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Stealing a review from Amazon, because I can't pretend to be pretentious and get away with it .
Originally Posted by some dude
Spencer Krug is insane. In the best possible way of course.
And Sunset Rubdown has expanded their sound in every direction, with the gloriously dense third album "Random Spirit Lover." While their music hasn't changed drastically in sound, it's grown deeper and denser and much, much weirder -- in fact, it may be too dense to hear in one sitting.
It opens with a sprightly tangle of growling squealing guitar, energetic piano, bells and blurry synth. "He was a man of many nations, had a hundred souls and a hundred to go/He was a man of many nations, two hearts, two hands, it's a slippery slope," Krug yowls over the bouncy, cluttered melody. "It was the tender mending of this slender gown/that brought me bending to the ground..."
You might want to just turn it off after that, and take a little while to digest it. Or you can move on to the tremulous, mournfully quirky "Magic vs. Midas," which serves as a little oasis after the craziness of the first song.
But things don't really get any simpler after that -- we have twinkly marches, ominous indie-rock with a chorale, stately crescendos of ringing guitars, rippling dark electronica, and cascading eruptions of crazy harps and keyboard. Occasionally, they mix in a gentle echoing experimental song, a fuzzfolk pop song, or a tinkl little ballad like "Stallion."
You can really tell in "Random Spirit Lover" that Sunset Rubdown is no longer merely a side band for people from Pony Up, Wolf Parade, et cetera. Their music has really blossomed into a dense, intense combination of experimental music (a la Animal Collective) and pop tunes. You can dance to it, but it might make you dizzy.
Each melody is made of a bunch of loosely intertwined instrumentals -- winding riffs that vary from ringing to fuzzy, solid drums and fast-moving piano setting the beat. And the whole thing is wound in a dizzying, colourful blanket of shimmering glockenspiel, harmonica, and swells of windy keyboard.
Krug is responsible for most of the vocals, and it takes a little while to get used to his yowling, dramatic voice. But he sings lyrics of staggering lyrical beauty ("You say it's the hair of ghosts/So I say it's the white hair of Poseidon/Ebbing in the tide in some dead sea"), and more than a little tenderness.
Even more striking, those lyrics are crammed with symbolism and dreamlike imagery -- leopards, virgins, snow and ice, the Shroud of Turin, and lots of diamonds and violins. There are plenty of repeating motifs in these songs, tangling them almost into a theme album.
Your ears may overflow while you're listening to "Random Spirit Lover," but the rich experimental pop and astounding lyrics make a wonderful way to be overwhelmed. Definitely a must-listen.
Essentially, it's a mix of Wolf Parade and Animal Collective that has been one of my most enjoyable albums of the year. Highly recommended
Swan Lake is a supergroup made in indie-rock heaven, featuring Dan Bejar (Destroyer), Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes), and Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes) and debut Beast Moans is the cacophonous, lo-fi outcome of their collaboration. Using what they do best, Swan Lake's members have meshed their distinct styles and odd voices together, mingling them to create something limitless and fresh. But, cooperation takes patience, and so does this album. There's a lot going on and without the guide of great engineering, wading through some of the murkiness is probably best left to the band's other pre-established fans. While this record isn't a collection of bonus tracks, there are undeniable watermarks: Destroyer fans will rejoice at strident "The Freedom" that's so Destroyer that it self-references a city of daughters, yet is peppered up with Krug's characteristic weirdo keyboards and Mercer's haunting backup singing. Similarly, "All Fires" and "Bluebird" spark pure pathos not unlike other Sunset Rubdown lamentations, and Carey Mercer's spastic frenzies aren't at all hushed either. Echoes of the inescapable rock & roll canon are here too. If it ever seemed lazy to compare Destroyer to David Bowie, that association has a leg to stand on in the sum of Swan Lake, as Mercer renews Bowie on "City Calls" and the album's mood recalls Bowie's Eno-influenced period. Also, the playful "A Venue Called Rubella" is really Beatlesy and "The Partisan But He's Got to Know," is a raucous Pere Ubu jaunt that could be the soundtrack to a Bobby Socks night for the undead--not a bad thing, in fact it's the best track on the album. Perhaps intentionally, the lyrics are mostly indecipherable and swirl together in static ("Pleasure Vessels," "Shooting Rockets"); the duets Krug and Bejar share are sometimes like duels ("Are You Swimming in Her Pools"). Overall, the album is loud and challenging, aptly full of moaning, gnashing, and circumstances of halting, crystalline beauty. --Gabi Knight
One of the greatest albums I've ever heard. Definitely defines the "shoegaze" genre and has influenced a lot of modern music. One of the few albums I own a physical copy of. For all the weaboo's / film junkies out there, half the Lost in Translation score was done by Kevin Shields, who is the frontman of the group. He hasn't released much material since Loveless since he never felt he could release something that would match the perfection of this album. Highly, highly recommended.
