CMX - Dinosaurus Stereophonicus (2000)

CD1: 1) Kreetan härkä; 2) Kansantalouden saavutusten näyttely; 3) Ei koskaan; 4) Iliman pielet; 5) Ohjelmansiirtoketjun mittaustauko; 6) Pelon enkeli; 7) Loputtomasti samaa; 8) Ilmestyskirjanpitäjä; 9) Kylmänmarja; 10) Baikonur; 11) Negatiivinen alkusoitto
CD2: 1) Jatkuu niinkuin sade; 2) Tuonen lintu; 3) Luuhamara; 4) Tämän runon tahtoisin unohtaa; 5) Kultaiset portaat; 6) Meidän syntimme; 7) Myrskyn ratsut; 8) Karsikkopuu; 9) Olkoon täysi sinun maljasi; 10) Suurta yötä päin; 11) Tähdet sylissään

The prog beast has been unleashed!

Key tracks: "Jatkuu niinkuin sade", "Meidän syntimme", "Baikonur"

Towards the late 1990s CMX fell out of love with performing live, and it eventually escalated in the band announcing that they would stop touring altogether. The whole hulaballoo that began around this with the media and the fans is now a somewhat infamous chapter in the band’s history, once they awkwardly reversed the decision just a few years later (and they’d steadfastly insist for years to come that they only ever meant a taking hiatus rather than fully cease live performances) but temporary or not, it laid out the groundwork for Dinosaurus Stereophonicus. The two-hour, two-disc giant indulges in CMX’s hitherto somewhat hidden love for progressive rock and it’s above all a studio album: a record written and recorded without a single thought given to whether it could ever be replicated with just four people on stage, utilising every and any technology available in the studio to fulfil a meticulously arranged widescreen vision. One filled with mellotrons, synthesizers and organs, string sections, hundred-head choirs and songs hovering around the ten-minute mark that would be miles beyond anything the band had released before from both a technical and technological standpoint. 

The two separate sections of Dinosaurus Stereophonicus aren't there just because of course you're going to aim for a double album if you're doing your big prog rock record, but also because of how CMX have chosen to approach this vague direction. The ethos is the same across both discs - intensely maximalist, polished to perfection and primed to explore the entire space between the full wingspan what the band are capable of. There's a certain kind of fearlessness I appreciate - and love - when artists take a studio-focused approach like this because it’s often the time when they redefine themselves and blow open new doors. Dinosaurus Stereophonicus is precisely that, and the extra long length serves as the means to separate the two distinct paths that these new paths have lead CMX to: one unpredictable and turned inwards, the other full of pomp and grandeur.

The first disc represents the former approach - the more askew side of the kind of prog rock that CMX pay tribute to. The songs are long and twisted with crooked time signatures with heavier guitar tones and lengthy instrumental sections (including the ultimate taboo - a drum solo), all the way down to multiple fully instrumental songs which appear as the lead-in, the mid-album palate cleanser (“Ohjelmansiirtoketjun mittaustauko”) and the outro. “Kreetan härkä” starts the journey with four minutes of synthesizer-warbling scene setting, from where the album travels through multiple heavy dramatic musical drops and not one but two big giants one right after another, and the conclusion isn’t really even an outro for the last ten songs but a sneaky bridge to the next disc ("Negatiivinen alkusoitto" - "Negative Prelude"). Of those two epochs one is a metal-adjacent churner with a doomsday choir ("Kylmänmarja"), the other a ten-minute ambient space-farer ballad ("Baikonur"). Taken as a whole it's some of the most unpredictable and audience-challenging material CMX have produced to date: more of a mood sequence than a string of evergreens, to be considered as a wider piece even if some pieces are a little easier to take in isolation than others such as mildly arena-flirting “Loputtomasti samaa”.

The second disc is actually the more welcoming of the two halves even though it appears last. The prog elements here emphasise depth of sound rather than hefty experimentation and they retain more conventional (even chorus-friendly) structures: less Tales from Topographic Oceans, more Dark Side of the Moon. You still have space for quirkier cuts like the janky jamming of "Luuhamara" and the atmospheric groove of "Karsikkopuu", but in either case CMX aren’t taking the wilder ideas as far as they did on the first disc and they’re placed right alongside the classic rock singalong "Tämän runon tahtoisin unohtaa" (complete with "hey hey!"s and cowbells) and the vintage prog epic "Olkoon täysin sinun maljasi" with a keyboard sound and solo lifted directly from the 1970s - both of which the first disc would chew and spit out without mercy. The defining element of this half is the presence of a grand choir that "Kylmänmarja" sneakily introduced and which goes on to appear throughout the second set of eleven songs: in the angelic harmonies of the anthem single "Jatkuu niinkuin sade", booming down from the skies to out-heavy the guitars in the grunge beast "Meidän syntimme", to embrace the listener in the galaxy-sized lullaby "Tähdet sylissään". Disc two of Dinosaurus is about the size of the sound and the options it presents, married to clearly distinct and melody-oriented songs - the closest thing to an interlude is the elegiac piano piece "Suurta yötä päin" that strips down the excess for a brief moment while paving the way to the grand finale.

The second disc is the easier way to approach and unlock the album - certainly based on personal experience - but if you were to listen to these as one big block of music then the order here works just right. The first half’s headiness and heftiness is the more intriguing initial dip into the strange waters of the record, and the second half’s more obvious anthems feel more impactful after the tightly wound tension of the first half and they lead more naturally to the grand finale - "Tähdet sylissään" is the awe striking homecoming where seemingly everyone and everything on the album is brought together for one last singalong, in an unashamedly epic manner that’s the only real way to finish something as massive as this album, and it’s a heartwarmingly beautiful song that radiates warmth and understanding, a sense of belonging. I would ultimately say that I personally prefer the second half, just because the new ideas are used to augment what is some of CMX's best songwriting from a melodic perspective: in particular the positively soaring "Jatkuu niinkuin sade", intense "Meidän syntimme" (and its awesome choir drop) and the tender dreamscape of "Myrskyn ratsut" are close to perfection. Whether they’d sound as immense without the extra production values is completely irrelevant (as this argument always is) because they’re songs built around that go-big-or-go-home approach and they ride that wave proudly and beautifully, every grand gesture hitting sweet emotional spots. 

That isn't to say that the first disc is a letdown or that it isn't without its merits: its more arcane approach is inspired in its own right and carries much of the album’s magic on its back. It is however an entity that I need to be in a specific mood for, largely listened to only when I really want to dive deep into the album’s layers. The question that naturally crops up is whether I’d prefer if the album was just the second disc, and maybe from a purely numerical rating perspective that would be the case, but I also reckon the record would lose an important dimension if these two halves didn't compliment one another. It’s what I mean when I say that the second disc unlocks the first: it’s the hook that pulls you in and draws attention to the album’s ideas and concepts, after which the ways the first CD utilises (and in some ways foreshadows) the same concepts and ideas becomes more fascinating to dig into. Not to mention that the first eleven songs are still very good in their own right (bar the instrumentals which really are there just to serve the prog vibe) and I'd lament the loss of its best parts - especially "Baikonur" which is a truly incredible song and the grandeur of which cannot be understated, floating peacefully in the galaxy and sighing with weary beauty for the most wonderful ten minutes. I’d happily stay within its soft electronic hold and comet's tail guitar solos for another ten.

Like many double albums Dinosaurus Stereophonicus is a bit of a compromise act between its parts, everything inevitably balancing out to something that’s a little lesser than perhaps what could’ve been with further editing involved. That'd defeat the point though and it’s not something I hold against the album - it’s an impressive piece of work with many incredible songs, some of which I consider integral to the band and moreso to my feelings about the band. The video for "Jatkuu niinkuin sade" is probably the first time I became aware of CMX and while it would take me another decade before I actually became invested in their music, it did manage to spark something that stuck around in my memory bank. Some fans probably lost the CMX they loved with this record for good given the roughest edges of their music had now been sanded off for good by this stage, and the way the album embraces its more "prog" elements and balances the melodic with the heavy would impact the rest of their career as they continued to move beyond the punk and erratic alternative rock sound of their 1990s. But I always think that each band should have at least one grand studio statement in their back catalogue and the sheer inspired excess that CMX rammed through with it gave them a landmark record and another unique iteration of their sound in their collection.

