(RE)SOUND

One time is never enough

[resoundmusic]

Passion Pit - Gossamer Like a machine buzzing back to life or a cool dusk slowly surrendering to the placid radiance of a starry night, Gossamer awakens in a slow hum. Not the buzz of vacuum tubes warming up or the chirping of a cricket orchestra slowly retuning, but a sprawling crawl of faux-flutes, concertinas, and endearingly tiny metallic clinks, finally climaxing in a romping row of candied bombast. The peppermint stomp of “Talk a Walk” is a sign that Passion Pit’s trademark musical deception is still alive. Angelakos’ pastes the tale of a declining American Dream atop a booming symphony of feigned-kazoos and Hammond organs, playing up cognitive dissonance to its highest potential. The intermittent jubilee of Manners is certainly revisited, though. “On My Way” breaks way to a rapturous chorus, heralded by each snare pop and bellow of the brass section, transforming the tune into more a regal procession than a 2012 pop song. Gossamer isn’t a continuation of Manners’ glossy washes, though. Instead of drifting off in the flood of its predecessor, it lays stepping stones beneath the surface and wades through. Make no mistake—it’s still in the water, but only gleefully damp and not sopping wet. “Constant Conversations” offer a digression from the normal synthpop dreamscapes in the form of turtleneck-sporting soul. The plucked strings and winding clarinet are only outshined by the stooping bass and whiny vocal sample, its vibrato trilling the entire track with tinny, retrograde soul. Pull up your panties, girls; we’ll get the mop. This is also, much like “Take a Walk”, a good example of Angelakos’ departure from Manners in lyricism. The song is a notable step down from his usually pertinent wordplay. Though touting a few notable lines (“I never wanna hurt you baby/ I’m just a mess with the name and the price.”) spawned from the same vein as Michael’s normal verbiage, it all eventually smelts down to an oddly-weighted number about love and alcohol. “Mirrored Sea” educes a frenetically-charged downpour of chiming synthetic notes from an otherwise mild rainfall, welling it up into a tempestuous shower of multi-tracked voices and echoing keyboards. Wrenching angst and desperation from untapped pools and reservoirs of otherwise calm waters, it’s a summation of Angelakos’ emotional palette, offering little solace within the eye of the storm. Though Angelakos’ mental health has apparently been endangered to some degree recently, his music remains untouched by and far. Gossamer is a testament to his expanding musical ability and his ever-broadening horizons. Though the sound is far from perfected, it’s equally as far from any traces of degradation. Hopefully Michael will continue to improve in skill and health in the next few months. As he’s assured us before, he’ll be alright.

Final Rating: B+

[resoundmusic]

Frank Ocean - Channel Orange Allow me to preface the following with a small disclaimer: I couldn’t care less about Frank Ocean’s private life. His interests, preferences, and relationships have no bearing over my perception of the quality of his music. After the chutzpah of his recent coming out as bisexual, though, a sizable chunk of the internet decided that his newest album, “Channel Orange”, is either perfect or totally broken based off of their approval or denouncement of his way of life. It’s irrelevant and insular to base an analysis or review off of personal views outside of musical opinion. Music, of all things, cannot be inherently good or bad based off of the lifestyle of the artist. Therefore “Channel Orange” isn’t outstanding or terrible because Frank happens to have a “nonstandard” sexuality; it’s fantastic for completely different reasons, and an abundance of them.

A callback to “Nostalgia Ultra”, Frank hails the beginning of the album with the instantly recognizable start-up tones of the original Playstation. The lead single and first true song of the album, “Thinkin’ Bout You”, drapes Ocean’s super soulful falsetto chorus against a starfall of undulating synthesizers. Ocean rides a fine line between youth and maturity, falling back and forth between floozy infatuation and the joys of real dedication. Frank is undeniably maturing, projecting that same growth into his sound.

