Posted on February 12 2010 at 10:37 PM
6 out
of 10
It’s hard to think of
a band that has more epitomised the power of a collective voice
than Massive Attack. Born out of
The Wild Bunch, the Bristol soundsystem behind the rap-reggae
fusion that infamously became known throughout the world as
trip-hop, Massive’s finest moments deployed collaborations with
the precision of a smart bomb. Whether it was Shara Nelson’s
spectacular turn on 1991’s future-soul classic ‘Unfinished
Sympathy’ or Elizabeth Fraser, elfin on the frosted beauty
of ‘Teardrop’ seven years later, they knew a great
vocalist – and exactly how to use them. Seven years on from
their last album, 2003’s ‘100th Window’, and Massive Attack
– now the core duo of Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja and Grant
‘Daddy G’ Marshall (who wasn’t even on the last record
because he was on sabbatical raising his baby daughter) –
return. The backstory of ‘Heligoland’ is enough to
give anyone cause for concern. It appears to have been a tricky
bugger to complete, vocals with the likes of Stephanie Dosen
recorded, then scrapped. Not that the finished product is short
on guests – it’s absolutely crammed with them. Tunde Adebimpe
of TV On The Radio, , Damon
Albarn, , Mazzy Star’s
and [/a]Horace Andy[/a] all check in for a song or two.
They’re all undoubtedly great singers, but the frequency with
which they’re used gives the awkward impression that Del Naja
and Marshall are a marginal presence on their own record. It’s
hard to see the logic of kicking off with ‘Pray For
Rain’, a trudge of sombre piano and tom rolls that Adebimpe
approaches like he might any moody TVOTR song. Sonically, too,
there’s little here distinct enough to leave a clear Massive
fingerprint. We don’t hear Del Naja and Marshall at all until
track three, ‘Splitting The Atom’ – which ironically
comes off like a gloomy Gorillaz
song, thanks to some ska-tinged organ from Albarn.
After a shaky start, ‘Heligoland’ finally begins to
deliver. Long-time cohort Horace Andy shines on ‘Girl I Love
You’, driving bass and droning horns harking back to the
collective’s 1998 album ‘Mezzanine’. The luminescent
‘Paradise Circus’, featuring Hope Sandoval, is as close as
the album gets to a ‘Teardrop’. “The devil makes us
sick”, breathes Sandoval, over handclaps and chimes, “But
we like it when we’re spinning”. ‘Rush Minute’,
meanwhile, is tense and paranoid, Del Naja’s whispered chant
raising the pressure a la ‘Inertia Creeps’.
Overall, though ‘Heligoland’ is a puzzling and frustrating
listen. Some good tracks can’t hide the fact that this is the
stuff of an identity crisis. It’s one thing to call on your
famous friends to put flesh on your bones. It’s another if you
leave the listener wondering if you’ve any spine at all.
Posted on January 27 2010 at 06:45 PM
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Beach House
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Beach House's sound was fully formed at the time of their 2006 debut. They had slow, shadowy dream-pop down; at times they recalled Mazzy Star or Galaxie 500, but songs like "Apple Orchard" and "Master of None" had a dark and blurry resonance all their own. Artists that start out so assured and distinctive can run into trouble on second, third, and fourth records. Hardcore fans are there no matter what, but others may wonder: Do I need another album from this band? When I'm in the mood for what they bring, can't I just put on what I already have?
Teen Dream, Beach House's third album and first for Sub Pop, obliterates these concerns. This is both the most diverse and most listenable of their three full-lengths, and yet it never seems like a compromise. It feels like the product of careful, thoughtful growth, bringing in new influences-- bits of mid-1970s Fleetwood Mac, sparkling indie pop, even a few soul and gospel touches--- while maintaining the group's core sound. Teen Dream is a stirring reminder that good things can happen when you move out of your comfort zone.
The interplay between Victoria Legrand's voice and droning keyboards and Alex Scally's guitars is still the key element of the band's aesthetic. But here, each song has its own palette, which creates new possibilities. So the repetitive guitar figure, double-time kick drum, and crashing cymbals in the opening "Zebra" immediately suggest movement, signaling that this record will have a dramatic sweep unheard on the band's more pensive beginnings. And the whispery "ah-ah-ah" backing vocals that open "Norway" imply a new openness to the allure of pop pleasure, as that bit of ear candy finds a sharp contrast in the seasick-sounding slide that hovers over the verses. More somber ballads like "Better Times" and "Silver Soul" have the thick, churning gloom familiar from earlier records, but they acquire more force by being placed alongside tracks that allow for more light. Front to back, the arrangements and sequencing are superb.
