life is noise

In his series of pictorial album reviews, Tristan Fidler takes a look at Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn’s Clear Heart Full Eyes.

In his new series of pictorial album reviews, Tristan Fidler takes a look at School of Seven Bells’ Ghostory.

In the first of his new series of pictorial album reviews, Tristan Fidler takes a look at Sharon Van Etten’s Tramp.

Handsome Furs
Sound Kapital
Sub-Pop

For me, a highpoint of the second Handsome Furs album Face Control was the lyrically sampling of New Order’s ‘Temptation’ for the song ‘All We Wanted, Baby, Was Everything,’ a tribute to the band hearing that dance-floor classic played within a Russian nightclub. Both song and story are pleasurably intertwined in this notion of an echo of a country, a disco and a new wave classic, all of these elements receiving further expansion in the recent Handsome Furs release, Sound Kapital, their third album. From press notes to magazine interviews, Handsome Furs aka Dan Boeckner (of Wolf Parade) and Alexei Perry (of Dan Boeckner; they’re married) have mentioned how the sound was affected and influenced by touring across Asia and Eastern Europe; the sense of change through dislocation is emphasised in the album’s very opening lines, “When I get back home, I won’t be the same no more.” The sensory disorientation of being a stranger within strange cities is expressed predominately in the culturally shared sound of late night dance music. Thus Boeckner’s charging guitar licks have taken a back seat for charging drum machine beats, Sound Kapital is touted as the first Handsome Furs album written predominately on electronic keyboards. Read the rest of this entry ”

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Belong
Inertia

Precious. When you hear the band’s music, when you see the band play, or when you think about the band’s name for crying out loud, precious is the first word that springs to mind. There’s nothing wrong with that, wearing your heart on your sleeve along with your influences (I’ll repeat the ones every reviewer makes: Smiths, My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins, etc) wrapped up in cotton-wool and delicate lace, nothing wrong with that at all, but I remember when The Pains of Being Pure at Heart played Beck’s Music Box, the sense of preciousness wasn’t enough for me. Some of the tunes from the first album enjoyably soared (‘Young Adult Friction’ for instance), delighting my very eardrums with their washed-out prettiness, their live performance a clean and proficient affair within the misty output of a smoke machine. However, their imperfection remained: they were too perfect. I wanted a bum note, a wrinkle, an incorrectly folded cuff, a piece of grit in the eye, etc. These are the slight reservations I hold against The Pains of Being Pure at Heart even as I repeatedly listen to their first album pop brilliance and these are the slight reservations I took to their second album, Belong, which bring into the fold established producers like Alan Moulder and Flood (co-producers of such classics as Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and The Downward Spiral, so I guess they know what they’re doing). Read the rest of this entry ”

Okkervil River
I Am Very Far
Jagjaguwar

Originally conceived as a double-album, The Stage Names (2007) and The Stand Ins (2008) was a step up for Texan band Okkervil River, a one-two punch of literary anthems and narrative ballads that complemented each other nicely. At the heart of all this is singer-songwriter powerhouse Will Sheff, he of the tall frame and spindly fingers, a charismatic performer and an intelligent writer, often using the folk-pop form to create clever and self-aware songs that comment on the effectiveness and, quite often, the ineffectiveness such music holds for the masses (‘Unless It’s Kicks’, ‘Pop Lie’). With several long-terms members having departed, particularly organist Jonathan Meiburg who left to pursue the side-project band Shearwater, Sheff took a couple of years to return with a new Okkervil River album, one that promises a “startling break” from what has gone before. For me, it sounds like an Okkervil River record, so it’s not that startling a break, but it may not capture eardrums and hearts as quickly as their previous two releases. Read the rest of this entry ”