album review: 'matangi' by m.i.a.

A couple of months ago, I did a retrospective review of Shaking The Habitual by The Knife, a critically acclaimed album that I didn't quite like as much as all of the critics did. And there's a reason for that: that album, despite some very solid ambient pieces I found quite stirring, the lyrics and delivery had the subtlety of a brick through a window. But more importantly, The Knife were trying to be very political on that album, and they were using their anti-commercialism in instrumentation to emphasize how difficult it would be for the average listener to accept the paradigm changes - but at the same time, it proved to be a fatal flaw, because by doing so, they killed any populist appeal they might be able to drum up. In the heavy-handed message-mongering of the album, The Knife utilized their instrumentation to hammer home their point... a point that ultimately turned out to be bog-standard left-wing criticisms of family values, environmentalism, and offered nothing new to the cultural discourse. And by killing any broader appeal, they only embodied the worst straits of snobbish artists with a message and proved more than a little insufferable for me, even though I agreed with their message.

See, here's the thing about political music: while politics offer a whole load of fascinating and captivating topics, it's hard to make political music well. It's a balancing act between the intellectual nuance that needs to be brought to be taken seriously and the populist appeal to speak to a broader audience. And believe me, it's hard to maintain that balance and it's why I maintain one of the best political bands was the anarcho-punk collective Chumbawamba (most commonly known for their one hit 'Tubthumping'), mostly because they balanced hard-edged and smartly articulated political messages with simple melodies, a lot of wit, great hooks, and a fundamental spirit of 'we're all in this together'. Even if you disagreed with the politics - which at points I did - I don't think you can argue that the delivery of their message was ingenious.

And yet, I had to admit I was more than a little skeptical when I heard about MIA and her new album Matangi. She had made no secret of the fact that she was a political artist with a message and that she had solid pop sensibilities. I mean, the critics sure seemed to think so, given the rave reviews her albums have tended to receive - and yet, until I reviewed this album, I had no interest whatsoever in MIA. I had heard 'Paper Planes' and 'Boyz' and thought, 'Nope, I don't need any of that, those songs are vapid and incredibly obnoxious'. But I figured, hey, I was probably being unfair and there isn't much coming out in the end of this month anyways, so I decided to go through MIA's discography and give her a fair chance. And...

Eh, maybe it's not for me. Look, I mostly respect what MIA is trying to do and I can't deny she's got a gift for genre-hopping sound collages that will be unlike anything you'll ever hear, but it's not clicking for me and I know exactly why. Part of it is her voice - it's not my thing, I can accept that - part of it is her delivery - it never feels raw enough or emotionally drawn enough to really get to me - and part of it is the fact the lyrics just don't work nearly as well as they should. Yes, they're descriptive, yes, they fit the tone of the instrumentation and production - but there's no nuance here and little populism. It's unbridled and incredibly straightforward and yet lacks the energy to justify the simplicity of the approach - almost to the point of propagandizing the far-left attitudes she sings about. And while the emotional response can be compelling (when it's even there), to me it feels shallow, a stark painting that might put forward an interesting image, but lacking in dimension.

And maybe that's enough - her first album Arular was very much in this vein, and while it wasn't bad, its lack of cohesiveness did show (then again, that did seem like the point). Her second album Kala was a bit better, with 'Jimmy' being the standout track for actually having a melody worth remembering, but with the inclusion of more electronica to create a more cohesive sound, it felt like some of the texture and rawness that characterized Arular was jettisoned, which wasn't a good sign. But then again, the loss of texture should have been the last thing I was concerned about with MAYA, which seemed to be M.I.A.'s attempt to fuse internet-inspired industrial music with her usual schtick, and all it ended up doing was giving me a massive migraine. Not only did the lyrics prove M.I.A. had nothing interesting or all that insightful to say about the Internet, the instrumentation lost any hint of cohesion and only amplified the klaxon-esque howling that has always been the worst part of M.I.A.'s instrumentation. I could imagine industrial musicians like Trent Reznor coming to this album and muttering, 'Who the hell is responsible for this messy, incoherent, poorly mixed and painfully shallow nonsense?' To be fair, it was probably the first album that came remotely close to backing M.I.A.'s continued assertions she was inspired by hardcore punk, and songs like 'Meds and Feds' were easily the best on the record, but that's not saying much. And really, after MAYA, I was a little optimistic - I mean, it can't get worse than that, can it?

video review: 'hesitation marks' by nine inch nails

Yeah, two album reviews in one day. This one's been in the works for a while, and I'm fairly happy with how it came out. I'm fairly certain I'm going to get ripped apart, though, mostly because I'm part of the apparent minority who thought The Fragile was absolute shit. 

