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Electronic artistry at another level of intricacy
Best track: Truth Ray Worst track: Guess Again Rating: **** Transcending the confines of indie pop and electronica
Best track: All I Ever Need Worst track: Dive Rating: *** A multi-faceted album that sparkles with sheer mastery
Best track: Fool Worst track: Don’t Let Them In Rating: *** Abundant ebullient beats that is both booming and bizarre
Best track: Here I Am Worst track: Love Stops Here Rating: ***
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Yorke’s
new solo album, delivered by surprise via BitTorrent, is the best
project he’s been involved with since Radiohead’s 2007 late-career
highlight In Rainbows, the last time he set the internet on
fire with a surprise, self-distributed album. Yorke’s sophomore
effort, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, finds the singer-songwriter
at a fairly distinct musical crossroads. Like The Eraser, this
latest offering is built predominantly on programmed beats, oblique
piano, and synth sounds that thickens and diffuses like dense digital
fog. Opener A Brain In A Bottle exists somewhere between his
debut album and the blazing, industrial tones of Radiohead’s
Lotus Flower. In Interference, There Is No Ice (For My Drink) and
Nose Grows Some, it feels like Yorke has a trilogy of
unassumingly brilliant songs. The Mother Lode, echoes and loops
between Yorke and the beats that enclose him, while Truth Ray sounds
like a clear point of demarcation, with Yorke trying on a trip-hop
beat, the likes of which he hasn’t dabbled in since DJ Shadow. For
all its moments of beauty and lush compositions, this is Yorke’s
most experimental side project yet and, arguably, his best.
Our
Love, the latest work of
Polaris prize winner and doctor of mathematics Dan Snaith, is his most
intimate album yet. The collection follows the direction set out by
2010’s Swim, moving further away from the composer and
producer’s glitch, towards a more dancefloor friendly production
style that is imbued with soul. Opener Can’t Do Without You
sets the bar extraordinarily high for the rest of Our Love,
with an array of gorgeous sounds that doesn’t want to end. On tracks
like Silver and Back Home, frail vocals is more
accentuated in the mix than usual, and Snaith’s lovesick croon takes
on a newfound vulnerability. Caribou crafts amazingly catchy house
influenced electronic music made up of warm samples and Snaith’s
totally compelling vocals. Second Chance, featuring the
delicate vocals of Jessy Lanza, is possibly the most poignant and
affective track here. Snaith’s lyrics seem to come from deep within,
covering intense, vital relationships, working in an intimate, home
listening environment just as well as the huge spaces that Caribou
often inhabits. After the romantic All I Ever Need soothes and
calms the senses, the title track provides an epic experience that
kicks off with a soft groove before breaking down into a roaring club
track. Listening to Snaith’s music has always been a rich and
rewarding experience.
On
Too Bright, Mike Hadreas’ third album as Perfume Genius, the
Seattle songwriter attempts to move past his fragile, whimsical style
to release his most straightforward collection of songs to date. The
album is a near immaculate work. It’s bold but vulnerable and finds
Hadreas taking risks in structure, content and sound. Opener I
Decline starts off in familiar territory to past songs, but its
somber theatrics quickly segue into the vivacious, boasting Queen,
with its modern glam sparkle coming as a total surprise. Hadreas’
lyricism has always been the shining element of Perfume Genius, but
while it is still as strong as ever, it’s the audacious sonic
qualities that really stand out on Too Bright, and will
certainly turn the most heads of fans and new listeners alike. Fool
is a clear standout. It wonderfully combines the shifting dynamics of
the album in four minutes, starting out as a firm soul track, it then
veers in a more ethereal direction before returning to gospel backing
vocals without blinking an eye. The album’s breathtaking closer, All
Along, is one of the more plainly spoken tracks on the album.
While the song is brimming with the confidence displayed throughout
the album, what stands out to us are the last few lines, "I
don’t need your love/I don’t need you to understand/I need you to
listen." Too Bright boasts of harder-hitting lyrics, more
sophisticated arrangements and Hadreas’ best-fitting production yet.
It’s
been 12 years since The Juan Maclean’s acidic electro debut single, By
The Time I Get To Venus and nine since their debut album release.
With their third album, In A Dream, it’s clear that the band
is in it for a long inning. Musically the album is more varied than
anything else The Juan Maclean has done before. As with their prior
albums, there’s a fair amount house and soul within these club
creations, including stunning synth-pop on the gorgeous You Were a
Runaway, a slow and space-disco euphoria on I’ve Waited for
So Long. The focal point of their music has always been rhythm and
groove but here they seem restless to escape that mold, offering a set
of straightforward pop music instead. Second half of the album peaks
with Charlotte, a frantic medley of a soap-opera and a sinewy
guitar solo that might as well have been transplanted from an Allman
Brothers record. A Simple Design helps Whang’s lyrics shine with a
lyrical intensity beside Maclean’s more somber playback. Here I
Am changes up the tempo with a commanding groove that doesn’t
relent. On the closer The Sun Will Never Set on Our Love, Whang
sings about a love that is beyond time and consistency, "What
if the sun goes down, forever?" she asks. "The sun
can never set on our love."
