Album Review: Sondre Lerche — “Heartbeat Radio”

Norwegian pop phenom Sondre Lerche is often compared to Burt Bacharach for his melodic, jazz-inflected compositions and silk-smooth vocals. Unfortunately, Lerche shares another trait with Bacharach: He kind of sucks as a lyricist. Throughout Heartbeat Radio, Lerche drops cringe-worthy lines and trots out D.O.A. clichés (“Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” rears its head) that distract from his indisputable talent as a composer and arranger. Following his flirtation with straight-up rock on Phantom Punch, Heartbeat is Lerche’s big, romantic, orchestral-pop record. Sugary melodies stack up on countermelodies (and counter-countermelodies — check out the dizzying string coda on “Good Luck” and the diet disco-funk of “I Cannot Let You Go”), but in many cases the flourishes fall just short of moving or memorable. While more technically accomplished, Heartbeat’s pleasantly vanilla vibe feels like a step backward from Punch, on which the songs were pumped up with energy and badly needed tension.

Album Review: The Antlers — “Hospice”

Hospice is the best record this year that I have absolutely no desire to revisit anytime soon. Brooklyn’s Antlers have crafted an impressively assured album with beauty oozing from every moody track, recalling the crystalline ambience of Sigur Rós one second (“Kettering”) and a sleepier Arcade Fire the next (“Two”). But the concept behind this concept album — a man witnessing his loved one painfully die of bone cancer — is really fucking depressing. Frontman Peter Silberman scripts a crushingly bleak mortality play, packed with upsetting details like “shining children’s heads” and “hundreds of thousands of hospital beds.” It’s heavy stuff, but occasionally the music buoys the subject matter like a fleeting happy memory. Besides, Silberman warns us up front how the story ends, singing, “I didn’t believe them/ When they told me that there was no saving you.”

Album Review: Julian Plenti — “Julian Plenti is … Skyscraper”

Spoiler alert: Julian Plenti is really the alter ego of Paul Banks, well-dressed frontman for one of rock’s most polarizing bands, Interpol (opinions range from “Best band ever!” to “Hey, is this a Joy Division b-side?”). Banks’s nom de plume proves to be totally pointless: Instead of crafting a new style that requires listeners to distance themselves from his main gig, Skyscraper mostly just sounds like Interpol with a less talented rhythm section. Make fun of Interpol’s Carlos D all you like (and you should — dude wears a fashion gun holster), but his bass lines are more memorable than all of Skyscraper. A few flashes of inspiration — the understated piano on “No Chance Survival,” Sgt. Pepper’s horns on “Unwind,” and the haunting, acoustic “On the Esplanade” — are noteworthy, but the rest of the album showcases Banks’s worst traits: monotony and bad puns (see: “Fly as You Might”). At least he didn’t grow a soul patch (RIP Chris Gaines).

Album Review: Japandroids — “Post-Nothing”

Canadian duo Japandroids* are concerned with only two things: guitars and girls (and not necessarily in that order). Their much-hyped full-length debut, Post-Nothing, is a brief, blistering set of low-fi garage that transcends its carport origins by replacing cock-rock swagger with puppy-dog charm. Brian King (guitar) and David Prowse (drums, no relation to Darth Vader) play their respective instruments like they’re in a much bigger band, with Prowse’s syncopated beats punching holes in King’s solid brick walls of noise. Drunk on amplifier fuzz, the guys sprint through relationship stages like oversexed teenagers, covering infatuation (“Wet Hair”), commitment (album highlight “Sovereignty”), and the inevitable post-split depression (epic closer “I Quit Girls”) in a little more than 30 minutes. Despite the unhappy ending, King and Prowse know better than to waste their time slamming the fairer sex. Rock-cliché misogyny just doesn’t suit them — Japandroids are programmed to love.

*We already have a Japanther. What’s next? Japancake? Japancreas?
Japanderson Cooper?

Album Review: YACHT — “See Mystery Lights”

For fans of the Blow — the Khaela Maricich/Jona Bechtolt electro-pop collab that produced the sublime, sensitive Paper Television — Bechtolt’s current project, YACHT, can feel like a consolation prize. For kids who just want to shake their asses, though, See Mystery Lights is the real winner, packed with irrepressible beats that will soundtrack countless dark, sweat-soaked dance floors. Bechtolt and vocalist Claire L. Evans (who always sounds too cool at best, and bored at worst) mash up post-punk riffs (“It’s Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want”), Afropop (“Ring the Bell”), and pure bubblegum (“Psychic City”), among other genres, into a catchy — if not always coherent — whole. While Bechtolt’s production skills are unquestionable, lyrics range from clever (“I’m in love with a ripper”) to confused (“Be careful with the downloading / Read the comments”). No matter how fun YACHT can be, they mostly make me miss the Blow — if only because Maricich gave your brain something to do while your ass was moving.

Album Review: Regina Spektor — “far”

Since being “discovered” by the Strokes in the early 2000s, Regina
Spektor’s been polishing her act for the mainstream. The end result is far, a surprisingly dull record featuring almost none of the playfully whacked, creative gusto that was, up until now, her trademark. The rough edges Spektor once proudly flaunted have been sanded down by no less than four (!) producers, and while there’s an occasional bright spot (the moody “Genius Next Door,” the bouyant “The Calculation”), much of the record resorts to the kind of preachy pop treacle she used to be the antithesis of. (She does mimic a dolphin during “Folding Chair,” but it just doesn’t feel the same. Sigh.)

