“Brother,” the song which put Annuals on the map a couple months ago starts of unassumingly enough. From the near silence of what sounds like a field at midnight, a gentle guitar builds, along with Adam Baker’s delicate voice, before exploding into a tornado of sound (beat that, Phil Spector) that is the musical equivalent of a Tasmanian Devil entrance. I like it because it makes me pedal faster. By the time Adam gets to singing:
Now I’ve grown
Bold and lonely
I should have stayed
With dear brother at home
But we grew up old
you’ve made a pretty strong attachment to the song, if not for the story, for the way that it has drawn you in with its emotional delivery. Emphasizing the peaks, his voice is backed by an Arcade Fire-ish chorus of pained vocals. I think what makes the songs is that play between the harshly yelled vocals and with more emotional chorus. It actually reminds me a lot of early Braid, and if I had to label it as something (I can’t… I can’t… ok fine), I’d call it a second coming of late-90s emo. But its a much more complex sound than that, with guitar line on “Brother” reminiscent of Tortoise to temper it. “Bleary Eyed” has some keyboards and drums that also bring to mind Tortoise, and the vocals are much more Mac McCaughan than Win Butler.
Pitchfork is making more recent comparisons… The Arcade Fire (sure, the vocals and then there are strings), Animal Collective (fine), and Man Man (yeah… no). Where Man Man is a sprawling mess of unfocused energy, Annuals are structured and controlled. Their debut, Be He Me, comes out on October 17th, and I’m anxious to hear how the rest of it sounds.
Maybe I made my case a little too strongly. I didn’t mean to aim accusations at those undeserving of them; posting music illegally with no intent to profit off it is illegal and (more important) probably unethical and bad for music, but I agree that the intent of the average music blogger is not truly nefarious, however misguided his or her actions may be. Anyway, such bloggers are not deserving of any more blame than P2Pers.
My post was mainly aimed at the few music bloggers who would dare to monetarily capitalize off someone else’s hard work and leech the hard worker’s potential profit. This undermines both art and capitalism.