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By Robin Smith, September 7, 2010 8:00 am

Sufjan Stevens – All Delighted People EP

Asthmatic Kitty 2010

Rating: 7/10

There’s a lot I admire about Sufjan Stevens. Too much, in fact. I like that he put Michigan and Illinois on the map for me and that in my ignorance I’m hard-pressed to name any other state. I like that he bursts into breakcore rock songs midway through charming acoustic sets. I like that he can’t decide whether to be super-serious or super-silly because let’s face it, posing with a banjo and a cowboy hat ends in frowns. I like his music a fair bit, too, even if it’s just an excuse for him to wear outlandish costumes. Angel-wings, anyone?

When I don’t like him I probably just end up admiring him more. Remember that musical mid-life crisis he had? You’d think that’d be the end of the road for any self-respecting fan, but it turns out it’s easier for us to believe in Sufjan than it is for him to believe in ‘the song’, or ‘the album’, or whatever else he tried to hate. He called the state-project a gimmick, and that probably swung it for us. No one in their right mind would call Illinoise and Michigan gimmicks- they’re so personal they could be postcards from your best pal. And now All Delighted People comes, aptly titled and generously packaged, and I know I’ll be spending more time celebrating than I will telling Sufjan we told him so.

All Delighted People is drowned in its own celebration, actually, and only comes up for air thirteen minutes into closer “Djohariah,” the sequel to Seven Swans’“Sister” in many clever ways. Maybe the fact that this EP most resembles that sweet and personal record of gospel stories, or the way in which both songs fit that description of “freak outs for single-mothers,” or perhaps just the simple in joke of a family tree. This is a good thing. It’s a beautiful continuation of a beautiful sequence, and in a way only this guy would know how- he strings together a guitar-solo with an acoustic lullaby and some finishing touches of bleepy electronica, and the whole thing could fall apart like a five-year-old’s arts and crafts project, sealed with nothing but excitement and flimsy gluing skills. Even with Sufjan trying to cram more in, he still sounds like that delicate trooper sporting a beginner’s banjo.

In a way, though, it’s more weird than beautiful. You crowned Sufjan baroque pop king for Illinoise and I did for Michigan, and these records were a darn sight different from what usually comes out of the genre. They had fluidity to them, not sounding overstuffed by the grand instrumental compositions but rather continuing to move calmly and at their own will; even if tracks were horrible to read out by name, they sounded soft and saccharine, not huge and rallying. That was what Funeral did- it had us bask in its arrangements– but not what Illinoisedid.

I notice these forceful features on All Delighted People, because it does sound overstuffed, and that’s probably the first time I can say that about Sufjan since A Sun Came. That was 21 tracks long, and this is, um, an EP. And it has everything; the full scale string arrangements, the trumpet guys in the corner, the wacky guitar solos from the genius himself, the quirky keyboard stuff, and reworked versions of songs that you were introduced to ten minutes ago. This isn’t such a shocking turn to take for Sufjan, and most of us could care less as we let the first listen glaze over us, but I feel overwhelmed as I never wanted to be by him. This is the guy who had me gliding through “Detroit,” a song with oh so many components but such seamless ease. Now I can hear the build-ups in “All Delighted People” and feel them knocking me over. Now I find myself waiting more than anything in “Djohariah,” noticing even the things I shouldn’t, such as the dissonant riffing that pulls away from its place in the background. And even a track as light and glorious as the synthy “From the Mouth of Gabriel” thumps up a little more than I want it to.

This thump is the thump of the album. All these songs still work out of the focus of the EP and even become more appreciated for it- “From the Mouth Of Gabriel” is slowly becoming a favourite Sufjan track in how it sounds like a Seven Swans session gone retro. By itself it’s simply gorgeous, lamenting and longing like no other track in his canon dared to do. “Heirloom” and “Arnika” reach similar ends if by more traditional means. When these songs come together at the album’s focus, the artsy twinning of “All Delighted People,” I can’t help but feel they’re being done a great injustice. They are no less important than the sprawls they are wrapped around.

Looking at these songs from the outside rather than one after another, I realise why I waited five years for this. It was because I knew Sufjan Stevens didn’t really hate music. We got it wrong when he said all that stuff about ‘the album’. I think what he really grew tired of washis album. I feel he’s done detailing these works and mapping these worlds for us, and that’s too bad for anyone still hoping for Sufjan to come to his or her state- personally, I’m done holding out for his ode to Kent, but if he’s up for it, they call it “the garden of England.” This is a fantastic collection of songs, if better for what they are rather than as a controlled unit; All Delighted People has eight of Sufjan’s rebounds, and while it’s taken him a while to get over music, he’s got there. Hurry along, October.

