Four personally significant new records dropped in a three-week stretch near the end of spring 2012, sort of my musical equivalent of a solar eclipse. No small potatoes, these. Ex-Blue Niler Paul Buchanan is my favourite singer from the 1980s. Saint Etienne is my favourite band since 1990. I think Beach House made the best record of 2010. And you might’ve heard I like The Beach Boys. There’s little stylistic common ground among the four, but together they created a sort of dream vortex of previous champions aiming to soundtrack summer 2012. How’d they do?
New records are like the new T.V. season or a new year of school: eventually they’ll be bunched together in a body of work or experience, but in the moment they’re disproportionately important. Evaluation’s not an exact science, especially from such a cramped perspective, but one thing’s certain: a good record from a pet favourite is a sigh of relief and a bad one’s an affront. Sometimes new records make me nervous.
PAUL BUCHANAN – Mid Air
Paul Buchanan once said five albums would make a good career; 28 years after The Blue Nile’s first, he’s made his marker, and Mid Air’s finally cast Buchanan in the role he was born to play – saloon singer. Playing both halves of the Sinatra-Bill Miller combo, Mid Air‘s lo-fi execution sacrifices cinematic TBN flourishes for aching immediacy, removing Buchanan from the pigeonhole of his band’s box and into the realm of anyone who ever ruminated over simple piano chords in a backstreet dive. Unsurprisingly, it’s awfully affecting: haunting and haunted, and the closest spiritual companion to the magnificent pair of ‘80s TBN albums as we’re likely to get. Several of TBN’s best songs eschewed drums (notably, “Easter Parade,” “Regret,” “From A Late Night Train,” “Family Life”), but this record’s hush goes deeper, past the bridge and over the hillside into extreme reflectiveness. That’s not to say Mid Air is close to AWATR or Hats in scale or song. But it restores Buchanan to his rightful place as a real go-to when chips are down. The voice still creaks while it searches for the higher notes, and wraps beautifully around the simplest of phrases (a disastrous “tear stains on your pillow/I was drunk when I danced with the bride/Let it go” denouement; a knowing “life goes by and you learn/how to watch your bridges burn” shrug). It’s anyone’s guess where art and life intersect with Buchanan, but that’s what makes his sketches ring with everyman wisdom and wry regret. Primarily a guitarist in his band’s day, Buchanan’s reliance on piano further eases Mid Air onto terra firma (heck, there’s even a touch of distant trumpet, just like the old days), but it’s a double-edged knife that leads to my only plaint: ex-communicated Niler Paul Joseph Moore might’ve worked magic with these brief songs (only one over 2:57), a few of which seem built for longer, fuller arrangements and suffer for lack of same (Buchanan’s instrumental skills are purely workmanlike; his chordings can be choppily rudimentary). But Mid Air is generous with displays of his innate songwriting genius, even if it’s held to a modest scale. “Mid Air,” “I Remember You,” “Wedding Party,” “My True Country” and “After Dark” aren’t run-of-the-mill voice-and-piano bedsit musings. They are wonderful, they are proof a Paul Buchanan exists.
THE BEACH BOYS – That’s Why God Made The Radio
Nothing that’s come out of the Brian Wilson camp since Carl’s death seemed possible in 1998. Back in 2004, the SMiLE album/tour was the cherry atop an impressive six-year solo run, but he’s still defying best-before dates eight years later. Here, on the eve of his 70th birthday, The Beach Boys have released their first record in 20 years, the first with Brian’s involvement in 27, the first with him at the helm in 35.
