Third - Portishead

Third

Portishead
Mercury Records.

SCQ Rating: 82%

If my high school years were compiled onto soundtrack format, it would suck. With our social classes built insolently of jocks, nerds, and attractive girls, secondary school revolved around the typical mix of Lifehouse, Savage Garden and Backstreet Boys – all cornerstones of adolescent melodrama – while even the offbeat kids swore by Rage Against the Machine, Outkast or, unsurprisingly, Phish. Needless to say, the push of major labels remained at its pinnacle, and the closest I came to unexploited music was the Get Up Kids record I’d play at work. Being that my place of employment was a record store, I feel additionally ripped off that I was never introduced to groundbreaking artists of the late 90s; the Tortoises, the Lindstroms, the Portisheads.

The first time I heard Dummy and Portishead was 2002, a full half-decade after they’d disappeared alongside trip-hop’s collateral damage, but in the burgeoning world of online music criticism, you’d never know Portishead went missing. Quite the opposite; despite only two studio albums and a live release, Beth Gibbons and Co. were nurturing a legacy that thrived off anonymity, their albums acting as templates to a seductive, sample-heavy style that was at once perfected, then whored-out to B-class imitators who may’ve ruined the genre, but couldn’t touch the source.

As the suddenly classic story goes, ten years pass.

Third is immediate in its harsh brilliance; a brute force of dull sonic edges that meld swimmingly with expertly arranged compositions. To be entirely honest, I don’t know how they did it. Start with lead single ‘Machine Gun’, a rapid-fire percussive assault of stuttered racket that is pillowed by Gibbon’s intimate choir and the ever-changing effects of Geoff Barrow. Or take ‘Threads’, the trippy finale that envisions Portishead as a loose, psych band steering between Jefferson Airplane mysticism and their classic noir atmospherics.

To be a successful follow-up after ten years in 90s oblivion doesn’t do Third justice. That it’s heart-wrenching as often as it’s cold and industrial deserves further praise after Portishead left us to assume any new material would feel passé to our 21st Century ears. As one of Third’s many lovely ambassadors, ‘Hunter’ reminds us that any creeping melodies or smooth surfaces from their past can be inverted to show the coarse beauty of a jewel’s underbelly. The digging part is thankfully up to us, and as a decade of hesitation will prove, Portishead were wise to let these songs grow in the shadow of their past glories. Malnourished but muscular, Third is the soundtrack to a misery no sample or effect can remedy. A soundtrack that makes me miss high school that much less.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend
XL Records.

SCQ Rating: 73%

Let’s dissect the record right: first off, toss that afro-beat garbage out of your Vampire Weekend idiom pamphlet. Giving a song some exotic xylophone or wooden percussion that’s remotely tribal doesn’t warrant Paul Simon getting Femi Kuti comparisons. Neither does throwing around labels like post-punk validate post-punk as a recognizable genre. Here’s the focus: these four Columbia graduates have made an often brilliant and otherwise pleasant indie record, one that will keep critics swooning over their amalgamations and find new fans throughout these summer months.

A good album, yes, and nearly equivalent to The Strokes as far as economic, irreverent indie-rock goes… of course, instead of picturing ripped-jean hipsters in leather jackets, envision Vampire Weekend blaring from the windows of beach-side frat houses the week before orientation. That said, its accessibility deserves some additional respect given how they wear influences that most indie-musicians steer clear of. Few outfits could tie the Victorian chamber-pop of ‘M79’, reggae rhythm of ‘One (Blake’s Got a New Face)’ and the drunker-than-frosh delight of ‘A-Punk’ into an appetizing whole, but it’s a diverse batch that, like Tapes N Tapes had two years earlier, will likely be hard to replicate on future releases.

At just over half an hour, its few dull moments are easy to spot; the odd undercooked track that fails to provide a payoff (‘The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance’) adds to Vampire Weekend’s good-time vibes but stalls the ambition present in ‘Walcott’ or ‘Oxford Comma’. And that’s where I get conflicted… is Vampire Weekend one of those records that’s supposed to simply exist for easy enjoyment? Should we consume this laid-back accomplishment and ignore the nagging question of whether it could’ve been bigger, better? According to critics, that question is mute – next up, the Pitchfork Year-End list, 2008!

