albums of the year... i had hoped

i'm willing to bet that i'm not the only one that has been waiting impatiently to hear the new broken social scene album. i guess the album has been officially leaked now that bss feel the need to announce it on their website. so what is the verdict? it's not you forgot it in people. it sounds more chaotic and less poopy. windsurfing nation, (zip file) which any bss fan has heard by now, is a stellar song. in short, it is not the album i dreamed of but neither the album that i feared after seeing them on olympic island this summer. it somehow feels a little loose knit, like the band just had a big party - kinda like the band is having more fun playing than you listening. of course, repeated listening may chance this - great albums are rarely great at first listen. anyhow, the good news is that bss is also releasing a limited edition ep (7 more songs) on the same day as the album... oh joy.

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another album i have been dying to hear is calla's collisions. televise and scavengers are two of the best albums released in the last few years and it is a shame that calla hasn't caught everyone's ear yet. calla apparently thinks so too because collisions strikes a little poppier note than previous releases as hinted at by their (excellent) shows over the last year. unfortunately this comes at a cost - the nice "calla-sound" is almost missing here. previous releases sounded a little dark, a little miserable, and a little mysterious. now the lyrics seem a little to straightforward and the choruses too big. but despite all my complaints the album really is pretty good - it just didn't live up to my, perhaps unreasonable, expectations. if you haven't heard calla before, start with televise though.

it dawned on me
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ah, mf doom... not that one ever needs to wait impatiently for an mf doom release since he releases about 43 albums a year. nevertheless, many have been excited about the pairing of mf doom and dangermouse - the grey album guy. i wasn't too crazy about the grey album - though i did think it was an improvement on the white album, which, honestly, was rubbish. dangermouse's work here sounded a little flat here at first, and perhaps a little derivative of mf doom's production style and you wonder what is the point of a collaboration if you aren't bringing anything new to the mix. but to be fair, the beats grow on you and despite a slight initial disappointment (a theme here?) I now manage to thoroughly like the album - much like it took me a while to get into mm food. it is no madvillainy, of course, but yet another solid mf doom album (the 28th this year, i think).

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just because i have the links handy: Rogue Wave: 10:1
& Of Montreal: requiem for omm2
& the new pornographers: use it
& wolf parade: you are...

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i caught the red sparrowes opening up for zombi and breather resist last night and, well, this band is the shit. they were so good that i just left after they played because there was no way the other bands could compete (and, ok, i was feeling a little sick and tired). their album is strong contender for the album of the year in my book and live they are even better. catch them if you can....

sounds like violence

i can't say i had high expectations of band with a name like sounds like violence. nor the fact that it is on deep elm records. this band just has emo/punk written all over it but thankfully it didn't stop me from checking out the pistol ep. it sure is punky, but with a pop flair, and it might pass for the blood brothers' scandinavian cousins. basically, it is great album for those of us that like their pop with spikes. the band is definately competent though it is not breaking any new ground. the band's singer is, however, the band's biggest selling point. the above song, grow/blow, bears more than a passing resemblance to afghan wigs' early output and is the stand-out track here. if sounds like violence can expand their sound and range in this directions we may be in for a treat. right now, sounds like violence sounds like an interesting proposition - but one wonders where they are headed. they migh settle for a competent pop-punk band but they might also, and hopefully, start living up to their name. now if only they wrote lyrics like dulli.

arpeggios madness

well, there are few things i like more than to bitch about pitchforkmedia. and yes, obviously i wouldn't if i weren't a devote reader. it has become something of a ritual - 9am, coffee, cigarette, pitchforkmedia, and then i can go work. and this, of course, just means that i get annoyed with the smallest things. lately, arpeggios have been bugging me. ever damn review has to mention arpeggios. low arpeggios, floating arpeggios, lithe arpeggios, pretty, jangling arpeggios, dark Rhodes arpeggios, blistering arpeggios, genle folksy arpeggios, jazzy guitar arpeggios, tripping arpeggios, tender ebony-and-ivory arpeggios, and so on and on. the thing is that having read music reviews obsessively for nearly two decades i hardly ever recall coming across the word arpeggios. but apparently arpeggios are the shit now. but i don't know if it is because musicians everywhere all of a sudden realized that they didn't have to strum their chords or the music reviewers just learned a word that sounds polished and cool - and signals that they know more about music then you do. which ultimately is what most music reviewer want to get across. i'm leaning towards the latter. pitchforkmedia is undoubtedly one of the most elitist, snobbish music sites out there. a search on google reveals 122 mentions of arpeggios on pitchforkmedia.com. On rollingstone.com we have 17. need i say more? well, yes. this would seem to support the notion that the music hasn't changed but, well, rolling stone doesn't review exactly the same albums. so i checked out a few other music review sites and here is the ranking.

pitchforkmedia.com 122
adequacy.net 73
stylusmagazine.com 57
popmatters.com 50
rollingstone.com 17
fakejazz.com 8
nme.com 8
junkmedia.org 7
tinymixtapes.com 5
themilkfactory.co.uk 2
spin.com 1

obviously there are differences among the sites in terms of number of reviews, etc. but the picture seems pretty clear and i think the editors of pitchforkmedia should cut down on the arpeggios abuse.

silence kit

after hearing the silence kit's latest album pieonear i sat down to figure out how many russian bands i had heard. and to be honest, tatu was the only one i could recall. so in short i was a little shocked by how good silence kit is. pionear consists of three songs - with an average duration of about 22 minutes - so, yes, it has got post-rock written all over it. it is mostly instrumental, starting out with a sort of cabaresque piano that shortly gives way to an exploding guitar riff that reminds me of radiohead peppered with a dose of kyuss. then we get some more quiet parts on par with mono's prettiest moments and some more loud parts of shredding guitars and strings that sound equally frightening and beautiful. if this does not end up on my list of the very best albums of the year this year will indeed have been amazing.

the song above is in .ogg format (plays, e.g., in winamp). more song, including all of silence kit's self-titled debut, can be found here.