The Antlers- Hospice

Hospice

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1. Prologue
2. Kettering
3. Sylvia
4. Atrophy
5. Bear
6. Thirteen
7. Two
8. Shiva
9. Wake
10. Epilogue



Several listens of this album has left me quite speechless, but since that sort've snookers you if you're trying to write about an album, i'll have to manage.
Hospice is the work of singer songwriter Peter Silberman, who upon moving to NYC in 2006, disappeared into isolation for a year and a half. Hospice emerged out of this isolation, and as such is beautiful, introspective, and forlorn.
The theme of sadness prevails throughout this album, conveyed through slow, dreamy tunes and Silberman's wistful falsettos. His voice is brilliant, and couldn't suit this music better.

The album starts off with the eerie Prologue, and sets the scene that Hospice is going to be a heavy, less than cheery affair. By the second listen of this album I had forgotten how beautiful Kettering was. A minimalist piano piece with an Anthony Hegarty esque vocal makes for a chilling experience. "I should have quit but instead I took care of you/You made me sleep and uneven/And I didn't believe them when they told me there was no saving you." The soundtrack to the next Fast and Furious film, this is not. Some shoegaze elements and crashing drums culminate in a devastating triumph.

Sylvia starts as tentatively as previous tracks, before exploding in a wall of sound. Atrophy is a gentle and desperate tale, but the album keeps its head just above the water (The water here being, you wanting to kill yourself) with melodic piano lines and fuzzy electronics. Also tucked away at the end of Atrophy is a wonderous acoustic gem.
Singles Bear and Two aren't nearly as sorrowful as the other tracks on the album, yet still maintain the bands' characteristically introspective sound. The latter even manages to be a great pop song.

The album finishes with Epilogue (Lol prologue + epilogue I c wut they did der) . For a song with truly depressing lyrics, it still manages to be a perfectly contented pop-acoustic song. "But now it's not a cancer ward/we're sleeping in the morgue." Yes, quite. Silberman's vocals reach an emotional apex before he is cut off by fuzzy electronics. Honestly, this isn't as tragic as it sounds. It's not going to win you any friends as a happy go lucky kinda guy, and it won't be DJ Dez Dancelot's choice on a Saturday night, but on a grey cloudy day, I can think of nothing better to stick on and fall asleep to.

I haven't listened to an album this year yet and thought, aw jeah, album of the year material.


'Bout frikkin time.

9.2/10

Bullion - Young Heartache E.P.

Young Heartache E.P.

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1. Young Heartache
2. Are You The One?
3. Time For Us All To Love
4. Long Promised


This is really good. A fifteen minute long, warm summery hug from instrumental hip hop/electronic mofo, Bullion.
I'll get the obvious comparison and the one which hits you twenty seconds into Young Heartache out of the way; Bullion is very, very similiar to Flying Lotus. The same brand of soul infused, thick electronic beats prevails in both artists catalogues, yet Bullion manages to make his work just about distinguishable by freckling it with samples from Film and popular culture, and at times introducing dreamy soundscapes into his music.

First track Young Heartache is an apt all round introduction to Bullion, with eerie vocal samples and drum loops that sound as if they've had one too many drinks. Are You The One? takes things a bit more seriously with it's prominent bassline, before the dreamy Time For Us All To Love takes over, sounding as if it could be taken from The Avalanches back catalogue. This really is paradise music. Bullion plays us out with the jazzy dreaminess of Long Promised. At a brief 15 minutes, Young Heartache hits the balance of just about right and leaving you wanting more.

I don't want to generalise about an entire genre that I know next to little about, but (omgwtfhypocritz) Bullion has created some of the freshest sounding Hip Hop that I've heard, from anyone, ever. Maybe it's my inkling for music without prominent vocals, but this really is warming, summery stuff. While i'm not sure after describing a drum track as drunk that I can call this the most intelligent music i've heard in a while, it is a very confident E.P., and its sounds speak of being drunk on a beach at sunset, or chilling in the garden in the summer with your mates. Normally you listen to a piece of music and then associate it with memories; with Young Heartache, you've already mapped out what you'll be listening this to.

Bullion, along with Flying Lotus, will be hailed in ten years as one of the founders of modern hip hop. Get ahead of the curve.


