Fever Ray - "Fever Ray"

Fever Ray - Dry & Dusty (Mute 2009)

Fever Ray - Fever Ray / Mute

Winter Leak Season '09 was just gearing up in late December when this record seeped through the cracks to find its way to an audience that had largely been caught sleeping. Rightfully so, too: Here was an album due in late March that shouldn't have had any fanfare for at least a month or two, yet there it was seeping slowly onto the Internet purporting to showcase the feminine side of The Knife as a solo artist. You remember Olaf and Karin Dreijer Andersson, right? The patron saints of rural forest techno following Mark Pytlik and Philip Sherburne's cooperative end-of-year anointing in '06? Silent Shout sure seems like a long time ago, though maybe not quite as long as Honey is Cool which, let's be honest, you had never heard of even after you purchased Silent Shout on a whim. Man, remember when people bought albums? Ah, the good old days of a better economy. At least I can still afford wireless.

There remains little debate that Silent Shout was a great album with great timing, pitch-shifting its way through a gap in the indie-electro space-time continuum and coyly filling the space between playfully insular techno and house (Ellen Allien & Apparat and Booka Shade's Movements that spring) and the coming nü-rave juggernaut (Justice's Waters of Nazareth EP that summer). Fever Ray is in a different position: Free of the potential paradigm-renovating gravitas that buoyed its spiritual predecessor, Karin has room to move about the forests of her own dark creation.

You can look at this album one of two ways: Either it's a really nice way to sate your appetite for another Knife album, or it's another Knife album incognito. The truth is probably somewhere in between, but its uncanny resemblance to the sonic template Silent Shout set three years ago makes one wonder what kind of contributions Olaf was making. There is a distinctly muted (no pun intended) tone to this album, to be sure: Standouts like "Dry & Dusty" or the first single, "If I Had a Heart," do not colorfully come out of the woodwork in the same way something like "We Share Our Mother's Health" does. There is less of a techno flash to these songs; rather, Fever Ray as an album trudges quietly through the snow with muffled kicks that don't strictly play to 4/4 convention.

More so than any of her other projects, Fever Ray places Karin's distinctive voice at the center of attention. Not a song goes by that you don't notice her charming pronunciations alienated by her favorite technological trick in the pitch-shifter. Even this can't disguise the natural hooks that seem to sneak out from behind the wooded pines. Everywhere one listens, there is always a memorable melody eerily working its way into your eardrums. It can't help itself. It's a Caribbean pop album ("Triangle Walks") covered by insular Scandinavian electronica.

But I'll be damned if this isn't at the sharp end of the first wave of 2009's leaks. Even though it doesn't alter the way we think about what The Knife has accomplished, and even though it says almost nothing about what Olaf is doing on his behalf for that group (Just sayin', O), it's a great listen because it's so free of attached strings. Listen on your headphones, listen in the car, listen anywhere you want: The end result is that you're still listening. It's been a month and I'm still playing it daily. I see no reason for this trend to continue unabated. Maybe I'll even buy it. That was a joke, sort of.

Dälek - "Gutter Tactics"

Dälek - Street Diction (Ipecac 2009)

Dälek - Gutter Tactics / Ipecac

Things were pretty different when we last reviewed New Jersey duo Dälek in early 2007. We were in different cities, we were under a different president, we were still open to the idea of a certain neon-imbued monstrosity that's now completely out of control (Hey there, Elektrobär). Landscapes and soundscapes alike have shifted paradigms; it's a new world out here, and it's probably for the better. Probably.

Of course, some things should stay the same. For the longest time, I thought this about MC Dälek and his trusty cohort Oktopus. Here are two guys who have spent a decade reinventing rap and subverting the typical hip-hop categorization that continues to widen the gulf between champagne poppin' megastars and truth-serum backpackers hellbent on a capital-M Message. Though they did it largely on the atonal template of forerunners such as Cannibal Ox and The Infamous (1995), their lyrical content was still the same: They spoke on a template of ambiguous fear, which was perhaps the best reflection of the political climate they had come of age to. In the era of a born-again Bush, nobody seemed scarier than a group equally nebulous in character and sinister in tone.

While Dälek was always most fascinating because he preferred to submerge his vocals rather than extract them from the mix (in the vein of the Rhymesayers and, later, the gaggle of NoW Coasters), Oktopus weaved dynamic sonic structures in and out of a distinctive triptych of albums: From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griot was demanding without being directly doomy; Absence was utter industrial hopelessness; and Abandoned Language was savvy urban grit that perhaps best encapsulated what the group had always been working on. If their last album wasn't the embodiment of a decade of output, it sounded awfully close.

