Arctic Monkeys - Humbug

Arctic Monkeys were the biggest English buzz band five years ago and now they are a reliable entity as far as releasing a couple good singles and not stocking up their album with too much filler goes. Then again, I think this is their worst album. And again, not that it's bad, just not as good as their first two.

But there are about five really good songs--"My Propeller," "Crying Lightning," "Potion Approaching," "The Fire and Thud," and "Cornerstone,"--which is probably more than you can say for any previous album. There was speculation that Humbug would be their "stoner rock" album, since Josh Homme produced it in the desert of California. It may sound like that during about three different parts on the album, but it sounds more just like the Arctic Monkeys growing up.

Their sound has definitely matured, and on tracks like "Crying Lightning," it is enhanced. But "Cornerstone" (though listed as a "really good song") is kind of boring, and is only great for its lyrics, which is about finding lookalikes of a lost lover and asking if you can call them by the wrong name.

So basically, same problem with the New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene (though Arctic Monkeys are about 1/5 as "mellow"), the new album just doesn't have a lot of songs like "Brianstorm" or "D is for Dangerous" or "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" or "From the Ritz to the Rubble." Its songs sound more like "Do Me a Favour"--which was a great song off Favourite Worst Nightmare--but which gets a bit tiresome without much variety surrounding.

I guess I am being picky. Humbug is their "stoner rock" album and it is cool that they worked with Josh Homme, and it's totally possible that the Monkeys will continue on in this direction and put out their next album which doesn't make too many changes. Overall, I am not upset that I bought it, but find it to be somewhat unremarkable. So maybe you can understand why this is such a short post. I didn't even care about writing it in the first place.

In comparison with their Domino labelmates, Humbug is better than Hidden (not as immaculate, but more immediate), but not as good as Your Future Our Clutter.

These New Puritans - Hidden

When we last checked in with These New Puritans, they were putting out their debut around the same time as Vampire Weekend, and I was claiming that they were the better band. Proof? http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/these-new-puritans-beat-pyramid.html

Quote #1 from review of debut:
"TNP won't necessarily be for everyone...."
It may have been clear after Beat Pyramid that TNP did not cater to the masses and did not aspire to radio airplay. But the album still had a very accessible streak running through it. This is not the case with Hidden.

Hidden is arguably the most "difficult" album I have ever heard. It has its moments of accessibility too, but overall it is a very imposing album indeed. Most notable, however, is the degree to which this doesn't even sound like the same band.

It's like a novelist trying to do something completely different (the quick obvious example is Dave Eggers moving from AHWOSG to What is the What, but those were not consecutive releases, both were successful on their own terms, and Dave Eggers is way more visible than TNP in the literary-musical analogy) with their next book so they can prove they can write about more than one topic. I don't think TNP needed to prove anything after Beat Pyramid.

Quote #2:
"...I think it shows that TNP is more interesting than TNV (Times New Viking) or VW (Vampire Weekend), but I don't think they'll get as much attention as either."

Duh. Putting out an album like Hidden will not get them any more attention either. OK. Hidden is a very ambitious album. Maybe it's Kid A in disguise. There. That is the comparison I was looking for.

Except Beat Pyramid wasn't OK Computer. I don't know what fans of TNP are making of this album. I am assuming they trust Jack Barnett and now look towards him as some sort of demi-god. I think he is crazy. There was a great feature on Pitchfork where he said he doesn't think he'll sing on any more albums and where claimed one of his favorite songs was an ultra-obscure selection from Pocahontas. I am assuming he still wears his chain mail armor onstage. In my last post, I mentioned that Kevin Drew is becoming more iconoclastic, but Barnett is way ahead of him, and at this point beyond M.E.S. himself.

I may claim their soon-to-be-former singer/frontman is crazy, but there is a method to it. It does seem to be a concept album about the end of the world. Or global warming. But Hidden is an album you could talk about for hours in trying to assess its meaning.

Not that anyone would--and this is the album's chief defect: it's so different from anything that's come before it that the listener has no bearings. Much mention is made of the lack of guitar on this album. Throw even less lyrics than before into the mix and you have a very moody, largely instrumental and atmospheric album with occasional doses of vicious noise. But unlike Sisterworld, the music is primarily orchestral, and it never veers into anything resembling punk rock.

