Thursday 27 September 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #329 - Efterklang, "Piramida"

This was another album I had to have on in the background while I was doing other things with my mind and fingers yesterday.

The most persistent thoughts I had while listening were COLDPLAY and A-HA. Maybe it was the Nordic twinge in the vocals, seeing as these boys are from the Denmark, that got the Morten sensors activated. But there's something about the structures that suggest a more laid-back Coldplay. His voice is of a very similar pitch but there isn't the cloying bombast.


The music chimes tastefully throughout. It has a classical jazzy shuffle of sorts; "The Ghost" in particular mixes the soft-brushed drums, avian guitar lines, warm brass and the musicianly air in a satisfying way. I read in the NME that there aren't enough choruses, which I can understand. It's quite a lateral album. "Black Summer" wanders too far into the detective soundtrack territory - a great many notes hanging in the air. Suspension in musical aspic.


I like it more when he sounds like Morten and less when he sounds like Chris Martin. I also read the description "adult pop", and I'm not sure about that. Is it the idea that it's adult in the sense that all the explosive, effervescent joy had burnt away and the shapes left behind in the dying light somehow represent adulthood. The sober surveying of the leftovers. I don't think I agree. (I don't think I agree with the idea I just made up myself based on reading two words.) But this album could fit that description: shapes made music that were left behind in the absence.

"Between the walls/I'm a werewolf"

Rating: Subtracting Bombast out of Coldplay

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