Campus Connections: Hello Sadness Review

So, as promised, I will review Los Campesinos! new album Hello Sadness for you all. So in my efforts to be unbiased, I will give you what I think and feel, but as you all know, me being unbiased towards LC! is quite impossible…

Anyways, the first track off the album is “By Your Hand”, and for anyone that has followed up on me knows how awesome this track is. An homage to their old sound whilst keeping their new style. The evidence of that is shown throughout the album. It was really sad that Harriet left the band, but when she left the band wasn’t really specified, yet it is highly obvious that there is a lack of strings throughout the entire album. Unlike Romance Is Boring which has Aleks in the entire album even though she took the same leave Harriet did.

Regardless of that, the loss of Harriet did not cripple LC! in their sound, even though their creativity and direction was changed. The addition of Rob Campesinos! to the group has proved time and time again an excellent choice. Not only is he featured vocally on “By Your Hand” (though unfortunately thats it) you can hear his prescience in the entire album. The absence of strings leaves a major musical hole in the sound, something that was easily filled by Rob’s talents. You probably can’t hear it in most of the tracks, but Rob is usually adding the extra instruments, whether it be percussion or synths (mostly synths) which would have sucked if he wasn’t there.

One other thing that sets this album apart is Kim Campesinos! Before, we had never really heard her sing except in octaves way too low for her, because a song was never actually written for her. Yet on a couple of tracks like one of my favorites “The Black Bird, The Dark Slope” Kim is featured, and she is actually really really good. She does a fantastic job with the chorus and has her own unique quality, an excellent replacement for Aleks, even if it took about a year for her to finally have a chance to come into the limelight.

One last thing that separates this album is the ballads. LC! has had some pretty good ballads in their time, songs like “The Sea Is A Good Place To Think About The Future” to “Heart Swells”, yet none of them really stood out. Yet there is one ballad on here that has so much power and raw emotion in it that you can’t help but love it. That track would be “To Tundra”. Yes, the song may take a little while to get going, but once it does Gareth pushes his voice to the volume and emotional limit. It’s brilliant.

Anyways, I love the entirety of this album. I know me and a couple other people were worried about the bands direction when their first edition of Heat Rash came out. Yet as soon as “By Your Hand” and “Hello Sadness” came out, I knew the direction would be different, yet they are still paying homage to their old style that all of us love so much with some of their tracks.

I completely suggest picking up the album, but if you don’t, besides the two I already mentioned, check out “To Tundra”, “Songs About Your Girlfriend” and “The Black Bird, The Dark Slope”. All fantastic tracks.

enjoy

– Tyler

10 fer ’10

So, even as a music blog nOOb, I feel it is my duty to wrap up this year and the beginning of a decade with a few lists. Lists that are only fairly influenced by my peers, but mostly just my thoughts and my opinions. So, I have ranked from 1 to 10, what I think the best 10 albums were for 2010.

(please excuse the text and such being askew, tried 50 billion times and couldn’t fix it.)

10. North Highlands – Sugar Lips EP

Now this band is probably unknown to most of the human population, and hey, that’s fine, more for me! But seriously, this is a SEVERELY under-rated, un-discovered band that should, nay, NEEDS to be known by people. They have all the aspects that I like of Ra Ra Riot, and only some of the ones that I hate. Plus, their female lead singer doesn’t piss me off (yay!). Anyways, you should def pick up this EP.

Collar Bones – North Highlands

9. Spirituals – Spirituals

Now this was one of my beginning posts, and he has held through to the end. Spirituals probably was the single factor in opening my eyes to the world of electronica and electronic pop. He mostly did it because ALL of his songs on this album keep the underlying theme of the song and don’t stray from it. Which is contradictory from most techno. Anyways, if you haven’t checked him out already, you should now.

Wanderings – Spirituals

8. Wildbirds & Peacedrums – Retina + Rivers + Iris

One of my favorite favorite favorite duo’s out there. Perhaps they are even the creepiest, weirdest, most demonic band (that I can stand) out there. And that’s why I love them! She puts so much soul into everything that she does, (implying she hasn’t sold it yet) and the drums part of their title is always brought out. And it was super exciting that this year they put out not only ans album (Rivers), but TWO EP’s (Iris, Retina). Very excite.

