That caveat aside, I’ll come right out and say this: one of the best albums of the past year or so is Strict Joy by indie-folk group The Swell Season. The group’s Oscar-winning songwriting duo of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova may have started their rise to renown as actors in the movie Once, in addition to performing most of the movie’s soundtrack, but their most recent album expands on their sound in marvelous ways. The sheer quality of the songwriting and performances on Strict Joy proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the success of Once and its soundtrack was much more than a fluke or Hollywood-induced trend. Hansard and Irglova - assisted by a full lineup of other musicians, some migrating from Hansard’s previous band, The Frames - are incredibly talented musicians, and possess a musical chemistry that, if there’s any justice in the world, people will be writing about and admiring for years and years to come.
It’s fairly clear that Hansard is calling most of the musical shots on Strict Joy (of the album’s twelve songs, all but two feature Hansard on lead vocals and primary songwriting credits), which is fine by me, because his writing and delivery are unfailingly excellent. His lyrics are simple and accessible but not watered-down, and the arrangements are varied enough from one song to another to keep the listener interested throughout the album’s runtime. Bluesy opener “Low Rising” is an immediate highlight, as well as “The Verb,” “High Horses,” “In These Arms,” and “The Rain,” to name a few. Hearing Hansard perform these songs is akin to reading an earnest, heartfelt letter from an old friend - he aims right for the melancholic sweet spot and scores a bull’s-eye almost every time. Irglova’s offerings are much more subdued, but don’t detract from the album in any way - if anything, they serve as a welcome break from Hansard’s methodology. “I Have Loved You Wrong” in particular is fantastic - the bassline and faint drumbeat combine with Irglova’s just-above-a-whisper vocals to wash over you and make you feel just a little bit more at peace with the universe than you did before. Well, maybe nothing that extreme, but hyperbole notwithstanding, it’s a truly excellent song, and yet another highlight on a very good album. Strict Joy is the kind of listening experience that doesn’t come around often enough. It’s the kind of record that absorbs you from the second you hit Play to the last note. The songs are the kind of songs that inspire you to pick up a guitar and write your own. It’s music that’s personal enough to feel intimate, while remaining accessible enough for just about anyone to relate to and be moved by. It isn’t quite perfect - Irglova’s other featured song “Fantasy Man” and the final two tracks don’t quite reach the sublime level of most of the rest of the record - but it’s damn close. And if nothing else, it sure was enough to melt the heart of this metal-hardened blogger. Enthusiastically recommended.
Rating: 4.5/5
Standout Tracks:
“Low Rising”
“I Have Loved You Wrong”
“High Horses”
“The Rain”
Release Date: October 27, 2009
Well, the answer isn’t quite a simple yes or no, but The Great Misdirect is a hell of an album, no matter what you compare it to. One of the key differences between this album and Colors is that each song is a more-or-less independent piece of music, instead of being separate-but-connected parts to an overall whole. This isn’t a bad thing at all - it gives each of the six tracks their own identity and makes for an even more varied listening experience. And while the album does engage in its share of genre-jumping, it seems like the band has reined in some of their more bizarre musical impulses this time around. Nothing as out-of-left-field as the infamous hoe-down pops up this time - the most head-turning passage is probably the intro to “Fossil Genera - A Feed From Cloud Mountain,” which features out-of-tune circus-piano chords and Mike Patton-esque, vaguely creepy “la-la” vocals. It’s certainly disorienting enough, however, especially coming out of the pulverizing ending of the previous track, “Disease, Injury, Madness.” None of this is to say that these songs are any less schizophrenic and meandering in nature than you’d expect from the band. Their digressions are just a little less weird, that’s all. If any sort of influence rears its head often enough to be considered a theme, it’s that of straightforward, headbanging groove rock riffs: the aforementioned “Disease, Injury, Madness” and epic album closer “Swim To The Moon” both feature lengthy instrumental sections in which the band gets a chance to stretch out and jam on a musical idea, explore it, play some solos over it, and move on to the next one. Some of these passages hearken back to the old-school metal and prog-rock that the members of the band were raised on, such as the fantastic, restrained-yet-relentlessly-building solo section of “Obfuscation;” others, however, show a bit more contemporary influence, such as the industrial programming in a particular section of “Fossil Genera.” Even though they’ve dialed back on the eccentricity, this stuff isn’t boring by a long shot. (To drive the point home, just listen to the two shortest tracks on the album: the jazz-influenced opener “Mirrors” and the late-album acoustic ballad “Desert Of Song.” Not only are they the farthest the band strays from their core sound on this album, they’re two of the best songs here, and the band sounds just as confident and self-assured playing this material as they do blast-beating away with all their might.)
