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urgencytobleed) wrote2010-10-14 12:51 am
urgencytobleed) wrote2010-10-14 12:51 am
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Albums of 2010 I have been too lazy to mention thus far, part two.
Two weeks isn't bad, is it? Maybe once I get all this out of the way I'll be able to post about things when I actually mean to instead of months later.
Club 8 is a Swedish band consisting of Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård and they've been making music for awhile now that's been able to be pretty accurately wedged into that heavily-populated pseudo-genre known as Swedish twee pop. For the past several years, they've been releasing albums that are cute and pretty and minimal and, overall, generally quite unoffensive if a bit bland. With The People's Record, though, they've really upped their game and taken several steps ahead of many of the bands that would be considered their peers. On this album, they effortlessly blend their more twee leanings - their love of simplistic yet catchy pop hooks, Karolina's sweet and light-as-air vocals - with something of a little more substance, namely lots of South African-inspired percussion. The results of this experiment are simply delightful and it's the kind of combination of styles that works so well that you wonder why no one's ever thought of it before. Tracks like "Western Hospitality" and "Shape Up!" are insanely addictive and manage to float in the air, ephemeral as clouds, yet also remain firmly rooted in the ground. In these songs, inventive Brazilian drumbeats co-exist with joyous group singalongs and this unpredictability is what keeps them from ever drowning in far too much sweetness for their own good. Elsewhere, "Dancing with the Mentally Ill" is almost haunting with its ghostly, chant-like harmonies and droning organ backdrop while on "My Pessimistic Heart," Karolina's translucent voice soars in an understated, girlish way that a more robust singer could never quite pull off. The album's crowning achievement though is its closing track, "The People Speak," which is, simply, one of the loveliest five minutes you'll ever spend. The melodies are subtly, classically catchy and, despite never drastically changing course, the song builds and builds until it reaches its highly satisfying end. There are no bells and whistles involved here, no fancy tricks or unexpected twists, it's simply a damn good song and, really, what more could you want beyond that?
I haven't given a lot of time to Corin Tucker's first solo album, 1000 Years, and of course it's nowhere near as good as Sleater-Kinney at their best, but it still seems to be a pretty solid release which is a nice surprise considering I wasn't exactly expecting much from it in the first place. Oddly enough, the more straightforward rock songs that can most easily be compared to S-K, like "Doubt," are the album's weakest links, in my opinion. They're not bad but they're not different enough to consider as entirely separate entities from S-K and they're not loud or passionate enough to make a dent in the majority of the band's output so they're just kind of there, not really leaving an impact one way or another. 1000 Years is much more successful when it focuses on Corin's more introspective, tender side as in "Pulling Pieces" or "Thrift Store Coats" and when she steps slightly outside of the box like on the excellent "Handed Love". Easily, the album's best moment, however, is the final track, "Miles Away". It's minimalistic instrumentally and Corin's voice sounds more naked and vulnerable than it ever has before which makes for an altogether heartbreaking and very beautiful listening experience. The downside is that once you've heard it, you'll have a hard time listening to the rest of the album without wishing there was more of the same. Still, it's a commendable effort overall if not quite spectacular.
Going back through the tags here awhile ago, I realized that I've only ever posted two Nina Nastasia songs in the entire time I've been running this blog and that is just completely unacceptable because she's nothing less than amazing. I'll admit, there was a period of a couple years where I didn't really listen to her at all, mostly because, at the time of its release, I was severely underwhelmed by her last album, On Leaving. Her newest offering, Outlaster, led me back to her again and, what a surprise, upon revisiting all of her back catalog, I've actually grown extremely fond of On Leaving now as well. Listening to her entire body of work, it becomes quite clear that Nina stands head and shoulders above a majority of those that fit the same mostly acoustic, folk-y, female singer-songwriter mold that she does. Most similar artists, ten years and six albums into their careers, end up making at least a slight misstep along the way. Several even falter completely and either experiment so wildly that keeping up with them becomes rather exhausting or settle so comfortably into a certain sound that they are no longer willing to take even the smallest risk, which can be just as exhausting in its own way. Nina, though, has managed to keep from falling into either of these traps and not only that, she makes it seem easy. Which brings us back around to Outlaster, an album which I have no problems naming as Nina Nastasia's masterpiece thus far. Ten years after the release of her debut, Dogs, she has created the darkest, most ambitious and most passionate album of her career. Outlaster takes Nina's simple and straightforward songwriting and flips it on its head, drenching it in gorgeously ominous string and horn arrangements and atmosphere haunting enough to send actual chills down your spine. The lyrics tackle heavy themes - a doomed relationship, depression, death - and while Nina's words are never many or overly clever, they manage to pack an impressive punch. "Wakes" is perhaps the album's most gut-wrenching song, both for its starkly devastating lyrics ("They've wrapped him in a sheet/He could be anyone//And I've been here before/And I can't mend this living... You misunderstood/If what you want from me/Is to give thanks for this/Empty tenderness") and the understated but highly emotional way in which they are presented. But perhaps the most surprising and enthralling element of Outlaster is Nina's voice itself, which sounds stronger and, at the same time, more emotionally unhinged than ever. She really lets loose in songs like "This Familiar Way" and "What's Out There," showing off a vocal confidence that has never really been present in her music before. Overall, Outlaster finds Nina mixing her best musical qualities with some that she's exploring for the first time and it makes for a truly stunning listening experience.
