Jubilee Offer: Patriot Classics for £2.50 |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Track Listings
| 1. "The Shakes" |
| 2. "Amplifiers" |
| 3. "Te Amo" |
| 4. "Parallax" |
| 5. "Modern Aquatic Nightsongs" |
| 6. "Mona Lisa" |
| 7. "Praying Man" |
| 8. "Doldrums" |
| 9. "My Angel Is Broken" |
| 10. "Terra Incognita" |
| 11. "Flagstaff" |
| 12. "Nightworks" |
Product Description
Review
Only one Bedroom Databank track turns up here, re-recorded of course; Mona Lisa, one of Cox’s prettiest melodies, splicing Merseybeat simplicity with uncanny dream-pop. The other 11 tracks equally tap Cox’s more concise handle on shivery, shimmery melody (he calls them "sci-fi fever dreams"), a long way from Let the Blind…’s swimming ambience and even Logos’ more diverse rhythmic tropes. His fascination with 60s producer Joe ‘Telstar’ Meek continues, brilliant bedroom boffins both, with an obsession and talent for otherworldly, shifting mosaics of refracting guitar and electronic FX (all played by Cox, including drums) that testify to a mind in overdrive, both comforted and haunted by the melodies that spill out. The strange, complicated and confrontational loner that Cox is, Parallax (according to Wikipedia, "a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight" but probably chosen because ‘parallax’ sounds groovy, trippy and futuristic) is stained by a lost, aching mood. To borrow a New York Dolls song title, his solo alias could equally be Lonely Planet Boy as Atlas Sound.
Parallax being Cox’s most coherent record to date, it’s harder to spotlight individual tracks, but individual settings stand out. The opening track The Shakes comes from the same 50s/Buddy Holly-sourced planet as Deerhunter’s Don’t Cry; Amplifiers and Flagstaff are especially ghostly-sad, Doldrums is the trippiest, the title-track relocates Marc Bolan to a western prairie orbiting Mars, and Modern Aquatic Nightsongs sounds exactly that, while posing the question: "Is your love like a sunset chandelier?" Nothing is quite what it seems in Coxworld. But whichever way you look at him, he is currently the most gifted, fascinating and beguiling songwriter around, as well as the most prolific. There’s only one Bradford Cox, but how badly we need more of his ilk. --Martin Aston
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
CD Description
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Customer Reviews
This new album by Cox largely answers the accusation levelled at him in relation to consistency since he does have an ability to produce outstanding highlights but combine them with some songs that are completely outshined as a result. On "Parallax" his third album with the Atlas Sound moniker he has produced one of his finest albums to date and by doing so stripped back production to such an extent and proved that less is indeed more. The bubbling gentle piano of "Te Amo" is an excellent example of this and it does echo some of the euphoric musical lines employed with such skill by the Guillemots on "Through the window pane". This icy beauty is taken to its logical conclusion on "Terra Incognito" with a slightly Radiohead feel and a languid vocal by Cox which is completely entrancing over the course of a slowly weaving six minutes. Unusually for Cox acoustic guitars figure in large parts of "Parallax" which gives the five minute plus "Flagstaff" a wintery feel and a sad edge particularly with the extended fade out of a gentle synth which slowly draws the song to its conclusion. The moody pulsing drums of "Amplifiers" is probably nearer to Cox's work in Deerhunter than any other song on the album and he colourfully describes it as a "dream of Steve Reich and the Beach Boys in vertical striped shirts pressing phasers on Lunar Canyon". Despite this probably the most surprising song here is "Mona Lisa" a straightforward acoustic song that would happily fit on a Wilco album and is none the worse for it. The harder but excellent "Praying man' which follows it almost echoes Marc Bolan but it is the sheer beauty of "Modern Aquatic Nightsongs" which will probably trouble the repeat button most for purchasers of this album.
Bradford Cox could and has been criticised for recording too much since his output is prodigious. But when he matches quantity with quality should we be at all concerned? "Parallax" shows an artist who is both a great musical innovator but whose pop sensibilities remain firmly intact. His albums are always an intriguing prospect and the musician from Atlanta Georgia has just delivered a very early and probably indispensible Christmas present.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
