenge of distinguishing lyrics, there’s a symbiosis and elegance to how all the moving pieces of the song work together. Indeed for most of Visions you’ll struggle to understand what Boucher is singing about, and that’s not always because of overdubbing. On the song “Genesis” for example, her singular voice is so drenched in echo it becomes the auditory effect of trying to see the car in front of you while driving through a dense fog. “Eight” turns one of her vocals into a deep-voiced robot and another into a woman that’s clearly been breathing in way too much helium. Despite all the different ways Boucher throws her vocals around, there are a few moments of genuine clarity, and those brief snapshots tend to be about relationships going through some sort of turmoil. “Oh baby I can’t say/that everything will be okay,” Boucher sings on “Circumambient”, signaling right from the start that there’s problems. Towards the end of “Skin”, she’s also in a sad place, espousing, “You touch me again and somehow it stings/because I know it is the end.”

Lyrical content is really the last thing you should be looking for on Visions though, because it’s far more about how these songs come together than it is any message they’re trying to get across. Boucher herself has said in interviews that she often feels the need to cover up her lyrics out of self-criticism over her skills as a writer but also because the melodies themselves should be telling you how to feel and not the words. With so much emphasis placed on what’s being said and not the way it’s being said, that’s a very refreshing take on pop music. Think of this record like a synth-pop inspired version of Sigur Ros, where the vocals are first and foremost another instrument in the mix rather than something intended to sit front and center as a path to deeper understanding. Or, even better, there are portions of the album that are very K-pop and J-pop influenced, and whether you’re a fan of Dance Dance Revolution or simply like those sorts of songs without speaking the language, there’s plenty of moments such as “Nightmusic” that you’ll be able to wholly enjoy. In fact, there’s a whole host of influences on Visions that may tickle your fancy depending on your tastes. Obviously if you’re into electronica and its many subgenres like IDM and Balearic you’ll be impressed with the strong beats that populate much of the record. The same goes for devotees of 80s pop, wherein the strains of a track like “Vowels = space and time” calls to mind Stacy Q or “Oblivion” has something distinctly Cyndi Lauper about it. And while 2011 was the year of the R&B revival, songs like “Be A Body” and “Skin” break out those influences as well, the former even impressing with some sky-high Mariah Carey falsettos. In spite of the various swaths of genres across the album, it all holds together quite nicely thanks to Boucher’s dynamic production style and ability to put together a very strong melody.

It goes without saying that Grimes is one of the most exciting new talents to emerge out of an ever-evolving music scene. Her previous records all hinted at what Visions would be in one way or another, and it’s extremely pleasing to hear her finally fulfill much of that early potential. For all of its oddities, this record is extremely listenable from start to finish, and cuts like “Genesis”, “Oblivion”, “Circumambient” and “Nightmusic” make it supremely catchy as well. In many ways these songs feel like the next step towards a genuine breakthrough in music, one in which a multitude of styles gives birth to a beautiful new hybrid that’s more aesthetically pleasing than any single one of them on their own. The best part is there’s continued room for improvement and growth, even as this record hovers near the precipice of perfection. Grimes has been an artist to watch from the day she first started releasing music 2 years ago, but only now, thanks to Visions will she begin to earn the attention she truly deserves.

Grimes – Genesis
Grimes – Oblivion

Buy Visions from Amazon

Album Review: The Black Keys – El Camino [Nonesuch]

By Faronheit

On 11/30/2011

In album review, BNM, music

In many ways, bands should be restricted from releasing albums of new material during the month of December. That last month of the year is pretty strictly reserved for the holiday album, the live album or the compilation album, all of which make for good gift-giving or as soundtracks to your Christmas parties. It’s also very much a list-making time of year, where everyone takes stock of the music they heard in the 11 months prior and admits to their favorites. Put out your record of original material in December and risk not being included in year-end countdowns, either because they’re already written and published in advance or there’s not enough time to give your record enough listens for proper consideration. Exceptions will always be made though, speaking specifically to 2010 and Kanye West’s super late release of “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. It was a year-ending blind side that essentially kicked the ass of virtually everything that came before it. A year later, do you think anyone regrets slotting that album at the top of their “Best of” list despite probably only hearing it a half dozen or so times? Sure it’s brilliant, and definitely Kanye’s most accomplished work to date, but is it “perfect”?

