Los Campesinos! – Romance is Boring

Wales hipsters trade in clever optimism for clever heartbreak.

Los Campesinos! made their high-energy debut two years ago with a pair of albums about six months apart: Hold on Now, Youngster… and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. These immediately made them critical darlings of the indie press, showing off both exciting enthusiasm — Youngster was an explosion of pop-rock-punk couplets, clever to the core — and a good sense of the possibilities of pathos available in pop songwriting — Beautiful was a much more tortured statement of the longing and loss that is the flip-side of the falling-in-love that was chronicled on their first disk, and a very strong pairing with their initial offering. Plus, it was two albums in quick succession. Two albums in a year? Who does that anymore?

So the jury was out on what’d they do for a sophomore excursion. A return to the manic energy and musically-adventurous form of Youngster, or a continuation of the more dismal Beautiful? We got our first hints when they released a cut off their new project on their website late last year, titled “The Sea Is A Good Place To Think About The Future”. It was a brooding, melancholic track, about longing and a troublesome relationship, with lots of watery imagery and a good shouty ending.

The new album, Romance is Boring, dropped on the 26th, and, while that initial glimpse was somewhat accurate, it fails to actually present a complete idea of what the album’s all about. Instead of picking between either of the two possibilities offered by their first two albums, they go harsh.

Los Campesinos!’s songs had, until this point, been marked by a measured gloss. Although busy and stuffed with instrumentation, they generally were somewhat clean. On Romance is Boring, they muddy up their sound, with the lyrics shouted as often as not, the guitars shredding into fuzz at points, and the entire exercise revealing the turmoil of the singer not just in the biting lyrics but the music as well.

The bass is more prominent (noticeably so on “There Are Listed Buildings”), and Gareth Campesinos! continues to be taking the lead on vocals, as compared to their first album, which had him sharing vocal duties more equally with the now-absent Aleks Campesinos!. “Plan A” is a manic explosion, the horns going crazy, the guitars all on overdrive, and practically every line in the verses shouted and the choruses topped with the girls singing in falsetto above Gareth — and yet it works just fine.

Not everything fits. “Who Fell Asleep”, although a fine song in its own right, doesn’t fit into the album, its vaguely country-twangy-loopy guitar out of sync with the rest of the songs. And there’s the constant complaint about Los Campesinos!’s songwriting: its wordplay can sometimes obscure itself with its own brilliant wit.

Overall, the album gives a sense of a band still trying to nail down exactly how they want to proceed. The album doesn’t fit perfectly cohesively, but it’s an aggressive statement of intent, and further solidifies Los Campesinos!’s position at the forefront of indie rock.

Spoon – Transference

The kings of minimalism go even more stripped-down.

Spoon are comparatively old men on the indie block, having been started back in 1993. Compared to Los Campesinos!, which constantly experiments with more instruments and consists of seven members, Spoon is a standard 4-piece, and has been consistently trimming back their sound over the years, becoming the recognized lords of deliberate, crafted, rattling indie rock.

The latest Spoon offering, Transference, starts off with a song with a giveaway of a title: “Before Destruction”. The first minute sounds like it was recorded in someone’s bathroom, until it snaps into production-quality sound. But there’s no major shift of style. Whereas Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, their previous album (2007), was Spoon at their most expressive, painting with broad musical strokes, here Spoon explores the bare minimums of what they can get away with. In fact, this opening song nearly over-promises what’s coming, with honest-to-goodness chorus parts near the end.

They won’t be that layered again throughout. Rarely does the music spread beyond vocals, guitar or bass, banged-out piano, and drums, swapping in and out as needed and never a second more than absolutely what they want. Several songs just full-stop in the middle of what sounds like a third verse — they just decided they’d said enough and that was that for that song! On to the next. No long setups, no long wind-downs. The overriding philosophy appears to be: get in, do it, get out again.

The album is at its strongest early on, with the trifecta of “The Mystery Zone”, “Who Makes Your Money”, and the album’s first single “Written In Reverse”. Spoon doesn’t sink to the same minimalist levels that mumblecore darlings The xx do — the lead singer Britt Daniel’s vocals are always audible and front-and-center, if the meaning is not always entirely transparent. But there’s no denying that this is a band who, after exploring the fringes of mainstream rock and roll on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, have consciously decided to return to their roots in minimalist rock.

The balladic tendencies of Spoon crop up near the close of the album, with the relatively expansive tracks “Goodnight Laura” and “Out Go The Lights” allowing Daniel to exercise his voice in less destructive ways. They follow it up with “Got Nuffin”, a rattling, claptrap ramble  from the 2009 EP of the same name, and close out the album with the odd “Nobody Gets Me But You”, with electronic drums and strange little Casio keyboard-esque flourishes.

With Transference, Spoon turns away from the experimentation and expansiveness of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and returns to music as minimalist as the 2001 album Girls Can Tell, and it’s glorious, revealing just how much can be done with just a little bit.

I didn’t listen to all that much new music this year — maybe about half of my music purchases were backfill for my collection, rounding out artists who I had most of their work, but not all. That said, there were a couple of albums that stood out for me this year. Most can be found on emusic, where I get most of my music from, and which I heartily endorse. (Last year’s list from me can be found on my personal website.)

Veckatimest, by Grizzly Bear

I first heard this album on the overhead play at work, shockingly enough. It took a while for me to process what I was hearing, because it kept coming on in snippets while I was doing other things. The album is filled with things you’ve never heard before: strange distorted guitar on “Hold Still”, a vast, soaring, roaring climax of noise on “I Live With You”, and the incredible build of the opening “Southern Point”. After getting my hands on this, I went back and started listening to their back catalog, and I can’t wait for what’s coming next.

