When Free is Just Boring: Brooklyn's Attempt at Free Concerts
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It’s hard to pin down well–hyped London producer James Blake’s music and the eleven tracks on his debut self–titled LP are no exception. Blake’s signature is juxtaposition: he routinely sets against one another big synth sweeps, piano chords, dubstep beats and whatever else tickles his fancy. The approach inherently risks ending up overdone, since the option to add another instrument is always there. But on James Blake, which dropped Monday, the result is surprisingly controlled and cohesive. If anything, it has the opposite problem, ending up more on the underdone side of the spectrum. The album opens up with dubstep–paced “Unluck,” whose layered vocals and noisy computerized hits make it a standout. The next two songs also do a good job of pitting Blake’s vocals against huge, brooding synth lines. “Lindisfarne I,” however, is where the album gets off track and it never fully recovers. On the song, Blake sings through a vocoder, unaccompanied except for a few minor synth notes toward the end. That aesthetic was sort of cool in 2005, when Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” rattled around the MySpace world, but it feels drastically off five and a half years later on James Blake. “Lindisfarne II” is a definite improvement, adding some Bon Iver–esque finger–picked guitar into the mix, but the rest of the album is hit or miss. Ultimately, James Blake is a short, dark glimpse of the guy’s sheer potential — but that very potential derives from the listener’s sense that he could do better. Blake is at his best when he’s least predictable, like on his cover of Feist’s “Limit to Your Love,” where dubstep elements meet piano and Blake’s crooned–out Feist lyrics. In other places, however, the music is flat and predictable, failing to introduce other elements to recontexualize the piano–and–vocals concept.
Blue Lebaron by Real Estate
Sam Beam, a.k.a. Iron & Wine, used to be that sad dude with the acoustic guitar that everyone listened to in high school. The music was minimalist, in a certain sense: Beam crooned out nostalgic lyrics over finger–picked arpeggios. So to say Kiss Each Other Clean, the newest from Beam, is a dramatic departure from his prior work would be a huge understatement. The album has everything but that singer–songwriter charm Beam used to bank on. Most striking are the changes in instrumentation: the record is full of electronic wizardry and pseudo–African rhythms. The pace is different, too. This is much more of a rock album than anything the formerly folky Beam ever dreamt up. The only real consistency is Beam’s hazy, nice–guy voice, which takes on a weird new context in the electronic mess that surrounds it.
Fullerton, Calif.'s Cold War Kids have always been eccentric. Their sophomore LP, however, takes bizarre to a whole new level. Loyalty to Loyalty showcases bluesy guitar and enough reverb to convince you that the album was recorded in an underground cavern or some enormous, empty amphitheater; ghostly piano lines round out the haunted-house feel.
Stars' latest, the six-song Sad Robots EP, immediately feels like a collection of tunes that didn't quite make the cut for the band's excellent 2007 full-length, In Our Bedroom After The War. Sad Robots will be sold on Stars' ongoing tour (they'll be in Philly tomorrow at the Troc), and with such timing, one can't help but feel that it's merely a disc to fill the merch tables. Full of slow, synth-laden harmonies, the album can lull you to sleep.
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