Tag: albums

Blood red is the new black. Like a reconnaissance of caves, each darker than the last, Blood Red Shoes’ discography is an ongoing incitation to fill already-black voids with one’s own crepuscule. While the flow of 2019’s ‘Get Tragic’ bludgeoned with garage rock energy, follow-up ‘Ghosts on Tape’ lives up to its title by channelling the misery of a global pandemic.

The klaxon-like keyboards of ‘Morbid Fascination’ actually appear chirpy compared to the bulk of ‘Ghosts on Tape’. While it may not encapsulate the album’s torn-apart manifesto – more Satan’s cookbook – the song is an evident high for the duo; an insistence on unique, whilst shaping itself perfectly into today’s hallowed alt rock zeitgeist – alongside a few other bits and pieces, most notably ‘I Lose Whatever I Own’, it’s Muse-like.

But the norm for Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell – heavily persuaded by the cancelled plans and geographic separation spawned by the pandemic – is to play the part of serial downers, shifting shape ever so slightly to fit a beast that bit more frightening. Blood Red Shoes are the vampiric folklore creatures of their craft, spiked by the gloom of isolation, whilst sporadically renewing the garage energy of ‘Get Tragic’ on cardio machines like ‘Give Up’.

Not even those energetic tunes could make ‘Ghosts on Tape’ appear extroverted, though the album does flick through a little book of influences in a manner that teases embrace. A few corners resemble CHVRCHES if their synthesiser suffered from stage fright, as much a part of the action, but hiding its face to contribute with Frusciante-style subtlety; the “it’s not about me” approach of a Pink Floyd concert. Save for post-industrial meltdowns like ‘Sucker’, on which the keyboards breathe upwards like melodic chimneys, this nuanced synth-wave is the duo’s principal creative stamp, multiplying atmosphere when necessary, but as ‘Begging’ proves, such a feat may just as well be achieved with six-inch-deep guitar picking or double-focussed percussion pulses.

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As an ex 2013 Tumblr teenager, The Wombats’ fifth studio album, Fix Yourself, Not the World, released on January 7th 14th, is one of my most anticipated 2022 releases. The Wombats formed in their native Liverpool in 2003 and have been a pillar of indie rock for the past 2 decades with no signs of faltering. Unlike many of their fellow 10’s alt rock bands, The Wombats are actually gaining traction with younger generations – Greek Tragedy (2015), Kill the Director (2007), Let’s Dance to Joy Division (2007), and Line Without a Hook (2016) have all gone viral on TikTok in the past two years. 

Despite (or perhaps in ignorance of) their expansion into a new and younger audience, Fix Yourself, Not the World is The Wombats’ most authentic album in a decade. After experimenting with a more pop-y sound on Glitterbug (2015), The Wombats seemed to lose their footing. Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life (2018), aside from Turn and Lethal Combination, was ultimately disappointing. Luckily for fans (old and new), Matthew Murphy (frontman and guitarist), Tord Øverland Knudson (bassist), and Dan Haggis (drummer) seem to have found themselves again.

Fix Yourself, Not the World is a true pandemic-era album; recorded from three different cities (LA, Oslo, and London) with the help of 5 different producers. Murphey, the band’s primary songwriter, pulls two years of quarantine, political unrest, and personal adversity into 41 incredibly relatable (but not too on-the-nose) minutes. This is a record that will outlast the uncertainty that inspired it.

via Flood Magazine

On Samia’s new four-song EP Scout, the singer-songwriter explores and expands upon all of the love in her life by shining a light on the hidden crumbs in the cracks. Each track feels like you’re sitting in a room with her as she opens up about missing her dad whenever he calls, or a friend getting a new job at the golf course. In step with her debut album The Baby, Samia maintains a distinct harmonization and strong narratives which lend themselves to the release’s biggest highlights. 

The opening track “As You Are” acts as if it could also close out the album, filled as it is with melting harmonies, legato cadences, and satisfying resolve. Lyrics like “Mouth hanging open in your 4Runner / Digging up shark teeth with your mother” and “You tell your sister you’ll be home in an hour / If she cleans her room, she takes a shower” snuggle together tightly as verses augment the simplicity of the chorus.

