Monday 28 November 2016

Kings Of Leon - WALLS

Let me set the scene. It's 2009 and Kings Of Leon are on stage at Reading festival and halfway through their set-list. They have been methodically strumming out a mix of songs from their last album Because Of The Times and year-old platinum baby: Only By The Night. Cruising through new material, the crowd noise still isn't really building up to anything spectacular. There's the core fans, crammed in at the front, in full voice... but they're always there and despite the enormous crowd behind them its hardly the festival reception the band had expected. They forget that this is Reading; 80% of the punters are too smashed and high to appreciate Caleb Followill's delicately rusty vocals or his cousin Mathew's intricate guitar pieces, they just want to shout the 6 to 10 words in a row that they can remember. Before he knows it, Caleb has gone through Be Somebody, Revelry and Crawl, all incredible new songs in their own right but the crowd are waiting for that song. And when he plays the opening riff and an almighty cheer goes up... well... Caleb loses his shit:

The highlight of that excruciating video is the crowd not even noticing the band deliberately butcher their favourite song and continuing to cheer, as I said: Reading. What it really shows, though, is a band frustrated by the success of one song (written half-jokingly) overshadowing their entire repertoire of material. They won't be having the same problems with this album: every song is fantastic.

WALLS opens in true Kings Of Leon Fashion, the rumbling bass and soft, catchy guitar melody ease us in to leading single Waste A Moment, a memorable track that I'm sure will be eagerly awaited on any setlist. The Tennessean four-piece have always been adventurous, refusing to be constrained by a particular genre, always seeking to vary things up with each new release. This record is a great extension of that attitude. Each intro seems vastly different from the last, the jingly, up beat guitar of Around The World sounding like Franz-Ferdinand while they blend punchy Weezer-esque power chords with an intricate melody vaguely reminiscent of R.E.M. in Find Me. 

At the same time, the quartet maintain that lyrical charm which characterises their material, demonstrating yet again that there's no harm in repeating a line if it sounds fucking great. I mean, I'm clueless as to what "Just like a reverend, like a reverend on the radio" means but they sing it so many times that you figure it must mean something deep. WALLS stands for We Are Like Love Songs so you'd guess that love is a major theme of the Followills' songwriting, but they address it in all manner of styles. Soft ballads are intermingled with stomping anthems, all of which are written from an almost retrospective outlook, older and wiser than on previous records.

You'd never guess they were an indie band.....
As a whole, the album (KOL's 7th) seems more clean-cut and expertly produced than anything they've released previously; every song seems to have been crafted to suit the group's stadium capacity crowds. Where their sound had, in the past, lacked a certain refined smoothness, WALLS is about as smooth as it gets. From the sleepy, melodic piano in Conversation Piece to the Spanishy guitar solo in Muchacho, everything is polished and intricately put together where previous records were a little bit rougher around the edges (intentionally more often than not). This in combination with some incredibly catchy chorus hooks makes the individual tracks far more memorable in their own right. They really do cover all the bases with this one and, if they can keep their cool when the tanked up crowds demand Sex On Fire, they really can put on an incredible show with the wealth of great songs they now have under their belts.

9/10






Wednesday 2 November 2016

Pop Punk Invasion: Greenday, Blink 182 and Sum 41 All Return With New Material

Pop punk. The genre of the 90s teenager, the genre of garage rehearsals, of baggy tshirts and hair so spiked with gel it could take your eye out. The genre of teenage angst and male mascara. The genre that brought you: 'Everything sucks', 'school is dumb', 'being in a band is a real job mom' and other assorted issues troubling the lives of middle-class suburban, Californian teens.
      For what it lacks creatively, you could argue, it makes up for in its easy-listening quality and 'relatable' charm. Its wave of popularity in the late nineties saw the emergence of three giants of pop-punk: Green Day, Blink 182 and Sum 41 who themselves inspired a generation of bands from  Neck Deep to A Day To Remember, shaping the style of pop music for several years to come. The power chords, simplistic structure and basic harmonies (albeit synthesised within an inch of their lives) of Busted and Avril Lavigne can be directly traced back to the pop-punk movement.
A common or garden pop-punk fanboy
      Green Day's Basket Case, Blink 182's All The Small Things and Sum 41's In Too Deep/Fat Lip respectively were catapulted to anthemic status thanks to plenty of radio airtime and huge commercial success. For many people however, the past is where these bands remain, a Polaroid of the nineties nostalgically belted out in the singalong room of a nightclub at 3am or during a 10 o'clock re-run of American Pie on ITV 2... but ultimately forgotten. This is reflected in the slump of their commercial success. Be this due to alcohol/drug addiction, band falling-outs or a simple inablity to recreate the youthful catchiness of their past records, it can't be known but all three have dropped off the mainstream radar in recent years.
   


Well the giants are back... all three releasing new albums in the past 3 months for a veritable feast of pop-punk. I urge you to have a listen and work out for yourselves if I'm talking bollocks or not.

