BuzzSugar

CD Review: Matt Pond PA, Last Light

BuzzSugar — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 15:30:17 -0700

I don't know who chose today as the release date for Matt Pond PA's new album, Last Light, but the music couldn't be more perfectly suited to the waning days of summer. From the painfully timely title track to the gentle acceptingness of the final song, "It's Not So Bad at All," the music perfectly captures that mix of depression and optimism that has plagued my summer-fall transition since my first year of school.

Not surprisingly, I picked this record as one of my September must haves. For what I thought, and to hear one of the standout tracks, read more

Before hearing this album, I decided that if every song was all as great as "People Have a Way," then Last Light could be a masterpiece. While it doesn't quite live up to that tall order, there are moments of emotive mastery mixed in among the duds. With the string-driven beats and hard-charging piano, this Matt Pond PA reminds me a little of Andrew Bird if Bird got a little more emo.

In fact, I'd still call this album a must-listen for the autumnal mood is sets so well. "Basement Parties" captures the hungover doldrums that often come with the end of summer, and almost everywhere else, the waning sunlight theme rears its melancholy head. On "Foreign Bedrooms," Pond sings: "deep in the night / with halos around the lights / there's nothing to hold / it's all letting go, don't you know it?" By the end, you'll be happy to give in to the futile battle against fall.

CD Review: Feist, The Reminder

BuzzSugar — Tue, 08 May 2007 10:16:40 -0700

When I first picked up Canadian singer-songwriter Feist's breakthrough album, 2004's Let it Die, I thought it was perfectly pleasant background music. Her '70s-infused, lounge-y songs seemed perfect for a dinner party, or for playing faintly while I flipped through a magazine. Only the catchy "Mushaboom" really made me sit up and take notice, wedging itself in my head for days on end.

With her new album, The Reminder, Feist has delivered a set of songs that owe more to "Mushaboom" than to the rest of Let It Die - and that's a wonderful thing. Feist shines on the uptempo songs on The Reminder, doesn't lose my interest on the ballads, and stocks her tracks with the kind of arrangements that show she's grown as a musician since her last effort. For more on the album, and to hear my favorite track, read more

Sure, it's only May, but I'm already set to declare "I Feel It All" as my summer anthem, with rhythmically repetitive lyrics ("I love you more/I love you more/I don't know what I knew before") and a vibraphone-driven melody. The swingy rhythm of "My Moon My Man" showcases a chorus vaguely reminiscent of '70s soul, and "Sealion" makes up for a somewhat cheesy guitar solo with exuberant, gospel-style clapping. Somehow, all of those elements - plus horns! - come together perfectly on "1 2 3 4," the album's final uptempo track. Percussion plays a larger role on these danceable songs than it has in Feist's previous work, but it never overshadows her voice, which is crystal-clear and haunting as always.

The majority of the album's slower numbers work, too, with the richly layered choruses of "Honey Honey," the sweetly folky "Brandy Alexander" and the duet "How My Heart Behaves" being among the strongest. A few of the ballads still haven't grabbed me after several listens, but they're the exception, not the rule. Above all, The Reminder isn't content to stay in the background. It's an album that demands to be played.

CD Review: CocoRosie, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn

BuzzSugar — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:30:57 -0700

There is a whole breed of baby-voiced women - Joanna Newsom, Satomi Matsuzaki of Deerhoof, and, to a lesser extent, Bjork - whose singing style suggests that of a tiny girl stranded on an amusement park ride. When the creepy/cutesy effect works, it's stunning, and when it doesn't, it can just be grating. That can definitely be said of CocoRosie, comprised of sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady, whose third album, The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, hit stores this week.

In keeping with the nursery-rhyme-sounding title, CocoRosie's childlike trip-hop mixes tinkling music-box melodies with silly animal sounds, operatic singing, and other quirky aural effects. For more on my take and to hear one of my favorite tracks,

When the eclectic elements come together well - as on the playful yet hard-edged "Rainbowarriors" - the music will stimulate your imagination and your urge to dance. But while I admire CocoRosie's tendency toward experimentation, other songs on Ghosthorse just got on my nerves.

