I don't know if anyone actually follows this blog (or has this in their RSS or anything) but if you've wondered why it's been so quiet for such a long time, it's because I decided to indulge in my post-millennial fantasy of having a retro-styled music review site. From hereon in, all content will be posted there.
You can find it at https://grumpfox.neocities.org/ !
1) Moving; 2) The Saxophone Song; 3) Strange Phenomena; 4) Kite; 5) The Man with the Child in His Eyes; 6) Wuthering Heights; 7) James and the Cold Gun; 8) Feel It; 9) Oh to Be in Love; 10) L'amour Looks Something Like You; 11) Them Heavy People; 12) Room for the Life; 13) The Kick Inside
Key tracks: "The Saxophone Song", "Wuthering Heights", "Oh to Be in Love"
For a young solo singer/songwriter it's hard to imagine a better launchpad than what Kate Bush got for her debut. David Gilmour's backing guaranteed she could get nearly all the creative freedom she could want, not to mention the label deal and the PR push to begin with. The only concession she had to make was that she had to use session musicians rather than her own backing band, but all the hired hands involved with the album were seasoned pros who clearly understood her vision and who clicked not just with the songs but with each other as well. Above all, she had a calling card as triumphant as "Wuthering Heights" up her sleeve - one of the all-time iconic debut singles and genuinely an awe-inspiring song of the magnitude that any artist would kill to have somewhere in their discography, much less as their first single. The odds are so stacked in favour of Bush that it's easy to forget she's barely 19 here and, to put it politely, still learning the ropes.
It wouldn't be fair or correct to call her the album's weak point - she's deservedly the star of this show and commands the songs with confidence - but she is the greenest thing on what is otherwise a staggeringly professional production and it does show across the songs chosen. This is especially true if you're coming onto this album with any kind of expectation of what "a Kate Bush album" should sound like whether that's through her reputation or having heard any of her later works first (which I imagine is the likely case these days). For that matter, even if you're only aware of "Wuthering Heights" that's still the case because in all of its arrangement, structure and performance it stands out massively from the rest of The Kick Inside. "Wuthering Heights" is a colossus of a song that's constantly on the brink of overwhelming itself with another new trick around the corner but which never falters, only boldens: just when you think it couldn't get bigger, it throws in front of you something like a guitar solo straight from a prog rock guitar hero album. Every little detail and aspect of its arrangement - and there are many - are put to powerful use, to weaponise Bush's eccentrically rambling verse melodies and the chorus that must have dropped the jaws of every label head who heard it for the first time to the floor. It's by and far the most fleshed-out, most deftly arranged and most ambitious song on the entire record, something that in a logical sense should've appeared a good couple of albums down the line and with more experience in her belt. Instead, it's here and it's by and far the most accomplished thing on the album and you won't hear anything else like it on The Kick Inside.
Outside its big centrepiece song, you can tell Bush is still a young songwriter. A good one for the most parts, but her writing is more conventional and straightforward in a manner that doesn't feel entirely by intent, and her lyrics are rather matter-of-fact and often very obviously indebted to whatever media she's consumed recently. The Kick Inside is at its best when you do start to hear her more recognisable elements emerge: the deliciously fluttering chorus and swiveling structure of "Oh to Be in Love" where she moulds a pop song in her own image, the atmospheric waves of "Moving" and its counterpart "The Saxophone Song" where those waves are turned into a lush prog-pop dream (with some wonderfully delirious synth arpeggios towards the end), or "James and the Cold Gun" which probably doesn't work quite as much as it would want to but Kate Bush doing a cowboy rock anthem is exactly the kind of off-kilter firecracker the album benefits from. You can hear a talent emerge, rearing its head across the album on and off. Though also on the flipside that same inventiveness does also lead onto the cod-reggae flavoured "Kite", which is exactly the kind of awkward idea you bury in your debut and never play again once you come to your senses.
At thirteen songs The Kick Inside also feels oddly long despite its perfectly average 40-odd minute length, thanks to a number of songs particularly towards the latter half which sound like lesser versions of others you've heard so far already: "Feel It", "L'amour Looks Something Like You" and "Room for the Life" come to mind in particular. Bush's backing band here is as fantastic a set of session musicians as you can get and the production still stands up, as even now this sounds wonderfully warm with some delightful instrumental flair (I heavily recommend headphones for this, especially to appreciate those gorgeous basslines); the downside is that every song bar "Wuthering Heights" and the three Bush solo pieces (of which the tender "The Man With the Child in His Eyes" is the highlight) is treated with the same approach, which makes much of the album sound alike to some extent and in turn really highlights the parts where the writing is weaker than elsewhere. I always feel it's unfair to judge an album based on what its creator would go on to do in the future, but in the case of The Kick Inside it's nigh impossible to avoid doing so when one of Bush's fortés in every single other album of hers is the range of her palette. Here the one particular shade used across the entire record mainly points out that she's still not quite there.
I may be lowballing the rating here a little bit because The Kick Inside is an enjoyable listen but I also don't think this would be quite as remembered if it didn't have "Wuthering Heights" or if it didn't have the retrospective benefit of her legacy afterwards keeping its memory alive. Only about half of this is genuinely remarkable, while the rest paint a picture of a young musician's humble beginnings. Which is, well, enjoyable certainly to some extent but I don't think anyone really pines to hear Bush in the role of just a frontwoman of a standard 70s pop band.
1) Planet Telex; 2) The Bends; 3) High and Dry; 4) Fake Plastic Trees; 5) Bones; 6) (Nice Dream); 7) Just; 8) My Iron Lung; 9) Bullet Proof... I Wish I Was; 10) Black Star; 11) Sulk; 12) Street Spirit (Fade Out)
Key tracks: "The Bends", "Fake Plastic Trees", "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"
Radiohead are traditionally seen as a band who are not bothered by the expectations of others and thus they fearlessly do exactly whatever it is they want at any given time. This is for the most part completely true (and it's why most of their albums sound completely unexpected), with the exception of The Bends. At this stage the band were dealing with critics who had already labelled them a one hit wonder after "Creep", audiences who only wanted to hear "Creep" and a record label who really, really wanted them to record more "Creeps", and so there was an incredible amount of pressure on the band for their sophomore. What made things worse is Radiohead had never been too keen on their sudden smash hit to begin with (the signature guitar disruptions were an attempt to sabotage the song, which backfired spectacularly) and thanks to its runaway fame, they had already began to despise the song they felt had became an anchor around their necks - the first informal taster for The Bends was "My Iron Lung" which was a very unsubtle dismissal of "Creep". Rather than cave in to the pressure of the follow-up, Radiohead's motivation for their second album became the need to demonstrate to the world that there was more to them than just one song and that whatever they released needed to shut up any doubters who were dismissing the band as already-has-beens.
