Thoughts on two new albums before my sojourn to Montreal's MUTEK festival:
The Doves "The Last Broadcast" has been hailed as an instant classic. I've only heard about half the record, but there's a lot to like. It's a tremendously ambitious effort, they're throwing about a million different ideas onto the record yet it never comes off as prog wibbling, unfocused, or hastily assembled. They take in ambient noise, grandiose pop, and fuzz rock, sometimes within the same song. Tracks like "Words" recall Suede's "Stay Together", where new melodies crop up every eight bars. "M62 Song" is a blast of stadium-ready rock, and I can already hear album closer "Caught By The River" closing out encores across many continents. They've made an album that will satisfy the Mogwai eardrum blasters set, the Super Furries/Gorkys bonkers psychedelia set, and the Coldplay/Travis overly sensitive set. How many bands can claim that?
And there's also Luke Slater new "Alright on Top". Luke Slater, for those who haven't heard of him, is the colonizing empire of electronic music. He finds a genre of music, swoops right in when he feels like it, sucks up every last bit of worth from the genre and trashes all of the elements that he deems nonessential, and uses these riches to make a fantastic album that completely embarrasses the pithy efforts of his so-called "competitors", humiliating them to the point that nobody could possibly take their music seriously anymore in comparison to his own. Then he moves on and does something else.
"Freek Funk" delved into nearly every existing area of techno and did it all bigger and more beautiful. "Wireless" showed how drab most electro and particularly big beat had become, as he out-funked everyone in sight, was louder and nastier than everybody else, and rocked his way through throbbing harsh electro that hadn't even been invented yet. AND he bloodied himself up on the cover. Now, electro is still big, 80's retro is still big, and he's done it all over again by making the album that locks 1981 Depeche Mode into the studio with 2001 Primal Scream. At first listen, I found it a tad too Europop in places, but I'm usually not partial to vocals. But have patience. As with Slaters' other records, this one starts with dance-y fun and gets progressively rougher and nastier.
