Album Review - Fuck Buttons, "Tarot Sport"

It's been way too long since I've done one of these, and I've heard plenty of albums that merited reviews (both good and bad). But last week, I got two albums I'd been highly anticipating, and both are so good as to merit the revival of reviews (though the other will wait a little bit).

At the beginning of this year, I sang high praises for Fuck Buttons' debut album Street Horrrsing, which I now consider one of the two best albums of last year. As I'd put it in January, Street Horrrsing wasn't just amazing; it was that rare breed of album "that you didn't even realize you'd been waiting forever to have until it came out." The original template was simple, yet amazing - danceable electronics, deep bass, beautiful glockenspiel-like chimes, and Come to Daddy style screams. It was one of the more visceral things I've heard in 10 years, and it was, for all appearances, perfect. The fact that iTunes tells me I've listened to it 47 times in the past year (and that doesn't count the times I listened to it in CD format) says plenty.

Thanks to the vagaries of Amazon, I didn't have Tarot Sport, the Buttons' follow-up, until this past Friday, in spite of ordering it before it was released 10 days previous. While I held out from listening to it online, I couldn't help but read some of the reviews. All seemed to like it, but all also said the same thing: "like Street Horrrsing, only different." They particularly highlighted that some of the deep rumbling bass and screams were gone. Given that that was what originally drew me in, I was...not skeptical, but wondering if I'd like Tarot Sport as much. So, do I?

I don't know yet - it's still too soon (47+ listens vs. 6 listens isn't exactly a fair comparison). But it's really, really, really fucking close. It's true - the screams-on-beauty-on-chest-rumbling-bass-line is gone. But it's still a pretty powerful wallop, and it's perhaps more consistent. That's not to say Street Horrrsing is inconsistent - far from it - but personally, the beauty and ferocity of track opener "Sweet Love for Planet Earth," followed by the tribal-ish drums and haunted screams of "Ribs Out" were always so amazing, haunting, stunning, to me, that the rest of the album felt less....I don't know. Fuck Buttons' second album, though, while lacking that "letdown" (though that's hardly a fair or adequate term for their debut), doesn't have that so-called "letdown". In part, it's because nothing is quite as amazing (or, better yet, amazing in the same way) as the opening of Street Horrrsing, but that makes the rest of Tarot Sport that much better.

As for the "the same, only different," aspect, that's also a fair assessment. "The Lisbon Maru" reaches "Sweet Love for Planet Earth's" pulsing, throbbing feel, but with a sense of depth and layering lacking on the opening track of the debut, even while also lacking the screams that gave the debut's opener such a punch. And tracks like "Olympians" and "Flight of the Feathered Serpent" are more dance-able than anything on Street Horrrsing, even while maintaining the simultaneous absolute beauty and sheer aural assault of the first album.

And that's really where the difference between the two albums rest. It's not that Andrew Hung and John Power have gotten lazy, or rested on their laurels, or even fallen into a holding pattern or a sophomore slump. Tarot Sport is worthy of its predecessor, even while changing the soudn somewhat. Where Fuck Buttons' first album made you want to weep at its sheer beauty and ugly force, the second makes you want to nod your head for 60 minutes. In fact, with Tarot Sport, Fuck Buttons have managed to achieve what we often hope so many bands will do with their second album, but what so few manage to do: hold on to everything that made us love the first album, even while transforming and refining the sound so that it's simultaneously familiar and amazingly different. The expectations I had for Hung's and Power's second album were unfair after becoming familiar with Street Horrrsing; the quality of Tarot Sport is so remarkable, my expectations for their third album, while perhaps unfair, are out of this galaxy.

It's just that good.