Third verse same as the first....

When the Goo Goo Dolls first let slip that they were recording a new album, 4 years after the last offering 'Let Love In', there was alot of talk about being rockier, stripped-down, even darker. As someone who has a great love of the Goos, i was damn excited by the prospect of a return to the heavier, punkier sound that shone through their earlier albums. Well now 'Something For The Rest Of Us', the 9th album from the band, is with us. Does it hold up to the scrutiny fans are going to pile on it? Let's find out!

The first track 'Sweetest Lie', bursts over you in much the same way as 'Stay with You' started off the previous album - a brilliant rush of pop-rock filled with the standard Goos lyrics - love, loss and all that jazz. It's a good start to an album that actually starts to fulfill the promises of a rockier return-to-form. Then the next track, 'As I Am' kicks in. It's a step down from the opener - a mid-tempo 'thank you for loving me' number, but still engaging enough to keep the attention.

Now I'm not going to go through an exaustive list of the songs, but the bottom line is that, if you're a fan of the Goos, you're going to find a lot to like about this album. The instrumentation never really moves away from the standard vocals/guitar/bass/drums malarky, but they have never been a band to mess about with accordions or bagpipes. However, as the album played through, I couldn't help but notice a real lack of actual rock songs. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of moments - the electric solos come thick and fast, and the distortion never loses it's edge. But the majority of tunes lack the 'darker' edge that was promised: lyrically they revolve around the same love-and-loss vein frontman Jon Rzeznik has been mining... well since 'Name' first introduced a mellow side no-one had seen up 'til then. Then again, i'm not entirely sure lyrically the Goos aren't 'dark' anyway - the ratio of sadness to upbeat is pretty bleak, with songs ranging from despairing of life ('Big Machine') to outright bitchyness (the beautifully cutting post-divorce song 'Sympathy'). The band flirts with some more mature orchestration - lead single 'home' uses a cut-down minor verse, surprisingly effective despite the rather camp use of 80s synth, while the closer 'soldier' is a downbeat extensive metaphor comparing a life collapsing with a soldier in the trenches. But frankly, it seems like Rzeznik and his boys are incapable of keeping a lid on the bouncy harmony-laden melodies, and throughout the album's more melancholy sections there is always a sing-along chorus waiting in the wings to jump out and turn the song into a hands-in-the-air singalong.

One of the best descriptions I ever heard of Snow Patrol was that they were stuck in 'arena-rock purgatory' - churning out the same basic tune because it sold records, not because it was what the wanted to play. I honestly have thought at times that the Goos are held down by the same chains - 'Name' and 'Iris' were such massive hits, and so different from their typical output at the time, that they basically shackled the band to inoffensive pop that is full of lyrical emotion and no... I hate to use the word 'soul', since it seems soo cliche, but it honestly fits. Some tracks out of the last few albums have been so transparently trying to cash in off 'Iris''s popularity that you can't help but feel something else than musical love is pushing Rzeznik's songwriting pen.

I realise that last paragraph sounds amazingly harsh on the band, but it was not meant as that - apart from a choice few I have enjoyed nearly all of the post-Iris output. It's just... when you put it up against the early albums there is little doubt that their sound has strayed out of the rock it once inhabited, and firmly into the pop territory. That's what this album is - despite all attempts to the contrary, it's a pop album. And I'm ok with that, but I can't find myself wondering what would have happened if they'd really let rip and pushed back against the legacy Iris left them with...

Admittedly a large portion of this feeling is fueled by the bonus tracks: a pair of covers. 'Postcard from Paradise' is a Paul Westerburg number, that bounces like Bon Jovi at his happiest, with just the lightest touch of harmonica. 'Rough Boys', on the other hand, is almost worth the price of admission alone. If (when!) you get the album, I suggest grabbing the special edition off iTunes, or somewhere that has this track attached. It is both hands down the rockiest track on the album, and the best. A cover of a Pete Townsend tune, it quite simply rocks. It reminds you what the band can do when they put their mind to it, and is well worth tracking down however you do it.

