Quick Reviews (White People Edition)
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Feist Metals // Leslie Feist’s music is close to being the exclusive province of white girls in knit caps and nonprescription eyewear who have read Franny and Zooey at least eight times. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a couple of the softer tracks on Feist’s latest, Metals, had opened their own Etsy shop selling coffee mugs with mustaches or canvas totes with canary prints or some kind of whimsical nonsense. At times, it’s impossible for me to divorce Feist from her legion of scarved fans: her music seems to be an extension of their chimerically pretty lives. And, of course, this is deeply unfair to Feist herself because The Reminder is a beautifully crafted album who legitimately earned every success that it garnered. So, at what point, exactly, does Feist stop being pretty lifestyle music to complement the prettily decorated apartments of white girls in major urban centers and start being a deeply talented songwriter who cannot be blamed for her shappy chic appeal? When the chorus from “The Circle Married the Line” refuses to leave your head for an entire diurnal cycle. When she transcends the torch song idiom of “Anti-Pioneer” to create something that verges on a noirish standard. When the tender “Get it Wrong, Get it Right” threatens to break your swollen heart in two perfectly symmetrical pieces. When a male chorus purges the tension of “A Commotion” with their aggro-chant. When it occurs to you that even considering her substantially pretty back catalogue, that even then, “Cicadas and Gulls” is still one of the most unabashedly pretty songs she’s ever written. When you realize that, you know, fuck white girls, right?, and all their terribly lonely prettiness because Feist doesn’t belong to them any more than any of these artists belong to any of us. Rating: 7.5 / 10
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James Blake Enough Thunder // For better or worse, Enough Thunder is the logical conclusion of James Blake’s debut album. The dubbed-out torch songs that populate this short record seem to push Blake’s unquestionable talents in two directions: reliably moving avant-R&B and tediously plodding balladry. Of course, this is something startlingly new because Blake has never been anything but consistently excellent. As a risk taker, Blake was bound to trip up at some point. But there’s no use dwelling on the sensitive tedium of “A Case for You” and “Enough Thunder.” Because “Fall Creek Boys Choir” and “We Might Feel Unsound” and “Not Long Now” are all tremendous individual tracks that only deepen Blake’s sense of accomplishment over the past 18 months. Each of these beauties combines Blake’s sensitive ear for heartbreaking melody and his sense of electronic adventure, an obvious intersection between Blake’s experimental and tradition strains. Rating: 6 / 10
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Anyone could be forgiven writing off Wilco after the picnic-pop of Sky Blue Sky and the dad-rock comfort of Wilco (The Album). There was nothing in these albums to suggest that Wilco were ever a challenging or progressive or even mildly exciting band. This was clearly not the band that recorded “Misunderstood” or “Theologians” or “A Shot in the Arm” or “Kamera,” let alone “Spiders/Kidsmoke” or “Reservations.” They were tepid, frightened of the obligations and expectations they created with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Summerteeth. And while The Whole Love isn’t going to allow Wilco to retake the mantle of America’s Radiohead (whatever the shit that title was ever supposed to mean), the album is more than enough to remind casual listeners that Wilco still have enough residual weirdness to be a intriguing band. Opening with the challenging but engaging “Art of Almost,” The Whole Love is an album that dabbles in every era of Wilco’s diverse career: some of it is easy, some it is tough. At its most fluid (“Black Moon,” “Open Mind,” “Rising Red Lung”), The Whole Love is a pleasantly sleepy record, lulling its listener with its comforting familiarity. But, as always, Wilco is best when they make bold artistic decisions. The electric guitar part that careens all over “Born Alone” is thrilling, and the sepia rave-up “Standing O” packs a surprising punch. Even the A.M.-esque “I Might” is terrific if for no other reason that it feels instantly familiar. At this point in their career, it’s unlikely that Wilco will ever return to the abject weirdness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or A Ghost is Born, but it’s entirely probable that they will continue to write songs that will bloat any forthcoming greatest hits package. Rating: 6.5 / 10
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Jens Lekman An Argument with Myself // Jens Lekman is still joking, right? I have to tell you, it’s getting really hard to tell. An Argument with Myself continues Lekman’s cheese reclamation project with frightening vigor and sincerity. And here I thought that Night Falls Over Kortedala had obviously wrapped dated soft rock completely in its sweater’d arms. Whereas Lekman would wink clearly enough to his listeners (as he does by chopping up with deliciously fat horn riff at the end of “Kanske Ar Jag Kar i Dig”), the twee Swede plays it relatively straight here. To the point that I think I started blushing from embarrassment while listening to “So This Guy at My Office.” Though the EP’s finale is kind of a dud, it’s schizophrenic opener, the title track, is a towering achievement in songcraft. Then there’s “Waiting for Kirsten,” a obsessive and sweet ballad about, no shit, Kirsten Dunst filming Von Trier’s Melancholia in Gothenburg. These songs are so successful because we understand that Lekman’s wry lyrics contradict the mushy instrumentation. But when Lekman messily blurs the line between (un)ironically sappy and honest-to-God sappy, he loses the strange power of his aesthetic. Rating: 6.5 / 10
