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Album
Reviews
To say that
Absinthe Blind have elements in common with their fellow Champaign,
Illinois space-rockers Hum would be an understatement as both utilize
sweeping guitars and distorted melodies to completely overwhelm the
listener, but to say that Rings has any glaring similarities to
You'd Prefer An Astronaut or Downward Is Heavenward would
also be completely off base. Hum's primary songwriter Matt Talbott
actually recorded the tracks for Rings but the album doesn't come
across as syrupy as some of his past engineering works like Shiner's
The Egg. Instead Rings boasts a very full, rich sound of
otherworldly guitars that are perfectly balanced with the intricate
synthesizer melodies and the crisp indie rock percussion to an end that
is quite remarkable when taken in with perspective.
When putting my perceptions of Rings into words there are two
things that are hard to avoid- gushing with praise and over-use of the
word balance. There are so many stylistic and tonal elements
twisted up within nearly all of the 11 tracks on this album that it is
hard to find a clear angle at which to approach it. For the most part it
simply looms ominously, like some sort of over-sized post-modern
sculpture. Siblings Adam and Erin Fein swirl gorgeous vocal melodies
into taught spirals that float effortlessly over the structure anchored
by brother Seth Fein's percussion and Mike Zolfo's creative, propulsive
bass. Tristan Wraight's guitar coats everything in sight with a hundred
degrees of distinction- from the playfulness of the Beatles-y The
Dreamers Song to the sticky sludge of "She Saves / Now I'm Where I
Need To Be". Slivers of drum machine and other synthetic accents surface
occasionally, fighting for face time with trumpets heralding, piano
twinkling and strings serenading. Layers are piled on from all
directions and the players never become content with one approach. The
percussion is all over the map with change ups in cadence and style yet
it is never out of place, never overbearing or overshadowed, and the
guitars and keyboards rotate the melodic lead.
Although Absinthe Blind has stripped down to two guitars on Rings
from the three-guitar wash of their last album The Everyday
Separation, the guitars remain the oxygen on which the band's
atmosphere primarily burns. Compared to previous efforts the band's
sound is huge on Rings, due in large part to the heavy-handed
production team of Talbott and psych/space guru Keith Cleversely, whose
psychadelic knob twisting has bettered efforts by the likes of Mercury
Rev and The Flaming Lips in addition to Talbott's own Hum. Fans of the
cosmo-rock game will no doubt be in awe of the album's squeaky clean,
non-stick Teflon sound but the final mix combines too many elements to
be pigeon-holed. Much like renaissance rockers such as Sigur Ros,
Absinthe Blind amalgamate melodies that are fiery and bittersweet with
rhythms that are hypnotic and exuberant and grooves that are melancholic
and deep. The entire album is a genuinely cathartic experience.
Considering the fact that it is amazingly complete and robust of sound,
influence and scope, not to mention that the band was already a personal
favorite of several staff writers, if this album doesn't make the top
five of LAS's Best of 2003 list I'll be aghast. Rings is
one of the most breathtaking albums of any genre to be released in the
past year and will floor fans of Spiritualized, Saint Etienne, Radiohead,
Yo La Tengo, My Bloody Valentine or any other notable band of the past
decade. This album is beautiful.
~
Monique Lebreau
It's hard to be
floored - honest-to-god, outright floored - by a record you aren't
introduced to. I've been lucky enough to have the pleasure, albeit
mostly when I was 12 and had an allowance, and could therefore
rationalize dropping $15 on something I thought I'd heard mentioned by
Billy Corgan in an interview once. Now that I'm all grown up, though,
and pay federal taxes and can be drafted and all, the chance to get
sonically cold-cocked by a band who isn't Radiohead gets slimmer and
slimmer the more bands I have recommended to me, from one source or
another. And I'll be honest - I'd heard about Absinthe Blind before,
from friends of mine to whom the band is local. They hadn't said
anything quantitative about them, though, and certainly nothing about
the contents of the album just released on Mud Records, Rings, so
when I got the album in to review, I was surprised to note that Matt
Talbott, former HUM frontman and current Centaur mainstay - two of my
favorite bands of all time - had teamed up with Keith
"Spiritualized/Flaming Lips" Cleversley to run the decks. So I expected,
being the cynic that I am, to be able to pick out the work of talented
producers in a competent-to-good local band's work. Happily - amazingly
- confoundingly - Absinthe Blind are more than happy to hand my ass
directly back to me, pre-kicked.
