[review 2006: the odds and ends]

Dancing With Daggers is kinda boring. It’s boring enough that I can’t even think of particularly evocative ways to describe the album. So let’s do clunky instead: a hack and slash autopsy of Magneta Lane’s latest effort.

The band burst onto the Toronto scene two years ago with a juicy EP, The Constant Lover, and a disturbingly developed sense of craft considering how young they were at the time. Stuff like “Their Party Days” and “Mare of the Night” wasn’t exactly breaking new ground, but it was decently executed and fun to listen to. The hype began to build, Magneta Lane started to tour across the country, and expectations began to rise.

The last band I remember that had such a meteoric rise? Controller.controller, a Toronto band whose future is in question now that lead singer Nirmala Basnayake has left. But that’s not the interesting part—what’s interesting is that they put out an extremely well-received EP, History, then scrambled to write and record a full album. When that album finally hit, suddenly the hype faded; it turned out what was so exciting and praiseworthy in EP form didn’t translate as well over the course of a whole album. So too is the case with Dancing With Daggers, an album that doesn’t deviate very far from the Magneta Lane approach and suffers greatly for it.

The band have settled into two modes of operation: hard-charging mid-tempo rocker and upbeat, relaxed mid-tempo rocker. That’s not a lot of variation, and in fact if you listen to the whole album you’ll notice a certain consistency throughout—the same tempos, the same drumbeats, the same vocal intonations, the same song structures. In other words, too consistent; Dancing With Daggers is the sound of Magneta Lane running their formula into the ground. This is especially troublesome considering there are elements of Magneta Lane’s style that were already wearing dangerously thin before this album: the drumming is somewhat uninspiring and Lexi Valentine’s apparent refusal to inject more than a slight sneer into her vocals was a potential problem area from day one.

Okay, so why don’t I hate this album? Because it’s still a pleasant enough listen. The monotony of the album all but ensures that you won’t remember very much once it’s over, but I can’t say that I hate any of the songs on Dancing With Daggers. “Bridge to Terabithia” is a game opening shot, and “Daggers Out!” is one of the few times where Valentine shows some genuine snarl. If you took any one of the tracks and stuck it on a mixtape, you probably wouldn’t skip over it. Damning with faint praise, yes, but it’s honestly hard for me to conjure up much enthusiasm for the album. Or, as a friend of mine suggested I say in place of this whole review: “meh.”

[review 2006: the odds and ends]

When Magic Marker announced the impending release of There Is No Home, they also revealed that Dear Nora’s latest album would also be their last. Katy Davidson decided that the band had gone through enough personnel changes and musical directions that it was no longer worth keeping the name around; Davidson’s next project would mark the beginning of a different era for her.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising that Dear Nora’s final album would feel a bit half-baked, though the thought hadn’t crossed my mind until after I heard the album. Lacking the coherence of previous Dear Nora efforts, There Is No Home seems to bounce between all the various aspects of Dear Nora’s seven-year career, but to little effect. It feels very much like a collection of loose ends committed to tape for posterity, released more to mark the occasion of Dear Nora’s passing than to make an actual musical statement.

Some aspects of the album don’t seem to recall anything from Dear Nora’s back catalogue; the opening two tracks are instrumentals that sound like the work of a very different band. The psychedelic leanings of The New Year are represented by the likes of “Emily” and “The Freeway,” while the laid-back indie bedroom rock of “The Flats of Irony” and “Defeated and Lonely” sound like early outtakes from We’ll Have A Time. Other tracks just sound like outtakes; “What a Weird Cactus” and “The Call” are experiments that don’t really work, and “Frank, the Witchdoctor” sounds very much like a one-off jam before intermission, an impression that the final hidden track does nothing to dissuade.

The bright side is that if you are a fan of Dear Nora, you’re likely to find something to appreciate on There Is No Home. But as swan songs go, it doesn’t stand up very well. Any other Dear Nora release will serve as a more fitting memorial.

