After the ridiculous length of last month’s post, things are a lot more streamlined this month. We have less albums covered but that doesn’t mean there’s any dip in quality. So let’s just get stuck in. Also, it’s a bit surprising that three of the six acts are Irish but it’s always nice to see.
Overhead, the Albatross
I Leave You This
Post Rock / Dance
I’d never heard of Overhead, the Albatross until this summer, but it became pretty obvious that I’d been missing out on some good music. Their debut, the strangely titled, Learning to Growl, is a good post rock album but it was the first time I heard the single, Your Last Breath, I knew that their new album was going to be something special.
I listen to a lot of music over a year and it takes a lot to stop me in my tracks but Your Last Breath did. I just restarted it when it finished. Then I sent it to some of my friends. I was gobsmacked. This isn’t something that happens very often but for whatever reason it just grabbed me. It probably helps that the video is great as well, and I’d advise watching it. (Link at the end of the review)
It may start more like your standard post rock song, but by about half way through it starts to mutate, a skronking sax that menaces its way into the mix, building tension till the spoken word passage starts and the song just takes off. It’s hypnotic and it’s dizzying.
It’s just brilliant.
Post rock shouldn’t mean sounding just like Explosions in the Sky. Post rock used to mean using rock instrumentation to do different things, create new sounds. Overhead are using the genre as a foundation, they prove that you can do anything you like, you have the entire world’s music at your fingertips, there are no boundaries any more, you should be shooting for the stars.
Saying all that, the first third of the album sounds like an ambitious post rock album. There is a clear influence from God is an Astronaut here, but it’s no bad thing, but it’s used as inspiration not badly coged homework. O,tA aren’t here to copy other people. L’appel du Void and Hibajusha show the band’s grasp of electronics and introduce a dance element to the proceedings.
By the time we get to Miss Na Kita all bets are off, from here on in we get dance beats, chopped up vocal samples, asian and african singing and I’m pretty sure there are tabla drums in there too. This isn’t close to a guitar album any more. This is the sound of a band using everything they can think of to express themselves. This is taking everything, including the kitchen sink, and then throwing it at the wall and somehow making it all stick. This should be a crazed mess, a fever dream but the band lands the album with a style I haven’t heard before. It’s a thing of wonder.
This is life affirming. This is joyous. I love this so much.
https://lynkify.in/song/your-last-breath/a42s9RRt
The Cure
Songs of a Lost World
I’ve been a Cure fan for longer than some of my team members at work have been alive. That’s a hard thing to type but gives you some idea just how many years I’ve been listening to the band. And for almost all of that time the Cure have released bad to terrible albums, with Bloodflowers kinda being the exception. So with all the talk of a new Cure album, I just couldn’t get my hopes up. Then the press started publishing five star reviews and I still refused to get excited. But somehow, the band have come back with their best album since Wish, which was all the way back in 1992.
From the opening track, Alone, you know that this is the Cure firing on all cylinders again. The Disintegration feel is there, but the song still feels like its own thing. This feels more like the continuation from Disintegration that Bloodflowers was meant to be.
Lyrically, not much has changed in the last few decades, the Cure singing about being old and being lost / sad is nothing new, I mean he was in his 20’s when he wrote the line “Yesterday I got so old I felt like I could die”, but now with Smith in his 60’s this feels more real. Maybe that my own mortality calling but when Robert sings,
“Something wicked this way comes
To steal away my brother’s life.”
Knowing it’s about real loss makes it far more poignant.
But it’s not all dirge, Done:nodrone has the energy of one of the rockier songs off Wish and breaks up the mood nicely, although I’m not sure we needed quite that much wah pedal soloing.
From the first time I heard Endsong it was obvious that it would be an all time Cure classic. Even though it takes 6 minutes for the singing to start, it sets you up for the most heartbreaking song of pain and the horrors of getting old. There’s no other band in the world who can compare to the Cure when they’re on form like this. It’s like being kicked in the soul, and yet, it’s one of the best songs of the year.
Songs of a Lost World pulls an amazing feat by sounding like a Cure album you’ve known all your life but without ever sounding like the band going through the motions or just repeating themselves. After decades in the wilderness, this is the Cure better than I could ever have dared to dream.
So congratulations Robert on your second number 1 album. It’s well deserved and I hope to catch the next tour. It’s so good to honestly say, I’m really looking forward to hearing the new songs live.
https://lynkify.in/song/endsong/3QnpI5DD
Long Island Sound
HYDRA
Electronica
Dublin Duo, Long Island Sound return with their second album, HYDRA. Their debut album was good, but it was clear that they hadn’t quite found their own voice yet. This album is a clear step up from that debut, the songwriting feels more assured and LIS feel more confident with their sound.
The opener, As One, is a gentle introduction, with the band opting to take things easy, just relax you into things, with track 2, Anchor, just wrapping you in bass as you head nod along.
