Lady Gaga - The Fame (2008)

 

1) Just Dance (feat. Colby O'Donis); 2) LoveGame; 3) Paparazzi; 4) Poker Face; 5) I Like It Rough; 6) Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say); 7) Starstruck (feat. Space Cowboy & Flo Rida); 8) Beautiful, Dirty, Rich; 9) The Fame; 10) Money Honey; 11) Boys Boys Boys; 12) Paper Gangsta; 13) Brown Eyes; 14) Summerboy; Bonus tracks: 15) Disco Heaven; 16) Again Again

The humble beginnings. A late-00s pop record, feat. one Lady Gaga.

Key tracks: "Just Dance", "Paparazzi", "Poker Face"

When Lady Gaga first appeared, I thought she'd be a flash in the pan. Her sound was so trendy it’s like it was fated to go out of date in record speed and her quirky vocal hooks came across like gimmicks that would get old just as fast, and so I quickly filed her down as someone we wouldn’t hear again from anytime soon. My 2008 self was, of course, proven wrong repeatedly and without mercy in the years to come as Gaga started shaping the pop scene into her own playtoy and went on a trajectory that her early hits in no way signalled. I never actually listened to The Fame until way after she had established herself as a particularly strong and unique creative force, and so when I finally got around to it, it was with expectations of hearing hints of her future adventures across its deep cuts. Turns out, the biggest surprise with The Fame is just how absent it is of all that.

A lot of it has to do with how little The Fame sounds like Gaga herself. On later albums she’d pick and choose her collaborators and producers and instruct them to work under her vision, but here the balance feels like the other way around and the producers have much more of an imprint to the songs - most recognisably RedOne who'd effectively codify his own signature sound through this album much more than Gaga established her own. I don't know if it's because as a new artist she either didn't have the courage or simply wasn't able to take a tighter control, but The Fame sounds tame as a result. It features Gaga playing the pop game of the time without doing anything to upset its ruleset, and coming from her of all people that play-by-the-books approach is just not all that interesting. 

And in all honesty, there isn't much in the way of songs to really shout out about either. It’s clear that Gaga is already solid with her melodies - I can remember at the very least the chorus hook for nearly every song just by looking at their names - but the writing around those hooks is very lightweight. The songs have played all their cards by the time the first chorus has finished and they're only dealing random sets of pairs rather than surprise flushes, and once again that seems to be more tied to just how timid and stuck to its producers' formulas the album is. I don't actually mind the production job as such - I guess 2008 has now breached that point where I can start feeling faint nostalgia about the whole deal - but most of the time it's where all the kick these songs have comes from. Gaga has scattered effective hooks and melodies all over the place but they lack the detail of her later efforts and sometimes are almost desperate to stick: that's where all the everpresent idiosyncratic vocal hooks come into play, the mum-mum-mum-mahs, the do-duh-do-donts, the producer tag shoutouts and the word salad rambles like opening sloganeering of "Starstruck". I hate to use this word but lot of the songs feel downright basic in composition and lyrics and while they may satisfy the primal urge to tap your foot to the rhythm, there’s little beyond the surface. Outside the singles there’s very few songs within the selection that really grab a hold: I quite like the cheesiness of "Boys, Boys, Boys" and it has one of the more genuinely effective choruses of the bunch, and "Starstruck" has a perky robo-groove and a flow that stands out, but even those come with some caveats.

 

 

But of course there’s then the singles, which stand out massively from the rest of the album; that is, apart from "LoveGame" which gives us the infamous disco stick lyric but otherwise just fades in with the rest of the album cuts. But "Just Dance", "Poker Face" and "Paparazzi" are all miles above anything else on the record, and the latter two are the few visible links to where Gaga would head next. The dramatic "Paparazzi" has the same hallmarks of vague concepts interpreted in an over-the-top fashion that would drive Gaga for much of her career, and it's more intricate in its composition than the rest of The Fame. Meanwhile "Poker Face" not just carries the album's by-and-far best chorus, but its oddball middle-eight "rap" is an iconic Gaga moment where she makes something great out of an idea that would fall apart on anyone else’s hands. You can hear Gaga's own voice in these two songs the clearest and not by coincidence, they're also the only cuts on the album that somewhat come eye-to-eye with anything else she's done, "Paparazzi" in particular. And if Gaga is operating in the same comfort zone as anyone else in pop in the late 00s, then "Just Dance" is where she runs for the throne in that very playing field. It doesn't sound much different to other hit songs from that period, but there's a reason why it has stuck around (and it definitely isn't the Colby O'Donis feature, who Wikipedia still lists as being most famous for his brief footnote appearance on this album). It’s not a triumph of originality, but it’s a Very Good Pop Song that doesn’t need anything more to it to strike. I do also enjoy the oft-forgotten fifth single "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)" that distills the more saccharine tracts of the album (mostly in the Martin Kierszenbaum production jobs) into a little sunshine ditty that's light as a feather but blissfully sweet. The singsongy blip-blip melody is a simple little thing that works a lot more than it probably should.

