The Killers

Your Stoicism Entryway (The Shins, Heartworms review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

 

Start each day knowing that the world is full of indifference, ill-will, selfishness, and a ton of other vices. Next, accept that each of us is affected by our environment, and not effected by it.

How we perceive the thing is much more powerful then the thing itself. The world will always be this way, which is why a certain kind of music could be popular ten years ago, and yet feel less interesting now.

 

 

 

The Shins – Heartworms
released March 10, 2017
******* 7/10

 

The Shins are an American indie rock band that have been playing together for just over 20 years. I own the bands first two records Oh, Inverted World (2001) and Chutes Too Narrow (2003) which I promptly picked up after listening to New Slang during it’s brief moment of spotlight in the film Garden State.

A few years later the dudes put together their third album Wincing the Night Away, which was a huge commercial success, and even earned them a Grammy nod.

I missed them when their fourth album came out, but I didn’t think to call or write, so I don’t have any strong feelings about it either way, but I can say most assuredly that The Shins fifth offering, Heartworms, is just as good as I was hoping it would be. And maybe a bit too comfortable for convention.

Does anyone remember when indie rock was the next big thing?

Death Cab For Cutie, Stars, Feist, Arcade Fire, The Strokes, Modest Mouse, Vampire Weekend, The Killers, et. al.

These were our champions in the 2000s, and The Shins were right at the centre of it all. Belle and Sebastian, The Black Keys, and Weezer too. Actually, I could probably list another twenty bands pretty quickly, but my point is this, when we look back in another ten years, people will be emulating the looks of these bands, and karaoking hard to their sweet tunes.

Sure indie rock has been around since the 1980s, (read: The Smiths), but The Shins are a picture perfect example of the sound captured at the height of it’s popularity. And Heartworms is no exception.

Which is probably why James Mercer dumped all of his bandmates in favour of something new on the last album. And then owned it fully for this outing. Name for You starts things off right with a higher note then we’re used to, but he doesn’t discard that tempo and brings it back a short one song later in Painting a Hole. We get excited listening to the lyrics while the instrumentation keeps things on track.

Cherry Hearts feels like it could be a late addition to the Sixteen Candles soundtrack or inside a more current addition in the movie Sing Street.

Fantasy Island is just good fun. And frankly I could make little anecdotes about each song along the way, which is how I feel that Mercer tackled this album from the outset. And that’s where it’s not quite punchy enough, it feels like each song was both captured in a moment and painstakingly crafted to sound that way. But thematically it can be a challenge to accept this as another other than a solo project finally realized in full. The Shins are James Mercer, and James Mercer is The Shins, good or bad.

 

 

 

Indie rock changed the game. Not in the sense that it forced anything political or social to happen, but that we collectively agreed that it was good music for a time, and now we are experiencing a shift away from thoughtful and whispy lyrics, saturated by striped down instrumentation, and heading back towards the glitz and glamour of the pop music. And that’s okay.

While that doesn’t mean that The Shins are less interesting, only that the larger public feel differently, I do agree that Mercer has run the course on some of his ideas, exploring things more fully is good, but where is the broader message at the centre of it all? Where is the stoicism?

That’s the theory I want to hear.

Tim!

Coatcheck (Kongos, Egomaniac review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

I always hated going to bars where I had to check my coat. Why the hell would I remove my jacket when I was struggling artist/student with minimal funds. Besides that coat check was worth half a pint of beer and I was just teeming with ideas to share with my fellow classmates.

The alcohol was a great way to release those thoughts and flood the room with my all-important vision for the art world and ideation of global citizenship.

I had something of an inflated ego and should’ve just played along with the group dynamic instead.

 

 

 

Kongos – Egomaniac
released June 10, 2016
******** 8/10

Egomaniac

Kongos are a band of brothers, quite literally – Comprised of South-African-Americans Johnny (accordion, keyboards, vocals), Jesse (drums, percussion, vocals), Daniel (guitar, vocals), and Dylan Kongos (bass guitar, lap slide guitar, vocals). Yeah, it’s not just a cool band name, it’s their legitimate surname too.

The brothers grew up in both London and South Africa, but have lived and worked on their art in their established hometown of Arizona since the mid 1990s.

The album starts off quite strong with Take It From Me, already a verifiable single with accompanying music video and that sweet sweet alt rock, hard rock, kwaito combo. You know, the sound that made Kongos a household name throughout Canada a couple of years ago, and which let them taste the Billboard charts of the United States too?

Now if you’ve heard their most popular song Come With Me Now, which came from the preceding album Lunatic, and I seriously doubt you haven’t, you’ll know that there was a very strong kwaito sound back then, that featured accordion and steel guitar, and made that track really cool and adaptive.

Fast forward to today, and first impressions from me were that I really dug the album almost immediately, and a lot of it had to with the lyrics, and harmonies between the brothers shared frontman duties. Autocorrect and Birds Do It stand out quite excellently in the lyrics department.

And Autocorrect reminds me of a July Talk song, which ain’t a bad thing at all.

In the grand scheme of life, it seems to be the case that Kongos are maturing into their strengths and broadening their interests so that they can deliver a more distinguished product. After all, Egomaniac is a concept album about the challenges of egomania. Again they accomplish this and more, drifting between synthesizers, ballads, accordion, bass, and some really sweet hooks. But that might be a byproduct of what happens when you tour with arena rock heroes like AWOLNATION, Imagine Dragons, and Kings of Leon.

It’s odd because I keep struggling with the words to explain how I feel about this album, but I truly do think it’s really cool – that they are capable of producing slower paced songs too, with proper attention given to each track, no matter what the song’s intent and focus, is a demonstration of their staying power.

2 In The Morning opens with what sounds like an edgier version of Brandon Flowers, and while I’m not sure if it’s Danny Kongos voice we hear, it’s quite good and attributed to him. Hey You, Yeah You also has that The Killers vibe to it.

It’s a rare treat when you find a band so self-aware of their strengths and particular voice, and I know I’ve written these words before, but this album is best served as a whole rather than as a sum of its songs.

And that is why Egomaniac won’t receive rave reviews from every critic and his mother – There are no stellar solos or catchy choruses here. But if you’re a fan of the band of brothers, you’ll shred your ego and hope in the trenches with ’em.

 

 

 

If only I had a checked my ego at the door, and had three other brothers with identical talents, I could be part of the Kueflers, an all-Canadian band of visual artists. Wait, I’m doing it again, getting lost in the ego. Gotta stay ground and enjoy the moment.

But that could just be a theory.

Tim!