Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Review: Women - s/t


Label: Jagjaguwar Records

Released: October 7, 2008

Some albums kick off with the strongest or most accessible song as a means of sucking the listener in. Others, ease their way into the real meat of the album so as not to scare the listener with their boldest material. But very few jump in with their most grating and difficult content. Women's self-titled album is, however, just one of those anomalies.

The album begins and ends with noise-fests that are not only difficult to enjoy, but difficult to discern the true value of outside the context of the album as a whole. However, between these near structureless bookends, there are songs that alternate between Women's dark, angular take on the Velvet Underground and their looser, more open nods to 60s psychedelia. Their travels between these seemingly divergent approaches is remarkably cohesive artistically. More remarkable still is how the more accessible middle of the album not only makes a case for the difficult start, but also sets up the manic ending.

Ratings
Satriani: 7/10
Zappa: 8/10
Dylan: 7/10
Aretha: 6/10
Overall: 7/10

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1 Comments:

Blogger taotechuck said...

The first track definitely sucked me in, but they lost me by track 3. You have a much higher tolerance (and love) for psych than I do. To me, this was the same old psych rehash, and I didn't hear anything particularly unique about it.

With that said, there's some nice noise happening on the last track. I don't like all of it, but at times the band is playing around with some very interesting ideas and sounds.

5:09 PM  

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