There’s no template for how a new record by a rock band with an average age of 68 is supposed to sound, but what I do know is That’s Why God Made The Radio is better than the ones The Beach Boys were making when they were pushing 40, with a significantly greater degree of creative health and spirit. Admittedly such things matter more to long-time fans than new converts or the casually curious. I’m not recommending Radio to newbies. But to the beleaguered diehards, the thrill doesn’t end with the act of purchasing the product: Songs still matter to head Boy Brian, and he’s supplied six really good ones. They begin and end the album – which leaves a prolonged sag in the middle – but judicious iPod planning left me shaking my head in happy wonder. The title track may be more arrangement and performance than song, but it’s spectacular on those first two fronts, a brilliant stroke as lead single, because it both sounds like a post-surf/car Beach Boys song ought to and like nothing else on radio in years (except, maybe, Grizzly Bear’s three-year-old “Two Weeks”): unashamedly sumptuous and wonderfully well-sung. I think it belongs in the canon. Second single, the relatively spartan “Isn’t It Time,” surprisingly steers clear of imitation: although its lyrics are throwback, the ukulele-as-lead instrument and neat octave-doubling harmonies are new wrinkles in the Beach Boy sound. Radio closes with a sequence that’s earned a lot of attention and admiration, a three-song suite that hearkens back to a later California sound, the ‘70s singer-songwriter domain of Newman, King, Dennis Wilson et al, albeit with superb, fully integrated BB harmonies. Maybe it’s what The Beach Boys might’ve sounded like in the late-’70s if it hadn’t all gone tits-up. “From Here To Back Again” features the evidently ageless Al Jardine on lead, a delicate two-part song with a jaunty whistling tag; “Pacific Coast Highway” and “Summer’s Gone” are Brian showcases of a piece with a couple of tracks from That Lucky Old Sun – unhurried reveries on aging, loss and loneliness which might seem unusual for a Beach Boys record if you recall the forced jollity of their “adult” albums, but not so much with Pet Sounds or “In My Room” considered. While it’s jarring to hear Wilson sing lines like “sometimes I realize my days are getting on,” “sunlight’s fading and there’s not much left to say” and “summer’s gone, it’s finally sinking in,” the frail beauty of his weathered tone, the deep swells of support from the backing vocals and strings, the hypnotic drag of the sun-speckled music are the surest signs of genius still lurking in his compositional bag. Throughout Radio, the sound is great. Jardine, Wilson and Bruce Johnston fill the middle range admirably. Mike Love doesn’t get a lot of lead here, and when he does it’s on ballads, which minimizes creeping nasality. Brian’s live band plays on most of the tracks, although only Jeffrey Foskett sings, taking the high tenor and falsetto “Brian” parts. He fits. That Radio’s saggy portion shows fallibility hardly matters – the fact I’m thinking critically about a new Beach Boys album 42 years after the release of the song that lends its name to this column (“Add Some Music To Your Day,” geddit?) is one of the great events of this summer.
BEACH HOUSE – Bloom
Beach House’s Bloom is more a refinement than Great Leap Forward, but now they’re on fire. The sharpest songs have a new and thrilling pop bite atop the expected glazy force, and Alex Scally’s single-note guitar style has edged into Disintegration territory, meaning anything they’re considering for a single or T.V. show appearance sounds positively mesmerizing. The new approachabiity is a rare treat, a kind of tangibility most of their dream-pop peers can’t touch. Bloom’s incandescence sounds great, but the songs hold up, too. “Lazuli” dazzles for every one of its 302 seconds, from the frayed, square-wave organ arpeggio intro to the beautifully staggered three-part contrapuntal vocal built into the last two minutes. Phenomenally grand but outfitted with a few inspired stripped-down breaks, swooning but cool, it’s a surefire finalist for my favourite song of the year. “Wishes” and “Myth” are nearly as good, superhero flick-sized walls of sound peaking with what’s becoming Victoria Legrand’s go-to move: the one-line lyric bridge that speaks of some unimaginable sadness (“one in your life, it happens once and rarely twice,” “or let the ashes fly, help me to name it, help me to name it”), either preceding or following searing, effect-heavy guitar passages that suck the air out of your chest. Bloom never hurries to the payoff; tension abounds in delayed choruses and suspended breaks. I suppose you could call Bloom’s songs a little samey – an accusation you might level at Disintegration or a Cocteau Twins record, too – but the bits that poke through the haze, a bristling solo or one of those torrid vocal bridges, dazzle and amaze. I get wistfulness from Bloom, but I bet it soundtracks euphoric love and bruised despair just as well. Simply put, this is an uncommonly great band at a new peak. Is it the best band in the world right now?
