The Singles Jukebox

Back with another classic.

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[2.90]

David Moore: I pulled out the Avalanches album the other day on a lark, and I was surprised at how much the album had distilled into its highlights — the listening experience was a pleasant haze, part tunes, sure, but mostly nostalgia. Simple music, simple pleasures, not very deep but deepened in retrospect. So this comeback was probably destined either to ding up my rose-colored glasses by underlining the flaws that were always hiding in plain sight (there’s a thin line between simple and crude, after all; the charm of “Frontier Psychiatrist” is the way it dances on the boundary — turns out it’s a fragile track, a sore thumb or two away from crumbling) or, alternatively, surf the nostalgia — nothing new or interesting, just once more into the haze. Nope, all thumbs. 
[3]

Cassy Gress: People listen attentively / I mean about this here calamity / Avalanches used to be more inspired / But now this shit I hear is so tired / This is a song where eternally / Tubas plod against half-assed sampling / Danny Brown shouts, MF Doom expounds / As you pine for the end of the droning sound.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: “Frankie Sinatra” is not an obvious delayed successor to the intricate collages of Since I Left You — it is dominated by just one sample, based around one idea and that sample is annoying and that idea is pretty bad. And the song would actually be a lot better if that sample, masquerading as a hook, didn’t exist, because the verses (especially Danny Brown’s) are pretty decent. It’s hard to enjoy them knowing that they lead into yet another iteration of Frankie having the voice to sing calypso and it is just joyless, grim patchwork in support of, no, in submission to an outright stinker of an idea. Maybe the record stores of Melbourne were out of good sample source material, but there’s little excuse for this.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: The cult of the Avalanches has always escaped me, but this first single in 16 years is definitely their nadir. There’s a circus-organ oompah beat (apparently taken from an old calypso record), some throwaway raps from Danny Brown and MF Doom, and precious little else. This isn’t even good enough to be bad college rock, and I loathe it.
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Tim de Reuse: Since I Left You pieced together disparate scraps into an hour-long magic trick, and looked like it was having a ton of fun pulling it off. Listening through was like listening to time-lapse footage of a ten-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle being assembled. “Frankie Sinatra” is one of those ten-piece puzzles you buy for toddlers; it’s a pretty picture, and it all fits together without a fuss, but there are no surprises, and you figure out everything there is to figure out in the first forty seconds. Maybe they’re trying to evolve their sound, which is a noble enough goal, but I can’t grok their angle here! Hell, the guest verses from MF DOOM and Danny Brown are pushed so deep into the mix they’re utterly ignore-able, as if to apologize for their very presence (just as well, because nothing they’re saying elevates this song above the sticky trudge that it is). I don’t know what I did want, after waiting for fifteen years, but it, uh, probably wasn’t this.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: The “heavily anticipated follow-up” is a genre of its own at this point, and this latest entry is distinct in its refusal to pander to old heads, newcomers, or really anybody. Because while a sizable portion of the music world may have been clamoring for new Avalanches for a decade and a half, I’m pretty sure none of them were asking for this. Credit to Danny Brown for being predictably yelpy and Doom for being predictably unpredictable. If I had been listening to critically acclaimed albums like Since I Left Youin 2000 instead of Radio Disney, I might feel a twinge of guilt for giving this a middling score. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: I don’t know who’s responsible for the terrible sample. Probably someone who thinks “Frankie” is cute.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: I imagine — or at least like to imagine — that anyone who spends way too much time on the internet has those moments where they disconnect, head out to places not as plugged in and discover a new perspective on something that has the digital masses a-buzzing. I wanted to hate this after one listen, based on how goofy it was and how the decision to cater to guest vocalists seemed like such an affront to what made me like Since I Left You (also, I’ve never heard anything else they did before that album until writing this blurb). And Twitter…my area, at least…seemed united in thinking this was pretty dumb. But in the past week I’ve met two friends who have thought — yet, it’s really different, but it’s alright, pretty fun. After thinking on it, I’ve realized…I still think this is pretty bad, but am not nearly as riled up about it, and can even appreciate its awkward attempts at silly times (though I still think I’d rather listen to The Avalanches and Danny Brown and MF Doom back to back rather than this).  
[3]

Brad Shoup: You play this on Spotify and they suggest “More by The Avalanches”. But why would you bother? The beerhall oompah that would’ve been an Easter egg in “Frontier Psychiatrist” — a supremely irritating cut half the time, 16 years on — dominates the runtime of “Frankie Sinatra”. It turns Danny Brown’s lil-stinker shtick in a carnival spiel; it stomps all over Doom’s punchlines. The tantrum clears when Doom’s done, and it’s back to old tricks: a transition from “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” to “My Favorite Things”. But then the oompah returns: perhaps it took them 10,000 LPs to get to Eminem.
[4]

William John: As with the Avalanches, Melbourne is my home. In early November, when the days grow warmer and longer, the city awakes from the debauched profligacy of spring racing season and begins readying itself for summer. It’s at that time each year that you begin to hear the Avalanches in the breeze. In my mind, Since I Left You is inextricably tethered to afternoons on university lawns, late night tram rides, house parties in inner northern suburbs. Sure, the record is découpage, and the band is subject to such universal reverence that to think about them as Melburnians seems churlishly jingoistic. But then again, jingoism is one of the commonest of Australian vices. When I think of Since I Left You, I think of the magic of “Electricity”, or the way that “Close To You” transports one to the woods in Disney’s Alice In Wonderland. I generally don’t think about “Frontier Psychiatrist”, but that may make me an outlier. If “Frontier Psychiatrist” was the template for “Frankie Sinatra”, then something went very wrong in the stencilling. The Avalanches’ skills lie chiefly in lurid soundscapes made to pump out of bars north of the river; not in nightmare vaudeville or – heaven forbid – the dreaded electroswing. Danny Brown and MF Doom try valiantly to rescue the piece from a hook that sounds like it’s being sung by the ghost of Fagin from Oliver!, but their efforts are in vain. Though all reports indicate that Wildflower will house more of the sentimental Avalanches material of which I am so beloved, what I’m looking at here is just ugly and bad and Cat Empire-level. And, to put a blemish on all my earlier hagiography, it feels apt to note here that the Avalanches never paid Melbourne opera singer Antoinette Halloran for her marvellous work on their debut album. It’s raining and cold, it’s mid-June, and early November seems so far away.
[1]