Bubble-TSome more bands. There's still a few really good records left, but I'm super tired now. Sorry for all the super-huge paragraphs :(
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (dance/rock) - 8/10:
This would make a good summer album for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere. It's dance with touches of rock similar to what a lot of Aussie acts are doing right now, with a whole heap of sonic flourishes that make most of the tracks a joy to listen to. Pretty much every dance gimmick (distorted base, vocoders, quivery synths etc.) is used here but only in splashes, whist there's touches of psychadelia and pop all over the place too. The lyrics pretty fluffy but the delivery sells them well enough. It's not perfect - the running time is a bit long and occasionaly it sounds a bit by-the-numbers but in general this is a well-crafted inventive album that you can dance or drive to equally well. Oh yeah, and "Hearts on Fire" is one of the best singles I've heard this year.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (rock) - 7/10:
I'm a pretty big Nick Cave fan (he's pretty easily the greatest Australian rock musician that I know of) but I don't get the hype for this album. If you've heard any of the Bad Seeds work before you probably know what to expect - fairly literary lyrics, biblical references, well played noisy rock. Somehow this album manages to sound similar to his past classics but end up being just plain boring. Considering the artists involved this is a huge disappointment.
Raheem DeVaughn - Love Behind The Melody (R&B) - 7(?)/10:
I checked this out because of good reviews and Prince comparisons, but I don't feel like I have any idea if it's good or not even after repeated listens. It's a fairly mainstream sounding R&B with plenty of polish musically and vocally, but that's just no my area of expertise. It's certainly enjoyable but nothing that made me want to check out his other work.
Santogold - Santogold - 8/10:
So much hype about this, and it is a good listen. It bounces between punk, ragga, pop and back to post punk without taking a breath, and the production and song writing is for the most part strong. Santi White's voice is going to be a love-it or hate-it deal for some people but for the most part it suits the work. So, why not a higher rating? Well.. there's a weird mix of by-the-numbers and experimental work here, often clashing on the same track, so sometimes the album just doesn't gel for me. Very few of the tracks really grab me by the throat, making for an album that I like listening to in small pieces but don't really want to go back to.
The Breeders - Mountain Battles (Rock) - 5/10:
Oh boy.. I'm a Pixies fan, and the older Breeders songs I know are good, but this album is just bland. The opening track starts off with enough energy despite the rather cryptic and insubstantial lyrics (I CAN FEEL IT repeated several times) and after that it's just up and down between songs that sound either like gimmicky songwriting exercises or half-finished ideas. There's a whole song here sung in German just for the hell of it, if that gives you an idea. Lots of people think this is a good album, so maybe you will too but it just does nothing for me. Strangely it's not on Last.FM either, no idea why.
Disparition - 1989 (Thematic Ambient) - 9/10:
Disclaimer: I sort of know this guy through the SA forums so I'm probably a bit biased here, but I honestly think his latest album is fantastic. Ambient electronic music based on the Romanian Revolution of 1989, with some really cool samples from old television and radio coverage of that event used along with evocative synths and drums. It's an album that demands to be listened as a whole despite a few scattered weak points, and I think it conveys the appropriate emotions even if you don't know the history being referenced. Best of all it's free from his website, I don't think there's a better deal this year.
Portishead - Third (Industrial/Synthrock) - 10/10:
This is it, the best album of 2008 so far. When the press releases were first announced, I saw comments along the lines of "coffee shops around the nation will rejoice" - referencing the way trip-hop, a genre Portishead practically defined and killed in one swoop with "Dummy", ate itself and became bland radio music. This view totally underestimated how much Portishead themselves hated what had become of the genre - in the 8 years since they last released something they'd taken a liking to a wide variety of eclectic, experimental music and they've somehow managed to force those inspirations through a blender to produce a monster of an album. There's a song called "silence" that simply cuts out instead of properly ending, there's a 50's style acoustic guitar + vocals track, there's echoes of old krautrock rythms along with synths and guitars that sometimes glide along and other times try to punch in your head. No coffee shop I know of is going to play "Machine Gun", 5 minutes of gunshot drums that ends in a climax of inhuman synths. Beth Gibbons still has one of the best voices in music, and her lyrics are even more fractured and tortured than before. Portishead has managed to piss off the fans who haven't let go of trip-hop, and done it with something more experimental and rewarding than even their previous highlights - every second of this is essential.
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride (Folk Rock) - 7/10:
There's no denying that the lyrics on this record are impressive - "Autoclave" in particular - but a lot of the time it seems a bit too much like an exercise in creative writing and not song writing, which is to say that too often the narratives don't feel like they really matter. I also don't feel like this album is as musically as successful as reviews have suggested either. I really enjoyed previous album "Get Lonely", so this was an unfortunate letdown. On that album the vocal quirks didn't seem to matter, here they drag it down an extra notch.
