Lady Gaga - Born This Way (2011)

1) Marry the Night; 2) Born This Way; 3) Government Hooker; 4) Judas; 5) Americano; 6) Hair; 7) Scheiße; 8) Bloody Mary; 9) Bad Kids; 10) Highway Unicorn (Road to Love); 11) Heavy Metal Lover; 12) Electric Chapel; 13) Yoü and I; 14) The Edge of Glory; Bonus track: 15) Born This Way (Jost & Naaf Remix) 

Over the top, larger than life, sprawling - iconic.

Key tracks: "Scheiße", "Heavy Metal Lover", "The Edge of Glory"

The success of The Fame Monster gave Lady Gaga the artistic freedom to follow it up however she best wanted, and the stylistic break-out of that album had left people eagerly anticipating what her next move would be. These days it's difficult to convey accurately just how different and fresh The Fame Monster's theatrically explosive and wildly flaying maneuvres sounded in the 2010 pop scene if you weren't there to experience it, and back then The Fame Monster was still technically considered just a deluxe edition bonus disc for The Fame until its runaway success more or less turned it into a runaway era of its own. Yet, I don't think anyone was ready for just how Gaga chose to follow it up; even now, Born This Way is spectacularly one of the strangest albums to occupy mainstream space with such dominance.

The sound of Born This Way itself is a direct follow-up from the high intensity dance pop of The Fame Monster: Redone remains as the main producer and Gaga's second-in-command, with DJ White Shadow  making his debut Gaga collaborations in-between. The ideas and aesthetics though - including that unbelievable/bly terrible cover image - are directly indebted to 80s hard rock. Gaga is an old-school heavy metal lover through and through and Born This Way is through and through a hair metal record, with big guitar riffs, crashing drums and a stench of whiskey cutting through the hyper-produced electronic sheen, old-fashion stadium rock theatrics reinterpreted in Gaga’s own language. Born This Way is also everything Gaga made her music out to be, super-sized up and overindulged in. It doubles down on all the eccentricities and quirks that lent The Fame Monster its strength, attempting to bring Gaga's music to the same level of unpredictability and out-thereness that her increasingly bizarre fashion displays had started to reach. 

That clash of titanic concepts is what makes Born This Way so overwhelming and uniquely thrilling. The album is at its best when its pushing down the throttle pedal in a neon glow adrenaline haze and throwing together ideas that would take supreme confidence to pull off - which she does. "Judas" stomps through with an erratic pace like an elephant in a china shop that's having a bad trip, "Americano" is a rave-rock-flamenco hybrid that proudly ignores the fact that it shouldn't work, "Bloody Mary" resurrects pop's eternal fascination with a soft reggae lilt and makes it sound hair-raisingly ominous, "Scheiße" finds Gaga speaking nonsense-German over cavernous eurodance synths and a beat so big it hits right in the spine, the unhinged "Government Hooker" goes through moods and tones like it's switching radio channels from one extreme to another. These are songs that happen when no one says "no" to even the most ridiculous idea and everyone fully believes in the power of their underlying force - i.e. Gaga and her charisma that persuades any naysayer, even when she sounds like a woman possessed flicking through incoherent accents and vocal shifts as she sings through most songs in brand new manners and ways from anything before. These are songs that in lesser hands someone would have toned down but that didn't happen, and it's all for the better. They are excessive and manic, and while flamboyant they're almost dark with the bombast used to drown over any demons of self-doubt creeping in through every crack they can. Gaga always sounds like she's at the forefront of a great battle in each song, determined to come out victorious.

