No. 21 of 2011: Cut Copy - Zonoscope

Sometimes all I want from a song is a good melody and a few minutes to myself to dance around like an idiot. With the gluttony of records released over the past few years which have been labeled as dance or dance-rock or dance-pop, pick your favorite, there has been a distinct lack of albums which have actually made me want to get up and dance or at the very least, nod my head vigorously in the car. Back in 2008, Cut Copy released In Ghost Colours and with its immediately danceable hooks and kinetic day-glo beats, it made its point with an ample amount of bombast and synthy-goodness. But it seemed like such a definitive statement on the whole genre that a follow-up seemed destined to pale in comparison.

In the following years, artists from different backgrounds broke new ground in deconstructing dance music and brought their own divergent influences to bear on the results. These included Robyn, whose own Body Talk series of EP’s set the high watermark for the perfect combination of dance rhythms and emotionally connective pop structures and LCD Soundsystem who continued to channel the electronic glam rock brilliance of Brian Eno and David Bowie to great effect. These artists brought a resurgence of interest to this quietly partitioned genre of music. But there were still bands finding new and creative ways to develop their own take on this musical meltng pot of a genre.

After In Ghost Colours, Cut Copy went about finding ways to inject a singular personality into a genre which was fast becoming overrun with artists who felt they had something to say just because they downloaded Young Americans and Come Away With ESG. But without the experience to tell the difference between ripping off an influence and paying respectful homage, these artists let the songs become bloated and haphazardly constructed.  On Zonoscope, no such deficiencies exist.  From the start with "Need You Now", the inherent musical ability of the band allow them to subvert, while also confirming, our expectations as listeners.  It's a 6 minute blast of smooth synths and longing vocals made all the more effective by the deceptively simple melody running throughout.  Follow-up "Take Me Over" takes a bouncing rhythm that wouldn't have been out of place on Speaking In Tongues and marries it to a calypso tinged guitar and drum line which only accents the varied influences of the band.  Album closer "Sun God" delves even further into the bands interest in 80's synth-pop, most notably late-era New Order, and at 15 minutes long can be seen as the culmination of their work to bring their own version of dance music to life.  And it seems that their hard work has paid off--I'm dancing like an idiot right now.

Tracklisting:

01. Need You Now (listen to the mp3 below)
02. Take Me Over
03. Where I’m Going
04. Pharaohs & Pyramids
05. Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution
06. Strange Nostalgia for the Future
07. This Is All We’ve Got
08. Alisa
09. Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat
10. Corner of the Sky
11. Sun God

No. 22 of 2011: Radiohead - The King Of Limbs

The assumptions we have as listeners can play a significant part in our enjoyent of any given record, more so when it's an album by a band that we love and from whom we've come to expect greatness.  No band more personifies this idea of assumed expectation than Radiohead.  Through the course of their 20+ years as a band, in one form or another, they've consistently released challenging, though generally accessible, albums which has continually pushed the boundaries of their own sound, while also placing emphasis on the elastic nature of rock music.  From the bland alt-rock theatrics of Pablo Honey to the fractured, syncopated rhythms of Kid A and Amnesiac, the disparate narrative discography of Radiohead has been just as discussed as the music itself.  And fans have been divisively arguing about these albums for as long as they've been listening.  They've been grateful for the releases obviously, but they've come to expect that Radiohead will repeatedly push their music in new and surprising ways, that any meandering or retread would be viewed as lazy or as a band stagnating. And so their last few albums, though full of the creative twists and turns we've come to expect, have been pointed to by disappointed critics and fans alike as a  band running out of gas and gradually repeating themselves. The fact that neither of these statements are true only goes to show the high expectations that listeners have come to associate with each new Radiohead release.

The King Of Limbs takes less of an abrupt turn from their recent releases than it does a circular reimagining of those techinques. And despite the shorter, though not unequivocally short, running time of this album, Radiohead allow each song to bend and expand naturally, never pushing it further than its own abilities can handle. Opener "Bloom" borrows liberally from the chopped up beats of Amnesiac and proceeds to run the song through its paces, bringing out the jazzier aspects of Selway's drumming.  Lead single "Lotus Flower" dials back the noise and fractured drums to allow what is ostensibly a pop song in disguise to rise to the surface, it's rhythmic lead balanced with strongly wavering vocals from Yorke. It doesn't hurt that it's the most coventionally built song on The King Of Limbs. Other tracks like "Codex" and "Give Up The Ghost" still have the musical fingerprints on their previous albums present but the execution sparkles and gains momentum as they find the cold heart of these songs and allow it to burst forth and envelope the listener.  The somber piano that leads Yorke along on "Codex" hits you on an emotional level rarely heard, except maybe on past Radiohead releases, so possibly that is something we've to come expect from them as well.  Radiohead are nothing if not passionate about their music and our involvement in it as listeners.  Even on an album so delicately sterile sounding on first listen, there are cracks in the bleak facade where they allow even the barest trace of light to filter in.  Even when they dial back the theatrics a bit and let the inherent musical creativity of these tracks shine, they never attain anything short of the grand musical intent of their previous releases.  And even if these songs don't have that need to be accepted, the need to be canonized, they exist and in a time when a great majority of music is best described as the product of some merchandising schematic, I'll be quite content to let Radiohead have the freedom to do whatever they want.

