Drop the needle
Cold War Kids – Audience Of One
Yesterday I was listening to Rihanna’s new album and I was so pissed about it I shouted the same incoherent BUT THIS IS ALL WRONG argument at upwards of six real life non-internet people, which is probably five too many. But seriously, THIS IS ALL WRONG, which, whatever, do what you want Ri, I will just sit in the corner and cry over the fact that I was WAITING for this album for EIGHTY YEARS, pre-dating my birth, and instead of adhering to the guidelines set forth for you by your robot cyborg alien overlord, someone in your camp (or you yourself) decided it would be totally cool to try to sound like an actual human. You know what no, let’s save this bit for a later post, because I am still in the rage stage, which promotes incomplete arguments.
But anyway I was sitting around doing spins in my spinny chair feeling sorry for myself because my best friend Rihanna let me down and I have nothing left in this world, when LO, this band that put out a shitty second album decided to give TOTAL MEANING to my worthless existence by releasing this piece of pop magic into the wild. There is this thing where I imagine it’s really hard if you’re a band to figure out how to evolve while staying true to your original sound. That sentence just before this one is the poorly worded quasi-definition of El Sophomoro Slumpo. GUESS WHO HAD THAT: COLD WAR KIDS. So, so badly. There was one good song on Loyalty To Loyalty, and coincidentally enough it was titled “I’ve Seen Enough.” Oh indeed. WAIT THOUGH, BUT THIS IS SO GOOD, THIS NEW ONE. Can you imagine if their second album had opened with this? It’s everything that you labeled as potential in “Hospital Beds” but was never acted upon until now. Seriously man, the flutter-light cadence of the “drop the needle” line is all I need in life, and it’s that type of buoyancy that floats this song on a river of SUCK IT RIHANNA, I AM CURED.
In moments of (their finest album) Combinations-induced delirium I have privately pronounced Eisley to be as masterful as my ultimate band, Radiohead. Their songs are so obvious in their beauty and so confidently delivered; they often feel surreal to me, like they are beaming their stuff from an alternate universe in which they are the true inventors of The Melody. How they are able to navigate through this increasingly murky land of one thousand genres while retaining such a staggering beauty and timelessness of sound continues to boggle me. They are untouched by trends and singular in their ability to evoke both a childlike innocence and the distinct melancholy that accompanies the loss of it. Everything they make sounds formed from glass – soft with sharp edges and flawlessly clear. That makes for a particularly intense listening experience, one I prefer to have through headphones. I recommend doing that with this new song of theirs, which may be one of their best ever: