Islands is a hard band to pin down. While each of their three albums could be broadly classified as indie pop, each takes a very different approach, ranging from whimsical guitar pop of Return to the Sea to the musically complex, progressive Arm’s Way to the simplified poptronica of Vapours. Despite all the shapeshifting, each record manages to be strong, though not without flaws.

Return to the Sea

Of all their records, the one that resonates with me most is 2006’s Return to the Sea. It’s ambitious and diverse, with indie rock epics (“Swans [Life After Death]”), whimsical folk pop (“Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby”), clap-friendly synth pop (“Rough Gem”), and even a really good indie hip-hop track (“Where There’s a Will There’s a Whalebone”). More than anything, the album manages to be a little unsettling and chaotic while still being incredibly musical; it’s playful and energetic pop that you can still take quite seriously. I love this album so much that it has entered my list of reference points: it’s the sort of record that I aspire to make myself.

Arm’s Way

Islands’s second album, Arm’s Way, is a bit tougher to assess. It’s far more compositionally complex than their debut, which is both a boon and a burden. There’s a richness in the instrumentation and song structure that gives the songs a real sense of motion and depth. The album is epic in the old sense of the word; it’s grandiose, ornate, multi-layered, huge. Unfortunately, when an album is packed with so much, something inevitably gets left behind, and with Arm’s Way, it’s the previous album’s whimsy. While not difficult or lacking in immediacy, Arm’s Way feels darker, more structured, more methodically composed than Return to the Sea, and despite the great heights it reaches, it’s worse off for it. As the album goes on, I feel weighed down, tired, spent. The last three tracks—particularly “To a Bond”—do a lot to alleviate that, but the album as a whole is exhausting enough that I hesitate a bit before putting it on. Perhaps that’s just the nature of such elaborate works: if you’re not prepared to receive them, they will surely leave you trampled underfoot. Still, when I do have the energy to journey through its Byzantine halls, I always find myself happier for it. It really is a tremendous album that deserves many, many listens.

Vapours

A few weeks ago, Islands released their latest record, Vapours, which—true to form—is completely different than their previous efforts. This time, the band went in the exact opposite direction of Arm’s Way and simplfied. While still distinctly Islands, the album is characterized more by simple electronic indie pop than epic indie rock. No song exceeds five minutes—Return to the Sea and Arm’s Way have four and six, respectively—, nor are the songs peppered with the myriad instruments and twists and turns of the band’s previous albums. This is an album of straightforward pop songs, at least by Islands standards, and it’s just a joy to listen to. Still, there’s enough going on to stand up to repeated listens, and in the couple of weeks that I’ve had it, I’ve only grown to like it more.

So that’s Islands. Go check them out and give them an earnest listen; there’s a lot to like there. Also, they’re on tour to promote Vapours, so go see them if you have a chance. I saw them a couple weeks ago and absolutely loved it.

• Create songs with more interesting, musical vocal melodies than I typically do.
• Explore harmonically interesting chords and progressions that are perhaps a bit unusual in typical (indie) rock music.
• Avoid letting the composition and musicianship draw too much attention to itself; it should be good and maybe even advanced, but tasteful, erring on the side of understated.
• Most importantly, write an album of fundamentally good songs.

Beyond that, I’m pretty much open to anything. The musical style will be defined by the songs that are written—so far they’ve all been in the slightly melancholy, guitar (indie) rock style that I’ve been exploring for the last several years—, and the eventual lyrical topics will hopefully be diverse and interesting.

Given the fluid definition of the record, creating a potential track list is a lesson in futility. All told, there is probably enough material for fifteen to twenty songs right now, though the ones that work in a pop context and fit well together without sounding homogeneous number closer to seven or eight. Good song ideas are currently coming in at a rate of one or two per week, which I’m quite pleased with, so much so that I can’t imagine that pace can continue for too much longer. Still, I’ll happily oblige the muse if she chooses to visit more frequently.

Anyway, that’s the update. Progress is solid, there have been no nervous breakdowns, and I’m building up a strong set of potential tracks. There’s probably more I could discuss, but it’s all a bit silly given that most of you haven’t heard the songs, and I don’t plan on letting them be heard until much later, so let’s just skip that bit.

As a final note, I’m planning on posting some September music recommendations later this week. Be on the lookout!

