A few reviews
Stripmall Architecture – We Were Flying Kites
It’s hard for me to be objective about this release, since I liked the projects of the Cosebooms enough to solicit a remix from them. Ryan Coseboom could probably record Rebecca singing over radio static and I’d probably give it a rave review. (Actually, that could be kind of cool, come to think of it).
That said, I’d like to say that this is a pretty fantastic release. It alternates between extremely delicate micro-programmed electronics, lush soundscapes, and fuzzed-out guitar pop with almost dizzying frequency, as though My Bloody Valentine were trying to make a Dntel album. The whole thing is anchored by Rebecca Coseboom’s voice, a dreamy soprano. The surprising thing is how well it cuts through the mix and drives the melodies – the tendency for most artists of this stripe is to use vocals like this as a texture, burying them amongst all the noises and effects, but they come through clear here.
The other surprising thing is that there seems to be no shortage of hooks, something again rare in the genres of music that this album overlaps. Tracks like “Stop Thief” and “What’s Wrong With The Kids Today” are surprisingly driving shoegazy-rock songs with very well-defined melodic hooks.
I still don’t know what a “Minnesota smile” is, though.
Claire Voyant – Lustre
Keeping with the theme of dreamy pop from the west coast, Claire Voyant returns after a too-long absence with what is frankly a phenomenal album. It’s both reminiscent of 80’s 4AD dreampop (This Mortal Coil springs to mind, particularly on tracks like “Mercurial”) but yet full of modern production sheen and electronic textures. Victoria’s voice, however, doesn’t fall into the same kind of “ethereal” mold that often defines such music – she has a stronger vibrato and more raw power than say, a Liz Fraser.
I do have trouble getting away from the 4AD comparisons, because for a solid chunk of the album I could swear Watts-Russell and Fryer are behind the mixing board. Lest anyone think this is a bad thing, I would point out how much I love the old 4AD sound and lament the fact that it kind of got consumed by Britpop in the early 90’s. This reminds me strongly of what would’ve happened if it had been allowed to evolve into the current era – the shimmery synth pads of old amended with treated samples and tweaked electronics, the vocals brought down from the inscrutable stratosphere into the forefront, and the tendency to kick a little harder (case in point – “Painted Gold” builds to a chunky guitar riff and swirling synths from a simple mix of staccato guitars and vocals).
In short, it’s really freaking good.
Gusgus – 24/7
I’ve been a fan of this band since their 9-piece-Icelandc-artist-collective days, and have always been a little leery of a lot of their transformations. They’ve lost members, they’ve added members. Now they’re down to a three-piece again, original vocalist Daniel Agust is back with them, they’re signed to the label for all things minimal, Kompakt, and their sound is stripped down to a core of techno beats, squelchy basslines, buzzing synth leads, and slick vocals.
This works pretty well, actually. While it lacks some of the immediate hooks we got on their first two albums, the return of Agust augurs well for them. I had no problem with their previous vocalist, “Earth”, other than she sounded a bit too house-diva for their sound, stripping the music of some of its originality.
“24/7” is surprisingly short – it’s only six tracks (albeit, some are upwards of 12 minutes long) and I honestly find about two tracks to be on the annoying side. When it works, though, it really works. The lead single “Add This Song” is a driving techno track of the old-school Detroit variety, with an infectious vocal hook. “Hateful” features guest vocals from Jimi Tenor and a machine-gun of a bassline. “Bremen Cowboys” sounds like a classic techno jam.
It’s not quite a return to form, but it’s a unique sound melding a retro cool with a pop sensibility.
Bell X1 – Blue Lights on The Runway
The single “The Great Defector” has made some inroads in US pop radio of late, although I heard it played constantly on the radio in their homeland of Ireland several months back.
That track displays an affinity for an almost Talking Heads-like sound. The rest of the album doesn’t sound like that, though. Paul Noonan’s vocals does veer into Byrne-ish textures, but the bulk of the album is straightup pop. While a lot of the arrangement harkens back to classic 60’s guitar bands and alt-pop, the instrumentation and performance displays a distinctly modern electropop edge. The lyrics display a rather unusual wordplay, veering from literary references to oblique metaphor to pop culture references, but without the kind of preciousness that one might think accompanies that.