Smaller clips and samples of other songs fill the breadths between songs in place of asinine “skits”–a breath of fresh air offering more relevant transitions unforced by shabby attempts at humor or depressingly incoherent rants purportedly reinforcing “hardness”. Some of these dwarfed tunes even beg to be fully fleshed out. “Fertilizer”, taken from James Fauntleroy’s song of the same name, practically purrs under Ocean’s hand, coagulating into a sticky and staticky bliss before dispersing far too soon at the peak of its nirvana.

Increasingly impressive is Ocean’s “Pyramids”, a 9-minute sectionalized electronic odyssey. Dwindling from a hiccupping buzz to a hip-hop slow jam halfway through its extended run, it breaks off from sensibility as its spindling guitar outro drifts into the recesses between time and space, as detached from reality as the song’s historical-alternative-turned-to-stripper-ode lyrics.

Frank’s hedonism peaks out at certain points of the album, duly noted in the Benny and the Jets-inspired “Super Rich Kids”, a satirical and intoxicated rant on exactly what you’d think—excess and futility—visited by a very stoned and sick Earl Sweatshirt, who somehow manages to keep his prodigious lyricism though he’s reduced to wheezily rasping out his own words.

Guest spots on “Channel Orange” are also a high point. Possibly climaxing at “Pink Matter”, a lethargic ditty dedicated to the obvious, the song doesn’t gain much momentum until Andre 3000 offers intervention. Also the guitarist on the track, 3000′s usual down-to-earth bluesy lyrics perfectly coil into the chilled tempo and slight slap bass thump. The last guest spot, surprisingly, is secured by John Mayer, who, instead of hazily belting out poppy love lyrics, yields a swelteringly blue torrent of guitar licks.

Everything about the controversy and wonderment surrounding “Channel Orange” is contained with and explained by what is possibly the best track of an already exceptional album: “Bad Religion”. Frank tries to contain himself, but ends up howling the frustrations of unrequited love and building up to a final admission: “I could never make him love me”. It’s pain and beauty in a primal form, and it’s gorgeous. Not everyone may agree with it, but it seeps an honesty unheard of in most pop music, and that should be more than good enough for anyone.

Final Rating: A

[resoundmusic]

Infantree - Hero's Dose You’ve never heard of Infantree, have you? Truthfully told, I hadn’t until about a week ago They’re by no means “big”, and they’re not really hitting the status quo in terms of “radio friendliness”. They occasionally snag Thursday night television spots, but other than that you can expect not to hear much from the band without delving in for yourself. It’s a small trip, I suppose, but it’s worth the distance traveled from your couch to the internet device of your choosing.   Their newest outing, “Hero’s Dose”, sounds a little like The Ventures covering Paul Simon, and sometimes vice versa. Spouting sandy, clanging guitar strums a la CCR, the singer’s soft-spoken bleating negates the impending totality of the band’s rockabilly side and establishes a homeostatic balance, retaining the inherent folksiness of the music without covering up its flagrantly Californian roots. It’s an oasis in the middle of a small dust-storm. Bring your boards, kiddos.    Amidst the straight-forward psychedelia lies (seized) potential for differentiation, though. Genre-bending is standard indie protocol by now, isn’t it? Infantree isn’t breaking any rules. Experimentation ranges from the poppy drum samples and stoner- kid-Doo-Wop harmonies of “What You Wanna Do?”, the efficacy of which will leave you whistling along to the track for days, to an instillation of progressiveness in “Should”, signature changes being prevalent and a Richie Blackmore-inspired solo present.  Other tracks like “Fibber”, though, overdrive the original sound, splitting guitar duty between the omnipresent chord whaps and a smoother passage of strings, tinging warmly and surfing to the side of the track.  Despite all their deserving, Infantree might not ever take off. They’re not infectiously gleeful enough to breach the field of view of the skewed public eye and not quite the off-the-wall heroes that hipsters claim to deserve. I’m fine with this, though. It just means there’s more for me. Final Rating: B

[resoundmusic]

Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel... Fiona Apple is the unicorn of modern pop music–equally as whimsical but possibly exceeding the creature in elusiveness. For 7 years she’s been near-silent, with only occasional blurbs being released about her where-and-whatabouts throughout the years, leaving fans antsy and on-edge, waiting for the record label conflict to end.

Needless to say, the announcement of this album was a breath of relief for damn nigh everyone.

The full title of the album, like the extended name of “When The Pawn…” is a short poem–a couplet in fact. “The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do,” it reads. Undoubtedly a word of wisdom Apple gleaned in the process of writing this heartbreakingly stunning  album.

She has, once again, outdone herself, this time without having to resort to the baroque arrangements of “Extraordinary Machine”. Favoring stripped-down, jazz-touched arrangements to accompany the expectedly keen lyrics Fiona has been consistently penning since her teens, she follows her normal routine, bleeding her own essence on the recording tapes. Only this time, she applies it more forcefully than before. She slices through her own wrists, smearing clumps all over herself and her songs. It’s less of a thing to be heard within the tracks and more of one to be felt from the Fiona, as she projects a flawlessly imperfect image of herself into her music.

A single page turn of Fiona’s diary lands the listener within the opening plinking chimes of “Every Single Night”. The dynamics of her voice skip around, expanding from little more than a whisper to a full-throated shout, bellowing over double-bass and minor pounds of kettle drums. It’s an outline for the rest of the album. Some lines are little more than traces of graphite, while other are written so harshly residue from the pencil’s breaking are still present on the spot, but the roughly drawn sketch is still undeniably a snapshot right out of the brilliantly engineered cogwork of Ms. Apple’s ever-sparking mind.

It’s almost as if she’s graduated from her youth and any is leaving any scraps of teenage hedonism behind her. “The Idler Wheel” is 100% cathartic, from track one to track ten. The days of Fiona faux-mournfully regretting her indulgences and plotting her “redemption” are over. Instead, she moans and howls to all of her faults and downfalls. All of her short-comings are gracefully condensed into an incalculable yet perfected series of songs known, in brevity, as “The Idler Wheel”, ironic in that Fiona’s emotive performances are anything but still.

Standout tracks like “Jonathan” exemplify the instability Apple conveys throughout most of the album. It almost unfolds like one of the more chilling moments of an ancient cartoon lost to the obscuring wilderness of archaism . Fiona plays notes on her piano that stumble uphill, drunkenly and woozily but fully animated, while she details her romance with writer Jonathan Ames. Not angry. Not excited. Simply acknowledging it happened. It’s moments like this that give you the most insight into her thoughts.

With all the blood she poured into this work, you can pick out the tears with ease, landing atop moments such as “Valentine” and “Werewolf”. Acutely and softly dismissing her own agony and heartbreak, she submits to her own emotions and strives to stay standing, with varying results.

“The Idler Wheel” brings to table everything Fiona has kept barricaded in her personal labyrinth for years now, and it happened to yield some of the most touchingly despondent music I’ve heard in quite some time, now. Its pulchritude is to be reckoned with, though, as is standard with anything Apple sets onto a track. To quote Fiona herself, “Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key.”

Final Rating: A+

[resoundmusic]

Passion Pit - I'll Be Alright As far as I’m concerned, Passion Pit can do no wrong. And as a biased person, I’m saying this as objectively as possible.

Michael Angelakos and the crew return for something…completely different from anything on “Manners”, not to say it was unexpected. Did you hear “Take a Walk”?

A constant in Passion Pit’s music, though, is the air of melancholy the band can distill from such an excitingly electronic beat. Using microsampled blurbs, sped up to a ridiculous play rate, tweets and chirps blurt from every degree of the soundscape while Michael ignores the cartoon birds upon his shoulders to bittersweet-ly dismiss all worries about his state of mind and emotion. The audio clips come and go, as does basically every other instrumental track within the song, but Angelakos’ vocals remain. Unabashed, but certainly not alright.

And with that, I’m all the more impatient for “Gossamer”.