Tracklist
1. Only Shallow
2. Loomer
3. Touched
4. To Here Knows When
5. When You Sleep
6. I Only Said
7. Come in ALone
8. Sometimes
9. Blown a Wish
10. What You Want
11. Soon
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Year: 2008
Label: Mute Records
Genre: Shoegazing / Pop / Electronic
review:
Originally Posted by pitchfork
Saturdays=Youth-- the new album from French musician M83 (aka Anthony Gonzalez)-- opens with a stately piano phrase. Synths gradually overtake the piano and Gonzalez sings concise lyrics in falsetto-- "It's your face/ Where are we?/ Save me"-- amid billowing harmonies. It's the sort of big, beatless slow-burn he often uses to dramatize an impending pivot, a moment when the percussion gallops in and the song takes off for the stratosphere. But on this track, "You, Appearing", that pivot never arrives. Instead, the music tapers off into the booming overture of "Kim & Jessie".
Saturdays=Youth is still huge music, with three players in addition to Gonzalez-- but it has a different kind of heft from previous M83 records. On Before the Dawn Heals Us, M83 was all about the vertical push-- layer after layer of synths and drums piled up in a vertiginous tower. But these new songs disperse in all directions: Producers Ewan Pearson and Ken Thomas spread the melodies and beats into a sound world of uncommon vibrancy and pristine clarity, mounted on a massive yet now more proportionate scale.
Not only does the music move differently, it offers a different take on M83's favorite decade, the 1980s. Where previous albums saluted the doomed grandeur of the Cure and the retro-futurism of Blade Runner, Saturdays=Youth pays homage to Cocteau Twins (whom Thomas has also produced) and the teen dramas of filmmaker John Hughes. It's dense with new wave tropes: the chrome-plated guitars and aqueous keyboards on "Kim & Jessie", the decadent synthetic toms on the otherwise cloudy "Skin of the Night", the funk guitars and shivering cymbals of the masterful "Couleurs". Many modern bands have appropriated these iconic touchstones with a wink, a revision, or both. M83's reverent take is less common, bringing to mind Lansing-Dreiden's underappreciated 80s throwback The Dividing Island.
The album has the same nostalgic sparkle as Hughes' films, a soft-focused mythology of eternal summers and young love. In the liner notes, Gonzalez dedicates it to "all the friends, music, movies, joints, and crazy teachers that made my teenage years so great!" At 26, Gonzalez is just the right age to look back on this era with rose-tinted glasses, forgetting the alienation and anxiety, remembering only the sweetness. Whenever the darker side of teenhood rears its head, it's heroically battled back: On the shoegaze-thick "Dark Moves of Love", "everything is wrecked and grey," but the song ends on a poignant note: "I will fight the time and bring you back!" On the album's cover, heartbreakingly radiant youths (one of them a dead ringer for Molly Ringwald) strike poses in a gold and russet pasture-- the same kind of beautiful misfits that Hughes arranged in after-school detention. In lyrics filled with lusty eruptions ("They are Gods! They are lightning!"), archetypal teens invent themselves with innocent fervor: A love-struck young couple in "Kim & Jessie"; a goth with a crown of black roses and a heart of bubblegum in "Graveyard Girl".
