Review: Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises

Mark Kozelek’s never been one for brevity. Even the first Red House Painters release, 1992’s Down Colorful Hill, ran over 43 minutes spread across only six tracks. Kozelek has made a career of long songs and lengthy albums, both as a solo artist and as the frontman for Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon. The previous SKM record, 2008’s April, clocked in at a sprawling 73:44. Yet in all these epics, Kozelek somehow manages to avoid the trap of the bloated, meandering “long album.”

Admiral Fell Promises, the latest from Sun Kil Moon, is no different. Its ten tracks run just over an hour, with more than half of the songs clocking over six minutes.

But Admiral Fell Promises does differ from prior Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters releases in a few key ways. This is the first album by either band not to feature drummer Anthony Koutsos. In fact, this is the first release by either band to feature no musicians other than Kozelek. This is also the first entirely acoustic record, with the accompaniment provided solely by nylon string guitars.

While Kozelek’s signature voice, atmosphere, and lyrical themes carry over, the music has quite a different feel. Gone are all the crunchy or gritty numbers. Instead, there are many clean guitar flourishes that sound almost classical or even, at times, flamenco. Maybe it’s the nylon strings, or maybe he decided to explore the range of his abilities as a musician. Regardless, stripping the songs down to nothing but Kozelek’s voice and acoustic fingerpicking makes his lyrics all the more haunting.

Perhaps none of these songs is quite as haunting as “The Leaning Tree,” in which Kozelek is visited by an apparition who appears to him in a wintertime dream. He describes her as having the perfect poise of a “statuesque queen” with “ocean blue eyes that bear the depths of your loss.” Eventually, the apparition disappears, thrusting him into an isolation even dreams cannot relieve. He calls for her, saying, “I long for one more day with you in my life,” and begs her to forgive him “once and for all, for all of [his] lies.”

The haunting qualities of dreams and loneliness are deepened by the album’s imagery. For a record released in July, winter imagery tends to dominate, especially in tracks like “Half Moon Bay” and “Leaning Tree.” Throughout “The Leaning Tree,” Kozelek refers to “the cold icy stream,” snow coating the “pines in the Sierra wintertime,” and his “mountain home.” “Australian Winter” describes the season differently, but even here the deserts and oceans represent loneliness and dreams, which seem to be the dominant themes of the album.

Even when “Church of the Pines” announces spring with blossoming flowers, jumping squirrels, and humming birds, Kozelek sounds no less lonely. In fact, all of this life bursting forth from nature seems to deepen the longing for some sort of inner contentment. Here he describes being alone in a room, loosening the strings on a guitar, looking for a specific tone. “And if it don’t come,” he says, “then I’ll put it down.” Overall, this seems to be the concept of the album, the isolated musician attempting to find some escape from loneliness and dreams, but facing frustration and further isolation if he can’t get the notes right.

This record may not appeal to everyone, not even all fans of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon. Those looking for the crunch of “Make Like Paper,” the hook of “Carry Me Ohio,” or the grandeur of “Tonight the Sky” will be disappointed. But those to whom intricate guitar work appeals should find plenty to love, as this album, more than any before it, showcases Kozelek’s musicianship. Combining this level of craft with haunting, chilling lyrics of loneliness and dreams makes Admiral, perhaps, the magnum opus in a long career of long albums.

Admiral Fell Promises is available now on CD from Caldo Verde Records, with the vinyl set to be released in August. Those who order the album from Caldo Verde will receive a limited edition EP called “I’ll Be There,” which includes covers of Stereolab, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, and The Jackson 5.

Review: Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

If I were Ben Bridwell, I'd want an identity change too. Throughout their history, Bridwell's Band of Horses has drawn comparisons to My Morning Jacket, which makes sense. Neither band has a stable, identifiable sound. Instead, both bands sound like several other bands in a schizophrenic back-and-forth between the spacey experimentation of the Flaming Lips to the alt-country-pop of early Wilco. Band of Horses' debut record, Everything All the Time (2006), drew comparisons to My Morning Jacket from almost every reviewer of almost every music magazine and blog. But what many of these reviews didn’t quite mention was that Everything All the Time sounded like only certain My Morning Jacket songs: The spacey, dream-popesque indie sound laced with a little southern rock and Americana. The follow up, 2007's Cease to Begin, reversed this equation, moving the southern rock and Americana elements to the forefront and pushing the spacey dream-pop to the background. Unfortunately for Bridwell, this sounded a lot like certain other My Morning Jacket songs.

Hence, the need for an identity change. Hence, 2010's Infinite Arms.