[resoundmusic]

Sigur Rós - Valtari I’m actually fairly new to the world of Sigur Rós. For years, I saw blogs and publications laud them as an almost “religious” band–evoking the deepest corners of the emotions and inciting enlightenment in listeners of any tongue or alignment. I doubted the hype, for a while. I focused my efforts, instead, on figuring out how the hell “Sigur Rós” is pronounced. Once that confuddlement was eliminated (once again, thank you, internet), only one logical path remained: to actually LISTEN to the band.

It was 3 AM on a Saturday night, and I was caught up in a state of sleep-deprived drunkenness in the absence of any drinking whatsoever. Instead, I lazily rested my bored head upon my hand, and tiredly perused the wilds of Reddit, clicking any blue links at all, mentally filtering all purple.

I finally happened upon a link from the website’s Music subreddit. “Sigur Rós – Svefn-g-englar”. Now I need to know how the hell this is pronounced, too, I thought. But instead of letting myself get caught up on bottomless minutia, I gave in and threw my headphones on for a moment.

Peace emanating like an endless ocean wake, wonder spouting forth from each crash against a pearly seabank. Too much purity to grok. Aptly enough, I later found out, “Svefn-g-englar” roughly translates to “sleep angel”, and I must have seen those celestial figures as I leaned back, untense and flat in my chair, staring at the ceiling and pondering the reasons we must exist, the spirituality of life at its core, and how the hell music could ever be so gorgeous.

And now here we are, at Valtari, the Icelandic band’s sixth studio album.

It’s gorgeous as always. Jónsi could record 6 hours of the band throwing sharpened forks at angry cats and still find away to make it sound glorious. The band has absolutely mastered atmospheric production, transforming listening into an experience more than a chore. The band’s sonicism envelopes the listener in a cradle, this time a hammock on a an ocean vessel, and sets sail for anywhere. The destination doesn’t matter when the journey is such sweet rapture.

Ambience is what the band has always sought to create, and this time they’ve got something even Eno could be jealous of, though not for its quality as much as its serene disposition. A few of the songs could easily work their way into “Music for Airports” with the removal of a bass-line or a drum-track.

Everything, and this is surprising even for an band where the average song length is somewhere between 7 and 9 minutes (time well-spent, mind you), seems a little too dragged out, though. The trip is a few hours too long, or days (in this case, the destination does matter), and leaves the traveller a bit tired, legs and stomach equally wobbly. How to explain this?

“Valtari” is what you get when you try to stretch out the glory of the “Hoppipola” build-up for 54-minutes. Grossly engrossing and constantly growing.

But like any good journey, just a little exhausting.

Final Rating: B

[resoundmusic]

The Beach Boys - That's Why God Made the Radio

Let me just point out that I’ve NEVER been more terrified to listen to an album, much less analyze and review it. It’s common knowledge that when a band that’s been apart for so long decides to leave behind or put aside their differences and reunite, there will almost certainly be qualities of their past music that will be discounted.

That being said, it’s important for you to acknowledge now that my generation was not raised with The Beach Boys. We belonged to a different time and era. We were introduced early, though. Back then, to us, the band’s name conjured thoughts of “Surfin’ USA”, “Good Vibrations”, cool California breezes and endless waves. Never ever getting old, just wasting life walking up and down infinite beaches–sometimes thriving on the vivacity of youth, packed with the fargone innocent teenagers of yesteryear…

…But other times a meeting of nobody but one’s self and the sands.

And that’s where “Pet Sounds” came in. An album that really meant something. Ignoring the daft-but-fun pap shoveled out by the band in their formative years, it twisted everything about music on its head. Interjecting dog bells into songs. Harmonies thicker than the suffocatingly beautiful colors of a pacific sunset. But, most of all, something deep. Something relatable. The musical equivalent of a timeless teenage tragedy. The flipside of “Catcher in the Rye”. An approach to our collective mindset, sans all the cynicism, but instead making the addition of a wave of emotion. “Pet Sounds” makes everyone cry, at one point of their life or another.

THAT’s where they truly seized the notion of endless youth, and embodied it within mere inches of reality. Nothing else of human fruition has ever come so close to really portraying what it’s like at those delicate ages, and I doubt anything else ever will.

