MONDOmagazine

Cat Power
With the Memphis Rhythm Band
at The Phoenix
Wednesday November 22nd, 2006

by Gabrielle Channon-Merritt

Truth be told, Chan Marshall might be the most awkward person on stage. She did a funny chicken-like dance when she was nervous, and kept apologizing for what an awful show she was doing that night at the Phoenix. She even admitted being frustrated from a lack of sex, and that she was PMS-ing hardcore, being four days from her period.

If it hadn’t been for Cat Power’s accompaniment, the Memphis Rhythm Band, she would’ve stopped halfway through each song, unsatisfied with her own playing. This 10-piece backing group – including vocals, piano, sax, trumpet, and violin, among other things – helped record singer/songwriter Chan Marshall’s stunning new album, The Greatest, and kept her on track during the 2006 promotional tour.

After being introduced by the big, ballsy backup singer, Marshall climbed onstage to the opening riff of the album’s title song. I was worried that the concert would sound just like the album, but happily, the songs were quite different. The band even helped with an a capella version of “Where is My Love.” The lead guitarist seemed inebriated and over-powered everyone, but the musicians still had fun. Unfortunately, Toronto just isn’t the right place to hold a blues show; the audience seemed to enjoy Cat Power’s performance, but no one danced.

When Marshall wasn’t performing solo on both guitar and piano, she put a touch of twang into her smooth, lilting voice, getting back to her southern-blues roots. The performance was a clear example of Marshall’s free and improvisatory style on stage. She has nothing to hide, and really doesn’t care what anyone thinks anyway: she knows she can’t dance, and she doesn’t mind stopping one song to start another that she prefers instead. By the end of the night, she had lit a couple cigarettes and passed them to the front of the crowd. Despite ranting about how much she sucked, Marshall’s performance affirmed that she is, indeed, the greatest.

Deerhoof
Friend Opportunity
Kill Rock Stars, 2007

By Lonny Knapp

Deerhoof defies description.

Most music critics use comparisons to help describe the sound of a relatively new band to their readers, who have possibly never heard the artist in question; most readers of CD reviews have come to rely on these comparisons to help them imagine what a band will sound like. If I wrote “Deerhoof sounds like The Stooges fronted by Björk” you would stop reading, look ponderously up towards the left, and feel that you had a pretty good idea of how the music on Friend Opportunity would sound. But you’d be wrong. And although I’m tempted to say Deerhoof sound a bit like a mixture of Jethro Tull, Stereolab and Puffy AmiYumi, I wouldn’t want to lead you astray. I’ve tried to think of witty comparisons to other artists but I was stymied. Deerhoof sounds like Deerhoof.

It’s a good thing.

Deerhoof have been recording, touring, and releasing albums since the late nineties, and have had more line-up changes, false break-ups, and brushes with success than most bands, but only in the last few years have they been recognized by the mainstream media. After being handpicked for coveted opening slots on high profile tours of The Flaming Lips and Radiohead last year, Deerhoof found themselves the cause of a well-deserved media buzz. In 2006, the band headlined the best-attended free outdoor concert in New York City and ended the year with their album The Runners Four appearing on many critics’ top-ten lists.

With Friend Opportunity, the San Francisco band’s ninth album, Deerhoof find themselves in a position few could have predicted: on the verge of commercial success. Undeterred by the weight of high expectation, the three-piece band has risen to the occasion and released an album that is both accessible and defining. Singer/bassist Satomi Matsuzaki, with her sweet Japanese-accented voice, sounds blissfully out of place singing along with the Meters-inspired syncopated riff of guitarist John Dieterich, and the funky cowbell groove laid down by drummer Greg Saunier on “Believe E.S.P”, a track that induces involuntary head-bobbing from beginning to end. Already a top forty hit in the U.K., the lead-off single “+81” features trumpet blasts, marching band rhythms, an insanely infectious sing-along chorus, and a nonlinear arrangement that had me intrigued from the first time I heard it months ago. Weighing in at a hefty eleven minutes and forty-five seconds, “Look Away,” the final cut on the album, is an opus. From its lush beginning to its noise-rock crescendo and never-ending ending, “Look Away” is pure art-rock and will satisfy fans of the band’s earlier work.

