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Archive for December, 2005

Dressy Bessy
She Likes It
Electrified (2005)

[review 2005: the honourable mentions]

Most Dressy Bessy reviews write themselves these days. The story, it seems, is always the same: the band decides their last album doesn’t adequately reflect the rocking out they do in their live shows, so they record and release an even louder album. Then they proceed to tour the new album around, whereupon their sound gets louder still. Rinse and repeat. And if it sounds like I’m a little tired of the pattern, it’s only because the Denver four-piece are just too damned consistent. I’m waiting for the day when we can’t rely on Dressy Bessy for catchy, crunchy indie pop; 50-50 chance that day never comes.

If you want to capture Dressy Bessy’s evolution over the past four albums in just two songs, try “Jenny Come On” from their debut, Pink Hearts Yellow Moons, and “She Likes It” from Electrified. On the surface, the two songs are about as different as you’d expect considering they came from the same band. “Jenny Come On” is lofi twee pop of the sort you’d expect from a (then) Kindercore band. It’s got a pleasantly buzzy vibe, some coy, girlish vocals courtesy of Tammy Ealom, and a bit of jangly tamborine. In a perfect world, fourteen-year-old girls would put this on the record player in their candy-themed bedrooms and dream about that nice boy in fifth period Spanish who makes kissy faces at all the girls but whose heart, you’re sure, beats just for you. Oh yes. Then there’s “She Likes It,” all swagger and shake and in your face. Our cute little Ealom turns out to have a bit of attitude to her; here’s she’s all cool and confident, as though that fourteen-year-old grew up and became the twenty-something heartbreaker you knew was inside.

But interestingly, the ingredients haven’t actually changed all that much. Dressy Bessy is still Ealom, guitarist John Hill, bassist Rob Greene and drummer Darren Albert, the same lineup that recorded Pink Hearts Yellow Moons. And if you listen closely to some of those old tracks, you’ll hear a lot of the new Dressy Bessy. The jangly guitars and the bubblegum hooks haven’t disappeared; it’s just there’s now a healthy layer of distortion over top, and the band has grown into their larger sound over the years. Perhaps the sugary taste has been cut a bit with a little citrus. Other than that, there’s no reason why a fan of Dressy Bessy’s old stuff should balk at Electrified.

Well, perhaps one. If there’s aproblem with Electrified, it’s that the band has been a little too consistent over the years. As they turned up the volume dial with each successive album, Dressy Bessy also became more and more anonymous, to the point where they’re now just very good at what they do, but not especially notable otherwise. “Who’d Stop The Rain” and “RingAlingAling” are perfectly good tunes, and they’ll probably rattle around in your head for a bit as all good pop songs do. Some, like “Stop Foolin’” and the title track, will stick around longer. But perhaps what Ealom and company need to work on, now that they’ve got the rock swagger down pat, is to inject some personality back into the music.

December 21, 2005
filed under Hard, Review 2005
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Dirty Three
Sad Sexy
Cinder (2005)

[review 2005: the honourable mentions]

When Chan Marshall starts singing seventeen seconds into “Great Waves,” right in the middle of the Dirty Three’s latest album, you’re hearing something new: vocals on a Dirty Three album. Nick Cave doesn’t count; he doesn’t sing so much as recite a monologue over “Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Rivertentum.” Besides that, it’s not on any of their albums but rather a hidden track on a soundtrack, and hidden before the album begins to boot (you have to rewind nine minutes from when the first track plays in order to hear it). Marshall’s worked with the Australian trio before; in addition to touring with them, guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White backed her up on the third Cat Power album, Moon Pix. But “Great Waves” sounds different from either band’s oeuvre; fuller than Cat Power but largely missing the signature violins of most Dirty Three songs, it represented a shift for the band. Critics had damned the Dirty Three with faint praise, giving 2000’s Whatever You Love, You Are and 2003’s She Has No Strings Apollo high marks but wondering if the standard template would ever change. Would Warren Ellis’s swooning violin always add the flourish to Turner and White’s stirring backdrop?

