Guess who has two thumbs and just posted a backlog of music reviews he’s written for the paper this year? This guy.
Okay, so that doesn’t work as well without the visual of the thumbs pointing at myself. Reviews of new(-ish) music by MGMT, 7 Worlds Collide, Dan Black, and The Bird and The Bee are below.
Boston was great. Hoping for good things. One more track for music’s sake:
Also: Those tacos from the food post? This happened.
“Time To Pretend”, a song about the excesses of fame off MGMT’s first album Oracular Spectacular, seems eerily prescient now. “Kids”, another song off of Oracular, came out of nowhere to become a smash hit for the group. Listening to Congratulations, the group’s second album, it’s clear they’re still processing what this all means.
A warning: if you’re looking for another “Kids”, Congratulations is going to disappoint you. There’s nothing as immediately hooky in the album’s 9 tracks, but overall the tracks are more consistent and coherent. “It’s Working” and “Flash Delirium” mix British Invasion and psychedelic pop influences with what feels like the kitchen sink – “Delirium” in particular feels like it rips through about 4 or 5 genres in its 4 minute running time. Even the 12 minute “Siberian Breaks” is a delight, blending surf rock with the Beach Boys and other 60s influences to produce something sonically unique.
If there’s a bad track in the bunch (which is debatable), it’s probably “Lady Dada’s Revenge”, an instrumental that doesn’t really go anywhere over its short running time and feels more like padding. Sometimes the songs feel a little overstuffed as well – it seems like 18 songs could have been produced from all the ideas the band put into these 9. Aside from these minor detractions, the album explores some impressive ground musically, putting it in contention as one of the best albums of the year.
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Between a prominent placement in the (500) Days of Summer soundtrack, multiple parodies on SNL, and the webseries “Live From Daryl’s House”, Daryl Hall and John Oates are having a resurgence of popularity. The Bird and the Bee continue this trend with their new album “Interpreting the Masters Volume I: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates”, covering eight of the duo’s classic hits along with one original homage.
It’s a bit disappointing then, that the album seems so one-note. The album’s production, provided by Greg Kurstin (the “Bee” to Inara George’s “Bird”), seems mostly to blame. The soaring blend of soft synths, 60’s tropicalia, and jazz that populates their two previous albums is nowhere to be found here. Each track carries the same half-60s/half-80s blend of semi-distorted bleeps and boops, which gets tired after only a few tracks. The re-interpretations of “Maneater” and “Private Eyes” make the most of the production choices, but slower songs (“Sara Smile” and “One on One”, in particular) suffer, dragging along and ruining the listening experience.
The album isn’t a complete misstep, though. The opening track, “Heard It On The Radio”, feels like a lost Hall and Oates B-Side; I actually had to check that they hadn’t recorded the song originally. It’s a fantastic eye into how closely The Bird and The Bee studied the music of Hall and Oates; it’s also a shame the rest of the album doesn’t have the energy of this single track.
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Dan Black’s breakthrough in the UK came when he posted a mashup of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” and Rihanna’s “Umbrella” title “HYPNTZ” to his MySpace. Now his debut album has arrived in the States, and it builds on the influences of that track to mixed effect.
The album’s lead track, “Symphonies”, shows the clearest influence of the mix of hip-hop style beats and R&B instrumentation—the drum line is a near replica of Rihanna’s smash hit, and this contrasts nicely with the angelic instrumentation providing the rest of the song’s backbeat. Other songs that blend these disparate influences nicely are “Ecstasy” (which features some great beatboxing as part of its instrumentation) and “Cocoon”, a slower track.
Other than these songs, though, there’s not much else to recommend on UN. Black’s whiny vocals ruin the choruses of “U + Me” and “Yours”, and the swagger he displays in tracks like “Pump My Pumps” and “I Love Life” doesn’t fit with the more sensitive side he shows during much of the rest of the album. It’s easy to see what’s influenced Dan Black’s debut album; this is also its downfall. There aren’t enough tracks that feel like an original extension of these influences to truly recommend checking out the entire album.
