#1!!! (1979)

Oddball human pop meets danceable robot groundwork. They arrive at disco and do disco well (albeit weirdly and mechanically), tag-teaming the role as thing-responsible-for-retarded-transcendence 5 times over. The most retardedly transcendent track (6) is a collaboration wherein the robots back the pop for three minutes of heavenly absurdity not transcendentally pop, not transcendentally electric, just a blissful synthesis of these playfully competing elements. A division occurs at the halfway mark- they pretend to go back to competing playfully, but the bond is still audibly/philosophically there. This is important- we can still thank Moroder but it's the Maels' positivity which distinguishes it from everything that came next (Sparks being 'literate', 'camp', 'mean', 'caustic', 'acerbic') at the same time that it paved the way for everything that came next (rockists claiming synthpop to be 'anaemic', 'soulless', 'Hiterlish').

A

here

Anxiety (2013)

1. Did gloomy hipsters ruin R&B in 2012? (the guardian, 29 December 2012)
2. Nah (everyone)
3. Will gloomy hipsters ruin R&B in 2013? (someone, 5 March 2013)
4. Nah (most people)
5. Anxiety's all about disconnection and Ashin already told you that before you heard it
6. I guess the inclusion of Munch's The Scream on the cover would've been too obvious, though obviousness isn't something Anxiety avoids, ever
7. The art of disconnection- anxiety as the byproduct of desire and lack, of not having and wanting, or of having and not wanting, behold the nature of desire and the inevitability of anxiety
8. Behold the opening and closing tracks
9. Peter Gabriel
10. Post-internet
11. Grimes
12. Turgid solipsism or a treatise on the self (universal) and r&b in general (pretentious, unnecessary)
13. Seriously though
14. He'll probably fess up and say that's the point, man
15. And I'll be like yeah I know, man
16. And he'll be like did you hear where it's all poppy and there's a buzzsaw
17. And I'll be like yeah that was a cool song, man, is it about your anxiety, my anxiety, their anxiety, or every r&b song ever
18. And he'll be like it's all the same, man
19. Anxiety in the age of superficial knowledge+connections+identities
20. A scream through the vaporwaves
21. Climbing Up the Walls for gloomy 21st century hipsters
22. Does its status as a socio-technolo-musico-psychological dissertation add to or lessen its value?
23. Well, when it gets me by the balls...
24. And then when it doesn't...
25. Love it when it screams to me and gets all in my head and like makes me feel sick
26. Because at those points it's beyond the self-awareness, irony, and intertextuality supposedly defining it- it's startling, and human- a sort of cure for the conditions of its (his, and our) anxiety
27. And when it fails to transcend...
28. A failure. Don't let anyone tell you that its failures enhance its message (Lacanian self-analysis)
29. Because they will, and it matters more than that- Anxiety occasionally transcends both the problems it deals with and its ideological arsenal- an emotional mess that utilizes the 21st century existential crisis for moments both reassuring and genuine (if absurd) 
30. It's about moments, I'm sure, and it has them, sure, and to have highs you need lows, and if it was all desire achieved without the subsequent lack then it would be to avoid the condition of having and not wanting, meaning no anxiety, meaning no Anxiety, and so he sticks to his conceptual guns, so it's more truthful, fine, but man, this makes me lame, or whatever, but on a third of these tracks we get something transformative, something curative rather than reflective, evidence of the power of art, and emotion, whether it lifts or crushes, it breaks us out of our heads rather than telling us what's in there and why we're in there, occasionally it's a work of art beyond the one that people are saying it is, and how am I in the minority not being frustrated by this

B-

try/buy/spotify

Avalon (1982)

I briefly thought about growing up and then I decided against it but my love for cornball sophistipop remained. I actually think it's easier to enjoy records like Avalon when you can't/don't want to relate to its make-out yuppie demographic. There's an unusual atmosphere hanging over Avalon and that's probably thanks to the cover- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog for white-collar Romantics divided in regard to what the mythical Avalon means to their white-collar Romantic contemporaries: the end of the colonial dream and the beginning of world music, the return of the colonial dream, or an allusion to Ferry's bedroom out of the spotlight. The best song's the opener which is even more obvious than the title track- Ferry throws every archetypal Romantic image he can at you BUT OH WAIT it's all in past-tense, and allegedly that's all there is- the beauty of times gone by. Pessimistic end-of-an-era vibes, optimistic end-of-an-era messages, or Ferry getting horny and reading 19th Century poetry? I can't tell, and that doesn't really bother me. His croons are some of the best in cornball sophistipop, his moods are darkly seductive (no homo), and the synths which permeate every sound are at the point of atmospheric which occurs just before tacky. Actually my favourite Roxy Music album

A

check

Killing Joke - Brighter Than A Thousand Suns (1986)

Last one for the day: one that I was scared of and then heard and then thought needed defending. The infamous (but not infamous-est one, that'd be Outside the Gate) synthpop/new-wave record from the band who famously i) took synthpop/new-wave and then ii) metal-ified/punk-ified/noise-ified it, but for a few releases (like this one) stopped after the first step (i), leaving Duran Duran pop gone to hell or waiting for the apocalypse. Sound good? It is!