Until next time…

A little background

Three years ago—almost exactly, coincidentally—I broke up with my longtime girlfriend, who I’ll refer to only as She. The breakup itself wasn’t particularly difficult; I had deliberated over it for awhile and convinced myself that it was the right decision, and excepting a few brief moments of weakness, I never really questioned it. The difficult part was making sense of it all. Naïve as it may sound, at the ripe age of 24, I still believed in the notion of a “one,” and up until just before the breakup, I was sure She was it. When convinced of such a thing, you start making plans, and my plans were hopelessly intertwined with hers. Post-breakup, the hardest part was figuring out what to do with my life now that her part in it was so greatly diminished.

As is often the case when I find myself at a loss, I started contemplating projects. I needed to do something that would at best help me figure things out and at worst keep me occupied. More than anything, I wanted, no, needed to create something positive and tangible, something that could fill the void I felt in the wake of the breakup and make sense of my life. Creating an album seemed like an obvious solution, and I reasoned that a concept album about the circumstances surrounding the breakup would be even better. My hope was that by writing songs about the whole ordeal, I would have to understand what happened and why. So in September 2006, I started throwing around some ideas of what I wanted the album to sound like, what its feel would be, what the story would be, and how I wanted to convey those ideas to the listener. While I had plenty of ideas about what I wanted the album to sound like, the lyrical concept wasn’t really making itself known. One dreary October day, in a moment of inspiration while having my oil changed—it can come to you anywhere—, the structure of the album revealed itself as four song titles scribbled on a piece of torn newspaper. Thus The Awakening was born.

The madness

By early November, I began developing song ideas for the record. I had already come up with the record’s basic structure, which was to consist of five songs:

1. The Awakening
2. Lost Again
3. Should (Of Course It Matters)
4. Apology
5. Hope

Note that at this point, I had not written a single note or lyric, but I had an extremely detailed idea of what the songs were to be about, each song’s feel and style, and how each song would flow into the next. This, I would later discover, is a terrible way to go about making a record.

My process was woefully convoluted. Since the songs existed as well-formed concepts, I had to write music and lyrics that fit those concepts, rather than working in the opposite, more natural way. I started off jamming for a few weeks and wrote a lot of music pretty quickly, though little really managed to fit in with the ideas I had developed. This led to a plethora of unused material, and very little progress on the album for some time. By Christmas 2006, I had most of the music and some lyrics for “The Awakening,” some music for “Lost Again,” and some music and lyrics for “Hope,” which by that point I was calling “Skylar’s Song.” “Apology” had been dropped from the record altogether, though songs being added and dropped was an almost daily occurrence and by no means final. In fact, none of my decisions were final. Were one to describe the writing of the album at that time, perhaps the most fitting description would be “paralyzed by indecision.” I was so fiercely committed to my original ideas that I spent most of my time trying to force the material I was writing—most of it quite good—into these neat concepts that I had conceived of months earlier. When that didn’t work—that is, most of the time—, I would stress out and devote all my intellectual resources to figuring out how to make it work. That would eventually lead me to reconsider whether the song was right for the concept, but rarely would I question the concept itself. For me, the concept was all that I had. My plans had all gone awry, and this project, this album, in all its constructed conceptual purity, was going to save me. The concept was the ideal, and my job as a songwriter was to live up to that ideal, no matter how unnatural that was.

A phone call

By the middle of February, progress on the record had very nearly come to a halt. One particularly bad week, I discarded all but one song and basically had a nervous breakdown. In need of a little perspective, I called a close friend to talk things over and get his opinion. Having gone over the whole thing, I asked him “What do you think? Am I just being stupid?” His response: “Yeah, pretty much.” We talked a bit more, and by the end of the conversation, I had a much needed boost in my confidence, and perhaps a bit more faith in my natural tendencies versus my so-called ideals.

Within a week of the phone call, work had begun again on the record, and six songs were starting to take serious shape. A seventh was added in March, and within a few months, music had been completed for nearly all of the tracks, which were now:

1. The Awakening
2. Lost Again
3. Should (Of Course It Matters)
4. Requiem née Apology
5. Should Reprise
6. Solace née Skylar’s Song
7. Where Are You?

By July, all that was left to do was to write lyrics for “Where Are You?” and “Lost Again.” The latter was to be my Moby Dick: a positive love song adults could take seriously, which I had been trying to write for over a year by then. I worked on those tracks intermittently for the next few months, mostly without a great deal of stress, while recording updated demos for the other songs. By late November 2007, a full year after I started it, I had finished all the writing.

