February [Album] Reviews

Reviews of the latest by Animal Collective, Circlesquare, Cut Off Your Hands, Faunts, Guns N’ Roses, Love is All, Mr. Oizo and A.C. Newman after the jump.

Click on the album names to preview and purchase from iTunes.

[1] Animal Collective
Merriweather Post Pavilion
Domino
By now you’ve probably read half a dozen 331 – 1,009 word reviews about this record. Including those very accurate word counts, I want to be specific. Beginning with the cover art: its intensity will have you tripping balls from any distance (computer screen or otherwise). The thumping bass will break the plates on your walls and the teeth in your mouth. My friend hallucinated while listening to this record, although his notion of hallucinations is slightly askew, you might also! On “My Girls,” Animal Collective responds to Madonna’s truthful reasoning that “we are living in a material world.” This response is creating poppy pop with reflective lyrics like “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things… I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls.” Cute! Now that Panda Bear has a family, it is interesting to hear a remarkably produced, more mature, yet still experimental record. This is the one for 2009. And you knew that. So, things to do: attend a listening party, strike up a situation in which you dance with a certain someone and smile and say, “I like this song…” Then, buy a record player and the vinyl because it will, I promise, take you on at least one unforgettable trip. 5/5 – Stefana Fratila

[2] Circlesquare
Songs About Dancing and Drugs
Boompa
I’ve never liked dancing and I’m finished with drugs, but Circlesquare’s Songs About Dancing and Drugs is tempting me to do both. They’ve encouraged me down this dark path with the addition of guitarist Trevor Lawson and drummer Dale Butterfield. The duo pulls Circlesquare away from the electronic lockstep of previous releases taking the album toward a humanized avalanche of sound. This shines through on songs like “Dancers” and “Hey You Guys.” Guitar parts start awkwardly, building toward something you’re not quite sure of, until it all comes together with that single missing snare hit. Jeremy Shaw’s coolly detached vocals ride the edge of mechanical goosestepping and human emotion, with the tendency toward the emotional in songs like “Timely” and “Music for Satellites.” While listening I kept finding myself singing along with Jeremy’s nah nahs and doot doos, so much so that I was soon singing along without even knowing the words. Circlesquare has convinced me to start snorting ones and zeros and grinding with guitar feedback. 4/5 -Troy Sebastian Alden

[3] Cut Off Your Hands
You And I
Universal
Cut Off Your Hands’ debut album You and I is boring. This is the first album I have had trouble reviewing because it’s just so… middling? Usually I can find something either outstandingly good or bad to write about, but not so in this case. This album is fine for what it is; an example of how, in a post-everything culture, it’s okay to reach back 20 years, pick out an already bland style of music and bland it down some more so as to not appear retro. Lead singer Nick Johnston sometimes sounds like he’s channeling Rick Astley, sometimes Robert Smith, but mostly he’s channeling straight formulaic whatever-the-hell kind of music this is. Okay, seriously, I am listening to the album right now as I type this and it just really inspires no response whatsoever and that might be all you need to know about Cut Off Your Hands. 1/5 -Bix Brecht

[4] Faunts
Feel.Love.Thinking.Of
Friendly Fire Recordings
There are advantages to being a band in Edmonton, Alberta. You don’t get pigeonholed with your sound, you get to be remixed by Cadence Weapon (if you’re lucky/any good) and you get to sound like the bleak winters (the sound of a bleak winter being the only advantage to living through a bleak winter). Faunts’ third album doesn’t sound like anywhere though and that’s what its first hook is. Taking shoegaze to a weird contemporary place is difficult, and sometimes Feel.Love.Thinking.Of misses, but the record eventually finds a perfect place to live; somewhere between an overcast November day and a poignant scene in a Darren Aronofsky feature. The more adventurous listener will put it on for a late evening lovemaking session, and the casual listener can at the very least appreciate the wide production. Add in that the standout track “It Hurts Me All The Time” sounds like a perfect amalgam of a Lilys song, a Sega Genesis game and the Eric’s Trip tune “Happens All the Time” and you’re left with an album that hits, misses, but comes out the of tunnel with a trophy in hand. 3/5 -Trevor Risk

