The Vaccines: What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?

This is my dumb review blog, so I'm going to tell you something about my dumb life for this dumb review of The Vaccines' very good first album. Every so often, my family has a boozy night. Sit around, rehashing old stories, reminiscing about dead pets and old houses and the 90s and old times. This is a recent development. My family never used to care about old times. There weren't any old times to care about. Now I guess there are, and some of them relish the chance to drudge it all up, telling all the old stories like they contain profound revelations that haven't been rediscovered dozens of times in the last year. The tone of these nights is so sincere and so earnest and so desperate to feel. And I'm not one for those. I sit there while members of the family force themselves to feel deep and think about how profound it is that we've been through such things... and I just shrug. I roll my eyes. I'm not into it. Maybe it's because I don't happen to be drinking. I chip in a sarcastic remark every now and again when things get too intense, just to insinuate myself and undercut the melodrama and maybe, unsuccessfully, deflate the scenario to a level that I'm comfortable with. That's me. For all my big talk on the blog, in my day to day life I'd rather be living my day to day life, complete with snide remarks and an acknowledgment that my pain is pretty mundane. I'm a heartless bastard.

I see myself, that part of myself, in The Vaccines. If an album can be as snide as I tend to be at family dinners, this is. There are big grandiose movements in the music: intense punky energy, operatic U2 moves, power pop, the whole shebang, and then Justin Young undermines the whole thing with his vocals. I don't know how to describe it, his delivery is so bored of emotion, so unconvinced by emotionality, he's the reverse Bono. He makes the music work to win him over. He sneers, "What did you expect / From post-break-up sex?" and it sounds more revolutionary than anything I've heard in the punk section lately. The opening track, "Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra)" is a lie. He brings this proper dry British sensibility to the music, this stiff upper lip punk that simply will not give. So removed.

Meanwhile, the music itself is quite great: there are hooks, there are riffs and licks and rhythms worth banging one's head to. It's just all disrupted, happily, by the clash between the sound and the voice. The message and its delivery.

And yet it's not cold. It's not like an icy Canadian indie pop album, not a whimpering postpunk, not a brash garage band. It's something more difficult to classify, more difficult to read. It's so flummoxed at the idea of feeling and dealing with other people and searching for that profundity that everyone else seems to access so easily, looking hopefully for things to get so pumped about, as on "If You Wanna" or to be anthemic about on "Wetsuit." It's the audio equivalent of a Greg Daniels TV show: sincere and earnest and whimsical at times, but willing to accept that sometimes things are worth observing because they're so normal. And normal things include meeting people, falling in love, having sex, being bored, getting your heart broken, moving on and wondering why it happened. For all the capacity pop music has to make these events into golden coins, here's one that seems to reveal them, to me at least, as the basic plain bricks that build our lives. When he urges you to "Blow, blow, blow it up" it sounds more like a polite suggestion than a command. When he cries out for "E-e-elenor" it's less pleading and desperate than it is casual and curious. Is there anything worth getting worked up over?

It mashes together the observational quality of The Hold Steady with the Gen-Y passivity of Tokyo Police Club and the "show me something" restlessnes of the Strokes.

Normalcore. What an innovation. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just looking for a way to normalize and understand my own situation, but I think it's worth noting that I got this out of this album, and that that feeling feels so unique. Unique, and yet... ordinary.

PS Guys please don't ever tell my family I talked about them in a music review, I don't want to have that conversation either.

Buy this album now:iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Feist: Metals

I think it’s pretty neat that, when Feist was ready to capitalize on the popularity of her appearance in an Apple commercial, she went and released an album like this. Specifically, it sounds to me like a Feist album, although it’s the first one I’ve ever listened to, it’s exactly what she should be doing. If there was any pressure to write another giddy-in-love pop tune like “1234,” she didn’t bow to it. And at a time when big voices and big production are the big ticket for female vocalists (as if they ever weren’t?) Leslie Feist releases a soft-focus, broken-down, weepy, whispery lo-fi affair that shows off the unique skillset she’s got, that no one else on the scene really approaches.

It’s got the courage to be quiet, the strength to be sad. And not grandiose, melodramatic, “Someone Like You” sad, although that has its place (as the market has proven!) but quiet, contemplative, sulky, sullen sad, the kind familiar to moody teens and adults alike. She evokes this with her voice that creaks when she pushes it, her phrasing and lyrics, which are the kind of poetry that could easily line notebook margins: all concerned with desolate nature and weather and the world around. There’s also the very, very well-done instrumental arrangement of soft horns, light strings, and discordant olde blues guitars that twang and blare at just at the right time. Sometimes, Feist’s voice disappears right into it. “Undiscovered First” is built around a tambourine that hisses like a rattlesnake, before building to a hymnal war chant. You can tell she comes from the indie world and not the pop one because she’s not afraid to let her songs develop beyond a traditional “hook.”

My favourite tracks are the sultry “How Come We Never Go There,” which like the best points of the album is built around restraint, the mesmerizing “The Bad in Each Other,” the rhythmic “Comfort Me,” and the dusty, willowy “Graveyard.” In general, I like how increased exposure only made Feist want to keep writing Feist songs, being Feist, doing Feist. It’s not easy to be this defiantly yourself. This is some heady stuff and it will not be for everyone. It reminds me of the Low album I reviewed last year, C’mon: it takes patience and intense listening, although it also works in the background as well.

Buy this album now: iTunes (Canada) // iTunes (USA) // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Does it Rock? The Airborne Toxic Event, "Changing"

Airborne Toxic Event's second album, All At Once, is halfway to a good album. And that isn't to say that half the songs are good and half are bad. Most of the songs here have something to recommend them. They're obviously good musicians with an ear for massive, arena-level hooks in the tradition of U2. The production is crisp and although there's a lot going on in each song, and from one song to the next, taken on their own they work.

My own issue with the album, though, is that they could stand to loosen up. Massive hooks go a long way to setting a mood and imprinting a song in people's minds, your lyrics don't always need to be so particular. There's a reason why most U2 songs have lyrics that are maddeningly vague: because the music, and Bono's delivery, does so much of the heavy lifting. ATE leader Mikel Jollett is obviously pretty literary, which is why he named his band in reference to a Don DiLillo book that you have to have been a Contemporary Lit major to have read (hey guys) but if he could follow the old writer's axiom to "kill your darlings," he might pare his lyrics back to something that enhances rather than distracts.

That's why I like "Changing," which is the best example, among a few, of the band letting the music do the talking. It's a good, lyrically uncomplex, yet still complete song. The way he sings the chorus, that's exactly what you're supposed to do with a song like this. There are a few other tracks on the album that really get it, like "Numb" and "All At Once." "All I Ever Wanted" comes close. But I can't quite put my stamp of approval on the whole piece.

Does It Rock? Twin Atlantic, "Free"

Maybe it's just because they have Scottish accents that I find them so charming and affable. By and large, Twin Atlantic trades in a type of music that is very easy to dismiss, overeager to prove its worth as angsty and thoughtful while still being poppy and accessible. To my tired old ears, they seem like an updated, Glaswegian version of Tonic.

But this is a type of music that will always have a currency with the current crop of teenagers, with thundering drums, squealing guitars and vocals centering on breaking free, expressing yourself, taking control at last, etc. On that level it ain't half bad at all. Critics hate it, but it's a necessary creature, generally harmless. I could see being 16 and getting really into this record, then moving on once you discover, I dunno, the Clash or Metallica or Arctic Monkeys or something. This is never going to be the "big thing" but it'll do at that age where you hate whatever the "big thing" is but don't know where to look for something you like.