Sufjan Stevens – “From The Mouth of Gabriel”

See larger image All Delighted People EP (MP3 Download) New From: $4.99 In Stock Release date August 23, 2010.

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By Robin Smith, September 4, 2010 8:00 am

Eels – Electro-Shock Blues

Dreamworks 1998

Rating: 10/10

Electro-Shock Blues isn’t just a reaction. It’s a hundred shades of one reaction; a funky, playful album of horrible mirth at times, a completely hopeless document at others, an open stream of all the emotion one could have in the face of being left on your own. And finally, it’s life-affirming, an E beating up through the rubble of his life as if he’s learning some lesson and subtracting the bitter from the bittersweet. Because surely that’s why Electro Shock-Blues ends on the up. “P.S. You Rock My World” is the aftermath before itself, E’s words so bluntly honest: “I was thinking about how everyone was dying / and maybe it’s time to live.”

Sometimes I wonder that about E. His descriptors do him horrible service, painting him black and white in his never-ending sadness, as if every song is an “Electro-Shock Blues.” He’s more complex than that- hell, in the last number onElectro-Shock Blues his epiphany comes at a funeral service. At first I thought this was all a devastating black comedy, but now I realise it’s deeper than some ironic Indie pop record: it’s E’s honest smack of tough love, and he is his own recipient. On “Last Stop: This Town” he places himself in position with no compromise whatsoever, both with lament and celebration- “You’re dead / but the world keeps living.”

This song (and the album it belongs to, don’t forget) has soul. E pumps his fists, fires up his guitar riffs and screams his yeah yeahs, and, quite simply, lays it down like it is. What makes Electro-Shock Blues so honest it can be called a document, an accidental journal left around for curious eyes? Surely it is that E never flinches. He writes his tragedy from both sides and doesn’t shy away from measuring every millimetre of his mind; the lows and the highs come together, as the insanity comes with the joy on “My Descent Into Madness,” a pop highlight on the album that depicts E’s late sister and the reasons to root for her- “Come meet me at 8 o’clock tonight and you will see how I am not the crazy one.”

Electro-Shock Blues is held together like no other fragile thing is, its acoustic mopes, layered dance offs and electric rockers all landing on the same plane. Most would call this structure, and sure, this album has the beginning and end and the moments in-between, but ultimately the truth is what keeps E’s songs clutching to one another. Each one, to put it simply, is a reaction. A reaction to two deaths, to being the last remaining Everett and to wondering where the hell one goes from such a dark place. And every reaction leaves us humbled, but no perhaps more than the heart-stopping strings of “Dead of Winter”- “I will not fade into the night.”

Eels – “My Descent Into Madness”

See larger image Electro-Shock Blues (Audio CD) List Price: $9.98 USD New From: $4.80 In Stock Used from: $1.68 In Stock Release date October 20, 1998.

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By Robin Smith, August 31, 2010 8:00 am

Lights Out Asia – In The Days of Jupiter

N5MD 2010

Rating: 5/10

With album art no astronaut would deny makes a good January for his wall calendar and a whole lot of ethereal soundscapes in their suitcase, Lights Out Asia are, for one hour, back in our lives. And the one thing I can say about In The Days of Jupiter is that we are being beamed down upon. We are, finally, being treated the way we always should have from this band; the mysterious blank dot of space, the big planets that fill it, the whole damned transcendent nature of the thing. Why did it take so long for a space rock record, guys?

This is pretty admirable, and the general concept behind In The Days of Jupiter is enough to excite any fan; for a trio of ten-minute climaxes and (short) dissertations on the existence of God, conquering the universe is pretty much the next step. And the more I listen to their latest record I wonder how I never saw it in an album as mysterious as Eyes Like Brontide.

This is the thing, though- that’s exactly what I see in Eyes Like Brontide; an album that shines and shimmers with its electronic decorations, wearing its quiet-loud dynamic proudly and begging the listener to be some sort of emotional passenger, gliding from calm ambient sections to devastating climaxes with more beat than brain.

The shine and shimmer wears off as we approach Jupiter, though. Maybe it’s having heard three Lights Out Asia records before this that pushes me away, but I don’t think so; I’m comfortable with the style these downtempo kids provide, but its execution leaves something to be desired here. In The Days of Jupiterattempts, as always, to soar as one piece of music, told in chapters but ultimately with no track simply in it for itself. Division of the music is more generous this time around, and ultimately it hinders flow more than it embodies it; “All These Worlds are Yours” stays subdued and perhaps even irrelevant as a counterpart to its follow-up, “Except Europa,” which seems to trip over its own feet as it stops and starts the wind to climax.

