The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. I’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Like the tide coming in, the second part of Circa Waves’ Love & Death has washed up on these shores.
Back in February, I wrote, mostly favorably, about Love & Death, Pt. 1, the first installment of the Liverpool quartet’s sixth album and gave it three stars.1 Late last month, Circa Waves released Love & Death, Pt. 2, completing the band’s 18-song, double-album vision, so it seemed worth checking in on the new LP and considering how the multi-part project coalesced.2
On the strength of big hooks and some sounds nicked from multiple waves of cool bands from both sides of the pond, Circa Waves crafted a tight, bright LP that often successfully channels the emotional grandeur hinted at in its title.
That’s what I wrote in February about Part 1, and it all applies to Part 2, too.
While the two-part album is a byproduct of creative outpouring following lead singer Kieran Shudall’s brush with mortality, Circa Waves produced another batch of fizzy indie pop that sounds a bit like a lot of bands that you probably know and love.3 It’s likable, danceable and always inoffensive. At its absolute worst, Love & Death, Pt. 2 is slightly saccharine or a smidge goofy. At its best, these songs deftly repurpose the qualities of past decades to exorcise something personal.
Just like its predecessor, Part 2 is frontloaded with its most energetic songs. “Lost in the Fire” is, suitably, the album’s most combustible tune. The band’s rhythm section, bass player and multi-instrumentalist Sam Rourke and drummer Colin Jones, lay down the driving kindling. The often-breathy Shudall strikes the match and lets it drop by putting some grit in his voice to sing about resignation and fatalism. “I lost friends to pain/ Oh, I’ve missed birthdays, weddings, funerals/ They’re all the same,” sounds just the right amount of bored and heated for the song. Guitarist Joe Falconer plays the part of rising flame with chugging playing that eventually bursts into a fiery solo. None of this sounds quite as intense as the all-cleansing fire that awaits all of mankind that’s depicted in Shudall’s lyrics, but it’s a nice opening blow.
“Stick Around” is less inspired but equally enjoyable. It’s a Strokes-ian exercise in guitar pop that’s more enjoyable than anything Julian Casablancas has done recently, but that doesn’t do much other than take a mostly successful stab at recreating magic. “Cherry Bomb” is where Circa Waves introduce the synth-pop vein that runs through their music. Clapping percussion and a pleasantly pulsing low-end keep the track moving while Shudall adopts a suitably airy delivery, and swirling synthetic sounds accompany his voice above terra firma. While the lyrical content of the song does raise the troubling possibility that the members of Circa Waves don’t have a firm grasp on the actual power of a cherry bomb — “Yeah, she’s my cherry/ Ready to kill anyone/ Yeah, she’s my cherry bomb” doesn’t make a ton of sense4 — it’s easy to hear why it it was chosen to be the album’s lead single. It’s also a fair representation of the sonic terrain the rest of Part 2 occupies, aside from a one-off return to rock revivalism on “Old Balloons” and the gentle balladry of “Sweet Simple Thing.” Of the synth-heavy stuff, “Sunbeams” is a clear highlight. It’s a throwback to New Order’s5 chunkier take on synth-driven music that does a good job incorporating organic elements, a tasty guitar lick and Thomas Mars-like tenor, that make the song shine.
Death & Love, Pt. 2 acquits itself just fine as an indie pop album dedicated to two of pop music’s great motivators. However, it mostly fails as a complement to Death & Love, Pt. 1. It does nothing to distinguish itself as a distinct side of a double-album. If the king-sized completed version of Death & Love is played on shuffle, a good memory is the only way to distinguish whether a song comes from Part 1 or Part 2. The lone exception is “Waves Goodbye,” the cheekily titled track that brings the whole thing to a close. A fit of productivity and emotional release is an eminently reasonable reaction to a major health scare, but it makes for thin connective tissue for 18 songs released on two albums across almost nine months.
That’s a shame because the timing of each album’s release could have provided fertile ground for clean themes. One album came out close to Valentine’s Day, the other dropped just before the Day of the Dead. A full disc of love and a full disc of death would have made a lot of sense. Or, with the equivalent of a human gestation period separating each half of Love & Death, it would have been appropriate for the second disc to be a total sonic rebirth rather than a static continuation. It’s a missed opportunity that calls into question whether this project needed to be a multi-part release, or whether it’s a byproduct of simply having enough songs and some streaming numbers chicanery.6
Whatever the motive was for releasing Love & Death, Pt. 2, it’s worth a listen and does nothing to water down Circa Waves’ expansive project.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
The Kids In The Hall, Season Four, Episode Ten
“You’re telling me Sketefetterhe called me?” Amazing that this sketch predicts AI generation.
