#I just had a vision in my head after listening to some dark club bangers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mint-sm · 7 years

Text

LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

Last time on the Los Camp review (suspenseful orchestral soundtrack plays), I went over “Hold on Now, Youngster...,” which was an excellent introduction to the band, but I don’t think was completely reflective of the refinement and impact it would later reach. While what was presented was impressive and lively as hell as is, and the foundation for a wittier, more poetic, more intelligent, more refined and diverse sound was there, they just didn’t have the a full-enough grasp on their visions to take advantage of it.

Well, just 8 months after the release of “Youngster,” the world was suddenly sucker-punched right in the face with “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed,” which had immediately shown a much firmer grip on that path. Bare in mind, prior to the release of “Youngster,” the band had already existed for 2 years, and that album was something of a compilation of different songs they had been performing in university clubs and internet radio shows. It’s an excellent compilation, and it’s still very well put-together, but it likely wasn’t the most precise voice and identity resembling what the band intended to jump for, at least for the future.

With “Doomed,” they finally found ground for their true calling, and it was surprising as hell. Starting things off, the album immediately hits you with “Ways to Make It Through the Wall" with its bombastic opening chords, grimy feedback, incredibly-banging and dense melodies, crashing cymbals and blasting violin, and even MORE shouty vocals from the band, including Gareth almost incoherently screaming “AND A ROOM FULL OF VACUUM AND A ROOM FULL OF AIR LOOK THE SAME!” during the bridge. On one hand, it still somehow manages to feel like the good ‘ol Los Camp we knew, and yet at the same time you ask yourself “This is the same band that just released an album with a song called ‘Drop It, Doe Eyes’?”

(HOW YOU BREAK THE RULES THAT YOU YOURSELF IMPOSED / THINK YOU'VE GOT IT IN FOR US, I THINK YOU'VE GOT IT IN FOR YOURSELVES!)

I kinda mentioned this in my intro, but I would personally divide Los Camp’s discography into 3 periods: A “Twee Indie Period,” followed by an “Noise Pop Period,” then a “Mellow Rock Period,” and “Doomed” is found kinda sandwiched in between the first two. A lot of the fresh-new-vibrant-indie-ness of “Youngster” can still be felt, but it doesn’t quite reach the more experimental and even more noisy magnificence of “Romance is Boring” that we’ll discuss next time. That said, this transitionary period still feels like a massive blow to the head with just how much more powerful the production feels now, but it’s really, really welcome.

While I don’t really think other tracks in the album reach as much of an impact as the intro, it still does consistently have a more consistently… not “tight,” but “punchy” feeling to it. Much of it feels in a way somehow messier than “Youngster,” with a more abrasive side, almost garageband-like than hipster-y (though looking it up, I just found out that “noise pop” is an actual thing. You can see why I’m probably not the most qualified music critic lol).

Later bangers (haha see that I'm an awesome reviewer look at my lexicon) on the album, such as “Miserabilia,” the title track, and "All Your Kayfabe Friends" all have this less-pure, but still clashing feel to them, with more distorted guitars, harsher-sounding percussions, and more compressed vocals, almost sounding cassette-recorded quality at times. Even their comparatively softer tracks, such as "You'll Need Those Fingers for Crossing" and “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time,” still feel very feedback-y and dense, if that makes sense.

(WE GOT NOSTALGIC, ENDED UP FILLING SHOE BOXES WITH VOMIT / COLLECTED SCABS IN LOCKETS, HUNG THEM ROUND OUR NECKS LIKE NOOSES / NONE OF IT MATTERED, NONE OF IT MATTERS, NOBODY CARED)

Now this probably sounds like “Doomed” is maybe too messy or harsh to be really accessible if you’re coming from “Youngster,” but honestly, it’ll all feel surprisingly pretty familiar since a lot of the instrumental sensibilities from that record still shine through and are in the forefront. We still have a lot of those plucky, lo-fi keyboard synthesisers, we still have the violin and glockenspiel riffs, we still have the many call-and-response verses between Gareth and Aleks, and we still have the upbeat, catchy melodies and choruses.

Not much theory-wise has fundamentally changed in that regard, except maybe the softer, lowkey ballads have gotten more distinctive, such as “You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing,” which not only has a constant, but soft and occasionally punchy rhythm to it, but again, has that duet aspect, and it flows beautifully.

“Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky” is also this great, a bit dissonant, synthesized, little screechy, but also rather ethereal and floaty-sounding instrumental, a track that I honestly think is one of the band’s most visual-sounding themes, one that provides one of the most clear mental images, like maybe you’re splayed out while floating midair as both the earth and sky are already exploding beneath and above you all in extreme slow-motion, where everything’s all violent and impatient and tense and shit but at the same time weirdly serene and kinda cosy? It’s like experiencing a terrifying apocalypse and yet it feels like everything’s going to be okay.