Sadly that energy doesn't quite reach the album's title track, even though it's inarguably the most famous song from the entire era. It's easy to view it through a modern viewpoint now and judge it as slightly tone deaf - the "chola and orient descent" didn't sound right in 2011 either - but it's a song that means well, came at the right time when LGBT+ was starting to break into the mainstream more visibly than ever and eventually it deservedly became the anthem of pride and underdog unity that Gaga desired it to be from day one, the (ultimately superfluous) "Express Yourself" controversy nonwithstanding. But despite naming the album, "Born This Way" has always been at odds with the rest of the record. In a album coloured in shades of seedy nightlife and desperation to break free from it, "Born This Way" is all rainbow lights and thin disco beats, with none of the edge or surprise that the rest of the album revels in. It never fit the album comfortably and almost exists outside it as its own entity, and despite being one of Gaga's biggest hits and nailing down her status as the heartfelt ally she sincerely wants to be, its appearance right at the start is almost jarring and in all ways - production, melody, really even the lyrics despite the message - it's throwing weaker punches than most other songs on the album. You can contrast it directly with "The Edge of Glory", another song that's covered in more neon lights than club spotlights and plays its hand brighter than the rest of the record, but also keeping truer to the album's heart. Its nods to the 80s are in line with the rest of the album (including a saxophone solo from Springsteen's right hand man Clarence Clemons) and it retains the emotion and will of what preceded it - it's the one last tearful goodbye to Gaga's grandfather and she sings it with all her abandon as the synths grow taller and louder, scraping skies as the album's ultimate pop anthem. As the closer it's the dawnbreak after the album's seedy nightlife crawl - the hopeful start to a brand new day. 

Though its more peculiar moments are what ultimately define Born This Way, as "The Edge of Glory" (and "Born This Way") shows the album is content to simply be a pop record at times as well. Sometimes perhaps a little too earnestly - the theatre kid camp of "Hair" comes to mind - but by and far even at her more controlled Gaga works magic here. The grand epic kickstart of "Marry the Night" which sets the album off with a firework display, revs up from naught to hundred after its beguilingly quiet organ intro and makes the case for the album's strengths immediately. It's exhilirating, life-affirming and triumphant - so basically everything you want a larger than life pop anthem to be. "Bad Kids" goes from stuttering synth stabs and grungy guitars to saccharine bubblegum pirouettes in an instant, and "Heavy Metal Lover" might just be one of Gaga's most essential songs, tucked away unassumingly in the depths of the back half but boasting some of the album's best hooks and production: ironically not leaning towards its titular style despite the rest of the album giving the space for it, its ethereal and crystalline synth-disco sound and that instantly striking half-wordless chorus are among the most powerful moments of pure pop bliss in Gaga's discography.

What mars Born This Way somewhat is that it is ever so slightly overlong, and this is even the case with the standard issue without the (rather common) deluxe edition's bonus tracks weaved into the tracklist - although my Euro-version copy does come additionally equipped with a perfectly adequate remix of "Born This Way" that you forget the moment you stop listening to it. Some of the chaff is easier to identify, namely "Highway Unicorn" and "Electric Chapel" which largely serve to build the album's internal mythos and aesthetic rather than act as independent agents of their own. That isn't strictly speaking a bad thing and not something I would always criticise, but they sound like songs designed for live stage interludes and their hooks and vigour aren't a match for the rest of the record; not to mention "Highway Unicorn" is where the album's loudness war PTSD rears its head the most obviously as its synths and drums reach clipping heights so much it's distracting. And with distractions in mind, when the album does depart from its general ethos it really, really sticks out - "Born This Way" including, but also "Hair" that's all bright highlights and hi-NRG stomping covered in the kind of cheese that's bound to split opinions, and I'm not sure it has a place here. But this was an imperial period for Gaga and even "Hair" starts to charm when its intensity just doesn't let up and it blows off in all cylinders so charismatically you forget what qualms you had with it. 

"Yoü and I" is the other main breakaway: it's where Gaga finally nails the classic rock piano ballad that she's been trying to pull off on both her previous albums, and would practically come across as a cosplay pastiche if she wasn't so convincing and giving her all with it, but what's it doing here? Besides maybe peeling off some of those theatrical layers and giving Gaga a brief moment of unarmed humanity as she so honestly both seizes in a kind of music she so obviously loves and reaches out for her man without any smoke and mirrors - "six whole years!", she adlibs with such spur-of-the-moment you can absolutely hear her giggle. Her eventual break-up from the man who inspired it of course now makes the song even more bittersweet, and arguably and very cruelly adds to its power. So even "Yoü and I" works and by the time Gaga's unleashing the final bombastic choruses you've fully bought into it, which both underlines just how much of an imperial period this was for Gaga and just how confusing the album can sometimes be.

