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

Arcade Fire - Reflektor (2013)

CD1: 1) Reflektor; 2) We Exist; 3) Flashbulb Eyes; 4) Here Comes the Night Time; 5) Normal Person; 6) You Already Know; 7) Joan of Arc

CD2: 1) Here Comes the Night Time II; 2) Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice); 3) It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus); 4) Porno; 5) Afterlife; 6) Supersymmetry

Shorter than your average double album but packed with far more concepts than normal. Arcade Fire start a new chapter of their career with a dense beast you can dance to.

Key tracks: “Reflektor”, “It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)”, “Afterlife”

By Reflektor, Arcade Fire had openly become a band who were just as much about their concepts as they were about their music, and those two aspects held hands very tightly. There had been a gradual shift from Funeral's coordinated Victorian hipster uniforms to the carefully planned recurring motifs and visual accompaniments of The Suburbs, with Arcade Fire spending more time with each album to create some form of mythology around them. Reflektor itself above all signals a new chapter for the band and a re-invention of sorts, but its new sound often distracts from what an incredibly dense record it is from a thematic perspective. If the band were emphasising the conceptual aspects of their songwriting process then Reflektor is where that cup started to risk overflowing: it's an album that places its foot in so many doorways and crams a number of entirely disparate concepts together into a wide collage, with a rabbit hole of ideas hidden underneath waiting to swallow up its listeners. 

 

It's understandable though that the new musical direction attracts the most attention. All great artists go through a skinshedding moment eventually and in the case of Arcade Fire, theirs was to suddenly and shockingly move from beloved indie anthems into disco-ready floor stompers. Except, not quite. For one thing, it's not as if the concept of putting a groove on was ever alien to the band - check out all those four-to-the-floor finales on Funeral - and so Reflektor is more of an extension of something that was always lying underneath. But most damningly narrowing the scope down to just the prevalence of open hi-hat beats sells the album's range short. It's true that its most prominent moments are clearly inclined to hit the dancefloor, but focusing on that means you ignore the carnival anthems, the riff-rockers (in both loud and jangly varieties), the theatrical centrepieces and the synthesizer mood moments that inhabit Reflektor's two discs. The underlying narrative thread is on sustaining a groove of some kind and letting the rhythm lead the way as much as the melodies, but Reflektor casts its nets far wider than just that.

Reflektor is split into two discs, mainly out of circumstance: the band intended to make a short record, which they failed to do spectacularly when they kept writing 6-7 minute songs, and so splitting the final album into two distinct halves was primarily a way to compromise on the initial idea. That said, the two discs do also roughly correlate with the album's main lyrical concepts and, coincidentally or not, also arrange the album's musical motifs into tidy movements. The first disc is the endlessly style-shifting beast that walks a varied journey across only seven songs, where Regine Chassagne's Haitian roots (which inspired much of the record from the sound to the stagewear and the promotional graffitis that signalled the album's arrival) meet with the co-production from LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, who casts his New York cool all over the songs. It's also where the whole 'reflector' concept comes in play the most: at the time Win Butler was binging on Søren Kierkegaard and his writings about "a reflective age", mass conformity and their effect on human identity, and those particularly existential flavours form the thematic line between the otherwise disjointed songs. Meanwhile the second disc is a more tightly knit musical suite which operates within similar soundscapes throughout its dramatic flow, utilising the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and its tragedies love affair as the central lyrical inspiration for its six songs. The band were also working for the score for Spike Jonze's film Her around the same time and there's traces of its takes on love as a mystical force running across the tracks as well: directly in case of "Supersymmetry", which was composed for the film and then reformatted for Reflektor. 

 

What Arcade Fire have created with Reflektor is a space where those potentially preposterous - or pretentious, if you wish, but I'd give you a disappointed glare - ideas and Butler's wildly hit-and-miss writing pen find a musical format where they turn out to work phenomenally. When I talk about Reflektor being dense, it's because it's a record where I find it harder than normal to split the concept from the sound and treat the songs as just songs, because you have all these thematic threads from the Haitian carnivals to love after literal and metaphorical death to 'we live in a society' style creeds, and then they're bundled up with songs which are impossibly stylish and yet often forebodingly threatening, both looking at its topics as a cold and detached spectator and someone caught within the turmoil. This is particularly the case on the first half. "Reflektor" is only right to start the album as the title track as it's a hefty song with a lot going on - seven and a half minutes of Haitian percussion swinging with disco beats, French and English vocal swaps, David Bowie cameos, nods to the Kierkegaard writings, a tonal shift which moves the song from a cool indie club banger to a hair-raising crescendo that's like the moment you realise the storm has arrived and it's too late to run. It works phenomenally: it's one of Arcade Fire's all-time greats and as the very first song it signals accurately that there will be no limits to where this record could go.

