Beach House: Bloom (2012-Leak)

Leaked last night.

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Frankie Rose: Interstellar (2012)

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Frankie Rose spent a few years kicking around the Brooklyn jangle-pop scene before striking out on her own: As the most charismatic member of Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls, she was a reliable bolt of onstage electricity enlivening the often noncommittal presences around her. It was pretty clear, even then, that she was eventually destined for bigger things, but her first solo record, recorded under the name Frankie Rose and the Outs, still felt constrained by a reflexive sort of cool-kid slouch. Between that record and Interstellar, she has dropped the pretense of a backing band entirely, and is recording simply as "Frankie Rose." The implicit point is clear: This time around, she's going for it.

The first moments of "Interstellar" make this point immediately. The song opens on a cool-blue vista of synthesizers, a transportingly vast sound of the sort Frankie's never made before. When her voice enters the mix, cooing about interstellar highways and moon dust, it's piped from above, passed through a series of filters so until she slightly resembles the Laurie Anderson of "O Superman". A minute in, a massive, Valhalla-pound drum hit resounds, the synths explode sideways, and Frankie hurls us down a flume ride of descending vocal harmonies. It's the most colorful, thrilling music of her career, and as grand a pronouncement as one can make that we're not doing things the same way anymore.

Interstellar is a big, second-album leap of faith into deeper waters, a sparkling synth-pop record that wants very badly to mean something to dreamy, hyper-emotional twentysomethings. For her model, she's taken the impression of some of the dreamiest, most hyper-emotional records of her youth. The production on Interstellar is gorgeous, and clearly modeled on the Cure's big, panoramic pop records, like Disintegration: booming-canyon drums, acres of spannable horizon. The drum beat that opens up "Know Me" is virtually identical to that of "Close to Me", and the silvery guitar leads on "Gospel/Grace" are pretty much mimeographed from "Plainsong". But although Rose indulges pretty heavily in the Cure's primary colors, she paints something distinctly her own with them. The world of Interstellar is a vision of paradise as lifted from the front of a Trapper Keeper: air-brushed, pastel-hued, and gloriously vivid.

Interstellar is not a thematically rich experience-- it basically has one single invitation, and that is to swim with Frankie in the glorious bath of echoes she's drawn for herself. "All that I want is a pair of wings to fly/ Into the blue, a wide open sky/ Show me your scars, I'll show you mine/ Perched out of the city on a pair of power lines," she sings over and over on "Pair of Wings", and you can hear this yearning for escape echoed in the record's every upward-spiralling note. Her singing has always been breathy and modest, but on Interstellar, her voice seems to mist on contact, even when she's swirling herself into a prismatic mini-choir of Frankies. On her record, she's just another celestial body orbiting larger ones.

The resulting album isn't one you actively explore so much as bask in gratefully. The longer I spend immersed in it, the more I appreciate its details: the haunting, truncated piano chords that the melody of "Apples for the Sun" clumps around, or the way Frankie's voice melts into and becomes one with the bloom of synthesized strings in the last minute of "Gospel/Grace". Rose is tapping the same slightly shameless clear eyes/full hearts well of teen melodrama that sourced M83's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, and she demonstrates the same kind of focus and vision in carrying it off. On Interstellar, she transports us further and takes us higher than she ever could have as the drummer of an indie pop revivalist band. Amen to breaking free of sonic restrictions when they outlive their usefulness.

Real Estate: Days (2011)

For a mix of songs made at different times, Real Estate's self-titled 2009 debut was impressively consistent. Given how well the New Jersey band fused disparate moments, you had to figure they could reach even greater heights were they to craft their next set all at once. They did just that last winter, and the result is indeed a step forward. Cleaner, sharper, and just plain stronger, Days is like a single idea divided into simple statements-- a suite of subtle variations on a theme.

Its coherence sounds remarkably effortless, as if stringing together catchy gems is as easy as, in the words of one song, "floating on an inner tube in the sun." Interestingly, Real Estate actually acknowledge this sense of ease. The opener is bluntly titled "Easy", and references to carefree simplicity abound. As singer/guitarist Martin Courtney puts it, "If it takes all summer long/ Just to write one simple song/ There's too much to focus on/ Clearly there is something wrong." But the band's celebration of the uncomplicated is less about how Days was written than about the beauty of life seen in retrospect, especially young life in small towns.

Like the stirring scenes of suburban Texas in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, these songs find meaning in daily mundanities-- in houses and gardens, phone lines and street lights, names carved in trees and leaves pressed by footsteps. "All those wasted miles/ All those aimless drives through green aisles," sings Courtney wistfully. "Our careless lifestyle, it was not so unwise." That sentiment was evident on the band's debut, but here they've honed it to its essence.