Cinder is not your typical Dirty Three album. For one, this is easily their most prolific album ever, with a whopping 19 tracks. The band managed this feat by trimming down their songs; no more 13-minute epics. This is an unfortunate move; the Dirty Three have always had a keen sense of dramatic structure, knowing exactly when to draw out a movement, when to quicken the tempo, and where to place the shuddering climax. At an average running time of about four minutes, those luxuries go out the window. But in their place is a new willingness to play around with new ideas, and for the first half of the album it pays off splendidly. Much of the first third of the album is apparently an exercise: how not to sound like the Dirty Three while still being the Dirty Three. “Ever Since” is anchored not by Ellis’s violin but by a mandolin, a sign of things to come. “She Passed Through” doesn’t actually get started until halfway through its three and a half minutes, with the band advancing in fits and starts. The title track is dominated mostly by Turner’s guitar, and is proof that his work can be just as expressive and emotional as Ellis’s. “Cinder” gives way to “Doris,” another track where the violin takes a backseat. It’s also one of the most obvious departures from the band’s traditional sound; while the melodic signature still marks it as a Dirty Three production, an electric guitar and a set of bagpipes (!) provide the instrumental thrust here. Lively and raucous, it shows flashes of a Dirty Three of yesteryear, the Dirty Three that once put together Horse Stories.

The problem with the Three’s abandonment of the long epic is that while they have a lot of good ideas, many of them also sound the same. Combine this with the band’s late-career tendency towards a less aggressive sound, and you have a recipe for slowcore disaster. The latter half of the album isn’t bad; it just leaves less of an impression than the first half. In the context of a whole album, Marshall’s turn on “Great Waves” isn’t quite the revolution it sounded like on its own. And while there are some standout tracks like “It Happened” and “Dream Evie,” the rest of the album dissolves into one long stretch of background music—certainly pleasant, and perfect for a drive through some picturesque eastern European countryside, but not quite up to snuff. It’s still a worthy addition to the Dirty Three collection, at least on par with She Has No Strings Apollo. And if it isn’t quite on par with the dust-ups of Horse Stories or the starry night skies of Whatever You Love, You Are, well. Not many albums are.

December 19, 2005
filed under Review 2005, Soft
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Sleater-Kinney
Rollercoaster
The Woods (2005)

[review 2005: the honourable mentions]

If you’ve been around a while, and if enough people have bought your records and seen your shows and written about how good a band you are, then you’ll eventually reach a point where the weight of expectation becomes overwhelming. When your next record is no longer simply “awaited” or “anticipated,” but rather prepared for like a religious event, you have two options: change or die. Sleater-Kinney reached that particular summit, had a look around, and decided that for The Woods, they’d have to change. Their hope was that after over a decade of making music, the trio could rediscover what it was they loved so much about composing and playing music. They wanted to remember what it was like when music felt alive, to feel it course through your veins and scare the living daylights out of you with how good it was. So the three women of Sleater-Kinney left Portland for upstate New York, shot a bunch of rifles, forgot how to turn off the distortion pedals, and recorded 10 songs that only remotely resemble anything they’ve done before.

If The Woods is Sleater-Kinney’s answer to “what makes music exciting?”, then it appears exciting equals a lot of distortion and a lot of guitar solos. Far exceeding the restrained experiments sprinkled about every album since Dig Me Out, The Woods is the closest the band has come to recreating their live concerts on record. The difference is that during concerts, the solos and extended outros and fifteen-minute bridges between songs were all improvised and grafted on the spot to the original songs. Here, the solos might be improvised but they’re an integral part of the songs; “What’s Mine Is Yours” is supposed to fall apart halfway through and lurch awkwardly into the bridge. “Let’s Call It Love” is supposed to be eleven minutes as opposed to three. So the one thing that made all the staples of their live show so interesting—their deviation from the regular material—isn’t so interesting anymore, now that it is the regular material. The Woods doesn’t feel any more spontaneous than previous albums, even if occasionally it does feel more alive.

Though let’s not dismiss the more alive part. “The Fox” is a gloriously messy burst of noise that doesn’t let up for most of its three minute running time; it’s the closest Sleater-Kinney have ever come to worshipping at the altar of pure sonic chaos. “Let’s Call It Love” is equally anthemic, the one song where the contained chaos of the entire second half actually works. And the band haven’t lost their ability to pen compelling lyrics, either; “Jumpers” and “Modern Girl” are two of the best character studies the group’s ever written. But there are also more duds on The Woods than on previous albums; “Wilderness” is less interesting than it wants to be, “Steep Air” is actually a bit boring, and “What’s Mine Is Yours” has that excruciating full stop in the middle. Moreover, The Woods never feels like more than the sum of its parts; it sounds like a collection of songs, not an album.