Enough about the technical though; the real issue I have with In The Days of Jupiter, the first album to go past ten tracks since Garmonia, is what it’s revealed to me. For the first time I feel attached to one side of Lights Out Asia rather than the other, because their downtempo material here begs to come in peace: tracks like “All Is Quiet In The Valley” and “Bye Bye Novemeber” want to glide. They sound as if they are in key with whatever humble, galactic theme In The Days of Jupiter rests on. The small flittering key changes on these tracks are minimalist in their technique, but are styled in emotive fashion that sounds signature of this band. And as for ten-minute epics, give me “Great Men From Unhealthy Ground” over “Shifting Sands Wreck Ships” any day.

That is how I know that I’m not simply tired of Lights Out Asia. There’s no extra dimension to add to an album as densely layered as In The Days of Jupiter, but there’s certainly one to lose. It’s devastating to hear a band throw away an ambient ballad as gorgeous as “13AM” because they’re still hung up on blazing it alight with the post-rock gene, to see that the silence of space has been given over to the familiar, awkward world of distortion and noise. It just doesn’t fit anymore. Lights Out Asia are in the sky, they are not explosions in the sky. What I wouldn’t give to hear them all hushed up.

Lights Out Asia – “All Is Quiet In The Valley”

See larger image In the Days of Jupiter (Audio CD) List Price: $15.98 USD New From: $9.35 In Stock Used from: $15.96 In Stock Release date August 10, 2010.

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By Robin Smith, August 15, 2010 8:00 am

Galaxie 500 – On Fire

Rough Trade 1989

Rating: 10/10

There’s barely a second that goes by on Galaxie 500’s On Fire without Dean Wareham begging love lost just one more chance, but it’s “Where Will You Come Home” that really sticks out for me. “When will you come home? / watching TV all alone, watching Kojak on my own,” he wails with his eyes potentially closed, but through all the radiating passion I’m left wondering: is this just time passing by a commercial break? Whoever Wareham’s ex is, his high-pitched mopes try and try to convey the blues she’s given him, but he sends her (and all of us) one better – yep, On Fire is an album that couldn’t be without melodrama. Melodrama sets it all alight.

Even if this isn’t true, On Fire succeeds on a similar feeling, a contradiction of terms that makes Wareham sound like he needs the agony more than he needs it cured. It’s a record about romantic things gone the wrong way: a shitty date, a weird acid trip, a sad night alone or even the frolics at the end of the world. Each song exists on its hunger for this darn-shame sadness, and the band accepts this feeling. At times Wareham seems aware of how trivial he is being, side-stepping his problems with silly anecdotes- “I stood in line and ate my twinkies / I stood in line I had to wait” when he’s drugged up; “you said / can I bring my guitar?” when he leaves the planet. Wareham doesn’t patronise us and give us life-lessons on love and pain – hell, even on his band’s tearful cover of “Isn’t It a Pity” he stops short of this – he just shares it with us, he makes a day of it. In fact, his George Harrison rendition sums it up with a grin. Sucks, doesn’t it?

The synchronisation couldn’t be better. The music and emotional weight of On Fireshare a mutual understanding, with the flattened out guitar play reserved when Wareham sets his dull, plodding scene and the blistering solos temperamental when he enters it. That in itself summarises all ten of the album, each explosion of instruments set to its weepy conductor; when he has his serious face on, the music makes us frown as much as he does (“Isn’t It A Pity,” or “Snowstorm”) and when he’s light-headed his band mates respond, just as they do on the glum hoedown that goes on in “Leave The Planet,” the band reverting to an out of tune harmonica to fend off the apocalypse. It’s silly, but serious and touching in the same blow, and in a sense Wareham and co. smooth over their melodrama with something more realistic. The music is realistic, in a way- there are times when Wareham is each feeling he has, and these simple guitar chords deafen us and mellow out when the time is right.

This is my favourite dream pop record out there because, quite simply, nobody is shoving it down your throat. On Fire plays out with only half a heart, spacing out Wareham’s passion as if it were for no one other than him. He repeats himself like he’s the only guy that matters and to hell with bigger problems, but still I can share in every moment of this, even without being told to. It’s immersing at every turn, playing out with the best kind of music- that which reflects mood. Most importantly though, Wareham shows us what we’re all too fond of. He knows melodrama makes us tick, that we’ll use this beautiful On Fire record and make it all about our foolish selves when really it’s just another rock record. I’ve never watched Kojak, though, so take one off five hundred.

