CMX - Cloaca Maxima II (2004)

CD1 (Lyijy): 1) Olet tässä; 2) Surunmurhaaja; 3) Jatkuu niinkuin sade; 4) Pohjoista leveyttä; 5) Taivaan lapset; 6) Lepattajat; 7) Ei yksikään; 8) Luuhamara; 9) Puuvertaus; 10) Pirunnyrkki; 11) Minne paha haudattiin; 12) Palvelemaan konetta; 13) Meidän syntimme (Edit); 14) Pyörivät sähkökoneet '04
CD2 (Helium): 1) Kauneus pettää; 2) Kuoleman risteyksestä vielä kolme virstaa pohjoiseen; 3) Vainajala '04; 4) Minun sydämeni on särkynyt; 5) Tuonen lintu; 6) Sillanrakentaja; 7) Sielunvihollinen; 8) Baikonur (Edit); 9) Tähdet sylissään; 10) Tuulilukko; 11) Myrskyn ratsut; 12) Melankolia; 13) Revontulten repijä; 14) Vanha talvitie
CD3 (Uraani): 1) Päämäärä; 2) Ei tästä maailmasta; 3) Väkivallan moottorit; 4) π; 5) Kvartetto rock-yhtyeelle ja solistille, op. 1; 6) Ehdotus ensimmäisen mainoskatkon paikaksi; 7) Ruisperkele; 8) Kolme kimaltavaa neitoa; 9) Kiusaajien kiusaaja; 10) Epäluoma; 11) Negatiivinen asenne; 12) Ehdota jotain parempaa; 13) Punainen nro. 6; 14) Helevetinkone; 15) 10¹¹⁸; 16) Huntu

Another set of b-sides and familiar favourites spread across three discs. And this time it's really, really impressive.

Key tracks: Of the previously unreleased and non-album material, "Puuvertaus", "Kauneus pettää", "Päämäärä"

Aion seems like a good time to pause for a moment and look back to the past few years, no? By the end of 2003 CMX were at their critical peak and regularly appearing in the airplay charts, having reached that glorious part of an artist's career where you garner respect from critics, fans and the general audience alike and have secured yourself in the pop culture history books. Cloaca Maxima II started out as just a b-side compilation until the band were convinced to do another triple-CD selection to cap off another chapter of their lifetime: this time summarising the fabled imperial phase years they'd been enjoying during the four album stretch from Vainajala to Aion.

The composition of the collection follows the original 1997 Cloaca Maxima, so the first two discs are devoted to a selection of singles and noteworthy album tracks, split between heavier and louder songs on the first CD (subtitled Lyijy - "Lead") and softer or weirder cuts on the second CD (Helium). There genuinely isn't anything to quibble about the tracks chosen: of course there's some personal favourites I think would've fit nicely here, but the overall selection is so strong that any complaints seem weak: you've even got both the ambient prog odyssey "Baikonur" (even if edited down to eight minutes to fit the disc) and the haunting synth nightmare "Sielunvihollinen", even though they're hardly the songs you'd first think to include because of how out there they are (but I'm glad they're here, both being among the best songs of their respective albums). The flow is also done superbly, especially on the second disc that ties together all its diverse tracts into a real epic experience that could be an album onto its own.

Both CDs also come with some new songs, non-album singles and remakes that are exclusive to this release physically. The two brand new songs in particular are absolutely top notch and throw away any notion of compilation singles being filler. "Olet tässä" kicks off the entire thing with fierce fury and vigour, going from nil to hundred in an instance and laughing maniacally as it does so and its machine gun of a chorus being a real tour de force moment; "Kauneus pettää" meanwhile creeps in through its e-bowed textures and spatial production, acting like a simple pop song with its clear and straightforward structure but just like in its title, it deceives. There's something unsettling to its cold and clinical delivery, beautiful though it is. Both songs join the CMX classics club immediately and are just as essential as any of the canonically bigger tracks included. Those include "Puuvertaus", a turn-of-millennium non-album single with great big guitar walls, a startlingly lush string section and an extended metaphor lyric that in its relative simplicity counts among Yrjänä's best - and the song overall is absolutely fantastic, its inclusion here being one of the best things about the compilation. The other non-album single "Lepattajat" on the other hand is far less exciting and probably one of the weakest songs across the three discs, making a lot of aimless hullaballoo for four minutes that doesn't stick in the slightest. The two 2004 remixes also feel like they're here primarily just because the original Cloaca Maxima had some re-recordings. The new "Vainajala" is a simple remix that only amplifies the guitars of the (great) original but is overall superfluous, and the re-recording of the debut album's "Pyörivät sähkökoneet" is fine but inessential, mainly just giving the listener a direct idea of how different the band sounds 14 years after the original's release.

The third disc ("Uraani/Uranium") is the b-sides compilation and it's the most deranged collection of CMX songs ever put together on a single disc. Yrjänä mentions in the (expansive and comment/trivia-heavy) liner notes that most of the b-sides for the period this compilation spans were written, arranged and recorded on a single day: the band would book a day in the studio just to record a song for a single bonus track, turn up with no plans and see what today's whims would result in. Sometimes that shows up all the way to the track titles ("Ehdota jotain parempaa" = "Suggest Something Better" after constant nagging about song titles, "Ehdotus ensimmäisen mainoskatkon paikaksi" = "Suggestion for the Placement of the First Ad Break" after a script that had been left in the studio by the previous customers), mostly just in the madness of the music. The headbanger hell chorus of "Väkivallan moottoreita", the half-acoustic half-metal mental breakdown of a folk song "Ehdotus ensimmäisen mainoskatkon paikaksi", the hard rock reggae rhythm and the ludicruous chorus stumble of "Ruisperkele", the electronic dark night of the soul of "10¹¹⁸"... I mean the list goes on. No idea (or riff) is considered too absurd not to include, and CMX at their most unhinged is often exciting and sometimes borderline hilarious. And right next to those descents into madness are some genuinely beautiful songs like “π” and “Punainen nro. 6” - songs that are perhaps a little rough around the edges, but which among the chaotic energy around them sound downright bizarrely lovely and uncomplicated. The opener “Päämäärä” is the sole brand new song of the third disc, a band recording of a song Yrjänä wrote for a TV show: within its whirlwind drums and guitars that split between screaming sirens and brightly glowing melodies, it somehow distills all three discs into a single impressive song.

The Cloaca Maxima compilations are odd birds because their 3-CD big box scope doesn't smoothly suit the needs of either the casual listener or the familiar fan, both of whom might find the contents a little excessive from different perspectives. Cloaca Maxima II hits that sweet spot though, where it serves both as a deep introduction to the band (or at least one particular era of theirs) - like it did for me when I first started to seriously gain interest to the group - as well as a rewarding listen even once you've become a convert. It's the type of compilation that all its ilk should aspire to, acting like a celebration of the career sumarised within and sequenced in such a way that even an experienced fan can get something out of how the songs they're intimately familiar with are presented. I still listen to the first two discs - and the second disc in particular - because they work so well as a hit-to-hit ride and are in such a satisfying order. The third disc is like a secret album unearthed, most obviously a compilation because of how it runs all over the place but still sequenced with care to make its screwball characteristics work. That third disc alone is worth the money here for anyone who enjoyed the four albums the compilation puts in a nutshell, but this genuinely doesn't feel like money wasted in a way some other, lesser compilations do.

Rating: 9/10

Various Artists - World of Warcraft OST (2004)

1) Main Title: Legends of Azeroth; 2) The Shaping of the World; 3) Legacy; 4) Song of Elune; 5) Echoes of the Past; 6) A Call to Arms; 7) Intro Movie: Seasons of War; 8) Stormwind; 9) Orgrimmar; 10) The Undercity; 11) Thunder Bluff; 12) Darnassus; 13) Ironforge; 14) Elwynn Forest; 15) Duskwood; 16) Dun Morogh; 17) Burning Steppes; 18) Shimmering Flats; 19) Felwood; 20) Stranglethorn Vale; 21) Tanaris; 22) Teldrassil; 23) Tavern; 24) Moonfall; 25) Ruins; 26) Temple; 27) Lurking; 28) Sacred; 29) Graveyard; 30) War

Fantasy ambient for a nostalgic world.