Even if The Woods was a bad album, it was still worth recording because when I saw Sleater-Kinney in Vancouver earlier this year, they actually looked like they were having fun playing the new songs. And the album does have quite a few highlights. But in the end, The Woods sounds like a transition album, merely hinting at what Sleater-Kinney’s new direction might sound like. In other words, how people remember The Woods in the future will depend a lot on what comes after it: will this album represent the point at which Sleater-Kinney began to change, or the point at which Sleater-Kinney began to die?

December 17, 2005
filed under Hard, Review 2005
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Goldfrapp
Time Out From The World
Supernature (2005)

[review 2005: the honourable mentions]

I haven’t heard most of Felt Mountain, the first Goldfrapp album, so I can only guess its contents based on the many reviews out there. But if you’d tossed me Supernature and Black Cherry at the same time and I’d never listened to them before, I’d probably have guessed that Supernature came first. When Black Cherry surfaced two years ago, a lot of people didn’t know quite what to make of it; I guess they were expecting something more along the lines of Portishead with an orchestra. Instead, they got a fully realized vision of neon-inflected electronic pop, at once seductive and fetishistic. It made you feel a little dirty in a good way. Once people got used to Alison Goldfrapp parading around on stage wearing a horse’s tail and playing a theremin, Black Cherry made a lot of sense.

Supernature doesn’t get under your skin in the same way. More cabaret than strip club this time around, Goldfrapp returns with a set of songs that sound less polished—perhaps on purpose—but also less coherent as an album. More comfortable with the mid-tempo tracks than the extremes, Supernature is an oddly tepid affair despite the presence of some very good songs. Much of the damage occurs at the beginning of the album. If “Crystalline Green” was the archway to a new world, “Ooh La La” is simply a welcome back to the fold, a somewhat uninspired mixture of “Train” and “Strict Machine.” And while “Lovely 2 C U” is well played, it’s fairly obvious that no new ground’s being broken here.

There are too many good hooks and alluring melodies on Supernature to write it off, though. Goldfrapp is at its best when the band tries its hand at ballads; “Let It Take You” and “Time Out From The World” showcase Alison Goldfrapp’s voice in ways the louder, brasher tracks don’t allow. They glide effortlessly through a narcotic dreamscape, the closest the album comes to taking you to another world. But for some reason, the other tracks don’t stick. Perhaps without the thematic unity of the previous album, the new tracks fall apart. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with “Satin Chic” or “Slide In,” two of the better full-vamp tracks; it’s just that you’re not going to remember them the same way you remember, say, “Tiptoe” or “Twist.”

Supernature, then, is a bit frustrating; you keep hoping there’s something you’ve missed, something that pulls this album out of the muck and makes it truly great. But perhaps one review said it best when it guessed Supernature worked best as remix fodder. Give the songs a heaping dose of canned beats and outrageous samples and they’ll light up the clubs, I’m sure. The Tiefschwarz remix of “Ooh La La” is proof positive. On its own merits, though, Supernature is good—but not great.

December 15, 2005
filed under Electronic, Review 2005
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Thievery Corporation
Warning Shots
The Cosmic Game (2005)

[review 2005: the honourable mentions]

If you pick up a Thievery Corporation album, chances are you know what to expect: polished downtempo electronica with a great beat and a world music aesthetic, something inoffensive enough to play in a coffee shop but interesting enough that you could throw a track on at a party and no one would necessarily blink an eye. Alternatively, pick any Thievery Corporation album and your finest pot, hotbox the bedroom, and you’re all set.

The Cosmic Game is merely the latest version of the Thievery Corporation sound; perhaps more worldbeat, less downtempo this time around. Despite the presence of guest vocalists like Perry Farrell, David Byrne and Wayne Coyne, I imagine your reaction to The Cosmic Game will be roughly the same as it has been to other Thievery Corporation efforts. And while the electronic duo are nothing if not consistent, all that can really be said about their latest album is that it is slightly better than the rest of their work, but equally anonymous. The album works well taken as a whole, but it’s impossible to ignore the sameness of The Cosmic Game’s sixteen tracks, nor the relative blandness of the material. No new ground is being broken, and everyone knows it.

In the end, I’m glad I bought this because I don’t own any of the other Thievery Corporation albums out there. But after listening to The Cosmic Game, good as it is, I don’t think I’ll need to pick up any others.