This year’s artist playing the late release game is The Black Keys with their seventh long player, “El Camino”. If you follow along with the details surrounding the recording of this album, you know the band entered guitarist Dan Auerbach’s new Nashville studio back in March and announced they’d completed the new record this past July. Apparently it takes close to six months to put a whole campaign together prior to an album’s release. That includes making a comedic promotional video starring Bob Odenkirk, setting up a hotline for people to call and coming up with your own viral music video. Admittedly, it’s a pretty smart and fun strategy to adopt, certainly better than a traditional album release. When you take such a novel approach, giving a little release date leeway is practically required, and better the first Tuesday in December than the last. The Black Keys have also been dealing with the “problem” of immense popularity. Their last album “Brothers” was a game changer for them, earning all kinds of radio airplay and higher billing on summer music festival lineups thanks to songs like “Tighten Up” and “Howlin’ for You”, the latter of which was still blasting from car stereos this past summer, a year after that record’s release. Not a minute had gone by towards lowering the band’s visibility when they struck again with “El Camino”‘s first single “Lonely Boy” a couple months back. It continues the tradition of infectious blues-driven garage rock they’ve been feeding us steadily over the last 10 years.

Arguably one of the biggest changes and best moves The Black Keys have made in the last few years was recruiting Danger Mouse to produce their records. After producing their first few records entirely on their own, Danger Mouse first got behind the boards for 2008’s “Attack and Release”, which actually yielded moderate success and some radio airplay with singles like “I Got Mine” and the psychedelic “Strange Times”. Though a slight variation on the style they had established with their previous records, “Attack and Release” was ultimately a strong example of a band still largely within the clutches of a creative slump. The hip hop infused Blakroc certainly suggested there was more to the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney than previously believed, but the boys were also having some personal issues that fueled the sonic stagnation. After taking some time away from the band and pursuing other projects, they reconnected and rebuilt their relationship with one another. Their last album was titled “Brothers” to emphasize that they continue to love one another in spite of the difficulties they sometimes face. The record itself was also a bit of a challenge as well, but more in how it tackled preconceptions of the “Black Keys sound” and worked to revamp them. They had clearly learned something from their time with Danger Mouse and it showed both with slight twists on their style as well as a renewed energy that had been largely lost after 2004’s “Rubber Factory”. And while success certainly followed along with that, the record was still a bit clogged up with 15 tracks and a running time of nearly an hour. Sometimes careful editing and cutting the wheat from the chaff can be a good thing. Almost as if they’ve been listening to their critics, “El Camino” spans 11 tracks and 37 minutes, attempts to expand on the best elements of “Brothers” and appears to have forgotten that chaff even exists.

