Moderator: Redaktörer
av phloam » 2010-08-26 15:06
av Alexi » 2010-08-31 14:51
av Alexi » 2010-08-31 15:28
av Alexi » 2010-08-31 16:10
av zidanefromhell » 2010-09-01 12:51
av kasper » 2010-09-01 13:09
zidanefromhell skrev:Lyssnar på lost in trees nu, verkar mkt bra
av Tompa_39 » 2010-09-02 18:21
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-06 19:23
Mycket mysig skiva, men är inte den ursprungligen från 2008?Alexi skrev:All Alone In An *Empty House är en av kandidaterna till årets skiva enligt mig.
There is an instant of doubt and trepidation as the CD is readied to be played for the first time as the album arrives wrapped in a sleeve adorned with some of the most pretentious and hyperbolic sleeve notes I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. All trepidation is wiped away as the songs unfold, the album’s content is a beautiful, sparse, understated collection of observations of life - tiny vignettes so carefully drawn that you vicariously experience them as the words gently purr into your ear. I have the scene perfectly in my mind as Mij (three of the band only have first names) sings the tale of a day: joking with friends in broken French, doing the laundry, finding a little red plastic crab in his jean’s back pocket and realising it is a symbol of a love that had never been fully declared. The band support this fragility on delicate acoustic guitar, softly brushed drums, glockenspiel and aching violin.
If they remind me of any other band, and comparisons are not always precise, it is 10,000 maniacs. There is the same slightly jazzy folk ethos that doesn’t pretend to have never heard of rock music, like Simon and Garfunkel without the folk-rock make over. Poetic lyrics that insist you linger over them, listen and listen again.
Mentally stimulating - perspectives are played with in Runaway Clay - a figure drags himself through a burning environment as vultures circle overhead, and once we are emotionally involved with him he is revealed as a fugitive from justice, but is he a wrongly accused "Dr Kimble" like Fugitive or are the repulsive and violent lynch mob pursuing him actually in the right - is he as guilty as they beleive him to be, and if so is he really the embodiment of evil ? Questions. No direct answers here.
Light The Choir is a little more transparent in it’s dissection of love coupled with desire, both the desire to be emotionally loved and also a hot urgent passion "rub your flesh / against my flesh / I swear we’ll set ourselves on fire" can’t help but call to mind all those times you’ve felt this defining human moment yourself.
There’s a touch of The Decemberists about Dwayne, a long ballad tale of a man with two sides to his nature - on the one side a dedicated Father and hard working farmer, on the other a man who see’s that a life of sensuality may be preferable to early mornings with the cows in the milking shed. He tries living life as a part time rake and inevitably it comes to a bad end - it’s a stand out song on an album of stand out songs.
This is a text book example of quiet majesty, a truly impressive album. To quote from In A Den "Don’t think I exaggerate / when I say the moment is sublime". It’s soothing, without being dull, gentle without being bland, intellectual without being pretentious, and emotional without restraint.
-- http://www.perpetualquestforthesilentside.com/?p=606
av Alexi » 2010-09-09 10:32
Låter som en beskrivning av precis hur jag vill att musik ska vara!It’s soothing, without being dull, gentle without being bland, intellectual without being pretentious, and emotional without restraint.
av Alexi » 2010-09-09 13:35
av Alexi » 2010-09-09 13:44
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-09 15:37
Alexi skrev:Låter som en beskrivning av precis hur jag vill att musik ska vara!
Bäst är att jag tycker det stämmer in också, tack FalloutBoy!
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-09 15:48
If you've followed Matthew Dear over the years, then you know he doesn't like to stay in one place for very long. Even as a primarily electronic artist in the early 2000s, Dear hopped from label to label, switched aliases often, and made everything from steely microhouse to harder Detroit techno. But his biggest departure was 2007's Asa Breed, the record where he stepped out from behind the decks and reached for the mic. Singing on tracks and leaning more heavily on song structure, he built strange hybrid music that had one foot in techno and the other in pop.