Ah well. The trials of being a critic.

album review: 'hesitation marks' by nine inch nails

I'm going to say something that's borderline anathema to everything I stand for as a reviewer, something I never expected I would say and something I sincerely hope won't kill my credibility forever: sometimes, pure sincerity just doesn't work. Sometimes, it might be actually be the crippling blow that ends up throwing the entire album out of whack. And for somebody who has always prized sincere delivery in performance above most, this sort of conclusion is both enlightening and infuriating.

And for this unexpected revelation, I blame Nine Inch Nails.

Now let me make this clear, I don't think Trent Reznor's project is entirely without merit or is a 'bad' band, to say nothing of any of the slew of moral outrage that has been directed at the act over the past several years. My issues with Nine Inch Nails aren't linked to any aversion to their shock factor or their abrasive sound or the nihilistic subject matter (well, at least not entirely). As someone who listens to industrial metal acts like Ministry or Pain, I'm well-aware of Nine Inch Nails' impact on the industry as one of the pioneers of their genre.

And for the most part, Nine Inch Nails have earned that reputation, particularly in their instrumentation off of their first two LPs, Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral, the two albums that cemented Trent Reznor and his band in pop culture and in the eyes of the controversy circuit. The themes, particularly those on The Downward Spiral, were steeped in an examination of depression and self-loathing, and it's not hard to buy the underlying very real emotions that inspired songs like 'Closer' or 'March Of The Pigs' or 'Hurt'. And coupled with Reznor's uncanny knack for fusing industrial sounds with surprisingly catchy melodies, it's no surprise that Nine Inch Nails built their cult of personality that would permeate goth and alternative clubs all over the world.

But here's the problem: it's clear from every album Reznor has released since that he is haunted by the success of The Downward Spiral, and his attempts to replicate its success in differing forms have never managed to work, partially because Reznor can never properly detach from his material to provide that additional context and weight that made The Downward Spiral such a deeply affecting, influential, and critically acclaimed work. 

Of course, that doesn't touch the other big problem with Trent Reznor: he has never been a great songwriter. I'm not saying he's terrible or not talented - far from it, he has a gift for crafting memorable hooks that most industrial acts wish they could have - but to say that his nihilism has long ago stopped being compelling is probably underselling it. Now that's not saying that he hasn't tried to inject it with some degree of variety, but Reznor has a bad habit of returning to the same themes and cliches over and over again, and it very rapidly commits the cardinal sin of any nihilistic artwork: getting really boring and repetitive really fast. Forget buying into the 'HALOs' or Trent Reznor's cult of personality (which I'd argue he hasn't really earned), I had a hard enough time getting through the Nine Inch Nails discography over my vacation as a refresher because Reznor's songwriting regularly found ways to get on my nerves in a serious way. And most of the problem comes from the fact that Reznor is selling every single line with complete honesty and sincerity, which makes some of the more cringe-inducing lyrics even worse. If they were delivered with the slightest bit of additional nuance or a hint of irony, they might be more excusable, but too often they vary between being infuriating and just embarrassing.

Now granted, it wasn't as if Reznor didn't try to replicate his success with The Downward Spiral, which led to seriously mixed results. The first attempt was The Fragile and Things Falling Apart, two atrocious albums where any of the limited subtlety that Reznor had in his lyrics was pitched out the window in favour of swaggering, self-serving bravado and terribly out-of-place acoustic instrumentation in favour of catering to the late-90s obnoxious brats that bought into Reznor's cult without thinking. Forget the deeper context that informed The Downward Spiral or the motifs and symbolism - no, let's go for greater aggression and shock with a quarter of the subtlety. Things did improve in With Teeth, which held a tighter balance between inward and outward aggression, but the lyrics didn't really impress and the instrumentation seemed even less controlled. It was also on With Teeth that we got the first hint of Reznor's political edge, which fully manifested itself on Year Zero, an album that would honestly require a full-length review on its own to fully unpack. For now, I'll say that there was a lot of interesting ideas toyed with on Year Zero, but the execution was muddled and ultimately I was left distinctly confused and unsatisfied with the whole endeavour (although the Green Day fan in me loves 'Capital G' for its sheer blunt Bush hatred).

And really, I can directly trace the lack of satisfaction with later Nine Inch Nails less to the lyrics (which for the most part I tend to give up on) to the instrumentation. Instead of using electronica to create the distortion and more jagged segments of his music, he's chosen to rely on these heavy, feedback-swollen guitars that might create an impressive wall of sound, but lack the control that made his songs really gripping to me. I've gotten to the point as someone who listens to harsh, abrasive music that raw walls of distortion just doesn't impress me the same way if the tune is seriously lacking (and more often than not on later Nine Inch Nails albums, it definitely is). That's also where I tend to come down on his 2008 album The Slip, which once again failed to recapture that tightness that made Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral so effective (to say nothing of the lyrics, which might be the most minimalist and slapdash work I've ever seen Reznor put on record). At this point, I'd have a hard time pointing to any of Reznor's work besides his moody, ambient pieces (Ghosts in particular, which is unfocused but does capture the appropriate atmospherics quite well) as anything I can recommend. 

