Month 1: June 09
My Cd: The Postal Service ~ Give UP
Tracklist:
1. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
2. Such Great Heights
3. Sleeping In
4. Nothing Better
5. Recycled Air
6. Clark Gable
7. We Will Become Silhouettes
8. This Place is a Prison
9. Brand New Colony
10. Natural Anthem
Death Cab for Cutie's singer Ben Gibbard branches out to the electro indie-pop genre with The Postal Service's "Give Up"; the catchy beats and Gibbard's light vocals make this Cd an easy and enjoyable listen. The boppy intro to "A Brand New Colony" will be stuck in your heads for hours, but even after that you wont mind going home and giving it a few plays on repeat. I quite like this album as it has the quirky electronic elements without it being over the top and, dare I say...wanky.
I already had a burnt copy of this Cd, so I am familiar with most of the songs. My favourite songs on this album would have to be: Brand New Colony, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight and Sleeping In. It's nice to finally have a hard copy of this Cd as the booklet and visual elements make the listening experience that much stronger!
- - - Looking forward to next Month's Cd! - - -
My Cd: The Postal Service ~ Give UP
Tracklist:
1. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
2. Such Great Heights
3. Sleeping In
4. Nothing Better
5. Recycled Air
6. Clark Gable
7. We Will Become Silhouettes
8. This Place is a Prison
9. Brand New Colony
10. Natural Anthem
Death Cab for Cutie's singer Ben Gibbard branches out to the electro indie-pop genre with The Postal Service's "Give Up"; the catchy beats and Gibbard's light vocals make this Cd an easy and enjoyable listen. The boppy intro to "A Brand New Colony" will be stuck in your heads for hours, but even after that you wont mind going home and giving it a few plays on repeat. I quite like this album as it has the quirky electronic elements without it being over the top and, dare I say...wanky.
I already had a burnt copy of this Cd, so I am familiar with most of the songs. My favourite songs on this album would have to be: Brand New Colony, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight and Sleeping In. It's nice to finally have a hard copy of this Cd as the booklet and visual elements make the listening experience that much stronger!
- - - Looking forward to next Month's Cd! - - -
4 comments:
Marcus' CD:
Motion City Soundtrack: Commit This To Memory (Deluxe Edition Re-Release)
Track Listing (CD):
1. Attractive Today
2. Everything Is Alright
3. When 'You're' Around
4. Feel Like Rain
5. Make-Out Kids
7. Time Turned Fragile
8. L.G. Fuad
9. Better Open The Door
10. Together We'll Ring In The New Year
11. Hangman
12. Hold Me Down
13. Invisible Monsters (Bonus Track)
Track Listing (DVD):
1. 7th Street Entry Show
2. Documentary (Hooray For The Madness)
3. Music Videos (L.G. Fuad, Hold Me Down, Everything Is Alright, The Future Freaks Me Out and My Favourite Accident)
4. DVD Extras
I am yet to listen or watch it yet, so alas, I cannot write a review for you. When I do listen to it though, (hopefully tomorrow), I will write one and e-mail it to you.
I had a look at the booklet that accompanies the CD, and the art is quite nice.
Before I begin this review, I must mention that I have never actively listened to Motion City Soundtrack.
Prior to Commit This To Memory I didn't own any of their CDs, nor have any Motion City Soundtrack single(s) stored in my iTunes Library. In fact, I had so little to do with this band, that aside from possibly hearing the occasional song on Triple J (http://www.triplej.net.au), I can define my only musical interactions with this band to three vague memories:
1) A video clip whereby they are playing their song in the snow;
2) A video clip whereby they are playing their song on a beach (they are also surrounded by young couples, and the day slowly turns into night then the sky explodes with fireworks); and
3) A performance on Letterman that I may or may not be imagining.
In addition, aside from Amy suggesting that I purchase this CD, the only other people whom have mentioned the band have been members of the 'Alexis-set', i.e. those who listen to Alexisonfire and/or other post-hardcore bands, with the general consensus being that either:
a) “Motion City Soundtrack are a pleasantly awesome indie rock band”; or
b) “Motion City Soundtrack are too soft and suck”.
Furthermore, I should also mention that I dislike Blink-182, and considering that this CD was produced by Mark Hoppus, the bass player (and sometimes vocals) of the aforementioned band, I purchased this CD with some bias. In fact, though I probably shouldn't have, for fear of hurting Amy's feelings, and/or, negating the entire purpose of the Monthly CD Exchange, I rather disappointingly mentioned something along the lines of "Oh. This has been produced by Mark Hoppus of Blink-182" prior to purchasing the CD. I was legitimately worried that this CD, or even the band, would be a Blink-182 clone, with Hoppus vicariously producing an album that his own band never had the opportunity to make prior to hiatus. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Commit This To Memory was absolutely nothing like I thought it would be.
To provide an analogy, if Death Cab for Cutie renamed themselves Francis and were played by Chris Masterson, Fallout Boy were titled Reese (played by Justin Berfield), and lastly, somebody like Panic At The Disco! played a character called Dewey (played by Erik Per Sullivan), then Motion City Soundtrack would most definitely be Frankie Muniz's Malcolm - i.e. Malcolm In The Middle.
