So many artists from the so-called "indie rock" boom of the early to mid-2000s resurfaced in 2017, many with comeback records after a long hiatus. Meanwhile, the new album from the War on Drugs was considered the high-water mark of the genre—which only confirms that whatever was once known as "indie rock" is all but dead. Which makes the few triumphs below even more valuable.
Broken Social Scene – Hug of Thunder (Arts and Crafts)
It’s hard to believe Broken Social Scene didn’t already come up
with that title earlier in their career. It defines both their sound and their
live experience: a warm embrace, almost suffocating at times, all the biggest
emotions laid bare and expressed through gesture. Vulnerability presented with
a small army of friends. A big, big love with a big, big sound, forever and
ever, amen.
Broken Social Scene took a hiatus after touring 2010’s Forgiveness Rock Record, which is a good
thing: this was never a band built for the recording/touring cycle, and time
apart has always benefited the project. This time out, singers Leslie Feist and
Emily Haines are noticeably back in the fold, joined by Ariel Engle (AroarA,
Hydra). The horns also play a larger role, giving everything an extra heft.
With so many solo outlets for the individual members, Hug of Thunder benefits from a united sense of purpose: everyone
involved knows what this particular band does well, and hence we have one
rousing song after another that also happen to be filled with sonic shades that
tickle the tiny corners of your headphones, the kinds of songs U2 has been
trying to write for the past 25 years and failing, songs marry pop melodies,
stadium ambition and experimentalism. Even the lower-key, more subtle material
seems designed to echo out across large festival fields.
As with any band this size, and with this level of talent and
competing egos, the real trick is avoiding bloat and excess. With this group of
old friends, it sounds like that gets even easier with age. (July 6, 2017)
Stream: “Halfway Home,” “Skyline,” “Please Take Me With You”
Filthy Friends – Invitation
(Kill Rock Stars)
Since the demise of
REM in 2011, all members have been laying low. Michael Stipe has popped up on a
couple of late-night talk shows for a skit or two. Mike Mills is trying his
hand at symphonic works. Peter Buck has been putting out solo albums quietly on
a tiny, independent, vinyl-only label. All seem more than happy to have nothing
to do with the machinery of rock’n’roll.
Except here comes Buck with a powerhouse new band, on
the venerable punk label Kill Rock Stars. It features musicians from the
Fastbacks, REM’s touring band, and--King Crimson?! It’s fronted by
Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker, who recently restarted that power trio after a
nine-year hiatus.
Yes, it sounds a lot
like the singer from Sleater-Kinney fronting a more raw version of REM. Buck’s
sound and songwriting style is unmistakable, and certain tracks here harken
back to REM classics. “Windmill” is a more than obvious nod to Television’s
“Marquee Moon,” a key touchstone for both Buck and Tucker. On the other hand,
“Come Back Shelley” slinks like T.Rex (the band), which would have been hard to
detect in either of their other bands. Tucker doesn’t feel compelled to
constantly channel the aggression that Sleater-Kinney so often demands; she
sounds more than comfortable toning it down here, in ways she didn’t on her own
solo records, while never dulling the unique edge she’s always had in her
voice. While there is softer material here, like the breezy, almost jazz closer
“Invitation,” Buck and company were obviously attracted to Tucker for what
she’s known for in the first place; a voice like hers can’t be tamed for long.
“Holding on to the
past won’t make it repeat,” she sings on the opening track. Between the
pedigree on hand here and the strength of the new material, Filthy Friends are
looking forward to a time when their CVs don’t matter as much as the new music
they’re creating. For a bunch of old folks on their second or third go-around,
they sound excited and hungry--and not at all too old for rock’n’roll.
(Aug. 24, 2017)
Stream: “Despierta,”
“Faded Afternoon,” “No Forgotten Son”
Iron and Wine – Beast
Epic (Sub Pop)
In many ways, Beast Epic winds the clock back to
2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days.
