Manitoba

Spent some time listening to the first two Caribou albums, released under the name “Manitoba.” The first, Start Breaking My Heart (2001) is just a rather generic electronica album. It’s just sort of a collection of different types of beats. There are some nice atmospheric textures, but nothing as immaculately beautiful as some of the other bands I listen to for “texture” (Sigur Ros, Four Tet).  Nor is there anything that moves from point A to point B in such an interesting or dynamic way as bands like Explosions in the Sky or Holy Fuck.

The second album, Up in Flames (2003) hints at the direction he would follow on his later, more acclaimed albums. This is a poppier album, not least of all because he uses vocals in a more melodic way. It isn’t necessarily a verse-chorus-verse thing, but many of these songs seem like they were constructed in such a way that a pop song could be written around them. I hear spaces for verses and spaces for choruses. “Bijoux” does this in kind of a roundabout way. I hear a clear chorus that repeats, although the song sort of detours into various instrumental breaks. I get the sense that I’m hearing a more structured body of work, on this album.

I would recommend both albums to electronic music fans, but Up in Flames is the place to go if you were seduced by Andorra (2007) and are looking to get into his earlier albums.

Bright Eyes – The People’s Key (2011)

The People’s Key is easily the most rock ‘n’ roll project Conor Oberst has worked on, at least since his pre-Bright Eyes days. I have to say I’m a little dissappointed by the direction he took. I think he can write a wonderful folk song. He’s a gifted lyricist and had learned to hone his vocal delivery so that he no longer sounds like a vain teenager. The People’s Key explores electric guitars a lot more, in a rock way, not a folk-rock way. Also, synthesizers are all over the place, taking this in a direction more poppy and less spacey than his last significant experiment with synths (2005′s Digital Ash in a Digital Urn).

He’s coming right off his two releases with the Mystic Valley band and his album with Monsters of Folk. I thought the Mystic Valley albums were among the best things he’s done; I thought his songwriting really developed. He’s shown flashes of brilliance since he was 20, most often in the lyrics, but somewhere between Cassadaga (2007) and Conor Oberst (2008), he figured out how to put it together for a full album.

The biggest problems with his work, as I see it and as people I talk to seem to indicate, are his vanity and his self-indulgence. His personality doesn’t matter much except for the fact that the way he sings has sometimes come across as whiney. He also had a habit of putting his personality on full display, with minimal or insignificant instrumentation or melody, earlier in his career. I didn’t tend to care for his slower songs through his first few albums for that reason. He really needs strong melodies to go along with his lyrics, because often his vocal delivery communicates a sort of frailty.

I expect this album will take some getting used to. I like the single, “Shell Games,” quite a bit. It’s got a catchy chorus and it progresses nicely. The melody (in the beginning) reminds me of “If the Brakeman Turns My Way” from Cassadaga.

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My goal now is to turn this blog into more of a diary and make it less about the standard, long-winded reviews. There may still be the occasional review, but my interest is mainly in documenting whatever it is that I’m listening to at the time, both new and old. I spend a lot of time discovering older music, or even relatively recent stuff that isn’t necessarily “going on” right now and I’d like to talk about things other than fresh-off-the-press releases. I think my postings from here on will resemble snippets of reviews, and be more off-the-top opinion than in-depth looks at the music.

Yuck – Yuck (2011)

Yuck’s self-titled album is their second LP and it’s garage rock that borrows from shoegaze at times and also has a grungy aspect to it as well. The guitars have tons of reverb, sometimes to a fault, and the vocals have a grungy quality that I found quite annoying. On the album opener, “Get Away,” the guitars are a swirling mess of reverb, which is good because the vocals on that track and others sound a bit like Billy Corgan, who I can’t stand. The female vocalist is far more pleasant, but nothing to write home about. Some tracks, like “The Wall” and “Holing Out,” despite the shoegazing guitars, remind me of some of the most uninspired 1990s alt rock.

Yuck make me think of Radiohead’s Pablo Honey in some ways. This is a rather inconsistent album that shows promise in places but has some songs that are absolute clunkers. Unlike Pablo Honey, the annoying songs kind of outweight the promise the band shows.

The bad songs are too rooted in grunge, but there are times when they turn down the volume, tone down the distortion, and show some diverse songwriting. I much preferred these slower, quieter songs. The acoustic guitars on “Shook Down” provided a much needed break from the guitar onslaught of the first two tracks, though the song itself is not really anything special. “Suicide Policeman” used xylophone and some muted brass instrumentation just to spice things up. The guitars on “Suck” wail in a pleasant way and the almost-whispered vocals on “Stutter” are much better than the aggressive ones. Even still, these songs get old too.

“Rubber” ends the album with seven minutes piece of droning guitars and vocals buried way down in the mix. It carries on for the final three minutes, with just the guitars blaring, and it’s not the worst moment on the album, but it feels a little arbitrary to me. The highest point on this album, for me, was “Georgia” which is a perfectly pleasant noise-pop tune.

The low points of this album are too bothersome to overlook. I’d recommend this to fans of bands like Smashing Pumpkins, but this feels a lot more anonymous than the better grunge or alt. rock acts of the recent past. There’s promise here, but the guitars and the vocals just wore on me too much for me to want to spend any more time with this album.