Even if it's a philosophical affront to the idea that "good" music must have "artistic value," I'll admit I've listened to this record the whole way through without turning it off a whole lot, and if it sucked I wouldn't be able to do that. Sure it's slick and commercial, but not every band gets to be Nirvana, not every band has to define a generation. Some just go along with it.

Black Keys: El Camino

With El Camino, the Black Keys follow through on the promise of Brothers. Oddly enough, to do this, they had to make an album that sounded very little like it. Brothers had a decade of obscurity behind it, and with its unexpected success, brought everybody over to their side. But getting them to stay there was going to require some doing. El Camino represents one of the finest examples of deliberate hitmaking I've seen in a very long time.

Basically, after you have a hit like "Tighten Up" and "Howling For You," you don't get to go back to the little rooms (to paraphrase Jack White.) Some bands elect to chase their newfound audience off. Some bands try too hard to keep them. With a band like the Black Keys, that would be bad. There's the problem: if they made an album that ignored their success, their label would probably chuck them to the curb. If they tried too hard to please their new fans, they'd end up pleasing nobody. Everybody wants to have hits, but nobody wants to get caught in the act of aiming for a hit. The magic of El Camino is that it succeeds and in fact thrives: it gives the people what they want, the Black Keys album they dreamed was next. No more, no less.

All that is why this album is noticeably brighter and more upbeat than the often dour Brothers. That one was good music, and I wouldn't fault them if they didn't change the routine for their next album, but instead they rose to the challenge of creating a great Black Keys album that was also a chart topping monster. This sort of premise is usually a recipe for a compromise that pleases nobody.

What they ended up with was not merely an album that contained hits, but an album that was made out of them. Every track on this album has a welcoming air to it, a feeling like you've been hearing it in the background of your entire life since forever. That's not just because "Little Black Submarines" is a compressed version of "Stairway To Heaven," but also because songs like "Gold on the Ceiling" and "Stop Stop" have those irresistible grooves you didn't know you'd been craving this whole time. Moments in between those peaks, like "Money Maker," "Run Right Back," "Sister" and "Dead and Gone" keep the ear from waning. This album is compulsively listenable. Each track cements the fact that Auerbach and Carney are the makers of great rock music.

Still, it never betrays the sound that brought us to the Keys two years ago. Auerbach's guitar wails with wry, dark pain, his vocals distant and obscure, Carney's drums thundering insistently, tons of interesting minor choices all throughout. This is auteurial rock, still, while also being for the masses.

It works because they're great at what they do, and know how to soak the album with those primal elements that makes music so addictive to so many people. "Lonely Boy," the opening track and first single, announces it with great urgency. There's a reason why this is the "mainstream" stuff, though: it's fun. It's big, it's groovy, it's hook-laden, you find yourself humming it, it moves you. It's fucking delicious. If you're an artist playing to small audience, it's no great shakes to make an album you can be proud of, just by following your instincts. An album like this requires walking a remarkable tightrope act.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Low: C'mon

Do you ever go for a long drive at night? Maybe just go for a spin around the block, just to clear you head, you find yourself mesmerized by the shadows cast by the dim streetlights and driving for a lot longer than you thought you would. C'Mon, by Low, feels like that light to me. It's focused, directing me down a long, dark road. For long stretches of the album, singers Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker sing-chant fragmented lyrics over gradually morphing instruments. Consider the 8-minute long "Nothing But Heart," which stretches its main phrase ("I'm nothing but heart") to its breaking point as the guitar parts rise and fall and squeal and sing in the background and the drums chug on. There are other lyrics, but I think you're not even meant to hear about them. The album is about its spare soundscapes.

The opening track, "Try to Sleep," is pretty arresting, pulling you into the album's tonal spirit, an off-kilter lullaby whose chorus goes: "Try to sleep, don't look at the camera." I think that's about sums it up: relaxing yet unnerving. Particularly excellent is "Witches," a growling indie-blues moment about facing fears in the darkness (and about not trying to act like Al Green.) Importantly, this is not a quiet moment on the album. In fact, it's not as quiet of an album as it seems, it just happens to have that David Gilmour quality to it of being soft and mellow but also huge and imposing.

Low does a lot of great stuff on this album, mostly in showing restraint. They're obviously great musicians and maybe the music is more complex than it seems, but it has that repetitive, moody quality that doesn't require much excessive adornment, but needs to seem deep and dark, with all the elements - guitars, strings, drums, vocals and anything else - in perfect balance. I give special notice to the two singers. Sparhawk's rasp is commanding and solemn, but weary. Parker's quivers with uncertainty. Both can carry a song, when pushed way to the front, as on "$20," or help build the atmosphere from the bottom of the mix. When they sing together, it's like oil and water, both clashing yet neatly sitting together.

This is soft music for people who don't have the patience for soft music. The moaning "Especially Me" zones you out: it's not even as long as I thought it was, only 5 minutes when I felt like it was 20. That's not a criticism, I was genuinely surprised when the next song started and I realized I had only been listening to one song that whole time. Songs like that tend to grow in intensity as they go along. The vocals induce trances, cause meditation and reflection. I'm not even sure this album is meant to be listened to... it's there to not-hear, in its hypnotic way.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Fountains of Wayne: Sky Full of Holes

There are a few righteous moments on this album. The dudes that brought you "Stacy's Mom" actually know how to string together a pretty rad bunch of songs. Chris Collingwood's lyrics are frequently insightful, painting character pictures that hit without bludgeoning you with the imagery, as in "The Summer House" and "Richie & Ruben." And if there's any fault to the music by Collingwood & Adam Schlesinger, it's that it's too consistent, too catchy, so your head might get tired by the end of the 45 minute running time. And there are moments, therefore, that drag. There might be a ceiling to how much Fountains of Wayne I can take at a time, no matter what they do to switch it up on songs like "Action Hero," "Cold Comfort Flowers," or the alt-country tinged "Road Song." All good songs too. The need to admit stuff like that is part of my resolution for this site's revival.

They play earnest, honest, good-natured power pop, and skillfully. And maybe it just works better in small bits than all at once. A couple of songs stay with me. One is the bass and piano driven "Acela." The other is the truly excellent "Someone's Gonna Break Your Heart," which gets into a bit of a Tom Petty thing by the time it hits its closing moments.

My recommendation is that you check out a few tracks from this album. There's a strong chance you'll find something you like, and the beauty of this day and age is that you're not required to buy an entire album to get all the ones you like.

Buy this music now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

St. Vincent: Strange Mercy

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you'll remember I don't spend a ton of time discussing lyrics. As much as a good lyric can really make a song, my way of thinking about music doesn't really depend on them too much. There have been a lot of extremely lyrically-well-written albums on this site, whose words I just didn't pay much mind to. I missed a ton of the nuance in The Hold Steady's Stay Positive. And after reading numerous write-ups of Arcade Fire's Funeral, I still don't quite "hear" what they're singing about, and that's one of my favourite albums I've written about yet. It's a bit of a shame, that lyrics often make up a huge amount of the work that goes into an album, and yet they comprise so little of the listening pleasure for me. St. Vincent's lyrics, for instant, are weirdly brilliant. They're often abstract, or impressionistic, (and often directly confrontational) and intricately-crafted, woven into the art of the album, to the point where they cross-reference each other on a few tracks. The lyric sheet of this album is quite frankly drowning with brilliance.