In the context of teen drama, how perfect is it that Gonzalez met Morgan Kibby, whose dovelike vocals enrich "Skin of the Night" and "Up!", on MySpace? In the context of a band whose music is both literally and metaphorically cinematic, how perfect is it that Kibby has done voiceover work on the trailers for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water? These symmetries make Saturdays=Youth feel like an unaccountably alive, complete album. While some fans might be disappointed by the lack of a "Don't Save Us From the Flames"-style anthem, the change in M83's sound arrives just as Gonzalez has pushed the maximal thing to its limits and risks diminishing returns. On its first two studio albums, M83 did one thing very, very well: create compact doses of tension and adrenaline. Saturdays=Youth meaningfully diversifies M83's catalog while retaining Gonzalez's indelible fingerprint. Like his recent ambient foray, Digital Shades Vol. 1, it finds a guy who's known for painting gigantic horizons figuring out how to broaden them even more.
-Brian Howe, April 15, 2008
Basically an 80's inspired electronic album that has some great ambient tracks and awesome pop songs. I love it.
Tracklist
1. You Appearing
2. Kim & Jessie
3. Skin of the Night
4. Graveyard Girl
5. Couleurs
6. Up!
7. We Own the Sky
8. Highway of Endless Dreams
9. Too Late
10. Dark Moves of Love
11. Midnight Souls Still Remain download
Ruby Suns - Sea Lion (2008)
Year: 2008
Label: Lil Chief Records
Genre: indie
review:
Originally Posted by pitchfork
The cover art for the Ruby Suns' sophomore disc, Sea Lion, is a fitting allegory for head Sun Ryan McPhun: A boy on an island takes pains to try to costume himself, tangling himself in lights and string, and wearing a feather in his hair and a crown on his head. McPhun's work as the Ruby Suns functions in much the same way: Stationed on New Zealand's North Island, the California native dresses his work in global music, nibbling at the edges of unfamiliar sounds but, ultimately, skillfully creating sunny psych-pop.
The result is an album of environments, both natural and imagined, hinted at by the cover art's pastel Candyland, the collage of African wildlife on the CD insert, and McPhun's tributes to his home state's Mojave desert and Joshua Trees ("Oh, Mojave"). The album's title refers to the colony of animals that sun in the ocean off of California's Highway 1, and on "There Are Birds", co-vocalist Amee Robinson pines for a world where "there are birds and it is calm." A host of animal references doesn't equate to an environmentally conscious album, but Sea Lion takes to heart quaint state park signage: take only pictures, leave only footprints. The Ruby Suns visit the world via an array of global signifiers-- pinging conga drums, field recordings of animals, slight, sunny harmonies-- but as they do, the band sounds genuinely curious and respectfully adoptive rather than calculating or opportunistic.
Sea Lion, therefore, has a fair amount of clutter-- expect comparisons to musically busy peers like Panda Bear or the Russian Futurists, and to the jumbled orchestral experimentation of Olivia Tremor Control-- but the album's building blocks ooze with a homespun grace. Opener "Blue Penguin" rubs the sleep out of its eyes before grinding a dirty acoustic guitar into overdriven tape. The tender horns on "Remember" are reminiscent of the gentle indie rock of Beulah before introducing a coda of warm, looped sighing. "Adventure Tour"'s high-pitched, descending choruses recall Avey Tare. "Tane Mahuta", sung in indigenous Maori, provides the sole link to McPhun's adopted home, but the song's furious strumming and dewy harmonies are straight from power- and African- (think Tabu Ley) pop.
