Album Reviews: What we're listening to this week
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate), Soft Pink Truth and Steve Gunn & Mike Cooper
Music Go Music | A
There are several moments on Impressions (Thousand Tongues), this L.A. outfit’s magnificent second LP, when they go out of their way to sound like ABBA. Take the glorious “Shine Down Forever,” which handily elevates the godless desperation of “Gimme Gimme Gimme …” to pious romantic rapture (“You are the sun to me/ Shine on me always with gentle beams of empathy”) — before they tease the riff. Most of the time it happens naturally. But don’t think of them as copyists — it’s just that more bands should make melodic almost-funk disco-pop with harpsichords.
—K. Ross Hoffman
Soft Pink Truth | A-
Drew Daniel — half of merrie electronic meta-pranksters Matmos — is no stranger to conceptual goofiness, but Why Do the Heathen Rage? (Thrill Jockey), released in June, is his most gleefully demented project yet. It drags Venom, Mayhem and Darkthrone through a frothy miasma of break-beat rave, acid techno, industrial glitch-core and diva house. —K. Ross Hoffman
Steve Gunn & Mike Cooper | B
Part of the fun of RVNG Intl’s FRKWYS series, which pairs artists with their senior influences, is imagining what a trip each installment must’ve been to make. Just picture guitar-slinger (and Kurt Vile associate) Gunn and experimental cult hero Cooper linking up in Lisbon to cut FRKWYS Vol. 11: Cantos de Lisboa, a breezily discursive six-string summit that settles in with some languid folk-blues but is unafraid to venture down weirder, noisier ambient alleyways. —K. Ross Hoffman
Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) | C+
On You Will Eventually Be Forgotten (Topshelf), you get the sense that Keith and Cathy Latinen, Empire!’s core songwriting duo, have a lightbulb drifting above their heads, but it’s flickering. The record’s repetitive, low-tempo narrative-building, consisting of little more than drifting guitar twinkles and Keith’s painfully high-pitched vocals, insists on turning boring ol’ reality into a matter of life or death. That’s a fine thesis and sometimes the band pulls it off, but it’s boring when each track is nearly indistinguishable from the last. —Marc Snitzer