My copy of the album also comes with the bonus tracks "Again Again" and "Disco Heaven" and, amusingly enough, they're better than a lot of the songs that made it onto the record proper and probably should have swapped placed with. "Disco Heaven" is exactly the kind tribute to its namesake vibe that its name implies and possibly thanks to that, its snappier groove comes across more playful and joyous than anything else on the disc. "Again Again" on the other hand is the first real dip into the classic rock power ballads that's now become a Gaga staple, which "Brown Eyes" on the main album already hinted at. But “Brown Eyes” really shows the strength of the producer impact is on the record, with Rob Fusari's awkwardly out-jutting slick production that would sound more at home on a club floor-filler than a piano ballad. "Again Again" on the other hand has a live band treatment closer to the genre it’s in musical tribute to and quelle surprise, it works so much better. They're not enough to really affect my opinion of the album as such, but who'd have thought some random bonus tracks would actually make more of an effort than some of the stuff that ended up on the album itself?

Although, it's not really a lack of effort that's bringing The Fame down. It's a big budget pop record with a hungry lead star backed by people on top of the latest trends and it's extremely clear that a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into Gaga getting a proper blast off. But I’ve had to revise that previous sentence several times to word it in a way that didn't imply Gaga was just along for the ride, and that's emblematic of my issues with the album - it doesn't sound like a Gaga album and if it wasn't for her name attached to this (and how this comes packed with The Fame Monster in many regions), I'm comfortable saying I never would have spent as much time with it as I have done. It's a fine, serviceable album with a few good hits and a lot of decent if a little filler-ish deep cuts, but with no real identity of its own and Gaga feels like a guest on her own album, like it’s coincidental her name is on the cover rather than someone else’s. And as she’s made her move forward, she’s naturally left The Fame behind. This was a genuinely huge album when it came out, but it’s weird to consider that now, given how in the grand scheme of things it acts as little more than a brief, expendable prologue for its artist.

Rating: 5/10

Manic Street Preachers - Generation Terrorists (20th Anniversary Legacy Edition) (2012)

 

CD1: 1) Slash 'n' Burn; 2) Nat West - Barclays - Midlands - Lloyds; 3) Born to End; 4) Motorcycle Emptiness; 5) You Love Us; 6) Love's Sweet Exile; 7) Little Baby Nothing; 8) Repeat (Stars and Stripes); 9) Tennessee; 10) Another Invented Disease; 11) Stay Beautiful; 12) So Dead; 13) Repeat (UK); 14) Spectators of Suicide; 15) Damn Dog; 16) Crucifix Kiss; 17) Methadone Pretty; 18) Condemned to Rock 'n' Roll Bonus tracks: 19) Theme from M.A.S.H. (Suicide Is Painless)
CD2: 1) Slash 'n' Burn (House in the Woods Demo); 2) Nat West - Barclays - Midlands - Lloyds (Marcus Demo); 3) Born to End (Marcus Demo); 4) Motorcycle Emptiness (House in the Woods Demo); 5) You Love Us (Heavenly Version); 6) Love's Sweet Exile (House in the Woods Demo); 7) Little Baby Nothing (House in the Woods Demo); 8) Repeat (Marcus Demo); 9) Tennessee (House in the Woods Demo); 10) Another Invented Disease (House in the Woods Demo); 11) Stay Beautiful (Marcus Demo); 12) So Dead (House in the Woods Demo); 13) Repeat (House in the Woods Demo); 14) Spectators of Suicide (House in the Woods Demo); 15) Damn Dog (Live); 16) Crucifix Kiss (Marcus Demo); 17) Methadone Pretty (House in the Woods Demo); 18) Suicide Alley (South Wales Demo); 19) New Art Riot (South Wales Demo); 20) Motown Junk (London Studio Demo); 21) Motown Junk

An alternative glimpse into the debut album without its infamous drum machine.

Key tracks: They're demos!

(This is review for the 20th anniversary reissue specifically, for a review of Generation Terrorists itself please click here).

If all the deluxe versions and anniversary re-releases have proven anything, it’s that the Manics are 1) hell-bent on recording every song draft they every write and 2) that they are obsessive archivists. The standard version of the 20th anniversary reissue of the debut Generation Terrorists comes with fully-fledged demos of nearly all the songs on the album, and more - which, like the parent album itself, is bordering on excessive.

This is where I’d normally complain about the lack of everything else that I’d personally deem more important, like all the b-sides (if you want those, you’ll have to had fork out for the super deluxe box set which I as a university student at the time was too poor to do) or even the US remixes of the six-odd songs that got redone for the stateside release of the album. And I do complain, but for a band who will one day very likely have released the original demo for nearly every song in their discography, the bonus disc here is arguably the best set of demos the band have ever released. Lest we forget, Generation Terrorists is a victim of its own production: slick yet somehow incredibly cheap, with a drum machine replacing Sean Moore’s own drumming in an ill-fated attempt to make everything sound bigger. The demos, then, give a chance to hear these songs as actually played by the band, more organically tying together the pre-album singles and EPs and the material that ended up on their debut. Most of the demos have been remastered pretty well to the point that they could just be slightly scruffy studio recordings from an indie act, and that means you nearly have the entire record presented in an alternative way. There’s only a few gaps and exceptions: “Condemned to Rock ‘n’ Roll” was entirely a studio creation so no demo exists, “Damn Dog” was literal studio filler so there’s a completely pointless live version instead, and a few of the demos rely on the same drum machine approach as the album, most predictably “Motorcycle Emptiness”. There’s also no demo for “You Love Us”, and instead you get the original single version released via Heavenly Recordings. I’ve actually grown to prefer the Heavenly version over the years: it’s a lot more whimsical and ridiculous, with some hilarious backing whoops and the singalong outro is far better than the shredding finale of the Generation Terrorists version. 

