2K7 In Review: My Favorite Albums, #10
At long last, I'm gonna give you my ten favorite albums from last year. As I've hinted before, I've found motivation rare to write about some of these. But what the hey, it's damn April. The best way to finish this is to do it one at a time, and that is what I intend to do. Obsessive readers may notice some cannibalization of previous scribblings I did about a few of these, but since those are my opinions, I believe I'm allowed to recycle them. As each post appears (hopefully in quick succession), I'll add samples from the record in question to the ol' streaming player so you can get a taste of the magic.
Gang, let me preface by establishing that I listen to a lot of music. A LOT. Traditionally, I have my preferences, but I also like trying out new things. As I get older, I find that while I get a lot of joy out of the old standbys, they don't typically deliver the sort of mind-melting moments a less familiar act can. I admit it, at this stage I'm sort of hooked on novelty. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want the music coming into their ears to be fresh, inspired, unique and surprising. I certainly do.
I want every record I hear to send that crackle up my spine, the way I felt it in the old days when I was completely unfamiliar with the inner workings of the record biz, when I had no idea what "subculture" meant and music was either good or bad. I want to be mesmerized and confounded by it. I want mysteries to unravel, treasures to discover, terrains to explore, zeniths to ascend, even pitfalls to circumvent. I want chops to admire and hooks that I can't banish from my head. I want an album that goads me to play it over and over again, never fearing burnout, until I can recite its track listing in my sleep, yet by which I can be startled six months or a year later when I pull it back out and hear something I never noticed before. Each of the records I'm writing about fulfilled for me some facet of that impossible dream. They got me through the relatively few rough spots and buoyed the many high points of 2007, and will thus be inextricably linked with that time in my memory. I implore you to give each a try.
10. Interpol, Our Love to Admire (Capitol)
I was kind of shocked that I liked Interpol as soon as I heard them, considering how cynical I was about the Big Apple's crop of celebutante rockers. Yes, all that NYC hype a few years ago was a bit much. The Strokes always seemed like corny industry fodder to me (still better than, say, Wolfmother - barf!), The Walkmen leave me cold (as in, I saw them live in '06 and don't remember a second of it) and I find the Yeah Yeah Yeahs abrasive in a bad way (I concede that this actually helps their live show). But Interpol was what I wanted from regular old non-metal rock music: understated where others were pointlessly overblown, sincere where others hid their emotions behind cryptic shields, dark and tense where others strove to evoke sunlit pastures or hipster-packed sports bars, yet not so bleak as to become maudlin sad-rock caricatures. In these ways and others, they remind me of my favorite band, Katatonia, albeit in an alternate universe where the Swedes dropped their metal influences, got more into post-punk and acquired a singer who was a huge Ian Curtis fan. And they're on the radio! Even showcased during the few early-morning minutes MTV deigns to show music videos! In my mind, Interpol was mainstream well before this, their major label debut, was written, yet they still feel so unlike anything else radio listeners are currently subjected to that in their case, I can accept the sticky "indie" tag.
Interpol's first and second albums each have distinct personalities, and I think that helped ease me into the band since a friend gave me copies of both of them at the same time. Turn On the Bright Lights heralds the atmospheric onset of evening, dizzy from a wealth of possibilities and awkward starts. Antics, on the other hand, is the after-hours comedown, jittery and regretful, still wired from the thrum of humanity and heartbreak. Given this strained metaphor, their third disc should necessarily fill in the gap. Our Love to Admire should theoretically feel like the meat of the evening, the parties and decadence and love and drama. Yet, the closest Interpol comes to such a conceit here is in acheiving a strong synthesis of those moods. Our Love to Admire contains some of the most lush and enveloping musical blankets the band has yet to conjure, yet thumps as hard as anything they've done before. Take the impossibly picturesque opener, "Pioneer to the Falls," which floats in on Daniel Kessler's shimmery U2-on-downers guitar plucking and twinkly piano flutters by bassist (and Joachin Phoenix look-alike) Carlos D. It's fairytale pretty until Paul Banks opens his gloomhole, moaning his usual incoherent but incredibly grave melody like an undead 1940s pop idol... when this dude sings "we'll be fine," you can't help but doubt him. I mean, he spends the ickily anthemic following track, "No I in Threesome," trying to talk his girlfriend into a ménage à trois. "Who Do You Think?" pulses with poppy paranoia, while the jarringly jaunty tone of lead single "The Heinrich Maneuver" masks a bitter lyrical kiss-off. Drummer Sam Fogarino helms the old Interpol nocturnal groove on the moodily suffocating "The Scale" and the jazzed/jaded fluctuations of "Pace Is the Trick." By the time "Wrecking Ball" and "The Lighthouse" close the disc with twin post-rockish ebb-and-flow creepers, the experience feels complete, a comprehensive display of the band's strengths. The only downside I can see to this is the plateau effect: unless they attempt a risky stylistic change, the rest of Interpol's albums will probably sound very similar to this one. Whatever happens, I think I'll maintain hope that they'll continue to put out good work within this paradigm. If not, Our Love to Admire offers enough decadence and drama to last for years anyway.
