Wild Beasts in the Present Tense

For England's Wild Beasts pop music, class, and gender aren't easily separated. What makes this more than a simple pop cliche is the band's approach to the question of masculinity. The kind of masculinity that appears across their four albums is as diverse as it is arcane; instead  of attempting to embody an abstract ideal or essence, Wild Beasts' approach might better be described as an exploration what it means to be manly at different moments in time. Their latest release announces as much in its title, but, as always with Wild Beasts, what first appears as a naive truism masks a darker story.

Since their 2008 debut, Limbo, Panto, Wild Beasts have walked a compelling balance between hedonism, wit, and musical precision, all the while providing self-conscious caricatures of their own virility. Their fourth album, Present Tense, continues their trend towards more tightly wound pop productions, abandoning the cocksure sounds of other current British rock bands for the delicate textures of 80s pop and R&B; and while it doesn't surpass the high water mark of 2009's Two Dancers, Present Tense is a definite improvement over the spare, fragile Smother. As co-vocalist Hayden Thorpe put it in a recent interview, "there was a real purpose of stepping out of the ruins of Smother, which was a very bruised and defeated record in many ways." Where Limbo, Panto presented a compelling but disorganized tour of young libido, Smother followed the logic to its breaking point, losing listeners (like me) along the way. Unlike its predecessors, Present Tense is, despite its titular pun and garish cover art, a relaxed and spacious pop record that relies more on crystalline synths than the taut strings of a guitar.

Present Tense trades the darkest undertones of the Wild Beats' previous work for a more playful and ambiguous sendup of the present. "Wanderlust," their galloping opener takes its cue from King Lear,  giving the finger to wealth and the class groomed to possess it. "We're decadent beyond our means," taunts Thorpe, "They're solemn in their wealth, we're high in our poverty . . . With us the world feels voluptuous." As with other Wild Beasts records, the interplay between vocalists Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming -- a foppish falsetto and throaty baritone, respectively -- allows for the simultaneous appearance of different thematic registers: Thorpe's vocals prance through the clouds, while Fleming's are rooted to the earth. Along with their first single, "Sweet Spot," the best example of this, Present Tense's brief, glam-pop performance "A Simple Beautiful Truth," transitions perfectly from the album's pensive centrepiece, "Pregnant Pause." By this point, the aura sounds effortless: the R&B of Fleming's fluid bass finds its companion in a glittering 80s synth line, helping make good on the promise of "Sweet Spot," that "godly state," sings Thorpe, "Where the real and the dream may consummate." These fleeting moments appear to suggest the kind of bourgeois acceptance that the Wild Beasts, in until this point, had seemed to parody. But towards the album's end the narrative changes yet again in order to reveal these reproduced moments of pop perfection for the nostalgic constructions they are.

Unlike previous Wild Beasts releases, the romance on Present Tense seems to move beyond satire and jest to what might pass as honest enjoyment. On "Mecca" Thorpe builds on the existential embrace of "Wanderlust," describing history's collapse into a single moment of erotic love: "Cause all we want is to know the vivid moment / Yeah, how we feel now is felt by the Ancients." Similarly, the album closer, "Palace," finds Thorpe arriving again at that romantic moment, unguarded and able to achieve an intimate vantage: "In detail you are even more beautiful than from afar / I could learn you like the blinded would do, feeling their way through the dark." The catch to all this is that this kind of intimacy doesn't come without a lot of historical baggage. On "Past Perfect" Thorpe dismisses the possibility of a "perfect present," instead admitting to a present that is characterized by an irreducible tension. His explanation reads like a moralistic nursery rhyme: "Our hurt is older than our hands / It passed from monkey into man / Now tender hands do heal the hurt / Man did fuck up / and then he learnt." But the learning is not over. For the Wild Beasts of Present Tense, what counts as masculine cannot escape its own historical confusion or triumph over modern disillusionment. Here, in other words, is no simple resolution, but the end of a category that knows its time is up.

New Music: PJ Harvey, Radiohead

It appears to the be the year for English pop artists to engage in political critique -- well, sort of. Who knew musicians could still find their arsenal by tarrying with the pastoral tradition?

PJ Harvey's Let England Shake isn't terribly complex ("How is our glorious country sown? Not with wheat and corn" -- "Our land is plowed by tanks!" Harvey sings on "The Glorious Land"), but musically there's a lot going on. Harvey's familiar songwriting style is stronger than ever (best heard in songs like "Bitter Branches" and "In the Dark Places"), but it seems she's taken the lessons of failed albums like White Chalk and her recent collaboration with John Parish (A Woman a Man Walked By) to heart: here, murky production, disparate soundscapes, and a Victorian-gothic aesthetic merge with reflections on post-colonial England: a nation constantly in dialogue with its own legacy (as she demonstrates on the haunting centerpiece, "England"). Harvey's approach is to play with, juxtapose, subvert cultural resting places with a downright bloody history: into this mix she throws lines from English protest songs, reggae samples, and tons of autoharp. In other words, Harvey's task with Let England Shake is to re-energize the English tradition of political critique. It could have been a heavy-handed train-wreck, but in Harvey's hands (and thanks incredible team she's assembled: Rob Ellis, Mick Harvey, John Parish, Flood, etc.), Let England Shake reminds PJ Harvey fans why we came to love her in the first place: not for her brilliant insights, but for the raw emotion that can only come by looking the devil in the face.

