It's the end of summer as I write this. Not officially,; the solstice is still a few weeks away, but we did just make through the unofficial end of summer that is Labour Day. The temperature even collaborated with that, coming down to the single digits for a couple of days this week.
This is kind of ironic, as Ron Sexsmith's new album, Long Player Late Bloomer, feels like a spring album more than it does anything else. It's a light, fun album, an album full of seventh chords and syncopation, of breathless lyrics and hope. Hope's a tricky thing to accomplish in today's indie rock world, as is earnestness. Both have gotten a bit of a bad rap over the years, victims of the forced, fake sort of earnestness one can associate with Celine Dion or the pop tarts that dominated the last decade of popular music. Still, the fact that saccharine gives you cancer doesn't stop sugar from being sweet, and the hopefulness that Sexsmith displays throughout this album is very welcome. All this makes it a little bit like Sexsmith's other albums, to be honest, which the listener might see as being either a credit or a drawback, depending on how they feel about the type of music he makes.
If you've been paying close attention to the past few weeks' worth of reviews around here, you may have noticed that I've been a little down on the albums we've been reviewing, and that I had to actively search to try to find something nice to say about them. That isn't the case here at all, and while I'll admit that there's a possibility the context of those other albums may have influenced how much I appreciated this one, it still is an objectively good album for the reasons I've outlined.
There's a song in the middle of the album called I'm In The Middle of Love that's a perfect example of this. It's just as goofy and fun as the title suggests, without becoming cloying or sappy. If I had to pick a stand-out track, that'd be it, but honestly all 13 songs on this album are well worth your time.
Showing posts with label 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2011. Show all posts
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Ryan's Braids Review
I had an awkward feeling while listening to this album. It felt like I'd heard it before. Which seemed unlikely, because I know I only got a copy of it a few days ago, when I started listening to it to review it for this blog, and as far as I could remember I hadn't heard it on the radio or any of the music podcasts I listen to. The feeling was definitely there, though, nagging at me every time I hit play, like a piece of unpopped popcorn that gets stuck in your teeth and you spend days trying to find a way to work it out from in there. Then, finally, it hit me: I hadn't heard the album before, but I have been listening to Polaris shortlisted albums for the past three years and this sounded an awful lot like a lot of them.
I think that if someone were to sit down and try to compose an album specifically to appeal to Polaris judges, they would end up with something not unlike Native Speaker by Braids. I'm not saying that Braids went into the studio consciously thinking that, but the result is uncanny. You've got the haunting, feminine lyrics that one could associate with Tegan and Sara or Kathleen Edwards, the atmospheric, detached feel of a Besnard Lakes or Timbre Timbre album, and the electronic influence of a Caribou or Weeknd. For all of those combinations, though, it didn't feel like there was really anything new here - the sum of those disparate parts was no greater than any of the pieces that it felt influenced by.
I'm sure this album has its supporters, but when stacking it up against the rest of the shortlisted albums (and even some that were overlooked by the Polaris community), I can't help but feel it falls far short of the rest of them.
I think that if someone were to sit down and try to compose an album specifically to appeal to Polaris judges, they would end up with something not unlike Native Speaker by Braids. I'm not saying that Braids went into the studio consciously thinking that, but the result is uncanny. You've got the haunting, feminine lyrics that one could associate with Tegan and Sara or Kathleen Edwards, the atmospheric, detached feel of a Besnard Lakes or Timbre Timbre album, and the electronic influence of a Caribou or Weeknd. For all of those combinations, though, it didn't feel like there was really anything new here - the sum of those disparate parts was no greater than any of the pieces that it felt influenced by.
I'm sure this album has its supporters, but when stacking it up against the rest of the shortlisted albums (and even some that were overlooked by the Polaris community), I can't help but feel it falls far short of the rest of them.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Ryan's Galaxie review
I've started noticing this pattern when it comes to the Polaris shortlist, now that we've been posting to this blog for a few years. First is that there's always one French band that makes the shortlist. If Iwere a far more cynical person, I would chalk that up to an unspoken quota system on behalf of the organizers, but I know that's not actually the case. From a technical standpoint it would be difficult to game the system in that way; more importantly, I think that it would work completely against what the organizers of the prize are trying to accomplish, so they'd have no reason to do so. It's an interesting coincidence, is all I'm saying.
