Review: The Black Keys, Turn Blue

By Emmett H Robinson Smith

Since the release of El Camino, which turns three years old this coming December, Akron duo the Black Keys have been through a lot. Patrick Carney, the outspoken Keys drummer, found himself confronted on Twitter by millions of adolescent Justin Bieber fans for his words about the controversial pop star. Perhaps more significantly, however, Dan Auerbach, the arguable brains behind the Keys operation, went through a divorce, and it shows on the band’s new album Turn Blue. His lyrics on the LP are more full of “woman trouble” subject matter than ever. “Looking back on where we used to be / Everything was clear, but still I refused to see / Hearts began to rust / The diamond turned to dust” Auerbach admits on “Bullet in the Brain”. Indeed, blue is the operative mood on the bulk of the album’s tracks.

El Camino was the sound of a group struggling to find a balance between staying true to their roots as old-school blues-rock artists and bolstering their newfound popularity, mainly due to the excellent single “Tighten Up” from their sprawlingly diverse 2010 album Brothers. El Camino was a tight, unified, albeit safe, and at times tepid, collection of songs that leaned more towards the mainstream than the Keys ever had before: Auerbach called the album “too manicured” in a recent Rolling Stone interview. Thusly, it’s exciting to hear the duo explore new styles and instrumentation on their latest effort. The epic “Weight of Love” is the bold album opener, and it becomes clear almost immediately that new musical directions will be a feature. A whistling, ghostly organ and pinging bells help to create a lush, richly textured soundscape that complements the haunting melody of the chorus. The song’s sheer length – 6:50 – is significant in itself, as the Black Keys aren’t known for making tracks much longer than four minutes apiece.

Much of the credit for the musicality of Turn Blue can be given to Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse, who has produced their last four albums to varying effect. On this project however, it sounds as though the visions of both parties have found a way to play off each other in a natural way. The classic blues riffs of the Keys’ earlier albums are still intact, but are made to sound fresh with spacey, echoing accompaniment. Take the title track, for instance. Auerbach’s bluesy riff is complemented with booming toms, crescendoing strings and a quickly repeating one-note bass line.  This is a prime example of the successful marriage between Burton’s and the Black Keys’ ideas.

Things do get sluggish in the middle of the album. “Year In Review” is an overly monochromatic throwaway which features Auerbach vaguely lamenting his women troubles with very general lines as a result: “You don't wanna know more/And you've been down this road before/So leave it alone/Just leave it alone”. The more serious problem here, though, is the monotony of the tune. The verse and chorus melody is on the same note, which, by the two-minute mark, becomes tiresome, and, worse, annoying. “It’s Up to You Now” inexplicably takes a turn for the lethargic worse after the up-tempo riff becomes exhausted. You can almost hear the Keys thinking, “okay, it’s getting boring. We should probably change it here”.

However, Turn Blue’s final batch of songs is strong. “Waiting on Words” is an old-school Who-like ballad, and Auerbach’s falsetto sounds gorgeous over the delicate chord progressions of the chorus. “In Our Prime” begins surprisingly stripped down compared to many other tracks on the album, and there are hints of blues guitar that creep into a groove which has the Beatles written all over it. However, the song builds into a blazing guitar-and-organ-solo epic, complete with a string section and mallets. Auerbach’s lyrics are particularly strong here, too, and carry a nostalgic tone that plays strongly to the placement of the song as one of the album’s final tracks: “Like every lover hovers in my mind / We made our mark when we were in our prime / The house, it burned, but nothing there was mine / We had it all when we were in our prime”, he sings.

One of the most musically courageous and exciting releases of 2013, Kanye West’s Yeezus, was for the most part an assault of harsh, industrial “hip-hop”, to use the term very loosely. However, the final track took listeners by surprise: In the context of an album so dedicated to pushing the boundaries of conventional hip-hop, the last song, “Bound 2”, was a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. It was classic Kanye, featuring his staple soul-sampling which made him so popular in the first place, as well as his trademark simple, wry lyrics. This phenomenon is mirrored in Turn Blue. With their most musically explorative collection to date, they end the album with a blast of retro, balls-out rock n’ roll in “Gotta Get Away”. It’s El Camino again, but tighter, more singable, and more cruise-down-the-highway-with-your-speakers-blasting, which makes for a hugely effective closer for a work that is largely a textural “headphones album”. It’s a satisfying ending that tells us that the Keys aren’t taking themselves too seriously, and that they still know how to rock in the classic sense of the word.

The Black Keys have created something special with Turn Blue, with a huge help from producer Brian Burton. The arrangements are rich and beguiling, and Auerbach’s lyrics shine through with this accompaniment. Despite some missteps, the duo has taken a bold step in a new direction without sacrificing their roots. The Black Keys are back.

