Ask Me This - Alcoholic Faith Mission (SPRING ALBUMS 2012)

Ask Me This

Alcoholic Faith Mission

Alarm Music.

SCQ Rating: 78%

It has become something of an institution for Alcoholic Faith Mission to issue a release in the springtime. 421 Wythe Avenue, Let This Be the Last Night We Care as well as 2011’s And the Running With Insanity EP each blossomed onto the scene at winter’s end and resonate as though they are unburdening the cares collected the previous year.

Ask Me This, however, wastes no time in presenting a change of season we weren’t expecting. Opening track “Down From Here” sets the tone via an impassioned group a cappella, building in bombast but remaining rigidly sober, before “Alaska” finds an almost industrial crunch replacing the typical warmth of this Copenhagen-based sextet. Ask Me This could’ve been considered a departure on the basis of sonic tinkering alone but that merely accentuates the tonal shift: that on these ten songs, Alcoholic Faith Mission are holding their burden tightly, consumed with and fueled by the conflicted emotions they once sought to emancipate. The sunny disposition of “Running With Insanity”, which owned the headliner spot on last year’s EP, only gradually feels at home here on account of its painstaking layered arrangement, as breathless harmonica, handclaps and vocal harmonies form the song’s foundation (whereas guitar and piano get relegated to the status of happy accessories).

Which brings me to my next point: Alcoholic Faith Mission’s break-neck speed of releasing material can only be outshone by their evolving song-craft, which undergoes another upgrade on Ask Me This. Whether it’s the spliced symphonics on “Reconstruct My Love” or the stuttering drum machine on “Into Pieces” that sound so alien to ‘aFm’ loyalists, repeated listens find those experimental qualities being absorbed into the same emotional vein that rendered past records so magnificent. In particular, “I’m Not Evil” likely stands as one of the band’s best tracks yet; its cascading piano line latched to a subtly rendered bass and percussion shuffle.

Small efforts truly make Ask Me This a more nuanced animal than its predecessors, even if the end results fail to shine quite as brightly. Saying this new record gets personal wouldn’t really explain much, given some of the band’s previous talking-points, but one could definitely call it insular. And that pervasive overcast succeeds in shedding strange new light on a disciplined band transforming before our very ears.

And the Running With Insanity EP - Alcoholic Faith Mission

And the Running With Insanity

Alcoholic Faith Mission
Paper Garden Records.

SCQ Rating: 78%

Alcoholic Faith Mission have jumped several indie-rock mantles over the past year and a half, predominantly through endless touring and that one-two blitzkrieg of releases, 421 Wythe Avenue and Let This Be the Last Night We Care. With the latter full-length and its career-defining climax (‘Honeydrip’), it was hard to imagine the band further equipping their bombast without running the risk of repeating themselves. So, it’s with relief and a wince of sadness to report that Alcoholic Faith Mission have side-stepped predictability once more, shying somewhat from their 2010 effort’s cathartic pulse in favour of patient songwriting that outlives all of life’s more immediate sensations.

There was a lot of blood, confusion and drunkenness at the root of Let This Be the Last Night We Care, which collectively made for a tumultuous listening-experience. Instead of trying to top that level of intensity, the sextet from Copenhagen has done something far more courageous: they’ve put aside one set of strengths to hone another. Compositionally, And the Running With Insanity EP is likely the band’s high-watermark. Eloquently paced and adventurous, each of these five songs explore melodic and vocal possibilities without straying from their core hooks. A breathless harmonica sets the title track’s rhythm with an airy vibe, which Thorben Seiero Jensen then flatters by crooning an almost jovial break-up song. With a flurry of hand-claps and backing vocals, 'Running With Insanity''s arrangement unfurls unlike anything from their back-catalog, confidently exploring detours grown organically from their craft.

