Blackout Beach- Fuck Death

Whether or not you're as a dedicated fan of his as I am, I'm no longer sure if metrics of “good” or “bad” apply to Carey Mercer's solo project, Blackout Beach. Like Scott Walker's modern music, it has few precedents or points of comparison and so it's hard to tell how good or not it is. You like it because it's successful at what it's trying or because you find it interesting, and you sure aren't going to put it on at a party. Anyway, I don't think it's possible to like Blackout Beach on an album-by-album basis; by now, you're either all in or all out, and Fuck Death will do nothing to change anyone's mind.

Mercer's last two releases, Frog Eyes's Paul's Tomb: A Triumph and Blackout Beach's Skin Of Evil, felt like they belonged in the same headspace even if they sounded little alike. The same dark, intense atmosphere permeated both, many of the same characters haunted both records, and they were made around the same period of time. Naturally, Fuck Death has much more in common with Skin Of Evil, though it does feels of-a-piece with both albums.

Still, this is not Skin Of Evil Part 2 even if the constituent parts sound similar. Mercer is pushing himself to his greatest extremes yet on Fuck Death: at more than 12 minutes, 'Drowning Pigs' is the longest track he's ever made. Similarly, there are very few traditional guitar sounds on Fuck Death as Mercer decided to focus on synthesizers and atmospherics. Perhaps he was inspired by Spencer Krug's Moonface release from earlier this year, Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped, where Krug limited himself to primitive organs and drum machines. Or maybe the influence was the other way around. But I digress.

In a press release for Fuck Death, Mercer took a few swipes at the chillwave scene in between explaining that the record focuses on themes of war, beauty, and cowardice. All of this, somehow, makes sense to me after listening to this album off and on for a few weeks. One could make the argument that Blackout Beach is the opposite of chillwave, forcing the listener into discomforting thoughts and environments, like a Lars Von Trier film. After all, there are no hooks or melodies, or anyway, no intentional ones. The way 'Be Forewarned, The Night Has Come' peaks at the end is strangely addictive to these ears, though it's worth noting I genuinely like the No New York compilation, so perhaps I'm skewed as to what is catchy and addictive. As for the war, beauty, and cowardice...I assure you, it's there in the lyrics and the sounds, you just have to keep working at it.

And you'll have to trust me that the work is worth it, because despite the extremes that it goes to, Fuck Death is perhaps the most successful Blackout Beach album yet. Which is my way of saying, it's perhaps the best Blackout Beach album yet. The lengthy, demanding 'Drowning Pigs' seems like pretentious, slapped together dreck until you've heard it a few times with patience in tow. To be honest, it has most of the weakest moments of Fuck Death and lacks the visionary progression of previous Mercer epics, though it still manages to be interesting and also has, yes, some of the album's strongest moments. The bit around the 8:00 mark when he's singing over himself made me realize just how pretty and traditional his voice can sound when he wants it to.

Fuck Death is desolate, lonely music and by extension, it only makes sense when heard on headphones or perhaps curled up in front of the record player with a cigarette and some wine. If any of the above sounds at all compelling, this is the album for you. If you don't always qualify music in terms of 'good' or 'bad', but how 'interesting' or 'successful' it is, Fuck Death may be for you, too.

 5 Successful Stars Out Of 5

Weekly Whiskey Episode 19

Posted a little later than usual, but hey, there's a reason I always date the show for Wednesdays to allow myself some wiggle room.

Moonface- Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped

Musicians today have it really easy. While it's true not everyone has access to a wide variety of instruments, it is still ridiculously easy to make music if you want to. No need to book a studio and prepare songs ahead of time; thanks to computers and readily available software, bedroom auteurs don't even need to spring for cheap 4-tracks anymore. So now, more than ever, self-imposed limitations have a huge effect on how music is made and what the results end up like. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam recently released a solo album of songs written on/for ukelele. Matt Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces is putting out a series of solo albums using one instrument per record. And now Spencer Krug is going down a similar path. One of the most absurdly prolific artists of his generation, having recorded music with fully six different bands in less than ten years, last year he debuted Moonface, the name given to his solo project outside of his main bands, Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown.

Dubbed Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums, it was a single 20 minute track played only on the titular instruments. A demanding and tedious EP, it tests even the patience of hardcore fans such as I. Following on the heels of the indefinite hiatus of Wolf Parade, he now releases another Moonface record, Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped. Recorded when he was snowed in at his home during the winter of 2010, the album title, as with the previous EP, alludes to the instrument used, a primitive sounding electronic organ, though the record also has some cheap sounding drum machines. Some reviews have described this album as videogame music/chiptune sounding, but this is talking in terms of pure sound and not the feel of it. I would say this music is more akin to Wolf Parade co-leader Dan Boeckner's side project with his wife, Handsome Furs. While that band goes for a synth-pop dramatic intensity, recalling the purely synthetic sounds of early techno singles, Organ Music has a more atmospheric and trance-like quality, as if Kraftwerk had recorded an album with David Bowie in the early 80s and sang without using robotized voices.

Those who couldn't stand Krug's aesthetic before will find this the latest damning evidence that he is an overrated, pretentious, and self indulgent artist who hipsters talk themselves into enjoying. And even some fans will still dislike this release, thinking it repetitive and monotonous. I concede that is technically true; the songs of Organ Music sound like they started off in a drone/minimalist style before Krug decided to sprinkle in melodies and lyrics. That, to me, is what makes Organ Music a far more interesting and successful release than the Dreamland EP. It helps immensely that this album is only five songs and 37 minutes long, demonstrating that even when he is making dense and “indulgent” music, Krug still has some self control left.