In today’s tepid musical climate, Deerhoof are refreshingly original. They challenge the listener, and for those who are up for it, the rewards are many. In an industry that produces cookie-cutter bands for fans who love categories, that originality could have been their downfall, thus far. But Friend Opportunity may just be accessible enough to grant the band the commercial success that has eluded them.

File this record under kickass.

The Shins
Wincing the Night Away
Sub Pop, 2007

By Krystle van Hoof

Every year my high school friends and I complete a best-of-the-year music ballot so we can laugh at each other’s lack of hipster acumen — I mean, so we can learn about new music. This year’s ballot raised the question of the best and worst new music trends. It brought to mind a question from Chris Ott that I had read in the Village Voice: “Have we reached the point where we’ll celebrate a band for how overtly or exactly they imitate a predecessor?”

Maybe we have, and maybe that’s okay. But for the LOVE OF GOD, can we try to mix it up a bit? If the postmodern condition has you so tied up in knots that you truly believe that nothing new can ever be created, at least combine old shit in a new way. Jesus.

Take The Shins, for example. I’m not a fan of their previous albums. Too slow, too boring — precisely what I’d call “Sleeping Lessons” (a decent track on this album, but a more apt name for earlier releases). On their latest album, Wincing the Night Away, the production values are better, the tracks are catchier (read: they no longer put me to sleep), and there isn’t anything terribly bad. But is that all we look for now? “Not terribly bad”? What happened to “brilliant,” or “blows our jaded little minds”?

I’ll spare you the “they sound like this-meets-and-marries-that” rhetoric. You can draw your own conclusions in that regard – I won’t spoil the fun for you. Besides, their previous albums are null and void in terms of comparisons; the new album trades in their folky acoustics for a few fun computer tricks. I am all for this change in sound, but I didn’t like them to begin with. Who knows if The Shins’ true fans will feel the same?

Just to quell the bile of those who disagree with me, a more measured (read: less bitchy) approach to this album would inform you that the strongest track is definitely “Sea Legs” which does a nice job of combining their old sound with this new thing they’re trying out. There’s some neat electronic stuff, and the vocals and melody aren’t as formulaic as the other songs. (Listen to “Turn on Me” and tell me that the chorus doesn’t sound like “Cleveland Rocks” from The Drew Carey Show!).

Damn, I was almost magnanimous for a minute there.

Don’t expect this music to change anyone’s life. If it does, it probably isn’t for the better, but if it is, well, I apologize — that’s very sad.

If you really love the Shins (God help you), but you don’t like Wincing the Night Away, then there’s just no hope for you. This album is by far the best thing they’ve ever released. There, that was kind of pleasant.

Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis
Rough Trade, 2006

By Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith

He’s reinvented himself. Again. Not as Jarvis Cocker, just as Jarvis: always a ladies’ man, a dream fuck, and a pure fashionista — the haute couture of metrosexuality, before it was butchered by blokes with feelings and yuppies in pink button-ups. Since his Pulp days, Jarvis has taken a half-decade to focus on other pursuits: directing music videos for Aphex Twin and Erlend Øye, releasing an album as Darren Spooner, throwing together a failed band, and getting hitched. Seeing Jarvis get married shocked me as much as if the Pope had announced “God is dead.” Common People was a tribute to how he could get any woman he wanted, how he refused to settle, how women were his toys. His warnings of infidelity won him more chicks! Jarvis was a man that every man wished he could be, in his designer suits and faggy style. Jarvis was my hero, but he’s changed a little now.

