Earn This

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006) – 4.5 stars

Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007) – 4 stars

Humbug (2009) – 4 stars

Years before Radiohead invited yet another wave of critical fawning by offering an album for free download, the Arctic Monkeys cultivated a rabid following by giving away demos of early CDs and eschewing the radio for the Internet (especially MySpace).  Reviewers documented the shift as a potential vanguard of 21st century marketing, which may be true, but let’s have people attribute most of the Monkeys’ success to their talent, yeah?

A key band in the recently departed decade’s post-punk/new wave revival, along with The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand, the Monkeys revved up their engines for their debut album.  After giving it an inaccessible title and terrible cover image, they watched it become the fastest selling debut album in UK history.  Given that country’s success with music, the sales’ numbers are staggering, but much of the hype is warranted.  Indeed, they’ve had a stronger start to their career than obvious influence Oasis, whose Definitely Maybe they knocked off the aforementioned chart. 

2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not swaggers through dense, punky gems and the occasional pull-back-on-the-reins ballad, with the band’s frenetic, aggressive playing style naturally complementing frontman Alex Turner’s lyrics about those clubs and girls he can’t get into and those drinks and girls that don’t get into him.  On tracks like “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” “Dancing Shoes,” “Still Take You Home,” and the wonderfully titled “You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me,” Turner skewers arrogant girls (“You’re probably just alright, but under these lights you look beautiful”) and the guys who play into their hands (“Those that claim that they’re not showing off are drowning in denial”), but never totally exculpates himself either.

Such tracks work so well because of his enviable gift for melody and the overriding sense that, despite whatever jealousy or bitterness gurgles over, they’re having fun.  The second half doesn’t quite match the first for original tunes, but by the time you hear Turner singing, “There’s only music so that there’s new ringtones” on the glorious “A Certain Romance,” you’ll probably be ready for another spin.

Follow-up Favourite Worst Nightmare finds the Monkeys, uh, dancing with what brought them.  Openers “Brianstorm” and “Teddy Picker” announce their intentions with a purpose, savaging the kind of preppy, obnoxious guys Turner can’t stand with more laconic wit and devilish hooks.  If they’d written those tracks in time for the second half of Whatever…, that would have turned into a veritable classic.  (Aside from the obvious reasons, watching them live is a treat, for the chance to see Turner stare out disdainfully into a crowd largely composed of preppy, obnoxious guys.)

The rest of this solid second album features more grinding, danceable riffs and quick wordplay; closer “505” once more shows off Alex’s skills at both writing a juicy hook and articulating ambivalent feelings about relationships: “I crumble completely when you cry / It seems like once again you have to greet me with goodbye / I’m always just about to go, I spoil the surprise / Take my hands off your eyes too soon.”

Unfortunately, aside from the aforementioned three tracks, plus melodic centerpiece “Fluorescent Adolescent,” much of FWN sounds vaguely indistinguishable—especially, again on the second half—enough so to encourage you to reach for its predecessor.  (The band has said they regret including inoffensive-but-fillerish “The Bad Thing” on the album instead of another track written during the recording.)

 
As Coldplay was putting the finishing touches on 2005’s X&Y, I recall reading a few music critics who noted that the third album often dictates the rest of a band’s career.  Sometimes you get Born to Run, London Calling, War, OK Computer, or Dookie and critics love you forever; other bands, like Oasis and the Stone Roses, can’t do much past two.  Perhaps aware of the stakes, the Monkeys enlisted Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme to produce and give their music a darker, more mysterious vibe.  For 2009’s Humbug, the pace has slowed, the bass has been cranked, and the musical palette gotten more colorful.  

In other words, as the digging-in, deliberate follow-up to two thrashers, Humbug is their Steady Diet of Nothing, with perhaps a hint of Red Medicine-esque color thrown in for good measure.  Within about ten seconds of pressing play, one will be able to tell that things have certainly changed.  “My Propeller” quite effectively demonstrates their newfound interest in atmosphere over aggression, while “Crying Lightning” quite simply strikes out territory they’ve never approached before.  Their heaviest (not fastest) rocker to date, the song makes good on its cleverly ambiguous title by exploring that irritating-yet-irresistible push-pull of unstable relationships; over a resoundingly explosive crunch, Turner alternates loving and hating those games, all the while providing more memorable lyrics: “You never look like yourself from the side / But your profile could not hide / The fact you knew I was approaching your throne.” 