Organ Music sounds to me like something recorded between 10 P.M. and 3 A.M. while drunk on wine and partially stoned, thinking about exes you wish you hadn't blown it with, or friends you haven't seen for two years. These are lengthy songs which slowly build, peak, and recede. Once the drum machine has faded out, the slowly dying haze of the last part of 'Fast Peter' piles on layers of organ into a grand finale. 'Whale Song (Song Instead Of Kiss)' may start off sounding like the opening to an 8-bit Nintendo game, but Krug's addition of more organ lines and double-tracked vocals as the song progresses proves that at this point in his career, he's at his best when he's given a long canvas to paint on. Instead of brush strokes, his non-linear song structures shoot out in grand ellipticals which never fail to resolve themselves in memorable and self-referential ways.

Where the monotony and repetition of the Dreamland EP turned me off, I find Organ Music completely succeeds. Krug's skills as arranger and hook-crafter may be on vacation, but his emotive way of singing oblique narratives and his ability to write surprisingly enjoyable melodies on even the most simple of instruments transforms this record from a boring vanity project into a transcendent and thrilling piece of music. If you are one of the Krug faithful or you want some dense, challenging music that doesn't follow trends or attempt to start any, this record is for you.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Wolf Parade- Expo 86

I'll save you the trouble of looking it up: Expo 86 was the World's Fair held in Vancouver in 1986, and as it would turn out, all the members of Wolf Parade were at it. The band attach no significant correlation between this title and the music on their new album, but finding out that, many years before you met someone, you were both at the same concert or gathering of people has a strange effect on the psyche, as if the roots of some heretofore unseen bond between people was growing and now sprouted from the soil, years later, fully grown and replete with flowers. In this sense, Expo 86 is a wholly appropriate title, since never before has Wolf Parade sounded as solidified and on the same page as a band. Combine that with an energetic and tightly played set of songs that allows itself some room to roam, and you've got what may be their best album yet.

Whatever your opinion of At Mount Zoomer (I've gone back and forth on it a lot myself), I don't think anyone would disagree that it's unfocused and uneven. No, not in the quality of the songs; rather I mean that it plays like a double album that was trimmed down to a single album. The tracks are extremely varied in terms of both song length and sound, and since the album was recorded in two different sessions at two different locations, this uneven, disjointed feel makes perfect sense. Expo 86 is the direct opposite of this: like Frog Eyes's excellent new album, Paul's Tomb: A Triumph, it was recorded mostly live to tape with the band playing in the same room. Co-leaders Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug have turned in a batch of tunes that have relatively even lengths and aesthetics, like they're finally writing for the band and not themselves. Not only does this album sound much more unified as a result, there's also the matter of all of the songs having a mid-to-up-tempo pace, making Expo 86 perfect for driving or grooving to with friends. It kicks off with 'Cloud Shadow On The Mountain' which takes no time in setting the barnstorming tone of the record, as if the drum beat and vocals were already going and you have to jump unto a moving bus. The energy and volume don't dip much from here all the way through to the closing 'Cave-O-Sapien', a song that reminds us that six minutes can seem like two if handled properly. As a whole, Expo 86 really does give off the heat of a maximalist, kick-out-the-jams live album with nary a ballad or quiet moment to be found.

“Maximalist” is an adjective that at least Boeckner now identifies with this band, at least according to an interview he did with Pitchfork a couple months ago. Thankfully there's a much stronger focus and sense of tightness to this band's brand of maximalism, so those who disagree with my recent review of Broken Social Scene's Forgiveness Rock Record should check this one out for an example of dense layers of music and vocals done properly. True, on first listen, it does feel like Wolf Parade have two guitarists, two or three keyboardists, two drummers, one bassist, and two vocalists on every single song. 'Two Men In New Tuxedos' and 'Yulia' in particular are nearly overwhelming with how many things your ears try to pay attention to at the same time. Unlike with Broken Social Scene, though, what initially sounds like cacophony and unnecessary elements soon gives way to intricacies and complexities of melody, rhythm, and texture. As Boeckner put it in the aforementioned interview, “[t]here's a lot of melodies going on within the songs...At any given time, there's five or six counter-melodies running against each other, with the vocals kind of fighting for supremacy.”

Since Expo 86 has an even stronger focus on instrumental chops and full-band interplay than At Mount Zoomer, one could dub it a jammier effort. Indeed, this album does possess a sense of openness and expanse that is superficially close to classic rock and/or jam bands. It's reminiscent of Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, but less traditionally rooted. Boeckner turns in consistently crisp guitar solos, but they don't come off as solos, and Krug's now-patented flights of fancy and counterpoint on keyboards and synths are as dramatic and yet grounded as ever. Meanwhile, stuff like the extended “ooh hoo hoo” vocal outro to 'What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had To Go This Way)' nail home what I'm trying to get at. This is an album that sometimes spools off into tangents, brightening the corners of the room as it wanders about, but it never strikes me as jammy or prog rock show boat-y.

