on the pulse - 2020 - week 14 - songs for abnormal humans

Hate to say it folks, but this week is full of a lot of disappointments. Lot of potentially frustrating and controversial ones too, so just a warning… but hey, we’re all still here, right, so stick with me On The Pulse!

The Orb - Abolition of the Royal Familia - I mean, I have to give credit to the patron who requests the electronnic projects with meaty back catalogs, it has given me the opportunity to flesh out my knowledge of a genre I haven’t had the chance to explore a lot. Unfortunately, more often than not I’ve been a little underwhelmed, so let’s talk about The Orb, long-running project from Dr. Alex Patterson, who moved out of punk into electronic music in the late 80s and has been putting out projects with a large number of collaborators ever since. And like a lot of electronic acts of this era, it’s hard for me not to say that The Orb was ever that good - and I’m still on the fence about that - it was patchy in the 90s and forgettable ever since, embracing a style of spongy, half ambient electronic music with splashes of dub and house that wasn’t really rising to the best of any of what I’ve heard from that era. And yes, they’ve worked with David Gilmour and Robert Fripp and at one point were pretty experimental… but it has often felt very unstructured in its quirkiness and has left me thinking their most potent work was 1997’s Orblivion, if only because a refocus on groove! From what I’ve read about Patterson, his method of composition is driven more of the live experience and chopping up overlong segments for albums, so maybe that’s the big factor to why I’m so underwhelmed outside of that, but on the other hand, this is 2020, we’re decades removed from The Orb at their best, there’s been some really misshapen trend-hopping on recent albums, Patterson has a new collaborator in Michael Rendell… and it’s an album by The Orb alright. To its credit, it does feel like there’s more or their distinctive identity to this one than most: the politics come through in piecemeal samples that balance between heavy-handed and quirky, there are some potent ambient passsages that can’t quite distract from a project that runs long, and once again the group seems to be trying to do way too much, dabbling with vocal house and even electronically-assisted reggae that is utterly jarring. Hell, for as much as this album wants to rail against British imperialism, does it strike anyone as painfully ironic they’re doing so through adopting limp imitations of reggae and world music, except their version filters it through farting synth lines and some bafflingly chosen organic elements? The best thing I can praise The Orb for here is good mixing, but that should be par for the course for an electronic project running this long… otherwise, outside of a few pretty moments, this was a chore. 5/10

the Mountain Goats - Songs For Pierre Chuvin - okay, so the story of the Mountain Goats is well-known to start with John Darnielle and his old tapedeck boombox, where in the 90s and early 2000s many of the projects were explicitly lo-fi and recorded there. And this is where I differentiate myself from a lot of diehard Mountain Goats fans because while I appreciate the boombox years, it’s more for the writing than any intrinsic authenticity in the recording - the songs of All Hail West Texas are great more in spite of crackling, lo-fi pickups, and while it may be a feature, there are points it can be a bug. But in current unprecedented times, it’s a nice gimme to the fans and a lift to his band for Darnielle to drag out the boombox and see if he can pull together a quick throwback… but there’ also more going on here. Darnielle has said that this album was inspired by Pierre Chuvin’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, pulling from ancient Roman history in order to flesh out a series of disconnected stories that can’t help but have modern detail relevant to today’s current climate slide in. And if that sounds like an odd, extremely niche fusion… it is, and this is absolutely a project for diehard Mountain Goats fans only, especially given that it’s not all acoustic as Darnielle occasionally pulls out a keyboard and drum machine that sound even chintzier coming out of the boombox. That said, if I was to praise something in the writing here, it does come out thematically - namely in how Darnielle’s primary point of view is from that of pagan survivors, rebellious but often crushed underfoot by a now-Christianized Roman Empire… until it falls and they can hold together, and oh, what an obvious parallel to what we’re dealing with right now in the face of capitalism! And if you’re a classics nerd or long-running Mountain Goats fan, there’s a bunch of a great little details to flesh out the stories and parallel - epitomized the best in one hell of an ending with ‘Exegetic Chains’ - but this is not a jump-on point and I’d argue it’s best for the diehard fans. So… very solid 7/10, with all the caveats in mind.

