Whether as fiery and hard-charging as classic punk, or as sad and secluded as the bedroom pop of contemporaries like Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, the ten tracks on Toronto-based trio The Rural Alberta Advantage's second album Departing offer up a brand of indie folk as straightforward and non-fussed-over as one is likely to hear.
But in no way should this lack of complexity be perceived as a flaw.
Powered by band leader Nils Edenloff's battle ax of an acoustic guitar and piercing, Jeff Mangum-like howl, the songs on Departing are a highly consistent, appealing, and propulsive lot...perfect for long drives down desolate roads the album's Fargo referencing cover so clearly suggests.
And while in no way intended or implied as a substitute for In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, I feel many fans of Neutral Milk Hotel will eat this album up...as will any listener who likes their indie served spare, passionate, and direct.
Status: Solid Recommend.
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:Under The Knife, North Star, Stamp, Barnes Yard.
Here's the official video for Muscle Relaxants.
Component Breakdown:
1. Two Lovers - 7
2. The Breakup - 7
3. Under The Knife - 8
4. Muscle Relaxants - 8
5. North Star - 8
6. Stamp - 9
7. Tornado '87 - 8
8. Barnes' Yard - 8
9. Coldest Days - 8
10. Good Night - 8
Intangibles - Above Average Listen On Spotify!
??. Space Is Only Noise - Nicolas Jaar: Combine the rampant textural eclecticism of career peak Moby with a slower paced, distinctly after-hours feel, and that gives you a very good sense of the surprises in store on this excellent full-length electronica debut.
??. D - White Denim: Classic psychedelic country-rock harmonies and jams galore in this uneven but very likable offering from one today's best contemporary garage acts.
??. Mirror Traffic - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Malkmus veers away the heavy pyschedelia of 2008's Real Emotional Trash, instead producing a loose, snarky, ramshackle collection of widely eclectic pop and rock tunes. Several fun moments on this one.
LEANING MILD RECOMMEND
??. New Brigade - Iceage: Classic, assaultive punk by way of four angry Danish teens. Fans of bands ranging from The Clash to The Futureheads will want to give this one a spin.
The majority of the song titles on Bon Iver's Bon Iver, his self-titled full-length follow-up to his wildly successful debut album For Emma, Forever Ago, refer to locations at once both recognizable and non-existent...Minnesota, WI...Michicant...Hinnom, TX...Lisbon, OH...and it's this merging of the familiar with the imaginary that lies at the heart of this elusive collection of soft-rock dreamscapes, one of the hardest records to pin down in quite some time.
Fans of the debut can take solace in the fact that like For Emma, Bon Iver is a gentle, introspective work, and that Justin Vernon's instinctive, dynamic falsetto remains as spectacular as ever.
But otherwise, everything has changed.
Where For Emma was raw and desolate and crisp and stripped-to-the-bone clear, Bon Iver is lush and welcoming but utterly shapeless, a dense, amorphous, constantly shifting world to get lost in rather a scarred, barren landscape to traverse.
Where For Emma seemed sprung straight from a agonized soul, Bon Iver feels the work of an becalmed, drifting, almost sub-conscious mind.
And it's the extremely intuitive nature of this album that is the source of both its highest highs and lowest lows, of which there are plenty of both.
Musically, Vernon seems to be playing with two recent sub-genres he's been exposed to through his many collaborations of the last few years.
The first stylistic foray, which makes up about two-thirds of the album's material, is to take songs somewhat similar in initial feel to those of For Emma, but then adorn them in rich, over-instrumented, multi-part arrangements ala art-rock/beard-folk contemporaries like Sufjan Stevens, Grizzly Bear, The Fleet Foxes, Okkervil River, Animal Collective and The National. As big a stylistic leap as this is from For Emma's spare acoustics, all of this album's best material...Perth, Holocene, Towers, Michicant, Calgary...fall into this category.
They second, much less satisfying foray is a continuation of Vernon's experimental R&B collaborations with Kanye West, James Blake, and most significantly, Gayngs. At times the album effortlessly intermingles these two approaches as well, but trends more and more towards the experimental R&B as it progresses, until by album's end, with Lisbon, OH and Beth/Rest, we're into lame-oh 80s soft-soul territory so gooey and mushy and MTV it would have felt right at home on the Top Gun soundtrack.
But where things really break down on Bon Iver is with the mix.
It's undoubtedly been a very heady ride for Vernon over the last few years, with the success of For Emma and all the celebrated, high profile collaborations, but in also taking on the bulk of the production responsibilities here, he's bitten of more than he can chew and done the album a real disservice.
The drums play flat and tinny, the phased guitars sound shrill and break unintentionally into the red, and despite the obvious goal of conveying a dreamlike state, the overall mix still feels unnecessarily incoherent and muddy. Nowhere are the mixing issues more obvious than on Calgary, which should easily be the album's best song, but because of its mix, feels just middle of the pack.
