A review of Radiohead's "A Moon Shaped Pool"

There's a line in Marcel Proust's Within A Budding Grove that refers to a small village seen just at sunrise but before the sunlight has actual hit it: "its pond encrusted with the opalescent nacre of night".* That phrase, "the opalescent nacre of night" keeps returning to me as I listen and relisten to the newest release from Radiohead. If we're getting conspiratorial, then I believe the opener, the frantic, paranoid buzz of "Burn The Witch" is the only "waking" track, something so horrible and prophetic that the narrator is overstimulated and driven into a soporific escape from reality. This is where the rest of the album takes place. After this assault and retreat, the theory is cemented by the watery blur of "Daydreaming" which even concludes with low strings and vocalizations serving as fitful sleeping noises. There are a few crescendos on Moon Shaped Pool, but all of them are soft. For the most part, the BPMs are low. And almost everything drifts along on Jonny Greenwood's syrupy orchestration.

As far as reviewing something like this...I'm really at a loss. It doesn't feel like a typical Radiohead album (whatever the hell that is). It's like trying to review a series of dreams or imagined vignettes, perhaps all taking place in those ubiquitous "five minutes" one always begs for before their day must begin. Greenwood's amazing, emotive strings play the same role here as David Campbell's orchestration on Beck's Sea Change and Morning Phase, specifically to deepen and widen the experience, to give it more meaning. The slow, sad, glorious bloom of "Decks Dark", the recounted anxiety-dream feel of "Glass Eyes", "Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief" which stands out in the most interesting way**, that heartwrenching, faux choir on "Identikit". There's more space here, sometimes filled with sparkling keys or electronic sputters or just silence, on the whole making Moon Shaped Pool sound a bit more like Yorke's solo work.

For a while, before they erased themselves from the internet, released two videos and then the whole thing in a matter of days, there was talk that this album was to be titled Dawn Chorus, which wouldn't have been totally accurate, because of that ever-present "opalescent nacre of night" here that I mentioned earlier.

At this point in their career, I wonder how Radiohead garners new fans. They've been around for over two decades and, I feel, you either like a few of their songs***, are dangerously, slavishly devoted to them, or cannot stand Thom Yorke's voice/don't know what a radio head is. If you're in that second category, you've already downloaded the digital version, pre-ordered the CD and/or vinyl, and, most likely, the elaborate and, no doubt, spectacular special edition as well, and you're not going to cancel your orders based on anything written here...so...why are you reading this?

* Fuck my eyes that is the most pretentious sentence I've written since college.

** Something feels Bond-ish. Maybe an earlier and completely disparate draft of "Spectre"?

*** "PLAY CREEP! PLAAAAY CREEEEP!!!!"

A review of Mother Feather's self titled debut LP

I used to force music on people. My thinking was: I like it and I’m the smartest person in the world with the best taste in music, so you should like it…here’s a mix CD…what did you think of the mix CD I just handed you…etc.

I’ve stopped doing that.

Until now.

This isn’t a review or a recommendation, it’s a prescription. Go. Go now and listen to this album because it has everything a sane person would want: nostalgia? Check. Anthemic manifestos of empowerment? Check. Minxy euphemisms involving trampolines and airplanes? Check. Fucking puns involving ancient Egyptian goddesses? Fucking check. I would tell you this album cures cancer, but there isn’t enough empirical data to substantiate that claim.

Yet.

It’s eerie…you’re not hearing this music for the first time, you’re rediscovering it. It’s more than primal, it’s archetypal.  “Natural Disaster” is inspiring without being pandering; less of a “c’mon, kiddo, you can do it!” vibe and more of a “you know you can rule the earth, get off your ass.” The slinky little guitar line in “The Power” is both coy and fun, until the chorus when it’s kicking you in the teeth and causing you to uncontrollably pump your fist. “Trampoline” is inexorable, inescapable joy— resistance is futile. And then, there’s the title track, which contains one of my favorite lyrics. In music. Ever.* You cannot get the chorus of this song loud enough. I dare you to try. 

The only downside to this album is that it isn’t twice as long.

Front woman Ann Courtney informs you and assures you that she “will be your mother feather”, and, while you do not know what that is...you want it, you need it. But, sadly, you can't gain full understanding merely by listening to the prayers, you must go to the temple to worship, to truly see these gods and goddesses burn and writhe as they preach. Shield your eyes though, you might just become a zealot, a devout follower, and then everything else will fall away and the chorus to their titular anthem will never seem loud enough again. 

Hm. I’m going to sound like a lunatic until you listen and get what I’m talking about. So, do it. Get this fucking album. Discover the Truth. You’re only denying yourself something singular and pure and amazing if you don’t.

* Specifically, “you have lucked upon my lightning”.

A review of Peter Christopherson's "Time Machines II"

I know that the man used electronic instruments. I know that I might even own one or two of the exact type he utilized to create the follow up to Coil's Time Machines, but, in my mind's eye, I've never pictured Peter Christopherson sitting down at a keyboard and pushing buttons or pressing keys; I picture him sitting in a darkened room with a jumble of wires sticking out of the far wall. He sits and meditates on what he wants to create, what he decides to share, what he needs to excise from himself, then stabs these wires into his brain. The resulting sound is recorded directly onto whatever storage device he has hooked up.*
It's a nightmarish image, but it's the only one that comes to me when I hear this, Christopherson's final work**.

The end begins with dental drills and synthesized church bells. Exactly as it should. Next, something rife with whimsical jounce, fun until everything melts into sputtering, chittering madness. The fourth track sounds enough like something from Alessandro Cortini's Forse trilogy that it's distracting. The penultimate track is redolent of tribal drums and black mists. The album concludes with something wet and nasty; a noxious tar pit teeming with broken starlight. Or eyestalks. And, although things are disturbing and evocative for a bit, the final sounds given to this world by Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson are quiet, tender, and lonesome. 

When compared directly with its predecessor, Time Machines II is not as trance-inducing; there's more variation and texture to the dissonance, but, I firmly believe that, under the right circumstances, one could use this work to truly pass through the space-time continuum. It's a dark, elegant, and fitting end to the creative life of one of the bravest men in music.

* In this case, a USB drive embedded in a piece of wood contained within an engraved pewter slipcase in a leather pouch.

** "Final" until some malnourished Thai boy stumbles over Danny Hyde's doorstep clutching a wax cylinder bestowed upon him decades ago by Sleazy himself.