consume

Krisis’s Recommended Releases of 2010:
Far – At Night We Live

Key Tracks: “Give Me a Reason,” “If You Care Enough,” “Are You Sure”

Far’s At Night We Live is an album that wears its rock on its sleeve, but an abundance of riffs and metal bombast are merely ornamenting an LP full of mercilessly catchy power-pop songs.

At the surface level, Far has a bracing sound slightly on the harder side of radio modern rockers – near neighbors seem to be Foo Fighters or 30 Seconds to Mars, and to a lesser extent more pop-oriented acts like All-American Rejects. But Far is differentiated from those bands not only by smart, layered arrangements, but by the handsome, tuneful baritone vocals from lead singer Jonah Matranga.

The titular melody on “Give Me a Reason” is almost too pretty to be a rock song, and even proto-typical screamery on “Fight Song #16,233,241” (biting hard on Eagles of Death Metal) turns into something shimmering on the chorus.

In that way, Far is like Eagles or a harder, less jocular OK Go – because both bands consistently display seductive, playful-but-mature vocals. Far even recalls, god help us, a less smarmy Rivers Cuomo, finally living up to the supposed love of hair metal that got him into music to begin with (check out “Are You Sure” and the super-Weezer “Burns,” each like a sticky wet dream of what post-Pinkerton Weezer could/should/would have been).

If the parade of hyper-popular comparisons sounds like a turnoff then this LP might not be for you. Almost every song has the immediacy of the best cuts on alternative radio in 2010, which marry metal influences with carefully crafted melodic work.

Again and again At Night We Live floats up and away from standard riffing to stadium-filling rock. On the whole it’s a strong, confident re-entry into the rock scene from a long-absent band.

Key Tracks: “Grenade,” “Just the Way You Are,” “Count on Me”

I don’t know any way to start this but to confess that I haven’t really liked mainstream R&B for years.

It’s not a deep-seated dislike. I loved R&B in the 80s and early 90s. I loved it when it was adjacent to pop but distinctly different, still wielding inescapable, soul-shredding melodies, sung soulfully over a bed of tangled guitars, synthesizers, and drums.

At a point it just got boring to me – a hollow parody devoid of melodic revelation, rotely programmed and immediately ready for remixing and rapper guest spots.

But this isn’t a history of or tirade against R&B. It’s just a frame for why I honestly like Bruno Mars and his Doo-Wops & Hooligans. It’s at once disarmingly simple and undoubtedly calculated, and altogether it’s a R&B/pop crossover smash.

I first listened to the album out of obligation – it was a record a friend pressed onto me at a party.

Well, “Grenade” blasted me out of that mindset in one play, walking across the Schuylkill towards 30th Street Station on a blustery day this fall.

“Grenade” is an incredibly shrewd opening track. It starts so minimally that you are helplessly focused on the vocals, so that even when the thrumming tom drums join the song at the chorus you are still transfixed by the singing like a beacon in darkness. To his credit, Bruno Mars attacks every “bullet straight through my brain” pinnacle with a rocker’s glee, as if it was the hook in an Aerosmith song.

The subtle genius of “Grenade” is not solely that it’s an amazing song (oh, and it surely is). It’s not just that it’s both an obsessive love song and a blunt kissoff.

No, the true smarts is that it’s so easily upstaged by what Bruno Mars has in store for the rest of the album. In the same way “Grenade” starts subtle with its naked vocal and then baits and switches, the album as a whole plays a game of peekaboo from song to song, stringing you along its compact 10 tracks before you realize you’re still listening.

Bruno Mars bobs and weaves between obstinate melodies and obnoxiously obvious hooks. He disguises textbook-worthy songwriting chops behind exuberant tenor vocals. He juggles production between R&B trope, glimmering pop, and Jason Mraz lighthearted guitar, never choosing a side. It all comes off as extremely calculated – a game of transporting a listener through the album without the slightest disturbance.

I love that drama and playfulness. It’s something I don’t always know where to find in popular music.

Yes, sometimes it gets a little too playful. “The Lazy Song” crosses the line to silly for me. It’s a charming-but-lackluster retread of the superior “Billionaire,” co-written by Mars. “Liquor Store Blues” seems to be similar one-note playfulness, but it winds up like a R&B cover of a secret Sublime track – you’re laughing with it instead of at it.

The upstaging moments are many. “Count On Me” is a Mraz-style slam dunk. It’s stupidly simple, with counting lyrics screaming for a Sesame Street cover and a deadly wordless jump into falsetto. “Runaway Baby” is a 60s go-go dancing smash that Cee Lo could have destroyed, but here it’s content in its less overt Austin Powers shagadelicness.

Both “Marry You” and “Just the Way You Are” are utter rainbows of pop magic – unbashed love songs so super-sweet that they should come with a toothbrush. Could anyone singer actually be so enamored with their subject? Or, are both songs the transparent come-on of a masterful player? To his credit, Mars delivers each unflinchingly straight, and why shouldn’t he – is there any compliment better than “I think I wanna marry you,” other than “you’re amazing, just the way you are?”

Billy Joel didn’t think so, and neither do I. Yet, however great “Way You Are” is, “Marry You” might be the slightly more impressive construct of the two. Its dead-simple melody harkens back to the doo-wop name-checked by the album title.

There is a also piano power-ballad (“Talking to the Moon”), a song with famous guests (“The Other Side”), and a standard bedroom croon on “Our First Time.” The latter seems a bit embarrassing, but embarrassing honesty is part of the selling point of this album. This is not a philandering “I’m Gonna Sex You Up” booty call. I mean, geeze, the prechorus “Is that alright? Is that okay?” Even with the “clothes are not required” verse it’s still a pretty oversensitive song about fucking.

There are so many subtle lines tread on this album. Is it R&B or pop? Is it too corn-syrup sweet or too disarmingly frank? Too dramatic or too laid back? Too emo or too horny?

I don’t care. Doo-Wops and Hooligans is a confection and a riddle, a lollipop and a musical Rubik’s cube of genres and influences. It will leave you sticky and befuddled, grinning and wanting more.