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Music reviews |
Manitoba - Up in Flames
One of the best electronica albums in years recalls the brief "shoe-gazer" era of 15 years ago.
Domino
Release date: 4/8/03
Rating: A-1. I've Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life 5:35
2. Skunks 3:45
3. Hendrix With Ko 3:57
4. Jacknuggeted 3:29
(mp3 from Manitoba website)
5. Why the Long Face 0:44
6. Bijoux 4:17
7. Twins 1:45
8. Kid You'll Move Mountains 5:01
9. Crayon 2:40
10. Every Time She Turns Round It's Her Birthday 7:49
Manitoba is really one guy – Canadian electronica artist Dan Snaith (who’s actually from Ontario). Up in Flames, his second full-length album, places him far above the dreary pack of glitchy, twitchy laptop-fiddlers that has dominated electronic music lately. With 39 minutes of melodic, beat-driven, fill-your-headphones giddiness, Up in Flames fills a void that has been empty for far too long.
The record can be described as “psychedelic,” but not in the lame ‘60s acid-eating “too much to dream last night” sense. Lots of influences are evident here, most prominently the largely British “dream pop” or “shoegazing” bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s. For this brief period, bands like Ride, My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus and Mary Chain and Lush put out hazy, fuzzy (such that lyrics were usually unintelligible), heavily produced, yet highly addictive records that still sound amazing today (put on Ride’s “Nowhere” or MBV’s all-time classic “Loveless” and see how little they’ve aged). These bands influenced British “Madchester” groups like the Stone Roses (“Waterfall / Don’t Stop” and “I Am the Resurrection” are great shoe-gazer songs) as well as U.S. bands like Galaxie 500 and Mercury Rev, and British followers like Swervedriver and Catherine Wheel.
But the shoe-gazing bands are all ancient history now, swept away by a wave of early-90s grunge and late-90s “techno.” Echoes have been heard from time to time, like on the downtempo, spacey songs at the end of the Chemical Brothers’ first couple of albums (think of “Where Do I Begin” after Beth Orton stops singing), the Beta Band’s Three EPs (songs like “She’s the One” or “B+A”), or some of the Flaming Lips’ work. But for the most part, the genre hasn’t been revived.
On Up in Flames, though, Snaith goes a long way toward bringing it all back, with immensely satisfying results. Unlike latter-day electronica, but like the above-mentioned influences, Snaith loads on the analog: glockenspiels, horns, sax, farfisa organs and real drums, as well as birds chirping, dogs barking, children laughing, and lots of other stuff my Ipod headphones probably don’t pick up all that well. The result is “electronic” music more appropriately listened to outside on a sunny day than in some dark, smoky club.
“I’ve Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life” quickly sets the album’s tone with swirling horns, acoustic guitar, and overdubbed vocals, then a “chorus” of breakbeats that closely recalls the Chemical Brothers or DJ Shadow. The instrumental “Skunks,” starting with guitar arpeggios and the sounds of frogs chirping, quickly builds, along with at least 3 rhythm tracks, into an intense, trippy groove (to use some ‘60s lingo) with some free-jazz sax layered over the mix. It sounds better than I just described it.
The instantly accessible “Hendrix with KO,” an album highlight, can perhaps be described as Ride with an electronic beat. There’s one point, between verse and chorus, where a piano chord is struck and a new beat is inserted – this, by itself, is worth the price of the CD. The song simply sounds better the more you hear it.
Repeated listenings do not work as well for the fourth track, “Jacknuggeted,” which in fact was the first single from Up in Flames. It’s a decent song, with a slower tempo, acoustic guitar and farfisa organs, but the prominently heard yet utterly meaningless lyric gets annoying – and let’s face it, a little farfisa goes a long way. The song’s last minute kind of meanders, with some stuttering electronic noise and organ notes that recall a lesser Boards of Canada song.
“Bijoux” is sprawling and ambitious, though perhaps a bit pompous and cacophonic. The repeated several-second break with some sort of electronic flute noise gets a bit grating. “Twins” is 1:45 of breakbeat bliss, slowed down at the end to great effect.
“Kid You’ll Move Mountains,” the eighth track, is tied with “Hendrix” for my favorite track on the album. It borrows shamelessly from Loveless, with strummed guitar, an impenetrable wall of sound, and lyrics so distorted that they’re nothing but another instrument. But Snaith adds a driving beat, backed up with percussion, that makes you wish the song lasted even longer than its five minutes.
“Crayon,” with vibraphones, sounds of children laughing and sunny lyrics sung by Koushik Ghosh, is a bit precious but still keeps you listening. The last track, “Every Time She Turns Round It’s Her Birthday,” is by far the longest one on the record – nearly eight minutes of uptempo, house-influenced exuberance that picks up where the Chemical Brothers’ “Private Psychedelic Reel” or Leftfield’s “Space Shanty” left off years ago.
Up in Flames is a great album, but it doesn’t quite signal the return of a new shoe-gazer golden age. What keeps the record from making the all-time classic lists like Loveless, The Stone Roses or Dig Your Own Hole is the heavy borrowing: Snaith has produced something rich, detailed, creative and compelling, but he spends too much time on ground already covered by those who came before for Up in Flames to be considered a classic all by itself.
Nonetheless, it’s one of 2003’s best records, beyond dispute. Manitoba has lived up to, and in some cases surpassed, its influences.
