Music Review: The 1900s, The Foals and Al Green

The 1900s
Cold and Kind

Most breakups result in tubs of ice cream, not creative epiphanies; fortunately, for the seven-member The 1900s, emotional disaster has turned into a pretty, and pretty cohesive, record. Employing various boy-girl vocals, the album mines the same personal wreckage as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, while adding enough surprises to separate it from the 70’s lite-rock cannon. If there’s one thing The 1900s share with their idols, it’s the fact that they’ve made an album, album – from the urgent piano of the first tracks, to the gospel-ish choir in the middle to the aching coda at the end, Cold and Kind is best experienced, for all its beautiful ebbs and flows, as a whole. Highlights: The whole thing…(also: Wool of the Lamb, Georgia, When I Say Go)

The Foals
Antidotes

The Foals are their own genre, and that genre should be called divisive listening. If you hate kinetically-charged math rock with a Battles meets Brit-rock aesthetic, then you’ll hate the Foals; if you love lyrics that repeat every third word because it sounds cool and random thrown-together subject matter that came freshly picked out of a hat, then you’ll love the Foals. Antidotes is simply a frustratingly, enjoyable, unbearably, wondrous album. Highlights: Red Sock Pugie, Olympic Airways, Cassius

Al Green
Lay it Down

You know the drill – trot out former all-star, dominate the record with “supporting” new all-stars and let everybody collect a cheque. Well, Al Green isn’t going down so easy – Lay it Down might “feature” John Legend and half of The Roots, but it’s still Green’s show. Green’s falsetto still has its stunning wattage, and it basks in the syrupy sweetness of the AM radio horns, old-school Hammond organ buzz, and fat bass lines. Of course it’s not Green’s best work (that’s Call Me), but it is his best work since returning to recording in 2003, and it captures the essence of satin soul better than anything else released since Green retired the first time around. Highlights: Lay it Down, Just for Me, You’ve Got the Love I Need