Because so many people have placed Burial’s Untrue fairly high on their top 10 of 2007 lists — and because it left me kind of cold – Vadim Rizov’s take on the album makes me feel vindicated:
I put “ethereal” in scare quotes because Untrue, above all else, seems like a record that’s trying too hard to be haunting. The general idea seems to be that Burial is all about encapsulating big-city late-night anomie; instead of insinuating this subtly, it’s right there in the song titles. “Archangel,” “Ghost Hardware,” “Shell of Light”: all promise some kind of transcendent mood music to cocoon yourself in, alienation made blissful. Other song titles—”Homeless,” “In McDonalds”—are grittier in premise but sound the same, meaning that OMG THE UGLY AND THE BEAUTIFUL ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME EMOTION. Whatever.
I’m not sure what music critics would do with this kind of music if there weren’t concrete visuals to tie it into; apparently listening to this is supposed to tell me what it feels like to be alone at night in a big city. Aside from the fact that I know already, I have to wonder if there isn’t some kind of synesthesia weirdness going on here, where people have watched Morvern Callar one too many times, mashed it up with Lost In Translation’s more heavily ambient moments, and concluded that that’s what modern anomie looks/feels like.