 

The rest of disc one is effectively an extension of "Reflektor", in that it is a lot of big ideas running around to a point that they form an almost impossible to control hurricane of inspiration. "We Exist" sways even further into the disco with its "Billie Jean" bass while heavily implying but never outright saying what identity issues it exactly refers to (the official video opts for trans representation), lacing its funky slickness with both defiance and venom. The dub nod of "Flashbulb Eyes" and the carnival breakdown of "Here Comes the Night Time" are most directly inspired by the Haitian excursions the band were taking prior to the record, taking Arcade Fire into brand new waters musically but melting those influences naturally into a part of their sound. From here Arcade Fire suddenly realise they are a rock band too, and so "Normal Person" trashes the hotel room with its big electric guitars and is cathartically fun in its over the top antics and self-aware tongue-in-cheekiness, "You Already Know" is a deliciously melodic foray into 80s indie and quite possibly the most criminally underrated song across the entire two discs (and for a person living in the UK, that Jonathan Ross cameo never stops being weird), and "Joan of Arc" is all glam swagger, big drums and big fist pumps. It's a hefty, strange journey where each song is a curveball, but all the elements come together to create something incredible and truly memorable: sincerity and irony melt into a surreal concoction delivered with so much passion it doesn't matter which way it swings, the general songwriting is some of the band's strongest, and the production and arrangements are both ingeniusly detailed as well as creatively chaotic. It's a bewildering set of songs but excitingly so, a true treasure trove of creativity.

The second disc gives the album its breathing space because it's a lot less manic than the first half. The songs play more comfortably together in sound and tone, and are a more direct realisation of the threads that The Suburbs' more synth-laden moments hinted for the band to take. It's a quiet start with the reprise of "Here Comes the Night Time" acting as the bridge between the two discs and "Awful Sound" (which is anything but) acting as a calmer counterpart to "Reflektor" in how its announces its disc's themes - it bears a lush, quintessentially Arcade Fire -esque sound but updated for the reflective age, glimmering in keyboards, filters and processed drums. The second half doesn't truly kick into its groove until "It's Never Over", and when that kick arrives it's massive: the stammering, thick beat is already appropriately dramatic for the increase in bombast that the song brings, but it's in particular the moment when the verses come back alive after the first breakdown and announce their arrival with a triumphant horn section, that the second side of Reflektor truly begins in earnest. It's a spellbinding moment that continues to sound incredible each listen, with the long multi-song build-up reaping its rewards beautifully. "Porno" and "Supersymmetry" both move further into a more synthesizer-friendly ground, the former clicking and popping with such a heavily theatrical tone that it almost obscures just how great the suave build-up and chorus melody is, and "Supersummetry" gives the album a beautifully understated and quietly epic finale. Its ascending harmonies are a long cry from the frantic start of the record, with all bliss and no discord in its star-gazing atmosphere. It's a lush and gorgeous ending, even if the decision to tack on extra six minutes of ambient noise at the end is arguably one production choice too far, because it adds so little to the conclusion of the record. The album also bears a hidden pre-gap track in the null space of the first disc which is effectively just some of the key melodies of the record played in reverse, and if you ask me it would have served as a more interesting ambient outro.

What really makes the ending of Reflektor is the presence of "Afterlife" as the penultimate song, the great finale before the finale as is the band's tradition. "Afterlife" is heartache under the mirror ball, melancholy and carefully hidden despair that run away from their emotional heft onto the dancefloor to try and forget. It's a beautiful and powerful song and serves as the emotional climax of Reflektor as a whole, with the mania and thunderball energy of the album's first half returning and powering up the more introspectively charged reflection of its second half for one last dance. It sweeps away with its woah-ohs and ever-intensifying choruses while the layered percussions and simple keyboard riff give it a lightweight, light-footed tone that disguises just how colossal of a tune it is. But Butler sounds defeated and like he already knows the answer when he pleads if he can make it through; the way he utters "oh my god, what an awful word" towards the start of the song packs so much evocative emotion in how low-key loathed it is. The first disc of the record indulged in its excesses and the second disc saw the comedown slowly growing more lucid, and "Afterlife" as the whole record's undeniable highlight slots right there as the moment where all the shields come down and what's left is the same charismatic emotion and sincerity that has always shined through in the band.

That final set of songs is where Reflektor is its most emotionally evocative; in fact, for most of its duration Arcade Fire keep their usual level of sentimentality and vulnerability out of Reflektor. It's an emotionally distanced record until it starts breaking away its barriers towards its finale, and that's potentially what prevents it from being one of the all-time greats: that as much as I love Reflektor, it just lacks that one final emotional hook. My personal resonance for the album lies largely in how strongly the worldbuilding took me over. The band were creating something larger than just a record with Reflektor, with the emphasis on extramusical details that the band built around the album: the pre-release shenanigans, the more theatrical live shows with extras and dramatic stage performances, as well as the supplementing features (including the pseudo-live feature Here Comes the Night Time with its hectic celebrity cameos, an exercise in millennially ironic surreality). They were selling a full concept, and I was buying it - when a band goes the extra mile, I tend to be the type of nerd who openly bites the bait. So Reflektor isn't just the music for me, it's also the countless mental images and recollections of particularly arresting visual moments the band scattered across its period and which are now forever associated with these songs: the "Reflektor" video, the Glastonbury performance of "It's Never Over" with Regine in her own section surrounded by skeletal extras, the "Afterlife" live performances illuminated by mirrorball light (with the Tonight Show and Graham Norton Show appearances above all), the Here Comes the Night Time visuals, and more. Arcade Fire created a visually arresting and sublimely cohesive universe throughout the Reflektor period, which in its own way is awe-inspiring. It may seem irrelevant to some to highlight so many things that aren’t found within the album itself, but for me, the music of Reflektor is impossible to tear away from its peripheral material.

