I love how James Hetfield makes doing backing vocals look like the coolest damn thing in the whole wide world.

There really seems to be no end to Justin Bieber’s insistence at shoving himself down our throats. In the two years since the appearance of his debut My World EP, we’ve had My World 2.0, two remix albums, a compilation album (because every career that is over an album and a half long obviously becomes in dire need of compiling), and nothing less than a full-length documentary of the boy’s personal life. In other words, if ever a competition were to be held to decide the world’s most shamelessly exploited celebrity appeal, Mr Bieber’s would be a serious contender.

With that in mind, the biggest surprise of all, really, ends up being the fact that Island Records have waited this long to land an album like Under the Mistletoe on our collective heads. After all, what would make tweenage girls happier than a combination of two of their favourite things i.e Justin Bieber and Christmas at the same time? In other words, it makes absolute sense to put the two of them together, and as fast as possible. To that end, Mistletoe – which is incidentally, and quite strangely, Justin Bieber’s de facto sophomore album (by virtue of the fact that the artist has spent his time doing barely more than simply retweak his material over the past couple of years) – will undoubtedly end up achieving two things by the time its run is over: a thorough and holistic affirmation of love for all things Bieber from the pop star’s legions of fans, and serious agitation on the part of those folks who find themselves cringing and wincing each time some faceless DJ decides to spin his music in shopping malls.

While it is rare (or at least, relatively uncommon) for an artist’s general reception to fall so quickly and so easily into such differing extremes, careful examination of Bieber’s rise to fame (and his subsequent attempts to stay there) suggests that it should be no surprise that the line between love and hate ends up being quite thin in Bieber’s case. Let’s begin at the beginning: at the tender age of 13, Justin Drew Bieber was discovered by former So So Def marketing executive Scooter Braun, who clicked on one of his home made videos by accident whilst looking up another artist on YouTube. One thing led to another, and before the year was out, Bieber was on his way to Atlanta to record demo tapes. But while Bieber wasn’t the first – and most assuredly won’t be the last – of aspiring bedroom musicians to use the video-sharing website as an initial springboard for popularity, unlike many of those other wannabe artists, Bieber is increasingly starting to show that he does not deserve a single ounce of the critical acclaim that he has received. Such an outcome is itself a gross violation of the very meaning of artistic expression, and not only because he frequently creates the type of soulless, cheap-trick commodity that excites none but the lowest common denominator, but also because every inch of his current persona appears to have been callously slipped upon him – like a loosely-fitting pair of pajamas – by a backing agency that doesn’t seem to care a single jot about artistic integrity.

Which brings us back to Under the Mistletoe. Obviously, there’s nothing particularly alien about a record company cashing in on the excuse to shop that is Christmastime – corporations of all sorts have been doing that for ages. In fact, in many instances they help form the essence of the joys of giving and receiving that make each festive season an event worth looking forward to. It’s the same reason why the rentals of holiday-related movies spike astronomically at this exact same time every single year: we want to get in the mood and connect with those around us. Decades of consumer study have thoroughly educated the retail industry on what makes us tick in family-oriented times like these, allowing them to capitalize on our greatest and most innate desires. Having done so, these companies necessarily agree to take on the burden of ensuring that that same message of mutual love and togetherness is not buried under the temptation to embark on a round of rampant profit-making. In other words: in return for sincere, well-thought-out products, we will give you our turkey (no pun intended).

Justin Bieber and Island Records could have so easily created an album based on such a guiding spirit. Instead they chose to take the easy way out and stuff Under the Mistletoe full of phoned-in and blatantly disingenuous tracks. That selfish decision to prioritize their coffers — and destroy the spirit of festivity in its name — is the prism through which Under the Mistletoe must be judged. No other track reflects the utter deservedness of this sentiment more than the absolutely awful re-recording of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, which sees Bieber perform a duet with the American singer-songwriter herself. For most of the number, the pair barely sound like they’re on the same wavelength; the song’s introduction, for instance, sounds like a dry run gone badly out of sync, with both Carey and Bieber taking turns to blubber over each other’s vocal parts like a pair of kids competing to see who can come up with the most extravagant claim about their respective fathers.

Equally as criminal is the completely unnecessary inclusion of yet another rendition of “Silent Night”; apart from the song’s placement at the end of the album adding credence to the overwhelming suspicion that it was slipped in as a mere stopgap measure to make the entire album seem a bit more Christmassy, Bieber’s performance also comes across as more subdued rather than emotional, as if he had been forced to perform it against his own will. Now, to be completely fair, that was probably the case. But don’t let that sentiment lead to even the slightest notion that Bieber should be let off the hook, for all throughout this record there is a strong sense that the artist could have really used this opportunity to develop his own craft. Having already successfully dealt with a breaking voice and commendably coped with his new-found status as the latest global phenomenon, the next step for Bieber, logically, would be to attempt to expand his palette and try out a few new things. But the apparent ease in which Bieber rejected that option entirely before proceeding to recreate a new catalogue filled to no end with perfidious pop songs like “Only Thing I Ever Get For Christmas” and “Mistletoe” is to walk the path of the damned.

