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Culture

Two Sevens Clash: The 30th Anniversary Edition

Electronic,Global

Mike Powell

For all its Biblical heft-- the title was taken from a Marcus Garvey prophecy about chaos erupting on 7/7/77-- Culture's reggae classic Two Sevens Clash, like Funkadelic or gospel, took suffering as a means for uplift. Re-sequenced from its original running order, this 30th Anniversary Edition opens with "I'm Alone in the Wilderness", which singer Joseph Hill does appear to be, for about 20 seconds. The minor key screws up to major, and the second time Hill claims solitude, he's joined by Albert Walker and Kenneth Dayes; Robbie Shakespeare's guitar nods in repose with the rootsiness of a Band record; wet organs drone in the background; an electric piano punctuates Hill's exultations; Sly Dunbar clacks along on drums like their bejeweled rickshaw. The goal here-- not to lose sight of what already feels like heaven on earth-- was deliverance: "I'm alone with Jah almighty." And not only are there nine more songs, but they're as impossibly ecstatic as the first. Hill understood that true redemption probably takes better root in collectivity, so a handful are calls for inclusion: "Get Ready to Ride the Lion to Zion" (the lion appears! and he roars!), "Calling Rastafari", and "Black Starliner Must Come" (referring to Garvey's back-to-Africa dream). But Rastafari were caught between Babylon and a hard place, and Hill doesn't let his kin get too comfortable, slyly reminding them on "Pirate Days" that "the Arawak was here first" (and that Zion's pretty far off). Though it's considered a classic of roots reggae-- a late-1970s style focused on Rastafarian teaching, social distress, and political injustice-- Two Sevens Clash generally sounds a lot brassier than most of the records in its category. The rhythms, if not always dance-oriented, are springy and uptempo, the harmonies are major, and Joe Gibbs's production is bright (contra, say, dub's intoxicant muddiness). And Hill is ultimately the catalyst reveling in the middle, a wily, lemony voice, never shying away in melody or delivery, never letting harsh reality cancel out his hope, but never pretending things are any less miserable than they actually are. The title track was released as a single in March and became so massive that when July 7th arrived, businesses closed, the military perked up, and, reportedly, most people stayed indoors. Not that the year had been a party up to that point: the country experienced a growth in the first decade after 1962's independence, but it had slowed so drastically by 1977 that the International Monetary Fund arrived in May. In economic halt, the country played host to the usual mix of violence, anxiety, and unrest. But Hill yawps about the impending doom with zeal that sounds more like anticipation than fear. He's feeling great because he's goin' to see his lord, and one glimpse of heaven's good nuff to tut-tut the fears of any of god's reverent children wandering this hurt world-- we would've called it "apocalypse"; Hill called it "glory day." Culture was signed by a subsidiary of Virgin (with the help of Johnny Rotten-- Two Sevens Clash was considered a classic amongst the punks), and Hill performed around the world until his death last August. That July 8th came never mattered.

Artist: Culture, Album: Two Sevens Clash: The 30th Anniversary Edition, Genre: Electronic,Global, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "For all its Biblical heft-- the title was taken from a Marcus Garvey prophecy about chaos erupting on 7/7/77-- Culture's reggae classic Two Sevens Clash, like Funkadelic or gospel, took suffering as a means for uplift. Re-sequenced from its original running order, this 30th Anniversary Edition opens with "I'm Alone in the Wilderness", which singer Joseph Hill does appear to be, for about 20 seconds. The minor key screws up to major, and the second time Hill claims solitude, he's joined by Albert Walker and Kenneth Dayes; Robbie Shakespeare's guitar nods in repose with the rootsiness of a Band record; wet organs drone in the background; an electric piano punctuates Hill's exultations; Sly Dunbar clacks along on drums like their bejeweled rickshaw. The goal here-- not to lose sight of what already feels like heaven on earth-- was deliverance: "I'm alone with Jah almighty." And not only are there nine more songs, but they're as impossibly ecstatic as the first. Hill understood that true redemption probably takes better root in collectivity, so a handful are calls for inclusion: "Get Ready to Ride the Lion to Zion" (the lion appears! and he roars!), "Calling Rastafari", and "Black Starliner Must Come" (referring to Garvey's back-to-Africa dream). But Rastafari were caught between Babylon and a hard place, and Hill doesn't let his kin get too comfortable, slyly reminding them on "Pirate Days" that "the Arawak was here first" (and that Zion's pretty far off). Though it's considered a classic of roots reggae-- a late-1970s style focused on Rastafarian teaching, social distress, and political injustice-- Two Sevens Clash generally sounds a lot brassier than most of the records in its category. The rhythms, if not always dance-oriented, are springy and uptempo, the harmonies are major, and Joe Gibbs's production is bright (contra, say, dub's intoxicant muddiness). And Hill is ultimately the catalyst reveling in the middle, a wily, lemony voice, never shying away in melody or delivery, never letting harsh reality cancel out his hope, but never pretending things are any less miserable than they actually are. The title track was released as a single in March and became so massive that when July 7th arrived, businesses closed, the military perked up, and, reportedly, most people stayed indoors. Not that the year had been a party up to that point: the country experienced a growth in the first decade after 1962's independence, but it had slowed so drastically by 1977 that the International Monetary Fund arrived in May. In economic halt, the country played host to the usual mix of violence, anxiety, and unrest. But Hill yawps about the impending doom with zeal that sounds more like anticipation than fear. He's feeling great because he's goin' to see his lord, and one glimpse of heaven's good nuff to tut-tut the fears of any of god's reverent children wandering this hurt world-- we would've called it "apocalypse"; Hill called it "glory day." Culture was signed by a subsidiary of Virgin (with the help of Johnny Rotten-- Two Sevens Clash was considered a classic amongst the punks), and Hill performed around the world until his death last August. That July 8th came never mattered."

New Order

Live at Bestival 2012

Rock

Nick Neyland

It's easy to take a band with a storied history and try to impose thoughts and feelings about where they should be heading instead of taking them at face value. This recording of a headline show by New Order at 2012's Bestival on the Isle of Wight offers plenty of moments that don't necessarily sit well-- Bernard Sumner bellowing "come on!" in the middle of a stadium-ized version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart", the inclusion of non-classic era songs "Krafty" and "Here to Stay", the absence of Peter Hook on bass. But if you trace their history it's clear that the stoic image they partly cultivated has gradually loosened and fallen away as the years have passed, sometimes becoming distinctly at odds with the impeccable Peter Saville sleeves and Factory marketing acumen of yore. This is, after all, a group that chose to perform on the Baywatch set when invited to play "Regret" on Top of the Pops in 1993. What's remarkable about New Order circa 2013 is the amount of good will that continues to flow toward them despite their obvious flaws. Hook is gone, Sumner has often seemed disinterested in the band, it's arguably been 20 years since they penned anything like a good song, and this is their third go-around following a 2011 reunion with an altered lineup. Yet, listen to the version of "Blue Monday" here and you can hear the (no doubt huge) crowd faithfully singing along at times, turning it into an unlikely festival anthem. They sound comfortable in this space, and so they should. Their notable festival appearances are legion at this time, arguably beginning with a headline slot at the 1989 Reading Festival, which played a big part in transforming that event from a parade of has-beens into something approaching vitality (Starship of "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" fame topped the bill the previous year). The question of whether Hook is missed is somewhat moot. His basslines are played impeccably by Tom Chapman, for the most part. But Hook's presence was always a key part of their makeup, a flash of dirt and menace to counteract Sumner’s boyish exterior. It's possible that Hook’s leather trouser act no longer befits someone of his years, but still it's probably better that this is being released as an audio document as opposed to a visual one. We're also spared the sight of Sumner's erratic performance, with his voice sometimes comically strained (horribly so in "True Faith") or sounding like he's out of breath ("Bizarre Love Triangle"). But New Order were rarely ever a slick machine live, and mostly Live at Bestival highlights the shortcomings of documenting them in such a light; what once might have been drunk, celebratory fun sounds distinctly less so in the cold, sober light of day. This is a charity album, released to aid the Isle of Wight Youth Trust, and as such it's a commendable venture. Still, its placing in the New Order discography is hardly likely to be significant, especially as the Live at the London Troxy album from 2011 already documented this incarnation of the group in a live setting (and with a similar tracklisting). There's a certain joy to be found in them tearing through "Regret"-- a song that always seemed designed for such cavernous surroundings-- or hearing them stretch out a 10-minute-plus version of "Temptation". It's when they turn to smaller moments that things backfire, such as the decidedly unsure steps taken through the opening "Elegia", reduced here to a runtime of less than three minutes, which feels especially puny following the release of the 17-and-a-half minute version on the Retro box set. Live at Bestival won't tear anyone away from the riveting Taras Shevchenko live video from 1981, but it's still hard not to crack a smile at how corny Bernard Sumner can be on occasion. His between-song banter is the sound of someone utterly comfortable with what his group have become, a veteran festival headline act happy to work through the hits. It's about as far away as you can get from the multiple shades of black that cloaked the original Joy Division songs liberally sprinkled throughout the setlist, but there's a strong sense of vindication in the robust vigor of "Transmission", a feeling that this music was always destined to connect to an audience far beyond those who first claimed it. Sumner's almost certainly having far too much fun to care either way. "Cheers, thank you Bestival," he says at the close of the set. "What a great festival. It's the best... festival."

Artist: New Order, Album: Live at Bestival 2012, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "It's easy to take a band with a storied history and try to impose thoughts and feelings about where they should be heading instead of taking them at face value. This recording of a headline show by New Order at 2012's Bestival on the Isle of Wight offers plenty of moments that don't necessarily sit well-- Bernard Sumner bellowing "come on!" in the middle of a stadium-ized version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart", the inclusion of non-classic era songs "Krafty" and "Here to Stay", the absence of Peter Hook on bass. But if you trace their history it's clear that the stoic image they partly cultivated has gradually loosened and fallen away as the years have passed, sometimes becoming distinctly at odds with the impeccable Peter Saville sleeves and Factory marketing acumen of yore. This is, after all, a group that chose to perform on the Baywatch set when invited to play "Regret" on Top of the Pops in 1993. What's remarkable about New Order circa 2013 is the amount of good will that continues to flow toward them despite their obvious flaws. Hook is gone, Sumner has often seemed disinterested in the band, it's arguably been 20 years since they penned anything like a good song, and this is their third go-around following a 2011 reunion with an altered lineup. Yet, listen to the version of "Blue Monday" here and you can hear the (no doubt huge) crowd faithfully singing along at times, turning it into an unlikely festival anthem. They sound comfortable in this space, and so they should. Their notable festival appearances are legion at this time, arguably beginning with a headline slot at the 1989 Reading Festival, which played a big part in transforming that event from a parade of has-beens into something approaching vitality (Starship of "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" fame topped the bill the previous year). The question of whether Hook is missed is somewhat moot. His basslines are played impeccably by Tom Chapman, for the most part. But Hook's presence was always a key part of their makeup, a flash of dirt and menace to counteract Sumner’s boyish exterior. It's possible that Hook’s leather trouser act no longer befits someone of his years, but still it's probably better that this is being released as an audio document as opposed to a visual one. We're also spared the sight of Sumner's erratic performance, with his voice sometimes comically strained (horribly so in "True Faith") or sounding like he's out of breath ("Bizarre Love Triangle"). But New Order were rarely ever a slick machine live, and mostly Live at Bestival highlights the shortcomings of documenting them in such a light; what once might have been drunk, celebratory fun sounds distinctly less so in the cold, sober light of day. This is a charity album, released to aid the Isle of Wight Youth Trust, and as such it's a commendable venture. Still, its placing in the New Order discography is hardly likely to be significant, especially as the Live at the London Troxy album from 2011 already documented this incarnation of the group in a live setting (and with a similar tracklisting). There's a certain joy to be found in them tearing through "Regret"-- a song that always seemed designed for such cavernous surroundings-- or hearing them stretch out a 10-minute-plus version of "Temptation". It's when they turn to smaller moments that things backfire, such as the decidedly unsure steps taken through the opening "Elegia", reduced here to a runtime of less than three minutes, which feels especially puny following the release of the 17-and-a-half minute version on the Retro box set. Live at Bestival won't tear anyone away from the riveting Taras Shevchenko live video from 1981, but it's still hard not to crack a smile at how corny Bernard Sumner can be on occasion. His between-song banter is the sound of someone utterly comfortable with what his group have become, a veteran festival headline act happy to work through the hits. It's about as far away as you can get from the multiple shades of black that cloaked the original Joy Division songs liberally sprinkled throughout the setlist, but there's a strong sense of vindication in the robust vigor of "Transmission", a feeling that this music was always destined to connect to an audience far beyond those who first claimed it. Sumner's almost certainly having far too much fun to care either way. "Cheers, thank you Bestival," he says at the close of the set. "What a great festival. It's the best... festival.""

Callers

Fortune

Folk/Country,Rock

Chris Dahlen

In a better world, Sara Lucas would have an orchestra behind her-- maybe the tastefully mordant strings you'd hear on a 1960s murder ballad, say, or a Nick Drake album-- to enrich the cracks in her complex voice. Or she'd front a ferocious rock band, exercising those mighty lungs in front of stacks of amps. But on Callers' Fortune, she has just one steady partner. And while guitarist Ryan Seaton provides varied and distinct atmospheres for each song, the backdrops remain spare: room sound colors the mood, and Lucas moans like she has nothing left to sing to. Fortune is barebones, opening with a quick haunter ("Valerie"), followed by a brittle blues that starts: "I love you/ More than is right." The loose waltz staggers to the tune of Seaton's staccato guitar, and you can almost hear Lucas staring daggers at a telephone that's not ringing. But this is one of the most desultory tracks: while it's mostly a ballads album rooted in folk and blues, Fortune is also eclectic-- a distant cousin of collaborations like Rustin Man or even Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, where two principals capable of anything try to stretch their reach without shaking off a cozy, morose mood. Each song gets a different setting, from the precise and lush classical guitar on tunes like "In Blighted Gold" or the woeful volume pedal on "Debris". The atmospheres are strong, and the songs are solid. "More Than Right" stands out for its tune and its stumbling tempo, and "Rone" has the makings of a memorable, "Shenandoah"-esque folk song, with its long, languid melody and exquisite pairing of guitars. "Fortune", one of the few songs with a rhythm section, makes a powerful setting for Lucas' yearning wails. Other tracks are incidental or merely lovely: their eclecticism keeps Fortune from finding a flow, and "The Upper Lands" sticks out as the lone smolder on the album. I waited until the end to mention that Lucas and Seaton hail from New Orleans. They met at a café there, and Lucas has sung and taught around the city. Around the time of Katrina, they moved to Rhode Island, where they recorded Fortune, and then landed in Brooklyn. In songs like "Debris"-- an exquisite ballad of almost on-the-nose despair-- it's easy to read a connection to Katrina. But this isn't music about one tragedy or one tragic life: it absorbs those particulars to reach and heal a bigger hollowness. Upon listening to Fortune in the car on one of those days last month when the global economy looked like it was going to collapse, I actually had to shut it off because it got to be too much. And of course, that's meant as high praise.

Artist: Callers, Album: Fortune, Genre: Folk/Country,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "In a better world, Sara Lucas would have an orchestra behind her-- maybe the tastefully mordant strings you'd hear on a 1960s murder ballad, say, or a Nick Drake album-- to enrich the cracks in her complex voice. Or she'd front a ferocious rock band, exercising those mighty lungs in front of stacks of amps. But on Callers' Fortune, she has just one steady partner. And while guitarist Ryan Seaton provides varied and distinct atmospheres for each song, the backdrops remain spare: room sound colors the mood, and Lucas moans like she has nothing left to sing to. Fortune is barebones, opening with a quick haunter ("Valerie"), followed by a brittle blues that starts: "I love you/ More than is right." The loose waltz staggers to the tune of Seaton's staccato guitar, and you can almost hear Lucas staring daggers at a telephone that's not ringing. But this is one of the most desultory tracks: while it's mostly a ballads album rooted in folk and blues, Fortune is also eclectic-- a distant cousin of collaborations like Rustin Man or even Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, where two principals capable of anything try to stretch their reach without shaking off a cozy, morose mood. Each song gets a different setting, from the precise and lush classical guitar on tunes like "In Blighted Gold" or the woeful volume pedal on "Debris". The atmospheres are strong, and the songs are solid. "More Than Right" stands out for its tune and its stumbling tempo, and "Rone" has the makings of a memorable, "Shenandoah"-esque folk song, with its long, languid melody and exquisite pairing of guitars. "Fortune", one of the few songs with a rhythm section, makes a powerful setting for Lucas' yearning wails. Other tracks are incidental or merely lovely: their eclecticism keeps Fortune from finding a flow, and "The Upper Lands" sticks out as the lone smolder on the album. I waited until the end to mention that Lucas and Seaton hail from New Orleans. They met at a café there, and Lucas has sung and taught around the city. Around the time of Katrina, they moved to Rhode Island, where they recorded Fortune, and then landed in Brooklyn. In songs like "Debris"-- an exquisite ballad of almost on-the-nose despair-- it's easy to read a connection to Katrina. But this isn't music about one tragedy or one tragic life: it absorbs those particulars to reach and heal a bigger hollowness. Upon listening to Fortune in the car on one of those days last month when the global economy looked like it was going to collapse, I actually had to shut it off because it got to be too much. And of course, that's meant as high praise."

Fog

Fog

Rock

David M. Pecoraro

When it came to music, poor little Timmy could never do anything right. They gave him a horn; he blew in the wrong end. They gave him a guitar; he made feedback. They sat him at a piano; he opened it up and plucked at the chords. So discouraged was little Timmy by the taunts of his peers that one day, he gave up playing music altogether. Then, one sunny afternoon, he stumbled upon a record by this guy named Fog. Fog didn't necessarily play his instruments right, either. Sure, Timmy had heard people scratching records, but he'd never heard anyone doing it like this. It was strange, almost haphazard in a way. The music fell somewhere in between Christian Marclay and Kid Koala-- more a collage of strange sounds sometimes set to guitar or bass than the rhythm-happy scratchfests that comprise most traditional DJ records. Fog seemed more interested in seeing how many strange sounds he could make with his turntables than in keeping a rhythm or showboating. And yet, there was something to the chaos that sounded totally planned, completely sculpted. Timmy was amazed to hear someone show the same utter disregard for convention his very classmates had convinced him was so wrong. Fog became a catalyst for Timmy. He soon realized that there was no such thing as "a right way" to play an instrument, and that there were others out there who believed this, too. Soon he would discover other turntable wizards-- folks like Christian Marclay and Otomo Yoshihide-- and he grew even more awestruck. A year later, little Timmy, slightly less little and much less melancholy, found himself surrounded by strange albums, and had even taken up the turntable himself. True, Fog wasn't quite so amazing now that he'd heard all these other turntablists, but it still had its moments and he certainly couldn't deny that it played the role of catalyst in his life, or that it was-- in many ways-- responsible for his trajectory. But enough about Timmy; let's talk about Fog (aka Andrew Broder), a young Minnesotan who grew up, in fact, only a few miles away from Pitchfork's esteemed editor. But while Schreiber was learning to pitch the fork, Broder was no doubt hiding away in a nearby suburban bedroom, destroying records, fooling around with turntables in the dark, and following the call of his muse, no matter how strange that call might have been. As an avant-gardist, Broder's music is solid-- nothing revolutionary, perhaps, but solid. Where Broder truly shines is in his understanding of pop, and in the way he makes it fit so snugly with his more left-field musings. Take the decidedly poppy "Pneumonia," for example. The track starts out sounding like another in a long line of Neutral Milk Hotel imposters, with distorted fuzz bass, a simple acoustic guitar melody, vocals that teeter dangerously on the edge that separates grating from sensitive, and weird ghostly theremin-like noises hovering ominously in the background. But rest assured, it's only Broder and his turntable. He's also keeping the beat with a looped, gently scratched drum sample. But it's when the song reaches its instrumental interlude that Broder really shines, busting out a stunning turntable solo that sounds more like a harmonica or a guitar than a record player. The technique he's using at this point is actually rather minimal-- using records with just one flat tone, allowing it to play on its own more often than he manipulates it. Even then, it's just a quick scratch here and there, and a pitch adjust before he allows it to play again. Still, simple is not synonymous with ineffective or unoriginal. The sound works. Indeed, it's Broder's willingness to give in to his pop sensibilities that make Fog work so well. "Truth and Laughing Gas" opens as one of the more straightforward tracks on the album, with thrashing guitar, distorted bass, ominous synths and frenzied hip-hop scratching. But as the song progresses, the guitar falls away and the scratching grows more and more abstract, eventually giving way to an exercise in ambience. "Hitting a Wall" begins like Ween or vintage Beck, replete with heavily treated wobbly vocals, purposely sloppy guitar and well-placed scratches. But every so often, Broder's turntable takes over, as if possessed, letting the song fall by the wayside as he presents a barrage of strange noises. Ultimately, Broder allows bits and pieces of crackly old folk records to fall into the collage, and manipulates and contrasts them with feedback-laden guitar that brings us back to the song's opening. Broder restrains himself on "Glory," layering violins and little bells underneath his manipulated percussion samples as cLOUDDEAD's Dose One weaves vocal digressions in and out, nothing more than another element of the atmosphere. If the poppy aspects of some of Fog's songs end up alienating some stuck-up, by-the-book avant-gardists, then so be it. Because it's Broder's careful balancing act between the traditional and the abnormal that makes his music so interesting. And if anything, the album's more traditional moments will serve as a jump-on point for those who'd never think to check out something like "experimental turntablism." It's here that Broder will succeed where many of his brethren fail-- not only is he creating innovative music; he's making an effort to expand its audience as well.

Artist: Fog, Album: Fog, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "When it came to music, poor little Timmy could never do anything right. They gave him a horn; he blew in the wrong end. They gave him a guitar; he made feedback. They sat him at a piano; he opened it up and plucked at the chords. So discouraged was little Timmy by the taunts of his peers that one day, he gave up playing music altogether. Then, one sunny afternoon, he stumbled upon a record by this guy named Fog. Fog didn't necessarily play his instruments right, either. Sure, Timmy had heard people scratching records, but he'd never heard anyone doing it like this. It was strange, almost haphazard in a way. The music fell somewhere in between Christian Marclay and Kid Koala-- more a collage of strange sounds sometimes set to guitar or bass than the rhythm-happy scratchfests that comprise most traditional DJ records. Fog seemed more interested in seeing how many strange sounds he could make with his turntables than in keeping a rhythm or showboating. And yet, there was something to the chaos that sounded totally planned, completely sculpted. Timmy was amazed to hear someone show the same utter disregard for convention his very classmates had convinced him was so wrong. Fog became a catalyst for Timmy. He soon realized that there was no such thing as "a right way" to play an instrument, and that there were others out there who believed this, too. Soon he would discover other turntable wizards-- folks like Christian Marclay and Otomo Yoshihide-- and he grew even more awestruck. A year later, little Timmy, slightly less little and much less melancholy, found himself surrounded by strange albums, and had even taken up the turntable himself. True, Fog wasn't quite so amazing now that he'd heard all these other turntablists, but it still had its moments and he certainly couldn't deny that it played the role of catalyst in his life, or that it was-- in many ways-- responsible for his trajectory. But enough about Timmy; let's talk about Fog (aka Andrew Broder), a young Minnesotan who grew up, in fact, only a few miles away from Pitchfork's esteemed editor. But while Schreiber was learning to pitch the fork, Broder was no doubt hiding away in a nearby suburban bedroom, destroying records, fooling around with turntables in the dark, and following the call of his muse, no matter how strange that call might have been. As an avant-gardist, Broder's music is solid-- nothing revolutionary, perhaps, but solid. Where Broder truly shines is in his understanding of pop, and in the way he makes it fit so snugly with his more left-field musings. Take the decidedly poppy "Pneumonia," for example. The track starts out sounding like another in a long line of Neutral Milk Hotel imposters, with distorted fuzz bass, a simple acoustic guitar melody, vocals that teeter dangerously on the edge that separates grating from sensitive, and weird ghostly theremin-like noises hovering ominously in the background. But rest assured, it's only Broder and his turntable. He's also keeping the beat with a looped, gently scratched drum sample. But it's when the song reaches its instrumental interlude that Broder really shines, busting out a stunning turntable solo that sounds more like a harmonica or a guitar than a record player. The technique he's using at this point is actually rather minimal-- using records with just one flat tone, allowing it to play on its own more often than he manipulates it. Even then, it's just a quick scratch here and there, and a pitch adjust before he allows it to play again. Still, simple is not synonymous with ineffective or unoriginal. The sound works. Indeed, it's Broder's willingness to give in to his pop sensibilities that make Fog work so well. "Truth and Laughing Gas" opens as one of the more straightforward tracks on the album, with thrashing guitar, distorted bass, ominous synths and frenzied hip-hop scratching. But as the song progresses, the guitar falls away and the scratching grows more and more abstract, eventually giving way to an exercise in ambience. "Hitting a Wall" begins like Ween or vintage Beck, replete with heavily treated wobbly vocals, purposely sloppy guitar and well-placed scratches. But every so often, Broder's turntable takes over, as if possessed, letting the song fall by the wayside as he presents a barrage of strange noises. Ultimately, Broder allows bits and pieces of crackly old folk records to fall into the collage, and manipulates and contrasts them with feedback-laden guitar that brings us back to the song's opening. Broder restrains himself on "Glory," layering violins and little bells underneath his manipulated percussion samples as cLOUDDEAD's Dose One weaves vocal digressions in and out, nothing more than another element of the atmosphere. If the poppy aspects of some of Fog's songs end up alienating some stuck-up, by-the-book avant-gardists, then so be it. Because it's Broder's careful balancing act between the traditional and the abnormal that makes his music so interesting. And if anything, the album's more traditional moments will serve as a jump-on point for those who'd never think to check out something like "experimental turntablism." It's here that Broder will succeed where many of his brethren fail-- not only is he creating innovative music; he's making an effort to expand its audience as well."

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

Soul of a Woman

Pop/R&B

Stephen M. Deusner

When Sharon Jones passed away last November after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, she died not as a soul revival artist but as a soul artist, period. The distinction is subtle but meaningful. What sounded in the 2000s like a throwback to the era of 1960s and 1970s funk and R&B eventually became something very modern and of its moment. The Dap-Kings may be one of the best backing bands around, and Daptone Records a more diversified and adventurous label than many people think, but it was Jones who rooted the music in the here and now instead of the there and then. A lot is made of her experience as a corrections officer and armored truck guard, but she worked in wedding bands and did session work for decades before she recorded her first single, at 40 years old, and her first full-length album, at 46. She conveyed an unshakable belief that soul music could speak to this or any other moment in time, and her voice, so insistent and expressive, could transform a song like Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately”—or even Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”—into something new and timely. Remarkably, that voice sounds barely diminished on Soul of a Woman, retaining every ounce of its personality and authority despite how cancer and chemo had sapped her energy, if not her drive. When Jones felt strong enough, she went into the studio and made music with the Dap-Kings. Otherwise, she was either resting or touring. In fact, she didn’t stop playing live until just a few weeks before her death. “I can’t wait too much longer,” she sings on opener “Matter of Time,” which dreams of peace, freedom, and unity. From any other singer, such a statement might speak to the long arc of justice, but in this case Jones sings from the position of knowing she might not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of that struggle. (In fact, she suffered a stroke on election night, which left her hospitalized, unable to speak but still able to sing.) Yet Soul of a Woman is not an album about facing down death. There’s nothing grim or fearful or despairing in her performances. Rather, most of these songs are lively, even celebratory, as she sings about the age-old subjects of soul music: politics both public and romantic, the state of the world and the state of a relationship. The barnburner “Sail On!” turns the tables on a dismissive lover, the Dap-Kings’ horns blasting around her as Jones works out the moral equation of her situation. “Rumors,” with its effervescent groove and party vibe, wags a soul finger at the gossip mill: “Rumors tell me that you’re no good, baby!” Soul of a Woman was initially planned to sound very different than it does. Producer Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) envisioned an album of slower, more lushly orchestrated songs but ultimately decided that Jones’ final statement should include more upbeat dance numbers, the kind that elicited such an excited response at live shows. A few of those original tunes remain: “When I Saw Your Face” shows just how acrobatic Jones’ voice could be, as she soars around in her upper register to convey a sense of romantic ecstasy. “Girl! (You Got to Forgive Him)” throws the kitchen sink at its melodramatic arrangement, but Jones keeps the song anchored in a very real predicament and lends the advice real wisdom and gravity. By combining these powerful soul ballads with upbeat dance numbers, Soul of a Woman lovingly portrays Jones as an artist with remarkable emotional and interpretive range. Nothing on Soul of a Woman, in fact, suggests that this is actually a posthumous album, that it was recorded by someone who knew she wouldn’t live to see its release. Jones gives perhaps her greatest performance on the final song, “Call on God,” which she wrote decades ago for her choir at Universal Church of God, where she sang before and after she started working with the Dap-Kings. The band provides restrained churchly accompaniment—the gently supportive thrum of the organ, the sympathetic chords of the guitar, the dramatic pulse of the drums—and Jones sounds bigger than life as she sings, “I made up my mind to be with Him all the time/And I won’t let nothing turn me around.” It’s to her credit that it doesn’t sound like a farewell. Instead, the song—the entire album, in fact—is a poignant statement of the determination that motivated her all along.

Artist: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Album: Soul of a Woman, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "When Sharon Jones passed away last November after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, she died not as a soul revival artist but as a soul artist, period. The distinction is subtle but meaningful. What sounded in the 2000s like a throwback to the era of 1960s and 1970s funk and R&B eventually became something very modern and of its moment. The Dap-Kings may be one of the best backing bands around, and Daptone Records a more diversified and adventurous label than many people think, but it was Jones who rooted the music in the here and now instead of the there and then. A lot is made of her experience as a corrections officer and armored truck guard, but she worked in wedding bands and did session work for decades before she recorded her first single, at 40 years old, and her first full-length album, at 46. She conveyed an unshakable belief that soul music could speak to this or any other moment in time, and her voice, so insistent and expressive, could transform a song like Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately”—or even Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”—into something new and timely. Remarkably, that voice sounds barely diminished on Soul of a Woman, retaining every ounce of its personality and authority despite how cancer and chemo had sapped her energy, if not her drive. When Jones felt strong enough, she went into the studio and made music with the Dap-Kings. Otherwise, she was either resting or touring. In fact, she didn’t stop playing live until just a few weeks before her death. “I can’t wait too much longer,” she sings on opener “Matter of Time,” which dreams of peace, freedom, and unity. From any other singer, such a statement might speak to the long arc of justice, but in this case Jones sings from the position of knowing she might not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of that struggle. (In fact, she suffered a stroke on election night, which left her hospitalized, unable to speak but still able to sing.) Yet Soul of a Woman is not an album about facing down death. There’s nothing grim or fearful or despairing in her performances. Rather, most of these songs are lively, even celebratory, as she sings about the age-old subjects of soul music: politics both public and romantic, the state of the world and the state of a relationship. The barnburner “Sail On!” turns the tables on a dismissive lover, the Dap-Kings’ horns blasting around her as Jones works out the moral equation of her situation. “Rumors,” with its effervescent groove and party vibe, wags a soul finger at the gossip mill: “Rumors tell me that you’re no good, baby!” Soul of a Woman was initially planned to sound very different than it does. Producer Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) envisioned an album of slower, more lushly orchestrated songs but ultimately decided that Jones’ final statement should include more upbeat dance numbers, the kind that elicited such an excited response at live shows. A few of those original tunes remain: “When I Saw Your Face” shows just how acrobatic Jones’ voice could be, as she soars around in her upper register to convey a sense of romantic ecstasy. “Girl! (You Got to Forgive Him)” throws the kitchen sink at its melodramatic arrangement, but Jones keeps the song anchored in a very real predicament and lends the advice real wisdom and gravity. By combining these powerful soul ballads with upbeat dance numbers, Soul of a Woman lovingly portrays Jones as an artist with remarkable emotional and interpretive range. Nothing on Soul of a Woman, in fact, suggests that this is actually a posthumous album, that it was recorded by someone who knew she wouldn’t live to see its release. Jones gives perhaps her greatest performance on the final song, “Call on God,” which she wrote decades ago for her choir at Universal Church of God, where she sang before and after she started working with the Dap-Kings. The band provides restrained churchly accompaniment—the gently supportive thrum of the organ, the sympathetic chords of the guitar, the dramatic pulse of the drums—and Jones sounds bigger than life as she sings, “I made up my mind to be with Him all the time/And I won’t let nothing turn me around.” It’s to her credit that it doesn’t sound like a farewell. Instead, the song—the entire album, in fact—is a poignant statement of the determination that motivated her all along."

31Knots

Talk Like Blood

Rock

Brian Howe

Raise your hand if you've ever thumb-wrestled. Wow, everyone except you guys from the sawmill? Great. Take a smoke break. The rest of you might recall a little something known as "the sneaky finger." The sneaky finger is a real wild card. No one's quite sure how close to legal it actually is, but for my money the sneaky finger can't close the deal-- the index finger slips out of the grip, pulls down the opposing thumb just long enough to implement the official thumb-pin. 31Knots's third LP, Talk Like Blood, has a sneaky finger of its own. You're distracted by the thumb, i.e. the fat-bottomed emo-prog hooks, the twisted metal carcasses thundering down. But it's the little things that sneak out and grab you before the next cascade of unapologetically overwrought vocals polishes you off. It's the blocks of percussive static that the guitars slither around; the malfunctioning recordings of chamber music; the channel-switching effective glissando sawing the beginning of "Intuition Imperfected"; the highly pressurized drumming and compressed riffs wheezing to life on "Chain Reaction". But I'm not kidding about the dominant vocals-- Joe Haege has a huge voice and he's not afraid to let it all hang out. That's going to be a deal-breaker for some no matter how awesomely deformed yet melodic the licks are. Sometimes, like when Haege spleens "Hell hath no fury like me!" before the ripped throb of "Thousand Wars" drops in, or the spoken word rant at the beginning of the industrial music-box "City of Dust", it's too much. Talk Like Blood is different than what we've previously heard from 31Knots, in ways desirable and less so-- their earlier work (specifically thinking of It Was High Time to Escape) hugged a tight border between spacious, intricately polished guitar rock, and chorus-busting emo, but now they've pushed further in both directions. So while the musical side of Talk Like Blood presents a more detailed field than ever before, the vocals and some of their attendant musical dynamics are flatter. Previously those heart-tugging emo hooks were the sneaky finger and the smart, propulsive musical compositions were the thumb, and if they haven't switched places yet, they're trending that way. I'm fine with it for now, but I hope it doesn't go much further.

Artist: 31Knots, Album: Talk Like Blood, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Raise your hand if you've ever thumb-wrestled. Wow, everyone except you guys from the sawmill? Great. Take a smoke break. The rest of you might recall a little something known as "the sneaky finger." The sneaky finger is a real wild card. No one's quite sure how close to legal it actually is, but for my money the sneaky finger can't close the deal-- the index finger slips out of the grip, pulls down the opposing thumb just long enough to implement the official thumb-pin. 31Knots's third LP, Talk Like Blood, has a sneaky finger of its own. You're distracted by the thumb, i.e. the fat-bottomed emo-prog hooks, the twisted metal carcasses thundering down. But it's the little things that sneak out and grab you before the next cascade of unapologetically overwrought vocals polishes you off. It's the blocks of percussive static that the guitars slither around; the malfunctioning recordings of chamber music; the channel-switching effective glissando sawing the beginning of "Intuition Imperfected"; the highly pressurized drumming and compressed riffs wheezing to life on "Chain Reaction". But I'm not kidding about the dominant vocals-- Joe Haege has a huge voice and he's not afraid to let it all hang out. That's going to be a deal-breaker for some no matter how awesomely deformed yet melodic the licks are. Sometimes, like when Haege spleens "Hell hath no fury like me!" before the ripped throb of "Thousand Wars" drops in, or the spoken word rant at the beginning of the industrial music-box "City of Dust", it's too much. Talk Like Blood is different than what we've previously heard from 31Knots, in ways desirable and less so-- their earlier work (specifically thinking of It Was High Time to Escape) hugged a tight border between spacious, intricately polished guitar rock, and chorus-busting emo, but now they've pushed further in both directions. So while the musical side of Talk Like Blood presents a more detailed field than ever before, the vocals and some of their attendant musical dynamics are flatter. Previously those heart-tugging emo hooks were the sneaky finger and the smart, propulsive musical compositions were the thumb, and if they haven't switched places yet, they're trending that way. I'm fine with it for now, but I hope it doesn't go much further."

J Mascis

Several Shades of Why

Rock

Ryan Dombal

On Dinosaur Jr.'s self-titled 1985 debut, J Mascis sang, "I never try that much 'cause I'm scared of feeling." Over the last 26 years, Mascis has produced a number of guitar-rock touchstones, yet it's been tough to tell exactly how much effort and emotion has gone into his work. Cited as one of the original slackers, his demeanor is infamously laconic to the point of aloofness; even as he peels off some of the most ear-busting guitar solos you've ever heard live, he sometimes looks like he's about to doze off while doing so. Meanwhile, his words-- usually involving vague alienation and confusion-- are often drowned out by the ungodly squall behind him. Across his career, Mascis has let distortion, excess wattage, and virtuoso technique do most of the talking for him, and the translation can be surprisingly clear. But Several Shades of Why is different. It's his first solo album of all original material and it's almost entirely acoustic. Here, the grey-haired 45 year old's weathered husk of a voice is close-mic'd, as if he's drawling mere inches away from your head at all times. And while he was rightfully dubbed "the first American indie rock guitar hero" by Michael Azerrad in Our Band Could Be Your Life-- and has backed that claim up with countless memorable solos-- the songs on Several Shades of Why are marked by background strums and finger-picking rather than spotlit wails. By using his own name and going with such bare sonics, it's reasonable to suggest that this album could be Mascis' most knowingly personal yet. On the title track, he clears up the whole "trying" issue, kind of. "I'm not saying much, I tried hard, that's all I do," he croaks, his feelings of hurt, wisdom, and wistfulness fearlessly up-front. Though the album is confessional in nature, the reveals are relative-- there are no clear narratives and almost comically nondescript song titles like "Not Enough", "What Happened", and "Is It Done", are good representations of the ambiguous pronouns (and profundity) found therein. Dinosaur Jr. bassist Lou Barlow once said Mascis "had nothing to say, yet he had everything to say," which is about right. But, even considering the imprecise language, Mascis does a fair amount of telling through his indelible voice, which wears its years with crackling grace. Though Neil Young has been a common reference point for Mascis' vocals since he first opened his mouth to sing, Several Shades of Why has him going for After the Gold Rush-type intimacy like never before. So when he finishes the Laurel Canyon hangover track "Not Enough" with "I know my love is over/ And I wish I didn't know," the simple admission carries serious heft. That song is also aided by the vocal talents of Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell, Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew, and J's current tourmate Kurt Vile, whose recent album Smoke Ring for My Halo shares a somber eloquence with this one. Guests are used frequently and wisely throughout the album-- adding subtle vocal harmonies or instrumental atmospherics-- proving that the notoriously non-communicative songwriter still knows how to make the right connections when he needs to. None of the featured players are more effective than Godspeed You! Black Emperor violinist Sophie Trudeau, who adds elegant ache to the title track. For all of his technical gifts, Mascis is wise enough to know he shouldn't do it all, a fact supported by Dinosaur Jr.'s brilliant comeback this century. (While Barlow and Dino drummer Murph are nowhere to be found on this album, they are thanked in the liners.) On opener "Listen to Me", Mascis repeats the song's titular phrase in a pleading voice. As the album's 10 tracks unravel with effortless, low-key ease, it's easy to obey his appeal. He's no longer "scared of feeling," though that doesn't mean he's not scared. The specter of loneliness and aging is a through-line here, too, brilliantly visualized by artist Marq Spusta's gorgeous cover, which shows a pair of fuzzy, unmistakably J-like creatures-- one big, one tiny-- using a sea monster's back for an island. (Mascis had a son in 2007.) Though dour, Mascis' sleeve avatar is also kind of cute. Several Shades of Why gives us that softer, gentler J Mascis. But it's not kids' stuff-- these are lullabies for adults, offered up with a compassion that doesn't come easy.

