Destroyer- Thief

Dan Bejar has always been gifted when it comes to lyrics, but an appropriate musical backing for his early Destroyer records seemed like an afterthought. The City Of Daughters album is held back by short grating instrumentals and the overall sense he's being obtuse and clever just to be obtuse and clever; his albums before that were rough and forgettable things, semi-obscure and best left that way. Streethawk: A Seduction, then, is considered his first true success, a rich record with purposeful and catchy songwriting, though I think this praise also belongs to Thief. Released the same year as the breakthrough debut of The New Pornographers, Destroyer's Thief can't help but sound like a reaction to that band. Perhaps it merely inspired Bejar to care more about melodies and hooks. Either way, sprinkling some classic rock and singer/songwriter influences on his music produced a record that contained songwriting and melodies as beguiling and original as the lyrical voice always had been.

What promise was hinted at on City Of Daughters and earlier is, here, finally achieved. Some have suggested that Thief is also a reaction to Bejar's lack of success, but it's be hard to tell if he's serious or not with his criticisms and witty abstractions on tracks like 'Destroyer's The Temple' and the Pink Floyd nodding 'To The Heart Of The Sun, On The Back Of The Vulture I'll Go.' I always get the feeling Bejar is more interested in how words sound together and the kind of feelings and imagery they can evoke, so any meaning in his songs is up to the listener. Yet there's enough commentary and witticisms about the music business, cryptic as they might be, that he must be attempting to say something, a goal few or none of his other releases share, making Thief a bit of a unique bird for that reason alone.

If there's a chief weakness to Thief, it's that whenever the band gets up to roaring energy on rockers like 'Canadian Lover/Falcon's Escape' and the surf-pop sounding 'City Of Daughters', they always merely smolder when they should burn. I'm not sure if this is the same band used on the Destroyer's Rubies and Trouble In Dreams albums, but by that point the Destroyer band was capable of burning with the best. Thief, on the other hand, feels detached and half-committed: are these songs of sincerity and energy, or irony and apathy?

It could be that this question doesn't matter when applied to Destroyer, yet there's a nagging notion in the back of my head that knows, as much as I like Thief, it's a dress rehearsal for Streethawk: A Seduction, an album superior in every way because it's more relaxed and fun. Bejar has something to prove on it, whereas on Thief he merely has something to say. This could explain the album's weak second half, the anti-climactic title track, and overall lack of focus (those pointless instrumentals and experimental tracks from City Of Daughters still rear their heads), yet I'll still stick up for Thief as the first wholly enjoyable Destroyer album, one that has something to say and says it well more often than not.

The New Pornographers- Mass Romantic

Mass Romantic is a curious case of an album being ahead of its time in terms of trends that have nothing to do with the style of the music contained therein. Examined as the first New Pornographers album, it set the stage for the band's take on power-pop though doesn't hold up as well as the band's subsequent work. Examine as the first Canadian indie album to cross over to the U.S., it was unintentionally predictive of how the last decade would be defined as much by Canadian indie rock as it was American standard bearers old and new.

For whatever reason, I hadn't heard the first New Pornographers album until recently. It isn't a revelatory listen for someone who's followed their music since their second album, Electric Version, but it does clearly lay the foundation for the band's sound. Hooks and melodies immediately find purchase in the listener's mind, whether it be the huge choruses of 'Letter From An Occupant' or with a pinch more subtlety, as with the continually peaking refrains of 'To Wild Homes.' Unfortunately, the lyrics and songwriting variety aren't as strong as they would be on later albums, and as a result some of the songs have a slight, dashed off feel that combines with Mass Romantic's monotonous energy level to drag the album down. 'The Mary Martin Show' is the obvious offender here, and much of the album could be shuffled into any order with no loss of flow or pacing, since it's constantly energetic and loud. Moreover, the production of Mass Romantic is shrill and treble heavy, and as a result the personality of the voices of the band's three vocalists are often lost in a mess of keyboards, organs, guitars, and, often, the backing vocals of the others. Simply put, this is an example of an album deservedly getting praise upon its release for the things it did right, but eventually it's made obsolete when later releases from the same band did everything it does better.