[5] Guns N’ Roses
Chinese Democracy
Universal
Axl Rose kept the world waiting sixteen whole years for the follow-up to Use Your Illusion I/II. Considering it took Guns N’ Roses my entire lifespan to create this mindfully-titled record, I was expecting something a little better. Although when the 45-second intro of actors and actresses ‘excitedly speaking about nothing’ came on, I wasn’t really that surprised. For weeks, my friend told me how pumped his customers were about the anticipated release, answering the phone with “Welcome to the Jungle! Guns N’ Roses out on November 23rd!” At that point, I didn’t know very much about them (except that they existed). I actually told someone I was reviewing Guns N’ Moses… a reference to my Civilization homework, right? No? Well, I ultimately asked myself “Who is going to buy this?” and I realized it could only be two particular groups of people: those guys with ‘cahraaazy’ belt buckles and the parents of those teenagers that make out at steamy house parties (all the time). Just like those parties you don’t go to anymore (but remember vividly because of their cheap strobe lighting that got to your head), that’s what Chinese Democracy feels like. 0/5 – Stefana Fratila

[6] Love is All
A Hundred Things Keep Me Up At Night
What’s Your Rupture?
It’s not hard to smile, you don’t even need an excuse most of the time. Well, if you bought stock in Circuit City or you work (worked) for GM or you’re getting generally fucked by the world you might. Or maybe you’re just not a very happy person. Hey, some people aren’t. You might take drugs to make you think that you’re happy, but they don’t work. Just a side effect to mask a symptom. You’re really better off removing all of the stuff in your life that makes you unhappy like hate and violence and money and greed and Stephen Harper. Then what? Then you’re just an empty shell that used to be filled with shitty shit. Now you need LOVE… and that will make you smile for sure. Now if Poly Steyrene’s voice didn’t make me want to stick sharp pencils in my ears I would compare Love is All to Xray Spex, but the sax is the only real similarity. Oh well, I’m going to compare them anyways. The Xray Spex make me hurt (in a good way) some of the time, Love is All makes me not hurt (in a better way) all of the time. 5/5 -Hayz Fisher

[7] Mr. Oizo
Lambs Anger
Ed Banger
I can’t stop listening to this album… Mr. Oizo is electronic club music for people who like their electronic club music goofy and weird. The only problem with his discography up until this point was that there weren’t enough solid dance songs or party anthems. Even though Mr. Oizo pretty much conquered mainstream dancefloors on his first try when he released “Flat Beat” 10 years ago, he never really followed it up with any other bangers (unless you count “Stunt” which is a little too intense for most parties.) But now we have Lamb’s Anger and it’s filled to the brim with the dumbest, silliest rave anthems and party jams imaginable. Dear Mr. Oizo, “Bruce Willis is Dead” is so awesome that I forgive you for producing Uffie. My only fear is that I’ve preached the greatness of this album in print, when it was supposed to be some sort of treat designed especially for my brain. This is my favourite collection of Oizo’s work so far and I hope he keeps going in this direction. 5/5 -Kellen Powell

[8] A.C. Newman
Get Guilty
Last Gang Records
It’s hard to find fault in a Carl Newman-styled pop song. He knows just what to do to make a song catchy and somehow, I always feel inspired when I listen. It also helps that I feel like I’m listening to a new New Pornographers record. The album starts off with “There are Maybe Ten or Twelve”, a similar song to the Peter Bjorn and John Writer’s Block album opener. Make of that what you will! As you listen, you will subconsciously add kazoo on “The Heartbreak Rides”, start chopstick coffee table drumming on “Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer” and “la la la la” along on “Submarines of Stockholm.” Just sayin. I adore the closer, “You All of My Days and All of My Days Off,” as it confirms that a clever title can prove a song wonderful too. Like Miranda July having a short film entitled “Are You the Favourite Person of Anybody?” – obviously it’s going to be precious. Or, at the very least, perfect to write on a mixtape tracklisting for someone you love. 4.5/5 -Natalie Vermeer