The National ~ Trouble Will Find Me

8.5

There are a number of different ways an album can make one feel sad, but in my experience I would classify most of these under two main umbrella categories: sorrowful albums and sad albums. Trouble Will Find Me really appears to belong in the latter of those two categories, and yet it feels more sorrowful than sad. Doubtless, all of this requires some explanation. When I say 'sorrowful albums' I am referring to those albums which focus on some sort of tragedy, there is a substance behind the artist's sadness. When someone has something to really be broken up over, his or her sorrow tends to feel much more real. I think of William Fitzsimmons' The Sparrow and the Crow, a divorce album so intimate and barefaced that I haven't been able to stomach its entirety since meeting my wife. At the other end of the spectrum is an album like Morrissey's Ringleader of the Tormentors. The man may have a good amount to say in a lot of his work - and don't get me wrong, I love the Smiths - but, Ringleader is mostly the Moz wailing about nothing. This, as far as I see it, is what separates simply sad albums from truly sorrowful albums. And, while sorrowful albums often create a powerful impact for the listener, the feelings stirred by sad albums are typically as fleeting as the substance which is being sung about.

All of that to say that Trouble somehow fits the billing of a sad album while delivering the emotional punch of a sorrowful one. Matt Berninger's songwriting is a mix of melancholy and mundane, everyday life in plain speech interspersed with enigmatic lines of poetry. One song contains both the line "I'm tired, I'm freezing, I'm dumb" and the lines "when they ask what do I see / I say a bright white beautiful heaven hanging over me." At first, it's hard to swallow the odd combination of first person prose and poetry, but eventually the two become so connected that there really is no difference between them. Berninger simply interprets his life as a poetic tragedy of sorts, and it's never really overstated or melodramatic, just confusing and realistic. Sure, there are occasional slips into territory that feels contrived and over-poeticized ("under the withering white skies of humiliation"), but the melodrama is sparse on this album. The sorrow here is small, but real.

From what I know of The National's discography, that realism seems to be their most brilliant quality, and I really do mean brilliant. Even if I may be a married man in his early twenties living in the suburbs, Trouble really makes me feel as if I know what it's like to be ten years older, single, and living in a city. And it doesn't just paint a picture of what that life looks like from the outside, but it really gets inside the heart of someone in that situation. It gets specific enough to feel truly personal by using first names (Jenny, Jo, Davey), first person, and dialogue. But, it also stays generic enough to allow the listener to become the "I" in every song. It's through that vicarious living that Trouble delivers its blow. And not that you necessarily feel the sadness that's being sung about, because honestly, a lot of it isn't all that sad. But, you feel sympathy for whoever really is experiencing everything that the album is built upon. Sure, he isn't going through anything traumatic, there is no unexpected death or painful separation, but he's a real person and he's going through a hell of a lot. And not only that, but he's normal. By the end of the album it's easy to realize that pretty much everyone's going through a hell of a lot, and Trouble finds a way to make you dwell on that reality, and it sort of breaks your heart.

Young the Giant ~ Mind Over Matter

6.7

If Young the Giant's self-titled debut was a hot, sunny day (they did record a live version of "I Got" in the desert), then Mind Over Matter is the hot summer night that follows. A few tracks still carry the same brightness that much of the band's previous album contained; but even these sunny spots, namely "Daydreamer" and "In My Home," feel more like speeding into the sunset than strumming guitars on a warm afternoon. In a way, this dimming of the lights takes away from the upbeat and carefree sound that drew me to Young the Giant (then The Jakes) in the first place. But, it also provides a route for more a meaningful, if slightly dark, message. Consistently throughout the album that message tends to lean towards regret as frontman Sameer Gadhia sings about the way things could be instead of how they are. Nowhere is this regret more poignant than on "Camera," where Gadhia asks himself, "why can't I get close to the man I saw in me when I was young?" And though that line itself may be a little blunt, the chorus of the song seems to cut straight to the heart of Mind Over Matter: "On holiday with a broken camera / and all I say is I could be happier / I could be happier."

All this so far makes the album out as quite the bleak affair, but it spans a fairly wide range of emotions throughout its thirteen tracks, a range that actually adds to the impact of those moments of sheer regret. One of the strongest points in the album is its opening track (excluding the 48-second intro) "Anagram," which showcases what I consider the band's strongest musical attribute, their tone. The song opens with a crisp, bright guitar riff, which weaves its way in and out of the track between passionate yet reserved vocals, a staccato bass line, and a bridge that rings out with more bright, nearly tropical-sounding guitar reverberations. This track and those "sunny spots" I mentioned above provide a context for the regret - nearly sorrow - that shows up again and again on the album. The listener sees both passion and pain here, rejoice and regret.

And yet for how thematically connected (assuming stark contrast counts as connection) the songs of Mind Over Matter seem to be, there is a lack of segue from any one track to the next. Even the move from the introductory track "Slow Dive" to the first full song of the album, "Anagram," seems more of a disruption than a transition, as if the band felt a need for sudden movement less than one minute into the album. Certainly variety between songs is appreciated on just about any album, but the type of variety Young the Giant include on this album can sometimes leave the listener feeling disoriented, even jerked around a bit. That rollercoaster of feeling could be intentional, since the album does convey the highs and lows of youthful passion, from the "I want to dance / and I'm not dancing alone" of "Eros" to the point in the album's closing track where one is left "paralyzed on the floor." But, the transitions between those contrasting moments in the album tend to feel more like bipolar disorder than the emotional swings of the relatively youthful. The tracks on Mind Over Matter definitely take the listener up and down, but it would be nice if that ride didn't feel quite so jarring.

