REVIEW: Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love

I’m the queen of rock and roll.

This line, from Sleater-Kinney’s 1996 sophomore outing Call The Doctor, was delivered more tauntingly and angrily than triumphantly. It wasn’t yet a declaration, with the band still in its youngest era and lacking a stable drummer. It was more of a mission statement—less about filling a role of the male rock superstar as it is displayed (mockingly) in “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” and more about stretching the boundaries about what it means to be a “rock star” in modern America.

Sarcastic intentions or not, by the time Sleater-Kinney’s initial run fizzled out in 2006, Janet Weiss, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein (best known in recent years from her work in the IFC comedy series Portlandia) were the queens of rock and roll. From 1995’s sonic eruption of Sleater-Kinney to 2005’s equally loud but significantly grander The Woods, the members of Sleater-Kinney declared themselves as one of rock ‘n’ roll’s all-time finest and let out a fierce, guttural scream at the constructed and accepted norms of our society.

The band’s first full-length in ten years is not merely an echo of that scream muted by time, new projects, or maturation. Instead, No Cities To Love is just as loud and clear, just as pissed-off and affective as ever. Flaunting all of the aggression of 1996’s Call the Doctor with the top-notch songwriting and confidence of The Woods, No Cities To Love sees Sleater-Kinney returning at full force.

And they hit the ground running. Opener “Price Tag” wastes no time lingering on the fact that this is the band’s first album in ten years, there’s no huge build-up to what surely is a pressurized can of expectations pent up over a decade of silence. No, Weiss, Tucker and Brownstein just launch right in to a blazing release of frustration at the monotony of routine life and the modern fixation on money. Brownstein’s opening riff is bouncy and sinister and immediately draws listeners back in to the distinct but ever-evolving sound of Sleater-Kinney’s tight, hooky but incredibly complex brand of punk rock. Brownstein’s and Tucker’s guitar lines bare their fangs at each other in somehow beautiful and rousing harmony, as Tucker’s assertive, intense vocals seem once again to lead an army of today’s discontents into a sort of moral, spiritual and societal war.

Each of No Cities To Love’s ten tracks delivers an attack on the powerful and corrupt, and strives to unify the outcasts, the underrepresented and the wrongfully suppressed. “Surface Envy” has all of the gusto and spirit of a classic punk rock song, a vocal back-and-forth with Brownstein and Tucker culminating in a chanting, anthemic chorus of, “Only together do we break the rules.” “Bury Our Friends” carries on in a similar fashion as a proclamation of self-awareness and self-empowerment—“Only I get to be sickened by me…we’re wild and weary, but we won’t give in.”

And this is the essence of the album as a whole, and indeed much of Sleater-Kinney’s back catalog—not letting the perceived notions of what a person should be stop them from being everything they can be. The band proves this point better than they ever have before simply by releasing an album this fantastic ten years removed from their last. That magic is supposed to be gone by now, isn’t it? No Cities To Love is a swift “to hell with that notion” jammed into 33 minutes of intense, passionate and damn good rock and roll music.

No Cities To Love is capped off by the doomsday march of “Fade,” a siren-sounding lead riff leading the listener to emergency, a signifier of time running out more quickly than we imagined. Weiss’s drum lines build steadily to an apex and then die off into cautioned cymbal ticks as Tucker warns, “If there’s no tomorrow, you better live.” “Fade” begs us to make the most of our time as Tucker’s razor-sharp croon nearly seems to be coming from another world—“if we are truly dancing our swansong, darling/shake it like never before.”

Sleater-Kinney’s eighth record embodies this idea, with every minute exuding this tension of having so much to say and do but so little time and space to do it. As a result, No Cities To Love is a blast of colorful, liberating, fist-in-the-air sing-along rock music that is so dense and satisfying that it’s good enough to hold us off for another ten years– but let’s hope we don’t have to wait so long. We need the queens of rock and roll now more than ever.

NOTE: This article was originally published in The Minaret.

REVIEW: Death Cab For Cutie – Kintsugi

Death Cab For Cutie is quickly approaching the two-decade milestone, and with that comes the weight of legacy. The act has served as a major representative of millennial indie rock, with two or three seminal records well over a decade old and one on the brink (2005’s major label Plans). For years now, Death Cab has set the bar for a very distinct brand of professional and confessional indie music. From haunting and minimalist echoes of youth (2000’s We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes) to cathartic, arena-worthy emo rock (2003’s classic Transatlanticism), to glossy, macabre and mature balladry (Plans), Death Cab has compiled a bildungsroman of sensitivity and surprising grace while maintaining one of the most consistently great discographies in indie rock.

So how does one bring a new record into the conversation with all-time favorites? How can I talk about Kintsugi, the band’s eighth studio album, in the same breath as Transatlanticism, a record with over 12 years of personal and musical history behind it? The easy answer is that I can’t. I can’t hold Kintsugi opener “No Room In Frame” up to Transatlanticism opener “The New Year” with a straight face, with any real insight to be had. I can’t seriously attempt to compare one of the best album climaxes I’ve ever heard (the one-two-three punch of “Tiny Vessels,” “Transatlanticism,” and “Passenger Seat”) to any selection of this new record. There’s no contest, and at this point there honestly never could be. The only question I can answer, in the immediate wake of release, is whether or not Kintsugi is a good record. Not ignoring the legacy of a great band, but acknowledging the impossibility of the task of one-on-one comparison.

With all of this in mind, I can now confidently say this: Kintsugi, is a great record. Kintsugi simultaneously balances all of the most admired aspects of the band’s discography while teetering on the edge of new territory. The band’s last record with long time member Chris Walla and the first without Walla as producer, Kintsugi is a record of transition, both in content and execution.