So in the end, an inconclusive review. I've settled on a high ranking solid recommend, but in truth, my feelings towards the album have varied dramatically listen to listen, though I have always liked the first half better than the second.
But I do think it is an album most listeners should pick up, and here's why...
Through it's first eight songs, Bon Iver's Bon Iver may be the first rock and roll release that is genuinely of this century.
It's as if Vernon has taken the work of all the other contemporary artists I've mentioned above (most of whom have been clearly influenced by artists from 60s, 70s, and 80s), thrown all that work into a blender, and then strained all the older influences out, so that only the modern, post-2000 sensibilities remain.
Food for thought as you fall into this unusual and flawed but very significant work.
Status: Solid Recommend.
Cherry Pickers Best Bets:Perth, Holocene, Towers, Calgary.
Here's the official video for Grammy nominee Holocene, which does a very nice job capturing the sense of expansive, dreamlike wonder the album conveys as a whole.
Barely out of high school when they released their self-titled debut in 2009, Chicago's Smith Western's Dye It Blonde finds the band settling in on an appealing early 70s glam-pop vibe that recalls George Harrison's early solo recordings (especially All Things Must Pass) and/or prime Mott The Hoople in its strongest moments, and cheesier bubblegum punk acts like The Sweet or Bay City Rollers in its worst.
The instrumental craftsmanship and nuance, especially when one considers the band's age, is impressive, but after nifty opener Weekend, the rest of the material here, though consistently energetic and upbeat, struggles to take flight.
A couple of the other tracks come close...Imagine Pt. 3 and the jaunty Dance Away in particular...but otherwise, some spark just seems to be missing...the instrumental hooks don't quite grab, the vocals a bit too smooth and soft to bite, the overall choices a touch too safe to excite...leaving the listener with what I found to be an increasingly frustrating string of "almost" great tracks.
Still, if you're a fan of the classic 70s glam or the early solo Beatles releases, the sound and energy here are strong enough that you'll probably find Dye It Blonde worthwhile (Lord knows the album has received its share of stellar reviews). But for the rest of you, I'd grab a download of Weekend and give the album in full a pass.
Status: Mild Recommend.
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:Weekend, Imagine Pt. 3, End Of The Night, Dance Away.
Here's the official video for best track Weekend.
Component Breakdown:
1. Weekend - 8
2. Still New - 7
3. Imagine Pt. 3 - 8
4. All Die Young - 7
5. Fallen In Love - 7
6. End Of The Night - 7
7. Only One - 7
8. Smile - 6
9. Dance Away - 8
10. Dye The World - 6
Intangibles - Average.
Through the years, some artists just seem to intrinsically go together.
Whether the result of historical influences, stylistic similarities, personality, regional identity, or a matched timing of definitive releases, it's hard for listeners to think of one artist without immediately conjuring thoughts of the other. Nirvana/Pearl Jam, Yes/Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Led Zeppelin/Black Sabbath, Joni Mitchell/Carole King, Graham Parker/Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.
But in recent years, outside of possibly England's Wild Beasts and Ohio's The Antlers, no two acts have felt more unintentionally tethered than Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver.
Both broke through in 2008 with heralded debuts that now stand as signature albums of the late Aught's "beard folk" movement, and now, both have returned to equal, if not heightened, critical acclaim in 2011.
As of this writing, with a good number of the year-end lists now out, it's clear both artists's sophomore efforts will land high in the consensus top tens compiled by http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/ and http://www.metacritic.com/, with Bon Iver's Bon Iver looking like a lock to take the number two spot and the Fleet Foxes's Helplessness Blues landing just a few spots behind.
But for me, it's these albums's flaws, not their strengths, that ultimately link the bands this time around.
No two albums were harder to get a qualitative grip on in 2011, and yet ironically...given how the acts target the same audience...it's for exactly opposite reasons.
Bon Iver's Bon Iver is an album of casually original, brilliantly intuitive material, diminished by an artist taking on technical duties he is in no way ready to handle.
Helplessness Blues is an album of aggressively ambitious, classically anchored but ultimately workmanlike material, elevated to near-greatness by one of the most astonishing production and arrangement efforts of recent memory.
"So now, I am older / Than my mother and father / When they had their daughter / Now what does that say about me? / Oh how could I dream of / Such a selfless and true love / Could I wash my hands of / Just looking out for me?"
Right from the opening verses of first track Montezuma, it's clear we're in for a different type of album from the Fleet Foxes this time around.
Where the Fleet Foxes self-titled debut was full of mystery, fantasy, and a rustic sense of place...Helplessness Blues is an intensely personal, confessional album, ready to plumb the deepest depths of band leader and principal songwriter Robin Pecknold's soul and tackle life's biggest questions head on.
And front and center seems to be a preternaturally insightful young man who realizes just how much a continued pursuit of his music will cost him.
