Lichens – The Psychic Nature of Being

Situation one: you’re alone, walking down an empty street. For some reason, you’ve been drenched in water and your clothes are a bit disheveled. You look as though you’ve just gotten out of a fight and you’re out of breath. The moon is hovering overhead overbearingly, as it shines its light upon you and casts the most ominous of shadows. As you stumble along, Lichens’ The Psychic Nature of Being begins to play.

Situation two: you’re in a deserted city, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The town is up in flames behind you and you’re walking away from it all in slow motion. Heat is resonating from the sand-covered ground. You have straps of bullets across both of your shoulders, you’ve been shot in the thigh and bicep, and you’re holding a revolver in your right hand and a sawed off shotgun in your left. As the wind blows through your hair, Lichens’ The Psychic Nature of Being begins to play.

These are the two most unfortunate, but fitting times Robert Lowe’s ambient drones could start. In situation one, you realize that there’s a killer on the loose that you just nearly escaped by swimming across a vast bay. In situation two, you just survived a gunfight that claimed the life of your wife and daughter and left you thirsty for vengeance. While it all seems overly dramatic and cliché, Lichens is the perfect soundtrack for most Hollywood thrillers.

When Robert Lowe isn’t collaborating with the likes of TV On the Radio and Castanets, he uses Lichens as his personal escape and experiment. His latest release, The Psychic Nature of Being, is a mass of bass drones, twangy guitars, and eerie vocal crescendos. And, as an improvised, one-shot deal, the album shows the genius rolling around in Lowe’s head.

“Kirilian Auras” is a lumbering, 11-minute colossus of sound. Robert Lowe uses vocal loops throughout the entire track to add a nearly divine sound. The track feels as though you’ve walked into a Buddhist monastery during the middle of prayer. After nearly four minutes, a hand-plucked acoustic guitar blazes through the chants in Desperado-esque fashion. The western feel of the guitar spurts adds a new dimension to the song.

“Shore Line Scoring” and “You are Excrement if You Can Turn Yourself into Gold” follow suit. They both begin with creepy vocal samples before the guitars and bass take hold of the forefront.

While Lichens offers a genuinely unique approach to ambient music, Lowe’s sound quickly becomes monotonous and played out. All three tracks on The Psychic Nature of Being seem to blend together and not in that Lowe-is-really-good-at-sequencing kind of way. With each track possessing the same demeanor and structure, the entire album seems like one big track that goes nowhere in the end.

Lichens’ The Psychic Nature of Being truly is quite an accomplishment. As an improvised one-attempt piece, it shows true potential and a great understanding for ambient as a whole. Unfortunately, it hits the same pitfalls that nearly all improvised music does: a tendency towards the monotonous and a lack of structure and planning. In the long run, through, as long as you don’t find yourself in a situation that would make Quentin Tarantino make a movie about you, Lichens is great ambient music.

Andrew Thompson – Egad!

I don’t care what you think, but any song about evil robots with stun guns automatically deserves some sort of public recognition … especially when that song has a bouncy, new-wave beat and hilariously awesome lyrics. Honestly, when was the last time you heard a song that features a goofy android utter, “Come on outside, I brought you a lollipop. Oh what, this? It only looks like a laser gun that kills people. It’s harmless.” And then proceeds to attack the singer. And that just “We’re in Business”, one of 12 charmingly inane, yet delightfully silly tracks (and even slightly sullen) on Andrew Thompson’s debut album.

Bursting with squiggly synths, old-school beats, a bit of brass, hell even a kazoo, Egad! is very much an album in which the fanciful and fearful coexist. In addition to killer robots, Thompson’s world is also inhabited by other fantastical characters. Long John Silver, barnyard roosters, and a clever singer/songwriter help weave colorful tales that are both whimsical and a tad disturbing. Often playful, even anarchic at times, many of these songs sound like self-deprecating episodes of the Muppets show. The laid-back reggae sounds of “Cockadoodledoo” are breezy yet melancholic. Among the farm-filled revelry are lines like “The truth is scarce.” and “Things aren’t done like they used to.” When evil robots aren’t after him, his own insecurities are.