It's not an album for everyone. The production is over the top, the lyrics can go from incoherent to cheesy to actually kind of brilliant in a moment's flash ("Love is like a brick / you can build a house or sink a dead body" is probably my favourite Gaga lyric but it also occupies the same song as "if offenced, wear an ear condom next time"), it's self-awarely high on its own pretension and absurdity - and let's face it, Gaga spent so many years spiralling off this that you could consider this the beginning of the end and see it for its warning signs and not for its strengths. Born This Way practically invites you to raise an opinion out of it with it sheer outrageousness, right down from that cover. It is an overreaching mess - but it's also a blast and a one-of-a-kind pop phenomenon. Gaga was a character larger than anything - that was her goal from day one - and with Born This Way she rose to that self-mantled throne. It's a passion project that has everything thrown into it because it had Gaga's worst enemy against it - her own expectations - and it needed to rise into the occasion. It did, with its big verses, bigger choruses, production that still sounds stylish even when it aims for a throwback vibe, the endlessly quotable lines in both content and delivery and, in a nutshell, Gaga's best set of songs. I'm a sucker for an album that dreams big and then grabs hold of that dream, and Born This Way ticks that box so well. If it were more leaner and meaner it might be genuinely legendary, but its shambling kitchen sink attitude is its own kind of iconic and it still stands out as one of the very best pop records of the 2010s.

Rating: 8/10

Noah and the Whale - Last Night on Earth (2011)

1) Life Is Life; 2) Tonight’s the Kind of Night; 3) L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.; 4) Wild Thing; 5) Give It All Back: 6) Just Me Before We Met; 7) Paradise Stars; 8) Waiting for My Chance to Come; 9) The Line; 10) Old Joy

Big smiles, big melodies, but it doesn't sound quite right.

Key tracks: "Tonight's the Kind of Night" “Wild Thing”, “The Line”

Most of Last Night on Earth is presented in third person. Up until this point, Charlie Fink and Noah and the Whale had predominantly operated in the first person, even when writing fictitiously like on much of their debut. On the subsequent The First Days of Spring and its intimately detailed break-up psychodrama, the first person narrative had taken a turn to so personal that the band had more or less become about Charlie Fink singing from his own perspective. So when Fink starts up their third album with the line “He used to be somebody”, that completely innocuous pronoun is actually jarring to hear coming from his mouth. That is, only if you’re still not too busy being taken aback by the fluttering synths and perky drum machine that “Life Is Life” kicks off with.

Noah and the Whale were likely going to change tract anyway, because following up an album so deeply and perhaps awkwardly personal as The First Days of Spring would be difficult no matter what - how do you move naturally back to normal from what was effectively a diary turned into a record? So you may as well pick up somewhere completely different. But Last Night on Earth is more than just a flick of new paint, it's a full re-invention. The folk leanings and acoustic production of the first two records have been buried under peppy pop rhythms, 80s-adjacent keyboard work and cheery choirs. The intentionally sullen outlook that the band had come to known for has shifted towards happier tides with plenty of sing-along choruses along the way, and the stories Fink tells are now very obviously and clearly stories: tales of other people observed from the side rather than him being the central narrator, a move that makes as much of a shift away from The First Days of Spring as it is possible.

