12 minute read
New Music Reviews
By the people, for the people
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes - Thom Yorke
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Thom Yorke frequently positions himself as a sentinel for human-technology interaction. He is consistently blending synthetic and non-synthetic sounds in interesting ways, both in Radiohead and in his solo projects. 2006’s The Eraser was Yorke’s chance to explore it further, embracing laptop glitch and laptop breakbeats to their logical conclusion. Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes feels like a spiritual successor to The Eraser, offering a similarly solitary and brooding Yorke. The out-oftune piano in “Pink Section” sounds like it could have been lifted from The Eraser’s title track. This isn’t always good: the frst few tracks sound like dated versions of overly Yorke-heavy Radiohead songs, with trademark glitch and gloom. Overall, though, this record is a modern one, with nods to the assemblage of sounds in 2014, incorporating wet and dub-like drums and tonal swells that are reminiscent of Four Tet and Arca. The only critique I would have is that most of the songs are essentially orbiting the same idea. For this reason, some of the songs feel like sketches in Yorke’s computer, not a commercial product. This is not all true, though: “There Is No Ice (For My Drink)” is a 7-minute head-trip, and transitions beautifully into “Pink Section.” If you’re already familiar with Thom Yorke, you probably already know whether or not this album is for you. For those who have never given Radiohead or Thom Yorke a chance and are looking to embrace their inner isolation and megalomania, this brief record is worth checking out. 4/5 Yorke croons. -Ben Wedin
Origins - Eluveitie
Ok, so if you haven’t ever heard my shameless plug for this band, here it is: ELUVEITIE ARE SOME OF THE MOST TALENTED AND INTERESTING MUSICIANS COMING OUT OF EUROPE RIGHT NOW! FUCKING LISTEN TO THEM. 9-piece band, folk instruments backed by guitars, base and drums, sick alternations between full and half time, beautiful female backup singer, what more could you ask for out of your music?
Now let’s talk their new album. “Origins” is defnitely a step up from their underwhelming last endeavor, “Helvetios.” “Helvetios” was supposed to be a rock opera kind of thing talking about how the Helvetii tribe were kicked out of modern day Switzerland and obliterated by the Romans (folk instruments, folk tales, get the picture?). Where as that album was fat and uninteresting musically, this one is diverse and complex. It still has some of those “storytelling elements,” but these are better interspersed amongst excellent straight up rockin’ tunes. Highlights from the album are “The Nameless” (although they miss an obvious opportunity to get listeners bumpin’), “Call of the Mountains,” and “King”. Of these, King is my favorite because of the complex alternation of tin whistle, goat bagpipe, and guitar solos in the closing minute of the song. But overall, each of the songs acts like a fushed-out story in itself.
If you are looking for something new in your life, like a little head banging, but are also curious about the cultural history of one of the most complex regions in Europe, this is an excellent album. They will never top their 2007 masterpiece “Slania,” but this is their best effort since. Check it out. -Henry Southwick
Syro - Aphex Twin
Fresh off the hype of the Caustic Window re-release (or really frst ever release), Aphex Twin buys an onion domain name and releases SYRO, his frst full length album since Drukqs in 2001. There was mixed critical review of Drukqs, and in Aphex Twin’s own words, the album was rushed. But that didn’t change the fact that for many people, (including my 15 year old self) Drukqs was a thorough and diverse collection of rancorous DnB jams coupled with introspective piano interludes. Despite that, the album couldn’t escape the notion that it was simply Aphex Twin unloading a bunch of songs he had lying around on his hard drive onto some giant double album in order to part ways peacefully with Warp Records. Furthermore, whatever Caustic Window was, it wasn’t a “new” Aphex Twin album. It was made in 1994, and works better as a time capsule than an album.
