Review Summary: Colors last a lifetime and fade to grey...
I’ve heard Archive for the first time while watching a Polish movie. A lifelong theatre director Eugeniusz Korin decided to make his debut as a film director at the ripe age of 57. For some reason, he felt that Archive songs would be a perfect soundtrack for a movie about people who abduct career criminals straight from the courtrooms for their own purposes. Thus, my first contact with a British trip-hop band happened because of my fluctuating fascination with Polish culture. As I watched Michał Żebrowski jogging through the streets while listening to Pollard Berrier intoning “It hurts to feeeeeel,” I thought to myself: “That’s a nice Radiohead knock-off. I need to check it out later.”
Well, I must have had more important things to do, because I’m doing a proper Archive discography run only now, roughly 12 or 13 years after I watched the imperfect but entertaining “Sęp,” written and directed by Eugeniusz Korin. And, of course, the reality defies my first impressions. At least on their early albums, Archive sound nothing like Radiohead, and not just because they’ve had different singers back then. For one thing, the band’s second album doesn’t feel so dramatic at all, with its lyrics mostly centered on the feeling of mutual love with all the tenderness and joy it brings. But before I get to their sophomore effort, I need to talk about “Londinium” for a bit.
Archive’s debut is branded as a skillful imitation of Massive Attack, but I am not an expert in the matter at all. My interaction with Massive Attack is limited to that hot music video for “Ritual” starring Rosamund Pike and a couple of boring “Angel” covers. What struck me about “Londinium” was the sheer richness of its sound. I’m not talking about variety in a sense of every song being in a different style, but rather about how much of everything was put into every individual song. To be honest, I was sure some of the instruments presented on that album were sampled. But no, they are all real, the flutes, the French horns, the cellos, and much more, all adorned with beautiful singing and skillful rapping. Oh dear, that album has
so much going on!
In comparison, “Take My Head” feels… well, not exactly a diluted version of “Londinium,’ but rather as if the band members kept some aspects of their earlier sound and completely abandoned others. It starts off strong, with “You Make Me Feel” based around a boisterous synth riff reinforced by Suzanne Wooder’s uplifting vocals. It’s a great song that instantly gets your attention, but it already shows how streamlined and simplified this album is in comparison with its predecessor. Even as the second song, “The Way You Love Me,” rolls in, it already leaves a tiring impression, even though Mrs. Wooder again conveys just the right feeling with her voice.
In my view, the vocals are the main strength on this album, but they may also be one of its limiting factors. I don’t know if the band consciously decided to make Suzanne’s voice front and center of the record or if she just had to carry the album entirely on her back. But the fact remains, most of these songs would have fallen flat on their faces without the impressive singing. It’s not that they’re all bad. Both “The Pain Gets Worse” and “Cloud in the Sky” have some cool cinematic string sections, while the title track harkens back to the swaggering attitude of the opener. But with most of the songs here it feels like they are hammering one single point into your brain, again and again and again. That feeling is reinforced by rudimentary and repetitive lyrics. Again, the vocals remain the strongest point throughout, as Suzanne always finds the right way to showcase and present every song, but she can’t do much about the variety issue.
It’s not always like this, though. Just as you’re nearing the end of the album, tired of the endless repetition, “Love in Summer” comes in to ease your sorrow. It’s a song that tells a proper story, instead of endlessly repeating the same phrase. It keeps changing as it goes, with feel-good guitar melodies gradually giving way to symphonics that pass the torch to some classy bass lines while remaining in the background, and then the keyboards take their turn, ranging from classy organ sound to modern electronic drive. All the time, the drum beat keeps morphing to accommodate the change, and although it’s an instrumental track, Suzanne Wooder still adds her own touch with some wonderful vocalizations towards the end of the song.
I’d say that the tail end of the album contains the strongest songs, starting from the title track and until the two genuinely tender ballads, “Rest My Head On You” and “Home.” Overall, though, while “Londinium” was like a big box of crayons of the brightest and most vibrant colors, “Take My Head” leaves a much more washed-out impression. It’s like the same box, but some of the crayons got lost, crumbled, or expired over time. It does, however, retain some of the most unearthly colors still…