Sleep Well - Electric President

Sleep Well

Electric President
Morr Music.

SCQ Rating: 92%

Morr Music, the independent label that grew to prominence amid electronica’s broadening from a dancefloor reaction to the soundtrack of your livingroom armchair, has pigeonholed itself into a precarious rut over the past few years. From Guther’s I Know You Know to this Spring’s Bobby and Blumm collaboration, Morr’s innovation of home-listening beat-patterns stagnated to such a degree, only the unassuming coyness of twee could properly compliment such diminishing returns. And while you have to respect the German imprint for standing by their narrow sonic margins so stringently, truth is, it’s difficult to justify buying a Morr album when you know exactly what it’ll sound like.

Electric President, besides representing Morr’s snail-quick acknowledgement of the guitar, never fit in. A duo from Florida of all places, Ben Cooper and Alex Kane recorded their self-titled debut in a tool-shed behind Cooper’s house. Bearing the electronic-rock tag that pitted them in the shadows of Postal Service, Electric President created fair buzz then dissipated into the trenches of eccentric/goofy indie-rock that plagued 2005’s college charts.

Sleep Well, their thirteen-month-in-the-making sophomore effort, is an entirely different beast; a gracefully distressed symphony of fevered intentions and darkened bedrooms that cause elation as often as shivers. As blurred as that imaginary moment where a dream becomes nightmare, many of these songs endure transformations that fail to carry any sign of closure; a strategy that abandons some of these tracks from becoming fully cohesive songs, but lends bravado to the album as a whole. Yes, you'll find several songs that are gorgeously compelling but it’s those transient tracks that embed the album with its shape-shifting heart; idea-packed movements through dark territory and harsh light for your inner narcoleptic.

What marks Sleep Well as such a devastatingly better album than its predecessor (and the duo as an entirely altered creative force) is how confidently they milk ideas from such a singular thematic focus: the nature of nightmares. As explained in Morr’s video promo for the release, Cooper discusses how he collected a scrapbook of nightmare accounts, written through the night or by morning, and eventually turned to the narratives for songwriting inspiration. Unlike that video, however, which goes to great lengths to either scare or convince us of Electric President’s newfound goth-cred, Sleep Well roundly encourages the notion that Cooper and Kane, who sounded like sarcastic arts students last time around, have truly ascended to a level of songcraft most bands die hoping for (to the point, in fact, that the video promo does more harm than good). The trancelike ‘We Will Walk Through Walls’, with its rich bass and cavernous melodies, moves hauntingly into ‘Graves and the Infinite Arm’, a creeping contrast that would be polarizing if not for the band’s seductive use of synths, which are as funereal as The Cure’s Faith era.

With any justice, this should crowd critic’s year-end lists and reinvigorate Morr Music from its comfortable coma. So fully realized and lovely, Sleep Well doesn’t seem ostracized from its label so much as evolved from Morr’s lush and pristine trademarks; no more than in closing track ‘When It’s Black’, an electronic minor-chord skeleton that grows into its piano, otherworldly chants, and erupts into a raging distorted guitar close. Neither the band nor label have ever rocked like this, and it’s a scorching end I still can’t wake up from.

Silent Movie - Quiet Village

Silent Movie

Quiet Village
!K7 Records.

SCQ Rating: 80%

OK, so you listen to ‘Victoria’s Secret’, the string-heavy soliloquy that omits neither seagull squawks nor wave crashing, and you’re understandably turned off. I mean, where do these guys get off? As schmaltzy as the worst wedding speech and laughable as it is, though, this song takes guts, flattening the emotional abscess of its orchestra for a subtle soul vocal and bass beat. And as the opening track to Quiet Village’s debut album, it’s both a mission statement of what’s to come as well as a catalyst for accusatory critics.