Playwright August Wilson put it best years ago with his simple, matter-of-fact declaration on 60 Minutes that "Art comes first," that for an artist of genuine intent to ever think they will be able to place the needs of family, friends, or community ahead of their craft is sheer folly. Art demands total selfishness. To give higher priority to anything or anyone else is to merely guarantee failure on both fronts, and the thought of continuing down this road that will deny him so many of life's simple, enriching pleasures has Pecknold...the product of a happy family, still in his early twenties, and still young enough to jump ship...in existential agony.
Needless to say, the lyrics are one of Helplessness Blues's most captivating aspects, though by the end, so much gut-wrenching, soul-searching vulnerability does grow wearying. By the time Pecknold starts tweely fantasizing about "Apples in the summer / all gold and sweet" on tenth track The Shrine/An Argument, I find myself about ready to hurl.
But then there's Phil Ek's production.
If there's a better produced album this year, I haven't heard it.
Put any of this album's tracks (except for Battery Kinzie) side by side in a mix with music from any other release this year and it is shocking how much more the songs here pop. Other producers are going to leave the industry with their tail between their legs because of this recording.
And for the most part, the dense, dated Pet Sounds feel of the debut, also produced by Eks, is gone, replaced with an airier, instrumentally adventurous feel that recalls warmer 60s folk-rock classics like the first two Traffic releases, quieter numbers from Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers like Turn My Life Down, and the Pete Townsend produced self-titled debut for Thunderclap Newman. When the debut's Pet Sounds feel does return, as on weakest track Battery Kinzie, and too a lesser degree on closer Grown Ocean, it feels a touch out of place, getting in the way of the album's more direct, confessional feel.
So deeply heartfelt ambitious lyrics, striking production, inventive arrangements...sounds like a bona fide classic, right?
Well, not just yet.
Unfortunately, Helplessness Blues does have a serious weakness, and that's the core architecture of the songs themselves. The effort, craft, and passion put into this album are amazing...but genuine musical inspiration (again the exact opposite of Bon Iver's Bon Iver) is in relatively short supply.
Pecknold is on record as having been devastated by the greatness of Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest, and it's clear, given all the sudden tempo changes and surprising esoteric touches, that he views this album as an attempt to match Veckatimest.
But whereas most of Veckatimest's oddball flourishes had an undeniable sense of rightness to them, many of those flourishes here feel forced, workmanlike, and that goes double for many of the melodies, whose flaws are for the most part masked by the band's unreal harmonizing, but when you get down to it, sometimes feel downright pedestrian.
Worse, the biggest take away I sense from the Veckatimest template seems to be Grizzly Bear's tendency for momentum killing turns.
Take the title track, easily one of the year's best songs, but just like Veckatimest'sNorthern Lights opened as the best folk-rock song of its year but then chose to abandon that definitive groove for a new, ambitious but far less compelling direction, Helplessness Blues does precisely the same here in its final minute.
Still, with a band this talented, this ambitious, and production this good, on those rare instances when the muse truly strikes...as it does in the opening three minutes of the title track, Bedouin Dress, the choral intro to The Plains / Bitter Dancer, the surging charge of closer Grown Ocean, and the charming, blatant theivery of Dylan's 4th Time Around called Lorelai...the results are fantastic, and the craft and production generates such an elevating consistency that even though I consider The Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues a far less inspired effort than their debut, it stands nonetheless as a better overall record.
So it appears to me, whether Pecknold realizes it or not, that he's already made his choice.
Status: Strong Recommend.
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:Bedouin Dress, The Plains / Bitter Dancer, Helplessness Blues, Lorelai
Here's the super ambitious official video for possibly the most ambitious track on an album full of ambitious tracks, The Shrine / An Argument.
Component Breakdown:
1. Montezuma - 8
2. Bedouin Dress - 9
3. Sim Sala Bim - 8
4. Battery Kinzie - 6
5. The Plains/Bitter Dancer - 9
6. Helplessness Blues - 10
7. The Cascades - 8
8. Lorelai - 9
9. Someone You'd Admire - 7
10. The Shrine / An Argument - 7
11. Blue Spotted Tail - 8
12. Grown Ocean - 8
Intangibles - Above Average.
What are your thoughts on Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues? Let readers know!
Scottish quartet Veronica Falls's full length debut is yet another example of post 20th century musicians doing what they do best - taking a variety of sounds and influences from rock's first fifty years, and then amalgamating them into a remarkably cleared eyed, fully formed stylistic synthesis that feels instantly familiar but is nonetheless, in its own subtle way, something entirely new.
Here the emphasis is on a highly propulsive 60s garage sound, which is then muted with a dash of 90s atonality; goth-slanting lyrics on love and death; hook-ridden, contemporary feeling female dream-pop vocals (think A Sunny Day In Glasgow), rich folk rock-flavored male backing vocals, and indulgent levels of late-era Velvet Underground / Galaxy 500 Ostrich guitar.
Despite the number of influences being blended, it all comes together effortlessly...producing a clean, straightforward, simple sound that while feeling of a piece with much of the surf punk we've all heard recently, is graciously delivered with none of that no-fi nonsense that's been diminishing album after album over the last few years.