Maddie & Tae - The Way It Feels - I really feel bad for Maddie & Tae. They may have been introduced to a lot of folks as the ‘anti-bro-country’ duo with ‘Girl In A Country Song’, but once you moved past that novelty they were really good: the harmonies were consistent and mostly organic, they were decent songwriters, they had a lot of potential… but in retrospect, you can tell their handlers had no idea what to do with them after ‘Girl In A Country Song’ which led to an album dropping in 2015 - over a full year after the breakthrough - and then their label Dot closed down. They bounced between labels for a bit before landing at Mercury Nashville and both of them got married, and now this new project feels like an attempt at a fresh start… presuming, of course, you ignore that fact that two thirds of the album was already released on EPs. And… well, it certainly feels more openly lovestruck, as there are more traditionally structured love songs and overall softer timbres - I get the feeling they’re trying to give Maddie & Tae a bit more versatility, and the fact the duo mostly keep it organic across the board is a huge credit to them, complete with pedal steel, a lack of programmed percussion, and surprisingly solid bass work (even if some of the backing vocal punch-ins can sound obvious). Problem is, the duo is absolutely at their best when they can drill into that unique sense of cutting detail and bring a little more verve to songs like ‘Drunk Or Lonely’ or ‘Die From A Broken Heart’ or covering ‘New Dog, Old Tricks’, and that doesn’t translate as strongly to the loving relationship songs that don’t have the same dramatic core. I should also mention there’s a song where Dierks Bentley steps up to play the duet counterpoint… which is odd having him sing opposite a duo, but also reminds me that Maddie & Tae kind of miss the opportunity to sing opposite each other, especially for an album that goes fifteen songs and probably could have been trimmed, especially given how many songs were just repeated from the EPs! As a whole though… it’s certainly good and I’m happy to see them back on their feet, and there isn’t really a dud on the album, but I really wish their label wasn’t hedging their bets so obviously at this project’s detriment, because there’s the capacity for greatness here. Very light 7/10, worth hearing.

Black Dresses - Peaceful As Hell - So this was another group where I heard about their hype and backlash before I actually heard them - and what’s bizarre is that for a Toronto-based duo, the vast majority of that buzz was online first and foremost! But okay, Black Dresses… the easiest way for me to describe them is to imagine if very early Kesha crossed with Poppy’s industrial side and then made super-edgy and very queer noise pop… and honestly, I don’t mind it? Going through their previous albums, I didn’t mind the aesthetic or content at all - mostly because I get the feeling they’re not going for irony so much as dramatic juxtaposition - but this is a group that could really afford to be more tuneful, which you don’t have to compromise transgressive edginess to deliver. Thankfully that’s the direction the duo has gradually taken, but I do feel the lyrics have gotten more abstract and fractured, spiraling inwards as they tack on more synthetic vocal layers to obscure their obvious weaknesses there… which takes us to Peaceful As Hell, probably one of their most composed albums to date, if not their best. Granted, they’ve now taken their super-online noise tone into blown out chiptune and I do feel there’s not the same mix depth and swell that came early on, but there’s a bit more structure and melody to a lot of these songs and they don’t feel as much like fragments… which I wish the writing was able to capitalize on more. Funnily enough I don’t mind the tryhard edginess and seething spiral of self-doubt balanced against desperate optimism in a collapsing world that this album inhabits - if you’ve spent any time on the internet past few years talking to people their age, even the diction and structure of the writing can be familiar - but I do wish the ideas driving that writing were explored a little more deeply, even if you can’t expect coherence. But without some of that structure or poetry that feels more developed, and once you become accustomed to their sonic palette… it just starts to run together and feel a bit repetitive to me, which given this style of music is the last thing you want - when you’re trying to be this edgy, there should be more standouts. Definitely a promising step… but something gives me the impression I won’t revisit this outside of very specific moments. Very strong 6/10, definitely worth a listen though.