While this album will draw fewer obvious comparisons to My Morning Jacket's sound, in a lot of ways it reminds me of the direction MMJ took with their most recent album, Evil Urges (2008): With the exception of a few riskier songs, Evil Urges is a predominantly safe record dominated by a 1970s sound and vanilla songwriting. In a word, dad-rock. Regrettably, the same holds true for Infinite Arms.

On first listen, I was drawn in by Infinite Arms’ two opening tracks. “Factory” begins with a drum roll into swelling strings and acoustic strums that would almost find a place on a Belle & Sebastian record. The minor key hook of the chorus showcases Bridwell’s Americana influences and, though it feels trite to say, the influence of Jim James. “Compliments” is one of the only stomping numbers on the album. Unfortunately, this is one of the few up-tempo moments in an otherwise plodding album. Here Bridwell’s smoky South Carolina voice comes through clearest, though it doesn’t quite fit with the sound of the song. Still, “Compliments,” the first single, is one of the few highlights on the album.

After those first two songs, I had high hopes for the album. I thought, maybe, just maybe, Infinite Arms would live up to the hype from mainstream music reviewers. But then the next eight tracks move us into the vanilla dad-rock sound that dominates the album. The choruses are all catchy but safe and bland. Many of these songs—“Blue Beard,” “On My Way Back Home,” “Dilly”—even transcend dad-rock and begin to approach mom-rock. It’s not Sarah McLachlan, but still the type of music you could play in the car without your mom objecting.

“Older” is the one shining moment in this stretch of dull songs, and it is possibly the strongest song on the album, though I can’t help but think it would be nothing more than a forgettable role player on many albums, including Band of Horses’ first two. At the very least, “Older” is the catchiest song on the album, with crunchy southern rock guitars blending well with Bridwell’s Jim-James-meets-the-Beach-Boys vocals. Here his voice sounds most country, though there’s something unconvincing about it. Sadly, this boy from South Carolina sounds less authentically southern than California-bred John Fogerty ever did.

Just as Infinite Arms begins strong, so it ends, with four of the stronger tracks creating a solid frame around the blandness of the middle bulk of the album. “NW Apt” returns us to the up-tempo stomp of “Compliments,” a welcome return after so many safe down-tempo tracks. Here we get a sense of urgency and a sense of soul the album seemed to lack. Following “NW Apt” is the closing number, “Neighbor,” a slow piano ballad that eventually builds into the only true cathartic moment on the album. This catharsis is a solid way to end an otherwise forgettable album because it leaves us wanting more. But what we want is more of this—more of the album’s highlights, but they are few and far between. Literally.

And that’s the biggest problem with Infinite Arms. While there are a handful of strong songs spaced throughout the album, we have to wade through so many vanilla numbers to get to them, and so many of them seem to run at the same slow tempo with the same songwriting formula. Sure they’re catchy, but they’re predictable. They’re safe. And if I had to sum up the album with one word, it would be “safe.”

Review: The National - High Violet

I’m going out on a limb here. Making a bold prediction.

Germany will win the World Cup.

Ok, that isn’t really my bold prediction, though it would help me win $150 in our World Cup pool. My bold prediction is The National’s High Violet will be in my top 10 albums of the year in December.

Why is that such a bold prediction? In a year that has already seen amazing releases by artists like Joanna Newsom, Broken Social Scene, and Beach House, as well as newcomers like Surfer Blood, and with albums on the horizon from acts like LCD Soundsystem, MIA, Panda Bear, and rumors of a new Iron & Wine, guessing what’s going to come out at the top of such a strong year for new music is like picking the winner of the World Cup or the NCAA tournament. There’s several favorite contenders and safe picks, but in the end there are going to be out-of-nowhere upsets and disappointments from strong teams. (I’m looking at you, Hold Steady.)

This is also a risky move because it’s early May. Who’s to say that an album that strikes me now won’t have cooled like the weather come December? Like when picking for NCAA tournament brackets (dammit West Virginia!) I’m following my gut. Very seldom does an album catch me on first listen—usually I have to hear something a few times before it sinks in—but High Violet was immediately accessible and moving. On first listen, the album felt familiar but paradoxically brand new. On tenth listen, I find myself falling in love with every song all over again, like octogenarians renewing their vows.

The opening track, “Terrible Love,” sets the tone for the rest of the album. It starts slowly with fuzzy guitars, bright piano, and Matt Berninger’s distinctive warm baritone. The drums’ steady four-on-the-floor beat reveals an urgency to the song, and that feeling of tension continues to build as the band comes together in a tightly-orchestrated bedlam. “Terrible Love” is followed by the appropriately named “Sorrow,” with its chilling chorus of “I don’t want to get over you,” and the catchy but haunting “Anyone’s Ghost.” “A Little Faith” completes the trio of strong but not overly remarkable songs.

