Kent - Tillbaka till samtiden (2007)

1) Elefanter; 2) Berlin; 3) Ingenting; 4) Vid din sida; 5) Columbus; 6) Sömnen; 7) Vy från ett luftslott; 8) Våga vara rädd; 9) LSD, någon?; 10) Generation ex; 11) Ensammast i Sverige

Kent embrace synths and accidentally reinvent themselves, confident and atmospheric.

Key tracks: "Elefanter", "Ingenting", "Columbus"

Kent’s discography can be divided between their pre-2007 and post-2007 output, or pre- and post-Tillbaka till samtiden. I imagine Kent themselves didn’t intend their seventh album’s influence to reach so far: the choice to utilise more synthesisers and programmed elements and to de-emphasise guitars was initially a strictly reactionary move, following the excessive (as described by the band) use of guitars on the last record as well as the amicable and coincidental departure of rhythm guitarist Harri Mänty. Unexpectedly to everyone, the album had an impact deep enough that the second half of Kent’s story would follow in its footsteps, with the sound world of Tillbaka till samtiden becoming such an integral part of Kent that the early albums became almost a distant memory. 

In retrospect, Tillbaka till samtiden is still a clear transitional phase for Kent. It’s synth pop, but as interpreted by a rock band: the style is new but the songs still follow Kent’s typical songwriting style, the insistent kick beats drill the rhythm right down to the spine like a dance track but they're still live drums even if processed within an inch of their lives, and there's still guitars and the songs that feature them most prominently (“Generation Ex”, “Berlin”, “LSD, någon?”) could have slotted in the previous albums without too many difficulties. Electronic elements and synth sounds were never unfamiliar to Kent either, and Tillbaka till samtiden is perhaps best thought as the logical end point where the band would have journeyed eventually anyway. In other words, it’s not quite the radical departure that it would seem like at a first glance and the biggest contributor to any shock factor is the simple fact that it follows Du & jag döden, the dense and epic guitar climax of their back catalogue - it's the contrast that's unusual, not the actual change.

The big difference instead between Kent as they were and Kent now is how comfortably the band find themselves settling in their new skin. No wonder they shifted their scope after this album because it becomes abundantly clear across Tillbaka till samtiden that Kent have managed to locate their comfort zone, sitting somewhere between the alternative rock ideals they made their name with and a more directly hitting and sleekly produced synth sound they were clearly inspired by, and which they had tested in the past but hadn’t nailed to their own satisfaction. That isn't to say the previous albums weren't truly Kent, but there is a kind of reactionary restlessness to them that in hindsight is identifiable as a band in search of their own place, uncertain about ever standing still. In contrast it's remarkable just how naturally the stylistic decisions made here work with the band's songwriting style and how at ease they sound in this environment; it comes across as beautifully balanced. There's still that sharpness and edge of their guitar days, even during the parts of the album where Kent are fulfilling their fantasy of what they’d do if they were in charge of a Depeche Mode or a Pet Shop Boys record. Something like "Vid din sida” is what happens when the disco drive of the earlier hit “Musik non stop” stumbles onto a cyber goth club, and the new instrumental decisions lend well to such curveballs. 

It's also an incredibly atmospheric and scene-setting album. The entire record sounds like takes place in hazy twilight or in a faintly glowing cold winter's night, and the music is dipped in thick textures conjured by the band's now-favoured synthesizer shifts: it conjures images of foggy deserted streets bathing in moonlight, late night drives staring at the city lights through the passenger window and quiet corners of dark clubs. Some tracks play off it more than others, but the feel is strong enough throughout that it's undoubtedly my favourite aspect of Tillbaka till samtiden. It's thoroughly appropriate to consider it visual album in how vividly its sound paints these associations and images (some imaginary, some based on real life moments); and by the looks of it even Kent thought it so. The booklet is nearly entirely dedicated to various atmospheric and striking photographs, and through the haunting freeze-frame poses in the music video for "Ingenting" and the arresting urban imagery in the one for "Columbus", Kent brushed off their old generic rock band videos and became a visually arresting group with their latter day music videos (though the other two singles didn't fare as well admittedly, with the live-in-studio footage of "Generation ex" and a remix of "Vy från ett luftslott" receiving a compilation of public commons media remixed into a competent Youtube fan video). It's, once again, a sign of growth as a band, taking the steps to form a wider context around the music, developing aesthetic choices to emphasise the music while creating songs that outright invite for strong visual counterparts.

It's particularly on the first half where all these aspects - the synthetic atmosphere, the electronic motion, the rock band strength -  are in balance. "Elefanter" continues Kent's streak of classic openers as it cycles through all the album's motions one after another, its sunset horizon gazing of a start shifting into distorted frustration and ultimately a bold and awe-inspiring horn-accentuated finale. It's a beautiful thing to witness and it's an opener that sticks from the very first time you hear it, and it leads onto a real gold streak. The high-speed thrill of "Berlin", the phenomenal lead single "Ingenting" that introduced the album so perfectly and still sounds like the record's purest distillation of its ideals with its foreboding tension and the insistently powerful piano hook, the pounding of "Vid din sida" and the breathtaking dark night of the soul ballad "Columbus" is a hell of power play, one after another. Many of these are instant classics, with "Elefanter", "Ingenting" and especially "Columbus" - exploding in quiet, piercingly human melancholy as its synth walls swell so hauntingly - immediately making the case that Kent have practically levelled up as they've started this new life of theirs.

There's a clear halfway break point to the album, brought by the linked couplet of "Sömnen" and "Vy från ett luftslott": the former's ambient dreamscape takes the atmospheric production to its furthest and also serves as the extended prelude to the latter's lightweight bounciness, from which point the album itself tones down the soundscapes and returns to a more familiarly dynamic Kent territory. It's a great second half too, with the charged and cruising "Våga vara rädd" riding another set of excellent horn section hooks and the impeccably stylish "Generation ex" having the kind muscular liveliness that serves the album well as it nears its end. "LSD, någon?" took the longest to grow and it's still perhaps the album's weak link, as great as it admittedly gets when it goes off the rails towards its end - it's the clearest bridge to Du & jag döden and nearly juts out because of it, but really its issue is just the fact that it takes a long, long time to get to somewhere really exciting. "Ensammast i Sverige" tides the album over towards its break of dawn after the long gloomy night, its knowingly dramatic heartbreak carried by a thudding beat around which guitars, organs and synthesizers swirl over and over as the credits roll and the narrator walks alone into the early hours of the morning. It's a confidently controlled miniature masterpiece - this album's Kent epic but not necessarily in size (even if in length, still), but rather in its emotional vastness. It’s a beautiful closer, and its relative restraint is another example of the confidence and comfort Kent have found while moving to different waters.

Unlike many transitional records, Tillbaka till samtiden is the point when the band found the last puzzle piece they were looking for rather than the awkward in-between phase, and that’s why it’s stood the test of time so brilliantly. Timewarping back to the mid-late 2000s, this was an era where a great number of rock acts discovered that a solid way to break out of a creative rut was to trade guitars to synthesizers and keyboards. Most of the time these resulted in an odd singular album or two at most, which the bands would then turn their backs on afterwards before launching into your usual return-to-roots records - and at the time it felt like Kent too were jumping onto this exact same trend. Tillbaka till samtiden was a great album back then too, but it's really gained a finer side through age and that's because unlike so many of its stylistic peers, Kent integrated those new sounds into their own heart and soul rather than simply treating them as an aesthetic choice. As a transitional record it perhaps loses some of its due attention to its siblings on both sides, but the atmospheric, evocative qualities of Tillbaka till samtiden are unmatched in Kent's discography.

Rating: 8/10

Neoangin - A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World (2001)

1) A Life in a Day; 2) A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World; 3) Let Your Money Work for You; 4) The Plot; 5) Under the Plasticsink; 6) Celebrity Bones; 7) Girl with Attitude; 8) I Like to Be Somebody Else; 9) The Nightbus; 10) Poor Living; 11) Under Bad Influence; 12) Guess My Name; 13) Flu; 14) Man Who Brought Light into Darkness; 15) Everything Comes Back; 16) The Shop Detective; 17) Das Feuilleton Groovt Mit; 18) The Unfriendly World; 19) Are You Happy; 20) The Happy Hour; 21) The Blind Passenger; 22) Daydream; 23) 2 Sides of a Coin; 24) Trouble Couple; 25) Hall of Fame of Selfexploitation; 26) San Antonio; 27) Playing on the Piano of New Media; 28) Don't Take Money from Anyone; 29) All Fucked Up; 30) The Long Goodbye; 31) Give Me a Platform; 32) Walnut Kitten; 33) Another Day in Another Life

A cartoon potpourri of quirky melodies and kitschy grooves, that could have perhaps benefited from a bit more of a focus. 