Vampire Weekend ~ Modern Vampires of the City

With this being the first review posted, I should open with a few explanatory notes.

1. I plan on using a scale of 1 to 10. I know some people don't care for this type of review system, since the score of any album truly is relative and arbitrary; but, it allows for easier comparison between different albums. Also, I'm sort of obsessed with rating/ranking things for some reason, and nothing else more so than music.
2. While I do intend to review new albums as often as I can, I don't have the connections or financial means to acquire every new album as soon as it's released. And on top of that, I don't like the idea of posting any reviews here before I've given the album a fair shot. This doesn't necessarily entail a certain number of listen-throughs, but it does certainly require more than one or two.
3. If you are reading this review and thinking to yourself, "Oh, Vampire Weekend, I hate that kind of hipster trash;" or; "Oh, Vampire Weekend, I hope this is the kind of stuff that's always on here!" then I have a few things to say to you before you either stop reading or immediately bookmark this page (actually, go ahead and do the latter, regardless of what else I say). 
1. If you have a bad perception of a band whose album I'm posting on here, you don't have to read that review - OR - you could forget about perceptions (especially if they're based on very little listening experience) and see how your opinion compares to mine after a fair listen.
2. I promise that I will post about bands both very different from and rather similar to Vampire Weekend in the future, so even if this review has nothing for you, another one in a week or two could be exactly what you want to read.

And, now that I've bored to death all of you reading this, I'll actually go ahead and give my take on Modern Vampires.

8.1

Certain music sites, such as Pitchfork (some day soon I'll discuss how my love/hate relationship with that site has affected my take on music and reviews in particular) touted Modern Vampires as the album of 2013. I would be lying if I said that wasn't a large reason why it's the first review to grace this page, but I would also be lying if I said that I completely agree with all the praise the album received. It definitely did a lot to capture the zeitgeist of 2013, at least among those in Vampire Weekend's general audience. And it definitely showed an increased maturity, both musically and lyrically by the band. But, I think those points have been blown out of proportion by many listeners/critics.

Starting with the positives - and don't get that opening paragraph wrong, there are plenty of positives - these songs are considerably more thought-provoking than just about anything on Vampire Weekend or Contra. "Ya Hey," despite the odd, whining repetition of its title, is actually a quite serious affair, where lead singer Ezra Koenig directly confronts God, "I am that I am," wondering "who could ever live that way." And yet, for all the serious posturing, I hesitate to give Koenig too much credit for questioning God - it's not exactly the first time pop culture has done that. But, the questions raised do come with what feels like deep sincerity, which is refreshing and definitely creates a feeling of sympathy between the listener and the lyrics. A similar, though even more intense sincerity is found in "Hannah Hunt," arguably the strongest song in Vampire Weekend's entire catalog. More through the music than the actual lyrics, they really do convince the listener that they have their "own sense of time" here. Also, the chorus of the song just has a way of staying lodged in your head for days, or at least it did in mine.

On the other hand, Vampire Weekend is still a fun-loving, rap-inspired indie band who, as a friend of mine once bluntly pointed out, "have no idea what a chord is." About half of the songs on Modern Vampires could be transplanted onto Contra and only slightly alter the feel of that previous album. Not that there's anything bad about the sound Vampire Weekend have created over the past 7 years, but it is a very distinct and fairly monolithic sound. Also, while that sound is crafted to fit a more mature and deep album expertly on Modern Vampires, the upbeat handclaps of "Diane Young" and rapid-action vocals that open "Worship You" seem to distract from an overall theme of growing up and taking life more seriously. But then again, in the band's own words: "wisdom's a gift, but you'd trade it for youth / age is an honor - it's still not the truth."

An Introduction to D.o.S.

My wife has been bothering me for some time now to start writing about music, particularly in the format of a blog. And as I was looking at this stack of nearly twenty albums that I'm currently adding to my personal library, I've finally realized that she probably has a rather decent point.

Today's stack of CDs to be added to my iTunes library.

So, for anyone who wants to join me in this adventure, the rest of this post will give you a general outline of what to expect.
I plan to post:

• Album reviews on at least a weekly basis, covering both new releases as well as new personal discoveries of old releases.
• Occasional reflections on the life and work of artists/groups, especially those whom I consider to be under-appreciated or mostly unheard of by the general listening public.
• My own personal journey in musical taste, appreciation, listening approach, etc. Essentially, I might occasionally post a rambling bit on my current thoughts and feelings towards music or some aspect thereof. (Hint: these are the ones that you'll either want to skip or send me ranting comments/emails about)
• Anything else related to the world of music that strikes my fancy. This is my blog and I can do with it as I please, though I promise I will always make an effort to keep my audience - whoever that turns out to be - in mind. 

 Hopefully this won't be the last post you read, whether by your fault or mine.

-Aa