Album Review: Art Brut - Art Brut Vs. Satan

Art Brut

Art Brut Vs. Satan

Rating: Satan wins.

I really, really wanted this album to be good. I absolutely adore Bang Bang Rock & Roll and like many other admirers of that album I was very disappointed by its follow-up, It's a Bit Complicated. I knew that it would be tough to capture the lightening-in-a-bottle spark of BBR&R on a second album, but Complicated came off as more stale and half-hearted than I expected it to be. I also knew that it would be tough for Art Brut to make a return-to-form third album because such a large part of their "form" was novelty, and, by definition, you can only have that once. Art Brut Vs. Satan, recorded in Portland with Black Francis, is an improvement over its immediate predecessor, but drives home that Art Brut is a one (very good) trick band.

One listen to "Alcoholics Unanimous" tells you pretty much all you need to know. It's a fine song and features a hung-over Eddie Argos demanding caffeinated beverages while explaining why he feels like shit. There's a nice little structure, some well-placed backing vocals, and an excellent use of the word "et cetera," but it just seems like the same old same old. What was it that Eddie said of songs about sex, drugs, and rock and roll years ago? Well, three albums in, he ended up being right. "DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshake" is also a nice, even sweet song, but if you replace the titular items with "Emily Kane," you have an almost identical and far inferior version of the BBR&R highlight. The rest of the album continues along those lines: they're all objectively good songs, but they all seem like worse versions of songs we've heard the same band play before.

Although I'm disappointed in the album, I still love the band even if they can only be enjoyed by listening to a five-year-old record and by seeing them live. I think the songs on Art Brut Vs. Satan will take on new life and be best enjoyed in concert because Art Brut is still the most fun live band on the planet, and Eddie's delivery works best when you can see his sublime ridiculousness in person. I'll report back after seeing them in a few weeks.

--Jim Powers

Album Review: Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career

Camera Obscura

My Maudlin Career

Rating: If after listening to this you still have testicles, you're doing okay.

Now that the myspace.com phenomenon of internet music discovery has been well established, I recall that years ago I fortuitously came upon Camera Obscura in just that manner while perusing the bands listed on the Concrete’s site. But I bought My Maudlin Career at Permanent Records in Chicago on none other than Record Store Day, so a little “In your face!” to the digital music hand that fed me.

I consider Camera Obscura’s Let’s Get Out of this Country as an album that was part of a personal revival in my interest in the rock scene a few years back. It came alongside my discovery of other fantastically wimpy rock bands like Belle & Sebastian and Rilo Kiley. I fell hard for their poppy, sappy sound and their penchant for melodrama. After completely overdosing on it for months, I stashed it away for years and once again have been listening to it recently when I heard that My Maudlin Career was forthcoming. I’ve decided that it has staying power and thus made me excited for their next release.

The album opens with a catchy and arguably their best number, “French Navy.” The next track flows nicely into the dreamy “The Sweetest Thing” that starts with back-up singers woo-woo-wooing and tambourines shaking. It makes you want to don a polyester, flowery 1960’s dress and take your sweetheart for a moonlit walk. Funny how music can whisk you away to a time and place you’ve never been to. A light country rhythm and slide guitar accompanies “Away with Murder” and closes with a melancholy violin. We get a mid-album break with “James,” a meditational, heartbreaker of a song. It definitely has a whiff of Belle & Sebastian. I was a bit disappointed with the closing track, “Honey in the Sun” because I think it was too reminiscent of “Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken” from the previously mentioned Let's Get Out of This Country. It did not give My Maudlin Career the epic, sweeping closure that “Razzle Dazzle Rose” gave Let’s Get Out of This Country. This may be a bit nit-picky, but I felt the closer should have been “My Maudlin Career” for it being the title track and its echoy grandeur. Camera Obscura has once again nailed down the art of retro pop and it can be delivered to you in a beautiful watercolor album cover should you choose to go non-digital.

But above all what stands out in My Maudlin Career is Campbell’s vocal styling, the band’s true piece de resistance. Campbell’s steely, paucity of expression belies her church-like voice. It’s fragile and also very soothing. In concert she sings like a reluctant member of a choir, and only shows occasional hints of anguish that indicate she actually is feeling something. It’s quite refreshing given the multitudes of stage acts out there that often detract from musicianship.

After listening to My Maudlin Career ad nauseum, I notice I keep on reaching for the heavy handed bluesy rock of the Black Keys. You do run the risk of getting oversaturated with the girliness of Camera Obscura. So this review is a caveat for all the manly men out there. I have yet to meet a man who offered up that he likes Camera Obscura. So while you might not buy into this music all that much, at least you can woo your next rock babe at your nearest dive with this material.