Artists and bands shift shapes, that’s a fact, but sometimes the transformations aren’t quite the right fit and Last Night on Earth is one of those occasions. It's like someone putting on a radically different set of clothes trying to desperately want to be someone else. They don’t do a bad job with the more hook-shaped melodies and sparkling keyboards that are the signature element of the record - they’re nice melodies - but at times it sounds like forcing a smile. The First Days of Spring was the painful break-up album and Last Night on Earth is exactly what someone who still hasn’t gotten over the relationship would be doing, trying to show off that they’re a fresh new person who's moved on but where a shade of bitterness flares from behind the facade. And because this is so obviously personified around Fink himself, it’s only apt that it’s his performance where these aspects most show up. His faux-Springsteen narratives lack the resonance, smarts and heart of his former character studies and they don’t offer much of a springboard for Fink to show off his charisma either. He sounds like he's singing karaoke, pretending to front a different band to the one that did the first two records.

 

 

The big thing to note is that Last Night on Earth is not a bad record. Even if the direction change is debatable, they are still the same band that did the first two records and for the most parts, from a musical songwriting perspective, they’re still doing a good job. “Tonight’s the Kind of Night”, “Give It All Back” and “That’s Just Me Before We Met” may have a whiff of the band forcibly wedging into a space they don’t fit, but they have some enthusiasm and heart to them, trying to walk in their new shoes with pride even if they trip now and then. Despite the clumsiness or cheesinees they have genuinely good musical elements running within them, which come more obvious when you contrast them to the blatantly chart-flirting “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.”, a song with a chorus hook so weaponised it’s holding a gun against your temple to force you to tap your foot to the beat, and which comes across incredibly close to cynical in its attempt to be something completely different. “Life Is Life” faces almost the same damning judgment, especially with its paper thin and almost banal lyrics and slapped-on choir hell-bent on wanting to squeeze some positivity out, but the rest of the song does admittedly sound pretty neat and it's only its final third that threatens to drown it.  “Waiting for My Chance to Come” falls somewhere in the middle but it’s ultimately rescued by its middle-eight, and if there’s one thing the album truly and consistently succeeds at are its post-second chorus bridges, which are a constant highlight of each and every song they feature in. Even “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.” has a middle-eight so great that its eight lines alone are one of the best parts of the entire record and is almost enough to get you thinking that the rest of the song is better than it actually is.

But the best material on Last Night on Earth is also the part of it that sounds most like the old Noah and the Whale, i.e. the slower songs. “The Line” sounds like a more natural progression for the band and the new production elements are used in a way that work with the band’s skillset better, and the near-hymnal closer “Old Joy” shows a little bit of open vulnerability in a record that’s otherwise shouting out loud how great it’s doing. And then there’s “Wild Thing”, which alone justifies the existence of this entire record. It’s a gorgeously arranged and produced (so many details flickering in the background that it really comes alive with a good set of headphones) piece of stargazing wistfulness that peaks beautifully when it lifts into its stunning middle-eight: it's not just an incredible bridge in an album full of them, but comfortably one of the best things the band have ever recorded. It’s a wonderful song - and maybe it’s not so surprising when I say that it’s the closest to something that could have appeared in the previous records.

Which, I guess, gives the impression that I didn’t want the band to change and I’m just disappointed that they did. But it’s more about how that change has come, rather than the actual shift itself. One of the lasting images in my head of Noah and the Whale is their performance of their breakaway hit “5 Years Time” from a festival performance around the Last Night on Earth tour. The song - a twee clap-happy pop song about a lovey-dovey couple - had become the band’s signature song, but given how it featured Fink’s former love before their big breakup and how lyrics were so openly enamoured, it obviously became a weight over his back. I say obviously, because during that performance Fink has the face and posture of a man who is having salt rubbed in his wounds live on stage, looking like he hates every single line he sings while the rest of the band are enjoying playing their big song. It’s clear Fink wanted to bury his past, move away from the sound he now associated with his old relationship and perhaps get the peoples’ favour again with brand new upbeat singles that could usurp his anchor-like hit. So the trendier sound (in 2011 terms), the snappier and hook-friendly songs and the brighter mood all come across like an intentional abrupt halt to old plans and a way to force a new start, and it’s not a growth spurt without its awkward moments. Last Night on Earth bears the sound of a band desperately wanting to find a new way to connect with people, but doing it by pushing themselves onto unsuspecting audiences rather than letting them come to the band. There’s enough good here to consider Last Night on Earth a nice album, really - but there's a downside to every upside and its direction never stops sounding slightly uneasy to the point that it’s difficult to simply enjoy the record without thinking how it’s like one band pretending to be another.

