Over the past few years, I can think of a handful of really, really impressive debuts. Mika is the first to come to mind… I bought the Life in Cartoon Motion
But, hell, let’s sing “Grace Kelly” together again. For old times’ sake.
Ah, big sigh.
The next one, Gotye, needs no introduction. I didn’t buy Making Mirrors
Who’s the next one? Wanna guess? Here’s a hint: Last year, when I went out to Annapolis for the first time, I was all nervous and scared and in a place where everything was strange… and I tuned in the radio and that particular song came on and I snarled and changed the channel and thought “okay, maybe it’s not *THAT* different.”
That’s right! Lorde
Well, Alt-J was the fourth artist on my list and I’m sure that you remember hearing Breezeblocks the same number of times as the other songs on this list but… well, Breezeblocks has the lyric “She’s morphine, queen of my vaccine” and, well, I’m willing to forgive a lot for that one. So I got the album An Awesome Wave
The best part of the song is between around 2:25 and when the instrumental kicks in at 3:08. A moaning, longing prayer (almost).
And the whole album was good! Like, still able to listen to it good. Like… almost Quadrophenia good. Almost. Well, that made me say “you know what, I’m going to keep my eyes open for their next one.”
And I got it. This Is All Yours
And it’s pretty good. I don’t know how to compare to the original but… they’ve managed to recapture some of the strange, alien sound that made the first album awesome.
The perfect moments from around 2:00 until 2:55 just have me captivated.
Now, this album feels different than the first insofar as it feels like a religious album. (No Religion.) It’s like they’re trying to wrestle with the Argument From Desire. (Which is, of course, no proof at all… and yet…) Many of the songs feel like meditations, psalms, and prayers. Now, there are fun and goofy songs on the album (the first one, Left Hand Free (currently getting a lot of airplay) feels more fun than anything else), but those songs aren’t representative.
The album feels like they’ve stopped listening to advice… which is, I suppose, the hallmark of sophomore efforts that follow massive success. Some of the advice they got was very good advice indeed and you can tell that they probably should have listened to it… but you can also tell that some of the advice was to hold back and tone it down a little bit. For my part, I’m very glad that they stopped listening to that advice.
I’m looking forward to the next album already… when they go back and filter the advice they should have followed with the advice they’re glad they didn’t and put all of those pieces together for what should be one heck of an album.
But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. I should get back to enjoying this one… because it’s very, very good. Here’s “The Gospel Of John Hurt”.
So… what are you listening to?
I’ve been all over the new Aphex Twin the last couple days.
That Gotye video up there made me think of this (we’ll see if this embed works):
Also, the wiki entry for Argument from Desire contained this sentence:
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new aphex is excellent. being a design nerd, the vinyl art is awesome – it’s just a rundown of tracklisting, bpm, times, and then all the money spent on various promotional items, done in a fixed width font (not courier, but decima mono i think?)
i like the new interpol outside of one song. talk about a band that will never live down a legendary debut.Report
I guess the (slight) knock on the AT is that it’s, by AT standards, fairly accessible/not as groundbreaking as some past works. There are definitely tracks on there that have some sounds that I could see coming from someone else.
That said, it’s varied, melodic, and just plain excellently-crafted, so…
Did you read the interview on P4K with him by Philip Sherburne? Very normal, down to earth, no obfuscation or pranking or talk of tanks and bank vaults and stuff. Sherburne is actually one of the few music writers I have time for (even before he started writing for them) he focuses on electronic stuff. His personal site hasn’t been updated in a couple years (it looks like he’s getting a lot of paid work, so good on him).
http://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/aphex-twin/
Yeah, the new Interpol is pretty good. I didn’t miss Dengler’s playing as much as I thought I might. I might actually go see them when they come around next time, though I’ve seen them twice and never been over-impressed.
(But I have to say, though Antics is less-consistent than TOTBL, I think its peaks may be even higher. I put it up there with the first one.)
