Author: Christopher William Schahfer

I like sad-sack, spare acoustic music… Nick Drake, you know? And it isn’t just spare, sad sack acoustic music, although there’s plenty of that here, and even though they cover sad sack king Leonard Cohen’s great “Take This Waltz,” which I like, but only really because it’s a Leonard Cohen cover. “Amsterdam” sounds like the Decemberists! And “Oh! My Kingdom” kicks the tempo up considerably! So it’s got some variety, which I always appreciate from an album, and it’s in a general style I enjoy.

And, well, I just can’t connect with it. There are individual aspects of it I really enjoy – the vocals are strong and very emotional (“Waiting for You” and “Whispering Willow” are, if nothing else, quite well-sung), and I really like the way the guitars and harmonicas sound here.  I’m not such a big fan of the songs on this album, but at least this band has a cool sort of sound. And they do pull things off every so often. I like the Cohen cover, although that might just be because it’s a Cohen cover. Meanwhile, “In My Time of Dying” is raving, intense, fast-paced country gospel reminiscent of 16 Horsepower; it’sa great song, and this album could’ve used more of those.

Because, as it stands, a lot of it just completely falls flat. Maybe if I listen to it more, I’ll realize that not just “In My Time of Dying” but everything else here bears a gothic country influence and fall under its spell afterwards (and I certainly hope that happens… I mean, I like liking albums, you know? Especially ones that seem as though they were made with me in mind). As it stands, however, this album is more a collection of individual ideas I like than songs I like. I mean, “Please” and “Puppet Strings” have very nice-sounding guitars that don’t really go anywhere, and “Tricks to Magik” and a couple of other songs here have female vocals, and…

Well, I’m repeating myself, because this album doesn’t really give me a lot to say about it. It’s stark and it’s sad, which is a quality I often find myself enjoying, but  I’m more or less indifferent to the songs themselves, because the melodies just aren’t engaging enough or… I don’t know, something like that. I really wish I could give this one the “it’s not you, it’s me” treatment, but all things considered, I wish they’d put as much effort in making the songs good as they had making them sad. If nothing else, now I know how other people must feel when they hear this sort of sad sack music.

If you’re a fan of ‘90s emo, from those days back before MySpace made it a dirty word, the name Jimmy Eat World might mean something different to you than it would to most music fans. Depending on who you ask, they were either the band behind huge hits like “The Middle,” “Sweetness,” and “Pain,” or the band who gave us 2001’s earnest, stylistically diverse, and surprisingly inventive Clarity.  Now, Jimmy’s hits were kind of killed by virtue of sheer overexposure to me, but I still really enjoy them circa Clarity (“Watch the Fireworks,” man) even though I kind of jump off the bus with them afterwards.

It turns out that their new album sits at a point somewhere in between Clarity’s earnestness and experimentalism and their slick radio hits. There are, after all, a good amount of curveballs here. The acoustic sing-along “You Were Good,” the funk-verse, rock-chorus combo of “No, Never,” and “Book of Love,” which fuses folk guitar and mandolin with a Motown beat and as a result becomes one of the best songs here (you’ll have a great time wallowing in your own misery!) all deviate from this band’s formula significantly, and “Lean” combines jangle pop – a genre a little closer to home for this band – with some decidedly un-Jimmy electronics.

And as for that earnestness, part of me thinks that the slick production compromises that a little. While the jittery “Damaged” sounds like peak-era Jimmy with a little bit of spitshine, and while “How’d You Have Me’s” high-budget production lends its anthemic refrain (to contrast its rollicking verses, of course) pretty nicely and actually makes it seem even more convincingly anthemic,  sometimes they get so slick that they forget what they’re good at. I mean, the aforementioned “Watch the Fireworks” operated on sheer chutzpah, and a song like “Byebyebye” or “Please Say No” could really benefit from some chutzpah.