There are no dub reggae grooves, no jazz excursions, no crescendos, no danger
of veering into jam-band territory--even if all those things were welcome
extensions of Beam’s aesthetic. Instead, it’s 11 three-minute songs where you
can hear the squeaks of the strings as Beam moves around the neck of the
guitar, even when he’s surrounded by a full band that applies the most delicate
of touches throughout. For what it’s worth, he’s also returned to the Sub Pop
label that gave him his start, after two bigger-budget records for major-label
affiliates.
Just in case listening
to Iron and Wine didn’t already always make you feel older than you were, Beam
admits that this, more than any of his others, is made by a middle-aged man. He
recently said, “Where the older songs painted a picture
of youth moving wide-eyed into adulthood’s violent pleasures and
disappointments, this collection speaks to the beauty and pain of growing up
after you’ve already grown up. For me, that experience has been more generous
in its gifts and darker in its tragedies.” The best of times, the worst of
times: that pretty much sums up your 40s, doesn’t it?
Beam could easy cash
out by writing less oblique lyrics, by doing acoustic covers of pop songs (his
take on the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” helped launch his career), by
decorating his songs with more conventional arrangements. He has a beautiful
voice and writes beautiful songs: that’s all he needs. But that’s what he did
on his very first album. Every album since, even here on a somewhat
back-to-basics record, he’s still full of surprising ideas and pushing himself.
Middle age isn’t about giving up. It’s about trying harder. (Aug. 24, 2017)
Stream: “Summer Clouds,”
“Last Night,” “The Truest Stars We Know”
LCD Soundsystem – American
Dream (Columbia)
The hotly anticipated
comeback album by the band who taught indie kids to dance opens with… a ballad
that sounds like a Cure B-side from 1990.
Many LCD fans were
upset that after announcing a break-up and playing a triumphant last show at
Madison Square Gardens, filmed and recorded as Shut Up and Play the Hits, that they’re now back on the festival
circuit just four years later. Those fans are going to be even more upset to
hear an album like this sullying LCD’s legacy. What’s worse, bandleader James
Murphy—always a self-aware guy, to say the least—appears to know it, as he
sings: “I’m not dangerous now / the way I used to be once / I’m just too old
for it now / at least that seems to be true.” Self-flagellation is one thing;
doing it on a poor track with even worse lyrics is another crime entirely.
Much of American Dream sits at mid-tempo, which
is fine: bands change and mature, and one can’t expect the adrenalin rush of
the first two records over and over again. (Also: The Cure’s Disintegration is a great record.) But
the slower tracks here, with the exception of the title track—which bears an
odd resemblance to “Worlds Away” by ’80s Vancouver band Strange Advance—are dire
and dirge-like. Ballads have never been James Murphy’s strength, and that’s not
about to change any time soon.
Broken Social Scene
and Arcade Fire have already had trouble this year convincing people that the
magic of 2004 is still alive. LCD Soundsystem isn’t helping their case.
Stream: “Call the
Police,” “American Dream,” “Emotional Haircut”
The National – Sleep
Well Beast (4AD/Beggars)
This is the National’s
seventh album. They’re inexplicably popular. They’re the somnambulant Arcade
Fire. U2 with zero charisma. They’re ostensibly a rock band, but their music
sounds like divorced bankers opiated on too much expensive red wine.
Not much has changed
here, unless a few more synths here and there are considered revolutionary for
such a static band. The production is marginally more interesting, on songs
like “Empire Line” and “I’ll Still Destroy You,” both of which tap into the
hypnotic trance of German art-rock or West African guitar music—in the most
subtle ways possible, of course. Singer Matt Beringer still sings like he’s
five minutes away from falling asleep. The rest of the band backs him
begrudgingly, playing as if they had something better to do.
Beringer says this is
a midlife marital crisis record, and that he cowrote many of the lyrics with
his wife as a way of working through their troubles. “Blame it on me, I really
don’t care / it’s a foregone conclusion,” he sings in what sounds like an act
of mutually assured destruction on “Carin at the Liquor Store.” “I’m going to
keep you in love with me for a while,” he claims on “Dark Side of the Gym.”