Fight For Me – Wildbirds & Peacedrums

7. The Morning Benders – Big Echo

So this album contains one absolutely fantastic song called “Excuses”. If you’ve never heard it before, shame on you for living under a rock (it’s even in a reese’s commercial!). Anyways, there are a whole bunch of other great tracks like “Promises” on here. But “Excuses” shoots it up to 7th.

Excuses – The Morning Benders

6. The Drums – The Drums

Speaking of songs that skyrocket a band, this band had the most popular song on the summer indie charts with “Let’s Go Surfing”. With it’s super catchy baseline, and the whistling, and the reference to our current president, this song was everywhere (and is now in commercials). Plus, songs like “It Will All End In Tears” ain’t half bad either.

It Will All End In Tears – The Drums

5. Freelance Whales – Weathervanes

This is another band that is relatively unknown (at least around here). Yet almost every track on this album is golden. “Hannah” is their most popular track and has the catchiest melody. But my personal favorite is “Generator First Floor”. But this band/album is severely under-rated.

Hannah – Freelance Whales

4. Darwin Deez – Darwin Deez

Darwin is this high up here, well, because his songs make me so damn happy! Plus their super catchy. Any of my closer friends can attest to the fact that “Radar Detector” got stuck in their heads soooooo many times. And it wasn’t a bad thing. Plus even a song about bad things made me happy, “Bad Day” is one of my favorites as well. All in all, I hope he continues with this work.

Bad Day – Darwin Deez

3. Tokyo Police Club – Champ

Now this album, though I had planned to do a full-scale review, it looks like it’s past the point of relevancy. So i’ll do a quick one. This album is chock-full of super awesome songs. From big chart hits like “Wait Up” and “Breakneck Speed” to change ups like “Gone” and “Bambi”. Plus some fun ones to shout at like “Favorite Color” and “Favorite Food”. Altogether this album showed Tokyo’s mature sound, and the way they have developed their mix. This is a must have.

Bambi – Tokyo Police Club

2. Vampire Weekend – Contra

Ok, so technically this is an album from 2009, but it was December so close enough. But anyways, this album is awesome, simply awesome. Through all the strife they have gone through, it’s totaly worth it. Songs like “Holiday” and “California English” are super peppy songs. Then there’s “Cousins” and “Contra” which are in a league of their own. Basically, if you don’t know about this album, or have not gotten anything from this album, you’ve been super glued to the underside of a rock for the last year.

California English – Vampire Weekend

1. Los Campesinos! – Romance Is Boring

What to say, what to say. Well first off, it was pretty obvious that this was gonna be my pick, but any true fan thinks, well why wouldn’t you? This has some of the best lyrics by any band. Of course nothing beats “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed”. But songs like “In Medias Res”, “We’ve Got Your Back (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #2)”, “A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show-Me State/Letters From Me To Charlotte” and “The Sea Is A Good Place To Think About The Future” come damn close. If you haven’t listened to this before or don’t like them, get out…seriously, get out…

I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed. Just So You Know. – Los Campesinos!

Honorable Mentions:

Jookabox – Dead Zone Boys, Ra Ra Riot – The Orchard, Fol Chen – Part II: The New December, The Mynabirds – What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood, Twin Sister – Color Your Life, Xiu Xiu – Dear God, I Hate Myself, Blue Water White Death – Blue Water White Death, Surfer Blood – Astro Coast

Some of these are very good candidates, but some, like Xiu Xiu, Surfer Blood, and Blue Water White Death, I just haven’t listened to enough yet. Then some like Fol Chen, Twin Sister, and The Mynabirds just didn’t have enough over the others, though I love them very much.

So there we have it. My first end of the year list, hope you enjoyed it!

LEAVE COMMENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thank you

–vafflehausfb

Methods of Madness

Ok, so sometime in the near future I plan on writing a review of The Orchard by the band Ra Ra Riot. I haven’t listened to it at all, but hopefully pretty soon I will be obtaining it and listening to it so that I can analyze it and review it (per request by my friend cat). However…I am not a big fan of Ra Ra Riot. Now I know I will be crucified by my close friends for this but, I don’t really like them. I’ve heard a couple of tracks off of The Orchard that I actually like, I will get more in-depth to those when I do my review.

