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Sondre Lerche’s new album Phantom Punch (Astralwerks, 2007) contains some of his best songs to date, and overcomes the inertia of complacency afforded by his skills as a songwriting heavy. It’s not clear if it is an ambitious change of course or a flippant departure from the sublime and reserved Duper Sessions (2006), but it comes across as casual and unpretentious, which makes even the lesser parts of the album highly likeable.
Phantom Punch is a louder and more spastic effort than the more controlled (but not boring) albums of yore; a consciously boisterous and noisy response to the inertia of easy listening, which has been the embarrassing fate of other excellent songwriters that lacked the balls to turn up the volume (a la Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, etc.). His heavier-than-usual reliance on the distortion pedal yields questionable results, but is buoyed by well-written songs that stand out from his other work with a boost of much-needed energy.
Unfortunately, track 2, ‘The Tape’, is so unnecessarily hyper that Lerche’s melody and story are lost in the muck, but ‘Well Well Well’ is full of simple riffing and a busy chorus that works to good effect. At first, the tendency is to wish that he had taken a few steps back and stayed closer to the reserved and sublime production of his previous efforts, but the track most similar to Two Way Monologue ‘Tragic Mirror’ is of good stock, but bookeneded by more excited tracks is the least noticeable. It would be nice to hear an slower remix of the disorganized ‘Face the Blood’ so we could figure out what’s happening, but it stands out for shedding the Ben Gibbard meekness that a pretty-boy songwrite use to curry favor with the [poster] buying public.
Even the most raucous tracks are unmistakably from Lerche’s hand, and where the production obfuscates his craft, his role as one of today’s best songwriters is still obvious. The noisy subterfuge works well on the title track, due largely to the disco beat that is so uncharacteristic of Lerche that the other inspired sonic flights help make us more pleasantly disoriented. ‘Say it All’ is the best single on the album, and one of his catchiest so far – major-to-minor twists, lyrics that matter enough to give them room to be heard, and just enough discipline to keep all the elements from bleeding into each other make it so. Greater care could have been taken to combine Lerche’s compositional skills with this more primitive sound, but if turning in a raw effort was his goal then he has succeeded, and wrote some very good songs while he was at it.
Sondre Lerche is one of the few songwriters and musicians in the rock genre that uses jazz chords well, and not to prove that he knows what a major-seventh is, but because nothing else will do. His songs are marked by witty chord progressions and catchy melodies, but the three-note fuzz guitar riffs, studio effects and confusion in Punch assemble a clever and noisy response to the quieter Duper. It would have been much more pretentious if he were trying to establish a new idiom rather than mess around and have fun with distortion and effects pedals, but instead you feel like you are discovering some diamond-in-the-rough hanging out in his garage and fucking around on some great material that is waiting to be discovered.
Release Date: Feb 6, 2007
Look, I’ve listened to a lot of electronic music in my day. In fact, not so long ago I absolutely refused to listen to any music that didn’t have a synthesizer in it. Analog, preferably, but these days that’s asking for a bit much. My point is, I’ve heard a lot of electronic music. I’ve talked about it for countless hours, danced to it, sang to it, stayed up all night listening to it, watched my friends make it, loved to it, cried to and over it, spaced out to it, once nearly had a heart attack to it. It’s my thing, okay? I love it. So I get personally offended when someone makes a bad electronic record, especially when they are receiving a bunch of undeserved hype and praise for said record.
I first heard about the Norwegian band 120 Days a few months ago from some online music writer/idiot (a breed that Superstarcastic doesn’t support) who claimed they were the next big thing, heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and prone to onstage synthesizer jams lasting 10+ minutes. Not having actually heard a song of theirs yet, I was pretty interested (even if it appeared that their name was a sly reference to the Marquis de Sade book 120 Days of Sodom, which is pretentious and presumptious as hell). The album was finally released, and I got my hands on it pretty quickly. It was around this time that I started to shake my fists angrily at the heavens and cursing myself for even hoping this band would be impressive. About 95% of the recent electronic albums I’ve heard have been total crap, but that’s another article altogether.