SAINT ETIENNE – Words And Music By Saint Etienne
It shouldn’t register as a surprise to anyone in the know that Bob Stanley – in his other professional life, away from co-helming what is, for my money, the best damn pop band of the past 22 years – will publish a book on pop history next year. As Saint Etienne’s once prodigious work rate slowed in the middle of the last decade, Stanley returned to rock writing, regularly contributing pieces to Mojo, The Guardian and Pitchfork among others, showing the same archivist zeal that’s always tugged at the skirt of Et’s modern dance pop. What might be surprising, however, is how the newest Etienne LP – their first in seven years – functions as a totally serviceable introduction to the band for those who might only have a remix or two on their iPhone. Words And Music By Saint Etienne – a concept album about the age-defying emotional connection forged between artist and fan – is sometimes so damn good it gives me goosebumps. Of a piece with any Etienne record since 1994’s Tiger Bay, Words And Music is chock-a-block with floor-filling uptempos in all sorts of intriguing shades, no doubt aided by cannily chosen production hands (Tim Powell, Richard X, Nick Coler, Rob Davis and honorary Et Ian Catt), but the vision remains Stanley, Pete Wiggs and Sarah Cracknell’s. Referential songs about record collecting, DJs, gig-going and the centrist vibe regarding music as the most emotionally rewarding of all art forms might be gratingly cute in other hands, but Etienne set the emotional tone brilliantly with a mostly spoken-word opener “Over The Border,” which is one of the most intelligent things they’ve ever done, because it frames the following 40 minutes as a record about loving music for people who love music. Etienne’s played this card before (“Join Our Club,” “Clark Co. Record Fair”), but even without that knowledge, Words And Music is still a gas. Shades of chugging Italo, bright house, Philly disco and Baelaeric stompers abound, but the biggest surprise for vet fans might be “When I Was 17”’s indie guitar bounce. It wears extremely well. As they did on 2005’s Tales From Turnpike House, Etienne apply some thickening agents to Cracknell’s increasingly feathery singing – a great idea then and now. Longtime pal Debsey Wykes pops in to harmonize on the terrific “Haunted Jukebox,” and Brit disco chanteuse Tina Charles guests on three numbers, including “Answer Song,” which is one of the best songs they’ve ever done, a pop-soul tune Bacharach might’ve written had he started a few decades later, with a whomping string hook riding over a churning electro groove, and a gamine sexual/sensuality that explodes in the sky-punching chorus. Taking a cue from Smokey Robinson, the song’s title employs a time-tested pop music trope to deliver its more universal message of romantic longing, which is ultimately what both music in general, and Words And Music in particular, are about: as one-hit wonder Stardust put it in 1998, “music sounds better with you.”
All in all, that’s a heckuva good batch of records. Summer’s sounding better already.
The first Chairlift LP had one absolutely delightful art-pop number (“Evident Utensil”) and some nice second bananas, but still I bundled these guys with the likes of Captain, Go! Team, Black Kids and other pan flashes: briefly intriguing pretenders destined for shuffle play purgatory. But Something is something else – an unexpected Great Leap Forward into superior songwriting and all the relevance that attends it. Chairlift, down to a girl-boy duo with studio assistance, is still mining glistening ‘80s-biting dream pop, but nearly every song on Something has a moment – a winning chorus, a dramatic payoff, a lovely sound design – that lofts the band past the middle-of-the-pack and into the upper echelon of the newish new wave we’ve been listening to for half a decade. It helps that Caroline Polachek has a lovely, flexible voice and the brief to keep the lyrics audible. But the music’s got a lot of hustle, too: “I Belong In Your Arms” sounds like a breezy 45 from about 1984; “Sidewalk Safari” churns over wobbly, interweaving melodic lines; “Met Before” kitchen sinks stately keys and heavily reverbed girl-group vocals over thudding Californian garage rock. On a cooler tip, “Frigid Spring” is delectable, a watercolour of breathy coos, twinkling keys and acoustic washes, heir to the debut album’s promisingly arty singles. Recall that “Bruises” was an iPod Nano jingle in 2008; Something debunks hipster taint with surpassingly strong material.
One of the most stimulating efforts I’ve heard from the endless pack of studio rats masquerading as bands, Porcelain Raft’s appeal lies in massed layers of trebly, kaleidoscopic sounds morphing into warm whorls of psychedelic dream pop, with some spectacularly beautiful results. Strange Weekend – the first solo album from 39-year-old serial collaborator Mauro Remiddi – is one of those relatively rare treats where the artist attains impressive conceptual cohesiveness through playing everything himself, filtering ostensibly rock-based instrumentation through the mix with cleverly deconstructionist flair. Especially whatever the hell he’s using for rhythm beds! The drum patterns are chopped, pureed and liquefied, but never at the expense of the momentum which drives and anchors Weekend’s swooningly appealing singles “Put Me To Sleep” and “Until You Speak From Your Heart.” Remiddi seems to have tapped into a sort of nostalgic prettiness despite the clatter – an old trick Thomas Dolby mastered on The Golden Age Of Wireless – but some of the more graceful passages (“Is It Too Deep For You?” and especially “Backwords”) recall Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s woozy stateliness. Dolby and OMD were terrific at invoking old grandeur through modern synthetic means, and the best moments of Strange Weekend repeatedly get there. Remiddi’s singing voice, which ranges from a harsh, Bolanesque lisp to a thin, keening tenor, is suited to both the material and the sibilant mix. On the closing “The Way In” there’s even a stab at Brett Anderson-scale ballad singing over appropriately melancholic strums and whooshes. This guy’s a great architect.