The sisters certainly don't need cuteness to carry their songs, so sometimes, I wish they'd just take it down a notch. For instance, the booming timpani percussion and opera singing on "Japan" are incredibly novel, but after a while, the repetitive baby-talk lyrics become as irritating as a 5-year-old would tugging repeatedly on your sleeve.

Thankfully, CocoRosie gives us an occasional respite from the hyperactive fairy-tale vibe. "Miracle," featuring haunting guest vocals from Antony and the Johnson's Antony, is so slow and languid it nearly comes to a full halt, but the effect is surprisingly beautiful. In fact, the same could be said for the entire album, which is well worth a listen despite its flaws.

CD Review: Bright Eyes, Cassadaga

BuzzSugar — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 06:00:38 -0700

If you're a regular BuzzSugar reader, you know how much I've been looking forward to the new Bright Eyes album - that is, very much, for months. Each new track that trickled out only heightened my anticipation. If the whole album was as well-crafted as the fiddle-laden "Four Winds," I thought, then Cassdaga would do nothing but rule.

You might argue that no album can live up to those expectations, but in its best moments, Cassadaga is brilliant. When it suffers, it's merely a matter of misguided ambition. After the personal and folksy I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, much has been made of this album's political bent. But actually, this Bright Eyes is more spiritual than political - at once rejecting established belief systems and trying to figure out what to follow in their absence.

Fittingly, the CD is packaged in gray-patterned paper that, when viewed under the enclosed "decoder," reveals a myriad of messages and shapes invisible to the naked eye. Inside, we get some of Bright Eyes' grandest sound to date. To hear a track from the album and more about what I think,

Recorded with an orchestral assortment of Conor Oberst's friends and collaborators - including M. Ward on guitar, vocalist Hassan Lemtouni, and Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss - the eclectic songs on Cassadaga range from triumphantly defiant to just plain mopey. On "If the Brakeman Turns My Way," Bright Eyes follows the path blazed by Bob Dylan to prove that loaded messages can also rock, as a roving piano chugs alongside a subtle Hammond organ that faintly echoes "Like a Rolling Stone."

But while the multi-layered sound works well on the more frantic numbers like "Classic Cars," Cassadaga derails on several down-tempo numbers, which have too many elements and not enough oomph. The string section only weighs down the plodding "Lime Tree," making me long for the younger, angsty Oberst rather than this drearier version. And though the bass clarinets on "Middleman" give the forlorn lyrics - "the in-between, the absentee / is a beautiful disguise" - a more sinister air, the trance-like chant that comes in at the end is only a distraction.

It seems a silly gripe for an album that contains some of Bright Eyes' most riveting songs to date - including "Brakeman," below - but the best tracks on Cassadaga deserve better company.

CD Review: Andrew Bird, Armchair Apocrypha

BuzzSugar — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:15:05 -0700

In the din of hype surrounding the new albums by Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, and the forthcoming Wilco and Bright Eyes, you might miss the quiet genius of Andrew Bird's new release, Armchair Apocrypha. But after spending a few weeks with the album, which hits stores today, I'm already willing to say it's likely to end up on my year-end best list.

The hippest thing ever to happen to the pizzicato violin, Andrew Bird is just as adept at crafting string-laden pop songs as he is writing rhymes so sing-song, it takes you a moment to hear the words. In his definition of pop music - and the extremely catchy folk-inspired tunes are undoubtedly pop - plink-plunks of strings and winds combine with twisty, turning electric guitars for melodies that carry you right to the edge of chaos, but not quite. For more details and to hear one of the album's best tracks,

Whether he's chronicling stolen moments or engaging in cheeky wordplay, Bird always manages to floor me with his lyrics. It might be a sliver of brilliance, as on the album's standout track, "Heretics": "You're making mountains of handkerchiefs / where the mascara always runs." But most often, Bird is offering veritable prose poems set to song. On the arresting ballad "Armchairs," he idly sings "I dreamed you were a cosmonaut / of the space between our chairs / and I was a cartographer / of the tangles in your hair" before jolting us into an aggressive chorus. Not matter how he engineers his collisions between words and melody, I manage to hear something new almost every time I listen.