Yesterday and Today, by The Field

The first album by The Field was one of my favorite albums of 2007, but I was worried that it would be impossible to follow it up. After all, it was such a simple conceit: repetitive micro-sampling. How could Alex Willner evolve the music without it turning into self-parody or avoid sitting in one place and getting boring? Well, he pulls it off: These songs manage to expand his musical vocabulary without losing what made the first album so listenable; “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime” has vocals, even. “Sequenced” feels stretched out and languid, “The More That I Do” a sonic-ping-infused dance track, all introduced by “I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet”, which perfectly recaps everything he’d done on the first album.

Florine, by Julianna Barwick

This is an album that defies categorization. Nearly every sound on it is Barwick’s voice, shifted or modulated (in real-time, no less, for her performances) to create these haunting, echoing, beautiful soundscapes. I picked this up because Warren Ellis kept going on about it, and my first reaction was: “@warrenellis It’s like someone’s singing how the planets orbit around the sun. Stunning.” It really is an amazing album, worth listening to just for the sheer imagination of its construction. “Choose”, in particular, is a glorious exercise in how to build something out of nothing at all — and likely to put shivers down your spine to boot.

Fist of God, by MSTRKRFT

I picked this up more-or-less on a whim — and I am so glad I did. Big, crunchy beats matched with smart lyricism? “So Deep” is a disorienting, tri-tone laced synth experiment, while the admittedly-unrepresentative “Heartbreaker” features the multi-talented John Legend on piano and vocals, with MSTRKRFT stepping back and letting him shine. The rest of the album is packed with fast, aggressive songs, perfect for getting fired up. The album got a strangely muffled reaction from critics on first release, and, I’ll admit, it took me a while to come around on it — but once I did, it’s been on permanent rotation.

Bitte Orca, by Dirty Projectors

Bitte Orca is not an easy album, on the surface, all odd-sounding time signatures and oddly-pitched singers. Stick with it, though, and you find some beautiful indie music buried amongst all the thinking and strangeness. Dave Longstreth, the lead singer and group’s mastermind, has crafted an album that makes you want to coo along with the girls on “Temecula Sunrise” and just flail your arms around as “Useful Chamber” explodes through your speakers. It’s delightful, joyous listening, and you can’t wait to see what they’ll do on the next track.

Potato Hole, by Booker T. Jones

Potato Hole is Booker T. Jones’ latest solo album, although he gets help from back-up artists Drive-By Truckers (!) and Neil Young (!!). It’s a great non-vocal record, the songs evenly divided between bouncy rockers and introspective, meandering soul. Jones wields his organ like a singer on his cover of OutKast’s “Hey Ya”, where Jones takes the part of André 3000, and like a thudding percussion section on “Get Behind The Mule”. It’s a great album, loaded with hooks and passages that’ll be stuck in your head all day, leading friends to wonder why you keep humming organ music.

Man of Aran, by British Sea Power

British Sea Power were asked to create a soundtrack for the 1934 silent documentary Man of Aran, about the hard-scrabble lives of the natives of this tiny archipelago off the western coast of Ireland, and turned out this beautiful piece of ambient post-rock. Aside from the weak cover of a track from The Twilight Zone of all places, “Come Wander With Me”, the album is vocal-less. “Boy Vertiginous” into “Spearing the Sunfish” is pulse-pounding, “The North Sound” has this brilliant off-kilter violin spiraling through it, and “It Comes Back Again” is a nicely introspective, dirge-y track. I can’t speak to how it stacks up as a soundtrack to the film — haven’t seen it — but as a stand-along piece of music, it’s great atmospherics.

Merriweather Post Pavilion, by Animal Collective

Animal Collective is a truly divisive band — either you love them or despise them. Their latest, Merriweather Post Pavilion, won’t win them any new fans, but it’s a fun, bouncy record for those who don’t mind their particular quirks (Yelping! Shimmering noises! Weird sound effects!). “Summertime Clothes” is a delightful song, all bubbles and thuds, and if it doesn’t get you bobbing along, you have no soul. And you’ll want to sing along to “My Girls”, even if you can’t make sense of the words. The second half of the disk is somewhat of a letdown, after the manic energy of the first, but it’s still a strong album overall.

Tarot Sport, by Fuck Buttons

Fuck Buttons’ debut album was on last year’s list, and their follow-up is even better. Where Animal Collective just nibbles at using noise in their songs, Fuck Buttons embrace the noise aesthetic completely, creating fascinating pop music which doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard before. Walls of white noise meld with disorienting samples merge with primal rhythm tracks merge with high-flying melodies into an album that never seems to repeat itself. The very first track, “Surf Solar”, explodes with vitality, and never lets up.

Actor, by St. Vincent

The cover is shockingly generic for what’s contained within. Annie Clark, the only member of St. Vincent, perfectly nails the line between “cute” and “creepy” on this one, whereas her debut, Marry Me, was just a hair too pleased with itself sometimes. “Save Me From What I Want” has one of the odder sing-along choruses you’ll ever come across; “Black Rainbow” builds so cleverly as to not even be noticed until the song as suddenly demands you pay attention to it. Later on the album, “Just The Same But Brand New” is a twinkling example of perfectly-constructed dream-music.

There were also a couple of EPs I really enjoyed this year, but I’ll save those for another post.