Dear's latest album, Black City, follows this path but pulls a pretty drastic shift in tone. Where Asa Breed was bubbly and squeaky and ultimately dancefloor-bound, this record is dark as night. The music brings to mind blown-out warehouses, desolate alleys, and seedy basement nightclubs; it's some real threatening, grimy shit. The production is as inventive and immersive as ever, but what separates this album from the last is that Dear mostly sticks with one theme all the way through. Asa Breed was all over the place at times, but this album has a cohesive thread to follow and smaller vignettes within it.
It's worth noting on a general level that Black City isn't always an easy listen-- there's a lot of detail that can take a couple of spins to get comfortable with. Part of this is structural. Dear doesn't really do clean electro-pop; his approach is more about pushing contrasting sounds together and leaving the edges jagged. The other part is his vocals. Dear is not a classically strong singer and can often sound pretty flat; importantly he knows how to make up for it. He uses technology to stretch his natural range, wrapping choruses around beats in creative ways and sometimes layering multiple vocals together to create depth.
So the album has a lot of contrast and textural nuance. There's also a good amount of sex. In the first half, Dear explores this really nocturnal, salacious sound. Songs in this section are either slow-paced come-ons or faster club tracks, but they all ooze attitude and lust. Opener "Honey" is a good example of the former, kind of a sauntering R&B number with a gritty noise instrumental at its core. But one song stands out: "You Put a Smell on Me" is just total industrial-dance smut, with Dear soliciting an indecent ride "in [his] big black car." Mechanical synths grind, beats scrape against the wall, and Dear offers up double entendre: "You decide if you want to come." It might just be the raunchiest-sounding track since NIN's "Closer".
Dear gets that there's no point in going any dirtier after this, and he uses the rest of the album to divert the vibe towards something brighter. It's a move that threatens the overall theme, but it ultimately works in maintaining the idea of deep contrast and dark vs. light. So the back-end is more pastoral sounding-- beats don't grind as hard and vocals open up, feel more skyward. Rather than the dark disco earlier on, songs in this portion hew closer toward Eno/Talking Heads ambient pop, and there's some really beautiful stuff here. "Gem", the closer, is one of the album's best. A big, opulent track about loss and regret, it's both deeply sad and optimistic at the same time. And the album needs a big emotional anchor like this, otherwise you might feel a little filthy for enjoying it so much.
-- http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14533-black-city/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-14 15:10
Listen to Blonde Redhead’s 1995 self-titled debut. Note its downright debauchery, punk rock attitude, and experimental use of guitar distortion, especially for that era. Now try on their eighth full length, Penny Sparkle. Sounds pretty contrasting, like hearing All Eyez On Me after For Emma, Forever Ago. But for a real patriot of music who fancies synth pop and trip hop as much as progressive, Penny Sparkle delivers gratification of an equal caliber. Though many die-hard fans were dismal about 2007′s 23, where the usually eccentric outfit sound warm and cordial, the altering moods and sparkles of this record will ultimately sway their convictions. Enlisting the Subliminal Kid (Fever Ray, Glasser) as producer, the trio of Kazu Makino and Simone & Amedeo Pace were keen on creating an entirely new sound on this LP and they’ve succeeded.
On the first few Blonde Redhead records, Makino’s icy vocals could draw comparisons to Bjork, or even The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan. On Penny Sparkle, she sounds like Karin Dreijer Andersson of The Knife. There are undeniable traces of Subliminal Kid all over this album; the savvy electro pop “Oslo” will likely appear on disco blog spots, title track “Penny Sparkle” adopts Fever Ray’s fondness for the offbeat and nostalgic. There are engaging moments that don’t conform to electronica; “Will There Be Stars” sounds like classic Thievery Corporation, “My Plants Are Dead” comparable to Beach House, “Everything is Wrong” reminiscent of the warped dreaminess of Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemons, a pinnacle moment in the band’s career. Lead single “Here Sometimes” is the most accessible Blonde Redhead has ever sounded in their 17 years together; a gloomy synth overtone accompanying Makino’s soft articulation “Now it’s day and I am dreaming/A man walks by I want to be his wife/I’m only here sometimes/Under the tree of life.” Though it appears they have basically abandoned instruments, the group is, for their first time ever, creating significant palpable music.
