We have finally cleared out the backlog of great music and present some new episodes.
Episode 711 features music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Zola Jesus, Duster, Sangre Nueva, Dialect, The Bug, Cleared, Mount Eerie, Mulatu Astatke & Hoodna Orchestra, Hayden Pedigo, Bistro Boy, and Ibukun Sunday.
Episode 712 has tunes by Mazza Vision, Waveskania, Black Pus, Sam Gendel, Benny Bock, and Hans Kjorstad, Katharina Grosse, Carina Khorkhordina, Tintin Patrone, Billy Roisz, and Stefan Schneider, His Name Is Alive, artificial memory trace, mclusky, Justin Walter, mastroKristo, Başak Günak, and William Basinski.
Episode 713 brings you sounds from Mouse On Mars, Leavs, Lawrence English, Mo Dotti, Wendy Eisenberg, Envy, Ben Lukas Boysen, Cindytalk, Mercury Rev, White Poppy, Anadol & Marie Klock, and Galaxie 500.
Skolavordustigur Street in Reykjavík photo by Jon (your Podcast DJ).
Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
After more than a year of lying low following the release of 2004's bewildering They Were Wrong, So We Drowned,Liars return with this provocatively packaged single, a taster fortheir forthcoming full-length. Though I had hoped that Hemphill,Andrew and Gross might have decided to drop some of the abrasive,self-consciously artsy gestures that made their last album such anunsatisfyingly turgid mess, unfortunately It Fit When I Was A Kid shows that the band is travelling even further down the same rabbit hole, apparently intent on alienating everyone.
Liars' 2002 debut album was part of a flurry of new groups thatfound their inspiration in early 1980s post-punk-funk groups like ACertain Ratio, The Pop Group and Gang of Four. Their debut album They Threw Us All In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Topdemonstrated that, unlike many of their contemporaries, the group wascapable of adding their own idiosyncrasies into the mix, and they endedup with a passable album that was angular and tense, but still filledwith catchy hooks. Then the band lost two of their foundingmembers, got a new drummer, and began a long descent into purposelybefuddling art rock, culminating in a tiresome concept album aboutwitches or something.
I have a feeling that band and label both realize expiration date forcritical enthusiasm over Liars' is about to be reached, and theprovocative cover artwork for this single seems to be a cynical attemptto ignite some controversy in order to drum up publicity for the newalbum. The cover shows the heads of the three bandmembersdigitally grafted onto a pornographic gay menage a trois. Though retail copies of the single are censored, the full artwork can be seen here,and mailorder copies of the 7" will contain the uncensored imageprinted onto edible paper. It's a gimmick that appears to havefuckall to do with the actual musical content of the single, andeverything to do with getting the bloggers of the world to help promotethe new release.
The upcoming full-length is a CD/DVD combo entitled Drum's Not Dead,indicating a new emphasis on percussion, which can clearly be heard on"It Fit When I Was A Kid." The song's sing-songy vocal chant ispartially lifted from The Turtles' "You Showed Me" and placed amidst anresonant jungle of tribal drumming and mechanical bass. Halfway through, the song pauses for breath, returning with churchorgan, vocal multitracks and creepy echo chamber. It's not aterrible track, but it seems almost neanderthal in its simplicity,and it's anything but groovy. The two b-sides are completelypointless, all splattery obtuseness and formless blurt. The besttrack is the "Don't Techno For An Answer" remix of the a-side, whichups the tribal quotient by leaps and bounds, producing a wonky rhythmattack not unlike those Boredoms Re-Bore mix albums.
Of the three MPG videos included on the CD, two are utterly mindless,and another borrows heavily from Terry Gilliam. This doesn't bodewell for the upcoming DVD, which apparently includes three separatevisual takes on the entire album. At bottom, I think the newemphasis on visual art is really just a distraction from the fact thatLiars haven't really written any songs. Groups that Liarsobviously hope to emulate—The Pop Group, This Heat, MountEerie, and even Neubauten—have always had songs at the heart of even their mostunorthodox experiments. Liars attempt to infuse their workwith conceptual trappings that are vague and incoherent, and their musicis undernourished and underwritten, so everything falls apart intoformlessness. I'm guessing that some will find somethingmeaningful to grasp onto in the midst of this nebulousness, but I forone no longer care to even try.