But I don't love it because it has great lyrics. Even knowing how great they are, I pay more attention to how they're put together, delivered, and fused with the sonic landscape of the album. St. Vincent has put together a very deliberate thing here, playing off novel takes on moods and idiosyncratic rhythms and shifts in tone that combine into this one specific thing in a very precise thing. Unconventional isn't quite the right word, because that sounds like she's just being random for the sake of random. In places, it might even be counter-intuitive. The opening track "Chloe in the Afternoon" repeats its title phrase in a clipped, wedged-together way that you wouldn't do by accident. Much of the album has a quiet, funky slant to it, like "Surgeon," "Dilettante" or "Neutered Fruit," which also has what sounds like a gospel choir beneath it, or a synthetic facsimile. In these places, the album reminds me of Bowie's work in plastic soul, circa "Golden Years" and "Fame." The pulsing wah-funk coda of "Dilettante" is one of the album's most enjoyable side trips. Elsewhere she opens up dark, XX-like fits of soulful quiet, like "Champagne Year."

When the album develops a galloping pace, as it does on "Northern Lights" or "Hysterical Strength," it really gets a good thing going. The climax of "Surgeon" is one of many great examples of repetition with growing intensity. Every so often it will find a direction with a song and pursue it, like the synth break in the title track, which feels like restless pacing in thought, bridging into a very intense second half ("If I ever meet the dirty policeman who roughed you up...") which showcases the performative qualities of her vocal.

For me, the finest cut on the album is "Cruel," which has every aspect you might enjoy about the album in microcosm. St. Vincent's voice is in its finest form in the chorus, joined with a crisp, grasshopper riff that grows ever more unstable, until it's a lawnmower. It even has a bit that sounds perversely like the Andrews Sisters. The same (minus the bit about the Andrews Sisters) could also be said about the thunder-and-lightning "Cheerleader." If "indie rock" is a genre, and it's what St. Vincent does, then it might be defined by taking prog rock's capability to stretch beyond normal instrumentation and structure, but to compact those extreme constructions into a 4-minute pop song. Tracks like "Year of the Tiger" create their own strange worlds, and the album strings them together on those shared moods, themes and ideas.

I like the way St. Vincent does things. Her voice is great: at times vulnerable, defiant, or prophetic. On many tracks, like "Northern Lights" and "Cheerleader," she reaches positively operatic levels of expression. The music sets a messy, often abrasive, or else grandiose and imposing landscape on a solid basis of clean pulsing funk. What St. Vincent has here is a very driven desire to have things her way, to break free from the trappings of the norm.

As I said, I'm always less about what an album says than how it says it. Whatever this album says, it does so with extreme personality. There's no mistaking it for anything else. It reminds me of Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks' Mirror Traffic, the way it creates a language of its own. If it's enough to recommend an album because it is interesting just to hear the way it all fits together, then I can do that here. But luckily, this isn't just a curious piece of auteur indie pop. It's also a damn good piece of music that is a joy to listen to the whole way through. It can be a bit alienating, but gratifying to sit down and figure out. Those various pieces combine into a full statement worth getting to know.

Buy this album now! iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Elbow: Build a Rocket Boys!

I first heard this album about a year ago, when it had just been released. Because I had just reviewed Seldom-Seen Kid, I thought it was wise to wait a while before really digging into it, but also it wasn't as immediately gripping as that album. The opening song, "The Birds" is a methodical, cerebral 8-minute build that sets the tone for the album: one of reflection and rehabilitation of the past. It's much lighter and friendlier than its predecessor, and there's nothing as immediately pleasurable as "Grounds For Divorce," but Build a Rocket Boys has a few secrets of its own. In listening to, and preparing to review, this album, I reaffirmed a few things:

1) Reviewing a follow-up album is always a crappy assignment because your opinion is going to be informed by that earlier one, and as I preached in my Arctic Monkeys/Strokes review way back, that is both useful and not. I now know what I like about Elbow, and I have to try not to be upset that this isn't literally Seldom-Seen Kid Part II.
2) I'm so glad I don't work on a deadline.

It may be useful to this review to note that that earlier album was bittersweet. Vocalist Guy Garvey sounded like a poet self-destructing with grief: the lyrics are loaded with pointed, critical observations about the narrator himself and the world around him, referring to himself as "a horse that's good for glue" on "Starlings," drinking himself to death on the Earth-shattering "Grounds For Divorce," and generally being wary of the world's promises. The album's key scheme of beauty was the disappointment after the death of a loved one, as made chillingly clear on the album closer "Friend of Ours," a last toast, a sobering walk home.

There are no such hard feelings on Build a Rocket Boys. It's all enthusiasm and hope, sometimes bordering on syrupy and sentimental, but I think never going over the edge with it. Positivity isn't a feeling I usually associate with great music, but Garvey & Co know they don't need to wallow in misery for their art. When they memorialize youth in "Lippy Kids" you can buy into the delicate piano and soft harmonies because of lyrics like "Stealing booze and hourlong hungry kisses / And nobody knows me at home anymore." The soft, strummy "Jesus is a Rochdale Girl" sounds like Nick Drake on lithium, buoyed by electric piano. Even when he howls "I miss your stupid face / I miss your bad advice" on "The Night Will Always Win" it feels goodhearted and earnest. The previous album found faults to be angry about even in good things, this album is finding the better nature of the bad. "The River," a somber tune that seems to draw the album toward its close (despite three tracks following it) sounds like last call at a jazz joint, with the pianist wearily pecking away at the keys and Garvey relating a story of grief and release.

The music itself is affable, suited to the mood. Dig the stomps, claps and singalongs on "With Love," between chipper strings. "High Ideals" falls into a colonial groove, reminiscent of some of those off-kilter tunes on the earlier album, like "Starlings" or "The Bones Of You." The album teases its finale with the teeming, overflowing "Open Arms," haunts with a reprise of "The Birds," then soothes you at last with "Dear Friends" ("You are angels and drunks ... You are the stars I navigate home by.")

If the album doesn't have a "Grounds For Divorce," it at least has a "Neat Little Rows." Something has to be said for a band's capacity to rock out once in a while, and if all Elbow ever did was create modest little crafts, I might not think so highly of this album. No, headbanging isn't the top order of business, but "Neat Little Rows" is one you can really bob along to, while retaining a weighty vibe. The song combines insightful lyrics with a powerful musical mode.

The album feels whole, perhaps even moreso than its predecessor. It hits those big, bombastic moments (on "Neat Little Rows" and a few others) and those quiet intimate ones. Its songs are all complete thoughts, usually with clever lyrics that invoke a great deal of good feeling, nostalgia, wistfulness, insight, and subtlety. The band is both skilled and talented working in this mode, and Garvey's vocals can hit the epic and the personal, all with charm and affability. And this isn't an album likely to upset anyone, so why does it feel like a dangerous career move, after the comparatively-upsetting Seldom-Seen Kid?

I'll tell you why, and it's what impresses me most. I don't love to make assumptions, but the audience for this kind of soft, good-feeling music, generally doesn't deal with off-kilter rhythms or obscure lyricism well. There's a market for simple, non-challenging positivity, but Elbow isn't a safe bet for them because there's probably too much going on on this album, too much to think about. They probably can't handle the nuance in Garvey's words or Elbow's music, in spite of "Lippy Kids" appearing in trailers for movies like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This isn't easy music. But the market for such difficult music isn't looking for mature, reflective comfort, and the market that can handle it might find it too precious. I don't know what the sales figures on this album were, but the only demographic I think really looking for this is looking for a specific level of quality without any specific notions about what music is supposed to sound like. There's a conflict on this album between the easy feelings it hints at and the conflicted music that it presents. And again, as good as "Neat Little Rows" is, it won't hook you like "Grounds For Divorce" did me.