(And I actually got a little verklempt when “No I In Threesome” came up on shuffle the other day. Talk about sneaking some real emotion into what initially appeared to be a joke based on the song title.)Report
To be clear, the “knock” in my first para is one I keep seeing around the ‘net, not my own. But generally speaking it’s just been kind of an introductory “let’s get this out of the way, he’s not reinventing the wheel this time around, but this is an excellent record, up there with his best.”Report
re interpol – first time i took my wife to see them (irving plaza) was quite excellent, during the tour for antics. it was the most “rock” thing i’d ever seen, to be sure, but very well done.
second time was in a theatre. watching bands in a theatre sucks.
the new aphex is not some super amazing 4th dimensional visitation of the new shit, to be sure. it’s just really, really good.
i enjoyed that interview. weird to think that in eight years he’ll be 50.Report
speaking of interview, i read a good one in i think the quietus with the guys in interpol, and there’s an extended riff on being forced into place while listening to music as it was during the ancien regime. i don’t know how i feel about that, but it’s hard to deny that it does force one to try and slow burn through music, and fully get an idea of what’s going on before making up one’s mind.
i do try and focus almost entirely upon listening to full albums from front to back. i generally succeed.Report
One of the shows I saw was a huge amphitheater show (opening for the Cure) and that setup generally serves no one well. I only went because my friend wanted to go.
The other time was a mid-size venue (actually, an old theater, come to think of it) which was fine size-wise, but the sound there is always crappy*. I’m not sure if that was the problem, the band just seemed kind of lethargic; though that could also have been partially due to the epic amount of wacky weed semi-reliable sources (well, some employees of a store he visited before the show) tell me that they suspect Banks might have smoked that day.
This time around it’s in a pretty good historic/storied mid-size local venue. My friend already got tickets and told me I can have one if I want.
My wife and a friend of mine know their current touring bassist, so weirdly I am on kind of an acquaintance basis with (someone kind of in) Interpol.
That’s as close to fame as I get, I’m afraid.
* Actually, I just saw a rock show recently, in another old theater, and it also had terrible sound – just muddy as all get out. Is this something specific to old theaters? They just re-did another one here fairly recently, and it has *excellent* sound now (sound baffles and such), but before that it was not great.Report
my understanding is that redoing an old style theatre for modern sound requires a lot of retooling and careful engineering, as they were designed to work without requiring amplified instruments. town hall in nyc is a place that went through extensive revision and sounds great, but the seats are a torture if you’re over 6’2″.Report
Ah, that makes sense. These places have all been “converted” in the sense that the seats were taken out and modern PAs installed, but I am guessing they didn’t do all of the necessary acoustic renovations to the structure/space.
The other venue I mentioned, they recently totally renovated, replaced the sound system and also added sound baffling on the ceiling etc., and it sounds *fantastic* now (I just saw Mogwai there). But before that it was pretty crappy-sounding.
We were also laughing about the smoke/fog machine.
Sure, it’s a classic; but also, if you want the romance of playing in a smoke-filled room in 2014, you gotta bring your own “smoke”; you can’t rely on your nicotine-stained audience anymore.Report
Puddles is an amazing, full-package performer. My big toe shot up in my boot the first time I saw that Lorde cover and it’s stayed shot up. This guerrilla performance is a favorite.Report
“My big toe shot up in my boot”
is this a regionalism?Report
It was commonly heard on the planet where Little Richard came from. “His recompense and reward—My Lord.”Report
Oh, the irony! When I saw Gotye (1), I kind of had a premonition that the only other artist in the rotation on the “modern” stations in my car that causes me to change the channel within less than the “Name That Tune” standard seven notes might be coming, but didn’t really believe it was possible because things never work out that perfectly in real life. And then, oh Lorde….
I have no idea why I have such a powerful reaction to both of them. It’s not that they’re not talented, I recognize that they are. And it’s not like I have great taste, anyway… “Shout” is one of my favorite Devo albums. I like 80s rockabilly unironically. I think Bastille had the best song of 2013. Those two just reach straight down to my rat brain and cause me to recoil.
(1) Whose name, thanks to the power of first impressions, I can never hear other than in the voice of Mike Myers as Fat Bastard chasing Mini-Me around – “GOT ye!”. You’re welcome.Report