THE TOP ALBUMS OF 2010 #11 - So So Modern: Crude Futures

THE TOP ALBUMS OF 2010
#11 - So So Modern: Crude Futures
Words by Dirk Calloway





Preface: each day I'm reviewing one of 2010's Top 20 albums. You've joined us at #11. Cheers.






Starting off with a lone guitar, riding one note like a latter-day Eye of the Tiger, So So Modern announces they're going to take their sweet time on this record. Crude Futures has as much energy as its predecessor, Friendly Fires, but the enthusiasm is channeled in a more meaningful way. This record is a sniper rifle, while the earlier one was a sawed-off shotgun. I like both equally, but for very different reasons. To use an over-used expression, Crude Futures "is a marathon, not a sprint." The opening track simmers away, adding more instruments and loops at 15 second intervals until - "aaahh" - the band of vocalists finally start singing their arrival. In this case, they're not just arriving in the album, but they're returning to the forefront of New Zealand music. A minute later they eventually get around to making the noise dance-able via a familiar keytar bass and then the record blasts off into the stratosphere.



Lord knows what the band think, but in my opinion this is the closest they've yet got to recreating their live sound. In the case of the track just mentioned, it pulls back exactly as they do on-stage, allowing a seething sweaty mass of bodies a moment to comprehend the madness they've just heard. It's a live show like no other and it's a damn shame they didn't do more gigs in support of this CD. From what I understand that has to do with being in your late 20s and, frankly, having life to get on with. Let's just say the worst happens and they never come back from hiatus, I'll still be able to play this to my kids one day and say, "that crap you're listening to has nothing on the stuff this kiwi band was performing in my day." In this way Crude Futures finally allows So So to join the Split Enz club proper-like; they've made an album that sounds electrically 'live.'

So, the songs. The track that follows aforementioned 'moment' of silence is a hyperactive beast like the So So Modern of olde. Nothing wrong with that, but I feel it failed to gel with the record as a whole. The next four tracks, by comparison, are much more superior: a complete work unto themselves. They are cut from the same cloth, and become the backbone of the album as a whole. They set up tics, themes and ideas that are paid off within each song but also in the last few tracks that take the record home. What I'm saying is that SSM are now thinking in broader strokes than the three or so minutes they used to contain their ideas to. The mid four songs are absolutely key to this idea and the band has set up a legacy for themselves by including them in the order they did. The tracks say to me, "none if this is accidental jamming. We've thought this through and we're better than a Pub Band now."

I heard 81 records from 2010 and very few had So So Modern's confidence, skill or good judgement. You'd be silly to not give them a shot. Check it out now, while record stores still exist to do so! Tune in for more tomorrow, where we're going to review a bizarre orchestral / R&B / steampunk hybrid. Exciting.