On the one hand, from the perspective of sound and intent, a moderately encouraging step away from the soporific, airbrushed fussiness that dominated the records they made in 2007 and 2009. On the other hand, from the perspective of songs and execution, a discouraging affirmation of Air’s enduring staleness. I was in the record store the week before this came out when some guy told his friend, “I’m really nervous about the new Air record.” You may recall Air occupying an exalted space in people’s minds a dozen years ago, riding a wave of otherworldly early singles, a dizzyingly grand debut album and a darkly affecting soundtrack LP. But now the disappointments outnumber the triumphs, and all the weaker records have come in succession. La Voyage Dans La Lune, an imaginary soundtrack to a century-old silent film, is a well-intentioned bummer. In reaching back for the feel of old glories, but failing to deliver anything you might remember an hour after playing it, Air’s bag is no longer worthy of such record-store hand-wringing. It’s always a downer to realize the goodwill’s spent, isn’t it.
Fervidly inventive yet frustratingly fitful, Plumb’s hooks race by like samples from the golden age of T.V. show theme writing, dangling earworms long enough to capture attention but not to pay the pleasure zone. That flaw undermines the nicely shaped narrative, great sound (“significantly less compression and limiting than most contemporary records,” boasts the liner) and deep well of creative mojo. Plumb’s both too taxing and too brief: 35 minutes is a long time to absorb ideas whizzing by at warp speed; conversely, few of Plumb’s 15 fragmented tunes can stand on their own. Despite attention spans shaved to fractions of what they were in simpler times, pop music’s digestibility – not advertising jingle pop nor T.V. theme pop – is still founded on hook deployment. On Plumb? Well, how many unresolved notions comprise “Choosing Sides”? The brilliance of, say, SMiLE, is that while it’s built on modular arrangements it also sparks cognitive enjoyment through repetition and recurrence. But Plumb comes like lightning. In spite of themselves, a few songs are written to completion anyway, and are pretty affecting, whether lyrically (social exclusion brought about by careless time management in “Sorry Again, Mate”) or musically (the gorgeously searing strings that fill “From Hide And Seek To Heartache” to bursting). I’m buying the next Field Music record because I believe, I believe, but I think they shoot themselves in the foot about a dozen times on Plumb.
I’ve read she digs Animal Collective and it shows on Visions, which is surprisingly organic for a record built on brief, recurring melodic phrases. Not that the loops are so deft you don’t realize what’s going on, but the burbling synth-plus-beats work is fresh and invigorating throughout. Although live performances occasionally veer into twee ether, she holds it together as a vocalist here too, despite a delivery that essentially kills at least half the words before they reach the mic. Thus, it’s not so much an impediment as an artistic statement. Allowing for the featherweight vocals, the heavy lifting’s left to the music, which is tight and clubby, sometimes hinting at late-’80s chart cheese (“Oblivion”), sometimes nodding at Eurodisco narcotism (“Be A Body”), sometimes evincing the queasy otherness Lynch, Badalamenti and Cruise might’ve dreamt up for Twin Peaks if its time had come 20 years later (“Symphonia IX [My Wait Is U]”). Mostly, though, Visions retains an elemental approachability despite its animated idiosyncrasies, which is the best of both worlds for Grimes. A little like good AnCo, genuine pop moments appear throughout, long enough for some listeners to connect the dots and possibly hear things that aren’t really there. Is that why it’s called Visions, Claire?
A lovely – and sometimes dark – album that reminds me somewhat of last year’s Miracle Fortress set, both of ‘em sparkling recordings that forestall most knee-jerk retro tags despite their reliance upon cozily familiar instrumentation. Icy synths, syncopated drumbeats and chorused guitars abound, but their deployment’s what makes Interstellar glow. Frankie cushions her modest voice with close harmony double-tracking that occasionally suggests Dolores O’Riordan purring in neutral. It’s a pleasant sound that works wonders on the peppy “Daylight Sky,” which cleverly trades that vocal approach off and on with a similar close-harmony synth melody, or on “Pair Of Wings,” which bursts into M83-like Technicolor over its final minute. Interstellar’s songs won’t smack you over the head with the kind of tension-releasing middle eights that’d cost Smokey Robinson any sleepless nights: a few songs somehow reach the three-minute mark without any real resolution. But nervy tunes like “Night Swim” and “Moon In My Mind” are so dynamically solid you don’t notice unless you’re listening for it. A classy effort that’ll probably fly under the radar but oughtta reward every pair of ears it graces. And I’ll bet this sounds great under a starry September sky.