In the end it has to come down to whether the album is worth getting. And I have to say yes. Definitely. It's well worth the money, unless you have a crippling aversion to listening to light rock. Just try not to think too hard about where that darker, edgier album we were promised went...

On the nature of rocking and/or rolling...

When you start to look at a history of rock, certain names have a lot of weight, predominantly ‘cause they’ve been around since the dinosaurs (and The Rolling Stones) roamed the earth. Iron Maiden. Status Quo. Bon Jovi, Metalllica. AC/DC – bands with discographies longer than a small novel, and normally sharing 10 drug addictions and 4 brain cells between the lot of them. A while ago I was reminded of the existence of the later of these when I finally got around to catching Robert Dowry Jr.’s latest adventure in red metal and alcoholism. People made a big thing of Iron Man 2’s reliance on AC/DC music, and it spurred me to check out the latest offering from everyone’s favourite Australian hard-rocking siblings (no, not those ones. Or those ones)

So, for those of you far to busy to read the whole thing, I have a simple question. Did you like Back in Black? Do you enjoy rocking and/or rolling? In which case, get this album (although you probably already have, since I’m admittedly a touch late to the party. In which case, good job! Go listen!) For everyone else, here’s the long version…

The first thing you notice upon picking up a copy of ‘Black Ice’, their most recent (2008) album, is the names. ‘Rock ‘n Roll Train’, ‘War Machine’, ‘Spoiling for a fight’, ‘She likes Rock n’ Roll’. It’s clear that old age and nearly a decade out of the studio, have not mellowed their outlook on life, nor their propensity to write songs about exactly two subjects - rock and women. We’re on familiar territory here, and the band knows it, playing to their strengths and creating an album as familiar as it is heavy. There is not a touch of over-production, and few fancy tricks. From the fast-paced opener of ‘Rock n’ Roll Train’ to the dirty blues crunch of ‘Stormy May Day’, the album is uncomplicated straight-up rock. And actually, it’s very refreshing. In a time when you can’t release an album without some strange synth elements, or incorporating the sounds of an obscure aboriginal tribe because it makes you a ‘proper’ musician, it’s a pleasant feeling to find an album that never tries to trick you, and doesn’t require a PhD in music nerdery to properly appreciate. This is straight up rock – the guitars never dip below ‘very distorted’ and it’s full of big, sing-along choruses that follow AC/DC’s age-old tradition of repeating the name of the song 5 times over. As ever, blues rock is the order of the day, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t branched out just a little bit. ‘Anything Goes’ is far mellower than much else they’ve put out. I wouldn’t call it a ballad by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely owes alot to the likes of Bon Jovi – creamy reverb-laden guitar and met-her-in-a-bar lyrics. ‘Stormy May Day’ moves the formula in the opposite direction, using dirty slide to invoke a delta-blues feel. These kind of cuts provide nice distractions from the main affair, and help make the album feel far less like 15 copies of exactly the same song.

However, there is no escaping the fact that this is a band who see no need to escape the niche they’ve found for themselves. When you pick up this album, you know exactly what you’re getting into – pretty much exactly the same deal as the 15,000 albums that have come before. For most bands, this would be a deal-breaker – no-one wants to pay again for exactly the same songs. But AC/DC seem to be immune from such criticism – maybe it’s because they’ve been around for so long that they’ve got a free pass. Maybe it’s just because they are very good at what they do. This album doesn’t try to change anything that doesn’t need changing, and it makes no apologies for leaning heavily on its history. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but sometimes you don’t need to. Sometimes the tricks it’s known for years are still good enough for one more go around. So it is with ‘Black Ice’. Pick it up, crank it up loud and enjoy. Save your brain cells for the next pretentious indie album that takes itself far too seriously.