Sometimes the band’s mid-tempo grooves evoke disparaging comparisons, as with how ‘Legacy’ stirs up a vocal line reminiscent of Iron and Wine or ‘When They Bleed’ grabs at a guitar hook used by The XX, but each passing familiarity reiterates how quickly this young group are evolving their heartfelt anthems. The last two tracks, ‘Drowning (In Myself)’ and ‘Dancing Fools’, are arguably the EP’s best, swooning on clever lyricism and instrumentation doused with rich harmonics – trademarks the band has nurtured from the beginning. Coming from a group that, just two years ago, couldn’t shake journalists’ tendency for Broken Social Scene comparisons (SCQ is likewise guilty of it), And the Running With Insanity EP is a quiet revelation, showing a willingness to dissect themselves and reconvene for the most hummable, if not bombastic, version of Alcoholic Faith Mission yet.

#2 Album Of 2010: Let This Be the Last Night We Care - Alcoholic Faith Mission

Let This Be the Last Night We Care

Alcoholic Faith Mission
Paper Garden Records.

Original SCQ Review

It was a year ago right now that I was discovering Alcoholic Faith Mission’s 421 Wythe Avenue, a lush yet fragile indie-rock record, and wishing I could edit it into SCQ’s year-end list. Alas, I couldn’t; even if I was willing to make such an impulsive decision, the list had been posted days earlier. Still, the Denmark collective’s vulnerability, both lashing out and whispering patiently, had me convinced I’d hear from them again… I just figured it wouldn’t happen within four months.

Let This Be the Last Night We Care, like all great follow-ups, doesn’t demean its predecessor so much as open the floodgates 421 Wythe Avenue seemed too introverted to manage. As a result, Alcoholic Faith Mission here operates on an expansive scope, translating heartbreak and healing with a passion that’s tougher to ignore. Songs like ‘Season Me Right’ and ‘Honeydrip’ find Alcoholic Faith Mission out-performing their contemporaries (ahem, Broken Social Scene) while establishing themselves as heirs to the stadium scene. Let’s hope 2011 affords these ladies and gentlemen the recognition they deserve!

Alcoholic Faith Mission (SCQ's Year-End Questionnaire Part IV)

Most of us were still reeling from this Danish sextet’s sophomore release, 421 Wythe Avenue, when Alcoholic Faith Mission announced their speedy follow-up. What should’ve by all means sounded like a rushed recording instead stands proud as the band’s finest moment - Let This Be the Last Night We Care. SCQ recently caught up with ringleader Thorben Seierø Jensen, who divulges some back-story for that stunning record as well as big plans for the coming year. (Photo by Maud Frisenfeldt)

SCQ: Every list-lover's favourite question: what are your top albums of 2010? Feel free to include any older yet worthy records you discovered this year.

TSJ: I'll give you 5...

1. the national - high violet, even though they've become such a popular band they still hold water - imagine coming up with a lyrical line such "... i'm walking with spiders, it's quiet company..." wow...

2. BSS - forgiveness rock record

3. foals - total life forever

4. beach house - teen dream

5 .dirty projektors - bitte orca (Last year's effort was hands down one of the most interesting releases of that year - still can't get enough - and live: mind-boggling!)

SCQ: What were you listening to a lot of while recording your excellent Let This Be the Last Night We Care?

TSJ: Thanks :-)

It's quite difficult to delve deep into artists, especially new ones, while recording our own material.
When we're arranging, producing, writing, etc, we kinda try not to block our creative flow with loads of different inputs.
(Also after a 14+ hour day in the studio, for my part at least, it's not really the music mode one's in coming back to the house; you just wanna rest your ears and watch dumb movies or read a book - within an hour you'd be fast asleep anyhow :-))

However, were we to put on some music we'd probably turn to old favorites such as red house painters, talk talk, and casiotone for the painfully alone.

SCQ: Be cocky for once in your life: what was the finest thing you did all year? That moment where you actually thought "shit, I nailed that..."?

TSJ: Her name was Tina and she was a 21 year old model from Sweden...
Ha ha?? Funny?? Probably not but worth the shot...

Think we all had the feeling you're looking for after recording a very stripped down version of "SEASON ME RIGHT" with some of our fellow "collectors" from the Copenhagen Collective on the docks of Copenhagen.
that went really well... - and yes... - WE NAILED THAT...

