Radon Reviews: Islands “A Sleep & A Forgetting”
From the bluesy chords of “This is Not a Song” to the indie-country sounding snare-riding of “Hallways”, A Sleep & A Forgetting by Islands is sometimes a slow foot shuffle of indie rock and sometimes a Happy Days sock hop that has all the pop-like craftsmanship of slow Weezer songs, the cloudy air of The Shins, and just a tiny, tiny pinch of Spandau Ballet. If you want energizing, mood-lifting music, Islands aren’t giving it to you here, but if you believe in the truths found staring out into cold midnight rain, those photos of still life that still feel lifeless, or need something to curl up into a ball and stop thinking to at 3 in the morning, this is an album worth picking up.
This album in a lot of ways makes me feel like it’s a compilation of all the best riffs written in rock history combined into one concept, the intro and verses of “Never Go Solo” are married to the driving power ballad piano chords that define it, even when it gets thick and gurgling with sound. “Can’t Feel My Face” has all the electric organs a fan of Byrds-era psychedelia can ask for while still having that go-go American Bandstand pop background to it. Each song here is like when a song gets one part perfect that gets the entire bar going, then is distilled and bent to fit the needs of its new performance.
A Sleep & A Forgetting’s biggest weakness is also sort of its biggest strength – It’s a little one-note at times, being mostly soft-spoken and melodic, it’s not so easy to relate to without the mood to match. At the same time, each song is different enough that the minor variations keep the album from getting stale at any point, and it becomes a sort of exercise on how to express the same emotions eleven different yet very effective ways. From the doo-wop rock of “No Crying” to twangs and distortion of “Don’t I Love You”. Islands doesn’t so much skip genre as influence, putting together a competent display of musical ability.
Radon Reviews: The Holiday Crowd “Over the Bluffs”
Put on your legwarmers and hi-tops, because The Holiday Crowd’s debut EP Over the Bluffs sounds like it was the very thing written for John Cusack to be awkwardly in love to while Molly Ringwald shows us all that there’s a lot of societal pressure to being a teenage girl. This is a band that is going to be plagued by comparisons for their entire career for the bands that obviously influence them, and it takes exactly 30 seconds of any song of theirs to convince and unconvince yourself a dozen times that it’s really, for example, The Smiths you’ve been listening to all along.
I always appreciate music like this, that feels so out of its time that what better time is there than now to listen to it? The combination Colin Bowers’ jangly, almost island-style guitar playing and singer Imran Haniff’s throaty wails call into mind all the great bands who were making a name for alternative music thirty years ago. This isn’t a matter of pretending and emulating something they’re not. The Holiday Crowd could have been an easy hit in John Peel’s book, landed in a spattering of John Waters film soundtracks, and lip-synched their songs on Top of the Pops, and nobody would bat an eye.
One of the really great things about this EP is that it knows its time is limited, and so it minces nothing. From the very beginning you get a clear picture of what you’re going to be listening to, and it stays true throughout. If you like the first minute, you’ll like the other twenty. Lead track “Never Speak of it Again” is an absolutely beautiful piece of songwriting that is as good for the isolationist, blustery days leading into spring as it is for your theme-costume throwback parties. “Pennies Found” is everything Morrissey would have ever asked for in a song and more.
Radon Reviews: Plants and Animals “La La Land”
Plants and Animals have put me in a precarious position. On the one hand, what I’ve heard off their latest album The End of That has me in an anticipatory fit. On the other, it’s not out yet. So how about a primer? Let’s have a look at their previous album, La La Land, which is, it seems, just as adept at blending infectiously simple guitar strums with the subtlest of synthesizers to create something with layers and depth in a way that seems almost too simple. The good news is that it all sounds cloudy and punctuated in its own excellent way.
To draw a line between what Plants and Animals do with some other genre of music, I think their sound is fairly progressive, but in a hushed, muted way. Somewhere between Modest Mouse and Rush, Plants and Animals have carved their names in the bark. Though the guitars and the vocals resonate so well off each other that one could fall asleep in the middle, the sharpness of the percussion keeps you from losing yourself. Listen to the second and third tracks (“Swinging Bells” and “American Idol”) one after the other and you can feel the seamlessness that the band moves from 1960’s native psychedelia to its edgier 90’s revival.
