Belly, Dove
[Belly Touring]
Grade: C+
Belly returns with an ambitious 12-track release after 23 years away, with its King-era lineup intact after the band’s two-album ’90s heyday. It follows, then, that the record sounds like a step back into that era’s alternative radio, a mid-wave cresting of Tanya Donelly’s still-sweet voice and guitars that stray into slide territory, adding a jangly country element to Belly’s catalog of love conundrums. The best of these get descriptively personal, as in “Suffer The Fools”: “I’ll still come by / I’ll bring that terrible wine you love / I’ll cut your hair and deadhead your garden.” The worst just sound like an angry rant with unfortunate metaphors, as in “Army Of Clay”: “I see the truth break over your face like a bad egg.” Shaving a few of the middling cuts like “Heartstrings” and “Stars Align” would have helped the album overall, as Belly’s comeback songs runs together in a cranky sea of relationship angst.
RIYL: Journaling. Flannel mini-dresses with black tights. Sipping cheap wine while going through boxes of ’90s memorabilia.
Start here: The spirited brightness of “Shiny One” helps it break out from the muddled pack, while “Artifact” indicates that maybe the band should just go ahead and re-market itself for the country circuit. [Gwen Ihnat]
Eleanor Friedberger, Rebound
[Frenchkiss]
Grade: B+
Before she was a wonderfully consistent singer-songwriter, Eleanor Friedberger fronted the inconsistently wonderful band the Fiery Furnaces. Her solo work has favored more straightforward arrangements, with lyrics closer to subway-chatter memoir than stream-of-consciousness freak-outs, but Rebound sees bits of the Fiery Furnaces sound creeping back in. There aren’t any backwards-mixed vocals or abrupt key changes, but synths and programmed drums return to augment a batch of songs somewhat less rooted in concrete storytelling details. Friedberger replaces some of those past lyrical details with musical ones, like the way various keyboard lines ebb and flow from “In Between Stars” or form de facto backup vocals on “Everything.” That’s not to say she’s lost her ear for conversational ennui. “How’s your French? / It’s bad, it’s none,” she sings on “Are We Good?” before repeating the question (and answer) in Swedish and chastising a dog for “not even barking in the right language.” Whatever strange yet accessible language she’s speaking here, she’s clearly fluent.
RIYL: The catchy Fiery Furnaces songs. “Roosevelt Island” (the Eleanor Friedberger song, but maybe also the place). Riding public transportation alone.
Start here: Friedberger makes well-structured albums, which is another way of saying she doesn’t always throw her hookiest songs out front, and you have to extract gently dance-worthy singles “In Between Stars” and “Make Me A Song” from the middle of the record. [Jesse Hassenger]
Iceage, Beyondless
[Matador]
Grade: B
Danish band Iceage made waves with its 2011 debut, New Brigade, a collection of loose-limbed post-punk songs that seemed more notable for its intent than its execution. The sound cohered more on 2013’s You’re Nothing and 2014’s Plowing Into The Field Of Love, but still suffered from repetition. The press materials for Beyondless hint at that, noting the album finds Iceage “finally catching up with their ambition” instead of “running ahead of themselves.” Maybe they’ve caught up by slowing down; Beyondless noticeably steps off the gas. Standout track “Catch It” builds a psychedelic atmosphere with a slow tempo, as Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s voice sounds genuinely worn and woozy, instead of settling into his usual flat sing-speaking. The song takes off toward the end of its nearly six minutes, but it shows Iceage giving itself room to breathe. That said, the group hasn’t abandoned its post-punk, just refined it: Opener “Hurrah” sounds like what the band has always been going for, but never grasped.
RIYL: Savages. Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Ought. The Strokes.
Start here: “Catch It” is probably the biggest departure for the band and also the most indicative of where it can go when it gives itself the room. Also check out the horn-assisted “Pain Killer”—featuring Sky Ferreira—another departure that still retains Iceage’s charms. [Kyle Ryan]
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