And hey, I’m willing to concede that those were my two least favorite songs here in the first place: “Byebyebye’s” refrain just wasn’t as cathartic as it wanted to be, while there was a certain insincerity about “Please Say No” that sort of bothered me and is almost painfully at odds with the old-school emo aesthetic. And as someone who really likes the old-school emo aesthetic (seriously, judging emo by Hawthorne Heights or Panic at the Disco is like judging jazz by Kenny G), this gets on my nerves. But even “I Will Steal You Back,” a high-energy gate-crasher, would’ve crashed more gates with a more raw production job.

Still, it’s some good stuff overall, and it’s nice to see this band is capable of recovering from their radio hits, which I found listenable but quite MOR compared to what they had done before. I’d certainly recommend checking out Clarity before this, and you do in some ways have to accept that the band has changed since that album (although I’d be the first to admit that I have trouble with that), but while the slick production occasionally works against it, it’s overall diverse and emotional enough to be well worth your time. This band’s name is still utterly ridiculous, though.

I’ve probably mentioned this in passing before, but twee pop has changed a lot over the years. These days, it’s pretty much code for lushly arranged, folksy music that often plays on the contrast between lush, adorable, sugar-sweet melodies and sardonic, frankly sexual, and otherwise decidedly not sugar-sweet subject matter. Stuff that sounds like Belle & Sebastian, in other words.  That’s not the way things used to be, though. When twee began to emerge in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, a lot of it had a lo-fi punk sound, particularly if the bands in question were mainly female. Dolly Mixture and Tiger Trap come to mind here.

The Courtneys really remind me of this particular style of twee, which I thought was long extinct.  Well, old-school twee combined with Riot Grrl. I understand that this might seem like a bit of an odd combination, seeing that Riot Grrl is just about the least twee genre of music in history. But that’s what I’m picking up on, and besides, why wouldn’t the two intersect? They both claim a strong punk/garage influence, both embraced the lo-fi, and both have a good deal to say about gender relations, although the twee groups have a little more of a sense of humor about it. And this is a nice combination of Riot Grrl anger and twee cleverness.

And, like the best of both genres (Sleater-Kinney and Dolly Mixture spring into my head here), it’s all sorts of fun. “Manion’s” “mandatory suicide” chorus is the kind that’ll just rattle around in your head all day, and believe me, you’ll really like it that way; the same can be said for the clever “Insufficient Funds,” whose lyrics probably got me going on the “Courtneys are sort of neo garage-twee” thing, and the awesome, sprightly “New Sundae” and the jumpy “Delivery Boy,” where they sound a lot like Sleater-Kinney – if you’ll excuse the winding, slowly building guitar passage that opens it up.

When they change it up a little, they sound good, too. “90210” is far more tense than most of the rest of what’s here, and I like it so much, I’m willing to forgive it for actually rhyming “ocean” with “emotion” and “insane” with “brain.” “Dead Dog” has a dynamic instrumental passage that sort of calls Daydream Nation to mind, if you can imagine Daydream Nation without the dissonance. Which might be hard, but for me, huh? If there’s any downside to this, it’s that there isn’t a single knockout song to be heard – it’s all good, fun riot twee, but nothing exceptional. Still, it is a debut. There’s time for growth.

I understand that Sonic Youth and Sleater-Kinney are some big names to toss around, and I certainly don’t mean to hype this band up to an impossible standard. But they are very, very good at what they do, and I think they have the potential to make something really great if they keep at it. So I’d like to nominate them as arguably the most promising newcomers I’ve heard all year.

Well, this was certainly interesting. Not anywhere near as good as the new Knife album as far as experimental synth pop (which seems to be a bit of a big thing lately) goes, but still, pretty interesting and mostly fun. I have to warn you, though, there is a little downtime. For instance, I confuse “Love Natural” with a Spotify ad every time I hear it, which isn’t a good sign, while “Are We One” tries to switch between calm and aggressive but can’t pull off either (“These Nights” does the same thing to much stronger effect”), and “Everywhere” is a cool synth tone in search of a solid melody.

