CD Review: Lana Del Rey - Born to Die

With everything that's been said about Lana Del Rey, it's worth noting that her major label debut album has been out for all of one week. We've heard all about the woman's image, her constantly morphing videos, her lips (especially the lips), and how calculating it all is. All of that chatter has two sizable disadvantages. First, it has a shelf life that expires, it would seem, about two weeks before the album itself drops (publications that adored the idea of getting 'firstsies' when 'Video Games' came out are falling all over themselves to distance themselves from the finished product). Second, it really has nothing to do with the only thing I'm even remotely interested in.

Is the damn album any good??


Well, yeah. It is. I mean, to a certain extent, it was bound to be. Anyone with an open mind loved 'Video Games' and 'Blue Jeans' (I certainly did), and the title track is excellent, as well. That's three good-to-great songs - already more than to you're likely get out of a vast majority of pop albums. The only question was whether or not the rest of the album was going to live up to those songs. On that count, how could it possibly do that? Anyone who was going to enjoy Lana Del Rey at all was going to have heard their favorite song by the time they pop in the disc for the first time (and truthfully, if you hated "Video Games" or "Blue Jeans", then you really don't need to give this a try... nothing here is going to convince you if you didn't like those songs). The track listing doesn't do Born to Die any favors, the three songs people have heard are loaded at the front of the album, giving people a glut of lesser songs to close it out.

The music itself is darkly poppy, with a hint of hip-hop beat to go with the string flourishes that Born to Die is absolutely full of. Lana's better with the solemn stuff, her voice sounds a little frail for the more upbeat stuff (though I will cop to enjoying the 'harlot scarlet' bit in "Off to the Races"). She's clearly meant to evoke a sultry nightclub singer, but there's always a weird "innocence corrupted" angle that pops up. The allusions to Lolita obviously aren't by accident. They are a recurring theme throughout the entire album ("Off to the Races" directly appropriates a line from it, and several other songs allude to it). This could come off as heavy-handed, or even a little creepy if the music wasn't so damned catchy - and make no mistake, the songs are catchy. Even if they sometimes have obvious flaws (would it have killed them to do a take where she takes an extra half pause between "let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain" and "you like your girls insane"?? I may have to make an edit that adds it in. It will never stop bothering me), they are well built.

Born to Die is interesting to me, not because of the weird controversy that hovers around it, but because it's a well built, if flawed, album. The flaws seem so correctable in spots, but they give the whole thing a character that overcomes what could have been a connect-the-dots affair. At the same time, it leaves a lot of room for Lana to improve. I think there's every chance that she will. This might be truly great, but if she can capture that dark, haunted, yet cynical vibe that makes her best music jump, there's no reason to think her next one might not be. I'm a lot more interested to see that than I am to hear another heavy-handed dissertation on how her lips make her a sellout.

7 / 10

Highlights
* Born to Die
* Blue Jeans
* Video Games
* Diet Mountain Dew

This 'n That: Ugly Losses, Stuff I've Been Listening To,

Bah.

Last night's Twins game was so great for the first eight innings. Morneau crushed two homeruns on his birthday, Mauer added one of his own, Johnny Damon got ejected... going into the ninth inning, the Twins were two runs up. In his career, Joe Nathan's only blown four two run leads. Things got ugly - fast. Nathan had a meltdown and gave up three runs in the bottom of the ninth to lose the heartbreaker. The outfield had some issues, including the normally solid Denard Span over-pursuing a line drive down the left field line, which led to an inside-the-park home run. Hopefully the Twins will be able to get to Joba Chamberlain early today and put the evil empire in their place.

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Micro Album Reviews

• I'd been eagerly awaiting Viva Voce's new CD 'Rose City' since I'd heard of its upcoming arrival. The finished product is pretty decent, but they've sort of stripped away a lot of the melody that made them so undeniable before. Most of the songs expand on the jam-heavy sound from "Get Yr Blood Sucked Out". It's a pretty good album, but it's going to take some time to get everything out of it.
• Wilco's new album (amusingly titled "Wilco (The Album)" is good. It's streaming for free at their website now, so you really don't have any reason not to check it out.
• Mewithoutyou's new album, "It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright" might actually kind of suck. After a couple of listens, I haven't gotten much out of it. The original mwY sound as featured on '[A-->B] Life' is gone. Aaron Weiss no longer has any fire left in his vocals, everything is either straight singing or done in his "sing-talking" style. All of this wouldn't really be a problem if the lyrics were up to mwY's usual caliber. Instead we get awkward lyrics with none of the drive that we've been used to from previous efforts. So to recap, they've lost their musical, vocal, and lyrical intensity - what actually is left to draw a listener in?

