As if getting a spread in a popular home decor magazine just a month prior to this album's release wasn't enough of a tipoff, Blonde Redhead have come a long way since their days of mimicking Sonic Youth's brittle art-rock. Clanging guitars have been replaced by warm synthesizers and soft strings, while Japanese singer Kazu Makino's thin voice has become a ghostly moan on the grandiose opener and title track of the New York trio's seventh full-length release, 23. Their last one, 2004's Misery Is a Butterfly, was a lovely throwback to the dream-pop heyday of the Cocteau Twins and Lush. This one presses further down that road, only with a more experimental streak, as cascading guitars, military rhythms, and wobbly melodies shape opulent, otherworldly songs like "The Dress" and "My Impure Hair." --Aidin Vaziri
Blonde Redhead
23
[4AD; 2007]
Rating: 7.0
The 23rd hexagram of the I Ching is commonly known as "Splitting Apart", the point in a cycle where upheaval and disintegration enters in. The number 23, heralded by many an occultist and rag-tag philosopher is often considered a magical number associated with change, the point in a series where new energy comes in to transform the pre-existing condition and change the trajectory. A pop example of these esoteric notions, sadly, may be beloved New York indie rockers Blonde Redhead's seventh full-length, 23.
Ironically, this career-facelift will most likely be the album that catapults this band to the red carpet-- more record sales, more exposure, higher profile tours. But serious Redhead heads familiar with the band's past forward-thinking oeuvre of magical melancholy will most likely catch a wince-able whiff of disintegration. Somewhere underneath all the high-gloss, ornamental swirlies and lacquered doilies are haphazardly camouflaged well-written songs.
Essentially, 23 consists of simply tunes much in the vein of the international trio's high water mark, 2000's Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, which found the once angularly screeching Sonic Youth/Unwound-worshiping post-no-wavers breathing deep and relaxing. The songs are similar to 2004's almost as good Misery Is a Butterfly, which took said gems of art-pop blueness, but draped them in heavy orchestration and flirted with an almost too-lush production. Consider Butterfly the unsubtle foreshadowing: Allegedly, somewhere during the course of the making of the self-produced 23, Blonde Redhead got lost; unsure if their early mixes were going in the right direction the band brought in famed alterna-rock producer Alan Moulder (U2, Depeche Mode, My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins) for a tune-up.
Whether the Pace twins-- Amedeo (voice-guitars) and Simone (drums)-- and foxy frontwoman Kazu Makino (voice-guitars) were already drifting toward overblown production before Moulder's involvement is unclear, but the producer's paws are everywhere. Take, for example, the title track "23" where seriously My Bloody Valentine–jonesing guitars and hypno whatzits whirl around Kazu's eyes-wide-shut ethereal unintelligible words, sounding like the coolest new shoegaze band on the block, but not the quirky subtle architects of wistfullness we've come to know and love. Another mistep would be "The Dress", where traceable stains of previous BR dance-y hanky panky (such as Lemon's "This Is Not") gets mired in electro keyboard chirps and droning draft-in-the-brain synths. You can't blame a band for trying new things: "Silently" sounds like a beach-walking Blondie track with girl-group harmonies; "Publisher" takes a Police-like drum attack and the trio's trademark minor-chord guitar lines but pads them with odd electronica effluvium; and "Top Ranking" smooshes J-pop cutesiness against Tropicalia breeziness. And then there's "Heroine", with its honey-I-shrunk-Kazu-into-a-Buggles-song samba. Innovative? Sure, but when all the day-glo splatters, candy-coated swooshes, and chocolate waterfalls obscure the individualized songs underneath, what's the point? 23 coulda/shoulda been the album where Blonde Redhead added on that much needed new wing to their mansion of moody cool craftsmanship. But instead, constructed right in front, blocking the entire view of the ornate and majestic building they took over 13 years to build, is a garish warbly and weird Frank Gehry-esque monstrosity.
-D. Shawn Bosler, April 11, 2007
Review by Heather Phares
With each album since Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, Blonde Redhead has made huge strides forward with their sound. Misery Is a Butterfly pitted fragile melodies against dark, swirling arrangements, and its tragic glamour turned the album into a cult favorite. On 23, the band trades the cloistered chamber rock of Butterfly for tone-bending dream pop and subtle electronics; while the wide open spaces sound a little bare at first, this streamlined approach ends up making this Blonde Redhead's loveliest and most accessible work yet. The group begins each album with a bold statement of purpose, and 23 is no different. The epic title track's delicate electronic rhythms, swooping, shimmering guitars, and majestically bittersweet melody pitch it somewhere between My Bloody Valentine and Asobi Seksu, showing how a more restrained Blonde Redhead can still sound lush and haunting. "Spring and Summer by Fall"'s streaming, comet-tail guitars and "Silently"'s thorny melody hark back to Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, while "Heroine"'s vocoders sound surprisingly fresh, giving the song a fairy tale-meets-sci-fi vibe. This more whimsical, if not exactly lighthearted, feel flows through much of 23, especially on "Dr. Strangeluv," which boasts playful percussion and sparkling synths, and "Top Ranking," which layers Kazu Makino's vocals into futuristic girl group harmonies. However, Blonde Redhead hasn't ditched the brooding beauty of Misery Is a Butterfly entirely. "The Dress" is just as darkly stunning as any song on that album, with looping gasps and insistent guitars circling lyrics like "the fear starts creeping up when you have so much to lose," while "SW"'s melody and psychedelic brass interlude have a Butterfly-esque intensity. And as always, Blonde Redhead has a flair for haunting melodies, particularly on "Publisher," the chorus of which sounds peculiarly like Aerosmith's "Dream On." 23 is stunning -- in fact, its only flaw might be that its track listing is a little top-heavy, resulting in an album with an amazing first half and a flip side that is only very good. Nitpicking aside, 23 is mysterious and modern, with an artfully strange beauty that is more memorable than perfection.
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