Galaxie 500 – “Isn’t It A Pity?”

See larger image On Fire (Audio CD) List Price: $11.98 USD New From: $69.87 In Stock Used from: $5.40 In Stock Release date April 29, 1997.

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By Robin Smith, August 11, 2010 8:00 am

Feeder – Renegades

101 Distribution 2010

Rating: 4/10

I’m certain Renegades is supposed to appeal to someone but I can’t think who. I think it’s supposed to be me; I was one of those fussy diehards just longing for Feeder to roll back the years and create another Polythene or Echo Park, records that plugged in and rocked out but didn’t forget their pop priorities.

The real problem is that those punk-y diehards, yours truly included, have been saying this since Comfort In Sound and their reward has come three records down the line. Now it’s hard for them to know if they want that group of kids in their life because seeing them grow up has been half the fun of being their fan. For all the complaining, records from Comfort In Sound onwards were the band’s truest accomplishments because they showed a maturing band, a group responding to tragedy and producing songs that weren’t just about getting laid or installing cup-holders into the glove department of their car. The sentimentality of each record was startling and the balladry that accompanied it proved that the band needed their emotion on the surface of things. And tracks such as “Miss You” and “Just The Way I’m Feeling” were the result.

On Renegades the band hold true to their word and create that record of high-voltage, no-frills punk rock, whatever you want to call it; it just isn’t sappy and sad, and that’s by their design. But fans will rue the day they made that pledge, because this isn’t Feeder anymore. It was Feeder nine years ago, granted, but now each track sounds like a shell of what it should be. By definition, Renegades is supposed to be a raw interpretation of Grant Nicholas’ and co, with each song left in its skin and dressed up none. But raw musicianship isn’t raw Feeder, and less certainly isn’t more: tracks such as “This Town” and “Barking Dogs” fall flat on their face because they emulate the glory days more than they speak for themselves, and a lot has happened since the glory days. With one member now missing from the original line-up, the grungy fuzz and the attitude that goes with it is simply unbearable when it comes from the band we’ve had develop feeling and understanding, and the fact that they can’t channel these things into their old sound is probably the most devastating conclusion to make from Renegades. It acts simply to show us what cannot be done.

Even with its eleven tracks, only one needs to be looked at to draw the line in Feeder’s career at 2010. “Call Out” takes the crown on Renegades at least statistically (it’s the best-bet single, you could say) but it sounds like a crushed version of “Miss You,” the same for its musical structure but having the feeling made naked. Now thought and feeling isn’t important to Feeder, which is what every fan wanted; another rendition of “Buck Rodgers” to pump up and down to. But we could still do this with “Miss You,” and if we hadn’t been bitching and moaning we sure would’ve. On “Call Out,” Nicholas describes the very song he is singing as invincible: “You can’t take that away.” So much for the song – give me the words any day.

Feeder – “Call Out”

See larger image Renegades (Audio CD) List Price: $31.98 USD New From: $15.28 In Stock Used from: $26.87 In Stock Release date July 27, 2010.

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By Robin Smith, August 6, 2010 8:00 am

Defiance, Ohio – Midwestern Minutes

No Idea Records 2010

Rating: 8/10

Midwestern Minutes bats for folk-punk. It acts as another coming-of-age record in a genre that desperately needs an injection of maturity. And lets face it, folk-punk needs Defiance, Ohio. They spearhead this community of happy-clappy anarchists, defining everything about it; its DIY ethics, its passion for politics and its enthusiasm for playing. In sparks, they used to have all three: “Oh! Susquehanna” stung its audience with its rejection of an urbanising world but was more about personal grudges. Nostalgia seeped through that track, and it was matched with a musical unison that proved how mighty the song really is, regardless of who made it, what instruments they used and how much they sold it for. Which is diddly-squat, by the way.

So what’s great about Midwestern Minutes is that its “Oh! Susquehanna” eleven times over. Each track is neither obvious nor ambiguous, a balance the band always met with tracks such as “The New World Order” which provided less stale commentary on the Bush-sucks era. Better still, the band learn about structure, because each track complements the last, and each real song (“Cigarettes” and “Diamonds Theme Song” not included) exists long enough to prove itself. It’s their equivalent of Ghost Mice’s Europe, a tightly-knit travel lodge that shows off the diversity of the world its about. It could even be their Can’t Maintain, because if Andrew Jackson Jihad can write an album with structure, then Defiance, Ohio certainly can.

