album review

Blacklisted by Neko Case
2002, Bloodshot Records, 14 tracks at 39 min.
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RATING: 47 out of 50

Seeing Neko Case perform “Deep Red Bells” live was quite the treat. Following the concert, I bought some pastries and iced tea at the local CVS, wanting to fill my stomach. No cheese Danish, though, could be as satisfying as seeing someone with such command over the human voice. Case’s singing is anything but typical. Indeed, she assumed something of an extraordinary persona when she was on stage, aside from banter with the audience and her admittance to cutting one song a few seconds short.

Painting Case as superhuman is ridiculous, but it’s difficult to describe her vocal talents without resorting to some hyperbole. There’s something universal and dreamlike to her voice and lyrics; but one look at the person spitting these words and it’s hard not to feel a sense of detachment from someone who can sing so damned well.

Likely the second-best communicator of Case’s skills, Blacklisted is an alleged country album. More than anything it is a vocal album—Case’s voice often soars above the arrangements, drawing attention to itself without even trying. The arrangements themselves carry a vaguely American aroma; they are not so much specific as they are evocative. To take Blacklisted as a vocal album would be a grave mistake, however. Case needs (at minimum) a plain-colored backdrop against which to let loose her siren’s wail; otherwise, hers is a voice without any place or time.

Case’s sense of setting and mood is of special import to her music. The title track is profoundly grave, “I Wish I Was the Moon” is a humongous dose of the bittersweet, and “Lady Pilot” is suave, sly, comfort. Case maintains the same essential range throughout Blacklisted, and no one song varies wildly from another. Rather, it is Case’s ability to morph each track ever-so-slightly into something more magnificent, more wholesome than the last that stuns the listener.

Blacklisted? Hardly.

Volta by Björk
2007, Atlantic, 10 tracks at 51 min.
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RATING: 28 out of 50

Oh, Volta. Björk’s most…recent album. Do we really have to review this? Do you know I’ve been trying to review this album for, like, two years? Two frigging years? Not like this is Tristram Shandy—it’s not. Did you read that last sentence in a really snobbish art kid tone? Well, you should have, because if I was speaking to you, that’s how I would of said it.

Ten tracks, a bright red gatefold cover, a sticker, and some ridiculous photographs of crochet gone mad—what does Volta have to offer? Well, it’s got a lot of horns. You could call it a ‘horny’ record! Ba-dum-tish! Actually, that statement isn’t far off given Björk’s slant towards self-pleasure on her last two records—she’s gotten quite into the idea of ‘make art for oneself before making art for anyone else’. That idiom, though, is usually reserved for writers. Music is a more of a social art, and Björk’s tendency of late to serve herself first and foremost is not the most fitting attribute.

Take, for example, “Pneumonia”. Something about being a recluse, or something about something. k, thx for three great albums, bjork, see you in pagan heaven. It would be nice to have this review without blindly stupefied sarcasm, but Volta simply begs mockery. “Pneumonia” is as delicate, suspended in air, as is the “Anchor Song”, but its length and pretension—those fucking HORNS—debase its beauty beyond a quick skip-through of the song.

“Declare Independence” is Björk’s take on punk, which is dumb because Björk just fails at politics. “Vertebrae by Vertebrae” is an uninspired Björk singing over the same bellowing brass that appeared on “Hunter Vessel” from Drawing Restraint 9. “The Dull Flame of Desire”, a duet with Antony Hegarty, is far too long, and if I wanted seven minute songs with a female vocalist I’d take out one of my shoegaze records, not Björk. Am I getting my point across?

Sample this before purchase. Or, better yet, just get the songs worth any salt: “I See Who You Are” and “My Juvenile”. These are the most tender cuts of meat; the choicest rib. Everything else is grizzle, even the hoopla of “Earth Intruders” and “Innocence”. Though an admirable effort—no, no, forget that. Put out something that doesn’t suck, Björk. We pagan sprites are a picky bunch.

Nightclubbing by Grace Jones
1981, Island, 9 tracks at 38 min.
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RATING: 50 out of 50

Androgyny—the cornerstone of every PoMo asshole’s personal philosophy. Well, it’s the cornerstone of this PoMo asshole’s personal philosophy. And probably Lady GaGa’s, too. That counts for something, right? Regardless of where one stands on the issue of androgynes, it is important to understand that Grace Jones is one of the best androgynous folks ever. This is fact.

I’d like to say that it’s opinion, but I can’t, as one listen to Jones’ 1981 album Nightclubbing should convince you that Grace Jones is awfully good at what she does—and what she does is svelte, sexy, urban-nymphette disco pop. Sounds lovely, no? It is, of course. Had it been otherwise, “Pull Up to the Bumper”—a song about a crowded street, clearly—wouldn’t have been a hit, and Jones’ interpretation of the Sting-penned “Demolition Man” would be a rather dreary affair.

Thankfully, though, the managerial hands of Chris Blackwell and Alex Sadkin would not allow anything droll to go under Ms. Jones’ name; one can assume that Jones didn’t want a dull record either—she’s in full display of her prowess here. There is a certain bravado to her voice—it is not demanding, nor unassuming, yet it is articulate, and with her weapon of a voice Jones is able to entice even the stoniest listener. Her seductive skills extend even to her nonchalance, as demonstrated by her cover of Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing”.

Nightclubbing is a fine album. There’s a unique ‘grooviness’ to it—a rather confounding funk, something all too appropriate for Jones’ eccentric persona. Yet there is a comfort, a coziness, to Nightclubbing. On the surface it suggests warmth and friendliness; in the subtext there’s some rough sex. By the closing track, you’ve found yourself magnetized to Jones—a tall, genderless, slightly intimidating, black woman. It’s that sort of feat that makes Nightclubbing a timeless album, one the sanitized pop princesses—say, Lady Gaga—will have trouble achieving, as they are not tall, genderless, slightly intimidating black women. All in all, that’s probably for the best—the Western World only needs one flattop-sporting disco dominatrix, and we’ve found her in Grace Jones.

Generation Star Wars by Alec Empire
1994, Mille Plateaux, 13 tracks at 1 hr, 13 min.
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RATING: 46 out of 50

L’enfant terrible of German techno, Alec Empire is a man who is very apt at displaying the polarities of his mother culture. Like East and West Germany, Empire’s music is likewise split into opposing factions. He can be stoically ambient, removed of any feeling but fear (Low On Ice, for example). As demonstrated by his early rave work, The Destroyer, and Atari Teenage Riot, he is equally skilled in crafting liberally-minded blitzkriegs of ballistic noise. On his second solo effort, Empire evidences his forte for the dualistic with a epic, hour-plus LP of varying electronic moods.

The results are highly stratified and inconsistent, though Empire’s spotty approach to chaos is often part of his charm. Of the seventy minutes on the disc, the first ten are devoted to one outstanding track, in which several minutes of slow ambience are blurred into a ferocious drum n’ bass rhythm. I’d say it’s derivative of Richard James, but I can’t; this disc was released around the same time Aphex was building his own name. The remaining sixty minutes are likewise varied, with tongue-in-cheek electric exotica (“Sonyprostitutes”), haunting vignettes (“Smack”), and dazzlingly frozen messages from outer space (“Pussy Heroin”).

It’s a mixed bag for certain, and one would think that a man of many talents might not be particularly apt in any one of them. Even if the contents of this disc can figuratively be found elsewhere—and they can—it’s the no holds barred approach which Empire takes to fashioning his own little planet that works. No resource is left stocked; everything is exhausted for exhaustion’s sake.

Writes one Discogs user, “This can only come from Berlin!” That statement, quite bluntly and eloquently, sums up the achievement of Generation Star Wars.

Debut by Björk
1993, Elektra, 11 tracks at 48 min.
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RATING: 31 out of 50

Before Björk became international symbol of reporter abuse—oh, wait, she’s always been a symbol for the semi-socially-detached, awkward, indie cool sort of person who just doesn’t care about anything besides finding their place in the world. Hell, she complained upon the release of “Possibly Maybe”, saying it was the first song she wrote that was ‘hopeless’, and that such an addition to her catalog peeved her. This was, obviously, before she started writing songs about explosions and purses and suicide bombers.

The Björk of Debut is very much unlike the Björk of Volta. Here she was a young woman, and it shows—she’s romantic, a little homesick, and apparently she really wants to hit the club: half of these tracks are only-slightly-atypical house-romping fare. This isn’t an inherently bad thing. Yet for a female vocalist who’s given us some of the most emotionally charged work in the past fifteen years of her field, it’s a little disappointing to listen to this record and say to oneself, “Huh. So this is Björk.”

On single “Big Time Sensuality”, Björk sings that she doesn’t know her “future after this weekend” and that she’d rather not know, regardless of its content. One can’t help listen and think that Björk needs to grow up; she’s talented enough to go beyond wispy vocals and keyboards that smack of Eastern flavour. Thankfully, she did—she grew into a magnificent monster of sorts, but she grew up nonetheless. On Debut, though, there is little maturity—it’s all cool air and sweet nothings. This will be fine by some, irritating for others, and a plain “meh” for those such as myself, who refuse to take this record as anything but simple pop music.