After the nervous bliss of 2011’s mildly received Codes and Keys, Kintsugi feels like a return to more depressing subject matter. Throughout the record, relationships crumble and fade away, homes are abandoned and reestablished, grey hairs appear and fall out. The aged character of this record suits the band nicely—indeed, Death Cab has always seemed to have an old soul, level-headed but constantly aching.

Kintsugi is an art form that reconstructs broken artifacts, lining the cracks with gold. This idea pervades the record, a constant sense that things have fallen apart for the good of better reassembly. This is a record that does not dwell, but tries to move on. Opener “No Room In Frame,” in keeping with this theme, is a driving song, maintaining songwriter Ben Gibbard’s affinity for Kerouac-like tales of fleeing. “I disappear like a trend/in the hum of the five in the early morning,” he delivers bouncily over meandering electronics and deliberate guitar plucks. This stellar reintroduction is an affirmation of the relevance of self-discovery well into adulthood, a reminder to recognize one’s self and act in accordance (“how can I stay in the sun when the rain flows all through my veins/it’s true”).

While Walla’s production work has pushed this band to its greatest heights over the past twenty years, the introduction of new producer Rich Costey into the mix really helped shake off any sense of staleness. This is especially evident on dancy standout “Good Help (Is So Hard To Find),” which sports a kind of bouncy indie pop reminiscent of The 1975. Meanwhile, “Little Wanderer” is light and breezy while “Hold No Guns” is intimate and isolated. The range of texture on Kintsugi is impressive, the record still maintaining a solid sense of flow (despite a little clunkiness toward the middle—the transition from “Hold No Guns” to the harsh ‘80s synth of “Everything’s A Ceiling” is rather abrupt).

The movement-inducing style of “Good Help” and “Everything’s A Ceiling” marks new territory for the band, but much of this record is a comforting point of balance struck between Death Cab’s past stylistic ventures. Lead single “Black Sun” recalls “Narrow Stairs” in its biting guitar solo and lyrical darkness, but incorporates Codes and Keys‘s carefully articulated use of electronics and tidy production. “You’ve Haunted Me All My Life” sounds like an extension of some of Plans mid-album cuts, while closer “Binary Sea” plays as a less reactive version of Transatlanticism’s more majestic piano-led numbers. This fine-tuning never feels like a cheap retread, however. Instead, it comes off as reflective of a journey so far, a conscious admission of a checkpoint reached. With a core member leaving for good, it feels like an important and well-deserved wrapping-up of an era.

However, this is a wrapping-up in full awareness of another act to follow. The final lines of the record reflect this awareness of legacy and hopefulness for great music to come: “lean in close, and lend an ear/there’s something brilliant bound to happen here.” After years of creating great music, Death Cab has secured its position as a solid, trusted institution of indie rock. Kintsugi, as a record of transition, admits this and promises to follow through in the future. In the meantime, it’s just another great entry into a wonderful body of work. Who knows, maybe history will treat it as kindly as its most revered predecessors.

NOTE: This article was originally published in The Minaret.

REVIEW: Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit And Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

If only existential crises were as fun as Courtney Barnett makes them seem. On her debut full length record, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett delivers a snapshot of the life of a twenty-something: an aimless confusing existence composed of equal parts punk, rock and roll, and ‘80s shambling indie pop. The result is hauntingly accurate and strangely anthemic for those living in a transitional liminal space— troubled enough to get sad to, upbeat enough to yell along to. An excellent combination.

No song nails this combination like opener “Elevator Operator,” a loosely rocked-out number about a depressed office worker. The lyrics to this song, as with the rest of the record, are utterly dense—an unfiltered ramble streaming among brightly strummed electric guitars. Barnett’s voice is slightly bored as she recounts this strange dual crisis: “Don’t jump little boy, don’t jump off that bridge….he said ‘I think you’re projecting the way that you’re feeling.”

“Pedestrian At Best” is a little bit harder; a more pronounced punk or grunge edge pervades this anthem of false perception. Here, Barnett lets some grit into her voice to overpower the wall of sound behind her: “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you/tell me I’m exceptional and I promise to exploit you.” As close to catharsis as Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit will get, “Pedestrian At Best” is somehow an empowering way of saying “I’m really not that great.”

The K Records influence pervades a good portion of the record, taking its best form with “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party,” a perfect sonic representation of the introvert’s desire for social interaction, but without having to get out of bed. “I wanna go out but I wanna stay home,” Barnett flatly delivers over a beachy melody.

Some of the record’s best moments aren’t well-suited for a sunny drive, however. “Small Poppies” is a long, bluesy cut that comes across like a daytime fever dream: “I dreamed I stabbed you with a coat hanger wire.” “Depreston” broods over the story of a couple buying their first home together, building up to a delicate delivery of the record’s most heartbreaking lines: “If you’ve got a spare half a million/ you could knock it down and start rebuilding.” This may seem mundane, but in reality it’s a prescient reminder that it’s okay to start over if the resources are available— but that means giving up on what’s been built so far. This is the crux of what makes Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit such a good record. The pervading feeling of steam being lost in an effort to make more of one’s life, but a willingness to go on trying anyway. More than anything, “Sometimes” is about control over identity, self and destiny. Courtney Barnett is startlingly wise in this department, and this debut record is essential listening because of it.

NOTE: This article was originally published in The Minaret

Copeland- Ixora

I stepped outside my front door into the misting Oxford air, turned swiftly left and looked out across the aged urban landscape. The Christmas decorations were strung up and ready to go but not yet lit—winter was coming quickly, but hadn’t quite arrived. The transition was consuming and overwhelming in scope, as the days became greyer and greyer and the nights began to arrive alarmingly early. The air was so much colder than my Florida-trained lungs were used to harnessing, it expired like smoke into the gloomy early-onset afternoon sky.

