Call it Lo-Fi indie if you want a broad classification, but it is so much more than that. This is one amazingly crafted album and it is important to note - a whole album experience. Don't just download one song from iTunes - it will be good, but it will not do the whole thing justice. The album flows through movements taking you on a journey through moods and sounds. Every second of each song is in exactly the right place. The production values are sublime. The Album is dense and textured and yet somehow sounds so sparse and simple in other places. Veckatimest is complex and yet easily accessible. The ambition of the album is grand and the band have obviously pursed perfection - and in my eyes it is almost attained.
In a word it is quite simply stunning. What's so amazing about this album is that the attempts by most artists at achieving their lofty ambitions of perfection are inevitably ruined by a misplaced sense of what actually sounds good. This is usually caused by a combination of overproduction (name any number of moderately successful artists here who have delusions of grandeur, lets begin with The Killers), pretentiousness (Coldplay & Axl Rose spring to mind there) and of course the need for instant gratification (The Kings of Leon in the forefront of my mind there....) As Alex Turner of The Arctic Monkeys once sang "There's only music so that there's new ring tones". Anyway back to Grizzly Bear - there is no overproduction and no pretensions. Veckatimest is just so damn good. You keep coming back for more and more and strangely enough it keeps getting better and better. It sounds so familiar and yet you keep hearing more and more within the songs.While you wait for the others is certainly one of my favourite songs of the year, but the album is full of brilliant tunes. Two Weeks, Dory & Cheerleader are highlights, while the pair of songs that close I live with you and Foreground finish the album on a splendid note.
If you have not heard it -get it. If you have it - make sure you see the magnificent film clips for Two weeks and while you wait...
This is one hell of an album, my best for 2009.
Astonishing.
Fits is an extraordinary album, not just because it is so good, but because of the way in which this three piece from Texas write songs. Strap yourself in and hold on tight for 37 minutes of some of the most versatile and creative music you have every heard. White Denim are basically a Garage Rock band. Well maybe a caravan rock band, they recorded this album in drummer Josh Blocks caravan, either way that is just a starting point. Like Grizzly Bear, White Denim are hard to categorise (so why try) but basically the joy is in the sonic intensity that encapsulates your head and leaves you wanting more!
So we have Guitar, Bass & Drums as a starting point with wah wah pedals, psychedelia, ethereal harmonies, punk, jazz, prog rock, dub, soul, organs, sing along and some stoner rock thrown in, sometimes all in the course of one song.
Confused?
You should be.
It is like nothing you have ever heard before, but I have to say there is not an album out there that i have had more fun listening to than this - well flight of the conchords was fairly funny, but fun derived from music...... The chemistry between the members makes what really should not work a very cohesive album. Songs change halfway though and become something completely different, they speed up slow down, timing changes abound (Josh Block is an exceptional drummer). These guys are certainly very handy musicians and multi instrumentalists. Pianos, Organs, Saxophones and christ knows what else make appearances.
The songs are just so enjoyable. I start to run gets in my head and makes me want to dance (or run). Sex prayer is the most awesome organ driven dub rock turning to trippy psychedelia song i have ever heard. Although it could well be the first. El Hard Attack DCWYW is latin punk, Regina Holding Hands is beautifully acoustic, Radio Milk, How Can You Stand It thrashes around masquerading as a punk song before coming up bluesy. Syncn closes the album and makes you want to start it all over again.
There is a psychedelic weave throughout the album and this, combined with the rambunctious energy, has the whole thing teetering on the verge of combustion. However the absolutely stunning songs on Fits always manage to hold together and work themselves out with exciting, engaging results.
This is what bedlam sounds like.
And i like it.
Supergroups scare me.
They should scare you as well. The general equation would be to take good musicians and songwriters out of great groups and put them together and the sum of all the parts = musical gold. However this is almost never the case. The equation actually spits out something far worse than any of the individuals would ever imagined, instead of getting Voltron, you get the mighty morphin power rangers. Think Audioslave, Velvet Revolver, Zwan, The Highway Men, TheTravelling Wilburys (in their defence Roy Orbision did die........) all just bad - especially when compared to from where they came - Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, Guns N Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, The Smashing Pumpkins, Slint and individuals such as Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and George Harrison. Anyway, you get the message, all supergroups are bad and the only exception that i can make with any conviction is for Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young).
But...........
Dave Grohl, the man who found himself in two of the biggest bands in the world of the last 20 years Nirvana and the Foo Fighters has made a habit of side projects. Grohl has worked with Queens of the Stone Age, Tenacious D and Probot among others - he likes it, says it is fun. His good mate Josh Homme has done the same - The Eagles of Death Metal & Desert Sessions. So to be clear, when you are still in a band (Foo Fighters or QOTSA) working on a side project, you are not in a supergroup. Therefore, it is OK to team up with your mate (Grohl and Homme) and find some old fellow who you happen to worship because he was in some band called Led Zeppelin (John Paul Jones) and form a band.
Now that i have proven that Them Crooked Vultures are a side project and not a Supergoup I can stop being scared and get on with loving the album.
What would you expect from Grohl (rock) Homme (mega rock) and JPJ (more rock than rock itself). Ah - heavy guitars and drums and rock. yep. rock.
Guess what. This album rocks.
Firstly, thank God that Dave Grohl has got back behind a drumkit. This is where he belongs. He really is one hell of a drummer and with JPJ on bass showing he has lost nothing in the 30 odd years since Led Zeps untimely demise, the album is very tight. The timing is particular noticeable and this allows Homme a fantastic platform for some guitar work that we have not heard from his since, funnily enough, he last worked with Grohl on the Songs for the Deaf album (Queens of the Stone Age) This is one formula that works here. Homme shows his voice has continued to improve as it has on each Queens album, the man has a great vocal range, certainly along way removed from Feelgood hit of the summer ('Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy and Alcohol C-c-c-c-c-cocaine) if you had forgotten. To most mainstream commercial radio listners he would be the least known of the group, but really he is the guitars and vocals and if anything many of the tracks are Queens of the Stone Age sounding - but - there is so much more. as you would expect from Grohl and JPJ, they are not going to take a back seat.
That is one of the highlights for me. The album actually works. Its better than anyone expected. The musical talent on show throughout is as phenomenal as you'd expect - Grohl plays drums like a man possessed - the cymbal work, drum rolls and timing changes throughout the album are brilliant. JPJ is the master producer. He made Led Zep sound that good as well as every other band he ever produced.
It's thrilling just to hear these three men play together, you can almost hear the guys having fun, Homme and Grohl getting to live out a boyhood fantasy. However if there can be a criticism, that is probably born out of this very point. There are drums solos, guitar solos, bass riffs galore. I mean galore. Its packed. It is fantastic - but at times it is a bit meaty.
In the end it is what i paid for though, i wanted a big album with screeching soaring guitar solos, big riffs, pounding drums with roll after roll all topped with a voice that moves between a shot and a croons.
In this case the sum of the parts were never going to be greater than the original bands from whence they came (except the Foo Fighters of course with apologies to their second album the colour and the shape), however them crooked vultures have put themselves right up there with a phenomenal debut.
And for christs sake lets call it a Side Project.
0 comments:
Post a Comment