Rating: 8/10

Kent - B-Sidor 95-00 (2000)

CD1: 1) Chans; 2) Spökstad; 3) Längtan skala 3:1; 4) Om gyllene år; 5) Noll; 6) Önskar att någon...; 7) Bas riff; 8) Din skugga; 9) Elever; 10) Längesen vi sågs; 11) December; 12) Utan dina andetag; 13) På nära håll
CD2: 1) Livrädd med stil; 2) Verkligen; 3) Gummiband; 4) Att presentera ett svin; 5) En helt ny karriär; 6) Rödljus; 7) Pojken med hålet i handen (Hotbilds version); 8) Kallt kaffe; 9) Den osynlige mannen (Kazoo version); 10) Slutsats; 11) Rödljus II; 12) En helt ny karriär II; 13) Papin jahti [hidden track]

The b-sides for the first four albums; as it often is, uneven but with surprises in unexpected places.

Key tracks: "Chans", "Längesen vi sågs", "Verkligen"

Kent’s b-sides compilation arrives at the time and moment when you would have expected a greatest hits compilation to have happened, and it feels like a bit of a power move. Together with a few new songs, one which got the kind of retrospective clip show music video you normally reserve for promotional singles from best offs, B-sidor 95-00 sees Kent repackaging their career so far in their own terms, by highlighting the songs that rode off on the backs of their hits. And there were a good number of them: the 1990s were the golden period of single bonus tracks, particularly in the UK where they were an art form onto their own and often something bands were prided for: for these bands, a b-sides compilation could easily have been another hits collection. With Kent’s career so far being so very obviously inspired by their British counterparts, they had taken it upon themselves to carry that tradition in their own region.

The two discs of B-sidor 95-00 run in a counter-chronological fashion, so the first disc covers the b-sides to the mainstream hit singles from Hagnesta Hill and Isola, while the second disc features outtakes from the first two albums Verkligen and Kent. With that in mind, disc one is where you’d expect the big hitters to be but it actually feels rather... underwhelming? Or to put it in another way, it's  predictable. Not just in how it sounds, i.e. that the songs carry same slick guitar moves as their parent albums, but even in how they're presented: all the singles from Isola and Hagnesta Hill carried two b-sides (apart from "Kevlarsjäl", which was backed solely by "Längtän skala 3:1") and in each case they're a big rock song backed by a quiet, sparse mood piece next. The entirety of disc one after the first few songs (i.e. the new tracks) effectively plays out the same across the board and you end up feeling like you are constantly tracing steps back to where you just came from. Of course, this wouldn’t be the case if the material was strong enough to ignore but a lot of the songs on the first disc, and in particular those fleshed out full-band takes, feel a lot like underdeveloped or overall lesser versions of what Kent were releasing on their albums at the time. There are great songs within the bunch: in particular the beautifully growing "Längesen vi sågs" could have easily had a spotlight moment on an album and represents the kind of quality that you perhaps would have expected, and "Utan dina andetag" has a preciousness to its big 90s rock riffs which goes a long way explaining why it's become a legitimate hit in Sweden (it even got a spot on Kent's career retrospective best of collection - it’s apparently a very popular wedding song in Sweden?). But they’re one of the few that really jump out, and in fact I find myself enjoying those quiet mood pieces like "December" and "Om gyllene år" more than I do the big rock songs because they show something a little bit different in context.  

 

It is surprisingly the second disc which is where the compilation gets really interesting and exciting. I find Kent's first two albums to have been made by a band who were still clearly a work in progress: they're promising but uneven records, with the band still in the process of aligning their vision with their songwriting. And yet, these b-sides are so much more interesting than you would expect from this period in chronology. There's extensions to the band’s rock sound where they break away from the more self-serious approach on the records to something more relaxed, like the rough but big-hearted and beautiful "Verkligen" (one of my favourite things to come out of the second album’s sessions and a shame it never made it to the titular record), the scruffy riffing of "Livrädd med stil" and the stupid fun punk of "Kallt kaffe". Other songs find the band experimenting with electronic production long before it started appearing on the records, leading to excellently atmospheric cuts like "Gummiband" and "Att presentera ett svin", which sound like the works of an entirely different act to the one who recorded the A-sides. Some of the songs are obvious demos without the tag in place, but for example "Rödljus" befits from the rawer production which lends it a kind of warmth and intimacy that it might not have otherwise had. It’s so intriguing that it’s this earlier period where B-sidor 95-00 really shines, given the parent albums are among the band’s weakest (purely due to their more undeveloped nature) - it shows that Kent were holding back certain aspects of themselves away from the albums, where perhaps they felt they had to act in a more polished manner.

 

B-sidor 95-00 rounds itself off with a few new tracks as the bookends. “Chans” and “Spökstad" are two brand new songs which effectively bridge between the present and what’s next: slick and stylish production, a more programmed sound and an ear tuned for the hooks, as initially trialled on Hagnesta Hill. The sleepy ballad “Chans” is the better of the two, unfolding into a beautifully understated dramatic rise atop its ethereal keyboard layers. “Spökstad" is a preview of the upcoming Vapen & ammunition in sound and the more hit-oriented of the two songs, and it's a fine song, but perhaps suffers a little from the band effectively doing its shtick better throughout the next album. Meanwhile the end of the second disc sees the band returning to the two most obvious demos of the selection and fleshing them out years later. Kent end up treating the two songs pretty similarly, both climbing up to epic explosive finales with cymbal crashes and soloing guitars, and to be fair, they're a band who do that particular trick really well. "Rödljus" as established before already worked pretty well as a more stripped-down demo, so it's more "En helt ny karriär" that benefits from the re-envisioning as it gets to switch the placeholder drum machine into a full band, equipped to take the song where it was always destined to be. 

(There is also technically a fifth new song, the hidden track "Papin jahti" at the end of the second disc which is an improvisational comedy piece and not really worth anyone's time beyond the obvious novelty that it's meant to be - though it is fun for me to hear a Kent piece in Finnish, sung by the Finn-Swede drummer Markus Mustonen)

In the end, I suppose B-sidor 95-00 reflects the period it represents accurately enough. Kent's first four albums are a mixed bag, solely because they're like a live presentation of a band developing themselves: the rough start, the evolution, the realisation of their strengths, and figuring out their own sound bit by bit. For the first two albums Kent hid the fine-tuning of that development behind the scenes and away from the main albums, which this compilation brings out to light; with the next two records those ideas started getting the spotlight so the b-sides simply became more of what the albums offered, just not as well. It caps off one particular period of Kent's journey and empties the table before the next chapter, which is arguably why it feels so much like a curveball alternative for the standard career-so-far summary of a greatest hits compilation. But b-side compilations tend to always be either incredible or uneven, and B-sidor 95-00 is the latter. It warrants to dig deep though: that second disc is some of my favourite early Kent in full disc length.

Rating: 7/10

The Ark - We Are the Ark (2000)

1) Hey Modern Days; 2) Echo Chamber; 3) Joy Surrender; 4) It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane; 5) Ain't Too Proud to Bow; 6) Bottleneck Barbiturate; 7) Let Your Body Decide; 8) Patchouli; 9) This Sad Bouquet; 10) Angelheads; 11) Laurel Wreath; 12) You, Who Stole My Solitude

A flamboyant and confident debut, both bolstered and perhaps overshadowed by the inclusion of one truly immortal song. 

Key tracks: "Hey Modern Days", "Joy Surrender", "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane"

I don’t like to generalise but I think all of us gay folks (and presumably all non-straight and/or non-cis folks for that matter) end up doing a fair bit of amateur self-psychoanalysis sooner or later in our lives: what were the first signs that we felt different from our peers, when did we feel at odds when comparing to the expected, et cetera. In general I was a late bloomer when it came to dealing with that whole subject properly, but the sudden arrival of The Ark in the early 2000s was probably the first time the topic appeared as a blip on my radar. Their colourful music scored a fair few significant airplay hits at a time when mainstream popularity was the only real way for me to discover new music and I found myself drawn into those songs, but they came with flamboyant performances and frontman Ola Salo’s playfully provocative theatrics, and thus the band were deemed - in the most elementary grade school way possible - gay, and that wasn’t cool to like. I was a nerdy and not particularly outgoing kid in a small city with a very small friends circle and so I was always paranoid about losing what little social interaction I had, and liking The Ark became something I was very cautious to admit: I sheepishly bought the “It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane” single in the first instance so as not to commit myself wholly to the band by way of owning a whole album, because I felt like I needed to have that song around me. I wasn’t exactly fluent in English but knew it far better than most kids my age (thanks PC games!), and even with my limited knowledge of the language there was something in that song that resonated.