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7 Worlds Collide is slightly different than other supergroups. 21 artists came together in New Zealand over 3 weeks to record an album to benefit Oxfam, and the results are fairly impressive; all 24 tracks of the double-disc set feel cohesive in sound while retaining their own eclectic touches. “Too Blue”, a collaboration between Johnny Marr, Jeff Tweedy, and Neil Finn, and “Reptile”, Lisa Germano’s quirky contribution shine on the first disc. Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall really shows herself on the album–both “Black Silk Ribbon”, a collaboration with Bic Runga, and “Hazel Black”, her contribution on the second disc, are excellent.
With any double album, though, there’s bound to be some filler. Tracks like Liam Finn’s “Red Wine Bottle” and Tim Finn’s “Riding the Wave”, while nice, aren’t particularly memorable, and the instrumental “3 Worlds Collide” doesn’t really seem to have a purpose other than to make both discs 12 tracks long. Still, these are minor faults in an overall solid album. The eclectic range of singers and styles provides something for everyone.
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I thought I had finally come up with a way to recap the past two months in a simple format: two posts, one briefly highlighting awesome things which had happened in the second part of the quarter and one covering the not-quite awesome things which had happened. I started thinking about what I wanted to cover, and honestly, for all the hard work, stress, and frustration that went into this quarter, there wasn’t really a “this completely sucks” moment that sticks out in my head. Which is good; winter term is notorious for being really depressing and gray and desperate because it’s 8 weeks of class, no breaks in awful weather (ah, Indiana, land where the weather literally CANNOT MAKE UP ITS MIND whether to rain or snow). So, anyways, awesome things. Here they are.
To start, a few that don’t require much explanation besides a bullet-point mention:
Now for those that require a little more explanation.
It’s been posted a bunch of other places online, but this OK GO video is amazing:
It seems like it would probably enhance the music reviews I’ve written if you could hear what the band sounds like. I’ve retroactively added these to the posts they belong to, but here’s a sample track (via LaLa) of the last albums I’ve reviewed:
Beach House’s sound has been fairly consistent over their last two albums, 2006’s self-titled debut and 2008’s Devotion. Alex Scally’s reverb-drenched guitars and Victoria Legrand’s keyboards and distinctive vocals mix in a sea of tinny drum machines and slow, measured tempos to create something dreamy and ethereal.
With Teen Dream, their third album and Sub Pop debut, they’ve cleared some of the fog from their sound, adding live percussion and speeding the tempo up a bit to create something both familiar and refreshing. Songs like “Zebra”, “Norway”, and “Used to Be” are bright and engaging while still retaining the dreamy sound the band is known for.
If there’s any fault in the album’s 10 tracks, it’s that a few of the songs, like “Real Love”, drag a little too long. None of the songs on the album could be considered short; most average around five minutes while the shortest is just under four. Still, these atmospheric songs showcase Victoria Legrand’s low, distinctive voice to great effect. If the growth between this album and their last is any indication of how the band will continue to progress, the future holds bright things for this Baltimore duo.
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Full Disclosure: Although after the review was written/turned in, I received a copy of the album and a poster of its cover in blue on one side and in yellow (like the album itself) on the other. The label sent them to the station because we’re playing it a lot lately.
Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut exploded on the blogosphere two years ago, with critics either finding its afro-pop meets indie-rock aesthetic amazing or horrible. Two years later, their sophomore album, Contra, should hopefully turn those who weren’t as keen on the first album around to the band’s sound.
The album shows a clear progression from the first album; while the guitar tone and rhythms that defined the band’s first-album sound are still present on the songs (“Cousins” and “Holiday” could easily fit onto the group’s debut), more synth-based rhythms are also present. The group even manages to make Autotune (an overused element in 2009) sound fresh on “California English”.
The group’s experimentation with new sounds doesn’t always pay off—while the electropop influences on “Giving Up the Gun” make the song even better, the muddled, overlayered strings of “I Think UR a Contra” detract from the song’s reflective lyrics. Overall, Contra retains many of the elements that made Vampire Weekend’s first album so unique, it shows a growth and willingness to experiment that indicates a band that has the potential to produce interesting music for years to come. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
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