MINI MANSIONS - Mini Mansions (2010)

Review by: Syd Spence
Album assigned by: Ali Ghoneim

1967, a mythical year in rock music. This year is when rock music began to explore new realms of musical possibility. R&B, Music Hall, Pop, Country, Folk, Blues, etc were transformed into a kaleidoscope of novelty. Likewise, people have been worshiping this year for decades, and Mini Mansions is another in a long line of nostalgia acts seeking to emulate that epoch.

Nostalgia is the key word here to describe Mini Mansions. This record sounds like the band really liked 1967, especially the Beatles’ Magical Mystery. And that is what they do, create psychedelic pop album with all those brit psych pop attributes. Harmonies, keyboards, astral lyrics, etc are all on display here, and well, i was bored literally midway through the first listen. Oh, they can create slightly catchy tunes probably on the par of one of those third string Brit psych groups like The Action or Kaleidoscope, but so what? This album was released in 2010! The epoch is gone, and I will say that if this record was recorded and released in 1967 it would be given all the acclaim and admiration of say Nirvana’s (the psych band) The Story of Simon Simopath. In other words, only record collectors scouring each and every record released during that period would even bother, and even then they would probably play it rarely.

That Nirvana album, as mediocre as it is, was at least was a product of it’s era. Mini Mansion’s debut is not. It’s the 21st century and paisley isn’t the hip new fashion. Perhaps, I’m being too harsh on Mini Mansions. I mean i too spent my time buried in the aura of ‘67, collecting every psychedelic relic i could get my hands on. I remember in college, going “Golly Geeze, I wish bands sounded like Piper era floyd again.” I’m as guilty of nostalgia worship as Mini Mansions, and i didn’t have the gumption to actually learn an instrument and make said such music. So kudos for that triumph.. 

Also, this is their first album made by relatively young dudes, perhaps in the future they will find their own sound, one that reflects novelty. There are plenty of examples of good bands releasing nostalgia pieces as their first record. The first one that pops up in my mind is Primal Scream, whose debut is just play ‘60s as much as possible. Later they released interesting genre crossing masterpieces like Vanishing Point and Screamadelica. So there is hope, but honestly, these days i don’t have any for rock bands.

See the production on this album is indicative of ourtime. It has all the digital perfection of a Mumford and Sons record. It’s bland, digital, and has no warmth or space that is oh so needed for great psychedelia. This is the grand problem with modern rock bands. They continue to use modern music equipment in a postmodern world, and thus it just doesn’t sound right. To my ears, digital productions sounds best on electronic and hip hop music i.e. art forms that use digital instruments. The use of traditional instruments with the sterility of today's production just innately sounds wrong. Don’t get me wrong i think a musical genius could possibly use these old instruments in this new environment, but for new artists honing their craft, it just sucks. 

So I’m giving this a THUMBS DOWN. And i wish the musicians would try to make music that reflects the times more. Psychedelia in a digital space would and does sound brilliant. Try that instead of this sad ‘67 worship.  

IT'S IMMATERIAL - Life's Hard and Then You Die (1986)

Review by: Andreas Georgi
Album assigned by: Julien Mansencal

When I was asked to review this album, I realized that I remember seeing the cover in record stores in the late ‘80’s, but I had no recollection of the music. The first thing that struck me is the incongruity between the expectations that the title and the “evil clown” album cover create, and the actual music coming out of the speakers.  Far from the sinister first impression, what you get is very melodic fairly laid back pop rock with a highly eclectic mix of influences ranging from folk to Celtic to country meshed into a coherent whole with some dark undertones.   I’m having a hard time making comparisons to any similar groups, frankly.  It is very much of its time (mid-80’s), but does not suffer for it.

