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The Pole Of Justice
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Animal Collective are the icon…the album you like if you like “this” kind of music. It’s assumed a totemistic property by encapsulating a lot of what people value in music right now.
Unfortunately, checking points off a list does not a good album make. It DOES, however, make for something people are eager to identify with, stand up for, and define their personal aesthetic politics around. Expressions of quality or longevity have more to do with enthusiasm than insight. Remember how The Beta Band was “changing music” in the early 2000s?
That Animal Collective record…seriously, I tried. But Goddamn, that record is BLAND. It’s useful as shorthand for a certain subcultural aesthetic, but I ran out of reasons to actually listen to the thing REAL fast.
These comments are making me feel old.
This is a Vincent Clarke album. I don’t mean in the hipster, “it reminded me of him so I’m going to treat them like a ripoff” way, I mean if you told me this was Clarke’s latest project, I’d not only believe you, I’d feel a bit insulted that you had assumed I couldn’t figure it out just by listening to it.
Quavery vocals, bright, wobbly synths, icy melodrama. “Madder Red” and “I Remember” especially…for Christ sakes, “I Remember” sounds EXACTLY like Erasure. Which, I should add, I’m perfectly happy with. Stuff like this has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, and this album comes off as more substantial and less ABBA obsessed.
Y’know, after stuff like this, I have to wonder why people worry about “selling out” at all.
Personally, I don’t care. But I can’t help but notice that people give these Starbucks releases slack, but like to freak over, say, the Buzzcocks being used to sell SUVs.