This is Ryoji Ikeda's first full-length release of new material since 2002's orchestral Op.,however, it is a return to his original form of rhythmic clicks, sonicbeeps, high pitched squeals, and low buzz. Although the claims comethat this, the first part of the Datamatics series, is built onstructures from data, Ikeda hasn't woven data into something that'sabstract or foreign sounding. The music is rather rhythmic,challenging, and completely enjoyable: something most computer musiciantypes have failed at.
Dataplex almost picks up where O°C left off, asthere's 20 tracks, a number of them are strung together using a commontheme, and for the most part, the music is very upbeat. The reason Ithink I like Ikeda's music over all the other sonic laptop "glitch"acts of the late 1990s is that Ikeda isn't glitch. His music is veryprecise and composed: it's never accidental, haphazard, or random.Ikeda's aesthetic is song-based. He knows how to start and end a songand make it something both tangible and enjoyable.
The first eight tracks are strung together: they follow the samehurried tempo and use a common palette. It's only by the ninth track,"data.microhelix," that things significantly change. This piece isdrastically slower and introduces some sustained lower tones into themix, making an almost funk-influenced groove that Ikeda's not commonlyknown to exhibit. When the pace picks up again for "data.superhelix,"the low tones remain but it's as if the sound has moved from being funkinspired to almost speed-metal inspired. Switching up the pace andpalette is in store for the following duo of tracks, "data.minimax" and"data.syntax," as the high pitched bell-like sounds clearly establishthat nobody else sounds like Ryoji Ikeda.
Ikeda returns to his new found love for incorporating other musicstyles in "data.flex" and its successor, "data.reflex," where both arealmost built through influences of deep techno, using lower tones likebass sounds and higher rhythmic sounds like a hi-hat. It's songs likethis that make me wonder what Ikeda might do as a member of atraditional rock group, adding his signature rhythmic clicks and beepson top of more standard western pop instrumentation. I'm sure somemight feel it would spoil the purity of the music but crossing soundscan prove quite influential to the evolution of music if they're wellexecuted.
Ikeda goes more abstract for the next triptych, "data.convex,""data.vertex," and "data.vortex," almost borrowing ideas from the wholemath-rock/post-rock/dub hybrid aesthetic, using dub-like echoes almostlike submarine sounds before cutting the beat and dousing the audiofloor with a low drone. It's serene and unusually peaceful.
Dataplex concludes with the cadence of the fantastic"data.matrix" (before the clearly abstract data noise of the disc'scloser, "data.adaplex") in a similar way that he has closed otherprojects, taking some of the ideas put forth in earlier tracks andwrapping them up in an all-encompassing song. Ikeda might claim thathis music is built from data points of DNA, the cosmos, or mathematics,but it's what's at the center his own heart that weaves everything intosuch elegant and beautiful songs.
The second part in Dockstader's series of albums based around recordings of radio waves packs a powerful punch. The atmospheric and cold timbres of the first volume have dissipated and have been replaced with a collection of hot, energetic pieces. The previous album was a subdued and relaxing work but with Aerial #2, Dockstader goes straight for the face.
Dockstader has selected far more active pieces for Aerial #2 than he did for Aerial #1, the pieces here range from rhythmic and pulsing currents of sound to disorientating storms of tones. The music is very evocative: many of the tracks stimulated very detailed daydreams and imaginings in me. "Wail" elicits the feeling of freefalling down a deep, dark chasm where everything is a charcoal grey; I could hear the updrafts of warm air and noises of passing by the ledges at great speed. "Orgal" and "Babbel" were the sound of hitting the bottom of that chasm, belly flopping full force into magma and bathing in the molten rock. It is incredible that each track throbs with so much life; there is no piece that sounds contrived or strained. Every piece flows smoothly and naturally into the next.
Of course I'd be worried if there was even one below par track, Dockstader made nearly 600 mixes over the course of this project, whittling them down to the best 59 for release as this series. The middle of the album calms down but it never rests easy. "Spindrift" is a looming piece that sounds the sky will crack at any moment. The mood continues and the feeling of impending doom escalates in the following track "Surfer." As the album draws to a close, the power starts to build again. Perhaps this is an indication of what is in store in the final part of the trilogy.
By limiting himself to a somewhat limited area of tones (radio waves), Dockstader has proven again to be the master of manipulating normally ignored or intangible sound into flowing, lucid and beautiful landscapes. He has crafted each piece to a fine layer of detail without pushing the music at all into difficult like many musique concrète composers can’t help doing. Aerial #2 is intellectually stimulating but Dockstader doesn’t let that force him to sacrifice accessibility and abstraction from enjoyable music. A lot of music I like can be classified as that which I find enjoyable to listen to and that which I find interesting from a more beard stroking perspective. Aerial #2 joins that special club found at the intersection of these two classifications. It is an absolutely fascinating and infinitely pleasing album.