The first song “Driving Away From Home”, evidently was a hit single in the UK. I must admit that my initial reaction was not positive, but by the end of the first listening I got to appreciate what these guys are doing - kind of Kerouac in Lancashire or Yorkshire. The singer does have a propensity to “talk sing” in a way that comes off a bit corny at times. The band seems to hail from Manchester, in northern England’s industrial rustbelt, and a lot of the lyrics reflect a theme of a difficult life in struggling post-industrial towns. “Happy Talk”, “The Sweet Life” and “Rope” reflect on this theme in various ways. The mood is gentle with a melancholic touch, but not morose.  Two songs, “Space” and “Ed’s Funky Diner” don’t work for me.  The latter was also a hit of sorts.  I appreciate what they’re doing – a kind of Waits – like cast of characters – but I just don’t care for it.  The slower songs work better.  “Festival Time” starts off sounding like it’s going to turn into Talking Heads’ “Cross-eyed and Painless” and ends up sounding like the carnival it describes – good one.  “Washing the Air” is a mostly instrumental piece with a James Bond guitar, and is another highlight.  The CD version, at least, ends with remixes of “Diner” (alluding to artist Edward Keinholz in the subtitle) and “Driving..”.

This one is one album that I didn’t immediately like, but definitely grew on me over a couple of listenings. I’m glad I gave it time. This not your average mid 80’s pop. There’s a lot of substance that rewards repeated listenings. THUMBS UP

JORGE BEN - A Tábua de Esmeralda (1974)

Review by: Julien Mansencal
Album assigned by: Francelino Prazeres de Azevedo Filho

When I subscribed to the reviewing chain, I certainly did not expect to be assigned a Portuguese-language concept album about alchemy from a Brazilian musician. It is rather difficult for me to comment on albums when I do not know the first thing about the context of their release, the subject of their lyrics or even the guys and gals who made them: I need something to hang onto when throwing myself into it. Here, I got nothing, and I simply do not have enough time to learn Portuguese (there is actually one track in English on this record, but it's the worst in my opinion), delve into Nicholas Flamel's arcane manuscripts or immerse myself into the South American pop/rock/whatever scene of the 70s and the career of the estimated Jorge Duilio Lima Menezes. This only leaves the music and me, a frightened parachutist without a parachute.

So, what did I think of A Tábua de Esmeralda? Well, I quite liked it. The overall sound is really enjoyable, with LOTS of tasty acoustic guitar (the intro to "Menina Mulher da Pele Preta" reminds me an awful lot of Lindsey Buckingham's acoustic work on some Fleetwood Mac tracks, especially the live versions of "Big Love"), and nice vocals from the female chorists or Jorge Ben's himself. He has a really sweet voice, and the way it blends with those of the chorists gives a very down-to-earth feel to the entire proceedings, as if everyone was sitting around Ben next to a fire camp, just singing and having a good time together. There is a tinge of Latin percussion here and there which works quite well, and a bit of orchestration in other places which works just as well; that's a melting pot quite unlike anything I've ever listened to seriously so far. My pickout track would be the last one, "Cinco Minutos", despite the false advertising (it only lasts 2:57), where everything falls together and culminates in a gorgeous finale.

This winter of 2015 is cold here, but A Tábua de Esmeralda keeps me warm when I put it on after a harrowing day outside; and isn't that what music should be all about?

THE BLUE NILE - Hats (1989)

Review by: Hipster Sokushinbutsu
Album assigned by: Nina A.

Let me start outright by saying that this album is very much a product of its time, since 80’s electronica rock, new wave, new romantic, synth-pop and sophisti-pop elements are (fairly predictably) the rules of the game here. This review is pretty much coincidental to a recent epoch in my life where I re-christened myself ‘Hipster Sokushinbutsu’ in the realization that listening to music so as to produce a review is essentially similar to an ancient Japanese self-mummification ritual. You leave the mundane behind and enter a solitary state of meditation, feasting on nothing but an austere and hopefully healthy diet of the single album you have chosen or been given to review, composing the goddamn piece of writing whilst removing all the mental distractions amounting up to the fat that obscures your Inner Will - which is: to compose a multi-paragraph masterpiece of perfection that hopefully produces a change in the Universe in accordance with the aforementioned Will. Once you get done with yourself, you’re preserved for posterity as a sight to behold.