Elsewhere, even the presence of various big name stars fails to disguise the obvious sense of theatrical festivity present herein. So Usher, Boyz II Men, and Busta Rhymes feature on this album. Big deal. In a world of perfect justice, these artists would be ridiculed for having associated themselves with Justin Bieber. Obviously, that will never happen, so here’s what we should do in the meantime: until Justin Bieber decides to take himself seriously, the rest of us shouldn’t as well. Such an approach certainly isn’t pretty. It’s not even nice. But it’s a message well worth sending: mess with our familial sensibilities again, and the coal sitting in your stockings will be the least of your worries.

Score: 1/5

If you were a budding video game developer back in 2009, then Batman: Arkham Asylum was probably your chief case study on how to successfully port a comic book franchise to the home entertainment console. Developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Warner Bros., Arkham Asylum reaped the benefits of charging a veteran Batman writer – five-time Emmy award winner Paul Dini – with the job of creating its storyline. As opposed to most other Batman games, which are adaptations of the character from media distinct from the source material, Dini chose instead to base the game on the long-running comic book mythos, making for a simple yet engaging plot which easily resonated with the legions of Batman purists around the world. Elsewhere, convincing voice acting, innovative game design, and solid marketing sealed the deal, and the game ended up shipping over five million units worldwide while simultaneously earning plaudits as possibly “the greatest comic book video game of all time”.

Trust Warner Bros. to suckle such a golden teat for all it’s worth though; a sequel for Arkham Asylum – Batman: Arkham City – was quickly announced that same year, and extra Arkham Asylum challenge maps turned up with all the regularity of shirtless guys in Twilight: New Moon. More telling, perhaps, was Warner Bros.’ decision to release Batman: Arkham City in a multitude of formats (“Standard”, “Robin”, “Steelbook”, and “Collectors”), with each edition being distinguished by the inclusion of various – and often superfluous – forms of added merchandise. Amongst the many, many added appendages to the Collectors’ Edition of theArkham City game is none other than Batman: Arkham City – The Album, a compendium of eleven tracks featuring musical contributions to the franchise by various alt rock and indie artists.

Although at first glance as bewildering and unnecessary an inclusion as those hard-rubber batsuit nipples and oversized codpieces in the 1997 Batman and Robin film, Batman: Arkham City – The Album quickly proves itself to be a worthwhile companion piece to its parent game. American alt rock group Panic! at the Disco kick off proceedings with “Mercenary”, an infectious pop punk tune with a frantic, vaudeville sheen that would not have seemed entirely out of place on the band’s 2005 debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. The confident and casual manner in which frontman Brendon Urie slips in a Two-Face dialogue sample behind his trademark lyrical bombast is further proof that the band are still capably trundling on, despite having lost bassist Jon Walker and guitarist-cum-chief-songwriter Ryan Ross for over two years now. Elsewhere, American alt rock band Coheed and Cambria, apparently still enjoying their runaround with making the sort of shorter and more concise efforts like those seen on 2010’s Year of the Black Rainbow, contribute the pocket-sized “Deranged”. But don’t let the song’s brevity and relatively muted instrumentation fool you, for lead vocalist Claudio Sanchez manages to serve up a piece that perfectly encapsulates the desolate and dismal feel of the streets of Arkham: “While you clean the streets of misfortune/I pick the innocent from my dirty teeth,” he explains during the song’s chorus. “We’re one and the same – deranged,” he offers a split second later, effortlessly mimicking the sort of ironic moral juxtaposition that the Batman franchise is so well-known for.

Compilation albums sometimes have the knack of bringing out the best in a band, and Danish indie rock duo The Raveonettes show us as much by treating us to a sultry, distortion-laden number – “Oh, Stranger” – that effortlessly plays to their instrumental strengths while never once eschewing the band’s trademark closely-harmonized vocals. Elsewhere, The Damned Things prove that they haven’t yet lost their hard-edged, pseudo-music-school chops by turning in a blistering, no-holds-barred performance on “Trophy Widow”, and even the otherwise mediocre Daughtry manage to withstand their frontman’s lyrical banality and hold their own with the fist-pumping euphorics of “Drown in You”. Even further down the album, The Boxer Rebellion make themselves a solid case for finally being signed, with the lofty “Losing You” acting as a perfect antithesis to the gritty and much edgier The Cold Still, which they released earlier this year.

But it is perhaps Serj Tankian’s coda to the album, “Total Paranoia”, that is the hardest track to describe here. In keeping with his constant desire to further distance himself from his halcyon days as one-fourth of System of a Down, Tankian opts to go for a theatrical, embellishing performance – complete with faux choirs, chamber rock arrangements, and dramatic oversinging – ending up with a sound that is unmistakably his own. While this bizarre hybrid of stylistic choices doesn’t exactly make for delectable listening, the number does have a grizzly sense of satisfaction about it, and on a whole manages to fit into the brooding tone of Batman: Arkham City perfectly. Still, it is Crosses’, “The Years”, which wins the title of being the absolute highlight of the entire record. Herein, Deftones singer Chino Moreno channels himself through an ambient filter, slowly creeping towards a climax that is as harsh-sounding and cacophonic as it is pensive, surfacing with a set of predictably thrilling results.