In my ears, the isolated, ethereal harmonies and delicately plucked acoustic guitars of “Have I Always Loved You,” mirror the feeling of oncoming freeze. The song is the first on Ixora, the first album from my fellow Florida natives in Copeland since 2008. It accompanies this exit from my apartment for what seems like the billionth time—the sonic equivalent to the first real fall I’ve fully experienced since I was very small. “Have I Always Loved You” begins Copeland’s anticipated fifth outing with astounding vulnerability and fragility from a band whose increasing vulnerability and fragility in the later years of its career have turned it from a great band into an amazing band. As the wind blows my cheeks raw and fills my eyes with liquid, Ixora exudes the beauty of the quickly darkening afternoons of early winter days.

That is, Ixora perfectly represents sonically the feeling of being quietly on the edge of something. Winter so close you can taste it. Love so close you can touch it. Happiness right before your eyes. But still just beyond your reach. Ixora is simultaneously full and sparse, quiet and loud, composed and uncertain—it’s an unbelievable listen from a band who, to date, has yet to fail at besting itself, at creating the absolute best iteration if its sound without losing what made it special in the first place.

“Disjointed” is the perfect representation of this, the clearest progression from 2008’s You Are My Sunshine, while at the same time bringing in the new pillars of Copeland’s songwriting that come into play on Ixora—the traditional slowly unfolding crescendos and pristinely delivered lovelorn lines (“is this the sweetest song I’ve ever heard/you’re singing in your native tongue”) are merged with icy electronics and an undeniable groove. The rest of the album teeters on either side while remaining impeccably uniform all the while. “I Can Make You Feel Young Again” and “Like A Lie” feed on this sense of quiet groove while “Erase” and “Ordinary” deliver the most distinct and fantastic versions of Copeland songs in the band’s discography, proving that they do what they do better than anyone else.

“Erase” is particularly enthralling, its scope gradually blossoming from a lonely piano ballad into an enveloping orchestral affair, with lead singer Aaron Marsh hitting his most haunting falsetto notes just at the most poignant moment, as the orchestra recedes for just a second: “and I can’t help this awful feeling that I can’t erase you.” The silence is washed away in one of the few “crashing” moments on Ixora, as these words are lost among the currents of quivering strings and swirling guitars. “Erase” is a marked accomplishment from an already accomplished band—and it speaks to Ixora’s quality that it never seems to overshadow or feel out-of-place among the rest of the nine songs.

Ixora is quiet devastation, the dull panic of an existentially burdened winter nights. It ebbs and flows but rarely explodes, and its most heartbreaking moments are simultaneously its most relaxing. Take the penultimate “World Turn,” an early Bon Iver-esque reverie that seems to live in a mostly empty, slightly echo-y room with a relaxed Marsh and a causally strummed acoustic guitar. The lyrics reflect this, a wish for quiet isolation in a moment when the everyday motions of your life just seem far too much to deal with: “Now you can feel the world move slow/if you lay down on your back and wait/and suddenly you’re home.” Just as the music lures the listener into serenity, a sleepily performed saxophone emerges but does not startle—instead, it quietly changes the identity of the song from something simply relaxing into something profound. A soft, but important stirring, an unreactive unhinging of everything that’s kept you sane…and a silent struggle to pull it all back together, eyes still closed, as the sax recedes and the song returns to its original state.

Ixora is sad but not hopeless—it’s a representation of the idea that everything in your life can seem to be just perfect and can even actually be going really well, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not still plagued by all of the same insecurities and thorns that have followed you all your life. It’s about realizing that all of the bad in your life will never truly disappear; about clinging to the things that make it all feel better, if only for a moment, whether it be a loved one (“in her arms you will never starve/you will never freeze/and when the world is hard/you can fall asleep there”), an imagined happy place (“a lavender hillside in the sun”), or anything. It’s about not running from these things in search of a nonexistent place where all of the bad stuff is gone (“what if you can’t turn back when you’re finally tired of running?”). It’s about letting yourself be comforted, even if you think you don’t deserve it.

And one of the reasons why Ixora is so amazing is because it can do some of that comforting, it can pull you under with the spectral calm of “Like a Lie” or the full synth underbelly and call-response of “Chiromancer.” Ixora is paradoxically haunting and reassuring—and this is precisely why it is so stunning. On my walks through Oxford with the album, I was simultaneously happier than I had ever been in my entire life and panicked at the implications of that fact. How I may never return to the place I’ve grown to love once I leave in two weeks, or how I may indeed return or find somewhere else that I love and have to be far away from the people I care about. How I feel better than I’ve ever felt here, how much I want that feeling to stay, and how much I fear it won’t. Ixora marks this point of confusion and uncertainty in an astounding fashion. It’s the kind of album that gracefully but surely sinks into your life. It’s the album I needed to hear this year more than any other—and one I’m sure I’ll reach for and need for years to come.

http://rd.io/x/QQ-r8CIRfDY/

Copeland Week: Revisiting You Are My Sunshine

This piece is part four of what I’m calling “Copeland Week,” a look back at Copeland’s discography in preparation for the release of Ixora on November 24. Currently, I’m researching the narrativity of popular music, so I’m letting a lot of that line of thinking bleed into these blogs.

Copeland’s progression over the course of its career is impressive not only because of the sheer increase in quality over the years (from an already fantastic starting point), but also because of the band’s ability to hang on to a core sound all the while, in such a way that the band who made Beneath Medicine Tree is clearly the same band who made You Are My Sunshine—the raw materials, the musical sensibilities, the distinctly Copeland fingerprint is never obscured or smudged, but refined. With each album, the band has come closer and closer to perfecting its sound. You Are My Sunshine, Copeland’s fourth full-length album, is, as of today, 13 November 2014, the best and most definitive representation of the band that is available to the general public. Consistently breathtaking, moving, and invigorating, You Are My Sunshine is the kind of album most bands never even get close to achieving.