Frustration over another’s flightiness mirrors the album’s overall tone; lyrically, Turner now strives primarily for consistent, adult connections.  Maybe it’s not true that “My propeller won’t spin / And I can’t get it started on my own,” but let’s find a partner anyway, no? (Indeed, “let’s make a mess, lioness.”  Rawr.) Elsewhere, the lovely “Secret Door” forms a paean to a celebrity unfazed by the bright lights (“She’s never been the kind to be hollowed by the stares”), while on the thickly bubbling “Potion Approaching,” Turner coos, “If I could be someone else for a week, I’d spend it chasing after you.” 

Despite the ten-song track order, Humbug has its share of duds, primarily the result of the band succumbing to boredom in the shift away from energy (“Fire and the Thud,” “The Jeweller’s Hands”) or not knowing whether to keep things fast or slow (the nevertheless quirky “Pretty Visitors”).  That keeps the album from climbing the heights of their debut, but all told, this is a more eclectic, interesting listen than anything they’ve put out to date.  And no quibbles, minor or otherwise, surround “Cornerstone,” the album’s second single and the one track all critics couldn’t stop talking out.  There’s a reason for that—it’s the band’s all-time high point, Turner proffering both his most indelible melody and heartbreaking lyrics yet. 

At first, it feels like merely a cute little ditty, with its protagonist running into all these girls who remind him of his ex.  But in the bridge, Turner uncovers his deeper thoughts and fears.  “Tell me where’s your hiding place,” he sings, his voice richer and more mature than ever before, “I’m worried I’ll forget your face / And I’ve asked everyone / I’m beginning to think I imagined you all along.”  The apparent confusion over whom he sees reveals a desperate desire for a lingering connection to hold onto and a fear that memories will fade too quickly.  No wonder that, when he smells that scent on the seatbelt, he “kept my shortcuts to myself.”  Tied together with impeccable restraint and undeniable style, the words bring about a spectacular song, one whose second 50 plays are better than its first 50.  They never could have written this song four years ago, and that realization, along with the increased musical range, is why, like Steady Diet and OK Computer, this third album will leave you feverishly anticipating what they’ll do next.

Pablo Honey: 4.5 stars

The Bends: 4.5 stars

OK Computer: 5 stars

Kid A: 4 stars

Amnesiac: 3 stars

Hail to the Thief: 2 stars

In Rainbows: 3 stars

Radiohead’s career trajectory resembles that of an old-time baseball slugger, before steroids fucked up the typical pattern of rises and falls.  They started out with promise, honed their skills in the middle of their career, and then gradually fell off as they got older.  In their prime, they demonstrated a flair for the dramatic that few have, but as they aged, they fell back into comfortable and less idealistic patterns.  How old-school of them.  It’s almost enough to make you pull out your dusty radio and rocking chair to listen to a game on your front porch.

Most critics see the band’s career differently, of course.  Indeed, their latest release, 2007’s middling In Rainbows, confirmed two sad realities: that Radiohead have pretty much reached that U2/Bruce Springsteen plateau whereby music critics apparently sign a contract forbidding them from criticizing any aspect of their new music simply because it bears their marks; and that they’ve never been farther from their peak.

Back in the 90s, though, the young prospect made you vibrate with the excitement of what was to come next.  Influenced by 90s alternative and early U2, debut album Pablo Honey works much better when most of the songs are played live.  (That fact makes it difficult to rate—if I listen to all its songs in their studio versions, it has to be docked at least half a star.)  Breakthrough hit “Creep”—at least when nailed live—is transcendent, a tough and moving anti-anthem on which Yorke’s lyrics (“I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul / I want you to notice when I’m not around / You’re so fucking special / I wish I was special”) rewrite Ian Curtis for the crass and sarcastic (in other words, the 90s cohort).  The song of high school for me, and I doubt I’m alone.  “Prove Yourself” achieves similar success—“I want to breathe / I want to grow / I’d say I want it, but I don’t know how / … I’m better off dead” with another riveting melody.

