Listening Journal
I have a habit of not pushing myself to hear new releases all the time, waiting around for good records to somehow find their way to my ears, which is not a good way to do things if you want to be an even half-decent critic. So I spent the last couple days playing catch-up on a handful of talked-about albums I’ve been meaning to listen to—some newer than others—taking notes as I went and trying not to get overwhelmed by the glut of new sounds. Here are some short thoughts on them.
Chairlift - Something - I didn’t expect to like this as much as I do. Popular and critical praise aside, there’s been an overabundance of ‘atmospheric,’ 80s indebted electro-pop albums the last few years and I find it increasingly difficult to locate vitality or personality in those sounds. Chairlift can certainly be too ethereal for their own good—and they rely far too heavily on rote, marchy (boring!) 80s drum beats—but when they allow themselves to branch out, like on “Ghost Tonight,” they reveal themselves to be keen, inventive sound sculptors. The melodic strength and cosmopolitan poise of “Frigid Spring,” “Grown Up Blues,” and even the silly “Amanaemonesia” don’t hurt either. Basically, the further Chairlift roam from Drive-soundtrack retro moodiness, the better off they are.
First Aid Kit - The Lion’s Roar - This record should be listed in a Dictionary of Modern Music under O for ‘Omaha.’ These Swedish sisters have Mike Mogis’ country-folk-pop production, a guest verse from Conor Oberst, and those close-knit harmonies that start off pleasant but sour quickly from overuse. Ten songs of dusty strumming filtered through orange afternoon sunlight and wrapped in quavering personal angst makes for an adequately moving record, but it’s far from a revelation. If it had better lyrics it’d be a lost Jenny Lewis album, or add a dash of impetuous pep and it’d scan like Slow Club (in a good way) or She & Him (in a not so good way). Serviceable catnip for Saddle Creek devotees, but I doubt I’ll come back to it much.
Sharon Van Etten - Tramp - A diary full of hard knocks isn’t a prerequisite for making sincere, affecting music (let us never forget it!), but in the case of Sharon Van Etten it sheds a lot of light on what makes her compelling. Tramp’s backstory of her struggle to escape the clutches of a controlling boyfriend has gravitas and fuels some great writing (“Give Out,” “All I Can,” “Ask,” etc.), but you can hear it just as clearly in her voice. She sings like a strong person beaten down into deep weariness—never timorous or fragile, but nervy and exposed. Aaron Dessner’s production wisely mirrors her attitude, with guitars and drums that never get too comfortable in their own spaces, sometimes murmuring in the background behind a thick curtain and other times crowding in so close around her that they simultaneously smother and lift her up.
John Talabot - ƒIN - This may boil down to a personal preference thing. I like the idea of headphone dance music in theory, but in practice I don’t seem to find myself making a lot of time for it. I tend to think of it as something to zone out to, and maybe I’m just too much of a sucker for songs to get deep into it. Some of Talabot’s tracks hew closer to my comfort zones—“Last Land,” “Journeys,” “So Will Be Now…”—but others can feel angular and blocky in a way that distracts my ears. I hear the contemporary steamy ‘tropical’ influences at work, though thankfully they don’t overwhelm the record. There are also smooth, dark, even woozy sides to ƒIN and so far those are the better ones.
Beach Fossils - What a Pleasure EP - A more downcast, melancholy addition to the world of indie surf bands. Beach Fossils have never been exactly brimming with energy or emotion, but here they manage to widen their pale sound while letting the appealingly bleached, morbid qualities of their debut slip through their fingers. The guitars sound fine, but the rhythm section is still too thin and papery, dropping the bottom out from these supposedly-deeper songs and making them plod where their influencers pushed. I realize it’s an EP and probably a stop-gap on the way to the next album, but What a Pleasure demonstrates what it sounds like for a band to not go far enough, in any direction.
Caveman - CoCo Beware - Yeah, I didn’t think Local Natives could get any more snooze-worthy either, but here we are.
Beach Fossils - “Youth”
Y’know what’s always cool? When bands start with very similar musical theses and through artful process and consideration end up in markedly different places. It’s an unspoken argument against function following form. Take, for example, today’s song “Youth” by NYC’s Beach Fossils and contrast it with something like Real Estate’s “Suburban Dogs,” which I reviewed early last month. Both songs are prime examples of contemporary indie surf pop, relying on simple 4 piece band structures, studio reverb, and tightly repetitive phrasal structures to evoke beachy, summery vibes. Real Estate’s approach, if you remember (or go back and read…or don’t), involves using their glassy guitar ‘riffs’ to build a kind of undulating, abstract haze. One part bleeds into another as both crest and fall together on a seemingly endless cycle. It’s a rather obvious but well-executed way of illustrating the ebb and flow of waves. Real Estate combine those rolling patterns with a bare, shuffling drum beat and muffled, comfortable melodies in order to suggest a restless nostalgia.
The four dudes in Beach Fossils use a lot of analogous tactics but they end up miles away from Real Estate’s reminiscing. “Youth” also features two interlocking guitar parts built from single picked notes (no chords) and strung together in orderly rhythmic blocks. But where “Suburban Dogs” feels aquatic and amorphous, “Youth” comes off dry, austere, even mechanical. The left channel axe spends a good 80% of the song looping a 2-bar phrase, which focuses on the key and root note of the song while the bass guitar leads the ear between root changes and the right channel guitar plucks out a more arpeggiated (but no less cyclical) counterpoint. Taken together, these parts don’t really move through a chord progression the way we’re used to hearing it. Instead we get the ghost of a structure, the mere suggestion of changes in voicing and tonality as these three voices continually braid themselves together. The drums beat out an unchanging pattern of muted toms and snare—no cymbals, no fills, and almost no color.
The spotless, robotic precision of “Youth” (and every other Beach Fossils song) is really pretty incredible. I’ve mentioned before how there’s a deep sense of nostalgia and longing for childish comforts at the heart of a lot the summery music we’re seeing nowadays. Though sonically they fit comfortably in with bands like Real Estate and Best Coast, Beach Fossils are functionally almost cold and calculated—less a rock band and more perpetual motion machine. Listen to the harsh timbre of Dustin Payseur’s multi-tracked vocals. Sure, they’re lazy and throaty, but in the context of genre, the pool of reverb they rest in should suggest warm aquatic moods. Instead, he sounds like he’s broadcasting his deadpan delivery over a bullhorn or loudspeaker. This isn’t memory cast as a picturesque ideal, it’s memory as a dead thing—bleached, frozen, and dried up. Beach Fossils have certainly chosen an apt name for their band.
