Album Review: Gorillaz - The Singles Collection 2001-2011

A thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters could not have predicted the success of cartoon pop band Gorillaz. They exploded into the world in 2000 with the improbably catchy hip-hop track 'Clint Eastwood' and on account of their bizarre nature they turned heads immediately. Gorillaz was (at least initially) the brainchild collaboration between Damon Albarn, artist Jamie Hewlett, and producer Dan The Automator (Kasabian, Peeping Tom, DJ Shadow). Dan didn’t make it to the second album which allowed many more collaborators to get into the sharpest outfit in pop music. Over the years they have worked with Danger Mouse, De La Soul, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Snoop Dogg, Ike Turner, Roots Manuva, MF Doom, Bobby Womack, Buena Vista Social Club’s Ibrahim Ferrer … the list is exhaustive.

The infuriating argument that has always surrounded Gorillaz is that they are somehow “not real”. Do some people actually believe that the music is being made by computers and animators rather than actual people? Just because a group of revolving musicians choose to use cartoon characters as placeholders for their own image, does that make them any less real? What it has meant is that an unknown number of musicians have filled the roles of drummer Russell, bass player Murdoch, and guitarist / keytarist Noodles (along with Albarn as singer 2D) over the years without ever having to change their appearance. In truth, these virtual avatars are an inspired concept that could have been cheesy if it hadn’t been done so well.

While doubt still lingers over the band’s future we are treated to a simple but functional greatest hits collection entitled The Singles Collection 2001-2011. It features all of the hit singles from their three major albums, a few lesser-known album cuts, as well as the non-album single 'Doncamatic' and two additional remixes. This unfortunately means that the b-sides compilations G-Sides and D-Sides have been excluded from the collection as well as their free online album The Fall (allegedly recorded on an iPad in hotels across America). Don’t get me wrong; these songs are still fantastic. The brash 'Feel Good Inc' is still likely to cause spontaneous partying, 'Rock The House' is still funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter, and 'Stylo' is still a madcap stroke of genius. These massive hits rub shoulders well with their less famous counterparts. A compilation like this benefits from having songs like the achingly gorgeous 'El Mañana' on its track list. These songs show some more of the immense depth that Gorillaz are capable of. 

I don’t think that any collection of tracks from a band this diverse and inspirational will ever 100% satisfy a die-hard fan, but they have laid a great foundation here. At the end of the day Gorillaz are still a very much a pop act, albeit a very successful one that unites many disparate threads of music into a cohesive catchy concept. Their albums roller-coaster from rock to pop, soul to punk, drum’n’bass to funk on a whim. Nothing is beyond their virtual reach and should they continue forwards we will all be treated to their unique, endearing brand of genre-hopping madness. And all of this from a group of characters that aren’t even “real”.

Rating: B (i.e. the songs are excellent but the compilation could be better)

This review is published with kind permission from www.the-tune.net. Read the original review at http://www.the-tune.net/review-gorillaz-the-singles-collection-2001-2011/

Random Album Review #3.5

This week features two random reviews. Why? Because I can.

Week 3 (part 2): The Poets of Rhythm – What Goes Round (2002)

Country: Germany / Funk, Soul, R&B

When you think of funk, Germany is not at the front of one’s mind. Ever. Yet here come The Poets of Rhythm, a smooth octet of well-versed funkateers who recall the heyday of pre-disco soul and the undying spirit of P-Funk. All the requisite elements are there: scratchy guitars, massive horn section hooks, the garbled cat calls of hype men. So far, so James Brown. Even still some of these joints are infectious dance floor fillers. Try the guileless ‘Funky Train’, an excellent example of funk’s self obsession. Funksters love singing about funk in the same way that AC/DC appear to be their own favourite subject. Over the thirteen songs here the band rides on an even keel, never departing too far from their chosen wheelhouse. Still there are a few minor changes in pace. Perhaps the off-kilter reggae grooves of ‘Choking On A Piece Of Meat’ is more your speed, as the band heads further into jam band territory. A few slow numbers threaten to derail the funk express completely (like the tepid ‘What You Doing’). The Poets of Rhythm are not reinventing the wheel on What Comes Round. They are merely enjoying the ride.

Rating: C+

For fans of: James Brown, The Bamboos, The Mighty Imperials

Random Album Review #3

Each week I am going to write a short (under 200 word) review for an album from my collection chosen at random by iTunes. You can expect anything from Slayer to Salmonella Dub to (Ravi) Shankar and that is all part of the fun. Enjoy.