So no, they’re not the world’s most consistent band. But when they get rolling, they’re very good, occasionally great. “L.A. Calling” and “You & I” are both unique fusions of folk and synth pop. The first earns its keep with one of the best choruses on the record and the second by having an agreeable “(Nothing But) Flowers” vibe about it. Granted, the band’s inconsistency plagues them even then – “No Man” comes off as pro forma after all the unqualified success before it, while “Wave” could use a more solid chorus if it wants to work its way into my good book.

But hey, I give them points just the same.  And why not? For one, these songs are unique.  Folk synth pop certainly isn’t a combination of sounds you hear often, and the fact that Crystal Fighters are willing to do it all is good by me. The fact that they make fun songs out of it when they’re at their best, and are quite listenable with it even at their worst, is definitely worth extra credit. They can do more conventional dance material quite well, too – “Separator” has an awesome rhythm to go along with its great chorus.

The big surprise, though, comes in the form of “Bridge of Bones.” It’s completely unlike anything else here, so much so that it took me by surprise when I first heard it. It starts off as a very simple piano and vocals-type affair, which gives way to a melody which combines, of all things, alternative rock with gospel. It moves through this quite well, only to bust out some hefty emotions come the big, uplifting ending. You know, the sort that shifts in key and melody and is basically the most cliché thing ever but works every time (well, as long as it’s not a power ballad) just the same? Yeah, that sort of ending.

And hey, I’m not entirely sure what to make of the fact that this album’s best song is also its biggest change of pace. All I know is that I like what I’m hearing here for the most part. Yes, they could use a little work in the quality control department, but they’ve got a unique sound and can put a good tune together. Turns out those two things will take you a long way.

Argh, what a demanding album. With me, that doesn’t even necessarily have to be a bad thing, but in this case it is because this album demands a lot but doesn’t really have all that much by way of payoff. I mean, you can tell just by looking at the cover that these guys really want this album to be a great time, and if that wasn’t proof enough for you, the day-glow synthesizers, constantly fast pace, and feel-good vocals will do the trick, even though the lyrics tell tales of dysfunction and occasionally despair (see “Goodbye Copenhagen,” which isn’t exactly the Smiths as far as sprightly mope-a-longs go, and “Fall Into These Arms”) because hey, irony’s what the cool kids do anymore, right? And you’ll dance along and shout along and at the appropriate moments laugh along and it’ll be a great, great time for all, right? And hey, I’m not in it to ruin anyone’s good time, but I’m just plain not feeling it. It’s the sort of thing I could definitely see other people enjoying, but for me, it’s almost taxing.

I guess the big problem here is that, for all the big sparkly presentation – the crystal-clear production, the sunny melodies, the breezy tempos, the glistening synthesizers on songs like “Tonight You’re Perfect” and “Goodbye Copenhagen” – the songs themselves are pretty thoroughly forgettable. This renders the whole affair quite frustrating for me, as do all of the attention-getting gimmicks themselves, like the echoing vocals on “Tonight You’re Perfect,” the cheerleader chants on “Harlem,” and the club synthesizers on “Berlin” (which almost pulls off jangly guitars in places and has a cool dissonant bridge). All they really do, at least to me, is call attention to the fact to how forgettable the songs themselves are. This isn’t like Arcade Fire, where the bombast adds to the emotional experience. It just sort of drags things down.

They really pull it off once here, though, and that’s with “Stuck on You.” An aching ballad isn’t exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from such an album, and while it’s just as fluffy as everything else is here, it’s at least emotionally resonant fluff, with a pretty good vocal, a good beat, and a pretty violin line. It’s just as over the top as everything else here, but since it’s got a little more weight than the rest, it comes off a little better. And I do like parts of the above-mentioned “Berlin,” while “Give Me Hope” is kind of fun up until the embarrassing rap, which even then isn’t as embarrassing as the rap on “Overcome”). Maybe next time around, they’ll give us more of “Stuck on You” and less of the annoying Muse knock-off “Die Together.” But until then, I can’t really call myself a fan.