Zeus - Say Us... 54/100

People often use the slang term “vanilla” to describe things that are boring, unadventurous, plain, etc. The problem with the term is that vanilla can be quite a delicious flavour, especially when it’s derived from real vanilla bean for homemade desserts. This being the case, I hesitate to use the word to describe this Toronto quartet’s debut long-player.

I could call it oatmeal, but even then, I’ve eaten some very flavourful oatmeal, so let’s kick it down a notch. What Zeus have created here is akin to a cold bowl of plain oatmeal. I’m not trying to be especially mean; I’m trying to draw a comparison here that conveys just how unoriginal and tired the sound of Say Us is.

The album’s all-over-the-map-ness indicates that Zeus just hasn’t settled on a sound yet. They want to be too many things at once, and they’re doing it in such a heavy-handed way that the whole thing just comes off as derivative. Most of Say Us falls somewhere between the Strokes and Sloan, but Zeus lack both the aloofness of the former and the charm of the latter to make the sound work, not to mention that they have neither of their knack for melody. Incidentally, the cheapest Strokes imitation here is certainly “Kindergarten,” on which singer Mike O’Brien puts on his best Julian Casablancas impression to croon the utterly empty phrase “all I want to do is clap, all I want to do is sing.”

When they aren’t channeling the spirits of their two primary influences, Zeus are ripping off other artists even more thoroughly. “The Renegade” is pure Beck, from the song’s opening guitar drawl through to the meandering guitar solo in the middle - hell, O’Brien even does his damnedest to sound like Beck himself. Elsewhere, “I Know” sounds like an OK Go b-side that just wasn’t catchy enough to make the album.

But in the end, it comes down to this: a good album is either engaging in a way that pushes boundaries and challenges the listener or it forgoes experimentalism for sheer melody and hooks. In some very rare cases, it can do both, but unfortunately for Zeus, it cannot do neither.

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me [Disc Three]... 79/100

So maybe, now that I’ve been through the entire album, I should offer up some final conclusions about this album.

First, Have One On Me is incredibly consistent; seriously, there isn’t a bad track on the album. It’s a testament to Newsom’s songwriting ability that even the tracks that go longer than they should have a melodic spark that keeps them from ever going stale.

Newsom’s only failure here is to self-edit. Without an overarching concept or theme to tie the three albums together, it seems pointless to have released them all at once. Why not space them out so that listeners could focus their attention on just one at a time? Or, even better, get really critical and pare the songs that are good but not stellar down to a truly amazing double album, or a pair of single ones.

But it’s okay: What Newsom lacks in self-control she makes up for with track sequencing that could only be the work of someone who composes and arranges music. Her skillful hand in the matter ensured not only that none of the three discs was a dud, but that each of the discs was given a beginning, middle, and end. Each disc of Have One On Me works both as a single entity and as part of the greater album, which is important for fans who just don’t have two hours to spend hunkered down with it.

Have One On Me is more a showcase for Newsom’s consistency and immense talent than a superb, insular work of art. It doesn’t quite match the heights hit by previous album Ys, but that’s okay: Newsom has proven that she’s here to stay, and the next album could be her masterstroke.

Overall: 81/100

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me [Disc Two]... 82/100

Don’t ask me which disc of Joanna Newsom’s fantastic Have One On Me is musically the best; I couldn’t tell you. She’s sequenced her albums in such a way that not only do each of the three discs work as an individual album with a beginning, middle and end, but the standout tracks are so evenly spaced over the three discs that there’s nary an argument to be made which of the three is made up of better songs.

Why then, if the songs themselves are equally rewarding and engaging, does disc two seem to captivate me more than disc one? It could only be the clever track sequencing.

Disc two begins with “On A Good Day,” by far the shortest song to be found Have One On Me, and it works effectively as a short introduction to the disc. The sweet ditty ends too soon, but being that it’s followed by the joyful, horn-aided waltz of “You and Me, Bess,” the listener needn’t fret too long.