In turn, the chorus’s cliché of being taken as you are by a loved one is strengthened when each verse unravels a certain intimacy behind the feeling expressed. Like defrosting food in fridges, details slowly melt in subtle motion until the chorus reels the listener back in. 

The EP concludes with a cover of When in Rome’s “The Promise,” an echo from the past that showcases her versatile range in successfully covering a song while maintaining her unique sound. Featuring vocals from Jelani Aryeh, the cover cements a brimming balance of vocal range and blend. Through the layering of simple instrumentation, her own lyrics always pin themselves as thoughtful and personal—the talent sticks, and she’s ever-evolving. Upon each listen, I imagine the careful detailing of crocheting a colorful meadow into a quilt.

Ryuichi Sakamoto
Minamata (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
MILAN for Flood Mag
7/10

Somewhere between an Eric Satie still life and Jerry Goldsmith’s noir-jazz score for Chinatown exists the coolly emotional and subtly effervescent yet earthen music for the film Minamata from composer and instrumentalist Ryuichi Sakamoto. Starting with its gently halting piano opening theme and traveling through quietly whining atmospheric battles between sequencers, breathy voices, and real-time strings (“Landscape,” “Chisso Co.”), tonic glitch-hop riffs (“The Boy”) and their sinister equivalent (“Hidden Data”), opulent cello runs (“Boy and Camera”), and burnt-edged, electro-ambient (with squeezebox) scowls (“Into Japan”), the sonic monologue behind the true-life events of aged American war photographer Eugene Smith (played by Johnny Depp in director Andrew Levitas’ gritty film) documenting the effects of mercury poisoning on a coastal town in Japan is exactly what we’ve come to expect from latter-day Sakamoto.

Far beyond his historic, ethnographic co-penned score for Bernardo Bertilucci’s The Last Emperor (for which the composer won an Oscar), and more moodily along the lines of his intimate, textural 2017 studio album async and his recent soundtrack for Black Mirror: Smithereens, Sakamoto shows off a mind and a taste for menacing, tactile music which meshes the oceanic-winded scale of the elements, be it the organically orchestral or the sumptuously synthetic, with cricket nattering glitches for physical punctuation. If you didn’t think a score emulating the effects of industrial pollution and one man’s dedication to portraying pain and beauty could find a composer, you’ve missed the point of Sakamoto’s long career’s aesthetics.

Though the final track contains every trick in Sakamoto’s kit bag and pulls from his electronic dance past (its thumping, sequenced rhythms), “One Single Voice” was recorded by Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins (famous for a beloved Christmas episode of Dr. Who) after Sakamoto’s involvement in the project. The lush grand finale features all of the self-empowered heft and fine-boned focus of Celine Dion without a hint of the haughty or the saccharine.

Find the vinyl edition of the soundtrack pressed on a pair of 180-gram black vinyl discs and housed in gatefold packaging with liner notes from Levitas, for what the director calls Sakamoto’s talent to “represent both the absolute best of humanity as well as the worst.”

There have been some emo revival acts who have risen to fame by shattering genre expectations, often drawing the ire of the genre’s elitists along the way. Many of those bands end up crawling back into their shells, returning to the sounds expected from within. But Foxing have never shied away from the hate. Throughout their polarizing trajectory, they have braved the critical gatekeepers with the sole purpose of making music that matters to them, even if the results are a mixed bag.

With the exception of 2013’s debut album The Albatross, which has already been enshrined within the Emo Hall of Fame, each subsequent Foxing release has rubbed at least someone the wrong way. However, it wasn’t until 2018’s Nearer My God that the band felt comfortable enough to break across genre lines and expectations that they’d be the ones to reclaim the traditional sound of emo from the mainstream; it was an allusive statement that they’re no longer trying to be an emo band.

Now, with their newest record, Draw Down The Moon, the trio (down from a quintet) embrace this status with authority, as it finds them completely at home in a house undefined. They’ve occupied a space that allows them to be musical nomads without caring about what your pretentious Twitter timeline thinks ‘real’ emo has to be.