I don't remember much about School of Seven Bells' first album, Alpinisms, other than that I kind of enjoyed it in a really vague sort of way. Of course, if I were to listen to it again with fresh ears (and I probably will at some point), my opinion of it would likely change completely because that happens to me a lot. But that's beside the point right now because I'm not talking Alpinisms, I'm talking the band's latest and, as far as I'm concerned as of this moment, far superior release, Disconnect From Desire. This album is, basically, ear candy at its very finest. The voices of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza are pure aural bliss and the musical soundscape that surrounds them is carefully crafted to perfectly compliment their flawless harmonies. My hazy memory of their first album is that it was more shoegaze than pop but Disconnect From Desire is the opposite. In fact, it contains some of the most infectious melodies I've heard in a long time. I would go so far as to say that opening track "Windstorm" is the catchiest song I've heard all year. The opening distorted guitar riff is instantly memorable and the chorus is so singalongable you'll likely have it down pat by your second listen. But don't think School of Seven Bells has sacrificed any of their inventiveness for catchy pop hooks; instead, they've learned how to effortlessly blend these two aspects together. At their cores, songs like "Heart Is Strange" and "Babelonia" are pure poppy goodness but they are augmented by layers of off-kilter vocal melodies and unexpected instrumental turns which propel them to another level altogether. Meanwhile, other tracks like "Joviann" and "Dial" are just fucking beautiful. But the most compelling aspect of School of Seven Bells' music is that, for a band so devoted to the tiniest vocal and instrumental details of their sound, their lyrics are also much more impressive than one might think they would be. One seemingly simple phrase can suddenly make your ears spring to attention and take notice of what's being said - "Swing my weight around, begin the windstorm;" "the heart is strange and dissolute" - but there are also the more complicated turns of phrase and metaphors that are as much of a delight to come across here as they would be in any good book: "My nights are full of strangers and even stranger ends;" "the silence behind me snarl[s] like a swarm of bees;" "I dreamed my perspective was on a dial, wired to spare me from this will." Disconnect From Desire really delivers the complete package. It's the kind of album you can't really multitask to. Instead, you have to fully immerse yourself in the experience of listening.
I am very conflicted about Stars' latest album, The Five Ghosts. I do enjoy several of the songs but it's difficult not to pit it up against their previous work and, in my opinion, see how strangely lifeless and emotionally distant it sounds in comparison. Part of the problem, for me, is that The Five Ghosts sounds most like Nightsongs which is by far my least favorite Stars album. There are a couple songs on there that are among my very favorites but, mostly, I find the beats and melodies uninteresting, the vocals boring and the lyrics downright embarrassing at times and several of these things are what's most wrong with The Five Ghosts as well. Take "I Died So I Could Haunt You," for example; it's a great song but it's easy to see the places where it could have been an amazing song if only they were a bit different. As it is, it kind of sounds like, in the verses, the band started out with something really promising and then couldn't think of a truly memorable chorus so they settled on just repeating the title about a thousand times instead and, as a result, the song kind of goes on and on without ever actually getting anywhere. "We Don't Want Your Body" suffers the same fate; it's one of the few songs where Torquil Campbell actually sounds like a real, passionate human being instead of a detached, monotonous robot but the song as a whole is underwhelming, without anything really significantly memorable to latch onto. Don't get me wrong, there is some really great stuff here: opener "Dead Hearts" is a song that actually benefits from being so repetitive and simplistic and though the vocals are also very restrained here, they somehow sound so much more potent and affecting than the majority of the album; then there are tracks like "Wasted Daylight" and "Changes" on which Amy Millan's voice has never sounded better and it's easy to forgive any shortcomings they may have because of how easy she is on the ears. For the most part though, whether it is or not, The Five Ghosts sounds rushed and unfinished. It sounds like Stars phoning it in and despite the fact that even at their worst they're still quite good, it's still disappointing to consider all that this album could have been. Especially when you take into consideration The Seance EP, a collection of four songs, three of them collaborations with other bands, that was offered as part of the deluxe edition of the album. All of these songs are infinitely more complex and interesting than anything on the album itself and though this may partly be due to the other bands involved, I have to assume that Stars still wrote all of the music and it was just slightly remixed. Which kind of makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking when they decided to abandon this direction entirely for the album. Even its namesake song sounds nothing like the album itself which is more than slightly puzzling and also very frustrating.