Tracklisting:

01. Bloom
02. Morning Mr Magpie
03. Little by Little
04. Feral
05. Lotus Flower (listen to the mp3 below)
06. Codex
07. Give Up the Ghost
08. Separator

No. 23 of 2011: Real Estate - Days

Sometimes its the simple things that can be the most memorable. When discussing the term in relation to music, there are numerous factors which come into play, not least of all is its' absolute subjectivity. What one person finds simple, another may label as lazy or half-formed. And so the debate continues as to the exact nature of this elusive idea, when in reality there is no definitive answer to satisfy everyone.

But simple means more than just the absence of complexity. With music, it can come to define entire genres and trends in popular music. And different albums handle this decidedly complex idea in varying ways and to varying degrees of success. You can listen to the barely-there acoustics of an album like Days In The Wake by Palace Brothers or the acoustical theatrics of The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death by John Fahey and realize that simple is not limited to an idea of stripped down instrumentation. The ideas that simmer beneath the surface of these albums maintain their potency, not because they are considered simple, though in execution they could indeed be labeled as such, but through the force of their intense creative construction. And the opposite can be true as well. Just look to the radio for bands who think that an acoustic guitar equals "feeling". But to equate the idea of a song being simple with just its instrumentation is obviously missing the point. There are more things to consider when making that assessment.

Among the current crop of bands which have fixated on the breezy, carefree aspects of indie rock, Real Estate ply more weight and creative ingenuity from this often derided musical niche than should be considered able. On Days, the follow-up to their self-titled debut, they've managed to use the swirling, chiming guitars which wound around the songs on that album and polished them to a fine sheen. The interplay between singer Martin Courtney's vocals, the clever fretwork of guitarist Mondanile, quicksilver bass of Alex Bleeker and insistent though never overpowering drums of Etienne Duguay--who left the band this year and was replaced by drummer Jonah Maurer--drift in among each other so easily and seemlessly that the band never appears to be out of sync with one another, this musical congruity shepherding the bands collective creativity to its logical end. Opener "Easy" defines the album as it rolls along freely towards some hazy destination, where the journey taken can be more important than where you wind up being. The guitars cleanly chime in and out, almost seeming to be plucked out of the air. They're draped across the barest of musical structures to create a testament to what a band can do when focused on how simple music can be. And while this song never feels as though the band held back or purposefully stripped down the sound, it does feel simplified. The vocals never feel overcooked, nor the backing tracks superfluous. "It's Real" and "Green Aisles" are both showcases for how Real Estate eschew popular indie trends and focus on how best to integrate their own 80's pop gleam influences and develop a sound which neither adhers too close to homage nor feels wildly exclusive to those who fell in love with their debut. By taking the concept of what simple can be and twisting in on itself, Real Estate have shown that this idea can be whatever you want it to be, whether it be a clear interpretation of their own influences or a simple melody played expertly by those who cherish the idea behind it.  As a cohesive whole, Days stands as proof that a band need not be anchored to a specific musical loyalty to invoke the ageless simplicity which comes from listening to something that resonates so singularly within you.

Tracklisting:

01. Easy
02. Green Aisles
03. It’s Real (listen to the mp3 below)
04. Kinder Blumen
05. Out Of Tune
06. Municipality
07. Wonder Years
08. Three Blocks
09. Younger Than Yesterday
10. All The Same

No. 24 of 2011: St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

Over the course of the past 6 decades, music has successfully documented the examination and critical breakdown of the psyche of the average person, whether it dealt with the emotional or the physical.  With music being so personally subjective, it seems the perfect vehicle for this kind of extended, indepth charcater assessment. Let me add one caveate though--the majority of these songs seem to deal with the makeup of the male mind, whereas the female mind has been given secondrate treatment in regard to its own examination.  Not that there hasn't been some songs dealing with the complex segmentation of fears, hopes, and basic emotional responses in relation to women, but they seem to be superficial at the best of times, with some exceptions of course.  The banshee wail of Janis Joplin and the chaotic, bordering-on-damaged vocals of pre-Jefferson Starship Grace Slick are some of these exceptions to the rule.  They did successfuly share the anger and defiance in equal measure that exists in the female mind.  And rarely had it been so devestatingly displayed.  But recently there has been a dirth of artists, female or not, that have delved deeply and seriously into the layered aspects of the female psyche.

Then in 2007, St. Vincent--nee Annie Clark--released Marry Me and all that changed.  By marrying the intensely personal lyrical designs of her influences, including those we've already mentioned, along with the technically massive guitar squall of recent guitarists like Marnie Stern and Carrie Brownstein, Clark managed to add her own personal touch to these already distinctive touchstones of indie rock.  In 2009, her next album Actor showcased a newfound confidence and willingness to experiment within her own musical world. And while this resulted in some songs feeling a bit overstuffed, the risks were worth taking and allowed her the freedom to approach her next album without rules or self-guided expectations.

On Strange Mercy, her efforts come to fruition as she delves ever deeper into her own complicated feelings.  The songs hit harder and ring emotionally sharper than anything she has released previously.  She has always had a razors edge humor about her place in the world but now she extends that caustic wit to include the listener as well.  We follow her as she digs deeper into her own subconscious and the collective subconscious of women in general.  With songs like "Surgeon", with its morbid connection between relationships and medical imagery, and "Northern Lights", which documents the hesitancy inherent in a questionable relationship, Clark carefully dissects her contrary feelings toward the emotional connections which are the lifeblood of any person.  She comes away with as many uncertainties as confirmations but she accepts that this is the way that relationships work, that we won't always have all the answers but manage anyhow.  That emotional purges come uncalled but need to resolved nonetheless.  The process by which we cope with, and further our own understanding of, each other lay at the heart of Strange Mercy, a comforting and also disquieting confirmation of all the things we hope for and fear concerning the personal relationships we struggle with each day.  And while she may not be able to answer all our questions, Clark allows us an unfettered view of the world through her own distinct personality, and through this understanding, she hopes we may be better able to know her and what it's like to live in her head.

Tracklisting:

01. Chloe in the Afternoon
02. Cruel
03. Cheerleader
04. Surgeon (listen to the mp3 below)
05. Northern Lights
06. Strange Mercy
07. Neutered Fruit
08. Champagne Year
09. Dilettante
10. Hysterical Strength
11. Year of the Tiger

No. 25 of 2011: Atlas Sound - Parallax

Does there come a point when an artist becomes so prolific over such a short period of time that the listener simply tunes out? That after so much so quickly, we begin to feel oversaturated with an artists particular sound. In the past, this would have been less of an issue as the release of new music was far less available in past decades as record companies kept tight watch over their intellectual properties. But with the instant gratification support of the internet, we've become a collective of over-consumers who regard the expedited release of any material as a given right. And as much as I hate to admit it, I place myself in that group as well. I think it has more to do with the fact that so much music is so easily acquired we feel that an album we know we will like should be made just as available as all the stuff we have on clue about. There is also an undercurrent of collection-minded people who only want the most. The most music, the most songs...the most anything. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with this mindset, but taken to extremes can rob a listener of the joy once felt by simply placing a needle in a groove or putting a cd into a player.

Bradford Cox plays host to many peoples assumptions of an overactive musician, whether his music is liked or not. With his main gig in Deerhunter, his sideline affair as Atlas Sound, and the bevy of constant demos and song fragments he releases through his blog, he certainly takes on the appearance of someone who is infinitely uncomfortable sitting still, musically speaking. And you'd wonder if his fans, after becoming so familiar with his musical output, would be hesitant to allow him further leeway with regard to any new material. But as each consecutive official release, and pouring out of demos, has shown, his fans are still sticking to him, anxious for any new material, whatever it may be.

On his newest release as Atlas Sound, Cox expands his range and comes away with an album as distinct and immediate as anything he's released, in either of his bands. The very aspect that we spoke of initally, that is the over consumption of music, has actually benefited Cox in his own way, by allowing the musical chaff of his extensive unofficial discography to fall by the wayside as the more fully structured songs take precendence. He takes the best of what began as mere fragments and carefully layers with them just the right amount of guitar, strangely unfiltered vocals, and an aesthetic so fully realized that it seems as though Atlas Sound may possibly become his more immediately relatable band. With songs like "Te Amo" with it repeated synth loops and lovely ballad "Terra Incognito", his skills as a songwriter have become the focal point as opposed to previous releases where his vocals were buried beneath a dense musical swathe. Parallax may be the most cohesive musical statement Cox has yet to impart to his fans; it never feels piecemeal or only tangentially related. He's been able to successfully micro-manage being in both bands, and by taking the best from his bandmates in Deerhunter and from his own personal releases, Cox has created an absolute stunner of an album, one that never relinquishes control of its often dense personal narratives nor feels overtly tied to one thematic element. It feels freed from the musical confines which his fans may often place him in, and hope he'll continue in. But if this is the last record Cox puts out for a while, I'll be content as it will hard to create something more consistently listenable and brought to life with more creative musical intent than Parallax. But to be honest, by the time I've written this, I'm sure he's already got another hundred demos ready to give out.

