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By Robin Smith, May 8, 2012 10:00 am

Best Coast – The Only Place

Mexican Summer 2012

Rating: 3/10

No matter how many times you say fun I still can’t have it. The Only Place feels like the greying out of Bethany Cosentino, the same sentiments she’s been pushing just rolling on to the next page, blowing through the streets, always the streets of California, like an endless gust of weed smoke. It is talking to the same people from the same couch as trashy TV rolls quietly and insignificantly in the background, thinking about fixing the same problems but clinging to them like little nuggets of meaning, pining over the same guy and being too lazy to do anything about it. We’re still supposed to take it to the beach and get high to it and take pictures of our cat to go on a clip reel with it. We’re right where we left off: “when I’m with you,” when we’re together, “I have fun.”

Okay. Either this record is boring, or I am. Don’t tell me. The way Crazy For You ended epitomized that record, because it held up a mirror to its mad dependence. All the weed was taken out of the skull-fucking boredom of waiting for your prospective boyfriend to not come ‘round; going half out of your mind and talking to your pet was a replacement act and saying the same thing over and over and over again was to calm the thoughts that consumed. The distractions only lasted minutes. Minutes? Perfect! Write a pop song. “When I’m With You” was a fitting conclusion of all these little anxieties, because what is an album about ‘weed and my cat and being lazy a lot’ without the fun you could be having? I guess it’s nothing. The Only Place is kind of nothing.

In its nothingness, everyone will tell me, “it sounds like every Best Coast album” and point back to Crazy For You as being as simple as what follows it. It will reinforce a lyric like “I wish my cat could talk,” a line that is pretty much the holy grail of simple lyrics. Give me a simple lyric any day, for all the obvious reasons: it’s honest, or it speaks to an experience we’re probably all having, or maybe it’s just easier to connect with someone over having a bad day than it is to grasp for meaning in it. When I hear a simple lyric of Cosentino’s, though, it’s simple because she has nothing to say and no experience to share with anyone but the dude she’s talking to. This would be James Last’s surf pop muzak if not for the elongating of words like “fun” and “life” and the constant repetition of that nothingness refusing to dig through the surface. All Cosentino has to write about on The Only Place is the distractions, and last time around that nothingness, played on a purely upbeat note, lasted the summer and died out as fast as the weather did.

And so the most hideous crime The Only Place commits is that, yes, it is an “emo” record, just like Cosentino said she wanted- emo not for the guitars twinkling or the skramz screaming, but for the gloomy, plodding place it exists in. It comes from exactly the same place that the sun shone on for Crazy For You, but with the grey shading. That doesn’t refer to the inevitable move away from being a lo-fi band, either- it barely factors. Again we’re at home with Cosentino on the couch, listening to her music the way it was lazily written, and lazy isn’t an insult: it’s like a badge a Best Coast record proudly pins on itself. Everyone is out somewhere with something to do and The Only Place is at home with the curtains pulled over.

The result of darkening the room by the beachside is this: the drab distractions of fun and the sad twee ballads all move The Only Place at a precisely made, sluggish speed through half an hour of Cosentino’s white lies about being unhappy and pissed off with friends. It’s all held up through jangle pop played in a major key, but in this even Cosentino seems unsympathetic towards her character- the melancholy is only ever piled on a happy melody and the never-ending sadness, as on the guitar-chugged “Last Year,” seems like a red herring played for the hell of it (again: nothingness). That’s why the song indulges in the surface of lyrics rather than the words on the inside, and why Cosentino becomes more entertaining when she expresses her “la de das” instead of the problems she seems little interested in. “What a year this day has been” is a lyric that reflects the grungy, uncaring nature of this track, but any venting on The Only Place remains simply that on this is an album of surface- nothing goes any deeper, because nothing can come from nothing.