So The Bends is all about Radiohead proving their worth and it does it with flying colours. While it’s a clear continuation from the grunge-era guitar walls Pablo Honey rather than a radical shake-up, Radiohead are not just showing a whole lot more ambition and range here but they're also not so subtly showing it off and flexing their capabilities. There’s a wider range of tones and moods than Pablo Honey ever had and running through the album is constant and obvious experimentation with production choices, arrangements and atypical song structures; even Yorke has stepped up with his lyrics, starting to develop his own characteristic voice. "Planet Telex" is a very intentional starting point for the album because it demonstrates from the lift-off that this isn't the same Radiohead who made their humble appearance a few years ago, its spacey atmospherics, loop-like drums and electric piano distancing the band as far as they can from the previous album's limited soundworld. Though "Planet Telex" is the furthest out there that The Bends goes, much of the album sounds like Radiohead challenging themselves to do something new with every song like each track began as a songwriting exercise to write something in X sound or style. It's never predictable where the album goes and just when you think you've figured The Bends out, it throws another curveball or sidestep to a different style and sound with the next song.
That's much of the album and not all, and thanks to that it becomes ridiculously obvious what the lowlights are. The Bends is a classic by its reputation and due to its importance in the wider Radiohead timeline, but it's not a classic wholly on its songs - otherwise we wouldn't have "Sulk", "Black Star" or "Bones" cluttering the tracklist. They're so close to Pablo Honey that their inclusion here was either the band throwing an uncharacteristic bone to the past audiences or they simply didn't have as much new material as they thought they did and thus some b-roll material was thrown in to fill the album. It's the only way to explain the gap between their middle-of-the-road rock antics and the rest of the album: if The Bends is about looking forward, then these three songs inexplicably revert back to the past. On Pablo Honey they may have stood out more positively but in the new company they're in they're sticks in a mud and almost haplessly straightforward compared to everything else going on.
That "everything else" meanwhile really is one of music's great and unexpected level-ups. Half the album was released as singles in one way or another and they're largely all incredible and miles ahead of anything on the last album. "Planet Telex" soars with its space-age textures, "High and Dry" is a rare glimpse of Radiohead in an unabashed pop mode in a way they'd these days rather forget about even though songs like this demonstrate how brilliant they were at it, "Fake Plastic Trees" launched a thousand other British rock ballads draped in strings and none of them ever bettered the earnest emotional power of the original, "My Iron Lung" is a noisy and unpredictable kiss-off that gets more delightfully sassy as it goes while bridging this and the last album together in a very natural manner, and "Street Spirit" as the closing chapter points the way forward to the next, previewing the anxiety and depression of OK Computer as it submerges itself into a gorgeous, haunting darkness that's scarily blissful towards the vocal runs of the end (a sentiment like "immerse your soul in love" has never sounded more foreboding). The direct guitar anthem "Just" is the only one that's never particularly grabbed me and it's for no real reason why that I could point out (great video though!), but I do find that the borderline joyously bouncy "The Bends" actually does everything it does but better, and in my imaginary timeline these would have swapped their single and deep cut statuses; "The Bends" also very powerfully brings the album back to earth after the shock cold open of "Planet Telex" which further adds to its impact. "Nice Dream" and "Bullet Proof" in-between are both slow and atmospheric, too gentle to jump out but beautifully serene enough to sink into, showcasing the band's growing desire to build and sustain moods rather than simply go out loud at all times; plus, the sudden wake-up call of "Nice Dream"'s ending is the most memorable structural whiplash thrown at the listener on the record.
The thing is, The Bends is clearly a transitional album: not only for Radiohead themselves whose story would start in earnest with OK Computer (as most people would attest to), but also for British rock as a whole as you can easily point to specific songs here that acted as launchpads for the entire careers of other groups. That's a ridiculous amount of accolade and cultural importance which can easily obstruct that at the end of the day this is still an album by a band caught in the middle of a more significant development phase. Therefore, all the usual hallmarks of transitional albums apply here too despite The Bends' significance in the Radiohead biography: it's one foot in the future and the other still stuck in the past, moments of brilliance and exciting peeks in future directions interspersed with old ways still lingering around and hints of change that have yet to be fully realised. A good half of this album is inarguably brilliant and still stands strong with the rest of the band's discography even if they undoubtedly became a much more exciting band later down the line, and though the other half of the tracklist is more hit and miss there is a rush of excitement in hearing the band figuring out who they are with such vivid ambition. Often that energy and ambition also translates to genuinely excellent pieces of 90s guitar crunch. Over the years I've gone back and forth and back and forth with The Bends (in RYM it's probably one of the albums I've most changed the rating to), from early indifference to various honeymoon phases when it cracked through my defenses and then wild pendulum motions depending on which aspect of the band resonates with me more at any given moment. It probably tells as much about me as a listener as it does about The Bends' nature as an album in-between phases and while I've now landed somewhere between "good" and "really good" with it, don't let the comparatively "low" (pft) personal rating fool you. This is still an essential 1990s rock album for its influence alone.
1) The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One; 2) The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. Two & Three; 3) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea; 4) Two-Headed Boy; 5) The Fool; 6) Holland, 1945; 7) Communist Daughter; 8) Oh Comely; 9) Ghost; 10) Untitled; 11) Two-Headed Boy, Pt. Two
Key tracks: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", "Two-Headed Boy", "Holland, 1945"
Like I presume many people have done over the years and certainly in the 2000s, I originally downloaded (illegally!) In the Aeroplane Over the Sea because of its status as Indie Rock 101 study material and as the kind of essential listening that you come to learn about when you spend a moment among music geeks in the internet. Likewise, like I assume happened to those many others as well, I then spent my first listens in a state of "ok, and?" after the album with way too much weight across its humble shoulders did not, in fact, turn me into a crying mess crumbled in front of something beyond mortal understanding. Thanks to time and persistence, I'm now proud to announce that after almost two decades from that first exposure I not only own a copy of this physically (by happenstance, admittedly), but I am this close to understanding the fervour!
I'm obviously being glib above, but the truth is I do understand why In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has its reputation: if there's any record that sounds like something that is going to be someone else's most beloved thing in the world, then this is it and its rebirth as a legendary album through internet word-of-mouth alone is one of my favourite stories of the 00s world wide web. And for the first half of the album, it makes a damn good case about deserving to be all the way up there with the greats. Jeff Mangum & co hide behind a great number of (intentional or unintentional) acts of being as quirky and uncommercial as you could get (the album credits read more like D&D lore book with items like euphonium, zanzithophone and a wandering genie, the uneven production, the concept that floats somewhere being about Anne Frank and just being really horny on main), but he's simply undeniably great at writing stupendously catchy and instant melodies that could be stretched into pop songs by definition and his chosen arrangements in no way obscure that. Just check out the the first twenty minutes of the album which throws one iconic cut after another like it's nothing: all parts of oddly joyful "The King of Carrot Flowers" (including the infamous "I love you Jesus Christ!", which takes an awful lot of attention in the wider discourse from the euphoric second half), the sublimely beautiful title track which I think is the key that has the greatest chance to unlock this as a personal experience to anyone, "Two-Headed Boy" which is one of the greatest man-and-guitar salvos in indie rock and "Holland, 1945", the fuzzy punk rock anthem that injects some well-needed energy into the record and sounds so blissfully delirious doing so. Even the interlude "The Fool" stacks up. It's a run of songs that thrill, resonate and excite all at once, that sound both like high art and approachably warm and comforting. Above all they're ridiculously, affectionately catchy - I've barely even looked at the lyrics sheet to this album over the years and I could still convincingly sing karaoke with nearly every line across all those songs, and frequently do when I listen to the album. People have been converted into faith with lesser miracles.
