Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly

Blonde Redhead formed in the beginning of the nineties and earned themselves comparisons to Sonic Youth, largely due to the help they got from Steve Shelley, but quickly shook them off by making louder and louder in each record a voice of their own and a peculiar approach on slanted pop with echoes of the aggressiveness of second era Dischord post-punk... YADDA YADDA YADDA, we all know the story, now on with today's account.

When dropped on the desk for the first time their new album, Misery is a Butterfly, starts out good, really good, sadly enough...

Misery is a Butterfly initially appears as a strikingly sensual album, and just as the title suggests, takes on a symbolic character: perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly destructive. The homogeneity of the record turns out to come from echoes in a musical symmetry... Sadly enough, this may imply a decline from their great records such as Distilled or even from la Mia Violenta.

Take one example: Misery is a butterfly suffers from uninterested vocals. They try to throw the nice song with nostalgic singing trick to us, but excuse me... them guys already had that before but at least backed it up by a sort of postmodernist take on it, which was relieving with such an overused effect.
Here, it seems perplexing that they would consider a step back of that size.

To try and put it clearly, let's move in closer on the Melody case. This track pretty much stigmatizes the problem of the record, although starting out on a good idea, it quickly navigates to classical Blonde Redhead territory, slightly elevates it at times, hinting at new directions but finally lets go by going pretty much nowhere, ending abruptly where we were expecting an epiphany of some sort. Misery is a butterfly could practically be Blonde Redhead in a box with the price on it and a nice paper bag to take it home easy, but doesn't go that low and ends up being poppy, effortless, a oomphless version of something that might have been.

In the end, Misery is a butterfly may be the only song that is worth being on the record, very innovative as far as they used to compose. The fact is that all the other songs are Misery is a butterfly-likes. Failing Man is a nice song. Listen to it while eating, or drinking, it certainly won't bother you. Anticipation is just plain boring. Maddening Cloud is the first song with a quicker tempo, although slow, it is less slow than the other songs. At 2'32, the piece is pretty sparkling. Pink Love has no attention in its vocals once more, and the music itself is merely sympathetic. But they are cunning as foxes, they based the song on the male/female call and answer balance. The song grows more attractive, but stops when getting better ONCE AGAIN. Equus might be the better song, since being the archetypal Blonde Redhead. The song would have been a worthless bore in previous records, but is here a pleasant hymn, that elevates the record.

Yet I sometimes enjoyed listening to it. Indeed, it stays a pleasant listen and one of its qualities is that it's a grower. Anyway my girlfriend likes it, so I have to hear it from time to time.
The main issue is that we don't know whether the emotions triggered throughout the whole record are really sincere. Always the same old way of lamenting. Blonde Redhead know perfectly what to play, how to play it and they cut it well.
This is still Blonde Redhead and Misery is a butterfly is much more than a high-class prostitute, but for now, let me get back to Sonic Youth's Sister.


Links:
Buy it at amazon.com
Buy it at amazon.co.uk
Buy it at amazon.fr
Blonde Redhead's page at Southern records
Blonde Redhead at 4AD