Album Reviews What's been crossing our ears this week...
ALBUM OF THE WEEK BOARDS OF CANADA Tomorrow’s Harvest Warp/Inertia
Boards of Canada came onto the electronic scene as a warmer, more accessible alternative to some of the more abrasive, experimental Warp artists.
Xxxx The clever interweaving of retro and non-electronic elements ensures we’re not left out in the cold on our own. No future? No worries.
Their fourth album is unmistakable a Boards of Canada record, though the nostalgic feel of their debut has been further diminished, despite the continued reliance on warm, analogue sounds from the ‘70s. Where the choice of a human element was once a child gasping “Orange / Yeah, that’s right!” the first human element on Tomorrow’s Harvest is a sinister vocoder voice counting over and over.
EDITORS
The songs sound comprehensively less rocking, with violins and echoing voices interspersed in more than one track – even those not meant as ballads, like ‘Honesty’ or the foot-tapping beat in opener ‘The Weight’. The new album takes a U-turn back to the group’s beginnings. Editors’ trademark is still there – like the mood in ‘Sugar’, reminiscent of their previous albums’ eerie atmospheres with bass lines and distorted guitar riffs interwoven with high-pitched piano, while ‘A Ton of Love’, not surprisingly chosen as the first single off the record, is a slice of driving guitar-fuelled Americana typical of Editors. But it’s also true that there’s a general feeling that the band has lost some sheen with this new material. There is the usual space for ballads like ‘Nothing’, but if you want the high points you’ll need to stick with the centre eight tracks. It’s not a terrible album, just uninspiring – nothing is genuinely un-skippable. Whatever the case, Editors have released a well-mastered album that gives attentive audiences something to talk about for a few weeks until it ceases to impress. There are albums that are instantly lovable and others that need more time to be fully understood and appreciated – The Weight of Your Love is presumably one of them. Carla Pavez
The cute fanfare that opens Tomorrow’s Harvest is like a movie studio’s intro jingle for a film, which is apt considering the album’s cinematic feel. This is the end of the world, but not in a flashy, big-budget way. To capture the sobering environmental woes
BLACK SABBATH
The Weight of Your Love PIAS
In an already experimental collection of albums, The Weight of Your Love is indeed different from Editors' previous LPs, remaining shadowy at times but definitely lighter in tone and less electronic.
Despite this being their least playful album, its prerelease marketing campaign was a light-hearted treasure hunt for music-lovers, with unmarked vinyl offering cryptic clues to Record Store Day shoppers, an introduction to single ‘Reach For The Dead’ at a busy Tokyo intersection and a full playback in a desert’s abandoned leisure park. It was as if the Scottish duo were competing with Daft Punk in a ‘biggest tease’ competition, though the style of their campaigns were very different, as was the resulting music. (The introverted Tomorrow’s Harvest is worlds away from Daft Punk’s disco flash).
Black Sabbath scared the shit out of people in their heyday. There was Ozzy eating bats, songs about Satan and devil worshipping and, above all, the heaviest, doomiest riffs anyone had ever heard. Their debut self-titled album is widely credited with more-or-less inventing heavy metal, but metal has become exponentially heavier in the intervening forty years. The title track was once described by Judas Priest’s frontman as “probably the most evil track ever written”, but now is almost comical in its earnestness. Yet despite Ozzy, Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi all being in their 60s, they don’t show any signs of slowing down. This album is every bit as heavy as any of their previous efforts, with only a slightly-diminished Ozzy giving any hint at their age. But he still sounds sharper here than he did on Sabbath’s recent Australian tour, where he was dwarfed by the on-stage sets and the giant screens. He’s certainly helped by Butler’s lyrics (he’s written most of Sabbath’s lyrics since the very beginning) which are as dark and demonic as ever, while the final track, ‘Dear Father’, is a typically-Sabbath take on living with memories of physical abuse. But the real star of Sabbath has always been Iommi’s guitar. Here Iommi lets it all hang out, displaying all the attributes that have made him an icon – the riffs, the guitar tone, the jazzy, tangential solos. This album does sometimes feel like a shadow of Sabbath past – it takes a good few minutes to really warm up, some of the lyrics are appallingly trite, and the whole thing is probably 10 minutes too long. But I don’t think anyone will care. We are still not worthy. Hugh Robertson
The Gifted Maybach Music Group
Pythons Sire Records/Warner Bros.
Following their debut album back in 2010, Florida’s Surfer Blood were at the top of many Most Promising lists, delivering fun bass-infused groove into a surf rock sub-genre more often associated with stoned swaying than dancing. That scene has gone back out with the tide during the long wait for this second album, but Pythons opens hopefully with mid-tempo single ‘Demon Dance’ highlighting John Paul Pitts' familiar sweet lead vocals, and drawing heavily on a couple of obvious influences – Weezer’s scuzzy guitar over ’60s-style pop, and a carbon copy of Frank Black’s demented scream. The next few songs trace the same pleasant template, with features like multiple guitars fuzzing over doowop backing harmonies. But for a contemporary take on power-pop, there’s little that acts as a hook, other than more screams. Unfortunately, where Pythons’ first half could be seen as flailing for inspiration to hold onto, the second half feels like the floating corpse. Lyrically, things centre around rom-com-level love and lazy similes, most notably on ‘Say Yes To Me’ – “I love you dearly, so let me see…I’m true blue”. ‘Blair Witch’ has to be titled ironically, as rather than recalling its namesake, the sappy tune sounds recorded specifically to pitch to a Richard Curtis movie soundtrack – “The more I see love the more I need love.” Many beloved bands have reappropriated the classic love pop song format effectively, but unlike Teenage Fanclub, Camera Obscura or The New Pornographers, Surfer Blood don’t appear to have any particular love or respect for the material they’re drawing upon. Disappointing follow-up record delivers a tepid take on power-pop, where there’s little real power and nothing pops.