First of all, just because some retard goes out and buys a digital synthesizer with the Christmas money his grandmother gave him doesn’t mean he is going to sound anything like Kraftwerk. In fact, no one sounds like Kraftwerk, except Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk is awesome because they did something original. Like I really need to explain that to you people. You know. I’m just reiterating it because it’s so fucking ridiculous that someone actually likened this band to Kraftwerk. That’s like saying !!! sounds like Kraftwerk. Disgusting.
What this band actually sounds like is an electronic pyschedelic jam band that bred with tired emo-esque vocals and spawned the ultimate blasphemic lovechild. I don’t even think ‘blasphemic’ is a word, but who cares. It’s Phish with synths, featuring Conor Oberst on vocals. Except Conor actually wrote some decent lyrics before he hit puberty, whereas this is just trash. Maybe I’m being overly harsh, but I was expecting so MUCH. Why can’t someone make another Power, Corruption and Lies? Is demanding that sort of quality asking for so much?
To be fair, the music isn’t bad, really, even if they rip off everyone from Kraftwerk to The Cure (and pretty much every other band I respect). The melodies and instruments and everything are fine, although there is nothing new or exciting going on at all. Just your run of the mill electro-guitar dance band stuff that we’ve all been subject to for the past few years that makes me want to rip my eyeballs out at the roots and stuff them into my ears. It’s the vocals that kill me. Cliche, angsty rambling from a bored and/or high trust-fund baby, to put it nicely.
If you love electronic music and have any respect for it, just pretend this record doesn’t exist. Everything’s going to be okay.
Release Date: October 10, 2006
Label: Vice (America)/Smalltown Supersound (Norway)
Rating: 4/10
Once upon a time (okay, late last summer), three great British musicians–Damon Albarn (vocals, Blur & Gorillaz), Paul Simonon (bass, The Clash), Simon Tong (keyboards and guitars, The Verve), and Nigerian-born Tony Allen (drums, Africa 70) formed a supergroup. Our guess is that they had a hard time naming it; one possible theory is that, since “The Super Friends” was already the name of an American cartoon series, the supergroup decided to go with something a little more English. Six months later, their album was set to drop in the States…with one minor glitch. Sam and Christine, two obscure contemporary American poets who happen to write reviews for Superstarcastic, BOTH wanted to review it. Instead of writing two reviews, they decided to review it together. What follows is a transcript of their conversation.
Christine: So, um, has England gotten collectively depressed since the last time I was there? Because Damon Albarn has said that The Good The Bad and The Queen’s new self-titled album (set to hit U.S. stores on Tuesday) is “a very English record,” and all these minor piano chords, coupled with the slower drone Albarn used to reserve for the really bummed songs in the Blur catalogue (since Albarn compares the sentiments of this record to Parklife, I’m thinking “This Is A Low”) have me a little worried. Or maybe it’s that, as I experience them, the songs feel front-loaded: the sweet, open intros draw me in and then, through the gradual descent into minor sound, the scattering of the blips in the background, and the sudden shifts in production, I feel gradually shut out.
Sam E.: But then again, during the past thirty years, few things have been more British in the musical world than an obsession with dub (everyone from Public Image, Ltd. to New Order has tried their hand at it), and what I first thought when I heard this album is “wow! so this is what a dub remix of Blur would sound like.” (Take a listen to “Behind the Sun” and tell me if you don’t agree.) I think that’s a Paul Simonon thing, actually — he was always the guy in The Clash who was writing vaguely dub-sounding tunes like “The Guns of Brixton,” and I get the sense that he’s the one driving the band in that direction. Whether you think that’s a good thing or not depends on how high your tolerance for little production clicks and gallons and gallons of echo is. I think it sounds interesting, especially on the tracks with more rather than less guitar, but I also think I prefer my Albarn a little punchier.
