With the release of Interpol’s fifth album El Pintor on Tuesday, now is a great time to take a look back and examine the career of the band. Yesterday we analyzed their brilliant debut, Turn on the Bright Lights; today we’ll examine how Interpol’s career developed in the wake of the their initial success.
The common narrative behind Interpol’s career has been that they’ve been in a steady decline since their stellar debut. It’s understandable that a band may seem incapable of reaching the same creative peaks of an artistic triumph like Turn on the Bright Lights, and in our culture it seems that we are all too ready to tear down what others have built up. However, while I will admit that album-to-album the quality of Interpol’s output has dipped, it is not nearly as steep a drop as other critics make it out to be. In fact, there are several moments and songs that are the equal or better of their work on TOTBL.
Given the massive expectations that would surround any followup to an accomplishment like Turn on the Bright Lights, it is amazing that Antics ended up being as great as an album as it is. Listening to the album now, disconnected from all the circumstances of its initial release, it’s easier to appreciate the record as the perfect response to its debut. Interpol managed to balance the nearly-impossible task of creating an album that is true to the spirit of their early work without surrounding derivative of themselves, and at the same time progressing from their previous album while maintaining a deep connection with the elements that made their songs so successful in the first place. In other words, they didn’t make a repeat of TOTBL and they didn’t abandon their formula either.
The biggest difference between the two albums is perhaps the clarity of the songs and the production. In terms of the latter, with TOTBL there was an air of gauziness (for lack of a better term) that surrounded the recording of the instruments and especially the vocals, which helped give the music a hazy, dreamy quality. Antics differs in that each part is recorded with sharper precision and instead of blending in as it did on TOTBL, the parts stand in sharp relief to one another. There is more snap to the drums, more pop to the bass, and less effects on the vocals. The result helps alter the mood and ambiance, with Antics moving away from the gloom that so many attached to TOTBL.
Antics, on a track-by-track basis, is still one of the best album of the 2000’s. Though it initially caught fans off guard with its surprisingly danceable beat, lead single “Slow Hands” ended up being the perfect connection between Antics and their debut. There was the sly mention of “weights” that was a callback to their previous hit “Obstacle 1”, but musically there was also several of the hallmarks of the Interpol sound, from the funky bounce of Carlos D’s bass to Sam’s expert shifting between different drum patterns, to the interaction between Paul’s and Dan’s guitars. And while it’s easier to hear Paul’s vocals, the specific story within the song is as hard to determine as ever, though there are several memorable lyrics spread throughout (“I submit my incentive is romance; I watch the pole-dance of the stars” was a particularly good turn of phrase).
“Evil” also was a significant triumph for the band, working as a straightforward rock song with sparer instrumentation than they’ve used before. The lyrics were also some of Paul’s best, evoking in my mind images of Camus’s The Stranger amid a mysterious love triangle. “Evil” also provided an example of the band’s sly humor and subtle wordplay, with lines like “you’re weightless, semi-erotic; you need someone to take you there”–with those two lines in tandem, it’s easy to determine what exactly Paul means by the latter phrase. But perhaps my favorite track is “C’mere”, a paean to unrequited love wrapped around several catchy riffs. Just in the verse, the music alternates between a basic driving riff, a start-stop lead guitar, and a delicate chiming second guitar; similarly, the lyrics capture different emotions wrapped around the situation, from distressed (“the trouble is, you’re in love with someone else; it should be me”), to wistful (“oh how I love you in the evening, when we are sleeping”), to the cheeky (“we try to find somebody else who has a line”).
Even beyond the singles, the album is filled with several gems, from the slow-rolling opener “Next Exit” to the pounding “Not Even Jail” to the deliberate “A Time To Be So Small”. Really, the one misstep is the goofy “Length of Love”, but I’m willing to give it a pass since it seems like it must have been a blast to play.
Interpol jumped from indie powerhouse to a major label for Our Love To Admire, but there is little in the music that would make the shift obvious to the casual observer. It’s not as if Interpol all of a sudden became an ultra-slick, sugar-coated pop as a result of the move. The one noticeable aspect of the change is that it seems that OLTA was a victim of the music industry’s “loudness war”, where individual parts were compressed and brickwalled, creating problems such as unintentional distortion at certain points. The other problem with OLTA was probably not the result of label interference, but instead an offshoot of natural band evolution–the diminished role of the bass and drums. It was at this point that Sam’s and Carlos D’s parts became simpler and took a backseat to a more prominent role for the guitars, as well as more prominent placement of Paul’s vocals.
That said, there are several songs that would fit in perfectly in an Interpol setlist. “The Heinrich Maneuver” is a blast of hooky, uptempo rock, and the one example where the louder production serves the song well. The unrelenting beat of “Mammoth” hits right after, and is an excellent example of ever-escalating tension. “Who Do You Think?” sounds the most like traditional Interpol, and its place in the second half of the album is the best spot for that trip into nostalgia. The last two tracks, “Wrecking Ball” and “The Lighthouse” also sees the band experimenting with new compositional techniques, and while they don’t necessarily completely hit, it shows that the band is attempting to branch out creatively and have not stifled themselves by sticking to the same old formula.
In other words, Our Love To Admire is better than its reputation suggests, with several points to recommend in its favor. And that’s even in spite of the fact that Interpol decided to cater to critics’ jokes about the band in actually titling a song “No I in Threesome”, a song which is far better than its title suggests.
Interpol’s next album, their self-titled effort, is definitely a step down. On the one hand, it showed the band willing to experiment with different musical ideas and compositional concepts, but it never fully cohered into a pleasant listen, even for fans. In many respects, it seemed to be the sound of a band spinning its wheels creatively; one could sense that the band was running out of ideas, and it was reflected in the music. At least the band was still making an effort, and didn’t seem too tired of actually being in the band (unlike say, The Strokes). And while the announcement that Carlos D had left the band occurred after the release of Interpol, it almost feels like he left in the middle of recording the album–in most of the second half, the complete lack of bass is extremely noticeable.
Again though, it was not a completely wasted effort. The first half has songs that play to Interpol’s usual strengths (“Success”, “Summer Well”, “Barricade”) as well as others that see the band do a great job of trying something new (“Lights”, “Safe Without”). The problem is that while it’s an admirable effort, especially when attempting to assess the album as a neutral observer, there’s something unsatisfying about the whole endeavor, and it’s obvious that the band couldn’t quite figure out what the missing piece was.
The good news is that upon my first few listens of El Pintor, it seems that for the first time we can say that Interpol has improved upon its previous work. We’ll have a full review next week, but go ahead and check out this weekend on your own.