8.6/10

Metric - Fantasies

Fantasies

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1. Help I'm Alive
2. Sick Muse
3. Satellite Mind
4. Twilight Galaxy
5. Gold Guns Girls
6. Gimme Sympathy
7. Collect Call
8. Front Row
9. Blindness
10. Stadium Love


Fantasies comes four years after Canadian girl + 3 guy group Metric's last album, Live It Out. It featured the track Monster Hospital, which did very well and got remixed tae fuck.
With vocalist Emily Haines' dreamy voice perfectly suited for indie rock music, and a band which obviously know how to write a catchy song, there wasn't much that could have gone wrong here. And, it hasn't.....but it hasn't really blown me away either.

Which would leave us floating in meh. Help I'm Alive, the first single off Fantasies, is great. It's catchy and regularly returns to the "Beating like a hammer" refrain, and Haines' vocals of, "They're gonna eat me alive/If I stumble" is quite touching. Next track Sick Muse, while making a good impression on first listen, fails to ascend much past middle of the road indieocrity. The album melds into garage rock guitars and floaty electronics until Gold Guns Girls, which despite some cringe worthy lyrics, is pretty decent.

This is an album which is trying to sound big. Despite the band releasing this independently in the states, there's an overall impression that they're aiming for Coldplay levels of radio play, which they aren't going to get. Ambition is fine, but it seems creativity has been sacrificed in it's place. Awk, it's not a bad album, and when listening to it you'll probably think, "This is fine", and it is, but after an entire listen of this album I would challenge you to walk away humming one of these songs. Fantasies fails to leave any sort of lasting impression, and instead of being a solid indie rock record from a band which have more things going for them than most in their position, it has ideas above its station and falls gruesomely between two posts.

You could do alot worse, and you could do alot better, but nothing is worse than indifference.


5.2/10

Born To Run #2

Cows- Effete and Impudent Snobs

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Let me have this horrible, horrible music.

1. Memorial

2. Dirty Leg

3. Big Mickey

4. Preyed on

5. Immigrant Song

6. Whitey in the Woodpile

7. Nancy Boy Cocaine Whore Blues

8. Cartoon Corral

9. Little Bit

10. Put Me Down

11. Sittin' Around

No, I haven't heard of them before either. I'm not really sure why, after one listen, i'm listening to this again. It's disgusting.
Screw MSTRKRFT, if a dirty bassline is what you're looking for, and I mean, dirty, then look no further.

Effete and Impudent Snobs is a 35 minute sonic rape of an album from Minneapolis noise-rock dudes, Cows. First track Memorial snarls in with a greasy bassline and welcomes you to the hellish musical pit you'll be dwelling in for the next half an hour or so, should you see this album out to the end. Which you probably won't.
The first half of this album squeals along with barely distinguishable guitar melody, yet there's still a sense of growing darkness. I've never heard something which I imagine to sound so much like hell itself, Glasvegas jokes aside. The tension eases up slightly on The Emigrant Song, and I mean lighten up comparitively. It still sounds like you've been given a two and a half minute long song to listen to while the entire world laughs at you behind your back. Whitey in the Woodpile, (presumably written about Kevin Brown) is a brief refrain of silliness, before the barrel of laughs of Nancy Boy Cocaine Whore Blues. This is horrible, brain frying stuff, and truely would be an apt punishment for a lifetime of sin.

Strangely, however, I like this album. I meant everything I said, it is horrible........but sometimes that hits the spot. I would reccomend giving the band a listen on last.fm before downloading this feral beast. I mentioned not seeing it through to the end, and whilst I did, it's doubtful that the average listener will. All too often the temptation to listen to something.....with some sort of discernable tune, kicks in. This is a filthy album though, reccomended for when you're not feeling quite yet human after the night before. Or for those with implosive tempers; this is our soundtrack to finally cracking.

Hardly essential, but enjoyable filth. Bit like Skins.

Anamanaguchi- The Dawn Metropolis

The Dawn
Metropolis

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1. Blackout City
2. Jetpack Blues
3.Dawn Metropolis
4. Danger Mountain
5. Overarrow
6. Tempest, Teamwork, Triumph (At Sea)
7. Mermaid



Anamanaguchi are a four piece NYC band from the "chiptune" scene. Whilst this may immediately bring Crystal Castles into your head, this album is different from a lot of other albums in the same genre.

