Destroyer — “Kaputt”
Upon sitting down to start writing about Destroyer’s fantastic yacht-rock opus Kaputt, I quickly realized that I had no idea where to begin. During my first few listens, I was immediately entranced for reasons beyond my comprehension; I loved what I was hearing as the muted, rainy-day jazz of “Chinatown” emanated from my headphones, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint why that was. Months later, after having Dan Bejar’s ramblings about jaded lovers named Christine and watching ships disappear in the seaside fog soundtrack countless evenings, everything has become clearer. Slightly. Dan Bejar—the presence that ties this whole bizarre affair together—is still an enigma to me, a drunken amalgam of free association visions. His bottomless pit of dry wit gives these songs a very distinct character that elevates them from pretty great to fantastic; that feat alone is enough to write a few pages about, since Kaputt was constructed entirely from 80’s lite-jazz and new age instrumentation that, through the wise composition and production choices by Bejar and Co., here sound impossibly lush without ever feeling forced. This is an album to swim around and lose yourself in, endlessly creative and comically tragic.
The War on Drugs — “Slave Ambient”
Slave Ambient has been in my possession for only a fraction of the time that these other three albums have, but perhaps that’s a testament to the immediately recognizable power that The War on Drugs wield with their music. Where other albums flow and evolve like a short story, this feels like a gargantuan, dusty tome one might find found locked away in a temple. This isn’t because it’s particularly lengthy—it clocks in at about 45 minutes—but because TWOD have more to say, and they know exactly how to say it. Slave Ambient is a carefully crafted psychedelic trip of shimmering, sky-high peaks and far-reaching canyons of sound that feel aged and weathered, all tethered by the ragged, Dylan-esque storytelling of singer Adam Grandaluciel lest it shoot off into space. At its best, it feels as if Slave Ambient encapsulates those breathless moments when you’re standing on top of a mountaintop in a national park, gazing out onto a sprawling landscape that feels more colossal and divine than you’ll ever understand.
Tim Hecker — “Ravedeath, 1972”
Brian Eno first coined the term “ambient music”, referring to it as music that could be “actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener”. But only one minute into Ravedeath, 1972’s opener “The Piano Drop” and it’s easy to see that this won’t be “easily ignored” by any stretch of the imagination. Churning distortion shatters wavering chords into millions of tiny blue crystals. Walls of drone slowly dissolve into vast, tundra-like soundscapes. Some songs seem to rip themselves apart from the inside out with a desperate energy, molecule by molecule. Comparing it to what else I’ve heard of Tim Hecker’s catalogue, this is arguably his most sonically intense record, but it’s one of his most emotionally engaging as well, thanks to the simplicity of Ravedeath’s palette (the base melodies of all of these songs were recorded on an organ in an Icelandic church) and Hecker’s intensely visual composition style. The result, when paired with unyielding waves of distortion, is the sound of entire worlds being torn in two in a constant tug-of-war between beauty and brutality.
mp3 // Tim Hecker - In The Fog I
Cut Copy — “Zonoscope”
How do you create a worthy successor to such a runaway success as In Ghost Colours? The album was such a winning combination of soaring club-ready bangers and blissful ambient interludes that many listeners were curious how Cut Copy could ever top themselves, myself being one such person. But after having Zonoscope in constant rotation since it was released early this year, I’ve been converted to an acolyte of their church.
Zonoscopeis a refinement of IGC in almost every sense. What elements dragged or felt lackluster before have been trimmed back, and their best qualities—stadium-ready choruses, thick layers of shoegaze and nostalgic ambiance—are now honed and highlighted; singer Dan Whitford delivers some of his most ranged and theatrical performances yet; the production is also fantastic, with crisp percussion and perfectly executed builds/climaxes. But in the end, Zonoscope is such a success because it’s exactly the album that a band of this genre and in this point of their career should be making. It’s a sturdy bridge between the directions that Cut Copy wish to explore next and the skills they have already perfected, an immensely satisfying compromise for those who wanted more of the sonic highs that IGC had and those who wanted a popular, well-regarded group to take the opportunity to think outside of the box. It’s a hypnotizing, gorgeous tropical-disco trip that consistently keeps me crawling back for more.