 

Rating: 6/10

 

Physical corner: Basic jewel case + lyrics booklet affair.

R.E.M. - Collapse Into Now (2011)

1) Discoverer; 2) All the Best; 3) Ūberlin; 4) Oh My Heart; 5) It Happened Today; 6) Every Day Is Yours to Win; 7) Mine Smell Like Honey; 8) Walk It Back; 9) Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter; 10) That Someone Is You; 11) Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I: 12) Blue

For their last hurrah R.E.M. sum up their entire career in 12 songs, interpreted through their recently rejuvenated form. It's both an apt goodbye as well as a little hit and miss.

Key tracks: "All the Best", "Ūberlin", "It Happened Today"

Here it is. After fourteen studio albums and thirty-odd years, R.E.M. present their curtain call. Collapse Into Now wasn't announced as such (the actual news hit roughly six months later), but it was intended to be one: R.E.M. knew it was time for them to bow out and ride the high wave of their autumn years into the sunset. In retrospect it's obvious - the lyrics skirt around the issue in a manner that's so clear in hindsight (I'm looking at you "All the Best" and your lines about showing the kids how to do it one last time), and the band even wave goodbye right there on the front cover. But at the time very few people had any idea that it'd be the case, and Collapse Into Now certainly didn't show any signs of the group stopping. Quite the opposite in fact: it felt like the band were continuing to sail with the new wind of energy that Accelerate had brought over.

Beyond that, Collapse Into Now also sounded like the band didn't want to focus on any one particular idea to go forward with - and so they went with everything. Once again, perhaps in hindsight it was a way to sum up what R.E.M. stood for musically as they were ready to place the final full stop at the end, and so Collapse Into Now goes a little all over the place. It's still firmly centered around the muscular and guitar-heavy direction familiar from the previous set of releases, but every other song they keep splintering away from it in various ways. So much of R.E.M.'s past vibes makes a cameo appearance throughout Collapse Into Now, although reflected by where the band were standing at the present. Even Buck's mandolin makes a return after several records of absence, giving a respectful nod to how it became the band's semi-signature instrument for a time. R.E.M. never were a purely nostalgic band and even when they openly dug up their own past (like with Live at the Olympia) they did it in a way that honoured their present - likewise, the familiar elements here are flashes rather than direct throwbacks. It's R.E.M. of 2011 clearly in the lead, but you can tell where the keyboard-heavy dreamers, acoustic ballads or other sudden sonic textures popping up throughout originate from. 

That variety comes with some inconsistency. For their last record, R.E.M. pull out a first for the band in creating a record that wildly swings from brilliant to awkward from one song to another (or even within the same song), in a manner that goes beyond the intentionally incohesive vibe the song selection has. It's an album that's difficult to build a consensus on, because how could you make up your mind when even the album itself can't. "That Someone Is You" and "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" are irreverent punk fun but border on throwaway, and then they're situated right next to rock anthems as full of life and vigour as "Mine Smell Like Honey" (a chorus so effortlessly soaring it comes out of nowhere) and the self-snarky "All the Best", which put the "kick" in kicking the bucket ("it's just like me to overstay my welcome, bless"). "Every Day Is Yours to Give" tries to be atmospheric but slows things down to a slog with little beyond the surface textures, yet "Oh My Heart" is a genuinely elegant and beautiful plaintive lament, taking its melodies from its direct Accelerate prequel "Houston" but removing the tension surrounding them, allowing the grace of it come to front. For every striking success there's a sudden clumsy step tripping over around the corner.

