I don't know if it's idiosyncratic that a great deal of the music I like the most was underwhelming to me at first listen. Subtle is certainly in that category for me. Though I found some appeal when I first heard it (initially, For Hero:For Fool) , parts of the style were so odd to me at first; the singer Doseone's rapidfire nasal singing/rapping, the sometimes grandiose sound, abstract yet vivid lyrics, and a greatly varied structure. Of course, these are now some of the things I love about it. They're one of those bands very good at taking some familiar element of a recognizable song or style of song and using it out of its element, where it becomes something completely different. It's akin to DJing or sampling, but more...subtle. Beck is someone who I think does this a lot, and well.
The hip/hop element is mostly apparent in the vocals, very rapid rapping interspersed with a kind of layerd falsetto that sometimes sounds like someone playing at singing falsetto, but it ends up working extremely well with the music as another layer of sound. The music is not as strictly hip/hop, it's richly layered in a different way, but not so much as to be muddy; it's very textured, and sometimes moody while simultaneously absurd. Fat squelchy synthesizers are mixed with cello and classical guitar and heavy polyrhythmic percussion. The song The Mercury Craze, for example, is like a stylized version of a high school cheer about replacing blood with improved new blood:
What would you give
in order to get your hands
on the latest most luxurious blood...
to have yours flushed completely
and replaced with that of a nice bright white
college boy or very viral multi-millionaire widow...
Hour Hero Yes is the "superhero" character throughout the trilogy of A New White, For Hero:For Fool, and ExitingARM. The lyrics are oddly evocative and sometimes graphic abstractions of popular culture superficiality, middle class and mortality. The melodies are often catchy and sometimes even archetypical, but used in context the same way as the sounds, as an ingredient intentionally bringing their flavor in and not as the heart of the song. There's nothing new about unconventional music following some conventions, but it's nice when it's done really well and originally. The music is not repetetive but recursive, with some themes recurring in different iterations in different songs, like a theme that appears at the end of Middleclass Kill that shows up again in The Ends on the same album, and Hollow Hollered on ExitingARM.
After getting into FHFF, I started listening to ANW, which is another great album, though with more ambient, tonal songs mixed throughout.
ExitingARM, their latest album, is supposed to be a more accessible album with something like pop sensibilities. It is, to an extent, in that some of the songs are more melodic and slickly polished, with more straight up singing. Lyrically it's similar, though again at first I was unsure just how to feel. For me it was like when the Police came out with Synchronicity after Ghost in the Machine, or if that's too old a reference, then maybe like Radiohead's Kid A, when you first hear it you see that they're going in a somewhat different direction, and it takes some getting used to. ExitingARM is not that much of a departure, but in going for accessability, I can see how the sound is a little more teflon, and some of the grandiose conventions come in. The opening song in particular (the title track) works like a big opening number, laying out the rest of the album, though the tone changes somewhat throughout.
In any case, if anyone else is familiar, I'd love to hear opinions; if you haven't heard it, give it a listen. I think it's fantastic.
Listen at their myspace site (link at the top), or download two new songs here. |
