{"id":8606,"date":"2014-07-06T11:15:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-06T15:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=8606"},"modified":"2018-08-09T17:14:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T21:14:16","slug":"track-review-alt-j-hunger-of-the-pine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/track-review-alt-j-hunger-of-the-pine\/","title":{"rendered":"TRACK REVIEW: alt-J “Hunger of the Pine”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you had played \u201cHunger of the Pine\u201d without telling me who it was by, I would not have guessed alt-J<\/a>. In fact, James Blake might\u2019ve been my first guess. As a lead single from the\u00a0British band\u2019s sophomore album,\u00a0This is All Yours,<\/em>\u00a0“Hunger” seems a bit of a departure from the textured, intimate rock music that populated\u00a0their debut album, An Awesome Wave<\/em>. A bit more electronic, suspended in deep bass and cosmic sounds, with a vocal sample of Miley Cyrus\u2019 \u201c4×4\u201d thrown in, it\u2019s expansive, engulfing and more than a little moody. It\u2019s just short of pure art.<\/p>\n

Since releasing An Awesome Wave<\/em>\u00a0in 2012 to considerable acclaim, alt-J have toured heavily, steadily playing larger and larger venues that seemingly never cease to sell out, also hitting several festival circuits as well. In the UK, “Breezeblocks” charted in the Top 10, and the success in their native country has been echoed in the US and Australia. They’ve not only licensed songs to popular television shows like\u00a0Weeds<\/em> and Sons of Anarchy<\/em>, but also contributed an original track for the Grammy-nominated Silver Linings Playbook.\u00a0<\/em>Earlier this year, the band\u00a0announced the\u00a0departure of bassist Gwil Sainsbury,\u00a0but it has hardly slowed them down\u00a0from completing their sophomore effort – while the remaining members have said that they may invite a replacement bassist on tour, the writing and recording process was undertaken as a trio.<\/p>\n

Whether or not that’s changed the direction of the album overall remains to be seen. But, let me repeat: \u201cHunger of the Pine\u201d sounds like nothing the band has done before which makes me even more excited about This Is All Yours<\/em>. The song starts off with a monotonous, beeping tone that calls to mind a more subdued version of an emergency alarm, a more than\u00a0appropriate intro for a song about the physical pain of pining for another. Combined with ethereal vocals and atmospheric instrumentals, listeners float as though sedated in this vast space of longing and despair. The Miley\u00a0sample has a whole different connotation unmoored from the bubblegum of Bangerz;<\/em>\u00a0when she\u00a0sings \u201cI\u2019m a female rebel\u201d it takes on an indignant, haunted tone, the effect of seeming tough and unaffected yet quietly and surely breaking inside. Its appearance in the song heralds\u00a0a methodical beat that churns through the rest of the track, clinking somewhat mechanically. By the song’s end, they’ve added words from the equally desolate and searching French poem \u201cL\u2019espoir en Dieu\u201d by Alfred de Musset,\u00a0sung in a much lower register than the swirling croon we’ve grown used to. The song is so chill, in fact, that alt-J’s\u00a0US record label voiced concerns that the song didn’t have the potential to be “hit;” the band revealed in a recent Guardian interview<\/a> that they cheekily delivered the clich\u00e9-riddled “Left Hand Free,” written in a mere twenty minutes\u00a0\u00a0– the irony is that the label loved it.<\/p>\n

This is All Yours <\/em>promises \u00a0to be full of surprises.\u00a0<\/em>It’s\u00a0available for pre-order now and will be released in the U.S. on September 22nd via Canvasback\/Infectious Music. An extensive\u00a0North American tour starts October 14th in Vancouver and ends November 19th in DC. Shows in Chicago, Portland, Montreal, and New York are already sold out but dates will likely be added in select cities; see below for the current schedule.<\/p>\n

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ALT-J NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES:<\/p>\n

October 14 – Vancouver, BC – Orpheum Theater
\nOctober 15 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theater
\nOctober 16 – Portland, OR – Roseland Ballroom
\nOctober 20 – Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theater
\nOctober 21 – Pomona, CA – Fox Theater
\nOctober 24 – San Diego, CA – Soma
\nOctober 27 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex
\nOctober 28 – Denver, CO – Fillmore Auditorium
\nOctober 31 – Minneapolis, MN – Myth
\nNovember 02 – Chicago, IL – Riviera Theatre
\nNovember 04 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom
\nNovember 05 – Dallas, TX – Southside Ballroom
\nNovember 06 – Houston, TX – Bayou Music Center
\nNovember 07-09 – Austin, TX – Fun Fun Fun Fest
\nNovember 10 – Detroit, MI – The Filllmore
\nNovember 11 – Toronto, ON – Kool Haus
\nNovember 12 – Montreal, QB – Metropolis
\nNovember 14 – Philadelphia, PA – Tower Theater
\nNovember 16 – New York, NY – Beacon Theater
\nNovember 18 – Boston, MA – Orpheum Theater
\nNovember 19 – Washington, DC – Echostage[\/fusion_builder_column][\/fusion_builder_row][\/fusion_builder_container]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you had played \u201cHunger of the Pine\u201d without telling me who it was by, I would not have guessed alt-J. In fact, James Blake might\u2019ve been my first guess. As a lead single from the\u00a0British band\u2019s sophomore album,\u00a0This is All Yours,\u00a0“Hunger” seems a bit of a departure from the textured, intimate rock music that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":8608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206,638,202],"tags":[2068,2078,2077,915],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/alt-j-pic-da53878550c233b639b07c4a17d9b4360f29ad34-s6-c30.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8606"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19548,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8606\/revisions\/19548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}