Within the up-and-down lot there are two rock solid classics which solidly slot into the greater canon, and go a good way in boosting Collapse Into Now's role in the greater whole. "Überlin" is the big one, though it never makes it out to be the case. It's almost dangerously unassuming, keeping things close to the ground and carries itself largely by its simple acoustic riff and steady beat. It conjures an impeccable atmosphere though, conveying getting lost in an urban metropolis and finding amazement from the sheer size of it through a dream-like sway, offering an evocative tone the rest of the album intentionally steers away from. Most of all, it's loaded with killer vocal moments, from the constant interplay between Stipe and Mills to the superbly strong chorus with a great melody and touching bittersweetness, and the little twists and turns that drill into your head (the interjecting "that's astounding!" where you can practically hear the parentheses is my favourite). It's an undeniably signature-like R.E.M. song in how it's grand without ever making itself intentionally so. 

"It Happened Today", meanwhile, is pure catharsis. Its first half doesn't make it out to seem so, admittedly: musically it's a neat throwback to 90s coffee shop alternative but not in such a standout fashion you'd highlight it specifically, and Stipe's lyrics could be seen as another self-deprecating nod to the split but other songs do it better. The big thing here is that Stipe leaves his lead spot halfway through to the song, and that's where the tune lifts off: a group of wordless vocal harmonies layer one on top of another, filling the song with counter-melodies and vocal tones and giving it wings, the music shooting off accordingly. The initial light touch turns out to be a build-up for something greater, and for that second half it's a song of pure jubilation - a hint of bittersweet ache haunting in the background, but drowned by the sheer power of a number of voices shouting into the skies in unison. It's a Moment. 

There's a lot of those Moments throughout Collapse Into Now, and it's amusing that in an album which frequently changes its tone so obviously from song to song, it's the small moments that really stand out instead of the great sound switches themselves. Even in its weaker moments, something inevitably jumps out: e.g. with "Every Day Is Yours to Give" it's that small bridge after the second chorus where the beat intensifies and carries the vocal melody for a short while. Some are big like the stand-out chorus of "Mine Smell Like Honey", others fleeting such as the beautiful string part of "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando & I" (which is otherwise a perfectly serviceable mood moment but nothing too excellent) or the moment the guitar melody emboldens and begins to carry the verses properly in the pretty but inessential "Walk It Back". Even "That Someone Is You", in all its throw-away nature, gets its own moment when Mike Mills shouts "You! You! You! You!" repeatedly, which is simultaneously hilarious, stupid and hilariously stupid fun. There's at least something in every single song, even when the rest of the tune falls short, and that keeps the album running and adds to its hodgepodge feel.

The overall way that Collapse Into Now's stop-start flow is constantly throwing one off the wheels is fun in a way, and it's certainly a stubbornly playful way for the band to refuse the listener a tragic end: Collapse Into Now honestly doesn't sound like the last album from an iconic band, it's too irreverent for that. No sad tears, no dramatic goodbyes, and most of the time the subject is vaguely touched upon the band actively ridicule themselves for staying together this long. The actual finale, the very last song on the very last R.E.M. album, plays around with the idea too. "Blue" is a heavily textured, almost discordant spoken word piece featuring Patti Smith's haunting wailing (which in itself is another flashback to the past), and it could almost pass as the final end of a sentence if left as is. But then after a brief moment of feedback, it kicks into a reprise of "Discoverer", the thunderous (and great) stadium call the whole record started with, and the album loops unto itself, the finale just going back to the start all over again. It absolutely works: it's a fantastic in-album throwback and one of those big Moments you'll take away from the album, simply because how smoothly "Blue"'s chaos transitions to the fist-pumping clarity of "Discoverer", with the latter giving the former its own closure. It's also another cheeky way for R.E.M. to not go down the way you'd have expected. They've delivered the perfect way to end an album that only serves the record itself; it doesn't matter that it's the last time they'll ever deliver one and the slot practically begged for a career-wide statement. 

