A mistake on the part of nature

Reviews

School Of Seven Bells - Disconnect from desire (7/10)

My fingers are freezing slightly while I'm typing this, but I'm sure you'll forgive for keeping this entry non-verbose.

School Of Seven Bells hardly needs any more introduction, having been featured on this blog twice before with some excellent singles. I got a hold of their latest effort by this New York based poppy shoegaze-style band, and I can say I like most of it. It is a slight hit or miss record, the lesser tracks don't really annoy, they just drag on and nothing really happens. The good tracks however make up for it, and they'll all seem to draw inspiration from a different source. The echo in "Bye bye bye" has a slight Souvlaki Space Station -vibe, the elektronic sample in "Cammarilla" is Kraftwerk-esque, the vocals in "Babelonia" remind me of Cocteau Twins, and "I L U" draws heavily on the inescapable My Bloody Valentine influence. I was however disappointed by their performance at De Nachten (they played as a threesome, as twin sister and backing vocalist Claudia left/got kicked out of the band a couple weeks before); they started out real good, then the vocalist completely lost her voice, struggled through the rest of the set - that was subsequently cut short - and left the stage without anymore acknowledgement of the crowd. Plus, letting a drummer play along with a programmed drum track is always a little silly/unnecessary. Shame, because the setting was perfectly suited for them to make an impression. But I have a suspicion we'll hear from these guys in the future. Wasn't really non-verbose, now was it? I'll have to try harder.

The New Pornographers - Together (6.5/10)

I was a fan of Canadian ultrapoppy supergroup (a supergroup in Canada, apart from Neko Case maybe, none of the members is known in Europe except for the most diligent music fans) for three albums, as with many fans, they lost me a little on their slow and kind of boring "Challengers"-album, but luckily, fifth album "Together" again packs some punch. The band's weak spot is still the lyrics; both of the songwriters (A.C. Newman and Dan Bejar) both never seem to write personal stuff, but lose themselves in absurd writings (what about "Valkyrie at the roller disco") that never seem to go anywhere, which really decreases the recognisability and the singalong factor. Luckily, on about half of the tracks, the song structures and arrangements are that good that the lyrics don't even matter; this is true for the first five tracks and "Up in the dark". The rest of the material doesn't really cut it. Do hope to see these guys live again someday, especially now that Neko Case seem to tour along more often.

Random radio stuff

Laserkraft 3D is the maker of one of this moment's smash hits. "Nein, mann" is simply irrestible, a good advocate for the german language, and I especially like it because it's hard to believe that only in 2010 someone came up with the idea of using this theme for a song. The clicking beats kind of remind me of the classic "Answering machine" track by Green Velvet.

Another dance song I really like right now is Martin Solveig's new track. Sounds a little different (more dance, less groove) than his previous work, but still, good stuff. Dragonette seems to be a hip singer, she's also featured on a couple of other tracks right now.

Can't say the new Lykki Li track has completely won me over yet. Something in the drum rhythm reminds me of The Bangles.

Saying White Lies are into bombast is an understatement. They were the only band on the Pukkelpop festival that appeared in black and white on the stage-side screens, and their new video features a hospitalized boy singing the lyrics. Their previous album just nearly missed my skip-pile and I strongly fear the new album is going to be a miss. In this track, the chorus just does nothing and the vocals are way too overproduced for my taste.

Apart from the "Chasing pavement" single which I found decent at most, I never enjoyed any of Adele's work. Sure, voice is good, so what, if the songs are not. And I'm definitely not into her advocating/championing smoking every chance she gets. On this new single, she tries to do something bluesy/county, disregarding the fact that KT Tunstall did the same thing a lot better a couple years back.

This is my jam right now. Apparently, this is the first Asian American number one track in the US ever. Apart from the jumpy beats, the chorus really is what makes this track. It's actually a sample from the "Booty Bounce" track by Dev, who also features in the video. I've checked out some snippets of some other tracks by this band, looks like they're trying to be the Asian Black Eyed Peas (Will.I.Am, a "Time of my life"-cover? really?) or something.

The new Robyn track is pretty alright too. The melody/tempo in the verse really reminds me of another song, but I can't quite put the finger on it (yet).