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In Which Things Get a Little Weird on the Bases...

With one out and runners on first and third, Michael Cuddyer (the runner on first) took off as the pitch was being thrown. Brian Buscher (the batter) hit a looping drive which was caught by the centerfielder. Cuddyer had slid into second base already, so he started running back to first, as Morneau tagged up to score. Bizarrely, Gardner ignored the easy double play option in Cuddyer and threw home to try to catch Morneau. His throw was unbelievably pathetic, and Morneau scored in plenty of time. At this point, they appealed to second, and the umpire ruled that Cuddyer had not tagged second on his return to first (even though he had not run past second at all). Somehow, the run counted. Which rules govern this, and why did Cuddyer get called out for not retouching second even though he had not travelled past second base, but rather had simply slid into it?

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While We're At It...

Derek Jeter is a great baseball player and a liekly first ballot hall of famer. However, he does not now, nor has he ever had "great range" or really even good/average range. He is a subpar fielding shortstop who knows how to make certain plays look very flashy. Thank you.

CD Review: Shiny Toy Guns - Season of Poison

I really liked Shiny Toy Guns' 1st/2nd/3rd CD We Are Pilots. It had an enjoyable mix of dance, electronica, and pop/rock. Whe I heard they were coming out with a new CD, I was understandably excited. Then I learned that they had parted ways with Carah Faye Charnow, who had injected a lot of the attitude and fun that made We Are Pilots so good. Then I heard the lead single to Season of Poison - 'Ricochet!', which prompted me to write the following:

"I was pumped for a new Shiny Toy Guns release when I first heard it was coming, but if the rest of Season of Poison is anything like this, it'll just prove that We Are Pilots was lightning in a bottle, and that the lightning has escaped."

Luckily, Season of Poison isn't quite all that bad. Sisely's "tough girl" vocals prove to be tortuous at times, but her actual 'singing' voice is pretty decent. The album kicks off with a song that represents the abum pretty well "When Did the Storm Begin", Sisely sort of rhythmicly shouts the verses, but she's saved soon enough by a soaring power-pop chorus. This proves to be about as close as Season of Poison comes to a formula. Most of the CD is guitar-driven power-pop, basicaly A lot less "Don't Cry Out", a lot more "Chemistry of a Car Crash". Occasionaly it veers and careens from genre to genre, touching on hints of african drum beats ("Season of Love"), some honest to God prog-rock ("Poison") and a LOT of 80's pop ("I Owe You a Love Song", and especially "Blown Away"). Through it all though, there very few light melodies. These are big songs.

I've warmed to 'Ricochet' to the extent that I greatly enjoy the chorus, but the verses are still hard to listen to. In fact, that represents one of the problems I do have with this CD. The album is so scattershot (often switching things up within the song, and putting things that don't necessarily work together - such as the organ led verses and the distorted guitar chord guzzling of "Blown Away") that you often get something you're not fond of mixed in with a song that you enjoy. There's the painful verses of the otherwise fantastic "When Did the Storm Begin?". There's the epic "Poison" with 2 minutes of needless organ and ambient noise noodling stuck on the end. A lot of it just seems disjointed, like the band had a million different directions they wanted to go, and only 45 minutes to pack it into.

If that sounds harsh, I really don't mean it to be. Like I said initially, this is a good CD. The band obviously doesn't miss Carah nearly as much as I had feared they might. With a few head-scratching exceptions, Sisely acquits herself pretty well. It's easy to miss sure things like "Don't Cry Out", and "Le Disko", and I don't think this CD will gain quite the same place in my CD wallet that We Are Pilots did, but I'd recommend this to anyone who liked Shiny Toy Guns before.

It's nice to be proven wrong sometimes.

7/10

CD Review: Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

A few months ago, Pitchfork had 'Buriedfed' on its venerable Forkcast. It's a great song - one of the best of the year, really - that builds from a simple strummed guitar all the way into a cacaphony of slightly off-kilter voices and crashing drums. It's also depressing as hell, but the lyrics are good to the point where it's not TOO much of a downer. After hearing a similarly good song called 'The Debtor', I was excited for a full-length release from MBAR (as people are seemingly calling him these days).