That attitude, which is honestly charming, certainly doesn't excuse Collapse Into Now's flaws, and it certainly has them - it's far from the upper echelon's of R.E.M.'s discography with its varying quality of songwriting and it's maybe a little disappointing that I have to say that about their last ride. And yet it still stands out, makes a fuss and refuses to simply fizzle out into nothing: flawed or not, there's much to remember within it, even if sometimes it's just a short moment of brilliance within something else. It is maybe most of all a fun album, even with its occasional somber moment. For the album's creation they largely got together in the studio to play absolutely anything they wanted with little greater plan or consideration for any next steps; from the beginning they chose not to even think about touring the album. As such, it's charmingly casual. By intentionally stepping away from the shocker news that would follow it, it gives way for a genuinely natural ending: friends playing whatever they wanted together in a room, just like how it all started back in the day. Warts and all, it's a graceful bow-out to a long career.

Rating: 7/10

Gotye - Making Mirrors (2011)

1) Making Mirrors; 2) Easy Way Out; 3) Somebody That I Used to Know; 4) Eyes Wide Open; 5) Smoke and Mirrors; 6) I Feel Better; 7) In Your Light; 8) State of the Art; 9) Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You; 10) Giving Me a Chance; 11) Save Me; 12) Bronte

Still as shapeshifting as its predecessor but with a bigger confidence and flashes of the real Gotye behind all the genre exercises. And it's got the hits.

Key tracks: "Somebody That I Used to Know", "State of the Art", "Giving Me a Chance"

Gotye's - Wouter de Backer's - music is defined by its boundlessness, in that there is no definitive trait to it. It's a project centered around a single person's creativity but not limited by any notion of an established style to follow, and rather moving wherever the whim takes with whatever assets there are at hand. "Somebody That I Used to Know", the signature hit that's come to define Gotye, is on Making Mirrors but I'd be willing to bet that a number of people who ended up with the album in their collection after the fact listened it with mixed feelings, because there's little else like it on the album - beyond, of course, that maximalist, wide-screen notion of artsy pop music that happily walks its own trails.

The general freely wandering style and sound followed by a breakout hit could just as well describe Making Mirrors' predecessor, Like Drawing Blood - both albums operate under the same banner of unpredictability and share the same traits, even going so as far as both albums featuring an out-of-nowhere old-school soul jam (in this album's case, "I Feel Better") and a big breakaway hit ("Heart's a Mess" effectively made Gotye a star in his local Australia in the fashion "Somebody That I Used to Know" would make him globally). Making Mirrors isn't a change from what came prior, but rather a refinement: it's more cohesive even with its variety and its footholds to its chosen ideas are firmer. I'm certain it wasn't designed with it in mind, but especially in retrospect it sounds like a more confident, ambitious version of Like Drawing Blood: the tighter sequel fit for global attention.

The song that achieved that breakthrough, "Somebody That I Used to Know", slightly towers over Making Mirrors. It speaks well of the song's strengths that it's managed to become this ubiquitous one-hit wonder, because the scene at the time certainly wasn't openly welcoming any quietly building and slowburning indie pop songs that take a good minute and a half to get to its first, carefully peaking chorus. But "Somebody That I Used to Know" won people over out of nowhere, and much of that's arguably in how brilliantly it holds attention as it builds its tension. It's a spring constantly tightening, an ostensibly bright tune with its xylophone flourishes masking a frustration that keeps the listener in its grip like a great story. Then Kimbra comes in, flips the narrative upside down and lets the tension explode at the end of her verse- the finale of the song consisting of both her and Gotye getting all that seething build-up underneath the song's calm exterior finally out. The song's got hooks for days sure - the xylophone melody and the chorus are both instant earworms - but it's that slowly unfurling emotion that really makes it such a standout and which still grips with each listen.