Artist: J Mascis, Album: Several Shades of Why, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "On Dinosaur Jr.'s self-titled 1985 debut, J Mascis sang, "I never try that much 'cause I'm scared of feeling." Over the last 26 years, Mascis has produced a number of guitar-rock touchstones, yet it's been tough to tell exactly how much effort and emotion has gone into his work. Cited as one of the original slackers, his demeanor is infamously laconic to the point of aloofness; even as he peels off some of the most ear-busting guitar solos you've ever heard live, he sometimes looks like he's about to doze off while doing so. Meanwhile, his words-- usually involving vague alienation and confusion-- are often drowned out by the ungodly squall behind him. Across his career, Mascis has let distortion, excess wattage, and virtuoso technique do most of the talking for him, and the translation can be surprisingly clear. But Several Shades of Why is different. It's his first solo album of all original material and it's almost entirely acoustic. Here, the grey-haired 45 year old's weathered husk of a voice is close-mic'd, as if he's drawling mere inches away from your head at all times. And while he was rightfully dubbed "the first American indie rock guitar hero" by Michael Azerrad in Our Band Could Be Your Life-- and has backed that claim up with countless memorable solos-- the songs on Several Shades of Why are marked by background strums and finger-picking rather than spotlit wails. By using his own name and going with such bare sonics, it's reasonable to suggest that this album could be Mascis' most knowingly personal yet. On the title track, he clears up the whole "trying" issue, kind of. "I'm not saying much, I tried hard, that's all I do," he croaks, his feelings of hurt, wisdom, and wistfulness fearlessly up-front. Though the album is confessional in nature, the reveals are relative-- there are no clear narratives and almost comically nondescript song titles like "Not Enough", "What Happened", and "Is It Done", are good representations of the ambiguous pronouns (and profundity) found therein. Dinosaur Jr. bassist Lou Barlow once said Mascis "had nothing to say, yet he had everything to say," which is about right. But, even considering the imprecise language, Mascis does a fair amount of telling through his indelible voice, which wears its years with crackling grace. Though Neil Young has been a common reference point for Mascis' vocals since he first opened his mouth to sing, Several Shades of Why has him going for After the Gold Rush-type intimacy like never before. So when he finishes the Laurel Canyon hangover track "Not Enough" with "I know my love is over/ And I wish I didn't know," the simple admission carries serious heft. That song is also aided by the vocal talents of Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell, Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew, and J's current tourmate Kurt Vile, whose recent album Smoke Ring for My Halo shares a somber eloquence with this one. Guests are used frequently and wisely throughout the album-- adding subtle vocal harmonies or instrumental atmospherics-- proving that the notoriously non-communicative songwriter still knows how to make the right connections when he needs to. None of the featured players are more effective than Godspeed You! Black Emperor violinist Sophie Trudeau, who adds elegant ache to the title track. For all of his technical gifts, Mascis is wise enough to know he shouldn't do it all, a fact supported by Dinosaur Jr.'s brilliant comeback this century. (While Barlow and Dino drummer Murph are nowhere to be found on this album, they are thanked in the liners.) On opener "Listen to Me", Mascis repeats the song's titular phrase in a pleading voice. As the album's 10 tracks unravel with effortless, low-key ease, it's easy to obey his appeal. He's no longer "scared of feeling," though that doesn't mean he's not scared. The specter of loneliness and aging is a through-line here, too, brilliantly visualized by artist Marq Spusta's gorgeous cover, which shows a pair of fuzzy, unmistakably J-like creatures-- one big, one tiny-- using a sea monster's back for an island. (Mascis had a son in 2007.) Though dour, Mascis' sleeve avatar is also kind of cute. Several Shades of Why gives us that softer, gentler J Mascis. But it's not kids' stuff-- these are lullabies for adults, offered up with a compassion that doesn't come easy."

Creeper Lagoon

Watering Ghost Garden EP

Rock

Camilo Arturo Leslie

After sitting through Creeper Lagoon's new EP for about the fourth time, something truly remarkable happened to me-- epiphanic, even. For the first time in my life I experienced actual ennui. Can you believe that? Just like characters in 19th century novels! Not just dull, run-of-the-mill boredom, or impatient, fidgety disinterest, but enn-fuckin'-ui! Yeah! Watering Ghost Garden finds this San Francisco quartet serving up a low-sodium, reduced-calorie six-song helping of Blah. Considering the effusive praise and lofty predictions lavished upon 1998's I Become Small and Go, you might be inclined to hope this EP is some sort of red herring. You know, to, uh, throw the sophomore slump off their scent, and ensure smooth going to their forthcoming Dreamworks full-length. Or, perhaps this is just the lackluster batch it appears to be on first listen. But things get off to a good start. "Centipede Eyes" is lush, not unpleasantly overproduced pop. Remember Shudder to Think's more conventional sounding songs from the First Love, Last Rites soundtrack? Well, take out half the quality and pour it on the ground as a libation to the god of unmet expectations. You're left with a perfectly good half-bottle of Creeper Lagoon. Drink up. "Roman Hearts" is more of the same. Unfortunately, maudlin piano lines and synthesized string arrangement pretty much torpedo the song's passably pretty melody. Also, something about Ian Sefchick's vocal inflections here hints strongly at the onset of delusions of Radiohead. Prognosis: grim. The verse to "Big Money Struggle," a track produced by former Talking Head Jerry Harrison, is great. And if that looked like a barbed compliment to you, you get a cookie. Or a free copy of the new Creeper Lagoon EP. The verse is to the overall song what the face is to the girl about whom people say, "Well, she has a pretty face." The chorus, accordingly, is the big, ungainly ass and hunched, pimply back that makes a pretty verse more a badge of shame than a redeeming element. Or perhaps they meant for it to sound like an NBC sitcom theme song resulting from a Wallflowers Crap Music Summit. "Chain Smoker" sports an electronic drum kit, more misplaced sounding piano tinkling, and best of all, sitar. "My Friends Adore You," meanwhile, is gorgeous. The Creepers keep things simple, adding decorative flourishes like a chorus of falsetto voices, and subliminal keyboard parts, where appropriate. But, inexplicably, around the fourth minute-- like that fuck-up friend everybody has who can't handle good fortune-- they throw in a "heavy rock" section with a jarring 3/4-to-4/4 tempo change, and a turgid, stinking guitar solo. Then, Watering Ghost Garden draws to a close with "God Will Understand," a track that seems like more of a moody outro than a proper song. Owing to its brevity, there's not enough time for the guys to actually ruin it, and consequently, it's the EP's most successful minute. You know the rap on these guys. Spin readers' designated "Best New Artist of 1998," lauded by the New York Times, featured on a big time movie soundtrack (well, okay not quite-- Dead Man on Campus). Though Watering Ghost Garden is an awkward, ankle-busting step off the curb for these four, Creeper Lagoon may just redeem themselves with their next album. In the meantime, this EP proves again that, apart from promoting music sales and exposure, Napster is invaluable as a guide for what not to throw your cash at.

Artist: Creeper Lagoon, Album: Watering Ghost Garden EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.9 Album review: "After sitting through Creeper Lagoon's new EP for about the fourth time, something truly remarkable happened to me-- epiphanic, even. For the first time in my life I experienced actual ennui. Can you believe that? Just like characters in 19th century novels! Not just dull, run-of-the-mill boredom, or impatient, fidgety disinterest, but enn-fuckin'-ui! Yeah! Watering Ghost Garden finds this San Francisco quartet serving up a low-sodium, reduced-calorie six-song helping of Blah. Considering the effusive praise and lofty predictions lavished upon 1998's I Become Small and Go, you might be inclined to hope this EP is some sort of red herring. You know, to, uh, throw the sophomore slump off their scent, and ensure smooth going to their forthcoming Dreamworks full-length. Or, perhaps this is just the lackluster batch it appears to be on first listen. But things get off to a good start. "Centipede Eyes" is lush, not unpleasantly overproduced pop. Remember Shudder to Think's more conventional sounding songs from the First Love, Last Rites soundtrack? Well, take out half the quality and pour it on the ground as a libation to the god of unmet expectations. You're left with a perfectly good half-bottle of Creeper Lagoon. Drink up. "Roman Hearts" is more of the same. Unfortunately, maudlin piano lines and synthesized string arrangement pretty much torpedo the song's passably pretty melody. Also, something about Ian Sefchick's vocal inflections here hints strongly at the onset of delusions of Radiohead. Prognosis: grim. The verse to "Big Money Struggle," a track produced by former Talking Head Jerry Harrison, is great. And if that looked like a barbed compliment to you, you get a cookie. Or a free copy of the new Creeper Lagoon EP. The verse is to the overall song what the face is to the girl about whom people say, "Well, she has a pretty face." The chorus, accordingly, is the big, ungainly ass and hunched, pimply back that makes a pretty verse more a badge of shame than a redeeming element. Or perhaps they meant for it to sound like an NBC sitcom theme song resulting from a Wallflowers Crap Music Summit. "Chain Smoker" sports an electronic drum kit, more misplaced sounding piano tinkling, and best of all, sitar. "My Friends Adore You," meanwhile, is gorgeous. The Creepers keep things simple, adding decorative flourishes like a chorus of falsetto voices, and subliminal keyboard parts, where appropriate. But, inexplicably, around the fourth minute-- like that fuck-up friend everybody has who can't handle good fortune-- they throw in a "heavy rock" section with a jarring 3/4-to-4/4 tempo change, and a turgid, stinking guitar solo. Then, Watering Ghost Garden draws to a close with "God Will Understand," a track that seems like more of a moody outro than a proper song. Owing to its brevity, there's not enough time for the guys to actually ruin it, and consequently, it's the EP's most successful minute. You know the rap on these guys. Spin readers' designated "Best New Artist of 1998," lauded by the New York Times, featured on a big time movie soundtrack (well, okay not quite-- Dead Man on Campus). Though Watering Ghost Garden is an awkward, ankle-busting step off the curb for these four, Creeper Lagoon may just redeem themselves with their next album. In the meantime, this EP proves again that, apart from promoting music sales and exposure, Napster is invaluable as a guide for what not to throw your cash at."

Neurosis

Given to the Rising

Metal

D. Shawn Bosler

In the hallowed halls of metaldom, the name Neurosis carries some pretty (no pun intended) heavy overtones: they're a staunchly DIY cult band with the most devoted following and a long track record of highly innovative thinking-man's metal. But anyone even vaguely familiar with their oeuvre would wisely not call them a doom band; they're way too varied for such a tag. On these San Franciscan metallurgists' ninth album, Given To the Rising, Neurosis are simply not fucking around. Within the first note you know you're in for a ride: no staple slow-building intros or atmospheric effluvia, just a crushing primordial mid-tempo riff that eventually falls into one of the album's repeating motifs of bendy, long-hanging funereal guitar lines, all braced with plenty of back-to-basics pummeling. The sense of purpose is developed further on "Fear And Sickness", where disjointed yet dissonantly harmonious axe lines dodge and dart in paganistic call-and-response around a swing-like snare and kick drum beat. These two dimly lit apocalypse-summoning tracks shine light on why Given very well may be the best Neurosis album in over a decade-- or at least since 1999's signature Times of Grace. First a re-cap: It's difficult making a new album when you're a band like Neurosis. Much like the elders on which they were weaned (Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Black Flag, Swans), aspects of their sound have spawned entire micro-genres. Whether it be their kinetic mega-evil tribal drum-and-guitar interplay or their dense layering of creepy samples and textural atmospherics or their melodic instrumental passages that birthed the "metalgaze" school-- see Isis and bands such as Cult of Luna and Mouth of the Architect for starters-- it's hard to stay fresh when everyone's copping your every move. Which is why Given feels so smart and so standing-on-the-throats-of-our-imitators-and-not-giving-a-fuck confident. All the past doomsday bells-and-whistles are still prevalent, all the progressive guitar mayhem and Steve Von Till's classic Tom Waits-meets-Michael Gira vocals. But unlike their last couple albums-- most notably 2004's introspective and mostly-delicate and majestic The Eye of Every Storm-- the noodley bits are tethered as if in direct response to all the quiet-loud-brood-quiet-loud brooding copycats. And songs like the two previously mentioned openers, as well as the Jesu-like "Hidden Faces" and the Mastodon-like chug-fest "Water is Not Enough", seem to be cribbing notes from the cribbers (as well as the non-copying competition) and then in turn streamlining the turns the cribbers previously cribbed. Such as the way that soundsculptor/keyboardist Noah Landis masterfully blends the dark ambient textures, not just for spooky intros and outros, but for dynamic passages of their own. Or the way that the songs-- most averaging around seven and a half minutes-- keep morphing from thunderous cacophony to desolate soul-searching melodic phrases, but with a mad scientist exactitude regarding all of the subtle, beautiful, and terrifying spaces in between. Even dynamically adroit acts like Pelican and, once again, Isis have yet to explore these depths of shifting-- and, most importantly, gradual-- peaks and valleys. Neurosis have once again conjured those ominous trance-inducing dark spaces, but they've placed them in canyons even more broad and deep.

Artist: Neurosis, Album: Given to the Rising, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "In the hallowed halls of metaldom, the name Neurosis carries some pretty (no pun intended) heavy overtones: they're a staunchly DIY cult band with the most devoted following and a long track record of highly innovative thinking-man's metal. But anyone even vaguely familiar with their oeuvre would wisely not call them a doom band; they're way too varied for such a tag. On these San Franciscan metallurgists' ninth album, Given To the Rising, Neurosis are simply not fucking around. Within the first note you know you're in for a ride: no staple slow-building intros or atmospheric effluvia, just a crushing primordial mid-tempo riff that eventually falls into one of the album's repeating motifs of bendy, long-hanging funereal guitar lines, all braced with plenty of back-to-basics pummeling. The sense of purpose is developed further on "Fear And Sickness", where disjointed yet dissonantly harmonious axe lines dodge and dart in paganistic call-and-response around a swing-like snare and kick drum beat. These two dimly lit apocalypse-summoning tracks shine light on why Given very well may be the best Neurosis album in over a decade-- or at least since 1999's signature Times of Grace. First a re-cap: It's difficult making a new album when you're a band like Neurosis. Much like the elders on which they were weaned (Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Black Flag, Swans), aspects of their sound have spawned entire micro-genres. Whether it be their kinetic mega-evil tribal drum-and-guitar interplay or their dense layering of creepy samples and textural atmospherics or their melodic instrumental passages that birthed the "metalgaze" school-- see Isis and bands such as Cult of Luna and Mouth of the Architect for starters-- it's hard to stay fresh when everyone's copping your every move. Which is why Given feels so smart and so standing-on-the-throats-of-our-imitators-and-not-giving-a-fuck confident. All the past doomsday bells-and-whistles are still prevalent, all the progressive guitar mayhem and Steve Von Till's classic Tom Waits-meets-Michael Gira vocals. But unlike their last couple albums-- most notably 2004's introspective and mostly-delicate and majestic The Eye of Every Storm-- the noodley bits are tethered as if in direct response to all the quiet-loud-brood-quiet-loud brooding copycats. And songs like the two previously mentioned openers, as well as the Jesu-like "Hidden Faces" and the Mastodon-like chug-fest "Water is Not Enough", seem to be cribbing notes from the cribbers (as well as the non-copying competition) and then in turn streamlining the turns the cribbers previously cribbed. Such as the way that soundsculptor/keyboardist Noah Landis masterfully blends the dark ambient textures, not just for spooky intros and outros, but for dynamic passages of their own. Or the way that the songs-- most averaging around seven and a half minutes-- keep morphing from thunderous cacophony to desolate soul-searching melodic phrases, but with a mad scientist exactitude regarding all of the subtle, beautiful, and terrifying spaces in between. Even dynamically adroit acts like Pelican and, once again, Isis have yet to explore these depths of shifting-- and, most importantly, gradual-- peaks and valleys. Neurosis have once again conjured those ominous trance-inducing dark spaces, but they've placed them in canyons even more broad and deep."

Sage Francis

Li(f)e

Rap

Tom Breihan

Sage Francis has never feared silliness. I once watched the burly, verbose indie-rapper end a show by kneeling and touching his DJ's turntables while the DJ chopped up Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech with the Hendrix version of "The Star-Spangled Banner". And he brings that same tendency toward ridiculously broad gestures in his lyrics, which bounce back and forth between leftist fervor and self-lacerating slam-poetry. So it's something of a pleasant shock to hear Sage begin Li(f)e with "Little Houdini" a straightforward story-song about a (real-life) car thief who keeps breaking out of prison to visit dying relatives. It'd be easy to lean hard on any sweeping truths about the human condition in that story, but Sage keeps things simple and straightforward, sticking to the narrative and showing an eye for detail and a sense of empathy. "This ain't no country-western song," he snarls a few times, and it's to his credit that he's sort of wrong. The big news about Li(f)e is that it's Sage's indie rock move. Rather than sticking with old collaborators like Jel and Alias, he's recruited a backing band that consists largely of members of the post-roots-rock crew Califone. Various indie-rock big dogs write the music for a song or two: Chris Walla, Jason Lytle, the late Mark Linkous. The inevitable Califone/Calexico crossover finally happens here, with the latter's Joey Burns and John Convertino supplying the music for "Slow Man". These guys fortunately don't attempt to come up with some sort of warped dustbowl take on rap; instead, they just vamp away, confident that Sage will catch whatever groove they work up. And Sage sounds pretty good on this stuff, his husky, authoritative growl taking on the sort of gravelly weariness that suggests he's got a few Tom Waits CDs scattered around his tour-van floor. It's not a seamless move (the choruses tend toward all-consuming clumsiness), but it's a sincere one-- and it underscores how l [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| ittle Sage has to do with rap these days. In the past, Sage has taken time out to blast any and all forms of mainstream rap he can find, even shoehorning an anti-Jay-Z fusillade (over "99 Problems", no less) into that same live show. Here, he seems past that, barely even referencing rap and straying away from traditional rap cadence and even further toward the spoken-word stuff that he also does. If there's any precedent for this sort of musical move-- rap as impressionist Americana-- it's Sage's sometime Anticon-affiliate buddy Buck 65, a man Sage once publicly bashed for the crime of distancing himself from rap. Times done changed. If every track on the album had the unforced lyrical clarity of "Little Houdini", Sage could have the album of his life on his hands here. But Sage is still the type of guy to name an album Li(f)e and a song "Polterzeitgeist", and the album comes packed with yeesh-inducing lines. ("I heard God is coming and she's a screamer", "That Wall of China ain't so great; I built a bridge over a hymen.") Like that hands-on-a-turntable scene, it's all a bit much. If Sage has a unifying concept here, it's organized religion and the difficulty of breaking away from it. But for rather than simply stating his case, his arguments too often devolve into word soup. Sage breaks away from those riddles once more on the album, and the result might just be the best song he's ever written. The album ends with "The Best of Times", a pained memoir, Sage talking calmly and revealingly about his history as a loser kid, reeling off embarrassing anecdotes with tough candor. The music, from the French composer Yann Tiersen, is a gorgeous vibraphone-based twinkle that builds slowly and confidently, no guitars showing up for nearly three minutes. Over a track as gorgeous as that, Sage lets loose with some deeply cringey thoughts: "Considered doing something that would cripple me/ I wanted a wheelchair, I wanted the sympathy." It's the sort of song that forces you to root for the guy, no matter how much grim hectoring you've seen him do.

Artist: Sage Francis, Album: Li(f)e, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "Sage Francis has never feared silliness. I once watched the burly, verbose indie-rapper end a show by kneeling and touching his DJ's turntables while the DJ chopped up Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech with the Hendrix version of "The Star-Spangled Banner". And he brings that same tendency toward ridiculously broad gestures in his lyrics, which bounce back and forth between leftist fervor and self-lacerating slam-poetry. So it's something of a pleasant shock to hear Sage begin Li(f)e with "Little Houdini" a straightforward story-song about a (real-life) car thief who keeps breaking out of prison to visit dying relatives. It'd be easy to lean hard on any sweeping truths about the human condition in that story, but Sage keeps things simple and straightforward, sticking to the narrative and showing an eye for detail and a sense of empathy. "This ain't no country-western song," he snarls a few times, and it's to his credit that he's sort of wrong. The big news about Li(f)e is that it's Sage's indie rock move. Rather than sticking with old collaborators like Jel and Alias, he's recruited a backing band that consists largely of members of the post-roots-rock crew Califone. Various indie-rock big dogs write the music for a song or two: Chris Walla, Jason Lytle, the late Mark Linkous. The inevitable Califone/Calexico crossover finally happens here, with the latter's Joey Burns and John Convertino supplying the music for "Slow Man". These guys fortunately don't attempt to come up with some sort of warped dustbowl take on rap; instead, they just vamp away, confident that Sage will catch whatever groove they work up. And Sage sounds pretty good on this stuff, his husky, authoritative growl taking on the sort of gravelly weariness that suggests he's got a few Tom Waits CDs scattered around his tour-van floor. It's not a seamless move (the choruses tend toward all-consuming clumsiness), but it's a sincere one-- and it underscores how l [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| ittle Sage has to do with rap these days. In the past, Sage has taken time out to blast any and all forms of mainstream rap he can find, even shoehorning an anti-Jay-Z fusillade (over "99 Problems", no less) into that same live show. Here, he seems past that, barely even referencing rap and straying away from traditional rap cadence and even further toward the spoken-word stuff that he also does. If there's any precedent for this sort of musical move-- rap as impressionist Americana-- it's Sage's sometime Anticon-affiliate buddy Buck 65, a man Sage once publicly bashed for the crime of distancing himself from rap. Times done changed. If every track on the album had the unforced lyrical clarity of "Little Houdini", Sage could have the album of his life on his hands here. But Sage is still the type of guy to name an album Li(f)e and a song "Polterzeitgeist", and the album comes packed with yeesh-inducing lines. ("I heard God is coming and she's a screamer", "That Wall of China ain't so great; I built a bridge over a hymen.") Like that hands-on-a-turntable scene, it's all a bit much. If Sage has a unifying concept here, it's organized religion and the difficulty of breaking away from it. But for rather than simply stating his case, his arguments too often devolve into word soup. Sage breaks away from those riddles once more on the album, and the result might just be the best song he's ever written. The album ends with "The Best of Times", a pained memoir, Sage talking calmly and revealingly about his history as a loser kid, reeling off embarrassing anecdotes with tough candor. The music, from the French composer Yann Tiersen, is a gorgeous vibraphone-based twinkle that builds slowly and confidently, no guitars showing up for nearly three minutes. Over a track as gorgeous as that, Sage lets loose with some deeply cringey thoughts: "Considered doing something that would cripple me/ I wanted a wheelchair, I wanted the sympathy." It's the sort of song that forces you to root for the guy, no matter how much grim hectoring you've seen him do."

Mike Ladd

Father Divine

Rap

Joe Tangari

During the long process of making Father Divine, Mike Ladd got married and became a father (in Paris, no less). You might be tempted to expect a calmer, more reflective Ladd in the wake of fatherhood, but you'd be way off. Father Divine is his grittiest, rawest, furthest-in-the-red album to date, leapfrogging through dub, punk, electro, and soul, all while still rooted in hip-hop. Ladd is notoriously fond of overarching concepts, and he cooked up two for Father Divine: one revolving around the title figure, the founder of the not-quite-a-cult Peace Mission Movement, the other around an attempt to recapture the saturated, dirty sound of the old ROIR punk and dub cassettes, especially that of the self-titled Bad Brains album. The Father Divine thread seems mostly (perhaps mercifully) to have been lost along the way, apart from a mention on the outer space dub track "So 'N So", but the second goal is definitely achieved-- as synths buzz, the compression pushes the bass right up into the front of the mix and the album generally crackles with volcanic energy. Ladd has assembled a crack band that draws in players from hip-hop (Antipop Consortium's High Priest on keys), jazz (pianist and frequent collaborator Vijay Iyer), rock (TV on the Radio's Jaleel Bunton on guitar), and dub (Raz Mesinai), among other styles. The diverse musical backgrounds of the players serve Ladd's deconstructionist approach to hip-hop perfectly, as they approach every genre and song they attempt with seat-of-the-pants vitality. Thanks to the band, the album's instrumental tracks are nearly as crucial to the album as the vocal ones, especially "Crooner Island", which opens as a stuttering dub cut, slathered in bass and broad synth strokes from French producer Gymkhana, eventually morphing into a pumping shard of Thunderdome electro. Still, the vocal tracks are the focus, and Ladd is fucking righteous on "Awful Raw", which swings violently between a repetitive bhangra chorus and blaring swirls of synth. That chorus is addictive, as Ladd doubles himself singing "Gotta get me channel on/ Gotta get my channel free/ Gotta get my channel on channel channel on" over tweaked tablas and what might be a Bollywood sample. If there's any palpable result of Ladd's recent life changes, it's most clearly felt in a pair of tracks about women, a subject he's rarely touched upon in the past. "Barney's Girl" is a buoyant remembrance of a girl from back in the 80s in Ladd's home of Cambridge, Mass.: "She was a whole lotta punk and a little hip hop," he says, on his breeziest track to date. The other "girl" track, "Murder Girl", could be prime Prince with Ladd's falsetto chorus and splashy synth hits, channeling His Purpleness in verses broken up by an ominous bit of echoing bass that feels like a reference to Pink Floyd's "One of These Days". Like any Ladd album, Father Divine is stuffed with tracks worth talking about, and it's nice to see that Ladd isn't afraid to lay aside his conceptual tendencies in the name of just getting down and nasty, and Father Divine does just that-- it's a record played in the red, and it's not afraid to have a good time there.

Artist: Mike Ladd, Album: Father Divine, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "During the long process of making Father Divine, Mike Ladd got married and became a father (in Paris, no less). You might be tempted to expect a calmer, more reflective Ladd in the wake of fatherhood, but you'd be way off. Father Divine is his grittiest, rawest, furthest-in-the-red album to date, leapfrogging through dub, punk, electro, and soul, all while still rooted in hip-hop. Ladd is notoriously fond of overarching concepts, and he cooked up two for Father Divine: one revolving around the title figure, the founder of the not-quite-a-cult Peace Mission Movement, the other around an attempt to recapture the saturated, dirty sound of the old ROIR punk and dub cassettes, especially that of the self-titled Bad Brains album. The Father Divine thread seems mostly (perhaps mercifully) to have been lost along the way, apart from a mention on the outer space dub track "So 'N So", but the second goal is definitely achieved-- as synths buzz, the compression pushes the bass right up into the front of the mix and the album generally crackles with volcanic energy. Ladd has assembled a crack band that draws in players from hip-hop (Antipop Consortium's High Priest on keys), jazz (pianist and frequent collaborator Vijay Iyer), rock (TV on the Radio's Jaleel Bunton on guitar), and dub (Raz Mesinai), among other styles. The diverse musical backgrounds of the players serve Ladd's deconstructionist approach to hip-hop perfectly, as they approach every genre and song they attempt with seat-of-the-pants vitality. Thanks to the band, the album's instrumental tracks are nearly as crucial to the album as the vocal ones, especially "Crooner Island", which opens as a stuttering dub cut, slathered in bass and broad synth strokes from French producer Gymkhana, eventually morphing into a pumping shard of Thunderdome electro. Still, the vocal tracks are the focus, and Ladd is fucking righteous on "Awful Raw", which swings violently between a repetitive bhangra chorus and blaring swirls of synth. That chorus is addictive, as Ladd doubles himself singing "Gotta get me channel on/ Gotta get my channel free/ Gotta get my channel on channel channel on" over tweaked tablas and what might be a Bollywood sample. If there's any palpable result of Ladd's recent life changes, it's most clearly felt in a pair of tracks about women, a subject he's rarely touched upon in the past. "Barney's Girl" is a buoyant remembrance of a girl from back in the 80s in Ladd's home of Cambridge, Mass.: "She was a whole lotta punk and a little hip hop," he says, on his breeziest track to date. The other "girl" track, "Murder Girl", could be prime Prince with Ladd's falsetto chorus and splashy synth hits, channeling His Purpleness in verses broken up by an ominous bit of echoing bass that feels like a reference to Pink Floyd's "One of These Days". Like any Ladd album, Father Divine is stuffed with tracks worth talking about, and it's nice to see that Ladd isn't afraid to lay aside his conceptual tendencies in the name of just getting down and nasty, and Father Divine does just that-- it's a record played in the red, and it's not afraid to have a good time there."

Canada

This Cursed House

Marc Hogan

Let's all give Canada a standing "O". Our northerly neighbor's universal healthcare and de facto cannabis tolerance provide a beacon of hope for sinus-congested, stone-sober freelance writers everywhere, while its winters make even Chicago seem habitable. Just a few years ago, the nation confirmed Ross Perot's worst free-trade nightmare by insourcing all the good indie-rock gigs (a giant not-sucking sound). On debut album This Cursed House, an Ann Arbor, Mich. septet not coincidentally also called Canada prove that their knowledge of recent indietastic touchstones is more than name-deep. In fact, they do little else. Half the time This Cursed House sounds less like Canada (the country) than like Sufjan Stevens (the precious cabin-folkie). Beginning and ending with cricket chirps, the album bets huge on Upper Peninsula layers of harmony, cello, Rhodes, harmonica, banjo, melodica, glockenspiel, zither, flugelhorn, sleigh bell, wineglass (crystal), pad (paper), etc. (etc.). Of four instrumentals, one is based around a typewriter rhythm track. On "Beige Stationwagon", a library voice sadly scolds: "He should have kissed his wife/ Like only a husband could." It's the 2005 album of the year. No worries, as the rest of the time Canada (the septet) also sound like bands from Canada (the country). This Cursed House reaches for the somber midwinter mood, Renaissance Faire plenitude, and unrestrained grandeur of Montreal's Arcade Fire, though not the melodic chops or Byrnean paranoia-- no head, just talking. "Look to the Trees" opens with swaying "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" accordion, and "Madisonville, KY" is a "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)"-like sprawling slowdance about the deep meaning of everyday objects, while "The King's Ashes" and "Cold Mouse Winter" share the Butlers' fascination with easeful death and freezing loneliness. So, it's also the 2004 album of the year. Too bad it doesn't quite work that way. The stylistic tics of any pop musician, from the Beatles to Beyoncé, are rarely the stuff of year-end lists without everything else-- tunes, pacing, performance, and sometimes even persona-- falling perfectly into place. Underneath their arty gestures, Canada's songs are soft, gawky freshman-rock, Parachute-era Guster without the wit, bongos, or "Mona Lisa" (ahem). Canada's acoustic guitar strums, the real meat of This Cursed House, are pretty much rotten, squeaky with misplayed notes. So, too, the lyrics: "Where were you?/ When the trees started to fall/ ...When the birds began to call/ ...When the weeds were grown tall/ ...When our houses were still so small"... oh dear God please kill us all. Look, Canada are young, they could still flesh out their ambitions on some future record, and one day we'll probably even discover this is all somehow Dubya's fault. In the meantime, blame Canada.

Artist: Canada, Album: This Cursed House, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 3.4 Album review: "Let's all give Canada a standing "O". Our northerly neighbor's universal healthcare and de facto cannabis tolerance provide a beacon of hope for sinus-congested, stone-sober freelance writers everywhere, while its winters make even Chicago seem habitable. Just a few years ago, the nation confirmed Ross Perot's worst free-trade nightmare by insourcing all the good indie-rock gigs (a giant not-sucking sound). On debut album This Cursed House, an Ann Arbor, Mich. septet not coincidentally also called Canada prove that their knowledge of recent indietastic touchstones is more than name-deep. In fact, they do little else. Half the time This Cursed House sounds less like Canada (the country) than like Sufjan Stevens (the precious cabin-folkie). Beginning and ending with cricket chirps, the album bets huge on Upper Peninsula layers of harmony, cello, Rhodes, harmonica, banjo, melodica, glockenspiel, zither, flugelhorn, sleigh bell, wineglass (crystal), pad (paper), etc. (etc.). Of four instrumentals, one is based around a typewriter rhythm track. On "Beige Stationwagon", a library voice sadly scolds: "He should have kissed his wife/ Like only a husband could." It's the 2005 album of the year. No worries, as the rest of the time Canada (the septet) also sound like bands from Canada (the country). This Cursed House reaches for the somber midwinter mood, Renaissance Faire plenitude, and unrestrained grandeur of Montreal's Arcade Fire, though not the melodic chops or Byrnean paranoia-- no head, just talking. "Look to the Trees" opens with swaying "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" accordion, and "Madisonville, KY" is a "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)"-like sprawling slowdance about the deep meaning of everyday objects, while "The King's Ashes" and "Cold Mouse Winter" share the Butlers' fascination with easeful death and freezing loneliness. So, it's also the 2004 album of the year. Too bad it doesn't quite work that way. The stylistic tics of any pop musician, from the Beatles to Beyoncé, are rarely the stuff of year-end lists without everything else-- tunes, pacing, performance, and sometimes even persona-- falling perfectly into place. Underneath their arty gestures, Canada's songs are soft, gawky freshman-rock, Parachute-era Guster without the wit, bongos, or "Mona Lisa" (ahem). Canada's acoustic guitar strums, the real meat of This Cursed House, are pretty much rotten, squeaky with misplayed notes. So, too, the lyrics: "Where were you?/ When the trees started to fall/ ...When the birds began to call/ ...When the weeds were grown tall/ ...When our houses were still so small"... oh dear God please kill us all. Look, Canada are young, they could still flesh out their ambitions on some future record, and one day we'll probably even discover this is all somehow Dubya's fault. In the meantime, blame Canada."

Archer Prewitt

Wilderness

Rock

Sam Ubl

I'm a sucker for bridges and codas. I love their unpredictability, how they insouciantly break with songs' often grid-like verse-chorus-verse panelling. Being struck by one is like venturing beneath 4th street for the first time and finding yourself suddenly deep in quaint, snarled Lower Manhattan, or like discovering a hidden package behind the tree on Christmas morning when you'd given up on getting that Red Rider BB gun. The unexpected detours on Archer Prewitt's new album Wilderness are even better: Rather than simply disregarding convention, Prewitt ingratiates his off-the-beaten-path escapades-- two-minute bridges, codas, and codas of codas-- into coherent form, and the resulting songs are fluid and virtuosic. This prodigiousness may come as a surprise to those familiar with Prewitt's work. While the Sea and Cake contributor and Chicago denizen has released four accomplished solo albums since 1997, he's never before experimented as confidently with spiraling song structures or adventurous instrumental adornment, and he's seldom approached such heights. The consistency of Wilderness' eleven songs is almost overwhelming. Pick a track: Buried amid a complex topography of busy yet buoyant orchestration and sundry subtleties you're sure to find a sterling hook that would probably sound great even if it were handled fecklessly. Dusting off the ashes of 2002's coarser Three, opener "Way of the Sun" steals in on a babbling bell melody. Unassumingly, Prewitt joins the fray, strumming and singing as if nothing much has changed-- it's just another humble singer-songwriter album. Out of nowhere comes a titanic, vaguely Dylan-esque chorus-- as memorable and articulate as anything Prewitt has ever done-- and it all comes into focus. Then, a lithe bridge flows in almost like an afterthought-- the first of the album's many dazzling, unforeseen twists. "Leaders" starts routinely and grows more unconventional with every turn: The song's exceptional chorus is buffered by a stately harpsichord lick. Then the track slows as Prewitt reasserts the chorus at two-thirds speed before tacking on a tiptoeing Dark Side of the Moon coda. "O, KY" turns the trick even better, processing a bouncy, shuffled intro before deciding it would rather be plaintive and bittersweet. Stiffening up and straightening out, the track performs a wild about-face, running through a couple of nervy verses before regrouping for a dramatic finale that puts most prolix rock bands' best riffage and structural histrionics to shame. "Think Again" is Wilderness' darkest song; it also implicates Prewitt's role in the Sea and Cake-- though the song takes just as much of its dusky, open-air vibe from Thrill Jockey brethren Tortoise's TNT. Part of Wilderness' charm is its trembling near-composure: Prewitt doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve. Rather, he lets his emotions seep out in brief moments of vulnerability before thinking better of it and curling back up. On "Cheap Rhyme", his vocal snarling is almost flagrant amid so much modesty. True to form, the song funnels out into a regal, horn-driven bridge, but not before Prewitt's weakness becomes apparent. He can't belt, but Wilderness is almost better for it: Although Prewitt doesn't possess James Mercer's earth-shattering tenor or A.C. Newman's hand at pop hooks, those limitations have only led him down a more carefully considered-- and more interesting-- route. His struggle to circumvent has earned him one of the most idiosyncratic and captivating voices in songwriting, and Wilderness is his most focused solo effort yet.

