The Good: Good vocals, Decent intense metal rock sound, Good replayability
The Bad: Short, Mostly cover songs.
The Basics: A surprisingly good, melodic album, A Perfect Circle’s Emotive rocks lightly but with compelling political purpose.
As April rocked toward an end in my household, my wife was thrilled when I got in Emotive, the last album from A Perfect Circle. The album was part of my Maynard James Keenan Artist Of The Month exploration as Keenan was one of the central members of A Perfect Circle. And I generally enjoyed Emotive, despite the fact that it is not the most original album I have heard in recent memory. Instead, the album gets a lot of credit from me for simply still interesting my ear after two dozen spinnings of the album. While A Perfect Circle is good with its own, original works, it seems that cover songs work well for the band as well.
Emotive is shorter than I generally like a c.d. to be and is thoroughly mellow, making for a listening experience which is distinct and brief. The album also sounds more musically diverse than many of Keenan’s other works, which plays well after so many days of listening to his other stuff. A Perfect Circle on Emotive sounds much more moody and alternative than their other works, at times becoming a male version of Nightwish from the instrumental accompaniment and others becoming an alternate future version of what John Lennon’s works might have sounded like had he not been killed.
With only twelve songs occupying 48:13, Emotive is short for a c.d. and is hardly the defining work of A Perfect Circle. Indeed, the band only wrote two of the songs. The remaining ten are obvious cover songs, like “Imagine” by John Lennon and “Freedom Of Choice” from Devo. All of the songs have been remade with a more ominous, metal and synth sound to them. Instrumentally, the album is the work of the band as they play all of their own instruments and Maynard James Keenan does provide all of the lead vocals. This was clearly the musical vision of the band at the time as Billy Howerdel, the band’s guitar, bass and piano player, produced and engineered the album.
What one can expect then are murky – bass and deep synth-driven – interpretations of songs like “Annihilation,” “Peace, Love And Understanding,” and “What’s Going On.” The songs delve into metal usually only after they have lured the listener in with softer, more dense musical sounds and then the song explodes with sound, as the band does with “People Are People.” Still, this is a quieter album than most of Keenan’s works with “Imagine” being almost acoustic for most of the song, giving it an appropriately eerie sound. Even when the song becomes accompanied with guitars and drums, it still has a more orchestral than rock feel to it.
Vocally, Keenan is clear, crisp and direct with his vocals on Emotive. In fact, more than illustrating any great range with his voice on the album, he successfully illustrates he can emote. Virtually every line is clear and well-defined and this helps the political nature of many of the lyrics to be heard and realized by the listeners. As well, Keenan occasionally plays with production elements so his voice gets mechanized or reverberated for emphasis and this, too becomes auditorily interesting.
As for the lyrics, amid the cover songs, Keenan and Howerdel have something to say. The two original songs actually stand up remarkably well with the well-established antiwar anthems and this album, despite the instrumental accompaniment which sounds dank or occasionally frightening, is quite progressive. When Keenan sings “Counting bodies like sheep / To the rhythm of the war drums / I’ll be the one to protect you from your enemies and all your demons / I'll be the one to protect you from a will to survive and a voice of reason / I'll be the one to protect you from your enemies and your choices son / They're one in the same, I must isolate you” (“Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums”) there is a great nihilistic sensibility presented. The song resonates and the repetition seems to drive home the futility of war remarkably well.
Similarly, the band becomes articulate and poetic with interpersonal relationships. On “Passive,” Keenan and company make the horrors of being left by a partner as real as the horrors of war. With lines like “Dead as dead can be / My doctor tells me / But I just can't believe him / Ever the optimistic one / I'm sure of your ability / To become my perfect enemy / Wake up and face me / Don't play dead 'cause maybe / Someday I will walk away and say / You disappoint me / Maybe you're better off this way” (“Passive”) A Perfect Circle illustrates an understanding of how terrible it feels to be left alone and to have relationships dissolve.
Ultimately, I found Emotive to be better than its component parts. While none of cover songs truly make the songs into A Perfect Circle’s, the album holds together remarkably well and it becomes a strong, political album for a generation frequently too apathetic to care.
The best song is “Passive,” but there are actually no weak tracks.
For other works by Maynard James Keenan, please check out my reviews of:
Undertow - Tool
Aenima - Tool
10,000 Days – Tool
Mer De Noms - A Perfect Circle
Thirteenth Step – A Perfect Circle
V Is For Vagina - Puscifer
8/10
For other music reviews, please check out my index page for an organized listing!
© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
No comments:
Post a Comment