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By Robin Smith, May 5, 2011 10:00 am

The Dodos – No Color

Frenchkiss 2011

Rating: 9/10

As far as titles go, No Color really sucks. Who wants to see the Dodos in black and white and grey? The Dodos are all about the beating of the drum and the slips and tangles they get us lost in, so to take away that vibrancy, that spring in their step, is to create something out of the space this duo occupy. Even if you locked these guys in a room and set them to task with a strict slow-jams policy, you’d get the hung-up, devastatingly sad sounds of the Dodos- a track as crushing as “Winter” is a product of its band, a product of Visiter, a track in which Kroeber thumps at his kit like he’s teasing his other half to put more into it. Which, by the way, he actually is: there’s life and colour enough even for a track as cold as “Winter,” and it ends up as a minor moment played fast and loose. So it kind of feels like there’s no place for a Dodos who dress in gothic shades when they can do it all playing their own game. Which is all the colours of the rainbow, or something.

But really No Color suggests a different incarnation of the same band behind Visiter. That album really was ridiculous, which is where a lot of its appeal lies: it carried great emotional weight on its back (“Undeclared,” obviously), and it explored it so intensely that everything came out. At fourteen songs, Visiter was the Dodos in pursuit of every little thing, and it suited a band so frantic. It was a real rabbit-chase of an album, moving from one moment into the next completely unrelated one, from the quickie in “Eyelids” to “Fools,” from the album’s most chaotic track (“Joe’s Waltz,” chock full of dissonant piano and folk-punk duets) to, well, “Winter.” It was a mess from a band without an editor, and how could it have been any other way? Most bands would’ve realised that two songs as heavy-hearted as their last couple on that album shouldn’t sit together, but Long and Kroeber seemed to know exactly where the peaks and valleys of Visiter should’ve been.

And man was it wild, so where do the Dodos go from there? Their next two records have been nine tracks a piece, which seems both a statement of shortness and a wish to fragment things just a little less. It’s an album length so abrupt it sort of harkens back to how mad the whole Visiter thing was. And what is so great about No Color is that it unravels the crazy patterns in the Dodos’ sound in a completely different way. It allows them to discover what they can do with their songs rather than what their songs can do to their album. That’s what’s so supposedly uncolored about this cheekily titled album: it’s the same Dodos, silly, but one treating every song like its own moment, which is why even if “Black Night” flows into “Going Under” as well as anything on a prog-rock album, the explosion between the two isn’t laboured over. Nor is it some crazy transition- instead we can talk about what the songs do. “Black Night” feels as pushy as any Dodos track, moving from its steady tempo into a sudden twist in pace that opens the album with a fresh energy. “Going Under” sounds more than ever like the band trying to glue two different songs together, but it makes sense to have these moments together because emotionally, they’re within touching distance. And a nine-track Dodos album with “Good” on it? I guess this structure frees up the band in ways we never knew, because those guitar riffs fume forward out of the indie-folk and thrust the band ever forward through their song.

It saddens me to hear it said that No Color throws itself in with Time To Die and rests firmly on the laurels that the Dodos have earned. We can accuse the duo of playing the same card a hundred times over, or that this sound comes with its territory (you can only bang on a drum so many times), but No Color goes deep into emotional places the Dodos have never expressed so well. Much in the same vein as the sad-saps behind that new Fleet Foxes record, tracks jump out that sound wholly new for the Dodos because they look at a different feeling. It seems hard to think that the Dodos could pull of a track with all the desperation “Hunting Season” carries in 2008, with this crafty, silly musical style they play. Nor do I think it’s possible that we’ve seen them repeat a thing with “Companions,” a track that refuses to sacrifice that same style but is somehow the most downbeat we’ll ever see it. More so than “Winter” for sure, because it doesn’t give us the band upfront. And there’s something to be said of the record’s centrepiece, “Don’t Try And Hide it,” which brings indie superstar Neko Case aboard for a folksy anthem in-between that doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It’s complex stuff for a band who used to simply express themselves, and do so a lot- it’s Long and Kroeber looking at everything in a little more depth, and giving everything a little more time. And so once more, the Dodos feel fresh, a little bit more thoughtful, and every bit as happy to get us tangled up in ourselves. Of course there’s color to No Color. It’s just this time there’s black and white and grey as well- colors they’ve never used before.

The Dodos – “Black Night”

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By Robin Smith, April 12, 2011 8:00 am

Vivian Girls – Share the Joy

Polyvinyl 2011

Rating: 8/10

With the rest of Share the Joy still to come, “The Other Girls” raises some serious questions about Vivian Girls. Or maybe it just makes us smirk- a line as forward as “I don’t wanna be like the other girls” spouted first-thing on the newest record from one of many fuzz-pop, all-female bands is gonna do just that, isn’t it? It feels sort of like a direct nod to all the stuff that went down last year in this genre, whether it was Dum Dum Girls, Best Coast or the ever-boyish Wavves, like an adamant refusal to be tagged in a genre where it’s becoming all too easy to be one or another.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who asked me, “why Vivian Girls? They’re women!” and, well, you can imagine how I rose my all too indie eyebrow and responded no, Women released Public Strain. Not that I lent that record to explain, but this outburst of geekery is the sad truth; all this fuzzy stuff got more and more diluted to the point where we forgot where Vivian Girls stood. Their last studio album surfaced just as the fuzz-revival craze well and truly hit off, and with that little teasing line kick-starting their time in 2011, it feels foolish to forget how Vivian Girls are kind of seniors in this genre. As much as one can be a senior after three years of records, right?

Even if, in all honesty, they don’t act like seniors. Nor do they seem to dislike any of the bands around them the way “The Other Girls” might imply on paper. The song is nothing but pleasant, and more so because it doesn’t have any of the biting noise we’d get with Vivian Girls or Everything Goes Wrong. It sounds as it should: a nice way of the trio announcing that there can be a song like “Where Do You Run To” without the stigma that surrounds it. “The Other Girls” is a relief to anyone who couldn’t quite get to grips with Vivian Girls in 2008/9 respectively, because it takes what we always knew about them- that they love girl group pop and punk, and know how to play both- but doesn’t force us to extract from the fuzz.

