2010 Tunes: More Quickies

Some more quick reviews! Hooray!:

Vampire Weekend - Contra
Much as I’m not a fan of their whole Ivy League aesthetic, I’ve still found plenty to like on Vampire Weekend’s sophomore album. Songs like “Cousins” find the band at their most energetic heights yet, while others like “White Sky” further refine the kinds of breezy tropical horizons the band hinted at two years ago. Ezra Koenig seems to have really benefited from his horizon-broadening side projects with The Very Best and the like, even if his love of over-enunciating exotic words causes songs like “Horchata” and “California English” to veer into over-precious nursery rhyme territory. And then there’s “Giving Up the Gun”, an instant classic that’s an unabashed stab at radio play while still feeling like a fresh direction for these guys. It’s just another one of the contradictions that make Vampire Weekend such an interesting band, even if not every hat they wear is to your liking.


These New Puritans – Hidden
I was a big fan of these guys’ labyrinthine debut album, Beat Pyramid, which was awesome in part because it was so obtuse, providing a listening experience that felt like an excavation. Their follow-up retains a lot of TNP’s flavor, echoed horn loops and all, but also feels more straightforward, ironically enough. I don’t doubt that there’s a lot to mine here, but it seems that even the puzzles themselves are too well hidden on this album to really excite the hunt for meaning. Sure, there are songs on here that can stand on their own (“Hologram”, “Attack Music”), but as a whole the album does seems to have too much, well, Hidden for its own good.

Turzi – B
When I first heard “Baltimore” on the radio, my immediate reaction was disbelief that Primal Scream had a new album out already. OK, sure, partly because of Bobby Gillespie’s guest vocals, but there’s no denying that Turzi’s darkly urban electro-rock gives the song a distinct feeling that it could be called “Exterminator 2.0”. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, either, especially when the music on most of the rest of the album speaks for itself. A lot of “political” artists lean on either long-winded manifestos or cheesy sloganeering to get their point across, so it’s really refreshing to hear a set of (mostly) instrumentals that just feel like protest music. And, true, without a specific target or worldview, you could argue that it’s not a real political statement; I’d argue back that it least this won’t go stale after six months.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
Gorillaz was originally conceived as an anti-band; four cartoon avatars who provided the surreal facade of a faceless and numberless band. That was almost immediately undone when fans found out who was involved (“omigod! Damon Albarn and Del tha Funky Homosapien and Dan the Automator!?!”). Then came Demon Days, probably my favorite Gorillaz album because it’s the least Gorillaz-like, basically an Albarn/Danger Mouse vanity project first and some vague attempt at “anonymity” a distant second or fifth. Plastic Beach, now, feels like a serious attempt to get back to that anonymity through such sheer volume of guest singers, musicians and producers that only the vague notion of this as a “concept album” can really keep all this together as any kind of unified piece. That’s not really my bag, but in the age of mp3 downloads and iTunes singles and “the death of the album” (whatever that means), it’s probably exactly what they’re going for. Still, it’s hard not to be impressed by a guest list that includes Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, Lou Reed, De La Soul, Mick Jones, Joe Simonon, fucking Mark E. Smith and, uh, Snoop Dogg. The more I look at this as less of an artistic statement and more of a big fat crazy party where each rock luminary gets a turn at the mic, the more it works for me. Is it in too poor taste to end with “Everyone gets a turn with the Plastic Beach”?