Key tracks: "A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World", "Everything Comes Back", "Walnut Kitten"

I ended up with a copy of this album largely by happenstance when a friend of mine was doing some collection spring cleaning by way of shoving me a ton of their CDs they didn't have room for anymore, and in lieu of actual knowledge a quick Internet search tells me that Jim Avignon - aka Neoangin - is a German do-it-all artisté (with the signature hat to match the accent on the stress, based on various photos) who mashes up cartoons, painting, music and performance art into a concoction that seems to have given him some degree of fame in Germany. Which makes perfect sense, because A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World is precisely the kind of music you'd expect from that kind of an artist.

The channel-hopping 33 songs and fifty minutes of A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World is a potpourri of kitschy sounds, MIDI production jobs and happy-go-lucky sing-along melodies, with a dash of lamentations on the weight of the modern world thrown in for good measure, sung with a heavy German accent. Avignon's world is a realm of bright colours, cardboard backdrops and cartoon animals, and Neoangin is his interpretation of pop music: the songs average on 1:30 to 2 minutes, most of them gleefully blur the borders between what's an interlude and what isn't, with blink-and-you-miss-it segues scattered liberally throughout. Avignon doesn't leave any room for subtlety or development - songs smack the listener right out of the gate with their most obvious, catchiest hooks and then either repeat it until they stick or until the next song suddenly appears. The lyrics try to aim for something deeper, with a prominent use of the traditional twist of introspective lyrics on top of deceptively upbeat music, but Avignon's bone-dry, barely-singing delivery makes them just as oddbeat as the musical backdrop; it's urban environment adulthood anxiety, if you happen to live in Toontown instead of New York. It's all very ridiculous, but also often genuinely charming or lovable.

My problem with A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World is perhaps more to do with me than the album itself, and it's that as a music listener I have issues keeping my attention span focused with quickfire snippet albums such as this. It's too much information in too small of a span of time and while I do appreciate that the manic nature of the record does fit with its music, in practice the album becomes a singular formless blob of music that moves from one thing to another so quickly I can't fully register the songs as they breeze past. Which, perhaps arguably, may as well be the point but while the melodies ring familiar to me when they play, it's another thing for them to actually stick. The primary exceptions for this are near the start and the end, and to some extent that's simply because they're the first and last things you hear when the record is on, but there's an argument that the bookends of the record are its most developed songs. The title track in particular is the most perfect pop song Avignon presents across the entire extended medley of a record and it's a genuinely great little ditty that, even if only two minutes in length, sounds more fleshed out and finished than anything else on the record. "Walnut Kitten" on the other end sticks out because of its calmer and more graceful touch. There are a few moments throughout the album where its facade as a goofy cartoon jumble cracks and Avignon almost sheepishly creates something more serious (the central third in particular is rich in this vein), and the three-minute "Walnut Kitten" takes that to its logical conclusion right at the end and acts as the comedown for the fifty-odd minutes preceding it: the friendly dog kicking off his shoes and slumping in his lazy chair after another long day in the unfriendly world. It's a lovely instrumental which allows Avignon to showcase that he is actually a really good composer and arranger in a way that the rest of the album's quick flashes necessarily doesn't do justice to, and tonally it feels like the right way to end the record. 

That isn't to say that the rest of the album lacks memorability - "Everything Comes Back" with its chill frolic vibe in particular comes to mind - just that it's harder to to grab onto the great parts in the chaotic jumble of interludes, segues and speedrunning melodies. As said before that's an "it's not you, it's me" situation, and the manic colourful rush through the album's running length does befit Avignon's aesthetic and the tone of the songs: at the same time, the handful of songs that sound like their own thing instead of just a segment of a wider whole make a convincing argument that Avignon could have made a stellar 30-40 minute album just by focusing on those (and maybe he has and I'm unaware of it). The rambliness of A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World is what ultimately makes it a thoroughly charming curio rather than an actually great record for me - an album that I appreciate in its aesthetic and vibe more than I actually adore musically. But that said, I don't often get to say this about albums with such cartoony cover art, but A Friendly Dog in an Unfriendly World sounds exactly like it looks - and that alone is something worth cherishing.

Rating: 7/10

Various Artists - World of Warcraft OST (2004)

1) Main Title: Legends of Azeroth; 2) The Shaping of the World; 3) Legacy; 4) Song of Elune; 5) Echoes of the Past; 6) A Call to Arms; 7) Intro Movie: Seasons of War; 8) Stormwind; 9) Orgrimmar; 10) The Undercity; 11) Thunder Bluff; 12) Darnassus; 13) Ironforge; 14) Elwynn Forest; 15) Duskwood; 16) Dun Morogh; 17) Burning Steppes; 18) Shimmering Flats; 19) Felwood; 20) Stranglethorn Vale; 21) Tanaris; 22) Teldrassil; 23) Tavern; 24) Moonfall; 25) Ruins; 26) Temple; 27) Lurking; 28) Sacred; 29) Graveyard; 30) War

Fantasy ambient for a nostalgic world.

Key tracks: "Stormwind", "Dun Morogh"

World of Warcraft really isn't the kind of game I ever expected to pick up, much less enjoy, but a bored download of the free trial in the uneventful months between my high school/college (the Finnish equivalent, anyway) graduation and my first real job in my late teens turned out far more differently than I expected. Getting lost in the unbelievably vast world of Azeroth and its countless nooks and crannies ready to be explored tapped into something I hadn't really experienced in games before, at least not in this scale. To go into the exact details why the old school WoW became something special for me - and why it still holds up, as I write this in 2021 after a few weeks of returning to Azeroth in the form of WoW Classic -  would take up too much space in what is meant to be a music review, but just to be clear on the context here: WoW could probably and unexpectedly find itself in my all time favourite games list, maybe not because of its mechanics and certainly not the writing, but because of how it made me feel. Its music is therefore the soundtrack to me falling in love with a virtual world and the countless hours spent there, sometimes simply just sitting on a lonely beach somewhere and soaking in the atmosphere as the music quietly played in the background.

Stylistically WoW's soundtrack is what you'd expect from a fantasy game, with orchestral swells, booming choirs and the like: if you have played a fantasy game or watched a fantasy film in a post-Lord of the Rings film trilogy world, you know what to expect here. What makes WoW's soundtrack a little different is that because it's a massive multiplayer game rather than a linear single player experience, the music isn't built around a guided journey or dramatic story beats. Rather, these songs are meant to accompany the player in more open-ended adventures as they wander around the many biomes of the game doing whatever it is that they fancy doing on that particular day, for the people to create their own context for these songs rather than the music backing particular scenes. Most of the music therefore lingers more than it thrills, slowly building the atmosphere and setting the overall tone for the areas they feature in. Many of the original game’s zones also share the same tracks despite how some of them have been named after particular areas, so very few of these songs are actually tied to particular themes and instead they operate by mood: some more pastoral and inviting, others evoking desolate landscapes and some building up tension. The typical high fantasy bombast is primarily reserved for the game’s faction capital cities which do have their unique themes - purpose built to make new players feel that they've taken their first real step in their epic adventure as they step through the gates of these grand hubs where they can encounter hundreds of other heroes.

It is therefore a score that isn’t really memorable per se in terms of catchy melodies, but by letting the mood linger it installs a sense of familiarity to the songs through how omnipresently they underline the events on the screen. I don't enjoy this soundtrack because it's back to back bangers, I enjoy it because so many of the songs here take me instantly back to my own memories of the game, to my own personal experiences that they soundtracked. WoW’s music practically begs to be nostalgia fodder for the hours you spent listening to the songs idly in the background while wandering the endless roads in wonder or spending more time than you wanted hunting down that goddamn elusive last quest item drop. Out of the many, many game soundtracks I have downloaded or owned during my lifetime, WoW's music is one of the most comfortable listening experiences I own even though I’d struggle to hum most of these songs. It's at times beautiful and full of wonder, but ultimately the reason it works is because of the sensory memories it evokes. In contrast, there's a number of "exclusive tracks" included to pad out the soundtrack disc - miscellaneous pieces which use the same musical guidestones as the rest of the soundtrack to portray more elaborate and purposefully crafted songs. They're not bad songs by all means, but if there's a flaw to this particular collection it's these cuts that appear briefly, if at all, in the main game itself as they are closer to your standard indistinguishable fantasy music fare without the benefit of the direct association with the game itself. An outsider to the game wouldn't bat an eyelid about their inclusion, but by being present next to the rest of the actual soundtrack does illustrate just how much more resonant the in-game music is.

