Radio Rant: Avicii – Wake Me Up!

Posted on October 27, 2013 by bgibs122

Hello, and welcome to Radio Rants. Who are we looking at today?

Swedish DJ Avicii is the latest in the David Guetta-Calvin Harris line of “DJs who engineered someone else’s hit trying to gain their own success”. Similar to how D.Guetta costarred the Black Eyed Peas’ largest single and Calvin Harris tapped with Rihanna in 2011, Avicii got his start when his song “Levels” (already an electronic hit) was sampled by Flo Rida for “Good Feeling”. After that, he’s been around while prepping his proper debut album True, from which we get “Wake Me Up!” And, despite only being responsible for notching one hit before “Wake Me Up!”, Avicii’s presence has been felt on the chart for the last year or so.

That “slap some acoustic guitar over a club jam” gimmick? He was near the start of that. “Good Feeling”, basically a “Levels” remix, brought that guitar to the front of the mix. About a year later, Ke$ha’s “Die Young” (a “Good Feeling” soundalike) used damn near the same chords, and was a major hit, too. And, thanks to the continued success of “strum your heart out” folkies like The Lumineers, we’re seeing more club meets folk/country abominations than we know what to do with. In short, Avicii is part of the reason that the Mumford and Sons/Ke$ha mash-up has gone from “silly novelty remix” to “eerily prophetic”.

Point of fairness, “Wake Me Up!” credibly sounds like a Mumford remix in so much that the guitar (care of Incubus’ Mike Enziger) has some honest to God texture to it instead of sounding like a few chords hammered out by the recording studio’s intern. The production on “Wake Me Up!’ overall is top notch, which should be no surprise, considering that it’s by a DJ. My favorite part of the song is the chorus before the proper synth hook comes back; the Mumford-style single bass drum, the guitar strumming, and bass all sound muscular without any hamfistedness. The synths themselves aren’t bad, and even follow a more “folk” sounding melody. “Wake Me Up!” is a deftly thorough exercise in genre cross-pollination.

But who on Earth is singing this thing? It’s not Avicii, is it? If so, the dude’s been on the wrong side of the recording booth. No, it turns out that those vocals belong to soul singer Aloe Blacc, whose biggest claim to fame is the opening for How to Make It In America. Blacc brings some emotional resonance to the song that might feel a little out of place, but it helps break up the song’s monotony (“Wake Me Up!”‘s biggest weakness is repetition–at a four minute runtime, the song could be a little tighter, or try a little more). What’s he singing about, though?

“Feeling my way through the darkness/Guided by a beating heart” Either you just switched senses from touch to hearing, or that is a disgustingly literal line.

“They tell me I’m too young to understand/They say I’m caught up in a dream/Well life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes/Well that’s fine by me” That was the longest way to restate “Living is easy with eyes closed” I’ve heard.

“So wake me up when it’s all over/When I’m older and wiser/All this time I was finding myself” …what? You just said to let you dream, but now you want us to wake you up “when it’s all over” and you’ve found yourself? Ok, I guess…

“I tried to carry the weight of the world/But I only have two hands” I love this line just for how surprised it sounds. Was he going dream up a third hand?

“Wish that I could stay forever this young/Not afraid to close my eyes” Holy shit, dude, PICK ONE. No one says, “Yeah, I’m going to dream away my life for the next decade, but as soon as I’m older, then I’ll get it together”. Just because Avicii and company made a Mumford beat doesn’t mean they needed to play Mad Libz with Mumford lyrics. And I know I’m nitpicking, but with a delivery as large as Blacc’s, you’d think he was singing something of gravitas.

“Wake Me Up!” is ok. The beat’s nice, the production’s great, and the idea is interesting, but something about it doesn’t quite click. The song combines club pop and arena-style folk, but misses the most satisfying part of both: the payoff. There’s no rush or catharsis to “Wake Me Up!”, and so it has to settle for being good instead of great. It’s a solid hit for Avicii, but simply the next in a long-line of constructed anthems, all size, no weight.

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Album Review: Katy Perry – Prism

Posted on October 23, 2013 by bgibs122

Holy shit was Teenage Dream successful.

It was a forgone conclusion that the album would sell tons of units and notch a hit or two, but five number one hits and an unprecedented streak on the Hot 100? You can’t predict those kind of numbers, especially considering the quality of the material. Teenage Dream transformed Katy Perry from crass but occasionally great pop artist to a superstar that, by the books, was on par with Michael Jackson and Thriller. I’ve written more about her than anyone else since I started blogging; there was about a year where I straight up didn’t think she would leave. Katy Perry wasn’t a leader in pop music, she was pop music.

I’m not entirely sure this was a good thing.

