General Ratings:
Music: 8
Lyrics: 6
Scope: 7
Consistency:4
RIYL: Band of Horses, Gram Parsons, Summerteeth-era Wilco
Further Listening: Sera Cahoone, Carissa's Wierd, The Twin Atlas
Place of Origin: Seattle, WA
Instrument/Sounds List: Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Bass, Drums, Multi-tracked Vocals & Harmonies, Keyboard/Synthesizer, Piano, Effects Pedals/Tape Manipulation, Harmonica, Alternative Percussion (shaker, tambourine, woodblock, jingle bells, chopsticks), Whistling, Pedal Steel, Banjo, Trombone, Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Violin, Cello, Glockenspiel, Melodica, Hammered Dulcimer, Mandolin, Ukulele, French Horn, Organ, Field Recordings.
Mood Tones:
Season: Spring
Weather: Overcast
Time of Day: Afternoon
Song Highlights: The Crime Window, Torn Blue Foam Couch, Swan Matches
Favorite Lyrics:
"Bag of bones, cursing at the spit he spat,/
He was creep creep creeping up the railroad track./
Tell his Mrs. that Mr.'s fine,/
Keep her fingers crossed and her split tongue tied."
(from "The Crime Window")
"We were all blue,/
Disguised in black,/
Bad news travels fast."
(from "Index Moon")
"It's nearly dawn, your motel home,/
The shades were drawn to hide the storm/
Without a sound, the TV glows,/
The blankets tied around our throats."
(from "Sleepdriving")
Other Thoughts:
It's always made me sad that this album got mostly over-shadowed by the fallout of Mat Brooke's decision to leave Band of Horses. If anything, a side-by-side comparison of Grand Archives and Cease To Begin underscores to me that the elements of Everything All the Time that I enjoyed the most were probably Brooke's contributions; while CTB is easily classifiable as a vanilla guitar rock album with sub-par lyrics, Grand Archives runs the gamut from punkish sing-a-long ("The Crime Window") to coffeehouse folk ("George Kaminski") to indie pop ("Miniature Birds") to gypsy dub ("Breezy No Breezy"). Don't get me wrong, the blueprint for this record is mostly recognizable in its forebearer, but it's surprising how cleanly Brooke and Ben Bridwell fit into the Jekyll and Hyde roles (musically speaking) when comparing their follow-up efforts. I would go so far as to claim that there is nothing that Bridwell does on Cease To Begin that isn't one-upped somewhere on Grand Archives, and, that the inverse of this sentiment has been almost uniformly regurgitated by the reviews that I've read of GA has left me wondering if we're even listening to the same album.
So there are all the pieces of an early 70s classic rock record here, major 7 chords, vocal harmonies, a crisscrossing of the folk/rock divide. Seems straightforward enough, no? But the deeper you get into Grand Archives, the more you begin to notice and appreciate the energy and deliberation that went into crafting all of its inter-locking pieces. On one track, a plucked cello substitutes in for an electric bass, on another, a banjo is played with a slide, smoothing out its rough edges so that it will blend better with the vocals. I've listened to this album over 30 times and there are still sounds that I can't place with certainty, as well as a slew of others that I only know about from reading interviews with the band. Headphones are probably a good idea here, if only to pick up on some of the nifty production tricks they pull, like alternating the sides of vocal leads, and crossfading at the end of a couple songs. This seems especially worth noting given how easy it is to miss all of the precision by simply getting caught up in how pleasant sounding it all is. There are maybe two or three songs where the lead melody isn't immediately memorable, and while Brooke's voice may sound a bit airy at times, he gets around this problem by constructing elaborate multiple-part harmonies, sometimes layering his own voice, sometimes juxtaposing his against a cadre of back-up vocalists (never to better effect than in his duet with Sera Cahoone on "Swan Matches"). It also bears noting that his voice, if a bit non-descript, is exceedingly easy on the ears, a refreshing alternative to the John Darnielles and Stephen Malkmuses that seem to have taken over indie music (not that I don't love them both).
The Downside:
This album was cut in piece-meal seesions at three different studios, and the more you listen to it, the more the subtle recording and mixing differences between tracks can start to affect the flow. Equally important is the fact that the range of styles and the sequencing's penchant for somewhat abrupt shifts in tone, while never reaching Beck-like proportions, could make this an album of hits and skips, or at least something you might be tempted to re-sequence. The lyrics never take away from a song, but they rarely add to it as well, which gives them an ephemeral quality and makes them one of the album's few missed opportunities.