Otherwise, there's not much else to say.
Though it contains no A+ track, Veronica Falls is a very solid evocation of one specifically constructed sound.
Give a song or two a listen.
I can guarantee if you like one, you'll probably end up liking them all.
Status: Solid Recommend
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:Found Love In A Graveyard, Right Side Of The Brain ,Stephen, Beachy Head.
Here's the official video for the album's punkiest tune, Beachy Head.
Component Breakdown:
1. Found Love In A Graveyard - 8
2. Right Side Of My Brain - 8
3. The Fountain - 7
4. Misery - 6
5. Bad Feeling - 7
6. Stephen - 8
7. Beachy Head - 8
8. All Eyes On You - 7
9. The Box - 7
10. Wedding Day - 8
11. Veronica Falls - 7
12. Come On Over - 8
Intangibles - Average.
What are your thoughts on the full length debut for Veronica Falls. Let readers know.
I don't know how else to say it - Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is the most timeless album in rock 'n' roll.
With the possible exceptions of Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced? or The Rolling Stones's Exile On Main Street, I don't think there's another album I've listened to more in my lifetime, and yet, no matter how many times my wife or I throw this record on, something we still do regularly, it never, ever feels dated or old.
Much of this comes from the album's unique design.
Generated entirely from acoustic instruments, and born mostly of Morrison's childhood rooting in Celtic folk and American jazz, there's no technological or stylistic bent to the music that links the album to any specific era in rock 'n' roll. But it's the records introspective, deeply personal, at times even inscrutable feel...as if the whole album sprung forth fully formed straight from Morrison's subconscious (or his gut)...that is the main source of Astral Weeks's ageless power.
Which is a delicious irony, given the arbitrary manner in which the album was actually made.
Recorded in just two and a half sessions in September and October of 1968, with a supremely talented group of jazz musicians led by upright bassist Richard Davis and drummer Connie Kay, Morrison provided little to no instruction for his band. Instead, he isolated himself in a separate booth with his acoustic guitar, telling the other musicians, most whom he had just met, to simply "play whatever you feel as long as you stay out of my way."
But out of that directionless freedom came pure magic.
Anchored by Davis's astonishing bass, the resulting sound was a stunning, ethereal flow of interweaving flourishes that, while often lighter than air, seemed a perfect accompaniment to Morrison as he exposed raw his mystic soul.
Lyrically, much of the material was very dark and should have been controversial...from Slim Slow Slider's meditation on death, to the sad Belfast transvestite character study Madame George, to the even more troubling Cyprus Avenue, which puts us right in the head of a conflicted potential pedophile as he sits in wait for a young school girl...but the music had such hypnotic pull, controversy never arose.
This was also the album that established Van as having no parallel when it comes to drawing out the ending to a song.
Most of Astral Weeks's longer songs peak quite early, often before the halfway point, then gradually diminish over several spellbinding minutes as Morrison recants phrases and sentences as if slowly slipping into a trance. And we, the listeners, are pulled right into that state with him.
Finally, of course, there's Van's voice.
High on the short list of contemporary music's all-time great singers, it's an understatement to call Morrison's soulful, explosive vocals here a tour de force. His visceral singing on Cyprus Avenue alone puts this album in elite company, and his performance on Astral Weeks's other seven tracks is every bit as strong.
One of the most gorgeous, singular, and mysterious albums ever put to vinyl, Astral Weeks an is absolute must own.
Here we go, folks, head first into the inevitable 90s revival that's sure to dominate much of the next ten years.
And first out of the gate, with their very promising self-titled debut, is the ridiculously young London-based band Yuck.
Composed of three lads and two ladies, most whom have yet to reach legal drinking age in the States, their album has received widely disparate reviews. On the negative side, critics bemoan the album's derivative recreation of just about every 90s fuzz-rock trope.
On the positive side, the side I am decidedly on, is praise for just how perfectly the band pulls it off.
Give this album a spin and you'll hear the blatant influence of 90s acts such as Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Belle & Sebastian, Smashing Pumpkins, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement, and Jesus and the Mary Chain...oh, and did I mention Dinosaur Jr...all rendered with loving accuracy.
But further countering the "derivative" argument, I've always felt there's a flip side, and that's the impact of stylistic crystallization that can only come in hindsight. Let's not forget, one of the most derivative artists in all of history was William Shakespeare, and he did okay.
Obviously, I'm not elevating Yuck to Shakespearean status, at least not yet, but just as many of the Aught's 80s focused bands...acts like Franz Ferdinand, LCD Soundsystem, Robyn, Cut//Copy, Wolf Parade, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Wild Beasts, and The National...delivered an album or albums that were just as good if not better than those of their 80s influences, Yuck comes at this project having spent their whole lives absorbing and mastering the fine points of the style before laying down their first note.
And from the opening moments of first track Get Away, it's clear this band has the genre down cold.