Repeating critical success is hard. Repeating commercial success on this scale is damn near impossible; chasing down the magic that made it happen can be maddening. While writing Thriller‘s follow-up Bad, Jackson would write his goal number on bathroom mirrors as a reminder to himself: “100 million”.

If Perry ever set such a goal for herself, you wouldn’t know it from Prism. While it doesn’t sound like a direct sequel to Teenage Dream–there’s a heavier focus on the synths in 2013 than there was in 2010–it is in spirit: pure, confectionery pop music wrapped in polystyrene cliches. It’s hard to call this a bad move, or even disappointing on Perry and her production team (pop masterminds Dr. Luke and Max Martin are back, as is Bonnie McKee for writing): after all, can five million records be wrong?

Your ability to enjoy Prism in any capacity depends on how safe you like your pop music. And I mean that–Prism is “wearing a helmet on a swing-set” levels of safe. Lead single/first track “Roar” illustrates this to a tee with it’s well polished albeit pedestrian hook. The bouncy drum beat and major-key melody are off-set with a slightly murkier bassline, but the song’s push-pull cancel each other out, and “Roar” is more tolerable than anything else.

Safety wins again on second single “Unconditionally”, a big, drum-heavy ballad that’s meant to sound timeless and epic with all of it’s echoes and reverb-drenched guitars, but comes off at cavernous and dull instead. It’s not a bad song, per se, but it doesn’t do anything well, either. Something similar can be said for the record’s production as a whole: everyone in the producer’s chair comes with a veteran’s set of skills, but outside a few key cuts, they’re making pleasant-but-inert creations.

Perry’s also doing some image-fixing on Prism. That’s not to say that she’s completely shed her “winking pin-up girl” appeal, but there are no girl-on-girl kisses or The Hangover reenactments here. “Birthday” might include every “birthday sex” joke Jeremih discarded, but it still romanticizes the experience, and on designated party-jam “This Is How We Do”, Perry’s night out includes fewer arrest warrants and shopping sprees and “Mariah karaoke” (sidenote: that line might qualify for the top 10 worst of the year). It makes sense when you consider that this is her “introspective” and “reflective” album–more on that later–but it’s still odd to hear Katy Perry this tame.

The times that Prism succeeds come from it going for the jugular and committing to a solid idea. “Dark Horse”, a dark, sensual, trap banger with heavy bass, made waves when it was released, and it’s still a top-tier cut on the album. It’s a good song, but Perry herself comes off as incidental next to the monstrous beat. She fairs better on second song “Legendary Lovers”, which lyrically recalls “E.T.” except with religion and spirituality as love-metaphors instead of aliens. The beat’s dark with tinges of hip-hop during the verses before turning into a Florence and the Machine slice of art-pop for the chorus. The album’s best song is far and away “International Lover”, where Perry is at her best: deliriously silly, unrelentingly catchy dance-pop. For “International Lover”, Perry’s in disco-diva mode with self-backing “Ooooooh, wooooo, ooooh”s in the verses and a deft bit of range on the chorus. The music behind her is led by a disco drum beat and guitar riff, and with the vocoder and musical swell at the bridge, the song straight up comes a Random Access Memories outtake. It’s worth listening to.

Those tracks aside, the first eight songs on Prism are a mix of mediocre to tolerable. “Walking on Air” revisits early 90s pop in a way no one needed to remember, and “Birthday” is such a 70s soul imitation that I had to triple check to make sure Bruno Mars didn’t produce it (as a song, it’s enjoyable if you can turn your brain off; example lyric “Let me get you in your birthday suit/It’s time to bring out the big balloons”). Like I said, Prism is Perry’s “maturing” album, and accordingly, the last five songs of it are sparse, ponderous, whispered, utterly pace-murdering ballads. Let’s skip to the good stuff: “Love Me” scrapes at the real emotion behind the navel-gazing profundity surrounding it by exploring insecurity in a relationship. It’s a muddled success at best, but still leaves more to chew over than what else is here.

“Ghost”, “Double Rainbow”, “This Moment”, and “By the Grace of God” fall apart not only because they’re all stacked together (although that certainly doesn’t help), but because they beg for sincerity from music’s most authentically inauthentic pop star. Perry’s strengths are in selling fun hooks and maybe a sweet love song, not fumbling around with stock platitudes like “be your own person” and “live for the moment”. Even after half a dozen listens to each, I can barely remember any of these tracks.

Taken as a whole, Prism is a better made, tighter unit than Teenage Dream, but I’m not sure that makes it “better” by default. The mostly nice production is the album’s saving grace, while the cliche and just flat out bad lyrics don’t do it any favors. The record will still sell by the millions and notch a few hits, but I can’t say it thrills me for whatever Katy Perry and company do next, three stars out of five.

tl;dr: Prism won’t do anything to make Katy Perry lose the “Princess of Pop” crown, but it might not help her keep it, 3/5.