In Part 1 of our Spoon feature last week, we went over the elements that make up the Spoon “sound” as well as their early work. In Part 2, we’re closely examining Spoon’s brilliant stretch of work from Girls Can Tell to Transference, making sure to highlight key tracks and themes.
Kicking off one of the most impressive hot streaks in rock history, Girls Can Tell is an artistic triumph that remains one of the greatest records released since the beginning of this century. It’s an album that is truly timeless–it sounds as fresh today as it did back in 2001, and has a classic sensibility that would have fit into the music scene at any point in the past 30 years, but would not have a “dated” quality that would make it sound like a product of a particular era. Its themes and sensibilities make it the perfect late night album, as the songs explore and evoke feelings of quiet contemplation and reminiscences tinged with slight regret; it’s nostalgic without being overbearingly so, a quality that is rare to find these days.
The album also marked a stylistic shift into the now classic Spoon sound, as the band brought in pianos and keyboards while placing the guitar more in the background. This change is clear from the classic opener, “Everything Hits At Once”, which begins with a light bouncy keyboard figure with the guitar used sparingly to provide accents to melodic ideas. The memorable first lines set the tone for the album: “Don’t say a word–the last one’s still stinging.” The directness of that command is a jarring emotional cut for the listener, and exposes feelings of not just anger from the narrator but vulnerability as well. While seemingly a traditional tale of moving on from an unpleasant breakup, the words take on a second meaning when considered against the backdrop of the band’s release from their record label prior to the recording of this album. Though you can sense the bitterness throughout, there is still some hope, as Britt repeats the lines “I can still change my mind tonight.”
Girls Can Tell is filled with perfect segues, including how “Everything Hits at Once” merges beautifully into “Believing is Art”. The song modifies some of the melodic figures of the previous one by adding a bit more jagged guitar as well as a quicker beat, two elements that help set up songs later in the album. “Lines in the Suit” and “The Fitted Shirt” form another inspired combination, both thematically (in obvious and not-obvious ways) and musically. “Lines” alternates between a bouncy verse and a disheartening chorus, and again works as a commentary on their response to the pitfalls of the music business, with the resulting feelings of being young yet washed up (there’s a direct reference to their early work with the lines “I’m listening to ‘Mountain To Sound’ [from the Soft Effects EP]and the way it’s panned is cool”). However, it’s the powerful vignette that Britt depicts in the bridge, where he introduces a previously unmentioned character, that is most memorable:
“The human resource clerk has two cigarettes and back to work; she eats right but hurts. And she says it could’ve been good by now–it could’ve been more than a wage. How come she feels so washed up at such a tender age now? It could’ve been easier.”
The listener can instantly form a mental picture of this woman and immediately grasp at her inner emotional turmoil, all in the span of a couple of lines, proving that Britt Daniel has skills that most songwriters only wish they could have. With “The Fitted Shirt”, Spoon flips the imagery, with the fancy clothing no longer being a target of ire but instead a totem of a warmly remembered past with his father. Musically, the repetitive guitar figure in the verse does a great job of mirroring the drudgery of the everyday rat-race, and the descending line in the chorus helps emphasize the feelings of nostalgia. Lyrically, the band capably manages to romanticize the past without sounding like bitter/naive old men, and somehow make the act of wearing an old fitted shirt an act of rebellion–a sentiment matched by the increased fury of the music.
The album ends with another excellent pairing, with the instrumental “This Book Is A Movie” providing an excellent introduction to the closer “Chicago At Night”. It helps settle the listener after the (relatively) raucous “Take the Fifth”, and with the help of a few deftly placed mysterious guitar chords helps set the mood for the aforementioned enigmatic track. “Chicago At Night” helps capture the feelings of alienation lurking throughout the album, with its constant references to a wall and its repeated mantra of “Everybody’s at disadvantage speaking with their second language.” It’s almost sinister, and by any objective evaluation should be considered to be a downer of an ending, but somehow Spoon makes the listener comfortable with its ambiguity, and satisfied with the album’s conclusion.
And to think, I didn’t even get the chance to mention “Me and the Bean”, a personal favorite and a song that’s so great that most people don’t even realize it’s a cover, since it sounds in many ways like a typical Spoon track. Even the cover is chosen with great care, as it also explores looking back through the past through the eyes of a partnership between an older man and younger woman. The initial dismissal by the former turns into acceptance of the importance of the latter, first as a symbiotic relationship (“I’ll bring you cover when you’re cold; you’ll bring me youth when I grow old”) and then total dependence (“I am your shadow in the dark; I have your blood inside my heart”); with three short verses (and no real chorus, besides some oh-o-o’s), we get the entire relationship between two people over a lifetime.
Kill The Moonlight followed the template established in Girls Can Tell, but cleaned up the production a bit and added a bit of an edge to most of the songs. Tempos picked up on several songs, and even on some of the softer tracks the band approached their instruments with a bit more ferocity. Piano/keys began to take an even more dominant role in the music, as evidenced by the opener “Small Stakes” which focuses on different variations of a playful organ riff (save for a tambourine), reserving the entrance of a chaotic drumset for the end. “The Way We Get By” is probably the song that most people know from the album, which again uses the piano as its driving force, this time opting for a jazzier/swingier vibe as Britt spins tales of misfits growing up tying various references to Stooges songs (“Shake Appeal”, “Some Weird Sin”, and “Down on the Street”, for the record) to certain rites of passages.
The band also begins to show their eye for experimentation, like with the studio-processed percussion of “Paper Tiger” and “Stay Don’t Go”, or the various production tricks of “Back to the Life”. Spoon manages to make these oddball touches sound almost organic, and never like mere gimmickry, and they’re able to fit right alongside more classic sounding songs like “Someone Something” or “All The Pretty Girls Go To The City”. The true heart of the album may be in the raging “Jonathon Fisk”, whose emphasis on a driving guitar call back to the earlier incarnation of the band, except for perhaps the horn lines that pop up at certain points in the track that indicate their newfound appreciation for jazzier influences. And just as they did before, Spoon ends the album with an excellent ballad, “Vittorio E.”, a song that to the listener provides a fitting resolution to the album, with its delicate acoustic guitar (mirrored by piano) and looping melodies, even as it ends with the repeated line of “It goes on.”
My first introduction to Spoon was with their next album Gimme Fiction and its unconventional lead single “I Turn My Camera On.” I was working in radio at the time, and I remember being utterly bewildered when I heard it for the first time, wondering to myself how it could be these guys that I had heard so much about from music critics. But I quickly came to appreciate the charms of Britt’s falsetto and marvel how the band could make a song with such an insistent straight beat sound so funky. I made sure to quickly grab a copy of the rest of the album, and it soon became a favorite of mine.
