5. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart [Slumberland]
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - as sweetly accurate an aesthetic statement as they come. This Brooklyn group’s debut album withholds romantic chamber pop that would be perfect even if their name weren’t. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart is a glaringly obvious homage of an album that wears its noise-pop tendencies on every line of its face. Possessing the sonic dexterity of Loveless with the adolescent heart wrenching of Disintegration, the album’s fuzzed-up loudness underscores the unbridled emotion with a surprisingly subtle dab of refinement.
An amalgam of all of the things that were good about late 80’s and early 90’s college radio are gathered up and siphoned back here with rediscovered clarity. The distant, but angelic vocals of their front man, Kip Berman are sonically similar to Kevin Shields, but with upbeat melodies that rise above the requiem.
Bookends “Contender” and “Gentle Sons” have a kinship in mentality that works the like the start of glorious day leading to an exhausted head upon a pillow.
The album opener, “Contender” is a near percussion-less vacuum of fuzz that eases into the record on a more somber level than the assaults that follow. “Come Saturday” and “Young Adult Friction” sport a harder rocking shell, but still bring about the hooks and occasional humor that the band extracts so well. It’s a tight combination of washed-out over-trebly guitars and keyboard synths as back-up vocalist Peggy Wang harmonizes from a distance. “I never thought I would come of age,” sings Kip on “Young Adult Friction,” about a passionate rendezvous between teens in a library. The track starts with a 4/4 percussion before a explosion of keys gives way to muted guitars and crooning vocals, building upon the track until becoming a shining example of pop goodness that has a 14-year-old’s angst but the wisdom of the heartbroken.
Mostly centering on youth and heartache (see “This Love is Fucking Right!”), the sentiment fits the crime. They feel like a young band should, with equal parts naivety and energy. “A Teenager in Love” is sure to satisfy anyone’s sweet tooth for goopy hooks. “Everything With You” is a straight-ahead pop jammer that fizzes with a melodic confidence and sincerity.
It feels like we are on the crest of a new-wave, noise-pop re-birth that’s been looming for a while. With groups like Vivian Girls, Times New Viking, and Crystal Stilts, the revival is most welcome. The Pains can easily be at the forefront of this scene because, simply put, they have the best hooks. There is something distinctly perfect about the naivety that the Pains seem to effortlessly inject into every bouncy ballad of youhtful love and living that makes their debut not only a welcome throwback but a much needed vacation from over-calculations.
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart raise above their name-dropping prototype peers on the plains of authenticity and heartfelt melancholy. Most importantly, at the pulse, when stripped of all of the fuzz, comparisons and reverb... these are plainly blissful pop songs.
4. Girls – Album [True Panther]
Girls, a duo from San Francisco, have quite a back story, one to rival any Australian Idol contestant. Singer Chris Owens was born into the ‘Children of God’ cult. He escaped at 16, then lived as a drug addled teen in Texas before being picked up by a millionaire who helped him relocate to San Fran, where he met band mate Chet White (Oprah hasn’t caught onto this shit yet). An upbringing resulting in a serious disconnection from good things in life. Which is why it makes sense that much of his golden-era, Californian pop songs are about things like wanting to kiss the girl, or holding on to reasons for smiling.
Their debut, simply called Album, was recorded under the influence of copious amounts of prescriptions. Yet it's not a lo-fi, half-arsed, ‘screw it’ collection of tracks. Each song is layered, with guided guitar solos and giftedly pitched vocal harmonies reverbing around Owens' cracked, hic-cup-y vocals.
The opener “Lust For Life” hits with rush of jagged guitars, tambourine, canned handclaps and some unexpected melodica over which Owens drawls "I wish I had a father/ Maybe then I would have turned out right/ Now I'm just crazy...fucked in the head". It’s a perfect, devastatingly honest song played out in a clinically.
It's Owens' upbringing and recent break up that influences much of Album, not just in the lyrics but in the common sadness that he exudes simply by sighing into the mic. “Ghost Mouth”, with its Be My Baby-style drum pattern, is a heartache tale of trying to get into heaven. The brilliant, almost jaunty “Laura” deals with the hurt of loss; "Now when I run into you I pretend I don't see you/ I know that you hate me". It also features some great guitar noodling, which eventually takes the song into an unexpectedly psychedelic addendum.
