New Music from 3/8/2011 - R.E.M., Starfucker, and Brooklyn Rundfunk Orkestrata

Starfucker Reptilians - The four-person Indie/Electro-Pop band from Portland, Oregon known to sometimes cross dress for their live performances releases its sophomore album.  If you think you are unfamiliar with the band, you might remember this song from their debut album that was featured in a 2009 commercial for Target.  Frontman Josh Hodges wrote Reptilians shortly after the passing of his grandmother and, according to a recent interview, the theme for a lot of the songs is about death and the end of the world.  Sounds like cheery stuff!

"Born" opens the album with a quick acoustic guitar riff with drums and synthesizers accompaniment shortly thereafter.   The lyrics are written from the perspective of a newborn and the song is sung with airy vocals to enhance this perspective with esoteric synthesizer sounds layered to mimic the confusing sounds a newborn would experience in this well crafted track.  "Julius" follows with a more standard electropop sound with heavy keyboard work, a catchy hook that is reminiscent of an OMD song, and more conventional vocals.  "Reptilians" is slower indie ballad initially with jangly instrumentation and ethereal vocals until the synthesizer gets cranked up and the bass gets going to drive home the message.  "The White of Noon" and "Mona Vegas" have a stronger electronic feel with House influenced samples which, when overlain with the slow tempo beats, help create two very haunting and memorable tracks. 

Reptilians is a fantastic indie/electro pop album.  While their self-titled debut album from 2007 was a very good album, the band shows tremendous growth since that release with more complex song writing, a complete theme for an entire album, and better overall production work.  And despite the heavy sounding tone I foreshadowed in the first paragraph, the music is very vibrant and upbeat without much of the dreariness you would expect on an album about death and the end of the world.  It's really a testament to  Hodges and the other songwriters to be able to turn the bleak subject matter into something dynamic that you will want to listen to repeatedly on good days or bad ones. 

Score:  9.5/10
Song(s) to Sample:  "Julius" [sample it below] and "Mona Vegas"

R.E.M. Collapse Into Now - Indie music icons Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills reunite to release R.E.M.'s fifteenth studio album.  This twelve track disc comes exactly 30-years after their first single "Radio Free Europe" was first released and started to get heavy play on lots of college radio stations.  Can the band that was so influential to the indie music scene in the 80's and 90's release an album that is still relevant and sounds fresh by today's standards?  Let's find out...

"Discoverer" sounds like an old R.E.M. song from the early 90's with heavily distorted guitars, a fast tempo and a catchy hook during the chorus--all buoyed by Stipe's distinctive warbling sounding none the older despite the years.  "All The Best" continues the fast pace of the opening with another hard rocking, guitar driven song.  "Uberlin" is a real standout song that had me wondering why they weren't recording more songs like this over the past decade with most of the fancy electronic wizardry gone in favor of an acoustic guitar, simple keyboards and a laid back beat to create one of their better songs in ages.  "Oh My Heart" is an Irish sounding ballad with lots of various string instruments and a heavier tone as if R.E.M. were covering a Pogues song.  The album then becomes very uneven after that with, unfortunately, some extremely forgettable songs mixed in with some pleasing but unspectacular tracks.

By far, this is the best R.E.M. album in over a decade.  The first handful of songs are very diverse but all of them have that spark that the band used to magically bring to their albums with such ease.  There is also more variety to their track choices with a good mixture of slow-, medium-, and fast-tempo songs and a better blend of electronic/distortion heavy songs and acoustic guitar driven tracks.  They will probably never be able to recapture the greatness they once exhibited but it's good to know they can put out a credible album still. 

Score: 7.5/10
Song(s) to Sample:  "Uberlin" [sample it below] and "All The Best"

Brooklyn Rundfunk Orkestrata The Hills Are Alive - BRO is an instrumental quartet led by Peter Kiesewalter, founder and arranger of Grammy nominated Opera "revisionists" East Village Opera Company.  This is their debut album and it is a high-concept album that re-imagines and rearranges the songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music.  A plethora of guests singers pitch in to provide the vocals necessary when covering one of the most well-known musicals of all time. 

All of the twelve tracks can fall somewhere into one of three categories: 1) a rearrangement of the original usually in a more modern style; 2) a mash-up of the original and a well-known pop or rock song; or 3) shoehorning the original song into many well-known songs.  The songs are not in the same order as they are presented in the musical.  The opener of this album, "The Sound of Music," incorporates extremely well known guitar riffs from over a dozen popular modern music singles by groups like Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, and Steve Miller Band probably in an attempt to show how music can leave an indelible impression on its listeners but it ends up being more distracting than clever.  That's followed by "Do-Re-Mi/ABC" which unsuccessfully tries to mash-up the original song from the musical with the Jackson 5 hit.  However, there are some bright spots in some of the tracks that follow.  "Something Good" is rearranged in a Soul/R&B style with sexy vocals and sultry horn work.  "My Favorite Things" is arranged in the style of a 90's Broadway rock musical (think part Chess and part Miss Saigon) that oddly works.  "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is cleverly re-imagined as a hip-hop/R&B song in which the updated version creates a new meaning to the chorus.

The Hills Are Alive is a valiant and ambitious effort that comes off as part oddball and part beautiful.  None of the three styles they use to rearrange the songs are genuine successes or complete failures.  There are a couple of tracks that are very clever updates and create a different meaning to the lyrics ("Something Good" and "Maria") but a lot also that sound off-putting especially when they're combined with another popular song ("Do-Re-Mi/ABC").  When you mash-up two songs, they must have something in common (or at least a good transitioning point) so when you switch between them it doesn't sound awkward.  Otherwise, one song (usually the more popular one) ends up dominating the other with unspectacular results.  However, if you liked the recent David Byrne and Fatboy Slim collaboration album about Imelda Marcos (an album I definitely enjoy when I'm in my more eclectic moods), the style of music and the theme of this album will be right up your alley. 

Score:  7/10
Song(s) to Sample: "Something Good" [sample it below] and "Climb Ev'ry Mountain"