Abandonment

The beautiful thing about making a record that’s supposed to save you is that every now and then, despite your best efforts, it actually does. Writing The Awakening left me completely drained, both creatively and emotionally. The process decimated my self-confidence; caused a minor nervous breakdown; and drove me, and by extension some of my closest friends, absolutely crazy. But by the end of it, I was better. I had written seven of my best songs up till then, not because they fit the original concept that I had concocted at the beginning, but because they were natural expressions of the things I was feeling and the ideas I was having. It wasn’t what I had envisioned; it was better. And having gone through the whole process, I realized I didn’t need it anymore, so I decided not to record it.

This came as a shock to many of my friends. Some found it rather sad that I wouldn’t have anything to show for all my tribulations, but it seemed very natural to me. Writing The Awakening was always supposed to be a cathartic experience. At the end of the catharsis, I had effectively closed a rather large chapter of my life; recording the album seemed the wrong way to start the next. So, I didn’t.

It really is too bad; I’m really quite proud of everything I wrote. ”The Awakening” is easily one of my strongest pieces musically, and “Lost Again” is by far the best pop song I’ve ever written. It also remains the only positive love song I’ve ever written that I’m not ashamed of. Of all of the tracks, “Where Are You?” stands out as my favorite, and its strong guitar work and fundamentally good songwriting has informed a lot of my work now. Perhaps one day, years from now, I’ll be able to come back to The Awakening and record it, but I doubt it. There’s rarely any sense going back.

These days, while working on what will hopefully become my next album, my main memory of The Awakening is a piece of advice my friend gave me on that oh-so-important phone call: trust yourself and don’t over-complicate things. Since then, I surely haven’t eradicated my penchant for over-complication, nor have I done away with my fear and self-doubt—I likely never will—, but I have realized that my instincts are good and that I can do work that I’m really very proud of when I get out of my own way. As long as I keep reminding myself of that, I think I’ll be all right.

After a couple of months of sporadically testing all sorts of guitars, including archtops, a plethora of Telecasters, and an SG, I tried out a dual-humbucker Fender Jaguar. I loved its looks, but its tone was totally devoid of character to my ears. The single-coil model was better, though too similar to my Strat to justify a purchase. Both suffered from really complicated controls. After mentioning this latter point to a salesperson, he brought me a Jazzmaster: a guitar that looks like a Jaguar, but with simpler controls, and tones that were a nice blend of Strat cleans and Les Paul warmth. Perfect.

This weekend, I went back to play the Jazzmaster again. After playing it for two hours and being pleased with everything I heard, I decided to buy it. Thus far, I’m having absolutely no buyer’s remorse. First of all, the guitar looks great… very rock ’n’ roll, especially with the guitar strap I picked out:

More importantly, it sounds great too. As with any new guitar, it’s taking some time to get the best tones out of it when combined with the rest of my equipment. The trouble is that the bridge pickup outputs a ton of highs, and getting that under control is proving somewhat difficult, particularly since I use the already bright Vox AC15. I think it’d be a lot easier if I could push my AC15 a bit harder, but I don’t think my ears or my neighbors would like that idea very much.

I went ahead and recorded a few doodles tonight so you could get a feel for the tone. I didn’t perform any post-recording EQ adjustments or compression, so it sounds a bit raw, but you can get an idea of what it sounds like.

• Clean fingerpicking – Here I fingerpicked some typical Prachi-esque chords, with no effects except a little reverb. There’s quite a lot of hum in this, mostly because I had my amp’s master volume set too low.
• Clean blues – This really shows off the warmth and punchiness of the Jazzmaster’s pickups.
• Overdriven crunch – A little bit of overdriven crunch. This riff was written on the spot, so pardon its banality.

Anyway, that’s the new guitar. Again, I’m still trying to figure out how to get the best tones out of the guitar through my amp and pedals, but things seem promising for now.

Music

This may be old news to many of you, but Fleet Foxes’ eponymous full-length album is absolutely tremendous. I’d describe it as baroque folk pop with gorgeous vocal harmonies and a generally lovely, organic sound.

For a slightly darker, sparser take on baroque pop, check out Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear. I’ve been listening to this album for a few months. Put simply, it’s one of the best records I’ve heard in a long time. Inventive, interesting, and oozing intelligence.