Besides, some of the demos are also intriguing in other ways than just from the production perspective. Many have changes in their lyrics or structure (missing second half of the chorus on “Born to End”, various changes across “Love’s Sweet Exile”, etc) and others almost feel like alternative versions. “Spectators of Suicide” is closer to the original Heavenly Recordings version than the radically different album version, so already quite different in that respect, but it’s also a much peppier and almost pop-like take that’s fascinating on its own. “Little Baby Nothing” is brilliant even in its demo form where the more acoustic-lead approach shifts it away from the glam rock power ballad it would eventually become - and it’s not only got the guest vocals in already, but the take is so different I’m not even sure if it’s Traci Lords or someone else (the credits are glaringly absent with any info). There’s also demos of some peripheral material, which neatly ties the entire early years of the band together. The band’s real debut single “Suicide Alley” never gets acknowledged anymore so its appearance here is a good inclusion (and given the original’s sound quality, it’s not like it was much more than a demo to begin with), and the demos of the title track of the New Art Riot EP and the non-album single and Manics classic Motown Junk pave the path towards the actual album. They are a really good bunch of demos that actually feel like they’re worth the price of admission, much more so than the clear majority of the early takes on the other anniversary reissues.

Elsewhere, the other audio bonuses include the actual “Motown Junk” and the non-album single “Suicidal Is Painless”, both great songs and an integral part of this period of the band so their inclusion is a solid choice. The remastering across the main album can’t fully save its production woes given how baked in they are, but it still lifts the sound up and gives some well-needed care to the original - it still sounds very artificial, but at least it has a little bit of life to it now and out of all the Manics remasters, this is the album that needed it the most and benefits the most from it. The liner notes have a bunch of artwork, photos and article clippings from the era, and the DVD has the token ‘making of’ interview, music videos and live performances - all a decent watch (and I have a soft spot for the mixture of bravado and silliness of the music videos for this album cycle). 

Would I, as a completionist, have wanted something more than just demos? Well, yes, but let’s put it this way: this is the only collection of demos from the Manics that I enjoy listening to beyond just the initial geekish exploration. It’s a genuinely interesting set of early takes that do what a good set of such things should do when released out in the public, and provide an alternative view of the songs you're already familiar with. In other words, it's something you can put on just to enjoy it - and that's a feat no other Manics demo set has achieved.

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.

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) (2006)

CD1: 1) Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier; 2) A Design for Life; 3) Kevin Carter; 4) Enola/Alone; 5) Everything Must Go; 6) Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky; 7) The Girl Who Wanted to Be God; 8) Removables; 9) Australia; 10) Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning); 11) Further Away; 12) No Surface All Feeling Bonus tracks: 13) Enola/Alone (Live); 14) Kevin Carter (Live); 15) Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning) (Live); 16) Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier (Live); 17) Everything Must Go (Live); 18) A Design for Life (Live); 19) A Design for Life (Stealth Sonic Orchestra Remix)
CD2: 1) Dixie; 2) No Surface All Feeling (Demo); 3) Further Away (Demo); 4) Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky (Demo); 5) No One Knows What It's Like to Be Me (Demo); 6) Australia (Acoustic Demo); 7) No Surface All Feeling (Acoustic Demo); 8) Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning) (Acoustic Demo); 9) The Girl Who Wanted to Be God (Acoustic Demo); 10) A Design for Life (First Rehearsal); 11) Kevin Carter (First Rehearsal); 12) Mr. Carbohydrate; 13) Dead Trees and Traffic Islands; 14) Dead Passive; 15) Black Garden; 16) Hanging On; 17) No One Knows What It's Like to Be Me; 18) Horses Under Starlight; 19) Sepia; 20) First Republic; 21) Australia (Stephen Hague Production); 22) The Girl Who Wanted to Be God (Stephen Hague Production); 23) Glory, Glory  

Good remastering, all the b-sides, loads of other nice bonus material, no tracklist edits...

Key tracks: Of the bonus material and across the various types of it, "Sepia", "A Design for Life (Stealth Sonic Orchestra Remix)", "Australia (Stephen Hague Production)"

(This review is for the 10th anniversary re-release, for the review of Everything Must Go itself please click here).

The Manic Street Preachers catalogue reissue series is a chaotic journey with twists and turns around every corner, the teasers for each new addition being met with concerned anticipation from fans. You never know what format they might go for, how they’ll treat the bonus material, and with the later releases how they’ll even treat the track list to the original album. And with all that in mind, the 10th anniversary reissue of Everything Must Go is the closest they’ve gotten to a perfect fan-pleasing deluxe re-release.

Most importantly, all nine of the original b-sides have been included, which is arguably the most important aspect of these re-releases given the Manics' strength as a b-sides band - only the three covers from the "Australia" single have been dropped. Some of the b-sides bear a similarity to the mother album's anthemic elegance, and the stadium ode to mundanity “Mr. Carbohydrate”, the melancholy and drop-dead gorgeous “Sepia”, and the flute-driven "Dead Trees and Traffic Islands" could have all slotted finely to the album, including from the quality perspective - with "Sepia" being one of the standout Manics b-sides. The brooding and moody "Black Garden" is like a reverse-transitional bridge to the dark mindscapes of The Holy Bible, nudging the idea that despite the gigantic transformation between the two albums they were still only two years apart. As per usual the b-sides offer a little bit of a ground for experiments and the band's first instrumental (and still among the best of its ilk), the suave "Horses Under Starlight" is a prime example, gliding along smoothly with its trumpet and ba-ba-bas; on the other end of the spectrum "First Republic" and "Dead Passive" are b-sides primarily because of how scathing their lyrics are, the former bringing down the government with some good ol' fashion riff-rocking and the latter making an elegant death march out of its litany of celebrity couples. The only real weaker b-sides are "Hanging On" and "No One Knows What It's Like to Be Me", which are rather uneventful and somewhat boringly straightforward three-minute rockers which sound like they took fifteen minutes to write, together. But, this reissue also contains the original demo for "No One Knows What It's Like to Be Me" and what seems like a weird inclusion at first turns out to be a brilliant one: the song actually sounds so much better in its original demo form, with a bit of a kick to it that got lost on the way to the final version.