As I'm fond of saying, I don't have to talk about this album if I don't like it. I do. I fought with it for nearly a year before really opening my heart to it and realizing it hit the sweet spot for me. They have a specific sound on this album, even if and especially because every song doesn't sound the same.

I think of Paul McCartney in 1967-68. Here we have the summer of love, the revolutionary Sgt. Pepper/White Album era, a time when late-60's youth is finally asserting its voice and identity, and the Beatles were nominally the vanguard of that... but Paul was already looking backward, writing songs like "When I'm 64" and "She's Leaving Home," sympathizing with his elders, and "Your Mother Should Know" and "Honey Pie," looking back at bygone years at a time when he should have been raucous and iconoclastic. It was somehow even more subversive to combine the two rather than set them in opposition, and it worked. Guy Garvey does things the way he wants them, not the way he is told he ought to, and is probably creating a lasting body of work because of it.

I love music, and I love changing my mind about music, learning to love something I hadn't been thrilled by the first time around. I love searching for that hook and learning to take something on its own terms. Whether I truly "get" where this album is coming from, or someday will, is less important to me than the fact that now, a year after I first heard it, I love to listen to it.


Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Dinosaur Bones: My Divider

I love a good band name. It helps me gain a handle on how to think about their work. Dinosaur Bones evokes something huge, looming, intimidating... yet fragile and raw. Some great albums are made of a bunch of great songs. Other albums are great because they encompass a whole sound that just works together terrifically. Not all the tracks on "My Divider" are individual gems, and yet from track 1 to track 11 it is an engrossing, wonderful listen.

They play that titanic sound for all it's worth. The opening track, "Making Light" is led by Ben Fox's moaning, vulnerable vocals, toughened by a brick wall of guitar/bass and percussion. The band often sounds more like it's writing scores than rock songs: "Sharks in the Sand," "Life in Trees" and "Point of Pride" are all mesmerizingly moody in their own ways, evoking things like hopelessness and despair without ever seeming like a contrived attempt at gloom. This feels less like a deliberate attempt to drive into the melancholy than something huge an inevitable coming up and swallowing you whole. That the music can go from the extreme to the minimal at a turn helps. Their arrangements are tight, but they follow the flow rather than setting down an a-b-a-c-c pop structure. Their solos burrow deep into the brain and chest.

I say Dinosaur Bones is uninterested in conventional structure. That's not to say the songs sound like meandering jams - they sound like songs. And some of them sound are very much real songs. The petulant, punkish "Royalty," sounds a fair bit like Elvis Costello or Tom Petty (okay, neither of them were punk, but let's take a broad interpretation.) "Hunters" is a particularly dynamic moment, one of the most cinematic tracks in scope, culminating in an explosive rock-out. "Bombs in the Night" is like a panic alarm, with its weirdly offbeat drums, air raid strumming guitars, and metal-detector synth. It has my favourite refrain on the disc ("Cell phones keep going off like bombs in the night." which definitely sounds like a phrase worthy of hooking a song around.) For me, the blockbusters are "NYE" and "Ice Hotels." Both are utterly gorgeous, standout compositions. "Ice Hotels" is shimmering and soft, yet crystal clear, like starlight glinting off arctic snow. Fox's voice is such a desperate whimper here, and the instruments bleed in and out behind him. All through the album, the vocals are as much a means to convey lyrics as they are part of the sonic atmosphere of the band. Fox's singing voice isn't technically studied, but it is beautifully real. He has that sort of "perishing indie rock" voice like Thom Yorke or Julian Casablancas, where there's real expression, in where it's restrained and where it cuts loose.

"NYE" lives and dies on its opening drumbeat. Lucas Fredette sometimes sounds like a drum machine set to "John Bonham" - precise, yet intuitive and uncaged. I don't know anything about how any instruments work, but the stuff he does with hi-hats, I think, is just terrific. The song uses the time-honored prog/arena-rock tactic of marrying a low-key, personal verse with an anthemic chorus. It's wistful and evocative but nonspecific in a great way. And all these songs are presented with a larger-than-life, all-consuming wall of sound that nevertheless is made of only a few discernible parts (guitar/bass, drums, synth, vocal.) Dinosaur Bones: You see all the parts, and they're huge.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Arkells: Michigan Left

Michigan Left, the second album from Arkells, is a lot easier for me to love than their first. I reviewed that one, Jackson Square, early on in the site's life, saying that I loved a lot of the songs on it, but a number of the songs were skippable to me, including "Pulling Punches" which was a radio hit before I ever picked up the album. At the time, I was experimenting with how much negativity I wanted to include in my reviews, because although I was being honest, I was also nitpicking some. Even the songs I didn't like on that album had their virtues, they just weren't ones that resonated with me. I hope you bought it. "John Lennon" is a particularly excellent song, as are all the highlights from that one.

The good news about Michigan Left is that it's a better album. Maybe the best moments aren't as brilliant, and it doesn't give as broad a view of their abilities, but it's an excellent set of songs from head to toe. On this album, the band fulfills their promise of "black and blue eyed soul" by infusing their sound with a easygoing beat and a heavy stomp. Most of the songs are actually based more around bass riffs and drumbeats, accentuated (rather than led) by by the pianos and guitars. That's not to say they're not there, and not well used... there's a subtlety to the sound that is really welcoming and invites repeated listens, usually a simple ringing and progression splashing in and out, swirling around the vocals. It makes the album into good white-boy soul, a guarded sincerity not usually executed in radio rock these days. It helps that Max Kerman has a good basic voice: he doesn't strain his boundaries too much, but he forms a good foundation, with those drums and bass, on tracks like "Book Club," "Where U Goin" (with its neat call-and answer lyric that laps itself.) The album is loaded with great hooky choruses, including the title track's "Decorations will be wasted..." bit. Just about every track offers similar pleasure: "Kiss Cam" and "Bloodlines" feature sing-along choruses, matching sprightly melodies with reflective or weighty content. This is coffee-house sized stadium rock. Intimate yet huge.

Occasionally, they even go big, with the moody quiet-loud of "One Foot Out The Door" and the fiery loud-loud of "Whistleblower," which are standout tracks stylistically. The album concludes with a warm, soft-focus tune called "Agent Zero," suggesting we all "turn the lights down low, turn the lights down low." Quite nice.

My favourite tracks are "Coffee" and "On Paper." "Coffee" has a whole lowdown dark Film Noir feel. It begins with a stuttering guitar intro, which takes A Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran" and wrings it for all it's worth. "On Paper," in addition to having one of those great hooky refrains ("I can't keep up, always playing catchup...") exemplifies one of the best aspects of the band, going back to their first album: their songwriting. They're not just capable of writing damn catchy hooks or measuring and balancing all the different instruments to make an effective sonic experience. They also craft great stories, usually by way of setting a scene, outlining specific characters, moods, and problems without seeming like they are too wrapped up in telling a story to forgo the formal framework of their songs: Kerman's vocal performance goes a long way to helping this.