Sea Lion likely will be pegged a great guitar-pop album, but it's more sonically complex than that suggests. Intriguingly, some of its stylistic conceits-- the 4AD hum of "There Are Birds" or the New Order-via-Graceland second half of "Morning Sun"-- are found on both their most straightforward and best pop moments. Meanwhile, the unfortunately titled "It's Mwangi in Front of Me", and the even worse "Kenya Dig It?", provide the record its most abstract, collage-inspired moments. Sea Lion's one constant is its hard-charging positivity; even songs that begin with a slow drizzle ("Ole Rinka") or hesitant atmospherics ("Blue Penguin") end up as paeans to suns or birds or-- most traditionally-- love. Sea Lion's artwork, song titles, and McPhun's background all suggest something pan-global and yet the album shines brightest when it stays closest to its indie rock roots-- a reminder that despite their escapist charms, exploration and travel work best as an accent to the familiarity and comfort of home.
-Andrew Gaerig, March 07, 2008
I don't know how I'd describe this. Some African inspired tracks, some with muffled voices. It fits the modern definition of "indie" basically.
Tracklist
1. Blue Penguin
2. Oh, Mojave
3. Tane Mahuta
4. There are Birds
5. It's Mwangi in Front of Me
6. Remember
7. Ole Rinka
8. Adventure Tour
9. Kenya Dig It?
10. Morning Sun
Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant (2008)
Year: 2008
Label: Sub Pop
Genre: indie folkrock
review:
Originally Posted by pitchfork
The opening track on Fleet Foxes' debut EP is the perfect introduction to this Seattle band, whose carefully fashioned songs reward more active listening than your typical indie-roots outfit. "Sun Giant" begins with their soft harmonies reverberating in what sounds like a cathedral space. With no accompaniment, their sustained a cappella notes fade slowly, adding gravity to this hymn of contentment: "What a life I lead in the summer/ What a life I lead in the spring." The only other instrument is Skyler Skjelset's mandolin, which enters late in the song playing a delicate theme as singer Robin Pecknold hums quietly.
The Sun Giant EP-- sold on tour and digitally through Sub Pop, with a proper release forthcoming-- contains familiar sounds, but Fleet Foxes make something new and special with them, following their own musical whims as closely as they follow tradition. (Maybe more closely.) These five songs-- modest but never spare, atmospheric but never as an end in itself-- change shape constantly, taking in elements of classic rock, church music, old-timey folk, and soundtrack flourishes. Already mistaken for Southern rock (there's not enough boogie in Nicholas Peterson's drums for that), Fleet Foxes will bear repeated comparisons, both praising and disparaging, to groups like My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses, but those connections are based on superficial similarities like geography or the heavy use of reverb. In fact, Fleet Foxes' touchstones are much more diverse than that-- and not necessarily so contemporary. Until recently, their MySpace page listed Judee Sill, Crosby Stills & Nash, and Fairport Convention as influences, although now it reads "not much of a rock band." That's not especially true. You could also make a case that Fleet Foxes' demonstrative harmonies recall Fleetwood Mac; that their rearrangement and recombination of traditional styles hints at the Band or, more recently, Grizzly Bear; that their short, evocative instrumental phrasing bears similarities to Pinetop Seven.
Such comparisons accompany the arrival of most young bands, but Fleet Foxes' songs inhabit a very specific, very rural space that's as much a product of how these songs are assembled as it is of how they sound. Like a novelist writing intricately winding sentences, the band craft hummable melodies that never quite go where you expect, but sound neither manipulated nor directed. After the quiet title track comes "Drops in the River", which builds gradually as the band patiently add instruments-- strange ambient clattering in the background and simple floor toms in place of a drum kit, accentuated with tambourine and a snaky electric guitar. Halfway through the song, Fleet Foxes reach a dramatic peak, and their next move is surprising: The music ebbs momentarily, as if to build anew through a second verse, but then picks up at that same dramatic level. Like the rest of the EP, "Drops in the River" possesses an intriguingly blunt concision, as though Fleet Foxes have no time for the luxury of long, slow crescendos or meandering jams. They focus their arrangements finely, emphasizing Pecknold's rustically impressionistic lyrics as much as their organic and inventive sound.