Despite the brighter, more pop-informed sound and an album title that brings to mind the hazy nostalgia of youth, Teen Dream has a pretty sad heart. Because the music is so effective, the churn of emotions is there even when you don't know exactly what Legrand is singing about (this can happen easily with her unusual phrasing). But a closer listen reveals songs about uncertainty, doubt, and feeling beaten down by the world. "Walk in the Park" sounds romantic on paper, but this is a journey taken alone as a way to try and forget someone who is no longer around. The choppy verses, nudged along by the sort of cheap drum machine Beach House use expertly to suggest loneliness, explode sideways into a shimmering chorus that finds Legrand busting out a time-heals-all-wounds affirmation over a calliope organ. This chorus turn is a big moment that gets more affecting with more listens, lunging from resigned sorrow to an anxious plea, and it accomplishes this mood swing with a damn catchy melodic hook. A similar lift-off happens on "10 Mile Stereo", when the song shifts from its deliberate opening bars to its rushing and noisy main section that's as close as Beach House have come to true shoegaze. The gorgeous racket is affixed to a song about feeling dead inside after another failed relationship: "Limbs parallel/ We stood so long, we fell."
Though the Teen Dream lyrics are printed in the booklet, they lose their power on the page. "Real Love", from the album's less immediate but equally rewarding second half, has my favorite imagery from the record, and is also Legrand's best vocal performance. At first, it's just her and a piano, with chords that lean toward gospel. Hearing her voice in such a spare setting reinforces just how rich, earthy, and, dare I say it, soulful it really is. "I met you somewhere in a hell beneath the stairs," she sings, "There's someone in that room that frightens you when they go boom, boom, boom." There's pain in these lines, but her cracking, husky intonation amplifies it tenfold. It's easy to miss that Legrand's presence is forceful and deep rather than ethereal and angelic, but here these qualities stand out like never before, lending her darker laments extra weight.
As with Liars' Drum's Not Dead, the Teen Dream CD comes with a DVD containing videos for each of the record's songs, all by different directors. The clips range from 8mm found footage to colorful Flash collages to silly stories that clash with the music in a big way. To be honest, it's a little overwhelming to be dealing with 10 videos when you're getting to know an album, and I'm not sold on this sort of package at this point. The DVD, while it looks reasonably interesting, seems like something to spend time with later, after the record has had a chance to sink in. For now, I'm more inclined to close my eyes and imagine my own pictures for Teen Dream. The music has been inspiring some pretty vivid ones.
— Mark Richardson, January 26, 2010
Posted on January 27 2010 at 06:41 PM
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Delphic
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Delphic emerged from the BBC's recent poll of tastemakers as the nation's most hotly tipped new indie band, but in 2010, in the UK, this is not such a great accolade. It's a sign of the post-Britpop times that in the final tipsheet the band actually finished third, trailing behind a couple of arty female pop acts (think this year's version of Florence, or Little Boots). While 2009 was a golden year for U.S. indie, in the UK it was the moment the term "landfill indie" went mainstream, denoting the domestic glut of torpid, timid, generically retrogressive guitar bands. The post-Strokes tide that kept British indie afloat through the 00s, from Franz Ferdinand to the Libertines to the Arctic Monkeys, has finally gone out, leaving a clueless generation of charmless groups high and dry.
Delphic are being heralded as a way out of this dismal situation. They're wired and sequenced for the dancefloor, as opposed to plodding and strummed for the student moshpit; suited and booted rather than dowdy in denim; stylishly poised rather than scuffling and shambolic. On the face of it they represent a break from recent orthodoxy; in truth, it's hardly a novel approach. In recent months Snow Patrol returned averring that there'd always been a dance element to their music, while Editors attempted to update their reference points all the way from 1980 to 1982 with the addition of a few studiously vintage synthesizers.
In fact, if Editors had shown real commitment, persuaded their singer to take one for the team, and recruited the drummer's girlfriend on keyboards, they would doubtless sound an awful lot like Acolyte. To have reached the third paragraph of a Delphic review without mentioning New Order is practically a feat of self-discipline, but it can be avoided no longer. Delphic, let's be clear, are a rather brazen yet undistinguished attempt to reconstruct and exploit the trappings of Factory Manchester circa 1985.
The funny thing is, the odd crackling guitar line and synthpad chord change apart, they actually don't sound very much like New Order. All three Delphicians did national service in the landfill trenches, and at their worst, on tracks like the opening "Clarion Call" and "This Momentary" you can still hear the lumbering basslines and prosaic piano chords of some sub-Coldplay sketch, like old wallpaper under a cheap lick of paint. At their best, the spangled guitar and chattering sequencers are more likely to put you in mind of the fleeting beauty of "Perfume" by Madchester also-rans Paris Angels, or even late 80s rave-pop chancers the Beloved.
Though the band protest that Factory comparisons are unwanted but inevitable for any Manchester group attempting to marry rock dynamics with dance technology, that they are far too young to remember the Hacienda and are more influenced by German minimal techno, they desperately invite the comparison. Titles like "Halcyon", "Ephemera", and "Submission" are simply gagging to be expensively set in sepulchral type by Peter Saville. It's like they've audaciously claimed the rights to the Factory franchise, like one of those authors who's commissioned to write the new James Bond novel or Gone With the Wind sequel. And inescapably the comparison, once raised, does them no favors. Though both groups are fronted, on the face of it, by poor singers reciting vapid lyrics, you're left pondering once again the strange alchemy by which Barney Sumner was so often so lazily transcendent. And as any busker who's bashed out "Bizarre Love Triangle" will tell you, New Order's melodies-- which you'll search for in vain on Acolyte-- are indestructibly lovely.
