Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience

Two weeks into 2013, Twitter exploded. Nearly every day, timelines were just full of excited tweets, all of which entirely in capital letters with at least 4 exclamation points following it. This would become ‘The Week That Shook Pop’. Destiny’s Child announced a new album, David Bowie released a new single and Justin Timberlake announced he’d be releasing “something”. But once the dust had settled, it was all a bit of a fool’s paradise. The Destiny’s Child album was merely a compilation of love songs, with one new song, David Bowie’s ‘Where Are We Now?’ wasn’t particularly spectacular and Timberlake’s announcement was that a song would be coming out the week after. ‘The Week That Shook Pop’ suddenly became ‘The Week That Made Everyone on Twitter Sad’. As with Bowie’s return, Timberlake’s was anticipated with bated breath, to say the least.

Yet, unlike Bowie, Timberlake hasn’t exactly been quiet in the 7 years since the absolute disco stomper Futuresex/Lovesounds. He’s been in award winning, critically acclaimed films (Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network) and not so critically acclaimed films (doing the voice of Boo-Boo in Yogi Bear), done a song with Madonna, hosted Saturday Night Live 3 times (adding to his total, making him one of the few people to host 5+ times) and even got married. Still, his return to music was unexpected.

The 20/20 Experience brings back long-time collaborator Timbaland, the mastermind behind Futuresex/Lovesounds’s production, to create an album with an altogether much different feel. The 20/20 Experience feels like the relaxing VIP lounge to Futuresex/Lovesounds’s heaving club with alcohol flowing. Opening with swirling cinematic strings, ‘Pusher Love Girl’ feels like a classic soul track brought into the 21^st century.  Equally, ‘That Girl’, with its smooth brass section and Timberlake’s crooning voice alongside doo-wop backing vocals, wouldn’t feel out of place on a Motown compilation. Slightly cringey ‘Strawberry Bubblegum’ also follows this pattern but is made a bit unnerving by the fact Timberlake is singing about his wife’s vagina for the full 8 minute running time.

On the subject of song running times, none of them are short which, in some cases, is slightly detrimental to the songs. Timberlake is no stranger to long songs – LoveStoned and What Goes Around Comes Around hit around the 7:30 mark – but The 20/20 Experience only has one song below 5 minutes. Some of the longer songs feel like they overstay their welcome, with what seems like a jam session shoved on the end; ‘Let The Groove Get In’, an otherwise fantastic slice of tropical pop goodness, is let down slightly by the unnecessary outro which takes up half of the song. ‘Mirrors’ is the only song that feels like it deserves its 8 minute running time, a perfectly crafted pop song that works as an antithesis to ‘Cry Me A River’ in its pure joy at finally finding love, alluding to his relationship with wife Jessica Biel.

With some tighter editing to get some songs down to the pure pop goodness that are hidden away in the background of almost every song instead of Led Zepplin-esque “epics”, The 20/20 Experience could be a worthy competitor to Futuresex/Lovesounds but, as it stands, it’s a welcome albeit marginally disappointing return for ‘N Sync’s greatest export. 

3 ½ / 5

Recommended download: Mirrors

Woodkid - The Golden Age [March 28th 2013 in The Courier]

There’s nothing more daunting than being thrust into the adult world. One second, you’re sat on the floor of your living room, drinking a Fruit Shoot and eating as many biscuits as you’ve managed to nab from the kitchen cupboard while being transfixed by the insane colours of Pokemon or the high school antics of Saved by The Bell.

The next, you’re drowning in bills, worrying about the economy with the only the stability of Pointless being on at exactly 5:15pm every weekday. It’s this jarring and often extremely sudden transition that is tackled in Yoann Lemoine AKA Woodkid’s debut album, ‘The Golden Age’.