Then In the Aeroplane Over the Sea reveals itself to be one of the most obviously lopsided, top-heavy albums I've heard. There isn't a subtler or fancier way to put it - nothing after "Holland, 1945" has the same strength or charisma that the album was so full of right up to that point. "Communist Daughter" is pleasant but mostly memorable for the line about semen stained mountain tops (it took me an awful lot of time to understand that he really does say that and it wasn't just my mishearing), "Oh Comely" is a centerpiece epic without the ambition to be one or the melody or spark that could successfully carry its eight whole minutes, "Ghost" comes in through one ear and goes out the other, and of the two instrumental intermissions "Untitled" is the filler one. The reprise of "Two-Headed Boy" makes for a functional finale and it could be a beautiful way to bookend the record, if it had been preceded by a more impactful run of music that built up to its resigned farewell. As impressive as the first twenty minutes were, the next are disappointing - still decently enjoyable but a far cry from where we were, almost as if someone had swapped songs from an earlier version of the album before Mangum went back to hone things down. And this is the spot where I've been for a good portion of my life that I've been making acquaintances with this album, and I imagine it's where I'm likely going to stay too - in the past week as I've been preparing for this ramble the only thing I've really wanted to listen to is this album, and even during this binge nothing has shifted.
That is, admittedly, in large part because I don't hear this as a particularly personal experience and it feels more like a museum piece that you admire from a distance. The effect of the hype is real, but not in a way that would affect the album's inherent qualities but rather I've never been able to hear this as just an album like any other that waits for me to imprint my personal context and experiences to its songs. So, it's remained a little aloof and its weaker moments haven't been able to penetrate my defenses in a way that some less exemplary deep cuts have on albums I have deeper personal attachments to, where I can forgive the flaws to the extent that the surrounding material supports them. That just isn't the case with In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, even when its strengths are obvious and even though in particular the title track and "Holland, 1945" have managed to worm their way into my personal canon of beloved favourites. I do feel genuinely miffed about it too, not because I just want to be part of the cool gang but purely because the simple quality of those first five songs (and the interlude in-between) makes me desperately wish the rest of the album was of that caliber. Who knows, maybe it could be one of the all-time greats then. As it is, it's a tale of two halves - and one of them is exactly as incredible as people praise.
(Fun fact: my CD copy of this is a hand-me-down from a friend and was supposedly straight out of the shrink wrap after he had bought it brand new from the shop, and rather than the famous drum head lady the front cover is the "front" panel of the fold-out poster style liner notes. It feels like I'm missing a slipcase or something? It's actually quite hilarious, to me anway, that I finally own a copy of this and of course it's missing the bloody iconic cover)
1) Everyone Involved - A Gay Song; 2) Charlie Murphy - Gay Spirit; 3) Blackberri - It's Okay; 4) Smokey - Strong Love; 5) Robert Campbell - Dreamboy; 6) Mike Cohen - Evil & Lusty; 7) Lavender Country - Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears; 8) Chris Robison - Big Strong Man in My Life; 9) Steven Grossmann - Out; 10) Tom Robinson - Good to Be Gay; 11) Buena Vista - Hot Magazine; 12) International Gay Society - Stand Up for Your Rights; 13) Scrumby & Martin - Hots for a Hustler; 14) Paul Wagner - The One; 14) Conan - Tell Ol' Anita
Songs of love, empowerement and defiance - hidden hits with a big rainbow heart.
Key tracks: "A Gay Song", "Big Strong Man in My Life", "Tell Ol' Anita"
I'm going a little personal here to start with - sorry - but I think personal is an appropriate place to begin simply because a compilation of old songs of queer defiance like this hits a little a different when you are flying the rainbow flag yourself. Now, that's sentiment I wouldn't have related so strongly with if I had been writing this review earlier in my life - for many years I didn't consider my sexuality to ever be a point worth raising. I'm writing this during Pride month and that used to be a concept I felt almost alien towards: I've always accepted being gay and never felt I wanted to be anything different, but I also felt no relation to the wider LGBT+ community and if anything I found myself rather estranged by it, being so out of sync with what was considered the general "gay culture", and as a result who I am attracted to became a completely blasé topic for me in the wider sense of things. But people change, positions in your life change, your relationships change, and governments change and so do the people in power who no longer care about making life comfortable for everyone. I still don't perhaps fully relate to everything that Pride is all about but these days I do carry a little rainbow emblem on my shoulder bag and the importance of that representation has grown more meaningful on a personal level. And with that softly cultivated personal connection in mind, hearing music that was written and performed by people who were genuinely gambling around with their wellbeing by being so open about who they loved now strikes a somewhat deeper personal importance (and it certainly brings your own issues into perspective). This compilation came somewhat out of nowhere for me (I can't even remember how I stumbled across it in Bandcamp) but it took me by surprise during a period of self-analysis when it became something strangely comforting - proud - to listen to.
Strong Love gives the spotlight to a group of voices who felt empowered in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots to be who they are and sing it out and loud; the songs here are specifically and intentionally from the perspective of gay men, without downplaying the importance of any other groups (which the liner notes acknowledge too). Much of the material here was distributed through limited circulation at most, some from acts who never amounted to more than some random songs. Only a few artists featured only ever made it to a major label, with their efforts receiving little promotion partly thanks to their open sexuality and their albums now have a status of little below cult records that have yet to be rediscovered by modern audiences. The succinct but tight fifteen-song selection runs a whole gamut of styles, from celebratory and by default rebellious anthems openly celebrating queerness and demanding equal justice, to pop songs of a various degrees of horniness and a handful of forlorn acoustic laments with writers bearing their souls on the injustices they're living through. Some are joyous, others heartbreaking; some are political and others are more personal, though by default given the subject and the times the personal is also political.
From a more "objective" perspective - judging the music and presentation alone - it's a ragtag selection of competent and often fun songs that bear no shame should they be stood next to any more esteemed peers of theirs from this decade. Robert Campbell's "Dreamboy" is vintage 70s dreaminess that bears the hallmarks of classic studio-focused crossroads where art and pop meet, "Stand Up for Your Rights" (International Gay Society) and "It's Okay" (Blackberri) have that post-flower power funk groove going on with sufficient charisma to have become highlights on any more genre-specific selection, "Big Strong Man in My Life" (Chris Robison) is only a rough demo but would've had the clear potential to be a huge bubblegum smash with some lyrical tweaks, or a non-male singer given the times. The collection throws a few curveballs along the way too, even extending to country (Lavender Country's hilariously sassy "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears") and cabaret (Scrumby & Martin's "Hots for a Hustler", a drag queen stage show in sound alone) - it paints a vivid picture of a vibrant community of varied musicians who can't be pigeonholed and who refuse to compromise on their individuality. The tones and production values flicker wildly back and forth across the fifteen songs which is kind of fun (and kudos for the compilers for making it work as well as it does), and on surface level it's a chaotic representation of a handful grassroots 70s musicians who never made it big but who could have. That alone makes Strong Love a decently good and interesting listen.