Elsewhere, things take a more straightforwardly sullen turn. On “Don’t Get Down,” Thompson croons “Trying not to feel sad,” his voice sounding like some sort of missing link between Stevie Wonder and Colin “I come from a land down under ” Hay. On the synth-waltz that is “Idiot” he proclaims, “I don’t know what I’m doing / I suppose it’s better that way / I’m an ass with a capital letter A” with a blend of sarcasm and sincerity that it’s tough to tell where his intentions lay. The only track that doesn’t really fit in with Thompson’s mix of silly and sullen is “Dickhole Disco.” It is too unnecessarily crude and doesn’t cohere with the rest of Egad!’s good-heartedness.

While the beats become a tad redundant and the Casio keyboards occasionally veer into cheese whiz territory, it’s not unexpected considering the bizzaro subject matter and the fact that the entire album was recorded in Thompson’s basement. But overall it’s an amusing album, and if he stays down there long enough, who knows what other fears, doubts, and monsters will emerge next.

Gwar – Live From Mt. Fuji

The legions of Japanese Gwar fans could no longer be denied. Early in 2007, they began gathering on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, demanding that the scumdogs of the universe come and rock the mountain. As the small gathering became a mob of deformed, blood-thirsty maniacs, the Japanese Defence Force tried to contain them using water cannons, tear gas, and finally they brought in the giant robots, but still to no avail. The Gwar fans would have their show or die trying. The scene caused quite a stir, and eventually word got out to Gwar’s lead singer, Oderus Urungus, who quickly assembled the band and made the voyage from their chilly home in Antarctica. The band then proceeded to bring the metal like Japan has never heard before. The only way the show was stopped was by a nuclear warhead rumored to have been sent from North Korea. Luckily, the whole thing was caught on tape, and it is the only record of the event, other than the huge hole left from the bomb.

Obviously, this didn’t really happen, but it would be freakin’ sweet, wouldn’t it? Gwar is just one of those bands that won’t go away, not that anyone wants it to. The band’s incredible staying power can be traced to one thing: the non-stop touring with a one-of-a-kind live show. With Live From Mt. Fuji, we have the first ever audio documentation of the live madness.

Contained on this disc are some of the all-time Gwar classics, spanning their entire career. Among the standouts are crowd favorite “Sick of You” with its infectious chorus, “Womb With a View” and its humorously gory lyrics, and the anthemic “Bring Back the Bomb.”

Gwar isn’t the heavist band in town anymore, and the group isn’t aren’t wowing crowds based on these guys’ technical prowess. No, Gwar is just a hardworking band that does everything it can to entertain, and that is rare these days. Get Live From Mt. Fuji if you want a small sample of what Gwar has to offer.

Various Artists – Song of the Silent Land

Constellation Records has put together a compilation of remixes and unreleased tracks from all members of its deep roster. The resulting album, Song of the Silent Land, is wildly diverse. The artists dive deep into their particular styles, from the scratchy acoustic dirges of Sackville and Sofa, to the propulsive beats of Hangedup, to assorted mash-ups and improvised jams. It will make your head spin, leaving you stunned and a little disoriented. This is not a listening experience for the timid or the hungover.

I read somewhere that the folks at Constellation detest the term, but the bands are usually dubbed “post-rock” by the cognoscenti. The label formed in Montreal back in 1997 and has made it its mission to seek out and promote talent from the region. What unites the bands’ music and mission (silly music-crit terms aside) is a fierce spirit of independence, manifested in an aversion to big chain record stores and jewel box packaging. The music they make is a salad bar of punk, progressive rock, avant garde, and occasional nods in the direction of recent classical music. It’s inventive and almost always abrasive, best exemplified in Hangedup’s “(Re)view from the Ground,” all metallic percussion and fierce, fuzzed-out guitars (at least I think they’re guitars). Exhaust tries something similar (on “Wool Fever Dub”), but the results are more – sorry – exhausting, centered around guitar noise that has all the charm and musicality of a dentists’s drill.

