The Avalanches - Since I Left You Review

The Avalanches Since I Left You

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Tracklist:
Since I Left You
Stay Another Season
Radio
Two Hearts in 3/4 Time
Avalanche Rock
Flight Tonight
Close To You
Diners Only
A Different Feeling
Electricity
Tonight May Have To Last Me All My Life
Pablo's Cruise
Frontier Psychiatrist
Etoh
Summer Crane
Little Journey
Live at Dominoes
Extra Kings

Ranking: #30 for 2000

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4.1
excellent

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On 15 Lists

5.0
classic

Alex -Slayer- Robertson USER (30 Reviews)

2009-08-25 | 31 comments | 686 views

Summary: Perfect.

2 of 2 thought this review was well written

The music and review site allmusic.com (not unlike Sputnik Music in content) has an interesting system for overviewing bands and albums. Each band has a list of "mood" adjectives assigned to them to describe their music aesthetically and emotionally. Mostly, it's stuff you'd expect: Radiohead has cold, epic, austere, and nervous; Nirvana has angst-ridden, cathartic, and visceral; and Nine Inch Nails has gloomy, distraught, and brooding. Australian turntablist dance group The Avalanches have a total of 13 adjectives to describe them, and the adjectives suit well both the music of The Avalanches, and the how the listener feels when experiencing them. These adjectives are: soothing, party/celebratory, whimsical, amiable/good-natured, playful, boisterous, fun, cerebral, energetic, sweet, quirky, carefree, and summery.

Wow. Sounds fun, doesn't it? It is. Rather than being deep like Radiohead, emotionally complex like Nirvana, or intense like Nine Inch Nails, the debut (and, sadly, only) album by The Avalanches is simply fun as hell to listen to. The whole album has no low points to speak of, and easily puts a smile on the face of any listener who has a heart. To compliment the album on how fun it is, however, is not to say it is musically shallow. Quite the opposite, in fact: Since I Left You pulls from countless aesthetic and emotional origins. The album packs heaps of different moods into each song, from optimistic (the title track) to creepy ("Frontier Psychiatrist") to nostalgic ("Tonight"). The musical aspect also changes constantly, from Spanish-tinged pop to house music; even a song that, for the most part, only samples the sounds of a dock and a carnival nearby manages to be brilliant. Oh yeah, it's also made from only samples.

The journey starts with the title track: a tinkling Spanish guitar enters over the sounds of partygoers talking. A beautiful string section then enters, along with an exotic rhythm section. The voice of a man says, "Get a drink, have a good time now. Welcome to paradise." You truly believe you are there. The famous vocal sample then enters, saying, "Since I left you, I found the world so new." The song is not about a generic break-up, though. As easily as it could be about an ex, it could be about the corporate world or the tiring work and stress of city life. It's a song of escape into a beautiful new world, where independence reigns.

By the time the title track melds into "Stay Another Season," The Avalanches' immense talent in sampling and melding songs together is shown. The song has a completely different atmosphere from the title track, yet they keep the vocal sample, and it still feels completely in place, with a different twist. The song gives a whole new meaning to the samples, completely changing the emotional significance just by giving it a new environment. A group of lesser talent would be afraid of tainting the sample and discard it after use in one song, but The Avalanches build "Stay Another Season" around the sample, letting it take the song wherever it wants to.

The genius continues: third track "Radio" is a rave-ready house jam worthy of giants such as Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx. The sampling is still evident: from the repetition of "radio!" and "sending those signals," vocal samples add to the atmosphere here, acting not as a distraction, but as just another instrument added to the song. And, like all great dance songs should be, it's extremely fun to listen to, as with the rest of the songs on the album.

First single "Frontier Psychiatrist" shows another side of the album: the song almost has a sort of musical plotline, sampling B-movies to tell the story of a boy named Dexter who is being expelled from school for being allegedly criminally insane. The song also uses some of the most recognizable samples on the album, from the cinematic strings-and-horns samples to the almost-comically placed Spanish guitars, which enter after an exchange between a little girl and an old woman about animals that talk other than humans (according to the girl, one of them is a record).

Of course, considering the album's nature, it's hard to talk about without considering DJ Shadow's 1996 masterpiece Endtroducing....., the first album made from only samples. However, except for the way in which they were conceived, the two albums couldn't be any more different: Endtroducing..... was an album with a dark atmosphere, using deep synths and sparse hip-hop beats to illustrate its mood. Since I Left You is more like the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique: industrial, raucous, and a hell of a lot of fun to listen to.

However, like DJ Shadow's album, Since I Left You uses its samples brilliantly, and not as a gimmick. Only a group of people with a true love for music could pick out from countless vinyls and combine them in ways that reinvent the samples themselves as brilliant musical devices. Whether the samples are obscure or instantly recognizable, they never distract from the musical whole, and sometimes even find themselves being recognized by their context in this album, rather than the original song they were used in.

While each track stands on its own, the album works best as a musical whole. The whole album plays out like a journey through countless musical cultures. It encompasses so many different situations in an album that the scope of it is mind-boggling. Remember being on that cruise and hearing the water rush by, which was then interrupted by that deafeningly loud and deep horn? That's "Pablo's Cruise". Remember your beautiful vacation in the tropics, where everything seemed to be momentarily perfect? That's "Since I Left You". Remember seeing those old, cheesy Western movies when you were younger, and being completely mesmerized by them? That's "Frontier Psychiatrist". It goes on. Not everyone has had these individual experiences, but Since I Left You has something for everyone.

In this day and age where sometimes popularity overtakes musical creativity in priority, Since I Left You is an absolutely essential piece of musical beauty that manages to be uncompromisingly cutting-edge. There is not one wasted second on the album, and the only possible complaint is that it should be longer. But it already is. Since I Left You is the music you hear as your life plays out. It goes on forever.

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