Fiete Hermans

The weirdos in your stereo

It’s kind of hard for me to review Motionless In White, since they were one of my teenage obsessions (Or should I say ‘regrets’?), much like Fall Out Boy and Game Of Thrones; but unlike the violent disgust I developed for the latter two, I still have a soft spot for this bunch of Pennsylvanian goths, even if I associate them with a part of me I hate. (That is: even more than I already hate myself!) And it’s not hard to tell why: after almost fifteen years of music, they still sound incredibly young. Maybe I feel wrong talking about them because I still listen to music meant for teenagers?

Their unique brand of dark, edgy metalcore infused with some industrial and nu-metal is something that has become less interesting since the nu-metal revival thanks to albums like BMTH’s That’s the Spirit and The Black Crown by Suicide Silence, although MIW have always managed to sound unlike anything else. Maybe because their music is such an anachronism: all these sounds they toy with, and all these bands that influenced them, like Marilyn Manson, Korn, or System of a Down are all very much sounds from the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s. But in spite of their youthful appeal and their set-in-stone sound, the band try to grow and expand somewhat on this latest album, but usually to its detriment.

The first step of managing to listen to the horrendous cover artwork. I rarely bring up album art, so you can imagine how awful it must look for me to warrant it a mention! Once you’re over that, you will be greeted by opening track Disguise, which is probably one of the MIW-iest songs MIW have ever released: slamming guitars, vocalist Chris Cerulli screaming ‘f—k’ for absolutely no reason, and some cheesy lines, followed by a brutal breakdown—not a bad first impression! This is followed by Headache, the Slipknotiest song Slipknot never released, and it is here that the main problems of the album appears: for all the angst it’s trying to convey, the song, and, to an extent, the entire album, is severely under-written, and sees the band trying their hand at some new sounds, but failing thereat. One of the consequences is that the album is quite poorly paced: the band takes regular brakes for melodramatic power-ballads (Holding on to Smoke, Another Life, Catharsis), a trend we left in the 80’s for good reasons, since they, as a great critic once said “like a menstruating woman falling off a tall building, break flow”! Beyond that, Thoughts & Prayers is the song bashing religion, because all metal bands are seemingly contractually obligated to have at least one of those on each album, and it’s just pure, unfiltered cringe; it would have been the worst song on the album, if not for Legacy, which sounds like a hard-rock version of an Imagine Dragons song: overproduced, overbearing, and pompous to the point of flatulence.

But there are some genuinely good moments on this album, too: the aforementioned power-ballads could have had some potential if they were better executed; Broadcasting from Beyond the Grave is a nice tongue-in-cheek banger, and the title track and Undead Ahead 2 (This being the second song they’ve written about Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the first one being Undead Ahead, natch!) are genuinely great songs, but they are buried neath a truckload of mediocrity. While the band tries to evolve their sound in an interesting way, they prove that can’t, and that their ought to stick to their guns, since the best songs on Disguise are their most throwback.

Overall, Disguise might have been better of as just another MIW record, but the band tries change their sound, all for the worse. If you want to see them do something similar, check out Reincarnate, and skip this one…

I thought I’d never have to spill a word on William Control again! About a year ago, when I wrote (or… typed) down my thoughts on his last album (which, by the way, has become my most popular post, with a mind-crushing SEVEN notes—take that Kendall Jenner!), I genuinely thought that was the last we would ever hear about that weird, WEIRD person (and, let’s do not forget: possible child abuser); but now, he re-released his debut album, Hate Culture, with an updated mix (Why he couldn’t have done so on the ten-year anniversary, I don’t know; I had expected a gentleman who always wore ruffled suits on stage to have a little more class!), and he shouldn’t have… No, really: he shouldn’t have!

From both a business and an artistic perspective, this remaster isn’t a stupid idea: Revelations, his last album, was a dramatic shift for Control, as he abandoned the harsher, almost industrial elements of his sound in exchange for a more 80’s driven synthwave style, like Pet Shop Boys going through a goth phase, as well as the Dorian Gray-esque narrative of weird sex, drugs, and rock & roll he had built over the years; and so it would only be logical to update your previous work to somewhat match your new sound.

The execution however, is poor, as the new production is so bad, it’s almost funny… almost. The drum machines have been replaced with live drums, complete with gated reverb, but they are incredibly poorly mixed: even to me, a drummer, they are so loud that they overpower the entire track, and some of the synth tracks and ad-libs are completely removed. Remember the first time you heard Beautiful Loser, and how great that multi-layered percussion with the shakers and the castanets? Well… that’s gone: drowned out by the loudest drums in the world. On top of that, the unnecessary Auto-Tune is gaudy to say the absolute least, and since they couldn’t improve the quality of the numerous samples (mostly porn), they—quite fittingly—sound like arse! The We Are Already Here interlude leaves out the audio track that gives it its name, and the acoustic guitar on London Town is so badly compressed, it makes the poorly-mixed drums sound tolerable.

Marriage of sounds

If I had known I would have to discuss eighteen tracks, I would’ve left this one alone! Call them anything you want, but don’t ever call Vampire Weekend ‘easy to pin down’! when the group broke out more than a decade ago, they were a unique voice in pop music, blending indie with world music; on their third album, Modern Vampire of the City, when they abandoned their worldbeat roots, and made a foray into Beatlesque baroque pop. These were accompanied with lush production, poetic lyrics, and catchy pop hooks, making them easily the most gorgeously-sounding bands of the early 2010’s. However, since Modern Vampires… in 2013, they have been awfully quiet. Now, after six years of silence, that era is finally over, as the band finally released their fourth full-length, Father of the Bride!

The trademark Vampire Weekend sound is on display right from the start, as opening track Hold You Now combines lo-fi folk with an African choir—not exactly gospel, but almost tribal (not racist). This is also the first of three duets with Danielle Haim (the other ones being Married in a Gold Rush and We Belong Together); together, the three describe the trials and tribulations of a married couple. Lead single Harmony Hall is up next, and may be one of the best songs of the entire year—certainly one of VW’s best: a beautiful piece of Americana-tinged pop, combining gospel with country, and the most gorgeous of choruses from a band known for their gorgeous choruses. Meanwhile, Bambina is the closest thing the band comes to its worldbeat roots. By This Life, FotB displays a pretty clear dynamic: peppy music accompanied by sad lyrics, often with religious connotations. A song such as Rich Man explores the story of being rich and sad at the same time… It’s basically emo trap with a string section! Or My Mistake, a pretty ballad dealing with guilt. The sound is also quite distinct by this point: namely that there is one; rather, the numerous tracks explore many different genres, often within the same song: How Long? combines echoey backing vocals, quirky effects, and subtle organ touches; or the flamenco-inspired Sympathy, the Steve Lacey-collaborations, or the 2021, with its uncharacteristically electronic instrumental. A final highlight would be closing track Jerusalem, New York, Berlin, a stripped-back piano ballad with subtle electronic touches.

The production is, as is to be expected, top-notch: lush and gorgeous, like a good VW ought to be! (I’ve been using the words ‘lush’ and ‘gorgeous’ an awful lot, like they are my words of the day, but they honestly are the only terms that manage to even come close to how orgasmic this music sounds!) The instrumentation is, much like the genres, varied and tasteful.

Yet that variation is the major downside of FotB: despite its one-hour runtime, it goes by pretty quickly, but the many stylistic shifts and song lengths make the entire album very… schizophrenic; it honestly sounds more like a compilation of multiple ideas or demos than an actual album, and some of the songs themselves even sound like demos: short, or just a chorus on repeat. It’s like writing a novel: you need to keep a steady pace writing, so that you keep it consistent, not spend six years working on and off, leaving you with a large quantity of material, but some of it not finished, or too old to pick up again.

To wrap this up: Vampire Weekend returns with a collection of great pop songs, but the result seems unrefined; they needed to either expand the songs into a full double LP, or trim all the unnecessary fat!

Mostly just annoyance

Hey look everyone; it’s Marina and the Diamonds! (Oh sorry: ‘MARINA’!) This Welsh singer-songwriter has been steadily releasing music ever since the early 2010’s, and I never actually cared, much like mainstream pop music; much to the chagrin of MARINA, who’s style could generously be described as ‘non-existent’: she’s just there to follow trends; and nowhere is this foible more obvious than on her latest effort.