Excellent, efficient fuzz rockers bleed into moody, shoegazey ballads then bleed back into fuzz rockers with such clarity of purpose that the album almost plays as a greatest hits compilation for the entire decade. The energy and quality drops of some as the band explores slower, sludgier tempos on the album's back half, but its first six tracks play as strong as the opening half of any release in 2011.
Personal favorites include the instantly iconic The Wall (sure to be a festival crowd pleaser for years to come), the downright nasty Sonic Youth distillation Operation, and the gorgeous Suicide Policeman, which starts off unassuming and then slays with some plaintive Belle & Sebastian-flavored brass.
Otherwise, there's not much to say.
If the forces of mass culture insist we spend the next ten years revisiting the sounds of the 90s, I can't imagine getting off to a more satisfying start than with Yuck.
Status: Strong Recommend.
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:The Wall, Holing Out, Suicide Policeman, Operation.
A big fan of their excellent second album, 2011's Scandalous, and having been wowed by their knock-out Coachella set this previous April, I was more than excited for the opportunity of see what Austin, Texas blues/funk outfit Black Joe Lewis And The Honeybears could do with a headlining slot.
Heading out with my wife and several neighborhood friends as part of my birthday celebration, that enthusiasm turned to wary concern the moment I entered the Echoplex for my very first time.
Simply put, the basement-level Echoplex is a dump, one of those intentionally gritty, slightly punky dive bars that just happens to have a stage, much in the vein of Chicago's Metro or Empty Bottle, but with far worse sight lines as large weight-bearing columns start to reach for the ceiling just twenty feet back from the stage.
And unfortunately, the acoustics would prove even worse.
Taking the stage at 11:15, the Honeybears soon discovered the room offered few sweet spots where a band can effectively deliver their sound.
Up close, the mix was throbbing and muddled, but move just fifty feet back and the venue's low ceiling all but erased Black Joe's vocals and the band's marvelous brass section.
Making matters worse...the band chose to heavily back-load their setlist.
All their biggest booty-shakers and jams were held in reserve, leaving the first forty minutes filled with still engaging and rocking but comparatively weaker numbers such as I'm Gonna Leave You, Black Snake, Jesus Took My Hand, and their cover version of Robert Johnson's Stop Breaking Down. Try as the band might, given all the acoustic issues, they just couldn't get things to gel, something even Joe noted when he asked about twenty minutes in "You guys having a good time tonight? Cause I don't see none of you moving at all."
Here's the one fan captured video I've found from the show, which was taken in this problematic earlier portion of the set.
But then, at the halfway point, things suddenly kicked into gear.
The tech team seemed to finally get a handle on the room's acoustics just as the band launched into a very strong rendition of Mustang Ranch, and from that point on it was just a funk orgy as most of the bands A+ material...Living In The Jungle, Booty City, Sugarfoot, and You've Been Lyin'...followed in quick succession.
After one or two more numbers, the band left the stage, then came back out for a hysterical, lengthy cover of the Rivington's The Birds The Word. It proved to be a fine, playful, satisfying end, finally displaying this band at its best on a night when getting to that point seemed very much in doubt.
Still, sound problems aside, the longer set did expose some of the band's limitations that their shorter Coachella set did not.
First, Joe has a ways to go as a front man.
In front of an eager crowd like one gets at Coachella, all one really needs to do is play one's best, but here, in a shitty venue with all those audio troubles, combined with the standard-fare only half-engaged LA crowd, more banter and interaction would have gone a long ways towards pulling the audience into the show.
Also, the longer show length suggested the band may not yet having enough top quality material to sustain much more than a forty-minute set, though as an act they certainly show the potential of generating that additional material within their next couple of releases, and more balanced sequencing on this night would have surely helped.
But the biggest issue facing the band is one of identity.
The name is Black Joe Lewis And The Honeybears, but to me, this band works best as a pure ensemble.
Joe isn't a classic front and center soul singer like James Brown, whom he's often compared to, or contemporary soul ass-kickers of note like Sharon Jones. While more crowd interaction would have been nice, musically on this night he was trying to grab too much of the spotlight...taking several guitar leads on the night when a superior guitarist was standing just feet to his right. This band works best when the emphasis is on their interplay, rather than its talented but not tremendously charismatic frontman. Hopefully they'll get these kinks worked out and find the right balance, because overall, this band is still full of promise...when they're hitting their peak, there are few rock/funk acts better.
Of the night's opening acts, only caught a few minutes of punkers Dikes Of Holland, can't say they did much for me.
Rolling Stone Magazine cover photo contest winners Sheepdogs took the middle slot. At first their earnest recreations of early 70s classic and Southern-Fried rock felt corny and derivative, but the hirsute band definitely has instrumental and vocal chops, and by the end of their set, particularly on a fantastic Santana-ish second to last number, my friends and I were fast becoming fans.
The cover to Wild Beasts's latest release, the thematically air-tight Smother, depicts a number of distinctly colored, transparent feathers flattened atop one another and clipped by a diamond border.