The music bears a simplicity to match. These aren't minimal songs by any means, but the layers of cycling guitar, rolling rhythm, and gentle echo are always understated, more about conveying feeling than showing off the band's considerable chops. There's also a smooth efficiency in these rich tunes. No note feels wasted, and nothing happens at the wrong time or in the wrong place. Much of this precision comes from guitarist Matt Mondanile, whose nimble playing adds color to each song's shape. It's most noticeable in the insistent "It's Real", but I'm even more taken with his sonic smoke rings in "Out of Tune", and how his shimmering guitar evokes sunrays mingling through branches and sparkling off pools.

That idyllic tone permeates Days, and in lesser hands could deprive it of tension or variety. But Real Estate have such a knack for classic-sounding melody that every song quickly engages on a musical gut level. It's a quality their music shares with the jangly hooks of early R.E.M., the breeziness of later Pavement, and the garage twang of the Fresh & Onlys. But their closest kin are New Jersey forefathers the Feelies. That group's undying ability to mine repeated chords and Zen phrases is matched best by the album's closer, "All the Same", a looping study of how night and day are merely sides of the same coin. Lasting over seven minutes, it might be Real Estate's first epic. But it's as subtle and unassuming as anything on Days-- more evidence from this band that great music doesn't have to sound hard to make, even if it is.

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Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

A beautiful sense of irony envelops the work of Canadian singer-songwriter Dan Bejar. The moniker Destroyer seems like a fitting antonym to an artist who perpetually redefines his style. Since releasing We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge in 1995, Bejar has embarked on an expansive exploration of sound, transcending categorisation like a prophetic musical chameleon. 2011 sees the arrival of the much-anticipated ninth studio album Kaputt; an album admirable if only for its amalgamation of genres as conflicting as honesty in politics. With brass sections replicating the chaotic cadences of jazz weaving with the effulgence of ’80s pop, Bejar’s latest effort certainly seeks to redefine the term “creative crossover”.

‘Blue Eyes’ opens in familiar territory forming a crossroads between Bowie and The Cure before veering off the map into the untraversed frontiers of free jazz. Bejar’s evocative imagery finds its harmonic counterpart in Sibel Thrasher’s dulcet tones; the intermingling vocal lines lead stream of consciousness into a candescent chorus. The underlying funk rhythm provides a stable base for the brass section’s detached diatonic runs, adding a semblance of spontaneity to the mix.

The phaser-fuelled scratch of guitar strings ushers in ‘Savage Night At The Opera’; a pastiche of the ’80s shoegazing new wave replete with taut drum machine fills and repetitive, reverb-heavy guitar riffs. The synth swirls complete this slice of retro pop creating a song as haunting as an acid trip at the homecoming rally. ‘Suicide Demo For Kara Walker’ dedicates its first two minutes to a painful pan flute intro. The clarinet-driven middle eight propels the song into a jazzy conclusion that’s sure to unsettle some listeners while luring others into the throes of tonal ecstasy.

‘Poor In Love’ finds a middle ground between Bryan Ferry’s nasal nuances and the early output of U2. Teeming with acute cultural references, the song’s slow-burning pace casts Bejar’s musings in a more sombre and reflective light, capturing the melancholia of his forebears. As we flow on a wave of nostalgia towards the halfway mark, a faint suggestion of superficiality rises to the surface. While Bejar’s clever correlation of genres conceals the frayed edges, one cannot help but think this irony merely veils a vacuum buried beneath the polish.

Title track ‘Kaputt’ creates an intriguing series of counterpoints between guitar and saxophone, coupled with the backing vocals of Sibel Thrasher once again. And yet, the piece flows amicably into its successors without leaving a lasting impression. Likewise, ‘Downtown’ and ‘Song for America’ maintain the same ‘Pavement meets acid jazz’ juxtaposition that characterises the entire collection, concluding an album as ambiguous as Bowie’s androgyny phase.

Like the litany of merchants currently pilfering the musical attic of the ’80s, Bejar’s ninth outing ultimately fails in maintaining a balance between imitation and originality, leaving a well-produced yet unfulfilled copy of what could have been. Pastiche as an art form lures its audience with the promise of the familiar only to reveal something utterly new in the performance. Kaputt creates an offering made up of little more than recycled revelations.

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Beach House - Teen Dream (2010)

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Metric - Fantasies (2009)

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Papercuts - You Can Have What You Want (2009)

Highly anticipated third album from Jason Quever's cosmic dream-pop project fully delivers. Quever is a guest member of numerous bands (including Vetiver, Beach House, and Skygreen Leopards), and the living room/recording studio wizard behind numerous others (Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, Cass McCombs, Donkeys, and more) .


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Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care (2009)

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