ComfortComes

Review: The Mary Onettes – Islands

Oh Robert Smith, it’s good to have you back!

What do you mean The Cure haven’t released anything this year? Of course they have, their new single is called ‘Once I Was Pretty’ – I’m listening to it right now! Do you think you can fool me? ME? I got my postgraduate degree from the University of Perpendicular Hair with a specialisation in 1980s indie, I know the contours of every gloomy spikily-coiffed post-punker better than I know the path of the veins running down the back of my hand. That… that right there… is Monsieur Robert Smith.

I mean, just listen to these lines off ‘Cry For Love’, who else is morbid enough to go ‘it’s just a matter of time till they put me in the grave’? WHO ELSE?

Alright, there may be other people, but none of them sound like the Cure!

What? The Mary Onettes? Pssht. Rubbish. Poppycock. It’s The Cure, you illiterate plebeian. Don’t tell me to look at the CD sleeve, how do you know I haven’t already? … Er, no, I haven’t actually. Oh FINE – see? The C… Mary Onettes. Well, wasn’t all that time at Uni a bit of a waste then…

Look, are you sure this isn’t some sort of stylish alter-ego? A song called ‘The Disappearance of My Youth’ with a lyric that goes ‘you live your life like a shadow…’? Do you not understand, it actually HURTS to imagine this to be anyone other than the Cure? Also – they’re called the Mary Onettes, that would imply a female front person but despite the gloom and doom, this is definitely a bloke’s croon. Ergo, this is obviously a joke CD sleeve, oh ho ho ho, you thought you had me fooled. You think I am that naive do you? I repeat – oh ho ho ho!

Yes, that last.fm bio, that page on Wikipedia, the MySpace, the very authentic Swedish names, the photographs etc. are all very clever and I appreciate the amount of painstaking effort you have put into trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

WAIT! This last track – ‘Brick’. You’re right! I’m so sorry I doubted you – this isn’t the Cure. How silly of me. It’s The Church! My bad.

Review: You Say Party! We Say Die! – XXXX

“You Say Party! We Say Die!” is a name that makes me cringe. I am a shallow, superficial person who loathes punctuation abuse. Firstly, WHY are there exclamation points within a band name, are they REALLY necessary? Secondly, if it is ABSOLUTELY VITAL that they be there, WHY not go all the way and insert the appropriate commas and quotation marks. Your name, m’dears, should really be You Say ‘Party!’, We Say ‘Die!’

Yes, so, this mistreatment of grammar makes me very grumpy. I decide to get revenge. I attach to my noggin my criticalest pair of ears. And I push play. And then I am made even more grumpy as the final question that bubbles up in my brain is WHY must they be so GOOD? Damn cognitive dissonance.

For starters, I did not expect to hear what I heard when opener ‘There is XXXX (Within My Heart)’ wafted, rather than blazed, out of my headphones. Given that their name (with or without the appalling mistreatment of punctuation) superficially implies rebellious (die!) dance-pop (party!), it is a bit of a surprise to have the first song caress your eardrums rather than assault them. Breathy and minimalistic and littered with a woodwind (?) it is only two minutes into it that you realise XXXX means ‘love’. A discovery confirmed by the songs later on the album ‘Make XXXX’ and the puzzlingly named ‘XXXX/Loyalty’ (do you pronounce the slash?).

‘Glory’, on the other hand, is the cheerleader to ‘There is XXXX’s flautist-in-the-school-band. Playful and flirtatious, it inserts comical little gasps after every defiant utterance of such scandalous terms as “sex!” and “drugs!” ‘Cosmic Wanship Avengers,’ fittingly enough, sounds like it belongs behind the opening credits of a mid-90s superhero anime assisted by lyrics like “I want to find you in a dark alleyway” and “I know you’re scared/like the coward who hides inside”.

I am particularly fond of ‘Lonely’s Lunch’ (a lot of these song names leave you going ‘what?!’). The insanely excellent refrain ‘inside out, outside in’ is probably the catchiest of the lot and there’s an organ thrown in to make things even more interesting, YSP!WSD! (see not good as an acronym, either) pawn a bit of The Police as they bridge the song with whimpers of “so lonely, lonely lonely.”