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Double EP Review: Fall Out Boy – PAX AM Days and Best Coast – Fade Away

Posted on October 20, 2013 by bgibs122

EPs, while less robust than full albums, can make for interesting listens, because they provide a candid picture of where an artist is at a given time. An EP might feature an artist following a particular creative impulse, playing with a different sound between albums, or writing a few songs with a common theme. Anyway, I’m looking at two of them today, so let’s dive in.

The players: Veteran pop-punk/pop-rockers Fall Out Boy who are releasing their second set of material this year, and bratty indie darlings Best Coast following up 2012’s The Only Place.

What Brings Them Here Today?
Fall Out Boy are still in the press cycle from Save Rock and Roll, their reunion album put out this April. Despite the title, it’s the least rock and roll (and least good outright) product the band’s ever committed to tape, opting instead for rock meets pop meets soul creations devoid of character. PAX AM Days could be a chance for them to win back some fans.

Likewise, Best Coast could use more good community press after 2012’s The Only Place. That album stripped away the shoegaze fuzz that’s been a trademark of Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno’s sound since day 1, and despite the clear, 70’s singer-songwriter polish, is a bit more of a slog to listen to than I remember.

In short, both groups are looking at a redemption round.

Why Now?
Fall Out Boy got in touch with Ryan Adams at Adams’ recording studio PAX AM. Reportedly, the band wanted to get more in touch with their hardcore roots and “play punk rock” after sound more Maroon 5 than blink-182 on Save Rock and Roll. After two days in the studio with Adams, the group had enough material for PAX AM Days.

Fade Away is the inaugural release of Bethany Cosentino’s Jewel City label, and a somewhat corrective action for her band, as well. In an interview with Stereogum, Cosentino said that Fade Away was her and Bruno’s attempt to recreate the sound of Best Coast’s live show, which is basically the halfway point between Crazy For You‘s lo-fi roar and the sleeker The Only Place.

What’s the Sound?
PAX AM Days racks up 8 songs in 13 minutes–do your own math. The EP could be described as guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley revenge (or, less charitably, their last gasp); aggressive drums and spastic 80s hardcore guitar riffs dominate here, not hooks and cheeky lyrics. To the contrary, Pete Wentz’s bass is practically missing, and Stump’s vocals come out in borderline indistinguishable shouts and screams, save closer “Caffeine Cold”, which is the only cut that gets close to traditional FOB. The songs sound like demos of Fall Out Boy demos: start with a count off, bash out riffs for a minute or minute and a half, and throw the switch. Hurley’s the clear victor here, release from the “drum machine” duties of Save RnR, but that aside, PAX AM Days succeeds a little too well at being “tossed off”.

Fade Away, on the other hand, sees Best Coast get ambitious with song lengths: three of its seven songs stretch past the four minute mark (the group’s previous comfort range was two to three minutes). The band cited “Mazzy Star, Patsy Cline, My Bloody Valentine, and Ambien” as influences–in other words, Best Coast with their distortion pedals back. Fade Away has the hallmarks of BC’s sound: the punchy drums, simple but straightforward lyrics around romance and sadness, rudimentary chord progressions, Bruno’s melodic guitar lines, and Cosentino’s 60s girl-group layered vocals. The varying song lengths actually work in the group’s favor–the title track and “Who Have I Become?” are two of the longest cuts, but some of the best (opener “This Lonely Morning” isn’t quite three minutes, but lovely all the same).

But, Does It Work?
Here’s where it gets tricky. I’m no expert in hardcore, but PAX AM Days feels ok-ish and faceless for what it is. There are few distinctions between songs–“Love, Sex, Death” is the single, “Hot to the Touch, Cold on the Inside” is the crowd singalong, “Eternal Summer” is the feedback-heavy one–but no matter how you slice it, none of them are Fall Out Boy. Patrick Stump plays to exactly zero of his strengths, and the band doesn’t fair much better outside the “make a racket” department. Even as a “back to our roots” record, PAD is painfully overcompensating; sure, the band might have listened to hardcore and punk in high school, and Hurley and Trohman played in metal/hardcore groups during FOB’s hiatus, but early Fall Out Boy was doe-eyed pop-punk.

Best Coast pass the first hurdle of sounding like themselves, but that includes some of their past flaws. The band is at their best when the material is propulsive, this is why despite their varying lengths, the first three songs on Fade Away are impressive. As soon as that sense of forward motion disappears, the quality dips (“Fear of My Identity”) and bottoms out (“Baby I’m Crying”). The one time that slow works is on the title track, which has heightened drama and melancholy. But when Fade Away hits, it hits damn well, and even with some duds, BC have added four great new tunes to their cannon.

