Issue #66 Album Reviews

Reviews of the latest by The Clientele, DVAS, Hot Panda and M.I.A.

The Clientele
Minotaur
Merge
The Clientele have always been the band that I’ve listened to on cold and rainy days, but their sixth release, Minotaur EP, is being released in the middle of summer. “What the fuck?” Listening to this on a hot and humid evening, though, I begin to see how the violin and dreamy guitar perfectly soundtrack a barely dressed girl, in her apartment holding a flower that moves in the wind from her fan. “That romantic shit or whatever!” The electric bass sound. The English man’s voice. The yams in the oven. A song gets dark. “I love you, okay?” The eighth track comes on, “Nothing Here Is What It Seems,” and the pop gets wet and the drunk outside is still screaming: “I’ll learn Greek. So fuck you!” This is a nice and seasonal record to play in your living room.
-Stefana Fratila

DVAS
Society
Upper Class Recordings
Not for nothing but this album didn’t make my backbone slide; nor did it make my pants feel tight. Society’s strongest moments are achieved at the beginning of the album, with the title track and “Consenting Adults” being the best offerings. After the midpoint all of the tracks sound repetitive and more like an afterthought. Their last two tracks, “Giving it All Away” and “Passionate Persuasion,” would do better by not being on the album at all. My advice to DVAS would be to release strong singles, rather than throw out a full length that doesn’t have any real umphh. It’s not that it’s a bad album, it just isn’t really great. In summation, if Society was a Star Trek phaser setting, it would be meh.
-Dr. Ian Super

Hot Panda
How Come I’m Dead?
Mint
Boy, this is nice! How Come I’m Dead sounds like the perfect soundtrack for a sick new movie you could write in your head. Imagine the playful new alterations of the title that you could come up with … for instance: “How Come I’m Dad?” or “Homecoming, I’m Done.” Don’t those sound like nice movies to watch? It seems like Edmonton’s Hot Panda are ready. A song like “Fuck Shit Up/ Hell Hey Hex” is asking for a toss an’ turn in a busy and abandoned ‘venue’. Maybe I’m losing my grip on what music really is to me. But right now I just wish I could see this band live because, man, when I hear “Start Making Sense” I know those are the kind of guitar riffs I want to hear now and then… like the moment when we first felt something from music in ninth grade. Where were Hot Panda when we were in ninth grade!?
-Stefana Fratila

M.I.A.
/\/\ /\ Y /\
Interscope
There comes a moment in every controversial musician’s career where the tides turn and the fans that once anticipated her songs with genuine relish pull the pedestal out from under their idol and wait to watch her fall. For M.I.A., her third and possibly most personal album, /\/\ /\ Y /\, is that moment. But then again, that moment has been coming in fits and starts for months. First, there was the online release of M.I.A.’s uber-violent music video for “Born Free,” a calculated controversy that missed the mark with its oversimplified human rights allegory. Then there was Lynn Hirschberg’s New York Times Magazine takedown, which publicly shredded M.I.A.’s credibility as a revolutionary (if indeed anyone ever took her self-appointed role of pop star-pundit seriously). /\/\ /\ Y /\’s lyrics are often clumsy attempts at incendiary political statement, and lines like “Connected to the Google / Connected the government” (in opener “The Message”) are off-putting enough even before you realize they include not a shred of irony. The album is full of misses (and several near-hits), and it’s not as catchy as its predecessors, but it will hardly be the end of M.I.A. Behind /\/\ /\ Y /\’s over-aggresiveness are the makings of solid hip hop. If she learns to lay off, she might have us eating out of the palm of her truffle-fry-stained hands all over again.
-Nojan Aminosharei