Finishing off with some tracks by some compatriots, Sherman is the singer-songwriter project of Steven Bossuyt. He now resides in London and seems to be doing well, seeing that he got invited to do a session at the BBC. His new single "On your side" is pretty good, I prefer the more dynamic radio version to this acoustic performance however. A really well structured track, although I hope not all his writing is so dependent on lyrical clichés.

The new Goose album gets miscellaneous reviews. Not really into the new "Can't stop me now" -single, however, the title track of their new album is pretty cool. You could validly state this is their "Housewife".

Random nineties video

And closing off with another nineties video, Scott Weiland is such a mess right now, you could overlook the fact that Stone Temple Pilots used to be pretty cool. This is one of their first singles ever, the lyrics are somewhat controversial, it seems.

I am ready to owe you anything

Reviews

Male Bonding - Nothing hurts (7.5/10)

Male Bonding is a band based in London, they're on the quality-driven Sub Pop label, which makes a lot of sense, because the grunge sound of some bands that were on the label in the nineties is definitely present here, although it's mixed here with some surf and African influences, which makes for an enjoyable mix. Short songs, varied album, this will not be a boring listen, I can promise you that.

"Weird Feelings" is a signature song, with a propelling bassline. The word that comes to mind when I want to try to describe this video, would be 'smegma'.

"Year's not long" is the opening track of the album. I found a pretty cool video of kids skating around in LA/Hollywood on old school skateboards, that seems to fit the music well. This is the demo version of the song however, the album version does have a better sound and production.

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Abe Vigoda - Crush (7/10)

I checked out Abe Vigoda because Best Coast namedropped them. Their African guitar riffs remind me a little of Vampire Weekend, although Abe Vigoda focuses more on danceable rhythms. I witnessed myself that it's pretty hard to stand still during their live shows. Singer's voice gets some Robert Smith comparisons.

"Sequins" is the opening track of their latest album, it has a nice synth break in the chorus.

"Hyacinth girls" is actually an older track of their album "Skeleton", which was more guitar and less synthesizer-oriented.

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Wavves - King of the beach (8/10)

Wavves is Nathan Williams' band, and the album sounds as shizophrenic as the man himself, from what I've heard. Rock, grunge, surf, girl groups, everything gets thrown into the blender, but every track seems to work in it's own respect.

"Post acid" is one of the rock tracks on the album, slightly elated. The video features an alien mask and some skateboarding.

"When will you come" and "Baseball cards" are 2 examples of the melodic, less rock-oriented tracks (like 'em both so much, couldn't pick just one).

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Delphic - Acolyte (6.5/10)

Delphic are an UK band from the Manchester area, that get some New Order comparisons because they too fabricate danceable synthpop that is more suited to listen to than to actually dance to. A lot of the tracks are a bit long and mid-tempo, so the album gets a little monotone, but there are no real misses. "Counterpoint" with the nice synth loop is probably my favourite album track.

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Bombay Bicycle Club - I had the blues but I shook them loose (8/10)

I featured a Bombay Bicycle Track on a previous blog post a couple months back. Their last album "Flaws" focuses on their acoustic side, while this 2009 album is an electronic indierock album. And a very good one, I might add. The singer - as stated before - looks a little like Chris Martin, but with an outrageously silly haircut, be sure to check out the videos. And this might be just me, but something in his voice and phrasing reminds me of Conor Oberst at times. On this album, this London outfit strikes a good balance between harder and softer tracks, you will hardly find a weaker track on this disc, I picked the three singles that have an official video, but I could've just as easily picked "Lamplight" or "Dust on the ground". Recommended.

Of the three tracks, "Always like this" is the atypical one, with it's groovy bassline, "Magnet" has a slight Snow Patrol-feel with those background vocals in the chorus, and "Evening Morning" has a nice buildup in the intro.

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Random stuff

Mucky Pup

Random nineties band of the week/month, I had owned a tape of their "Act of faith" album, but (just like Helmet), I never had a friend or someone I knew that was on the same page with me as far as this New Jersey band went. They put out a couple of albums, had tons of line-up changes, and they had some ties to the hardcore scene (back in the day, I always felt like they sounded like a softer and, well, more fun version of the hardcore bands I knew back then), and some members of this band actually went on to play in Dog Eat Dog.