This supergroup among the new wave of Italian experimentersput out one of my favorite records of 2004 and returned in late 2005 withanother favorite. Members ValerioTricoli, Claudio Rocchetti, and Stefano Pilia represent some of the mostmystical, lyrical music I’ve heard come out of Italyor anywhere in some time. ¾, theircollaborative group, now with percussionist Tony Arrabito, make brilliantlyinviting and adaptable music mixing melancholy chamber acoustics, ambientimprovised textures, and woven electronic and mechanical effects.
The sound is a lo-fi trio, languishing in a woody, goldenroom, half-asleep and wading through brushed textures and sad crescendos, whilethe fourth cuts into everything with slow slices of field noise, the occasionalglitch-pop or little breaking object. Inmy review of their first record, I talked about the way these interruptions,rather than leading outside, or becoming immediately contrastive presences,instead work at saturating or carving out an existing environment. Incidental sounds pop into existence asguidance for the more conventionally song-like structures or become buriedmarkers for shifts in the mood or momentum of a song, arriving with anarbitrary quickness that is never forced, always magical.
The general, droning quietude of the group’s self-titleddebut made the subtlety of their methods more effective than it is on Year, a record more reliant onpercussive, “pop” forms but also infinitely more lush in its assemblage ofsonic details. Vocals appear for the firsttime, and the musicians seem more confident in articulating even the smallest,potentially intrusive elements (including shrill alarm sounds and cannedscreams). All in all, the sound is lessveiled, less overcome by Pilia’s exquisite, Lid-ian guitar drones and morecomparable to ambience in the natural world: more irregularities and lopsidedrhythms, more chatter and clatter.
Recognizable field captures from ocean and woods direct themood more towards the pastoral than the monolithic, sublime abstractions of theband’s first disc, but Year’s mood isjust as hard to isolate and should appeal to many tastes, from post-rock, tojazz, even glossy, symphonic rock or the most austere of experimental orcontemporary classical. My most obviouscomparison is the recent work of Dean Roberts, with whom several of theseItalians have worked, and who likewise embraces the synthetic punctuation ofmelancholy acoustic sound in the creation of ornate, baroque masses of sound asopposed to ascetic dissolves. Though theout-of-improv feel of most of this disc tends to conjure ethereal imagery, eachmoment remains a monument to grandeur and presence,in sound, in life.
John Wiese's name is becoming as recognizable as Merzbow's. His output, though not as insane as Masami Akita's, is constant and nearly impossible to keep up with. He has worked with a number of musicians and noise-makers including Sunn 0))), Wolf Eyes, The Haters, Panicsville, and Daniel Menche. Teenage Hallucination: 1992-1999 is an attempt to consolidate much of Wiese's earliest output (some of it recorded at the age of 14) on to one disc and catch everyone up with this prolific destroyer of sound.
First things first: unless I am mistaken, much of what appears on this disc is entirely out of print or otherwise very difficult to get a hold of. Even if neither of those is the case, there is a lot material compiled on this release from Troniks and other prolific noise musicians and their labels would do well to follow suit. So often noise records are released in severely limited editions and become impossible to find very, very quickly. Not only do compilations like this one make it easier to get the material, they also make it easier for more people to appreciate an artist's work. It's always very difficult to decide whether or not I'd want to buy a special edition, expensive vinyl from an artist I barely know, especially if the tracks included are less than ten seconds long. Having tracks like that compiled onto one disc is a great thing and no other genre of music could possibly benefit from compilations like this one more than noise.
In the smooth and perhaps best looking booklet from Troniks that I've seen, Toshiji Mikawa of Hijokaidan and Incapacitants remarks that even at the age of 14, John Wiese seemed to know what he wanted to do with noise. As evidence for this statement, Mikawa remarks that the final two tracks on the album, both recorded in 1992, foreshadow much of the material Wiese would record throughout his now long career. It's an interesting statement because harsh noise is a fairly homogenous approach to sound, many albums sounding too similar for some. In addition, a 14 year old making noise isn't all that unusual, why should Wiese's consistency and, later, his innovation be considered remarkable at all? Mikawa's answer has something to do with noise as spirituality, but my answer sits in the heart of what Wiese does best: change.