Week 3: John Frusciante – The Will To Death (2004)

Country: USA / Singer-Songwriter, Alternative, Art Rock 

John Frusciante has had his hand in the Red Hot Chili Peppers but they were never his band. Released just two years after the award winning By The Way, The Will To Death could not be any more different than that album and each album plays to a different strength of this underrated guitarist. It opens with the heart-wrenching A Doubt that uses John’s frail falsetto to full effect and you are instantly miles away from a mainstream Grammy nomination. Throughout the album Frusciante is portrayed as the guitar hero for the avant-garde set: minimal but poignant. The production is certainly rougher than his famous (former) day job which puts the emotional gravitas the forefront of the sound. Considering its rawness, the album is a little long-winded. Even still songs like ‘The Mirror’ cut deep. As the guitarist of one of the most famous bands on the planet you might think Frusciante had nothing to prove. He did. He needed to prove that he didn’t need the fame and success. This album is a powerful statement to that effect.

Rating: B

For fans of: Tim Buckley, Frank Zappa, Beck

Album Review: Explosions In The Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Post Rock (for those of us who still insist on using that contentious term) is the opera of the rock pantheon. It is a style filled with high drama, emotion, and outlandish, unintelligible narrative. Texas’ Explosions in the Sky are no exception. If anything they have become the flag-bearers for more traditional “post rock” now that many of the previous generation are disbanding (Isis) or exploring new directions (Mogwai). Explosions in the Sky’s trademark sound has always been densely layered guitars (often three at once) and this is true straight from the get go on their sixth album Take Care, Take Care, Take Care.

After an extended drone that can be likened to an orchestra tuning up the famous guitar textures come out to play on ‘Last Known Surroundings’. This song demonstrates the interplay between the many styles of six strings in their toolbox: long drawn siren song, melodic with clean reverb, atmospheric musing, acoustic near classical noodling, and of course white noise crunch. What is obvious immediately is how the tone of this album differs from their peers with more consistency than your standard post rock ebb and flow dynamic. You aren’t constantly climbing mountains only to get thrown off them; it is more akin to the lapping waves of the ocean. The long coda to the song is truly elegant before dwindling into a mantra-like keyboard loop that drifts into the lush intro of ‘Human Qualities’. It is an orchestra of gentle beats that finally breaks loose at the 7 minute mark. Even though the rush doesn’t last long it is certainly worth the build up.

Not everything is so serene. ‘Trembling Hands’ (the shortest song on the album at not even four minutes long) is a percussive powder keg - sounding like Battles doing Bauhaus – that ups the ante in ferocity amongst the calm. For once the calculated guitars take a back seat allowing the blood the really get flowing as well as a bizarre vocal “riff”. Showstopper and album closer ‘Let Me Back In’ starts on a slinky, jazz club vibe like Massive Attack by way of Pink Floyd staring out into an endless arid plain. After the fireworks are over a trail of whispers closes out the disc, returning to the taut, haunted landscape from which they came. The compositions on Take Care Take Care Take Care feel more minimal than many of their instrumental post-rock brethren. The less-is-more approach lets a lot of feeling in between the instruments and Explosions in the Sky make the most of it. The brooding intensity of All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone or earlier albums has been dialled back to create a gorgeously Technicolor cinematic experience for your ears.

Rating: B+

Reproduced with kind permission from undertheradar.co.nz. Read the original review at http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/review/CID/507/N/Take-Care-Take-Care-Take-Care.utr

Album Review: Zechs Marquise - Getting Paid

You have to feel sorry for the siblings of famous musicians. No matter how hard they might try they will never fully escape the shadow and legacy of their noted surname. So what if you didn’t try and escape this fate and instead embraced it? That is exactly what the three brothers Marcel, Manfred, and Rikardo Rodriguez-Lopez have done for their band Zechs Marquise. If their name is familiar then perhaps you are familiar with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the prolific guitarist / song-writer best known for his work in At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta. These three (along with guitarists Marcos Smith and Matthew Wilkson) make surreal instrumental music that owes a debt to Omar while also having enough flavour of its own to avoid being mere mimicry. Getting Paid is the band’s second album and it is a stunning work of jam-minded psychedelics that also touches on classic prog rock, blaxploitation soundtracks, deconstructed experimentation, and even dubstep. This is truly a unique album that holds each of its disparate elements in place to create a thrilling if esoteric listening experience. The album cover, adorned with pimped-out animal people, is likely to puzzle but if anything that helps to prepare you for what is about to happen.

