Niki N. Phaser

The thing with Dead by Sunrise is that you can either listen to it as Chester Benington’s side-project and compare it to Linkin Park, you can also listen to it as Julien-K without Ryan Shuck on vocals, or you can clear your mind of all these faces and names and enjoy a new rock band. And, truth be told, it’s not at all difficult to enjoy Dead by Sunrise’s debut album, Out of the Ashes. The overall feeling you get from this first studio effort by these guys, is that you are listening to some classic rock’n'roll album, something old school, but still alive and kicking. Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell is the first thing that comes to mind, but Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet is not too far either. I’m not entering sound issues when mentioning these albums. I’m just trying to say that Out of the Ashes has everything you would want from a rock album. It might not become your favourite, but you will respect it.

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This isn’t really something against The Dandy Warhols, it’s just that they have recently joined yet another new trend in the process of releasing records. We no longer get just remastered re-releases, but also remixed ones, and by that I don’t mean the seven-minutes-intro club mix of a three-minutes song. It’s about the mix of the whole album. The Dandy Warhols released Welcome to the Monkey House in 2003, the version mixed by Jeremy Weathley, apparently preferred by the band’s label at the time, Capitol. Still, the original mix was done by Russell Elavedo and this was apparently preferred by the band. Now, six years later, they are releasing this version with the title The Dandy Warhols Are Sound.

Truth be told there are plenty of differences between the two records, it’s not just that one is louder, like with remastered material. First of all, some of the songs are longer, for example The Last High or We Used To Be Friends. The track order is different, the album covers (as you can see in the images) and then, of course, there is the mixing. The songs have a new sound, but if you have listened to Welcome to the Monkey House for all these years and got acquainted with that music in that form, its 2009 “doppelgänger” seems like a collection of rough demos, missing some crucial production. Still, The Dandy Warhols have a strong enough indie following for this release to not have been in vain and they have plenty of irony to not pretend that pecuniary thoughts haven’t crossed their mind. Their official website’s greeting at the moment is: “Remember when we released The Dandy Warhols Are Sound today? And then you bought it? Good times.”

You can compare samples from the two versions here:

Welcome to the Monkey House and The Dandy Warhols Are Sound

Pearl Jam did the same with their first album, Ten, which was rereleased in 2009, both remastered and in a new mix by Brendan O’Brien, as the band thought the original mix by Tim Palmer had too much reverb on it, something that many rock bands seem to complain about when it comes to mixing. But the truth remains that it simply sucks when your favourite band says about your favourite album that is not quite what they were striving for, but, oh, the new mix, which comes in Limited edition, Deluxe edition, SuperDeluxe edition, Vinyl, iTunes edition, Wal-Mart/K-Mart edition, the gas station around the corner edition, oh, yes, that’s the real deal. And, yeah, I know no one is forcing you to buy it, but it has those two damn bonus tracks…

A Fine Frenzy is not quite your standard ignored-gold, considering that Alison Sudol’s debut album (One Cell in the Sea - 2007) has been well received and created enough buzz and fans for her upcoming album, Bomb in a Birdcage, to be released this september. Still, it always hurts a little bit when music of great quality isn’t universally acknowledged as value, especially while mediocre stuff is championed all over the place. A Fine Frenzy’s The Rangers is, for me, the perfect song to back up the statements above. Alison Sudol is well-known for her poetic lyrics and in The Rangers she really creates an entire universe within a classical pop-song structure. She talks about hiding, but not alone and that is why, despite the rather dramatic vocals and tearjerking piano, the song is… well, happy. The chorus is just so tatooable as a wedding vow: “and the rangers stream out of their cabins, they are the hunters, we are the rabbits and maybe we don’t want to be found, maybe we don’t want you tracking us down”. Even though there is isolation in all the hiding and getting lost because “the crumbs are gone”, there is also a sensation of empowering from the fact that there is no I in “we are the rabbits” or “they’ll keep seeking but they won’t find us”. The only I‘s we find are “let’s keep living our quiet lives, you and I, you and I”. I can only conclude by recommending A Fine Frenzy’s The Rangers as a fine way to celebrate the power of togetherness, because every good is better and every evil is lesser when you are with someone.

LISTEN TO THE SONG HERE