Reviews
Le Loup
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly
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Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2007-12-02
Welcome, students, to this semester of Modern and Post-Modern Indie-Rocking 201. Please, find a seat and we’ll begin shortly. Today’s lesson will cover topics Self-Marketing, Discovering Your Niche and Pretentiousness: To be or not to be (A Twat). I’ve had my assistant pass around a brief outline of today’s subjects; please read through them now.
Self-Marketing
For today’s modern indie-rocker, it is vital to sound big. More importantly, you must appear big. The first, most obvious, ideal is more rather than less band members. Remember: more is more. This will make it obvious to concert-goers that you are not messing around; the amount of coordination required to get six or more people to perform a song is indicative of a band that is serious about their art. However, serious art also requires serious music, and serious ideas. Therefore it is equally important to present your art-form in a larger-than-life manner. Make sure you have a solid back-story to position your band as cutting-edge and hip (like gathering members on Craigslist – very current). Do not worry about being perceived as trendy – you will earn fans and recognition quickly in this fast-paced digital world of insatiable, impatient hipsterdom. Pleasing the hipsters is imperative.
Discovering Your Niche
Following the advice of “bigger is bigger”, it is vital to address the appropriate subject matter, and apply the appropriate musical techniques to that end. What could be a bigger subject than the END OF THE WORLD and what better musical treatment could there be than wistful, repetitive, haunting vocal arrangements careening into crashing pianos and monolithic guitar chords (see “Planes Like Vultures” for reference)? That’s a good place to start, at least. Failing that, you would do well to follow in the footsteps of a more successful band eg. Broken Social Scene, Animal Collective or Sufjan Stevens. Don’t worry about mixing incongruent influences or sounds, like following a blippy, goofy/stupid indie-dance track like “We Are Gods! We Are Wolves!” with a quiet, lonesome banjo piece like “Breathing Rapture” -- just pretend it’s your personal style.
You will need lyrics. Lots of them. They should skirt the line between beautiful imagery and self-indulgent lit-major bullshit. Here are some examples of each:
Beautiful (“To The Stars! To The Night!”):
To the stars! To the stars!
To the silver scars that mark the night.
Alight! Alight!
And leave this silent world behind.
Bullshit (“Outside of this car, the end of the world!”):
In the kingdoms, in the bright blue heavens,
See the faceless phantoms of the chosen seven!
In your wild abandon, will you look like death and
Will you cull the seasons from the bright blue heavens?
This is just a rough guide, of course, but it is important to straddle that line as precariously as possible. This will be the key to your success.
Pretentiousness: To be or not to be (A Twat)
Following that last point, we’ll go deeper into the question of pretentiousness. This is an omnipresent concern for art-folk ensembles, or any genre beginning with “art-“. What is crossing the line? Naming more than one song a “canto”? (“Canto I” and “Canto XXXIV”. Coincidentally, Dante’s Inferno closes with the 34th canto. My translation closes with the words “and we came out to see once more the stars” which may as well be lyrics on this album. Yes, that’s right, I have a copy of the Divine Comedy too. I am also a pretentious dickhead, as if that wasn’t evident by now) Naming your album after obscure, pseudo-religious art installations made of scavenged parts and foil? Abusing the exclamation point obsessively in your lyric sheets? We’ll delve into these questions, and more, in the final discussion.
There will be a quiz on this material during tomorrow’s class.
Score: 7.1
Ok, but seriously. “Canto I” is pleasant banjo-picking and backup vocals with completely ignorable spoken-word poetry that says “like” way too much. “Planes Like Vultures” is absolutely infectious, hypnotic and beautiful and is followed up by “Outside of this car, the end of the world!” which is completely unnecessary computer beats and ridiculous lyrics. “To the stars! To the night!” follows with mostly solo banjo work and multi-part harmonies. Very pretty. Track 5 is “(Storm)” which is a glitched-up field recording of a thunderstorm. “We are gods! We are wolves!” is another unnecessary electronic-blip dancey song that once again derails any serious mood or theme the quiet songs would have developed. “Breathing Rapture” follows in the banjo + harmonies format. Track 8 “Look to the West” is righteous with organs and quiet vocals bursting into electric guitar riffs and drum rhythms and finishing with a sing-along-worthy melody and multi-tracked voices. “(Howl)” is a forgettable and short sound-scape. “Le Loup (Fear Not)” is all ooos and folk drumming. “Canto XXXIV” reprises the banjo rhythm from track 1 and adds more drum machine wankery. It kind of works this time. Final track “I Had A Dream I Died” is predictable apocalyptic-level life-affirming-message closing track. “Tell your good friends you loved them all doubtlessly”, “now’s the time!”, “this is the end!” The song then dissolves into grinding, distorted computer effects and echoing reverb, and eventually fades completely into the field recording of pleasantly chirping birds.
I’m confused. A few tracks here are quite impressive, and I enjoyed them quite a bit. Other tracks feel bizarrely out of place and seem only to serve as kitschy genre touchstones designed to impress scenester assholes. Le Loup, as a group, have the potential to create something truly inspiring, if they ever cut the bullshit out. If you make an album that works through the theme of the ending of civilization, do you make the songs alternate between straight-faced majesty and songs that come of as three-minute piss-takes in relation? The dance songs would be catchy and decent in their own right, but artwork depends on the frame you put it in. Place that silly song next to a serious song and call it a pair, and people might question if the serious work was actually serious or not. Is Sam Simkoff trying to address a serious topic, or is he just fucking around? I can’t really tell. I’ve considered that he might be deadpanning the apocalypse stuff, but like telling pedophile jokes, if your face is too straight, people are going to take you seriously. Le Loup needs to figure out where they want to go, because their talent level is unmistakable, but this album finds them throwing too many influences into one pot, and the album as a single unit suffers for it.
I bet Dan can’t wait until I get my own TWM writer blog so I can pen incredulous bullshit like this without letting it spill all over the reviews.
- Jeff Geady