Consistency is one thing, but to move from that concept to bland repetition is a mistake. Yes, Wiese has remained almost unfalteringly harsh throughout his career, especially during his formative years as a noise-maker and a performer, but many of his pieces exhibit a depth of sounds and influences. I'll admit that I don't know quite how to take the four-second-a-piece "Lock" series or the multitude of sub-twenty-second tracks, but one thing is for sure: Wiese never really sounds the same at all. His attacks are always modified, buffered, sharpened, or mutated by different approaches to constant static and total feedback. The "Catwoman" tracks could be tagged as nightmare soundscapes. They are two completely different tracks belonging to one release, presumably: one of them is a mash up of video game sound assaults, pure noise, cut up voices, and other unpleasant sources and the other is a rolling, bubbling drone with no sudden surprises or igneous outbursts. Then there is the "Selectric" series. Four tracks, each over two minutes in length, play out as recordings of pure, unhinged anger as heard from inside a wind tunnel. There are other tracks on the compilation like them, but their unity and high-pitched fury are unmatched.
As the noise continues, Wiese becomes younger and younger. "Untitled (Sissy Spacek) CS" provides a glimpse of Wiese employing his mad and spastic editing techniques to great effect: the garbled, possibly vocal, sounds jumping around on this track are almost rhythmic, but subtle enough to keep the noise assault pure. "Static Whale" is a gorgeous bit of droning noise and another example of Wiese experimenting with his sound early in his recording career. On and on, as the songs move backwards through time, more and more intriguing tracks pop up. They make clear the progress Wiese has made and almost write out in detail some of the ways Wiese has modified and tinkered with his sound.
I'm not sure if that means Wiese has always had a consistent, but ever-changing vision, though. Noise might just lend itself to consistency, creating an illusion of vision. I also don't think that whether or not he's ever had a vision matters at all. I don't care if Wiese is a genius, a king, or any of the other things he's been described as because his noise is often entertaining. Sometimes it is outright captivating. I do wish he'd explore that "Static Whale" sound a bit more, but then he'd just be revisiting old ground and that wouldn't be any fun at all.
I nearly gave up on this album on first listen, but after learningmore about the context, things fell into place and I quickly became fascinatedby it. Across 11 tracks and in styles that range from dancey techno tocrazed piano, Rehearsing My Choir covers the life of bandmatesand siblings Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger's grandmother, withGrandma herself providing much of the vocals.
The story of Olga Sarantos' life is fractured and initially hard tofollow because the album doesn't follow a linear timeline. Instead ofbeing a biography set to music, it's more like listening to someonereminisce, telling stories as they come to mind with music accenting,harmonizing with, and clashing against Olga's spoken words andEleanor's sung ones. They speak and sing of loves lost and found, gypsycurses, war, death, and family tensions. The music itself is difficultto describe, as it's abstract and by turns harsh and gentle.
Rehearsing My Choir is definitely a concept album and not one toload onto the iPod and hit shuffle. Take the time to listen through andpay attention to fully appreciate to beauty and loss of one woman'slife told in a beautiful and unusual way.
Imagine there's an old abandoned farm house on the edge of town with nothing but the woods to keep it company. Imagine a bunch of high school kids held a party there one night and didn't come back. There wasn't any screaming, no bodies were found, no signs of violence; all the kids simply disappeared and never came back. Davenport braved that farm house and made some recordings there, only when they came back there were sounds on their tape that they didn't record. There were things happening in the background that they couldn't perceive. The contents of this disc are made up of those recordings.
In all reality that might as well be the truth. Davenport's first release on the 3 Lobed label is scary at times, but has a gravitational pull unlike many albums of the same kind. The whole affair was recorded with a hand held tape machine. The result is that many of the sounds are muddy or warped, but that makes each of the tracks all the more intriguing. There's a sense that some unknown parts of the world were caught and manipulated on this disc. It's almost as if the record is a documentary without a narrative to guide the listener along. As such it is necessary to try and piece all of the sounds together, to try and create a thread of coherence to make sense out of lingering moments captured by the tape recorder.
While that may seem like the result of a poorly conceived record, in reality it is part of the fun of listening to music like this. The collage approach to sound might be a playground for cheap free association when it is handled by amateurs, but it can be an exciting and powerful means of exercising the imagination. Davenport temper their recordings well, allowing for exciting juxtapositions to occur, but also allowing for some randomness to take part in the making of the album. This makes the album both unpredictable and listenable. On top of that, anyone with any voyeuristic tendencies will find nearly every track captivating. One track will place me next to a lake with a small wooden boat, at other times I'm watching the trees wave in the wind from the top of a wooden fence, and at other times I'm feeling my way around inside a pitch black cellar, the sound of airplanes rushing by outside. All the time I feel as though I'm watching myself do this. The music is both transportive and cinematic. Davenport has combined many details, several different sources, and a mirage of feelings to great effect.