Tracklisting:

01. The Shakes
02. Amplifiers
03. Te Amo
04. Parallax
05. Modern Aquatic Nightsongs
06. Mona Lisa
07. Praying Man
08. Doldrums
09. My Angel Is Broken
10. Terra Incognita (listen to the mp3 below)
11. Flagstaff
12. Nightworks

No. 26 of 2011: Yuck - Yuck

The 90's revivalism of 2011 has been well documented both in critical circles and in my own best of 2011 list. For people who didn't necessarily grow up in that transitional period of time, I can imagine that it seems a gold mine of influences to be plundered and in truth, it is...for those who can do it well.  Otherwise, we get some defanged version of how those bands sounded.  However, some releases this year contained amazing insight into what made those bands function as well as they did and how they produced many of the genre defining songs from that decade.  Bands like The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Cymbals Eat Guitars placed particular emphasis on the crunch and sometimes-forgotten melodic heft that the 90's developed and that is prone to be overlooked in critical reassessments.

With early showcase song "Daughter" in 2010, Yuck displayed an innate knack for realizing the multi-factedness of what the 90's had to offer.  It wasn't just another Superchunk/Pavement aping attempt at reviving an appreciation of that time and those bands.  Yuck built upon a simple piano-ish riff leading into one of the best build-up slow burners of last year.  With their self-titled debut, Yuck have gone deeper into the riches of the 90's and come away with a fresh and immediately captivating take on the bands and sounds which have so influenced them and dozens of other current bands.  Surging Superchunk-inspired opener "Get Away" tears through its runtime with a passionate insistence of the resonance of its own inlfuences.  "Georgia" allows the band room to showcase the poppier sound of the 90's, with its typical boy-girl relationship tropes. Yuck never allow the seeming novelty of their sound to allow the listener to forget that this is a singular band with a very definite musical identity and not a greatest hits of 90's indie rock, though in all honesty it makes a great case that such a compilation would be pretty fucking great.  

Tracklisting:

01. Get Away (listen to the mp3 below)
02. The Wall
03. Shook Down
04. Holing Out
05. Suicide Policeman
06. Georgia
07. Suck
08. Stutter
09. Operation
10. Sunday
11. Rose Gives a Lilly
12. Rubber

No. 27 of 2011: Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

This is not Aqualung nor is it 2112 territory but we are, whether we like it or not, listening to a concept album. And as such, there are a few things that we know are going to be present. We can expect the overly detailed and thoroughly confounding story of some humble protagonist doing....something and eventually, or not, overcoming whatever it was that needed to be overcome. The story generally concerns an overarching narrative storyline that exists to play host to a wide range of ethical or emotional lessons that the artist wishes to relate. Needless to say, these albums are generally thought of as pretentious, egotistical exercises in excess. But every so often, an artist presents an album steeped in its concept histories but that breaks free of those same boundaries to present a story told exactingly, but never overly confusing, and invests it with an energy which transforms what might have been an otherwise ungainly narrative into a logical, cohesive story.

On David Comes To Life, Fucked Up manage to deliver an album which by its nature is categorically a concept album but can and does function as an album bereft of the confining ideals of that musical form. The crushing guitars run down the beat as singer Damian Abraham's vocal screeches accompany the bass sprinting toward the end of each song. The sheer "much" of this album can seem to be a bit daunting on first listen and doesn't quite let up on repeated listens, but what does slowly expose itself are the buried melodies and seemingly indecipherable lyrics chronicling main character David's finding and losing love and the acceptance which must come or else fall irrefutably into the darkness. The band manages this grand feat with what could be considered a limited musical palette. The guitars are very loud, the bass throbs away, punching its way through the chaos, and drums and vocals wind around each other as each song hammers its way through the storyline. The occasional interruption comes in the form of Cults singer Madeline Follin and singer Jennifer Castle, playing the two female characters who intertwine with David over the course of the album. The massive squall is shelved for a brief time on the acoustic anomaly opening of “A Slanted Tone” and the harmony-laden backing vocals on “The Other Shoe”, though both manage to resume their intensity shortly thereafter. And in the intense personification of David and his cast of characters, David Comes To Life becomes less an act of purposed storytelling than a bands hard earned rite of passage, where the ideas of what Fucked Up should sound like collide with what Abraham and Co. feel like doing. It’s an aggressive stance from a band that has never compromised and never tried to soften their sound to please the non-diehard fans. You either give them the leeway to do what they want or get the fuck out of their way.

