Nine Inch Nails - The Slip (2008)

3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9

Despite the fact that Nine Inch Nails has ceased to be relevant in any musical sense, Trent Reznor's rampant support of the modern digitalization of music has kept his music thriving. From online alternate reality games, to releasing his albums for free on the web, one gets the sense that his attack on music industry commercialism has revitalized his efforts, and it shows both in the frequency with which he's released his last few albums (three in little more than a year), as well as their quality (Year Zero and Ghosts I-IV were probably his first great albums since The Downward Spiral). The Slip continues this trend, lacking the conceptual coherence that charged its predecessors, but making up for that with Trent's most concise collection of tracks since Pretty Hate Machine.

The album makes its two halves very distinct from one another. The first half contains all the usual industrial influenced, rage ridden dance-pop that Nine Inch Nails has made itself known for; in other words, 4 straight reprisals of "Bite The Hand That Feeds". Yes, the proto-industrial grind of "Head Down", high-octane energy of "1,000,000" and club-ready single, "Discipline", are all very entertaining. But one can't shake off the feeling that Trent watered down the striking Bomb-Squad-esque production of Year Zero leaving behind, artless angst-rock. A full album of this stuff would have been a disappointment. Thankfully, The Slip, makes a 180 degree turn on the remaining songs. The first track of the second half, "Lights in The Sky" blows away everything that came before it. Stripped down to its emotive core, Reznor's songwriting talent is finally given the treatment it deserves. No more pedestrian, overtly-distorted anger overflowing his composition; just Trent and a spacious piano, with haunting results. After a soothing ambient piece, two hypnotizing near-instrumentals with buzzing layers of synth-pads, de-tuned guitars and unsettling layers of noise function as even more evidence that Reznor should consider following through with a sequel to Ghosts I-V. Admittedly, the off-the-cuff nature of the album release makes it feel like it's not quite the proper sequel that's been promised by Year Zero, and if there's any other fault to be had, it's the same complaint that could be given against Trent's mid-career material - an unwillingness to move forward. But The Slip is still yet another brick in the ever-building wall of anticipation for Reznor. Only time will tell if he decides to follow through with these inspired tendencies or just linger in a point of transition, still fatally attached to his younger years of misplaced angst. What's definite, however, is that the past two years have marked a much stronger revival than the With Teeth years did. Read more...

Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs (2008)

3.0 ★/6.0 - 6.9

Secretly, nobody likes change. It's inherent in Humans to gravitate towards our comfort zones. But who knows where the world would be if people didn't evolve, grow, move on and move out. Death Cab For Cutie understands this well enough. Scenesters still decry this once-loved Indie guitar-pop band for turning their backs against the underground and entering the major-label studio. But ultimately, two of Death Cab's most financially and critically successful works (Transatlantacism and Plans) came from this career trajectory. So for a band whose style (and gross income) has benefited so much from change, you'd think they'd be happy to welcome it back with open arms. But Narrow Stairs shows that, in reality, Ben Gibbard and co. are as apprehensive towards transformations as the next person.

The common consensus is that this is Death Cab's "experimental" album. But if you've grown attached to their current stream of OC-friendly guitar pop, you don't have to worry. Narrow Stairs' perceived experimentalism is more obvious in idea than in practice. "I Will Possess Your Heart" is probably the main source of the talk. It opens with 4 instrumental minutes of Can-esque jamming and spacious atmosphere led by a soulful bass riff. Also, "No Sunlight" and "Long Division" carry dense, intricate guitar-play and driving Neu!-style rhythms that distinguish them from typical Death Cab fare, yet still fit perfectly with their sing-along qualities. Even though "Pity and Fear" falls flat in it's attempt at traditional tabla-driven Indian music, Narrow Stairs' boldest tracks point to what could've been a spectacular new chapter in Death Cab's career. But the biggest problem of the album is that the band seems so resistant to make the full-fledged leap into the unknown, even though they clearly have the capabilities. Too many tracks hide behind the same AM pop territory they hinted at with their last two albums. In particular, the mid-section spanning from "Talking Bird" to "Grapevine Fires" settles into a lazy lull of humdrum hooks. Even after getting back on track with the slinking beauty of "Your New Twin Sized Bed", "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" prevails as a completely underwhelming closer, filled with lifeless cliche that leaves the listeners asking themselves, "is that it?".