The other demos offer interesting little insights to the process with melody and lyric changes, and the acoustic solo versions prove that Bradfield's melodies stand up strongly even when the guitar walls are stripped away. The live versions are a good mix of hits and deep cuts (I particularly appreciate how much the generally underappreciated “Interiors” gets wheeled out across the two discs), and the Stealth Sonic Orchestra remix of "A Design for Life" is one of the band's best remixes and iconic in its own little way by way of its appearance in various segues and interludes along the years, so it's great to have it here. It's a shame the Stealth Sonic Orchestra remix for "Everything Must Go" hasn't been included and it probably would have been better to have than the rehearsal versions of "A Design for Life" and "Kevin Carter", which are neat to hear once but too shoddily recorded to warrant for repeated listens. The two Stephen Hague mixes are the best part of the alternative takes and are genuinely fascinating: the band started the album sessions with Hague but soon realised it wasn’t just working, and you can hear why through the versions of “Australia” and “The Girl Who Wanted to Be God” but as fan fodder they are incredible. His take on “Australia” is incredible for all the wrong reasons, as the song is driven through a happy-go-lucky Britpop filter with handclaps and tinny horn sections - but it’s so interesting.

From a general perspective, the remastering is generally really well done. Everything Must Go didn’t necessarily need a touch-up job, but to my ears the original sounds a little flat at places (mostly in the drums); this reissue doesn’t tweak the mix as such, but it does give it a little extra boost that adds to the anthemic volume of the songs. As per usual for Manics re-releases the liner notes are more visually oriented so rather than track-by-track breakdowns or interviews (beyond a guest essay on the album serving as the introduction), the focus is more on showcasing various artwork and photography from the period. The DVD features a talking heads documentary with the band on the album, the music videos and various peripheral performance material - all which make for a decent evening’s viewing. It all comes together into one particularly strong reissue, with little to actually criticise. The only real complaints are that the three covers would have been nice to have been included for the sake of representing the complete the era (and unlike the covers of "Velocity Girl" and "I Can't Take My Eyes Off You", the original 1996 version of "Take the Skinheads Bowling" never made it to Lipstick Traces), and the intro to "Black Garden" has been chopped off and given its own track ("Glory, Glory") which makes no sense.

The thing is, those two points have already been addressed on the later 20th anniversary reissue, which arguably is the better version - it lacks the demos and other unreleased alternative versions, but it's more complete in terms of all the official non-album releases and gathers every single b-side (remix, cover, live or original) that appeared during the era. So, the main issue for this one becomes the simple fact that the band decided to outdo it when cashing out on this album again and thus this version has basically outlived its usefulness. But I can’t say I’m too bitter about it - this is still a fantastic reissue of a great album, and the bonus material is enough to kick the original's rating up a notch.  

Rating: 9/10

Slowdive - Slowdive (2017)

 

1) Slomo; 2) Star Roving; 3) Don't Know Why; 4) Sugar for the Pill; 5) Everyone Knows; 6) No Longer Making Time; 7) Go Get It; 8) Falling Ashes

The comeback album that re-establishes the band by bringing together everything they did before the break.

Key tracks: "Star Roving", "Sugar for the Pill", "No Longer Making Time"

Shoegaze and I have a weird relationship. I love the concept of thick textural walls of sound hiding gorgeous melodies underneath them, atmospheric noise washing over rock rhythms and sheer overbearing volume coating fragile emotions. The amount of shoegaze bands I really listen to? Barely any. I'm stuck with a very romanticised notion of what the genre is in my head, while in the real world I flick through recommended bands and albums in search of something that would resemble the perfect formula I've conjured in my imagination. I am, to put it honestly, a picky eater and I’m struggling to find an entree on the menu that's all to my liking. Slowdive have come closest to a band who frequently offer what I seek, but then what does it say about me that their 2017 self-titled comeback record is my favourite record of theirs (up until this point in time) and at times it only just registers as a shoegaze record?  

Before Slowdive entered their extended hiatus in the mid-90s, they had started a move towards a more ambient territory. Slowdive reels things back towards the signature shoegaze sound that Souvlaki established them with, but leaves the marker somewhere partway between both worlds. Shoegaze and dream pop are frequently the best of friends, but with a little nudge on either side and Slowdive could comfortably fall fully one way or the other: one foot in the dynamic explosions of their genre-faithful debut and another in the dreamy soundscapes that followed it, with most songs comfortably displaying aspects of both. If you were a fan before I'd imagine this would sound comfortably like the band you loved no matter which way your preferences leaned; if it took you until this record to really get familiar with the group like what happened with me, it sounds like the perfect marriage between the very first few albums. 

