One Direction – Midnight Memories
So, I listened to an entire One Direction album in a single sitting in the quietude of the Bennett Library. I obsessively monitored the volume of the music coming through my headphones so that no one would know what I was doing. Once I was finished, I was left with three distinct observations.
Observation One: Some of these songs are good.
That’s right, I said it. On Midnight Memories, the British quintet tries so many times to create the perfectly manufactured pop song that a couple of them were bound to turn out right. The infectious juvenilia of “Best Song Ever,” the mug of cocoa vocal harmonies of “Don’t Forget Where You Belong,” the puritanical bubblegum pop of “Happily” and the simple message of “Strong” are about as good as corporate assembly line boy band fodder gets — which, admittedly, is not very good, but certainly much better than this band has any right to be.
Observation Two Most of these songs are awful.
For every step forward, the impeccably coiffed teen heartthrobs of One Direction take three steps back. Many of the songs on this record are musical wallpaper — meaningless verse chorus verse nonentities that aren’t even worth mentioning. Others are so bad that they warrant further comment: the faux Freddie cock rock of the titular track, the paper thin sentimentality of “Diana,” the auto tuned aural assault of “Little White Lies,” the laundry list of lyrical clichés that is “Something Great.” Ultimately, listening to an entire One Direction album did little to dissuade my apathetic dislike of the group. Sorry, Tumblr.
Observation Three: This album is indistinguishable.
One Direction’s success story has become inescapable: their discovery on the British reality show The X Factor, the whirlwind success of their problematic “You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful” single, the chorus of yeasayers announcing the second coming of the British Invasion. After having finally listened to an album by these wide eyed ragamuffins, it’s become clear that the group’s success is distinctly a right place right time phenomenon. Nothing about One Direction differentiates them from any of the facsimile groups that have preceded, and will inevitably succeed, them.
Death Grips – Government Plates
Are we living in a post-Death Grips society? Whether you like their music or not, it’s hard to argue that the industrial hip-hop trio’s us against the world attitude to the music industry has turned more than a few heads. Just last year, the band was dropped unceremoniously from Epic Records for leaking their sophomore album, No Love Deep Web, onto the web weeks before its release date. Oh, and the cover art was a picture of drummer Zach Hill’s erect penis.
I’m serious. Look it up.
Though rumours of Death Grips’ triumphant return have been passed along through comment sections and internet forums ever since the group launched its own label, Thirdworlds, no one expected Government Plates to drop so soon. I learned about its spontaneous leakage through the band’s Facebook page, and quickly backtracked, thinking I must have missed an announcement, a blog post, a tweet, something.
But ultimately, this is exactly the kind of thing Death Grips is all about. Echoing the guerilla spirit of its release, Government Plates is a puzzling, schizophrenic record, full of choppy electro beats, deranged yelps and enough musical about-faces to make your head spin. Fans of the group will likely be unphased: after all, no one would choose to listen to these guys if they weren’t fully prepared for this sort of thing.
The album’s first track (who’s Bob Dylan-referencing title, at 26 words long, I refuse to type in full) opens with the sound of a glass shattering, followed by vocalist MC Ride yelling “It’s so fucking dark in here/Come come fuck apart in here,” and shrieking. In the post-Death Grips world, this is easy listening.
Despite the album’s unapologetic abrasiveness and complete lack of formal structure, it’s a remarkably easy LP to like. Maybe it’s because its frenetic pace and abstract expressionism feel purposeful, like they’re passages from some sort of radical manifesto on the state of our society that I haven’t quite decoded yet. Like Death Grips’ best material, Government Plates leaves its listeners frightened, confused, infuriated and clamouring for more.
Throwback: Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights
Some records, you love because they’re classic. You love them because that’s what you’re supposed to do. They’ve crawled through the tunnel of critical appraisal and come out in one piece on the other side — your Revolvers, your Kind of Blues, your London Callings. These are the untouchable, the canonical crème de la crème of popular music that have reached the point where one might consider unironically referring to them as “legendary.”
Then there are those records you can’t help but love. They might be underappreciated indie label debuts or obscure back catalogue picks, but each one of us has that one record that we love in spite of ourselves, and in spite of their relative lack of mainstream approval. For me, Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights is that record.
To be honest, I expected the LP to have aged less gracefully when I picked it for this week’s throwback. My relationship with this album has faded from the passion of romance to the solemnity and security of companionship — listening to it, I feel as though I’m sitting in a carefully woven rocking chair on a sun soaked patio, sharing a mug of watered-down coffee with an old friend. I have a lot of feelings about this record, okay?
I could go on and on about the music on this thing — Carlos D’s self-consciously swaggering bass lines, Daniel Kessler’s far away guitar tones, Paul Banks’ arcane lyrics, Sam Fogarino’s spring wound drums — but I don’t want to bore you. The appeal of Turn on the Bright Lights goes beyond its music, anyway: from the album cover to the quartet’s perfectly pressed suits, Interpol’s debut LP was all about creating a mood.
That mood may include, but is not limited to: flickering street lamps, thick industrial fog, vintage neon signs, cheap foreign beer, abandoned train stations, molasses thick dollar store coffee, cigarette smoke, and hair gel. Not quite autumn, not quite winter, but certainly cold enough to button up your jacket.