To be fair, Acolyte is never less than stylish: dusted with powder, brushed and polished to a fine gleam, as shiny but generic as a new car. Producer Ewan Pearson has constructed a shimmering, relentless soundworld and a couple of tracks-- "Doubt" and "Counterpoint"-- attain an urgent, anxious euphoria. It's just that it feels so characterless and anonymous.
Maybe in the end, Delphic are as authentic an expression of modern-day Manchester as Joy Division were of the city in their own time. It was one of the more dubious claims of Tony Wilson, after all, that Factory remade the city in its own image, that the Hacienda, once built, was a premonition and inspiration for the 21st century city of steel and glass. The British urbanist Owen Hatherley has written of how modern Mancunian speculators these days actively trade on the legacy of Factory, of how old industrial warehouses had been transformed into "cramped speculative blocks marketed as 'luxury flats' or 'stunning developments' with an attenuated, vaguely Scandinavian aesthetic." He adopted the term "pseudomodernism" to describe this capitalist appropriation of modernism as spectacle or logo, divorced from any social or political ideal. It's a term that might serve just as well to describe Delphic, or indeed a great deal of British music today, vainly trading on the modernist impulse of their 80s forebears. "Pseumo Pop," then: it's no landfill indie, but for now it will have to do.
— Stephen Troussé, January 26, 2010
Posted on January 08 2010 at 05:41 PM
8 OUT OF 10
Lord knows they have their detractors, but whatever you might
think of them, the simple fact is Vampire Weekend are now one of the most
unique bands on the planet. Two years on from their eponymous
debut album and their much talked-about oeuvre – the African
influences, the preppy stylings, the songs about punctuation –
is no longer eyebrow-raising, yet remains uncopied. Few bands
have tried to appropriate what they do, because it is difficult,
if not impossible. This is advantageous. It means they can leave
a gap of almost exactly two years between albums – save for
supplying the beautifully baroque (yet still-recognisably-VW)
‘Ottoman’ to a film soundtrack last year,
and of a course making a couple of dozen fields’ worth of
people all scream “BLAKE’S… GOT A NEW FACE!” in unison
– and still sound fresh.
Further good news: on the evidence of ‘Contra’, the band’s
efforts in their tiny Brooklyn studio since have seen the four
broaden their horizons even further. The first taste of the new
Vampire Weekend – save for the viral ads and cryptic website
stared out from by the mystery blonde who adorns the cover –
was free download ‘Horchata’. Named after a
hangover-curing Mexican rice drink and boasting a rumbling,
drum-pounding choral refrain The Lion King would be
rightly proud of – plus an impressive contribution from
Thom Yorke’s marimba player
Mauro Refosco – the album’s opening track is a statement of
intent from keyboard player and producer Rostam Batmanglij. Not
everything on ‘Contra’ is as head-swirling or elaborate as
this, but it defines the deeply ambitious thread that runs
through the record. Instead of shipping knob-twiddling duties out
to a stranger, the band take a lead from hip-hop, merging
production with songwriting. Witness ‘White
Sky’: perhaps the best demonstration of how texture
has joined charm and wit in the band’s arsenal. Written so
precociously early that it was actually debuted live at the first
album’s launch party, on ‘Contra’ it’s completely reborn.
Instead of the harpsichords and synth-strings of its earlier
incarnation, here it’s reconstructed by Chris Tomson’s
crunching drums and circuit board bleeps (the band have
acknowledged the influence of the late-’80s video game Contra),
adding new depths to its spiralling scales.
Lyrically, too, you can feel frontman Ezra Koenig’s confidence
growing. Whereas ‘M79’ took a bus into New York, ‘White
Sky’ finds its narrator proudly strolling amongst Manhattan’s
skyscrapers, daring to imagine the lives – and laundry –
behind its most exclusive addresses.
‘Holiday’ similarly begins life as a ska
thrash in the mould of The
Specials’ ‘Too Much Too Young’ with nothing more on
its mind than hitting the beach before a submerged bed of drums
sends it skipping to the sands of Iraq, the invasion and probably
the only reference ever on record of the font Futura.
Yet while ‘California English’ impressively
crams hundred-mile-an-hour tongue-twisting (complete with some
Auto-Tune action borrowed from Rostam’s side project Discovery)
into barely two minutes, Vampire Weekend take care not to flash
their new toys for the sake of it. ‘Taxi
Cab’ takes the foot off the gas as a menacing ballad
with heartbeat-bass and shadowy strings, invoking both New
York’s grandeur and danger with Lou Reed-like subtlety; while
‘Giving Up The Gun’ moulds a swelling house
head-rush with a charming C86-esque tune to produce an anthemic
yet deeply personal mix of fist-pumping euphoria and delicate
empathy.
The band’s longest-ever song, ‘Diplomat’s
Son’, mixes dancehall reggae, Tetris bleeps and
MIA’s vocals (hypnotically sampled from ‘Kala’’s
‘Hussel’), all of which beautifully underscores a sprawling
narrative of love and double-crossing, played out against the
backdrop of the US’ similarly convoluted overtures towards
Nicaragua’s Contra rebels back in the early ’80s.