December 13, 2005
filed under Electronic, Review 2005
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Broken Social Scene
Fire Eye'd Boy
Broken Social Scene (2005)

[review 2005: the honourable mentions]

Broken Social Scene is this year’s Blueberry Boat for me: an album so imposing and impenetrable that every listen is hard work, trying to discover exactly where the good bits are and wondering if you aren’t being played for a fool. Broken Social Scene weren’t really facing a sophomore slump when they recorded this self-titled album—after all, You Forgot It In People was their second album—but that’s the folly of having a breakthrough album; you get to go through the terrible twos all over again. I’ve never been as much of a fan of Broken Social Scene’s freeform jam tendencies, and my favourite songs of their have always been the ones that sounded like songs. If that makes me a traditionalist, so be it. The entire second half of You Forgot It In People is less memorable, though it has its moments; think of Broken Social Scene as the second half, blown up to a full album and reconstituted until it’s practically unrecognizable save for the stubborn inability to form coherent songs.

There’s so much baggage that comes with Broken Social Scene these days that it’s hard to figure out which parts of the album I don’t like because of said baggage, and which parts I genuinely don’t like. Take “Swimmers,” for example. It actually starts at the tail end of the preceding track, “Windsurfing Nation,” with Emily Haines and a canned drum beat giving us a false intro. Maybe it’s supposed to be cute, or maybe it’s supposed to be a signifier of the intentionally scattered and spontaneous recording process. All I know is it’s annoying. Broken Social Scene should do well enough on its own without having to ride the coattails of its three female vocalists, and as a symbol of spontaneity it feels far too self-conscious and planned to be convincing. But the rest of the song is pretty good, even though Haines isn’t buried under a sea of vocal effects like on her previous showcase, “Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old Girl.” It’s the sort of effortless dream pop promised by the album’s original title, Windsurfing Nation.

There are plenty of good spots on the album as well. The first single, “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day),” is a gloriously noisy stomper of a track, and is exactly the sort of thing Broken Social Scene should be recording more of. It sounds like a real full band effort, and with a loose collective nearing double digits in number, Broken Social Scene’s full band sound blows away everyone else’s full band sound. “7/4 (Shoreline)” is another highlight; time has made it clear that Leslie Feist does just as good a job of this song as Amy Millan did, if not better, and the noisier production of the studio track (versus the Zed recording from a couple of years back) finally works. It just took a couple of months to get used to it.

That’s the central problem—and the streak of hope—with Broken Social Scene. On the one hand, the album as it stands right now doesn’t really do it for me. I get that it’s a much grander vision than You Forgot It In People, the sound of a band more confortable with its expanded scope. It’s impossible not to applaud the majestic record the band finally delivered after two years of haphazard recording sessions. But I also hear songs like “Finish Your Collapse and Stay For Breakfast,” which are maddening because they’re so incomplete, inconsequential and utterly useless. And then there are songs that display flashes of brilliance and nothing more, like “Windsurfing Nation” and “Hotel.” But on the other hand, I used to hate the final version of “7/4,” and now I think it’s great. Is it simply that I have to give the album more time to sink in, to let it do its magic?

But in the meantime, every listen is like work. If I don’t keep it firmly in my field of attention, it dissolves into a series of unfocused noises and melodies. And at the end of the day, there are albums that reward my attentions more immediately and to greater satisfaction.

December 11, 2005
filed under Hard, Review 2005
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Fiona Apple
Window
Extraordinary Machine (2005)

[review 2005: the disappointments]

Reviewing an album like Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine is difficult work because it comes with its own built-in mythology. It’s even more difficult because, thanks to the internet, there are two widely available versions of Extraordinary Machine out there. The original version, produced by Jon Brion, was leaked while the album’s fate was still in limbo. Sony execs, it was rumoured, had quietly shelved Apple’s third album because it was impossible to sell; thousands of dedicated fans begged to differ. Whether Sony really backed down due to the fan campaign or whether they’d just held the album back until it could be re-recorded the way they saw fit, we may never know; in any case, the final version removes nearly all traces of Brion’s involvement. In his place is Mike Elizondo, who removed most of the orchestral flourishes of the leaked material and straightened out all the kinks to create a classic Fiona Apple album—lots of piano, some angsty vocals, etc., etc.

