TheTornadoTimes

By Sophie Mirzaian

Imagine yourself at a concert in England. The lights, dim a second ago, are now nearly blinding you as you stare at Brett Anderson, as thin, androgynous, and glamorous as ever. And Bernard Butler, one of the greatest guitarists of his generation, is a few feet away from you. The first few notes of “We Are the Pigs” start playing, and you feel like if you were to collapse and die in the crowd, you would be okay with that because you’re listening to Suede.
But that was in 1994. The year 1999, however, nearly destroyed Suede. Lead singer and lyricist Brett Anderson was able to overcome his cocaine addiction, and although he recovered, his band wasn’t so fortunate.
Now, the Britpop legends of Suede are back with “Bloodsports” and closer than ever to returning to their former glory.
The first track, “Barriers,” makes the album’s theme clear: youth, love, and the chase. With its opening lyrics (“anise seed kisses and lipstick traces / lemonade sipped in Belgian rooms”), we already feel classic Suede. Anderson’s songs have always been riddled with over-dramatic similes and metaphors, and to rob new songs of those would be criminal.
The fact that Anderson actually refers to “glue” in “Barriers” as a sticky substance rather than as an inhalant (“Beautiful Ones” from “Coming Up”) is a sign of the at least slightly more innocent lyrical themes throughout the album.
“Snowblind” opens with a guitar riff that sets it apart within the album, creating a unique melody that channels Bernard Butler-era Suede. Butler left the band in 1994, and although Anderson and Butler reunited in 2004 for their project The Tears, they disbanded again in 2006.
Still, listeners can feel Butler’s creative influence anchoring Anderson in this album, perhaps because of their earlier collaboration. The guitar riffs are just as strong as they were pre-“Head Music,” despite the fact that Butler himself did not rejoin the group for the new album.
By the third track, “It Starts and Ends With You,” the listener already feels monotony in terms of overall song structure, which disrupts the momentum as the songs flow from one to the next. The problem carries throughout nearly every single song and becomes the album’s single but monstrous flaw.
The closing track, “Faultlines,” asserts itself in its more muted sound and instrumentation—especially juxtaposed with the grandness of the preceding track “Always.”
It isn’t so much that this album makes you want to listen to it on a loop for months, but it does make you crave Suede’s early albums, the lyrical and melodic richness, the glamour, the rawness. Judging on a Suede-sized scale is slightly unfair, considering it’s been nearly twenty years since the last album of theirs that lived up to the standards the world has set for them. Even then, “Bloodsports” reminds listeners of old Suede and echoes it beautifully.
“Bloodsports” stands extremely tall both within Suede’s discography and outside of it. Long-time fans will be very easily pleased by the ease with which it emulates material Suede could have released in 1995. In remembering the failure that was “Head Music” (1999), which then also ruined commercial sales of “A New Morning” (2002) and the album itself for, well, everybody, fans would be crazy not to feel like “Bloodsports” gives Suede the finale it should have had a decade ago.

photo source: Domino Records
By Sophie Mirzaian

Although they are worshipped by sometimes scary psych-folk fanatics and indie music buffs alike, the crazy Animal Collective is a band I have always felt I should like but never have. The band fits my general style: it’s noisy and rich in sound. However, its 2009 album “Merriweather Post Pavilion” and its most famous song “My Girls” both gave me intense anxiety despite captivating so many others. But somehow it seems that Animal Collective has created an album, “Centipede Hz” which was released Sept. 4, that registers more in my brain like music and less like a mess composed by Stockhausen fanboys.

My personal favorite track, “Applesauce,” sounds close to perfection to my ears, although it may seem overwhelmingly piercing to some because of its sometimes overwhelming mixture of electronic sounds. The song is, in literal terms, about fruit’s tendency to be so juicy and delicious in its prime but also to age so quickly. Preservation of youth and fear of aging are frequently revisited themes on the album. Lines where Avey Tare is “[reminiscing] of the days when [his] mom made it all seem delicious” make this longing for ease and youth obvious.

Musically, the album feels more wild and experimental, and the power of the characteristic cacophony of electronic beats shines through with relative simplicity. On “Merriweather”, songs would feel too cluttered with supposedly polished samples and layers all with an unlistenable frequency, but “Centipede Hz” gets it right and acknowledges its limits.

Even though many consider this album an easy listening for Animal Collective’s standards, the band has not lost the elements intrinsic to its music, ones that particularly show themselves in “Wide Eyed” and the dense opener “Moonjock.” If anything, Animal Collective has expanded on them and added more experimental touches. Although off-putting to some, I personally love the jolt of emotion and energy so many of the songs hit you with.

But the truth with Animal Collective is that there will always be so many differing opinions because of the nature of their fanbase. Despite so many being disappointed, my opinion happens to have changed for the better with this album.

photo source: Parlophone Records
By Sophie Mirzaian

I have been a bit upset with the world of opera lately. Just a few weeks ago, I went to experience Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” I was utterly disappointed and left at intermission, after an hour and forty minutes. In fact, the singers were so uninteresting with their small voices and poor Italian that I had more fun watching the harpsichord player mouth all the words as she swayed along to the music.

