School of Seven Bells: Disconnect from Desire
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Artist:
Excuses are for the weak. It is awkward to forgive a sophomore slump now when School of Seven Bells constructed the second album that it did, produced by Benjamin Curtis. The band is harder on itself here, not engulfed by the air library but steeping in it. Swimming like this is hard, drowning was easier.
Many times, Disconnect from Desire is a machinist's pop musings, as though The Secret Machines detained by Ivo Watts Russell for a day of pitiless exposure to, I could swear, The Human League. (Or in passing, a cease-fire between The Stone Roses and Primal Scream universes.)
Half the record is still the unsettling other-worldness that half the debut album also was, and several songs are not to be sung praises for, but I have laid my humble verdict. No euphemisms this time: I love you, band, with all your faults.
You have me swimming in circles as you rescued yourself.
Bye Bye Bye
Windstorm
I L U
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Comments (16)
What a hell of way to start my work week. Thanks. I wish I had time to enlarge on that thought but......Hi Ho. Hi Ho
Love this band!
I also wanted to add that
I really like your writing style.
Good stuff. :)
~aoxoa~
That's right, I remember now that you introduced me to Alpinisms. And I agree, this is a better album.
By the way, nice pic! :)
Very fine album indeed ... and just what I need this morning.
Reading that steeping is harder than being engulfed, and that swimming is harder than drowning, gets this irony maven mulling and weakly trying to find an excuse to agree, but the music's unsettling otherworldness makes it all OK.
machinist pop musing - holy cow, that is the genre of the century! you are on a roll ms!
school of seven bells has just not captured my flightly attention at this point. i give them a 1 song chance every now and then. perhaps thats is the problem, can you recommend this album it get better acquainted with them? or the debut?
Though I spent a half-year scratching the surface of a machinist's toil, I never crept through a truce that housed such...treasures. Don't you think the faults are, more often than not, responsible for what endears us?
Your enthusiasm is contagious!
Liking the tunes but not the production, it's too slick for my taste. I bet they would be much better live. I've run across several artists that this has happened with like Janelle Monae. Just saw her 7/25 in SF & she's fantastic live but I don't care for her albums since they have a ghastly sheen over them.
Jeff, off to work you go, deadman, just not too much now. i wish i had time, period. (+
Aoxoa, because you love this band, i like you already. because you like the writing, we are practically BFFs. (8 thanks for dropping in.
Dale, i also think it's better although i noticed after posting this post that others have called it a sophomore slump. shrug, just a different of opinions. DfD would not make it to my year's best-of but something about So7B just floats my boat.
Nick, i have been wanting to say this for a long time ... it is good to see you. ;p this album is morning-perfect, and at night, too.
Charles, as usual, you make me smile. i suppose it is the difference between being maimed and killed. with the former, there is no hiding conveniently. you face the world again at some point and do a lot of awkward explaining of what the foolishness was all about.
Rob, the band at this stage is a maker of some very awesome songs, for me, anyway. i remember putting Alpinisms (debut) under "not so great albums i love" of 2008, or something like it, and that is exactly how i feel. i love the music despite the weak songs.
Scott, you got that right, i am endeared by them faults, perhaps too endeared for my own good. and thanks for thinking some part of me contagious. ;d
Aug, too slick, huh? ok. :[ i get ya, it is slick although not too much for me. the slickness comes from Ben Curtis, i suppose, from way back in his work with The Secret Machines. okay, i never paid attention to Janelle Monae (the whole "too little time" thing) but i will investigate.
been listening to this for over a week now and am still enjoying the sounds, something fresh with each listen. and great new pic, thanks
love this band, loved the Secret Machines and brother Perry Watts-Russell, although a good friend, has always been one of the record company executives that has combined music and business quite well.
as far as Janelle, i get where you're going Augusts but for me it's more about the arrangements and structures on the record. i still love it, but the meandering doesn't hold up as well on a recording with repeated listenings as i would like. i still replay it though.
its probably just me being too superficial with them, but something about the face value doesn't drag me under any spells. i need to hear more to get intrigued on this band. clearly, from everyone else's comments I'm missing out...
I've actually seen Janelle Monae live 3 times in the past year & a half. I first saw her open for Erykah Badu 6/09. Don't get me wrong, I do like her songs but they sound far better live. I just don't care for overly 'clean' sounding production since it usually ends up far from an artist's live sound.
Also Janelle is a energy bomb on stage & is just all over the place. She's so fun to watch AND she can really show off her virtuoso voice. Erykah is that way too, you just can't capture either of their essences on an album.
You know, after giving this album my undivided attention the whole way through, I get your assessment even better. The first half of the album just knocks it out, it's really fantastic and would probably kill on the dancefloor played loud. The rest of the album ... meh.
Having said that, I love their sound, and with some better quality control they'll put out a killer start-to-stop album. I can't wait for that day.