{didn't quite make the list}
Y∆CHT: See Mystery Lights review
Despite the mass of verbiage and iconography, it's hardly clear what they're getting at with all the quasi-occult trappings, apart from creating some marginally intriguing art, but thankfully understanding it is completely unnecessary for enjoying the music. The only album cuts with an overt lyrical connection to this pseudo-spiritual business are the first two numbers (both built around repeated nursery rhyme-like incantations about the afterlife) and "Don't Fight the Darkness," which turns the Maharishi's mantra into a loopy bit of sparse, Timbaland-ish IDM. Despite some reasonably inventive beat programming, they're probably the least interesting things here, sounding dry and labored in comparison to the freewheeling fun of obvious party jams like the cheeky "I'm in a Love with a Ripper," with its T-Pain-jacking Auto-Tune hook, and the very-DFA "Summer Song," an affectionate if derivative disco-punk homage built on a solid foundation of cowbells, handclaps, and an all-mighty bassline. Though the album as a whole makes for an enjoyably unpredictable hodgepodge of summery, celebratory, and frequently quirky sounds, individual numbers often suffer from a sort of ambivalence of form, as though they couldn't decide whether they wanted to be pop songs or dance tracks -- it's telling that the two most effective moments both feature a clear and engaging structure, albeit very different approaches. The biggest earworm is "Psychic City," a laid-back groover that borrows the curious verse lyrics (and linear song form) of a 1987 song-poem by K Records' Rich Jensen, adding the self-evident refrain "Ay-Ya-Ya-Ya!"
But See Mystery Lights' biggest leap, and most surprising success, is the two-parter "It's Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want," which abandons pop linearity altogether in favor of an extended, expansive beat workout, kicking off with unprecedented guitar-driven punk-funk intensity, then delving into a hypnotic, Afro-tinged groove powered by frenetic drumming and swirling, chanted vocals. It's by far the album's longest cut and also the clearest indication of why DFA is an appropriate home for YACHT -- to the extent that it could almost be written off as a mere LCD Soundsystem/Juan Maclean ripoff (which, perhaps, if you want to be a real killjoy, makes it in turn an Arthur Russell/Brian Eno ripoff...) if it weren't so compelling and enjoyable in its own right. YACHT focus most of their (musical) energies on making goofy, offbeat pop in the frivolously fun vein of good-vibes heroes Tom Tom Club, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that -- it's their best quality, and that certainly remains true on See Mystery Lights -- but this track in particular demonstrates that, when they so choose, they can be equally adept at channeling the fearlessly adventuresome spirit of Talking Heads, and there's definitely nothing wrong with that either.
The London/Berlin-based duo Omo have a good deal in common with their willfully weird Lo Recordings labelmates the Chap, which comes as little surprise considering that one-half of the duo, Berit Immig, also serves as a vocalist and keyboardist in that band (and, in fact, both members of Omo previously played with Chap main man Johannes Von Weizsäcker in the group Karamazov). The two outfits share a deliciously warped sensibility, characterized by a wry, steely-eyed humorousness that seems at once decidedly English and also rather incongruous and alien, as though something were being lost (or deliberately mangled) in translation. Whereas the Chap typically deliver a fairly muscular, mutant electro-rock sound, Omo's musical approach on this debut LP is calmer and gentler but perhaps even quirkier, combining cheap-sounding synths and beatboxes with languidly plucked guitars and an array of electronic burbles, whistles, wordless vocalizing, and other odd noises to craft sparse but amiable compositions recalling the retro-minded stylings of groups like Plone and Stereolab as well as the strangely lucid sonic abstractions of the Books. As curious and endearing as Omo's music might be, however, its primary function is clearly to serve as a backdrop for the duo's vocal and lyrical shenanigans. Typically delivered in spoken or half-sung phrasing (bearing out occasionally cited comparisons to Laurie Anderson) and often subjected to electronic vocal manipulations whose effect is, on the whole, more whimsical than off-putting, The White Album's lyrics focus in on the minutia of various facets of everyday life: the hours of the clock ("2 PM"), a tennis game ("Advantage"), some fish in a tin ("Fish in the Tin"), and, of course, teatime ("Tea Break"), along with occasional forays into biology ("Her Body," a found-text description of a bird laying an egg) and fantasy ("König," sung by a theramin-voiced queen with a crown of "real stars"). There's an occasional whiff of overarching commentary on the culture of consumerist consumption -- in the general preoccupation with material objects and in more specific instances like the music industry vignette "Live Show," the bland ad-copy language of "ROV," and especially standout track "Oversized," which features some folderol about eating tarts (over a perky, chintzy bossa-nova beat) followed by the comically unsettling refrain "Will you be surprised when I'm oversized?" By and large, though, Omo offer arch absurdism of an elemental and purely conceptual stripe, rendering any inklings of interpretation more or less gleefully futile.