If I had to give her last album, 2015’s FROOT, any credit, it would be that there, at least, the sounds were varied and quite sweet indeed; the opening track Handmade Heaven is, unfortunately, the closest L+F gets to sounding decent. FROOT has this rather annoying gimmick where MARINA would adhere to this very close-minded rhyme scheme, which made every song sound like grade school poetry; that’s still here, as well as on the song Emotional Machine, but Handmade Heaven serves as a gentle ballad before the disappointment that is the rest of this album. The rest of this album consist of mostly tedious dance-pop, as well as white, watered-down dancehall, and if there is one thing white people are good at ruining, it’s Caribbean music. It starts on Orange Trees, and worsens on Baby, a collaboration with Clean Bandit and Luis Fonsi. I have always hated Clean Bandit; I hated them when they got their first big hit about five years ago, and now I hate them even more than I used to. That being said, Luis Fonsi delivers a pretty enjoyable verse, and sounds more lively than the entirety of this mess of an album. However, other than music that is so lifeless, bland, and inoffensive that it comes back around to being insulting again, MARINA also can also deliver some awful messaging, as on Enjoy Your Life, she tells her listeners that if they have some sort of personal struggle, to just ignore it and dance your troubles away, rather than do anything about it. This gets even more offensive on True, where the message is to accept yourself, regardless of how you actually feel about you as a person—an advice I gave to one of my transgender friends, before they punched me in the face!

That’s all I have to say about side A, LOVE, which, presumably, was supposed to be the uplifting part of the album, while side B would be darker in tone; this, however, is a massive motherfucking lie, as MARINA is clearly afraid of anything that doesn’t have Top-40 potential. In my mind, she is the opposite of Lana Del Ray, who is someone who managed to perfectly balance the tightrope between critical acclaim (well… mostly) with commercial appeal, and successfully brought indie music to the masses; meanwhile, MARINA spent the entire decade gradually dumbing down her sound and trend-chasing—a woman in her thirties that makes Ariana Grande sound mature! The result is an album that tries to please everyone, but spreads its slutty legs so wide it ends up pleasing literally no one.

Desperation runs through LOVE + HATE like poo through a sewer, and also smells about as nice. For every decent Luis Fonsi verse or remotely half-witty line, there are ten instances of bad production, bad lyrics, or bad instrumentals. Fuck this album, and fuck MARINA!

So what dod you do when one of your favourite bands from your angsty teenage years drops new material? Do you ignore it, and possibly miss out on nostalgia; or do you take the bait, and be reminded of a time you are in no hurry to revisit? These questions I pondered as my disused email got the notification that Motionless In White had released two brand new tracks. I took a deep breath and dove into my Spotify.

I must admit it was far less awkward than I had anticipated: these two new songs are quite alright! They are very MIW: heavy, edgy, and catchy; they both have some fun moments, like the bit of behind-the-scenes audio on Brand New Numb, or the breakdown on Disguise. The musicianship and production is really tight as well.

I do have my criticisms, however, as the lyrics are really corny. Brand New Numb has some minor jabs at American exceptionalism, but they are too far and few in between to lift the song above its inherrent edginess. Meanwhile, the concept behind Disguise--masks as a metaphor for hiding your real emotions--is cliched as hell. Another qualm would be the lack of progress MIW makes; their quality hasn’t really changed in the more than ten years that they have been around, and lack a certain maturity that would add to their songs.

Diamond in the rough

Everybody has that feeling; you get exhausted by your over-exposure to advertising, to the point where you start hating something without even having any experience with it. It happened to me with the MCU, and it happened again with Billie Eilish—and it’s a damn shame, because she is great!

At this point in time, there is but little I could say about Billie Eilish that hasn’t been said before: she is a new type of pop star; she is a new type of model for young girls; etc. And I’m perfectly fine with that dynamic, but I must admit I loathed the unbelievably rapid growth of Eilish—not because I thought she was unworthy of the success, but because it felt like forced hype, like all this buzz came because a few rich, white, male, Republican studio execs threw money at music publications until they succumbed neath the weight of all that green and were forced to do an article praising Eilish. But I did not want to be this cynical, since (*pulls out their ‘liked-them-before-they-were-famous’ card*) I had always enjoyed her music, and was curious as to how she would evolve. And though she might have started her carrier as a Lorde wannabe, her full-length debut proves she is so much more than that!

