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Volume 27, Issue 1, July 29, 2004 Music |
Album reviews... pick of the litter
If you are a rock critic at all, do not read this review. If two dozen adults prancing around in white gowns to epic-choir-symphonic pop music does not immediately excite you or even mildly interest you, The Polyphonic Spree might not be your thing. The Polyphonic Spree is a Dallas-based band led by Tim DeLaughter, former frontman of Tripping Daisy, and boasts twenty-something members playing every instrument from a glockenspiel to a flugelhorn. The collective sound resembles an ode to the sun, or all things warm, good and fun, and is driven by an overdose of optimism and celebratory dance. Unapologetically joyous messages give the Spree what people will either love or hate about them; their mission to make everybody’s life a little happier. Together We Are Heavy picks up where The Spree’s first album, The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree, left off, not only with its praising brand of psychedelic symphonic pop, but literally, titling the first track “Section 11” (The Beginning Stages ... ended with “Section 10”). But where The Beginning Stages ... had a more demo and lo-fi feel, Together is marked with bright production, denser layers, and even more uplifting crescendos. DeLaughter’s messages of hope, love, and, or course, laughter, intertwine with brass fills, heavy percussion, sprawling strings and swirling choir chants to give the listener a kind of grin that you can only get from listening to the Spree. Listeners who are not completely with the Spree may find Together rather overwhelming. If this group can be labeled as anything, besides maybe a cult, it would be that they are extremely consistent. The sun and a promise of a brighter tomorrow are reoccurring themes throughout the 10 sections and those not on the same page as DeLaughter might begin to turn away. Yet, there a few tracks that even the most critical Spree listener cannot help but to crack a smile to, because on the other side of those speakers are twenty or so people in gowns smiling right back at you. - Tyler Breuer
The label artwork for the new Wilco release, A Ghost Is Born, revolves around one central image: the cracking open of an egg. The motif of transformation, of breaking out of one’s shell, is highly appropriate for this band, whose career has been marked by constant change and a refusal to be pegged into one genre. From its 1995 debut as a country-rock band, mixing heavily distorted riffs with clean honky-tonk slide effects, Wilco has progressed in unexpected musical directions, and, in the process, redefined the sound of what’s commercially viable in the industry. A Ghost is Born is the heavily anticipated follow-up to 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an album which was, for all intents and purposes, resurrected from the dead. Warner Brothers refused to release Foxtrot, with its extended sonic samples and eerie spells of feedback, citing a complete lack of commercial appeal. The album, however, enjoyed a widespread buzz on the internet among critics and fans alike and, once officially released by Nonesuch records, became the band’s highest grossing release.
Not to be pigeonholed by controversy, the band goes in a different direction
on Ghost, opting for an earthier, more organic aural ambience over the
artificial, heavily sample-driven sound of Foxtrot. Even as the musicians employ different musical textures with organs, modular synthesizers, hammered dulcimers, and violas, the album retains the feel of an intimate performance, of five guys playing in a basement. Still, the band includes some flavor of experimentation with sound. The 15 minute long “Less Than You Think,” features 12 minutes of pure feedback, prefaced by the line, “There’s so much less to this than you think.” Still, they keep up an unprocessed sound that complements the tone of the lyrics that paint majestic scenes of seas and breeze, canyons and mountains, stars and dreams. In “Hummingbird,” Jeff Tweedy plaintively sings of a hapless hero whose dream is to have the resonant staying power of an echo “the type of sound that floats around/and then back down like a feather,” but whose voice is lost in urban sprawl and anonymity, “but in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans/no one could hear him.” Similarly, in “Hell Is Chrome,” the Devil eschews the traditional costume of red for a more manufactured, metallic mien, an appearance that connotes modern industry. Wilco has further developed their sound and explored new territory on A Ghost is Born. Whatever new musical ideas germinate as a result, I look forward to seeing how they will hatch independently in a future project. - Adam Goldstein
Somewhere, in a top secret lab buried deep beneath the streets of Los Angeles, a cabal of A&R executives, image consultants and focus testers have been hard at work, “perfecting” and manufacturing templates for every musical genre. With their unstoppable clone army they are determined to remove the unstable element of originality from the process of making obscene piles of cash by selling the mediocre to the ignorant. Farfetched? Perhaps, but how else does one explain the phenomenon of
an album like Godhead’s Evolver? Anyone with ears has heard all this a hundred times before. It’s
slickly produced, immaculately packaged and utterly boring. Coming off like a third rate Filter meets Alice in Chains, this is the bland following the bland. Luckily for them, they’ve got a great image. Imagine a bunch of pretty boys that wouldn’t look out of place in N*Sync, all dolled up with “scary” goth makeup and Gen X approved haircuts. Dreamy, and certain to set aflutter the heart of every 15-year-old girl with a penchant for way too much eye makeup. If they aren’t already appearing hourly on MTV, it can only be a matter of time. Strike back at that cabal of “tastemakers” and their clone armies. Ignore this tripe and speed its journey to the 99 cent used bin, where it belongs. - Cory Casciato |
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