SCQ: Effect and Cause: Songs such as 'Education' and 'Honeydrip' quickly became celebratory listening this past Spring, as I'd walk home knowing I'd survived another day at my boring office job. Okay, your turn: confess a true tale that inspired one of the songs from Let This Be the Last Night We Care.

TSJ: Sobriety Up and Left...
the way we usually create songs is by recording some random shit. Could be a guitar lick, some synths, a beat - whatever.
And we had been working on creating that whole landscape of sound that is this song, but hadn't really come up with a melody and lyrics for it.
Then luckily, after a night of boozing and smoking my lungs out, I woke up spitting blood, and voíla: a tremendous song was born.
:-)
Just a wee bit cynical, but fortunately there was nothing wrong but that event had me taking inventory... and a song was inspired and born from it...and I'm now a happy non-smoker.

SCQ: If all the reasonable and implausible ideas in your head came to fruition in 2011, what would they be?

TSJ: We really would love to see our attendance at iceland airwaves and CMJ would bear fruit and able us to turn things up a notch or two.
Also the release of a fourth album in '11 would be amazing - if we get it done in time... Working real hard on it now, but we don't wanna release anything we're not 100% comfortable with.

(Editorial Note: Thorben also included some late-breaking information written after our initial interview. All of the good news is included below...)

TSJ: It actually bore fruit: we have been added to the bill at sxsw and canadian music week...
and hopefully we'll do some touring along with those two shows.
Right now we're planning the midwest (illinois, wisconsin, michigan, minnesota) and south going west (texas, arizona, new mexico, nevada, california)
However, whether or not these tour plans will see fruition, time will tell. CMW and austin are a sure thing and should obviously be our main focus - however we spend a lot of money crossing the pond, and it would be a shame if we couldn't do a bit of touring while here.

Let This Be the Last Night We Care - Alcoholic Faith Mission

Let This Be the Last Night We Care

Alcoholic Faith Mission
PonyRec / Paper Garden Records.

SCQ Rating: 83%

In early December, maybe one week before I wrapped 2009 into the year-end picnic basket I call SCQ’s Top Twenty Albums list, 421 Wythe Avenue fell heavily into my lap. With distinct yet connected songs like ‘Escapism’ and ‘Sweet Evelyn’ in tow, 421 Wythe Avenue’s varied flow of bohemian strife and loneliness lent well to those early winter days spent alone with open-flapped boxes, as I hurried my farewell from Toronto. Given that I still listen to it often, I have little doubt Alcoholic Faith Mission’s sophomore could’ve landed on my year-end list had I discovered it a month or two earlier.

But why get hung up on the would’ve-could’ve’s when Alcoholic Faith Mission, easily Denmark’s most promising export, have already churned out another new album? Hot on the heels of their non-stop touring schedule, Let This Be the Last Night We Care wastes no time lamenting their old Brooklyn address, beefing up their quirky anthems with added bombast. From the onset this more muscled approach proves an irresistible upgrade, igniting the determined percussion of ‘My Eyes To See’ and searing into a festival-worthy chorus for ‘Got Love? Got Shellfish!’. Crowding the record’s top half, you’d be forgiven for assuming Alcoholic Faith Mission had rid themselves of the melancholy that shone like rain on Wythe Avenue’s windows – but fear not! As if the Copenhagen quintet found a way to harness those emotional peaks that scattered past releases, Let This Be the Last Night We Care uses those sporadic cases of cathartic genius as a leaping-off point. How else can one explain the chills caused by ‘Put the Virus In You’’s elegiac piano progression? Or the goosebumps behind ‘Sobriety Up and Left’ with Thorben Seiero Jensen’s lyrical stand-still “I heard you called but I was spitting up blood”? These haunting slow-burners not only share the same bolder arrangements that shine on Let This Be the Last Night We Care’s upbeat tracks, but also a genuine passion that energizes the record as a whole. Without doubt, these are heart-on-sleeve songs, heated and longing, but performed with such convincing gusto, Alcoholic Faith Mission turn a pity-party into a breathtaking, combustible listening experience.