But for now, I am addressing the fact of my dislike-ing of Ra Ra Riot. But to prove that I have legitimate reason’s not to like them, I have taken and analyzed a track from several of the more popular, deemed “better” bands, and I have broken down what I like and do not like about each song. I have tried to take songs from these bands that are kind of nondescript (as best as possible), or songs that kind of just flow through the album without you thinking too much about them.

So first, let me start with a song by one of the more popular and by far one of the best bands out there; Vampire Weekend.

Vampire Weekend – “Run” Contra

Good

• use of electronics = good
• guitars immediately present
• consistent melody in verses
• repetitive trumpet background
• melody follows quarter note pulse, or leaves room for music underneath to do what it wants.
• listener can hook on to the chorus on the first listen.
• percussion ultimately drives the song to whatever direction it wants to go.

Bad

• electronics > guitar
• electronic trumpets are super fake, barely realistic sounding.
• dissonance of trumpet at end of song does not work whatsoever.
• takes hard listening to notice presence of base.

Overall

The song is very good and comes off of a great album, but I believe it gets washed away from the rest of the album. That being said, that doesn’t make it a mediocre song, the song has a lot of great aspects to it.

Now I will analyze a song by my favorite artist; Los Campesinos!

Los Campesinos! “This Is A Flag. There Is No Wind” Romance Is Boring

Good

• It’s an LC! song, automatically fantastic haha.
• good mix between electronics and guitars
• yet guitars are prominent instrument.
• group shouting = yay!
• repeating verse lines.
• music is full and loud, but not crazy and confusing.
• alternating voices and number of voices appeal to those with music ADD.

Bad

• If you are not accustomed to his voice, that’s a problem.
• There is one random instrument/musical thing in the background halfway through that doesn’t really make any sense.
• song ends abruptly.

Overall

Overall this is a LC! song, therefore it’s good. As I said with “Run”, it’s not a bad song by any means at all, nor is it mediocre, it’s that the rest of the songs on the album are better. LC! has mastered mixing their typical instruments with electronics.

Next I will be analyzing a song from my current musical obsession; Tokyo Police Club

Tokyo Police Club – “In A Cave” Elephant Shell

Good

• Guitars prominent at beginning.
• Verse melody is consistent.
• Chorus follows half note chord progression with the music underneath.
• Consistent drum beat adds consistency.

Bad

• Song just kind of ends.
• Mix between electronics and everything else still patchy and needs smoothing out.
• Bridge being last words to hear kinda weird.

Overall

This is a song off an album that is a midway point between Tokyo’s mixing maturity, and it’s breakaway from the monotony of its style, therefore the song is kind of weak, but still a pretty good song off of a pretty good album.

So now that I’ve distracted you, let me get back to the orignal point of this post. I will now share my analysis of one of Ra Ra Riots songs.

Ra Ra Riot – “Oh, La” The Rhumb Line

Good

• Strings are very cool
• Chorus is catchy
• Interesting musical lines.

Bad

• Strings > guitar. There’s guitar in this song? Barely.
  
• There is a lack of consistency in the strings part in between verses and chorus’.
• One string is staying constant, whereas the other changes.
• There is a semi-repeating verse, some aspects are the same, but there is nothing that the listener can hold on to.
  
• Crams too much into the chorus.
• There is a random bari sax that appears and disappears, it doesn’t really fit.
• There is entirely too much to try to focus on.
• I really really really really really really really really really don’t like his voice.
• There is a complete absence of other electronics.
• There is no direction to the song.
  

Overall

Perhaps the most important thing is that there is an absence of guitar, or rather the absence of prominant guitar. Guitar is one of the bases of this genre music. However, though there are some substitutes for guitars, they are electronics that serve the same purpose. When replacing guitars almost entirely with strings, there is valuable music consistency that is lost. That plus a lack of consistency within the song itself, too many parts playing too many things. Cramming too much at once. The song lacks a sense of direction. You can’t tell what emotion they are trying to emanate, nor what they want to achieve at the end of the song. There’s one mood, one feel, and it stays the entire song. And, I really really don’t like his singing.

So there’s my reasoning. But besides that, I’ve heard some tracks from The Orchard, and I like them. So we’ll see if they improved.

If you would like to leave any scathing comments, or agree with me on anything, please feel free to do so.

–vafflehausfb