All posts tagged albums

  • December 22, 2015

    The Weekend Australian album reviews, December 2015

    I reviewed 15 albums for The Weekend Australian in 2015. Many of them were great, but the only five-star rating I awarded was to the below album, which was released in early August. The full review follows.

    HEALTH – DEATH MAGIC

    HEALTH - 'DEATH MAGIC' album cover, reviewed by Andrew McMillen in The Weekend Australian, 2015That this Los Angeles-based electronic pop quartet insists on capitalising all of its song and album titles speaks to the confronting nature of the music it creates. DEATH MAGIC is the group’s third album, and its best: a futuristic and immersive marriage of electronic beats and pop sensibilities. Its style on previous records was rooted in the abrasive repetition of noise rock, and while that scaffolding remains in place, HEALTH has spent the six years since its last album, GET COLOR, perfecting an aesthetic which is entirely its own.

    Since 2009, the quartet has composed an eerie, atmospheric score for a popular video game, Max Payne 3, and according to an interview published on Pitchfork in April, they “made this record like four times”. The rewrites were well worth it.

    This is among the most vital and exciting albums to be released in any genre in any year. It is a masterpiece of staggering depth and immediacy. Each track pulses with energy and the optimism of youth, yet its overarching lyrical theme is an obsession with the end of life: “We die / So what?” sings guitarist Jake Duzsik on fourth track ‘FLESH WORLD (UK)’. “We’re here / Let go,” he intones atop an insistent backbeat and snippets of warped, metallic squalls.

    Wedged among the unrelenting darkness are two anomalously poppy tracks, ‘DARK ENOUGH’ and ‘LIFE’, which appear back-to-back in the middle of the set list. “Does it make a difference if it’s real / As long as I still say ‘I love you’?” sings Duzsik on the former track, while on the latter he reflects, “Life is strange / We die, and we don’t know why”.

    For a bunch of guys in their early 30s, this preoccupation with death is curious, but as fuel for their art, clearly it has been a boon. The mood that surrounds these themes is far more ebullient than funereal. In acknowledging its mortality rather than denying it, HEALTH seems to have replaced existential anxiety with self-confidence. First single ‘NEW COKE’ is the album’s darkest arrangement, wherein Duzsik’s ethereal vocals state a mantra (“Life is good”) that’s offset by waves of engrossing electronic distortion, like a plane crashing in slow motion. In the middle of the track, there are a couple of brief moments of silence, before the diabolical noise returns anew.

    Stylistic decisions such as these are perhaps influenced by the notion of “the drop” in electronic dance music: compulsive snatches of anticipated euphoria which spur the mind and body into action. DEATH MAGIC is a tough album to categorise: half pop, half electronica and wholly immersive, it is the sound of four singular musicians mining a rich, untapped vein of material. Defiantly, proudly, this band sounds like no other in existence. What HEALTH has come up with here is a towering achievement best played very, very loud.

    I also reviewed the below albums for The Weekend Australian in 2015. They are listed in chronological order, with the publication date and my rating noted in brackets.

     

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  • December 22, 2010

    Mess+Noise Critics Poll, December 2010: Tame Impala, My Disco, You Am I

    Each year, the Mess+Noise critics are asked to choose their 10 favourite Australian albums of the year. In 2010, I chose:

    1. My Disco – Little Joy
    2. You Am I – You Am I
    3. The Gin Club – Deathwish
    4. Parades – Foreign Tapes
    5. The John Steel Singers – Tangalooma
    6. Tame Impala – Innerspeaker
    7. Washington – I Believe You Liar
    8. Faux Pas – Noiseworks
    9. We All Want To – We All Want To
    10. Halfway – An Outpost Of Promise

    My top 5 Australian songs of 2010 were:

    1. My Disco – ‘A Turreted Berg’
    2. Halfway – ‘Sweetheart Please Don’t Start’
    3. Parades – ‘Marigold’
    4. You Am I – ‘The Ocean’
    5. The John Steel Singers – ‘Sleep’

    I was asked by my editor to write a short summary of three albums that placed in the top 10: Tame Impala (#1), My Disco (#5), and You Am I (#9).

    1. Tame Impala
    Innerspeaker (Modular)

    Following Wolfmother’s success in recent years, Tame Impala’s premise was never going to be particularly risky. By gazing into the past and mining the annals of psychedelic rock, this Perth act – a quartet when playing live – produced a debut full-length characterised by spaced-out guitars, lyrics of social dissociation, and complementary, distant vocals.

    Led by singer/guitarist/conductor/producer Kevin Parker, Innerspeaker is very nearly a solo album – he plays the vast majority of the instruments – but upon hearing the finished product, you wouldn’t pick it. His ear for song dynamics is remarkable, and at no point does it sound like anything other than a full band jamming in a smoke-filled room. The cover art requires a double take to process, but the music doesn’t: Parker’s production is immaculate, and his songwriting accessible. Ultimately, Innerspeaker struck a chord this year not because of the human fascination with revisiting sounds of the past, but because Tame Impala threw themselves so entirely into ensuring a high quality experience. “It’s all we really do at home, think about music or record music in some way or another,” Kevin Parker told M+N earlier this year. Long may they continue.

    5. My Disco
    Little Joy (Shock)

    This Melbourne trio have defined themselves through minimalism, repetition and unrelenting force. On Little Joy, they’ve amplified all of the above to craft their finest set yet. “It was the longest we have ever spent time-wise on a record,” guitarist Ben Andrews told M+N, “and I think it really shows with the finished product”. He’s not wrong. Every sustained guitar sound, every metronomic drum part, every chanted lyric is calculated to precision, yet none of the inherent, confronting bleakness and brutality of their music has been lost (despite their decision to stick Scott Horscroft – best known for his work with The Presets and Silverchair – behind the mixing desk). My Disco adhere to the old-school aesthetic of album-as-document; as a result, cherry-picking individual tracks from Little Joy doesn’t really work: its potency is derived from the mood they conjure and sustain. From Andrews’ first jarring chord (‘Turn’) to the record’s elegant, all-inclusive conclusion (‘A Turreted Berg’), My Disco have bettered themselves in every way, and the outcome is nothing short of joyous.

    9. You Am I
    You Am I (Other Tongues)

    Recorded over “a couple of days” and driven by a mutual desire to impress each other, You Am I’s ninth album is an enduring delight – and it’s largely because the band sounds so at ease. Their role as forerunners of contemporary Australian rock music has long since been assured, and it’s telling they’ve no one to impress now but themselves. In ‘Shuck’, the album’s lead single, Tim Rogers sings of a desire to shuck “the past, my poise, the background noise”, and it’s this insular approach – four musicians in a room, banging it out, fuck everyone else – which has certified the album as a true classic. It’s a genuine anomaly for a band’s ninth record to rate among their best work, but You Am I once again remind us just how vital their contribution to Australian music has been, still is, and will continue to be.

    For the full 2010 critics poll, visit Mess+Noise.

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