Every morning I would see her getting off the bus
The picture never drops, it's like a multicolored snapshot
Stuck in my brain, it kept me sane
For a couple of years, as it drenched my fears
Of becoming like the others
Who become unhappy mothers
And fathers of unhappy kids
And why is that?
'Cause they've forgotten how to play
Or maybe they're afraid to feel ashamed
To seem strange
To seem insane
To gain weight, to seem gay
I'll tell you this:
That it takes a fool to remain sane
In this world all covered up in shame

That’s a hell of a verse, and even as a kid there was something in its proud defiance that spoke to me - and word-dropping “gay” into the whole thing and grabbing that particular subject head-on felt literally rebellious and smashing taboos. Yet in an unexplainable way it felt good and right to hear it, though the reason why wouldn’t properly click until some years later. But I obsessed over the song and to this date it’s very firmly in my pantheon of my favourite songs of all time: Salo’s fearsomely charismatic performance, that absolute killer of a chorus melody, the breathless run-on section demonstrated above where Salo breathlessly abandons all notion of where to split between the verse, bridge and the chorus, and that soaring, triumphant chorus itself where it feels like the world genuinely has no boundaries. They all coalesce into a genuinely life-affirming, resonant and thoroughly evocative anthem: a monster of a pop song. 

 

Nothing on We Are The Ark threatens to top "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane", but the same qualities that make that song so great are still represented throughout the record. In the five years between their debut EP and this record, The Ark had somehow transformed from a group of borderline sullen goths into a gang of endlessly energetic ambassadors of glam rock throwbacks, and they roll in with the fervour of a band reborn and grasping everything precious about their new life: so much of the record is so positively boisterous and aspirationally joyous. The credit to a lot of it goes to Salo, who even this early on was already scouting for a slot in the halls of all-time great frontmen, with his voice and performance radiating with charisma and sheer, complete command of his audience with every wink of the eye or uttered sentence. There's a charm and a quirk to his lyrics as well that helps make him so engaging. I once read them described as incredibly obviously written by someone not native to the language, not because of grammatical errors but because they exhibit a kind of outside-the-box thinking that's definitely not natural but effective exactly because of it: just take a look at the tongue-twister chorus of "Hey Modern Days", the opener that kicks down the doors and writes the ruleset for the rest of the record to follow, from the extravagant whimsy to the sheer strength of the melodies. He's just as memorable when he's more direct as well: "Let Your Body Decide" is the album's definitive "love yourself regardless of who you are" anthem among many but Salo makes the honesty in the message work, and the swirling, moody closer "You, Who Stole My Solitude" is possibly the only song about love I've come across where the narrator is downright angry about finding someone and falling in love ("did you expect a love song?", Salo coyly winks at the camera at the end of the second verse). He's not necessarily a consistently incredible lyricist but he has a language of his own, and it makes a good part of why The Ark were so exciting.

It's worth emphasising the musical aspect of the record as well, as it's the richness of the melodies that makes We Are The Ark such an exciting album, particularly as a debut. The Ark's glam-influenced pop/rock is the kind of thing that aims to be instant by nature, and when you opt to go down that route you have to go in for the kill when it comes to your choruses, harmonies et al. So, they do. With debuts there's often a great temptation to talk about confidence and ambition, of a band wishing to take on the world and proving why their name should be the one to remember. That's certainly the ethos behind We Are The Ark, where each of the songs exist as one big hook in the best possible way, in that the arrangements and melodies genuinely grab: they're genuinely thrilling in a way that plants a smile across one's face through the sheer power of how well those elements are crafted or how they are presented. They make an instant impression and it's almost show-off-y in how The Ark approach that aspect of their writing. That's even the case for the weaker tracks. "Echo Chamber" kind of goes nowhere, "Ain't Too Proud to Bow" is a sass anthem that only really kicks in once the duelling guitar solo begins and leads into the final blown-up chorus where the song stops being a little flat, and "Patchouli" is almost obnoxiously upbeat in its hippy-dippy sunshine handclaps and sax, and yet they still get under my skin and I can groove to them quite willingly. The reason why I don't think as highly of them is because they come across less developed than the other songs: they lack the sense of dynamics and a level of depth the rest of the album has. Salo's still magnificent as always, but a few times around the record it feels like the band as a whole are almost holding themselves back, lest they get too wild. Maybe it's because there was still some element of figuring out what they should be even after a nearly a decade of musical soul-searching, but you compare the incredibly confident takes like "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane" or the dangerous disco swerve of "Let Your Body Decide" that keep you in their grip firmly throughout and compare to them how "Echo Chamber" and "Patchouli" meander through their verses until they get some jolt of life in their chorus, and you can practically feel yourself swaying to avoid falling into the gap between.

Which leads me to tackling the big question of how this hasn't become the kind of favourite-of-all-time, perfect score record you'd expect given its pivotal role in making me question the world around me, and it's honestly because the album as a whole arrived a little late to the party. I finally got hold of the full album a few years later after hearing and buying "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane", once my friends and I had grown up by a few years and the diversity in music tastes between us had started to show, and it became clear to me that it was perfectly OK to like things that your friends might not. By the time I finally did get around to hearing We Are The Ark in full, they'd already followed it up with 2002's In Lust We Trust and I bought both albums at the same time, and simply from a compositional point of view that older sibling is above and beyond the debut, and Salo gets downright brilliant lyrically in it. That doesn't make We Are The Ark any weaker per se, and I still haven't even mentioned some of my other big favourites (so I'm cramming them here) such as the dramatic "Joy Surrender" with its angelic walls of sound, the flamboyant and parading "Angelheads" that brings a burst of light into the slightly more downtoned latter half of the record, and the genuinely beautiful "This Sad Bouquet" which shows the band can pull off quiet and intimate if they want to. But In Lust We Trust ended up overshadowing We Are The Ark at the time of purchase and "It Takes a Fool to Remain Sane" is an outlier on the album in how strongly it connected with me as a music listener and as a human being, compared to the other songs. Outside that, We Are The Ark is absolutely a great record, and when I simply want some larger-than-life pop songs performed by an extravagant gentleman, this is where I turn for such. At its best makes you feel completeley invincible as you stand on top of the world.

Rating: 8/10

Physical corner: Jewel case, liner notes in glossy(!) paper. Lyrics and pictures of all band members, photo manipulated to the point they have an uncanny valley real doll look to them. Salo gets the whole centrefold for himself, of course.

Sufjan Stevens - A Sun Came (2000)

 
1) We Are What You Say; 2) A Winner Needs a Wand; 3) Rake; 4) Siamese Twins; 5) Demetrius; 6) Dumb I Sound; 7) Wordsworth's Ridge; 8) Belly Button; 9) Rice Pudding; 10) A Loverless Bed (Without Remission); 11) Godzuki; 12) Super Sexy Woman; 13) The Oracle Said Wander; 14) Happy Birthday; 15) Jason; 16) Kill; 17) Ya Leil; 18) A Sun Came; 19) Satan's Saxophones; 2004 Reissue Bonus Tracks: 20) Joy! Joy! Joy!; 21) You Are the Rake

Home recordings, silly family fun and somewhere deep within, the promise of a good start. Heavy on the potential, drowned out by its novelties.    

Key tracks: "A Loverless Bed (Without Remission)", "A Sun Came", "Joy! Joy! Joy!" (I know it's a bonus track)

A Sun Came reminds me most of all about the miscellaneous demo collections you end up hearing whenever artists (or their labels) clear their vaults. Miscellaneous home recordings, early releases under different monikers, obscure demo tapes and shelved debuts that were scrapped - some released officially years later, others surviving through leaks, and by and far aimed at and digested by hungry fans who are more interested in their historical context than actual quality. A Sun Came strictly speaking isn’t such a release - it is Sufjan Stevens’ canonical first album and was released properly as such (albeit with limited circulation, and there seems to be some debate whether it was 1999 or 2000). But in spirit, it is absolutely the kind of ragtag release where you get to see glimpses into the early stages of an artist who is on the cusp of something great, but who's still mainly just playing and around recording any possible idea from the comforts of his bedroom.