Because those original tracks are so easy to find online, it’s nearly impossible not to compare the two versions. But let’s leave that behind for the moment and get straight to the point: no matter what version of Extraordinary Machine you listen to, it’s still not a big departure from When The Pawn…, still Apple’s high-water mark. This is a problem because Extraordinary Machine just isn’t as good. The problem is the sameness of it all, and Brion is almost as worthy of criticism on this front as Elizondo. The songs just don’t pop the same way they did on When The Pawn. There are no stormy ballads like “On The Bound” or “Get Gone,” no lightning-quick piano pop like “Fast As You Can,” nothing like a “Paper Bag.” Some tracks come close; “O’ Sailor” works well in both incarnations, as does “Better Version Of Me.” The title track is one of two songs on the final album produced by Brion, and it’s easy to see why they kept his work. It’s Fiona Apple does Into The Woods, with fairy tale flutes and woodland creature woodwinds all over the place.

And here’s why I haven’t really gotten into which producer made the better version: all the tracks that work are equally good no matter who’s behind the boards, and all the less interesting songs aren’t saved by any one producer’s bag of tricks. The major difference between When The Pawn and Extraordinary Machine is the more languid pace on the latter. Apple’s previous album gained its punch from its economy; it seemed like all the details had been placed just right, everything coming together perfectly. The result was one of the most cohesive albums I’ve ever heard. By contrast, Extraordinary Machine is a bit scattershot and a bit loose, and the effect just isn’t the same.

It’ll be interesting to find out whether the same is true of the third version of Extraordinary Machine; Apple is thinking of putting out a definitive Brion version next year.

December 9, 2005
filed under Review 2005, Soft
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Gemma Hayes
Another For The Darkness
The Roads Don't Love You (2005)

[review 2005: the disappointments]

Gemma Hayes is relatively new to me. I haven’t waited two years for this album; Hayes’s career, in effect, has been compressed into the past month and a half. Whether this makes me more or less able to comment, I don’t know, but that’s never stopped me before.

Having heard both the UK and the US versions of Night On My Side as well as The Roads Don’t Love You (which is import-only at the moment), I’ve been able to formulate a theory. The original mix of Night On My Side was the first version I heard, and so perhaps I’m biased towards it as my favourite. But the subsequent rejigging of the album for the American market—despite being directed by Hayes herself—didn’t improve it at all. While she admits she kept “Over and Over” on the UK release purely for sentimental reasons, it’s not a bad track. And why “Day One” was left off entirely, and “What A Day” relegated to a hidden track, I don’t know. Then there’s the re-recorded versions of “Hanging Around,” “Back Of My Hand” and “Let A Good Thing Go.” The changes were slight—added backing vocals here, a different outro there—but it all pointed to someone tweaking the album for a larger audience. Finally, there was the news that Hayes had recorded The Roads Don’t Love You in Los Angeles (!) with a new set of studio musicians (!!) led by drummer Joey Waronker of R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins and Beck fame. Gemma Hayes does Hollywood? I feared the worse.

Upon first listen, it sounds as though the worst has indeed come to pass. The sound is brighter, Hayes has changed her singing style to include a bit more Michelle Branch, and the grit from Night On My Side is gone. This isn’t a Gemma Hayes album so much as a Singer-Songwriter album that just happens to have Gemma Hayes playing the role of the chanteuse. The low-key brilliance of Hayes’s first album has given way to the melodramatic stylings of “Something In My Way,” a track that’s almost painful to listen to. This is the woman who wrote “Ran For Miles” and “Lucky One”?

The album does improve the more you listen to it. The first quarter of the album is easily the best, carving out a somewhat anonymous but pleasantly sparkly sound. “Happy Sad” seems to leave a trail of stardust in its wake, especially during the extended outro. But it all still pales in comparison to the pristine, untouched wonder of Night On My Side. Hayes mentioned in an interview that she’d had trouble writing songs after touring in support of her first album, and was afraid that she was finished with music. Only when Hayes had given up hope did she suddenly find she had another set of songs in her after all.

Little did she realize those songs were planted in her head by the devil. Hayes is far from the treacly theatrics of a Michelle Branch or Chantal Kreviazuk. But if she doesn’t watch herself, she may one day find herself stranded in L.A. with a guitar and a set of forgettable albums, trying to remember what it was that made her so special in the first place.

December 7, 2005
filed under Hard, Review 2005
5 comments | permalink

Need New Body
Brite Tha' Day
Where's Black Ben? (2005)

[review 2005: the disappointments]

Oh, Need New Body. If you could only get your collective shit together, you’d have an outstanding album on your hands. But then you wouldn’t be Need New Body, would you?

