Armor For Sleep – What to Do When You Are Dead

Lately, the countless number of CDs that are delivered day after day to my door end up piling up sky high next to my desk. Some of the lucky ones are best served as a welcoming mat for my morning and nightly cups of coffee. You really need something to keep you up when the music brings you down. About a month ago, the “buzz” surrounding Armor For Sleep’s sophomore album, What to Do When You Are Dead, started ringing out. It’s the make it or break it album and I love to listen for the progression, or mostly lack thereof.

I was initially impressed by Armor For Sleep’s debut album, Dream to Make Believe, it was an album that showed promise. They’ve changed the way someone can look at a band’s second full-length release with What to Do When You Are Dead. This album, which borders near conceptual is written from the perception or point of view of someone who has traversed over into the afterlife. It’s a journey and passage of life and death. Something we all must face, but find it hard to talk about and realize.

The music is reminiscent of a dark, cinematic feature and the album is in fact admirably structured that way. The full experience of listening to this album is closely related to that of watching a film with all its peaks and valleys throughout. The album begins with an actual death, an entering to heaven and being alone before returning home and finally taking your steps as a ghost. Don’t let the conceptual idea of the album fool you though. While the full experience of the album is best suited to listen to in sequence, each song can surprisingly stand alone. That is how well executed these songs are. Now the concept is definitely intriguing but it wouldn’t be able to stand up without the music and Armor For Sleep do not disappoint. They have implemented the same amount of thought and expression into the music as they did with the concept. The music on this album is a clear progression from their debut album. I can best describe it and relate it to as the way label mates; The Snake The Cross The Crown progressed from their first EP to their LP.

What to Do When You Are Dead sees a change in the vocals as the range is much more vast and extensive. The guitars also provide their own range as they are featured much more enthusiastically with shuffling between high points and low points that help budge the delicate structure of the album along. Another aspect that is truly neat to follow is how the lyrics flow so well with the music. You get the sense that there was so much time put into matching the lyrics with the guitar and bass lines because it all fits so well. As much as they have progressed on this release, they still manage to keep things somewhat catchy and I think that’s the trick. Often times, concept albums can offer too much experimental material that one tends to lose focus. Rather than deem this album experimental, the right thing to do would be to classify it as the result of what happens when a band pours thought, vitality and the will to do things differently into a release, and then to have execution meet expectations.

(Equal Vision Records)

William Elliott Whitmore – Ashes to Dust

There is a definite fetish with American roots music today. Not only in the popular realm, with the recent frenzy produced over the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack and Emmy Lou Harris’ new recording, but also in independent music. William Elliott Whitmore is nothing if not rootsy. He doesn’t have the Flannery O’Conner meets Nick Cave gothic stoicism of 16 Horsepower or the indie sensibilities of Blanche, but he feels much more authentic than either.

His boozy drawl crawls straight from the south, from his home on a horse ranch along the banks of the Mississippi. It is so spiritually laden, a hoarse cry for God, that it would sound equally in place on a scratchy southern gospel 78. Whitmore’s music also has the same stripped down verve of that early music. Most of it is just vocals and guitar with a bit of foot tapping, hand clapping or tambourine to provide a rhythm.

Whitmore sounds like he has seen the dirtiest, roughest part of the world. Like many of the roots throwbacks recording today, Whitmore has a sense of the melancholic. While it could be compared to a southern folk spiritual, songs like “The Day the End Finally Came” evoke the wrath of a mighty God, impersonal and fiery, breathing down the neck of the sinner. Most of the songs titles are equally imbued with southern gothic: “Diggin’ My Grave,” “The Buzzards Won’t Cry,” “Sorest of Eyes.”

What more should one expect from an album titled Ashes to Dust? It is refreshing in a world where the general feel is a euphoria of denial to hear songs that stare death in the face. And Whitmore acknowledges that all of humanity is to blame for this cold world on a personal level: “I’m digging my grave, I’m digging my grave / My road to hell is surely paved with all the love I never gave.”