Shatteringly loud-but-brilliantly mixed avant-punk that’s stuffed with so many brightly melodic possibilities it’s hard to figure why this record’s filed under hardcore…until the singer woofs all over the proceedings. Fucked Up is Damian Abraham’s band, so no one’s gonna tell him off. But the disconnect between the music and the voice is ridiculous. The omnipresent, bellicose screaming – a technical achievement, to be sure – obscures the high-minded lyrics. The 78-minute run-time borders on masochistic. Some get off on a wall of roar. Not me.
In his enthusiasm nay drive to emulate some of soul’s great multitaskers – men who wrote, sang, played and produced their own records (Stevie, Marvin, Smoke, Sly), he’s playing in awfully deep water. Pleasant but not especially inspired pastiche, the sound is better than the songs, which too often try getting by on predictable melodic phrases and a crippling disregard for middle eights. He’s painted his vocals into a corner, too: gasping out short, punchy phrases like an elementary schooler slapping at a tether ball. It takes moxie to take on a decades-old genre stuffed with songs that survived the cull of time to become cultural standards. Sharon Jones faces the same challenge, and gets across more authentically. I love soul, and Saadiq’s got it, but maybe he should enquire into whether Holland-Dozier-Holland is still writing for hire.
Three kinds of music on offer from Toro Y Moi’s second LP: cruise ship lounge funk (“New Beat,” “Still Sound”), hazy summertime froth (“Got Blinded,” “How I Know”) and more of the debut album’s hushed, elaborate chillwave. The first type is excellent, with subtle, jazzy organ interplay softening the funk edge like Billy Paul might’ve done without the Philly strings. The second is pretty good, with whispering, high harmonies adding an appealing sheen to the breezy, ’60s sunshine pop. The third is a minor developmental uptick from 2010’s so-so Causers Of This – the music sounds great (“Divina” could be a mid-period Air track with that fab drum-bass guitar sound) although it rarely grabs you. I get the impression Chaz Bundick is outgrowing his early musical trappings: the aforementioned first two styles suggest routes that could pay off handsomely once he commits.
“Pussy is not a matter of fact,” and I suppose one could say the same of Maus’ credentials as a songwriter. Empirical statements aside, Maus would never have worked the Brill Building with one-line song texts like that, nor would his looped-passage-extended-to-song-length approach have landed gigs with Ellie Greenwich, either. But he is a madcap audio alchemist, whose murky, gothic, analog synthpop holds no small charm for those so disposed. The viscid, vampiric sensuality is rather alluring. As a singer he is ridiculous. Chest-voice bellowing swathed in long-decay reverb, the kind of sound you might create in an empty underground parkade. Censors is a gauzy, oddball, Halloween romp with the structural backbone of an Ariel Pink record, but it succeeds on those wiles, whether evincing a Miami Vice death scene vibe (“Cop Killer”) or a heroic, you-’n'-me-’gainst-the-world-babe stance (“Believer”). The grainy, mid-‘80s, station ID song intros often recall the first Neon Indian record. The most normal-sounding song, a hauntingly dark piano ballad called “Hey Moon,” is an obscure modern cover that wouldn’t be out of place on a Peter Murphy record. Grimly fiendish.
Contrary to the John Maus record, Washed Out’s Ernest Greene ditched the lo-fi for perfumed silk sheets (and check out the cover pic, poached from a Cosmopolitan ish), and until fatigue sets in around minute 25, I figure the abdication’s been a good idea. Chillwave adherents and Bryan Ferry acolytes alike should dig Within And Without: unhurried tempi, supremely euphonic synth washes and a murmured vocal buried deeper than a secret. I really like the first batch of songs, especially the sporty pair of “Eyes Be Closed” and “Amor Fati.” I have no idea what they’re about. I’ll have to hit a lyric search engine; they’re usually about 70 per cent right. What’s missing from Within is the giddy gaucheness of “Belong,” or the dead-cool funk base of “Feel It All Around.” It’s a little too smoov (for you Roxy fans: really, is “Avalon” as great as “Virginia Plain”? No, it’s not). But Greene’s fattened up his setlist considerably, successfully stepping around the received wisdom about chillwave auteur lifespans. He can surely roll, if not exactly rock.