The disc’s most seamless transition might be that between “Jackrabbits” and album highlight “Go Long,” who share a similar lyrical theme that the latter picks up from where the former left off. The cascading harp of “Go Long” brings the listener to album-closer “Occident,” whose sombre tone and minor chords truly feel like a farewell, which only serves to further accentuate the disc’s cohesion and perfect sequencing.

Disc two is also the shortest of the three discs, by around nine minutes. That the delicate centrepiece “In California,” whose sparse harp plucks are punctuated by a rolling timpani, is the longest track on disc two speaks to that succinctness. This brevity, like the disc’s opening track, leaves the listener wanting more and thus, might be the most effective of Have One On Me’s three discs.

Just don't call it the best.

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me [Disc One]... 80/100

Joanna Newsom has come a long way from her days as The Milk-Eyed Mender, when she was known equally for her vocal idiosyncrasies as for her musical brilliance. For many listeners, her voice was a stumbling block that just couldn’t be overcome.

Her 2006 follow-up, Ys, was an epic, orchestrated affair that saw the singer tone down her high-pitched nasality in favour of a more “Bjorkian” timbre. The album was far less divisive and met with near-universal acclaim.

Those looking for another epic are in luck: Have One On Me is a whopping triple album that, at six lengthy songs apiece, is a veritable musical feast that matches the intimacy of Newsom’s first record with the scope of her second.

Disc one is opened by “Easy,” a dramatic song that almost sounds written for the stage with it’s constantly ascending and descending scales and quickly shifting moods. Jabs of flute and horns nearing the end of the track give the track added dramatic flair.

The eleven-minute title track exemplifies Newsom’s knack for keeping the listener ever-intrigued: clever melodic twists, multiple song movements and dynamic, soft-loud vocals ensure that not a minute of the monumental song drags.

Joanna Newsom’s hook is that she imbues her songs with a lingering sense of melodic familiarity while always seeming strikingly unique musically, most notably on the gorgeous tip-toe of disc highlight “’81.” Newsom wears her influences on her sleeve, but never crosses the line between resemblance and plagiarism. On the rollicking first half of the piano-led “Good Intentions Paving Company,” she channels the charm and effervescence of a young Joni Mitchell, while the sombre and melodic “No Provenance” whiffs faintly of Kate Bush, albeit without her synthesized sound.

Of all six tracks here (which average more than seven minutes apiece), only closer “Baby Birch” drags slightly, and it’s only partially salvaged around the six minute mark, when a hand-clap suddenly turns into an enjoyably uptempo, harmonized ending.

On the whole, though, disc one of Have One On Me is a cohesive and consistent affair that sets the plot of the album in motion. And though it could arguably stand as a great album on its own, disc one’s sense of intimacy and spaciousness is best enjoyed as a prelude to the rest of Have One On Me, and incidentally, on headphones.

Xiu Xiu - Dear God, I Hate Myself... 79/100

Xiu Xiu has been one of the mostly quietly prolific bands of the 2000s. Since 2002, Jamie Stewart’s baroque experimental pop outfit has been not making headlines making consistently rewarding avant-pop albums punctuated by Stewart’s spine-tingling wail and raw production style.

Dear God, I Hate Myself is no exception to Stewart’s rule of excellent albums, but there are two things missing in this collection of fifteen songs that just won’t stop niggling me: cohesion and spontaneity.

The former is forgivable. While I prefer an album that holds me close while it sashays around moods, tempos, chords and rhythms, I’ll take a consistent if not meandering collection of experimental pop songs any day of the week.

The latter is less so. Stewart has obviously matured over the last eight years, but his music reflects that maturity in an obvious way that hinders the album emotionally. On Dear God, I Hate Myself, Stewart has seemingly eschewed noise, atmosphere and catharsis in favour of precision in the form of relatively uncluttered, straightforward three-minute songs.

