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Giveaway: Body Talk, Pt. 2 CD + $20 iTunes Gift Card →

STREET DATE: 09.07.10 | EMUSIC | AMAZON| INSOUND | ITUNES

RATE BODY TALK PT. 2:

It would be tempting to say that Robyn’s Body Talk Pt. 2 picks up where the first installment left off, but that would be a clumsy use of the phrase – in actuality, Body Talk Pt. 1 leaves off with acoustic tracks and Swedish folk songs. That is distinctly not where Pt. 2 picks up. The second of three albums in the Body Talk series picks up somewhere right around the middle of part one, full of lush synthetic pop songs sung by a singer making a case to be the most adorable badass this side of, well, anyone.

Let’s talk. Let’s talk as if we’ve never heard Body Talk Pt. 1, as if this is our introduction to Robyn. In that world, this album is phenomenal, untouchable. Every song on the record is stellar – and I mean that in the scrape-the-stars sense of the word. The production is spotless, the hooks are catchy, and Robyn’s personality rings true across danceable beats and swelling synths. Album opener “In My Eyes” gradually builds in density, before dropping out and leaving Robyn to promise “You’ll be OK.” On the next track, Robyn breaks it down for us – “It is really very simple, just a single pulse, repeated at a regular interval.” If that’s how she builds her dance songs, she’s doing something rare: making the easy look delightfully complex.

The album’s highlights come in the form of “Hang With Me,” “We Dance to the Beat,” the Diplo-produced “Criminal Intent,” and Snoop Dogg feature “U Should Know Better.” For those of you keeping track of these sort of things at home, that’s half of the album. It seems that in this whole mini-album foray, Robyn has chosen to separate the wheat from the chaff, leaving the chaff on the cutting room floor. I’m for it.

“We Dance to the Beat” is another example of that single pulse, repeated at a regular interval, mixed in with repetitive phrasing reminiscent of Passion Pit’s “Sleepyhead.” It’s Robyn at her most robotic, hypnotic and trancelike but imbued with an understated emotion that pokes through on certain phrases. “Criminal Intent” smacks of cougar-ism, a siren-referencing tune that bumps its way into your brain with little remorse. “U Should Know Better” is the most urgently dynamic song on the record that overcomes (unsurprisingly) lackluster Snoop Dogg verses to make Robyn seem absolutely unstoppable.

Body Talk Pt. 2 is awesome. It is across the board excellence – even the slight dip of “Love Kills” and the acoustic mood change of final track “Indestructible” can’t tarnish that fact. But the jig is up. I’ve gotten five paragraphs in without referencing the elephant in the room. While I would love to consider Body Talk Pt. 2 on its own, I cannot help but compare Body Talk Pt. 2 to Body Talk Pt. 1 – the two records are linked by shared names and shared sonics.

When approached from a comparative standpoint, Body Talk Pt. 2 loses some of its luster. The album is more consistent than its predecessor, which has a bit of a dragging back half, but seems a bit like a new building built from the same blueprint. “We Dance to the Beat” mimics the structure of “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do.” “Hang With Me” is a recapitulation of an acoustic track from Pt. 1. “In My Eyes” and “Include Me Out” reach for the heights of “Dancing On My Own” and “Cry When You Get Older” without every quite reaching that level. Indeed, the opening quartet of tracks from Body Talk Pt. 1 has set a standard that has yet to be met, a tough act to follow for sure.

Fact is, I’d wager that if Body Talk Pt. 1 and Body Talk Pt. 2 had been released in the opposite order, I’d be saying that the second release didn’t live up to the first – it’s the similarity of the releases that causes that sentiment, not the quality. From album to album, we are accustomed to hearing some sort of evolution in artistry – a change in direction, an additional influence, a growth in style. That development just isn’t present here. But can we really expect much transformation from Robyn in the span of just a few months (during which she is touring material from Body Talk Pt. 1, I might add)? Let’s not damn her for giving us good music twice in a single year. Take Body Talk Pt. 2 for what it is, without comparing it to its older sister. It is a phenomenal album, digestible in length and chock full of bangers. Can we really have too many albums like this?

84 ∴ — [Rating Scale]

Giveaway
To enter to win a copy of Body Talk, Pt. 2 on CD and a $20 iTunes Gift Card, leave a comment with your thoughts on the album, rate the album and “like” PMA’s Facebook Page. A winner will be picked at random on September 16th.