ANYWAY.

The Blue Nile, though quite well-renowned, were totally unfamiliar to me before I got this album to review. I have a soft spot for 80’s as a decade and music isn’t an exception. Yet due to my taste craving mostly the unusual sounds for some time now, this pop and ‘alternative’ album so representative of the late 80’s was able to escape my radar altogether. It came out the same year as The Cure’s Disintegration which happens to be my #1 favorite album of all time, and though darkly reflective and deliciously nostalgic, the two albums aren’t twins by any stretch of the imagination in my mind. The former was conceived on LSD by a depressed musician holing up in an apartment for a while with the woman of his dreams and coming up with anthems – if indeed they could said to be anthemic – of doom and gloom that are the soundtrack of the universal psyche, of love and loss. This album is the kind of music you’d love to listen to on the open top of a skyscraper, wind blowing in your hair, looking down on urban blinkenlights as the great tide of humanity goes about. The former is about closing down and drawing inward, this one is about bursting outward.

'Over the Hillside' starts with a tight synthesized drumbeat and spacey keyboard intro that languorously gives way to an infectious pulsating rhythm in a way that is uniquely intoxicating. Then comes the emotive crooning of Paul Buchanan, an ode to the beastly daily ritual of Work humanity is victim to since times immemorial, or at least since someone invented the less-than-a-good-move idea of 'earning a living' as if being a human being is not an honor in itself but, ironically, a shackle that names its own price. So you're sitting at your table, probably in a cubicle, probably in your own room, working and wondering in the existential sense where this is even leading you. You look outside your little window and watch a train cutting a bend around the hillside, then going up and down the hills. There's something in that sinusoidal rollercoaster motion that reminds you of your own life, being very much the child of Circumstance, of Nature's forward propulsion that pokes, urges and sometime brutally prods everyone but those that have transcended mere matter, into further and further action, no matter how much you'd like to sit and brood on past hurts and present uneasiness. Enter the ubiquitous rock (a term that, parenthetically, some allege was coined way back by the CBS marketing division so as to produce a capitalistic economy of hipsteristic music consumption) fantasy: the done-to-death yet still vaguely and endearingly novel and fresh escapist motif of finding someone stupid enough to share your craziness and vanishing together into thin air – leaving and being never reborn in this fleeting world of woe and misery, a feat in Crowleyian terms not technically possible until you fully attain and go beyond the spiritual grade of 7°=4□. ANYWAY. Something sounding like a synthesized sax now makes an appearance, with the throbbing rhythm reasserting itself. A quiet desperation in the vocals leads you into a brief reverie that is oddly and strangely reminiscent of the famed (not actually famed but I personally think it deserves its own Facebook page or smth) crescendo of Alcest's “Percées de Lumière”, yet nothing quite like it and relatively subdued. It is a nice but ephemeral episode, and presently you re-enter so-called reality and coming to grips with the brutal ironies of earthly existence you have to tag and bookmark that bit for some later time. Things get strangely variegated as a slightly new-age funk-like groove kicks in with soaring synths serving as the atmospheric backdrop, and as the beautiful track ends, you're left wondering whether to rewind or to fast-forward ... not the album but the events of your very life, though in logical terms the former would naturally ensue from the later unless you use your God-given self-will to decide otherwise.

I can't go on and I can't go back

I don't feel so, matter of fact

I tried and tried to make good sense

What's the good to try it all again?

So the mood for the album is set. The Blue Nile have drawn you in. ‘The Downtown Lights’ starts with a chime leading to the familiar rock rhythm. The song is literally about taking a downtown stroll, with your sweetheart – or with her spectre – by your side. There isn’t much in terms of variation or development, yet for some reason this song is the first single from this album. “Let’s Go Out Tonight” gets off to a start with a droney soundscape and gentle acoustics. The mood is once again that of urban loneliness and the wistfulness of imploring someone out; the single itself is slightly reminiscent of Katatonia’s “In The White” in terms of the imagery it conjures.