Despite the slight changes in musical color and influence, however, this is mostly the same BTBAM we know and love from the last few records, and the material here packs no less punch. Fans of the breakneck technical metal that has run through the band’s entire career should find a lot to enjoy - perhaps even more than on Colors. Those who listen to the band for the sake of highly virtuosic playing will definitely not be disappointed - these guys continue to step up their game without fail in terms of playing ability and compositional audacity with every release, and this one is no exception. And those hoping for something as huge and epic-sounding as their last couple albums should be more than satisfied by this one - “Fossil Genera” and “Swim To The Moon” in particular both feature two of the most sweeping, grandiose ending passages in the band’s catalogue, or anyone else’s, for that matter. The Great Misdirect will eternally be compared to Colors, and that’s a shame, because it’s just as solid an album. While it might not be quite as risky or cohesive as its predecessor, it delivers all the important goods one would expect from a band of BTBAM’s caliber, and that makes for an intensely enjoyable listen. Just remember to buckle your seatbelts - it’ll be one hell of a ride.
Rating: 4.5/5
Standout Tracks:
“Swim To The Moon”
“Obfuscation”
“Fossil Genera - A Feed From Cloud Mountain”
Release Date: October 27, 2009
The biggest problem I have with Dear Agony is how sterile it sounds. The guitar tone in particular seems flat and utterly devoid of any inflection, personality, or really any indication that it was tracked by an actual human being rather than programmed in Pro Tools. It’s like every bit of signal-compression and noise-reduction in the studio’s arsenal was thrown at the guitar tracks - maybe in an effort to make things sound more precise and less messy - and the end result is something that sounds so mechanical and computerized that it barely even sounds like a guitar anymore. The vocal tracks are just as bad, utilizing a liberal amount of auto-tune and, moreover, simply recorded with a minimal amount of variation in delivery and tone. This is especially disappointing since Burnley’s voice, with all its quirks and smirk-to-scream attitude, was always one of the band’s defining characteristics. Here, his voice seems blander than it ever has. Only a couple songs on the album (such as “Lights Out” and opener “Fade Away”) hint at the old Breaking Benjamin, with particularly heavy guitar riffs and a bit of Burnley’s old vocal personality peeking through. Most of the album’s other tracks, though, are generic and uninspired to a really depressing extent - and the suffocating amount of studio sheen applied to everything only hurts matters more. Really, what all this means for the whole package is that everything is processed and over-produced to the extent that it all sounds almost robotic, and as a result, the final product is boring, homogenized, and predictable - in other words, the farthest thing possible from the satisfying experience a rock album should be. Maybe all this production work was an effort to compensate for a lack of inspired songwriting, but no matter how hard they try to dress it up, there’s no making up for the lack of quality material here. Sure, there are guitars, drums, a bass track in there somewhere, and vaguely angry vocals, but without good songs to play, it’s still no fun to listen to. It’s like ordering a New York strip and receiving a big slab of bologna. Yeah, it’s technically still meat, but it’s nowhere near as good.
Rating: 1.5/5
Standout Tracks:
“Lights Out”
“Fade Away”
Release Date: September 29, 2009
