Mini-Mini Review Blitz

Sigh... the list of '07 releases I've purchased but not yet reviewed on here now numbers 20. This is clearly unacceptable considering I'm going to be publishing my year-end lists any day now! Of those 20 albums, I've listened to and thoroughly evaluated 12 of them. So, here's tonight's challenge - 12 albums, 5 minutes each, super-no-frills, and I'm all caught up in an hour. Let's do this!

Parts & Labor - Mapmaker
Rating: 8

Parts & Labor start at the noisier end of standard post-punk but then put some interesting twists on it. The vocals are anthemic and melodic. One guitar plays power chords and the other bleeps, bloops, and occasionally sounds like a bagpipe. There's a string of really strong songs here, each venturing far enough from the basic template to be distinctive while still contributing to the overall feel of a solid and consistent album. Also worth mentioning is the fantastic and creative drumming. Highlights are the bizzare "Ghosts Will Burn," soaring opener "Fractured Skies" (whose chorus comes complete with a brass section), and "Brighter Days" which manages to collide chaotic guitar skronk with a Smashing Pumpkins -worthy power chorus and make it seem seamless.

The National - Boxer
Rating: 7

The word you'll constantly read about this album (and in fact, this band in general) is "grower" - and I have to agree. The first couple listens I couldn't connect. But then I realized the vocals were playing constantly in the back of my head, and every new listen has made me love this album more. Much like Interpol, two of the four members more than carry their weight - only in this case it's the vocalist and the outstanding drummer. "Brainy," "Squalor Victoria," and "Guest Room" are all carried by the insistent, creative drumming. The baritone vocals are strangely soulful and moving. Each song seems to have at least one powerful phrase that carries an emotional heft: "You might need me more than you think you will" from "Brainy" or this awesome couplet from standout track "Mistaken for Strangers" : "You wouldn't want an angel watching over / Surprise, surprise - they wouldn't want to watch."

Boris with Michio Kurihara
Rating: 5

Quite a leftward turn from last year's loud-tastic Pink: more contemplative, restrained. Michio Kurihara plays some pretty cool, psychedelic solos throughout the album, and a few of the songs are immediately catchy ("Rainbow," "You Laughed Like a Water Mark," "Starship Narrator"). Still, I liked these guys better when they gleefully banged the hell out of everything in sight.

PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Rating: 6

Let's just be honest: PJ hasn't made a consistently engaging album for a decade now. But I'm going to keep buying her new releases because she's always got some new interesting ideas to explore. On this one she strips down her songs even more and replaces the guitar with the piano - an instrument she's admitted in interviews she barely knows how to play. Of course, her best material has always been more about delivery and raw power than instrumental complexity, and that's the case again on White Chalk. Some critics have called her vocal delivery on this album limited and child-like, but I think she's never sounded more frightening. Sit through the last half-minute of "The Mountain" and see if you don't get goose bumps. Less dramatic but equally effective are eerie opener "The Devil", and the standout track "Silence", with its slow build to Polly Jean moaning the title as if a lifetime of hurt could be summarized with that single word.

Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends
Rating: 7

Any criticisms I might level against this album - and there are few - are immediately halved by the fact that it even exists. We had no reason to expect after the last couple years of "indefinite hiatus", that LSF would ever bless us with another release. And yes - Let's Stay Friends does feel rushed in places, but I think that had more to do with enthusiasm and excitment than a fear that spending some time refining it might end up in it's not seeing day. And frankly, much as I love these guys - every one of their albums has a couple duds on it. So let's not dwell on... oh, the last third of the album. From the opening salvo of "The Equestrian" through the blistering finish of "Slugs in the Shrubs" Les Savy Fav are BAAAAAAAACK! Those two songs and first single "Patty Lee" (who says dancepunk is dead?) are among the band's best ever. Even the dubby experiment "Brace Yourself" works. Tim Harrington continues to be one of my favorite vocalists - and the lyrics on Let's Stay Friends aren't as obtuse as usual. It seems marriage agrees with the guy... though it's interesting that two of the songs on here are explicitly about sexual situations gone awry.

Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
Rating: 6

It's interesting to me how I can't accept Sonic Youth's turn toward the pastoral over the course of their last couple albums (I'm pretending Rather Ripped doesn't exist) - but Thurston wants to get all jangly acoustic and even pretty - and I mostly like the results. There are no surprises here, and also a couple of "experimental" missteps (the last track - on which we listen to 13-year-old Thurston putting on some kind of weird audio show for what was an audience of one - only confirms the reasonable predictions that the man has been odd for a L-O-N-G time). But there are also more than a handful of really pretty tunes and interesting half-rockers: "Silver > Blue," "The Shape is in a Trance," and "Off Work" are my favorites.

New Pornographers - Challengers
Rating: 3

Challengers is shockingly bad. I'll let others make excuses for it, wag their tongues about how it's a "deeper" album, a more "mature" album than its three predecessors. It's not as if I'm unwilling for the Pornographers to change - Twin Cinema revised the sound of the first two albums significantly with no large drop in quality. But this! My friend David sums it up best - Challengers sounds contrived. The sheer effortlessness of Carl Newman's previous songwriting is nowhere in evidence. Now every leftward veer feels premeditated. The melodies don't glisten, they plod. And fuck - when even Neko Case singing lead can't rescue a song from being a torpid mess... The songs were slightly better live, but not enough to erase my ill will toward this album.

M.I.A. - Kala
Rating: 7

I like this album more than I wanted to, and despite how much M.I.A.'s rhetoric (both in her lyrics and her press) annoys the hell out of me. Rant for another time. There are some truly unlistenable moments on Kala - the little Aboriginal boys singing about fish; the bad duet with Timbaland; the bad duet with Afrikan Boy. (So pretty much - whenever M.I.A. collaborates). This is all more-than-redeemed however by "Bird Flu" alone (about which, more later when I write up my fave songs of the year). "Boyz," "World Town," and "XR2" also contribute heavily to that number up above. I'm even willing to listen to the Madonna-meets-Bhangra pastiche of "Jimmy."

A Place to Bury Strangers - A Place to Bury Strangers
Rating: 8

It's a begrudging nod. These guys are doing nothing original. Take three parts Joy Division (especially the vocals), shake with one part My Bloody Valentine and one part The Cure, and turn the volume up to 11. It's just that the execution is so satisfying! "Don't Think Lover" - hits you over the head HARD, then leans over and croons to you "Don't think love will last." And then hits you over the head again just to make the point. "To Fix the Gash in Your Head" - the song Trent Reznor has been trying to write for 20 years now, dashed off with sickening ease. "She Dies" rips off "Primary," and "I Know I'll See You" rips off (among other Cure songs) "Charlotte Sometimes", but I still love them. And then there's "My Weakness", ten times more brutal than MBV ever allowed themselves to be. I mean all the references and comparisons in the best possible way. Really.

Liars - Liars
Rating: 4

Yet another of my previously-favorite artists changing their formula (which I'm not implying is always a bad thing!) and falling short of past glory. And I hate to admit it, but these guys have pretty much exhausted my remaining fumes of They Through Us all in a Trench - inspired mania. Opener "Plaster Casts of Everything" was an interesting introduction to the "new" sound (and the video is a classic Liars creepfest); "Houseclouds" carries just enough bite to not be dismissable as a Liars song; and the tension/release dynamics of "Clear Island" will keep it on my playlists for a while. The rest of the album? Yawn yawn yawn yawn. I didn't like the Jesus and Mary Chain fifteen years ago, and I don't like Liars posing as them now.

Supersilent - 8
Rating: 5

I admit to buying this at least in part because I'm a sucker for indie cred. Their last album, 6, had one absolutely killer-eerie tune ("6.1") and a lot of more ambient stuff that - for all that it's improvised and experimental - I just couldn't connect with. 8 has one more killer-eerie tune, the epic "8.5" (about which, more later when I do my songs-of-the-year list) and it also has two fairly amazing rhythmic exercises ("8.3" which thuds, and "8.6" which glitches then falsettos) that suggest Supersilent are the new Autechre. Opener "8.1" is interesting. And the other four songs either fail to impress or actively alienate ("8.7").

OK, I managed 11 albums in an hour! And now it's time for bed.