The end result of meeting halfway like this is that from a production perspective, Slowdive places just as much importance to the excess of sound as it does to its absence: its songs alternating between areas where that comfortable wave of sound looms over the listener and ones where the empty stretches of space between the different elements are just as important. Its most vital aspect is its spatial nature and how everything hovers within an infinite vacuum, each note and drum hit echoing into the distance, with the vocals faintly floating amidst everything else to offer a faint sense of human warmth in the center of that space. The production job on the record is absolutely spectacular and one of the album's stand-out features, with both depth and clarity that offer space for detail while allowing for the sound to really envelop your senses when it needs to. It’s an album that sounds massive but because of any epic bombast, but because of how small it makes you feel underneath all that sky.

There's a minimalistic, almost economical way to how Slowdive treat that adopted approach. This is a record where every aspect matters because there's rarely too much else going on, where sparse melodic and productional elements layered on top of steady rhythms that make every note the lead star when they play out. Every single sound is a hook simply by way of existing. It's once again where I need to point out just how spacious this album sounds, because you can practically hear the gaps between the elements that the delayed and echoed sounds then bridge together. It's almost like taking the traditional aspects we associate with shoegaze and playing the game by a new set of rules, which the opener "Slomo" so effectively demonstrates. The colossal hits, the ethereal keyboards and the celestial guitar lines ring out into the void in a way that's perfectly alike the hazy walls of sound of Souvlaki, but played with the bare minimum of layers required while retaining the scope and weight of something traditionally louder. 

 The band can still operate in a more expected fashion if they want to, and they flash that throughout the album: the gossamer guitar walls of "Everyone Knows", the crashing thunder of "Go Get It" and the swirling rhythms of "Don't Know Why" are rock anthems, or as close as you can get in the context of the rest of the album. Big, guitar-heavy songs where the band's past works rear their head the clearest. Most familiary with "Star Roving", which I have very deliberately isolated from the rest of the pack. If I'm a picky diner who's never satisfied, then "Star Roving" is the perfect dish I've been craving for - it is everything I love about shoegaze from the energy to the etherealness, with the way the it pushes forward almost exuberantly and dresses itself in fuzz and static from head to toes, but with a killer melody as its beating heart underneath it all. It's majestic and while in no way any kind of shining example of originality, it's the model example of how great you can get when you simply execute a formula to perfection.

As wonderful as "Star Roving" is, the album's centrepiece duo of "Sugar for the Pill" and "No Longer Making Time" might just be even better. Alongside "Slomo", it's these two songs that demonstrate just how great you can get when the combo of production, arrangement and songwriting work together perfectly. They're twin songs: both mid-tempo, both carried by a steady bass and beat and both characterised by simple but incredibly effective lead guitar melodies. "Sugar for the Pill" is the gentler of the two, elegantly swaying in a dream state like it's calling back home from another dimension,  building its momentum gently as it reaches the album's strongest chorus. There's a very petite melody (guitar? synthesizer?) that pops up for a brief moment after every other line in that chorus that practically steals the show, proving how even the tiniest details can make a grand show on this record - it exists for a literal couple of seconds during the chorus, but it simply sounds so great in the place it inhabits, the sonical cherry on top to crown the song. "No Longer Making Time" on the other hand drowns its yearning into a haunting storm of guitars, flicking from melancholically longing to emotionally ablaze throughout, the album's two dimensions holding hands and taking turns leading the song. It's these two songs that most represent the strengths of the album: the ones that hang onto the listener the strongest afterwards.

The sparse piano lullaby "Falling Ashes" leads the album's brief run of songs into a close by slowly fading into the void that the rest of the album has been circling, and ends it on a note which gives the record a full stop and logical end, but also leaves you wanting more. Adhering to the album's minimal-maximal approach there's only eight songs on the album, but all of them feel essential to its runtime. It does leave you wanting more though, and I guess that applies for the album in general - I gush about it a lot but it's still not quite there among the very greats and the only explanation I can give about it is that it's right on the border but missing that one last step - I'm left wanting a little more, and not only in terms of song numbers. But if bands name their records after themselves whenever they want to re-establish themselves, as is tradition, then the main hope I have is that there's more that builds up on this. Slowdive is a great, gorgeous record - and one of the few that brush against its mother genre I've found and latched onto.

Rating: 8/10

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 9/10

Nicky Wire - I Killed the Zeitgeist (2006)

1) I Killed the Zeitgeist; 2) Break My Heart Slowly; 3) Withdraw/Retreat; 4) Goodbye Suicide; 5) The Shining Path; 6) Bobby Untitled; 7) You Will Always Be My Home; 8) So Much for the Future; 9) Stab Yr Heart; 10) Kimono Rock; 11) Sehnsucht; 12) (Nicky Wire's) Last; 13) Everything Fades

A rough and raggedy ugly duckling with a heart of gold. So, a Nicky Wire record.

Key tracks: “I Killed the Zeitgeist”, “The Shining Path”, “Bobby Untitled”

Nicky Wire had been writing the lyrics for Manic Street Preachers for years but barely contributed to the music. James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore were the musically gifted wonders, meanwhile Wire had spent years talking down his own musical skills even long after it stopped being relevant. Still, a spark remained and the experimental, laissez-faire sessions around 2001’s Know Your Enemy gave Wire the informal go-ahead to have a go at writing music. A few years later and Wire was actively writing a song here and there (even if they were relegated to b-sides), and had started to hint at writing a solo album. When the band took a break in mid-2005, he was the first member to announce one.