Being a pop band, their music would have to live and die by the hooks. When they’ve got a hook, it’s usually pretty monstrous. The aforementioned single is ludicrously catchy, as are more straightforward songs like “Amelia” and “One Stringed Harp.”
What is surprising is the lack of seriously uptempo tracks – aside from “Defector”, pretty much everything falls into the mid-tempo or ballad category. And then the ballads have a twangy, almost alt-country feel about them. “The Curtains Are Twitchin’” almost expects Neko Case to make an appearance.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag overall – satisfying listening from a pop standpoint, but not heavy on single material.
Empire of The Sun – Walking On A Dream
Australia’s Empire Of The Sun had a minor hit on their hands when iTunes listed “Walking on a Dream” as a featured single, and “We Are The People” ended up in a commercial. It provided a pretty good snapshot of what the band was all about, too. It’s an odd band, overall – the music is very much informed by 80’s radio pop, and the vocals sound like Gary Numan after a bender with Brian Molko. Jangly guitars, chugging rock basses and fuzzy analog synths all come into play with a slightly more modern house/hip-hop production edge. Their album cover deliberately looks like the poster for a cheesy 80’s sci-fi/fantasy epic, which says a lot about what the band is trying to accomplish. It does sound like a soundtrack for some nonexistent “Neverending Story” ripoff, right down to the gratingly annoying love ballads. It borders on self-parody, but that appears deliberate, and I can’t decide if that’s clever or just irritating.
It’ll be interesting to see what this band carries off in the future – the shtick that informs their music works now, but whether their catchy retro-dance tracks will stand up to future exploration is a big unknown. Especially given the lack of variety in Luke Steele’s voice.
Imogen Heap – Ellipse
Imogen Heap is an odd bird. And when I say “bird”, I’m not using the britslang for woman, I mean “she’s often seen wearing a lot of feathers.”
I’m almost tempted to forego saying anything about her new album, “Ellipse”, merely because she has blogged , vBlogged, tweeted, forum’ed, and youtubed the album’s creation in such detail that anyone who’s aware of the album probably already knows an awful lot of fine-grained details.
The album itself? It’s good. It’s not as immediate as “Speak For Yourself” – there’s nothing quite as soaring as “Hide and Seek” and nothing quite as dark as “Headlock” or “Closing In.” It is, however, much more complex in terms of arrangement, production and programming. It’s intensely multilayered, the soundfield is huge and detailed, and the sound is astoundingly lush. Her voice remains as elastic as ever, even within the hundreds of overdubs.
So that’s not a problem.
The songs themselves usually take a while to develop. The leadoff single, “First Train Home” has a spartan, understated beat until the climax of the song. Most songs take a bit to get going. Once they do get going, the wait is usually worth it. All it means is that there are fewer “radio-friendly” songs, which is kind of a non-issue for Imogen Heap anyway.
That’s not a problem either.
The problem is that a number of the songs teeter on the self-indulgent side. The lyrics wander into twee, Tori-Amos-in-fairyland territory periodically, there’s a song that’s made entirely of processed vocal overdubs and beatboxing (didn’t Bjork do that already? And isn’t that a bad sign?) The “making of” video that comes with the iTunes download is bafflingly strange, involving Heap wandering around her house with plastic biscuit containers over her ears, supposedly as a way of explaining the songs. She hasn’t quite gone over to the inexplicable side yet, but she’s dangerously on the edge.
What is frankly amazing about this album was the level of interaction Heap had with her hardcore fanbase during its production. While she’s never been a multiplatinum artist, she’s developed an enthusiastic following, and her constant updates, use of fan feedback to determine which versions of songs make it to the album, and solicitation of fan artwork basically ensured extremely strong sales on release. She’s quickly become the darling of the “new media” world, which is both heartening and annoying. Heartening because it does prove the concept of some of these new media promotion processes, annoying because now they’re all going to be de rigueur for anyone releasing anything, giving those of us who make music independently even more distasteful stuff to do. Even Ms. Heap complained about the level of self-promo she had to do. That doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.