Radon Reviews: Adaline “Modern Romantics”
It takes about a grand total of five notes for Adaline’s Modern Romantics to present itself: an off-center pop album set inside of some futuristic cabaret. The album does more than just that, but the pulsing electro beats of “That’s What You Do Best” have their own place among the distorted guitars just as the dark horn section of “Lovers Collide” fits in to the scheme of things like a modern pop song mixed with the Peter Gabriel albums of yesteryear. Still with all that experimentation, Modern Romantics never really feels as if it’s pushing boundaries.
The Latin, percussive beat of “Silent Prayer” versus the soft piano of “Heartache” is just one of the many contrasts an album that under most circumstances could be called experimental or avant garde. But Adaline manages to be just as familiar as unexpected, even if the lyrics and rhythms aren’t anything overly complicated or daring. This is music you’re supposed to dance to, and there’s just the added benefit of being able to dance to almost every track differently.
Toward the middle and again at the end, Modern Romantics lost my attention a bit the first time through, and I wasn’t blown away and immediately compelled to play it for anybody within earshot. Still, I can’t say the album has a single song that isn’t worth listening to, from the almost Metric-like “The Noise” to the serenading “Cost Is Too High (Not To Love).” If you want something new to listen to that could fit right in with all the songs you’ve heard your entire life, Adaline is certainly not risky in checking out.
Radon Reviews: Sparrow & the Workshop “Spitting Daggers”
Where do I start with the sublime Sparrow and the Workshop album Spitting Daggers? Having just finished my first complete listen of the album despite picking at it in chunks here and there, I feel like I saved the best for last. While the whole album is really something truly special, the final track, “Soft Sound of Your Voice” left me feeling absolutely touched. But how did the album get to this point, to make one track hit so hard and leave me with no other options than to start from the beginning?
Sparrow and the Workshop are really a truly amazing band that I am glad to be aware of, and Spitting Daggers builds and continues a legacy put forth by their previous release Crystals Fall. Typically starting each song with an unassuming, innocent build-up, the band explodes into every chorus with an absolute burst of energy and noise. Look no further than the opening riffs of “Pact to Stay Cold” to get a feel for just what this album plans to do sonically throughout. Songs like “Against the Grain” and “Snakes in the Grass” have all the raw beauty of a Lush song with all the northern European twang and harmony of The Cranberries.
In the last 12 months (December 2010 – December 2011) I’ve reviewed exactly 40 albums for Bearcules. They’re not all necessarily new, some are a few years old, one a couple decades old, but one thing that they all have in common as a result is that they are all officially eligible for the 2011 Bearcules AWESOME Award (Which Exemplifies Special and Outstanding Musical Excellence) Awards! I know, Top ____ posts are a total copout, but I wanted to put something together in time for the holiday season so you would know exactly what to buy for people who have good taste in music, but not enough good taste to read Bearcules. Without further ado, here are my Top 5 albums for 2011.
#5 – Land of Talk – Cloak and Cipher
When I heard this release, I was confident it was a front-runner for one of my top albums of the year, and it continues to hold its own despite everything else I’ve listened to. A perfect mix of slow and fast, gentle and noisy, Cloak and Cipher continues the tradition of excellent albums by Land of Talk, and was the first to really make me feel like they could follow up their initial EP Applause Cheer Boo Hiss. “Goal Time Exposure” and “Colour Me Badd” have grown on me immensely, while “Quarry Hymn” and “The Hate I Won’t Commit” still remain favorites of mine. Solid from start to finish.
#4 – Hollerado – Record in a Bag
Recently coming to my attention and quickly becoming one of my favorites, Hollerado’s “Record In A Bag” evokes everything fun about rock music while still being emotionally honest no matter what. Self-produced but with all the professional trimmings, Hollerado pulls no punches delivering an album that is funny, intense, heartfelt, and powerful. The album loses a little steam during the interludes, and I’m still not really digging “Hard Love,” but “Walking the Sea,” “Juliette,” and “Got To Lose” are all amazing enough to elevate this album despite its few weaknesses.