Prior to making music, Lemoine has directed videos for Drake’s Take Care and Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die, which makes the extraordinarily cinematic feel of ‘The Golden Age’ come as no surprise. Both the aforementioned music videos had the feel of a short art film, with a sombre colour palette alongside its stylistic direction; ‘The Golden Age’ is very much a musical companion to Lemoine’s directing style. Lemoine’s gritty, Gallic vocals are accompanied by booming military drums and a cacophony of brass instruments that effectively capture the confusion of growing up. There’s so much going on that, sometimes, it all gets a bit too much and, in some regards, this could quite easily put some people off but, thematically, it works. The album is bookended by tracks that follow a very simple piano line with ‘The Golden Age’ being a lament of childhood, while ‘The Other Side’ feels more sinister with the quiet military drums in the background as the protagonist of the album (the “boy” of ‘Run Boy Run’) sheds the last his innocence, as though there has been an ominous tolling bell of inevitability, after trying to grasp onto whatever part of childhood he can, most obviously seen in ‘Run Boy Run’ where the sweeping string section imbues a sense of hope.

Stylistically, the album is very cinematic. The opening strings on ‘The Great Escape’ feel like they could’ve been ripped straight from a 1960s romance and the ending of ‘The Shore’ could quite easily feature in any Bond film. The orchestration could be enough to make this an endearing album (and, to some, probably a better one) but it’s Lemoine’s unique, rich vocals that anchor the album down, keeping it from floating off in its flights of orchestral fancy. To some, however, it could be Lemoine’s vocals that could put many off. His Gallic tones are very marmite, much in the way that Tom Waits’s gravelly tones might be to others. But despite this, everything that surrounds it is fantastically cinematic, giving the album an air of a dark fairy tale.

4/5
Recommended download: ‘Run Boy Run’

Daughter - If You Leave [March 28th 2013 in The Courier]

There are umpteen lists on the internet setting out the perfect date playlist; tunes that will not only impress your companion, showing off the length and breadth of your music tastes, but also set a nice romantic mood. There’s the usual stuff like most popular James Brown stuff but then also some more left field choices like Frank Ocean’s cover of Coldplay’s ‘Strawberry Swing’ or Jessie Ware’s ‘Sweet Talk’. Whatever you choose is going to have a resonant effect on the state of your date. Just for the love of everything that is sacred in your potential relationship do not pick anything from Daughter’s debut album, If You Leave.

If You Leave is the album you get out when things have thoroughly hit the fan, dripping with melancholy and, at times, emotional collapse. If You Leave is a ten song story that needs to be listened to as a collective. It’s one of the first albums in a while that feels like the songs benefit from working as a whole, rather than just a collection of really, really good songs. From the outset, If You Leave feels suffocating; it feels as though all these emotions are thrown on your all at once. Album opener ‘Winter’ sets the scene for the rest of the album, with Elena Tonra’s bitterly sweet vocals gliding through fragile but simultaneously heavy guitar lines, laying out the post-break up swirl of emotion: “Wait for me to degrade before you go”. But somehow, despite this feeling of suffocation, the lyrics sometimes akin to a high school girl’s diary (“we’re setting fire to our insides for fun” on single ‘Youth’) and often one-note theme running throughout the album, there’s a real sincerity here. Bubbling under the surface of Tonra’s beautifully destroyed vocals and Igor Haefeli’s understated and atmospheric guitar work is hope. It takes until the end of the album to finally reach the surface but, by the time it does, it feels like you’ve been on a journey, that this final section of emotional triumph is only made as great as it is by the suffering that preceded it. ‘Shallows’ is an 11 minute finale that feels like a warm bath after being dragged through the dirt and bushes for a good hour or so.

But even when we are going through the dirt and bushes, it’s an experience to treasure. The emotional breakdown present in Tonra’s vocals (I know I keep coming back to this but they really are beautiful in an affecting way) working in sync alongside the rise and fall of Remi Aguilella’s percussion feels enormously cathartic. It’s a mix that just hasn’t been done properly since Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service found “love”, whatever that is. At points, If You Leave occasionally even manages to surpass some of Death Cab’s most bleak yet beautiful moments.

This is an album that needs to be taken as a whole. Sit in a dark room with headphones on (OK, probably don’t do that) and just listen. This isn’t an album you can just listen to snippets of on Soundcloud, it’s one that needs experiencing, taking in every inch of the emotional journey until the triumphant conclusion. It has an arc, gliding from break up, through self-doubt (“All my children can become me, what a mess I leave to follow” Tonra sings on ‘Smother’), to the light at the end of the tunnel in ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘Shallows’ (“Dry your smoke stung eyes so you can see the light”).