In the case of most artists, this would be a good thing, but not for Xiu Xiu; their characteristic emotion-driven caterwaul was one of the band’s best distinguishing features. Like Bright Eyes before him, Stewart was able to express himself almost without restraint, which for the listener was strangely co-cathartic (if that is a thing). It follows, then, that the most unfettered songs, like the jerky “House Sparrow” and the mid-tempo stomp of “The Fabrizio Palumbo Retaliation,” are among the strongest here.

That said, there are no filler tracks here, so yeah, Dear God, I Hate Myself is another success for Xiu Xiu. But with just a little more of that unbridled expression, it could’ve been even better.

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra - Kollaps Tradixionales... 89/100

I enjoy film scores, but I don’t listen to them in my spare time. As companion pieces to film narratives they can be utterly bewitching and lovely, but independent of visuals, I often find them to be pleasant background music at best, and dragging at worst. It is in this same vein of opinion that I also find instrumental rock music to be unappealing, and often, cheesy and overbearing as well.

And so, it was with a happy heart (and engrossed mind) that I first listened to Kollaps Tradixionales in its entirety. The newest incarnation of Silver Mt. Zion has created a cinematic masterstroke with this, their sixth studio LP, one that is variously tense and hauntingly ethereal, peppered with feverish squalls of swirling strings and distorted guitar.

The album is bookended by two fifteen-minutes epics; opener “There is Light” and grand finale “‘Piphany Rambler,” both go through stages of gently building tension and rolling mid-tempo laments before bursting into a melodic storm of strings and Efrim Menuck’s baritone wail. The band’s creativity and adeptness at turning musical complexity into emotional effectiveness is exemplified throughout the album, especially five minutes and twenty seconds into “There is Light” when, over his band’s cacophonous 3/4 waltz, Menuck desperately wails in staccato syncopation “there ain’t no truth but the no truth and there ain’t no thing but the nothing.”

While the album has only one track under six minutes, these songs never rest on a repeated phrase for long before twisting the tempo, melody or arrangement to create a new, dynamic movement in their ever-changing songs. Kollaps Tradixionales is an album on which the band’s proficiency, creativity, and sheer exuberance are overwhelmingly present, and whose quality should go mostly unmatched this year.

Lightspeed Champion - Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You... 74/100

Sometimes a catchy pop song is just a catchy pop song, and nothing more. It’s not going to change the world, but you’re going to enjoy listening to it a couple of times before it gets set aside to be obscured by better albums with a longer shelf-life.

Enter Lightspeed Champion, the king of said catchy pop songs. Devonté Hynes’ second solo album since leaving his former band the Test Icicles is a varied smorgasbord of ear candy centred around his theatrical melodies and exuberant, boyish voice.

Appropriately titled Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You, the album begins on maybe the darkest note Hynes is capable of. Shimmering synths and mid-tempo bass plucks take the listener to the two minute mark of opener “Dead Head Blues,” whereat the listener begins a dramatic and bouncy journey through the pop soundscape of the 2000s: first single “Marlene” has the faint disco tinge and aching strings that mark the work of Montreal’s Islands; “Faculty of Fears” features dainty string plucks reminiscent of Andrew Bird; “Madame Van Damme” is punctuated by a hollered chorus straight out of the repertoire of 00s British groups like the Cribs or the Libertines; even the reverb-y strum of “Sweetheart” bears momentary resemblance to the shaky charm of Lifted-era Bright Eyes.

This shouldn’t suggest that Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You is plagiarized; these are compliments. Devonté Hynes employs classic pop moves that have been proven effective by the multifaceted pop of the new millennium, and uses them well.

Life is Sweet! Nice to Meet You isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch of the mind, but it’s a tasty, varied mix of “snack” songs for the peckish listener. If you’re hungry for something more lastingly satisfying, you’d do better to look elsewhere.