From dream pop abiding hipsters, to loungers who adore getting stoned to trip hop, to the goths who will appreciate the murky bass lines and sedated electronic scores of this record, Penny Sparkle is repertoire to be loved by all, one that will seriously broaden the BR fan-base. It is a validation of Blonde Redhead’s commitment to the avant-garde, even if it is ridiculously easy to listen to.
-- http://prettymuchamazing.com/reviews/al ... nnysparkle
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-21 17:01
Tim and Sam's Tim and the Sam Band with Tim and Sam are a treasure chest of orchestrated folkish bliss. Based in the unremarkable village of Ewloe in Flintshire, Tim and Sam have won favour all over the UK - particularly on 6 Music - with their layered - mostly acoustic - instrumentals, spinning guitar arpeggios with piano, glockenspiel, violin, clarinet, banjo and many more tonal colours besides.
The debut album, Life Stream, has taken a couple of years to record but whatever obstacles and false starts the band had to endure in its making aren't at all apparent when listening to it. The opening track, Sparks, barely contains the euphoric potential of the band, as a rolling wave of horns, e-bowed guitar, glockenspiel and xylophone proves to be a fine 'Welcome' mat for the rest of the album.
Summer Solstice, a previous single release, has all of the unbridled, infectious joy of Belle and Sebastian at their least lachrymose. So far, so good - but no real surprises. However, if you've been at all aware of Tim and Sam's music prior to Life Stream, Coming Home is sure to have you checking the mp3 player hasn't skipped to a different band. There is singing - something of a volte-face for a band who'd only been known previously as an instrumental group.
The initial plan for the album was that it would feature a number of guest vocalists but that proved logistically impossible to pull together in time. So Tim and Rebecca decided to give it a go themselves. Remarkable, then, that they should just happen to have voices so suited to the music: pure, sonorous and impeccably performed.
The music eddies from major to minor keys and back again, encapsulating a panoramic range of emotions, sometimes in the space of a single piece of music. Reflections, for example, sounds like a contemplative Slint as it begins, dark of cloud and thought, then a glockenspiel and cello set the horizon ablaze with the kind of hope that gets us all through our most TS Eliot days.
It's breathtaking in a most unshowy way. Where Sigur Rós create music as massive, airy and impressive as the sky caging Iceland's Aurora and the dramatic volcanic landscape below, Tim and Sam are like a ramble in the Clwydian hills Tim has grown up being able to see out of his bedroom window (I imagine): rosy cheeked, invigorating, unspectacularly moving.
It's a youthful album and more evidence that being a young musician doesn't have to be about dull bravado and posturing. More often than its given credit for, it's about a lack of cynicism; a sense of possibilities; raw nerves that feel everything rather than ones that have callouses grown over them.
There is romance here, too - little 'r': no frilly shirts or narcissistic bouffant hair don'ts - and courageous vulnerability. And - in the lyrics of excellent next single Finders Keepers - defiance: "follow my lead, and don't even try to stop me".
Other than the reference points I've already mentioned, I hear echoes of The Beach Boys, Mogwai, Steve Reich, Incredible String Band, Tuung, The Cure (All Tucked Up sounds like an instrumental outtake from Disintegration) -- it's telling that none of the artists I hear in their sound are claimed as influences on their myspace page. This is indicative of a band who - despite the weight of musical history behind them - are following nothing other than their own muse.
That in itself makes them worthy of your investigation, the fact that Life Stream is as accomplished, thoughtful and lovingly-crafted as any album will hear this year makes it essential listening.
-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/walesmusic/2 ... ream.shtml
av Jansson » 2010-09-21 17:51
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-23 17:15
Jansson skrev:Ulver: Peredition City
(Bara FOB eller någon annan inte redan nämnt den, i så fall får jag skämmas... TCM brukar hålla reda på mig.)
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-23 17:22
In a world of "slow" movements that rail against mindless consumption, rock survivalists Windsor for the Derby represent "slow" music. For their latest outing, they began with a set of seemingly infinite drones and loops inspired by their early beginnings as a band. As those recordings were passed back and forth, the sounds were further sculpted by Dan Matz and Jason McNeely into their own leftfield brand of pop song. This became Against Love.