5/5
Recommended download: “Youth”

David Bowie - The Next Day [March 11th 2013 in The Courier]

No-one expected it. On the day of his 66th birthday, David Bowie released a single; a present from him to us on his birthday, clearly unaware of how birthdays actually work. He’d been gone for about a decade, recording an album in secret for the past two years. So closely guarded was this secret that we only first heard about it when the aforementioned single ‘Where Are We Now?’ was released on his birthday, about two months before The Next Day was to be released.

 Of course, the announcement of his return was met with joy and uncertainty in equal measure. As critically acclaimed as Bowie is, he’s had a patchy career. We try to forget the whole Tin Machine era and a few of his later albums failed to hit the mark that his ‘one fantastic album every year throughout the ‘70s streak did. And ‘Where Are We Now?’ wasn’t exactly a ‘Sound and Vision’, which sent people into a bit more of a fluster. It was intriguing, featuring Bowie pining for his Berlin days, hinting at a raw, autobiographical feel to The Next Day but had it been released during his career, as opposed to alongside the flurry of excitement at his return, it would’ve been passed off as just OK.

Luckily, ‘Where Are We Now?’ is unrepresentative of the album we actually have. In fact, plonked right in the middle, it feels a bit out of place. Other than cementing the theme – that of mortality and, as in the wonderful ‘The Stars (Are Out Tonight)’, excess – it’s a lot slower and more reserved, with Bowie’s wispy voice leading the way. The rest of the album does everything it can to escape the notion, implied by that first single, that Bowie’s getting on a bit. In fact, The Next Day acts as a sort of exhibition: The Life and Times of David Bowie.

Echoes of nearly every single Bowie era are here, unexpected from man who would rather explore than hark back to the past. It’s exciting to hear the sonic references; ‘Valentine’s Day’ could quite easily have been ripped straight from Aladdin Sane, and ‘You Feel So Lonely You Could Die’ reflects Ziggy Stardust’s ‘Five Years’.  We have strangely industrial tunes in ‘I Can See You’, and the occasional rock stomper such as ‘How Does Your Grass Grow?’.

While it’s no Young Americans or Low, it still has all the excitement that you found in those albums for the first time. Each track references the past but stamps its own identity on the Bowie chronology, unrelenting in their ability to continue carving a new path whilst also looking back at the path they’ve already created in a way that only someone like Bowie could do.

This is how you make a comeback: not with a whimper but with a massive, massive bang.

4 1/2 / 5
Recommended download: 'How Does Your Grass Grow?' 

Parks & Recreation review [March 4th 2013 in The Courier]

It’s very rare that I properly fall in love with a show. Fall so hard that I want to scream its praises from the rooftops. I’ve fallen in love with shows such as The Wire but never while they were on the air, so I never got the excitement of waiting week by week to watch the new episode. But I have done just that with Parks & Recreation. Each week, I wait in anticipation of what the folks at Pawnee Parks & Recreation department have in store. I love this show.

It started out a little bit wishy washy, admittedly. Finally being brought to the UK, Parks & Recreation was initially seen as simply a clone of The Office US; a bunch of misfits in an office earnestly trying to go about their jobs while being filmed mockumentary style. Yet just like how The Office US’s first season was essentially a carbon copy of the UK Office, and suffered slightly as a result, Parks & Rec does too. Leslie Knope, the affable Deputy Director of the department, was just a female Michael Scott and the kind of stale, one-note storyline of trying to turn a pit into a park didn’t allow for any of the secondary characters to shine. But then, like The Office US, it found its own voice and blossomed from there.

What Parks & Recreation does so well is character progression. When it gives these characters the time to shine, which it fails to do in Season One, they really come into their own. “Practise Date” is the episode when it becomes less “The Leslie Knope Show” and more an ensemble comedy. As the gang dig up dirt on each other, the laughs just come thick and fast, particularly when Jerry (a constant source of fun poking) doesn’t want to play but has numerous dark secrets revealed. Watching these characters grow and grow to the point where they’re almost unrecognisable in earlier episodes is fascinating and exemplifies the strong writing this show has become known for. Ron Swanson in particular (who will become your new favourite TV character, I guarantee that) progresses from a brick wall of a man to a cuddly teddy bear yet still packs in so many one liners, you’ll have to pause the show to catch your breath.