Those aren’t the only songs of note, but the album’s lesser tracks reveal themselves as a band searching for its alternative niche.  But Radiohead hit the big leagues with sophomore effort The Bends, its Joshua Tree; mainstream enough to garner widespread acceptance, it’s full of anthemic choruses and a deft push-pull between Yorke and guitarist Johnny Greenwood.  The midsection sags a little, and it doesn’t sound as timeless as OK Computer, but it’s still an essential 90s landmark; the title track and “Fake Plastic Trees” hit cathartic instrumental explosions, and the drama is reined in wonderfully by tender ballads “High and Dry” and the sleep-inducing (in a good way) “Street Spirit,” on which Greenwood applies understated guitar texture at only the right moments.

They then proceeded to blow everyone’s minds with OK Computer, which frequently shows up in “Best of the 90s” lists.  The guitars hadn’t yet disappeared, but everything sounds darker, denser, more paranoid, more colorful, more experimental, and full of that indefinable it.  Many billed the album as a warning against technology and the future, but the real treasures lie in the intensely personal songs: “Exit Music” and “Climbing Up the Walls” are both legitimately haunting, while “Karma Police” unfolds with perfect pacing and genuine heart.

Yet nothing compares to “No Surprises and “Let Down.”  The glockenspiel on the former almost achieves the same degree of I-still-remember-when-I-first-heard-it awe as those chimes on Joy Division’s “Atmosphere,” and lines like “I’ll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide / With no alarms, and no surprises, please” make quiet resignation feel like the only valid option in the world.

Similarly, on the breathtaking “Let Down,” their all-time best song, Yorke captures that in-between feeling of despondency, confusion, and search for beauty that has been fascinating singers (such as Curtis) for years.  His second-verse—culminating with “Don’t get sentimental, it always ends up drivel”—breaks my heart every time, but I’m lifted up by the gorgeous melody, the exquisitely placed guitar, and those heartbreaking, multi-layered vocals, spinning around from ear to ear over the conclusion.  These tracks possess that rare form of intoxication found in songs like “One”—they achieve incredible emotional climax without ever making you realize it until afterwards.

“Radiohead’s response to all the acclaim,” Rolling Stone wrote, “was to get even weirder,” resulting in the electronica-heavy Kid A and Amnesiac.  And that’s where the critical opinions start to diverge from my own, as most have seen such works as additional stops along the train ride towards revolutionary immortality.  The former is the better album, RH still hanging on and providing otherworldly peaks like “How to Disappear Completely” and “Idioteque.”  Yorke moaned “I’m not here / This isn’t happening” over end-of-the-world atmospherics, and then switched to a pulsating rallying cry of “This is really happening!”  But the album couldn’t always keep up, introducing filler (despite the 10-track length) such as the irritatingly overlong “The National Anthem” and “Motion Picture Soundtrack.”

However, sister album Amnesiac begins the band’s real decline.  Here, the atmosphere sounds somehow faded and less intense than Kid A, perhaps because the electronic sounds and keyboard tinkles have taken over for song-craft even more.  There’s nothing as compact as the two aforementioned songs, so you have to enjoy the individual elements—the pretty piano on “Pyramid Song,” or Yorke’s provocative, repeated line “I’m a reasonable man, get off my case” on the opener.  The album will work when you’re in the right mood, but that won’t happen very often.  It’s not aggressive enough for the bitter and paranoid—on too many songs (“You and Whose Army?” “I Might Be Wrong”), you really do just want the band to let loose—nor does it have OK Computer’s sonic, lamentable beauty.

On the bloated and scattershot Hail to the Thief, though, everything goes ass.  Here, the songs really only work if the piano sounds pleasing.  But the band sounds like they’re trying to experiment just for experiment’s sake, to be difficult listening just to be difficult.  Guitars feature more prominent than on the previous two releases, but the vitality of both Jonny’s axing and Yorke’s voice have been dulled, scraped off as though by a coin on a lottery ticket.  In their desire to be different, they seem to have forgotten the necessity of qualities like melody, emotional release, or sonic agreeableness.