The music is, of course, incredible just as it is too. With Reflektor Arcade Fire threw everything around them into a singular melting pot, took a gamble to forge a new path with what they pulled out of the pot, and created a classic record: a thrilling and invigorating explosion of inspiration which, yes, is also good to dance to at times.

 

Rating: 9/10

 

Physical corner: An extremely shiny gatefold with each silver/gray element being vividly reflective (it’s just a reflector!). A separate fold-out lyrics sheet for both discs.

Manic Street Preachers - Rewind the Film (2013)

1) This Sullen Welsh Heart (feat. Lucy Rose); 2) Show Me the Wonder; 3) Rewind the Film (feat. Richard Hawley); 4) Builder of Routines; 5) 4 Lonely Roads (feat. Cate Le Bon); 6) (I Miss The) Tokyo Skyline; 7) Anthem for a Lost Cause; 8) As Holy as the Soil (That Buries Your Skin); 9) 3 Ways to See Despair; 10) Running Out of Fantasy; 11) Manorbier; 12) 30-Year War
Deluxe Edition Bonus Disc: Original Demos: 1) This Sullen Welsh Heart; 2) Show Me the Wonder; 3) Rewind the Film; 4) Builder of Routines; 5) 4 Lonely Roads; 6) (I Miss The) Tokyo Skyline; 7) Anthem for a Lost Cause; 8) As Holy as the Soil (That Buries Your Skin); 9) 3 Ways to See Despair; 10) Running Out of Fantasy; 11) Manorbier; 12) 30-Year War; Live at the O2, 2011 13) There By the Grace of God; 14) Stay Beautiful; 15) Your Love Alone Is Not Enough; 16) The Love of Richard Nixon; 17) Revol

The first signs of a creative rebirth - Wire's introspection meets the band trying on a more acoustic route.

Key tracks: "This Sullen Welsh Heart", "Rewind the Film", "Builder of Routines"

A long-recurring piece of Manic Street Preachers mythology has been the idea of an acoustic album. It was something that had been haunting the back the band’s mind for years and years, frequently reappearing as an aside n in interviews and potentially initiated a couple of times across the band’s history, but it always either fell on the wayside or transformed quickly into a different direction. James Dean Bradfield in particular had been namedropping Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska for years as an inspiration, but by the time the band had entered their third decade of activity the concept seemed to be on its way to be a piece of fan lore, and nothing tangible. But then, following the failed “last shot at mass communication” of Postcards From a Young Man the band took a break and when they reconvened, they (for once) kept true to their promise of not trying to repeat that same bag of tricks again. The recording sessions for the new album had no greater plan or focus, but they turned out to be extremely fertile - so much so that the band realised they had a lot more songs than they knew what to do with. Two clear directions to take were starting to pop out of the overall wealth of material, and the decision was made to create two albums. The selection of the less electrified, contemplative songs became the heart of Rewind the Film, the first of the duology - and through that, the band finally seized the chance of realising one of their long-ignored plans.

Rewind the Film isn’t Nebraska by a long shot and it's not even near to any kind of intimate collection of campfire songs, but it’s the closest the band has been to the concept of an album built around acoustic instruments. A good half of the songs feature veritably rich arrangements (in particular the symphonic title track which rides on a layered David Axelrod sample), while others heavily feature programmed elements that bridge the gap between this and the more electronic Futurology, the second album still to come. The acoustic aspect has mainly been restricted to James’ choice of guitars, and even then his electric guitar hasn’t been banned completely - its appearance has simply been restricted to a couple of guest spots where its sudden appearance makes the most impact. This may not sound like much but Manic Street Preachers have been recognisable throughout their history by Bradfield’s electric guitar sound and the riffs and solos that come with it, and so their absence is immediately notable. Taking things further, Bradfield doesn’t try to raise his acoustic guitar as a replacement lead either, and there isn't any particular defining element in the album's soundscape as a result. For an album where the basic description sounds like it could be a one-thing shtick, it’s anything but: the songs vary significantly from one to the next, from intimate confessionals to busy electronic soundscapes and would-be rock songs that have been forced to sit down for a second.

Coinciding with moving himself away from the spotlight instrumentally, Rewind the Film overall - and intentionally - diminishes Bradfield's general leading role. At the time Bradfield confessed that he was bored of his own voice, that after so many years of dominating the microphone he felt like the band needed something or someone else to freshen things up. While Nicky Wire had become a more regular feature on the studio albums, he was never going to take the lead to any larger degree; and so the band were inspired to invite other vocalists in the studio. There’s three guest spots across Rewind the Film and together they run the whole gamut of features: Lucy Rose mainly works background vocals on “This Sullen Welsh Heart”, the Richard Hawley-featuring title track is a full duet between him and Bradfield, and most strikingly Cate Le Bon is the de facto lead on “4 Lonely Roads”. With one Wire song ("As Holy as the Soil") and one instrumental (“Manorbier”), Bradfield is wholly or partially absent for nearly half the album, which takes a while to get used to but proves out to be a successful trick. Manics for certain aren’t in need of a new vocalist and Bradfield's vocals aren't in the danger of sounding stale, but the guests are a perfect fit to the album’s sound world. All three have a significant presence and audible chemistry with the material presented, and they suit their respective songs perfectly. Rose’s gentle voice works gorgeously against James’ in the quiet opener “This Sullen Welsh Heart”, Hawley’s dramatic baritone is right at home against the exploding orchestras and keyboards of “Rewind the Film” and Le Bon’s calm delivery is a natural fit to the relaxed stroll of “4 Lonely Roads”. You can tell their contributions are a success because you don't actually miss Bradfield for the time they're on centre stage, and the band have created something new out of it. Apart from “Little Baby Nothing” way back in the day, Manics’ few duet spots across the years have been afterthoughts, collaborations placed on top of songs that weren't meant to be duets; here it sounds like the band wrote the songs with their guests in mind, even if that isn't necessarily the reality. That's what makes their sudden appearance work.