The full length is here, and I'm really not sure what to think. The two songs I really enjoyed are the first two song on the CD, and they're really the only two that follow the stripped down, folky singer-songwriter vibe. Almost all the other songs run with hazy guitar (think Grizzly Bear) wandering around through them. The atmosphere is a crushing one, and combined with his slightly off-kilter voice, things sort of feel like a druggy nightmare.

Then there's the lyrics. Dark, hopeless, depressing lyrics are not something that any listener of music in general (and indie music in particular) are unfamiliar with, but these are a special batch. Mr. Robinson has gone through a rough stretch, it seems, and he exorcizes a lot of demons here. There's not a lot of light to be had at the end of any of these tunnels. Lest I sound like a Plugged In reviewer, 'Buriedfed' uses some of the most hopeless imagery on the disc, and it's my favorite song of the bunch, it's just that SOMETHING needs to click with the listener. I'm admitedly not a large fan of the hazy soundscapes that Grizzly Bear comes out with, a lot of the lyrics are hard to identify with, and the vocals are hard to get into without the emotion behind them. When it comes to it, that's a large part of the problem, when MBAR sings, it feels like it's over, there's no fight left - there's a shocking number of things one can overlook in music when it feels like there's some fire behind them, as there is in Buriedfed.

I still greatly enjoy Buriedfed and The Debtor, but after multiple listens to the rest of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, there's nothing else for me to grab onto. It's soul-baring is admirable, but not necessarily something I want to listen to.

5/10

CD Review: The Black Mages - Darkness and Starlight

The Black Mages cater to a very specific niche - that is, they play prog rock remakes of battle themes from the Final Fantasy video game series. I was a fan of their first two releases. They were musically interesting, and they were a rare instrumental group that could be listened to as music, rather than just enjoyable background noise (though they worked pretty well for that, too).

However, in the second release, a few cracks began to show. In order for this music to really work, there has to be at least some connection to the source material. Simply put, they were running out of interesting themes to duplicate. That problem is only exascerbated on Darkness and Starlight, and it quickly becomes apparent that the best songs have long since been exhausted.

Something that quickly becomes noticable is that these songs become monotonous quickly. There are no fun quirky songs like 'Vamo Allo' Flamenco' to break things up, no 'Matoya's Cave' to slow things down, just wave after wave of very similar sounding music. It ends up failing where the first two offerings succeeded - with very few exceptions it only works as background music.

Things come to a head on the painfully overlong title track, where the Mages take an interesting concept (an epic metal opera), then continue to play it until the listener's attention span begs for mercy. DOn't get me wrong, I love some Sigur Rós, and I actually found 'Dancing Mad' to be enthralling for it's 12 minute duration, but 15 minutes for this particular track is too long by about 10 minutes.

After the disc comes to a close, the first thought in my mind is that the Black Mages had a good run, but this particular gimmick has completely run its course. I can't imagine a Black Mages IV (or, at the veryleast, not one base don FF music); and I have to say, that really doesn't bother me.

3/10

This 'n That: It's Business Time

Haven't had a good chance to do much with the space the last couple weeks. I have, however, had a chance to catch some new music, so here's what I've been after the last few weeks...

Flight of the Conchords (s/t)
Ah, the Flight of the Conchords. I was lucky enough to get my 3 month HBO trial during the run of the eponymous show, and became an instant fan. All the songs from their full length self-titled CD will be familiar to fans of the show, who should be pleased to see such classics as 'Business Time' and 'Prettiest Girl (in the room)', while people unfamiliar to the group might be a bit confused as to what the fuss is about. 'Leggy Blonde' is still awful, and a couple other songs seem a bit detached without the show to act as a reference point (even though most, if not all of these songs existed in some way before the show even aired). Still, the Conchords are awesome, and this set shows that fact quite nicely.
(7/10)

Crystal Castles (s/t)
Whoa, this is fun music. Crystal Castles use an Atari 5200 chip inside of their keyboard to produce what could best be described as videogame dance pop. The songs alternate between ridiculously catchy sugary songs that sound like old school nintendo soundtracks and hyperactive shouty electronic spazz outs. Greatly enjoyed.
(8/10)

