Category Archives: Andrew

Arcade Fire has continued to be a beloved group since 2004, the year they put out one of the best albums of the decade: “Funeral”. When “Neon Bible” was released in 2007, it became apparent that the band enjoyed tackling a broad message on a single album. With “Funeral”, they expressed the challenges and sadness of dealing with death and in “Neon Bible”, the subject matter involved religion and the controversy around it. Finally, their newest release “The Suburbs” sets an all too familiar tone. It’s about home, growing up, and the nostalgia of being in a place you wish you weren’t in.

“The Suburbs” is the first song, a swingy, piano-powered track. Essentially, the song is about becoming an adult and feeling trapped inside the cage of suburbia. There are some extremely well-chosen words used by Win Butler: “The kids want to be so hard, But in my dreams we’re still screaming and running through the yard.”

The guitar riffs surrounding “City With No Children” are perhaps one of the coolest highlights of the album. They are cleverly written and extremely appealing to one’s earholes, or so I hear (pun).

“Half Light I” appears to be a neutral song, however there is a sense of relief and wariness in the lyrics. For some reason, it reminds me of “Funeral” quite a bit, which is a good thing. “Half Light II (No Celebration)” brings something unseen on the album so far, being sort of half-dance track, half-rock anthem. The rock anthem side doesn’t surprise me as much as the other, and it’s pleasing to hear some variation in the bass and drum beats.

The track “Suburban War” borrows lyrics from “The Suburbs”, basically being a song of rebellion and escape. It also borrows a verse from “The Suburbs”: “In the suburbs, I learned to drive, People told me we would never survive, So grab your mother’s keys we leave tonight.”

“We Used To Wait” starts with piercing piano, driving the majority of the song. Its premise is caring and then eventually losing your drive. The rest of the song sounds kind of fun as opposed to the message, possibly because Butler now cares again.

The best song on “The Suburbs” is quite possibly “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” carrying the same basic principle as “Sprawl I (Flatland)” but a little more anthemic and pumped up in emotion. It almost seems like it’s a Springstein/ABBA collaboration. “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” is what you would expect from Arcade Fire, but it’s also a pleasant surprise.

“The Suburbs (continued)”, the album’s closer repeats the theme of the starter almost as if it’s the conclusion of a high school research paper, ending with “Sometimes I can’t believe it, sometimes I’m moving past the feeling again”.

Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” is no doubtably their second best record to date (it’s damn hard to beat “Funeral”), however it is my personal favorite of theirs. It emulates a message and feeling that is extremely important to me in my life. All I’ve really known is the suburbs and it seems that they haven’t forgotten either.

WINNER: “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire

WHY: Arcade Fire has put out some amazing music over the years and this is no exception. Definitely one of my absolute favorite albums of the year.

I’m going to say right off the bat, I really love electronic music. I also can really despise it a great deal of the time. With that now in the air, it’s safe to let you know that I was interested in trying out Javelin’s “No Más”. After a few good listens, I realized that I found an album that was extremely enjoyable and I will definitely listen to it again and again.

Javelin has a unique style, mixing 70s funk beats with specified electronic elements. It mixes up tracks with the occasional go at vocals and produces innovative sounds that were pretty much made to rap over, but still stand by themselves as great songs. The first song “Vibrationz” is a chilled out track when one could find peace while listening to it in a convertible by the beach. However, that’s only how to get the maximum effect out of the song and it’s extremely easy to see its catchiness and overall fun attitude without any of that.

A ton of this album sounds like it came straight out of a mid-to-late 80s video game, making great tunes, and sampling great shit. The tune that powers “Oh! Centra” is reminiscent of a well-written classic video game theme, also probably the easiest area of that song to listen to. The rest of the song is powered by Katamari Damacy / Animal Crossing raps from a squeaky voice. This is a toss-up enjoyment for most people; the voice could come off as annoying, cute, funny, or stupid. I find it that it’s a mix of all of that.

“On It On It” is perhaps the best jam on here. The keyboard sounds that occur throughout the song sound so damn cool, it’s totally hard to dislike it. Then it revs up into full funk status and ends with some interestingly composed vocals. I can’t help but want to dance every time I hear it.

The album progresses from being funk based, to not, and going back again, having nice time coming up with enough variety so it keeps you interested until it ends. It also decides to through some out of place but welcomed acoustics amongst the dancy beats, which I can appreciate if it’s done right.

I really don’t know what else to say. “No Más” is just straight-up fun. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys music. A broad stroke, but a very pretty looking one.

WINNER: “No Más” by Javelin

WHY: It’s one of the funnest albums I’ve heard all year. Perfect for summer, fits your lifestyle.

Christopher Smith is an artist of little notoriety. His name sounds familiar only because it is so simple. To school the rest of you, he is a singer/songwriter from Vancouver, but before he started working on music he was involved in the city’s art scene. I actually ended up noticing this album because of this fantastic little video for his song “Gently Gently”. I figured I would purchase it on my own as a courtesy to the artist and what I got was just a little underwhelming.