Artist: Archer Prewitt, Album: Wilderness, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "I'm a sucker for bridges and codas. I love their unpredictability, how they insouciantly break with songs' often grid-like verse-chorus-verse panelling. Being struck by one is like venturing beneath 4th street for the first time and finding yourself suddenly deep in quaint, snarled Lower Manhattan, or like discovering a hidden package behind the tree on Christmas morning when you'd given up on getting that Red Rider BB gun. The unexpected detours on Archer Prewitt's new album Wilderness are even better: Rather than simply disregarding convention, Prewitt ingratiates his off-the-beaten-path escapades-- two-minute bridges, codas, and codas of codas-- into coherent form, and the resulting songs are fluid and virtuosic. This prodigiousness may come as a surprise to those familiar with Prewitt's work. While the Sea and Cake contributor and Chicago denizen has released four accomplished solo albums since 1997, he's never before experimented as confidently with spiraling song structures or adventurous instrumental adornment, and he's seldom approached such heights. The consistency of Wilderness' eleven songs is almost overwhelming. Pick a track: Buried amid a complex topography of busy yet buoyant orchestration and sundry subtleties you're sure to find a sterling hook that would probably sound great even if it were handled fecklessly. Dusting off the ashes of 2002's coarser Three, opener "Way of the Sun" steals in on a babbling bell melody. Unassumingly, Prewitt joins the fray, strumming and singing as if nothing much has changed-- it's just another humble singer-songwriter album. Out of nowhere comes a titanic, vaguely Dylan-esque chorus-- as memorable and articulate as anything Prewitt has ever done-- and it all comes into focus. Then, a lithe bridge flows in almost like an afterthought-- the first of the album's many dazzling, unforeseen twists. "Leaders" starts routinely and grows more unconventional with every turn: The song's exceptional chorus is buffered by a stately harpsichord lick. Then the track slows as Prewitt reasserts the chorus at two-thirds speed before tacking on a tiptoeing Dark Side of the Moon coda. "O, KY" turns the trick even better, processing a bouncy, shuffled intro before deciding it would rather be plaintive and bittersweet. Stiffening up and straightening out, the track performs a wild about-face, running through a couple of nervy verses before regrouping for a dramatic finale that puts most prolix rock bands' best riffage and structural histrionics to shame. "Think Again" is Wilderness' darkest song; it also implicates Prewitt's role in the Sea and Cake-- though the song takes just as much of its dusky, open-air vibe from Thrill Jockey brethren Tortoise's TNT. Part of Wilderness' charm is its trembling near-composure: Prewitt doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve. Rather, he lets his emotions seep out in brief moments of vulnerability before thinking better of it and curling back up. On "Cheap Rhyme", his vocal snarling is almost flagrant amid so much modesty. True to form, the song funnels out into a regal, horn-driven bridge, but not before Prewitt's weakness becomes apparent. He can't belt, but Wilderness is almost better for it: Although Prewitt doesn't possess James Mercer's earth-shattering tenor or A.C. Newman's hand at pop hooks, those limitations have only led him down a more carefully considered-- and more interesting-- route. His struggle to circumvent has earned him one of the most idiosyncratic and captivating voices in songwriting, and Wilderness is his most focused solo effort yet."

Jonny Nash, Suzanne Kraft

Passive Aggressive

Electronic,Experimental

Philip Sherburne

It’s no secret that albums are getting longer, but Jonny Nash prefers concision. He has said that his favorite format is the mini-LP: 30 or 40 minutes long, one piece of vinyl, not too many twists and turns. The format is particularly conducive to home listening; it’s the right length, he finds, not just to set a mood, but to immerse the listener in the artist’s “sonic world.” He likes the format as a musician, too: as a vehicle to explore a specific idea or a temporary obsession. So far, his Melody As Truth label has been geared along exactly those lines. Modest in sound and scope, yet unusually committed to its cozy parameters, the Amsterdam label has, in its three-year run, dedicated itself exclusively to quiet, contemplative ambient experiments by Nash and his friend Suzanne Kraft (aka Diego Herrera, a former Los Angeleno now also based in Amsterdam). Each release so far has offered a snapshot of a process or a mood. Nash’s 2014 EP Phantom Actors was a set of limpid new age studies for synth and piano that could have been mistaken for a lost Mark Isham demo. The following year, his Exit Strategies modeled itself upon the liquid guitars of the Durutti Column and Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie. Kraft’s 2015 album Talk From Home, meanwhile, tackled airy synth-and-guitar miniatures, while last year’s masterful What You Get for Being Young used similar sounds, just fewer of them, and ended up being as evocative, and elusive, as the scent of a crisp autumn morning. Following a split 7” and a split cassette, Passive Aggressive is the duo’s first collaborative album, but it’s not immediately obvious that it’s the work of four hands instead of two. If anything, it is quieter and more spacious than anything either musician has done on his own. It sounds as though, instead of encouraging each other to add more ideas to the mix, the two musicians focused their energies on subtracting everything extraneous. The results appear as effortless as Japanese calligraphy: a constellation of gestures in which no motion is wasted, and so seemingly natural that the creator’s hand disappears behind the work. The pair recorded the album in a week of sessions last summer; instead of their usual array of hardware synthesizers, they opted for software-based tools. They have described their desired aesthetic as “future-ECM,” a reference to Manfred Eicher’s iconic jazz and contemporary-music label, in which empty space and suggestive textures are often as important as melody or rhythm. There’s certainly something to that characterization, though the music’s restraint has even more in common with the hushed margins of Editions EG’s catalog, not to mention the Italian minimalist Gigi Masin, who plays with Nash in the trio Gaussian Curve. The more melodic songs, like the bookending “Photo With Grey Sky, White Clouds” and “Time, Being,” suggest Talk Talk muting most of the channels on their mixing desk. The palette is limited to slowly unfurling synth pads, a liquid trickle of piano, and, most intriguingly, a stubby sound that uncannily resembles an upright bass, except slightly too perfect to be the product of mere wood and catgut. In “Time, Being,” Nash contributes some of his characteristic clean-toned guitar; in “Small Town,” a backmasked filament reminiscent of Robert Fripp flares up. They like to dribble soft staccato attacks over watery backdrops, and they prefer melodies that slip ambiguously between major and minor keys, opting for seconds and fifths over thirds. It all conjures ambiguous, open-ended moods that accommodate a listener’s own emotional state rather than enforcing one of its own. To call Passive Aggressive placid would be an understatement. It is an album of profound tranquility, and in its modest ambitions it can seem almost slight at first—not just ambient music, but Ambien music. Still, heard on good speakers in the right frame of mind, its meditative miniatures come springing vividly to life. Taken together, this entrancing 40-minute listen amounts to a core sample of a mood you can’t quite put your finger on, which only keeps you drilling ever so gently deeper.

Artist: Jonny Nash, Suzanne Kraft, Album: Passive Aggressive, Genre: Electronic,Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "It’s no secret that albums are getting longer, but Jonny Nash prefers concision. He has said that his favorite format is the mini-LP: 30 or 40 minutes long, one piece of vinyl, not too many twists and turns. The format is particularly conducive to home listening; it’s the right length, he finds, not just to set a mood, but to immerse the listener in the artist’s “sonic world.” He likes the format as a musician, too: as a vehicle to explore a specific idea or a temporary obsession. So far, his Melody As Truth label has been geared along exactly those lines. Modest in sound and scope, yet unusually committed to its cozy parameters, the Amsterdam label has, in its three-year run, dedicated itself exclusively to quiet, contemplative ambient experiments by Nash and his friend Suzanne Kraft (aka Diego Herrera, a former Los Angeleno now also based in Amsterdam). Each release so far has offered a snapshot of a process or a mood. Nash’s 2014 EP Phantom Actors was a set of limpid new age studies for synth and piano that could have been mistaken for a lost Mark Isham demo. The following year, his Exit Strategies modeled itself upon the liquid guitars of the Durutti Column and Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie. Kraft’s 2015 album Talk From Home, meanwhile, tackled airy synth-and-guitar miniatures, while last year’s masterful What You Get for Being Young used similar sounds, just fewer of them, and ended up being as evocative, and elusive, as the scent of a crisp autumn morning. Following a split 7” and a split cassette, Passive Aggressive is the duo’s first collaborative album, but it’s not immediately obvious that it’s the work of four hands instead of two. If anything, it is quieter and more spacious than anything either musician has done on his own. It sounds as though, instead of encouraging each other to add more ideas to the mix, the two musicians focused their energies on subtracting everything extraneous. The results appear as effortless as Japanese calligraphy: a constellation of gestures in which no motion is wasted, and so seemingly natural that the creator’s hand disappears behind the work. The pair recorded the album in a week of sessions last summer; instead of their usual array of hardware synthesizers, they opted for software-based tools. They have described their desired aesthetic as “future-ECM,” a reference to Manfred Eicher’s iconic jazz and contemporary-music label, in which empty space and suggestive textures are often as important as melody or rhythm. There’s certainly something to that characterization, though the music’s restraint has even more in common with the hushed margins of Editions EG’s catalog, not to mention the Italian minimalist Gigi Masin, who plays with Nash in the trio Gaussian Curve. The more melodic songs, like the bookending “Photo With Grey Sky, White Clouds” and “Time, Being,” suggest Talk Talk muting most of the channels on their mixing desk. The palette is limited to slowly unfurling synth pads, a liquid trickle of piano, and, most intriguingly, a stubby sound that uncannily resembles an upright bass, except slightly too perfect to be the product of mere wood and catgut. In “Time, Being,” Nash contributes some of his characteristic clean-toned guitar; in “Small Town,” a backmasked filament reminiscent of Robert Fripp flares up. They like to dribble soft staccato attacks over watery backdrops, and they prefer melodies that slip ambiguously between major and minor keys, opting for seconds and fifths over thirds. It all conjures ambiguous, open-ended moods that accommodate a listener’s own emotional state rather than enforcing one of its own. To call Passive Aggressive placid would be an understatement. It is an album of profound tranquility, and in its modest ambitions it can seem almost slight at first—not just ambient music, but Ambien music. Still, heard on good speakers in the right frame of mind, its meditative miniatures come springing vividly to life. Taken together, this entrancing 40-minute listen amounts to a core sample of a mood you can’t quite put your finger on, which only keeps you drilling ever so gently deeper."

The Album Leaf

Into the Blue Again

Electronic,Rock

Matthew Murphy

Composer/multi-instrumentalist James LaValle has certainly generated his fair sum of impeccable music-- both in collaboration with sympathetic acts like Sigur Rós or the Black Heart Procession and as author of his ongoing project the Album Leaf. Past works like 2004's In a Safe Place or last year's Seal Beach EP have shown LaValle able to patiently craft sonorous ambient crescendos with the best of them, yet at some point even the most fastidious listeners have to be anxious to see him get his clothes a little rumpled. Unfortunately, however, on LaValle's latest release, Into the Blue Again, the operative word is "Again". Here he takes the Album Leaf on a romantic tour of all the familiar post-rock haunts, guiding the listener though another tranquil series of shivery watercolor instrumentals and hand-carved melodic scrimshaw, the music's gentle restraint quickly blurring into a needlessly restrictive caution. LaValle recorded the basic tracks for Into the Blue Again at Bear Creek Studio in Washington, and then took the album to Iceland to be mixed under the watchful eye of Brigir Birgisson, the engineer at Sigur Rós' Sundlaugin studio. The Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins chips in with lyrics and vocals on a few tracks, while guests like violinist Matthew Resovich make brief but crucial cameos. For the most part however, LaValle handles the instrumental duties himself, building these pieces upon a reliable foundation of Rhodes piano, unobtrusive electronics, and a polite mix of acoustic and programmed drumming. Perhaps as a consequence of LaValle's increased self-reliance, much of Into the Blue Again has an air of stifled insularity, with many of his admittedly gorgeous melodies pressed nearly lifeless beneath the fingerprints of the album's antiseptic, fussed-over construction. Several of the songs on In a Safe Place had a fruitful second life as background fodder on television soundtracks, and it's not much of a stretch to imagine several performances on Into the Blue Again enjoying a similar fate. On vocal numbers such as the lovely "Always For You", Pall Jenkins' lyrics have been trimmed down to their romantic essentials, stripped of all personal effects and identifying features. "All these things we tried to change/ Were never easy to contain/ It was always meant for you," sings LaValle with exquisite, nonspecific ardor-- the song's potential dramatic utility only as limited as the screenwriter's imagination. Likewise, "Writing on the Wall" and "Wherever I Go" flawlessly hit their marks, matching LaValle's wistful pop melodicism with gracefully billowing strings and crisp, snappy drumwork. Despite the Album Leaf's studied textures and buoyant songcraft, there is a crippling lack of tension inherent within Into the Blue Again's careful constructions. Instrumental pieces like the opening groundswell "The Light" or the rippling "Red-Eye" can be temporarily breathtaking, but ultimately feel confined by the self-imposed limits LaValle has placed on this material. Every sonic detail is gradually unspooled with such predictable and scrupulous precision that the listener can rest assured that nothing jarring or dissonant might ever be allowed to cast a ripple across the music's placid surfaces. And until LaValle proves willing to expose his compositions to more alien and/or volatile elements, the Album Leaf will have to content itself to a tasteful but restrained hothouse existence.

Artist: The Album Leaf, Album: Into the Blue Again, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Composer/multi-instrumentalist James LaValle has certainly generated his fair sum of impeccable music-- both in collaboration with sympathetic acts like Sigur Rós or the Black Heart Procession and as author of his ongoing project the Album Leaf. Past works like 2004's In a Safe Place or last year's Seal Beach EP have shown LaValle able to patiently craft sonorous ambient crescendos with the best of them, yet at some point even the most fastidious listeners have to be anxious to see him get his clothes a little rumpled. Unfortunately, however, on LaValle's latest release, Into the Blue Again, the operative word is "Again". Here he takes the Album Leaf on a romantic tour of all the familiar post-rock haunts, guiding the listener though another tranquil series of shivery watercolor instrumentals and hand-carved melodic scrimshaw, the music's gentle restraint quickly blurring into a needlessly restrictive caution. LaValle recorded the basic tracks for Into the Blue Again at Bear Creek Studio in Washington, and then took the album to Iceland to be mixed under the watchful eye of Brigir Birgisson, the engineer at Sigur Rós' Sundlaugin studio. The Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins chips in with lyrics and vocals on a few tracks, while guests like violinist Matthew Resovich make brief but crucial cameos. For the most part however, LaValle handles the instrumental duties himself, building these pieces upon a reliable foundation of Rhodes piano, unobtrusive electronics, and a polite mix of acoustic and programmed drumming. Perhaps as a consequence of LaValle's increased self-reliance, much of Into the Blue Again has an air of stifled insularity, with many of his admittedly gorgeous melodies pressed nearly lifeless beneath the fingerprints of the album's antiseptic, fussed-over construction. Several of the songs on In a Safe Place had a fruitful second life as background fodder on television soundtracks, and it's not much of a stretch to imagine several performances on Into the Blue Again enjoying a similar fate. On vocal numbers such as the lovely "Always For You", Pall Jenkins' lyrics have been trimmed down to their romantic essentials, stripped of all personal effects and identifying features. "All these things we tried to change/ Were never easy to contain/ It was always meant for you," sings LaValle with exquisite, nonspecific ardor-- the song's potential dramatic utility only as limited as the screenwriter's imagination. Likewise, "Writing on the Wall" and "Wherever I Go" flawlessly hit their marks, matching LaValle's wistful pop melodicism with gracefully billowing strings and crisp, snappy drumwork. Despite the Album Leaf's studied textures and buoyant songcraft, there is a crippling lack of tension inherent within Into the Blue Again's careful constructions. Instrumental pieces like the opening groundswell "The Light" or the rippling "Red-Eye" can be temporarily breathtaking, but ultimately feel confined by the self-imposed limits LaValle has placed on this material. Every sonic detail is gradually unspooled with such predictable and scrupulous precision that the listener can rest assured that nothing jarring or dissonant might ever be allowed to cast a ripple across the music's placid surfaces. And until LaValle proves willing to expose his compositions to more alien and/or volatile elements, the Album Leaf will have to content itself to a tasteful but restrained hothouse existence."

Luciano

Tribute to the Sun

Electronic,Global,Rock

Andy Battaglia

You won't likely hear many tracks this year weirder or more unsettling than the first one on Luciano's Tribute to the Sun. Can you imagine sucking on a mouthful of pennies-- not just the taste of it, but also all the squirms and shudders that would come to pass? Does it make sense to describe a sound as "sour"? If that means anything, does it make such a sound in a dance track sound appealing? Like something worth savoring? Would it help or hurt to know that the sour-pennies part is just one of several parts that run concurrently for almost nine minutes, with some of the others being an anxiously pitched-up tribal chant and what might well be a dozen murderous kids clapping? Luciano is a techno producer whose sound-world is uncommonly vast and even more uncommonly fertile. In a realm where steely shades of gray compete for space within formalist grids, Luciano favors subtle washes of color. More than that, though, he plays the minimalist's game of placing sounds where they can grow. An evocative rustle here, a suggestive tap there-- something interesting will always happen in between such things if the conditions are made right. They certainly are in "Los Niños de Fuera". That's the first track on Tribute to the Sun, and it works as both a functional charge and a wide-open statement of intent. As the distended vocal wail (the sour-penny part) duels with the handclap chant, the effect is simultaneously ghostly and bursting with life-- something both exotic and immediately identifiable. It's as good an encapsulation of Luciano's aesthetic as anything he has done. The whole album makes good on the wide spread of Luciano's sound, which shares a lot with the lilting experimentalism of Ricardo Villalobos and so many others tracing techno lines these days between South America and Europe. (Luciano has roots in Chile and a home in Switzerland.) "Celestial" follows the album-opener with a percussive mix of hand-drum runs and minimal house beats that scan as South American for all their airy, woody timbres and especially their patience. They're also trademark Luciano in the way they're haunted by a humid bass-line that seems to be humming to itself when not distracted to silence by something happening out of ear-shot. Tracks like "Conspirer" and "Hang for Bruno" take mellow forays through melodic passes, the latter with a gorgeous quasi-trumpet sound that would've worked on Miles Davis and Gil Evans' Sketches of Spain. But it's the dance tracks that prove most striking. "Africa Sweat" features vocals by Senegalese singer Ali Boulo Santo and an awful lot of touch, in the infectious rhythms as well as some subtle but wowing EQ-tweaks on the kora and drum sounds. The same subtlety plays into "Metodisima", which runs through an IDM egghead's store of rhythmic ideas while sounding effortless and contented. Much of Luciano's best handiwork on Tribute to the Sun works like that: It's easy to miss certain things in the rush or swell of the mood, but it's just as pleasing to go back and try to take stock of all that he's doing without making too big a show of it.

Artist: Luciano, Album: Tribute to the Sun, Genre: Electronic,Global,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.3 Album review: "You won't likely hear many tracks this year weirder or more unsettling than the first one on Luciano's Tribute to the Sun. Can you imagine sucking on a mouthful of pennies-- not just the taste of it, but also all the squirms and shudders that would come to pass? Does it make sense to describe a sound as "sour"? If that means anything, does it make such a sound in a dance track sound appealing? Like something worth savoring? Would it help or hurt to know that the sour-pennies part is just one of several parts that run concurrently for almost nine minutes, with some of the others being an anxiously pitched-up tribal chant and what might well be a dozen murderous kids clapping? Luciano is a techno producer whose sound-world is uncommonly vast and even more uncommonly fertile. In a realm where steely shades of gray compete for space within formalist grids, Luciano favors subtle washes of color. More than that, though, he plays the minimalist's game of placing sounds where they can grow. An evocative rustle here, a suggestive tap there-- something interesting will always happen in between such things if the conditions are made right. They certainly are in "Los Niños de Fuera". That's the first track on Tribute to the Sun, and it works as both a functional charge and a wide-open statement of intent. As the distended vocal wail (the sour-penny part) duels with the handclap chant, the effect is simultaneously ghostly and bursting with life-- something both exotic and immediately identifiable. It's as good an encapsulation of Luciano's aesthetic as anything he has done. The whole album makes good on the wide spread of Luciano's sound, which shares a lot with the lilting experimentalism of Ricardo Villalobos and so many others tracing techno lines these days between South America and Europe. (Luciano has roots in Chile and a home in Switzerland.) "Celestial" follows the album-opener with a percussive mix of hand-drum runs and minimal house beats that scan as South American for all their airy, woody timbres and especially their patience. They're also trademark Luciano in the way they're haunted by a humid bass-line that seems to be humming to itself when not distracted to silence by something happening out of ear-shot. Tracks like "Conspirer" and "Hang for Bruno" take mellow forays through melodic passes, the latter with a gorgeous quasi-trumpet sound that would've worked on Miles Davis and Gil Evans' Sketches of Spain. But it's the dance tracks that prove most striking. "Africa Sweat" features vocals by Senegalese singer Ali Boulo Santo and an awful lot of touch, in the infectious rhythms as well as some subtle but wowing EQ-tweaks on the kora and drum sounds. The same subtlety plays into "Metodisima", which runs through an IDM egghead's store of rhythmic ideas while sounding effortless and contented. Much of Luciano's best handiwork on Tribute to the Sun works like that: It's easy to miss certain things in the rush or swell of the mood, but it's just as pleasing to go back and try to take stock of all that he's doing without making too big a show of it."

Earth

Legacy of Dissolution

Metal

Johnny Loftus

Dylan Carlson has used the Earth nameplate as a freq-torturer more or less since 1990, and over the years a cult has developed in worship of his music's drone. Or is it the doom? The sludge, maybe? Cultish designation depends on hair length and drugs taken. The point is, with 1993's Earth 2, Carlson and his collaborators created a no-motion masterpiece of sub-tonal metal. Its three tracks range between quarter-hour and half. They consume the Melvins, and splay Godflesh out to dry in the sun. Earth 2 adds 40,000 "f"'s onto the end of "riff," and the result drags right off the page. "Humans are present only as audience or operators." That's what the Survival Research Laboratories mission statement says. But it applies to Earth, too, 'cause this shit is a stoned and illuminated manuscript. God is not a DJ. He is an amplifier. Legacy of Dissolution is a remix project that gathers six of Earth's most important cult members. Sanctioned by Carlson and released as a joint venture between the mighty Southern Lord and Philly's No Quarter (home of Earth's 2002 live compendium Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars), Dissolution features contributions from Mogwai, Russell Haswell, Jim O'Rourke, Autechre, Justin Broadrick, and SunnO))), the last of which famously began as an Earth cover band. (Name: Mars.) Results vary, but the overall feel is a not-unpleasant sense of thudding dread. Like, "I don't understand this, but I want to lay in it." The original "Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine" is 27-minute pulse for guitar and bass. Mogwai manipulates that into a singular hovering tone, dropping in the plodding original recording at the four-minute mark over electronic triggers and its own manipulated atmosphere. It's Coil's Angelic Conversation, stuck on an ellipsis. Like Jim O'Rourke's lengthy meditation on the title track to Earth's Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions, it's difficult to call what Mogwai's doing metal. But the source material isn't metal, anyway. It's something stranger, maybe more modal; maybe even louder. Legacy of Dissolution proves the spectacular reach of experimental music-- whether it's Earth or Isis or Kammerflimmer Kollektief, it's open to interpretation. Reinterpret they do. Russell Haswell's "Tibetan Quaaludes [Waveset Sloth Mix]" runs the original's solitary resonating guitar through some kind of horrible and scary processing program \xD0 the garbled, lurching, and totally fantastic result sounds like a sadistic biker movie on the wrong speed. Autechre retains the main riff of "Coda Maestoso in F [Flat] Minor" (from Earth's last official album, 1996's Pentastar: In the Style of Demons). However their version is slowly taken over by reflective plinking until there's only that bass line, the one built for stoned head nodding. The final, epic section will make David Gilmour weep openly. Legacy of Dissolution's final position is owned by SunnO))). Its sixteen minutes are probably the closest this set gets to Earth's original template; like their origins, it feels more like a tribute than a remix. But "Rule the Divine [Mysteria Caelestis Mugiv]" is one of the collection's strongest moments, a dreary roar of open maw guitars and the echoes of drums from some far off cavern. This is sludge; this is primordial. Then at about six minutes in, things drop out. A pause, and then the report of one guitar. This goes on for awhile, and you might forget yourself. But then it's back, a monstrous squalling tone coming from the amp where God lives, and He's angry. Well, what are you going to do about it, stoner?

Artist: Earth, Album: Legacy of Dissolution, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Dylan Carlson has used the Earth nameplate as a freq-torturer more or less since 1990, and over the years a cult has developed in worship of his music's drone. Or is it the doom? The sludge, maybe? Cultish designation depends on hair length and drugs taken. The point is, with 1993's Earth 2, Carlson and his collaborators created a no-motion masterpiece of sub-tonal metal. Its three tracks range between quarter-hour and half. They consume the Melvins, and splay Godflesh out to dry in the sun. Earth 2 adds 40,000 "f"'s onto the end of "riff," and the result drags right off the page. "Humans are present only as audience or operators." That's what the Survival Research Laboratories mission statement says. But it applies to Earth, too, 'cause this shit is a stoned and illuminated manuscript. God is not a DJ. He is an amplifier. Legacy of Dissolution is a remix project that gathers six of Earth's most important cult members. Sanctioned by Carlson and released as a joint venture between the mighty Southern Lord and Philly's No Quarter (home of Earth's 2002 live compendium Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars), Dissolution features contributions from Mogwai, Russell Haswell, Jim O'Rourke, Autechre, Justin Broadrick, and SunnO))), the last of which famously began as an Earth cover band. (Name: Mars.) Results vary, but the overall feel is a not-unpleasant sense of thudding dread. Like, "I don't understand this, but I want to lay in it." The original "Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine" is 27-minute pulse for guitar and bass. Mogwai manipulates that into a singular hovering tone, dropping in the plodding original recording at the four-minute mark over electronic triggers and its own manipulated atmosphere. It's Coil's Angelic Conversation, stuck on an ellipsis. Like Jim O'Rourke's lengthy meditation on the title track to Earth's Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions, it's difficult to call what Mogwai's doing metal. But the source material isn't metal, anyway. It's something stranger, maybe more modal; maybe even louder. Legacy of Dissolution proves the spectacular reach of experimental music-- whether it's Earth or Isis or Kammerflimmer Kollektief, it's open to interpretation. Reinterpret they do. Russell Haswell's "Tibetan Quaaludes [Waveset Sloth Mix]" runs the original's solitary resonating guitar through some kind of horrible and scary processing program \xD0 the garbled, lurching, and totally fantastic result sounds like a sadistic biker movie on the wrong speed. Autechre retains the main riff of "Coda Maestoso in F [Flat] Minor" (from Earth's last official album, 1996's Pentastar: In the Style of Demons). However their version is slowly taken over by reflective plinking until there's only that bass line, the one built for stoned head nodding. The final, epic section will make David Gilmour weep openly. Legacy of Dissolution's final position is owned by SunnO))). Its sixteen minutes are probably the closest this set gets to Earth's original template; like their origins, it feels more like a tribute than a remix. But "Rule the Divine [Mysteria Caelestis Mugiv]" is one of the collection's strongest moments, a dreary roar of open maw guitars and the echoes of drums from some far off cavern. This is sludge; this is primordial. Then at about six minutes in, things drop out. A pause, and then the report of one guitar. This goes on for awhile, and you might forget yourself. But then it's back, a monstrous squalling tone coming from the amp where God lives, and He's angry. Well, what are you going to do about it, stoner?"

Pinback

Offcell

Rock

Brandon Stosuy

Offcell isn't inherently shocking, since-- let's be honest-- Pinback only have so many moves, but it's another supremely gorgeous record from a band that exists outside contemporary musical trends, yet makes absolute sense within them. Quite simply, Pinback are an original pop band, and these days, you can almost count their peers on two hands. I saw Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV a few months ago, at a bar staffed by muscle-bound, black-clad bouncers and tall, blonde, half-shirted waitresses carrying illuminated trays. It was the first time I'd seen the band in person, and this bizarre, conservative setting seemed all wrong; in my imagination, theirs was background music for firefly-infested fields and laid-back loft parties. What's worse, the club was packed, and it had a smoke machine, which pumped furiously and pointlessly before Pinback even took the stage. By the time they'd gathered their army of DAT machines, it was way too late for my wide-eyed excitement. They sounded pretty-- as expected-- but after four or five songs I left, dejected. What a fucking letdown after I'd waited four years to see them! Still, leaving early didn't bother me: I was only interested in seeing how well they'd pull their quiet magic off in front of staring eyes and the tired commentary of drunken goons. After a few songs, I'd seen all I needed, which is one of the beautiful things about Pinback: their work is a single volume of slight variation. You could cut and paste their output together as one big landscape of clouds, mist and plaintive sounds. And some complain, but I like the unwavering steadiness of their vision. Pinback have added layers as time's goes on, but otherwise, the narrative arc is entirely predictable, and all the better for it. This isn't some kind of underhanded compliment; you don't listen to or watch Pinback to be surprised, you welcome their aesthetic, because it lends the same nostalgic recognition as the smell of a freshly mown lawn. The main difference on Offcell is that the guitar and bass tracks sound more live and full, more "rock" for lack of a better word. I've always enjoyed the interiority of the duo's work, and would hate to see take on the boring mid-ranges of most indie twaddle, but they did record this EP in Smith IV's new studio, so this "low-key technique"-- not so anal and arcane-- is probably just a byproduct of their surroundings (and, yes, as with their other releases, we get moody images of their gear). Offcell starts with the three-part "Microtonic Wave", which leads with a damp, sandy guitar, offset by piano and chimes. After a quick shift into the patented baritone/falsetto harmonizing, and bleak, often cryptic lyrics-- "Cauterize my scars in scum"-- brief stardust vocals murmur and sigh below the persistent but dainty chimes. They've thankfully dropped the tired, ill-advised nautical fetish of old, instead finding inspiration in digital waves and telephones. "Victorious D" is improbably gorgeous, especially because it's such a bruised fruit. When I saw them perform it live, I wondered how they'd bury the bass line on record, and if Crow was supposed to be singing so absently off-key in the bridge. Seeing how they struggled through its ambitious melodies in concert, it's exciting to hear the resolution: Crow intones "Angels suffering/ Angels fall from light/ Angels sickening/ Angels suffer," giving way to Armistead's higher-pitched response, which accrues a perfection all the more triumphantly on-the-mark. Offcell's midpoint is a lesser version of "Tripoli", from their 1998 debut. The band's never topped that one, that first song on their first record: its sunny instrumentation hid the "sad I'm gonna die" lyrics for weeks, and only over time, like a slow-release pill, did its intent emerge. "B" is Pinback as garage rock: distorted guitars blending into computer blips and drum machines, the rust and angular gears of their vintage gear praising an idiot god. I thought of the town "B", from William H. Gass' In The Heart of the Heart of the Country, a place of revulsion and poetic repose. As in "Tripoli", there's again a discrepancy between the cheery musicality and creepy lyrics, drones in the air and kids down spiral stairs: "Mommas tell your babies not to rest inside your will/ Kids in refrigerators won't scratch their way out, and never will." "Grey Machine"-- an eleven-minute, string-based doo-wop romance-- streaks across the sky, considering space and time before retreating into the more immediate powers of memory. I don't want Pinback to break-up, but in a way, this unique, potent bag of sweets would be a nice finale to what began so gloriously with "Tripoli" in 1998. You'll have to excuse my romanticism-- and don't worry, there's a Touch and Go full-length due in 2004-- but this grand epic, after many minutes and layered sounds, delivers its own aching epitaph: "Pick me up/ Take me home/ Get me out of here/ Please."

Artist: Pinback, Album: Offcell, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "Offcell isn't inherently shocking, since-- let's be honest-- Pinback only have so many moves, but it's another supremely gorgeous record from a band that exists outside contemporary musical trends, yet makes absolute sense within them. Quite simply, Pinback are an original pop band, and these days, you can almost count their peers on two hands. I saw Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV a few months ago, at a bar staffed by muscle-bound, black-clad bouncers and tall, blonde, half-shirted waitresses carrying illuminated trays. It was the first time I'd seen the band in person, and this bizarre, conservative setting seemed all wrong; in my imagination, theirs was background music for firefly-infested fields and laid-back loft parties. What's worse, the club was packed, and it had a smoke machine, which pumped furiously and pointlessly before Pinback even took the stage. By the time they'd gathered their army of DAT machines, it was way too late for my wide-eyed excitement. They sounded pretty-- as expected-- but after four or five songs I left, dejected. What a fucking letdown after I'd waited four years to see them! Still, leaving early didn't bother me: I was only interested in seeing how well they'd pull their quiet magic off in front of staring eyes and the tired commentary of drunken goons. After a few songs, I'd seen all I needed, which is one of the beautiful things about Pinback: their work is a single volume of slight variation. You could cut and paste their output together as one big landscape of clouds, mist and plaintive sounds. And some complain, but I like the unwavering steadiness of their vision. Pinback have added layers as time's goes on, but otherwise, the narrative arc is entirely predictable, and all the better for it. This isn't some kind of underhanded compliment; you don't listen to or watch Pinback to be surprised, you welcome their aesthetic, because it lends the same nostalgic recognition as the smell of a freshly mown lawn. The main difference on Offcell is that the guitar and bass tracks sound more live and full, more "rock" for lack of a better word. I've always enjoyed the interiority of the duo's work, and would hate to see take on the boring mid-ranges of most indie twaddle, but they did record this EP in Smith IV's new studio, so this "low-key technique"-- not so anal and arcane-- is probably just a byproduct of their surroundings (and, yes, as with their other releases, we get moody images of their gear). Offcell starts with the three-part "Microtonic Wave", which leads with a damp, sandy guitar, offset by piano and chimes. After a quick shift into the patented baritone/falsetto harmonizing, and bleak, often cryptic lyrics-- "Cauterize my scars in scum"-- brief stardust vocals murmur and sigh below the persistent but dainty chimes. They've thankfully dropped the tired, ill-advised nautical fetish of old, instead finding inspiration in digital waves and telephones. "Victorious D" is improbably gorgeous, especially because it's such a bruised fruit. When I saw them perform it live, I wondered how they'd bury the bass line on record, and if Crow was supposed to be singing so absently off-key in the bridge. Seeing how they struggled through its ambitious melodies in concert, it's exciting to hear the resolution: Crow intones "Angels suffering/ Angels fall from light/ Angels sickening/ Angels suffer," giving way to Armistead's higher-pitched response, which accrues a perfection all the more triumphantly on-the-mark. Offcell's midpoint is a lesser version of "Tripoli", from their 1998 debut. The band's never topped that one, that first song on their first record: its sunny instrumentation hid the "sad I'm gonna die" lyrics for weeks, and only over time, like a slow-release pill, did its intent emerge. "B" is Pinback as garage rock: distorted guitars blending into computer blips and drum machines, the rust and angular gears of their vintage gear praising an idiot god. I thought of the town "B", from William H. Gass' In The Heart of the Heart of the Country, a place of revulsion and poetic repose. As in "Tripoli", there's again a discrepancy between the cheery musicality and creepy lyrics, drones in the air and kids down spiral stairs: "Mommas tell your babies not to rest inside your will/ Kids in refrigerators won't scratch their way out, and never will." "Grey Machine"-- an eleven-minute, string-based doo-wop romance-- streaks across the sky, considering space and time before retreating into the more immediate powers of memory. I don't want Pinback to break-up, but in a way, this unique, potent bag of sweets would be a nice finale to what began so gloriously with "Tripoli" in 1998. You'll have to excuse my romanticism-- and don't worry, there's a Touch and Go full-length due in 2004-- but this grand epic, after many minutes and layered sounds, delivers its own aching epitaph: "Pick me up/ Take me home/ Get me out of here/ Please.""

Carl Craig

69: The Legendary Adventures of a Filter King

Electronic

Jess Harvell

You probably won't be able to find a copy of this. In fact, you probably have more people on your Facebook friends list than there are copies of this floating around out there. For one thing, it's a vinyl-only, 5x12" release. For another, it reissues material few beyond techno freaks heard the first time around, in such a way that even fewer people are going to be able to hear it now. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's quasi-minimalist, breakbeat-driven techno-funk, designed to be mixed. So the format, at least, makes sense. Even Craig's releases as 69 avoid his late-era repetition through their cut-up synth riffage, alternating between sandpaper raw and new-age relaxed, and unpredictably looped breaks, they're still designed to be diced hard between two turntables. It's the availability that rankles. Filter King finally collects some of Craig's best work, out of a large and hard to track down catalog. 69 tracks like "Desire" sound A-OK at home, treating the calloused functionalism of first-wave hip-house to a warm, salted bath in Detroit keyboards. Far be it from me to tell the man how he should administer his own music, but a wider release-- even if not on CD and/or digital-- wouldn't feel quite so... alienatingly cultish. Because this is not difficult music. Craig-as-69 was about the overlap between the rave's peak and the post-club late-night drive, the "innerspace journeys" rhetoric of techno and the crowd-pleasing bumpiness of urban radio from multiple eras. "Jam the Box" is so unpretentiously rugged I wouldn't have been surprised to hear it in a Baltimore club music mix. On the other end of the 69 spectrum, "Microlovr" is as spectrally wiggy as anything on Warp between the bleep era and the wilderness period of Autechre-ian over-programming. But crucially there's always a body-rock undertow that stuff often abjured. As a collection, Filter King is all-things-to-all-people for fans of the "funky and proud" side of electronic dance. Techno-identified stuff in the aughts still has plenty to recommend it, but I'd take the low-res wallop of Filter King over the perfectly sculpted sleekness of cross-continental new-millennium minimalism nine times out of 10. Sure, compared to the bite-sized editing of Hawtin school graduates, the antic beat to "Frequency Finale" sounds like Toni Basil's "Mickey" with two poppers jammed up its nostrils. That's why it's so fun. As someone who's mostly immune to the dry, deadening arpeggios of Craig's much-lauded 21st-century remix work, I appreciated the reminder of a time when he could swing, or get dumb, so effortlessly. Again, you want to deduct points for restricting the music to obsessives, but like those hardcore bands still releasing seven-inches (and Jim O'Rourke), Craig's decision can be read as a bracing fuck-you to all those .rar blogs.

