Jubilee Offer: Patriotic Classics for £2.50 |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
In the four-year downtime since Does You..., plenty’s changed on Planet Chairlift. Aaron Pfenning, who co-founded the group with girlfriend Caroline Polachek, quit the band after their relationship hit the rocks in 2010, threatening legal action when remaining members Polachek and Patrick Wimberly opted to soldier on under the moniker. An agreement between the three was eventually reached outside of court, clearing the way for a belated second album to surface.
Far from being the expected hook-shy mope, however, Something does what so many of us fail to do when romantic endeavours go arse-over-tit. It offers a confident, head-held-high reappraisal of the band’s MO, with the newly-promoted Wimberly a more than capable foil for Polachek’s songwriting smarts.
Opener Sidewalk Safari’s predatory, twisting synths and assertion that "All of the bones in your body are in way too few pieces for me / Time to do something about it, if you know what I mean" suggest a recriminatory tone’s in the offing, but prove something of a red herring in the context of a post-breakup record that mostly makes do with sounding foxy as hell. Wrong Opinion hits a strident pop groove replete with flashy, Buckingham-esque touches in the arrangement, while über-lithe single Amanaemonesia sounds like The Police sprinkled with silver dust, and is perhaps their most fully realised moment to date.
Elsewhere and tracks like I Belong in Your Arms and Ghost Tonight sound lean and committed in a way that easily outflanks the occasional goofiness of Does You..., and boast terrific pop vocals from Polachek, who it’s even possible to imagine as a latter-day Deborah Harry at times.
The band are perhaps less convincing when the pace is allowed to drop – though the unusually lovelorn Cool as a Fire does a pretty convincing middle ground between Sade and Christine McVie – and the slick revivalist template remains broadly the same. But, in producing a focussed follow-up that completely transcends its litigious backstory, Chairlift have summoned a watertight case for the defence with Something.
--Alex Denney
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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 is the album that you will be playing for years, not just another one temporary pleasure.
many of that fertile borough's arty excesses. Having survived a break-up
singer Caroline Polachek and instrumentalist/producer Patrick Wimberly,
still recording as Chairlift, have got a winner on their hands with 'Something'.
Ms Polachek has a quirky voice, given to whoops and swoops and even a spot of
yodeling here and there; she also knows more than a little about crafting a
good song. By turns Mr Wimberly's arrangements are intelligent and richly detailed.
There are eleven numbers in the set and they all stand up to close scrutiny.
The odd nod and wink to the eighties is not over-laboured and when it comes
to an ear for a memorable hook this talented duo have got it in spades. Take a
track like 'Take It Out On Me' : in not much more than three minutes we are
carried along on a bubbling wave of naive synth melody into the heart of the
kind of solid chorus which takes a light touch to bring off (it's a tad
like Gwen Stefani's 'Cool' without the chugga-chugg guitar). 'I Belong To
You' romps along at a fair old piece sporting a cracking high-flung vocal
from Ms Polachek and a riot of uplifting percussion and lithe harmonies.
The gentle quasi-Latin beats of 'Cool As A Fire' brings the tempo down to
frame one of the album's loveliest tunes and a truly enchanting vocal turn.
'Wrong Opinion', however, gets my vote for top track; its nifty chromatic,
rhythmic and textural shifts supporting Ms Polachek's finest performance.
A refreshing reinvention of a cracking act who deserve to go the full distance.
Recommended.
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?
|
