Fischerspooner - Odyssey 5.0

Alright, so it is pop. Pop shouldn’t get a break. Many pop musicians offer great, actually intelligent music. Fischerspooner doesn’t do that. Instead, he offers two halfway decent songs with some serious dregs for the rest of it. Considering where he came from, the word ‘disappointment’ can’t describe the awfulness.

                “Just Let Go” and “Cloud” are the only ones a casual listener might find interesting. What is the rest? Well, it isn’t absolutely dreadful, but it is pretty bad. Basically you get a lot of ‘by the numbers’ pop songs that sound like things he wrote up in a couple of minutes before microwaving a burrito.

                I wish they had spent more time on this. The beginning started out with a great deal of promise. You can feel an absolute rush of excitement, alongside some ridiculous flourishes. Nothing outside of the two first songs is worth it for me, or any sort of revisiting. I’ve tried to see if the rest of the album is more of a grower, but no, it feels like it is mostly terrible. One can almost hear the death knell of electroclash throughout the album.

Hammock –Chasing After Shadows…Living with the Ghosts 7.2

I can’t really think of a more aptly named band. Their music gives off the warm vibes of lying in that free-moving piece of furniture, staring blankly up into space. Clouds move by at a snail’s pace. And the flow from song to song is great. 

They bring up images of a mix between Stars of the Lid and Explosions in the Sky, but with their own personality. Most of their work directly references the quieter parts of Explosions in the Sky without the crescendos, deftly avoiding that part of post-rock. Instead the songs tend to drift away. Occasionally they even hark back to Stars of the Lid type classical arrangements, though those moments are relatively few. 

Basically, this album is better taken in a few doses. For some people a 70 plus minute album of mostly soothing sounds might be a bit much. This is an album which rewards patience. And I’m sorry I missed them when they opened for Stars of the Lid at Le Poisson Rouge. From what I heard, that was a great concert.