The stronger presence of people outside to the band runs somewhat counterpoint to the album's general themes, because in terms of its content Rewind the Film is Wire’s most personal and directly confessional record yet, and it is a sad album. Wire had previously described Lifeblood as “The Holy Bible for 35-year olds”, but this is closer to that parallel; one man soaking the songs with his own psychoanalysis, this time obsessed with reflecting on the past. It's an album about aging, painful nostalgia, old failures and the never-ending worry that it's too late to fix things up, and desperately holding onto the few pieces of your life that grant the familiar safety to retreat into. Wire starts the record with "I don't want my children to grow up like me", takes time to admit he's "so sick and so tired of being 4 real", defeatedly admits "I am no longer the centre of the universe" in a way that trashes his legendary rock and roll id, and runs away hiding in childhood memories on the title track. Where the music flutters and blusters in order to counter the standard associations with acoustic albums and sounds thoroughly ecstatic at times, Wire's lyrics are one melancholy verse after another, retreating further to his own shell. The scattering of songs that are on a different tract barely feel like distractions: "Show Me the Wonder" sounds defiant but now and then throws a line that questions its own boldness to tackle itself, "Tokyo Skyline" is a genuine love letter to Japan and yet is all but blatant about how it's an escapist fantasy for Wire to escape to, and "30-Year War" simply switches the melancholy to anger as the personal moves to political. Wire's been introspective before but Rewind the Film is straight soul-purging more often than it's not and it's oddly harrowing, especially when it's sung by other people; it's hard to grasp just how depressing the album really is when the attention is mostly on the sudden new sounds that allow the songs to hide their real nature.

The thing is - and I'm sorry to keep the sad artisté cliché alive and well - Wire's introspective moments have often coincided with creative musical peaks for the band and once again his melancholy has heralded the trio finding the right direction again. After the mass communication wilderness years of the past three albums, the band were in a desperate need of rerouting, and Rewind the Film a realisation - albeit not a flawless one - of the promises the band made after the chart-seeking years fizzled out to their end. It's an album that looks somewhere new for the group and doesn't abide to any strictly set doctrine of how the band should represent themselves, and for the first time in a while it feels like the band just allowed themselves to create without ulterior motives. In other words, despite its placid nature Rewind the Film is thoroughly exciting, and that often directly translates to the music being excellent. Even though the album attempts to bare things down at places, it's especially the parts where Rewind the Film shows its flair a little that come alive well and truly. The busy electronic skittering against the scene-setting violin of "Tokyo Skyline" sounds genuinely giddy, the brief horn outro for "Builder of Routines" is a drop-dead gorgeous finale for the slowly intensifying song and you wish it would last so much longer (alongside the rest of the song), and the heftly layered part-sample backdrop for "Rewind the Film" is sweepingly cinematic. Moving away from guitar solos and the need to write constant anthems has revitalised the band's creative spree so you get more variety, more twists, more sudden moments that you love to point out. Wire's melancholy may dominate the album lyrically but around it, the band have created a very varied and often surprising album that is practically undersold by its "acoustic album" reputation. Not that it couldn't have been just as good had it been more restrained: "Running Out of Fantasy" and "This Sullen Welsh Heart" are fantastic proof that James requires very little around his songs to make something great, and especially "This Sullen Welsh Heart" is among one of James' best solo spots and opens the album wonderfully. Similarly, the album closes excellently: as the atmospheric instrumental "Manorbier" wonderfully bridges the acoustic sound into the aggravated electro-stomper "30-Year War", moving from Wire's internal politics to very blatantly the external and with the rage to boot, the album as a whole looks forward, showing yet another new aspect of itself while linking it to Futurology. It's a transition between two separate pairs that do not need the context to work, but the inherent qualities of which are amplified by the meta aspect.

There's a few areas where Rewind the Film falters. "Show Me the Wonder" is the obligatory single that Bradfield is bound to write under some ancient oath; the radio single that somewhat undersells the main album is the main carryover from the previous albums and a hard habit for the band to shake, and despite its eventually poignant verses and the bright horns that the song rides its hooks on, it grinds to a halt in its thumping chorus and its perky retro-styling feels at odds with the rest of the album. "3 Ways to See Despair", one of the few songs featuring James' faithful electric guitar, is the opposite as it takes an intentional stab to pair Wire's lyrics with the musical tone to match, and comes off anvilicious in its emotional heaviness - a try-hard dark night of the soul that ends up being a little corny instead. "As Holy as the Soil" is the least abrupt of the lot but it's like an awkward Sunday school original, going for a light gospel twang that maybe would have worked on Postcards From a Young Man but here is clear filler even if boasts the only Wire-vocal. The silver lining here is that part of why these songs stand up so clumsily is because the rest of the album is so well put together and natural in its skin; so the weak spots are the ones that either feel like leftovers from prior ideas or attempts to intentionally match a set tone and mood.When directly comparing it to its sibling album, you get the slight feeling that the initial batch of songs that lead to Rewind the Film were the minority of the session material and that's why you get a few songs where the lines blur between the two albums, and another couple of songs like these that probably would have ended up as b-sides if not for a need to bulk the record up a little bit more.