More Icelandic warblings by the worlds leading ice-flow hipster

I have a suspicion that there is a correlation between the sound of a band, and the sort of surroundings they see when they look out the window. Built up affluent cities lead to fast, insistent tunage.  More industrial townships (like the German old-school metalworking towns) lead to slower, more pounding beats. When you start to move out into the country, the pace of life slows down, and so does the music – there is a greater sense of peace, as well as the constant danger of banjo attack* But the point of this rambling theory is Iceland. Iceland seems to be a magical place, full of wonder and a pearlescent sheen that covers everything like a cross between a travel agents and a perfume advert. I say this because all the music that comes out of Iceland is beauty incarnate – melodies so delicate they feel like they would break if you even looked at them; singing so ethereal that you’re pretty sure the singer isn’t entirely human. Bjork, Sigur Ros, Seabear... the best word I can think to sum them all up is atmospheric. Two new albums have dropped out of Iceland recently, so I thought it high time to give the Icelanders some love! So here is part one, ‘Go’ by Jonsi

I don’t blame you if you don’t immediately recognise the name of Jonsi. But queue up any of his songs, and you’ll certainly recognise his sound – close your eyes and you could swear blind you were listening to a Sigur Ros album. And you’d be pretty much right – Jonsi (real name Jón Þór Birgisson, according to the wonders of Wikipedia) is the lead singer of Sigur Ros, a band well known for creating music so beautiful it makes Helen of Troy look like Gordon Brown on a bad hair day. ‘Go’ is his first solo effort, and is as beautiful and meticulously crafted a record as you’d expect from the one responsible for Sigur Ros’ delicate melodies. Starting with the upbeat duo of ‘Go Do’ and ‘Animal Arithmetic’, the 9 tracks making up Go show a far greater emphasis on pop than Sigur Ros - most of the cuts have a renewed urgency about them that will be quite refreshing to anyone tired of 9-minute minimalist epics. But make no mistake, this is still Sigur Ros through and through. Indeed, taking the two side-by-side, it becomes clear that Jonsi is the main force behind Sigur Ros’ songwriting – the ethereal harmonies, the stratospheric vocals... this is a Sigur Ros album by any other name. Compare for instance the beautifully quiet and delicate "Grow Til Tall" with Sigur Ros’ equally lovely “Svefn-g-englar” – the stylistic similarities are very clear. Jonsi has swapped things up this time around though – as I mentioned earlier the stronger focus on pop lends itself to more upbeat tunes than his main band, and you’ll definitely find yourself falling asleep less through this album! ‘Go’ also sees Jonsi experimenting more with different languages – Sigur Ros famously wrote sang several of their albums in a made up language called ‘Hopelandic’ – a kind of bastardisation of Icelandic and gibberish. It’s undeniable that it added to the mystery and beauty of the songs, but it also formed a barrier between the band and the listeners. You couldn’t become as involved with the songs, because the vocals became just another layer of texture, rather than an anchor or a story holding the framework of the music together. ‘Go’ sees him singing more in his native Icelandic (which he also did for the latest Sigur Ros – clearly he's forgotten how to speak Hopelandic!) and with increasing snatches of English – ‘Tornado’ talks of the protagonist exploding like a volcano and laying waste to everything as a tornado, and while it’s still difficult to follow the thread of the stories (if indeed any do exist) it helps create a feeling that you actually know a bit of what's going on inside his head.

I guess my recommendation on this album comes down to a simple question - do you like Sigur Ros? If you like them, you will like this album, simple as that. It's a wonderful distillation of what makes Sigur Ros fantastic, while eliminating some of the gumpf that may have turned people away from them in the past. And if you don't like Sigur Ros... well then have a listen anyway - it's also a fantastic pop record in it's own right.

Tune in next week (or whenever I manage to get round to it) and I'll take you through "We Built A Fire" by Seabear! See you there!


* herds of wild banjos are a common sight throughout the heavily rural areas of the US, as well as parts of Cornwall and Norfolk. While weak individually, they are deadly in packs

In which a singer who looks like someone's dad starts acting like it...

 The Hold Steady deal in tableaux. Now onto their 5th Album, the New York band have cornered the market in indie-rock snapshots of drugs, booze and sexed-up 20-somethings in Manhattan. So I came at their latest offering, ‘Heaven is Whenever’ expecting another 12 tales of drug overdoses, hangovers and one-night stands that made their previous albums so damn enjoyable. But something strange is afoot on this LP. It creeps up on you slowly, and isn’t obvious at first glance, but the unthinkable has happened.