Any way you look at it, Narrow Stairs is a polarizing album. Death Cab's experiments are exciting enough to get previous detractors on board, but those people will undoubtedly be let down by the straightforward interior. Inversely, those who jumped on board with Transatlantacism and Plans probably won't welcome the new influences very nicely. And ex-fans of their first few albums, will probably fall in love with "Cath..." (which strongly recalls Something About Airplanes) but will be unimpressed with both their typical tracks and their new jams. If Death Cab had just applied to a single mode, they might've retained the focus that makes all of those aforementioned albums so great. Instead, they've made a strange transitional work that offers small snapshots of the band's strengths and wide-scale landscape photos of their fears. Read more...

Islands - Arm's Way (2008)

2.5 ★/5.0 - 5.9

So many other journalists have written about what causes the musical anomaly known as a "Sophomore Slump", that restating it would just be redundant. That said, if you don't want to hear about yet another band falling hard on the follow-up to their well-received debut, just walk away from this review right now, because Arm's Way is a frustratingly classic case.

Here's the deal: each track on Arm's Way is bursting with ideas, but very few of them actually materialize into worthwhile songs. First track, "The Arm" personifies the album best, opening with a beautifully delicate build up of ghostly voices and crashing cymbals, but quickly ditching it for a generic, dark indie-pop tune. Time and time again throughout Arm's Way, the band induces face palms of the highest order, with their decision to make the strengths that they exhibited so well on Return to the Sea (subtlety, playfulness and catchiness) an afterthought, in favor of a sound that's darker, more progressive, and ultimately more forgettable. This choice probably comes from a new-found love for The Who, and I'm not just saying that because of the reprise of "You Are Forgiven" that arrives at the end of "In The Rushes". Each song flows like a Rock opera with a capitol R, filled with misguided attempts at drama, Prog and capturing the over the top whine of Queen at their most sinister and "serious" sounding (serious is in quotations because even when Queen were serious, they weren't, really). But all the tempo changes and excess Muse-inspired melodrama (his blood is dirty, and he likes it that way, folks!) can't mask the fact that the parts of these multi-sectioned songs that focus on the whimsicality from their debut are the only reasons Arm's Way is worth listening to at all. Check out the tip-toeing bridges of "The Arm", the chorus of "Pieces of You", the funky mid-section of "Life in Jail" and observe how much more lively, original and true to the band they feel in comparison to the majority of the forced, bloated songs they're lazily tacked onto. Jamie Thompson boasted in interviews how much more dark and complex the new album would be. But he should have known better than to overlook the fact that that's precisely one of the main issues that leads to a sophomore slump: a band consciously ditches their strengths in an attempt to avoid an album that's tagged as "too similar to their debut". One might argue that changes are necessary in a band's evolution, but it's also important to note that a change should be natural. If it's too self-conscious...well...we get a baffling mess like Arm's Way. Read more...

Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances (2008)

3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9

Can passion be substituted for virtually every other attribute that characterizes good music? Some would point to Conor Oberst as proof that it can, but just as many probably remain unconvinced by his albums; especially his more recent ones, which have tended to overlook the fact that if you're gonna make emotion be the core-attraction of your music, you shouldn't drown it out with string sections and excess compositional prowess. If someone's gonna stake out the claim that emotion trumps content, Titus Andronicus is perhaps a better example, whose dedication to fervor and fire is only further strengthened by their muscular, musical simplicity.