Tracklisting:

01. Let Her Rest
02. Queen of Hearts
03. Under My Nose
04. The Other Shoe (listen to the mp3 below)
05. Turn The Season
06. Running on Nothing
07. Remember My Name
08. A Slanted Tone
09. Serve Me Right
10. Truth I Know
11. Life in Paper
12. Ship of Fools
13. A Little Death
14. I Was There
15. Inside a Frame
16. The Recursive Girl
17. One More Night
18. Lights Go Up

No. 28 of 2011: Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien

After releasing an album so indebted to the hard rockers of 90's indie music, it seems prudent for a band to take stock of its own creative viability and determine what steps they need to take in order to avoid being pigeonholed as only backward looking rockers.  At some point the bands own musical identity needs to rise above their influences and exert the proper amount of pull to allow them to come at the music in a slightly different way, a more subtly influential way.  You can only mine the sound of bands like Built To Spill or Modest Mouse for so long before you go from repectful homage to deliberate rip-off.  But fortunately, for a band still in the youth of its tenure, Cymbals Eat Guitars have the ability to turn these influences, which permeated so much of their debut album, inward and have created an album as indebted to those influences as to their own singular musical vision.

On Lenses Alien, the overriding sense is of a band which has become so enamored and familiar with their own influences that they've integrated the best parts of them and come away with a sound as much their own influential assimilation as respectful acknowledgment of their forebears. That's not to say that Cymbals Eat Guitars have lost their own sense of creative direction, far from it.  But it's through this direct link to the bands which they admire that they've found a place where they can manipulate the sounds of these archetypal works and develop their own take on modern indie rock.  Deceptive from the get-go with lengthy opener "Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name)", a song concerned with the narration of an unsettling protaganist who may or may not be someone you should be afraid of, the track showcases the feedback soaked guitar washes we expect from them but is immediately darker and displays a depth of musical maturity which has been built upon since their debut.  Other tracks like the shimmering, chunky guitar rock of "Definite Darkness" play freely with the constructs of indie rock while slightly augmenting them with their own creative arrangements to develop something familiar, while at the same time feeling completely original.  Cymbals Eat Guitars may not need you to guess who they like to listen to; it's obvious really, but it's that communal respect and admiration, that knowingness between them and us that draws you in to see the underlying differences and burts of ecstatic musical joy as more than just a band playing to the strenghths of their influences, though they are.  This is music which stands on its own, held up by the respect they have for their peers and influences and for us as listeners.  By never pandering to our expectations of what their sophomore album should be, they have given us a new view into their own surging, in-love-with-sound headspace and to be honest, it feels pretty comfortable there.

Tracklisting:

01. Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name)
02. Shore Points
03. Keep Me Waiting
04. Plainclothes
05. Definite Darkness (listen to the mp3 below)
06. Another Tunguska
07. The Current
08. Wavelengths
09. Secret Family
10. Gary Condit

No. 29 of 2011: Cults - Cults

The rapid assimilation of music, due in part to the boundless reaches of the internet, has brought about a kind of  DIY renaissance, where the digital savvy comingle with the analog pushers and tape-to-tape junkies.  This melting pot of homebrew music has been both a blessing and curse for those of us who value the accessibility of new music.   Because while we now have hundreds of thousands of songs at our fingertips, the same sheer volume of music becomes a stumbling block in our path as we try to pick apart what we find.  The good, the bad, and the hardly-worth-a-glance bands that once were limited to hometown bars and hole-in-the wall clubs now all have the same venue to hoist their wares. Whether it's Facebook, Myspace(?!?), or Bandcamp, these bands can now put forth as constant a barrage of new music as they care to create and in this steady stream of releases, the listener can often get lost among the rushes.

So it's a pleasant surprise to be see a band which has garnered such a positive critical buzz take the strengths of their less than extensive discography, three songs in fact--and great ones to be sure--and release a major label debut that not only builds on their past indie-pop sound but also breaks them free of any confining musical labels.  On their self-titled debut, Cults have successfully integrated their love of Spector influenced pop with their undeniably catchy take on modern indie rock.  The results take the well-worn pop ideas of love and youthful (see self-righteous) independence and condensed them into a half hour of some of the most memorable pop songs this year.  The album hits its stride immeditaely with opener "Abducted" which likens love to being held hostage, a somewhat naive sentiment maybe but one that still resonates with the listener through the sheer exuberant thrill of the music.  Other tracks such as "You Know What I Mean" and "Oh my God" reinforce the feeling of youthful revery coursing through this album while at the same time placing a weight and heft that hints at the further emotional depth that Cults seem to be inclined to mine. Despite the quick ascension and quicker major label signing, Cults have never compromised on their sound, even if that sound was never particularly intellectual, though still emotionally connective.  As the debuts slowly fades away after closer "Rave On", and the heady rush of pop polish has gone, Cults slowly walk away from the stage, allowing us to keep step if we want.  Maybe we can have a cup of coffee together.  After all, they're nothing if not inviting.

