ACE TRACKS: October 2019

I never realized just how addicted I've become to the sun now, at least to feel even the slightest bit productive. It wasn't such a big deal before, as my work schedule always left me with some remaining Sol energy in the day. Now though, with me working a more 'traditional' 9-5 shift, I'm getting home, it's grown dark (if not already dark), and my will power to do anything productive is gone, man, just gone.

Not that there aren't other factors that impede my ability to do much of anything in the evening hours (damn you, Neebs Gaming, and your addictive Cinematic Gameplay videos!), but unlike the summer months, where I could still crank something out before 9pm, my mind totally checks out come 6pm now. Guess it's back to the ultra-early rises to get my writing done then. That seemed to work quite well for me this past winter. Leave me an hour to get in a morning swim too. In the meanwhile, here's the ACE TRACKS for the month of October:


Full track list here.


MISSING ALBUMS:
The Winterhouse - Winter Gardens
Convextion - 2845
Emiliana Torrini - Love In The Time Of Science

Percentage Of Hip-Hop: 0%
Percentage Of Rock: 14%
Most “WTF?” Track: The noisiest outing from Ringo Sheena.

Lots of Phantogram and Ringo Sheena, obviously, what with Patreon Requests eating up a bulk of my review time this past month (the Sheena ones were long overdue requests). Why, you'd almost forget there's things like house, techno, and ambient in here too. Tracks arranged alphabetically, it seems most of the tracks still bunched up together by artist. Huh, my whole deal in doing it my way is to break up the potential monotony of hearing the same artist over and over. Something screwy is afoot this past month, methinks.

Phantogram - Three

Republic Records: 2016

(a Discography Patreon Request from Omskbird)

Every time I say Phantogram out loud, I can't help but say it in a similar manner to how the word 'speakerboxxx' is oft repeated in the OutKast album Speakerboxxx. Like, “Phan-Toe-Gram”. Did the Big Boi influence somehow worm its way into my brain in ways I can't possibly comprehend? That non sequitor out the way...

Like Thanos, the Pop Music Machine is inevitable. Whatever unique traits or style you had will be scrubbed clean by various studio hands for maximum market penetration. Your individual talent will be made to fit predetermined moulds that have proven success rates with as wide a demographic as your handlers feel is possible. This is not some insidious secret only revealed when an unwitting participant has signed their names away. They go into the Machine willingly, hoping to take their brand to commercial heights of success only dreamed of before. It will naturally annoy and even piss-off some hardcore followers that helped nurture an act's rise to prominence from the beginning, but as I said, the process is inevitable.

Not that it isn't possible to make the Machine work for you, but it takes an incredible talent, plus force of personality and will to shine in an industry that disposes of its resources if they don't turn out the expectant results. Even those that do have their time in the limelight are quickly left to the dustbin if a newer, fresher hotness can easily replace them. For real, when was the last time folks cared about a Madonna release?

This isn't a mould I hear Phantogram fitting with Three. For sure they give it their best effort (Sarah Barthel is at times bellowing her soul out, understandable given many of the songs were inspired by the suicidal death of a friend), bringing in professional studio producers and crafting songs with big-huge, wall-of-sound chorus/drops, as was the style at the time (is it still? Please say we've moved on from that). These don't sound like only Phantogram could have made them though. You're Mine could have been done by any number of contemporary starlets as the feature. I sure wouldn't know the difference if I heard it on the work radio. For all the influences of musicians new and old I heard in Phantogram's earlier works, at least I could tell it was Sarah and Josh performing them.

This isn't me condemning the duo though, oh no. If slick anthem pop in the vein of Imagine Dragons is what they wanted to make, then they did it very well, and I'm sure it pleased many fans of this kind of music. It just wasn't made for me, and I have no interest in returning to it anytime soon. Well, maybe Funeral Pyre. That one kinda' felt like the genre-fusion synth-pop act I heard on their earlier works.