Key tracks: "Stormwind", "Dun Morogh"

World of Warcraft really isn't the kind of game I ever expected to pick up, much less enjoy, but a bored download of the free trial in the uneventful months between my high school/college (the Finnish equivalent, anyway) graduation and my first real job in my late teens turned out far more differently than I expected. Getting lost in the unbelievably vast world of Azeroth and its countless nooks and crannies ready to be explored tapped into something I hadn't really experienced in games before, at least not in this scale. To go into the exact details why the old school WoW became something special for me - and why it still holds up, as I write this in 2021 after a few weeks of returning to Azeroth in the form of WoW Classic -  would take up too much space in what is meant to be a music review, but just to be clear on the context here: WoW could probably and unexpectedly find itself in my all time favourite games list, maybe not because of its mechanics and certainly not the writing, but because of how it made me feel. Its music is therefore the soundtrack to me falling in love with a virtual world and the countless hours spent there, sometimes simply just sitting on a lonely beach somewhere and soaking in the atmosphere as the music quietly played in the background.

Stylistically WoW's soundtrack is what you'd expect from a fantasy game, with orchestral swells, booming choirs and the like: if you have played a fantasy game or watched a fantasy film in a post-Lord of the Rings film trilogy world, you know what to expect here. What makes WoW's soundtrack a little different is that because it's a massive multiplayer game rather than a linear single player experience, the music isn't built around a guided journey or dramatic story beats. Rather, these songs are meant to accompany the player in more open-ended adventures as they wander around the many biomes of the game doing whatever it is that they fancy doing on that particular day, for the people to create their own context for these songs rather than the music backing particular scenes. Most of the music therefore lingers more than it thrills, slowly building the atmosphere and setting the overall tone for the areas they feature in. Many of the original game’s zones also share the same tracks despite how some of them have been named after particular areas, so very few of these songs are actually tied to particular themes and instead they operate by mood: some more pastoral and inviting, others evoking desolate landscapes and some building up tension. The typical high fantasy bombast is primarily reserved for the game’s faction capital cities which do have their unique themes - purpose built to make new players feel that they've taken their first real step in their epic adventure as they step through the gates of these grand hubs where they can encounter hundreds of other heroes.

It is therefore a score that isn’t really memorable per se in terms of catchy melodies, but by letting the mood linger it installs a sense of familiarity to the songs through how omnipresently they underline the events on the screen. I don't enjoy this soundtrack because it's back to back bangers, I enjoy it because so many of the songs here take me instantly back to my own memories of the game, to my own personal experiences that they soundtracked. WoW’s music practically begs to be nostalgia fodder for the hours you spent listening to the songs idly in the background while wandering the endless roads in wonder or spending more time than you wanted hunting down that goddamn elusive last quest item drop. Out of the many, many game soundtracks I have downloaded or owned during my lifetime, WoW's music is one of the most comfortable listening experiences I own even though I’d struggle to hum most of these songs. It's at times beautiful and full of wonder, but ultimately the reason it works is because of the sensory memories it evokes. In contrast, there's a number of "exclusive tracks" included to pad out the soundtrack disc - miscellaneous pieces which use the same musical guidestones as the rest of the soundtrack to portray more elaborate and purposefully crafted songs. They're not bad songs by all means, but if there's a flaw to this particular collection it's these cuts that appear briefly, if at all, in the main game itself as they are closer to your standard indistinguishable fantasy music fare without the benefit of the direct association with the game itself. An outsider to the game wouldn't bat an eyelid about their inclusion, but by being present next to the rest of the actual soundtrack does illustrate just how much more resonant the in-game music is.

Thus, scoring this particular release is slightly awkward because it's not exactly something I simply pick up and play and it ticks all the boxes for your usual only-for-the-big-fans soundtrack experience; compare this to for example the Wrath of the Lich King expansion soundtrack from the same people a few years later, which is simply a genuinely great soundtrack from a composition point alone and serves as a direct contrast to how the original scores is more about its mood than it is about the arrangements or songcraft. But having gone back to the game recently once more now that Blizzard have made its original form available to the public again (for those who haven’t played the game, it changed over the years and the expansions), I've realised just how much of the world's magic is in the music alone. The familiar places, characters and quests have been wonderful to experience again, but it's the music that really makes me feel at home. I might not be able to express directly how most of these songs sound apart from describing the general mood and tone of them ("Stormwind" and "Ironforge" are the main exceptions when it comes to “the hooks”, and not coincidentally they are the themes for the two biggest capitals), but the sheer serotonin that these orchestral ambient cuts provide at the best of times is immeasurable.

Rating: 7/10

The Ark - State of The Ark (2004)

 
1) This Piece of Poetry Is Meant to Do Harm; 2) Rock City Wankers; 3) Clamour for Glamour; 4) One of Us Is Gonna Die Young; 5) Let Me Down Gently; 6) Hey Kwanongoma!; 7) The Others; 8) Girl You're Gonna Get 'Em (Real Soon); 9) Deliver Us From Free Will; 10) No End; 11) Trust Is Shareware

Disjointed and unfocused attempt at a new sound, but in their hyperactive back-and-forth The Ark do pull off some intriguing songs.

Key tracks: “Clamour for Glamour”, “Hey Kwanongoma!”, “Deliver Us From Free Will”

The third album is usually where bands start changing things around, toying with their established sound and exploring new avenues. The glam rock sound that The Ark had been triumphing with has therefore appropriately been updated for their respective third record State of The Ark, and replaced with a clearer influence from the artsier side of 80s new wave. Everything is processed to the point that sometimes it's hard to tell where the live band ends and the programmed elements begin: the drums have been filtered to the inch of their life so the snares blare with a dull electronic thud, there's zany keyboard and synthesiser elements all over the place and the production lays a pristine, plastic skin over the band underneath. There's a lack of bass tones and depth, which comes off almost cheap at first until it clicks that it's pretty on par with the British invasion groups of the 1980s, although that doesn't really excuse it as such either. The band have clearly retained their own identity so it's undeniably The Ark we are talking about, but State of The Ark represents a big leap into somewhere completely different.

The more surprising change is how bitter The Ark are throughout State of The Ark. The first two albums were above anything else positive records: life-affirming motivational boosts, charming sass and extended verses on believing in oneself. Now the album starts with a venomous kiss-off (“This Piece of Poetry Is Meant to Do Harm” is exactly what it states), moves onto various takedowns on rock star and celebrity culture (“Rock City Wankers”, “Clamour for Glamour”), flips off organised religion for good measure on the way (“Deliver Us From Free Will), and never in a particularly constructive fashion. They’re snappy and annoyed; even the tracts on all outcasts coming together sound like they’re building a mob (“The Others”). Even the more surreal lyrics (which there are plenty this time) tend to veer into quick frustrated quips before moving on, and when it’s direct it’s awkwardly so - “now here’s some good advice: try some manners fuckface” is a long way from the past two records’ lyrics. This isn’t necessarily bad by default but the issue that The Ark bump into with it is that this negative attitude comes across off when it’s coming from them. It’s like when we’re hungry, we’ve had a bad day at work and we accidentally snap at people next to us; that’s not really who you are and even you acknowledge it. State of The Ark is like Ola Salo just wasn’t in the mood for anything at the day of recording and so you get a set of songs that don’t sound right, and never sits comfortably.

It further accentuates what a strange record State of The Ark is. Between the catty attitude and the new sound, The Ark’s songwriting has gone slightly off the rails. You can count the typical Ark-like anthems with one hand: “One of Us Is Gonna Die Young” with its arpeggio synths is a jolly choice of an obvious lead single, “No End” is gentle and intimate in a way that breaks through the tough guy facade for a little bit, and “Trust Is Shareware” plays the whole inspirational anthem thing pretty straightforwardly, though not to particularly exciting degree. Elsewhere it’s strange song structures where verses and choruses mismatch in style and tone, quirky ideas extended into entire songs and odd hybrids of new and old styles clashing. The hit and miss ratio is therefore unsurprisingly wild. The apocalyptic disco of “Deliver Us From Free Will” with its hyper-processed MIDI-esque power chords, oddball call-and-answer bridges and heaven-reaching conclusion is a piece of mad genius I can’t help but unequivocally adore, "Rock City Wankers" is saved from its trite lyrics by its hyperactive flick back and forth between a suave New York rock club and a bright and coke-fumed 80s synth scene, and the janky “Hey Kwanongoma!” sounds less like a song and more like a snowball that keeps tumbling down the hill and picks up vocoders, breakdowns, absurdist lyrics and long chorus windups along the way and it's both ballsy and effective. But then you get something like the “My Sharona” -riffing “Girl You’re Gonna Get ‘Em” or the rackety mess of “The Others” and I still don’t really know what to think of them, but it isn't glowing praise. 