The opener “The Beast and Dragon, Adored” gave a clue that Spoon was now interested in deconstructing a lot of the basic elements of rock and putting them back together in an unconventional manner. When listening to the song, the structure seems relatively normal, but when you learn the music you realize that the different verse and chorus figures never follow the same pattern, and instead add and drop chord progressions at random. It gives the whole song a disorienting feel that would be otherwise impossible to determine. The melodies themselves are great at building up a mysterious, foreboding air, and the band writes great lyrics that give an almost-mythic sense to the music. The line “When you don’t feel it, it shows, they tear out your soul–And when you believe they call it rock and roll” is one of my all-time favorites and gives the sense that Spoon is fighting for the future of rock music as we know it, and is a brilliant setup for Britt’s spastic guitar solo that is the very definition of controlled chaos. It may sound like random noise, but it takes serious musical skill to pull off something that dissonant and make it still fit the song.
Even with more conventional rockers like “Sister Jack”, Spoon tweaks the formula in subtle ways that help capture the listener’s attention. The chord progression elongates some of the time spent on certain chords (a technique that is more clearly heard in the last few iterations in the song), providing some added tension, and helping to underline the emotions of betrayal that are evident from the lyrics (“But I can’t relax with my knees on the ground and a stick in my back”). Then there is the absurdity of the title character, “Sister Jack”, which is never actually explained in the lyrics. The tweaking of gender identities is found elsewhere on the album, most notably in “The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine”. It took the video for me to realize the storyline that was hidden in plain view, but a subtle tweak between the first and third verses provides the plot twist: in the first verse, the role that M. Valentine wishes to play “gets to sword-fight the duke, he kidnaps the queen”, but in the third verse “he makes love to the duke, he sword-fights the queen.”
Musically, the band places less emphasis on keys, though “My Mathetmatical Mind” proves to be an exception to the rule as its jazzy piano drives the tune, and in many ways represents the quintessential Spoon track. In fact, there were a few times I heard commercials with backing music that imitated the song, surely the result of some ad executive demanding something Spoon-esque but unable to pay the licensing fee for the real deal. Instead, acoustic guitar takes a more prominent role in many songs, like the excellent “I Summon You” and “The Delicate Place”, though the band makes sure that each strum is heard cleanly and doesn’t bleed from one stroke to the next. It still sounds like “Spoon”.
Spoon would return with the tight and poppy Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, which is probably best-known for its ebullient single “The Underdog”, a song whose effervescent horns recall for many Billy Joel, and not in a punchline kind of way. It has an infectious bounce and great incisive lyrics that help propel its positive message, and if you listen to it when you wake up it’s a great way to start your day. Another standout track is the buoyant and irrepressible “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb”, whose driving beat and soulful beat lift up the spirits of the listener, but mask what is actually a downer of a song. The music sounds so joyful, but the lyrics are all about the end of a relationship; even the central conceit of the cherry bomb is a reference to this, as the mentions of blowing out the cherry bomb are surrounded by lines like “We lost it long ago”, ‘I watched you start that drive alone”, and “Get yourself to bed”. It’s the happiest song about a breakup you’ll probably ever hear
The five best songs from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (“Don’t Make Me A Target”; “Finer Feelings”; “Black Like Me”; and the two previously mentioned ones) rank up with the best that Spoon has ever done, but on the whole I always have difficulty recommending this album over any of their others. The issue is not that the other five songs are bad–they’re all quite good, aside from “Don’t You Evah” which I would appreciate much more if the local radio station had chosen any other song on the album but that one to drive into the ground–it’s just that the Fab Five are so much better, that it creates an imbalance that you don’t really find on their other albums.
“Don’t Make Me A Target” initially sounds like a remake of “The Beast and Dragon, Adored”, but the fact that the entire song revolves around variations of the same riff, played differently according to the emotional mood of the lyrics, instead of the unsettled progression as outlined above, makes it an entirely different animal. That said, the breakdown into the guitar solo is a great partner to the Gimme Fiction track, and both are highlights of any Spoon show. “Finer Feelings” is simply a perfect pop song, filled with memorable lines like “A hundred yard stare of a kiss–Lord, I know I’ll never miss it” and “I was part-time at the Tasty Prawn–that and moving furniture and cutting lawns”, as well as the ingenious wordplay of using the Memphis newspaper Commercial Appeal in the chorus. Musically, the bass does a great job of locking into a bouncing groove, the guitar does a great job of providing the right rhythm accents and then twisting it into the chorus melody, and the fun studio tricks of using different samples and incorporating the talkback in the studio between the room and the performance area provide a nice color to the song without overwhelming it. And the closer “Black Like Me” is a great lovelorn ballad, one that plays the cruel trick of seeming to be just about to explode when the song suddenly stops, but somehow it works. “All the weird kids up front, tell me what you know you want–someone to take care of tonight.”
Spoon then closed out the decade with Transference, and it was at this point that it seems that critics got tired of writing praise for a consistently brilliant band and began taking them for grand. I feel like I need to start a support group for fans of this underrated album–well, as underrated an album can be when it still maintains a rating of universal acclaim at 80 on Metacritic. In many ways, it’s almost a reaction to the easygoing nature of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but there are gems that are ready to be found. Part of the allure is that there are so many subtly subversive tricks to the album that delight music obsessives; for instance, the band put the lead single and biggest rocker “Got Nuffin'” as the tenth track of an eleven track album. The band also indulges in some of the studio trickery that they had only previously dabbled in, incorporating more talkback in different songs as well as switching between demo instrumental tracks (the rougher sounding spots) and regular studio tracks. It gives the album a really great raw and stitched-together feel, and is an excellent rebuttal against their earlier meticulous production.
There are some truly great songs on Transference that should rank high on any Spoon fan’s list, like the energetic and spirited “Trouble Comes Running”. In many ways, its pop sensibilities would be perfect for Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but there are subtle tweaks that make it a natural fit for Transference; there’s the mix between demo and studio guitar for one, but then there’s the general approach of keeping the guitars as thin as possible when the natural melodic pull of the song would push other artists to fatten it up as big as possible. “I Saw The Light” uses its initial 6/8 triplet feel to create some excellent tension, and Jim Eno deserves a great amount of credit by switching on a dime to a straight-ahead 6/4 time signature, and seemingly cutting the climax at its knees. The fact that the lyrics cut out as soon as this time change occurs should be a signal to the listener that this is the exact moment that the narrator “saw the light”. But the outro almost raises more questions than it answers, as the chords continues to follow a descending pattern, while the guitars and piano hit on odd beats, so the listener is left to wonder exactly what it is the narrator “saw”. The album also includes two of the finest ballads of the band’s career with the gorgeous “Out Go The Lights” and the delicate and touching “Goodnight Laura”, songs which unfortunately have seemed to have gone overlooked in the years since the album’s release.
Where does They Want My Soul stack up within this great run? We’ll have the full review tomorrow, but we’ll say this now: it is definitely a fitting companion.
With the release this week of They Want My Soul, now is an excellent opportunity to take a look back at the remarkable career of Spoon. We here at Rust Is Just Right want to give novices a look at the elements that make up the Spoon sound, and how the band was able to become so reliably brilliant over the years that it was named the Metacritic Band of the Decade. In addition, we want to point out our favorite highlights of each album, so you know what to look for when listening through their discography this weekend.
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly constitutes the Spoon “sound”, but the band has developed a general style over the years that is identifiable to the trained ear. I’ve read in a few interviews with the band how critics would deem their music “minimalistic”, but that’s not quite accurate; there are dynamics, melodies, and chord progressions, unlike the true “minimalist” music that’s more experimental in nature. The better descriptor is “sparse”–Spoon doesn’t load up their songs with a lot of unnecessary filler, allowing the notes that each member plays to have room to breathe.
First, the band uses only a handful of tracks per song; there are not layers of guitars and keyboards and strings in a Spoon song. Second, as Britt noted in an interview with The Guardian, the band early on took out the rhythm guitar in most songs, so that it doesn’t clog the music, and this philosophy extends to the other instruments as well. The drums rarely rely on a ride cymbal or hi-hat to keep continuous track of the beat; the groove is felt through the precise emphasis of the rhythms of the bass and drums. The rhythms themselves aren’t particularly complex, but Spoon does a wonderful job of varying the way that they’re hit, shifting from drums to cymbals to tambourines to shakers and so on. As for the “rhythm” guitar, it’s deployed in the same way as the bass and the drums, usually as a counterpoint, with the additional responsibility of providing the occasional burst of color with the odd chord or novel tone; pianos and keyboards are often deployed in the same way as well. From these basic elements, Spoon has proven that it’s possible to assemble a wide variety of songs without repeating themselves; it also helps that the band also knows their way around a great melody or two.
The Spoon sound didn’t come fully developed; their debut Telephono almost sounds like the work of a completely different band, one that was much more indebted to 90’s alternative rock and 80’s post-punk. A lot of critics compared this album to the Pixies, but the comparison is really only accurate in describing their emphasis on short songs and oft-kilter stories. It’s much less oft-putting than the Pixies are on first listen, and filled with catchy hooks. The band hadn’t developed the philosophy to rhythm guitar as mentioned above, so it’s much more prevalent on Telephono than on any of their later work. Over the years, songs from Telephono gradually fell out of the band’s setlist, though songs like “Plastic Mylar” and “Don’t Buy the Realistic” still sound great today. The follow-up Soft Effects EP continued in a similar vein, and “Mountain to Sound” and “I Could See The Dude” get the occasional spotlight in a set, and represent a key point in the early evolution of the band.
The band’s major label debut A Series of Sneaks saw the band smooth out some of the rough edges of their debut, cutting out some of the fat and sticking to the hooks. It’s an album that still holds up well to this day, though it’s clearly of a different period than the traditional Spoon album. But you can tell there’s a clear connection between many of the songs on Sneaks and their later work; “Car Radio” or “Utilitarian” can pop up in the middle of a Spoon show and it wouldn’t sound out of place at all, even if the piano player has to figure out something to do for a couple of minutes. However, due to lackluster sales and turmoil at the record label, Spoon was dropped and left to their own devices to figure out what to do next; part of their thought process is heard on the re-release bonus tracks “Laffitte Don’t Fail Me Now” and “The Agony of Laffitte”, detailing their anger and feelings of betrayal.
The band responded to the lowest moment of their career (and to circumstances which would have killed most bands), with one of the greatest albums of the new millennium, Girls Can Tell. While Telephono and A Series of Sneaks are fine efforts (especially the latter, which is unfortunately often forgotten when discussing the band’s oeuvre), they are a cut below the brilliant hot streak that would follow in their wake. In our next and final part, we will discuss each of these albums in depth, which will hopefully serve as a bit of an appetizer to our review of their newest record, They Want My Soul. But to give a taste of what to expect, here’s the definitive ranking of Spoon albums according to Rust Is Just Right, which should certainly end any such debates from ever occurring again.
The story of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is one we’ve seen countless times before, and just as unfair as with many other cases–band debuts with huge buzz and overnight success, becoming a shorthand for the Hot New Thing, difficult followup alienates the tastemakers and the band’s profile begins to dwindle, band now exists in shadow of former glory and is now shorthand for “hey, weren’t we crazy back in [insert year]?” Granted, since we’re talking about indie rock bands in the new millennium, the full scale of their trajectory is of a much smaller scale than previous decades, but it’s a familiar pattern nonetheless. Even we here at Rust Is Just Right, fans of the band that we are, have added insult to injury by letting their most recent release pass by without much comment, letting it get lost amid a sea of other stellar releases that week.
However, since the newest iteration of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is set to play Portland this Sunday, now is the perfect time to correct our previous omission and attempt to put the band’s career in context, and also to help give the band a needed reassessment.
The story of the unexpected success of the band’s debut is still remembered today, as the band was able to sell over a hundred thousand copies of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah even without the benefit of record label support, based purely on the power of word-of-mouth and shares through music blogs. The album eventually made its way into the hands of various critics, and with a helpful push particularly from Pitchfork, the band became indie darlings and were selling out big halls while at the same time individually mailing out copies of their record. To give you an idea of their success at the time, the opener on their tour was The National, who were supporting their just-released classic Alligator. Today, it’s a different story, as The National can headline festivals while CYHSY plugs away at tiny clubs, but there’s no hard feelings–Matt Berninger does a guest vocal spot on the band’s new album.
While the story remains compelling, many might be surprised that the actual music still holds up years later. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah didn’t exactly spawn a legion of odd-voiced, delicate indie-dance rock imitators, so their unique sound stands out even today. The sparse arrangements serve the songs well, and the melodies remain strong and filled with hooks. If I hear “Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood” or “In This Home On Ice” pop up on my iTunes, I can still sing along with ease.
It was with their next album, Some Loud Thunder, that the band began to lose support; you can probably pinpoint the exact moment, which is when the heavily-distorted title track opens the album. I believe that initial impression turned off most people, as many probably reached for their album once it started playing and asked “Did I get a warped copy?” However, I personally eventually found some charm to that abrasive opening, and admired the ballsiness of the band’s maneuver to dare people who were merely hoping to catch the tail end of a trend to keep listening. The opening lines are also a brilliant response to the incredible hype that the band had received: “All this talking, you’d think I’d have something to say, but I’m just talking.” There was no hidden agenda; the guys were just interested in making music.
