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Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles Weider Offen

As Einstürzende Neubauten began work on Alles Weider Offen they were coming off a truly stunning hatrick of great albums (Silence is Sexy, Perpetuum Mobile and Grundstueck) and they had set themselves a very high standard to match. Sadly, they didn't quite make it.

Alles Weider Offen is still a decent enough album. It goes without saying that on a Neubauten release that the production is impeccable, and a few standout tracks are up to their usual standard. The opener 'Die Wellen' and ten minute mid album centrepiece 'Unvollstaendigkeit' are moody epics in the vein that Neubauten have tapped to so much success with in the past. However the rest of the album feels less passionate than their other recent work, and that's a serious disappointment.

Alles Weider Offen continues the trajectory that Neubauten's music has been taking over the last few years. The instrumentation is not as pretty as Silence is Sexy, the swooning strings have largely been replaced with a return to the industrial percussion that characterised their earlier work even if the raw aggression that they had in the Eighties has been replaced by a very German, contemplative sense of beauty. The new album also further develops their forays into a weird kind of pop music, many songs have a twisted sort of R&B feel to them, and there are a few tracks such as 'Let's Do It A Da Da' which are outright bubblegum pop in their approach, although of course not in their execution. These upbeat, energetic songs don't sit well next to their more usual style of moody, epic music, which is perhaps part of the reason why this album has an unsatisfying, inconsistent feeling.

The supporter version of Alles Weider Offen comes with a b-sides album (and a DVD, which I've missed out on for various reasons attributable to my own incompetence) which was released track by track as they were completed during the recording process. These songs are actually surprisingly good, they're shorter, more experimental and less cohesive than the real album tracks but taken one at a time they're almost all great songs.

This album has been a long time coming and it's quite a disappointment that it turned out to be not up to their usual high standards. Still, it's good that their online subscription business model is still working out for them (they've been doing it for five years now, anticipating Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails' rejection of the record label system by quite some time), and I'm still looking forward to finding out what they'll do next.

Here's their official video for 'Nagorny Karabach'. Blixa Bargeld sure is a peculiar fellow:

Close To Euphoria

Collide – Live at the El Ray

A friend once remarked to me that while he really liked Placebo's albums, he felt that they didn't generate quite the energy that the songs required on record and that it would be much better to see them live. I agreed but as it turned out, Placebo are a terrible live band with even more lacklustre on stage than on their albums. Collide's albums have always given me a similar feeling of unfulfilled potential so it's not much of a surprise that Collide's live album is disappointingly tepid.

Collide's albums Chasing the Ghost and Some Kind of Strange are very good but they always leave me feeling that despite the musical talent displayed, there's some subtle failure to make the deep emotional connection that defines great music. I hoped that in a live performance they might remedy that deficiency but once again I must sadly note that in fact, performing live only exacerbates the problem.

There's a lot of good things about Live at the El Ray mind. The setlist is a nice greatest hits collection, and they've very skilfully arranged the purely electronic, industrial songs for an analogue rock band format. However maybe it's because the backing electronics enslave them to a click, or maybe it's because vocalist Karin (I refuse to type the cutesy industrial alternate caps spelling) sounds as though she's either extraordinarily nervous or high as a kite, there's definitely a lot lacking in the performance department, and this is a pity because they're so close to being truly great, and maybe all it would take to get them there is just a bit less stiffness.

When Does Ellen Come On?

Reaper

So I watched the first half dozen episodes of the new TV show Reaper, a decision made irrationally and almost involuntarily based on early reviews comparing it to Buffy. It certainly had a great premise: on his 21^st birthday our protagonist, a boring young man named Sam, finds out that his parents promised his soul to Satan before he was born. Now that he's reached the age of majority, he must work off his parent's debt by becoming the Devil's bounty hunter - catching and returning souls that have escaped from hell.

Unfortunately Reaper, at least in the first few episodes, fails completely to capitalise on such a great premise, instead quickly finding a generic formula and falling into a dull routine. This would be tolerable if the writing and acting were sharp enough to keep it entertaining but sadly the show also suffers from a fatal lack of wit. The characters are unbelievably generic, the attempt at a wacky sidekick (a guy who acts out a pretty straight impersonation of Jack Black) might have helped if his wackiness contained a trace of genuine humour, and the less said about the others... well there is nothing to say about them because they're so boring and two dimensional. But the nail in the coffin for the show was the romance, in which Sam pines for his workmate Andi, which over the course of a mere six episodes became so offensively inane that I had no choice but to cancel my bittorrents in disgust.

