Our culture is fascinated with other people’s misery. We relish the downfalls of our celebrities and politicians, mesmerized with perverse, fascinated joy. We’re all guilty of it, albeit to varying degrees. Tiger Woods, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, David Vitter, Bill Clinton, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. Odds are, you recognize at least five names on that list, and I’m willing to bet you’ll stop reading this review to Google the ones you don’t recognize.
This attitude weasels its way into every corner of our lives. It’s why emo music was so disgustingly successful for a few dark years there. Glasgow folk outfit (now a quintet) Frightened Rabbit’s last record, Midnight Organ Fight, owes a good deal of its success to the fact that it brimmed with a raw, wounded self-loathing. In fact, that sort of melodramatically low self-esteem was the very heart of that record. It’s what made it so damn appealing to so damn many people – it was emo for people who hated listening to emo (and those fucking emo kids). Sure, it was relatable, but it was more just kind of incredible to hear someone sing about himself with such passionate contempt. The band managed not only to strike a chord with its listeners, but also to satisfy this almost voyeuristic, escapist impulse within all of us to bear witness to someone else’s private struggles, as if doing that would somehow blunt the force of our own personal failings. It was the musical equivalent of watching someone’s personal life collapse right before your eyes – we could feel comforted, we could feel empathy, we could commune with Scott Hutchinson in his misery. When the news broke about the follow-up, The Winter of Mixed Drinks, I was with a friend of mine, and one of us made a half-joking comment about how excited we were to hear Scott Hutchinson singing about his precipitous descent into post-breakup alcoholism.
Weirdly, though, The Winter of Mixed Drinks is about as clean a break as I could imagine from Midnight Organ Fight – it’s way richer, way more polished, and way less self-deprecating. This might sound at first blush like a big step down to people who loved Midnight Organ Fight, but it’s actually more of a tradeoff. It changes the whole emotional atmosphere of the album – less passionate but more thoughtful and arguably even more heartfelt. So from an atmospheric perspective, this album takes a very different and unfamiliar kind of tack, but still manages to get the job done.
Musically, the most noticeable change on this album is that it lacks the tribal, muscular drumming of Midnight Organ Fight. The drums no longer dominate the mix, so this album has a way less percussive feel. That’s appropriate, from a thematic and critical standpoint, but still a little disappointing from a fan’s perspective, given how badass the drumming was on Midnight Organ Fight. The phenomenal album centerpiece “The Wrestle” still incorporates a little pounding snare, evoking memories of “The Modern Leper,” but for the most part, Grant Hutchinson is a little more restrained on this record. Other than that, this is a big step forward for this band – motifs emerge and re-emerge on this record without sounding trite or repetitive, and their dynamic sense has progressed miles. Scott Hutchinson still manages pathos-rich vocal performances – thank God – so it’s still unmistakably Frightened Rabbit.
If Midnight Organ Fight was the teary-eyed tantrum that immediately follows a breakup, then The Winter of Mixed Drinks is the weary resigned sadness that nobody sees but everybody feels. This record trades heart-on-sleeve appeals for pity for detached perspective. In almost every sense, The Winter of Mixed Drinks is the perfect follow up to Midnight Organ Fight. It’s like the band is continuing the story rather than just repeating it. Good. A story’s never as good the second time anyway.
8.7 / 10.0
From the faux-gramophone opening of The Morning Benders’ effort, Big Echo, it’s pretty clear where the hearts of this Berkeley-based outfit lie – in the 50s. But they’re clearly children of the modern age, and they’ve clearly incorporated the here and now into their sound. This album is dosed with a strong shot of shoegaze, which generates a sort of surreal atmosphere. It’s that contrast between the old and the new that The Morning Benders explore on Big Echo: think My Bloody Valentine covering “Earth Angel” and the like, and you’re on the right track. The sleepy, deliciously over-the-doo-wop-top “Excuses”, with its soaring violins and its lilting backing harmonies might be mistaken for a 50s radio hit, were it not for the massive amounts of reverb-y atmosphere that makes it a much more dreamy, blurry affair.
If there’s one word to describe Joanna Newsom (besides hot – don’t judge me), it’s got to be “fascinating”. Of course, trying to describe her in one word is all but impossible; complexity is an essential element of her style. But I think the reason that “fascinating” is such an appropriate word because it’s neither complimentary nor pejorative. Have One On Me, much like its predecessor Ys, is always interesting, never boring.
It’s always nice to see a band really come into their own. Shearwater’s tough to root against too, especially because frontman Jonathan Meiburg left a great thing (Okkervil River) behind to completely commit to what had previously been just a side project. It was a risky commitment, one that took some serious stones, and that in and of itself is praiseworthy. But with the bafflingly gorgeous Rook, it certainly seemed to have turned out pretty fabulously for everyone involved.
At first blush, Seabear might just seem like a pretty typical whispery Scandinavian folk outfit. Many point to their relatively conventional songwriting, their usually safe chord progressions, and their use of a tenuous grasp on the English language as an endearing kind of advantage. But I have argued, in public and private, that Seabear’s 2007 effort, The Ghost That Carried Us Away, was a very underrated album. It had an intangible, secure quality to it that made it instantly familiar. In that respect, it was very different from the usual vanilla folk that was so common ever since Sufjan got huge. But even I was surprised by what they came up with next.
After the first two tracks of their debut, Stockholm’s Shout Out Louds haven’t really put out anything worth listening to. It’s a harrowing statistic. I often wonder why I keep going back to them, considering they have offered so little of quality. But then I remember the thrill that went shooting up my spine when I listened to the first two tracks of their debut. It’s a thrill that never returned – not for the rest of their debut, and nowhere on their dreadful second album. I’m starting to think those two tracks might have been teasingly situated flukes. But in case I’m wrong, I keep going back to everything they put out, and you’d be surprised how hopeful I still manage to be.
Here’s a brain teaser for you: name one great band to come out of L.A. in the past few years that didn’t get their start in The Smell.
Somewhere, Elvis Costello is smirking. He’s not even dead yet, and his influence is becoming increasingly noticeable in music today. Lots of groups are picking up their Fenders and starting to emulate Costello’s power-first, pop-second brand of power-pop. That’s great. Of course, in any movement, there will be greatness, there will be garbage, and there will be everything in between. The Soft Pack are closer to the great end of things, but definitely, decidedly, aren’t there. They’re for sure, at times (it seems) almost by design, in the middle of the pack (oof, pardon the pun). They’re not pure Costello, mind you – there’s definitely, definitely a very healthy splash of the Ramones in there as well.
If you wrack your brain, you might be able to remember Midlake. They’re a group that has been tirelessly touring a record they released in 2006. It was called The Trials of Van Occupanther. It’s been almost four years since that record was released, and now, we have the follow-up. With that much of a gap, it’s tough to not expect a thing or two. It’s not like Van Occupanther was that mind-shattering a record, either. It was good enough, sure; but it was essentially a droopier iteration of Fleetwood Mac. Even so, I came to The Courage of Others expecting serious progress. After the better part of four years, you better bring something new (and worth a damn) to the table.