But for a "scene" compilation such as this, the context and concept are vitally important - especially for a collection of this type of theme - and it's the shared spirit throughout that makes Strong Love not just cohesive but also meaningful. Throughout the entire album the connecting thread between the songs is a combination of boldness, bravery and earnestness - everything comes from the heart and the musicians are living the truth they preach in the fullest. Lyrics like "gay is natural / gay is good / gay people should / all come together and fight for our rights" are so blunt that they're from a modern perspective cheesy or even cringy, but put it in the context of a random collective of political youths (Everyone Involved) singing out a statement that few others would with zero desire to hide the message for the masses, and it flips into a genuinely inspiring passage of words. Even the more straightforward love songs sound practically subversive because of a few little choice pronouns here and there, with an impact that countless more contemporary attention-baiting songs wish they had a fraction of. All the songs have such a wide big heart that it strikes a very personal chord, and it makes these generally good obscure 70s pop songs into a whole more resonant bunch. The intimate confessionals obviously benefit from the meaning the most: the genuine heartbreak running through every line of Steven Grossmann listing every in-closet person's nightmares in "Out", the warmth that radiates across Paul Wagner's devoted love song "The One" and the quiet but confident defiance in Conan's "Tell Ol' Anita" and Mike Cohen's "Evil & Lusty" are the most emotional songs of the entire compilation simply because of their unique combination of performance, wider context and intimacy.
(I have to raise "Tell Ol' Anita" here out specifically for being particularly striking. Aimed at Anita Bryant, a former pageant model who became one of the big faces of the anti-gay rights movement, the final gentle kiss-off which also closes the record is a such a stunning combination of sweetness and rebellion. "Tell ol' Anita / There's nothing sweeter / Than the sound of my lover's name" never fails to give me the chills)
Strong Love is really rather powerful at places, but in an affirming and empowering way. While occasionally melancholy, it's ultimately a joyous album that revels in the self-determined freedom of its songs, and while many of the songs are rough around the edges to some degree there's a beautiful warmth glowing throughout. The relatively small size of the compilation - fifteen songs, fifty minutes - keeps things neatly consistent too and while there's always going to be the odd weaker song in any compilation the pace never gets too disturbed. And in case you're wondering - for me personally it's the somewhat musically heavy-handed titular "Strong Love" itself and the admittedly funky "Hot Magazine" that just don't quite measure up to the rest though it's not too far away either. This compilation seems to have generally flown over many people's radars and it's a shame - not only because it would make some kind of poetic justice to have these messages of love to play out more openly now that they can, but because there's plenty of genuinely great songs here that are treasures waiting to be found whether you're an enthusiast of the decade or not. And if you do find yourself falling in a category that makes this all the more personal to you, then consider this a history lesson; one lead by infectious melodies and a freewheeling spirit of togetherness no matter what.
1) Elementa; 2) Paratiisin Eeva; 3) Puolikas hyvää; 4) Konx om pax; 5) Verenpuna; 6) Sulaneet muovisotilaat; 7) Neljäkymmentä päivää; 8) Alkemisti
Key tracks: "Elementa", "Paratiisin Eeva", "Sulaneet muovisotilaat"
With some (most?) of my reviews I like to provide an idea of the context behind the albums to give a little insight of how they came to be what they are, especially with these more "regional" releases where most people reading this have little to no idea what this band or album is. It gets a bit trickier with Alkuteos because CMX's website was hacked and deleted off the cyber realm in 2015; when it finally came back, in a typical CMX fashion the band announced they had no desire to spend energy trying to recreate the past and instead their website now (as it still currently stands) is largely just of a list of links on where to buy the latest releases. With the website, we also lost both the official biography where the band retrospectively revisited and reviewed their own past as they gave insight to each studio session, as well as the infamous Q&A page where in-between the band and the fans trying to outsnark one another they'd sometimes drop interesting trivia or detail behind the music when they were in the mood for it.
That means we have to take some inferred guesses, and I think the genesis behind Alkuteos lies in the band's touring activity prior to its recording. In 2016 CMX took on a concept tour subtitled "Rarely Heard Songs", with the concerts dedicated to b-sides, deep cut album tracks and songs they'd never performed live before; this meant that CMX got back in touch with some of their most erratic work, lost classics that the band had shockingly forgotten about and other songs that fans had begged to hear for years but which had been deemed too difficult to reproduce live thanks to their detailed production and/or keyboard/synthesizer heavy arrangements (CMX having never been a band with a particularly elaborate live setup). The tour was a success, and when in the following year when the band revisited their bonkers space prog opera record Talvikuningas for its 10th anniversary, they brought in another trick from their sleeves. The anniversary concert started with a "Prelude to Talvikuningas" section where the band, all four members now behind synthesizers and laptops, reimagined a number of thematically appropriate songs across the back catalogue. And if you ask me, it's that binge back into the deepest sections of their archives and the adventurous spirit bolstered by successful risk-taking which ignited a particular spark they took to the next album sessions.
I dislike the phrase "return to form" but in some cases it feels appropriate to use. CMX had been slipping across the past few albums, simplifying their form and content to diminishing degrees of success and the band was acutely aware of it as well. Alkuteos is inspired by the band's past selves, and CMX even acknowledge it openly via lyrical references (and one potentially coincidental musical reference - the near-end section of "Verenpuna" is very similar to the ending of Talvikuningas' "Kaikkivaltias" or is that just me?). The prog dials are turned up again and Yrjänä has gone back to cryptic theological prose in his lyrics, to the extent that Alkuteos could easily be read as a biblically inspired concept album - it all seems like a homecoming after years in the wilderness. But CMX are doing their return in their own way and so the 'inspired by' part is really just that, because the sound is fresh. Bringing out their prior synth escapades and inventing the "Elektro-CMX" form (which would continue to appear throughout the Alkuteos tour) has left an imprint on the album and Alkuteos is the most heavy on synths and programmed elements across an entire album's length that the band's ever been. It's not the synth-CMX album some may have hoped to hear one day because the band's clearly present throughout and they are rocking very heavy and hard; but the new elements have a fairly equal slice of the pie of the album's arrangement decisions: the new textures and sounds share an even footing with CMX of yore, and thus despite being reminiscent of the band's past Alkuteos isn't a simple retread. It's almost a hypothetical reset, a record that could have naturally followed up Talvikuningas (the metallic bass twang even feels so in touch with that album's sound world) while bypassing the decade afterwards entirely.
And for all its inherent mania (it is a very creatively mad album), Alkuteos is impeccably balanced and probably one of the best examples of CMX placing equal weight to, well, everything they're made out of in a single release. You've got your crooked and snarled prog (the chimaira-like couplet "Elementa" and "Alkemisti", "Konx om pax") and your loud and heavy guitars ("Neljäkymmentä päivää", "Puolikas hyvää"), but you also have the lush and welcoming melodic abandon that CMX used to be so wary about and now display so openly (the airy pop of "Paratiisin Eeva", the sky-reaching anthem "Verenpuna"); the warbling, keyboard-focused "Sulaneet muovisotilaat" is almost a brand new direction in its entirely. The indecipherable insanities are in harmony with the immediate choruses, like they had found a hidden formula after all these years; or it's simply the age and experience of a veteran band that has taught them to hone onto everything they are good at. With only eight songs and 45 minutes it's a compact run of songs where not a minute is wasted. It's almost economical in its approach, each of its songs assigned a clear and distinct role in the sequence where they all feel important and each jump out.