[review 2006: the disappointments]

Had Ancient Melodies of the Future never come out, I might’ve been more excited about You In Reverse, Built to Spill’s return from a five-year hiatus. Keep It Like A Secret overflowed with guitar hero anthems like “Carry The Zero,” a magnificent song that reached heights Built to Spill haven’t reached since. If You In Reverse had followed the glory of Keep It Like a Secret, we could come up with any number of excuses to explain the relative disappointments and failures of the band’s latest album; it’d been seven years, things had changed, the band just needed time to get back on their feet, we just needed time to remember what made Built to Spill great.

If You In Reverse was the first material we’d heard from Built to Spill since Keep It Like a Secret, we’d call the new album a misstep. But one misstep we can forgive; two missteps is a lot harder. And Ancient Melodies of the Future was a big misstep—one that fails in many of the same areas You In Reverse fails. So now You In Reverse becomes part of a trend rather than a fluke, and it’s in that light that its failures become more obvious.

You In Reverse isn’t as exciting or interesting as that high-water mark; it stays stubbornly glued to the ground where Keep It Like a Secret soared into indie rock heaven. What You In Reverse does retain is Secret’s tendency towards the epic, but unfortunately this hurts the album more than it helps. “The Wait” and “Liar” wouldn’t have been all that interesting as two-minute songs; to stretch them to five is criminal. And there are far too many of these tepid mid-tempo numbers, hurt even further by the apparent lack of an editor, or at least some guy in the studio who could sit everyone down and explain that while it might be fun to fuck around on the guitar for three minutes, it’s not necessarily going to keep anyone glued to the speakers.

Even during the extended bridges and solos on Keep It Like a Secret, you knew where the band was going. I don’t mean to say the songs were predictable, but you could trust Built to Spill to go way out with the guitar acrobatics, and then bring it all back home to finish a song, or hit the final chorus or whatever. By contrast, You In Reverse simply floats; when Doug Martsch begins a solo, you don’t really get the sense that he knows where it’s going. Songs seem to meander without purpose, and though occasionally that can lead to interesting places, on You In Reverse all it leads to is boredom. When you’re dealing with already weak mid-tempo numbers like “Wherever You Go,” the solos merely add to the frustration—you never feel like there’s going to be a big payoff.

But worse is what the many solos and interstitials do to the interesting songs. “Goin’ Against Your Mind’s” first three minutes are fantastic, but then almost loses the plot with a lengthy interregnum before we get back to the rock. Once the song hits the seven-minute mark, you get the sense that even the second burst of energy should have ended by now, but there’s still two minutes of the song to go. “Conventional Wisdom” is similar; though the basic melody is actually a bit pat, the song motors along quite well until it wanders into noodling territory less than halfway through. And this time there is no second burst of energy or a return to the original refrain; the song just fades out with Doug Martsch in the middle of some more guitar acrobatics.

Maybe the band does need time to get back on its feet, and maybe we just need some time to readjust our expectations of what a Built to Spill album sounds like. Of all the albums I’ve listed as “disappointments,” You In Reverse is probably the best of the lot. In fact, there are a couple of songs I can genuinely get behind, like “Goin’ Against Your Mind.” But coming off Ancient Melodies of the Future, which was already a letdown from Keep It Like a Secret, I was really hoping for a screaming comeback album—one that would make everyone forget Built to Spill had ever been gone. Instead, we have You In Reverse, an album that kinda makes me wish they’d stayed away a bit longer. And that’s why, despite the potential, I think of the album as a disappointment.

[review 2006: the disappointments]

It’s been seven years since my first Rainer Maria album, Look Now Look Again; since then I’ve done a lot of growing up, and so has Rainer Maria. Back then they were tossing off their emo leanings at a time when the definition of emo was shifting from Braid to Dashboard Confessional, years before emo shifted from Dashboard Confessional to My Chemical Romance. Back then I was still in high school, and so particularly vulnerable to lines like “And I’m certain if you drive into those trees / it would make less of a mess than you’ve made of me.” We were a great fit; there was just enough pop to make songs like “Lost, Dropped and Cancelled” sound pretty and just enough raw grit for the air guitar moments like “Breakfast of Champions.” I was a sucker for Caithlin de Marrais, especially on “I’m Melting,” one of the few songs I used to be able to sing from beginning to end. My ex-girlfriend couldn’t stand her voice; de Marrais was off-key, you see, and my ex had perfect pitch.