But, not unlike life itself, there is always some joy to be found. On this album it comes in the form of the foot-stomping reverie “Lift My Jug (song for Hub Cale).” The song, so I read, is inspired by the first true hobo Whitmore ever met, a man of the railway and of the night sky. The song is an ode to human perseverance (and the alcoholic beverages that aid our plight) and its optimism in the face of adversity is enough to make Sisyphus take heart. Ashes to Dust is a collection of hymns to the human spirit, crushed and bedraggled as it is.

(Southern Records)

And You Will Know Us By the Trail Of Dead – Worlds Apart

And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead have managed to simultaneously confuse and intrigue by blurring the lines of the genres they so artfully bounce in and out of. Their sometimes proclaimed magnum opus, Source Tags & Codes proved to be a smooth transition from Merge Records to major label Interscope. They embraced the style of predecessors like Sonic Youth in terms of the avant garde guitar work by Kevin Allen, where there is a fine line between melody and dissonance, teamed with busy yet tactful drumming of Jason Reece, and Conrad Keely’s intelligent lyrics and display of vocal range, and were backed with enough money for all of this to sound clean and polished. They had a good thing going for them. As expected, this 2002 release was warmly accepted, getting rave reviews with most ratings surpassing 9 out of 10. …Trail of Dead had a lot of expectations to live up to for their next project. So did they buckle under the pressure? Well, maybe. They went on to release Worlds Apart, a puzzling ego trip for the band.

You are bombarded with a haunting, operatic overture of an intro with “Ode to Isis,” where you can barely make out the names of Egyptian kings being chanted. I would expect this sort of thing from an Opeth album, but not from them. This might leave you a little mystified, but piques your interest as to what can follow this. The title track “Worlds Apart” mocks the music industry for being full of unoriginal carbon copies. Lines like “They all sound the same to me / Neither much worse nor much better” are belted out facetiously by Keely who strangely sounds like a more falsetto version of Mike Ness. This track is a generic rock song, easily replaceable, yet it bears the oh-so clever moniker “Worlds Apart.” We are all supposed to see the farce in this. There’s enough music out there for us to roll our eyes at for sucking the life out of creativity. We don’t need a band that we depend on for their originality to remind us of this by parodying the kind of things we usually try to avoid. The majority of the remainder of the album mirrors “The Rest Will Follow”- a half heartfelt attempt at writing poignant, introspective lyrics sang with a guttural howl which just fails to make a deep connection to the listener because they have to sit through all too simplistic guitar riffs and drumming, and sleepy bass lines. However, “To Russia My Homeland” manages to be a perfect backdrop for waltzing at a masquerade ball, so it stands out quite significantly. “Caterwaul” hoards the remnants of what …Trail of Dead were on previous albums, and is probably the most substantial track on the album.

There are bursts of filler throughout the duration of the record that are comprised of things such as children cheering, interludes similar to “Ode to Isis”, spooky violin, and bouncy piano- …Trail of Dead attempt at eclecticism which is just overdone. It doesn’t aid in making Worlds Apart a more solid album, though it might just give you a confused look on your face. It’s just not appropriate because it accompanies tracks that are just catchy pop rock melodies more than anything else. They had the freedom to be progressive and experimental because they could never be tied down to one genre, but they have celebrated this to excess.

If this is your first taste of …Trail of Dead, you may gladly accept into your collection, and place it right next to your Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and Sparta records. If you’ve heard Madonna or Source Tags & Codes, you’ll wonder what happened to that experimental, artsy Texas quintet you bobbed your head to when your copy of Sonic Youth’s Washing Machine started to skip.