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Over the long Labor Day Weekend, NPR released a stream of Of Montreal’s new album, False Priest, which is due out September 14. Listen to the album in its entirety in the player below:

Review coming soon

Tags: Of Montreal

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STREET DATE: 09.14.10 | EMUSIC | AMAZON| INSOUND | ITUNES

RATE THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOVE:

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Antony & The Johnsons – “Thank You For Your Love”

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Antony Hegarty has never been one to shy away from his feelings. The British singer/songwriter, head honcho of art pop group Antony & The Johnsons, has earned quite the reputation for his distinctive voice and falsetto method of singing. Throughout the duration of the group’s history, fans have come to expect emotionally driven lyrics and serene, piano heavy ballads. Antony is no stranger to the profound, repeatedly sharing his innermost thoughts and feelings with us, whether apropos of his woes and heartache, or of times of joy and content. Thank You For Your Love, the band’s sixth EP, is more concerned with the latter.

A straightforward and calmer record, Thank You For Your Love does not dabble in metaphors and poetic devices like its precursor, 2009′s dazzling The Crying Light, which deals with the notions of life versus death and light versus darkness. The only likely vindication for Antony’s change of heart is that he’s fallen in love this past year, whether with religion, as “My Lord My Love” suggests, or with a fellow mortal. “You Are The Treasure,” an affectionate poem, finds Antony repeating proclamations of love, each statement more provocative than the last. “You are the treasure/you are the dream/you are the one I’ve been waiting for/you are forever/you are my friend/you are a river of milk to me.” As the title insists, Thank You For Your Love is purely an open declaration of fulfillment and devotion; five tranquil ballads that waste no time stating their premise (on the opening title track, Antony claims “I want to thank you for your love” three seconds in) and conforming to it til the record’s end.

The last two tracks are covers of Bob Dylan and John Lennon songs, though you wouldn’t recognize them instantly. Antony strips these classics bare, removing the instrumental grandeur from the timeless “Imagine,” and the folk charisma from “Pressing On.” Truly making them his own, he poses them as downtempo love songs, consisting only of his insatiable voice and an acoustic guitar. Thank You For Your Love is clearly an opus meant to inspire love and hope in our darkest moments, a poignant record that continues to reveal Antony’s inner self; more specifically, it’s a constant reminder that Antony is grateful for your love.

‘Thank you For Your Love’ EP also serves as the first single to Antony & The Johnsons’ forthcoming 2010 album, Swanlights out October 12.

70 — [Rating Scale]

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STREET DATE: 08.24.10 | EMUSIC | AMAZON| INSOUND | ITUNES

RATE SURFING THE VOID:

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STREAM: Klaxons – “Echoes”

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London based dance-rock outfit, Klaxons, have been working on their sophomore album since July 2007, just months after receiving the prestigious Mercury Prize for their debut effort, Myths Of The Near Future. They had completed recording Surfing The Void, the heavily anticipated followup, last March when their label – Polydor – insisted they re-record parts of the album, deeming it too experimental for listener consumption (ha!). The result is actually a formidably loud, dance compelling record, that would make one interested in hearing how hard it sounded before the reworking.

Klaxons have been tagged to a variety of genres, from dance to punk rock, to the recently coined new rave, though they’ve renounced any association to it. They’ve been compared to outfits like Foals, Late Of The Pier, or Does It Offend You, Yeah?; all of which subscribe to the growing trend of trip rock/dance music. But Surfing The Void does not meddle with electronica like other progressive rockers; it is a futuristic sounding rock odyssey, the perfect soundtrack to your next acid trip. Tracks like “Extra Astronomical” and “Flashover” are concrete links to that new rave sound: hard hitting percussion, frontman Jamie Reynolds’ furious delivery, dark, electrifying guitar solos. There is not a moment on the record where they slow down or change the momentum, from the punk friendly “Echoes” to the murky cult sounding “Cypherspeed.” Reynolds talks so much about the future and arriving on other planets, you’d think this is a sci-fi concept album.

While Surfing The Void can get a bit redundant at times, the Klaxons are acting on their best strengths here, doing what they do best while improving the formula; now they provide fans an even heavier, spaced out means to lose their shit to. More than anything, this LP establishes Klaxons as a rock band with real potential; it isn’t a ground breaking record, but it grows on you with each listen.

77 — [Rating Scale]

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STREET DATE: 08.20.10 | EMUSIC | AMAZON| INSOUND | ITUNES

RATE ALL DELIGHTED PEOPLE:

There’s a moment at the end of Sufjan Stevens’ All  Delighted People EP, almost fourteen minutes into the record’s final track, “Djohariah,” where the drums are replaced with a synthetic beat that pulses behind the ebb and flow of a male and female voice and Sufjan’s repeated refrain of “Djohariah,” the name of his sister. I think it’s the most beautiful moment on an EP full of beautiful moments, a brilliant condensation of everything that makes Sufjan Stevens one of the most impressive artists releasing music today. He has a phenomenal voice. He tends toward epic orchestration, in scope and in scale. He is uplifting and crushing, confident and vulnerable. He embodies the ongoing struggle between organic sound and machine-made noise. And now, after five years in the shadows and repeated allusions that he may never return to releasing music, he’s back.