‘I Think UR A Contra’ wraps things up with a
hymnal warning about the dangers of needlessly stirring up raw
emotions.
It’s fair to say that with so much going on ‘Contra’ is
much less immediate than its predecessor, requiring a bit of
patience to uncover its true shades, contours and charm. But
it’s certainly worth sticking with, because with their second
album Vampire Weekend have escaped their collegiate niche without
sacrificing their true essence. Two more years, and they can do
it all over again. No problem.Lord knows they have their
detractors, but whatever you might think of them, the simple fact
is Vampire Weekend are now one of
the most unique bands on the planet. Two years on from their
eponymous debut album and their much talked-about oeuvre – the
African influences, the preppy stylings, the songs about
punctuation – is no longer eyebrow-raising, yet remains
uncopied. Few bands have tried to appropriate what they do,
because it is difficult, if not impossible. This is advantageous.
It means they can leave a gap of almost exactly two years between
albums – save for supplying the beautifully baroque (yet
still-recognisably-VW) ‘Ottoman’ to a film
soundtrack last year, and of a course making a couple of dozen
fields’ worth of people all scream “BLAKE’S… GOT A NEW
FACE!” in unison – and still sound fresh.
Further good news: on the evidence of ‘Contra’, the band’s
efforts in their tiny Brooklyn studio since have seen the four
broaden their horizons even further. The first taste of the new
Vampire Weekend – save for the viral ads and cryptic website
stared out from by the mystery blonde who adorns the cover –
was free download ‘Horchata’. Named after a
hangover-curing Mexican rice drink and boasting a rumbling,
drum-pounding choral refrain The Lion King would be
rightly proud of – plus an impressive contribution from
Thom Yorke’s marimba player
Mauro Refosco – the album’s opening track is a statement of
intent from keyboard player and producer Rostam Batmanglij. Not
everything on ‘Contra’ is as head-swirling or elaborate as
this, but it defines the deeply ambitious thread that runs
through the record. Instead of shipping knob-twiddling duties out
to a stranger, the band take a lead from hip-hop, merging
production with songwriting. Witness ‘White
Sky’: perhaps the best demonstration of how texture
has joined charm and wit in the band’s arsenal. Written so
precociously early that it was actually debuted live at the first
album’s launch party, on ‘Contra’ it’s completely reborn.
Instead of the harpsichords and synth-strings of its earlier
incarnation, here it’s reconstructed by Chris Tomson’s
crunching drums and circuit board bleeps (the band have
acknowledged the influence of the late-’80s video game Contra),
adding new depths to its spiralling scales.
Lyrically, too, you can feel frontman Ezra Koenig’s confidence
growing. Whereas ‘M79’ took a bus into New York, ‘White
Sky’ finds its narrator proudly strolling amongst Manhattan’s
skyscrapers, daring to imagine the lives – and laundry –
behind its most exclusive addresses.
‘Holiday’ similarly begins life as a ska
thrash in the mould of The
Specials’ ‘Too Much Too Young’ with nothing more on
its mind than hitting the beach before a submerged bed of drums
sends it skipping to the sands of Iraq, the invasion and probably
the only reference ever on record of the font Futura.
Yet while ‘California English’ impressively
crams hundred-mile-an-hour tongue-twisting (complete with some
Auto-Tune action borrowed from Rostam’s side project Discovery)
into barely two minutes, Vampire Weekend take care not to flash
their new toys for the sake of it. ‘Taxi
Cab’ takes the foot off the gas as a menacing ballad
with heartbeat-bass and shadowy strings, invoking both New
York’s grandeur and danger with Lou Reed-like subtlety; while
‘Giving Up The Gun’ moulds a swelling house
head-rush with a charming C86-esque tune to produce an anthemic
yet deeply personal mix of fist-pumping euphoria and delicate
empathy.
The band’s longest-ever song, ‘Diplomat’s
Son’, mixes dancehall reggae, Tetris bleeps and
MIA’s vocals (hypnotically sampled from ‘Kala’’s
‘Hussel’), all of which beautifully underscores a sprawling
narrative of love and double-crossing, played out against the
backdrop of the US’ similarly convoluted overtures towards
Nicaragua’s Contra rebels back in the early ’80s.
‘I Think UR A Contra’ wraps things up with a
hymnal warning about the dangers of needlessly stirring up raw
emotions.
It’s fair to say that with so much going on ‘Contra’ is
much less immediate than its predecessor, requiring a bit of
patience to uncover its true shades, contours and charm. But
it’s certainly worth sticking with, because with their second
album Vampire Weekend have escaped their collegiate niche without
sacrificing their true essence. Two more years, and they can do
it all over again. No problem.
Posted on December 08 2009 at 05:56 PM
The most talked about band in the world with an EP that still defies easy categorization
8 out of 10
Imagine for a moment
that the internet is something you can hold in your hands. You
pick it up and, ignoring mother’s pleas to leave the mucky
thing alone, you set about building a scrapbook for every band
ever blogged about, by anyone, anywhere. When you’re done, a
billion volumes of yack-stack tower and teeter above you like an
ironic and never-ending forest of corpse trees, but it’s
Animal Collective whose music has
inspired the most virtual ‘column inches’; their book of
clippings is so thick Yuri Gagarin can see it, and he’s not
just flung out in space any more, he’s nowhere.
