The Streets - The Escapist

Either Mike Skinner is a Machiavellian genius or he's had the most stock-standard, accidental career ever. Either way, it's made for (mostly) gripping music over the past 8 years. 2006's The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living garnered mixed reviews thanks to its strangely over-the-top portrayal of fame and celebrity but now The Streets are back with The Escapist, the first single from Everything Is Borrowed. Where Hardest Way.. was full of fast paced beats, over-indulgent lyrics and Skinner's manic, uneven delivery, The Escapist is, in a word, peaceful. With his penchant for unusual rhythms, Skinner and co. keep it simple and interesting over the beat while he slowly (almost lazily) drawls about 'weeks of peace on a beach'. It remains to be seen whether he can maintain this sound over the course of an entire album without succumbing to gimmick or mediocrity - Hardest Way... works more as artistic statement than enjoyable record, after all - but The Escapist is a good first step.

The Game - L.A.X. (draft 1)

It can't be easy being The Game, one of the more disturbing by-products of America's gangsta rap infatuation. After being shunned by both Dr. Dre and 50 Cent in 2005 and a series of breakup style records and disses throughout the subsequent three years, Jayceon Taylor seems to have found his new idol in Nas. Not only do they appear on eachother's most recent records, Let Us Live featuring Chrissette Michelle sounds like a lost song from the It Was Written era. He's not exactly blubbering apologetically beside Busta Rhymes (yet) but the childlike aping of Hip-Hop's elite continues to hinder Game's talent.

Game's obvious deficiencies are on show throughout L.A.X. from the borderline-moronic pick-up lines of Gentleman's Affair (Girl fuck your friends / matter of fact I want to fuck your friends positively reeks of charisma, clearly) and the consistent name and brand dropping to his insistence of remaining steadfast to the tried and true West Coast blueprint. Doctor's Advocate remains a high point in which Game engulfed himself in music that sounded more like Dre than Dre himself in an cathartic attempt to deal with the supposed abandonment of one of Hip-Hop's longest lasting, respected producers. It also caught the rapper in the midst of committing career suicide, firing scattershot disses to the then-industry juggernauts, G-Unit. Game's self-destruction was utterly fascinating and voyeuristic but also revealed that underneath the most meticulously crafted and marketed rapper since 50 Cent lay an immensely talented, spiteful MC. 300 Bars and Running still stands as one of the most scathing disses in Hip-Hop history yet the spirit behind that record never surfaces on L.A.X.. Instead we're treated by another album heavy on radio-ready singles and overwrought reflective songs like My Life that hardly sound convincing or emotional.

As much as he tries, though, Game can't help but let his attention-starved inner child shine. Dope Boys combines one of the strangest single choices in recent history (A Milli notwithstanding) with the album's sole creepy reference to Dre. Threats of home invasion are still a step up from a pseudo-breakup album, though. Bulletproof Diaries features Raekwon, Hip-Hop's fabled lost hope, combining Staten Island's 'artifact' with a bizarre, catchy beat from the under-appreciated Jelly Roll. House Of Pain and Angel step back to the G-Funk vibes of the early 90's as DJ Toomp and Kanye West provide Dre-style much better than any of his recent output. Never Can Say Goodbye puts Game's imitative qualities to good use by providing Pac, Biggie & Eazy-E style verses in describing their tragic last days. Game pays homage to, imitates and raps as his idols over the entire album and it isn't until the last song, Letter To The King (featuring a rejuvenated Nas), that he finally plays himself. Subsequently, it's the most honest song on L.A.X. and hopefully signals the start of something new.

If L.A.X. proves anything it's that Game is a master of disguise. Whether it's the reflective, violent 50 Cent-style persona of The Documentary or the vocal imitation of Dr. Dre throughout Doctor's Advocate, The Game himself only erratically displays any originality through his commercial releases. L.A.X. is an obvious attempt to capitalize on the suicidal rapper hype that helped his last album achieve success without so much as a top 10 single. Despite (uniformly) fantastic beats and a solid set of songs, L.A.X. still misses the mark on what makes the rapper so fascinating, masking his faults with a bevy of guests and singles. If he can't achieve success on his own merits The Game might as well be consigned to the same fate as G-Unit.

