One of her examples: |
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- What if the vocalists for Peru Ubu and The Cure went to Sunday School together, got married, but decided to let their emo child hang out with a proggy post-punk/funk dancer with the "artificially heightened emotions of Peter Gabriel" ?
- What if their first album was "fractious,frantic and thrashy, and their second was "spacious, elegiac and grand"?
- What if their Godhaunted (Godtaunting?) lyrics were "fractured and desperate.. with lucid glimpses of destruction, of tortured love, of struggles for righteousness and redemption"?
- What if the singer was " a gymnastic and flexible frontman who convulses like a man French-kissing a light socket"...The group's live show will leave you sweaty and dumbstruck. "??
- What if they were influenced by the "angular guitar riffs courtesy of Gang Of Four, Big Rock Hooks courtesy of early U2...and recall Eurotechno Muse "? And they wound up being "Convulsing punk-funk brilliance from Leeds"?
The band's music has been described as "art rock", "contemporary agit-punk", and "high-octane dance-punk".[7][20][21] When Give Me a Wall was released, the band received comparisons with Bloc Party, while the NME described them as sounding "like a peculiarly English take on emo".[20][22] The band's second album was described by Pitchfork Media as "a curious mélange of studied dance-punk and flailing hardcore".[23]
Jon Pareles, reviewing a live performance from 2006 in The New York Times stated "[their] songs aren't content with verse and chorus; they're packed with incident, and they're propelled by the indefatigable drumming of Katie Nicholls. Instruments unite for muscular, danceable funk, then splay apart like a fist suddenly opening."[24]
Woodhead's vocals were described as "post hardcore operatic screeching".[25]
Seattle Weekly:
..dramatic and unique. Driving melodies and math-rock rhythms found throughout drive the musical complexity of the group and the album...
The maelstrom of sound behind vocalist and keyboardist Tom Woodhead isolates the piercing clarity of his voice. When he shoots into falsetto, Only rarely will he allow himself to dip into the frenzy, but when he does the raw desperation is poetic.
Their sound is one thing, fairly easy to understand and enjoy, but the themes are something else entirely.
The lyrics can seem nonsensical and disconnected at times, but when taken in context of the song and album as a whole, are impressive. As a concept album describing the facets of life — from fear to love to hate to confusion to acceptance — "Life Processes" has a literary quality and tries to be exactly as it's named. link
Drowned in Sound:
dramatic and verbose. Religious icons, regret, pitchforks and satellites all somehow find their way onto the album without sounding false, which is saying something after a debut that didn’t even have song titles. link
Despite being a cliché of the laziest type, the idea of the ‘difficult’ second album is one that has endured simply because so many bands seem to be unable to avoid falling into its trap. Leeds’ ¡Forward Russia! launched themselves into so many people’s hearts two years ago with Give Me A Wall, an album so tightly coiled that every one of its enigmatic songs seemed to be bursting under the force of its own tension. It was a collection of songs defined by the whip-crack of drummer Katie’s snare and hi-hat, which meant that while it was instantly recognisable as part of the post-DFA dance/punk buzz it stood out enough for it to be a still-stunning work that can justifiably be called of the best debuts of the century so far.
And Life Processes is by no means a sequel; it feels more like the work of an entirely different band.
...the lyric “Did you ever study the Israelites? / They made a new life for themselves with such a peculiar change” – is anyone really going to be able to reply in the affirmative? ..
The real gem of the album. ‘Spanish Triangles’ has already been unveiled – all nine minutes of it – but it demonstrates a stunning calmness and fluidity. It builds slowly, powerfully but effortlessly, growing organically into itself. It’s worth noting that ‘Gravity & Heat’, for example, is almost three minutes shorter but feels much longer – ‘Spanish Triangles’ is the real culmination of their work post-…Wall and stands as the impressive, brilliant centrepiece. And ‘Don’t Reinvent What You Don’t Understand’, one of the shortest songs on the album, managed to move from one-two dance-punk to something undeniably epic, helped no end by Whiskas’ chiming guitars that seem air-lifted in direct from Explosions In The Sky’s Those Who Tell The Truth… era. And ‘Some Buildings’ is a three-minute lament stretched gloriously out for almost seven minutes, again given the chance to breath and mutate on its own. It doesn’t cut right to the feet like their earlier material but instead takes up residence in the gut, and by the third time you hear it all doubts will be blown away. link
the end result, though diverting, is a slightly uncomfortable mid-point between the two albums. And Life Processes could quite possibly be a transitional album, a first step in a bigger, bolder direction that doesn’t quite let go of Give Me a Wall‘s quirks;
only time will tell..... link
"Choose life/
We all can lean on figures and crutches/
It's such an easy thing to do when you're so unaware/
We all can change our tegument's function/
Replace the outer shell with something more neoteric link
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“Working at college is great. I get the same holidays as the teachers, and the kids are so funny. Sometimes I interrupt them when they’re talking about music, and they look at me as if to say, ‘As if you know anything!’” linkThe guitar player (brother to the drummer) is now part of Duels.
Psalm 82 is a good start. [It says] defend the rights of the poor and the orphans. Be fair to the needy and helpless. Rescue them from the power of evil people. See, this isn’t charity, this is justice.
I try to get to the place where the song is singing me.
We [U2] have a hunch that God is not that interested in advertising . . . . It’s art, rather than advertising, that the Creator of the universe is impressed by.
Taylor: One thing you’ve learned about God through your reading of the Psalms. Bono: “He listens.” Taylor: One thing that you’ve learned about yourself through your reading of the Psalms. Bono: “I don’t listen enough.”
I want to argue the case for artists – or potential artists – who might be listening in on our conversation and are not giving expression to what’s really going on in their life because they feel it will give the wrong impression of them. We don’t have to please God in any other way than to be brutally honest; that is the root not only to a relationship with God but the root to a great song . . . .
I think all art is prophetic.
I went finally to Jerusalem… And I went to Golgotha, and I went to the site… where death died. That’s where death died. And so, I don’t really believe in it anymore. It has no power over me as it had when I was 14 years old.