It is a welcome return home. It's the most inspired and exciting CMX have sounded in years, and they sound so inspired and excited themselves between the lines too. When a band reaches back into their past the danger is that they awkwardly try to fit into old clothes that no longer suit them, but CMX have brought back the spirit from their revisit into the past and the songs have a spark that places them alongside any past greats. Even "Puolikas hyvää", the now-expected token single that always shows any CMX album at its most uncharacteristically direct, practically refreshes the ruleset on its ilk because it's so excitingly headbanging it's almost ridiculous, and in the album's grim sterness it's a welcome flash of fun that most clearly reflects how renewed the record feels. "Paratiisin Eeva" is near heavenly in its unashamed ethereal suaveness, the twists of "Elementa" never stop thrilling. "Palaneet muovisotilaat" may be the biggest surprise, unassuming as it is at first glance in its role as a short breather among bigger statements. Its cold sound, drowned in synthetic production, is the furthest the album goes in taking its newest elements but in its heart it's a classic CMX ballad that has been given a new skin, and it makes it sound all the more chilling and yet strangely resonant and impactful.
In real life, I had partway written CMX off at this stage after a string of disappointing albums. They had become a band whose newest releases I'd only listen to thanks to a feeling of old obligation, until even that slipped through the cracks - the release of Alkuteos came and went for me without a single listen. It wasn't until a whim "well-why-not" mid-price bin purchase that it came to my life, and it was honestly a surprise. And having come back to it again for this review, I've been listening to it for a good week while holding off on finishing this review just so I don't have to cross it off my list entirely and I can keep returning to it. It's CMX finding a brand new wind, whether through fresh blood (the new producer Erno Laitinen behind the decks) or by reminding themselves of how great they used to sound by dedicating entire gigs to some of their most creatively wild material - it doesn't matter why, it's simply great that it happened. You could even consider the title of the album a pun, the likes of which Yrjänä loves so much: it translates to "Work of Origin" and while it's more obviously a biblical reference in line with much of the lyrics' theological angle, it's incredibly tempting to also see it as a sly nod for this being a new start.
Let's see if it lasts.
CD1 (Ilmari): 1) Tuulet ja myrskyt; 2) Uusi ihmiskunta (Videoversio); 3) Punainen komentaja; 4) Kivinen kirja; 5) En tahdo nähdä enää yhtään alastonta; 6) Sateenkaaren pää; 7) Kusimyrsky; 8) Rakkaudessa ja sodassa; 9) Laavaa; 10) Me tulemme kaikkialta; 11) Pedot; 12) Pretoriaanikyborgit; 13) Kappaleina
CD2 (Väinämö): 1) Niin me kaikki mennään; 2) Kain; 3) Iäti; 4) Linnunrata; 5) Tähtilaivan kapteeni; 6) Rikkisuudeltu; 7) Ojai; 8) Rautalankaa; 9) Teräs; 10) Kuolemaantuomitut; 11) Eteläisen tähtitaivaan kartoitus; 12) Laulu todellisuuden luonteesta; 13) Valoa nopeammat koneet
CD3 (Lemminki): 1) Hyökyaalto; 2) Magnetogorsk; 3) Suuri pyramidi; 4) Myrskynkosija; 5) Supersäie; 6) Kirotut; 7) Epätodennäköisyyslaskelma; 8) Vapaus johtaa kansaa (feat. Kotiteollisuus & 51 Koodia); 9) Mesokosmos; 10) Requiem 2012; 11) Vanhan liiton arkkiveisu; 12) Hullut koirat; 13) Mekaanisten lintujen puisto
Key tracks: Of the non-album material, "Kuolemaantuomitut", "Rautalankaa", "Mekaanisten lintujen puisto"
It's 2016. Digital formats now hold a stronger foothold than physical formats and streaming has started to take over as the primary method of music consumption for the general public. For those still holding out on physical music, CDs have been branded as the uncool choice and vinyl's baffling return to the mainstream is becoming a real thing. CMX, once a band who balanced unwavering commitment to their own whims with actual commercially successful hits, haven't had a truly popular single for a little over half a decade. The truth is, absolutely no average member of public is going to buy a 3-CD box set of singles, selected album material, b-sides and other extras - not the way they would with the first two Cloaca Maxima compilations and especially when you take into account how the timespan this third part includes one album with no singles, two with zero hits and only few songs they might actually recognise.
The fact that Cloaca Maxima III exists to begin with is like a fan wishlist prompt, a tradition that needs to be fulfilled now that the band have established this series of milestone marker collections - and maybe that's why in parts it feels like a release done out of obligation rather than desire. Let's face it, everyone is here for the third disc for its rare non-album cuts and those first two CDs dedicated to a reader's digest summary of the last 12 years - once again split between the louder rock songs and softer/subtler material per disc - are more perfunctory in nature. Which would go for some way to explain why a lot of this sounds so slapdash. The flow is abrupt and awkward throughout which is a stark contrast to the well-thought running order of the first two Cloaca Maximas, with "Kappaleina" closing off the first disc being a particularly egregious example that sounds like it was made through shuffle. The selections from the segued-together Talvikuningas haven't been edited with even the laziest of fade-outs and thus they end with a direct crash into a brick wall halfway through a note, which might then explain why only three songs from that record appear here even though it's one of the key albums out of the five featured here. The two new songs aren't that exciting either: the piano-accentuated "Tuulet ja myrskyt" is a perfectly pleasant anthem and "Niin me kaikki mennään" drills really heavily into the radio-friendly suomirock vibe the band had started to fall into in the recent years. Both are fine but stereotypical compilation filler, which CMX had previously avoided. Where the discs dedicated to the old and familiar on the first two CM compilations are still fun to listen as an experienced fan, the impact isn't quite the same here.
That said, the key takeaway from the first two discs are that they act as a convenient collection point for a number of non-album tracks CMX released in the timespan of the compilation, and this time it's actually pretty significant. "Kuolemaantuomitut" was released as a one-off single right before Talvikuningas and it's effortlessly beautiful, gracefully sincere and soaringly yearning: or to summarise it, it's pretty damn huge of an anthem that strikes very particular emotional chords. It's huge and far better than just a random loose single. "Kivinen kirja" and "Rautalankaa" were originally released on the earnest greatest hits compilation Kaikki hedelmät in 2008 and now included here for the benefit of every fan who skipped on that label-mandated release, and while I do like the straightforwardly loud "Kivinen kirja", it's "Rautalankaa" that really deserves the second time in the spotlight. What starts out as a typical CMX-rocker (complete with a pun title which Yrjänä loves, "rautalanka" being the coined term for the particular guitar sound used in the lead guitar riff), as soon as the strings hit it ascends to a whole new level of grandeur that's slightly reminiscent of the golden era classic "Puuvertaus" with its combination of orchestral flair and muscular guitars. The Pedot single "Uusi ihmiskunta" is also presented as its music video version with a guest verse from the Finnish rock legend Tuomari Nurmio, which to my knowledge hasn't been released earlier and while I prefer the feature-less original, having the alternative take in my library is welcomed.