There’s also “Heart Swells/Pacific Daylight Time,” which on top of just being one of the band’s very few honest-to-god love songs that’s surprisingly heartfelt (it’ll get more surprising when I discuss “Romance is Boring,” believe me), the muted vocals, the reverbed, feedbacked to hell background ambience, but very crisp guitar and percussion just paint this beautiful, but kinda fading image that’s honestly one of the most sweet tracks the band’s ever made, but also one of the most vaguely tragic.

(I DON'T WANT TO SOUND TRITE BUT YOU WERE PERFECT / THE WAY YOU LOOK COULD SERIOUSLY MAKE NATURE DYSMORPHIC / I WISH THAT YOU WOULD KISS ME 'TIL THE POINT OF PARALYSIS / THE WAY I FLAIL MY ARMS IN FRONT OF YOU, IT JUST EMBARRASSES)

And then we get to the lyrics, and like I’ve said, this is where the band has started to get much more flowery and descriptive, and honestly very funny in a sort of cringe-comedy-ish way, accentuated by once again, dissonant instrumentals. “Miserabilia” in particular is just like a really jaunty, upbeat and smiley-sounding track, and there is a definite playfulness both sonically and lyrically, but at the same time you go “wow, this ‘miserabilia’ (because get it, misery? Memorabilia? Miserabilia!) isn’t something I should cling onto, but at the same time, it’s pretty natural to do so, innit?” There’s also a really cute and funny lyric about “He whispered, ‘Oh my God, this really is a joy to behold’ / I thought he said, ‘It's a joy to be held,’ so I held him too close / It was a grave mistake, he never came back again!”, and I honestly can’t help but smile at just how absolutely DUMB it sounds when I hear it.

But on the more depressing side of sardonic, there’s the title track, and it’s probably one of my personal favorite cuts in the band’s discography, not just because how much it hits close to home for me personally -- it’s about a long-distance relationship falling apart, and how over time you start getting more and more resentful of them and their diverging interests and they get so much more unfamiliar it makes you wanna break their new friends’ teeth in no I’m not still bitter -- but also because how it manages to perfectly encapsulate that snide, but genuinely frustrated catharsis, not just with the banging instrumental or the gradual vocal escalation as the song continues, but the really specifically-vibrant vignettes Gareth provides to really build this mindset, like how “Absence makes the heart grow fonder / fondness makes the absence longer / Length loses my interest, I'm a realist, I'm insatiable / Swapped counting days until I fly, with hours before your reply.” Really, if you can only listen to one song from this band, it’s this one (even if it is for the climax, which is absolutely incredible if emo-sounding as fuck).

(OH, WE KID OURSELVES THERE'S FUTURE IN THE FUCKING / BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING FUTURE / I'M JUST PRACTICING MY ACCENTS, PICKING AT OLD SUTURES)

Admittedly, there are some times when the lyrics really elude me on their exact meaning, probably because I can’t really pin down what scenario or what context they were born from, unlike the lyrics to “No Blues” where I can say “Oh yeah, he’s just making a football reference, right” (we’ll get into that later). Like the song “It's Never That Easy Though, Is It? (Song for the Other Kurt),” which I think is about the narrator meeting with a girl, breaking up with her, and I think like the on-off resentment he gets when she snogs with some other dude? I think? I dunno, I’m reading the lyrics and I’m listening to who’s singing what line, but I still don’t really get a clear scenario.

Though like I said, Los Camp doesn’t USUALLY excel or at least specify in making images, and are more for crafting mentalities, mindsets, and atmospheres, and you still get this kinda-restrained giddiness juxtaposed with deep-seated resentment/fondness about a girl and part of her family, which is a theme that continues on for pretty much the entire second half of the album, like with “The End of the Asterisk,” or “Documented Emotional Breakdown #1,” whose exact meanings also elude me, but they have an obvious, kinda “twee indie”-style jauntiness to them, but haunted by an understated feel of darkness.

(THEY SAID, "THAT BOY'S TOO LAZY", YOU WERE CLEARLY FOREWARNED / A JEALOUS EX SILENCED THE ROOM, HE SAID THAT YOU WERE A WHORE / "DO YOU KISS YOUR MUMMY'S LIPS WITH THAT MOUTH?")