This new Jarvis is a bit older and a bit wiser. He’s not so sex-driven, and a tad more serious, on first glance. Like any debut diva rock album, Jarvis has just enough synth to make it contemporary, but not enough to steer away from rock. The range of styles shows he’s attempting to diversify — to really make himself out as a singer. Tragically, this collection of songs seems more of an attempt to actually say something, but at least he says it with cynicism. Jarvis touches on religion (“It’s the true believers who crash and burn”), sex (“Sex is for dummies anyway, for when you’ve run out of things to say”), even economy (“The free market is perfectly natural / Do you think that I’m some kind of dummy?”). And he throws in “dummy” whenever he can.

Were this a record by someone a little more serious, and a little less sexy, I would have sloughed it off as another attempt to convey meaning in vagueness, like Radiohead. Thankfully, after all the politics, Jarvis simply declares: “Shit floats.” It seems so fatalistic to hear a whole album about the horror stories of the everyday and then get shot down with: “Use your right to protest on the streets / Use your right, but don’t imagine it’s heard.”

The construction of the album is as eccentric as Jarvis’s lyrics. The prereleased single, “Cunts are Still Running the World” (titled as “Running the World” on the album, but I won’t be tricked), is tagged onto the CD 30 minutes after “Quantum Theory”, as a bonus track. In the LP version of Jarvis it doesn’t even fall on the vinyl — it’s included as a separate 7”. But, because he’s just so deliciously English, it’s easy to accept the album for its style: sensual stories told with compelling wording. The ballad “I Will Kill Again” is one of the many songs written with that kind of emotion. When his voice cracks ever-so-slightly while singing it, you can tell he’s straining for breath – that maybe he actually worked for this album.

The literary side of Jarvis has surfaced before — like the time he walked onto the English show TGF, pushed a cardboard cutout of himself out the window, sat down, and referenced Oscar Wilde. When asked why he pushed himself out the window he claimed: “To let something new grow in its place.” So after his mid-life crisis reinvention process, Jarvis has come out the other end older and married, and apparently wiser for it.

In The Country
Losing Stones, Collecting Bones
Rune Grammofon, 2006

By Allana Mayer

An ominous, suspense-movie opening leads into the slow, pensive jazz of “My Best Friend is a Dancer”, the first track from In The Country’s sophomore album Losing Stones, Collecting Bones. Not nearly as stark as 2005’s This Was The Pace Of My Heartbeat, this album equally conjures a quiet night in with a glass of wine, a triumphant mountain-climbing odyssey, and a sultry evening swaying on the dance floor. To be sure, Losing Stones, Collecting Bones has some grim and dark parts — the Satie-like piano-mashing in “Medicine Waltz”, for instance — but none of the songs conclude with minor chords or negative tones. In a nearly imperceptible tiptoe, the dynamics work over the course of a four-minute song from the edges of your consciousness to a frontal assault, and back again. More than once I felt affected by a subtle, hushed part; then I realized that the song’s crescendo had ended a moment before, as gently as it had begun.

Pianist/songcrafter Morten Qvenild’s parts mesh seamlessly with the ever-sexy upright bass, and the slowest of rhythms played with the softest of brushes. There are noodling piano parts so perfectly expressive that you can’t tell if it’s the cleanest improve, or the most creative scripted performance ever recorded.

The two vocal tracks are interesting but out of place in the whole; cheesy electric guitars and lyrics cheapen what is an otherwise intelligent and emotional experience. However, the album’s end result is strong, confident, and resolved. The absolute stunner of the set is “Take Me Over”, but its subtle genius has been ignored by music critics in favour of art-scene guest stars Marc Ribot and Stefan Sundstrom on other tracks. With Losing Stones, Collecting Bones, In The Country are sure to get more than enough accolades, for doing what they do best.