Much like its titular character, Batman: Arkham City – The Album, is likely to service a world which is painfully unaware of its existence, mainly due to the relatively underwhelming role that it plays both within the overall experience of its parent game and the triviality of compilation albums to the modern day music enthusiasts. Still, we would all do well to attempt to defy the album’s stealth and predator tactics, for herein lies that rare gem: a shameless money-making grab that is actually more than half-decent. In other words: do heed the summons of the bat-signal.

Score: 3.5/5

As a born-and-bred Buddhist, I was taught early in life that the idea of karma – broadly understood in the Western world as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect – governs all. Now, far be it from me to argue against an entire civilization’s worth of cultural understanding, but this idea simply can’t be absolutely true: for if it was, things like Dream Theater simply would not exist. Despite the self-deprecating title of their first best-of album – Greatest Hit (…and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs) – the truth is that the Dream Theater production machine has been steadily trundling on, virtually unhindered, for the past two decades or so. On the surface, the band’s success can be put down to a fearsome combination of the individual band members’ fantastic technical prowess, a punishing touring schedule (insert an obligatory reference to Mike Portnoy’s forced departure here), and an incredibly loyal fan base. But listening to A Dramatic Turn of Events, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is the sound of a band which probably should have disappeared over a decade ago. Indeed: when examined up close, the five piece’s longevity is frankly bewildering, especially considering that since 1999’s Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory they have been almost terminally idle.

Now I will accept that Dream Theater probably deserves a well-sized chunk of the inordinate amount of holy-shit-did-he-actually-play-that-riff flattery which gushes forth from their fans and many neutrals each time they release a new record. Earnest musicianship is hard to come by these days, and the band’s self-enforced restraint from completely selling-out musically is nothing short of admirable. Moreover, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that the band is made out of nothing less than seasoned and battle-hardened professionals who are in the business not just for the money but also out of a genuine love for what they do. Yet the rampant callousness with which they treat their role as progressive metal ambassadors is really starting to aggravate. Along with bands like Fates Warning and Queensrÿche, Dream Theater was chiefly responsible for their parent genre’s crossover and immediate mainstream commercial success. Most notably, the band quickly mastered the art of fusing traditional progressive metal with a complexity and grandeur usually associated with classical compositions, without ever losing that whiff of commercial appeal. But whereas the genre’s best acts have either all sought to reinvent or at least revitalize themselves in the years since, Dream Theater have stubbornly stuck to the same old clichés. On A Dramatic Turn of Events, the band resort to a familiar concoction of storm and wind samples, repeated use of faux choirs, predictable jazz fusions, extended trading solo sections, and bombastic song titles that use polysyllabic, apocalypse-referencing words in an attempt to sound grandiose.

Worse, the entire affair is wrapped in a set of barely-metaphorical, almost self-parodying lyrics, in which vocalist James Labrie attempts to deliver a treatise on everything – from the failure of society’s moral compass to a fear of the occult – but fails spectacularly at each attempt. Take first single and opening track “On The Backs of Angels” for instance: the song itself is catchy enough, and Petrucci treats us to a couple of cool riffs that are welcomingly reminiscent of none other than prog-rock greats Pink Floyd, but the number is irreparably bogged down by Labrie’s constant spewing of perennial eye-rollers such as, “We spiral towards disaster/Survival fading faster” and “Tears fall from the shameless/Shelter me, guide me to the edge of the water.” It’s the kind of uninspired poetry that is produced when an entire school is conscripted into a National Day poem-writing competition by overzealous teachers. Speaking of which, repeating the central thesis of F. Scott’s Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby” like they taught you in school is also all well and good, but it can only be done so many times before it starts sounding trite, and the last song with that privilege passed us by about a decade ago. Elsewhere, the wordplay of second track “Build Me Up, Break Me Down” isn’t much better, providing us with plenty of evidence that in all probability, band chief lyricist John Petrucci has been reduced to thumbing through The Dictionary of Doom-Mongering Words and using a verb-the-pronoun syntax strategy in a last-ditch attempt to put half-interesting phrases together.

Granted, no one ever comes to Dream Theater for particularly deep insight on the human condition, but the band’s point-blank refusal to update or revitalize their craft leads to a series of songs that, for all their blistering technical mastery, are ultimately far more stagnant and predictable than anybody would like to admit. True: reverting to familiar genre clichés may be a valid and occasionally welcome form of creative expression, but over the last decade or so, it has also become mind-numbingly unremarkable. Unfortunately, Dream Theater show no sign of letting up with the self-hackneying: the album also includes three ballads that present the sort of misplaced, heavy metal emotive maudlin that nine times out of ten either comes off as insincere or downright dreadful. Lyrically, A Dramatic Turn of Events’ path ends up being one that has been so painfully well-trod that the record seems at times self-mocking. As a result, the album ultimately becomes a monument to all that can be wrong with the songwriting of modern progressive metal.