"English House" and "Mykonos", the longest and most obviously "rock" songs, comprise the EP's rising action and reveal more of Fleet Foxes' range. The former is a graceful downward rush of guitars and percussion, with a falsetto chorus trimming the music like Christmas lights in the rafters. "Mykonos" doesn't travel as far as its title suggests, but thrives on the tension between Pecknold's wordless vocal intro and the band's intricate harmonies. Of course, it careens off in new directions. "Brother, you don't need to turn me away," Pecknold pleads, bringing the song to a dramatic standstill. Then the band just runs away with the song again.
The Sun Giant EP ends with Pecknold alone once more, singing "Innocent Son" with only a few brusque strums as accompaniment. With only the sparsest elements, he turns the song into a sort of rough county-road soul, his voice unceremoniously fading out on the final words. This song, and the others here, reinforce the impression that Sun Giant is more than a tour souvenir or a promotional teaser for a proper release. It's a sovereign work: a statement EP, supremely crafted and confident.
Tracklist
1. Sun Giant
2. Drops in the River
3. English House
4. Mykonos
5. Innocent Son
Fleet Foxes - s/t
Year: 2008
Label: Sub Pop
Genre: indie folkrock
Leaked ST. doubly excellent.
Tracklist
1. Red Squirrel / Sun Rises
2. White Winter Hymnal
3. Ragged Wood
4. Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
5. Quiet Houses
6. He Doesn't Know Why
7. Heard Them Stirring
8. Your Protector
9. Meadowlark
10. Blue Ridge Mountains
Track Listing
Intro - 1:21
Agoraphobia - 3:22
Never Stops - 3:04
Little Kids - 4:22
Microcastle - 3:40
Calvary Scars - 1:37
Greem Jacket - 2:09
Activa - 1:49
Nothing Ever Happened - 5:50
Saved By Old Times - 3:50
These Hands - 5:25
Twilight at Carbon Lake - 4:24
I honestly can't provide a review for you because the album isn't out and because I don't trust myself to give a reliable review. I can say that the album is fantastic, however, and that I would highly recommend it.
In true form, I can't write musical descriptions for shit. This is a Japanese multi-instrumentalist, and I would say it's funky pop that oddly reminds me of animal collective or panda bear. If you're not satisfied with my bad description, here's a full review
Spoiler:
As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my little part of the house. Years of use are present: the fading and drooping armchairs; the small pencil drawings on the wall; and the pins in various shapes and positions, a face smiling from the knee. What sounds like a backwards bagpipe is playing through the speakers in front of me, a pot banging from the kitchen in the background, and I feel more comfortable than I have for days. While I won’t dwell on the Issues that Plagued 07-08, I can tell you that finding myself in this room wasn’t a rare occurrence, listening to Shugo Tokumaru because maybe, I don’t know, he was so good to just trip out to, maaaaan, or Night Piece was the perfect way to come down off another long, summer day, or Exit got me get ready in the early mornings, even more so on the way to school. Not many albums inspire that kind of attention from me, fewer artists even, and Shugo Tokumaru manages to do just that. That I can’t understand Japanese seems pretty irreverent.
Craig Eley over at Cokemachineglow described Tokumaru this way: “Listening to Shugo is like watching a foreign film with the subtitles off. You can't ‘know’ what's being said (as if you can ‘know’ anything, man, shit), but you can ‘understand’ what's happening. You can feel. And at the end, you can say ‘that was delirious and beautiful and fun.’” More so than anything, this is what makes Exit Tokumaru’s best album to date (his "singles album" as opposed to his subdued, atmospheric debut), each song a different template and story. I’m not to assume the dirty, Nintendo-fronted acoustic bash “D.P.O.” is meant to be profound, but when the song guides its way to the softer, effect-laden “Hidamari,” Tokumaru’s falsetto-prone performance becomes poignant and palpable after the frustrated wails in “D.P.O.”