Junior Boys’ charms generally outweigh their chief shortcoming – namely, that they don’t write songs (go ahead, try singing something other than “Hazel” or “In The Morning”) – because Greenspan’s a good singer and the JB groove style (implied over explicit, nearly every time) fosters some seriously polyrhythmic dancefloor contortions. The records sound great. Still, I always get the sense they’re making it up as they go along, cut ‘n’ pasting fragments together until they find an outro. Wonder how much tape splicing they’d’ve done in the days before Pro Tools. Lots, I bet. But when they’re on form, watch out: meandering or not, “You’ll Improve Me” and “Itchy Fingers” are remix-ready floor fillers, and the dizzy echo orgy at the end of “Second Chance” is some kind of stirring. “Playtime” is as moody as film music, another in JB’s long line of narcotic time-outs. The brittle, supersized “Banana Ripple” sounds like a standalone single tacked on as a reissue bonus track, but it salvages True’s slightly undercooked final third.
With the whitest man in indie at the helm I never expected something as boss as the groovy Neu!-stomp of “Doors Unlocked And Open,” but I’ve played it a lot and it’s wearing well. DCFC never nursemaided me through any O.C.-type tribulations, so I’m not weepy over the abandonment of a classic Cutie sound; the fleshier production and fatter textural presence of Codes And Keys are welcome touches that put a few tufts of chest hair on that weedy, Eng Lit professor’s voice of Gibbard’s. He seems less needy now. Of course, he also married up. Cross that off the bucket list. Side one’s where the action is, where grasp meets reach: the title track’s thumping piano and orchestral dolour, the nagging guitar riff and helicoptering vocal eruptions running through “You Are A Tourist,” the unhurried Another Green World-like intro into “Unobstructed Views.”
After a long hibernation, the best summer stock band since The Beach Boys takes a spin down reunion road, delivering one stone gem (“Sad Song”) and enough personable second-drawer nuggets to make the wait worthwhile. Apart from the grin-inducing Pavlovian response to old gulpy floating them lyrical airballs over that choppy, all-American new wave bounce, Move Like This does suffer a bit for the big hole left by Ben Orr’s death (cancer, 2000): namely, the helium element his lovely, crushed croon brought to those thick vocal harmony stacks. Still, Ric Ocasek remains a force of nature, with loads of good song ideas brought at least halfway to fruition through sensibly simpatico production and a snappy vibe that eschews the band’s occasional experimental streak of yore for immediate thrills. Pitched halfway between the airbrushed pop of mid-80s Cars or “Emotion In Motion,” and the engaging but dressed-down rock of Ocasek’s later solo oeuvre, Move Like This could stand a little more song sculpting: the half of the album produced by Jacknife Lee (including “Sad Song,” “Blue Tip and “Hits Me”) is a mite more vivacious than the band’s self-prods. But you know, these guys bounced before anyone said scram, and the timing of their re-emergence is peachy.
Moment Bends starts promisingly but by the end of the record I wanted to throttle these guys. I think the brief was to create mainstream songs with as little instrumental ornamentation as possible, but the hollowness is maddening. There’re five people on the back cover. I want to make a joke about Australians and light bulbs. Three of the first tunes are serious replayables, throwback synthpop of various ‘80s colours, featuring neat, fat keyboard leads and keeper vocal melodies, but the remainder plays like a band running over budget and out of time. Moment Bends loses the bet where minimalism covers barrenness.
Strobe-light intensity keyboard pop that’s more clotted than kinetic, a shortfall they might’ve addressed with a single, proper outside producer. Friendly Fires’ take on synthpop – especially the fast songs – largely shuns vintage sounds and playable arrangements for stuttering, chopped-up beds of keyboards that occasionally overwhelm: I almost tossed “Live Those Days Tonight” and “Blue Cassette” overboard due to excessive chatter. No flies on the spectacular “Hurting,” though, which lights the sky like a full moon bursting through cloud cover and maintains its star turn for five minutes of superballing house squibs, Ed Macfarlane’s Daryl Hall-like tenor-into-falsetto lead, and a no-quit chorus worthy of early MTV. Delirium on ‘roids, and the best song they’ve given us yet. I can’t hear many of Pala’s songs passing the singer-with-guitar litmus test, but the sheer effort expended upon keeping “True Love,” “Chimes” and “Hawaiian Air” from collapsing is worth a huzzah or two.
Cue another round of twitchy art rock and witchy Macbeth singing voices. Second verse, same as the first. TVotR remind me of bands like The Doors, The Cars, The Ramones: good, yes, but stuck in a moment they just can’t get out of. The new TVotR opens with the gang sounding exactly like The National for all of about 90 seconds, before resuming their appointed rounds. But Nine Types Of Light sports no adrenaline rush to match “Wolf Like Me” and no barnstorming funk to rival “Golden Age.” There’s a nice mid-album peak: the elegiac “Killer Crane” actually sounds like a sunrise to me, and lead single “Will Do”’s an affecting, melodic, straightforward love song. Both sound great. But by the time the record winds down with “Caffeinated Consciousness”’s grinding, lazy, two-chord “Guns In The Sky” verse melody, Nine Types has mouldered as often as its smouldered. Not as good as previous efforts.