The much-awaited third disc is... in retrospect kind of obviously a little bit of a letdown, in parts anyway. Both Seitsentahokas and Mesmeria were released after actual single releases had died in the industry and thus any leftover songs from those sessions remained unreleased officially until now. The first half of the 3rd CD is mostly dedicated to previously unheard material from those sessions (touched up after the fact where required) and with those two albums being two of the weakest CMX have released, the outtakes aren't particularly exciting. "Kirotut" and "Epätodennäköisyyslaskelma", two b-sides from the Pedot era are also rather throwaway in nature and in the liner notes Yrjänä admits as much between the lines. Things do get better halfway through, kicked off by the non-album collaboration single "Vapaus johtaa kansaa" with Kotiteollisuus and 51 Koodia - it's a whole lot of unhinged testosterone and masculine thrashing about, and it's a great deal of fun in its unashamed pop-metal flirtations. The incomprehensingly slobbering "Mesokosmos", the nihilist anthem "Requiem 2012" and "Vanhan liiton arkkiveisu" with its half-improv sing-speak verses are all Iäti b-sides but they were finished after the album and they've got a tangled-up weirdness to them that's reminiscent of CMX b-sides of yore. "Mekaanisten lintujen puisto" - "The Garden of Mechanical Birds" - at the end is the undeniable triumph of this collection: it starts out innocously enough if alluringly experimental, with a restless beat and an arrangement heavy on electric piano reminiscent of Radiohead when they were reconstructing their own essence at the turn of the millennium. Then the titular birds appear and the song falls into an abyss of nightmares for the next three minutes. It's maniac, creepy, almost genuinely distressing - and thoroughly brilliant.
The much-touted cover of pop superstar Antti Tuisku's "Hyökyaalto" should probably be acknowledged as well (recorded as an "exchange of pleasantries" after Tuisku covered CMX's "Pelasta maailma" in one of his albums), but in effect CMX just turn it into a very contemporary CMX single that probably could've been on Mesmeria and it becomes yet another example of a rock act covering a pop song that only highlights how the two worlds aren't as far apart as some people might like to think. It's fine and more of a curious footnote than you'd expect; still, more interesting than the Popeda cover "Hullut koirat" that comes and goes without leaving an impression. CMX don't really do covers and maybe these two prove a point why that's the case.
I guess the slightly lukewarm positivity is to be expected though. The first two Cloaca Maxima compilations felt like natural spots for the band to park on and reflect the prior years, with the covered albums forming clear chapters in the band's history. Here we have one album that could just as easily have been included in Cloaca Maxima II and it would've made perhaps even more sense, another that was a bizarre experimental rock opera that stands as its own weird monolith in the band's story and a set of three records that are loosely combined by the notion of CMX's grip on quality control beginning to loosen. It's all much more of a hodgepodge to make any sense out of together and the diversity in both sound and quality is spread wide. At the end of the day it's a good collection, because combining (some of) the best bits of those five records together and adding some (some) interesting rarities in the mix can't really fail as a recipe. It's just not as captivating as the last two.
1) Rakkaudessa ja sodassa; 2) Hyperborea; 3) Laavaa; 4) Ojai; 5) Kauneuden pitkä varjo; 6) Mestarirakentaja; 7) Valles Marineris; 8) Teräs; 9) Mystiikan ontologinen sydän; 10) Tuleen kirjoitettu; 11) Tulisaarna; 12) Eksopaleoklimatologi
Mesmeria is CMX's 15th studio album, their second on their fourth decade of operation. In the wider sea of internet dwellers with too many opinions on music I am probably one of the more positive people when it comes to bands continuing past their unofficial "sell-by" date (as mandated by fickle music nerds who latch onto the old canonical classic and ignore the rest); old dogs can learn new tricks, they can surprise and not be shackled by their past. Plenty of artists have had incredible latter day albums. But the older artists get, the easier it becomes for them to stagnate. You have to start taking bigger creative risks in order to say something meaningful; or as we Finns say, a rolling stone won't grow moss.
On Mesmeria CMX aren't rolling with the speed they used to. There's an attempt to keep things fresh: Yrjänä has switched onto a more straightforward lyrical style, even going so far as being openly biographical for probably the first time in his career on "Teräs", and the band's trusted court producer of their last decade Rauli Eskolin has stepped back. His replacement is a special superstar producer, the Pariisin Kevät lead figure Arto Tuunela - and on paper that's a titillatingly unpredictable combination, because the idea of Tuunela's hyper-colourful hi-fi productions somehow meeting CMX's pure power is bound to be a fascinating mishmash. But Tuunela has let his inner CMX fanboy stay in control a little too much and he keeps things perhaps a little too faithful. The only real way Mesmeria differs at all in sound from any other CMX album of the past two decades is the few cheeky arpeggio synths in a couple of tracks. In most parts, Mesmeria resembles your average CMX album in most ways.
Mesmeria might in fact be less than average. I've been umm-ing and ahh-ing this album over in my head for a while now and I've tried to find an insightful reason for what's wrong with it, but I'm running up empty - which may just sum up the album the best anyway. You can detect small particles of what could make an interesting album between the lines - namely some of the arrangement decisions and the couple of more askew cuts in the vein of the more acoustic and vaguely Aura-esque "Ojai" (which dates back to the early 1990s and has suddenly resurfaced now) and "Teräs" which restraints itself to a mere piano and atmospheric textures for half its runtime. But it's not enough. Mesmeria is mostly made out of politely loud and relatively straightforward cuts, destined as playlist filler for the local rock (with a big rhotic rrrrrock) radio stations who kindly allow the respected veterans to play their latest singles in-between the old hits constantly on rotation. No rough edges, no sense of adventure - simply industry pros recording a selection of songs they could have written in their sleep. This is also the first real debut of the new drummer Olli-Matti Wahlström as an official band member, but he still sounds like a session drummer cautious not to bring attention to himself, which is not only not helping with the album's general blaséness but it really highlights just what the former drummer Tuomas Peippo brought onto the formula with his technical showmanship.
It's just all very... milquetoast. Even the token oddball, the sprawling and seemingly indecipherable closer "Eksopaleoklimatologi" which nods towards CMX's prog side, sounds like a gentle reheat of the previous album Seitsentahokas' similarly rambling closer. The lead single "Rakkaudessa ja sodassa" is the most anaemic fit-for-airplay single CMX have pulled out and the bubbly synths in its bridges aren't enough to make its middlingly rocking chorus any less stale. "Rakkaudessa ja sodassa" is about the only thing I actually frown at here though; Mesmeria largely just passes by and makes for a decent background listen, but rarely comes close to entice the listener to place it in the foreground instead. Few songs stand out either by way of form ("Ojai", "Teräs") or through a sudden appearance of something more captivating (the backing vocals of "Tuleen kirjoitettu", the smoothly soaring chorus of "Valles Marineris" that threatens to be something that sticks). The rest of it sounds like it was written under obligation or habit, almost as if knowing that no one was going to crave to hear these songs a few years down the line. Apart from "Laavaa", which ironically is the safest, most hit-seeking thing on the entire record and yet goes all-in on it, including having some actual fire in its belly. It's simple, direct and positively effective, with a snappily anthemic chorus that strikes straight into your spine (and some fun bass runs in its bridge which are really pleasing to play). It's the best thing on the album and the only real takeaway from it, proving that CMX don't need to be quirky or difficult to be great, they just have to approach the brief with some passion - it's the only song here where it sounds like the band are actively engaged with it and that makes the biggest difference.