I took a listen to one of their recent singles, to hear if they've stayed the course from Three. Yep, that's some big-huge production from Into Happiness.

Phantogram - Voices

Indica: 2014

(a Discography Patreon Request from Omskbird)

I may have oversold my enthusiasm for the Nightlife mini-album. Maybe for Phantogram too? I don't dislike anything I've heard, and find their music worming its way into my brain the more I listen to it, but I can't say I want to re-listen to it. They fall into that nebulous blob of genre interest I think of as the 'This Is Fine' bubble – where every critic's 6/10 records reside. Not that I'd give this such a ranking myself (and even if I did, probably a little higher), but as my music collection balloons and grows, things get lost in the shuffle, including the Random Shuffle feature on my PC. So many songs to 'randomly' choose from, yet it never, ever lands on Fu-Schnickens' Sneakin' Up On Ya? What's up with that? Erm, what I'm getting at is, if Spotify Discovery was to discover me some Phantogram, I'd enjoy it, but wouldn't go out of my way to explore their discography further.

Anyhow, we've flash-jumped a few years, and our intrepid Sarah & Josh duo have hit the big-time, in a low-key sort of way. Tons of tours, tons of festivals. Tons of appearances on late night talk shows (so many Jimmy Fallon performances, just... so many). Tons of nods and approvals within their scene (opening for genre icons M83 couldn't have hurt) and from players outside looking in (yes, Big Boi had taken a liking to them by now). You'd almost think they were half a dozen albums deep into their career with this much promotion behind them, and yet Voices is only their second LP, released half a decade after their first. Dang, dawg and dawgette, you gotta' get into that studio and start cranking out some more music stat, lest your set playlist grow old and stale. Maybe get a major label backing your efforts in the process, for that little extra exposure, really go for the 'pop' in the synth-pop.

I feel like I should like this more. The songcraft is more refined, the production is top-grade, and there's plenty of moments that leap out at me as it plays through. The crunchy guitar action in Nothing But Trouble. The buzzy, punchy bassline in Fall In Love. The percussion in Howling At The Moon (yeah, there's trap snares in there, but oh so much more too). Josh Carter's one-the-nose Peter Gabriel wailing in Never Going Home (whole track sounds like a Peter Gabriel tune, for that matter). There's a few moments that strike me as odd choices, like that same buzzy bassline used in the dream pop of Bill Murray - how can I feel bliss and chill with a sputtering transistor in the background? - but it's hardly detrimental to the album as a whole.

Yet, Voices doesn't grab me the way Eyelid Movies did. It's like, in perfecting their genre fusion, it's turned their neapolitan style into a strict vanilla flavour. But one of those good vanilla flavours, like vanilla bean, or dame blanche.

Phantogram - Nightlife

Bursak Records: 2011

(a Discography Patreon Request from Omskbird)

The debut album's out, the buzz is building, but all that touring is impacting your ability to hop into the studio for another full-length session. Fortunately, the good ol' mini-album option has become quite fruitful in the modern era, a handful of songs all that's needed to be propelled into super-stardom. Why, look at that Skrillex kid, one of the biggest acts of 2011, based almost entirely off a single EP. If he can do it, why not Phantogram? Oh, that whole 'completely different genre and scene' factor, I guess. Yeah, Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel definitely make music of a different style compared to headline festival mosh. I sure didn't hear anything resembling overblown anthems in Eyelid Movies, nothing even hinting at such potential. Guess they'll stay in their lane, the steady rise of synth-pop songcraft within a nurturing indie scene bringing them the fame their later sales numbers indicate. Have I mentioned looking only at Wiki sales charts isn't a good idea to get a full story of a band's development?

The other good thing about making a mini-album is how it keeps things to the point. Eyelid Movies had plenty of good musical ideas about it, but was kinda' rambly in its direction too, one of those LPs where the musicians tend to throw everything at the wall. Such is the case with many debut albums though, muses bursting at the seems to flood out for all to hear. Typically a producer can reign things in, but Phantogram apparently did it all themselves, so here we are. Time to focus your ideas into with surgical precision, then, using what you've learned and build upon it.

