So as you might have surmised from my failure to post a review, I wasn’t super excited about Contra. I gave it quite a few honest and earnest listens, but I’m still on the fence with it. Additionally, I’m pretty tired of the “VW Hype” that a lot of the music blogsophere seems to be consumed with… it wears on a guy after all.

When I saw the new video for ‘Giving Up the Gun‘, easily the best song on Contra in my opinion, I forgot all that for a few minutes. It’s a fantastic reminder of why Vampire Weekend is relevant. Hope you enjoy it!

Just at the end of January, Citay put out their fourth album, Dream Get Together. I’d never heard of this band, but the sample I found was cool, and the album art reminded me of one of my favorite webcomics, so it seemed worth a try. The entire reason I’m doing just this song instead of a full album review is because I can’t get these guys figured out. It is pretty far outside of my “comfort zone” as far as genre is concerned: something expansive, otherworldly, and altogether psychedelic, but still grounded and technically very tight. These musicians are class acts.

My favorite track is the opener, and really the only one I listen to as of now. It’s called ‘Careful With That Hat‘, and I have no idea what it’s about, but the opening riff just makes me wanna DANCE, and that always scores major points.

‘Careful With That Hat’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

Citay – Dream Get Together

At last, the first new album review of the new year! The honor goes to Owen Pallett’s first effort under his own name, having ditched the Final Fantasy moniker, for fear of SquareEnix coming after him, no doubt. Heartland is a concept album whose protagonist Lewis is coming to grips with the fact that he was created by Owen Pallett, and is confined to the landscape of Heartland itself. It is within this vehicle that Pallett guides us through some of his richest soundscapes he has ever created.

So many of these songs play like small orchestral pieces, beginning simply and slowly building to a more expansive and powerful musical idea. However, I should point out here that this is not your standard “slow build” a la a ‘Transatlanticism’ or the like. Instead, Pallett steadily layers sound on with each successive iteration through the song, which is why it seems such a smooth transition, but can also come upon you quite fast in places. A good example of this is heard in the eerie ‘Red Sun No. 5‘ which has a slow, almost dirge-like pace, driven by patient percussion. Layered over this are horns which build the song up and evoke images of some grand scale while the lyrics lend some cryptic insight into Lewis’s character who affirms, in spite of what we know to be true, “I am not a farmer.”

‘Red Sun No. 5′
[ mp3 ♫ ]

‘The Great Elsewhere’ is an example of this rich music but at a much faster pace. The drums propel us along through the thick of the song while the strings impart a sense of urgency, and rightly so, as Lewis recounts a story of a violent encounter on an island he had once long ago, you can feel his panic. Suddenly, as if cresting a small hill, the song slows, fading into a lull, as Lewis’s ship sails away from the island.

And of course, perhaps the defining characteristic is Lewis’s belligerence: glib though it sounds, “Oh Heartland, Up Yours!” ends with Lewis repeating “I will not sing your praises,” rejecting Pallett’s control over him. The following track, ‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt‘ finds Lewis sans shirt, riding his horse as fast as he can, cognizant for a moment of “the odds against an adolescent standing up to all of Owen’s wrath.” He claims that “What I have is what you need, and I’m never gonna give it to you.” I could conjecture what Lewis is referring to, but I honestly have no clue… which really is part of the beauty of Heartland.

Buried within all of that fantastic sound, Pallett has constructed a protagonist so full of contempt for his creator that he ultimately tries to destroy him, leaving us with the puzzle to try and reconstruct how and why this happened. Pairing deep layers of meaning to his deep layers of sound, Heatland is as fascinating as it is delightful.

‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

Owen Pallett – Heartland

As before, how I am kicking myself for missing this record the first time around. Though I’ve really come to appreciate what makes Fanfarlo unique, I think the easiest way to explain this band to someone who’s never heard them is in the following fashion:

OK, so you know Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?
…
Imagine now that Jeff Magnum hadn’t gone a little tiny bit crazy and put the band on indefinite hiatus, and had decided the polish NMH’s sound ever so slightly.
…
That’s Fanfarlo.

Assuredly, such a comparison does both bands a bit of injustice. To say that Fanfarlo’s 2009 effort Reservoir punches through to the emotional plane that Magnum’s concept album, about the life of the celebrated author of The Diary of Anne Frank, did is most likely untrue. And as I said before, Fanfarlo’s record is far more polished than Aeroplane, but the instruments employed and musical ideas executed certainly invite the comparison. The vocals also hint at David Byrne, which is one of the greatest compliments I can give, and some of the composition later in the album is reminiscent of Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar.

My favorite thing about Reservoir, however, comparisons aside, is the pacing. I am always a little picky about this, but this London-based group (though the frontman is from Sweden, which maybe explains a bit…) has really hit the mark! Tracks such as ‘Luna’, ‘The Walls Are Coming Down’, and ‘Drowning Men’ really keep the album moving. Normally, I need this, and these are my favorite tracks, because during the slow songs my interests wanes, but not with this group. The slow songs, such as ‘I’m a Pilot’ and ‘If It Is Growing’ really provide invaluable structure to the rest of the album, and are good to listen to in their own right.

The best songs transition between these two ends, however. My favorite track, ‘Comets‘, as well as ‘Fire Escape’ and ‘Harold T. Wilkins…’ start you off slow, with an almost march, quickening eventually to inescapable refrain that you can’t help but sing. It’s also worth restating that the brass really helps these tracks, and its conservative use goes a long way, and when used with the theremin it helpts towards getting at a hint of that NMH-esque eeriness without it becoming overbearing.

Maybe why I’m grasping like a crazy person at similar sounding artists is because there are just so many layers to this rich music that it’s hard to describe. In light of my failure to explain it then, I strongly encourage you to check out this record. Expect big things from these guys, because if they can pull this off with their first swing, who knows what a year or two more of experience will help them produce in the future.

‘Comets’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

I also threw in a “bonus” track of theirs because even though it’s not on the album, it’s easily my favorite after ‘Comets’.

‘Sand & Ice’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

Fanfarlo – Reservoir