[audience applauds less loudly for Simon than Hecubus] “Traitors.”
“Thanks for the coffees, rookie.”
“Old people leave straight messages. Government clerks leave straight messages.”
“Picasso didn’t feel like getting up every day, but he did, and he spoke French, and he painted–”
“That’s why AIDS didn’t exist until Rock Hudson got it.”
“You had sex with your father, you moved on.”
KITH continuing the tradition from silent films of showing cops getting kicked in the ass.
“I like the beaver, but the wolverine is my favourite. Only one to kill for pleasure!”
“Well, Canada does have the best health-care system in the world.”
Johnny Mnemonic
Ninety straight minutes of cool shit. There’s an incredibly simple plot that a cool, campy aesthetic hangs off – there’s a lot of camp here, both in terms of goofy shit played with unironic sincerity (like the CG climax) and deliberate queer aesthetics. It makes me realise the line between camp and cool is just as strong as the line between horror and comedy; horror and comedy work on the same ‘shocking but, retrospectively, inevitable’ sensibility and timing, so too do camp and cool both depend on acting and moving as if what you’re doing is totally normal. From this, I also realise how much Keanu Reeves rides that line; he’s endearing because he wavers incoherently between these two modes. His big monologue is one of the goofiest things he’s ever done, but I realise how his expressions of anger (or other extreme emotion) often come off as the character trying to communicate an emotion to the other characters. He has this innate charisma that makes up significantly for his weak acting.
Hell yeah Johnny Mnemonic. It does get away with quite a lot because it has Tons of Cool Shit, and I’m absolutely fine with that.
The Practice, “Loser’s Keepers” – The epic saga, or more accurately epic fail, of George Vogelman comes to an end when a naked Helen shoots George, dressed again as a nun, before he can stab Ellenor. Taken as a whole, the entire Vogelman arc, which goes back to season one, is a mess and there is nothing at all to square the nebbish we saw up to the big reveal with the cunning criminal genius here. At least one critic says he stopped watching by this point, I cannot blame him, but I keep going. Of more interest is Rebecca defending a Townie in a hit and run case, where the kid confesses, withdraws his confession and admits someone was paying him to take a fall, and withdraws the withdrawal. What makes this work in the interplay between Rebecca Paul Dooley’s somewhat unstable but apparently not incompetend Judge Swackheim.
Got about two minutes into Fraiser, “Mary Christmas” and bailed as we have back Dr, Mary, a character designed at once to play into stereotypes about Black women and bring out Frasier’s inner bigot. I did not need that again. This is two episodes this season I skipped. The eighth season is clearly struggling. And so is Frasier in “Frasier’s Edge.” The good doctor is getting a lifetime achievement award, but a note from his old mentor (working for the year in Seattle) that triggers a huge wave of self-doubt. The mentor is played by René Auberjonois, one of my favorite character actors, and the crisis is just barely played for laughs, and climaxes with Frasier accepting the award and just saying “thank you for honoring my life. Just wish I knew what to do with the rest of it.” Not what we expect here, but once in a while we and Frasier need it.
Die My Love – hmm. I haven’t seen a Lynne Ramsay film since Morvern Callar, a film I strongly disliked but saw before I was really ready for That Kind Of Thing. But here I am many years later with a more refined palate and… I’m not sure I got much out of this one, either. I do tend to struggle with “couples tearing each other apart” movies (even when they’re well done, what am I really getting out of 2hrs of destructive misery) and I’m not the world’s biggest Jennifer Lawrence fan (she’s a good actress but there’s something oddly blank about her face / eyes to me) so perhaps it was inevitable that this would leave me cold, but I wouldn’t say I hated it – the performances are generally good, and it was a pleasure getting to see Sissy Spacek in a supporting role, she’s always so good (same for Nick Nolte, although to a lesser extent). There was enough there that I might have given it the benefit of the doubt, but for a spectacularly godawful end credits song that struck me as extremely high-end bullshit and left me wandering into the night confident that this was Not A Good Movie.
Oh noooo — I love Movern Callar and in particular its use of music, so a bad credits song is very ominous here.
There’s some other musical stuff through the film that worked a lot better for me. But that final song… oof. It’s a tackily obvious choice presented in a bad version, for me at least – maybe it would play as a funny choice to the people who’ve decided this is a “black comedy”.
I definitely need to give Morvern Callar another shot though.
Correction: I did see, and like, You Were Never Really Here. Forgot that was a Ramsay.
Really like You Were Never Really Here and it’s (batshit insane/weirdly touching) music choice at a crucial moment so I gotta at least try this.
Very curious to hear more people’s thoughts on it. I’ve since learned that the terrible musical choice (IMO) in this one was performed by… Lynne Ramsay. So that’s… erm… something to think about?