But the one big takeaway from Rewind the Film is that at its brightest it shines so well. It's amusing to describe a largely calm, collected and aching album as a revitalising jolt but it's exactly what Rewind the Film is - for the band and the listener. It's an audible document of the Manics brushing off the self-inflicted awkwardness of their previous years, and with that, they sound like themselves again: fearless and invested. I don't dislike the 2007-2010 period as much it seems like I do (and Journal for Plague Lovers right in the middle of it is the odd one out that doesn't quite fit in with the main criticisms I have of those years), but for the most parts it saw the Manics putting on a role and colouring by numbers, and it lacked that unpredictability the Manics had always treasured. Rewind the Film brings that spirit back again and comfortably slots in the continuum, like it had never gone away and the past couple of albums were a dream. I hate the phrase "return to form" because it implies artists should stick to their past and not take risks changing, but Rewind the Film is that risk after a series of safe bets. It's a case where that phrase really feels like it applies, because it's back to the most important aspect of the past greats: it's an album where it's clear the band put their conviction into it.

The now-standard deluxe edition of the album comes with the now-standard bonus disc of original demos and few other goodies. The demos are fine but not too interesting for the most parts - most of the songs are already fully realised and there's no interesting sketches, rather it's just rougher versions of the album tracks with placeholders over future production elements (keyboards instead of horns, etc). You can get a hint of the barebones Nebraska version album through some of them and have an idea of what it would've sounded like, but for most parts it's clear these songs were intended to be fuller works to start with. Few interesting details still remain: "Rewind the Film" and "4 Lonely Roads" feature Wire in vocals, a child choir comes out of nowhere on "3 Ways to See Despair" (and axing it was the right choice but I did not expect a child choir to appear in a demo), and the version of "30-Year War" gives an idea of what a true Rewind the Film-version of the song would have sounded like, as opposed to the duology hybrid of the album version. Far more interesting are the live songs. Capping off the hit-chasing years, the band released the singles collection National Treasures in 2011 and closed off the era with a residency at the O2 in London, playing every one of those singles. Including the ones they've deliberately ignored for years. A live album never realised and instead the band provided bulk of the gig through b-sides, free downloads and bonus material like this; and the great thing is that they didn't shy away from releasing some of the less obvious songs this way. We may never get the full gig but I'm glad we have the excellent recordings of "There By the Grace of God" and "The Love of Richard Nixon", dusted off for one night and probably never to be heard again. "Stay Beautiful" is great fun live with a full stadium audience screaming the lyrics at the band, "Revol" comes back with a vengeance with some muscle and, uh, "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough" is there and the combined charisma of Nina Persson and Bradfield still can't save it. If you're cobbling together your own live album like I am the deluxe version is sort of worth it, but the demos aren't particularly interesting this time around just due to the nature of the album.

Rating: 7/10

Lady Gaga - ARTPOP (2013)

1) Aura; 2) Venus; 3) G.U.Y.; 4) Sexxx Dreams; 5) Jewels 'n' Drugs (feat. T.I., Too Short & Twista); 6) Manicure; 7) Do What U Want (feat. R. Kelly); 8) ARTPOP; 9) Swine; 10) Donatella; 11) Fashion!; 12) Mary Jane Holland; 13) Dope; 14) Gypsy; 15) Applause

Excessive, chaotic, high-energy. Gaga battles against an impending popularity comedown by frantically going all over the place, turning her internal battles into off-kilter pop monsters. It's messy, but she knows it.

Key tracks: "Venus", "G.U.Y.", "ARTPOP"


Lady Gaga loved fame. Her first two albums were dedicated to it and to the tragi-romantic notion of how too much fame can affect a person. Appropriately, she gained her own fame through it and ironically, when her imperial phase had hit its peak and she needed to keep on top of her own fame, she felt the effects too. But rather than crumble under pressure or push herself away from it, Gaga plunged herself right into it. Some artists end up recording 'fame hangover' albums where their music takes a sudden turn following exposure to something they couldn't deal with, but ARTPOP is instead the heavy binge right before that comedown; the musical equivalent of someone diving right into their addiction with full disregard to its danger. If Gaga was addicted to her own perception of her status in the pop culture world, this was her reckless junkie phase.

While Gaga was always explosive on stage, it's worth watching some of her live performances from around this tour. They're the show of a woman outright possessed on stage, pushing herself to her limits and often reducing her vocal range to a guttural scream over a series of songs that each come out more outrageous than the last, the breakdowns becoming more intense as the tour continued on. Gaga has later come clean on just how much of a bad mental state she was in at the time: she was feeling vulnerable as she was retrospectively dealing with her abused past and second-guessing her own moves all the time, which fed into a snowball of desperate measures to prove her stature. This is the era where her infamous clothing got even crazier, where she talked a great deal about a companion app to the album that'd revolutionise how music is experienced (it ended up just being some photo filters and a lot of Peter Molyneux-esque forgotten features), she was planning to be actually launched into space for a performance... Little of it actually came true in any realistic fashion, but you could tell Gaga was constantly pushing herself to be something gigantic, in a way that felt far-fetched even to her own standards. But amongst all that music needed to be made, and her mania filtered into the album and so, ARTPOP became the one real-life monument to this particularly tumultuous period.