And that’s EXACTLY why it was so hard trying to make myself turn“That’s Why God Made the Radio” on. After sitting on my bed, staring at the ceiling with a headful of lucidly romantic hopes and fantasies, and whispering along to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” so many times, the feeling just sinks in. The Beach Boys ceased to be surfers and cool kids and embedded themselves into my memory as heartbroken and hopeless romantics, as misunderstood as any of us.

That’s not what this is, though. This is an attempt to rekindle that spark, or the lack thereof. This is grasping at the cypher, and reeling back with a handful of nothing. It’s disappointing.

The Beach Boys, or at least Brian Wilson, used to perfectly comprehend the struggles we’ve all gone through. Now, I’m afraid, they’ve all grown up and forgotten. They’re back where we all began, convinced this is all about scampering up and down coastlines, soaking up the sun, and ignoring everything else in this life and the next (if you’re into that). It’s a vivid reality to anyone who has already experienced the age or to anyone yet to hit the mark, but anyone dwelling within the bleak realities of teendom and childhood will only see this is as the mirage it really is–conceived in abrasive short-sightedness.

I’ve spent paragraph after paragraph so far comparing the album to “Pet Sounds”, I realize, which some people might also see as short-sighted. The band has other fantastic albums in their repertoire, including the magnificence that is “SMiLE”, as close to classicism as pop music will ever get. But they weren’t trying to grab hold and pin down any spirit within “SMiLE”. Brian Wilson was simply trying to make good music through unconventional and complicated methods, part of his era’s musical zeitgeist (see: The Beatles, The Zombies, The Rolling Stones, etc). “Pet Sounds” played off of that idea, but molded itself into the mindset of an entire generation–one not fixed by the aforementioned “zeitgeist”, but deeply crammed within the human subconsciousness to emerge at one time or another and to glumly thrive until receding at an undetermined age.

“That’s Why God…” isn’t bad, though. It just drastically falls short of the mark. The harmonies are a bit sappy and contrived and end up sounding more like children’s sing-along songs than The Beach Boys, but I still found myself catching chills, and often. Of all elements of the song, only the harmony is what really retains the spirit of The Beach Boys. Like the angst and passion and longing they once sung about, it’s timeless. It can’t be bottled up, and only men truly chasing their art and their dream after all these years could possibly produce a sound some vibrantly nostalgic and utterly breathtaking, irregardless of the flaws and inconsistencies I can point out.

One moment in particular, though, captures every single emotion, loss, trouble, dilemma, change, metamorphosis, and essence released by the band in past 50 years. The album’s simple piano introduction, “Think About the Days” catapults the listener into the array of struggles experienced by The Beach Boys. Brian Wilson’s mental illness and alienation. Carl and Dennis’ untimely deaths. The band’s inept attempts at maintaining relevance during some of their later years. The eventual demise of the band. Looking back on this, I’m sure there tons of regrets. Maybe this is just a plight for success and money. Maybe it’s pandering to fans of many years, so that they’ll open their arms back up to accept and embrace a band that’s ultimately completely different from what it once was. With a simple, almost-dirgeful piano and a sweeping hum, the first conjunction the boys have made in decades, you too will be wrapped up in the bittersweet existence of The Beach Boys. And though the rest of the album attempts to wipe off that stain of loss and tragedy, the indelible tint bleeds through and markedly shows you why this album couldn’t fail, even if it tried. Is it all good?

No, but it’s beautiful nonetheless. Final Rating: B-

[resoundmusic]

Azealia Banks - 1991 Amidst prophetic lines such as “At least that c**t gettin’ eaten,” and “Young coochie, tight,” it’s easy to get caught up in the profoundness that is Azealia Banks’ rhyming. Leagues ahead of her female counterparts, Banks’ tight hip-house flow winds hairpin curves with ease, no corner cutting, still allotting plenty of room for Banks to flail around and raise hell at 200 miles per hour.