To its credit State of The Ark succeeds more than it fails, and at parts it does move to a direction which sounds like a natural advancement for the band, taking into account the aspirations of the new production style. The hyper-active hook brigade of “Clamour of Glamour” is musically the best of both worlds that The Ark have operated under and the moody synth pop flirtation of “Let Me Down Gently” feels criminally underdeveloped on an album where most songs end up throwing some kind of a big explosive finale; both are among the album’s most infinitely revisitable tracks simply because of how effortless they come across. The issue I have with the other songs isn’t really either the tone or the sound per se, but more that in their wild abandon they end up taking a step back for every three taken forward; I heartily enjoy most of the songs across the record but nearly all come with a ‘but...’ caveat, and as a result State of The Ark as a whole ends up plateauing somewhere along the same. It’s a good record, but it has its problems with occasionally unfocused songs, a few clunkers and the production sucking the life out of the band in the handful of songs where it isn’t working perfectly in unison with the writing. 

The name State of The Ark always struck me as odd for the sleeve it’s written on. It feels like it’s meant to come across as a statement akin to ‘this is who we are now’ but the album doesn’t give the impression that The Ark really knew what they were aiming to achieve in earnest. It’s more tempting to refer to the title in the more colloquial meaning of being in a state - i.e. being a mess, disorganised, and so on. It’s more apt, if nothing else; it sounds like a band in flux pulled into the studio while they were still figuring out what they were doing, and they were cranky about it.

Rating: 7/10

Physical corner: The version I’ve got is housed in a jakebox-style packaging, the only CD I’ve got with this design - it’s a cardboard gatefold style packaging, but the CD is stored in a centrefold tray that pops out, like a pop-up book. It’s very fancy! Also has a fairly straightforward lyrics booklet.

Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible (10th Anniversary Edition) (2004)

CD1: 1) Yes; 2) IfwhiteAmericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart; 3) Of Walking Abortion; 4) She Is Suffering; 5) Archives of Pain; 6) Revol; 7) 4st 7lb; 8) Mausoleum; 9) Faster; 10) This Is Yesterday; 11) Die in the Summertime; 12) The Intense Humming of Evil; 13) P.C.P. Bonus tracks: 14) The Intense Humming of Evil (Live); 15) 4st 7lb (Live); 16) Yes (Live); 17) Of Walking Abortion (Live)
CD2: The US Mix 1) Yes; 2) IfwhiteAmericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart; 3) Of Walking Abortion; 4) She Is Suffering; 5) Archives of Pain; 6) Revol; 7) 4st 7lb; 8) Mausoleum; 9) Faster; 10) This Is Yesterday; 11) Die in the Summertime; 12) The Intense Humming of Evil; 13) P.C.P. Bonus tracks: 14) Die in the Summertime (Demo); 15) Mausoleum (Demo); 16) Of Walking Abortion (Radio 1 Evening Session); 17) She Is Suffering (Radio 1 Evening Session); 18) Yes (Radio 1 Evening Session)

The first of the re-releases, with the legendary alternative mix included. Three songs short of a perfect reissue, but close.

 

Key tracks: Out of the bonus things... the entirety of the US mix?

(this review is exclusively for the 10th anniversary edition - for the review of The Holy Bible itself, please click here)

The Holy Bible was the first Manic Street Preachers album to get a splashy anniversary re-release, and if you're not planning to do these things chronologically, it's the logical starting point. It's the canonical fan favourite, the big critical darling, the band revere it and, not least of all, it has one of the most enticing potentials for a bulked up deluxe version by virtue of its hitherto unreleased US mix. And that's exactly what the band have brought out here.

As the legend goes, in early 1995 the Manics were planning to tour US. The early Manics sound wasn't seen particularly commercial in the US and the previous albums already had had some partial remixes and rejigging done with the transatlantic audience in mind, and the raw and jagged The Holy Bible was absolutely nothing the band could have had any success with in the States. So, the band agreed that the entire album was remixed for the US release, ready to be in record stores as the tour started. When Richey Edwards disappeared right as the tour was about to start, all plans were understandably cancelled - including the release of the remixed album, which would never make it to the shops. Except, in a few stores in Canada who broke the release date. By the time they had pulled the album off the shelves, enough copies had been sold to turn the then-nicknamed "Canadian Holy Bible" into the Holy Grail of collectibles. Rips existed, but even with them the alternative mix of The Holy Bible was still considered a rare and elusive beast.

The 10th anniversary deluxe edition of The Holy Bible finally brought the alternative mix out into the daylight. Unlike so many alternative mix works tacked onto re-releases, the US mix genuinely has an impact on the album. The original was almost thin in its mix: its sound is dry and skeletal, its harshness working in tandem with the lyrical content and mood of the record. The US mix first and foremost gives the record a veritable backbone. The bass is thick, the drums thunder and everything has more depth. Where the original was almost withdrawn in its cold misanthropy, the US mix is an aggressive force kicking down doors. It's great. It doesn't polish The Holy Bible or turn it any more commercial, but rather it makes it sound all the more fearsome. The US mix gives the album's anger the muscles to do damage with, and it does it to such great effect that in practice, I never listen to the original anymore. The US mix is the definitive version of the album in my opinion, and the other small but important changes further drill down on that opinion: the additional synthwork on "She Is Suffering", the full ending of "Yes" instead of a fade-out and the creepy additional vocal samples haunting "The Intense Humming of Evil"  all improve their respective songs, with only the more audible vocal filters on "Faster" landing in the questionable territory.

The rest of the bonus material isn't as exciting or even interesting. The live cuts are fine, but the only really interesting one out of them is "The Intense Humming of Evil", simply for the novelty of hearing it being tackled live. The Radio 1 session cuts are largely identical to the other live material but in better sound quality, but you do get to hear the awkward censored version of "Yes". The two demos have some minor variations to the studio versions but nothing you'd really call attention to. What's genuinely baffling is that the album's three original studio b-sides aren't here. Together they run for under ten minutes, two of them are rare and they would have so much more to offer than any of the other live material. They did eventually get a release on the (incredibly cash-grabby) second re-release on the album's 20th anniversary but there is literally no reason why they should not have been here. And thus, with the band's first deluxe re-release, the great tradition of them always somehow stumbling with begins.

Beyond that though, this is a stellar package and one of the very few anniversary reissues I would recommend that people pick up instead of the original even if they're new to the band, simply because of the US mix's existence. It's amazing how different the same album and the same songs can sound when the production is tweaked, and both versions have entirely different tones to them. There's also a DVD with a suitably interesting interview on the album and the era around it, and various supplementary video material from the official music videos to TV promotional appearances and live performances - all which work well to get you deeper into the album's world from a more visual perspective. The packaging is suitably deluxe-like and the new liner notes are decent, even if more heavily oriented towards era-specific imagery than written word. It does feel celebratory, like a deluxe reissue should - shame it's three songs short of being the perfect anniversary re-release, but it's still pretty close.

Rating: 9/10

William Shatner - Has Been (2004)

1) Common People; 2) It Hasn’t Happened Yet; 3) You’ll Have Time; 4) That’s Me Trying; 5) What Have You Done; 6) Together; 7) Familiar Love; 8) Ideal Woman; 9) Has Been; 10) I Can’t Get Behind That; 11) Real

With the help of Ben Folds and friends, the former space captain returns down to earth and shows a warm and genuine side usually buried behind his act. A more meaningful record than you’d think.

Key tracks: "It Hasn't Happened Yet", "That's Me Trying", "Real"

A real William Shatner historian could help to fill in the gaps on the man, the myth and the legend and how we got from Star Trek to recording an album with Ben Folds in the mid-aughts, but here's what we common men know. One, whilst not a musician Shatner has been able to add "iconic music star" into his CV thanks to his cult-favourite late-sixties spoken word album and later quirks like the famous "Rocket Man" performance. Two, Shatner had struck a friendship with Folds in the late 90s following Folds securing a guest feature from him for his Fear of Pop project. Three, by the 2000s Shatner had started to openly embrace William Shatner the Character: the hammy, perpetually scenery-chewing Hollywood weirdo whose real fame was in the past and who was now mostly known for increasingly strange guest spots, each building up the reputation of the act. And finally, four - when Folds and Shatner seized the opportunity to write an album together, both men had too much respect for one another to devote an album for that character.