At this point it's clear that the immediacy and nervous energy of their debut was a a fluke rather than the establishment of the Wolf Parade aesthetic. Put onApologies To The Queen Mary now, and you'll hear a group of guys who weren't quite sure what they wanted to sound like and hadn't quite figured out their own identities inside or outside of the band. Expo 86, then, is a band in the full bloom of their confidence, crafting songs that don't instantly stop you dead in your tracks, like, say, 'Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts' did, but do reveal themselves to be just as potent and addictive if patience is one of your virtues (even if it's only in regards to music). Those still wishing Wolf Parade will strip down their sound and song lengths need not apply; those of us who are in it for the long haul with these guys, embracing if not celebrating their changes and development, will find plenty to savor.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Moonface- Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums

There was a time in the mid 90s to the early 00s when Chicago was an incredibly prolific and incestuous scene for independent music. Bands freely shared members and put out a lot of material, often as obscure solo or side projects. Even when you thought you had a handle on a relatively well known band like Tortoise, it would turn out that, say, Jeff Parker put out some solo album you've never heard of. Today, though, this kind of cross pollination and proflicacy belongs to the Canadians. It's easy to play "six degrees of separation" with many of the bands since most of them have members who do solo material or serve time in side projects, collaborations, and other bands. Perhaps none of these axes is more tangled and large than the one centered around the Spencer Krug: he is a full time member of Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and Swan Lake and a sometime member of Frog Eyes...oh, damn, he also had that Fifths Of Seven band, too...

And now he has added Moonface to his deck of cards. Presumably a solo affair, this EP is possibly connected to an obscure 7" put out by Krug's Sunset Rubdown band titled "Introducing Moonface." As if to combat any complaints from fans of his other bands, he not only released this as Moonface but also with a completely honest, literal subtitle: the only instruments used on this 20 minute single track are marimbas and cheap sounding drums.

For fans (I'm tempted to say "scholars," considering how complicated Krug's discography is), the Dreamland EP will be little more than an interesting, inessential experiment. Often artists can produce amazing work within self-imposed limitations, and Krug has proven he is sometimes at his best with little to work with: 'Child-Heart Losers' from Sunset Rubdown's Random Spirit Lover is devastating in its simplicity. But while the long tracks on last year's superb Dragonslayer worked through several sections, focusing on different instruments or atmospheres, this EP is limited to the aforementioned two instruments and is double the length of even that album's longest song.

Unfortunately, Dreamland makes for a monotonous and trying listen for the Krug faithful and a baffling, pointless exercise for non-fans. There aresome good moments here or there during the track's 20 minutes, but there are also too many parts where the same marimba pattern cycles for the 20th time and you wonder if he's putting you on or not. Since this EP was initially a "pay what you want" download in the now standard Radiohead In Rainbows mold, it makes me wonder if this was something Krug dashed off as a personal challenge and thought it was worth releasing as a obscure curio for the hardcore. Even as much as I love Krug, though, I wish he had taken the ideas and sections and turned them into shorter, full fledged songs instead of a rambling, often-outright boring single EP-length track. To be honest, I'm not sure this EP is worth any amount of money. I am sure, however, that it's for the completionist fans only and even they will find little nutrition in it.

2 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Whiskey Pie's Best Of 2009 (Part 2)

(Again, read the badly spellchecked full text below for clarifications of bad sound quality and my mush mouth)

5) I'm Going Away by the Fiery Furnaces: The 2009 releases from Wilco and Yo La Tengo left me feeling pretty meh, so even bands that are normally reliable helped contribute to the general weakness of the year. That said, I ended up loving I'm Going Away by the Fiery Furnaces more than I thought I would. Since this is a release that strips away almost all of the song structure experiments and crazy instrumental workouts of the band's sound, I was initially underwhelmed by the album. But the Furnaces always had the songwriting and melodic hooks beating at the heart of their music, and by focusing on that aspect--and a live-in-the-studio production style--they ended up making one of their best albums. The Friedberger siblings recently issued the digital-only Take Me Round Again, which sees them re-making the songs from this album on their own. In the process they ended up emphasizing that, hey, these are great songs no matter what their form.

4) Beacons Of Ancestorship by Tortoise: "Fun" is not a word I associate with post-rock even if it's obvious the dudes in Mogwai, at least, have a sense of humor. But Tortoise have always given off an intellectual air of clinical studio perfectionism that brings to mind Steely Dan. Yet Beacons Of Ancestorship is the clearest example I heard all year of a band very obviously just trying to have fun with music. Because of this, Beacons may lack the cohesiveness or flow of other Tortoise albums, but it's by far the most fun to listen to and sports a variety of sounds. Call it their "much needed shot in the arm" release if you must, but I never thought I'd be so excited about a Tortoise album after 2005's sleepy, workmanlike It's All Around You.

3) Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear: Yes, I'm not entirely sure how it's pronounced either, but I feel like that was the point. Much like with Dirty Projectors, you have to come up with multi-syllabic phrases to categorize the music of Veckatimest. Indie rock folk pop chamber vocal music? Whatever, the point is, this is an amazing album with a timeless quality to it, bursting with ideas and melodies that never sound obvious or cliche.

2) Merriweather post pavillion by animal collective: Merriweather post pavilion was the best reason to start 2009 just as their recent Fall Be Kind EP is the best reason to let it end. As such, Animal collective felt like they owned the entire year, setting the bar high early for other albums to match and then closing it out in style with a great EP. Every fan seems to have their personal "dude, this is totally the best" Animal Collective album--even if it happens to be Panda Bear's solo release, Person Pitch--yet everyone seems to at least agree that Merriweather is brilliant and rivals their own personal pick. I'm a Sung Tongs man yet there are times while listening to Merriweather when I begin to question my loyalty. It's that good. On a final note, those people who complain that the best songs are at either end of the album--'My Girls' and 'Brothersport'--are neglecting 'Daily Routine' and 'Lion In A Coma', not to mention....well, hell, the whole album is great, so shut up already.