Cut Copy – Zonoscope (2011)

I’ve enjoyed Cut Copy since I first heard them shortly after the release of In Ghost Colours (2008). They’re just a light, fun, synth pop group, and they have a way of making their music catchy as hell. In the past there has been more to them than just dance beats and hooky vocals. They’ve used guitars to great effect, on tracks like “Feel the Love” and “So Haunted” (in very different ways).

The only thing that bugged me were the interludes that really interrupted the action (“DD-5”, “Voices in Quartz”). In addition, it felt like sometimes they snuck interludes into the actual songs (the end of “Autobahn Music Box”). These tended to have little to do with the actual songs, and made the albums feel a little bit longer than they were otherwise.

Zonoscope is not as blatantly danceable as their past work. It isn’t dominated by that bubbly, cheery, attitude that defined my favorite songs from their last two albums. It presents a wider array of moods, from sunny pop right out of the Beach Boys playbook (“Where I’m Going”) to the unabashed dance pop (“Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat”) to a more somber new-wave style (“Need You to Know”) to a light funky style (“Take Me Over”).

There’s a lot more that I like about this. Cut Copy are unafraid of exploration, whether within or outside of the confines of synth-pop music. “Pharaohs & Pyramids” sounds like there’s some influence from Autechre—with whom I would never have thought to associate Cut Copy. “This is All We Got” reminds me a lot of Panda Bear, just in the way the vocals are buried under tons of reverb-laden guitars and keys. Cut Copy have written a diverse album and everything they try works nicely for them. There’s nothing awkward, trite, boring, or cliché here.

But at the end of the day, it’s the hooks that make me want to listen to this, and this album delivers in spades. It is arguably less immediately gratifying than In Ghost Colours and Bright Like Neon Love (2004), but it feels more mature, more artistic, and ultimately more interesting without sacrificing their pop sensibilities. They’ve done a wonderful job on this.

If you were violently opposed to Cut Copy’s past work, Zonoscope isn’t going to do anything to change that. If you were on the cusp of fandom, however, the evolution they’ve taken might reel you in.

Fujiya & Miyagi – Ventriloquizzing (2011)

Fujiya & Miyagi are a British electro-indie band whose fourth album, Ventriloquizzing, is due out on the 25^th. This album seems to borrow equally from the new wavey post punk of Joy Division and the rigid, repetitive electronic music of bands like Holy Fuck. On this album, they keep the tempos low and really emphasize the low end with the bass and understated drumming. Synthesizers lend this a bit of color in places as do elements like backing vocals and a piano.

I think Ventriloquizzing will alienate people for one of two reasons. Either people will find the lyrics and the band’s general ethos kind of obnoxious or they will wish the band dove further into the dance elements of their music. Obviously, there are other reasons not to like this, as is the case with anything, but I’m enjoying it. I admit the lyrics often come across as silly, juvenile, nonsensical, or some combination of the three, but for me the way the music complements the words makes it seem as though it isn’t meant to be taken very seriously. My favorite song here, “Sixteen Shades of Black & Blue” is literally about beating someone black and blue. I love the way he sings “I’ll beat you black, I’ll beat you blue,” but it looks so silly on paper.

I’m hearing that sort of depressive gloom in the vocals (think Interpol’s first album), the downtempo melancholy in the melodies (think Portishead), and the dancey beats (think the afformentioned Holy Fuck), all stuffed into a blender. The last track on the album, “Universe,” makes a phenomenal use of airy background vocals that just go “ah-ah-ah-ah” over the course of the track. Fujiya & Miyagi do little things to spice this up, and it’s kind of amazing that they have the effect they do.

I’m relieved that this album doesn’t explore its dance aspects further. If anything, I would argue that the danceability is incidental. I think this really wants to be a brooding post-punk album. The low end is just too undeniable to think these guys didn’t care at all about the mood. There are a few tracks I have trouble characterizing as “dance” music at all. “Spilt Milk” has no percussion, being built around the piano melody instead. “Taiwanese Roots” doesn’t have the propulsive rhythm I keep hearing elsewhere. On “Minestrone,” I find it easier to focus on the narrative than on the beat.

So, I’m totally on board with this, and truth be told, I did not expect to like this at all. I’ve given two of their three previous albums multiple listens and didn’t care for them, but right off the bat I found Ventriloquizzing an inviting listen and it’s growing on me as I discover little intricacies in the songs. This is my favorite thing I’ve heard this year, so far, at least up to this point. I don’t think it will be among my favorite albums of the year, but for now I’m having fun with this.

Videos for two songs from the album: Yo-Yo and Sixteen Shades of Black & Blue.

SINGLE: DeVotchka – “One Hundred Other Lovers”

“One Hundred Other Lovers” is a single from DeVotchka’s upcoming album, 100 Lovers, due out February 15. As is typical of band, lots of strings and other instruments more common in folk or world music make an appearance, and it gives DeVotchka a rather unique flavor.

This song has a very warm atmosphere to it, with a very lush keyboard backdrop, but it picks up some energy in the choruses. It makes great use of strings throughout. I’m excited to hear this album.