KEEPING ALL OF THAT IN MIND, "We Want War" contains a beautiful moment or two, "Hologram" is the closest thing to a fully-pleasant experience, "Attack Music" and "Fire-Power" go back-to-back as the most straightforward stuff on the album, "Orion" has a moment or two of greatness, and that "Drum Courts..." song is definitely something, alright.

Quote #3: "However, if they imitate the Fall more on their next album, they will probably deliver album of the year and will be a buzz band two years from now and no one will remember their debut coming out or else they will drop off the face of the Earth and no one will remember them in three years."

Neither happened, but few know who TNP are, and putting out an album like Hidden could be akin to dropping off the face of the Earth (particularly if the album is about the end of the Earth), so it is possible that TNP will become a cultural artifact by 2011 and no one will know they ever existed.

OK. That's not true. They're well-documented. I document them because I care about them. I don't know if Hidden will make my top 10 of 2010--but I doubt it. I just don't think I'll listen to it enough to figure it out to be able to blast it incessantly and gain some kind of pleasure from it. This is a very moody album for moods that almost don't exist--or moods that aren't advisable: ultra-depressed, evil, intellectual, portentous, and (forgive me) pretentious.

If they had listened to my advice, they could have put out a top 10 contender along with their inspirational predecessors on Domino Records, but I have a lot of respect for making a statement like Hidden. I spent money on this album--I'm crazy--and maybe it will sell as well as it needs to--but the only kind of music like this is made to accompany strange and scary movies. Perhaps there is something of Fantomas in here too.

Vampire Weekend put out their sophomore effort too, and while I haven't heard it, I'm assuming it doesn't sound too different from their self-titled. Apparently they experiment a bit, but obviously it's not as ridiculous as the experiment that is Hidden.

I've got my own prediction for the next couple years: in (or by) 2012, if the world isn't already over then Vampire Weekend will put out their third album--their Merriweather Post Pavilion masterpiece that will finally win me over--and TNP will release an album of ambient music as they transform themselves into an artier version of the Kronos Quartet.

In the meantime I will listen to Hidden, probably more often than Beat Pyramid, solely in an attempt to understand its message (and I will emerge from my underground lair with an apparatus that will bring humanity to its knees).

Maybe time travel has something to do with it too.

If there are such things as secret recordings hiding in plain sight....well there are, and this is one of them. The question is whether you think the secret will be worth hearing or not. My opinion is that I can't tell. It should be fairly easy, though, to guess how consumers will react.

These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid

Buzz bands come in all shapes and sizes, but English buzz bands tend to wander around the same territory. That is post-punk. These New Puritans follow after the Arctic Monkeys and the Klaxons in the mining of similar influences (Gang of Four chief amongst them). TNP even share a certain quality with Art Brut. And actually, they sound a lot like Franz Ferdinand at times too. It's just too bad that Vampire Weekend had to come in and spoil everyone's fun...TNP might sell a few copies in the UK, but I am 90% sure they will never be more popular than any of those above-mentioned post-punk revivalist bands in America. Bloc Party will continue to dominate the genre in this country, and it's getting dicey to call Franz Ferdinand post-punk when they share a certain quality with Interpol, and then you're starting to lose your post-punk dedication to driving beats, an attitude beyond pissed off, and some atonality/avante-garde noise textures thrown in to separate the bandwagon-jumping frat boys from the more sneering snobs of modern rock criticism. TNP won't necessarily be for everyone, but they do what's been done before as well as anybody to come along in recent years. And their name is a reference to a Fall song (a fact no one ever mentions, which just goes to show that the Fall continue to be unappreciated, despite overwhelming evidence that they may in fact be one of the greatest groups of all time), so they have to have some intelligence, right?

The album starts fast and doesn't let up for a good long while. Ignoring the transitional/"fake" tracks that consist of a few seconds of noise experimentation (such as the opening and closing tracks, "ce I will say" and "This twice, I will" or whatever the cut off is, further giving the appearance of the album as a cryptogram), opener "Numerology (Numbers)" could be a single and features the infectious barked interrogative, "What's your favorite number? What does it mean?" Singer/guitarist Jack Barnett then goes into detail about what most of the numbers from 1-9 represent ("Number 1, is the individual, Number 2, duality...") and the song is extremely thought-provoking.

