Album Review: James Blake's Overgrown

I won't shirk the claim that James Blake is my favorite artist to debut in the last couple years; that's a pretty concrete feeling I have. He seems to do everything right - his EPs allow him to experiment with new styles and sonics, his LPs are focused on furthering his songwriting and catalogue. That being said, Overgrown feels much more complete than Blake's eponymous debut. It is pure joy to pick out the little nuances Blake buries in his music, whether it be the subtle shifting of elements from foreground to background or just a noise I cannot begin to fathom constructing myself. He is at the forefront of Electronic music, passionately concerned with moving the genre forward.

Overgrown finds Blake stripping back the digital masking on most his vocals, offerring a more honest listen to his maudlin crooning. What makes Blake's second effort much better than his first is the song writing. His lyrics are tight, pensive, organic -- this is why I was rather disappointed that Blake didn't include a lyric sheet in his physical release like the debut did. I'm not just humming along to these songs anymore, but singing the lyrics clearly all day: chewing, digesting the material. The structures of these songs are complex and unique, more so as the record progresses into its increasingly experimental second half.

Enough Thunder, one of the two EPs in between the debut and Overgrown, saw Blake flirt with a Bon Iver collaboration and a beautiful Joni Mitchell cover; and even though the former wasn't anything to write home about, it allowed the artist to broaden his musical palette by including someone else in the song writing process. With this experiment under his belt, Two legendary musical figures, RZA and Brian Eno, helped James Blake with two songs on Overgrown. Both efforts are wins, the RZA song being one of the best songs Blake has done, giving hope to anyone (me) who wanted him to produce for rappers - his mix of R&B singing with stellar production dovetails RZA's heartfelt and serious lyrics pointedly.

There are more traditional songs - "Overgrown", "I Am Sold", "Retrograde" - on Overgrown than any of James Blake's previous efforts, be it EP or LP. And even though, as previously mentioned, the back half is a little experimental, there aren't any Lindisfarne ones and twos taking up record space. When it comes to a bonus track, a concept Ben Goodheart is vehemently against, "Everyday I Ran" may be the first bonus track to warrant a couple extra bucks, as it is just as good as Blake's breakthrough "CMYK".

I cannot wait to see where he goes from here; hopefully we get more experiments and new musical approaches on an EP in the near future, which isn't hard to imagine considering how dense the artist's output has been since his emergence.

Final Grade: A-

Track Review: Mount Eerie - I Walked Home Beholding

Phil Elverum is a busy dude. He's already put an album this year, Clear Moon, and now he's released a second single -- the first bearing the new album's title -- from another album due out next month, Ocean Roar. The second single is fittingly called "I Walked Home Behoding", sounding very much like a contemplatively observing walk home after a long night. Elverum is famous for his use of nature in his lyrics and artwork, often achieving a raw, powerful sound, but both singles from Ocean Roar have seen him dialed back a little bit. Clear Moon was typical Elverum fashion, like if The Microphones focused on a clearer sound. A glacial march, "I Walked Home Beholding" is what Bon Iver's "Beth / Rest" could have been, had it any dignity or tact. The track features spacious keyboard and just enough percussion - finger snaps and light cymbals . What can be derived from "I Walked Home Beholding" is yet another great release in an already impressive catalogue from Phil Elverum and whatever he chooses to call his band. Check out the single below, and Ocean Roar next month.

LA Weekly's Lists, "Hipster" as a Genre and Why Music Doesn't Need Negativity

For those of you unfamiliar with LA Weekly, it's kind of an alternative-internet-tabloid-blog concerned with LA. Simple enough, right? Well, what the website is more known for is their lists concerning The Top 20 Worst Bands of all Time, The Top 20 Whitest Musicians of all Time, or The Top 20 Musicians of all Time, in any Genre. And while these lists are obviously constructed with tongue in cheek - their grandiose best of all time, in any genre list has William Hung as its number one - the most recent list calls out a whole group of music admirers, "hipsters," polarizing the interwebz.

The Top 20 Worst Hipster Bands of all Time, a list detailing "hipsters" "lemming-like" ability to follow trends blindly, sees the ilk of bands like MGMT, Sleigh Bells, and TV on the Radio, all of which are primarily associated with the generalized branding of "hipster" -- I will continue to put that title in quotes because I still have no idea what it means or intends to mean -- all thrown under the flexfuel tourbus. It's not that I disagree that some bands can, or will be, labeled as "hipster" bands, but I can't help to think of how this affects music.

From 2004-2005, I experienced a shift in what I considered to be music. Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Franz Ferdinand, and Silent Alarm comprised what I consider to be the albums that took indie rock mainstream. These were the albums, accompanied by excellent singles, that opened everyone's eyes to a different brand of music not clouded by major label interference. "Indie" was the term coined, a term of endearment. Now, we have a "hipster" brand of music. "Hipster" is identified with trust fund babies, poor fashion taste, and fixed gear bicycles. It doesn't come off too nicely. Anything can now be dismissed as "hipster" and ignored. But what it so different about "Indie" and "Hipster?"

Here's where the surprising bands on the list come to play. Bright Eyes, The Black Keys, and Death Cab for Cutie are all bands who were well established before I ever heard the term "hipster" to identify a kind of music. Ben Westhoff, the list's editor, described the term as such:

On its surface hipsterdom seems to be an individuality-grab, but most of today's 20 and 30-something bands from Silver Lake and Williamsburg sound shockingly similar. They're all playing variations of retro garage and soul music -- or bringing glockenspiels and choirs on incestuous nationwide tours -- all the while clad in vintage garb likely infested with lice. We're not saying that they should be outlawed by, like, Congress or something. Just that they should be avoided. Here then, is our field guide to the worst offenders.

"Variations of retro garage and soul" seems like something a "hipster" would describe his band as, but how different and vague these references are makes it seem like a spontaneous, uninspired insult. I'm not saying the list isn't funny or entertaining, I just don't see the need for it.

Much like Spin's "Worst New Music" section, I can't seem to justify publishing such a negative attack on music. I might say something along the lines of "That band suck," but I would never go through the process of insulting someone's art, then broadcasting it. I understand the irony of publishing this piece - it's not lost on me - but it doesn't take an editor years of practice and performing to put out a shitty list. And to Spin, assign a letter grade or a badge of honor, don't admonish and brand.