Alt-J "This Is All Yours"

Alt-J is the worst. Alt-J is like the guy who makes popcorn and doesn’t offer to share.  Or the guy who only plays his guitar when other people are around, saying, “Sorry, I just have to noodle.”  Alt-J links to Huffington Post articles on Facebook.  Alt-J makes a show of ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, and then asks to split the check 50/50.  Alt-J got high once, and has been talking about it for the last six months.  Alt-J always sends the last text. Alt-J still thinks pinching people is funny.  Alt-J drinks Diet Pepsi.  Alt-J intentionally drops their IPhone 6+ to show everyone how little they care about how big their screen is.  Alt-J takes Febreze into the bathroom to make sure their shit doesn’t stink.

Yes, Alt-J has returned, with their new album, “This Is All Yours”. They are back, and also radically changed, a trio with the departure of founding member and guitar player Gwil Sainsbury.  With “This Is All Yours”, the new Alt-J tries to follow up their buzzy and very popular debut, “An Awesome Wave”.  And I hate this album, goddamnit, I hate it so much.

I thought “An Awesome Wave” was pretty good.  It was interesting and fresh, and some of the complicated rhythmic stuff going on was really cool.  But Alt-J took off in a way no one expected.  They did little to promote their music themselves, and they didn’t have to.  Their music spread across the internet like wildfire.  In November, in fact, Alt-J will be played in Chicago, in the Riviera Theatre.  Tickets were been sold out for months. 

Why such demand for this band?  The key word, I think, is “buzz”.  Alt-J is tailor made to be popular in the internet age.  Everything about their music is perfect for quick, social media consumption.  The synths are easily identifiable; the funky rhythmic breaks add instant variety and interest.  The lyrics are impossible to understand, so it gives the first-time listener one less thing to make out.  In this way, Alt-J makes music that is very easy to get into on a surface level.  Whether you go any deeper is another question.  I’d like to go to an Alt-J concert and see how many people know “Fitzpleasure” is about a woman getting brutally gang raped with a broom, or “Breezeblocks” is about a man killing (or wanting to kill) his woman so she doesn’t leave him.

If Alt-J wanted to just keep doing their does, I would have been fine with it.  “An Awesome Wave” was very buzzy, but it was too good for the hype to detract from the experience.  With the departure of Sainsbury, it appears they'll never make an album as good.  Except they continue to think they’re clever, and they’re so fucking smug about it.  Their entire next album appears to be trying to emulate and exploit all the buzzy qualities of their first in order to drive popularity, with much worse results.

Most of the album is just bloated (13 songs is unnecessary), less complex or interesting versions of “An Awesome Wave” songs.  The band seems to think that if they draw out songs for much longer than their ideas warrant and just play with dynamic contrast, there will be an interesting result.  Most of the album is excusable, one-listen music, but as I said, pretty boring.

Yet “This Is All Yours” is just asking for attention.  There's a Miley Cyrus sample clearly used just to generate interview questions and Google clicks (type in “alt j m” and Google suggests “alt j miley cyrus”).  

Then there’s “Left Hand Free”.  Created when studio executives asked for a more radio friendly single, Alt-J says that they wrote the song, “in about 20 minutes.”  In the same interview, they gloat, “Left Hand Free” is “the least Alt-J song ever,” and was built off a “joke riff” and constructed to be the most pre-fab, prototypical pop song imaginable.  Because writing a poppy song is just so beneath Alt-J.  They can write a hit song in 20 minutes and they don't care.  To top it all off, they put the song to lyrics about masturbation.  Alt-J is literally saying they are such superior musicians, that they went and had a circle jerk for 20 minutes and this is what came out.  Yet they wrote the song, and I’m sure won’t complain about playing it at every concert, and won’t feel guilty when the money comes in from sales of the single.  If you think you’re better than writing a pop song, then don’t write a pop song, and especially don’t jizz one all over our faces.  Fuck you.

3.5/10

Songs I liked: Bloodflood Part 2, Hunger of the Pine