While they experimented with more formalized rock structures on their past few albums, Against Love finds the balance between experimentation and rock tradition more heavily skewed toward the former. The songs are filled with tried & true conventions; some with pedal steel and acoustic guitar ("Dull Knives," "After Love"), and others in waves of warm feedback and synth ("Queen of the Sun," "Autumn Song"). Lyrically the songs are about how the modern world is changing the human condition, how we decide to land when the floor is pulled out from under us, and how hope is born from loss. The songs were shaped over months in backstage rooms, hotels, vans, and wherever else Matz and McNeely found time during WFTD's European and American tours of the past two years. Tracks were finalized in Matz's haunted Hope Union Studio, where disengaged clock chimes, spectral taps, and mysterious footsteps are a constant cause for another take; some left in the mix.
-- http://www.secretlycanadian.com/onesheet.php?cat=SC202
av Jansson » 2010-09-23 21:25
FalloutBoy skrev:Jansson skrev:Ulver: Peredition City
(Bara FOB eller någon annan inte redan nämnt den, i så fall får jag skämmas... TCM brukar hålla reda på mig.)
Den tror jag inte varit uppe tidigare. Bra skiva är det iaf, så jag instämmer i rekommendationen!
Hoppas vi får se fler tips från dig!
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-24 15:57
shifts skrev:Oj, Windsor for the derby... Har någon sjutums-EP med dem från det skånska bolaget Speakerphone Recordings. Det var riktigt länge sedan jag tog fram den däremot.
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-24 16:05
Jansson skrev:Provar med den här.
nosound-lightdark
Siskiyou is the new group led by former Great Lake Swimmers member Colin Huebert in collaboration with Erik Arnesen (who still plays with the Swimmers). The group is based in Vancouver, Canada where Huebert has recently settled after a stint working on an organic farm following his departure from the Swimmers. This is their eponymous debut album.
Colin sent us a first collection of songs in early 2010 just as the bitterest months of Montreal winter were setting in. Working like glowing embers on us all season long, gaining warmth and radiance with every listen, the humble intimacy and composure of these recordings steadily drew us into the deeper tension between economy and epiphany humming at the core of the tunes. Emotionally direct, marked by an underlying darkness and doubt about relationships (to each other, to the environment, to mortality) without overreaching lyrically or musically, and without overriding the quiet exuberance embedded in every melody – the songs compel.
It was no surprise to learn that Huebert had channeled these songs with immediacy and austerity, recording dozens of tunes at home with only voice and guitar, generally within minutes of their conception, as an exercise in unmediated documentation. From this audio sketchbook, Huebert and Arnesen began building gently ornate arrangements on top of various tunes, recording overdubs in itinerant fashion in hallways, stairwells, bathrooms and parks throughout the Vancouver area. Banjo, piano, accordion and electric guitar play the lead roles in adorning Colin’s initial acoustic guitar sketches. The resulting collection of songs thrums with a scrupulous lo-fi backwoods energy and restraint. The music has been described as perfectly conjuring the lush, crisp yet often chilly landscape of the Pacific Northwest, and we tend to agree.
-- http://cstrecords.com/cst067/
av Jansson » 2010-09-24 17:08
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-28 13:59
Jo, jag vet att många har problem med den sortens "navelskådning" som så många artister i den genren är skyldiga till.Jansson skrev:Han släpper inte in någon annan och lämnar inte riktigt någon plats för lyssnaren.
Bra, för jag har knappt börjat med listan över 2004 än.Sen en annan sak.
Jag har ännu inte hunnit med alla dina decennier, bara så du vet.
Tufft.
During the continued rise of electronic music over the past several years, countless acts have attempted to take the basic facets of the genre and make it their own with little twists of psychedelia and the like. It’s a tricky endeavor, for sure, so we’re glad that bands like Blackbird Blackbird have joined in on the fun with songs that pick and choose the best styles to create something that is at once familiar and fresh. Though their debut doesn’t have any ceiling-shattering moments, it is unfailingly pleasant in its entirety because of its apparently innate carefree breeziness.
