You could have it so much better.....with the ILM albums of 2005

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Comments:

True story: while at a music festival on a farm in the middle of nowhere a few weeks back, the house DJ dropped the lead track from Congotronics. I scanned my eyes across the crowd, but there wasn't even a flicker of recognition - I had bought the one copy I'd seen, in Melbourne's smallest record store. Slowly but surely, after a while you could see people moving in time to it - a lot of unsure swaying and bopping to the alien soundtrack, some more enthusiastic dancing to the fuzzy groove. The moral of this story is, if you can get a bunch of indie rock fans in a paddock moving, you're doing something right. Hayden Nicholls
 
Konono No.1: Congotronics (Crammed) We've read about this: songs from
salvage, via homemade percussion and sound system, and lives salvaged, so far, via well deserved publicity, from the kind of boondocks that makes The Hold Steady's service roads seem like Beverly Hills. Metallic, yet fluid (those amplified thumb pianos, like a light show on an oscilloscope). But I never know, from one
listening to the next, whether monotony  or melodic outbursts will win more of my august attention, and this seems to be what keeps me listening so much (so far, anyway).
Don Tarboe

A percussion-driven street party that sounds like Vooredoms with thumb piano. O.Nate

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He's gotten older and wiser but hasn't forgotten how to take chances.
O Nate.

My early verdict on Face The Truth is that it is very good, but maybe not as much as the last two Malkmus records. I like it more than Terror Twilight, but not nearly as much as any of the Pavement records before that. I'm very impressed by "Kindling For The Master" and "Pencil Rot" - they touch on some newish territory for him (actually, they both kinda sound like the Fiery Furnaces), and feature some nice sounds and twists. "Freeze The Saints" is my least favorite - it's nice, but it screams "this is a song from my solo album" in way other post-Pavement Malkmus songs have not. Most of the songs aren't very new to me, so I'm just adjusting to the revised studio versions. "Malediction" is clearly my favorite on this record, even though I think I might prefer the live acoustic version that I have from the Buenos Aires show from last year.

Matthew C Perpetua

Just listened to the album. I really liked his last one, but this one does not seem nearly rural prog enough! I WISH there was a song called "Horslip" on it (since I just bought a Horselips best-of this weekend, and it was great!), but on my copy there sure isn't one.
xhuxk March 24th, 2005 12:43 AM.

Anyway, FtT is rocking in my bedroom constantly. I'm moving down the tracklist: at first I was all about the opening Pencil Rot It Kills I've Hardly Been combo. Now the middle section is really satisfying something. I slighted Freeze the Saints for being too Pavementy but it's Malkmus' prettiest tune since Major Leagues (though I never cared for the first album's ballads like a lot of people). Loud Cloud Crowd might be my favorite on the whole album. I'm pretty meh on Kindling for the Master, Post Paint Boy, and Malediction. My favorite SM album.
mitch dub March 31st, 2005 4:45 PM.

Also, that Fran album is so fuckin' good. My indie side (and hatred of cookie cutter crap) won't let me fully appreciate most major bands, but I have to admit, Franz have finally won me over. Just try "Walk Away", "The Fallen", "Fade Together", "Eleanor Put Your Boots On", "Well That Was Easy", etc. Solid songs, man, I'm tellin' you.

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Comment

"To turn myself inside out when I make music is one of my favourite hobbies," offered Bpitch Control matriarch Ellen Allien as explanation for her second album's sound, a sound which is remorseless in turning the listener inside out as well. Thrills is rife with contradictions, illogical foundations shifting around to make perfect sense: a cold, monolithic post-industrial grind transmitted through warm, bubbling ARP synths, an album all about expressing deeply internalised sonic textures on a packed dancefloor or, better yet, on public transport systems. Less of an overt homage to the city than Allien's first album, Berlinette, her fascination with urban living remains as potent a theme in her work as she grapples with its psychogeography, binaries first struggling against each other and then merging as Allien brings them to heel via the messed-up sounds coursing through her body.
 
Key tracks: 'Come',  'Washing Machine Is Speaking', 'Down'
The Lex

other ilxors said

i find this album to be very easy to engage with, it is almost like a blank slate. i also find it to be less cold than either of her previous albums. that's probably the arp talking. the tracks sound like they are 120bpm, but they all hover around 128. i wish the tracks were slower actually, but then it might not sound so techno. i think it has a very late night humid vibe to it.
tricky July 11th, 2005 10:02 PM.

'Thrills'. Wow, it's one hell of a left turn of a record!

I'm gobsmacked at the almost reckless bravery of it. I mean, she's virtually thrown away with her 'typical' sound set (Stadtkind/Berlinette/Remix Collection) here and doesn't seem bothered about the potential to fail without it this time round. She got new tools and wants to play! :-P

On a slightly negative note, I think 'Magma' is my least favourite track here so far, feels slightly ugly and it is just me who hates hearing the last track on a record as the single? So glad I got to hear the whole thing early. But then I really wasn't expecting perfection this time out, I know how these things can go .

But there are many, many things I like about it so far too. Some of this sounds hilariously out-of-control, like Ellen is barely keeping that ARP from bleeping and bouncing out of the studio and into the streets under it's own unstoppable wayward energy.

Her beautiful, subtle yet strong, enigmatic melodies are still here even in all this flowing chaos. I'm not sure how I feel about the comparative lack of vocals so far either, they are there, but often much more direct when used. It still sounds more of a techno thing to me than electro-house, although 'Naked Rain' is kinda deep-house in a way. And 'Down' yeah, is more electro-y. It's just that it's as a whole so much less electro than her previous stuff, and so much weirder, frankly.

If I had to decribe it in less words than I've used so far I'd say: Vaguely Germanic beats meets Giorgio Moroder, LFO & the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

I'm still leaning towards fucking awesome btw, I might have lost the main thrust of my point in all this chatter ;-) There's stuff going on in this record that absolutely kills.I think I'm going to go listen some more now :-)
fandango April 5th, 2005 1:12 AM.

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Comment:
Serves me right for snickering at one time. It's not the consistent, forceful drive of Elephant (though the first track might fool you).  Now they offer sprawl. More overt (but still mutant) stabs at folk, blues, classic rock and pop (with Zep and Stones homages more blatant than before and no worse for it), and dirges; tunes sometimes fall down into noise and rise up again. Beaten out on drums, guitar, piano, and marimba by the primitivist pair. More moods (including happy ones).
Sundar Subramanian

other ilxors said: 
i reckon it could be their best album so far. certainly, 'red rain' and 'take take take' and 'the nurse' are stikingly great songs. 'blue orchid' is a red herring, though - while the album hangs together perfectly, there isn't a song that sounds like another song on the album throughout (is that clear?).
stevie May 17th, 2005 12:11 PM.

It's like old White Stripes with pounding piano instead of pounding guitar, and acoustic guitar and mariamba songs. I've only had a few listens but it seems like their punchiest record so far-- a "total distillation" (like a new Spoon record, kind of) of everything they used to stand for, but more cracked and interesting than ever before. Good stuff, even if the rip is a bit dodgy.
Eric Seguy May 20th, 2005 11:56 AM.

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Comment:
Wherein Missy drops the metallic clanking of This Is Not A Test and embraces, well, everything else - squiggly Neptunesisms, the ghost of Detroit electro, Rich Harrison's booming drumloops, faux-crunk, dancehall, "Apache"... And it all works, even the Slick Rick impersonation. Why no love from the critics? Perhaps they're over Missy, now that they can't tie her into some grand Timbaland auteur story? Their loss. Hayden Nicholls
 
other ilxors said:
have only listened to it once but at least (at least) 3/4ths of this is...guhhhhhh...
strng hlkngtn June 22nd, 2005 4:31 PM

This album is beyond fantastic -- the only weak spots are "Partytime," which I think is the actual disappointingly tame moment, and "Click Clack," which is all boring commerical Southern and, like, a safety net in case everything else flopped.
I think "Remember When" is my favorite. Talk about a great ballad! If Missy only rapped she'd EASILY be half of the artist she is.
Rich June 25th, 2005 11:44 PM.