Across the last few CMX albums there's been a steep and steady decline as the band abruptly exited their golden years. Iäti was too safe and risk-averse but it brought in some songs and generally simply sounded like an experiment that didn't quite succeed, which happens to the best of us. Seitsentahokas doubled down on it by being flimsy on the songwriting department too, but it still had vigour at least. Mesmeria inadvertently makes it clear that those weren't just coincidental stumbles, but rather CMX themselves have been on decline and this marks the foot of the hill they've been spiraling down on - no passion, no energy, no songs of particular consequence. It's an entry towards the bottom of a long discography list that no one is going to click unless they're going for a deep dive; a middling album that even a big fan has little to comment on because it doesn't incite a strong enough reaction for it.
That gorgeous cover picture deserved a lot better.
1) Valoruumis; 2) Etuvartio; 3) En tahdo nähdä enää yhtään alastonta; 4) Luotisuora; 5) Nrsisti; 6) Kusimyrsky; 7) Rikkisuudeltu; 8) Me tulemme kaikkialta; 9) Jyrsijä; 10) Seitsentahokas
Key tracks: "En tahdo nähdä enää yhtään alastonta", "Kusimyrsky", "Seitsentahokas"
Seitsentahokas didn't arrive in this world easily. The original sessions were pushed back by a year when A.W. Yrjänä's home was broken into and, among many other things, the thieves had taken the early sketches for CMX's next album. After Yrjänä had taken a long break to recover and the band reconvened the following year, everyone disagreed about the new songs - guitarist Halmkrona infamously walked out of the session in frustration. Once everyone had calmed down and found a mutual ground to continue from, drummer Tuomas Peippo's other work outside the band meant that he wouldn't be able to invest as much time as everyone else, and conscious that this would mean yet more delays perhaps for the foreseeable future, the other three men decided that it would be easier to let him go. A friend of the band Olli-Matti Wahlström was recruited as a session drummer and after the tour was formally signed on as the new drummer, but officially Seitsentahokas was the first time since 1990's debut Kolmikärki that CMX had recorded an album as a three-piece
Whether by coincidence or not, Seitsentahokas became the oft-dreaded "back to basics" album. In order to bring the band back closer together, the record's chosen conept was to not include anything extra beyond what the four members (including whoever would be behind the drum kit) could muster together in one room. Two guitars, bass, drums and vocals and that's it; the credits section for the album is blunt and minimal, a sharp contrast to the more involved sound of the band's past decade. To give CMX credit where it's due, rather than succumb to attempts of replicating their old sound Seitsentahokas is stylistically still a continuation of where the band were overall in the early 2010s, with one foot in their imperial phase prog/metal/alternative hybrid and another in the more straightforward direction heralded by the preceding Iäti.
And it's... fine. The simpler sound world isn't actually something that particularly jumps out, primarily because there are still songs that sound complex enough to effectively distract from it - the eight-minute prog goblin "Kusimyrsky" ("Piss Storm", released as the lead single so the message was clear that this wouldn't be another easy radio record like Iäti) and the sprawling and tangled title track in particular sound like there's a lot more going on under the hood than there actually turns out to be. The sound is remarkably stuffed in fact: the two guitars fill each other's gaps and the bass is deep and steely and murmurs constantly underneath - it's so strongly in the mix in fact that it has a noticable physical reverbation through my room during select parts of the album where it growls the loudest.. Seitsentahokas is a berserker ready for war, with CMX hellbent on showing that they're not going to be pushed around by what temporary setbacks fate has thrown at their feet - it's an angry battering ram going full speed directly towards the listener for nearly its entire length.
The proof of the material's mundanity is that the bulk of the album's better songs aren't even necessarily particularly great tracks; they just do things differently enough that in this ten-song context they have a far more positive imprint than they otherwise would. "Nrsisti" begins like any other song on this album but the swervingly melodic and soaring chorus is so shimmery and light that it sounds genius against the general backdrop; the solemn ballad "Rikkisuudeltu" pulls off the same trick with its more gracefully melodic pace, even if its overwroughtness wouldn't be a part of the upper echelon on any other CMX album. "En tahdo nähdä enää yhtään alastonta" is a little too long and repetetive but its shambling weight and dynamic shifts (from murky to brutal to almost jubilant even if still quite grim) are refreshing even after just two songs. Even the mighty "Kusimyrsky" which once stood as the album's tall central column, spitting and growling everywhere as it tears through time signatures and shouts out perverse oneliners (the chorus' "flow over me" is the obvious thing here, but the concluding full stop of "trust in the number, yourself and the holy geometry" is my favourite), is no longer the highlight it used to be even if it's still one of the more exciting songs on the album thanks to how it's one of the few moving askew rather than directly ahead. It just could be more.
Fortunately the title track leans all-in on that and saves what it can of the album. "Seitsentahokas" is its titular album's brightest star, imploding further into itself with each weird breakdown or murmury verse, guided deeper by the deliciously metallic bass, and when its coil does unwind it bursts forward with a real rush that almost comes across as anthemic. It's the proggiest song on the entire record and I'm not meaning to imply that in order to succeed CMX must be weird and indecipherable - but it helps because that's the strength they've been operating on for nearly almost all their imperial phase albums in the decade just gone prior to this. They certainly do that better than they do charging ahead recklessly. In its last song Seitsentahokas finally finds its footing and itself and even if it's a little too late, it's finally something. Imagine a whole album filled with these dry and deranged creatures like "Kusimyrsky" and "Seitsentahokas". Just imagine.
But that's not the album we have in our hands in reality. The funny thing is that when Seitsentahokas was originally released, I was thoroughly thrilled by it - Iäti had left me a little disappointed and I ended up having a honeymoon phase with this album, thinking it was such a strong return to form. The reason I remember this at all is because I wrotea shoddy but glowing first impressions review on the scrappy little music blog I had at the time and to my shock and surprise CMX themselves linked to it on their Twitter feed - one of the few fleeting moments of wider visibility I've achieved with my ramblings. And then I completely forgot about the album for many, many years; in fact, I think I've listened to this more in the past couple of weeks preparing for this review than I have in a decade. The result of my archaeological dig is that I've found... a lot of nothing in particular, apart from a growing appreciation for "Seitsentahokas" the song itself. And when this review is done, Seitsentahokas will likely return to its place in the shelf and stay there for another long break. It's not bad or even boring so much as it is completely uneventful: it's an album centered around the belief that volume equals personality and sheer power means a song is interesting, and then fails to back that claim up. Even my scoring is clinical, because I've given Iäti a 6 and because it has more real standout songs than this has, Seitsentahokas has to be a notch lower. I would say it's staggering how run of the mill this is despite how it really tries not to be but that would be indicate an actual emotional reaction to the record. In hindsight, it's really obvious here that CMX had waded deeper into the creative rut that defines these years in their history.