You Are My Sunshine is the daytime to Eat, Sleep, Repeat’s nighttime, striking the absolute perfect balance between the intricacy of that album, the groove and intensity of In Motion, and the sheer emotional weight of Beneath Medicine Tree. All of this is encapsulated spectacularly in the album’s opening number (and my personal favorite Copeland song), “Should You Return.” Aaron Marsh’s opening vocal performance sounds otherworldly, the album’s first lines simultaneously immensely affective and abnormally ambiguous:

You see the night is all I have to make me feel,

And all I want is just a love to make it hurt.

Cause all I need is something fine to make me lose.

Now it’s a funny way I find myself with you.

You Are My Sunshine, as a whole, deals with understanding why we become the people we are. In “Should You Return,” the narrator considers what exactly drives him to do the things he does, love the people he loves, feel the way he feels. He searches for stability, for safety and self-assuredness, after the rug is pulled out from under him so many times. “Should You Return” is the sonic equivalent of planting two feet on the ground in the morning, stretching your arms, getting that one last yawn out, and facing the world. It moves slowly, softly at its outset, a playful bass line and sunny mellotron hum along as the narrator considers all of the concrete pieces of his life—the songs, the lover, the time he has—and attempts to link them together. The song pauses ever so slightly, falls to a dulcet flatland of sound…a deep breath before the curtains are thrown open, and the sun shines through the window as the song becomes thicker and thicker, more orchestral and surrounding and overwhelming as the truth is accepted, the situation clear—“If you’re unhappy still/I will be hanging on your line/should you return.” The narrator will wait for the one he loves—because his safety and his happiness lie with them, with the knowledge that he is doing everything he can to make his loved one content.

In the narrative sense, You Are My Sunshine is different from Copeland’s previous three albums in that the story being told has less to do with the narrator understanding himself and more to do with the narrator understanding the one he loves. In “The Grey Man,” the narrator seems to be advising the one he loves, who seems to have given up on themselves: “Don’t worry now, it’s all erased/burned to grey and white.” He reminds the other person, over and over, that no matter how vast the number of failures, they have to keep fighting for what will make them happy: “you’ve got to run right back to the start.” This song also introduces another trend that arises many more times over the course of You Are My Sunshine—the blurred lines of who exactly the “you” in the songs is addressing. In “The Grey Man,” the narrator switches back and forth, exchanging the “to the start” in the refrain with “to her arms” to perhaps refer to his female love. This multiplicity of “you” perhaps suggests that the narrator sees himself in the person he is addressing in the song, thus advising the other person just as much as he is advising himself.

This continues throughout the course of the album—he fears the progress of the other person is stalled in the upward slithering “Good Morning Fire Eater,” perhaps reminded of a time (maybe even documented in the earlier three Copeland albums) when he himself felt stuck in recoil: “I’m afraid you’ve stopped to lick your wounds/dear, do you know;” remembers fever dreams and willful ignorance of problems as he is reminded of them in his love in “Chin Up:” “watching a strange show/play out in your head/but you were moving somehow.”

The true profession of love comes in the form of the swirling crescendo of “On The Safest Ledge,” in which the narrator actively promises the one he loves that he will be there for them, that he understands them and will do his best to make everything better: “Could you be happy to fall like a stone/if you’d land right here safe in my arms?” Its tentative in the way it’s proposed, but slowly becomes more self-assured as the chorus becomes more grandiose. The wall of sound comes down abruptly at the end of the song, and Marsh leaves us with an unaccompanied “it’s fine,” as if the conviction of the narrator in his ability to bear the weight of his loved one’s troubles is diminished in the final moment. This comes through in “Not Allowed” in which the communion is found to be uneven: “you’re not allowed to feel nothing…I’m not allowed to be sad.” The basis for the relationship falls apart in a flash.

“Strange and Unprepared” finds the narrator lonely—the song is a bare-bones combination of Marsh and a piano. In the song, the narrator comes to understand that another person’s experiences cannot simply be explained in terms of his own—“you never feel good or bad, only strange and unprepared/’cause I never see you coming or you leaving.” He comes to realize that he can never fully understand a situation that he is not in himself, can never fully know what it’s like to live through an experience that is not his own. In saying he understands the problems his loved one is encountering, he assumed that he was ahead of the game, that because he had been through something similar he knows how it all will end, knows the “answers” to everything. In “Strange and Unprepared,” he realizes that he was wrong in this. He comes to understand that he cannot magically solve another person’s problems; all he can really do is be there to support them through it. But he laments that he has realized this too late to save the relationship he had (“but now we’ll always never know…”).

The album closes with “Not So Tough Found Out,” a ten-minute epic—the mountains and valleys of the song repeated as consistently as the lyrical content, all of the same elements coming around again in a natural, patient progression resembling déjà vu. All of the lessons that the narrator learns, that we all learn, must arise from moments of wrongness. In mistake and failure, we become stronger, smarter, and more mature. It will happen again and again, continuously throughout our lives. Because of this, we can never assume that we know everything, that we have it all figured out. In hindsight, it seems simple, the lessons we learn (“not so tough, found out”), but then we hit another roadblock, stumble again (“not so strong, lost out”) and have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start over and not forget what we’ve learned (“twice as sweet, come round”). As we go through all of this, we hold onto the memories of the things that made us feel safe and happy…use all of our wisdom to get ourselves back to that feeling (“feels so warm, sun fire”). Marsh, through all of this, is calm, monotoned, understated—the narrator accepts all of this as the nature of life, of growing up. He lets the cycle take its course, becoming a little bit stronger each time he rises and falls. He waits to feel the sunshine once again.

