A is for Music

B is for Bardo Pond

Lapsed
(Matador, 1997)

Lapsed is another album from a band I love that nonetheless took some time for me to appreciate. I originally bought it on a recommendation from Pitchfork (!) (do I lose?), and just as I've never been quick about shoegaze, the big walls of guitars on Lapsed didn't affect me straight away. But then I happened onto the one substance that makes all music sound awesome, dude: VOLUME, LOTS OF VOLUME. Because when the thick fuzz is loud, it's at its most palpable.

With Lapsed, Bardo reached their cacophonous noise-peak: Set and Setting became a lot more musically controlled, Dilate was, uh, kind of boring, and On The Ellipse with its quiet-then-loud the sonic opposite of Lapsed, which is loud-then-LOUD -- though amazingly, the album doesn't get monotonous, mostly because the monstrous slabs of guitar textures keep changing shapes, even if slowly of the course of a 14-minute track.

And like an inexpressive hippie that this album turns me into, I have a hard time describing Lapsed without resorting to far-out metaphor.

1. "Tommy Gun Angel" -- Like time and space being ripped apart, maaaan. Another apt metaphor that I've heard is that "Tommy Gun Angel" sounds like a rocketship starting up. Their ultimate shoegaze song, and as I alluded to earlier, shoegaze isn't my favorite genre. I think what eventually put "Tommy Gun Angel" over for me was this performance, and now whenever I listen to the song, my senses see in crazy inverted color and time indeed stands still as I head out for the Great Beyond.

2. "Green Man" -- The bass that dangles just kills me -- among my favorite bass workouts that Bardo's ever recorded. It's like "Flux, Jr." but better because with 3 fewer minutes, "Green Man" is more intense than "Flux."

3. "Flux" -- Ideally, you need to listen to "Flux" on 11 -- with headphones, but that's living much more dangerously than I care to. Among the best of vintage old school Bardo: loud (no duh) and slow. The wall of guitar is so thick and sheer, and churns so deliberately -- "Flux" is like sitting in the crevace of a glaciar, listening to the ice groan and echo over itself until the noise fills the entire space over the course of eons.

4. "Aldrin" -- The mellowest track on Lapsed ("Green Man" minus the menace) until, oh, the 11-minute mark, when the buzzsaw guitars cut through and drop a sonic bomb of distortion and the drums bam it up a notch.

5. "Pick My Brain" -- For the longest time, the twangy guitars bugged me, but then, guess what, I turned up the volume. Isobel Sollengberger's vocals get an unexpected workout, singing with less restraint than her usual grooved out post-Beats poetry.

Worst Track: "Straw Dog" -- Dog is right! I kid -- the song isn't bad by any means, but the riff isn't a great one to begin with, and "Straw Dog" keeps using it over and over again.

TV Rating: Alias - "The Hourglass"

posted by Leee @ 2:12 PM