Customer Reviews

The Brutalist Bricks

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For Ted Leo fans, "Shake the Sheets" is a good comparison starting point for "The Brutalist Bricks", both are straightforward political punk albums. Leo's foray into unabashed pop music on "Living With The Living" seems like a distant memory for most of this album as the guitars and political lyrics dominate.

The album opens up with the excellent opening single "The Mighty Sparrow." The song shows off Leo's singing abilities, manages to be catchy without an actual chorus and contains two false endings, all in a little over two and a half minutes. Next, "Mourning In America" is a blistering rocker in typical Leo fashion with the driving guitars leading the way. "Ativan Eyes" and "Even Heroes Have To Die" come next, both a little slower paced than the two opening tracks, but both are fun, if not terribly memorable. "The Stick" follows, it is as loud and fast as anything Leo has done, a power packed track coming in under two minutes.

The track that is perhaps in the "Living With The Living" mold more than any other on this album, "Bottle in Cork", is also, surprisingly, one of the best. The sound is light and breezy, reminding me of more than a few tracks off of their last album, and it is very enjoyable. The rest of the album continues switching between faster ("Woke Up Near Chelsea", "Where Was My Brain?") and slower ("One Polaroid A Day", "Bartomelo and the Buzzing of Bees"). Over this stretch, "Tuberculoids Arrive in Hop" deserves note for being an extremely slow, stripped-down piece with some interesting vocal parts, not typical Ted Leo at all. "Gimmie the Wire" is a great rocker, one of the standouts of the album. "Last Days" finishes things off, it is another strong tune on an album full of them.

I'll avoid trying to rank where this one stacks up against the rest of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' catalog, but if you are a fan, this album won't disappoint. It is a good mix of tempos and styles, never staying in one place for too long and stays engaging throughout.

In his anthemic, chorus crushing song, "Waiting for the Great Leap Forward," Billy Bragg sings, "Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is/I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses." Within the narrative of the song, the question is posed to Billy during the last call moments at a pub, and it carries a sense of drunk cynicism. It is also the question that Ted Leo, a musician deeply influenced by Billy Braggs punk and politics, has been posing to himself, both in song and interviews, for most of his career. Can an artist deliver the complications of politics through the streamlined joys of a pop melody? It's a question that every artist who trades in choruses and hooks that go straight for the mainline must ask. After all, if politics, as the philosopher once said, are an ideology that separates the individual from his or her real condition, then can the pop music, with its inherent brevity and disposability, perform the work of impacting a listener's consciousness enough to make these conditions known?

At times Ted Leo has suggested in interviews that pop music can't accomplish this kind of consciousness shifting, but, rather, all it can hope to do is preach to the converted. This tension between wanting to craft a political anthem within the confines of pop music shifts to the forefront of his latest album, The Brutalist Bricks, and is perhaps best exemplified by the song "Ativan Eyes." The song begins with a call to action, sprinkled with a little Karl Marx, but, before even the first chorus, abruptly shifts into the idioms of a love song: "The industry's out of touch / The means of production are now in the hands of the worker / But I just want to be touched by your expert hands." Here the metaphorical hands of labor are transformed into the hands of that oldest of rock and roll traditions, a woman to pine for. The mash up between politics and pop is jarring. The split roles of "Ativan Eyes" mirror the forked expectations for popular rock and roll: those who are listening for tidbits of lyrics to live their lives to and those who want something to that will move their feet.

Fittingly, Ted Leo name checks the stridently leftist hardcore band Flux of Pink Indians part way through "Ativan Eyes," and longtime fans of Leo will notice the influence of hardcore music on Brutalist Bricks. Both "The Stick" and "Where Was My Brain?" are more aggressive than anything Ted Leo has previously put to disc, even the consciously stripped down Shake the Sheets. Both songs play at one point or another to the nostalgia for music that, like Flux of Pink Indians, could impact how one sees the world during the most vulnerable time in our life, our teenage years. On "The Stick," a song that moves along with some clipped chords but on more than one occasion threatens to devolve into feedback and noise, Ted Leo intones, "Play an ancient mixtape, try to break from your routine," suggesting the power inherent in returning to the same music that once shifted how we saw the world. And on "Where Was My Brain?," he sings "We had the best of an imperfect world" in one of Leo's perfectly placed anthems.

Ted Leo's interest in hardcore careens across the album and finds its way into songs that aren't as readily impacted by the genre as "The Stick" and "Where Was My Brain?" The entire album bursts with the type of energy that most bands manage to infuse on their first or second album, but can rarely muster on their sixth release. The album opener, "The Mighty Sparrow," begins, as if mid-sentence, with the statement, "When the café doors exploded, I reacted too / Reacted to you" and doesn't let up over the course of two and a half minutes, which includes two false endings and an instrumental outro. The song "Mourning in America" not only references that all time favorite target of hardcore punk bands, Ronald Reagan, but also backs the verses with frenetic guitar play. The song is a testament to Ted Leo's ability to craft political songs that speak to the moment while referencing the past. Similarly, Living with the Living, often took aim at the Iraq War by circumventing it altogether and choosing instead to recall America's forays into reshaping South American politics (a move that hasn't borne out all that well since several of our American backed "candidates," including Augusto Pinochet, have found themselves in front of war crimes tribunals).