In essence, what I'm saying is that Arkells have it all on this album. It sounds good, it makes you feel good, and it feels like a real accomplishment for the group. It's a great rock and roll album for people that have lost faith that there's anything left to do in rock and roll.

Buy this album now: Itunes Canada // Amazon.com
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Noel Gallagher: High Flying Birds

No matter what I thought about Oasis, it was a successful rock band that is still talked about today (although much moreso in the UK.) A while back I addressed the fact that although I wasn't a fan of their work by and large, I could still admit when a song of theirs was good. I have their two-disc greatest hits and find myself skipping a lot. Regardless my feelings about those other Oasis songs, Noel Gallagher is someone whose songwriting talents are considerable. He's internalized so much classic pop rock that he seems to compose his records with his eye closed and one hand behind his back. It's easy for him to do, I'm saying.

The sound of High Flying Birds isn't the sound of genius at work, I don't think. It's not innovation in progress. It's the work of a really good songwriter knowing what works and what he wants to play: not only that, but it seems to dovetail well with what his fans want and expect from him. He does it so consistently and with such ease that I don't find myself skipping around much, although I do always let my ears perk up when I know "The Death of You And Me" is coming near. Even the most basic-seeming tracks, like "Dream On" or "(I Wanna Live in a Dream In My) Record Machine" offer anthemic, strummy pleasures. If not all the songs quite stand out, at least they all offer a little ingredient that endears me, like the swaggering "So long, baby, buh-bye" chorus on "(Standing On) The Strong Beach" or the oceanic late-Beatlesness of "Stop The Clocks." Most have really catchy, toe-tapping choruses, the insidious kind you find yourself humming to yourself. "If I Had a Gun..." has some of the best lyrics I've heard the usually-incomprehensible Noel has cranked out.

"The Death Of You And Me," though, is the moment of greatness here. Although I made note of Noel being fine to fall back on his apparently-natural ability, that's the one that feels like it took some doing and it paid off. If it doesn't totally break from his Oasis pattern it certainly feels like a development of its own, a slight development but an effective one. It swirls like gypsy music, swells with horns (which recur throughout the album, along with plenty of other sonic accents) and has a chorus that really commands attention rather than settling in the back of the mind. The whole exercise was worth it if only for that piece.

There's nothing shocking here. It's what you might expect from a solo album from the main creative voice of Oasis, the same basic pop chords and word salad lyrics and vague-feelery. But Noel is no longer the brash, world-beating young man of Oasis' heyday. This sounds like an album by someone who's been there and back, who knows his skillset and has settled in nicely to it. It offers a lot of the same goodies as the Oasis songs I like, like "Wonderwall" or "Lyla," but toned down considerably. Because Noel is handling the vocals, it sounds a good bit more subdued and down-to-Earth. His voice sounds less rock star and more coffee shop than his brother. So the music comes off as an interesting mutation between the arena and the coffee shop: epic yet grounded. Dreamy and Earthy. Familiar yet fresh.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA Flying Birds // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

My Morning Jacket: Circuital

There's a spiritual simpleness to this album. In my past experience with My Morning Jacket, they tend toward the elaborate, the psychedelic, the showy: tracks like "I'm Amazed" and "Evil Urges" that demonstrate unbridled enthusiasm for creation: imagination and technical wizardry. Here the boldness is toned down, but I still think the album carries that inventiveness. They've managed to learn how to get a lot of mileage out of a lot less.

Even the brassier, bolder songs on this album have a modesty to them. Something like "Holdin' On To Black Metal" or "First Light" announces itself as special but still feels grounded. "The Day Is Coming" feels like a hymn or a sermon, but still never needs to puff itself up. Both it and the opening track, "Victory Dance" use their sheared-down sound, standing on towering drums, to sound huge without needing to slap on a bunch of decorations.

The heart of the album is in some of the quieter moments. "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" is delivered with an earnest vulnerability, really carrying the lyrics of "Going where there ain't no fear, going where the spirit is near... where the living is easy, and the people are kind, with its picked guitars sitting on top of light strings. "Outta My System" is probably the strongest lyric on the album, where songwriter Jim "Yim Yames" James details his growth from a drug-taking, car-stealing thug to a responsible, married adult. He speaks fondly of his former self, not passing judgment, understanding he did what he felt was right at the time but wouldn't behave that way anymore. The way the song is delivered demonstrates the perspective, and manages to engage the issue of growing up without outright saying "Kids are dumb" or "Adults are lame." A lot of the album takes this serene attitude toward the idea of growing and changing, like "Movin' Out," which marvels at the opportunity to create a new life for oneself.

The finest moment of the album is probably the title track, which manages to sustain itself for 7-plus minutes without dragging or needing to be built out of suites (not unprecedented but not common.) It starts un-peeling its rhythmic riff as James croons, building to its apex as the moan becomes a howl.

In general, the album has a relaxed, easygoing vibe to it, perfect for latter-day hippies. "Slow Slow Tune" with its ringing guitars and staggered drums, is an ultimate slow jam. I think it's healthy to have something like this in your musical diet, even with my general preference for exciting, lively tunes. It helps clear the mind a bit, to unwind. It's not one I find myself excitedly pushing on people, because I'm concerned they'll listen to the generally mellow tones and murmured lyrics, and go "So?" But when you sit down with it, given a chance, it'll speak to you. One of those great albums that matches its thoughts with its way of speaking, big and small at once.

Buy this album now: iTunes Canada // iTunes USA // Amazon.ca // Amazon.com

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Mirror Traffic

There was a time, before I ever started this blog, when you probably wouldn't have gotten me to listen to this album. Hell, there was a long period after it started when I still wouldn't have known what to think of it. I had this notion that "being weird" and "being good" were entirely separate things, and that while I had a healthy respect for the odds and ends of the alt-rock world, I didn't consider it my thing. Times change and tastes change and your ability to determine what is good hopefully grows and expands. While it will never be a slam dunk recommending an album like this, once your tastes grow to include it, you feel like you and other people that see the appeal have a connection, and you can sense when someone will like this album, and that they'll get a lot out of it.

There's a period after you first hear a piece of music where you have to get used to it. Some hit you immediately and you look forward to the next time you hear it. Some take a while to grow on you. And some sink into the back of your mind so that you know you've heard something but you can't quite call it up, and even if you remember liking it you just don't have any basis to remember why. The next time you hear it is pretty much like the first, but this time you're really listening so you're more likely to retain it. Mirror Traffic stayed in this phase for more re-listens than any album I've picked up since I started. I kept getting to the end of the album and thinking "Okay... what did I hear just now?" I liked it, but there was so much of it that I just couldn't put it all back together in my mind.

It's very much a collage. Songs don't always seem like they belong next to each other. Other songs go off on tangents, jazzy experimental solos or bizarre middle-sections that seem grafted from a totally different songs. It goes from melodic to rough so quickly and so often, that disorientation becomes the norm. Helping this along is Malkmus' ear for jangly alt-pop, like "Stick Figures in Love" or "Forever 28," and his vocals, which constantly sound exasperated, impatient and uncertain, helping the songs into those oddball directions, which he pursues on a whim. And then snaps back. Sometimes he strains at the top of his range, deliberately breaking his voice into a pubescent creep or a wavering wheeze. No, he's not the greatest vocalist ever, but he definitely knows how to write for his voice. Along with other moments, the chorus of "Long Hard Book" hits what sounds like a deliberately sour note. And instead of thinking about how it sounds like he messed up, you wonder what he means by going the other way.