What makes it worse is that some of the instrumental sections present herein aren’t even that good either. Going back to “Build Me Up, Break Me Down”, the song bewilderingly opens with the kind of nu-metal riff that makes you lean back and check to see if the album’s track listing also includes a cover of Disturbed’s “Inside the Fire”. Elsewhere, Dream Theater’s old faults return to haunt them yet again: both “Lost Not Forgotten” and “Outcry” feature riffs that keep going even after they’ve long since turned stale, and Rudess’ repeated usage of the same dripping piano in several tracks, in an unconvincing attempt to create distinction and emotion, is often enough to make anyone skip to the next song. But the chief compositional lampoonery here is mid-album track “Bridges in the Sky”, whose chord progression is sandwiched – like a grotesquely malformed burger – between two thirty-second samples in which Dream Theater went to Malaysia, found the biggest river toad they could, and then told it to belch loudly into the microphone.

In the end, the biggest, most inescapable problem with A Dramatic Turn of Events, and – by extension – Dream Theater, is that, aside from being derivative, the band repeatedly shows that they are capable of doing much better. Indeed, the best bits on this album – like the slow, yet fantastic creeping towards utter chaos on the climax of “Breaking All Illusions”, and Rudess’ trippy playing in the intro to “On The Backs of Angels” – are when the band step outside their confines and attempt to do things farther away from their comfort zone (in this case, it was the mere act of giving John Myung the songwriting pen and telling Rudess to just go nuts). I cannot honestly say that I dislike this album, but I cannot reward it with a rating higher than a 2.5 either: mainly because at the end of the day it is cliché, contrived, and smacks of a band in desperate need of reinvention. Guys, please wake the fuck up – I want my favourite prog-metal band – and my religion – back.

Score: 2.5/5

American rock band R.E.M. have announced that they are breaking up. From the band’s website:

“To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.” R.E.M. 

MIKE

“During our last tour, and while making Collapse Into Now and putting together this greatest hits retrospective, we started asking ourselves, ‘what next’? Working through our music and memories from over three decades was a hell of a journey. We realized that these songs seemed to draw a natural line under the last 31 years of our working together. 

“We have always been a band in the truest sense of the word. Brothers who truly love, and respect, each other. We feel kind of like pioneers in this–there’s no disharmony here, no falling-outs, no lawyers squaring-off. We’ve made this decision together, amicably and with each other’s best interests at heart. The time just feels right.” 

MICHAEL

“A wise man once said–’the skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave.’ We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it. 

“I hope our fans realize this wasn’t an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way. 

“We have to thank all the people who helped us be R.E.M. for these 31 years; our deepest gratitude to those who allowed us to do this. It’s been amazing.” 

PETER

“One of the things that was always so great about being in R.E.M. was the fact that the records and the songs we wrote meant as much to our fans as they did to us. It was, and still is, important to us to do right by you. Being a part of your lives has been an unbelievable gift. Thank you. 

“Mike, Michael, Bill, Bertis, and I walk away as great friends. I know I will be seeing them in the future, just as I know I will be seeing everyone who has followed us and supported us through the years. Even if it’s only in the vinyl aisle of your local record store, or standing at the back of the club: watching a group of 19 year olds trying to change the world.” 

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I’ve never been able to completely get into this band (God knows I probably did it the wrong way, having first started with their latest albums - Accelerate and Collapse Into Now – when everyone knows it’s their 1980s material that was truly ace) but their 1992 release Automatic For The People holds a special place in my heart, it being the album that I listened to throughout the entirety of my 2011 Gaspesie trip. For instance, each time the song below comes on, I find myself thinking back to long – but beautiful – hours spent hitch-hiking on gravelly park roads, navigating jungle trails, and marveling at the beauty of the edge of the world.

For giving me those simple memories alone, I know that I will miss you guys deeply.

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Sea Sew – Irish singer/songwriter Lisa Hannigan’s 2008 debut record – was very nearly overshadowed by its own biographical legend. Famously: after spending seven years in fellow Irishman Damien Rice’s band, Hannigan was sacked by the notoriously prickly indie artist just moments before they were due to go onstage for a gig in Germany. She subsequently retaliated by bunkering down in a freezing barn in the Irish countryside for two weeks, feverishly writing, composing, and rehearsing the songs that would eventually become the basis of her debut LP. Upon its release, Sea Sew was greeted with the kind of enthusiasm afforded only to the best of modern music’s upcoming starlets; Choice Music Prize and Meteor Music Award nominations for “Irish Album of the Year” soon followed, and Hannigan also enjoyed a successful promotional tour – the cries of “Lisa who?!” from the crowd at one of the shows she was asked to open notwithstanding. Add to that the fact that the record had even managed to create a new genre for itself – the reasonably descriptive moniker of “plinky plonk rock” – and all the signs were that Hannigan would become one of Irish music’s most compelling exports for many years to come.