When Tokumaru switches to English to sing the title's refrain in “Parachute,” his enunciation is a hook in itself; when in “Button” his voices rises into a passionate wail, it barely matters what he’s saying as long as we can feel it. This is such a large appeal to Exit that it’d be easy to overlook the fact that the reason the album works so well against the language barrier is Tokumaru’s abilities as a songwriter. “Parachute” makes this immediately apparent, jumping full-throttle into the layered acoustic song, outlined with kitchen noises and bells, though Tokumaru never indulges the quirks; the clank and slides on the acoustic guitar are always audible. His ability to use any sound at his disposal is indelible, like the cowbell that keeps tempo in the clunky, passionate “Button.”
Even when the tracks become abrasive, almost a little too saccharine as the jangling "Future Umbrella" presents, they still manage to work as beautiful compositions, dense and off-the-wall. When woodwinds blow in spurts through “Clocca,” they are fascinating because of how they read on paper: annoying, irritating, indulgent. In practice, in the universe that Exit exists in, they are just a part of the landscape, more beautiful details to a design that seems to always be expanding.
As I’m writing this, “La La Radio” has begun the transition from innocent folk-rock to sparkling electronica, replete with a jazzy guitar and another transitional acoustic solo, where Tokumaru marks the passage into a full-blown rock song. It ends. The silence is overbearing until a guitar chord thumbs through the fog, and Tokumaru suddenly, quietly, creates a folk instrumental. At this stage of the album, following Tokumaru’s magnum opus, a more fitting conclusion couldn’t be created; though, as “Parachute” begins once again to vibrate through the floor beneath my feet, it serves perfectly as the cooling off period before we indulge, once again, in expertly crafted pop. Exit is a classic, a refreshing and rewarding experience that is sweet and euphoric and brilliant. Exit should make Tokumaru a star.
All I'll say is that I always liked this album, but after it a while it grew on me and I adore it now.
REVIEW
Spoiler:
Grizzly Bear’s woozy, sea-drunk folk has been skirting the ‘freak-folk’ line since their debut, Horn of Plenty, in late 2004. But where Devendra, Animal Collective, and company live up to the oddity implied by the tag, at least musically, Grizzly Bear has always sounded like a slightly less deranged crew of roustabouts, one whose three day sleep of hair may just be the weirdest thing about them. I’d guess they take their coffee black and their cereal wet. They owe as much to traditional psychedelic music as to the hirsute escapism of their genre-mates, but there’s an ascetic lividity to their spirituality that gives these often rough, imperfect gems their hymnal quality.
Their songs are smothered in gushes of sound and atmosphere; they take their time in coming to the heart of the matter, allowing the tracks to simmer and smoke before they fire. Near-silence, a rough-note, an overly eager moment in a spot of quiet comes together perfectly, beautifully awkward. It’s this concentration on the long-form over the short, which comes off at first listen as a collection of songs with no real center-point—no moment where the album finds definition as a whole—which may lead critics to write it off as more carelessly tuned, formless indie wankery. But like a precisely stacked pile of kindling, all the twigs and the odd pieces of dry wood have to hold their place for the rest to catch.
No longer just the effort of singer/songwriter Edward Droste, Grizzly Bear’s now a foursome, and the rest of the band puts some shadow in his sketches. Though Yellow House—recorded in a house off Cape Cod, one which, yes, just happens to be yellow—maintains their debut’s DIY aesthetic, its blood is thicker, with plenty of strings, subtle electronic flourishes, and a more rhythmic base. The result is a prodigious leap for the band, combining their deft sense of atmosphere with a renewed attention to songcraft and, perhaps more importantly, album-craft. After all, Yellow House is more an astounding record than an astonishing set of songs, which was how Horn of Plenty ultimately sounded. For every “Easier,” with its sleepy background chorus, marching drums, and ambergris quiet, there’s the wavering, closed-door singalong of “Lullabye.” For every soaring gust like “Knife” or “Central Remote,” two of the album’s few songs that adhere to a traditional sense of melody and motion, there’s a shaky, flickering nod to the nod like “Little Brother,” with its whistling, stumbling drums, and the ocean-borne sickness of its progress.