Lyrically, their first and last albums apparently dealt with some serious issues ("Short Attention Span" made the Headbanger's ball playlist), but the "Act of faith"-album I had on tape, is musically and lyrically not too far away from what The Bloodhound Gang was doing in their early days. I mean, the first track is called "Freakin' at the peepshow", the second one is "Mr. Hand" (featured below, the sound quality is pretty horrible, but if there ever was an anthem written for all the lonely, frustrated dudes out there, this was probably it), I forgot what the third track "Understand" was about, but the fourth track was called "Please don't burn the Johnson", with the lyrics "My johnson's on fire/I smell smoke/understand that this is no joke", I'm guessing you kind of got the point I'm trying to make here by now.

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School Of Seven Bells

I got a hold of the last album by this shoegaze outfit (some tracks were already featured a couple of blog posts back); needs a couple more spins before I can write a review of it, but cannot resist sharing this track with you, the fourth song on their "Disconnect from desire" album. Not original in any respect, but a pretty perfect mix of Amusement Parks On Fire, M83 and My Bloody Valentine if you ask me. If you're planning on making a mixtape for a significant other anytime soon, you have to check this pronto. I also featured a live version, because uh..well, the singer's really hot.

You can never quarantine the past

The Skip-pile

When I started with the whole review thing, my goal was to only review things I liked, and just ignore the bad stuff. I broke my own rule when I felt I had to warn everyone about the insanely bad Weezer record, so I'm giving birth to the Skip Pile, which is a pile of albums I'd advise you to skip and/or give a wide berth.


Adding to this pile today:

Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb sun

One thing about listening to music while playing World of Warcraft is that it usually takes you half an hour to realize you've been listening to the same album for three times in a row already. So basically, you will notice when a really good song comes along, mediocre songs just pass by unnoticed. In other words, it has got to be a really sucky album when you actually pick up on how bad it is sucking, and you decide to alt-tab out of the game just to switch cd's. This is one of those albums. I think these guys played the Werchter festival last summer, and it was on that basis that I decided to check it out, but this was horribly bad and boring.

Laura Marling - I speak because I can

Part of the London-based folk-scene and the partner of the singer in Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling is an acoustic singer-songwriter. I myself, have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of the genre (I only have a limited tolerance towards the Duyster program, after which I will stop listening and blast some Slayer or Metallica instead), and I'll admit "Rambling man" (the third UK single from the album) is actually quite good (it incidentally is musically very similar to Mumford and uses the same songwriting techniques), but all the rest is highly skippable.

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Reviews

Best Coast - Crazy for you (8/10)

Best Coast is a fairly recent band from California. They recruited the drummer from Vivian Girls, there's a long-haired spastic Asian dude on guitar and then there's Bethany Cosentino. Lover of cats (she has her ginger cat's name Snacks tattooed on her arm), weed, Snookie (from Jersey Shore fame), hater of Katy Perry. This is their debut album, although they've released a lot of singles and EP's in their short existence. I'm a big fan, they remind of The Raveonettes in their 'Chain gang of love'-period, when they also sounded light, sunny, not too fuzzy and had short tracks. At 12 tracks, this album clocks in under half an hour, which is a good thing, because the songs always are done way before they would start to bore. Not the best lyrical record you'll ever hear, but the emotions come across and you can feel the honesty ("You say that we're just friends/but I want this 'till the end"). There's some influences from sixties girl groups, and expect a lot of woo-hoo background vocals. The more up-tempo tracks are like always my personal favourite (see below), but the slower tracks usually have some kind of twist that keeps them interesting. Recommended background music for daydreaming about love or the summer.

Pavement - Quarantine the past (8.5/10)

A year and a half ago, I listened to the Wowee Zowee album by the same band. It was the first full album I ever checked out by this cultband (categorised as lo-fi alternative indie rock) from the nineties. I liked it but at the same time couldn't really get into it, because the album is abrasive at times, there's a lot of different styles, and Pavement were never the band to make it easy on their listeners. This best-of compilation came out to celebrate their reunion shows last year, and it's a lot more coherent that the respective albums the tracks come from. People will always complain that some particular songs are lacking, but this is a good overview, ranging from forgotten singles ("Gold soundz") to excellent album tracks (the slightly post-rockish "Grounded"), with a lot of variation. Makes me wonder if contemporary teenagers would still dig this, or if it's really a "you had to be there in the nineties"-kind of thing. It is only now that I got the lyrical brilliance of the "You're my fact-checking cous"-line in "Stereo" too.