Boys for Pele by Tori Amos
1996, Atlantic, 18 tracks at 70 min.
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RATING: 47 out of 50

Ah, Boys for Pele. A clumsy, difficult introduction to Amos; an introduction not recommended by her fans largely for those reasons. Keep in mind, though, that Tori Amos fanatics are far from being on any radical end of the musical spectrum. There’s nothing ‘radical’ about any of Tori Amos’ records—feminism, a piano, some songs about men, and a whole bunch of—as Nabokov might say—“moth-bitten” mythologies.¹ But don’t let that stop you, as Boys for Pele may just be Amos’ best work.

This was the first Tori Amos album I purchased, around two years ago. It didn’t ‘turn me off’ from her music, mainly because I found it so rich, very full-bodied and baroque. And, hey, there were a bunch of postmodern, ambient photos in the booklet, all of them probably taken with an ISO of like a billion. Two-years-ago-me was, doubtlessly, impressed.

But even more impressive than a bunch of cheesy Lomographs was the way Amos raged on this record. There was a hell of a lot of harpsichord but it all sounded violent, if at times hopelessly fragile. The wit was sharpened and honed, despite the occasional dose of forced eclecticism.² It was a grand ole’ time, if songs about heroin and the ‘girl zone’ are your idea of fun.

Good times have to end somewhere, though, and one wonders why Amos had to make this record the musical equivalent of The Second Sex. Eighteen songs? That’s pushing it, especially when the hooks start to drift farther and farther apart from one another (“Putting the Damage On”). The first half of the record is generally fantastic, and it’s the second portion where one starts to encounter problems. Amos begins to soften her tone, and by the final track she sounds like a delicate twig, ready to snap. Why not finish strong?

Despite its shortcomings, Amos demonstrates on Boys for Pele the ability to merge highly idiosyncratic mumblings with classical flavour and alternative appeal. It may not be a work of genius, but this album is hard to pass up as its influence can be seen so clearly in the tender-throated starlets of today—Bat For Lashes, Poe, Fiona Apple. Boys for Pele isn’t magnificent, but it is essential.

Notes
1: Can't find the quote but I'm almost sure I've read it somewhere (maybe The Paris Review?)
2: Also demonstrated by Amos’ breastfeeding of a pig in the CD booklet.

Curtain Call by Midaircondo
2009, Twin Seed, 11 tracks at 43 min.
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RATING: 49 out of 50

Roughly four years have passed since Midaircondo’s phenomenal debut, Shopping for Images. The path’s been cluttered—one less bandmate, a label switch, and a sudden (or rather gradual) change in musical disposition for the Swedish gals. The brooding darkness of their debut is not entirely lost; it just happens to be a bit more subtle. In place of the furrowed-brow-gloominess that solidified their freshman LP? Why, a terribly violent and bittersweet feeling—and plenty of it.

The opening track (also the title track) instantly recalls images of days long since past—it’s sunny yet clinical, immersed yet detached from its source. Following track “Come With Me” shatters this formula, brining into play an industrial-esque, jazzy, evil dance sort of track, complete with distorted vocals and delicately grinding synth. If it’s meant to be intimidating, it is. Midaircondo has gone martial, it seems.

Then we get “Reports on the Horizon”, in which gently lilting horns are complemented by the characteristic Swedish-sorceress vocals and what sounds to be a reversed piano. It’s hopeful, glorious—and it crashes back down almost immediately into the threatening “Below” and “Bringing Me Home”.

And maybe that’s what makes this record not-quite-an-improvement over Shopping for Images but a companion. It’s two-faced, tricky, dramatic, perversely genteel. Removed from the intimacy of their debut (excluding “Silk, Silver, and Stone”), Midaircondo have now proven themselves to be some mighty furious ladies. I’m not entirely sure what they’re steamed about, but whatever is in their craw should stay there. With their ferocious new outlook and their ever-present talent, Midaircondo appears to be nigh-invincible. Or maybe the Swedes are just really cool people.

Shopping for Images by Midaircondo
2005, Type Records, 11 tracks at 53 min.
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RATING: 49 out of 50

Swedes are good at a lot of things—meatballs, berries, tennis, dynamite, Walpurgis Night, and classifying things into other things. They are also amazingly talented in producing music. The Knife, Opeth, ABBA, Robyn, the Tough Alliance, Meshuggah, Refused—all of them, delicious Swedes. Particularly apt in black metal with lyrics concerning permafrost, the Swedes are also aces in their ability to create electronic music and jazz. It should be no real surprise, then, that ambient-jazz outfit Midaircondo’s debut album, Shopping for Images, is good.

It’s real good, actually. The trio (now a duo) have produced an album that is frightfully unnerving, gloriously moody, and just plain listenable. Refusing to soak themselves in ambient tropes (fuzzy releases, drawn-out passages of near-silence), Midaircondo instead immerse their music in continual oppositions—flirtatious saxophone to meditative bleeps, plinks and plonks to ticks and tacks.

It is this friction that propels much of the album forward. We get ghostlike imperatives on the first two tracks and cloyed sentiment on “Perfect Spot”; we get windchimes on “Perfect Spot” and discordant sax on “Faces”. All of it works wonderfully—gratingly so, actually, as each song takes itself in deep seriousness and solemnity (disregarding the slyly sarcastic “Eva Stern, Shake It”).

Above anything else on the album are “Although I Heard” (the midpoint) and “I’ll Be Waiting” (the endpoint). On the first, we hear, “I didn’t stop/although I heard you coming.” On the final track, we get an infinitely more reassuring nudge: “I’ll be waiting.” It’s fierce contrast, but it’s played out in the same terms—a gentleness impeded by darkness; an ominous, fatal sort of mindset. Yet it is the slurred, hushed vocals and the music box melody on the final track, whispering their message, that will stun you. No matter how dark, how awful it seems, someone will be waiting. It’s a hazy guarantee, a sloppy prospect, and it’s a little suspect. Yet given the constantly shifting state of our world, the unobstructed flow of life at insane speeds—“I’ll be waiting” is the greatest promise you can make. Midaircondo ‘gets’ that. And they’ve put to it to such good use on their debut that it’s paralysing.

Nothing Lasts…but Nothing is Lost by Shpongle
2005, Twisted Records, 20 tracks at 1 hr, 7 min.
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RATING: 35 out of 50

What to make of Shpongle? Besides, of course, the accurate response of “lol u listen to Shpongle?” On Nothing Lasts, there is ample cause to perhaps throw away this retort, and to not be embarrassed by Shpongle. In place of eleven-minute trance epics that lead to ‘neo-consciousness’ or the like, there are twenty short tracks, each one less of a ‘thump thump thump’ Goa extravaganza and more of Aphex-like techno vignettes.

Do not come to Nothing Lasts expecting the British duo to be hardcore techno wunderkind, however. The pieces here retain their “shpongality” via goofy vocal samples (“Outer Shpongolia”), mystically-obsessed titles (“The Stamen of the Shamen”), and placid guitar (“Falling Awake”). Yet the dabbles into techno territory remain the centerpiece. The beats are jerky, distorted, cut-up, playful, chaotic—it’s aptitude masked by lack of pretension, a trademark of the most revered electronic maestros (Wagon Christ, for example).

The bedlam contained within is not exactly ‘danceable’, though I suppose this keeps in line with Shpongle’s ‘higher goal’—magically-imbued consciousness or something, I don’t know, some Middle Eastern shit. The flow of the album is seamless, and accordingly it operates on some degree of ambience. Periodic bursts of high energy—the beguiling brass on “The Stamen of the Shaman”—are welcome, and while the album runs a bit long it doesn’t run unbalanced.

Maybe I’m just impatient, but my main complaint about this album is its length. It’s nice to fall asleep to, but once you put conscious effort towards listening it seems something of a chore. The beats squibble, squabble, and flutter, yes; but one pair of ears can only take so much tomfoolery. My first thought on hearing this album was, “Wow, sounds like Digimon World 3.” And it does. So if you’re in the mood for video game music, then Nothing Lasts will be nothing short of a gem. Otherwise, you may want to take this piecemeal, at every meal, and with water—a big glass, since you’ll be swallowing a whole lot of haberdashery.

The Dreaming by Kate Bush
1982, EMI, 10 tracks at 43 min.
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RATING: 50 out of 50

This is one of those albums that I’ve reviewed in several drafts, only to scrap the entire thing near the end. It’s one of those albums which I enjoy so much yet I can’t quite explain why. It’s one of those albums I’m tremendously biased towards. It’s one of those albums that make you feel like you’ve just lost your virginity.

Yes, I had assumed that Hounds of Love would remain eternally the centerpiece of my compulsive Kate Bush habit, but the September day that The Dreaming arrived in the mail I was totally put to shame. This album is the pinnacle of Kate Bush’s career. She didn’t top it, won’t top it, shouldn’t top it. Let’s see why.

First off, this is something—as much I may not like to admit it—of a prog album. Thankfully, though, the length is concise; and the material is still pop, so let’s call it ‘art pop.’ Then you have the arrangements which are not only of Carpenters-level quality but also imbued with an undying artiness. The special treatments which Bush adds to this already-substantial core—mulish braying, medieval intonations, Vietnamese howls—provide the gloss, the lustre, that really makes this album shine.

And, in most respects, it’s the surface which mystifies here. The ‘sound’ of this album—a sound I haven’t really heard replicated to a point, and I’ve traversed the bowels of female-fronted music—is immeasurably attractive. “Get Out of My House” may well be the high point of Kate Bush’s discography. I could describe it as ‘art rock,’ but that seems hokey. It’s like Kate Bush meets metalcore, if that makes any goddamned sense.

