June 2012 Archives » Pure Pop Records

Jun

22

New Releases

Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do.
This is the most distilled Fiona Apple album yet. While her celebrated previous work was marked by eclectic musical flourishes courtesy of producers including Jon Brion and Mike Elizondo, The Idler Wheel is fearlessly austere in comparison. She worked with touring drummer Charley Drayton on the album, and his touches are light and incisive. Speaking of the record’s signature clattering percussion– including thigh slaps, truck stomps, and “pillow,” according to the credits– Apple associated the homemade sounds with an increased freedom: “I just like that feeling of: ‘I’m in charge, I can do whatever I want.’” And this musique concrète approach is not random. Every single waveform is pierced with purpose, from the muted heartbeat thumping through “Valentine” to the childlike plinks popping around the uncharacteristically optimistic “Anything We Want” to the chugging factory sounds that give “Jonathan” its uneasy rhythm. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Liars – WIXIW
For this album, Liars holed up in a studio under the 101 freeway in L.A. and learned how to produce electronic music. The space has no windows and is situated in a forgotten area of the city, where the glitz of L.A turns to grime and decay. This environment shaped the contours of WIXIW. It is an album about sequestering yourself and digging deep inside your own head. Beginning with opening track “The Exact Color of Doubt” it’s clear that, sonically speaking, this theme translates into an expansive yet intensely intimate sound. Sweeping, dreamlike synths circle around sparse percussion and Andrews’ voice (something like an unpolished Thom Yorke) meanders aimlessly. It’s a song fit to be played during a nighttime scuba diving excursion. In fact, most of the record feels deeply associated with water. Specifically, being alone and deep, surrounded on all sides by pressure and the unknown, looking up at one guiding light on the surface. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing

Smashing Pumpkins – Oceania
This is the album that needed to surface back in 2007. With Zeitgeist, Corgan lost himself amidst a complicated jigsaw puzzle that was always destined to lay unfinished on the dining room table, namely because he kept looking for the missing pieces in other boxes. It didn’t help that the only support he received was himself and producer Roy Thomas Baker, whose sensationalized, glossy production made everything feel as real as a Hasbro action figure. On Oceania, however, Corgan exerts a different kind of authority, one that’s level-headed enough to go somewhere, and with people behind him. The songs actually feel like songs and not tracks digitally titled “Smashing Pumpkins anthem.” But why? Read the full review on Consequence of Sound

New Releases

Hot Chip – In Our Heads
Over the years, Hot Chip retained their sense of humor, largely in the visual sense (funhouse torture devices, boy bands getting attacked by laser beams), but something not-so-funny also started to take place: As they perfected a savvy alchemy of dance and modern pop, their music became more serious. Amidst the big, beating heaters, dancefloor deconstructions, and “Simpsons”-soundtracking anthems, there emerged sincere ruminations on love, protection, and the pleasure that one derives from simply experiencing life, all of which were fully realized on 2010′s excellent One Life Stand. The band’s most concise and uniformly gorgeous album to date, One Life Stand also represented Hot Chip’s most clear-eyed material yet, suggesting that the group was, somewhat soberly, growing up. Read the Full Review on Pitchfork

Rush – Clockwork Angels
“Clockwork Angels” has 12 tracks and is approximately one hour and six minutes long – a respectable length considering we are talking about a band that is simultaneously considered one of the best classic rock and progressive rock bands still active today. While I’ve read online that Alex Lifeson strongly denies that “Clockwork Angels” is a concept album it does come across like a concept album to me, and it seems it also does to novelist Kevin J. Anderson (a friend of Neil Peart), who has stated that he will be writing a sci fi novelization of the album. I’m certain this will be an interesting novel, with Kevin J. Anderson describing the plot as follows: “In a young man’s quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy, with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life.” Read the full review on Absolute Guitar

Tallest Man on Earth – There’s No Leaving Now
Matsson functions differently. He’s more autonomous — secluded somewhere in his home country of Sweden with each album consisting of little more than his nasal drawl, dextrous finger picking on an acoustic guitar, and sparse accompaniment. Compared to Dylan’s eight LP’s, Matsson now has three, bolstered by two strong EPs of hyper-consistent songwriting. On There’s No Leaving Now, Matsson lolls on down the same path he’s been a-walkin’, careless of the destination or the speed of life around him. The sound is more dampened than his previous recordings, even though it sometimes features more studio arrangements than any of his previous works, almost (but not quite) making good use of an eight-track recorder. Read the full review on Consequence of Sound

New Releases

The Walkmen – Heaven
Much of Heaven revolves around this lyrical back-and-forth, consisting of a possibly hypocritical Leithauser making statements and disavowing them almost as quickly, trying to legitimize compromises he’s made—like not being able to take his one-year-old on tour because she wakes up at six a.m.—for a career in music that’s “always been a struggle.” After promising “I’ll never leave” on “We Can’t Be Beat”, the boom-boom-bap behind “Heaven” belies the desperation of “Don’t leave me, you’re my best friend/All of my life, you’ve always been” and the regret of “I left you a million times” on album closer “Dreamboat”, whose funereal chords curl under themselves like a tail tucked between his legs. Whether addressing his partner or his muse, these empty threats and pleas will undoubtedly be familiar to anyone who’s struggled with a loved one. It’s a far cry from “Little House of Savages” when Leithauser screamed with what was then youthful conviction, “Somebody’s waiting for me at home!” Eight years later and after “some long tour that you really shouldn’t have done,” he doesn’t seem so sure. Read the full review on Consequence of Sound

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Here
While the band’s debut album took the “Up From Below” name, the song’s calm tone and energy is found throughout the entirety of Here, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes’ much-anticipated follow-up. Full of reflective, soul-searching chants and quiet explosions of horns and drums, Here is an album that builds on the cathartic, communal atmosphere the band has been developing since its inception. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing

Sigur Ros – Valtari
Dialing back on the melodrama, Valtari feels like an early Sigur Rós record without the once-inevitable crescendos. The throwback feel is no accident: Recording began in 2007, and its earliest roots lie in sessions with a London choir four years earlier. The closest precedent for Valtari is Jónsi & Alex, the modern classical and ambient project co-led by Sigur Rós singer Jónsi that features both choral work and contributions from string quartet Amiina. Read the full review on The AV Club

‘Tis The Season….of Free Stuff

There are so many free goodies available at Pure Pop (with accompanying purchase, of course) that we don’t quite know what to do with ourselves. ‘Tis the season of new releases and sweet free stuff that comes with ‘em.

Check out what you can score when you purchase any of the follow albums on CD (compact disc) or LP (long-playing).

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Father John Misty: Fear Fun // $11.99 – CD // $18.98 – LP

>>Comes with a FREE 5-track CD<<