Editor’s note: First Listen is a new feature on the site, allowing you a little more insight on how we regard our criticism. Hopefully, it will enlighten. Or just make it look like we have a lot going on. All artwork and commentary is subject to change as the albums premiere or the labels/bands tweak the albums. Feel free to bash the idea via the comments or on twitter (@10listens).
All I know about this band is that Mark Kozelek liked them enough to produce their first record and that Alan Sparhawk (of Low) is good at things. 2 is their Sub Pop debut, thus giving them more production and creating a lusher, fuller sound. The result is a fascinating blend of Sparhawk’s telling lyrics and RGC kicking ass.
“Hide It Away,” I will go ahead and say, is already one of my favorite songs of the past few months and the album as a whole promises to be a fulfilling series of listens. 2 is a short blast of 10 songs, most of them hard-rockers filled in nicely with loud/noisy filler from a three-piece front. I actually can’t wait to start devouring the album as a whole rather than trying to form a first opinion. I suppose that’s a pretty high honor for a band I knew little about, other than some names. 2 came out a couple of days ago, so the full review should follow shortly.
Editor’s note: First Listen is a new feature on the site, allowing you a little more insight on how we regard our criticism. Hopefully, it will enlighten. Or just make it look like we have a lot going on. All artwork and commentary is subject to change as the albums premiere or the labels/bands tweak the albums. Feel free to bash the idea via the comments or on twitter (@10listens).
Shame, Shame is the sixth album for Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog. Their lo-fi sound mixed with jammy psychedelia has been, in my opinion, either highly entertaining (the album We all Belong is one of the best albums of the past decade) or fantastically boring (Fate followed We All Belong and was a major disappointment). This is their Anti-Records debut.
I’ve been less than excited to hear the album, to be perfectly honest, since I thought Fate was such a letdown. It’s been sitting on a pile of CDs, unmolested, for around a month and I finally got around to it after being bored to death with other possible reviews. It’s a sad way to discover what has impressed me so greatly. Shame, Shame, on the initial listen, is a return to form– a polished version of the lo-fi sound that captivated me three years ago.
Honestly, I’m itching to listen more and have the album’s lyrics and 60s-esque backup vocals wash over me more and more. The tail end of the album needs especially close attention as the songs lengthen and strengthen. Dr. Dog has, thus far, not disappointed, and that is a major relief. Problematically, the album’s release date is targeted for April, so it may be awhile before any of us get to enjoy this together.
Given her award-winning and hyper-passionate performance in last year’s Antichrist, I expected a little more feeling from Charlotte Gainsbourg on her latest record, IRM. Then on second thought, I figured it makes perfect sense for an actress who just starred in a Lars Von Trier film to retreat into a womb-like world of whispered emotions and detached eroticism.
Of course, an album with such subdued vocals and modest pop melodies needs a good producer to keep the audience stimulated, and IRM is fortunate enough to feature some inspired work by the inimitable Beck. Most of the time, he surrounds Ms. Gainsbourg with gentle acoustic guitars, simple piano chords and throbbing bass drums, creating the sensation of a lover absentmindedly caressing your skin as pent-up lust pulsates through her veins. Sometimes he has fun inserting his uber-European muse into extremely American genres, like in the White Stripes-lite blues rocker “Trick Pony,” or the horse-walkin’ country of “Dandelion.” On a few tracks he also seems to get a kick out of suffusing the atmosphere with haunted bordello orchestras, as if to remind us that the lovely lady singing was the very same child conceived by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin during the magical Melody Nelson sessions.
Most of IRM is pleasantly sensual, tailor-made for heavy petting on a quiet Sunday afternoon. A couple of songs (the nasal “Greenwich Mean Time” and the lyrically clunky title track) are almost annoying enough to belong in iPod commercials, but they’re kind of redeemed by their playfully mechanical productions. And though the record often drifts awfully close to aloofness, it does contain one must-own instant classic that justifies its existence: the bouncy, brassy “Heaven Can Wait,” where Beck drops in for a duet and helps lay down a tune worthy of The Kinks’ late-’60s golden age. For those 2 minutes and 41 seconds, purgatory has rarely felt so alluring.