While Mass Romantic may not be the indie classic that it has garnered a reputation as, I would argue that it was inadvertently important for how well it opened the door for Canadian indie rock to emerge as a major creative force. It was released in Canada in 2000 but didn't see official release here until 2003; in the meantime, the album was winning rave reviews in the American press, even giving the band a sold out tour. Subsequent Canadian indie bands that hit it big, like Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, and Wolf Parade, may not have followed a similar fame curve, but they did share a collective/collaborative make up. As the New Pornographers were a self-styled “supergroup” made up of people who were in other bands or were solo artists in their own right, so too did those aforementioned bands have members who were in other bands or had solo/side projects. This is really quite similar to the way Chicago indie rock and post-rock bands of the 90s operated, though in that case there was nowhere near the level of popularity or attention paid, and often bands were incredibly short lived or extremely obscure, their output hard to track down. Or both. In Canada's case, however, the burgeoning online press and resultant documentation of bands, the prolificacy and quality of the artists, and the good faith support of record companies with modest sales goals were such that you can now busy yourself for a couple months just with the New Pornographers's family tree alone, and most of the albums, EPs, and singles are still in print and relatively easy to find.

Judged as music, Mass Romantic is a fine piece of modern power-pop that was made somewhat redundant by the New Pornographers's next album,Electric Version, which not only improved upon this debut, but arguably perfected their trademark power-pop sound to the extent that by their third album they were already moving away from it. As an early example of one of the major trends of music during the 00s, however, Mass Romantic is a crucial release.

4 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Re: Views On The New Pornograpers's Together

Rather than try to embed the video here, since that still doesn't display properly, here is the link to go to YouTube for proper resolution!

I hope to have a review, and possibly a video review, done of the new Broken Social Scene album in the next week or so, since the more I listen to it the more conflicted and verbose I think my thoughts on it are going to be by the time I get around to writing about it.

Primer: Part 2/Album Of The Week: Shins- Chutes Too Narrow

I'm working on a theory that the beginning of every Shins album announces its intention within the first song. Oh, Inverted World opens with 'Caring Is Creepy', which has astral keyboards and is a chugging mid-tempo jangle-pop gem. Wincing The Night Away's 'Sleeping Lessons' has a dreamy keyboard line and James Mercer sounds like he's singing underwater; it takes almost a full two minutes and 30 seconds before the electric guitars kick in and the songs sounds 'full' finally. What does Chutes Too Narrow begin with?? Some clapping, a "Woo!" and a patient acoustic guitar intro that gets punctured by electric guitars 40 seconds in. Before we hit the minute mark we're already in the midst of one of the most rocking and downright raunchy songs the Shins have put to tape--Mercer even manages a scream on the "be ready to remember" line.

Yeah, it's gunna be that kind of album.

Chutes Too Narrow represents a lot of things for the Shins. As alluded to in my review of their first album, this one sees the band fully plugging into the Northwest music scene, enlisting Built To Spill/Modest Mouse producer Phil Elk to help get the abundance of electric guitars on display to sound just right. It also represents the band not only matching their impressive debut but overcoming it; Oh, Inverted World is nearly flawless indie pop and essential to the zeitgeist of this decade thanks to Garden State, but pound for pound Chutes is better. This is an album bursting with addictive hooks and excellent songwriting--Wincing The Night Away is more challenging and interesting to talk about, but Mercer really perfected his way with arrangements and lyrics on this one. Lastly, Chutes Too Narrow represents the band filtering out some of their 60s pop/psychedelic tendencies for something much more akin to the power pop of contemporaries like The New Pornographers. Funnily enough, it was during this same era when Belle & Sebastian were themselves moving toward power pop from their twee/indie pop beginnings. Once again, comparisons could be drawn between the Shins and those Scottish masters. But I digress.

