2016

I couldn't be this person in their lives. I had to be me in my own life.

No gif more accurate pic.twitter.com/ENWNfrq6uJ

— Miss Jenny (@Corpus_Spice) June 22, 2016

Ladyhawke: Wild Things

It almost feels like 2008’s hit ‘My Delirium’ was a mistake. Driven by a simple yet catchy guitar lick, the song took off into Pop Rock heaven, yet the rest of Ladyhawke’s début album seemed to ignore the direction of that radio-friendly gem to make a case for synth-keyboards and beats instead. When New Zealanders got the opportunity to hear her new single (first!) a few weeks back from the follow-up album Wild Things, I was excited to hear what the Masterton-born Kiwi had in store for us on her second album – more rock or more …

What?

...Urghh

Sorry … Did you say something?

...Her follow-up album.

What about it?

...Umm, Wild Things is her third album.

Are you serious?

...Yeah.

Really?

...Yeah.

I guess I should go and listen to the follow-up album then. 
Yeah.

Boy, did Anxiety completely pass the world by (or at least my part of the world). And with good reason too. While the first couple of songs start out promisingly with strong pop beat sensibilities, the rest of the album seems to struggle to find itself and has a tendency to lean heavily on ripping melodic fragments off from The Cure (‘Sunday Drive’). When the song ‘Cellophane’ comes along one can’t help wondering why there isn’t more guitar present as the arrangement’s dynamics are what attempt to propel the song while the guitars get buried by uninteresting synth. One of the great virtues of using a guitar in pop music is that it really stands out, especially if you have a riff that can be hammered out to drive the song home – something that ‘Sunday Drive’ definitely needed more of and could have made that song the follow-up hit that Ladyhawke needed (so idiots like me would know that there was a second album out!). ‘Cellophane’ in the same respect – quite a fantastic song – lacks any real dynamics, any real variety …

Okay, enough.

Onto the review of the new album. The third album.

So what does this all mean for Ladyhawke’s 2016 release Wild Things?

The album takes the synth route again.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with first single ‘A Love Song’ when Ladyhawke aired the song to her New Zealand brethren first on national television, though on subsequent listening it certainly has much to like about it. It’s a simple song that does nothing special but will be likeable for anyone who likes this brand of under-the-radar pop. ‘The River’ attempts to compete with another local singer-songwriter, Brooke Fraser, for metaphors about water and rivers, though Fraser’s ‘Something in the Water’ has so much more natural instrumentation with pop hooks appearing in every part of the song – verses, chorus, and bridges. This is essentially what’s missing from the entire Wild Things album. It’s not like there aren’t pop hooks, but much of it is derivative, and those that stand out are only one part of the song while other parts fall flat.

All over, the album feels a little homogeneous. And not just in the vocals, but in the over-reliance on one production technique. For an artist who used to bang out her pre-Ladyhawke bands on the guitar, and had her biggest hit with a guitar driven song, the one instrument that could have made this album more dynamic and interesting to listen to is at times buried or completely missing.

‘A Love Song’ and ‘The River’ start the album off on a really strong catchy pop-note, where the title song slows the tempo down with heart-warming pines of love. ‘Let it Roll’ is the highlight that gets everything right, even if the guitar is still relegated to just bridge colouring. An infectious beat, a bass groove, all propelling the song towards the chorus. ‘Chills’ is almost a direct rip-off of The Knife’s ‘Heartbeats’ in the verses while ‘Sweet Fascination’ continues taking the same cues but lacks the propulsive groove and quirky but endearing vocal approach. ‘Golden Girl’ inserts some of that Brooke Fraser acoustic guitar (or is it ukulele? ...I think it’s ukulele) in the chorus lifting the song from being just a synth-fest and adding a touch of fun.

Lyrically the entire album is an ode to falling deeply in love. Luckily it isn’t soppy and boring, but is actually uplifting and joyous which translates to the music with fruitful results, but a lack of vocal and instrument variation can really cause the songs to drag at the halfway mark. Wild Things is a good pop album, though it doesn’t stand out, but at least it’s a huge step up from the second album and almost reaches the same simple but easy fun of the début.