The album also features a couple of the group’s best singles, the twisted-but-goofy “Satan Said Dance” and the dramatic “Yankee Go Home”, but they failed to gain traction outside of a devoted fanbase. Otherwise, the album was filled with dreamy textures and various sound experiments, which work well if one is committed to listening to the album but can present problems for the casual listener. But when you strip away all the extra layers, there are still beautiful songs below the surface. For example, here’s a gorgeous if haunting solo acoustic performance of “Underwater (You and Me)”.
After the intentionally confrontational Some Loud Thunder, the band regrouped with the bouncy and fun Hysterical, trading experimental rock for more keyboards and a dance beat. It’s certainly an enjoyable record, and one that works extremely well live, though only a handful songs leave any sort of lasting impression. “Same Mistake” is an energetic rave-up, and “Adam’s Plane” is a nice dramatic ballad that builds to an epic finish, but in between those two songs the album merely seems to float from one track to the next.
Even with a pivot toward more crowd-pleasing material, the band’s audience continued to shrink. During the Some Loud Thunder tour, they sold out the Roseland Theater, one of the biggest venues in Portland; for the Hysterical tour, they downgraded significantly to the Hawthorne Theatre. Despite this, the band’s performance actually improved, as the smaller size of the venues seemed to be a more comfortable fit. The band was also helped by the fact that the people who showed up to see them were actual devoted fans, who had a great time providing an energetic response to the material and dancing along to the music, and yelling out the lyrics as needed.
After a few years off, the band returns in a radically different form, existing in recording form as basically a duo. Alec Ounsworth and his distinctive voice remain as he tackles most of the guitars and keyboards as well, with some help from drummer Sean Greenhalgh. The result is a careful, more subdued record that falls more in line with recent bedroom-pop-like efforts, and one can sense an element of restraint throughout the album. The result is an unusual combination of an air of calm mixed with a bit of unease, as the sounds themselves are soothing but they’re seemingly pushing against an unseen force to prevent a full explosion of emotion. Keyboards are a more dominant presence on the album, with single-note guitar lines cutting through to provide some edge and movement at particular moments, such as in the single “As Always” (embedded above) or to propel the momentum forward, as in “Coming Down”.
Overall, it’s an intriguing step forward for the band, and one that shows that while the band may be content to have a lower profile, the important thing is that they are still committed to releasing new music. Looking back, it was clear that the “living room” tour that the band did a few months prior to the release of Only Run was an indication of this new direction, and perhaps a sign of things to come. The band has shifted to an even smaller venue this time as it passes through Portland, as they perform within the intimate confines of Mississippi Studios. But if previous events are any indication, it will be an even better experience.
I finally have to deal with the moment that I’ve been dreading for weeks now, and that’s a discussion of Jack White’s latest solo album Lazaretto. It’s not a matter of disappointment with the record, or anything along those lines–in fact, I think it’s a pretty good record. The problem instead is that I feel I have no particular insight specific to this record to offer at all. As per the usual, White dabbles in different old-timey styles, while often adding a unique personal touch: here’s a more traditional folk song;, here’s the song where he inverts blues conventions and utilizes bizarre guitar tones, etc. It’s not that it’s formulaic, but at this point the audience should have a good idea in their minds of what a Jack White record sounds like, especially now that we have a variety of post-White Stripes work to analyze.
Of course, this doesn’t stop others from attempting to postulate on the supposed themes of the album, or worse yet, divine some sort of grand theory behind Jack White the artist and what it means for Our Culture. As one of the few cross-generational “rock stars”, White is a figure that no matter what he does is going to generate some interest, or at the very least some page views. Beyond learning about his origins, considering how striking the White Stripes were in contrast with the contemporary music scene, for the most part I never indulged in this impulse. To me, beyond chuckling at a few articles about his various idiosyncracies (who doesn’t love a good “record release by balloon” story?), Jack White was a guy that wrote a lot of great rock songs, and some that were not-so-great. My one concession to this line of thinking is the fact that my favorite Jack White moment is the beginning scene of It Might Get Loud, where he constructs a makeshift guitar out of various spare parts.
The scene helps show a lot of what I love about White as an artist–his practical ingenuity, his love of cheap crap, his ability to find music from the unlikeliest of sources, and the pure emotion that he puts into his music. I enjoyed Jack White before seeing the documentary, but I came away with a new-found appreciation about him as an artist.* The documentary also is worth mentioning because it helps define my critical viewpoint of Jack White: it’s usually one that’s in opposition to someone else.
I know that it sounds like the douchebaggiest position imaginable, but in reality it works as more of a grounding influence. “The White Stripes suck”/”Actually, they’re a pretty good band that shows how limits can actually result in even more creativity”; “The White Stripes are the best band in rock’n’roll”/”They’re really good, but come on, there’s a lot of filler in their catalog and you can’t say that every detour Jack White takes is one worth exploring”; “Jack White is a shit guitarist”/”He knows how to wring pure emotion out of his guitar, and the seemingly odd melodic choices are there for a reason–he’s not just randomly choosing notes, unless it’s in specifically appropriate circumstances”; “I never want to hear ‘Steady as She Goes’ ever again”/”…We agree on this.” I think that White Blood Cells and De Stijl are the Stripes’ best albums, with Get Behind Me Satan a severely underrated number three, especially considering how White was able to organically expand the sound with pianos and marimbas and still have it sound natural, and that Elephant despite its high points is not their magnum opus. I also believe that the solos in “Icky Thump” sound like an electric dog fart, and hearing that song in heavy rotation while I was working full-time as a DJ has to rank as the worst part of an otherwise great job. But I could listen to the guitar in “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” forever.
At this point, it makes sense that Jack White continue as a solo artist; even though a lot of this discussion centers on his work with Meg White, his solo work does allow him to indulge in different styles outside of the pigeonhole he created with the self-imposed barriers of The White Stripes. And the listener has benefited as a result, and it’s led to some thrilling results. You’ll find some of the most amazing displays of pure musicianship anywhere at one of his live shows; it was amazing to watch how in sync the band was with one another, especially the drummer, as Jack would change tempos and arrangements often on a whim.
Yet, amid all this general awe, there is little that is particularly memorable about White’s solo work. There are no immediately identifiable high points, like “Fell In Love With A Girl” or “Ball and a Biscuit”; I kind of remember “Love Interruption”, but that’s only because it got fairly significant airplay and I still had to think a bit before I could remember its melody. This is essentially the problem that I have with Lazaretto as well–when it’s done, I feel like I just listened to a good album. Ten minutes later, if you asked me about any favorite moment, I would be stumped. No matter how much I admire the music, there is still that little extra that is somehow missing to make it truly great.