Even when singer and one-man band Mikey S (formerly known as Bye Bye Blackbird) definitively sings that he’s going to pack up his bags and leave town, it sounds nonchalant, as though he’s being taken away from something unexpectedly but is still perfectly content to just roll with it. The musician bills his music as “acousmatic”; the adjective is fitting in a way; you can’t help but visualize snowflakes and glitter and clouds without quite realizing why, as the music never seems to force any kind of image on you through words or otherwise. The synth, the vocals, the hollow drum beats—all are so sweetly hesitant that it would be hard to dislike any of the songs on Summer Heart.
Though the whole album works together quite well, there are a few songs that stand out for both their subtlety and the shimmery pleasure they instantly give from their starts. One of these is “So Sorry Girl,” in which apologetic lines like “so sorry girl/that you need my heart” are overshadowed by half-hearted explanations like “I’m a burnout” and “I’m looking out for number one.” It’s kind of melancholy but also strangely playful, creating a unique interplay of moods that comes off sounding just right. “Dreams I Create” has the same sort of strange and pleasurable mix of tones, sounding regretful and carefree at the same time while also being completely danceable as well. “I’m Feeling Hazy” sounds just like the title suggests it should, with only three words backed by echoing coos and ever-so-light synths lending delicate support for the song’s woozy dreamscape. The fact that most of the songs are two minutes or less in length only makes them sweeter in their apparent simplicity.
Another thing that sets Blackbird Blackbird apart from his peers is Mikey S’s quality of invoking his own personal style while still making music that is ripe for remixing. An ideal example of this is the Sunvisor remix of “Hawaii,” which is stunning all around, with a repeating line of “give me one goodbye/ give me one good reason to stay” layered over steel drums and totally catchy beats and faraway back-up vocals. After hearing the remix, it is apparent that a lot of the songs on Summer Heart are great on their own but also provide great raw material for other artists to work with, and should Blackbird Blackbird continue to rise in popularity it will be interesting to see how many other beautiful songs can come out of the original material. Though it’s most often low-key, the music on here is memorable for its wistful, layered hooks and simple but affecting lyrics and instrumentation. Check it out!
-- http://inyourspeakers.com/content/revie ... t-08052010
av phloam » 2010-09-28 23:09
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-29 18:39
phloam skrev:Hittade vad som verkar vara en intressant Label vs Label-skiva; skivbolaget Sub Rosa kolliderar smakfullt med Kompakt och resultatet är.... ja, lyssna själva
Screen Vinyl Image’s “Interceptor’s” is like slipping into a dark noir world that reflects on past memories of faded angst and creates sterile images of nostalgic machinery set loose. Yet there is more to discover beyond the dark exterior, as their sound completely leads the listener into another world dominated by car chasing cruisers, planetary spheres, and psychedelic interference.
This 11-track debut album from DC band Screen Vinyl Image showcases them at their fullest extent of sonic punishment. Their previous, 2 EP’s (Midnight Sun and Chaser) were released onto virgin ears unsuspecting of such deliberate ear canal damage and defacto electonic destruction. But now the duo of Jake and Kim Reid that are Screen Vinyl Image, have produced a more complete vision built upon their previous efforts of audio annihilation.
The album’s lead track “Synthetic Apparition” is the perfect droning backdrop to begin the journey. Its ghostly ambience creeps in like a fog with the lead melody spelling out to the listener the forthcoming density that awaits in the succeeding tracks. “Cathode Ray and “Fever” command attention from side A (“Fever” is the first video from the album). On “Fever,” Jake’s reverb enwrapped vocal evokes the feeling of a lost soul crying out for repentance, as samples and fuzz guitar entwine their way to the song’s feedback-drenched ending. Also notable is “Asteroid Exile,” which weaves in the band’s cinematic layers into a fully realized song complete with song structure and vocals.
Side B begins with “Lost in Repeat,” which with its almost dub-like trance bass line flexes the versatile muscle of the band. The bass continues through against an ever-growing gale force of sweeping distortion, filling in to the ear’s higher register, as the bass loops with Screen’s own take on astral dub.