Given that “Tighten Up” was the big song that catapulted The Black Keys to a whole new level of popularity and it also happened to be the only track on their last record produced by Danger Mouse, the band sought to recreate that success across the entirety of “El Camino” by putting all of those elements together once again. The result is the band’s most energetic, poppy and generally fun record to date. Those concerned a buzzy earworm like “Lonely Boy” might be a lone standout needn’t worry. So many times on past records the band has tried to temper their approach by throwing a few quieter or more spacey psychedelic numbers into the mix, and more often than not those wind up being the weak spots. The only slow thing you’ll find on the new album comes courtesy of “Little Black Submarines”, which starts with just a plain acoustic guitar and some world-weary blues vocals, providing a nice respite from the ramshackle rock and roll of the first three tracks. The break only lasts a couple minutes though, because by the halfway point the electric guitars wake up with an intense fury that goes unrivaled on the rest of the record. Just because nothing else on the record slams quite as hard, don’t go thinking that the band’s fuzz pedal isn’t cranked up to 11 most of the time or that there’s not a whole lot of ballsy rock songs on “El Camino”. “Dead and Gone” hammers down a martial drum beat and then accents it with some xylophone, handclaps and a choir to back up Auerbach in the chorus. The choir and handclaps hold strong on “Gold On the Ceiling”, which incorporates some synths and has the chug of “Howlin’ for You” but plays it to more of a glam rock effect. The hard crunch of “Money Maker” has the heft and subject matter to soundtrack not only a million pole dances at your local strip club, but probably a couple dozen movie scenes in which some sexy girl character is introduced and you watch all the guys lower their sunglasses down their noses to get a better glimpse as she strolls by in slow motion. Yes, that scene happens in like half the movies released each year.

The second half of “El Camino” plays out a lot like the first, with plenty more riffage and uptempo numbers, though the use of the choir as backing vocals becomes far less prevalent. As the album works its way towards the finish line, there are moments that feel a little repetitive. “Hell of a Season” isn’t a bad song, but comes off almost like The Black Keys on autopilot. They’ve done songs like it before and will probably do songs like it again. The same can be said for the final two songs, “Nova Baby” and “Mind Eraser”, the latter of which might as well function exactly as its title suggests. The oft-repeated hook in that last song, and ultimately the last words spoken on the entire record are, “Don’t let it be over”. For something that started off so promising, by the time the full 37 minutes are up there’s this unerring sense that wrapping it up is probably a good thing. Basically the record teeters on the edge of becoming too long in spite of being one of the band’s shorter efforts. It’s that constant drive just hitting you over and over again with fuzzy guitars that pretty much tires you out. It is worth noting there are some fun second half bits. Carney gives his kit a severe lashing on “Sister”, which also happens to be one of the record’s bluesier cuts with a buzzing guitar and some sparkling keyboards snaking their way between the chords that make up the overall base melody. The light as a feather “Stop Stop” is a whole lot of fun as well, largely excelling thanks to some well-placed xylophone in the chorus. It’s a great late album reminder that the band does oh so much right on this record.

There’s a very good chance “El Camino” is the finest Black Keys record to date. To some of their most fervent supporters, i.e. all those “passionate” people that suddenly became aware of the band through “Brothers” and now call them “the new White Stripes”, this is the justification they’re looking for. Commercially speaking, there’s not a bad song on here. You could name virtually any track a single and it will do well on radio and in concert. That’s kind of the point, right? This is what the Black Keys wanted, or at least what their army of fans demanded of them. They are a better band because of this record, even if it distills their all-too-familiar sound and rather bland lyrics down to their core elements. This is the quintessential Black Keys album. Now that they’ve reached such a career peak, let’s hope they know what to do with it.

Preorder “El Camino” from Amazon

Album Review: Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow [Anti-/Fish People]

By Faronheit

On 11/23/2011

In album review, BNM, music

What do you know about Kate Bush? The answer to that question isn’t necessarily age-specific, but undoubtedly the older you are, the more likely you are to know who Kate Bush is and what she’s all about. Ask you average 17 year old kid about her, and 99% of the time you’ll be met with a blank stare. The same probably goes for most 20-somethings too. Play the song “Running Up That Hill” for them though, and you’ll get some familiar nods and maybe even a few, “I thought that was a Placebo song”. Similar things could be said in regards to “Hounds of Love”, which The Futureheads to deftly covered a few years ago to much acclaim. And like it or not, Kate Bush continues to have a pretty big impact on new artists today, and perhaps the best, closest example is Bat for Lashes. Natasha Khan’s voice and her moody compositions in many ways makes Bat for Lashes the new Kate Bush, though time and quality of material will act as the official judges of that.