Should I Listen to Them?
PAX AM Days: Fall Out Boy play pretend as something they never were: 1.5/5.
Fade Away: Best Coast pass their redemption round, but barely: 3/5.

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Album Review: Pearl Jam – Lightning Bolt

Posted on October 19, 2013 by bgibs122

It’s funny to think that as of Lightning Bolt‘s release, we’ve had records from Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and now Pearl Jam within a year of each other after the latter spent over a decade as grunge’s Last Man Standing. Each group got here through different means: Soundgarden are on their reunion album, AiC 2.0 finally stepped out of Layne’s shadow, and Pearl Jam are simply on album ten. Despite the varying paths to 2012/2013, each album is the first in the given band’s “dependable veteran” era.

For Pearl Jam, this means confirming the “back to rock” trend started with the ramshackle but somewhat stooge-y Pearl Jam in 2006, and continued with the polished and poppy Backspacer in 2009. Of the three, Lightning Bolt is firmly in the middle as far as quality goes; it has the largest sound and most ideas of the three and is more refined than the self-titled, but doesn’t have Backspacer‘s precision, either. This album is Pearl Jam at their most arena-ready, but that doesn’t mean that they’ve eased on the emotion or the tension in their music.

The first four songs on Lightning Bolt create it’s best suite of tracks. Opener “Getaway” has plenty of power in Matt Cameron’s drumming and Stone Gossard’s muscular riffs and Eddie Vedder has a desperate edge in his vocals that adds urgency to the song’s chorus, especially in the closing minute of the song where everyone’s playing their heart out. First single “Mind Your Manners” is the album’s designated punk track with Vedder at his raspiest while delivering politically charged lyrics over a Dead Kennedy’s style riff. It’s an explosive track that’s been called Lightning Bolt‘s “Spin the Black Circle”, but strikes me more as its “Brain of J”. “My Father’s Son”, meanwhile, is an excellent workout between bassist Jeff Ament and Cameron. It’s Pearl Jam working their artier side, but an interesting listen that gives the album a bit of depth.

Capping off this run is album highlight “Sirens”, one of the band’s outright best ballads and an instant classic. “Sirens” won’t break any new ground, but as a sprawling, heartfelt song imbued with gorgeous guitar work and Vedder at his most earnest (and some of his highest vocals), it’s the kind of “lighters in the air” arena ballad that lesser bands have spent careers trying to write. “Sirens” works so well because it’s a classic Pearl Jam song updated to where the band is in their history; it’s earnest with more than a few classic rock nods, but is also free of the reactionary self-consciousness that dogged the band until Backspacer.

Pearl Jam have also reached the point of their career where, as a fan, an album is more about finding some great new tracks to add to the catalog than making end-to-end masterpieces. In that regard, Lightning Bolt does its job quite well: outside of the aforementioned tracks, the album is consistently enjoyable and occasionally great. Mostly acoustic and folksy “Sleeping By Myself” is charming, and bolstered by textured electric guitars. The Matt Cameron-Jeff Ament-Stone Gossard rhythm section (frequently cited as one of the best in big name rock) gives “Infallible” a lumbering might that the band hasn’t explored before, and there’s a grinding paranoia to the song’s triumphant chorus that makes it memorable. Tender closing ballad “Future Days” doesn’t hit as hard as “Sirens”, but is lovely all the same.

But that isn’t to say that Lightning Bolt isn’t entirely without blemish. The title track, “Yellow Moon”, and to an extent “Swallowed Whole” are rank and file Pearl Jam songs without much to differentiate themselves from the pack. “Let the Records Play”, a “Johnny Guitar” style rock tribute, sounds like a set-list closer by a bar band whose best song is an “Even Flow” cover. “Pendulum” is an experimental tom-tom and piano heavy texture piece that’s not even four minutes long, but feels much longer. None of these are bad, but they aren’t going to appear outside of the current tour, either.

But, ultimately, Lightning Bolt is a keeper. It’s enjoyable as a whole, and has a few stellar high points for a band making headway into their third decade of existence. As always, the instrumentation is wonderful, Vedder’s voice continues to improve with age, and there’s a warmth here that isn’t present on other PJ records–these intangibles help compensate for the album’s occasional slip-ups. Pearl Jam are aware they’re no longer the last man standing, but they’re not just standing, they’re still pushing forward. Four stars out of five.

tl;dr: Ten albums in, and Lightning Bolt still sounds vital, 4/5.

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