Highly touted dubstep scenemaker (DJ, producer, label head, ostensible great white hope) Caspa opens his debut album, Everybody's Talking, Nobody's Listening!, with, ironically enough, some talking: the legendary U.K. reggae DJ David Rodigan asserting that "it's all about the music" and sketching an implied sonic and cultural lineage leading directly back to "King Tubby's echo chamber in western Kingston." It's an odd choice for a keynote, and a rather dubious connection, because the music that follows lands pretty squarely on the least roots-oriented end of the dubstep continuum. Despite a vague Jamaican flavor imparted by guest MCs on a few cuts (most notably Roni Size compatriot MC Dynamite, always a likable presence, though he's more of a grime/hip-hop hypeman than a true ragga toaster) and the genre's de facto half-time skank undergirding about two-thirds of the set, there's relatively little reggae influence discernible here, and almost none of the organic, reverberant, dubby haze favored by producers like Burial. Instead, Caspa's productions are cold and mechanical, often strident and occasionally somewhat sterile-feeling, but nonetheless brutally effective dance music, albeit dance music of a curiously sluggish strain. There may be hints of heat and humanity in these grooves, and moments of woozy intoxication, but they derive strictly from the interplay of rhythms themselves, while the textures remain resolutely forbidding and industrial. Caspa's sound is presented at its most potent, elemental form in the instrumental cuts: the spare, ominous "Low Blow," with its trademark midrange wobbles and pummeling bass; the strobed, colorless zapping of "Marmite." The bleepy "I Beat My Robot" and "The Terminator" hit just as hard while offering just slightly more musical range, which could almost be taken for playfulness. Elsewhere, the vocal cuts are decent if fairly undistinguished musically (though "The Takeover" does amusingly feature its own screwed-and-chopped remix outro), while a handful of stylistic experiments reaching beyond Caspa's comfort zone (slick R&B on "Lon-Don City," downtempo acid jazz on "Victoria's Secret") are passable in themselves but feel out of place. He leaves listeners with a final pair of curiosities: the jittery, obnoxious Streets-like pop-grime-house oddity "Disco Jaws" and an evidently nostalgic tribal-ambient excursion titled "Back to '93," which is the album's longest and probably most incongruous cut. Taken together with the aggrandizing intro track, it seems there is some attempt being made here at a statement about U.K. urban dance culture/history, and, presumably, Caspa's place within it. The album itself is hardly strong enough of a musical statement to make much of that premise (notwithstanding the foolhardiness of historicizing yourself on your own debut album), but it's certainly got a lot of energy.
Is Blood from a Stone Hanne Hukkelberg's difficult third album? Actually, on the surface it may be her most direct work so far, slotting more neatly and readily into a recognizable genre type -- call it dark, shoegazey, post-punk-derived art rock -- than either of her previous albums, and making prominent and comparatively conventional use of electric guitars, without abandoning her distinctive found-object approach to orchestration. Hukkelberg's music has always been difficult, requiring repeated and attentive listening for the nuances of its elliptical melodies and intimate sound-worlds to seep through. She's always been an artist who works in shades of gray. But if Little Things was silvery: blithe, wispy, evanescent; Rykestraße 68 more of a wizened, smoky charcoal, mottled and murky; Blood is closer to a gunmetal smear: drab, dense, and frequently oppressive. Drawing explicit inspiration here from the likes of Sonic Youth, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and PJ Harvey, Hukkelberg seems less interested in those artists' visceral urgency than their sonic grittiness. Blood gestures toward post-punk's primal edginess, particularly in its brutalist percussion tactics (freezers and stoves, clogs and rocks, no traditional drum kits), but it fails to approach the traction and immediacy of, for instance, the previous album's gripping, revelatory Pixies cover. Part of the trouble is that her remarkable voice is put to notably less expressive use this time around. More to the point, though: most of the songs just aren't that compelling. Things start out strong, with the lush, gauzy "Midnight Sun Dream," the swaggering title track, and the driving "Bandy Riddles," which boasts the album's most sprightly melody. From there on it's heavy going, as the songs seem to devolve into a dreary, largely undistinguished mass, respectable and even potent on a tonal and textural level, with some undeniable moments of beauty and strangeness, but weirdly laborious to actually listen to. No one should have expected getting Blood from a Stone to be easy, but it's a shame it had to be this much of a chore.
If the most striking feature of Disco Romance, Sally Shapiro's utterly charming debut album, was its uncannily meticulous evocation of early-'80s Italo disco in all its fragile, intimate glory, the most notable thing about this follow-up set may be how fully and faithfully it replicates its predecessor. Save for an occasionally perceptible updating and subtle toughening of their sound, and a marginally poppier writing approach (thanks largely to the increased involvement of Nixon/Cloetta Paris songsmith Roger Gunnarsson), Johan Agebjörn and his still-secretive chanteuse have hardly altered their working template, so album number two feels mostly like a déjà vu whirlwind of glistening synths and icily insistent beats, laden with sweetly cooed romantic disclosures and hushed spoken asides. It's a rather less uncanny feat the second time around, certainly, and My Guilty Pleasure can't help but feel like something of a letdown after the starry-eyed singularity and surprise of Shapiro's initial appearance, but more of the same is, in this case, far from a horrible thing. To some extent, it's hard to say what else could have been expected -- the two discs' worth of largely reverent remixes that followed Disco Romance were surprisingly scant on potential new directions (that said, the one remixer who crops up again here, Tensnake, does provide a loose, poppy highlight in "Moonlight Dance," even if it's less distinctive than his dubby, percussive mix of "I'll Be By Your Side"). Excepting perhaps wholesale retreads like "Looking at the Stars" and "My Fantasy" (dead ringers for the first album standouts "Hold Me So Tight" and "I Know"), the sameness of the sound isn't necessarily such a problem in itself; more disappointing is that nothing here follows up on the charismatic songwriting promise of the stellar inter-album singles "He Keeps Me Alive" and "Jackie Jackie" (which appeared on the North American release of Disco Romance and the European edition of this album) -- even with Gunnarsson aboard, nothing here approaches the personable nature of those songs or of his work for Cloetta Paris (whose overlooked 2008 debut is a far more worthy next step for Shapiro admirers). The closest are probably "Love in July" (featuring an almost imperceptible vocal cameo from Paris), whose electro-tinged warmth does indeed inject a bit of summer into Shapiro's decidedly wintry vibe, and "Save Your Love," a simple but touching blast of quasi-Hi-NRG dance. The lushly arranged album closer, (and first single), "Miracle" is a nicely effective piece of overwrought emotionalism, complete with fake thunderstorm. A little variety goes a long way -- here's hoping the next album will continue to explore further afield. In the meantime, this may be a holding pattern, but it's one worth holding on to. Diminishing results are, after all, still results.
