Print Edition: June 19, 2013
The Maine
Forever Halloween
Arizona alt-pop-rockers The Maine show up to play ball with their fourth full-length album Forever Halloween. Their new release presents a more polished and mature side, but they maintain that distinctly fun quality that pop rock has to offer. Unabashedly honest lyrics on tracks like “These Four Words” keep the collection from getting too bubblegum, and the self-deprecating quality to “Birthday in Los Angeles” adds an on-trend freshness to the mix. “Love & Drugs” is the quintessential summer jam that will have you tapping your feet, wishing you were at a house party. With almost ghoulish harmonies, the title track brings the album to a sombre and contemplative close. There is a song on Forever Halloween for everyone, and the grab bag nature makes it an accessible listen to those outside the genre. An album that manages to make me want to dance, laugh, cry and go out and get into trouble on a warm summer evening, plainly put, wins my vote.
Eleanor Friedberger
Personal Record
Eleanor Friedberger possesses an all-too-rare near-bottomless songwriting vocabulary. Refreshing stories of unconventional descriptors that spin into unexpected rhymes is the typical way a Friedberger song goes, though not in a way that alienates, for each still has a mind for returning to pop choruses. Friedberger writes songs that run along guitar and drum lines content to settle into arrangement, not force walls of noise or riffs begging to be extended, lending a sense of play to the way her voice jumps from image to association to reference to metaphor, even when at base tethered to the convention of songs about love. Though that tie is anything but constraining; Friedberger regards each situation with a mixture of unimpressed amusement and attached wistfulness – lines curve up at the end, whether perfecting response to the foolish persistence familiar to so-called romantic idealism (“You’ll Never Know Me”) or asserting the way memory works (“I Am the Past”). That (im)permanence edges in on more than one song, and in the way Friedberger’s vocals resound – ghosts, hauntings and echoes all the same, tried out as positives, and left unknown (and better) for now as on the shift of “Singing Time” that closes Personal Record.
Apache Tears
Barricades
Some artists are able to capture lightning on their debut release. Vampire Weekend, Joy Division and REM all produced classic albums on their first outing. Some artists, like The Stone Roses or Television, put out their best work on their first try, channelling years of song writing, musicianship and experience into one breath-taking collection of music. That’s a problem that Apache Tears will never have to worry about. On Barricades, the UK band have crafted a how-to manual for lifeless, generic modern rock in the guise of jagged, drone-heavy minor-key anthems. The melodies are predictable and forgettable, an overcomplicated by-the-numbers affair that highlights song writing weaknesses by embellishing them with uninspired, overwrought guitar work that poorly apes the dark, muscular garage riffs of recent Arctic Monkeys output. The band’s outlook improves slightly with quiet send-off track, “Isolated Sleep,” which combines double-tracked vocals and a forlorn reverb-drenched guitar for a pleasant, albeit brief, coda to an unremarkable album. At the very least, Apache Tears are gracious enough to offer something of a palate cleanser after six tracks of big, loud, and utterly vacant rock affectation.
Portugal. The Man
Evil Friends
Existing as outsiders for almost a decade, Portugal’s easily accessible Evil Friends brings them closer to the center of the scene. With adaptable Danger Mouse at the production helm, the band decided to shed much of their endearing eccentricity and has instead embraced the way of synth leads that are mostly laid overtop their usual frenzy of fuzzed-out guitars. These small modifications have established a fresh glisten to Portugal’s tracks, and sometimes this gloss makes the songs feel too processed. One of Portugal’s greatest strengths in the past was the ability to compose extravagant choruses, complete with string sections, choirs and positive lyrics, a formula seemingly tailor-made for large festival shows, where fans can sing-along to their favourite feel-good tunes. However, the choruses on Evil Friends are much darker, like on “Atomic Man” and sometimes feel like they don’t fit with the song’s verse, see “Hip-Hop Kids.” Currently signed to Atlantic Records, Evil Friends being their second big-label release, the band is making a solid attempt at making the jump to the mainstream markets, even if they miss the mark on a few odd tracks.