The patchwork definitely works, because even if you don't dig the entire thing, you can be in awe of how it all sits together. That's why the album is my favourite size of musical product to review. There are parts you like and parts you don't, and you could discard the ones you don't, or you can ponder how they all sit together.

At times, it does morph comfortably into pleasure listening: "Senator" is a great raucous affair, as is the garage-moded "Tune Grief." "Brain Gallop" has a hook of "There's not much left inside my tank today," which you might find yourself humming over, and slower tunes like "Fall Away" and "Asking Price" find a real sweet spot, a deep breath in the middle of the chaos. I really am burying the lead, in a way, by not praising the individual songs and musicianship more. It's just so interesting to me the way they all form a whole.

While I'd rather not temper my praise, I still have to note that it won't be for everyone. It does its own thing, and it doesn't need anyone's approval. Someone disliking it doesn't mean they have bad taste, and someone liking it might not even indicate they have good taste. But it does indicate a certain type of listener, one that you might be without even knowing.

Buy this album now! iTunes // Amazon.com
// Amazon.ca

Childish Gambino: Camp

I'm going to begin 2012 by restating a simple fact that underscored every review I did last year: I don't really know shit about shit. Okay, I have a pretty decent wealth of knowledge of music and I try to apply it properly in determining what music is good and why. It'd still say that's more based in intuition, and there are serious gaps in my knowledge. I admitted early last year that you wouldn't see a lot of hip hop on this site, and that is not because I have something against the genre. I simply don't believe I'm a trustworthy voice in determining when hip hop is good. I like some rap, I hate some rap, at the end of the day I don't feel as comfortable telling people whether to buy the Kanye/Jay-Z album as I am telling them to buy an Arcade Fire. And even then I'm not sure I "know" anything... more reviewers would do well to consider this fact. Anyway.

What's more is the unavoidable fact that it's entirely possible I only bought this album because of Community. I'd like to convince myself otherwise, that I wouldn't spend $10 on a CD just because I like a performers comedic acting. It was definitely the reason I first watched his videos on YouTube, but I'd like to think that if he weren't any good, if I didn't like what I saw, if it was just a novelty, I wouldn't have kept watching and sought out the album when it was released. So cards on the table, there's that.

But I don't listen to anything I don't think is good, and I definitely don't waste time talking about it if I don't think people should buy it. And to my ears, Donald Glover's plastic debut, after years of self-releasing by download, is definitely worthy.

The man puts his considerable skills to work. He builds a complicated persona by exploring one aspect of his life on one track, then turning back to another on the next. There's a lot of great thematic exploration here about sexual politics, identity, the black experience, fame and self-consciousness. Of course, there are also more puns and references than you can possibly account for and more references to body-juices than the entire Aerosmith songbook.

One strategy to review the album would be to go down the lyrics, to see if his words ring true, if he represents and keeps it real or whatever they're saying these days: if it's all a front or if he's really 2 legit to quit (I should stop.) But I'll remind you, I really don't know shit. I don't know shit about where Childish is coming from, about the projects or the black experience or the perils of fame or even getting too much pussy (remember, I write about music on the internet.) What sells it for me is the indomitably-clever (or occasionally so-unclever-it's-clever) lyric sheet, doing a great job of finding multiple ways into an issue, usually the various conflicting ways it might affect him. It would be time-consuming to list all the lyrics that affected me - despite not sharing the background - but you can't help but nod in understanding when you hear "Culture shock at barber shops cause I ain't hood enough / We all look the same to the cops, ain't that good enough?"

Helping things along is the composition, helped by Ludwig Goransson's production, bathing the beats in a pumped-up anything-goes atmosphere, always befitting the tone of the song but never degenerating into abrasive noise or, in the case of the more delicate tracks like "Kids," schmaltz. There is a level of craft in this album that deserves commendation no matter what. And sometimes it feels like it's justly drawing attention to itself, other times it seems perfectly modest and self-effacing. It has a lot of the elements that made me love the Foster the People album last year, which is that music can sound like anything these days. A lot of the tracks, like "Heartbeat" and "Sunrise" are really made by the musical component.

But I'll tell you what. At the end of my first listen, I hadn't really drank in a lot of the lyrical content, and I couldn't quite separate all the backing tracks to see what was good. As much as a first-listen is ever adequate to draw an opinion, I was really unsure until we got to the end of "That Power," which is the absolute crux of the album, devoting one component to Gambino's flow-and-reference style, which is excellent, and then neatly using Glover's writing talents to neatly sum the album up with a spoken word anecdote that ties together the entire concept of building an identity and determining who you are in the world and how to communicate with others, and growing up and going back and just... the whole damn thing in like a 5 minute story about a bus trip. It's an excellent moment that ended any doubts and made me want to go back.

So who am I when I try to write about this album? Still some white kid from the suburbs, just like most of the people probably buying this disc. But I'm also one of the only (perhaps the only) person to appreciate both the "I want a full house Full House / They said 'You got it dude'" and "It's 400 Blows to these Truffaut Niggas", so there's that. Glover's clearly not making this album for anybody but himself, but he's also using weighty topics like race and identity as potent material for his rhymes. Or perhaps, he's using the attention he would be getting anyway to try desperately to say something important. I don't know, again, I don't know anything at all. All I know is that I listen, and I like it.

It reached me. It did. It's a blast to listen to and it connects despite my lack of a basis in experience to connect with a lot of Childish's material. Music is after all communication, and if he's reached this far, he's done good. I can't say any more than this: you know what I like, you know what you like, and the point of this site is to figure out where they overlap.

Shout out to Rap Genius for helping me attempt to cope with how much I was missing in this album.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca

Sloan: The Double Cross

I have a soft-spot for power pop. I'm a sucker for a good, bouncy yet forceful guitar. It's not a type of music that is going to be lauded often for its artistic potential, but it's the sort of thing I keep going back for more of, as you might note when taking a glance at this blog. There's a lot of guitar rock here, and a lot of it isn't the ornate, extreme kind, nor the straightforward, macho kind. Sloan blends sensitive prettiness with an action-packed excitability. This is the kind of record that might slip through the cracks, but is very rewarding for those who listen.

There's a lot of joy in the making of music on this record, from the motor-mouthed, foot-stompers like "Follow the Leader," and "Shadow of Love," to precious beauties like "The Answer Was You" and "Green Gardens, Cold Montreal." "Unkind" is the archetypal stadium rocker. It's very much like a Canadian band, not to mention the clever lyrics of Sloan, to hook a blockbuster like that, with its purely archetypal riff, around the ambivalent phrase "Don't know why you've got to cross that line ... You can be so kind sometimes / And you can be unkind sometimes."

A number of true highlights like that one are buffered by ear candy. "The Answer Way You" has a sincerity that offsets the sarcasm of the opening track, with its cooing vocals (all the members take the mic at some point, but I sadly don't know who's who) and majestic instrument work. "Green Gardens, Cold Montreal" is built on a warm acoustic guitar and a shivering vocal. It comes across like warm breath on an icy day. "Your Daddy Will Do" is even impressive amongst this company, with its clevery story-and-message setting a twangy guitar against a pitch-perfect funk-rock backbeat, including a strangely dreamy Beach Boys like middle eight.