On 2011’s Ambition, Wale showcased his dynamic flow and catchy beats (best of all on the Diplo-produced standout ‘Slight Work’), however the album lacked cohesion and was lyrically uninspiring, alluding to Wale’s potential, but nevertheless falling short of the mark. With this in mind, I was keen to check out how Wale had grown as an artist and lyricist, particularly when I noticed that The Gifted managed to knock Kanye West’s Yeezus off its number one spot (on July 4 no less). However, given the album’s lofty title, I should have known I was destined for disappointment. To his credit, the album is much more cohesive than his previous releases and has a unified sound characterised by soul samples and heavily-produced, nuanced beats. No stranger to the pulling power of guest stars (his debut album featured Lady Gaga), the star power is once again out in force, with guest spots from Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa and others. The outro, affectionately titled ‘The Outro About Nothing’ in reference to Seinfeld and Wale’s 2008 Mixtape About Nothing, even features a cameo from Jerry Seinfeld. Despite a strong opener (the cinematic intro ‘The Curse of the Gifted’), and the soul-inspired standout ‘LoveHate Thing’, things quickly get monotonous and predictable (tracks like ‘Heaven’s Afternoon’ seem like filler). By the time we reach the middle of the album, it all takes a distinct turn for the worst, with ‘Vanity’ featuring a poorly conceived (verging on embarrassing) sample of Tears For Fears’ ‘Mad World’. The chilled out concluding tracks (‘Rotation’,‘Simple Man’ and ‘Bad’) are all catchy and provide a solid wind-down, but aren’t enough for the album to live up to its title. The Gifted is by no means bad. If anything, it’s aggressively competent (to the point of being dull). Marisa Lugosi
Simon Topper
INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK ZOMBY
With Love 4AD Listening to With Love is by no means an easy task. A two-disc journey that skitters, skips and jumps from one track to the next with complete disregard for the listener, Zomby creates an interesting if slightly difficult to keep up with pace for this album. Once you wrap your head around the lack of formal structure you would expect from a record, there is some fascinating stuff to be found on this album. Drawing inspiration from all across the bass music spectrum, elements of jungle, grime,
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even DnB all make a distinctive sonic stamp across the majority of With Love. It occasionally feels like giant jigsaw puzzle of sounds that fit together, albeit in a very strange way. At 33 tracks long, Zomby has ostensibly divided the tracks across the discs into positive and uplifting (disc one) and mournful and reflective (disc two) but these are incredibly interchangeable posts for a record like this. Occasionally, for every great track, like ‘Memories’ or ‘Overdose’, the latter of which rattles and spits with the unrestrained energy a DnB bass line should, there are a handful that sound like reckless abandonment for the sake of it rather than for any discernable purpose. Whether they add to or subtract
from the experience seems to be something Zomby has left largely up to us. Disc two is where a lot of the best material can be found. ‘White Smoke’ possesses an almost tangible melancholia, while title track ‘With Love’ closes things off in an appropriately dark, sparse and mysterious tone that, unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to convey much love at all. Zomby throws the rulebook out of the window for an intriguing but frustratingly drawn out third record that will manage to alienate and fascinate you all at the same time. Marissa Demetriou
Chris Girdler
WALE
SURFER BLOOD
13 Vertigo / Universal
of our planet, Boards of Canada mark out a subtle yet rewarding soundscape that is moody and submissive to its doomsday setting.
FAT FREDDY’S DROP Blackbird The Drop Ltd
Back in the day, Fat Freddy’s Drop were but a support act for the likes of New Zealand music royalty Salmonella Dub. Today, having survived where said band has perished, the fellow Kiwis have flourished on local and international soil. Planted a seed, in fact, and watched their tree grow and grow. Now an undeniable force in the dub scene, hundreds upon hundreds of live shows have amassed a huge fan base and, incredibly, this latest album is only their third full-length release. Blackbird was recorded in the band’s own studio in New Zealand and, according to the band, directly resonates its direct environment. By the sound of the album opener and title track, this place is one mighty funky chill pad for the ska, reggae and, of course, dub inclined. And what an entrance to Blackbird – at almost ten minutes, it makes up for one-sixth of the whole album. In fact, none of the songs on Blackbird seem to be over too quickly – just like the band, they linger and leak and lull through each beat with deliberation and purpose. ‘Clean the House’, three tracks into the album, welcomes frontman Joe Dukie’s butter-wouldn’t-melt vocals back to where they belong, continuing in the sensual groove of ‘Bones’…we certainly “can’t get enough of those bones.” Lead single ‘Silver and Gold’ is obviously a stand-out track and, while it’s a bit anti-cool to brandish, as the album’s best track it does have a hellishly catchy chorus. Crouching in the more electroinfluenced corner of the Fat Freddy’s room, ‘Never Moving’ pulses with scattered energy as it broaches trance, psychedelic and deep house. Blackbird is a fine example of what Fat Freddy’s Drop do, but it’s not a pinch on what they’re really capable of. Their energy remains, as it always will, in their live shows. Jen Wilson
OFFICE MIXTAPE And here are the albums that have helped BRAG HQ get through the week... JAGWAR MA - Howlin' CLOUD CONTROL - Bliss Release NATHAN FAKE - Drowning in a Sea of Love
SCHOOLBOY Q - Habits & Contradictions PNAU - Pnau