Cults

Whether you want to tag this New York boy-girl duo as dream pop, twee, noise pop, or psychedelic pop, it is easier to just lump them into indie pop and say they have a nostalgic or “throwback” quality to them. Regardless of tags, their cutesy sound is unique and pleasing to the ears.

The Show

The Visuals

So while I was excited for this show, I didn’t anticipate how absurdly visually-rewarding the show was going to be. I will pat myself on the back for immediately realizing that the 4 screens behind the stage would be used to display static, to go along with the theme of the album.

But I did not foresee the use of a projector to paint the entire room with beautiful psychedelic colors and patterns synched to the music. The effect was to flood the entire room with incredible visuals to coincide with songs; slowly cascading colorful sprites for the slow bits and spastic noisy geometric static when the song picked up. To add to the effect, the projections had to permeate the fog, which gave it an added trippy dimension. I picture that this type of affordable, accessible, and incredibly impressive visualization is the kind of thing that early psychedelic bands, maybe Jefferson Airplane only dreamed of.  It was quite cool. By far the best visuals I have seen in a while.

The effect was even amplified by the lucky coincidence that the stage’s backdrop is red (as opposed to black), which rendered the projections in red, highlighted elements in the foreground, and gave the projected visuals even more perceived depth.

Here are some vids I shot that showcase this awesome effect far better than the pics (but be sure to crank the quality all the way up to 1080P!)

The Set

The Setlist for the show shows a 50/50 split of the 2 albums, which was a nice balance of old favorites and promotion of the new album. Besides what I thought was generally too loud of everything, except her vocals which were just a little drowned-out, I thought they translated very well live, sounding just like the albums. However, I did feel that the songs don’t lend themselves to much crowd participation. Even the most exciting parts of their hits just leave you kind of bobbing your head and swaying like the back-up singers of a Doo-Wop group. This is more to do with the nature of their music than their performance. Their performance was great, however there was a noticeable lack of the band head-banging and hair-thrashing, as their album-art leads you to expect.

So while they were spot on, and it was an overall good show, I didn’t find the show to be that fulfilling except for the stunning visuals. I do recommend catching their show on this tour if you can. If for no other reason, just to see the visuals, which were worth the ticket price alone.

The Albums

Cults - Cults

Their self-titled debut is a very novel and refreshing album that I was fairly obsessed with for a while. It has a consistent psychologically dark underlying theme to the lyrics with samples of famous cult leaders Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and Patty Hearst embedded into the songs, all hidden underneath the sugary-sweet vocals and happy-go-lucky percussion that gives the album its unique feeling.

Although most of the snippets of the cult leaders preaching and brainwashed ramblings of cult members are distorted beyond comprehension with reverb and other effects, I feel their inclusion augments the overall creepy feel of the album and add a cohesion that pulls it together into what can almost be mistaken for a concept album, (although it isn't). I’ll just say they really know how to make the most out of a motif, considering most of the album focuses on milder themes such as relationships, coping with life, and skeletons in the closet, rather than mass suicide and grape Kool-Aid.

Check out this cool music video for Go Outside, in which the band members are almost-flawlessly superimposed into footage from Jonestown. It really encompasses the vibe of the album.

Selected Songs and Quotes

Abducted –  Sets the tone of the album, starting off with...

I knew right then that I'd been abducted,
I knew right then that he would be taking my heart.

... giving me the impression she has found herself under the spell of stockholm syndrome and has fallen for her captors.

You Know What I Mean – a beautiful slow saunter through feelings of dysphoria, fear, and loneliness.

Bad Things  -

Bad things happen to the people you love,
And you'll find yourself praying up to heaven above,
But honestly I never had much sympathy,
Cause those bad things, I always saw them coming for me.

Cults - Static

Having given new album, Static, a fair amount of listens, I would say while it stays true to their distinctive sound, it is lacking in something that I have yet to put my finger on. Seeing the songs live with the fantastic visuals synced to the audio, gave me a little more appreciation for the album, but I’m still not as fond of it as their debut. It’s a good album: I wouldn’t say great. Maybe I just really liked the eerie, dark, mysteriousness of the 1^st album.

However, I do love how they chose an animated GIF image to represent the album in the digital realm. It has caught my eye on various websites.  It’s a bit oxymoronic and a lot of genius that they chose a dynamic image to represent an album dubbed "Static". Brilliant marketing on their part, but they aren’t the first to do it (REM did it 1^st, relatively recently).

