With today’s online debut of Plastic Beach
Damon Albarn has given the world an album that tripped-out stoners, pro-primitives, and environmentalists alike can all appreciate, synthesizing the warm and welcoming nature of past Gorillaz work with a new emphasis on pop appeal. There’s nothing as immediately satisfying as “Feel Good Inc.,” but a sense of depth lurks below that urges you to explore this strange little cartoon world further.
If you’re a fanatic who truly cares about resolving the story lines of fictional cartoon characters, then Plastic Beach should be massively enjoyable, but the album works perfectly well as an experience for the casual fan. Albarn cares a little too much about the weather and chintzy dry-spells can get tiring, but the 56-minute trip currently streaming at NPR is still worth the trip. After the jump, listen along while reading our track by track review of the album, and let us know what you think.
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It’s hard to believe that it was only two years ago when four Columbia grads who looked prepped to sail from the Hamptons to Nantucket and back for a guitar tune-up were billed as a Band to Watch on Stereogum and Best New Music on Pitchfork. They were riding such a monstrous wave of hype, a crash and burn seemed inevitable. With the first news of their upcoming sophomore album, Contra
, many believed that the Ivy League’s own box of Afropopcorn had set itself up for a fall. However, stripping away the normally guitar-heavy tracks, the band left the shores of the Upper West Side for a land with more falsetto crooning amid grooving bass lines, airy reverb, and catchy-as-hell synths.
Is this a new electronic-tinged country that no one saw Vampire Weekend drifting toward? Perhaps. But lyrically, we’re still in the same pop-culture reference-laden territory of their eponymous debut. After the jump, we take a closer look.
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The release of this year’s rapturously received Merriweather Post Pavilion exposed Animal Collective to an enormous new group of fans and served as an awakening to the strange musical concoctions the band has been churning out for nearly a decade. Yesterday’s leak of their new Fall Be Kind EP showcases the group at its best, a perfect marriage of their otherworldly aural tendencies with nontraditional song structures and sensibilities. Much of the material continues in the lush, orchestral vein of Merriweather (some songs were recorded during sessions for that LP) and the crystallization of the band’s celestial sound continues to be thrilling.
After the jump, our track-by-track analysis.
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Yes, we got to hear the new solo album by The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas. Yes, it’s really, really good. Yes, it’s not due out until November 3rd. Enough questions already. After the jump, look for a track-by-track breakdown of Phrazes for the Young. Read More »
For better or worse, the last year has been marked by the rise of the almighty auto-tune. This pitch-altering device is so powerful that it caused Kanye to stop rapping and, subsequently, an R&B stampede. Discovery, a band consisting of Wes Miles (lead singer of Ra Ra Riot) and Rostam Batmanglii (a multi-instrumentalist for Vampire Weekend), is arguably the first indie-pop group to tap into it. As such, it’s hard to tell whether their debut album, LP, is a) excitedly pushing the boundaries of R&B/auto-tune by breeding it with indie music b) a joke, or c) a victim of a gimmicky trend in popular music. Read More »
Despite their increasingly high profile, and a tendency for earth-shatteringly large performances, Japanese noiseniks Boredoms most recent release is pretty impossible to find. Part of the group’s long-running Super Roots EP series, the record’s first run in Japan sold out almost immediately, and they’ve yet to announce a Stateside release. For now it looks like it’s only available in the obscure (and somewhat seedy) corners of the interweb. After the jump, Aaron Leitko ventures into the ether for a snapshot review of the all-to-elusive album, plus we offer our favorite MP3.
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No question: the Boss wants this one to be BIG. Hot off a Golden Globe win for his contribution to Mickey Rourke-reviving flick, The Wrestler, Bruce Springsteen is sandwiching the record — only his third with the E Street band since 1984 — between a high-profile inauguration outing and an appearance as the centerpiece of the Super Bowl’s halftime soiree.
But, while the roll-out is the gargantuan crush of a bona fide rock god, the actual album is a pretty modest affair. Leaked this week, and available as an NPR stream on the 19th, Working on A Dream, is, enticingly, a return to eras the Boss never actually entered. Our pre-release sneak peak after the jump…
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From the get-go, Antony and the Johnsons’ The Crying Light languishes in undiluted distress, shaping a bitter, abstract moan into its first real words: “Her eyes….are underneath the ground.” To say this record represents a bitter acceptance of atrophy would be inexact. On its cover, an old woman, eyes to the sky, presses bony fingers away from her body, her face abstract, ambiguously emotional. Like his cover figure, Antony is simultaneously overwhelmed and at peace with his pain. Our full review, after the jump.
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