ARTPOP is still a pop album - it's just every pop album you could think of. The character Gaga had created for herself was starting to crack and the fragments started pulling away from each other. Here's the emotional balladeer; here's the crazy art chick; here's the perfectionist dance pop superstar; here's the hip-hop hook girl. She had no filter and no idea was considered too much. The swerving opener "Aura" was originally called "Burqa", tip-toeing around the controversy right on the doorstep of all the covert islamophobia rising in media; "Swine" was a call-out against the gossip blogger Perez Hilton who Gaga felt backstabbed by after a period of fake friendship, and which on stage took form of a scream therapy session that got more maddening the further she toured (by SXSW she was literally puking out neon paint). The message of "Do What U Want" was that anyone could take advantage of Gaga's body but no one could ever own her mind, as an abstract response to how media and paparazzi were treating her - and she invited already-infamous R. Kelly to sing a completely point-missing verse that just made it that much seedier. Somewhere among this she became obsessed over the concept of taking pop art and flicking the theme upside down, by way of an incoherent vision of bringing art into pop music; there wasn't really any kind of logical red line in her rambles, but it's the reason for all the Koons balls in the artwork, promotional material and referenced in the lead single "Applause". "Applause" itself is an adrenaline-fueled art statement of a song that's more a manifesto of Gaga's concept for the record than an obvious chart-topper, barely catching its breath for its anthem of a chorus. This was right as pop had started turning towards the Lorde-led eat-the-rich chill vibes, and here Gaga was literally singing about people praising her in a way that many perceived as egocentric - and she sounded like she's absolutely terrified if it would ever end.

It doesn't take a long-winded analysis to realise just how all over the place ARTPOP is, but that's where its power stems from. Born This Way holds its place as one of the key pop albums of its decade because of how completely fearless it is in its execution and vision, with Gaga taking inspiration from so many different things and meshing them into something that shouldn't work but does. ARTPOP is the same but just way more unhinged, however it's got that same adventurous spirit and most importantly, Gaga is still operating on that same songwriting high that she wrote Born This Way on. When she's at her best, Gaga brings together the kind of hooks pop dreams are made of with mad ideas no one else could think of. Take "Venus", which is an absolutely ridiculous song: the stop-start rhythm with its punctuating title drops which range in tone from ecstatic to utterly bored, the ludicrous lyrics that move from "let's blast off into a new dimension - IN YOUR BEDROOM (... Venus!)" to the middle-eight where she lists off the solar system one-by-one like the planets are her groupies and where she counters her own brattishly stressed "ur-ANUS" with a histrionically shrieked "don't you know my ass is famous?!", and the sheer 70s b-movie glam space opera histrionics at all. And yet, not only it's an instantly powerful hook after another but it has two obvious choruses and both could be the shining moment of a hit song in its own right. It's stupid, but it's completely irresistable and a really wonky version of pop heaven.

ARTPOP makes an art out of throwing something unexpected and baffling into the mix and creating something of a landmark through it. It's in the gloriously ugly bass fills that steal the chorus of "Sexxx Dreams" (and its instantly iconic, endlessly quotable spoken word bridge), the sudden mosh pit ending to the otherwise impeccably slick and suave "G.U.Y" that turns an artist tag shoutout into a album highlight, or the fact that "Fashion!" features both David Guetta and Will.i.am in co-production duties and yet Gaga has such a tight control over them that the song is a glacially smooth, wondrously decadent French disco jam rather than the horror you'd expect from such a duo. The album's production drills this down, full of weird quirks of its own from raunchy distortions and split-second breakdowns to playing around with volume to a disorienting degree. It's every bit as hi-fi and hyper-produced as you'd expect from the new album of a global pop superstar, but where the odd element you'd expect to be there have been replaced by malfunctioning synthesizers and traditionally unattractive sampler choices. It does actually serve the songs too: the chaos is a creative force, a cavalcade of synthesizers and programmed elements all clashing into noisy layers that Gaga channels into a frantic, manic energy for her pop powerhouse songs. The production of ARTPOP is a wondrous thing in all its excessive obnoxiousness, because it matches the excess of the songs. It's big, maximalist pop but closer to auteur in its execution.

The best way to prove that the jumbled nature works for the album's advantage is that the song which lacks of all of it is also the worst on the record, i.e. the piano ballad "Dope". While there are other songs with questionable antics, they pull through by compensating elsewhere: e.g. you can just about ignore R. Kelly's presence on "Do What U Want" because everything else about the song is a gloriously huge pop mammoth breaking down china shop walls, and while "Jewels 'n' Drugs" is perhaps a slightly misjudged attempt to slip into mainstream rap by way of creating what sounds like an AI designed the most stereotypical rap song you could think of, every single person who appears in it is so full of charisma that they salvage the song with their presence. But "Dope" is a bad, clichéd metaphor ("your love's a bigger drug than the actual drugs, okay") and it's a dull, fake-earnest song that goes for histrionics over emotion. Gaga has done piano ballads elsewhere and they are all far better, and if she wanted to soothen the album's wall-scaling energy down with it, she demonstrates it perfectly well elsewhere on record that she doesn't need to remove everything for that. The already mentioned "Fashion!" is a frictionlessly gliding groove that's simply stylish as all heck without going towards anything outrageous, and the title track is an actual masterpiece - a hypnotic half-siren song, half-dance anthem full of ethereal atmosphere, over which Gaga lays one of her best arrangements and melodies and which culminates in a genuinely triumphant middle-eight where she lays down everything she meant with the "artpop" concept and drives it across so clearly with her performance that even the listener gets it. Some days I legitimately consider it as Gaga's outright best song.