That's what catches people by surprise when others mention Has Been as a genuine recommendation. It's not a comedy album starring a cheesy, hammy actor making fun of his own status; Shatner does ham it up and there is some cheese to it, but only to the extent that naturally occurs with Shatner anyway, he never goes out of his way to emphasise either area here. All but three of the lyrics are written by Shatner himself and take form of various spoken word and poetry pieces ruminating on life, legacy, loved ones and age - just as often funny as it can be surprisingly somber and thoughtful. Has Been has heart, and it feels like Shatner took the rare opportunity to genuinely be himself for once.

A lot of the strength of Has Been is down to Shatner, who’s genuinely a great performer even if it gets hidden away by his act, and in particular he knows how to deliver a line - to absorb the meaning of a lyric or a verse and then read it out in the most pitch-perfectly effective way to push that meaning through. Has Been isn’t a serious album but it’s grounded enough into reality that Shatner gets the room to take his craft seriously, whether it’s a punch-line filled rant about modern day pet peeves, enthusiastically declaring his love for those close to him or solemnly narrating his experience of discovering his wife drowned in a pool. Shatner and Folds mention in the liner notes that the idea was to give Shatner a way to say things he had rarely been able to speak out loud, and Shatner takes the opportunity to be frank about his experiences, and to approach making an album seriously rather as an extension of his past dabbling in the art form. Sometimes he wants to make you reflect on his words, other times to raise a smile on your face, but the one constant is that Shatner narrates it in the absolutely best way: from the way he stresses syllables to how he runs past some lines and spends a long while in another, he’s a tried and true storyteller. Now he’s telling stories that star him, rather than a character he plays.

It wouldn’t work as well as it does without a solid musical backing, and for that we have to thank Folds as the executive producer. Has Been is all over the place but brought together by Folds’ guiding hand, so the easy listening mid-tempos, tender ballads, hints of gospel and country, blazing rock ‘n’ roll and others all play along well. Folds brings in a veritable amount of guest stars to the studio (Aimee Mann, Brad Paisley, Matt Chamberlain, Joe Jackson, Lemon Jelly...) but no one is there to hog the spotlight from Shatner. The talent of the backing crew means that Has Been is great as a musical artifact as well. The contemplative mid-tempos suit the more po-faced Shatner the best and they’re frontloaded to the album as if to prove a point (“It Hasn’t Happened Yet”, “That’s Me Trying”) and they’re wonderful, touching pieces. The various little style experiments have a fairly universal success rate, in particular the love-lorn doo wop of "Familiar Love". “Together” is a mild sonically whiplash as it takes Shatner on a tour of mid-00s indietronica, all acoustic guitars and skittering beats, but it provides a meditative background for one of the more blissful lyrics of the album. I also love the sudden cowboy twang towards the end of the album, with the comical and ludicrously catchy title track (with an absolutely perfect intonation in Shatner’s voice on the song’s closing lyric that completely flips the mood), and the Paisley-written torchlight anthem “Real” which ends up being the album’s real theme from a lyrical perspective.

There is also, inexplicably, a cover of Pulp’s “Common People”, which has no relation to the rest of the album, isn’t explained in the liner notes and feels like a bait-and-switch hook, given it has no real connection to the rest of the album’s themes. I don’t know if it’s because Shatner really wanted to cover it, they thought they needed a catchy familiar single, if it was Folds’ whim or what, but if it didn’t cold open the album it’d stick out more than it does now. And I feel like I’m being too harsh on it by questioning its existence because it’s actually a really good cover. The party-thrashing rock-riffing form somewhat undermines the original song’s meaning but by the time it rolls onto the rant section, Shatner’s intonation at least makes it clear he gets the song - and as a sucker for big backing vocals, the inclusion of a recorded concert audience providing an impromptu choir for Shatner and duet partner Joe Jackson gets my points regardless. I’ve seen people pass on the album simply because of the cover, because to them it implies the full album is Shatner riffing on popular hits in his post-ironic fashion, so it does a bad job of selling the album as its most popular cut from it - but I still admit to really rather enjoying it regardless.

If there’s one other thing to account for the actual quality of this, it’s the fact that I don’t actually really care about Shatner in the first place. I enjoy Star Trek to an extent but have no strong feelings about the original run, and as a non-American I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot of the pop culture fascination that follows him simply due to lack of exposure. It doesn’t matter with Has Been because of how well it has been executed from a pure songwriting and production perspective, and to its credit it's done more to help me understand why people hold Shatner to some reputation than so much of other media. It’s Shatner’s gravitas and personality, channeled through his powerful performance, which rises above alll regardless - in a world full of celebrity vanity musical projects, this stands out as something that could only ever have come from him and has a reason to exist. For a man who’s most famous for being the captain of a spaceship, Has Been is one of the most down to earth and human records in my collection.

Rating: 8/10

Midlake - Bamnan and Slivercork (2004)

1) They Cannot Let It Expand; 2) Balloon Maker; 3) Kingfish Pies; 4) I Guess I'll Take Care; 5) Some of Them Were Superstitious; 6) The Reprimand; 7) The Jungler; 8) He Tried to Escape; 9) Mopper's Medley; 10) No One Knew Where We Were; 11) Anabel; 12) Mr. Amateur

A rock album molded into a dreamlike ramble through gorgeous, crackling synthesizers. One of a kind, even within the band's own catalogue.

Key tracks: "Balloon Maker", "Some of Them Were Superstitious", "No One Knew Where We Were"

There are two aspects to Bamnan and Slivercork that I instantly associate with the album when asked to describe it, and one of them is the world that the record creates. Midlake have a knack for creating little pocket universes with their records in a way that seems completely accidental, where separate threads form a web that could - if you squint a little - create a conceptual whole. Bamnan and Slivercork wasn't intended to be a concept album of any kind, but thanks to the ever-so-slightly off-kilter lean it has in its presentation, performance and writing, it inadvertently creates something that could be. The nonsensical name, the visual presentation from the strangely arresting cover to the surreal videos and the dream-like lyrics collaborate to build a coherent reality out of the balloon makers, one-armed scientists, ominous monocle men (which the cover depicts), love-lorn janitors, bird suit wearing swordsmen and murdered lovers who share their rambling dream-like story vignettes song by song; stories that seem real but don’t quite belong to our reality. Midlake would really tap into that skill of make-believe concept albums with the rural lore of The Trials of Van Occupanther, but it's already so present on their debut that it's one of its most tangible characteristics; despite not even being officially classed as one, it sounds more like a story album than most concept albums do. You then pay more attention to the music because of the words that accompany them, and vice versa, and they both play off against eachother's traits.

From the very beginning, Midlake have been a restless band who never quite found a slot they felt they belonged in. They were jazz musicians first, who then wanted to go rock; by their debut album they had already gone through a number of line-up changes and style shifts. That restlessness feeds into the sound of Bamnan and Slivercork, recorded way before frontman Tim Smith’s rigid perfectionism started to shape the band. Nominally the album slots comfortably into the millennial US indie canon but the extended instrumental passages bridging the verses and choruses hint at wider inspiration points, the shuffling liveliness of the drums so in contrast with the rest of the instrumentation nods at the original jazz influences, and the whole album feels like it’s been rearranged for a different band from the who wrote the songs. It's got one foot in rock band dynamics, another one in psychedelic sound textures, and it's played by people who are freely mixing up all their influences together in wild abandon. It’s album’s other key aspect and its arguable signature element which brings it all together: the synthesizers.

The best thing about the preceding Milkmaid Grand Army EP were the fuzzy synthesizers that were used to a distinguishable degree, with their instantly recognisable signature tones breathing a different kind of life to the Radiohead-esque guitar sound the EP had. On Bamnan and Slivercork those synths have been turned into the de facto lead instrument. The guitars are little more than a flavouring or a rhythmic accompaniment, with the synths taking charge as the key melodic and textural elements; the only things sharing space to an equal degree with them are Tim Smith's wispy voice and the lively drums that lock into vibrant grooves. The warm synthetic sounds crackle, bleep and fuzz all over the twelve songs and for many songs they're the stars that deliver the hooks and capture the imagination, whether they're all out there like the pitch-shifting robo-voice melody of “He Tried to Escape” or the more tasteful atmospheric electronic wallpaper that drapes over the instrumental passages of “No One Knew Where We Were”. They’re gorgeous and unique textures, and the usage of these instruments on Bamnan and Slivercork is not just masterful, but integral to the record; above and beyond the usual "indie bands do synths" trope we've heard a thousand times by now. If the pseudo-conceptual nature of the album is what inspires the listener to dig deep into it, it's the synths that pull you to take the shovel in your hand.

