June Music: Dntel, Cornelius, Janelle Monáe, and School of Seven Bells
Life is Full of Possibilities
DntelA lot of people are surprised when I tell them I'm not a fan of Owl City. It's not so much that I actively dislike Adam Young, but every time I listen to his music I feel like I should have just listened to the The Postal Service instead. Owl City sounds at least heavily influenced by Postal Service—and there's nothing wrong about that, I suppose—but there isn't anything Young brings to the table. Nothing—not the sound, production, melodies, lyrics, ideas, themes—nothing improves or even matches what Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello laid down in Give Up.
But recently I realized that as much as I like Death Cab for Cutie I'd never listened to Tamborello's solo work, Dntel. And wow I've been missing out.
I finally picked up Life is Full of Possibilities and it's a really solid album. Some of it is real deep, glitchy ambiance, like "Fear of Corners". "Why I'm So Unhappy" reminds me of so much Telefon Tel Aviv that I love, but darker and more brooding.
The highlight is without a doubt "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan", Dntel and Gibbard's first collaboration. Listening to "Evan and Chan", it's clear that The Postal Service was something that simply had to happen.
CM3
CorneliusI've been loving Cornelius ever since my aunt Carole bought me the weird and awesome compilation album WKM Tribute to Walkman. Joe noticed a third Cornelius remix album came out sometime last year and, through his Secret Ways, ordered a copy from Amazon Japan. After a few listens, CM3 is a bit weak, especially with CM2 being so damned good (I will never get over Bonnie Pink's "Fish"), but there are definitely a few great tracks.
The overall approach is very similar, and Cornelius' sample repertoire doesn't seem to have grown much, but the sound is still solid. The songs seem to have been produced anywhere from 2003 through 2009, so I wonder if I'm expecting too much by thinking this is anything more than a supplemental collection to the previous CM releases.
My favorite is Crystal Kay's "One". Sure, the track was originally written as the theme song for the eleventh Pokémon movie (fun fact, Kay voiced Nurse Joy's Chansey in the movie) but the treatment here is an infectiously optimistic summer pop song, the sort you play as you start off a weekend trip to the coast. I love it.
The ArchAndroid
Janelle MonáeJanelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid is something else. It's a seventy minute epic, the second and third suites of a four part sci-fi series about androids, a futuristic city, love, and self identity. And it's the freshest R&B hip-hop jazz psychedelic cinematic (all of these and more) albums I've heard in a long time.
This is concept and execution approaching the level of Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
The singles "Cold War" and "Tightrope" are great, but make no mistake: The ArchAndroid is an album, a single work that flows, moves, and dances between genres, never settling for down into one sound for long, but never losing its cohesion or vision.
Monáe also rocks the slickest dance moves and an epic pompadour. No really. So awesome.
Alpinisms
School of Seven BellsI don't remember exactly how I stumbled on it, but Adult Swim has a bunch of free albums, including Ghostly Swim featuring artists from the Ghostly International label. It's a seriously good mix album, and there's very little excuse not to go download it now.
From there I picked up School of Seven Bells' Alpinisms and it's been on heavy rotation since. It's shoegaze and electronica, a sound I've been really been loving lately. "Half Asleep", especially, has been rocking the hot late afternoons we've been getting.
The deluxe version of the album has a bunch of alternate cuts on the second disc, and it's really interesting to hear the same song, with the same melody and vocals, but with a very different instrumentation. And it's not like they're radically different; they have the same texture, roughly. It's a small, fascinating peek into the care and craft SVIIB put into Alpinisms.
A new preview track "Babelonia" has been floating around and it's everything I love about Alpinisms but even better. Between that and the Windstorm EP I just can't wait for SVIIB's next album.