Gloomy, taut synthpop in a darkwave vein, delivered with impressive reserve considering tools at leader and singer Katie Stelmanis’ disposal. In more than one way Feel It Break reminds me of Eurythmics circa Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), itself a terrific artefact of similar atmospherically melodic starkness. The opera-schooled Stelmanis stacks coolly controlled vocal tracks with crackling energy and harmonic invention, but the surgical preciseness of her vibrato-filled leads is what’ll catch the ear. Aren’t we lucky she digs synths? One of Break’s lesser lights (throbbing club track “Beat And The Pulse”) got all the early notices due to a NSFW video, but there’re several stronger songs on tap: “Hate Crime,” “The Villain” and “Shoot The Water” form a 12-minute, mid-album stretch as good as anything I’ve heard all year, and the slinky, twinkling “Darken Her Horse” has all the icy hauteur of early Goldfrapp, or even mid-period Banshees. Beautifully recorded and nicely paced, the first full-length Austra feels like that distant rumble of thunder, portending something bigger that stays on the mind until the rain explodes the cloud cover. It’s the record I’ve returned to most often in the first half of 2011.
Fleet Foxes was a band many were compelled to listen to once, in the wake of critical ejaculate spattered so far and wide it made you mute the world around you when “White Winter Hymnal” came on the radio. You know, just in case. (Me, I’ve got that weak-in-the-presence-of-intricate-harmony-singing thing going, too.) Now, pastoral throwbacks are as much of a challenge for me as Trans is for CSN&Y fans, but good songs sometimes trump mundane idioms. Happens a few times here. While there’s nothing as gorgeous as the first LP’s “He Doesn’t Know Why,” Helplessness Blues does sport the robust “Lorelai,” which soars and sparkles like My Morning Jacket’s “Golden,” even as it borrows a little too liberally from Dylan’s “4th Time Around.” (Copyists abound in every arena, see.) In the interests of disclosure: “Sim Sala Bim,” The Plains/Bitter Dancer” and “The Shrine/An Argument” have been on repeat, too. But the rest of Blues is slipping from memory.
Once you’re clued in – hardcore poster boy Wesley Eisold has become a vampire! – the band name does a fair job of describing the LP’s content. As if sired by sundry black-clad netherworlders, it’s starkly beautiful, glowering and spacious-but-mammoth-sounding. This stuff’s always compelling in its basic state. Ever since Scott Walker’s sepulchral baritone put the rock into baroque there’s been a steady stream of pale-faced men overcompensating for their 98 lb. frames, and although I’m sure none of Bowie, Iggy, Curtis, Murphy, Eldritch or Cocker would ever talk back to mother with that voice, somehow it always sounds terrific married to the right backing tracks. These’ll do. Eisold’s sneaky pop streak keeps Cherish The Light Years hopping. Half the songs sound like lost singles from one of DJ Lazarus’ darkwave club nights: the bellowing opener “The Great Pan Is Dead,” the Faint-biting “Icons Of Summer,” and a pair of ridiculously titled tunes (“Alchemy And You” and “Villains Of The Moon”) that do the muscularly danceable spirit of New Order’s Brotherhood proud. While we’re sifting through the time capsule, my absolute favourite has to be “Confetti,” a spectacularly baleful homage to Depeche and 4AD both, dropping a magnificently anguished, cod-Bowie vocal over a pulsing bed of electro-tom fills, crystal-clear guitar figures and cascading synths. It’s shamelessly retrograde, even sporting a perfectly gothic yearbook quote-as-hook: “It’s important that evil people look good on the outside.” Favourite song of the month – or 1986 – right here.
The record Andy Taylor probably figured they didn’t have left in them. All You Need Is Now is overgenerous, not flinty. Must be nice to think you’ve a surplus of songs 13 albums into your career. Even Rio was only about 45 minutes long. The hour-long run time affords opportunity to skeet shoot the weaker tunes, but aside from a lame Mark Ronson house track with a bleating Le Bon-Ana Matronic duet and one of those we’re-logged-in-and-turned-on mid-life crisis things, there’s precious little to get upset about. Among the many uptempo, could-be singles, “Too Bad You’re So Beautiful” has an immensely satisfying verse melody, “Girl Panic!” is as agreeably swishy as any of the debut album’s 45s, and the hustling disco bounce of “Being Followed” mines moody Euro verse/sunlit chorus duality with great skill. The six-minute “The Man Who Stole A Leopard” doesn’t hide its “The Chauffeur” genesis, but its execution is admirable. Nick Rhodes and original Duran singer Stephen Duffy made a good record together about a decade ago, which sparked fan talk about how the new romantic vibe still suited the band, if only they had the conviction to try it out under the Duran banner. They’ve done that here. The record’s slightly form-over-content – Andy’s buzzing riffs are missed; Roger’s metronomic fills are in short supply, producer Ronson’s layering is pushy in spots – but the enthusiasm is infectious. Easily surpassing expectations at this advanced stage, no Duran fan should pass this by; most new wave enthusiasts will find some treasure within.
