RobMCFC
Well-Known Member
Voice - Eyeless in Gaza
I’ve mentioned before that I was a relative latecomer to music. I didn’t start buying music until I was 17, and part of the reason was that I was too into other stuff to really care (football, films, books). Hand-in-hand with this reason was that the stuff I heard glimpses of at school or on the TV was just not very interesting. It just seemed to be a load of atonal noise that was designed to disrupt rather than entertain.
But when I did get into music, it was because I liked the melody or the crunching guitars or the interesting instrumentation or I felt that the singer had something worthwhile to say. The reason I mention all of this is because it leads me nicely into my review of this album: in short, it’s not for me. Somebody was obviously having a laugh when they titled this collection Voice, or maybe the admin department were having a bad day and missed out the adjective that preceded it.
This maybe says more about me than the music on offer – you could have probably picked any new wave/post punk English act from 1978 onwards and I’d have said a similar thing. I’m probably in the minority, but I have to be honest with myself and everybody else, so here goes …….
The first 15 tracks are full of atonal singing that doesn’t do anything for my ears, there’s no sense of flow or melody and worst of all, there’s no warmth. It’s new age and it’s cold, it’s electronic and somebody thought it would be a good idea to have a melange of sounds that don’t work well together. It sounds like a bloke (or two blokes) messing about in their bedroom with their new synth and is that the sound of somebody trying to force themselves to be sick in “Seven Years”?
The Michael Stearns album really surprised me in that although it’s mainly synths and there are no words and hardly any chord changes, it had a beautiful warmth to the sound that I feel is lacking here. OK, there are short snatches here and there (e.g. “Through Eastfields”) but not enough to make a difference. Hang on a minute, there’s just been an outbreak of proper singing on “Changing Stations”, I wonder how long that will last? The singing is definitely better from this point onwards, but that wouldn’t be hard given what’s come before. And is that a bit of mandolin on the into to “Welcome Now”? Never mind, it’s gone too soon. When “Evening Music” starts, it sounds like there’s a bit of warmth there and, praise the lord, the sound of some strings! That I have to fight to find such brief moments of joy tells me all I need to know about this album.
I get that it’s trying to be different – the problem is that I can’t take to stuff that tries to be different for the sake of it. I’d rather hear something that is rooted in a tradition such as the blues or rockabilly and then tweaks it a bit, puts an interesting spin on things. But not something that just sounds too alien for me to care. I’m sure fans of Bowie or New Order or a hundred and one new age wannabees will lap this up but sorry @KnaresboroughBlue, this really isn’t for me. It’s a good choice in that, like The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, it’s really out there and different to the other nominations, but come back KISS, all is forgiven! I’m certainly looking forward to what everybody else makes of it.
I know we’ve had a debate about how many times you have to listen to something before you get it, but I can’t subject myself to more than one listen to this. It does have the redeeming feature that most of the songs are mercifully short but unfortunately, they still add up to more than an hour.
I was going to give it a 3 as the first 15 tracks were uniformly painful, but the last 11 tracks were markedly better (in comparison – they are straying into passable background pop territory) and have bumped the score up to 4/10.
I’ve mentioned before that I was a relative latecomer to music. I didn’t start buying music until I was 17, and part of the reason was that I was too into other stuff to really care (football, films, books). Hand-in-hand with this reason was that the stuff I heard glimpses of at school or on the TV was just not very interesting. It just seemed to be a load of atonal noise that was designed to disrupt rather than entertain.
But when I did get into music, it was because I liked the melody or the crunching guitars or the interesting instrumentation or I felt that the singer had something worthwhile to say. The reason I mention all of this is because it leads me nicely into my review of this album: in short, it’s not for me. Somebody was obviously having a laugh when they titled this collection Voice, or maybe the admin department were having a bad day and missed out the adjective that preceded it.
This maybe says more about me than the music on offer – you could have probably picked any new wave/post punk English act from 1978 onwards and I’d have said a similar thing. I’m probably in the minority, but I have to be honest with myself and everybody else, so here goes …….
The first 15 tracks are full of atonal singing that doesn’t do anything for my ears, there’s no sense of flow or melody and worst of all, there’s no warmth. It’s new age and it’s cold, it’s electronic and somebody thought it would be a good idea to have a melange of sounds that don’t work well together. It sounds like a bloke (or two blokes) messing about in their bedroom with their new synth and is that the sound of somebody trying to force themselves to be sick in “Seven Years”?
The Michael Stearns album really surprised me in that although it’s mainly synths and there are no words and hardly any chord changes, it had a beautiful warmth to the sound that I feel is lacking here. OK, there are short snatches here and there (e.g. “Through Eastfields”) but not enough to make a difference. Hang on a minute, there’s just been an outbreak of proper singing on “Changing Stations”, I wonder how long that will last? The singing is definitely better from this point onwards, but that wouldn’t be hard given what’s come before. And is that a bit of mandolin on the into to “Welcome Now”? Never mind, it’s gone too soon. When “Evening Music” starts, it sounds like there’s a bit of warmth there and, praise the lord, the sound of some strings! That I have to fight to find such brief moments of joy tells me all I need to know about this album.
I get that it’s trying to be different – the problem is that I can’t take to stuff that tries to be different for the sake of it. I’d rather hear something that is rooted in a tradition such as the blues or rockabilly and then tweaks it a bit, puts an interesting spin on things. But not something that just sounds too alien for me to care. I’m sure fans of Bowie or New Order or a hundred and one new age wannabees will lap this up but sorry @KnaresboroughBlue, this really isn’t for me. It’s a good choice in that, like The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, it’s really out there and different to the other nominations, but come back KISS, all is forgiven! I’m certainly looking forward to what everybody else makes of it.
I know we’ve had a debate about how many times you have to listen to something before you get it, but I can’t subject myself to more than one listen to this. It does have the redeeming feature that most of the songs are mercifully short but unfortunately, they still add up to more than an hour.
I was going to give it a 3 as the first 15 tracks were uniformly painful, but the last 11 tracks were markedly better (in comparison – they are straying into passable background pop territory) and have bumped the score up to 4/10.