New Music from 10/5/2010 - Fran Healy, Bored To Death Soundtrack, and Tim Kasher

Fran Healy Wreckorder - The Travis frontman and Scottish musician releases his first solo album and first work since Travis' 2007 album  Ode to J. Smith.  Although the rest of Travis is not backing him on this album, Healy does reach out to some friends from the music industry to help him out on this album.  Most notably, singer/songwriter Neko Case provides vocals on "Sing Me To Sleep" and music legend Paul McCartney plays bass (using his legendary 1963 Hofner even!) on "As It Comes."  This might just be me, but I think it's pretty cool to have a Beatle on your album that is being released four days before what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday!

The good news for Travis fans is that he doesn't wander too far from the style of music he gave us with Travis so fans of their previous albums will find something they like on this album.  The album opens with "In the Morning" which reminds me of a subdued Travis song that starts off with gentle piano playing and slowly adds more instruments like guitar, drums, bass and even a strings section to help provide a more lush, complex sound than I was expecting as the song builds to its climax.  "Fly In The Ointment" has a very pleasing blues/rock feel to it and the way he sings the lyrics is reminds me of how Mark Everett (Eels) would approach a song.  "As It Comes" is a clever song with very downtempo feel that has a chorus whose tenor is both haunting and memorable and, of course, the bass work by McCartney would help improve any song.  Unfortunately, not all the songs can match the quality of these though.  "Sing Me To Sleep," which features a duet with Neko Case, is surprisingly dull and monotonous with extremely boring backing drumming and a harmony that sounds like it is from an adult contemporary country song rather than a pop or rock song despite the pleasing vocal performances.

Some good songs pepper the middle of the album but overall there is nothing great about the album.  A friend of mine that was a one-time huge Travis fan said the music was much darker than what she was looking for.  I can't disagree with that statement as there is a general gloominess to most of the songs.  For example, a song titled "Holiday" could go many ways but instead of being an uplifting song about having a vacation, the song seems to be about one person telling another things aren't going well and they need to take a holiday.  While "Rocking Chair" is written from the perspective of man at the end of his life reminiscing about the past with references to dead icons like Richard Nixon and Fred Astaire.  Not necessarily the most cheery stuff even given the usual jaunty melodies on the songs.

Score: 6.5/10
Song(s) to Sample: "Fly In The Ointment" and "As It Comes"

Various Artists Bored To Death The Soundtrack - A soundtrack to the very good HBO show is released.  The album features songs used on the show and sound clips of dialogue from the show.  For those unfamiliar with the show, Jason Schwartzman stars as a writer/part-time private investigator whose detective skills have more in common with Inspector Clouseau than Sherlock Holmes.  Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis co-star as Schwartzman's pot-smoking publisher and best friend, respectively.  Even though I haven't seen every episode, the show generally features an eclectic mix of mostly indie music and Schwartzman's less than stellar detective work leads to some hilarious situations and dialogue.

The album starts appropriately enough with the enchanting theme song from the show.  The song is performed by Coconut Records, which happens to be Schwartzman's band and his voice is easily recognized in the performance.  In total on the album, there are 15 songs (other than two by Dan Auberach, each song is by a different artist) and a dozen dialogue clips taken directly from the show that run between two and 20 seconds.  Some of the songs you'll probably be already familiar with (Lykke Li's "Little Bit" and TV on the Radio's "Halfway Home") and some will probably be new to you (Kaiser Cartel's "Inside Out" and Salad Days' "Young Marble Giants").  As far as I could determine, there are no songs that were new or exclusive to this album.  Most of the songs have a lounge vibe to them, in the more modern definition of the term, with a few throwbacks to stuff from the 60's and 70's.  The one exception is the very electronic house-sounding "Dirty Robot" by Arling & Cameron. 

As far as the music on the album, I'd probably give the songs and the song selections a five out of 10.  Like many soundtracks, there are songs you only hear very briefly on the show simply because of things like the director enjoys how the chorus of a song sounds in one 30 second scene.  Unfortunately, taken out of context and without the visual cues to enhance the experience, the full versions of the songs lose some of the oomph they were able to conjure during the show.  The witty dialogue clips were the highlight of the disc for me.  The dialogue on the show can be so funny that, even taken out of context of the episode, the lines will still make you laugh (the quick 7-second "I Want A Colonic" dialogue blurb between Schwartzman and Danson's characters nearly had me shooting hot chocolate out of my noise when I first heard it).  The music is a so-so collection of modern lounge-type songs but it's not an album you could have going during a dinner party because of the very funny and sometimes ribald dialogue bits interspersed in the album.  And the brevity of the dialogue clips, despite the humor, prevents it from bringing up the overall score of the album more than a point.

Score: 6/10
Song(s) to Sample:  (Since you can find all the songs elsewhere, instead let me give you the Dialogue Clips to Sample)  "I Want A Colonic" and "Stockholm Syndrome"

Tim Kasher The Game of Monogamy - Since I reviewed the new album by the frontman of Travis above, I thought it only fair to review the new album by the frontman of Cursive, Tim Kasher.  Wikipedia describes Cursive's music as post-hardcore and that description would definitely fit most of their early work but their more recent stuff would fall in somewhere between indie rock and sadcore as a lot of the punk influences are no longer as prevalent in their music.

The album opens with "Monogamy Overture" which a true overture in the classical sense with a full orchestra and no lyrics.  It's an interesting opening and it tells you you're going to get a real album an not a mishmash of songs thrown together.  The second song, "A Grown Man," is more of the indie style you would expect from Kasher.  The repetitive chorus and awkward spots of singing without any backing music (more like spoken word poetry than actual "singing") make the song hard to like though.  However the next song, "I'm Afraid I'm Gonna Die Here," is an absolute delight.  A ska-like horns section opens the song which segues to a really cool verse with peppy hand clapping and a minimal but catchy melody and then the song journeys on interestingly from there.  The rest of the songs are a mixed bag but I did like what Kasher did in laying out the album and telling a story through the songs.

The music given to us a more in the style of Andrew Bird or Jason Mraz than you would find on a Cursive album.  There are some enjoyable songs ("There Must Be Something I Lost" and the hilarious "Bad, Bad Dreams" which is about feeling the need to visit a priest after fantasizing about possibly underage women) and some I wasn't a fan of ("Strays" and "Surprise, Surprise") but the album is put together well both in terms of giving the listener an overall story and of taking the listener on a journey.  Kasher ends up giving us a very solid album that I ended up liking more as the journey unfolded.  It's not as great as, say, a Pink Floyd album in that regard but it's a more than respectable attempt in the vein of something like Arcade Fire would give us.

Score:  7.5/10
Song(s) to Sample:  "I'm Afraid I'm Gonna Die Here" and "Cold Love"