But this is 2013, and Trent Reznor is 48 - surely his songwriting has evolved into something new, particularly after a five year hiatus from Nine Inch Nails, right? Surely there's something worth liking here on Nine Inch Nails' new album Hesitation Marks, right?

video review: 'colours in the dark' by tarja turunen

Whoops, missed putting this up last night. Anyway, here's my newest video review of Tarja Turunen's album 'Colours in The Dark'. I'm kind of flabbergasted that I spent the entire damn review pronouncing Tarja's name wrong, but to be honest, that's always the way I heard in pronounced, and I never even expected I was wrong. But then again, the translation of a 'j' to a 'y' is really common over there, and frankly, I should have known better. God, that's embarrassing.

Also, the fact I have a tan is really not showing up on screen. That's deeply annoying to me. Eh, you can't win them all.

album review: 'colours in the dark' by tarja turunen

It's really hard to talk about Tarja Turunen without talking about Nightwish. Yes, even her solo career.

I should explain for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, and it's going to require a bit of a history lesson. Back in 1996, there was a keyboardist and insanely talented songwriter in Finland named Tuomas Holopainen, and he recruited guitarist Emppu Vuorinen and classical singer Tarja Turunen to form a band that would fuse classical symphonic music with heavy metal. In 1997, they (along with future symphonic metal titan Within Temptation) released their first albums, birthing a whole new genre of metal that would take them to fame and fortune. 

It was also one of the first genres of metal I ever explored, and Nightwish was one of the first bands I discovered that I really liked, which was in large part thanks to Tarja Turunen's soaring, powerful, operatic vocals. To put it another way, Nightwish is one of the few bands to cover 'Phantom of the Opera' and actually manage to match Sarah Brightman's incredible delivery. Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, Nightwish made a ton of fantastic music that I still love to this day...

And then in 2005, Tarja Turunen was fired from the band through an open letter by Tuomas, and the fanbase split violently in two. Now as somebody with the benefit of context and hindsight, I can say that there was no party involved in this split that is completely innocent or deserves all of the blame. Tuomas was always a brilliant, introverted control freak who couldn't stand not getting his own way, and Tarja got used to being the face of the band and thus became a bit of a diva (whether or not it was encouraged by her husband, who has nothing but contempt for Tuomas, is an entirely different can of worms I don't want to touch).

But Tarja swore she was going to keep making music on her own, so the same year Nightwish released their comeback album Dark Passion Play with new vocalist Anette Olzon (which also happened to be one of the best albums of their career), Tarja also released her solo album My Winter Storm. One thing was for sure on both of those albums: neither Tarja or Tuomas were over the whole breakup thing, and were taking more than their fair share of complicated emotions regarding the whole affair. 

However, the important questions regarding that album from Tarja tend to get overlooked amid the hysterics, and I'm here to provide an answer to it: is Tarja's solo material any good? Well, to be blunt, it's better than I expected. Considering it was Tarja's first attempt to write songs on her own (with an arsenal of professionals behind her, of course), I was surprised how well many of the songs came together. And Tarja's voice is as strong and gorgeous as ever, and she has always had a lot of personality and energy in her delivery. The problem becomes that this album is automatically compared with Dark Passion Play, one of the best albums Nightwish ever made that still holds up today. Nightwish made a classic album of the symphonic metal genre, and My Winter Storm just can't compete with that, on songwriting or instrumentation (I'm not jumping into the pit of comparing the vocals of Tarja and Anette, and you can't make me).

Fortunately, her follow-up What Lies Beneath was actually a fair bit better, actually showing that Tarja's (and her collaborators') songwriting was only getting better, and Tarja was experimenting with differing symphonic metal sounds and styles, proving that she could indeed be a pretty potent solo act. Yeah, not all of the experimentation worked - the hints of more industrial sounds were especially hit-and-miss, and some of the tempo changes mid-song brought mixed results, but it was enough to give me a bit of hope that her newest album this year (released while Nightwish is in a bit of a complicated state as a band, having replaced Anette Olzon with Floor Jansen) could actually be something special.

So what do I think of Tarja Turunen's newest album Colours In The Dark?

album review: 'yeezus' by kanye west

I think it's necessary to discuss my original plan for how I was going to write this review, both so you can get a glimpse of my process and so I can add a bit of context to this whole thing.