The Gothic bass line intro of “Until the End of Time” crawls against the sequenced bells and simple lamenting vocal, which remains resolute and commanding: “I want you, I need you.” Instrumental “Death Defiance” plays into their more danceable side as upbeat tracks work alongside an electro line and yet another creepy synth – but it’s when the unsuspecting bongos hit that the track really takes off. This song could have been blasted out in an early 90’s warehouse party to thousands of dark wave ravers. As the album ends on “Conscience Collider,” a shifting bass mover, it slowly eclipses back into the record’s initial foreboding dreamlike trance. A bonus track of “Chaser” (Screen’s first single) graces the CD format.
To truly appreciate the music of Screen Vinyl Image you might find you have an affinity for antiquated soundwaves, vintage potentiometers, and old plate reverbs. If you can respect the tensions of loud basement garage rock running alongside an inspired Chicago house beat than you can learn to fall deep under their spell. Both live and on this record they create sounds that inspire visions where John Carpenter battles Jim Reid (no relation) and Blade Runner goes Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. And it’s here where Screen Vinyl Image have created their own original soundtrack to their dark twisted vision of film noir, campy horror and futurism crashing head-on into a stasis-like oblivion.
-- http://www.jezebelmusic.com/1844/screen ... erceptors/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-30 17:07
A word of warning: Pivot (or PVT as they now call themselves) have gone a bit Animal Collective on us. Well, not quite, but the Australian threesome have made a leap from the textured sound of their previous output, the rather enchanting O Soundtrack My Heart, released over two years ago on Warp to something which may still bear occasional tints of the old, but has become an essentially much more song-based form, with multi-instrumentist Richard Pike assuming a new full time role as singer within the band. The sound has also evolved into a more electronically-fuelled affair, quite a radical departure, this despite often heavy live drums and occasional outburst of guitars spotted throughout. This is made very clear right from the short opener, Community, with its ethereal choral chords drowned in electronic arpeggios which could have been stolen from a sixties sci-fi soundtrack experiment.
From then on, Church With No Magic descends into a series of harsh and angular songs, drenched to the bone with fat electronic sounds and propped up by Laurence Pike’s drums, which sees the trio cut their way through the hypnotic and heavy footed Light Up Bright Fires and the much more basic title track all the way down to the surprisingly dreamy Waves & Radiation, the only fully instrumental track here, and the sumptuous closing Only The Wind Can Hear You.
The analogy with Animal Collective made earlier is never truer than on the incantatory Light Up Bright Fires, Crimson Swan, Window or Circle Of Friends, where Richard Pike’s voice is more than a little reminiscent of Panda Bear. This is accentuated by the apparent lack of clear lyrics, at least on some of these, and the heavily processed vocals which characterise Light Up Bright Fires or the latter part of Crimson Swan especially. Elsewhere though, this is far less relevant. On the title track for instance, Pike sounds like the bastard child of Elvis and Billy Idol, yet it somehow works in his favour, giving an already strong song a totally unlikely edge, while he appears much more stripped down and vulnerable on Timeless. There are times here when PVT seem to lose focus slightly, especially on the somewhat dated The Quick Mile, but these are only blips in an overall rather convincing collection.
Some may regret the lack of subtlety of this vowel-less PVT, yet the trio appear to operate on a new lease of confidence here. Their sound, much bulkier and grittier, has gained much in the process. The name change may have been the result of a legal challenge, but it also signalled a somewhat radical review of the band’s overall approach, and all for the better.
-- http://www.themilkfactory.co.uk/st/2010 ... p-records/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-09-30 17:15
Halcyon Digest is a record about the joy of music discovery, the thrill of listening for the first time to a potential future favorite, and that sense of boundless possibility when you're still innocent of indie-mainstream politics and your personal canon is far from set. In revisiting that youthful enthusiasm, Deerhunter brilliantly rekindle it, and the result meets Microcastle/Weird Era (Cont.) as the band's most exhilarating work to date. Whether those halcyon days were real or just idealized doesn't matter. With producer Ben Allen, who lent a bass-heavy sheen to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, these four guys-- lead singer Bradford Cox, singer/guitarist Lockett Pundt, bass player Josh Fauver, and drummer Moses Archuleta-- have created a seamless album of startling emotional clarity.