After !!!!!!!, a recorded conversation between Billie and her brother-producer Finneas, WWAFA… hits us with bad guy, which is an incredibly catchy dark pop song, wherein Eilish portrays some sort of libertine/femme fatale/dominatrix character. (She warms the listener that she might seduce their dads, something very pleasant to hear coming from a 17-yo!) This song sets the tone for the entire record: Billie doesn’t necessarily sing about herself: she’s playing edgy dress-up, and it don’t mind that! The song xanny twists the song’s title, and is downright gorgeous with its very unique character, which mixes Billie’s distorted jazz singing with a very minimalist instrumental; the production on this song is simply perfect! I must admit I did not like the following you should see me in a crown: though the lyrics are appropriately braggy, Eilish’s mumbling delivery and generic trap instrumental make it less than memorable. all the good girls… returns to the industrial jazz sound of xanny, and though its beat is much less sparse, the melody is solid. That ‘industrial’ part gets turned up to eleven on bury a friend, which is haunting, edgy, and immaculate. Yet is spite of all the edge, Billie proves she can also get personal with songs like wish you were gay, listen before i go, and i love you, which has Eilish contemplating love and suicide. I do not know whether this was based on some kind of personal experience, or whether it was simply the need to be edgy again, but no matter what the intention was, the songs give me chills!

As mentioned before, the production on WWAFA… is great: Finneas’s production style is very dark and minimalist, and can almost get a bit experimental during some of the darker songs; during the more emotional songs, however, they lack that lush factor that gives them that overwhelming emotional power. When it comes to the lyrics, they are very distant, but carry a certain emotional weight in them; they are not singer-songwriter levels of personal tragedy, but manage to conjure up the appropriate feelings: sassiness, love, and lots and lots of teenage angst.

Overall, WWAFA…  has managed to conquer my apprehension: it is a solid debut for team Billie, and has me looking forward to her next project.

In need of a remix

I was really looking forward to this one! Gesaffelstein is the soubriquet of French DJ and producer Mike Lévy, mostly known for his dark, industrial-tinged techno production. His last album, his full-length debut Aleph, saw him expand this sound with some softer, more artsy compositions (which more often than not were accompanied by weird Poe-esque spoken word passages) to mixed success. Now, six years later, he finally released its follow-up Hyperion, and honestly, I’m a bit underwhelmed!

Ignoring the opening title track (which is little more than a throwaway intro), the punchy Reset is the closest Lévy comes to his original style: it’s dark, menacing, angular techno, but feels like little more than an Aleph B-side. Just listen to some of the more hard-hitting material on that album (Pursuit, Obsession, Hate or Glory, etc.), and you dare tell me Reset is good in comparison! The album takes a second L with its big hit, Lost in the Fire featuring The Weeknd. I had some hope for this, since I enjoyed Lévy’s production he did on The Weeknd’s My Dear Melancholy, EP, where their respective moody and vampiric styles fitted together quite well; however, that wasn’t as good a thing as I had expected, since the lifeless beat doesn’t play to Lévy’s strength as The Weeknd takes it over completely, and turns it into Starboy 2: Electric Boogaloo (which led me to the conclusion that, as a pop singer, you should never collaborate with French house musicians more than once!). However, after more than ten minutes minutes of fucking about, Hyperion has its first genuinely good song in Blast Off, with Pharell Williams. The beat is funky, and Pharell brings his usual charisma. After a collaboration with HAIM, that would have been decent if it wasn’t too dreary for its own good (a miracle, since—as I mentioned before—Gesaffelstein is usually quite talented at making dark, repetitive stuff), there is the intimate cut Forever, with contributions by fellow French producer The Hacker and Toronto pop duo Electric Youth. This is another good song, saved mostly by EY singer Bronwyn Griffin and Hackerman’s glitchy bridge section, which sounds way more interesting and enjoyable than anything on this album has any right to be (mostly because it reminded me of what Gesaffelstein himself used to be good at). This glitchy passage flows quite smoothly into Vortex, another dark techno cut, and as a result quite a decent feature. And in spite of my seemingly disproportionate dislike of Hyperion, I have to give credit where credit is due, and applaud the ambition of the closer Humanity Gone, a ten-minute ambient opus with a sweeping organ opening worthy of Amiens cathedral, a haunting, plodding drum beat, and cold, floaty effects; it’s a unique blend of gothic sci-fi music that would not be out of place in the Warhammer 40k universe!

