In those five years the world changed too. Gone are the days of a perceived bright sunny Obama-led future, when Osama bin Laden had been defeated and the world looked to have pulled itself up from a Great Recession. That feeling has been replaced with the fracturing Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the rise in nationalism, the weakening of alliances, and the realization that our democratic institutions aren't as strong as we thought.
This all brings us to Noire, the tenth studio album by VNV Nation. As the album title makes clear, Noire is a darker affair. The wistful longings for a perfect future have been replaced with dour warnings of impending doom. Whereas on 2011's Automatic Harris sang an upbeat song called "Gratitude", Noire contains numerous worries about the end of days.
Now, don't be mistaken, because VNV have long flirted with the idea of the eschatological. The 2000 remix album Burning Empires gave us the song "Further" which pondered: "At the end of days, at the end of time/When the sun burns out, will any of this matter?", and Futureperfect's "Carbon" asked "In 10,000 years, what will be our legacy?". Noire makes the danger feel more immediate - more a matter of decades rather than millenia.
Noire marks many firsts for the band. It's the first VNV Nation album that doesn't feature the band's iconic torch and flame logo on the cover. At thirteen tracks it's their longest album to date, and at just shy of 74 minutes nearly exhausts the amount a CD can fit. Regarding album structure, this is the first VNV album to eschew an instrumental or spoken word intro track. And where the band would usually end each album with a track that pulls the themes of the album together in some uplifting and anthemic way (see "Perpetual", "Where there is Light", and "Radio" to name a few), here the final song is aggressive and chilling in its urgency.
At times Noire recalls VNV's early albums, such as Advance & Follow or Praise the Fallen. Many of the songs are also lyrically dense, bringing back a lyrical complexity that more recent albums have at times skimped on. The production is superb. Noire is at times a dark, brutal beast, but at other times contains some of the most delicious melodies the band has ever produced. There's also a sense that Harris is toying with the acoustics more, something perhaps inspired by his time working on the orchestral Resonance project. And, while it almost sounds obvious, given this is the band's 10th album, and with Harris approaching elder-statesmanhood in the genre, there's an overwhelming sense of maturity to be found here.
Let's dive in.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The album begins with the menacing "A Million". Over a foreboding drone Harris begins with an intonation of something resembling a prophecy or prayer telling of a coming end. The track morphs from there utilizing a steady beat. There's an interesting callback lyrically to "Teleconnect (Part 2)", the final track from the previous album Transnational, where Harris sang of finally fighting his demons. Here at the beginning of Noire he suggests the fight continues with the lines: "I know you too well and I know you by name/I fought you, I defeated you time and again". The final lines of "A Million" offer a glimmer of hope that love will conquer all, but in contrast to the rest of the song they feel almost unearned.
The first time I heard "A Million" I was a bit caught off guard - not only is it not a typical VNV instrumental opener, it's the complete opposite: a dark club track with gloomy lyrics fortelling the end of days. After repeated listens though it's really grown on me, and it's nice to see the band break out of it's typical introductory formula.
The album then shifts gears and gives us "Armour". Harris sure does love British spellings (see "Honour" and "Colours of Rain"). Alongside some perky synths Harris sings of donning his metaphorical armor when he tires of the world. That may sound a bit cheesy, but Harris has always had a certain earnestness in his voice that helps sell his lyrics, and I absolutely love the lyrics here.
"Armour" also experiments with acoustics, or more specifically the sound of Harris's voice. I had seen the song performed live (on YouTube) before the album was released and so I had a certain expectation of how it would sound on the album. But here Harris has unexpectedly done something to his vocals that make them sound like they're floating above the music, almost a little dream-like. There's also a deliberate stiltedness in his delivery, note how in the opening when he sings "when I falter when I tire/of a world that leaves me cold inside" the slight pause between the two lines.
At first I thought these were odd choices but after a few listens I've warmed up to them and now "Armour" is quite possibly one of my favorite songs in the band's entire catalog. It's like candy to my ears and at just over four minutes it feels like every second is utilized perfectly. There's also a lot of well used VNV references that will sound familiar to long time fans (e.g., tempests, mortals, being lost at sea), which help give it the makings of a VNV classic.
"God of All" follows and brings back that similar drumbeat from Automatic finale "Radio", the one I described as "despite being unrelentingly thumping, has a surprising amount of bounce to it". There's always been a slight mystery as to what Harris's religious leanings are (ex-Catholic? Atheist? perhaps Buddhist?) and "God of All" seems to directly address that relationship. The chorus, in keeping with the theme of the album, seems to suggest we've lost our way. This track has excellent placement coming right after the energizing "Armour", and stands as one of my favorites.
"Nocturne No. 7" functions as a palette cleanser and could be seen as marking the end of the first act of the album. This piece is obviously inspired by Harris's time with Resonance as we get a quiet, meditative, piano piece - it's like being at a somber piano recital. It's beautiful but at over six minutes it's perhaps a big of an indulgence on Harris's part.