First of all, that cover. God it's great. Even before listening to the music I feel like im playing the SNES. It also fits the tunes perfectly.
I mentioned this album being different from similiar styled bands. Whilst a band like Crystal Castles are pulling no punches in aiming for the scenester crowd, Amanaguchi on The Dawn Metropolis, don't care. Their tunes are here for you to listen to, regardless of your scepticism or raised eyebrows. If you're in a bad mood, stick on Unknown Pleasures. Come back when you're ready to smile again.
This album is a massive heap of fun, and even if you didn't play Super Mario all stars or Donkey Kong world as a nipper, it'll make you think you did. If you were a nerd as a child, this is for you. It will fill you with memories of nintendos, rainbows and innocence.

A hacked nintendo system is combined wonderfully with fuzzy power chords and a band with an ear for a tune. Whilst you'd be hard pressed to find something like this in the charts, many of these melodies would suit some of todays modern pop artists, just maybe not as frantic as on display here.
The first two tracks snap, crackle and pop along happily, and are a good idea of what this band's all about. The title track shows off that ear for a tune I was talking about, and on Danger Mountain, the electronics go absolutely alloy. The same theme continues along until album closer Mermaid, which despite not being a chiptune Flight of The Conchords cover builds up quickly and confidently, culminating in a mess of joyful electro nonsense.

This album is free leech for a bit on Waffles, and has helped give this band some deserved exposure. I also advise checking out the official website, which is very cool. At 7 tracks in 26 minutes, its pretty much exactly the length you'd want an album of this sort of music to be. The pace is maintained, and this is great, great fun throughout.

A little nostalgia goes a long way.

9.0/10

Greenday- Still alive, and with new material.

Bleh. The soundtrack to whenever you first started playing a cool instrument are back, with a "21st century breakdown." Oh gad.
Mainly about how his generation sucks, Billy Joel sings, ""My generation is zero / I never made it as a working class hero." He is entitled I suppose, to express his dissapointment at his depraved and lower class lifestyle.
I would for one, however, like to hear Greenday singing about money and porsches, and not in an ironic way.
And with Bush no longer in power, Billy Joel has only one thing left to rant about; how we've failed future generations. Awwwww. Before breaking into a Queen esque bridge and shouting, "the bastards of 1969!"
It certainly isn't something unpredictable.

Born To Run

The 1990's - They bestowed a plethora of gifts upon the world. From the Poll tax, to randy politicians, (maybe they had been steaming the night before or something) the 90's had it all.

1990 was also the year I was born, and in a tenuous linkage i've decided to chuck up an album every week from 1990, which I may or may not have come out of the womb listening to. Awesome.


Fugazi- Repeater + 3 Songs

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1. Turnover

2. Repeater

3. Brendan No 1

4. Merchandise

5. Blueprint

6. Sieve Fisted Find

7. Greed

8. Two Beats Off

9. Styrofoam

10. Reprovisional

11. Shut The Door

12. Song #1
13. Joe # 1
14. Break-in


Repeater is a suprisingly listenable punk rock record, and an incredibly solid one. The angry guitar squealing doesn't let up, and if it does, it's done to make way for some fancy bass fretwork. Despite being a punk album, Repeater has some serious indie rock sensibilities. Take opener Turnover, for example. Before ex-Minor Threat vocalist Ian MacKaye's angry taunts are introduced, you could be forgiven for thinking you were listening to a classic indie rock record. Shit, the bass part could even belong to a Joy Division song.

It is a punk album though, and even with 14 songs rattles along in just over 40 minutes. This urgency lends itself perfectly to the music and ensures you don't go sticking on another album before it's done. It isn't an effort, though, as previously mentioned it's an easy album to listen to. As one screaming riff ends, another palm-muted harbringer of chaos has begun.

It is, also, a hoot. While it does have enough tuneful moments to appeal to a large audience, sometimes it can be extremely fun to listen to someone else go absolutely buck daft, and Repeater has those moments in spades.

Well worth a listen.