This dirge fittingly closes of Hyperion, and I’m getting mixed feelings; while the more pop-oriented tracks are a mixed bag (but not as bad as the spoken word on Aleph) and the more ambient passages are downright commendable, the thing that actually matters—aka: that dark, hard-hitting techno and house—is incredibly underwhelming, and results in an album that fails to find a style and stick to it. In theory, that could be a nice idea: something for everyone; but over here in reality, it means we get an album that has three or four badly thought-out concepts that don’t go anywhere.

So while there are a few bright spots on Hyperion, Gesaffelstein is too bogged down in mediocrity and trend-chasing to come up with an album that manages to stay consistently enjoyable.

God is a starlet

I must admit that, until recently, I didn’t pay Ariana Grande any attention. That being said, Sweetener blew be of my feet: it was a well-produced piece of pop that nonetheless had a certain personal angle to it; suddenly, I saw Grande’s potential fulfilled! This new thank u, next-album has her exploring this personal direction even further, but with a dark undercurrent that certain popstars such as Drake or Taylor Swift tried before, but failed at; Ariana, however, pulls it off very well!

Opening track imagine is a pretty sweet song; however, Ariana exposes herself as a bit of a hopeless romantic, who imagines having casual affairs without having to suffer the consequences. This vulnerable, confessional angle is a central theme on the album, as a song like needy has Ariana reflecting on her bad character traits; or certain romantic regrets on the track bloodline, another standout track with an incredibly infectious beat, and some fun horn licks (innuendo). However, just when you thought a top-40 record couldn’t get any darker, you get a song called fake smile! Meanwhile, make up seems uncharacteristically upbeat, especially when looking at the rest of the album. The off-beat and quirky instrumentation is very enjoyable, and Ariana’s vocals are very pretty, even if it’s a bit short. I must admit that, when it comes to the recent controversies surrounding 7 rings, I’m definitely in the ‘NO’-camp, since it sounds like empty, dime-a-dozen trap-rap; like Grande is somehow playing a parody of herself—and besides: the Mary Poppins-melody is annoying as hell. If it’s supposed to be ironic, then this supposed meaning falls flat on its face. But for all the problems I had with 7 rings, the title track is god-damn amazing, and anyone who disagrees is objectively and scientifically wrong! The gorgeous instrumentation, the very personal lyrics, the be-e-autiful vocals—if this isn’t one of the best pop songs of the year, I don’t know what is. The closer break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored is another braggy cut similar to 7 rings, but seems much more tongue-in-cheek; it also has a way better beat, so that also helps the song go down quite well.

Compared to Sweetener, the music on thank u, next is a whole different animal: Pharell’s unique production may be gone, but in exchange, the dark, trap-influenced feels much more real, and fits with the album’s dark tone; together with Grande’s melodic vocals, it creates a sweet but sad, cold dynamic, like what few good songs Drake has.

Whilst top-40 may have a bad rep for all the right reasons (being shallow, fake, vapid, and other synonyms), thank u, next breaks these trends by being laced with personal touches and bad-girl attitude. When they come together with tasteful production and Ariana’s beautiful vocals, they create an enchanting pop experience.

Heavy-hitter

This was an intense listen… I must admit I only got into HEALTH recently, but already have I formed my opinions on them as a whole; I greatly prefer their comeback as an electronic outfit over their earlier noise-punk days. I think that their 2015 album DEATH MAGIC was a great self-reinvention. It was a hard-hitting, frantic and loud, with vocalist Jake Duzsik’s melismatic way of singing interspersed throughout. This new album, SLAVES OF FEAR, sees the band going even further down this path, but even more intense than DEATH MAGIC ever was.

Opening track PSYCHONAUT is an excellent mood-setter: it features pounding drums and distant, haunting guitars, only so suddenly half, and give way to FEEL NOTHING, a catchy electronic rock song about numbness and indifference, with a heavy subtext of substance abuse. The drums also switch from acoustic to programmed, to create an almost trap-like beat. This style of percussion gives the mainly metal-tinged industrial music a unique flavour that becomes even more evident on tracks like BLACK STATIC and RAT WARS. These types of beats were already present to some extent on DEATH MAGIC, but SLAVES OF FEAR goes—as Peter Steele once put it—slow, deep, and hard, emphasising mood, whilst still remaining quality songs. HEALTH somehow has managed to make their nihilistic message damnably catchy! This eclecticism of styles is also present in Duzsik’s vocals, which are very ethereal—almost like dream pop, making the whole thing rather sound like industrialised Beach House(which isn’t necessarily a bad thing!).

