Arcade Fire
The Suburbs

The Suburbs introduces you to the shiny new Arcade Fire that you’ve always known.

This idea is so relevant to this album I felt it would be unfair of me to not include it when it’s been ringing in my head the entire time I wrote this very, very lengthy review. I realize that opening a review with a quote is an awful thing to do to you, but closing with it would probably be far worse.

"People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. […] We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living."
-Rem Koolhaas

...

Menomena
Mines

When they do it this well, I don't care how they do it

Finally, on Menomena's third full length offering, Mines, the technology which drives the band has finally found its elusive soul, the element that was arguably missing on I Am the Fun Blame Monster - whose long instrumental freak outs and sonic surprises at each turn were interesting but loveable only in the way that the parent of an ugly child feels towards its offspring - and certainly hinted at though not entirely in attendance on Friend and Foe where it got lost amongst some overly ambitious arrangements. This soul has no doubt come from experience and the common belief that practice makes perfect. The band's ability...

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
Before Today

Sleepily and still dreaming, I finally get the review done! How fitting!

It has been a couple of months now since Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti dropped this one, and I think it came at a time when some of this year's bigger releases were hitting the shelves and being lapped up by critics in a hungry display of indulgement and feverish excitement. Though it met with a lot of positive reviews at the time, it went under the radar as bands like LCD Soundsystem and The National released much anticipated albums. In many ways it was as though it never happened. But I'm here to tell you now that it did indeed happen and also that if we continue to overlook it and underestimate it we might be accused of crimes against music.

It is fitting though that Before Today went largely un-hyped and so became...

Eminem
Recovery

Guess Who's Back? No, Not Him.

Singing? Humility? Admitting he was wrong? Apologising? Excusing himself? What the Hell is going on here?

The simple answer is that Slim Shady is officially dead. Marshall Mathers, on the other hand, is very much alive. He is also sober, a bit of a stick in the mud and in need of a bit of a hug and maybe a pick-me-up. But he's clean now and if you offered him one he'd probably write a new song about how hard it is being sober, or indeed being him, and I'm not sure we need any more than the seventeen already squeezed onto this disc. You see, the element of Eminem's psyche that was represented by Slim Shady is probably the element which most people enjoyed because, whether they like to admit it or not, Slim's shocking and offensive mind and actions were thrilling and absorbing in a cartoon-like way. Eminem without...

Wavves
King of the Beach

I'm definitely a covers man. An album's cover can make or break a record for me and if I'm sitting on the fence a bit but the record has a startlingly good sleeve design then I will often give it the thumbs up whereas something which looks like it was regurgitated by a dying bird will get the big elbows down. Other times I may decide to buy a CD because its cover intrigues or impresses me. You can't judge a book by its cover but I have, perhaps foolishly, judged many a record by its cover.

This is a foolish approach however and I have often been reminded of that, not least when I spent many months being fascinated my the badly focussed action shot that graced the cover of Wavves previous full length effort. The fact that you can't make out the boy's head, the sharp focus on the tree branches in the...

Nachtmystium
Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II

Further Down the Rabbit Hole

As a general rule of thumb, one must either love black metal or hate black metal. It’s right up there with the extreme/death metals as far as having a strict definition: you must have X, Y, and Z qualities, or you’re not truly black metal and as such, subject to derision by the fans of the “truer” form of the genre. For those not in the know, Black Metal usually features incredibly fast tempos with incredibly loud, buzzsaw guitars that generally stick to amelodic riffs without any discernable traditional structure. You may know about the vocals already: shrieks and growls about opposition to Christianity, with occasional dalliances into fantasy, philosophy, and other subjects Rush covered in the 1970s. Also keep in mind that the true black metallers are the crazy bastards that come to mind when people think of Satanism in heavy metal. One needs to...

Prince
20Ten

Nothing shouts Has Been quite so loudly as when you release your brand new album through The Daily Mirror or its equivalent to non-UK residents. Hardly a bastion of taste and decency and certainly not known for its musical or indeed factual knowledge or credibility. I imagine that Prince (that's what we're all calling him now, isn't it?) had never had the misfortune to read it himself until they offered to put out his album for him and at least give him a shot of being heard and recouping some of those expensive recording costs.

Because 20Ten is not only a lame name for a record released this year but it is also a lame album which, rather than being a futuristic or at least present day summation of what is happening or perhaps what is going to happen as its title suggests, it is actually a record that, like Prince himself, is...

M.I.A.
/\/\ /\ Y /\

It is totally fitting that the first interpretable sound you hear on M.I.A’s third proper LP is the mashing up of an electric screwdriver and a chainsaw. That’s actually from the second track, “Steppin’ Up,” which then mixes Auto-Tune, heavily distorted guitars, and one of the most disgusting amalgams of ProTools tricks you’re ever likely to hear into the already rancid soup.

Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Conspiracy theories are almost never right. This is the unwritten law of the unsubstantiated. You can’t be a ‘crazy’ theory if everybody believes it. That said, some conspiracy theories are true. Some unknowing schmuck will throw out a seemingly bogus idea that turns out to stick. Today, I am that schmuck.

I think the New York Times/M.I.A. dustup was a scam. The most reputable paper in the country certainly hasn’t been unaffected by the serious downturn in...

Big Boi
Sir Lucious Left Foot: Son of Chico Dusty

In any relationship which comes to an end, whether it is amicable or otherwise, those that are involved or at least interested are inevitably forced to pick a side. After Outkast started dividing their albums in two most people went over to the side of Andre 3000 following the success of "Hey Ya" and "Roses" (even though they did smell like poo poo poo). But 3000 was probably everybody's favourite because he was this love obsessed romantic and Big Boi was more of a dirty sex addict, a fact reinforced not just by lyrics but also the photos which adorned their album booklet artwork which depicted to BB with some nasty looking hoes whilst 3000 was portrayed as more of a family guy.

However, on revisiting Speakerboxxx / The Love Below years after the initial hype surrounding it died down I...

Flying Lotus
Cosmogramma

It isn't there anymore. For years it was just visible beyond the Police "Do Not Cross" tape but after a couple more kids tried to get brave they closed down the whole amusement arcade and then one day without warning they demolished it and levelled the whole area. There has been talk since of a 24/7 being built on the site but planners and architects are understandably nervous just as developers are, perhaps irrationally, dubious about building anything over the site of an Indian burial ground.

During the spring and summer of 1991 the Super Mario arcade machine in Arnold's Amusements, Winnetka CA claimed the lives of five children who were apparently sucked in to it through the screen - much like in the movie Poltergeist - and forced to assume the role of Mario as they tried to find their way back to the real world over 17 gruelling levels littered with terrifying (although...

Steel Train
Steel Train


As reviewers, there is an implicit notion that a good record is one that gives us something undiscovered, something intangibly new, regardless of whether that something is actually new at all. This is the magic of artists like Animal Collective, who are rightly praised because of their magnificent randomness, still rooted in notions of songwriting. It’s a great life, constantly searching out the things that amaze us. But it can certainly lead to some sad depreciation of things that are rooted in tradition rather than progress. Artists like The Gaslight Anthem and She & Him are the exceptions that prove the rule—their existence is because a sound existed in the past that we long to hear again. It’s a form of discovery in itself, a delving into the unknown past instead of the unknown future.

But Steel Train are different. Dismissed (rightly) early on in their careers as sad...