Our Ill Wills, the second full-length album from Sweden's utterly wonderful Shout Out Louds, was one of this year's surprises...not so much for being a good record, but for being a lotdifferent than what was expected. The band's debut, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff was a wonderful mixture of pop and crunchy indie-rock, and it owed more than a bit of a debt to Pixies. This time around, the harder rock elements are gone, and in its absence is sophisticated, intelligent, lush, downbeat pop.

Over the course of 48 minutes, Adam Olenius leads his band through tales of woe and sadness. The songs range from the deceptively upbeat ("Tonight I Have to Leave It"), to melodramatic ("You Are Dreaming"), with themes of jealousy ("South America"), regret ("Normandie"), nostalgia ("Your Parents Living Room") and even that long-lost musical theme, the car accident weeper ("Time Left for Love"). Unlike their previous work, the musical backing is very lush, soft, and dreamy; mixing orchestration throughout, at times, the music is so damn dreamy, Olenius and pianist Bebbon Stenborg's vocals lose out to the music behind them. "Impossible" is the kind of pop song that don't get made any more, with a gorgeous fade-out and an ethereal dance beat. The epic "Hard Rain" closes the album, and it feels more like a quiet hurricane than a hard rain; while it's not noise, it's a quiet-loud ending that leaves the listener white-hot and bothered in a melancholy way.

Merge Records once rescued another band with a Pixies fixation from the major-label rejection pile, and they subsequently turned them into the Big Thing. Our Ill Wills proves that Merge may well have struck gold again; saving this Swedish band from obscurity was a smart move, and this record is one of the best of 2007.

Listen To: You're Dreaming

Labels: best of 2007, Merge Records, Shout Out Louds

posted by joseph kyle @ 12:28 PM 0 comments

Caribou "Melody Day"

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Caribou's "debut," The Milk of Human Kindness, had a few great ideas, but to me, it just seemed too...muddy. I didn't connect with it like I did Up in Flames. So Caribou's new single, Melody Day, took me by complete surprise. The three songs found on this criminally-brief EP represent a magical departure from his previous work, and I can only say...GREAT! "Melody Day" is very sunny. Not necessarily "happy," mind you, but it's sunny. It sounds like Dan Snaith heard a Turtles song and immediately rushed home to his studio to recreate the song verbatim. Failing horribly, but creating something totally wonderful and original instead. It also has a rough, demo-like quality, and thoug it's a bit heavy on percussion, Snaith makes up for that with gorgeous harmonies, a pulsating, non-stop rhythm, and a melody that's damn catchy. Try getting it out of your head. (You can't!) Four Tet's remixing turns down the sunny vibes, ditches the excessive percussion, slows it down a bit, and allows the gorgeous harmonies to come into focus. Are those children backing him up, or is it just Adem? Sounds like kids to these ears. With Hebden's touch, the once-jaunty pop song becomes a beautiful folk ballad. This remix is one of the rare instances where a radically different remix of an already-ace song actually sounds better than the source material. "Zoe," the b-side, is a brief but wonderful blast of orchestra pop that sounds like a First Class (or possibly The Yellow Balloon) instrumental backing track. It's loaded with bursts of sunny sounds, flutes, a loosely-tuned sitar, and other mysterious things. I've said a lot about three simple songs, but I'm thoroughly convinced that Andorra is going to be the high point of Snaith's career. It's unlike everything he's done so far, and these songs already tell me it's a record to be extremely proud about.

And yes, I'm lame, and I know the album came out today, on the wonderful Merge Records. You want to hear it? Go here and check it out!

Labels: bo07, Caribou, Merge Records, The single from the album

posted by joseph kyle @ 12:43 PM 0 comments

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