Mae - The Everglow

Considering that Tooth and Nail is a small label, it's unusual how many albums I have that are released on it. Dead Poetic, Project 86, two by Anberlin, two by Emery, three by Underoath, and now Mae. Some of it is not so great and I'm annoyed by their tendency to put out "Special Editions" with a few extra tracks that just annoy fans who already bought the album, but it's generally pretty solid punk. Mae fits with this trend. There's a special edition, but the regular one was cheaper and has better art, in my opinion.

Honestly, this kind of music doesn't quite do it for me anymore. It's completely pleasant, never irritating, has some real emotions in it, and is fairly good technically. But my tastes have shifted away from decent pop punk/emo and towards more original stuff. There's nothing wrong with The Everglow, I enjoy listening to it, it just doesn't grab my attention as much as I'd like. I like the vocalist, he has a nice voice that fits the tone of the music very well. The album has a concept behind it, and it plays out like an audio storybook that's accompanied by the drawings in the booklet.

The main problem is the lack of recognizable tracks. Only a few songs stick out from the rest of the pretty standard rock sound. It's all guitars and drums, except for the first and last songs which are more piano-focused ballads. My favorite song is "Someone Else's Arms". It's a good genre song and I love the way it enters the chorus. "Suspension" is a pretty decent single, although not terribly interesting musically. "Painless" is another standout with the picked intro, piano-driven verse, and recurring wall of sound. The title track has a really catchy chorus, and I also like "Anything" a lot. If you're into the general scene Mae inhabits, you'd probably enjoy The Everglow.

The Longest Journey

I'm annoyed whenever I spend more on stuff than it turns out I have to. It happens sometimes with games. I bought Shadow of the Colossus at full price, and before I got around to playing it, it was re-released as a Greatest Hits title, so I essentially paid $20 for non-hideous packaging. Does anyone think that red color looks good? What happened with the Longest Journey games wasn't as bad but it was still annoying. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was put on Steam for $30 and I jumped on a 10% discount because I was interested in it. A couple months later, my hopes to play the prequel were made easier by its own release on Steam, but it was in a deal with Dreamfall for $25 total, so I ended up paying much more than I had to if I just waited a bit. Oh well, it happens some times.

Being a point-and-click adventure game, The Longest Journey focuses on storytelling over gameplay. There's a lot of running around, discussions, and puzzle solving. As I gave an example of in an earlier post, a lot of puzzles involve bizarre leaps of logic and item hunting, but it's all fun when you figure it out. Usually the game is good about letting you know what to do next, but sometimes it either doesn't make it clear enough or just doesn't tell you, which can lead to confusion. You know what your next goal is, but before it gets triggered you have to go somewhere or do something else, and it can lead to wasted time going back and forth.

The graphics are strange in their duality. The backgrounds and environments are a mixture of photographs, hand drawings, and pre-rendered computer images, and look generally very nice. The real-time character models however, are terrible. They're extremely low resolution, are usually poorly animated, and don't interact with each other or the environment well. This is forgivable for three reasons, though. The game was originally released seven years ago, when most games looked bad; it's not an action game that requires accurate interactions to work; and the art direction and visual design are strong enough that you can appreciate it anyway.

The story and writing are really very good. What's quickly noticeable is how funny the game is. Dreamfall had a few wise-cracking characters (mostly who were introduced here), but it was a mostly serious game that focused on its dramatic story. April Ryan is a much more quirky and light-hearted heroine than Zoe or her future, hardened self from Dreamfall. Her grounded sense of humor permeates the whole game, and the epic story doesn't seem worse for it. Speaking of the storyline, it's quite interesting, telling the tale of a world with two opposite halves, one a vision of earth in the future, the other a land of fantasy. A new group has come to disrupt the delicate balance, and April has to explore both worlds to find what she needs to stop them. The pacing is generally very good - like Dreamfall did, it starts a bit slow but can grab you and pull you forward until it ends before you know it. I only had one problem. Near the end, the pace has been accelerating for a while and you can feel it coming to a climax soon, but you end up having to dawdle around on a space station for a while before you get to the last area. Despite that and a few other hiccups, The Longest Journey is one of the better experiences you'll have with an engrossing story in a game. I'm looking forward to the episodic conclusion to the whole saga that was announced in May.

The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium

When At the Drive-In broke up, two bands came out of it, Sparta and The Mars Volta. I have a couple albums by Sparta. They're pretty solid if unexceptional hardcore/punk rock. Despite their more mainstream sound, they're overshadowed by their unique and more eccentric counterparts. There's been a bit of a backlash against The Mars Volta's increasingly weird and meandering music, as evidenced in declining critical acclaim, but if nothing else, De-Loused is a hard-rocking, original creation. They are known for very long tracks that have nothing but strange noises for minutes at a time, but their first full-length keeps that to a minimum as they focus on real music. The lyrics are strange and seemingly strings of random words thrown together, but there apparently is meaning, the whole thing being an obscure concept album about a character based on a friend of the band members who committed suicide after a drug-induced coma.

"Son et Lumiere" is an atmospheric intro that segues nicely into "Inertiatic ESP", the only song I've really heard before. It's fast-paced and shows the epitome of what the high-pitched vocalist can do for a song. There's a chaotic sound that permeates most of the songs, and makes it seem more urgent and maybe better than its true, objective quality. "Drunkship of Lanterns" shows off their more latin-influenced side which is just as interesting as the more progressive stuff. "Eria Tarka" has one of the more infectious vocal parts. "Cicatriz ESP" is the longest track and is the biggest hint of what's to come with the band, having an extensive section of jamming and ambiance before coming back to finish the song. Flea's strong baseline pulls it forward to the explosive chorus. It's interesting how each song is sufficiently unique to be memorable while still always sharing the same interesting vision of what good rock sounds like. Of the eight real songs on the record, "Televators" is the least instantly entertaining, but is still a solid, slower song. "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" ends the album in one of the best ways I've ever heard, with an intense climax of starting and stopping guitars backing passionate vocals. It really makes you feel like you just finished listening to something great. It's a bit hard to define, but I think anyone with an inclination towards any of the aspects could like it.

Daft Punk - Discovery

I don't listen to much electronica/dance/house/techno/whatever you want to call it, so it takes quite a bit to make me actually pay for an album of it. But Daft Punk is too good at not just cool computery noises, but also just making music, that it's hard not to like. Unlike some artists whose work consists of the same basic riff or melody over and over again for an insane amount of time, Daft Punk makes actual songs with structure and points, and their instrumentals are a lot of fun without being too long. They do a fair amount of sampling of music from some older songs, some credited and some not. But they're not lazy with the samples, they usually work them around and integrate them into a song, making it their own.

The album starts with "One More Time", and it's a perfect opening, throwing you into exactly what the band is and making you feel really good. "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" is maybe the most recognizable song on the record, and for good reason I guess. It's really catchy and sticks in your brain, although I've heard it a lot before and I'm not sure how well it fits with the rest of the tracks. The album has a good variety and vocal and instrumental songs. The vocal ones are more instantly memorable but there's some good stuff in the other tracks. I really like "Superheroes", which samples "Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed" by Barry Manilow but changes it to make it sound completely different. "Aerodynamic" has a really cool guitar solo part that maybe gets repetitive but it's just a fun song to listen to. That describes pretty much the whole thing, on which every song, excepting one filler track, is unique and enjoyable. If you can get into something different at all, it's worth it.