Cinema Scope: A Review of Dirty Beaches' "Drifters / Love is the Devil"

Alex Hungtai aka Dirty Beaches

In the last couple minutes of David Lynch's 1977 film, Eraserhead, there's a scene where the main protagonist (Henry) is suddenly surrounded by a white, pristine light and then embraces the woman who has been living in his radiator. This scene follows a film full of terror, violence, confusion and disturbing images. There's sort of a plot that runs through the film, about a man who must take care of a deformed baby, after his wife has left him. He also talks to the woman next door, and the lady living in his radiator. But in the scene stated earlier, it's a beautiful moment, with Henry embracing the woman and being surrounded by the light.

Eraserhead covers a lot of ground in it's 90 minute duration (many would disagree with this statement though). Love, death, loss, loneliness, the universe around us, and who controls our fate. Alex Hungtai,  who makes music as Dirty Beaches has cited more filmmakers than musicians as his influences. It may be over analytical to relate his follow-up to 2010's great LP, Badlands (a reference to the film by Terrence Mallick), to Eraserhead but the excellent double album Drifters / Love is the Devil plays like a film. It is cited as  a double album, but both discs are packaged together, and the best way to listen to it, is all the way through. Drifters is the violent, sometimes frightening portion of Eraserhead and Love is the Devil is the last five minutes of somber acceptance.

Alex Hungtai has matured in the three years following Badlands. He's grown out of his 50's greaser obsession (i.e. James Dean), which The Gaslight Anthem are still having trouble doing. He's cut his hair, and has thrown away what he's referred to as "a fucking character. That's not me".

Drifters / Love is the Devil

This change is reflected in Drifters / Love is the Devil, and not just in aesthetic. You weren't the only one who felt cheated by the 20-25 minute lengths of Badlands and the Double Feature - EP. Both were such promising albums, that could have benefited from maybe a couple more minutes of music. Drifters  is 37 minutes and Love is the Devil is 38. Overall, it goes for 75 minutes. Songs like "Berlin", "Alone At the Danube River" and "Mirage Hall" are all pushed past the 7 minute mark effortlessly.

On Drifters, his recording style has remained the same, with distant guitars, creepy organs, rolling bass and minimalist drumming.  Songs like "Night Walk" and "I Dream in Neon" feel like the ghostly rockabilly tracks that were featured on Badlands. Out of the two records, Drifters is the most similar to Badlands, but there's still much experimentation to be found on it. "Aurevoir Mon Visage" is sung in broken French, with the lyrics translating to "goodbye my face, it's just a mask." "Mirage Hall" is 5 minutes of a dance party in a haunted house, before it segues into Hungtai grunting and yelling in Spanish for the remaining 5. It's bloodcurdling music, very similar to Pharmakon's recent Abandon. And like always, there's that sense of displacement on Drifters. On the best song of Drifters, "Casino Lisboa", Hungtai is wandering through an unknown, neon lit city. On this album's instrumental closer, "Landscapes in the Mist", we get a sense of loneliness.

But, Love is the Devil is where we really see the growth of Hungtai's music. It's much more experimental that Drifters and some of the songs are almost unlistenable. But it's undeniably ambitious. He has been welcomed to the ranks of musicians who make heart breaking ambient pieces, like David Bowie and Grouper. The David Bowie comparison is also exemplified on the final song, "Berlin". "Greyhound At Night" and "This is Not My City" give off that air of displacement again. The only time we hear Hungtai's voice on Love is the Devil is on the beautiful ballad, "Like the Ocean We Part". After an album prior of yelling in different dialects, it's nice to hear his voice similar to what it was on songs like "True Blue" and "Lord Knows Best". It's a breakup song and gives context to why "Love is the Devil" and the breakup Hungtai experienced before recording this.

The best song, out of both Drifters and Love is the Devil, is "Alone At the Danube River". It's a 7 minute long song, of guitar chords similar to those from Jim Jarmusch's 1995 film, Dead Man. Lonely guitar notes that are soon overtaken by ambient synths. It's the most beautiful moment of the whole record.

Back to the Bowie comparison, and the final song "Berlin". Bowie recorded his three (arguably) best albums while in Berling. Low, Heroes and Lodger. He also changed himself, by ditching the Ziggy Stardust character and freeing himself from the throes of cocaine addiction. He took inspiration from Brian Eno, and recorded beautiful ambient pieces like "Warszawa" and "Subterraneans". Hungtai pulled a Bowie, with Drifters / Love is the Devil by recording this album in Berlin and reinventing himself, and all for the better.

Bowie, Eno, Jarmusch, and Lynch comparisons aside, Drifters / Love is the Devil stands alone as a fantastic piece of music. Other musicians today are being cited "as the new visionaries of post-punk" or claim to "Give Life Back to Music". Existing outside of the miasma of hype and other bullshit is Dirty Beaches' Drifters / Love is the Devil. It'll be that record for a lonely night alone, a walk in the rain or for those who may have fallen out of love. So, this record isn't for everybody.

But this record's for you and me.

Dirty Beaches - Drifters / Love is the Devil 
9.5/10
Recommended Tracks - "I Dream in Neon", "Casino Lisboa", "ELLI", "Aurevoir Mon Visage", "Mirage Hall", "This is Not My City", "Love is the Devil", "Alone At the Danube River", "Like the Ocean We Part", "Berlin".