1) Dragonslayer by Sunset Rubdown: Around June of this year, it seemed obvious to me that either Animal Collective or Grizzly bear were going to take this top spot. But then--confession time--I downloaded a torrent of Dragonslayer, and within a couple days I bought every Sunset Rubdown release I could get my hands on. Spencer Krug has always been my favorite member of Wolf Parade, but his contributions to this year's Swan Lake album were sub-par. Furthermore, in retrospect I overrated At Mount zoomer even if I still like it. But I digress. Dragonslayer catapulted Krug to being among my favorite artists. The opening and closing tracks of the album are perfect mood pieces with vibrant imagery, while all the songs are intricate mini-suites that have two or more different pieces that fit internally together, and with the rest of the album as a whole. Furthermore, the subtle or overt nods to Sunset Rubdown's previous album, Random Spirit Lover, are clever and fascinating attempts at further tying together Krug's already inter-connected body of work. I actually had to take Dragonslayer off my iPod because for a long time it was all I wanted to hear. It is a joy to listen to, an album full of interesting ideas and brilliant songs within songs that I never seem to get tired of. In a year with a highly contested top spot, Sunset Rubdown managed to become my obvious and only choice.

Album of the Week: Sunset Rubdown- Dragonslayer

One could make the case that the first decade of the 21st century, at least as far as the music world is concerned, saw the emergence of Canada as a major force. Between bands like The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers, and Wolf Parade, Canada has inarguably been one of the prime movers in the indie rock arena. Interestingly, a lot of these bands branch into or out of other side projects/bands that are just as good if not better than the "main" bands, depending on the listener's sensibilities. One of the minds behind Wolf Parade, Spencer Krug, is involved in 3 other bands: Swan Lake, Frog Eyes, and Sunset Rubdown. This last band has always existed in the shadow of the other bands, in their early years being compared heavily to Frog Eyes and lately to Wolf Parade.

Around the time of 2007's Random Spirit Lover, I began to take Sunset Rubdown seriously as not a side project for Spencer Krug but another outlet for his prodigious and prolific talents. And while I thought his contributions to this year's Swan Lake album were not up to his usual level of quality, I now wonder if he saved all of his best material for Dragonslayer, the new Sunset Rubdown album, because it is, I daresay, the best thing he's ever done in any of his bands. I have been so taken with this album that I bought everything I could get my hands on by the band, which is something I never do. After hearing this album I am an official convert to the Church Of Rubdownology.

How exactly did this band surpass the mighty Wolf Parade, who I always thought of as Krug's focus?? Well, it's a combination of taking the lessons learned on Random Spirit Lover and Spencer Krug's gift for songwriting. On the aforementioned release, Sunset Rubdown crafted a dense-but-rewarding 'album for people who love albums', full of songs that blended into each other, songs in non-standard forms that had no obvious structures. When choruses or melodies appeared, they were often in fresh ways or unexpected moments. Songs would have two or three different hooks in fairly different sections such that you had to listen to the album as a whole to milk all the good stuff out. This same thing takes place on Dragonslayer but to an even more successful degree. It is more melodic and addictive, too, and brings to the fore something that was always a part of Krug's output that I never noticed: his self referential, self remaking aesthetic.

In listening through all of Sunset Rubdown's material, you'll find songs, melodic ideas, lyrics, and characters that appear a few times. It's something he possibly learned from the similarly self referential Dan Bejar (who is also 1/3 of Swan Lake with Krug) but done to an even greater degree, such as the three different versions of 'Snakes Got A Leg' and the two of 'Stadiums And Shrines.' But the ties between Krug's more recent work with Wolf Parade and Swan Lake is not like how Sunset Rubdown's Shut Up I Am Dreaming fleshed out Snake's Got A Leg. Rather, it's more like echoes and hints to Random Spirit Lover, enhancing and intertwining both albums in the process. There is also a re-imagining (and I would say an improvement upon) of 'Paper Lace', which was on this year's Swan Lake album. But I digress. The important thing here is the music and not all of these interesting but inessential ideas that float around it.

Dragonslayer is bookended by its strongest songs: 'Silver Moons' is a new Krug classic, with a lyrical delivery that slips around the beat brilliantly while 'Dragon's Lair' reminds one of the similarly epic album closing 'Kissing The Beehive' from Wolf Parade's At Mount Zoomer though seems half as long and does twice as much. In between are songs that never get old due to their linearity and complexity; as with Random Spirit Lover, in order to get to the hooks and "choruses" you have to listen to the entire album. Dragonslayer sticks more to the catchy and melodic side of things, so the rewards come faster. 'You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)' opens with rhythmic guitar scratching and a tribal drum groove that is waylaid by videogamey keyboards; the magnificent 'Black Swan' has a minimalist percussion section with Krug's vocals that bursts into a full on band section before collapsing back into eerie atmospherics and percussion and back again. Unlike Random Spirit Lover, which took a few listens and some patience to become hooked on, Dragonslayer is immediately great but only gets better and better with every listen. And as ever, Krug's majestic, poignant lyrics burst with images and poetry, from "confetti floats away like dead leaves in the wagon's wake" ('Silver Moons'), "you are a fast explosion and I'm the embers" ('Nightingale December Song'), to the twisting "my heart is a king/where the king is a heart/my heart is king/the kind of hearts" ('Black Swan'). Everywhere Krug and Co. continue their art-pop experiments with a spiky and bombastic mix of keyboards, guitars, percussion, and vocals.

Awhile back I wrote a somewhat useless and embarrassingly overblown review of Wolf Parade's At Mount Zoomer. Well, I feel even more strongly about Dragonslayer. It has made Sunset Rubdown my new "favorite band ever!!" and handily put them into the running for album of the year alongside Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest and Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion. Dragonslayer is rare: an album that is immediately good but gets better with more listens; an album that has the proper ratio of art/experimentation to pop/catchiness; a singular work, standing on its own, that nevertheless recalls and echoes other works from the band's discography (and Spencer Krug's in general). Highly recommended.