What The Only Place entails is a list of reasons to not be having fun, but the description is unsympathetic, and not only in Cosentino’s lyrics: the music feels entirely out of step with the record’s moody facade, like eleven new versions of the impassioned, irony-smacked “Positively Fourth Street” but intending none of the scorn Dylan did in his music. And this is just how Cosentino writes; her dad-rock-surf-pop guitar music sounds nothing but sincere in its airy and carefree construction, and as a result it means as little as her lyrics do, just in the complete opposite way. What results is a bizarre record of contrasting base material, a bittersweet record without any of the force behind what make those words sting. The Only Place becomes a record that is suggesting everything but giving none of it, and what sucks the most is that this badge of laziness is entirely of Cosentino’s choosing. She neutralises these two parts into some sort of post-beachcore album that cynically rhymes words like “fun” with themselves, just to point to as it was last time around.

So it’s fitting that the best moment here is “Up All Night,” a song entirely about feel: it’s long and gloomy, but dedicated to its story for more than four minutes, ditching the superficial twee brevity for a little focus on what’s upsetting Cosentino and how a pop song of little guitar riffing can speak for that. This side of Cosentino feels none forced as the band rollicks through guitar licks and percussive snaps that dot together the bitter with the sweet in a more palliative way: Cosentino is wistful on this closer, and the music actually reflects that, without a smile. Best Coast’s style feels fully connected here, rather than just presenting the description, the “emo,” as an afterthought. It’s as if the saving grace to Cosentino’s sadness is the time dedicated, which makes sense for this album of nothing; there’s something buried under “Up All Night,” finally. But until this moment, I’m not having fun with The Only Place, and when it’s down and out I’m not not having fun with it. All I feel towards this record is some sort of angry indifference, which feels like the exact empty feeling that it impacts on us; like nothing matters as long as I hear the same words and the same chords over and over until all I can say about this record is nothing, over and over. This is an empty record, and the exact opposite of what it means to write classic music, because through all its forced smiles and fake problems, it’s an album that means absolutely nothing to me.

Best Coast – “The Only Place”

See larger image The Only Place (Audio CD) List Price: $12.98 USD New From: $7.99 In Stock Used from: $6.72 In Stock Release date May 15, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, March 29, 2012 10:00 am

One of my favorite songs from a record that I can’t help but enjoy even if it leaves me wanting more. ”The Rifle’s Spiral” has some spacey effects and a more fleshed-out production reminiscent of Broken Bells, but that gorgeous hook and forceful guitar lines are all Shins.

The Shins – “The Rifle’s Spiral”

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By Rudy Klapper, March 27, 2012 10:00 am

“We were born with sun in our teeth and in our hair,” goes the first single from uber-West Coast-pop lovers Best Coast, and if it’s any indication of their upcoming sophomore album The Only Place, it’s going to be a worthy follow-up to 2010′s retro Crazy For You. “The Only Place” is as direct a love letter to Southern California as you can get, and it helps that Bethany Cosentino’s cheery vocals are in fine form behind a jaunty, effervescent guitar melody by multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno. As straightforwardly dedicated as they are to the bubbly sounds of West Coast power pop, Best Coast does a damn good job of making you want to stay there.

Best Coast – “The Only Place”

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By Rudy Klapper, March 26, 2012 10:00 am

Bouncy indie pop from this trio from Brooklyn, whose Amber Papini reminds me a bit of Regina Spektor on a drama-free day. Although they’ve been around since 2007, they just released their debut self-titled LP near the tail end of January, and it’s one of the better indie pop efforts of 2012 so far. Check it out if you like Tennis, Chairlift, etc.

Hospitality – “Eighth Avenue”

See larger image Hospitality (Audio CD) List Price: $13.98 USD New From: $9.23 In Stock Used from: $10.92 In Stock Release date January 31, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, March 21, 2012 4:00 pm

Vacationer is an East Coast synth-pop group (roots in Philly and Brooklyn) who recently released their debut LP Gone, a lovely, airy bit of chill wave/dream-pop inspired stuff. The title track is the obvious winner, meditating on a cozy melody and coalescing nicely around vocalist Kenny Vasoli’s soothing vocals (yes, the same Kenny Vasoli from pop-punk stalwarts The Starting Line - quite a change of pace!). RIYL: MGMT, Washed Out, lullabies.