Thus, scoring this particular release is slightly awkward because it's not exactly something I simply pick up and play and it ticks all the boxes for your usual only-for-the-big-fans soundtrack experience; compare this to for example the Wrath of the Lich King expansion soundtrack from the same people a few years later, which is simply a genuinely great soundtrack from a composition point alone and serves as a direct contrast to how the original scores is more about its mood than it is about the arrangements or songcraft. But having gone back to the game recently once more now that Blizzard have made its original form available to the public again (for those who haven’t played the game, it changed over the years and the expansions), I've realised just how much of the world's magic is in the music alone. The familiar places, characters and quests have been wonderful to experience again, but it's the music that really makes me feel at home. I might not be able to express directly how most of these songs sound apart from describing the general mood and tone of them ("Stormwind" and "Ironforge" are the main exceptions when it comes to “the hooks”, and not coincidentally they are the themes for the two biggest capitals), but the sheer serotonin that these orchestral ambient cuts provide at the best of times is immeasurable.

Rating: 7/10

Kent - The hjärta & smärta EP (2005)

1) Vi mot världen; 2) Dom som försvann; 3) Ansgar & Evelyne; 4) Flen/Paris; 5) Månadens erbjudande

The epilogue for the Du & jag döden chapter - more of the same with diminishing returns.

Key tracks: "Dom som försvann", "Ansgar & Evelyne"

The phrase “victory lap” originates from racing sports, where the winner of the race drives an extra lap as a form of celebration and to give the audience a chance to congratulate them. In context of music, the connotations for the term tend to be inconsistent - it’s used for referring to releases that follow a successful album without changing things too much, but it differs from person to person whether it’s used in a positive (more of the same great stuff, yay!) or negative (a comfortable if safe and unexciting follow-up) light, and I'm guilty of being just as wishywashy with my usage of it in the past. Released six months after Du & jag döden, The hjärta & smärta EP is without a doubt a victory lap for Kent, basking in the success of the preceding album where Kent perfected their guitar sound as it continues where the album left off. The immediate idea that this is Du & jag döden: The B-Sides is proven wrong by the mere virtue that those b-sides were already released with the actual singles (and they were all great, and honestly worth a check for anyone who loves the album), but the long and short of the EP is that it's five more songs of the same dramatic guitars and bombastic rock twists, pushed out into the world seemingly to give the era an epilogue of sorts. 

If there is a difference between the preceding album and The Hjärta & smärta EP, it's that the EP feels a little lighter. As the covers have changed from Du & jag döden’s black to the EP's angelic white, the songs have a little more levity to them. “Vi mot världen” has a glimpse of positive defiance to it, “Ansgar & Evelyne” gets close to euphoric when Berg lets his wordless vocals roam, and “Månadens erbjudande” almost sounds celebratory. But that’s vague at best, and by most parts The Hjärtä & smärta EP feels like a storage clearance for songs the band had in their pockets before moving onto the next record. In other words, as much as Kent were riding high on their imperial phase wave at this stage, the biggest fireworks had already been used up by this point and we're left with consistently enjoyable but not particularly essential material. The "single" of the EP “Dom som försvann” is about the only thing that acts like something that should be brought up when discussing Kent's discography: it’s the closest thing to Du & jag döden that the EP has both in sound with all its impassioned guitars and dark underpinnings, but also in quality. It also makes a terrific use of a children's choir, exchanging betlittlements with Berg's narrator and lending a song a slightly more twisted vibe that makes it a bit more unique within Kent's back catalogue. "Ansgar & Evelyne" is the other highlight of the set, a real beam of light in an otherwise musically melancholy year for Kent, lifting off with a little bit of hope into an effortlessly lovely chorus.

The other three songs inspire fewer ecstatic ramblings: "Vi mot världen" is up to the standards of the period even if not as striking as most of its peers, the speeding "Flen/Paris" doesn't have much to say for itself and is clearly the last thing the band dug out of their drawers for the EP, and "Månadens erbjudande" does have a little something special going on for it with its wedding dance atmosphere but despite a four-minute length it feels like it ends before it actually gets going. As songs they're fine, but run-of-the-mill. More of the same isn't a bad thing, especially in EP length, but The hjärta & smärta EP sees mostly diminishing returns for the style Kent had perfected on the preceding album. Which in reality means that there's no particular reason why I would turn to these five songs instead of Du & jag döden if I were in the mood for this particular era of Kent, given for most parts the songs aren't strong enough. It's a victory lap release: more of what made the previous album so great, but ultimately just there for the show.

Rating: 6/10

They Might Be Giants - A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants (2005)

1) Minimum Wage; 2) Meet James Ensor; 3) Particle Man; 4) Don't Let's Start; 5) She's an Angel; 6) Cyclops Rock; 7) Istanbul (Not Constantinople); 8) Purple Toupee; 9) James K. Polk; 10) Birdhouse in Your Soul; 11) Ana Ng; 12) The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight); 13) Bangs; 14) The Statue Got Me High; 15) New York City; 16) Doctor Worm; 17) Boss of Me; 18) Your Racist Friend; 19) Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas); 20) They'll Need a Crane; 21) I Palindrome I; 22) Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head; 23) John Lee Supertaster; 24) Older; 25) We're The Replacements; 26) Dr. Evil; 27) No!; 28) Clap Your Hands; 29) Spider

An eclectic compilation for an eclectic group.

Key tracks: "Particle Man", "Ana Ng", "Birdhouse in Your Soul"

They Might Be Giants falls into the category of artists where I can understand why people love them so (they seem to be the one band that everyone in my social circles likes to some degree and who inspire a lot of adoration even among people who otherwise don't get geeky over music), but I can't necessarily relate to that myself. Compilations are my way of meeting halfway with artists like these, and for a part-time appreciator the benefit of A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants is that it really does hammer down how there's a lot more to John and John than just the affectionally nerdy twee pop ditties about obscure historical figures and events that they're arguably most associated with.

That desire for comprehensiveness is also what somewhat lets A User's Guide down, just to tackle the downsides first. They Might Be Giants wear many hats and this compilation wants to showcase them all: the ingenius pop wizards, the nerdy folk historians, the style experimenters, the soundtrack stars, the children's edutainers, the whole lot. I'm normally all for this kind of comprehensiveness, but some of these categories are stronger than others and so I just question the need for the barely-recognisable-as-TMBG "Dr. Evil" (from the Austin Powers OST - did anyone really think this was in any way essential to the film?) or four different entries from their children's music side adventures to be included here, particularly when really only "Why Does the Sun Shine?" feels substantial enough to merit inclusion. The compilation's tracklist has been organised to run according to Gaussian distribution based on the track lengths so that the shortest songs start and finish the disc, which works disturbingly well for most parts ("Minimum Wage" as a cold open kick is probably the best way to open this potpourri), but it hasn't stopped the compilers from oversaturating the end of the disc with a whole load of the collection's most inessential parts: meaning that in effect everything after "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" is complete filler and it spoils the mood. They Might Be Giants songs aren't particularly long for most part and this is one of these cases where 29 songs on a disc seems perfectly appropriate, but it's an album that still manages to outstay its welcome. It ends up rubbing in exactly why my dabblings in the band's studio albums have been less than successful, because there's always a throwaway novelty peeking its head around the corner. "Spider"? On a best of? Really?

 
On the plus side, the delight in A User's Guide is the recurring realisation of what a pair of sharp indie pop craftsmen lie behind They Might Be Giants. Underneath all the twee singalongs, TV features and the reputation as the ultimate nerd musical act, the fact that John & John are an incredibly talented and imaginative songwriting pair gets unfairly lost in the noise, and so the comprehensiveness of A User's Guide equally puts this in the spotlight. They're a duo who can more or less tackle anything through their sheer imagination on how to approach even the strangest ideas, and then pull it off via genuinely cunning writing. The marvellously smart and impeccably charming "Birdhouse of Your Soul" is obviously the perfect showcase for that - its cavalcade of layered vocals, sharp lyrics and heck of a load of hooks making it the most perfect and honest pop song the duo have ever pulled off and even then it sounds completely unique - but there's a lot here that matches its strengths. "Ana Ng", "Don't Let's Start" and "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" are brilliant pieces of quirky 80s art pop, which is the side of They Might Be Giants that tends to slip past the public consciousness the most, and certainly surprised me as someone who was mainly aware of their 90s catalogue and beyond. The later reinterpretations of the same ideas also work just as well, such as the delightfully unhinged "Cyclops Rock" (with a great Cerys Matthews cameo) or "I Palindrome I" which has so much more to it from a purely musical perspective than just its titular gimmick. A User's Guide keeps catching by surprise and it does it in a myriad of ways: whether because something is unexpectedly earnest, affectionate or direct ("New York City" is all three and could be a Magnetic Fields song), or you simply encounter a curveball you didn't see coming such as the cheeky interpolation of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on "The Guitar". And of course, like any millennial who grew up with Tiny Toons, I too have a lot of love for "Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" - the former a razor-sharp ditty jam-packed with wit and hooks in its 1:50 length, the latter a superbly fun cover that fits the They Might Be Giants brand so perfectly that it may as well have been theirs to begin with. Overexposed as they may be, they are genuinely great and evergreen, and a very good reason to keep hold of the compilation as-is.

