Grimes: Visions - Album Review

Grimes
Visions
Rating: Jeez Lady

Grimes, the one woman project of Canadian musician/artist Claire Boucher, has released two albums of experimental synth pop that at its best hypnotizes and transfixes, and at its worst confounds and perplexes. Visions, her third album, and first for iconic label 4AD, was recorded by Boucher in her home over a period of three weeks, and is unlikely to change any one's opinion of her or her output. If you enjoyed Halfaxa (which I did immensely) or Geidi Primes (which I did not), Visions will be a welcome addition to your collection. For me, I haven't seen much of a progression over the course of these albums to get really excited about these tracks. The production still sounds relatively bare boned, and instead of focusing on her strengths (which she appeared to be leaning on with Halfaxa) this seems almost like a regression, relying on the same sonic/vocal tricks in almost every track. This tends to make the tracks fade into each other with no real distinctiveness or charm. If the intention was to create more of a suite of tracks that utilized similar themes and motifs, then it fails as none of the ideas themselves add up to much over a 50 minute run time.

In my review of Halfaxa, I mentioned how I loved her combinations of beautiful and harsh sounds, and that her voice, when properly reigned in, was an exquisitely evocative instrument. My problems with the record were when the album flew off into realms of new age gauziness, coming across like a low-rent Enya. Unfortunately, with Visions, Grimes has almost forsaken all of the things that made me love her last record. There are a few tracks that capture the allure of the last record. The vaguely Asian melodies of "Genesis" undulate under Grimes' most ethereal and lovely vocal. Once the beats kick in, the multi tracked vocals take over the lush instrumentation.



"Circumnambient" features sinister blasts of synth lines over a harsh drum beat. Her voice, starting quiet and monotone, erupts further into the track, propelling the track forward. Strangely, it sounds like the perfect marriage between Gary Numan and Madonna.



These tracks work because her voice is working with the track instead of against it, becoming either the driving force, or working in harmony with the other elements. "Vowels = Space and Time," allows her breathy voice to grab onto the chugging drum programming, almost becoming another electronic element in the track.



However, her voice is likely to become the most polarizing thing about this record. Too many times, she sings far too high for the vocal to be effective, taking strange detours into Chipmunks territory, or slathering her vocals with so much reverb it is impossible to tell if it is human or not. Additionally, the music this time feels lazy and slapdash. Previously, Boucher has indicated that she is not a musician per se, noodling around with electronic equipment until she found sounds that she liked. On Halfaxa, this approach seemed to work in her favor, perhaps the luck of certain sounds bouncing off one another somehow worked together serendipitously. Here, that approach was not as fruitful. For the most part, the drum programming is very rudimentary, and at times seems like presets on Garageband. And the melodies mostly float along unmemorable, bleeding into choruses, when there are choruses to speak of. The album becomes almost an amorphous mess by the end, content to drift on ambient washes of keyboards and breathy vocals.

Tracks like "Symphonia IX" float on a pre-programmed beat, barely rising to any peak.



"Eight" suffers from more of the same tinny drum machines and lackluster bass lines, Boucher's helium voice, tweaked and tortured into such high octave extremes it would give even Mariah Carey pause.



"Visiting Statue" starts promisingly as a sort of updated electro take on Prince, but just never goes anywhere, remaining at the same place throughout the track.



"Nightmusic" also starts promisingly as a simple electro track, but Grimes' breathy vocals take over the mix and eventually the music just sets into autopilot.



Based on her album Halfaxa, I was expecting great things from Grimes. While I am not ready to count her out, Visions is a disappointing stumbling block, an album of many ideas, none of which really seem fleshed out well, and none that really struck me as being something that could be fleshed out. I'm hoping this is just a minor setback from her, as she truly has talent, but only needs a stricter hand at editing out the bad ideas from the good. Perhaps working with a producer next time might put things on track. As it stands, Visions is a baffling misfire.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and peaks one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.