Vacationer – “Gone”

See larger image Gone (Audio CD) List Price: $11.98 USD New From: $5.79 In Stock Used from: $2.19 In Stock Release date March 20, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, March 20, 2012 10:00 am

The Shins – Port of Morrow

Columbia 2012

Rating: 6/10

For all the press lauding this as the comeback of one of modern indie’s more venerable acts, Port of Morrow sounds strangely suspended in time, caught in between the ghosts of its past and a far more promising future. Ostensibly it’s an album that showcases everything that made the Shins great; maybe not change-your-life amazing, but certainly one of the defining acts of the ‘00s, workmanlike indie pushed over the top by frontman James Mercer’s distinctive tenor and his remarkable melodic talents. Yet the James Mercer who was beginning to emerge on 2007’s underrated Wincing the Night Away does not always sound like the James Mercer in rare indie pop form on Port of Morrow, except perhaps in the slinky, sexy titular closer, which is so distinct from the rest of the material here that it almost seems like a tacked on bonus track. “Simple Song” has been derided for being just that – with the punchy guitars, Mercer’s trademark shift to a higher register, and clever wordplay, it seems like a Shins song concocted in some hellishly cheery, Zach Braff-run indie pop factory via carefully worded specifications (insert backing vocals here, add a dash of piano throughout). “Simple Song” is near flawless as a pop song, but it’s that inevitable feeling of déjà vu that makes it and much of Port of Morrow predictable rather than truly stirring.

Mercer’s more recent work with Danger Mouse in Broken Bells and even much of Wincing the Night Away foreshadowed an accomplished songwriter finally stepping out from his own considerable shadow. A song like “Red Rabbits” or “Sea Legs” from the latter reveled in different textures and a more experimental take on indie pop, and in doing so it revealed a Mercer who was comfortable in growing as a songwriter, still an ace with those hooks and a pristinely recorded guitar but more interested in seeing where these studio explorations would take him. His later remarks that he had felt stifled working in the Shins, recruitment of an entirely new backing band, and enlistment of producer Greg Kurstin (of fellow indie poppers The Bird and the Bee) pointed to a continuance of that more expansive direction, but for the most part, Port of Morrow slips in neatly between Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow on the CD rack. This is not a bad thing when Mercer is able to recapture the intimate spirit of those records, as he does on the lovely “September,” which, for all of “Simple Song’s” inherent craft, is the most quintessentially Shins song here. The light strum of Mercer’s acoustic guitar and the dreamy haze that drifts around the song like a summer dew gives it a nakedly honest feeling of newfound romance that “New Slang” nailed so perfectly, a feeling summed up in a classic Mercer line: “love is the ink in the well when her body writes” (Braff would love that!).

“September” is quiet and thoughtful, and in the context of the rest of Port of Morrow it jumps out at you for precisely that reason. The flip side of Mercer’s studio proficiency is the double-edged sword of perfectionism, which was never a problem when Mercer was laying down a couple backing vocals and a guitar track but tends to overwhelm on MOR-fluff like the schmaltzy “For A Fool” or the even cheesier “It’s Only Life,” which features lyrics that drip clichés and a short guitar solo that can be seen coming from miles away. It’s hard to fault Kurstin here for doing what he does best, and combining his production skills with Mercer’s songwriting is bound to lead to some stunners – opener “The Rifle’s Spiral,” for instance, is just the kind of stomping pop that Kurstin does so well, an incessant guitar riff and some bouncy drumming pushing one of Mercer’s better melodies forward. Where “The Rifle’s Spiral” surges, however, other songs merely sound exceedingly well produced; the cheerful, ringing guitar on “No Way Down” and the festive percussion and funky guitar on “Bait and Switch” are all well and good, with polished hooks and a production sheen that practically sparkles in the higher tones and kicks hard and cleanly in the lower. Yet, whether it’s because of Mercer’s so-consistent-it’s-almost-boring vocal excellence or the fact that the hooks tend to blend into one another after a series of up tempo, vaguely rocking pop master classes, Kurstin’s focus on a glossy, slick aesthetic rarely serves to enhance Mercer’s songs.