Their “kitsch”, as most every reviewer refers to it, is courtesy of a BBC garage-sale that afforded Joel Martin a load of library records for a lean 40 quid, and is commonly most audible at a song’s start, when whatever archive sounds being used - old Soul vinyl, Italian soundtracks - are nearly untouched (but skillfully looped) as blank-canvassed backdrops for cratediggers Matt Edwards (techno artist of Radio Slave) and Martin (music collector, DJ). Once these songs match Edwards’ dancefloor aesthetic and Martin’s cult-film clips, Silent Movie unveils its genius; a downtempo mash-up that owes as much to soul and psychedelic records as Boards of Canada is indebted to the NFB. And while it hardly breaks new ground – think of it as a slowcore appropriation of the Avalanches’ debut back in 2000 – Silent Movie suffers no shortage of rousing song ideas. Each of these twelve songs occupy their own territory righteously: the aviator-adorned weightlessness of ‘Pillow Talk’, ‘Gold Rush’s cautious path through unmapped lands and the mind-bending freak-out which is ‘Circus of Horror’ all represent a different twist to Silent Movie’s exotic yet fluid narrative. A few trips through and what was once 60s schmaltz or elevator music is suddenly a very (post)modern approach to compelling, guileless electronic music.

Many have argued that Quiet Village hardly elaborate upon their source material, saying much of the record’s charms are identical to those written by the Chi-Lites, Andreas Vollenweider, and a slew of 70s originals tampered with here. They might well be right, what do I care? These samples are not only being used legally, creatively and with the consent of those owning copyright, but Silent Movie is a gracious bow to an inspired era of underground music, tawdry and forgotten, that deserves a revival of its own. That Quiet Village openly celebrates its source muse is commendable when you consider how easily modern acts can tweak a classic to avoid the charge of plagiarism. Cause SCQ would still be writing about Mr. Vollenweider if not for this record, right?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Silent Movie has brought me back to the golden age of downtempo and turntablism – two subgenres that, at their best, forged moving narratives out of globe-trotting instrumentation and creative sampling (admittedly with some illicit help from its largely stoner-oriented fanbase). Unlike Thievery Corporation and Kid Koala - although possibly upon their shoulders - Silent Movie will thrive as a pioneer to the renaissance of such well-loved, heady endeavors. Like LCD Soundsystem benefited dance music with its high-brow hipster-isms, Quiet Village is reinstating 90s chill-out with the same well-read, millennial playfulness of music history. Loved and hated with equal rigor, this easy-listening blend of archived vinyl, dubbed-out bass, weathered disco and borrowed soul is likely the most important electronica record of the year so far.

In Ghost Colours - Cut/Copy

In Ghost Colours

Cut/Copy
Modular Records.

SCQ Rating: 76%

Is it indie-rock or electronic? Are they mash-up artists or a genuine band? And as the young record store employee with the cowboy boots asked, are they French or what? With so much love for house music in their compositions, I can’t help but understand where she was coming from. They’re from Australia, as I later discovered, although at the time I simply responded “they’re probably just really big New Order fans”. At the time, they may as well have been and that brings me back to the aforequestioned dilemma Cut/Copy’s new album presents: at what point does style take precedence over songwriting? A combination of everything from Daft Punk to Depeche Mode, Cut/Copy primarily sounds like pirates of every cool band from 80s new wave. And even as I made that New Order comment while purchasing it, that’s pretty much what I was preparing myself for.

Whereas Cut/Copy’s choice of name complimented my initial misconception, title In Ghost Colours now represents an opposing viewpoint; that of a record drenched in chameleon-changes, slick and fluorescent like diesel puddles but rich in the best each skin has to offer. Incorporating their influences straight to sleeve, Cut/Copy have crafted a collection of impeccable pop songs, worthy of their cousinship to some of new wave’s greatest while adding their own blend of pop to the proceedings. ‘Out There On the Ice’ is straight dancefloor chic while ‘Haunted’, announced with razor-sharp guitar drones, is awesome indie-rock; two disparate ends of Cut/Copy’s accomplished genre-melding. That the band’s highlights are both multiple and seemingly contrary is indicative of In Ghost Colour’s splendor: ‘Unforgettable Season’ is as lively and nostalgic as its title suggests (lord knows we've all had one) while ‘Far Away’ presents a fair case why pop music, at its unapologetic best, is too purely addictive for the stagnancy of contemporary radio.

Although a few of these fifteen tracks are ambient segues, ominous and brief like spectral encounters, In Ghost Colours still outstays its welcome in the final third, spreading thin when it could’ve been mean and purposeful at twelve tracks. The occasional gaffe doesn’t deter what Cut/Copy have accomplished (and proven to me, discerning listener): this album has heart beneath all the suffocating style. Indie-rock or electronic, few records will humidify your summer evenings quite like this one. Embrace its ecstasy.