There remain a few worthwhile Broken Social Scene comparative points, namely in Alcoholic Faith Mission’s buoyant yet layered instrumentation, but Let This Be the Last Night We Care capitalizes on a few hard-earned, home-made distinctions. Over the course of three and a half minutes, ‘Season Me Right’ morphs from the comforting folk of their last record into a forward-thinking exercise of tuneful dissonance. And words can hardly express the wall-to-wall beauty of ‘Honeydrip’, a late album highlight that showcases the band’s trademarked group-chorus - all voices clamouring together without overpowering one another - while pushing their songwriting to new heights. Explosive and wistful, Let This Be the Last Night We Care somehow begs to be blasted from the stereo as frequently as it deserves careful headphone attention. Year-end lists, get ready!

421 Wythe Avenue - Alcoholic Faith Mission

421 Wythe Avenue

Alcoholic Faith Mission
Paper Garden Records.

SCQ Rating: 79%

‘We All Have Our Shortcomings’, the single of sorts from Copenhagen’s Alcoholic Faith Mission, struck a deep chord in me; one that has scarred over and been re-opened a million times since I bought my first 7” single in the third grade. Thorben Seiero Jensen’s pained vocals layered hauntingly over a lilting acoustic coda have barely settled the emotional barometer before the five-piece begin amping up the rhythm section, and what spills perfectly out of this tense build-up is that conservative yet fresh-faced indie-ballad that references Snow Patrol as easily as it does Arcade Fire. Which is to say that few bands are so capable of indie-crossover stardom yet as equally undercover as Paper Garden Records' Alcoholic Faith Mission are right now. Expect that to change within the next few minutes…

As great an introduction to the band as ‘We All Have Our Shortcomings’ is, that potential hit is but a wave in the repressed, overcast ocean that is 421 Wythe Avenue. Lyrically tumultuous but showcased with an emboldened bravado, this sophomore drifts rather nonchalantly between serene instrumentals (‘Someone Else’) and stomping heartbreak anthems (‘Painting Animals in Watercolors’), multitracked and ghostly girl/boy harmonies (‘Escapism’) and cathartic seething (‘Sweet Evelyn’). The job of integrating so much variety thankfully doesn’t fall squarely in the lap of the producer, although the production is fantastic, carrying tinges of morning-ambience and an electronic edge that renders every note and vocal pitch-perfect. What really umbrellas these songs of oozing sentiment is Alcoholic Faith Mission’s command of songwriting, which not only disregards the go-to rules on introspective, woe-is-me composing, but in the stitches of this song-cycle pinpoints a true nostalgia for 421 Wythe Avenue. Be it an old house you passed every day for a year or an apartment that witnessed the exhausting details of your formative years, 421 Wythe Avenue builds from the foundation up (through the rites of yearning on ‘Escapism’) and establishes fine minutiae like twenty-something disaffectedness (‘Gently’) and urban proximity (the late-night jazz moaning in ‘Time’). Am I getting carried away? Perhaps… but getting to know an album of such introspection entails certain gap-filling, and for my imagination’s worth, no sonic frill is wasted.

Seemingly complicated but uncluttered, 421 Wythe Avenue is a worthy colleague to the work of Broken Social Scene; both emit emotional indie-rock that feels breezy and uncalculated yet Alcoholic Faith Mission aren’t afraid to occasionally fall off the proverbial cliff. Nothing about ‘Sweet Evelyn’, an eleven-minute rumination of repeated acoustic chords and chiming ambiance, should’ve been a good idea. Placed just before the album’s finale and barely evolving throughout its epic running-time, ‘Sweet Evelyn’ somehow earns its indulgences and trumps half the familiar rock build-ups you’ve learned to tolerate throughout life. Alcoholic Faith Mission won’t revolutionize or champion a genre this crowded but, with 421 Wythe Avenue, they’ve certainly landed a promising square on the indie-chessboard.