Even though Brutalist Bricks shares a more cohesive sonic thesis than the stylistically diverse Living with the Living, Ted Leo hasn't lost the ability to change genres with the same ease as changing a radio station. Leo has transformed "One Polaroid a Day" from the radio ready tune fans recognized at his live show into a slow burn funk number. For many fans this seems like a perplexing decision. Why, after all, might Ted Leo weaken one of his catchiest songs with an, arguably, unnecessary genre shift? We might explain this move by pointing towards Leo's anxiety that pop music's slickness is at odds with any potential message. That, or maybe he was listening to a lot of Curtis Mayfield when it came time to record the song. "Tuberculoids Arrive in Hops," a meditation on the importation of disease to the New World from Europe, is a quiet moment of lo-fi folk that would sound at home on a Sebadoh album.

Perhaps all a musician can really do provide a message to those who are already ready to hear it. A song, after all, is unlikely to change your life. That doesn't mean Leo doesn't try, and there are plenty of rousing numbers we have come to expect from Ted Leo. Chief among these is "Bottled in Cork," a song that narrates Leo's excursion abroad, and, although it begins discussing the United Nations, the story moves quickly from the political to the personal. In a sense it is the diametric opposite of Heart of Oak's "Ballad of the Sin Eater," whose chorus was "You didn't think they could hate you." "Ballad of the Sin Eater" told of expatriate adventures following America's reaction to 9/11, but unlike that earlier song, "Bottled in Cork tells of growing older and befriending the locals. The song is a reminder that, if nothing else, the converted need to be reminded now and then that the conditions of the world are not stagnant and with a little faith and a lot of work things can change. Whatever side you fall on the pop and politics debate, we might ask ourselves what our outlook on politics and life might be if we had not discovered X band at Y moment in our life.

I thought Hearts of Oak was really great but the last few releases were lacking something, but not this one. This is a great listen all the way through and all the songs stand out by themselves. I compare Ted to a modern day Elvis Costello or Graham Parker and this could be his This Years Model or Squeezing Out Sparks.

I'll admit I'm a big fan of TLRX and was patiently waiting for this release after 2007's Living with the Living. As with any favorite band you're always a little scared; will I like the new album? Will I be disappointed? Will it make me long for the classics? I can assure you that TLRX is back in great form with The Brutalist Bricks. The sound is not as experimental as on Living; there are no funk or reggae inspired tracks here but instead a more stripped down sound. Even though it seems Ted is going back to his roots the songs are fresh, inspired and as always meaningful.

The album is very balanced mixing in edgy punk sounds like "Mourning in America", "The Stick" and "Where Was My Brain" with Ted's classic Punk Pop like The "Mighty Sparrow", "Bottled in Cork", "Ativan Eyes" and "Bartomelo And The Buzzing Of Bees". Seriously, there's not a weak song on the album. "One Polaroid a Day" and "Even Heroes have to Die" are as catchy as I've ever heard. Polaroid is the first time I've heard Ted lower his voice instead of using his classic falsetto. You won't be disappointed in this album

A great live act too, TLRX just had a ton of energy on stage. While I was cheering when Ted went into "Me and Mia" and "Timorous Me" I was just excited to hear the new songs.

Don't get me wrong, I've got lots of his other stuff and I liked it fine. But this is a compulsively listenable album that had me all the way, and whatever it is that makes the music click was present here.

Not much more to say than that. Buy this one. It's their best, so far as I can tell.

This band continues to grow with each effort. I hope they are around for a long long time. Head and shoulders above all the androgynous cloying crap we have to listen to today.

Its called paying your dues and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists have done it in spades. Since 1999 various incarnations of this band led by Mr Leo from Washington DC have rocked around the USA honing their concert appearances to perfection. Their 2004 album "Shake the Sheets" was right on target especially the songs "Counting down the hours" and the truly wonderful "Me and Mia" and the set the template for a pop/punk/rock/soul band that could play the spoons if required and sound great. If anyone has also heard 2003's "Heart of Oaks" please feel free to add a comment.

British artists such as Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Clash and even the Libertines are the key reference points here. Ok it is not hugely original but as summer approaches it will soundtrack warm days and when its done this well there is no need to be disingenuous. The album is fast paced, full of big tunes, infused with hope and Ted Leo himself sings with little regard to the future impact on his larynx.

The pace barely lets up over the 13 songs contained herein but savvy punters should head for the best of the bunch which include the poptastic "Even heroes have to die", the fast Costello like "Mourning in America" and the two real highlights which happen to be the opening track "Mighty Sparrow" (check out the You Tube storming version on the Jimmy Fallon show) and closing track "Last days". Both have a punk rock sensibility that will have you humming like a bee with a pollen overdose. Indeed Last Days clearly draws on the riff of a another song which I am damned if I can recall but its great all the same.

Ted Leo and the Pharmicists could appropriate the label from James Brown as the hardest working men in show business. "Brutalist Bricks" is passionate but focused album by a great American band who deserve much wider recognition.

2 1/2

While not lacking in momentum, BB suffers from Leo's increasingly generic writing (Bartomelo And The Buzzing Of Bees is the only track that fully reminds me of his former simplistic potency), painting his political pop-punk with more limp than kick.