That’s not to say this doesn’t sound like Sufjan because it absolutely does. His voice is unmistakable and just as magical as it would be later on, and while the recording quality is a little more rudimentary you can already hear him nudging his way into the maximalist territory he’d claim as his own a few years later. But rather than leaning towards the more elaborate and emotional nature of his cornerstone works, the main driving force behind A Sun Came is the unpredictability and, in lack of a better word, whimsy that would eventually lead towards the sudden stylistic switches, the balloon unicorn stage costumes and the Christmas box sets. It’s also curiously his most insular work: it’s an album so littered with in-jokes, historic home recordings of Sufjan and his family members and collaborations with some of them that it feels like you’re missing out on something if you’re not among his confidants. It somewhat goes back to these being home recordings, and in a very literal sense of that as well. It’s like Sufjan’s writing songs for his family and with his family, and that the rest of us get to hear it too is like unintentional happenstance.

As quaint, and in its own way adorable as that sounds, from a purely musical perspective it’s not quite so. A Sun Came is a hodgepodge of a record - as said, its closest resemblance is to compilations of material not originally intended for wider release, and the picture it presents of Sufjan at this stage is someone who's still noodling around with concepts and sounds more than anything else. The vast amount of hushed folk ballads throughout is familiar territory - and the best part of the record - and the noisier excursions to an almost slacker rock like territory are unexpected but intriguing, and both together could make an uneven but promising debut. Where it starts getting into a flimsier territory are the abundance of interludes, skits and scattershot side paths it takes. Among the worst are the spoken word segments consisting of home recordings of li'l Sufjan and his family, which are fairly short but all quite annoying, and the clear novelty filler like the terribly aimless "Rice Pudding" and the absolutely abysmal free jazz dreck of "Satan's Saxophones". Some cuts are more developed but still resemble mere ideas in search of actual songs: "Demetrius" is like three songs playing all at once with no clear winning direction and it becomes a mess, and the aforementioned Middle Eastern excursion "Ya Leil" does in no way support its near six-minute length. I’m not a completely joyless monster and the lo-fi irony-groove of “Super Sexy Woman” is more in line with the off-kilter sense of humour that makes e.g. the Christmas box sets works, but even then it's nearly three minutes long with a joke that lasts for about one. 

 
You strip all the filler out and you are left with a solid (and noticably shorter) debut release by an artist-in-works, but I'd be wrong to say it'd still be a particularly strong record. A lot of what's left is very aesthetically pleasing - you honestly cannot go wrong with the combination of Sufjan and an acoustic guitar, and simply in sonical terms it's thoroughly captivating to listen to. But as songs you'd remember, they don't go that far - though I'm not sure if it's just because all the clutter around them makes it harder for even the good things to stick. It's not to say that it all passes through without attention: the title track is a deadly gorgeous little acoustic melody piece, and "A Winner Needs a Wand" features a richer arrangement that hints towards where Michigan and subsequently the rest of Stevens' career would go towards. I also have a particular affinity towards "Jason" and "A Loverless Bed", which sound like Sufjan's attempts to mingle with the more familiar lo-fi indie rock sound of the day; "A Loverless Bed" in particular sounds so much like a Sparklehorse song it throws you off time and time again. Once again, enjoyable songs - but I'd be forcing myself to come up with anything more of interest to say about them.

The copy I own actually does a practical disfavour to itself by including two bonus tracks at the very end, recorded years later and acting as a gigantic neon arrow pointing towards the brighter future. "Joy! Joy! Joy!" is a quirky synthpop jam that dresses up the original album's erratic sense of humour into a far more fun form (it even has a spoken word segment reminiscent of the main album in the middle, and it works). "You Are the Rake" on the other hand is a 2004 re-recording of "Rake", keeping the original composition's core intact but presenting a more confident performance and arrangement, with a little polish on it and a small choir behind Sufjan. They're the best two songs on A Sun Came, and they're the bonus tracks. Which sounds bad to even say.

But that's just how it is, and the fact that the two bonus tracks are dated later than the rest of the record is more or less why they’re better - because Sufjan got better and he started to focus on creating actual records. I appreciate home demos, silly goof-offs never intended to see the light of day and lo-fi jams from acts I like with a glimmer of intrigue like any fan would, but I don’t generally get a lot of actual musical excitement out of them - and A Sun Came is a collection of such things, even if not openly so. Calling it sloppy or rudimentary in comparison to Sufjan’s later works is beside the point, because apart from the few most obvious throwaways you can definitely hear the intent behind the music and Sufjan’s obviously talented by this point already. From a wider musical perspective his aim’s still a little wobbly though, and as a result the album fires its shots all over the place and you’re left searching around for pieces of shrapnel of something solid. Listening to A Sun Came is akin to browsing through a photo album of childhood photos, with both all the potential and the embarrassments right there on display.

Rating: 5/10

The Smashing Pumpkins - MACHINA / The Machines of God (2000)

1) The Everlasting Gaze; 2) Raindrops + Sunshowers; 3) Stand Inside Your Love; 4) I of the Mourning; 5) The Sacred and Profane; 6) Try, Try, Try; 7) Heavy Metal Machine; 8) This Time; 9) The Imploding Voice; 10) Glass and the Ghost Children; 11) Wound; 12) The Crying Tree of Mercury; 13) With Every Light; 14) Blue Skies Bring Tears; 15) Age of Innocence

One last hurrah for the original Pumpkins run, and Corgan & co give it their everything. The culmination of everything the Pumpkins recorded in the 90s.

Key tracks: "The Everlasting Gaze", "I of the Mourning", "This Time"

In the beginning Machina/The Machines of God was to be The Smashing Pumpkins’ return to form. As brilliant as the synthesized and understated Adore was, it caused a huge dip in the band’s popularity when everyone who had bought into Billy Corgan’s crunchy teen angst riffs suddenly weren’t quite as keen on his gothic introspection. So, plans were made to kick back into the familiarly guitar-heavy territory, and not just that but to do it even more ambitiously than ever before. Freshly cleaned up Jimmy Chamberlain was invited back into the band to replace the drum machines with his machine-strength drumming. The upcoming release was to be another double album, and not just that but also a concept album about sci-fi dystopias and the music industry. There were to be tie-in writings, an animated show, ARGs… and then the label said no. So the extra tracks got cut. All the extraneous non-album material got cut. The concept got largely cut – still present in the core of the songs but not tied together anymore. Bassist D’Arcy Wretzky left the band. And somewhere along the way, the album stopped being the next ambitious chapter in the band’s book and instead, the last.

The “cyber goth rock” sound planned for Machina got morphed somewhere along the line too, or at least it gained a new dimension as the plans started to finalise. Machina plays out like a pseudo best-of of the Pumpkins’ various styles. The muscular, heavy rock riffs, the radio-friendly stadium rock, the shoegazed-out walls of sound dreamily washing over the listener, the sense of understated beauty they sometimes revealed and the extended rock-outs all get their moment in the spotlight; only Adore’s synth ballads are missing, largely because they wouldn’t have had room for Chamberlin’s powerful drumming. In their place are more notable keyboard parts that hang in the background of most songs, accentuating the atmosphere and the emotional highs and lows, in practice giving Machina its own sound even when it takes a lot from the band’s history. It’s both futuristic and traditional at the same: bringing back the powerhouse rock that made the Pumpkins’ name but looking into the future. The short future, in any case – Machina’s 15-track run has a constant sense of finality to it, the constant musical climaxes coming across like one epic send-off after another. There’s a glimmer of bittersweet jubilation everywhere, with frequent references to things ending and goodbyes being said but played with a joy in the heart rather than falling all over in tears.