I think that just about sums up this album in a nutshell: Twee indie-style jauntiness with darkness haunting under them, like maybe say, an erupting earth and an exploding sky? It feels like Los Camp have finally identified an ominous, impending feeling of doom underneath their twee pop exterior and is slowly bringing that out with noisier production, more simultaneously specific-yet-vague subject matter, and a lot more honest-to-god atmosphere, brought out with much more concise and evocative lyricism.

It marks the true beginning of what I think the band is all about, and redefined what to expect from them. Once again, the feelings it provokes are a simultaneous yet somehow distinctive mishmash of wanting everything to be raucous and violent and you wanting to break down walls and shit, but also at the same time wanting things to be more emotional and down-to-earth, yet additionally being resentful and anticipating that fearful, inevitable doom.

It really is a great addition to the band’s discography, and it honestly feels like the perfect halfway point between the band’s innocent enjoyment of a time and scene gone by and the massively sardonic bitterness of the future. What happens then? Stay tuned! (suspenseful orchestral music ends) (4.5/5)

FAVES: “Ways to Make It Through the Wall,” “Miserabilia,” “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed,” “Between an Erupting Earth and an Exploding Sky,” “Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #1,” “Heart Swells / Pacific Daylight Time”

PS, if you’re interested, I’ve also got an EEP released recently too! It’s electronica/chiptune fusions about a lot of cheeriness and sadness and shit! Thank!

#los campesinos #music review #we are beautiful we are doomed

3 notes · View notes

thesinglesjukebox · 7 years

Video

youtube

ED SHEERAN - SHAPE OF YOU [4.60] We're still a bit grouchy...

Elisabeth Sanders: The fact that this is a decent-ish bop at its core can in no way outweigh the total, full-body revulsion I feel when hearing Ed Sheeran -- a still-damp bridge troll who seems to have made some kind of unholy deal with a dark force (Taylor Swift?) for fame -- say "that body on me." I'd write more but I have to go boil myself. [2]

Anthony Easton: I cannot get my mind around Sheeran as a sexual being, and this sung-spoken ode to fucking is the least erotic, mostly because it does not move substantially. There's just a kind of spitty mumble stumbling over a rudimentary beat -- and not rudimentary in a four-on-the-floor sense. [2]

Ramzi Awn: I'm not sure what this is, which is usually a good thing, but I do know that I don't need to hear about Ed Sheeran's bedsheets. Like at all. [2]

Lilly Gray: This is an inoffensive "let's fuck" song if there ever was one, but of the two Sheeranisms on offer today I prefer this version. His voice is fine; he sings solidly and a little plainly, rather than yanking that tortured scratchy indie boy voice up and down the register, which makes his false duet in the pre-chorus stand out more. I also like that his earnest In Love™ brand, prefect for undanceable songs at a wedding reception, is side-stepped for a mildly saucy pick-up narrative. That said, "your love was handmade/for someone like me" clunks so profoundly I'm elbowed out of the song. The frankness and emptiness of his appraisal of her body and their sex is not going to light any fires in amorous listeners, and the oh-I chorus is dressing for the job it wants as a club banger rather than the job it has, as a weird, passionless chant. "Come on be my baby" is on the same lo-cal, lo-lust diet. [4]

Tim de Reuse: You can look for something cute and flirtatious in the little things -- songs like this have worked on less narrative material than we get here -- but you don't have to be so damn literal. Better to be explicit or corny or overenthusiastic than go through the laundry list of mundane generalities we get here; boring is surely close to the polar opposite of sexy. It has a decent groove, I guess, even if it feels like it's grooving purely because it's obliged to. [4]

Jonathan Bradley: Sheeran expects the tropical house rhythm to do a lot of the work on "Shape of You," its burbles nudging his multi-tracked smolders forward. It works for a while, but he runs into a familiar dilemma: a stiff R&B presence, he sorely needs the energy of a dance beat but is most believable in his poisonous acoustic mode, lacing pretty guitar figures with incongruous malice ("Little Things," "Love Yourself"). "Shape of You" tries to let its hair down, but from the vividly bland date narrative -- Van Morrison on the jukebox, a cheap meal, taxicab petting -- to a hook far too dependent on harmonies, it feels detached. Where on "Sing," Sheeran found a puckish taste for adventure, here he sounds too much like a schlub trying to play smooth. [5]

Alfred Soto: I was gonna say, "God, another 'Love Yourself'" until I remembered this dude co-wrote it, although lines like "We were talking about sweet and sour" suggest he hasn't used the royalties for songwriting workshops. Double tracking his voice high and low -- how very Justin Timberlake. The pseudo-warmth of the title hook and the fake winks at body sensitivity are all Sheeran's. [3]