"Beverly Terrace" is a song with a lot going on it, from great lyrics like "She wears sunscreen in the middle of winter / To remind herself of summers that were kind" to its quote/repurposing of "Shadow of Love," redoing it as a duel between vocalists: "I know, I know / But knowing doesn't make it untrue," one of those wonderful contradictions Sloan's lyrics often touch on. In general, the album is concerned with the way one feeling or situation transforms into another, whjether through betrayal, redemption, or realization. "Traces" revs up like a hot rod, and gets liftoff on those fucking organs, I love it, with a "Life goes on and on / Appreciate it" chorus that's hard not to dig. It sets the stage for the delicate closer, "Laying So Low," which staggers into bed and says goodnight. Love it.

Even less notable tracks are goosed up with gorgeous harmonies, instrumental skills, clever lyrics, and/or any of a dozen tools in the band's kit. Like the Sheepdogs' album I reviewed last week, it's meant to be listened to from front to back, and makes for a rewarding listen without playing any unfair tricks. More or less the tracks stand on their own, but are sequenced so terrifically, especially at transitional points, you can't help but want to keep going. Dan Mangan, in response to my post about his song "Post-War Blues," (#humblebrag) told me I should keep paying attention to whole albums, so that the format doesn't die. It's always great to see a whole piece laid out and put together with care.

I keep coming back to guitar rock, a format that is sometimes considered passe and dumb, because the most popular acts in the genre tend to be lame. But it's what I grew up on, and it'll never go away, because without even rewriting the rules there are always rewarding possibilities. It's an extremely rich, expressive way of making music, and it is a language that is not hard for a listener to understand and appreciate. If there's one thing the guys in Sloan probably hate, it's a cliche: it's the one thing I don't think they're good at doing.

The guys in Sloan have been hanging around as a band for twenty years now, and have proven themselves masters of their craft ever since "Underwhelmed" many years ago. Their love for their craft shines through, and you can sense that they're still, at heart, teenage music nerds. You see from these 12 tracks what eight capable hands, with a working knowledge of the ins and outs of pop music history, can do with the basic elements. It's a no frills album that is secretly pretty showy.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca

Viva Brother: Famous First Words

The last album I reviewed was Radiohead's very highly regarded OK Computer. I would like very much for every album I review to be a masterwork of that order. It would be nice if every album was as affecting as most people (including myself) find that one. But of course, not everything is on the same level, and so as music critics we have to face the facts that you're going to get a lot more Viva Brothers than Radioheads.

So what is Viva Brother? A very clear throwback to Britpop. It's very un-selfconscious about it, too, dropping away the meaning and depth (or appearance of meaning and depth) and seriousness of Oasis and Blur. That sorta-familiar sound is cleansed of mannerisms unique to either band and boiled down to hooks and rhythms, a twangy accent and some clever lyrics rather than soul-searching or socially-critical ones. There's a lot of soaring choruses and refrains, handclaps and backing vocals, chants, "oooh", "ohs" and "ows," that sort of thing.

It may not be terrifically revolutionary, but it's certainly fun, light-hearted and catchy. This is music that will put a spring in your step, and never drags. The 34-minute running time is just about enough time to enjoy hearing the same song in 11 variations. It's really visceral, and you get the feeling that it was really fun for these guys to work out their riffs and hooks. There's a lot of spirit here. I bet the crowd at a Viva Brother show has more fun than a lot of bands.

Here, they're not aiming for high art. They want to bring a strong, kinetic energy to their record, and they do. It's damned consistent, none of the tracks stands out as better than the others (although the closer, "Time Machine" might boast the best chorus, and "Darling Buds of May" may be the very most fun,) and none of them sounds worse. If you hear one song by them, you can imagine whether you'd like a whole album of it. And that decision will probably say a fair bit about you as a listener and what you expect out of music. Admittedly, it'll be more for the younger set, who haven't had their fill of fun, active power pop yet, and need a reason to move around. It's also perfectly acceptable not to like the album, for those of us who've already had their Britpop, as well as their Weezer, their Sloan, their Arctic Monkeys, or even more recent (and yeah, probably better) acts like Locksley and Hollerado. But still, it's in fused with enthusiasm and excitement, and there's not a moment on this album that doesn't hit the spot for me.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca

The Strokes: Angles

It is, I think, physically impossible to review the latest Strokes album without mentioning how awesome Is This It was. I would love to be reviewing that album, as I think even ten years later it stands as a shining example of rock in the 21st century. But time has passed, the Strokes have released a few albums of varying quality, and returned with their fourth effort, which forges in a different direction. It is different from Is This It, that's for sure. And I, personally, would never see "not being that album" as a flaw that would keep me from enjoying it. While that's a valid approach, it's one that has been done every way possible. I'm too interested in talking about this particular album to drag that one back up.

There are a lot of criteria you can consider when judging an album. Some have a particular statement they want to make in songwriting form. Some have a sound to explore across various tracks. Some just have a few bona fide hits/highlights and the filler is merely not bad. The latter approach, I think, is an underrated way of scoring an album, and it has been the case with a lot of albums I've loved this year. I know where my favourites are, and I'm happy to listen to the tracks in between to get to them. Among Angles' ten tracks, we have four, five, maybe six real highlights, and the in-between tracks never feel tacked on, boring, bland, rote, phoned-in or weak. This is an album of definite craft, which manifests even when a real catchy hook is absent.

It begins as strongly as anything I've heard all year, with "Machu Picchu," crystalline rhythm establish the album's dark dancefloor aesthetic. It builds to one of many great Casablancas choruses on the album, where he shows off he's not just a garage punk screamer, he can do a good Jim Morrison croon, showing a cocky swagger with a poetic distance. This is followed by a crashing guitar echo that reminds me of running lines on the school gym floor. It gets your pulse going. "Under Cover of Darkness" has the band at real top form, with a spiky opening riff unlike anything I can recall (truly "angular,") and swinging like the bigger brother of the earlier "Someday," with its soaring chorus, those scribbling choked-up riffs, and that solo which does as any good solo should, takes the driver's seat and seems to sing the song in microcosm without words. I can't praise the guitars on this album enough, nor the drums, which crash and bang and cut loose when they need to, but also restrain and keep a tight funk beat when called upon.

Speaking of funk, there's "Taken for a Fool," which is an otherworldly, shadowy bass workout, one of the most focused and driving individual tracks on the set. All the pieces seem to come together, and it's a really gripping tune that can easily get people worked into a frenzy. It sits between the buzzing, muttering "You're So Right" and the moaning "Games." There's a definite sound on the album, with the band sounding almost inhuman, disaffected, beaten down, defeated and robotic. It's played out through these tracks between the "highlights," and sometimes within them, since music is often a balance between the two (read: rhythm and melody, doy.) Then sometimes, they switch back to too-human versions of themselves, bristling with life, rage and romance. "Two Kinds of Happiness" is a highlight in this regard, which I could see some disagreeing on. It starts out bouncy, but with a weary vocal, until Julian's voice seems to get completely overtaken by his bandmates sending out a soaring, anthemic, almost U2-like (but in a good way) score. It also has some of the most thoughtful lyrics ("One's devotion, one's just a ring,") even for a band known for being clever and observational.

