MWE Week Four: Poets of the Fall, MF DOOM, and Gorillaz
The theatrical romance of Poets of the Fall,
Poets of the Fall: Carnival of Rust, Twilight Theater, and Temple of Thought
Of all the pop and alternative rock acts I’ve heard about throughout the years, I don’t hear people bring up Poets of the Fall nearly enough for my liking. I guess it makes sense. They’re too rock for pop fans and too pop for rock fans. And their music, in general, can be pretty niche to people who don’t already buy into the idea of a theatrical rock band that uses carnival and religious imagery to deliver their declarations of love. They’re over the top, have ridiculous imagery, but they have so much fun reveling in their unique style with a charismatic lead singer that I can’t help but come back to their massive scales and impressive hooks. I realized it halfway through this discography, but Poets of the Fall remind me an alarming amount of Marianas Trench, my all-time favorite musical act. But while Marianas Trench’s melodrama is more rooted in desperation and a general lack of tact, Poets of the Fall’s melodrama is rooted in a titanic sense of romance where every moment feels like the fate of the world depends on it. They’re the kind of band that will compare a failing relationship to two Gods battling it out and trying to restore balance to an unstable world. So yeah, definitely the kind of band I’d be super into.
Previously I had only listened to two of their albums; Jealous Gods and Ultraviolet. Both great albums with songs I hold near and dear to my heart. But they have a pretty extensive back catalog that began in the mid-2000s where their sound began to slowly develop and eventually hit its stride during the 2010s. A good friend of mine is a huge fan of theirs, so I decided to consult her Poets of the Fall album ranking to determine which albums are most essential for me to fully understand their discography. She listed these albums as within their Top 5, so naturally, this seemed like the right progression to go off of.
There’s not a lot I can say about Carnival of Rust. It’s a very solid project and one where Poets of the Fall first start honing in on their sound. It’s a solid album all around, with track after track of great hooks and excellent grooves. It doesn’t quite have the spark that makes Poets' best music stand out yet, but you still hear that instinct for grandiose hooks and theatrical romanticism that would eventually become the band’s trademark. “Carnival of Rust”, the band’s most popular song, is a great example of that, as the crescendo from the eerie guitar plucking of the first half to the dramatic escalation of guitars and Marko Saaresto’s desperation turn the song into something truly momentous and incredible. Though, I personally prefer the more straightforward powerhouses “Sorry Go Round” and “Delicious”, both some of my favorite songs of the group without question.
None of that, however, compares to what might be their magnum opus, “Twilight Theater”. This is where their style fully comes into fruition, and the results are MARVELOUS. With the production being a bit more polished and unafraid to lean into its pop instincts, the theatrics of this band increase exponentially, their hooks are stronger, and every song here is a fucking knockout. This is the album that made me theorize the Marianas Trench comparisons because in a way this does remind me a lot of Astoria and its form of romantic theatre. Saaresto is no Josh Ramsay, but he still sounds phenomenal on this album. His baritone and expressive voice is half the reason this band works at all and adding orchestral strings and compositions to his usual rock production is a brilliant addition that takes advantage of his unique presence and power as a singer. There’s not much of an overarching theme to this album. If anything, it’s more of the same from Poets of the Fall. But I consider it their best album (if not, on par with Jealous Gods) because it’s pretty much the best showcase of their music. The best songs, the best hooks, the best moments, everything. Twilight Theater puts a huge smile on my face.
Temple of Thought is really close to being just as good. The production is a little sharper and the stakes are higher. I’ve heard this pinned as the fan-favorite, and I can definitely see why! If Twilight Theater was the perfection of their formula, Temple of Thought is the advancement of that formula, this time focusing more on an apocalyptic double-edged sword where the romance and melancholy that Saaresto goes through has him flipping back and forth between his genuine self and his darkest realities. By all accounts, I should like this more than Twilight Theater. And honestly, in some ways I do. Its best songs are pretty fucking incredible, and I love hearing the stakes amped up as they deliver yet another collection of fantastic songs. I’ll be honest, the only reason I don’t prefer this album is that I prefer the production on Twilight Theater. Temple of Thought leans back into the alternative rock sound, and while this is the best that alternative rock sound has been, I do prefer the more cinematic, orchestral arrangements that colored the best parts of Twilight Theater. Plus, say what you will about that album, at least it doesn’t have Poets of the Fall’s worst song slapped awkwardly at the end of the album. This is a universal opinion held by fans of the band, but “The Happy Song” has no reason to exist. I don’t know who told Poets of the Fall to end their album, not with the biblical climax of “The Ballad of Jeremiah Peacekeeper”, but with Five Finger Death Punch making a song out of the mental illness AU Tik Tok was a good idea, but it fucks the ending and overshadows what’s otherwise a tremendous album.