You Say Party! We Say Die! seem surprised at their success in their homeland (Canada). They speak of the novel bizarreness of having their faces staring back at them from more than one magazine cover. They really shouldn’t be so shocked. They’re very accessible but in a cool, underground way.

Review: The Big Pink – A Brief History of Love

The first thing you need to know about A Brief History of Love is that the only song on it that sounds like ‘Velvet’ is ‘Velvet.’ So if you’re like me and have been nibbling your fingernails down to a fine powder waiting for this album’s release because you happened to fall in love with this one song, you’d do better to just put it on repeat and listen to it a dozen times in succession. If that’s the sound you’re after, A Brief History of Love is bound to disappoint.
 
Okay let’s try to explain why this is so.
 
Grandiose opener ‘Crystal Visions’ oozes confident obnoxiousness even in its apparent aimlessness as it asks for directions: “do you know the way/ to the silver covered road/ by the city that’s run dry?” with the explanation “they’re waiting for us to arrive.” Indeed and that is why this is a perfect summary of the album as we will soon find out.
 
‘Too Young To Love’ moans “never again, no never again” as its vocals strain against a heavy guitar. This is a song that tosses and turns and writhes trying feverishly to snap out of a nightmare and is followed by a significantly less vulnerable track that demands to be freed from the confines of an album and let loose in stadium. ‘Dominos” false opening preps you for a climactic explosion before dissolving into a mist of sparkly voices and lulling you into a sense of security which is when it drops the inevitable grenade of a chorus on you. Sing with me: “These girls fall like DOMINOS! DOMINOS!”
 
Somewhere, Richard Ashcroft is furiously penning a venom-filled note to The Big Pink asking for his vocal chords back. At least that’s the impression I get from ‘Love in Vain.’ After the frivolous promiscuity of Dominoes, this song sees Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell (did I not mention who the Big Pink are, already?) turn into lovestruck, heartbroken gentlemen. This is one album of alternates, it is.
 
Somewhere, Nick McCabe is furiously dictating a venom-filled note to The Big Pink asking for his digits back. At least that’s the impression I get from ‘At War With The Sun.’ The first few seconds are a bit of a ‘Forth’ flashback. Once it picks up, though, it’s predictably bouncier than its predecessor.
 
Ah – ‘Velvet’. You’re beautiful. I love you.
 
It could be because it’ has a tough act to follow, but I do believe ‘Golden Pendulum’ is a rather forgettable track. Nothing particularly memorable about the lyrics and that’s good because if you pay attention you hear lines like “you say that I feel no pain/Where are you going?/The number three.” What? Also, after some concentration, I have arrived at the conclusion that this is the chorus: “Pull some strings like falling in love… Instant love, instant love.” This is one weak song, we should move on.
 
The blips and bloops on ‘Frisk’ are the obligatory nod to 2009. ‘Frisk’ is a crudely sewn quilt made up of patches lifted from the stronger songs on the album. Patches that are responsible for the awesomeness of the more awesome songs. Unfortunately they do not go well when stuck together.
 
It sounds like there was a lot of thought put into giving the title track as grand an entrance as possible. ‘A Brief History of Love’ has an intro put together by a film production house but is packed with lovey-dovey cliches to do with magic, sunlight, stars, heaven and the like.
 
I do not know what the band that created the first half of this album was thinking when they put together ‘Tonight.’ To say that it is an understatement to call it a disappointment is an understatement. The chorus is the cringe-inducing line “Toniiiiiiiight, you take a part of my life!” Big Pink, I had such hope for you, why have you let me down, so? I wish I could appreciate the effort behind the song and chalk down my dislike to personal preference but the whole thing just radiates laziness and I do not like it at all and wish it would go away.
 
So the final track ‘Count Backwards From Ten’ is now faced with the arduous task of saving me from this album and this album from me. Does is succeed? Er, it’s like ‘Golden Pendulum.’ Once it’s over I won’t remember a note.