Hi let's be friends I live in a Sprite can on the bottom of the sea pic.twitter.com/DvCy7BpayI

— Clayton Cubitt (@claytoncubitt) May 21, 2016

Cello Suite - by W. Stubbs

This is the Cello Suite I composed between teaching from about August through to December at the end of 2015. The music progresses from a simple Gigue in 4 to a gentle Cantabile movement, before taking on some modern flavouring from the pop and rock world. The fourth movement contrasts with two alternating time signatures that develop a G minor broken chord figure before launching into a more-or-less free-form development in the fifth movement of the same theme but in a Heavy Metal style (I composed most of it on guitar as though I was playing a Metal riff).

 I. Gigue
 II. Cantabile
 III. Spiccato
 IV. Allegro Agitato
 V. Heavy Metal Riffage

Rapping, deconstructed: The best rhymers of all time

New Keepers of the Water Towers: Infernal Machine

The word ‘infernal’ refers to Hell. When someone is a nuisance, irritating or tiresome, they can be an infernal nuisance thus representing a hellish experience for you, and thus any hellish experience can be described with the word ‘infernal’.

So too can a particularly boring and insufferable experience. I’ve often thought of grinding through heavy games such as Diablo in this vein. Apparently Diablo III is super easy in this respect. Who knows. I’m confident I’d still find it boring.

Infernal Machine feels like a machine that spat out ideas without any focus, stuck in it’s own hell of second-hand parts. There are moments when you hear good ideas – surf rock’s lead slides and rhythm track chromatics (‘Tracks Over Carcosa’) – but these good ideas never go anywhere or become more interesting, and the productions not big enough to drive home dynamics that seem to just happen without any build up or force.

‘The Forever War’ is aptly named because it takes forever to get anywhere, and if you can allow yourself to be dragged along for the first five minutes, I’d be impressed if you make it another four at which point the guitar finally breaks out of its annoyingly picked chord figure, lasting a mere fraction of the time and making you wonder where the rest of that lead break went.

Maybe a black hole.

Neither the rhythm nor the lead work is interesting or catchy enough to sustain attention – and at least one of those needs to be to allow the listener greater pleasures. Most tracks will pass without you even noticing them, which, in one respect, could make great background music you don’t have to pay any attention to.

‘Tachyon Deep’ focusses more on a bongo rhythm which is a great enjoyable contrast without diverting from the band sound. Passing the halfway mark, bigger drumming seeps in and the guitar distorts away from the sustained notes, but the song never reaches any true climax, and the final chord stabs aren’t convincing enough.

In many ways this is my kind of music – stoner rock via prog and space rock with some sprinklings of surf rock. It all sounds like it’d be a good, if not interesting, mix. It is a good mix, it’s just that the ideas never rise above bog standard. I can honestly say that I like what the band is attempting, but if anything, the shortest ‘song’ (tracks are mostly instrumental with some dreary vocals moaning here and there) at a mere two minutes displays aptly what they can’t do with the simplest of ideas. ‘Escape Aleph Minor’ and the following tracks want to invoke Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma but without any of the crazy. There’s a sense of serenity at times, and there are moments of doom, but neither feel like they’ve been created through the shear abandonment of the soul towards musical ends. It all feels too safe at times.

This album has more of the feel of a band exploring music without solidifying or editing any ideas. It’s almost what I imagine Tool might sound like during rehearsals when they first start rehearsing riffs. The difference of course is that Tool spend time (actual time within the space/time continuum) working on and developing those ideas; Infernal Machine sounds like neither of those two events took place and New Keepers of the Water Towers just shrugged their shoulders and said “yeah, that’ll do.” It’s not like any of that’s particularly bad, I just can’t imagine someone who actually enjoys this album would come back for extended periods of listening.

Maybe you need to be stoned out of your brain to enjoy this music, or surfing on an acid trip; I don’t know and I don't do drugs anymore, and I'm not going to either just so I can get more out of this album.