The Hold Steady have grown up.

The songs still have the same driving rock and the melodies are still razor sharp (with one serious caveat – I’ll get to that in a moment), but the songwriting has definitely taken a different turn. Take lead single ‘Hurricane J’, where singer Craig Finn advises that it’s better to be “22 and banging round in restaurants than 22 and banging round in bars”... Seriously? Is this the same man who sang about getting so smashed on drugs at a festival that he passed out, woke up in the medical tent and started making out with the first girl he saw? (‘Chillout Tent’) Or who described his marijuana trip as “starting in a vestibule and ending in a hospital”? (‘Hot Soft Light’) You find the same ideas throughout – the fantastic ‘Soft in the Center’ finds him giving some surprisingly zen relationship advice to a guy just starting on dating “I know what you’re going through. I had to go through that too”, while ‘Barely Breathing’ has the band firing salvos against the overly violent nature of mosh-pit shows. It seems that the Hold Steady have finally started to mature a little bit. It’s a strange change, and at times the transition is rather jarring – the aforementioned Barely Breathing comes off as just too preachy – but it’s a surprisingly strong and coherent album. The only track that harks back lyrically to their old songs is ‘Rock Problems’, which sees Finn back on his old stomping grounds – a party in Brooklyn where the music is loud and the drink is strong. But even here his new-found maturity invades – Finn finds himself cornered by a fan who asks if he was drunk at a previous show “since some kids from the net said the sound kinda sucked”. But it safely passes, and he goes back to being drunk again.

So outside of this strange new world, how is the album as a whole? In a word: Fantastic. In two: Bloody Fantastic. The centre of the Hold Steady has always been Finn and his beautifully human way with words. This new mature approach to lyrics has been greatly helped by a renewed emphasis on actually singing – in previous albums Finn has half sung, half spoke his lyrics to rather mixed results (in my view at least – I know some people love his delivery). Heaven is Whenever sees him making a far more conscious effort to actually sing, and the results help drive the songs along better. There is still a healthy streak of D.I.Y Punk running through the band, but this time around it is counterbalanced by a more professional sheen, no doubt in part brought on by some serious mainstream appeal after hits like ‘Constructive Summer’. Which, sadly, brings me to the one downside of this album. The previous albums have been bolstered by some truly stupendous piano work by Franz Nikolay, and his piano lines helped make songs like ‘Constructive Summer’ or ‘Stuck Between Stations’ into amazing tunes. Sadly he left the band before this album, and it really shows. There is a far stronger emphasis on guitar, but the hole left by Nikolay’s departure still gapes. As I was listening to the album, I kept waiting for the beautiful piano lines to sweep in. There are still some good keyboard parts from his replacement, and the melodies on the whole are amazing, but I can’t help thinking how much more fantastic a song like ‘The Weekenders’ would be with their old pianist at the keys. Also the album does deflate just a touch with the softer ‘We Can Get Together’ in the centre – it’s a lovely song, and the sentiments are touchingly sad, but it just goes on a touch too long.

Admittedly though, I’m nitpicking. Heaven is Whenever is a fantastic album, and one that deserves some seriously play from anyone with a love of rock. The more mature direction, while surprising, really helps the album as a whole. Let us hope they continue on such a strain! Go, grab it. You won’t be disappointed. Unless you were expecting the CD case to be full of strippers or something. Then you will be disappointed. Sorry.

Bitesize album reviews for the gentry!

So, I thought the best way of resurrecting this ol' musical endeavour was by rounding up and doing mini-reviews some of the best albums I've been listening to over the last few months. So without further ado, I'm going to look at 3 of my favourite for 2009 - 'Lungs' by Florence & the Machine, 'Conditions' by the Temper Trap, and Passion Pit's debut slice of disco-rock goodness, 'Manners'. All debuts, and all absolutely fantastic! Right, onward!