Hey Rosetta!
Plan Your Escape
independent, 2006

By Elisha Denburg

The debut album from Newfoundland natives Hey Rosetta! is a catchy collection of pop songs with a unique sense of structure. Plan Your Escape makes its first bold statement with “Another Pilot,” an energetic anthem with several melodic fragments that are first introduced separately, then cleverly placed in counterpoint with one another — a cliché technique if not for its strong execution. Shying away from the strophic verse-chorus format, multi-talented leader Tim Baker uses stark juxtaposition while still managing to maintain coherence and integrity. A shining example of this is “The Simplest Thing” – a slow piano-and-voice ballad that after two minutes launches into a cheerful, jaunty, trumpet-driven shuffle, and finishes in a cathartic crescendo from the entire band. Somewhat reminiscent of Matthew Good, Baker’s gruff vocals are nicely softened by his sense of lilting melody, and complemented by sensitive violin and cello arrangements – something that Good hasn’t the musicianship to execute convincingly. Baker’s engaging lyrics freely intersperse banal conversational phrases with rich poetic imagery, furthering the band’s jarring, clashing trademark.

The album finds its flaw in the sequence of its tracks: most of the energy is packed into the first half, leaving the introspective numbers to drag out the rest of the disc and blend hopelessly into a sea of sameness. However, a final respite from this lethargy comes in the form of “Hospital Beds,” a genuinely moving climax that brings the disc to a sincere and satisfying close. The tangible energy of Hey Rosetta! in a live setting cements the notion that Tim Baker’s candid and refreshing approach to pop songwriting is one that cannot be easily ignored.

The obligatory best-of-the-best list.

Earlier this year I reviewed the energetic and baffling Man Man’s Six Demon Bag, thinking it might make it into my top albums of the year. The novelty wore off quickly, however, and it ended up tossed by the wayside. An underwhelming anecdote about an underwhelming year: 2006 wasn’t exactly banner for music, in my opinion.

I was disappointed by a few hyped releases – the long-awaited Thermals album had maybe two rousing tracks; the reformed not-quite-Don-Caballero were hit-and-miss; TV On The Radio didn’t get nearly the critical acclaim for their sophomore release. A lot of my favourite albums are from artists I’ve never heard of, so I spent more time tracking down earlier releases and less time trying to stay current. And almost all the music I fell in love with came from Norway, and required headphone-listening, to appreciate the obsessive panning effects. I don’t feel as though I missed out on much, this year.

I’m by no means certain that others had the same experience, though, so without further ado I’ll present some alternative views on the best music that 2006 had to offer.

Allana Mayer
Music Editor

Miles Baker’s Winners Club

1. Cat Power – The Greatest (Matador)
I know a lot of people like Cat Power when she’s crazier, but I love her sane. I admit there are fewer surprises on The Greatest than Moon Pix, but Moon Pix was 10 years ago, no one should stay so crazy for that long. Many critics have talked about the Memphis musicians she hooked up with to make this record and how they are awesome—they are awesome. This is my top record because it has the swagger of a cowboy and melancholy of a tortured piano-girl. So I feel tough and weak all at the same time—that is the definition of me.

2. Final Fantasy – He Poos Clouds (Blocks Recording Club)
3. Hawksley Workman – A Treefull of Starling (Universal)
4. Hylozoists – La Fin de Monde (Boompa)
5. Regina Spektor – Begin to Hope (Sire Records)

Johnathan Isaac’s Inner Circle

1. Joanna Newsom – Ys (Drag City)
Ys is easily the standout album in a year of standout albums. Since 2004’s The Milk Eyed Mender, Joanna Newsom has polished and cleaned the edges of her childish sound. Yet it’s exactly Newsom’s off-kilter voice that provides the perfect foil for the beautifully arranged strings and harp. The five pieces, none of which are less than seven minutes in length, tell rich and detailed stories of all kinds of love, from her admiration of her sister in “Emily” to the bizarre exploitative romance between two metaphorical animals in “Monkey And Bear”. There is no denying the brilliant narrative quality of the lyrics, like children with their large shifts in focus and occasional hyper-attentive details. The album evokes strongly a page from the past through the use of unusual turns of phrase (the repetition of “why the long face” in “Sawdust and Diamonds”, for instance) and antique melodies. Ys is a porcelain ocean: pretty and pure on the surface, but deep and rewarding to dive into.