The CD definitely reminds me of Fallout Boy’s 2007 release Thriller, with lead singer Justin Pierre sounding quite similar to Patrick Stump – albeit with a higher pitch.
In fact, Pierre’s vocals are what I both enjoyed and disliked the most about this record. In my opinion, like many pop-punk releases his voice was absolutely perfect, which was wonderful, but it lacked a little bit of ‘roughness’ or ‘grit’ which could’ve added to the emotion of the record. For me, it’s often the imperfections which make or break a record, and sadly this record has very few. Hopefully the concert contained on the DVD that came packaged with this CD has some vocals with more substance.
Often when there is little variance in the sound of the vocals, or the delivery, the record has what I like to call Hot Hot Heat’ syndrome, named after the Canadian quartet, whereby an entire CD can sound like a single song. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that at close to 45 minutes (bonus track inclusive), Commit This To Memory can be a little too much to listen to in its entirety. As singles on shuffle though, I would probably enjoy it a little more.
On a whole, the album is quite poppy and a little bit rocky, with some very nice lyrics scattered here and there, but lacking in any real storytelling, though in its defence, it is rather enjoyable.
The album opens with Attractive Today, Everything Is Alright and When ‘You’re’ Around (probably my favourite on the album, sans the bonus track) three infectious tracks that happily rocked the album into my consciousness. At this stage, after 3-4 listens, When ‘You’re’ Around will most likely be the track that I return to constantly, as it is the one that I replayed several times when attempting to listen to the CD the full through.
The following track, Resolution didn’t quite grab me. I am not sure whether it was the tempo or the lyrics, but it left me a little unsatisfied, especially after what I considered a rather strong opening, ditto Feel Like Rain. In fact, these two are probably what I consider two of the lowest points on the album.
Thankfully, it returns to form on the upbeat Make-Out Kids – a song that has some rather interesting guitar work which I wouldn’t mind learning (it sounds so simple, yet for some reason, I find it really appealing), and some Fallout Boy’-esque lyrics and melodies.
The transition between Make-Out Kids and Time Turned Fragile could be viewed as quite effective by fans of the Motion City Soundtrack’s genre, with the interesting guitar work from the prior song continuing throughout, however, for myself it only helped to reinforce the feeling that the CD was slowly blurring into one large song.
At a risk of this review sounded really negative, which I don’t want, as I enjoyed the CD quite a lot, I will try to limit my response to the next song, and what I assume was the lead single, L.G. Fuad. For me, it represents everything that I dislike about the ‘pop-punk’ genre – the use of profane language to promote a single that contains no real substance, only silly lyrics masking a trivial message.
Better Open The Door is a happily up-beat number that was a welcome relief after L.G. Fuad, which as you’ve probably noticed, I didn’t enjoy. Like the majority of songs on the album, it is also fairly short, however Motion City Soundtrack manage to cram a lot of sound into such a small amount of time!
With most records, it’s the lyrics that really draw my attention immediately and which I often like to talk about. However, for some reason, those on Commit This To Memory are yet to really grab me. Perhaps, after a few more listens.
The last three songs, Together We’ll Ring In The New Year,Hangman and Hold Me Down form a small pattern of slow song, fast song and then slow song.
I have a feeling that Together We’ll Ring In The New Year is the song that I recalled earlier – ” A video clip whereby they are playing their song on a beach (they are also surrounded by young couples, and the day slowly turns into night then the sky explodes with fireworks)” - and it is pleasant enough to listen to. It didn’t really stand out, yet it didn’t really annoy me either. So I guess it is good in its own little way.
Hangman is another song that is reminiscent of Fallout Boy with a chorus line of Commit This To Memory. Although it’s a very solid track, it isn’t the one that I would necessarily Commit To Memory - that probably belongs to When ‘You’re’ Around.
I wasn’t a massive fan of the closer Hold Me Down as I expected more lyrically from a song that had such a lower tempo – I guess was just a left a little underwhelmed.
The bonus track on the other - Invisible Monsters - is excellent. It doesn’t really fit the album when placed after Hold Me Down but I really liked it, and will probably return to it every now and then. Once again, I couldn’t help thinking of Fallout Boy when listening to this catchy rock track and it was one song where the lyrics stuck out a little bit (or maybe it was because that I listened to it enough times to remember them). Also, it has a catchy little guitar riff. Either way, it’s a track that I would definitely recommend giving a spin to.
On a side note, it’s a bit hard to determine when it was recorded, because although it is similar to some of the tracks on Commit This To Memory, it is also slightly different, and given the knowledge that it’s a bonus track, you can’t help but wonder whether it was recorded during the album sessions (and discarded for reasons unknown) or after the album was completed.
‘Commit This To Memory’ will be a CD that I will listen to again, and probably quite frequently for a few weeks, however, I doubt that it will have the lasting appeal of a record like ‘Cold Roses’ (the 2005 release by ‘Ryan Adams & The Cardinals’) which I have listened to (at least parts of) most weeks for five years, or even ‘Highly Evolved’ (a 2002 release by ‘The Vines’) which I listen to once every other month. At the moment though, I am quite content to listen to it again a bit more, and watch the concert contained on the accompanying DVD – which will hopefully contain some less-polished vocals.
Rating:
- CD: 7/10
- CD & DVD: 8/10
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