Another part of this pattern is that the one French band always puts out an album that's absolutely fascinating. The shortlist on a whole is always an eclectic group, of course, but that French band always seems to stand apart from the others (and not just due to the language barrier).
We're not here to talk about patterns, though, were here to talk about Montreal's own Galaxie, and their incredible album Tigre et Diesel. It's a short album (if memory serves, the shortest one this year), but it's also an intense one – Galaxie seems to know going in that their time is limited, so they don't want to waste a single second and bring the rock as quickly as they can. That intensity really works to the album's advantage – it grabs you and drags you out onto the metaphorical dancefloor, letting you lose yourself in the screaming guitars and electronic beats. In a longer album I think this intensity would become either overwhelming or tiring, but it works excellently here.
I won't go so far as to say that this is my favourite album of the year, but it's up there for sure.
Another part of this pattern is that the one French band always puts out an album that's absolutely fascinating. The shortlist on a whole is always an eclectic group, of course, but that French band always seems to stand apart from the others (and not just due to the language barrier).
We're not here to talk about patterns, though, were here to talk about Montreal's own Galaxie, and their incredible album Tigre et Diesel. It's a short album (if memory serves, the shortest one this year), but it's also an intense one – Galaxie seems to know going in that their time is limited, so they don't want to waste a single second and bring the rock as quickly as they can. That intensity really works to the album's advantage – it grabs you and drags you out onto the metaphorical dancefloor, letting you lose yourself in the screaming guitars and electronic beats. In a longer album I think this intensity would become either overwhelming or tiring, but it works excellently here.
I won't go so far as to say that this is my favourite album of the year, but it's up there for sure.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Ryan's Timber Timbre Review
There was this guy I knew in university who was a good guy, but was not the most intellectual of fellows. We had a couple of classes together, including, to my surprise, a philosophy class. The class was a struggle for him, and I ended up helping him study for his tests to help him pass the class. During one of those study sessions, I ended up asking him why he was taking a philosophy class in the first place, and he told me "Well, it's not that I care about philosophy; it's just that I thought I'd learn a bunch of impressive quotes to use in essays and stuff."
Listening to Timber Timbre's Creep On Creepin' On, I was strongly reminded of that sentiment expressed in that story - that it's okay to want just the high points, rather than wanting to understand the structure that lies beneath them. From the first time I listened to it, I had a feeling that I liked the album, and when I tried to articulate why I was left quoting individual lines from songs, like "I found depravity convinced me I may no longer care" and "The ectoplasm coiled like a hovering halo of smoke, and our beloved invention is conjured each night in your throat". And don't get me wrong - those individual lines are beautiful works of poetry. What I found limiting about the album, though, was that those individual lines seemed to exist in isolation; there was nothing that seemed to link them to a grander tableau or narrative, and the music of the album, while enjoyable in a chill, low-key sense, did nothing to provide a meaningful context for them to exist in either.
Overall, I'd say this was a fairly enjoyable album. If I were listening to my stereo and it came on, I wouldn't turn it off. But it lacks that special something I've come to expect from shortlisted albums, and that lack of cohesiveness of the lyrical highpoints with the rest of the album ends up as a distraction that takes away from the songs.
Listening to Timber Timbre's Creep On Creepin' On, I was strongly reminded of that sentiment expressed in that story - that it's okay to want just the high points, rather than wanting to understand the structure that lies beneath them. From the first time I listened to it, I had a feeling that I liked the album, and when I tried to articulate why I was left quoting individual lines from songs, like "I found depravity convinced me I may no longer care" and "The ectoplasm coiled like a hovering halo of smoke, and our beloved invention is conjured each night in your throat". And don't get me wrong - those individual lines are beautiful works of poetry. What I found limiting about the album, though, was that those individual lines seemed to exist in isolation; there was nothing that seemed to link them to a grander tableau or narrative, and the music of the album, while enjoyable in a chill, low-key sense, did nothing to provide a meaningful context for them to exist in either.