Loosen Up and Empty Out Your Head: A Review of Yabadum's "Yabadum"

   Here's a couple of things that happened when I went to see Yabadum live at Funkadelic Studios:

   1) Three men well over the age of sixty were smoking weed in the men's room.

   2) Some kid with an afro, who couldn't have been over four feet tall, was the one starting all the moshing.

   3) The band had some kind of makeshift roadie, who danced in the corner behind the drum set for the duration of the forty minute set.

   4) I wore all black, which was a bad idea, considering we were in a room with about fifty people which was only supposed to hold thirty.

   5) I got to see my new favorite band play my new favorite album in it's entirety.

So why is Yabadum my new favorite band? And why is Yabadum my new favorite album?

Well....

Because the music is amazing.

Unlike countless New York bands, that are making music based on lo-fi indie bands from the 90's, or the wispy dream pop of the C-86 era, or just lo fi noise overall, Yabadum get their influences from elsewhere. They are kids who obviously grew up listening to Is This It and Bitte Orca instead of Alien Lanes and Psychocandy. They bring back the sounds of bands like LCD Soundsystem, The Strokes, Interpol, Arcade Fire, The National and Sufjan Stevens.

Indie music obviously isn't what it was back in it's excellent early to mid 2000's run. Back when The Strokes, Interpol and The National owned New York, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, and The Futureheads made the U.K. their stomping grounds, and when Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade were the best thing coming out of Canada. But then in 2008, no-fi and lo-fi became the new "cool" thing, and many of these bands lost their footing. LCD Soundsystem broke up, Interpol have been on indefinite hiatus, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have ceased doing everything that made them great, and The Strokes are trying to convince themselves that they're still relevant.

But how does this relate to Yabadum's Yabadum? Because Yabadum feels like one of those good old NYC indie records. One that you could throw on in your apartment party in Brooklyn, after you and your guests got tired of listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah over and over again. Or that record that you listen to while walking through Park Slope in the Spring. That kind of album.

The album starts off with "Winter", which begins with keyboardist Charlie Schine playing a cabaret/baroom piano line. Then lead singer Laszlo Horvath comes in with some "doo-doos" and "da-das". Then Will DeHaven's drums kick in and guitarist Chris Rivera plays a distant guitar line, that grows throughout the song into a great solo. What's so surprising about "Winter", is how fleshed out of a song it is. It goes from 4/4 time to 6/8, while the band rushes along, and Horvath's voice soars and croons over them. "Winter" works great as the opening track with each member of the band showing off what makes them great. Especially Horvath's voice which switches from baritone to tenor to falsetto flawlessly (my favorite point is when Horvath sings "sit still / AND SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!").

The album than moves onto it's first single, "Cosmos". It contains jerky guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. Throughout "Cosmos", Horvath's lyrics are pretty abstract, but sometimes they come off as self loathing ("look at me, I'm such an animal, I'm incomplete", "I turned myself into a monster and scare myself to bed"), and he also seems to be questioning why "the cosmos never let us settle down and rest". But than comes the lyric that can perfectly sum up Yabadum: "loosen up and empty out your head". It's an invitation to dance. And boy, do I dance when I hear this.

"Me All Mighty" is the next song, and it's almost reminiscent of The Killers circa Hot Fuss, with the way Horvath sings and the keyboards. Following "Me All Mighty", is "Little Rooms", one of the album's best songs. In it, the lyrics seem to be addressing how mundane life can be with lines such as "it starts again, there's another one, the days all seem to blend this time" and "yeah I got a brand new suit, a window in my office, I can see all these people, obsolete." The song features an organ, and MIDI-drums, and a guitar that isn't showy but does the trick. At the end of the song, the band descends into an Okkervil River/Titus Andronicus shout along and the real drums come in and crash away. It sounds like it would have been a lot of fun to record a song like "Little Rooms".

There's the next album highlight, "The Mountain Man", but before it is the album's only interlude, "Lonly". "Lonly" features that cabaret piano again, and there's chatter over it, similar to the kind that popped up all over Tame Impala's Lonerism. "Mountain Man" is just a straight up crescendo, starting with just Schine's keyboard plinks, some bass and Horvath's voice, in which he sings about "the Mountain Men" who play "hide and seek, a dangerous game". The band steadily gets louder until the end, when all the band crashes along and sings "so tumble backwards (tumble backwards!)" and "da-da-da-da". It's at this point where the push pit starts.

So what's the overall topics of Horvath's lyrics? Two perfect examples are the last two songs, where he sings about love and life. In the accordion laden, acoustic shamble of "Swift Buck", he begs someone not to run away from him. On the final song, "Earth It Shakes", the drummer takes a break, Horvath picks up and acoustic guitar and Rivera breaks out the singing saw(!). "Earth It Shakes" is the most emotionally potent song on the album, with Horvath wondering about his friends and why he even talks to them before asking "who am I?". Then he starts singing the chorus of "Cosmos", and the rest of the band sings with him. It's a truly beautiful moment.

So maybe I'm a bit biased. After all, I went to middle school with the drummer (Will! I voted for you to become class president in seventh grade!) and the guitarist sits behind me in my math class. But Yabadum is a great piece of music, especially considering the members' ages (15-16). Young bands can make a lot of mistakes. But they could do great things. Look at Iceage and Odd Future.

So don't screw up guys...

because I want to see you go far.

Yabadum - Yabadum
9/10
Recommended Tracks - "Winter", "Cosmos", "Me All Mighty", "Little Rooms", "The Mountain Man", "Swift Buck", "Earth It Shakes"
Download the album here.