Destroyer- Poison Season #CantMissIt

Destoryer
Poison Season
Merge Records

The indie pop sound that dominated the alternative waves of the past decade has undoubtedly cooled off. Making way for artists with more of an R&B flair to them, the scope of indie music has been broadening and changing. Following and conforming to such trends has never been a concern for indie rock collective Destroyer. At the ripe age of forty-two band leader Dan Bejar is still making music on his own terms. In doing everything he can to avoid a predictable sound, Bejar has proved once again that he can create a freshly enjoyable new project. “Poison Season” comes at a time 4 years removed from the group’s most successful work to date, “Kaputt”, which is a bit of a moot point due to the challenge of comparing Destroyer’s work. Like all Bejar releases, “Poison Season” comes with numerous talking points that differentiate itself from previous releases.

From the opening moments of the album Bejar introduces the listener to a world filled with a diverse array of lush and varied instrumentation that remains unrelenting throughout the record. This album feels about as maximal as an indie pop record can be to a gorgeous effect rather than an overproduced one. “Dream Lover” quickly shows Bejar’s willingness to let the horn section run wild as he laments about the harshness of the sun rising. The enchanting string compositions coupled with big horn support regularly take center stage, however, these pieces are also used in subtle fashions as well. The violins and saxophones will blend into the background of the mixing as well for a lingering reminder of their presence.  The album is also filled with delicate piano pieces, wailing electric guitars, and lavish cello pieces. “Sun in the Sky” finds Destroyer creating a slower groove while maintaining a feeling of denseness. On “Poison Season”, Destroyer is constantly shifting themselves everywhere in between these two dynamic ranges giving the album a very diverse almost journey-like feeling with Dan Bejar’s narrative style lyrics guiding the trip.

Lyrically Destroyer usually remains abstract, but that is not the case at all on “Poison Season”. Bejar uses imagery, stark emotion, and relatable experiences to provide the listener with more tangible word-play substance than usual. Bejar’s tribulations of love, anxiety, and drug use are honest and decipherable which cannot be said for all his projects. The album features three separate thematic tracks entitled “Times Square” that bookend as well as divide the record creating the feeling of a pseudo two act play. These short but expansive tracks feel like a microcosm of the album itself which give the listener a piece of foreshadowing to open the record and closure at its fulfillment.

The sheer denseness of this album alone makes for a compelling listen. Varied instrumentation is used purposefully and effectively. It does not feel like the musicians were playing improvisationally or even loosely, rather every note is meticulously placed effectively as part of a much greater sound. “Poison Season” is an exciting piece of chamber pop that has come at a time where the genre is desperately looking for life. This is not going to be a record that will cause any sort of genre revitalization or find itself at the top of year-end lists the way “Kaputt” did in 2011, but “Poison Season” is still worth of high praise as a record that successfully accomplished what it set off to do. Dan Bejar said in a recent interview that he is too old now to be drastically successful or cool. It seems that embracing such an attitude has enabled him to create music that appears goal oriented and remarkably effective on a grand scale.

8/10  

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TJ Kliebhan

8/31/2015 

Stream "Poison Season" via Consequence of Sound here: http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/08/stream-destroyers-new-album-poison-season/

Beach House-Depression Cherry

Beach House
Depression Cherry
Sub Pop

Dream Pop act Beach House have been using a combination of male and female vocals with pop hooks and ethereal backgrounds to delight listeners for four albums now. Their most recent record,

“Bloom” saw the band reach new levels of popularity with a set of songs that showed off brilliant syncopation between its two founding members and the achy longing of songwriter Victoria Legrand. The somber tones were sure to be continued when Beach House announced the title of its forthcoming record, “Depression Cherry.” The newest record from the Maryland duo has its moments of dainty instrumental elegance, but these highlights fail to overcompensate for the downright forgettable nature of the majority of these songs.

The Beach House charm is built on delicate and slow ballads and “Depression Cherry” is full of them. The spacy reverberated guitars that lead the listener through tracks like the opener “Levitation” and “Space Song” are relaxing, but hold a strain of liveliness that keeps the tracks catchy. Where Beach House’s prior records succeed is where “Depression Cherry” fails. Tracks off “Teen Dream” and “Bloom” would take these slow burner tracks and take the listener though different sets of dynamic ranges as tracks would develop while the band’s reverberated pop hooks were given enormous space to shine. Instrumental layers would be applied and the original piece that drew the listener into the track at the beginning would end as an afterthought which faded into the texture of a larger instrumental track. Beach House are masters of creating a seemingly massive space then filling in that space with lavish texture and scintillation. On “Depression Cherry” these opening guitar or synth pieces are left to dangle out at the front of the track for its entirety. A lot of these piece lack the strength to stand on their own and are not even able to be supported by a stronger pop hook or chorus. The vocal layers and harmonies are not as enticing as they were prior and by track five this not only becomes painfully evident, but tracks become downright predictable.