Overall, I'd say this was a fairly enjoyable album. If I were listening to my stereo and it came on, I wouldn't turn it off. But it lacks that special something I've come to expect from shortlisted albums, and that lack of cohesiveness of the lyrical highpoints with the rest of the album ends up as a distraction that takes away from the songs.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Ryan's Colin Stetson Review
I'm absolutely fascinated by Rorschach tests. You're probably familiar with the concept, if not with the name: the Rorschach is a psychological test that involves showing someone a series of inkblots and having them identify images within them. The idea behind the test is that the images that people see reveal things about their personality or mental health; what's crucial about them, though, is that the blots don't have any intrinsic meaning. What's important is how people react to them.
It took a full week of listening to the album to realize it, but that's what Colin Stetson's New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is: an auditory Rorschach test. There's an argument that that's what all art is, to an extent, but I think this album more fully encapsulates that idea than most, if not all. As one listens to it, they take the scattered horns, haunting spoken-word poetry, and barely audible strings, and desperately try to attach meaning to it. They'll reach different conclusions while doing so, of course. Some might see Stetson as a decadent charlatan, while others might admire him for being brash and audacious in his musical creation. Some might even think, as I briefly did, that he's using the album to audition to be the house band of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The brilliance of this album - and let's be clear, I do think it's brilliant - is that you can't even argue that any of those perspectives are wrong. the album is so sparse, so minimalist, that it is entirely what the listener wants it to b. It's democracy in art. The end result is not one of those albums that I'm going to listen to regularly - in fact, I don't know if I'll ever give it another spin now that I'm finished reviewing it. Listening to it was a great, challenging experience, though, and I'm very glad that I did.
Standout track: A Dream of Water
It took a full week of listening to the album to realize it, but that's what Colin Stetson's New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is: an auditory Rorschach test. There's an argument that that's what all art is, to an extent, but I think this album more fully encapsulates that idea than most, if not all. As one listens to it, they take the scattered horns, haunting spoken-word poetry, and barely audible strings, and desperately try to attach meaning to it. They'll reach different conclusions while doing so, of course. Some might see Stetson as a decadent charlatan, while others might admire him for being brash and audacious in his musical creation. Some might even think, as I briefly did, that he's using the album to audition to be the house band of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The brilliance of this album - and let's be clear, I do think it's brilliant - is that you can't even argue that any of those perspectives are wrong. the album is so sparse, so minimalist, that it is entirely what the listener wants it to b. It's democracy in art. The end result is not one of those albums that I'm going to listen to regularly - in fact, I don't know if I'll ever give it another spin now that I'm finished reviewing it. Listening to it was a great, challenging experience, though, and I'm very glad that I did.
Standout track: A Dream of Water
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Ryan's Hey Rosetta Review
Tim Baker, lead singer for Hey Rosetta!, has explained the name of their current album, Seeds, by saying that "the songs are seeds ... they’re these little things –- four and five minute things — but they have the ability to grow in your brain and be far more meaningful than just what they are", and I think that's a perfect assessment of the album. When I first started listening to it I wanted to say that the songs were haunting, but that's not really accurate – they don't have the mournful, melancholy edge that one would associate with a haunting. The 'seed' metaphor works as well because it's organic, and the music on Seeds is as well, each song fitting into a larger whole than just existing on its own.
I felt that Hey Rosetta!'s last album, the also-Polaris-shortlisted Into Your Arms, was about an immature band in the process of self-discovery; Seeds, in contrast, finds Hey Rosetta! having become much more mature and sure of themselves – sure enough that they've developed a more playful edge to their music. This is something displayed in the reggaesque beat of several songs, such as in the punningly named "New Sum (Nous Sommes)", or the outtake of laughter crossed with what sounded like a handsaw impression (?) at the end of "Parson Brown". It's an interesting contrast to the fairly structured, somewhat traditional instrumentation on display throughout the album. That play within structure helps strengthen the album, I found – you know it's neither going to become stilted or fall apart from self-indulgence.
Of course, instrumentation and self-discovery will only take you so far; if a band wants to win me over they need a strong lyrical presence, and it's here that Hey Rosetta! shines, with Baker crafting his lines in a thoughtful, measured way. In the hands of a lesser writer, subject material like new fatherhood and the intricate balance between fear and trust could come across as cliched or trite, but Baker manages to make them seem familiar and relatable, and brings them to the table without any judgment or trying to provide any unique insight. Doing it in this way allows the listener to develop their own conclusions about those subjects, which creates deeper roots for those subjects than a more didactic approach would. I mentioned that Hey Rosetta! comes across as very mature throughout the album, and this approach of guiding the listener and trusting them to make their own connections and conclusions is a reflection of that maturity.