Video: Sunset Rubdown- Us Ones In Between (Live)

After downloading a torrent of the new Sunset Rubdown album, Dragonslayer, I listened to it, obsessed, for 2 days before finally snapping and ordering all of their stuff I could get from Insound.com. I had always liked this band but felt that Wolf Parade was the superior product that Spencer Krug focused his efforts on. After Dragonslayer, Wolf Parade begins to look like the so-called "side project" and not the other way around. Seriously. The album is that good. It's easily up there with the Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear releases for "ALBUM OF THE YEAR ZOMG" contention.

Anyway, enjoy this live video from the Random Spirit Lover era.

Album of the Week: Wolf Parade- At Mount Zoomer

I was out for a jog the other day, and as usual, I didn't have music on. Maybe I'm alone in this regard, but I can't concentrate on music while exercising, so I developed the habit of listening to podcasts. For some reason I can concentrate on human speech while jogging--in fact, it takes me out of the physicality of exercise so I'm not always thinking "I'm tired, I'm sore, how much longer??" I don't remember what exact podcast or topic within said podcast spurred the thought, but I started to think about how very few artists these days manage to create equally brilliant second and third albums. Is this a process of the Internet-age hype machine burning out bands before their time or are we, as consumers, more apt to get bored with something and move on because of the acceleration of culture?? Or is it just the age old "you have forever to make your first album, and very few bands can create something equally good and interesting on the next try"?? This isn't a completely original idea, I realize, but I want to take it a step further: is it the bands who let us down with their subsequent albums or are we too critical of albums that are too different or too similar to the first, and thus unable to follow a band's career and grow naturally with them??

This may be a sign of my own increasing cynicism and critical-ness, but, myopically, so far 2008 has been a mixed bag for music. We've had some good albums, true, but new releases by a few of my favorite artists have been disappointing--specifically, Islands, Silver Jews, and Destroyer. None of those albums are the 'second' album by each band, but they all felt like let downs because they were either too different or too similar to what had come before. At the very least, I can't imagine anyone arguing that that these albums are the best thing each band has done. This holds true for other second albums/subsequent albums I've been listening to lately: Evil Urges by My Morning Jacket, Walk It Off by Tapes 'N Tapes, Cease To Begin by Band of Horses, and Some Loud Thunder by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Some of these came as let downs, but even the ones I like I would never posit as better than their forebearers.

This whole concept of "following up hugely successful albums" has plagued bands for decades, but it's also been something many, many other critics have picked at in regards to their reviews. On one hand, I want to recommend Some Loud Thunder because it's a good album with interesting songs that grow on you. On the other hand, most people aren't obsessive music collectors like me, and will only want the best album by a band, so I have to sit here and say "well, it's not as good as their debut..." I think Destroyer's recent Trouble In Dreams is an inferior, samey follow-up to Destroyer's Rubies, but if a fan came to that album first, would it seem so weak?? Half of music reviewing and criticism should be supporting and explaining albums that other people might not know or understand, but the other half should also be a consumer guide that goes beyond personal opinion.

At least, in theory.

See, an album like At Mount Zoomer throws a wrench into my plans, because while I absolutely adore Apologies to the Queen Mary, the band's debut, I am genuinely torn between the two. At Mount Zoomer sounds like the same band--the same omnipresent keyboards and crunchy guitars, driving/taut percussion, and the affected, impassioned vocals of Dan Broeckner and Spencer Krug--but it has entirely different aims. Where Apologies to the Queen Mary was a masterpiece of relatively concise songwriting and a modern day indie rock touchstone, At Mount Zoomer is a more nuanced, complex, and expansive album. It feels and sounds like a travel album, painting portraits of places and scenes while motion is maintained. If you've ever driven by people arguing and started to write their story in your head, or had a quick series of dreams about imaginary romances while afternoon napping, you have a good idea of the kind of things this album shows to you lyrically. It's not entirely removed from the first album, but it doesn't have the same goosebump inducing poetics that Queen Mary does. Instead, Zoomer's goosebumps come from a combination of word sounds and the music itself.

The big difference, musically, between At Mount Zoomer and Apologies to the Queen Mary is that the songs are longer and more instrumentally focused. This isn't to say that it's a guitar solo heavy, jamming album ala Stephen Malkmus's Real Emotional Trash or a prog rock influenced workout like, err, basically every Fiery Furnaces's album except their first. No, what this album does is allow the songs to breathe when they need to. Apologies to the Queen Mary is an intense, upfront album that rarely stops long enough to let you exhale. On Zoomer, if a song doesn't always need percussion, guitars, and keyboards piled on top of each other, it doesn't have it. If it needs a delicate moment (or three) of only one or two elements of sound going, it gets it, such as the halfway mark of the superb 'An Animal In Your Care', wherein everything dies away and the song enters its catchier second half, building from a simple keyboard melody to a majestic climax. Moreover, if a song needs the instruments to carry the emotional weight of a song, they do. Epic album closer 'Kissing The Beehive' puts faith in the listener to hang on through the instrumental sections because the melodic concepts and ideas they sail upon will pay dividends when the vocals come back in. Think Let It Be by the Beatles, not in a "back to basics, classic classic rock" kind of way, but in the way that, say, the full band is playing together and playing off of each other in the intro to 'Dig A Pony.' This song is also worthy of praise for being the first time it truly becomes apparent how sympathetic Boeckner and Krug are as vocal foils.