The first song does little to make things any easier on the listener. “Getting Paid” shifts tempos at the drop of a hat and fires through musical ideas so quickly you are left lost and bewildered. This is no mistake to be sure; they want to catch you off guard. Guitars loaded to the brim with wah pedal effects duel with stuttering synths and a marching krautrock beat over a restless six minutes - and that is just the first track. Second song “Lock Jaw Night Vision” is the closest thing you will find to a single. A dubstep influenced bassline embellished with hints of latin jazz frame a very Mars Volta sounding guitar solo. The apple has not fallen far from the crazy space alien tree when it comes to this family. All five members of the band are firing on all cylinders and that momentum carries through to the halfway point of the album. Singer Sunnie Baker adds her sweeter-than-sugar voice to “The Heat, The Drought, The Thirst, The Insanity”, putting a well-placed break in the instrumental madness of the album. The keyboards here are reminiscent of Can, King Crimson, or even Rush further showcasing this band’s prog rock credentials. 

By the time you reach the slightly atonal opening chords of “Everlasting Beacon Of Light” chances are you are loving the album to death and wish to see it to the end or have already run to the hills. Either way your mind is made up. Matthew Embree (RX Bandits) punches up this doomy throw down with another much-needed vocal performance. Getting Paid ends with the hyperactive ‘Mega Slap’, channelling the last of the band’s manic energy into a frenzied climax. If you have the extended edition you are also treated to three remixes (being Static Lovers, Mega Slap, and Guajira). These are fun additions to the album but are still far from essential. 

Anyone who is familiar with The Mars Volta will undoubtedly draw comparisons between the two bands. That being said, there are far worse things to be compared to in the world of music. Zechs Marquise are not a clone of that band but have certain similarities. Their eccentric prog rock sound, molten guitar solos, full-force freakouts; the individual elements are all there but Getting Paid is its own thing all together and the band twists the sound to suit their needs. Zechs Marquise are at the edge of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s shadow and are primed and ready to burst out into the sun.

Rating: A-

This review is published with kind permission from www.the-tune.net. Read the original review at http://www.the-tune.net/review-zechs-marquise-getting-paid/

Random Album Review #2

Each week I am going to write a short (under 200 word) review for an album from my collection chosen at random by iTunes. You can expect anything from Slayer to Salmonella Dub to (Ravi) Shankar and that is all part of the fun. Enjoy.

Week 2: The Black Angels – Directions To See A Ghost (2008)

Country: USA / Psychedelic, Rock, Retro

The Black Angels hail from Texas and make music as bleak as their name suggests. Their style of claustrophobic rock owes a debt to the Velvet Underground (the band are in fact named after a VU song) and the darker side of 60s psychedelics. Walls of ominous guitars, reverberating vocals, washed-out keyboards, and even sitars layer and build to blanket each song in a permanent narcotic haze. Directions To See A Ghost, the band’s second album, starts on a menacing note with ‘You On The Run’ and the atmosphere of existential panic does not subside throughout the entire album. ‘Never/Ever’ owes more than a passing debt to The Doors’ bad-trip baiting opus ‘The End’. These songs are tribal and visceral but not at the expense of creative a cohesive sonic vision. In fact by the time the album ends, after the grueling 16 minute ‘Snake In The Grass’, you might feel a twinge of unfamiliarity with your surroundings. You have been on a journey through the nether regions of the soul only to return to exactly where you are. Your enjoyment of this album depends on your tolerance for oppressive sonic textures and feel-bad vibes.

Rating: B-

For fans of: The Velvet Underground, The Warlocks, 13^th Floor Elevators

Album Review: My Morning Jacket - Circuital

This review is reproduced with kind permissiom from www.undertheradar.co.nz

 

Are any musical acts held to stricter standards than a cult-hero indie rock band? Every move that they make is scrutinized and derided by the more vocal elements of their fan base. Take Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket for example. In 2002 they joined up with ATO records for their 2003’s major label debut It Still Moves to the cries of “sellout”. Two years later and another album Z, while receiving almost universal acclaim, was also criticized for leaning in a more “pop” direction. And finally Evil Urges in 2008 was divisive in its wide-reaching approach to genre exploration, combining elements of funk, disco, country, and stadium-sized rock. They seem to be a band that has gotten used to praise and backlash in equal measure. And so in 2011, with the release of their new album Circuital, what are they to expect? As a small teaser to the album’s overall sound the band announced that it would be recorded mostly live in an outfitted gymnasium in an effort to reproduce their incendiary live performance. And, with the exception of some post-production luxuries, Circuital is just that. It is also a document of a veteran band coming full circle back to their roots without ignoring all of the ground that they had covered since.