The miraculous thing is that somehow all the setbacks have made the band sound stronger than ever, downright defiantly so. As a group of performers the Pumpkins are incredibly rejuvenated: they’re incredibly hungry for glory and downright fierce throughout Machina, fighting against the tide with every bone of their body and pushing everything through. Chamberlain especially shines once again, almost like he felt like he had something to prove after his absence (another reason why “The Everlasting Gaze is such a powerful intro song – check out the drumming at the end). But Corgan’s songwriting is also similarly strengthened. The Adore sessions seem to have had a lasting effect on his songwriting: the subtler and more melody-heavy approach allowed Corgan to refine that side of his writing and make it consistent, and that same effect is present all over Machina. There’s depth and nuance to the songs here no matter what form they take and an incredible amount immortal melodies and stunner moments of songcraft presented consistently throughout. Even something like “Heavy Metal Machine” that at first sounds like a near-aimless, distortion-filled monster true to its name hides an excellently evocative melody deep within itself that bubbles to the surface when the song begins to develop new parts.

What all that means is that despite its underdog reputation, Machina doesn’t just match its other Pumpkins counterparts – often it even towers over them. “The Everlasting Gaze”, “Stand Inside Your Love”, “I of the Mourning”, “Try, Try, Try” and “This Time” all stand proudly among the likes of “1979” and “Disarm” – so evocatively atmospheric, powerfully backbone-kicking and sonically rich they are.  The ten minutes of “Glass and the Ghost Children” breeze by and carry the same strength throughout, something which rarely has been the case with Pumpkins’ extended moments. “The Imploding Voice” is like Corgan finally cracking the perfect harmony of noise and melody that he always wanted to reach while “Wound” does the same by merging together the more sensitive melodies with the band’s muscularity. “Age of Innocence” sounds liberated and in peace with itself – something that’s always been rare with the oft-tight-wound band. This extends to the album as a whole - the originally reactionary nature and its difficult development have left no traces and if anything, Machina sounds the most naturally grown and flowing of all the band’s albums. There are definitely a couple of weaker cuts involved thanks to Corgan’s need to always release as much music as possible and ultimately the album could have benefited by dropping off “The Crying Tree of Mercury” and “Blue Skies Bring Tears”, both too plodding to withstand their own length. But overall it doesn’t matter – Machina’s 70-odd minutes hardly feel so long thanks to the consistent excitement and rush, both on the band’s and the listener’s side.

In other words, for me this is the quintessential Pumpkins release. Gish is good but it’s obviously the first steps; I can see why people fall in love with the really good Siamese Dream but to me it’s still in search of the final puzzle piece; Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness features a filler song for every stone cold classic; Adore is one of the band’s best but very atypical of them. Machina brings together all the elements that come to my mind when I think of The Smashing Pumpkins and it presents them brilliantly. It’s the last proper release of their first incarnation, and the one that ultimately cemented their greatness while becoming one hell of a farewell. When I’m asked to define Pumpkins’ sound, Machina is the first thing that comes to my mind.

Rating: 9/10

Radiohead - Kid A (2000)

1) Everything in Its Right Place; 2) Kid A; 3) The National Anthem; 4) How to Disappear Completely; 5) Treefingers; 6) Optimistic; 7) In Limbo; 8) Idioteque; 9) Morning Bell; 10) Motion Picture Soundtrack

The famous reinvention. Not as radical to modern ears but it's hard to argue this didn't leave an impact and changed Radiohead forever. And it remains great. 

Key tracks: "Everything in Its Right Place", "The National Anthem", "How to Disappear Completely"

Kid A is an album with a Legacy. It’s defined by its origin story and cultural context so much that the music largely comes secondary: notice how Kid A is mostly talked about as a whole, rather than as individual songs. It’s the story of a rock band whose sound defined the late 90s abandoning all that, taking their music into a whole new world and who then ended up defining rock music as a whole afterwards. By now artists going electronic is a trope we’ve come to expect during the lifetime of every guitar band and it wasn’t exactly rare before Kid A either (see 1998, the year bands seemed to collectively discover samplers and synthesizers) but Radiohead’s open love for IDM and the sheer conviction they threw themselves out into the new world with – not to mention their global size at the time – changed gears forevermore. Add some flair about the usage of internet in its infancy and the disconnection and chaos the band themselves felt about what they were doing, and you’ve got the ingredients to a perfect analytical album retrospective. Even if it’s not all true, it sounds plausible enough to be so.

It’s not unusual for context-specific significance to fade away for those who come to the artefact later on down the line, having become used to the effects of the revolution. No one who’s gone through Modern Rock 101 would expect Kid A to sound as wild now as it did back then, even back when I got into this roughly a decade ago. Well, it does – kind of. It’s still a significant album in Radiohead’s discography. But there’s this nagging feeling at the back of your head whenever you listen to it, especially when you first put it on after all the raving and story-building and one which you can never shake fully even after you’ve come to readjust your views. Wasn’t this supposed to be an electronic album?

Kid A is more like a hedging-your-bets kind of transitionary album than the genre revolution it’s made out to be. Amnesiac took the full dive and Hail to the Thief moulded it all together but Kid A is still clearly the work of the same band who made OK Computer, logically progressing from one point to the next. A lot of guitar, a lot of conventional band playing, a lot of the same songwriting you’ve come to expect. The much touted electronic elements aren’t even the best part of the album. “Everything in Its Right Place” is really good but fizzles out into nothing rather than keeps its momentum, “Treefingers” goes all ambient but is ultimately an interlude and the parallel universe dance anthem “Idioteque” is great until you hear any of its live versions and discover how disappointingly flat the album version is. Only the glacial IDM gallop “Kid A” feels like a great idea meeting a fully fleshed out production. It’s the moment where your expectations meet reality, and it’s great.

But Kid A is an excellent album nonetheless. If conjures a soundscape of isolation and ice-cold otherworldliness perfectly – someone once said the cover art is like looking at a forest fire from a distance, observing the chaos from afar in silence, and it’s a great way to describe the album’s atmosphere. It’s filled with anxiety, terror and horror (“we’re not scare-mongering, this is really happening”) but it’s distanced from all of it, wrapped up in its isolation chamber and covering all the panic with a cool detachment. Here and there the shield breaks down – the soul-crushing existential loneliness of “How to Disappear Completely”, the bits of “Idioteque” where it almost goes mental (and would, without the production stopping it) – but Kid A picks itself back up quickly, fixes the front and returns to its wintery solitude. Radiohead have made a career out of standing at the verge of madness – here they sound calm and at ease, in a manner more disconcerting than when they’re about to break down.

The bit about no one ever mentioning Kid A’s songs makes sense the more you tug into the album. It’s not album where titles jump out of the tracklist in a “that is my jam” kind of way, but it’s a tracklist where each song knows its place in the greater whole. The “Optimistic”/”In Limbo” duo is the perfect example. “Optimistic” throws away any notion of this being an electronic album with what it being a rifftastic rock band effort and it’s nowhere near among Radiohead’s best in that regard, but its relative loudness and brashness acts as an excellent foil to the rest of the album and it sounds far better in its right place than it does out of it. “In Limbo” is effectively an extended outro that had the audacity to try to morph into its own song and it’s a little too formless to make it fully work, but it’s hard to not get wrapped in its groove when it slyly appears on the album. It’s a cliché but Kid A is first and foremost an album rather than a selection of songs, and the sum is far greater than the parts ever will be individually. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have songs that wouldn’t be great on their own. “Kid A” is an exciting glimpse into what the album could be, “How to Disappear Completely” is a spine-chilling classic and arguably Radiohead’s greatest “ballad” (“mood piece” is probably a better term), “The National Anthem” is one hell of a groove-monster you would not expect this album to contain, coming with an instant classic bass riff, and “Morning Bell” finds the band taking the sound elements of the title track and applying them onto a rock song in fantastic, hypnotic results.

None of it’s really revolutionary. In fact, you can hear traces of them all in Radiohead’s prior works and they’re only now becoming realized. Kid A’s supposed genre shift feels more and more out of place the more you listen to it, the more you listen to Radiohead and the more you listen to music. There’s countless albums that have been branded with “X’s Kid A” that actually do the Kid A thing better than the real deal does. But the more you listen to the album and the more you listen to Radiohead, the more it’s clear that the shift is mostly in the personal level. Whether or not it’s radical in how it does it, this album is where Radiohead re-wrote their own rulebook and took a new approach to writing and playing music that they still hold onto today. As an album it’s not quite the 90s gloom rock as the ones prior or the twitched-up art rock of the albums after, happily mediating in the middle. As a bridge it works perfectly – for so many people this was the album that made them realise sides of the band they’d never thought about and opened the way onwards, myself included. The legacy and the hype might not quite hit the nail on the head then, but it still holds an important place in the band’s history and in people’s record collections. That, however, is because of the music within and the overall experience the ten songs work together to bring.

