Coldplay Ghost Stories: Old(er) Album of The Week

    Today we are looking at the album that killed my interest in Coldplay; Ghost Stories. From about 2008 to 2011 or so Coldplay were one of my favorite bands, I absolutely adored Viva La Vida and the Prospekts March EP and I at least enjoyed the singles from Mylo Xyloto even if I never got into the full album. Then Coldplay released A Sky Full of Stars as the lead single from their album Ghost Stories and I pretty much lost all interest in this band until I rediscovered Viva La Vida in 2015 and heard some of A Head Full of Dreams.

    Now let’s be clear, I went into this album more biased than usual because of the disdain I had for A Sky Full of Stars. I could not stand the boring instrumental and excruciatingly repetitive lyrics; and yeah those criticisms kind of apply to the album as a whole. I don’t dislike dreamy ambient sounding music as a whole, in fact one of my favorite albums this year, Vitamins and Flowers by Trophii is a card carrying Dream Pop album. The difference is that Coldplay are at their best when they mix ambient elements with more traditional rock elements and always benefit from having interesting soundscapes.

    The only track with any real energy Sky Full of Stars, with the only other thing keeping me awake being random drum machines. I get that Coldplay leaned on similarly dreary sounds for some of their hits like Yellow, Fix You and The Scientist but those songs still had some sort of rock edge or changes throughout the song. Yellow has gorgeous delay filled guitar passages, Fix You turns into a rock track with group vocals and The Scientist eventually turns into a rock song as well. On top of instrumental shifts that keep these tracks interesting, the lyrics are much deeper and more interesting than anything on Ghost Stories.

    Overall this feels like an album where Coldplay weren’t sure what direction to go in, adding in 2010’s pop elements like the heavy use of drum machines and the dreary introspection of their earlier work. The issue is that the album isn’t as good at being dreary and introspective as Parachutes or X&Y and it is nowhere near as good at being a pop album as A Head Full of Dreams. If I were to rank all of Coldplay’s album this would by far be the worst, at least in my opinion.

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Tame Impala Lonerism: An Album a Day

An Album A Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday

    Today I am reviewing an album I had recommended to me by a friend of mine, Lonerism by Tame Impala. The recommender of this album said that this is one of his favorite modern album, and given that he generally has pretty good taste in music I decided to give it a listen. Now I’ve heard of Tame Impala before, but I’ve never heard any of their music. My initial thinking with this band is that they would be somewhere in the ballpark of bands like Arctic Monkeys, The Black Keys or Wolfmother, which wasn’t a completely wrong assumption.

    First things first, Tame Impala are a band in the same sense as Nine Inch Nails; one guy writes and records everything and then gets other musicians together to tour. In this case that one guy is Kevin Parker, a multi instrumentalist contrarian who has an affinity for the music of the 60s and 70s as well as modern pop music. This album shows off all of those interests as well as some downright dirty guitar playing at times.

    Apparently their first album was a much more straightforward rock album, at least in Parker’s mind and he wanted to experiment with their follow up. He even stated that he got bored messing with guitar sounds after the first album and became inspired to work with vintage synthesizers for the sound of Lonerism. On top of that he wanted to have the music wash over the listener rather than striking out the way it had on the first album.

    These desires mixed with a love for pop melodies is what spawned the half dream pop half garage rock album that is Lonerism. Some of the stand out tracks on this album are Endors Toi and Elephant. Endors Toi caught my attention at first because of the main synth line throughout the song sounding like a combination of Free Bird and the Metroid Theme. The other thing that caught me is the fuzzy guitar solo towards the end of the track that differentiates it from the rest of the album.

    Elephant is the track that made me realize I had heard one song from Tame Impala before, and this is definitely my favorite track on the album. As I haven’t listened to their first album yet I don’t know for sure but I’d imagine this is close to what it sounded like. And I’ll be honest I prefer this mix of fuzz bass and synths to most of the rest of this album. I think I just prefer to have some elements of the song stick out rather than the whole thing wash over me. The instrumentation on this track is excellent and overall has damn near perfect construction.

    While the rest of the album doesn’t stick out to me like these two tracks, it’s not because they’re bad but because they work best within the context of the whole album. Lonerism works best as an album, much like ones from the 60s and 70s. Despite being a pretty loud album the constant waves of synth and guitar layers makes it a soothing experience, much like shoegaze. For the same reason that I don’t listen to Pink Floyd very often I probably wouldn’t listen to this too often either, because it’s going to make me feel tired.

    Overall this is an excellently put together album with a few track that really stand out on their own. If you’re sleep deprived like me though, listen when you don’t have anything to lose by drifting off because the dream element of dream pop is heavily emphasized here.

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Trophii Vitamins and Flowers: An Album A Day

An Album A Day is published 5 days a week Monday-Friday

    After waiting over 4 years for a debut album, Lindsey Pavao’s angry kickstarter backers finally have something to show for their donations. Pavao, one half of the dream pop duo Trophii, was a semifinalist on the NBC singing competition The Voice back in 2012. Pavao was always something of an oddball among the show’s mainstream pop, rock and country artists as she was clearly cut from an indie background. No matter how much dubstep and pop production her coach Christina Aguilera surrounded her with, she retained her unique indie stylings.

    This indie streak likely played a big role in her post Voice approach to making a debut album; kickstarter. Rather than selling out and cutting a pop record hot off the heels of the exposure she gained from The Voice, Pavao decided to go small time and make her music her way; the only snag is that it seems she was unsure of what way that was. Somewhere along the line she joined up with a band before breaking off on her own project with co-conspirator Richie Smith.

    The combination of Pavao and Smith is a strong one; despite the duo’s debut album being weird and often experimental it succeeds on almost every level. As a self described dream pop duo, you could be forgiven for expecting them to sound like a boring and ambient wall of sound with lilty vocals laid over top. On the contrary, most songs feature strong, driving rhythms and interesting melodies on top of the wash of ambient synths and echoey guitars. Even the songs that are mostly mellow and ambient feature prominent melodies that keep the tracks from being dull.

    Pavao’s vocals have not lost a step from her days on the voice, brilliantly going from sweet and soothing on Vitamins and Flowers to creepy and a bit threatening on Raven. I think Raven and Featherway are two of the most interesting tracks on the album as the melodies and interplay between Smith's guitar and Pavao’s vocals create a great combo.

    Surprisingly for such an ambient album there is a lot of tasty guitar work throughout. From the solos on the album opener Itch and second track Trove to the interesting melodies played throughout Raven and Featherway, Smith’s guitar work is superb. What Smith does throughout this album is something far rarer than playing the guitar well, it is playing the guitar in a restrained manner that always serves the song.

    As a huge fan of both Pavao and genuinely good indie music, I absolutely adore this album. While it’s entirely possible that there are a million better indie records out there that I simply do not know about, this album is fantastic. Trophii have done just enough with melody and rhythm to keep the ambient elements of this record from being drowsy or boring, but they do this without overpowering those ambient elements. If this is what dream pop sounds like, then I might have to go listen to some more dream pop.
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