Following up a masterpiece like You Are My Sunshine is a daunting task—it was incredibly justified for Copeland to let its story rest here for six long years. The anticipation and bar set for Ixora is astronomical, but if anyone can produce a worthy fifth chapter to an already incredible catalog of work, it’s this band. Who knows, Copeland might even best itself once again.

Copeland’s first album since 2008, Ixora, comes out November 24. iTunes pre-order.

http://www.rdio.com/artist/Copeland/album/You_Are_My_Sunshine/

Copeland Week: Revisiting Eat, Sleep, Repeat

This piece is part three of what I’m calling “Copeland Week,” a look back at Copeland’s discography in preparation for the release of Ixora on November 24. Currently, I’m researching the narrativity of popular music, so I’m letting a lot of that line of thinking bleed into these blogs.

Even if “Sleep” was the fever dream of In Motion, it was still only a premonition of darker, more troubled dreams to come. When Eat, Sleep, Repeat came out in 2006, it was Copeland’s most expansive, intricate, and wonderfully performed record yet. A beautiful, haunting dirge into the mind of a troubled lovelorn sleeper, Eat, Sleep, Repeat continues the story of Copeland with more resonance, more wit, and more conviction than ever before in the band’s career.

The dreamy (or perhaps even nightmarish) atmosphere of Eat, Sleep, Repeat is introduced in the form of “Where’s My Head,” with a singular, defined yet mellow xylophone backbone. The song evokes the feeling of barely knowing if you’re dreaming, noticing the little, strange compulsions (“I just woke to eat some chocolate and go straight back to bed”), and the small things you’re experiencing that just don’t seem quite right (“the only chance that I have tonight/is if something I that ate made my dreams not right”). From this point on throughout the course of Eat, Sleep, Repeat, the narrator seems just on the line between waking life and sleep—often times unsure of what state he’s actually in.

The title track seems to make clear what’s troubling our narrator: “it occurred to me at once/that love could be a great illusion…that love gets everything it asks for” In the song, the narrator tosses and turns as he considers the subject of love, to the tune of understated synthesizers and lush, enveloping post-rock guitars. He appears to be stuck in a sort of damaged relationship, and now, in the unexpected clarity of the middle of the night, he is realizing why—“all this time you didn’t know love.” The interesting thing here is the sort of didactic tone taken in these lines, in continuation of the “fall in love and hold nothing back” portion of In Motion’s closing track. The growth in knowledge and experience is evident over the course of Copeland’s catalog.

The narrator’s situation is made even more transparent in “Control Freak,” a steadier track in which the narrator is cognizant of his waking state, and trying to make sense of his dreams: “and when I fell asleep, it plagued my dreams/and 30 bits of glass had become my teeth.” The chorus repeats “you’re freaking me out/and I could run like a coward for the door/but I’ll never get out/you’re freaking me out,” The narrator feels trapped here, but the song itself is sober—even it’s apex is in the form of a forceful but still calm falsetto delivery from Marsh and a near wistful string section. This is not a moment of panic, but a moment of lucidity—the narrator has felt like this for some time, but he is just now realizing it.

The lines between asleep and awake are blurred and defined by the music of the songs. Whereas the waking “Control Freak” is more upbeat, the keys more thickly struck, “The Last Time You Saw Dorie” is nearly spectral sounding—the music almost hidden behind a filter of dreaminess, with a multilayered Marsh poking through after an extended intro, the music unreactive to his entrance into the song. Meanwhile, “Love Affair” seems to fall somewhere in-between—with dream-like images (“she’d lie on her bed/and stare into the harsh white light”) contrasting with more direct, repeated pleas—as if the narrator is speaking in his sleep, harrowed over this feeling of being controlled, stuck: “just let me run where I want to run.”

The interesting thing about Eat, Sleep, Repeat in comparison to In Motion and Beneath Medicine Tree is that none of these problems are necessarily resolved by the album’s end—a clear climax is not apparent, and the album goes for a more resonant ending in the form of the magnificent “When You Thought You’d Never Stand Out.” The album’s final track led in by an airy piano line, one which sounds almost like a morning bell. As the narrator slowly rises from sleep, he begins to understand what he must do to be happy, thinking of the control he had in “other lives,” in which it was he who “wrote the plotline.” As the song goes on, the layers of piano, drums, vocals, and guitars grow and expand as the narrator remembers his childhood and his feelings of difference and inadequacy, when all he wanted was to enjoy the youthful time he had left: “In younger days/I’m stealing bases while my mother prays/and dreading to wake/longing for one more play.” As another, female vocalist comes in, the narrator pictures the difficulties he will have in severing his ties with those who have made him feel badly about himself, have caused him this night of fever dreaming, reminding him of the time when they rescued him from isolation—“didn’t I see you when you thought you’d never stand out.” All the while, Marsh repeats “they’re gonna come to light tonight,” reminding himself of the happiness he pictured, and how imperative it is that he not suppress his desires because he is afraid to stand up for himself.

This confrontation does not occur within the narrative of the album, but as the music dissolves and we’re left with just the vocal refrains, it feels as if the narrator has risen from submission, that he realizes that all of these worries and solutions and problems he envisioned in his nightmarish night are very real, and that he must now deal with them in the light of day. We are left to ponder what action narrator will take.

Copeland’s first album since 2008, Ixora, comes out November 24. iTunes pre-order.

Copeland Week: Revisiting In Motion

This piece is part two of what I’m calling “Copeland Week,” a look back at Copeland’s discography in preparation for the release of Ixora on November 24. Currently, I’m researching the narrativity of popular music, so I’m letting a lot of that line of thinking bleed into these blogs.

