Memory Tapes – Player Piano (REVIEW)

July 14, 2011 lloyd 2 comments

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Remember those days in grade school when you’d have to read a book that you weren’t even remotely interested in, but were obligated to finish a certain amount of pages? Not mature enough to muscle through it and retain the important stuff (or smart enough shuffle through the Spark Notes), so you tortured yourself with the menial task of soaking up unwanted information. The moment of self-realization for this particular instance is when you catch yourself, mid daydream, reading the same sentence you thought you’d completed no less than five minutes ago, over and over agian. Well, that’s what this review was for me. Memory Tapes sophomore effort isn’t so much an obligation (no one makes me do this shit) as much as it is a chore to listen to. As pleasant a disposition as it holds, I also don’t know what I gained by hearing any of it.

Player Piano is the followup to 2009′s breakthrough LP Seek Magic by the artist otherwise known as Dayve Hawk. That album, a parade of bright melodies, lightly dashed with electronic flavors and left to melt on your palate like a soft, pop sorbet. As sweet as that album may have been, not to mention, pretty damn good, Memory Tapes’ encore is utterly diabetic in comparison. Hawk even went out on a limb by likening this album’s motif to that of “psychedelic girl group music”. Sadly, I was a bit disappointed when I realized that I wasn’t getting a saucy cross between Animal Collective and The Spice Girls, and rather something more like Passion Pit with all the testosterone (however little there may be coursing through Michael Angelakos’ balls) siphoned out.

Take “Today Is Our Life” for example; A jaunty rendezvous into the happiest part of the electronic Gumdrop Forest, with synth chords bouncing to and fro (as if they could EVEN do anything else on this album), and a guitar solo that’s just begging to wah with no wah pedal in sight. The thing is, I love this song. Like, a ton! It sounds like summer to me — and I’m the type of person who listens to Joy Division and Neutral Milk Hotel on my afternoon July drives. What isn’t “the thing”, though, is that this album never reaches that height again. That song is pure, unhampered sugar; whereas the rest of the album is more or less Sweet and Low, or worse… Equal.

Player sure as hell tries to hearken back to those days of a few tracks ago, though. “Offers” conjures up a vision of Mika gleefully shimmying through a field Julie Andrews style for me, but that never translates into a good song. “Sun Hits” is just as hopped up on Mountain Dew as anything else here (stop me when you no longer need the annotations), but the common thread here seems to be wire thin drums + punchy Casio plucks + high-pitched delivery = song. That formula gets old quick. Even when Hawk shakes things up, I’m less than compelled to come back to tracks like “Worries”, despite its jazzy electric organ and synthetic harp strokes.

When Memory Tapes slows things down the album shapes into something a tad more fulfilling. “Humming” is a wordless expedition into the more creative side that Dayve seems to restrain so well. When the drums kick in here, there’s a sense of urgency because the tension is built beforehand. This is less of a studio trick and more of a case of good song writing. “Yes I Know” has one of my favorite melodies I’ve heard in a while. The track wades nicely without getting egregious with it’s cuteness. When Hawk holds back, he can craft some of the more potent moments akin to those that accentuated his debut so well. Another calm moment,”Fell Thru Ice” parts one and two, reminds me somewhat of the issue I had with James Blake’s Lindisfarne tracks form his self-titled debut earlier this year: why not just one track? Splitting the two seems to take away from the mood, even though I’m not too fond of either iteration of these songs in the first place.

This record seemed to reach the same part of my brain as Cults’ album did about a month ago: I just don’t feel anything. As much as “Trance Sisters” wants me to bop my head to it’s glistening guitar accents and coursing bass, I just feel numbed by the fanfare. And as inoffensive as semi-opener “Wait In The Dark” seems by initial impact, on repeat listens, I feel like it’s simply going through the motions. The ideas are there, but nothing’s righteous about this music. It begs for attention almost, which it should, but I never feel unjustified in my annoyance. So, by the time it works its way into making a plea, the sounds have already seeped into the background, and deep inside the furniture, to the point where I’ve forgotten all about the pop festival going on in my headphones. Almost as if, in a way, I’ve been listening to the same song. Over, and over, and over, and over…

5.0/10

This fucking video, though >>>>>