Elsewhere the tunes are quieter. Elizabeth Anka Vajagic does a spot-on Patti Smith impersonation on her contribution “The Sky Lay Still,” singing in a fragile, reedy voice over softly scratching guitar. To my ears, the strangest contribution comes from Black Ox Orkestar, which offers depressing indie klezmer music. In Yiddish. While “Ver Tanzt?” is not something you’re likely to hear drifting from the speakers at your local Starbucks, to be sure, I found that after the second listen it had not only become strangely compelling (I clicked back for a third spin), but my favorite song on the album. I only wish I knew what the hell they were singing about (“Ver tanzt?” means “Who’s dancing?” That’s as far as I could get). The song is slow but not plodding, and it seems to contain an ocean of restrained, gritted-teeth anger that’s positively electric. Then again, it could be about running out to meet the Good Humor man for all I know, so I shouldn’t speculate.

Constellation is a label on a mission, but for all the noise and the anti-capitalist propaganda (check our the label’s manifesto), first and foremost is the music. Godspeed You! Black Emperor ends the album with the strangely lush, drifting “Outro” from a concert recording from France in 2003. It’s a peculiar coda, but a fitting one, a breath of a lullaby after a stormy night.

Carrie Yury – Mutter EP

Back in June, the California-based photographer and Dolce Volante alum Carrie Yury displayed 700 free copies of her latest solo outing, the Mutter EP, in light-box towers at LA Design Center, and the exhibition itself seems to serve as an interesting bit of context to the incredibly engaging six-song disc. The installation’s five CD towers are all clean, well-lighted lines, the mechanical tones of blacks and whites complemented by the blank steel-gray slate of the shrink-wrapped CD cover, a possible homage to the Table of the Elements label. In photographs posted on Yury’s website, this cold and almost sterile precision is amplified by an absence of viewers and participants. Except for a lone woman in black coat and jeans passing through one frame, the displayed discs exist as pieces of art without audience, documents forged without the smudged and imperfect wonder of human fingerprints. The disc couldn’t be more the opposite.

Recorded in Shelbyville, Kentucky in May, the disc is tender and fragile in the most human of ways — a 23-minute collection of folk-pop gems that are as a beautiful as they are beautifully understated. Far from the cold and well-plotted precision of the LA Design Center installation, the disc is warm and disarming and clearly benefits from the comforting charms of contributors Will and Paul Oldham, Colin Gagon, and Richard Schuler. While Schuler’s able drum work may be best known from King Kong and the early days of Louisville punk heroes Squirrel Bait, it’s the musical context brought to the table by Gagon and the Oldhams that may be most identifiable by listeners, a colloquial kind of folk-pop that may have defined itself best on post-Palace outings like Joya or Ease Down The Road.

But Yury is clearly the shimmering star of Mutter. In addition to penning each of the disc’s songs, it’s her breathy voice that serves as the magnet at the record’s high and low pole points. Much like Cynthia Dall or Sarabeth Tucek to Smog’s Bill Callahan, Yury’s voice has a sensual, sometimes-smoky and seductive quality that simply invites listeners to pay attention, whether it’s on the incredible album-opening pseudo-ballad “Twofer,” the playful All Most Heaven pop-rock of “Metastatic,” the folky melancholy of “Stain,” or the more percussive rumble of “Jar.” That’s not to say she’s not surrounded by sterling performances from her backing band. Schuler’s drumming is muted but inventive and perfectly suited to tracks like “Twofer,” whose chorus packs an emotional punch that it wouldn’t sans percussion. Gagon, who produced the disc, offers piano and keys that add a bluesiness to songs like “Warden,” backed by Paul Oldham’s almost restrained, carefully placed bass notes. Will Oldham, who sings and handles the guitar duties on Mutter, does some of his best supporting work of recent years on the disc, lending his trademark emotive voice to the proceedings while still refraining from taking the spotlight.

Lyrically, Yury also strays from the tones of her LA Design Center exhibition, crafting songs that seem to reflect on the comforts of home but, more importantly, seem to play with the conventions of love songs by translating their tropes into literal-minded scenarios. In “Twofer,” a heart breaks — somewhat literally — as Yury and Oldham sing in the achingly sweet chorus, “You can’t break a heart / Into two / Halves / And expect it to go on / Like before.” The balance of the song, all piano, bass, and thumping drums, deals with the blatant duality of romantic longing and loss, leaning on images of two hearts combining into one, merged intersections and romantic births.