In Motion is a more than appropriate title for Copeland’s second album. Everything about the record is just kinetic—emotionally and physically. In comparison to Beneath Medicine Tree, In Motion just feels more alive—it’s more immediate, better produced, and perhaps even more emotionally charged than its predecessor.

And album opener “No One Really Wins” encapsulates all of this in one exceptional pop-rock tune. In comparison to Medicine Tree’s opener, “Brightest,” “No One Really Wins” is a complete turn-around, with an absolutely menacing guitar showing more teeth than any Copeland song ever has. But the song is still distinctly Copeland, rising from an almost garage rock verse into a pristine, clear, and rhythmic chorus of “it’s a fight between my heart and mind, no one really wins this time.” If In Motion is a continuation of the story began by Medicine Tree, then it’s clear that the very narrator who previously broke out of his cycle of regret and sadness after a recent loss is once again in the throes of a new entanglement—and posed with yet another dilemma that everyone encounters as they come of age: the choice between what is smart and what is true to oneself. The album, taken as a whole, seems to ponder this choice over the course of its ten songs, the angry frustration of “No One Really Wins” providing the backbone for the following onslaught of debate, characterized by desperation, exasperation, and eventual clarity.

This theme of choice is most clearly carried out in track two, “Choose The One Who Loves You More,” a groovy track in which the narrator is preoccupied with a decision they must make—“rain, rain, rain on my mind.” At the end of the song, Marsh repeats, as if the narrator is speaking to himself, planning ahead for when someone discovers his “secret life,” “when they come knocking on your heart’s door/choose the one who loves you more.” The narrator is thinking vehemently about his situation, breaking down every possible outcome of his dilemma, with guest vocalists chiming in to signify interjecting thoughts.

And here we have the major flaw of In Motion’s protagonist. He’s stuck in his head, he can’t stop deconstructing his situations, no mater how blissful, filled with love, difficult, or simple they may be. And because of this, he’s restless—he tosses and turns in “Sleep” over mellow, yet jaunty keys and distant sounding, loose but constant guitar. The song only has two lines that aren’t in question form: “I wanna see your hairline and cheekbones/your red lips on your cell phone.” The narrator knows what he wants, but consistently talks himself out of the possibility, questioning to death the will of his romantic interest. Marsh’s melodic “ahh’s” here are exasperated and exhausted—as if the half-dreaming narrator in the song is yelling out in frustration but finds himself muffled by the power of sleep.

After this tendency to overthink begins to actively impede on the narrator’s love life, as exemplified by the pleading “Don’t Slow Down,” which thrives on contradictions (“you move way too fast/but don’t slow down”), In Motion approaches its climactic moment. Like Beneath Medicine Tree’s one-two punch of “When Paula Sparks” and “California,” In Motion’s major thematic summit comes in the form of two songs—“Love Is A Fast Song” and “You Have My Attention.” The former returns to the sinister, frustrated sound of “No One Really Wins,” but escapes it in it’s cathartic chorus—Marsh’s “whoa’s” leading the way as the drums and guitars alternate between a steady, full rising sound and a propulsive chugging. “My heart is in motion,” Marsh sings forcefully—here, the focus has shifted from thinking to feeling. This shift is apparent in the following, euphoric “You Have My Attention,” in which the reverie of layered “ooh’s” and acoustic strumming is broken as the tempo increases and multiple, sweeping guitars build up and up and Marsh yells, “You have my attention.” Finally, the narrator has escaped his head, and in the “fight between my heart and mind,” the heart, in this moment, reigns supreme.

The succeeding songs, “You Love To Sing,” and “Hold Nothing Back,” sound unburdened compared to the earlier songs on the record, more sweeping or smiling and less crunching or teeth grinding overall. “Hold Nothing Back” is somber but self-assured—perhaps this love has ended or is in trouble, but the narrator has grown to understand what is important to him. He need no longer to exclaim it from the rooftops—all of the frustration and all of the restless dreams lead to a simple way of life, a sober affirmation: “if you fall in love/fall in love and hold nothing back.”

In Motion is the most transitional album in Copeland’s catalog, combining the band’s purgative pop-rock tendencies with a more reserved, atmospheric, and textured sound that would be further explored in subsequent records. In Motion is the best possible combination of the two sides of Copeland—a record that must have sat on a precarious peak of anticipation at the time of its release in 2005, a signal of true brilliance to come.

http://www.rdio.com/artist/Copeland/album/In_Motion/

Copeland’s first album since 2008, Ixora, comes out November 24. iTunes pre-order.

Copeland Week: Revisiting Beneath Medicine Tree

This piece is part one of what I’m calling “Copeland Week,” a look back at Copeland’s discography in preparation for the release of Ixora on November 24. Currently, I’m researching the narrativity of popular music, so I’m letting a lot of that line of thinking bleed into these blogs.

It is undeniable that the Florida-native Copeland has come incredibly far in its four (soon to be five)-album career span. From straightforward but delicate pop-rock anthems to lush, nuanced musical palates, hospital beds and fields of white flowers to safe ledges and airplanes—Copeland’s story has flourished patiently and surely…each chapter distinctly more interesting and impressive than the last; each chapter representing another step in the trek towards adulthood, towards a kind of self-actualization slowly coming to fruition in musical evolution and refinement.

This story begins with tragedy. Beneath Medicine Tree, released in 2003, runs the gamut of formative devastation—from death in the family to loss of love, and all of the regret and prevailing vitality that shines through it all, Beneath Medicine Tree is the sound of approaching adolescence.