"Collide" is next and follows wonderfully in that VNV tradition of the quiet, slowly building ballad that we've seen before with songs such as "Endless Skies" or "Secluded Spaces". "Collide" has an acoustic bigness, a depth to it, again demonstrating how much Ronan has learned from his time with Resonance. It starts off slow and introspective, transitions into something Vangelis-like in the middle, and turns into a full-on heart pounding ballad by the end. There's also the introduction of a sort of dreamy 80s synth that will return later in the album. I love the production on this one. At this point in his career Harris is just an ace at making these kinds of ballads and I'm not sure how he's ever going to top this one.
Next up is "Wonders", a mid-tempo number with a dreamy 80s feel. The synth has an almost vaporwave sound to it. Harris has great delivery on this one. It's like a melancholy Erasure song or even Pet Shop Boys. My only critique is that the opening line about about memories playing "like films on the wall" is nearly identical to the one expressed in 2005's "Arena" ("Before me plays the endless film").
"Immersed" and "Lights Go Out" share the role of the obligatory VNV album industrial dance floor-filler (see "Chrome", "Control", or Transnational's "Retaliate") and do their job admirably. "Immersed" takes a while to get going and, while it does have a fast beat, it's almost like a slow burn where before you know it you're immersed in the dance (pun intended). It ends somewhat abruptly but that works in its favor. There's echoes of Nitzer Ebb in its barking "Give me love" refrain.
"Lights Go Out" begins (and ends) with repeated air horn blasts but then dives immediately into another strong dance number. It's the song on the album with the most artifice - here Harris inhabits the role of a fictional character dancing in a nightclub during the world's end (at the fictional Club Vertigo). Despite that, the song has a nice grit to it, like it's something that would be playing in the basement of some dance club at the end of the world. In fact, I swear I've heard this very song playing in some nightclub at some point. It's like a revved up version of The Cure's "One Hundred Years". There's some fun lines here like: "Out with the old war, in with the new/dressed to the nines/atomic chic looks so good on you". I appreciate that it's a svelte four minutes long - it gets in, does its job, and gets out.
"Guiding" marks what could be seen as the end of the album's second act. Again, it's an instrumental, but this time it has more electronic elements to it (but still no beat). It reminds of "As It Fades" from 2007's Judgement. There's a bit of that dreamy 80s sounds again.
"When is the Future" brings back the energy in perhaps the most most straightforward track on the album. This one sounds the most like VNV and could have come from nearly any album of theirs from the past 15 years. That's not meant as a dis - this is a very confident track and feels almost effortless. It's got some of that electro-harpsichord we haven't heard since Automatic's "Space & Time". I love the lyrics and delivery on this one. In another VNV first we get the band's first official music video, where we follow the back of Ronan's head as he wanders around Tokyo.
"Only Satellites" is a fun, poppy song. It's got a strong pump-your-fist-along-to-the-beat/we-can-prevail feel. On a more positive album this would have been the album closer.
"Requiem for Wires" marks the end of the album's third act. A third and final beatless instrumental that recalls maybe the instrumental "PTF2012" from Praise the Fallen, or maybe even the hidden untitled track from the same album (remember when albums had hidden tracks?). This song reminds me strongly of music by Disasterpeace, especially something like the song "Compass".
The album ends on the monumental denouement of "All Our Sins", and boy what a doozy. In keeping with the album's theme, "All Our Sins" sounds like the final song you might hear before armageddon. The closest antecedent that I can think of comes from way back on VNV's first album: the Gaelic tinged "Amhran Comhrac". Maybe this is due to the song's unusual rhythm. It reminds me of VNV's early work but with a much more modern polish and production. The song starts off intense and just ramps up the bombast from there. It's also the albums longest song, clocking over seven minutes in length. It ends in a long orchestral crescendo, complete with timpani drums and blaring horns. I lamented in my review of Resonance that for orchestral renditions of VNV's songs they didn't sound big or grand enough as I'd have liked. This is like Ronan Harris's response to that criticism, giving me a big middle finger and going as big as possible. I'm not sure it's necessarily my preferred song on the album, but it's certainly memorable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
After consistently putting out albums every two years from 2005-2013 and after my mild disappointment with 2013's Transnational I had hoped that Ronan Harris might take some time off and find some new inspiration to draw upon. It seems the inspiration came to him, as the world changed significantly in the intervening years, and Noire feels like a response to that. As a long time fan, it was a long wait, but what we've ended with is a near masterpiece. Most bands put out their best work in their first few albums and then produce facsimiles of that sound for the rest of their days, rarely reaching those heights again. VNV Nation seems to work in the opposite direction, aging like a fine wine, or perhaps more appropriately a fine whiskey. Their albums on the whole just get better and better with each new release.
Noire occasionally zigs when I expected it to zag. It delivers a bleak message, but one that presents the tiniest bit of hope. For the entire duration of VNV Nation Ronan Harris has been delivering the message that if we just work together, we can build a better future. With Noire Harris is telling us that our time has come, that either we take this last chance to act now, or we let it all crumble to dust.
4.75/5 Zrbo points
No comments:
Post a Comment