You see, the second I heard that Kanye West was going to title his next album Yeezus, I got the immediate idea that it might be kind of fun to frame the review like a letter to Kanye West, to discuss his ego exploding out of control in a way that can only lead to cataclysmic disaster at some point down the road (bear in mind I still suspect this'll happen at some point - hell, I've been predicting it since My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy). You know, frame it like an intervention, a bit like the way I wrote my little letter to Taylor Swift that doubled as an a review of her album Red.

And make no mistake, I would have had plenty of material for this letter, because Kanye West's career has been one of the most intriguing adventures to watch for the past several years. He burst onto the scene as a hit producer and made three reasonably solid rap albums that I like a fair amount to this day. Granted, I didn't think they were anything all that special - Kanye's gift for sampling and production always made his instrumentation a treat, but his weaker flow and clumsy lyricism never really impressed me all that much. In that, I was content to slot him into the list of acts I considered good, but not great.

And then something happened to Kanye West. His mother passed away, his relationship ended badly, and the resulting crises of faith and loneliness drove Kanye to make one of the most influential hip-hop albums of the past five years, 808s & Heartbreak. A choice to dive straight into introspective, autotune-layered electropop split his fanbase violently and was hastily predicted by most to be a flop, but the subsequent critical acclaim and surprisingly strong sales proved them wrong - mostly because the album is incredibly good. Kanye's choice to use autotune as more than just pitch correction and instead use it to emphasize his loneliness and the isolating feelings of grief do wonders for the atmosphere of this album. And in contrast to the majority of fans and critics, I found 'Robocop' (which had a bizarre yet compelling tonal juxtaposition between lyrics and instrumentation) to be my favourite song on the album. There was grief there, but there was also light at the end of the tunnel, as it felt Kanye was finally gaining some context and moving towards something brighter.

That didn't happen, after an infamous incident with Taylor Swift, Kanye descended deeper into the nightmarish rabbit hole and made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which achieved incredible critical acclaim, with many critics declaring it his magnum opus. It took the mad genius of Kanye's production and married it to eclectic samples, a host of guest stars, and lyrics that didn't just expose Kanye's insanity, but brandished it proudly before the masses. 

Now I've had a, well, let's call it complicated relationship with this album. When I originally reviewed it on Facebook, I pissed off a lot of people by saying it's really not all that great, and certainly not the perfection that so many critics had claimed it was. And while I tend to revisit the album about once a year - sometimes you need unfiltered insanity and darkness - I'm increasingly convinced that while the album contains some of the greatest highs of Kanye's career (seriously, 'All of the Lights', 'Hell of a Life', 'Power', even 'Dark Fantasy' and 'Blame Game' are mindblowing), but ultimately doesn't work as a whole. Yes, the instrumentation and production are top-notch, but I've always had issues with Kanye's flow and there are enough awkward lines to knock too many of the songs off their pedestals. And this isn't even factoring in the extremely hit-and-miss guest star inclusions, none of which I feel really add much to the album.

And that isn't even touching album themes and the twisted pathology lurking inside this album. I will definitely admit that as a slice of the insanity inside Kanye's head, it's something entirely unique, but whenever it tries to build towards a theme or a coherent driving mechanism, it feels unfocused, indulgent, and oddly sloppy at points. Kanye tries to come across as an alpha-male douchebag or seductive predator on this album (and I can't help but admit there are moments here that the asshole I was throughout 2010 and early 2011 fucking adores), but it's undercut at every turn because there's no perspective and Kanye is too honest as a performer to embrace something remotely untrue. Instead of a coherent and focused work, we get Kanye attempting to explore his darkest neuroses and eventually finding them hollow and token. It reminds me strongly on a thematic level of Nick Cave's darker material, but while Kanye only found sadness and emptiness at the base levels of his psyche, Nick Cave actually found something darker, creepier, and genuinely gripping when he looked, a real horror - and his masterful skill was making all of us realize that we had that darkness too. But with Kanye, we don't get that connection in the same way, and I left feeling oddly distant from the album at the end of it. And considering how damn hard Kanye was trying to put it all out there and create that connection to curb his loneliness (seriously, go back through his material in recent years, it's a definite undercurrent that Kanye feels he has no true peers - although I'm conflicted whether or not his choice to expose his inner demons was the best way to win people over, which might have been part of the point, loneliness being his punishment), I can't help but feel it doesn't quite work for me.

So after two albums of material (a collaboration with Jay-Z in Watch The Throne, which was solid enough but didn't really stick, and Cruel Summer, a label launchpad collaboration that just did nothing for me whatsoever), Kanye was finally back with a new album titled Yeezus. Frankly, when I heard the title, I was just expecting a continuation of the shallower themes in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, just blown up to eleven. And given his material throughout 2012 and especially on Cruel Summer, I wasn't expecting much other than Kanye to wallow in his own ego. Hence, the 'intervention-review'.

I didn't get what I was expecting.