The overall aesthetics and themes of the album are clearly the most identifiable elements of Bamnan and Slivercork when assessing it, but the actual songs are far from being secondary to everything else. Bamnan and Slivercork operates differently to its more famous siblings but from a pure songwriting perspective, it's among the strongest set of songs in the band's catalogue. The busy, swirling “Balloon Maker” is a quintessential Midlake classic, riding a marching beat and a set of horns across its synth-laden dreamscape, and rising above its meager beginnings in the chorus full of bittersweetness and yearning. “No One Knew Where We Were”, "Kingfish Pies" and “Mopper’s Medley” have a shuffle underneath their feet and a bounce in their heart, with Midlake operating as a tight interplaying unit of musicians in a way that the more rigid later albums would shy away from; they're downright exuberant in their swinging and grooving. “I Guess I’ll Take Care” and “He Tried to Escape” are mid-tempo heaven, their signature synth sounds carrying them forward high and mighty, Smith's voice showing just how effective his particular soft tone is for harmonising quiet melancholy and desperation. And you know an album is great when even the slow-burner intro and the interlude are stand-outs in their own way - especially the latter, the instrumental "The Reprimand" which is a short ode to the album's synthesizers and has a lot more longevity than you'd expect.

The closing duo of short, end credits roll themes of "Anabel" and "Mr. Amateur" bring the album to a quiet, contemplative closure and it feels appropriate as the strange stories of Bamnan and Slivercork come to an end. It's a singular journey of an album, with hints of other ideas and inspirations but brought together uniquely, not least because the band themselves hold such a wide range of instrumental styles that play with eachother so well here - and with the way and the rejigged sound that the band would take off with shortly after this, that notion of this being a one-of-a-kind deal is reinforced even further. Bamnan and Slivercork is above all a set of great songs, even if that aspect might have been downplayed when talking about its other traits, but those other aspects really raise it above ground, coaxing you to keep revisiting the world that Midlake have created just for this one album.

And I just really love those synths.

Rating: 9/10

Hotel Lights - Hotel Lights (2004)

1) You Come and I Go; 2) A.M. Slow Golden Hit; 3) Miles Behind Me; 4) I Am a Train; 5) Small Town Shit; 6) What You Meant; 7) Follow Through; 8) Stumblin' Home Winter Blues; 9) Marvelous Truth; 10) The Mumbling Years; 11) Anatole; 12) Motionless; 13) Love to Try

Gentle melodies to warm up with during those cold winter nights. It's one recipe throughout but it's a solid soul food dish.

Key tracks: "A.M. Slow Golden Hit", "I Am a Train", "Follow Through"

As the thunderbolt drummer for Ben Folds Five, Darren Jessee didn't really get to show his songwriter side out much in public, though if you read the credits to the albums you can find him in surprisingly pretty places - "Brick" and "Magic", to name a couple. Following the dissolution of Ben Folds Five, Jessee hung around and about for a while preparing for a solo release, which eventually transformed into Hotel Lights once Jessee recruited some famous friends (both Archers of Loaf drummer Mark Price and Sparklehorse touring guitarist Alan Weatherhead feature as part of the line-up for the debut). If you're only familiar with Ben Folds Five superficially the direction Jessee took might be a surprise but the more you look at his writing credits within the band, the more it makes sense - because Hotel Lights is a placid and pretty songwriter's album.

Jessee described the idea behind the name for Hotel Lights as the duality between the optimism of finally seeing the window lights of your destination hotel at the last stretch of a long drive, and the stark fluorescent lights within the hotel bathroom where "you can see all your scars". Hotel Lights as a band is lot more of the former and very little, if at all, the latter. With a couple of exceptions the thirteen songs that make up the self-titled debut album are gentle ballad-like singer/songwriters tunes, weary and tired but happy and tranquil, with a lot of gently strummed guitars, delicate piano flourishes and synthesizer jolts that can be best described as 'early 2000s'. Jessee as a lead vocalist doesn't have a voice that could belt out a tune, but it's the kind of soft guide that's ideal for the material he specialises in. It's the type of album that finds a natural place in the last hours of a waning evening, blissful but tired and ready to sink into a comforting sound.

You'd think a solid 54 minutes of the same mood and soundscape could get tiring, but between Jessee's admittable gift for a perfectly affable melody and the overwhelmingly atmospheric touch it's a surprisingly strong bunch of songs. Jessee and the crew do break the mold a few times and go for something a bit peppier, but then the album's perkiest cut, the organ-riffing "rocker" "Marvelous Truth" is also the only song here I'd happily cut - between the corny fruity organ and the wuss-rock sound that simply does not suit the band, it's an awkward fit. "I Am a Train" holds the fastest tempo on the record and is a much better fit to the rest of the album, because it takes the general sound and simply utilises its charm in a somewhat more extroverted way, with some lush guitars and moments of gentle explosion that lift the song naturally.

The star of the show are those wistful autumn/winter moments of slow, warm melodies though and while they're not all incredible, the batting average is consistently good and Jessee drops a couple of real hidden classics too. "A.M. Slow Golden Hit" is largely perfect and absolutely nails the weary hope that Jessee aimed for with the band's name, packing an awful lot of poignant atmosphere in its simple form - it's amazing how much you can do with a guitar, some synthetic handclaps and a bunch of additional flourishes. It manages to hit the feeling of nostalgic longing that its lyrics directly reference and the aura of getting lost in an old song that's as familiar as a blood relative (and in 2020 it has become one, natch), and it is absolutely at home when watching the dark roads go by through the car window. "Follow Through" is another clear winner, dedicating a lot of its space for building instrumental sections that lead with a gorgeous organ, and the result is a spellbinding late night anthem where you'd gladly let the last loop go on forever. A number of other stand outs exists - "You Come and I Go", "Small Town Shit", "Stumblin' Home Winter Blues" - but they're largely just different items cut from the exact same cloth: variations on a particularly lovely base recipe of pianos, guitars and lullaby melodies.

Jessee would keep recording more Hotel Lights albums with changing lineups, and I own a few more, but on a brutally honest level the other records haven't really had the longevity of the first one - they are more of the same again and again, just with diminishing returns. The shine of the debut is in part due to despicably personal reasons: there's a lot of references to associations and nostalgia within this review because that's what the album represents to me, having had ordered it from the States back when that was still a novel thing and after already having gotten acquainted with a third of the album through the freebie MP3s shared via the official website, and it vividly takes me back to that period. I also talk about its late night qualities a lot because that's when I found myself listening to it often, headphones on in the dark of my room. But I've owned some of the other Hotel Lights releases for nearly as long and so I'm comfortable enough in saying that Jessee's songwriting is generally the sharpest here and that's why it's stuck around most of all. If Hotel Lights are a bit of a one-trick act, then here on the debut that act is still fresh to impress. Stack it against the records by his former band or its titular star's solo albums and it's likely going to get overshadowed, but Hotel Lights knows its place: it's a comfort food album, welcoming and cosy, and just the right thing for the moments that call for such things.

Rating: 8/10

Wilco - A Ghost Is Born (2004)

1) At Least That’s What You Said; 2) Hell Is Chrome; 3) Spiders (Kidsmoke); 4) Muzzle of Bees; 5) Hummingbird; 6) Handshake Drugs; 7) Wishful Thinking; 8) Company in My Back; 9) I’m a Wheel; 10) Theologians; 11) Less Than You Think; 12) The Late Greats
Special edition bonus CD: 1) Panthers; 2) At Least That’s What You Said (Live); 3) The Late Greats (Live); 4) Handshake Drugs (Live); 5) Kicking Television

Deeper dive into more experimental sonic textures and introspection. More Tweedy than anyone else, but it's Wilco at their most fascinating and captivating.

Key tracks: "At Least That's What You Said", "Wishful Thinking", "Theologians"

Jeff Tweedy is one of the most unassuming frontmen in modern rock. He looks like your uncle who retired to his farm years ago, and he speaks like your uncle who’s just come for a visit and quietly giggles and mumbles by his coffee cup. On the stage he stands still, delivers a dad joke or a wry observation between songs and when the music is actually on, he keeps focus on his role. These days, that role is mostly just the singing bit – the other guitarists in Wilco, especially the mighty Nels Cline, keep such a steady hold on the guitars that a good chunk of the time it’s hard to tell whether Tweedy’s playing something of just lazily strumming the air in front of his guitar. A great number of the songs he sings might be melancholy but the guy himself is a jolly man having a carefree time and acts almost like he just happened to stumble on the stage and behind the microphone. There’s a lot of heaviness in his heart and troubles in his past but you’d never know that from his light-hearted demeanor.