The good absolutely outweigh the bad. There are probably better compilations of They Might Be Giants' collected works out there - real fans of the duo can answer that - but for a willfully casual listener this makes for a good selection of the songs that everyone mentions and the deep cuts you’re glad to get to know better. It is also, I think, sufficient to my needs. I'm not certain what the takeaway here is when I say that owning this, I've little desire to resume with my efforts to listen to more of the actual albums and I'm satisfied with that complacency - as much as there's a lot of quite frankly excellent material here, it feels like it's enough. A User's Guide does make a strong case of why They Might Be Giants could be someone's favourite band and I'd genuinely love to adore a group with such a witty writing pen (both lyrically and musically), but the first 22 songs here will do for me for the occasional revisit to their intriguing world.

Rating: 7/10

Kent - Du & jag döden (2005)

1) 400 slag; 2) Du är ånga; 3) Den dödä vinkeln; 4) Du var min armé; 5) Palace & Main; 6) Järnspöken; 7) Klåparen; 8) Max 500; 9) Romeo återvänder ensam; 10) Rosor & palmblad; 11) Mannen i den vita hatten (16 år senare)

Stark, dramatic, emotional and above all, focused - Kent take note of having become Sweden's biggest rock band and decide to create a record to match their status.

Key tracks: "400 slag", "Klåparen", "Mannen i den vita hatten (16 år senare)"

As it’s the first thing you’ll see (in the tangible world), a special mention goes out to how the physical version of Du & jag döden presents itself. To compliment the title ("You and I, death"), Kent dressed the record in an appropriate funeral wear. Not only is the booklet jet black, with the lyrics written in a font so small it's barely visible, but the jewel case itself is tinted black as well which means the artwork in reality looks much darker than on the image up there. The CD follows suite and the front label is completely black, but so is its underside and it's the only time I've seen a CD like it. It’s ultimately a simple trick, but it's done in such an over the top (and perhaps a bit blunt) way that it turns out to be a powerful one. It's dark and dramatic, guiding towards an album that in many ways is exactly that.

One of my many embarrassing musical confessions is that I spent a lot of time intentionally brushing Kent off to the side simply because of their choice to sing in their own tongue. In my early-to-mid teenage years full of musical hubris and preconceptions yet to be knocked down, I didn’t think Kent would ever genuinely resonate with me because I could barely understand the language. But I got better, and in good part thanks to Du & jag döden. Kent have always been the masters of the perfect opener song (I can’t honestly think of a band who rivals them in this department apart from R.E.M.), and “400 slag” was what tipped me over to the fan club. The true kick-off at the end of its lengthy intro, slowly building instrument by instrument atop a stone-cold rumbling bass before flashing into full bloom, was what got me to stop living in denial and start embracing the band on the spot. "400 slag" is the kind of a song that aims to leave an impression and the way it draws open is majestic to behold, as the band command the song’s immense sonic space effortlessly.

Du & jag döden lives by its dramatic flair, painting in grand dynamic strokes and marrying Kent's rock band streak with theatrically grand gestures. Much of it is in the lyrics of course - it's hilarious in hindsight that this became the album that finally got me into Kent after thinking I’d never be able to crack through the language barrier, even though you could argue it's a concept album with the amount of running themes it has going through it. Revising the liner notes with my barebones knowledge of Swedish and online translators in the present day, it’s clear just how much more importance Berg placed in his lyrical work here - the death that lurks around its lyric sheets is moreso the death of youthful innocence rather than literal demise, and it's a theme that repeats over and over again and inches more and more towards biographical as the album progresses. Much of the rest of the songwriting also acts like it highlights and underlines the lyrics, with the general flow of the songs built around Berg’s voice and the narrative and the impact he pushes. It's not a dark album, as much as it looks the part - but it is melancholy and aching, and treats them with grandeur.

 
But the power of Du & jag döden doesn't lie in its lyrics, but in how vividly the band translate those themes and feelings into the actual musical notes and arrangements. The impetus behind the record was to be a direct reaction against the previous album Vapen & ammunition, the super-slick, hyper-produced pop songs of which had started to grate the band after a few years of repeating them over and over on tour. Going into the follow-up Kent wanted to shake off any formulaic trappings and to write songs that wouldn't always repeat the same verse-chorus structures, to move away from production tricks and to reveal the humanity underneath the sound. Likewise, where Vapen & ammunition was intentionally a selection of disparate songs bound together by the same aesthetic, Kent were looking to write an album again: a set of songs with a common narrative told through chosen aesthetics, flow and tone. The guitars are back with a vengeance too after their relative backstage presence on the previous album, now louder in the mix and intricately layered with Kent taking full advantage of having at best three guitarists on stage where needed. The songs that ended up forming Du & jag döden are still big songs, fit for the large concert venues the band were now accustomed to, but they are being played with the gravitas that’s required to keep them close and personal. Melancholy and anxiety are almost triumphant topics in the world of alternative rock, and Kent embraced the inherent melodrama in that for Du & jag döden: guitar anthems for lost souls searching for something to hold onto.

Which means that while knowing what Berg sings is a great bonus and it helps the overall concept of the album to click, the resonance of the album's music alone is universal in nature. You don’t need to know the language to understand the weight under the emotionally detached maelstrom of "Klåparen" exploding into a rage of guitars, or to hear the personal importance behind "Mannen in den vita hatten" unfurling as the band speeds up past the string-laden bombast of its chorus and towards the finale where Berg begins to spill his guts out with such intensity it practically becomes a rant. It's a record that wears its heart on display on its sleeve exposed and awaiting, its melancholy and vulnerability obvious and immediate. Both of the above mentioned songs are among Kent's finest ("Klåparen" perhaps more personally, but the latter has become the canonical classic of this record and for a very good reason), and they were so long before I started parsing what they really stood for, because of the strength of the arrangements and performance alone. Same with "400 slag" right from the first listen and still on the so-and-so hundredth listen, same with the sweep of "Den döda vinkeln" as it accelerates, same with the exhausted weightiness and deft guitars of "Du var min armé". These are songs where in practice it doesn't matter what the actual meaning is, because the colours the band use are so vivid that the listener has the power to illustrate their own interpretations into the songs with them.

I've tried to come up with a more artful way to say this but the crux of it all is that Du & jag döden is where Kent reach the peak where they'd go on to stay for a while: it's the apex of their rock sound, and among their best albums overall. Every promise made across the last five albums, every classic song, every emotional moment of brilliance - they all pay off here, perfected and delivered with a tight grip to how everything should be presented and how it all should connect. The dramatic peaks of its emotionally intense journey are presented like movie scenes that lead artfully from one revelation to the next, building up the stakes. The songs are great of course, but the flow of the record really is immaculate too, where throughout there's a constant feeling of momentum being built, which is then resolved in the more obvious tracklisting climax points: the restrained quiet of "Järnspöken" leads beautifully into the anguish of "Klåparen" as the mid-album palate cleanser, and the quiet-loud extremes of "Rosor & palmblad" build up the theatrics carefully in preparation for the epic resolution of "Mannen i den vita hatten". And while the band may have turned their backs towards Vapen & ammunition to some extent, they have adapted the more immediate strengths they leaned onto that record into their new guise: the punctual powerhouse energy of "Palace & Main", the fantastic backing vocal action on "Romeo återvänder ensam" and the precise piano hooks and epic stadium lift-offs of "Den dödä vinkeln" aren't too far removed from the previous album, but they're now clad in black and played with the passion of where every note played could be the last. It's a gorgeous, powerful listen and feels instantly personal.

