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Category: Reviews

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  • #39 album of 2012 – Delta Spirit by Delta Spirit

    Artist: Delta Spirit

    Album: Delta Spirit

    Delta Spirit ‘s Matthew Vasquez sings with a twang, and their rock music has strong heartland folk/country leanings. I’m told this was even truer on their first two albums, which had titles; Delta Spirit is their third, and shows an, apparently new, interest in keyboards and mild Delta-Spiritelectronic beats. That’s not what you’d notice first.

    Me, I noticed the drummer first. I’m not sure whether Brandon Young is unusually good — his choppy, intricate pounding on Otherside is his closest thing to a showcase — but his fast steady kick/snare pulses and fills are mixed loud, and vary enough to keep the rock songs distinct. The guitars ring out thickly, as close to college rock radio as to John Mellencamp, and have no fear of surging power chords. The guitar and drums often strongly suggest, for me, Jimmy Eat World making their version of a TV on the Radio album, accumulating force steadily over the course of the song instead of blowing it all in the choruses.

    The reviews I’ve seen mostly downgrade the Delta Spirit tracks that deviate from this style. Ideologically, I disagree: trying new things is always something we should want artists to be eager to do. In practice, I’ll agree that I find the results mixed. The frantic Tellin’ the Mind is excellent, I think: the ululations, organ, beatboxing, the rhythmic tugging of the vocals. Time Bomb is pure Arcade Fire, starting out spare and ending up massive, gorgeous and resonant with keyboards and echoing drum thumps (and drum machine too, I think). Then again, the slow electric piano and drawn-out synthesizer notes of Home and Yamaha are simple-minded, and while I find them pretty, I don’t find them involving. Delta Spirit‘s melodies are fine when the energy level is high, but lack the personality to carry a song.

    *****

    What I *do* find involving are the lyrics. These aren’t, unfortunately, songs that lend themselves to a brilliant quoted phrase or two; like the music, the words here accumulate their meaning as they unfold over three or four minutes. On the one hand, as a reviewer, I shouldn’t mistake myself for a lyrics site (it’s always awkward when lyrics.wikia.com drops by my house with misdelivered Christmas presents that had been meant for me; and as annoying as I find it when my dinner guests expect www.songmeanings.net‘s pet tortoises to be there hopping onto the sofa, she’s just as annoyed when her guests expect my cats to be around staring balefully at them). On the other hand, I can’t resist offering examples in case you see what I see in these texts.

    There’s Home‘s ever-modulating balance among idealism, friendship, anger at the world and anger at himself: “Beaten like a rug, ashed out and clubbed, well, it’s all for my betterment/ I’ll give you a rib, with the marrow dried up/ It’s not much but a widow’s gift./ But in the right rays of the sun, if you squint hard enough, there can only be one like it/ I’d write you a song, for all men to be one, but I’d sing it from a place of pride… Drug in by the reign, of the crooked ways I think, I wish I was in the mood to die/ Well life it is good, no matter how far you sink, sometimes sitting still is better than to try/ When you’re down in a hole, when your heart’s weighed down by gold, there’s a hand that can reach you there”.

    Yamaha and California are matched songs to an ex, with a hard-fought balance of apologies and benevolence: “Now you’re dealing with the hell I put you through/ If I had my way I’d be right there with you/ There’s certain things in life you cannot change/ I hope you know I care”, joining “I want you to wander silent past my outstretched arms/ I want you to hide yourself from all I see/ And though my heart will fight until its dying breath/ You’re not for me … I want you to go out there and find somebody else/ I want him to treat you like I know he should”. Meanwhile, nicely-chosen details support the wounded idealism of Empty House‘s “How could one little speck/ make a difference to the rest?/ Well it doesn’t: no one cared except me”.

    If Tellin’ My Mind is a brief, eloquent tantrum — “It took the final straw that broke across my back. And as the others watched, they all refused to lend a hand/ I have been taking notes of when you come and when you leave. I sneak out in the night and take everything I need/ Tellin’ the mind just what I have to do” is the complete text — I can report from experience that sometimes idealism and benevolence need to take breaks. Plus hey, it’s rock’n’roll. Delta Spirit stick those words in the middle of the album, not the end. They’re a fun aberration; they don’t, over the course of Delta Spirit, get to define things.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!

     

  • #40 album of 2012 – MTMTMK by the Very Best

    Artist: the Very Best

    Album: MTMTMK

    As should be obvious from the plaintive opening blasts of fog-horn, the Very Best are a dance band, and MTMTMK is a bright, shiny, transnational, transcultural electro-pop dance record … Well, fine, but it *becomes* obvious once the fog-horn has been made to hold down the very_best_mtmtmkultra-low bass end. Meanwhile, groaning synthesizer has been drafted to hold down the almost-as-low bass; ultra-trebly synthesizer whistles and bleats have started playing the high end; oscillating disco synths have begun to hold down the middle; African drums and Phil Collins-y drum machines have pushed things along; and the song’s vocals have been processed, chopped, and strewn rhythmically, techno-style, over the top. Then there’s Jamaican-style rapping/toasting, some uplifting group/choral backup singing, and a stirring keyboard melody. That’s just the first song.