2. Boris – Pink (Southern Lord)
3. Various Artists - Jamaica To Toronto: Soul, Funk and Reggae 1967-1974 (Light in the Attic Records)
4. Venetian Snares – Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom-Poms (Planet Mu)
5. Keith Fullerton Whitman – Lisbon (Kranky)

Lonny Knapp’s Best Friends

1. Tom Waits – Orphans (Anti-)
Most collections of “new and unreleased” material by music industry dinosaurs tend to be nothing more than a washed-up artist cashing in on sub-standard material. But Orphans, a three-disc collection of new and archival recordings from Tom Waits, exceeds expectation. The first disc, Bawlers, contains drunken ballads and mournful dirges best listened to in the wee hours with a bottle of bourbon. Brawlers is raunchy blues tracks featuring backstreet characters so real you can smell the blood, sweat, and beer through the speakers. Bastards, the wildest of the discs, exorcises Waits’s demons, with odd animal grunts and howls accompanied by the rattling of chains and the clatter of a junkyard band. Carrying the entire collection is his voice: strange, wounded, guttural, and raspy––he can be a clown, a boogeyman, an angel, or a devil. His varied musical talent is represented in enough detail to satisfy die-hard fans; its enormity makes Orphans my favourite album of the year.

2. Amy Millan – Honey from the Tombs (Arts & Crafts)
3. My Morning Jacket – Okonokos (ATO Records)
4. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife (Capitol Records)
5. Solomon Burke – Nashville (Shout Factory)

Sam Linton’s Honour Roll

1. The Decemberists – The Crane Wife (Capitol Records)
I love this album enough to make it my Crane Wife. Granted, I tend to like all Decemberists albums, so any album they released was assured a spot on my top 5. But The Crane Wife merits my number one spot for the year by appealing to my inner music lover, my inner literature student, and my inner… guy who enjoys looking stuff up? All the Decemberists’ albums engage me in this sense, but The Crane Wife epitomizes this. Take either of the title tracks: we have an engaging and pleasant melody, an interesting narrative (packed with Colin Meloy’s trademark literary flair) and a link to a classic Japanese folk tale, to be read and perused for further enjoyment. The song “Shankill Butchers” comes alive once one has familiarized oneself with the real Shankill Butchers, a group of Ulster Unionist serial killers. The song “When the War Came” resonates much more once one gains an understanding of Soviet agriculture in the face of WWII. Even for those without mountains of free time on their hands, the album is still thoroughly enjoyable: you too may want to pick up your own Crane Wife. Or at least a Crane Girlfriend.

2. The Pipettes – We Are the Pipettes( Memphis Industries)
3. Blind Guardian – A Twist in the Myth (Century Media)
4. Various Artists – Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys (Anti-)
5. The Old Soul – The Old Soul (Hand of God/Universal Canada )

Allana Mayer’s Coalition of the Willing

1. Band of Horses – Everything All The Time (Sub Pop)
If wailing shoegaze isn’t your thing, you’ll be turned off by Band of Horses; I was, on first listen. From the openings bars of (redundantly-titled) “The First Song”, you can already tell this album means to give your heartstrings a good tug. I made it through to “Funeral”, obviously the most single-worthy track, before I conceded that I was indeed hooked. Even Ben Bridwell’s voice, verging on whiny, contains attitude and certainty — though the lyrics are so ambiguous I hardly know what I’ve signed myself on for. Pensive yet unapologetic, Everything All The Time is such a perfect guilty pleasure I don’t feel the need to justify it. It’s great mopey pop: simply structured, but somehow compelling, and fraught with tension and regret. Admittedly, I’m tired of the more embellished bits, like “Funeral” and the ultra-depressing ending of “Part One”. But their divine harmonies and lulling acoustic work more than make up for it. I’m constantly charmed by the silly “Monsters” and roused by “Our Swords”. Just tell yourself you deserve a break from being cheerful all the goddamn time.