Musically, Album is a medley of influences, with nods to early Beach Boys (brilliant “Big Bad Mean Mother Fucker”), The Beatles, Elvis Costello and even Spiritualized.
With “Hellhole Ratrace” Owens and White sublimate a diary page into a trip/epic manifesto. Though moving, it also recycles a chord prog heard previously in “Ghostmouth.” Elsewhere, “Morning Light” repeat offends, coming across like a carbon copy of Sonic Youth’s “Mote.” It’s the kind of lovelorn, broken-hearted epic Jason Pierce would be proud of, all drip drums, layers of inharmonious guitar noise and a central, repeated motif of ...
"I don't want to cry/ My whole life through/ I wanna do some laughing too".....
It's a beautifully bruised seven minutes that leaves you exhausted.
Much credit must go to producer and bassist White, whose warm production allows the songs to slowly unravel, as on instrumental “Curls” and “Lauren Marie”, or hit their stride with immediacy as on “Big Bad” and “Lust For Life”. Given the fact that most of the record was created in bedrooms, he manages to make each song sound almost epic, through a fog of drugs and sadness.
It's testament to how good their debut is that all the hype is lost as soon as the opening bars kick. Created by two genuine outsiders and made with a refreshing lack of irony, Album is a welcome addition to my best albums of 2009.
3. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers [Domino]
Wild Beasts are certainly one of the most idiosyncratic bands to have emerged from the UK in recent years. Last years debut Limbo, Panto was ambitious, bold and at times with a bewildering approach to a myriad of musical elements that, as a whole, was largely successful, if at times manic and incoherent. A year later we have Two Dancers an album with so many densities and provocative melodies it could easily have taken 10 years to make.
Opener “The Fun Powder Plot” is a tropical number that chugs along steadily and seamlessly, as twisting melodies and scattered percussion intersperse one another; feeling cohesive and progressive. It’s an invigorating opener. “Hooting And Howling” follows, this is where Hayden Thorpe’s voice really begins to open up, but not in the falsetto to growl routine of Limbo, Panto. Here, he controls and restrains his voice to a mid. This, with the dynamic yet sensitive tribal like percussion and escalation is, as a result, pretty magical. It’s seems their producer uses a similar tactic used by Rick Rubin on Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” and turns up the volume along with escalating vocals, resulting in a grand, theatrical sound that also succeeds in raising a hairs. This ability to shift rhythms and tempos is one of their key assets.
“All The King’s Men” completes quite a rather triumphant trio of opening songs for an LP, and sees Fleming take lead vocals. This is a good example of the art of track listing, as only three songs in and you already feel like you have encountered a varied, diverse and multi-layered record.
As the album progresses those elements of tribal and tropical percussion become a staple and welcome addition. It bears resemblance to Fear Of Music era Talking Heads and to match, his voice wraps around the percussion not unlike to Byrne. This all comes to fruition on “We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues.”
That demonic growl that Thorpe has the power to unleash is very rarely exuded on this record, perhaps the closest we come is on “This Is Our Lot” or closer “Through The Iron Gate” and it shows a sign of an artist years ahead of his time in terms of comfort and control. Rarely does such a new and youthful band exude such assurance in what they are creating.
One thing that is apparent throughout the LP and much like the last one is their use of repetition. They seem to have mastered the art of repetition without losing any focus or clarity. A prime example of this is the single “Hooting And Howling”; it’s very much focused around one melody or guitar, they are essentially able to loop it over without a sense of boredom creeping in. Again, placing emphasis on their ability to balance restraint and ambition.
The pace slows for the album's latter half, lending proceedings a more reflective mood. The two-part title track has a distinctly post-rock feel, with one guitar building just off-centre before reaching a crescendo and then dropping off, the other, meanwhile, delivers twinkling broken chord. It's as epic as Wild Beasts get. It's blatant sexual references are a noticeable contrast to the literary content of the majority of their lyrics, and is quite probably deliberate.