Many of the tracks like “10:37” and “Wildflower” are so slow that they keep the listener in anticipation for a new element that never comes. No added instrumentation or shift in tempo or mood, just continued falsetto from Legrand until the track ends. The songs on “Depression Cherry” lack vision and the subtle variation that made Beach House so successful before. In fact, most of these tracks lack any sort of variation or jaunt at all. The album exists on one setting with no deviation and by the end the album feels like short collection of experiments within one limited sound.

Beach House have given us four reasons to expect more than the average dream pop contained within “Depression Cherry”, making this release a disappointment. The album is not without moments of gorgeous and spacey pop bliss. Where it disappoints is it feels like Beach House creates this environment to exist in without filling in the space. The album is in black and white rather than color which is a travesty for a Beach House record. The lyrical themes may be drastic enough for Beach House to create a more depressing record, but the music does not reflect that in any way. These instrumentals at their core are not dramatically different enough from their earlier work for any type of “new direction” to be a valid excuse.  This leaves the listener with a collection of songs that become indistinguishable and the listener without much of a desire to distinguish the tracks anyway.

5.5/10  

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TJ Kliebhan

8/19/2015 

Chelsea Wolfe- Abyss #CantMissIt

Chelsea Wolfe
Abyss
Sargent House

Although she always describes herself as a folk artist, Chelsea Wolfe has always had much more in common with Black Sabbath than she has Simon & Garfunkel. Wolfe’s music has always pushed the limit on just how gothic folk can be as exemplified with her last record “Pain is Beauty” where Wolfe implemented texture and vocal effects. These techniques which are uncommon to folk music created dark environments and new territory for the genre. Now on her fifth full length; “Abyss”, Chelsea Wolfe has used a wider range of instrumentation and the conscious decision to shed the vocal effects. The new recording techniques bravely challenge and reinvent the Californian singer-songwriter, creating a familiar yet fresh take on what we have come to expect from her.

The idea of an abyss and folk music functioning properly together is hard to imagine. As dark as Wolfe’s folk music has taken us before, Wolfe was looking to achieve, “the feeling of when you’re dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious.” To achieve this Wolfe utilizes her familiar dark drone soundscapes with huge sludgy guitar riffs, distortion, some excellent drumming from Dylan Fujioka, and viola pieces from Mike Sullivan of Russian Circles. Some of these tracks would not seem out of place on an industrial record like “The Downward Spiral”. Over these harrowing instrumentals Chelsea Wolfe has never sounded more pure or clear because these tracks use minimal or no vocal effects at all. Wolfe’s voice has nothing to hide behind on these tracks and as a result it has never sounded more magnificent. Wolfe pushes herself with different vocal inflections and really shows off her range on tracks such as “Dragged Out”.

On this album Chelsea Wolfe explores many themes such as dreams, sleeping, frailty, and anxiety in both powerful and moaning tones that match the instrumentals perfectly. This album features Wolfe’s best songwriting with harrowing lines such as, “You said you won’t break my heart, unless you do, you said you won’t fall apart, until the end” on Survive. She does a truly excellent job outlining and explaining her malaise which is rooted in debilitating sleep paralysis. The lyrical themes of the album seem like something Wolfe has been inching toward with each release, but the profound honesty and maturity of this collection of tracks show a songwriter comfortable with being honest to the point of vulnerability.

The two monoliths that this album stands on are “Iron Moon” and “After the Fall” which Wolfe released as early singles for the album. The tracks feature ethereal soundscapes, reverb and distortion soaked guitar, and a metallic industrial tone that shifts and crescendos as the songs progress creating tension and drama. At their climaxes, the songs are transitioning from ballad to post-rock mastery. The only track resembling her folk roots is “Crazy Love” which serves as a nice resting point about three fourths of the way through the album before it drags you back into the harrowing depths of Wolfe’s psyche.

In a way this album feels like a risk that paid off for Chelsea Wolfe. She just about completely abandons her folk roots and is largely exploring new territory. The wall of sound and texture is still there at times, but she does not allow herself to be masked behind the sonic explosions, rather she puts her unaffected voice at its forefront. This is also the heaviest we have heard Chelsea Wolfe’s music be yet the tracks still feel about the Wolfe’s feelings, experiences, and the songwriting. On “Abyss” the album’s title seems to juxtapose the music in that everything seems expertly crafted and meticulously calculated to create this dark reflection of her mind. Yet the music is so easy to feel completely consumed by that when you come out the other side you’re not quite sure if you really have escaped. 

8/10
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Tom Kliebhan
8/4/2015

Stream "Abyss" here: http://www.npr.org/2015/07/29/425892446/first-listen-chelsea-wolfe-abyss