Tracks like “We Suck Young Blood” and “The Gloaming” skitter along electronic sounds that never break out of their shells—really, it’s incredibly boring, even though it may be sacrilege to say so.  Radiohead seem to have settled into an unassailable niche, whereby one gets discredited as unintellectual and/or ignorant of quality music if he dares attack them.  SPIN Magazine bucked this attitude with a recent feature challenging the notion that their every move sparkles with gold.  Writing of a recent concert, they recounted, “Radiohead began their set with… “15 Step”: an open-ended groove with a quirky electro beat, two-chord motif, and airy, abstract singing.  Then they did the 2001 song “Morning Bell/Amnesiac”: an open-ended groove with a quirky electro beat, two-chord motif, and airy, abstract singing.  Then they kept going, one groovy tone poem into another…an immersive experience of sound, light, pattern, rhythm, and utter, paralyzing boredom.”

SPIN acknowledge that their opinion carries few supporters; indeed, the piece headlined an issue devoted to debunking popular rock ‘myths.’  And the pervasive critical adoration of In Rainbows (88 score on Metacritic) just confirmed the disconnect I now feel between popular perception of the band and my own.  Rolling Stone’s 4.5-star review, describing the album as “typically hard-rocking Radiohead,” makes me wonder whether I happened to buy a different set of tracks from everyone else.

From refusing to play “Creep” live after it jumpstarted their career, to turning their backs on adored albums, Radiohead have never particularly seemed to mind pissing off their core supporters.  And Rainbows, a hybrid of sorts between Thief and The Eraser (Thom Yorke’s solo effort released in 2006), proves they’ve completely forsaken the 90s.  There may be nothing wrong with that in theory, but, no matter what Rolling Stone says, the album abounds with mellowness, but not in that epic, Cure- or old Radiohead-way.

Instead, songs like “Faust Arp, “House of Cards,” and “Reckoner” all project the same dull, taupe-colored mood—a new manifestation of boring, if you will.  Yorke’s pet project, “Nude,” reminds me of U2’s “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”—it was worked on for years and hyped by fans as the Next Great Thing, and yet it registers barely a blip on the radar screen.  All throughout, a feeling of temperate melancholy dominates—and the apparent oxymoron of that statement explains a lot of my ambivalence about the album.

The band’s capabilities have now been reduced to providing calming tranquility, as they can do on “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.”  But if The Bends was a soaring flight over cliffs at sea, OK Computer a journey through an empty ocean, and Kid A a figure staring out over the cliff into the water below, In Rainbows is that person turned around, standing comfortably on dry land.  Yorke’s lyrical concerns have shifted towards such mundane things as being a girl’s lover rather than friend and getting someone’s number at a bar (the admittedly neat “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”).

In other words, with the reduced diversity and increased simplicity of the music and more day-to-day lyrical concerns, Radiohead have struck new ground once again—but not on solid footing.  On their best albums, Radiohead were never been easy to explain or understand, never created music that could pass without comment—good or bad—and never conveyed the feeling that they were content with themselves.  Sometimes they were too weird or too overbearing, other times exceedingly brilliant, but they never felt satisfied—until now.  And as the second half of their career has eschewed cathartic guitar rock for droning beats, prolonged songs that often don’t go anywhere, and vague wails that don’t resonate, it’s made me start to re-align their place in my musical pantheon.  No longer a band who can do no wrong, they’re simply one that recognized extraordinary potential for a brief span of time, but then fell short of other ambitions.  A sort of Michael-Jordan-playing-baseball thing, if MJ had been ‘only’ one of the game’s 2 or 3 best at his prime and baseball had accounted for about 40% of his athletic career.

