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Everything Everything - Man Alive.

If you’re not a fan of erratic time signatures, harmonies in high registers and fast abstract lyrics then maybe this is not for you but if you are and you have time and patience to spare then you may find something special here.

Man Alive is almost daring you to put it in a box, to define it or to summarise it. It expects you to dismiss it on first listen and it’s fine with that, it was made to reveal itself after repeated plays and perseverance. There are moments here that stick out first time but there’s a lot that seems to fall flat and that’s mainly because there’s a lot going on. There is an overarching theme of the duality between life/death & man/machine but there are also a lot of, on face value, nonsensical visuals portrayed in the lyrics.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a risk taken from a record label, there aren’t really any clear singles on this album and the genre changes almost song to song. From the beautiful piano ballad of NASA Is On Your Side to the Queen-like harmonies of album closer Weights, there’s a lot of variety and invention going on here. It’s a massive risk for the band too as the singles are largely unrepresentative of the album as a whole, they are relegated to being the ‘fast’ songs while the new songs tend to be slower and more restrained.

That’s not to say they are the only energetic songs on the album, QWERTY Finger and Come Alive Diana both feed off the same frenetic energy as Photoshop Handsome with the latter featuring a fantastic moment when things quieten down just as horns kick in. The slower songs are just as much of a delight if not more, Tin (The Manhole) is where the vocals and the music come together in what sounds like a soundtrack to a lucid dream and it’s the moment Man Alive transcends everything you’ve heard from them beforehand.

The biggest compliment I could probably lay upon this album is that it sounds like nothing else. They do nothing revolutionary technically or lyrically but the compositions and arrangements of the songs are truly unique and refreshing to hear.

Everything Everything have collected a melting pot of influences, sounds and styles and have cooked up something terrifically unique and exciting. Man Alive breathes life back into a stolid and boring music scene and challenges it to evolve into something better.

The Love Language - Libraries.

By moving away from the hip realm of bedroom lo-fi, Stuart McLamb & co. make one of the most brave and confident records of the year but is it a perfect transition?

Last year’s self-titled début made the Love Language name synonymous with lo-fi doo-wop and Spector-esque production, this year they move out of the house and into a studio and the result is one of the best transitions of it’s kind of the last 5 years.

Most often when a band makes a move to a cleaner & more professional sound they are accused of selling out or losing what made them endearing in the first place. What makes Libraries different is that the music it is recalling were recorded in this way in the first place. There is no Burt Bacharach or Phil Spector album recorded in their bedroom.

Listening to hypnotic dream-like Horophones or heavily layered opener Pedals, it is apparent that those names, particularly Spector’s, are still a clear influence on the sound of Libraries. 

Heart To Tell echoes more of the spirit and sound of the début and is a stone-cold pop delight while This Blood Our Own is an album highlight, slowly building up into a crescendo of lush guitars and glacial strings. If you come to any kind of resolution by the time this album is finished, it will be that Libraries is absolutely packed to the brim with hooks, memorable memories and songs that imprint themselves onto your after just a few spins.

It’s not all plain sailing however, This Room feels more like an embarrassing pastiche and ends the album on a really weak note and Wilmont only adds to the album’s theme of sounding a bit like the first album and then suddenly switching back to their new polished sound. I feel that this is more of a transitional piece for The Love Language, an album to bridge the gap between their early tendencies and their new found discovery that clean does not necessarily equal bad.

‘Brittany’s back!’ McLamb declares and so is The Love Language, just what 2010 needed.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs.

With themes like the monotony of suburbia, youth and disillusionment, Arcade Fire emerge from their three year incubation with an assured sense of distaste for the modern world. In fact, words like ‘suburban’ and ‘modern’ are keystones of The Suburbs, an album that questions what these words mean and gives them new meaning.

Lead singer Win Butler promised an album sounding like ‘a mix of Depeche Mode and Neil Young’ but while the former seems a fairly distant influence, the latter’s sound is a clear part of The Suburbs. There are some truly fantastic moments to be had, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) is an unexpected electro-romp with Régine taking lead vocals and We Used To Wait is an oddly sparse arrangement with staccato keys and a throbbing electronic bass. 

That said there are also some duds, some songs that just fall flat or don’t truly make good on the ideas. City With No Children sinks into insignificance in-between two much better and Modern Man almost ruins the mood altogether by bringing the tempo right down only 3 songs in. 

This album definitely leans on more of a typical band archetype than before with guitars much more prominent and the grandiose styles of My Body Is A Cage and Black Wave/Bad Vibrations have been played down for a more raw, simple sound.

‘Grab your mother’s keys, we’re leaving’ is a lyric repeated throughout The Suburbs and practically encapsulates the essence of this album. This is an album about growing up and growing out, about escaping and about the place where you grew up.

As we finally near the end of the album, a reprise of the first song and title track arises to play the album out. It’s an eerie and cold closer featuring almost robotic voices and haunting strings. Arcade Fire are synonymous with big and bold orchestrations about death and love but part of me wonders whether the mixture of light and dark that was so important in their first two releases is growing thin. There are only so many songs about modernity and teenage uprising that can work well on one album and with 16 songs it’s easy to find songs that should have been left off the album. 

There is definitely quality here and potential to improve on their new sound on future works but for now I’m slightly drawn as to whether it’s the best move they could have made.