By the time of his third album -- fourth if you count the disparate double-set Clocks/Pretender as two; fifth if you include the half-re-recorded compilation Introducing...The Best Of (whose several new tunes are very much in keeping with his work here) -- Montt Mardié, still only 25, had long since left behind the endearing adolescent idiosyncrasy of his debut for a distinctly sophisticated brand of classically inflected indie pop. That's not to suggest that he's abandoned his deep-seated sentimental streak (a sensibility which feels at once youthfully idealistic and somewhat improbably nostalgic and wistful) or his penchant for giddy exuberance. On the contrary, Skaizerkite is packed full of peppy, danceable, and dramatically heartfelt soul-pop, from trumpet-blaring opener "Welcome to Stalingrad" to the Motown-ish groover "Bang, Bang," the tense New Romantic fashionista strut "Click, Click," the string-laden stomper "I Love You Annie," and the majestically melancholy lead single "Dancing Shoes," a perfectly pitched ode to dancing through your tears. Mardié's familiar lyrical concerns, including (most chiefly) lovesickness and (as a glance at the track list suggests) European travel, are all here, and the album is practically dripping with schmaltzy romanticism, inflated both by his impassioned falsetto delivery and by lavish semi-orchestral arrangements that hearken in equal measure to the '40s, the '60s, the '80s, and the more recent likes of Camera Obscura. It's accomplished stuff, to be sure -- fans of Mardié's past work or the chamber pop genre in general are likely to be pleased -- but it can feel fairly overwrought and overwhelming when taken as a whole, so the handful of gentler, more stripped-down numbers (including the tender portrait-ballad "Elisabeth by the Piano" and geek-love farewell "Dungeons and Dragons") come as a welcome change of pace, even if the latter's combination of nerdy references and heart-on-sleeve emotionalism verge on parody. It may not have quite as many obvious stand-out songs as his past work, but Skaizerkite still stands as a consolidation of Mardié's many strengths, and the most self-assured and unified statement thus far from one of Sweden's finest young popsmiths.
An admirable attempt to shake up hipster dance music formulas that doesn't quite come off, Thunderheist's self-titled debut combines the decent if derivative talents of Isis -- a real-deal MC who mostly limits herself here to dumbed-down good-times party rhymes -- and Grahm Zilla, whose synth-laced productions take in Moroder-esque disco, old-school electro, stuttering crunk and B-more club, and brittle tech-funk. It's a promising merger, but the results are frustratingly uneven. While the blank-voiced Isis occasionally makes for an intriguing presence on the mic, as on the minimal, electro-flavored "Slow Roll" and "Cruise Low," too many of her ostensible hooks come off as tired and oddly dispassionate rehashes of the frank sex rap perfected by the likes Peaches and Spank Rock, not to mention Missy and Lil' Kim. That's particularly true of the duo's early singles ("Jerk It," "Bubblegum") and several of the other tracks packed towards the front of the album, where Zilla's beats are too plodding and one-note to provide much spark, either. Things get somewhat more colorful, or at least varied, in the album's latter half, with "The Party After"'s curiously murky booty-groove and "Space Cowboy"'s gleaming disco/R&B, which demonstrates -- along with the surprisingly soulful early standout "Nothing 2 Step 2" -- that Isis is far more engaging as a singer than as an MC. A few notably weak tracks notwithstanding, most of this material would be pretty enjoyable, or at least reasonably effective, in a club context -- taken as an album, though, it's an unfortunately tepid, shruggable listen with a small handful of highlights.
"What could be more devilish than a decently atmospheric but insipidly monotonous and ultimately fairly tepid techno record? How about that same record again...twice! That's not exactly what Bernard Fevre is offering here on this companion release to his 2006 "comeback" album, 28 After, but it's distressingly not far off."
Bernard Fevre may have been largely inactive in the quarter-century between the little-heard initial release of his 1978 Black Devil opus Disco Club and its 2004 re-release (and attendant critical plaudits), but he's certainly been making up for lost time since then. In the ensuing years, he's toured, cut a handful of remixes, issued a follow-up LP of uncertain provenance (28 After), a remixed version of same (In Dub), and another similarly styled album (Eight Oh Eight) of evidently new material, which was presented as the third and final item in the Black Devil oeuvre. Honoring that notion (at least for the time being) while still keeping the ball rolling, Fevre has now turned to his pre-1978 output -- several albums of electronic library music (i.e., generic-use soundtrack cues) -- for source material. Neither a wholly new outing nor a straight reissue, this release is a curious amalgam: it contains about half of the tracks from 1975's The Strange World of Bernard Fevre -- two of which had surfaced more recently on the crate-trawling library music compilations Further Nuggets and Space Oddities -- all of them newly spruced up with richer, fuller production and extended a good minute or more past their original one- to two-minute snippet length. The remaining half of the tracks are previously unreleased, though it's hard to know for sure whether they're wholly new or just salvaged from '70s scraps. It's certainly an unorthodox approach to constructing an album, but it's a sensible one for this material, which benefits from the expanded focus. The results are enjoyably old-fangled but not overbearingly so, making for an engaging, immersive experience and arguably a more rewarding one than the latter-day Black Devil efforts. The sound palette is familiar -- nothing but deliciously musty analog synths -- but the emphasis is on mood-alteration rather than dancefloor incitement, spanning an emotional range from seedy to spacy to spooky and, of course, campy. Strangely delightful.