Sam spends a decent percentage of each episode trying to gauge Andi's feelings for him and/or smooth over the latest misunderstanding that has arisen between them because of his secret other life. At no time does Andi evince any hint of a personality or an opinion of her own, merely making puppy dog eyes when Sam breaks a date with her after work and remaining a blank cipher, both to her suitor and to the viewer, as to what she's really thinking or feeling. If I saw someone behaving this way in the real world I would shake my head and cluck disapprovingly at her cruel and manipulative toying with this poor sap who's quite obviously infatuated with her, but of course that's not what the writers intend us to see. Andi is a perfect example of this peculiar American TV/ Hollywood creation, the artificial love interest: a character (invariably a woman) who exists only to stand in as an example of chaste virtue, and to be used by a primary character to learn a valuable lesson about honesty, or some other fatuous homily. Aside from the obvious crimes against characterisation that this approach entails, it's offensive for two more reasons. Firstly the creepy crypto-chauvinism it implies (the perfect woman is completely passive and virginal), not to mention the numerous opportunities it provides for the writers to massage conservative America's madonna/whore complex (contrast Andi with the women Satan sends to tempt Sam with, who (gasp) have tattoos and make the first move in trying to kiss him). And secondly because of the nauseatingly Disney moral of twue wuv that it's expressing.

But there is a reason that I made it through six whole episodes, and that's because Reaper does have one genuinely great redeeming feature in the person of Satan as played by Ray Wise (who of course we all remember as Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks). Appearing as a distinguished, tanned, well dressed older man, Wise steals every scene with his delicate balancing of the character's cheerful, friendly outer persona and his true nature as the malevolent manifestation of all evil. He is also apparently the only character which brings out any trace of wit in the writers. Sadly he (and the concept) are not enough to redeem the show. I've since shifted my attention to Pushing Daisies, which has it's own problems, but pleases me much more on a moral and philosophical level.

As Your Attorney, Your Friend, And Your Brother… I Strongly Suggest That You Get Yourself A Better Lawyer

Twin Peaks Season 2 Part 1

It's taken a long time but finally the second season of Twin Peaks is out on DVD, and as it happens there's good reason that no one's too excited about it. The first season was a mere eight episodes, all of them taut with tension and mood. It was buoyed along by a mystery driven plot which, while it couldn't be expected to really go anywhere (this is a David Lynch project after all), kept things moving and interesting. The show's best qualities were its moody setting, colourful characters and infrequent but brilliant black humour.

Sadly things rapidly declined in the second season. The plot threads began to wander and the weird gimmicky characters outlasted their welcome. That said there are still many high points to be found, the unique mood of the peculiarly Lynchian isolated mountain town, where the surrounding forest is home to supernatural creatures both wonderous and diabolical, is still showcased frequently. The season's midpoint climax episode (the unmasking and capture of Laura Palmer's killer) is riveting watching, and scattered elsewhere through the season are many brilliant scenes, most memorably this one, probably the creepiest thing I've ever seen on TV (although I'm not sure how well it will come across in a grainy out of context youtube video):



Sadly, I doubt I will bother to get the second part of season two. With no central plot thread remaining after the mystery was solved the story devolved into pointless wandering. But it's still remarkable to see just how much influence this series had on those that followed it, which ranged from The X-Files to Lost and include many others. These shows are quite clearly the direct successors to this one in atmosphere, style and in their deliberately cruel manipulation of their audiences with mysteries that are never truly meant to be solved (I swear they even reuse half the music from Twin Peaks in Lost).

You'll Go To Hell For What You Did

Radiohead – In Rainbows

Measured in terms of both critical and commercial success Radiohead are probably the greatest band in the world today, and having held that position for some time now they can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want, and so they are. Sitting in a comfortable financial position gives them the freedom to allow people to download their new album for a price of their choice, just to see what happens. I suspect that the commercial aspect of their decision is a little savvier than some might give them credit for. Someone asked me recently why they didn't just charge a fixed price for the album, in the nonsensical economic assumption that if you offer something for free there's no reason that anyone would give you money for it. The fact of the matter is that people now have the option of paying any value at all for the music, from nothing up through to maybe twenty pounds, (at which point you may as well just buy the forty pound hard copy version), whereas with a flat fee they have the choice of either paying the fee or nothing (i.e. getting it off soulseek). It's hard to explain without drawing a graph but my guess is that it will actually be more profitable for them this way. And even if it's not, I'm sure the expensive 2CD, 2LP boxed set will cover costs.