Speaking of which: At Mount Zoomer is a significant step forward for Boeckner as a singer and a songwriter. Though I confess to not having heard his Handsome Furs side project, I have always considered myself more of a Krug kind of guy, since I thought he had the better batch of songs on Apologies. Here, however, Boeckner's work is just as good--if not potentially better--than Krug's, in particular 'The Grey Estates', with its circular, merry-go-round feel and intricate lyrics. Of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention 'Fine Young Cannibals', presumably named after that band because of the falsetto vocals Boeckner employs. I also like the strange, barely-there saxophone solo that ends the song. Perhaps, then, a minor difference between the two albums is that Krug had a higher batting average on the debut while Boeckner does on the sophomore release.

At Mount Zoomer sits in a weird place because it's not likely to win over anyone, and those that Wolf Parade already had are apt to either love it, as I do, or feel like it's a let down. Moreover, you're likely to meet people who like Wolf Parade but not Sunset Rubdown; people who like Handsome Furs but not Wolf Parade; people who like Sunset Rubdown but not Wolf Parade; people who like At Mount Zoomer but not Apologies to the Queen Mary and so on. Taste, as a subjective force, is such a strange thing. I want to be able to play the consumer guide and end this review by saying that At Mount Zoomer is better or worse than Apologies to the Queen Mary, yet the more I listen to it, the more I can't choose. Let me try to sum all of this up, then. At Mount Zoomer is not the place fans should start, but I feel it has enough of its own life and character that fans will be richly rewarded for giving it a try. In short: equally as good, but for different reasons.

Album of the Week: Wolf Parade- Apologies to the Queen Mary

At the risk of getting dangerously meta on you: whenever I sit down to write a review, I always have a pretty good idea of what I want to say about something. The points I want to make, the things I want to single out for praise or criticism, and so on. But sometimes I want to write a review, and I really think about it a lot, but nothing comes to me. I end up back in my 8th grade days, thinking that reading and writing reviews is pointless, and all you need to know is whether something sucks or not. Well, I've been trying to write a review of Apologies to the Queen Mary for almost 3 years now and I'm still drawing a blank.

Mind you, this isn't an issue of the album being so overwhelming that my response to it is to just sit here, mouth agape, going "guh guh guh guh guh" and gesticulating wildly. For instance, I watched the movie Old Boy a few hours ago and I was nearly catatonic by the time the credits rolled. With Apologies to the Queen Mary I can't think of anything to say because nothing intelligent or incisive comes to mind. I feel like, even after hearing their new album At Mount Zoomer I'm still not far enough away from Apologies to see the big picture. No ideas or critical conceits come to mind when trying to craft this review because it's just a fantastic album that needs no explanation.

See??

You can't tell, but I just sat here listening to 'Fancy Claps' instead of writing something.

This is an album that lives in moments, in the realizations you have on the bus home from somewhere or when you go for a walk at night, your head spinning with thoughts that never settle. It lives in vivid scenes of beauty, love, loss, pain, and separation. It spins poetry out of lyrics and ideas that are the little clever things we think of and say everyday but never write down because we think they're too pedestrian:

"You said you hate the sound
Of the buses on the ground
You said you hate the way they scrape their brakes all over town
I said pretend it’s whales
Keeping their voices down."

I genuinely believe that as time goes on, this album will stand as one of those generational masterpieces that we can look back to not just as a fun, enjoyable album, but as a work of art with depth and substance. I don't use terms like "zeitgeist" often, but if there is a zeitgeist to be captured out there, right now, then Wolf Parade have captured it with this album. My appreciation and understanding for it has only increased with time. It helps, too, that though this was the first major work from co-leaders Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug, they both turn in high watermarks with 'Shine A Light' and 'I'll Believe In Anything', respectively, the latter of which I think is one of the top songs of the decade thus far. Along with 'Purple Bottle' by Animal Collective, it's also one of my favorite love songs, though they're both very skewed and odd love songs. But I'm odd and skewed too, so...

We've all got a few albums that we have an emotional attachment to, an attachment that doesn't allow us to step back from the music at hand and deliver some semblance of a sensible evaluation of. Sure, it's still subjective. But I love In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and react emotionally to it, yet I can still write a decent review about it without words failing me. I think I've proven, though, that I can't do the same for Apologies to the Queen Mary. I love this album so much that I can't explain why I love it. It transcends the indie rock genre even if the tools it uses--glossy-but-not-retro-or-lame keyboards, whip snap drumming, melodic bass, crisp guitars, unique and affected vocals--are almost standard. I don't want to read anything critical about it because to me it's as perfect a thing as I'm likely to get in this world and I don't want it diminished. I like a lot of albums, but it's very rare that they end up meaning something to me.
Apologies to the Queen Mary means something to me.

Islands- Arm's Way

It's tough to grow up. But it's even tougher to grow up when all you're known for is being a kid. Just ask any of the many child stars over the years who have tried to parlay their pre-teen successes into adulthood. What, then, to expect from a band like Islands, and leader Nicholas Thorburn, who has made a living out of crafting childish and catchy indie pop?? What to make of Arm's Way, an album that seems to perversely force itself into maturity and forget the band's appeal in the first place??

Well, that's not entirely fair. Thorburn's aesthetic, going back to the Unicorns album from half a decade ago, was to combine a whimsical, childish indie pop aesthetic with dark subject matter (many of his songs deal with death) and an experimental, genre bending playfulness that touches on prog rock, hip hop, and tropical flavors. And it's also true that the Unicorns album and the Islands' first album, Return To The Sea, had long songs. But, this album isn't as good as either of those, and gives one the impression that Thorburn took the worst tendencies of those albums to hear this time out, while simultaneously trying to forcefully mature the band's sound. Which is to say, he made the arrangements more complicated and focused more on nuance and overall sound than crafting 'hooks.' The result is an interesting, frustrating, and ultimately unfulfilling album that gives you just enough succor to want to come back but never enough to fill you up.

