After doing my Nick Cave and David Bowie reviews, I realised it was a good idea to familiarize myself with an album by listening to it several times before typing my opinion. On paper, this seemed like a viable tactic, because in case I change my mind partway through writing a review, revising my own opinions is tedious and difficult work. However, for March Fires I definitely regretted this decision, as all I wanted to do was stop listening to it, and this did not change no matter how many times I listened to it. Generally, this is not a good sign.
Birds of Tokyo are a relatively new Australian band previously known for their 2007 debut Day One and their 2008 follow-up Universes, both released independently through MGM Distribution. The former was a raw, organic alternative-punk sounding album which, although uncertain of its identity and purpose, was no doubt a quality piece of music, and showcased the band’s potential at the time. The band resolved these identity issues with an outstanding follow-up album, Universes, full of depth, atmosphere, subversive songwriting, dynamic tension and, overall, soul. 2010, however, saw Birds of Tokyo release a self titled third album through EMI records, complete with ultra-clean production, catchy pop tunes, and generally everything good about the band removed for the sake of accessibility. Effectively, Birds of Tokyo reduced themselves to nothing more than yet another drone calibrated specifically for the mass production of easy-to-consume pop music.
Modern pop music has the emotional impact of a can of Coke. It’s purpose is not to enlighten, inspire, or enrich your life, but to mass-market itself to as many people as possible in order maximize profit. Modern pop is nothing more than a consumer product, and March Fires fits neatly in this realm of music, also known as the tenth circle of hell for people like myself. If you played any given song from this album on any mainstream radio station, it would turn no heads or bat no eyelids. It would blend seamlessly into the scene, which showcases its complete lack of originality or innovation.
What characterised my experience of March Fires most prominently is that all I wanted to do is stop listening to it. While Birds of Tokyo’s first two albums could be not inaccurately described as Pixies meet Radiohead, March Fires sounds more like Nickelback meets Owl City. Birds of Tokyo used to be organic, dynamic and full of passion - March Fires is literally the opposite; artificial, static and empty. The aforementioned ultra-clean production sound coupled with the simple, pleasant major-scale oriented melodies completely filters out any semblance of humanity or soul left over from their atrocious previous album. Everything sounds too clean, too pleasant, too nice, and too over-polished, and as such merely comes across as shallow and insincere.
Counter-intuitively, the music itself is not pleasant to listen to. “Pleasant” is the adjective I would use to describe the sound of the melodies, or at least the intention behind them. The intervals and melodies played are specifically designed to sound nice, by fitting themselves neatly into one scale, and the problem with sounding this nice is that it’s uninteresting and inconsequential. It’s comparable to the difference between a children's television program, and an introspective thriller film such as Fight Club or Taxi Driver. If the subject matter is inherently intended to be “nice” without any sense of conflict or dissonance, the story ceases to be compelling or interesting in any way. Music works in a similar way, albeit far more abstract in nature.
The bass guitar’s entire subordinate role is to carry the songs on predictable note progressions, and the drum kit is weak, artificial, and carries no weight. Synthesizers across the album are merely a detriment to the already lacking sense of passion or drive by adding to the artificial, mechanical and jaded tone of the album. Even Ian Kenny’s vocals sound jaded; a vocalist known previously for having little care for accurate intonation in favour of conveying dynamic, strong and powerful emotion, has restrained his voice in order to retain correct pitch, and his voice suffers tremendously for it. On the other hand, Kenny is and has been a great lyricist, and while the lyrics on this album are certainly well written, they sound insincere and disingenuous with this music
It’s worth noting that there is not a single incidence of dissonance on any of the 12 songs, including the bonus track. Listening to the filler track Motionless, which incorporates a repeated palm-muted guitar note, all I could think was how much difference even one minor-second interval thrown in somewhere. That kind of slight dissonance, tension and subversion of predictability is what makes music interesting. There’s no depth to it, no sense of conflict, and thereby no sense of purpose. The problem with this kind of music is that it serves exactly no purpose. It does nothing to enlighten its listeners; it doesn’t innovate the music scene in any way, due to being completely unoriginal and derivative; and it offers no transcendent experience. This is an album which adds nothing to anything which already exists, and thereby does not need to exist - and should not exist at all.
The pop trope is played unashamedly straight in this album, expecting to be taken seriously without a shred of irony. In high school songwriting classes, you are taught how to use conventional song structures, chord progressions and scales to make nice sounding accessible music for everyone to enjoy. March Fires would be the result of these students gaining access to an expensive studio. Every song is predictable, conventional, safe, and places a strong emphasis on sounding happy and upbeat. Personally, I thought we had gotten over this mentality around Hendrix’s time.
It seems as though our century’s obsession with perfection has been taken too far. Music in the last ten years has steadily been moving toward computer generated auditory perfection, resulting in something much further from perfection than before. We see it mainly with mainstream pop, but even the alternative indie scene has been plagued with modern technology enabling pristine crystal-clear audio recordings for anyone with a laptop, and it’s our culture’s fixation on cleanliness and perfection which has induced this trend of clean, polished music. The inherent problem with clean, polished music is that all sense of uniqueness and humanity has been erased along with the grit. No one can relate to perfect music because no one is perfect.
Were it almost any other band, I would enjoy insulting this awful album and the terrible band that made it, but with Birds of Tokyo it only makes me sad. The album tries desperately hard to sound and feel happy, in order to make listeners happy, but in all truthfulness, all it did was make me depressed by reminding me of the decay of the 21st century music scene. Perhaps I’m too cynical, but anything which tries to be this happy and idealistic in tone merely comes across as unrealistic to me, and I can’t relate to it at all. What saddens me even more is that people like it - it honestly baffles me that anyone with half a brain can listen to Universes, then say with a straight face that March Fires is good.
This review is unexpectedly difficult to write, because there’s not a lot to say about an album as bland and uneventful as this one. I did enjoy one song - Sirin - for about twelve seconds, but I would attribute that to stockholm syndrome and a complete collapse of my resolve, rather than actual quality. March Fires is terrible. It’s bland, jaded, painful, derivative and completely unnecessary. Normally, I prefer to buy CD albums, because I like to think of myself as a collector, and part of the experience is owning the actual disc, as well as the linear notes and art; additionally, I think putting money into the music industry is a generally good cause, as record companies may feel more inclined to take risks (as they have done previously) if they have more money to spare on supporting innovative artists. However, I didn’t feel a shred of guilt downloading this album for free, and in fact I’m glad I did because it’s not worth any money.
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