Share the Joy is all about taking those albums and fleshing them out into a classic one- they can jam for three minutes in the middle of this song and keep us happily engaged in the record because it’s giving us breathing space. It’s still carried by its insistence, something the Vivian Girls have always had in their music on their first two records- that belief that they’re making whatever noisy songs they want and you can decipher the pop hooks if you must- but this time it comes from melody rather than disguise. It may have taken us our sweet time to hear how well the voices of Cassie Ramone and Katy Goodman complemented each other on “Such a Joke,” but here their interplay is instantly brilliant and something to keep. On “The Other Girls” they work together perfectly, and they always have, but now we have their voices upfront. And that’s to say nothing of that opening line in “I Heard You Say.”

Not that ditching this side of themselves does any disrespect to fellow lo-fi-beach-pop-what-have-you-punk bands, and in a way Vivian Girls do a bit of catching up on Share the Joy. It’s great to see the trio open and bookend this record with the two longest tracks ever to grace a Vivian Girls studio album, “The Other Girls” loose and with none of the claustrophobia the trio’s lightning pace brings, and “The Light in Your Eyes” which propels the record outward in grand fashion. But through it all Vivian Girls retain what is raw in their music and reinforce that their signature sound is recognisable for more than just bedroom fidelity. These tracks are inherently Vivian Girls even within the record’s newfound structure; “Dance (If You Wanna),” so light-hearted it may well be the indie Safety Dance cover, and “Lake House,” an old live number, so brilliantly pushy with its punchy verses and Campbell’s forward-motion drumming. Vivian Girls have lost nothing of what made them pop stars of static two years ago- they haven’t lost the grunge in their guitar, they can still hand out sweet dating advice- they’ve just lost the static.

I can see a whole lot of dejected indie fans turning off “The Other Girls” before its first sixteen seconds fade away. With six minutes of this song still to come, the pocket of useless noise feels taunting- like a tongue-in-cheek response to the less tongue-in-cheek cry of “not this again!” when someone hears a band recommended in lieu of Crazy For You or Rip It Off. Or worse yet, it might feel like Vivian Girls are just picking up straight where they left off the rumbling ending of Everything Goes Wrong two years ago- they sound ready to go full circle with another round of noisy pop shorts. But if you get past this wall of noise, only bothering to burden Share the Joy for a freaky sixteen seconds, you’ll find a record contained within its little motto, the noise dropped, the joy shared tenfold, the delightful “Dance (If You Wanna)” circling our heads, encouraging us with a smile. “The Other Girls,” no, Share the Joy is about remembering all things Vivian Girls, passionate as ever, more themselves than they’ve ever been.

Vivian Girls – “Dance (If You Wanna)”

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By Robin Smith, March 17, 2011 11:37 am

The Strokes – Angles

RCA 2011

Rating: 6/10

Let’s just look at this whole “angles” thing for a second. The big idea circling this record is its totally collaborative nature: this is the most boldly Julian Casablancas has stressed that he is not the Stroke but one of five, to the point where the album has even been named after its group mentality and the guy to explain that to us was Albert Hammond, Jr., who until now sort of felt like Casablanca’s second-in-command simply because he had two solo albums and a jewfro under his belt. And I guess, also, because he was the second Stroke to get a writing credit with “Automatic Stop,” a track that slotted right into the band’s canon on Room on Fire, shuffling along unnoticed after “Reptillia” injected some venom into the aftermath of their debut. Angles, however, is said by Hammond to come “from five different people,” and while Hammond’s a good start, that’s a whole lot of writing credits.

But those of us who haven’t recognised the song-writing assets of these other Strokes understate how much Casablancas has, perhaps less pointedly, welcomed his friends in the past. Valensi, Fraiture and Moretti all had their own places on the latter half of First Impressions of Earth, and the record went downhill for it: critics told us “Ask Me Anything” was the Strokes’ worst song ever, bemoaned the repetitive, gloomy “Killing Lies” and sort of just downright ignored “Evening Sun.” Instead they talked about the songs that frontloaded the record, three singles in all, and made the point that the spirit waned as Casablancas did. So it’s kind of admirable that Angles brings these guys back, one record after that ‘disaster’, one by one, five approaches in all.

So Angles is very much an album made for a story. First Impressions of Earth dangled The Strokes off the edge in a way that Room on Fire refused to do and its reception was lukewarm in a way that you wouldn’t normally expect from fans and critics alike- no cheering for their ambitious moment, instead cries that this wasn’t where the Strokes should go (or, rather, they shouldn’t go too far from Is This It?) with their music. Angles, then, not only has to apologise for First Impressions, it also has to do it by being inherently characteristic of the Strokes. All five of them.

And in that way, it fails: this isn’t just ‘a return to basics’ because it is pointed so many different ways, and the Strokes only used to point towards one. Is This It? offered eleven near-identical tracks of garage-pop, a few chords thrown into each one for rhythm and an occasional smoky solo to break up the choruses. Angles is so-called because it carries five people’s worth of ideas. Compare Valensi’s “Machu Picchu,” which sounds like the Clash should’ve in the ‘80s, with Fraiture’s grungy, sinister “You’re So Right,” the exact song you’d expect the guy behind “Killing Lies” to create: it has none of what we’d recognise from the Strokes, none of the guitar interplay which Hammond and Valensi would normally cook up together, which is why it takes us aback as much as it does. And then look at “Metabolism,” a track more suited to the evil fucks behind “Heart In A Cage.” And then remember that “Games,” electro-pop as cute as anything from Casablanca’s smooth solo album, also features. Nope, this isn’t “Last Nite” another ten times.