The starting track, “Gently Gently” is ominous as it is sweet. It is also perhaps the best song on the album. There is no percussion on the entire runtime, but on “Gently Gently” it seems to really help the song. The looming electric guitar keeps the song fun to listen to while the acoustics keep it progressive. The lyrics are simple as well and end up being useful in the overall simple-delivery of the entire song. It also helps that his voice sounds incredibly soothing but real.

Smith sings the next three songs as if he was in front of his girlfriend’s porch with his guitar in attempt to woo her back into his arms. Unfortunately, it’s also like he’s in high school and has had little experience in writing lyrics. “Middle of the Night” is wrought with clichés and painful repetition that made me want to cringe a few times. The turn in the three songs after “Gently Gently” abandon the feeling that he was the quiet kid that you knew in school, never really knew, but respected him because of his obvious intelligence, and replace it with sort of an amateurish take on songwriting.

Some my complaints changes for the better when he becomes a bit edgier in the second half of the album. “The Beckon Call Part 1” and “The Beckon Call Part 2” aren’t much on the side of music, but are good, ambient tone-setters. However, you can find a five-note connection between the two songs making them consistant.

“Two Strawberries In a Jam” finds Smith in a place of weakness, when he has little sound backing him and his guitar and it comes off as honest, catchy and enjoyable. In fact, there is a sense of the same weakness on the rest of the album but it becomes disappointingly edgy. The cohesion in “Hands” seems like it wasn’t written with a whole lot of thought and depends solely on the sadness in its musical tone.

The problem with this album is that it’s really kind of boring. Honestly, I had trouble listening to it and it’s only about 35 minutes. In times when it should be personal, it just comes off as whiny. When you want him to be emotional, he portrays himself as cold with his delivery. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this album doesn’t want you to like it that much. It wants you to say “it’s okay but I wouldn’t listen to it again.” And to put it frank, that’s what it is.

WINNER: Andrew

WHY: Christopher Smith is an okay artist. Nothing should be expected of him, but “The Beckon Call” just isn’t that interesting to listen to.

It seems that every time I listen to Panda Bear’s 2007 album “Person Pitch”, I get stuck in to this world of mesmerization. I like every member of Animal Collective a ton, but with the release of the “Tomboy” single, (first in a series of three singles that will be released prior to the full album release in September), I seem to have gained a larger admiration for the stylings of Noah Lennox, the man behind Panda Bear.

Both “Tomboy” and “Slow Motion” seem marginally different from Panda’s past work, but you can see great comparisons between both of Animal Collective’s most recent albums, “Strawberry Jam” and “Merriweather Post Pavilion”. There is a lot less sampling used in both of these songs, the most possible culprit to the departure from “Person Pitch”.

One can pull many more similarities between “Tomboy” and the previous works of Panda Bear, but something about the new track feels like it tries to break free with frequently echoing guitar. Lennox could easily have went with the same basic premise of “Person Pitch” but this escape adds a sense of mystery to the rhythm of the song. “Tomboy” is great.

“Slow Motion”, where do I begin? I absolutely love this track. It starts off with a swift and memorable hip-hop beat and progresses with a catchy, dark piano riff, ending with soaring vocals that you’ve come to know from himself and Animal Collective. Everything seems to mesh extremely  well together and it makes me wonder if more artists will begin adding seemingly out of place hip-hop percussions to their music.

WINNER: “Tomboy/Slow Motion” by Panda Bear

WHY: Panda Bear has added a great deal of newfound depth to his style and the tracks prove it. Best song: “Slow Motion”

Best Coast is one of the most popular buzzbands of 2010 and their debut album is nearing its release. Most of the EP’s they have put out have been generally well received and excitement was built for somewhat good reason.

Until I realized every song on “Crazy For You” is essentially the same, each based around boys, cats, weed, and being a bitch. Sure, there are some standouts, like “Boyfriend”, “Our Deal”, and “When I’m With You”, but in the end it feels like all these songs were thrown together in a matter of days, reminding me of a more half-assed experimental version of Dr. Pepper’s “Band In a Bubble”, where bands of mild popularity and mediocrity are thrust into a bubble-like household for thirty days and are expected to leave with a finished album.

Not only do the majority of the lyrics on “Crazy For You” seem insanely similar crossing each song, the music written for each of them is reminiscent of the one before it. Best Coast lead, Bethany Cosentino talks about how she writes most of her songs with simple, catchy lyrics because that’s just her style. Normally, I can agree with that, except none of the songs have anything special to offer besides their simplicity, and in the end the album comes of as short and monotonous. Which it is.

Literally, from song to song, the basis is exactly the same, just with slightly differentiated lyrics. I am not sure if this was Cosentino’s intention, but if it is, boy, what a bitch. It makes no sense, how you can rhyme “crazy” with “lazy” probably three times on the entire 31:33 runtime, and be called a respected artist. I don’t know how I can ask her to improve on anything because I don’t even know anymore what she is capable of. So, in a nutshell, just listen to “Boyfriend”.

The problem with this album is that it has a terrible struggle with finding variety and is simplified for a four year-old.

WINNER: ANDREW

WHY: Because everything about Best Coast’s album is indulgent and can’t be counted as anything but a summer album for one listen. Make-out music my ass, Bethany. These are young children you are talking to about weed and boys.