On The Dreaming, everything makes sense. All ten parts of the album are in perfect unison, each gear grinding into the next to make a stream of perfectly produced, panned, and planned pop. It’s Victorian, it’s fake Australian, it’s cinematic, it’s literate (extremely so), and it has mule screams (thought I’d mention that again). It’s Kate Bush, damn it. And damn you if you can’t be bothered to give it a listen.

Seizensetsu by Hi-Posi
2000, 13 tracks at 43 min.
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RATING: 46 out of 50

Man, does anyone else feel like having a seizure right now? I sure do, but it may just be the Hi-Posi. If there was ever an album designed to have you dance like a Pichu fed by gavage, then this is it (keep track of all the Pokémon references in this review, true believers!).

Cut from the same national cloth that gave us Boredoms, Melt Banana, Excel Saga, and the Sarin Gas Attacks (too soon?), it should come of no surprise to anyone who is not an idiot that Hi-Posi is such a ‘kooky’ gal. It is often this special brand of Nipponese (damn, before you know it, I be makin’ fun of Jynx) insanity that has inspired countless artists douchebags. After all, where would Sonichu be today without the Oriental imports from which he is so obviously ripped? Where would weeabos be without the mountains of hentai to which they pleasure themselves? Where would I be without my earliest groundings in G-Gundam (all da charatiz on dat show were hot)?

Hi-Posi is of no likewise-revolutionary stripes, but her combination of Yoshimio-like skullduggery, Shonen-Knife-like powerpuffery, and Towa-Tei-like beat-mastery is enchanting. The opening track (also the title track) is a pinball machine gone mad. Every track, actually, is a pinball machine gone mad. Maybe a more apt description would be thus—‘On Seizensetsu, Hi-Posi weaves forty-five minutes of sticky poison-pop threads; so potent is their toxicity, in fact, that you may mistake her for a Nidoqueen.’

But that makes no sense—much like the numerous sexual puns supposedly present on this album (puns I can’t understand because I’m a sinful gaijin). But nothing makes sense on this album. There’s crowded background shouting (“Sonae Yotsuneni”), alt-ish guitar (“Core”), haunted taunting (“Iranaimono Risuto”), squiggly noir (“Gomendawa”) and naïvely adorability (“Denki”). All of this makes for something not quite cute, not quite satirical, and maybe not even shibuya-kei—it is, in all honorable respects, a polite mindfuck.

Remember in the Red, Blue, and Yellow Pokémon games your tireless frustration upon discovering that you had to wake the road-blocking Snorlax up with a special ‘Pokéflute’? The vexation was endless, clearly. Well, Hi-Posi is a kick in the balls to Snorlaxes everywhere. She will keep you awake, forever—if you’re into that sort of thing. Otherwise, this is prime Asian fetish material.

The Campfire Headphase by Boards Of Canada
2005, Warp, 15 tracks at 1 hr, 2 min
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RATING: 37 out of 50

NOTE:This is the first review of the 125-review challenge! (Just in case you didn't get that from the title.)

First off: “Dayvan Cowboy”. That shit is so overrated. Whoosh, twang, zoom, whoosh. That’s what it sounds like. And not in an Autechre “Beep-Boop-I-am-more-machine-than-man” way. In a post-shoegaze way that, for 2005, just sounds like some backing beats for Esthero. And thus is the story of how BoC managed to totally fuck up their first major ‘single.’

And “Oscar See Through Red Eye”? If I could translate the auditory experience to prose, it would be something like this:

Squiggle, squiggle, went Oscar’s crayons as he smoothed his lines on the fresh sheet of butcher paper. His father looked over his shoulder, uncorking a bottle of some cheap alcohol that tasted so generic and was so much like every other chillout track alcohol that it didn’t even have a name. “Whatcha drawing, son?” he asked Oscar. “Oh, some dogs and cats,” said Oscar. “Pfft, Oscar. You’re blind. You can’t draw,” said his father. And Oscar cried a little, inside.

“’84’ Pontiac Dream”, meanwhile, comes so close to greatness—the intro and ‘chorus’ see a return to BoC’s vocal sampling (though very miniscule in scale), as well as more of the duo’s earlier “fuzzy” dynamics instead of the “slushy” sound which seems to dominate the album.

This disc, for all its faults, contains some wonderful material for a “Best Of” compilation should one ever happen (though I severely doubt it). “Constants Are Changing” is a slow release of tension, and is appropriately brief at one minute and forty-two seconds. “Slow This Bird Down” rivals Geogaddi’s “Corsair” for BoC’s greatest drone piece, while “Farewell Fire” is representative of the ‘new sound’ and ‘old emotion’ simultaneously.

It’s not that this isn’t a ‘good’ album. It’s not that the guitars are ‘bad’—they may be the best part of this album. But BoC, having set impeccable standards for themselves on prior LPs, have really just tried to ‘remove’ themselves from the ‘IDM’ field on Headphase. Unfortunately, instead of removing themselves from this ‘scene’, BoC have instead placed themselves in the dreaded—and infinitely more crowded—‘chillout’ field. This is not to say that ‘chillout’ is bad, or even that BoC has been removed of its influence in the past. However, BoC has usually invested a particular, albeit largely ambiguous—should we say suggestive?—emotional experience on their older works, yet on Headphase we instead hear, “Hey, man wanna get toked?” And myself being a TOTAL STRAIGHT-EDGE WARRIOR, I must decline. With any other band, this album would probably be a solid four, or a four-and-a-half. Yet for BoC, The Campfire Headphase is uncharacteristically mediocre. Maybe when the smoke clears we’ll have a more coherent album.

Kate Bush is tired of my shit

Remember when I used to post things on this blog? Things that weren’t filler, and were well-thought out pieces on modern culture? No? Well, I have some truly wonderful news for those of y’all that do remember—it’s something that will hopefully have you returning to the calamari dish known as Squid Can throughout the month (Ooooh).

Given the approaching state of Thanksgiving and the holiday season, I’ve decided to reward all of my one-and-a-half loyal readers with something extravagant, ludicrous, and near-impossible for a one-man blog—125 album reviews between now and Christmas Eve.

Yes, one-hundered-and-twenty-five reviews—starting now—and ending on the eve of Santa Claus. You read that correctly. These won’t be super-analyses expounding on meta-text or anything similarly in-depth—just three-hundred words or so on whether an album sucks or not. Now, why not bookmark this page (or better, subscribe to the RSS thing) and skedaddle for now. I’ve got some work to do.

CLICK HERE to see the most recent album reviews
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Phoenix Demos by Kate Bush
[Bootleg], 1976, 23 tracks at 60 min
[Mp3] Download from DonGrays.com

RATING: 4.5 out of 5

One has to wonder what happened to Kate Bush. In 1978, she’s shrieking like a siren about Emily Brontë novels; four years later and she’s proselytizing anti-Nam sentiment and bellowing like a donkey satan-lord to lyrics concerning houses and Houdini. It’s disappointing when the two are compared—her earlier, funkier works often seem shallow compared to the rigid and uncompromising art pop of her middle period. Yet if one takes a listen to her 1976 recordings—collectively dubbed the Phoenix Demos—there’s a happy medium between both eras.

According to DonGrays.com, Bush isn’t particularly fond of these demos being public. But the webmaster of this ancient site is also unpleased with bootleggers getting money off material not intended for the market. Thus, the whole collection is available online for free. So, nothing is stopping you from getting a hold of this unofficial release. But what should you expect from this pack of woman-on-a-piano pieces, and where does it fit into the Bush canon?

The songs here are stark, stripped of whatever avant-garde leotard Bush would be wearing ten years later. Still transparent, however, is Bush’s talent for impeccable melody and theatricality. Tracks like “Where Are the Lionhearts” and “Come Closer to Me Babe” express and maintain the melancholia and exuberance of her later works. There’s no shortage of skill here, and the unrefined mien is charming, if not essential. One gets the sense that, with only a touch of training, Bush could have gone straight from here to The Dreaming in terms of emotional output.

For that reason, this collection is perfect for a rainy night or those moments when you feel like reading an Albert Camus novel and crying over your crap life. The Phoenix Demos are not substantive or coherent, but are they passionate, atmospheric, and—most crucial—the cartilage of Kate Bush’s career.

Two Way Monologue by Sondre Lerche
2004, Astralwerks, 12 tracks at 47 min.
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RATING: 4.4 out of 5

“You were naked…which was weird,” sings Sondre Lerche on “Track You Down”. But, sorry, people, HE IS MARRIED AND ACCOUNTED FOR. Thus, his new album Heartbeat Radio may be lacking the awkwardly stilted lines that made his ‘bachelor years’ so charming. So, yes, while it is sad news for the gals (guys?) that the most handsome man in folk-pop is now married (Lerche > Noah Lennox for the record, you twelve-year-old jackasses who somehow snuck into the ‘crazy indie musik’ section of Limewire), we can at least enjoy his earlier work with zeal. And that’s pretty easy to do.

Lerche has an interesting voice. It’s not majestically pretentious (Chris Martin), modishly moody (Thom Yorke), or so smooth that you’ll think he’s black (Jamie Liddell). Instead, there’s a touch of the feminine in his wavering, sorta-falsetto. He sounds strong and hesitant at once, the kid who, upon embarking for a dance with the ‘pretty girl with da nice tits hur hur hur’, gives second thoughts to his courage. Should I be doing this? Am I cool enough? How do I smell?