Whether ARTPOP works as an album is another thing. It's one wild ride of a tune after another, but at 15 songs is absolutely way too much of it. It's practically exhausting towards its final segments, and whether it's because of that or the songs themselves, the latter third just doesn't carry the same excitement anymore. "Dope" is what it is, "Mary Jane Holland" is a lesser version of the mid-tempo jams of Born This Way and even though "Gypsy" is as classic and "normal" of a pop song as you can find here and Gaga sounds genuinely earnest in her love for her fans in it, it lacks the pizzazz and sounds too plain for its surrounding elements. It's enough to halt the high you were riding and if it weren't for "Applause" at the end, the final part of the album would be a completely disappointing slide to a quiet fizzle. On its own "Applause" still isn't so much of a standout; when it was first released, it came across as a disappointing first taste of the new era following the footsteps of Born This Way. But as a closer to the album, it makes so much more sense because it's less of a stand-alone song and closer to a summation of all the album's themes from concepts to production, all the way to closing both the song and the album as a whole by spelling out the album's name for no particular reason. It's the grand finale, the appropriate bow for applause. It just about saves the album from completely falling off the rails as it ends, even if I'd much rather just have a shorter but stronger record.

To some extent, the end of the album also marked a curtain call for Gaga. ARTPOP was a commercial success (though arguably because of the strength of her previous albums) but in terms of public consciousness and general consensus now, it flopped - its singles run was full of cancellations, last-minute replacement choices and aborted videos and its campaign was a messy string of Gaga jumping from one idea to the next, and they shot the album's chances of ever regaining a real foothold or a hit. Following this, her own private demons made her resent some of the choices she had taken and the public largely wrote her off as a desperate attention seeker following some of the aftermath from the first two points. Gaga herself would move away from the pop world as much as possible following ARTPOP, by sinking time into side projects and acting and eventually emerging with a whole new sound for the eventual follow-up record. You listen to the album and watch some of the era-specific videos and you sort of understand why, because it is such an inherently disorganised selection of songs and concepts and with every televised performance, Gaga is dangerously close to tripping the fine balance between serving iconic moments and trying too hard, the line which she used to be able to dance around carefully. But listening to the album, it also feels like it never got a chance to truly show its worth because there's so many things here that are so compelling and exciting, and so very thoroughly Gaga - they just got buried in the process. ARTPOP, flawed as it is, is one of my favourite things Gaga has released, even if it took me a long time to get any kind of clear footing with it. Within its sleeves is proof of Gaga's talent, but it also comes with a big asterisk at the end of the sentence. It's the pop version of a tortured artist splashing colours on a canvas and eventually throwing the entire canvas on the floor, manically explaining that the whole room the canvas is in is part of the art piece after all. During ARTPOP's best moments, Gaga manages to be viciously convincing about those ideas being perfectly on-point.

Rating: 7/10

Studio Killers - Studio Killers (2013)

1) Ode to the Bouncer; 2) Eros & Apollo; 3) All Men Are Pigs; 4) Who Is in Your Heart Now?; 5) Friday Night Gurus; 6) Flawless; 7) Jenny; 8) In Tokyo; 9) Funky at Heart; 10) When We Were Lovers; 11) True Colours

Cartoon colours, unbeatable attitude and a production to take over the dance floor. Masterclass pop.

Key tracks: "Ode to the Bouncer", "Who Is in Your Heart Now?", "Jenny"

Around 2012-2013 I was going through a pop music revival phase. The first music I ever loved was dance pop and while it’s always held a place in my interests for that very reason, over the years it became completely overshadowed and overpowered by rock music - at first through extroverted frontmen and flashy guitar solos, later primarily by endless amounts of introversion and melancholy. It got to a point where I found myself at a point where synth stabs, dance beats and unashamedly infectious hooks started sounding like the most refreshing, exciting thing around. Pop was worlds away from what I was otherwise constantly listening to and it began to sound brand new.

“Ode to the Bouncer”, which opens Studio Killers’ self-titled debut, arrived with a perfect timing and became a point of obsession very quickly. It has absolutely everything you could dream of a pop banger to have. The production is full of glitz and detail, reaching for a futuristic sound yet with a respecting nod towards past dance music trends. The lyrics are full of sharp wordplay, cunning puns and unapologetic sass and attitude that make what’s being sung just as exhilirating as the tune itself. The hooks are big and bold and hit a ton right off the bat. It’s a monster of a pop song that wipes the floor with its contemporaries and competitors. It took me roughly to the halfway of the first chorus to be smitten. It was a perfect case of the right song at the right time.

Studio Killers’ debut turned out to be a thrill ride - and still is. It’s a breath of fresh air even though it doesn’t invent any new wheels: instead, it ups its contemporaries through the level of devotion it has for its art. It radiates with confidence about its own strengths, masters the craft of melody and uses its foundational elements so immaculately that the music comes out revelatory. The fabled Perfect Pop Song is a rush of instant excitement to a downright physical level, a jolt of energy that gets you giddy just by how impactful its rhythm and melodies are, the Studio Killers album is close to repeating that throughout an entire record and if you were to ask me what I actually seek in modern dance pop, handing this album over would be enough. That in retrospect the once-mindblowing “Ode to the Bouncer” would actually turn out to be dethroned by half the album speaks to the level of inspiration and quality control here.