You can discern the outline and texture of each individual feather if you work hard enough to see through all the color blends and overlaps, but for the most part, the sense of any single element is lost in the couplings.
And so it is for the human protagonists and antagonists of Smother, an album wholly locked in on the suffocating nature of sexual desire.
On the surface, the album seems designed to viscerally convey that heart-stopping loss of breath one feels when in the initial throes of passion. The voices play almost whisper soft, the music is achingly restrained, but a wave of intense emotion always seems on the verge of surging forth.
But on a deeper level, Smother seems to be after something more profound...the inevitable loss of self that occurs with any romantic pairing.
The Smashing Pumpkins's Billy Corgan put it far less subtlety twenty years ago when he bellowed "Love is suicide!", but Smother is similarly obsessed with just how much will we savagely take or consciously sacrifice in the service of carnal urges and love. Deftly rendered lyrical images of predatory domination (Lion's Share, Plaything) and willful sublimation (Bed Of Nails, Invisible, Reach A Bit Further) abound...friends and family are jettisoned, cherished possessions and pastimes are casually tossed aside, elemental life goals are abandoned...all to sate uncontrollable flames of lust that threaten to burn away all we were before.
Ironically, despite the strong, mature manner in which these themes are explored, I suspect it will be the musicianship that brings most listeners into the fold.
For three albums now, Wild Beasts have been honing in and refining one very specific, compelling sound, a sound that seems a perfect fit for the band's personnel, and that seems destined to sustain them for many albums to come.
Anchored in gorgeous, chimey, slightly jazzy 80s textures that weave and flow effortlessly around the band's two disparate but wonderfully compatible voices...guitarist Hayden Thorpe's highly idiosyncratic falsetto (think of the drag queen theatrics of an Antony or Queen's Freddie Mercury, but with a more masculine vibe), and Tom Flemming's yearning, richly earthbound, slightly Gabriel-esque baritone...there's little that sonically differentiates Smother from the band's equally excellent previous release Two Dancers, save for each album's disciplined adherence to theme.
Two Dancers, with its violent, almost Clockwork Orange-ish tales of hedonistic English hooligan's run amok, allowed itself a more dynamic, flamboyant design. The songs had a greater sense of build, of unpredictability, of catharsis.
But with Smother, the emphasis is solely on the burn, not release, and as a result, much like on Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, the peaks and valleys are intentionally flattened until the album's very end.
In the Suburbs, that moment of release came with The Suburbs Part Two (Mountains Beyond Mountains), with the album's protagonist finally breaking free of her spiritual confines and finding other similarly minded souls. Here, it comes (literally and figuratively) with final track End Comes Too Soon, but in a brilliant follow through on theme, the song skips the moment of sexual release, instead jumping in post-coital as the yearnings, and then the very relationship, start to fade. Then, after a minute long drift into near nothingness, the song reemerges exultantly, implying the phoenix-like rebirth of self that comes at the end of a relationship, even as one continues to long for the overwhelming emotional connection that has been lost.
It is just one of the many sophisticated highlights on this understated, immaculately produced album, one of the smartest...and best...that 2011 has to offer.
Status: Strong Recommend.
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:Bed Of Nails, Loop The Loop, Invisible, Reach A Bit Further.
Here's the official video for Bed Of Nails. Be sure to check out the killer vocal bridge at the 2:03 mark!
Component Breakdown:
1. Lion's Share - 8
2. Bed Of Nails - 9
3. Deeper - 8
4. Loop the Loop - 9
5. Plaything - 8
6. Invisible - 9
7. Albatross - 7
8. Reach A Bit Further - 9
9. Burning - 8
10. End Come Too Soon - 9
Intangibles - High.
What are your thoughts on Wild Beasts's Smother? Let readers know!
Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot recently stated following Cut//Copy's summer performance at The Pitchfork Music Festival that he felt the band seemed just one hit song away, one 1901 or Listzomania, from a Phoenix-like mass market breakthrough.
My suggestion to listeners is "Why wait?"
They may not have the hit single yet, but with the release of Zonoscope, the Australian lads have proven for two albums in a row now that they're basically the best 80s flavored electronic/dance act out there not named Daft Punk, Robyn, or LCD Soundsystem, and are quite possibly the most broadly appealing bunch of the lot.
Following on the heels of their excellent 2008 release In Ghost Colours, Zonoscope is just another winning collection of electronic numbers given the warmest/poppiest of spins. The high points are maybe a touch lower this time out, but the album boasts a slightly more muscular, consistent, and streamlined approach that more than compensates.
And once again, though not composed of conventionally great singers, the band's secret weapon remains their inventive, sly backing vocals, which seem to incorporate just about every sophisticated trick from the 80's new wave canon.
Highlights include the urgent, John Hughes-y opener Need You Now; best track Where I'm Going, which somehow seems to simultaneously reference classic Beach Boys, the Who's Won't Get Fooled Again and The Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows, all while still delivering the requisite dance-rock punch; the buoyant Alisa; the Men At Work-flavored Take Me Over, and fifteen-minute closer Sun God, which hits a muscular LCD Soundsystem-like groove and never lets up.