The Game - The R.E.D. Mixtape... 68/100

The Game is the thinking man’s thug, a reflective, ponderous character who considers all sides of an issue so carefully that he often makes a bold, bridge-burning move only to renege less than a month later and wholly embrace another point of view. Does that make him “fake”? Only if being contemplative enough to continually grow makes one so.

It is thusly that the Game’s first two albums, The Documentary and Doctor’s Advocate, were thoroughly absorbing affairs that made up for solid-if-not-stunning tracks with consistently thoughtful lyrics that often painted vivid and emotional mental pictures. So excuse me if, even after the disappointment of 2008’s LAX, the R.E.D Mixtape gets me just a little excited for this year’s forthcoming The R.E.D. Album.

The rap mixtape is typically regarded as practice for the event that is the full-length album, and the R.E.D. contains enough quality that it should set more than a few tongues wagging for the studio album’s spring release. The one-two punch of openers “Cigar Music 2” and “Bang Along” are pure, gangster-rap gold: the former features the MC spitting a nostalgic verse over a syncopated piano riff, while the latter is an anthemic street tale complete with the tinkle of a toy piano and a sampled soul refrain.

“Better on the Other Side,” Game’s tribute to Michael Jackson, is as touching as syrupy R&B sung by the likes of Chris Brown, Usher, Mario Winans and Boyz 2 Men can be, but there’s something to be said about Game’s verse on the song. His lyrical tribute to MJ, in which he recalls imitating the Jackson 5 with his brothers, speaks volumes about the powerful and inspirational influence that Michael Jackson had on an emerging generation of young African-Americans that the white media and public couldn’t possibly understand.

Unfortunately, the R.E.D. Mixtape suffers from a sagging, derisive latter half, but that’s understandable: mixtapes like these serve as a dumping ground for tracks that the artist feels just aren’t good enough to keep around as future singles or album tracks. Yet even through the cheesy, guest-hampered second half, Game holds his own lyrically, relieving any fear that his eccentric narratives might be losing their effectiveness.

So, as far as serving the purpose of getting listeners excited about a forthcoming full-length studio album, the R.E.D. Mixtape is successful. But a proper album, it ain’t.

Peter Gabriel - Scratch My Back... 20/100

Conceptually intriguing and soundly curated, the S.S. Scratch My Back was supposed to be a thing of beauty, but sadly, the ship went under this Tuesday, February 16 almost as soon as it left port.

None of the lives of the 12 original songs aboard the vessel were spared as they were caught in a storm of poor and cliched arrangements that left the songs slow, melodramatic, and worst of all, tediously drawn out.

Reports state that it was as if Peter Gabriel, the shipwright, had paid little to no attention to what made the original songs so likable in the first place. He stripped the songs of their hooks and their intended lyrical meanings, turning them into insipid, leaden versions of themselves.

Of the ship’s passengers, David Bowie’s “Heroes,” which was to turn 33 this year, was the first to go under. Sapped of all it’s original triumph and energy, the song stood no chance of survival as it was bogged down by a lengthy intro that burst into a sappy whirl of synthesized strings.

More devastating, however, was the loss of so many young aboard the ship. Bon Iver’s 3 year-old “Flume” was forced under by Gabriel’s refusal to keep the song’s folky rhythmic sway, while the Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage,” also 3, had it’s original organ tension replaced by lazy, conventional strings. It was a horrific six minutes before the song finally drowned, under a noisy chorus that elicited none of the awed reaction the original provoked.

Gabriel’s shoddy workmanship showed especially when he seemingly missed the entire feeling surrounding some of the passenger songs. The irony of the Magnetic Fields’ cynical and amusing story about “The Book of Love” went overlooked by the ignorant Gabriel, who sung the lyric “the book of love is long and boring” in a weepy, dramatically romantic whisper.

Investigation following the tragedy showed that rather than picking the songs that suited his vessel best and imbuing them with some sort of meaning and musical complexity, he configured a trendy, calculated set of songs that would make his vessel look stylish and in touch with modern shipbuilding.