So while that whole free-folk thing keeps chugging along with its mostly talentless musicians and largely false mysticism, there are others who might be associated with that junk that are doing something entirely different. Davenport fits that bill very well. Just because a freaking acoustic guitar makes an appearance on a record does not mean that it belongs to the tradition of John Fahey and that certainly doesn't mean it is tied somehow to the blues or classic country music. Take this record for what it is: a well-designed, fun, and intriguing collage of places, intuitions, and memories.
This four-way split from Die Stadt is a treat. It is a double 7” with a gorgeous sleeve featuring some wonderful experimental and minimalist pieces from four top-notch sound artists. Lucky early birds who get one of the first 300 copies also get a double CD of material from the same artists. Packaged in a lovely textured sleeve, the entire collection both looks and sounds dreamy.
On the first 7”, the track from z’ev looks to the early stages of his career. “Elementonal” is a combination of two live performances from the early '80s, the rhythm being from the Atonal Festival in 1983 and metal percussion (I suppose you’d call it lead percussion) from a 1981 San Francisco show. Combined, the two recordings make a powerful junkyard piece, more chaotic and tempestuous than his contemporary performances. John Duncan’s contribution, however, is far harsher than the rest of the material. “OFFFFFFFF” is pure noise, sounding like roadworks being broadcasted over longwave radio. It is like being hit by the lightning that z’ev was brewing up on the flipside.
My favorite from the entire collection is the excerpt from Aidan Baker’s “Drone Four” on the second 7" single. There is a gentle warmth in the waves of sound. The drones come together to make an oceanic atmosphere. It feels that at any moment a lumbering undersea behemoth will float silently past as you are pushed away in its wake. The final piece from the vinyl is an excerpt from “The Beautiful Decline” by Fear Falls Burning. It’s superficially similar to the Baker piece but doesn’t have the same depth. It’s hard to get lost in the drones. The sleeve notes make a big deal about it being performed in real time with no overdubs but anyone with a guitar and a couple of delay pedals could do something like this.
The CDs are based on a simple concept: let the four artists remix each other (or modify or recycle, I can never remember the proper mot du jour). z’ev processes a two minute recording of Duncan’s into a 20 minute glitchy ambience: it doesn’t work as well as the other remixes. Duncan’s remix of Z’ev’s material sounds a lot like his own piece on the vinyl but slower. It is interesting enough but this disc is dull compared to the other CD and the vinyl. The second CD is better. Fear Falls Burning don’t add anything significant to Baker’s “Drone Four,” but it is a much more satisfying 37 minutes and there are nice little bumps and noises in the background that change the mood of the piece ever so slightly into something more unsettling. Baker fleshes out “The Beautiful Decline” into two more substantial works, making the sound richer and more vibrant. Ironically it sounds less like a pale imitation of Baker’s own original work once he fiddles with it.
These various discs add up to a rewarding and fulfilling experience. The different approaches each artist takes to sculpturing sounds into different shapes and characters are reinforced by each other’s contributions. Barring a couple of stumbles there is a lot of material here that is worth sitting down and analyzing bit by bit.
Community Library is now one year old. Founded in part by Paul Dickow, the label released three 12" singles in 2005 and a CD EP from Sawako. With more on the way, this is a look at the Nudge and Strategy singles released last year. High quality, clear, beautiful vinyl releases were the focus for the label throughout 2005 and it shows. These are dub-touched, rock-scored dance masterpieces of a quality that makes waiting for more a frustrating experience.
There is little doubt that these are records of high quality. Looking at the vinyl's color and the depth of the grooves is enough to make that a sure thing, but one sample of the music in those grooves and it'll become obvious that Community Library knows how to handle the format. Both the Strategy and the Nudge records sound clear and fluid, the full range of sounds used on both records are easy to hear with little to no interference and all the warmth of analog playback. The Strategy record benefits the most from this; the thick bass and dance-oriented nature of the record is front and center, perfect for high volumes and getting your groove on. The Nudge record, on the other hand, sounds full and energetic. "Stack" is full of fluttering drum patterns, heavy bass, distorted electronics, a lead harmonica, and all manner of twisting melodies and effects. There is a multitude of minute detail packed onto these records and whether these are played through a nice stereo system or on headphones, they sound great. Not only can they be danced to, but they have replay value because of the depth of the production on all the tracks.