Since then, Rainer Maria have all but cut their connections both to emo and to the Midwest. de Marrais has slowly taken over the vocal duties for the band, and has learned how to sing on key in the process. Long Knives Drawn was arguably the band’s finest effort to date; hearing “Ears Ring” for the first time was like hearing an entirely different band, one whose resemblance to the Rainer Maria of old only became apparent with repeated listens. More muscular and aggressive than before, the first half of Long Knives Drawn was razor sharp, even if the second half faltered a bit. But there was a problem; though Rainer Maria have evolved far more than most bands in their six years up to 2003, the major emotional thrust of the band—the relationship between band principals Kyle Fischer and de Marrais—was gone. Long Knives Drawn was the breakup album, but what do you do for an encore?

Catastrophe Brings Us Together is the sound of Rainer Maria trying to figure out the answer. Unfortunately, Catastrophe isn’t the answer itself, as it is most definitely a transition album. The extent to which the band is still figuring out its new direction is evident as soon as you see the album’s packaging; the cover and back is lettered in a thin gothic typeface and covered in worn photocopied posters, but the liner note booklet is a lush, glossy affair with sleek Helvetica lettering and the usual band glamour shot. The dissonance continues on the album proper; the sequencing works against the album’s momentum and the songs are a mixed bag of jangly indie rock (”Clear and True” and “Terrified”), mid-tempo alt-rock (”Catastrophe” and “Already Lost”), pseudo-artsy instrumentals (”Cities Above”, the worst track on the album), a couple of fiery blowouts (”Bottle” and “I’ll Make You Mine”) and quiet, introspective numbers (”Burn” and “I’ll Keep It With Mine”). Some of it works, but much of it doesn’t. Had Rainer Maria picked an approach or two and stuck with it, the album would perhaps still be just as spotty but at least more coherent. As it stands, it’s easy to pick out a couple of enjoyable songs and jettison the rest as forgettable or failed experiments.

Something else: Rainer Maria needs to drop some of the distortion and vocal effects. “Bottle” could’ve been a great song, but it seems to float just underneath a layer of haze. We’ve heard this sort of production before, on Long Knives Drawn’s “The Double Life,” but Catastrophe Keeps Us Together is more severely afflicted; “Burn” and “I’ll Make You Mine” suffer from the same lack of immediacy thanks to the haze. Even “Clear and True’s” sonics aren’t quite clear or true, though it is the best song on the album. A notable exception is the final track, “I’ll Keep It With Mine.” Even though it’s a cover, the low-key, almost narcotic sound is a direction that could bear fruit if the band decides to pursue it.

The next step for Rainer Maria is to trim down and try to do one or two things really well; Catastrophe Keeps Us Together is too scattershot to feel like an album, let alone a good one. If you compile “Life of Leisure,” “Bottle,” “Terrified” and “Clear and True” into an EP, clean up the sound and get rid of the other songs, you’d have a fairly decent release. Rainer Maria are still capable of writing a good song, and if they could string a couple more together their next album will be worth lining up for.

[review 2006: the disappointments]

When I first posted about Elan Vital way back at the beginning of the year, a couple of people wrote in to tell me I was nuts. And to some extent, those people were right; I clung to the early days a bit too strongly to see the merits of the latest Pretty Girls Make Graves album, and was perhaps guilty of wanting them to release another Good Health. Thus began a long journey to see if I’d given Elan Vital a fair shake. I listened to it, then listened to it again. Then I left it for a couple of months and forgot about the album. Then someone else would bring up Pretty Girls Make Graves and I’d re-read a bunch of reviews and plunge headlong into the album again, trying to figure out what I’d missed.