2. Subtle – For Hero, For Fool (Astralwerks)
3. Svalastog – Woodwork (Rune Grammofon)
4. Danielson – Ships (Secretly Canadian)
5. In the Country – Losing Stones, Collecting Bones (Rune Grammofon)

Gena Meldazy’s Power Squad

1. Rammer – Cancer (Blue Fog Records)
Toronto’s Rammer, and their new album Cancer, is nothing if not thrash-worthy, and their release party at Sneaky Dee’s was an eventful and disastrous exchange. An opening act completed their set with the burning of a wooden cross, and a bar brawl broke out in the middle of the dance floor with almost parallel timing. Rammer’s set was thus delayed when security threatened to cut power to the stage for the remainder of the night. For those familiar with earlier releases from this band, Cancer progresses to something more serious. The lyrics tone down on the stereotypical ‘fantasy’ element, from albums like Incinerator, (think: ‘Iron Witch’) and take a more sombre tone. If you are a heavy metal junkie, the entire Rammer discography is worth your while. If you don’t give a fuck either way, their most recent is a solid bet.

2. Criminal Damage - s/t LP (Feral Ward)
3. Fucked Up – Hidden World double EP (Deranged Records/Jade Tree)
4. Government Warning – No Moderation LP (Feral Ward)
5. Sonic Youth – Rather Ripped (EMI)

Leo Moncel’s Prestige Team

1. Cadence Weapon – Breaking Kayfabe (Upper Class Recordings)
Someone finally did it –– Cadence Weapon created the anthem for the barhoppers scanning the bus schedule after last call, plotting and plodding our ways home. Breaking Kayfabe covers a broad range of stories: everything from his father’s grow-op to consumerism to unrequited love. But each song is quite focused, and the writing is technically fantastic. The Weapon has an excellent command of internal rhyme structure, wordplay and tongue-twisters. He has a variety of unique flows and often uses several per track. To top it off, he produces his own beats and they’re unlike anything else out there. Fat, synth-y, bass-y bangers are heavily seasoned with esoteric little samples, and wild, digital bleeps and bloops. He occasionally mixes his beats too loud and buries the lyrics, as in “Grim Fandango,” a sin against such quality writing, but the album still makes for a great listen.

2. K’Naan – The Dusty Foot Philosopher (BMG Music)
3. The Streets – The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living (Locked On)
4. Jurassic 5 – Feedback (Interscope Records)
5. The Game – The Doctor’s Advocate (Geffen Records)

Supersilent
7
Rune Grammofon, 2006

By Allana Mayer

For those of us that may never see this abstract Norwegian quartet in their live improvisational mode, the grainy 16mm recording of their Oslo performance in 2004 may be the next best thing. Though all their albums are equally off-the-cuff, it’s another thing to see this work created in real time. Though I haven’t yet got my sweaty, nervous hands on a copy of this “ultimate” live performance DVD, the audio tracks have been e-pilferable for some time now. It’s only whetted my and other spaced-out electro nerds’ appetites. And until I can chalk up a 40-dollar DVD purchase to satiate my obsessive self, I’ll just loop the soundtrack and dream.

This highly mysterious group lacks album and song titles and is rumoured never to practice in between recording or performance sessions, letting everything flow naturally when required. From almost two hours of live music (including an enthusiastic audience’s strange habit of applauding in unified rhythm) comes a vision of the band at their most connected, dramatic, and expressive. In the first 8 minutes of “7.1″ the tension builds, and doesn’t release until the conclusion of the encore six tracks later. Chopped vocals, something unseen in earlier releases, only adds to the mystery. Supersilent remain wordless and unconventional in their communication.