There's also "Gratisfaction," with its "Never gonna get my love" riff, which is among the more pop moments for a band that has always delighted in blurring the lines between songwriting and pure rock. It's a groove you can take home with you. It's glitzy, and as with many Strokes songs, it seems to be about the darkness lurking beneath. This is preceded by the shimmering, passive aggressive quiet of "Call Me Back" (opening lyric: "Wait time is the worst / I can hardly sit.") which never builds the way you'd hope, but has a really nice moment in its "I don't know why I came down ... I hear a voice..." refrain, in a way romanticizing impatience. It's a fair bit more experimental than even the rest of the album. It's another track that indicates the band's interest in creating moods beyond merely making barnstorming rockers... an interest that was indicated, frankly, by the opening track of their first album. Its gentle conclusion leads perfectly to the crash-and-bang of "Gratisfaction," showing just how key sequencing can be.

The band then lays it all on the table with the ruthless, ominous "Metabolism," whose backing track reminds me of a Bowser battle from a Mario game, and a mean vocal. The song itself is not as great as other tracks as a composition, but like "Call Me Back," and others is a triumph of performance, shows the breadth and strength of their abilities. "Life Is Simple In The Moonlight" ends it on a high note (although even the albums "low notes" are pretty damn good,) playing an damn effective "quit-loud" dynamic for all it's worth, between vulnerability and toughness, freedom and restraint. Most of these songs don't sound like Is This It, but most of them manage to be quite awesome. They go for a setting and mood, and explore the appeal within them: then come the hooks and solos.

The more I listen to it, and the more I think and write about it, the more I like it. The Strokes are magicians, distracting you with songs that seem normal, but hit you in ways similar, lesser ones on the radio don't. They not only know their craft, their strengths and their scope, they're interested in expanding outward. They're a bit like 1970's David Bowie now: you feel like you know what they're up to, but they have hidden reserves, tricks up their sleeves. The point, which I always appreciate in my rock & roll, is that there is a point: they're reaching for something, rather than resting on what's expected, and they do it marvelously.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca

Foo Fighters: Wasting Light

I don't expect this to be one of my deeper, more thoughtful reviews. Good hard guitar rock isn't meant to be examined, but felt. It either grabs you or it doesn't, and while there are obvious traits a great rock album should exhibit, it's ultimately that ineffable, visceral feeling that determines whether it has done its job properly. It's funny. Biased as I am, bad rock is as painful to me as a bad example of any genre, and every generation goes through its uninspired radio hits. But a good rock album like this feels like a real achievement. Not because it's groundbreaking -- in fact, there's a surplus of precedent for an album like Wasting Light -- but because it manages to work its influence into something that is both new and classic-sounding. The miracle of Wasting Light isn't that there's a rock album that sounds like this in 2011. It's that just two years ago, Foo Fighters released their greatest hits covering a decade and a half of recording. That seemed like a pretty concise summing up of their career and underlined how consistent they've been, how nicely "I'll Stick Around" (actually omitted from the Greatest Hits) or "Monkey Wrench" sits next to "Best Of You." The miracle is that two years later they release an album of original material that creates an equally enjoyable listening experience in and of itself -- that takes all the best parts of the Foo Fighters sound and works them for all they're worth.

It's perfectly conventional and that's perfectly all right. Awesome, in fact, because when all the gears are in place, the rock machine is an incredible one to behold. Kurt Cobain mused (bluntly and not wrongly) that every song was just "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo, chorus." Grohl is a fair bit more nuanced about it, knowing exactly what riffs best introduce each songs, how to use a prechorus as a teaser to the chorus, and occasionally, write a really good lyric. The dude seems, on this album to be a veritable fountain of hooks, and they're damn sharp. They hit that center of your brain that makes you want to absorb the song, and keep listening to the album. And then the album performs the enviable feat of never letting up, over 11 songs that never cause the listener's interest to wane, from the opening chunk of "Bridge Burning" to the last note of "Walk." I'm often wary of songwriting that seems to obviously hooky, but to be fair, Grohl & Co. seem to come by it honestly. the stretch of "You got a lotta neee-eeee-eeee-eee-eeeerve" in "Back & Forth" uses the kind of descent (or some musical theory term) you would avoid if you were trying to write a hit, but it grabs exactly how it's supposed to. In fact, I find it interesting that for radio singles, they led with a couple of the less obvious hits. "Rope" is pretty manic, with its skittering guitars, droning verse and panicked chorus. "Walk," the second single, starts off seeming like it might be either a ballad or a rewrite of "Learn to Fly," but instead of rising and falling, it just keeps rising, until everything seems to collapse in on itself due to excessive rockitude, and Grohl's voice becomes a wail to rival Steven Tyler or Axl Rose as the needle gets buried in the red. They were both unlikely commercial singles, but have real character, and in the context of the album, stand out even further than the more hooky, catchy, ones.

The scream, of course, had previously been on display on the breakneck "White Limo," itself sounding largely like an earlier Queens of the Stone Age track. These, with the bluesy "I Should Have Known," provide alternative reference points for the character of the band and the album, beyond "able to produce catchy-as-fuck hard rock songs at the drop of a hat." When these moments come out, they overpower the surrounding tracks, but wind up as accessories to the real story of the album which is, as I've previously mentioned, all those fucking hooks!

Grohl's voice has become one of the great rock vocals. He can sing just enough, he can grumble and scream. He's got both the badass swagger and the vulnerability, and he sounds wiser with age but not jaded or exhausted. Many, maybe even all of the songs, deal with the passage of time, letting go of the past, forgiving, forgetting, regretting, lamenting, and looking toward the future. It's mature, but not stodgy, and would be a great album for a teenager to get his hands on, but an older listener will find it just right too. It carries a weight, and works as a great example of how good rock can sound when you take care over it, when you have a good intuition with your instruments. Grohl the former drummer can structure a song according to its rhythm, and has a great bunch of bandmates carrying it out; Taylor Hawkins may in fact be the best drummer in rock. But I don't know much about drumming. Or guitarring, for that matter. All I know is that certain flourishes in "Dear Rosemary" and "Arlandria" (perhaps the most masterful track on the piece) could probably be traced to that, and as a result give the album a lot of heart and soul to back up the world-beating riffage.

So... why does it work? Or how? How do they escape the morass of post-grunge radio rock lameness, without swerving too hard in the other direction (even on "White Limo")? If you had played me the greatest hits, and said "Sure, this band is good, but what is it they are missing?" I probably would not have said "Another guitarist." And yet, on Wasting Light, you have Grohl, Chris Shiflett, and a returning Pat Smear, all credited with "lead and rhythm guitars." And that definitely seems to make a difference, fleshing out and defining the sound without making it seem crowded, somehow. You can hear three guitars (along with the bass and drums!) at various points on the album, sometimes in harmony, sometimes doing their own thing. It could be a mess. Instead, every guitar knows where to go to keep the song from getting pedestrian, keeping the rock alive and breathing by adding that extra element, creating that unstoppable force of rock.

The thing is, these are all exceptionally talented musicians working on the same page. Smear was in punk bands a decade before his brief tenure in Nirvana. Shiflett also plays in the greatest cover band in the world, Me First & The Gimme Gimmes. They know the steps and they haven't grown tired of playing them. Between the five of them, they've lived the lifetimes of approximately seventeen musicians, and are, in 2011, among the most invigorated bands out there. There are a lot of traps inherent in creating an album like this, and they avoid them all. Each track is a gem and fits perfectly with the next. By the time you get to "A Matter of Time" and "Miss the Misery" you might be too thoroughly absorbed to even notice how long you've been listening.

This is the beauty of a great rock album. All the pieces seem familiar enough, but when you get them all together in the right way, in just unique enough a way to sound fresh, it's a thing of beauty. Guys, this album is pretty much the reason people still learn guitar.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca