Masseduction is St Vincent’s fifth album and first with acclaimed producer Jack Antonoff who is everywhere at the moment. Similar to past releases, this is a mix bag of sounds from the talented and capital A artist, Annie Clark. First single “New York” was a song of the year choice for us from the second we heard it and second single “Los Ageless” has a killer chorus: “how can anybody love you and lose you and not lose their minds too?”
First track “Hang On Me” is the most downtempo sound here followed by the peppiest in “Pills”. The 80s robotic funk of the title track and “Sugar Boy” are less successful but the apoplectic “Fear the Future” is a roar of sound. The fury of an overdosing “Young Lover” is another high: “I heard the robins and thought they were sirens, wake up young lover, I thought you were dyin’”. On Masseduction St Vincent continues to be one of the most interesting artists working around the fringes of the mainstream.
p.s I thought the album was called Mass-Education until a few days ago…
7.5/10
After a seven year hiatus, Toronto supergroup Broken Social Scene reconvened to record Hug of Thunder, their fifth release. “The gang is all here” is a most fitting expression for this as 18 musicians are credited on the album including all the usual bigger name suspects such as Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Emily Haines, Feist, etc. After a short instrumental the band hits the floor running with “Halfway Home” whereas the modern folk tinged “Skyline” sounds straight off a TV commercial that has people reaching for Shazam to figure out who sings it.
In Lizzy Goodman’s excellent book, Meet Me in the Bathroom, The National are cast as lesser characters in the NY/Brooklyn scene of the early 2000s. While The Stokes, Interpol and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs hit the ground running, The National took longer to find their footing. But over time, they have risen above their more popular colleagues from that era to become critical darlings and festival favourites. Back in September the National released their seventh studio album, Sleep Well Beast. Their last album, 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me, felt like the end of a trilogy which would make this a new beginning or at least a transitional one.
Back in 2014 the shoegaze band Slowdive reunited for live dates and continued on to record their fourth album, the self-titled Slowdive. Since hearing a b-side on a random blog years ago, Slowdive for me have been on the longlist of bands to check out after missing them the first time around. So, I started backwards with the latest release, one that sound tracked many late summer walks, with an eye on collecting their older albums.
Spoon’s eighth studio album, Hot Thoughts, is the one that broke this website! I was on a roll with reviews and then hit this one and found myself struggling on what to say or write about… for several weeks that turned into months. There’s plenty of good tracks here – the title track could fill an indie dancefloor in seconds, “First Caress” features a piano that sounds like it’s falling down the stairs, while “Shotgun” packs a mighty punch.
