Word: bandness
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...flaw. The record opens with the aforementioned “Farewell, Mona Lisa,” which clearly demonstrates the multiple styles TDEP have at their command. As the album continues, shorter, noisier songs are interspersed between their more melodic counterparts. For instance, after two particularly aggressive numbers, the band lines up the album’s centerpiece, a mathcore-lounge tune called “Widower.” The song begins with some jazzy piano playing that grows muddier as Puciato’s vocals crescendo, building into the song’s middle section, a paen...
...flaws in the album is its overly-polished production. Long-time producer Steve Evetts captures the band with such clarity that they sound slightly clinical. With a more vicious production job, all 41 minutes of this album would have been a joy. Nonetheless, TDEP have succeeded in creating an album that is not just powerful on first listen, but deep and inspired enough to yield rewards upon further exploration. Though hyperactivity drives “Option Paralysis”, the record demands nothing less than full and unflinching attention...
With irreverent glee, the WNO production transforms the “harlequins” of the original opera into a sort of rock band, dressed up in leather, tour T-shirts, and faded jeans. The Composer and his cadre become manifestations of the typical “classical establishment”: all ties, fine clothing and preening. They stick faithfully to Strauss’s score—no insertions of guitars or anything like that—but the context makes it clear that they’re talking less about the relationship between the comic and the serious...
...opera proper, the Composer’s “Ariadne auf Naxos.” The audience in the opera house implicitly becomes the audience in the house of the nobleman. The popular/classical concept of the Prologue seems to get dropped in the Opera; the harlequins stop being band members and become, somewhat disappointingly, actual harlequins (although one does wear sunglasses). The Opera itself could be substituted in any other production of “Ariadne auf Naxos” without much loss of continuity...
...Stripes documentary, “Under Great White Northern Lights,” a confused fan stumbles up to the camera and asks, “Where’s the show, guys?” For a film about one of the most perplexingly idiosyncratic, mannered, and sincere bands going, this question perfectly summarizes the sentiments of the audience as they sit through 93 minutes of tour footage where the band members never quite reveal the pretense—or if there even is a pretense—behind their show of weirdness. Unfortunately, despite its musical strength...