Then again, this is James Mercer, and these songs are nevertheless uniformly outstanding, another ten Exhibit As (in a long line of them) in the case for Mercer as one of the best songwriters of his generation. For all its AM dial affinity, “40 Mark Strasse” has the kind of soaring, overwhelming chorus that one can’t help but smile at, even if the idea of soft rock makes one sort of queasy. And that title track is a necessary revelation that Port of Morrow takes too long in getting to – in its ghostly synth work and the delightfully weird effect on Mercer’s falsetto throughout, it’s the logical heir to Wincing the Night Away’s oddball moments and Broken Bells more chromatic hues. Yet Port of Morrow seems much more a step sideways than forward for Mercer, not so much a dramatic comeback but more a compilation of greatest hits masquerading as new songs. We already knew Mercer could write a great Shins album – the question now is if he can ever become more than just the Shins.

The Shins – “September”

See larger image Port of Morrow (Audio CD) List Price: $11.98 USD New From: $5.85 In Stock Used from: $8.63 In Stock Release date March 20, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, March 15, 2012 10:00 am

Miike Snow – Happy to You

Universal Republic 2012

Rating: 8/10

It’s not exactly Sonny Moore leaving post-hardcore to twiddle knobs and worship at the altar of day-glo paint and Ecstasy as Skrillex, but the ease with which Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg have transitioned from crafting Top 40 epics as Bloodshy & Avant (see: Britney Spears – “Toxic”) to playing 260 shows and landing festival headlining slots as live band Miike Snow is nearly as impressive, not to mention eminently more listenable. Their self-titled debut was an unassuming collection of electro pop gems that rocketed to indie stardom on the backs of singles like “Animal” and “Black and Blue.” It was the kind of genre fusion Karlsson and Winnberg have been doing for years, a dynamic blend of dance, house and indie music, but the addition of versatile vocalist Andrew Wyatt and the emphasis on live instruments made Miike Snow that rarest of specimens: a fully-formed band right out the gate, with a cutting-edge electro album that sounded fresh and vital rather than a recycled MGMT-lite.

Happy to You, happily enough, is not a mere retread of Miike Snow, which wouldn’t have been surprising given the band’s grueling touring schedule and the fact that, well, a song like “Animal” is good for some serious airplay. Their signature sound is still electronic, marrying the pop sensibilities of Vampire Weekend with the feverish beats of Passion Pit and the grimier atmosphere of the clubs Karlsson and Winnberg have long been accustomed to. While Karlsson and Winnberg and their beatmaking savvy remain the backbone, Happy to You reveals itself as more of a diverse record than its predecessor. Things are much more textured, the trio clearly reveling in the live sound that they had perfected on the road rather than grounding themselves firmly in the electronics of their debut. The melodies seem largely more fleshed out, given extra weight by the fuller sounds the band more often than not embrace. “Devil’s Work” highlights the differences between the two records: in its reverb-heavy piano vamp, haunting tonal shifts and Wyatt’s ghostly vocals, it’s reminiscent of what made Miike Snow tracks like “Silvia” so successful; yet Wyatt’s voice in the chorus is awash not in synths but in lush strings and a swelling brass melody. It’s the natural link between their debut and this record, the precursor to the almost twee organ and martial drum rolls on the psychedelic “Bavarian #1 (Say You Will)” and the sparkling indie pop of “Archipelago,” where a whistle solo and a sunnily propulsive chorus reminiscent of the Shins belie Wyatt’s typically subversive lyrics.

First single “Paddling Out” is most likely to captivate fans of “Animal,” with an insistent, syncopated beat and a similar contrast between the song’s infectious tone and melancholy lyrics (“there’s someone here who laughs too hard at everything” begins the chorus), but for all the band’s efforts, there is nothing here that approaches the immediacy of Miike Snow. It’s a necessary trade-off, perhaps, as Happy to You is much more of a proper album, to be listened to as an entire whole, than Miike Snow ever was. It’s an up-and-down ride, and while there is not really a “bad” song, per se, on here (I find it hard to believe pop professionals like Karlsson and Winnberg could even write a bunk hook), there isn’t a gripping, defining standout like “Silvia.” Centerpiece “God Help This Divorce” comes the closest, its dreamy, Revolver-esque textures warping a straightforward (yet decidedly dark) ballad into a kaleidoscopic display of the band’s studio prowess, and it’s notable too in that it is easily the furthest of all the songs here from their earlier work.

