experimental

Mister Sinister (alt-J, Relaxer review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

A short poem.

Lifeless he crept upon her,
Daytime was not his friend,

Melancholy was her only friend,
What if the taste lingered for a time,

It is eerie outside at this time,
Too many sounds, too many noises,
It’s all rather eccentric.

We all need to own our weirdness, and alt-J could go in a million different directions at any given time, and they’ve proven that on their previous two albums, but what do I think of their third release? Let’s find out!

 

alt-J – After Laughter

released Jun 2, 2017
****** 6/10

alt-J are an English indie rock group featuring the talents of vocalist and guitar player Joe Newman, Cameron Knight on lead guitar and bass, Gus Unger-Hamilton on keyboards and backing vocals, and Thom Sonny Green on drums. Formed a decade ago, back in 2007, alt-J have now released three studio-length albums, An Awesome Wave, This Is All Yours, and today’s special, Relaxer.

alt-J are the kind of music for Millenials like what pop punk and 90’s r&b were for Generation Y. The voice of a generation – oft confused by physical albums and the thought of saving for a rainy day, but still a voice. Wicked generalization timotheories. Dick.

The thing is, alt-J have been compared to Radiohead a lot, and that is such a tired comparison to make, especially given that while their albums don’t come out with as much regularity anymore, Radiohead are still relevant. This is interesting music, for sure, but it’s not as courageous as those first two albums that alt-J put out.

I could spend a lot of time dissecting this album and pointing out all the places to you where it sounds amazing (read: In Cold Blood, Dead Crush, and Last Year), like the band that created Breeze Blocks and Left Hand Free, but someway and somehow we’ve been treated to a snoozefest for the most part and so many people are singing it’s praising without any reservation. It doesn’t make much sense to me, with a spectacularly weird and awful track in Hit Me Like That Snare. What a flaming pile of garbage that song feels like every time I listen to it.

And as much as I hate that song. This is actually a good thing.

Because it means that alt-J aren’t settling into a pattern of record making. They are willing to explore, to try new things and take some risks when it comes to their sound. Building a unique identity is difficult after all, and all of the comparisons to greats like Arcade Fire, Bastille and Arctic Monkeys would start to get on my nerves too.

This isn’t your mom and dad’s album, and it’s not mine either. But damn it if it doesn’t have the makings of something wonderful for alt-J to grow into in their middle age. They are working on making the content more meaningful, where they already set the standard in pared down simplicity.

Pros: As far as audio engineering and labour goes, nobody has alt-J beat. These gentlemen are more than capable of making arrangements interesting, and using ambience to tell narratives.

Cons: When they add in nuanced lyrics or play with formats, they struggle. It doesn’t always sound good, and Hit Me Like That Snare feels completely out of place with the rest of this record. I wish the experimentation didn’t feature throughout the entire album.

Runtime: 39 minutes

Points of Interest: In case you didn’t already know this, the band’s symbol is the capital letter delta (∆), a triangle. This can be accessed on an Apple Mac computer with the shortcut of alt+J. The first single is 3WW, the second is In Cold Blood, which features lyrics that state 00110011 01110111 01110111, which in binary translates to 3WW.

Adding poetry to covers of songs like House of the Rising Sun is a little bit odd, and a bit too clever, but it’s that sinister sound behind that curtain that has us coming back for seconds. Or should I say 01110011 01100101 01100011 01101111 01101110 01100100 01110011?

theories Summarized

We need to give artists like alt-J the space and time to grow, because we got two really excellent debut and sophomore efforts from them. That doesn’t mean that this album automatically gets a pass, but it does have some high points, and some points you can relax to.

Tim!

Family Matters (The Flaming Lips, Oczy Mlody review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Families are weird. And almost everyone thinks they have the weirdest of all, but let me assure you, they’re dead wrong.

These guys are the weirdest.

 

 

 

The Flaming Lips – Oczy Mlody
released February 13, 2017
********* 9/10

The Flaming Lips are an American rock band that loves their alternative, experimental, post-punk, psychedelic style, and I don’t expect them to give it up anytime soon.

Also, I’m just going to throw this out there, because I’m quite confident that it’s true. When I hear the songs on this album I can’t help but hear that distinctive Gorillaz sound intermingled in there, which makes me ponder upon the past for a minute or two… The Flaming Lips have been around for the better part of 3 decades, first forming in 1983, right? And Gorillaz only came to be in 1998, a definitive fifteen years later. So they have to have been influenced by The Flaming Lips right?

Which tells you something about me. This is my first Flaming Lips album.

I mean, I know about them. I’ve been fortunate enough to know they’ve made fourteen studio length albums in their career, but I never picked them up, mostly because I wasn’t too sure whether I’d like their sound.

It’s always the surprise albums that take your breath away.

What starts as a rather slow foray into the the fantasy world of castles, unicorns, wizards, frogs, et al. slowly becomes a backdrop for a message about the resurgence of hope. This is because Oczy Mlody, roughly translates to “eyes of the young,” from a Polish phrase these guys found. It makes sense given present company.

Over recent years Miley Cyrus has become something of an unofficial muse for The Flaming Lips. They even helped produce a twenty-three track album called Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz with her back in 2015. So it’s fitting that the old solidify the reputation of the young, and the young provide energy and relevance for the old. Best exemplified in closer track, We A Family, it is here that we get to witness some serious leg stretching on the part of The Flaming Lips.

As a track, it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the album, but is also the best part of it. It serves as an anthem of love, but it also ties all of us together into one big happy metaphor family.

Some of my other favourite tracks are The Castle, a perfect semblance of all that is sow and somber on this album, which is most of it. For instance, James Earl Jones delivers a monologue on unicorns in There Should Be Unicorns. It’s one of the saddest and loneliest space operas I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to.

I don’t care that Metacritic scored it as a 6.9, most of those reviewers missed the mark here. This is a slowburn which only gets warmer and brighter upon subsequent listens, this I can be sure of.

 

The Flaming Lips have been experimenting for years, and I wish I had seen them for the loving weirdos they are so much earlier in my art career. Because I would have fit right in with them. And now they’ve managed to make me appreciate Miley Cyrus as the weird sister I never thought I wanted. Through the eyes of the young we are reborn. A beautiful melody indeed. But that’s just a theory right?

Tim!

Good, Not Great (Bon Iver, 22 A Million)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

I’m glad I went to art school. I was exposed to a lot of people looking to impress, but without anything real to offer up. The struggle of the artist isn’t one of employment, it’s whether they can commit to a purpose and authentically represent it.

Too many posers walk around pretending they suffer, when they should put their nose to the grindstone and be affected for once. Yeah I’m feeling salty on this one.

Bon Iver – 22 A Million
released September 30, 2016
****** 6/10

jv1

Bon Iver is a multi-instrumentalist group headed by Justin Vernon, one that focuses on indie folk and which has been around since 2007. They’ve put out 3 full-length studio albums at this point, but it has been five years since their last album was released.

22 A Million is more of an experiment then anything. Lots of the songs go into unique directions, ascending and descending, depending on the song, but often cutting short before we see a real resolution. I think I may have been spoiled this year dear readers, there have been so many great album releases that Bon Iver didn’t really have a chance.

I should be more clear with my intent – it feels like the songs have lost all interest in established forms of songwriting, and they don’t really help us to whatever atmosphere the group had strived for; thanks Justin and friends. It’s a challenge against convention, a battlecry against form, but the other team didn’t want to show up.

Folk music is in a difficult place these days it seems. While pop music has continued to explore what’s possible and even make conceptual decisions that are exciting, especially this past year, folk artists that dabble in pop should be uniquely poised to come out ahead. And yet, this album feels a lot like the late oughts. I find it very confusing. We’ve explored these themes already.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed parts of this album and it sounds beautiful, but as a professor of mine once said, I’m grading you based on your own ability and not on a preset standard, because that’s the only way you’ll grow. After all, I think it can be exciting when we reject tradition in favour of exploration, but exploration for explorations sake? Come on Bon Iver, wake up.