I found it surprisingly difficult to talk about this discography. Similar to Zac Brown Band, Poets of the Fall hit a very specific niche in my brain that makes me fall in love with their music unconditionally. Hearing these big, romantic hooks and wonderful blends of rock and orchestra makes me light up whenever they come on, and it feels like with every release we’re seeing that style improve and make new strides into something incredible. I didn’t mention Ultraviolet that much in comparison to Jealous Gods, but sometimes I go back to that album and explore its best moments and I realize that this band is on the verge of topping Twilight Theater someday. We just need an album full of songs like “Jealous Gods”, “My Dark Disquiet”, “Dreaming Wide Awake”, “Fool’s Paradise”, “Daze”, “Show Me This Life”, “Sorry Go Round”, and more. I for one cannot wait for that day.
MF DOOM: Operation: Doomsday, MM FOOD, and Madvillany
Even if you’ve never heard his music, anyone who spends even a little time devoted to music history knows the name MF DOOM. One of the most influential and respected figures of hip-hop in its entire history. A guy who rapped under a number of other monikers, including King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn, but most importantly, MF DOOM. As someone who’s generally in the dark about a lot of hip-hop’s history, only really knowing about the big names like Tupac, Biggie, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and others, I’ve never really had a proper introduction to MF DOOM. The first time I’d heard of him was off my favorite song on The Avalanches’ “Frankie Sinatra” alongside Danny Brown. It wouldn’t be until I picked up pieces of who he was and how important his music was in building new standards in flows and sampled beats.
Unfortunately, what pushed me to finally listen to his discography was his sudden and unexpected death announced at the very end of last year. One final blow from the hell-year that was 2020 where the world found out all at once that DOOM had been dead for two months. Even I was shocked to learn about this once the rumors were confirmed. It was a monumental loss, one that every rapper who owed their careers to DOOM felt in their hearts.
But I guess part of me was always intimidated by DOOM’s discography because it’s difficult to know when to start. If we want to focus on Daniel Dumile as a whole, you’d have to take into account, not just the DOOM albums, but his instrumental work as Metal Fingers, his early rap collective KMD, his work as his other alter egos King Geedorah and Viktor Vaughn, the many collab mixtapes he made with producers and other rappers, plus the many different appearances he’s made on albums as a guest feature. I definitely want to check out albums like Take Me To Your Leader and Vaudville Villain in the near future, but for now, I just want to focus on the main albums under the MF DOOM name.
You know, it’s funny. Going through Operation: Doomsday, I heard a lot of flows and tricks that would later be reminiscent of modern rappers that I’ve grown to love. Which, duh, of course, it is. This is where those skills were created. DOOM’s flow is so specific, but it works wonders with the production he chose to back his bars up. I found myself really vibing to this album as I came back home from class that day. The beatwork was utterly fascinating to me. They’re so layered in their percussion, their tempo, the way the samples blend into the original production and create something that sounds as vintage as it is modern. Not to mention the integration of old-school television, particularly cartoons like the Fantastic Four where he recontextualizes the dialogue to be about himself and his rise to fame is so wildly creative I have no choice but to respect it. The music as a whole is simply brilliant. Every song belongs on this album, whether it’d be a fully formed song or merely an interlude. I love how every song has its own lyrical flair, with the same intricate rhymes as always, but with varying degrees of flexing so that no one song ever feels like it’s repeating itself. Especially since every bending flow is so unique and will give you at least one moment to blow you away each time. I do think this album teeters on being a bit too long, maybe a couple of cuts would have made it perfect, but it’s still a pretty phenomenal album.
In that spirit, I think MM FOOD might be slightly better in that regard. What I love about this one is how deceptively simple it is. In essence, it’s everything you loved about Operation: Doomsday and more. Only this time, there’s a lyrical focus on food and implementing that factor into every song. So much so every song title involves food somehow. And again, it’s where MF DOOM’s creativity comes into play. Basing an album around your love of food could have the potential to be really corny or lame. But like the way he implements his nerdy interests in superheroes and comics, DOOM slips in the food references so naturally through his incredible rhymes and flows that you buy into the concept immediately. So now we have a fantastic project in a tighter package with more and in some cases better songs that show DOOM’s growth as a rapper and as a producer. I’ve been told the instrumental intermission can drag the album a bit, but I found it as a nice distraction to show off DOOM’s beat-making skills and implement some fun samples to build upon the album’s lore. I like how the album ends with DOOM successfully taking over the world, as opposed to the defeat he faces at the end of Operation: Doomsday. It’s as if DOOM has achieved such a great level of dominance by the end of the album that the world eventually falls into his hands. This is technically the last solo album DOOM released as MF DOOM so that ending is honestly kind of fitting. Especially as he would from then on have such an immense influence on hip-hop as a whole that it might as well be non-fiction.
