Too Pure / Beggars
2005
Axes
About This Album
Though it arrives only a little over a year after the radiant The Power Out, Electrelane's third album Axes is a very different beast than their previous effort. Actually, it's more of a piece with the band's lengthy, improv-based debut, Rock It to the Moon, with keyboard-driven, largely instrumental tracks that often sound like a chamber music group playing forgotten Sonic Youth compositions. Both Rock It to the Moon and Axes show that Electrelane has undeniable talent as an instrumental post-rock band, but the mix of this talent with vocals and pop song structures on The Power Out was so striking that it almost can't help but be disappointing that the band didn't follow that direction on this album, too. To be fair, Axes does have a handful of tracks that expand on what Electrelane did on The Power Out: "The Bells" is a lovely track built on a Krautrock pulse and alternately pounding and rippling pianos and topped with pretty but not overly sweet vocals from Verity Susman and company; its ebb and flow make it one of the band's best pieces yet. "Two for Joy" is equally ecstatic, while "The Partisan" -- a continuation of the dark, driving instrumental "Those Pockets Are People" -- comes close to recapturing The Power Out's freewheeling energy, if not its balance of pop and improvisation.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,5 and 9)

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