Or at least she might have been if her sophomore record hadn’t abandoned just about everything that made her special in the first place. Passenger’s stylings – which are slick, polished, and about as far removed as possible from the wheezy, homegrown warmth and broken-down sounds of its predecessor – simply make it hard to bother with Hannigan any longer. For an artist who earned all her plaudits by opening up new methods of adding character and dimension into her songwriting, the record comes off as impersonal, removed, and emotionally distant. While Sea Sew sounded like it was put together with musical instruments held in one piece by nothing more than mere spit, prayers, and two sheets of rusted tin foil, Passenger has all the emotional depth of a modern day printing press. Even the album art itself is telling: whereas Sea Sew’s cover featured a gorgeous knitting pattern – which Hannigan made herself – that imbibed it with a comely home-worn feel, on Passenger, the artist sounds as far away as the constellations she has chosen to adorn the front of her new album with.

Yet, her attempts at selling the whole affair, though artificial, still manage to get off to a decent start. Album opener “Home” is a lush, full-sounding song with see-sawing strings and the kind of introductory piano riff that one would expect from Coldplay or Keane. Elsewhere, the rustling murmurs of “A Sail” are placed lovingly atop a pair of stately drumbeats, and third track “Knots” isn’t bad either. But from here, everything devolves into the same formulaic mess. “O Sleep” sounds depressingly familiar, and on “Safe Travels (Don’t Die)” Hannigan sounds like she’s channeling the spirit of The Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee – but in the worst way possible. To be honest, the songs themselves aren’t that bad, yet they’re definitely falling short of some elusive standard. When examined up close, Passenger reveals itself to want to distribute largesse in the same manner that its predecessor did, but few among its eleven numbers actually have the sincerity or the innate humility to go the distance, which is itself a good indicator of the hyperbaric conditions Hannigan was probably under whilst making this record. There is no doubt that she sincerely wants to please us as much as she did last time around, but ultimately, it’s her zeal to impress that causes Passenger to fall flat on its face.

To be fair, Hannigan’s reckless abandonment of her trademark rusticism may owe something to her success with Sea Sew. After all, it’s often tempting to tap into the luxuries granted by a successful debut record: new and different recording studios, crisp-sounding production, and access to notable guest artists just to name a few. Yet the fact is that it’s Hannigan herself who is the most remote element of all on Passenger. Her vocals rarely seem to interface with the songs that she has written, and often end up occupying a vast and alienating space that robs the artist of her trademark intimacy. Another failing of the album is its inability to capture the raw beauty of Hannigan’s voice in a live setting. When Hannigan sings before an audience she frequently casts her face to the ceiling and, with half-closed eyes, opens her throat and lets out a rasp of delicate strength and stirring beauty, its timbre only slightly accented by the artist’s leprechaun heritage. Only a mere imitation of this luminous beauty is present here; Sea Sew had this problem as well – so no additional marks off – but it’s still a huge shame that no mixing engineer alive has yet managed to figure out how to capture Hannigan’s voice when it is out in full force.

Three years ago, we bought into Lisa Hannigan because she sounded unique and because she managed to connect us with an experience long since made inaccessible by the sheen of modern studio production. We believed in her then because she could hold our attention in that affably humanistic sway of hers and then make us all watch as she somehow made us feel naked and vulnerable again. But her charm has finally receded from her interactions with us. The full significance of those old sounds of hers, so effortlessly unleashed on Sea Sew, probably never really infiltrated us until now, but Passenger’s failure to approach its predecessor’s level of emotional engagement will forever serve to remind us that its creator now sounds just like everybody else. And that, sadly, will be its greatest achievement.

Score: 2.5/5

“Recession-era music: low-budget and danceable,” said the New York Times’ Jon Parales of the (then still-emerging) chillwave genre in an article published by the paper back in 2010. Parales undoubtedly had chillwave’s trademark cheap-sounding bedroom production and bouncing dance-music hooks in mind when he opted to use those words to convey his initial description of the genre, but even he could not possibly have predicted the other scruples which this late-2000s branch of ambient synthpop would end up sharing with his metaphor of choice. In recent times, the frequent (and often stellar) output of similarly-veined acts like Washed Out, Toro Y Moi, and Memory Tapes – just to name a few – have gone a long way towards ensuring that chillwave, like its real-life economic counterpart, will likely end up as a constant and enduring phenomenon, the signs of its presence permanently seared in the back of many minds.

But for Alan Palomo, who had been writing and performing music for many years before the inception of Neon Indian – as both Ghosthustler and VEGA – that probably doesn’t matter. For even before the 2009 release of Psychic Chasms, his debut effort as one half of Neon Indian (alongside video artist Alicia Scardetta), Palomo made it clear that he planned on eventually returning to the synthpop style that he had so triumphantly championed as the leader of VEGA. Yet there was always hope that Palomo would reconsider his decision and keep his project with Scardetta alive for just a little while longer, with his debut record as Neon Indian – itself a gorgeous marriage of style and substance – being the chief argument.

