The Antlers- Burst Apart(2011)

The Antlers- Burst Apart

Following up on perfection is impossible.

That was the task that Brooklyn Indie Pop purveyors The Antlers had when they had to release a follow up to 2009's Hospice. Hospice was, for all intents and purposes, perfect: one of the most powerful, inventive, heartfelt and sincere musical releases of the decade, a literal and hyperbole-free tour-de-force. With it's heart wrenching sincerity and inescapable hooks, Hospice represented a massively high plateau for the band to try and reach with any follow up album. Burst Apart was doomed from the very beginning.

And that grim foreshadowing has indeed come to fruition, as Burst Apart fails in every conceivable way to match Hospice. Instead of an amazing ode to life and love, we get 10 Indie Pop tracks, no more and no less. The whole thing is a very standard and somewhat lifeless affair. Which is not to say Burst Apart is incompetent: the band understand how to write an instrumental Pop song, and each track is a well made and sturdy piece. So is your table, and I doubt your table got you very excited today. Burst Apart exists, but the question becomes does anyone care?

There are a few tracks that float up above the mediocrity of the whole affair. "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out" is by far the strongest track and is a fantastic mix of lightning fast guitars and ridiculously catchy verses, while "Hounds" has that haunting quality that made Hospice such a masterpiece. But most of the rest of the album is severely nondescript: The Antlers are incognito, much to the listeners chagrin.

Burst Apart is, for lack of a better word, boring. It comes and goes without any real staying power, and even if the band had not released Hospice, it would be hard to find a lot of love for this record. It is not bad, just functional. Like a toothbrush, or your crappy car in High School.

Rating: 6/10

Feist- Metals(2011)

Feist- Metals

There is not a more powerful and distinct set of pipes in all of Indie music than those possessed by Leslie Feist, or know by most as only Feist. Ms. Feist has without a doubt one of the most beautiful and insanely powerful voices to have ever been recorded. But her Siren-like vocals also stand apart from most of her contemporaries for their uniqueness: the slight rattle and throttle she gives every note makes her voice stand out in a sea of incredible female singers. And she has ridden those golden vocal chords to the top of her profession, while becoming one of the most recognizable and beloved Indie stars in the world.

Metals is Ms. Feist's newest release, and it sticks closely to the sound she established with 2007's brilliant The Reminder: lo-fi, quiet and dream like Pop songs that act as vehicles for her voice to soar. Whether it is a bit of horns and violin on "The Bad In Each Other," sugary sweet instrumental Pop in "The Circle Married The Line" or smokey, run down bar themes "Anti-Pioneer," Ms. Feist shows that she can sing the holy hell out of any song, any genre and any emotion. Metals somewhat lo-fi production also does wonder for the album: compared to many of her squeaky clean contemporaries, Ms. Feist is the one who still seems to be recording at the local studio instead of the multi-million dollar music factory.

There really is no comparison to the sheer power of emotion that Ms. Feist unleashes with each note. The only one I can honestly make is to the legendary Joan Baez, although whether that is unfair to either party has been difficult for me to assess. Her voice is one that must be heard, but how much enjoyment you get from Metals will be on how much you enjoy amazing vocal performances. Ms. Feist is a singer who can match the best, but her song-writing is rarely as adventurous as her voice. Which is not to say she is generic: any songwriter who has the guts to write a pop song driven by the banjo(as she did with "1234") is not one who understands the meaning of the word safe. It is more that Metals is very similar to The Reminder musically, and The Reminder was very similar to Open Season. Ms. Feist has been playing with the same instruments and similar arrangements for 3 albums now, and it is clear that she may lack the conviction to take the massive changes that artists like Bjork and Joanna Newsom have been willing to make. It doesn't take much away from Metals, but it bares mentioning.

I was hoping for a slightly more adventurous release from Ms. Feist, but my issues are nearly pointless in the face of the overwhelming beauty of her voice. Metals works because Ms. Feist simply won't allow it to fail: she will merely carry the whole damn record on the back of her Siren Call. We should all be so blessed as to listen to, and appreciate, this voice that will not be silent.

Rating: 8.5/10

Bon Iver- Bon Iver(2011)

Bon Iver- Bon Iver

It must be just awesome to be Justin Vernon.

