Deserted

Paradise
My Disco
Stomp, 2008
4 stars

I was so ready to love this album. All the lead-up talk of "Steve Albini this" and "Chicago that" had my appetite well and truly whet, and this morning when the digipack landed on my desk I probably looked like a 9-year-old girl discovering that High School Musical On Ice is coming to town. I was expecting Cancer: Part 2, but expectations can be a pain, because Paradise is a different beast entirely. The album's gate-fold cover shows Liam, Rohan and Ben standing on top of a pile of rocks in the middle of a sparse central Australian desert - it's the perfect visual partner for the album, because Paradise is a brutal, meditative lesson in patience. The boys are just as precise as ever, the drums and guitars working together so tightly you'd swear they're machine-operated. This time around they have a bit more time up their sleeves though, and they use it well - where Cancer was hurried and claustrophobic, Paradise's de-constructed drumbeats and basslines evoke endless desert landscapes of their own. There's a real sense of dread that comes with being surrounded by so much space, but, given time to get used to your surroundings it can become something really beautiful, and Paradise is a place worth getting used to. Sounding like it was inspired by a car alarm, A Christ Pendent Comfort Her Neck is as good as anything they've released yet, and the foreboding Land is the perfect album closer.

Artwork: A+

Published in mX, Thursday February 28, 2008

'90s, But Not Yet

Exposed
Boom Boom Satellites
Sony, 2008
2.5 stars

NME say that Boom Boom Satellites sound "like the Prodigy fighting Underworld with bloody big sticks", so it comes as no surprise that this album sounds very much entrenched in the '90s. The thing is, despite the current cache in all things '90s, this whole 'big beat' electro-rock thing (not to be confused with the current trend of 'dance-punk') still sounds a bit dated. The guitars and drumbeats on this record have been digitized to within an inch of their lives, and at times the vocal treatment sounds like the Verinocas after a rough night on the tiles. The Japanese can usually get away with a bit more than most (ahem, Five Venoms), but maybe these guys should have held onto Exposed for another ten years and given us time to revisit grunge, brit-pop, rave and the rest of the '90s first.

Artwork: B-

Published in mX, Thursday February 28, 2008

Tickled Pinks

Shocking Pinks
Shocking Pinks
Astralwerks, 2007
4.5 stars 4 stars

2007 must have been Year of the Arthur Russell Cover. Jens Lekman, Tracey Thorn and, here, New Zealand's Nick Harte all gave a nod to the late composer's genius. Production was well underway - as far as I know it still is - on a Russell documentary too. Harte's version of You Can Make Me Feel Bad, originally from the glorious Calling Out Of Context compilation, takes the awkward cello of the original and turns it into a blissful low-fi guitar workout - it's a simple, respectful conversion, and the result is gorgeous. In fact, simple and gorgeous are good words to describe Shocking Pinks as a whole. It's a dreamy, hazy concoction of blissed-out noise-rock, rampant garage drums and melancholic atmospherics - and the fact that one man is largely responsible for it makes it all the more impressive. Harte was once drummer for the Brunettes, and his pedigree as a skinsman is evident here - these tunes would be nothing without the beats that push them along. A brisk pace is set early on with This Aching Deal and album highlight How Am I Not Myself?, but slows down later for the bittersweet Girl On The Northern Line before picking up again for Cutout, one of only a couple of tracks on the CD that give any indication to this being a DFA release. Like No Age's Weirdo Rippers, this is a collection of songs that, though recorded seperately, fit together like they were meant to. I just wish I'd heard it before I wrote last year's best of list.

Artwork: C

In Threes

Promises Promises
Die! Die! Die!
Universal, 2008
3.5 stars

Recorded at New York's Marcata Studios (birthplace of the great early Walkmen albums), Promises Promises sees these New Zealand boys delivering on the promises of their excellent lead-up EP Locust Weeks. It's a rapid 13-track set of danceable, skeletal post-punk, with a handful of songs barely hitting the two minute mark. But the songs benefit from their brevity - Die Die Die are nothing if not efficient, and not a minute here is wasted. The bare-bones drumming, angular guitars and chirpy, spat vocals will inevitable lead to comparisons with Sonic Youth and Melbourne darlings (and frequent bill-partners) Love of Diagrams, but these guys bring enough to the table to make their sound their very own. Listen Listen Listen.

Artwork: B+ (for effort)

Published in mX, Thursday 21 February 2008.

Bloody Ripper

Weirdo Rippers
No Age
Sub Pop, 2007
4.5 stars

Noise is back, and with it are the ripped jeans, flannelet shirts and long hair that made up the '90s grunge aesthetic. Los Angeles' No Age are at the front of a wave of acts trying their hand at post-grunge at the moment, but they stand out with a sound as much about distorted guitars and garage drumkits as it is ambient surf-rock atmospherics. These guys have a really full sound for a guitar/drums two-piece, and though its eleven tracks have been cut from five EPs issued last year, Weirdo Rippers is incredibly coherent as a whole. The DIY feel of these album does a good job of disguising how thought-through and clever the songs really are, and you can bet this is no mistake - as visual artists themselves, these guys would know all about manufacturing disorder. Either way, it's just exciting to listen to a band that's hitting all the right notes, and Rippers is proof of a band at the top of their game. Hopefully they've saved some game for their first 'real' LP Nouns, due May.

Artwork: A

Someone Else's Daydream

Devotion
Beach House
Mistletone, 2008
4 stars 4.5 stars

This duo's self-titled debut was a gem of melancholy pop, and one made better by its lack of complexity or pretension - it was as if the two longtime friends were off in their own sun-drenched world, and the fact that the resulting tunes had made it onto a CD was merely a pleasant coincidence. The Beach House sound is like a textured reflective surface; it doesn't show you what to feel, but it shows you what you're already feeling and douses it in a hazy, dream-like glow. And, like the former, the new album is in no hurry - in fact it's so relaxed it will literally slow your pulse to a crawl. Shimmering and spacious, Devotion takes the formula and adds to it - the organs, guitars and understated percussion are still there, but the meandering daydreams that made up Beach House have grown into real songs.

Hindsight: When I wrote this review I was thrown a little by the more 'full' sound of the new album. But after seeing these guys live - wow. They actually sound as good live as they do on vinyl/plastic, if not better. I haven't been able to take this album out of my CD player ever since (Thursday September 25, 2008).

Artwork: A

Published in mX, Thursday 14 February 2008.

Musical Theatre

The Evening Descends
Evangelicals
Mistletone, 2008
3.5 stars

Sometime back in the mid-seventies Queen wrote a musical version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid for the stage, though it was never performed and remained largely unknown for three decades. Years later, whilst hunting around a local garage sale, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne found the piece in an old shoebox, and together with members of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Animal Collective and Broken Social Scene, set out to bring it into the 21st century. None of this is actually true, however listening to the fantastic indie-rock opera that is The Evening Descends you'd swear it could be. Both watery and electric - not usually a good mix, but here it works to great effect.

Artwork: B-

Published in mX, Thursday 7 February 2008.