Select Date
The calendar requires Javascript.
Entry
HOT OFF THE PRESS (#5) - Bodies of Water & Russian Red
This is the fifth installment of a weekly first glance at music discovered in the last seven days, whether it be just-released, just-leaked, or some long-lost gem that has remained under the radar. Search for "HOT OFF THE PRESS" in our search engine to the right to see the previous four editions of this Wednesday column.
Bodies of Water – A Certain Feeling
Released July 22 on Secretly Canadian.
We’ve all seen flashes of Arcade Fire’s influence in the music scene these past few years, and it’s hard to believe it’s been almost four years since Funeral took us all by storm. But rarely has an album truly jumped out and demanded to follow in the bombastic footsteps of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne’s Canadian outfit, while still being talented and unique enough not merely to seem like parrots. But A Certain Feeling has that quality to it, as it’s flamboyant and very, very large in sound, all the while featuring dueling male and female vocals, steady percussion, and the occasional classic rock-esque guitar riff.
Bodies of Water, shockingly, are not from Canada, and they’ve amassed quite a fine collection of songs on A Certain Feeling, whose nine tracks seem like plenty, but not too much. It’s somewhat difficult to find standout tracks, but not because there aren’t many excellent tracks—it’s just hard to find ones that are head and shoulders above the rest, so solid is the album as a whole. If I had to declare the album’s best track, though, I might be compelled to nominate “Under the Pines,” a six-minute wave of accelerated energy whose chorus is bound to rattle around your head for hours. Also acting as peaks for this album are the softly-vocaled “Only You,” and “Water Here,” with its dance-worthy horn breakdown.
If there’s any complaint about the album, it’s that it takes a while to truly embrace, as Bodies of Water can at first sound like just another twee-ish collective that impresses only with the number of instruments they utilize—this worry, though, quickly abates when the strength and sheer brutality of some of the songs materializes. By the time the somberly hopeful “The Mud Gapes Open” closes out the album, it’s more than clear that this band—which is still very early in their career, and without much buzz—will eventually shed those Arcade Fire comparisons and start forging their own enviable identity.
Russian Red – I Love Your Glasses
Released June 28 on Eureka (Spain).
It’s a rare event when the first minute of the first track of a newly-discovered artist grabs you so thoroughly that you're genuinely excited for the experience of the rest of the album. But that’s exactly what happened with Madrid-based Russian Red, as the idiosyncratic vocals of Lourdes Hernández in lead-off track “Cigarettes” introduced an intriguing new talent—someone who could even challenge Joanna Newsom for vocals that satisfy either because of or despite their strangeness. Given that all these expectations were building within I Love Your Glasses’ first two minutes, imagine the let-down when I found out that all that idiosyncrasy in Hernández’s voice was only temporary, and that the rest of the album features a more-straightforward sound that, though very nice, struggles to differentiate itself from the dozens of other cutesy-coy singers producing clever music these past five years.
Now let me get this straight: I Love Your Glasses is a nice little album, and I’ll keep listening to it. Songs such as bouncy “They Don’t Believe” (which is positively Feist-ian in its pop goodness) and heartfelt tearjerker “Kiss My Elbow” buoy a solid and mostly-satisfying collection; also notable is “Take Me Home,” which is practically radio-ready in its sugary simplicity. Despite these pros, plaguing the album is a notable lack of urgency, as Russian Red can fall into bouts of laziness and coffee shopism, and nobody needs any more of that. So the words of wisdom for the listener are twofold: #1 if you listen to I Love Your Glasses, start with track two so you don’t get your hopes too high, and #2 Hernández is only twenty-two years old, so she still has plenty of time to be the world-conqueror I’d hoped her already to be.
By blog contributor Nick Courtright.