Take a look at the Need New Body website and you’ll start to understand the problem with Who’s Black Ben? It’s willfully obtuse and amateurish, mostly uninformative and offputting to all but the most dedicated (or determined) of readers. The album is the same way; you can see the potential on tracks like “Brite Tha’ Day” and “So St Rx,” but in order to get to it you have to wade through some pretty strange shit. And while the obvious wankery is occasionally interesting (take the choral section of “Outerspace”), it’s also wilfully obtuse and amateurish. Let’s take “Outerspace” as an example: you can tell someone went to a lot of trouble to arrange everything just so, and yet the end product sounds like a drunken glee club meeting. Which I imagine was the point.

Some tracks are strange (”Magic Kingdom”), while others sound more like a giant fuck you (”Inner Gift”). Then there’s the obviously stupid and unlistenable (the aptly-titled “Mouthbreather”). What grates so much is not just the fact that so much of the album is the musical equivalent of masturbating a donkey onto a canvas and calling it art; it’s that you can’t quite ignore Need New Body because they’ve shown that they do, indeed, have the skills to write some decent pop songs. Take, for instance, “Eskimo,” a delightfully wonky keyboard track that finishes off the album. Or “Beach,” from the band’s last album. And it’s not that Need New Body just can’t write enough good songs, either; I get the distinct feeling that their albums are so horribly bad at times because that’s exactly what they want. They want to write songs that are unlistenable, or nonsensical, or a minute of instrumental noise. In other words, they’re writing stupid songs on purpose.

Well, congrats, boys. Mission accomplished.

December 5, 2005
filed under Experimental, Review 2005
1 comment | permalink

Ladytron
Fighting In Built Up Areas
Witching Hour (2005)

[review 2005: the disappointments]

If anyone could have pulled it off, it would’ve been Ladytron. Thrust somewhat unwillingly into the role of electroclash pioneer, Ladytron have always floated somewhere above the Miss Kittins and Peaches of the world; not quite content to merely rehash the 80s, there were times when Ladytron attempted to remake it in their image. 604 was the raw blueprint, “Commodore Rock” their call to arms. Then Light + Magic hit, and it was as if Ladytron had pulled their music straight into hyper-Technicolour. It was an album that sounded larger than life, a fully realized depiction of a seductive plastic utopia. If Ladytron had had any smarts, they would’ve figured out how to top the accomplishment, or quit while they were ahead. Unfortunately, the band did neither.

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way. First off, the resurgence of the guitar has not been lost on Ladytron; while electronics still dominate on Witching Hour, you can hear the influence of the guitar in the distortion that coats almost every track. “High Rise” is a prime example; what should’ve been Ladytron’s “Commodore Rock Revisited” is blunted by the traditional—dare I say boring?—arrangement of drums, guitars and keyboards. Helen Marnie’s vocals take a hit as well; the vocal effects turn her into a ghost on her own track, barely able to rise above the muck of the surrounding instruments. Far from the crystal clarity of Light + Magic, the fuzzier sound of Witching Hour puts distance between the songs and the listener. It’s less immediate.

This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the songs behind the thick veneer were worth examining; this is true only occasionally. Another major problem with the album is that Ladytron have run short on ideas. “High Rise” is a song that should’ve been much better than it is. “International Dateline,” however, is exactly as good as it sounds, which is to say not very. And if you listen to “High Rise” and “International Dateline” back to back, you’ll hear pretty much the same melodic hook. This happens again, though not so blatantly, on “Sugar” and “The Last One Standing.” All this repetition does is add substandard material to the album’s running time while blunting the effect of the superior versions. Why even bother?

And then there’s the most heartbreaking change of all, the apparent loss of Mira Arroyo. When Light + Magic began to feature Helen Marnie’s vocals on more songs, everyone praised it as a smart move. It took Ladytron away from the more strident feel of 604, and it gave Ladytron more options. Unfortunately, as great as Marnie sounds, she dominates Witching Hour. Marnie is the group’s Janet Jackson; she’s got a pretty voice, but it’s not versatile enough to carry a whole album. Arroyo’s thick, Bulgarian vocals are sorely missed. Perhaps it’s just the band couldn’t write enough new songs that used her effectively; “Fighting in Built Up Areas” and “amTV,” while not up to the standards of previous albums, are two of the better songs on Witching Hour, and they’re both fronted by Arroyo. They should’ve tried harder; a “Flicking Your Switch,” “Nuhorizons” or a “Paco!” would’ve added much-needed variety to the album, especially if the cost is a throwaway like “White Light Generator” or “Weekend.”

December 3, 2005
filed under Electronic, Review 2005
11 comments | permalink
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