Shaping today’s rock music landscape you have at one end the cataclysmic, experimental jangle of Animal Collective and the introspective poetry of Elvis Perkins at another. On some vastly different part of the spectrum lies Camera Obscura with their simple formula: one lead singer/songwriter performs structured songs with a tame band. This Scottish band plays nothing up with that classic reserved, across-the-pond attitude. But if you strip away all the existential shit that we often tie to a band’s worth and just listen to this bittersweet orchestral pop, it’s really quite enjoyable.

--Audrey Wen

Album Review: Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Neko Case
Middle Cyclone
Rating: It will go far in the tournament.

The nomadic, ginger-haired songbird moved to a dilapidated Vermont farmhouse to record Middle Cyclone and enlisted the help of some heavy hitters, including fellow Pornographer Carl Newman, M. Ward, and Calexico’s Joey Burns. This is an album that creatively does not venture far from her classic, moody, dark tones, but will haunt you down to your inner core nonetheless. Additional unique contributors to the album included Vermont crickets in “Marais La Nuit” and six lovely, old, unwanted pianos salvaged from Craigslist, rehabbed and brought back to life in the Harry Nilsson cover, “Don’t Forget Me.”

She throws it all on the table in the opening track, “This Tornado Loves You.” With lyrics like “Carved your name across three counties/Smashed every transformer with every trailer/So I pick them up and crash them down/Cuz I miss how you'd sigh yourself to sleep,” you know she’s ready to let it wail, she’s not going to apologize or take it back. She writes with such intense imagery - of swirling cyclones bearing tender love, of vultures lulling you to a safe but dark sleep. It’s simultaneously unsettling and charming. It’s that dangerous seduction of loneliness, an apocalyptic collision between beauty and absolute bone-crushing destruction.

The poppy “People Got a Lotta Nerve” scrapes what’s left of us off the floor as she embraces the inner man-eater by delighting in an unsuspecting man. In the liner notes for this song there is a cartoon of a killer whale sucking down a can of beer in hunting gear. This is the most lighthearted track of the album, albeit one large cannibalistic metaphor.

The title track gets a nice snug spot in the middle of the album. “Middle Cyclone” is a stripped-down, tender, confessional of a proud lover being undone composed of a simple trio of voice, music box, and a guitar. It is followed by the wobbly, atonal “Fever” which makes novel use of a Hawaiian guitar and then my personal runaway hit of the album, “Magpie to the Morning.” It’s a dark lullaby, a cautionary tale told by a magpie of a deceptive vulture and mockingbird. In this song, the vulture scoffs at your noble cause: “Run an airtight mission, a Cousteau expedition / To find a diamond at the bottom of the drain.” I heard bits of this track months ago in a story about the album before it was released and its tantalizing opening measures whetted my appetite for this album like a bell rung for Pavlov’s dog. I would have bought the album for this song alone without hesitation.

The final tracks of the album allude to submission and resolve. In “Pharoahs” she aches for something that never happened which ultimately results in concession with “I want the pharaohs, but there’s only men” (I hear you, sister). But rather than concluding in some clarity or forging a new direction, she finishes in a lateral move. She resolves in “Red Tide” to keep on truckin’ as if to declare that she has traversed every emotion, laid them out from track one to thirteen and now she’s packing it all up and moving on. While maybe not exactly redeeming, it reflects the overriding tone of the album. It’s not heroic. Instead it’s bitter and rough. But there’s a palpable beauty in that, and when it’s all over, she takes stock in what remains and is not ashamed of her scars.

At first Middle Cyclone didn’t grab me and get that “holyf*ckingsh*t this is awesome” response that I got with Furnace Room Lullaby and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. At best it seemed like a middle of the pack record. But as I give it more play time, I realize that this is vintage Neko Case, circa a time that we all recognize, when we foolishly sabotaged our own opportunities or when we were too proud. She just makes our vices sound so cool because she likens them to tornadoes and sings in a voice with the most haunting richness I’ve ever heard in my lifetime. Miss Case has brought down yet another fine kill, and it deserves to be given a whirl in an audio player in a living room near you.

--Audrey Wen

Album Review: Studio 1 - Studio 1

Studio 1
Studio 1
Rating: An ameliorative for slackers.

My life is out of order. Working too much, drinking too much, keeping odd hours, not sleeping or exercising enough, not eating right, beard down to my chest. In short, I have lost focus. One of my goals this year is to get my shit together and halt The Great Thickening of 2008. And I have found a soundtrack in Studio 1, a collection of 12" records by Studio 1, aka techno luminary Wolfgang Voigt, co-founder of Cologne's venerable Kompakt label.

The collection, out of print since the late 90s/early 00s, exudes formalism, rigidity, and discipline through repetition and 4/4 beats, making it ideal for early mornings on the stepmill or evenings in front of the computer. Which is not to say Studio 1 is boring. Quite the opposite: It's hooky and engaging (even tense), it pushes the bounds of minimalism, and subtle shifts layer upon one another so that over time, creases unfold and variance reveals itself.

One of Voigt's preferred modes of expression on Studio 1 is addition by subtraction. On "Red"**, for instance, a little synth bloop (that's the best I got) that at first scans as nothing more than a time-keeping mechanism eventually is subsumed by the rest of the song. You forget it's even there until it's removed entirely, leaving only bass, snare, and hi-hat. When Voigt reintroduces the bloop (you come up with something better) about a minute later, the effect is stunning, focusing your attention like a laser during the last third of the song. "Blue" employs similar methods, but from the opposite direction: drum fills and basslines you hadn't noticed before appear from the ether (check the drum break around 5:00), and effects pop up and repeat in one stereo channel or the other. Elsewhere, the deep bass, the shifts in pitch, and the clicks/glitches of "Rose" congeal into a razor-sharp whole; and the positive bounce of "Silver", with its various permutations of the hi-hat, is the liveliest cut on the album.

The overall effect of Studio 1 is to keep the listener in suspense, waiting for a big payoff that never really happens. Don't confuse "lack of a payoff" with "unrewarding," though. This album's rewards are plentiful given time and patience, or even passivity. In many ways the album can be perceived as ambient in that it "accommodate[s] many levels of listening attention" and is "as ignorable as it is interesting." Your attention ebbs and flows, but never dissipates. Insistent without being demanding, Studio 1 is the rare techno album that's suitable to any imaginable context. Except maybe sleeping.

**Note about due diligence: I'm using the song titles (e.g., "Red", "Yellow") as they appear in my iTunes. However, research indicates some discrepancy with respect to the track listing. The original Studio 1 12" releases were untitled and differentiated by colored vinyl. Kompakt lists six tracks comprising the original Studio 1 pressings and this reissue. The album in my possession, though, includes ten tracks, four of which were previously unreleased. Resident Advisor clarifies things . . . kind of. My decision to use the "colored" song titles, while perhaps not entirely accurate, reflects my experience with this music.

--Brian Herrmann

Album Review: Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective

Merriweather Post Pavilion

Rating: I have never met someone from Hoboken, New Jersey that I didn't want to immediately put in a headlock.

I read somewhere that if you wanted to start a fight within the community of slack-jawed alternative yokels that read the magazine No Depression, all you had to do was bring up Wilco’s 1999 album Summerteeth. Some of them loved it and embraced Chicago’s favorite sons' new sense of experimentation. The others hated it, and felt the St. Louis band had snubbed the alternative country scene. (A scene that Chuck Klosterman once accurately pointed out rested on the laurels of a bunch of musicians born in the late 1960s writing songs about their experiences during the Great Depression and their affinity for fine malt whiskey.) I really do think there were certain Wilco fans that were reluctant to sign off on such a dramatic shift of sound. But there was something else at play, too. Some fans just weren’t ready to share the band with the new fans roped in by Summerteeth.

The same sort of thing could be at play with Animal Collective’s eighth album Merriweather Post Pavilion (hereinafter, MPP). MPP has a slightly more generous sound than their prior records, and those that have never heard or bothered with Animal Collective might finally tune in and start to understand what all the fuss is about. Therefore, if I had to guess (and I base this on nothing, mind you, other than a hunch), I wouldn’t be surprised if there are certain Animal Collective fans who have been around since the Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished days that are lining up to hate, or at least slightly resent, MPP. Take the second track “My Girls.” It’s an incredible song with all the proper Animal Collective experimental ingredients along with the requisite nonsensical chorus (“I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status/ I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls.”). Oh, and it’s catchy as hell. So catchy your mom might like it. And there’s nothing like a great melody and moms to piss off the original fan base.

The album starts off with “In the Flowers,” a showcase of dreamy pop that eventually navigates into a series of crashing drums and just a big mess of awesome noises and vocals. Oh, brother, I really like this song. That notwithstanding, if the melody from “In the Flowers” isn’t lifted directly from the underwater levels from Super Nintendo’s 1994 classic Donkey Kong Country, then I didn’t beat that game during a 37-hour Coca-Cola and Doritos induced barrage of button-pushing instincts unrivaled to this day. So move over Coldplay and Joe Satriani, we might have another lawsuit on our hands.