And that’s strange, isn’t it? Not that they attract praise,
or that Gagarin’s dead (it’s a dangerous profession), but
that so much blather surrounds the quartet when the noises they
make – slippery, absurd, familiar yet future-new – are so
hard to talk about. Taking this record apart is like diving into
the sea and trying to glue water together. Better to let it wash
over you, because the sound of ‘Fall Be
Kind’ is one of a band fast running out of
context.
Baltimore-born, Brooklyn-based, Animal Collective already seem to
exist on no-one else’s terms but their own. This EP looms into
life with ‘Graze’; a track that begins by stealing Walt
Disney’s strings and disappears while playing electric panpipes
on a medieval waltzer. Where did it go? Where did the electricity
come from? Is Walt Disney still frozen in the past? Gluing.
Water.
That absurd, time-defying hoedown somehow bleeds seamlessly into
‘What Would I Want? Sky’, which has been in
Animal Collective’s live set for over a year, and as such is
already more famous on the internet than Tyson the skateboarding
bulldog. Sun-baked and blissed out, it’s just as warming and
impressive as watching Tyson roll around California’s
oceanfront and mocks the band’s assertion that what’s here
was “too dark” for their last album. It contains the first
legal sample, sounds a bit like Lemon
Jelly’s ‘The Staunton Lick’ and still manages –
through its hook’s hypnotic repetition – to be the best thing
you’ll hear all day.
The surprises continue to gather. ‘On A
Highway’ and ‘I Think I Can’ are
the most ‘standard’ Animal Collective fare here, the former
guided through a lonely night drive by Avey Tare, his eyes
picking out pissing workmen, pretty lady passengers and dreaming
bandmate Noah Lennox. The latter, the EP’s final track, is
Noah’s, and as such loops and lopes along, his throat trailing
cascades across strange, quacking synths and war-march drums as
he harmonises with sampled versions of himself. It’s good –
everything on ‘Fall Be Kind’ is good – but it’s not
something we haven’t heard done better before, either in Animal
Collective’s past or in 2007, on Lennox’s full-length
‘Person Pitch’.
That’s not to say their past is becoming a curse. This EP’s
centrepiece, a stunning hymnal called
‘Bleed’, ranks alongside anything Lennox,
Tare (real name David Portner), Brian ‘Geologist’ Weitz and
Josh ‘Deakin’ Dibb have ever put their names to. Slow-motion
and sparse, it’ll widen your eyes and put an ache in your gut;
consisting of little more than Tare’s cooing, Lennox’s
wailing and the sombre drone of a lone cello. Stripped of all the
sonic flotsam that usually surrounds them, Animal Collective come
into their own – if you can ignore the chatter to listen with
innocent ears, they surpass ‘good’ and remain
bewildering.
Posted on November 15 2009 at 11:42 PM
7.0
Halfway through the Cribs' new album, singer/bassist Gary
Jarman issues a plea to remember him like "last year's snow,"
but really, the Yorkshire band should be feeling a little more
secure in their standing within the mod-eat-mod world of
Britpop. Not only have the band lived to see their fourth
album-- while other post-Libertines peers like the Others and
the View get cast aside like so much NME roadkill--
their chart placements keep going up; Ignore the
Ignorant recently hit No. 8 in the UK. And the band have
been equally successful at turning its heroes into
collaborators; having previously enlisted the services of
everyone from Bobby Conn and Orange Juice's Edwyn Collins to
Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo,
the Cribs are now living out the ultimate indie pop
fantasy-camp dream by recruiting Smiths guitar hero Johnny Marr
as a full-fledged official fourth member. That development may
seem less staggering given Marr's recent Modest Mouse tenure,
but while the guitarist was absorbed into that band's backwoods
art-funk framework, the crystalline guitar pop heard on
Ignore the Ignorant-- produced by Public Image
Ltd./Birthday Party vet Nick Launay-- leaves little doubt as to
who's taking cues from whom.
Marr's presence is immediately felt on opening track "We Were
Aborted", which fills in the spaces between the Cribs' usual
staccato-riff schematic with counter-melodies that give the
song more room to breathe without sacrificing its pressurized
thrust, rendering it a distant British cousin to the Foo
Fighters' "Everlong". This transformative process-- from
post-punky pub-rockers to graceful pop songsmiths-- plays out
all through Ignore the Ignorant, though not without
its growing pains. As a band fond of naming indie rock
influences that are several degrees more idiosyncratic than the
music they actually produce, the Cribs are prone to hampering
their songs' increasingly dignified presentations with
screaming; the hoarse chorus howls on gleaming lead single
"Cheat on Me" feel overly melodramatic, and the circa-1963 slow
dance reverie of "Save Your Secrets" is upended by a lumbering,
overwrough t middle eight that feels like it barged in from
another song. The six-minute anomaly "City of Bugs", meanwhile,
sees the Cribs stretching out into nocturnal, Sonic Youthian
terrain, but despite Ryan Jarman's best attempts at Thurston
Moore-like sing-speak, the song just feels like an excuse to
unleash some string-snapping guitar squall.