The “1991” EP only has 2 new offerings. No complaints, though, as the rest of the album is supplemented by “Licorice” and the damn-near-infamous “212”, a beautiful ode to cunnilingus and (probably) slamming Nicki Minaj’s face into a thick slab of asphalt.

The title track somehow perfectly coalesces 90′s trance and moombahton, planting Black Box-esque synthesizer lines atop Latiny beats. The album only faults during during the “hidden” skit-like rant contained within “Van Vogue”, the EP’s other fresh outing. Though Banks awkwardly (drugs were involved. Don’t kid yourself) exacerbates her pretend target with a dose of anti-helium and likely nitrous-oxide, her inebriated ramblings can’t take away from what turned out to be a damn good first release. Though a tad bit (very) brief, “1991” is nothing short of a blast. Final Rating: A-

[resoundmusic]

John Mayer - Born and Raised Let me run this one by you. “John Mayer Plays Country!” Does it work? Of course not. Nobody would buy that shit. This generation’s blues-god/pop-star has been thriving on a solid body of work toggling solid, moaning guitar licks that would make Muddy Waters jealous and affable pop songs smitten by perpetually-teenage love. 10 years into a widely publicized career, making a country album would in no way be a decent idea, realistically. Right?

You’d be surprised. Note, when I say a John Mayer country album, I don’t mean a jangly strand of “Say”s highlighting, over and over again, John’s flawless ability to pound the hell out of an acoustic guitar. Instead of weaving between blues and pop, he instead looms a distinctively hybrid cloth, like The Decemberists covering the Allmans’ “Melissa”. No mistaking, John couldn’t make an album without at least teasing the ideas of blues and pop, but they’ve been truly altered by a pure sense of quaint Southern-ness. It’s a lot more idyllic than the the country littering the radio currently. No watered down Nickleback-grade rock superimposed with fake drawling. Just John doing what he does best–making good music.

John makes the experience surprisingly well-paced, beginning with the lonesome perseverance of “Queen of California”, akin to another famous opening track, “Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More”. Both float atop lofty piano plinks, though John chooses to man his trusty acoustic guitar instead of trying to recreate Duane’s inimitable slide.Yet the quality doesn’t oxidize; it shifts.

The next track couldn’t be more of a stark contrast. Within the limitations of the album’s Dixie-driven frame, Mayer peaks in both jubilance and self-consciousness with “The Age of Worry”, a thoughtful ditty held in place by its brilliant “lala” chorale. Playfully naive, and still a joy to behold.

While John is often tackling the ideas of self-actualization, social problems, and (his favorite, of course) love, rarely does he set out to tell a story. He picked the oddest place to start, though. A 5-minute narrative intent on offering a discourse about finding adventure in spite of obstacles, Mayer spins the tale of a man in his one-seat submarine. “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test” unfolds the normal way a Mayer-song does: a troubling situation in the first verse, whereas the chorus plays into a happy treatise about solving all of life’s problems by simply constructing one’s own personal underwater vessel. Peculiar, but it doesn’t slow the DisneyWorld-grade happiness pushed by the song’s distinct current.

Don’t discount Mayer because of who he is. With an alternating track record in album quality, he’s back on his good side and he’s certainly earned himself a nice, down-home slap on the back. The album ends with a reprise of the title track, “Born and Raised”, back not where it started, but where it belongs. And though Mayer was likely never born, nor raised, in the countries he details, he’s certainly welcome back anytime.

Final Rating: B+

[resoundmusic]

Orbital - Wonky Orbital’s return was surprisingly low-key. Aside a few key members of the industry and media who took notice of their new release and bothered to assemble small album reviews or features, many overlooked what they likely thought to be a failure–not surprising in the world of electronic music. Or maybe just another reunion followed by landslides into current fads like dubstep and 3-note (or 3-chord, for the brave ones amongst us) electro-pop, and that’s partially what this is. Similar to any artists who’ve been outside of the public eye for a while, Orbital decided to reevaluate their own music and augment it with newer styles–styles to appeal to a crowd much less infatuated with the solid-streaked jet streams and beat-heavy, acid-glazed music which pervaded the 90’s electronic and rave scene. Trance has been squeezed into a bottleneck from which it hasn’t yet been able to emerge, and Orbital would have trouble fitting in.