Artist: Carl Craig, Album: 69: The Legendary Adventures of a Filter King, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "You probably won't be able to find a copy of this. In fact, you probably have more people on your Facebook friends list than there are copies of this floating around out there. For one thing, it's a vinyl-only, 5x12" release. For another, it reissues material few beyond techno freaks heard the first time around, in such a way that even fewer people are going to be able to hear it now. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's quasi-minimalist, breakbeat-driven techno-funk, designed to be mixed. So the format, at least, makes sense. Even Craig's releases as 69 avoid his late-era repetition through their cut-up synth riffage, alternating between sandpaper raw and new-age relaxed, and unpredictably looped breaks, they're still designed to be diced hard between two turntables. It's the availability that rankles. Filter King finally collects some of Craig's best work, out of a large and hard to track down catalog. 69 tracks like "Desire" sound A-OK at home, treating the calloused functionalism of first-wave hip-house to a warm, salted bath in Detroit keyboards. Far be it from me to tell the man how he should administer his own music, but a wider release-- even if not on CD and/or digital-- wouldn't feel quite so... alienatingly cultish. Because this is not difficult music. Craig-as-69 was about the overlap between the rave's peak and the post-club late-night drive, the "innerspace journeys" rhetoric of techno and the crowd-pleasing bumpiness of urban radio from multiple eras. "Jam the Box" is so unpretentiously rugged I wouldn't have been surprised to hear it in a Baltimore club music mix. On the other end of the 69 spectrum, "Microlovr" is as spectrally wiggy as anything on Warp between the bleep era and the wilderness period of Autechre-ian over-programming. But crucially there's always a body-rock undertow that stuff often abjured. As a collection, Filter King is all-things-to-all-people for fans of the "funky and proud" side of electronic dance. Techno-identified stuff in the aughts still has plenty to recommend it, but I'd take the low-res wallop of Filter King over the perfectly sculpted sleekness of cross-continental new-millennium minimalism nine times out of 10. Sure, compared to the bite-sized editing of Hawtin school graduates, the antic beat to "Frequency Finale" sounds like Toni Basil's "Mickey" with two poppers jammed up its nostrils. That's why it's so fun. As someone who's mostly immune to the dry, deadening arpeggios of Craig's much-lauded 21st-century remix work, I appreciated the reminder of a time when he could swing, or get dumb, so effortlessly. Again, you want to deduct points for restricting the music to obsessives, but like those hardcore bands still releasing seven-inches (and Jim O'Rourke), Craig's decision can be read as a bracing fuck-you to all those .rar blogs."

Glenn Gould

Bach: The Goldberg Variations

Jazz

Seth Colter Walls

The press release began: “Columbia Masterworks’ recording director and his engineering colleagues are sympathetic veterans who accept as perfectly natural all artists’ studio rituals, foibles, or fancies. But even these hardy souls were surprised by the arrival of young Canadian pianist Glenn Gould and his ‘recording equipment’ for his first Columbia sessions. … It was a balmy June day, but Gould arrived in a coat, beret, muffler and gloves.” The rest of the bulletin detailed the other peculiarities that Gould had brought along with him when recording J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations for the label. These were many. Instead of nobly holding his head high with a proper recitalist’s posture, Gould’s modified piano bench allowed him to get his face right near the keys, where he would proceed to hum audibly while playing. He soaked his arms in hot water for up to 20 minutes before takes and brought a wide variety of pills. He also brought his own bottles of water, which, for 1955, was still something that seemed like only Howard Hughes would do. It was these initial, broadly trumpeted peculiarities that helped shape the Gould myth throughout his too-short life, the audacious genius who slightly unsettled everyone around him. Fittingly, throughout the 20th century, there would be no more audacious and initially unsettling act of musical reinterpretation than Gould’s debut studio recording. With his 1955 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the young pianist made a compelling case for a work that, at the time, was considered an obscure keyboard composition by an otherwise imposing master of Baroque music. Gould made his counter-argument for the piece’s rightful prominence by taking wild liberties with the source. In addition to playing the work on a piano instead of on the 18th-century era-appropriate harpsichord, Gould rushed tempos and varied his attack with aggression. His body flailed up and down his creaky chair, displaying melodramatic physical gestures—the very cliche of a young genius at work. But instead of seeming like an impudent youngster, Gould’s innovations signaled a clear love for the source material. He took the piece’s unusual status—a theme-and-variation work so varied that it could be hard for a lay audience to follow—and realized that it could be performed with modernist vigor, full of wild twists of character. Gould drilled his famous technique over time, using an obscure practice known as “finger tapping” to produce muscle memory in his fingers—thereby allowing for dizzying flurries of notes with astonishing control and minimal physical exertion. And at a time when the future members of the Beatles were still obsessing over British skiffle bands, Gould was pioneering the use of the studio as an instrument by splicing together different takes: finding startling collisions of mood that could help drive his conception of a work. In its fervor for relating Gould’s peculiar behaviors, Columbia’s first press release neglected to mention all the substantive ways in which the pianist was revolutionizing the art of interpretation. The critics, however, did notice. Gould’s Goldbergs received a raft of rave reviews from the New York Times, Newsweek, and Musical America, among others. Even writers who were unsure if his was a respectable way to approach Bach’s sublime music counted themselves impressed by Gould’s array of approaches—including his dancing sprightliness, a dashing top-gear of speed, and swooning sense of drama. And Gould proved a forceful advocate for his own ideas about the piece. In erudite liner notes that accompanied the first LP issue in 1956, Gould writes about the strangeness of Bach’s theme-and-variation work: “...one might justifiably expect that … the principal pursuit of the variations would be the illumination of the motivic facets within the melodic complex of the Aria theme. However such is not the case, for the thematic substance, a docile but richly embellished soprano line, possesses an intrinsic homogeneity which bequeaths nothing to posterity and which, so far as motivic representation is concerned, is totally forgotten during the 30 variations.” It’s a fascinating read of the piece—even if it seems trollish to accuse Bach’s Aria for adding “nothing to posterity.” (At least Gould was consistent in his dislike of obvious, top-line melodies. He didn’t much care for Italian opera, either.) Still, it’s true that the power associated with the culmination of Gould's Goldbergs—when the Aria returns—has something to do with how far the listener has traveled since the opening. If you want to make that Aria really floor people at the end, why not blow out the contrasts between the variations as you play them? Gould makes an argument for his own radical vision of how the piece should be played. He sees his own jagged cadence not in defiance of but as a requisite to Bach’s score. Even listeners who put the Goldbergs on as background music are likely to sit up and pay attention when Gould pours it on during Variation No. 5. With that one far edge of intensity established, his ruminative way of handling Bach’s “Canons” is far more seductive. Gould’s lightning-fast runs tend to get all the press, but they cast into sharp relief his poetic handling of the so-called “black pearl” Variation No. 25. The power of Gould’s 1955 Goldbergs comes from the contrasts that Gould chooses to emphasize. Gould’s first version of the Goldbergs reportedly sold 40,000 copies in its first five years: A considerable amount for any classical recording at any time, but particularly notable at the dawn of the LP era. The pop-cultural primacy of Gould’s first take on the Goldbergs also fostered some detractors, among them some Bach specialists like Wanda Landowska who were also interested in rescuing the piece from its relative obscurity. Late in life, Gould joined their ranks, offering some withering criticisms of his 1955 recording. In 1981, the pianist told the critic and biographer Tim Page that the 1955 handling of the “black pearl” variation had become particularly unwelcome to his own ears: “It seems to say—Please Take Note: This Is Tragedy. You know, it just doesn’t have the dignity to bear its suffering with a hint of quiet resignation.” The idea of judging his famous 1955 recording on the basis of those criteria seems like a category error—or a set-up destined to prompt a negative assessment of his first record. The latter possibility is at least plausible, since when Gould offered this self-criticism to Page, he was doing so as part of a new publicity campaign. After being

Artist: Glenn Gould, Album: Bach: The Goldberg Variations, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 10.0 Album review: "The press release began: “Columbia Masterworks’ recording director and his engineering colleagues are sympathetic veterans who accept as perfectly natural all artists’ studio rituals, foibles, or fancies. But even these hardy souls were surprised by the arrival of young Canadian pianist Glenn Gould and his ‘recording equipment’ for his first Columbia sessions. … It was a balmy June day, but Gould arrived in a coat, beret, muffler and gloves.” The rest of the bulletin detailed the other peculiarities that Gould had brought along with him when recording J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations for the label. These were many. Instead of nobly holding his head high with a proper recitalist’s posture, Gould’s modified piano bench allowed him to get his face right near the keys, where he would proceed to hum audibly while playing. He soaked his arms in hot water for up to 20 minutes before takes and brought a wide variety of pills. He also brought his own bottles of water, which, for 1955, was still something that seemed like only Howard Hughes would do. It was these initial, broadly trumpeted peculiarities that helped shape the Gould myth throughout his too-short life, the audacious genius who slightly unsettled everyone around him. Fittingly, throughout the 20th century, there would be no more audacious and initially unsettling act of musical reinterpretation than Gould’s debut studio recording. With his 1955 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the young pianist made a compelling case for a work that, at the time, was considered an obscure keyboard composition by an otherwise imposing master of Baroque music. Gould made his counter-argument for the piece’s rightful prominence by taking wild liberties with the source. In addition to playing the work on a piano instead of on the 18th-century era-appropriate harpsichord, Gould rushed tempos and varied his attack with aggression. His body flailed up and down his creaky chair, displaying melodramatic physical gestures—the very cliche of a young genius at work. But instead of seeming like an impudent youngster, Gould’s innovations signaled a clear love for the source material. He took the piece’s unusual status—a theme-and-variation work so varied that it could be hard for a lay audience to follow—and realized that it could be performed with modernist vigor, full of wild twists of character. Gould drilled his famous technique over time, using an obscure practice known as “finger tapping” to produce muscle memory in his fingers—thereby allowing for dizzying flurries of notes with astonishing control and minimal physical exertion. And at a time when the future members of the Beatles were still obsessing over British skiffle bands, Gould was pioneering the use of the studio as an instrument by splicing together different takes: finding startling collisions of mood that could help drive his conception of a work. In its fervor for relating Gould’s peculiar behaviors, Columbia’s first press release neglected to mention all the substantive ways in which the pianist was revolutionizing the art of interpretation. The critics, however, did notice. Gould’s Goldbergs received a raft of rave reviews from the New York Times, Newsweek, and Musical America, among others. Even writers who were unsure if his was a respectable way to approach Bach’s sublime music counted themselves impressed by Gould’s array of approaches—including his dancing sprightliness, a dashing top-gear of speed, and swooning sense of drama. And Gould proved a forceful advocate for his own ideas about the piece. In erudite liner notes that accompanied the first LP issue in 1956, Gould writes about the strangeness of Bach’s theme-and-variation work: “...one might justifiably expect that … the principal pursuit of the variations would be the illumination of the motivic facets within the melodic complex of the Aria theme. However such is not the case, for the thematic substance, a docile but richly embellished soprano line, possesses an intrinsic homogeneity which bequeaths nothing to posterity and which, so far as motivic representation is concerned, is totally forgotten during the 30 variations.” It’s a fascinating read of the piece—even if it seems trollish to accuse Bach’s Aria for adding “nothing to posterity.” (At least Gould was consistent in his dislike of obvious, top-line melodies. He didn’t much care for Italian opera, either.) Still, it’s true that the power associated with the culmination of Gould's Goldbergs—when the Aria returns—has something to do with how far the listener has traveled since the opening. If you want to make that Aria really floor people at the end, why not blow out the contrasts between the variations as you play them? Gould makes an argument for his own radical vision of how the piece should be played. He sees his own jagged cadence not in defiance of but as a requisite to Bach’s score. Even listeners who put the Goldbergs on as background music are likely to sit up and pay attention when Gould pours it on during Variation No. 5. With that one far edge of intensity established, his ruminative way of handling Bach’s “Canons” is far more seductive. Gould’s lightning-fast runs tend to get all the press, but they cast into sharp relief his poetic handling of the so-called “black pearl” Variation No. 25. The power of Gould’s 1955 Goldbergs comes from the contrasts that Gould chooses to emphasize. Gould’s first version of the Goldbergs reportedly sold 40,000 copies in its first five years: A considerable amount for any classical recording at any time, but particularly notable at the dawn of the LP era. The pop-cultural primacy of Gould’s first take on the Goldbergs also fostered some detractors, among them some Bach specialists like Wanda Landowska who were also interested in rescuing the piece from its relative obscurity. Late in life, Gould joined their ranks, offering some withering criticisms of his 1955 recording. In 1981, the pianist told the critic and biographer Tim Page that the 1955 handling of the “black pearl” variation had become particularly unwelcome to his own ears: “It seems to say—Please Take Note: This Is Tragedy. You know, it just doesn’t have the dignity to bear its suffering with a hint of quiet resignation.” The idea of judging his famous 1955 recording on the basis of those criteria seems like a category error—or a set-up destined to prompt a negative assessment of his first record. The latter possibility is at least plausible, since when Gould offered this self-criticism to Page, he was doing so as part of a new publicity campaign. After being"

Various Artists

5: Five Years of Hyperdub

Mike Powell

Beatportal.com user Yield Load thinks "dubstep is wicked music, but I didn't know how your suppose to dance to it." The grammar's not there, but the idea is: Dubstep-- the nocturnal, claustrophobic subgenera of British electronic music that emerged from garage and 2-step-- is descended from dance music but doesn't sound like it's made for dancing. The tempos feel slow, the mood is usually threatening, lonely, or both. If there's any movement I can imagine going comfortably with dubstep, it's what Three 6 Mafia's DJ Paul rapped about on "Side 2 Side", and the standard step at indie-rock shows worldwide: "I'm in the club posted up, got my arms folded... twistin' my body from side to side." Of all the videos of dubstep dancing I clicked through online, two stick out in my mind. One is by an overweight teenager in what is likely his parents' living room, a decorative ship's lifesaver on the wall between what appear to be illustrations of the seaside, a large desktop computer at one end of the room, an open door leading to a yard on the other. A track by the producer Skream comes on, and he starts to move his fists up and down like a child banging steadily on a table, taking very deliberate steps across a carpet. That's it. The other is of two men, one black and one white, dressed in suits, dancing in some kind of white, computer-generated void, as the names of their dance steps flash across the bottom of the screen. My favorite is called "Lost in the woods (with bewildered stare)". I don't know if the comedy was intentional. Either way, it's a sign that dubstep has reached a particular position of cultural importance: hundreds of thousands of people are watching a suburban kid dance to it on YouTube. Hyperdub is usually cited as dubstep's most prominent and progressive label, but it's hard to even call most of their releases dubstep, strictly speaking. They've released off-centered hip-hop (Flying Lotus), brooding chill-out music that recasts the chill-out room as a bunker (Kode9 & the Spaceape), and misfit rave music (Zomby). Hyperdub's sound isn't dubstep, it's urban noir in the 21st century, or at least how the 21st century looked in 1970s science fiction: A procession of florescent signs over an empty street. 5: Five Years of Hyperdub-- their first CD compilation-- has the tall task of trying to anthologize the label without making it seem like they've run out of ideas. Their solution is sensible: One disc of new material; one disc of classics. Like any label compilation, 5 functions as a kind of mission statement: Here's what we've done; here's what we do. Most of the music on it sounds made for the head, not the feet. In a way, it's like a modern analog to Warp's 1992 compilation, Artificial Intelligence, whose sleeve was a picture of an empty armchair in a living room-- electronic music that has a place in the home. Describing his music to The Guardian in 2007, the producer Burial said, "I want it to be like a little sanctuary. It's like that 24-hour stand selling tea on a rainy night, glowing in the dark." His two albums, Burial and Untrue, have more in common with Massive Attack and ambient music than anything you'd hear at a club. Zomby, on the other hand-- whose Where Were U in 92? sounded like jungle and drum'n'bass chewed up by a Game Boy-- described his daily routine to XLR8R magazine as "lots of rolling joints" and "eating some chicken-based dish à la carte." These guys aren't public faces, they're lost in the crowd-- they're people spacing out in their living rooms, alone. Burial's identity was secret for two years after he started putting out records. Zomby will be photographed only while wearing a mask. Anyone familiar with Hyperdub-- or dubstep in general-- will know most of the classics disc. That's the point. One of the label's first singles-- Kode9 & the Spaceape's bloodless cover of the Specials' "Ghost Town"-- doesn't even have a beat behind it; it floats. Burial shows up twice, once with "South London Boroughs", once with "Distant Lights". There's Zomby's nightmarish "Spliff Dub (Rustie Remix)", whose sampled vocalist sings, "One spliff a day keep the evil away," over a track of 8-bit garbage and what sounds like synthesizers in a deep fryer. (The music captures weed's paranoia more than its elation-- I mean, is it supposed to make me like pot or fear it?) The word "classics" has a kind of accelerated, lax definition in dance music, and some of the tracks on the second disc are from as recent as earlier this year. The heaviest is Joker's "Digidesign", a spacious, bone-simple piece of 80s-style R&B based around a handful of acidic countermelodies, so elegant it almost plays like a jingle. The first disc-- the new one-- is good, but doesn't hold up to the classics. Those expected to bring it, as it were-- Burial, Zomby, Joker, Flying Lotus-- do, just not in any revelatory ways. Of the bunch, Zomby is probably the most satisfying because he's so hard to pin down: "Tarantula" doesn't sound exactly like anything he's released before, and his most recent single, "Digital Flora"/"Digital Fauna" doesn't sound like "Tarantula". I was never sold on Quarta 330's chiptune routine, nor on Kode9's music either-- their new contributions roll off. The only track that actively perplexes me is Black Chow's "Purple Smoke", whose junkshop hip-hop beats are the most brainlessly retro flourish on the whole compilation, and whose come-hither Japanese vocalist confuses sexy with corny. Minor complaints. Hyperdub deserves this: They've reshaped the little world they work in, and they've reached out to a wider one-- whether that world dances or not.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: 5: Five Years of Hyperdub, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Beatportal.com user Yield Load thinks "dubstep is wicked music, but I didn't know how your suppose to dance to it." The grammar's not there, but the idea is: Dubstep-- the nocturnal, claustrophobic subgenera of British electronic music that emerged from garage and 2-step-- is descended from dance music but doesn't sound like it's made for dancing. The tempos feel slow, the mood is usually threatening, lonely, or both. If there's any movement I can imagine going comfortably with dubstep, it's what Three 6 Mafia's DJ Paul rapped about on "Side 2 Side", and the standard step at indie-rock shows worldwide: "I'm in the club posted up, got my arms folded... twistin' my body from side to side." Of all the videos of dubstep dancing I clicked through online, two stick out in my mind. One is by an overweight teenager in what is likely his parents' living room, a decorative ship's lifesaver on the wall between what appear to be illustrations of the seaside, a large desktop computer at one end of the room, an open door leading to a yard on the other. A track by the producer Skream comes on, and he starts to move his fists up and down like a child banging steadily on a table, taking very deliberate steps across a carpet. That's it. The other is of two men, one black and one white, dressed in suits, dancing in some kind of white, computer-generated void, as the names of their dance steps flash across the bottom of the screen. My favorite is called "Lost in the woods (with bewildered stare)". I don't know if the comedy was intentional. Either way, it's a sign that dubstep has reached a particular position of cultural importance: hundreds of thousands of people are watching a suburban kid dance to it on YouTube. Hyperdub is usually cited as dubstep's most prominent and progressive label, but it's hard to even call most of their releases dubstep, strictly speaking. They've released off-centered hip-hop (Flying Lotus), brooding chill-out music that recasts the chill-out room as a bunker (Kode9 & the Spaceape), and misfit rave music (Zomby). Hyperdub's sound isn't dubstep, it's urban noir in the 21st century, or at least how the 21st century looked in 1970s science fiction: A procession of florescent signs over an empty street. 5: Five Years of Hyperdub-- their first CD compilation-- has the tall task of trying to anthologize the label without making it seem like they've run out of ideas. Their solution is sensible: One disc of new material; one disc of classics. Like any label compilation, 5 functions as a kind of mission statement: Here's what we've done; here's what we do. Most of the music on it sounds made for the head, not the feet. In a way, it's like a modern analog to Warp's 1992 compilation, Artificial Intelligence, whose sleeve was a picture of an empty armchair in a living room-- electronic music that has a place in the home. Describing his music to The Guardian in 2007, the producer Burial said, "I want it to be like a little sanctuary. It's like that 24-hour stand selling tea on a rainy night, glowing in the dark." His two albums, Burial and Untrue, have more in common with Massive Attack and ambient music than anything you'd hear at a club. Zomby, on the other hand-- whose Where Were U in 92? sounded like jungle and drum'n'bass chewed up by a Game Boy-- described his daily routine to XLR8R magazine as "lots of rolling joints" and "eating some chicken-based dish à la carte." These guys aren't public faces, they're lost in the crowd-- they're people spacing out in their living rooms, alone. Burial's identity was secret for two years after he started putting out records. Zomby will be photographed only while wearing a mask. Anyone familiar with Hyperdub-- or dubstep in general-- will know most of the classics disc. That's the point. One of the label's first singles-- Kode9 & the Spaceape's bloodless cover of the Specials' "Ghost Town"-- doesn't even have a beat behind it; it floats. Burial shows up twice, once with "South London Boroughs", once with "Distant Lights". There's Zomby's nightmarish "Spliff Dub (Rustie Remix)", whose sampled vocalist sings, "One spliff a day keep the evil away," over a track of 8-bit garbage and what sounds like synthesizers in a deep fryer. (The music captures weed's paranoia more than its elation-- I mean, is it supposed to make me like pot or fear it?) The word "classics" has a kind of accelerated, lax definition in dance music, and some of the tracks on the second disc are from as recent as earlier this year. The heaviest is Joker's "Digidesign", a spacious, bone-simple piece of 80s-style R&B based around a handful of acidic countermelodies, so elegant it almost plays like a jingle. The first disc-- the new one-- is good, but doesn't hold up to the classics. Those expected to bring it, as it were-- Burial, Zomby, Joker, Flying Lotus-- do, just not in any revelatory ways. Of the bunch, Zomby is probably the most satisfying because he's so hard to pin down: "Tarantula" doesn't sound exactly like anything he's released before, and his most recent single, "Digital Flora"/"Digital Fauna" doesn't sound like "Tarantula". I was never sold on Quarta 330's chiptune routine, nor on Kode9's music either-- their new contributions roll off. The only track that actively perplexes me is Black Chow's "Purple Smoke", whose junkshop hip-hop beats are the most brainlessly retro flourish on the whole compilation, and whose come-hither Japanese vocalist confuses sexy with corny. Minor complaints. Hyperdub deserves this: They've reshaped the little world they work in, and they've reached out to a wider one-- whether that world dances or not."

Jack Name

Weird Moons

Rock

Evan Minsker

Jack Name has a flair for the dramatic. Here's the establishing shot that opens Weird Moons: "Activated midnight, actuate the beast/ Cast your spell on the bastard child blasting Judas Priest." The stage is set for a concept album featuring werewolves, one of Jupiter's moons, skulking synthesizers, specters, and watchers. In the tradition that began with last year's Light Show, Name hasn't arbitrarily packaged some hodgepodge collection of weird songs—he's delivering a handful of tableaux to form a story arc within the same universe. This isn't new territory for the man, whose recorded vocals often seem to be filtered through the guise of a character. On Light Show, he altered his voice to play both protagonist and antagonist in a battle between darkness and light, like a 9-year-old acting out both parts while narrating the war between his Cyclops and Magneto action figures. Name makes allegorical music, symbolic of the darkness that lives in the real world. When he was finished recording his debut album, he was diagnosed with cancer. "I had had it for five years without even knowing," he said. The werewolves and shape-shifters on Weird Moons were inspired by what his body went through during treatment. "I can’t stand still, my body is changing, and I feel like I’m all alone," he sings on "Lowly Ants". "Sometimes I waste my mind, I feel like I’m already dying." Steeped in darkness, Name has carved out his best album yet. Some of Light Show's more vibrant and maximal tracks ("Do the Shadow") couldn't stand up to the more spacious songs, the ones that had room for him to linger on a verse for a bit ("Pure Terror"). On Weird Moons, he lets himself tease out grooves for a bit longer, and the extra space puts a better spotlight on just how good this guy is at writing hooks. "Under the Weird Moon" packs rafter-reaching glam pop while the brooding synths of "Running After Ganymede" pulse in the darkness, occasionally mimicking a wolf's howl. He's soulfully ethereal like Station to Station or Low-era Bowie ("Something About Glenn Goins"), and he's crunchy and industrial ("Watcher Talk"). If his voice isn't muffled beneath other instrumentals, it's almost unsettlingly present, like when he coolly asserts "I like to feel my body changing form" at the front of the "Waiting for Another Moon" mix. In order to enjoy Light Show, it felt necessary to be invested in the album's story. A lot of the songs were essentially character-establishing scenes in a film, and even though the music was interesting, some songs felt like vehicles for the plot. While there's obviously an arc here, all eight of these songs work when removed from the album's context. His ambition as a songwriter has earned him a spot in the Hall of Pop Eccentrics alongside Ariel Pink (P**om Pom featured Name) and Connan Mockasin, but when you step back from the monsters and implicit darkness, you realize that Jack Name is also very good at writing earworms.

Artist: Jack Name, Album: Weird Moons, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Jack Name has a flair for the dramatic. Here's the establishing shot that opens Weird Moons: "Activated midnight, actuate the beast/ Cast your spell on the bastard child blasting Judas Priest." The stage is set for a concept album featuring werewolves, one of Jupiter's moons, skulking synthesizers, specters, and watchers. In the tradition that began with last year's Light Show, Name hasn't arbitrarily packaged some hodgepodge collection of weird songs—he's delivering a handful of tableaux to form a story arc within the same universe. This isn't new territory for the man, whose recorded vocals often seem to be filtered through the guise of a character. On Light Show, he altered his voice to play both protagonist and antagonist in a battle between darkness and light, like a 9-year-old acting out both parts while narrating the war between his Cyclops and Magneto action figures. Name makes allegorical music, symbolic of the darkness that lives in the real world. When he was finished recording his debut album, he was diagnosed with cancer. "I had had it for five years without even knowing," he said. The werewolves and shape-shifters on Weird Moons were inspired by what his body went through during treatment. "I can’t stand still, my body is changing, and I feel like I’m all alone," he sings on "Lowly Ants". "Sometimes I waste my mind, I feel like I’m already dying." Steeped in darkness, Name has carved out his best album yet. Some of Light Show's more vibrant and maximal tracks ("Do the Shadow") couldn't stand up to the more spacious songs, the ones that had room for him to linger on a verse for a bit ("Pure Terror"). On Weird Moons, he lets himself tease out grooves for a bit longer, and the extra space puts a better spotlight on just how good this guy is at writing hooks. "Under the Weird Moon" packs rafter-reaching glam pop while the brooding synths of "Running After Ganymede" pulse in the darkness, occasionally mimicking a wolf's howl. He's soulfully ethereal like Station to Station or Low-era Bowie ("Something About Glenn Goins"), and he's crunchy and industrial ("Watcher Talk"). If his voice isn't muffled beneath other instrumentals, it's almost unsettlingly present, like when he coolly asserts "I like to feel my body changing form" at the front of the "Waiting for Another Moon" mix. In order to enjoy Light Show, it felt necessary to be invested in the album's story. A lot of the songs were essentially character-establishing scenes in a film, and even though the music was interesting, some songs felt like vehicles for the plot. While there's obviously an arc here, all eight of these songs work when removed from the album's context. His ambition as a songwriter has earned him a spot in the Hall of Pop Eccentrics alongside Ariel Pink (P**om Pom featured Name) and Connan Mockasin, but when you step back from the monsters and implicit darkness, you realize that Jack Name is also very good at writing earworms."

Kristian, Shalabi, St. Onge

Kristian, Shalabi, St. Onge

Mark Richard-San

Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge. It doesn't roll off the tongue like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, now does it? Although I will concede that this bandname is slightly less cumbersome than Anderson-Bruford-Wakeman-Howe, it's fair to say that this record was not intended for discussion. Can you see asking someone, "Have you heard the new one by Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge?" Or, "I like the Pixies, John Coltrane and Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge." Fuck it. It just doesn't work. But I have to figure something out, because if asked about recent favorite records, my answer would include this thing by Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge. A bit of background on the players: David Kristian is an electronic musician fond of collaboration who explores the audibility threshold with his ambient works (see Room Tone) as well as dabbling in beat-driven techno. Sam Shalabi is a versatile musician who has lent his name to the near-East trance combo the Shalabi Effect, as well as playing on countless records in the Constellation/Godspeed/Alien8 axis. And Alexandre St-Onge plays upright bass with the Shalabi Effect, in addition to other gigs. All are based in Montreal, where they've performed together as a trio on occasion. While this record is improvised, the mood of each piece is so integrated and clearly defined it feels more like studied composition. St-Onge's upright bass provides the anchor with unsettling drones, scuffs and plucks. Kristian fills in dark colors on an analog synth, sometimes with gurgling modulation, and other times with quaking bass tones. Shalabi, meanwhile, provides much of the texture, picking and scraping his way on guitar and oud. It's an odd combination on paper, but the three work together as a single six-armed beast intent on conjuring black, brooding atmosphere. A discomforting sense of anxiety is established from the outset with "Dirt Well." Kristian lays down a warm drone, and over it, St-Onge bows a slow, creaking bass. When Shalabi adds delicate plucks on oud, the music becomes paradoxically both menacing and delicate, as the tiny, precise sounds far exceed the sum of their parts. The music occasionally threatens to burst into pure noise, but the crescendo (and attendant relief) never comes. This music is about the stalk and the hunt, not the kill, and the tension is impressively thick. The mood throughout is so consistent and relentless that some of the individual pieces are hard to differentiate. As Kristian's is the most sonically flexible instrument, the tracks that stand out most are those where he takes the lead. "The Heart of a Mouse" begins with some looped glitch-style friction, introduces other low level pops and hisses, and then becomes an increasingly quiet buzz that fades over the course of a minute or more. "Insistent Falls" finds Kristian piercing the silence with a high-pitched, grating synth drone piled on by guitar scrapes and bass moans. St-Onge take the lead on "Little Feck," bowing higher in his instrument's range and imparting an eerie, speech-like quality that works perfectly next to the hypnotic hum. Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge is a demanding record-- one that requires a certain amount of work from the listener to be fully appreciated. The subtlety and quiet detail simply cannot be grasped without concentration. So no more talking; it is time now we listen.

Artist: Kristian, Shalabi, St. Onge, Album: Kristian, Shalabi, St. Onge, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge. It doesn't roll off the tongue like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, now does it? Although I will concede that this bandname is slightly less cumbersome than Anderson-Bruford-Wakeman-Howe, it's fair to say that this record was not intended for discussion. Can you see asking someone, "Have you heard the new one by Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge?" Or, "I like the Pixies, John Coltrane and Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge." Fuck it. It just doesn't work. But I have to figure something out, because if asked about recent favorite records, my answer would include this thing by Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge. A bit of background on the players: David Kristian is an electronic musician fond of collaboration who explores the audibility threshold with his ambient works (see Room Tone) as well as dabbling in beat-driven techno. Sam Shalabi is a versatile musician who has lent his name to the near-East trance combo the Shalabi Effect, as well as playing on countless records in the Constellation/Godspeed/Alien8 axis. And Alexandre St-Onge plays upright bass with the Shalabi Effect, in addition to other gigs. All are based in Montreal, where they've performed together as a trio on occasion. While this record is improvised, the mood of each piece is so integrated and clearly defined it feels more like studied composition. St-Onge's upright bass provides the anchor with unsettling drones, scuffs and plucks. Kristian fills in dark colors on an analog synth, sometimes with gurgling modulation, and other times with quaking bass tones. Shalabi, meanwhile, provides much of the texture, picking and scraping his way on guitar and oud. It's an odd combination on paper, but the three work together as a single six-armed beast intent on conjuring black, brooding atmosphere. A discomforting sense of anxiety is established from the outset with "Dirt Well." Kristian lays down a warm drone, and over it, St-Onge bows a slow, creaking bass. When Shalabi adds delicate plucks on oud, the music becomes paradoxically both menacing and delicate, as the tiny, precise sounds far exceed the sum of their parts. The music occasionally threatens to burst into pure noise, but the crescendo (and attendant relief) never comes. This music is about the stalk and the hunt, not the kill, and the tension is impressively thick. The mood throughout is so consistent and relentless that some of the individual pieces are hard to differentiate. As Kristian's is the most sonically flexible instrument, the tracks that stand out most are those where he takes the lead. "The Heart of a Mouse" begins with some looped glitch-style friction, introduces other low level pops and hisses, and then becomes an increasingly quiet buzz that fades over the course of a minute or more. "Insistent Falls" finds Kristian piercing the silence with a high-pitched, grating synth drone piled on by guitar scrapes and bass moans. St-Onge take the lead on "Little Feck," bowing higher in his instrument's range and imparting an eerie, speech-like quality that works perfectly next to the hypnotic hum. Kristian, Shalabi, St-Onge is a demanding record-- one that requires a certain amount of work from the listener to be fully appreciated. The subtlety and quiet detail simply cannot be grasped without concentration. So no more talking; it is time now we listen."

Jackie-O Motherfucker

Liberation

Experimental,Rock

Brent S. Sirota

The late French historian Ferdinand Braudel demanded that history be written in the longue duree. History's typical subject matter, politics and war, were but weather fluttering above the passage of a deeper time-- the time of soil and seas, the rise and fall of populations, the global transit of diseases, the expansion of economies. Beneath the speeches and explosions, history creeps along in the long span; perhaps it was all slower than anyone might have imagined. Though bound to the seventy-five minute surface of a compact disc, Portland's Jackie-O Motherfucker have discovered the secret of making music in the longue duree. Masterminds Jef Brown and Tom Greenwood, along with the platoon of weirdo outrock soldiers of fortune with whom they surround themselves, have been crafting the perfect antithesis to the millennial strain of gloomy post-rock, a genre dominated by the likes of Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and the lately touted Explosions in the Sky. Against the ubiquitous music of crisis, Jackie-O has managed to make a very serious case for the music of continuity. Its sheer joy and wonder reside neither in tension nor resolve, neither verse nor chorus, but simply in dogged perseverance. Last year's breathtaking Fig. 5 unfolded in the deep time of the American musical past. The album simply eroded the strata of one musical epoch after another, as if beneath it all there was some secret to be disinterred. The dusty x-ray on that record's cover served as the perfect manifesto for the album: underneath all this, somewhere there must be bone, a frame and foundation that holds it all together. Liberation has no such quest; it is rivery and meandering, with no discernible source or mouth. Liberation simply travels, picking up junk and jetsam along the way, discarding it somewhere downstream, and rambling on. Beginning somewhat arbitrarily with the clatter of "Peace on Earth," one gets the distinct feeling of having suddenly and for no apparent reason been made privy to the secret sound of everyday life. Drums tap out a hesitant shuffle. The plaintive vibraphone chatters brightly. The strings drone and yawn as if they were the innards of some great machine that makes everything turn. The guitars enter into the fray, commanding some sense of direction, but to little avail. One might compare the proceedings to the drone jams of Spacemen 3's Dreamweapon; both render dissonance rather precarious-- as if a song could emerge from the noise at any minute. But "Peace on Earth" never really resolves into a stable entity. After ten minutes, "Peace" simply shuts the door on the listener, as if never meant to be heard. The similarly lengthy "Ray-O-Graph" owes much to the dreary Celtic fog perfected by the Dirty Three. Above the programmed drizzle of the drum track, the guitar and strings manage to recreate the seasick interplay of Mick Turner and Warren Ellis. Jackie-O Motherfucker add squiggly sound effects and softly squawking horns to the mix, giving the track a kind of drunken stagger. The twanging "Northern Line" sets the sweet voice of Jocelyn Goldsmith above the throbbing backporch Americana that dominated Fig. 5, serving as a transitional piece in much the same way as the similarly lilting "Beautiful September" did on the previous album. The twenty-minute "In Between" cycles like seasons through sparse, wintry branches of bare guitar and lush passages of noise in full bloom. The fierce and nimble free improv drumming is easily the track's strongest suit; they're recklessly creative even when the guitar minimalism grows somewhat tiresome. As an exercise in patience, the first ten minutes of "In Between" is masterful; but musically, the point is made early on and is barely expanded upon. The second half, however, erupts into backwater freakout, bleeding the thin twang into thick distortion like some confederate Sonic Youth. The subtle and engaging "Pray" intertwines a spare and beautiful guitar line in slithering electronics. Vibes, organ and several guitars slowly begin to flesh out the sound, transforming skeletal country into irresistibly creepy psychedelia on the order of Popol Vuh. The guitars skitter off into mock-sitar, sax crows in the corner, yet the restraint and economy of "Pray" is almost saintly. There is a stubborn lag to Liberation that some will no doubt find infuriating. Lacking the focus and narrative of Fig. 5, Liberation occasionally plays like molasses. But the album is nonetheless beautiful, for the consistently amazing quality of Jackie-O Motherfucker is their ability to color experimental music and noise with more candor and emotional sophistication than most turtlenecked troubadours. But it takes time. And time might just be the instrument played with the most brilliance on Liberation: sped up, slowed to a crawl, made to stand dead still and maybe even at times, dismissed. The stereo display times this album at seventy-three earthly minutes, but I'm not quite sure how long the music has really been around. Seems like ages.