Trumpet, drums, keys, and electronic manipulation add up to more confusion, as a soft trumpet solo sounds more like a flute, sporadic rhythms speak to synthesized beats, and shiny chimes ring out from lazy fingerings. In the last three minutes of “7.4″ it becomes obvious that this band could seamlessly transition into fully functional electronic music, with rhythm and loop and traditional dynamics galore. Instead, Supersilent chooses to create its own language, of sound and body and discrete looks, speaking to each other, and their fans, in fascinating and compelling ways.

Xiu Xiu
La Foret
5 Rue Christine, 2005

By Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith

Xiu Xiu is one of the few fag bands around. The others remaining in the endangered species list are Peaches, Antony & The Johnsons, and The Hidden Cameras. Since emo took hold, male hipsters have become effeminate, metro, bi, and asexual: these hipster males are no longer aggressive mate-seekers and concert-goers. Blatant fag bands have become the reaction to this popular effeminacy. Xiu Xiu, a changing band under the direction of Jamie Stewart, has been at the forefront of the fag music movement since they began releasing shock albums such as Knife Play and A Promise, which features a naked Asian man on the cover holding a baby-doll to his genitals. Xiu Xiu’s genius seems to be the blend of touchingly sentimental shock lyrics and experimental recording techniques. Everything on a good Xiu Xiu album becomes blatant: from lyrics about dismembering parents and oral sex to hyperaware production of thick synthesizers and big percussion crashes.

La Foret is probably the tamest of their releases; it seems to lack the imagination and brilliance of earlier albums, like Fabulous Muscles from a year ago. The songs are not nearly as daring, and I swear there are moments where Stewart just copies sections of Fabulous Muscles. For instance, “Muppet Face” on La Foret maintains an almost identical chorus to “Crank Heart” on Fabulous Muscles. La Foret does succeed, in a kind of psychological closeness never quite felt in his earlier works. Knife Play was heavily distanced and character-driven; Fabulous Muscles was much more about the dynamics of a relationship. La Foret is an album of intimate pillow-talk and minor eruptions between a close couple. It begins with a sparse guitar and Stewart singing in his wispy voice. A xylophone enters with a cello. The melody is slow; harmonies are sparse; the song ends with a metallic crack of the xylophone. Thankfully, the production on this album is gorgeous: simple, effective, and clear. Other songs, like “Ale”, have just clarinets, vocals, and a bit of background noise.

Though La Foret is not shocking, its sincerity won me over quickly. Xiu Xiu’s sweet straining voice has left me listening to this album over and over — a strong release of 2005.

Blind Guardian
Nightfall in Middle Earth
Century Media, 1998

By Sam Linton

Honestly, what could be more enjoyable than a power-metal concept album based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion? That’s right, nothing could. Nothing could be more enjoyable than that. Blind Guardian’s first North American release is — start to finish — one of the most enjoyable CDs ever released. Well, not actually start to finish; the final track is just an annoying voice-over, but you can just skip over that.

From the album’s opening track, “War of Wrath”, which features the din of battle and clang of steel on steel, Nightfall in Middle-Earth sets the stage for a truly epic, truly fantastic, and truly geeky odyssey into adventure. What else is there to say? Great guitar work, great percussion, fantastic vocals (how often do you hear choral singing in metal?) and more standout tracks than you can shake a stick at! From the rolling drums leading into “The Curse of Feanor”, to the subdued piano and high-powered vocals of “The Eldar”, to the orchestral majesty of “Time Stands Still (at the Iron Hill)” (don’t these tracks just have the best names?), there isn’t a bad song on the entire album.

Seriously, whether you prefer your metal very loud or just sort-of loud, there’s something for everyone on this CD. Also, it provides a great alternative to actually reading The Silmarillion. I mean, why read over pages of dense and often cryptic prose when you can have it all in the form of a metal album? Sure, the non-musical interludes between songs can get annoying at times, but those are never longer than 20 seconds.

Basically, there is no way that anyone with a soul could not find this album enjoyable. I defy you to give this a listen without banging your head and throwing up a pair of horns. You will not be able to do it. It’s impossible.