Print Edition: November 20, 2013
Justin Bieber
Music Mondays / Journals Pt. 1
Since kicking off his Music Monday series back on October 7, a musical advent calendar leading up to his new film this Christmas, Justin Bieber has consistently released new singles from his “journals” collection. Now in week seven of his 10-week run of new material, Bieber has so far demonstrated significant strides, and the restraint and maturity necessary to widen his musical appeal beyond that of teenage charm. While tracks like “Wait For a Minute” fit more into his traditional mould of pop-radio fodder, “Hold Tight,” “Heartbreaker,” “Bad Day,” and “Recovery” stand in stark contrast to Bieber’s standard material. In fact, they’re his first attempt at adult R&B. He pours his heart out on these tunes, with lyrics like “First I’ll acknowledge, our trust has been broken” on the soulful “Recovery,” and “Never thought a love like yours would leave me all alone” on the downbeat “Bad Day,” as Bieber begins to let the disappointment in his personal life into his music. While he may falter with his lyrics from time to time, the minimal and tight R&B productions expose an untouched emotional side of Justin Bieber. Suddenly, Monday mornings just got a lot better.
Andrew Bird
I Want to See Pulaski at Night
This is not an album you listen to while working. It evokes—requires—contemplation. It is an intense, rhythmic journey with a high clear voice of violin shifting from euphoria to melancholy, from love to longing. The music is highly emotional and multifaceted, with the tracks flowing into one another. Bird’s EP has clear narrative threads despite its primarily instrumental nature. Whimsical whistles meander hand-in-hand with lower, more urgent rhythms. “Lit from Underneath” was my favourite song aside from the title track. “Logan’s Loop” was a contender with a catchy beginning and strong build-up, but ended abruptly at just over a minute, leaving a dissatisfying void. But the album flourishes with “Pulaski at Night.” This is where the narrative woven throughout the album culminates, and the vocals do not diminish the instrumentals; rather the experiments from previous tracks blend with the unique tenor of Bird’s voice, creating a kind of poignance. It ends on a note of melancholic hope to be carried through “Hover I” and “Hover II.” However, the end of the latter and the last track, “Ethio Invention No. 2” seemed superfluous, in the first case wrapping up too tidily and the second sounding too similar to “Ethio Invention No. 1” with only some strange variations. But overall, an intriguing instrumental album that leaves the ears and the mind feeling satiated.
Céline Dion
Loved Me Back to Life
It’s hip to slam Céline Dion. As a contrarian to sub-popular culture I gave her new record a spin. Wow. I never knew something could sound so technically right, but feel so goddamn wrong. The first track, “Love Me Back to Life” sounds like burnt popcorn. Like, when you were really hungry and you over-cooked the bag by just 30 seconds, so the office smells really good – making people jealous, but angry because it stinks like burnt chemicals. For the life of me, I could not understand what was happening with the melody on the first four tracks. Surely, this was not a person singing, it must be a computer. Céline has brought auto-tune to a whole new level of horrible. I tried to imagine myself in a minivan, driving my daughter to soccer practice. Maybe we could sing along with this, an all-out sonic holocaust, melting the teeth out of our skulls. But thank Jebus, Ms Dion asked Stevie Wonder to show up on the ninth track, “Overjoyed.” And I’m not gonna lie, that shit pulled me in. I didn’t know if it was some sort of sick trick, but I could feel some sweet ‘90s soft jazz-style PBR&B pumping through me like a picture of the New York skyline in Ikea. At the end of the day, this record is kind of good—in that high-waisted jeans kind of way we can all relate to. My advice is to skip the tweeny first half and start listening with the track “Save Your Soul.”
Arcade Fire
Reflektor
Not content to take the Divine Fits route of adding synths to shuffle rock, Reflektor sees Arcade Fire, true believers in The Album, recycling concepts (see the stagnation from “Keep the Car Running” and “Ready to Start” to “You Already Know”) but with the fireproof producer’s touch of James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem). Arcade Fire “don’t know if [they] like rock and roll music,” and don’t know if they like their audience, offering up the insult of “Normal People,” American Beauty style, stuck between their mass appeal and wanting to preserve their outsider point-of-view. What emerges over the hour and change (not counting 20 minutes of tapedeck “hidden tracks”) is that, for all their Greek-tragic allusions, this is still one simple broken-love narrative from the suburbs, for all their Black Orpheus-pasted videos, it’s Resnais’ version they might want to pay attention to, and for all their 80s rock narrative attempted groove, this hangs closest to contemporary worship, hence the (accurate) comparisons to U2. Win Butler wants to speak to a generation, or for someone, but the less attention paid to the embarrassing techno-colonial warnings of “Flashbulb Eyes” and “Here Comes the Night Time” the better. Even if the calls of “Afterlife” (“when love is gone/where does it go?” “can we work it out?” “I’ve gotta know!”) come close to a Beach Boys b-side in naive fervour, Reflektor most resembles the beginning of a mid-life crisis.
