In the beginning, Los Angeles' Failure were just a duo:
vocalist/guitarist Ken Andrews and multi-instrumentalist Greg Edwards.
The melodic grunge of Comfort (Slash, 1992), particularly virulent and
slightly dissonant in
Submission and Swallow, had matured by the sophomore effort,
The stormy Helmet-ian charge of Let It Drip
and the hard-hitting frenzy of Magnified
were the exceptions, not the rule.
Moth boasts the soft-to-noisy dynamics of Nirvana.
The gap gets even larger with Empty Friend, a ferocious hard-rock guitar
launching an almost ethereal melody.
Bernie stradles the border between
acoustic ballad and psychedelic workout until the explosion of the
Nirvana-ish riff/scream.
More depth can be found in the two least obvious tracks.
The suspended trance of Frogs (with its syncopated beat and neurotic
distortion) finds perhaps the perfect balance between melodic pleasure
and psychological torture.
The guitars' sinister lines give Undone a nightmarish quality, despite
its friendly refrain.
Synthesizers and a textured production helped
achieve an atmospheric sound that had little in common with the first album's
gloom.
Andrews and Edwards also played in the Replicants with Paul D'Amour
of Tool.
Andrews' skills as a storyteller shine on
Fantastic Planet (Slash, 1996), a better produced and carefully
set out album (and a colossal one).
Saturday Saviour and Smoking Umbrellas are particularly
effective as "stories" set to music.
The music is still heavily influenced by Nirvana and grunge
in general, but it hardly indulges in standard structures. In fact,
songs like Sergeant Politeness
(a booming, hard-hitting panzer that slowly mutates into a country shuffle)
have more lives than a cat.
The best song may actually be
Pillowhead, a hardcore slam-dance with the drilling force of
Neu and a melody worthy of Norway's Aha.
Unfortunately, several tracks get lost in mainstream stereotypes
(Solaris starts out as a Police progression, then delves into acoustic
balladry) and the songs that truly try something new
come through as half-baked stabs at refounding progressive
(THe Nurse Who Loved Me) or psychedelic rock
(Heliotropic).
The closing Daylight, a lullaby drenched in noises and an harp-like
rhythm before it soars in a majestically distorted melody, crowns a bold
experiment.
Ken Andrews released the solo album Shifting Skin (Epic, 2002)
under the moniker On, where he indulged in his pop fantasies,
and then formed a sort of supergroup,
Year Of The Rabbit (Elektra, 2003), to play a more lavish kind of
power-pop.
Secrets of the Lost Satellite (Dinosaur Fight, 2007), finally released
under Andrews' own name (back by what was essentially Beck's live group),
successfully blended all his disparate musical threads, from Nirvana-style
grunge to synth-pop, delivering a set of sorrowful elegies.
|
(Translation by/ Tradotto da xxx) Se sei interessato a tradurre questo testo, contattami
|