Nightlife definitely is that, to such a degree I almost wish this had been longer, exploring these musical ideas and themes for a proper full-length. Sure, the concept is straight-forward enough, one of those inside-out looks at the self-destructive romanticism of hitting up bars and clubs when you're young. I'm sure touring about exposed Sarah and Josh to all manner of ups and downs within their scene, the decadent highs and the dilapidated lows. It's not a specific narrative, mind you, but it does capture the roller coaster of feelings in a night out with an always lingering, nagging doubt of whether your actions mean anything at all. Or maybe I'm reading a bit much into it, but hey, sometimes over-analyzing music half the fun of listening to music. Like, it's practically a mission statement from all those Pitchfork wanna-be clones that existed a decade ago. This is catnip for them! The indie-leaning genre fusion too.

Oh, and of that genre fusion? Yeah, it's still on that synthy indie-rock, dream-pop vein, though less of the wilder leaps into things like funk and soul and whatnot from Eyelid Movies. Again, smaller record, less room to let the muses roam free. Makes for a nice, tight listening experience though, leaving the listener anxious for more. All hail the mini-album, for those who don't have time for artistic bullshit!

Phantogram - Eyelid Movies

Indica Records: 2009

(a Discography Patreon Request from Omskbird)

I didn't know what to expect when I put Discography Reviews up as an option for Patreon Requests. Most likely an obligatory opportunity to fill out some glaring gaps in my own music collection, but just as easily a chance for y'all to expose an act or artist that needed some extra shine in the limelight. I've yet to discern where Phantogram falls on that spectrum. I can't claim I was familiar with the duo prior, but a brief glance through their Wiki indicates they've seen their fair share of activity within the upper echelons of indie-leaning synth-pop stardom. Not top tier, but enough presence to do respectable numbers on sales charts with songs featured in a variety of soundtracks. A nod from Big Boi likely didn't hurt.

They had to start somewhere though, and Eyelid Movies is that start. I'm not so sure I'd call it a breakout, since it didn't land them all the crossover attention they seem to have garnered in the past decade, but it's as solid a debut an act with almost no prior exposure could have hoped for. It establishes a sound unique enough to stand out in an over-crowded indie synth-pop market, but retains enough style and sounds of that scene that can lure in potential curious passer-byes in the rotation of playlists and radio streams.

Of course, my frame of reference in indie synth-pop is woefully small, undoubtedly a huge number of acts others could namedrop that Phantogram are comparable to. It's probably a real sad thing the strongest comparison I can make is Gorillaz, in that I hear a lot of the same genre-fusion going on from track to track in this album (oh man, does As Far As I Can See ever remind me of Plastic Beach-era Gorillaz). Heck, Josh Carter even has a similar croon Damon Albarn 2D's, and shows no qualms in feeding his voice through different effects for that authentic dream pop/digital funk feel. Sarah Barthel's no slouch on the pipes either.

And genre fusion? Oh yeah, there's plenty of that, Phantogram showing little fear in tackling whatever strikes their fancy. The aforementioned dream pop? Here's Turn It Off, All Dried Up and You Are The Ocean for you. Something funkier for your feet? Try Running From The Cops or Bloody Palms for size. In need of intimate glitch-soul? 10,000 Claps is all up on that. Got a hankering for that melodramatic, trip-hop blues that Moby's known for? Then When I'm Small and Futuristic Casket have you covered. Yeah, I pulled a Moby namedrop here. I told you my frame of reference sucks in this genre.

But hey, Eyelid Movies is regardless a strong start to this dive into the Phantogram discography. The album could have used a bit more cohesion between songs for it to truly shine, but it does leave me intrigued in how the story unfolds from here, how gained exposure and experience will form and shape their future releases.