Florence + the Machine "Lungs"

What's really left to add that hasn't been said already? This one has been winning accolades left right and centre, and with very good reason! The songwriting is top-notch - an excellent mix of pop, soul and rock with just the smallest touch of disco. Powerful drumming, heavy on the toms, lend a pounding, darkly-manic bend to the fantastically gripping 'Drumming Song' and drive along the lead single of 'Dog Days are Over'. The guitar work is light and low in the mix, while the occasional string line adds an ethereal quality to several numbers, most noticeably 'blinding', where it builds to a beautiful crescendo over the course of the song.

All of this is great, of course, but the real clincher for the album is there in the title - Florence Welch. She is the driving force behind the album, and really turns it from simply a good album into one of the best of the year. Over the course of the running time her voice goes from a soft lullaby ('I'm not Calling You A Liar') to harsh, soaring blues ('Girl With One Eye'), to triumphant gospel (a fantastic cover of 'You've Got The Love') all with equal skill. No doubt about it, the titular 'lungs' of the album belong to her, and they are amazing! That girl can sing.

But outside of her vocal skills, there is a surprisingly mature, and dark, lyrical edge to the songs. Below the soaring melodies lie songs about detachment, loss, bitterness and a general obsession with less pleasant areas of human nature. Nowhere is this more obvious than the beautifully bitchy 'Girl With One Eye', where Florence tells of mutilating a lady because she seduced her man. Here the guitar work is used to wondrous effect - slightly off-kilter Spanish/blues melodies keep the listener off guard and a beautiful string scratch symbolising the knife going in makes me wince even now! And while we're at it, there is the rather excellent 'Kiss With A Fist', which sounds like Jack White if he got up on the wrong side of the bed!

T'be honest I don't really have much bad to say on this album. Some of the bonus tracks get a little bit shaky, and thank you iTunes, I don't need 3 different versions of 'Dog Days', but outside of that, 'tis pretty damn fantastic. Go listen!


The Temper Trap "Conditions"

Sometimes first impressions can be very misleading. I first saw, and heard of, The Temper Trap while tagging along with a friend to the free festivals iTunes were running over the summer. When I listened to them, I wasn't blown away. They were ok, yeah, but not exactly oral sex and cookies. Looking back, I think the blame lies alot on the sound system - the vocals were swampy and the guitar hardly cut through at all. Also they were playing with Mumford and Sons that night, which is a completely mismatched pair if I ever saw one! Anyway, sometime later they started getting some airplay, and I decided to give them a second try, so found myself a copy of 'Conditions' on Spotify and sat back to listen. Next day I bought the album.

Though it may sound weird, the first thing I thought of listening to this album is a song called 'Emotion Sickness' by fellow Aussie grungers Silverchair. If you haven't heard it, go search it out on Youtube - it's a fantastic little tune. It's a slow-burning, emotionally powerful number that takes time to get to the punch, but when it does, it's second to none. Temper Trap's album is similar to this - several of the songs take a long time to get going, but the pay off is worth it. Tunes like Resurrection almost sound like Tool songs, building up layers of drums and heavily reverbed guitars until it all comes crashing down, in the best way possible.

This isn't always a plus point though - several songs (Soldier On being the worst offender) are over-extended to the point of stagnation. But when it works, boy does it ever work well.

As I said, Temper Trap are one of these bands heavily reliant on effects and production. The sound is big - far bigger than the 4 of them sound like they could make, but it works very well given the nature of the songwriting. The lead singer frequently reaches dog-whistle levels of pitch, but it complements perfectly with the riff-based guitar work. The best example of this is probably the intro to lead single 'Sweet Disposition', where his vocals hit the stratosphere!

This album has it's share of faults - the lyrics are often seem as floaty and light and the melodies that contain them, but it is an album bursting with power. Also bonus points must be given to 'Fader', which is possibly one of my favourite songs released all year. Brilliant, simply brilliant.