This album is a complete mess in terms of it’s composition. I might as well be listening to a 35 minute solo track in long form.

Literally every song on this album features some sort of dichotomy, good vs evil, up vs down, I could go on, but the point being made is one of tension. Even the song titles are written with symbols and avant garde grammar, it’s pretentious and we’ve seen that trick before too – leet speak is dead. Maybe I’m completely off my rocker here folks, but 22 A Million is not groundbreaking, it’s evocative, haunting, and a great jazz session. We should look at this as more of a mixtape then anything, and hopefully when the rest of the world wakes up, Bon Iver will have put their pants back on.

 

 

 

Maybe that was a harsh criticism, but I really do believe these guys are capable of a lot more than we saw on this record. I want to believe that this was just a misstep, but the flourishes and fawning of the masses over this record are driving me nuts friends. Listen to this one at your own discretion, but don’t for a second fall into the hype. It’s good, not great.

Tim!

 

Flower Powers (Brendan Canning, Home Wrecking Years review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Have you ever jumped into a pile of leaves dear readers? Fallen into a snow drift? Tumbled into a pool? Slipped in the mud?

Yeah I have too. Nature has a surprising amount of built in padding for both kids and adults alike. And yet we never seem to take advantage of it – Especially in summer. Consider this idea for a second… What if you were to dive into a bed of flowers?

I bet it would feel a lot like this album.

 

 

 

Brendan Canning – Home Wrecking Years
released August 12, 2016
******** 8/10

brendandhomewrec

Brendan Canning has been making indie music for a long time – 24 years to be exact. I know this because the year that he became active is the same year that my baby brother was born. Which in music years, means he is old as fuck. Just kidding Brendan! Anyway, Canning is a co-founder of Arts & Crafts sweeties Broken Social Scene, yay for Canadian content! Canning has also been a part of such acts as Blurtonia, By Divine Right, hHead, Len, and Vally of the Giants.

Yeah that Len, the Len that performed Steal My Sunshine.

But this isn’t a group record, it’s a one man show. Speaking of which, Canning has now made three solo albums, the most recent being Home Wrecking Years.

It is immediately accessible and feels like an album you should listen to on vinyl with some incense, hummus, and your most breezy shirt. You shouldn’t expect anything less than a comfortable and heartwarming experience with this record. That is, if you’re familiar with Broken Social Scene’s experimental, shoegazing, and noise infused sounds. Because most of the guest spots feature regular BSS members Sam Goldberg and Justin Peroff

It’s not quite as epic in scale of course; But that combination of guitars, horns, woodwinds, and string instruments is definitely there for you get a good feeling about.

Now, I could spend time picking apart each individual track and tell you the strengths and weaknesses found on the songs contained within this album, but to be perfectly honest, that’s not the way that I ultimately took this album in. I listened to it in my car throughout the week, on the way to work, on the way home, going to see friends, onto a date, taking my brother to the medi-centre, basically just out living life. I tried to set it down and pay really close attention to it, I swear, but it never felt right to do so.

As I mentioned already, this is music you put on to feel good about yourself and your unfolding story.

It’s a weird thing, as much experimentation as Canning puts us through in his shoegazing efforts, that’s okay. It’s allowed. We have music so many kinds of music out there on the market, it’s nice when an artist pulls back some of his cords and unplugs. And that’s what Home Wrecking Years is a raw and simple record, which is experimental for this artist. Ever heard the expression, hiding in plain sight? Yeah, pretty much that’s what this is. A great album, hiding in plain sight.

 

 

 

People get so concerned about stopping to smell the flowers, that they never think to dive right in. But I bet you that if you did take that chance, you’d find Brendan Canning just hanging out in your neighbours flowerbed, hiding in plain sight. A notion of summer well remembered.

I’m out of musical theories for now my friends, but you should check back tomorrow, when I share a movie review about another natural occurrence.

Tim!