The first draft
of this review consisted of me just typing "WHAT THE HELL! WHAT IS THIS!
THIS IS - DAMMIT! THIS IS FANTASTIC" a whole bunch, and while that's
overkill, it's entirely attributable to that inital shock of hearing
something so deliciously juxtaposed to the rest of indie rock. The first
song, "The Break (It's Been There All This Time)," starts off with 30
seconds of ambience, after which the organ patch from "Everything in its
Right Place" is used to create a cut-up riff, and after some processed
drum machine starts ticking, the singing starts - and that's when
the inertia hits. The guys in this band can sing, people. We're
talking Sting-Bono-Peter Gabriel "flag-waving staring-into-the-stadium
thrown-panties-dodging frontman" singing - strident, eager, polished
singing that has nothing in common with either the off-handed drawling
of indie rock bands of yore, Kevin Shields' quiet sussur, or even, say,
Swervedriver's audibly-mixed vocal delivery - this is a voice that,
given radically different (and infinitely more unfortunate)
circumstances, could sell SUVs or duet with Michelle Branch.
I don't know
how to adequately explain this without using references that will
automatically be labeled unhip - it's like suddenly being in a world
where Peter Gabriel didn't leave Genesis and
found the Infinity Gauntlet and married Jonny Greenwood and moved to
outer space and hand-built analog Moogs. Jefferson Starship are probably
listening to this album and crying. It makes me want to get a vocal
coach. Remember how awesome guitar solos suddenly were the first time
you heard Siamese Dream, even though Corgan was all into Queen
and Journey and whatever? That's the kind of awesome this is. And the
production - God, the production - Rush would probably pay ten million
dollars to sound this good. This whole album sounds like it's coming
from the moon. The instrumentation is rarely anything grandiose, despite
a few guest trumpet spots and whatnot, but the songs have a density and
weight that would bely that. Cleversley's previous work with
Spiritualized has its thumbprints all over this album, except that the
songs he has to work with this time around aren't boring.
Quite the
opposite, really, with only the possible exception of the
just-a-little-too-tongue-in-cheek "The Dreamers Song" (in which "It's
our turn to write the Beatles song / So you can sing along / And I can
leave this," et al, is sung over a dead-on Rubber Soul-era chord
progression on a piano - cute, sure, but not three minutes' worth of
cute, which is how long it takes to get really good). These songs have
their roots in not only The Beatles, but also Simon and Garfunkel and
The Beach Boys, as well as whichever guitar-centric wall-of-sounders
inspired the guitarists in this band to buy stock in Big Muff. The
results are wonderful - you end up with songs like "Shields," which
starts off with Mates of State-esque boy/girl harmonies over an acoustic
guitar - which smash directly into thick-soled multitracked guitars
supporting a syrup-thick My Bloody Valentiney guitar loop. Or there's
"Do You Know What You Mean to Me," which cuts up sampled guitar and
drums and unrolls rumbly bass-synth over them - the vocals and lead
guitar come in, slowly and tentatively, sounding not tacked-on but
cautious, and by the time you realize there's piano and little
beepy stuff starting to come in too, the drums have already picked
up and the song crescendoes into a shimmering beach-party-on-Venus
swell. While the lack of true dynamism is occasionally a little
dissapointing - no "Every Rose Has its Thorn" to follow an "Unskinny
Bop" here - it should be implicit that this album serves its one purpose
ridiculously well.
What can we
learn from this experience, then - from my gape-jawed introduction to
Absinthe Blind? Two things, I feel - one is to always listen to your
friends when they recommend a band to you, just in case - but the other,
more important one, is that as good as the "Jed Clampett Striking Oil"
feeling of finding something new can be, it's often infuriating when you
realize that your diamond in the rough isn't getting the press they
deserve. Absinthe Blind should be touring nationally on the strength of
this album; they should be getting write-ups. If my general ignorance
towards their talent previous to this review is an indicator that
they're still working their way to the top, then let me be the first to
tell all of you this: This band does not deserve to go unheard.
~
Steve
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I was recently introduced to Absinthe Blind by a friend of mine, and I’m
extremely grateful! He’s graciously asked for my opinion, and it’s a pleasure to
do so with a band like this.
My musical tastes have always leaned in the heavier direction, but it’s an
album like this (Rings) that makes one more well-rounded and musically diverse.