Although Medicine Tree is Copeland’s least accomplished work, it still radiates beauty, and sets the scene perfectly for what was to come over the next ten years of the band’s career. Opener “Brightest” is the ideal introduction to Aaron Marsh’s soft, effortlessly evocative vocal style, taking charge over a lonely piano line. Isolated and melancholy in its naiveté and nostalgia, Marsh pines in regret: “I just know that she warms my heart/ and knows what all my imperfections are.” Marsh’s smooth glide into falsetto on the “she” is equally spectral and devastating, indicating along with the present tense a lasting romantic connection in contrast to the past tensed following lines: “she said that I was the brightest little firefly in her jar.” Was. And this is how Beneath Medicine Tree operates as a whole—regretting moments and feelings and loved ones passed in a struggle to come to terms with the inevitable fleetingness of certain aspects of life in general.

In our younger years (which I’ve yet to escape, I know), overcoming our personal tragedies seems impossible—it’s impossible for us to just let go of some of these lost feelings, whether they pass away across time, distance, or worlds. One of the best parts of Beneath Medicine Tree is its illustration of the final, last cathartic moment we all must finally meet in order for us to move on to new, probably better portions of our lives. The album’s centerpieces, “When Paula Sparks” and “California,” are climactic in this way—both play off of each other and mutually build up to an energetic and musically moving moment in which acceptance of these feelings of desperation in the wake of loss is reached in the form of a melodic pronouncement of “ever since you went away…I miss you more every day” in “Paula,” and a wordless release in “California’s” extended, cleansing outro.

The remainder of the album stays true to this release in its final songs. “Coffee” (a personal favorite of mine) and “Walking Downtown” (a personal favorite of nobody’s except for my sister) convey a sort of in-the-moment attitude not apparent in the album’s preceding tracks. “Coffee” is a rolling, meandering song in which Marsh’s vocal performance is as wistful as the lyrics and music, a sort of smirking, content attitude of “let’s-see-where-the-night-takes-us” present in the rolling, coffee shop-ready (ahem) drum line and delivery of “if it’s not too late for coffee, I’ll be at your place in ten/ we’ll hit that all-night diner, and then we’ll see…” That we’ll see is explained in the following “Walking Downtown,” the most upbeat and immediate song on Medicine Tree, in which the night becomes memorable for the narrator and company. After all of the caffeine consumed in “Coffee,” “Walking Downtown” sounds all hopped up, excited to be in the moment, as crashing, relatively loud guitars accompany a whooping yell of “we were walking downtown!” An excitement akin to spending a night out with close friends or family—of being in that moment and knowing you’re happier than you’ve been in a long time, and knowing that you won’t forget this instance of soft epiphany.

The album’s closing “When Finally Set Free” is the resonant aftermath of that evening, an understanding that the good feeling is here for now—but the hardship and the difficulty that comes with being alive will return in greater numbers. A quieter, resonant moment on Copeland’s first album, “When Finally Set Free” seems to rise and rise as the repeated line burns into remembrance—a lesson all adults will learn in time: “Feel the pain, teaching us how much more we can take…we have time to start all over again.” And just as the song seems to be inching toward the kind of climactic moment heard in “When Paula Sparks” and “California,” all of the orchestral elements die away and we are left with an acoustic guitar line just as lonely as the piano at the beginning of “Brightest.” The sound of a smile on the narrator’s face, looking back at all they’ve been through, and a sigh of momentary accomplishment in their ability to overcome it all, and how small it all seems in hindsight. The atmosphere and restraint exhibited on “When Finally Set Free” give insight to the band’s future output—a fitting conclusion for an album that yearns to escape the past and look forward to what may come next.

http://www.rdio.com/artist/Copeland/album/Beneath_Medicine_Tree_2/

Copeland’s first album since 2008, Ixora, comes out November 24. iTunes pre-order.

Futures and I

One of the most common responses I’ve seen in my six or seven years of consistently reading music writing is the legendary, emphatic you’re so biased.

It’s also a pillar of one of the most confounding ideologies I’ve ever encountered when it comes to discussions in musical communities. What does it mean to be “biased” when reviewing an album? When talking about music? Why on earth should a writer deny in their writing the very attributes of the music that drew them to the art in the first place? Is a music writer forever doomed to be dishonest in the endless pursuit to be, ugh, objective in music reviewing and writing?

This last week, I’ve been looking a lot at the differences between the indie music created in the 1980s and the music created now. A lot of the indie music in the 80s had a way of being loosely performed—that is, the skill of the musician was not as important as the projection of authenticity. Take, for example, Beat Happening’s 1986 self-titled debut. In an objective light, the album simply shows that the members of Beat Happening had a lot of growing to do…the lyrics were simple, the vocals were flat, and the album itself sounds like it was recorded in a small cave with a hand-held tape recorder. All of this is true—but objectivity doesn’t explain why Beat Happening is a damn enjoyable record. That is explained by something more than the “art itself,” inspected in a vacuum, can ever reflect. Beat Happening is enjoyable and wonderful because it’s damn honest. A messy, poorly recorded piece of work like Beat Happening is authentic because it makes clear all that the band cared about while creating it was their commitment to the craft. Their limited funds and resources were drained in the effort to make the album, and for that reason the authenticity of the piece is clear when listening to the album. It’s fun, simple, and honest—and it became important to people because of all this. It became important because people cared about it, and because of all the changing, the growing up, the heartbreak, and the happiness that would eventually be attached to it—attributes that make it more important than any objective lens could ever reveal.

This is want I want to see when I read a piece about music. I find that, as I’ve grown older, I don’t so much like the album reviews and music pieces that aim to be “even handed” or “subjective” as much as I like the ones that openly and unabashedly display the effects that the music had on them on a personal level. That’s the most exciting thing. Did this beautifully produced, tightly performed, technically amazing record fly right by you? Or did Beat Happening change your life?

To hell with “objectivity,” I want honesty.