That might get you down. Angles might well be the same old Strokes on the inside, but it’s the shine on the outside that makes them almost unrecognisable at times. This is the first time the Strokes feel really, truly impenetrable. They come from a distance on “Two Kinds of Happiness,” which feels obscure, produced in such a way that makes it kind of hard to grasp at the guys who made it: it fades in and out, builds to momentous, ever-building choruses, and plays that trick to its death. “Games,” too, feels like a Strokes number specifically deconstructed into the opposite, the guitar replaced for a synthesized sound that does the same job, but without that home comfort, without those chords, with efficient drum machines instead of the slick Moretti. That last guitar bit just reminds us who it is we’re listening to, and how at home they usually make us feel. Not that it’s bad for these guys to challenge us, but Angles is so diverse that “Games” is almost a mistake rectified by the uncompromisingly Strokes-y “Gratisfaction.”

For those of us sort of wondering if the Strokes would still be for us ten years on, it plays heavily on what we saw in them anyway. Did we see five guys in jackets who made those bouncy songs that were probably about sex (as if we were listening to lyrics)? Or did we see a little more in them than that, be it the music or the words or just the sadder tones they carried with the weight of growing up? In short, what the hell is Angles to us- is it the first/second record or the third?

To which the answer is all of the above and more. There’s obviously no room for “Games” on any of those records, because the Strokes never wrote the soundtrack to Q-Bert before now. But there’s obviously a place for “Under Cover of Darkness” to rest on Is This It?, a track that rolls about with the persona of a showy, silly rock-group just like the Strokes were at the turn of the millennium. It’s an achievement, eleven years on, that each member is on the same page, perhaps not in terms of what music they like (as the record as a whole is, yeah, it’s out of whack at its best), but in terms of how well they know each other. “Under Cover of Darkness” is seamless work from its collaborators and boundless fun for the fans who’ll love it for its hooks and embrace it for what Casablanca calls its “cheesy” storyline. There’s a lot of fun to be had with Angles, be it as a throwback or as the jump off the edge where First Impressions was too scared.

And, then, in final breath moment, there’s “Life Is Simple in the Moonlight,” a track penned by Casablancas in solidarity, which throws us straight off again. If anything, this track takes up the foundations First Impressions left, making a full product of the drunken, late-night “15 Minutes,” treading the same waters in which Casablancas battles sadness with celebration. Neither is definitive: the record finishes with those rollicking, playful cries of “don’t try and stop me!” but the build-up is so pensive, so First Impression Strokes. With “Life Is Simple,” Angles ends in a horribly frustrating manner, with none of the assurance of “Take it or Leave It” or “Red Light.” No, Angles, even in ending with its strongest song, dies the way it lived: in sheer ambiguity. Forget the ‘return to basics’: the promise the Strokes made true on was that whole “angles” thing. Vintage Strokes, newer Strokes, Strokes from the future, and each member of the Strokes. And so the question really remains, among all this confusion: which angle do you like best?

The Strokes – “Gratisfaction”

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By Robin Smith, February 24, 2011 8:00 am

Julianna Barwick – The Magic Place

Asthmatic Kitty 2011

Rating: 8/10

The Magic Place does little to take back Julianna Barwick’s sound as it was on Sanguine and Florine- it’s still very much a story told by her voice- but here it sounds closer to us and in a way, more serious. It’s easy to see a criticism of The Magic Place will be that it seems out of Barwick’s control most of the time, or that she lets her choral work drone beyond its end, but really, it’s the first of her records to lay down markers. That’s to do no disrespect to the beauty ofSanguine, a record that reflected the strengths in her (reverb-drenched) a’capella, but a record as endless as that became less about giving her ideas space and more about using all of them- “Scary Cat,” a freak out worthy of Animal Collective, came out of no where and took away what was so powerful about hearing this voice. This time around, however, Barwick’s music always hits. “White Flag,” the records centrepiece, not only feels like the highpoint of Barwick’s career in terms of composition and structure, but also benefits emotionally from it; the warm bass tones that shake around her voice add feeling through control. The song becomes bigger with these markers because Barwick is let loose better when her voice has something to react to, and it does- the layered vocals become thicker, more passionate, and this warmth fills your speakers.

That’s something that would’ve escaped her before, perhaps, but as The Magic Place moves onward, Barwick seems to know where her warmth comes from and never attempts to re-create it. Instead, she lets her voice feel and flow as it so wishes while her newfound ability to construct fills the edges around this ambience. The balance never tips one way or the other, with “Vow,” the instant fallout from “White Flag,” one example. The best of the album is here accepted in “White Flag,” and so her layered vocals continue to act as a focus, descending from the record’s peak with sprinkled piano notes and the continued comfort of that thick bass. And perhaps that’s what’s so recognisable about The Magic Place, that by making “White Flag” her focus, Barwick has found a professional side, one where a record is created to consciously engage with its listener, building in its heady emotion for its first four tracks and bowing out just as touchingly with its other half. “Vow,” “Bob in Your Gait” and “Prizewinning” all hold their own as pieces, with the latter even exploding before the record’s end, but they share pattern that recognises the gorgeous record Barwick is trying to make around “White Flag,” her cornerstone. The rise and fall of The Magic Place feels patient and planned.

Still, it feels a little silly to say all this of The Magic Place when it’s really a record about a voice. It’s Barwick’s most evocative instrument, one that sparkly piano notes can only help fill the room for, and one with which she diminishes too many comparisons to Panda Bear and other leftfield pop musicians. The voice she’s spoken of as being at one with “church music” carries the record, resonating in each layer she adds; at times she’ll puncture with it (“Keep Up The Good Work”) and at others she’ll use it as something anthemic, recognising the beauty her chorus makes in (to say yet more of the record’s masterpiece) “White Flag.” On the record’s final track, “Flown,” she returns to the basics, letting her voice alone carry The Magic Place to its end. And that about sums up what this record does best: it allows us to celebrate Barwick’s voice from all corners, using its structure and professionalism to keep her greatest instrument doing what it does best. At its loudest and quietest, The Magic Place uses Barwick’s voice as the great emotional vehicle it is.