As far as the basics are concerned, this group of musicians is well above the
present day norm as far as talent is concerned. No cookie-cutter riffs or the
evident “radio single” goals here. It’s unique, with hints of everything from
Pink Floyd to Boston. Atmospheric is a word that comes to mind, but in no way in
a “Yanni” sense.
It’s more than background music, the vocals diverse and the harmonies extremely
rich, with a definite electric edge in all the appropriate places. There’s not a
song that I wanted to skip, and it was very easy to let play over and over. In
my mind, it’s an ideal listen over a great stereo system, because the music is
very layered, and the more of the depth you can get, the better!
~ Bob Lewerke
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Absinthe Blind(homepage)
Videos
parasol.com
catalog.songsearch.net
Interviews
undertheradarmag.com
somewherecold.com
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Grace Hotel
Overall rating:
The Everyday Seperation
1 Gentleman's C
(3:54)
2 Nation Loved Separation (3:49)
3 Experience Is the Name Everyone Gives to
My Mistakes
4 Antarctica (3:07)
5 Two Leading In (4:11)
6 Vanity Calls (5:02)
7 Streamlined (1:53)
8 Daydream Set (4:40)
9 Rising (3:36)
10 You Should Get Out More (7:41)
Album Reviews
There are two ways bands
deal with their place in the world: Some look at an existing niche and
dive in head first, indulging in all the ready-made conveniences that come
with an existing style. Absinthe Blind, however, takes the alternate, and
much more difficult, route on Everyday Separation, as the band
stubbornly avoids falling into a niche and instead forces the world to
wrap itself around its music.
It’s an artistic decision
that pays off large dividends for Absinthe Blind. Though it’s the band’s
first platter for Parasol’s Mud Records imprint, the band’s already made
quite a stir in its indie-rock hometown of Champaign-Urbana, Ill., with a
solid back catalog and a word-of-mouth following that stretches across the
country. The band’s latest set isn’t going to disappoint any of its
following, and what’s more, the band also stands to pick up more than a
few new fans, as Everyday Separation is its most mature to date.
There’s a certain timeless quality about this album that, even if it was
released in the mid-’80s or early ’90s, ensures Absinthe Blind a bit of
that powerful, long-lasting sound every band wishes they could come up
with.
Led by an enchanting
mixture of Adam Fein’s gruff and smoky male vocals and Erin Fein’s more
candy-coated ones, there’s understated complexities in the band’s songs.
Like the Feins’ vocals seamlessly intermeshing, the band calls up
simple-sounding sing-alongs only to make listeners suddenly discover the
interplay between a bass line and a rhythm guitar’s hidden panache. On
this record, Absinthe Blind proves it’s one of the few acts that can make
stripped-down guitar numbers ("Streamlined") sound as deep as its complex,
electronic-haunted ambiance sound natural ("Experience is the Name
Everybody Gives to My Mistakes"). Anyone with an ear for the past decade
and a half’s music will have a field day with Everyday Separation,
as the band’s able to allude to everything from the cascading guitars of
R.E.M. to the rich, looming atmosphere of the new-face Radiohead, while
stopping off at countless checkpoints in between: U2, INXS and poppy Cure
albums. Absinthe Blind does it with a gentle enough touch as to make its
well-picked influences only shadows deep below murky waters whose surfaces
dance with reflections of the band’s own light.
Anyone who thinks the spheres of intellectual and pop-driven emotional
rock are mutually exclusive needs to pick this album up and prepare to
watch worlds collide, as does anyone who thinks ambient electronic
overtones need to be pretentious and repressive (ahem, Thom Yorke). While
it’s a few strokes of brilliance short of genius, Everyday Separation
is everything all-encompassing alternative/indie rock should be.
~
Matt Schild
The Everyday
Separation could be seen as an attempt to bridge the gap between indie
rock and the radio-friendly "alternative" crowd. All of the songs seem
quite original at first, but many of them melt into bland alt-rock blah at
the halfway point. Among those that don't are the slow, spaced-out
"Experience is the Name Everyone Gives to my Mistakes" and "Nation Loved
Separation", which combines Radiohead's "The National Anthem" with U2's
stadium-rock style. As much as I would like to say that the disc forges
the essential link between indie rock and its more robust broadcast
cousin, The Everyday Separation ultimately comes across as too
glossy and too bland to really score points
~
JK |
