01. Everybody (Backstreet's Back) 02. As Long as You Love Me 03. All I Have to Give 04. That's the Way I Like It 05. 10,000 Promises 06. Like a Child 07. Hey, Mr. DJ (Keep Playin' This Song) 08. Set Adrift on Memory Bliss 09. That's What She Said 10. If You Want It to Be Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy) 11. If I Don't Have You
Curve has had more of their share of ups and downs. Yet even when their career looked its bleakest, the band continued to make great music. When Estupendo/Universal told the band that their album Gift would be shelved, they continued to write and record. After posting several mp3s on their website, Toni Halliday and Dean Garcia had enough material to fill another album. As Gift was still tied up in legal battles with the major label, Curve independently released Open Day at the Hate Fest through their website. As the band enjoyed brisk sales of their self-release, they received word from Universal that Gift was put back on schedule and would be released on their Hip-O imprint. It's interesting to consider that Gift almost never saw the light of day. While it does fit in well with the band's efforts, it sounds different enough to reveal that the duo has fresh ideas and an ability to write great melodies without recycling old ones. As Come Clean kicked things off with "Chinese Burn," a gritty track featuring slick production, skittering beats, and a dirty, guitar-driven sound, "Hell Above Water" impressively introduces Gift with an edgy riff reminiscent of late-'90s Nine Inch Nails. Gift's title track follows and reveals one of the band's slickest choruses, perfectly combining their up-tempo instrumental intensity with Toni Halliday's sultry vocal work. Seemlessly flowing from menacing tracks like "Chainmail" and "Polaroid" to smoky, electronic-laden ballads like "Perish" and "Hung Up," Gift is classic Curve with modern arrangements and energy. While mixing elements of rock and electronica together is old news for Curve, their songwriting seems more natural on this outing. Perhaps due to their more personal nature, Gift's ten tracks are among Curve's best. While bringing together an all-star mix of producers and performers, including Alan Moulder, Flood, Alan Wilder (Depeche Mode, Recoil), and Ben Grosse (Filter), Halliday and Garcia showcase their unique knack for recording songs that feature an underlying darkness, even in their lighter moments. As Garbage and Sneaker Pimps have each scored commercial success with similar blends of female lead vocals, big beats, samples, and electric guitars, Curve shows that they are among the innovators of the form and prove themselves with one of their finest efforts.
The National don't do anything radically different on Boxer, but then again, they don't really need to: their literate, quietly anthemic take on indie rock seemed to have arrived fully formed on their 2001 self-titled debut. Boxer just hones in even more precisely and intimately on the heartfelt territory the band covers, with punchy-yet-polished production and orchestration by the Clogs' Padma Newsome giving these songs an intimacy and widescreen expansiveness that rivals the Arcade Fire. The album's first four songs are among the National's finest work yet: "Fake Empire" begins as a dead-of-night ballad that echoes Leonard Cohen, then peppy brass and guitars turn it into something joyous. The brooding "Mistaken for Strangers" touches on the side of the band that could be mistaken for a more hopeful Joy Division, if lyrics like "You wouldn't want an angel watching over you?/Surprise surprise, they wouldn't want to watch" can be counted as hopeful. "Brainy," a borderline obsessive love song, shows off the remarkable, dark chocolate richness of Matt Berninger's vocals and how well they complement the band's occasionally bookish lyrics, while "Squalor Victoria" makes the most of Newsome's lavish string arrangements. The rest of Boxer is subtler, but no less accomplished, with each song supporting the other as a classic album should. "Apartment Story"'s hypnotic chug and "Slow Show"'s witty, knowing affection make them standouts, while the graceful, regretful "Ada" plays more like a short story than a song. As focused as it is ambitious, Boxer is riveting.
At first glance, a Finnish heavy metal band named Wintersun, whose album cover shows a fallen warrior lying face down in the snow, might elicit thoughts of simplistic black metal infused with pagan or anti-Christian messages, but it doesn't take long for this eponymous debut to prove that first impressions can be deceiving. In fact, the new project of former Ensiferum and Arthemesia vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jari Mäenpäa merges the hyper-fast precision of Yngwie Malmsteen-like guitar playing (witness the speedy "Beyond the Dark Sun") with the melodic sensibilities of post-Helloween power metal (see the more diverse "Winter Madness") and a homegrown passion for folk-styled songwriting descended straight from trailblazing compatriots Amorphis. If there is any sign of black metal songwriting to be found here, it's in the majestic symphonic backdrops draped all over the ever more ambitious offerings that follow: "Sleeping Stars" flirts with doom via its slow-creeping riffs, "Death and the Healing" alternates clean and rough vocals with a jaw-dropping display of pyrotechnic guitar heroics, and "Beautiful Death" comprises a stunning (if quite morbid) black metal tour de force in terms of both words and musical attack. Curiously, each subsequent track runs longer than the last here -- as if Wintersun is consciously using the song lengths themselves as means of upping the compositional ante. And when they arrive at the ten-minute colossus "Sadness and Hate," which brings the album to a final, fittingly progressive close, one realizes that, amazingly, the ploy works! Therefore, although these unexpected twists and turns can't stop their formula from becoming predictable at times, Wintersun's superb musicianship (props to drum machine man Kai Hahto, as well) helps them win out against their evident influences in the end, making this a recommended release for lovers of relatively accessible extreme metal.
Review by Don Kline at allmusic.com
Review by Heather Phares at allmusic.com
Review by Ed Rivadavia at allmusic.com
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