Music bloggers roasted Spektor when her Begin to Hope track “Fidelity” made an appearance on scrubs-opera Grey’s Anatomy, but at the time I wrote it off as a happy convergence of art and commerce. But far sounds too much like rom-com fishing. Note to ReSpekt: if you don’t want people to think you’re writing songs for Grey’s, don’t start one with “No one laughs at God in a hospital.”

Album Review: God Help the Girl — “God Help the Girl”

Stuart Murdoch, Belle & Sebastian’s master storyteller, conceived the musical God Help the Girl sometime around 2004. Five years later, Murdoch’s still working out the details (like, um, a screenplay), but that didn’t stop him from finishing the soundtrack. Murdoch auditioned vocalists from both sides of the Atlantic in search of the perfect voices for his lovelorn, misfit (yet ironically always gorgeous) characters and hit the twee jackpot with Catherine Ireton (who plays Eve, the titular girl in need of divine intervention). Ireton’s strong yet feather-light voice admirably carries the record, a collection of well-crafted songs that recall B&S’s simpler, string-filled early days while paying homage to ’60s girl groups and old-school musicals.

There are a few kinks, though: Brittany Stallings’s showy rendition of “Funny Little Frog” is more American Idol than American Bandstand, and Murdoch teeters on the line between clever and corny until he inevitably stumbles on a few lyrical clunkers (see “Pretty Eve in the Tub”). Eve wishes that “life could be musical comedy,” but it seems Murdoch has been living one all along. We should be grateful to be let in on his latest head-movie — even if its runtime is only 45 minutes.

Album Review: Dirty Projectors — “Bitte Orca”

Bitte Orca is a strange creature. The Dirty Projectors’ newest is like some kind of awkward yet beautiful bird, seemingly incapable of flight due to its Frankensteinian anatomy (displaced rhythms, off-kilter guitar picking, stretched-out vocal harmonies, and then there’s frontman/zookeeper Dave Longstreth’s voice — so pinched and trembling it sounds like affectation). And yet, the album soars anyway, high on its own joyful weirdness. It helps that, unlike previous (even weirder) DP releases, Orca finds Longstreth turning his plethora of musical ideas into actual songs before hitting “record” — handclappy opener “Cannibal Resource” and pseudo-dance-rocker “Stillness Is the Move” even have sections that resemble choruses. Exquisite acoustic ballad “Two Doves” courts convention even harder but is a much-appreciated (and flat-out lovely) mid-album breather before Longstreth looses his menagerie again. Obtuse yet oddly inviting, Bitte Orca may be tough to catch up to — even after repeat listens — but it’s a fun chase anyway.

Album Review: Grizzly Bear — “Veckatimest”

From the first jazzy chords of kinetic album opener “Southern Point,” Grizzly Bear has a spring in its step — the kind of sly self-possession that signals the group knows something you don’t (and not just the proper pronunciation of Veckatimest). Their confidence isn’t unfounded: This isn’t just the Brooklyn band’s finest record to date; it’s one of the top releases of the year. Co-frontmen Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen have proven to be students of the Lennon/McCartney tradition, with Rossen providing the album’s sharpest moments (“While You Wait for the Others”) and Droste providing the sweetest (“Cheerleader” and the heart-stoppingly gorgeous “Foreground”). The biggest surprise: “Two Weeks” is going to be the pop song of the summer, coasting on Chris Bear’s tasteful, propulsive drumming and four-part doo-wop harmony so bright it could part clouds. This isn’t just GB’s “pop” record, though — the careful sonic textures that colored Yellow House are back, and better. Rather, Veckatimest is the sound of a young group realizing and building on its potential, stretching out in all directions at once without stretching itself too thin.

Album Review: St. Vincent — “Actor”

Pixie dream girl Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) cornered the market on delicate, too-cute indie-pop with her debut, Marry Me. Actor, however, trades wide-eyed naïveté for jaded maturity, as Clark — who once penned a tune called “What Me Worry?” — now frets about being saved from what she wants and waking up the neighbors with shouting matches. Looks like the honeymoon is over.

Actor is a huge leap forward for Clark, who simultaneously focuses her songwriting while expanding her lush orchestral arrangements. Horns swoon and strings swoop prettily throughout, but just when things get too precious, Clark bitch-slaps her whammy bar over fuzzed-out, syncopated saxophone blurts that sound like Maceo Parker having a panic attack (check out the brilliant kiss-off stomp of “Actor Out of Work” and “Marrow”). Despite all the dark, gorgeous noise, Clark’s bewitching vocals and vivid lyrics still take top billing. In “The Party,” she paints an elegant, convincing portrait of after-hours love over unusually stripped-down piano and drums: “I sit transfixed by a hole in your T-shirt / I’ve said much too much, and they’re trying to sweep up.” It’s one of the album’s only understated moments, but Clark lends it as much drama as she does her lovingly bent Hollywood arrangements. Actor is undoubtedly one of the year’s best so far, and deserves a standing ovation.