Standout tracks: Young Glass, Welcome, New Sum (Nous Sommes)
I felt that Hey Rosetta!'s last album, the also-Polaris-shortlisted Into Your Arms, was about an immature band in the process of self-discovery; Seeds, in contrast, finds Hey Rosetta! having become much more mature and sure of themselves – sure enough that they've developed a more playful edge to their music. This is something displayed in the reggaesque beat of several songs, such as in the punningly named "New Sum (Nous Sommes)", or the outtake of laughter crossed with what sounded like a handsaw impression (?) at the end of "Parson Brown". It's an interesting contrast to the fairly structured, somewhat traditional instrumentation on display throughout the album. That play within structure helps strengthen the album, I found – you know it's neither going to become stilted or fall apart from self-indulgence.
Of course, instrumentation and self-discovery will only take you so far; if a band wants to win me over they need a strong lyrical presence, and it's here that Hey Rosetta! shines, with Baker crafting his lines in a thoughtful, measured way. In the hands of a lesser writer, subject material like new fatherhood and the intricate balance between fear and trust could come across as cliched or trite, but Baker manages to make them seem familiar and relatable, and brings them to the table without any judgment or trying to provide any unique insight. Doing it in this way allows the listener to develop their own conclusions about those subjects, which creates deeper roots for those subjects than a more didactic approach would. I mentioned that Hey Rosetta! comes across as very mature throughout the album, and this approach of guiding the listener and trusting them to make their own connections and conclusions is a reflection of that maturity.
Standout tracks: Young Glass, Welcome, New Sum (Nous Sommes)
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Dave's Arcade Fire Review
The Arcade Fire we’re able to put lightening in a bottle with The Suburbs.
The Suburbs is more than a successful album that has sky rocketed a band from ‘popular’ to other worldly music stars - at the end of the day The Suburbs is a masterpiece - pure and simple, it will be remembered as such, but will it win the Polaris Prize this year?
That’s a tough question to answer. If this was any other competition we would just announce it as the winner and be done with it. But this is music, subjective and emotional as being technical and structured – so there is no clear right or wrong, winner or loser. There is only a consensus. We’ll see where out judges take us this year.
When I first listened to The Suburbs I was stopped in my tracks at how well crafted it was, how much care had gone into production, artwork, songwriting and the mix. It all seemed so deliberate – but not in a ‘too cool’ for school’ way, in a completely accessible way. The themes that play out within the songs drip with angst and love for a youth we all once lived, and sometimes miss.
It’s hard for me to talk about individual songs, because the whole album resonates so well from top to bottom with me and my experiences in suburbia. As a product of the suburbs myself, when this album is on, I’m taken back to memories of my youth (both fond and hurtful) – driving around in my mother’s car, tunes cranked, dreams of somewhere else, a better time (if one could exist).
Little did I know that 14 years after leaving the comfort of my parent’s Mississauga home I’d find the soundtrack to motivate me to actually leave. I’m sure for lots of us now in adulthood we wished The Suburbs was around to push us out and into the future. At least we have it now, to provide an emotional landscape to look back.
KEY TRACKS: The Suburbs, Rocco, City With No Children, Month of May,
CLINCHER: We Used To Wait.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Ready to Start!
It's that time of year again. The Shortlist has been announced, the 10 albums are in place and we three amateur critics are here to help guide you through the Polaris Prize.It's an exciting mix of instantly recognizable and more esoteric artists, but as always it will be an interesting and educative process. So sit back, put on your headphones and get ready for 10 weeks of provocative (sometimes) - but always entertaining (hopefully) musical judgments.
Enjoy.
1. Arcade Fire - Suburbs
2. Hey Rosetta - Seeds
3. The Weeknd- House of Balloons
4. Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol.2 Judges
5. Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin' On
6. Galaxie - Tigre et diesel
7. Braids - Native Speaker
8. Ron Sexsmith - Long Player Late Bloomer
9. Austra - Feel it Break
10. Destroyer - Kaputt
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)