Geordie's guitars buzz and cut and weave like they should, and Jaz appears like a prophetic maniac: "Insane crusades, destructive gesture of the freedom bringers and all the bells shall toll, as holy banners fly and all will talk of freedom. Revolution – points of no return. Evolution – we cross the Rubicon"

Brighter Than A Thousand Suns is obsessed with mortality- like Tibet (I read), Coleman's convinced that the world we belong to is an empire that'll fall in due time. Like Vonnegut (I think), he often points out why he thinks everything's going to hell- Darwinism, war, and so on- but here he can't seem to see any sign of hope. People who've heard Killing Joke are probably used to his rants- humanistic or nihilistic- but here they're made unsettling by his lovely singing voice and catchy synth-heavy arrangements. For once it's all mood, no aggression.

If you haven't heard them before, don't start here. Get onto that shit quick though, they're the best post-punk band there ever was! If you have, take a listen! They make a pretty good pop-band-on-the-verge-of-a-mental-breakdown

B+

here
spotify

The Blue Nile - Hats (1989)

1. Over the Hillside 5:05

2. The Downtown Lights 6:29

3. Let's Go Out Tonight 5:16

4. Headlights on the Parade 6:16

5. From a Late Night Train 4:01

6. Seven A.M. 5:09

7. Saturday Night 6:27

Back when I first heard this album I called it self-indulgent white collar dinner party sophisti-pop but I never would've done that if I'd heard Hats first- a record which is almost as indulgent but is also actual sophisti-pop from the actual yuppie era (exciting!)

It has its critics- although more wintry, it doesn't sound too different to music by guys like Don Henley or Sting (or as some really critical people might argue, Kenny G), and in fact because of that wintriness, is all the more horrifyingly decadent, Hats appealing to the melancholic white collar professional believing that his or her own pessimism and feelings of alienation due to privilege (oh the burden!) are profound, true, and complex- and if only the world understood. On top of that, there's the fact that the alien, melancholy landscapes on Hats are almost entirely produced electronically- so cue Aphex Twin and Brian Eno comparisons

Such criticism aside, Hats is a beautiful album! It might detail the triumph of emotion over technology in its aesthetic- dark human emotion rendered electronically (Kanye)- but then we're back to how freakishly decadent such an album is! I don't give a shit about that (it actually puts me off) or the (accurate) Henley comparisons, but there's something special about Hats and it's not that it speaks to my profoundly pessimistic disposition (I'm taking the piss), insight the human condition (again), or uniquely tragic past (dad showered me in money, not love)

Holy shit I can't help but make fun of it... I give up

But I'll give it a

B

so you know that I love it deep down and you might too

For fans of Kenny G, Sting, Don Henley, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Bon Iver, Talk Talk, and King Crimson's Matte Kudasai

spotify

SCREENS

BARGAIN BIN CD BUY #2

These guys were my heroes when I was younger. I saw one of their songs on music TV when I was 13 and came my pants. I bought fabric paint and made a stupid little colourful Mint Chicks t-shirt that I wore until the colourful paint came off. The Mint Chicks played spastic punk and opened for every band that ever played because they were so good. They opened for The Blood Brothers and I thought they were better than The Blood Brothers. In 2006 they stopped playing spastic punk and became a pop band. They made a pop album about drug addiction and mental illness with little Ramones-y la-la-la choruses. They weren't my heroes any more but the whole country embraced their depressi-pop. They went away and became expatriates which is like the worst thing you can ever do in nz because everyone goes OH YOU'RE TOO BLOODY GOOD LALALALALA. Screens was released in that OH YOU'RE TOO BLOODY GOOD LALALALALA backlash and was ignored by the whole country. Even four years later with the success of UMO, nzers are like ah yes the mint chix *single tear due to reminiscence + feeling of extreme betrayal*

Screens is a semi-industrial (in the drums + melding of human voice w robot effect) synthpop album that sounds sad as fuck even when it's happy. It's like 808s for the indie pop/quasi-Beach Boys revival generation of the mid 000s. It's a swansong for the band and the era (they did something else but acknowledging that makes Screens less poignant). 3 of the tracks aren't that good but the rest kill poignantly. It's when everything heads in a single positive direction but sounds doomed that Screens works best.

Also just ps, UMO's II is still 2013's #1 for me

A-

v0 / lossless / buy

Wall of Voodoo - Dark Continent (1981)

1. Red Light 3:05

2. Two Minutes Till Lunch 2:15

3. Animal Day 3:14

4. Full of Tension 2:12

5. Me and My Dad 3:23

6. Back in Flesh 3:40

7. Tse Tse Fly 3:59

8. Call Box 2:32

9. This Way Out 2:59

10. Good Times 2:28

11. Crack the Bell 3:31

Here's what happens when you hear something as strange as Dark Continent and you need to describe it for a blog post

Devo playing new wave versions of a spaghetti western adaptation of a Raymond Chandler story staying true to the spaghetti western sound but they're also playing on halloween and they've been listening to too much Suicide

Ugh

B-

Yeezy - 808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Yeezy's saccharine robocop concept album: the heat and mind destroyed by an event, the machine required to hold things together. 808's dumb aggression sufficiently balanced by lines as achingly true as I know my destination, but I'm just not there regarding the need to, and yet seeming impossibility of, moving on

PS delete the fuck out of that bonus track. Shit goes straight self-parody

A-

v0