Artist: Jackie-O Motherfucker, Album: Liberation, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "The late French historian Ferdinand Braudel demanded that history be written in the longue duree. History's typical subject matter, politics and war, were but weather fluttering above the passage of a deeper time-- the time of soil and seas, the rise and fall of populations, the global transit of diseases, the expansion of economies. Beneath the speeches and explosions, history creeps along in the long span; perhaps it was all slower than anyone might have imagined. Though bound to the seventy-five minute surface of a compact disc, Portland's Jackie-O Motherfucker have discovered the secret of making music in the longue duree. Masterminds Jef Brown and Tom Greenwood, along with the platoon of weirdo outrock soldiers of fortune with whom they surround themselves, have been crafting the perfect antithesis to the millennial strain of gloomy post-rock, a genre dominated by the likes of Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and the lately touted Explosions in the Sky. Against the ubiquitous music of crisis, Jackie-O has managed to make a very serious case for the music of continuity. Its sheer joy and wonder reside neither in tension nor resolve, neither verse nor chorus, but simply in dogged perseverance. Last year's breathtaking Fig. 5 unfolded in the deep time of the American musical past. The album simply eroded the strata of one musical epoch after another, as if beneath it all there was some secret to be disinterred. The dusty x-ray on that record's cover served as the perfect manifesto for the album: underneath all this, somewhere there must be bone, a frame and foundation that holds it all together. Liberation has no such quest; it is rivery and meandering, with no discernible source or mouth. Liberation simply travels, picking up junk and jetsam along the way, discarding it somewhere downstream, and rambling on. Beginning somewhat arbitrarily with the clatter of "Peace on Earth," one gets the distinct feeling of having suddenly and for no apparent reason been made privy to the secret sound of everyday life. Drums tap out a hesitant shuffle. The plaintive vibraphone chatters brightly. The strings drone and yawn as if they were the innards of some great machine that makes everything turn. The guitars enter into the fray, commanding some sense of direction, but to little avail. One might compare the proceedings to the drone jams of Spacemen 3's Dreamweapon; both render dissonance rather precarious-- as if a song could emerge from the noise at any minute. But "Peace on Earth" never really resolves into a stable entity. After ten minutes, "Peace" simply shuts the door on the listener, as if never meant to be heard. The similarly lengthy "Ray-O-Graph" owes much to the dreary Celtic fog perfected by the Dirty Three. Above the programmed drizzle of the drum track, the guitar and strings manage to recreate the seasick interplay of Mick Turner and Warren Ellis. Jackie-O Motherfucker add squiggly sound effects and softly squawking horns to the mix, giving the track a kind of drunken stagger. The twanging "Northern Line" sets the sweet voice of Jocelyn Goldsmith above the throbbing backporch Americana that dominated Fig. 5, serving as a transitional piece in much the same way as the similarly lilting "Beautiful September" did on the previous album. The twenty-minute "In Between" cycles like seasons through sparse, wintry branches of bare guitar and lush passages of noise in full bloom. The fierce and nimble free improv drumming is easily the track's strongest suit; they're recklessly creative even when the guitar minimalism grows somewhat tiresome. As an exercise in patience, the first ten minutes of "In Between" is masterful; but musically, the point is made early on and is barely expanded upon. The second half, however, erupts into backwater freakout, bleeding the thin twang into thick distortion like some confederate Sonic Youth. The subtle and engaging "Pray" intertwines a spare and beautiful guitar line in slithering electronics. Vibes, organ and several guitars slowly begin to flesh out the sound, transforming skeletal country into irresistibly creepy psychedelia on the order of Popol Vuh. The guitars skitter off into mock-sitar, sax crows in the corner, yet the restraint and economy of "Pray" is almost saintly. There is a stubborn lag to Liberation that some will no doubt find infuriating. Lacking the focus and narrative of Fig. 5, Liberation occasionally plays like molasses. But the album is nonetheless beautiful, for the consistently amazing quality of Jackie-O Motherfucker is their ability to color experimental music and noise with more candor and emotional sophistication than most turtlenecked troubadours. But it takes time. And time might just be the instrument played with the most brilliance on Liberation: sped up, slowed to a crawl, made to stand dead still and maybe even at times, dismissed. The stereo display times this album at seventy-three earthly minutes, but I'm not quite sure how long the music has really been around. Seems like ages."

Books on Tape

Dinosaur Dinosaur

Electronic

Brian Howe

I'm glad this book is on tape, 'cause I'm imagining the large-print version and it isn't pretty: Rat-tat-tat-tat-BAM-rat-tat-BAM, chugga chugga, etc. Hard on the eyes. Right away, you know Todd Drootin is on some freaky shit: Not only does the cover art's Books on Tape logo have an umlaut over the "p", but it also has them under the "k" and the "n." Dude, stop, I can't even do that with my keyboard! Drootin, on the other hand, can do lots with his various inputs, drum machines, and samplers, and while Dinosaur Dinosaur makes for good interstate driving music, it might have you concerned you've drifted onto the rumble strip. Speaking of audio-lit, this project shouldn't be confused with that of better-known electronic manipulators the Books. Where that group is solemnly stony, Drootin's beatscapes are more deranged and abrasive. As sonic reshaping goes, Dinosaur Dinosaur is less interested in making a statement-- for instance, there are no broad intuitive leaps between recognizable samples-- than in making a racket, pulling open a silverware drawer full of variously-oxidized but uniformly spindly percussion on the profoundly apolitical "Noise Is Political", then sending it down the terror chute of "Killing Machine", ravaged with clipped syllables and rhythmic moans, a punchy staccato melody and floppy bass, and a stabbing swarm of synths. Mellower tracks like "Surly Ambassador" sound like Jason Forrest tweaking a long Boards of Canada loop until he just can't take it anymore, then ratcheting it up to a hectic house bounce that picks up debris like a Katamari before collapsing into a sinister dirge. This music can't sit still: Densely detailed and riotous mini-compositions frantically leapfrog over each other; old grooves split before they wear out their welcome and come back with new haircuts; the electronic scalpel makes mincemeat of the obsolete analog cadaver. And later, the dumb tropicalia of "Bubblegum" gets flash-frozen by the shifting digitalia blowing around it, and the anthemic guitars on "Upon Rock City" decay into stuttering glitch-fests at both ends: rock music body-modded toward ambiguity in the age of elective sonic surgery.

Artist: Books on Tape, Album: Dinosaur Dinosaur, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "I'm glad this book is on tape, 'cause I'm imagining the large-print version and it isn't pretty: Rat-tat-tat-tat-BAM-rat-tat-BAM, chugga chugga, etc. Hard on the eyes. Right away, you know Todd Drootin is on some freaky shit: Not only does the cover art's Books on Tape logo have an umlaut over the "p", but it also has them under the "k" and the "n." Dude, stop, I can't even do that with my keyboard! Drootin, on the other hand, can do lots with his various inputs, drum machines, and samplers, and while Dinosaur Dinosaur makes for good interstate driving music, it might have you concerned you've drifted onto the rumble strip. Speaking of audio-lit, this project shouldn't be confused with that of better-known electronic manipulators the Books. Where that group is solemnly stony, Drootin's beatscapes are more deranged and abrasive. As sonic reshaping goes, Dinosaur Dinosaur is less interested in making a statement-- for instance, there are no broad intuitive leaps between recognizable samples-- than in making a racket, pulling open a silverware drawer full of variously-oxidized but uniformly spindly percussion on the profoundly apolitical "Noise Is Political", then sending it down the terror chute of "Killing Machine", ravaged with clipped syllables and rhythmic moans, a punchy staccato melody and floppy bass, and a stabbing swarm of synths. Mellower tracks like "Surly Ambassador" sound like Jason Forrest tweaking a long Boards of Canada loop until he just can't take it anymore, then ratcheting it up to a hectic house bounce that picks up debris like a Katamari before collapsing into a sinister dirge. This music can't sit still: Densely detailed and riotous mini-compositions frantically leapfrog over each other; old grooves split before they wear out their welcome and come back with new haircuts; the electronic scalpel makes mincemeat of the obsolete analog cadaver. And later, the dumb tropicalia of "Bubblegum" gets flash-frozen by the shifting digitalia blowing around it, and the anthemic guitars on "Upon Rock City" decay into stuttering glitch-fests at both ends: rock music body-modded toward ambiguity in the age of elective sonic surgery."

Tiga

Sexor

Electronic

Mark Pytlik

Forget chestnuts and nog. The close of the calendar year is a time for rifling through the past twelve months and catching up on all the records you either didn't pay enough attention to or slept on entirely. Released with a whimper in February, Tiga Sontag's Sexor probably falls under that banner for a lot of people. While the Montreal DJ has long enjoyed renown among clubgoers as a top-tier supplier of slithery, trashy electro (check his 2002 DJ-Kicks mix for proof), this marks the first original outing of his career. Released on Canada's Last Gang Records-- best known for breaking the likes of Death From Above 1979, Metric, and MSTRKRFT-- Sexor finds Tiga atoning for the silence with a series of bangers, skits, and-- in keeping with a longstanding tradition that's seen him try his hand at everything from Nelly's "Hot in Herre" to fellow Montrealer Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night"-- a fresh handful of cover treatments. The bad news is that Sexor feels a bit forced, a bit sellotaped together. Where Sontag's singles and remixes are generally pretty immaculate, you can sense his anxiety over the long-form format here. Everything from the album's loosely-conceived conceptual overlay (Sexor is apparently a planet where "imagination rules the nation" and "sexy lightning always strikes twice") to its light smattering of voicemail excerpts and telephone conversations points to his willingness to kowtow to long-player conventions. While it's clear from the tracks' compact running times that he's trying to keep things concise and poppy, he might have been better served by instead letting some of these songs unfurl and build. Nonetheless, with co-production courtesy of Soulwax and Jesper Dahlback, there's also lots to like here. With a bassline containing trace amounts of "Material Girl" and an insidious little chorus, "Far From Home" proves Sontag fluent in effervescent, 80s-tinged synthpop. Elsewhere, Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears tags along for the snaking, sweaty electro of "You Gonna Want Me", "Brothers" conquers a silly lyric with a convincing New Order impression, and "Good As Gold" finds Tiga and producers Soulwax channeling their inner James Murphys to deliver the album's only real epic. Even the covers yield decent returns. Despite being originally released in 2004, Tiga's drastically retooled version of Public Enemy's "Louder Than a Bomb" makes strange sense here; perhaps even more surprising is that he also manages to wring genuine atmosphere out of a slowed-to-a-crawl take on Nine Inch Nails' "Down in It". Ultimately though, too much of Sexor feels suspiciously like the middle of the road. If it doesn't bump enough, slink enough, or sing enough, what good is it? Tiga's capable of better than this, and his discography bears that fact out; the good news is that he's reportedly working with Soulwax on a followup. That he's not waiting another five years for the next album has to bode well.

Artist: Tiga, Album: Sexor, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "Forget chestnuts and nog. The close of the calendar year is a time for rifling through the past twelve months and catching up on all the records you either didn't pay enough attention to or slept on entirely. Released with a whimper in February, Tiga Sontag's Sexor probably falls under that banner for a lot of people. While the Montreal DJ has long enjoyed renown among clubgoers as a top-tier supplier of slithery, trashy electro (check his 2002 DJ-Kicks mix for proof), this marks the first original outing of his career. Released on Canada's Last Gang Records-- best known for breaking the likes of Death From Above 1979, Metric, and MSTRKRFT-- Sexor finds Tiga atoning for the silence with a series of bangers, skits, and-- in keeping with a longstanding tradition that's seen him try his hand at everything from Nelly's "Hot in Herre" to fellow Montrealer Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night"-- a fresh handful of cover treatments. The bad news is that Sexor feels a bit forced, a bit sellotaped together. Where Sontag's singles and remixes are generally pretty immaculate, you can sense his anxiety over the long-form format here. Everything from the album's loosely-conceived conceptual overlay (Sexor is apparently a planet where "imagination rules the nation" and "sexy lightning always strikes twice") to its light smattering of voicemail excerpts and telephone conversations points to his willingness to kowtow to long-player conventions. While it's clear from the tracks' compact running times that he's trying to keep things concise and poppy, he might have been better served by instead letting some of these songs unfurl and build. Nonetheless, with co-production courtesy of Soulwax and Jesper Dahlback, there's also lots to like here. With a bassline containing trace amounts of "Material Girl" and an insidious little chorus, "Far From Home" proves Sontag fluent in effervescent, 80s-tinged synthpop. Elsewhere, Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears tags along for the snaking, sweaty electro of "You Gonna Want Me", "Brothers" conquers a silly lyric with a convincing New Order impression, and "Good As Gold" finds Tiga and producers Soulwax channeling their inner James Murphys to deliver the album's only real epic. Even the covers yield decent returns. Despite being originally released in 2004, Tiga's drastically retooled version of Public Enemy's "Louder Than a Bomb" makes strange sense here; perhaps even more surprising is that he also manages to wring genuine atmosphere out of a slowed-to-a-crawl take on Nine Inch Nails' "Down in It". Ultimately though, too much of Sexor feels suspiciously like the middle of the road. If it doesn't bump enough, slink enough, or sing enough, what good is it? Tiga's capable of better than this, and his discography bears that fact out; the good news is that he's reportedly working with Soulwax on a followup. That he's not waiting another five years for the next album has to bode well."

Dntel

Life Is Full of Possibilities

Electronic,Rock

Paul Cooper

The title of Dntel's third album is really ringing true these days. Who'd have thought that our lives would bear witness to bioterrorism and mass destruction? Even the album cover tacitly cautions against optimism. Yes, life might bring you a million dollar check one day, but as symbolized by the ambulance on Life Is Full of Possibilities' artwork, the envelope could be smeared with anthrax spores. Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello couldn't have known of present hazards when he put together this uniformly superb album; what he did know was that it was time to progress as an artist. Dntel's previous albums-- released on the maverick Californian extreme IDM label, Phthalo-- showcased Tamborello's mastery of the \xB5-Ziq form. Both Early Works for Me If It Works for You and Something Always Goes Wrong are heavily indebted to Mike Paradinas' askance appreciation of melody and spastic beat programming. Tamborello's transition from slinging "Eno-core" bass bricks in his first band (the Los Angeles-based ambient pop band Strictly Ballroom) to creating exemplary IDM appeared effortless. And though Something Always Goes Wrong didn't demonstrate much desire to explore uncharted sonic realms, it remained an engaging and rewarding listen. But with Life Is Full of Possibilities, Tamborello separates himself from the tired, poor and huddled masses of bedroom programmers. Enlisting members of the West Coast indie elite, the album is a matchless combination of scratchy indie rock and post-Oval electronics. What impresses most about the record, beyond the strength of the songs, is Tamborello's willingness to treat his vocalists as he would a synth tone. Most musicians are content to let their guests contribute a couple of lines and leave it at that-- at most, they'll tack on a cheeseball vocoder effect. Tamborello takes it a step further, cutting up and contorting members of Beachwood Sparks, That Dog, and Death Cab for Cutie. Tamborello crinkles and manipulates vocalist Chris Gunst, the frontman for both Strictly Ballroom and Beachwood Sparks. But this is more than a bassist's revenge on his former band's lead singer. As Gunst sings the first lines to "Umbrella," Tamborello inserts micropauses into the phonemes Gunst utters. When Gunst's nostrum, "You can turn the city upside down if you want to/ But it won't keep you dry," appears for a second time, Tamborello clothes it with a delicate vacuum cleaner sound. On its third appearance, Gunst's voice appears au natural; instead, it's the accompaniment-- a church organ and a swarm of ambience swirls-- that Tamborello alters before a relatively conventional drum machine beat kicks "Umbrella" through the classic-opening-track goal posts. As superb as "Umbrella" is, it's not a patch on "Anywhere Anyone," a track which features L.A. performance poet and singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd, who provided the recent Dublab compilation, Freeways, with its best moment: "Digital Version 2.1." In Tamborello, Todd has found her musical soulmate. As she plaintively sings, "How can you love me if you don't love yourself," Tamborello's accompaniment swoons and swoops in its dense coverings, until a tinny xylophone chimes through with the most delicate of melodies and accompaniments. It's similar in effect to the way Björk uses harp lines amid the fuzz and static of Vespertine's glitchier moments. The drifting aleatoric ambience of "Pillowcase" reminds me of David Kristian's Roomtone sonic sculptures. Sounds waft by or linger barely long enough to register as rhythmic or melodic phrases. "Fear of Corners," in its crackled way, vies with Aaliyah and Timbaland's "Try Again" for most rhythmically obtuse but still mad funky programming. Like "Try Again," "Fear of Corners" is fearful of its inherent groove, and muffles it with smothering ambience. Nonetheless, the insuppressible and awkward beats persist with an Autechre-ish resilience. Tamborello's partner in the electro-pop act Figurine, Meredith Figurine, takes vocal duties on "Suddenly is Sooner Than You Think." Figurine tries her utmost to match Mia Doi Todd's heartfelt bleakness; instead, she has to settle for matching Dani Siciliano, the serene vocalist of Herbert's masterful Bodily Functions album. This is hardly a major concession, especially given that Tamborello's setting for the song appears to confirm to Matthew Herbert's Personal Contract for the Composition of Music manifesto. The only thing you might miss on this track is a fat beat, but the filigree lyrics and processed accordions would sound really crap with a two-step monster pattern humping away at them. Tamborello, like Herbert, has nobly allowed good taste to dictate his approach, rather than the prospect of a club hit. The title track begins as another David Kristian-style sound sculpture before transforming into ringing bells conversing with abstract noises that bubble up from the impenetrable deep. As such, Tamborello succinctly and accurately describes life's possibilities becoming actualities. "Why I'm So Unhappy" features former That Dog bassist, Rachel Haden. Haden collaborated with the For Carnation's Brain McMahan (also the ex-frontman of Slint) on the song's lyrics. But despite the track's pedigree, I'm distracted from the lyrics by the beauty of Haden's voice and how Tamborello frames it: in drifting strings and Björkish ambiance. Towards the end of the song, Tamborello forces every element-- Haden's voice, the sparse percussion, and the guitar-- through broken distortion. However excellent "Why I'm So Unhappy" is, it's eclipsed in brilliance by "(This is) The Dream of Evan and Chan." Death Cab for Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard guests and compliments Tamborello's most melodic, Eno-esque distortions with his wistful lyrics of nostalgia ("He then played every song from 1993/ The crowd applauded/ He curtsied bashfully). Tamborello brings in the sturdy beats that were such a staple of Something Always Goes Wrong, until Gibbard repeats, "Until the telephone started ringing, ringing, ringing off." At this point, the song slows and stills in preparation for the closing instrumental "Last Songs." Life Is Full of Possibilities confirms that, while possibilities exist in a quantum state of probability, it takes a special person to convert them into certainties. I've only become this ecstatic about one other album this year (Herbert's Bodily Functions), and Life Is Full of Possibilities exceeds even that landmark album. Possibly, it'll have an similar effect on you.

Artist: Dntel, Album: Life Is Full of Possibilities, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 9.3 Album review: "The title of Dntel's third album is really ringing true these days. Who'd have thought that our lives would bear witness to bioterrorism and mass destruction? Even the album cover tacitly cautions against optimism. Yes, life might bring you a million dollar check one day, but as symbolized by the ambulance on Life Is Full of Possibilities' artwork, the envelope could be smeared with anthrax spores. Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello couldn't have known of present hazards when he put together this uniformly superb album; what he did know was that it was time to progress as an artist. Dntel's previous albums-- released on the maverick Californian extreme IDM label, Phthalo-- showcased Tamborello's mastery of the \xB5-Ziq form. Both Early Works for Me If It Works for You and Something Always Goes Wrong are heavily indebted to Mike Paradinas' askance appreciation of melody and spastic beat programming. Tamborello's transition from slinging "Eno-core" bass bricks in his first band (the Los Angeles-based ambient pop band Strictly Ballroom) to creating exemplary IDM appeared effortless. And though Something Always Goes Wrong didn't demonstrate much desire to explore uncharted sonic realms, it remained an engaging and rewarding listen. But with Life Is Full of Possibilities, Tamborello separates himself from the tired, poor and huddled masses of bedroom programmers. Enlisting members of the West Coast indie elite, the album is a matchless combination of scratchy indie rock and post-Oval electronics. What impresses most about the record, beyond the strength of the songs, is Tamborello's willingness to treat his vocalists as he would a synth tone. Most musicians are content to let their guests contribute a couple of lines and leave it at that-- at most, they'll tack on a cheeseball vocoder effect. Tamborello takes it a step further, cutting up and contorting members of Beachwood Sparks, That Dog, and Death Cab for Cutie. Tamborello crinkles and manipulates vocalist Chris Gunst, the frontman for both Strictly Ballroom and Beachwood Sparks. But this is more than a bassist's revenge on his former band's lead singer. As Gunst sings the first lines to "Umbrella," Tamborello inserts micropauses into the phonemes Gunst utters. When Gunst's nostrum, "You can turn the city upside down if you want to/ But it won't keep you dry," appears for a second time, Tamborello clothes it with a delicate vacuum cleaner sound. On its third appearance, Gunst's voice appears au natural; instead, it's the accompaniment-- a church organ and a swarm of ambience swirls-- that Tamborello alters before a relatively conventional drum machine beat kicks "Umbrella" through the classic-opening-track goal posts. As superb as "Umbrella" is, it's not a patch on "Anywhere Anyone," a track which features L.A. performance poet and singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd, who provided the recent Dublab compilation, Freeways, with its best moment: "Digital Version 2.1." In Tamborello, Todd has found her musical soulmate. As she plaintively sings, "How can you love me if you don't love yourself," Tamborello's accompaniment swoons and swoops in its dense coverings, until a tinny xylophone chimes through with the most delicate of melodies and accompaniments. It's similar in effect to the way Björk uses harp lines amid the fuzz and static of Vespertine's glitchier moments. The drifting aleatoric ambience of "Pillowcase" reminds me of David Kristian's Roomtone sonic sculptures. Sounds waft by or linger barely long enough to register as rhythmic or melodic phrases. "Fear of Corners," in its crackled way, vies with Aaliyah and Timbaland's "Try Again" for most rhythmically obtuse but still mad funky programming. Like "Try Again," "Fear of Corners" is fearful of its inherent groove, and muffles it with smothering ambience. Nonetheless, the insuppressible and awkward beats persist with an Autechre-ish resilience. Tamborello's partner in the electro-pop act Figurine, Meredith Figurine, takes vocal duties on "Suddenly is Sooner Than You Think." Figurine tries her utmost to match Mia Doi Todd's heartfelt bleakness; instead, she has to settle for matching Dani Siciliano, the serene vocalist of Herbert's masterful Bodily Functions album. This is hardly a major concession, especially given that Tamborello's setting for the song appears to confirm to Matthew Herbert's Personal Contract for the Composition of Music manifesto. The only thing you might miss on this track is a fat beat, but the filigree lyrics and processed accordions would sound really crap with a two-step monster pattern humping away at them. Tamborello, like Herbert, has nobly allowed good taste to dictate his approach, rather than the prospect of a club hit. The title track begins as another David Kristian-style sound sculpture before transforming into ringing bells conversing with abstract noises that bubble up from the impenetrable deep. As such, Tamborello succinctly and accurately describes life's possibilities becoming actualities. "Why I'm So Unhappy" features former That Dog bassist, Rachel Haden. Haden collaborated with the For Carnation's Brain McMahan (also the ex-frontman of Slint) on the song's lyrics. But despite the track's pedigree, I'm distracted from the lyrics by the beauty of Haden's voice and how Tamborello frames it: in drifting strings and Björkish ambiance. Towards the end of the song, Tamborello forces every element-- Haden's voice, the sparse percussion, and the guitar-- through broken distortion. However excellent "Why I'm So Unhappy" is, it's eclipsed in brilliance by "(This is) The Dream of Evan and Chan." Death Cab for Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard guests and compliments Tamborello's most melodic, Eno-esque distortions with his wistful lyrics of nostalgia ("He then played every song from 1993/ The crowd applauded/ He curtsied bashfully). Tamborello brings in the sturdy beats that were such a staple of Something Always Goes Wrong, until Gibbard repeats, "Until the telephone started ringing, ringing, ringing off." At this point, the song slows and stills in preparation for the closing instrumental "Last Songs." Life Is Full of Possibilities confirms that, while possibilities exist in a quantum state of probability, it takes a special person to convert them into certainties. I've only become this ecstatic about one other album this year (Herbert's Bodily Functions), and Life Is Full of Possibilities exceeds even that landmark album. Possibly, it'll have an similar effect on you."

Manda Rin

My DNA

Electronic,Pop/R&B

Jessica Suarez

When your music leans on the power of your youth, it's impossible to age gracefully without undergoing a reinvention. When Glasgow's Bis laid down their "Teen-C Revolution" manifesto in the mid-1990s, a vague but confrontational screed against fascists, homophobes, and adults, they put an expiration date on their band. But if their lyrics hadn't made it explicit, their music-- a mix of playground taunts, synths, and guitars-- would have spoken the same manifesto. You can trace a crayon line from Bis to young, shouting, dancing bands like the Gossip and Los Campesinos!. And so, a decade and a half years later, and on her first solo record, Bis singer and keyboard player Amanda MacKinnon (still using her Bis stage name Manda Rin) finds herself trying to catch up to bands that were, no doubt, influenced by Bis. She experiments with variations on the bright, kandy pop that Bis perfected and finds a more nuanced form of rebellion, but she can't find the reinvention she needs. Shedding the shackles of Bis probably sounds ridiculous when most Americans have probably never heard of the band. In America the band are best known for writing the end credits song to "The Powerpuff Girls". But in 1996, the band played "Top of the Pops" before they even had a record deal-- the first group ever to do so. They released three albums and numerous EPs on the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label here and the Delgados' Chemikal Underground imprint in Europe-- and sold 100,000 copies of their debut album in Japan. Straight off, it's easier to see her connections to Bis rather than her defection. MacKinnon is in cartoon form on My DNA' s cover, just as she was on many of Bis' EPs. But it shows her staring solemnly into a mirror at her real reflection, still wearing her trademark hair barrettes, but definitely looking more mature. On "Tell It to the Kids" Bis bragged that Manda Rin used her "childlike appearance" as a weapon-the My DNA cover shows her older and a bit defenseless. My DNA tries on different variations of dance pop: disco, electro, even glassy Scandinavian dance. Sometimes these songs work: The title track's laserbeam keyboards and rubbery bassline are brash and fun enough to make up for Manda Rin's more subdued vocals. She's less relenting on "The Word Out", where her chants ("Did you ever write the perfect song/ Did you ever say sorry to who you should") serve as cheerleaders for the song's ripsaw guitars. Manda Rin reaches for icy pop princess sheen on "Love to Hate You". Her voice can't support the tension. It aims for delicate but comes off thin. While the new tonal and rhythmic palette betrays desire to branch out, the results show more courage, but less confidence than her material with Bis. Bis were never subtle, but MacKinnon wants more nuance and less shouting on My DNA . She takes issue with issues like body acceptance ("Less Than Zero"), abuse ("Bruises") and relationships ("Break-Up/Breakdown"). But lines like "Boys say go/ Girls say no" ("Guilty Pleasure") are too flat to make their point. For an album about being comfortable with yourself, My DNA is still not sure what it should be.

Artist: Manda Rin, Album: My DNA, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "When your music leans on the power of your youth, it's impossible to age gracefully without undergoing a reinvention. When Glasgow's Bis laid down their "Teen-C Revolution" manifesto in the mid-1990s, a vague but confrontational screed against fascists, homophobes, and adults, they put an expiration date on their band. But if their lyrics hadn't made it explicit, their music-- a mix of playground taunts, synths, and guitars-- would have spoken the same manifesto. You can trace a crayon line from Bis to young, shouting, dancing bands like the Gossip and Los Campesinos!. And so, a decade and a half years later, and on her first solo record, Bis singer and keyboard player Amanda MacKinnon (still using her Bis stage name Manda Rin) finds herself trying to catch up to bands that were, no doubt, influenced by Bis. She experiments with variations on the bright, kandy pop that Bis perfected and finds a more nuanced form of rebellion, but she can't find the reinvention she needs. Shedding the shackles of Bis probably sounds ridiculous when most Americans have probably never heard of the band. In America the band are best known for writing the end credits song to "The Powerpuff Girls". But in 1996, the band played "Top of the Pops" before they even had a record deal-- the first group ever to do so. They released three albums and numerous EPs on the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label here and the Delgados' Chemikal Underground imprint in Europe-- and sold 100,000 copies of their debut album in Japan. Straight off, it's easier to see her connections to Bis rather than her defection. MacKinnon is in cartoon form on My DNA' s cover, just as she was on many of Bis' EPs. But it shows her staring solemnly into a mirror at her real reflection, still wearing her trademark hair barrettes, but definitely looking more mature. On "Tell It to the Kids" Bis bragged that Manda Rin used her "childlike appearance" as a weapon-the My DNA cover shows her older and a bit defenseless. My DNA tries on different variations of dance pop: disco, electro, even glassy Scandinavian dance. Sometimes these songs work: The title track's laserbeam keyboards and rubbery bassline are brash and fun enough to make up for Manda Rin's more subdued vocals. She's less relenting on "The Word Out", where her chants ("Did you ever write the perfect song/ Did you ever say sorry to who you should") serve as cheerleaders for the song's ripsaw guitars. Manda Rin reaches for icy pop princess sheen on "Love to Hate You". Her voice can't support the tension. It aims for delicate but comes off thin. While the new tonal and rhythmic palette betrays desire to branch out, the results show more courage, but less confidence than her material with Bis. Bis were never subtle, but MacKinnon wants more nuance and less shouting on My DNA . She takes issue with issues like body acceptance ("Less Than Zero"), abuse ("Bruises") and relationships ("Break-Up/Breakdown"). But lines like "Boys say go/ Girls say no" ("Guilty Pleasure") are too flat to make their point. For an album about being comfortable with yourself, My DNA is still not sure what it should be."

Bigger Lovers

This Affair Never Happened... And Here Are Eleven Songs About It

Stephen M. Deusner

Call it Big Wheel pop: Philadelphia's Bigger Lovers make music influenced as much by the detritus of their youth as by the romantic wreckage that's ostensibly the true subject of the their third album, This Affair Never Happened... And Here Are Eleven Songs About It. One song is titled "Ninja Suit", the following track namedrops Bionic Man, and even the word "affair" in the title seems oddly old-fashioned. The four band members are children of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and their songs of failed romance emanate from a shared period nostalgia. However, they don't ape early XTC or prime Cheap Trick, for example, the same way Interpol echo Joy Division. Instead, for The Bigger Lovers, these influences fall in the category of older-sibling bands: groups your big sister or brother played and therefore you thought had to be the coolest. On This Affair Never Happened, the band comes across as candid and self-effacing-- as well as a little self-congratulatory for being so candid and self-effacing. But beneath the back-patting and the reflexive jibes lies a sober sincerity. The heartache, the romantic confusion, the almost adolescent hopelessness-- it's all very, very serious business. In a sense, it's the flipside of irony: Rather than not caring enough, The Bigger Lovers care so much that they sometimes lose perspective. At times this tunnel-vision romanticism can be endearing in a shamelessly escapist way, a tonic for life's real hurt. On songs like "I Resign" and "Slice of Life", they prove themselves a more-than-capable pop band. Ed Hogarty's guitar cuts through with riffs that are as concise as they are catchy, as Scott Jefferson and erstwhile Pernice Brothers drummer Patrick Berkery maintain a strong pop momentum. But too often on This Affair Never Happened, the band sounds like they just need to get over it. "Blowtorch" is a humdrum shuffle that tries to sell us lines like, "Black coffee, booze and cigarettes/ Have kept me running on fumes." And who knows what to make of the line, "And it's hard to sleep/ When the shit is ankle deep" from "Hollywood". Additionally, the determinedly inconsequential "No Heroics" brings This Affair Never Happened to a screeching halt midway through, and the record doesn't get moving again until two tracks later, with the dermatological love song "Peel It Away". The album ends with "For Christ's Sake", a Christmastime lament that mixes cloying coyness ("Thoughts stick to my mind/ Like head lice") with a chorus ("Come back to me/ For Christ's sake") whose cleverness undercuts its heartfelt plea. As a follow-up to the more focused songwriting of their two previous albums, This Affair Never Happened ultimately sounds disappointing and a little hollow, with no real experience behind the sentiments. Maybe if that affair really had happened, these eleven songs might pack more punch.

Artist: Bigger Lovers, Album: This Affair Never Happened... And Here Are Eleven Songs About It, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "Call it Big Wheel pop: Philadelphia's Bigger Lovers make music influenced as much by the detritus of their youth as by the romantic wreckage that's ostensibly the true subject of the their third album, This Affair Never Happened... And Here Are Eleven Songs About It. One song is titled "Ninja Suit", the following track namedrops Bionic Man, and even the word "affair" in the title seems oddly old-fashioned. The four band members are children of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and their songs of failed romance emanate from a shared period nostalgia. However, they don't ape early XTC or prime Cheap Trick, for example, the same way Interpol echo Joy Division. Instead, for The Bigger Lovers, these influences fall in the category of older-sibling bands: groups your big sister or brother played and therefore you thought had to be the coolest. On This Affair Never Happened, the band comes across as candid and self-effacing-- as well as a little self-congratulatory for being so candid and self-effacing. But beneath the back-patting and the reflexive jibes lies a sober sincerity. The heartache, the romantic confusion, the almost adolescent hopelessness-- it's all very, very serious business. In a sense, it's the flipside of irony: Rather than not caring enough, The Bigger Lovers care so much that they sometimes lose perspective. At times this tunnel-vision romanticism can be endearing in a shamelessly escapist way, a tonic for life's real hurt. On songs like "I Resign" and "Slice of Life", they prove themselves a more-than-capable pop band. Ed Hogarty's guitar cuts through with riffs that are as concise as they are catchy, as Scott Jefferson and erstwhile Pernice Brothers drummer Patrick Berkery maintain a strong pop momentum. But too often on This Affair Never Happened, the band sounds like they just need to get over it. "Blowtorch" is a humdrum shuffle that tries to sell us lines like, "Black coffee, booze and cigarettes/ Have kept me running on fumes." And who knows what to make of the line, "And it's hard to sleep/ When the shit is ankle deep" from "Hollywood". Additionally, the determinedly inconsequential "No Heroics" brings This Affair Never Happened to a screeching halt midway through, and the record doesn't get moving again until two tracks later, with the dermatological love song "Peel It Away". The album ends with "For Christ's Sake", a Christmastime lament that mixes cloying coyness ("Thoughts stick to my mind/ Like head lice") with a chorus ("Come back to me/ For Christ's sake") whose cleverness undercuts its heartfelt plea. As a follow-up to the more focused songwriting of their two previous albums, This Affair Never Happened ultimately sounds disappointing and a little hollow, with no real experience behind the sentiments. Maybe if that affair really had happened, these eleven songs might pack more punch."

The Samps

The Samps EP

Electronic

Zach Kelly

Last year, Cole M. Greif-Neill (the sometimes-guitarist for Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and one-third of the Samps) made a simple admission in an interview with Vice about his sample-based collective: "I can tell you that we have no idea what we're doing." On the surface, we could take him at his word. Here are three Californians taking time out from their other bands to put together a little EP, often via web, with no desire to play any of the material in a live setting. Often, this sort of homemade pleasure project can be a little too indulgent, and as long as the day job is working out, there's really little risk. But The Samps is a tight, wonderfully nuanced little outing where all that pleasure really shines through. Each experimental element here is firmly supported by genuine grooves and an ability to distill a variety of pop genres-- from cartoonish electronics to hammy disco boogie-- to their gratifying essences. And even if the result is sometimes unrefined, it's anything but uninformed. For a debut that packs such a punch, it's a little surprising that it runs for all of about 15 minutes, including two schizoid interludes that work as intros to each side. But with the four tracks that remain-- complete with retrograded funk and R&B, chintzy video game noises, and the occasional glam rock pose-- it feels as if the guys have hand-picked the highlights from some non-existent long player. Each of these tracks could be a standout single. So instead of faulting The Samps for being a too short, you could also look at it like the weeding has already been done for you. Though these songs are accessible, there's still room for a little tinkering and some full-blown left turns into the strange. Take "Hyperbolic", which starts as a springy, robotic B-boy jam and pulls a U-turn right into a blippy lite-rave track. These head-turning shifts provide some insight into how these tracks were crafted. Sometimes this interplay obstructs the groove, as a perfectly hooky concoction is hijacked and reworked as a result of another member taking the reigns and reinterpreting the sounds and ideas. While this kind of collaborative process might not make for a terribly smooth listen, it surely creates a more dynamic-- and ultimately more engaging-- space for these tripped-out grooves to incubate in.

Artist: The Samps, Album: The Samps EP, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Last year, Cole M. Greif-Neill (the sometimes-guitarist for Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and one-third of the Samps) made a simple admission in an interview with Vice about his sample-based collective: "I can tell you that we have no idea what we're doing." On the surface, we could take him at his word. Here are three Californians taking time out from their other bands to put together a little EP, often via web, with no desire to play any of the material in a live setting. Often, this sort of homemade pleasure project can be a little too indulgent, and as long as the day job is working out, there's really little risk. But The Samps is a tight, wonderfully nuanced little outing where all that pleasure really shines through. Each experimental element here is firmly supported by genuine grooves and an ability to distill a variety of pop genres-- from cartoonish electronics to hammy disco boogie-- to their gratifying essences. And even if the result is sometimes unrefined, it's anything but uninformed. For a debut that packs such a punch, it's a little surprising that it runs for all of about 15 minutes, including two schizoid interludes that work as intros to each side. But with the four tracks that remain-- complete with retrograded funk and R&B, chintzy video game noises, and the occasional glam rock pose-- it feels as if the guys have hand-picked the highlights from some non-existent long player. Each of these tracks could be a standout single. So instead of faulting The Samps for being a too short, you could also look at it like the weeding has already been done for you. Though these songs are accessible, there's still room for a little tinkering and some full-blown left turns into the strange. Take "Hyperbolic", which starts as a springy, robotic B-boy jam and pulls a U-turn right into a blippy lite-rave track. These head-turning shifts provide some insight into how these tracks were crafted. Sometimes this interplay obstructs the groove, as a perfectly hooky concoction is hijacked and reworked as a result of another member taking the reigns and reinterpreting the sounds and ideas. While this kind of collaborative process might not make for a terribly smooth listen, it surely creates a more dynamic-- and ultimately more engaging-- space for these tripped-out grooves to incubate in."

Great Northern

Remind Me Where the Light Is

Rock

Joshua Love

Ideally for a band, getting a song played in a commercial or during a TV show or film shouldn't merely be a means of putting money in its pockets. There's always the concurrent hope that people will be so moved, turned on, or at least intrigued by the song that they'll hunt down the tune and artist. We've all done it-- memorize a snatch of the lyrics and then either hit up Google or consult the sage minds who respond to queries at Yahoo! Answers (you might even find out how to drywall while you're at it). The L.A.-based electro-rock act Great Northern (ironically a pretty Google-unfriendly moniker) make the kind of music that just happens to be perfect for selling things or setting scenes. Unsurprisingly, the band's first album performed both feats, placing songs in ads as well as on both the big and small screens-- "Low Is a Height" even soundtracked a couple of really awesome NBA commercials a year ago that utilized a split-screen gimmick to depict a pair of star hoopsters discussing the importance of the upcoming playoffs. The bad news is that as a roundball junkie I saw these commercials dozens of times, and yet not only was I never once inspired to track down the ad's tune, even listening to it now I can't place it in my memory in conjunction with that commercial. Meanwhile (and I know this is cheating since I already knew and loved the song), I remember somewhat embarrassingly getting a little choked up by the spot where Steve Nash was talking over Radiohead's "House of Cards" (ah, Stevie, will you ever get that ring?). Great Northern's sophomore full-length, Remind Me Where the Light Is, should pick right up where the debut left off in terms of scoring network and celluloid placement, while failing to do much to actually compel people to find out just who composed those atmospheric soundscapes and gauzy melodies. The band's music is spot-on for soundtrack work precisely because it's moody yet unobtrusive, evocative of something, yet noncommittal enough to conceivably fit any emotional tableaux. Thanks to vocalist Rachel Stolte, the album's more driving, insistent, and therefore most successful tracks, particularly "Houses", "Story", "Snakes", and "Mountain", approximate the sound of Madonna fronting a group of stylishly dark, beat-minded rockers from that mid-to-late 90s period when a patina of techno was seemingly de rigueur for would-be-hip MOR guitar acts. There are no shortage of nice touches in these songs-- "Mountains" is propelled by big, cascading drums while "Snakes" arrives on Flaming Lips-ish strings and rides an attractively loping, buzzy guitar line, yet all the major moves are pretty baldly telegraphed, and the results are eminently predictable if admittedly somewhat satisfying in their punchy loudness. The same can't be said for the tracks predominantly sung by co-principal Solon Bixler, which are more heavily distributed towards the back end of the record, and weigh it down perceptibly with purely flat dream-rock wallpaper, forgetting the saving grace of even the least interesting shoegaze band to at least crank up the damn volume. Great Northern may continue to be soundtrack heroes, but complementary aural scenery is likely all the group will ever be so long as its music can't do anything more significant than remind me how I sort of dug former Veruca Salt frontwoman Nina Gordon's first solo album.

