Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea

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There's a very brief flicker of a moment when you think all will be lucid, cascading joy for Brian Eno's Small Craft on a Milk Sea. That moment comes in the form of "Emerald and Lime," the album's ice flow funeral march opener. It's a sweet and sad moment that points to how articulate Eno can be, if he chooses to. Unfortunately, it fades very quickly. You start to spiral down a dark, uncomfortable cavern with, "Complex Heaven" - many broken electronic noises jabbing at your skin. Even when the heavy bouldered beats of "Flint March" and "Horse" come tumbling down during the descent, it all proves to be too thin and insignificant to care.

I know Eno is capable of creating strong ambient atmospheres, but Small Craft sounds like he wasn't paying attention half of the time. It's as if he allowed his computer programs to do the lion's share of the work, all while he went to his kitchen alcove, sat on his hands and stared listlessly out the window. The album is plenty foreboding and I'll admit that kind of aesthetic is a tough sell for me. However, when it's done right and impacts like a true cerebral phantom, I'm all in. Instead, Small Craft unfurls like the ricktey, herky-jerk "House of Cool Ghouls" ride at your local carnival.

I'm particularly hard on this album because it' made by Brian Eno. For a man who has redefined the way I think about music and the universe, I expect better. Frankly, I don't care how old and tired you may get, I still expect output worthy of your name. Sure, you're bound to have some albums that sink into obscurity when you've got as long of a career as Brian Eno, but it's all the more disappointing when the wounds are still fresh. Plus, Eno hasn't aged so poorly, not like, say, the Rolling Stones. His previous album, Another Day on Earth, was a celebratory synthesis of the greatest elements Eno had culled over the years.

As it stands, Small Craft on a Milk Sea is a deflating and tepid mess. It would be a shame to see this album be Eno's swan song.

Underworld - Barking

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Underworld is one of those group's that you tend to praise and curse in equal portions. They're like your friend Gary. Gary tells two or three really interesting stories - and they really are fan-fucking-tastic stories - but beyond that he's a big bore monster. In fact, he might as well do you a favor and glue your eyes shut. Regardless of this, your other friends think he's fucking majestic, insisting that when he's boring, he's actually just being artfully subtle. It's what I like to call "David Bowie Syndrome" - the prevailing notion that an artist who is well-established and loved the world over will automatically be praised for anything they produce, without due scrutiny or consideration.

This is how I've largely come to feel about Underworld. They grabbed and pulled at my heart strings with the pulsing sweetness of singles like "Rez", "Born Slippy" and "Jumbo", but the quality and cohesiveness of whole albums were frequent let downs. The fall was particularly far due to the precedent they set with their unforgettable, memory-blazing singles. Imagine my surprise, then, when the electronic duo offered up Barking for my delectable listening pleasure. It's hard to pinpoint a good visualization for the album as it's a jigsaw necklace, fit together by a thin strand. The first thing that came to my mind was an orangish summer afternoon (that switches to night randomly) on the lush green of an art school campus. Not a pretentious, no-talent art school, either.

It's like the band sits there and discusses existential philosophy with you ("Moon In Water") while balancing the conversation with strange but subconsciously familiar stories. Some of the stories are glimmering love attacks ("Scribble", "Diamond Jigsaw") with cascading drums, while other stories are suspenseful noirs, pulsing bass line in toe, all to unpredictable conclusions ("Bird 1", "Grace"). And, so you don't go back to your dorm unsatisfied, Underworld offers you some closure in a thoughtful serenade ("Louisiana"). By the end of it all, you're kind of totally in love with them. And rightfully so, my sparkle-eyed student, rightfully so.

Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy Soundtrack

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If you're as far up the ass of Daft Punk as I am, then you're bound to think that their deep innards lead to some kind of kaleidoscopic dance floor heaven, populated by glamorous blue-skinned groovers. Being the divine French robots that they are, I felt that Guy-Manuel and Thomas could do no wrong. Their luminous dance music has had such a dynamic, satisfying and (most importantly) -fun- flair to it over the years, you never wanted to see it end. Unfortunately, it did. It turns out they are "human after all" to very much intend an awful, awful pun. The proof? Their score for Tron: Legacy.