In the wake of LCD’s retirement, DFA’s poured its faith into Holy Ghost!, and while I don’t hear them as being wittily ironic enough to challenge James Murphy’s defunct band on an intellectual scale – lyrically, anyway – everybody knows stiff-backed Italo disco-cum-new wave lifts indie kids out of their chairs four times out of five. “Hold On,” an old single recalled to give the LP a boost, benefits from Murph’s co-prod, sporting a dirty serrated synth loop and lightly phased keyboards straight out of CHIC’s “Everybody Dance.” It’s addictive. So is “Wait & See,” the live opener – pristine, John Hughes flick-worthy pop tricked out with an octave-bounding bass line, buoyant synth pad hits and a wordless, boy band refrain. If the song were a cheerleader, you’d call it Muffy or Buffy. It sounded dead brilliant in concert; it’s nearly as irrepressible on record. Throughout, the candy floss superficiality is extremely agreeable, but sameyness lurks. There are other bass lines, dudes. Holy Ghost! isn’t quite as inventive as the first Sally Shapiro record – still my favourite Italo throwback – but after all the great-sounding carbon copies, there’s an amazing curveball tacked on at album’s end: “Some Children” leaves the ghosts of Bobby Orlando and Baltimora behind for a deeper dig into the crate o’ soul, blending a youth choir and yacht rocker Michael McDonald (!) into a confection every bit as clever as the old-school woody boogie Hercules And Love Affair crafted a few years ago. With a few caveats, Holy Ghost! is genuine boombox bounty.
Somewhat like the new Duran album – hell, somewhat like the newish OMD too – a way back playback comprising old tropes given a spit shine: lots of keybs and popping bass lines, and a very familiar singer taking camp followers all the way back to 1986. It’s a shame none of these period recalls ever dial the clock back an additional three-to-five years, when these bands were flirting with greatness, not painting by numbers. For not the first time, and I suppose not the last, the artist presents an album in search of the perfect single, 10 four-minute, radio-friendly ditties with lots of surface charm but of variable wattage. I’d give in to the easy joke implied by the album’s title, but Spoons – just Gordon Deppe and Sandy Horne this time around – are such sweethearts I’d rather highlight the better efforts: Deppe’s “Imperfekt,” “Breaking In” and “End Of Story” are slick and punchy, and Horne leads a breezy summertime keeper in “Escape.” The songs are grounded by a few too many fat saw-wave synth leads and flat drums to buck the nice-guys-finish-in-the-middle-of-the-pack trend. Good to have ‘em back though: I’ve caught Spoons in concert a few times, and if you can get out to a show I guarantee a quality night out.
“Codex” and “Lotus Flower” are smashingly beautiful recordings, and I like a few others too, but The King Of Limbs is really just a functionally decent, minor record from a major band, and historical recollections will be reduced to a few comments about the curious lengths the band took to protect that mediocrity by cleverly controlling the fanfare surrounding its release. Not a starter record for the uninitiated, but the second side’s a pretty decent reminder of how production and arrangement can fluff up second-drawer songs. Just once I’d like to see what these guys would come up with if we put them on a desert island without Pro Tools and Nigel Godrich. New Order and Smiths covers?
Sort of like the Brewis brothers’ Field Music and The Week That Was projects rolled into a one-man band, with emphasis placed on synths, not guitars. There’s a lot to like here, from the angular, almost architectural rhythms that support and eventually consume “Tracers,” to the expansive, sky-wide pop of “Raw Spectacle” and “Miscalculations.” The steady-as-she-goes equipoise of Graham Van Pelt’s approach keeps indulgence at bay – tasteful refrain abounds – although it also straightjackets his brightest pop song, “Spectre.” As a sound painting, “Spectre” is a lovely, soaring thing. It also needs a live drummer’s gristle. Could be a concert revelation waiting to happen. Generally speaking, an intelligent, crafty, nearly-there record, where the only fault is an overly measured gait.