Instead, his laziness and overwhelming sense of self-importance in the execution of the task were made obvious by the S.S. Scratch My Back’s complete inability to float when immersed in water.

Robert Pollard - We all got out of the army... 79/100

Former Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard’s a very busy person, and so are you if you’ve been keeping up with his body of work. Between his solo venture and his bands the Boston Spaceships and Circus Devils, the man released nearly a dozen records in 2008 and 2009.

The best part? Pollard’s hit the vein of form he was in in the mid-to-late-90s, when he released classics like Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes and Mag Earwhig! in his prolific cult band Guided By Voices. The songs on his first of many projected 2010 long-players, We all got out of the army are as energetic, as lo-fi and, most importantly, as engaging as his best work.

Songs like “Silk Rotor,” “Post-Hydrate Update,” “Cameo of a Smile” and “His Knighthood Photograph” are all buzzy, sing-spoken hits akin to “Watch Me Jumpstart” or “Tractor Rape Chain,” albeit just shy of those songs’ anthemic quality and ramshackle charm. And while excellent, Pollard-signature slow-burners like “Red Pyramid” and “Wild Girl” never come close to hitting the triumphant heights of “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” (though, you know, very few songs at all do).

At times, it can be disappointing that Pollard’s so prolific: his albums, which come so fast, they rarely afford the critics’ attention and have become less of an event with each passing release.

But those paying attention are getting a treat. Pollard is destined to go down as one of the most important songwriters of the “indie” generation, even if only half his recorded output gets its proper due.

If you haven't been paying attention, it's never too late to start. And you could do much worse than starting a record as consistently rewarding as We all got out of the army.

Yeasayer - Odd Blood... 60/100

It took a long time to come to a verdict on Odd Blood, Yeasayer’s follow-up to their not-awesome 2007 LP All Hour Cymbals. Its quality is just too damn dependent on the listener’s mood and critical lenience, making it hard to make any sort of unbiased, bona fide judgement of the album.

So, how happy are you right now? Those of you feeling downright ecstatic, this album will blow your mind. First single “Ambling Alp” is a rollicking, sun-speckled fountain of melody and positivity that advocates (I kid you not!) sticking up for yourself, while the rest of the album is similarly sprinkled with high-pitched call and response vocals, “ooh-oohs,” and shimmering synths over uptempo, hand-clap-aided tracks. It’s charmingly quirky and melodically engrossing - the hallmarks of any good pop album.

Besides, it’s the kind of pop music that offers a little more, right? The kind of post-Merriweather Post Pavilion, post-Dear Science pop that marries past incarnations of the bubblegum genre with the experimental, genre-hopping nature of music in the digital age.

But take a second listen, now that your momentary euphoria has worn off. Aren’t those lyrics annoying? When they’re even coherent, they’re nothing but reductive cliches and over-dramatic statements about universal themes like love, sexuality and life that are so vague, they’re rendered meaningless.

Listen again to those “engrossing melodies”. Suddenly, the soaring, 80s-style choruses of tracks like “Madder Red” and “I Remember” feel cheap and gimmicky, if not downright irksome. The quirks that seemed so charming through rose coloured lenses are gone, and all that’s left are grandiose musical statements that have all the sentiment of a dollar store Birthday Card.

What’s more maddening is that you just realized that Yeasayer is really ripping off a bunch of your favourite bands. Rather than progressing as artists, the band is just absorbing more and more of the musical zeitgeist and churning out better imitations of the bands making real strides forward. Sure, there are hints of Animal Collective here, but where are the challenging time-signatures and dreamy atmospherics that charge that band’s music with real emotional tension and depth? And where All Hour Cymbals mimicked the sound of AC’s middle period, isn’t Odd Blood just aping the band’s post-2007 output?

The only treats here regardless of mood are found in the metallic churn of album opener “The Children” and the atmospheric-but-concise finale “Grizelda,” which, despite lyrics as dim-witted as the rest of the album’s, strikes a chord somewhere that incites disappointment that Yeasayer couldn’t inject some real quality between these excellent bookends.