A Ghost Is Born is a Jeff Tweedy record. It says Wilco on the front but at this point Wilco were in a state of flux, in-between classic line-ups: after Jay Bennett had left and Jorgensen had joined, but before Cline and Pat Sansone had become a part of the crew. Tweedy’s always been Wilco’s heart and soul but he’s always had someone to play against to, an instrumental virtuoso of some kind that reins him in and has an equal presence in the music. This time it’s all about Tweedy; a very troubled Tweedy, both physically and mentally in ill health. So if he wants to have an 11-minute krautrock jam, so be it. If he wanted to tribute his crippling migraines with a 15-minute noise adventure, he could do so without any restrictions. Who’s going to stop him? At this stage the rest of Wilco were composed of John Stirratt who’s the poster boy for a loyal comrade-at-arms, Mikael Jorgensen who had only just joined and Glenn Kotche, the man who had seen with his own eyes just how easily Tweedy could sack someone who he saw was in the way of his vision, ie his predecessor drummer. And because someone has to do it, if someone has to play lead guitar then this time Tweedy’s just got to pick it up himself.

The guitars on A Ghost Is Born are amazing. Fascinating, even. They have a tendency to mostly just hang around with basic rhythmic patterns, and then suddenly and out of nowhere they wake up with an otherworldly scream. Jeff Tweedy, when fueled by migraines and painkillers, is an amazing guitarist. Erratic, but amazing. Wilco’s latter day output has often been characterised by Cline’s downright monstrous guitar treatments as he unleashes the most bewildering noises out of his electric guitar, but Wilco’s beginning as that kind of guitar band lies here. “At Least That’s What You Said” devotes half of its runtime to a full-on guitar solo that goes all the way from tasteful classic guitar licks to the sound of every single string exploding (and is one of my favourite guitar solos recorded, natch), the mellow “Hell Is Chrome” bursts out wailing electricity out of nowhere in the middle of the song and the monotonous, long verses of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” grow more and more frantic each time they appear as Tweedy’s guitar lines go progressively more unhinged as the song progresses. The guitars define A Ghost Is Born and possibly Tweedy himself during its creation: they exist in their own world, calmly doing their own thing until they suddenly have a panic attack, a freak out, a breakdown. A Ghost Is Born feels comfortable in its own skin and sounds pretty mellow, until suddenly it falls apart and reveals that maybe it’s not quite that after all. Underneath its mid-tempo, softly produced exterior is a pained atmosphere that doesn’t quite know how to stand still and which is growing wearier by the minute. Much like Tweedy himself.

Despite being such a no man’s land between Wilco’s most famous line-ups, A Ghost Is Born ends up sounding like Wilco in a microcosmos – maybe it’s because it’s defined by the man that’s the very center of Wilco. It has the sonic experimentations of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the hooks of Summerteeth, the subtler personality of the earlier albums and the mature rock vibe of the albums that would follow it. It mashes facets of the band wildly together, from having fun rock-out numbers like “I’m a Wheel” to the existential ballads like the breathtakingly glorious “Wishful Thinking”. The laidback “Theologians” and “Company in My Back” have that sort of alternate universe hit single feel the band has been displaying during its entire life, although for all of the latter’s hypnotic rhythms and earworm choruses it would never get airplay with its expletive-centered chorus. “At Least That’s What You Said” has the commandeering tone of Wilco’s past epic openers and sends life-affirming vibes through one’s spine, reminding once again why music can be so magical. Here and there there’s a piece of sweetness and loveliness like “Hummingbird”, making sure everything’s OK. 

The most far-out moments are also the boldest on A Ghost Is Born and I’m glad they exist. The twitchy extended jam of “Spiders” gets its life force from how its loose rock-out choruses break the almost endless, repetitive verses, leaving behind an air of jubilation and excitement (and we’ve already discussed how brilliant the guitar in the verses is). “Less than You Think” spends the first few minutes of its life as a minimalist piano ballad and the next thirteen as a constantly evolving and ever-growing cacophony of static and noise, and is by its very design a definite opinion-splitter, but I’ve always found it a mystifyingly rewarding. For thirteen minutes it feels like you’re transported to a whole different realm of existence, where your mind is cleansed of all thoughts and resetting you into a zen-like existence. The transition between it fading away and the straightforward, feel-good rocker “The Late Greats” starting to play is marvellous: existential followed by simple fun, long followed by brief, experimentation followed by going back to basics. “Less Than You Think” takes you away and “The Late Greats” welcomes you back to Earth with a big hug. It’s a fantastic closure for the album and only really works perfectly if you take the time to go through the full “Less Than You Think” experience.

I’m convinced this is Wilco’s magnum opus. The amusing thing is that if you were to ask me classic Wilco songs, the ones that blow my mind repeatedly over and over again, I’d probably list a fair few titles before I’d get around anything on A Ghost Is Born (for the record, I’d definitely name for “At Least That’s What You Said” and “Wishful Thinking” among the first). But while the highest of highs might be found on other Wilco albums, A Ghost Is Born is the most consistent, perfectly flowing experience out of them all. It defines the band in so many ways and showcases many of their best qualities, the ones that make them such a rewarding band to listen to, and the way all the songs work together in one unit is outstandingly well done. And yet, for all that it still sounds like a completely unique work in their back catalogue. The sum of the parts is morphed into something new and different, powered by one man’s unbroken vision. And his migraines, I guess.

The version of the album I have comes with a bonus disc of goodies. The three live cuts are all great – Wilco is always a fantastic live band and it shows here as well – but they have zero to give if you already own Kicking Television, which is a full-concert documentation of the very same tour as these are from. The studio tracks are pretty obvious outtakes but entertaining in their own right. “Kicking Television” is another rocker in the vein of “I’m a Wheel” and sounds like a fun live moment that loses a little of its momentum in the studio. “Panthers” sounds gorgeous and is produced and arranged to perfection, but at the cost of songwriting – all beautiful sound, little in the way of a memorable melody. All of these can now be found on Alpha Mike Foxtrot as well, so I’ve little reason to put the disc on anymore or advise anyone to hunt it down.

Rating: 9/10

Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters (2004)

1) Laura; 2) Take Your Mama; 3) Comfortably Numb; 4) Mary; 5) Lovers in the Backseat; 6) Tits on the Radio; 7) Filthy/Gorgeous; 8) Music Is the Victim; 9) Better Luck; 10) It Can’t Come Quickly Enough; 11) Return to Oz 

Bold, outrageous and cunningly catchy - a whole lot of expert songwriting beneath the colourful exterior fuels one of the decade's most outstanding debuts.

Key tracks: "Laura", "Comfortably Numb", "It Can't Come Quickly Enough"

The debut albums that tend to become cherished classics tend to have one or two things in common: they either break genre boundaries in a revolutionary fashion and/or they’re fueled by an almost arrogant ambition and passion. Scissor Sisters’ self-titled album belongs to the latter category. Like many great debuts it sounds like it’s on a mission to prove the world that there is a great hole in the music map and this band is there to fill it - that they’re needed to exist. Then they go out their way to prove this with youthful energy, a confident attitude and a certain level of audacity, sporting a belief that they can do no wrong. It’s no wonder that Scissor Sisters’ first album became huge - it sounds like that was the only choice that could ever possibly exist.

Talking about the Scissor Sisters in the present day tends to be a bit of a disappointing affair. Ignoring the fact that they’re effectively a pop act and one from an era before it suddenly became cool for hip music geeks to like pop music, they’re one of those acts who bear the downside of releasing a brilliant debut album: the feeling that all their inspiration was spent on that one initial explosion and ever since they’ve been left wondering what to do. The band’s career since has become a series of diminishing returns, difficult recording sessions, long periods of absence, underwhelming singles and lead singles that feel like they’re pandering towards the charts and which bear no similarity whatsoever to their parent albums. When the group announced in late 2012 that they were going on an undetermined hiatus, it was hardly a shock surprise announcement. They’re likely going to be delegated to footnote mentions in the greater annals of music history eventually - unfortunately - but there was a reason why for a while they did feel like a genuine event. And that’s the first album.