Grizzly Bear pair the dizzying with the clairvoyant, and back the mellow moments of prayer with deafening, prodigal excess. Tracks take on several different moods, often through dogleg turns in pace, without noticing the shift. “Marla,” perhaps the album’s most stunning moment, was actually penned by Droste’s great-aunt in the thirties; Grizzly Bear shape it into a waltz whispered in the mire, a crude fever of strings (courtesy of Final Fantasy), piano, and Droste’s coy vocals. It’s drugged and deprived of sense, a mystery of ten million parts and too many characters with too few faces. But it’s addictive, absolutely maddening, like a tune whistled by the straitjacketed in the cinderblock hole, with a melody that wormholes your dreams. When followed by the stubby guitars of “On a Neck, On a Spit,” a barrel-leaping trot by comparison, the two form a seemingly senseless couplet whose connection, though tenuous, is oddly necessary for the album’s late progress. Elsewhere, the mushroomed layering of “Reprise,” finds purpose in its end, giving out to the reverbed piano and staccato effects of “Colorado,” the album’s closer. Fittingly, Grizzly Bear founds an irresolute, unnavigable place in the space of ten songs: laying to rest in the canyon after taking shape in a sea of weeds. A masterful record from a yellow house where every bit of timber is damp and ready to take fire.
Also whoa just realized that Animal Collective is referenced for both previous albums but no one has ever uploaded Animal Collective. This must be done.
Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam Label: Domino
Release: September 11, 2007
Genre: Experimental? It's weird
Just when you thought 2007 was going well in terms of new music, two of the decade's defining bands drop new albums and turn the whole year on its head. I'm talking about Animal Collective and Liars. These two experimental rock behemoths have chartered unique and fascinating courses through the 00s and are surely two of the most accomplished bands operating today. Curiously, coincidentally, if the critical consensus is to be trusted, they've both just released their big 'pop' records within one month of another. We've already established that Liars is really, really good. Could Strawberry Jam be even better still? I think so.
Fans of the Collective have already had one record to cherish (Panda Bear's Person Pitch, which for my money deserved a couple more points than the six we gave it but, hey, this site's a democracy) and one to be slightly confused by this year (Avey Tare and Kria Brekkan's Pullhair Rubeye). Strawberry Jam comfortably surpasses both.
The fun begins with Peacebone, the lead single, which sounds something like Feels' Grass on Ritalin. (At this point in their career, comparing Animal Collective to anyone other than Animal Collective is a futile act.) The melody is equally buoyant, but crisper production allows it to flourish rather than, dare I say, irritate slightly. For Reverend Green is the next major highlight. Its reverberating, delay-drenched guitars lock into a gorgeous drone which provides the backdrop for Avey Tare's most impressive vocal to date (he sings, he shouts, he screams, he murmurs nonsense...) and the trademark AC harmonies. At around the 4:40 the wheels sound like they're about the fly off, only for the band to tighten it all up for a thrilling finale.
After this, I'd have settled for filler. Instead the band offers up Fireworks, perhaps its strongest, most fully realised track to date. Featuring inventive percussion, another cracking Avey vocal, more enthusiastic harmonies and an inspired change of pace three minutes in, this classic centrepiece arguably makes for 2007's most rewarding seven minutes of new music.