And how different things were back in those days! The complex IDM of the 90s has given way to a more minimal, spacious, and simplistic kind of electronic music. Artists such as XXYYXX, Gold Panda, Daniel Avery, Koreless, and Jon Hopkins (to name a very select few) have re-shifted the focus of electronic music from being cold and calculating to cool and reserved. You don’t need to have ffty intersecting melody lines or snare rolls that are 16th note triplet subdivisions in order to make good electronic music anymore. Even the wackier and more subversive artists like Shlohmo and Arca can’t hold a candle to Venetian Snare’s Songs About My Cats in terms of rhythmic and melodic complexity, and they aren’t trying to. The philosophy of electronic music is different now. Even though the potential for precise and over-complicated sequencing is higher than ever thanks to the Digital Audio Workstation (something not widely available when Aphex Twin was starting out), people just don’t want to do that anymore. That isn’t a bad thing by any means, but it’s worth noting just how much things have changed.
Thus, it is surprising that in an era dominated by bass drops and 4-on-the-foor kick drums, the album SYRO contains none of that. Rather than strip down, Aphex Twin has beefed up, created an album that fies in the face of every trend in electronic music right now, and is in many ways stronger for it. This is a new Aphex Twin album for sure, but it is still an Aphex Twin album, and features the trademark complexity that he himself popularized. Almost every song features millions of cascading synth melodies raining down on angular and stabby bass lines driven by drum patterns which transcend the notion of “patterns” because they don’t even repeat themselves in some cases. When patterns aren’t mutating, new instruments and samples are drifting in an out. SYRO is an endless stream of constant change.
However, the album is not by any means loud or noisy. Many of the songs are at slower BPMs, and very few feature any kind of harsh noises or distortion. Despite their density, the songs are rather reserved and unobtrusive. In fact, even with a crystal clear mix and layered production, the songs don’t necessarily invite you in, and can sink into the background at times. The album seems more interested in mangling itself than it does in telling you about something. And that’s really what Aphex Twin has created: a nifty little machine that sort of tromps around on its own accord.
Aphex Twin has always been an experimentalist rather than a composer. His albums aren’t stories or arguments or dissertations on anything, but rather just nifty sounds. And to be fair, there have been some really fucking nifty sounds, but “absolute music” has been dead since the 1800s. Truly 10/10 music is capable of stepping outside itself and making people think differently about things. In the 90s, Aphex Twin was able to make us think differently about music by using a bouncing ball as the tempo for a song, but with SYRO, he fails to break new ground. He’s just making a bigger hole at this point. To be fair, it’s a pretty fucking huge hole, but it’s the same one he’s been digging since 1992. That said, he deserves to be applauded for this solid new addition to his already expansive discography. Is SYRO the best thing ever? No. Will it re-establish Aphex Twin as a prominent fgure in modern electronic music? Maybe. Is it worth checking out? Absolutely. -Cisco Hayward
Last month saw the release of This Is All Yours, the awaited sophomore effort by the newest band to have been hailed a “new Radiohead”— a title both unwarranted and meaningless. Still, their awesome wave of a debut instantly cemented alt-J as one of the most capable art rock groups of the decade. Simultaneous groovy and glitchy, let’s at least agree: alt-J made some creative choices within Britain’s stale experimental music climate. Through their disconcerting lyrics and cute Yorkshire candor shine thoughtful compositions. It’s Britpop with folkloric whimsy. It’s prog rock with EDM sensibilities.
But that was two years ago. What’s happened since? They lost bassist Gwil Sainsbury, but that didn’t stop them from releasing a slew of singles over the last four months in anticipation of An Awesome Wave’s follow-up. This time, we knew what alt-J was capable of, and expectations towered dangerously high. The frst single, June’s “Hunger of the Pine,” ft. an uncanny Miley sample is a “k, sounds good” downtempo number but is sadly a high point of the album. July’s label-pleaser, “Left Hand Free,” was the one you undoubtedly mistook for a Black Keys song. Written in 20 minutes, the keyboardist actually predicted, “Someone’s going to walk on stage to it at an NRA convention.” It’s that bad. Now August’s “Every Other Freckle,” makes for a truly groovy ride, and it may well be the album’s best.