The album hits its true stride in the middle with a pair of amazing songs, “Afraid of Everyone” and “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” the first single. “Afraid of Everyone” begins with Berninger crooning the chorus over minor key strings and airy backing vocals. When the rest of the band joins in for the first true verse, you realize few songs this bleak have made your foot tap and your head nod to the beat since Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

“Bloodbuzz Ohio” may be the tightest, strongest song The National have released to date, which is high praise for a band with so many great singles to their name. Not only is the song catchy yet complicated, with all the instruments and voices coming together in a perfect and unified whole, but the lyrics create a sense of place, something sadly lacking in many songs. Here we have a band that originated in Cincinnati before relocating (like everyone else) to Brooklyn singing, “I was carried / to Ohio in a swarm of bees / I never married / but Ohio don’t remember me” and “I never thought about love / when I thought about home.” These lyrics create an image of home tied less to a specific place than to the universal ideal of Home that anyone who has ever truly moved away can identify with, especially if, like Berninger, you never identified this particular place called Home with a feeling of love until you left. While in this scenario the underappreciated former lover is named Ohio, it could as easily be any name we give Home.

Immediately following this song of lost love for Ohio is another song about New York, “Lemon World,” the first weak point in the album. While the verses are complex and moving, the simple repetitive chorus makes “Lemon World” something of a disappointment, especially following the two strongest tracks on the album. Like a lemon sorbet and nice champagne, this track seems to be a palette cleanser between the meaty “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and the delicate flavors of the plodding but beautiful “Runaway.” With “Conversation 16,” we return to main courses, as Berninger sings about leaving “the silver city / cause all the silver girls / gave us black dreams” and how he’s afraid he would eat your brains. Because he’s evil, naturally. “Conversation 16” is the pop song equivalent of a zombie flick, but one of the good ones. Think 28 Days Later instead of The Crazies.

High Violet closes with two of the weaker songs on the album, “England” and “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.” And when I say “weaker,” I mean the term relatively. Compared to the rest of the album, these last two songs are something of a disappointment. Put instead on most other albums by most other bands, these would be highlights. Not quite singles, but heavy hitting role players. These songs suffer less on their own merits than on the strengths of the rest of the album. Both songs drag a little but have catchy hooks that will get stuck in your head and leave you wanting to listen to High Violet again, which ultimately should be the effect of all closing tracks.

If I can cite any overall fault with High Violet, it is the uniform sound of the album. Other than “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” no songs escape the cohesive sound established on “Terrible Love” and running through “Vanderlyle.” Put in negative terms, many of the songs sound the same. After listening to the album, I often find myself with a chorus stuck in my head, but not the chorus of any particular song. Instead, the lyrics and melody of one song will flow after a few lines into another song. At the same time, I could put this criticism in positive terms. The album functions as a coherent whole with an identity created by its tone and production. And if we evaluate albums based on their effectiveness as albums rather than collections of songs, then this is an excellent album indeed. One of the year’s best, I’m willing to wager.

High Violet is available now from 4AD.

"We're Not Above Reviewing Leaks": Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks

When I really get into a “discovery” album—meaning either a band’s first effort, or the record that introduces me to a band—I’m often disappointed by the follow-up. Most likely, this is a personal problem, one of expectations, and not the fault of the artists. I say this upfront because I loved Frightened Rabbit’s Midnight Organ Fight (FatCat, 2008)—partially because of the immediacy and intensity of the record, the feeling of four guys playing slightly imperfect but heartfelt indiepop in a room together, and partially because the bitter breakup theme running through the album resonated with my personal problems at the time. While the latter no longer applies, I still find myself able to return to Midnight Organ Fight and engage with the record the same way I did nearly two years ago.

So, ok. I admit it. I came to The Winter of Mixed Drinks (FatCat, 2010) with lofty expectations. I didn’t expect Midnight Organ Fight II: Revenge of the Organ, but I expected the same immediacy, the same intensity as the last album had. I expected the promise of the last album to be somehow fulfilled or at least furthered. On first listening to Mixed Drinks, I was carried away by the pop melodies and the familiar feel of the songs. On second listen, I realized why the songs feel so familiar: All of them would have a place on Snow Patrol’s Final Straw. Depending on your taste, you can read that statement how you choose. On repeated listen, I’ve realized The Winter of Mixed Drinks, though in a lot of ways a more accessible and polished album, fell short of meeting those expectations.