Radiohead's music always gestures toward some kind of late capitalist malaise, and The King of Limbs is no different. Indeed, this time around there seems to be a strong resonance between the natural imagery transparently there (both in the cover art and in Yorke's lyrics) and a recently resurfaced debate over forest enclosures throughout much of Britain. But regardless of its political timeliness, The King of Limbs is a strange animal. As is often the case with Radiohead's albums, early reviews have been typically vague. It's not their best album -- I think we're all agreed on that -- but neither should it be written off as a misstep. The King of Limbs is a good album, but it's also their most idiosyncratic -- only Amnesiac comes close. There's a strong dubstep influence and the more organic elements that characterized In Rainbows have retreated into the shadows only to reemerge in two oddly situated tracks: the lovely, effortless, out-of-place piano ballad, "Codex," and its partner, the echo-chamber folk song, "Give up the Ghost." The rest of the album is comprised of rhythmically complex songs that seem to fold in on themselves; at times, one wonders what the rest of the band was up to during recording sessions. As for immediate highlights, there's the devious lead single (below) "Lotus Flower" (in my opinion, this is one best tracks of the year so far), the very catchy, occasionally clumsy "Little by Little" (which picks up nicely from Amnesiac's "I Might be Wrong") and an album closer ("Separator") that actually does something -- to put it a bit differently, "Separator" is more expansive than what we get on the rest of The King of Limbs: it incorporates a fantastic lead guitar line, releases some (dearly missed) ambient steam, and gets as close to an anthem ("Wake me up") as Radiohead can currently get. We Radiohead fans need not despair. The King of Limbs is full of fine moments. More than anything else, we're victims of our own anticipation.

New Music: Women - Public Strain

Women's 2008 self-titled debut staged a battle between a discomforting wash of static/fuzz/feedback and the sort of pop gems most indie artists can only dream about. Women was a brilliant record, the kind that reaffirmed one's faith in indie rock and other outmoded genres. Here was a new paradigm, here was a model to follow; and it didn't hurt that it was produced by King Midas himself (aka Chad VanGaalen).

Women's sophomore album, Public Strain, carries a lot of the same momentum that made Women so successful. For one thing, Chad's back, and at this point I don't think Women's albums would be near as good without him at the helm. But the apparent conflict between noise and melody is much more understated on Public Strain; by consequence, the songs seem more organic and the result is a more cohesive album. Women remains great for those short punches of crystaline Beach Boys melodies set against the album's hostile background. Those beautiful moments still break through Public Strain (they're scattered through a song like "Eyesore," see below), but this time those moments remain an integral part of the album's chaos. I don't want to call it a better album, but I will say that Public Strain is winning me over more quickly than Women's debut. Perhaps what's so great about this album is that there is no "Black Rice" for everyone to hide behind. On Public Strain, Women feel more unforgiving, and I think they're better for it.

"Heat Distraction"


"Eyesore"

Secular Parables: An Early Review of Menomena's MINES (part 1)

Click here for a track-by-track review of Mines.

Menomena's third (technically fourth) album, Mines, is probably my most anticipated album of the year. It leaked last Thursday and I've set myself the task of reviewing it long before any official sentiment spreads. The band hails from Portland, Oregon and have been a fixture on my blog since I first heard Friend and Foe back in 2007. I loved that record.

A few general things we can say about the album as a whole. The drumming is absolutely bombastic and continues to be one of Menomena's greatest strengths; the lyrics are never straightforward or dull; each song is unapologetically grand, even with the simplest musical ingredients. All the songs on Mines are potentially explosive, even volatile; and it can make for an album that's difficult to navigate. The first time listening through, I simply didn't know how to maneuver through some of these tracks. And I'm still guessing.

Menomena records are always constructed very deliberately. With song composition, its become their trademark to treat each instrument as an ingredient appears and disappears from the mix continuously. Rarely do we get everything all at once; and, indeed, that's one reason I find Menomena so engaging. They know how to show restraint and they use it to their advantage. That said, each musical ingredient is recognizable and quite distinct. Rarely do the piano, the baritone saxophone, the drums, or the guitar and vocals get lost in the mix. What we're left with is a collection of songs that never settle down. This is more or less how Friend and Foe functioned; Mines only ups the ante.

During our first listen, my friends and I came up with a theory that this album constituted by parodies of alternative rock cliches from the 90s; it unfolds like some epic battle between artistic ingenuity and the most sentimental rock music. Another theory that quickly developed among the group was that this was essentially the best (and perhaps the most self-conscious) "praise and worship" album ever recorded. As with Friend and Foe, it's heavy on religious imagery, but Mines doesn't skimp on the sort of "inspiring" melodies common to most "praise and worship" songs. It's also got moments of gospel-style delivery and more than once employs the sort of transcendent chorus that bands like U2 are know for. Menomena effectively deconstruct all of this. The songs on Mines are, at times goofy and irreverent, but Menomena never flinches. I won't be surprised if this album doesn't get a very positive reception, but one thing is certain: this is music only Menomena could make; and it is surely an impressive feat. In fact may be the strangest (and most intriguing) rock album of the year.

New album reviews in Stylus Magazine (links below)

Molina and Johnson - Molina and Johnson (Secretly Canadian)
The cover is shown above. Probably my favourite album cover of last year - shame the content was such a let down.

Tara Jane O'Neil - A Ways Away (K Records)

On Fillmore - Extended Vacation (Dead Oceans)

Half-Handed Cloud - Cut Me Down and Count My Rings (Asthmatic Kitty)