Oh hell yes, Ramsay bringing back the rapping granny.
Live music — not having to work today meant I could party last night so I caught the weekly residency of the White Owls, local blues/roots/rock legends headed by vocalist Dennis Brennan playing at a fine old bar where the vibe is chill and the crowd is largely over 50. Except not! I don’t know if this was because of the holiday or if there has been a sea change (and I suspect the latter) because a bunch of young people were there, dancing up a storm and clearly out for a purposeful good time. Fantastic vibes, perhaps the kids are all right.
Hell yeah unexpected young people!
Last few Rome Season One episodes are this fun, soapy show letting the solid plot reach it’s climax and damned if it doesn’t have some chilling tragedy (and, in the penultimate episode, badass, epic violence, especially Lucius de-legging one gladiator. “THIRTEENTH!”) In the finale, the show deviates from history so Brutus, Caesar, Niobe, and Lucius Vorenus can reach their climactic downfalls while Servilia at least in the moment delivers total ownage to Atia. At least Eirene and Titus find some hope and the possibility of forgiveness in the countryside. The show largely sticks with a firm BBC/2000’s drama aesthetic but there are some great images in the final sequence here, including (2000+ year old spoilers so eh) the senators covered in blood, beautifully and impressively framed like the famous painting of Caesar’s assassination and Titus/Eirene hand in hand at the very end.*
*Also hilarious is Eirene holding Titus at knifepoint (after literally bashing her lover’s brains in) and Pullo reacting with “Fair enough.”
Absolutely hilarious they titled the final episode “The Kalends Of February,” I remember seeing that and assuming we’re not getting to the fireworks factory for another month/episode. WRONG!
From this weekend:
Chungking Express — I liked this a lot, although, not knowing it was an anthology film going in, I expected some further tie in if the two stories. The best part was certainly Tony Leung talking to his soap. In a way, this could be seen as an effort to get a sweet and silly romantic comedy through to the MTV generation — more than anything else the first story — or rather, the best parts of it — felt awfully similar to watching the early Aeon Flux. Obviously the setting is different, but being thrown into a strange environment with guns and drugs and shifting perspectives and an emotional connection between people who should be separate. It had that same energy. The second half is more emotionally compelling even if it is goofy.
Time Bandits — Like every Gilliam I’ve seen, creative and thrilling and inventive and, you know, just a little boring. I saw this in the theater when it was out (and I was a little kid) and remembered very little except the end and the bit where his parents go on the game show (which is a much smaller part of the movie than in my recollection, lasting about 20 seconds if that). Gilliam often seems content to fill the frame with some wonderful spectacle or idea and then trust you’ll find it as engaging as he did. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. On the other hand, I had this reaction to Baron Munchausen the first time I saw it but then when I saw it again recently I adored it. So who knows?
I liked all the performances, though. Shelly Duvall is very funny, as is Ian ahold as Napoleon. Jack Purvis in particular among the thieves of short stature is great, really selling the emotional climax at the end.
Fantastic Four: First Steps — I’ve made this point before, but Marvel fatigue is a real thing. Because I enjoyed this very much, and I love the FF, but I didn’t consider seeing this in the theater for even a picosecond. I loved the fact that they didn’t do yet another origin story. I liked that they made Johnny a focal character given that he is so often the afterthought. And Vanessa Kirby is excellent, showing Sue as the spine of the group (for good and ill). The one misstep was in teasing the idea of the public losing faith in the team but not actually doing much with it. That should have either been central or skipped over. But on the other hand, they made some efforts to portray Big G in the somewhat sympathetic light in which his best comic appearances always have.
Think one person said this is the best Fantastic Four movie but it’s not like there’s any real competition for that title.
Yeah, but it’s better than that.
Also I thought the 2005 FF wasn’t bad at the time. I have t seen any of the others (except I FFWD through that film’s sequel to make sure they had a cameo of Stan getting kicked out of the wedding, and my expectation satisfied).
That is a good point about Gilliam, that sometimes his imagination risks (and attains) boredom, but it’s worth it for the things you’re not going to get anywhere else.
What did we listen to?
Didn’t have time to write up a single song this week, but did listen to a lot of albums:
Memory Almost Full, Paul McCartney
Back on my McCartney. I’m fascinated by how McCartney seems to treat music the way I do criticism i.e. self-expression is a necessary part of the process and also not to be taken too seriously. I love how he completely thinks and speaks in pop music; drawing one’s attention around, shaping the sound to be as interesting as possible (what I particularly love is him knowing when to put his voice through a filter for effect without it being jarring).
Tonight’s The Night, Neil Young
This one tested me a bit. The music rules, but he’s pushing his voice into new places, and they don’t always work.