Christine: I agree. I think “The Guns of Brixton” (which I just threw on my speakers for comparison’s sake, since I’m a dork like that) works well because it manages to be dub-sounding (as you say) and punchy at the same time.
It’s interesting that you think that The Good The Bad and The Queen are what a dub remix of Blur would sound like, and that you place this record firmly in the dub tradition, because Albarn seems to think TGTBTQ represents a new and unique sound for him and the other collaborators. That, and a few years ago when his former Blur bandmate Graham Coxon put out Happiness in Magazines, Albarn accused Coxon of stealing Blur’s sound, particularly on guitar. Pot calling the kettle black, much? I think Albarn and Co.’s current efforts were foreshadowed ten years ago, albeit in punchier form, by that song “Death of a Party”: if Coxon stole the upbeat nature of Blur’s guitars on Parklife and 13 for Happiness in Magazines, Albarn’s taken away the dark underbelly that was showcased on, say, Blur and put it in front of a steamroller driven by Paul Simonon and Guided by Voic–err, guided by the other dudes. Read more »
wow, i just heard that denny doherty died yesterday. this leaves only one member of 60’s pop band the mamas and the papas left alive (that being michelle phillips, of course, who had an affair with denny behind her husband and fellow band member john phillips’ back and got herself kicked out of the band…so much for free love.)
anyway, unlike some of the other founding members of the mamas and the papas, denny doherty had nothing to do with inflicting wilson phillips upon the world so he will be missed. let’s remember him with a video of the classic song “california dreamin’,” shall we? doesn’t it kinda make you want to dance in a bathtub yourself?
Since the inception of this site, two abominations have been the source of many brutal tirades and lengthy harangues made by our writers and contributors. These abominations? My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco (more nefariously referred to by us as Pitchfork! At The Disco). In celebration of our collective fervent derision, I offer to you, gentle readers, this footage of Panic! At The Disco’s frontman, Brendan Urie, being whacked in the head with a bottle, wisely thrown by a knowing Brit during the UK’s Reading Festival. Sure, this happened in August 2006, but justifiable violence never really goes out of style, does it?
Hey, remember superstarcastic’s friend lexxcoop, the french rapper and master of western swing? Well, he’s still making music and hip-hopping it up on the other side of the ocean and is also our 5 question interview for the day. Check out his stuff at his myspace so you can feel all international and cosmopolitan and shit. Also, kindly remember that English is not Lexxcoop’s native language and get all grammar-snobby about this interview - I kept it exactly as he said it because it’s awesome…I even think I am starting to adore him a little.
1. when historians listen to your most recent CD 1000 years from now, what will they say?
This urbanosapiens tried to make digital music, I can’t understand their dialect!!!
2. if you could play a show with any band/musician living or dead, who would you pick and why?
I would “pick” big punisher and kool g rap because i felt first how they sounded before to understand the lyrics,I was amazed of the technic level of the rhyme!! and make a final combo w andre 3000″ old school style” and jimi hendrix because i always loved people who did their own stuff without gibin’ a f*ck of what ppl think ( It s not a comparaison, just a wish to be on stage with that 2 guys).
3. what is the strangest band-related dream you have had?
I dreamt once of being on stage and wanting to jump in the crowd and everybody pulls away, so my face on the ground ah ah
4. what do your fans look like?
Very eclectic but generally no family and few under 18. From pure hip hop heads to people who don’t necessarly listen rap but more electronic things, and also random people who could like or not our music when we perform in festivals.
5. what bullshit do you run into at most every show that makes you think “man, this bullshit again?”
When we don’t come with our engineer and even if you tell him to turn your mic up won’ t do sh*t. Or if you open a band , state that ur general master was wayy down compared to the main band , They’re afraid or whut ?? Bring your own engineer lol
bonus question: why won’t you forget to tip your bartender?
Because that way he wouldn’t forget sure to always have “double” jacks (if it’s a typcal expression i may not understood )
