•
Rating:
I only knew Stephen Merritt for those cavernous voices, so vintage in interpretation that I couldn't quite appreciate them, even though they were bolstered by always intelligent and absolutely unpredictable arrangements. Now Stephen Merritt sounds distorted like the Jesus and Mary Chain (he says), and since echo-filled distortions are one of those things that make me the happiest in the world, I give that baritone voice another chance, somewhat intrigued by the proposed combination.
Even though everything in this album is filtered through a sticky patina of distorted echoes and reverberations, more than in Shoegaze territory, the impression is that of facing the Red House Painters in a full-blown cheerful crisis, or conversely, the Beach Boys discovering the melancholic and distorted side of rock. From this point of view, the piece that sounds most ingenious to me is "California Girls", with that Phil Spector-like voice over a lo-fi ultra-reverberated wall of sound. Nonetheless, the greatness of the record lies in its being unabashedly full of references yet never trivially revivalist. Stephen Merritt plays with various citations, sometimes extremely, but they all come together to form another piece of what has always been his poetics (at least as I perceive it), that is, music of memory, or nostalgia, a calm losing oneself in a glimpse of memory.
In conclusion, it is a record that holds the power of storytelling, which makes it confusingly genius, especially in its evident citation of rock culture forms that are light-years apart.
Tracklist and Videos
Loading comments slowly
Other reviews
By nino
Pop explained to my mother (who has never heard of the Jesus and Mary Chain) or the poetry of feedback in the anthology of distortion.
To write a love song you don’t have to use the foil; you can also use the axe, to cut the thicker feelings.
By m
"Distortions like surges of white granite that crash down from above onto the melodic textures, submerging them up to the neck and, in doing so, making them... even more piercing."
"This album primarily stands on the strong legs of the sharp and refined melodies that make it up... a distillation of years of toil and experience."