A revelation in the eight months since Elan Vital’s release: Andrea Zollo was not the only thing I liked about early Pretty Girls Make Graves. It is utterly fantastic when Zollo screams out the last lines of “By The Throat,” the final track off Good Health. But further examination reveals that she doesn’t actually scream that much on the album; “Speakers Push The Air” and “More Sweet Soul,” two of my favorite songs on the album, are actually pretty restrained by comparison. And actually, the argument doesn’t extend at all to The New Romance, where Zollo spends a lot of her time well below vocal-shattering levels of volume. And yet even the weakest tracks off The New Romance feel far sharper than anything off Elan Vital. It turns out the killer blow may not be Zollo’s vocal difficulties at all, but in fact the loss of guitarist Nathan Thelen. It’s hard to say just how much of the band’s early guitar acrobatics was Thelen’s responsibility and how much was due to surviving guitarist Jay Clark, but the aggressive, muscular and accomplished guitar-driven approach fell apart in his absence, leading to the new approach on Elan Vital.

And what of this approach? It just sounds emptier, for one. The dueling buzzsaw guitar ninja attack is extremely difficult to replace, and despite Leona Marrs’ best efforts, one keyboard simply doesn’t fill the soundstage nearly as well. The album sounds woefully underproduced even at the best of times, like “The Nocturnal House” and “Parade”; “Domino” is simply an embarassment when held up against early live versions of the same song, which managed to do far more with just the one extra guitar (and not even Thelen’s, but a fill-in from Les Savy Fav). “The Number” fares marginally better once the full arrangement kicks in, but the keyboard opening is out of place and the vocals are murky at best. In fact, Zollo’s vocals are hopelessly buried underneath unnecessary effects more often than not. Why? “Parade” makes it clear that Zollo can still sing; why mess around with a good thing?

The strongest song on Elan Vital is “Parade,” the gentlest labourer call to arms ever committed to tape. “Parade” is effective because it is so clearly the polar opposite to everything the band has done prior to 2004. But the rest of the album lacks similar conviction; there are a lot of songs that sound shoehorned into the new approach, and it simply doesn’t work. Again, “Domino” is an obvious point of failure, but so are “Wildcat,” “The Number” and “The Magic Hour.”

In the end, the single most damning thing about Elan Vital is that I gave it more chances than I do most albums, and I still can’t listen to the whole thing without getting bored or wanting to listen to something else. I can sit here and play Bad Music Writer all day long, but the long and the short of it is listening to Elan Vital is a chore. Why should I continue to waste my time?

Yes, this is the third Cadeaux song I’ve posted this year. There’s a good reason.

In a couple of days I’m gonna start the whole self-wank best-of-year thing again. It’s starting earlier than last year because I have holiday songs I want to put up, and holiday songs don’t work if you post them in January, unless they’re songs about the feast of the Epiphany. (I know of exactly zero pop songs about Epiphany, but if you happen to know about one, feel free to send it over and I’ll have a listen.) Anyways, as is always the case with best-of-year lists, you inevitably miss something. Generally the release schedule slows down when you get to December, but there’s always an album you didn’t know existed until the year after its release, or a record you come back to and re-examine after initially writing it off. Then you spend some time kicking yourself because it turns out to be much better than the other albums you put on your list last year.

Physical City is one of those albums. Sure, Joel Plaskett, Petra Haden and Bullette put out some fine albums last year, but to be honest Cadeaux completely blows them away. In the first few months of 2006 things looked dismal, with a couple of early albums leaving much to be desired; I honestly wondered if I’d ever be as interested about music as I was when I was still in college. Physical City was the first album I bought this year that I was genuinely excited about, to the point where I was not only kicking myself for not discovering them earlier, but also kicking myself for not seeing them live while I was in Vancouver. I swear I passed a hundred gig posters for them without ever realizing the bounty I was passing up—songs that made you want to dance and shout and thrust your fists in the air. It’d been a long time since I’d heard an album that rocked as hard as Physical City, and it’d be a while again before I found another one with the same propulsive energy and infectious enthusiasm.

To make matters worse, it turns out I bought Physical City only months before the band broke up for good. So not only did I miss my chance to see them while I lived in the same city, I missed my chance to see them—full stop. All I have left is this one album—a stunning explosion of deliciously noisy post-punk that will be forgotten all too soon. If you like what you hear, pick up a copy at your local record store, or the Vancouver-based Scratch Records if you can’t find a place near you that stocks semi-obscure, dearly departed Canadian indie bands. I loved this band and this album; hopefully you will too.

Stay tuned; review 2006 is coming up next.