It's too appropriate that a review of The Airing of Grievances open with a mention of Conor, because the lead vocalist of Titus Andronicus has a raspy and emotive voice that recalls the indie boy-wonder at his most searing, longing and corrosively punk-damaged. Unlike Bright Eyes, however, which too often contrasted Conor's quavering voice with spotless pop, the enraged and implosive screams and gang-shouts on The Airing of Grievances are perfectly appropriate for the music. The bulk of the album is made up of Flogging Molly-esque bar anthems that recall Punk in terms of volume and energy, but bring to mind The Hold Steady's dedication to painting pervasive pictures of parties and recklessness. In other words, these songs are freaking loud. The band begins with their amps at 11 and get progressively louder, nearly falling apart under the weight of every member plowing a single progression into the ground. They milk anthemic hooks for all they're worth, riding them through enough repetition and hot-blooded delivery of notebook poetry to thrust you into nostalgia, pining for long lost urges of youthful abandon. And this album is nothing, if not a soundtrack for growing up, particularly in the Western World. You can hear the Fourth of July fireworks sparking off in the opening rush of "Albert Camus". The two sections of "No Future" reek from traces of American rooted pride and honor in their traditional structures and melodies. Matched with the band's bleeding angst, fury and disquieting readings of Albert Camus, it feels like a mean-spirited satire on whatever this country is supposed to stand for - an extension of the idealism and anarchistic rage that develops when you're young and just learning the world's unfairness. Perhaps I'm reading too deeply into what many will justifiably ingest as bar-rock, but the band's wonderfully cryptic and poetic nature invites these kinds of interpretations. And as easy as it is to be resistant to music like this that wears it's heart and mind on it's sleeves, nothing really succeeds without some sort of emotional backing. I hope that The Airing of Grievances manages to convince the more hard-hearted people out there to accept sincerity at face value. It's okay to have feelings. It's okay to be philosophical. And it's perfectly possible to write a bare-bones, vulgar, kick-ass drinking album in the process. Read more...

Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (2008)

4.0 ★/8.0 - 8.9

Through the first half of the 2000's, DFA records struck upon something gold, even if they didn't realize it yet. The formula was simple: Live Rock instrumentation + Dance music = a good time. The result was what publications have gone on to call "Dance Punk", recalling the early 80's, but bringing in the modern dance renovations of Club music. Bands like !!!, The Faint and Hot Chip spread these forefathers' philosophy all across the country, revealing scenesters' silliness at refusing to get their asses on the dance floor and start moving. It's no surprise why someone would look back on this as the "golden era" for music in the 00s, but those people also face the undeniable fact that the genre didn't have nearly enough top-tier albums before dying down.

This is what makes Cut Copy's sophomore album such a pleasant surprise. It so impeccably fuses dance music and indie pop that one would have trouble recalling a time when the two genres were at all separate. They're akin to a more poppy version of LCD Soundsystem, abusing all the arm-crossing, stand-still hipsters at a show with irresistible, hip shaking grooves, leaving them no choice but to move to the beat. But let's get rid of the modern cultural implications here; Cut Copy are just a ridiculously catchy Techno band. They aren't doing anything that Depeche Mode (or even more recently, The Rapture) didn't do before, and you'll be mistaken to think that there's any sort of cultural milestone hidden within In Ghost Colours' spinning keyboards and sharp rhythmic guitars. All they have are insanely catchy melodies and toe-tapping beats to match. But they accomplish it with so much charisma and fearlessness that you can't help but get caught up in their ever-swirling daze. "Feel The Love" is the mission statement, mixing Futureheads-style hooks with whimsical Disco breakdowns and shameless usage of a vox-box that seem to invite the listener to let go and embrace the cheese. If you do so, you'll be rewarded with the bass-led dance punk of "Feel The Music" and "Nobody Lost, Nobody Found" or "So Haunted", which glamorously fuses avant-noise with a rock-star arena chorus. "Hearts On Fire" meanwhile is a straight-forward club track with "uh" voice samples and layers of spacey synths. Between each of these 80's dance-offs are cloudy sound collages of vocal clips and samples that recall Animal Collective (see "Eternity One Night Only") and do away with any overbearing qualities that could've so easily plagued a retro-release like this. As a matter of fact, similar to M83's Saturdays = Youth, In Ghost Colours perfectly fits into 2008 despite it's dated influences. I think what we're seeing is a vigorous response to everyone who said in the early 2000's that all the bands bringing retro influences back to the forefront of musical consciousness was just a phase. The bottom line is that truly timeless music doesn't just stick to it's decade. It continues to inspire and be reinterpreted in an infinite number of ways, sometimes in a form that's just as fresh as the original was. In Ghost Colours is such a case. Read more...