The figure head and main creative force behind Bon Iver, which contrary to the various promotional photos is not a solo Vernon project but a band featuring Michael Noyce, Mathew McCaughn and Sean Carey(who released a solid solo album this year), Vernon is a huge fucking deal. And the thing is, he always has been: this meteoric rise to the top was destined since high school, when Vernon fronted the band Mt. Vernon, whose music was utterly fantastic and was miles ahead of anything you would expect a band whose members were still taking Algebra 2 classes to ever pull off. He then fronted deYarmored Edison, which released a few critically acclaimed albums before Vernon left for solo stardom. It is debatable how much influence Vernon had on the song-writing process at this time, since the rest of dYE would go on to form the incredible Megafaun, but regardless Vernon used his previous experience as a stepping stone into a log cabin to write For Emma and become the Indie darling he is today while kicking it with Kanye West. The whole process reeks of an ego almost as big as the hype, if not bigger, but then again it takes a serious ego to make an album like Bon Iver.

A complete departure from the Iron and Wine-influenced For Emma, Vernon has taken the band in an entirely new direction without any real warning. Synth, electronic music and electric guitars, drums: Vernon bought out the local music shop and jammed it all into the recording studio. Yet it speaks to Bon Iver that despite this new found love all things musical, it remains one of the softest, most sincere releases this year. Ego aside, Vernon just fucking gets it. As here proves here, he can out Dream Pop the Dream Pop-players in one album, with no real practice at is. He remains an idiot-savant for all things hook infused and beautiful. Vernon remains one of the best singers in Indie music: his ability to move effortlessly from a powerful baritone to a charming, if off-kilter, falsetto remains unmatched by any singer in Indie music. This is displayed perfectly in "Minnesota, WI," while the floating guitars of "Holocene" evoke Vernon's criminally over-looked solo album Hazeltons.

I was more than ready slap a 9.5 or even a 10 on this album as it winded down. I was flat out blown away how easily Bon Iver had transitioned from Freak Folk to Dream Pop, and started musing my writings as the song "Beth/Rest" began blasting from my headphones.

I had to pause the record, for I could not stop laughing.

In another absolutely wonderful and wholly misguided effort of the ego, Vernon crapped the bed with "Beth/Rest." The synth will instantly cause you to sing "I can feel it coming in the air tonight..." should be a deadly foreshadowing of the shitstorm that is to come, but when Vernon's auto-tuned moans come groaning over the top of them, it is time to board up the windows and invest in some plastic gloves. It takes serious balls, and frankly a belief that anything you write will be loved automatically, to make a song like "Beth/Rest" and use it as the closing track! It is like Vernon took us on a magical journey we would never forget, only to end at a 65 and over singles bar, complete with slow dancing. No doubt "Beth/Rest" will make it into some High School proms DJ rotation, but for the rest of us this is completely insane and a serious atmosphere killer.

The closing track is a big deal on just about any record, but the way Bon Iver ends is a little inexcusable in my book. This album still has some of the most finely crafted songs of the year, and I would still recommend it to anyone. Just make sure to hit stop before Phil Collins starts his set.

Rating: 8/10

Patti Smith - Horses (1975)

‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine’. Thus opens ‘Gloria’, the opening track from Patti Smith’s seminal debut album Horses. The track itself is actually a cover of a Van Morrison song, originally written for Them, but Smith recreates it – including a reinvention of lyrics to include said opening line – in such an idiosyncratic manner that the song sits quite happily among the rest of the album, well-disguised as a Smith original.

But idiosyncrasy was always one of the main objectives of the then-budding punk movement; a fact which was somewhat forgotten by the better-known English bands after the original rush of ’77. Smith used the lyric as a method of rebellion against the institutionalized religion she felt had been forced upon her; the three-chord progression was the style which came to be known as the ‘punk style’, sure, but by the time the likes of the Sex Pistols attempted to see commercial success past the surprising success of Never Mind The Bollocks, their attempts fell flat – not so much, I believe, due to the lack of another full-length, but more so because the style had had its 15 minutes.

So when the Pistols came stateside, performing just down the road from Patti Smith one night and frontman John ‘Rotten’ Lydon talked about ‘some woman singing about fuckin’ horses’ (or words to that effect), it was evident that they had lost touch with the roots of the movement. The diversity in Smith’s influences is evident throughout this album – for instance, second track ‘Redondo Beach’ takes a bouncy approach akin to reggae, predating ska punk by several years, whereas the first 9-minute epic of the album, ‘Birdland’, is loosely based around a piano ballad throughout.