Yet this tentative confidence is what makes part of his charm. “Maybe you’ll wait for me”, he sings on the final track, “Maybe You’re Gone”. It’s sung with the sort of appeal that corners two markets—sixteen-year-old girls (distinct subset of people-with-shitty-musical-taste apart from twelve-year-old girls) who think they want to settle down with a sensitive man in their ‘golden years’ (age 29/30); and teenage guys, who, listening to Lerche, will either be repelled by his lack of hyper-masculinity or attracted by his heartfelt songs, which prompts the response of, “Hey maybe I can cover this and sing it to a girl I like!”

For an embittered rat such as myself, I can’t fall into either camp. Lerche is too hopeful; even his string arrangements (“Love You”) are lacking doom. But his honesty (Norwegian brand, so you know it’s really honest) and naïveté are…hmm, cute, in a way? Imagine this scene: you are a woman/man in his/her mid-forties, or late thirties, having no children of your own. One day, your neighbor’s son says goodbye. His mother is there, and he has invited you to come and wave him off. He’s not going to college, but he’ll be traveling, trying to “find himself” for a while instead. Watching him drive off, you can’t help but appreciate his idealism, all the while reminding yourself that he’s surely soon to be crushed by the fact that we are living in the endtimes. But you keep on smiling, because you don’t want to spoil the final good times before he’s totally disillusioned; and in a way, you don’t want to spoil the ending either. That’s what this album is like.

Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
1985, EMI, 12 tracks at 47 min.
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RATING: 5 out of 5

A year ago, my psychology teacher lent me this album. “If you like Suzanne Vega,” he said, “You’ll like this.” Well, he was right. Sort of. But he was also sort of wrong, because Hounds of Love blows out of the water every fucking New York poetry corner ditty that Ms. Vega has ever penned (I can still dance to “Solitude Standing” and dream of being Marcel Proust, but that’s another story).

I repeatedly thanked him for introducing me to the album. He was like, “Uh, ok,” because, really, how queer am I that I raved about Kate Bush from late September to early November? I even said at one point, “Wow, almost as good as Björk’s albums.” Absolutely wrong, year-ago-me. This is the best (art) pop album in existence. Mike Love can go on singing about whatever the hell it is fifty-year old beach boys sing about, Madonna can keep scrubbing the stains off her latex bodices, and Björk can stand there helplessly, trying to help the Icelandic economy by singing songs about nature with Brian Chippendale on drums. As far as I’m concerned, these artists—or any pop artist for that matter—will never top this album. I’m biased, for once, yes. Can you believe it? Of course you can. But HAVE YOU HEARD THIS THING?

The first half is supposedly the more ‘pop’ of the two, which is total bullshit since “The Morning Fog” is pop in its purest form—charged, bubbly in an unexpected anachronistic way, and just swelling with optimism. “Watching You Without Me” carries the air of an orientalism so pungent that Edward Said would crinkle his nose, even though the result is more precocious than pretentious. “Waking the Witch” is both anti-Puritan (what other popular songwriters still care about Separatists in the 20th-century?) and akin to something out of an arcade game. “Under Ice”, admittedly, is pop only in an artsy sense, and no one listening to all the Gregorian chanting on “Hello Earth” has ever touched a Cathy Dennis record in their lifetime.

And then there’s “Cloudbusting.” Jesus. Really, Jesus Christ. Have violins ever been so robust yet restrained? Have strings ever been put to such good use on a pop song? Combined with the drum machine and Bush’s vocals—ones that fall below her limits, but full exercise of her range does not seem the goal here—“Cloudbusting” is the perfect art pop song: a length that’s just a tad long, an element of ‘unexpectedness’, and a marriage of synth and baroque elements so striking and streamlined that only the finest eloquence is communicated.

Then there’s theatricality here, but not glitz. Glitz is for Gary Glitter and Duchess Gaga, not Kate Bush. All she needs to be incredibly cool is a pair of dogs nuzzling her chest just ever-so-slightly. Oh, and a loose, purple gown. An essential, clearly.

Listen to this. Then, listen to it again. And again. Listen to it until you think your head is going to combust in a Hindenburg/Firestone tire-like blast. Just listen to it. Buy it, steal it, borrow it, whatever. If you steal it, then buy some Kate Bush posters or something. Like a lot of posters. Some classy, some sexy. Just get this album. Play it around people. Cool people will like it. Dykes will smile endearingly at the PJ Harvey-like independence. Feminists will like it. Gay dudes will like it. Straight dudes will like it. Your dad will like it. Your mom will, too. Give a copy to your psychologist. Your prostitute. Your dead grandpa. Yell out lyrics from it. “I GET OUT OF MY CAR…” Shake people on the street and tell them why “Running Up That Hill” is vastly preferable to “Wuthering Heights.”

And one day, leave a note on Ms. Vega’s doorstep telling her why you’re breaking up with her. You’ve found a new woman. Even if my psychology teacher got to her first. And he must be like a billion years old.

See, old people love this shit.

Music for Apartments by Lullatone
2003, Observatory, 3 tracks at 16 min.
Download (Free from Archive.org)

RATING: 4.5 out of 5

Okay, this is a free download, so it’s not as if there’s much reason preventing you from getting this. But where does it fit in the powerful repertoire of Lullatone? This collection of three songs—hardly an album, or even an EP—was released prior to Lullatone’s first full length, Computer Recital. Available only as a digital release, this album is likely to be overlooked by anyone curious about Lullatone since 1) it’s not available for sale, and 2) it’s not advertised on Lullatone’s website.

Is this record so bad that it needs to be shunned from the rest of Lullatone’s discography? Absolutely not. The third song here, “Resound”, reappeared on Computer Recital and managed to outshine most of the other cuts included. The first track here—a short untitled piece—is breezy, poppy, and, admittedly, not all that ‘deep.’ Yet Lullatone is a band that evades pretension, and instead aims for a child-like atmosphere—and, as many great records have proven, childlike music can often be the deepest and purest music of all.

Thus, the title track here, clocking in at a full nine-and-a-half minutes, is doubtlessly as strong as any other piece Lullatone has since crafted. The atmosphere that makes most Lullatone songs so incredibly appealing is present: a mien that, while immediately playful, is weighted so carefully that the wise will see it not as a simple bedtime ditty; but rather as something immensely delicate. As assholeish as I may sound right now, take a listen—to any of Lullatone’s material, really—and tell me I’m wrong. Boards Of Canada are known for making you think of your childhood, but they also manage to summon up all the debris between you and those memories. Lullatone, meanwhile, is pure innocence. They’re not twee, the emotion isn’t forced, and the music isn’t cheesy. “Music for Apartments” is a song that’s fearless about tomorrow, which is probably why it’s good for putting kids to sleep, and good for making us jaded adults a little uneasy.

If you’re looking for a place to start with Lullatone, then Music for Apartments is a good choice. Aside from the obvious fact that it’s free, everything you need is here—which is no small feat for three tiny songs.

Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective
2009, Domino, 11 tracks at 55 min.
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RATING: 3.9 out of 5

Okay, folks. Please stop this. We get it. The internet likes Animal Collective. Okay, best album of the year. WHATEVER. Okay, I like the band too, but can we please stop branding them as if they’re the fucking pinnacle of musical achievement? I’ll admit that I’ve been cooking up this review in various forms since January. I’ve had it since then, and I’ve listened to it many times since. But the fact is folks—and I swear to God don’t label me as some ‘backlash hipster’, because I’ve reviewed Dolly Parton and Boards Of Canada in the same stroke—this album is only okay. After listening to Animal Collective’s impressive body of work, I can only say that this album is ‘okay’. Please get over it.

Let’s start from the top. “My Girls”. Okay, fine. It’s a good song. But how is ‘AnCo’ (as the Williamsburg crowd prefers to dub them) breaking any new ground on this? Same erotic-pagan vocals, just a backdrop fleshed out of synth—a backdrop that bands have been resurrecting particularly in recent times. How is AC/AnCo/Pandanation any different from every other 80’s-revival band in their Moog-based efforts? (Fun fact: every reference to synthesizers on Squid Can involves the word ‘Moog’.) How are psychedelic club-rompers any different from similarly disoriented house club-rompers?

They’re not, and people’s failure to recognize—or perhaps acknowledge—this fact is what has led to the massive over-lauding of this album. There’s only one midtempo track (“No More Runnin”), and it so happens that is probably the worst track on the disc. Relatively speaking, they’re all good, but this is—in its heart and bones—a dance album. It’s not avant-garde anymore. When Animal Collective was making twelve-minute songs of assorted noises, that was sort of ‘avant-garde’. But Animal Collective making four-minute songs of squiggly electro does not pardon Merriweather from being a bit—dare I say it, before I am crucified by a trend-hopping ‘posse’ of fifteen-year-old girls for daring to mock ‘kewt, kawaii Panda’?

‘Bland’, is how I was going to end that sentence, and that’s a word that accurately describes this album. Sure, compared to other post-punk revivalist efforts (such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Merriweather is ‘hella’ exciting, especially on such anthemic cuts as “In The Flowers”. But for a band that once sang about a ‘Slippi’ as hastily and feverishly as they could in the span of two-minutes-and-forty-seconds, Merriweather seems more like a singles collection.