Being an original film score, you already have a primer for visualization and emotion. At least, you think you would. While the score certainly does evoke a sinister science fiction universe, it doesn't bother to fill in the crucial details. "The Game Has Changed" is a perfect example of this. You can't really decide if you're in the world of Tron or of Inception (or The Dark Knight) until the excruciatingly curtailed synth chords plod in, almost an after-thought to the generic tornado of strings and foghorn brass. It's not as if the orchestral arrangements are just plain awful, but they are so painfully similar to half the blockbuster films that have come out in the last two years. At this point, there's a voice in your head and it begins repeating over and over, "so, basically they could have hired Bob the composer for 3/4 of this soundtrack, then left two songs to Daft Punk."

Sure, "Derezzed" and "End of the Line" offer Daft Punk swimming back to the thumping shores of analog funk, but honestly, it almost feels like an insult to see them included. After all, this is not the next Daft Punk album, it is a film score written by Daft Punk. So why even tease us? The real question is: were their musical sensibilities so incompatible with scoring a film that the duo couldn't find more of a distinctive or intriguing compromise? Generic scores are a cancerous growth on the ass of cinema - why not try pushing some boundaries? We know you have the talent for it, Daft Punk, we know you do. Instead, we just lose you, then find you, only to lose you all over again.

As it stands, Tron: Legacy is a mediocre film score created by an orchestra that just happened to feature two automatons with keyboards.

Galaxie 500 - On Fire

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If you ever wanted to watch a concert hall burn down in slow, slow motion, then Galaxie 500's On Fire is the album for you. This sluggish burning would take place on a cold snowy day in December (or perhaps January) - you'd be watching from across the street, a warm cup of hot chocolate in your hand. With endless caverns of reverb and acidic wah-wah, On Fire has the band filling the concert hall with sweet and slothful melodies (such as "Tell Me" and "Snowstorm"), hosing it down with gasoline ("When Will You Come Home" and "Decomposing Trees") and finally burning that sucker down ("Another Day" and "Leaving the Planet").

Dean Wareham's guitar solos have a kind of reserved snarl to them, always following his lyrical swatch of life lessons and surrealistic portraiture. On "Tell Me", Wareham falsetto's his way in and then brings it heavy: "Tell me one more time/you like the shoes I wear/tell me as you leave/you really couldn't care." He hints at some kind of painful loss - but as to what, the singer purposefully leaves things ambiguous. Then on "Decomposing Trees" Wareham confesses, "my toes can talk/and they're smiling at me/'come down' they say/not afraid anymore," as bell percussion rattles and the album's only saxophone part defiantly announces it's presence. Even at his most cryptic (and playful), there is something captivating about Wareham's songwriting.

Of course, for me, the real hall-razer of On Fire is "Another Day". I feel this song in particular encapsulates all the best qualities of Galaxie 500: Damon Krukowski's powerful, tumbling drums, Naomi Yang's soothing, subdued chant and Wareham's liquid guitar. Together they irreverently sing, "It's just another way, that everyday is not the same day," watching the grand old concert hall slow-burn to the ground around them.

Orchestral Manoevures in the Dark - Architecture & Morality

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Listening to OMD's Architecture & Morality is a bit like going to a modern art installation and, amidst all the boldly colored squares and symmetrical lines, you find a cute and mysterious young woman. She isn't quite part of the exhibit, but the distant expression on her face gives you the same mystified reaction as all those simple shiny blocks, light-bulb dresses, lobsters in tuxedos and upside down chairs. Some pieces are disjointed, others tightly packed together. But that girl - that regret buried in the circles under her eyes - brings it all together.

You take in the album, with all of its bright synthesizers, tin-can drum machine and Andy McCluskey's "disheartened lounge singer" delivery, and the vision becomes clear. Amidst chiming synths and an anxious bass on "She's Leaving", McCluskey sets you up for a fall, "we never learn to bide our hearts/we won't find what we deserve/she's leaving, waiting for so long". He goes on to deliver a very black and blue situation: "she pretends that he cares," announcing an unrequited passion, then moving on after being wracked by anticipation, "she wiped her hands of the whole affair".

The album is all about regret - a lost memento on "Souvenir", the impossible boyish crush on "Joan of Arc" - it is that girl in the gallery. She's lost in the construction of the shapes and you - you are reminded of all the missed connections and discarded opportunities in your own life.

Architecture & Morality is as ethereal as it is evocative. It's a light turquoise dream, hazy with compunction. However, there is an anxiousness there and it's palpable. With this album, OMD managed to make the coldest of synths sound like the perfect choir for a bleary-eyed romantic fantasy.