Posts written by album review

Sounds like The Lonesome Crowded West… check. LOUDquietLOUD dynamics… check. Hell, chuck in some lazy Pavement comparisons too. And that is Cymbals Eat Guitars.

So goes almost every review of the debut album by the New York-based quartet. And yes, they do sound like the records Modest Mouse used to make. They do play music that suddenly veers from squalls of feedback to fingerpicked acoustic guitar. For fucks sake, the barely coherent mumbled vocals of lead singer Joseph Ferocious even sound like Stephen Malkmus.

Much more important than any of this, though, is the fact that Cymbals Eat Guitars have created, in Why There Are Mountains, an almost perfect record, and one of the best debut albums I have heard in a very long time.

Album opener …And the Hazy Sea is a mission statement of sorts, kicking off with a chorus of woah-aahs and coming to a close six minutes later with squalls of feedback. In between Cymbals Eat Guitars create an overwhelming ocean of noise with semi-audible vocals that speak of “business men in starched collar shirts who peered out windows that would fog faster than you could wipe them.”

Some Trees (Merritt Moon) seems to consist of about five different song parts crammed into less than 3 minutes, while album centrepiece Share builds from a single organ line to raucous white noise. Wind Pheonix, recently released as a single, sees the band expanding their palate with glockenspiel and horns, while Ferocious engages in Beck-style word play, singing about “Exotic vision permanently red-light squinting for hours natural American spirit doctorate make love to inanimate objects pasteboard decked out in Ikea finery.”

When the album reaches an end on Like Blood Does, with only a single acoustic guitar and Joseph Ferocious’ cracking voice, it’s hard to think of any other album released of late that has sounded so coherent, and so meaningful. It may only be March, but this album is already a contender to be the best of the year.

9.8790/10

Jed Howlett

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Wind Phoenix

Album of the week…

Grammatics finally release their eponymous debut on Dance To The Radio and, unsurprisingly, it’s great!

This isn’t going to be a long review as I don’t see the point in repeating what basically every other review has said; this album is a fantastic. If you haven’t heard the band before the live line-up iss boy/girl vocals, guitar, bass, cello and drums; on record however there is all manner of wonderful programming, sound design and extra flourishes. It’s produced really well and sounds epic from opener (and my track of the year 2008) Shadow Committee, to equally epic Relentless Fours in the middle, and onto disjointed Swan Song at the end, taking all manner of experiments in pop in the gaps between.

However, like many new artists Grammatics released four singles prior to this, and these as well as a couple of the B Sides have been put on the album meaning I knew half the tracks before (that is the sole criticism). However, many were re-recorded and if you haven’t heard them before, you get a fresh album. This is not a massive fault with the band though as the songs are fantastic; it’s just a shame I (being a long time fan) didn’t get 12 new tracks served up.

It’s great anyway and I implore you to buy it, if you don’t believe me check out some more of the barrage of praised reviews and more importantly hit the Myspace page and listen for yourselves! www.myspace.com/grammatics

Out today.

9/10

Greg

Album of the week…

Explaining why Klang, the third full-length from the Rakes was recorded in East Berlin, Alan Donohue claimed that the London music scene is “like wading through a swamp of shit.”

Thankfully, the Rakes have managed to drag themselves out of that swamp, and away from the memory of their poorly received second album, with this release. No song outstays it’s welcome – the album clocks in at under thirty minutes and the longest track at less than three and a half.

There are no clumsy attempts to tackle the subject of terrorism here – Instead songs about house parties and warnings that “if you hang around bitchin’ in the kitchen, you’re not gonna have a good time.” Lead-off single 1989 finds Donohue taking inspiration from his new surroundings, visiting cemeteries in East Berlin and “half expecting to catch a sight / of the dead Russian soldiers marching into the night.”

Meanwhile The Light From Your Mac is an art-rock ballad which manages to overcome clumsy references to Apple products to become an album highlight, alongside the preceding track Shackleton and the lead singer’s anguished cries that “we’re all pawns baby, we’re all pawns.”

On album closer The Final Hill, Donohue sings that he’s “just had a revolution.” On Klang, though, his band have stuck to what they do best, and crafted a great collection of indie sing-a-longs, and it’s gratifying that while many of their post-punk contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, Donohue’s gang have succeeded in crafting their best set of songs yet.

7/10

Jed Howlett

PS; This album is actually out next week but with another album filling our March 22nd ‘Album of the week’ slot, and with half decent albums few and far between at the moment, the best you can do is get on amazon and pre-order this instead!