2006
CAD 2512 - Celebration / Celebration
Released February 27 2006
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The latest incarnation of Katrina Ford and Sean Antanaitis' ongoing musical collaboration (which stretches back to the chaos of their early-'90s noise-punk band Jaks and the only slightly more restrained gothic romance of Love Life), Celebration's self-titled debut album harks back to the dark, spiky, yet free-flowing post-punk with which 4AD originally made its name. Even if the music the pair makes now is slightly gentler than it was in the Jaks and Love Life years, it's still remarkably intense: Ford's deep, commanding, borderline androgynous voice draws apt comparisons to both Shirley Bassey and Diamanda Galás, and her ability to veer quickly from ferocious to sensual and back again remains effectively unsettling. Meanwhile, Antanaitis' various keyboards -- including carnival-esque organs and the guitorgan, a guitar/organ hybrid -- are an equally strong, dramatic force to be reckoned with. Though their styles of expression could overpower each other, on Celebration member they work well together; the theatricality of his keyboards makes a wonderful backdrop for her singing, and her voice has a soulfulness and urgency that keeps the music from ever sounding campy. Helping Celebration pull off this balancing act, with only a few wobbles, is friend/collaborator/producer/TV on the RadioDavid Sitek (who also introduced the band to 4AD). Production-wise, Sitek is at the top of his game, making sure the music's intensity never becomes too claustrophobic. With the presence of other TV on the Radio players on almost every track on the album, Celebration sometimes sounds like a parallel version of that band with an impassioned female singer instead of an impassioned male one, especially since Ford's vocals on TVOTR songs like "Staring at the Sun" added to their uniqueness. However, Celebration ends up being distinctive in its own right, especially since tracks such as "Holiday" and "Stars" are actually quite beautiful, which is virtually uncharted territory for Antanaitis and Ford. Meanwhile, the nightmarish sea shanty "Good Ship" shows that the duo can be just as terrifying at slower speeds as it was at a punk pace. Some of the album's more violent-sounding songs get a little too unfocused and histrionic, but the tightly constructed ones, such as "New Skin," have a deadly aim. Nevertheless, this is still some of the best music Ford and Antanaitis have made in their decade-plus career. Theatrical and heartfelt, Celebration is a fully realized debut that promises even better things to come. - Heather Phares, All Music Guide
CAD 2603 - Scott Walker / The Drift
Released May 08 2006
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There were intermittent soundtrack and score contributions of varying magnitudes, as well as a couple other low-key projects, but The Drift is Scott Walker's proper follow-up to 1995's Tilt, an album that also happened to trail its predecessor by 11 years. If 1984's Climate of Hunter put the MOR in morose, Tilt avoided the road completely and went straight toward the fractured, fraught images inside Walker's nightmares. It was entirely removed from anything that could've been classified as contemporary. The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt, but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening. Maybe it'll make your body temperature drop a few degrees. Working with what Walker has referred to as "blocks of sound," only a few of the album's 68 minutes have any connection to rock music, and many of those minutes are part of a harrowing 9/11 song that also obliquely references "Jailhouse Rock" as Elvis Presley cries out ("I'm the only one left alive!") to his stillborn twin brother. The songs swing from hovering drones to crushing jolts. The blocks that make them, then, differ tremendously in weight, from one that could be pushed by an index finger to one that could only be hauled by a forklift. Whenever a vast shaft of space opens up, it is eventually stuffed with drastic, horrific dissonance. While a song might contain a constant element or two, they're all in a constant state of unease and flux. Walker's voice matches the activity levels of the sounds, providing a kind of paranoid croon one minute and then, during another, casting almost demonic projections that are nearly as rattling as the accompaniment. From the outset, the album seems impossibly insular and impenetrable, especially if you've been led to believe that Scott Walker's name is synonymous with recluse, but it has everything to do with real lives (or, more accurately, real deaths). Walker is acutely aware of what's going on with the world outside his supposed candle-lit bunker; he's only finding very unique (OK, bloody minded) ways to bring them up. Any mystique behind the recordings is laid to waste by one scene from a documentary, titled 30 Century Man, which shows Walker -- a baseball hat-wearing sixty-something man from Ohio -- instructing another man on how to thump a slab of meat. It looks and sounds absurd, of course (the participants seem to be aware of this), but then again, the results are used in a song inspired by the public executions of Benito Mussolini and his mistress. Broken spells aside, how much more bleak could this album be? None more bleak. - Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