I'm especially taken by the B-sides on both records. Both "Div" on the Nudge record and "I Have to Do This Thing" are excellent songs, each different from their A-side. "I Have to Do This Thing" is almost pure club-oriented electronica the way I remember falling in love with: full of melody, constant movements, and clear sounds. "Div" is a hallucinogenic mix of ringing bells, whirling synthesizers, and a barrage of percussion all rotating around fluctuating bass tones and persistent washes of sound. They both round out the records very well, making them full and satisfying recordings.
While Strategy's record makes me want to dance and even consider hitting up clubs hoping for the same cerebral funk, Nudge's record is further proof that they really know how to meld the digital and acoustic worlds like nobody else. Their music is digital composition and free-form jam mentality all blended into a mind-warping electronic rock that I've not heard from anyone else.
Vinyl releases like these are very, very exciting. I'm already jonesing for the Eats Tapes 12" and knowing that there is more coming is enough to make sure that my eyes stay on Community Library. Grab these records, throw them on, turn up the volume and be prepared to keep them on for a long time. If it is possible to convert these into mp3 format or on to a compact disc, that may be advisable; wearing this vinyl out might be difficult, but it seems inevitable. Every time a track ends, I just want to flip it over and start again.
Atsome point, someone is going to have to put an end to all of this. Whenit seems every new band forming is an experimental two piece that runeverything through a phalanx of distortion pedals, I have to step backand take a deep breath. It's not that I don't care for noise-rock orhave no patience for amateurism; in fact, they're two items I greatlyenjoy. But every once in a while, a record comes along that forces meto call my predilection for the two into question. This is,unfortunately, just such a record.
Itdoesn’t take a rocket scientist or any real close listen to realizethat I’ve Visited the Island of Jocks and Jazz is a noisy,incomprehensible mess. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translateinto anything that I would call “bracing” either. Drums are thwacked,guitars are run through with enough ear-splitting distortion so as torender them nearly meaningless, and vocals are hardly the point. Think early Jesus and Mary Chain with absolutely no pophooks. I’m all for noise, and count myself a big fan of Load’s releasesin the past, but The Hospitals simply renders all their noise meaningless.
Instead of being a challenging or even intimidating approach, The Hospitalssimply water down their songs with so much distortion they sound likeglobs day old mayonnaise–bland and not very good. Poorly playedsaxophones appear on “Boom Bap Biff,” not so much providing that songwith any sort of saving grace but at least giving the listenersomething else to hate. “Moving/Shaking” comes close to approaching thenihilistic tone of early No-Wave pioneers Mars and Teenage Jesus andthe Jerks, which makes the song less of an endurance test then theothers. “Jocks and Jazz” is the only song that seems to find anappropriate pulse and it thrusts and flails through its 1:30 runningtime.
The biggest complaint that can be lobbed here is that the albumis on auto pilot 95% of the time. For a genre where a lack of technicalproficiency can be easily made up by energy (see early Black Dice), NedMeiners and Adam Stonehouse both seem content to just see all thelevels in the red and leave it at that. Obviously, kids in the Americannoise rock scene will probably shit themselves over this. I won’t saythat Hospitals don’t have it in them to become something far greaterthan I’ve Visited the Island of Jocks and Jazz attempts to hint at, butuntil then, I think I’ll take a pass.
Thirty seconds into the first track of this CD, I thought I'd beentransported back to about 1985. I'm pretty I heard a song just likethis at the Roll-R-Skate in fifth grade. That '80s feel was a lot more interesting when it was new.
Polystar is intentionally (and self-consciously) retro; Finishedis full of heavy '80s synths and disco. Maybe they're trying to create an homage tothe past, but to me it feels like they're just rehashing it withoutadding anything new or original. The lyrics are trite and don't addmuch interest; lines like "I know it's more than skin deep/Because Ifeelit through and through" from "You Turn Me On" made this writer cringe.Songs like "Upside Down" could holdits own at any'70s-era Ramada Inn lounge while "VampireGirl" is about as pointedly dark as you'd guess from the title. Despiteworking with Roger O'Donnell (who formerly worked with The Cure), theydon't reach the interestingly moodiness of that band.
Nostalgic listeners would be better served digging through the used binat the local record shop for a $5 '80s compilation.