REVIEW: No Bad Memories by The Avalanches
On paper, No Bad Memories, the newest record from Australian electronic music group The Avalanches, should sound annoying. It has all the hallmarks of a bloated, unfocused streaming-era product. No Bad Memories is 31 tracks and 51 minutes long; 18 of those songs are interludes under two minutes and barely any songs finish one idea before flitting to the next. It even has some new, never-before-seen irritants. Songs get interrupted at their peak by samples of advertisements before returning and settling into a different hook; there is a near constant hum of digital machinery, audio artificing and distorting, hard drives spinning up, and mice clicking. None of this sounds pleasant or enjoyable to listen to, and yet, No Bad Memories is extremely listenable. Why?
The obvious answer demands an appeal to the sheer technical prowess of The Avalanches as musicians. There is a reason they take multiple years, sometimes even decades, between albums. The collage of samples and strategic employment of guest musicians works time after time to create a fresh, seamless listening experience. All of their previous work has the ability to make you unintentionally lose the next hour just by throwing on one song. Their work is meticulously crafted. Why is a song like “Together” listenable despite its crescendo anti-climaxing with a sample of an old Toshiba ad? Because the rest of the song is skillfully made, the interruption hardly registers as abnormal when it occurs.
The less obvious answer requires looking at the intention behind the record. Using “Together” as an example again, the choice to play a Toshiba ad in the middle of the song coheres, but could still get annoying if you don’t have any idea why they’re doing that in the first place. No Bad Memories is, first and foremost, a satire on advertising. The record frames advertising as cultural pollution, non-biodegradable promos and jingles that infect the cultural consciousness long after the products they were selling are gone. The work interrogates how advertisements and brands are as potentially informative to our identity and culture as any other piece of pop songwriting.
This contextual framing justifies a lot of the “annoying” things about the record. The high number of interludes are positioned as the record having literal commercial breaks. The constant, breakneck speed of ideas represents shrinking trend cycles and the disposability of so many of the products whose ad campaigns are sampled. A Toshiba ad in the middle of a dance song might read as frustrating, but in context, it is a delightfully cynical punchline that everything– even the tightest groove the band can create– is trying to sell you something.
The satirical choices combined with the band’s technical ability are a double-edged sword. It works to create a very literal and effective satire of consumer culture, making the record’s abnormalities register as effective thematic and artistic choices. At the same time, it makes the more conventional songs feel improper. “Blue Shadows” is great, taking a sample of an old 80s ballad and making it a modern crooner track with the help of Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs fame. “Highfield” is a lovely ambient tangent in the middle of the record that feels purpose-built for someone like Panda Bear, who is a featured vocalist on this song. If there is any good in the world, “Can’t Get Over Losing You” makes Portraits of Tracy a massive artist. It is far and away the album’s best song, a laser-focused pop track with lyrics about losing someone you maybe never had, brought to life wonderfully by Tracy’s excellent guest vocals.
Still, regardless of the quality of these songs, the fact remains that none of these have really anything to do with the thematic setup of the record. The critical slipstream of promos, sweepstakes, whirrs, and clicks that propel the album get interrupted by great but largely uncritical songs. Complaining about an album having too many good songs sounds silly, but for a record with such a distinct concept and thematic execution, it’s hard not to be put off by the number of times it breaks from its thesis entirely. Perhaps there was a way to balance this: more conventional songs that sideline the satire but keep the energy level consistent and less conventional songs that strengthen the messaging at the risk of the playfully annoying tone becoming actually annoying.
In its current state, despite the album’s strong themes and The Avalanches’ virtuosic control and technical ability to make the worst traits of an album on paper excel in practice, No Bad Memories is an album best listened to in full two or three times before listening to the hits out of context. In other words, it’s a bit of a bloated, unfocused streaming-era product.
3/5
Favorite track(s): “Can’t Get Over Losing You”, “Blue Shadows”, and “The Pavements Light“
No Bad Memories is available for purchase from The Avalanches’ website and is available to stream wherever you get your music. Additionally, the band is doing a short tour in Europe to support the record; tickets are available for purchase here.