(Interscope Records)

Ed Harcourt – Strangers

Strangers marks the third full-length in four years from prolific British songster Ed Harcourt (four if you count the 2003 re-release of his early EP Maplewood), a spasmodic musical soul who isn’t afraid to draw from an amalgam of otherwise unrelated influences. Harcourt, now 27, was rumored to have a backlog of over 300 songs by the time he put his debut, Here Be Monsters, to tape in 2001. In defining his aesthetic motivation, he has name-dropped the likes of everyone from jazz legend Chet Baker and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (of “I Put A Spell On You” fame) to acutely modern acts like the Beastie Boys, Perry Farrell and At The Drive-In. While all of his influences may not be promptly apparent, Harcourt’s brand of tuneful, piano-based pop is indeed a savory musical curry, full of spunk and wildly varying concepts that somehow coalesce into a truly captivating listen.

In actuality, the best approximation of Harcourt’s sound would be that of Badly Drawn Boy, crossed with the more august melodic moments of The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft (for those of us naïve folks who believe that Ashcroft has indeed had moments where he was not august), with a voice that can’t help but remind you of Jeff Buckley in spots. The once-important but now going-out-with-a-fuss indie legends R.E.M., whose tastes seem to hold more weight than their music these days, thought highly enough of him to take him out on tour with them last year. Anyone who heard Ron Sexsmith’s last album, Retriever, got a dollop of Harcourt’s piano stylings on “From Now On,” imbuing the song with a vivacity that had been absent from most of Sexsmith’s previous work. Those who were paying attention could have taken it as a nod to the material present on what wound up being Strangers, and they wouldn’t have been too far off. And golly, it’s even got a kazoo.

The album-opening “The Storm Is Coming” lives up to its title, rolling out with an atonal guitar squall and arena-rock beat, joined midstream by Harcourt’s piano and a vindictive chorus (“The storm is coming / It’s gonna make a beautiful sound / I hope it turns your life upside down…”). In contrast to his multi-dimensional orchestrations, Harcourt’s lyrics are pleasantly direct and heart-on-the-sleeve, which he goes as far as to tell you himself in “This One’s For You.” “Born In The ’70s” is a cheeky, driving number that finds him scorning his traditionalist elders. He volleys deftly from tempo to tempo and melody to melody; from the Verveian bombast of “Let Love Not Weigh Me Down,” he drops off quickly to the frail emoting of “Something To Live For” and “The Trapdoor.”

The always-humble Noel Gallagher mentioned in a rare felicitous moment that he wished he’d written “This One’s For You,” which is no less than high praise from a now-descended Britpop deity who actually had an entire genre named after him. The Gallagher name might be innately associated with a certain degree of twatness, but no one’s second-guessing Noel’s musical pedigree. Noel might even enjoy the simple irony in naming a song “Loneliness” and then playing it as an uptempo, major-key pop song.

If the Keane album can catch fire in America for reasons I have yet to discern (besides it being warm, cuddly and completely inert, which while being enough for many people, is SO not rock), there’s no reason to believe that Harcourt can’t get some steam behind a tune like “The Storm Is Coming” or “Born In The ’70s.” The only thing that might hold Harcourt back in the States is that we don’t take too well anymore to radicals or free-thinkers, of which he is both. But make no mistake about it; there are two kinds of pragmatists: Bad pragmatists (I’m looking at you, Craig Nicholls) and good pragmatists. Ed Harcourt is safely in the company of the latter.

(Astralwerks)

This Day & Age – …Always Leave the Ground

There seems to be a recent surge of what I would classify as melodic rock. And I like it. Sometimes these bands have a punk edge to them, like Relient K and possibly Mae. Sometimes they don’t at all, like Copeland. This Day & Age is unabashed melodic rock, but the band’s edge is more rock than punk—like Copeland mashed together with label mates Lovedrug. It’s emo for sure, but it’s also alternative, pop and relentlessly addictive. The good thing is, it’s not addictive from just that one- or two-line part of that one song you love; the whole sound of the band is addictive.