Tracklisting:

01. Abducted (listen to the mp3 below)
02. Go Out­side
03. You Know What I Mean
04. Most Wanted
05. Walk at Night
06. Never Heal Myself
07. Oh My God
08. Never Saw the Point
09. Bad Things
10. Bumper
11. Rave On

No. 30 of 2011: Washed Out - Within And Without

For a band so associated with the Chillwave backlash nonsense, Washed Out seem pretty comfortable right about now. After a well regarded EP, from most crtitcs anyway, Ernest Greene, the man behind the Washed Out moniker, took the experience of constantly defending his own musical output and used that to build upon the sounds of his first full-length.  The fact that Greene took what was probably one of the more diffciult times in his life, that being the indie-sphere's blind retiliation against himself and fellow cohorts, Toro Y Moi, Neon Indian, and others, and used that self-defining time to push himself creatively, to allow those same barriers to become opportunites to refine and sharpen his focus is a fairly impressive accomplishment.  Many bands, just out of the gate so to speak, could not have handled that extra scrutiny and, let's face it, the downright hositlity towards something which they only wanted to share with others.  And as with any artist out to prove him or herself , Greene took what lessens he'd learned from the reception of the Life Of Leisure ep and created what amounted to an iron-willed stance against those who care more about berating a musical idea than in debating the merits of an artists work.

Within And Without stands as a personal statement of intent towards those who'd just as soon condemn Greene for making more of "that" music, than to allow him the time to expand his sound naturally and perhaps develop the intricate nature of what Chillwave may have to offer.  Much of the feeling and mood from that first ep shows up here in a slightly more polished and aesthetically creative way.  The synths roll and percolate around the delicately deceptive beats and Greene sings/moans above it all, a careful watcher of the ever changing patterns beneath him.  "Amor Fati" with its bouncing beat and hazy, inviting vocals allow us to see the free-form nature of what this genre has to offer.  This song functions less as an avenue to display his creative prowess, though it is here in spades, than to offer a welcome to those who've come back to see what Greene has in store for them--those who never joined the mass exodus away from the band in the first place.  Album opener "Eyes Be Closed" is the perfect introduction to Washed Out's bright, synthy landscape.  The pulsing waves of chiming synths wash over the distant vocals as the beat plays catch up and the song lays opens a striking musical vista where there is no intrinsic worry or fears, at least for the time you're there.  Greene extends his hand and simply asks you to do the same.

Tracklisting:

01. Eyes Be Closed
02. Echoes
03. Amor Fati (listen to the mp3 below)
04. Soft
05. Far Away
06. Before
07. You And I
08. Within And Without
09. A Dedication

No. 31 of 2011: The Antlers - Burst Apart

There comes a time in a band’s tenure—that is, a good band—when the release of a particular album affords them the accolades of critics and listeners alike. The hype machine is turned up to 11 and the process of integration and assimilation begins. The album is picked over, micro-intellectualized, and wholly stripped of its mystery. And upon first release 2009’s Hospice, the third album by The Antlers, was given this strenuous treatment. But it resisted. It came packaged with so much dense storytelling and purposeful despair that at first it completely stopped this process in its tracks. Over the following months, the full story of its terminally ill protagonist came to light and Hospice was canonized by some as a milestone in indie rock realism.

I make mention of the circumstances surrounding the release and reception of Hospice because the feared “follow-up to a great record” expectations, which are inevitably going to be leveled at their newest album Burst Apart, are hardly fair as it feels slightly different than their last one, though it does still retain some of the elements which made that album to interesting. The pallor of death still surrounds these stories of worried fates and darkly threatening fears, and the intensely personal lyrics are still first and foremost the centerpiece of these songs but the emotional resolutions lacking on Hospice are here given full room to expand and resolve as The Antlers thoughtfully dissect the darkness which surrounds them, and as such, the utter despair and inevitability of death held over from that album still hang loosely across these 10 tracks. The psychological fuck-up of principle Antler Peter Silberman is still intact, as are his neuroses concerning mortality. But surprisingly, we do get brief glimpses of the light filtering in through the cracks in the dark. They’re not overwhelming to any degree and are used sparingly to contrast with the still overarching theme of mental and physical degradation. Songs like the ripe-for-interpretation “Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out” and the emotionally benumbed “I Don’t Want Love” show that despite what we may have thought we knew about Silbermann, he now sees himself as having a dulled, senseless grasp on the world and his place in it, as opposed to feeling every intricate hurt and moment of pain that ran through Hospice. And it’s in this new realization that the epiphanies which have eluded him for so long now coarse through him and wrap themselves around the notes of these songs. Through this emotional dichotomy which has afforded him the ability to venture through both pain and numbness, he affords himself, and us as listeners, a brief moment of rest, where the pain of a minute ago has yet to resolve into the numb acceptance of its continuation.