Which is why the album ends on such a disappointing note! After a solid 30 minutes of violence, SLAVES OF FEAR suddenly comes to a screeching halt with an ambient cut as the closing track; this sounded rather uncalled-for! And another problem I have are some of the lyrics, which often suffer from a dissonance of complexity: since the more heavy (aka: quite a lot) of the songs on SLAVES OF FEAR have quite mature lyrics, when the music drowns out all the vocals, whereas those on the more mellow—though still quite intense—cuts seem way to simplistic and straightforward; an odd choice, especially considering the esoteric, cult-like feel they probably wanted to go for. It also doesn’t help that this central theme of ‘dark times’ isn’t juxtaposed with anything hopeful to reinforce it: its just all bad, all the time; it is I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream without the complexity, or 1984 without the humanity.

In the end, SLAVES OF FEAR is loaded with bangers and works with some great concepts, that sometimes, rather unfortunately, fall flat on their face!

Blast from the past

Well look who what we have here! These guys were the shit when I was an angsty, acne-ridden teenager. Very little has changed since then, except that I kind of gave up on punk and metal music, and moved on to greener pastures. That being said, BMTH was still my cup of tea when their last album came out back in 2015, and I’m still impressed by it, even if I associate it with a period of my life which I’d rather not talk about. That project blended together elements of metal, pop, and electronic into some catchy songs that all felt distinct, yet still were part of a consistently enjoyable album. This new project, amo, sees the band going further in this direction; and while the songs sound a bit more poppy as a consequence, that doesn’t per se mean they didn’t get less experimental.

The album starts with a slow boil: the opening track i apologise if you feel something layers a few fluttering beats on top of each other, before morphing into lead single MANTRA; I thought it would be better if they abandoned this whole phase, and instead kicked it off with  MANTRA for a greater impact, and reworked i apologise… into some sort of instrumental interlude. That being said, MANTRA is a pretty great rock song, and is possibly one of the most BMTH songs ever, as grungy guitars and damnably groovy drums come together on a catchy pop-metal song, topped off with Oli Sykes’ thoughts on cult behaviour, herd mentality, and mental health. It’s a surprisingly mature song, despite its seemingly glossy façade (skip to 1:30 for the best moment on the entire record!). The following track, nihilist blues, goes in an entirely different direction, opting instead for trance electronics, and a haunting Grimes feature. The next song, in the dark, sounds like your standard, Imagine Dragons-esque pop-rock, but way more digestible, and less nightmarishly, insufferably smug. wonderful life is a downright hard-rock banger featuring none other than Dani motherfucking Filth backed up by a horn section! Again, surprisingly profound themes such as happiness and drug abuse stand in stark juxtaposition to the song’s catchy nature. However, thereafter, the album hits a few duds: medicine and sugar honey ice & tea have, in spite of their catchy instrumentation,  some of the least compelling lyrics on the entire record, all in one song; whist mother tongue is possibly the worst song in BMTH’s entire career, dependant on your thoughts on the band’s early deathcore period. However, the band makes a great comeback with the song heavy metal, a playful meta-commentary on their many stylistic shifts, as they spent their entire career combining metal music with other musical styles, until very little rock edge remains on this album.; the music perfectly reflects this, as, once again, rock guitars are backed up by EDM-style electronics and a beatbox section.

When it comes to technicalities, the album has a pretty consistent flow, and the crisp production is another thing to be admired. The squeaky, high-pitched synths can get on your nerves, but the guitars are roaring and the drums punchy.

At this point in time, BMTH reminds me a lot of everything the 1975 isn’t: whereas—until recently, when I got into them super hard—the 1975 were good at crafting solid pop tunes, but wasting their time combining them with every conceivable genre with varying degrees of success, amo proves that BMTH’s strength lies in their willingness to take risks, as this album results in—despite a few duds—a unique and somewhat experimental, but still consistently catchy pop-metal record.