Even when viewed independently, Psychic Chasms is a confident and loud-mouthed affirmation that the entire genre would be more than just a mere flash in the pan. Whereas other roughly similar acts opted to hazily reconstruct childhood memories that have long since been consumed by VHS mold, Palomo managed to unite all of the genre’s best sentiments – the deceptively hackneyed bedroom production, its yearning sense of grandeur, and characteristically fluid visual decorum – together on a single album. Upon its release, Thought Catalog famously reviewed the album from a penile perspective – to which Palomo responded on his Twitter account with an exuberant, “Finally! Someone hears the penises!” tweet. But this time around on Era Extraña there are no phalluses to be found – just an obtuse amount of balls.

Palomo’s new-found bravado is smeared all over the pages of his new record. Album opener “Heart: Attack”, with its disparate shimmers and cacophonic 8-bit squiggles, affixes a fevered and gauzy sense of longing to proceedings, but it’s really second track “Polish Girl” that gets the show underway. The song bravely introduces itself with a shiny catchiness that is terribly reminiscent of a latter-day Duran Duran single, yet feels purposefully spare and fleeting, with Palomo nonchalantly pressing, “You, you’ve got to remember!” in the background. Elsewhere, slow and hazy synths glide out from a dramatically circulating backing beat on “Fall Out”, which then ends with the type of muted denouement that one might expect from Daft Punk after a particularly grueling day at the office.

Depending on how one sees it, the title of Neon Indian’s latest album Era Extraña can apparently mean either “Strange Era” or “She Was Strange” (I use “apparently” because yo no hablo español, you see), but either way the context is fitting: Palomo’s muffled vocals, sibilant synths, and wan atmospherics might as easily have recalled a futuristic urban utopia or the immediate aftermath of a bizarre, yet particularly intoxicating date with a breathtaking femme fatale. Either way one struggles to figure out if it was all real or simply imagined. It is in this rather disorienting template that bleached musical movements like those on “Suns Irrupt” or “Hex Girlfriend” work their magic, creating formless cities or venues for sensations to congregate, just so that an effervescing musical interlude like “Heart: Decay” can tie it all together and call it a day.

The most remarkable thing about Era Extraña is the fact that the collective joys of its contents are surprisingly easy to access. Each of the songs carry a sense of sun-baked detachedness that allow them to be individually extricated from the rest of the album and enjoyed at one’s leisure (in fact, putting this record on shuffle along with the other 80 gigabytes of music on one’s iTunes will create an entirely new – but still interesting – experience). But it is the bigger picture which always provides the effect that will keep one coming back for more: blurred and laid-back, yet waffly and warm all at once, this is precisely the sort of pleasure that you’ll always want to shell out money for – recession or otherwise.

Score: 4/5

As one quarter of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters built his legend around crafting albums tied together by grandiose thematic ideas, philosophical lyrics, and spectacular sonic experimentation. But the eventual, early-1980s disintegration of Pink Floyd left him free to pursue his own artistic inclinations, completely unencumbered by the creative and interpersonal restrictions of his former band mates. Ironically, it was a project that had very nearly been taken up by the Floyd that would end up as his first solo release: Waters had originally demoed The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking along with another album – entitled Bricks in the Wall – to the rest of his band in July 1977. After a long debate, the band eventually decided that they preferred Bricks in the Wall (which, of course, eventually ended up as the now-famous The Wall) and the draft of The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking was dropped without much fanfare.

The concept of The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, as envisioned by Waters in 1977, rotates around a man (curiously named Reg) who has a series of dreams about committing adultery during the onset of a midlife crisis. The concept of hitch hikers is presented here as a metaphor for unattached and lonely people, and the middle-aged Reg, who dreams that he and his (unnamed) wife are tourists driving along a country road in West Germany, is made to introduce one such person into his subconscious mind when he unwittingly picks up a hitch hiker in his dream. The album then follows his subsequent, semi-conscious examination of his failing marriage and his personal struggles with fidelity, with events taking place in real time (as indicated by the song titles). As an abstract peering into the human mind’s deepest and most boorish desires, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking is a work dense with heavy symbolism, disturbing imagery, bizarrely shifting scenes, and Waters’ trademark black humour, which are all used to help unravel the tale of Reg’s internal battle with himself.

Unfortunately, Waters’ work proved too dense and complicated for most to comprehend – despite being backed by an elaborate supporting tour which featured a stage set up like a bedroom and a 27 foot high back screen, the album’s confusing plot structure and Waters’ stubborn insistence on wanting to perform everything as it had been recorded on the album resulted in a bewildering pantomime that didn’t go down well with most audiences, and ticket sales soon started to suffer. Some of the tour’s bad luck rubbed off on the album sales – The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking took eleven years to go gold, and by March 1985 – barely a year after its release – could only afford to be played in North America’s smaller venues. To rub salt in the wound, David Fricke, one of the Floyd’s biggest former champions, wrote that Waters’ latest creation was nothing more than “a petulant echo, a transparent attempt to prove that Roger Waters was Pink Floyd”.