Laura Marling - Song For Our Daughter - so recently I went back to relisten to Laura Marling’s entire back catalog, and while I love I Speak Because I Can and Once I Was An Eagle , there’s a certain niche appeal to those projects outside of their more immediate moments, I need to be a very specific mood to absorb the layered writing and low-key delivery. Bizarrely enough, the greater sense of charged immediacy and hooks on the best songs of Short Movie have pulled me back more than I thought they would, and more than the more tasteful, cerebral, and genuinely beautiful high points on Semper Femina. And thus when out of nowhere she announced she was moving up the date for her newest album - produced by her former long-time producer Ethan Johns and returning to the stripped back tones she nailed at her peak - I’ll admit I was more excited than I expected to be for a new Laura Marling album, especially when the rave reviews started pouring in. And… I really wish I was as excited as all the critics are for this, because while this is quite good, I’d struggle to call it great? And it’s tough to pin down why, but I think part of it comes in mood and texture, as both I Speak Because I Can and Once I Was An Eagle had distinctive darker passages and real rough edges that tempered the frankness of her writing. Song For Our Daughter is far smoother and more liquid in its pickups, and even Marling’s delivery has softened - it’s cleaner and brighter and I’m sure that it can feel reassuring especially given the subject matter… but at the same time it runs the risk of feeling tepid or not particularly memorable, especially as Marling has fewer moments where her delivery gets more curt or sardonic. But when you dig into the content, that’s not really surprising - Marling is writing a selection of relatively bare, intimate songs for an imaginary daughter, building on the frustrating complexities of being a woman in the modern world with a world-weary maturity and wisdom that’s certainly well-formed and empathetic, even for a lot of the men who are in her orbit, but there’s a domesticity to the album to which I don’t really connect; reminds me or similar cuts from Lori McKenna, which speaks to parental experiences and emotions I haven’t really had. And that, combined with delivery and production I don’t quite love leaves just kind of lukewarm on this one. 7/10, still good, not great.

Nightwish - HVMAN. :||: NATVRE. - I’ve gone on at length before surrounding my fondness and love of Nightwish - they were a formative symphonic metal band for me, the Tarja years were instrumental to laying a foundation in the genre still copied to this day and they deserved all the success Evanescence wound up getting stateside, and I’d still posit that the Anette years were probably the band at its peak in terms of creativity, hook, and absolutely massive production. That said, I haven’t been wowed by the Floor Jansen years yet but I figured Endless Forms Most Beautiful would be a transitional project in which the kinks were ironed out and this would be the real smash, especially as it’s been five years since that last album. And for the most part I’m going to focus on the first disc - the second disc, like off the last album, is taken up by a massive, mostly instrumental classic piece with limited metal elements and while being very pretty can feel short on distinctive melodic motifs and interesting dynamic shifts and ends on a really awkward note… which sadly can feel a little applicable to the first disc too. Indeed, it’s hard not to listen to HVMAN. :||: NATVRE and hear many of the same problems as Endless Forms Most Beautiful: the lack of Marco’s raw howls doesn’t help the darker side of this band and that contrast is vital - sorry, Troy Donockley, it’s just not clicking in the same way; Floor Jansen has some support and multi-tracking but her cooler vocal timbre just doesn’t soar out of the mix with the same force; the songs don’t have the same dynamic swell as previous releases; and the hooks are just weaker… in this case because it seems like song structure as a whole was a casualty. And yes, Nightwish has used weird or offkilter song structures before but they had huge, driving hooks that could balance the gorgeously ethereal with the heavier crunch - or hell, there was just a commitment to a dynamic but melodic heaviness that this album struggles to utilize well, either with songs that fade out on awkward notes, riffs that go more for a flattened grind than any sort of darker crunch, or stylistic diversions into more futuristic or ‘tribal’ sounds that feel about as hit-and-miss as whenever Nightwish has drilled outside of their usual folk side. And then we get to the content, which focuses more on the tribulations of modern humanity and the art that brings us all together to transcend because of course Tuomas is going to hammer on that theme, all amidst the text that in the broader scope of spacetime, we are just a part of nature. And maybe it’s just me, but not only has Nightwish gone to this thematic well before - as in building off the last album - but outside of the anti-phone addiction screed of ‘Noise’ and the anti-suicide song ‘How’s The Heart’, there’s a weird, detached lack of deeper humanity on this album - kind of a shame, because that focal point prior to the Floor years gave the albums their heart, no matter how self-absorbed and occasionally frustrating ithey were! What’s so damn frustrating is that when this album works in patches, it reminds me of why I love Nightwish - the melodies, the huge production, the killer grooves, a swell that earns the ‘symphonic’ part of the subgenre… but it’s overlong, inconsistent, frequently unbalanced, and given that it’s been five years to not fix the issues of the last project, this wound up a huge disappointment. Strong 6/10… I’d say for the fans only, but I don’t think this’ll satisfy that group.