As they’ve diminished both their muscular power and melodic grip, Radiohead have eliminated themselves as a band whose new album I’ll buy without hearing anything about it.  And maybe I’m harder on efforts like In Rainbows and Amnesiac than I would be if they came from someone else.  But the more I listen to their early work, the more I marvel at the specific emotion captured in a random, unhyped track like “Lurgee” or the masterful timing exhibited in the climax of “Fake Plastic Trees”; whereas, the more I listen to their later works, the less provocative they sound.  In various parts of the latter half of their career, one can still hear Radiohead’s talent, but the overall impact leaves me thinking that a band that was formerly mine has left me behind.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no greater loss to music than the suicide of Ian Curtis at the age of 23.  There’s no one I’d rather bring back for a couple decades of recording than him.  That’s because the heights reached by him and his band, Joy Division, in their brief existence, are both nearly unmatched by anyone else and also infinitely frustrating for their potential.  Joy Division occupies the second spot on my artist pantheon, trailing only U2, but Bono’s group has the advantage of more material; pound for pound, Joy Division’s sound is the most compelling I’ve ever heard.  To try to imagine if they could have improved over time, as bands often do—my favorite U2 album is their seventh—almost makes my mind hurt.

Lead singer Curtis and his three band mates—Bernard Sumner on guitar, Peter Hook on bass, and Stephen Morris on drums—created the most exquisite, heartbreakingly beautiful music in rock history, all with just two albums and a few singles.  The depths of emotion explored, and the intricacy of the music and production, place them on a level entirely their own.  They grew out of punk (inspired especially by a Sex Pistols concert) but ended up sounding nothing like it—nothing like anything, really.  Working with revolutionary producer Martin Hannett, they slowly and painstakingly brought forth, as Rolling Stone wrote, “as dramatic and severe a rethink of rock’s aesthetic parameters as has ever been envisioned.”

Song for song, debut album Unknown Pleasures evokes similar feelings as watching Sean Penn act—you just feel that the artist inhabits a different level than everyone else.  The immensely talented Hannett amalgamated the individual musical components—Sumner’s icy sheets of guitar; Hook’s high-end, melodic bass; and Morris’s crisp drumming—into a sound so dark and disturbing that it teeters right on the edge of mental insanity.

Hannett added a variety of additional sounds, some musical (keyboards, synthesizers), some not (breaking glass, a creaky elevator rising) to the songs, which faded in slowly, reluctantly, with the pain of despair.  And then they exploded, like someone trying, and failing, to not lose his mind.  Hannett’s production, despite all the elements, allowed the music incredible breathing room, making it sound as though you were staring through an endless tunnel.  Opener “Disorder” may be the best demonstration of this: introducing Morris, Hook, and Sumner, in that order, Hannett makes Hook’s independent bass line and that piercing guitar simultaneously sound like it’s inside your head and miles away, the space echoing even when everything crescendos.

The music is perfectly matched by Curtis, whose suicide just before the band’s first American tour makes his lyrics uncovering the scariest feelings of the human heart all the more penetrating and real.  Ravaged by both epilepsy and an inability to keep minor flaws from consuming him, he inspires little doubt about whether he felt everything that he sang about.  A line from a song off their second album accurately describes his vision: “We knocked on the doors of Hell’s darker chambers / Pushed to the limit, we dragged ourselves in.”  But Curtis explored such despair and resignation with an intelligence and humanity virtually unmatched in music.  He wasn’t just blandly depressed; he was bewildered and intrigued by the vagaries of the human heart, disappointed in his own hypocrisy and failings, and despite it all, hopeful—hopeful for connections that he never found, for the ability to feel something that would get his heart racing.  And he turned his own failings into world-class tragedies, which is probably why he couldn’t stand to carry on.  “New Dawn Fades,” “Shadowplay,” “and I Remember Nothing” are some of the most heart-wrenching depictions of failed connections anyone’s ever sung about.

On “New Dawn Fades,” Hook’s bass comes in like the shadow of someone walking away in slow motion, before Hannett places Sumner’s guitar thick and pervasive on top.  The song unfolds with utterly perfect timing and tension/release, and Curtis chronicles the attempt to make sense of a relationship that one failed in maintaining: “It was me, seeing me this time / Hoping for something else.”  Likewise, “Shadowplay”—an exercise in precision—pairs a vicious guitar with Curtis’s morbid analogies about failed relationships.  These all should be too hard to take, really, but they’re just too well-done to turn away from.