Gnarls Barkley (The Odd Couple)
Big kudos to Gnarls for moving on from 2006's biggest hit. 'The Odd Couple' could have been nothing but 15 stabs at re-bottling lightning, and to their credit, they haven't gone in that direction. Instead, they've filled their followup with manic, flow-of-consciousness r&b similar to the stuff on St. Elsewhere, only more consistently good. The mountains have been smoother out a little, but the valleys have been filled in quite a bit, too.
(8/10)

Panic at the Disco (Pretty. Odd.)
I was a moderate fan of Panic's first CD (back when they were known by the asinine name of "Panic! at the Disco"), but thought they were nothing special. If they had churned out another 'Fever You Can't Sweat Out', I probably wouldn't have given it a second look, but hearing that they had abandoned pop-punk entirely in favor of Beatles-ish pop-rock songs, I had to check it out. Well, at least the album lives up to it's name. It's really strange hearing a band who sounds like they only just heard about the Beatles try to emulate what they've discovered. There's no way on earth Panic should be trying to copy the Beatles, but they don't know that, and it makes the music more interesting than it should be. As an added bonus, they still know how to write a decent hook, so in the end, even though there's no way that this CD should work, it somehow does. Barely, but it does.
(6/10)

Atmosphere (When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold)
As an aside, I would like to state that this is the best album title of the year. They can give out the award now, and save everyone the trouble of trying to think up clever plays on words and puns. Nothing can top this. Musically, it's a mixed bag. I really enjoy Atmosphere when they're playing the over-the-top, big bragging music. This CD doesn't really have any of that. Lyrically, it's a revelation, after hearing Slug rap about 'Slug and the things that Slug hates' for his entire career, we get a concept album of sorts about how much life sucks and how family needs to stick together through it. All the familiar themes (girls, strippers, inner city lifestyles) get turned on their head and twisted around to a more personal setting. Some of the songs are almost completely resigned, and all of them carry around a certain gloom, but the much more subdued production and almost 'tender' vocal treatment give them a weight you don't expect from rap music. Like I said before, I enjoy this act more when they're in 'The Arrival' mode, but this album almost necessary by the time 'In Her Music Box' ends. Different, but good.
(7/10)

 

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Chalk This Up Under 'Cockflickery'

Looking at the now famous video of Buzz Bissinger's hissy-fit, there are points to be made for the fact that blogs don't necessarily encourage good writing (and I'm a shining example of that), and there are plenty of world class cockflickers out there (and the fact that I have a 'cockflickery' tag lumps me uncomfortably close to the people that think the word 'douchebag' is hilarious). But honestly, to berate somebody for the comments on his blogs? That goes beyond cockflickery to absolute worthless babble.

On a side note, one thing that actually strikes me (other than a certain inward sigh over how impervious to logic some people are) is how uncomfortable it must have felt for Braylon Edwards to be sitting there watching the whole thing. That had to have been awkward.

CD Review: Children 18:3

It's no secret that I've been looking forward to this CD for quite a while (basically since 2006, when they shockingly made my 8th favorite album of the year). I eagerly listened to the new versions of 'LCM' and 'You Know We're All So Fond of Dying', and liked what I was hearing, but I already knew that these were good songs, and while Songs of Desperation was good, it was pretty front-loaded, and my favorite 3 songs off of the CD were coming back. I began to worry that the band had already run out of gas.

No worries.

Having been familiar with a bit of their earlier work, it's no shock that the riffs are pummeling, or that the instruments are all played fantastically. It does, however, come as a pleasant surprise how tuneful the album is. As I said last month, they clean up nicely. David actually has a pretty decent voice when he puts his mind to it, and the male/female vocal play between him and LeeMarie is done as well as any act I can remember. It never feels like a gimmick, and they both really stepped up their game for these recordings.

The mish-mash of genres (including garage rock, punk, straight up rock, and even ska) never comes across as forced, and there really aren't any weak tracks. If this sounds a touch fanboyish, keep in mind that 3 years ago, I disliked this band enough to sell an old EP I had bought to my brother. They've come a long way as songwriters since then, and it really shows here.

Children 18:3 have put together one of the most consistantly engaging CDs in recent memory. It's not often that a CD like this comes along. Check into this album immediately. You won't regret it.

9/10

Standout tracks:
Children 18:3 - LCM (mp3)
Children 18:3 - You Know We're All So Fond of Dying (mp3)
Children 18:3 - Even Sleeping