Its rather fitting that they chose an underwater video for their first single, as the Beasts have managed to encapsulate a submerged feeling on this record. However, as opposed to the record having the feeling of flowing water or a murky sound like someone drowning, they have managed to get both into a sound that is like someone being carried along downstream whilst remaining underwater. It has flow and clarity yet it has oddities and a strange peaceful eeriness.
In my opinion, Wild Beasts have created one of this year's finest albums. As a standard bearer for the future, Two Dancers should be heard by any aspiring group of musicians intent on taking their first steps into the music industry, as its creators haven't so much as merely raised the bar of expectation, but soared previously unattainable heights themselves in the process.
2. Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light [Secretly Canadian]
Nothing about Antony Hegarty's voice sounds appealing in description. It's highly mannered, demure, tremulous, cold, withholding, adenoidal, mercurial—something alien choked from the throats of Nina Simone and Scott Walker with a pair of frilly lace gloves found in the back of a cabaret dressing room. But that same voice is what makes Antony dramatic—and, on The Crying Light, absolutely an unequivocally devastating.
There’s such a shock in hearing music so alien yet so nakedly human. Listening to music is such a personal thing, no matter what. It’s something that we have to take for granted in order to get through the day without embarrassing ourselves. And Antony’s music, if I let it, absolutely destroys me. Perhaps it’s a character defect. It could be elegant and soothing in some sense, but it’s too urgent, too gut-wrenching, too sincere to not break hearts every time it is heard. Once immersed, it’s hard not to feel privileged to be roiling in such implacable wretchedness.
Antony certainly knows what he's doing in a sly song like "Epilepsy Is Dancing," which takes a jaunty, almost madrigal-like detour after the mournful "Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground" opens with a cry for the ocean to swallow him now, so as to ease the pain.
The orchestration on The Crying Light is breathtaking The woodwinds, harpsichord, and impossibly soft-strings on “One Dove” (his lilting of “Mercy, mercy” is one of his most indelible refrains yet) are so lush and perfect as to make his words seem injected into your blood. There’s an instrumental break in late 2 mins that absolutely slays. Towards the end, Antony sings “Eyes open, shut your eyes,” things get spooky, with a creepy flutter rainforest creature noises. This song is incredible.
Other highlights, like the title track and "Another World" (among others accented greatly with eerie arrangements by Nico Muhly), share the theme of staring down the prospects of environmental oblivion or apocalypse. In "Another World," over sparse piano and atmospheric feedback, Antony sings about birds, trees, bees, the sun, the wind, the snow. They're all simple things he'll miss when he's gone—and all things made more haunted and poignant by the simple act of Antony singing about them. There is only the sense of swelling and receding, hoping and letting go. It’s transcenence.
The main evolution from I Am a Bird Now is an increased richness in the music. Antony was always an incredible singer, at his most moving when it sounds like he’s throwing out the book. Bear in mind that the conceptuality of this record is very personal, you need no context to appreciate it. These are sad songs, the presentation is one of rapture an poetry. It’s music to get absorbed by. You're not listening to just another piano troubadour; you're hearing the confessions of an artist who in time will be considered one of the most affecting composers of this young century.
1. The Antlers – Hospice [Frenchkiss]
The Antlers' Hospice is not an easy record to sit through. This album is so unbelievably powerful that it will crush you through heartbreak in under an hour without the right focus, or the right mindset.
Hospice is at once the simplest and most immense album of the year.
Its music is made of small melodies, tiny vocal ranges and repeated, winking guitar. It is basic piano, slow-rolling drums. The combination of those simple sounds works, and through their unified action, comes music that confronts, soothes and washes over you. It’s music that smacks you on the side of the head, but then embraces you and apologizes in tears for being so cruel.
The Antlers make music that marches so intently - unfocused on trends or what anyone thinks may be cool. Songwriter Peter Silberman has crafted a true concept piece populated with slow-mo feedback cyclones, melodies from nursery rhymes, loud/soft shifts, and lyrics fixated on life’s themes: love, death, and guilt. Reference points abound, from Godspeed You Black Emperor’s protracted moodiness to My Bloody Valentine’s pink-tinged guitar tones to Arcade Fire’s death-focused, life-affirming choruses. And yet Hospice sidesteps cliché, or at least overwhelms it.