Given this set-up, it would be expected of me to say that Gutter Tactics was always going to have it tough. Recorded in the waning days of the Bush administration and released the day Obama came to power, Gutter Tactics felt woefully out-of-step the moment it leaked, a relic from a passing era, unfortunately dated. I was unconvinced the moment Jeremiah Wright opened his mouth on "Blessed Are They Who Bash Your Children's Head Against a Rock." Not only is the chosen speech laughably extreme (We bombed Qaddafi's kid without "batting an eye?" I guess he doesn't remember that Qaddafi's daughter was adopted, and oh yeah, the whole Berlin discotheque bombing thing), it sets the stage for an album that feels redundant - this is, in fact, an inferior version of Abandoned Language. Oktopus has a handful of memorable songs on here (the title track of which rips off My Bloody Valentine's "Glider"), but any kind of message this time around has been suffocated by the extraordinary density of the mix. It is the most brutally unrelenting release they have yet committed to tape. In a time when a breath of fresh air is en vogue, Gutter Tactics takes aim at nothing in particular and hurls its bitterness to see what sticks. All of this is a poorer way of describing what Daniel Levin Becker has already emphasized at Dusted.

That said, it's worth noting the rebuttal (even as an afterthought). Dälek may not need to fulfill their former function - that of hip-hop's bleakly prophetic superego - but they are still necessary as a socially conscious warning sign. The issue is that they are no longer a complete group on their own; instead, they are the angry and ambiguous yin to the specific street violence of another hip-hop duo: the Clipse. Where the Thornton brothers insist upon rising above the streets through the pointed fear pervading their dope, blood, money and guns, Dälek assume the role of stormcloud to set the mood. Are they upset over the "death of hip-hop" (whatever that even means anymore)? Are they angry about corrupted youth? Are they raging to rise above it all? Do they even know? I think the answers lie in the Clipse. These two groups are speaking the same street diction in different dialects; they are angry about the same things, but one emphasizes ambiance through maximalist quagmire while the other stares out vacantly from behind minimalist desolation.

Personal, political, professional: Above all else, they are polemical. We'll have to wait a little longer and see when it comes to Till the Casket Drops, but as for Dälek losing their relevance, they still remain as elusive as ever. This album is the first time it feels like that's working against them. I don't know what the answer is when it comes to what they can do next to stay focused, to stay necessary, but the deep blues and greens of Gutter Tactics suggest that the group is cooling off one way or another. Hopefully this spells a withdrawal and reevaluation rather than a retirement.

Telefon Tel Aviv - "Immolate Yourself"

Telefon Tel Aviv - The Birds (Bpitch Control 2009)

Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself / Bpitch Control

It's true that I had this review mentally written several days ago, that the words had already formed into complete sentences into whole paragraphs into a general linear train of thought. There was a swoon there for a minute, a genuine burst of unabashed positivity about the whole affair, the hopeful undercurrent that ran through the melodies of "Helen of Troy" or "You Are the Worst Thing in the World" and swung for the fences in grand gestures, bold strokes of synthesizer swathed across your stereo or your headphones or my headphones or whatever. New Orleans to Chicago to Berlin, nothing to Nine Inch Nails to Ellen Allien, a future full of more than support tours for Matthew Dear. They were the big hands, and this was the proof long in coming - the best album of their careers. The best of a very young year.

But that review got trashed, because it sucked. Every review of this album has sucked, I don't know if you noticed. They're all vaguely positive and say no more than, "who knows what might've been." What might have been doesn't matter after listening to "The Birds" - maybe nothing does. Did you ever get a chance to read that Todd Burns review of M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts? This song is like that. RIP, Charlie Cooper. I'm sorry this world and the sounds you gave it weren't enough.

Animal Collective - "Merriweather Post Pavilion"

Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes (Domino 2009)

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion / Domino

It seems both obvious and appropriate that Animal Collective's ninth album is being released on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, especially considering the fever pitch of excitement currently surrounding both the Collective and our newly minted 44th president... But something about this release has been bothering me since I was awaken to its immense hype by both Pitchfork and The Chicago Sun-Times after a deep autumnal slumber. It was a vague resentment, an uneasy awareness that for all of the positive press being lobbed like happy hand grenades in its direction, something was off.

I listened anyway. I played it at work, I played it at home, I played it in the background of countless GChats, I played it on the CTA, I suggested it to people, I talked about it with those who had already heard. All of the pieces seemed in place for a praiseworthy post-millennial indie archetype. And after a ton of listens, I reckoned it was a good thing that it had already garnered a 9.6 and kids were hailing it as the album of the year after less than a full week. Part of me wanted - wants - to believe that this is the hope Obama's been relentlessly invoking in a very marginal context: Indie kid stereotypes who used to confine themselves to Built to Spill or The Boy Least Likely To are opening their eyes to an album that draws a direct line to West African tribal music and avant-garde noise records (and not just, y'know, Daft Punk). If a college radio freshman thinks Merriweather Post Pavilion is great, how much greater the chance that they will follow the Paw Tracks to Repo in April and believe in that, too? This is supposed to be what makes the Internet essential: It shrinks this - our, everybody's - world enough to make it relatable for even the most hopeless xenophobic (The best commentary to this end vis-à-vis the Collective has, shockingly, been on Hipster Runoff).