Passion Pit "Manners"

Finally, we come to Passion Pit. This is a lot pushed onto me by my sister and is a tasty bit of indie electro-pop with a chewy disco centre (to torture a metaphor until it screams). Passion Pit are a bunch of American indie kids who seem to enjoy keyboard synths and distorted vocals far more than is probably legal in most states. 'Manners' is the first major label release for them, drawing together several EP tracks and some new stuff.

While I'd normally separate out the individual elements of the band's sound, that's kinda hard with Passion Pit - all of the instruments blend together into one homogeneous lump. This is very much noise rock - imagine Sigur Ros shot through the heart with adrenaline and E and stuffed through a moog synthesizer until they stopped being all sad and beautiful and started bouncing around like lunatics. They make heavy use of keyboards and all the flexibility that allows - just listen to the harpsichord-style intro to 'Moth's Wings' or the 60s game show syth of 'Little Secrets'. It gives the entire album a very eclectic style, and this is enhanced by the almost child-like vocals. I really can't decide whether I like the singer's voice or not - most times he sounds lovely, but there are times when he wanders into rather worrying territory. One of the worst offenders of this is 'Sleepyhead', where I honestly can't take silly falsetto dootings and distorted melodies seriously at all.

Now it sounds like I'm ripping on the album, but honestly Sleepyhead is the only bad apple in an otherwise very very good crop (bunch? barrel full of? whatever.) Whereas normally I feel the vocals and lyrics stand seperate from the rest of the song, here they are another melody line just as the guitar and keyboards are. I must have listened through this album a dozen times or more, but I couldn't tell you what half the lyrics were. And indeed, if you take the elements individually, they don't add up to much. But put them all together, and you get a syrupy, tasty mess of electro-awesomeness (3rd food metaphor this review. I must be hungry). Songs like the aformentioned 'Little Secrets' just make you want to smile and dance around like a mad thing. And despite the darker tones of many of the lyrics (that which you can make out anyway) the songs nearly all have a wonderfully happy beat to them. This is music made for dancing, and the band clearly has a fantastic time and a real love of performing - because of this, all the little problems of the album are rendered moot by the sheer joy of the 12 tracks that make it up

Let The Flames Begin...

Shh... do you hear that? That's the sound of any indie cred I had shrivelling up and dying, since I'm gonna talk tonight about "Riot!", Paramore's most recent album. Sure, it's a very different album, and a very different band, from everything else I've looked at so far, but 'tis still an excellent album, and well worth the effort. So unblock your ears and steel yourself all ye indie kids, for we're going on a daytrip to Emoland!

Let's get this out of the way first - Paramore are an emo band. They be young (God I felt old typing that!), loud and frequently overly-emotional/straight-up angsty. However, for the remainder of this review, suspend your general waryness and bigotry against Emo music - I know it is a beautifully easy target that won't fight back that much, but that is a discussion for another time. For the interests of this review, emo is rock is alternative is whatever - 'tis all music, and frequently good.

Right, down (finally) to the music! Riot is the 2nd album from the band, and even if you're never heard of the band, you've probably heard some of their stuff - be it (the rather stupidly titled) "Crushcrushcrush" from the Twilight OST, or "Misery Business", which seems to have been on every 360 game for the last 6 months. Myself, it took me about 2 months of being stalked by their songs before I took them seriously and gave them a proper listen, and was pleasantly surprised! Frontwoman Hayley Williams has a voice far surpassing her 21 years, and it is her vocal ability that is the driving force behind the band. Tracks such as "Hallelujah" show her to have a strong range, and the emotional kick to back that power up. The rest of the band have more than their fair share of skill and back up Hayley perfectly, but this is really her show, and she steals it well and truly.

I want to talk for a moment about the lyrics. Straying back into stereotypical emo territory for a moment, a large part of my troubles with emo music comes from the supremely depressing/self-pitying nature of the lyrics. Now, I'm all up for a bit of that every now and again, but most bands seem to be something of a one-trick pony - 'tis self-pity and angst, or nothing. Though I was expecting that from Paramore, I was surprised to find a real vein of strength and optimism running through the songs. Songs such as the aformentioned "Hallelujah", or "Miracle" concern themselves with trying to save relationships and being strong in the face of things going tits up, rather than running away. There is a temptation to label this strength as feminism just because it is sung by a woman, but I think this is misguided. I think it speaks more from a genuine positive view on life by the band, rather than an attempt by Williams to leverage her sex for the good of her songs. It would still be powerful whether it was sung by a man or woman. Nevertheless, other songs run the spectrum from stereotypical "we're young and don't like how you run the world" rantings of "Born for this" to obsession with "Stop this song". The lyrics can be blunt and lacking finesse much of the time, but it fits with the fast and powerful style of music paired with them.