But too much emphasis on individual highlights misses the point.
This is one of the most enjoyable front-to-back listens of the year.
It might be a bit on the disposable side...these upbeat songs aren't cut of a stock that sticks with you much after a listen...but conversely, the album is a tremendous grower.
It's sounded better to me every time I've given it a spin, it always puts me in a good mood, and frankly, I can't wait to throw it on again.
Status: Strong Recommend
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:Need You Now, Where I'm Going, Pharaohs & Pyramids, Alisa.
Here's the official video for album opener Need You Now.
Component Breakdown:
1. Need You Now - 8
2. Take Me Over - 8
3. Where I'm Going - 9
4. Pharaohs & Pyramids - 9
5. Blink And You'll Miss A Revolution - 8
6. Strange Nostalgia For The Future - 8
7. This Is All We've Got - 7
8. Alisa - 9
9. Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat - 7
10. Corner Of The Sky - 8
11. Sun God - 8
Intangibles - Slyly High.
What are your thoughts on Cut//Copy's Zonoscope? Let readers know!
"War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again."
Somehow, it seems fitting that this review of PJ Harvey's Let England Shake follows my review of Sufjan Stevens's The Age Of Adz. Both rate among the top-most exercises in artistic ambition rock has produced over the last few years, and taken together, the two albums perfectly illustrate the hair's-breadth difference between abject failure and glorified success when one follows one's muse.
Stevens makes one critical error in deciding to mirror his subject's battle with schizophrenia by adding a cacophonous layer of electronics to an already richly detailed work, and the whole affair collapses under the weight of its overstuffed design.
Harvey makes several equally unusual, potentially treacherous choices in her unflinching, despairing, time-traveling examination of war's impact on her beloved England...to sing exclusively in her odd, disembodied upper register to imply the sad but distant gaze of Mother Earth; to incorporate jarring, incongruous samples into her otherwise naturalistic songs to suggest the clash of cultures...but here the choices magically coalesce, resulting in a bona fide masterpiece.
Spare and folk-oriented in design, with the bulk of its instrumentation limited to simple acoustic or electric guitar lines, a touch of brass or keys, and a ubiquitous auto harp, Let England Shake is a moving, and consistently surprising musical experience.
But lyrically, it is not for the faint of heart.
As made clear, the subject here is war, or better put, the hopeless cycle of human suffering brought on by the love for one's land that inevitably leads to an unchecked patriotism that inevitably leads to war.
Harvey takes on the subject from all sides in plain-spoken language and graphic detail...the clueless pols who make the decisions in The Words That Maketh Murder, the wailing mothers whose sorrow over children lost is matched only by their fervent willingness to continue the patriotic fight in England, the irreparable damage left in wars aftermath in The Glorious Land ("What is the glorious fruit of our land? / The fruit is deformed children!")...but the bulk of the album occurs in the trenches, as Harvey pit stops through time to visit several of the most horrendous battles in Britain's centuries long military history, and put us right alongside the common foot soldiers to share in their misery and terror.
Think of the album as the British, folk-rock equivalent to the most potent moments of Steven Speilberg's Saving Private Ryan, but with that flawed movie's mawkish bookends and pedantic monologues removed, and you start to get a sense what Harvey has accomplished.
And like Ryan, I think it's wrong to classify Let England Shake as a protest album.
Harvey is far too edgy and cutting an artist to get sucked into false optimism.
War, in her eyes, is eternal, an inexorable part of the human condition. There is no end to the cycle.
All she can do in moral response is bear empathetic witness to those who have been trampled in war's wake.
Obviously, the risk to this approach of returning to the same heightened emotional territory again and again is diminishing returns, but Harvey fully counters this risk through a fantastic effort of musical variation.
Though wonderfully cohesive as a whole, no album this year better differentiates its individual songs.
Track after track stands alone with a clear, unique personality, a distinct, crisp structure, and the subtleties of design in this album are genuinely stunning.
Check out the way Harvey effortlessly shifts from bone-weary march to frightened chaos to hopeless funeral dirge as her soldiers realize they are all about to meet their fated end in All And Everyone, or the way a reggae sample is used to evoke both the otherworldly flavor of the ransacked Iraqi village and the lack of concern among the invading British and American troops in Written On The Forehead, or how the melodies of both George Of The Jungle and Summertime Blues are incorporated to suggest the trivial callousness with which England's past leaders have made decisions that went on to cost thousands of lives.
Truth be told, though I have liked a handful of other albums a bit more over the last six years, I cannot think of another album so confidently devoid of artistic misstep since Sleater-Kinney's The Woods dropped in 2005.
Though tremendous challenging, Let England Shake isn't just a great recording...it's rock 'n' roll as art of the highest order, and hands down the best album of 2011.
Status: Highest Recommend.
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:This Glorious Land, All And Everyone, Hanging In The Wire, Written On The Forehead.
