Album Review: The Avalanches — 'No Bad Memories'
The Avalanches turn old TV ads into their most ambitious album yet.
The Avalanches have always worked in fragments, and on No Bad Memories they've gone bigger than ever, 31 tracks across their first album in six years, the Australian trio's fourth full length since their 2000's debut Since I Left You. The concept this time is pure childhood nostalgia turned inside out, the band digging through old jingles, adverts and corporate ephemera and flipping them into something warmer. They explained:
"Revisiting imagery and jingles from childhood and realising how profoundly they have stuck. Taking these sound sources from within the heart of this kinda corporate framework and flipping the fragments into our own kind of joyous pop music.”
With their thirtieth year in the industry approaching, a 31 track mammoth of an album somehow makes perfect sense. 'Bd-R' opens things on pure ambience, setting the slightly unhinged tone for everything that follows, before 'Together', featuring Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss, launches straight into a relentless house groove, glossy keys and a chanty chorus giving the whole project its blueprint, chipmunk vocals on the outro adding to the glitchy, Nintendo level feel of it all. That corporate jingle concept becomes obvious fast, with interludes like 'Xerox Altalink B8055', 'Friends Forever' and 'Logoland' scattered throughout like adverts between songs, short, strange and very much the point rather than filler, even if their sheer number eventually starts to test the endurance of the listener.
The fully-fleshed out songs are where the album earns its reputation. 'I Give Everything I Have 2 U' is a smooth, synth laced earworm, while previously released single 'Every Single Weekend', featuring Jamie xx, keeps that chanty, feel good energy rolling with real warmth. 'Blue Shadows' slows things down for Karen O, her voice taking precedence in an album that's constantly demanding your attention from every direction, and 'Like Clockwork / Hit By Traffic', featuring Khadija Al Hanafi, bursts between vocal snippets and addictive drums before settling into a genuinely captivating piano outro. 'All The Time In The World', with Rivers Cuomo, Vegyn and Baby Marlboro, is one of the clear highlights, its looping outro, "we got all the time in the world," landing as one of the most purely joyful moments on the record.
Further in, 'Vida', featuring Erick the Architect, segues in on blaring horns and a great flow over genuinely chaotic sound design, while lead single 'Far Away', with John Glacier and Khadija Al Hanafi, is one of the album's most beautifully produced moments, gorgeous piano work showcasing the trio's production chops at their most refined. 'Can't Get Over Losing You', another single, hands the spotlight to Portraits Of Tracy, who floats effortlessly over stellar production and makes the song entirely her own, no small feat on a tracklist this stacked. 'Highfield', featuring Panda Bear, brings a wholesome, childlike softness that fits his voice perfectly, and 'Under Yr Power' delivers one of the best hooks on the whole album, genuinely rebellious and affirming in equal measure.
The back half keeps the quality coming even as the interludes (or adverts) keep multiplying. 'One More Fantasy', featuring Carly Simon, is smooth top down, wind in your hair stuff, her high pitched vocal a lovely surprise this deep into the tracklist. 'Magic Wand', featuring Barry Can't Swim, is one of the best moments on the entire record, tension building in the intro before the drum groove takes over completely. The title track ‘No Bad Memories’ returns to that filtered groove from earlier before taking on a life of its own, a genuine culmination of everything that's come before, and 'Our Love Is Alive', bringing Barry Can't Swim back alongside Suzanne Ciani, delivers an unavoidable feel good payoff as the record enters its final stretch.
‘Total Recall', featuring Mike Patton, leans back into strange, horn laced ambience, while 'Final Credits', featuring Loaded Honey, feels noticeably more fleshed out than most of what's come before it, a smooth, jazzy l moment for the penultimate song. Closer 'The Pavements Light', with Haruomi Hosono, brings everything down to a calm, soft landing, what sounds like a Sinatra sample drifting in right at the end, a fitting way to close out such a nuanced, chaotic & maximalist project.
There's an almost impossible amount going on across No Bad Memories, and no single listen does it justice, the sheer scale of the guest list alone, from Barry Can't Swim to Haley Joel Osment, keeping the album constantly unpredictable. Where it falls down slightly is in just how many interludes are packed between the real songs. Although it is ostensibly pertinent to the album’s narrative, these moments often feel more like ideas for songs than anything that meaningfully adds to the overarching narrative of No Bad Memories. Even so, there's no shortage of genuine highlights buried across these 31 tracks, and nearly three decades in, The Avalanches still sound like nobody else making music right now.
Words by Alex Peters