Artist: Great Northern, Album: Remind Me Where the Light Is, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "Ideally for a band, getting a song played in a commercial or during a TV show or film shouldn't merely be a means of putting money in its pockets. There's always the concurrent hope that people will be so moved, turned on, or at least intrigued by the song that they'll hunt down the tune and artist. We've all done it-- memorize a snatch of the lyrics and then either hit up Google or consult the sage minds who respond to queries at Yahoo! Answers (you might even find out how to drywall while you're at it). The L.A.-based electro-rock act Great Northern (ironically a pretty Google-unfriendly moniker) make the kind of music that just happens to be perfect for selling things or setting scenes. Unsurprisingly, the band's first album performed both feats, placing songs in ads as well as on both the big and small screens-- "Low Is a Height" even soundtracked a couple of really awesome NBA commercials a year ago that utilized a split-screen gimmick to depict a pair of star hoopsters discussing the importance of the upcoming playoffs. The bad news is that as a roundball junkie I saw these commercials dozens of times, and yet not only was I never once inspired to track down the ad's tune, even listening to it now I can't place it in my memory in conjunction with that commercial. Meanwhile (and I know this is cheating since I already knew and loved the song), I remember somewhat embarrassingly getting a little choked up by the spot where Steve Nash was talking over Radiohead's "House of Cards" (ah, Stevie, will you ever get that ring?). Great Northern's sophomore full-length, Remind Me Where the Light Is, should pick right up where the debut left off in terms of scoring network and celluloid placement, while failing to do much to actually compel people to find out just who composed those atmospheric soundscapes and gauzy melodies. The band's music is spot-on for soundtrack work precisely because it's moody yet unobtrusive, evocative of something, yet noncommittal enough to conceivably fit any emotional tableaux. Thanks to vocalist Rachel Stolte, the album's more driving, insistent, and therefore most successful tracks, particularly "Houses", "Story", "Snakes", and "Mountain", approximate the sound of Madonna fronting a group of stylishly dark, beat-minded rockers from that mid-to-late 90s period when a patina of techno was seemingly de rigueur for would-be-hip MOR guitar acts. There are no shortage of nice touches in these songs-- "Mountains" is propelled by big, cascading drums while "Snakes" arrives on Flaming Lips-ish strings and rides an attractively loping, buzzy guitar line, yet all the major moves are pretty baldly telegraphed, and the results are eminently predictable if admittedly somewhat satisfying in their punchy loudness. The same can't be said for the tracks predominantly sung by co-principal Solon Bixler, which are more heavily distributed towards the back end of the record, and weigh it down perceptibly with purely flat dream-rock wallpaper, forgetting the saving grace of even the least interesting shoegaze band to at least crank up the damn volume. Great Northern may continue to be soundtrack heroes, but complementary aural scenery is likely all the group will ever be so long as its music can't do anything more significant than remind me how I sort of dug former Veruca Salt frontwoman Nina Gordon's first solo album."

Tom Zé

Postmodern Platos EP

Experimental,Global

Ryan Schreiber

Upon my pal Brent DiCrescenzo's suggestion, I've been digging on the recent Luaka Bop compilation of the "best of" the 1960s psychedelic tropicalia band Os Mutantes. If you'll recall, Brent raved about them a couple of weeks back, hyping their use of the Beatles' White Album recording techniques three years before the Fab Four had even conceived that album's existence. He was right, too-- Os Mutantes pretty much got it goin' on. I urge fans of recent Stereolab and Beck LPs to make a journey to the record store, posthaste. (Fuckin' do it, then!) Tom Ze's one of those 60's tropicalia guys. That's the blinding flash of brilliance I'm able to present on Ze's musical background. Y'know, he worked the same scene as Os Mutantes and Brazilian genius Caetano Veloso, drawing influences from everything from bossa nova and samba to American protest songs and Morricone soundtracks. But you know remixes these days-- they're not concerned with maintaining the original feel and emotion of the music. Rather, today's remixers take minor elements from the LP versions and warp them with experimentation. The end product is invariably a completely new track that incorporates a few samples from the original song. This is fine by me, as long as the remixers are competent musicians that can produce something that is not only worth listening to, but that the original artist would deem worthy of bearing their name. In the case of Postmodern Platos (I don't think they're referring to Dana Plato, better known as Kimberly from "Diff'rent Strokes"-- God rest her soul), we've got five fantasmoid remixes, and a straight, previously unreleased Ze track. The selection of artists remixing Ze's material is top-shelf, if a bit predictable. It opens with the High Llamas' gurgly, liquid Squirm-style take on "Defect 2: Curiosidade." The keyboards are distinctly Americanized tropicalia, with jazz organs and studio effects that, at times, seem to have shot forth from the skilled hands of Nigel Godrich. Tortoise's John McEntire's version of the same song follows the Llamas' track nicely, incorporating Brazilian acoustic guitar, a solid bassline, an advanced samba rhythm and Ze's organic vocals and pitch-perfect harmonies. Sean Lennon's rendition of "Defect 5: O Olho Do Lago" sounds decent enough, even if his ideas are somewhat amateurish and obvious (the sample of the electric drill was more effectively executed by-- and I hate to say it-- Ministry, on the opening track of 1989's The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste). But Lennon's obviously spent some much-needed time familiarizing himself with the expensive recording equipment that dad's legendary recordings paid for. He delivers a slow, punching hip-hop beat for the first part of the track, and all-out pre-programmed jungle rhythms for the second. Amon Tobin turns in some predictably spaced-out, jazzy Brazilian drum-n-bass for his remix of-- you guessed it-- "Defect 2: Curiosidade." Despite the fact that we've already heard two versions of the song by this point, Tobin's beats are undeniably refreshing when pitted against the comparitively stale drum tracks of previous cuts. When, four minutes into the almost seven- minute- long nebulaic journey, Tobin breaks out his trademark frenzied rhythmic assault, he casually casts off the best one- and- a- half minutes Postmodern Platos has to offer. Sasha Frere-Jones, who you may recognize from his full-time outfit, Ui, or from the pages of Spin Magazine, dishes up the EP's last remix-- a head-bobbing, mellow spin on "Defect 1: Gene" complete with breathy female vocals. But I can't really be of much help in assessing the quality of Ze's non-album track, "Canudos," since I'm not yet familiar with his latest Luaka Bop long-player, Fabrication Defect, the album the original versions of these songs appear on. I will mention, however, that its angular guitar part and "hillbilly violin" are enough to make me have to pee. Take it how you will. Postmodern Platos works on two levels: it can be experienced by Tom Ze fanatics as an opportunity to hear hip scenesters' interpretations of a tropicalia legend's latest work, or by hip scenesters who know nothing about the guy but are looking for an affordable helping of post-rock and drum-n-bass. You decide which.

Artist: Tom Zé, Album: Postmodern Platos EP, Genre: Experimental,Global, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Upon my pal Brent DiCrescenzo's suggestion, I've been digging on the recent Luaka Bop compilation of the "best of" the 1960s psychedelic tropicalia band Os Mutantes. If you'll recall, Brent raved about them a couple of weeks back, hyping their use of the Beatles' White Album recording techniques three years before the Fab Four had even conceived that album's existence. He was right, too-- Os Mutantes pretty much got it goin' on. I urge fans of recent Stereolab and Beck LPs to make a journey to the record store, posthaste. (Fuckin' do it, then!) Tom Ze's one of those 60's tropicalia guys. That's the blinding flash of brilliance I'm able to present on Ze's musical background. Y'know, he worked the same scene as Os Mutantes and Brazilian genius Caetano Veloso, drawing influences from everything from bossa nova and samba to American protest songs and Morricone soundtracks. But you know remixes these days-- they're not concerned with maintaining the original feel and emotion of the music. Rather, today's remixers take minor elements from the LP versions and warp them with experimentation. The end product is invariably a completely new track that incorporates a few samples from the original song. This is fine by me, as long as the remixers are competent musicians that can produce something that is not only worth listening to, but that the original artist would deem worthy of bearing their name. In the case of Postmodern Platos (I don't think they're referring to Dana Plato, better known as Kimberly from "Diff'rent Strokes"-- God rest her soul), we've got five fantasmoid remixes, and a straight, previously unreleased Ze track. The selection of artists remixing Ze's material is top-shelf, if a bit predictable. It opens with the High Llamas' gurgly, liquid Squirm-style take on "Defect 2: Curiosidade." The keyboards are distinctly Americanized tropicalia, with jazz organs and studio effects that, at times, seem to have shot forth from the skilled hands of Nigel Godrich. Tortoise's John McEntire's version of the same song follows the Llamas' track nicely, incorporating Brazilian acoustic guitar, a solid bassline, an advanced samba rhythm and Ze's organic vocals and pitch-perfect harmonies. Sean Lennon's rendition of "Defect 5: O Olho Do Lago" sounds decent enough, even if his ideas are somewhat amateurish and obvious (the sample of the electric drill was more effectively executed by-- and I hate to say it-- Ministry, on the opening track of 1989's The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste). But Lennon's obviously spent some much-needed time familiarizing himself with the expensive recording equipment that dad's legendary recordings paid for. He delivers a slow, punching hip-hop beat for the first part of the track, and all-out pre-programmed jungle rhythms for the second. Amon Tobin turns in some predictably spaced-out, jazzy Brazilian drum-n-bass for his remix of-- you guessed it-- "Defect 2: Curiosidade." Despite the fact that we've already heard two versions of the song by this point, Tobin's beats are undeniably refreshing when pitted against the comparitively stale drum tracks of previous cuts. When, four minutes into the almost seven- minute- long nebulaic journey, Tobin breaks out his trademark frenzied rhythmic assault, he casually casts off the best one- and- a- half minutes Postmodern Platos has to offer. Sasha Frere-Jones, who you may recognize from his full-time outfit, Ui, or from the pages of Spin Magazine, dishes up the EP's last remix-- a head-bobbing, mellow spin on "Defect 1: Gene" complete with breathy female vocals. But I can't really be of much help in assessing the quality of Ze's non-album track, "Canudos," since I'm not yet familiar with his latest Luaka Bop long-player, Fabrication Defect, the album the original versions of these songs appear on. I will mention, however, that its angular guitar part and "hillbilly violin" are enough to make me have to pee. Take it how you will. Postmodern Platos works on two levels: it can be experienced by Tom Ze fanatics as an opportunity to hear hip scenesters' interpretations of a tropicalia legend's latest work, or by hip scenesters who know nothing about the guy but are looking for an affordable helping of post-rock and drum-n-bass. You decide which."

Dark Meat

Truce Opium

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

I saw Dark Meat play a small club in Washington D.C. shortly after the release of their debut album, Universal Indians. The Athens collective, whose members numbered well into double digits, couldn't all fit on the tiny corner stage, so a guitarist and a horn player had to play from the audience. Decked out in warpaint and throwing handfuls of confetti like grenades, they actually outnumbered the crowd, which seemed at the time both sad and somehow impressive. Bandleader Jim McHugh has a vision, and while it may not be logistically or financially feasible, he never leaves that fifth tambourine player at home. For their second album, Truce Opium, Dark Meat have shed a few members-- they're back down into the single digits-- but they actually manage to expand their sound. Where once they mixed the most avant of jazz influences with the Stonesiest of classic rock, now the band blends in, well, pretty much everything imaginable: metal drone, prog effects, throat singing, Southern folk, even granola-crusted jamband. Predictably, Truce Opium bursts at the seams with ideas: A fife rises out of the din on opener "The Faint Smell of Moss" to give the percussive riffs more emphasis. On "Future Galaxies", the horns swell and subside hypnotically, recalling the Doppler Effect keyboards on Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", and closer "Song of the New Year" is a 12-minute sing-along dirge that slowly accrues instruments even as it threatens to fall apart. That crammed conceptuality is an essential part of Dark Meat's appeal, but those densely packed ideas don't seem to be arranged as exactingly or as excitingly as they were on Universal Indians, which is another way of saying the new songs aren't as strong. By embedding free-form noise into traditional song shapes, they made classic rock sound exotic and made the conceptual sound earthily accessible. But on Truce Opium, the songs are almost carelessly loose, with no recognizable elements to tether their jamming or shape their noise. "When the Shelter Came" twists and tangles itself melodically, initially coming across as anthemic before eventually wandering off into an extended horn break and then collapsing. It sounds unfinished; the shelter never comes. Still, the novelty of such an unwieldy lineup translates into a distinctively dense sound, so that even when Truce Opium feels unmoored and aimless, the sheer force of Dark Meat comes through clearly, as on "The Faint Smell of Moss" and the short, spastic "Yonderin'", two of the most lucid songs here. Ironically, the best track may be one of the longest: After a rambling intro, the 10-minute "No One Was There" breaks down into an extended drum-rooted jam punctuated by an ascending theme that makes an effective hook for 10 minutes. Dark Meat still play it as loudly as possible, which compensates for so many shortcomings.

Artist: Dark Meat, Album: Truce Opium, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "I saw Dark Meat play a small club in Washington D.C. shortly after the release of their debut album, Universal Indians. The Athens collective, whose members numbered well into double digits, couldn't all fit on the tiny corner stage, so a guitarist and a horn player had to play from the audience. Decked out in warpaint and throwing handfuls of confetti like grenades, they actually outnumbered the crowd, which seemed at the time both sad and somehow impressive. Bandleader Jim McHugh has a vision, and while it may not be logistically or financially feasible, he never leaves that fifth tambourine player at home. For their second album, Truce Opium, Dark Meat have shed a few members-- they're back down into the single digits-- but they actually manage to expand their sound. Where once they mixed the most avant of jazz influences with the Stonesiest of classic rock, now the band blends in, well, pretty much everything imaginable: metal drone, prog effects, throat singing, Southern folk, even granola-crusted jamband. Predictably, Truce Opium bursts at the seams with ideas: A fife rises out of the din on opener "The Faint Smell of Moss" to give the percussive riffs more emphasis. On "Future Galaxies", the horns swell and subside hypnotically, recalling the Doppler Effect keyboards on Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", and closer "Song of the New Year" is a 12-minute sing-along dirge that slowly accrues instruments even as it threatens to fall apart. That crammed conceptuality is an essential part of Dark Meat's appeal, but those densely packed ideas don't seem to be arranged as exactingly or as excitingly as they were on Universal Indians, which is another way of saying the new songs aren't as strong. By embedding free-form noise into traditional song shapes, they made classic rock sound exotic and made the conceptual sound earthily accessible. But on Truce Opium, the songs are almost carelessly loose, with no recognizable elements to tether their jamming or shape their noise. "When the Shelter Came" twists and tangles itself melodically, initially coming across as anthemic before eventually wandering off into an extended horn break and then collapsing. It sounds unfinished; the shelter never comes. Still, the novelty of such an unwieldy lineup translates into a distinctively dense sound, so that even when Truce Opium feels unmoored and aimless, the sheer force of Dark Meat comes through clearly, as on "The Faint Smell of Moss" and the short, spastic "Yonderin'", two of the most lucid songs here. Ironically, the best track may be one of the longest: After a rambling intro, the 10-minute "No One Was There" breaks down into an extended drum-rooted jam punctuated by an ascending theme that makes an effective hook for 10 minutes. Dark Meat still play it as loudly as possible, which compensates for so many shortcomings."

Phill Niblock

Touch Food

Rock

Andy Beta

I'm watching my man cook at his house. I know he's a badass in the kitchen, working in one of New York's finest restaurants for years now, yet I never get to see him in action behind the swinging doors, over the open flames and hissing steam. The precision with which he handles the knife is incredible, his knuckles and manual movements the very economy of action, each cut vegetable chopped meticulously. Everything, be it ginger, onion, peppers, or tomato, is reduced into miniscule 1/16th-inch cubes. "Why so small?", I ask. "The more finely chopped," he says, "the better the flavor." Technique aside, the resulting din-din is on a plane above how I imagined food could taste. I didn't really make the connection between fine cuisine and the music of Phill Niblock until thumbing through the thick ten-page booklet of Indonesian images that accompanies his latest set: bushels of harvest, rice patties, kitchen prep, and oxen carcasses being carved up rib by rib. The working methods of this minimalist composer are strikingly unique. At first it's tough to tell, since, for years, his recorded discography had large gaps, due to the limitations of the vinyl medium. The advent of the CD, however, allowed him greater frequency ranges and longer durations of uninterrupted time to cast his sounds in-- and the arrival of ProTools technology must have seemed an invention of Ron Popiel proportions, aiding him in easily amassing and processing his sounds. So while peers such as La Monte Young, Eliane Radigue, or Tony Conrad might have taken years or decades to bear forth variations on their initial 60s explorations, Niblock is feverishly cranking these days, his sounds mutating as he goes. The last few years have brought forth pieces for hurdy-gurdy and voice, as well as one for guitars featuring Thurston Moore, Kevin Drumm, and Jim O'Rourke. That said, it's hard to tell some of his pieces apart. Once instruments like the French horn, didjeridoo, sousaphone, hurdy-gurdy, and guitar are singularly smeared into 25-minutes cloud chunks, you could be anywhere. Here, the saxophone of the first piece, the bass clarinet of the second, and electric bass of the third are cooked down to their vibrating essence, and then heated in Niblock's cauldron as an entirely new thing. Alchemical or purely from the open flame, the once-acoustic instruments are altered to sound otherworldly, to the great duress of your woofers; as the low fluctuations coagulate and gain amplitude, cranking up the volume (as Niblock always suggests) lets the sounds beat across every pore and surface of the body, massaging the constrictions of the earspace away. The second disc holds "Pan Fried", a 70-minute bit of nervous system suspension that's easily Phill's grandest bit of glacial bliss yet, stretched out to commemorate his 70th year. Taking Reinhold Friedl's rosined fingertips as they rub a string tied to a single piano wire inside of a Bosendorfer piano (the piano of choice for heavenly hum by folks like La Monte Young and Charlemagne Palestine), several octaves of C# and F are recorded, then pureed. Between those two little notes, Niblock carves out a canyon that somehow has the basso profundo of the Million Man Choir, the slow grinding of plate tectonic pop, the 30-story high cicada song of spring, and the plinks of the Lord's own zither all freefalling through the space. That each droning sound dissolves into a heavenly consommé is one thing, but that the consummate effect is of you "soaking in it" makes it one of the more singular taste sensations of the year.

Artist: Phill Niblock, Album: Touch Food, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "I'm watching my man cook at his house. I know he's a badass in the kitchen, working in one of New York's finest restaurants for years now, yet I never get to see him in action behind the swinging doors, over the open flames and hissing steam. The precision with which he handles the knife is incredible, his knuckles and manual movements the very economy of action, each cut vegetable chopped meticulously. Everything, be it ginger, onion, peppers, or tomato, is reduced into miniscule 1/16th-inch cubes. "Why so small?", I ask. "The more finely chopped," he says, "the better the flavor." Technique aside, the resulting din-din is on a plane above how I imagined food could taste. I didn't really make the connection between fine cuisine and the music of Phill Niblock until thumbing through the thick ten-page booklet of Indonesian images that accompanies his latest set: bushels of harvest, rice patties, kitchen prep, and oxen carcasses being carved up rib by rib. The working methods of this minimalist composer are strikingly unique. At first it's tough to tell, since, for years, his recorded discography had large gaps, due to the limitations of the vinyl medium. The advent of the CD, however, allowed him greater frequency ranges and longer durations of uninterrupted time to cast his sounds in-- and the arrival of ProTools technology must have seemed an invention of Ron Popiel proportions, aiding him in easily amassing and processing his sounds. So while peers such as La Monte Young, Eliane Radigue, or Tony Conrad might have taken years or decades to bear forth variations on their initial 60s explorations, Niblock is feverishly cranking these days, his sounds mutating as he goes. The last few years have brought forth pieces for hurdy-gurdy and voice, as well as one for guitars featuring Thurston Moore, Kevin Drumm, and Jim O'Rourke. That said, it's hard to tell some of his pieces apart. Once instruments like the French horn, didjeridoo, sousaphone, hurdy-gurdy, and guitar are singularly smeared into 25-minutes cloud chunks, you could be anywhere. Here, the saxophone of the first piece, the bass clarinet of the second, and electric bass of the third are cooked down to their vibrating essence, and then heated in Niblock's cauldron as an entirely new thing. Alchemical or purely from the open flame, the once-acoustic instruments are altered to sound otherworldly, to the great duress of your woofers; as the low fluctuations coagulate and gain amplitude, cranking up the volume (as Niblock always suggests) lets the sounds beat across every pore and surface of the body, massaging the constrictions of the earspace away. The second disc holds "Pan Fried", a 70-minute bit of nervous system suspension that's easily Phill's grandest bit of glacial bliss yet, stretched out to commemorate his 70th year. Taking Reinhold Friedl's rosined fingertips as they rub a string tied to a single piano wire inside of a Bosendorfer piano (the piano of choice for heavenly hum by folks like La Monte Young and Charlemagne Palestine), several octaves of C# and F are recorded, then pureed. Between those two little notes, Niblock carves out a canyon that somehow has the basso profundo of the Million Man Choir, the slow grinding of plate tectonic pop, the 30-story high cicada song of spring, and the plinks of the Lord's own zither all freefalling through the space. That each droning sound dissolves into a heavenly consommé is one thing, but that the consummate effect is of you "soaking in it" makes it one of the more singular taste sensations of the year."

Sinéad O'Connor

Throw Down Your Arms

Rock

Jess Harvell

Okay, let's be up front: Your appreciation of this album will be directly tied to how seriously you can take the idea of Sinead O'Connor singing reggae. No one debates that O'Connor can sing. Nellie Hooper's barely-there backing of "Nothing Compares 2 U" throws her quivering, gorgeous voice right up in your ear. Also, no one should doubt her love of this music; don't forget that when she pulled the crazy pope-ripping stunt on Saturday Night Live it was to the tune of Bob Marley's "War". And reggae, the most non-secularized pop music on the planet, often chapter-and-verse on record, is an apt vehicle for a woman who left music in order to become an ordained priest in a non-traditional Catholic denomination. And Throw Down Your Arms is certainly authentic. It was recorded at the Marley's Tuff Gong studios in Kingston, and produced by Sly & Robbie, one of the five or 10 most smoking rhythms sections ever, in or out of reggae. And here's the thing you're probably most worried about: no, she doesn't sing it in cod-patois. Her voice is the same as always, that ringing, lilting Irish clarity. So thank God (or Jah) for small favors and good taste. Anyway, it's hard to fuck up a song like Peter Tosh's "Downpressor Man", and O'Connor doesn't. The band gets deep in the pocket, bass and drums on equal footing with voice as with actual reggae, and O'Connor sticks mostly to fire and brimstone roots like Burning Spear's "Door Peep" and the hectoring anthropomorphism of Lee Perry's "Vampire". She stretches out on Perry's charming "Curly Locks", made famous by Junior Byles, a sweet tale of a dreadlocks in love with a girl whose father will let her having nothing to do with him. At the end of the day, though, I'm a bit puzzled over why the world needed an album of Sinead O'Connor reggae covers. If anything she's too reverential and deferential. Nothing here betters the originals, and nothing takes them out into new, unexplored terrain. There's no way O'Connor can match the dread of Burning Spear's original "Marcus Garvey", to say nothing of the fact that music here never stretches its legs out to the wobbly dub versioning of "Garvey's Ghost". (Seriously, if you don't own the Marcus Garvey album, run to the record store yesterday.) The world of reggae is so vast, with so many great records to explore, that unless you're a huge Sinead O'Connor fan, this isn't much more than an enjoyable curio.

Artist: Sinéad O'Connor, Album: Throw Down Your Arms, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Okay, let's be up front: Your appreciation of this album will be directly tied to how seriously you can take the idea of Sinead O'Connor singing reggae. No one debates that O'Connor can sing. Nellie Hooper's barely-there backing of "Nothing Compares 2 U" throws her quivering, gorgeous voice right up in your ear. Also, no one should doubt her love of this music; don't forget that when she pulled the crazy pope-ripping stunt on Saturday Night Live it was to the tune of Bob Marley's "War". And reggae, the most non-secularized pop music on the planet, often chapter-and-verse on record, is an apt vehicle for a woman who left music in order to become an ordained priest in a non-traditional Catholic denomination. And Throw Down Your Arms is certainly authentic. It was recorded at the Marley's Tuff Gong studios in Kingston, and produced by Sly & Robbie, one of the five or 10 most smoking rhythms sections ever, in or out of reggae. And here's the thing you're probably most worried about: no, she doesn't sing it in cod-patois. Her voice is the same as always, that ringing, lilting Irish clarity. So thank God (or Jah) for small favors and good taste. Anyway, it's hard to fuck up a song like Peter Tosh's "Downpressor Man", and O'Connor doesn't. The band gets deep in the pocket, bass and drums on equal footing with voice as with actual reggae, and O'Connor sticks mostly to fire and brimstone roots like Burning Spear's "Door Peep" and the hectoring anthropomorphism of Lee Perry's "Vampire". She stretches out on Perry's charming "Curly Locks", made famous by Junior Byles, a sweet tale of a dreadlocks in love with a girl whose father will let her having nothing to do with him. At the end of the day, though, I'm a bit puzzled over why the world needed an album of Sinead O'Connor reggae covers. If anything she's too reverential and deferential. Nothing here betters the originals, and nothing takes them out into new, unexplored terrain. There's no way O'Connor can match the dread of Burning Spear's original "Marcus Garvey", to say nothing of the fact that music here never stretches its legs out to the wobbly dub versioning of "Garvey's Ghost". (Seriously, if you don't own the Marcus Garvey album, run to the record store yesterday.) The world of reggae is so vast, with so many great records to explore, that unless you're a huge Sinead O'Connor fan, this isn't much more than an enjoyable curio."

Young Jesus

S/T

Rock

Ian Cohen

A name like Young Jesus is either deadly earnest or a total piss-take. This record’s literally called S/T, a statement in itself as if to say, “Please do not call it “Young Jesus’ self-titled album.’” Its seven one-word song titles can be read as a strange poem and the last two of them take up over half of S/T’s 47-minute run time. The band is listed as “composers” in the credits. It comes not with a “RIYL” list but a reading syllabus. Their most prominent interview for this album cycle was done by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Young Jesus are not at all ashamed about the lengths they’ve gone to make a big ol’ piece of art, and it might be completely insufferable if S/T didn’t prove them to be acts of generosity that break down the boundary between the artist and listener—Young Jesus’ third album is not a conversation piece, but a dialogue meant to be shared. This is an important distinction between S/T and their sorely, but understandably, overlooked previous work. 2015’s Grow/Decompose was hyperliterate, barfly talk-rock that recalled pickled lifers like the Hold Steady and Protomartyr, but it was also a concept album that explored spiritual and sexuality confusion and fluidity—that’s frontman John Rossiter dressed in drag on the cover. Reflecting the band’s transplantation from Chicago to Los Angeles, there wasn’t any of the jocular referentiality, Midwestern rumination, or classic rock poses that made those other bands such an easy sell to aging critics. The authorial aims of S/T are no less ambitious: “There’s a theory I’ve got cooking/about the way the body moves,” Rossiter intones on “Desert,” but it’s more of an invitation to converse, not a lecture. Compared to the ripe prose of Grow/Decompose, S/T does a lot less talking with its economic poetry: “You are a room/If you want to settle down,” introduces “River,” a plea for reconciliation that reaches a crushing, predictable conclusion as Rossiter sings with faltering stoicism: “I guess I’ll see you around.” The 10 minutes of “Feeling” become intimidatingly literal, taking extended instrumental stretches to meditate on a single verse about the metaphysical sensation of feeling the feels. These are the rare moments of emotional brinksmanship on S/T, which is more interesting in exploring the life happening in between, perhaps inspired by Mount Eerie, a key passage finds Rossiter looking at crows and trying to divine meaning. Unlike Phil Elverum, he doesn’t just find it, but it’s one that makes him feel joyously overwhelmed by meaning (“I feel a fullness/feel entire moments always change”). At times, this awareness becomes overwhelming in the opposite direction: “Every little landscape breaks my heart,” Rossiter muses on “Desert,” later screaming, “Every little landscape breaks apart” in desperation on “Storm.” Rossiter is always in touch with his surroundings throughout S/T, abetted by a shockingly stark recording; there’s almost nothing associated with production, almost no perceptible overdubs or even reverb, the ambience arid and alien like a desert in the winter night. Or, as Rossiter puts it in “Green,” “A stranger in a strangely intimate embrace.” Freed from conventional post-punk, Young Jesus truly earn the title of “composers,” refashioning the tools of rock music as transportive devices: “Green” flows blissfully towards a coda of harmonic feedback, while “River” is an interstate heartbreak song, surveying scenes of nothing but cracked flatland and twisted metal. In its quiet moments—most of the time—S/T shares the same out-of-time, transportive, aural sandbox appeal of Young Team, Laughing Stock, Spiderland—a working title for “Eddy” could’ve been “Getting Stoned to Slint.” As for side-long closer “Storm,” imagine Broken Social Scene’s ”It’s All Gonna Break” rewritten as a feverish drunkalogue. “Back in ‘95/Mom and dad were screaming/And you were leaning out the back door of your mind,” Rossiter shouts. It’s initially left to interpretation whether he’s an omnipotent narrator, but his role becomes more clear as “Storm” unfolds: “Ten years later at the Holiday Inn breakfast, I started crying...I called and said I’m sick/I inherited something I can’t deny,” to which that friend or brother or substitute father figure replies, “You gotta deal with it.” It traverses 12 years in as many minutes until it finds Rossiter back in the present, standing in his kitchen under the weight of it all. “Is this existing? I’m gonna make it work,” serves as the valedictory sendoff of S/T, but it sounds like they band is just getting started.

Artist: Young Jesus, Album: S/T, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "A name like Young Jesus is either deadly earnest or a total piss-take. This record’s literally called S/T, a statement in itself as if to say, “Please do not call it “Young Jesus’ self-titled album.’” Its seven one-word song titles can be read as a strange poem and the last two of them take up over half of S/T’s 47-minute run time. The band is listed as “composers” in the credits. It comes not with a “RIYL” list but a reading syllabus. Their most prominent interview for this album cycle was done by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Young Jesus are not at all ashamed about the lengths they’ve gone to make a big ol’ piece of art, and it might be completely insufferable if S/T didn’t prove them to be acts of generosity that break down the boundary between the artist and listener—Young Jesus’ third album is not a conversation piece, but a dialogue meant to be shared. This is an important distinction between S/T and their sorely, but understandably, overlooked previous work. 2015’s Grow/Decompose was hyperliterate, barfly talk-rock that recalled pickled lifers like the Hold Steady and Protomartyr, but it was also a concept album that explored spiritual and sexuality confusion and fluidity—that’s frontman John Rossiter dressed in drag on the cover. Reflecting the band’s transplantation from Chicago to Los Angeles, there wasn’t any of the jocular referentiality, Midwestern rumination, or classic rock poses that made those other bands such an easy sell to aging critics. The authorial aims of S/T are no less ambitious: “There’s a theory I’ve got cooking/about the way the body moves,” Rossiter intones on “Desert,” but it’s more of an invitation to converse, not a lecture. Compared to the ripe prose of Grow/Decompose, S/T does a lot less talking with its economic poetry: “You are a room/If you want to settle down,” introduces “River,” a plea for reconciliation that reaches a crushing, predictable conclusion as Rossiter sings with faltering stoicism: “I guess I’ll see you around.” The 10 minutes of “Feeling” become intimidatingly literal, taking extended instrumental stretches to meditate on a single verse about the metaphysical sensation of feeling the feels. These are the rare moments of emotional brinksmanship on S/T, which is more interesting in exploring the life happening in between, perhaps inspired by Mount Eerie, a key passage finds Rossiter looking at crows and trying to divine meaning. Unlike Phil Elverum, he doesn’t just find it, but it’s one that makes him feel joyously overwhelmed by meaning (“I feel a fullness/feel entire moments always change”). At times, this awareness becomes overwhelming in the opposite direction: “Every little landscape breaks my heart,” Rossiter muses on “Desert,” later screaming, “Every little landscape breaks apart” in desperation on “Storm.” Rossiter is always in touch with his surroundings throughout S/T, abetted by a shockingly stark recording; there’s almost nothing associated with production, almost no perceptible overdubs or even reverb, the ambience arid and alien like a desert in the winter night. Or, as Rossiter puts it in “Green,” “A stranger in a strangely intimate embrace.” Freed from conventional post-punk, Young Jesus truly earn the title of “composers,” refashioning the tools of rock music as transportive devices: “Green” flows blissfully towards a coda of harmonic feedback, while “River” is an interstate heartbreak song, surveying scenes of nothing but cracked flatland and twisted metal. In its quiet moments—most of the time—S/T shares the same out-of-time, transportive, aural sandbox appeal of Young Team, Laughing Stock, Spiderland—a working title for “Eddy” could’ve been “Getting Stoned to Slint.” As for side-long closer “Storm,” imagine Broken Social Scene’s ”It’s All Gonna Break” rewritten as a feverish drunkalogue. “Back in ‘95/Mom and dad were screaming/And you were leaning out the back door of your mind,” Rossiter shouts. It’s initially left to interpretation whether he’s an omnipotent narrator, but his role becomes more clear as “Storm” unfolds: “Ten years later at the Holiday Inn breakfast, I started crying...I called and said I’m sick/I inherited something I can’t deny,” to which that friend or brother or substitute father figure replies, “You gotta deal with it.” It traverses 12 years in as many minutes until it finds Rossiter back in the present, standing in his kitchen under the weight of it all. “Is this existing? I’m gonna make it work,” serves as the valedictory sendoff of S/T, but it sounds like they band is just getting started."

Bill Fay

Life Is People

Folk/Country

Grayson Currin

You don't need a history lesson to love Life Is People, the third proper album by British singer-songwriter Bill Fay. If you've ever enjoyed the records of Pink Floyd or Randy Newman, Spiritualized or Wilco, the dozen gems here move between similar poles of spartan grace and outsized grandeur. The organ-abetted lilt of "The Healing Day" suggests Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett turning the page toward happiness a decade ago, while the gospel choir delivering the mantra of "Be at Peace with Yourself" might make you scan the credits for a J. Spaceman acknowledgment. The flinty "Empires" is a piano-led political tune written from a distance and with a dark, Newman-like wit, where the world's biggest timbers eventually yield to the teeming underbrush beneath. Its warped tones and terse delivery suggest Roger Waters coming back to Earth. Beautiful, patient and poignant, Life Is People is an expert singer-songwriter album, as dependent upon keen insight as it is upon meticulous arrangement. But a history lesson makes Life Is People that much more meaningful. Bill Fay is 69 years old, and he hasn't released a proper studio album since his second, 1971's brilliant and acerbic Time of the Last Persecution. He'd stumbled into a recording contract with the Decca Nova/Deram imprint. As he admitted to WFMU in an interview last year, labels at that point scooped up an abundance of acts, hoping that at least something would turn into a best seller. "Somebody told me at the time," he said, "that their policy was to throw as many pieces of mud as possible at the wall, and hope that some would stick." Fay's records didn't stick, however, and neither did he. Deram dropped Fay and, in the 41 years since Persecution, he's recorded new material and consistently written new songs but never finished a complete record. Music, as he also told WFMU, was a private family affair for him as a child, with his aunts and uncles playing together and his mom occasionally sitting down at the family piano; he performed several times, but largely it seemed that, after stumbling toward fame through music, he wanted to keep the stuff to himself. It was too late, though. Based only on the strength of those first two records and reissues, sporadic batches of leaked demos, and a terribly teasing collection called Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, issued 30 years after it was recorded, Fay's cult standing grew. Wilco covered "Be Not So Fearful", the gorgeous affirmation from his debut, and convinced Fay to join them onstage in 2007 and later during a 2010 Tweedy solo set. Then, last summer, Fay returned to a London studio for the first time in three decades with American producer Joshua Henry, a lifelong Fay fan who'd barely been alive for 30 years. With a band comprised of younger studio players and Ray Russell and Alan Rushton, who'd joined Fay for Persecution so long ago, they recorded the bulk of Life Is People in a little less than a month. And now, back to the present: Life Is People doesn't feel at all like a late-life afterthought from a cult hero. Pointed and urgent but never pushy, Fay's songs offer pleas for redemption in a world drunk on its promise, coupled with a reassuring contentment for simply having lived this life. Fay chastises the way generations have refused to learn from their history, even as we stare into devices that allegedly offer all the answers we'd ever need. On the other hand, "Be at Peace With Yourself" extends existential reassurance-- that is, as Fay offers behind a tabernacle-sized mix of organ and choir arrangements, whoever you are is probably good enough. That's a thought echoed on "The Healing Day", a tender Revelation hymn that depends upon the belief that some cosmic help is always on the horizon. "Every battleground/ Is a place for sheep to graze," Fay sings during one his most eloquent bits ever. "When it all comes tumbling down/ All the palaces and parades." But the record's two key songs, "The Never Ending Happening" and "This World", provide a crucial bridge between Fay's indignation and optimism. On the former, Fay's voice hang's worn but resilient above a simple, elliptical piano line; in these perfect four minutes, he considers death, God, birth, bird song, and war cries as one continuum. He's happy to have been involved, he admits, to have his tiny narrative shape a much bigger story: "Just to be part of it/ Is astonishing to me." The record's pop standout, "This World" springs from the somber end of "The Never Ending Happening" as if to offer the message that, appreciative as he may be, Fay isn't done quite yet. He and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy trade the verses and share the chorus, their simpatico voices both showing the signs and struggles of survival. (Fay also lands a wrenching solo cover of "Jesus, Etc." here, his voice turning Tweedy's resignation into observational candor.) As they dole out experiences with blue-collar worries and dismiss the corner drug dealer who offers "an easy way out," they sound enthused, as if overcoming the worries of the world is its own substantive reward for living. Though he's a quarter-century older, Fay temporarily lends Tweedy an energy that recalls the transition from Uncle Tupelo to Wilco. They're having fun. In the past decade, a number of serpentine stories and bittersweet circumstances have revitalized the careers of musicians who, for whatever reason, were swallowed by the record industry and largely ignored by the world. To varying degrees, soul singers like Bettye LaVette, Solomon Burke, and Charles Bradley found ways to turn long flirtations with fame (or abject failure) into real or revived careers with new records on indie imprints. Thanks to collaborations with young producer Kieran Hebden, drummer Steve Reid finally became more than a footnote of rock and jazz history; when Bert Jansch linked with Drag City and Devendra Banhart, the inspiration to Led Zeppelin and what had become New Weird America met a fresh generation of listeners. Life Is People and the tale that accompany it are strong enough to do the same for Fay, to at last make his reputation among many match his legacy among few. "There are miracles in the strangest of places," Fay sings at the start of the title track's seven-minute ascent, setting the scene for the string of tiny triumphs he sweetly lists. At the risk of overstating the case, Life Is People—the work of a 69-year-old family man, and the work of a lifetime—confirms its maker's own thesis.

