Album Review: Grimes
Grimes - ‘Visions.’ (4AD)
Although this is her third album, I can’t be the only person who hadn’t heard of Grimes until a few months ago. But when ‘Genesis’ started circulating a few months ago, it was (and remains) a strong enough track to suggest that this might well be an album paying serious attention to. And so it proves.
The work of Canadian Claire Boucher, Grimes is a leftfield pop meets electronica proposition. It is fitting that amongst her new labelmates are acts like Twin Shadow and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Though all three acts have their own distinctive sound and none of them are simply mining the eighties, there is a spirit common to all three, as well as a parent label. Not only that, but the ability to be bothy accessibily pop yet experimental in approach without one compromising the other, at least to these ears.
That said, I genuinely think Grimes is a superior act to both of them. This is a wonderful album, that I have had on repeatedly over the last few days, wondering at its’ atmospheric beauty, desperate to hear more.
Album of the year so far for me.
****1/2
Visions is out now on 4AD
i thought you already reviewed this?
SW
No…but i did post the track on my facebook page a couple of month ago!
ah that be it! I came across that film a few days ago not linking it to the post on Facebook. Gonna need to look into this i think.
SW
Trust me, it’ll be worth it!
I think this album is actually pretty bad. Here’s my review:
In terms of press attention, things are looking up for Grimes. The Montreal-based chanteuse (née Claire Bouchard) has attracted the attention of music critics with Visions, her third full-length project and first since signing with the record label that handles Bon Iver, 4AD. Some critics give the record high marks, they deem this latest project “a smart, funny album,” they aver that “everything on Visions is a total jam,” they call Grimes “beguiling,” a “bizarro pop star,” and they agree with her—given the diverse sounds of the past she uses and abuses—that her sound is “post-internet.” On this point, we couldn’t agree more.
Straightaway (“Infinite Love Without Fulfillment), Grimes blends infectious K-pop vocables with bass timbres directly from the early post-MIDI age. (It is small coincidence that several critics connect the palette of Visions with the Cocteau Twins.) Just before the lead track begins to stale, in dance some diminished harmonies redolent of the Residents. The list of diverse sounds continues. Pads worthy of Brian Eno or Pat Metheny (“Genesis”), orchestra hits from the DX-7 and even melodic fragments from Del Shannon (“Oblivion”) make their appearance to more or less joyous effect.
The point of bountiful inspirations raises the downside of the “post-internet” age, whatever that means. Start with all the available sounds online, combine them with a number of elegant software programs, let loose a bunch of unrestrained ideas, and you’ve got yourself Visions. Its best tracks are “Symphonia IX” and snatches of “Nightmusic,” but, before reaching those moments, listeners are asked to wade through thirty-five minutes of gnostic, self-satisfied self-expression desperately in need of edits. Less is more. For example, “Skin” would have been improved if the oscillating “oohs” that lead off the track had been purged, because they don’t serve any essential function. We could go on.
Moreover, the whole record sounds as if it were recorded in Notre Dame cathedral, suffused as it is with Garage Band echo. The project is too busy for its own good, and the echo effect added to flaunt goth cred only compounds the clutter. This has a particularly damaging effect on meaning—it is as if Grimes has consciously rendered her lyrics unintelligible, to remain forever alone in her echo-cocoon, to prevent audiences from singing along. (the WTF-o-meter pegs on “Eight” – is that “Tardis, Tardis”?!) Unless she alters course, we can’t predict a real flourishing. No singalong, no communication. No communication, no community.
Worse than being too busy, the album is largely uncompelling. Amid the clutter, a small number of effects—a balloonish bass timbre, for instance, in addition to the aforementioned echo and needless stereo panning—recur ad nauseam. When we read Grimes described on the Arbutus Records website as “weird pop,” we brace ourselves and enthusiastically prepare for the unexpected, but there’s little about Visions that genuinely fits the bill. What’s weird about every song being in four-four (i.e., “common”) time? What’s unexpected—considering the untutored source—about an album so wanting in harmonic exploration that it makes the Ramones smirk admiringly? What’s weird about a twenty-something imploring, “listen to my potential”?
Press-wise, things are looking up, but the somewhat puzzling success of Grimes is a testament to audiences who prize potential over proven ability, who root for underdogs like everybody’s on Idol, who sense that everyone is auditioning, now that we’re in the post-internet age.
Er, an interesting response.
Obviously, I don’t feel the same way -but I appreciate you taking the time to comment!