It’s been like a month, but I’ve been thinking about this song quite a lot. Also, I’ve been waiting for a chance to talk about Ivy Levan. After almost four years, this pop singer finally returned with some new material. With an EP being apparently under way, it would only be logical to take a look - or rather, a listen - at its lead single, Her.

Sad to say that the song is remarkably bland, especially by Ivy Levan standards: the retro-soul esthetic that defined her early work is all but gone, going instead for a rather run-of-the-mill pop tune; the only thing reminding me of that entire phase of her career is the organ intro and the piano quarter notes scattered throughout the track. She also sheds her character of the money-hungry dominatrix she played (or which might have been just a comic exaggeration of what she’s like irl), exposing instead a more vunerable side of her psyche, as Her turns into just another song about heartbreak. I at least appreciate the fact it’s heartfelt, but that does not make it good - only alright. Her all-powerful voice also does not match the tone of the song at all. It would also be amiss not to mention the music video, where she prances around in various sexy outfits. I’m no expert, so maybe someone could explain what thigh-high boots and a leather bodysuit have to do with lovesickness? It just reeks of desperation.

But there is something that makes me come back to this song. Is it the instrumental? Probably not. The lyrics? The song feels unfinished at times, especially with all its la-la-la’s. Or maybe it’s just Ivy Levan’s charisma? That must be it! She just overpowers you and draws you in, making heartbreak look and sound sexy. I do not have any other explanation.

Surprise Dirty Hit

Let me preface his by saying that I’ve never been a big 1975 fan, and that this new record did very little to change my mind. I always found their very spotless, unnatural production to be slightly off-putting, and could not stand their smug persona’s. This dichotomy also applies to their music, as I admire how they managed to reinvent some of radio rock’s most tiresome genres - namely post-Britpop and emo – by combining the two and sprinkling them with touches of funk and new wave on their first record and r&b and alternative dance on their second. But again, more often than not that mixing and matching of genres resulted not in a beautiful buffet, but in an unfocused collection of commendable but poorly executed ideas. In my opinion, their best songs were not those experiments, but their straightforward pop songs like Chocolate, Love Me or She’s American. However, A Brief Inquiry… may be their best project to date.

After the by now habitual The 1975 intro, the album kicks off with Give Yourself A Try, which interpolates the melody from Disorder, also known as my favourite Joy Division song, with this upbeat, very poppy instrumental. I’m not sure if I should like the song, because I love the guitars (thank you again Joy Division) but can’t stand their garish production or Matty Healy’s whiny vocals. After this so-bad-it’s-good intro comes TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME, a truly awful Balearic beat song with repetitive vocals, and my least favourite song on the entire record. Next is the kind of boring How To Draw which regains some points for its second movement, Petrichor, turning into this electronic, almost breakbeat soundpiece. By this point, the songs have been either mediocre or downright terrible, and so I began to lose hope. However, the following Love It If We Made It is the first of the album’s many bright spots, as the band gets political for the first time accompanied by some powerful drums. Be My Mistake is this very pretty acoustic ballad which uses heartbreak as a very thinly-veiled metaphor for Healy’s past addiction to heroin, and a lovely personal touch.  One experiment which does succeed is I Like America & America Likes Me, which sees the 1975 go trap, as Healy sings on top of a sputtering drum machine with auto-tune on his voice. The Man Who Married A Robot is a weird sci-fi story of a man falling in love with his computer, told by disjointed robotic vocals, and an obvious critique of social media. Meanwhile, It’s Not Living is my favourite song of them all. With the powerful chorus and very lush and tasteful orchestration, this is what a pop song should sound like. Just like on Be My Mistake, the song blurs the line between love and chemical dependency. One last highlight is the closing track I Always Wanna Die, which combines grungy guitars with an orchestral backing and sophisticated vocal delivery.

Despite some of the band’s usual baffling musical choices and some mediocre or downright bad songs, A Brief Inquiry… sees the 1975 come out with a solid album. And while they still sound as wishy-washy as before, I appreciate some of their decisions in what sound they wished to explore and all of the effort they put in.