With production by Ed Rose (The Get Up Kids, Motion City Soundtrack, Emery), This Day & Age makes an impressive label debut. The album, originally released in September, is being re-released in late February with more marketing behind it (with ads in magazines like Alternative Press) and a video for the first single, “Slideshow.” I find it annoying when bands/labels do this, but in TDA’s case, it’s probably not a bad idea. The buzz about the band is spreading and the single is quite teen-friendly: “If this were high school / or just homecoming / we’d dance all night.”

Frontman Jeff Martin’s voice is always intriguing and penetrating, never whiny—an easy trap to fall into with melodic rock/emo. Every track contains nice melodies that don’t rely entirely on vocal harmonies, but rather the back and forth between dirty and surging guitars, always resting comfortably next to the undulating piano. Now and then TDA makes use of electronic beats instead of drums, and usually to their advantage, such as on “Second Place Victory.” Most of this track is exclusively vocals, piano and a looped beat with a recurring refrain: “Let’s show them how to live / accept the pain / always forgive…” Lyrics like these are refreshing; it’s nice to hear a band that can talk about painful issues and emotions in a positive light. And usually it doesn’t sound too cheesy.

The only track that began to grate on me a bit was “Hourglass.” I thought Martin was singing the line “Weeeee used to beeeeee friends / but we found our way.” This got on my nerves, until I realized he was saying, “Weeeee used to beeeee afraid.” Much better, but still a little annoying—one-syllable words weren’t meant to be stretched out that long. 

One of the only obstacles this band has to overcome is separating itself a bit from Copeland. TDA isn’t a Copeland knock-off, but there are some striking similarities in the vocals and piano. But hey, I wouldn’t complain if more bands sounded like this.

(One Eleven Records)

Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning

Here is a theory: For some people, the only success is failure. Conor Oberst is surely one of these people. Nearly all of the best songs by Bright Eyes, the Oberst fronted collaborative project, deal with failure, specifically the failure of relationships, failure of our government, and, most notably, the failure of his own art. The band’s Lifted, or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground, was their swansong, with perhaps more angst and stripped down emotion than any of their previous releases. The album dealt with pain of all kinds such as the pain of creating art (Oberst’s realization that “everything I have made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time” in “Waste of Paint”), the pain of love (“love is an excuse to get hurt” in “Lover I Don’t Have to Love”), not to mention the pain of religion and politics. The only departure from the spiral of misery on Lifted… was in the positively upbeat “Bowl of Oranges.” This track was so intriguing because it was so oddly upbeat and instrumentally simply; Oberst sung of helping the sick and the paralyzing beauty of the world, and left many a listener wondering what provoked this foreign sentiment. Was it sarcasm? Was it a harbinger of things to come? While the track provoked discussion, it also became an extremely successful college radio single and got the band invited to perform on Conan O’Brien. This was not the failure and obscurity Conor was used to, and, after basing nearly his entire career around failure, fans wondered what direction Bright Eyes would continue in.

At the beginning of this month, the world received an answer in two separate discs, released simultaneously; the techno-rock Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and the disc reviewed here, I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning. From the title of the disc alone, one could tell that things were slightly sunnier in the Bright Eyes camp, and, lest to say, this is not the album anyone expected Conor Oberst to produce. The defining characteristics of any two given Bright Eyes songs prior to I’m Wide Awake… was that they were bound to be self-indulgent, but also most likely sound nothing like each other. The songs on Lifted, for example, moved from gothic orchestral rock to acoustic soul bearing to country with ease. I’m Wide Awake, on the other hand, is almost entirely a country album.