The album continues at a fairly leisurely pace, Terra Nova’s pitched up vocal adds to the hazy feel with its scratchy, skittering percussion accenting the bass. And while LIS aren’t really interested in throwing bangers at you, Searching is a dancefloor filler that should set a few festivals on fire next summer.
While HYDRA is quite mid paced that’s not a negative here. There’s a lot of room in the electronica world for something that isn’t frantic, not still not chill out tunes. The biggest compliment I can give this record is that I’m choosing to listen to HYDRA over the new (very good) Underworld album, almost every time.
https://lynkify.in/song/searching/pQeckh48
Lminl
The Dance Hall
Alternative
There’s always something special about an album that doesn’t do much for you on the first listen, but you end up falling for. Maybe one of the songs was pretty good, so you stick it on a playlist and go about your business. But there’s just something that makes you go back and give the album another try and suddenly another song pops. And another. It’s not something that happens often but it’s a joy when it does.
The Dance Hall is a slow burn album, all deep voice and lush arrangements, it knows how to build its atmosphere and more importantly, hold you there.
Mary, the first song proper, sets the scene perfectly for what you will be getting, the strings and keys perfectly building before that guitar comes in low in the mix, until the song breaks into what is almost post rock. The arrangement is beautiful and perfectly complements Deci’s voice.
There’s a feeling of loss and sadness that pervades The Dance Hall, it has an unusual fragility to it that’s perfectly fitting to these dark days, with its mix of fuzzy synths, strings, a dash of electronics on top of the usual guitar. I mentioned Deci’s voice earlier and I think it may be the highlight of the album, it’s deep yet has a gentle power to it. He can deliver some iffy lyrics but somehow make them work, in the way that someone like Matt Berninger can. But his delivery of the lines
“Breathe and be broken
Some light can not be seen”
Got stuck in my head for days and somehow didn’t ruin the song for me. That is a sign of some great songwriting.
If I have any issues with the album, it’s that it’s a bit too long for me. Cut two songs and this would be leaner and better for it. But your mileage may vary.
The Dance Hall is such a delicate, beautiful album and I can’t recommend it enough if you’re looking for something to curl up with in front of a real fire on a winter’s night. Put it on and just sink into its world.
https://lynkify.in/song/mary/WhhnhdoY
Alex Banks
Phase Shift
Electronica
Alex has been working away, quietly making some of the best electronic music out there for what seems like very little acclaim. Or certainly, not enough acclaim as far as I’m concerned.
With Phase Shift, he’s back again with more great music. There’s a feeling of post dubstep with all of Alex’s music, and while not throwing back or acting as a pastiche to the 2010’s you can still feel the foundations of that sound in here, and it’s still sounds as good now as it did all those years ago.
Fowards, gets things moving pretty quickly getting us dance floor ready, while Elevate has a strong club feel and its processed vocal and heavy kicks will sound great in dark rooms. Cable 23 has some old school hardcore energy going on with the bass over some great, rattling percussion. The closer, In The Shadows is a slow, thoughtful head nodder, with a cavernous kick drum that pulses through the reverb soaked vocals down the mix. It feels like there’s a little something for everyone on here.
Phase Shift is another highlight in Bank’s discography, with him seemingly able to deliver this caliber of electronica effortlessly. This will tide me over nicely till we get the next album.
https://lynkify.in/song/forwards/h1GiPHMm
Six Months of Sun
Creatures
Stoner/Sludge/Post Metal
Stoner and Sludge are a huge blind spot for me. I usually lose interest due to how repetitive the music is or if the band is just ripping of Black Sabbath. Thankfully, this isn’t a problem for Six Months of Sun, who while mixing, sludge, stoner and post metal, they’re not here to bore you.
The band name may conjure up images of a nice time in the Med, they’re actually going for a more desolate and blasted place musically. The album lets you know what you’re in for by just reading the track listing. The songs are named after fictional or mythic creatures, so that’s setting yourself up to go hard from the start. You can’t have a weedy song and call it Shai-Hulud.
You could do some serious damage to your neck listening to creatures, it’s just begging for some headbanging. What makes this album a bit different is that it also could start a circle pit in places. Shai-Hulud has a fantastic burst of speed that kicks the excitement levels up. The rock n roll feel that the stoner element provides really gives an electric feeling to the album, and in parts it reminds me of the glory days of Pelican. High praise around these parts.
It feels a little weird to be introduced to the Dobhar Chu, a 4 – 5 meter, half otter, half dog from Irish legend by a Swiss band. But fair play, I’d never heard of this man eating, very bad boy before.
Creatures is filthy in the best possible way. Sludgy, heavy and never, ever being boring. Blast this out this December and chase the festive blues away.
https://lynkify.in/song/shai-hulud/ZuyhFZdF
And we’re done for the month. See you in a few weeks for my top 10 of 2024.
The ways of exile 