Review Summary: You put on quite a show.
It's a genuine shame that Gotye seems to have gone down in history as a star-crossed one-hit wonder (in the United States, at least). It's true that "Somebody That I Used To Know" was a stellar song - a cursory listen to its' whispery, vinyl-processed groove, cloudy instrumentation, and synth-soaked atmosphere makes it easy to see why the strange track eclipsed its own creator. In spite of its simplicity at heart, "Somebody That I Used To Know" was unique, and that's what gave it the vital edge it needed to dominate the airwaves from 2011-2012. But "Somebody" wasn't the only track of its kind - those seeking more of the artsy uniqueness found within Gotye's hit single could have easily found it on its album of origin. But, as fate would have it, that's not how things really turned out for
Making Mirrors. Blame it on poor timing, blame it on barriers between countries an ocean apart from each other, or blame it on plain old bad luck, but both
Making Mirrors and Gotye himself found only momentary success by the riding the coattails of their darling hit single for about a year or two... and then fading from the memory of the public consciousness*. Truly, he was somebody we used to know.
* (Not making another album for about eleven years will do that, as well.)
And it really is a shame, because
Making Mirrors is a fascinating art-pop record, an album that dips its toes into a lot of different pools and constantly dazzles your ears with the eclectic results. "Smoke And Mirrors" is a feisty, hazy bit of RnB, strung along by a swaggering electric-piano groove, fuzzy Latin Jazz percussion, and Gotye's vocals swinging between a calm, collected midrange to a strong, searing belt. It's a sexy and sinister track that's quickly followed up by the bright-faced 60's Motown of "I Feel Better", a soulful array of pianos, horns, and tambourines straight ouf of Stevie Wonder's bag of tricks. And before you have time to breathe,
Making Mirrors hits you with the one-two punch of "In Your Light" - an ebullient burst of psychedelic pop given rhythm and energy by handclaps, twelve-string guitars, a fleet-footed bassline and fast-paced horns - and "State of the Art", a dark, jazzy ditty with pitched-down vocals, alien synths, and killer vocal harmonies painting a picture about a 70's home organ that takes over the world. Four terrific songs in a row that have absolutely
nothing to do with one another beyond a shared vocalist.
Making Mirrors is an album that's constantly hitting you with new sounds left and right. The creepy, minimalist, Trent Reznor-esque "Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You", the ethereal and haunting "Giving Me A Chance", the tribal influence on the quiet and achingly pretty "Bronte" - to say that Gotye had quite a few irons in the fire on his (presently) final record would be something of an understatement. On one hand, this makes the album a very disjointed one - it jumps between genres and influences with abandon and doesn't care if the listener isn't able to match pace with it. There are parts of the album that feel downright airheaded - take the opening tracks, "Making Mirrors" and "Easy Way Out". There's an interesting dichotomy shared between these songs, the former crafting a warm, dreamlike aura with its atmospheric synth pads and Gotye's distant vocals, while the rocking latter goes straight for a gritty, overdriven fusion between the Beatles and the Foo Fighters. In spite of the good templates these two songs present us with, neither of them manage to hit even the
two minute mark. Hell, the title track barely reaches the
one minute mark. It's like Gotye just couldn't wait to get to the rest of the record already, eager to try out something different as quickly as possible. It's a smorgasbord of raw, unadulterated stuff that shouldn't work as well as it does.
But "work" it does, somehow. Maybe it's the fact that the album hits much more often than it misses - it's hard to say there's a bad song among the twelve presented to us. Maybe it's the fact that as often as Gotye likes to shift gears and try something else, he never strays too far from the strong, overarching sounds and motifs that persist throughout the album - retro stylings, murky production, the interplay of futuristic synths and acoustic instruments. Or maybe it's Gotye's wonderful voice that acts as the glue that holds every track together. His soaring, emotive, Sting-meets-Steve Winwood tenor adds a lot of flavor to each and every one of the tracks here, be it the sonorous belting of "I Feel Better", his faint, misty-eyed mumblings in "Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You", or his teary-eyed, Bon Iver-y falsetto in "Bronte" giving color, warmth, and resonance to simple and sad lyrics like "
But now, it's the end" and "
I know it hurts to let go."
In spite of its pop leanings, at its heart,
Making Mirrors is artsy as hell, and it isn't afraid to show it. It's an all-over-the-place synthesis of different genres, of different hats for the chef to wear, but when every single song has something worth liking about it, it's hard to complain. Some of the best of 2010's pop can be found on
Making Mirrors, from the vocal interplay between Gotye's passionate belts and Kimbra's velvety crooning on "Somebody That I Used To Know" to the uplifting lyric and elegant, synth-heavy textures of "Save Me" to the sobering, psychedelic finality of "Eyes Wide Open", whose melancholic Worldbeat influence and simple lyrical profundities like "
we're all in the same boat, staying afloat for the moment" turn the track from a strong Peter Gabriel pastiche into something special. More than ten years have come and gone since
Making Mirrors, and it's an honest-to-God shame that Gotye never followed up on it, seemingly content to disappear under-the-radar into indefinite hiatus after the album's moment in the sun. Auteurism is rare in pop music - given its scarcity, it should be treasured. And
Making Mirrors is certainly a unique, lost-and-found treasure of its own, an album that does whatever the hell it wants, whenever the hell it so pleases.
