Snoozebutton

Your Discerning Guide to Modern Culture

Broken Bells – Broken Bells (Sony)

by

 

Product DetailsI got an advance of this record in late January, and was floored within 30 seconds. I then managed to forget about it for a month, and happily rediscovered it after beginning to see a small groundswell across the twittersphere. 

This is a dream collaboration between Danger Mouse and the Shin’s James Mercer and is a short but impeccably dreamy piece of work. For Mercer, this was a much needed break from the Shins whose great records haven’t evolved much since the beginning. For Danger, who lost me a bit on Gnarls, has again proved himself the most versatile producer/composer on the planet.

The ten songs here borrow from late 60’s Beatles on “Sailing To Nowhere,” to a much simpler slower ballads like “Float” to dancier beats-driven tunes like “Citizen,” and my favorite the Cure-esque “The Waiting Game.” But the sound has a crisp and cohesive feeling, based in part on the lush Mercer vocals and Danger’s specific spacey vibe that runs throughout. But like a “fun sized” candy bar, you keep wishing there was more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Midlake – The Courage of Others (Bella Union)

by

Product DetailsIt took me a month to listen to and process the latest Midlake record before I felt qualified to speak objectively about “The Courage of Others.” I would have to go back to Buckley’s stunning “Grace” fifteen years ago to find another record as important to me as Midlake’s predecessor “The Trials of Van Occupanther.” That record was immediately captivating both musically and emotionally, lifting the best bits from Fleetwood Mac-  a band I never really considered as deeply as perhaps I should have, and combined it with the indie folk I have grown older gravitating towards.

It is rare that I read the reviews of others before attempting my own, but in the case of Midlake my three years of eagerness for the follow-up to left me in some ways too biased to resist the urge. What I found was a massively polarizing reaction to a record that I took longer to fall for than I would have expected. “Courage” is in some ways as satisfying as I could have hoped for, but also perhaps more somber and precious than it needed to be. That said, with every listen, and I have found myself doing so more and more often, I am increasingly drawn into this reflective and emotive masterpiece.

They have grown closer to new influences this time around, but they tend to go further back than Fleetwood Mac, settling into the mid-sixties Brit folk of The Fairport Convention, than they do west coast Americana. Vocalist Tim Smith, has a voice a pure and urgent as anyone making music today, and like previous efforts is bathed in impeccable production. Songs like “Rulers, Ruling All Things” and “Winter Dies” represent the closest approximation to singles or pop songs, but to describe them as such would be to miss the point – this record is takes some getting used to. There is much emotional acclimation, but below the surface where initially there seems pretension, there is joy and hope. The songs build to a triumphant crescendo, and in the end with headphones this is an epic voyage that is both uplifting and contemplative. Just surrender yourself to something truly special, and use the music to help express emotions often to hard articulate.

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca (Domino)

by

Bitte OrcaTo say Dirty Projectors is an acquired taste would be both a probable understatement and disrespectful to the band. This is the kind of music that only happens when a kid from Yale with a big vocabulary, great taste in music and a broad musical education decides to make indie rock records. The result is mash-up of well appointed classical strings, unusual choral and vocal timings, synth-based electronic beats, and incredibly diverse guitar lines. This is art rock for those with a pop sensibility.

“Bitte Orca” is one part Jeff Buckley, one part “Graceland,” and part ’77 era Talking Heads. Any attempt to describe what happens over the course of the album’s nine songs could be seen as misleading: broadly dance music, but nothing I would know how to dance too, but then something way more precious and chamber music-like, best relegated to a drawing room, and then vocal gymnastics not really definable at all. The only real thread for me is that all directions initiated within these songs lead to and start from somewhere I can comfortably call brilliant. 

Girls – Album (Matador)

by

Photo

Inevitably every year I fall hard for a record that manages to further reinvent that hazy, melodic Brian Wilson mid-60’s California glow. This year the debut from San Francisco’s “Girls” rips that page up, and then reassembles it into a glorious, grungy scrapbook of freedom and loss. The band is the primary brainchild of Christopher Owens who, as a child he survived an itinerant drifting as part of a bizarre cult only to run away from home only to reemerge years later as the author of one of the most emotive and uplifting albums of the years. There is a beautifully ragged, druggy, innocence dripping from every note.

But “Album” is an adventure in texture. It lives somewhere between rock and pop, psychedelic and lo-fi, happy and sad. A song like “Hellhole Ratrace,” my vote for the finest song of 2009, is an epic meditation on “love and affection” that starts innocently enough with a gentle guitar that  builds into a wall of emotion cycling through a few repeated chorus’ for seven blissful minutes. Other songs stay closer to the Wilson ethos of the instruments just kind of echoing the crashing of waves on the pacific and the wind through the palms i.e. “Headache.” This album is wonderfully warm place to escape and dream weird thoughts.

 

 

 

 

Loney, Dear – Dear John (Polyvinyl)

by

loney-dear.jpgI love the Scandinavian folkies: Kings of Convenience, Sondra Lerche, Jose Gonzalez and Nicoli Dunger. But Loney, Dear’s latest effort transcends the genre and morphs into something quite different and special. Think The Postal Service, but stronger, much more urgent and less shallow-synth sounding. If the older Loney records were sparer, more acoustic seeming, “Dear John” is a gusher of both optimistic energy, much needed some days, and vocal melodies that just tend to find their groove and travel. With this big sound it is a combination of beats and percussion that lift off quietly and then burst like fireworks.

Perhaps I am getting carried away, but to listen to this record with headphones flying over the melting snowcaps of the Northern Sierra’s you can’t help by feel somehow liberated by the songs “Airport Surroundings” and “Everything Turns To You.” Although Loney, Dear is largely the brainchild of Emil Svanangen this record is a fully realized, impeccably orchestrated pop opera. There is no doubt this is already one of the year’s best, and will remain so.

Order It Now From Amazon