Still, I’m going to be on the lookout for the next time Jack stops by the Northwest.
*My opinions about Jimmy Page were completely confirmed, however, as he displayed once again that he is the most overrated guitar player in existence. I cannot stand his extremely sloppy playing, and that’s on top of his lack of creativity. At one point he was playing one of his old Zeppelin songs, and he kept fumbling and making mistakes, and I had to think “Couldn’t they have done at least another take?”
According to the rushed pace of the standard Internet cycle, it’s probably more than a little late to the game to do an in-depth discussion on Coldplay at this point. I mean, their new album came out nearly a month ago! Even if you were interested in reading a thinkpiece on the band, you probably have had your fill weeks ago. You’re probably even less inclined than usual to read a semi-glorified album review for something that you could have listened to multiple times already.
Of course, these are issues separate from the fact that it’s Coldplay that would be the subject of analysis. The mere mention of their name is enough to get Internet Folk riled up to offer their witty take, usually a negative one at that. Then again, I’m not the first person to acknowledge this fact, as most pieces on Coldplay are offered from some sort of an apologist’s perspective. So I’m just going to lay my cards on the table: I’m a Coldplay fan. As I’ve put it before, “That’s right: I have opinions on Coldplay b-sides.”
Now here’s where we go over all the caveats. I’m a fan in the sense that I will buy each of their albums as they’re released, but there’s no guarantee that I will continue to listen to them as the years go by (in fact, it’s been several years since I’ve listened to X&Y, and I’ve made it a point to specifically not-listen to that album over the years–the play count on my iTunes for that album remains at zero, and you can go back three laptops and find that to be the case). I’m a fan in that I will occasionally offer a defense of their musicianship or some of their works, but I’m not one to go out of my way to convince people. I’m not exactly the zealous advocate that Coldplay may require.
I still listen to their first two albums fairly regularly, and I would argue that Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head are two of the best albums of the 00’s. It’s striking that often you will find that many of Coldplay’s detractors will concede that there are at least a couple of good songs on those albums; what’s even more impressive is that there isn’t a general consensus on what those specific songs are, and if you add the vote totals up for each song, you would end up with votes for half of each album. “Shiver” or “Don’t Panic”, “Everything’s Not Lost” or “Spies”? “The Scientist” or “Amsterdam”? ,”Clocks” or “Politik”? It’s easy to make a case for any of these songs (except for “Yellow”, which was of course their first breakthrough hit–I won’t stand for any argument for it, and it’s the one area where I’ll agree with the detractors. Go figure).
Once A Rush of Blood to the Head made Coldplay the biggest band in the world however, it would undercut the identity that gave them their success in the first place: that they were the underdog. It’s hard to believe the person singing a lyric like “So I look in your direction, but you pay me no attention” from “Shiver” when he’s married to Gwyneth Paltrow, or that the frontman of the best-selling band on the planet would be contemplating suicide, as in “Amsterdam”. They were no longer the plucky underdog, they were not the confident favorite. This would even box the band in musically, as they built their reputation on more intimate, simple songs. Even when they would explode with emotion, there was still an element of restraint. Sure there are big and brash pounding chords on “Politik”, but they resolve to a delicate conclusion by the end (pay close attention to the subtle melody that overlays the chords, that is the true movement in the song).
X&Y is the sound of a band spinning its wheels as it realizes it has these issues. Luckily, the group realized that from an artistic perspective, that it needed a change in focus (they never would have a problem from a commercial perspective–X&Y opened up at #1, as they would for the rest of their career). The band realized that they needed to alter their style, and hiring Brian Eno was a great way to start. That’s why Viva la Vida works much better as an album–they realize their place, but they also realize that now they can indulge in more adventurous musical experimentation. Mylo Xyloto was conceived similarly, except any subtlety was brushed aside in favor of amplification of all their traits, good and bad. It’s still better than X&Y, but it would take a conscious effort on my part to seek out (most of the time I forget the album even exists, honestly).
Sadly, with the recent turmoil in Chris Martin’s personal life, the band could conceivably claim the mantle of their earlier albums. Musically, it makes sense as well–after a couple of albums of experimentation, the time is ripe to return to the original formula and make more intimate songs. Ghost Stories does that, but in the process it seems to miss out on the strengths of those early albums. Guitars are generally discarded and drums are programmed, with only the bass given much of anything to do. By de-emphasizing their instrumental strengths, it often has the aura of being a Chris Martin solo album more than a Coldplay album. This was a band that had an underrated guitarist that would use novel chords, provide incisive leads, and had a complete mastery of tone, and a group that had a drummer that had a wonderful rhythmic sense and had great control over both powerful hits and subtle flourishes.
Despite these flaws, Ghost Stories does have its merits, and at least shows that the band is still willing to engage in musical left turns (the multi-tracked vocals reminiscent of Bon Iver in “Midnight” are an example where the experimentation works). It will make a fine late-night album, but it won’t take the place of Parachutes or A Rush of Blood to the Head quite yet.
With the release of Beck’s new album Morning Phase this week, it’s a great time to take a look over Beck’s long, varied, and often bizarre career. Imagine telling someone back in 1994 that the guy who sang (or rapped, your call) “With the plastic eyeballs, spray paint the vegetables/Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose” would still have a career twenty years later, and more than that, was a highly-respected musician; that person who was the recipient of your madness would be more than justified in attempting to have you committed.
Hopefully that scenario I presented only exists in the hypothetical world, because CrazyPants was actually correct. Here we are, two decades after “Loser” and Beck is now an elder statesman, whose every move the music press documents and analyzes for greater meaning, even if his album sales have declined over the years. As of the writing of this article, Morning Phase has a MetaCritic rating of 82 based on 43 reviews, his highest score since the release of Midnite Vultures in 1999.
With this release, and because we now live in a culture that is obsessed with mining over the past (especially the recent past), there has been a flurry of thinkpieces and longreads about the career of Beck and what this album means, most notably its relation to his somber album Sea Change. And what better way for a fledgling new publication to distinguish itself than by writing a variation that other more popular outlets have already done? We won’t be looking at the new album specifically (we’re saving that for its own review), but instead taking a closer look at each of Beck’s previous albums. Really, it’s the least we could do considering how the entire week before was spent on listening to those albums. Think of it as an actually decent Consumer Guide, coming from a guy who doesn’t stubbornly insist that In The City was The Jam’s best album.