Two other great records that came out this summer and deserve a listen: Bowerbirds’ Upper Air and Megafaun’s Gather, Form, and Fly. I’ll be seeing both bands this weekend, which should be an excellent show.

Films

I’ve seen quite a few good movies lately, with some others coming soon that look quite interesting. I’ll just list them here with some short notes. First the ones I’ve seen:

• Moon – Interesting science-fiction film with brilliant acting by Sam Rockwell. A friend felt like it was a great concept that could have been better executed, and I think I agree, but still worth a watch.
• The Hurt Locker – Excellent action movie about a US Army bomb specialist in Iraq. I can’t say that the movie was particularly engaging from an emotional standpoint, but the story was definitely interesting, and it was nice to see what seemed to be a fairly realistic portrayal of the armed conflicts in Middle East.
• (500) Days of Summer – A nearly flawless summer movie: smart, funny, emotionally engaging, with more than its share of wit and minor profundities. In fact, the only thing I take issue with is the ending, which I found to be a tad cowardly. I won’t say more here to avoid any spoilers, but you’re welcome to email me if you want to want to have a go.

And two movies I’m eagerly awaiting:

• Where the Wild Things Are – this is quite possibly the best trailer I’ve seen in ages, much of which can be attributed to the brilliant use of Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up,” which is one of my favorite songs. Even without it, the whole thing looks spectacular.
• It Might Get Loud – Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White. Enough said.
]]> http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/08/17/summer-recommendations/feed/ 0 http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/08/17/summer-update/ http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/08/17/summer-update/#comments Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:24:57 +0000 Prachi http://quantumlenscap.com/?p=317 No, I haven’t posted in awhile. I’d love it if I had some sort of excuse, but I don’t. I’ve been taking pictures, working on music, and even writing a little poetry now and again, though in recent weeks I’ve been getting progressively less productive due to indecision, self-doubt, and typical Prachi paranoia. Thankfully, I decided to give that bit up insofar as I’m capable, and things are slowly starting to pick up again.

Photography

I’ve spent most of the summer shooting with my film cameras. In June, I had my Nikon F2 Photomic cleaned and repaired by the wonderful Sover Wong in the UK. It was back at my door soon after I sent it off and in phenomenal condition. In addition to being completely free of thirty-five years of dirt, it also has a working internal meter again! I haven’t used it a ton, but for the few rolls I’ve shot, it works like a dream.

Thanks to my recent film exploits and the dearth of recent digital shots in my Flickr photostream, I’m starting to get a reputation as a film photographer. Honestly, that wasn’t a reputation I was too keen about initially, but whatever. Being a good film photographer is far from the worst thing I can be accused of, and I’ve really been happy with my work lately. What more could I ask for?

Music

It’s hard to say if my new musical project is progressing or not. I’ve started to accumulate a fair amount of material, but it’s not really where I want it to be. Back in spring, when I was conceiving of the whole project, I wanted to do something dark with lyrical themes involving escapism and feeling trapped and music that was complicated, interesting, melancholy, and at times intentionally dissonant. At this point, I’m not so sure that’s an idea I believe in, so rather than commit to that plan, I’ve decided to continue experimenting for awhile until I come upon something that really works.

This past weekend, I picked up a new Fender Classic Player Jazzmaster. I’ll write a post in the next couple of days with little sound clips and some thoughts about the guitar, but for now let me say that I’m quite pleased with it. I think it’s a nice blend between the versatility and cleanliness of a Stratocaster and the warmth and creaminess of a Les Paul.

That’s all for now. I’ll probably be posting a few more times this week to make up for neglecting the blog for the last few months. I’ve got a few things I want to talk about anyway, so be on the lookout.

]]> http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/08/17/summer-update/feed/ 0 http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/05/03/sterep-and-should-reprise/ http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/05/03/sterep-and-should-reprise/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 04:44:59 +0000 Prachi http://quantumlenscap.com/?p=310 “Should Reprise” was the last song I added to The Awakening and the only one I made a final recording of. It’s an instrumental with just two parts—one double-tracked nylon-string guitar and one electric guitar—making it by far the simplest of the EP’s seven tracks.