My box set will be arriving in December sometime, but in the meantime we have the first disc worth of material available to listen to. It was nice receiving it completely out of the blue like that, with no early reviews to give you any idea of what to expect. Take that critics! You had to wait just like everyone else!

Radiohead have never done the same thing twice but even still In Rainbows is surprising in many ways. For a start it's easily the most quiet, restrained thing they've ever done with almost no high or low hooks to latch on to. It's an album that's so minimal (especially compared to their earlier work) that it demands careful listening to really appreciate a lot of it. Thom Yorke's distinctive voice is still front and centre but Johnny Greenwood's guitars and electronica are vastly subdued compared to his normal style. Unexpectedly enough this album gives Phil Selway a chance to shine. I've always thought he was a great drummer but in the past he's always been buried by the huge musical personalities he's keeping time for. However the biggest surprise with In Rainbows however is the upbeat, positive emotional vibe of the music. Coming from the most miserable band on the planet and on the heels of Yorke's maudlin solo release it's at least as stunning as their novel distribution model.

In many ways the album is also a bit of a return to rock. The electronic and avant garde elements that have dominated their last three albums are still present but are never anything more than background to the traditional rock elements. Hell, 'Bodysnatchers' sounds like it could have been on Pablo Honey, with it's fuzzed out indie rock tone and Thom's shouted but upbeat vocals. Yet the album as a whole reminds me mostly of Amnesiac, not just because they're both albums that greatly disappointed me, but because of the wilfully obtuse, opaque nature of the songs, especially Thom's voice, which goes out of it's way to confound my melodic expectations in ways that are not necessarily satisfying to the ear. 'All I Need' from the new album reminds me a lot of 'You And Who's Army' from Amnesiac, in the way that an song that I found unsatisfying for most of its length suddenly bursts into a wonderful, soaring piano break segueing to a beautiful outro that doesn't last long enough.

At least Amnesiac contained a few songs that I really liked ('Pyramid Song' and 'Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box') but almost everything on In Rainbows leaves me with this unsatisfied feeling. I can't fault the songwriting, every song seems to have been crafted with great care and skill, but it's so minimal and subdued that it's often hard to appreciate this. I feel as though this is perhaps the bands intention. Just as they are one of the only bands with the power to do something audacious like their record-label-less free download idea, they're also one of the only bands who can make a deliberately obtuse, difficult album and expect people to have the patience to give it time and attention to grow on them. For now I'm giving In Rainbows a tentative thumbs down, as the least incredible album to date (save Pablo Honey which doesn't count) in a spectacular career, but I can't shake the suspicion that it's precisely crafted songs are going to unexpectedly unveil hidden depths some day when I'm least expecting it.

I'll Smash Right Through Your Spotlight

Velvet Revolver – Libertad

Here's a tale of two bands. Velvet Revolver and Audioslave both formed at about the same time. Both were comprised of three former members of one legendary Nineties metal band and the singer from another. Both released début albums that were decent enough, but nowhere near as good as the music that had propelled them to stardom in their earlier bands.

Wildebeest Asylum Editorial Disavowal
Back in the early days of this blog I rated Velvet Revolver's album Contraband as one of the best releases of the year. In retrospect such a judgement is far too generous. There are some truly great songs on that album ('Slither' and 'Got No Right' come immediately to mind) but they're balanced out by an equal amount of total shite. Given that I gave the same honour to Slipknot's The Subliminal Verses in a year that also saw the release of Isis' Panopticon, Nick Cave's Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus and Dillinger Escape Plan's Miss Machine, I can only conclude that blogger must have been hacked by malevolent terrorists with bad taste in music who subtly changed some of my older posts in order to discredit me. You can all trust me when I say that I have convincing evidence that these terrorists were colluding with Saddam Hussein, which is why The Wildebeest Asylum is invading Iraq.

The sad trajectory of Audioslave's three albums will be familiar to many of us. The simplified version is as follows: OK; terrible; terrible. Velvet Revolver are only up to their second album but so far they're keeping pace with their fellow supergroup.