Superior album

I’ve really been looking forward to this one… Rendez-Vous are a five-piece post-punk project from Paris. Much like previous subject Pale Waves, they’ve been around for a few years, but have developed a strong cult following, particularly in France. Their last two EP’s, Rendez-Vous and Distance, were two collections of hard-hitting post-punk, and Superior State continues this trend. Their sound could best be described as a mix of the harsh, in-your-face sound of Joy Division or early Red Lorry Yellow Lorry (for all you die-hard post-punk fanatics out there) with icy, mechanical, Nine Inch Nailsian electronic elements.

Album opener Double Zero is a perfect introduction, with its growled vocals and frantic atmosphere; it’s also by far the most violent song on the album, as noisy guitarwork clashes with swirling synthesizers in a way that will sound eerily familiar to fans of Cocteau Twins. However, in the spirit of many post-punk bands, Superior State sees the band experimenting further: the track Sentimental Animal incorporates saxophone, which isn’t out of the ordinary, as Bauhaus did so in the eighties and, more recently, both Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson included saxophone in their work. I did not expect closing track Order of Baël to add accordion to its melody, which works surprisingly well. However, on the aforementioned Order of Baël or Lakes they also try to combine their abrasive sound with acoustic guitars, which doesn’t work out as well as the saxophone or accordion.

Superior State is all about variation, from the synth-driven Double Zero to the noisy Exuviae via the minimalist, the Cure-inspired Middle Class with its reliance on the heavy bass; the album has something for every stretch of new-wave!

Despite their grave sound, Superior State has some really catchy songs. Most riffs and hooks are fast paced and constructed around a strong bassline and very straightforward lyrics which somehow manage to leave enough space to sound distant and mysterious.

The production is excellent: spacy and foreboding, but crisp and clean; with ominous bass, very hollow drums, icy synth and distorted guitars. Again, feel free to draw the comparison to bands such as Bauhaus, Nine Inch Nails and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry.

Superior State is another addition to Rendez-Vous’s immaculate catalogue. If you are looking for your new favourite band, this is what rock music is supposed to sound like!

So William Control released their final studio album after all, but I’m not here to talk about that; I’ve heard it, and it’s fine. After its cancelation earlier this year, it would seem that the end was nigh for one of the quickest falls from grace in music since the likes of R. Kelly and Chris Brown, when their eponymous singer was accused of running an under-age S&M sex cult – an accusation to which the seriousness with which he took it only lent more credibility. Apparently, the ‘violating act of sin’ he so often sang about included date rape, grooming of underage girls and extortion, as well as forcing said girls to have his initials tattooed on their labia. As a way of damage control, he disbanded his recently-founded independent record label and went into a social media dark age. However, to make known his comeback, lead singer William Francis once again took to the internet, where the announcement of his divorce reinforced the felony accusations, and he himself started to burn what few bridges remained him by outing himself as a member of the alt-right in a bunch of frankly pathetic posts where he threatened violence against ‘soy drinking beta nerds that live for social justice’. Yet somehow, the only regret he expressed was not for his downright disgusting ways, but rather the fact that he had been caught doing it and was being called out for it. Judging by my language, it’s easy to guess my thoughts on the matter, since I should not need to clarify I find this behaviour tasteless to say the least. Yet on the other hand, he was the artist that introduced me to the Sisters of Mercy and Pet Shop Boys, as well as make me dive deeper into the New Order discography.

So how should we react, now that the only people left to like him are either starry-eyed girls, who worship him by blaming his victims and sending death-threats to his ex-wife, and crypto-fascists? My initial reaction was one of disgust: I could not believe that such megalomaniacal, sociopathic behavior was, in fact, not a constructed persona, but nothing more or less that truth. Apparently, one of the most enigmatic figures in alternative music had good reasons to keep to himself: when the mask fell, we saw it was no mask, but a mere toned-down reflection of what lay truly behind it.

I have in my own personal collection quite a few artists I should not listen to if I judged them by the same standards: David Bowie once bought the virginity of a thirteen-year-old girl, to keep quiet of what Michael Jackson did with kids; Phil Spector is still one of the greatest in pop music history, and he’s a murderer. However, those are all past, and so the distance of time, as well as the mark they left on music as an artform has been like a band-aid: though the wound may not be gone, it hides it and speeds up the healing process. Not for an indie musician as Control however, as his despicable behavior is still a recent wound, and so it is hard to tell when or even if it will properly heal. I still listen to all those great artists, yet listening to the new Control record took me a lot of courage, as well as an internal ethical discussion.