You can hear live versions of several songs performed by Bird at SXSW, or to hear "Heretics," just hit "play" below.

CD Review: The Besnard Lakes, Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse

BuzzSugar — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 08:00:50 -0800

Listen to The Besnard Lakes' "Disaster," and I guarantee you, the first musical reference that comes to mind will be the Beach Boys. All of the elements are there: the languid falsetto, lightly woven harmonies, and muted brass and sleepy surf strings. But then you realize: The Besnard Lakes actually sound nothing like the Beach Boys.

In fact, the latest band to break out of Montreal has a quite novel sound, at once chilly, grandiose, and catchy. Better yet, the more I listen to the group's just-released second album, Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse (Jagjaguwar), the more complex it becomes, so

In a way that's somewhat similar to the Texas instrumental group Explosions in the Sky, the Besnard Lakes excel at using orchestral instrumentation (violins, glockenspiel, you name it). But rather than achieve a symphonic effect, the band touches on all manner of accessible pop melodies.

The Besnard Lakes don't just draw on the Beach Boys in "Disaster" but also get inspiration from Zombies-style Brit-pop on jaunts like "Cedric's War," which you can listen to below. On the tracks where the haunting vocals of Olga Goreas take the lead - including "For Agent 13" and "Because Tonight" - the vibe leans more toward the sweeping, Cocteau Twins-style drama. What's remarkable is how perfectly the songs play off one another, creating an effect that's both dark and hopeful at the same time. Listen to the song below and let me know what you think.

CD Review: Explosions in the Sky, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

BuzzSugar — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:34:01 -0800

Explosions in the Sky convey all of the vastness of Texas with none of the twang. In fact, the Texas quartet's stirring and soaring instrumental music - which often serves as the soundtrack to the "Friday Night Lights" series and the preceding movie - sounds more like Iceland's Sigur Ros or Canada's Godspeed You Black Emperor! than anything ever to come out of the Lone Star state.

As compared to albums by its instrumental-rock peers, the band's All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, which comes out today, is more orchestral than experimental and more triumphant than dreary. To hear more of my take and a track off the album,

Maybe its my background as a writer, but it often takes a lot for lyric-less music to win me over. But the six songs on this sweeping LP have what it takes - such as poetic guitar duets and silvery piano melodies woven together into a palpable tension, which is usually unleashed in some sort of crushing crescendo full of symbol crashes and melodrama.

As with a symphony, it makes more sense to listen to this album as a unified arc, rather than as individual songs. In lieu of catchy hooks and killer one-liners, you get startling progressions culminating in ponder-inducing moments of release that will give you chills. "The Birth and Death of the Day," for instance, starts like a lullaby then morphs into a footrace between gnashing metal-edged guitars and frantic snares before circling back to its original touching melody. You can listen to the track below; if you dig it, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone will not disappoint.

CD Review: Bloc Party, A Weekend In the City

BuzzSugar — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 13:30:04 -0800

The weekend in the city that Bloc Party envisions on its sophomore album is ruled by party-ready riffs and thumping beats. But beneath the pop-punk surface of A Weekend in the City lurks a sort of disheveled, drug-fueled dystopia, giving the melodies a much-needed edge.

Fans will appreciate that the follow-up to Silent Alarm never veers too far from its predecessor's path, with frontman Kele Okerere's regal, slightly overwrought vocals coating some of the most soaring guitar work in rock.

But while Bloc Party's lauded 2005 debut was a fast and furious high - I listened to it constantly for weeks then burned out - Weekend never quite kicks in like it should. For the rest of my take and to hear a track off the album,

There are a number of welcome surprises in this set of songs: "Prayer" kicks off with a chorus of stomps, handclaps, and staccato tribal chants before going into the central plea: "Tonight make me unstoppable / and I will charm / I will slice / I will dazzle / I will outshine them all." The counterpart to that sentiment might be "Sunday," where whispered organs and chimey guitars draw the sort of day when you have to wake up in time to "catch the afternoon."