But DOOM’s best album, without a shred of doubt, is the album that perfected his style and is widely considered to be a hip-hop classic, Madvillany. A collab tape with producer Madlib where the two form a persona known as Madvillain and perfect MF DOOM’s formula to its purest, best shape. This doesn’t really do much that the other two albums didn’t already do. It simply took the best parts of both albums and packed all of them together into an incredible project where not a single moment is ever wasted. It’s crazy how this album has short, bite-sized songs, but rarely do they ever feel too short or lacking in ideas. Every song transitions so well into the others that it’s best to experience every song all at once rather than checking them out individually. Hearing the many ways Madlib twists these samples and gives them to beats that so perfectly compliment MF DOOM’s slightly off-tempo flow to hit the exact villainous atmosphere that has become DOOM’s MO. I don’t know what I can say about this album that everyone else hasn’t already been said. It’s truly incredible with some of DOOM’s most clever, most colorful, absolute best material to date. Huge ups to Madlib too for being the one to bring DOOM’s style to its best.
So yeah, I’m definitely more encouraged to check out his other works outside of MF DOOM. He had a ton of talent and made some of the best rap albums I’ve ever heard in my life. And I mean that beyond his own work. The works he’s influenced too that I consider classics in my own way wouldn’t exist without him. His metal fingerprints are all over some of the greats of our modern generation. I just hope he knew how much he meant to hip-hop before his death. ALL CAPS WHEN YOU SPELL THE MAN’S NAME.
Gorillaz self-titled
Ending off this year’s MWE roster with an album I meant to have listened to months ago, but kept putting off until their latest album came out and effectively rendered listening to this pointless. It’s weird to think that I had the same circumstance with this album that I did Father John Misty. Listening to all of their albums and forming distinct connections with all of them… except the debut. It was even less excusable in this case as many still regard Gorillaz as one of the band’s best albums. With a unique, dusty feel that was never quite recaptured on previous albums. Though I’d argue that’s part of what makes Gorillaz such a great band. You never get the same album. All of them have an abundance sounds and moments that will either resonate with you or not quite stick the landing. Even if albums like The Now Now and Humanz are very flawed, I still have plenty of songs to come back to from them. Meanwhile, Demon Days, Plastic Beach and Song Machine Episode One are all phenomenal albums that show off Gorillaz at their most eclectic and enjoyable from front to back.
Which leaves their self-titled debut somewhere in the middle. Not my favorite from the band, as there are a few things that keep me from fully liking it as a whole, but with enough brilliant nuggets of potential that would eventually be perfected in later releases. Still, this album is wholly unique in its trippy, off-beat personality shown through the odd, experimental production and Damon Albarn’s yawning drone of a voice that seems to have its own secrets hidden beneath its thick accent. Though I think the shining member of this album is Russel for his percussion playing that gives the album a strange rhythm that’s infectiously catchy, but still has that awkward bounce that sets off a different sort of atmosphere. Though I would like to mention what a triumph “Double Bass” is on Murdoc’s part. This album at its best was when it had features to play off of 2D’s vocals and the rattling production. Specifically, whenever Del The Funky Homosapien shows up and delivers a quirky, laid-back rap verse that would eventually become a bread and butter for Gorillaz on future albums. They work so well with rappers and the fact that the album’s crowning achievement is “Clint Eastwood” is more than enough proof of that.
That said, there are a couple of things that I didn’t really love about the album and kept me from putting it among their best. For one it’s definitely too long, and doesn’t have enough ideas to really warrant that length. Meaning some songs go in one ear and out the other when the ideas don’t click. Plus, Damon Albarn sometimes goes into this weird, wailing falsetto and it doesn’t sound good at all. I’m really glad he keeps 2D in his lower range for future albums, because I don’t know if I’d want to continue hearing songs like “Sound Check (Gravity)” and “Starshine” from Gorillaz again.
I probably would have enjoyed this more had I been there for the rise of Gorillaz and their creative music videos. Not to mention having already heard what Gorillaz can do beyond this album is already putting an unfair disadvantage on how this album can impress me. Still, I have a lot of respect for it. It’s best songs hold up and would eventually lead the way to a long, propsrous career that isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
And with that, MWE 2021 is DONE. I really loved going through these albums, but I’m glad to finally be done with it. Thank you all for reading through these as my first experiment into writing for this Substack!
My favorite albums I discovered through MWE this year are What You Get Is What You Give by Zac Brown Band, The Theory of Everything by Ayreon, Twilight Theater by Poets of the Fall, Madvillany by Madvillain, Sinners Like Me by Eric Church Old by Danny Brown, and burn.flicker.die by American Aquarium. My least favorite album, though still good, was Infestissumam by Ghost. If you’d like to know what my favorite songs from each album were, check out my Spotify playlist!
Until next time!