Given Kent's tact change from the next record on, Du & jag döden has in hindsight become the last hoorah for the musical ideas that Kent had built their career so far on, and it honestly feels like an intentional gambit move. The overstuffed Hagnesta Hill and the radio-friendly Vapen & ammunition had landed them wider adoration but perhaps weren't something the band thought deserved that spotlight, and so they went on to create something that did. The detail in the arrangements in tandem with a muscular performance, each song a part of something greater, piecing together a journey through big emotions and the music to match them - Du & jag döden is a model example of a classic record to the point that it sounds like the band were completely aware what they were doing with it, and it sounds bold, inspiring and personal. While I think Kent equaled the quality of Du & jag döden later on down the line with other releases, there's no doubt that this is where Kent perfected what they as a band stood for. 

Rating: 9/10

Karkkiautomaatti - Kaikilla (2006)

CD1: Levy-Yhtiö 1993 EP: 1) En kai koskaan löydä sitä oikeaa; Rakkaudella EP: 2) Ei oo ei oo toivookaa; 3) Hei Johanna; 4) Annathan anteeksi; 5) Hyvää matkaa, kulta pieni; Kävelyllä EP: 6) Ja mua harmitti niin (joo joo); 7) Rakkautta ensisilmäyksellä; 8) Luulitsä niin; 9) Maailman komein poika; Karkuteillä: 10) Jää beibi jää; 11) Aina vaan jaa jaa jaa; 12) Kai vielä joskus muistat mua; 13) Toivon että huomaat; 14) Hei okei mä meen; 15) Paina kaasua, honey!; 16) Äl-oo-vee; 17) Särkyneen sydämen twist; 18) Taaskin turhaan... 19) Tanssi vaan; 20) Takaisin en tuu; 21) Yeah yeah Jenni; 22) Kaikki menee pää edellä surffaamaan; Trallalalla EP: 23) Ymmärtää jos voisit näin; 24) Nyt lähtee rock 'n' roll; 25) Hyvästi Yyteri; 26) Uskomaton tapaus; 27) Ykkösbussi; 28) Modesty Blaise; Kaksi-nolla: 29) Niin oot kaveria!; 30) Huimaa, huimaa (Maagista vetovoimaa); 31) Inhat silmät tuijottaa; 32) Luonnon helmaan; 33) Minun ikioma kesälaulu; 34) Nimi muistiossa; 35) Karkkiautomaatti bop; 36) Pliis Denise; 37) Sovitelma: erätauko; 38) Viikonloppu kahdestaan; 39) Vanha älppärini soi (Soi dadididididamdaa); 40) Ja kesä hiipuu hiljaa...

CD2: Lämmöllä EP: 1) Hölmö kaikkein aikojen; 2) Toinen onneen vie; 3) Stimango; Seikkailuun (Single): 4) Kuutamo; Susan (Single): 5) Kuutamox kaikuu; Suudelmilla: 6) Rio Wamba; 7) Arvoitus on meille poika tuo; 8) Seikkailuun; 9) Nyt heitän arpakuution; 10) Toinen onneen vie (Albumiversio); 11) Yks-kaks-motocross; 12) Minne vaan; 13) Parisuhteen aakkoset; 14) Mä tahdon romanssin; 15) Voi kuinka on tää maailmain; 16) Kemijoki; 17) Susan; 18) Wambada; 19) Kaks-kol-motocross (Chinon & Rhodes Remix)

The collected works of an uniquely charming Finnish cult classic band, with one genuine classic in their back catalogue.

Key tracks: "Niin oot kaveria!", "Seikkailuun", "Minne vaan"

The 59 songs on Kaikilla collects together the entire recorded output of Karkkiautomaatti, a Finnish cult band who operated between 1993 and 1998, and who never had any option other than to be a cult band. With lyrics and attitude directly indebted to 50s rock 'n' roll and Finnish schlager, melodies straight out of bubblegum pop, the energy and playing style of the dodgy punk band your friends put together for fun and Janne Kuusela’s ridiculously saccharine vocals, Karkkiautomaatti were a baffling concoction who had so much inate charm that they inspired grassroots devotion with their overly earnest puppy love songs, often played side by side with hard rock covers in the live set. But behind the quirkiness were real strengths: Kuusela had a genuine talent for arrangement and melody, and bassist Sami Häikiö and particularly drummer Mikko Huusko were the energetic firecrackers underneath.

The first disc of Kaikilla covers the first two albums - 1994’s Karkuteillä and 1996’s Kaksi-nolla - as well as various peripheral EPs and singles around the long-plays. Despite the breadth of material, everything goes forward pretty breezily, with both albums running at 20-25 minutes and the EPs barely reaching five minutes, as the band finish their songs in an average of a minute and a half. The brevity works in their favour. Karkkiautomaatti had a consistent style (90% of the first disc is more or less the same song over and over again but with a different vocal hook), but wildly inconsistent quality control: one minute you're face to face with an ingeniusly lovely melody, and the literal next minute you may as well be listening to a school band’s first practice session going awry. It doesn't make for a great listen per se but the adorably slapdash nature of it all is part of early Karkkiautomaatti's charm and it plays well together with the song material. With the songs being so short and everything flying by so quickly, any clunkers are quickly brushed off and barely slow things down. Taking it all in during a single 70-minute block as presented on Kaikilla can get a bit hectic, and so the original running lengths for these releases make sense: something as syrupy and at times shambolic as this is best enjoyed in small bursts.

 

There isn’t much development across the first set of releases either. The recording quality gets better as time goes by, and Kaksi-nolla sees the start of the band developing their sound a bit further, with some additional instrumentation, introducing an acoustic song and even going as far as getting close (but not over!) the prog-tastic three minute song length barrier. It does feel bad to brush off so much of the first disc with barely a mention but overall, while there’s a number of genuinely fun, great little pop nuggets across the early days, Kaksi-nolla is the apex of Karkkiautomaatti’s initial sound and it houses the best songs on the otherwise somewhat samey (positively or not, depending on the mood) first disc. If there’s a song that perfectly describes the ethos of the band, it’s the Kaksi-nolla opening track “Niin oot kaveria!”, with its obnoxiously catchy backing vocals, ridiculously sweet melodies and the scruffy-round-the-edges playing that binds them together into a stupidly jolly ray of sunshine.  

Karkkiautomaatti had almost as many drummers during their lifetime as they had releases, but the Lämmöllä EP released after Kaksi-nolla found the band in a limbo point in-between percussionists, and it turned out to be an unexpected sea change moment for the band. Rather than the EP seeing the now-duo acting out a stripped down interpretation of the band, Kuusela and Häikiö started to experiment in a homebrewed version of a studio wizardry moment. The three songs on the EP, which starts the second disc, represent the birth of Karkkiautomaatti 2.0. "Hölmö kaikkein aikojen" reimagines the band's traditional sugary pop formula with vintage keyboards and drum machines in lieu of the rock & roll aesthetic of the releases before it, "Toinen onneen vie" is an honest-to-earth anthem that grows and develops further than any of the 40 songs before it, and the instrumental rock-out "Stimango" has a muscular touch previously amiss from the band even at their most punk rock. The goofy and naïve band of the first disc who embraced their amateurish charm have finally decided to stop fooling around and to take some time to grow up a little, in the process tapping onto aspects that were always in the background but had been perhaps intentionally obscured before.

This leads directly into the band’s third and final album, 1998’s Suudelmilla. The liner notes for Kaikilla features, alongside a general biography, a number of small blurbs by friends and industry mates of the band, and even nearly all of them admit it’s Suudelmilla where everything finally clicked and Karkkiautomaatti became something to seriously watch out for. With the additions of drummer Vesa Lehto and arguably more importantly Jenni Rope on keyboards, Karkkiautomaatti built upon the previous EP’s growth and took it to a full length format. It sees the band staying honest to everything they stood for before, but elaborating further and thinking bigger. So, with Suudelmilla, Karkkiautomaatti moved from cult classics to releasing a straight-up classic.