Boris - Smile (2008)

3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9

From what I've heard, the American version of Smile has a more clear, focused and direct feel to it. But when it comes to the Japanese version, it's contrasting styles, inconsistency, and unwillingness to edit makes it feel like a challenging collection of oddball leftovers from Pink. What's strange is how Boris makes what should be a scattered, short-sighted and hard-to-follow collage of unrelated tracks somewhat enjoyable. It opens with a striking duo of immediacy that hardly characterizes the bulk of it's inaccessible content. "Message" is Boris doing TV On The Radio, Hendrix style: fuzzy drum-machine driven Electronica with violently disorienting guitar-noise solos and playful doo-wop chants. The following "Buzz-In" makes an exhilarating and primal leap back into Pink territory: careening drums, garage riffage and background tape loops tossing in a psychedelic edge. From then on though, Smile becomes a tough cookie to crack. It doesn't fail completely, but on your first few listens, it does fall apart. I still can't understand how the underwhelming "Flower Sun Rain" has become a fan-favorite, constantly regarded as "wrongly excluded" from Pink. It's pace is mind numbingly slow, Takeshi's poor vocal attempts at balladry comes off as bad karaoke and the intended melancholia that this is supposed to be supporting doesn't even have a memorable progression. "Shoot!", meanwhile, is just too irritatingly fuzzy to retain any listening value. But Boris will still be your favorite Japanese Indie/Ambient/Drone/Psychadelic/Noise/Metal band by default. As difficult as it may be to get through their unpredictable albums, no one can deny them their distinctiveness, especially in the context of their homeland, where their closest living relative is probably Boredoms (and even they would only qualify as a half-cousin, twice removed). That realization alone makes all their albums worthwhile in some way. As confounding as Smile may be at first, it's got a personality that keeps you fascinated, making it a grower. Eventually, the initial incomprehensibility of "Dead Destination" begins to reveal an unstoppable decimation of apocalyptic proportions and the closing "You Put Up Your Umbrella" can never forgiven for it's lame first half, but soars and swoons through enough mind-expanding jamming and breathless ambiance in it's second half to impress.

The more you look at it, the more you realize Smile shouldn't be as good as it is. Pink was great because of it's cohesion and accessibility. It sounded like a work of labor and gave their experimentalism an aim and a recognizable identity. Here, the band sounds like they're once again shooting the shit, catering to no one and yet all the while, getting pretty close to Pink's greatness. Sure, it isn't very together, but taken as a collection of individual moments, it'll captivate. Read more...

The Notwist - The Devil, You And Me (2008)

3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9

The Notwist's last album, Neon Golden, was an album disillusioned with relationships, crafted mainly for long lonely nights (see song titles like "One Step Inside Doesn't Mean You Understand"). It was only on tracks like "One With The Freaks" and "Consequence", that the band opened their arms, revealing their fondness for simple, tender and touching rumination pieces. The Devil, You + Me, on the other hand, revels in that sound, from the moment "Good Lies" bursts out the door with pensively driving waves of sound that paint a picture of the band crouched over their instruments, pouring all their memories of loved ones, instinctual intimacy and traces of emotion into each heavenly movement. But for all it's romantic gestures and love-centric gestures, The Devil, You + Me is still best personified by it's album cover: A lone man standing at the edge of a forest, ankle deep in a body of water teeming with birds and wildlife. The narrator of Neon Golden has made it out of the dank labyrinth of tracks like "Trashing Days" and "Neon Golden", only to emerge in an endless sea. Beauty thrives much more in this place, but there's no escaping the fact that he's still a long ways from home. It's that tension between inescapable sadness and beauty that may make The Devil, You + Me worth checking out, despite it's lack of focus. By lack of focus, I'm referring to way in which the sequencing of the album let's down it's powerful individual moments. Unlike Neon Golden, which had a track order that lent each track a distinct identity and immediacy, even countless repeat listens will render The Devil, You + Me as not much more than a collection of tracks. But with delicate and transcendent songs like "Gloomy Planets" and the title track, one gets the sense that The Notwist puts so much into each one of these individual tracks, filling them to the top with hooks, life-affirming spirituality and dense textures, that their disregard for cohesion is a forgivable mistake. Read more...