While the 80s had Bush at the peak of her powers, like any number of classic singer-songwriters her star has faded with time and a lack of the spotlight. After 1993’s “The Red Shoes”, she took about 12 years off from music. While many felt she had become a recluse and no longer wanted anything to do with people, fame and fortune, the truth is she gave birth to a son and decided to put her career on hold to raise him. It would be 2005’s “Aerial” that would mark her big comeback, something that’d ultimately be met with mixed enthusiasm. As great as it was to have such a prolific and interesting storyteller making music again, her songs primarily about her life during those 12 years away from music were minimalist and sluggish compared to her back catalogue. Earlier this year Bush also tried to pull a Peter Gabriel and give her career a kick in the pants via a re-exploration of her old material. “Director’s Cut” featured re-recorded and drastically reworked versions of songs off 1989’s “The Sensual World” and 1993’s “The Red Shoes”, the main idea being to give them a more modern adaptation to reflect current trends and also play more to Bush’s voice, which has gotten deeper with age. The reaction was again widely mixed, as you might expect from an artist messing with material some might consider to be “classic”. Appropriately enough though, Bush has one more trick up her sleeve in 2011, and it’s only fitting she unleashed it as the weather turns cold and most prepare for a long and brutal winter. You can’t quite call “50 Words for Snow” a Christmas album, but its wintry theme certainly makes for a stellar soundtrack in the months ahead.

It’s not quite as simple as saying a unifying concept was all Kate Bush needed to earn back the critical acclaim and respect that was bestowed upon her in the mid-80s, but evidence suggests it likely played a small hand in it. The focus it takes to write 65 minutes worth of stories about snow really appears to have worked for her, the overriding theme connecting beautifully with the delicate and primarily piano-based arrangements. One of the biggest surprises about “50 WOrds for Snow” is how at a grand total of only 7 tracks, the shortest song clocks in at just under 7 minutes. The average length is closer to 8 minutes, while the longest moment comes courtesy of “Misty”, finishing at around 14 minutes. That song tells the story of building, falling in love with, and essentially having sex with a snowman, only to wind up disappointed when it melts. It’s the sort of WTF idea that you’d rather write off as a joke given how absurd it sounds, but Bush treats it with the utmost sincerity and passion. The result is more “Lars and the Real Girl” than it is “Weird Science”, supported by the thought that in the absence of a perfect man, you can build one out of snow. Elsewhere on the record, opener “Snowflake” chronicles the path of one little white piece of frozen water, unique in its own way, falling from the sky towards the ground. A search for a lost dog is the plot of “Lake Tahoe”, and the title track has actor/writer/poet/comedian/brilliant British guy Stephen Fry slowly reading off all the different ways to describe snow as a skittering electro landscape backs him up with occasional interruptions by Bush singing a chorus to break up the monotony. And speaking of guest vocals, Elton John duets with Bush on “Snowed in at Wheeler Street”, where they play starcrossed lovers that can never stay connected through many key events in world history.

Outside of the wintry theme, the main connecting tissue between these tracks is an underlying darkness and earnestness in how they’re delivered. Bush sells every track by holding firm to her aesthetic choices and drawing upon brooding atmospherics to add a sense of dread to even the most innocent of songs. It’s what works best for her, and where she also sounds most comfortable. Undoubtedly Bush is no longer the goth-pop chanteuse straight out of the 80s, but is able to show how she’s evolved with the times. This is an adult record with an adult temprament, even as it gets in your face and asks you to suspend all rational thought in the hopes of inspiring just a little flight of fancy. You’re only as old as you allow yourself to be, and though “50 Words for Snow” can get pretty heavy and mature, you don’t have to take such things as truth. They’re only stories, after all, and with this record Kate Bush proves yet again that she’s one hell of a storyteller.

Buy “50 Words for Snow” from Amazon

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Hello, and welcome to Faronheit! I hope you enjoy your stay. Before you read onwards, let me quickly explain a couple things.

Contact information: faronheit@gmail.com