But they will force you to delve into the deepest recesses of your mind.  “Insight,” which uses some of the aforementioned additional sounds to impart tremendous foreboding, fades in with a jolt before Hannett turns up the volume on Hook’s bass line that sounds like a death march.  Curtis sighs, “Guess your dreams always end / They don’t rise up, just descend…I’m not afraid, not at all / I watch them all as they fall / But I remember when we were young.”  On this song, he’s under control, lamenting the loss of innocence, but on the breathtaking climaxes of “Disorder,” “Day of the Lords” and “New Dawn Fades,” he sounds as though he’s about to burst.  The music joins him: the ending of “Shadowplay,” for one, evinces their typically exceptional use of dynamics.

The album closes with just as absorbing and disquieting a note, the funereal “I Remember Nothing,” with Curtis’s vents—“Violent, more violent, his hand cracked the chair / Moves on reaction, then slumps in despair”—fading away into the remembrance of those unusual sounds.

Amazingly, Unknown  Pleasures would have been even better with the inclusion of “Atmosphere,” one of several non-album singles Joy Division released that are captured on the 1988 compilation Substance.  On the best, including “Transmission,” Hannett’s production acquires even more prominence.  And by the time the band wrote “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” Curtis had begun to have an affair with a Belgian journalist following the band.  “Love,” their only real pop song, became their biggest hit, and while it’s not their most musically complicated song, Curtis’s lyrics provide some of the most achingly real depictions of failed love ever set to music: “Did you cry out in your sleep, all my failings exposed? / There’s a taste in my mouth, as desperation takes hold / That something so good just can’t function no more / And love will tear us apart again.”

Curtis’s thoughts were beginning to presage the end, but there was still another album to come.  Closer, the group’s second and final LP, initially doesn’t sound quite so dark as its predecessor.  Lyrically, it’s even heavier, but the songs don’t all sound quite so oppressive, quite so much like you’re standing in an attic wondering what’s around the corner.  “Atrocity Exhibition,” though a mostly failed experiment, breaks free from Unknown Pleasures; and the riveting “Isolation,” namely, is the closest they came to foreshadowing what New Order sounded like.

But as the album progresses, it feels as though we’re walking through the final stages of Curtis’s life, his problems slipping inexorably out of his control and his outlook fading inexorably bleaker.  And the songs are no less devastating than before, once more expertly written, expertly produced.  The fatalistic lamentations make it almost impossible not to wonder whether Curtis knew the end was near.  “This is the crisis I knew had to come / Destroying the balance I’d kept,” he warns on the quietly morbid “Passover.”  And the brilliant gothic undertones of “Heart and Soul” are just a warm-up for the three-song requiem that closes the album.

The astonishing, incomparable “Twenty Four Hours”—the band’s all-time high point—finds Curtis at the end of the line: “Just for one moment, I thought I’d found my way / Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away,” he intones, before Hook and Morris take off the shackles for a ferociously intense breakthrough designed to knock you out.  The perfect comedown arrives in the presence of the gorgeous yet sepulchral piano that lives inside “The Eternal,” which describes a funeral procession, as though Curtis is watching himself being lowered into the ground.  Finally, “Decades” and its unsettling synths describe him stepping back to view the tragedy, after it’s all over: “Watched from the wings as the scenes were replaying / We saw ourselves now as we never had seen.”

Joy Division had already agreed to not continue on without one of its members, so Curtis’s suicide officially terminated the band.  Yet the remaining members quickly rebounded, adding a keyboardist and renaming themselves New Order.  They spent the next couple decades redefining dance rock, becoming a fixture in clubs and pop charts simultaneously with songs like “Temptation,” “Blue Monday,” the Curtis-penned “Ceremony,” and “Regret.”

Meanwhile, the next generation’s interest in Joy Division has been spurred on by a wave of compilations, reissues (including both albums), and films.  Ian’s wife Deborah wrote a memoir that became the basis for the stately 2007 film Control, a book that reveals fascinating insights about Ian’s thoughts, such as that as a teenager he frequently professed no desire to live past his early 20s.

All told, the band’s aura, mystique, and reputation have only grown in the past 29 years.  Their music lives on in the influence of countless bands, from U2 to The Cure to The Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand, and in confused teenagers hearing them for the first time.  Newcomers should eschew the 2008 hack-job “Best of Joy Division” CD and pick up both albums and Substance, which would be worth its cost just for the inclusion of the elegiac duo “Atmosphere” and “Love,” back to back on the disc, which have in a way have become the band’s most definitive songs.