To put this into context, no one was expecting anything out I Killed the Zeitgeist. In the band's early days Bradfield would record the bass parts for the albums and the band couldn't play certain songs live because Wire couldn't consistently play the riffs, and while he'd gotten much better over the years the reputation stayed. The first songs written by him for the Manics were chaotic, rudimentary and divisive, and even though by the mid-00s he had learned to write more melodically, there was still the issue of Wire's voice - i.e. the fact that his grovely, inherently out-of-tune voice just wasn't cut for singing. In short, the general expectation was that whatever Wire would release would be a complete mess.

I Killed the Zeitgeist is most definitely a bit of a mess, but so is Wire and it’s an album that very explicitly embraces it just like Wire would. It’s ramshackle and scattershot by purpose, almost antagonistically showing off its unpolished rough edges on the spot - including the complete lack of bass on the record, simply because Wire's whim dictated that it would be hilariously subversive on account of him being the bassist in his band. But Wire picked the perfect sonical playground for his irreverent attitude. Musically I Killed the Zeitgeist is a love letter to his punk roots and love for 80s lo-fi indie and the C86 scene, and its collection of primal punk anarchy, introverted ballads and cacophonic noise is all glued up on top of another like a collage of clippings. The liner notes and artwork for the album consist of typewriter printouts of the lyrics with scribbles in the margins, typographical errors and hasty after-edits in multi-colour pens, surrounded by scruffy polaroids, puppy stickers and glittery stamps, and it's the perfect visual insight to the world of I Killed the Zeitgeist perfectly. It's a chaotic tumbleweed of whimsy and guts, a peak to the leopard print world of a man who has always straddled between a tortured poet and a provocative brat.

And it is good. The range of I Killed the Zeitgeist proves that Wire is a good songwriter, who has evolved leaps and bounds since his first songs. Much of the album operates on his trademark glam punk aesthetic, but there's plenty of surprises too - some successful (the finale gear change in "Stab Yr Heart" that's almost Bradfield-esque), some less so ("So Much for the Future" devolves into noise in a way that isn't as interesting or artsy as it thinks, the instrumental "Sehnsucht" isn't interesting enough musically to stop being more than a pleasant filler song). But besides the few dips, I Killed the Zeitgeist is remarkably consistent. "Break My Heart Slowly" is an absolutely classic pop anthem dressed up in rags and eyeliner and coming from the most unexpected source, "The Shining Path" houses some of the album's strongest hooks and neatest arrangements (love that sharp acoustic guitar playing the lead melody, flipping the album's general acoustic/electric roles) and shows that Bradfield isn't the only one in the band gunning for big rock anthems, and "Stab Yr Heart" is a low-key highlight even before it switches to its remarkably good extended instrumental outro full of elegance and style. In some parts Wire channels his old Generation Terrorists self, full of cheeky attitude, sardonic sense of humour and a borderline arrogant conviction in his own message as he plows through the livelier numbers like the sing-along happy "Withdraw/Retreat" and the cock rock of "Kimono Rock" (the former which features Bradfield in a vocal cameo, the latter in guitars). The rugged punk of the title track which may not be very intricate, but  it latches onto the listener so well in so many ways (the big hook of a chorus, the gratuitous German, the DO DO DO) and its placer as the opener is the perfect introduction to the album as the song reveals all its quirks and traits right off the bat. They're carefully balancing on the border between entertainingly raggy and genuinely good, and come through full of swagger, point blank effective hooks and a sense of rock 'n' roll fun.

The biggest surprise is the number of songs where Wire conjures up something more poignant, and produces some genuinely lovely songs that run almost in antithesis of the image he projects elsewhere on the record. "You Will Always Be My Home", "Bobby Untitled", "(Nicky Wire's) Last" and "Everything Fades" are atmospheric, tender and sometimes flat-out beautiful songs, with melodies strong enough to work in a Manics album. "You Will Always Be My Home" and "Bobby Untitled" in particular could be called almost sophisticated compared to the rest of the album, the former showcasing one of the album's best vocal melodies and the latter coming across as the most fully-realised composition and arrangement of the entire record, and "(Nicky Wire's) Last" goes a great way to show just how well Wire's introspective lyrics can work when he's the one singing them for once. The general raw aesthetic around the album also suits the more tender songs perfectly, and that's including Wire's voice - because my mutant superpower is actually liking it. You honestly can't really call Wire's voice good and this album takes placebefore he got more confident with it, but there's a rough power to it that perfectly suits the soundworld he's chosen for the album. With the gentler songs it adds a layer of vulnerability; with the more explosive songs, his voice is perfect for their eyeliner and spraypaint aesthetic. It may not be a pretty voice and is absolutely an acquired taste, but part of me thinks these songs might be lesser if someone more polished sang them.

Secret success then? Much like Bradfield's 2006 solo album The Great Western is ultimately best enjoyed by people who are fans of the Manics already, so is I Killed the Zeitgeist and certainly even more so. In case of Bradfield this was because the inherent qualities of his solo album were ones already familiar from the Manics and thus unlikely to convert anyone new. Meanwhile Wire's solo album somewhat requires that you're so invested in the band you'd listen to anything related to them, because Wire's divisive (to put it kindly) voice and the album's rough exterior certainly aren't the kinds of things you'd be able to present around to any unsuspecting person. But where it's awkward on the surface it can be a genuinely lovely thing when you dig underneath, with a lot of genuinely good songs strictly in terms of their melodies and arrangements, and others that win over with charm where they might lack a little on other intricacies. Where the strengths of The Great Western are almost obvious, it's the unpredictability and whimsy of I Killed the Zeitgeist that makes it almost special. It's a little short of great but not too far - and while I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a big fan of the band, this might just be one of the most underrated and misunderstood albums of the wider Manics universe.