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Comment: 
I've long said that Fiona Apple is what would happen if Kanye West was a white girl (or maybe he's what would happen if she was a black man). And what happened in 2005? Kanye only starts bigging her up in interviews and getting some hott Jon Brion action, while Fiona replaces long-time producer and mentor Brion with Mike Elizondo, better known for his work with Dr Dre. It's perfectly clear, anyway: both are highly intelligent kids (less generous souls would say precocious brats, and call her precious and him cocky), American college archetypes, irredeemably moulded by their racial and sexual identity. They're both looking for the same answers - because this is how both work out their respective issues, by asking questions of themselves and their peers and their partners and their society, questions and more questions and not shutting up - and they approach the same sonic aesthetic from different directions (this is now obvious, with the Brion connection, but it's always been there). So, like Late Registration, Extraordinary Machine is smart; ambitious; at times wise and at times petulant; lavishly wordy and lavishly arranged; seething with anger even as the artist gives you a sly wink in honour of her theatrical tendencies; impetuous and light-hearted and possessed of a perfect understanding about which rules to follow and which rules to rip up.
 
(And who cares which version is better? I make it roughly half-half, and you have a CD burner. Learn from the lady, and quit whining.)
 
Key tracks: 'Extraordinary Machine', 'Get Him Back' (Jon Brion version), 'Please Please Please'
The Lex

other ilxors said:

Okay after some more listens I'm completely dumbfounded as to why this has yet to be released. There are more than a few tracks on here that would do well on radio with enough push, and the album is absolutely spectacular. Ugh... SONY sickens me.
The Brainwasher March 16th, 2005 3:12 AM.

Christ Almighty, this album is so good that it's even overcoming my passive antipathy towards Fiona Apple. It feels like the frame of reference should be the Arcade Fire - just this meticulously orchestrated swirling self-justified *thing* of an album.
And this is COMPLETELY the correct marketing route for Sony to go with this album. I for one would have never listened to it if it had just come out in the stores like any other great album.

James.Cobo March 16th, 2005 7:13 PM.

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A young violinist/singer/songwriter who's been experimenting with sound since he was 11, Patrick Wolf sounds like he's 21 going on 51 on his second album. After recording the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink folk and electronics debut Lycanthropy, Wolf studied composition at the Trinity Music Conservatoire. Wind in the Wires is dark, autumnal European folk, tweaked with laptop electronica. While the gothic songs show that Wolf has an old spirit, it's also one of the most passionate albums of the year.
AS Van Dorston

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Comment:

Hailed by the mainstream press as some sort of return to her disco roots, this was in fact producer Stuart Price carrying on where he left off with his excellent electro-house remixes as the Thin White Duke: gorgeous warm synths, a solid, lovingly detailed sound and, yes, plenty of open hats on the off-beats. If he could make Gwen Stefani sound this good, what could he do with Madge? Surprisingly then, the only thing wrong with this record is Madonna. She is at times a terrible lyricist, rhyming New York with dork and really caning the 'profundity' of her 'there's too much confusion/it's all an illusion' line. Her voice sounds tired in places, her phrasing is too 'straight' for me (as it has been since the early 90s) and it's hard to care about the self-audit of her fame in tracks like How High. The gloopy, very  un-disco strings that segue the tracks together don't help either. But there is still a lot to love about this record: Hung Up, of course, the surprisingly charming I Love New York, with its I Wanna Be Your Dog steal, the way the rave riff comes in half-way through Get Together, and the whole box of noughties production tricks that are making this such a glorious time for dance music.
Jamie Smith

other ilxors said:

I had been sitting on the fence about it, as it's a fine line between genius and horror when Madonna goes all profound and mystical, but...
"Isaac" is a fucking monster. The most sonically exciting song she's done... well, ever, maybe? I love the mmmms that nod back to "Frozen", especially. Fine line, yes, but she's on the right side on this one. And she's really not on it that much! I really have awful fears that she's going to release "I Love New York" as the third single ("Sorry", an excellent choice, is pencilled in as the second) instead of the much more suitable "Let It Will Be" or "How High".

edward o November 5th, 2005 7:35 PM.

I like my music to be produced by people who at least RESEMBLE yer average fella!

I agree with "Partytime" being a weak spot, but I think "Click Clack" isn't bad - it's a perfectly acceptable track, though it seems a bit prosaic in comparison with the other tracks around it. The other weak track I'd single out is "Joy" - which is fairly joyless and features Missy's least-inspired rapping. It's beyond ironic when the two weakest tracks on a Missy album are the two Timbaland productions.

ILM could use a little more rockism.

