Artist: OneRepublic
Album: Waking Up
Label: Interscope Records
Generally, I don’t listen to the radio. I find it to be bad for my mental well-being. However, due to my rampant absent-mindedness I sometimes forget my mp3 player when I go grocery shopping, and since the steady hum of car tires eventually grows a little unnerving, I will in such cases turn on the radio, cross my fingers, and hope for the best. One magical morning, as I turned the dial of my car stereo, my ears were assaulted by OneRepublic’s “All The Right Moves.”
The chorus of “All The Right Moves” immediately grabbed my attention—in a good way. It is magnificently huge and upbeat, the instrumentation is decidedly rock bandish, and the lyrics are pumped full of well-meaning ambiguities. In short, I found it to be the perfect soundtrack for a day of mundane errand-running.
A week or so later, I accidentally stumbled upon Waking Up while browsing the internet. The cover art intrigued me. I liked the simplicity. I liked the pretty colors. So I bought the album.
And I initially enjoyed what I was hearing. “Made For You” starts things off strong with a piano melody ripe for the arena and a wiry vocal line that could be found on a Lovedrug album. “All The Right Moves” follows, after an odd excursion into studio noise and large choir land (which may or may not have been pulled off successfully, depending on how cynical I am when making the judgment).
“Secrets” lags a little, but “Everybody Loves Me” picks the pace back up with a blues-tinged guitar riff and the perfect mix of irony and sincerity. However, many of the songs on the latter half of the album aren’t quite as radio-ready as “All The Right Moves.” In fact, Waking Up actually moves slower and more deliberately than I had expected. As a result, I became a bit bored.
However, after adjusting my expectations for the album, I approached it again and began to sense more of its excellence. OneRepublic plays safe music that borders on arena rock, takes hints from hip-hop, and glories in its accessibility. If you’re expecting your musical mind to be blown, you will be massively disappointed by Waking Up. But if you are in the mood for easy to digest tunes sprinkled with the occasional moment of excellence, OneRepublic is the band for you.
Throughout Waking Up, Ryan Tedder’s voice occupies center stage. This is a good thing, as Tedder has a great deal of control over his voice, and he varies up his delivery in a variety of ways. He can belt out gospel-sounding licks, croon a quiet lullaby, or hit that elusive note for a hair-raising chorus.
Behind Tedder, the band churns out a steady stream of unimpeachable musicianship. They bounce back and forth from Beck-like guitar riffs to Viva La Vida inspired instrumental postludes. No single element takes too much of the spotlight—the interplay between pianos, organs, guitars, and strings is part of what keeps things interesting.
Lyrically, Waking Up resides in the realm of big, fuzzy pictures with lines like “Say oh, got this feeling that you can't fight/Like this city is on fire tonight/This could really be a good life/A good, good life.” Later in the album, Tedder contemplates the fearlessness of children, promises to return to a lost love, and expresses hope for the future. All good things, certainly, but I would prefer the songwriting to be a little more focused.
Admittedly, the band has demonstrated that they have the ability to write big songs with big hooks. If they were to throw a little more creativity into the songwriting and take a few musical chances, I would call myself a fan. As it is, I count OneRepublic a guilty pleasure and a not altogether unpleasant discovery.
April 21, 2010
April 8, 2010
Timeless and (Almost) True
Artist: Mumford and Sons
Album: Sigh No More
Label: Island Records (UK) and Glassnote Records (US)
Don’t worry, there is a Mumford in the band. His name is Marcus. Therefore the first half of the band’s name is, in fact, logical. Unfortunately, the other members of the band are not actually his sons, but his close friends. Now, you might be thinking that this is an irrelevant point. It is not. In the following paragraphs, I will now use this somewhat trivial observation as an analogy for their music.
From the band name to the lyrical content to the music itself, the Sons thrive on paradox, on almost’s and nearly so’s. For instance, their sound is grounded in folk idioms, but it is not folk. It is British music made by relatively young British lads, but it is somehow both deeply American and as ancient as the earth. It is loud but tender. It is quietly intense and joyfully gloomy. This inconsistency is part of what makes the Sons such a compelling act. Without bothering to explain the why’s, they simply are. And they are good.
As an album, Sigh No More is a smashing success. It flows well from song to song, never seems to drag, and reveals new layers with every listen. It is one of the few albums that I don’t mind listening to in its entirety, due to its excellent balance of repetition and variation.
The basic sound of Sigh No More is really quite simple. Everything is based off of old-time music structures, complete with guitars, banjos, mandolins, pianos, and even an upright bass. However, it isn’t so much what they are doing that is so groundbreaking, as how they are doing it. Their instinct for tone, climax, and tempo borders on brilliance.
points, I would have to start with the Avett Brothers. Both bands utilize much of the original structure and instrumentation of folk music, but instill within it an adolescent aggressiveness and a pop accessibility that resonates with me and my fellow twenty-somethings.
However, Mumford and Sons take this basic formula in a slightly different direction than the Avett Brothers. With their heavy and often regretful tone, the Sons are more reminiscent of acts like Glen Hansard and Damien Rice. However, while Rice pursues the quieter paths of melancholy, the Sons charge full speed ahead, attacking gloom with anthemic choruses and Hansard-like bellows.
Throughout the album, Mumford sings confidently and with feeling. The earnestness with which the lyrics are delivered really calls attention to the content of the songs. At first, I only noticed that they used interesting words like giddy, fickle, and woozy. Upon repeated listens, however, I began to find the beauty and wisdom in many of the lines. For instance, the opening stanza of “Winter Winds” begins with the image-laden passage, “As the winter winds litter London with lonely hearts/Oh the warmth in your eyes swept me into your arms.”
By far my favorite piece of lyricism occurs in “Dustbowl Dance,” a goosebumps-inducing song that really showcases the musical talent of the Sons. The combination of detailed narrative content and musical euphoria that occurs in the last half of the song is simply breathtaking. Then, after the band thrashes out a blistering musical interlude, Mumford sings the chilling final lines “Well yes sir, yes sir, yes it was me/I know what I've done, cause I know what I've seen/I went out back and I got my gun/I said, ‘You haven't met me, I am the only son.’”
After this battering ram of a tune, the Sons finish up the record with a thoughtful, gentle song aptly titled “After the Storm” in which they sing “And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears/And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears/Get over your hill and see what you find there/With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.” In this almost spiritual moment, Mumford and Sons are able to momentarily take their listeners out of their broken world and bring them to that peaceful place of beauty and refuge.
Album: Sigh No More
Label: Island Records (UK) and Glassnote Records (US)
Don’t worry, there is a Mumford in the band. His name is Marcus. Therefore the first half of the band’s name is, in fact, logical. Unfortunately, the other members of the band are not actually his sons, but his close friends. Now, you might be thinking that this is an irrelevant point. It is not. In the following paragraphs, I will now use this somewhat trivial observation as an analogy for their music.
From the band name to the lyrical content to the music itself, the Sons thrive on paradox, on almost’s and nearly so’s. For instance, their sound is grounded in folk idioms, but it is not folk. It is British music made by relatively young British lads, but it is somehow both deeply American and as ancient as the earth. It is loud but tender. It is quietly intense and joyfully gloomy. This inconsistency is part of what makes the Sons such a compelling act. Without bothering to explain the why’s, they simply are. And they are good.
As an album, Sigh No More is a smashing success. It flows well from song to song, never seems to drag, and reveals new layers with every listen. It is one of the few albums that I don’t mind listening to in its entirety, due to its excellent balance of repetition and variation.
The basic sound of Sigh No More is really quite simple. Everything is based off of old-time music structures, complete with guitars, banjos, mandolins, pianos, and even an upright bass. However, it isn’t so much what they are doing that is so groundbreaking, as how they are doing it. Their instinct for tone, climax, and tempo borders on brilliance.
points, I would have to start with the Avett Brothers. Both bands utilize much of the original structure and instrumentation of folk music, but instill within it an adolescent aggressiveness and a pop accessibility that resonates with me and my fellow twenty-somethings.
However, Mumford and Sons take this basic formula in a slightly different direction than the Avett Brothers. With their heavy and often regretful tone, the Sons are more reminiscent of acts like Glen Hansard and Damien Rice. However, while Rice pursues the quieter paths of melancholy, the Sons charge full speed ahead, attacking gloom with anthemic choruses and Hansard-like bellows.
Throughout the album, Mumford sings confidently and with feeling. The earnestness with which the lyrics are delivered really calls attention to the content of the songs. At first, I only noticed that they used interesting words like giddy, fickle, and woozy. Upon repeated listens, however, I began to find the beauty and wisdom in many of the lines. For instance, the opening stanza of “Winter Winds” begins with the image-laden passage, “As the winter winds litter London with lonely hearts/Oh the warmth in your eyes swept me into your arms.”
By far my favorite piece of lyricism occurs in “Dustbowl Dance,” a goosebumps-inducing song that really showcases the musical talent of the Sons. The combination of detailed narrative content and musical euphoria that occurs in the last half of the song is simply breathtaking. Then, after the band thrashes out a blistering musical interlude, Mumford sings the chilling final lines “Well yes sir, yes sir, yes it was me/I know what I've done, cause I know what I've seen/I went out back and I got my gun/I said, ‘You haven't met me, I am the only son.’”
After this battering ram of a tune, the Sons finish up the record with a thoughtful, gentle song aptly titled “After the Storm” in which they sing “And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears/And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears/Get over your hill and see what you find there/With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.” In this almost spiritual moment, Mumford and Sons are able to momentarily take their listeners out of their broken world and bring them to that peaceful place of beauty and refuge.
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