I won’t pretend to use an album to psychoanalyze an artist – for all I know the past five years have been the happiest years of Sufjan Stevens’ life. Let it be said, though, that All Delighted People contains more darkness, struggle, and musical juxtaposition than any of his previous releases. As usual, Sufjan is about tension and release on All Delighted People, layering and stripping, building and breaking throughout. But something is a little different here – the tracks are more jumbled, as if not entirely sure where they are headed. In fact, the album contains two separate versions of the title song, one original and one “classic rock version”. The two takes vary widely, with the latter obviously featuring more guitars  solos than the orchestral original, but the fact that they comprise a third of the album’s length give weight to the idea that this is more experimentation than we’re used to seeing from Sufjan. After all, this is the same musician who left a full twenty-one tracks on the cutting room floor of Illinois, an album that contained twenty-two separate songs upon its release.

In more ways than one, Sufjan has changed as an artist. His voice, especially on the original version of “All Delighted People,” has a few more of the flourishes that Joanna Newsome uses as a calling card. Elsewhere, the album has more electronic elemhttp://prettymuchamazing.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=21488&action=editents, interplaying with the banjo, chorus, and orchestra that Stevens has long favored. Even tracks like “Enchanting Ghost,” which would fit in nicely on either of the states albums, have rolling guitars that seem shiny and new. Older song “The Owl and the Tanager,”  a sad piano tune that Sufjan has been playing live for years, is more intimate than we usually hear Stevens; perhaps it’s here that the influence of Paul Simon’s “Sound of Silence” referenced by the EP’s official website is revealed.

All Delighted People is a fifty-nine minute long EP that is defined by wonderful confusion; the tug of war between chorus and feedback in “All Delighted People,” the willfully bent measures and sloppy instruments of “Arnika” and “From the Mouth of Gabriel,” the split personalities of the expansive “Djohariah.” The confusion seems intentional, a conscious effort by Stevens to push the medium, splattering the paints on the canvas rather than always using the brush. After experimenting with electronica, he reverts to form, building “All Delighted People” to a screeching and shrieking conclusion using only strings as if to say, “I haven’t forgotten about this orchestra back here and they’re still in the picture.” Likewise, his desperation is tempered with hope; “What difference does it make if the world is a mess,” he asks during the album’s opener, “if the world is immense.” Later, on “Djohariah,” he advises his sister, “Go on, for you’re beautiful. Beautiful, all the fullness of the world is yours.”

All Delighted People isn’t perfect, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s an unpolished gem, a collection of songs lacking production sheen, but seeming more real as a result. With a proper Sufjan Stevens album fast approaching on the horizon, though, All Delighted People is a perfect refresher course, a delicious appetizer that is nearly filling on its own. It’s a remarkable re-entry by one of today’s top artists after a noticeable absent – Sufjan saying “I’m back, but I might look a little different.” Looks good.

87 ∴ — [Rating Scale]

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STREET DATE: 04.06.10 | EMUSIC | AMAZON| INSOUND | ITUNES

RATE I LEARNED THE HARD WAY:

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings – “I Learned The Hard Way”

The biggest compliment I can pay to Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings is also what makes their music borderline eerie to listen to – I always get the feeling I should have heard them a long time ago. And by a long time ago I mean throughout my childhood. They strive to revive their own brand of soul music and often succeed so well that it’s hard to believe these songs weren’t hits in 1967. I Learned The Hard Way, their latest and greatest album, is a throwback album in the purest sense of the term, and is tough to believe it was written and recorded in 2010.

The biggest reason I Learned The Hard Way maintains an air of timelessness and does not feel obsolete today is Sharon Jones herself. She is an outstanding and attention-grabbing vocalist, controlling entire songs from start to finish. She’s often able to effortlessly portray herself as simultaneously powerful and vulnerable. “Better Things” is one example of many on the record, with Jones forcefully moving on from past wrongs at the hands of a lover that comes across as both empowering and catchy as hell.

Jones’ backing band, The Dap-Kings, do not let themselves be overshadowed by the often larger than life songstress; the sound of Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings is clearly a collaborative effort. As great as Jones’ voice is, it would not work half as well without the carefully constructed horn arrangements and infectious piano riffs. The Dap-Kings create an immediate and sophisticated backdrop for every track on the record and are able to make music that is a measured and informed tribute to a bygone era while remaining unfailingly creative.

The dedication of the band to recreating the sound of soul music in the late 60’s is commendable. They recorded the entire album on an eight-track Ampex tape machine, the kind of technology used around 50 years ago. The real achievement here, however, is how the album feels somewhat contemporary while staying true to the stylistic influences of countless soul and jazz greats. Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings crafted an unorthodox classic that sets itself apart from most other great records being released today.

87 ∴ — [Rating Scale]

Tags: Sharon Jones, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, The Dap-Kings

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