My number two album is Annie but didn't vote for it because it's from last year. That is 100% the fault of ILM, again thanks. It can be included on my official list because 2004 albums I failed to listen to are eligible but felt wrong to vote for it on ILM.

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Comment:

Shaken by personal crisis, these slow-mormons abandon the church of neo-dull, presenting us this ominously beautiful revelation.
Joe Schoech

other ilxors said:

this is *amazing*. i'm sure i've said before on ilm that i've only got into the last 3 or 4 albums when the next one's come out, giving me some kind of filter to view the older one through, but this has got me straight away. maybe it's because of the election, maybe because of my personal life right now, but it just sounds fantastic - like they've finally delivered on the album they've been threatening since "dinosaur act".
toby November 3rd, 2004 11:43 PM.

Everyone seems to agree that the "classic" Low songs (Death of a Salesman, Walk Into the Sea, etc.) are great, regardless of how they feel about the rest of the album. Your description of "When I Go Deaf" is spot-on -- yes, the song's second half completely disrupts the mood and tone of the first half.
Many people are frowning upon this -- I am smitten with it. In most Low songs, almost every note sounds so meticulously crafted, as if every sound you hear is there for a specific purpose, with absolutely nothing left behind by accident. Certainly, the slow tempos have a lot to do with this, because each note is accentuated and separated from the others that much more.
Then we hit the second half. On its own, I love the fuzzed-out, grungy timbre in Alan's guitar here. But more to the point, after all the delicacy, and all the attention to the smallest details in their songs, suddenly Low have broken out into a chaotic sprawl and it sounds like they're about to completely lose their shit. The chorus isn't sung as much as it is heaved out of Alan and Mimi's lungs, and it's probably the most unrestrained that they've ever sounded on record. The raw emotion of this portion of the song completely floors me.
Obviously I'm not criticising anyone's taste or opinion here, I'm just writing down what I hear and how I feel about the album.
MindInRewind January 27th, 2005 6:10 PM

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Comment:

Sigur Ros, "Takk...". Here I sit, going through the motions of another failed attempt to describe Sigur Ros' "Takk..." without having the finished product turn out like a description of a shit Mum album written by a twee indie fuck. What's the point of writing about how "Se Lest" feels like a soaring, Peter Pan-like excursion over a twinkling Disneyland when I can't stand the way those words look on paper? Why write about how "Heysatan"'s four minutes serve as an exhausted, extended sigh that help the album tail off into nothingness better than any final chord could? There is no point.
Barry Bruner

other ilxors said:

so far this is great! totally hilarious coldplay-style-riffage, but they're real good at it.
sean gramophone August 4th, 2005 9:05 AM.

Ugh. They get worse with every album.
Melissa W August 4th, 2005 9:30 AM.

It's so frickin' BLAND for aural nirvana, by rote. I've never heard a band so dedicated to being DRAMATIC/BIG/BEAUTIFUL sound so dull, and that includes Godspeed, who I detest. So yeah, I dislike them for musical reasons, that way that they cheapen the sublime. Aim for Mont Blanc, get a Thomas Kinkade landscape.
That said, in the 'I am amused' department, two flacks on the NRO website were talking about being fans of theirs today, with one saying, "It's like Enya if Enya were rock."
Ned Raggett September 23rd, 2005 2:38 AM.

No, they had less points than #50 and 51.

I am astounded that New Order finished so low! And nobody else loved Mount Sims! Ah well ... my vote.

1. Richard Hawley - Coles Corner
2. Books - Lost and Safe
3. Mount Sims - Wild Light
4. Pernice Brothers - Discover A Lovlier You
5. The Clientele - Strange Geometry
6. Kate Bush - Aerial
7. Manual - Azure Vista
8. Holly Golightly - Slowly But Surely
9. New Order - Waiting For The Sirens' Call
10. Broadcast - Tender Buttons
11. Ween - Shinola
12. Josh Rouse - Nashville
13. Dungen - Ta Det Lungt
14. Matt Pond PA - Several Arrows Later
15. M83 - Before The Dawn Heals Us
16. Great Lake Swimmers - Bodies And Minds
17. Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger
18. Solvent - Apples + Synthesizers
19. The National - Alligator
20. The Music Lovers - The Words We Say Before We Sleep

and, more importantly, what game was the upcdowncleftcrightcabc+start cheat from?!