On “Jar,” which begins with a driving “Sweet Home Alabama” bass-and-drums descent, Yury continues the literal but emotive readings, singing about heartache, “Heart in a jar / Funny, bloody thing / Somebody is missing you tonight / How could they have lost you? / It’s damn near impossible / To survive / In a jar.” It’s a song that points out the strange and almost sado-masochistic imagery of the concept of “heartbreak,” yes, but it still manages to tap into all the soreness and familiar sting of the subject. It’s that human element that distances Yury’s downright incredible work on Mutter from the engaging but clean-cut designs of her LA Design Center show and also makes the disc one of the sleeper successes of the year. Take note now: find this record.

The Real Tuesday Weld – The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid

The Real Tuesday Weld is London-based singer/songwriter Stephen Coates. As the Real Tuesday Weld, Coates crafts lounge pop that blends the bubbly electronics of Stereolab with the pop classicism of Burt Bacharach and Nick Lowe. Coates tops off the mix with sprinkles of bossa nova and cabaret and a voice – really a hushed, almost menacing drawl – that is straight out of the Tom Waits playbook. If the Real Tuesday Weld is Coates’ primary musical vessel, the Clerkenwell Kid is his alter-ego. According to Coates, the Clerkenwell Kid is a mythological figure he met while tripping in Clerkenwell. The Clerkenwell Kid has appeared on all of the Real Tuesday Weld’s previous releases and takes credit for the title of the Real Tuesday Weld’s latest effort, The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid.

The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid is a concept album. The concept, ostensibly, is that the record is performed by Coates’ alter-ego, the Clerkenwell Kid. On the surface, the presence of the Clerkenwell Kid seems to do more to inspire curiosity in listeners than to affect the success or failure of the record. Yet as is often the case, the use of an alias here is not entirely trivial in that the moniker represents an underlying theme central to the musical and lyrical content of the record. It didn’t matter whether listeners thought of the Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society as being performed by the Village Green Preservation Society or simply the Kinks. The concept of the society merely stood to reinforce the album’s central theme – a push for nostalgia and a return to the ways of old. Likewise, the Clerkenwell Kid is not important here in and of himself but as a symbol of the album’s cinematic, story-like feel.

If it is not readily apparent from the music that this is intended as a concept album, the artwork tells an entirely different story. The album’s slip case boasts black and white action photos of a man resembling Clint Eastwood (wearing gruff facial expressions, a suit, and undone tie) from what appears to be both a love story and mystery that may involve murder. There is even a caption appearing next to this man (presumably the famed Clerkenwell Kid) that reads, “I’ve gotta change the way that I’m living – give up the fags, fast food and the women…” These old-time images are supported by the inclusion of some parallel musical reference points including cabaret, pop classicism, and the occasional dose of synthesized tape-hiss. There are also a number of instrumental mood pieces that give the record a cinematic aura.

The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid pushes and pulls between the aesthetics of the black-and-white and modern eras. The ghastly nature of the album’s photographs is supported by haunted throwback sounds and recordings mixed to sound vintage. On the other hand, the album jacket declares, “This [record] is the story of a love affair, from before its beginning until after its end.” This notion is supported by the smooth, buoyant feel of the majority of the songs (not to mention the love-infused lyrics). The result is a record that thrives on the juxtaposition of distinctly modern electronica (e.g., “L’amour et la Mort” and “Turn on the Sun Again” which border on house music) and intentionally old-fashioned pieces like the galloping “At the House of Clerkenwell Kid” (which sounds like a black and white cartoon score gone murderous).

As it is essentially the soundtrack to an amorphous storyline, The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid is well-trod ground for The Real Tuesday Weld. Coates already demonstrated his flair for the dramatic with I, Lucifer, The Real Tuesday Weld’s debut recording for Six Degrees records. I, Lucifer was intended as the soundtrack to the Glen Duncan novel of the same title. While Coates undoubtedly works hard to put together albums that follow a storyline, his ability to do so is (ironically) of little importance to his ability to create a compelling full-length album. This is primarily because the genre in which he composes – lounge pop – does not demand meticulous attention from its listeners but rather resigns itself to pleasant background music. Thus, on The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid, the lyrics only rarely rise to the forefront. Even then, the lyrics that leave the clearest impression are the playfully silly ones. With lyrics like “I could come up with some invention or theory / Be the star of some hit TV series…In the end I’m sure all you’ll remember / Is who you loved and who’ll never forget ya,” it’s no surprise that Coates has found an advocate and kindred sprit in the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt.

So while the cinematic storyline depicted in the artwork and Coates’ alter-ego the Clerkenwell Kid are food for discourses on concept albums, neither leaves a distinct imprint when one actually listens to the album. When listening to the album, what really matters is that the record is full of slickly produced, sophisticated Euro-pop. In short, The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid is always pleasant, but seldom more than that. There are a few gentle gems – particularly the Ed Harcourt sound-alikes “On Lavender Hill” and “Asteroids” (the latter even features a Chet Baker-esque trumpet solo at the end). As a whole, however, The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid is merely good (not great) for predictable reasons. Like most impeccably produced lounge-pop records, it’s too long, a bit too hypnotic, and a bit too dull around the edges.

History Invades – The Structure of a Precise Fashion

Behind the clever song titles and flashy artwork of History Invades’ debut label release lies a turbulent blend of guitar-based emo-core, manipulated samples, and hard rhythms. On the rare occasions when the band tones it down a bit, the angular guitar cadences and syncopated beats approximate those of early Modest Mouse. But where head Mouse Isaac Brock’s twisted lyrics and edgy vocals intensify their music, the vocals on The Structure of a Precise Fashion, courtesy of Paul Albert Harper, are anything but insouciant and more often than not are irritating outcries.

History Invades consists of the aforementioned Harper, who not only lends his grating howl but also guitar, samples, and manipulations. His partner in crime is another of the three-name people in Daniel Scott Mayberry, entrusted with drums, percussion, electronics, and pads. They show off their imaginations with the name of the album and astute song titles like “Call Me Mint Jelly ‘Cause I’m on the Lamb” and “We Ran Out of Bridges So We Burned Down Our Houses,” but musically they lack the same creativity.

Even with the production help of Starflyer 59’s Jason Martin, the songs are deficient in originality and fail to get a groove on. Most of the tunes are punk-leaning indie-guitar fare with a pastiche of effects, electronic sound manipulations, and Harper’s visceral vocals. Sometimes Harper actually tries his hand at singing, which is a good thing, but like a dog woken from sleep, his demeanor quickly changes and he resorts to screaming and yelling. The one standout track is “Here Comes the Smart Patrol,” which is not quite the quirky electronics of Devo but is an IDM instrumental piece (yeah!) similar in style to Boards of Canada, a welcome break from the guitar and effect histrionics.

History Invades strives hard not to be ordinary with the use of many guitar treatments and bizarre samples, but the complex mix comes out disjointed and changes directions so quickly there’s nothing to grab on to. And then there’s the screaming. The rants are too distracting and don’t allow the listener to focus on the music. If they really want us to listen to what they have to say, stop yelling and sing!

Halfway – Farewell to the Fainthearted

Often times, the most authentic accounts of this great and tattered land in which we live come from an outsider perspective. The Rolling Stones have spent over 40 years and counting mining the depths of American roots music to brilliant results. Franz Kafka humorously and evocatively chronicled the myth and magic of a land whose soil he had never stepped foot on in his first novel Amerika. And Italian director Sergio Leone transformed the time-honored Western film genre by depicting a much more honest and violent landscape than the one romanticized in John Wayne films.

By way of 12 superb songs (plus a hidden cover of Little Feat’s “Willin’”), Australia’s Halfway triumphantly blends the best parts of classic American rock and country music into a near-perfect record as equally inspired by the highlights and lowlights of this great land as the Rolling Stones, Franz Kafka, and Sergio Leone were.

On this debut release Farewell to the Fainthearted, Halfway unleashes a flurry of steel guitars, dobros, mandolins, and banjos that intertwine beautifully with the tag-team vocals of Chris Dale (who also provides some excellent atmospheric harmonica throughout the record) and John Busby. Comparisons to seminal early 90s country-rockers Uncle Tupelo are certainly accurate, but Halfway actually has more in common with the lazy, twangy sounds of mid 80s cowpunkers the Meat Puppets. After all (as mentioned in the liner notes), the hot, arid lands of Halfway’s hometown of Brisbane are quite similar to the barren desert of the Meat Puppets’ home state of Arizona. With both bands, the lonesome whistling winds of their surroundings can be heard in each and every musical note, lyrical phrase, and plaintive vocal.

Farewell to the Fainthearted marvelously opens with two tense, rollicking, country-rock raves-ups (“Patience Back” and “Get Gone”) filled with the same kind of world-weary sentiment that can be traced back to both Hank Williams and late-60s/early-70s Stones. “Compromise for a Country Girl,” “Six Hours from Brisbane,” and “Timetables” are three largely acoustic ballads with nice traces of desert ambience and aesthetic similarities to country-rock godfathers Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Gram Parsons. “Drunk Again” and “Sure Uncertain” are hard-drinking anthems that contain as many hints of classic Aussie guitar crunch (a la AC/DC, Radio Birdman) as hardcore honky-tonk.

Meanwhile, psychedelic-country tracks “Something for Yourself” and “Call Anytime” would sound as appropriate in Topanga Canyon as the Australian desert. Halfway’s impressive debut winds down with a whimsical ballad (“C.R. Skyline”) that contains references to driving, small-town misery, and listening to Big Star.

Farewell to the Fainthearted is a completely heartfelt statement by a collection of outsiders from one of the most remote locations on the planet – Brisbane, Australia. Leave it to them to produce one of the finest country-inspired rock albums in the last 10 or 15 years.

Royksopp – The Understanding

There are some albums that one becomes grateful for, regardless of true feelings about them. Consider the lesser of two evils. Perhaps you travel to the next Iron & Wine show only to be struck in the back of the head by an original pressing of Pink Moon, whose edges had been filed to razor sharpness. The bitterness and envy of some horribly tortured fan has lead to your untimely demise. This is what you vainly attempt to explain to St. Cobain, who now has to play Charon for MTV’s hell. He takes your hand, hums a few bars from the album that never got released, and ferries you to your after-life destination. Unfortunately, thanks to that crazy hot Good Life fan in the vintage Cure T-shirt (next time ask for ID before buying a beer for someone, eh?), you’re sentenced to working at an FYE in Macon, Georgia.

NOTE: For the kids that either don’t frequent large suburban malls, or whose malls contain no FYE, consider them to be corporate chains that pimp over-priced top twenty artists to the masses. So, when given the choice of either hearing the new Royksopp as opposed to The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show: The Enema Strikes Back, the choice should be obvious. Of course, this entirely pretentious and rather awkward metaphor implies that The Understanding would be a great album if you were spending an eternity in some suburban hell. In reality, this album was purchased by “the girly-girl” shortly after it came out (in July). I know this because I bought it for her. This action was taken for two reasons: one, after a good four months of both the latest Erasure album and the wholly dancey New Order record, Royksopp is a cool cube of frozen vodka when lost in a desert just south of the sun (again with the overwrought shite metaphors); and two, I really liked A.M. Melody, even if it sounded like techno music created for Volkswagen commercials.

“Poor Leno” was addictive, sure. However, listening to A.M. Melody, one might have worried that the next album would try and be more ambitious than the space-age dream-pop these two Norwegians came out swinging with on their debut. The Understanding might have dropped E and spiraled into blippity-bloop moronics, or they might have gotten really bored and decided to play mediocre jazz disguised as trip-hop. Thankfully, this album does neither.

The aptly named “Triumphant” starts things off with gorgeous piano before some beats stolen from the Hartnoll brothers slip in. The mixture of the organic and electronic here is nice, and it sets the stage of things to come. Slowly, the track builds into soaring shimmery beauty complete with obligatory crescendos and slightly mournful melody. It’s a grand entrance, and it fits nicely with the following “Only This Moment.” This is dead-on dream-pop. Featuring a light bouncey melody that will make your iPod giggle like a school girl, the vocals find male and female intertwining. Sure the lyrics are utterly forgettable, but isn’t that what all great pop is all about? “Every time I see you falling / I get down on my knees and pray” would be irredeemable had it not been written by masters of 80s dance. Likewise, “stay or forever go / play or you’ll never know / you spirit’s divided / you will decide if I’m all you’ve been waiting for” is forgivable simply because the melody and underlying rhythm is so damn addictive.

