a r t i s t : Lali Puna
t i t l e : Our Inventions
d a t e : 2010
l a b e l : Morr Music
c a t : morr 098
s o u r c e : CDDA
g e n r e : Indie
r l s. d a t e : Feb/2010
t r a c k s : 10
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 42,0 MB
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More than half a decade has elapsed since the release of
Faking The Books, Lali Puna's third (and hitherto most recent)
long-player, but the band's impact on the climate of
electronic rock music remains palpable. Along with
sister-group The Notwist, this Weilheim quartet have helped
map out the musical landscape for modern, experimentally
minded pop music, and Our Inventions finds Lali Puna
continuing to push the frontiers of their medium. 'Rest Your
Head' serves as a perfectly poised re-introduction to the band
and all they've become. Initiated by waves of glassy
pulsations and warm, swelling synths, the song has the feel of
a reverse-lullaby - gently winding its way through reposeful
melodies, guided by the welcoming whisper of Trebeljahr's
vocal until the final third kicks in with drum machine hits,
and you're wide awake. While Faking The Books, with its
vibrant riffs and extrovert tendencies, had the sound of a
record begging to be played live, Our Inventions exhibits the
hallmarks of an album spun from intensive studio-bound
introspection. Two of the most explosive and ebullient songs
here - 'Remember' and 'Everything Is Always' - confirm so much
of what's special about Lali Puna: all the elements are at
once precision engineered and delivered with absolute
heartfelt conviction; perhaps never before have such jubilant
pop hooks been so meticulously and fastidiously crafted, yet
you can always hear the soul behind these machines. This is an
album that's made for and about the modern world, concerning
itself with the driving forces of progress and technological
obsession. Trebeljahr's lyrics are suggestive of alienation
and disenfranchisement from nature during the irony-laced
title-track: "The birds in the trees/Singing our mobile
melodies/What a sweet, sweet world", later stipulating that
'progress' never really gets us anywhere on 'Everything Is
Always' ("Nothing new/These days"), while hinting at the
ultimate bankruptcy of the all-devouring consumer age during
'Safe Tomorrow': "Never going anywhere/Don't stop by and get
to know/Stuff your memory with facts/Save Save Save". The
final song on the tracklist is 'Out There', a collaboration
with the Yellow Magic Orchestra's Yukihiro Takahashi. The
version appearing here is an alternate rendering of the track
that appeared on Takahashi's Page By Page album in 2009. Here
Trebeljahr addresses the global financial collapse ("Their
kingdom's past, their kingdom's gone/Just ruins and plain
desert/It's all burnt down, we're left alone"), and sure
enough, Our Inventions is a body of work that keenly engages
with the concerns of its time, one that confronts the excesses
and ever-accelerating pace of modernity. The sublime, virtuoso
electronic arrangements of Our Inventions directly lock onto
the record's recurrent key themes, depicting a world inundated
with technology and consumed by a fixation on progress -
simultaneously passing commentary on this state of affairs and
overcoming it. When Trebeljahr intones "Things move on/I'm
gonna work fast because tomorrow comes quick" it sounds like
it's being sung from the perspective of someone who's already
there.
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01-Rest Your Head [03:11]
02-Remember ? [03:44]
03-Everything Is Always [04:18]
04-Our Inventions [04:20]
05-Move On [03:41]
06-Safe Tomorrow [04:28]
07-Future Tense [03:48]
08-Hostile To Me [02:20]
09-That Day [03:34]
10-Out There feat. Yukihiro Takahashi [04:06]
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37:30 min