Album Reviews

Album: B-Room
Artist: Dr. Dog
Release Date: October 1, 2013
Label: ANTI-
Genre: Indie rock/Blues rock/Neo-psychedelia

B-Room is the eight album by Dr. Dog. I don’t really know anything about the band except that I’ve heard of them before. Time to listen!

The album begins with “The Truth,” which is a very nice song to hang out to. It’s like something you’d listen to getting high with your friends, if that’s what you’re into. But it’s not exclusively that, it’s just a very “chill-out” track. Right now, it’s helping me calm down for an exam I have later this week. It’s like I don’t have a care in the world right now. The song has movement throughout and keeps your attention while it simultaneously allows you to totally ignore it while listening. This quickly fades into “Broken Heart,” which is a bit louder, and by the refrain sounds an awful lot like Animal Collective, but less electronic. The vocals are bouncing around playfully while the music keeps it steady. The short guitar solo is a nice little bit. That coupled with the outro’s chants make this a very good song.

Next is “Minding the Usher,” which uses an unusual chord progression in the guitar. The track kind of swells in a very slow way throughout its length. It starts off soft, then grows louder and then drops again. The bridge of this song is also really interesting, just soft little muffled stabs while the singer says “on and on and on…” Then, “Distant Light” starts off in a marching band like way, and the song sounds sort-of anthemic. If “Broken Heart” was the neo-psychedelia, this track is the blues rock. It’s very different from the other tracks on the album and I really appreciate that on this album, because they’re not all too different genres. And it sounds good! There’s no way around that fact.

“Phenomenon” creates this indie-rock-meets-farm sound that sounds extremely unique. This sound is very delicate and I’ll be very upset if they use it again on the album, because it has to be something used all on it’s own. The song’s strings are very well orchestrated, and it’s nice to see that they’re mostly played by real musicians and not just electronic instruments. After that it’s “Too Weak to Ramble,” which is another bluesy track, but less rock than the past one. The singer in this song sounds as though he really suffered the struggles of the old blues singers, and it’s a little sad to listen to, because this sound is created so effectively and so honestly that it’s totally believable. I’d be upset if I learned that these lyrics meant nothing and he was just trying to create a sound. I love this song.

“Long Way Down” is very interesting. It’s a true indie rock track and very difficult to describe. It makes me want to move and bop around. It’s guitar work is very cool, as well as it’s use of horns. The drums keep the beat while adding its own fills that are actually audible and good! The singing and lyrics are both great and the track makes me feel good. The next song, “Cuckoo,” goes back into that bluesy sound- this time more Black Keys than White Stripes. The sound is a bit dreary in this track, but that’s not bad, especially because, you know, it’s a blues song. The song forces me to tap my foot to the beat. It’s use of keys adds a nice old-school vibe to such a new cool song.

The song fades right into “Twilight,” which starts with a nice theremin that could have been part of the Titanic soundtrack, and then becomes a very strange piece that sounds straight out of a David Lynch movie. I really like this track, but my issue with it is that this is the track where I suddenly realize that this whole album is not cohesive. This is 12 different bands playing 12 different songs, like a compilation record of a music label. In terms of this song, it’s very cool, very eerie and interesting enough to be one of my favorites. Then, with no transition, “Rock & Roll” starts, which is very old-school sounding. It’s a great recounting of the artist’s past (if it actually happened, but either way, it’s a great story), much like “Jukebox Hero.” It’s sexy, it’s angsty, and it’s awesome, but it sounds a bit derivative of older artists. Is he trying to emulate the older artists? Maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me.

“Love” is another song that sounds very derivative and totally different from the rest of the album. But damn, the band’s music makes it so hard for me to be mad at them. I LOVE this song. If you ever hear someone complain that they don’t make music like (insert old band here) anymore, show them this song, it should be able to silence them. It’s the Beatles. It’s beautiful.

The last track on the album is “Nellie,” is also really good. Yeah, yeah, you get it. It’s the lighter song (except that’s lame, don’t do that), it’s the slow clap song, it’s the sing-along song, shout with them “Oh Nellie!”

There’s not a single bad song off of this whole album, which is the qualification I have for giving a great score to an album. The problem is that in order to make each song great, they had to make an album that is not cohesive at all. They can be themselves without sacrificing their quality!

Great track: All of them
Not so great tracks: None

FINAL RATING: 9/10

Album: Innocents
Artist: Moby
Release Date: October 1, 2013
Label: Little Idiot/Mute
Genre: Electronica

Before I review this album I’d like to apologize for my absence during September. I want to write these reviews, because it is something that I enjoy doing, but I got very behind during the month of September on my work and therefore the albums just passed by like a breeze and it became impossible for me to catch up. It would make more sense anyway to restart here in October with the start of the fourth quarter of the year of music. Thank you, and I will not stop posting if I can help it.

Innocents is Moby’s 11th studio album and is more “electronica” than his past few releases which were mostly IDM and often ambient.

The album begins with “Everything That Rises,” a song whose simple chords and drum beat suddenly become extremely atmospheric and never boring despite being somewhat redundant. With artists and songs like these, it’s the small changes that count. And when the cymbal sounds start coming, everything comes to a glorious climax of electricity that swells within the room. When the cymbals and drums leave, it feels like part of you has left and the other part is being held on to by the clinking melody that hasn’t changed since the start.