    Over the course of MTMTMK, we hear lots of African-style call-and-response singing — some of it melodically quite nimble — and rapping both playful and gritty, as well as modern pitch-corrected pop mantras, knob-twisted sudden rises and falls in vocal notes, and more disconnected vocal samples. Sometimes the synthesizers remind me of the Pet Shop Boys, sometimes of Erasure, sometimes of Dr. Dre, sometimes of ecstatic Japanese pop hits, sometimes of me and the kids futzing around with minor keys and Casio presets at the store, sometimes even of an imaginary happy Trent Reznor. African percussion plays, or sometimes it’s reggae, while dozens of cell phones clap their hands and snap their fingers. Mghetto, the record’s one serious/ somewhat-dark feeling track (and one of its best), may even feature flute and brass, although they could obviously be synthetic.

    MTMTMK is, for me, an album that loses momentum in the second half; an album where most of the songs are longer than strictly needed. And while I think it rallies to end with its absolute highlight — transitioning from chorus-worthy verses to chorus-worthy choruses to a chorus-worthy bridge in the celebratory We OK — I’m also aware that this highlight was written for the Very Best by Bruno Mars, and that I as a reviewer should find this damning. Whatever; I don’t listen to obscure music for the sake of credibility. I listen to find good music. Which sometimes is made by scouring the world’s pop charts for the many ways to make people smile.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!

     

  • #41 album of 2012 – Wing Beat Fantastic by Mike Keneally (with Andy Partridge)

    #41 album of 2012 – Wing Beat Fantastic by Mike Keneally (with Andy Partridge)

    Artist: Mike Keneally (with Andy Partridge)

    Album: Wing Beat Fantastic

    First, I got two careers to quickly summarize here. Mike Keneally — former “stunt guitarist” for Frank Zappa’s touring band — comes across as a friendly, goofy man who simply happens, by dint of hours a day of practice, to be a jaw-droppingly brilliant guitarist. His playing has gotten keneally_wing_beatmore understated and subtle over his solo career. This matches the trend in his songwriting, which has developed steadily more pop/jazz sophistication (which to some extent is a shame; his Potato and Live in Japan, from 1998 and 2000 when his albums were by “Mike Keneally and Beer for Dolphins“, are two of the most gloriously catchy hair-metal songs I’ve ever heard).

    Andy Partridge was the primary singer, songwriter, and arranger for XTC, a band I sometimes think of as what the Beatles would have become if they’d started out in 1978, forced to react — not only to punk and New Wave and Peter Gabriel’s musicology tours — but to the awesome challenge of being a pop band trying to out-innovate the Beatles. Partridge has claimed, plausibly (judging by their first couple of albums), that the origin of XTC’s distinct melodic style was an accident: that he and Colin Moulding simply learned the “wrong” set of three basic chords. Be this as it may, they developed this non-standard base into increasingly lavish tunes that, however unorthodox, nonetheless inspired genuine hit songs: Senses Working Overtime, Dead God, Mayor of Simpleton, the Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead. Then they vanished in 1993, on strike against their label; returned with two indie albums in 1999/2000; and vanished again.

    Until now, with Mike Keneally’s Wing Beat Fantastic, where the cover and Amazon listing both announce “Songs written by Mike Keneally & Andy Partridge”. I hadn’t noticed that Keneally’s and Partridge’s melodic styles were converging, but the resulting album feels natural for both of them, part Keneally’s acoustic Wooden Smoke (with its emphasis on elaborate vocal arrangements and headphone-listening sonic detail), part XTC’s fussily orchestrated Nonsuch. Or to bring in outside comparisons: I’m Raining Here, Inside is a fluid single fusing Billy Joel’s rock strut with the lovely elusiveness of Radiohead’s In Rainbows. Wing Beat Fantastic is like half-a-dozen late-Beatles stripped-down ballads transposed and stitched together into one complex creation. You Kill Me blends several styles of guitar-driven classic rock — some Thin Lizzy, some Who, some Yes, some Dire Straits, some Sesame Street — not all in 4/4 time.

    The guitar — except on You Kill Me — is de-emphasized. The quiet That’s Why I Have No Name is build on ghostly voices, low rumbling piano, and oscillating synthesizer. Your House is mostly a piano ballad, qualified to be covered by lounge singers for the next century. Miracle Woman and Man has one strikingly agile and expressive acoustic guitar solo at the end, but otherwise its forceful strums are notable mainly for the unusual chord progressions and halting-then-fluid-then-halting rhythms, and there’s a Chick Corea-like jazz fusion keyboard solo. Bobeau‘s really acrobatic feature is Keneally’s singing.

    The lyrics are very good, and while I make no attributions — Keneally’s a very good lyricist — the co-written words feel more Andy Partridge to me.

    * Some are happily romantic: “Wing beat fantastic: I want you in my backyard, tucking twigs and twine. Rising here and diving there, we’ll vanish, make ’em wonder where. Both evading cast and snare, we’ll emigrate to regions rare”.

    * Some are self-conscious: “What if you should see me here? I’d whirl blue and disappear”.

    * Some are lonely, emotions protected only by the search for the perfect metaphor: “My blue umbrella is no use: I’m raining here inside. Salt water flowing endlessly, just adding to the tide. Since you’ve gone, no light has shone; I’m drowning in my pride”.

    * Some are socially aware and indignant: “You kill me, with your cheap AK and your ‘Let us spray’. You kill me, with your oily games and your gift of flames. You kill me, with your ‘Praise the Lord!’ and your waterboard… I don’t mean to vote for you, but your machine will fix it so I do”.

    It adds up to a writing style I’ve recognized and largely admired for half my life. In whatever format, and with whatever help, I’m happy to have it back.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!