Ribbons - Royals Album Review (2008)

Radiohead has a lot to answer for. Thom Yorke and his cohorts are now the public face of lo-fi after abandoning a very successful guitar-based indie career. What they are doing now is nothing new. Bands evolve and musicians reinvent themselves all the time but one thing remains: the core sound that made them great in the first place. In an attempt to be innovative and different, to throw off the shackles of predictability and stereotype, the band are now a changed entity - newly invigorated, motivated and making interesting, if challenging, music. So why all this talk of Radiohead? Well, producer and musician Jherek Bischoff's new band Ribbons make Radiohead sound like Kid A never happened.

As you might expect Royals is all over the place. At times it is impossible to conceive that anyone has actually written most of the music. Some of the arrangements are so random that they could only be created using a stopwatch. But most of the time it all feels like a stream of consciousness unhindered by the usual rules. The album opens with the drawn-out wavering vocals of All Of Us and from the first lines it is clear that Bischoff has not been blessed with a great voice. There is a connection between despair and beauty but melancholy does not always work as a creative artistic force. What starts off compelling quickly becomes annoying and half way through a huge string arrangement tries to rescue the listener from the eerie apocalyptic trance. All We Know takes a similar approach but without the inevitable search party. The vocals are operatic, the soundscape is David Gilmore meets Vangelis with electronic percussion, lush guitars and fragments of piano. The soft vocal outro is spoiled by the drums. If Bischoff is such a good producer of minimalism, how could he get the mix so wrong? The third of this unsteady trilogy is the spooky instrumental Automatism, a piece played out in negative by a very small orchestra playing tiny instruments.

The best song on the album, undoubtedly is The Last And Least Likely. From the big Bond-themed string arrangement into the buzzing electronics, a complete change of direction in the mid-section and then an ambient outro - it glides through the five minutes. Children's Song could be described as pop: annoyingly catchy and familiar making way for some very cool guitars to finish. But this is a brief highlight. The second half of the album is plagued with more pitfalls. Miu Miu is just too weird, random and directionless. The introduction of an Eastern feel is at first interesting but then goes nowhere and the end is a noisy mess. Silver Locket is very slow folk accompanied by ghostly backing vocals and blasts of 'sound'. But it is not all bad news. Tongue Tied is the first glimpse of structure and a pleasant duet with added female vocals. It suffers from persistent soulless electronica and staccato leading to crashing drums and more big strings. For something so challenging, it is all too predictable.

But the biggest disappointment is the final song All I Was. Given the blatant self-indulgence on display, a fifteen minute sprawling epic of twists and turns, highs and lows, and a wealth of ideas would be appropriate - even if it did not work. At least it would be embracing the spirit of the album. What we get is the dreadful All I Was, one of the worst songs on any album this year. Bischoff tries to sing with clarity which falls flat, a delicate arrangement is interrupted by the sound of frogs being hit with big hammers and then just to top it all off, he adds in some whistling. Put in some handclaps and it would have everything. The last minute sounds revisited and uninspired.

Ground-breaking, innovative, different and challenging - these words all have one synonym: Crap. Even if the songs are non-existent, the music is not that great and there is very little talent on offer, the end result can be compelling. This generates a compulsion to listen and to keep listening, so that every note is explored, every word is understood, and every beat is felt. Royals does not pull you in as much as it wants to, mainly due to the improvised feel and the vocals delivering incomprehensible lyrics. What should be free-flowing and natural is more like trying to swim in Marmite.

So what of the Radiohead comparison? It still stands. The approach is the same, but as Ribbons has no core sound to rely on, the songs lack coherence and focus. At least Radiohead are still interesting. The constant use of string arrangements to desperately get things moving, the tendency to fill voids with empty wailing vocals and the creation of atmosphere over genuine substance - all these things make Royals a very frustrating listen which does not improve over time. Some really great ideas are ruined by a lack of discipline and structure. This is obviously the effect Bischoff is going for but the music always suffers when you don't have a plan. Pure production with very little to produce.

-- CS (for The Music Magazine)