It would be a fair assumption that the proper place to start with any retrospective is from the beginning, but it’s somewhat of a difficult task with Beck, since he had a few albums before his major label debut Mellow Gold. These on the whole amounted to glorified demos, and while there are a few gems here and there, I never really have the energy to sit through entire albums of alternative folk songs. There are a few interesting songs on One Foot In The Grave, and if you get the re-released version, you get the gem of an early version of “It’s All In Your Mind”, which would eventually be used for Sea Change. Beyond that, I would only recommend the early material if you’re a completist or are really into weirdo-folk, and if that’s the case, all the more power to you.
So it’s probably a good idea to start with Mellow Gold, and to answer the question that those who only know about Beck in passing–is there anything worthwhile on the album besides “Loser”? Yes! Even though I would personally rank it on the lower end of the Beck Album Scale, it’s definitely not an album with just one single and then filler through all the rest. You do get glimpses of the genre-splicing that Beck would become famous for, though the highlights tend to be variations on folk (my shorthand in this case for simple acoustic chords). “Pay No Mind” and “Blackhole” are great examples of this. And Beck’s humor in his lyrics are evident throughout the record. In other words, there was a good reason why you would consistently see “Beercan”, “Soul Suckin Jerk”, and “Fuckin With My Head” in people’s Napster directory.
With the recent release of the new Broken Bells album After the Disco, this is as good a time as any for people to become even more familiar with the different projects of Danger Mouse. If you’ve listened to music in the last ten years, you’ve come across several songs produced by Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, and more likely than not own at least an album filled with his contributions.
If there is one thing that I can pinpoint as a signature of the Danger Mouse Sound, it’s the idea of the old made new again, or perhaps the retro in a modern context. This is not done in a showy or bombastic way–at no point in a Danger Mouse song is he calling to the listener’s attention THIS IS AN OLD STYLE/CONCEPT. There is nothing post-modern about his use of old styles, and certainly no ironic commentary. He’s not just throwing old records into a blender and spitting out reprocessed old music; you won’t find a dubstep version of a Hollies song, for example. Though he first got most people’s attention with his Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up The GreyAlbum, he’s moved well beyond throwing modern beats behind old soul samples.It’s much more subtle, which is why it’s worked so well over multiple iterations.
There are certain reoccurring elements that can be found in the Danger Mouse sound. The one that I usually pick up on is a certain bass sound–quick, staccato single notes, and often muted to dampen the sound a bit. There are also certain idiosyncrasies to his drumming/percussion, namely in his snare sound and his use of the ride cymbal, often matched with a late 50’s/early 60’s rock beat. And you are also likely to hear certain organ flourishes that give an additional color; it’s usually not a dominant sound, but present enough in the background that it is a significant part of the atmosphere of the song.
Danger Mouse hasn’t just been consistently excellent in the past decade, he’s been quite prolific. That means there are probably a few albums of his that you haven’t gotten around to listening to, or may not even have known existed. I mean, I was looking at this list and saw a few albums that I owned that I had no idea he had helped produce. It could just be confirmation bias speaking, but as I’ve listened to them in writing this article, I keep going, yeah, that definitely has that Danger Mouse sound.
One of those albums is The Good, The Bad & The Queen, which has unfortunately been forgotten about a bit over the years. It’s the rare super-group album that’s worth listening to (and it definitely is a super-group: Damon Albarn of Blur, Simon Tong of The Verve, legendary drummer Tony Allen, and holy shit Paul Simonon of The Clash). While each of the component parts are brilliant, they unite to create a singular album that is different than anything else they’ve ever done.
Another overlooked album is the debut of Electric Guest, Mondo. I’ve heard the single “This Head I Hold” a bit on the local alternative radio station, but it never made much headway nationally. It very much has the kind of groove found in Danger Mouse’s work with Gnarls Barkley, namely from the bass and from the classic pop-rock drums, just with a different singer.
Speaking of Gnarls Barkley, even though everyone knows their breakout hit “Crazy” and a lot of people picked up their debut album, their follow-up The Odd Couple never caught on like it should. There was no single track that stood out from the pack like “Crazy” did, but the album was stacked from top-to-bottom with fantastic songs. “Run”, “Going On”, and “Surprise” were all incredibly fun tracks filled with energy that should pack the dancefloor. “Blind Mary” was a bouncy track that managed the difficult task of being positive yet melancholic. And then there’s the devastatingly heart-breaking ballad, “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?”, with it’s absolutely perfect video.
2008 was an absolutely banner year for Danger Mouse, creatively speaking. He had three of my top ten albums of that year, an honor that means absolutely nothing to most everyone. In addition to The Odd Couple, there was his work on Beck’s Modern Guilt and The Black Keys’s Attack & Release, albums which I will argue are among the high points of each artist’s careers. Beck is of course famous for shifting genres with each album, and he slides in smoothly into the Danger Mouse style. Beck always had a great touch in finding bits and pieces of old styles and repurposing them in modern contexts, so it should have been no surprise that he and Danger Mouse were simpatico.
The Black Keys were a different story. They had an easily identifiable trademark sound of ragged two-man blues/rock, and it was unclear how another element could fit in without disrupting that aesthetic. So often the production touches were at the margins or added for just little bits of color–a perfectly timed organ hit here, a little jazz flute there, etc. It was enough to push the group into new creative directions and eventually into greater commercial success. While some may grow tired of how The Black Keys have come to dominate rock radio today, I will always appreciate it when great songs like “Little Black Submarines” come on, even if they ruin some of its beauty by knocking out a whole verse and not allowing the song to properly develop (a rant that I will save for a later day).
It’s a lot better than being constantly subjected to Nickelback.
But perhaps the most interesting entry in the Danger Mouse discography is the project he did with composer Daniele Luppi, entitled Rome. It’s basically a soundtrack to a fake spaghetti western, and it’s really quite a blast. The album does a great job of mixing in instrumentals with more traditional “songs”, featuring Jack White and Norah Jones on vocals. In the end it fulfills the goal of any project like this: it makes you want to see the movie that would have this soundtrack.
If this has done anything, I hope it makes you at least somewhat excited when news of another Danger Mouse release comes out. And checking the calendar, you should be feeling that in approximately…three months. Enjoy.
In recent years I developed a scientific but informal method to determining the best albums of the year. It’s scientific in its attempt at objectivity (number of plays over the year), but informal in that the order was only for the purpose of guiding friends as to which albums they would get the most bang for their back. For the year of 2011, this process determined that the self-titled debut of Cults was the fourth-best album of the year, while Yuck’s album (coincidentally enough, also a self-titled debut) took the crown at number one. Since then, I can honestly say those assessments hold up, since I continue to listen to those albums on a regular basis (in fact, if I re-ranked the list, I’d bump Cults up into the number two slot, close behind Yuck (sorry Girls and The Antlers)).