And thus the Hartnoll brothers created “Wonky”, an apt title for an album filled with outdated 90’s trance mechanics forced gear-to-gear with modern electronica trends while surprisingly maintaining all pathways of functionality. Neither piston nor shaft shows signs of rust; just a dent or two here and there. The slight semblances of wear have no effect upon the performance, though. The meshing of two technologies–of old and new, fast and strong, daft and inspired–just works.

The tooth-in-tooth cog grinding has its drawbacks, though, as some songs run into each other–bleeding onto bordering tracks without no intention or skillful crossfade.  None being an earsore by any means, some of “Wonky”s moments aren’t quite quirky enough to stand on their own. In no way lacking nuances to the degree of a destructively seamless Deadmau5 album, “Wonky” simply sputters out sometimes, leaving the listener’s mind to wander and forget the gap between tracks.

But when “Wonky” shines, it’s brilliant. The first single, recorded with Zola Jesus, “New France” pastes Zola’s guttural cantillating upon thick, thready bass and cirrus-cloud keyboards. A new concept, not at all, but a beautiful and titillating junction of elements that rarely cross paths in modern music.

Other times, its brilliance peeps out from the slummy reaches of desperation and attempted “hipness”, which ironically works. “Beelzedub” finds the duo educing (mild, mind you) wobble-synths and tempos slowed to a near halt–dubstep. Instead of extorting the “Bass Cannon” approach,  ad nauseum, Orbital grants the song independence and room for growth, evolving the it from simple broken-beat to a full-on ‘Amen’ break.

Expect Orbital to offer plenty of oddly placed illuminating moments, actually. After all the album IS named “Wonky”.

Final rating: B

[resoundmusic]

The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet Of all the weapons within the vast arsenal of The Mars Volta, one clearly outperforms the others. Past the quaking productions of the prolific Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and the overdriven vocals of Cedric Bixler-Zavala is the sum of all The Mars Volta’s sound–the trait to which they owe their fame. The band has an indomitable resonance: a sound that picks away at the listener’s mind for days. Where other musicians are content to drive the nail halfway into the board, The Mars Volta pummels the spike until the head is halfway through the plank and the wood begins to splinter and crack. But at the same time, each repeated listen draws the the listener back in, as if the they think the sound will only linger for so long. They claw into the basin, while the music seeps through their fingers with the viscosity of clotted dirt. It possesses the unforgettable mastery of a Rembrandt painting and the talon-like grips of an Agatha Christie novel.

And like the masters they undoubtedly are, The Mars Volta have found a way to make things “fresh” again, with absolutely no risk of novelty. Noctourniquet changes the formula without reducing the results. While redacting Deloused…‘s interstellar jams to more meager and reasonable lengths and withholding the raw crunch of Bedlam in Goliath, the punch is retained. Flagrant experiments with synthesizers further cements the role of The Mars Volta as sonic crusaders. Though what they’re doing isn’t exactly “new”, it’s well-beyond what many artists are willing to try to revamp their own sounds.

But in no way does this compromise the dignity or artistry of a band many love for its incorrigible aggression and biting guitars. Although Rodriguez-Lopez has admitted to making way for the inclusion of synths by moving some of his guitar playing to the background, his brilliant compositions still carry his trademark swank and convicted liveliness, and it’s all noticeable within the first track. “The Whip Hand”s panicky chorus screeches like the Death Star sounding an alarm two minutes before meltdown. Bixler-Zavala’s harmonized vocals shriek in conjunction with newly-introduced laser-cutter synths, flashing red-hot beams all about the track. It’s different, but it’s Mars Volta from the exhaust vent all the way to the core.