Artist: Bill Fay, Album: Life Is People, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "You don't need a history lesson to love Life Is People, the third proper album by British singer-songwriter Bill Fay. If you've ever enjoyed the records of Pink Floyd or Randy Newman, Spiritualized or Wilco, the dozen gems here move between similar poles of spartan grace and outsized grandeur. The organ-abetted lilt of "The Healing Day" suggests Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett turning the page toward happiness a decade ago, while the gospel choir delivering the mantra of "Be at Peace with Yourself" might make you scan the credits for a J. Spaceman acknowledgment. The flinty "Empires" is a piano-led political tune written from a distance and with a dark, Newman-like wit, where the world's biggest timbers eventually yield to the teeming underbrush beneath. Its warped tones and terse delivery suggest Roger Waters coming back to Earth. Beautiful, patient and poignant, Life Is People is an expert singer-songwriter album, as dependent upon keen insight as it is upon meticulous arrangement. But a history lesson makes Life Is People that much more meaningful. Bill Fay is 69 years old, and he hasn't released a proper studio album since his second, 1971's brilliant and acerbic Time of the Last Persecution. He'd stumbled into a recording contract with the Decca Nova/Deram imprint. As he admitted to WFMU in an interview last year, labels at that point scooped up an abundance of acts, hoping that at least something would turn into a best seller. "Somebody told me at the time," he said, "that their policy was to throw as many pieces of mud as possible at the wall, and hope that some would stick." Fay's records didn't stick, however, and neither did he. Deram dropped Fay and, in the 41 years since Persecution, he's recorded new material and consistently written new songs but never finished a complete record. Music, as he also told WFMU, was a private family affair for him as a child, with his aunts and uncles playing together and his mom occasionally sitting down at the family piano; he performed several times, but largely it seemed that, after stumbling toward fame through music, he wanted to keep the stuff to himself. It was too late, though. Based only on the strength of those first two records and reissues, sporadic batches of leaked demos, and a terribly teasing collection called Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, issued 30 years after it was recorded, Fay's cult standing grew. Wilco covered "Be Not So Fearful", the gorgeous affirmation from his debut, and convinced Fay to join them onstage in 2007 and later during a 2010 Tweedy solo set. Then, last summer, Fay returned to a London studio for the first time in three decades with American producer Joshua Henry, a lifelong Fay fan who'd barely been alive for 30 years. With a band comprised of younger studio players and Ray Russell and Alan Rushton, who'd joined Fay for Persecution so long ago, they recorded the bulk of Life Is People in a little less than a month. And now, back to the present: Life Is People doesn't feel at all like a late-life afterthought from a cult hero. Pointed and urgent but never pushy, Fay's songs offer pleas for redemption in a world drunk on its promise, coupled with a reassuring contentment for simply having lived this life. Fay chastises the way generations have refused to learn from their history, even as we stare into devices that allegedly offer all the answers we'd ever need. On the other hand, "Be at Peace With Yourself" extends existential reassurance-- that is, as Fay offers behind a tabernacle-sized mix of organ and choir arrangements, whoever you are is probably good enough. That's a thought echoed on "The Healing Day", a tender Revelation hymn that depends upon the belief that some cosmic help is always on the horizon. "Every battleground/ Is a place for sheep to graze," Fay sings during one his most eloquent bits ever. "When it all comes tumbling down/ All the palaces and parades." But the record's two key songs, "The Never Ending Happening" and "This World", provide a crucial bridge between Fay's indignation and optimism. On the former, Fay's voice hang's worn but resilient above a simple, elliptical piano line; in these perfect four minutes, he considers death, God, birth, bird song, and war cries as one continuum. He's happy to have been involved, he admits, to have his tiny narrative shape a much bigger story: "Just to be part of it/ Is astonishing to me." The record's pop standout, "This World" springs from the somber end of "The Never Ending Happening" as if to offer the message that, appreciative as he may be, Fay isn't done quite yet. He and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy trade the verses and share the chorus, their simpatico voices both showing the signs and struggles of survival. (Fay also lands a wrenching solo cover of "Jesus, Etc." here, his voice turning Tweedy's resignation into observational candor.) As they dole out experiences with blue-collar worries and dismiss the corner drug dealer who offers "an easy way out," they sound enthused, as if overcoming the worries of the world is its own substantive reward for living. Though he's a quarter-century older, Fay temporarily lends Tweedy an energy that recalls the transition from Uncle Tupelo to Wilco. They're having fun. In the past decade, a number of serpentine stories and bittersweet circumstances have revitalized the careers of musicians who, for whatever reason, were swallowed by the record industry and largely ignored by the world. To varying degrees, soul singers like Bettye LaVette, Solomon Burke, and Charles Bradley found ways to turn long flirtations with fame (or abject failure) into real or revived careers with new records on indie imprints. Thanks to collaborations with young producer Kieran Hebden, drummer Steve Reid finally became more than a footnote of rock and jazz history; when Bert Jansch linked with Drag City and Devendra Banhart, the inspiration to Led Zeppelin and what had become New Weird America met a fresh generation of listeners. Life Is People and the tale that accompany it are strong enough to do the same for Fay, to at last make his reputation among many match his legacy among few. "There are miracles in the strangest of places," Fay sings at the start of the title track's seven-minute ascent, setting the scene for the string of tiny triumphs he sweetly lists. At the risk of overstating the case, Life Is People—the work of a 69-year-old family man, and the work of a lifetime—confirms its maker's own thesis."

Eternal Summers

The Drop Beneath

Rock

T. Cole Rachel

Eternal Summers began their life as a duo. Safely ensconced in something called the Magic Twig Community—a cache of like-minded musicians living in the mountains of Roanoke, Virginia—the band’s first recorded efforts were a mixture jingle-jangle guitars and lo-fi minimalism. On their 2011 debut, Silver, Guitarist and vocalist Nicole Yun and drummer Daniel Cundiff tossed off anti-authority missives and swoony romantic paeans in equal measure, managing to wring a surprising amount dynamic tension from a simple guitar and drums setup. On 2012’s Correct Behavior, the inclusion of a new band member—bassist Jonathan Woods—helped to push the band’s sound forward. With the inclusion of some much-needed low end, Eternal Summer’s sonic palette finally sounded big enough to match what appeared to be their own dream-punk goals: songs that range from emotional Marine Girls-like strummers to hyperdriven juggernauts that finally sounded as big and fuzzed out as the band’s own oversized ambitions. On their third proper full-length—the PledgeMusic-funded and generally excellent The Drop Beneath*—*the band takes another assured step forward. Having generally eschewed any outside producers in the past (Correct Behavior was mixed by Raveonettes’ frontman Sune Rose Wagner and producer Alonzo Vargas, but recorded safely at home in Roanoke by the band themselves), this time the band opted to work elsewhere, relocating to Austin, Texas to record with producer Doug Gillard (Guided By Voice, Nada Surf). The change of venue and a slight loosening of the reigns seem to have done the band a world of good. The Drop Beneath is the most pristine sounding thing that Eternal Summers have ever recorded. While smoothing away the rough edges seems slightly anathema considering the charm of the band’s early releases, on Beneath the cleaner sound reveals what excellent songwriters Eternal Summers have become. On “Gouge” a galloping guitar melody plays counterpoint to some of Yun’s most arresting lyrics—“Gouge my eyes out/ Cut tongue from my mouth”—all of which are delivered with the sweetness and ardor of a love note. Such is the charm of the album’s best songs—“A Burial” and “Deep End” among them—in which seemingly moribund sentiments are optimistically splayed out against walls of shimmering guitar. And while The Drop Beneath will likely do very little to quell the band’s reputation as savvy 90s alt-rock revivalists—“Keep Me Away” could pass for an American Thighs-era Veruca Salt outtake, not that that’s entirely a bad thing—the band’s frame of reference does appear to have grown. Yun’s voice and the band’s deftness with effects’ pedals might invite easy comparisons to the likes of Lush and pop-inflected shoegaze, but they also make the kind of loopy art-pop that would fit nicely alongside anything Too Pure were releasing back in 1996. Judging by the overall sense of clarity on The Drop Beneath, it would seem that bringing in an outside producer has mostly been a blessing for the band. Not only does one have a sense of what an excellent and rangy guitarist Yun actually is, her voice is something of a revelation here. On tracks like “Until the Day I Have Won” (in which she sings “Thrill/ is more than a swill/ It's more than what you feel/ It's knowing you've finally got the knack”), she sings with a kind of calm assurance and that previous releases only hinted at. That being said, the production polish can occasionally be a curse. The album’s prettiest songs benefit from the most from the more crystalline proceedings, but the rockers often sound a little restrained. In a live setting there’s no doubt that “100” and “Make It New” would sufficiently shred, but on record one can’t help but wish Yun’s voice would occupy a little less of the sonic real estate and that the guitars were allowed to rip a little harder. Also seemingly out of step on the record is “Not For This One”—a mellow, Feelies-vibed mid-tempo track in which Daniel Cundiff takes over vocal duties. It’s undoubtedly one of the album’s loveliest songs, but it sounds like it could/should appear on a different record altogether—one that perhaps Cundiff (who has a history of contributing vocals to interesting one-offs on previous records) should consider actually making. In a career that seems predicated on striking some kind of balance—a balance between whisper and roar, messiness and finesse, between articulating Heavenly-style twee bedroom musings versus whipping up walls of roiling melodic noise—Eternal Summers appear to have nearly hit their stride. While nothing here qualifies as any kind of radical reinvention of the indie-rock wheel per se, the band manages to astutely put their own spin on it, seemingly figuring out their own sizable strengths in the process.

Artist: Eternal Summers, Album: The Drop Beneath, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Eternal Summers began their life as a duo. Safely ensconced in something called the Magic Twig Community—a cache of like-minded musicians living in the mountains of Roanoke, Virginia—the band’s first recorded efforts were a mixture jingle-jangle guitars and lo-fi minimalism. On their 2011 debut, Silver, Guitarist and vocalist Nicole Yun and drummer Daniel Cundiff tossed off anti-authority missives and swoony romantic paeans in equal measure, managing to wring a surprising amount dynamic tension from a simple guitar and drums setup. On 2012’s Correct Behavior, the inclusion of a new band member—bassist Jonathan Woods—helped to push the band’s sound forward. With the inclusion of some much-needed low end, Eternal Summer’s sonic palette finally sounded big enough to match what appeared to be their own dream-punk goals: songs that range from emotional Marine Girls-like strummers to hyperdriven juggernauts that finally sounded as big and fuzzed out as the band’s own oversized ambitions. On their third proper full-length—the PledgeMusic-funded and generally excellent The Drop Beneath*—*the band takes another assured step forward. Having generally eschewed any outside producers in the past (Correct Behavior was mixed by Raveonettes’ frontman Sune Rose Wagner and producer Alonzo Vargas, but recorded safely at home in Roanoke by the band themselves), this time the band opted to work elsewhere, relocating to Austin, Texas to record with producer Doug Gillard (Guided By Voice, Nada Surf). The change of venue and a slight loosening of the reigns seem to have done the band a world of good. The Drop Beneath is the most pristine sounding thing that Eternal Summers have ever recorded. While smoothing away the rough edges seems slightly anathema considering the charm of the band’s early releases, on Beneath the cleaner sound reveals what excellent songwriters Eternal Summers have become. On “Gouge” a galloping guitar melody plays counterpoint to some of Yun’s most arresting lyrics—“Gouge my eyes out/ Cut tongue from my mouth”—all of which are delivered with the sweetness and ardor of a love note. Such is the charm of the album’s best songs—“A Burial” and “Deep End” among them—in which seemingly moribund sentiments are optimistically splayed out against walls of shimmering guitar. And while The Drop Beneath will likely do very little to quell the band’s reputation as savvy 90s alt-rock revivalists—“Keep Me Away” could pass for an American Thighs-era Veruca Salt outtake, not that that’s entirely a bad thing—the band’s frame of reference does appear to have grown. Yun’s voice and the band’s deftness with effects’ pedals might invite easy comparisons to the likes of Lush and pop-inflected shoegaze, but they also make the kind of loopy art-pop that would fit nicely alongside anything Too Pure were releasing back in 1996. Judging by the overall sense of clarity on The Drop Beneath, it would seem that bringing in an outside producer has mostly been a blessing for the band. Not only does one have a sense of what an excellent and rangy guitarist Yun actually is, her voice is something of a revelation here. On tracks like “Until the Day I Have Won” (in which she sings “Thrill/ is more than a swill/ It's more than what you feel/ It's knowing you've finally got the knack”), she sings with a kind of calm assurance and that previous releases only hinted at. That being said, the production polish can occasionally be a curse. The album’s prettiest songs benefit from the most from the more crystalline proceedings, but the rockers often sound a little restrained. In a live setting there’s no doubt that “100” and “Make It New” would sufficiently shred, but on record one can’t help but wish Yun’s voice would occupy a little less of the sonic real estate and that the guitars were allowed to rip a little harder. Also seemingly out of step on the record is “Not For This One”—a mellow, Feelies-vibed mid-tempo track in which Daniel Cundiff takes over vocal duties. It’s undoubtedly one of the album’s loveliest songs, but it sounds like it could/should appear on a different record altogether—one that perhaps Cundiff (who has a history of contributing vocals to interesting one-offs on previous records) should consider actually making. In a career that seems predicated on striking some kind of balance—a balance between whisper and roar, messiness and finesse, between articulating Heavenly-style twee bedroom musings versus whipping up walls of roiling melodic noise—Eternal Summers appear to have nearly hit their stride. While nothing here qualifies as any kind of radical reinvention of the indie-rock wheel per se, the band manages to astutely put their own spin on it, seemingly figuring out their own sizable strengths in the process."

Oasis

(What's the Story) Morning Glory?

Rock

Stuart Berman

It’s hard to remember now, but when (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? was released in the fall of 1995, Oasis were losers. Sure, their 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe had gone straight to No. 1 on the UK albums chart, and sold several million copies worldwide. But in their first true test of post-success fortitude, Oasis could no longer claim the title of biggest rock band in the land. “Roll With It,” the teaser from Morning Glory, was released August 14, 1995—not coincidentally, the very same day as “Country House”, the jaunty new single from their bitter rivals in Blur (aka the London art-school yin to Oasis’ Mancunian street-tough yang). A year’s worth of tabloid sniping between the two groups—which hit its peak/nadir when Oasis architect Noel Gallagher declared that Blur’s Damon Albarn and Alex James should “catch AIDS and die” —had effectively come down to the UK chart equivalent of an after-school fistfight. And in this case, it was Oasis who walked away licking their wounds—that week, “Country House” outsold “Roll With It” by more than 50,000 copies to take the No. 1 spot. As it should’ve: “Roll With It” is nobody’s favorite Oasis song and would be hard-pressed to crack a Top 20 list of the band’s all-time best. It's a catchy enough tune, sure, but its shoulder-shrugged message of “you gotta roll with it” felt atypically blasé coming from a band that had previously endorsed self-deification, immortality, and shagging well-heeled medical professionals in helicopters. However, for a band never encumbered by humility, the decision to go with Morning Glory’s weakest song was, in retrospect, Oasis’ cockiest gesture yet: They were willing to take the first strike in the so-called Battle of Britpop because they knew it was only a matter time before they’d be delivering the knockout blow. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? would go on to sell more than twice as many copies in the UK as Blur’s contemporaneous The Great Escape, and, over the following two years, it served as the unofficial soundtrack to England's imminent changing of the guard. But, just as significantly, it achieved a metric of popularity that had proven so elusive to Oasis' Britpop peers: bonafide American success, with the album reaching number 4 on the Billboard charts and selling 3.5 million copies Stateside. (The Great Escape, meanwhile, languished in the lower reaches of the Top 200.) For all their unibrowed laddism and two-fingered paparazzi salutes, Oasis projected a glamorous image of Englishness that was potent enough to stoke the Cool Britannia fancies of those North American Anglophiles who make trips to specialty shoppes to load up on Dairy Milk bars, but (unlike Blur) not so colloquial as to alienate the heartland. It’s the stuff upon which Austin Powers franchises and Brit-themed pub-chains would later be built. Fortuitously arriving at the mid-point of the '90s—and representing the peak of a Britpop narrative that took root with the retro-rock renaissance of the Stone Roses and the La’s five years previous—(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is Oasis' absolute pinnacle. If Definitely Maybe presented Oasis' raw materials—’60s psychedelia, ’70s glam and punk, Madchester groove—Morning Glory melted down and remoulded them into a towering sound that was unmistakably their own, with those omnipresent (but never ostentatious) string-section sweeps classily dressing up the songs like ribbons on a trophy. And yet the real triumph of Morning Glory is measured not by the tracks that have since become karaoke classics, first-dance wedding standards, and go-to bathtub sing-alongs, but the exceptional album tracks that never got a shot at certain chart supremacy—like the jet-roar jangle of “Hey Now” (for my money, the best Oasis song never to be issued as a single) and the crestfallen “Cast No Shadow”, dedicated to a then-mostly-unknown Richard Ashcroft of the Verve, a band that would soon reap the benefits of Oasis’ American incursion. Ironically, the Oasis-whetted appetite for all things English was arguably also crucial to the impending Stateside success of the Spice Girls, who would usher in a wave of preteen-targeted pop that would eventually push guitar-oriented rock acts down the charts by decade's end. And what’s most striking about listening to (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? today is how, at the height of their powers, Oasis seemed to be bracing for their own eventual downfall. The tone of the album is decidedly darker and more reflective than the working-class escapism of Definitely Maybe, be it the foreboding “it’s never gonna be the same” prophecy of opening salvo “Hello”, the title track’s white-lined dispatches from the after-party circuit, or the cigarette-lighter-illuminated comedown of “Champagne Supernova”, wherein Oasis already sound nostalgic for the idealism of their debut album. And while Noel still deals in absurdist metaphor here (how exactly does one slowly walk down the hall faster than a cannonball?), he also emerges as a more personable, sobering foil to brother Liam’s bratty swagger—not just on his showstopping star turn on “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, but also in the way his backing vocals imbue “Cast No Shadow” with a deeper sense of despair. This expanded three-disc edition of Morning Glory?—which outfits the original album with 28  bonus tracks—shows just how much Noel was on a roll in ’95. Conventional wisdom suggests Oasis released two near-perfect rock ‘n’ roll albums before a grueling, prolonged process of diminishing returns set in. That’s not entirely true—the truth is, Oasis produced at least three albums worth of spectacular songs, it’s just the one of them was spread out over various B-sides. Fourteen of these were collected on the 1998 compilation The Masterplan (a.k.a. Oasis’ Hatful of Hollow), half of which is culled from the Morning Glory era and reappears here. And as any long-time fan can tell you, these castaways rank among some of the band’s finest moments: perennial encore standard “Acquiesce” is a perfect sonic manifestation of Liam and Noel’s notoriously embattled but co-dependent relationship, contrasting the former’s sneering verses with the latter’s heartfelt chorus; “Rockin’ Chair”, along with the Noel-sung ballads “Talk Tonight” and “The Masterplan”, evince a subtlety and sensitivity rarely heard on Oasis’ albums proper. And for those who prefer to savor Oasis’ easy-going melodicism minus the Wembley-toppling bombast, the cache of Noel-strummed acoustic demos included here offer lovely, low-key showcases of his songwriting savvy. Such unwavering consistency

Artist: Oasis, Album: (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.9 Album review: "It’s hard to remember now, but when (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? was released in the fall of 1995, Oasis were losers. Sure, their 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe had gone straight to No. 1 on the UK albums chart, and sold several million copies worldwide. But in their first true test of post-success fortitude, Oasis could no longer claim the title of biggest rock band in the land. “Roll With It,” the teaser from Morning Glory, was released August 14, 1995—not coincidentally, the very same day as “Country House”, the jaunty new single from their bitter rivals in Blur (aka the London art-school yin to Oasis’ Mancunian street-tough yang). A year’s worth of tabloid sniping between the two groups—which hit its peak/nadir when Oasis architect Noel Gallagher declared that Blur’s Damon Albarn and Alex James should “catch AIDS and die” —had effectively come down to the UK chart equivalent of an after-school fistfight. And in this case, it was Oasis who walked away licking their wounds—that week, “Country House” outsold “Roll With It” by more than 50,000 copies to take the No. 1 spot. As it should’ve: “Roll With It” is nobody’s favorite Oasis song and would be hard-pressed to crack a Top 20 list of the band’s all-time best. It's a catchy enough tune, sure, but its shoulder-shrugged message of “you gotta roll with it” felt atypically blasé coming from a band that had previously endorsed self-deification, immortality, and shagging well-heeled medical professionals in helicopters. However, for a band never encumbered by humility, the decision to go with Morning Glory’s weakest song was, in retrospect, Oasis’ cockiest gesture yet: They were willing to take the first strike in the so-called Battle of Britpop because they knew it was only a matter time before they’d be delivering the knockout blow. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? would go on to sell more than twice as many copies in the UK as Blur’s contemporaneous The Great Escape, and, over the following two years, it served as the unofficial soundtrack to England's imminent changing of the guard. But, just as significantly, it achieved a metric of popularity that had proven so elusive to Oasis' Britpop peers: bonafide American success, with the album reaching number 4 on the Billboard charts and selling 3.5 million copies Stateside. (The Great Escape, meanwhile, languished in the lower reaches of the Top 200.) For all their unibrowed laddism and two-fingered paparazzi salutes, Oasis projected a glamorous image of Englishness that was potent enough to stoke the Cool Britannia fancies of those North American Anglophiles who make trips to specialty shoppes to load up on Dairy Milk bars, but (unlike Blur) not so colloquial as to alienate the heartland. It’s the stuff upon which Austin Powers franchises and Brit-themed pub-chains would later be built. Fortuitously arriving at the mid-point of the '90s—and representing the peak of a Britpop narrative that took root with the retro-rock renaissance of the Stone Roses and the La’s five years previous—(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is Oasis' absolute pinnacle. If Definitely Maybe presented Oasis' raw materials—’60s psychedelia, ’70s glam and punk, Madchester groove—Morning Glory melted down and remoulded them into a towering sound that was unmistakably their own, with those omnipresent (but never ostentatious) string-section sweeps classily dressing up the songs like ribbons on a trophy. And yet the real triumph of Morning Glory is measured not by the tracks that have since become karaoke classics, first-dance wedding standards, and go-to bathtub sing-alongs, but the exceptional album tracks that never got a shot at certain chart supremacy—like the jet-roar jangle of “Hey Now” (for my money, the best Oasis song never to be issued as a single) and the crestfallen “Cast No Shadow”, dedicated to a then-mostly-unknown Richard Ashcroft of the Verve, a band that would soon reap the benefits of Oasis’ American incursion. Ironically, the Oasis-whetted appetite for all things English was arguably also crucial to the impending Stateside success of the Spice Girls, who would usher in a wave of preteen-targeted pop that would eventually push guitar-oriented rock acts down the charts by decade's end. And what’s most striking about listening to (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? today is how, at the height of their powers, Oasis seemed to be bracing for their own eventual downfall. The tone of the album is decidedly darker and more reflective than the working-class escapism of Definitely Maybe, be it the foreboding “it’s never gonna be the same” prophecy of opening salvo “Hello”, the title track’s white-lined dispatches from the after-party circuit, or the cigarette-lighter-illuminated comedown of “Champagne Supernova”, wherein Oasis already sound nostalgic for the idealism of their debut album. And while Noel still deals in absurdist metaphor here (how exactly does one slowly walk down the hall faster than a cannonball?), he also emerges as a more personable, sobering foil to brother Liam’s bratty swagger—not just on his showstopping star turn on “Don’t Look Back in Anger”, but also in the way his backing vocals imbue “Cast No Shadow” with a deeper sense of despair. This expanded three-disc edition of Morning Glory?—which outfits the original album with 28  bonus tracks—shows just how much Noel was on a roll in ’95. Conventional wisdom suggests Oasis released two near-perfect rock ‘n’ roll albums before a grueling, prolonged process of diminishing returns set in. That’s not entirely true—the truth is, Oasis produced at least three albums worth of spectacular songs, it’s just the one of them was spread out over various B-sides. Fourteen of these were collected on the 1998 compilation The Masterplan (a.k.a. Oasis’ Hatful of Hollow), half of which is culled from the Morning Glory era and reappears here. And as any long-time fan can tell you, these castaways rank among some of the band’s finest moments: perennial encore standard “Acquiesce” is a perfect sonic manifestation of Liam and Noel’s notoriously embattled but co-dependent relationship, contrasting the former’s sneering verses with the latter’s heartfelt chorus; “Rockin’ Chair”, along with the Noel-sung ballads “Talk Tonight” and “The Masterplan”, evince a subtlety and sensitivity rarely heard on Oasis’ albums proper. And for those who prefer to savor Oasis’ easy-going melodicism minus the Wembley-toppling bombast, the cache of Noel-strummed acoustic demos included here offer lovely, low-key showcases of his songwriting savvy. Such unwavering consistency "

Doug Paisley

Strong Feelings

Folk/Country

Steven Hyden

For Doug Paisley, a tender-hearted stoic from Toronto whose songs land on the sweet spot between Kris Kristofferson and Gordon Lightfoot, the language of country music puts poetry into the mundane heartbreaks and setbacks of daily existence. On his third album Strong Feelings, Paisley seeks refuge in the beauty of the romantic lyrical metaphors that have populated the genre since at least the heyday of Hank Williams. “The ice it breaks the midday sun / in springtime when the river runs,” he sings in “My Love”, one of the album’s most bracingly pretty numbers. Essentially, Paisley is saying, “Nature tends to stay in motion, so no matter how hard or deeply you love something it’s going to leave you eventually.” But it sounds so much sweeter the way he says it. Mortality is Paisley’s central theme; every life is overshadowed by the omnipresence of death, every romantic relationship dimmed by the inevitability of eventual separation. This is the subject matter of a zillion country songs, of course, but unlike that other, more famous country singer named Paisley (whose song “This is Country Music” extols the virtues of songwriting limned with the tangible directness of everyday language), Doug Paisley hears a song on the radio and feels suddenly lifted toward transcendence. “I turned the radio on 25 years ago/ And they were playing your song/ I looked for you on the town, thought I was tracking you down/ But you were there all along,” he croons on the gently chugging “Radio Girl”, and he’s either addressing an actual woman or equating what he’s just heard grace the airwaves with a long-lost love. In Doug Paisley’s songs, distinguishing between what’s “real” and what’s felt scarcely matters. After a dues-paying tenure as a classic country covers act and the release of his understated self-titled 2008 debut, Paisley broke through in 2010 with his sophomore effort, Constant Companion, which was helped along by high-profile co-stars like Leslie Feist and the Band’s Garth Hudson. For Feelings, Paisley retains producer Stew Crookes and Hudson, who contributes crisp and cozy organ lines to five of the album’s 10 tracks that are so warm you want to rub your hands over them. (His playing on “Song My Love Can Sing” is by itself the worth the price of admission.) Subbing in for Feist on harmony vocals is legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara, who adds another layer of winsome melancholy to “It’s Not Too Late (To Say Goodbye)”. The album’s main musical ingredients—finger-picked guitar, lightly brushed drums, relaxed though subtly emotive vocals—knowingly recall the quietest, most pained cuts on 70s outlaw country records and the twangiest numbers on that era’s rock-leaning singer-songwriter LPs. Musically, Strong Feelings reiterates Constant Companion, which is fine, because it’s a good formula and Paisley’s songs are stronger this time. (He even musters up something resembling swagger on the steadily rocking “To and Fro”.) It’s a sound that comes wrapped in a warm glow of nostalgia that’s undercut by lyrics revealing the slow poison of lingering too long on your memories. “I turned the ground and found the roots still burning/ A night moon that lingers in a blue sky brings a yearning/ If it takes a waterfall to drown all my doubts/ Sometimes it takes a lie to let me know what it’s all about,” Paisley says in “Old Times”. Sometimes a song on the radio can feel like self-delusion in the cold, hard light of experience. No matter the short-term pleasure it provides, life marches inexorably toward an uncertain destination. But Paisley seems content to turn it up anyway and let the music carry him away to a better place.

Artist: Doug Paisley, Album: Strong Feelings, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "For Doug Paisley, a tender-hearted stoic from Toronto whose songs land on the sweet spot between Kris Kristofferson and Gordon Lightfoot, the language of country music puts poetry into the mundane heartbreaks and setbacks of daily existence. On his third album Strong Feelings, Paisley seeks refuge in the beauty of the romantic lyrical metaphors that have populated the genre since at least the heyday of Hank Williams. “The ice it breaks the midday sun / in springtime when the river runs,” he sings in “My Love”, one of the album’s most bracingly pretty numbers. Essentially, Paisley is saying, “Nature tends to stay in motion, so no matter how hard or deeply you love something it’s going to leave you eventually.” But it sounds so much sweeter the way he says it. Mortality is Paisley’s central theme; every life is overshadowed by the omnipresence of death, every romantic relationship dimmed by the inevitability of eventual separation. This is the subject matter of a zillion country songs, of course, but unlike that other, more famous country singer named Paisley (whose song “This is Country Music” extols the virtues of songwriting limned with the tangible directness of everyday language), Doug Paisley hears a song on the radio and feels suddenly lifted toward transcendence. “I turned the radio on 25 years ago/ And they were playing your song/ I looked for you on the town, thought I was tracking you down/ But you were there all along,” he croons on the gently chugging “Radio Girl”, and he’s either addressing an actual woman or equating what he’s just heard grace the airwaves with a long-lost love. In Doug Paisley’s songs, distinguishing between what’s “real” and what’s felt scarcely matters. After a dues-paying tenure as a classic country covers act and the release of his understated self-titled 2008 debut, Paisley broke through in 2010 with his sophomore effort, Constant Companion, which was helped along by high-profile co-stars like Leslie Feist and the Band’s Garth Hudson. For Feelings, Paisley retains producer Stew Crookes and Hudson, who contributes crisp and cozy organ lines to five of the album’s 10 tracks that are so warm you want to rub your hands over them. (His playing on “Song My Love Can Sing” is by itself the worth the price of admission.) Subbing in for Feist on harmony vocals is legendary Canadian singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara, who adds another layer of winsome melancholy to “It’s Not Too Late (To Say Goodbye)”. The album’s main musical ingredients—finger-picked guitar, lightly brushed drums, relaxed though subtly emotive vocals—knowingly recall the quietest, most pained cuts on 70s outlaw country records and the twangiest numbers on that era’s rock-leaning singer-songwriter LPs. Musically, Strong Feelings reiterates Constant Companion, which is fine, because it’s a good formula and Paisley’s songs are stronger this time. (He even musters up something resembling swagger on the steadily rocking “To and Fro”.) It’s a sound that comes wrapped in a warm glow of nostalgia that’s undercut by lyrics revealing the slow poison of lingering too long on your memories. “I turned the ground and found the roots still burning/ A night moon that lingers in a blue sky brings a yearning/ If it takes a waterfall to drown all my doubts/ Sometimes it takes a lie to let me know what it’s all about,” Paisley says in “Old Times”. Sometimes a song on the radio can feel like self-delusion in the cold, hard light of experience. No matter the short-term pleasure it provides, life marches inexorably toward an uncertain destination. But Paisley seems content to turn it up anyway and let the music carry him away to a better place."

Loren Connors

The Departing of a Dream, Vol. II

Folk/Country

Mark Richard-San

How much the second volume of guitarist Loren Connors' The Departing of a Dream differs from the first depends a lot on how closely you want to listen. On the surface, Vol. II is very much of a piece with its predecessor, characterized by its by vast, quiet spaces, unhurried compositions, and an overall sense of dread and despair. The instrumental makeup is pretty much identical-- Connors is credited with guitars, tapes and sounds-- and Volume II seems very much like a continuation. But the details and proportions here have been shuffled, and if you get down and listen closely enough, this a different kind of record. The first thing you'll notice is that Connors spends a bit more time here on the "tapes" and "sounds" and a bit less on the guitar. Field recordings form the essential character of many tracks. The third track (no titles) has only a strum or two of guitar and mostly consists of what sounds like a recording of an abandoned field along the side of a busy highway. You can hear the wind through the long grass and the hum of traffic a little ways away, and can almost see the decade-old rusted cans and yellow newspaper scraps tangled in the scrubby underbrush. It's quite an evocative piece considering it was probably recorded on a random afternoon on a Walkman. The sixth track was recorded a bit further into the wilderness, across the woods and into the forest, and this time, at dawn, complete with a cooing mourning dove. The first track has a similarly rich ambient layer with a more industrial bent, but quiet and in the distance. And over the noise Connors layers his plucked, sustained, carefully laid notes. On the tracks without field recordings Departing of a Dream feels familiar. A melody tumbles from Connors' hands with hints of processing and wah-wah to make a tone that bubbles up from some waterlogged dream. Once again, Connors is a master of slow instrumental heartbreak, and if you're in the wrong mood, this record can actually be painful to listen to. The seventh track, for example, is a slow pan across a bombed-out landscape of emotional devastation, all gurgly tone, bent notes, and shapeless melody. The shorter eighth track, which closes this brief (31-minute) album, has a warmer, sunnier cast, which somehow makes things even worse. The suggestion of hope and renewal seems like a prelude to another shattering reality somewhere in the blurry future. If you're sad and anxious you have a friend in Loren Connors.

Artist: Loren Connors, Album: The Departing of a Dream, Vol. II, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "How much the second volume of guitarist Loren Connors' The Departing of a Dream differs from the first depends a lot on how closely you want to listen. On the surface, Vol. II is very much of a piece with its predecessor, characterized by its by vast, quiet spaces, unhurried compositions, and an overall sense of dread and despair. The instrumental makeup is pretty much identical-- Connors is credited with guitars, tapes and sounds-- and Volume II seems very much like a continuation. But the details and proportions here have been shuffled, and if you get down and listen closely enough, this a different kind of record. The first thing you'll notice is that Connors spends a bit more time here on the "tapes" and "sounds" and a bit less on the guitar. Field recordings form the essential character of many tracks. The third track (no titles) has only a strum or two of guitar and mostly consists of what sounds like a recording of an abandoned field along the side of a busy highway. You can hear the wind through the long grass and the hum of traffic a little ways away, and can almost see the decade-old rusted cans and yellow newspaper scraps tangled in the scrubby underbrush. It's quite an evocative piece considering it was probably recorded on a random afternoon on a Walkman. The sixth track was recorded a bit further into the wilderness, across the woods and into the forest, and this time, at dawn, complete with a cooing mourning dove. The first track has a similarly rich ambient layer with a more industrial bent, but quiet and in the distance. And over the noise Connors layers his plucked, sustained, carefully laid notes. On the tracks without field recordings Departing of a Dream feels familiar. A melody tumbles from Connors' hands with hints of processing and wah-wah to make a tone that bubbles up from some waterlogged dream. Once again, Connors is a master of slow instrumental heartbreak, and if you're in the wrong mood, this record can actually be painful to listen to. The seventh track, for example, is a slow pan across a bombed-out landscape of emotional devastation, all gurgly tone, bent notes, and shapeless melody. The shorter eighth track, which closes this brief (31-minute) album, has a warmer, sunnier cast, which somehow makes things even worse. The suggestion of hope and renewal seems like a prelude to another shattering reality somewhere in the blurry future. If you're sad and anxious you have a friend in Loren Connors. "

Deerhunter

Fading Frontier

Rock

Ian Cohen

A Deerhunter album rollout usually coincides with some pithy and provocative statements from Bradford Cox on pop culture. He sort of obliged on Fading Frontier, calling most modern pop music "totally unredeemable" in an interview. But other than that, he seemed serene: "Fifteen years I spent proving myself," he mused in that same piece. "The only reason for me to make a record now is to make the record." Accordingly,  after the grotty, pissed-off Monomania and Cox's catastrophic car accident comes Deerhunter's most content, warm and plainspoken work to date. Cox drew an "influence map" for this record, one which included R.E.M., Tom Petty, and INXS. All of these names together clarify something about Cox's intentions: These are amongst the most agreeable rock artists to ever become stars, and Fading Frontier sounds like Deerhunter attempting to create songs that are equally enjoyable in an objective way as "Free Fallin'" or "Need You Tonight" or "The One I Love"—ones where if you hear them in a restaurant or car or house party, no one will ever ask you to turn them off.  While Deerhunter's created a number of indelible songs over their career, Fading Frontier may have their first that could conceivably blend into real-deal classic rock radio. Deerhunter reunite with Halcyon Digest producer Ben H. Allen, who forgoes his trademark aquatic ambience and booming low-end to approximate the embossed sound of Jeff Lynne or Scott Litt on "Breaker" and "Living My Life". Even compared to the contemporary indie rock elite working with late-'80s pop-rock at the moment, Fading Frontier sounds happily centrist. Opener "All the Same" shares a title with a Real Estate song, as well as their chiming, interlocked guitars and chipper melodic resolutions. The waltz-timed number with tinny drum machine and slide guitar also happens to share a title with Beach House ("Take Care"). These are crisp and professional recordings, midtempo strides with cleanly strummed open chords, broad harmonies and hooks, unbeholden to any particular subgenre or time period. Meanwhile, the harpsichord and high-capoed guitars of "Duplex Planet" and "Carrion" show a clearheaded psychedelic side of Deerhunter that's more Paisley Underground than Velvet Underground. Cox has called Fading Frontier his "domestic" record, but you shouldn't expect a facade of contentment: "All the Same" finds Cox turning his attention to a friend's father, who "changed his sex and had no more" out of boredom and loses his wife, kids and will to live as a result. Meanwhile, the foggy ambience of "Take Care" parts to reveal Cox singing about burnt dry ice and rotting corpses. The title is not a tender promise, it's a sarcastic, suicidal salutation. Even if Cox hadn't spent much of the past year in recovery, Fading Frontier would likely still obsess over mortality; this is a Deerhunter record, after all, and so we end up with sturdy, industrious pop-rock songs about creeping death, survival and revival. Cox has urged us not to confuse "I" with me," but  has spent a significant portion of his life in and out of hospitals, and both "Snakeskin" and "Duplex Planet" feel inspired by his convalescence." I don't ever want to go back again to the old folks' home," he sighs on the latter, and it feels like an echo of the riddle he posed on Halcyon Digest's "Basement Scene,'" where he claimed, "I don't want to get old" and "I want to get old". Perhaps he did mean both.  Note the play on words of the closer "Carrion", or hell, the double meaning of "remains". If it doesn't initially seem like there's as much at stake as there was on Halcyon Digest or the singleminded commitment of Monomania, Fading Frontier is Cox reckoning with the dissonance of being relatively young man of 33 with a band who's already in legacy-building phase*.* But the tough talk on "Snakeskin" comes from someone whose mere physicality is considered a major health risk and confrontational by default ("I was born already nailed to the cross"). If there isn't a Deerhunter sound, there's a Deerhunter perspective that runs through their work, best summed up in "All the Same"—"take your handicaps/ Channel them and feed them back/ Until they become your strengths." The weird era continues.