Good luck with that. (Sept. 7, 2017)
Stream: “Nobody Else
Will Be There,” “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” “I’ll Still Destroy
You.”
The War on Drugs – A
Better Understanding (Warner)
Grizzly Bear – Painted
Ruins (RCA)
“Is the War on Drugs
rock’s new torchbearer?” That headline comes from a publication not known for
hyperbolic pop-culture pieces: The New Yorker. Maybe the magazine’s target
demographic—and its arts editor—has forgotten what rock’n’roll is, or what it
sounds like. Or maybe this is just another nail in the coffin of rock’n’roll,
rock music, indie rock, or whatever you want to call it.
Almost every song by
the War on Drugs is approximately the same tempo, and it’s not one likely to
raise a pulse. Almost every song has chugging acoustic guitar and electric pass
and pulsing keyboards, with some guitar leads snaking around the lead vocals.
Sometimes there is some xylophone or bells to make you think of “Born to Run.”
The songs that don’t have any of those elements are too narcoleptic to mention,
though the 11-minute dirge “Thinking of a Place” underscores just how rarely
this band actually goes anywhere.
Sure, some of this
album is pretty. And I’m sure a War on Drugs song sounds great when you’re
stoned. But unless you’ve been pining for Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham to
have produced a Grateful Dead album in 1977, there’s likely not much for you
here.
Nor is there much hope
for aging indie rock fans in the latest from Grizzly Bear, who, like the War on
Drugs, are making their major-label debut in 2017. Grizzly Bear are like
Radiohead with fewer interesting bits and more obtuse song structures. To their
credit, they’re wonderful harmony singers, and certainly have more sonic
imagination than the War on Drugs or most guitar-based bands. But their songs
are all sharp angles and seemingly assembled by cut-and-paste. It’s cleverness
without charisma, full of smarts but no swagger. Maybe the vocals are too
distracting, placing the band in a pop music context when they’d be better off
liberating themselves from any structural formats at all. As it is, this is
egghead experimentalism that doesn’t coalesce in any fashion. At a time when
the most experimental pop music is coming from R&B corners, listening to a
band like Grizzly Bear seems archaic and unnecessary. (Aug. 31, 2017)
Stream the War On
Drugs: “Up All Night,” “In Chains,” “Holding On”
Stream Grizzly Bear:
“Wasted Acres,” “Mourning Sound,” “Glass Hillside”
Wolf Parade – Cry
Cry Cry (Sub Pop)
What year is it again?
New albums by Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Feist, New Pornographers, and
now Wolf Parade—it’s like the last 15 years never happened. Except a lot has
happened. Those artists were at the epicentre of an explosion of Canadian rock
music that set a new template for years to come. That they’ve all remained
vital, together and in separate projects, is a testament.
Wolf Parade went on
hiatus in 2010. Dan Boeckner has had three bands since: Handsome Furs, Divine
Fits and Operators. Spencer Krug abandoned his other band, Sunset Rubdown, to
record solo records as Moonface. Drummer Arlen Thompson and guitarist Dante
DeCaro busied themselves with low-key projects on Vancouver Island.
During their first
incarnation, Wolf Parade always sounded like they were in a hurry: every song
had a propulsive intensity, played as if it were the last gig of their lives.
Everybody in the band sounded like they were falling over each other on a
postage-stamp-sized stage in a dingy bar on St. Laurent in Montreal. Now
they’re older, wiser, living on the West Coast, and some of the chaos has
subsided. Due to their own maturity and the presence of producer John
Goodmanson (Sleater-Kinney), every instrumentalist is heard more clearly in the
mix—especially drummer Arlen Thompson, who really shines.
The overall intensity
remains: Wolf Parade are as virile and vital as ever. And with Boeckner and
Krug both writing songs that complement each other perfectly, this is as good a
comeback as one could ever hope for. (Oct. 6, 2017)
Stream: "Lazarus
Online," "Valley Boy," "Weaponized"
