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Their eponymous debut was far more standard dance-punk: heavy on live bass lines and live percussion. But with "Pala" Fires have turned a corner onto a decidedly more electronic avenue. It's so different that at time it's almost hard to recognize them as Friendly Fires.
"Pala" employs a seemingly indistinguishable mix of live and sampled material similar to British producer and recording artist Bibio. The first two tracks are consummately electro but track three "Running Away" is a little more live. It brings them back a little to the first album but only momentarily.
The vocals are, as I read another reviewer describe them, dramatic and "priapic". They just scream bright lights, discotheques, and ecstasy when coupled with the band's galloping bass beats and shimmering synths.
It's hard not to feel warm inside after playing through this.
Grade: B+
Houston act, The Mathletes just released their second full-length but I don't have a copy of that yet so I'm still jamming their first record, "#$@% You And Your Cool".
The album's title is itself a foreshadowing of the content within. The Mathletes channel a clever and cheeky awkwardness that listeners should recognize from nerd-rock bands like They Might Be Giants. The lack of concern over "cool" gives them room to experiment more than the average, vanilla, self-conscious, indie-rock band. In fact, the band openly mocks this obsession with image on "My record collection".
"#$@% You" is filled with horns, organs, and synths making it vastly more colorful than what I'm used to hearing from most local bands. "Opening Number (Hollywood Version)" uses the horns and bright vocals to create a beautiful Kinks/Beatles-like pastiche that sounds, despite the title's protestation, cool as hell.
The Mathletes are a powerful gust of fresh air and I cannot wait to hear their latest when I get around to it. Other great tracks on the debut are the KTRU version of "Asteroids!!!" and the punky "Pinocchiobot Rock". You can pick this one up on iTunes or stream it with a Rhapsody subscription.
Grade: A+
For a very long time I've racked my brain over why exactly this phenomenon is appealing to anyone. The TV show I can sort of understand. It's like Degrassi. It's a guilty-pleasure, teen, melo-drama. Dawson's Creek type crap. I get it. It's a moneymaker.
However, I don't understand why anyone would waste money paying for a soundtrack which consists entirely of very similar-sounding covers. They're not even good covers. Yes, these people hit all the notes, with or without the help of auto-tune (not gonna go there) but they're all done in the same shrill, teeny-bopper, timbre and register.
Cover albums don't normally sell well unless they're done by a variety of artists. Take for example Peter Gabriel's "Scratch my Back". People begin to say, "Ok, great. Now when does the original material start?" At least that was my reaction.
Anyway, Glee clubs have never impressed me. I remember even in high school I would say to myself (never out loud for fear of being labeled as anti-arts or something lame like that) why would anyone join choir and sing covers when you could go home and write something original, something that requires independent thinking. Yes covers take a degree of technical skill but if your voice sounds like your average, American Idol, dime-a-dozen, diva's then it's not going to be interesting. And that's what glee clubs encourage: conformity.
I know this is more of a rant than a review but after making my point I will say that this soundtrack did nothing to change my opinion. It's bland. Bland. Bland. It's Kidz Bop for adults.
When I interviewed Nick Thorburn of Islands (And formerly of The Unicorns) last year he said something about doing a collaboration with Honus Honus, lead singer of the fun, freaky, Philadelphia, experimental band Man Man. Of course, I presumed it would be a single track on Islands' next studio album but instead it turned out to be an entirely new side-project. Mister Heavenly was born.
Yesterday the band made another step toward concreteness by releasing its first full length. The genre has been called "Doom Wop" by Thorburn who described it in another interview as "[. . .] low frequency, and extremely slowed down music atop traditional doo wop harmonies. Or something". This description sounds more to me like Doo Wop chopped and screwed which isn't what the record sounds like but there's definitely a golden-age r&b influence with love lyrics and backup vocals aplenty.
The most noticeable vocals contributions are from Honus. Parts of the record sound very much like lost Man Man recordings while other parts sound like Islands b-sides. The title track is the best example of Thorburn and Kattner working together. Synths beep and Honus roars.
I don't know if this was just a one album stint but there seems to be enough chemistry between these two front men for another.
Grade: B+
GGD is very hard to categorize because the song-writing is so liquid. On "Eye Contact" GGD will take the words "pop form" and erase them from your memory with this album because everything about its composition is so non-standard. Choppy, sample-laden beats shape the record, along with live synths and the arcane and beautiful voice of Liz Bougatsos. Besides those three attributes, there is little else on "Eye Contact" one could call "constant".
"Romance Layers" is a sexy, down-tempo, jam with R&B vocals and is probably the most (air quotes here) normal track. The rest of the album is a protean musical mass of ever-evolving beats building upon and erasing each other. By the time a track ends it is barely recognizable as the track you started listening to.
The mood ranges from warm and familiar on songs like "Chinese High" to frantic and alien on others such as "Thru and Thru". But despite the constantly changing nature of the album, Bougatsos and her band make the material cohesive and captivating.
Grade: A-
Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that New York electro duo Holy Ghost! has enlisted one of the big hitters of blue-eyed soul. After all, they're on the punky, funky, DFA label. But the wickedness of the musical combination blew me away when I read about it today. I had no idea this collaboration occurred. Leave it to Pitchfork to fill in the gaps.
The album came out in April but somehow I missed it. I'm sure I'm not the only one. At least check out the fantastic song, "Some Children" if nothing else. Michael McDonald sounds strangely at home on the track, a testament to the growing skill of Holy Ghost!
Moves like this show that despite the colossal hype that's been surrounding Holy Ghost since they went public with "Hold On" that they're far more than ephemeral club-kid zeitgeist of the 2000s.
It's always been fashionable to write off certain post-punk bands as Joy Division copycats. By rejecting a band in this fashion music critics get the opportunity to flex their muscles. They take a certain secret pleasure in the ability to make and break artist's careers. When a band receives a reputation like this it is difficult to throw off. The Wake is one such band that has been branded with this unfortunate mark and they are for this reason, I feel, under-appreciated.
True, they formed in 1981 Glasgow after the dissolution of Joy Division which helps critics make a case for them as JD wannabes but the music itself is still strong enough to merit a good listening.
But let us get the similarities out of the way, yes there are fantastic, galloping, post-punk, bass-lines throughout the "Harmony" but after 82 when Harmony was recorded it became a staple of the genre. For me that's the only thing that makes me scratch my chin and go, "Ah, Joy Division". Other than that the band is original as far as I'm concerned, they're just post-punk. They share a genre with JD so of course there are going to be similarities.
If anything, the vocals sound more like mid to late 80s Bernard Sumner vocals than Ian Curtis' and at this point in time New Order was still, to a degree, trying rip-off Ian Curtis' baritone voice on "Movement" and their first New Order BBC sessions.
"Judas" is a gem on the album with a palpable melancholy and vocals that sound like a Gothic Syd Barret. Of all the tracks on the album this one breaks with the JD method more than any other while still appealing to the same emotions. Another outstanding track is "Host" which includes actual backup vocals, some Vinny O Reilly type guitar-work, and dub bass. A nice snapshot in the evolution of post-punk.
Their eponymous debut was far more standard dance-punk: heavy on live bass lines and live percussion. But with "Pala" Fires have turned a corner onto a decidedly more electronic avenue. It's so different that at time it's almost hard to recognize them as Friendly Fires.
