THE AVALANCHES: WILDFLOWER (2016)
1) The Leaves Were Falling; 2)
Because I'm Me; 3) Frankie Sinatra; 4) Subways; 5) Going Home; 6) If I Was A
Folkstar; 7) Colours; 8) Zap!; 9) The Noisy Eater; 10) Wildflower; 11) Harmony;
12) Live A Lifetime Love; 13) Park Music; 14) Livin' Underwater (Is Something
Wild); 15) The Wozard Of Iz; 16) Over The Turnstiles; 17) Sunshine; 18) Light
Up; 19) Kaleidoscope Lovers; 20) Stepkids; 21) Saturday Night Inside Out; 22)
Frankie Sinatra (extended mix).
Perhaps the weirdest thing about The
Avalanches' second album and the 15 (!) years that separate it from the first
one is realizing that The Avalanches did not, in fact, break up over any
significant time period in the interim. They'd always been a fairly loose
collective, and the only current members are the core duo of Robbie Chater and
Tony Di Blasi, while other people came and went, but there never really was a
specific timeframe in between 2001 and 2016 when The Avalanches officially
«did not exist» — so one cannot technically call Wildflower a «comeback», especially given the fact that some of its
tracks had been conceived as early as 2000.
So — fifteen frickin' falls, a period over
which most of the band's original adolescent fans graduated from college, got
themselves steady jobs, got married, settled down, grew some new or shaved off
some old facial hair, only to wake up one fine morning and learn that there was
also a parallel reality in which nothing has changed: Wildflower not only picks up from exactly where Since I Left You had, in fact, left us,
but it goes on to walk a crooked mile in order to leave us, one hour later, at
the exact same starting point once again. As if you needed one more argument to
show how little has changed in the world of music since the 21st century
introduced us to the concept of Artistic Deep Freeze, the Avalanches are here
to teach us a lesson in how «it takes all the running you can do to keep in the
same place», to quote a truly
immortal line.
To be fairly honest, if this reaction can be
called «enjoyment», then I «enjoyed» Wildflower
absolutely no less (and probably no more) than I did with Since I Left You — a reaction that
could hardly be said to agree with the overall critical and fan response to the
record, where most people said that it was sort of okay but no Since I Left You. The reason for that
seems to be on the surface: Since I
Left You struck a chord with its novelty factor — few, if any, people up to
that point made plunderphonics sound so fun, so light, so danceable, so
accessible, and yet so absolute in terms of focus and dedication. There was a
certain inspirational whiff to it that may even have led some people to
entertain odd thoughts about how this would be the future of music, etc. But now that fifteen years have passed
and, while sampling as such remains firmly embedded in our conscience as one of
the most heavily (ab)used modern musical means, plunderphonics remains on the
fringes of that conscience — and it kind of looks like it was a dead end after
all. A fun dead end to find oneself in every once in a while, but hardly one
where you can give a slight tap to the magical wall at the end and find
yourself in musical nirvana.
But perhaps this assessment — «nice, but
nothing particularly new or mind-blowing» — is unfair, and all it takes is a
few attentive listens to uncover progress? Well, they do seem to be a little
more open to integrating some new sounds in the patchy canopy of old: for
instance, rappers Danny Brown and Biz Markie came along for some of the
sessions to record vocal parts for several tracks, along with a few other less
familiar faces. Indeed, Wildflower
goes much heavier on the raps than its predecessor, though it hardly ever feels
like a hip-hop record because its «plunderbase» is so much more antiquated than
is typical of sampling in hip-hop. That's pretty much the only substantial
difference — other than that, Wildflower
offers you still the same dizzying kaleidoscope of instrumental and vocal
overdubs that find their sources in little-known old vinyl grooves. You will get educated, for sure, as they
revitalize long-forgotten niceties: ʽBecause I'm Meʼ, for instance, is all
based on loops from ʽWant Adsʼ by The Honey Cones, a cool dance-soul number
from the sunniest corner of 1969 (sold a million copies back in the day, by the
way, but who remembers that now? Well — The Avalanches do!), while ʽFrankie
Sinatraʼ exploits Wilmoth Houdini's ʽBobby Sox Idolʼ and reminds you of how
ironically fun classic calypso music could be back in the day, with Danny Brown
supplementing Houdini's trembling croak with his own humorous take on the Frank
Sinatra thing ("Like Frank Sinatra, bitch, do this shit my way" —
welcome to 2016, ladies and gentlemen).
On the really
obscure side, ʽSubwaysʼ will teach you about the 1980 EP by
"Chandra", a pre-teen artist who might be regarded as sort of
Eighties' equivalent to Rebecca Black (no, really, I mean it: the original ʽSubwaysʼ is such an
embarrassing piece of pseudo-New-Wave/disco-mash-up that it is almost amazing
how The Avalanches managed to take out a couple lines and make them sound
alarming and troubled); and on the «null void» side, ʽThe Noisy Eaterʼ features
a hilarious live recording of ʽCome Togetherʼ as performed by the choir of Kew
High School in the band's own native Melbourne, mashed with a Biz Markie
narrative about a «noisy eater», with language stuck midway between British
folklore and gangsta rap. Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Well, I can tell you
that the surrealist absurdity of it all does come through, and I'd be lying
through my teeth if I said this wasn't at all entertaining. Plus, there's
always the game challenge — how many of these bits and pieces will you
recognize on your own? I totally suck at this, but I was at least proud of my Beatle-lore when my ears perceived a
snippet from the carnivalesque Lowrey organ of ʽBeing For The Benefit Of Mr.
Kiteʼ on ʽFrankie Sinatraʼ, or the vocal harmony bit from Ram's ʽUncle Albertʼ on ʽLiving Underwaterʼ (alas, Spirit's ʽWater
Womanʼ that constitutes the backbone of the track was stuffed way too deep in
my memory to resurface on its own).
So yes, it's all fun. They have a good ear for
«tasty bits», and if there's a lesson in here that even bad-to-mediocre
obscurities can have moments of impressive musical dynamics that might very
well work outside of the original context — count me in. The problem is, it
still does not work anywhere other than in its own post-modern frame, and
aren't we living in a post-post-modern frame already? (Or perhaps even
«post-post-post-modern», I've honestly lost count...). Fifteen years have not
taught these guys how to plunder their phonics in a way that would truly create
an alternate psychedelic reality to which I could, you know, relate or something. There's a lot of
fussiness here, for sure, and meta-melodicity, and even some atmospheric
warmth, considering how they usually concentrate on life-asserting
dance-oriented R&B and sunshine pop for their sources, yet none of this
makes the resulting collage properly meaningful on an emotional level, once
you've savored the joke.
To be honest, I cannot blame them for not
having made much progress because I fail to see how it is even possible to make any progress in this
direction — although, on the other hand, maybe if they had introduced some
jarring mood shifts (for instance, added a «dark side» to the bubbly
psychedelic frolicking by plundering, oh, I dunno, some death metal archives?),
this could help focus our attention? Whatever. In any case, I'd be very
surprised if somebody (Danny Brown fans excepted) honestly and flatly preferred
Wildflower to Since I Left You — ultimately, it just feels like a bonus hour for
those who thought that 2001's Australia summarized the highest points of
Western civilization as we knew them. For everybody else, it's mostly a good
way to remember Wilmoth Houdini — and Chandra.
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