Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Neil Martin chances upon one of the albums of the year so far. Maybe:

Teenage angst is overrated. Sometimes the best way to deal with the uncertainties of youth is to accept that your only option is to blaze through those wilderness years with the reckless abandon of someone who is either immortal or doomed to an early grave.  This is what Japandroids second album sounds like.

It opens with these lines: “Long lit up tonight and still drinking/Don't we have anything to live for/Well, of course we do, but until it comes true/We're drinking.” This pretty much sums up the eight tracks and 35 minutes that follow. Short, concise anthems to directionless youth. Songs about staying up all night, sordid sexual encounters, burning the candle at both ends and living without regret. So often these kinds of songs can sound contrived and up being too literary, a trap The Hold Steady often fall into. Japandroids have the urgency that suggests they are writing about their own lives rather than sounding like 30-somethings writing about some romanticised, mythological idea of urban disaffection and young adulthood.

Celebration Rock sounds great all messy, revving guitars that burst into life like the beginning of the greatest night on the town you ever had. Hooligan choruses of “woos” and “oh oh ohs” that bring to mind drunken bar singalongs at 1am. The band sound just that right kind of sloppy, the best kind of sloppy, on the edge of collapse but always just holding it together, like The Replacements at their best.  In fact this is probably the closest thing I have heard recently to that Mats sound. Most bands compared to them sound studied and academic but Japandroids and Celebration Rock capture some of that raw honesty that made The Mats so wonderful. This is absolutely a contender for album of the year but it may be that I burn out on it in a couple of months. Given the subject matter that would perhaps be only fitting.

Review by Neil Martin

Grimes - Visions

Liana Gow-Killingbeck gets movin' to the sweet sounds of Grimes:

The first time I heard the new Grimes album was a tad embarrassing. I decided I was going to listen to Canadian Claire Boucher’s third record, Visions, in the car whilst driving to the beach, you know, because there’s something rather awesome about cruising around town, windows down, to yummy new tunes. What I didn’t realise was the effect this bewitching record would have upon me and my poor, unsuspecting limbs.

As a dancer, I can’t help but react physically to music that captivates me, and Visions succeeded to do just that. Consequently, I found myself whipping out some crazy D-moves all the way into town; shoulder popping, head rolling, finger clicking fun, and boy did my imagination run wild (I envisioned myself dancing on the moon attired in alfoil with loads of aliens and robots surrounding me – quite a normal reaction, I’m sure).

This was fine until I realised that the car full of teenagers driving adjacent to me found my wacky physical interpretations to be just as amusing as the energetic songs themselves. Whooops-a-daisy.

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Beach House - Bloom

Following the success of Teen Dream in 2010, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand are back with their fourth full-length album. Bloom was born on the road in stolen moments between soundchecks and shows, and takes influence from the experiences during two years on tour. The duo then wove together the resulting melodies, chords, rhythms, words and textures in Baltimore, before recording them over a period of seven weeks at Sonic Ranch Studios in Tornillo, Texas.

Despite being created over a period of time and in different locations, the most arresting thing about Bloom is that it sounds like a coherent body of work that needs to be consumed as a whole rather than in chunks, as is the norm in this era of diminished attention. It is also well-monikered in that feels like a natural development from Teen Dream. All of the elements which made that album great are here, yet are further developed. Ambitious opener Myth sweeps and soars even higher than 10 Mile Stereo and is a fine example of how, while the trademark distance and isolation are still evident, this time a greater sense of warmth and optimism thaws Beach House's iciness. Legrand's androgynous melodies are prettier than ever too. While often characteristically pared back, at times they rise beautifully. New Year for instance, is as joyous as it is dreamy.

While there is no wheel-reinvention here, Bloom works perfectly as a follow-up to their last outing. It is an album that actually sounds like... well... an album and is certainly one of the finest releases so far this year.

Review by Bobby Townsend