Album Review : Various Artists - Strike!
- Written by Stef Siepel
We have had our share of very good compilation albums this year. Take Dark Was The Night for example, curated by the Dessner brothers of The National, which next to providing us with some brilliant pieces of music also gave us an insight in the current creative zeitgeist in Brooklyn. A sampler, though, by definition, will not provide that (unless, of course, your label is called Kitsuné). Strike! is the sampler of Counter Records, and with such a name you do expect a bit of punk, which the sampler duly provides. The album is an introduction to their roster, which means that next to not really being an album in the sense that it has a build up and has an idea behind it, it will also be wildly uneven.
Probably the most well-known name on this sampler is Pop Levi, former bass player of Ladytron. He provides the sampler with two tracks, 'Police $ign' and 'Blue Honey'. The two tracks are punk-rocky affairs. 'Police $ign' gives us the necessary growling and vocal production suitable for these kind of songs, and it of course comes with lines as "She's an instigator!" and such. Rockable, if a tad conventional. 'Blue Honey' is an equally by-the-numbers affair, although with a bit more anthemic structure and less punk. So you could say the tracks are picked cleverly enough to show the variations of rock Pop Levi can dish out. Both tracks do have quite a retro rock vibe to them.
Spokes adds to this compilation with 'Torn Up In Praise' and 'We Like To Dance and Steal Things', and the two songs border on the areas of indie-pop and indie-rock. It's all together more melodic, and where Pop Levi gives us a barrage of guitar, the guitar solos here are a lot more subdued. Where indie-pop usually lives by a catchy chorus or by bouncy guitars it is interesting to see how the band here avoids the verse-chorus-verse structure, and instead gives us a long, melodic instrumental outro that almost takes up half the song. A move which is as daring as it is well-accomplished. 'We Like To Dance and Steal Things' does away with vocals altogether, but fails to flow as the first song did, with the juxtaposition of the melodic, dreamy instrumentation and the more insistent moments not blending as much as perhaps they would have liked.
The name The Heavy in combination with the title of this album gives away the intention of these lads. Stomping rock. 'Oh No! Not You Again!' kicks off the album in a rock style as brash and camp as The Hives, but whereas The Hives are tongue-in-cheek fun perhaps The Heavy want to be more Jesse Hughes/Josh Homme like. 'That Kind of Man' features a higher voice and in places reminds of the Stereophonics, though with a bit more grit. It is less stomping than 'Oh No! Not You Again!', but also fails to take off or really captivate.
Another mixed bag is The Death Set, who add two short tracks to the mix. The first one, 'Around the World', has a bouncy, simple, yet fun synth, over which they constantly sing the same lines. At the end the synth makes way for hand claps, to rejoin the fun a couple of lines later. It is fun and catchy, so all the more surprising that the second track, 'Paranoia', isn't. This track already starts with someone exclaiming "I can't hear shit", which I always find a bit grating. The guitars try to do the same as the synth line in the previous track, but only partially deliver, and instead of the lo-fi produced singing on the first here we have more yelping. Both, though, have their catchy elements, and it gives about a combined four minutes of possible bouncing around, though I would not dare to say they are distinct enough or indeed madness inducing enough to make a real impact.
Cougar is again one of those telling names, and it just takes the intro of a couple of seconds before a heavy drumbeat comes in, which is then helped by some guitar, which is added to by what seemingly is yet another guitar. Which is then all thrown aside for a piano. It is a completely instrumental affair, which is constantly build up and then toned down, though not always with elements that mix successfully or captivate. The track's second half is more in the right direction. Second track 'Rhinelander' starts off with chanting in what aside from the chanting is again decidedly instrumental. Yet this time the changes, the shifts, and the different moods are more intriguing than that they were on the first one, which provides an interesting listen.
Both contributing one track are Ape School and John Mattias. Ape School provides a slice of indie pop with 'Wail to God', while Mattias gives the sampler its closer with 'Stockwell Road', which is all together more melodic and more toned down than all the rest combined. A melancholic piano ballad, it is no wonder this is placed last, as it doesn't really fit with the rest. It is a fair melancholic piece, atmospheric, but not as immediate or orchestrated as you would hope, though further in the song horns and strings and the likes do help the man..
The main objective of a sampler like this is of course to provide everyone with a glimpse of the label's roster, and not to be a good album, which it isn't. Nevertheless it is good to give it a spin to see if there's something on there you like, which you can then further explore. I wouldn't play the sampler in order as an album too often but between the punk-rock, the instrumental tracks and the indie-pop, there is a chance you might find something that you fancy.