During the time their flame burned the brightest, the Scissor Sisters managed to create the perfect combination of songwriting and attitude, a package of incredible hooks fueled by world-conquering audacity. The audacity is arguably the most prominently visible: nevermind the salacious lyrics all over the record, the album’s most (in)famous moment is the cover of “Comfortably Numb”, a prog rock sacred cow ballad turned into a throbbing disco stomper seemingly aimed more to outrage classic rock fans than to pay tribute. But it also showcases the brilliance and the reason why the self-titled is so great: that this isn’t just a dull thump-thump take on a song done (solely) for the sake of attention. The production is cold and gloomy and despite the disco falsetto, the vocals are detached and melancholy. Its guise may be that of dancefloor filler, but the sound of the song and the way it has been realised bring it closer to melancholy original: the warm introspection has simply been switched into emotionless void of uncertainty. Our feet may tell that it’s something to dance to but it’s hard to really imagine the highlight of the party would be something this paranoid. And yet, it sounds playful - despite its gloomy underlinings, the Sisters know perfectly that they’re treading on sacred grounds and they find their fun from it, delivering the discotheque melancholia with their tongues firmly in their cheeks.

This delicate balance between fun and serious is the heart of the album. There is constant interplay of light and dark on the album, with both often making their presence know immediately after one-another. Make no mistake, it is a very extroverted album, filled with loud sounds and raucous energy, but time and time again it flips the coin on its other side and presents a different take on the band - one that goes into more personal depths and bares its soul on display. This fleshes out the band themselves, not only by offering variety but by underlining that underneath all the silly names (Ana Matronic, Babydaddy, etc) and fierce attitude there’s a group of people pouring their everything, their heart and soul, into this music.Tributes to lost and dead friends are scattered next to life-affirming optimism, the spectrum of life distilled into pop songs.

The big singles are still great, definitely - “Take Your Mama” and in particular “Filthy/Gorgeous” sound even better than ever now that they no longer play everywhere in the most inappropriate contexts, allowing the listener to re-evaluate them once more as the genuinely great tunes that they are (and in particular the brilliantly chaotic and busy production of “Filthy/Gorgeous” was completely lost in the background of whatever TV show that used it on any given moment years ago). But it’s the oft-unspoken album tracks that really show just how brilliant Scissor Sisters were at crafting songs in the mid-00s and why the debut is so great. In particular “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough”, hidden right near the end of the album, is the criminally unrecognised masterpiece moment of the album and arguably its grandest hour overall: a dramatic and dark half-ballad half-anthem that feels incredibly desolate and lonely as a complete opposite to how grand and stadium-filling it sounds, hitting those sweet evocative spots with killer accuracy. “Better Luck”, “Lovers in the Backseat” and the oft-forgotten debut single “Laura” are model examples of how to craft a perfect pop melody and if there’s one ‘outrageous’ moment I would have wanted the world adopt from this album, it’s the sexily bass-driven and deliciously attitude-sweating “Tits on the Radio”. The frequent nods towards popular music of yore brought to modern day add to the magic (the 80s-isms of “Better Luck”, the 70s singer/songwriter vibe of “Take Your Mama”, “Mary” being a loving tribute to every classic power ballad written, etc). The band’s stellar performance brings forth the final special touch. In particular Jake Shears’ performance here, both vocally and sometimes even lyrically, really brings to mind how he’s probably one of the best frontmen of his generation, even if just for one album. 

When the S/T got big back in its day, it felt like one of those moments where the mainstream market got it, that a band who deserved success actually reached it: even back then I was positively surprised when something I really loved suddenly became big everywhere (insert your favourite token “I liked it before it was cool” phrase here). A decade+ later when the band’s public presence is at its minimum, listening to the debut now just confirms that it wasn’t your usual kind of trend-following pedestal-raising that happens time to time in public media to fairly unexciting acts. The material holds up excellently and in fact sounds completely fresh, and the album still feels like a gem that should be mentioned alongside the usual subjects in any sort of 00s retrospectives. It’s a brilliantly realised pop album that sounds like people poured their hard-worked sweat, tears and blood over it to make it the best damn thing they’d ever do. Sadly it turned out that’s just what they did but focusing on the downsides takes away from enjoying the positives and ultimately dampens the mood during the celebration. And despite its serious heart, that’s exactly what the Scissor Sisters debut feels like - a celebration of a band in their prime, their creative vein and their desire to be on top of the world. 

Rating: 9/10

John Frusciante & Josh Klinghoffer - A Sphere in the Heart of Silence (2004)

1) Sphere; 2) The Afterglow; 3) Walls; 4) Communique; 5) At Your Enemies; 6) Surrogate People; 7) My Life

Frusciante and Klinghoffer dedicate an entire album to their chemistry, arm themselves with synths and loops and and forge something brand new to both, to rewarding results.

Key tracks: "Sphere", "The Afterglow", "Communique"

When reviewing Frusciante's 2004 albums, I've frequently called Josh Klinghoffer his brother-in-arms, co-conspirator, et cetera. The rush of releases Frusciante put out during the year was probably half thanks to Klinghoffer: not just with the obvious collaborative projects like this and Ataxia, but Klinghoffer was a frequent backing musician for Frusciante during these albums, even extending as back as before the official start of the project, on Shadows Collide with People - where Klinghoffer even got a co-lead vocal on one song and was immortalised in the promo photo in the liner notes. Klinghoffer's constant support is probably just as integral to the success of the project as Frusciante's seemingly endless creativity. A true collaborative project was inevitable and A Sphere in the Heart of Silence is a fitting culmination of the two men's shared work ethics, with both J's sharing equal amounts of airtime and space.

A Sphere in the Heart of Silence breaks away from the general genre umbrella of the release chain by going towards a more electronic route, but the relatively stripped down and raw aesthetics the releases share remain in place. The album is full of synths, programmed elements and drum machines, but it still sounds like two guys in the same room playing everything live - which is likely how it was as well - with little imperfections left in to retain the authenticity. The opening instrumental "Sphere" and its bubbling, eight-and-half minute analog synth jam is an appropriate demonstration. It's a steadily chugging soundscape where the two artists layer one element - from new synth riffs to a guitar solo - on top of another, transforming the piece from a brief intro sequence into a quietly colossal wave of gorgeous retro synth sounds that envelops the room within itself. You could have had an entire album full of free-form soundscapes like this and I could have been sold, but while it's the kick that starts the whole thing going and signals the drastic difference from the prior Frusciante albums, it's hardly the only trick it's got.

Where the rest of the 2004 set of Frusciante-lead albums each took a particular idea and ran an album with it, Sphere's only combining factor between its seven tracks is that they're all heavily based on those synthetic elements - after that starting point, they are free to go anywhere. The same variety goes for the vocals as well, where both of the dynamic duo get two songs each to lead as well as two further songs where they share the microphone. They all have emphasise certain elements of the overall concept and Frusciante's songs in particular go for the extremes. "My Life" is the complete antithesis of "Sphere" and fittingly served as the other bookend, closing the album with a naked piano ballad barely over a minute long, but giving it a particularly striking finality. "The Afterglow" meanwhile is the fury and heat of the album, built on top of a propulsive drum loop, smoothly flowing bass part and a hectically riffing guitar: it's a manic pseudo-dance track where Frusciante goes through the full range of his vocals, flicking between neurotic shouting and ethereal falsettos. The former is a surprisingly memorable finale for the album, while the latter is one of its key standouts. 

Meanwhile Klinghoffer's leads take a calmer route: "Communique" is a particularly haunting piano piece that utilises the space in the production to a great degree, making it into particularly effective headphone listening, and "At Your Enemies" takes that atmospheric angle and adds a backbone to it: they're respectively one of the album's most arresting cuts, and the one clear sort-of-filler it has to offer. The two duets on the other hand slot somewhere in the middle. "Walls" is a post-apocalyptic synth pop jam, starring a flurry of discordant vocal trade-offs between Klinghoffer's whispers and Frusciante's guttural screams over a stuttering mechanical rhythm and buzzsaw synths; it's the most electronica-heavy song of the lot. Meanwhile "Surrogate People" is downright conventional in comparison, boasting a traditionally straightforward rock arrangement underneath it that could have probably worked on any of the other Frusciante albums; here though, the striking synths take it over and seize control, turning it into a gothic slow-burner anthem dripping in moodiness.