The thing that strikes me most about this album today is just how energetic it is. We aren't quite to the spastic levels of Architecture In Helsinki but we're pretty close. Even the slower songs like 'Young Pilgrims' have a forward momentum to them (I also dig the pedal steel on this track; see 'Gone For Good' for more of the Shins going country). Most of this energy is due to the way the album was mixed, moving the guitars and vocals up front while burying the keyboards and bass. This is easily the Shins's most guitar centric album yet. Thankfully Phil Elk was on hand to capture the results;I say "thankfully" because he is an old hand at capturing these sort of distinctive guitar tones after working with Built To Spill, who also make use of guitars with a very clean, crisp, and slightly reverb-y sound. 'Saint Simon' has some staccato guitar chording as plucked from reggae (or funk) which somehow works in this context even once the band gets to the second half of the song with the angelic 'la da da da da' chorus. 'Turn A Square', meanwhile, reminds me of excellent group interplay in the beginning to the Beatles's 'Don't Let Me Down' only played faster and continuously.

On a side note, 'Those To Come' is such a great way to end this album. It's so reserved and poetic; something about the atmosphere it creates is utterly perfect and makes me think of whistling tea kettles on foggy weekend mornings. It makes me long for a James Mercer solo album whenever I hear it because--especially after the growth shown on Wincing The Night Away--I think he could make a really excellent album on his own.

I wanted to complain that this album is too short, but I only think that when I look at the runtime. Chutes Too Narrow is short and to the point; all excess and flab has been trimmed away. It is an as-perfect-as-we're-likely-to-get-in-this-world power pop album. While it's unclear where they'll go from their third album, Chutes stands as the band's pinnacle and is my favorite of their's thus far.

The New Pornographers- Challengers

Sometimes I wonder if I'm not critical enough of music. Lately I find myself writing more positive reviews than negative ones and I begin to wonder if I'm losing my edge; am I going soft, being too nice and accommodating to albums that, during the heat of youth, I would have dismantled with precision?? Perhaps it's just that I'm more selective about what I bother to review--why say anything if all you have is nothing nice?? Bad reviews are fun to write, but I actually find they're more difficult to write because it's harder to articulately posit criticisms than it is to repeat "boy, this sucks" in increasing volume and tenacity.

I bring this up because Challengers is one of very few recent albums I've flat out not enjoyed and I've had trouble getting my head around precisely why I don't think it's good. I wish it were as simple as "it's not as good as their other albums" because then we could just drop that on the table and nod, offering up witticisms about taste being subjective before we put on Led Zeppelin IV and open some beers. But while it is indeed not as good as their other albums, there's more going on in Challengers than just an example of an inferior sequel.

I think everyone can agree that the first three New Pornographers albums are of-a-piece. They don't sound identical, but they're all working from the same indie pop/power pop blueprint. They contain some of the catchiest and most addictive songs from this decade, and I can't say enough good things about them. At the same time that the New Pornographers "supergroup" was cranking them out, the members of the band--including A.C. Newman (aka Carl Newman), Neko Case, and Destroyer (aka Dan Bejar)--were producing really great 'solo' albums. At some point after the release of the third New Pornographers album, Twin Cinema, the solo work began to infect the "supergroup", and it was not for the best.

I don't want to say that the only thing the New Pornographers are good at is their aesthetic as described above, but, well, Challengers doesn't prove that they're good at anything else. It sounds like A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder, Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, and Destroyer's Rubies smashed together in a car crash with Twin Cinema. The mix isn't so much a White Album-esque "each Beatle with the other three backing him" vibe as it is a watered down, confused mess. Even the songs which do play to their strengths--like 'All Of The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth' and 'Mutiny, I Promise You'--strike me as b-side quality. Elsewhere, I can't help but wonder what 'Go Places', 'My Rights Versus Yours', and 'Entering White Cecilia' might have sounded like if delivered on the respective 'solo' wings of Neko Case, A.C. Newman, and Destroyer.