That decision to expand their sound and focus more on the links between where they were and where they want to go is the true treat of Happy to You. It’s evident in the percolating, stygian synths of “Black Tin Box,” which uses Lykke Li’s throaty voice to great effect in creating a threatening, foreboding mood, or in the sparse drums and surging bursts of noise on the twitchy “Vase.” And where a song like “Paddling Out” or “Devil’s Work” likely would have made much more sense as an opener, “Enter The Joker’s Lair,” with its skittish drums, see-sawing electronics, and general preference for skirting around its melody with bleeps and bloops rather than driving it home, stands out as the band’s clear mission statement for the album – don’t be afraid to shake things up. Happy to You is not as arresting as Miike Snow, nor will it likely make as much of an immediate impact. But for a genre well versed in sophomore stagnation, Miike Snow’s willingness to test their boundaries is a pleasant surprise.

Miike Snow – “God Help This Divorce”

See larger image Happy to You (Audio CD) List Price: $10.99 USD New From: $8.12 In Stock Used from: $6.47 In Stock Release date March 26, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, February 28, 2012 2:00 pm

San Diego noise-rock duo Crocodiles will be releasing their third album Endless Flowers on June 4th. First single “Sunday (Psychic Conversation #9)” would make it seem that Endless Flowers is aiming to be Crocodiles’ “summer” album – it’s loud and raucous with that wall of fuzz the band loves, but has a much more distinctive pop edge than usual. Hard not to be excited for a band that has been getting better with each release.

Crocodiles – “Sunday (Psychic Conversation #9)”

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By Robin Smith, February 21, 2012 10:00 am

Cate Le Bon – Cyrk

The Control Group 2012

Rating: 7/10

On my absolutely wishy-washy but definitely noble search for as many singer plus guitar albums I could find, it was in Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day I was able to make a home- preferably a log cabin- to crawl up in. Not that this is a review of that (though if I can petition someone to write a glowing 5 for it, yes please), but it is the warmth in that album that startled me. Even if it isn’t the perfect acoustic album- there’s more to it around the edges than that, shout out to the album’s obscure fiddle player – Bunyan’s assurance on a song such as “Love Song” speaks volumes of how to make an album that carries guitar and voice to its core. It’s not her gorgeous voice we will wax lyrical about forever unless it goes hand in hand with the guitar below it, and the rest is a fill-in. There, in Diamond Day, lies a classic album built on a steady foundation.

This mini-review, of course, fails to point back at the actual make-up of CYRK, an album driven by a musician and her band - drums, organs and such, they’re definitely a mark on this album, curse ‘em- but it’s in sheer strength of will that Cate Le Bon comes across like the room’s been cleared out. To me, it’s an album of vocal and guitar, too dressed-up in places like “Greta,” maybe, for that assertion to be actually true, but transparent enough to hold those two fundamentals at its centre. It’s the guitar-work that compels Le Bon to the shade of herself that is punk, but it’s the same instrument she falls back on for her less acidic moments. At the risk of being caught out by someone else in their boxy bedroom who knows I have nothing to say about CYRK beyond “cool music” or worse still, “sounds like Nico,” allow me to distract the conversation to Le Bon’s startling live show: as support for St. Vincent, she was the living, breathing definition of sparseness, which is the most fabulous of endorsements for Annie Clark’s supplement, in a strange way. Her live show presented that unsettling singer-songwriter style nuanced into its purest form, something most would call nothing more than “a lady and a guitar.” I prefer to think of it as a lady and some ridiculous chord changes, liberated by her small-time status enough to push through the intense experiments she’d been purveying. An expert fit, I’m sure you’ll agree, to St. Vincent, but Le Bon didn’t fill the stage as a band-leader. This was a pastoral (whatever that really means anymore) take on her peer’s quiet debut Marry Me, tampered with so little that even if I knew none of the songs, I was hearing them as if getting their inaugural play-through.