“Headlights on the Parade”, the second single, is something early Depeche Mode could have made. A stout bass and drum rhythm interplay leads to the some heart-melting vocals, lyrically continuing the tradition of two previous songs with some hypnotic keyboards and piano synths at work in the background. It is on “From A Late Night Train” that the direction followed by the previous tracks is curtailed and some new ideas are introduced. Some ambient-ish lounge-y atmosphere and sax with slow jazzy pianos with vocals filled with a slow, deep-felt passion narrate a story of past love and present loneliness. The closest analogy in purely thematic terms I can think of would be Alice Cooper’s “Stolen Prayer” or John Martyn’s “Man In The Station”. Slow, placid jazzy keys bring this to a tranquil end and we lead on to “Seven A.M.” which is upbeat enough to yank one out of the longing accumulating in your mind over the course of the previous track. Once again Depeche Mode sound-alike-ness kicks in but again not much going on in terms of novelty.

The ending “Saturday Night” seems to be a strong track here. It has an atmospheric and artsy post-punk / new wave vibe to it and deals with the theme of a Saturday night rendezvous with someone ordinary yet very special.

Overall, I think the album has its good moments and a romantic, sensitive, wistful vibe, not to mention Buchanan’s powerful vocals, but being a bit too formulaic it is not the kind of thing I would like to listen to on a very regular basis at all. People who love 80’s feels-y poppy electro-rock will find it a welcome addition to their catalog, and perhaps do it more justice when reviewing it. If however you like challenging or cerebral music, or some original sonic atmosphere, this will probably not end up on your regular rotation.

7.2 / 10

HARMONIUM - Si on avait besoin d'une cinquième saison (1975)

Review by: Steve Andrew Robey
Album assigned by: Jonathan Hopkins

For true connoisseurs of progressive rock, this album has become revered as an excellent example of the progressive folk subgenre. A progressive rock website I used to frequent placed it in the all-time top 20 albums at one point (based on consolidated site member ratings). When I first heard of this album several years ago, being not particularly interested in skinny guys with pointy ears and beards prancing through the forest playing flutes, I was not particularly quick to give this album a listen. Simply because when I heard "prog folk", that was the image that came up in my head.  Subgenres and classifications are easy to fall prey to - once you think you know a subgenre, you tend to think you know what a band will sound like even before you put it on. This is a mistake which I try to prevent myself from making, but old biases die hard. In fact, I considered myself "burned out" on prog rock in general about a year ago, and although I have a fairly extensive prog collection and have even written reviews for prog publications in the past, I really haven't listened to much prog in a while.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. When Jonathan assigned this album for me to review, it seemed to be an ideal time to approach it. Since I've been away from prog for a while, I could give it a fresh listen, not as a prog album/prog-folk/whatever-new-genre-tag-has-been-invented-this-month, but as a piece of MUSIC played by PEOPLE using their own particular creative vision and skills.  That's something that's easy to forget when approaching music from an academic, neatly-categorized angle: all those great progressive bands from the late 60s and early 70s were basically making it up as they went along, in the best possible sense. They were in an environment where they were encouraged to be as creative as they liked, and as a result all these new combinations of musical ideas started happening. Take Yes, and "Close to the Edge" - I read somewhere that the band admits they really didn't know WHAT they were doing, only that they wanted to take chances and really push themselves to make something original, and just see what works, using their own particular talents to their greatest advantage. BOOM. A timeless classic is born. They weren't going down some checklist of "elements of a prog song" and checking them off.

Harmonium seems to me to display that kind of spirit as well. Hailing from Quebec, they began as more purely folk but by their second album the decided to broaden their scope and see if added complexity could aid in painting a more sophisticated musical picture than the more traditional music forms they had tried thus far. They took a chance, and history has proven that whatever they did worked like a charm. So what did they do?

The title of this album translates to "If We Needed a Fifth Season", and it so happens it is a concept album about the seasons, with five tracks.  See where this is going? The first four tracks each represent one of the four seasons (Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio,.... no wait, wrong seasons), and the fifth, epic-length track represents the hypothetical fifth one. Not a bad conceit for a concept album, but nothing mind-blowing either, though I confess I don't understand French, so the lyrics may be a revelation for all I know.

