If you thought the hippie music of the sixties, the synthetic tunes of the eighties, and the electro-dance music of today could never be mixed, then you were right. That is, up until Jan. 23, when Chairlift released their new album, “Something.”
“Something” truly is quite something. I’m not sure if I can strictly define the album’s feel as fast or slow, fun or creepy, retro or electro. It seems to fit all of these contradictory descriptions.
The Brooklyn-based duo of Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly became famous when their song “Bruises” was on a 2008 commercial for the iPod Nano. And like most songs lucky enough to be the fifteen-second face of Apple, it became popular and cemented Chairlift as one of the indie bands of the moment.
The more I listened to the album, the stranger the songs became. When Chairlift was first formed, they started off making music for haunted houses. Fitting, since the songs on “Something” were beginning to pay homage to their spooky roots.
This aspect of the band’s past shows through “Ghost Tonight.” The song has slow lyrics that haunt the listener, and a fast beat, like a heartbeat. I started to think maybe this song was a leftover from the band’s haunted house days.
The song “Amanaemonesia” is one of the most eerie on the album. It has a touch of the eighties influence, yet it was slow. The lyrics were harder to decipher than the song name itself.
One song that mixes in both eighties and late sixties music trends is “Frigid Spring.” When I heard the guitar and piano at the beginning of the song, I thought this would be a generic, non-electronic song. The song took a slight techno turn, but ultimately ended up being more of a slow, electro-hippie tune. It became so long and repetitive that I could barely make it through the whole song
Chairlift’s “Something” sounds like a long-lost eighties album, but with undertones of both psychdelia and techno. Often the songs got too slow and too funky for their own good. The album could have been really great, but they didn’t seem to know where to stop with eighties synthesizers or the drawn out hippie melodies. Even though there were so many interesting, unique, and different ways to describe this album, Chairlift went too far with every aspect.
