Austinist CD Reviews: Art Rock XXXPlosion
Due to some odd twist of fate—or some serious demographic research—several major/minor art-rock figures are releasing albums today. These artists run the gamut from graceful (Thom Yorke) to chaotic (TV On The Radio) to I’ll-have-whatever-they’re-having (Muse). Let’s take a look:
THOM YORKE-THE ERASER
Thom Yorke once quipped that, in the United Nations that is Radiohead, he plays America—the joke being that, while he doesn’t have all the ideas (or talent), he sets the aesthetic course for each album and maintains unspoken veto power over who bombs—er, plays—what.
And yet The Eraser, Yorke’s solo debut, is as subdued and concise as his band’s music is brash and expansive. The album, produced by longtime collaborator Nigel Godrich, sounds like something written and recorded while someone else was sleeping in the same room—hushed and impenetrable, the songs glide by on a web of crumbling synth textures, hushed piano, and the occasional post-punk bassline, underpinned by dense, whispery programmed beats. Yorke’s low-key approach extends to the album’s roll-out strategy-the very existence of the project became known a mere two months before its street date, when it was already finished. This gave the bloggers plenty of time to kick up a ruckus, but it was a somewhat unusual route for a household-name artist. (The album is being released on the smallish British indie XL.)
The Eraser strikes an odd balance between reservation and immodesty. Yorke’s lyric sheet is full of politely barbed remarks such as the title track’s sweetly crooned put-down, “Are you only being nice/because you want something?” but it also includes a chorus which simply repeats “This is fucked-up/fucked-up” ad nauseum. It’s also probably the only album ever to feature the word “indefatigable,” which has far more value on a Scrabble board than an electro-pop album. There are long stretches of musical dead space; additionally, the wordless chorus of “Cymbal Rush” hijacks the bridge to Radiohead’s “There There” almost note-for-note.
So it’s a mixed-bag, but ultimately, the record’s uncompromising sonic palette works to its advantage. Produced with singular intent and focus, The Eraser aims to divert without exactly entertaining, to console without comforting.
MUSE-BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS
On a related note, we're convinced that a sizable number of people who’ve heard both “Karma Police” and “Stockholm Syndrome” on the radio believe Radiohead and Muse are the same band. Muse has made a highly profitable career for themselves by wedding some of their benefactors’ more obvious conceits—Yorke’s falsetto-heavy vocal style, all the arty pretentious end-of-the-world stuff—to Nirvana guitars, Eurotrashy keyboards, and song titles like “Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist.” They are the musical equivalent of Mountain Dew—high-energy and fun in small doses, but also kind of gross.
That said, Black Holes And Revelations could make or break the band’s reputation among die-hard fans. Guitarist/vocalist Matthew Bellamy reins in the riff-centric tendencies that made Absolution a left-field radio hit, instead crafting a ballad-heavy record that works about as often as it doesn’t. Bellamy pens quite a few winning melodies, especially the light-hearted “Starlight” and shimmering latin number “Hoodoo,” but nearly ruins them with a mega-emotive vocal style resembling the bleat of a hemorrhaging goat. If you’re still with him after he goes into full-on R. Kelly breast-beating mode on “Invincible,” you’re probably a fan for life.
The rock numbers fare better, if only because they are more suited to Bellamy’s hyper-kinetic propensities. “Assassins,” “City Of Delusion,” and especially the swirling “Knights of Cydonia” ride a sonic rush of mega-riffs and Queen-style operatics capable of becoming your inner-teenage-air-guitar-rebel’s favorite new song. At least for a few minutes.
TV ON THE RADIO-RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN
Paring sugary, multi-tracked soul harmonies with grimy post-punk and staggering levels of noise, TV On The Radio combine the obtuse with the familiar better than anyone else from their generation of Brooklyn art-stars. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs shifted a half-million units and went all LA on us, while the Liars hopped the first train to Weird Concept Album Hell once they started getting attention from Spin; meanwhile, TVOTR won the Mercury Prize for their debut LP, opened for Nine Inch Nails, and quietly signed a distribution deal with Interscope. The follow-up to 2004’s Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, Cookie Mountain expands the trio’s proclivity for horn samples, industrial drone, and dumb album titles without really breaking new ground.
One-time Celebrity Deathmatch animator and indie film heartthrob (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0273300/) Tunde Adebimpe has a voice most singers would kill for—splitting the difference between Ike Turner and David Bowie, it’s strong and silky enough that each previous TVOTR album has featured an a cappella tune (most impressively on their cover of the Pixies’ “Mr. Grieves”). The broken heart beating inside producer David Sitek’s paranoid android, Adebimpe’s voice does cathartic calisthenics over the band’s arid soundscapes with frightening intensity.
Too often, however, the detailed production sits in for want of a truly arresting hook. Desperate Youth, while not exactly O.C. soundtrack material, delivered album tracks like “King Eternal” that featured melodic counterpoints every bit as stunning as the more visible cuts. Only a handful of songs on Cookie Mountain stand up to the best of that album—“I Was A Lover” hitches a woozy horn sample to a chugging synth blast to sublimely dissonant effect, and “Wolf Like Me” finds solace inside a swirl of David Lynch-ian white noise. They even manage to enlits Bowie to sing backup on the sparkling post-soul cut “Province.”
That TVOTR have managed to forge such a singular body of work during their short time together bodes well for fans of classy, forward-thinking rock and roll. Although, like the aforementioned Mr. Yorke, Adebimpe and Co. occasionally mistake the sound for the song, they at least have the talent and integrity to pursue that sound without fear of failure.
