CMX - Mesmeria (2015)

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

There's a hint of CMX attempting something here, but it's like everyone is coasting along with no real interest.

Key tracks: "Laavaa", "Teräs"

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.

Rating: 4/10

CMX - Seitsentahokas (2013)

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

Loud and brash but with nothing to say.

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.

 
But the noise it makes is a fleeting distraction from the obvious signs that the difficult labour period didn't leave the album unscathed. Seitsentahokas charges in straight like a missile perhaps at least partially because the band are baring their teeth against all odds, but maybe more likely because the less adventurous material got discarded along the way - perhaps in the burglary (and everyone who's ever written something long knows that you can never re-achieve the magic of the first version you accidentally deleted and forgot to save) but also because the band's now-gone online biography directly referenced the first batch of material as "too strange". Thus, the straightforward and angry songs survived, whether it was to blow off steam or because they were the only demos that everyone agreed on. But despite the energy and underneath all that muscular power they showcase, they're just not very memorable songs. Nothing Seitsentahokas displays is anything the band hasn't done before and excelled at so the direction isn't at fault, the material is simply indistinguishably monotonous. Half this record beats around the same notes and though there's a fleeting rush of adrenaline that the songs provide, it's not enough to actually remember how they go afterwards. And then there's "Jyrsijä", which has such an irritating chorus that I wish I could include it in the blur batch of songs I have no recollection of.

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.

Rating: 5/10

Foster the People - Supermodel (2014)

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

Imposter syndrome wrapped in larger than life pop songs, when no one expected it.

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.

Rating: 9/10