But while the album is chock full of hooks, it failed to really hook me, even after multiple listens. On one hand, it's grandiose and thoughtful, but even clever tracks like "Uniform" - a brooding ballad that blames MTV for lessons in sulking - the big sounds are also overly simple. I should, however, throw out a caveat here, which is that I didn't fully appreciate Silent Alarm until I saw Bloc Party live in NYC. For now, listen to "Sunday" below or stream the album yourself and tell me what you think.

CD Review: Julie Doiron, Woke Myself Up

BuzzSugar — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 11:18:13 -0800

I'm pretty hot or cold when it comes to music by girls with guitars. I love me some Cat Power and Carole King, but too often, folksy female singers rely too much on pretty poetry and gently strummed chords and not enough on innovative songwriting.

But Julie Doiron's just-released album, Woke Myself Up, manages to avoid those pitfalls. In fact, it is a testament to Doiron's musical ability that I was transfixed by each song's texture - including the unpredictable vocal melodies and the piles of guitars that come crashing down on top of them - way before I started listening to the lyrics. And once I started paying attention, I was immediately struck by how perfectly the music echoes each song's sentiment, so

It helps that Doiron's voice, though feminine, is more icy than sweet, infusing depth and character into every line. On "I Left Town," Doiron perfectly captures the repetition of road trips with a drifting, dreary waltz, singing: "And although I was tired / I stayed pretty calm / because I knew that soon I would / be sleeping in your arms."

That gentleness disappears on the angrier "Don't Wannabe / Liked By You," where growling Pixies-style basslines charge alongside lyrics like "and we're all screwed anyway 'cause Greenland is melting." But suddenly the song slows to a contemplative pause as Doiron reconsiders: "So I suppose I'll just let the love in."

Woke Myself Up has its truly innovative moments, but when it falters, it's because many songs tend toward flat and repetitive. Too often, Doiron will find one nice lyric and go with it again and again. The music is captivating enough to make the repetition tolerable, but with a little more effort, this album could have been truly eye-opening.

CD Review: Menomena, Friend and Foe

BuzzSugar — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 08:58:56 -0800

Menomena is so weird it makes me giddy. The Portland, OR, band named its first album I Am the Fun Blame Monster, which is an anagram of "the first Menomena album." It favors baritone sax almost as much as it uses guitars, and the band even wrote its own software to compose its utterly bizarre songs. Yet, Menomena manages to pull off all this weirdness while making music that's entirely accessible, utterly unpretentious, and - in the case of its new album, Friend and Foe (Barsuk Records) - hypnotically catchy.

In fact, it's astounding that such fun pop songs can be crafted from a songwriting process that's downright dizzying. Not only does Menomena sound unlike any other band out there, but each off-kilter song draws on the band's formula in a completely different way. To read the rest of my take and hear a song off the album,

To create the songs on Friend and Foe, Menomena records each respective part then - using software called Deeler - breaks those recordings down into a series of loops. Those loops are then reassembled into a sort of sound collage that forms the basis for each song. Broken off bits of rhythm section crash into each other, while piano melodies collide with explosions of saxophones and menacing bass lines.

Some tracks are heavily jazz-influenced, while others hint at the dystopian sketches of Tom Waits. "The Pelican" starts as a forlorn Bowie-esque piano ballad, before being suddenly tackled by a gang of lurching guitars, cymbals, and snares. Meanwhile, the vocal melody on "My My" could easily fit into a number of indie-rock songs, but its backdrop - including an eerie organ and skittish, fuzzy electronic effects - make it a truly unique feat of songwriting. Though the weirdness of Friend and Foe may be off-putting at first, by the end you'll find yourself thanking Menomena for radically reinventing how a pop song can sound.

SAMPLE TRACK: Menomena, "Wet and Rusting"