Master of Reality, Black Sabbath
This continues the themes of the first album – cool riffs pounded until they stick in your brain, edgy lyrics. This has more of the Christian stuff, to the point that there’s one song about how Satan is evil and another about how atheism is confusing, which is hilarious given the controversies.
All We Know Is Falling, Paramore
This is more technically elaborate than it sounds at first glance – the cheesy power chords are more of the main flavour with more intricate playing as a spice.
Tanx (The Visconti Master), T. Rex
This strikes me as T. Rex comfortably settling into the role of reliable arena rock band. Less pretense, more goofy fun. Not simply copying a trend, but embodying it. These strike me as guys who played rock because it let them fucking party rather than because they liked it in particular.
After Forever is hilariously pro-Christian, it is arguably the only good Christian rock song. But the sound is still ominous, so while I think the haters and censors are stupid they are not entirely wrong in hearing something dark here.
Bolan did run into this problem where he was stuck playing glam-pop when the public had moved on from the trend post-1974ish. Should listen to Tanx though.
I am the sort of weirdo who, after listening to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to mark the 5oth anniversary of the wreck, then goes on to listen to all the Stan Rogers songs on Spotify. But while I like Gordon Lightfoot, I totally prefer Stan Rogers. Not everything he did was great, but a lot of it was (and he’s hugely popular in filk circles).
Also listened to Ringo’s first solo album and George’s Somewhere in England, as both were covered on a Beatles-centric YouTube channel called Parlogram. The host was, I think, far more enthusiastic about these than they deserved but they are pretty okay.
1001 Albums, etc.:
The Gun Club – Fire of Love: solid garage rock, reminded me a little of the Cramps with slightly less of the over-the-top mannerisms but maybe slightly better songs? Not totally my thing, but an enjoyable listen.
Bauhaus – Mask: didn’t really do it for me, more frantic tempos / arrangements than I expected from goths but not in a way I found particularly appealing.
Bobby Womack – The Poet: some really good soulful vocals and a couple of good songs here but this was presented by the book as a comeback album and I feel like I needed to have more of a grasp of the rest of his career to really get that. There’s nothing here I liked as much as “Across 110th Street” but maybe that’s unfair because that’s a pretty perfect song.
Tom Tom Club – Tom Tom Club: heard this one many times, it’s not perfect (why do so many people think Under The Boardwalk is an interesting song to cover?) but I do love it. Really fun with great arrangements, more than just a Talking Heads spin-off for sure.
Rush – Moving Pictures: enjoyed this way more than I expected, definitely still prog rock but there’s a bunch of new wave / powerpop energy injected here that kept me on board. Loads of cool synth hooks and harmonising guitars.
ABBA – The Visitors: never heard this before, and I only really recognised the title track and “One of Us”. Really gorgeous breakup album (in both senses), the melancholy really works well against the gorgeous arrangements. Something special about hearing a band at the top of their game and falling apart at the same time, top-tier pop music.
—
Blank Check, A House of Dynamite – huh, they really did not like this movie very much. But this is a really fun episode all the same and I really enjoyed the diversions into Oscar chat etc.
Screen Drafts, Peter Jackson and Dario Argento drafts – the Jackson episode was fine, an enjoyable listen but I’m not sure I care all that much about his filmography. I like Brain Dead / Dead Alive, Heavenly Creatures and LOTR but I don’t find his deeper cuts that interesting. Although I guess maybe I should see Forgotten Silver at some point, that sounds fun. The Argento episode was great fun though, some controversial opinions and fun discussions about his house fetish and what does and doesn’t matter / impact the quality in Italian horror films. I was happy with the #1 and with Suspiria getting ranked a little lower, and although some of the others that made it aren’t particularly favourites of mine, this did make me curious to revisit them (Tenebrae and Opera, mainly). Phenomena should have been higher but I’m glad it made it onto the list.
As making lists is a big project and particularly difficult this year, I’ve been listening to my playlists to try to sort out what my favorites are. I felt pretty locked in on 25 or so of them, with probably 7-8 more guaranteed a spot somewhere, and… then a few dozen songs for the final spots, so I spent some time listening to those to figure it out. And I’ve gotten closer, but not close enough. Gonna have to run on vibes to sort out the rest.
Year of the Month update!
This November, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 2018!
Nov. 12th: Ben Hohenstatt: Bark Your Head Off, Dog
Nov. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Christopher Robin/Mary Poppins Returns
Nov. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Ralph Breaks the Internet
Nov. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Legend of the Three Caballeros
And in December, we’ll be taking pitches on anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery
I’ll write up Venom for the 24th and Rope for the 29th of December.