Rating: 8/10

Mew - Half the World Is Watching Me (2000)

1) Am I Wry? No; 2) Mica; 3) King Christian; 4) Saliva; 5) Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years; 6) 156; 7) Symmetry; 8) Comforting Sounds
2007 re-release bonus disc: 1) Half the World Is Watching Me; 2) Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years (Live 2001); 3) Mica (Live 2001); 4) Wheels Over Me (Live 2001); 5) Wherever (Live 2001); 6) 156 (Cubase Demo); 7) Quietly (Demo); 8) Comforting Sounds (Do I Look Puerto Rican?) (Demo)

The first Mew album that really showcases their signature sound. You'll know most of it via Frengers, though.

Key tracks: "Am I Wry? No", "Mica", "Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years"

“What’s the point of tracking down Half the World Is Watching Me”, someone who’s not a completionist might ask. “I mean, two thirds of it is on Frengers after all”, they might continue. It’s a reasonable point I suppose, if you’re not the sort of geek who just wants to own every album a band releases (*cough*).  Mew’s second album isn’t the most convenient to find even after it was re-released, and it shares the majority of its tracklist with the more common follow-up Frengers. Frengers was the band’s international debut album after a couple of Denmark-only releases and for it, the band chose to include a number of their old favourites that they didn’t want to leave dusting away on some obscure indie releases. Nearly all of the old tracks chosen hail from Half the World Is Watching Me and for a good reason. Where the debut A Triumph for Man was a quirky lo-fi affair, Mew’s sophomore release presented a far more confident band and the production to back it up, with the bold power pop cuts a far cry from the first album’s whimsy.

Brushing off the irrational reasons (complete the set! Get everything! Collect!), the logical way to look at this dilemma is to look at the two different sides of it: the songs which were eventually remade, and the ones that didn’t make the cut.

The five songs on Half the World Is Watching Me which eventually got a facelift are “Am I Wry? No”, “Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years”, “156”, “Symmetry” and “Comforting Sounds”. The changes between the versions are as different as the songs themselves. The duet ballad “Symmetry” is largely identical to the point that I actually struggle finding any discernible differences between the two versions, including in the guest vocals, but the song was always built on a few simple elements anyway: it’s still the same minimal and wintery last dance of the ball, no matter which version you play. “Am I Wry? No” and “Comforting Sounds” are largely the same as their later counterparts, just a little less produced. The honestly epic “Comforting Sounds” is still the size of a small galaxy even if the final climax isn’t covered in an orchestra and it’ll always be an experience no matter its guise. “Am I Wry? No” is one of Mew’s finest honest rock songs and arguably the song that best nutshells them, and the main difference between the original and the re-make is slight arrangement decisions. If anything, I actually slightly prefer the version here as it introduces the keyboards after the second guitar part in the intro, as opposed to the other way around it’s performed in the remake: there’s a greater sense of drama to it and if anything, Mew love their dramatic entrances.

“Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years” and “156” on the other hand carry the major differences. The blissful indie pop mini-masterpiece “Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years” has an airier sound and a looser feel than its tightly-wound high-energy twin on Frengers and it suits the song and its delicate emotional touch better. The piano flourishes are also more similarly more elegant and contributes wonderfully to its shy poet boy romance vibe. There’s admittedly also a tacked-on extended outro that’s somewhat less essential. “156” goes even further and is almost a whole different song. It’s still recognisable and it features the same structure and melody as the re-recording, but the vibe and sound are wholly different. The “156” everyone knows from Frengers (because, let’s face it, unless you’re Danish you won’t have heard of this band before that album nor would you have obtained this before it) is ethereal and dreamy, full of beautiful melancholy and longing that ebbs between its placid verses and soaring choruses. The one here starts with a whimsical fairytale frolic of an intro, before it abruptly transforms into a more guitar-driven and laidback take on the song. It’s the closest tie Half the World Is Watching Me has to A Triumph for Man and carries that same whimsy, but it kind of fails to rise from the ground. It’s still a good song but clearly one still under construction. It needed the remake.

Mid-way tally: that’s two drastically different versions, albeit one which is more to please those who have a fetish for alternative versions, and a couple of minor differences that won’t make or break anything even if you can hear them. Not quite the selling point. But there’s still the other three songs.

One might wonder why “Mica”, “King Christian” and “Saliva” were left behind by the band. The initial assumption is because of quality: if Mew wanted to display their strongest back catalogue hits on their international entrance, surely it must mean everything that got left behind just wasn’t good enough? That assumption would be wrong. Rather, these three just wouldn’t have worked within Frengers. If you’ve heard that album (which I seem to assume you have, reading back on this review), you’d know that it’s not afraid to be aggressive, punchy and powerful: it’s full of dramatic energy and power riffs. These three songs, however, would have just been too damn fluffy and adorable for the serious image the band were trying to convey in Frengers. “Mica” is a super sunny pop ditty that’s so light and wonderful it practically floats, all heavenly falsettos, earworm choruses and shiny keyboards. “King Christian” is a daft romp with a stomping beat that could come out of a musical and which includes, of all things, a spoken word interlude featuring the titular king. “Saliva” is nothing like its namesake and sounds downright adorable – all sing-along choruses and handclaps, and some sudden tempo switches just to spice things up. These three are some of the most overtly poptacular moments Mew have committed to tape and they just wouldn’t have worked in the context of Frengers, whereas the others could with a little tweaking. They’re also the three best reasons to obtain a copy of Half a World Is Watching Me, with “Mica” and “Saliva” in particular being top class Mew.

(and besides, “Mica” and “King Christian” were re-recorded during the Frengers sessions anyway. They ended up as b-sides, and this time it was because they just weren’t strong enough. The transition tried to reshape and it didn’t quite work).

That tips the balance in favour of hearing Half the World Is Watching Me. Yes, even if you have an indepth knowledge of Frengers, this is still worth picking up. Granted, if you’re actually pondering about this you’re probably already too far in the fandom rabbit hole to back away, but suffice to say it’s a really good album with plenty to love. I should also point out that despite how I’ve titledropped other albums in this review way more many times than I’ve mentioned the one I’m actually reviewing, Half the World Is Watching Me definitely stands on its own feet as well. We’ve already established the tracks are great, the flow is good and despite only featuring eight songs it doesn’t feel too short. It’s definitely a transitional record but the transition itself is already great to listen to. So to answer the originally posted hypothetical question – the point of getting this is to get access to a bunch of great songs by a really good band who are on their way to become a great one.

The bonus disc that comes with the re-release shouldn’t really form any enticing factor, however. It doesn’t drop the ball quite as badly as the one attached to A Triumph for Man (we’ll get to that later) but still comes across as wholly inessential, even if curious. You’ve got the previously unreleased title track (s’alright) and “Quietly (Demo)” (which is pretty good and barely demo-like), but otherwise the b-sides and studio outtakes are once again missing. The live tracks go on to prove that Mew are a good live force but they offer little in the way of anything enlightening, apart from the take of “Wherever” (originally off A Triumph for Man) that’s already going through some changes from the original noise-slacker crawl to a loud, stereo-blasting guitar anthem. The Cubase demo of “156” is pretty anaemic, although the chorus is kinda entertainingly lazy in its delivery, and the demo of “Comforting Sounds” shrinks it even further: no longer a giant, it’s now “just” a big song still being worked on by a band in a room. It makes for a set of interesting curios that are good to listen to, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually had the desire to listen to the bonus disc beyond the sake of occasions like this review.

Rating: 8/10

Kemopetrol - Slowed Down (2000)

1) Tomorrow; 2) African Air; 3) Child Is My Name; 4) Night After Night; 5) View from the Sea; 6) Drown Little Child; 7) Teeth; 8) Disbelief; 9) Slowed Down; 10) Without Listening

Fresh, exciting, wonderfully melodic. A classic, scene-setting debut.