When she actually becomes violently passionate during a song, therefore, it comes as quite a surprise – the first chorus to ‘Free Money’ comes out of seemingly nowhere, as does the vocal attack when past the introduction to ‘Land’, which for all intents and purposes is the title track. The point is this; although the instrumentation is interesting, sure, the focal point of this album is Smith’s outstanding vocal performance – one which has not since been paralleled in popular music.

This performance demonstrates quite capability the sheer range of Smith’s vocal styles – although upon one’s first listen to the album, one might remember the ‘monkey noises’ during the chorus of ‘Gloria’ and Smith’s tendency to take her pitch sharply upwards at the ends of vocal lines, but equally memorable upon repeated listens are the cavernous vocals utilised in ‘Land’ and the percussive approach used in many verses, which really aids in the appreciation of the quality of the timbre of her voice.

In essence, the variation in this album means that the post-punk genre is here before much of the groundwork of punk itself had been laid down. It may seem strange, a ‘post-‘ genre being spawned before its suffix was fully created, but that is the only way to demonstrate aptly the full level of innovation of this album. This album was, and is, one of a kind. Patti Smith did indeed go on to make more wonderful music with the likes of Radio Ethiopia, but this is by a long shot her best. An absolutely wonderful album.

9/10

Iron and Wine- Kiss Each Other Clean(2011)

Iron and Wine- Kiss Each Other Clean

Sam Beam, better known by his performace moniker Iron and Wine, is without a doubt one of the most influential modern American Folk artists to ever strum an acoustic guitar. His string of highly influential releases, starting in 2002 with his debut LP The Creek Drank The Cradle, led to an army of imitators and was the stepping stone for dozens of modern Folk artists to enter the semi-mainstream. His legendary "whisper Folk" sound perfectly evoked the feeling of listening to a light wind rustle a Georgian oaks branches as dogs barked in the distance.

Yet since Beam released his most successful album, the unforgettable Our Endless Numbered Days, in 2004, he has done everything in his power to completely abbandon the sound he pioneered and the sound that made him such a legend. When Beam dropped the truly incredible The Sheppards Dog on his unsuspecting fanbase, it was met with as vicious a reprisal as any album has ever received from a belegured fanbase. The Sheppards Dog was so massively different from anything Beam had done before: no longer was Beam strumming a guitar or banjo as he whispered poetry over the fleeting notes. Now, with a full band of musician, Beam went into a smokey, psychedelic Country Rock direction, and many of his long time fans were disgusted. Which of course was insane, as The Sheppards Dog was an adventerous masterpiece the likes of which has not been seen since(opinions are grand, no?).

Now four years later, Beam is back with Kiss Each Other Clean, and the neon-colored and LSD-influcence cover art was to many a grim foreshadowing of what was to come for Beam, who seemed to delight in angering his original fanbase. But the glory of Kiss Each Other Clean becomes evident from the first track: loaded with synth, electric guitars, layered vocals and keyboards, "Walking Far From Home" would seem to be yet another slap in the face to the old fans while high fiving those fans who embraced The Sheppards Dog. But it isn't. In fact, much of Kiss Each Other Clean is a synthesis of Beam's early work and his new, progressive style. "Walking Far From Home" is the perfect example of this: a soaring, high volume love-letter to the lo-fi solo folk of days gone by.

Throughout Kiss Each Other Clean we see this stark, beautiful contrast. One minute Beam is mastering soft rock with "Tree By The River," then returing to his solo Folk roots with "Glad Man Singing," right before upping the Funk to 11 with "Big Burned Hand." Beam no longer whispers his cryptic poetry however: his vocal strength is better than ever on this album, and no Beam's mild falsetto has the power and emotion that his earlier work was missing. Beam is never more haunting then on the final track, "Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me" as he declares "we will/become/become" to a crescendo of static, saxaphones and blaring electric guitars. This is not the Beam you discovered back in High School.

Despite an eternally grim chorus of detractors, Beam has easily shaken his past and embrace a future eterally bright with possibilites. No longer limited by his own innovation, Beam is free to explore whatever he wishes to explore, and we are all invited along on his journey. Consider me one of those ready to follow him to wherever his path takes him.

Rating: 10/10