They do; they present separate scenes on a romantic and broken society. It’s presented in the true colours of Defiance, Ohio, too. There’s a delightful return to autobiography in “The White Shore” in which the band declare “History is always personal / family is always personal” as if to personalise their rock beyond its American clichés. It’s already nostalgic enough, and the band is as communal as ever, be it through the simple pleasures of rockin’ out with the gang-vocals of “Her Majesty’s Western Island,” or revelling in the roots of American rock on “You Are Loved,” which echoes Springsteen as it grows into an anthem. It goes without saying that this is the catchiest record in the Defiance, Ohio canon yet.

In other ways, it’s just so great to have the boldest band in folk-punk back. They don’t shy away from amplifiers like their counterparts do, and they aren’t proud of being an acoustics-only deal either. That’s just as well, because “Hairpool” is the best song they have ever put to record. It’s designed ambitiously and – a rarity for these guys – delicately, moving through the phases of a well-structured rock song like boxes to be ticked off. By the time the old-school guitar riffing is over the band have pulled us into their town and immersed us in it, taking us through a miserable experience, and, most importantly, its upshot (“This town is way too small / to ever need the bus / so meet me by the pool they keep open all night for us”). It plays out like a dreamy chapter in teenage discovery, but it’ll keep its entire audience grinning. So will the rest of Midwestern Minutes; this is seriously ambitious folk-punk, but it’s as uniting a force as its ever been.

Defiance, Ohio – “Hairpool”

See larger image Midwestern Minutes (Audio CD) List Price: $14.98 USD New From: $8.24 In Stock Used from: $6.99 In Stock Release date July 13, 2010.

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By Robin Smith, August 2, 2010 8:00 am

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Merge 2010

Rating: 7/10

Arcade Fire will never make a prog-rock record. Not one of those geeky ‘70s ones. You know the kind I’m talking about. It was sort of an era of contradiction, with Brits like Genesis and Yes who would go backwards and proclaim it the way forwards: albums like Selling England By the Pound which depicted medieval England, or Close To The Edge which would extend music to the ends of the earth in both title and length. Of course there are hundreds of arguments against Arcade Fire taking a time machine back to the 1970s – two good openers being they’re neither an experimental band, nor are they British. But The Suburbs takes me back to the days of Peter Gabriel and days spent listening to his twenty-two minutes of public-school nonsense just to see how it all ended. It takes me through endless genre shifts like chapters in one grand story. And it doesn’t have twenty-two minute songs to feast on, but you can bet it drenches each five minutes with as much music. Most of all the Arcade Fire’s third album plays out as if everything comes back to, well, the album itself: just as Genesis and Yes would make damn sure you were listening to every ounce of their preposterous jamming, Win Butler and Régine Chassagne want you to know that everything that matters is about the suburbs.

And you know what? Of all the changes in scenery those suburbs get, of all the dramatic shifts through the genres of punks, hip kids and oldies, the most interesting aspect of it all is in the simple statistics. It’s how the Arcade Fire go on this all-out, sixteen song romp in order to tell their story. It’s hard to know how to feel about that, because the greatest quality this band ever had was craftsmanship. Tragedy on Funeral was given tremendous respect because it was neither understated nor overstated. Neon Bible, filled to the brim though it was, boxed its themes of crisis and dealt with them with just eleven tracks. It all said what it needed to say, and no more.

But The Suburbs says what it needs to say more than, er, it needs to. It’s a record of aphorisms to be learned by heart, such as the wholly simple and nostalgic “In the suburbs I learned to drive / and you told me we’d never survive,” which connects from its original point in “The Suburbs” to its awkward placement in “Suburban War.” The intention is surely to put one unique idea at the heart of The Suburbs, and the record is prog-rock in this sense because the art they have made becomes more important than the themes it contains – it’s like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway made by an ethical Genesis. At points, the musical shifts become a hassle when you consider how little Butler needs to say for us to get it. Arcade Fire are trying to channel concept through everything at once, be it the icy punk rock of “Month of May” or the immediate follow-up “Wasted Hours” which, despite its clichéd Americana, says the exact same thing as “Month of May” did, and with little of the significance. “First they built the road then they built the town / That’s why we’re still driving around and around” he sings on both tracks, and it’s as if Butler is hitting his crowd over the head with a hammer of bloated morals and harsh life-lessons, much like Broken Social Scene, Radiohead or U2 would on their alt-rock escapades. But has Win Butler ever needed to shout his mouth off? The lyrics are good – if didactic – but overstated and poorly edited. Less is surely more.

This isn’t so much about lyrical content; it’s about the execution of it. And musically, every song on The Suburbs is executed perfectly, with a delightful new aspect of Arcade Fire: polish. Tracks such as “City With No Children” are straightened out and constructed with that old craftsman’s attention to detail. Each song demands further listens to discover deeper subtleties, such as everything that goes on behind the curtain of guitar-dominated “Half Light I” or how quickly the band can move from one thing to another – I’ve rarely heard an album delve from something as celebratory as “Deep Blue” to something as veiled as “We Used To Wait.” And everything has this polish, be it a synth melody at the surface or, most frequently, that bittersweet violin. Music is boastful and showy on The Suburbs and as a result the album swells up even more than its predecessor did. It’s every track for itself, rather than as it is meant to be: a movement to a far more important body of music. Each track is so huge, so diverse and so piece-by-piece. It sounds this way because the band are playing to their influences more than ever, Butler himself alluding to the album as a cross between Depeche Mode and Neil Young. Of course, there’s more than that; there’s ‘70s rock in “City With No Children” and there’s electronic dance music á la The Knife in “Sprawl II.” There’s so much going on that even the seamless transfer of track-upon-track feels forced. There is nothing carrying The Suburbs to be an album, and that’s what Win Butler wants this to be – an album, with segments and reprises and endings. The theme is left as the only uniting force for everything that goes on song-to-song, but its insistence is also the thing that breaks it all up.

One track at a time, this record works. But in spite of all its counterparts, “Month of May” stands head and shoulders above the rest. And why? Because it makes us as uncomfortable as “Antichrist Television Blues” did and it unifies its audience as much as “Power Out” did. This is the Arcade Fire at their best because it is the Arcade Fire at their most direct. And that is what has me jumping between love and hate for The Suburbs. This isn’t Win Butler backing off but it isn’t a confrontation either: hell, it’s a contradiction, a man of his own description, standing with his arms folded tight. For fifteen tracks of sixteen that’s who he is, but not on “Month of May.” The lyrics are cold snaps with minimum scenery and maximum impact, and out of respect for this Arcade Fire dismantle themselves and sit around an amplifier like it were a campfire. This distorted punk anthem is the group’s finest moment of 2010 for finding a way to cut through the passive aggressive world they’ve created and ask some real questions, just as they asked all-day long on Funeral and Neon Bible. It doesn’t use nostalgia or description as its weapon, but instead addresses the listeners, kids though we may be, with one cutting analogy: “How you gonna lift it with your arms folded tight?” That brings home the only thing The Suburbs is really trying to convey beyond every social scoff and accusation: a call for action. And while this sentiment reappears in small doses on “Suburban War” and “Sprawl II,” it never emerges as winner. Butler is urgent with his ideas, and that may well be why he has created this monolithic prog-rock record. But Like most prog-nerds, he leaves curtain call too late.

Arcade Fire – “Rococo”

See larger image The Suburbs (Audio CD) List Price: $15.98 USD New From: $8.98 In Stock Used from: $8.24 In Stock Release date August 3, 2010.

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By Robin Smith, July 26, 2010 12:00 pm

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Merge 2007

Rating: 10/10

It’s kind of sad, but I don’t think I have any opinions. Or, at least, I don’t think I have any that belong to me. I can’t think of a book I’ve read that I haven’t asked of others its worth or its literary relevance. I can’t think of a political opinion I didn’t steal from my brother. I can’t think of a musical obsession I had that wasn’t born from hype. I can’t help but feel a little useless about the whole thing because, quite simply, I don’t think I’ve made up my own mind about anything.

And that is why I’m so glad Neon Bible exists. Butler’s rock opera is just that: profoundly and devastatingly useless. Neon Bible waves a white flag in the air; the Arcade Fire is outraged in the realisation that its very last ounces of significance have been stripped away, and all they can do is scream out at those who hold claims on the truth. Butler’s lyrics declare himself and all of us powerless, not just over the world we are fighting over to change, but also the rights and wrongs in our head and our control over them. Butler gives up on that control. He gives up on religion, in the now and in the afterlife (“Heaven is only in my head”). He gives up on society and preachers who will sacrifice anything for their scheme, including their most sacred trait, spirituality (“Tell me lord / am I the antichrist?”). Most importantly, though, he lets go. Whether or not you flick through the themes of Neon Bible and agree to disagree, the album’s debt is to uncertainty and, most importantly, acceptance of that uncertainty. Neon Biblepresents a city of the brainwashed and determined, doing anything for something, be it putting daughters on the stage or selling souls to the church. And the album doesn’t end with some beautiful release from it all, either – nope, Neon Bible keeps its citizens trapped forever.

That white flag isn’t waved with weary arms, though. No matter how resigned Butler is to all of this, he and his followers surrender with nothing but passion.Neon Bible shows violence and while it does not indulge in the aggression that runs through its forty-six minutes, it uses it as a means of statement. Butler’s vocals, most notably, sparkle with melodrama. When as loud as he is on “Intervention”, his voice universalises what he is saying and no matter how hopeless his descriptions are, he makes his words monumental. On “Intervention” he dooms his protagonists to fear and the end of love and friendships, but he does so with such immediacy and drama that the song could spew from the world’s most tragic pantomime – hyperbole reigns over this record. It’s the only thing other than darkness.

And here’s the thing about Neon Bible. It’s a record controlled and surrounded by darkness, and maybe the group even focus in upon it and create the record around that absence of light. It certainly feels like it. “Keep The Car Running” tells the story of a man waiting in the dead of night to be taken away, but the conspiracy ultimately turns internally to his fears. “No Cars Go” is a run-away rock opera set in the dead of night with the thrill of escapism. And “Antichrist Television Blues” paints us a metropolis at midnight, with the reverberating guitars only shining artificial light on the buildings downtown. In this sense, Neon Bible is so unlike Funeral and just as worthy for its differences: it shows a second shot of Butler and Chassange, and it’s a paranoid one. What’s even more triumphant about Neon Bible is how this mood is never lost through the orchestral side of the Arcade Fire, in fact it enhances it. Musically, Neon Bible brings an empty landscape to life, and it is far bigger than the box it is put into. We’ve got flutes, church organs, accordions and thunder effects, and we become cramped into what is a supposedly a dead scene. If anything, Arcade Fire get lost further in their entanglement with baroque pop and their dated sound, and it makes a horror-flick of Neon Bible twice over.

People will argue against that, and scoff at Butler and co. for creating a record too grandiose for its own good, but in a sense, isn’t that the point? Where Funeral looks into the personal loss of the band with reservation and respect, its successor is external, making a social spokesman of Butler and creating something that speaks to everyone regardless of inward experience. He never quite becomes an activist and the anger he shows bubbles on the surface of Neon Bible, but the passion seeps through every piano note, every choir of voices and every church organ. This record is cyclical with this passion for fear, and where Butler opens his tragedy by warning us that all words will lose their meaning, he closes it with a revelation: that he’s living with us in an age of fear and self-doubt. That fear and self-doubt is what puts Butler’s music at its peak. It’s what puts it at its most intense. And it’s how he keeps us in line: by creating an album for us, the kids who squirm at gore and close their eyes until the scary part is over. But for Butler, it never ends. “World War III, when are you coming for me?”

Arcade Fire – “Antichrist Television Blues”

See larger image Neon Bible (Audio CD) List Price: $14.98 USD New From: $9.08 In Stock Used from: $8.24 In Stock Release date March 6, 2007.

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By Robin Smith, July 12, 2010 3:20 pm

Maps & Atlases – Perch Patchwork

Barsuk Records 2010

Rating: 9/10

I think what gets me leaping over clouds about Perch Patchwork is how it peels away the components of Maps and Atlases and lets them lie where they fall. The illusion of what Maps and Atlases “is” has irked me ever since I became entangled with Trees, Swallows, Houses because it felt like I’d had my newest discovery pinned into a corner. It seemed everyone had this vision of the band who could only produce toe-tapping guitar lines, who would sooner die than sacrifice their ‘math rock’ definition and who would keep their borderline wobbly vocalist as yet another constant through any change. And hey, when You, Me and The Mountain, entered the canon of their EPs, I felt even more adamant at the backlash I had probably invented: the musical shift was a non-dramatic and entirely subtle act, but I felt the band had chopped something out of itself without me thinking any different of it – “Artichokes” didn’t meander through insane guitar taps nearly as much as “The Most Trustworthy Tin Cans” would’ve done in its shoes, but did I notice? Did I care? That’s one rhetorical question Perch Patchwork – the band’s first ever LP – can answer for you, and I can see these qualms of moving beyond the ‘guitar-tap’, beyond the ‘odd’ time signatures and the compulsive drumming disappearing with every adoring repeat of “Solid Ground.” This is a Maps and Atlases who aren’t anything in particular, but rather a celebration of all the quirky influences they ever listed. Chop out that sound or chop in this one, and Maps and Atlases aren’t any different a thing to your ears. Except better.

This Maps and Atlases record is the most universal yet, but I’ll admit I’m a sucker for one thing rather than the other and the sound I heard festering under their earlier EPs was a psychedelic form of folk, with the jubilant crackling of guitars on “The Ongoing Horrible” made all the more a tease by its short length. Now that I’ve basically gotten what I wanted in places – Maps and Atlases wearing Six Organs of Admittance on their sleeves – I want nothing more than to call this their ‘folk’ album. For me, it walks and talks with that persona even if it can’t be tagged with it, and it is incredible because of it: as soon as “Will” begins we are given this stripped down Maps and Atlases, acoustic percussion and guitars slotted under the primitive-sounding chants of David Davison. Even the production readies my appetite with the chimes and guitar plucking sounding as far away from me as possible, as if they do indeed intend to play the album on top of the coast its art depicts. Even better, Davison’s voice is still as manic as it ever was, trembling between the highest and lowest pitches as the record moves into “The Charm” (and what a seamless transition, too), and the band are just as manic with the marching beats they temporarily exchange their guitars for. In a sense, it’s the same old in aesthetic, but this new folk invasion picks up the album from its other sounds wherever it is poised. The joyous “Israeli Caves” moves listeners out of a moodier passage of Perch Patchwork and the album is finished with a colourful conclusion in its title track, where there is an abundance of wood instruments and little else. It’s almost childish, “Perch Patchwork,” with each cello and violin synchronised into a storybook march. Of course, Maps and Atlases tell the best fairytales.

In a sense, the album is so universal because the band gives its control over to the fans without really doing any such thing. Just as soon as the record has settled into something entirely different and started to sound like a huge and daring ‘fuck you’ to loyalists, Maps and Atlases turns on its heels and throws us a “Living Decorations” or a “Carrying the Wet Wood,” and suddenly we’re reminded that every member of this Chicago outfit is totally non-threatening, loveable and more likely to be issuing a small and humble ‘sorry guys’ than anything else. “Living Decorations” especially zips up old-school crowd, promptly paced for its injection of math rock and relieving due to its whereabouts on the album as a whole; the imprint of this loud and jingly number, heavily drenched in guitar riffs is – after two tracks that have burned through the albums beginning at a comparative snail’s pace – almost a sign of the band trying to appease its diehards. “Carrying the Wood,” too, strays away from the character of the album without being out of context, having the tone fans will have familiarised with most since 2005 and Trees, Swallows, Houses. It sounds welcome on that EP: Davison’s cries of “Why/did/you/tell me/oh why/that there was nothing left to climb” sound as structured and technical as anything from that album (as do the riffs, which roll ever onward) and yet there is some barrier stopping them from that hypothetical situation where they could sit by the comparatively robotic “Everyplace is a House.”

That barrier is the best thing that happens to Perch Patchwork. An uncanny presence dominates the record’s entirety, making it their best effort yet and proof that they can write albums better even than they can EPs. It’s the presence of things both small and big that can never be heard in the foreground because of our familiarisation with the Maps and Atlases of math rock rather than the Maps and Atlases of any thing else. We are so engrossed with these textures that we let any other additives drift to obscurity, but even if we forget the sounds, they abolish any technicality, any forced complexity that was left in the mix and that played foul upon our ears. It’s enjoyed with repeated listens of the album that take away the initial awkwardness of Perch Patchwork: on “Pigeon,” brass instruments curve the song playfully with distinct Caribbean spirit – ludicrous, when given the band we’re talking about, but it somehow it works. It counterbalances the mechanics of the song. Hell, it simply loosens up the band that has always needed loosening up.

My favourite example though is the delightful “Solid Ground,” a track fans had the pleasure of stewing over for the long months before the album’s availability. If this track was supposed to be an indicator, it did its job and then some; here of all places Perch Patchwork sounds like a Maps and Atlases who did away with the lab and went running through the wilderness. Or maybe they just set up their lab in that wilderness, because “Solid Ground” – and the 2010 album it belongs to – is a mix of the sound I so want my new favourite band to be and the remnants of the one I so adored in them already. I mentioned the folksy, one-man Six Organs of Admittance, but truthfully Perch Patchwork sounds more like if he invaded Don Caballero’s territory and stirred things up – and above all, the members of Maps and Atlases celebrating everything about each other, these influences included, is what makes their first ever record such a gem. They’ve taken cues from their grandest experimental peers to create yet more of the best pop. There’s a description out there that describes the band as “wrestlers” of the “intricate and organic,” and while we could debate back and forth which of the former or latter we see in them more, who are we to impose our favourite genres upon these guys? It’s time to stop speculating over what Maps and Atlases should do and just hope they do more.

Maps & Atlases – “Solid Ground”

See larger image Perch Patchwork (Audio CD) List Price: $11.99 USD New From: $8.42 In Stock Used from: $7.60 In Stock Release date June 29, 2010.