Here's the video for the album's one foray into contemporary times, Written On The Forehead.
Component Breakdown:
1. Let England Shake - 8
2. The Last Living Rose - 9
3. The Glorious Land - 10
4. The Words That Maketh Murder - 9
5. All And Everyone - 10
6. On Battleship Hill - 9
7. England - 9
8. In The Dark Places - 10
9. Bitter Branches - 8
10. Hanging In The Wire - 10
11. Written On The Forehead - 10
12. The Colour Of The Earth - 8
Intangibles - Very High.
What are your thoughts on PJ Harvey's Let England Shake. Let readers know!
These are just some of the landmark errors in judgement that spring to mind whenever I listen to Sufjan Stevens's The Age Of Adz.
And while Stevens is hardly popular enough an artist for this work to reach the same level of cultural notoriety, The Age Of Adz is the exact same type of flamboyant misstep that only the genuinely ambitious and gifted...blinded by a self-confidence/sure-mindedness won through past success...can produce.
For like those other historic failures, there really isn't a questionable creative choice made on The Age Of Adz save one...the core idea that led to the project's creation in the first place.
"Let's make a hard-edge police procedural where the cops regularly break into song."
"Let's arbitrarily change the flavor of the world's most popular soft drink."
Or in Steven's case, "Let me take all these awful misogynistic and suicidal thoughts I've been having since the breakup of my last relationship and give them vent through a metaphorical exploration of the schizophrenic, woman-hating mind of African-American folk artist and religious crackpot Prophet Royal Robertson."
I know, sounds charming, but it's not the first time Steven's has taken this tack, and it's worked extraordinarily well for him in the past.
Check out the haunting John Wayne Gacy Jr. off of 2005's celebrated Illinois, where the openly Christian Steven's had the audacity to compare his positive qualities to the perceived positive qualities of the famed serial killer and then muse that "In my best behavior / I am really just like him / Look beneath the floor boards / For the secrets I have hid!"
That approach is repeated here, and while it feels like a stretch for Stevens to elevate merely being upset at his ex to the level of anger exhibited by the sign-maker Robertson, who after being left by his wife of nineteen years spent the rest of his life creating vivid paintings portraying women as ghoulish, cartoony, threatening science fiction monsters, the truth of the matter is from a simple songwriting level, this album works fairly well.
It's with Steven's decision to instrumentally suggest Robertson's schizophrenia by diving into chaotic electronica where everything falls apart.
Steven's has proclaimed this as his electronica album, but that's disingenuous. This is not an electronica album.
It's a fully orchestrated, naturalistic, already overstuffed album in Steven's traditional vein, that's then had an additional layer of cheesy, Flash Gordon-esque elecro-beeps and farts slathered over the entire affair. And no matter how logical it might have seemed to suggest Robertson's schizophrenia in this way at the time, Steven's failed to take one thing into account when making this core creative choice...just how dopey and goddamn ridiculous the whole thing would sound in the end.
It's as if having already crafted an album that played fairly well, Steven's flew to England, tracked down a drunken Keith Emerson at some pub at 4 a.m., immediately dragged him into the recording studio and importuned..."Now give me some of that Karn Evil 9 shit!"
Still, as bad as most of these tracks play in their final form, The Age Of Adz rates, like Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, as one of the more interesting failures in rock history, with a few of its tracks rising far above the din.
Futile Devices, the lovely opener, succeeds because it's designed as a feint, hewing closely to Steven's trademark sound of the past before the electronics kick in on second track Too Much. The far too long but engaging closer Impossible Soul also works because of its more naturalistic sonic design.
The Idioteque-ish I Walked, and to a lesser degree Vesuvius, succeed for the opposite reason, being the two tracks that feel entirely electronic in nature.
And then there's I Want To Be Well, the album's one near masterpiece, and the one true success of this mergist style. A terrifying cry for help from a suicidal mind, it builds to such a searing emotional climax with its desperate closing refrain of "I'm not fucking around" that no flaw in sonic design can stand in its way.
So in the end, as much as I personally disliked The Age Of Adz, it's hard to feel much in the way of anger or disappointment towards Stevens. Far better to dare big and fail occasionally than play it safe.
He took a huge stylistic risk, saw it through to its natural conclusion, and in the end that risk didn't pay off.
But imagine if it had.
Status: Not Recommended.
Cherry Picker's Best Bets:Futile Devices, I Walked, I Want To Be Well, Impossible Soul.
Here's the bizarre stop motion official video for Too Much which clearly conveys both the album's overwrought ambition and cacophonous sonic design.
Component Breakdown:
1. Futile Devices - 8
2. Too Much - 4
3. Age Of Adz - 6
4. I Walked - 7
5. Now That I'm Older - 5
6. Get Real Get Right - 5
7. Bad Communication - 3
8. Vesuvius - 6
9. All For Myself - 5
10. I Want To Be Well - 9
11. Impossible Soul - 8
Intangibles - Very Low.
What are your thoughts on this controversial album? Let readers know!