Nevertheless, the band’s sonic excursions aren’t necessarily apparent from the get-go. Draw Down The Moon begins with the deceptive “737”, a cosmically woozy folk number with blips of synthesizers and sparkling guitars, fittingly paired with triumphant horns playing from afar. However, one can sense something big and explosive brewing in the song as a thunderous drumroll begins to flood the dreamy atmosphere. With 40 seconds left, the suspected explosion materializes as singer and guitarist Conor Murphy turns the track on its head with visceral nu-metal roars for the song’s finale. The combustible “737” is a fitting bridge between the cinematic approach of Nearer My God and this new record.

From there, the band’s path diverges as they bleed into a seamless, synth-driven world on the next track, “Go Down Together”. Though grating to the ears initially, “Go Down Together” is a contagious electro-pop banger with a sheen so bright that one can’t help be reminded of the radiant and infectious simplicity of more mainstream indie acts of the early 2010s, particularly Passion Pit. The same can be said about “Where The Lightning Strikes Twice”, though to a far more unflattering degree. With obvious homage to classic new wave acts, “Lightning” will also remind some of Muse’s mid-career output that would eventually plague evening television on ABC Network in the early 2010s. The song isn’t downright awful; it carries with it a level of replayability that deserves some admiration. But, then again, when a band diverges so far from what they’re used to, there will be misses. Even the album’s daunting title track will prove to be a polarizing cut for many. Though groovy, thrilling, and slightly endearing, “Draw Down The Moon”‘s campy character might be a little too much to get behind.

Between those who will appreciate this record and those who will find it as a desperate grasp for mainstream success, everyone will agree that Draw Down The Moon is an obvious bid for early for 2010s indie-pop revivalism. The band has been hinting at this direction since their last album, and it’s refreshing to witness this bold direction the Missouri band desires to take itself. But, even with most of Draw Down The Moon operating within this indie-pop space that might be foreign to a large portion of their fanbase, Foxing still maintain some of their emo edge in places; guttural vocals, explosive breakdowns, and heart-on-sleeve lyrics ensure they have at least one foot in the fictitious yet all-too-real ‘fifth wave’ of emo.

Ultimately, Draw Down The Moon proves that this genre was never about a particular sound; it’s always been about striking a chord through forlorn themes, sentiments, and lyrics. This is most clear on the acoustic “At Least We Found The Floor”, as Murphy startles listeners by way of unashamed cynicism; ‘comforting’ a loved one but unable to withhold a taste of brutal honesty: “It’s going to get much worse than this.” It’s not the only display that, even with a record as unexpectedly shapeshifting as this, Foxing’s angsty roots are maintained. On the danceable and deceptively trite firecracker “Bialystok”, Murphy yearns with homesickness weighing in his heart. While the song’s crackling synthetic sounds and simple pop song structure are not traditionally ’emo’, his words still carry that pointed desperation.

The same can be said about single and album closer “Speak With the Dead,” featuring guest vocals from WHY?, but to a far more realized extent. At seven minutes long, it’s a vivid and ambitious post-rock behemoth that simultaneously paints Murphy remorseful and at an incredibly vulnerable state, dreaming of being in the presence of a departed friend, gone too soon. Not only does Murphy stun listeners with a voice in ruin – one moment conjuring hushed intimacy, the next a wailing scream – but his words are striking as he reminisces of simple moments with this lost friend, while making a sacred promise: “In my dreams I’m on a porch with you / I promise you I’ve been doing well in your name/ And I won’t try to speak with you again / Until I watch my last breath dissipate.” It’s extremely difficult to make a song so towering while imbuing it with such a profound sense of unguarded secrecy, but Foxing has accomplished it impeccably while offering tantalizing insight into what the band could sound like in the future.

With each song on Draw Down The Moon, Foxing posture themselves as a different band, teasing new possibilities at every turn – though there are a few inevitably clumsy attempts. In an interview with SPIN last month, Murphy admitted that with “every record [they]’ve put out so far, it seems like a decent amount of people hate it.” This is the kind of awareness that goes a long way when trying to appreciate a record so fascinatingly imperfect and blatantly jagged around the edges as this one. Foxing are aware they’re alienating some fans, but that makes it the kind of evolution one should admire and value. And with Murphy’s melancholic poetry persisting as the band’s heavy heart and soul, the genre’s most polarizing band, whether you like it or not, has reached yet another new level of boldness and grandeur.

The post Album Review: Foxing – Draw Down The Moon first appeared on Beats Per Minute.