Bloc Party - Intimacy (3/4)

draft 2

Maybe I'm not picky enough with my music. I constantly find it disconcerting that I enjoy records the majority of publications and blog intelligentsia shun. Words like overproduced mean nothing as long as the song sounds good, right? Well, maybe not. A Weekend In The City, a constant in my iPod through 2007, hasn't exactly fostered a great reputation. Flux didn't help but I still loved it. Ditto Mercury. In my own snarky way I hoped Intimacy would be full of Mercurys, a harsh lesson to Silent Alarm fans who refused to give Bloc Party the opportunity to break out of their indie-dance-rock typecasting. It's not be the complete departure into brassy rave music the lead single hints at but Intimacy is, to say the least, a surprise. By oscillating wildly between styles Intimacy is part Silent Alarm, part AWITC and then something else entirely.

draft 3

Ares is urgent in a way that underscores Intimacy's sound and its sudden announcement, with a breakbeat style rhythm and a guitar straight out of the Chemical Brothers mid-90's peak. It's loud and fast probably what people want to hear after the extensive (or overproduced, depending on who you ask) scope of Weekend. Trojan Horse displays the talent of songwriter Kele Okereke with ambiguous lines like 'used to take your watch off / before we made love / you didn't want to share our time with anyone / you used to close your eyes / when we kissed goodbye / you didn't want to see me draped with sadness'. His blind optimism is both familiar and depressing. It's not all punchy riffs and breakbeats though.
(tbc)

Bloc Party - Intimacy (2/4)

General thoughts on the record. I'll try to synthesize all this into a piece later. But for now..

1. Ares - Old school, heavy dance-punk Bloc Party. I love the distorted guitars and Kele's vocals are enjoyable. He's doing that yelping thing he did heaps on Silent Alarm.
2. Mercury - It's only similar to the rest of the album insofar as it's LOUD. I still think it's an awesome tune, the layering at the end has been described by one of my friends as a clusterfuck of bad ideas and by another as sonic mastery. I'd go more towards the latter, even though I don't think its entirely necessary.
3. Halo - This is the classic Bloc Party all of their fans clamor for. They carry a great riff and the chorus is catchy. So far, so good. By this stage I'm getting the feeling that this album is gonna completely disregard Weekend In The City (which I fucking LOVE.)
4. Biko - Oh wait, there's that sound. Kele is singing more on this track. It's cute, and the little skipping-record effect reminds me of Aphex Twin, or Trent Reznor's quieter moments.
5. Trojan Horse - Bloc Party kick back into Silent Alarm guitar mode with this interesting buzz filter. If only this album was a bit longer than 10 songs. :-/
6. Signs - This reminds me a lot of the kind of music Bjork was making in the Vespertine era. The xylophone melody give the album some diversity and it's good to have a bit of a break after something like Halo or Trojan Horse.
7. One Month Off - The driving drums hold this song together. Stupid 80's style synths in the chorus stop the song from being too similar, but it's probably one of the songs I'll skip more than I play. That said, it's good. Just not as good as the other songs. And the key change at 2:53 is fucking horrific.
8. Zephyrus - I guess Kele really took the criticism of his vocals on WITC to heart. He's not been 'singing' much this album. This song starts off with the programmed drums and some harmonic vocals and gradually builds up. It's an interesting song. The harmonies, again, remind me of Bjork but this time it's her Medulla period. Not a bad thing.
9. Better Than Heaven - The latter half of the album is definitely lighter on the guitars. More synthesizers on this song. They probably could have sequenced the record a bit better but I'm not really complaining. The chorus is a nice change, it makes the song one of the most listenable on the record.
10. Ion Square - WITC mode again. Intimacy is not as epic sounding as Bloc Party's last record, I think that's what they must have been going for though. Again, they gradually layer sounds as the song becomes progressively louder. I'm liking the electronica slant to this record. Great way to end the record.

Bloc Party - Intimacy (1/4)

Preliminary thoughts while flitting through the album a few times.

- Loud
- Step between Silent Alarm & WITC
- Not at all like Mercury
- Layering
- Lots of gradual build-ups
- Kele's not 'singing' so much
- Bjork

I'll spend the weekend with the record and come back with some half-arsed, pretentious attempt at serious writing on monday.