Musically, they keep it mostly acoustic and gentle, with flutes, clarinets, acoustic guitars and basses, warm Rhodes electric piano, and Mellotrons. The vocals often employ excellent harmonies. Very little drums or percussion, if any at all.   I was often reminded of Anthony Phillips' solo work - with "pastoral" being the operative idea, except that in place of Phillips' classical leanings we have an almost jazzy feel at times. If you've ever heard the classic early albums by Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, their quiet sections remind me of this album too.

Where this album sets itself apart is in the sense of fun and playfulness in some of the material. The opening track "Vert" (representing Spring) begins rather austerely but soon acquires a certain swing, with groovy electric piano. The second track "Dixie" (representing Summer) employs an honest-to-goodness Dixieland style, with rollicking clarinet and barrelhouse piano and a brisk tempo. These two tracks set a unique tone for the rest of the album; even though the remainder of the album tends much more towards the serious side of things, you somehow know that anything might happen. And while they never employ whiplash-inducing shifts in style or tempo, they do put each piece through a number of subtly different movements that gives their musical painting a more three-dimensional perspective.

Most of the attention from prog-lovers goes to the aforementioned fifth track/season, "Histoire Sans Paroles" (translates to "Story Without Words"). It does in fact feel like a separate work, a "concerto" to which the other four tracks serve as a prolonged introduction. While it does have some lyrics, it doesn't have many, and the focus is clearly on painting a detailed portrait of what this fifth season would look, feel, and smell like. After four or so listens, I find I still have a hard time keeping my attention all the way through, but I can vouch for the fact that it is a beautiful piece, probably falling somewhere between autumn and winter mood-wise (the autumn and winter pieces on the record are notably more somber than the spring and summer ones).

In conclusion, I have mostly good feelings about this record, though I do often wish it displayed a bit more aggression, if only to put the quieter sections into greater contrast. Of course, to insist on something like that is probably missing the point, and I recognize that. This album does not want to beat you over the head, and it doesn't want to advance the idea that the passing of seasons is any more action-packed than it is. It is a tribute of sorts to the beauty of the natural processes and cycles that characterize our earthly existence. And it's done with impeccable taste (nothing cheesy about this album, and no show-offs allowed), sensitivity (a mature perspective on the complexity and perfect balance of nature), and even humor. If this is how the Earth's natural processes feel to them, then this must be a pretty nice place to live.

SQUEEZE - Argybargy (1980)

Review by: Nina A.
Album assigned by: Jeremiah Methven

"They do it down on Camber Sands, They do it at Waikiki" is the lyrical cold open of the first song on this album and make no mistake, the song is truly about doin' it. In fact, I suspect most of the album is about doin' it but this has somehow been cleverly obfuscated in clever lyrical detail or some exotic 80s British slang.

Anyway, Argybargy, Squeeze's third studio offering, is perhaps not quite as silly as the title and cover art would imply but it is definitely every bit as fun. It also feels like a solid album through and through with a some nice variety between the songs and very dependable production. 

Most of the songs on here are some very well crafted 3-4 minute pop songs with an energetic pulse and a nice buildup. The aforementioned opening track, for instance, delivers its title "Pulling mussels from a shell" as a punch after painting a nice lyrical and sonic contrast between people lazing about and reading Harold Robbins' paperbacks on the sands of some English holiday resort and his epic William Tell-like experiences "behind the chalet". And there is indeed a lot to appreciate in the way of lyrical details on this album (my favourite being the packed sequence of "From the Isle of Dogs // To the Egyptian sands // Where the Arabs chew on dates"), however some of these are easy to miss because they are not given enough space to breathe in the more energetic songs.