Villagers is singer-songwriter Conor J. O'Brien and his debut album, Becoming a Jackal, has been drawing comparisons to a certain other Conor you may be familiar with: Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst. Certainly, on a base level, the two Conors do have a lot in common: they both write introspective folk-rock that's based around mostly acoustic instrumentation and wordy, literate lyrics. But the same could be said of a lot of songwriters, couldn't it? I doubt anybody would be making such dramatic statements about O'Brien being nothing more than a carbon copy of Oberst if they didn't share the same name. And, anyway, in a couple areas I think O'Brien comes out ahead. For one, he has a more immediately accessible voice. It's not a spectacular voice and it's got the same reedy tone as Oberst's but it's less whiny and grating and a lot more in tune than his is half the time, particularly in his earlier releases (which, admittedly, is part of the charm with early Bright Eyes but it can get to be too much at times). O'Brien's songwriting also tends to be more poppy and hooky. Tracks like "Home" and "Ship of Promises" are fresh and energetic and instantly memorable without veering as far into embarrassingly emo territory as Oberst once did (though I'm not a fan of the howling at the end of "Pieces" it's really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things). Elsewhere on the album, there's more variety than there is on most singer-songwriter type releases. Opener "I Saw the Dead," with its haunting string and piano melodies and stark, direct lyrics, is rather chilling and atmospheric. But the one song I keep coming back to is the title track, which inspired me to give the rest of the album a listen in the first place. It's one of the simplest songs here, melody and instrumentation-wise, which is perhaps why it's so affecting. It's pure emotion laid bare for the entire world to see and the lyrics are brutally straightforward and personal: "Before you take this song as truth/You should wonder what I'm taking from you/How I benefit from you being here/Lending me your ears/While I'm selling you my fears." This is an excellent debut which shows a maturity beyond O'Brien's years without at all coming across as pretentious or inauthentic.
Club 8 is a Swedish band consisting of Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård and they've been making music for awhile now that's been able to be pretty accurately wedged into that heavily-populated pseudo-genre known as Swedish twee pop. For the past several years, they've been releasing albums that are cute and pretty and minimal and, overall, generally quite unoffensive if a bit bland. With The People's Record, though, they've really upped their game and taken several steps ahead of many of the bands that would be considered their peers. On this album, they effortlessly blend their more twee leanings - their love of simplistic yet catchy pop hooks, Karolina's sweet and light-as-air vocals - with something of a little more substance, namely lots of South African-inspired percussion. The results of this experiment are simply delightful and it's the kind of combination of styles that works so well that you wonder why no one's ever thought of it before. Tracks like "Western Hospitality" and "Shape Up!" are insanely addictive and manage to float in the air, ephemeral as clouds, yet also remain firmly rooted in the ground. In these songs, inventive Brazilian drumbeats co-exist with joyous group singalongs and this unpredictability is what keeps them from ever drowning in far too much sweetness for their own good. Elsewhere, "Dancing with the Mentally Ill" is almost haunting with its ghostly, chant-like harmonies and droning organ backdrop while on "My Pessimistic Heart," Karolina's translucent voice soars in an understated, girlish way that a more robust singer could never quite pull off. The album's crowning achievement though is its closing track, "The People Speak," which is, simply, one of the loveliest five minutes you'll ever spend. The melodies are subtly, classically catchy and, despite never drastically changing course, the song builds and builds until it reaches its highly satisfying end. There are no bells and whistles involved here, no fancy tricks or unexpected twists, it's simply a damn good song and, really, what more could you want beyond that?
