ALBUM REVIEW : The American Analog Set, "Set Free"
My CD Player probably hates me. Seriously. Since I got my Xbox hacked to run Xbox Media Center and then ripped all of my - and my girlfriend's - CDs to MP3s so we could stream them to the Media Center the only real use for CDs has been for the initial ripping process and then looking pretty on my shelf. Not the last bastion of job satisfaction for CDs, is it? I have quite a collection of CDs now that have only ever been near a cd-drive in a computer once and never near a CD Player.
However, tonight one of my precious friends loses his CD Player virginity. I've gone to bed, which normally entails turning off all computers except the Mindre Pandra server and failing to sleep, so rather than keep my girlfriend up with me due to my continuous tossing and turning I have relocated to the living room and put on The American Analog Set's latest. Now it is true that Xbox Media Center is the Mecca of the lazy music loving geek - an entire music collection controlled via a joypad, being able to choose any song in your entire collection without getting up off the sofa. Brilliant. However in this instance I can't be arsed the boot the PC, set up the TV and stuff like that. I just put a CD in a CD player and pressed play. Listening to music doesn't comes much more anachronistic to someone who was born in 1974.
So, to the music. I first encountered the "Amanset", as they like to be known, in around 1998. In the only case ever of me asking what they were playing in the record shop (which turned out to be Rough Trade in London, the one underneath the skate store) I came across them for the first time. So it was apparently an Austin, Texas beat combo that played slowly. Slowly was very much what I was into at the time. Apart from that I knew bugger all about them. A bit of web-searching revealed that it was in fact their second album, "From Our Living Room to Yours", and a masterful album it was too. A chance business trip to Toronto saw me managing to pick up the superior debut "The Fun of Watching Fireworks" and a love affair was born. For a start I am amanset over the entire internet. I am amanset at Hotmail. I am amanset on slashdot.org, Kuro5hin.org, numerous forums, from the old Edge Forum to newer variants like RLLMUKforum.com. I've only recently broken tradition on one forum where I have called myself "Sexy Parodius", but everyone there knows me and I think they have me sussed.
So then yes, I am a bit of an amanset fan. I think I've picked up anything mainstream that I could get my mits on and on 2003-6-10 I finally got to see them play live on the roof of Kulturhuset in town. It was the height of summer, nowhere near dark and basically everyone was just relaxed. However there was the gig, which was an experience but not one that I find I really enjoyed. The Amanset had slowed down even more and there seemed to be a lot of xylophone and/or glockenspiel (I can never remember the difference). The feel was so different. The strange thing is that they flirted with this on "The Golden Band" but pretty much ignored it on the subsequent "Know by Heart" and "Promise of Love". I thought the concert had been a mere blip. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the concert, but no way as much as I would have if they played more like the slow, but more upbeat keyboards and guitars band they had been on record. I was disappointed.
And that, kids, is the problem with "Set Free". That sound is back. I missed their last gig in Stockholm due to having a broken ankle brought on by a schoolboy skateboarding error, so I don't know how they played then. Maybe they always play this way, far too laid back with percussion instruments being far too much in the forefront, too much tinkling and not enough driving. And here it is on record and I am sad to say that it is the worst Amanset release I have heard. Yes, worse than the experimental "Late One Sunday & The Following Morning" and "Updates". I have plenty of Amanset records to go back to, it isn't as if one (perceived) bad release has killed those. Its just that I can't really see me playing "Set Free" very often at all.
Sorry Chaps. And you were so polite when my girlfriend got some stuff signed for me when I was too shy to ask myself. I really feel bad about giving a bad review, but that's just the way it is.
M Panda