What Challengers lacks most of all is hooks. "Hooks" are a very vague idea that everyone understands but nobody can explain, and this album is a great example of what not having hooks can do to your album. The first three New Pornographers albums had hooks spilling out of the speakers. The solo albums mentioned above have plenty of hooks without having to always be the "go for the throat!!" power pop of the New Pornographers. Yet even after listening to Challengers for the fifth time, I still don't remember much of anything about it. Normally the Dan Bejar songs are the highlights of a New Pornographers album: 'Jackie, Dressed In Cobras' is one of my favorite songs, ever, from any band or album. However, his contributions to Challengers are his weakest yet, a weakness that would begin to seem symptomatic with his kind-of-meh, hit-or-miss new album Trouble In Dreams. Meanwhile Carl Newman steadfastly tries to remake his solo album in this setting and comes up wanting again and again. Part of the blame for the hook-less can be placed at the feet of the increasingly dominant acoustic/orchestral sound the band began to head in during Twin Cinema. I think it needs to be said: acoustic instruments don't belong in the New Pornographers. At least not as the main instruments.

I hesitate to be too negative toward Challengers because I have ample evidence in and out of the discography of the New Pornographers that they're capable of incredible things. I keep telling myself that maybe it's me and not the album; maybe I don't "get it" yet and on this listen I will. But this is not a difficult album: there is nothing to get. It is what it is, and what Challengers happens to be is a creative misstep, not a disaster but a true disappointment if there ever was one.

Album Vs. Solo Album

It's often the case that a band releases an album and a member of that band releases a solo album in close proximity. This can just as often make for an interesting compare/contrast comparison, revealing how much of a band's sound or brilliance is up to that person, or at the very least, how much the band can bring to their work.

Album: Deerhunter- Cryptograms (2007)
Solo Album: Atlas Sound- Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (2008)
What Say You??: While Cryptograms adheres to a mixture of kraut rock, shoegazer, ambient, and noise pop, Bradford Cox's solo album under the Atlas Sound moniker falls closer to the dream pop, ambient, and electro-pop borders of the musical lands. You might be fooled into thinking Let The Blind Lead Those... is the next Deerhunter album because they sound close enough for unknowing ears to accept, but you'll definitely notice a difference in texture and mood.

Album: Animal Collective- Sung Tongs (2004)
Solo Album: Panda Bear- Young Prayer (2004)
What Say You??: I've gone into this in greater detail elsewhere, but Sung Tongs is Animal Collective's landmark release. This is not so much due to the fact that they were playing on mostly acoustic instruments but that they were writing actual songs--and catchy ones, at that. Panda Bear's solo album from that era takes the same starting aesthetic but goes in a different direction with it, featuring acoustic guitars almost exclusively, and all the while driven by Panda Bear's full range as a vocalist. It may be a step back toward abstraction versus songs, but it's more affecting for it.

Album: Broken Social Scene- Broken Social Scene (2005)
Solo Album: Kevin Drew- Spirit If...(2007)
What Say You?? Though released two years apart, and under the confusing label Broken Social Scene Presents..., the implication was that this would be a solo album, and so it wasn't unreasonable to expect that Spirit If... sound different from the last BSS album. However, I'll be damned if I could tell this wasn't a Broken Social Scene album. All of which confuses me, because it was recorded with seemingly the entire usual BSS crew, and it sounds like the sequel for their self titled album. But, whatever. I'm not complaining here--that album is better than You Forgot It In People in my opinion, and in this case, more of the same is "more of the awesome" in my book.

Album: The New Pornographers- Electric Version (2003)
Solo Album: A.C. Newman- The Slow Wonder (2004)
What Say You??: There isn't as much difference between these two albums as may initially appear. Though The Slow Wonder isn't the only "solo" album of a New Pornographer from this era, it would infect the band's sound most obviously. On their last album, Challengers, the band's sound evolved toward a more nuanced, orchestrated, and acoustic sound--not unlike The Slow Wonder. However, I don't really want that from the New Pornographers. What I want is something like Electric Version, which is a modern classic of indie pop/power pop that gets better and better with time, as do their other pre-Challengers releases. I also love The Slow Wonder though I love it expressly because it is a solo album, which implies something. But I digress. My case against Challengers will have to be made another day.

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.