Ignore the Ignorant fares much better when the Cribs
keep their contrarian tendencies in check and remind themselves
that, "holy shit, we've got Johnny fucking Marr in our band!"
Compared to Morrissey's oblique but resonant lyricism, the
Jarmans deal in provocative sound-bite slogans (e.g., "your
virility has made me forget empathy"), but the Cribs prove
themselves worthy successors to a lineage of cheekily erudite
Britpop that spans David Bowie (see: the "Rock 'n' Roll
Suicide" sway of "Stick to Yr Guns") through to the Smiths (
the "Panic"-style swing of the title track) to Pulp (the rather
excellent "We Share the Same Skies", a shot of organ-swathed
jangle-pop urgency would fit snugly on His 'n' Hers).
And in the jubilant Jam-ready rocker "Victim of Mass
Production", the Cribs seem to finally accept their status as a
pop commodity beholden to the "powers that be." They might
never acquire the iconoclastic cool of a Sonic Youth, but a Top
10 fate is certainly one they can live with, because, as the
Jarmans sing in unison, "we're not supposed to be here anyway."
Posted on November 15 2009 at 10:42 PM
![Bleach [Deluxe Edition] / Live at Reading](http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/nirvana200.gif)
8.5 / 9.5
The line between cool and uncool has never been less defined: We live in a world where Hall and Oates have become as influential to emergent indie-rockers as Joy Division, and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" has become as much of a hipster-bar last-call anthem as "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out". And yet, even in an era of omnivorous musical consumption and boundless genre tourism, the sight of a computerized Kurt Cobain belting out Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" in a recent Guitar Hero 5 demo reel was enough to revert the good/bad taste divide back to 1988 borders. For Nirvana fans, the Guitar Hero scandal was more than just a case of a dead rock-star's visage being exploited for the sake of peddling product. Few artists treated record collections as an extension of personal politics quite like Cobain; having him sing a hair-metal hit is not just contrary to his musical taste, but his entire value system. (Though one can't help but wonder what a guy who once skewered alpha-male behavior in a song called "Mr. Moustache" would make of indie's current facial-hair fetish.)
And yet, Cobain was no stranger himself to challenging accepted notions of cool. When it first emerged 20 years ago, Nirvana's debut album, Bleach, represented an equally heretical notion to some indie aesthetes: Flipper-grade sludge-punk molded into Beatles-schooled pop schematics. By 1989, indie rock was already making a rightward shift across the radio dial-- Dinosaur Jr. had covered Peter Frampton, the Butthole Surfers were dropping in not-too-subtle Black Sabbath and Zeppelin references-- but rather than using post-hardcore noise to desecrate their traditional FM-radio influences, Nirvana used it to give their dinosaur rock more teeth. In Cobain, they had a frontman with uncommonly melodic instincts, but shot through a voice that sounded like it was coughing up blood; in Krist Novoselic, a bassist who could hit the heretofore untapped sweet spot between Paul McCartney and the Melvins.
But unlike most rock bands who divided pop history between before and after, Nirvana's impact was not immediate. Upon its release, Bleach was a modest indie rock success at 40,000 copies sold, and the album's low-budget legend-- it was recorded for a scant $600, footed by the band's temporary second guitarist, Jason Everman-- often overshadows the music within. At that point, Nirvana had yet to divest itself of its Pete Best: drummer Chad Channing, whose scrappy style wasn't fully suited to the band's growing propensity for crater-inducing stompers. (Three Bleach tracks-- "Floyd the Barber", "Paper Cuts", and "Downer"-- were actually helmed by Melvins thud-master Dale Crover, and you can really tell.) And the album's first single-- a cover of 1960s Dutch-popsters Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz"-- is more emblematic of the dementoid new wave that Nirvana would indulge in on their future B-sides than the metallic Pixies-punk that would turn them into stars.
But rather than unfairly compare it to the platinum sheen of sophomore release Nevermind, Bleach is best appreciated today as a snapshot of a specific time and place, of a Seattle scene bubbling up before it turned into a media adjective: In the Aero Zeppelin grind of "School" and the Mudhoney-quoting scum-bucket thrash of "Negative Creep", you have the perfect audio manifestation of the stark, exhilarating black-and-white Charles Peterson photos that captured late-80s Seattle like a series of strobe-light flickers (and which populate much of this reissue's 52-page photo booklet). Original producer Jack Endino's new remastering job gives Bleach a much-needed boost in fidelity, but there's an intrinsic, primordial murkiness to this album that can't be polished-- while Axl was welcoming the masses into the Sunset Strip jungle, Nirvana dragged the Sub Pop set into the bleak, chilly backwoods from which they came.