1) Are You What You Want to Be?; 2) Ask Yourself; 3) Coming of Age; 4) Nevermind; 5) Pseudologia Fantastica; 6) The Angelic Welcome of Mr. Jones; 7) Best Friend; 8) A Beginner's Guide to Destroying the Moon; 9) Goats in Trees; 10) The Truth; 11) Fire Escape
Key tracks: "Are You What You Want to Be?", "Ask Yourself", "Best Friend"
I don't revere "Pumped Up Kicks" as much as many others do but I'm comfortable enough with it that I think its place in the 2010s commercial indie canon is well deserved. It could also never have been anything but a one hit wonder for Foster the People. Not only because the general public's attitude towards artists of this ilk in the 2010s was very much use-it-and-lose-it, hooking onto a random single from a field where ultimately most artists still tried to focus on albums and who perhaps never were in a position to be able to even follow up the freak hit's success to begin with (how many of these crossover acts actually had more than one real hit?). It was also likely to do with how Torches wasn't going to yield that many further rewards to begin with, bearing the sound of a songwriter trying to write another "Pumped Up Kicks" nine more times and not coming close, if you allow a little generalisation. But that song was a big hit and naturally the album was a success because of it, and eventually the time came to record another one and with it more potential hit songs. I don't think Mark Foster believed for a second he could ever pull it off.
The prevalent theme of Supermodel is the fear of losing everything you've worked for, and above all losing track of who you really are. It's full of questions on whether you truly are the person you could or even should be, whether the life you've wrapped around yourself is really the one you want to live and if you can ever feel content about it, whether you can live your life without trying to look back too much on your past decisions regardless of the collateral damage you've caused along the way - and that's just the first three songs. Supermodel is ridden with anxiety as its narrators question everything about everything, full of desperation to cling onto the things you do have and the constant fear that all of that will one day leave you. It's imposter syndrome as a concept album. It could just as well be simply writing exercises, but Mark Foster sounds exhausted and so ready for a good gut-spill throughout the record that I'm willing to believe there's a good amount of truth in there too. This is the big follow-up album to a genuine hit record by a songwriter who - for all intents and purposes based on his texts - is completely mortified of the prospect of failing the expectations, being considered a fraud or a dumb luck fluke for his past achievements and isn't sure if he even deserves to be in this position to begin with. So to beat his demons, he confronts them and writes an album about them. Supermodel isn't a happy record and its wounds feel raw rather than the kind of relatable melancholy much of Foster the People's peers dabble in. It is at times a surprisingly hard-hitting album as it waves its existential questions around, and primarily because of how sincerely Foster seems to be asking them rather than the lyrics themselves (which, to be fair, are pretty good and often very smart in their turns of phrase).
How those emotions are framed is another thing, and it's actually a little maddening just how invisible Supermodel has become in the wider discourse when as an album it goes a considerable length to be anything but. If Torches could be considered rather one-dimensional in its sound, Supermodel is a clear attempt to avoid that criticism once and for all; a friend of mine once said the album sounded like Foster the People trying to mirror every single one of their peers all at once. It's an occasion where "caleidoscopic" sounds like a genuinely befitting descriptor, where so many different sounds and colours explode all around the songs; hints of psychedelia, nu-disco, earnest singer/songwriter "indie" and stadium pop are peppered throughout in equal measures until they form into a singular, multicoloured bouquet of fireworks. Supermodel considers that big emotions require big musical notions, and so each song moves with giant motions, layered with elements and ideas and reaching for the heavens with every gasp. Even the barebones acoustic palate cleansers - "Goats in Trees" and the acceptingly disquieted closer "Fire Escape" - sound engulfing in their attempted intimacy.
In short, Supermodel dares to dream larger than life - and that's why it's so great. That opening run of songs as mentioned above not only confront the listener with the album's running themes head-on but also revel in how wide Foster and his bandmates have cast their net this time. The world-travelling opener "Are You Who You Want to Be?" was the first thing I heard back from this album back in the day, buried in a surprisingly influential year-end mix a friend had made, and it was hard to believe it was the "Pumped Up Kicks" guys: the tropicalia percussion, rhythmically erratic vocal flows and the pogoing chorus that suddenly bursts to life make for a wild, exciting and unexpected ride that never gets old. The album's centrepiece statement is "Ask Yourself", an existential pop masterpiece that runs abandon with the energy of a stadium anthem while in lyrics and performance it panickingly tries to find the nearest corner to crawl in a fetal position in. It's the album's thesis and ideas rolled into one song. The 80s-influenced floor-filler "Coming of Age" is the most upbeat and liberated the album finds itself in, all yacht rock synths and handclap-worthy melodic beats, and still carries that big vulnerable heart with it. All three are among the best pop songs of the 2010s, and each one is firing entirely different guns yet hitting the same targets. It's commendable how every song on Supermodel not just takes the listener to a brand new journey but how well it pulls it off, the album restlessly trying on new skins like it's paranoid that the moment it stands still it loses focus. With that urgency comes inspiration and that constant surprise becomes one of the record's key strengths, all the while the overall production aesthetics still manage to tie these separate together from one another. It's an album that sounds like it's both unravelling and which retains pitch-perfect control of itself at any time, and that's a really difficult combination to pull off well.
The other thing aspect that jumps out is that it's not afraid to properly lean into its pop inspirations either big time. "Pumped Up Kicks" was an incredibly catchy pop hit dressed up in humble ramshackle fittings, and for the sequel Foster the People have allowed themselves to embrace the power of massive melodic hooks without having to hold back. The songs on Supermodel are ambitious and unashamedly universal and they make the classic mix of
downbeat lyrics mixed with upbeat music sound like something fresh and noteworthy again. The sharpness runs through even the more outlying cuts, i.e. the psychedelic flourishes of "Pseudologia Fantastica" (where those
MGMT comparisons finally have some ground) and the crunchy, almost
shoegaze-y textural walls of "A Beginner's Guide to Destroying the
Moon", both which hint at an entirely different album and even a band but which still hold the same widescreen melodies. The choir & horn-propelled firecracker "Best Friend" runs back
and forth with the energy of Sonic the Hedgehog having a panic attack while its bass lays down the meanest groove of the album and the song having an overall feel of someone sticking a number of choruses together and pretending they're verses et cetera, and even the heartwrenching epic "The Truth" sweeps grand motions right from the emotional core of the record, hand raised into the sky and beckoning everyone who hears it do so in resonant unison. Grand
gestures crash into skyscraping melodies and spine-seizing rhythms.
I rarely find myself going on such hyperbole mode, especially from an album by an artist I otherwise don't really have time for: I've made my opinion on Torches clear enough and anything following Supermodel has sounded like the works of a band who have found themselves at complete loss of direction and unable to get their bearings back. But the results speak for themselves. This was an album I didn't expect much from and yet found something more from it than I could have ever anticipated. Supermodel is one of the best pop albums of its decade and at least half of it is well secured in the pantheon of the decade's key tracks, and as a cohesive piece of work it's both became a source of shared joy with likeminded people as well as a record that has hit a little too personally at times as the arrows it's fired have suddenly breached my defenses. It's such a vibrant yet emotional record that it's absolutely wild to me it's never mentioned by anyone ever. This is Foster the People's actual legacy, not their one hit.