Tracklisting:

01. I Don’t Want Love
02. French Exit
03. Parentheses
04. No Widows
05. Rolled Together
06. Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out (listen to the mp3 below)
07. Tiptoe
08. Hounds
09. Corsicana
10. Putting the Dog to Sleep

No. 32 of 2011: Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place

There is something inherently ethereal and enigmatic about the human voice. With all the manipulation and creative tweaking that can be applied to musical instruments, it's the human voice with its own natural cadence and striking range that far exceeds the emotional impact of even the most complexly arranged musical piece. Recent artists like Bjork and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, among others, have had success with the adaptation and modulation of the human voice on their recent releases. And obviously, this experimentation tends to lean more toward the avant than to any traditionally arranged vocal lines. The process of sampling, cutting up, and re-arranging vocal melodies--though not limited to melodies, it could include even be the barest scraps of recorded vocals--to fit cohesively together is a daunting task for even the most creatively agile artist. To be able to take your own voice, cut and altered, and loop it in such a way as to create something completely original and dynamic takes an ability that most artists do not possess.

Julianna Barwick takes on this same challenging task of realizing her grand ambition with the release of her latest album, The Magic Place.  Amid the waves of sparse instrumentation, hymn-like synths and vocal abstractions, there lies a substantive idea that Barwick is trying to convey, that the music of our youth has a substantial influence on our attitudes toward the music we settle into in our adulthood.  Much is made of the solemn, almost religious tone of these songs, which make sense given Barwick's known history of spending time in church since she was younger.  But what is only superficially talked about is her innate ability to construct memorably wavering melodies from the fractional recordings she's made of her voice; also of note is the creative way that the looping patterns of vocal samples meander around the other instrumentation to form a cohesive whole.  Songs like the ephemeral "The Magic Place" and "Cloak" take the already established ideas of intangibility and undefinable emotion and subverts them to weave an awe-inspiring display of shimmering beauty.  With The Magic Place, she uses her own voice, and those instruments which best suit it, to create an album of depthless imagination and a testament to the role that music plays in all our lives.

Tracklisting:

01. Envelop
02. Keep Up the Good Work
03. The Magic Place (listen to the mp3 below)
04. Cloak
05. White Flag
06. Vow
07. Bob in Your Hair
08. Prizewinning
09. Flown

No. 33 of 2011: Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact

On albums which seem to be so musically schizophrenic that we seem to miss the details on the first listen, we can either take that initial impression and assign it permanent association or we can go back and listen again and try to see if, below and among the scattered pieces, we see what the artist is really trying to convey, the intent and purpose of the album. And why they felt it necessary to use that particular set of rules and defined or undefined musical influences.  These albums may require repeated listens to fully understand what lies beneath the seemingly impervious exterior and what we find may make all the effort worth it, or not.  It's never a sure thing.   For every album that rewards multiple listens and reveals more and more of itself, there are also those albums which are only superficially interesting, that use the inpenetrable nature of their musical facade to entice listeners to give them more of a chance than they honestly deserve.

Gang Gang Dance have been making this kind of inpenetrable music for years.  They bathe their layers of punchy synthesizers with hard-hitting bass riffs, amorphous guitar parts, and the equally inpenetrable vocals of singer Lizzi Bougatsos.  With Eye Contact, they use these disparate parts to create something wholy of a piece, much like their past albums, but more fully fleshed out and devoid of the filler interludes, creative though they may have been, that pockmocked their previous releases. This album propels itself forward towards some indeterminable point in the distance with an almost religious fervor, and the bands intends to carry us with them as far we'll let them.  Songs like fuzzed-out synth monster "Mindkilla" and the rending tribute to deceased bandmate Nathan Lennox "Glass Jar" show that Gang Gang Dance have come a long way from those early records, that their musical tenacity has yielded a maturity that was barely hinted on those albums.  As you slip further and further under the musical influence of Eye Contact, you begin to see the music coalesce and form a shifting enigmatic work of sustained creativity. The band has always wanted us to be right beside them, they want us to know what they know.  And with this album, they extend their hands and ask us to just hang on and enjoy the ride.