Bloc Party - Mercury/Idea For A Story

It can't have been that long since A Weekend In The City but Bloc Party are already back in the studio working on their third album. Flux was a left-fielder for the group, foregoing the more polished rock sound of Weekend for a mess of electronic sounds and possibly even the dreaded autotune effect. In spite of itself (and the loss of critical darling status amongst blogs and hipsters the world over), the song is insanely catchy and warrants repeat listens. It looks like the critical backlash of the past couple of years hasn't put Bloc Party back in Silent Alarm territory either with the release of Mercury and the b-side Idea For A Story from their upcoming, as-yet untitled third album. Mercury is the more immediate of the two, evoking the same messy techno vibe of Flux. However it's also more well thought out with the horn stabs, brass and random electronic sounds used sparingly until they're piled upon each other in the songs final minute. A minor (yet interesting) note, the looping of the chorus ('Ma-me-mercury's in retrograde') and the pitching of Kele's voice might as well be a reference to Houston's chopped-n-screwed Hip-Hop scene. Idea For A Story is the better of the two songs with a beautiful electronic organ accordion and yet more 90's-rave style drums. It's obvious that Bloc Party is angling for something with this new sound. While the songs may for the moment sound kind of similar, I'll wait until the third album about passing judgment. On their own merits though, these songs are great despite what the majority of fans may want from Bloc Party.

Seriously though, where the fuck are the other members of the band? They must be feeling pretty left out right now.

Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul

Being a relative newcomer to the world of music outside late-night Rage broadcasts and saturday morning pop playlists, my first, unknowing, exposure to the music of Isaac Hayes was probably either the Shaft remake or the heavily-sampling I Can't Go To Sleep from the criminally underrated W. Both songs caught me upon first listen. Shaft's Theme encompasses everything I know of Black music in the 70's, literally miles away from what I was hearing at the time. (Korn? Limp Bizkit? How embarrassment.) RZA didn't need to do anything to the epic Walk On By, he simply looped a minute of the now-iconic guitar line and overpowering strings while he and Ghostface dropped some of their most emotive verses. It was inevitable, then, that I'd eventually find my way to Hayes' own music and after one particularly fortuitous trip to Ten Seconds Down in 2004, I had a second hand copy of Hot Buttered Soul in my discman.

Spanning only four tracks - two covers and two originals - Hot Buttered Soul is in stark contrast to the pop sensibilities of Stax Records. Walk On By is a cover of the Burt Bacharach penned Dionne Warwick tune stretched out to 12 minutes that seem over before they even begin. By The Time I Get To Phoenix is stunning, 20 minutes of spoken word and expressive, big band trumpets that emphasize the sadness of the Jimmy Webb composition. The songs that fill out the album, the (much) shorter One Woman and Hyperbolicsyllablecsesquedalymistic don't quite reach these highs but are excellent songs in their own right. The latter, especially, has fueled more than a handful of classic Hip-Hop songs with an endlessly sampled piano melody.

Hot Buttered Soul, Hayes' first solo commercial success, indirectly heralded the increasing creative control of artists over their own works. Stevie Wonder's 'classic' period followed in the early 70's along with Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield's most recognisable and accomplished works. The song lengths and slowly building melodies, more closely associated with psychedelic rock, was an indication of the then-future of black soul music. If Isaac Hayes accomplished nothing else in his life (and let's not forget Shaft or Chef), Hot Buttered Soul would have been enough to secure his legacy in music.

CSS - Donkey

What happened to CSS? Maybe the constant touring finally took its toll. With the departure of Iracema Trevisan, the foursome spent time on the road recording a follow-up to the 2006 self-titled record that shot them to the level of fame they now enjoy. Cansei De Ser Sexy (‘tired of being sexy’ in Portuguese) succeeded on the strength of its charisma and playfulness as much, if not more than, the ironic sexualized image of the band. Donkey, then, should be the perfect name for a follow-up considering CSS’ unique sense of humour (think dozens of utterances of ‘bitch’ in a song about Paris Hilton). So why does half of the album sound as if a group of session musicians could have done better? The opener, Jager Yoga, is utterly forgettable in the ‘5 minutes and you don’t even remember listening to it’ kind of way. Cue a glut of heartless, boring songs about nothing I care to remember, an inspirational (!) song that doesn’t work and there’s not much merit in Donkey. All is not lost, however. The first single, Rat Is Dead, is a fantastic Pixies rocker with revenge fantasies thrown in. Left Behind, although great, is ripe for remixing. Beautiful Song and Air Painter retain the light-hearted nature of Cansei De Ser Sexy, while Move is the best of the lot, bringing synth-rock back into the CSS sound. While these songs dull the disappointment and CSS should be credited for trying new things, Donkey sounds half-finished, as if they got halfway through the recording process and decided to go with whatever they had. Although the album will undoubtedly be salvaged through remixes (a process that's already begun, mind you), hopefully next time CSS can release a fully-realised piece.

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Writing. Something. Not sure what.