also reviewed for AMG:
Baby Teeth, Fanfarlo, Fischerspooner, Nite Jewel, Throw Me The Statue, John Vanderslice, Susumu Yokota
also previewed/reviewed for CP:
The Field, Issa, Junior Boys, Lady Sovereign, Micachu, NOMO, Paramore, Sian Alice Group, Telekinesis, Keith Urban
{reissued '09}
The Boy Least Likely To were one of the most delightful indie pop outfits of the 2000s, but hardly one of the most prolific, so it's a great boon to fans of their ramshackle twee to have the loose ends of their output to date compiled here -- especially so since most of it is first-rate stuff, entirely in keeping with the style and quality of their albums. As its title suggests, this disc (which was initially bundled with pre-ordered copies of their sophomore album, The Law of the Playground, and later made available at independent record shops) collects the B-sides of the singles from their debut, The Best Party Ever, with one perhaps wise omission: the highly improbable Armand Van Helden remix of "Monsters" (it's more listenable than you might expect, but it would certainly disrupt the flow here). There's also "Faith," a rendition of the George Michael chestnut that first appeared on a Q magazine freebie disc of '80s covers -- it might sound a bit funny on paper but it works marvelously, a sweet and relatively straight reworking (albeit swapping the original's Bo Diddley groove for a simple plodding two-step), at least until the recorders, glockenspiel, and toy percussion kick in for an instrumental bridge. The other cover here, of the Field Mice's somewhat dour acoustic ballad "Between Hello and Goodbye" (itself a B-side to begin with) is more reverent and less revelatory, though nice enough. The originals, however, are all prime Boy, deploying the full arsenal of banjos, xylos, synthesizers, and assorted kiddie instrumentation; spanning the spectrum from bouncy ("Oddballs") to tender ("Cuddle Me"); and boasting melodies that in some cases rank among their finest work -- particularly the jubilant "Rock Upon a Porch with You" and wistful "When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Boy Again," both of which seek to shortcut the gap between childhood and old age, though working from opposite ends of the equation. Simply put, anybody who has treasured the Boy Least Likely To's superb albums will find there's that much more to love on this brief but satisfying collection.
A virtually unknown Afro-funk rarity, deservedly rescued from obscurity by the good people of Daptone Records, Na Teef Know de Road of Teef is the work of Fela Kuti sideman Nicholas Addo Nettey, featuring several of his Africa 70 bandmates and recorded at the same Lagos studio (run by Cream's Ginger Baker) where Kuti cut many of his prime '70s sides. It's no great surprise, then, that Kuti's output of this era is the obvious touchstone here, and Fela fans will find this material immediately familiar, right down to the format of the album: four lengthy, intricately rhythmic, jam-heavy grooves, alternating between gritty call-and-response vocals and extended instrumental passages. That said, these recordings feel particularly raw and stripped-down, sacrificing some of Fela's horn-heavy punch (even though there are certainly horns here, along with plenty of percussion) for a slinkier, burbling vibe, dominated throughout by a reedy organ that recalls the chicken-shack jazz-funk of Jimmy Smith and the Meters. Soulfully grooving, if sometimes more hypnotic than danceable, and handsomely presented with the eye-popping original sleeve art intact, Na Teef Know de Road of Teef makes a welcome addition both to the Daptone catalog and to the shelf of any discerning Afro-beat collector.
{release date confusion: '08 France, '09 UK, '10 US}
The Dø -- the Parisian duo of Dan Levy and Olivia B. Merilahtin, whose moniker (pronounced like "dough") derives from both member's initials, but also refers to the first (and last) note of the solfege scale, as well as the Norwegian and Danish words for "die" -- stake out their unconventional indie folk-hip-pop territory with A Mouthful. It's all over the map, both musically and emotionally, and can be a lot to take in ("A Handful" might have been more appropriate), but they manage to strike a quirky yet affecting through-line that mediates between their frisky playfulness, fiery brashness, and tenderly sentimental sincerity, and helps to integrate the album's stylistic hodge-podge so that its eclecticism feels improbably natural rather than forced or gimmicky (or simply schizophrenic.) To be sure, the album's success rests largely on the duo's high-caliber musicianship -- in particular, multi-instrumentalist Levy's dextrous, sophisticated arrangements (which reflect, among other things, both his jazz influences and the pair's past collaborations on a handful of film soundtracks), and Merilahtin's distinctive, versatile singing voice -- which allows them to tackle an idiosyncratic assortment of genres with uncanny ease and coherence.
For the bulk of its running time -- roughly two-thirds of the tracks, give or take -- A Mouthful doesn't stray terribly far from relatively familiar, primarily guitar-centric folk/pop/rock fare, with a particular focus on breezy balladry (including the autumnal "Song for Lovers" and the sublime, elegantly bluesy "At Last") and a few tougher-edged roots-pop nuggets ("On My Shoulders," "The Bridge Is Broken.") Often, especially on the more aggressive cuts toward the album's end, this material recalls the artier side of '90s alternative and indie rock -- a comparison brought home by Merilahtin's passing vocal resemblance to prettily gritty singers like PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, and Nina Persson (specifically her work with A Camp). Even on these comparatively pedestrian offerings, the Dø offer far more compositional and instrumental nuance than your typical songwriterly outfit. Elsewhere, they hop through genres with gleeful abandon, calling to mind the infectious precocity of early Nellie McKay, the capriciousness of Beck, and perhaps even Björk's limitless ingenuity. Not that anything here feels remotely like a derivative genre exercise. "Stay (Just a Little Bit More)" is a cute bit of retro-pop whimsy polka-dotted with ukulele, whistling, strings, and carnivalesque organ; "Queen Dot Kong" is a shockingly credible but utterly demented stab at hip-hop with a swaggering horn section, all manner of cartoonish musical left turns, and its own expansively grooving instrumental-fusion coda. And the album's hidden gem is "Unissassi Laulelet," an all-too-brief curiosity that blends bewitchingly harmonized a cappella vocals (sung in Finnish) with polyrhythmic, quasi-ethnic "tribal" percussion to truly enchanting effect. Then there's the downright off-the-wall opener, "Playground Hustle," a sort of nursery rhyme-war chant by an army of disgruntled, gender-norm-disrupting youngsters, set to a spasmodically funky found-sound beat, which sounds like the Go! Team skirmishing with Le Tigre in a schoolyard scrap-heap with Matmos (circa The Civil War) providing the arsenal. Or something. Anyway, it doesn't really sound like anything else out there, or for that matter like anything else on this album -- which makes it a pretty appropriate calling card. The Dø's debut may be a mouthful, but it's deliciously sweet, tangy, and zestful, and definitely well worth biting into.