For one, Frightened Rabbit decided to forego the live studio recording of Organ, so this album lacks that intimate feeling of being in the room with the musicians. For another, and this is a direct result of the first, the production on Mixed Drinks seems to take much more focus, resulting in a clean and beautiful album, but one that crosses the line into over-production a few too many times. For yet another, Mixed Drinks lacks a true standout song, like Organ had with “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms.”

“Things,” the opening track on Mixed Drinks, immediately sets a tension that I expected to run through the record. The first 34 seconds consist of low-register fuzz guitar with heavy echo and a piano tinkling in the background before the vocals begin. Once the drums join in the party, the conflict is mounting as Scott Hutchison sings about not needing “things,” the material possessions that get in the way of our interpersonal relationships. “So I’ll shed my clothes,” he says, “shed my flesh down to the bone, and burn the rest.” A powerful statement of stripping oneself bare, and Mixed Drinks is in a lot of ways about flaying ourselves. Later in the chorus, Hutchison sings, “It’s just you I need, you my human heat, and the things are only things, and nothing brings me life, brings me love.” The need for human heat returns us to Organ’s “The Twist’ and Hutchison seems to be exploring similar territory.

This opening track sets up the rest of the album in two key ways. First, it establishes the complex arrangements and production that the rest of the album will follow. “Things” is so layered with instruments that to hear them all requires a focused listening with good headphones. Second, “Things” establishes a tension for the album that we hope will be carried through and fulfilled by the end.

Sadly, that tension is neither carried through nor fulfilled. Immediately following “Things” is the album’s first single, “Swim Until You Can’t See Land,” a bright, poppy, radio-friendly song whose opening contrasts sharply with the urgency of the first track. The chorus of “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” is Hutchison’s attempt to make the “sink or swim” cliché somehow interesting, by repeating the song’s title three times before asking, “are you a man or a bag of sand?” Apparently, this question is so profound that the chorus’s two lines repeat ad nauseam on the album’s seventh track, “Man/Bag of Sand.” This play with cliché also comes up again in the song “Foot Shooter” toward the end of the album. (Bet you can’t guess what that one’s about.)

Following “Swim” are two tracks that begin the Snow Patrol comparison, “The Loneliness and the Scream” and “The Wrestle.” Both tracks have interesting lyrical tension, but their melodies and arrangements leave something wanting, and we’ve moved far from the tension of “Things.” This tension seems to be resumed in “Skip the Youth,” whose long introduction includes building layers of noise and skipping drums that we expect to come to an urgent boil. But when the vocals come in around the 1:45 mark, all that tension evaporates and we’re left with another bright, poppy song that relies on choir-like backing vocals and overwrought sentiments like “All I need is a place to lie. Guess a grave will have to do.” Unfortunately, graves function as a trope throughout the album, leaving that bitter taste of teenage sentiment in my mouth.

The two most immediately accessible songs on the album, “Nothing Like You” and “Living Colour” are both poppy, catchy, and upbeat. “Nothing Like You,” the second single, has those hints of Snow Patrol like earlier tracks did, but its themes of getting over an ex by getting with someone else bring us back to Midnight Organ Fight. “There is nothing like someone new,” Hutchison sings, “and this girl she was nothing like you.” “Living in Colour,” which has Top 40 written all over it, is the poppiest and catchiest offering on the album. On my first listening of the album, this was the song that immediately stood out. On my tenth listening, this is the track I anticipate. Other than “Things,” “Living in Colour” is the song that most resonates. Unfortunately, it is framed by “Not Miserable” and “Yes, I Would,” two slow, plodding but melodic tracks. “Yes, I Would” in particular drags, and seems a disappointing way to end an album that begins with such urgency and tension as “Things” sets up.

Overall, I have to say that Winter of Mixed Drinks is a very pretty album in terms of its songcraft and production, and the addition of strings to nearly every single track adds layers absent from Midnight Organ Fight. The songs are tight and catchy and the arrangements are complex. However, this feels every bit like one of those unfortunate indie crossover albums, where the relatively successful band tries to create mainstream appeal by writing catchy songs with simple and repetitive lyrics and adding strings to every. single. track. While Winter of Mixed Drinks has the potential to far surpass the success Frightened Rabbit achieved with Midnight Organ Fight, ultimately it lacks the staying power of its predecessor.

The Winter of Mixed Drinks is out March 1 in Europe and March 9 in North America, both on FatCat Records. You can preorder the album here.