That lovely, simple magic doesn’t feel lost on CYRK, even when the shuffling drums roll over “Fold The Cloth” or the keys try to get some authority over it, and how they try: even mixed in louder, they’re still somehow kinda unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Even then, the base of this album feels sprinkled on by the band around it. Those twinkling effects on “Puts Me To Work” are put on top like the most awesome of supplementary essays, further explaining the character and zest of CYRK but not taking away from Cate Le Bon’s simple image. The character of this album is in its fine lines- again, reminiscent of Annie Clark as she plays on the borders of comfort and its sinister, opposite number- and those, laid bare, are simply given marking points by all this stuff. The organs, the drums, and such, are going to lend Le Bon a certain amount of comparison, but it’s in the guitar we keep falling in with Stephen Malkmus and her voice we so desperately want to connect to Chelsea Girl. Not that there are any gosh-darn flutes in this album, but “Fold The Cloth” gets its power from those wandering guitar-lines at 1:24. If anything, CYRK is more the work of someone working in Kurt Vile’s discipline, chilling from the couch as she makes an album of two great talents. Le Bon is doodling, but as she refines it, CYRK becomes a clear piece of work with a well-clarified core.

Even if, once in a while, she’s all up for dismantling her world, dusting it off and putting it back together in some new ridiculous layout. “Greta” seems to stress a particular breaking point for the album, but neither side is radically different from the other. It stands, in this warped little interlude, one which will put the easily horrified among us off brass instruments forever, that Le Bon is as much of experiment as she is of constructing songs, and in its creepy-as-hell last gasp, “Greta” is consciously laying down the deliberately fragmenting sound of Le Bon, one that she tampers with for nothing more than the delight of it. And so the disorientating final seconds of CYRK are indicative of the musician behind them in many ways, which is almost frustrating in light of part one of the inverted “Ploughing Out.” Le Bon is playing beautiful chords for the first round, and if it’s not that which sooths, one can point to the earnestness of everything: the softness of drums and the cooing vocal enveloping the headphones is the album I’m constantly searching for. That’s a story, I’ll bite, that lends itself to about half of CYRK (and half of my life), but to me it’s in Le Bon’s guitar-work she finds her innate strength, that which demolishes with about the same dedication it helps her sparkle bright. This album sits in the comfort of a pastoral tune and its strong-willed, angular resolution. The twist in “Ploughing Out” moves entirely in chords, treacling down to the next movement like the rough patch needn’t have words, needn’t have a reason; it’s just Le Bon’s electric guitar, now near-autonomous, causing the scene. Now leading some semblance of a band towards singer-songwriter paradise, it’s just a startling achievement to see a musician command her music so well. No wonder her audience got her stepping onto that tiny stage alone: that’s a really cool guitar, after all.

Cate Le Bon – “Puts Me To Work”

See larger image Cyrk (Audio CD) List Price: $13.98 USD New From: $9.42 In Stock Used from: $11.54 In Stock Release date January 17, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, February 16, 2012 10:00 am

Brooklyn-based noise pop duo Sleigh Bells will be releasing their sophomore record Reign of Terror next week (the 21), and from my listens the general Sleigh Bells concept is still largely driving the ship. Take a healthy dose of Derek Miller’s brick-to-the-face guitar overload, add arena rock drums and a healthy dose of distortion, and throw those sparkling indie pop vocals of Alexis Krauss on top. I like Reign of Terror more than the critically-acclaimed Treats, however; Miller (formerly of Florida hxcers Poison The Well - represent!) seems more concerned with tone and melodies now, particularly in the last trio of songs which take things to a more psychedelic place, and the songs themselves just seem much more focused. Aside from the two early singles, which I definitely recommend (“Born To Lose” and “Comeback Kid”), “End of the Line,” with its trippy chorus and multi-tracked vocals, is my current favorite.

Sleigh Bells – “End of the Line”

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By Rudy Klapper, February 15, 2012 10:00 am

Islands – A Sleep And A Forgetting

ANTI- 2012

Rating: 8/10

As a Break-Up Record, A Sleep & A Forgetting checks off all the boxes quite nicely. The story has been written a thousand times before, but trust Nick Thorburn to inject some high drama into it: A Sleep & A Forgetting comes after Thorburn endured a messy end to a relationship last Valentine’s Day and spent much of the past year in the care of a wealthy older patron (a woman, natch), who gave him a place to stay and a piano to pontificate on, the modern-day Romantic come to translate his tears to the ivories. It’s a record that wallows in clichés, be it in its release date or in its backstory or in its straight-to-the-gut lyrical matter, and for a band that’s always been the indie pop standard-bearer of bombast and glam, it all feels oh so very tragic and more than a little contrived. Yet for maybe the first time, A Sleep & A Forgetting gets at the heart of an artist who, over years of project changes and name switches, has remained frustratingly opaque.