{#7 - songs list} The Sound of Arrows: Danger! and M.A.G.I.C. review
If the Sound of Arrows' debut single "Danger!" described the world as a dark and scary place (not that it necessarily sounded that way), this follow-up presents entirely the opposite outlook -- instead of the exhortations of a neurotic parent, it's an unbridled expression of lightness and childlike wonder: "The W.O.R.L.D. is full of M.A.G.I.C." That utterly exuberant chorus (with definite shades of Justice's "D.A.N.C.E.") is even chanted by a bunch of kids -- conveniently or confusingly, "W" is pronounced in Swedish like "V," which may make them seem like a bunch of kid vampires. Rarely has a song's message been so perfectly suited to its sound; a giddy, gushy confection of synths, strings, twinkles, and beats that launches this Swedish duo right into the forefront of prime 2000s regressionist-pop, alongside the Go! Team and Architecture in Helsinki. A trio of glitchified electronic reworkings -- Let's Get Invisible's jumpy, '80s-happy take (subtitled "Reading Is Fundamental"), a spastic synth pop slice-up by Spain's Cof Cof, and a muted breakbeat infusion from Alaska's Curtis Vodka -- do interesting but inessential things, diluting the song's primal innocence somewhat without entirely obscuring its joyful essence, nor making it necessarily any better or worse for the dancefloor, whereas Japan's Ice Cream Shout manage to re-envision the song entirely (this time with harp, glockenspiel, a plodding tuba, and a battery of marching-band percussion) for a fittingly tender and warmhearted new reading. The mellow, meandering "Smalltown Lullaby," a somewhat Christmas-y quasi-instrumental which comes complete with storybook narration, closes out this entirely delightful EP.
31 March 2010
AMG review round-up, volume XVIII: the rest of 2009
27 October 2008
AMG review round-up, volume VIII
this time around - covering my review output from september, mostly, along with a few stragglers - we've got a bit from column "A" and a bit from column "B". first up, five assorted and generally quite enjoyable records of electronic dance hoo-hah (from abstractest to poppiest and roughly in order of goodness.) then, an eclectic quartet of singer-songwriter types, only three of them scandinavian. and for dessert, one of the most perplexing albums i've encountered in a while, the self-titled debut of Dominique Leone, which is perhaps somewhere in between the previous categories; perhaps somewhere else entirely. i think i finally figured out what is going on with it, but that took rather a while, making it one of my proudest recent record-reviewing accomplishments. before we get to that, though, another one that, as previously discussed, took me a minute to pin down...
Pink Skull main man Julian Grefe has spoken in interviews about wanting to make a record in the vein of the Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole, citing its dynamic diversity and cohesive album-length arc as elements lacking in most contemporary dance music. It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when listening to the Philadelphia band/DJ collective's sprawling, perplexing debut album -- for one thing, it's gotten distressingly difficult to think of the Chems as radical and experimental these days -- but that 1997 landmark is an entirely apt reference point. Zeppelin 3 certainly doesn't sound much like the vast majority of electronic music produced this decade, with a rough-edged, acid-washed sensibility that evinces little of electro-house's garish, '80s-refracting gleam or minimal's streamlined polish. And it doesn't sound anything like Led Zeppelin's III (Grefe's all-time favorite album) either, although like the Chems before them, Pink Skull don't shy away from manifesting their love of rock music and stadium-sized excess -- Grefe's a veteran of several Philly punk bands, and there are plenty of guitars here although they're employed not so much for righteous riffage as for steady, Kraut-like slow burns ("Zing Zong," "El Topo") and ambient smears ("Ssilt.") There's also a bit of deviant hip-hop -- an enjoyable, "Apache"-cribbing remix of Plastic Little's "Crambodia," featuring Amanda Blank, Spank Rock, and, improbably, Ghostface Killah -- and a smidgen of indie folk, in the oddly truncated Mirah guest-spot "Take Me Out Riding," which mostly feels like a missed opportunity (particularly in perhaps unfair comparison with the Chemical Brothers' brilliant work with Beth Orton.) Otherwise, most of the album consists of highly abstract, restively mutating, groove-based tracks that land somewhere in between breakbeat and acid house, overlaid with squelching psychedelic synths, percussion breakdowns, snatches of saxophone, and tortured, unrecognizable vocal fragments, and embellished with a dizzying array of effects. In other words, it's not far off from the bulk of Dig Your Own Hole, although this album lacks the equivalent of a "Block Rockin' Beats" or a "Setting Sun." There are few apparent bankable hooks, although the abrasive, insistent fuzz bass lick of the break-happy "Gonzo's Cointreau" (the album's most straightforward stab at big beat revivalism -- there's even a siren!), comes close. Partly for that reason, but also because it's not quite as eclectic or as cohesive as Grefe and co. perhaps hoped, Zeppelin 3 can be somewhat daunting and draining to listen through in its entirety. But taken in smaller doses (the ten-minute kitchen-sink workout "Bubblelog Aftermath," for instance), it can be quite effective, and it's definitely a worthwhile and promising step in the ongoing exploration and integration of dance music's interconnected past and future.