Sum 41 - 13 Voices

In mainstream circles, Sum 41 would be considered a '2-hit wonder' of sorts. Their SkatePunk masterpiece All Killer, No Filler was never followed by anything nearly as successful, with a combination of personnel changes and Deryck Whibley's alcoholism forcing the band into a hiatus by 2011. However, they return now (with Dave 'Brownsound' Baksh) with the metal-inspired 13 Voices. Despite a generally far heavier sound than fans would be accustomed to, the familiar spoken/shouted SkatePunk verses remain integral.
      This transition towards a more metallic style, with its accompanying fast-paced guitar/drums and more complex composition is pretty well-suited to the Canadians' punk-orientated style. In some songs this comes off brilliantly including Fake My Own Death (one of the record's best tracks) with its Muse-like intro and bridge combining nicely with the more recognisably catchy harmonies in the chorus. The title track 13 Voices too benefits from such a powerful intro. However, this sonic transition seems slightly forced in several of the songs, notably Goddamn I'm Dead Again and The Fall And The Rise, which both lack a memorable hook.

Abandoning the traditional high school-themed lyrical tropes of 'classic' (it feels stupid using that word) pop-punk, the content focuses on Wihbley's battle with and recovery from alcoholism. This imagery can be seen most evidently in War, my favourite track. The music video mirrors this with Whibley literally burning his old stuff: skateboard, guitar (incredibly confusing) and most importantly a bottle of Jack. Very metaphorical.

For fans of the group, it is a known fact that the band (Whibley in particular) have flirted more and more with metal throughout their career with songs like Pain For Pleasure and Bloody Murder but for me, their combined metal-pop-punk sound needs more refinement. 6.5/10

I can say from firsthand experience that they remain good live though. 

Green Day - Revolution Radio

Green Day have undergone a similar reinvention since Dookie and Nimrod, transitioning towards a far more classic rock sound. Revolution Radio is simply a continuation of that, its opener Somewhere Now's intro testament to their inspiration: namely The Who and Cream. Overall though, it's a pretty archetypal Green Day record featuring the familiar muted guitar verses, relatively simple chord progressions, soaring harmonies and generally lots of 'OOOOOHH's in the background. Like it or hate it they are nothing if not consistent. That being said, they are certainly growing (slightly) more adventurous with some pretty complex guitar solos in Revolution Radio and Say Goodbye. 
       The album certainly offers some standout tracks in Revolution Radio, Somewhere Now and Still Breathing. Its also refreshing to hear them explore that rock and roll side further than before.

However, any record they produce will always be inescapably compared  to American Idiot, particularly when there isn't exactly much deviation from their blueprint. And unfortunately its never going to be a favourable comparison for them. Revolution Radio lacks both the political edge and the delicacy (apart from the raw fragility of Ordinary World) of its predecessors. It shines brilliantly through several singles but the record as a whole has not reached past standards. 6/10

Blink 182 - California

Age has been incredibly kind to Blink 182. Over the years they've transitioned from childish teenagers singing anthems about high school, house parties and girls to...... childish 40 year-olds singing anthems about high school, house parties and girls. They've become the obnoxious uncles of the genre. Despite numerous break-ups in the past, this is the first album released under the name 'Blink 182' without founding member Tom Delonge. His replacement, Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba slots into the group seamlessly, bringing significant creative powers of his own.
     
For me, California strikes the perfect balance between experimental and nostalgic. The new synthesizers (in Left Alone for example), guitar arrangements and (slightly) more nuanced lyrics blend with the effortless harmonies and simplistic song structure we can all recognise as 'classic Blink'. In Matt Skiba, they have found a voice pretty much identical to Delonge with one key difference: Skiba can still actually sing and harmonises perfectly with Hoppus. It is these harmonies which are certainly my favourite feature of the album. They shine through in nearly every song and the slight auto-tuning actually makes the voices blend together that extra bit better.
       As well as this, the album really demonstrates the Californian trio's growing lyrical maturity, the highlight being Home Is Such A Lonely Place Without You: the album's version of Down or Stay Together For The Kids. Okay, when I say maturity, this is by Blink 182's standards, you've still got songs like Sober ("I know I messed up and it might be over/ But let me call you when I'm sober") and Kings Of The Weekend ("It's Friday night let's lose our minds") which remain very much in the 'High School' songwriting domain. Of course there's the old "nah nah nah nah nah"s chucked about left right and centre but that's customary really. How they can sing about being Teenage Satellites when they experienced their teenage years over 20 years ago seems baffling but, somehow, not once does it seem out of place. 8/10

All of these factors combine to produce that sound that is unmistakably Blink 182 and that really is their charm. Sure it may not be groundbreaking, but they never try to reinvent themselves, nor do they attempt to emulate other styles. "High School, beer and girls" is what they began with and its what they're bloody well sticking with to this day. And that, ladies and gents, is why California is the only 'Pop-punk' album on this list.