At seven songs A Sphere in the Heart of Silence feels criminally, or teasingly, short (even if due to song lengths it reaches nearly 40 minutes) because this is one of the most rewarding of the '04 album series. The whole album series has been a tribute to creativity but it's largely been restricted to highlighting already established facets of Frusciante's talents: out of the lot, this is the only one that represents setting sail towards uncharted waters and actually brings in something brand new to the repertoire, and a lot of those new ideas are rewarding to listen to. It's not only a small triumph for Frusciante, but a well-deserved spotlight moment for the oft-mysterious Klinghoffer who more often than not finds himself supporting rather than leading. There's a certain kind of Thom Yorke-esque charisma to his falsetto-edging voice and he makes for a beguiling frontman in his own right, and his contributions here shouldn't be overshadowed by the more famous name. Despite frequently working together this is a collaboration in the true sense of the word, and by making it over the two men made one of the most captivating records of the many they released during the brief amount of time.

Rating: 8/10

Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)

1) Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels); 2) Neighborhood #2 (Laïka); 3) Une année sans lumiere; 4) Neighborhood #3 (Power Out); 5) Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles); 6) Crown of Love; 7) Wake Up; 8) Haiti; 9) Rebellion (Lies); 10) In the Backseat

The triumphant sound of a small army of passionate Canadians who molded the musical landscape in the wake of their life-affirming anthems. Bombast, grandeur and so much heart.

Key tracks: "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)", "Wake Up", "Rebellion (Lies)"

The liner notes for Funeral point out the irony of a band giving their debut album such a name, like they anticipated every music writer rife to point it out and wanted to one-up them from the start. But as final as funerals are, they bring people together, everyone sharing their experiences of the life now lost in a tragic form of celebration. At least, that's the case for Arcade Fire's Funeral which is closer to an embracing welcome to everyone who has joined the occasion. So many albums unknowingly connect countless complete strangers who all find an emotional grip point in someone else's music, all of them feeling like they have a private connection to these records, but that notion is pushed onto the forefront and made obvious on Funeral. It's moved away from private bedrooms of music fanatics and out into the open giant fields to be shared with everyone else who feels the same way, shouting their voices raw into the sky together with the musicians themselves.

Funeral set the indie scene for the 00s. In the decade prior 'indie music' (vague notion as it is), and particularly of the North American kind, was frequently characterised by its low-key nature. Small bands in small practice rooms and dingy stages creating songs that were rough around the edges but who embraced that sound, turning it into a rugged warmth that could capture the hearts of the select people who'd ever get to hear it. Funeral changed the tide in such an obvious fashion you could directly hear it already as little as a year later. Rather than remain in the shade with a couple of scrappy guitars in tow, Arcade Fire utilised every instrument they could get their hands on, single-handedly making squeezeboxes and glockenspiels sexy in the process. Their music and the band themselves were earnest, sometimes even overtly so, but it didn't stop them from dreaming big and sounding big. Each song is built to a crescendo and it's only a matter of time before they launch into an anthem that needed to roar in ever-bigger stages to an increasing amount of people, but without ever losing touch of the intimately speaking core within. Funeral wants to connect universally, and it did - critics and music fans gilded it a classic in record time, countless new bands were inspired overnight to reach for those same heights and much of the indie landscape changed its scope to match, and when those same elements were recycled by artists with more of a mainstream presence, the chart forces reacted similarly. We likely wouldn't have the now-infamous millennial whoop without Funeral showcasing how powerful a wordless chant can be in the right hands.

The universality of Funeral derives from its desire to build a community and to cherish the one you belong to. It's a record spearheaded by two immigrants finding their future, and each other, in a new country and pushing through hard times and tragedies together and with their new blood brethren, with music which radiates that power to connect. Throughout Funeral there's traces of everything that built its DNA: Win Butler standing in-between his native USA and familiar Canada as both an insider and an outsider, Regine Chassagne's Haitian roots tangled up in the country's history, vague memories of spending harsh winters and power cuts together with people you trust, and goodbyes and farewells to all the loved ones who passed away during the album's recording, inspiring the title. Funeral has one of its feet deep in a contemplative sadness, but the other foot is leaping towards the light. It's an album full of hope, its strengths based on people who stay by with you through and through, with that optimism conveyed as call for everyone to come together. And so, when the numerous bunch of wild Canadians all shout out lyrics of these memories together in a way that would spawn numerous audience reactions, the resulting bombast is not just something that speaks directly to one's heart, but also something that beckons to be shared. Intimate and universal, without ever compromising either.

The communal warmth is the heart of Funeral, but its arteries that bring that notion forward are the songs. It's not an exaggeration to say that every single one of them is an anthem, and it's not a question of if they become grandstanding torchlight moments, but when: "Wake Up" explodes from the get-go, "Une année sans lumiere" and "Crown of Love" flick the switch towards their end like a curveball twist which feels so natural in hindsight, "Rebellion (Lies)" builds itself up for its whole length. Funeral's magic isn't directly in that all the songs are gigantic, but rather how and why they are. "Anthem" can be a dirty word for some, bringing into mind empty stadium pomp and circumstance that simply sounds big without a reason for it to be so. But on Funeral these larger-than-life songs are so because for their four-five minutes, they yearn to be the most important lifeline in the world. If not for the listener, then certainly very audibly for Arcade Fire themselves, whose vigour in these performances can practically be touched.

The thing is, they all do feel important - they're a series of songs that quiet down the rest of the world as they play out. "Tunnels" joins the pantheon of iconic openers which gradually introduces each element that will become familiar as the album moves forward, from the group vocals to the expansive instrumentation, strikingly four-to-the-floor drums and the ever-present strings, the soaring vocal lines. "Laika" and "Power Out" are fueled by urgency, with the latter in particular playing like the band's lives depend on it and it becomes a frantic rush of adrenaline through its jagged guitars and almost jubilant percussion riff playing behind the panicked band. "Crown of Love" and "In the Backseat" are the tearjerkers, one a vulnerable declaration of desire which moves from tender confessions to the dance floor as the lovers grab onto each other in a fleeting moment of passion, the other a harrowing ode to the emptiness of losing someone where the album's title finally becomes literal, giving the album a closure where it's now sorrow that sounds colossal and anthemic. The famous, magnificent burst to life of the wordless chorus of "Wake Up" is the actual sound of personal liberation and the song itself is the center of all the album's defiant optimism and zeal; and Butler closing the second verse with the impassioned "I guess I just have to adjust" is arguably the entire album's signature moment. "Haiti" and "Une année sans lumiere" are calm, collected and carefully chill - they're also Regine's spotlight moments, with a graceful and delicate touch that's more about mood-building than big choruses; at least until the songs lift off towards their end. "Rebellion (Lies)" is still, and perhaps always will be, Arcade Fire's grandest statement: a spell-binding five minutes of building an entire world over a single strong backbone rhythm, everyone's performance gradually tightening as the song keeps shifting gears upwards, culminating in one of the all-time great call-and-answer hooks. As the song winds down, it sounds victorious: all that blood, sweat and desperate tears having been spent but emerging as a winner, the pounding drums and epic strings forever still ringing in one's ears even after the song has ended.

It's only "7 Kettles" that lets the album down. On an album full of big moments a more traditionally intimate near-acoustic palate cleanser sounds like a fine idea, but where the rest of Funeral is a celebration of instantly powerful melodies and standout performances, the rather muted feel and easily forgettable songwriting of "7 Kettles" has never had the chance to particularly stand out. Without it, Funeral would be a perfect score - and even with it, it comes close. It's an album so honest with its emotions and power to resonate that you can't really be surprised when it does tug your heartstrings, lifts your spirits and places itself as part of your life by intertwining its tunes with your own experiences. For all its backstory and context, ultimately the main story it tells is its listener's: how each song still gets the hairs on your body to rise in awe as the swooning sounds play through the speakers, how every grand chorus feels as revelatory as it did the first time and even more important than it did then, how every rush of energy jolts through your body and tells you to join in as it reminds of all the past times that force was something you needed to get through the day. Ultimately Funeral is about life: both through its vignettes of personal stories that the band share as well as, and more notably, through the sheer power of the music that affirms just how vital and vibrant life is.

Rating: 9/10

Physical corner: Gatefold with a fold-out lyrics sheet, identical in design to the self-titled EP as if to pair the two up. The scribble line from the pen in the cover art is silver-embossed and runs through the back cover and inner fold, which is rather inspired.