Suudelmilla is brimming with honest ambition, abandoning the quickfire format and instead opting for longer song lengths which allow the band to expand and adapt their writing in ways they were restricted from before. The keyboards and organs have become a definitive part of the band’s sound alongside a generally more layered production style with all kinds of vintage sounds and sampled sound effects bouncing wildly like they’re overflowing, and the band have all but switched out of the tongue-in-cheek punked-up pop in favour of more analytical songcraft and indulgement in new ideas. Thus, you end up with unprecedented moments such as the psychedelic breakdown of “Nyt heitän arpakuution” that practically interrupts the song’s ordinary flow, “Yks-kaks-motocross” that could have soundtracked a video game action sequence, the atmospheric instrumental “Kemijoki” that stretches its soft textures across over seven minutes, and the bizarro tropicalia of “Rio Wamba” and “Wambada”. But the absolute best part of of Suudelmilla is how breaking away from their conventions underlines and emphasises Kuusela’s talent for songcraft, because those sweet indie pop melodies are now paired with songs that give them the throne they deserve. Any Anglospheric peer of the band would’ve killed to have the gigantic “Susan” in their back catalogue, “Minne vaan” and its swirling guitars and genuinely epic extended finale is quite possibly the best thing Karkkiautomaatti ever released, and the frolicking “Seikkailuun” even landed the band with a genuine radio hit which feels bizarre given how whimsical it is. As if to prove a point, “Toinen onneen vie” appears on Suudelmilla once more, this time polished to perfection with a new drive underneath and hunger in its eyes, crowning itself for the throne it was destined to be after making its initial EP appearance.

Suudelmilla is undoubtedly the highlight of the entire compilation and the key reason why Karkkiautomaatti have retained their relevance to date rather than ending up as a curio for musical archivists. As charming and lovely as the majority of their discography can be, the first few albums and EPs are a scattershot display split between what’s actually good fun and what’s just pleasant filler. Meanwhile, Suudelmilla has become an iconic and influential part of the Finnish independent music canon, and so much of what would take place in the Finndie scene in the decade after its release would be coloured in its shades - and it remains just as charismatic and magical today. That the band amicably split shortly after the release of Suudelmilla (for no apparent reason that I can find) just further enhances its legacy: for their last act they captured a lightning in a bottle. and in doing so closed off a short but genuinely unique career in a way that no one could have predicted. The existence of Kaikilla is a small pop cultural act of importance, and a wonderful way to dig into a truly memorable discography even if after the matter it's the second disc that ends up getting most of the airtime.

Rating: 8/10

David Bowie - Black Tie White Noise (1993)

1) The Wedding; 2) You've Been Around; 3) I Feel Free; 4) Black Tie White Noise; 5) Jump They Say; 6) Nite Flights; 7) Pallas Athena; 8) Miracle Goodnight; 9) Don't Let Me Down & Down; 10) Looking for Lester; 11) I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday; 12) The Wedding Song

Bowie starts his 1990s with a smooth jump to a new sound, and makes it his own so well that he's actually created a consistent record. 

Key tracks: "Jump They Say", "Pallas Athena", "Miracle Goodnight"

The 1990s were a reset for Bowie. Much has been made out of his 80s albums - probably too much - but it's clear that towards the end of the decade his magic had started to wane for the first time during his career. After taking a break from his day job while focusing on Tin Machine for a few years, the table was clean for Bowie to return in any way he pleased: for a man so keen to reinvent himself at any given turn, the start of the new decade after a small hiatus was a perfect time as any to begin anew.

Bowie's 90s are characterised by him falling in love with the electronic, club and hip hop scenes that were exploding at the time, and Black Tie White Noise is the careful first toe dip into those waters. It nods particularly towards house and hip hop, and while it's still more hesitant about fully merging those genres into Bowie's repertoire in comparison to how far his later 90s embraced their respective inspirations, they lend a clear and identifiable sound for the record: flourished with the iconic house pianos, loop-like drum processing, deep synth pads and the ever-present saxophone (played by Bowie himself, who rediscovered his love for the instrument during the studio time). It's obviously incredibly of its time, but its dated nature has sincere warmth to it in its big budget early 90s studio flashiness, which I admittedly have a big soft spot for. It's all incredibly smooth (to the point that when going through my first draft of this review it turns out I had described nearly every song as 'smooth'), in the way that many rock icons of yesteryear approached the 1990s. It's clear though that Bowie was genuinely curious about the new ideas he was tuning into at the time rather than just following the crowds, and he was eager to experiment with how he could best take these sounds forward on his own - you know Bowie's particularly inspired when he's writing instrumentals, and there's a grand total of three on Black Tie White Noise, albeit "The Wedding" is largely just an instrumental version of "The Wedding Song". In contrast "Pallas Athena", the centerpiece dance anthem, is so far removed from typical Bowie fare that it was even re-released under a different name to see if anyone would be fooled. For most parts though, in comparison to some of Bowie's earlier (and later) chameleon acts, Black Tie White Noise is more of a rejunevation than a drastic re-invention: from a songwriting perspective it's by and far what you'd expect from a Bowie record, with the old dog playing with tricks he knows that works, just with a new coat on.

The other facet that characterises Black Tie White Noise is just how positive it is. It's among Bowie's most upbeat albums: even the songs about the 1992 Los Angeles Riots ("Black Tie White Noise") and his brother's suicide ("Jump They Say") are filled with creative joie de vivre. Part of it is down to just how excited he was about these new influences, but in general, life was good for Bowie. His recent marriage had him still floating in a state of blissed out happiness and that kind of glossy-eyed enamourment is all over the record: particularly in "The Wedding Song" which he had literally composed for his wedding, and the light-footed and unabashedly lovefool "Miracle Goodnight". Black Tie White Noise is a record made by someone who's in a great place in his life and who directs that energy into their music, which translates to a particular sharpness in songwriting. In fact, the only thing that lets the record down is not even his own song, but the Morrissey cover "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday". It's not only in the wrong crowd in tone and aesthetic, but Bowie intentionally hams it up to the point of it being at times unbearable; in particular there's this vocal run that Bowie sometimes does which sounds like a bizarre take on Krusty the Klown's laughter, and this song is full of it, and it breaks me away from the song each and every time. On the other hand, the Cream cover "I Feel Free" is a perfect fit to the album's mood and aesthetic, and among the more successful Bowie covers.

The singles are almost always the cream of the crop with Bowie's albums and this time it's the boisterous synth-rock "Jump They Say" that's the big Bowie classic of the album, and among my favourite songs of his catalogue. It's a subtly dark lyric matched with one of his most charismatic vocal performances, has a chorus that glides so effortlessly into such majestic heights, the futuristic production that even today sounds like a sci-fi utopia and it's rife with bountiful arrangement details (with the filtered backing vocals being a particular personal favourite). Like many of Bowie's best songs it's bombastic and attention-grabbing (or seeking) yet it's thoroughly sincere in its delivery, and while clearly indebted to a particular period in time it's still somehow timeless and immortal through how Bowie sells it. The two other singles - the title track and "Miracle Goodnight" - are also incredibly infectious in their own right and really highlight how Bowie was at his most excited and exciting when trying out new sounds. "Miracle Goodnight" and its bubbly slap bass and ridiculous effect-laden production is so sugar sweet you'd have to have a heart of stone not to smile when it's on: it's a silly song and openly so (the spoken word bridges are absolutely in on the joke), but it sidesteps its corniness by being so flirtatious and charming you end up falling head over heels for it. "Black Tie White Noise" is, appropriately, the album in a nutshell from a sonical perspective, though amusingly  Bowie almost takes a backseat to Al B. Sure's ever-present vocals. It's the least of the three, but the lush cooldown of a chorus and the oh-so-Bowie "noi-oi-oi-oise" vocal hook ensure it sticks with the other two.

The sound and the singles being great is nothing new to Bowie, but what makes Black Tie White Noise worth a special mention is that it's among Bowie's most cohesive and continuously strong records throughout its length. My hot take (which I'll probably repeat across my Bowie reviews ad nauseam) is that Bowie very rarely made consistent records because of his up-and-down songwriting, incoherent and oft ill-fitting cover songs, and the frequent and obvious focus on the deemed singles of the project at the expense of deep album cuts that could stand up next to them. Yet, those aspects almost all but absent from Black Tie White Noise and many of its album tracks stand out positively just as much as the more famous songs. The wonderfully frantic "You've Been Around" (one of the few times the album moves away from its constant positivity to somewhere a little darker) and the atmospheric "Nite Flights" in particular could have slotted comfortably in a singles collection in their own right, and they show how Bowie's chosen production style for this record truly amplifies what he was going for - with songwriting and sound working hand-in-hand from the start. Sometimes the (intended or not) emphasis on the production gives way towards unexpected joys: the instrumental "Looking for Lester" with its rising horns and gliding piano parts remind me so much of the first Sonic Adventure that I love the song just because of that. But in terms of the instrumental, it's "Pallas Athena" that comes up the strongest. It's such a swerve for Bowie, but it's a little wonder of an arrangement with the increasing layers of strings that drive the tension that the saxophone and synth pads try to combat. It's such an excellent, transcendental piece of 90s dance music and the idea that it's on a David Bowie record is still wild.

