Retro Record Review

• The Killers “Hot Fuss” – This album took a while to grow on me. I liked the funky-retro rock of “Somebody Told Me” from the radio play and the follow up single “Mr. Brightside” confirmed that they had the capability of a decent sound. But when I got the whole album nothing really stood out to me on the first few listens aside from the Duran Duran-inspired opening track, “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.” Three out of twelve isn’t typically good enough for me to declare an album worthy of note so I moved on. But I noticed that as the 12 songs on “Fuss” began to seep their way into my random iPod playlists, I started cranking up more and more of them as they hit the rotation. First listen of the anthemic, gospel-tinged “All the Things That I’ve Done” may have you scratching your head but it doesn’t take long before you’re crowing “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier!” right along with them in the mind-sticky breakdown. Aside from a few missteps (“Andy, You’re a Star”) the album is similar to a lot of alternative pop/rock coming out (see The Darkness) that looks back to the 80s for inspiration but unlike some comparable acts The Killers manage to avoid sounding like a cover band gone awry. A few of the hooks are buried too deeply under odd production choices (why the catchy synthesizers of “Jenny” don’t make a noticeable impression until a few bars during the solo is beyond me) and some of the album feels rushed (could they maybe have written another verse for “Mr. Brightside?”) but patience pays off nicely with this one.
• The Decemberists “Picaresque” – I have a difficult time classifying The Decemberists. They write acoustic songs that evoke pre-industrialized European bardsongs (“Eli the Barrow Boy”, “From My Own True Love”, “Mariner’s Revenge Song”) but occasionally they slip in a modern reference or a catchy pop tune (“The Infanta”, “16 Military Wives”). Their lyrics are often woeful—depressing even—but their literary style (and delivery) paint fascination into the melancholy and the previously mentioned catchy tunes help brace the downhearted subject matter just when it is necessary. The album is just shy of masterful, actually, providing a perfect foil for a moody fall day but their strongest musical accomplishments are the more uptempo numbers (even if you never listen to another Decemberists track, hit iTunes and get “16 Military Wives” right now) and while well executed, there are about one or two too many mellow acoustic strummers to be perfect.
• Arcade Fire “Funeral” – I can tell you right now that not everyone is going to like Arcade Fire. Their curious brand of pop is all oddball melody, light driving indie rock and introspective balladry with the most intense vocal delivery I’ve heard on an album. These aren’t necessarily loud songs, but Win Butler sings them as if his points were absolutely vital to be heard and understood, perhaps not just by the listener but by himself as well. The songs on “Funeral” are crafted as near to perfection as I can imagine and aside from a bland closing track “In the Backseat,” there isn’t a weak spot here. The “Neighborhood” tetralogy (broken up by the pretty but indecipherable French/English hybrid “Une Annee Sans Lumiere”… not entirely unexpected from a Quebecois band) is not a musical series but more a thematic one and each entry is amazing in its own right, culminating with #4, “Kettles,” a descriptive slower track which suggests the album may have hit its peak until the next song (“Crown of Love”) comes on and completely blows you away. While the album is singularly fantastic, casual listeners will find it easy to dismiss them as underground U2 progenies or mainstream Belle and Sebastian crossovers. Others may simply find their patience unwilling to tune to Butler’s strained delivery or the catchy but subtle hooks and arrangements. In truth, it’s their loss.
• The Postal Service “Give Up” – Ben Gibbard is part of Death Cab For Cutie, one of those indie mainstream acts whose shirts get featured in Hot Topic, songs get on lots of soundtracks and magazine reviewers love to crow about (or bag on, depending on the phase of the moon) but who don’t get on the radio or MTV much. Gibbard’s interesting but ultimately disappointing side project is The Postal Service. The music was constructed from bits of electronic mishmash and the songs were collaborated on by Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello via tracks mailed back and forth between Seattle and LA. Perhaps they were trying to do something a bit catchier than the notoriously grim DCFC and achieve real pop success, perhaps they were just interested in messing around. Whatever the case it ends up sounding more like the latter than the former. Aside from the standout single “Such Great Heights” (see also Iron & Wine’s brilliant and unintentionally ironic cover for an equally good but drastically different rendition) most of the songs here are un-catchy and while technically intriguing, the sum of the parts is somehow less than the promise of an “indie supergroup.” “We Will Become Silhouettes” gives probably the next best listen, but it’s a distant second to “Heights” and other tracks have flashes of brilliance but the collaborative process makes for a better story than a song and the end result is overproduced mush whose too-light electronic beats betray pop aspirations and whose meandering vocals (and bizarrely misplaced backing vocals) aren’t nearly as interesting as Gibbard wishes they were.
• As I Lay Dying “Frail Words Collapse” – I don’t mean to mislead you; while I listen to a lot of indie rock (see above), I have other musical interests as well. As I Lay Dying is death metal, plain and simple. They feature lead screamer Tim Lambesis going from a gutteral snarl to a wailing shriek over intensive double kick drums, grinding guitars and tempos that threaten whiplash. But As I Lay Dying is different than your typical death metal band growling about war or context-less violence; Lambesis is a spiritual guy and he sings about his struggles with love, God and hope. You can’t really call As I Lay Dying a Christian band (although magazine articles have characterized them as such); their lyrics are not overt enough to specifically not be about human relationships but the sentiments are, according to Lambesis, often originally directed toward God and the juxtaposition is obviously one that suits As I Lay Dying just fine. Chances are you’d have to read along in the liner notes a few times to catch what he’s growling anyway, but doing so provides surprisingly thoughtful sentiments and the delivery is masterful for this type of music. But the music is where it really happens. These are hook-y, dense riffs played at blistering speeds with only a few oases between (“Behind Me Lies Another Fallen Soldier”) when the band shows a hint of restraint and manages to weave in some softer textures, a feat that in turn makes the inevitable return to form that much heavier. As I Lay Dying inject melody into their metal, something that is irrelevant to their spiritual beliefs and allows “Frail Words Collapse” to avoid being an unexpected crossover aberration and transcend into punishingly beautiful metal. If you’re into that sort of thing.
• Imperial Teen “On” – Classifying music is always a dicey proposition, especially when it comes to music that isn’t Top 40 material. It’s easy to call heavy rotation tunes and artists who frequent weekend morning countdown radio shows and MTV (when they bother to play videos) “pop” because, well, they are popular. But indie fans like to use the term pop as a descriptor to indicate that some album or band employs the use of melodies and arrangements that would be popularly accessible, should they be given sufficient airplay or marketing muscle. So for lack of a better term you can safely assume that Imperial Teen’s “On” is a pop album, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that they’re in the same vein as Jessica Simpson. “On” is not complex, it’s full of simple but catchy tunes with dumb but not insipid lyrics that serve mostly to drive the clever and classic vocal lines sung by committee in old school boy/girl style. At times one almost imagines that Imperial Teen is what the Mamas and the Papas may have been, if they’d grown up on steady diet of The Pixies and ABBA. It works, and while “On” isn’t going to be one of those life-altering albums that allows for a deeper insight into the human condition, it is good for cranking loud with the windows down on a summer day, and sometimes that’s as deep as I care to go.

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