Blonde Redhead Albums (7)
What The Critics Say
With each album since Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, Blonde Redhead has made huge strides forward with their sound. Misery Is a Butterfly pitted fragile melodies against dark, swirling arrangements, and its tragic glamour turned the album into a cult favorite. On 23, the band trades the cloistered chamber rock of Butterfly for tone-bending dream pop and subtle electronics; while the wide open spaces sound a little bare at first, this streamlined approach ends up making this Blonde Redhead's loveliest and most accessible work yet. The group begins each album with a bold statement of purpose, and 23 is no different. The epic title track's delicate electronic rhythms, swooping, shimmering guitars, and majestically bittersweet melody pitch it somewhere between My Bloody Valentine and Asobi Seksu, showing how a more restrained Blonde Redhead can still sound lush and haunting. "Spring and Summer by Fall"'s streaming, comet-tail guitars and "Silently"'s thorny melody hark back to Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, while "Heroine"'s vocoders sound surprisingly fresh, giving the song a fairy tale-meets-sci-fi vibe. This more whimsical, if not exactly lighthearted, feel flows through much of 23, especially on "Dr. Strangeluv," which boasts playful percussion and sparkling synths, and "Top Ranking," which layers Kazu Makino's vocals into futuristic girl group harmonies. However, Blonde Redhead hasn't ditched the brooding beauty of Misery Is a Butterfly entirely. "The Dress" is just as darkly stunning as any song on that album, with looping gasps and insistent guitars circling lyrics like "the fear starts creeping up when you have so much to lose," while "SW"'s melody and psychedelic brass interlude have a Butterfly-esque intensity. And as always, Blonde Redhead has a flair for haunting melodies, particularly on "Publisher," the chorus of which sounds peculiarly like Aerosmith's "Dream On." 23 is stunning -- in fact, its only flaw might be that its track listing is a little top-heavy, resulting in an album with an amazing first half and a flip side that is only very good. Nitpicking aside, 23 is mysterious and modern, with an artfully strange beauty that is more memorable than perfection. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
In keeping with the group's move from Touch & Go to 4AD, Blonde Redhead's Misery Is a Butterfly is their darkest and most delicate album to date. The brilliant Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and Melodie Citronique EP found the band moving away from the cerebral, no wave-influenced style of their earlier albums and toward a more intricate, emotional sound, but this album's preoccupation with filigree and shadow both reflects and represents the sensibilities of the label that released This Mortal Coil's Filigree and Shadow almost two decades earlier. The band's transition from their old home to their new one is smooth, but not as smooth as the album's actual sound; Misery Is a Butterfly's lush production and arrangements polish away with virtually all of the edges and angles that still informed their sound on their most recent recordings and pretty much defined their earliest ones. The move is both liberating and limiting: the album's soft focus allows Blonde Redhead to explore its relatively newfound romanticism more deeply than before -- particularly on the Eastern-tinged "Anticipation" -- but with less tension between the fragile and harsh aspects of the band's sound, its soft focus occasionally drifts into lack of focus. Songs such as "Melody" and the title track are lovely, but feel busier and more drawn-out than necessary; however, the indulgence that makes Misery Is a Butterfly's weakest moments somewhat ponderous also makes its best songs sweepingly romantic. The strings and keyboards that swirl around "Elephant Woman," "Doll Is Mine," and the gorgeous duet "Pink Love" give the album a brooding, overwrought feeling that conjures up fairy tales and lovesick recluses, and the album's song titles are just as evocative, alluding to love that is distorted, bruised, and in the case of "Equus," usually forbidden. There's something decadent about the album's layers of sound, and its wide scope paradoxically makes it one of Blonde Redhead's most insular albums; indeed, the indulgent isolation that permeates Misery Is a Butterfly makes it akin to Suede's Dog Man Star and Goldfrapp's Felt Mountain, in mood if not exactly in sound. The Blonde Redhead of old returns, somewhat, on more high-strung songs like "Falling Man" and "Maddening Cloud," both of which add some much-needed urgency to the album's mannered heartache. Misery Is a Butterfly might be a slightly less magical album than Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons because the listener is more aware of the effort going into the spell, but it's still an album of unusual grace. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons'
Release Date 6/6/2000
Tracks 11
Label Touch and Go
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
For a record produced by Guy Picciotto (Fugazi, Rites of Spring), Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons is a surprisingly quiet affair. Rarely do the cuts on Blonde Redhead's 2000 release get much louder than an electric guitar. With their fifth record, Blonde Redhead finally emerges from the shadows of Sonic Youth's post-punk legacy by avoiding the expected detunings, distortions, and shrillness of the genre. The three-piece manages to create a record that is subtle, tuneful, and sublime. On "Loved Despite of Great Faults," instrumentation mainly consists of acoustic guitar, piano, and percussion rather than an assault of power chords, yet the mood of the song is just as effective. While the record may be quieter, it still manages to move in several different directions. "This Is Not" tips its hat to Ric Ocasek with a new wave-inspired piece while the opening cut, "Equally Damaged," and "Ballad of Lemons" suggest an influence from Danny Elfman. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons may not accurately reflect the full body of Blonde Redhead's work, yet it presents an easy place to start. ~ Yancey Strickler, All Music Guide