Thorburn has always been a hard guy to pin down, but on Islands’ 2008 triumph Arm’s Way, it was this creative shiftiness that made his genre-mashing experiments work so well. Here, Thorburn is as direct as he’s ever been: “Sounds forming words / from the well spring of concern / while my boat in that ocean turned / on the hull I watched the city burn,” Thorburn whispers on opener “In A Dream It Seemed Real,” and it’s this portrait of a shattered relationship that is possibly the most heartfelt song of Thorburn’s career. Looking back on Islands’ discography, it has always been his music that managed to connect with me on a fundamental level – it wasn’t until the music itself became unremarkable that I really took to Thorburn the lyricist. And that’s what the music on A Sleep & A Forgetting is, for the most part; shades of grey and greyer, a muted palette of piano, guitar, drums and bass that pales in comparison to the vibrant canvas fans of Islands have become accustomed to. It’s a bleak picture of melancholy that doesn’t want to end, and it makes the occasional gasps of air all the more rewarding: the flippant barroom piano on “Hallways” that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on that Mister Heavenly record is a particularly nice touch, as are the carnival keys on “Can’t Feel My Face.”

Those are the exceptions that prove the rule, however; A Sleep & A Forgetting is a depressing album through and through, with all the subtlety and vitriol of the recently dispossessed yet none of the verve of Islands. “I loved a girl and I will never love again,” Thorburn moans, and yes, this is upsetting and occasionally cringe-worthy in the same way reading an old Livejournal is, but for once there is no artifice to Thorburn, no Nick Diamonds clogging up the lanes with thirty string and horn parts and lyrics about blood diamonds. Something is lost there, certainly, that manic energy and excitement that Islands always seemed to have no problem bringing, but there’s something found here, too. “Oh Maria” is the only track where Thorburn works from a third-person viewpoint, telling the story of Buddy Holly’s widow and her dreams of him, and it’s this frail, inconsequential lullaby that seems to be the only place where Thorburn can find a way to see past today and look to tomorrow: “Now that you’re all alone, do you remember that song / just think of me when you’re falling asleep / when you wake up / you’ll be able to dream.” It’s a sweet sentiment, one that resolves itself in a satisfying swell and that wrenching final line, and in its brittleness and fragile sense of loss showcases a side of Islands many will have never expected. This is the kind of raw yet hopeful vulnerability that A Sleep & A Forgetting tends to miss in favor of more blunt emotions, and for the purposes of this record, perhaps that’s okay; everyone needs to get their demons out once in a while. Whether Thorburn can maintain this kind of shockingly honest songwriting, whether he can combine this fragmented, broken singer with the wild, carefree bandleader of the Unicorns and Arm’s Way, will determine whether Islands will remain a going concern.

Islands – “Oh Maria”

See larger image A Sleep & A Forgetting (Audio CD) List Price: $15.98 USD New From: $5.84 In Stock Used from: $1.24 In Stock Release date February 14, 2012.

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By Rudy Klapper, February 14, 2012 10:00 am

Boy-girl indie pop is nothing new; there’s something innately attractive in the idea of a couple sharing their relationship through music, and of course there’s few genres that can mix the possibilities with the cutesiness without making one want to vomit. Denver group Tennis check off all the boxes: vocalist Alaina Moore and guitarist Patrick Riley met while studying philosophy in college, debut album Cape Dory consisted mostly of stories from a 7-month sailing expedition the two took (must be nice), and it’s built them enough indie cred to get them a respectable producer (the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney) for sophomore album Young and Old, which drops today (on Valentine’s Day of course). For all their similarities to lovestruck groups like Mates of State, however, Tennis’ still manages to stand out, particularly on the surprisingly entertaining Young and Old. Moore takes most of the credit for that – her vocals have an old-timey feel to them that wouldn’t sound out of place on some old flower-power record.

Tennis – “It All Feels The Same”