John Peel, host of a famous UK radio show, played the former after announcing Curtis’s death, and Control ended with it as well.  The first time hearing those heavenly chimes added on top of Hook’s supplicating bass is one of those musical moments never forgotten.  And the endlessly covered “Love” has become almost a cliché in and of itself.  Its title was inscribed on Curtis’s tombstone, which is both depressing and appropriate, for it reflects Curtis’s morbid fatalism that probably contributed to his inability to keep living.  He sang on “Heart and Soul” that “I exist on the best terms I can,” and maybe that was true for a while.  But, through some combination of marital strife, unanticipated fame, fear, personal faults, and inadequate coping and defense mechanisms, he couldn’t continue—and although that mindset may be partially responsible for the truth of his music, that fact still haunts us.  By the time of swan song “Decades,” he had it understood, going and “knocking on the doors of Hell’s darker chambers,” the battle complete—and lost.

Silent Alarm (2005) – 3 1/2 stars

A Weekend in the City (2007) – 4 1/2 stars

Intimacy (2008) – 4 stars

Bloc Party exploded right out of the gate in 2005 as one of the most acclaimed bands in this decade’s post-punk revival phase.  Their debut album, Silent Alarm, managed the tricky feat of garnering both critical and commercial praise, placing them at the top of the ranks that included Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The Arctic Monkeys, and others.  Headed by frontman Kele Okereke’s engaging voice and atypical deftness with wordplay, this multi-national band transcends their new-wave and post-punk influences to create a sound thoroughly 21st century.

Indeed, they sound fresh, edgy, and modern on Alarm.  The wonderfully vibrant opening duo of “Like Eating Glass” and “Helicopter” captivate from the start, Matt Tong’s staccato drumming propelling the first and Russell Lissack’s stuttering, descending guitar line the second.  Yet several songs on the album titillate with untapped potential; overall, the ballads (“This Modern Love,” “Compliments”) fare better than the rockers, which tend to meander as the album progresses.  Future efforts would be enhanced by Okereke’s improving lyrics and a more focused attention to songcraft.  

Sophomore effort A Weekend in the City diverged from Silent Alarm and didn’t impress critics.  Never mind that, for it’s a soaring, incredibly atmospheric, often soothing work that proves BP aren’t just concerned with lighting up a club.  The instruments less spiky and more haunting, the production beautifully dense and lush, the vocals lovelier, Weekend makes it hard to think of Bloc Party as a post-punk revivalist band at all.  Swirling, heavenly choruses on songs like “Waiting for the 7:18” and “The Prayer” ensnare the listener, and the band pulls back for a couple of magnificent, wintry interludes on the closing duo of “Sunday” and “SRXT.”   

Frontman Kele Okereke provides touching vocals in “On” and contributes fine lyrics throughout.  His overall theme addresses various aspects of modern-day life in London, though most of his thoughts, including those on irrational bigotry in the fiery “Hunting for Witches,” could apply on this side of the ocean.  “Uniform” has an inconsistent hold on melody, but Okereke quietly singing “There was a sense of disappointing as we left the mall / All the young people looked the same” more than makes up for that.  His concerns aren’t always rock staples—the outstanding duo of “Kreuzberg” and “I Still Remember” address, respectively, dissatisfaction with commitment-free relationships and what is likely a homosexual connection—and he hammers home the unconventional motifs with unconventionally intelligent lyrics, completing the puzzle.

Last year’s Intimacy neither re-writes Weekend nor bows to critics by returning to the sound of the debut.  Indeed, it feels independent, as though it could have come out at any time.  Several tracks are among their heaviest, while they also make room for brooding dirges.  From tracks three through nine, the powerful, odd-numbered rockers easily outpace the sparse, even-numbered ballads.   The album’s difficult to get into at first, but it hits spectacular peaks: sharp, sexy come-ons meld with the sharp, sexy riff in “Halo”; “One Month Off” sizzles with righteous vigor; “Talons” whips up a frenzied, apocalyptic sound perfectly at home with the lyrics fascinated with the menacing (“I didn’t think I’d catch fire when I held my hand to the flame”); and the majestic and ravishing “Ion Square” marries an insistent, orchestral beat to Okereke’s demand for commitment in a relationship. 

