Less... Than I Used To...

I must put in a plug for the new Blonde Redhead album, 23. It is quite excellent and very different from their last two efforts. 2000's Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons had a stripped-down, art rock vibe that ran counter to their earlier noise rock sound. 2004's Misery Is a Butterfly was a neo-baroque offering full of lush keyboards and synth-strings. While 23 takes the band in yet another direction, it does have somewhat of a tone from an earlier musical era.

To be specific, it feels like a record that could have been recorded and released in 1998. While this is still very much a Blonde Redhead album, there are some hints of the Caridgans' Gran Turismo and Garbage's Version 2.0. A few tracks even callback to early 90s shoegazing acts like My Bloody Valentine and Lush. This is not necessarily a bad thing; Blonde Redhead still manage to craft these styles into a record that very much their own.

Also worth noting is that Kazu Makino (guitars/keyboards) handles the bulk of the lead vocal duties (seven out of ten tracks). She and guitarist Amedeo Pace (here with only three lead tracks) split the voice work fairly evenly on past albums. This is still a very strong album, but may turn off those who could view it as a more "commercial" piece of work. B+


I didn't intend for the entire post to turn into a record review. I guess that's the mode of writing I've been crafting, as of late. Speaking of which, an article I wrote for Comic Addiction seems to have been the inspiration for someone else's article, which is pretty neat. This means people are actually reading my work. (Just discovered a quote from my review for Phonogram #6 at that comic's official site!)

I had a scare yesterday when I found out that somebody was about to publish a comic book with a premise similar to the eleven page story I'm writing for an anthology. My artist and I realized that the differences in direction and tone were enough to keep moving forward with our project (Robert pointed out that this is a world where the movies A Bug's Life and Antz can come out in the same year without much of stink being raised). Also, we really, really want to complete it. It's shaping up better than I'd ever expected.