A Thread For School of Seven Bells Love!

I really liked what I heard of this the other evening - my problem with the first was mostly the production, it sounded really flat and lifeless all the way through, this one sounds so much richer. Think the drums are a big part of that.

That's odd, because Benjamin was originally a drummer. I think part of why this sounds so different is that they got someone else to mix this - so the drums sound bigger and everything sounds clearer and more "in its right place" - but unfortunately it does make some songs have that 80s Teen Soundtrack problem. I'd love to hear an alternate "closet mix" of this album, mind you.

But I mean, when it's good, it's AMAZING. Which is most of it. Babelonia gets me every time, as does Joviann. This version of Camarilla makes me so so SOOOO happy.

Not a complaint, mind you but... there are times when it's mixed a little *too* politely for my dirty dronerock ways. There are definitely times that I want to tell them TURN THOSE BLOODY GUITARS UP! Give me NOOOIIIIZZZZEWEEEEEEE

But that could just be because I've become used to the way these songs sound live.

Yeah the drumming (drum programming?) is very 80s and the whole thing is very tastefully produced. The album brought to my mind All About Eve actually!

This is a very special bit of writing. The first two paragraphs appear to have come from a review of a different record all together.

http://drownedinsound.com/releases/15507/reviews/4140447

Wow.

this record needs more guitars and heaviness

it's super mannered and suffers for it imo

Their current live show takes all those "super mannered" traits, shits on them from a great height, throws them onto a bonfire and strikes a fucking match. GO SEE THIS BAND LIVE PEOPLE

Is that a review or is that someone's thesis statement of an art degree from, like, Camberwell College or something?

There are bad reviews, and there are incomprehensible ones. It's like dude scribbled that on his laptop while smoking dope and was just looking for a record to pin it on without any attention to the music involved.

What ilxor said. I enjoy their studio work, but it's the live performances that are the clincher.

As for that review. Uh.

If you're going to pull back that far for your way in to a record you might as well just start with "Webster's dictionary defines music as the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity".

That would actually have made some kind of sense. That DiS review was far more garbled than that.

dying @ that review

it is one hell of a review

A sort of theological reversal of postmodernity, where instead of the inherited fragment there is now something growing from the pile - a global culture, that no longer refers to its antecedents, no longer comes from anywhere, but proliferates like a remix of remixes.

Dude's going to be a hit at grad school.

it's kind of like when lindsay lohan kept misusing the word "adequate", i'm just super-curious as to what he thinks all those words mean

His review of Wildbirds and Peacedrums features the winning line: "Reviewing this as I am from a narrowboat on a welsh canal, I can’t help but notice that watery metaphors abound." Doesn't anyone ever get edited anymore?

hahah what was she using "adequate" to mean?

Never heard the first album and playing the new one for the first time -- it's a really peculiar listen. Reminiscent of A Sunny Day in Glasgow's Ashes Grammar instrumentally and the vocals have a world/foreign tinge even though there's no accent. Something's just OFF in the melodies and chord progressions but those weird moments make it more interesting. If they can pull this off live I'm sure it's amazing.

His review of Wildbirds and Peacedrums features the winning line: "Reviewing this as I am from a narrowboat on a welsh canal, I can’t help but notice that watery metaphors abound."

loooooooool

xpost -- They do pull off the performances of that live very well, it's how the sound is so much more full live, for lack of a better word. That said it seems to depend on the venue as well, the more close (claustrophobic?) a venue, the bigger the impact.

i did see them live--thought they desperately needed a drummer which i guess they have now?

Yup

Ally Deheza often seems to stress sung words on odd syllables. I don't know if this is deliberate, or if it's just to force rhymes to fit the musical meter, but I find it a really interesting and charming vocal tic. It often makes you think about the meaning and intention of word choice, and about what she's choosing to stress, and if that alters the meaning.

It sometimes reminds me of Kristin Hersch - although their voices sound nothing alike, that odd quirk of vocal intonation makes the work of both take on a different dimension.

The one useful point I took from that review is that Disconnect from Desire sounds a bit like Curve, which hadn't struck me before - it has the same stadium-shoegaze quality. He should have left it at that.

But the song I L U is one of the songs that really *doesn't* sound particularly like Curve!

Lord, I never thought they sounded like Curve -- much different vocal quality/emphasis.

hahah what was she using "adequate" to mean?

a few years ago she signed off a drunken open letter to hollywood, sent from her blackberry, "be adequite" (sic). to which the world responded "be literite".

I was thinking more of Heart Is Strange - just the early 90s indie-dance beat, the gothisms and the sheer scale of it rather than a precise similarity.

Might have leapt out at me as a comparison if they were closer in time to that band but there's something different about them that (granted the similarities you note) I can't fully put my finger on. And live I tended to think more of Loop!

The whole dancey beats plus goth plus shoegaze atmospherics (with female vocals) is totally Curve-like. (if it were male vocals, it would be Chapterhouse's second album.)

NOTHING like Loop. Are you mad, Raggett?

I love the fact that drum sound is so dated - you don't really hear that anymore so it takes me right back to my teens.

it's like lush-ious jackson IMO

xxpost -- I ascribe it to Ben fully there, first time through I saw 'em. Huge pulses of feedback throb etc. etc.

And yeah, it just doesn't suggest itself as Curve-like automatically for me as noted. Maybe because there's a slow burn anger in Toni Halliday's singing/lyrics that I'm not sensing here, but Ben's work doesn't make me think of Dean Garcia's either.

In Secret Machines, I could see a Loop-esque thing maybe. But not with SVIIB.

Benjamin is far more of an MBV fanboy than anything else! ;-)

"Babelonia" at 2:33-2:49 basically IS Curve (and a weedwhacker).

Did this get did already?

Sonic Youth and School Of Seven Bells members set for Neu! supergroup

Just listening to a bit of the new one and maybe I said this before but the vocals *really* remind me of Linda Perhacs' multi-tracked singing.

Bye Bye Bye = neat song, btw

Just wanted to post the pic of that drownedinsound reviewer:

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh310/yodelagogo/53769.jpg

Oh shit, I missed this Lusine remix of Half Asleep - kind of lush and chimey in a Pantha du Prince-ish way:

http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/School_of_Seven_Bells/track/Half_Asleep_Lusine_Remix

this record needs more guitars and heaviness

im 3 or 4 listens in, and i'd agree with this.

You know I would never ever normally engage in any kind of childish hipster bashing or anything but OH MY GOD I HAVE NEVER HATED ANYONE SO MUCH ON SIGHT IN MY LIFE AS THAT TWUNTISH REVIEWER, I WANT TO SMASH HIS PRETENTIOUSLY HELD CIGARETTE OUT ON HIS NON PRESCRIPTION GLASSES!!!!

lol

seconded!!!

Got mine in the mail today... nice little box and cards, but where is this bonus CD? Not included.

Is that a review or is that someone's thesis statement of an art degree from, like, Camberwell College or something?

I got as far as the top of the second paragraph:

But there is a third moment, and this is perhaps caught in Audrey's dance in the diner of Twin Peaks, where her naïf-fatale eroticism jives to Badalamenti's otherworld. His music exists at the hauntological cusp of big band, as it recedes into those hanging chromatic notes which betray the foreign agent at the heart of David Lynch's estranging of the American familiar.

to be honest, it kinda sounds like SVIIB lyrics.

they should re-record "half-asleep" with the words from this review and call it "voice of harold."