Perhaps that’s the best way to view this album—a collection of songs easily liked and enjoyed. After 10 or so listens to this album, the songs get tired. They become functional for enjoyment only as ‘single’ songs—the effect they created together becomes lost by way of blandness. The album flows flawlessly, but even this fine-tuned approach to cohesion is lost amongst the vanilla-flavored debris of Animal Collective losing a more experimental approach.

That being said, Merriweather is a decent album, one that deserves probably half of the credit it’s currently getting. If taken piecemeal, this album will last you quite a long time in terms of entertainment value. Regarding enlightenment and substantiality, however: this is a Brooklynese Shpongle with lots of falsetto. It’s not ‘lasting’ music, but sure is it a brilliant marketing gimmick. If there’s one way to vault yourself into the mainstream easily, your music has to be a polished turd—bad enough so that you don’t put too much effort into it, but good enough so that people are fooled into thinking you deserve a frigging Rhodes scholarship for making something danceable and mildly esoteric. And, hmm, I wonder who could be on that path?

Body Riddle by Clark
2006, Warp, 11 tracks at 42 min.
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RATING: 5 out of 5

Ah, here's the album that readily cemented Chris Clark as more than just a Warp addendum who could craft some cool beats. This is the album that really proved Clark's worth in the electronic scene. After the somewhat jokey, goodtime-focused Clarence Park—an album that, while great in its own right, was put to trial by the shrill cries of the ever-vigilant “Aphex Clone” crowd—and an additional LP in 2003 (Empty the Bones of You), Clark returned in 2006 with a new moniker and a new repertoire of skills.

Of course, everything on Body Riddle is hinted at on Clarence Park—the memorial piano twinkle of “Pleen 1930s” has become the deadly slow-drawl of “Springtime Epigram”, the miniature techno of “The Chase” has been replaced with the more immediate “Night Knuckles”, and the electro-flute on “Lord of the Dance” has been swapped for the inspiring mega-thump of “Ted”. As much as I love Clarence Park, Body Riddle is simply the Goliath in Chris Clark's beat-backed bible. But instead of rooting for David, you find yourself egging on the more mature, stronger, fuller-bodied Goliath—because man-oh-man, you get the feeling he can take down anyone he wants.

And that's exactly what Clark does on Body Riddle—not only does he blow his previous works out of Jericho and into whatever sand-stifled Arabic nation it's adjacent to, but he also manages to take down a few of his contemporaries. Take for instance “Night Knuckles”, which calls to mind Four Tet's “Spirit Fingers”. Instead of Kieran Hebden's “Just get me a Moog and a mandolin and we can chill all night loooong, man” attitude, however, we find dizzying grimness beneath the Lullatone-on-speed melody. “Herzog” takes a stab at being Boards Of Canada the hard way, skewing the usual formula of children's voice and substantial hip-hop beats for a sound remarkably reminiscent of “Triangles and Rhombuses”. “Roulette Thrift Run”, meanwhile, is a showcase of deep funk and dissected mantras, a sound that seems to recall Wagon Christ.

Hell, Clark even gives Squarepusher's noise-inflected, broken-drum-n-bass schtick a fresh gloss on the transformational “Matthew Unburdened”. Moving from a gravity-defying intro and into a vulnerable, string-fueled mental breakdown, Clark then serves the listener some fuzzy ambience before diving once more into a broken-beat extravaganza just rife with intimidation. Clark manages to tie it up nicely with the seven-and-a-half minute “The Autumnal Crush”, and while it can't beat “Matthew” in terms of pure power, its ghostly marriage of crushing melody and whisper-like micronoise is a more than satisfactory end to the album. If anything, it leaves the listener in a state of awe, maybe even sadness.

But Clark's polite dismantling of his musical siblings is more than just one-upsmanship. Indeed, the melancholia and wavering strength erupting from Body Riddle are indicative of Clark's strength at knitting together the best bits of electronic music—the go-with-the-flow tenets of Four-Tetism, the bravado of J Dilla, the breaks of Squarepusher, the lonely beauty of BoC and the ever-present backbone of Aphex Twin's influence. There's a reason [adult swim] utilizes this album often for its bumps. Just as the late-night block's bumps reveal emotions you might not normally 'see' in an image, Body Riddle will open the world around you and infuse everything with colossal meaning and possibility. Listen to this record in the car, while walking or running, on an airplane—it doesn't matter, as long as you're moving and you've got sights to see. As long as the suggestive influence of Body Riddle is pouring into your ears, and you observe your surroundings carefully, you'll find Clark's imposing masterwork shaping into a narrative.

Allow me to go “Big Picture” here and say that when it comes to music, I feel it should sync up with the world around us and reveal things we might normally ignore—toys on the side of the road, factories long since destitute, and people who seem down on their luck. With the impressive arsenal he utilizes on, Chris Clark proves that he's more of a storyteller than a musician by providing a voice to scenes and images whose timbres may have long gone flat. And what more can we ask for an album that, amazingly, clocks in at just forty-three minutes? If there's any meaning to the title, than it's in the album's length—because, really, how does one person manage to emote so much in so little? Otherwise, there's no riddle at all to be found on Body Riddle——it will solve the puzzles all around you, and give everything a song to sing.

Commercial Album by The Residents
1980, Ralph Records, 40 tracks at 51 min.
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RATING: 4.8 out of 5

NOTE: This is the first review with the all new review format. As you can see, it looks bright, stylish, and more accessible in general. Also note the new rating scale. Ratings are still on a scale of five, but each rating is now accompanied by any number in the decimal place, instead of just 0 or 5. I'll keep this scale for a while to see how it works. Thanks for reading!

If there’s one thing Americans are good at, it’s being pretentious. Sure, those Brits can knock about their Graham Greene references, and the French made smelling and whining about the futility of existence go hand-in-hand, but no one can quite touch America in terms of being super-artsy pricks. Take Ezra Pound. Show me a work more directly ostentatious than The Cantos. Well, you can do it, certainly, but where else can you find, “Harump rump rump, Rihaku, John Adams, fascists rule.”

Logically, then, Americans would be extremely jackassy in their musical creations as well. Frank Zappa. John Zorn. John Cage. Zeena Parkins. Animal Collective. For God’s sake, Laurie Anderson sang a song about her boyfriend’s sweaters over bagpipes. A song that, admittedly, I enjoy; but a song that is nonetheless mind-blowingly skilled in showing off Anderson’s master’s in not-having-a-real-job.

Wedged somewhere in-between Laurie Anderson crooning about Superman and Captain Beefheart wearing a mask of trout, there are The Residents. Famous for their own masks (a troupe of eyeballs, and the occasional skeleton), The Residents first caught (pretentious) music critic’s attention with their 1980’s Commercial Album. Based around the matrimony of the pop song and the commercial jingle, Commercial Album is a set of forty songs, each under a minute and ten seconds. Ranging from twisted serenity (“Japanese Watercolor”) to humorously angry (“Give It to Someone Else”), Commercial Album occupies a space between the haberdashery of manufactured pop and the society that has created these constructs.

Indeed, the idea of comparing the brashness of a commercial ditty to an allegedly ‘emotive’ pop song was exciting to those on the edge of art. The main idea here is that pop songs, if stripped to their core, are no more than a minute of music. Thus, by extension, a song for Rally Cola or Malt-o-Meal is no less artistically valid than a pop song. Yet, honestly, the Commercial Album is hardly something ‘strange’ to the environment in which it was created. Not to say that The Residents owe some great debt to Edward Said (though I guess one could make that case with Eskimo), but the ideological elements that underline the Commercial Album aren’t all that unique. Let’s see, 1980? Don DeLillo would soon be drafting shopping lists to mock suburbia and Carolee Schneemann was unfurling ‘critical scrolls’ from her ‘vajayjay’ (fave buzzword #2 of an old English teacher).

Even lacking a totally original mien does not make Commercial Album a miss. It’s one great piece of music, that much is sure. Even if other, similarly arthouse endeavors were being undertaken in other areas of the arts, The Residents were certainly among the first to do so in music. The music is pretty swell, too. Hear that devilish croon on “Easter Women”? Makes me want to smash some heads. Well, I mean, makes me want to smash my head because I have no idea what it’s about. And “My Second Wife”? Find me a song more perfect for a rubber horseman of the apocalypse to march to.

I swear, that sentence makes sense if you hear the song.

And, as worthy of scholarship as The Residents may be, they were (and still are) hardly the sort of band focused on impressing the literati. This music is meant to do much the same thing that most postmodern works do—celebrate or criticize the sometimes-sacred union we have entered into with consumerism. Judging by the Dadaist, “everything is lost so let’s go crazy” attitude displayed on this supremely ‘silly’ disc, The Residents seem fine with just coasting along in the meaningless world they live in. Commercial Album represents the moment when, departing from their nonchalance, they decided to make some ridiculously fun songs about the demise of, well, everything.

Here With Me by Holly Williams

2009, Mercury Nashville, 11 tracks at 36 min.

NOTE: Just trying out a new image format for reviews. If it's fuggs, I apologize.

The litmus test for country music goes something like this: in scenario one, my dad will say the music is okay, while I will rave it about until kingdom come. In scenario two, I will think the music is simply ‘okay’, while my dad will sing its praises. In scenario 3, my dad will think the CD in question is the end-all-be-all of country achievement, while I will be left saying, “Christ, you like this?”

You see, this litmus is usually flawless. Plug-in Lucinda Williams for scenario one, Carrie Underwood for scenario two, and Rascal Flatts for scenario three. But take the new Holly Williams album, Here With Me, and the formula falls apart. I like it. My dad likes it. And as ‘generational conflict’ (the fave buzzword of an old English teacher who described every fucking story in the textbook as such) dictates, we just should not agree on what constitutes ‘good’ country music.

So what makes Here With Me a pick for both geezers and kidsters? Being the granddaughter of Hank Williams connects Ms. Williams to the cryin’ and fightin’ fiddles of tradition—indeed, a lineage heavily touted by her half-brother Hank Williams III. Yet this album is not in the neotraditional vein for which her brother is infamous, but rather a fine mixture of altcountry, modern country-pop, and even a touch of singer-songwriter tendencies.

I say singer-songwriter because there are moments while singing her own lyrics that Williams’ voice emotes perfectly the message of the text. On “Mama”, a song praising her mother for not being vindictive towards her father, she sings “I’ve seen mothers fill their childrens’s/hearts with hate”, and her delivery seems not only spirited and revelatory but devoid of any sappiness.

Williams, however, is no Iris Dement (see the guilty-sounding “Without Jesus Here With Me”), and she takes a cautious-yet-ultimately-wanting view of relationships in “A Love I Think Will Last”. Don’t mistake Williams for a Twainian-pop-idealist, though. The highlight of the album, “Three Days In Bed”, is a tale of darkened, Franco-flavored quasi-love, and on lines such as “I don’t smoke but I do on occasions like these”, one hears not only the subtle power of Williams’ voice and lyricism but also the melancholia of her guitarmanship (that’s a word, right?). The superb “Let Her Go”, meanwhile, recalls a Lucinda Williams vibe with its roving, girl-with-a-guitar melody. On the other hand, radio-ready tracks such as “He’s Making a Fool Out of You” and “Gone With The Morning Sun” depart from the pleasantly non-mainstream sound present for much of the album for a fuller, more bodied aesthetic.

Here With Me isn’t exactly a healing of the ‘rift’ between modern country and the more drawling gloom of its ancestor, and one wonders how long Williams will be able to maintain the originality of her heartfelt, all-too-human shtick. For now, though, Williams should be content with her successes—and Here With Me, a surprisingly articulate sophomore effort, is certainly one of them.

RATING:

Buy from Amazon Mp3
Listen to "Three Days In Bed"

Far by Regina Spektor

2009, Sire, 13 tracks at 47 min.

Look everybody! An album review! On the day the album is released! How on top of things am I? Quite, I would say, and, also, I’m pretty “far” from being tardy on this review! Oh, man, what a pun! Now, you see how I use puns often, and to poor effect? Well, Ms. Spektor does much the same with her vocal skullduggeries, albeit to a much more efficient degree. Her fifth album, Far, continues the piano-mistress shtick that she’s been riding on since Soviet Kitsch. Yet does this technique still hold charm?

Let’s see: “Laughing With”? As in “Laughing With a Mouth of Blood”, the song by St. Vincent that Spektor obviously copied? Nah, Spektor may be Russian but she’s no thief. You see, the Spektor fans have been complaining in the Last.fm shoutbox because the song doesn’t have enough ‘quirk’. “Oh, man, Regina’s not singing about crates of tangerines or polite ghosts! She sucks now!” Pitchfork, meanwhile, misses the point of the song and sums it up as “lol dumb atheists.” Gee, sorry Regina Spektor has a religion. SORRY, EVERYBODY, STOP LISTENING TO HER; SHE HAS A GOD. Conversely, the song seems to be more of an existential anthem—no one’s laughing at god; we’re laughing with him because all human tragedy—no matter the severity—is minute and insignificant on a more cosmic scale. Were I the sort of person who cries to Regina Spektor, tears may very well have soaked the corn dog I was eating whilst listening.

But who really cares what Spektor is singing about? Her lyrics often have the ambiguous edge needed to feign greater depths, thus satisfying lit-holes like me while still wowing the more simple-minded with her vocal calisthenics. I mean, “Two Birds”? Is this a Flann O’Brien reference? Hahaha, no. This is frigging Regina Spektor. Get over yourselves, kids. Nah, I was really kidding. Regina knows her literature (see “Samson”, “Paris”, “Pound of Flesh” and “2.99 Cent Blues” from previous releases). Otherwise, though, this is one of the more addictive songs on the album. A future single? Possibly maybe; the short bursts of brass are pretty seductive—certainly more-so than Björk’s post-feminist pagan horn orchestra.

The album gets off to a good-enough start—“The Calculation”, “Eet”, and “Blue Lips” establish catchy melodies alongside Spektor’s usual lyrical mix of cynicism and naïveté—but things go downhill following “Laughing With”. “Human of the Year” drags along and can’t be saved by the periodic repetition of “Hello, hello?” “Genius Next Door” and “Wallet”, meanwhile, will fail to captivate the Spektorally-unengaged with less-than-stellar melodies. I’d like to say that the dolphin grunts on “Folding Chair” justify all these missteps—especially considering this is likely the album to propel Spektor farther into the realm of the Apple-Amos-Mann niche—but not even cetacean mimicry can compensate for the lyrically-insightful but melodically-lacking “Genius Next Door”. The lack of a more ‘commercial’ (read: uptempo) melody on “Wallet” is lamentable, as the narrative lyrics concerning a lost wallet and its finder are of Suzanne-Vega-level perception.

Spektor’s vocal play remains the main attraction on Far, and for those concerned with her ‘quirkiness’—it remains intact. Fans will find much to enjoy here, but new listeners will wonder what the hooplah is all about. And, if you do happen to be a first-time Spektorite, then kindly disregard the Pitchfork review. “I like to imagine that somewhere 19-year-old Taylor Swift hears this song and shakes her head, wondering when Regina Spektor is ever going to grow up,” writes Joshua Love of the track “Dance Anthem of the 80s”. Oh, yes, because Swift singing about a prince-princess love story is absolutely mature. Learn to patriarchal hegemony, please.

RATING:

Buy from Amazon Mp3
Listen to Far at NPR

Ray Of Light by Madonna

1998, Maverick, 13 tracks at 66 min.

Mature Madonna? That’s what listeners are led to believe before they pick up this album. “Oh, she’s so spiritual here. She’s really in touch with everything that’s going on around her,” piped the critics upon the album’s release. But I disagree. While Madonna megafans may see this as her ‘adult’ moment, don’t forget that most mega-Madge fans also think the video for “Secret” is as fucking complex as a Cady Noland installation. So, my first bit of advice for those seeking this album: don’t think this is Madonna at some apex of spirituality. This is the same postmodern, teasing, bitchy, pop-queen-dancefloor-electro demoness that’s been in play since “Lucky Star”.

So, now that we’ve got those cards out on the table: should you get this album? It’s cheap, certainly. You can get it used for less than four dollars, and it’s likely to be available at any store you visit. If you like late-90s chill-pop, then don’t hesitate to buy this. But what if you are unsure of Madonna? What if you’ve only just realized that you have a huge crush on Ed Droste/Sam Sparro, and that maybe by listening to the gayest dance music you can find that your love will be reciprocated? What if you think Madonna is a grown-up girl here, and that listening to this album will give you a fresh view of her? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then please read on.

First off, gay dudes won’t find much to like here, provided they’re strictly after cotton-candy dance fluff. Single “Ray of Light” and “Nothing Really Matters” are as homoerotic as it gets. All the other songs are about mothers and daughters and Indians and swimming and hetero-love. So what, then, does the disc have to offer for us heterosexuals? Same shit, really. I can’t really see myself listening to this with a girlfriend or whatever. “Man, Cindy/Jane/O’kala, ‘Substitute for Love’ really makes me think about how close we are and stuff.” But, hey, if you’re into professionally photographed, 40-plus year-old dance-pop nipples, there’s plenty in the CD booklet! Yeahhh. Somebody call Carl.

If you want to discuss actual songs, then there are a few gems here. “Ray of Light” was a single for a reason, and “Little Star” is a surprisingly, sorta-heartfelt ode to Madonna’s daughter. “Skin” and “Nothing Really Matters” are fine, more uptempo songs, a bit out of place on this laid-back album, but welcome nonetheless. Snark aside, “Drowned World/Substitiute for Love” is a decent song, and it opens on the more reserved note that dominates the entire album. Meanwhile, tracks like “Swim” and “Frozen” are decent in their own right, but for Madonna they just sound, well, boring. Not quite seductive, and certainly a little calming, but far from assertive. And “Shanti/Ashtangi”? You’re not Sheila Chandra, Madonna. Go home.

This album also stinks of William Orbit. You see, Madonna worked in heavy collaboration with the Strange Cargo wonder-boy to direct the flow of this album. At least Wikipedia says so. I mean, c’mon, it’s a Madonna album. You know a production staff of at least the size of Lichtenstein brought this project to fruition.

In short: should you get this? Yes, if you want to ‘chill.’ After listening to this album today, I said, “Huh, that was sort of…chill.” And if you can stomach all of the oatmeal-like 66 minutes on Ray Of Light, then you, too, can be invited to the circle of chill people. And what a circle it is—there’s so much Zero 7 and Thievery Corporation floating around that you might go comatose.

RATING:

Buy from Amazon
Listen to "Little Star"

Smiling And Waving by Anja Garbarek

2000, Virgin, 12 tracks at 45 min

Most people (and I'm no exception to this) are introduced to Anja Garbarek by way of Bjork. And it's really a shame, and I feel slightly ashamed, and you should too, you close-minded bastard, because Anja Garbarek is a musician all unto her own, not just some 'similar artist' to be recommended by Last.fm

Garbarek succeeds in two areas on Smiling and Waving, the first being her ability to carve out a niche within the overcrowded female vocalists scene, while the second is her avant garde sensibility that, thankfully, softens on repeated listens. The first time I heard "The Diver" I found it obtuse and lacking any melodic charm; months later I listened again and I was like, "Oh, this is nice." The lyrics are polished with a fine, grim, Scandinavian humor---"He was the world's greatest diver/But he couldn't swim." Oh, Ms. Garbarek! You are a sly fox.

That's the problem a few people will encounter with this album--it is really, really subtle. You know how those Swedes are---minimalism, IKEA meatballs, lingonberries, all that shit that Obama supporters like. I wasn't impressed by "You Know" at first either, but when I heard the cartoony brass on headphones I said to myself, "Oh. I like this cartoony brass now that I'm hearing it on headphones."

There's the trip-hop indulgence that seems a staple for contemporary female vocalists (the ghostly "Stay Tuned"), as well as a more ambient, droning piece (the magnificent "It Seems We Talk"), but the majority of tracks here are all jazzed up. Jazz! Can you feel it? Anja Garbarek can. And she's gonna jazz you up too!

Depending on the edition of the album you have, you may have the advantage of being treated to a few bonus tracks. "Blinding Blocks of Light" is a militant, near-industrial showcase of Garbarek in a de-jazzed state. Der is no jazz in dis dark world. On the other hand, "I Won't Hurt You" sounds like a socially-detached Cardigans---periodic bursts of sunlight and a romping light bass that complement each other creepily well.

Smiling and Waving isn't an essential album for those interested in female vocalists, or even for those who enjoy their music awash with female-electro fury. However, for people who enjoy vocals that command, whimper, whirl, and twist in their starkness--think Cynthia Dall, Frida Hyvonen, maybe even Neko Case---then Smiling and Waving might very well become a personal treasure. Yet the voice is not the sole object of affection here. One must also be open to the twiddling bleeps and stringy minimalism present on Smiling and Waving to truly appreciate the work.

RATING:

Buy from Amazon Mp3
Listen to "It Seems We Talk"

Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear

2009, Warp, 11 tracks at 53 min.

Dumb title of this review aside ('Pack of cubs'? Is that even an actual bear-related term?), this album is supposed to sound like the Beach Boys, right? Because it does. "Two Weeks"? More like "Brian Wilson's Two Weeks", amirite? Apparently some people think this album is boring, because it's too "Grizzly Lite," whatever the fuck that means. I really haven't heard that much Grizzly Bear before, but what I have heard ("Easier," "He Hit me"), I did enjoy. But this? This is fantastic. Indie rock 4eva!

Anyway, we all know this album is supposed to so amazing and all, so I'll just review some superficial things about it.

Album art: Yellow House had that pastoral snuff film going on with its seventies-yellow cover, and it looked just gorgeous. If you were a complete weirdo like me, you looked at that cover and said, "Oh, boy, I'd bet it be nice to live there!" But Veckatimest? Looks like some under grad's color field painting assignment.
2.5/5

Song titles: There are some pretty good titles here. "Two Weeks" is a little ambiguous and sly; it sounds like it could be a Sunny Day Real Estate song. Kinda. And "Foreground"? Impressive use of spatial vocabulary, Christopher Bear and friends. Impressive use.
3/5

Album title: I feel like an ass recommending this to people.
"So, heard the new Grizzly Bear yet?"
"Nah, what's it called?"
"Uh, Veck-uh-tuh-mist, or something."
2/5

Jokes aside, this is a great album. I'm not quite sure if this falls under a distinct category---psych folk, baroque psycho, orchestra retro pop, folk pop--but the whole album is just gorgeous melodically.

The 2009 Holy Trinity thus far: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Middle Cyclone, and Veckatimest. Congrats, Grizzly Chaps---you deserve a Dos Equis. Or should I say a few cans of Hamm's?

RATING:

Buy from Amazon Mp3
Listen to "Foreground"

Strawberry Jam by Animal Collective

2007, Domino, 9 tracks at 43 min.

I think this is an album about love songs. Let’s see, how about centerpiece “Fireworks”, an anthem of low self-esteem being vanquished by de powas of lurve (maybe)? Or “Peacebone”, perhaps, with its cutesy Alien-esque video rife with monsta’ luv. Can I fit any more misspellings of ‘love’ into this one paragraph? I think so, because, man, there is a lot of lúv on this album. It may not even be there, but Panda Bear and Avey Tare have such sexy falsettos that I think to myself, “Wow! These guys are singing to me! About dinosaurs and candles and babies and Rev. Al Green and stuff!” And then I feel so lüved and happy that I pump my fist in the air and yell, “Yeah!!! Animal Collective roolz!”

Well, I’d like to think this album is about me. It’s probably about Noah Lennox’s wife or something. But I don’t care. And neither should you, because not since Vitamin C and Lady Saw collaborated has there been such an explosion of smiles and feel-goodery. Take “Unsolved Mysteries” for instance. When Panda/Avey (still can’t tell the difference) sings, “There he goes/Jack the Rippurrr,” it sounds so amazingly fun that I say to myself, “Jack the Ripper…nice guy, nice guy.”

And “Chores”? It sure isn’t a chore to listen to! Zing! “For Reverend Green”? More like “For Hipster Kids Who Wear Green”! Half-a-zing. And “Winter Wonderland”? I can see the Delibirds gently spinning on their axes as Avey/Panda croons, their fur-feet glacially working with the deftness of the ice-skate’s blade to produce a perfect Figure Eight. “Kazahiro,” whispers the fair-skinned Delibird Asuka as alarms begin to blare in the background. “No,” says the blue-beaked Kazahiro, “You must go the mountains, and flee the Geodude Army.” Asuka turns, a tear in her eye, “Kazahiroooooo!!!!!!!” she cries, her Deli-tail becoming surprisingly damp.

Why are you still reading this review?

Really, you know this album is good. It’s not life-changing, but it sure can put you in a good mood. Rarely has screaming been put to such joyful use on record as it has been on “For Reverend Green”. Beach-Boysish harmonies become tribal calls for personal freedom on “Fireworks.” A mournful piano melody on “Cuckoo Cuckoo” carefully avoids becoming schlock thanks to a storm of electronics towards the track’s end. “#1”, one of the few midtempo tracks, is blurred into a slop of transformed voices and ice cream cake synths that makes for a Kodak memory carousel. And “Derek”? Well, it’s like Toni Basil’s “Mickey”, except more tropical and even gayer.

“I bet the monster was happy when we made him a maze,” sings Panda (?) on “Peacebone.” And I’m just happy these guys threw me a peacebone of their talents on Strawberry Jam.

I think I need to get over these guys, though. Grizzly Bear is the future, after all.

P.S. If you get this album at Amie Street, you’ll have the added treats of “Safer” (a nine-minute mini-epic with lots of screaming, chanting, and growling) and a live (and improved) version of “Cuckoo Cuckoo”.

RATING:

Buy from Amie Street
Listen to "Winter Wonderland"

Selected Ambient Works Vol. II by Aphex Twin

1993, Sire (US)/Warp (Eng), 23 tracks at 142 min. (24 trks on Warp ed.)

From Robert Christgau’s Review:

"Veering between an eerie beauty and an almost nightmarish desolation," intoneth Frank Owen. "Imbuing machine music with spirituality," saith Simon Reynolds. And, most incredibly, "Always a groove going on," quoth J.D. Considine. I mean, what are these dudes talking about? Not that ambient-techno wunderkind Richard James is offensive--when I played all two-and-a-half hours of this at a quiet thermal spring in Puerto Rico, the worst any of the attendant pensioners could say about James's nightmarish desolation was "interesting."

Yeah, I mean, Christgau’s right on this one, at least towards other reviewers’ attitudes. This album can be summed up in the usual ambient music tropes—haunting, desolate, sparse, ethereal, otherworldly, blah, blah, blah. Of course this album’s going to be a little bit unnerving; it’s ambient music, it’s supposed to be innocuous and low-key until one focuses on it and discovers its sinister undercurrents.

Yet there’s something about the scope of this work that elevates it the status of the stereotypical ambient fan’s most beloved construct. Two-and-a-half-hours of music is asking a lot from any listener—especially for a single album—yet the expressiveness of this album somehow compensates for this weighty request. Indeed, James seems to lure the listener in with the black-colored hope of opening track “Cliffs”. Fragile yet surprisingly in-control female voices dot the landscape of this track, and one cannot resist being pulled into this world that Mr. James has created.

Whatever dimension James is peddling, however, is far from stable. Following “Cliffs,” we are greeted by the demonic ping-pong of “Radiator”, which is then followed by another burst of the pastoral in “Rhubarb”—only to be pulled from the light and into the film noir of “Grass.” On “Mold” (or “Mould”, if you want to be all British about it), we hear more voices, yet this time the voices are menacing, riddled with shocks of insanity. “Weathered Stone” brings the listener to a calmer place—imagine a casino haunted by Caspar the Ghost.