What really makes the album is the impact of its personality - anyone can nail songs and production but it’s this where the biggest differences in this genre are made. Studio Killers are ‘virtual band’ where the musicians involved operate under pseudonyms and characters, and that comes automatically with a heavy emphasis on design and style. Thing is, it’s an easy thing to half-ass: Gorillaz took about halfway through to the first album to unravel into just Damon Albarn and his mates inviting guests to the studio and it’s questionable if their cartoon antics really have any point anymore. Studio Killers on the other hand flesh out entire character arcs over the course of a 11-track pop album to the point where they feel as vital as any people behind music. Big thanks to this is the sheer quality of the lyric writing, which can bend from take-no-prisoners sass and attitude to surprisingly profound depictions of human relations, by way of Leonard Cohen and Simone de Beauvoir namechecks and “I can’t believe they just said that” level of punning (“sailors of the sleaze / all hands on dick”). These not only make the big bops instantly quotable and the slower songs surprisingly evocative, but they help to bring the characters to life and make the album feel personal: the virtual characters are actual characters. Under the giant synths and CGI art is a great big soul.

It matters. It’s the key element that the album needs to take it from a group of great songs to a great album, a full experience from start to finish. It’s a sensory explosion that tickles every sense of a music geek – golden production to vanish into with headphones, intricate songwriting where each piece feels essential and each melody bears impact, a groove that feels in the backbone and lyrics that hold up. What flaws it has are barely there - the near-instrumental “Flawless” is a great soundscape but always comes out a little jarringly, like an interlude that got out of hand, and “Tokyo” doesn’t shine quite as bright as the rest of the album. But look at what we have in contrast. The piano intro, synth stabs and whistle bridges of “Eros & Apollo” are one more jubilant than the other, the EDM build-ups of “Funky at Heart” turn a trendy cliché into something that sounds borderline profound, “Who Is in Your Heart Now” soars like a ballad never ordinarily could, “When We Were Lovers” gets right into your feelings. “Jenny” is a monster on its own - a pop song so colossal it could dominate the world, armed with a merciless killer hook, spiced by its cunning lyrics and (more importantly) the sheer desperation in the voice that sings them and topped by a suave accordion punctuation. The tracklist is one of the most fun musical rollercoasters I’ve ridden on.

Studio Killers a joyous burst of colour, love and energy, and everything I wanted and needed to hear in 2013. It had a monumental impact, dominating my personal airwaves for most of the year. For most people the idea of music like this coming off as mindblowing might feel surreal given it’s everywhere and how it gets shafted by “serious” music listeners (and let’s not pretend the “poptimism” movement is anything different) - I mean, we’re supposed to get into jazz or something as we get older right - but it offers a kind of bliss and body-powering energy that I hadn’t found myself honestly and analytically appreciating for the longest time beyond a small number of acts that were more akin to exceptions. Studio Killers did a lot of that course realignmnent. Its impact has remained even now and it still feels just as thoroughly exciting, and that’s what cements its status as a fantastic record.

Rating: 9/10

John Frusciante - Outsides EP (2013)

1) Same; 2) Breathiac; 3) Shelf

Three tracks worth of Frusciante tinkering with his music programs and little else. 

Key tracks: "Same"

Calling Outsides an EP in the greater sense of being a bite-size cohesive body of work is a bit of a misnomer. It's more of a single with two b-sides, except the single is a 10-minute experimental cut.

That song, "Same", is a 10½ minute guitar solo backed by a short drum loop, which Frusciante chops up and repurposes and rearranges throughout those ten minutes in a variety of ways. The solo is merely an excuse for him to test loop manipulation and the song doesn't particularly grow or intensify during its length, but still morphs restlessly as the same beats switch shapes. It's the best song overall on the EP, genuinely good even, but after the first 6-7 minutes it's said everything has to say and the rest is simply made for zoning out if you're in that kind of mood. And it's certainly better than its "b-sides". "Breathiac" is a pile of noise and the worst thing Frusciante has committed on record since the 90s drug days finished - it's a mishmash of dissonant sound with no reason or rhyme, and it's hard to really think what Frusciante aimed to do with it. "Shelf" doesn't begin any better and is initially just a half-brained sound collage, but towards the end an actual song begins to emerge and the final couple of minutes actually get genuinely good, offering exactly the kind of artsy synth pop John promised back when he first announced going electronic. 

The common thread between the three songs is the sound of Frusciante moving further with electronic sound, somewhere more abstract and, at least within his own scope, boundary-breaking. The crux is that they're experiments first, songs second if even considered at all. Outsides is for Frusciante first and foremost, and I can't help but think that the sole reason why there's an official release of this for a wider audience is more to do with the label than Frusciante having a particular artistic itch to scratch. It has its enjoyable parts but none of it feels like it has any impact, whereas Frusciante's prior EPs at least had some element that might bring you back to it later. Outsides isn't a weak release as much as it is forgettable; the sort of thing that even a big time fan could foresee themselves giving a pass.

Rating: 5/10