Here’s the honest to god truth about Jimmy Eat World’s 2004 album Futures: it changed my life. It continues to change my life every single time I turn it on. That’s what matters, that’s why music matters—because, truthfully, every album has something to make it appealing to someone. A hook, an obscurity, a little something that says buy me—no matter what genre or label or lack thereof. But, not every album has what Futures has. Every album has a reason for it to sell 500,000 copies, but very few a have the ability to become such an important part of somebody’s life. Perhaps it’s ineffable, but Futures is an album that means everything to so many people, even ten years after it first hit their ears.

Or six years, as it has now been for me. But that’s been more than long enough for me to understand that this is music that will always have a place in my life. The songs may change in meaning as I grow older, as they have since 2008, but they’ll always have that core…something to them that I’ll always cling to.

And the meanings and the memories I’ve attached to these 11 songs have changed plenty over the last six years. ‘The World You Love,” for me, embodies an experience from only eight months ago—the night I put my intoxicated friends to bed, sprawled across my living room floor in the very first hours of 2014, the first time we’d all been together in eighteen months (I fell asleep with my friends around me/only place I know I feel safe). Just days ago, while listening to “Work” as I walked through Oxford (I’m now three weeks into the term I’m spending here), I thought of the independence and the chance to create my own life that I had wanted for so long to the tune of this song. And I realized that the experience I’m having here now is the beginning of all that for me. I’ve never smiled so wide in my life.

Then again, maybe the songs don’t change as much as I think they do. “Futures” has always been that sonic step forward, that accompaniment to the very same motivation that has allowed me to take some sort of control of my life. “Polaris” has always been the midnight drive song, the recording I’ve blown my voice out to more than any other—this cathartic moment shattering the emotional glass ceiling every last time:

I’m done, there’s nothing left to show,
Try but can’t let go.
Are you happy where you’re standing still?
Do you really want the sugar pill?
I’ll wake up tomorrow and I’ll start,
Tonight it feels so hard.
As the train approaches Gare du Nord,
As I’m sure your kiss remains employed,
Am I only dreaming?

More than all of this though, I’m actually planning a future with these songs. I’ll play “23” in the hour I actually turn 23. I’ll spin my new vinyl copy of the album (by this time, wearied and scratched from consistent use) for my kids someday.

And doesn’t that mean something in itself? Putting aside the fact that Futures is an expertly produced album; that Jim Adkins’ vocal performance is one of the most emotionally charged I’ve ever heard; that these layered, intricate songs are executed with remarkable ease and proficiency—isn’t it a testament to the greatness of Futures that these songs are just so deeply ingrained into my life—into so many peoples’ lives—past, present, and future?

What’s the point of me waxing poetic about Futures over a thousand words? What’s the point of talking about me just as much as I’m talking about the album? The point is this: I can’t honestly talk about Futures without talking about myself. That’s how important it is. It’d be the same thing if I were talking about The Mother, The Mechanic, and The Path or Invented (yes, Invented) or Stay What You Are or Transatlanticism. The music is part of my life. That is the honest truth about these records, and I can’t talk about why I like them without stressing that fact. The best music is that which means something to you, and we talk about it so vehemently because, well, if it has the ability to mean something in my life, who is to say that it couldn’t mean something in yours? One of the reasons we (or, at least I) listen to new music incessantly is because of the possibility that this new album could be our next Futures or Trouble Will Find Me or The Queen Is Dead. Because it could be the next thing that changes our lives.

But more than that, even if you hate Futures or just think it’s okay and are reading this anyway, aren’t you thinking about a different record? Aren’t you thinking about that album you grew up with and will continue to grow up with? About a piece of art that had a hand in making you who you are now? About your Futures?

Aren’t you thinking of why it means anything at all to you?

Good.

Don’t it feel like sunshine after all?

http://rd.io/x/QQ-r8CJJ3u0/

Favorite Fall Records

Hey, it’s been a while. I’m busy preparing and slowly getting myself motivated for my trip to England (only 10 days to go). Since today is the first day in what seems like a hundred years that the temperature is under 80 degrees (that’s remarkable in Florida), I got to thinking about my favorite Fall records. Fall is traditionally a time of epiphany and growth for me, and part of this is facilitated by the music I discover and grow to love as the air outside transitions from “hot as balls” to “okay this isn’t terrible.” Here’s a list of my favorite Fall records:

Jimmy Eat World- Invented
Death Cab For Cutie- The Photo Album, Transatlanticism, Plans
Copeland- Beneath Medicine Tree
Basement- colourmeinkindness
The Graduate- Only Every Time
Into It. Over It.- Intersections
Jeff Buckley- Grace
Brand New- Daisy, Deja Entendu
Kevin Devine- Brother’s Blood
Lydia- Paint It Golden
Mansions- Dig Up The Dead
The Smiths- The Queen Is Dead, Louder Than Bombs
The National- Trouble Will Find Me, High Violet
Northstar- Pollyanna
Punchline- Just Say Yes
Saves The Day- In Reverie, Through Being Cool, Daybreak
The Shins- Wincing The Night Away
The 1975- The 1975
Dashboard Confessional- The Swiss Army Romance, Alter The Ending
Sunny Day Real Estate- Diary, How It Feels To Be Something On
The Appleseed Cast- Low Level Owl, Illumination Ritual, Two Conversations
Matt Pond PA- Emblems
Bon Iver- For Emma, Forever Ago
fun.- Aim and Ignite

Hopefully this blog will be busier over the next few months while I study abroad at Oxford. I’m thinking I’ll have a lot to say about my experiences, and a lot of music-related write-ups pertaining to the projects I’ll be working on.

	laurenrichey on A Change of Heart: On Failure…
	michaelbmann on Copeland- Ixora…
	Jordan Walsh on Futures and I…
	michaelbmann on Futures and I…