If This Is All Yours is anything, it’s boring. As soon as we heard it, our fears were confrmed: alt-J has nothing to say in 2014 that they didn’t already say back in 2012. Maybe the songs do unfold in a Radiohead-like fashion, but with hollow insides. While Radiohead makes us shudder with shame or grin like a sociopath, today’s alt-J is best suited for a cold night in a steamy hot tub when you just want thoughts to turn to melodies. It reinforces what we saw in their frst album: Like the debut’s “Taro” and “Fitzpleasure,” the best cuts here tell a story, despite questionable phrasing choices. So check out “Every Other Freckle.” Check out the “The Gospel of John Hurt.” But for the most part, alt-J has traded its oomph for some feelgood folktronica. It’s not bad. It’s just not great.
Given their explosive popularity, one might have expected alt-J’s downfall to come in the form of mainstream songwriting, but not so. In fact, look at the song titles, and you would rightly suspect they’ve gone all conceptual on us again. Ultimately though, This Is All Yours fails because it lacks heart. Perhaps the “This” that is supposedly all ours is alt-J’s guts, balls, and other vitals.
Last Wednesday, as I feigned exertion doing my obligatory biweekly sit-ups on the blue mats in the ftness center, I managed to catch the interview portion of the previous night’s Colbert Report. Colbert’s guest that night was the band Tweedy, namely comprised of Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and his son Spencer, age 18, on the road promoting their new album Sukierae. I know Spencer because we went to high school together in Chicago. He’s a well-spoken guy with a refned yet laidback composure, just like his father. I haven’t gotten to know Spencer all that well, but that didn’t dampen my shock upon seeing his familiar mug on the television sitting opposite Colbert. I suppose in hindsight I shouldn’t have been so surprised, having known Spencer had done the album and that it was nearing release and that these sorts of media rounds are nothing foreign to names in music like Jeff Tweedy. Yet I feel obliged to mention this because as I continue, I must assure you that my casual relationship with Spencer has nothing to do with the following petite-review. And if you give Sukierae a listen yourself, you’ll know why. It’s simply a damn fne (double) album.
It’s commonly held that a key component to Wilco’s success comes from its arsenal of hyper-talented musicians that allow Jeff to focus on the singer-songwriter aspects of his role. This is not so much the case on Sukierae, as Jeff writes and records nearly all of the non-drumming parts on the entire album. (Note that he did have some prominent help from the talented women of Lucius on back-up vocals and Scott McCaughey on keys.) His unilateral vision is what gives Sukierae a little more cohesion and consistency than some of Wilco’s arrangements that often feel quite manic and busy. However, that’s not to say the various timbres Jeff summons on the more ethereal secondary and tertiary guitar tracks are unlike many Wilco textures and layers. In fact, it is those tracks, which harken back to the compositions on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, which I find most engaging.
Of course, if you already know Tweedy’s music, then superficially this album should feel quite familiar to you. His distinctive melodic phrasings, his bank of neo-folk-rock chord changes, his alluringly beautiful fngerpicking – they’re all there. Yet something else about it feels cutting-edge. And, without managing to be too cliché by invoking images of fresh ears and youthful perspective, I really think this is where Spencer comes in. The frst song that really smacked into my ears was “Diamond Light Pt 1.” Spencer’s drumming is a roiling froth of snare and bass drum hits, giving the song its constant, chugging rhythm. Over top, Jeff’s lyrics conform to an eerie melody that doesn’t struggle to not be too dissonant. In between, the bass notes are played in a high register, adding to the coalescence of many separate yet concordant sounds. Quite a bit of the album is like this, which makes it so stimulating to me because it becomes this sort of challenging indie-folk-rock music, which I hadn’t come to appreciate as much before. A
s I’m now over my word limit, let me just say: you don’t need a reason to listen to this album. Listen whether you’re glum, angry, mad, ecstatic, diffdent, brash, [insert word from thesaurus]. Sukierae is defned by no mood or temperament. There is something here for you, something comfortingly American and familial and relieving for us while we sit here trying to get our homework in on time.
