Ulver — Childhood’s End (Lost & Found from the Age of Aquarius) — released 28/05/2012
In the kaleidoscope, wolves revolve. Ulver returns with a bespoke collection of nuggets from the meta-world of 1960s psychedelia — songs both familiar and forgotten.
Okay! We weren’t even gonna review this one, but my good friend Saut seems to like it, so why the hell, why not, let’s check it out. It also seems like he’s the only one who likes it, with mostly everyone else either despising or simply not caring for it. This album is composed entirely of “…covers of “60s psychedelic chestnuts”, a reinterpretation of mostly obscure 1960s psychedelia, intended by Ulver as a reflection on lost innocence”(Wikipedia), which seems cool to me. Unfortunately I am familiar with exactly zero of the tracks they cover, even though I know some of the bands, like The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Gandalf and The United States of America. Normally a reviewer as thorough as I would listen to every original track and them compare them to the covers. But to be perfectly honest I simply didn’t feel like doing so, so I just jumped straight in. The flipside is that I’ll be able to listen to the songs in a more autonomous manner, free from a mandatory comparison to the originals.
The cover art is a little in bad taste, in my opinion. Of course, it makes sense with the whole concept of loss of childhood and innocence and murican bands from the sixties and all, but I think it’s a little gratuitous and disrespectful. Anyways, on to the songs: contrary to popular welpinion, I actually liked this! I’m glad Saut suggested I checked it out! I probably wouldn’t expect it, but The Ulvers really managed to put their own twist to the tracks and make them sound good, while still maintaining their clearly late 60s, early 70s, proto-prog, psych feel — or at least I think they did, since I do not have the original tracks’ reference.
They do kinda give up on a few Ulver trademarks, notoriously so their electronic dark ambient thing, even though there are still quite a few synths in here. Rock as a basic frame to work upon is clearly the norm here, and they don’t really run away from it. My other good friend Frog’s complaint about Childhood is that, and I quote, “it just doesn’t have the core Ulver vibe”. Now, it would be wildly innapropriate for a vibe wizard of unfathomable expertise such as him to be questioned by a piddly vibe beggar such as me, so I won’t really disagree with that. I will, however, suggest two points: one, that not having the core Ulver vibe isn’t necessarily a bad thing in principle, and two, that vibe actually is in here, just in some small and admittedly scarce details rather than in a general thing.
It all sounds pretty good to me. The sonics are sitting in a good sweet spot between dirty and clean, and has this nice chubby texture to it. If there really is that childhood and shit concept about this, I’ll say that I did not notice it at all, and don’t really care to; the music is bangin’ enough that I just enjoy it and that’s all. I don’t know what else to comment on this, so I’ll just leave it at that. Saut, you have been vanquished.
DOES IT PULVERIZE? It’s far out, you dig? It’s groovy, man, it’s with it, right on.