The next track is “A Case for Shame,” featuring Cold Specks, which is the leading single from the album. The song throbs in and then Specks starts singing in a very clear voice while humming in another track. Then the drums stop and Specks really starts the lyrics and shows off her voice. The instrumentation is very pretty, but seems textbook. It’s as if he took the standard chords used to create pretty music and added a drumbeat. People have been doing that for years, centuries even, and I’m not mad, I just think that if he’s going to do that on the instrumental tracks on the album, it’s going to be boring. Fortunately, this song is not instrumental, and needless to say Specks’s vocals are the standout feature of the song and her beautiful voice fits wonderfully with the song, or rather, expands upon the song in a  great way.

Next is “Almost Home,” featuring indie singer-songwriter Damien Jurado, and sounds like a mix between an electric sea and a western movie. Jurado’s gentle voice gives the song a sound reminiscent of Bon Iver. The instrumentation is not exceptionally redundant, it kind of emulates the wind at parts, it feels random, but is controlled. The track ends with a wonderful culmination and a second singer with a wonderful voice as well and then the track fades out. It is followed by “Going Wrong,” a slow song accompanied by brush drumming. The song starts off with a piano riff that is soon accompanied by string instrumentation and is put together wonderfully. When the song opens up to the higher register and the strings get louder, it becomes overwhelmingly pretty while still retaining the darkness present within the track.

“The Perfect Life,” featuring The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, starts off happy and springy, but also restrained. However, it soon becomes very electronic. Here, the focus is on Coyne’s vocals and the lyrics. We all want the perfect life, it’s all we need. The song could easily be a Flaming Lips track, and that’s my only complaint with this track. It became the guest’s song. However, I very much enjoy The Flaming Lips and this is a great song and one of my favorite tracks off the album. The next track is “The Last Day” featuring pop artist Skylar Grey. The song’s downbeat music and atmospheric production complements Grey’s voice nicely, but at the same time, the song is somewhat boring because it’s so consistently dreary, like it’s weighing you down.

“Don’t Love Me,” featuring Inyang Bassey, has a walking bass piano part and charges the song through Bassey’s sexy singing, organ stabs, and a looped drum part that sounds like it’s playing backwards. This is all good stuff, by the way! This is easily one of the standout tracks on this album because it’s so conventionally pop-structured but has such a sexy twist to it. Then the next  track is “A Long Time,” whose production sounds vaguely European. The samples in this song kind of get annoying after a bit. The song definitely has movement, but it has a very similar structure to all of the other songs on this album. The song gets tiresome very quickly. This 4 and a half minute song feels twice its length.

After that is “Saints,” which sounds like a mix between church mass and a dance floor. This song I think really captures IDM very well, a song that you can go out to dance to, but also comfortably listen to in your living room. I know a lot of musicians resent the IDM term, but I don’t use it as “Intelligent Dance Music,” I use it like MTV or AMC, where the meaning is the initials themselves. The song’s drums and swelling electronic chords make a very great track, and this time the vocal loops are very additive. They do make the song sound European like the last one, and that sound to me is a bit corny, but it’s still very good.

“Tell Me” features Cold Specks again, and starts like nighttime on a country road. Specks sings beautifully again, and the track pushes along with echoes and electronic washes. I imagine a video for this song, very simple, a car on a path, green on both sides, at night, and Specks singing in the passenger seat with Moby driving, if he’s there at all. Then the next track is “The Lonely Night” featuring Mark Lanegan, former singer of Screaming Trees. The track starts off very softly and Lanegan begins singing in his Leonard Cohen-like voice. This whisper is very pleasant. The song is very quiet and restrained, and doesn’t get loud even at the bridge and second verse. It builds up like a song to the heavens, but never shouts to show off the possibility of loudness. It’s just a very beautiful song.

The last song on the album is “The Dogs,” and actually features Moby’s voice singing. It’s actually very nice. The song quickly becomes like his other ones off the record and sounds like it uses the same chords and everything. I was able to predict exactly what happened while listening to the beginning. The song is not bad, it’s just predictable. The lyrics are very emotional, it’s an affirmation of a loss of hope. After the lyrics have ended, about five minutes in, the song changes subtly. Like an afterthought of sorts, the last few minutes are building up the same idea to a climax. It doesn’t come, but it does reach a state of euphoria that is satisfactory to ending the record.

The album all in all is very good, there is nothing wrong with any of the songs in particular, it’s just that they get very boring and repetitive after a few songs. One can predict the instrumental part exactly just after listening to the first third of the album, and you don’t really want that. Another thing is that there isn’t much identity to the tracks. Sometimes the featured artist takes over and Moby becomes irrelevant, which is fine, it doesn’t change the quality of the song, but it’s something that should be resolved.

Best tracks: “Everything That Rises;” “Almost Home;” “The Perfect Life;” “Don’t Love Me;” “Tell Me;” “The Lonely Night”
Not so great tracks: “The Last Day;” “A Long Time”

FINAL RATING: 6/10