But hey, cheer up... There, doesn’t Odd Blood sound good again?

Hot Chip - One Life Stand... 67/100

Hot Chip has alway had a kitschy, novel feel to them that always got in the way of my ever taking their music very seriously. The band, along with fellow glitch-poppers Cut Copy, have always seemed less concerned with music than with style, which they manifested by adorning the album covers with campy, 80s-style “futuristic” and making art-y videos that screamed “i’m quirky!” Even the music itself seemed more focused with establishing an aura than with constructing songs.

On One Life Stand, the band seems to have cut ties somewhat with their ironic, idiosyncratic past, to varying degrees of success.

On the bright side, the band’s newfound focus on summoning emotion from music is refreshing, and showcases a side of the band heretofore unseen. “Hand Me Down Your Love” is a bouncy little ditty, decorated by stabs of piano and washes of violin and static that give the song added depth. “Alley Cats” is a similarly likable song, with band members Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard layering their forlorn melodies into haunting rounds and harmonies.

These successes, unfortunately, are few and far between. The down side to the band’s maturing is that the majority of One Life Stand is dull, repetitive and dragged out. Despite being only ten songs long, the average track here is a lengthy five minutes’ duration, plenty long enough to, say, lose the listener’s attention on the flavourless title track, or to rankle on ballad “Slush” with it’s annoyingly repeated “humminna humminna” verse phrases.

By losing their quirky idiosyncrasies, the band has also sacrificed what made them even the slightest bit cutting edge. Here, the band teeters precariously on the brink of easy-listening, having imbued their music with emotion that feels disingenuous at best and at worst, downright cheesy.


One Life Stand is the sound of an irony-less, straightforward Hot Chip, but it may just have come at the price of what made them interesting (if not irksome) in the first place.

Hollerado - Record in a Bag... 72/100

Boisterous, male-created, straight-forward power pop is a dangerous genre in which to practice. There are pitfalls aplenty, and just one wrong step can make even the most energetic, well-intentioned album no more than a steamy, 45-minute pile of headache inducing, hit-the-roof-with-a-broomstick tedium.

Luckily, the scrappy Canadian foursome have a lot of important things going for them. The band have been blessed with charm, melodic and guitar chops, and luck in equal measure. In the spirit of being thankful, let’s count the band’s blessings:

1. They haven’t written one perfect cross-over hit for a cellphone or beer ad or something, only to surround it with weepy, lunkheaded ballads and cheap, less catchy imitations of the original (I’m looking at you, The Caesars, Razorlight and The Fratellis). Record in a Bag maintains consistent quality all the way until the end of the record.
2. The band won a battle of the bands-esque contest held by a radio station in Ottawa, Canada that scored them a quarter of a million dollars!
3. They got a distribution deal from Canadian label Arts&Crafts without sounding like one part Broken Social Scene, two parts water.
4. They managed to infuse their straightforward, guitar-driven pop-rock with elements of other genres (Irish traditional/gospel on album standout “What's Everybody Running For? Part III,” for example) without sounding forced or reductive.

Assuming the band keeps in touch with their humble, D.I.Y. roots (the record really does come in a Ziploc bag, complete with confetti and a temporary tattoo) and steers clear of the kind of sterilizing studio sheen that kills many a sophomore effort, the band may just be onto something.

On Record in a Bag, they’re just a better-than-average power-pop band that, if they had a nickel for every time they sang a “doot doo,” would be rich. That, or if they won a quarter-million dollars every time they entered a radio contest, right?

Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here... 87/100

That title is a lie; soul singer/spoken word poet Scott-Heron’s been around since the early 70s. And in the forty years since then, Gil Scott-Heron hasn’t lost an iota of his ability to convey, using only the spoken word, exactly what the man himself is feeling in powerfully emotional and vivid mental images.