The Strokes - The New Abnormal - Here’s a question: is it fair to compare The Strokes anymore to their first two albums? Well, I dunno if it’s fair because we do the same thing with Weezer all the time, but I think there’s a significant difference between The Strokes losing their lustre after Room On Fire and the backlash to Pinkerton and the loss of Matt Sharp on bass. For me it’s actually pretty simple: with each successive album, the tempos got slower, Julian Casablancas has sounded like he’d rather be doing anything else behind the microphone - in this case The Voidz, which are a very diffferent animal - and when the hooks are becoming more spotty and inconsistent the band has tried to plug the gaps with genre experimentation and obvious callbacks to classic songs that’s had very mixed results. That being said, the albums are still decent - I’m one of the few who’ll stick up for some of the bizarre tangents on Comedown Machine because at least ‘50/50’ kicks ass and outside of Casablancas’ falsetto I thought the experimentation landed, which is more than I can say for how sour and tinny it all sounded on Angles, even if that’s probably a more consistent project - although back in 2013 I was with everyone calling Comedown Machine their worst album and I’ve fluctuated all over the damn map since. That all being said, Casablancas has proclaimed this new album as a hard fresh start and… wow, Casablancas, can you sound like you care at all? Yes, his falsetto has gotten better - not saying much - but his delivery is half-hearted and lacking intensity or tightness even before the autotune slides in, which can work if you’re a great lyricist or can vamp effectively as a magnetic personality - and this is where I’m on the outside in comparison with most fans, but I’ve never bought either. He’s always struck me as barely holding together the rock star pose, and the fun on the best albums came in how he desperately strong-armed the songs into making it believable, so if he sounds like he’s not engaged and coasting, I stop caring. But maybe that’s not fair because there are moments where he starts hollering… opposite production and grooves that doesn’t flatter any of it, which for a band that has always relied on a hard veneer of cool, it’s a wonky mismatch, like on the slick new wave of ‘Eternal Summer’ that blows off a good groove to turn into Voidz-esque squonking with a terrible ending - even if thematically, that was the point. This leads us to the synth choices and some of the lead guitar tones chosen: how is it possible for a group with such great compositional instincts - and let me stress, there are catchy songs here - to keep picking the most blaring, oily blasts tones that can’t match the more sinuous presence of the grooves if they try like that synth line on ‘Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus’, and while the choices are more consistent than previous projects, they aren’t consistently good! Factor in lulls that seem to show the band constantly on the cusp of running out of gas - not helped by a lot of songs that run long and a serious lack of good transitions - and I’m stuck looking to the lyrics for anything to really hold onto… and while I’d argue social populism is a really odd look for The Strokes, I was more interested in the consistent metatext and anxiety that reflected angst at band fractures and never reaching past greatness. Which brings me back to my question: is it fair to The Strokes to compare them to their first two albums? Here’s my answer: in sound, of course they were going to evolve, but I’d like to think they knew their strengths enough to expand from that, and even here you can tell Casablancas is second-guessing that. Maybe that works for the right audience… unfortunately, while this is still decent, sonically it doesn’t quite work enough for me. Light 6/10