If Gotye had had some kind of foresight on the song's success and had made "Somebody That I Used to Know" the template for the full album, it'd likely have been a series of diminishing returns. But it ends up being just another chapter that Gotye briefly touches before the next, and right from the next song he's already moving towards whole different territories with the stadium-drum anthem "Eyes Wide Open" and the surprisingly convincing soul flashback "I Feel Better" following right close-by. Making Mirrors' restlessness is one of its strengths, with Gotye jumping into each idea in full and giving it his all for 3-4 minutes like he's fashioning a template for a full album out of each song, right before whisking it away for the next blind jump. There's a particularly great sentiment I'm borrowing from another review, which describes how Making Mirrors is ostensibly a release that is completely centered around a single singer/songwriter, but that Gotye has no desire to let that limit himself in instrumentation or ideas, and instead sees it as a liberating way to do absolutely whatever. While Like Drawing Blood already had this in spades, Making Mirrors really goes to town with the idea. Something like "State of the Art" is absolutely daft in theory: a reggae tune with robotic vocals, singing about the wonders of a real-life synthesizer like an extended advert, with "orchestral" flourishes throughout provided by that very same synthesizer. It's both alluring as well as creepy, like the devil enticing the listener by sweet talking. And somehow, it's incredible: a song where melody, production, mood and the sheer surreality of the concept make for intense, fascinating bedfellows. It's Making Mirrors' proof of concept: the brightest example of Gotye throwing himself all-in into an idea, no matter what it is. It's also an apt proof of the talent at display, because just on idea alone it could easily crash and burn badly - and rather, it's one of the clear standout moments.

While individually "Somebody That I Used to Know" and "State of the Art" might be more definitive, the final stretch of Making Mirrors is its most impactful. Gotye has mentioned that the writing process of the album was affected by flashes of introspection and depression throughout, and the trio of "Giving Me a Chance", "Save Me" and "Bronte" are a set of vulnerable, tender moments where that's the clearest - where the rest of the album so far has seen Gotye put on different uniforms, here it's just Wouter de Backer in his own clothes. "Giving Me a Chance" is fragile and hazy, a careful expression of hope that barely masks the vulnerability in Gotye's voice, "Save Me" breaks through that haze with clarity and grandeur as it reaches out to the listener in a fashion that channels how Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush handled pop formulas in the 80s, and "Bronte" acts as the calm lullaby to wish a final farewell with, a final moment of intimacy after a record full of big expressions. The three songs form a natural flow from one mindset to another - the one occasion where Making Mirrors actually does so, rather than switching channels abruptly with each song - and they're all fueled by a graceful elegance the album's avoided so far. It's a calm and personal ending for an album that makes its wild swings its main characteristic, but the final impression it leaves is incredible as a result: the awe and wonder of album's twists and turns turned into a set of emotional hooks that can touch quite strongly if you leave your guards down.

If there are any downsides, it's that the usual caveats which apply to any style-shifting release like this are present on Making Mirrors as well, in that the running order may as well have been shuffled and inevitably there's a few songs where the ideas haven't been as strong as elsewhere - namely the slightly annoyingly super-perky "In Your Light" really doesn't support its near-five minutes and the dub moods of "Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You" meanders around a little too non-descriptively. But they're light blemishes rather than obvious tarnishes, and they don't take away from the imagination and energy Gotye otherwise displays throughout Making Mirrors. It's an album that just as much impresses through its songs (and there are certainly more points to highlight here than already mentioned, e.g. the criminally short "Easy Way Out" that frantically opens the album after the intro track) as it does through its creator. Gotye as an artist presents a kind of untamed excitement, coming across like a mad creator at work who displays an intriguing creativity even when missing the mark. Those signs were already there on the previous albums of course, but Making Mirrors feels like the peak of that particular evolutionary path, creating the most elaborate version of what Gotye seems to want to achieve, even if it's not perfect and I'm not sure whether I prefer this over Like Drawing Blood. Of course after this record Gotye seems to have withdrawn himself from recording under his own name so it's getting harder to find out if whatever he would pull next would further build up on that. He'll likely be written down in pop culture history as a quirky one-hit-wonder, but to define him solely through that one song feels absurd when even the album itself steers away from being defined by any particular single idea it presents.

Rating: 8/10