Opening track ‘Victory Dance’ serves as an ominous and intriguing introduction. It inflates and builds upon itself like a lost Led Zeppelin epic; filled with guitar reverb, mystical lyrics, and soaring Native American harmonies. The final powerful notes are still ringing in your ears when the title track begins as a plucked guitar riff being repeated hypnotically over a murky bass drum. It is a recurring motif in the piece that builds into arena-filling choruses before subsiding back into that swampy beat. It is here that singer Jim James lets his trademark falsetto really let rip and he makes the song his own even if it does sound a little like The Who. While the first two songs are heavy on bombast the next few bring the tone down gently. ‘Wonderful (The Way I Feel)’, an acoustic ballad accompanied by woozy strings, is as pretty a song as they have ever made that transitions into the smouldering angst of ‘Out Of My System’. The real eye-opener of the album comes next in ‘Holding On To Black Metal”, a quirky tough-guy strut complete with a gigantic horn section hook and tripped-out back choir (Imagine if ‘Highly Suspicious’ from Evil Urges was less Prince and more Funkadelic although no less daft). If a gang of greasers ever needed a soundtrack for walking menacingly down the street they need look no further. Strangely, the song is actually about Black Metal. The last third of the album is a slow wind down to the finish with each track softer and more blissed out than the previous.

At the end of the day it is the music that should be deliberated upon not the circumstances under which it was made. My Morning Jacket have always had many strings to their bow and they all seem to be in fine working order. When they want to trade in pomp-filled anthemic rock they can pomp with the best of them. If they go for a flightier, country-tinged direction they are practically peerless. When they reach for their freak flags they are hard to out-freak. There may not be any clearly laid-out singles on the album but it is not lacking in transcendental beauty and mystical cool. The complainers will no doubt complain but nothing can detract from the fact that this is a wonderfully endearing album with many reasons to come back for more.

Rating: A

Read the original review at http://www.undertheradar.co.nz/utr/review/CID/485/N/Circuital.utr

Album Review: Cage The Elephant - Thank You, Happy Birthday

Back in 2008 Cage the Elephant released one of the most impressive debut albums of the year. Their self-aware bluesy funk harkened back to the heyday of British R&B (i.e. Rolling Stones not Craig David) and was buoyed in the charts by their ubiquitous single 'Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked'. So now in 2011 the young American quintet have returned to answer the question posed to so many bands in their position: “So, what else do you have?” They have responded with their new album Thank You Happy Birthday, a volatile brew of expectations met and expectations confounded that is laden with the angst born from triumph. 

Listening to the album it is clear that success and popularity weigh on the band like an albatross around their collective neck as they rage against hit singles, cool kids, and even themselves. It might seem like a strange move for such a well-received and promising young band but that almost feels like the point; to brazenly shoot into unknown territory, jettisoning those fans wanting a steady diet of “more of the same”.

Right off the bat on opening track ‘Always Something’ you can hear something new from Cage the Elephant. Their sound is light on wry jaunty blues, more akin to the post-punk-noir sound of Bloc Party or The Arctic Monkeys. Guitars criss-cross over a taut bass line and a Primal Scream beat. At least lead singer Matthew Schultz sounds the same, giving existing fans something to hold onto at least for now. They are saving the curveballs for a little later. And in that regard look no further than the unhinged fuzz blast of ‘Indy Kidz’, a menacing tune that recalls the acid-casualty surf rock of Butthole Surfers. Before it ends you find yourself wallowing in squalls of feedback and Shultz’s patronising taunts about how he thinks that “You’re so cool / I wanna be just like you”. The venom behind the sentiment is palpable.

Cage the Elephant seem to be stretching the outer regions of their sound as the albums strengths are divided between hate-fuelled noise rockers and up-tempo pop’n’roll. ‘Shake Me Down’ and ‘2024’ are comparable to the messy guitar pop of the Pixies, even when the later flies off into a boisterous Hardcore groove before returning to earth. Every time you think you have this album pegged down the next track reveals a surprise. ‘Rubber Ball’ is a tender waltz with hardly dash of irony in sight. ‘Sabertooth Tiger’ explodes as a messy tempest of abrasive guitars and painfully lo-fi howls and manages to only get more aggressive from there until it ultimately collapses under its own weight. The breakdown alone is enough to send hipsters running for cover. The number of different styles that the band undertakes is rather impressive even if they don’t all pay off. The only really weak point on the album is ‘Sell Yourself’ in that it lacks the restless ambition of its peers. The album closes a million miles away from where it began on the refreshingly serene ‘Flow’, a genuinely beautiful wee jam. It feels almost like a reward for braving the storm, a mumbled apology from the band for sitting through their catharsis.

While it is not an outright amazing album it is evident that Cage the Elephant have sidestepped the dreaded sophomore album slump, rather than confronting it, as they carve their own path forwards. Here’s hoping that album number three can pull out all the stops and strike their true potential. Until then Thank You Happy Birthday will leave people scratching their head in the months to come.

Rating: B-