Rating: 7/10

The National - I Am Easy to Find (2019)

1) You Had Your Soul With You; 2) Quiet Light; 3) Roman Holiday; 4) Oblivions; 5) The Pull of You; 6) Hey Rosey; 7) I Am Easy to Find; 8) Her Father in the Pool; 9) Where Is Her Head; 10) Not in Kansas; 11) So Far So Fast; 12) Dust Swirls in Strange Light; 13) Hairpin Turns; 14) Rylan; 15) Underwater; 16) Light Years

Pinning down onto their most graceful and delicate ideas with the help of their friends, The National create a pseudo-cinematic journey of an album.

Key tracks: “Oblivions”, "Not in Kansas", “Rylan”

The first album by The National I bought new on release day was High Violet, in 2010. I was riding high on my relatively recently found obsession with the band and the album came out at a time when I  needed to hear something like it; it’s now firmly canonised itself as one of my favourite albums of all time. During the tour following the album’s release, the band occasionally road tested new songs they had written following the creative flow in the album’s wake. One of these was a song called “Rylan”, a slow burner with an infectious melody that shortly became a fan favourite - including mine. “Rylan” also became a bit of a ghost afterwards, wheeled out in random concerts every once in a while across the years, showing small changes every time it made an appearance, but never seeing a studio release. The more elusive it became, the more its status as a secret gem only grew.

I love coincidences that make it look like the puzzle pieces of the universe are clicking into place, and so as "Rylan" was debuted at the start of the decade, it makes some kind of cosmic sense that it finally became something tangible at the very end of that same decade. Its sudden appearance at the tail end of the I Am Easy to Find tracklist was like seeing a now-distant friend you thought you might never see again, and its appearance ten years on from its debut only serves to highlight the changes the band have gone through in that time between. From grassroots stalwarts to the A-tier indie heroes, The National have been slowly evolving and changing their sound throughout their career and, even across the 2010s where they effectively codified their signature sound, they've transformed significantly. You can make a direct and easy comparison with "Rylan" alone - from the live videos of its early appearances (some professionally recorded) to the studio version in 2019, it's clearly the same song but so massively different in approach - and much of those changes around it are all over I Am Easy to Find in general.

We can probably credit the resurgence of "Rylan" to the same person who we can largely thank for I Am Easy to Find in general. Director Mike Mills, a close friend of the band, was planning an experimental short film and he tentatively approached The National to soundtrack it. What he gained was an open access to a Dropbox account of sketches, demos, samples and clips going back years - scattered ideas the band had worked on but which hadn't found their shape yet. The final film (a genuinely touching short piece starring Alicia Vikander) and the album share their name but aren't rigidly connected: the album isn't the soundtrack to the film even if segments of its music are used throughout, but they both exist in a symbiotic relationship. Mills would pick demos he liked, the band would work on those songs further and independently as they got excited about making a record album, and both parties ended up inspiring one another. There's only a few direct links to the film: the titles of the interlude segues that give the album a cinematic feel of its own are inspired by the poem that acts as the film's narration, and the otherwise non sequitur like lyrics of "Where Is Her Head" are the only set of words directly requested for the film (where they're a part of an in-universe children's book). Otherwise the two works are entirely separate and the short film isn't mandatory to enjoy I Am Easy to Find as an album, but it's still recommended because of the thematic beats the two ultimately independent works share (and just because the film's quite captivating). And if that's not an option, the short narration script is printed out in the liner notes.

I Am Easy to Find is an album about collaborations through to its very core. Matt Berninger's signature vocals so frequently share space with a multitude of guest vocalists (from Gail Ann Dorsey to Sharon Van Etten and many others) that he simply becomes one voice among others, and the Brooklyn Youth Choir get the sole spotlight in a number of interludes that segue the album's different sections together. The sonic palette of the band is expanded through session musicians and friends helping out with the arrangements, even further so than on the prior albums that were rich in production in their own right, as frequent orchestral sections make parts of the record sound like the cinematic soundtrack it is and isn't at the same time. Sometimes it's practically The National in name only, and the overall nature of the record sometimes resembles one of the many collaborative projects and compilations that the Dessner brothers have curated in the past. But it's The National themselves who anchor its multitude of concepts, voices and ideas into a coherent whole, and their own signature elements are still present as always: Berninger may have stepped back but his narration is the red line around everyone else, the Dessners' careful and delicate arrangements lead the songs and Bryan Devendorff's drumming is as propulsive and unique as ever, and the electronic textural elements first introduced on Sleep Well Beast appear once again and establish themselves as an essential element of the band's sound at this point. Together with the unified production aesthetic - hazy, dreamy, vulnerable - the band bring all the ideas and personalities together to form a cohesive, singular journey.