Where has Damian Harris been for the last eight years, you're unlikely to ask? It turns out the Big Beat architect/Norman Cook chum/Skint label boss is alive and well and spent at least a chunk of the time since his late-to-the-party debut LP living in Paris, partying it up with the likes of the Ed Banger and Kitsuné rosters -- labels whose output arguably represents the closest trendy dance music has come to the bombastic, rock/hip-hop/electro-fusing spirit of big beat since the genre fell into disfavor around the turn of the millennium. In fact, to judge by General Disarray's extensive liner thank yous, he's been making friends with virtually everyone who's anyone in the 21st century dance world, but those French connections in particular led to a role executive producing Justice's massive 2007 single "D.A.N.C.E.," and in turn to that group's Xavier de Rosnay's contributions to the Midfield General comeback single, "Disco Sirens." For a song celebrating (and prominently featuring) big beat's most obnoxious secondary trait, it's surprisingly delightful, thanks in part to de Rosnay's funky-struttin' bass work, which nods just slightly to Daft Punk's "Around the World," as well as cheeky rap-styled vocals by Vila of Modular's Bumblebeez 81. That track (it was also mixed by Soulwax, giving it quite an impressive blog-house pedigree) makes an auspicious calling card for this highly unanticipated return, and the guest-heavy General Disarray doesn't disappoint, although it can't help but live up to its title...
Joakim Dyrdhal's fanciful electro-disco productions bear some commonalities with...Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, arguably the Scandinavian electronica scene's de facto figurehead, with whom he shares a label (the increasingly buzzed-about Smalltown Supersound), a strong focus on melody and musicality, and a knack for compositions that feel simultaneously playful and majestic. Though they definitely evince a certain airiness, laced with starry-eyed synths and the occasional woozy swell, his tracks stop short of Lindstrøm's furthest-out, spacy excesses, rarely stretching beyond the six-minute range and maintaining a more or less consistent foundation of sturdy, midtempo disco beats (although he's not afraid to break it down and built it back up mid-song.) Those grooves help ensure a base level of dancefloor functionality without hampering the sense of restless creativity which is perhaps Staying In's most notable quality, though it also turns out to be something of an Achilles' heel. Somewhat paradoxically, the internal variety and subtle complexity of many of these pieces, which seem to unfurl a dizzying array of melodic and textural ideas over their gradually fluctuating beats, can leave them feeling somewhat formless and even faceless.
For all the contributions the French have made to electronic dance music in the past ten years, from Daft Punk's era-defining filter-house to the more recent bangers of Justice et al., it's striking how little of it has been overtly, recognizably French in attitude or musical aesthetic. Parisian duo Nôze go a fair distance toward amending that discrepancy, displaying a (stereo)typically Gallic ability to maintain an air of sophistication and vague superciliousness while indulging an utterly bizarre and often vulgar sense of humor, à la the paradigmatically Frenchy Serge Gainsbourg. Songs on the Rocks, their third full-length and highest-profile release to date, appears on the German imprint Get Physical, which is hardly inappropriate, given a rhythmic drive that's closer to that label's teutonic tech-house than French Touch neu-disco... Nevertheless, it's easily their Frenchiest outing to date, featuring prominent vocals, either in French or heavily-accented English, on every track save one, and making explicit their connection to the long-running chanson tradition, the classic pop likes of Gainsbourg, and more recent inheritors like Arthur H. Essentially, they've made good on the promise of "songs" -- as suggested by the album title and foreshadowed by the popular singles "Kitchen" and "Remember Love" -- while mostly jettisoning the rangier experiments of their earlier releases, thereby making this also their most accessible album yet. It's still a far cry from conventional though, especially when Nicolas Sfintescu unleashes the full power of his distinctively, er, froggy voice, an absurd and sometimes frightening growl that can range from comical to unbearable, depending on your tolerance for unhinged Tom Waits-isms and vichyssoise-thick shtick. On the album's pair of demented quasi-epics -- "Childhood Blues" and the "cinematic" "Slum Girl" -- that voice is just obnoxiously overbearing, dripping with (respectively) caricatured anguish and spy movie sleaze, and likely a deal-breaker for many listeners, but it's a good deal easier to take in clipped, chipper bursts, and in conjunction with other voices, on twitchy, light-on-their-feet groovers like "L'Inconnu du Placard" and the aptly named "You Have to Dance." And then there's "Remember Love," the undeniable standout here, built around a simple but maddeningly effective Chicago house piano figure and an effortlessly funky skip-step groove, with lyrics that touch on barroom infidelity, talking zebras, and the universality of love. That track's simplicity and classicism might have led fans to expect even more of a departure from Nôze on this album, but while it does trend in a more broadly palatable direction, Songs on the Rocks is more of a progression than a wholesale change from their typical oddball antics. Still, listeners drawn in by "Remember Love" (which would be worth the price of admission on its own) may well find the rest of the album nearly as enjoyable, in its own quirky way. Particularly if they have a taste for Époisses de Bourgogne.