MPP was actually released in several forms right after the New Year, and that’s when we here at NQL initially planned to do something with the record. But after glowing reviews starting pouring in from every direction, we thought it would be better to take a step back, give it a month, and then take another look. The best way to determine an album’s worth is usually after the honeymoon is over. (I believe this last sentence to be true. But what I wrote before it is a complete lie. What actually happened was laziness set in and before we knew it the album had been out for well over a month and we hadn’t done anything. The delay was completely unplanned.)

I bring this up because the virtues of the album become nearly impossible to ignore after listening to track 7, “Taste.” It’s not the strongest track on MPP, but it’s the first time I allowed myself to come to grips with the fact that this is a pretty great record. It’s an admission that must be made when you’ve been listening to an album nearly non-stop for a month and can still breeze through the half-way point with no intention of changing the dial. And symbolism aside, it’s a pretty good song. At the 0:37 mark, a really weird noise serves as a springboard for another rather catchy melody. And yes, when I review an album, that’s as good of a musical description you will get from me: a really weird noise and a catchy melody. Robert Christgau I am not.

That’s not to say they are all winners on MPP. “Daily Routine” is a bit of a bore, and “No More Runnin” is so sleepy it nearly cured the headache I got from staring at the ridiculous album cover. But if they’re the worse MPP has to offer, you can go to sleep at night knowing you’re in good hands. You can also rest assured knowing they’re the only tracks that have any stench of filler. Most of the tracks so brazenly attempt to mix creativity with basic pop sensibilities, that at the very least, you have to applaud the effort. For example, “Lion in a Coma” and the last track, “Brother Sport,” are so worldly absurd they wouldn’t be out of place on the Jungle Book Soundtrack. And I mean that in the most endearing way possible because you’re probably going to love these two songs, while at the same time trying to comprehend what you're actually listening to. At least, that's what happened to me.

Just as these two songs, along with the aforementioned “My Girls,” will be inviting to people looking for room on the Animal Collective bandwagon, I suspect they are the same songs that could potentially persuade veteran Animal Collective fans to give up their existing seats. But the more I think about it, there’s a good chance I am wrong. Even with this record, Animal Collective is still not going to appeal to the Rhianna crowd, or to even a large segment of people who own Arcade Fire records. The fresh and funky pop still gives way to that sense of avant-garde-ism that has always dominated their sound. And if there are any old Animal Collective fans who do find MPP to be just a tad too welcoming to all the new faces now listening to the band, I’ll be happy to let them borrow my copy of A.M. to keep them busy until something more akin to their taste comes along. In fact, they can keep it. I insist.

--Alex

Album Review: Morrissey - Years of Refusal

Morrissey

Years of Refusal

Rating: His best since Vauxhall and I.

Beginning with the 2004 comeback album Morrissey Holding a Tommy Gun (aka: You are the Quarry) and continuing with 2006's Morrissey Holding a Violin (aka: Ringleader of the Tormentors), Steven Patrick has put together a pretty good run of albums featuring covers of His Pompadourness holding something. Morrissey Holding a Baby (aka: Years of Refusal) is the clear high point of this recent run and his best effort in about 15 years. While his voice sounds as strong and clear as it always has, he sounds a little more growly and pissed off than usual. The opener "Something is Squeezing My Skull" sets more of a rocking, angry tone than his recent output, and that tone lingers throughout the album. The Tormentors (Morrissey's backing band) get to play around a little more this time, evidenced by the bit of fuzz guitar (or something) during "Mama Lay Softly on the Riverbed." They continue the trend of being an excellent band while not sounding at all like Johnny Marr & Co.

The album's high points come fast and furious (without the Tokyo drift). The first three tracks are excellent, I think the best on the album. The fourth track, "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" is a fine song, but unfortunately kills the momentum that the first three tracks so strongly establish. From there on, the songs are still very good (especially "All You Need Is Me" and "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore"), but only hint at an overarching theme. Perhaps this theme will reveal itself more fully after repeated listens, which will certainly occur. Overall, Years of Refusal is a very, very good album that was certainly hinted at in Quarry and Ringleader. I think the songs might even be better live when they are illustrated by Morrissey's posturing and mugging. I will see this spectacle at the end of March (for the first time). After finally hearing this album, I can't wait.

--Jim Powers