Jokes aren’t entirely focused on the bureaucratic side of things either. From Aziz Ansari’s Tom Haverford setting up an entertainment business with the amazing (only ocassional) recurring character Jean Ralphio, to Andy’s adorable stupidity, none of the jokes are made with malice but are all absolutely hilarious.

Parks & Recreation is how comedy should be. It’s entirely uncynical and unpretentious. I liken it to The Muppet Show a lot because it’s a show about friendship and having fun, but with a bellyful of laughs along the way. Seriously, give this show a shot. If you don’t like Season One, please carry on anyway. Especially when Rob Lowe and Adam Scott are introduced, the show becomes something entirely unlike what it used to be, and it only gets better from there.

Rhye - Woman [March 4th 2013 in The Courier]

When Rhye posted a couple of songs online early last year, the blogosphere went into overload, as nothing was actually revealed about them. Making things even more difficult was the wonderfully feminine vocals on both tracks. They finally revealed themselves as Canadian electronic musician Michael Milosh and Robin Hannibal, Milosh providing the Sade-like vocals which really set Rhye apart.

It’s Milosh’s voice that really carries this album. Hauntingly intimate but simultaneously coy, he tackles sex and relationships with a beautiful honesty, similar to the early Weeknd mixtapes but a lot less sinister. In a world of over-sexualisation in electronic music, it’s refreshing to hear love and sex tackled in such a way.

The album really goes through the motions, from the swooning strings of ‘Open’ to the ‘morning after the night before’ house music stylings of ‘The Fall’ to the surprisingly poppy ‘Last Dance’, the opening trio manage to effectively set the mood that dominates the rest of the album because, despite the sensual feel of the tracks, Milosh’s vocals continue to be hypnotic, cooing and ahhing through his disarmingly honest views of sex and relationships.

Most bands that feel the need to begin with anonymity usually disappoint in the long run, unless they’re someone huge doing a crazy collaboration or someone huge just wanting to piss about for a bit. Here the mystery only made Rhye more endearing and, even better, when the curtain was pulled down to see who The Wizard actually was, it took absolutely nothing away. A stunning debut that warrants the excitement surrounding Rhye.

5/5
Recommended download: 'The Fall' 

Darwin Deez - Songs for Imaginative People [February 26th 2013 in The Courier]

Darwin Deez’s first trip into the musical world was a sunny and quirky, yet acerbically bitter foray into indie pop. A negative Cajun Dance Party seemed the most obvious comparison for its lo-fi, almost twee sensibilities. ‘Radar Detector’ and ‘Constellations’ had the ability to be true earworms; the melody stuck in your head for days and days. Unfortunately, with Songs For Imaginative People, no such thing properly exists, making what was a promising start seem like a waste.

Deez has chosen to focus on the darker, more chaotic sounds he tried out first time around but they were, by and large, the weakest tracks on the record. So an entire album of overly negative, often nihilistic wittering is too difficult to bother with.

There are some really bum metaphors here too; ‘Redshift’ basically becomes an extended game of madlibs in which he replaces words with a space themed equivalent, thus ‘quirks’ becomes ‘quarks’. There are occasional bursts of dark humour but the rest almost becomes cringey.

At least with the first album we had the pleasure of some sweet and quirky melodies, to offset the clunky metaphors, but here Deez has whacked up the fuzz pedal to 11 making something overly chaotic to the point of incoherence. Coming across as rather unstructured – and not in a way people would see math rock but really, really unpredictable and random at times – it removes any element of melody that might exist and made the first album so appealing if slightly flawed.

Gone is the Darwin Deez that danced like he was auditioning for the newest Wes Anderson film with his baggy shirts and headband. I’d quite like that one back, please.

2/5
Recommended download: ‘Free (The Editorial Me)