Deerhunter have never lacked ambition. 2007 breakout Cryptograms came as two discrete halves: one front-loaded with ambient drifts and clanging post-punk aggression, the other blasting off into sunny psych-pop. Microcastle turned out to be a sprawling, ghostly amusement park of a double album, with violence and frail beauty never far from each other. And then there are all those EPs, side projects, and rarities. In blog posts and interviews, Cox has shown himself to be a music lover of the highest order, almost a platonic ideal of the artist as fan.
This record marks a distinctly different approach for the band, more streamlined and stripped down, and in its sparest moments, it echoes the stark intimacy and one-take effortlessness of records like Neil Young's Tonight's the Night or Chris Bell's I Am the Cosmos. Fans of the band's earlier stuff may understandably miss some of the old electric-guitar squall, but Halcyon Digest's expanded instrumental palette-- acoustic guitar, electronic percussion, banjo, autoharp, harmonica, vocal harmonies, and saxophone (!)-- creates endless depths of intricacy and nuance to explore in headphones.
In the past, Deerhunter's gift for garbled sonics and Cox's stream-of-consciousness methods made it easy to downplay the group's lyrical ability. That's not the case here. Whether by Pundt, who sings lead on two of Halcyon Digest's best songs, or Cox, Deerhunter's songwriting congeals into a style all its own, with lyrics moved front-and-center. The words fit perfectly together, down to the most trivial minutia: Cox asking, "Did you stick with me?" at the start of garage-pop fist-pumper "Memory Boy", right after the track people are most likely to skip (funny!), or Pundt mentioning a "marching band" on another uptempo proto-anthem, "Fountain Stairs", as Bill Oglesby's sax first appears.
The topical ground covered here is inspired, too: "Revival", a sort of Southern gothic folk-rock baptism, embraces religion. "I'm saved, I'm saved!" Cox exalts, "I felt his presence heal me." Recorded to four-track, "Basement Scene" "dream(s) a little dream" that soon turns nightmarish: "I don't wanna get old" quickly becomes "I wanna get old" as Cox weighs the alternative. And first single "Helicopter" is a beautifully watery electro-acoustic farewell that uses a tragic Dennis Cooper story about a Russian prostitute (graciously reprinted in the liner notes) to support its emotional bleakness.
Then there's seven-and-a-half-minute finale "He Would Have Laughed", dedicated to Jay Reatard, the Memphis garage rocker who died last winter of drug-related causes at age 29. Its lyrics are the most cryptic on Halcyon Digest-- full sentences are rarely formed before Cox closes them off with his usual crisp consonants. A simple acoustic guitar riff repeats as other percussion elements and electronic tones pan across the track, occasionally joined by the full band. Cox admits to growing "bored as I get older," and then goes into a dream-- "I lived on a farm, yeah/ I never lived on a farm"-- until he finally all but asks, "Where are your friends tonight?" The track cuts off unexpectedly mid-note.
Deerhunter unveiled their new album by asking fans to print out a vintage DIY-style poster, photocopy it, and tape it up all over town. In the last couple of weeks, band members have participated in all-night online chats with some of their most devoted fans. We'll never be able to parse every lyric or tease out every technical intricacy-- though somebody will probably try-- but that is what Halcyon Digest is all about: nostalgia not for an era, not for antiquated technology, but for a feeling of excitement, of connection, of that dumb obsession that makes life worth living no matter how horrible it gets. And then sharing that feeling with somebody else who'll start the cycle all over again.
-- http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/146 ... on-digest/
av stefanolo » 2010-09-30 21:34
. Har bara börjat lyssna på shifts första länk alldeles i början av tråden och MYSER när jag på låg volym sitter och lyssnar på mina underbara pi60s-s och småtjejerna sover sött i rummet bakom mig.
. L'origine är en favvis.
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