It's not quite a perfect record and its issues are largely relegated towards its end. We've already covered "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" which really shouldn't have been covered to begin with, and as much as I like "The Wedding Song", at the end of the day it's largely the same song as the version that opens the album, just with vocals, and it probably should have opened the album while the instrumental version was relegated to a single b-side. If you'd have swapped "Looking for Lester" a place further up the tracklist and had the record be closed by the suave last dance of the night "Don't Let Me Down & Down", it would've been a great finale for the record; better than the way it fizzles out now, certainly. But even that blemish is barely enough to raise when discussing the record because of all its other accomplishments. I have a strange track record with Bowie, but my favourite kind of Bowie nearly always happens when he's reassessing his place in pop culture and sets a plan to move forward in his own way. Black Tie White Noise is one of his most emblematic in that regard: a rejuvenated Bowie putting wheels in motion for the next decade after getting a scent of a new well of ideas to take inspiration from, and then turning those sounds so identifiably into his own. It worked out so well, it started off one of Bowie's strongest decades.

Rating: 8/10

 

Kent - Vapen & ammunition (2002)

1) Sundance Kid; 2) Pärlor; 3) Dom andra; 4) Duett (feat. Titiyo); 5) Hur jag fick dig att älska mig; 6) Kärleken väntar; 7) Socker; 8) FF; 9) Elite; 10) Sverige

Sharp, polished and straight to the point. Kent weaponise pop hooks and take aim.

Key tracks: "Sundance Kid", "Socker", "FF"

My primary complaint with Hagnesta Hill was that it was overstuffed, that Kent were going for excess when they didn’t necessarily have a clear end goal in mind. The band thought the same, which is why when going into the follow-up Vapen & ammunition their plan was to create a record that would be straight to the point. Ten songs with a ‘don’t bore us, get to the chorus’ attitude, written to stand independently with no real album concept in mind, each of which could be a single candidate. In the interest of retaining things economical even the now-traditional epic centrepiece is absent, with the six-minute “Elite” coming closest but still remaining a great distance away from the grand rock-outs of the last three records.

To serve the hits-or-bust approach, Kent have opted for a meticulously polished production for Vapen & ammunition. The incredibly processed sound all over the record is perfectionist in nature, with each filtered drum hit and keyboard layer coming across crystal clear and mechanically precise. It’s closer to the sheen of a multi-million budget pop album rather than the rock aesthetic that even Hagnesta Hill held onto closely even while it went for a heavy studio sound. The songs underneath the mirror glaze get to the point without dawdling around, with every section of each charging ahead with a clear key melody or sticking point. The title (“weapons and ammunition”, derived from scattered lyrics across the record) and the white tiger that graces the liner art are incredibly appropriate for the album: its pop instincts are smart and aggressive like a beast on a prowl and each of its songs has been engineered to deadly perfection, the hooks wielded with weapon-like efficiency. The album even opens up with an air raid siren, effective in its own right but also perhaps a very literal signal that Kent are not playing around with their chosen tools this time around.

It works frighteningly well. It’s not quite the ten hit singles it wants to be, but only because it’s hard to imagine how you could make successful singles out of the densely dreamy atmospheric wonder of “Hur jag fick att älska mig” (production highlight: the kick drum made to sound like a heartbeat for such a directly lovelorn song), or the stripped down acoustic closer “Sverige”; both are clear successes as songs though, and "Sverige" in particular provides a necessary counterpoint to the rest of the album’s hi-fi indulgence. Nothing on Vapen & ammunition is new to Kent and it’s not like they’ve shied away from catchy choruses before, it's simply that the band hone into them this time around. Musically the band are therefore on solid footing and Vapen & ammunition shines the spotlight on some of their more immediate strengths. What helps cut through the richness and sweetness of the album is frontman Jocke Berg, who continues to to branch into new topics lyrically and widening the band's scope in his own part. Many of the songs on the record may act like singalong-ready chart toppers but hide a heavy, worn-out heart underneath, more socially and politically conscious of the world around and hiding the frustration behind a chorus you can belt out.

The three big singles that did end up getting released from the album jump out from the tracklist, though arguably in part because they were such airwave hogs, and they demonstrate the record’s sharply tuned attitude really well. "Dom andra" in particular is still absolutely dominating right from its breath-as-beat intro, riding a blade-sharp electro-rock drive and an iconic whistle hook through a curiously structureless form that's like a free-form rant that became a pop song; even if it has lost some of its glimmer over the years, it's the sort of song where you can absolutely understand why it became the band’s signature song from a popular perspective, especially when it changes gears towards its impassioned finale and Berg breaks the cold and detached tone he’s held onto all song. That said, I have always preferred the slow moody disco of "Kärleken väntar" and the high-speed steamroller hooks of "FF" over their more popular sibling. "Kärleken väntar" is a direct descendant of Hagnesta Hill's slick disco-rock hit "Musik non stop" (which may as well have acted as blueprint for Vapen & ammunition), with a dancefloor-pounding beat and subtly churning guitars that meet somewhere between lovestruck ecstasy and emotional distance that gives it a curious uneasiness which sticks out. Meanwhile "FF" is arguably the best example of how Kent wanted to represent themselves in 2002 in production, mood and tone: 0 to 100 in a split second, an inescapable backbeat tapping straight into the spine and a tour de force double-chorus. 

That said, the three singles aren't among the album’s real stand-out songs, and it's the deep cuts of Vapen & ammunition that have eold up the strongest. "Socker" in particular is as classic Kent as it gets and is in fact a firm member of my personal Kent pantheon: there’s a heartwringing ache to its sighing melodies so strong it’s absolutely arresting, it features some of Berg’s most evocative writing (the second verse in particular) and on this album specifically its loud bursts of pure guitar walls shake up the tracklist's flow in a rejuvenating, and necessary, fashion. "Pärlor" is the only other truly guitar-heavy song of the record and is a reliably powerful stormer meant to play at loud volume for maximum effect, but its real secret weapon are the back-and-forth vocals in its verses. The same applies throughout Vapen & ammunition. As Kent have pushed the guitars into a less dominant role, they’ve filled the gaps with textural keyboards and most notably layered vocals and backing harmonies that appear throughout the album in a significant role. "Elite" and its gospel choir take that to its logical conclusion and though the song has always sounded a little too obvious as a big stadium anthem, there's an earnestness and glimmer to it that warms it up. It may be a big, big song but Berg pulls it back towards himself and the listener and retains some of that intimacy that its sentimental lyrics convey. “Sundance Kid”, the opener, is more or less all of the above: its lead guitar line is the first big power hook of the record until the double vocals of the chorus take its place, the loudly mixed drums are designed to capture the attention of anyone who hears their battle cry and there’s thrill to how the song unfolds. I appreciate a bold opener that acts as a statement of intent and “Sundance Kid” is the perfect gateway into Vapen & ammunition.

The one thing Vapen & ammunition slightly stumbles with is cohesiveness, and that's largely down to design. It's an album of loose songs that are playlisted next to one another, and even with years of listening they still feel like a sequence of jarring cuts from one song to the next. This is best highlighted by the mid-album double slow jam whammy of "Duett" (a perfectly nice ballad duet with Titiyo and with another strong chorus, but also clearly the song that leaves the least imprint afterwards) and "Hur jag fick att älska mig", which pulls the otherwise energetic album to a halt for a little too long in one go. As far as the songs go though, even if they're not cohesive they're consistent and excellently so. The batting average is really strong and Kent operating in this sort of high-intensity pop song craftsmanship channel is exciting in its own way, and at ten songs the trick doesn’t wear out. There’s mayhaps less nuance to Vapen & ammunition than to most other Kent albums, but the band pack it with enough strengths in other areas that as far as one-off direction exercises go, it can stand proud and tall as a great collection of songs. The album serves as an appropriate statement of Kent’s commercial imperial phase that the band were enjoying at the time: the “album full of singles” tract is something that few artists can pull off satisfyingly no matter how much they boast, but with Vapen & ammunition Kent took the opportunity to demonstrate why they had become Sweden’s biggest band within the last few years and they backed it up with songs that were fit to defend that title.

Rating: 8/10

Arcade Fire - Everything Now (2017)

1) Everything_Now (Continued); 2) Everything Now; 3) Signs of Life; 4) Creature Comfort; 5) Peter Pan; 6) Chemistry; 7) Infinite Content; 8) Infinite_Content; 9) Electric Blue; 10) Good God Damn; 11) Put Your Money on Me; 12) We Don't Deserve Love; 13) Everything Now (Continued)

What you may know it from: awkward and clunky antics. What you should know it from: its restless and quirky pace and fun grooves.