Sounding both beaten-down and optimistic, he concedes that “the hunger of those early years will never return,” but that doesn’t make him want to run out to the next parcel of grass.  When the excitement has dimmed, when you’re too old for clubs and unable to see someone for the first time again, Kele says, it’s still not worth giving up.  “Let’s stay in, let the sofa be our car / let’s stay in, let the TV be our stars” he cries during the almost painfully emotional climax.  The drop into the second chorus at the end is so mind-bogglingly good that it elevates the entire album, making the song their finest hour and a perfect conclusion to an entire effort devoted to relationships.  These boys have been more accessible, but rarely so intense.

Rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of five)

You can’t read eight words on Allmusic’s biography of Muse without reaching the word Radiohead; and given lead singer Matthew Bellamy’s obvious love for Thom Yorke, that’s not a surprise.  Musically, though, Absolution, the band’s third album, doesn’t really resemble any Radiohead discs.  There are hints of The Bends here, but with its dark stylings and heavy dose of drama, Absolution reminded me more of Placebo.  The problem, though, is that Muse, a relatively unknown band quickly gaining in prominence, sounds like Radiohead- and Placebo-lite, without the skill to transcend their influences. 

Absolution is filled with Bellamy’s paranoid and stark observations about the future of the world lined up next to the band’s oppressive sound.  The two forces fit each other, there’s no doubt about that, but the combination just doesn’t work.  This is largely because the music, and the production, sounds horribly claustrophobic.  The songs are not allowed to breathe whatsoever, and by mid-way through the album, the listener craves a break.  More talented bands and producers have created albums that are depressive and/or haunting, to be sure, but here Muse miss that target and end up sounding swampy and muddled.  The production further becomes a problem because there is very little melody anywhere to be found here; these two facts leave Muse playing intense but indistinctive and sludgy rock.

Fans of alternative rock may find enough to like here, especially on “Time is Running Out” and “Falling Away With You,” but repeated listens reveal too many imperfections in the songs and the lyrics.  Tracks like “Stockholm Syndrome” arrest attention on first listens, but after a while they don’t seem to hold together, simply fading away into irrelevance in the listener’s mind.  “Blackout” sounds appealing at first, but by the end of the song, Bellamy’s words starts to grate.  He moans uber-pessimistic lines like “This love’s too good to last” without ever really telling us why.  “I’m too old to change”—really?

Elsewhere, he rants that “This is the end of the world!” and “The end is all I can see,” which represent the tone of the entire album, but none of it registers much of an emotional impact.  As “Blackout” makes clear, Bellamy doesn’t take the next step of telling us why he’s so paranoid, what makes him so pessimistic, what perspective he can offer us besides apocalyptic visions.  He also slips up lyrically on “Falling Away,” where a multitude of absolutist clichés (“I’ll love whatever you become”; “I know I won’t forget a thing”; “All of the hopes we cherished fade”) de-mystify an otherwise stately song.

“Time is Running Out” deserves keeping around, possessing both a melody and a skillful build of tension.  The mischievous lyrics—easily the album’s best—express that undeniable but often unexplainable interest in unstable relationships (“You’re something beautiful, a contradiction / I wanna play the game, I want the friction”). They’re less successful at relating to the album’s overall theme (as expressed in the song’s chorus and title) that we’re all doomed, as Bellamy likely wanted them to, but they work in the four engrossing minutes of the song.

But ultimately, Absolution, despite being just 12 earnest songs (two brief Morning Glory-style instrumentals not included), feels overwhelmingly long, a fact traceable to the oppressive sound and unmemorable songs.  Rolling Stone’s Album Guide describes an album by Scott Walker as “top-heavy with pretentious abstraction, self-consciously difficult and often actively unpleasant,” which sums up my feelings on Absolution pretty much to a T.  In small doses, Muse’s music works better, but they have a long way to go before an entire album is worth listening to.