The Rex the Dog Show is an unusual combination of debut album and career retrospective, collecting five tracks from Rex the Dog's much-loved 12" releases and two remixes for other artists, along with six new productions. The approach is all killer, no filler -- the 12" sides have been smartly edited down, in some cases to nearly half of their length, to yield a concise, pop-friendly 45 minutes. As for the new tracks, not all that much has changed in Rex's basic production template -- he's still almost monomaniacally fixated on vintage '70s synthesizers and thumping electro-house percussion -- except that all but one of the six feature vocals of some sort (as opposed to only one of the five older tracks), in keeping with the poppier direction signposted by the short track lengths. Actually, as good as the vocals are, they tend to lessen the immediacy of these tracks, deflecting attention away from the rapturous, constantly mutating, elemental synth hooks which are Rex's greatest strength. One could argue that nothing measures up to the delirious heights of the previously released inclusions, but it doesn't really need to: none of the older pieces have lost an ounce of their charm, and the newer material helps to enhance their effectiveness by fleshing out a varied, listenable full-length experience very much in the vein of Mylo's similarly excellent Destroy Rock & Roll. Simply put, it's hard to deny the sheer quantity and quality of visceral enjoyment this album offers -- at his frequent best, which is handily compiled here, Rex the Dog makes (in the words of fellow electro-genius Richard X) "pure 21st century synth-pop": bombastic, euphoric, and beautiful.
Montt Mardié: Clocks/Pretender review
David Pagmar's second album as Montt Mardié is, for all intents and purposes, actually two albums, packaged (quite beautifully) as the two-disc set Clocks/Pretender. Although the 20 songs contained here clock in at just over an hour, and could easily fit onto a single disc, each half has its own distinct character and conceit, and each is entirely satisfying on its own terms. The loosely conceptual Clocks could be considered the "proper" follow-up to Mardié's debut, Drama, although it takes most of its cues from the classic songbook pop of the pre-rock era, rather than the 1980s, and eschews synthesizers in favor of stylish brass and string arrangements, fabulously rendered by a 20-piece big band-cum-orchestra. These musicians provide the buoyant, swinging backup for an authentically brassy rendition of the 1941 Frank Sinatra standard "Let's Get Away from It All," and help make nearly every other (original) song feel just as classic and ageless. Each song deals, in different ways, with the central themes of romance, nostalgia, memory, and world travel, and helps to evoke a vague but potent sense of historical time and place -- the album opens with a thunderclap and a snippet of 1920s bandleader Jean Goldkette, and has an over-arching pre-war vibe, but references to the '60s also abound in the lyrics as well as the music, from the Apollo moon landing and Holly Golightly to the title of the achingly lovely "How I Won the War" and the bouncy pop-soul flavor of "Birthday Boy."
Pretender, meanwhile, feels somewhat scattershot compared to the cohesion of Clocks, but it's nearly as enjoyable on a track for track basis. Each of the ten songs is a duet and a collaboration, all written by Pagmar but roughly tailored to the style of each collaborator and in most cases featuring their instrumental work or production. To some extent this offers a chance for him to demonstrate even greater range, but since his partners are all mostly standard Swedish indie pop types the results can generally be categorized as wistful, acoustic ballads, earnestly melodic synth rock, or effervescent dance-pop. Not that that's anything to complain about. Taken together, [these discs] offer a bounty of tuneful and inventive pop music as rich as any that's emerged from Sweden, or anywhere, in recent memory.
Although the core of his fourth solo outing is tasteful, tuneful, upbeat singer/songwriter pop/rock, Morten Abel proves too idiosyncratic to adhere strictly to such a familiar template -- he strays frequently and sometimes quite liberally, to intriguing and generally successful results. Along with plenty of full-bodied guitar work and some particularly lovely female harmony vocals, there are touches of instrumental color that help to liven things up -- banjo; whistling and slide guitar; some horns and subtle synthesizers. There are stylistic flirtations with Primal Scream-esque psychedelia and erratic, reggae-tinged funk-rock. And then there are the real curve-balls, abrupt diversions into hip-hop, a bizarre electro/diva-soul pastiche and, strangest of all, the sing-song story rap of "The Birmingham Ho," a sort of updated "Lola" featuring a saga about a transvestite, some music hall piano on the bridge, and the cryptic refrain "You don't have to be gay to make a friend feel good, OK." For all its playful genre experimentation -- which may explain the "being everything" part of the title -- and general goofiness, however, there's a stronger undercurrent of sentimentality and earnestness that comes through to make the album much more than a novelty; ultimately the introspection and emotional sincerity most evident on the relatively "normal" songs stand out as perhaps album's most essential and appealing qualities.
Britta Persson may have inherited the Swedish national knack for melodic hooks, but her intimate, decidedly idiosyncratic singer/songwriter approach has little in common with the demure twee and melancholic pop fare most often associated with her native land. Kill Hollywood Me offers a blend of arty pop, indie folk, and smart, gritty rock that recalls the '90s alternative likes of Liz Phair, Tracy Bonham, and Tanya Donelly, with a mix of whimsy and sentiment akin to Regina Spektor and Nellie McKay. Lead track and first single "Cliffhanger" starts things off on a particularly tough, rocky note -- it sounds surprisingly angry for a song about a promising relationship, although that's somewhat tempered by the melodic sweetness of the chorus, which fantasizes about parenthood and domestic bliss, years down the line. Persson has explained the phrase "kill Hollywood me" in reference to her wish to take herself less seriously, to focus on simplicity and happiness instead of a cinematic glamorization of love and relationships -- "memories and fantasies are to be seen as enemies," she sings on the title tune -- and that struggle is evident throughout the album's frequently lovelorn, self-doubting lyrics, which find her alternately renouncing and half-heartedly succumbing to the vicissitudes of modern romance. "If you're scared of goodbyes, don't say hello all the time" she reminds herself in "U-Turns," vowing to stay home at night and pursue "healthy love with healthy people." But "Can I Touch?" finds her out playing the field again, somewhat fatalistically wooing a prospective one-night stand with the come on "Who needs a head when you've got a heart?," which becomes an oddly triumphant group singalong. Ultimately, as much as she may strive not to let her romantic tendencies get the better of her -- "to invest and not get obsessed," as she puts it on the gentle, country-ish "In or Out," which features the unconvincing assertion that "this is about as fun as it gets/between happiness and unhappiness" -- she makes the alternative sound a good deal more gratifying, especially on the upbeat "Happy Hour," whose easygoing folk-pop lope and Sophie B. Hawkins-referencing refrain (or not; after all, there's a certain universality to the phrase "damn I wish I was your lover") make for one of the album's most engaging moments. Admittedly, untangling the album's textual intricacies without a lyric sheet can require some close listening, what with Persson's distinct accent and sometimes bizarre phrasing, but that's hardly a prerequisite for enjoying its richly textured, unconventional arrangements, and it shouldn't stop Kill Hollywood Me from appealing to listeners who don't mind a refreshing dollop of originality in their songwriter pop.