Strawberry Jam's final four tracks are less immediate, but no less impressive. The eerie Cuckoo Cuckoo is the record's most overtly experimental moment, sounding unlike anything in the AC catalogue with its sombre piano and jarring bursts of noise. Crucially, it works, which is even more impressive. #1 displays a more subtle approach to innovation, a swirling, multilayered soundscape that's propelled to a higher level by Panda Bear's soaring vocals. Winter Wonder Land sounds like a traditional indie-rock band put through a blender, where as the whimsical, folky Derek offers a refreshingly different finale, raising an intriguing question: what next for Animal Collective?
But that's for another day. For now let's just bask in the glory of Strawberry Jam, 2007's strongest album so far.
A colleague of mine noted recently, "There are no immature or trite topics—only immature and trite approaches." Though this didn't necessarily relate to music, it does illustrate the problem with most rock bands today. Because of the third-generation looting and pilfering, entire genres of music (post-punk, jangle pop, classic rock, fucking indie rock itself) have, quite simply, become clichés.
In reviews of Asobi Seksu's Citrus, close to every single piece of writing used the word "reverb," the dreaded statement "walls of guitars," and tiresome allusions to My Bloody Valentine. So it's understandable that a first impression of the album would prompt throwing it in with The Radio Dept. and every other blatant shoegaze rip-off outfit that wanks with their whammy bar. And that’s fair, to a degree.
But what seemingly hasn't been talked about regarding Citrus is that the songwriting is great: real, fleshed-out paintings in place of the basic sketches that littered their self-titled debut. OK, so the sound is bigger, but that's obvious. What's not recognizable is not what those sounds are, but how they're executed. There are a plethora of quirky tricks and brief, memorable riffs, mostly thanks to guitarist James Hanna. Listen, for example, to when the guitar interrupts its clean, ringing pattern with an Isn't Anything-style bend on "Strawberries" or the echoing, bare-bones slide figure on "Strings." What separates Citrus from the horde of shoegazer or other rock releases is that each song possesses tons of those ornamentations and idiosyncrasies. That might not be special; the Fiery Furnaces also have hook after hook on a single track. But on Citrus, each passage feels like a logical progression of its antecedent, and, simultaneously, every advancing section is completely unexpected.
"Thursday," the album's first single, is an ideal illustration. Gently gliding in on a fractured, ambient sound fragment, a sprightly bass plays over a muffled 4/4 kick/hi-hat beat. Singer Yuki Chikudate (who sings in both Japanese and English), coos a verse with a funerary tone, until the band launches into a breathtakingly ethereal chorus. When they repeat the first verse, rather than reverting to the basic template, they add a strong snare and intertwining guitars straight out of Turn on the Bright Lights. As if that wasn't enough, they crank the second go-round of the chorus up a notch, drop a chiming, bell-laced breakdown, and then decide to usher in the de facto enveloping sound and aching vocal melody for an overwhelming finale. That's just one song. And pretty much every track (with the exception of the drab "Exotic Animal Paradise") here shares the same qualities: multi-part structuring, addictive melodies, and clever overdubs.
I can't understand the lyrics when Yuki's singing in Japanese, but I do understand when she's singing in English. I can't imagine that the Japanese lyrics are very much different from cloyingly maudlin, neo-romantic lines like, "In drops on the dew / I wished they were you," or schmaltzy psychedelic pop statements like "disconnect the feeling factory." What could be a massive detraction, however, turns into a minor flaw, for Yuki doesn't focus on what she's saying, but how she delivers it. Her voice, which was incorrectly placed front-and-center, with no effects, on Asobi Seksu, is applied differently on Citrus. Though there are a million tricks going on all around her, the focus is always directed squarely on her instrument, which—regardless of the shape or path it takes—is always the eye of the storm.
One might say that what Citrus does well is draw from shoegazer's ability to control noise and clamor so that it creates beauty, but that wouldn’t exactly be it. The fundamental difference between is that even though Asobi Seksu employ noise into their aesthetic, it's never to such an extensive degree that it feels like discord. Citrus is an outstanding record because it doesn't fixate on what makes great shoegazer music but what makes great pop music, thus proving that approaches are what make albums—not the genre.
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