Although the significance of the release of the album has been slightly diminished by At the Drive-In’s Coachella reunion, Noctourniquet remains an accomplishment of planetary proportions. It may not be enough to replace the universal liturgy inspired by Deloused…, but it more than holds its own in the repertoire of a band more-than-deserving of its worship. Final Rating: A-

[resoundmusic]

Madonna - MDNA

Relevance is a constant battle for Madonna, The nearing-54-year old has spent generations, now, playing an ongoing battle of king of the hill with other starlets who are thirsty for a just a drop of the fame Madge has accumulated over her 30 year career. She plays dirty though. She has no misgivings about clutching head-fulls of hair and sending other pop stars spiraling into the dirt.

They’re the stars who idolized her, though. The girls who listened to her every record as kids, rolling on the floor in flopping tutus, dazedly singing into hairbrushes and toothbrushes about sex and love and drama, unbeknownst to them. But the subjects of their singing were irrelevant to them. Madonna was higher than all, and they’d show their love by emulating her every step and stumble.

Making it all the more odd that she would borrow so heavily from these same girls. Everything is coming full-circle.

Madonna isn’t dumb. At all. With all the experience she’s built-up, she knows exactly how to adapt and shift to evade every blooming wall and curving obstacle that tries to restrict her from her own throne. She’s to pop and dance what David Bowie is to rock ‘n’ roll. A chameleon, a shapeshifter, a “phony”, to some, but as if she cares.

MDNA is good. Very good. But even so, it isn’t intrinsically “Madonna”. Abandoning most of the austerity and proggy house mixtures concocted within Confessions… and and percussive funkiness of Hard Candy, it almost seems  like an attempt at re-redefinition, but that’s insanity. To once more reassign meaning to the sound of pop itself and the woman who created it–it’s all but impossible.

Yet Madonna relapses back to a level of ebullience and exhilaration unfelt since Music.Even when yammering about a typical day in the life of Madonna–how she’s killing her man…like the bitch he is…while he’s driving–she does so with the amount of poise expected from someone who willingly shared a stage AND shuffled with LMFAO.

And that’s why her fans love her. She’s not afraid to scuff up her boots. She’s the Queen of Pop, yes, but she won’t take a second thought about wringing out her own subjects at a whim. But no need–her subjects willingly comply. Guests like Nicki Minaj, who managed to snag two spots on the album, and MIA accompany the queen in her royal procession to the dancehall, reduced to grasping on to her coattails.

Their presence isn’t entirely necessary, though. Madonna can more than stand on her own; she can carry herself royally with no need of buttressing from attempted throne usurpers. She stands, full-mast, in all assorted regalia even without Minaj’s shoehorned-in verses or MIA’s apathetic bravado.

Her incorporations of modern musical developments are almost as surprising as her guests. The wobbling wubs and searing sirens of  Americanized dubstep creep their way into several tracks. Though the snare snaps are slightly mistimed and the synthetic whirring understated, it still hammers just the way Madge imagined. Terrorizing hardstyle synths also saturate a few songs, translating twice as well as the previously-mentioned wobble-bass but still having some slight potential to be overbearing and obtrusive.

The closing tracks are a stumble on the red carpet, though. A broken heel or a shattered glass slipper. That isn’t to say they’re unnecessary, only a bit out of place. Where Madonna makes her pensive retreat, she also steps off of track. The continuity is shaken and the album wanders. It’s ironic that her most serious moments are her interruptions. While Madonna experiments with some instrumentation throughout the course of the record, the slow-winding strings of “Fallin Free”, though beautiful, hold no place in the same court as the jubilant harpsichord and horn choruses of “I’m a Sinner”.

“All the records sound the same,” Madonna claims in “Give Me All Your Luvin.’” Faux modesty. Once again, the Queen has proven she’s more than capable of running her own kingdom, just with a few changes and revisions in policy and a bit of backtracking, not to say it’s unneeded or unwelcome. MDNA sounds both new and old, revamping played-out staples in Euro-pop to the point where they’re just as bright and fresh as ever. Madonna knows how to make a good album, and though she’s a bit off the mark for striking perfection, she can stand-up her pretenders now more than ever. Gaga, your move.

Final Rating: B