Is there a reason to pair these bands together, besides future narrative convenience? In a way, probably. As has been the case for most rock bands for over a decade now, both of these bands took their major inspirations from the past and offered their own reinterpretations of their favorite old bands. If you want to be mean, you could say the urge was not to push boundaries and create new genres, but to affirm a love of the old sounds that they had heard before, and hey what do you know, let’s try to do the same things ourselves. I myself don’t want to be mean, so don’t pin that accusation on me (others, however, have no problem whatsoever with this approach and react in a way that makes you want to ask if there’s anything you can do to console them, because it seems as if somebody in the band ran over their dog (possibly on multiple occasions)).
What distinguished Yuck and Cults from their colleagues was the era of their particular nostalgia. While several bands trafficked in 80’s revivalism (from post-punk to top-40 sounds) or hearkened back to 70’s arena rock, Yuck and Cults chose different routes: early-90s guitar-rock for Yuck and 60’s-era pop for Cults. After years of call-backs to Joy Division, Gang of Four, or God forbid, Led Zeppelin, critics at least would have a different set of bands to name-drop in describing each group’s sound (well, Dinosaur Jr. at the very least–that was the one that got the most references from what I’ve read for Yuck; I never saw too many specifics for Cults). But reminding me of some of my favorite bands only gets you so far; I was more than anything impressed with the execution of each band.
Take “Get Away”, the track that kicks off the Yuck album: the super-fuzzed-out rhythm guitar instantly catches your attention, and then the delicious lead guitar line, both in terms of melody and tone, kicks in through the mix with a circular riff that matches the song’s theme. But it’s the little moments that add up that make me truly appreciate the song: the excellent use of feedback as lead parts in the second verse, a post-chorus that truly builds on the chorus and leads perfectly back to the verse, and a bridge where everything drops out but a bassline reminiscent of the Pixies before everyone jumps back in for one last go-around. It’s early 90’s alternative done with an ear for perfect songcraft, and the only thing that’s infuriating is that the band members are even younger than I am.
For Cults, the comparisons are more general: the sunny nature of Madeline Follin’s vocals and the bright happy melodies do a lot to evoke an air of nostalgia, and bring to mind memories of Phil Spector and old-time girl groups like The Ronettes. It takes a lot to make this style seem like more than a gimmick, and over the course of an album Cults managed to do this successfully. There are subtle modern touches that provide enough of a twist to capture your attention, especially with the drum programming, and the seemingly carefree vocals mask lyrics that are more melancholic than expected. And I have to love a band that’s willing to do not only music videos, but videos that can be best described as “the director decided to get stoned and watch Lost Highway, and oh yeah, let’s make it a bizarre love story too”.
It’s easy then to imagine the excitement I felt when I learned that these two bands would be releasing new albums in 2013. I was excited to see what new influences the bands were willing to explore, or if they decided to stick with their old formula, that frankly sounded fine as well–it was a win-win as far as I was concerned. But soon after the announcements of the new albums, bad news followed: Yuck announced that lead singer Daniel Blumberg had left the band (and would record an album as Hebronix), and Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin had broken up as a couple, but in both cases, new albums were going to be released anyway. This was just the kind of news that makes a fan more than a bit wary of what could possibly be released, or worry that there would even be a release at all.
Each banded handled the turmoil in different ways: Cults agreed to several interviews detailing the process of making their new album and providing further background of the romantic-but-not-band breakup, and Yuck just started releasing music. The first single after Blumberg’s departure that Yuck released was “Rebirth”, which is just too on-the-nose to not be something that was planned. It did signal a new influence for the band, as they seemingly had decided to switch their focus from American alternative-rock to British shoegaze, and it seemed that the band had internalized the latter style as well as they had the former on their debut. In a normal year, I would have said that “Rebirth” was the best My Bloody Valentine song released that year; since hell froze over and My Bloody Valentine actually released a new album last year, I would revise my statement and say it was the third or fourth-best MBV song of the year.
The Cults approach worked too, because at least with continued engagement with the press indicated that a follow-up was not a tossed-off effort, and that they were committed to continuing the band. And their choice of a teaser single took the opposite approach of Yuck: from a stylistic perspective, “I Can Hardly Make You Mine” would fit right in at just about any point in the track-listing of Cults, though there were some subtle differences in the instrumentation that pointed to some growth (synths that were higher up in the mix, a more dominant guitar part, and livelier drumming all pointed to exciting possible new directions for the album).
With these songs, optimism began to build up once again, and I gladly purchased Glow and Behold and Static as soon as they were released. I then went through my usual ritual, ripping the CD and importing the tracks onto my iPod (to be played during the next workout), and then putting the physical discs in my car (to be played on my next drive). And just as was the case with their debuts, my reaction to each album was that of near-instant love. Now here we are a few months later and both albums remain in my car as part of the regular rotation, and when I write up my review of the best albums of 2013, both albums should have a place on the list.
But apparently I’m in the minority with this opinion (well, a minority of a minority–we’re talking about indie bands that are somewhat obscure even by indie rock standards). While Static actually has a similar Metacritic score to Cults, it failed to generate as much press or buzz, and failed to appear on year-end lists at the same rate that I remembered that their debut did. And there was a huge nosedive in critical appreciation of Glow and Behold as opposed to Yuck. Another bad sign was the lack of local promotion for either of their shows in Portland, which is pretty amazing considering that the backstories for each album should be a hook for both critics and their subsequent audience. The articles practically wrote themselves.
At least with some critics, it appeared that some were unwilling to let go of the past. This is especially evident in AllMusic’s review of Glow and Behold, which can’t seem to accept the fact that the band decided to continue without Blumberg, and subsequently would not sound the exact same. It may be just that I personally found the increased emphasis on shoegaze to be a more interesting route to take than an attempt to ape Blumberg’s whine, or that I had fonder memories of Teenage Fanclub than others (when Yuck first came out, I remarked that it seemed like they were the one band that learned that Bandwagonesque was SPIN’s album of the year over Nevermind and seemed to agree with the result; the Teenage Fanclub influence was even more pronounced on Glow and Behold, with the album’s more focus on brighter melodies and cleaner guitars). It was the same case with the more negative reviews of Static, though in a way in reverse: reviews would say how there was little deviation from the first album, when there was an entire two-thirds of the album that had a darker mood and more challenging instrumentation than anything on the debut.
So it’s clear what my answer to the title question is, and for what it’s worth, the few of my friends that care about this sort of thing tend to agree. I’m fine with enjoying great songs like “We’ve Got It” and “Middle Sea” (a song that would be near the top of my list of best singles of the year) on my own, but I just hope that we won’t end up seeing more great bands like these two get caught up in the downswing of the hype-cycle, despite continuing to produce great music, as we’ve seen plenty of times before. In other words, when album number three comes out, I’ll be there.
Rust Is Just Right 