Though briskly paced, Bleach is a front-loaded record, the maniacal/melodic contrasts of its stellar first half-- anchored by the epochal anti-love song "About a Girl"-- ceding to the more period-typical grunge of its second. The bonus live performance included here (recorded in 1990 at Portland's Pine Street Theater) suggests as much, mostly ignoring Bleach's side B to showcase important transitional tracks: the scabrous pop of "Sappy" (later to emerge as "Verse Chorus Verse" on the 1993 No Alternativecompilation); "Dive", a blueprint for Nevermind's plutonium-grade rockers; and "Been a Son", which bears the influence of Cobain's beloved Vaselines (whose "Molly's Lips" is covered here). It's a testament to both Endino's live-in-the-room production style and Nirvana's raucous onstage energy that Bleach and the bonus concert set sound like they were cut in the same session. But the concert also presents Nirvana in a light that the band's subsequently troubled and tragic story so rarely affords them: a simple, playful power trio who could lay waste to a drunk club crowd on a Saturday night.
Two years and one Dave Grohl later, the circumstances couldn't have been more different for Nirvana. Amid rumors of Kurt'n'Courtney drug problems and inter-band acrimony, the trio took to the stage for their headlining Sunday-night appearance at the Reading Festival, effectively cementing their status as the biggest-- and most gossiped about-- rock band in the world. If Bleach contains just trace evidence of the band that would, almost overnight, force radio stations to flip formats and record stores to open up "alternative" sections, the Live at Reading CD/DVD provides formidable evidence of perhaps the last rock'n'roll band to transform the monoculture in its own image. And yet, despite Cobain's cheeky show-biz entrance-- rolled onto stage in a wheelchair by music journalist Everett True, singing a line from Bette Midler's "The Rose", and then mock-collapsing-- the Reading set shows a band that hadn't changed all that much fundamentally from that Pine Street Theater gig two years previous.
Cobain's newly acquired, generational spokesmen duties didn't make him any more fond of engaging the audience with stage banter, ceding emcee duties to the jovial Novoselic during guitar changes. And even when playing to the biggest audience of their career, Nirvana blast through the 25-song setlist with a barrel-down, no-bullshit intensity that suggests it didn't matter if they were playing to 100 people or 100,000. And most pertinently, both concerts capture the band at crucial, between-album turning points: where the Pine Street Theater set shows a band burnishing its pop appeal, Live at Reading betrays Cobain's eagerness to tear it down, dispensing with the obvious Nevermind hits by the mid-set point, while reserving the encores for seething covers of 80s California punks Fang's suitably sardonic "The Money Will Roll Right In" and the Wipers' "D-7". In retrospect, the concert crystallizes the moment when Cobain stopped serving his servants and started serving himself, pointing the way to 1993's notoriously caustic In Utero.
Given its long-standing popularity as a bootleg, you can't help but wonder why Live at Reading wasn't officially released back in the mid-90s instead of the live compilation From the Muddy Banks of Wishkah; certainly, Reading makes for a more appropriate, electrified complement to the band's other career-defining performance, 1994's Unplugged in New York release. And for the sake of squeezing the entire set (save for "Love Buzz") on a single disc, the Reading CD excises pretty much all of the DVD's between-song interactions (most notably, the goof on Boston's "More Than a Feeling" that precedes the similarly riffed "Smells Like Teen Spirit") and key contextual interludes that reveal the tumult leading up to this triumphant performance (e.g., a heartfelt plea from Cobain to have the crowd shout a conciliatory "We love you Courtney" in the wake of her receiving the Yoko treatment from the British tabloids). But the CD's career-spanning tracklist-- touching on the best of Bleach, most of Nevermind, choice singles and B-sides ("Sliver", "Aneurysm"), three In Utero previews ("Tourette's", "Dumb", "All Apologies"), and the aforementioned covers-- actually makes it a far superior, more comprehensive introduction for Nirvana newbies than the band's 2002 greatest-hits compilation. Like the Who's Live at Leeds or Cheap Trick's At Budokan, it's an indispensible document of a legendary band at their most invincible.
And even if you're the sort of Nirvana die-hard who's been sitting on an audio bootleg of this gig for the past 17 years,you really need the DVD-- for a band whose visual legacy mostly amounts to a handful of stylized videos and the lowkey Unplugged special, Live at Reading effectively grants you side-stage access to the band in their mosh-pit-stoking, drum-set-toppling, putting you as close to the action as the band's mysterious friend Tony, who's seen flailing onstage throughout the show like an epilpetic Bez. Like the Bleach reissue, the Live at Reading packaging is heavy on photos and other scrapbook visuals, but entirely bereft of liner-note reminiscences and analysis-- because lord knows we don't need another essay-length rumination about Nirvana's cultural import and Cobain's conflicted relationship with stardom. The most lasting images on the Live at Reading DVD-- from the 60,000-strong pogo pit, to the blood sprayed on Cobain's pick guard at set's end, to the awkward but poignant post-show meeting with a young, leukemia-stricken fan-- tell you everything you need to know.
- Stuart Berman, November 11, 2009
Posted on November 10 2009 at 01:41 AM
I've held off posting about Girls because of certain
reservations I had about them. Specifically, I can't listen to
the lead singer's voice for a long period of time. But whenever I
do sit down to listen to their album, Album, I'm not
overwhelmed or blown away, as their 9.1 Pitchfork
rating might imply.
I will admit, however, that "Lust For Life," as well as "Laura" and "Hellhole Ratface" are essential and should be required listening in 2009. But take these tracks out of the equation and you are left with little to get excited about - a directionless Elvis Costello/Brian Wilson tribute album.