One disc two, listeners are greeted by the only properly-titled track, “Blue Calx”. “Parallel Stripes” is essentially a long droning spell, and “Shiny Metal Rods” jerks the listener from any sleep they may be falling into with what is doubtlessly the strongest percussion on the album. “Grey Stripe” plunges listeners into the ocean of this abandoned world, whereas “Z-Twig” is a brief respite with its service-terminal-esque melody. Hopes of complacency, though, are quickly dispelled by the tribalism of “Windowsill” and hopeless drone of “Spots.” “Tassels” and “White Blur 2” are sure to piss off the impatient with a constant laser-like sound and an endless sample of a child laughing, respectively. “Matchsticks” leaves listeners in this odd world, surely without escape, and more confused than they were upon entry.

Some people, though, don’t like this album. “Too jarring and annoying,” they say. “Too repetitive; there’s too much filler,” they whine. “Not enough like Selected Ambient Works 85-92,” they grumble. “You can’t listen to the whole thing in one sitting,” they cry. Well, these people can eff off. You see, I think the title of this album suggests, by nature, that this is a ‘compilation’ of sorts—a guidebook of suggested locales in James’ nightmare world; not a full map nor an agenda for a day trip. SAW2 is meant to be digested piecemeal, or in the background—--ambient music is, after all, about ambience. This is music that not so much demands attention as it does slow, subliminal approval. For that reason it is best suited for sleeping, relaxing, long car rides, or, better yet, long, depressing car rides.

In that regard, SAW2 can justly hold the acclaim it receives—it is music that seduces with its drawn-out passages of fuzz, while simultaneously inviting the listener to its deadly dance. In the ambient techno/IDM/whatever-it’s-called pantheon, I like to think of Music Has the Right to Children as the ‘dream’ of the past, Chris Clark’s Body Riddle as the ‘present-day dream’, and SAW2 not as a dream but as the ‘everlasting nightmare’. For that I think you have to give it James some credit and—Christ, just buy the thing already. It’s like twelve bucks. It sounds great. Need I another 700 words to convince you of this? I think not. Cliffs, rhubarbs, grass, curtains—whatever this world is made of, it sure is gorgeous.

RATING:

Buy from Amazon
Listen to "Shiny Metal Rods"

Some People Have Real Problems by Sia

2008, Hear Music, 14 tracks at 59 min.

Last summer, while going for a drive with a friend, I pulled out Sia’s then-new album, Some People Have Real Problems. “Looks interesting, huh?” I asked. “Well,” said my friend, obtusely, “Looks like some ‘daddy’s little girl’ playing pretend with her father’s money.” And, indeed, how could I refute that viewpoint? “Hey guys, I’m Sia, of Zero 7, and I’m trying to continue the tradition of soul music. By being white, and selling my records on Starbucks’ label.”

As expected from a Starbucks record, Some People Have Real Problems is wholesomely innocuous—at its base it’s pop music, tinged with some soulfulness. Yet the album title lends some evidence to the idea that this is not total brat-pop—says Sia in an interview, pointing to the atrociously-shooped album cover, “But here we have a girl who seems to be getting along just fine---without arms or legs.” You see, I thought the little character on the right merely had a pile of dookie on her head, but apparently she is a quadriplegic, thus contrasting the unhappy, spoiled bourgeois girl on the left, who is saddened by the tiny rainstorm hovering above her MS-Paint-drawn head.

Yet Ms. Furler has nice enough pipes to back up all her acute whiteness—“Day Too Soon” is particularly mournful, and the petite nature of “Academia” is well-crafted down to the minute. “Academia” is such a standout track, actually, that I wish I could bring it to all my historicty-obsessed instructors and say, “See? Sia disapproves of your over seriousness,” yet I get that feeling my argument would be instantly invalidated. “But she’s white. And trying to make soul music.”

And if this feigned soulfulness is the main flaw of the album—asides from the annoying fact that the spectacular “Buttons” is a hidden track on the US edition—then, really, this album is pretty damn good. There’s a full-bodied orchestral feel when need be (“Electric Bird” and “Soon We’ll Be Found”), as well as sweeping, teary bridges (“Lentil”) and defiant, funky ‘sod-off’s’ to whomever may call Furler a lightweight (“The Girl You Lost to Cocaine” and “Playground”).

So, should you buy Some People Have Real Problems, and expect it to be in continual rotation on your CD platter? If you’re into that Feist girl, then, sure, this may become your favorite summer CD. Otherwise, Sia’s third offering is enjoyable but a few inches from perfection. If you do decide to purchase this album, get it on an IRL disc, as you can get access to 4 bonus Mp3s online, including “Buttons.” And then you won’t have any real problems, will you?

RATING:

Buy from Amazon
Listen to "Soon We'll Be Found"

Geogaddi by Boards of Canada

2002, Warp, 23 tracks at 60 min.

The first time I heard "The Smallest Weird Number," I almost cried. Well, not really. But I said to myself, "This seems like something you could cry to, if you like crying to Scottish techno." And therein lies the divider between Geogaddi and Music Has the Right to Children---whereas MHTRTC was an album of bittersweet, "Oh I'm old and I smell and I can't get laid, why can't I be a kid again, existential crisis" tears, Geogaddi is an album of "My camp counselor molested me in the mid-80s and now I'm majoring in dance" tears. Such is the logical progression for any trip-hop-inflected, smoothly-shifting Midi manipulators---Care Bears and Transformers, then doom.

Perhaps it is this adherence to such an existential theme that makes Geogaddi such a cohesive work. MHTRTC is very representative of childhood in the fact that is ambiguous; fragmented in its recollection. Geogaddi is less subtle; it is nearly brash in its presentation. The Arabic tinges on "Alpha and Omega," the blissful drone of "Over the Horizon Radar" and "Corsair, the nautically revolving mysticism of "Dawn Chorus"---all of them, removed of the duo's signature 'chill' beats and instead framed as ambient cameos; musical stagings intended for places and times previously unknown yet now gleefully summoning visitors.

Take for instance the track "Gyroscope." A violent drumbeat is featured in the forefront, and melted into said drums are eroticized samples of a numbers station. It can be disturbing (if you're the type of person who cries at Scottish techno), or it can be the numbah-one hit for your next pagan ritual sacrifice. The point is, the track works---its execution is precise. Converse to this flirt with the industrial is "1969," undeniably poppish fare for Boards, which instead of soaring female vocals is a distorted voice referring to Amos Bishop Rodin. And, again, the execution is flawless---everything is bouncy, colorful, menacingly joyful.

As for those who claim this music calls up memories of teenage humiliation and degradation (with the look of 'Srs Bizness' on their faces), one really can't take this album too seriously. Perhaps there is dark 'magick' at work on this album; perhaps "You Could Feel the Sky" really is a clarion call to get on your Satan boots and go around bedeviling; but overall Geogaddi is dark, fascinating dance music. Yes, it's dance music. It's not Merzbow. It has melodies (beautiful melodies), and candy beats---candy in the sense of "Werthers Originials" but candy nonetheless.

This is likely Boards Of Canada's greatest work (suck it In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country), and should be given a listen by any adventurous pair of ears. Unless you like crying to Scottish techno, in which case you should just go listen to Tiesto or something. But everything on this album is great---the interludes, the main attractions--all of them working to build the elusive, strangely appealing mythology which has made Boards Of Canada so alluring to so many people.

So are you an asshole if you cry at this album? Probably. But at least you'll be an asshole with good taste in music.

RATING: 5/5

Buy from Amazon Mp3
Listen to "Over the Horizon Radar"

My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura

2009, 4AD, 11 tracks at 46 min.

Indie pop is one of those genres that isn't really a genre. Comparing the volatile, hyper-Dada pop of Of Montreal to the restrained, literate Scot-pop of Belle and Sebastian is like comparing Antony Hegarty and a skinny person. But indie pop can be divided into further sub-genres, and Camera Obscura falls into the young, cultured, and awkwardly hip set.

My Maudlin Career is an album that, while I can't appreciate in full, I can tell some people will treasure. The fresh-out-of-college, thrift-store-employee crowd will love this album, because it has all those classic post-collegiate angst elements---lost love, self-doubt, a thick sense of irony and the oddball.

At least, I think it does. I can't find the lyrics anywhere yet, and I can't figure out what Tracyanne Campbell is saying. But I'm positive that's what the album is about. Take the track "Other Towns and Cities." Perfect for a late summer's night, it's moody and airy, and it's probably about wanting to be somewhere else or moving away or lost innocence, etc.

The four last tracks are pretty solid; especially "Forests and Sands." Closing track "Honey in the Sun" is decent thanks to a flourish of trumpets, and it finishes the album strongly; but one wonders whether the album would have benefitted from placing "Other Towns and Cities" there instead.

Standout tracks include the lead single "French Navy," "Swans" (possibly the best track on the album), "Forests and Sands," "Other Towns and Cities," and the firm melancholia of "James." If you're looking for catchy melodies or contemplative musings, then those tracks are probably your best bet, and I would skip the album as a whole. But if you're inclined towards sweet, warm, thick-framed-glasses indie pop, then I wouldn't hesitate to add this to your collection.

RATING: 4/5

Buy from Amie Street
Listen to "Forests and Sands"