CAD 2604 - Mojave 3 / Puzzles Like You
Released June 19 2006
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A longtime fan of Mojave 3 has come to expect certain things from the band's albums -- things like relaxed vocals, wispy ballads, soft textures, and gentle soothing songs. There may have been the occasional uptempo tune with pronounced guitars, but this was the exception to the laid-back rule. Things have changed on Puzzles Like You and . Fully nine of the 12 songs clock in at midtempo or above, and some might even be considered rockers! Chiming guitars, tinny organs and vintage synths, double-time drums, briskly shaken tambourines, and almost bawdy-sounding pianos all pop up in one spot or another to give complacent fans a jolt of energy. Songs like "Truck Driving Man," "Just a Boy," "Breaking the Ice," and "Puzzles Like You" sound like the work of a totally different, almost frisky band. Whether fans of the group will be satisfied with the three (admittedly) lovely ballads is a legitimate question; they may find the record too cheery and loose for their liking. Or they may hear the usual sweet vocal harmonies from Neil HalsteadRachel Goswell (who has an increased presence on the album) and feel comforted. They may realize that, regardless of tempo, these are some of the strongest, most involving songs the band has ever recorded. They might come to regard the record as a masterful distillation of all their influences from country-rock to '60s pop to dusty Americana. They may notice that the record sounds like a progression for the group and not a total leap sideways. If they can come to any one of these conclusions, it's likely they will fall in love with Puzzles Like You, since it is one of the best guitar pop records of 2006 or any other recent year. It is always nice when a band keeps churning out perfectly fine records that all sound alike; for a band to create something as fine and accomplished as this so long into its career is almost miraculous. - Tim Sendra, All Music Guide
CAD 2607 - TV On The Radio / Return to Cookie Mountain
Released July 03 2006
As passionate as ever, but now with a little more polish, TV on the Radio's second album (and Interscope debut), Return to Cookie Mountain, is their most satisfying work since they exploded onto the scene with Young Liars. More than some of their indie rock peers, TV on the Radio seems comfortable on a major label. They've always been a band with a big, unapologetically ambitious sound, and on Return to Cookie Mountain, they give that sound room to breathe with a lush, expansive production. The sonic depth throughout the album is a sharp contrast with the density of their first full-length, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, which was so jam-packed with sounds and ideas that it was nearly suffocated by them. However, Return to Cookie Mountain is hardly slick or dumbed-down for mass consumption. In fact, the opening track, "I Was a Lover," is one of the band's most challenging songs yet, mixing a stuttering hip-hop beat with guitars of Loveless proportions and juxtaposing inviting vocal harmonies and horns with glitches and trippy sitars. "Playhouses" is only slightly less radical, with its wildly syncopated drumming and Tunde Adepimbe's layered, impassioned singing. At times, Return to Cookie Mountain threatens to become more impressive than likeable -- a complaint that could also arguably be leveled against Desperate Youth as well -- but fortunately, TV on the Radio reconnects with, and builds on, the intimacy and purity that made Young Liars so striking. David Bowie's backing vocals on "Province" are only one part of the song's enveloping warmth, rather than its focal point, while the album's centerpiece, "A Method," is another beautiful example of the band's haunting update on doo wop. Meanwhile, the mention of "the needle/the dirty spoon" on "Tonight" cements it as a gorgeous but unsettling urban elegy. As with all their other work, on Return to Cookie Mountain TV on the Radio deals with the fallout of living in a post-9/11 world; politics and morality are still touchstones for the band, particularly on the anguished "Blues from Down Here" and "Hours," on which Adepimbe urges, "Now listen to the truth." Notably, though, the album builds on the hopeful, or at least living for the moment, vibe that emerged at the end of Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes. The sexy, funky "Wolf Like Me," which is the closest the album gets to rock in any conventional sense of the term, and "Dirtywhirl," which spins together images of girls and hurricanes, offer erotic escapes. And by the time the epic final track, "Wash the Day," revisits the sitars that opened the album with a serene, hypnotic groove, Return to Cookie Mountain gives the most complete representation of the hopes, joys, and fears within TV on the Radio's music. - Heather Phares, All Music Guide
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