“49 Percent” loses a bit of ground. Coupled back to back with “Only this Moment,” it’s like turning off the mp3-player because you’ve walked into the Gap (and I swear I heard this thing in Banana Republic the other day). It’s a giddy track that sounds like Erasure if Andy Bell was 20 years younger and listened to a lot of 70s soul. Turn this up and be fiercely proud that your hair smells incredibly nice. “Sombre Detune” returns to the territory explored on A.M. Melody. This is late-night groove fare after hours at a coffee-shop. “Follow my Ruin” is Air on their day off, DJing for the local disco down the street, while “Beautiful Day Without You” is the salon across the street, as all the stylish hairdressers apply color at the same time.

The latter half of the album houses the truly great moments found on The Understanding. “What Else is There?” is quite possibly the best thing that Brundtland and Burge have composed to date. Featuring vocals from Karin Dreijer (The Knife), this is the song Bjork should have recorded years ago. It’s easily the best vocal track on the record. Quite possibly, it surpasses the greatness of “Poor Leno” in re-playability (and I had to hear this fucking song every day for a month … stupid carpools). “Circuit Breaker” is the ADD younger brother to “49 Percent” playing the newebie level of DDR in the arcade (you will never leave the mall alive!). Sure the kid makes up shite poetry (i.e., the couplet “caught up in your bliss / you’re so confusing and intense”), but the little bugger should can dance. “Alpha Male” is an extended stomper. Perhaps the unannounced reverse to “Royksopp’s Night Out,” this one starts off moody and somber, trying desperately to remind everyone that Delirium recorded decent tracks before succumbing to cheese. The new-age drone doesn’t last long though, because the synths pick up to catch the rhythm, and now we’re out of the car and in the middle of the club and everything is flashy and bright. The rest of the album winds down into pastoral sleepy tracks ala “Dead to the World”,,lazy late-night drives (“Someone Like Me”), and the short dirge-like postlude of “Tristesse Globale.”

Royksopp doesn’t come anywhere near the classical-tinged genius of Orbital. Nor do these guys combine ambient psychedelics with everything great about dub (The Orb). What they do best is produce exceptional electronica for people that don’t have the patience for extended instrumental passages and require things like vocals on regular intervals. With that precursor, The Understanding is probably one of the better electronica records to come out this year that thankfully doesn’t involve MCs from Dej Jux or was composed on a laptop. Buy it and embrace the smooth European side of pop. Just don’t blame me if you have the urge to throw some gel in your hair and run up a huge bill at Express.

Blue Monday (alt.) – Rewritten

There are three types of hardcore bands. The first type is made of the kids who are just jumping on a trend, content to just regurgitate the same shit, record after record. The second type is equally lacking in creativity, but these bands are good at what they do, and if you are lucky, they will bring a little passion to the table. The third type is the standard setter band that infuses a little of its own sound into a stale genre and therefore make wading through all the other crap worthwhile. Blue Monday is the second type of band – it doesn’t do much on creativity, but the band is solid enough, with the right amounts of old-school and new-school influences.

Blue Monday’s version of hardcore is fast, angry, and straight-edge, and if it matters to you, these guys are also vegetarians. Think Stay Gold, Carry On, and maybe even a little Madball in the more metallic parts. Expect the usual basic chord progressions, a little metallic flair, shouted vocals, and some melody for a little extra flavor. Pretty typical, but again, solid.

“Next Breath” is a perfect example of the accenting melody mentioned above, and therefore it’s one of the stronger tracks on the album. “Bloody Knuckles” tries to infuse a quirky lead line into the mix, but it sort of ends up falling flat. However, the metallic groove of “Bereaved” brings to mind Madball and totally redeems the album.

If you are into this sort of thing, go for it, but Rewritten fails to engage me as a listener. Halfway through, my mind starts wandering all over the place. What am I gonna eat for lunch? How would my boss look in a bikini? It’s a good effort, but Blue Monday definitely isn’t rewriting the hardcore playbook.

Next Page »