2007 Post-Release (or Post-Leak) Thread - Page 6

I just saw Spoon in July - that's my excuse. They were only okay, but I may just be holding it against them that they didn't play "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb."

I've got it, but I ended up with about 15 new albums or something in the last couple weeks, so I haven't been able to develop much of an opinion on it yet. On first listen, it's pretty good, but it shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's ever heard Broken Social Scene. It's a nice mix of the styles from You Forgot It in People and the self-titled one, but, unfortunately, it seems to get its self-indulgent tendencies from the latter - a number of the songs go on too long for my taste. It's still pretty decent, though.

Other newish stuff I'm liking:

Springsteen's Magic
Now, I'm not a huge Born in the U.S.A. fan, but I acknowledge that it suffers mainly due to overplay and bad production. With that in mind, I'm prepared to say that Magic is easily his best album of original rock songs since Born in the U.S.A. I'm not sure if I'd have this reaction if I'd just heard "Dancin' in the Dark" or "Glory Days" for the first time and not the 10 billionth time. I'm not prepared to say that the songs on Magic are as good as anything on Born in the U.S.A. But the feel and the sound are terrific - it's his most River-like album in years. But let's just say the competition hasn't been all that stiff, even if the playing has been from time to time (hello there, The Rising).

The Long Blondes - Someone to Drive You Home
I've had this one sitting around for a few weeks, but I finally gave it a real shot yesterday. Nice, noisy pop, but distinguished by a slight 50s vibe and vocals that hover somewhere between throaty Concrete Blonde/Dresden Dolls territory and Sleater-Kinney melodic screaminess.

M.I.A. - Kala
I wasn't really sold on Arular, but any artist bold enough to stretch out a New Order bassline to near unrecognizability, stick a Pixies chorus over it, and accent it with a vocal line that's as much East Indian as vocoder - well, let's say she has my interest. I'm finding Kala to be an incredibly dense listen that only works for certain moods, but the sheer ballsiness of it keeps it blasting in my car.

P.J. Harvey - White Chalk
This merits many more listens, but wow. I'm not sure if I like the direction Harvey takes on this album, but it features her most dramatic stylistic change since To Bring You My Love, and it makes that leap look tiny by comparison. It's the Polly and Piano Show here - minimal instrumentation and Harvey singing melancholy songs almost exclusively in a high range that renders her just vaguely recognizable.

Josh Ritter - the Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
I wish I could compare this to his previous albums, but Ritter's completely new to me, though I've heard the name for years. A friend sprung this on me a few days ago, and it grabbed me on first listen. It's terrific singer-songwriter pop that splits the difference between Dylan-esque folkiness and Spoon-style indie rock.

Yeah, I like to think that Uh Huh Her, which sounded like a bad, de-clawed version of the rockier stuff from Stories from the City (still possibly my favorite, although Rid of Me has a visceral appeal that she's never quite duplicated since), is partially what made her go in this new direction.

I scanned the thread for mentions of Lekman, and I noticed this. If you like that song, prepare to absolutely adore the new album. Night Falls Over Kortedala shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone who's heard Lekman before, but it's way more consistent than Oh You're So Silent Jens (as good as some of the tracks like "Black Cab" were, who the heck puts out an EP and singles compilation as a second release?) and more assured and mature-sounding than When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog. "Friday Night" is terrific, and it's not even one of the best songs on it.

I liked about half of Inches, but their other stuff never grabbed me that much. Might have to hear the new one.

It's an album that impresses by sheer ballsiness, but I'm finding it a hard one to listen to. I wouldn't be surprised if she called it "White Chalk" because of its abrasiveness, in fact. She hits some very unsettling notes that might even have you scrambling to turn the stereo down.

"A Postcard to Nina"!

Yeah, he does a superb job of keeping his samples unidentifiable. It's so weird, because you don't think of songwriters like him sampling in this way. Even after listening to a song of his, it doesn't occur to me that the instrumental tracks were largely patched together. It's even weirder that he and his almost comically attractive all-female backup band are able to duplicate the sound live.

I think I recognized a drum cue (seriously - not even a whole beat, but a little fill), but I can't remember which song it was in or what exactly it was that he sampled.

I never picked those out on You're So Silent, Jens, either. Maybe I wasn't really paying that close attention, since his songs usually don't sound sampled to me, aside from the odd scratchy record sound here and there.

This is a stronger release than You're So Silent, Jens, IMO, but it's not all that radical a departure. If you like one, you'll probably like the other.

On second thought, it's super-identifiable, since it kicks off the song in both the original and Lekman's song. It's the intro fill to Bowie's "Young Americans" (slightly slowed down, I think) on "If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This)."

It's okay. I think I like it better than the last one, actually, but Krug still hasn't improved on his contributions to Apologies to the Queen Mary. I get why people like Captain Warbly's output, but I don't get why people love it.

You're one listen up on me, though. Maybe this one'll actually grow on me.

I feel like I still have to listen to the new Sunset Rubdown to comment on it, specifically, but I'd argue that they still do "make 'em like this."

Even if you don't count the obvious concept albums like Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna... or the abovementioned Dirty Projectors album (thanks, Z-Man and Winjer), Okkervil River's the Stage Names hangs together like a near-concept album. Over the last few years, the Liars, Sufjan Stevens, and others have put out great album-length pieces that are more than merely the sum of their parts. The death of the album has been overstated, I think.

I don't dislike all of Krug's stuff, though. In fact, the album of his that I hate the most is Swan Lake, for which I hold Dan Bejar (a guy whose albums I often love) equally responsible. I just see a lot of fallibility there, whereas some seem to eat up virtually anything the guy puts out, regardless of quality.

I liked Blueberry Boat when I got it, for what it's worth. It eventually ended up grating after a number of listens, and I probably seem a lot more sour on them than I actually am, if only because, as with Krug, the accolades heaped on them seem excessive to me.

I honestly have no idea how you hear a more integrated experience in Random Spirit Lover or Blueberry Boat than in Hissing Fauna and Drum's Not Dead. Blueberry Boat's suites were pretty self-contained - there are essential songs on the two I mentioned that are practically just fragments removed from context.

The first three songs on "Hissing Fauna" are basically a suite (in the loose, rock context of the word - I can't attest to them being in the same key, etc., as one might in evaluating a classical suite). I'm not sure how these are arranged live, but on the album, "Sink the Seine" is barely a song, but a bridge between "Suffer for Fashion" and "Cato as a Pun." A bunch of the tracks on that album transition directly into the next in such a way that suggests this was a plan from the outset and not some post-recording decision.

With "Drum's Not Dead," it seems like just about every song is part of the whole. A number of them forego conventional song structures and you only get the dynamic payoff in juxtaposition with the other tracks. For instance, would you put "You, Drum" on a mix disc?

For better or worse, the songs on Random Spirit Lover seem more self-contained. They may sound better in context, but, to me, their effectiveness doesn't seem quite as dependent on it. That is, if you removed a few tracks from Random Spirit Lover and replaced them with tracks from Shut Up I Am Dreaming, I just don't get what the big deal would be.