Three music videos from Interpol's Our Love to Admire exist to date... see below.
"The Heinrich Maneuver"
"Mammoth"
"No I in Threesome"
Gang, let me preface by establishing that I listen to a lot of music. A LOT. Traditionally, I have my preferences, but I also like trying out new things. As I get older, I find that while I get a lot of joy out of the old standbys, they don't typically deliver the sort of mind-melting moments a less familiar act can. I admit it, at this stage I'm sort of hooked on novelty. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want the music coming into their ears to be fresh, inspired, unique and surprising. I certainly do.
I want every record I hear to send that crackle up my spine, the way I felt it in the old days when I was completely unfamiliar with the inner workings of the record biz, when I had no idea what "subculture" meant and music was either good or bad. I want to be mesmerized and confounded by it. I want mysteries to unravel, treasures to discover, terrains to explore, zeniths to ascend, even pitfalls to circumvent. I want chops to admire and hooks that I can't banish from my head. I want an album that goads me to play it over and over again, never fearing burnout, until I can recite its track listing in my sleep, yet by which I can be startled six months or a year later when I pull it back out and hear something I never noticed before. Each of the records I'm writing about fulfilled for me some facet of that impossible dream. They got me through the relatively few rough spots and buoyed the many high points of 2007, and will thus be inextricably linked with that time in my memory. I implore you to give each a try.
10. Interpol, Our Love to Admire (Capitol)I was kind of shocked that I liked Interpol as soon as I heard them, considering how cynical I was about the Big Apple's crop of celebutante rockers. Yes, all that NYC hype a few years ago was a bit much. The Strokes always seemed like corny industry fodder to me (still better than, say, Wolfmother - barf!), The Walkmen leave me cold (as in, I saw them live in '06 and don't remember a second of it) and I find the Yeah Yeah Yeahs abrasive in a bad way (I concede that this actually helps their live show). But Interpol was what I wanted from regular old non-metal rock music: understated where others were pointlessly overblown, sincere where others hid their emotions behind cryptic shields, dark and tense where others strove to evoke sunlit pastures or hipster-packed sports bars, yet not so bleak as to become maudlin sad-rock caricatures. In these ways and others, they remind me of my favorite band, Katatonia, albeit in an alternate universe where the Swedes dropped their metal influences, got more into post-punk and acquired a singer who was a huge Ian Curtis fan. And they're on the radio! Even showcased during the few early-morning minutes MTV deigns to show music videos! In my mind, Interpol was mainstream well before this, their major label debut, was written, yet they still feel so unlike anything else radio listeners are currently subjected to that in their case, I can accept the sticky "indie" tag.
Interpol's first and second albums each have distinct personalities, and I think that helped ease me into the band since a friend gave me copies of both of them at the same time. Turn On the Bright Lights heralds the atmospheric onset of evening, dizzy from a wealth of possibilities and awkward starts. Antics, on the other hand, is the after-hours comedown, jittery and regretful, still wired from the thrum of humanity and heartbreak. Given this strained metaphor, their third disc should necessarily fill in the gap. Our Love to Admire should theoretically feel like the meat of the evening, the parties and decadence and love and drama. Yet, the closest Interpol comes to such a conceit here is in acheiving a strong synthesis of those moods. Our Love to Admire contains some of the most lush and enveloping musical blankets the band has yet to conjure, yet thumps as hard as anything they've done before. Take the impossibly picturesque opener, "Pioneer to the Falls," which floats in on Daniel Kessler's shimmery U2-on-downers guitar plucking and twinkly piano flutters by bassist (and Joachin Phoenix look-alike) Carlos D. It's fairytale pretty until Paul Banks opens his gloomhole, moaning his usual incoherent but incredibly grave melody like an undead 1940s pop idol... when this dude sings "we'll be fine," you can't help but doubt him. I mean, he spends the ickily anthemic following track, "No I in Threesome," trying to talk his girlfriend into a ménage à trois. "Who Do You Think?" pulses with poppy paranoia, while the jarringly jaunty tone of lead single "The Heinrich Maneuver" masks a bitter lyrical kiss-off. Drummer Sam Fogarino helms the old Interpol nocturnal groove on the moodily suffocating "The Scale" and the jazzed/jaded fluctuations of "Pace Is the Trick." By the time "Wrecking Ball" and "The Lighthouse" close the disc with twin post-rockish ebb-and-flow creepers, the experience feels complete, a comprehensive display of the band's strengths. The only downside I can see to this is the plateau effect: unless they attempt a risky stylistic change, the rest of Interpol's albums will probably sound very similar to this one. Whatever happens, I think I'll maintain hope that they'll continue to put out good work within this paradigm. If not, Our Love to Admire offers enough decadence and drama to last for years anyway.
Three music videos from Interpol's Our Love to Admire exist to date... see below.
"The Heinrich Maneuver"
"Mammoth"
"No I in Threesome"
posted by SoulReaper at 7:14 PM
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