Tracklisting:

01. Glass Jar
02. ∞
03. Adult Goth
04. Chinese High
05. MindKilla (listen to the mp3 below)
06. ∞ ∞
07. Romance Layers
08. Sacer
09. ∞ ∞ ∞
10. Thru and Thru

No. 34 of 2011: Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise

Nicolas Jaar wants you to know what his musical interests are. He wants to sit you down, briefly explain what he likes, how he feels it all fits together and have you hear the results of his labors. And aiming for more than just an acknowledgement of his hard work, Jaar feels the need to intricately break down his songs influences and allow them to reconstruct themselves as he bends and twists and removes sounds and samples placed with a very purposed care, that he's willing to diassemble what he has created in order to have it resonate with the listener. He sees his songs are more like free-form jazz as opposed to strictly structured pieces of music--that these songs can suddenly change, can shift from tone to tone, even from genre to genre and still be emotionally felt by the listener. He creates with an aim to please and invite but also to explain, because without a primer we'd be lost among his scattered thoughts and musical alleyways. And in spite of all the random samples and strange loops, Jaar makes curiously inviting music which wants to be heard, which needs to be understood. Don't call it difficult music, or even music for those with a particular taste, to do so would be to do it an injustice, to sell it short even.

On Space Is Only Noise, Jaar builds on his already impressive resume of remixes and ep's and uses his considerable skills to craft an album of perplexing beauty and substance. The detail of this music is infinite. There is always some small detail, a stray musical ripple which hasn't been noticed before, as if each track subtly changes every time you listen to it. And as was evidenced on his previous releases, his ability to craft "pop" songs from what can be creatively called abstract parts is finely tuned here as well. And it's in this ability that Jaar manages to involve us on an emotional level as well as an intellectual one.  Songs like the somber "Colomb", with its spatial use of silence wrapped around echoed, warped vocals and "Keep Me There"--which on first listen seems little more than a collection of samples strung together over a simple beat but that slowly unfolds and displays an understated relaxation and quietly emotive resonance that is truly tremendous--only hint at the creative depth that Jaar has at his command.  With Space Is Only Noise, he has fully realized the potential of his earlier releases and created an album that feels so fully enamored of its own existence that it allows the listener the option of joining in or simply enjoying the passing wonders on their own terms.

Tracklisting:

01. Être
02. Colomb (listen to the mp3 below)
03. Sunflower
04. Too Many Kids Finding Rain in the Dust
05. Keep Me There
06. I Got a Woman
07. Problems with the Sun
08. Space is Only Noise if You Can See
09. Almost Fell
10. Balance Her in Between Your Eyes
11. Specters of the Future
12. Trace
13. Variations
14. Être

No. 35 of 2011: Wolves In The Throne Room - Celestial Lineage

While I make no claims as to the validity of my experience with metal--hell, I couldn't name more than a handful of scene-respected metal bands--I do count myself among those who don't automatically dismiss an album because it happens to brandish the usual flourishes common to these albums.  And in a genre that is known for its overt predilection for pretension and grand guignol theatrics, knowing which bands may indeed warrant the attention of a listener can seem a collossal endeavour in its own right.  Bands like Liturgy, who seemingly draw the ire of hardcore fans, and Krallice, who've developed their own sizable following on the strengths of their live shows and past few records, have allowed an entryway for listeners who aren't intimately familiar with the comings and goings of metal, in any of its complexly differentiated forms.

There has been some headway made though over the past few years that indicates that metal may not be as all exclusive as it once was and including the bands I've just mentioned, there are artists who are enamored with the idea that this music can mean more than just the cliched assumptions of thrown fists and unintelligible lyrics.  The latest release from Wolves In The Throne Room makes more clearly the direction that metal may yet be heading, into a still theatric though musically subtle path.  Though that's not to say this doesn't sound like metal, it sure as hell does, but the way that Wolves In The Throne Room go about offering their continuation of the assimilation and integration of various metal stand-bys plays more freely with the concepts and rigorously defended constructs which metal purists will say is dilluting the form.  That's really just a knee jerk reaction to a band allowing creative movement and room to grow in a genre that can easily collapse and stagnate under its own weight.  Celestial Lineage may be the stepping stone for many to finally take that leap into what has normally been an off-limits area of musical exploration, whether by self-imposed caution or by what pre-conceived notions they've had of people who listen to metal.  With songs like the thunderously, complex opener "Thuja Magus Imperium", with its multi-part construction, to "Astral Blood" with its ocean of chugging, surging sounds--right down to an acoustic guitar part--which seems to have more in common with its post-punk forebears than any metal song has a right, this album may change the long held beliefs and attiudes toward what metal can be, and should be.  Wolves In The Throne Room have been heading in this direction for some time and with this album, the closer in a self-styled trilogy of albums, they've broken free of the rules and barriers of their particular genre of music and created an album which shows, through its use of creative tonal arrangements and brutal guitar attacks, that metal can be more than what we know, that it is whatever the listener needs it to be. 

Tracklisting:

01. Thuja Magus Imperium (listen to the mp3 below)
02. Permanent Changes In Consciousness
03. Subterranean Initiation
04. Rainbow Illness
05. Woodland Cathedral
06. Astral Blood
07. Prayer Of Transformation