"Fill you up" is a bad way of putting it, because the one thing you're going to hear from most people about this album is how bloated it is. At 68 minutes it is inexcusably long, and for a band that formerly seemed to have no shortage of ideas (Return To The Sea is incredibly varied and consistently good at the same time), it's kind of sad that the album only has enough good material to support half that runtime. 'In The Rushes' is, frankly, a mess, a song that plods along for five minutes in search of a direction before suddenly quoting The Who's 'A Quick One While He's Away.' Unfortunately, this kind of "too clever for its own good" thing might have worked on a shorter, more quixotic Unicorns track, where you expect that kind of self conscious "oh, we're so quirky!!" vibe and can forgive it, but here it just seems like the band reaching to mirror their own attempts at length and bombast to that masterpiece and coming up very short. I will admit that I love the out-of-nowhere samba/Latin ending to 'J'aime Vous Voir Quitter', but this song is only three minutes long. Moreover, album closer 'Vertigo (If It's A Crime)' is 11 minutes long and mostly instrumental, and it's probably the most successful new idea on the album--it goes through many phases and ideas, but none of them are arbitrary or worthless fluff. So, my point is this: either give us these sharp changes in shorter songs, or go the Fiery Furnaces route and make the longer songs winding funhouses of sound, texture, and feel.

I've been listening to the new Wolf Parade album, At Mount Zoomer, at the same time I've been digesting Arm's Way and my overwhelming impression is that Thorburn desperately needs a creative foil. While the main Wolf Parade guys (Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug) can function very well outside of the band, they often have collaborators in those projects, too. Unfortunately, Thorburn seems adrift on his own course after the Unicorns broke up and Jamie Thompson left Islands. While he's capable of producing some brilliant and beautiful moments--of which 'To a Bond', 'The Arm', and most-likely-choice-for-single 'Creeper' are a testament--those moments are surrounded by lots of extraneous music that should have been left on the cutting room floor. This may sound hypocritical after I praised Sunset Rubdown's Random Spirit Lover for doing a similar thing, but the music between those brilliant, memorable moments on that album is very enjoyable if you listen to the album as a whole. With Arm's Way I just want to skip to the good parts and scrap the rest.

My hope is that Arm's Way is a difficult, growing pains album, not unlike the second Liars release. Now that Thorburn has moved his aesthetic past the quirky, quixotic, and compact indie pop/prog rock/cute-songs-with-dark-content phase of his career, let's assume he can either learn a new way of bringing his epic ideas to a more successful fruition, or perhaps re-learn some of what made his previous releases so great in the first place while better expanding their palette and delivery.

Album of the Week: Sunset Rubdown- Random Spirit Lover

If there's a trend I'm beginning to see in 2008 amongst the indie rock leading minds, it's that this is the year of indulgence and complexity. Perhaps I'm making a mountain of a mole hill, but with Stephen Malkmus's album being all jammy and guitar hero-y, the forthcoming Silver Jews album being all accessible and poppy, and future releases by Wolf Parade and Islands having both awesome cover art as well as complicated, long winded songs, it's starting to look like everyone is following whims and/or pushing themselves to expand their art.

I'm going back to Random Spirit Lover by Sunset Rubdown from this past fall, and I'm finding this similar change had already taken place within this band. The songs are longer (only two songs are less than four minutes), more complicated, and less distinct--often the songs flow into each other and have no obvious chorus/verse/chorus structures. This isn't so much prog rock as it is a true album album.

Music critics have used phrases like 'rewards repeated listening' and 'a true album rather than a collection of songs' for many years, and it's exactly for releases like Random Spirit Lover that they were forged. I've been listening to the album off and on since its release last October but it's only recently that I've completely come around to it. Up to this point, it most definitely was good but I didn't see the greatness yet. Compared to Spencer Krug's work with Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, or even the last Sunset Rubdown album, it felt like he was purposely sabotaging one of his best assets: his ability to write off-kilter but insanely catchy songs.

However, given enough time, Random Spirit Lover reveals itself to be every bit the equal of those projects. While they may possess better, self contained songs, Random Spirit Lover possesses better moments. None of the songs from the album immediately stand out, but moments certainly do. 'The Courtesan Has Sung' begins with an echoed, overlapping vocal line and primitive percussion, a seeming minimalist indulgence with no merit, before Krug starts to sing wordless "woah ah oh"s and the keyboards and guitars strike and the whole thing positively glows out of the speakers. Meanwhile, 'Colt Stands Up, Grows Horns'--which is the weakest 'song' on the album--serves to take the sting off the brilliant 'Winged/Wicked Things' with its spacey, frozen ambiance before a crazed funhouse keyboard outro leads us into the mid-tempo 'Stallion' which begins the second half of the album. I don't know if it's actually true, but from the time that keyboard outro begins and Krug comes in on 'Stallion', it feels like the longest stretch of time on the album without vocals. This gives the whole three song package a tinge of entering the second half of a story, as if an all instrumental intermission has occurred before the curtain rises on the next act.

The problem with an album like this is that if you're the sort of listener who just wants to get to the catchy pop moments, you're going to hate this album. It's difficult in the sense that it only rewards people who will stick with it and enjoy not just the main course of a meal but the aperitifs, appetizers, desserts, and digestifs as well. You could skip around to the moments or songs you like best, but it doesn't have the same effect it does when you listen to the whole thing and come to these heights naturally. With Random Spirit Lover the old adage holds true: it's about the journey, not the destination. The first time I listened to the whole thing in its entirety, it was during a power outage. Forced to kill time with just my iPod, I gave it my full attention in one chunk rather than the piecemeal listens I had given it in the past. I loved the experience, but afterward I couldn't remember which specific songs I liked.