As such, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking isn’t as much a compilation of honest artistic expression as it is a revealing snapshot of its creator’s artistic insufficiencies and the actual mid-life issues plaguing him at the time. Even the unusual recklessness of the album cover, which features a rear-view nude photograph of pornography actress Linzi Drew (and subsequently drew heavy criticism from various feminist groups for being sexist and advertising rape), tells us as much: here was a man with nothing to lose but everything to prove. But even if the racy cover of The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking dramatically casts Waters as some modern-aged sexist, the contents of the album don’t quite share the same sentiment. Instead, opening track “4.30 AM (Apparently They Were Traveling Abroad)” introduces us to Reg, who divulges his tale with the greatest reluctance: “We were moving away from the border/Looking for somewhere to sleep/The two of us sharing the driving/Two hitch hikers slumped in the back seat,” he explains, with the barest hint at a plea for understanding in his voice as thunder rolls ominously in the distance. It is amidst these bizarre surroundings that Eric Clapton, who features on the album as a guest guitarist – and, as one suspects, the only able substitute for the now-estranged David Gilmour –, pipes up a mournful two-note solo that anticipates the rest of the album’s somber tone. Then, the album simultaneously settles into its story-telling groove and wildly ratchets up its sound: “4.33 AM (Running Shoes)” opens with a deafening saxophone blast from David Sanborn and finds Waters steadily upping the ante by having a trio of backing girls echo his every other line. Tellingly, Waters sounds a great deal more interested on here than he did the last time we heard him, which was on the final Pink Floyd album prior to the band’s dissolution (The Final Cut), and rightfully so – for this was his one chance to prove that he would always be the true brains of the classic Floyd lineup.

Likewise, the album frequently finds itself lacking in terms of mellifluous moments. Apart from Clapton’s tuneful solos and masterful contributions from David Sanborn’s sax, a significant amount of The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking presents itself as anathema to the ears. Before long, it becomes clear that the tempering influences of Gilmour, Wright, and Mason are sorely missed – no matter how much Waters wants to believe otherwise. For all its strident embellishment of the album’s placement in a foreign land, massive chunks of “4.37 AM (Arabs with Knives and West German Skies) are close to being completely unlistenable, with the massive passages devoted to unintelligible background whispering painfully hearkening back to the dullest moments of “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” from 1970’s Atom Heart Mother. But for all his flaws when it comes to crafting rhythms and hooks, Roger Waters lyrical prowess has never been more complete. Perhaps wanting to underscore the obtuseness of Gilmour’s rather third-rate lyrics on About Face (his second solo effort), on “4.56 AM (For the First Time Today – Part 1)” Waters delivers a dispassionate yet well-weighted soliloquy on the senselessness of marriage to a couple which has all but lost their passion for each other: “You were my everyday excuse/For playing deaf, dumb, and blind/Who’d have ever thought/This was how it would end for you and me/To carry my own millstone/Out of the trees.” On “4.58 AM (Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin)”, he admits, with only the slightest hint of irony that, “I’d like to go on with this bit of a song/Describing this schmuck/I’d like to go on, but I’m going to throw up.” It’s powerful stuff.

As it comes from roughly the same timeframe as The Wall, much about The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking is strongly reminiscent of the former’s theatrical and much more stripped-down demeanor: the thundering introductory riff of “4.33 AM (Running Shoes)” is a dead-ringer throwback to both “In the Flesh” and “Young Lust”. Elsewhere, the petrified whispers of “4.47 AM (The Remains of our Love)” have clearly borrowed a thing or two from the terrified mumblings heard on “Don’t Leave Me Now”. Considering that the Floyd could so easily have worked on The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking instead of The Wall, it does give one pause to think how much more influential the Floyd could have been had they chosen to work with the former concept instead – particularly given that one frequent latter-day criticism of The Wall is the difficulty of trying to empathize with the insufferable character of the rock star Pink. In contrast, the fate of Reg – who is every bit the middle-aged and tormented everyman – would have been a much easier cause to champion. And who knows how more introspective The Wall could have been had Roger Waters been allowed to write about his disillusions with his rock star life completely on his own?

Instead, we hear a brow-beaten middle-aged man try and worm his way through a set of sketches that really would have benefited from the musical chemistry of his former band and the excising ruthlessness of Bob Ezrin, all while gazing down the boulevard of what-could-have-been. Still, even when viewed independently, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking illustrates the sheer genius of a man at the peak of his artistic prowess and captures him in a state of single-mindedness that he had never demonstrated before, and, strangely, that he never would again. Considering its poor sales and the failure of its supporting tour, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking is hardly the auspicious start that Waters would have wanted for his solo career, but he can still take heart in the fact that his first work still contains enough mystery worth unraveling even a quarter of a century later. If only the same could be said about 95% of everything else.

Score: 4/5

And today, the album – entitled Lulu - had its full tracklist released; and it really looks like it’s going to be a big one. The album includes – among other things – a 19-and-a-half minute (!) closing track “Junior Dad” and two 11-minute tracks, “Cheat on Me” and “Dragon”:

Lulu tracklisting:

1 Brandenburg Gate (4.19)
2 The View (5.17)
3 Pumping Blood (7.24)
4 Mistress Dread (6.52)
5 Iced Honey (4.36)
6 Cheat On Me (11.26)
7 Frustration (8.33)
8 Little Dog (8.01)
9 Dragon (11.08)
10 Junior Dad (19.28)

Check out a video of the quintet performing together at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th Anniversary Concert in Cleveland, Ohio:

Man, listening to this entire affair is going to take some serious stamina.

(Lulu drops on the 31st of October worldwide and on the 1st of November in North America)

Everything about my first listen to Bran Van 3000’s Discosis told me that this was going to be a stupidly disconcerting experience. With the album featuring no less than eleven guest artists, random infusions of roomy Senegalese dance rhythms, bass cuts syncopated so harshly that they sound explosive, and reckless sampling of works by Curtis Mayfield, Antonio Hardy, and Baba Varma, it seemed like only a matter of time before the spit and prayers that held the entire affair together at the seams buckled in protest at the ridiculous load that they were being asked to carry. Worse, a quick scan of the album’s back cover revealed that the entire wank affair had been haphazardly jammed into a seventeen track playlist – about half a dozen songs too many for a man whose attention span can, at times, make goldfish look smart. And to top it all off, all this had happened even before the appearance of the mid-album track, “Jean Leloup’s Dirty Talk”, which opens with a line that goes, “Well, that was fun/But I’m still horny/I think I’ll maybe suck on Bruno’s cock for awhile.” Great – not only is this album an absolute fucking mess, it also comes strapped with a libido that can be seen from the moon.

But once the haze clears, it becomes readily apparent that Discosis, for all her (female pronoun deliberate) flaws, is also brilliant. Much like her parent band, the album is a breath of fresh air in a Canadian music scene excessively dominated by – all respect to them – eerily familiar and borderline derivative indie acts desperately hoping to ape some of the success of bands like Arcade Fire, Metric, and Broken Social Scene, with mixed results. I can think of no one else who sounds quite like Bran Van 3000 – and the truth is that’s probably a good thing for all involved, for really, how many actually want to listen to this sort of thing anyway? The absurdity of Bran Van 3000’s style of music is such that it is often about an inch away from being completely unsustainable. Yet, against all odds, they are somehow still here – as albums like Discosis (and later, Rose and The Garden) prove. As a matter of fact, the band actually seem to revel in their own implausibility: it has granted them an almost non-caustic sense of immortality. By deliberately ignoring the signs that their marriage of hip hop, alternative rock, pop, and glittery electronica is a fusion that simply does not make sense, and that even on their best days, they somehow contrive to separate the best of these aforementioned genres in a way that is too disjointed and too alienating for most to enjoy or even comprehend, the band is able to dive straight into the deep end and surface with some startling results.

Opening track “Astounded” is one of them. Blessed with a dense, electrochemical groove, and a series of hushed “ooohs” in the background that serve only to heighten the tempo, the song tosses off the kind of carefree, late-night party groove in a way that only the best anthems can. Any coherence beyond the oft-repeated refrain of “All I want to do is love you” is, for all intents and purposes, strictly unnecessary. For what else could be more important? Elsewhere, “Loop Me” acts as the antithesis of the opening track, working silently in its niche as a prowling, silky number whose main body of strength lies is in the vocal performances of the sultry Bran Van girls. Third track “Montreal” may feature a curiously subdued Youssou N’dour, but it still manages to round up the album’s opening sequence nicely, with its smooth segue into the dirty funk riffs of “BV3” being one of the most satisfying moments of the entire record.

A lot of the album’s erstwhile charm comes from its unabashed nature and apparent disregard for the 21^st century’s notions of modesty, which takes on more substance than just the luridly detailed album art seen on the front cover. Whether the band is discussing its apparent apodysophilia on “Loaded” (“I want to play guitar/And be a movie star/Be in the B-movies/And take off all my clothes”), describing a lover’s body on “Go Shoppin’” (“On her chest my name written/Just below her nipple”), or dishing out none-too-subtle metaphors for the act of carnal intercourse on “More Shopping” (“Imagine I’m a weapon in your sheath”), it all comes across as desperate, hushed, and meaningful, akin to the unintentional sincerity of a pair of soft porn movie actors, catching themselves in the other’s eyes for the very first time since filming began. But the brevity and vigour to these brief sexual encounters is not to be underestimated; make no mistake, Discosis is a ravaging young lady slowly coming to terms with her own sensuality, and the way she learns best is by experimenting. The manner in which this explains the album’s haphazardness is deliberate, and almost poetic.

Yet the fulcrum on which everything really falls into place, that moment in where the record becomes more than just a woefully misdirected album made by a bunch of pavement-dwelling Montrealites with all the talent in the world but not an ounce of self-control, is on “Speed”. Here the entire band, left to their own devices for once on the album, carefully makes way for each other’s talents to shine through. The song focuses, with utter devotion, on just hitting the next note and taking every moment as it comes, hoping a portrait of the artist will shine through by the end of it all. Then, as the croons of “Hold on, hold on” echo softly in the background, the album chooses that exact moment to fall perfectly between not being too brash and too extravagant, nor too forced or too pedantic. In that smallest of moments, it becomes absolutely perfect. Who knew that clarity could be so disconcerting.

Score: 4/5