If professional classical musicians and opera singers fail to captivate audiences, I don’t see how Englishman Damon Albarn expects to with his newly released recording of “Dr. Dee,” a sort of folksy modern opera composed alongside Rufus Norris, which played for a week as part of a festival in Manchester, England last year.

When I think of “opera,” neither “England” nor “Damon Albarn” come to mind. I think of the Italians (namely Donizetti, Verdi, Ponchielli, and Puccini), the Germans (Strauss and Wagner) and the French Bizet’s “Carmen,” all with beautiful sets and singers hitting impossible notes and taking the audience on an emotional musical ride.

But “Dr. Dee” is something very different. It doesn’t even claim to be a rock opera like The Who’s brilliant “Tommy.” Damon Albarn has wrongly and conceitedly assumed that he can do anything he wants with whatever genre he pleases.

The album begins with four minutes of dreadful sound, and this continues into the second track—you couldn’t pay me enough to set aside my own pride and call these arias; they’re simply not arias—but really this one, “Apple Cart,” is quite nice. The melody is subtle, with an underlying eeriness, and Albarn’s voice nicely accompanies the guitar.

It doesn’t remind me of any classical music, but it does sound very much like “Tasseoma-ncy” by the Canadian duo Ghost Bees.

However, there is a problem in this song that occurs time and time again throughout the album: the lyrics don’t seem significant or important.

This song is simply about apple carts being set on fire. But somehow, even with that, the listener is almost optimistic that this thing, whatever it is, may not turn out to be so terrible after all.

The topic of the opera is also a bit unorthodox. It tells the story of John Dee (whose character does not sing at all), a mathematician, scientist, and philosopher of the court of Elizabeth I, yet the “story” is hardly anything more than disconnected lyrics attempted to be strung together by music reminiscent of the Elizabethan age. Albarn used instruments like the viola da gamba, shawm, dulcian, crumhorn, recorder, lute, and the African kora.

Occasionally, the music impressed me. The classical guitar (“The Moon Exalted,” “Moon (Interlude),” “Cathedrals”) is dulcet and melodic, and although it is not operatic, it has a beauty of its own.

Then come tracks like “Temptation Comes in the Afternoon,” perhaps the most annoying piece I’ve ever heard. The man who sings the last half reminds me of the “berries and cream” Starburst guy. Some parts of the second half of the album are such a cacophonous, muddled mess that I don’t think Damon Albarn should be allowed to make music like this anymore.

The only thing I have to thank Albarn for, besides his one decent but still somewhat forgettable track “Apple Cart,” is making this “opera”  short—48 minutes while classical operas are often three or four hours long—but really, if he’d skipped the pretensions, he’d have cut the album in half at least.

Overall, “Dr. Dee” is sometimes interesting and sometimes inane, but never opera.

photo source: Atlantic Records
By: Sophie Mirzaian

You probably know Santigold (or Santogold, as she was formerly known) for her 2008 single “L.E.S. Artistes,” a hit in both the U.S. and the U.K. With her new album, “Master of My Make-Believe,” which was released on May 2, we see Santigold departing from her pop style and shifting into something slightly less electronic, more Lykke Li than M.I.A.

As the album starts, you don’t see all that much of old Santi White in it. “GO!” has an interesting sound as it is a mix of genres, like many of the songs on the album. The problem is that even one of the album’s better tracks feels drawn-out and repetitive. If it weren’t for Karen O., who is featured on the track, I would skip to the next song sooner, but even Karen’s part isn’t too impressive or exciting.

First released as a single, “Disparate Youth” combines emphasized guitar, synthesizer, and lyrics about distinct young adults not plagued by laziness but saturated by ambition. White thinks these young people of the world have enough drive to fight for the things they believe in and care about as she does.

“God From the Machine” has substance and compelling rigidity. The accentuated drums add a richness to the song while still maintaining its muted quality. However, it seems White doesn’t understand the concept of “less is more.” The song should have cut out its repetitive parts and been at least 30 seconds shorter.

The fifth track, “Freak Like Me,” is impossible to take seriously. For White’s sake, I hope she meant to use it as a filler, considering a majority of the lyrics in the song are “la la la la” and “you a freak like me.”

An awkward jump from somewhat exciting with a dub vibe to calm marks the middle of the album, where White moves into slower but not higher quality songs. Some of the tracks make me want to play jungle-themed video games rather than continue listening to the rest of the album.

“Master of My Make-Believe” is a fairly decent album on its own, at least when not compared to White’s previous work. It’s somewhat easy to listen to but fails to keep your attention, often turning into mere background noise than an album that has you enthralled. When compared to “Santogold,” Santi White’s 2012 album seems insignificant.
With all the changes, “Master of My Make-Believe” lost many of the qualities that made the first album the gem that it was. You lose the excitement and substance that made White interesting in the beginning.

As with “Santogold,” there were high and low points, but on a much less-impressive scale of musical grandeur. This means lower highs and also lower lows.
If you don’t expect anything good, maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised, but really, don’t go out of your way to listen to the new album unless you’re an avid fan of Lykke Li or M.I.A. However, if you don’t have Santigold’s self-titled album, you should.