I haven't given a lot of time to Corin Tucker's first solo album, 1000 Years, and of course it's nowhere near as good as Sleater-Kinney at their best, but it still seems to be a pretty solid release which is a nice surprise considering I wasn't exactly expecting much from it in the first place. Oddly enough, the more straightforward rock songs that can most easily be compared to S-K, like "Doubt," are the album's weakest links, in my opinion. They're not bad but they're not different enough to consider as entirely separate entities from S-K and they're not loud or passionate enough to make a dent in the majority of the band's output so they're just kind of there, not really leaving an impact one way or another. 1000 Years is much more successful when it focuses on Corin's more introspective, tender side as in "Pulling Pieces" or "Thrift Store Coats" and when she steps slightly outside of the box like on the excellent "Handed Love". Easily, the album's best moment, however, is the final track, "Miles Away". It's minimalistic instrumentally and Corin's voice sounds more naked and vulnerable than it ever has before which makes for an altogether heartbreaking and very beautiful listening experience. The downside is that once you've heard it, you'll have a hard time listening to the rest of the album without wishing there was more of the same. Still, it's a commendable effort overall if not quite spectacular.
Going back through the tags here awhile ago, I realized that I've only ever posted two Nina Nastasia songs in the entire time I've been running this blog and that is just completely unacceptable because she's nothing less than amazing. I'll admit, there was a period of a couple years where I didn't really listen to her at all, mostly because, at the time of its release, I was severely underwhelmed by her last album, On Leaving. Her newest offering, Outlaster, led me back to her again and, what a surprise, upon revisiting all of her back catalog, I've actually grown extremely fond of On Leaving now as well. Listening to her entire body of work, it becomes quite clear that Nina stands head and shoulders above a majority of those that fit the same mostly acoustic, folk-y, female singer-songwriter mold that she does. Most similar artists, ten years and six albums into their careers, end up making at least a slight misstep along the way. Several even falter completely and either experiment so wildly that keeping up with them becomes rather exhausting or settle so comfortably into a certain sound that they are no longer willing to take even the smallest risk, which can be just as exhausting in its own way. Nina, though, has managed to keep from falling into either of these traps and not only that, she makes it seem easy. Which brings us back around to Outlaster, an album which I have no problems naming as Nina Nastasia's masterpiece thus far. Ten years after the release of her debut, Dogs, she has created the darkest, most ambitious and most passionate album of her career. Outlaster takes Nina's simple and straightforward songwriting and flips it on its head, drenching it in gorgeously ominous string and horn arrangements and atmosphere haunting enough to send actual chills down your spine. The lyrics tackle heavy themes - a doomed relationship, depression, death - and while Nina's words are never many or overly clever, they manage to pack an impressive punch. "Wakes" is perhaps the album's most gut-wrenching song, both for its starkly devastating lyrics ("They've wrapped him in a sheet/He could be anyone//And I've been here before/And I can't mend this living... You misunderstood/If what you want from me/Is to give thanks for this/Empty tenderness") and the understated but highly emotional way in which they are presented. But perhaps the most surprising and enthralling element of Outlaster is Nina's voice itself, which sounds stronger and, at the same time, more emotionally unhinged than ever. She really lets loose in songs like "This Familiar Way" and "What's Out There," showing off a vocal confidence that has never really been present in her music before. Overall, Outlaster finds Nina mixing her best musical qualities with some that she's exploring for the first time and it makes for a truly stunning listening experience.
I don't remember much about School of Seven Bells' first album, Alpinisms, other than that I kind of enjoyed it in a really vague sort of way. Of course, if I were to listen to it again with fresh ears (and I probably will at some point), my opinion of it would likely change completely because that happens to me a lot. But that's beside the point right now because I'm not talking Alpinisms, I'm talking the band's latest and, as far as I'm concerned as of this moment, far superior release, Disconnect From Desire. This album is, basically, ear candy at its very finest. The voices of twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza are pure aural bliss and the musical soundscape that surrounds them is carefully crafted to perfectly compliment their flawless harmonies. My hazy memory of their first album is that it was more shoegaze than pop but Disconnect From Desire is the opposite. In fact, it contains some of the most infectious melodies I've heard in a long time. I would go so far as to say that opening track "Windstorm" is the catchiest song I've heard all year. The opening distorted guitar riff is instantly memorable and the chorus is so singalongable you'll likely have it down pat by your second listen. But don't think School of Seven Bells has sacrificed any of their inventiveness for catchy pop hooks; instead, they've learned how to effortlessly blend these two aspects together. At their cores, songs like "Heart Is Strange" and "Babelonia" are pure poppy goodness but they are augmented by layers of off-kilter vocal melodies and unexpected instrumental turns which propel them to another level altogether. Meanwhile, other tracks like "Joviann" and "Dial" are just fucking beautiful. But the most compelling aspect of School of Seven Bells' music is that, for a band so devoted to the tiniest vocal and instrumental details of their sound, their lyrics are also much more impressive than one might think they would be. One seemingly simple phrase can suddenly make your ears spring to attention and take notice of what's being said - "Swing my weight around, begin the windstorm;" "the heart is strange and dissolute" - but there are also the more complicated turns of phrase and metaphors that are as much of a delight to come across here as they would be in any good book: "My nights are full of strangers and even stranger ends;" "the silence behind me snarl[s] like a swarm of bees;" "I dreamed my perspective was on a dial, wired to spare me from this will." Disconnect From Desire really delivers the complete package. It's the kind of album you can't really multitask to. Instead, you have to fully immerse yourself in the experience of listening.