Radon Reviews: Cuff the Duke “Morning Comes”
My love affair with country-folk-rockers Cuff the Duke has waxed and waned over the years, as I tend to tire of their sad whines and defeated sound when my confidence is high, and then when things aren’t so sure, I find myself looking for them, a security blanket, an ex-girlfriend who won’t let you make any regrettable decisions but will still hug you when you need it. Their latest album, Morning Comes, fits all of these bills. When things even out, I think I’ll find myself putting this one back on the shelf, but for now I can’t get enough of everything this album represents.
I always draw the comparison in my head between Cuff the Duke and Weezer, as they both have similar qualities when it comes to songwriting, melodic structures, and vocal styles, but Cuff the Duke embraces that classic southern rock sound, combining country twang with the principles that shaped rock music through its truly defining years. The emotional aspect of these songs is sharp, pulling no punches, eschewing the metaphors and imagery to present something that instead just defines itself clearly as accusatory or pitiful, sometimes both.
Radon Reviews: Hollerado “Record in a Bag”
This band’s name is Hollerado. Their latest EP is called Margaritaville 2: The Reckoning. Are they fun and energetic? Stupid question. Let’s take a look at their debut album Record in a Bag. It’s forty minutes worth of strung out, skinny energy indie rock, and it makes me want to kick things at a strength surpassed in magnitude only by the size of the toothy snarl on my face. It’s silly, it’s bouncy, but perhaps most impressively, it is chock full of technical skill.After the craziness that is the first five minutes of the album (including the entirety of “Hollerado Land” and the catchy-as-hell “Do the Doot Da Doot Doo”’s first few minutes), I found myself slackjawed and grinning, leaning back in my chair at the confident guitar work in the second track’s solo and then the barrage of hooks that comprises the third, “Juliette”, a track that calls back to the more competent and powerful work of Third Eye Blind. The rest of the album follows the same pace and attitude, and didn’t really disappoint me at any point along the way. Every song has the same kind of indie sound built over tried-and-true rock, and breaks down into some amazing arrangement that makes everything that follows pop out so much more vividly. If you like to hear raw, powerful skill on a guitar or a bass that doesn’t make up part of a screeching, thumping metal song, you absolutely owe it to yourself to start listening to Hollerado post haste.
Radon Reviews: Born Gold “Bodysongs”
The musical equivalent of a Magic Eye picture, Born Gold’s Bodysongs at first sounds just like unorganized noise layered on top of more noise, but it doesn’t take long to find incredibly clever and lush dance rock in the mix. Perhaps most surprising is that what gets found behind the stuttering electro sounds and reverbing vocals is that these songs are built on epic hooks, mutated into strange shapes and adventurous forms. I would be remiss to call this anything besides an electronic album, but in a way that feels more human than others.
Opening on perhaps its strongest foot, “Lawn Knives,” Bodysongs melts down each track of the recording into something that comes off as frantic and spread out and first, and then a few beat drops later becomes almost straightforward in spite of its unconventional sound. Sometimes taking a more simple dance pop approach (“Morning Bath”), other times going for familiar and strange (“Eat Sun, Son”), Bodysongs offers some depth but probably not enough to appeal to an instrumental purist. This album is all about the synthetic.
Radon Review: The Weeknd’s “House of Balloons”
I want you to imagine an album that gets name-dropped by Drake at the same time that its title track samples a Siouxsie and the Banshees song. Now I want you to know you can stop imagining and go download The Weeknd’s first album, House of Balloons for free from his official website. House of Balloons is like a nightmarish weekend of endless vice committed to audio, a garage-sounding guilty R&B album of horrors, a Kid A to fuck to.
House of Balloons is hard to understand completely. At its surface level, you can hear the Top 40 crooning, product placements, allusions and not-so-elusive references to sex, and you can write it off as just another R&B album, whether or not that’s your thing. But the deeper you dig into the slow jam dubstep hybrid sound, beats as hollow and lonely as any classic Phil Collins tune, and the way that the vocals have this empty, haunted quality, you can see all these parties, the drugs, and the sexual conquests fail to offer more than a minute’s distraction.