If anything, time is on Scott-Heron’s side. It’s made the singer/poet’s voice more gravelly and more evocative than ever, his baritone growl now reflecting the world-weariness expressed by his poetry.

It’s no surprise, then, that I’m New Here, which was begun in 2007 when XL Recordings label owner Richard Russell sought out Scott-Heron to make his first studio LP in 14 years, is a strikingly genuine, emotional record. His solemn reminiscences on family, fearlessness and facing the past are accompanied perfectly here by Russell’s sparse, rhythm-centric production. His gentle, meticulous touch ensures the spotlight always rests wholly on Scott-Heron: a solitary, plucked guitar is all that accompanies him on the title track, while “New York is Killing Me” has nearly no instrumental backdrop besides a snare, a cymbal, and a pair of human hands.

“On Coming From A Broken Home (Part 1),” which samples the surprisingly sombre beginning to Kanye West’s “Flashing Lights,” sets the mood perfectly for I’m New Here, with Scott-Heron acknowledging the lasting effect that his grandmother had on his existence. On subsequent spoken interludes, (woven skillfully by Russell throughout the album,) he takes the time to thank his family for their substantial supporting role in his life and comes to terms with his own limitations. On “Being Blessed,”, he even playfully acknowledges his mortality: “If you gotta pay for things you’ve done wrong, I’ve got a big bill coming at the end of the day,” he claims through an audible smile.

But it’s the stark contrast between Russell’s minimalist compositions and Scott-Heron’s lyrics that make I’m New Here such a thoroughly engaging album. While lyrically, Scott-Heron is boldly trying to assert himself as a man who’s both acknowledged his past transgressions and admitted that he’s relied on the strength of others along the way, he’s sonically isolated, stranded in a sparse and desolate record, facing his own inescapable end. It’s an existential dilemma suggested solely by the compelling tension of words against the accompanying music, an effect not often carried out on record in such a successful and absorbing way.

But I’m New Here is more than just a tense, minimalist ode to existentialism. It’s an album of overwhelming musical and lyrical quality and a statement of continued relevance from an artist that, had the revolution been televised, might have gotten the wide acclaim he so justifiably deserves.

Massive Attack - Heligoland... 69/100

Whether due to the lukewarm reception of 2003’s 100th Window or not, it’s been seven years since Bristol, UK trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack released a studio full-length. And while Heligoland has nothing on the duo’s cinematic 1998 high-point Mezzanine, it’s an often-fascinating collection of songs that sees the band complete their transformation from epic, distortion-loving experimentalists to trip-pop progenitors.

The album’s lengthy guest-list works relatively well here, or at least much better than it did on 100th Window. TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Damon Albarn, former Mazzy Star Hope Sandoval, and electronic frequent-feature Martina Topley-Bird all guest on separate tracks, and only Garvey falls completely flat. It’s not entirely his fault; “Flat of the Blade” is a dull, lifeless track, devoid of either the intense instrumentation of past Massive Attack albums or the absorbing, labyrinthine chord structure of the successful songs that surround it.

The Damon Albarn-featuring “Saturday Come Slow,” for example, is pulled from the edge of listener apathy by a suddenly-desperate chorus in which Albarn yearns “Do you love me?” The swirling nylon guitar pluck of “Psyche” is similarly captivating, but it’s on spacious first single “Paradise Circus” (f. Hope Sandoval) that the duo’s marriage of guest to track is most successful. Sandoval’s sensuous drawl is the perfect companion to the tense piano trickle and handclaps that fade lazily in and out of the song, and the strings that bring the song to a close provide a hint of the cinematic grandeur that characterized Massive Attack’s earlier work without seeming overbearing.

And while it’s too bad that a fair few of these songs are a hint too long, (only two of the ten tracks are much shorter than five minutes long) it’s what most Massive Attack fans have come to expect. This time around, at least there’s no eight minute “Anti-star” to slog through.