Mo Kim: If "Shape of You" fails as love song, it works much better as meta-commentary; in his writing or his performance, Sheeran gives little indication of his stakes in the relationship beyond his (and by extension, our) own investment in the idea of the relationship, of eating at unnamed rundown buffets and knowing what bed sheets smell like the morning after and having a song to share on the jukebox or the taxicab radio. Even the separation of heart from body (or the ultimate privileging of body, in the most literal sense) suggests an inability to commit himself fully in the mutual knowing of a lover, one he himself recognizes and deliberately enforces. But damned if he doesn't make it easy to fall in love with the shape of this: the twinkling marimba, the rousing string plucks, the crackle of those dance room snaps and thumps. And where is it, for many of us pop fans, that those fantasies began? The radio, of course, where at sixteen I was losing myself in music like this, one of the few spaces I had in which I could be young and unapologetically queer and, maybe someday, loved. "The club isn't the best place to find a lover," he admits, but there's room in its cramped halls to project expansive imaginations; this song was handmade for somebody like us. [8]

Juana Giaimo: Ed Sheeran can't avoid being tender and cute and honest and deep. That's why "Shape of You" is about bodies, but also about the idealized vision you have of a new person in your first moments shared together. The upbeat singles of X ("Don't," "Sing") suddenly sound quite dull compared to the warmness of "Shape Of You," especially because of that subtle reggaeton beat that can be so physical. There is no need for a big chorus when there are so many catchy moments -- even his rapping is easier to follow now. But it isn't needed either when you rely on looping, creating a pattern than is slowly completed with layers, just like the relationship told in the lyrics: it starts with a conversation at a bar, but he soon can identify all those details that make her unique. [8]

Joshua Copperman: One thing amusing about both this and "Castle On The Hill" is how he shouts out different artifacts of the generation before his own -- "Born To Run"/"Tiny Dancer" in "Castle," and Van Morrison here. Lazy trope or tribute to the music he was raised on? Who knows! Like "Castle," this wants to be a slow-burner, but it also wants to get in on the tropical-house trend that's been everywhere for a while now. This results in the first couple of minutes feeling too empty, but the last two minutes providing energy that the song should have had by the first chorus. The most memorable parts of any Ed Sheeran song are usually the looping vocalizations, whether it's the "all the voices in my mind/calling out across the line" bridge in "Bloodstream" or the chants in "Give Me Love," and the "Come on be my baby, come on" counter-melody is no exception. It's not bad at all, but the way Ed stretches himself too thin here lyrically, melodically, and production-wise means it doesn't sound like the smash hit he and Benny Blanco wanted it to be. One last thing: swiping from "Cheap Thrills" and "No Scrubs" at the same time is hilariously contradictory. [5]

Scott Mildenhall: Sheeran generally survives his own lyricism here by not overstretching it, but still: the hedging is feeble. "Although my heart is falling too" followed by "I'm in love with your body" is laughable. It's almost as if he wants this song to be a palpably physical thing, but can't quite bring himself to do it. That's wise, because it's about as vibrant as porridge, but he should still be more careful where he treads -- the levelling of "does" to "do" is best written off as being for the sake of a rhyme rather than any performative reason (partly because it makes him sound daft). It all bobs around affably though, so there's something to be thankful for. [6]

Edward Okulicz: Knowing this was intended for Rihanna, I played it back to back with her "Te Amo" and have concluded that this is exactly 50 per cent of the way to being a jam. [6]

Olivia Rafferty: It's really interesting to contemplate how this song was originally destined for Rihanna, because I bet the production wouldn't be as sparse as it is for Sheeran here. But this is what makes the song really charming, it's dancehall through a music box. This reductiveness also leaks into the lyrics: short, sweet lines that effortlessly rhyme and almost seem like they end too soon. This song will deceive you with its simplicity, then determinedly burrow it's way into your head. [8]

Will Adams: The funny thing about this and "Cheap Thrills" -- songs seemingly intended for Rihanna -- is that they sound like nothing Rihanna would do. The plucky synths evoke a vague tropicalia, sure, but Anti was exciting, daring, and never as concerned with radio ubiquity as "Shape of You" is. Like Sia's song, the problem is that giving the song to its writer doesn't fit at all. Ed Sheeran didn't work as a smooth bar pick-up, and he sure as hell doesn't work when singing, "my bedsheets smell like you." [3]

Katherine St Asaph: Ever want to hear about sex from a guy who thinks it's a mark of distinction to pick girls up at a bar? Fancy hearing Ed Sheeran's take on "Work"? If so, you baffle me entirely. [3]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#Ed Sheeran #Shape Of You

1 note · View note