It's a beautiful journey, as well. I Am Easy to Find is the most graceful record The National have made, full of delicate songs that swivel lightly in the air. Even the sad piano ballads (the title track and "Light Years", both almost devastatingly haunting and gorgeous) are gentle like walking on water rather than drowning in sorrow and melancholy, and the closest the album gets to loud and noisy are the psychedelic hullabaloo of "Where Is Her Head" and the opening "You Had Your Soul With You", neither of which invite Berninger to scream his lungs out - and "You Had Your Soul With You" even changes tract partway through as it introduces the strings and Gail Ann Dorsey's vocals, which mark the point where the album shows its true colours after the brisk intro. On other albums they might have been heavier songs (emotionally or in sheer sound), here they share the same soundspace as the pristine and careful moments of nearly meditative elegiac beauty that most of the album spends its time in; with only the anguished lashing out in the choruses of "The Pull of You" breaking the thunder. Even when the lyrics swing to the melancholy - and it's The National so that's the main modus operandi still - there's a pinch of hope within them, the songs leaving you with the impression that maybe everything can be fixed rather than the narrators losing themselves and their loved ones to their personal demons, with a heavier emphasis on trust between both sides (which the guest vocals intentionally or inadvertently emphaise). Those themes and main sonical reference points of the album takes many forms: the spacious and swirling "Oblivions" which almost feels like the film's and the era's main theme due to its prominence, the light-footed hook machine "Quiet Light" that's impossible not to get lost within, the torchlight anthem "Hey Rosey" and the dream-like and hypnotic slow dance "Hairpin Turns" among the best. They're all equally gorgeous and strong, and it's odd to think that all these songs started out as random seeds and stems, because they form such a cohesive whole where each idea presented supports the next.

That whole meditative experience comes to its peak as the album passes the halfway point, with its two extended centrepieces. "Not in Kansas" is the one song on the album where Berninger takes unchallenged center space as he mutters a stream-consciousness litany about his hometown, listening to R.E.M., being nervous about punching nazis, Christianity and everything else under the sun, like someone who's returned to somewhere he left a long time ago and whose mind is racing with everything that changed across the years - set largely to a sparse guitar and kickdrum beat that's miles away from the rich production surrounding it. And then the song literally broken apart by a hymn, a choir reciting a Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 lyric like it was a religious scripture sung at the end of a funeral. It's unlike anything else in The National's catalogue and it's nearly dream-like in its presentation, from the lyrics that wander around from distant point to another to the sudden structural breaks, hypnotically looping for nearly seven minutes (according to Berninger he removed several verses from the final version - and I could easily listen to those as well, maybe he'd finish Life's Rich Pageant by the end). "So Far So Fast" is the flipside of the coin: all driven by the voices other than Berninger, swept by a detailed, vivid arrangement that flickers with heavenly abandon through the headphones. It's a comfort blanket of a song while still coming across so fragile it might break at the lightest touch, like the sight of the light shining through your familiar home windows breaking through the night but with the uncertainty of not having visited for years. It's completely lucid in contrast to the fever dream of "Not in Kansas" and that's what makes the two songs perfect counterparts - the rambling chaos and the oasis to recover.

And then there's "Rylan". I love "Rylan" and the way it's been realised here, in what could be considered its final form now, is sublime. The driving snare-heavy that beat pounds away with fire under its feet and the lyrics and vocal melodies full of tiny little hooks are both familiar from the prior versions of the song but they've been tweaked and lifted up, sounding more vivid than ever. Kate Stables of This Is the Kit now sings the second verse, and the sudden change of tone from Berninger's murmur to her lighter voice flicks the mood and weight of the verse completely from the first, before the song builds back up again to its grand finale. The orchestral breakdown is majestic, and the towering conclusion it builds up to has been redefined into a capital-M Moment. "Rylan" is an incredible song and by and far the album's centrepiece, and it's been recontextualised so perfectly you could never tell it started its life so long ago. It's no longer just a homeless song that transcends eras, it's now the anchor of I Am Easy to Find specifically - the giddy, vibrant rush to the finale after the heavier waters that started the second half of the album, serving an important role in the record's flow. It's the homecoming welcome for the final stretch of songs loom in the horizon; and out of the album's context, it's the fulfilled wishes of a decade ago coming to a beautiful reality.

It's obvious now I place a lot of weighty personal importance for these songs, and I make a lot of references to peace, comfort, serenity, et cetera above very intentionally. It's what I Am Easy to Find has come to represent to me. A lot of the records by The National end up tying themselves into the particular timeframes of my life around their release, and I Am Easy to Find's release window in the late spring of 2019 was also when I was recovering from what was supposed to have been a simple surgery with a quick few week recovery time, but which turned out to be a three-four-month ordeal through most of which I could barely move, popping painkillers and watching the summer go by from the flat I was bound to (good prep for the 2020 isolation party). I Am Easy to Find became something of a consolation: a peaceful musical space I found myself retreating to over and over again during those months, escaping within the rich arrangements and finding comfort and a way to process what I was feeling there.

So I Am Easy to Find became special - it developed a meaning outside what was intended, but which it attained through its own strengths. It's the most beautiful set of songs that The National have released, and possibly their most immersive album - a record with interludes, segues and running themes where all those actually feel necessary, and not fluff to make a record look fancier than it is. It absolutely gains much of its power for me for reasons outside its music, but I don't think it would have imprinted itself on me so heavily without its inherent strengths - after all none of the albums I bingebought during that period (when you have nothing to do but stay inside and listen to music...) have latched onto me to this extent. I Am Easy to Find is a rich and complex album, full of intricacies and concepts that tie together into a cohesive, unified story told through music alone - and its songs are just plain great. It's almost unfair to other artists how The National can seemingly just coast along effortlessly from album to album with a consistently incredible quality of songwriting, to the extent that even their random Dropbox demos ended up making a collection of songs so strong others would kill for. But that's just how it is - it's another incredible album from a band who churn them out almost predictably by now, and a personal masterpiece because even now playing it is akin to opening a door to a pocket universe where things are OK no matter how ablaze the world outside is.

Rating: 10/10