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (dance/rock) - 8/10:
This would make a good summer album for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere. It's dance with touches of rock similar to what a lot of Aussie acts are doing right now, with a whole heap of sonic flourishes that make most of the tracks a joy to listen to. Pretty much every dance gimmick (distorted base, vocoders, quivery synths etc.) is used here but only in splashes, whist there's touches of psychadelia and pop all over the place too. The lyrics pretty fluffy but the delivery sells them well enough. It's not perfect - the running time is a bit long and occasionaly it sounds a bit by-the-numbers but in general this is a well-crafted inventive album that you can dance or drive to equally well. Oh yeah, and "Hearts on Fire" is one of the best singles I've heard this year.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (rock) - 7/10:
I'm a pretty big Nick Cave fan (he's pretty easily the greatest Australian rock musician that I know of) but I don't get the hype for this album. If you've heard any of the Bad Seeds work before you probably know what to expect - fairly literary lyrics, biblical references, well played noisy rock. Somehow this album manages to sound similar to his past classics but end up being just plain boring. Considering the artists involved this is a huge disappointment.
Raheem DeVaughn - Love Behind The Melody (R&B) - 7(?)/10:
I checked this out because of good reviews and Prince comparisons, but I don't feel like I have any idea if it's good or not even after repeated listens. It's a fairly mainstream sounding R&B with plenty of polish musically and vocally, but that's just no my area of expertise. It's certainly enjoyable but nothing that made me want to check out his other work.
Santogold - Santogold - 8/10:
So much hype about this, and it is a good listen. It bounces between punk, ragga, pop and back to post punk without taking a breath, and the production and song writing is for the most part strong. Santi White's voice is going to be a love-it or hate-it deal for some people but for the most part it suits the work. So, why not a higher rating? Well.. there's a weird mix of by-the-numbers and experimental work here, often clashing on the same track, so sometimes the album just doesn't gel for me. Very few of the tracks really grab me by the throat, making for an album that I like listening to in small pieces but don't really want to go back to.
The Breeders - Mountain Battles (Rock) - 5/10:
Oh boy.. I'm a Pixies fan, and the older Breeders songs I know are good, but this album is just bland. The opening track starts off with enough energy despite the rather cryptic and insubstantial lyrics (I CAN FEEL IT repeated several times) and after that it's just up and down between songs that sound either like gimmicky songwriting exercises or half-finished ideas. There's a whole song here sung in German just for the hell of it, if that gives you an idea. Lots of people think this is a good album, so maybe you will too but it just does nothing for me. Strangely it's not on Last.FM either, no idea why.
Disparition - 1989 (Thematic Ambient) - 9/10:
Disclaimer: I sort of know this guy through the SA forums so I'm probably a bit biased here, but I honestly think his latest album is fantastic. Ambient electronic music based on the Romanian Revolution of 1989, with some really cool samples from old television and radio coverage of that event used along with evocative synths and drums. It's an album that demands to be listened as a whole despite a few scattered weak points, and I think it conveys the appropriate emotions even if you don't know the history being referenced. Best of all it's free from his website, I don't think there's a better deal this year.
Portishead - Third (Industrial/Synthrock) - 10/10:
This is it, the best album of 2008 so far. When the press releases were first announced, I saw comments along the lines of "coffee shops around the nation will rejoice" - referencing the way trip-hop, a genre Portishead practically defined and killed in one swoop with "Dummy", ate itself and became bland radio music. This view totally underestimated how much Portishead themselves hated what had become of the genre - in the 8 years since they last released something they'd taken a liking to a wide variety of eclectic, experimental music and they've somehow managed to force those inspirations through a blender to produce a monster of an album. There's a song called "silence" that simply cuts out instead of properly ending, there's a 50's style acoustic guitar + vocals track, there's echoes of old krautrock rythms along with synths and guitars that sometimes glide along and other times try to punch in your head. No coffee shop I know of is going to play "Machine Gun", 5 minutes of gunshot drums that ends in a climax of inhuman synths. Beth Gibbons still has one of the best voices in music, and her lyrics are even more fractured and tortured than before. Portishead has managed to piss off the fans who haven't let go of trip-hop, and done it with something more experimental and rewarding than even their previous highlights - every second of this is essential.
The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride (Folk Rock) - 7/10:
There's no denying that the lyrics on this record are impressive - "Autoclave" in particular - but a lot of the time it seems a bit too much like an exercise in creative writing and not song writing, which is to say that too often the narratives don't feel like they really matter. I also don't feel like this album is as musically as successful as reviews have suggested either. I really enjoyed previous album "Get Lonely", so this was an unfortunate letdown. On that album the vocal quirks didn't seem to matter, here they drag it down an extra notch.