I am very conflicted about Stars' latest album, The Five Ghosts. I do enjoy several of the songs but it's difficult not to pit it up against their previous work and, in my opinion, see how strangely lifeless and emotionally distant it sounds in comparison. Part of the problem, for me, is that The Five Ghosts sounds most like Nightsongs which is by far my least favorite Stars album. There are a couple songs on there that are among my very favorites but, mostly, I find the beats and melodies uninteresting, the vocals boring and the lyrics downright embarrassing at times and several of these things are what's most wrong with The Five Ghosts as well. Take "I Died So I Could Haunt You," for example; it's a great song but it's easy to see the places where it could have been an amazing song if only they were a bit different. As it is, it kind of sounds like, in the verses, the band started out with something really promising and then couldn't think of a truly memorable chorus so they settled on just repeating the title about a thousand times instead and, as a result, the song kind of goes on and on without ever actually getting anywhere. "We Don't Want Your Body" suffers the same fate; it's one of the few songs where Torquil Campbell actually sounds like a real, passionate human being instead of a detached, monotonous robot but the song as a whole is underwhelming, without anything really significantly memorable to latch onto. Don't get me wrong, there is some really great stuff here: opener "Dead Hearts" is a song that actually benefits from being so repetitive and simplistic and though the vocals are also very restrained here, they somehow sound so much more potent and affecting than the majority of the album; then there are tracks like "Wasted Daylight" and "Changes" on which Amy Millan's voice has never sounded better and it's easy to forgive any shortcomings they may have because of how easy she is on the ears. For the most part though, whether it is or not, The Five Ghosts sounds rushed and unfinished. It sounds like Stars phoning it in and despite the fact that even at their worst they're still quite good, it's still disappointing to consider all that this album could have been. Especially when you take into consideration The Seance EP, a collection of four songs, three of them collaborations with other bands, that was offered as part of the deluxe edition of the album. All of these songs are infinitely more complex and interesting than anything on the album itself and though this may partly be due to the other bands involved, I have to assume that Stars still wrote all of the music and it was just slightly remixed. Which kind of makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking when they decided to abandon this direction entirely for the album. Even its namesake song sounds nothing like the album itself which is more than slightly puzzling and also very frustrating.
Villagers is singer-songwriter Conor J. O'Brien and his debut album, Becoming a Jackal, has been drawing comparisons to a certain other Conor you may be familiar with: Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst. Certainly, on a base level, the two Conors do have a lot in common: they both write introspective folk-rock that's based around mostly acoustic instrumentation and wordy, literate lyrics. But the same could be said of a lot of songwriters, couldn't it? I doubt anybody would be making such dramatic statements about O'Brien being nothing more than a carbon copy of Oberst if they didn't share the same name. And, anyway, in a couple areas I think O'Brien comes out ahead. For one, he has a more immediately accessible voice. It's not a spectacular voice and it's got the same reedy tone as Oberst's but it's less whiny and grating and a lot more in tune than his is half the time, particularly in his earlier releases (which, admittedly, is part of the charm with early Bright Eyes but it can get to be too much at times). O'Brien's songwriting also tends to be more poppy and hooky. Tracks like "Home" and "Ship of Promises" are fresh and energetic and instantly memorable without veering as far into embarrassingly emo territory as Oberst once did (though I'm not a fan of the howling at the end of "Pieces" it's really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things). Elsewhere on the album, there's more variety than there is on most singer-songwriter type releases. Opener "I Saw the Dead," with its haunting string and piano melodies and stark, direct lyrics, is rather chilling and atmospheric. But the one song I keep coming back to is the title track, which inspired me to give the rest of the album a listen in the first place. It's one of the simplest songs here, melody and instrumentation-wise, which is perhaps why it's so affecting. It's pure emotion laid bare for the entire world to see and the lyrics are brutally straightforward and personal: "Before you take this song as truth/You should wonder what I'm taking from you/How I benefit from you being here/Lending me your ears/While I'm selling you my fears." This is an excellent debut which shows a maturity beyond O'Brien's years without at all coming across as pretentious or inauthentic.