'In an Expression of the Inexpressible'
Release Date 9/8/1998
Tracks 11
Label Touch & Go
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
The oft-used comparison to Sonic Youth doesn't really hold a lot of water, as Blonde Redhead's music has always been a bit less swirling, more spontaneous, and rougher around the edges. Further differentiating them from Sonic Youth is their bass-less approach. In an Expression of the Inexpressible, their fourth release, is as uncompromising as Fake Can Be Just as Good and La Mia Vita Violenta, but this time Blonde Redhead wanted to be produced by someone outside the band. The sound is fuller and more polished, and in the capable hands of producers John Goodmanson and Guy Picciotto (of Fugazi fame), they've never sounded quite as good. Still, Kazu Makino's high-pitched, Björk-ish vocals can get irritating at times, and the two guitars never quite reach a compelling level of interplay. Blonde Redhead, who sometimes are too clever for their own good, could, in fact, learn a great deal from Sonic Youth, since most of the tracks never come across with much urgency. [A Japanese reissue of the CD contains bonus tracks.] ~ Matthew Hilburn, All Music Guide
'Fake Can Be Just As Good'
Release Date 3/11/1997
Tracks 8
Label Touch and Go
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
It seems like New York trio Blonde Redhead have been dogged with Sonic Youth comparisons since the day they formed years ago, taking their name from an old song by No New York faves DNA. Such yakking only grew louder when the group, then a quartet, signed with Steve Shelley's Smells Like label in 1994 for a pair of LPs, and then let the Sonic Youth drummer produce them. Three years down the road, it's a resemblance still firmly in place on Fake Can Be Just as Good, despite the group employing producer John Goodmanson and switching labels to Chicago's venerable, powerful Touch & Go. But if this stubborn outfit of two handsome Italian-Americans and a pretty Japanese-American doesn't care about being branded copycats, and it seems they don't, then neither should anyone else. Improving with each release, the solid, crashing duo of guitarists (and alternating singers) Kazu Makino and Amedeo Pace may borrow an ethic, an anti-pop stance, and atonal tension that's super-familiar, but the clean sound, direct attack, and straightforward, tense delivery are all their own. Moreover, there's plenty of room for further exploration in these dark, forbidding, tempest-ridden post-punk seas. In fact, when Makino and Pace get cold, claustrophobic, weird, wired, and chilling (with help from borrowed Unwound bassist Vern Rumsey) is when they also nearly explode in deep undercurrents: see the best things here, the quietly terrified "Symphony of Treble" and "Bipolar." And unlike 95 percent of all bands based on the New York noise tradition, Blonde Redhead never just grind like nails to chalkboards -- their well-produced sound is never annoying or unpleasant -- nor forget that music is supposed to have hooks, no matter how much it eschews obvious pop melodic conventions. Far from mere protégés of any band or scene, Blonde Redhead are a unique sub-branch all their own on a fertile tree. ~ Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover, All Music Guide
'La Mia Vita Violenta'
Release Date 9/4/1995
Tracks 10
Label Smells Like
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
With their second release, La Mia Vita Violenta, Blonde Redhead maintain their organically low-fi aesthetic and continue to prove themselves as one of indie rock's real triumphs. Even after the departure of guitarist Maki Takahashi, they still make more noise with three people than most bands could make with ten. Guitars tear into the songs -- pointed, direct, and tough -- while the vocals of Kazu Makino and Amedeo Pace weave tightly into drummer Simone Pace's impeccably precise backing. Timing is everything, and Blonde Redhead certainly have it. They're dirty when they need to be and crystal-clear when the situation calls for it. Never angry, the trio plays hard and fast to the point where the instruments seem to play themselves with the deftest of precision. The production is so skillful that even with the most Spartan of recording gear, guitars end up sounding synthetic, in that painting-looks-like-a-photograph kind of way. And the volatile changes -- from sweet acoustic strums to drilling power chords -- make this album a whirl of unexpected surprises. La Mia Vita Violenta is math rock without the nerdiness and art rock without the pretentiousness. ~ Ken Taylor, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Recalling the no wave movement of the late '70s, the self-titled debut of New York City's Blonde Redhead is a glorious piece of dense, art-damaged noise, with songs that move from drifting melodicism to raging aural assaults in the course of a few measures. Taking their cues most directly from Sonic Youth (Steve Shelley produced the album), Blonde Redhead revel in noise and create vast sonic landscapes out of which songs naturally emerge. The focus here tends to be on atmospherics, and yet there is never the feeling of utter chaos; instead, the album functions like a work of controlled mayhem, referencing a wide range of musical approaches. The opening track, "I Don't Want U," starts off like jazz-rock, building momentum until it erupts in a blast of indie rock noise, anchored throughout by a steadily rolling bassline. "Snippet"'s quite-loud-quiet dynamics are offset by the driving rock of "Mama Cita," and the album's closer, "Girl Boy," comes across like delirious dream pop. The entire album is drenched in dense, multilayered feedback, with a rhythm section that works to keep the guitars in control, underpinning the attack. Blonde Redhead have created a great record, especially for fans of experimental rock: difficult, noisy, and exhilarating. ~ Brandon Gentry, All Music Guide