The album opens promisingly with 'Let It Roll', which infuses the style of their first album with a bluesy, sleazy swagger, and rocks out quite sufficiently. For me Slash's guitar has always been the main reason to listen to either Velvet Revolver or Gunners, and he's still well worth listening to on Libertad, where he's taken a more subdued, less histrionic approach as befits the album's blues influence.

Unfortunately after that encouraging start the band waste no time in wading out into the shallows of mediocrity, and by the midpoint of Libertad they're swimming deep down in the trench of suckiness. It's a pity because most of the songs seem to have potential, they're just spoiled by lacklustre performance and a reliance on generic pop rock hooks, despite the occasional, too brief bridge or solo which provides a trace amount of innovation or passion. Take for example 'American Man', a boring, by the numbers upbeat classic rock track with an unimaginative, grating vocal hook (“Yes I am an American Ma-an...”) that's totally beneath this bands potential, which is suddenly and unexpectedly redeemed by an achingly sad, evocative and uncharacteristically restrained solo by Slash, which lasts for a too brief thirty seconds before returning us to the mediocrity of the chorus.

I saw these guys live a few years back and really enjoyed it. Others who have seen them have not been impressed and Libertad comes with a short live DVD which makes me wonder how objective my enjoyment really was. In the four song set the band give the impression that the audience is just another sea of faces in a darkened room at the end of another long plane flight, and that they're performing more for their own egos and legends than for the people who paid money to come see them.

It's sad really, there's obviously still a bit of musical talent floating around in Velvet Revolver, but it's being wasted as I don't think their hearts are really in it any more...

What This Country Really Needs, Right Now, Is A Doctor

Doctor Who – 2007 Season

The last two seasons of Doctor Who have turned out far better than I had dared hope, so the latest one was immediately put on the 'must watch' list as soon as it began airing. The first episode delivered quite satisfactorily. While the story was not terribly original (the Doctor faces off against a couple of breeds of malevolent aliens in modern day London (OK, a section of modern day London that has been transported to the moon)) it was done with the wit and flair that the new series has become known for and does a nice job of introducing the Doctor to his new companion, who turns out to be an improvement on Billie Piper if only because every time she appears on screen I don't think “Why d'ya have to play that song so loud?” “Because we want to! Because we want to!”

However much to my dismay the season quickly deteriorated after that, most episodes were based around ideas that were largely derivative of others from earlier seasons. This would not necessarily be a disaster, and the actors playing the Doctor and his new friend Martha do their best to put a bit of pep into things, but the dialogue and the plots are simply uninspired, far below the standard set to date.

A pair of two part episodes are the worst of the bunch. The Daleks are reintroduced, to no one's great surprise, but the writers aren't able to think of anything interesting to do with them. It must be hard when the Daleks have come up with one mindblowingly evil scheme a year for forty something years to keep finding new and interesting works of evil. They must be getting a bit tired, I wouldn't mind if the writers gave them a break next year.

In a later two parter, The Doctor erases his memory and assumes a human identity in order to hide from a group of aliens. This storyline exists only to foreshadow a plot point to be introduced later and delved to nauseating depths of sentimentality. At this point I was almost ready to give up on the show, and I would have confidently declared it worse than Torchwood. However the writers managed to engineer a total reversal of my opinion in the last four episodes. The disappointing two parters were followed up by the fantastic 'Blink', which revisits a lighthearted theme explored in an episode from last season ('Love and Monsters'): obsessive fandom. It also features the second best bad guys of the season; a breed of aliens that appear as statues and can only move when they're not being observed. It's an original idea and it leads to some really great effects.

The season ends with a fantastic three part storyline, featuring another of the Doctor's old enemies who has not yet reappeared in the new series. I'll spoiler protect things here, but if you're familiar with the show then you probably won't find it hard to guess who it is:

WATCH OUT! SPOILERS! Highlight to view:

The Master returns and gets elected as Prime Minister of Britain. In this incarnation he's a jovial, fun loving psychopath and his carefree attitude makes him the perfect foil for The Doctor. The actor who plays him is fucking hilarious. I'll never think of this scene without laughing:


SPOILERS OVER.

This final story arc is completely inspired, and redeems the entire shitty season. Here's hoping next year's will be of a higher overall standard.