There is a nice variety of themes for the lyrics, as well - "Misadventure" is possibly about smuggling substances through airport customs, "I Think I'm Go Go" is about the hectic experience of touring (although I am a bit wary of the list-like nature of the lyrics that usually signifies someone is about to brag about how good / bad they are having it), "Vicky Verky" is about teenage pregnancy and "There at the Top" is apparently about an independent modern careerist woman.

Of course, lyrics are not what you would come to Argybargy for, it is the great melodies and hooks, the tight rhythms and the tasty production, which builds each song up nicely. There is something to be said of the way the layering of instruments keeps the variety in the post-chorus of "Separate Beds" or the way the cold and almost menacing synths and martial drums build the atmosphere in "Here Comes That Feeling".

The only filler tracks I managed to detect are "Farfisa Beat" - you can't expect too much from a song that begins with "Everybody's dancing to the Farfisa beat" and proceeds with interjections like "flash flash" and "wow wow" - and the boogie-woogie of "Wrong Side of the Moon". Both are enjoyable enough, however, even if they are not always up to the standard of everything else on this record, so they get a pass.

In conclusion, I would say that Argybargy is a solid and charming pop record and it is probably its solidness in pop hooks, rocking, production, and consistency that makes it so enjoyable, accessible and also recommendable.

THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282 - Strangers from the Universe (1994)

Review by: Dinar Khayrutdinov
Album assigned by: Andreas Georgi

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, whatever that ridiculous name must mean, is a little-known yet really interesting band from San Francisco, which might at first give the impression of being yet another late 80s – early 90s postpunk/alternative/indie/noise-rock/guitar act, much in the vein of Sonic Youth or Pavement and such. But don’t be fooled by that first impression, because at least on this record Thinking Fellers offer enough diversity, weirdness and creativity to escape that kind of pigeonholing. This album manages to combine bizarre atmospheric experiments with melodic fun in a uniquely quirky way. 

To be perfectly frank I have never heard of these guys before I was assigned to review this album of theirs, so I’m not sure whether it is representative of this band or not, but here is my take on it anyway: it rules! Tight, minimalistic and precise arrangements, interesting, but never overly poppy melodies and plenty of tasteful guitars! Indeed, the guitar playing is possibly the strongest point of the band, which is not surprising considering that it features three (!) guitarists. From atmospheric texture-creation to melodic soloing to distortion and weird noises – most of the sound here is created using guitars, with only minimal synths or percussion added here and there. That said, this is in no way ‘classic guitar rock’ – the songs have more of a post-punk vibe to them, with the production being kept to a lo-fi minimum and the vocalists not even trying to err… “sing” in any conventional sense. 

What’s more, the structure of the album is as precise as their playing – it alternates ‘real’ songs with experimental noise/ambient links which are all very different from each other – from the excellent drony ‘Bomber Pilot WWII’ that invokes the very images its title suggests to the slightly silly ‘Communication’ which is obviously just some random studio dabbling. But even if you’re not a fan of experimental noisemaking, these tracks are never longer than 2 minutes, so they never overstay their welcome. The actual songs are of course even better, ranging from power-pop (‘My Pal the Tortoise’) to melancholy folk-rock (‘Hundreds of Years’) to krautrockish explorations (‘Cup of Dreams’) to friggin’ lullabies (‘Noble Experiment’). My favorite track here, however, is the gorgeous ‘The Piston and the Shaft’ – easily the most heavily-produced song on the album, with amazing interplay of the bass and several guitars and even some semblance of vocal harmonies in the chorus. This kind of song could make a fine radio hit too, if it weren’t for the dark lyrical matter (and maybe it WAS a radio hit on some alt-rock stations for all I know).

However, probably none of the above descriptions will give you any true impression about what ‘Strangers from the Universe’ actually sounds like. And even if I say that this is a weird cross between geometric guitar precision of Wire, noisy sincerity of The Fall and warped songwriting of The Residents, with a heavy dose of Can and Neu to boot, that still wouldn’t be even close to what you’ll actually hear. So if the named artists mean anything good to you, you’d better check this album out, I daresay it’s going to pleasantly surprise all lovers of indie-rock with experimental edge.