Julianna Barwick – “White Flag”

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By Robin Smith, February 15, 2011 8:00 am

G-Side – The One…Cohesive

Slow Motion Soundz 2011

Rating: 9/10

There’s something instantly grabbing in The ONE… COHESIVE, fourth record of Alabama-native-and-proud duo G-Side. Hearing the record play out, a lot of ST and Clova’s music feels fuelled by simple desire and ambition, by a want for being more than a small hip-hop act and the wish to be recognised as a fully-fledged music symbol. As guys who have spoken in interviews of working at gas stations and barber shops, The ONE… still reflects this longing, and in a sense, their talk paints them as guys who want to be this and that rather than guys whoare- on “Y U Mad,” a track driven by this theme of frustration, they vent that “everybody in the crowd want to be on the stage / the stars look so bright when you come from a city of no lights.” But at the same time, G-Side have come into 2011 with such certainty, such assurance and experience, that it’s like watching them shed this part of themselves; no longer mere aspirers, The ONE… has G-Side rapping about what often feels like the end of their journey into self-realisation and has their music boasting just as loudly, with the same fiery impatience to have its brilliance noticed. And that’s what gives it its tight grasp: this ambition, when channelled into the huge record G-Side has spawned with it, comes out a new thing. It comes out the other side as G-Side’s wannabe global masterpiece, their emblem in which ambition gets its payoff. The ONE… is that payoff.

While confidence readies G-Side to make this masterpiece, it’s the knack for synthesis that makes The ONE… such an achievement. ST and Clova are pacemakers first, and their record is certainly all about setting the tone: tracks as different in mood as “Pictures,” a track that’s basically about a guy staring at naked girls on his phone, and “Moneyintheskyii,” a track that rattles off the serious ambition G-Side embodies, are bolstered upward by their tremendous arrangements and the work of a very special production team indeed. The sprinkling of piano notes isn’t here and there; on “Moneyintheskyii” it’s used to launch G-Side into their verses, and let’s not forget where they find themselves, with the lines “if I don’t do this *** / my food don’t sit right / my heart beat too slow and my brain think too quick” backed by the symphony and pulsing beats to match their theme of compulsion.

It’s a perfect blend at all times, grandiose at every turn and with a production team that recognises the feeling behind ST and Clova’s words: the music is airy and groovy on the celebratory “Jones,” which is backed by boisterous percussion, but the mixture is serious and dignified when the duo explore their cerebral side, with the beats and violins on “Came Up” pounding home every line about what it means to be writing this song (S.LA.S.H’s lines “we all grind we all eat / we up late, don’t sleep / insomniacs, zombies at the crack of dawn trying to write a classic song” coming with particular bite). And how about that track about naked girls? “Pictures” is a track that proves G-Side has as much fuel for its pop side- even the hooks’ glitchy manipulation sounds like the result of working relationships between professionals, and with beat team Block Beattaz behind them, G-Side are just that. The ONE… gets the best of both worlds, propelled to its grand nature through the charisma of G-Side and the execution of their lyricism, but given its push and pomp through its massive arrangements, through the electronics and instrumentation that back up- and size up- the duo.

There’s an argument for The ONE… being another stepping stone, a way for G-Side to further explore the ins and outs of making their classic, and it comes to ahead almost immediately on “Shots Fired” in which they reminisce on the genesis of their project, going through the recording process of Somethin’ To Hate (the record that taught them distribution and manufacturing), Starshipz and Rocketz (recorded in a basement) and Huntzville International (the one that took them international) before they’re ready to kick off their fourth. And they kick it off, huge beat and all, just as they boasted, as ambitious businessmen: “your business model is / us.” In that sense, The ONE… could just be another example of a solid duo who know how to work off their own back, but it’s called COHESIVE for a reason: whether or not it goes global, whether it could possibly be as huge as it purveys to be, ST and Clova have created far more than the work of businessmen with this, a record that’s huge but cohesive and always bubbling with forthright energy. A record with more than just a power-point on business to detail, but one with hooks that blow us out on “How Far” and brilliant, urgent verses to wisp us away elsewhere, such as last word “Imagine.” The ONE… doesn’t feel like work for G-Side, rather it feels like a first love, a record that gives a hundred percent to garner every compliment it earns: flowing, smart, sexy, and even global to those who hear it and its grand tone. Its last verse asks, “Can you imagine success / can you imagine failure?” And let’s not undersell this: The ONE… is a success and nothing but.

G-Side – “Jones ft. P.O.P.E.”

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By Robin Smith, January 27, 2011 8:00 am

The Go! Team – Rolling Blackout

Memphis Industries 2011

Rating: 8/10

They may seem like the perfect summer troupe, the kind of thing that’d give Brighton pier (whichever one remains) a bit of sparkle, but deep down you know you’re glad The Go! Team is releasing this now rather than four months down the line. If you don’t have anything new to gorge on as you come to terms with this 2011 thing, then Ninja and co. can give you everything at once in this neat, not-so-little package. Much like Broken Social Scene or Architecture in Helsinki, The Go! Team are an ideal mixtape band, and on Rolling Blackouts it’s as if they made the artwork and set music to fit; songs to hold hands in the sea to, songs to raise your middle finger with, maybe a song to put on while you walk around naked. Yes, friendly nudists, The Go! Team is all things to all people, with its doo-wop pop, its hip-hop beats and its instrumental piano pieces all going to a happy home. Better yet, it all fits when, as the album artwork kind of suggests, it really shouldn’t.

You’ll like Rolling Blackouts if you like mixtapes, and you’ll love it if you want Thunder, Lightning, Strike again, but bigger. The quintet delight with their playfulness once more, but this time they expand on it. Namely, it’s louder, even more jam-packed with hooks and quirks, and all for the sake of the sugar-hit. Electronica does the job, for one, with the sparkly “Apollo Throwdown” layered in big, bold strokes. But really, no genre can fail in the many hands of this collective, with Ninja’s rapping over “Voice Yr Choice” feeling customary at this point, and the belching music below- the sly percussion and breezy horn section, devised like a cheeky sleight of hand- the jam’s other half. Every song penned here borrows from the band’s signature sound (an eclectic instrumental, but they forgot to keep it instrumental) but amplifies it beyond that lighter sound we knew.

Even so, it’s tempting to call Rolling Blackouts a wholly graceful record in the way it moves- tempting when “Apollo Throwdown” shifts from “Secretary Song” into those dulcet tones, but all swooning aside, graceful wouldn’t quite fit: the Team are loudmouths here, using turntables to fist-pump on “T.O.R.N.A.D.O.” and crafting cartoonish parade anthems like “Bust-Out Brigade,” an aptly titled instrumental that, for all intents and purposes, is vintage Go! Team. Rolling Blackouts is still very much lots of music for lots of people, and noisy, but there’s a real fluidity to it, and that’s good: it’s great to write marching pop anthems, but it’s better to keep the march going, and for that reason the Go! Team have created a very impressive body of work. They invite their collaborators, even, to be a part of the band rather than a distracting feature: on “Buy Nothing Day,” Bethany Cosentino takes a break from her summer duties and joins as a vocalist, and she’s a snug fit, even if the song doesn’t have Best Coast written all over it; it’s a harmonious pop song, but it’s a group effort. Deerhoof’s Matsazucki, too, is slotted into “Secretary Song” casually, until the song’s rockin’ conclusion, and then things move on. This is a well-contained party record, one where Ninja doesn’t make herself or anyone else the focus, even if she does kick serious ass on “Apollo Throwdown.”

All this makes Rolling Blackouts seem infallible. It works from top to bottom, to take songs from, and it fits the Go! Team canon with assumed confidence. If Rolling Blackouts, mixtape-gone-album extraordinaire, does nothing else for you, it’ll at least put 2011 fresh in your mind. The Go! Team’s third record thrives on the excitement of making music, however they want to make it, and that feeling doesn’t go away lightly. Here’s to hoping the year is as full to the brim as this.

The Go! Team – “Buy Nothing Day”

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By Robin Smith, January 19, 2011 8:00 am

White Lies – Ritual

Fiction 2011

Rating: 4/10

White Lies isn’t the name of this band. There’s nothing white about it: if McVeigh tells a lie, it’s about how he murdered his best friend. If he tells a story, it’s about how someone stabbed him with a pair of scissors and left him for dead. He hasn’t got an anecdote suitable for parties, and he hasn’t got an excuse to miss one that doesn’t end with his heart being torn into five hundred lonely pieces. That’s why he’s doing this music thing: no one would congratulate him on say, a good monologue about murder, unless there were the church organs and Interpol guitar riffs to complement it. That’s pretty much how To Lose My Life worked: McVeigh sang so many blockbuster lines it was hard to know where one lie stopped and the next began, and where “be a good girl and do what you’re told” was gloomy, “you’ve got blood on your hands / and I know it’s mine” was downright morbid. The hyperbole was justified by solid post-punk melodies, and, of course, that vintage baritone. To Lose My Life, named in tribute to its obsession with death and sadness, wasn’t a white lie, it was the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.

For all the efforts of these lying bastards, though, it was nothing more than a solid slice of British post-punk revival, wearing its influences heart-on-sleeve, sure, but not having the stones to go as deep as Joy Division or Nick Cave would’ve. And for that, To Lose My Life is now White Lies’ biggest problem: it didn’t have the substance to be their classic (nor the lyrics), but its bombastic nature, its hugeness, has caged them. Ritual, two years on, feels easily eclipsed.

And it shouldn’t be, in some ways. With enough inspection, Ritual is the work of a changed band. “Bigger Than Us” is an unexpected enough single, bubbling with the kind of guitar and synth back-and-forth of a new “Personal Jesus.” “Turn The Bells” has a tribal percussive feel that again detracts from the band’s post-punk glamour, even if for only a moment. Then there’s the symphonic “Strangers,” which feels emotionally lighter, if momentarily. And here lies the problem: these new devices are used fleetingly and McVeigh has no intention of taking them centre stage. In the song-writing department, the only thing that seems to matter for him and his band is the climax. He loves the moment where everything goes haywire on the previously spare “Bad Love,” and he enjoys knocking us out on “Bigger Than Us.” For everything else- the drenching electronics, the attempt at restraint on “Come Down”- it’s as if someone’s messed up McVeigh’s state of mind (which could easily be the case: Alan Moulder takes the helm as producer here, a man famed for his work with Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode). White Lies, for two albums now, have shown their interest in telling a certain type of story, one which begins, if musically different, with the same structural means (“In Love” is used as album’s “Death”) and uses the same technique throughout. And that’s the real issue with Ritual: for every new idea, there’s that old White Lies style, there’s that moment where “The Power & The Glory” sets itself aflame with punchy guitar. There’s the moment we’ve come to expect. White Lies will make you hate the climax as much as they will have you wait for it.

Overall, Ritual is too much of the same: “Streetlights” and “Holy Ghost,” the angular, disparate tracks that sit central to the album, are identical in structure and seem to ignore the fact. It’s all too hard for White Lies to make something mind-blowing when every song lives through that same moment, and even harder when we already lived through all this fuss on To Lose My Life. When we get Ritual at its best, it’s when the bass isn’t thumping in our face, it’s when White Lies aren’t rocking out to some grand idea that’s supposed to roll us off our feet (“the only thing I’ve ever found / that’s greater than it always sounds / is love”). And those are the tracks that don’t remind us of the old White Lies: namely, “Come Home,” the perfect release from all the thunder and lightning, where the band essentially write post-punk by Phil Collins. It’s sweet and soothing, as much as Ritual can be, and best of all, it recognises the band’s new trinkets for a whole song, rather than as half-baked ideas. At the album’s last gasp, it disrupts that old White Lies formula. It kills the lie the band have built up for so long about everything being huge and fiery. That’s kind of nice: it’s nice to see that the band can do something else, it’s nice that I can wait two years with a little hope. Other than this, Ritual thinks it’s making big strides when its focus should be on the small shading. If only they told the truth earlier.

White Lies – “Come Down”

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By Robin Smith, January 10, 2011 8:00 am

Shout Out Louds – Our Ill Wills

Merge Records 2007

Rating: 10/10

Our Ill Wills. I don’t know. I could labour over a theme if I wanted to, something about the Swedish downturn (Kiran Soderqvist, I made this up) but I feel like I’d be overdoing it. How can you sell this record? It’s “four guys and one girl” getting together to make indie-pop, which is pretty much the exact thing you’ve probably heard a hundred times before with a slightly different number-quote. The album art doesn’t really mean anything either, aside from the fact that it’s probably fun to spell out words with international maritime flags. The songs are sung delicately and beautifully- and crafted even better- and that’s the album’s biggest selling point. Songs. Cute, irrelevant songs.

But by god do I love Our Ill Wills, a record as simple, in many ways, as the first records I listened to, ones which were essentially just a collection of songs that captured whatever they wanted to capture in their fleeting minutes. There was no real aching importance once you turned off Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish- it was just Damon Albarn reminiscing over some London days and some very British things indeed- but it was compelling nonetheless. And I don’t live in Sweden, or as the Shout Out Louds point to in “You are Dreaming,” Stockholm, but I assume it works in the same way: Adam Olenius, Bebban Stenborg and co. are chronicling titbits of their lives and then singing them to us. And just like some of the best records, it’s the fact it’s such a collection that makes it so great: songs that are cute and giggly, such as “Impossible,” and songs as foreboding as “You are Dreaming.” It’s a simple, honest record. And that’s an infatuating thing, for some reason.

It’s an indie-pop record, and in fact Our Ill Wills is like the best indie pop records, a sugar-hit even at its saddest, of course, because it’s so ridiculous. It bolsters its themes as high as they can reach, and the music responds: a ***ty fallout with an important friend is retold on “You are Dreaming,” a painfully cold guitar piece that, like any break-up song, tells one side of the argument and tells it convincingly. “South America” is ecstasy for no reason, so it pulls out all the stops and doesn’t bother to explain why, through the interactive sing-along choruses and the unnecessary (but purdy) string arrangements. “Suit Yourself” is Olenius giving a dazzling display of his graceful vocals, “Blue Headlights” is the same for the even more dazzling Stenborg, and hey, “Hard Rain” combines both for something dreamy and something perfect. And that’s the album: it’s dramatic, an emotional outlet for joy, woe, sounding pretty (not so much sounding ugly) but it’s also well crafted, seriously and sincerely assembled stuff. All this, and no hand-claps.

Not much can really be said to validate my love for these Swedes, nor can I really justify them as the reason I know where Stockholm is. Granted I’m not a terrific geographer, but I guess what elevates Our Ill Wills above every other indie pop record I’ve listened to is its theatrical nature, its ability to go from one spectrum to the other in seconds. Even if it’s all twee dramatics, there are so many twists and turns to the people of this cutes-y, delectable quintet: the wholesomely lovesick “Tonight I Have to Leave It” first, the damningly nostalgic “Parents Livingroom” following and the bitter back-and-forth cursing of “You Are Dreaming.” These guys turn from crooning lines as embracing as “why can’t we give love!?” to ones as horrible as “don’t come back to Stockholm no more” in as little space as three songs. Filthy hypocrites, yes, but they love the drama. And all the more better for it, because you don’t have to be on or off for this record. You can have it whenever you want: when you want a good wallow, or, more healthily, a song to celebrate your life and your friends with. Or just a good pop song; you can shut out the romantic lyrics and listen to the xylophones. You can be seduced by vocalist of your choice. And don’t worry about being in the mood, because Our Ill Wills will always be in the mood for you.

Shout Out Louds – “You Are Dreaming”

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By Robin Smith, November 30, 2010 8:00 am

The War on Drugs – Future Weather

Secretly Canadian 2010

Rating: 8/10

If there was one thing to learn from The War on Drugs on Wagonwheel Blues, it was that the musical ‘epic’ is a loose term. The War on Drugs, counter-productive as ever, make a different kind of epic from their influences. Rather than blazing in and out, and with a fair middle, these guys would have their epics spit and splutter from all sides, eventually stumbling into a too-darn-humble conclusion. No drama, just a slow and steady exploration of everything they can pull off, be it folk or, dare I say it, shoegaze. And Future Weather is such a great continuation because it comes across like blueprints for future epics, without the huge lengths for the most part, but going nowhere like it’s a statement: keep it moody, keep it shapeless.

Yes, they still love Bob Dylan and, more broadly, they love Americana, but they prefer it twisted. And that shows more than ever on Future Weather, which treads similar ground to a couple off their debut proper: “There Is No Urgency” and “Show Me The Coast,” those distorted, wandering tracks, those frauds of folk, are reflected generously here, with tracks that keep that genre’s feeling but take away its conventions. There aren’t any choruses or stand-alone lines to refer back to, which takes them away from traditionalists like Dylan with immediacy. Instead they plough ever forward: “Brothers” drones onwards with guitar-play playful and lyrics spoken formlessly. “A Pile of Tires” follows one dreamy sequence of electric plucks to its unexpected death. And then there’s “The History of Plastic,” which has a handful of endings that mosey on from its messy beginning notes. It’s ambitious stuff, Future Weather, because it challenges the entire band to make itself scarce, and each member responds: there’s the out-of-place (and brilliant) percussion that thumps through the final track, and there’s also Granduciel presenting his lyrics of woe (“I’ve been a fighter for you”) with little interest in making a snug fit for the guys around him. Nothing much fits, and that’s what these guys ride on.

Future Weather is their most reflective material yet. It doesn’t drive towards anything in the same way their anthems do, and really, its only attempt is in vein: “Baby Missiles,” the only track with as much bite as “Arms Like Boulders” or “Taking the Farm,” sounds more cut and pasted than revisited. But when this band revisit (and they love to, if their obsession with numbering songs is anything to go by), it’s better for them to revisit a feeling rather than a style. For the most part, Future Weather takes a second look at what makes the War on Drugs feel so down, and the result is a moody, contemplative set of songs, culminating in their most reverb-heavy, angsty track yet. Once again, the EP has its corners coloured in with wordless reprises, maybe because they don’t have enough material to put out, maybe because they really love playing with guitars and ambience, or maybe because this is just throwaway EP stuff. But I like to think it’s because they’re sticking to their notes and their themes: Future Weather is, in bulk, a record turned inside-out, pissed-off Americana done brilliantly wrong.

The War on Drugs – “Baby Missiles”

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By Robin Smith, November 16, 2010 8:00 am

Working for a Nuclear Free City – JoJo Burger Tempest

Melodic Records 2010

Rating: 8/10

The first hour of JoJo Burger Tempest is absolutely crazy. It is as diverse a mixtape as anyone could dream to make, slathered in any genre’s wall of noise and taking queues from any band permitted they have pulse, be it the glossy-eyed admiration for Boards of Canada sampled on “Float Bridges” or the ambitious dream pop the band share with Faunts in “Silent Times.” Such a broad spectrum could only be the result of Working For a Nuclear Free City being what it is, which is five guys first and a band later. These guys are a musical democracy, and even if a quintet is, by numbers, an easy democracy, they make it look like utopia. JoJo Burger Tempest is left open to every ounce of contribution made and in turn caters to every one of its contributors: at times it is fuzz, at times it is pop, at times it is electronica and at times it is guitar-rock. But at all times it is everyone, an hour (on its first side!) so huge it reflects those age-old assets music so badly needs: confidence and collaboration, and confidence in collaboration.

But as easy as these Manchester louts make mixtapes look, there’s no getting lost in JoJo Burger Tempest. It’s a mixtape for those who need it and an album for those who seek it out, lending itself to immensely indulgent full listens that run from “Do a Stunt” to the first disc’s bookend, “Buildings.” That’s something their debut, just as jam-packed, could never quite do, and it shows how well these guys can mould their ideas together when they want to. Most of this is attributed to their lightning fast pace which, at its most electrifying, is glorious (“Pachinko,” “Faster Daniel Faster,” amongst others) and at its least, gratifying- there’s room to breathe in “A Black Square With Four Yellow Stars,” and the band let up with the acoustic “Buildings” when the time comes. The first disc of JoJo Burger Tempest is not only hugely experimental, it has the structured science to back it up: the album, regardless of genre shifts, is designed to have songs play off songs. I could pick any sequence of songs and have them match up in spite of all their paradoxes, with perhaps the greatest example the transition from the dreamy “Float Bridges” to the huge guitar anthem found in “The King and June.”JoJo Burger Tempest is chaos, alright, but controlled craziness.

At least, it is in its best moments: JoJo Burger Tempest is madness, succeeding not on having a method to that madness but rather on the assurance of craziness. Its construction is insanity with restraint, musical stream-of-consciousness penned by an overreaching beginning and end. And where Working for a Nuclear Free City fail, they do so because they lose that assurance- there’s a point at which Jojo Burger Tempest becomes insane and nothing but, and that is its cinematic title number, which is just about the wrong side of crazy. “The JoJo Burger Tempest” is impossible to ignore for ambition alone: it’s a ridiculous thirty-three minute top off for a record already so ridiculous that it could be three, four discs. This title-track is where Working For a Nuclear FreeCity’s utopia crumbles to the ground and where democracy falls to lusts of power. It is the work of its entity rather than its five friends, created in a thousand fragments that, while microcosmic of the countless influences shown throughout JoJo Burger Tempest, move lifelessly and pointlessly apart. There are choir rehearsals, sessions of shoegaze and danceable breakdowns, but the radical nature of it all is wasted without collaboration. Here, the guys in Working For a Nuclear Free City don’t know they’re insane, but we do. And I like it better when we’re on the same page. Disc one of JoJo Burger Tempest succeeds on its craziness, on the organic nature it is contributed to, on its openness. Disc two fails because Working For a Nuclear Free City are crackpots.

Working for a Nuclear Free City – “Silent Times”

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By Robin Smith, November 5, 2010 8:00 am

Badly Drawn Boy – It’s What I’m Thinking: Photographing Snowflakes

The End Records 2010

Rating: 4/10

Damon Gough’s records were never ragged. That’s what we’re supposed to think, right? Badly Drawn Boy, the godfather of train station busking, some guy desperately clinging to a famous beard. General homeless guy. Judging from the music video to “Something To Talk About,” someone threw a guitar into his cup. Those woolly hats, right?

Image clearly lies: there’s nothing ragged about The Hour of Bewilderbeast. It’s long, it’s weird, it’s messy perhaps, but it doesn’t need the shave Gough does. The Hour of Bewilderbeast was so loveable because it was a sprawling sound collage, Gough putting all he had to the board and gluing his heart out. The result was a gorgeous indie pop record, as full to the brim with harmony as Illinoise and with twice the heart.

The best thing about Gough’s sprawling, of course, is that he takes detours. His records start with important thoughts (in the case of One Plus One is One, one very important thought, love) and wind up with no conclusion, but no questions asked, either: no one particularly cares that that these themes of love and unity pass Gough by, so long as the flute stays firmly in his hands. Hearing Gough sing about his girlfriend may get smiles, but the flute? It’s the staying power.

Sprawling is, quite simply, everything that makes Gough great. We say he’s special because he doesn’t have an editor- who wants to listen to Gough cram sixteen, seventeen ideas into ten songs? There’s no point in a straight-up Badly Drawn Boy album because there is nothing to get lost in, no chance to contemplate what on earth is going on in this instrumental or that. And It’s What I’m Thinking Pt. 1 – Photographing Snowflakes is tragic because he’s run out of detours, or even steps forward: this is a man turning sharp on his heels. For the first time in his career, Gough is trying to be as concise as can be, compacting as much melody as man needs into ten songs.

For a guy without an editor, that’s ambition at its highest, and It’s What I’m Thinkingsuffers so much from being overstuffed it barely makes a mark. Its concentration is on atmosphere, but its atmosphere is confusing at best because of this excruciating concentration. “In Safe Hands” and “The Order of Things” are constructed with meandering sound effects and drum machines, electronic orchestras that place Gough and his acoustic mopes on a landscape. But the landscape is all Gough ends up with. He can’t get away from it, and never really sounds like he wants to. The juxtaposition of It’s What I’m Thinking is bizarre: Gough’s voice never raises above his song, and the arrangements rarely give him reason to. Even with the vibrant strings of “Too Many Miracles”- even at the album’s most symphonic- there’s no enthusiasm, nothing for Gough to wax lyrical about. Instead, he utters: “Are you ready to be in love again?” Snowflakes are a downer.

What Gough doesn’t lose to constraint he does to production. His centrepiece, “It’s What I’m Thinking,” is again designed for the atmosphere, the most clear of Gough’s tracks to date with echoes and an onslaught of country twang. And the more that goes into it, the less comes out: the track plods through until it ends filled with every slab of gorgeous instrumentation available, but for a track so aimless and meandered, there’s little to immerse in. If it were three tracks, sure. But It’s What I’m Thinking is (discounting that ridiculous bonus song collage) ten, not eighteen. And with Gough, getting lost in a song isn’t as exciting as getting lost in an album.

It’s worth getting into the head that this is Pt. 1, and what that signals is a mystery to all but Gough. It could mean a trilogy, and context could reveal all we need to know about It’s What I’m Thinking. Would this be more engrossing, say, if we had three hours of Gough’s thoughts to stew on? It seems, quite tragically, unlikely: The Hour of Bewilderbeast wasn’t subdued- it never shut up. And at this point, I wonder if hypothetical parts 2 and 3 would do anything to quench Badly Drawn Boy’s thirst, and just how long we’ll have to wait to have Gough giddy again. This is, Gough at his most subdued, and that is Gough at his most ambitious. Who’d have thought that ambition would be his downfall? It’s What I’m Thinking, 2010’s most bizarre release, backs our bearded superstar into a very tight corner indeed.

Badly Drawn Boy – “Too Many Miracles”

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By Robin Smith, September 24, 2010 8:00 am

No Age – Everything In Between

Sub Pop 2010

Rating: 8/10

No Age described Everything in Between as maturation; “not getting boring, just richer.” This is either a lie or a bad grasp on economics, because nobody is going to reach for their wallet the first time they listen to “Glitter.” They did for “Eraser” of Nouns in which the band ripped apart the song’s build up and let loose, but their latest single is content to glide in noise rather than blow up in it. In 2008 I was frightened of these rebels, so I thank Everything in Between for letting me be me, the guy too scared to sing along. It’s a rebel, but a crumpled one.

Everything in Between might just be my favourite No Age record for all the wrong reasons, then. It beggars belief that an album so underwhelming can be so satisfying, and moreso when it comes from two dudes with passion as high as the volume can go. Of course, it’s only underwhelming to start with, and it’s still that loud, but easier and more digestible. They were right, this isn’t boring, it just goes down better. “Fever Dreaming” is still raucous and pissed off, a dream for demented distortion freaks. “Skinned” is a huge punk song that grows chorus to chorus, and knows it- it’s possibly their most structured song. And of course, there’s “Glitter,” the album’s first single: at first it sounds dull (duller in the context of the band who made it), but for all its swishing and swirling it eventually reveals itself a winner, so long as you stop waiting for big finishes. After all, it’s as huge as No Age have ever been- a guitar is, as always, being scraped to pieces behind the scenes. And really, I could rave on about the first six songs on this album all day. At first they won’t quench the thirst of any die-hard because they aren’t as pulsating as “Miner” or “Sleeper Hold.” They’re as good, though, if only because No Age is okay waiting for us to appreciate them. For No Age, patience is a first. And you will get there with “Life Prowler” even if it isn’t dropping hammers, because it’s as catchy and weirdly transcendent as the next man’s fuzz.

I don’t want to be the one to pigeon-hole Everything in Between by calling it ‘maturation’ because I don’t think that would do this record half the justice it deserves: No Age are still writing songs with goalless grins on their faces, and like the best pop, they don’t go for sections or arrangements. The duo attest to that by creating an album with six singles and seven arguably useless tracks, and to fire that fact home they lead Everything In The Between with the six singles. As a result, some among us won’t bother with the bookends, but they’ll be missing this band at their niftiest; the fun of finishing off rocking out with fuzzy instrumentals like “Katerpillar,” “Dusted” and “Positive Amputation.” And the moments slotted sneakily in between, such as the understated (and slower) “Valley Hump Crash” and, of course, the album’s loudest and proudest, “Shed and Transcend.”

The best tracks may be the most unexpected. “Common Heat” is stripped bare, and not just musically. This anthem of desperation is as naked as No Age have ever been, and the fact that we’ve never seen this side of them will stop you twice before you write off Everything in Between as “boring.” At the end of the day, first impressions aren’t ever as deceiving as this. The songs on Everything in Between may consult the rule book from time to time, but the album sure as hell doesn’t.

No Age – “Shred and Transcend”

See larger image Everything in Between (Audio CD) List Price: $13.98 USD New From: $5.95 In Stock Used from: $3.63 In Stock Release date September 28, 2010.