As always -- for better or worse -- the most immediately striking feature of Madam Owl, at least for Hanson newcomers, is his unearthly singing voice: ethereal, gossamer, and yes, undeniably feminine. It's not simply that Hanson's falsetto is high, it's also impossibly delicate; tender but confidently solid; poignant without a hint of strain, with a resigned sweetness that recalls a certain (male) late, great labelmate. Madam Owl does little to discourage the reductive but apt (and inevitable) "female Elliott Smith" tag, although it has as much in common with the ambitious, classicist pop of Figure 8 and XO as the sparse, deft acoustic picking of Smith's earlier work. On the other hand, Hanson's music has always been polite in a way that Smith's is not -- less emotionally urgent, less rough around the edges -- and here it sounds positively urbane, with elegant chamber arrangements that give the album an understated Baroque quality, while still leaving plenty of space for his voice and folky guitar work to take center stage. The orchestration also helps to distinguish his otherwise often faceless songs, whose consistent prettiness and emotive but forgettable lyrics can render them somewhat interchangeable. If "Maryann" happens to echo the phrasing of "No Name #1" from Elliott Smith's debut, while the lyrics of "This Friend of Mine" ("I lost this friend of mine so very young/his wishes we would carry out/but know one seemed to know about them") are nonspecific enough that they could conceivably have been written about Smith, it's nothing worth complaining about -- not when he can make evoking his influences sound this effortless and heavenly.
Considering the litany of literate talking-point touchstones that filter their way through the twisted pop phantasmagoria of Dominique Leone's self-titled debut, the inaugural release on Hans-Peter Lindstrøm's Strømland imprint -- for starters, the big-league melodicism (and restlessly conceptual thrust) of Brian Wilson, Todd Rundgren, and XTC; the whimsical arcanity of the Canterbury scene; the brutalist cacophonics of Boredoms; and over a decade's worth of post-IDM exploration and electro-dance rejiggering, from Cornelius to Matmos to Ellen Allien, not to mention the conspicuously cerebral residue of a pedigreed classical background -- it's perhaps a no-brainer that it ends up sounding like very little except for itself. What's more surprising is that it's also remarkably cohesive -- despite a seemingly limitless outpouring of ideas and a penchant for sudden stylistic left turns (including jarring noise barrages) comparable to the convoluted neo-prog of the Fiery Furnaces (and, at times, Of Montreal) and an occasionally manic, giddy energy that recalls the day-glo pastiche work of Dan Deacon and the Go! Team, the album generally avoids merely refracting its cripplingly broad influence roster into a formless, indulgently esoteric hodgepodge. It's held together in part by a consistently dense, garishly glossy sonic aesthetic that layers buzzy, metallic keyboards and guitars around Leone's grittily processed voice, which is often multi-tracked into high, queasy, saccharine harmonies in a malformed take on his beloved Beach Boys, with frequent electronic disruptions of varying obnoxiousness. That may not sound very appealing, and, admittedly, it's not a style that makes for particularly easy listening, but it's an effective, intriguing, and distinctive one nevertheless. By juxtaposing such a willfully "difficult" approach with the surprisingly traditionalist popcraft that lies at the heart of most of these songs (and they are songs, albeit often encumbered as much by bizarre structures and knotty harmonies as they are by textural zaniness), Leone isn't just screwing around with thwarted accessibility for its own perverse, limited ends, but seems rather to be genuinely striving for new ways to integrate pop melodics, unorthodox compositional structure, and avant-garde sonics into a workable whole.
The album presents a range of approaches to this project, with varying degrees of success: "Duyen," the cheerily chugging "Goodbye," and the unexpectedly gorgeous closing piano ballad, "Conversational," are relatively straightforward pop songs, and quite lovely ones too, with little or no structural disruption, though they're in keeping with the rest of the album production-wise. On the other end of the spectrum, "Kaine" and "Claire" are so structurally disjointed as to verge on sonic collage, their through-line melodies all but obscured by shards of noise and shifting rhythms. Epic-length centerpiece "The Return" attempts to bridge these two approaches with only middling success -- it has a decent enough recurrent refrain that passes through untold iterations before descending into an extended miasma of mindless frippery, but as a whole feels plodding and pedantic. Quite the opposite is true, however, of "Nous Tombons Dans Elle," the album's weirdest, poppiest, and by far best track, an utterly baffling, utterly infectious multi-part bundle of boundless cutesy energy that packs in pretty much every sound we've heard along the way, helped along by a couple of killer dance beats. Oh yes, dance beats. Given that electronic dance music is routinely allowed far greater liberty in sound and structure than any comparably popular style -- somehow dance beats seem to make a lot of things more palatable -- this may be the most viable solution to the particular quandary Leone seems to be investigating here. Perhaps he'd consider it a cop-out on the experimentation front, but it would be great to hear him take some cues from his label boss and just do a lot more like this. In any case, this is a striking, accomplished debut that hints at whole new realms of possibility, and an album that should prove absolutely fascinating to anybody able to tolerate it.