The song has an interesting genesis. Years ago—perhaps in 2005—I was noodling around on guitar, when out of nowhere I played this very reflective, melancholy guitar line. After playing it for a little while, I noticed that for the vast majority of the riff, notes alternate between the fourth and third strings. I was experimenting a bit with electronic music at the time and thought it would be fun to sequence the riff using a synthesizer, with all the notes from the fourth string played out of the left speaker and all the notes from the right string played out of the right speaker. I was going to call the experiment “Stereo” for obvious reasons, but I accidentally typed “Sterep” when creating the Logic project, and the name stuck. I went ahead and added a ludicrous drum beat and recorded an (unintentionally) out-of-time guitar, and thus “Sterep” was born. Give it a listen, preferably using headphones or speakers that are set relatively far apart; laptop speakers and their ilk obscure the stereo effect.

A couple years later as part of The Awakening, I wrote a song called “Should (Of Course It Matters),” which uses the same basic chords as “Sterep,” though it sounds radically different. Despite those differences, “Sterep” and “Should” were still similar enough that recording “Should” precluded any chance that I could use the “Sterep” guitar line in another recording. After giving it some thought, I decided that reworking “Sterep” into a less electronic reprise of “Should” would let me get the guitar line out there and help the pacing of the record a bit. Instead of electronic drums and synthesizers, I went with a classical guitar line made up of arpeggiated chords. I laid down the original guitar line on top of that and ended up with “Should Reprise.” No worries, this one can be listened to without any sort of special equipment.

I think the natural thing to do is to compare the two, though I can’t say I prefer one over the other. Each is good in its own way and has a distinct feel. If you prefer one or the other, drop me a line with that whys and wherefores.

That’s all for now. It’s possible that I’ll post another track from The Awakening soon, so be on the lookout… same Bat time, same Bat channel.

]]> http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/05/03/sterep-and-should-reprise/feed/ 0 http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/30/shooting-film-the-legend-continues/ http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/30/shooting-film-the-legend-continues/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:26:13 +0000 Prachi http://quantumlenscap.com/?p=302 Since my post earlier this month about shooting film, I’ve explored analog photography a lot more. Last week, I picked up a used Nikon FM2n, which is a jewel of a camera and a legendary mechanical film body in its own right. My primary reason for buying it was for the working internal meter, which removes the only major of burden of using my F2. It’s also a bit less bulky, which is nice. I’ll probably still pull the F2 out every now and again, but shooting with the FM2n is such a joy that it will easily be my primary film body.

Earlier this week, with the guidance of a friend, I developed my first roll of film at home, which also happened to be the first roll I shot with my FM2n. Here are a few of my favorites:


]]> http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/30/shooting-film-the-legend-continues/feed/ 0 http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/29/regarding-the-content-of-this-site/ http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/29/regarding-the-content-of-this-site/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:54:01 +0000 Prachi http://quantumlenscap.com/?p=300 Despite any initial intentions, this blog has become heavily photography-centric, and I find that disappointing. Superficially, the reason may seem obvious: photography is by all observations the hobby I’m most actively pursuing. If the content of this blog is any indication, I’ve all but given up on any musical or poetic endeavors.

Thankfully, that simply isn’t true. While my lyrical and poetic output has slowed from the trickle it was last year to an occasional reverberating drop, my musical work is anything but dead. In fact, I’ve started collecting song ideas and riffs that will hopefully make it onto an EP or full-length album. I’ve been debating even telling anyone about it, as I have a history of working on musical projects—sometimes to the point of completion—and then abruptly abandoning them. While I can’t promise this time will be different, I’m making some changes to my process that will hopefully help avoid that. Right now, there are four or five songs that are coming along nicely, and I hope to write four or five more before I start recording. I have no idea if any of this will actually pan out, but those are the plans.

In the meantime, I’ll try to post a little more music-related content to this site, be it in the form of new recordings of old songs; demos from my last (abandoned) EP The Awakening; or just recommendations for records I really like. I’ll still write plenty of photography-centric posts, but hopefully the additional music-related entries will make the site a tad less one-dimensional.

In any case, those are the plans. All of them are subject to change according to the direction of the winds and the fickleness of my overwrought brain. We shall see.

]]> http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/29/regarding-the-content-of-this-site/feed/ 0 http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/23/onwards-by-james-jarvis/ http://quantumlenscap.com/2009/04/23/onwards-by-james-jarvis/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:10:20 +0000 Prachi http://quantumlenscap.com/?p=276 Via Monoscope, a beautiful short film made for Nike by James Jarvis. Do yourself a favor and watch it full-screen.
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