Review: Mac Demarco, Salad Days

By Emmett H Robinson Smith

Mac Demarco doesn't ease into his new album Salad Days. The full-band jam all begins at once, and the first few seconds of the album give the impression of being right in the middle of things. It seems, in fact, to pick up where his 2012 album 2 left off. The same tinny, airy guitars are as prominent in Salad Days as they were on 2, as is the don't-worry-too-much-about-your-life-problems motif. The rather morbid opening lines, "As I'm getting older, chip upon my shoulder / Rolling through life, to roll over and die" are tossed off so matter-of-factly that if you didn't know English you'd figure that Mac was talking about something as innocuous as putting his socks on. 

There aren’t many musical departures on this album, but that isn’t the point of Mac’s music. In this respect, he can be seen as a somewhat alternative counterpart to Jack Johnson: Both artists are masters of the accessible, easygoing groove. As an Entertainment Weekly reviewer wrote about Johnson’s 2005 album In Between Dreams, which is applicable to Salad Days as well, “He’s so laid-back, it’s hard to tell when he’s worked up.” However, the relative lack of musical exploration and emotional diversity is in part what makes Mac’s music so compelling. It serves to complement his lyrics, which are wry, simple, and universal: “Treat her better, boy / If havin’ her at your side’s something you enjoy / If havin’ her in your life’s really so important to you now”, he sings in highlight track “Treat Her Better”. To accompany these honest, unpretentious lyrics with intricately complex musical arrangements would defeat their purpose.

Things take a slight musical turn in the tune “Passing Out Pieces”, in which a shimmering, accordion-like synthesizer complements a once again worry-free groove. The trademark guitars are still a feature, as is Mac’s nonchalant tongue-in-cheek singing. But that accordion is about as weird as it gets on Salad Days, which amplifies the concise, focussed nature of the 11-track work he has created here. The songs aren’t hugely diverse, but they’re different enough that the album sets and maintains a relaxed mood without it getting tiresome.

The album closes with a humble statement from Mac: “Hi guys, this is Mac, thank-you for joining me, see you again soon, buh-bye.” This heartwarming, smile-inducing final thought is significant in the context of the album. If there’s a time when our problems seem to vastly outweigh our solutions in life, it’s valuable to have a guy like Mac telling us not to take anything too seriously. And, it’s reassuring to know that it isn’t the last we’ve heard from this chilled-out dude.

Review: Wild Beasts, Present Tense

By Emmett H Robinson Smith

The title is no joke: From the very first unsettling drum hits of Present Tense, the new album from Wild Beasts, it's clear that this is an album sure to be packed with turbulence. By the time you notice the swirl of the operatic synthesizer, you're surrounded. Hayden Thorpe's lyrics in this song, "Wanderlust", are both defiant and powerful: he knows he's pulled you in. "Now that you answer to me/I'll tell you how I want to feel", he sings.

What's perhaps most striking about Present Tense, among many other things, is the band's ability to sound at once primal and futuristic. In an interview with FaceCulture, Thorpe said that computers yield “great possibilities, but with great possibilities comes great danger”. So it makes sense that the man himself is struggling to find an artistically viable balance between the natural and the technological. Take, for example, "Nature Boy", the album's second track. The song begins with tribal, mesmerizing bongos and a single tremulous synth. However, these ever-present elements soon are assaulted by a decaying, lower-register synth blast. The percussion begins to clatter and harmonious backup vocals join in to complement Tom Fleming's lush baritone. The song unfolds itself until a perfect, richly layered storm is concocted. This internal contradiction between the primal and the futuristic is in and of itself tension-inducing, further playing to the album's title.

                Fleming described the album as “a response to the overload of information we get today”. This is embodied in songs like “Daughters”, in which a relentless shaker-inflected percussion beat doesn’t let up over the course of the song. This sparse instrumentation becomes gently crowded with other elements: echoey voices, the odd hi-hat, and richly layered string synthesizers. However, the song’s feeling of bareness and vulnerability in the face of intricate instrumentation is what gives Fleming’s comment so much significance. In an age where we hide behind tweets and facebook photos, our sense of vulnerability and nakedness is at an all-time high.

                What is perhaps the album’s mantra can be seen in a later track, “Past Perfect”. We see Wild Beasts utilizing a retro Daft Punk-y rhythm guitar that the electronic duo made so massive with last year’s Random Access Memories.  However, Thorpe seems to carry more qualms about this revival of the past: “It’s tense for me / can’t live within a memory” he moans. This subtle addition of rhythm guitar is part of what makes the album such a cohesive listening experience, despite its contradictions: The past is present; that is, it is being used in the present tense. The band’s members are indeed presently tense about it, but they seem to find – presently at least – some sense of tranquility about this revival in the album closer, “Palace”. The plinking guitar and nostalgic synth arrangement complements Thorpe’s words of acceptance: “We may be savage and raw, but at the core we’ve higher needs”. Wild Beasts has created a work that uses this savage rawness to its utmost effect by courageously pairing it with progressive, luxurious “computer music”. The result is an impressively compact (40:55!), hugely replayable, tumultuous album.