Key tracks: "Tomorrow", "Child Is My Name", "Disbelief"

The late 90s were a fertile breeding ground for brand new Finnish talent. Maybe it was something in the water or maybe it was the influence from what was happening in the UK and the US breaking through to the Nordic consciousness, but it suddenly felt like anything was possible and the groundroots music scene started bursting with new names taking lessons from English-language rock and adapting the sound into the Finnish mindset. It was mostly bubbling under the mainstream of course – lots of critical acclaim and countless small names becoming cult classics overnight to be treasured forevermore in scene-centric box sets, but no real presence on the airwaves over the more experienced, foreign peers. Which was fine; it gave the scene a chance to develop without pressure and grow slowly through the internet and music shows on small-time cable channels.

When they first debuted, Kemopetrol sounded completely unique to the Finnish landscape and in retrospect, can comfortably be attributed to be the icebreaker in charge of the new wave of Finnish music about to take over by storm in the 00s. In the grand scheme of things they hadn’t developed anything unique – their debut Slowed Down is so early 00s zeitgeisty in its sound – but they had two very strong feats of their own: one, they were Finnish and two, they actually broke into public consciousness big-time. You could hear them on the radio with their legitimate hits, you could hear them on the TV with their music licensed to advertisements, you could actually see their name in the headlines. They spearheaded the movement breaking new ground and while I’m sure it would have happened later on anyway through other means, I genuinely attribute Kemopetrol with not only helping Finnish indie to become popular, but also helping to shape the sound of Finnish pop music in the new millennium. There’s a direct line starting from here and going through a range of acts from indie darlings like Husky Rescue to latter-day mainstream pop such as Chisu.

Slowed Down, then, is a bit of classic record. It’s not just a famous in its general cultural relevance as described above, but it’s also somewhat of a magnum opus for the band themselves. It didn’t have the biggest mainstream impact out of the band’s albums (that award goes to the follow-up Everything’s Fine) and there’s something noteworthy to say about the band’s ability to change and re-invent themselves a number of times later on, but it’s here where the biggest impact lies. To wit, it has “Child Is My Name”: the band’s inarguable signature tune, the song that got them recognised in the first place and a cut that still remains remarkably captivating to the point of never failing to seize the attention when it plays. It’s a perfect match of an outstanding melody that feels huge without ever directly actually sounding so, a killer bass riff, a deep production that gives them both an otherwordly tone and a set of suitably vague lyrics that probably sound deeper than what they actually are, but which suit the tone of the music spectacularly. It is, in itself, one of those songs that make the album it resides in worth a mention. It also doesn’t even begin to describe what the album itself actually is.

Slowed Down is very much a mongrel album – a mixture of sounds so apart from eachother that it would be bafflingly bizarre if not for the fact that somehow, somehow, Kemopetrol actually managed to marry them together. The ten songs scatter between Britpop both at its breeziest and most upbeat as well as its angriest and angstiest while taking a dip down in dub and making eye contact with trip-hop, eventually finishing the album in a happy-dappy rave-out because why the hell not at this point. It’s sometimes a little jarring – the metal-riffic “Drown Little Girl” as a prime example – but to their credit the band make it work. A large part of this is due to the production. While the songs may come from altogether different places, they’re all treated the same sonically and the same rules are applied to each of them. It helps to tie down the songs and make it feel like they belong together, showing off Kemopetrol as a band who simply have a wide range of influences rather than one that haphazardly aims everywhere in confusion. There’s of course singer Laura Närhi’s voice too. She doesn’t have the strongest set of pipes but her tone is perfect for the music and she never really alters it across the album, which once again acts as a binding glue rather than as a flaw. There’s a bit of a Finnish twang to it but it’s strangely charming in its own right.

Each of the ten songs also stand out, partially obviously because of how different they sound but also in terms of sheer songwriting. There’s that cliché about bands having a lifetime to perfect their debuts and being able to capture themselves at their purest in their first releases, and it’s a cliché I have an aversion towards for a number of reasons, but there’s a hint of truth to it and it’s albums like Slowed Down that make a good case for it. Each song in Slowed Down is not only really solid as tunes but they all have a certain ambition and energy to them that could only come from a young band wanting to take on the world and not knowing any better. Each song acts as a bit of a mini-statement of its own, whether it’s the pop/rock could-be-hits ready to conquer the radiowaves (“Tomorrow”, “Night After Night”), the deeper, more atmospheric cuts (“Slowed Down”, “Teeth”, “African Air”) or the parts where it’s incredibly obvious that someone was listening to a lot of British rock music in the late 90s (“View from the Sea”, “Drown Little Girl”).  They all want to captivate the listener completely as much as the last song tried to, attempting to build new worlds from scratch every time the track number switches to the next. Most of the album succeeds in it pretty well – it’s all damn good music and while the style-hopping can cause some of the tracks to get buried in the chaos for a while, it’s never for good. For all its varied sounds, Slowed Down is tight.

What actually edges the album from great to classic are three cuts in particular. “Child Is My Name” we’ve already talked about but it’s worth an essay in itself if one were so inclined and definitely at least deserves another direction mention here. “Without Listening” is a tour-de-force closer that finishes the album in a way that it deserves: by making absolutely no sense compared to anything that came before, with its space discoteque vibe bearing no resemblance to anything else here, but sounding so exuberant and passionately joyous that it’s clear the band were having the time of their lives when they were given a chance to record their music. Then there’s “Disbelief” – quite possibly the best thing Kemopetrol have ever committed to tape, no matter how brilliant “Child Is My Name” is. It’s a five-minute trip through hazily dreamy soundscapes, pop perfection melodies, soaringly spacey guitars and bursts of energy that break through the dreaminess and take the song to warp speed. It’s a huge song that starts so benignly but ends up somewhere completely different: a proper journey encapsulated into a pop song. It’s special, genuinely special. Where the rest of the album is a strong collection of songs on its own, it’s these three songs that really make the case why Kemopetrol were the ones to make an impact in the larger scale: you needed a band who were able to tap into something special like this to be able to reach out.

And reach out they did, both to the general audience and to myself, and Slowed Down still continues to do so. It’s definitely an album very tied down to what the music world was up to at the turn of the millennium, almost like acting as the marriage between the British strain of pop/rock that was everywhere at the time and the downtempo atmospherics that would soon begin their climb to relevance. But it’s not aged in the slightest and if anything, the time between then and now has only made it more obvious that the album’s success was due to its great songs, not because of any particular external factors. There’s also the context that comes from knowing the rest of Kemopetrol’s journey. While the nature of those albums will be tackled on their in their own reviews, the gist is that the band became more precise and polished in their execution with time and while that’s not a bad trait in itself by any means, a part of why Slowed Down sounds a little bit more special is because it’s still a bit aloof and imprecise: there’s a type of untamed nature to it that gives it life, the backbone of the music being the still-youthful energy of a young band unafraid and eager. It has character. Combine it with the songwriting and the sound, and even when you strip away all the contextual and cultural bobbins the underlining message is clear: Slowed Down is a great, varied and inspired album that would’ve been a landmark release even if it had stayed bubbling under in its own scene.

Rating: 9/10

Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump (2000)

1) He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot; 2) Hewlett’s Daughter; 3) Jed the Humanoid; 4) The Crystal Lake; 5) Chartsengrafs; 6) Underneath the Weeping Willow; 7) Broken Household Appliance National Forest; 8) Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground); 9) E. Knievel Interlude (The Perils of Keeping It Real); 10) The Miner at the Dial-a-View; 11) So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky

Maybe not the magnum opus but I can very easily see how you could make a case for it. The definition of Grandaddy's music.

Key tracks: "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot", "The Crystal Lake", "So You'll Aim Toward the Sky"

Grandaddy’s defining statement. Perhaps not their best album - I for one don’t think it is - but the perfect summation of everything that springs to mind when you look at Grandaddy analytically and split the music into its foundations. It is the best representation of their music and the best description of what made them unique. You could call The Sophtware Slump their thematic peak: even if you regarded one of their other albums as your favourite in terms of quality, odds are The Sophtware Slump still displays the special sides of Grandaddy you love the band for more prominently than your album of choice in its design and themes.