Musically, Riot fits into the pigeonholes of power-pop/pop-rock/emo/whatever - heavy distortion is the order of the day, with fast guitar-work and a drummer who plays like he has made mortal enemies with the crash cymbal for all he beats the poor thing. There is only really one song where they slow it down - the rather pretty, if a wee bit cliche, "We Are Broken", which sonds more than a little like something Amy Lee would put out. I guess that is quite a good byline for this album - it is very safe. It breaks no new ground, but it never intends to - it won't tax the listener at all, but it is an awesome album to just kick back and enjoy. And I can imagine it would really come into it's own at a gig, since this sort of powerful, heavy distorted rock is always best listened to ear-breakingly loud, with about 200 other sweaty people having the time of their lives. So, if you get a chance, grab a copy of the album - and if you can, get the special edition, 'cause there are some good extra tracks stuck onto it. Before I go, here's some links to get you started:

CrushCrushCrush

Misery Business

That's What You Get

Peace,

J

Soulmates never die, and neither do excellent albums...

Ah Placebo, how we love thee. Been listening to their new CD "Battle for the Sun" for a while now since its release, and thought I'd give it a quick review for anyone who hasn't picked it up. Or I guess, for anyone who has picked it up and gives a toss what I think about it. In fact, what the hell, this review is for everyone! Huzzah!

This is the first Placebo album with their new drummer, and it really shows throughout the songs. The new member (one Steve Forrest, or so Wiki tells me) adds far more attack to the album than has been seen before, and gives the songs far more energy - and they really are better for it! Generally I've always felt that Placebo albums fell down with the quieter numbers - songs like Centerfolds, Narcoleptic or Bionic were often the weak points to the stronger, more powerful songs. The band seems to have realised this, and 'Battle for the Sun' is noticeably sparse on softer songs, preferring to keep it faster and heavier.

Now, I'm not gonna give an exhaustive blow-by-blow account of the album - leave that to those that get paid for this sort of gig! But I will pick out what I think are the high-points of the album...

Far and away the best song on the album is the single 'For what it's worth' - with Brian Molko's trademark semi-cryptic lyrics ("You're a god-shaped hole tonight") being augmented by a rather nifty brass section, which is a different direction for the band, but one that totally works. Definitely a fantastic little number, and well worth listen. Other good tunes include the strangely life-affirming 'Bright Lights', with a wonderful rising synth line bringing a smile to my face whenever I listen to it. On the other end of the scale, 'Devil in the Details' is the sort of slow, powerful songwriting that Placebo does so well. Starting out quiet and unassuming, it quickly rises to a powerful creshendo that makes for awesome listening. There is also 'The Neverending Why', a fast powerful song that hearkens back to songs like '36 Degrees' or 'The Bitter End'. Probably the next single, this one.

Listening to this album, one thing that occurs to me rather randomly is that this album seems to be far less sex and drug-obsessed than previous offerings - Brian seems more interested in relationship issues and cryptic but beautiful sounding couplets and lyrics. Don't know what that means for the band, but 'tis an observation nonetheless.

Anywho, as a final note, here's some youtubes for a couple of songs from said new album - enjoy!

For What It's Worth

Battle For The Sun

Keep it Ninja,

J

p.s. - If Brian does happen to be reading this - please stop changing your hair all the time! You looked perfectly good with the medium-long hair - keep it like that! Much appreciated.

p.p.s - Random bit of trivia - the song 'Ashtray Heart' is actually named after Brian's first band, formed with the bassist Stefan before they formed Placebo. So there you go!