If the first track isn't catchy enough to be a single then the second track "Colours" might be, but I feel it's also the most reductive track on the album. It opens up with a huge slashing guitar and a big, bounding beat of the drums, then Barnett, "If not now well then when? If not now well then when?" He starts going off about different colors or something and then settles on "Gold! Gold! Gold!" as the chorus line, which is probably the worst part of the album, but succeeds very well in sounding like Franz Ferdinand.

Following track, "Swords of Truth" opens up with a sample that could be taken off a hip hop track. Then the drums come in again, and I can only describe it as sounding like a sped-up version of "Spector vs Rector" with Barnett giving his best MES derivation when he sings "This music is weightless, This music's so funny, And when I sing, So am I, you'll be slashing at the air..." then it goes into its crazy instrumental chorus part that also sounds like "Spector vs Rector"'s inscrutable utterances. Yes, I love "Swords of Truth" because it sounds most like the Fall than any other track.

"Doppelganger" is a 90 second instrumental break from the proceedings. It could almost be on a Deerhunter or Atlas Sound album if the more electronic elements of it were toned down.

"C. 16th +-" is hard to properly document with the symbols available on they keyboard, but it is a really cool song that is also single-worthy. It's much more fast-paced and restless than "Colours" and so might be the best candidate for radio play--but it's also really short and is just about how Barnett keeps repeating, "We were right we were right we were right we were right," but it's really awesome.

"En Papier" comes in like another Fall-track, gradually adding instrumentation after each bar until Barnett enters. There is a really cool bass part that comes in after the chorus as well as a little instrumental breakdown. It sounds somewhat similar to "Colours," is not as fast as "C. 16th" but may serve as the most representative track of the album as a whole. It references the themes of the other songs and conceals whatever message it may contain behind a wall "kitchen sink"-type experimental instrumentation, which drowns out the last minute of the song.

"Infinity Ytinifni" also sounds like it could be a single upon its opening and expands upon the already stated TNP formula, but then turns it into probably the best song so far on the album. It's the song where Barnett goes off about "the Pre-Socratics" and "Heraclitus" and "conspiracy theories" and the hits upon the chorus, "Infinity's not far for me" or does it turn into "Infinity's not as fast as me." ?

"Elvis" is a pretty amazing song, that I think actually is the first single off the album. It's very direct--"We're being watched by experts," could be about the buzz surrounding them. Whatever, "Elvis" might be the best song on the album. It stays more confined within pop parameters than anything else here. It may not be as interesting for the fact, but this would be this album's "A-Punk," except, as shown, it is not clearly the best song on the album, it only might be. Any song could be anyone's favorite on this one, I think.

After "Elvis," there's "9 $" (four pounds-retarded US keyboard currency exchange rate), and I have no clue what it's about. It's not annoying, but it's probably not in the running for best song on the album, though it is a pretty tidy number. "MKK3" is another pretty short song starting with your basic Gang of Four guitar slashing and bass chugging and is a good example of how Barnett can also sound like Art Brut's Eddie Argos at times. However, TNP is better than Art Brut because while they do not offer as crazy lyrics or sentiments, their message is nowhere near as clear, thus they are not quite as easy to pin down or write off.

"Navigate Colours" introduces the bizarre end to the album after a little sonic-palette cleansing, and actually sounds like a sadder, post-punk song. It sounds more like Interpol than anything else here. It's probably better than "Colours" and goes off into something different from anything else on the album by its last two minutes.

"H." is a thirty-second transitional track before closer "Costume." This is a very strange song. Very somber. Almost sounds like the Knife at first blush. Then it almost sounds weirdly enough like Sunset Rubdown when the synthesizer and vocals come in. Except Barnett doesn't sound like Spencer Krug--his voice is more fragile here than anywhere else, but it is kept simple and somber, without veering into melodrama. By the end it becomes layered and almost sounds like Radiohead-type ambitions.

That's everything on the album, and I think it shows that TNP is more interesting than TNV or VW, but I don't think they'll get as much attention as either. They aren't all that original in terms of the territory they're working within, and they sound too much like other bands. However, if they imitate the Fall more on their next album, they will probably deliver album of the year and will be a buzz band two years from now and no one will remember their debut coming out or else they will drop off the face of the Earth and no one will remember them in three years. Still, a very promising debut, and a hint of more exciting things to come in from the English music scene.