Key tracks: "Everything Now", "Signs of Life", "Put Your Money on Me"

Following on from Reflektor, by the mid-2010s Arcade Fire had embraced their conceptual side, marrying their music together with visuals and elaborate theatrics to create something greater and more meaningful than "just" a new record. That was one of the great aspects of Reflektor that I particularly responded to on a personal level, and so the band continuing on that route was a development I quite liked in theory. But three years later, when the band tried to focus even harder on making an all-encompassing conceptual setpiece around Everything Now, the results were the complete opposite.

It's almost impossible to discuss Everything Now and not mention all the peripheral material, and that's largely because the band made such a big deal about it themselves that it succumbed the actual album. I'm a cynical millennial who has by now lived through three economic recessions in my lifetime but even I admit that the shtick about an all-devouring Jeff Bezos corporate wet dream hellscape was an ill-fitting and sometimes even ill-advised angle to try and make your campaign revolve around on: instead of nodding in agreement as Arcade Fire preached to the choir, the execution was painfully heavyhanded as the ideas and inspiration turned out to be little beyond how consumerism and capitalism are, like, bad. Between the band's social media profiles getting 'taken over' by their corporate overlords, the fake advertisements that got spammed through them and the overconceptualised press releases, the point got lost somewhere within all the anvilicious satire. It wasn't inventive, original or even that smart or funny, and yet the roll-out was pushed with such self-certainty of its own strengths that it actively got you thinking whether the more ironic moments of the band's past antics were ever that ironic after all. It was all getting a little too close to U2 at their worst.

The real tragedy of the Everything Now roll-out is that all the shenanigans managed to completely drown the record itself underneath the noise and the reputation that still lingers around the album, which is undeserved because Everything Now is a seriously great and weird album that its clichéd concept does absolutely no justice to. There is no clear angle to Everything Now musically: while its sound is rooted in the same slick groove-laden synth-rock vibe that was introduced on parts of Reflektor, it's far more accurately a record that sounds like whatever it wants at any given time. If anything, it's the anything-goes mentality of the first half of Reflektor taken to even further lengths, where no idea is too preposterous or absurd to be corporated into to the Arcade Fire repertoire. It's not just the band playing dress-up, but they're irreverent and rowdy about it, testing out new outfits and discarding them abruptly immediately afterwards, taking the listener for a ride that's likely to raise more than few confused exclamations the first time around. But the particularly cheeky way the band pull this through is what makes it also a genuinely fun album in all its sound-twisting delivery. You can hear the audacity and the rebellious joy that the band operate on throughout Everything Now, which once again runs against so much of the po-faced delivery of its promotional run. Even the lyrics get in on the fun more often than they wave a finger at CEOs: for example the synth freak-out "Creature Comfort" is a fine song in itself (there's definitely something to marvel at in its busy and untamed production) but its clear highlight is "she dreams about dying all the time / she told me she came so close / filled up the bathtub and put on our first record", which is pretty much the perfect jab to place within a record that is bound to alienate even further those who think Funeral was the band's last real triumph. It's the kind of self-aware nod that most of the promotional mess around the record tried to handle but failed. I honestly don't know what the end game for the revolving roulette of ideas of Everything Now was, but it doesn't get enough credit for being an album that constantly keeps you on your toes and does so in positive manner, where tonal whiplashes form into a strange but incredibly catchy journey along the way.

 
Which makes the title track, which was released as the lead single and which opens the album after the looping intro/outro reprises, a gigantic red herring even though it's arguably come to represent the album the most. From a band who always sounded like their sound would only ever fit stadiums, comes their first genuine stadium anthem: complete with a group vocal featuring literally hundreds of people captured in the kind of live setting that this song was made for, a bluntly open invite to ask people to partake into its charms. "Everything Now" is a fantastic song, don't get me wrong - it's a masterclass example of how to make a stadium pop song genuinely come to life and to sound absolutely magical in its size. It is also, however, a very conventional song to front and to represent an album that really isn't one in the slightest, and so it in no way prepares for what's actually coming up after it.

Take for example the disco/funk assault of "Signs of Life", right behind. It's perhaps not so unexpected as a stylistic exercise after Reflektor's foray under the mirrorball, but there is no way you can be prepared for the knowingly cheesy call-and-answer backing vocals and Win Butler spending a verse rapping through the weeks of the day. From there the song just goes more and more beautifully over-the-top as it progresses, becoming a delirious joyride -  there's so much excitement and fun to it and its delivery, right down to the delicious disco violins, and it's where co-producer Thomas Bangalter's Daft Punk backbone-tapping groove magic shines the most. "Chemistry" tipsily wobbles around a light reggae vibe and has a real wink in its eye with its lovelorn lyrics and it comes across like an oddball cover of an old showtune, and why it's on an Arcade Fire record who knows but it slyly charms with its wiles. The bubbly slow jam "Peter Pan" feels almost normal in this context, but that sense of harmony is quickly broken down when the "Infinite Content" duo storms the stage: first by blowing the door open with a ramshackle punk attitude, before it abruptly cuts into an americana ballad for its second act. Both of those halves could be a brilliant song on their own if fleshed out into a full-length segment (especially the first one with its downright exhuberant instrumental breaks): as the two halves are bashed together like this, you have a bewildering but thrilling double-interlude wrecking havoc in the middle of the record.

Towards its end Everything Now starts to calm down as it moves towards a more emotive, perhaps a more sincere finale, away from the bait-and-switch antics of its first half. The Regine-sung "Electric Blue" is a wonderful synth pop anthem for dancing by yourself through a 3am city centre (I only nick some points off for the atypically shrill vocal production which grates against the rest of the song's atmosphere) and the subtle "Good God Damn" has grown from the obvious filler cut of the album to a suavely captivating little brooder whose bass-heavy drawl learns to linger around in your head much longer than you originally anticipated, but they're primarily the bridge for the traditional Arcade Fire big finish. "Put Your Money on Me" is where everything comes together: it's as slick and refined as anything on the record but it also speeds into a surprising whirlwind of a post-chorus where the spirit of ABBA possesses the band seemingly out of nowhere. The sound is the closest approximation to what could constitute as Arcade Fire's core in 2017, but the heart and emotion in it is practically vintage in its earnestness, resonance and urgency. It it, as they say, a hell of a song. "We Don't Deserve Love" effectively starts as its extended coda, pulling that emotion right into the forefront, before coming to life as its own majestic entity. It's a space-age synth power ballad slowly unfurling into a supernova explosion of lights and dramar, covering itself in layers of melodies and harmonies and sounding so vulnerable despite its size. There's so much acting and facade in the whole story arc for Everything Now, but for the closure of the album itself the band simply serve the same kind of great emotional warmth that they've always done best - as if to say that even though it's been an unexpected trip, they're still the same band.

And that, I guess, is my hot take on Everything Now: that despite everything trying to point otherwise it's still by the same band who were behind the previous set of records too and it carries the strengths they've always had. It's absolutely a different frontier for Arcade Fire and Everything Now is without a doubt a mystifying record, one which I can't wait to read a detailed postmortem on some day in the future simply because it does sound like the band snapped one day when brainstorming ideas for their next record. But it's also a captivating, engaging and at the end of the day - and perhaps most of all - a powerfully entertaining record. Its anthems aren't often the emotionally evocative kind, but it's hard to complain about the record when I'm tapping my foot to its rhythms, unexpectedly dancing in my living room to it and getting swept by the melodic rush of energy that surges through the record. Even though it presents itself as some kind of an attempt at a deep statement on capitalism and corporations, that angle turns out to be more window dressing than actual real content, and you can count the songs on the album that tap into those Deep Thoughts just by using fingers on one of your hands. What Everything Now does represent is a record where the band in fact let their hair down for once. It's addictive and just so damn fun to listen to that I'm beginning to wonder if its detractors have ever even really paid attention to it. 

This post has been sponsored by our friends at Everything Now®.

Rating: 8/10

Physical corner: Everything Now came with two different cover versions, the ‘day’ version (pictured and owned) and the more limited ‘night’ variant; I chose the day one simply because the warm orange shade appeals to my tastes more. Gatefold housed in a plastic sleeve which bears additional artwork details and the tracklist (depicted as corporate logos). Fold-out lyrics sheet in classic Arcade Fire style, this time stylised as a newspaper’s adverts page.