BORIS: NEW ALBUM (2011)
1) Flare; 2) Hope; 3) Party
Boy; 4) Black Original; 5) Pardon; 6) Spoon; 7) Jackson Head; 8) Dark Guitar;
9) Tu, La La; 10) Looprider.
A band like Boris is not programmed to sell
out, but it is programmed to shock, and what could be more shocking than
selling out? There's a paradox for you. For almost three years, the formerly
prolific band kept quiet in the shadows, then blasted back into existence with
a vengeance — three records in a row — and the first one of those was... a
J-Pop album.
Okay, so it's a Boris-style J-Pop album, which
means that it will be noisier and heavier than the average product on the
market. But all the ingredients are there — energetic dance rhythms, electronic
robot loops, simplistic and repetitive earworm-type chord sequences, and
over-excited, over-exuberant vocals, including, for the first time ever (or, at
least, for the first time in such prominent lead quality), Wata herself
providing the lead on several songs. Yes they can. In fact, they prove they can
even come up with a few nagging vocal hooks, though, as in all such cases, the emotional
meaning of these hooks is so dubious that eventually you begin to suspect that
their only grappling power comes from being repeated so many times.
Seeing as how I already hate J-pop and K-pop with
a vengeance (it's a long story on which we shall dwell in more detail somewhere
else some day), and how my tolerance level for Boris is already quite low, the
first reaction to New Album on my
part was abysmal — a band with a very specific, very limited sort of talent
intentionally going in the direction of utmost dreck? It's, like, drilling your
thumbs down all the way into the floor or something. Later on, it dawned on me
that the album may, and probably should, be taken as a cute musical joke — that
the very idea of an underground psychodrone band switching to a near-degenerate
style cannot be anything but a diligent exercise in post-modern synthesis. That
made things easier, but still, there's only so much distance one can cover with
sardonic «joining of the unjoinable» without annoying the crap out of the
listener. At least, the listener who has not yet become an adept of the Temple
of Kawaii.
Speaking of earworms, ʽParty Boyʼ, pre-released
before the album, most definitely has a catchy techno chorus; shows that Wata
has a nice, soft singing voice; and has a very interesting and totally
unpredictable instrumental break, where, all of a sudden, they decide to play a
slightly dissonant piano melody, clashing against the chugging beat. Alas, this
is insufficient for me to be able to call it a «good song» — any good song has
to have some sense of purpose, and ʽParty Boyʼ just baffles me. Other than
being danceable, is it a love song? Is it a parody? Is it a psychedelic
experience? Is it sad? Is it joyful? Is it sarcastic? Is it earthly? Otherworldly?
The lyrics, referring to «strobe lights», «mysterious nights», and «riding on
the stardust», seem to suggest a club atmosphere that is metamorphing into some
transcendental experience, but the melody and arrangement are way too sparse
and formulaic to truly blow you away — after all, Boris are not known for being
experienced masters of electronic arrangements.
The «darker» tunes here, like ʽBlack Originalʼ,
work better, with cold, distorted electronic vocals that mesh aggressively with
guitar and keyboard overdubs in what sounds like an endless sea of police
sirens and warning signs. But they are relatively few. More often, we get odd
tributes to old school synth-pop (ʽJackson Headʼ), straightahead fast pop (ʽFlareʼ)
or dream-pop (ʽHopeʼ) songs, and something that probably owes its existence to
classic shoegaze (ʽSpoonʼ), only sped up to a tempo that no legitimate
shoegazer would probably endorse. All of them feel decidedly secondary, unsure
of themselves, unclear as to their purpose, too dance-oriented to feel magical,
yet too self-consciously artsy to pass for pure dance fodder. And even despite
the relative loveliness of Wata's tone, the other singer is still crappy, and Wata herself conveys no sense of
depth beyond the glam-artificial tenderness.
Finding myself completely disinterested in
coming up with things to say about these songs, I'll just say that it is
probably sort of a «fun» page in Boris history, and it will certainly leave the
average Boris fan thinking about a thing or two — yet I will still take regular
straight-faced techno, shoegaze, or electro-pop over this incoherent mess, and
I have a hard time realizing why somebody with a good knowledge of these genres
would want to give New Album more
than one passing listen with a smirk on his face. Or perhaps this is simply a
case of me being completely out of touch with modern übercoolness.
No comments:
Post a Comment