Hairglow - S/T (8/10)

Hooverphonic was one of the most succesful Belgian bands in the late nineties and noughties, if you look from an international perspective. After the departure of their singer Geike (as far as I know, they're still looking for a new one), main man Alex Callier emerged with this poppy, eighties synthpop project, with Alex himself on vocals. I'm risking all my credibility as a music reviewer by rating this with an 8, because this album was gruesomely ignored by the whole media and overlooked by the audience. I picked it up for 2 euros expecting little more than a couple of good laughs, but it has promoted itself to endless repeat-status. Part of the appeal is the confusion whether this album is a tribute to or a pastiche of the genre. The production is excellent and really evokes the eighties sound, whereas the lyrics are as silly as their eighties counterparts. A couple of examples "Your solitude doesn't like intruders/Asking for your name", "They're something inside me/it wants to get out/it wants to love you" and "You are not a robot dear/You are made of premium flesh and blood". Top tracks are "Is it love?", "I do love you" (both of which are unfortunately not on youtube), and "A12", which features a singer that - oddly enough - sounds exactly like Geike.

Helmet - Monochrome (6.5/10)

Helmet is an alternative metal/rock band from the nineties with a distinctive sound, mixing groovy guitars with a lot of their typical start-stop riffs. Unlike others, I still liked their "Aftertaste" album, but like most fans, I prefer the earlier "Meantime" and "Betty" albums. They split up for a while after "Aftertaste", had their fair share of line-up changes, and returned somewhere in the mid-2000's with the "Size Matters", which I haven't heard. "Monochrome" is the successor to that album. Page Hamilton succeeds in reviving the old Helmet sound in a couple of tracks (well, the riff "Brand New" is a straight copy from the one in "Turned out" on the "Meantime"-album), so if you're a Helmet fan and you have the chance to pick this up for 2 euro's like I did, do not hesitate. Great intro line too, "Hanging out with all these dicks/still collecting tokens", Hamilton sneers on "Swallowing everything".

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Dubstep

This genre has existed since the beginning of the millennium, but it has swiftly outgrown the underground since the beginning of the year (and probably before) and is even hitting the charts now. For a genre derived from grime and drum and bass, it first struck me as kind of slow, but then I realized that it's the jumpiness of the melody that creates the danceability. Let's see of this genre is a keeper, or if it will gracelessly will fade from popularity as fast as the late tectonic genre. The 2 biggest hits in this scene right now are:

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Random tracks

While we're still on the subject of danceable stuff, I've been liking this radio track with the jungle-like sounds for the past couple of weeks.

Manic Street Preachers have got a new album out, and first single is - slightly dramatically - titled "It's not war, just the end of love". I'll let you decide if the guitar in the verse sounds more like "A design for life" or "Tonight, tonight".

The Wombats were one of the more fun bands from the last couple of years, they too are back with a new album, the new single however lacks a little energy, even though it has lines like "Astrophysics, you'll never be my closest friend" and "I wear a suitcase under each of my eyes".

Since the second album by MGMT was deemed terribly boring by pretty much everyone, the niche for psychedelic retro music in the rock spectrum was now again vacant. The new darlings of the music press is Australian band Tame Impala, and I'll admit this track sounds like it should and is catchy.

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Title Fight

When 2 of our friends are wearing merch from the same band on the same day, you know you finally have to check out that other band you've been sleeping on. Title Fight is a poppunk/melodic hardcore band from Kingston, Pennsylvania, and combine the vocal intensity of the early The Get Up Kids with the fast poppunk of early Saves The Day and the whole early 2000's Drive-Thru records scene, or at least that's what I'm hearing. I checked out 2 tracks (both from the "Last thing you forget"-album) that were both excellent, checking out their albums is now a lot higher on my priority list.