The Black Keys - Attack & Release

The Black Keys
Attack & Release
(04.2008, Nonesuch)
Verdict: (Spruce Lee never writes verdicts)

I have been sitting on this review for a while now, and I’m actually glad I haven’t put thoughts to paper until now. In the intervening time between getting the album and writing this review I have had ample opportunity to listen, and I did listen. However, it was never quality time listening. I would try and listen, but every time I did, something would come up. I would end up making a phone call, begin studying for finals, or start watching American Idol, and before I knew it the album had finished playing and I had hardly heard a note. At first I chalked up my disinterest in the fact that Attack & Release just didn’t have the gems of The Black Keys previous efforts. There was no attention grabbing song like Rubber Factory’s ‘The Lengths’, it didn’t have the gritty consistency of Thickfreakness, and even lacked some of the bluesyness that had endeared the band to me on their initial release, The Big Come Up. And in spite of all this, I just realized how good Attack & Release is. Regrettably, The Black Keys seem unavoidably linked with The White Stripes as the driving forces in modern blues rock. And with the commercial success of recent White Stripes outings, The Black Keys will likely continue to play second fiddle. However, with The White Stripes going the way of Weezer, with their Beverly Hills anthem rock crap I would suggest to the world that The Black Keys should be playing second fiddle to no one, least of all The White Stripes. (Also, if albums were people and could get in the ring and settle all the comparisons through physical combat, there is no doubt that Attack & Release would destroy Icky Thump). Sorry for that rant. If you’re still reading I’ll get to the point. Compared to previous Black Keys albums, Attack and Release is less bluesy, but more gypsy. It is less gritty, but more seductive. It’s not a huge departure, but enough show that The Black Keys can successfully shift gears, and won’t resign themselves to just rehash the same old blues no matter how successful they have been doing it.

-Spruce Lee

Magnetic Fields - Distortion

The Magnetic Fields
Distortion
(01.2008, Nonesuch)
Verdict: marvelously magnetic indeed

I don’t remember much about 1999, but I do remember going to the record store to check out The Magnetic Fields album 69 Love Songs. I had heard good things about it, and fully expected to purchase it, but one fact about the album had somehow eluded me until I got to the record store; the fact that 69 Love Songs was in fact a three disc set of 69 songs! Feeling a bit intimidated, I decided against purchasing it, and until now hadn’t returned to The Magnetic Fields. A decision I now regret. The Magnetic Fields newest album Distortion has since made me return and revisit those 69 songs I had passed over in 1999. As with their 1999 album, Distortion is as much a description as it is an album title. The first track is mainly instrumental, and each instrument is laden with distortion. The album meanders pleasantly but rather unremarkably through a few tunes, with alternating vocalists. However, on "Please Stop Dancing," the album begins its ascent into a beautifully clever and melodic climax. It isn’t often that songs about lost love can come across as anything less than pitiful. Such songs often turn into an overly sentimentally mushy mess, but Stephin Merritt manages to write pop songs that feel honest, and fun at the same time. Lines like "Drive on, Driver’s" ‘take me to the airport, I need to be extremely far away; so I might forget about her someday’ don’t come across like a lame cliché as they normally might. And maybe it’s because I had a dream about a girl I wish I still had the day I first listened to this album, but "Too Drunk to Dream" is a marvelous ode to the benefits of alcohol on a troubled mind. On Distortion, The Magnetic Fields effectively turn the typically mushy into a masterful album, and that is quite an accomplishment.

-Spruce Lee

Magnetic Fields on Myspace