Yet despite those astute observations, the real discomfort I experienced with Merriweather stems from Hua Hsu's feature article for the January/February edition of The Atlantic Monthly. The gist: Hsu explores the elimination of "whiteness" in American culture through a rough timeline that starts with minorities mimicking whites to "fit in" at the top of the 20th century and ends where we are now as a society paying post-racial lip service that, he posits, has reversed itself. Of particular interest is "the identity crisis plaguing well-meaning, well-off white kids in a post-white world:" Hsu says a vacuum has formed where white self-denial is a path both to acceptance and authenticity.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is the soundtrack of that self-denial. All of these songs drown themselves with needlessly dense sonic tricks in a dramatic effort to move away from the pleasant psych-folk of earlier, less ambitious works like Hollinndagain or Sung Tongs. That in itself would not be a problem, except that their bid for post-everythingness is so transparent. There is a deep current of desperation running through songs like "My Girls" and "Brother Sport" that begs for a listener to hear the hip-hop rhythms, the unending samplers, the universal synth sounds, the musical melting pot this thing is supposed to represent. Drop any continent on earth and it wouldn't matter: Stripped of the bells and whistles, this is still an indie-pop album. A very average, white-guy indie-pop album that will reject listeners who came expecting a transcendent experience and got mere assimilation instead. It assimilates with the current indie landscape, an exercise in deception: This sounds like something you would want to like in the interest of furthering minority forms of music, but you don't because it's the same old thing. It's no closer to post-racial harmony than Death Cab for Cutie or, worse, Pavement.

It's only fair at this point to acknowledge the obvious ad hominem argument: The reason I point it out in the first place is because I myself am a white male. It's logical to assume that, because I have a blog and gave a fuck enough about Animal Collective to write about them, I would feel vulnerable. Further, by rejecting the idea that I am a part of this indie kid stereotype, I am instead personifying it. And how many essays have you read indicting the very act of rock criticism as culturally white?

But my discomfort doesn't merely come from identifying with three white guys (it used to be four) or its fans; my discomfort comes from the fact that people are pledging their blind allegiance to this album for what it is not rather than for what it is. The band projects an image of artful dodgers bent on bringing transcontinental hipsterdom right to your hard drive; several have taken the bait, proclaiming Merriweather as a product and paladin of the self-congratulating online community and, by proxy, the new cultural mainstream. It isn't. It is still a sonic defense mechanism meant to shield itself from a lack of culture.

As with most things culture terrorism-related, a word should be spared for Diplo. Great question from a fellow Audiversitarian: "If Animal Collective are racist, what does that make Diplo? Hitler?" Given that he singlehandedly imported baile funk and helped bring new meaning to the worthlessly nebulous "world music" tag in the early aughts, it follows that Diplo should carry the weight of this white rejection as he delves further into DJ Benzi mixtapes or another MIA collaboration in an effort to disguise how much of a pasty white Brit he is. The difference is that Diplo lived these subcultures: He went to Brazil, he went to West Africa, he met the sources, he inhabited the environment to the best of his ability - which isn't to say that going somewhere is a one-up for authenticity (See also: sheltered study abroad students), but AnCo never say in their liner notes that this was culled straight from a coupé decallé cut or open themselves up to Angolan mini-tours. They are armchair globalists, content to rip the sounds of the world from the safety of Williamsburg. They are a reflection of their wired-in, zoned-out audience. Diplo spins real vinyl and plays to the crowds he stole from and has used urumee drums. He engages these cultures on a personal level and never worries about where the references are because they speak for themselves. Animal Collective make no such effort; devoid even of TV on the Radio's soul chants or LCD Soundsystem's winking funk grooves, AnCo dress songs about girls and seasons and hanging out - boring topics that don't even strive for unidentifiable weirdness like, say, food (Strawberry Jam) - in sounds that imply worldliness but demonstrate none and, furthermore, have zero staying power. That's not a testament to influence, that's an insult.

In other words, it's not that this album is bad. It's good, I guess... And that's the whole point: Instead of creating some kind of new beat thriving on kwaito and The Neptunes, Animal Collective disguise nothing as something in their quest for greatness. Like Panda Bear's Person Pitch, this is not especially remarkable on a more annoyingly grand scale. On past efforts, the group ventured well into the freak-folk forests; at least there, they sounded secure in their embrace of 60s British psych and folk. All they seem like they're trying to do now is embrace anything else, but they can't escape (even when their fans can).

So really, are Animal Collective racist? Perhaps not explicitly (or even consciously), but there is a definite anxiety about being a minority that resonates in their music and in their fans. Despite their urge for reinvention, they come off as second-rate pan-ethnic appropriators. If I haven't already, I'll probably contradict myself in a future review. There are more coherent critiques for how boring this is, sharper wit to pierce through the dense reverb that permeates every single song... But I wonder how much enthusiasm people will have for this album in four months, nevermind four years. Is it post-racial? Is it that permanent? Is it four stars, 9.6, 5/5? I guess we'll have to wait and see. It's only been official for a day.

He Speaks in Your Voice, American President

Thought this corner was dead, right? We almost did too. But if Two Thousand Great was the year we stopped making this an enterprise and started making it a hobby (which really means we just stopped), O'Fine is the year we bring Blogger back. For all four of you following: Thanks. It's been a while.