Like so many true albums – where a listen through is necessary and single-tracks won’t do – Hospice tells a story of death. Not the blurred concept of death, but the detailed experience of being in an actual hospice.
The patient is Sylvia, narrated by Silberman. Whether it's fictional is irrelevant, because as Hospice progresses, the listener becomes so enraptured in the chronicle, the listening experience is akin to reading a novel, or viewing a fine film. Silberman watches Sylvia retreat into her own mind, unable to keep up with the sensations and feelings of the world, he retreats as well. As the disease eats her body, so too does it eat away at their relationship. He dies with her though in perfect health, often so overcome by helplessness that all he can do is watch in horror, unable to move his lips, unable to utter, “It’s alright. It’s going to be fine.”
Every song is a layer that peels back and reveals more and more about these two people, sometimes more than you want to know. The lyrics have a push-pull that is extraordinary in its equal balance of discomfort and beauty, both raw and restrained. Arrangements are stellar, slow-burning, ethereal sounds made by traditional instruments transformed with reverb and sustain. Silberman's vocal style is fragile and otherworldly hauntingly paired to this tale. Each song is a chapter of the troubled Sylvia's past and present, with abuse and dark impulses.
Hospice seems to have drained from Silberman straight through the speakers.
Hospice lives in a world with no doors, no vents, no communication.
The saga starts with a musical "Prologue" and liner notes providing background: "When she was younger, she had nightmares. She had scissor-pain and phantom limbs, and things that kept her nervous through that twelve year interim." The first lrical song, "Kettering," suggests intertwined as caregiver and patient. "I wish that I had known in that first minute we met, the unpayable debt that I owed you."
There are pianos here that melt into the music without any percussive motion - just sound that tip-toes in and slides out unnoticed. Silberman’s voice is even more liquid than the piano that melts beneath him. His words flow, slowly, between breaths.
And when the music picks up, it galllops to the complete other end of the spectrum – from a whisper to a cacophony. The chorus of “Sylvia,” with Silberman’s pained cry of “Sylvia! / Get your head out of the oven!” (part of a subplot juxtaposing the power of depression with the darkness of death), is forcefully beautiful. “Bear” (another song of subplot), relives the young protagonists heartbreaking tale of abortion. By structuring a upbeat tempo an catching chorus, anyone not listening inherently to the lyrics will be fooled into believing it is a joyous song.
The first several songs show a startling level of self-discipline, as they methodically build to the album's mid-point. On "Thirteen," vocals are handled by Sharon Van Etten, speaking as Sylvia: "Pull me out…can't you stop all this from happening." It is a short, ghostly poem that segues to the brilliant "Two”.
“Two” is the album's apex and turning point. Mighty acoustic strumming comes in from nowhere, the backdrop for Sylvia's actual passing. This disconnect is so disarming, gorgeously illustrating the duality of existence; the magnificence and horror of living and dying. The narrator realizes, once and for all, that it’s just too late. Silberman sings a story’s, all in a simple, repeating melody over a rusty acoustic.
“There was nothing I could do to save you / the choir’s gonna sing and this thing is gonna kill you / Something in my throat made the next words shake / and something in the wires made the light bulbs break.”
Paired with melancholy piano drops, Silberman’s words are richly visual. The light bulbs do break – they spark and shatter as the narrator falls.
On the nine minute album centerpiece “Wake,” Silberman deliberates on the comfort and terror that comes with solitude (“It was easier to lock the doors and kill the phones than to show my skin / because the hardest thing is never to repent for someone else / it’s letting people in”) over a hushed choral and piano arrangement and delicate percussion.
Anger, restlessness, fear, pride and beauty; Hospice is one of the most accomplished, complete albums made in years. And when last track “Epilogue” ends with Silberman singing, “You return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep / Your face is up against mine / and I’m too terrified to speak,” there’s no closure, no easy answer to sew up the wound.
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