“At The Bottom of Everything” starts the album on a more traditional Bright Eyes note, with Oberst spending nearly two minutes telling the story of two people on a doomed plane crashing into the ocean, each trying to understand the proximity of their own demise. The song itself then begins and listeners get an acoustic, fiddle enhanced bitter, vitriolic lament that ends with Oberst finding happiness because “I found out I am really no one.” This realization by Oberst is a telling summary of the entire album. Oberst was one of a select few songwriters whose work was enhanced by the self-indulgent nature of his songs, and he boldly declares in this first track that he is nothing special, just an average guy. For the majority of the album, the listener is treated to poetic, sparse, downbeat country tracks, many of which feature beautiful backing vocals from Emmy Lou Harris, an amazing country artist in her own right. These songs are beautiful, poignant, and lyrically astute. Oberst even manages to tackle the political without sounding preachy in the slow waltz, “Landlocked Blues.” However, something just doesn’t feel right.

This brings up the paradox of the review, should this review recommend this album as an excellent and adventurous country album, or call this a creative retreat for Oberst and the least exciting release in the Bright Eyes catalog? Perhaps it is too much to expect from Oberst to release an album with the emotional pull of his earlier discs, but the distance by which he separates himself from the listener on this album is huge. Perhaps the best thing to be said about this release is that it really is quite good, and that it’s just unfair to have any expectations for Oberst to follow a linear path, as long as his releases are of as high a quality as I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning is.

(Saddle Creek Records)

A Night with the Manic Street Preachers

Manic Street Preachers / Razorlight – 12.09.04 @ Wembley Arena

There’s a fine line in the music world between those who choose to grow old gracefully and those who somehow end up embarrassing themselves more and more with each encroaching decade (see the Stones, Iron Maiden). The Manic Street Preachers largely fit the initial category – but why is that seven studio albums, a greatest hits collection and a rarities compilation into their career they still remain reasonably relevant, can pack out arenas and attract one of the most obsessive fan bases you’re like to come across?  Well, one of the reasons could be the fact that with each album they musically reinvent themselves, – from the raucous, inflammatory punk of Generation Terrorists, the nihilistic, uncomfortably honest masterpiece The Holy Bible to the polished Spector-ish production exhibited on Everything Must Go and the lush soundscapes more akin to the likes of New Order and Goldfrapp that swamp new LP Lifeblood, the Manics never fail to surprise their loyal followers.

I think it’s fair to say, Razorlight are swallowed up by the enormity of the charmless arena. Coming across more as a student band in the shadow of the Manics, tracks such as “Don’t Go Back To Dalston” and “Rip It Up” which usually sound frantic and urgent come across as tired and turgid and it’s only tracks such as “Stumble & Fall” and the irrepressible “Golden Touch” that give them a degree of redemption. With two dates booked at London’s Ally Pally, playing to over 22,000, it remains to be seen whether or not Razorlight can make the complete transition from playing the sweatboxes of East London they were used to a year ago, to the enormodromes where they looked so uncomfortable tonight.

The Manics are essentially doing two jobs tonight; one is to promote the reissued, repackaged tenth anniversary edition of The Holy Bible, the other is to promote the brand new Lifeblood album, which the band have coincidentally described as being “The Holy Bible for 35 year olds.” Rather aptly tracks lifted from both of these go down equally well, from the expansive, elegiac melodies of tracks such as “Solitude Sometimes Is” and “I Live To Fall Asleep” to the jagged, acerbic punkoids, namely “Yes” and “Faster.”

Although they may have toned themselves down in recent years in terms of their outspokenness, the band (featuring a second guitarist for the first time since iconic original member Richey Edwards’ disappearance) still pogo and scissor-kick their way around the stage as if they were twenty again and just necked a shedload of amphetamines. Tracks such as “You Stole The Sun From My Heart” and “Motown Junk” still sound mighty and majestic, the extra guitarist giving them extra beef, whilst a fully-plugged in version of “This Is Yesterday” (as opposed to the usual live acoustic rendition) is both poignant and beguiling. 

As the closing fanfare of “Motorcycle Emptiness” and “A Design For Life” rings out, steam rising from the mosh pit, the Blackwood trio show that there’s a great deal of life in them yet, and once again prove their critics who have been writing them off wrong; the Manic Street Preachers are far from being dead and buried.