Spin Control

May 18, 2008

BY JIM DeROGATIS POP MUSIC CRITIC

"Hold on Now, Youngster ..." (Arts & Crafts)There are plenty of reasons to dislike the debut album by this seven-piece indie-pop buzz band from Wales, starting with ... its undue fondness for ... ellipses and lots! of! exclamation points! Here are a few more: There's more glockenspiel here than on any record since vintage Jethro Tull, paired with plenty of equally cheesy violin; the arch Art Brut-meets-Pulp spoken-word asides of Gareth Campesinos! -- no real last names for any of these excitable collegiate auteurs -- who is no Eddie Argos, much less a Jarvis Cocker; and the ironic intellectual pretensions on one hand (chattering about existential crises and bragging that "We Are All Accelerated Readers") paired with faux-naive playground confessions on the other (Aleksandra Campesinos! compares an ideal boyfriend to Spiderman, and can easily be imagined dueting with Kimya "Juno" Dawson).

Above all, though, there is the cloying, clubby nature of the lyrics, which are full of so many inside-indie-rock references that a casual listener will need a Rosetta Stone to decipher them. ("So stick with your instincts/Stick with the imprints/With the hieroglyphics that the fan club sent us," Gareth exclaims on "Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats.") The shame of it all is that the band's exuberant melodies are otherwise so infectious and invigorating that if the Campesinos! could have invested them with real emotion of any kind and given up trying to exclude everyone who isn't anti-cool enough to worship K Records, they might have made a masterpiece.

2.5 Stars

 

ALT-ROCK: Nine Inch Nails, "The Slip" (nin.com) "Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years -- this one's on me," Trent Reznor wrote on Nine Inch Nails' Web site on Monday when he offered the band's new album as a free download. In doing so, he not only took over the role that fellow alternative-era art-rockers Radiohead had claimed in leading the charge toward free Internet distribution, but he marked the release of his fifth disc of new material so far this year, following the instrumental "Ghosts I-IV" issued in mid-February, and matching the previously none-too-prolific output of his major-label career from 1989 through 2006.

Of course, one of the strengths of Reznor's discography had been the painstaking effort he made to create utterly distinctive worlds on each new album, whether it was the tortured angst-ridden trip of "The Downward Spiral" (1994), the more sprawling soul-searching of "The Fragile" (1999) or the dense, playfully paranoid conceptualizing of "Year Zero" (2007). In comparison, "Ghosts I-IV" was merely an overflowing notebook of half-finished sketches, while "The Slip" is a quick 'n' dirty garage-rock basement recording, industrial-thrash style, divided between atmospheric mechanical mood pieces such as "999,999" and "Corona Radiata" and much more aggressive, urgent and rewarding tunes such as "1,000,000," "Letting You" and "Head Down."

As such, "The Slip" doesn't come close to matching the musical and lyrical intensity of Reznor at his very best. But it's a testament to how vital his creative vision remains that it's at least as good as lesser efforts such as "With Teeth" (2005) or "Broken" (1992). And who knows what else he has in store for the remaining seven months of 2008.

3 Stars