In terms of tangible sound The Sophtware Slump bears little difference to the other albums. The distorted guitars, the fuzzy synths, the lo-fi aesthetics and Lytle’s ever-weary, ever-bittersweet voice are all here just as they’re on every single other Grandaddy album. The songwriting is a (major) step up from Under the Western Freeway but otherwise mostly in par with the subsequent albums. The key difference is that the thematic undertones that lie all over the Grandaddy discography are most prominent here. No one ever forgets to mention Lytle’s preferred lyrical material because it is so deeply entwined to the band’s sound and affects the music in several levels: the idea of looking at humanity through technology, analysing human existentialism through our relationship with machines and what we’re developing the machines into, has always been central to Grandaddy’s music to such extent that it’s a defining characteristic of theirs. Lytle’s tales of anthropomorphised machinery and people getting lost in the modern world had such a strong grip that the music around the words reflected them accurately in sound.

It’s this aspect that The Sophtware Slump emphasises more than the other Grandaddy albums. You can see this in all the reviews and articles that reference The Sophtware Slump as a concept album. The songs do not tie in together, outside the Jed couplet, but the thematic consistence is strong enough to make the album feel like they do. Calling it a concept album would require a loose definition of concept, but it’s easy to see where people come from: it feels like one and has great grounds for analysis in such terms. The emphasis on the concept doesn’t mean that you have to study the lyrics in order to get the album: that might give you more fuel for the whole concept album argument, but the concept shows its strength through the overall mood and atmosphere of the album. The music, and Lytle’s voice, is just as lost and vulnerable with or without checking the words and the unified threads and conceptual decisions are audible in every part of the music.

It’s good to talk about concepts and thematics and their power on the music, but ultimately the reason why they are expressed so strongly in the songs is because the songs themselves are strong enough to make the themes come alive. The key difference between The Sopthware Slump and the other  Grandaddy albums is two-fold: that this is where Lytle’s writing pen comes consistent (even the interlude has a place) and he discovers how to brew the formula he has in his head - which sets it apart from the debut - and that this maturement comes with a streak of creative wing-stretching that’s more prevalent than on the subsequent albums. Opening with “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot” is a mission statement of sorts. It has all the bearings of classic Grandaddy songs, but they’ve been pushed together into a single nine-minute suite of multiple parts and stylistic switches. It’s little like any other Grandaddy song, but it compiles every side of the band under the same set of notes. Much like its parent album, it may not be their best song but it’s their definitive statement. Leading the album off with reveals straight-off how far the band have come from the debut and what’s lying ahead.

The remainder keeps up a similar pace: it’s Grandaddy as we know them through and through, exploring each facet of theirs. Sometimes it comes in form of a pop song, like the short and sweet “Hewlett’s Daughter” or the largely canonised and actually quite straightforwardly brilliant “The Crystal Lake”, other times it gets close to punk as the band rev it up on “Chartsengrafs”. The Jed the Robot couplet is the emotional heart of the album: “Jed the Humanoid” presents its melancholy via a deceivingly simple but powerful piano build while “Jed’s Other Poem” drowns itself in angry static and fuzz before fizzling out in despair. “Broken Household Appliance National Forest” and “Miner at the Dial-a-View” explore the greater concepts both lyrically and sonically, carrying along in the opening track’s lineage but in a condensed form. “So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky” is a closing bookend to match the opening one - a weary, wistful and heavenly end to a journey that’s the finale of a grand soundtrack and the final emotional push.

There isn’t really a weak link in the chain and it’s that kind of consistency in themes and writing that sets The Sophtware Slump apart from its siblings. Sumday has the big hit tracks but can’t keep up the pace and while Just Like the Fambly Cat is arguably the better of the two albums, its stylistic hodgepodge could be as much a turn-off as a turn-on. The Sopthware Slump is devoted to the concepts that make up the very core of Lytle’s songwriting and Grandaddy’s identity, and that doesn’t undermine the strengths and efforts of the other albums. Instead, it’s a natural center core for the band, acting as a sonical and ideological source for everything else they did. The essence of Grandaddy, if you may.

Rating: 9/10

Coldplay - Parachutes (2000)

1) Don’t Panic; 2) Shiver; 3) Spies; 4) Sparks; 5) Yellow; 6) Trouble; 7) Parachutes; 8) High Speed; 9) We Never Change; 10) Everything’s Not Lost / Life Is for Living [hidden track]

Melancholy and subdued, a real case of a humble origin story for a big bang later on. Definitely underrated.

Key tracks: "Don't Panic", "Spies", "Trouble"

Who’d have thought that a whisper like this would end up launching one of the most extroverted, anthemic superstar groups on the planet? 

At this point I think it’s safe to assume that no one comes to Coldplay through their debut album: their global star power has long since overshadowed their beginning and the band are so quiet about it themselves that Parachutes has been all but brushed from history, bar the still-sort-of-ubiquitous “Yellow”. Thing is, through some quirk of the universe things could have gone in a wholly different direction. Parachutes isn’t an old shame or the embarrassing first steps: it not only had commercial success when it came out but also high critical acclaim, with a great deal of buzz and excitement surrounding its release that actually translated to genuine success. It could just as easily have become another classic debut that the band would forever try to live up to, or another victim of contemporary trends as the only real mark they left in the world before vanishing like so many of their then-counterparts. Not only did Coldplay managed to break both curses, but it’s pretty telling of their success since that they’ve gone through so many hits they can easily ignore the ones got them through the door in the first place. 

Parachutes‘ most interesting facet is that it’s absolutely nothing like a Coldplay album. The band have become synonymous with giant stadiums, grand audience sing-alongs and all-encompassing anthems: Parachutes, however, is bedroom-sized and somber, and its muted, dark colours clash ridiculously with the technicolour rainbows the band ride on now. The post-OK Computer Britain in the early 00s was a hotbed for melancholy, acoustic-heavy pop/rock albums and Coldplay slotted among that trend very comfortably. Only the amplified “Shiver” and “Yellow” kick the gear up a notch and raise the volume, and “Everything’s Not Lost” is the prototype for their epic torchlight shenanigans, though to a much more downstated, downright shy degree. Mostly Parachutes simply wallows, with Martin’s gentle piano and Buckland’s soft strumming and minimal melodies guiding the band through various degrees of melancholy and mid-tempo floating. It’s an album largely made out of ballads and mood pieces; melancholy, but in a quietly comfortable way rather than depressing. 

But while Parachutes is well-written for the most part, it does carry the tell-tale feel that it’s the work of a young band who found one thing that works and kept on doing it repeatedly (something the stories about the band’s performance being a little shambles at the time back up - the slow tempos are apparently partly the result of intentionally making the songs easier to play together as a band). That said, the certain homeliness does have its perks. For one, you could never imagine the group ever being able to knock out something as low-key and effortless as “Don’t Panic” in their current form. It’s a (over)short and simple song but so incredibly lovely in such an instant way, and much of its power comes from how completely nonchalant and minor it sounds, Martin mumbling his way through the shuffling verses and the deceivingly direct chorus melody. “Trouble” similarly keeps itself calm and is all the better for it - stadium-Coldplay would have it be full of bombast, but now its sheepishly exploding little sweep of a chorus highlights the song’s overall quality arrangement and melody. Similar moments occur throughout, and it’s clear already that there is a big pop band growing quietly inside, but right now they’re too shy to come out of a still-young band. “Yellow” is the obvious exception and it’s actually the strangeling of the album - after all these years I’m still not sure if it’s a bit too obvious and a little too airheaded to be genuinely enjoyable, or if the sudden moment of melodic inspiration it discovers during its stealth chorus is strong enough to make it a real keeper. 

Indeed, Parachutes is at its best when it stays away from the loud and boisterous hooks and sinks into its warm, home-spun sound. It’s got an intimacy that the band’s never really been able to reach since and when it’s being emphasised – whether it’s the simple beauty of “Don’t Panic”, the atmospheric dwelling of “Spies” or the sadsack daydreaming of “Sparks” and “We Never Change” - the album threatens to become something special. It never quite does to any major extent, staying comfortably good throughout but rarely breaking out further, but its humble intimacy does lend it a little extra staying power when placed in a line with the albums that followed since. That alone neither makes it worth brushing off completely or praising highly, but it’s a pleasant and actually rather good listen that’s maybe getting a little too neglected – both by the band and the audience. 

Rating: 7/10