The Bottom Line
There are two kinds of great albums, ones you know are great after a good number of listens and ones you feel are great immediately. I put Aqueduct's sophomore full-length Or Give Me Death on a few months ago planning to review it -- but I couldn't. Instead, I listened to it nonstop for a few months. Then I caught the band at SXSW. All the while, I knew they'd put out one of the best albums I'd heard all year. But I was selfish. I kept that from you. Why? Because it's hard to describe what makes Aqueduct's Or Give Me Death so great. It's not something I know. I just feel it. Or have felt it. For months.
- "Lying In The Bed I've Made"
- "Living A Lie"
- "Broken Record"
- "Keep It Together"
- The other 8 tracks
- None.
Description
- Possibly the least self-indulgent "solo project" I've ever heard.
- A full and constantly-surprising sound.
- (Excuse me, I'm going to listen to the album again now.)
Guide Review - Aqueduct "Or Give Me Death"--Album Review
Essentially the solo project of Seattlite David Terry, Aqueduct has been patching together off-kilter pop gems since sometime before 2003. The band started with self-released "mini-LP" that year (Power Ballads), a 2004 EP (Pistols At Dawn), and 2005 full-length (I Sold Gold). They were variously described as "textbook indie-rock" and "quirky." Now, however, they have released an album of firmer stature and more original voice.
The new record, Or Give Me Death, still manages to retain some of the bedroom casualness of Terry's early work (it is still "quirky indie rock"), but it also manages to take laid-back in a surprisingly intense direction. Where the mixed-and-matched nature of Aqueduct's earlier work gave Terry's keen ear for pop melody some zing, but essentially just decorated otherwise straight-up pop tunes, Or Give Me Death feels exquisitely alive within its hodgepodge nature.
It is understatement to say that "no two songs sound alike." No one song sounds alike even inside itself. The opening track, for instance, "Lying In the Bed I've Made," opens with a melodic intensity that feels ballad-esq, but quickly becomes more uplifting, more sing-songy -- and then, of course there is an electric guitar riff, keyboards wailing, a choir-sung chorus and an ever growing sense that this band, and this album, are creating something full, something real and new.
Here is some semi-meaningless reviewer-speak for you: the tunes on the album are just as catchy as they are counter-intuitive, just as brooding as they are gleeful and just as familiar as they are confusing. I don't know how any of that manages to work, but when I hear the first moments of the first song, I have to hear the entire album. It's like a beautiful tour of a strange stir of emotions -- a little cartoony (but isn't life?), a little awkward (but isn't life?), but always rewarding.