This will be why people who just want quick-and-dirty three minute pop songs won't like it, and why people who want something more will love it. You really need to set aside an hour and give yourself over to it completely. Just as you would devote more time and attention to a complicated film, novel, or videogame, Random Spirit Lover asks more of the listener but it also provides richer rewards. You may not listen to it every day, but when you're in the mood for a full meal and not just the main course, you'll find a lot to digest here.

Swan Lake- Beast Moans

People like to throw around the term "supergroup" as if it actually means anything anymore. Every time a few guys from other bands start a band together you hear that they're a "supergroup." I don't know about you, but the idea of "supergroups" becomes totally unappealing once you've listened to great musicians or artists thrown together at benefit concerts or music festivals. The cold realization is that it takes time for people to get used to each other, and it is exceedingly rare that people who've never collaborated together could produce something substantial on the first try. It's fun to make up dream bands--Hendrix on guitar, John Bonham on drums, that kind of thing--but the truth is they play entirely different styles and would take awhile to either learn to play in each other's framework or create something wholly new.

So, then, Swan Lake, which combines Dan Bejar (solo artist under the moniker Destroyer and the secret weapon of the New Pornographers), Carey Mercer (brilliant howler of Frog Eyes), and Spencer Krug (sometime member of Frog Eyes, main force behind Sunset Rubdown, and a significant creative half of Wolf Parade). At first glance this line up wouldn't make sense to anyone who isn't familiar with Destroyer's work. After releasing the synth/keyboard based Your Blues album, Dan Bejar decided to tour with Frog Eyes as his backing band, transforming the orchestrated and synthetic affectations of the album into a rocking and rollicking barnstormer. If you've ever seen Bob Dylan live in the past few years and witnessed how his band transforms the songs into new and fantastic shapes, then you have an idea of what the Frog Eyes pairing was like. Anyway, Bejar, Mercer, and Krug enjoyed the tour so much they recorded an EP under the Destroyer name, Notorious Lightning and Other Works, and made plans to record an album together. Thus, a year or so later, the Swan Lake project was born.

Where exactly does Beast Moans fall on the scale between "disparate musicians taking turns playing in each other's style" and "creating something unlike anything the three have produced before"?? Well, more of the former than the latter. Imagine me saying that with a tinge of disappointment and you've got the general crux of the issue. Beast Moans is a bit of a slippery album because I feel like Dan Bejar and Spencer Krug make better collaborators than either of them with Carey Mercer. This is no knock on Mercer or Frog Eyes, but that band's style is so distinctive and unhinged that one gets the feeling that here Bejar and Krug help make Mercer's songs more coherent and traditional while he, in turn, makes their's more unpredictable and odd. Consider 'The Partisan But He's Got To Know', which is just a typically great Frog Eyes song until Bejar and Mercer trade lines toward the end, adding much needed flavor syrup to the reverby Slushie that is Frog Eyes. Metaphorically speaking. On the other hand, consider album closer 'Shooting Rockets' which, though written by Bejar, is an apocalyptic dirge buried beneath dense guitar soundscapes and clattering percussion. Compare this to the version of the song that appears on Bejar's recent Destroyer album Trouble In Dreams in a cleaned up and much more enjoyable form.

Some new ideas do appear on Beast Moans, and promise greater things on the inevitable, all-but-released next album. After Bejar's magnificent 'The Freedom', the song segues into 'Petersburg, Liberty Theater, 1914', which has a title like a Frog Eyes song but belongs to each member equally. Over a repetitive drum beat, glistening guitars, and downright beautiful keyboards, Krug and Bejar harmonize very well before trading off vocals to Mercer, who is commended for singing in a fashion somewhat unlike his usual style, much calmer and almost speak-singing.'Pleasure Vessels', though Mercer penned, switches between reverb drenched walls of sound and clean guitar chording, a mood piece as much as a song.

It's always hard for me to review a "supergroup" album and not declare a MVP, so to speak. Were I forced, the easy victor on this album is Spencer Krug. Though we all loved the Wolf Parade album and Sunset Rubdown's Shut Up I Am Dreaming, he really proves himself one of the best and most consistent songwriters of the Canadian indie scene with 'All Fires' and 'Are You Swimming In Her Pools?' which combine his love of repeating everyday phrases with poetic/romantic imagery. The latter presents such gems as "please is not a word I ever said quietly" and "I hope you find your mother there" alongside the flat-out amazing second 'verse' which begins with the following three lines:

Are you running up her riverbeds and navigating long fingers of a hand?
Because fingers make the hand
And rivers make the land

I want to give some credit to Mercer and Bejar, but their best works lies elsewhere as far as I'm concerned, and I feel like their best contributions to the album are still overshadowed by Krug. It's true that they probably pushed Krug to this level and/or helped him realize his songs better than he could have with his other bands, but one gets the distinct impression they didn't bring their "A" game to the proceedings. Props to Bejar, though, for managing anything as good as 'A Venue Called Rubella' while he's also busy dividing his output between Destroyer and New Pornographers.

Though I do genuinely enjoy this album, I also feel that the next thing they release will be even better. Other than Bejar, who played it safe on his last two releases to diminishing results (I'm still baffled that people like Challengers by the New Pornographers so much), Mercer and Krug seemed to take the lessons of this collaboration to heart. Both of the last albums by Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown were phenomenal, and represented great artistic steps--if not a leap--for each. Whatever the future holds for the Swan Lake project, rest assured that its first product, Beast Moans, is well worth seeking out for fans of any of the three minds behind it.