These Are Powers : All Aboard Future

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/thesearepowersallaboard.jpg" alt=" " />These Are Powers' Dead Oceans debut isn't as god awful as their previous work or seeing them live, but still isn't any good by any...
3.8 Dead Oceans
2009 

These Are Powers : All Aboard FutureSomehow, Brooklyn’s These Are Powers has gotten enough attention and listeners to get signed by Dead Oceans (sister label to Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian).  This is despite being one of the most loathed bands in the New York indie music scene, thanks to their over-loud noise-rock, unappealing appearance, and ability to get booked playing with bands or at shows you want to see and making you suffer through them, like at last year’s Siren Music Festival on Coney Island (QRO festival recap).  After re-releasing their first two records, Terrific Seasons and Taro Tarot, Dead Oceans now puts out the new All Aboard Future, a record that is an improvement from the band’s low, low base, jettisoning the noise-rock for tech-beat electronica, but still isn’t any good.

When ‘divisive’ is a word used to describe a band’s music (as opposed to their politics or personality), that usually means they’re terrible, but for some reason a few people say like them.  Think of when something or someone is “you either love him/her/it or hate him/her/it; there’s no in-between” – that just means that that person or thing is awful (famed steroid user, and lesser known as a baseball player, Jose Canseco actually said that about himself – though at least he didn’t say it in the third person…).  If most people hate a band’s music, not the hype or its ubiquity or the people behind it but the music itself, with only a small minority in favor, this is a case where majority opinion is correct.  Even so-called ‘cult’ bands, the ones that have a loyal and dedicated, but limited, following, they only engender disaffection and ignorance from the rest of the music-listening public (think of the reactions to the last two huge, hit ‘cult’ TV shows, Lost and The X-Files); if a group’s music is enough to actually bring about hatred, not just avoidance, from listeners, then that tells you something.

Such is the case with These Are Powers.  ‘Noise-rock’ is a genre that almost begs for ‘divisive’ bands (usually ones promoted by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore – QRO live review), considering that it is defined by being an almost direct attempt to make music out of unlistenable noise.  And it’s even more aggressive live, since everything is played so loud.  These Are Powers have previously followed this example, even employing the classic ‘Asian singer/frontwoman’ used by bands like Deerhoof (QRO photos) and Ponytail (QRO photos), though singer/guitarist Anna Barie isn’t some little girl straight out of a fetishist’s dream, but an over-tall, gangly woman.  And while bassist/founder Pat Noecker (previously of Liars – QRO photos) does fill the usual ‘old guy who plays his instrument not the way you’re supposed to’ (he puts a wooden dowel under his bass strings to create a third bridge), new drummer Bill Salas looks – and acts – more like a DJ than a noise-punk drummer.

On All Aboard Future, These Are Powers do move further away from noise-rock, and not just its stereotypes, as they go for an electronica-tech approach.  At their limited best, Powers is a (very) poor man’s Animal Collective (QRO album review), and this new genre isn’t one that’s kind to failure.  While openers “Easy Answers” and “Life of Birds” are alright, the clap-march tech beat of the former is even a little catchy before getting muddled in tech, from there the record sinks with poor ideas and missed attempts.  The band’s stabs at haunting atmosphere are first merely forgettable, like with “Parallel Shores” and “Light After Sound”, but by the end they just gets outright bad: the ‘empty house’ attempt “Sand Tassels” is repetitive and boring, while the try at expanse on closer “Blue Healer” lame (and its minor, unnecessary bonus material even lamer, coming after a long break of silence); both feel indulgent, from a band that has in no way earned the right to be so.  Meanwhile, the tech-stop beats of “Double Double Yolk”, “Adam’s Turtle”, and “Glass Blocks” are downright unlistenably arrhythmic (and Barie’s vocals taking the lead on “Blocks” doesn’t help out); the only thing that can be said for them is that at least they’re not too loud.

That is one major advantage to These Are Powers on record, vs. live: you can turn the volume down (and the album’s only eight tracks long).  But there’s really no reason to listen at all.  The shift away from the outright awful nature of their music live, which earned them such a ‘divisive’ reputation at home, to the techtronica avenue now is a better direction, but All Aboard Future is still going no place.

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