Download to my favorite songs off Album or stream the whole thing, and then watch a NSFW/XXX music video.
Girls - Lust For Life
Girls
- Laura
Girls - Hellhole Ratface
Girls, "Lust For Life" XXX NSFW (I REPEAT: NOT SAFE FOR
WORK, MAN) Music Video
Posted on November 09 2009 at 11:18 PM
World Painted Blood is the best album to come from the Big Four of Thrash (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax) since the 1990s. That's not saying much, as their prime was the 1980s. Since then, three of those bands flailed about: Metallica went the radio route, Megadeth tried to do the same, and Anthrax turned to hard rock. Slayer, on the other hand, remained Slayer. They kept their core ingredients: spiky tonalities, no-frills thrash laced with punk, and lyrical obsessions with serial murderers and blasphemy. But after 1990's Seasons in the Abyss, the Slayer team underwent turmoil. Drummer Dave Lombardo left, producer Rick Rubin reduced his participation to executive production, and cover artist Larry Carroll didn't get called back. The band fell off for several albums, generating a few great songs and a lot of filler. The return of Lombardo on 2006's Christ Illusion helped right the band somewhat.
Now Slayer are fully functioning again-- and it's hard to believe that a 27-year-old band can be this intense. World Painted Blood races through 11 tracks in 40 almost fat-free minutes. Slayer haven't written a great slow song since "Seasons in the Abyss", but the few that are here break up the album nicely. The rest of the record is fast and finely controlled. Hooks peek through often, and the interplay between guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman is lively. Their trademark whinnying-horse solos are intact, and Lombardo still pushes the beat hard. "Unit 731" features some of his best drumming ever, with delightfully crackling fills. An extremely dry mix practically brings the listener into the room next to the band. This performance aspect is crucial to Slayer's success. Unlike, Metallica, whose drummer Lars Ulrich is inconsistent live, or Megadeth, who have settled into a monotonous precision, Slayer have retained their organic energy. They are one of the most electrifying musical units working today.
This upfront sound is double-edged, however. It's thrilling to hear the band in such close audio quarters. But as a result, it loses some mystique. The production quirks of past albums helped give Slayer an aura. Hell Awaits, for example, indeed sounded hellish due to an excess of reverb. The tedious sludge of Diabolus in Musica had a certain charm. Although Rick Rubin's production on Slayer's classic trilogy (Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss) was dry, the songs still had a smoke-rising-in-the-distance quality. Now the band is aurally inches away from one's face. Additionally, the band has turned its attention from the underworld to the real world. "Americon", for example, condemns the U.S.' blood-for-oil foreign policy. Slayer being timely is not Slayer being timeless. But the way they're still playing, they sure sound like it.
- Cosmo Lee, November 9, 2009
Posted on November 08 2009 at 03:51 PM
6 out of 10
Rivers Cuomo is a deeply weird individual. After the spectacular
success of Weezer's 1994 debut album - which pretty
much invented emo's melodic wing - instead of embracing rock-star
excess, the singer enrolled at Harvard, painted all his walls and
windows black and set to work on a bafflingly opaque
'space-opera'. In more recent years, his hobbies have included
meditation and picking up "barely legal" (his words)
cyber-girlfriends on Weezer.com.
So it's a shock, in 2009, to find this awkward, crabby outsider
hurling himself headlong into the world of blockbuster pop,
penning songs for Katy Perry and covering Lady
GaGa's 'Poker Face' live - a version of
which appears on the deluxe edition of this, Weezer's seventh
album. There's also a guest rap from Lil Wayne on
the synth-boosted track 'Can't Stop Partying'.
Meanwhile, tracks such as 'I'm Your Daddy' come
slathered in the kind of sugary guitar distortion last heard
sellotaping together 's record.
Is it convincing? Not quite. It works when Cuomo's skewering the
hollowness of that world. 'Can't Stop Partying'
does that job admirably, poking fun at ghetto fabulous stars who
"gotta have the cars, gotta have the jewels". Mostly, though, he
plays it straight: these are big, dumb, glossy pop songs,
delineating a weirdly phony world of open freeways, jocks,
mallrats and parties where hot girls put their hands in the air
like they just don't care. You long for a riptide of geek rage to
undercut the slickness, but those moments are frustratingly
rare.
Cuomo is not critiquing pop, he's immersing himself in it:
doo-wop pastiche 'I Don't Want To Let You Go'
finds him Xeroxing Diane Warren's dog-eared book of
romantic clichĂŠs: "The pain is killing me, but I can't let it
be". Is this his authentic voice, how he really feels? It's hard
to believe.
The band are on more comfortable ground when they play to their
traditional strengths. 'Put Me Back Together' is
magnificent, a heartsore tale of nerd romance to rank alongside
'Buddy Holly'. This being Weezer, it also boasts
a truly heroic chorus. And this album is full of them: colossal,
gleaming hooks, buffed to a Botox sheen. But given what we know
about Cuomo's eccentric inner world, it's hard not to find those
dazzlingly perfect melodies kind of hollow.
