[This and following posts in this series were extracted from
my diary; some have been revised or cleaned up to read better on the blog. I’ll only be posting
reflections on 2012 albums.]
January/February
January 31. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas. The titular “ideas”—vis., God, sex, love, death—are old
in every sense of the word, inasmuch as these well-worn signifiers have long
since stopped signifying much yet continue to be the primary concerns of this
age. They are also the very themes that have followed Cohen (or that Cohen has
attempted to follow) throughout his long career, though, all the same, there
aren’t any New Insights into the Old Ideas—the lyrics seem familiar and
don’t necessarily rank with Cohen’s best. Instead I focus on the album’s true drawing
power, which is in the performance,
both vocally (the septuagenarian’s cracked and creaking voice has never sounded
so appealing and, dare I say, dapper) and musically (these tracks glisten and
pop with much more imagination than Cohen’s last few studio efforts).
February 5. Gonjasufi: MU.ZZ.LE.
Can’t believe the guy needed the Gaslamp Killer to ground him!
February 5. Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory. So they listened to Fugazi growing up but
ultimately sided with Radiohead’s suburban ennui, I guess.
February 17. Alcest: Les voyages de l’âme [Journeys of the Soul].
Alcest make metal that might actually be worth listening to because they don’t
really make “metal” music exactly (which, in its “pure” form, is aesthetically repellant
and, let’s be honest, politically reactionary). As many critics have noted,
this is clearly closer to early 90s shoegazing: there are no guitar solos (thus
emphasizing layering and interlocking harmonies), most of the vocals are sung
and sunk low in the mix (thus making the occasional growl or howl sound Dionysian
rather than totalitarian), and a haunting sadness hangs over the proceedings,
which is deeper and more pointed than black metal’s well-noted obsession with
decay and decomposition. And yet…
February 17. Burial: Kindred
EP. While last year’s Street Halo
offered such subtle variations on a theme that the variations only registered
to the most acute listener, Kindred
actually does recognizably break with the musical techniques of previous Burial
releases, even though you wouldn’t mistake these three extended tracks,
extended toward but never reaching the point of collapse, for anyone else
working in electronica today. And for that I’m thankful, for that I listen
repeatedly.
February 19. Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks. I don’t want to insult the weighty abstractness
that (pop songsmith/self-styled intellectual) Barnes is shooting for here, but
this album borders on listenability!
February 21. The Caretaker: Patience (After Sebald) and Extra Patience (After Sebald). Given that
a film’s soundtrack was the original inspiration for Kirby’s entire Caretaker
project, it’s a surprise that it took this long for someone to commission him
to do a soundtrack (and how perfect is it that it’s for a project on W. G.
Sebald, perhaps the greatest European writer on memory and oblivion?). But it’s
anything but surprising that the result should be such a breathtaking and
haunting meditation on creation and memory, conveyed through treated samples of
Schubert’s Wintereisse cycle that tragically
fall apart somewhere along the journey between the stereo speakers and the
ears. [EXCURSUS, Aug. 6: The bonus EP, Extra Patience (which was made available for free on the guy’s bandcamp),
a selection of outtakes so subtle that they barely register, is the perfect
atmospheric companion piece.]