The Album as an Entity

In the ADD world of the sound-byte, the meme, apps, social media, and the wide-array of crap which serve only to trivialize everything into an easy-to-digest, quickly-consumable, packet of unfulfilling data, I worry that the album is underappreciated as an art form. With digital media, songs are easily and often chop-shopped from their albums and sold and consumed individually. Back when vinyl was THE ONLY allotment of music, the album was king. Now I feel that many fail to even recognize that music is released as an album.

Most worthwhile albums, have cohesiveness among the tracks which unify them as part of the same time, place, experience, mindset, emotion, etc, and usually has a unique feel. I’m not talking about vinyl, and I'm not talking specifically about a concept album (which takes album cohesion to a whole new and substantial level, where it encompasses an overall unifying theme), I mean an album as an entity.

Art as an analogy

A song :: An Album as a Painting :: A Collection/Gallery

Or maybe …

A song :: An Album as a Small Piece of a Painting (say the top left corner) :: to the Full Painting

The point is, that together, the songs are far greater than the sum of their parts. An album is more than several songs lumped together, it is an experience. The album is a vast spatial canvas upon which an artist can compose an aural experience. A song is but an element of this larger composition. It is the album upon which a band is free to paint a full picture in your mind and bring about an emergent experience that often is not inherent in a song. An album can be a roller coaster ride of emotions, ebbing and flowing with anticipation and fulfillment.

Music is, by far, my favorite art form. I find nothing has more potential to affect my mood than music. I need a constant influx of music in order to function. And nothing is more fundamental to my experience of music than the album. An album can ‘make my year’ or change my life. I always anticipate the next release from an artist, wondering if it will be as life-changing as the last, or if it’ll be a let-down.

I feel that the album is the vital way to experience, view, and critique a work by an artist, and in order to give an album the credit it is due, it is crucial to experience it in the proper sequence, from beginning to end as one listening experience, as it was made to be heard. I simply think that albums are the fundamental unit of music, and are often created to be experienced as one entity. An appreciation of the album as an entity is fundamental to a true appreciation and understanding of music.

I found this. It is cool. Love this album.

I found this. It is cool. Love this album.

via Tumblr http://thecontrollerspheremusicblog.tumblr.com/post/67579463579

The Besnard Lakes ARE the Most Underrated

I fucking LOVE this band! I know you don’t know who they are.But don't worry, no one does. I only know them from random happenstance. And it’s a shame, because they are seriously amazing. Seriously one of the most under-appreciated bands of our time. But I’ll warn you, you may have to work for the reward.  Like most worthwhile bands, you likely won’t be able to just waltz right into The Besnard Lakes  and expect immediate satisfaction.

HOWEVER, once you have tuned your brain into their fantastic niche sound and conditioned your auditory nerve-endings to the nuances of their music, it is absurdly rewarding.  I compare them in that way to Pink Floyd or Radiohead, in that you may not immediately appreciate the complex sound and the sometimes seemingly drawn-out or off-timing of particular elements, but after that a few listens the intricacies of the music gets ingrained into your neural patterns. THEN, and only then, will you realize the full potential and extremely rewarding sensation woven into the subtleties of the music. You anticipate a specific moment, (perhaps the placement of a vocal harmony or an escalation in tempo),  and as the anticipated moment materializes you are rewarded with the release of pleasurable neurotransmitters.

The Besnard Lakes are particularly adept at delivering  such fulfillment with their awesome build-ups, vocal harmonies, and the anticipation that goes along with them. Their 3^rd album “The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night” is a goddamn masterpiece along these lines, and I look forward to delving into their full discography to see if the other albums are as rewarding. I think the new album, “Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO” has a lot of potential.

The Show

I was lucky enough to catch their set last night at The Crocodile. It was a fantastic show. The simple light effects amplified by massive amounts of fog, created the perfect ambiance for their droney sound. They played mostly the new album, which I unfortunately had only listened to about 3 times through, so it was enjoyable (and they did great), but I could have prepared better. They played a few songs from "The Roaring Night" which I thoroughly appreciated, including:

Albatross

Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent

They unfortunately DID NOT play Chicago Train, which is the song I wanted to hear the most.

What makes this band unique 

In this video  Jace Lasek explains how they create their music, which in turn explains quite clearly why they sound so unique, saying they are “basically a cover band of our own band”!

They use a tool called an E-bow as a sort of  magical 'pick' for the guitar, to produce some of the more bizarre sounds on the album which uses an “electromagnetic field to produce a sound reminiscent of using a bow on the strings.” Which roughly translates into “ sounds fucking amazing.”

Jace Lasek has what someone else very perfectly described a “laser precision falsetto” giving the vocals a very distinct sound, which translates surprisingly well live. This combined with their amazing harmonies and perfection of their ambient droney sound makes for some incredible music.

Albums to check out