Music: 8
Lyrics: 6
Scope: 7
Consistency:4
RIYL: Band of Horses, Gram Parsons, Summerteeth-era Wilco
Further Listening: Sera Cahoone, Carissa's Wierd, The Twin Atlas
Place of Origin: Seattle, WA
Instrument/Sounds List: Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Bass, Drums, Multi-tracked Vocals & Harmonies, Keyboard/Synthesizer, Piano, Effects Pedals/Tape Manipulation, Harmonica, Alternative Percussion (shaker, tambourine, woodblock, jingle bells, chopsticks), Whistling, Pedal Steel, Banjo, Trombone, Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Violin, Cello, Glockenspiel, Melodica, Hammered Dulcimer, Mandolin, Ukulele, French Horn, Organ, Field Recordings.
Mood Tones:
Season: Spring
Weather: Overcast
Time of Day: Afternoon
Song Highlights: The Crime Window, Torn Blue Foam Couch, Swan Matches
Favorite Lyrics:
"Bag of bones, cursing at the spit he spat,/
He was creep creep creeping up the railroad track./
Tell his Mrs. that Mr.'s fine,/
Keep her fingers crossed and her split tongue tied."
(from "The Crime Window")
"We were all blue,/
Disguised in black,/
Bad news travels fast."
(from "Index Moon")
"It's nearly dawn, your motel home,/
The shades were drawn to hide the storm/
Without a sound, the TV glows,/
The blankets tied around our throats."
(from "Sleepdriving")
Other Thoughts:
It's always made me sad that this album got mostly over-shadowed by the fallout of Mat Brooke's decision to leave Band of Horses. If anything, a side-by-side comparison of Grand Archives and Cease To Begin underscores to me that the elements of Everything All the Time that I enjoyed the most were probably Brooke's contributions; while CTB is easily classifiable as a vanilla guitar rock album with sub-par lyrics, Grand Archives runs the gamut from punkish sing-a-long ("The Crime Window") to coffeehouse folk ("George Kaminski") to indie pop ("Miniature Birds") to gypsy dub ("Breezy No Breezy"). Don't get me wrong, the blueprint for this record is mostly recognizable in its forebearer, but it's surprising how cleanly Brooke and Ben Bridwell fit into the Jekyll and Hyde roles (musically speaking) when comparing their follow-up efforts. I would go so far as to claim that there is nothing that Bridwell does on Cease To Begin that isn't one-upped somewhere on Grand Archives, and, that the inverse of this sentiment has been almost uniformly regurgitated by the reviews that I've read of GA has left me wondering if we're even listening to the same album.
So there are all the pieces of an early 70s classic rock record here, major 7 chords, vocal harmonies, a crisscrossing of the folk/rock divide. Seems straightforward enough, no? But the deeper you get into Grand Archives, the more you begin to notice and appreciate the energy and deliberation that went into crafting all of its inter-locking pieces. On one track, a plucked cello substitutes in for an electric bass, on another, a banjo is played with a slide, smoothing out its rough edges so that it will blend better with the vocals. I've listened to this album over 30 times and there are still sounds that I can't place with certainty, as well as a slew of others that I only know about from reading interviews with the band. Headphones are probably a good idea here, if only to pick up on some of the nifty production tricks they pull, like alternating the sides of vocal leads, and crossfading at the end of a couple songs. This seems especially worth noting given how easy it is to miss all of the precision by simply getting caught up in how pleasant sounding it all is. There are maybe two or three songs where the lead melody isn't immediately memorable, and while Brooke's voice may sound a bit airy at times, he gets around this problem by constructing elaborate multiple-part harmonies, sometimes layering his own voice, sometimes juxtaposing his against a cadre of back-up vocalists (never to better effect than in his duet with Sera Cahoone on "Swan Matches"). It also bears noting that his voice, if a bit non-descript, is exceedingly easy on the ears, a refreshing alternative to the John Darnielles and Stephen Malkmuses that seem to have taken over indie music (not that I don't love them both).
The Downside:
This album was cut in piece-meal seesions at three different studios, and the more you listen to it, the more the subtle recording and mixing differences between tracks can start to affect the flow. Equally important is the fact that the range of styles and the sequencing's penchant for somewhat abrupt shifts in tone, while never reaching Beck-like proportions, could make this an album of hits and skips, or at least something you might be tempted to re-sequence. The lyrics never take away from a song, but they rarely add to it as well, which gives them an ephemeral quality and makes them one of the album's few missed opportunities.
No comments:
Post a Comment