Artist: Deerhunter, Album: Fading Frontier, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "A Deerhunter album rollout usually coincides with some pithy and provocative statements from Bradford Cox on pop culture. He sort of obliged on Fading Frontier, calling most modern pop music "totally unredeemable" in an interview. But other than that, he seemed serene: "Fifteen years I spent proving myself," he mused in that same piece. "The only reason for me to make a record now is to make the record." Accordingly,  after the grotty, pissed-off Monomania and Cox's catastrophic car accident comes Deerhunter's most content, warm and plainspoken work to date. Cox drew an "influence map" for this record, one which included R.E.M., Tom Petty, and INXS. All of these names together clarify something about Cox's intentions: These are amongst the most agreeable rock artists to ever become stars, and Fading Frontier sounds like Deerhunter attempting to create songs that are equally enjoyable in an objective way as "Free Fallin'" or "Need You Tonight" or "The One I Love"—ones where if you hear them in a restaurant or car or house party, no one will ever ask you to turn them off.  While Deerhunter's created a number of indelible songs over their career, Fading Frontier may have their first that could conceivably blend into real-deal classic rock radio. Deerhunter reunite with Halcyon Digest producer Ben H. Allen, who forgoes his trademark aquatic ambience and booming low-end to approximate the embossed sound of Jeff Lynne or Scott Litt on "Breaker" and "Living My Life". Even compared to the contemporary indie rock elite working with late-'80s pop-rock at the moment, Fading Frontier sounds happily centrist. Opener "All the Same" shares a title with a Real Estate song, as well as their chiming, interlocked guitars and chipper melodic resolutions. The waltz-timed number with tinny drum machine and slide guitar also happens to share a title with Beach House ("Take Care"). These are crisp and professional recordings, midtempo strides with cleanly strummed open chords, broad harmonies and hooks, unbeholden to any particular subgenre or time period. Meanwhile, the harpsichord and high-capoed guitars of "Duplex Planet" and "Carrion" show a clearheaded psychedelic side of Deerhunter that's more Paisley Underground than Velvet Underground. Cox has called Fading Frontier his "domestic" record, but you shouldn't expect a facade of contentment: "All the Same" finds Cox turning his attention to a friend's father, who "changed his sex and had no more" out of boredom and loses his wife, kids and will to live as a result. Meanwhile, the foggy ambience of "Take Care" parts to reveal Cox singing about burnt dry ice and rotting corpses. The title is not a tender promise, it's a sarcastic, suicidal salutation. Even if Cox hadn't spent much of the past year in recovery, Fading Frontier would likely still obsess over mortality; this is a Deerhunter record, after all, and so we end up with sturdy, industrious pop-rock songs about creeping death, survival and revival. Cox has urged us not to confuse "I" with me," but  has spent a significant portion of his life in and out of hospitals, and both "Snakeskin" and "Duplex Planet" feel inspired by his convalescence." I don't ever want to go back again to the old folks' home," he sighs on the latter, and it feels like an echo of the riddle he posed on Halcyon Digest's "Basement Scene,'" where he claimed, "I don't want to get old" and "I want to get old". Perhaps he did mean both.  Note the play on words of the closer "Carrion", or hell, the double meaning of "remains". If it doesn't initially seem like there's as much at stake as there was on Halcyon Digest or the singleminded commitment of Monomania, Fading Frontier is Cox reckoning with the dissonance of being relatively young man of 33 with a band who's already in legacy-building phase*.* But the tough talk on "Snakeskin" comes from someone whose mere physicality is considered a major health risk and confrontational by default ("I was born already nailed to the cross"). If there isn't a Deerhunter sound, there's a Deerhunter perspective that runs through their work, best summed up in "All the Same"—"take your handicaps/ Channel them and feed them back/ Until they become your strengths." The weird era continues."

Dead Meadow

Three Kings

Metal,Rock

Aaron Leitko

Dead Meadow have a special affection for the bell bottom era's sludgier side. The Los Angeles-via-Washington, DC psych-rock trio have spent much of the past decade dusting off the knotty proto-metal of yesteryear-- as performed by bands like Vanilla Fudge, Blue Cheer, or Black Sabbath-- and pushing it toward darker, druggier, and heavier extremes. Coming two years after the band's last proper release, 2008's Old Growth, Three Kings is an unabashed homage to Led Zeppelin's concert film The Song Remains the Same-- packaging a live recording and a few new studio tunes with a DVD that cuts between performance footage and loopy dream sequences. While the relatively high viscosity of Dead Meadow's music is an asset to the band's studio releases and live sets, it doesn't translate to the screen very well. In general, the heaviest personalities on stage at a Dead Meadow concert are the band's amplifiers. Stripped of the high volume and gut-churning low end, the band inevitably loses some urgency. During "Sleepy Silver Door" Jason Simon lays a strong case for his inclusion in the guitar-hero pantheon, but he's not much of a showman. His only stage move is to work the wah-wah pedal. The fantasy sequences, which do a sort of headshop take on Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal cult film The Holy Mountain, are meant to alleviate the burden of excitement during some of the band's jammier excursions. But they mostly just suggest that Dead Meadow does, indeed, have a sense of humor. Simon along with bassist Steve Kille and drummer Stephen McCarty strut about in wizard garb. During one animated sequence, a group of bipedal weed-creatures self-immolate, then the moon inhales the smoke and, well, you get the idea. The studio tracks are largely standard issue, too, the kind of groovy head-nodding prog-blues that the band can write in its sleep at this point. As a monument to Dead Meadow's live show, Three Kings largely flounders. But when combined with the mp3-only bonus t [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| racks, it does work pretty well as a de facto greatest hits album, offering up solid takes of material from across the band's discography. And the DVD's main narrative-- three young men toy with the dark intrigues and are swept up into a bizarre alternate reality-- has some strange, possibly unintentional, parallels to Dead Meadow's own career. Here are three East Coast indie-rock guys (two members were once in the scrappy emo band the Impossible Five) who took a glimpse behind stoner-rock's veil and wound up tripping through a psychedelic wormhole, that deposited them, for better or worse, in Hollywood.

Artist: Dead Meadow, Album: Three Kings, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Dead Meadow have a special affection for the bell bottom era's sludgier side. The Los Angeles-via-Washington, DC psych-rock trio have spent much of the past decade dusting off the knotty proto-metal of yesteryear-- as performed by bands like Vanilla Fudge, Blue Cheer, or Black Sabbath-- and pushing it toward darker, druggier, and heavier extremes. Coming two years after the band's last proper release, 2008's Old Growth, Three Kings is an unabashed homage to Led Zeppelin's concert film The Song Remains the Same-- packaging a live recording and a few new studio tunes with a DVD that cuts between performance footage and loopy dream sequences. While the relatively high viscosity of Dead Meadow's music is an asset to the band's studio releases and live sets, it doesn't translate to the screen very well. In general, the heaviest personalities on stage at a Dead Meadow concert are the band's amplifiers. Stripped of the high volume and gut-churning low end, the band inevitably loses some urgency. During "Sleepy Silver Door" Jason Simon lays a strong case for his inclusion in the guitar-hero pantheon, but he's not much of a showman. His only stage move is to work the wah-wah pedal. The fantasy sequences, which do a sort of headshop take on Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal cult film The Holy Mountain, are meant to alleviate the burden of excitement during some of the band's jammier excursions. But they mostly just suggest that Dead Meadow does, indeed, have a sense of humor. Simon along with bassist Steve Kille and drummer Stephen McCarty strut about in wizard garb. During one animated sequence, a group of bipedal weed-creatures self-immolate, then the moon inhales the smoke and, well, you get the idea. The studio tracks are largely standard issue, too, the kind of groovy head-nodding prog-blues that the band can write in its sleep at this point. As a monument to Dead Meadow's live show, Three Kings largely flounders. But when combined with the mp3-only bonus t [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| racks, it does work pretty well as a de facto greatest hits album, offering up solid takes of material from across the band's discography. And the DVD's main narrative-- three young men toy with the dark intrigues and are swept up into a bizarre alternate reality-- has some strange, possibly unintentional, parallels to Dead Meadow's own career. Here are three East Coast indie-rock guys (two members were once in the scrappy emo band the Impossible Five) who took a glimpse behind stoner-rock's veil and wound up tripping through a psychedelic wormhole, that deposited them, for better or worse, in Hollywood."

Dosh

Milk Money

Electronic,Rap

Grayson Currin

Is it better to bury the lede or to climax early? That’s the question that hangs highest at the close of Milk Money, the first album in three years from solo multi-instrumentalist, one-man loop station and Andrew Bird drummer Martin Dosh. Dosh begins with six slight and impressionistic pieces, each stopping not only well short of the five-minute mark but of any real peak, too. “Golden Silver”, for instance, slow-fades from a cool-blooded thicket of sighing organs, twinkling pianos, and thudding drums, evacuating its own oxygen before any eruption can occur. “Death Set” is not nearly as dangerous or foreboding as its name implies, with wild runs on multiple keyboards and stepwise sequences of bass simply folding in and out of a jungle beat until that pulse is all that remains. But the final track, “Legos (for Terry)”, is the most ambitious and most surprising moment of Dosh’s entire repertoire. Just shy of 25 minutes, “Legos” is not only longer than the sum of the rest of the album’s parts but also longer than anything else in his back catalog by more than double. This isn’t an exercise in simply going an indeterminate distance, though: Dosh wrote “Legos” as a commission for the Walker Arts Center in his homebase of Minneapolis, Minn., to be played as a duet with Glenn Kotche on the night of the Wilco drummer’s premiere of his John Luther Adams collaboration, Ilimaq. It’s a grand, arching composition that moves between two monolithic sections with just the right balance between restraint and restlessness. Though Dosh has sold his own piano playing short in the past, he summons Keith Jarrett during the first span, scattering bursts and slipstreams of notes between refracted vocal samples and a chiffon layer of static. It’s a phosphorescent dawn. Dosh’s original take lasted nearly twice as long as the album version and featured no vocals, but the sampled-and-splintered utterances here help introduce the song’s second half, a crisscrossing wonder of kalimba and piano, hi-hat and synthesizers. Their melodies and rhythms shift in and around one another like a Steve Reich epic on vacation, exciting and electric. Dosh micromanages the elements as the piece progresses—steadily boosting the background hum, wildly stringing together the vocal bits, carefully digging into the beat a bit heavier and hotter. When all those components tumble around one another, with vocals crashing against drums against electronics, the feeling is ecstatic, as though the composer-performer has just stepped into a field of infinitely bright light. The rest of Milk Money, or Side A, is simply fine. Dosh’s previous solo records, especially since 2006’s audacious The Lost Take, have been guest-heavy affairs, with songs stuffed by big beats and rock-like codas aided by unexpected influences. Perhaps saxophonist Mike Lewis lent his horn to a tune, or maybe Andrew Bird warbled a bit with his violin. They fit the eccentric, interconnected scheme of Anticon, the hip-hop miscreants who released almost all of Dosh’s material until now. But these pieces were all built without collaborators in mind, though Dosh did retroactively add vocals from a few singers, such as the slip-sliding, pitch-shifted bleat during “Unto Eternity” or the soft coos webbed throughout “We are the Worst”. Still, these shorts seem somewhat weightless and without anchor, serving more as messengers of a changing mood than as engrossing compositions. They’re the antithesis, then, of the record’s finale. These numbers remain interesting on a level of one-man-band proficiency, as when the rattling drums slingshot between the M83-like rumble and tropicália flute during the opener. But that’s something you notice from afar, not when the songs have pulled you into their orbit—something that, for the most part, doesn’t occur during Milk Money. In an era of laptop beatmakers and producers able to conjure a full-band feeling from a few outputs and a mixer, the sounds that Dosh gets as a solo performer are not as novel as they once were, despite the workaday analog nature of how he gets them. Strangely, such a consideration has never been problematic for him before Milk Money, because the songs themselves moved with enough drama and dynamics to make the mechanics secondary to the material. But Milk Money can feel like a clinic, a demonstration of the possibilities of his prowess without any meaningful purpose for them. Of course, on Side B, Dosh reveals a clinic of exactly how this should be done, with categories and clichés cast aside in favor of a rigorous and thrilling composition. For Milk Money, it ultimately makes no difference whether the lede is buried (it is) or the climax comes first (there isn’t much of one); this uneven album is mostly a vehicle for “Legos (for Terry)”, an accomplishment that’s not only worth hearing but good enough to leave you hoping for more like it, too.

Artist: Dosh, Album: Milk Money, Genre: Electronic,Rap, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Is it better to bury the lede or to climax early? That’s the question that hangs highest at the close of Milk Money, the first album in three years from solo multi-instrumentalist, one-man loop station and Andrew Bird drummer Martin Dosh. Dosh begins with six slight and impressionistic pieces, each stopping not only well short of the five-minute mark but of any real peak, too. “Golden Silver”, for instance, slow-fades from a cool-blooded thicket of sighing organs, twinkling pianos, and thudding drums, evacuating its own oxygen before any eruption can occur. “Death Set” is not nearly as dangerous or foreboding as its name implies, with wild runs on multiple keyboards and stepwise sequences of bass simply folding in and out of a jungle beat until that pulse is all that remains. But the final track, “Legos (for Terry)”, is the most ambitious and most surprising moment of Dosh’s entire repertoire. Just shy of 25 minutes, “Legos” is not only longer than the sum of the rest of the album’s parts but also longer than anything else in his back catalog by more than double. This isn’t an exercise in simply going an indeterminate distance, though: Dosh wrote “Legos” as a commission for the Walker Arts Center in his homebase of Minneapolis, Minn., to be played as a duet with Glenn Kotche on the night of the Wilco drummer’s premiere of his John Luther Adams collaboration, Ilimaq. It’s a grand, arching composition that moves between two monolithic sections with just the right balance between restraint and restlessness. Though Dosh has sold his own piano playing short in the past, he summons Keith Jarrett during the first span, scattering bursts and slipstreams of notes between refracted vocal samples and a chiffon layer of static. It’s a phosphorescent dawn. Dosh’s original take lasted nearly twice as long as the album version and featured no vocals, but the sampled-and-splintered utterances here help introduce the song’s second half, a crisscrossing wonder of kalimba and piano, hi-hat and synthesizers. Their melodies and rhythms shift in and around one another like a Steve Reich epic on vacation, exciting and electric. Dosh micromanages the elements as the piece progresses—steadily boosting the background hum, wildly stringing together the vocal bits, carefully digging into the beat a bit heavier and hotter. When all those components tumble around one another, with vocals crashing against drums against electronics, the feeling is ecstatic, as though the composer-performer has just stepped into a field of infinitely bright light. The rest of Milk Money, or Side A, is simply fine. Dosh’s previous solo records, especially since 2006’s audacious The Lost Take, have been guest-heavy affairs, with songs stuffed by big beats and rock-like codas aided by unexpected influences. Perhaps saxophonist Mike Lewis lent his horn to a tune, or maybe Andrew Bird warbled a bit with his violin. They fit the eccentric, interconnected scheme of Anticon, the hip-hop miscreants who released almost all of Dosh’s material until now. But these pieces were all built without collaborators in mind, though Dosh did retroactively add vocals from a few singers, such as the slip-sliding, pitch-shifted bleat during “Unto Eternity” or the soft coos webbed throughout “We are the Worst”. Still, these shorts seem somewhat weightless and without anchor, serving more as messengers of a changing mood than as engrossing compositions. They’re the antithesis, then, of the record’s finale. These numbers remain interesting on a level of one-man-band proficiency, as when the rattling drums slingshot between the M83-like rumble and tropicália flute during the opener. But that’s something you notice from afar, not when the songs have pulled you into their orbit—something that, for the most part, doesn’t occur during Milk Money. In an era of laptop beatmakers and producers able to conjure a full-band feeling from a few outputs and a mixer, the sounds that Dosh gets as a solo performer are not as novel as they once were, despite the workaday analog nature of how he gets them. Strangely, such a consideration has never been problematic for him before Milk Money, because the songs themselves moved with enough drama and dynamics to make the mechanics secondary to the material. But Milk Money can feel like a clinic, a demonstration of the possibilities of his prowess without any meaningful purpose for them. Of course, on Side B, Dosh reveals a clinic of exactly how this should be done, with categories and clichés cast aside in favor of a rigorous and thrilling composition. For Milk Money, it ultimately makes no difference whether the lede is buried (it is) or the climax comes first (there isn’t much of one); this uneven album is mostly a vehicle for “Legos (for Terry)”, an accomplishment that’s not only worth hearing but good enough to leave you hoping for more like it, too."

Lisa Germano

Magic Neighbor

Pop/R&B

Joshua Klein

There's glum, and then there's Lisa Germano glum, a sort of wry reaction to bearing the heavy weight of the world mingled with the realization that life might not get much better. It's not totally without hope, but it is the weary sound of real life pressing down from all sides, unfiltered through the usual irony and dramatic stylistic flourishes. It's often not exactly fun, either, and while Germano may rue the comparison, it's hard to jibe her work as a solo artist with the image of her fiddling away exuberantly in John Mellencamp's "Paper in Fire" video. Still, that was a lifetime ago, and since then Germano has come to occupy her own little niche. No surprise that the clouds don't part on Magic Neighbor, Germano's eighth record, or that the woozy gloom hasn't made way for sunbeams and rainbows. Even so, some of the gauze has lifted, especially compared to Germano's last couple of releases. With her piano and vocals at the fore, Germano finds plenty of room to toy with the arrangements, filling the empty corners of each song with small but sympathetic sonic details and a warmth and playfulness that she's not always transmitted from her occasionally spectral remove. "Marypan", an instrumental, begins like an overture, its questioning melody the perfect introduction to Germano's warped but not unwelcoming world. "To the Mighty One" features Germano teetering between childlike wonder and grown-up melancholy, the tonal unease enhanced by wobbling organ, piano, and what sound like outer space effects beamed in from the margins of the mix. "Simple" continues this exploration of contrast, its almost bluesy beginning giving way with little warning to a sprightly carnival waltz. Following "Kitty Train", another wistfully evocative instrumental interlude, "The Prince of Plati" resumes the bittersweet dance of innocence and experience, with Germano occupying a tough to pin down (but no less effective) emotional ambivalence summed up by the deceptively paradoxical line "You seem so unhappy; I can't take that today." Which leaves Germano feeling... where? Up? Down? It's unclear, but it's intriguing, as is Germano's decision to bury her already mumbled, muffled, and eventually manipulated mantra-like vocals in "Suli-mon" until she's just another layered exotic instrument. Things are more clear on "Snow", where what could be Germano's feet pumping at the pedals of her piano comes across like a distant heartbeat, and Germano herself sounds almost like she's singing her near-whispered vocals right into your ear. Elsewhere, the swirling Omnichord of "Painting the Doors", with its surreal lyrics, may be no less strange and mysterious than the purr of a cat, but they're just as inexplicably comforting. This occasionally awkward intersection of intimacy and elusiveness pervades the disc, just as it pervades Germano's other high-wire-act works, but this time the end effect is oddly inviting. It's almost as if we're being allowed a glimpse into a blurry movie flickering away in Germano's head, projected sans subtitles and its plot obscured, yet somehow no less affecting for it.

Artist: Lisa Germano, Album: Magic Neighbor, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "There's glum, and then there's Lisa Germano glum, a sort of wry reaction to bearing the heavy weight of the world mingled with the realization that life might not get much better. It's not totally without hope, but it is the weary sound of real life pressing down from all sides, unfiltered through the usual irony and dramatic stylistic flourishes. It's often not exactly fun, either, and while Germano may rue the comparison, it's hard to jibe her work as a solo artist with the image of her fiddling away exuberantly in John Mellencamp's "Paper in Fire" video. Still, that was a lifetime ago, and since then Germano has come to occupy her own little niche. No surprise that the clouds don't part on Magic Neighbor, Germano's eighth record, or that the woozy gloom hasn't made way for sunbeams and rainbows. Even so, some of the gauze has lifted, especially compared to Germano's last couple of releases. With her piano and vocals at the fore, Germano finds plenty of room to toy with the arrangements, filling the empty corners of each song with small but sympathetic sonic details and a warmth and playfulness that she's not always transmitted from her occasionally spectral remove. "Marypan", an instrumental, begins like an overture, its questioning melody the perfect introduction to Germano's warped but not unwelcoming world. "To the Mighty One" features Germano teetering between childlike wonder and grown-up melancholy, the tonal unease enhanced by wobbling organ, piano, and what sound like outer space effects beamed in from the margins of the mix. "Simple" continues this exploration of contrast, its almost bluesy beginning giving way with little warning to a sprightly carnival waltz. Following "Kitty Train", another wistfully evocative instrumental interlude, "The Prince of Plati" resumes the bittersweet dance of innocence and experience, with Germano occupying a tough to pin down (but no less effective) emotional ambivalence summed up by the deceptively paradoxical line "You seem so unhappy; I can't take that today." Which leaves Germano feeling... where? Up? Down? It's unclear, but it's intriguing, as is Germano's decision to bury her already mumbled, muffled, and eventually manipulated mantra-like vocals in "Suli-mon" until she's just another layered exotic instrument. Things are more clear on "Snow", where what could be Germano's feet pumping at the pedals of her piano comes across like a distant heartbeat, and Germano herself sounds almost like she's singing her near-whispered vocals right into your ear. Elsewhere, the swirling Omnichord of "Painting the Doors", with its surreal lyrics, may be no less strange and mysterious than the purr of a cat, but they're just as inexplicably comforting. This occasionally awkward intersection of intimacy and elusiveness pervades the disc, just as it pervades Germano's other high-wire-act works, but this time the end effect is oddly inviting. It's almost as if we're being allowed a glimpse into a blurry movie flickering away in Germano's head, projected sans subtitles and its plot obscured, yet somehow no less affecting for it."

Townes Van Zandt

Absolutely Nothing

Rock

Andy Beta

If to live is to fly, as Townes Van Zandt would warble, then he himself, to quote from his devout admirer Willie Nelson, was an angel flying too close to the ground. His quavering voice flattened with alcoholic pickling, the burdensome weight of bodily pain palpable in his throat, Van Zandt's powerful songs resonated through artists such as Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, the Cowboy Junkies, and Tindersticks over the decades with a decidedly dark edge to the proceedings. While often compared to Bob Dylan in terms of songwriting prowess, Van Zandt's words relied less on stream-of-conscious glossolalia than on the barren wastelands inside his own head. The result is more Samuel Beckett than Lightnin' Hopkins, and lines like, "I got a friend at last.../ His name's Codeine/ He's the nicest thing I've ever seen/ Together we're gonna wait around and die," convey a trailer-park existentialism that can make for a rough listen-- one preferably with the windows shut and the whiskey opened, the gas on and the lights off. The last in a series of fervent exhuming by the German label Normal, this posthumous release couples a 1994 solo performance in Ireland with five songs recorded days before Townes' death on New Year's Day, 1997. Opener "Flying Shoes" is of the trunk-packing blues variety, although there's a greater weariness on display here than in earlier versions, leaving one to wonder if Townes could have even put his boots on by this point. A tape buzzing distracts the fidelity of the bleak "Kathleen", but the downward spiral of emotions comes through painfully clear, and throughout the concert, his playing is still lucid. The audience is rapt and appreciative throughout, if not dropping like flies as the concert continues. When it comes to women in Townes Van Zandt's songs, they are of one variety only: succubi posing as barflies, pulling him down deeper into the burning hellfires with each drink of bourbon. In "Two Girls", they're of a Lynchian dichotomy, one light and one dark, abstracted beyond mere gal-flesh. The wicked witch tale, "The Hole", is harrowing, despite its obvious imagery; Van Zandt's voice is a haunting amalgam of Hank Williams' "Luke the Drifter" persona preaching the allegorical estrangements of Franz Kafka. "Don't go sneaking 'round no holes," he croaks at the concluding moral, "there just might be something down there, wants to gobble up your soul." It's not all doom and gloom though, as Townes was known for interjecting jokes during his shows, if only to keep the suicide rate down. Some appear here, as does a funny talking blues about discovering the pocket-change pleasures of Thunderbird wine and its cloudy-brained oblivion. With Van Zandt's well-documented history of alcoholism, though, it seems to laugh to keep from crying. The last studio recordings are not culled from the aborted sessions with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and Two Dollar Guitar-ist Tim Foljahn, but from earlier in that fateful December. Aside from a Pogues cover ("Dirty Old Town"), these are slower, eerier versions of old material, almost from life's other side, and are difficult to stomach with foretold death so palpable in the air. "Nothing" was harrowing enough on his 1971's Delta Momma Blues, but here he merges with the death rattle itself, barely exhaling the final lines: "Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things, and the only words that are worth remembering." Absolutely Nothing is fascinating, albeit extremely dismal listening, but, sharing seven songs with the classic double live album Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, is ultimately more for completists and those searching for an aural equivalent of Faces of Death.

Artist: Townes Van Zandt, Album: Absolutely Nothing, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "If to live is to fly, as Townes Van Zandt would warble, then he himself, to quote from his devout admirer Willie Nelson, was an angel flying too close to the ground. His quavering voice flattened with alcoholic pickling, the burdensome weight of bodily pain palpable in his throat, Van Zandt's powerful songs resonated through artists such as Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, the Cowboy Junkies, and Tindersticks over the decades with a decidedly dark edge to the proceedings. While often compared to Bob Dylan in terms of songwriting prowess, Van Zandt's words relied less on stream-of-conscious glossolalia than on the barren wastelands inside his own head. The result is more Samuel Beckett than Lightnin' Hopkins, and lines like, "I got a friend at last.../ His name's Codeine/ He's the nicest thing I've ever seen/ Together we're gonna wait around and die," convey a trailer-park existentialism that can make for a rough listen-- one preferably with the windows shut and the whiskey opened, the gas on and the lights off. The last in a series of fervent exhuming by the German label Normal, this posthumous release couples a 1994 solo performance in Ireland with five songs recorded days before Townes' death on New Year's Day, 1997. Opener "Flying Shoes" is of the trunk-packing blues variety, although there's a greater weariness on display here than in earlier versions, leaving one to wonder if Townes could have even put his boots on by this point. A tape buzzing distracts the fidelity of the bleak "Kathleen", but the downward spiral of emotions comes through painfully clear, and throughout the concert, his playing is still lucid. The audience is rapt and appreciative throughout, if not dropping like flies as the concert continues. When it comes to women in Townes Van Zandt's songs, they are of one variety only: succubi posing as barflies, pulling him down deeper into the burning hellfires with each drink of bourbon. In "Two Girls", they're of a Lynchian dichotomy, one light and one dark, abstracted beyond mere gal-flesh. The wicked witch tale, "The Hole", is harrowing, despite its obvious imagery; Van Zandt's voice is a haunting amalgam of Hank Williams' "Luke the Drifter" persona preaching the allegorical estrangements of Franz Kafka. "Don't go sneaking 'round no holes," he croaks at the concluding moral, "there just might be something down there, wants to gobble up your soul." It's not all doom and gloom though, as Townes was known for interjecting jokes during his shows, if only to keep the suicide rate down. Some appear here, as does a funny talking blues about discovering the pocket-change pleasures of Thunderbird wine and its cloudy-brained oblivion. With Van Zandt's well-documented history of alcoholism, though, it seems to laugh to keep from crying. The last studio recordings are not culled from the aborted sessions with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and Two Dollar Guitar-ist Tim Foljahn, but from earlier in that fateful December. Aside from a Pogues cover ("Dirty Old Town"), these are slower, eerier versions of old material, almost from life's other side, and are difficult to stomach with foretold death so palpable in the air. "Nothing" was harrowing enough on his 1971's Delta Momma Blues, but here he merges with the death rattle itself, barely exhaling the final lines: "Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things, and the only words that are worth remembering." Absolutely Nothing is fascinating, albeit extremely dismal listening, but, sharing seven songs with the classic double live album Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, is ultimately more for completists and those searching for an aural equivalent of Faces of Death."

Contributors

Contributors

Rock

Marc Masters

The music of Austin trio Spray Paint is simple but potent. Relying heavily on repetition, they use clanging guitar, motorik beats, and nervous singing to make music that can both wind you up and give you the chills. In just six years, they’ve mined this formula for six gripping, high-strung albums. If their distinctive post-punk hasn’t gotten its due, maybe that’s because Spray Paint aren’t easy to keep up with. That’s a situation Dan Melchior knows well. Since the late ’90s, the British-born musician has generated over 30 solo releases and with his bands Broke Revue, Dan Melchior Und Das Menace, and the Lloyd Pack, a sprawling oeuvre that’s difficult to sum up. His sonic signature is more varied than Spray Paint’s, but he shares with them a knack for picking an idea and sticking to it. That single-eyed patience is a key to Contributors, a new collaboration between Spray Paint and Melchior (along with Will Slack from Austin band Soft Healer). During their self-titled album’s six tracks—most of which last six minutes or more—the group make mountains out of mantras, propelling forward like an 18-wheeler barreling down a highway. The fuzzed out, driving pulse of Contributors is there from the beginning. Opener “Aiport Girl” starts with a single beeping tone, soon supplemented by a pounding beat and a chiming guitar note. Over the top, Melchior repeats questions about the song’s title character—“Why does she work so hard? Who is she working so hard for?”—until they become unanswerable Zen koans. As the tune progresses, none of its basic elements change much, but building momentum helps Contributors shift into ever higher gears. “Airport Girls” gains gravity through sheer centrifugal force. The rest of Contributors follows a similar path. Simple loops of beat and melody escalate throughout. Small modulations in guitar volume and density help each song avoid monotony while maintaining stability. Melchior’s semi-spoken deadpan—which isn’t far from Spray Paint’s flat shouts—adds to the perpetual motion, but his wry bite is also surprisingly subtle. He’ll repeat a phrase as if photocopying the one before, then alter his tone slightly, poking bubbles of drama through the music’s steely surface. This works best on “Reef of Regret,” as Melchior attacks the title from enough angles that the effect is both smoothly hypnotic and oddly disturbing. It can be easy, and enjoyable, to settle into Contributors’ grooves as if you’re cruising the Autobahn. But along the way, there’s always something slightly unsettling going on. That’s why even when they let up on the gas—take the slow, echoey “Clumsy Hands” or the near-bluesy plod of “Lazy”—the tension doesn’t recede. (The way Melchior bites off the lines in “Lazy” is particularly creepy, like he’s stalking the music). In that sense, Contributors lives up to the pedigree of its participants, working on different levels while merging into one unified lane.

Artist: Contributors, Album: Contributors, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "The music of Austin trio Spray Paint is simple but potent. Relying heavily on repetition, they use clanging guitar, motorik beats, and nervous singing to make music that can both wind you up and give you the chills. In just six years, they’ve mined this formula for six gripping, high-strung albums. If their distinctive post-punk hasn’t gotten its due, maybe that’s because Spray Paint aren’t easy to keep up with. That’s a situation Dan Melchior knows well. Since the late ’90s, the British-born musician has generated over 30 solo releases and with his bands Broke Revue, Dan Melchior Und Das Menace, and the Lloyd Pack, a sprawling oeuvre that’s difficult to sum up. His sonic signature is more varied than Spray Paint’s, but he shares with them a knack for picking an idea and sticking to it. That single-eyed patience is a key to Contributors, a new collaboration between Spray Paint and Melchior (along with Will Slack from Austin band Soft Healer). During their self-titled album’s six tracks—most of which last six minutes or more—the group make mountains out of mantras, propelling forward like an 18-wheeler barreling down a highway. The fuzzed out, driving pulse of Contributors is there from the beginning. Opener “Aiport Girl” starts with a single beeping tone, soon supplemented by a pounding beat and a chiming guitar note. Over the top, Melchior repeats questions about the song’s title character—“Why does she work so hard? Who is she working so hard for?”—until they become unanswerable Zen koans. As the tune progresses, none of its basic elements change much, but building momentum helps Contributors shift into ever higher gears. “Airport Girls” gains gravity through sheer centrifugal force. The rest of Contributors follows a similar path. Simple loops of beat and melody escalate throughout. Small modulations in guitar volume and density help each song avoid monotony while maintaining stability. Melchior’s semi-spoken deadpan—which isn’t far from Spray Paint’s flat shouts—adds to the perpetual motion, but his wry bite is also surprisingly subtle. He’ll repeat a phrase as if photocopying the one before, then alter his tone slightly, poking bubbles of drama through the music’s steely surface. This works best on “Reef of Regret,” as Melchior attacks the title from enough angles that the effect is both smoothly hypnotic and oddly disturbing. It can be easy, and enjoyable, to settle into Contributors’ grooves as if you’re cruising the Autobahn. But along the way, there’s always something slightly unsettling going on. That’s why even when they let up on the gas—take the slow, echoey “Clumsy Hands” or the near-bluesy plod of “Lazy”—the tension doesn’t recede. (The way Melchior bites off the lines in “Lazy” is particularly creepy, like he’s stalking the music). In that sense, Contributors lives up to the pedigree of its participants, working on different levels while merging into one unified lane."

Tyler, the Creator

Cherry Bomb

Rap

Matthew Ramirez

In a recent appearance on "Tavis Smiley", Smiley asked the now-24-year-old Tyler, the Creator to describe himself. He replied with a candid, perhaps-practiced monologue: "I’m very bright. I’m smart. I’m annoying and obnoxious. I’m very creative and borderline genius, and I think other people are starting to see that, too." Cherry Bomb, Tyler’s fourth long-player and third official album, complements his self-professed characteristics to a T, in ways both good and bad. His greatest strength has always been world-building, using a synth-heavy blitz of candy-colored jazz chords taken straight (sometimes blatantly so) from the Pharrell handbook. Cherry Bomb isn’t exactly a hard left turn from this lane, but it is a quick swerve. He’s still occasionally obnoxious and shockingly adolescent for someone almost a quarter-century old (on "Smuckers" he defiantly raps, "Fuck your loud pack, and fuck your Snapchat" with the gusto of Ian MacKaye declaring his devotion to straight edge). His idea of a joke is making the lead single to his rap album a Stevie Wonder-inspired bop about an underage relationship. What makes the joke "land," of course, is that the song is really good, a warm-sounding piece of pop music complete with an appearance from the ineffable Charlie Wilson. It’s a smart, annoying, obnoxious, creative, and borderline genius tactic from someone still working on reaching his final form. The best thing Cherry Bomb has going for it is relative brevity. Goblin and Wolf were notoriously long, which felt like a betrayal of one of Tyler’s biggest strengths—shotgun blasts of creativity and anguish as opposed to woozy, multi-part dirges that bordered on self-parody. Cherry Bomb still features three songs that are longer than six minutes, but the songs transform within themselves, like the jazz Tyler admires, so that they almost feel like three songs in one. There's still nothing "minimalist" about what Tyler does; this tweet just about sums up his approach to this album. Opener "Deathcamp" was allegedly inspired by the Stooges, and it sounds like what would happen if you put Tyler's idea of the Stooges on top of Glassjaw on top of Trash Talk, and, it should go without saying, on top a vintage N.E.R.D. production. Your mileage may vary, but I find it thrilling—the influence of rock music, while always present in Tyler’s music, is overwhelming here, which creates a Rebirth-ian wrinkle to an album that, to its strength and detriment, mostly recycles three or four similar ideas. "Pilot" and the title track to me recall none other than Big Black—drum machine-led walls of sound that break down and start up again as Tyler struggles to be heard over the noise. He is friends with Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick (who makes an anonymous appearance on filler track "Run"), and "Find Your Wings" is Tyler’s gentlest song to date, an interlude that’s part quiet storm, part Toro, and completely without pretense or sarcasm. Kanye and Wayne have verses on "Smuckers", the album’s best song. All three artists are auteurs in their own right, and with Tyler’s verses bookending and sandwiching the track and a beat switch thrown in the middle, it’s as if he’s playing hot potato with rap’s most singular voices and inserting himself in their world, a vandal placing his imprimatur on a piece in a gallery. The thrilling part is how at home Kanye and Wayne sound having fun in this playground (Kanye’s "Richer than white people with black kids/ Scarier than black people with ideas" is an instant classic, while Wayne slides into a comfortable vintage flow). There will be a lot of talk about how unfocused or chaotic this album is, but I’ve always taken that as par for the course with any Tyler music. Tyler is still gonna do Tyler things, and it’s refreshing when an artist creates exactly the kind of art they want to create. A quick glance at the announced five alternate covers to the album was revealing—there’s a real aesthetic consistency to them. I’m reminded of the work of Marilyn Minter, an artist with a similar panache for creating intentionally ugly and tacky art, with the knowing observation, "Yes, this is ugly, but I can’t stop looking at it." That may be old hat at this point, but the idea is still such a seductive one: I know it's a mess, I put a lot of work into creating this mess, and it's your problem if you can't handle it. A funhouse mirror doesn’t make sense without knowledge of how a regular mirror works. Tyler, the Creator only creates as the sum of his exhaustive, trying, kaleidoscope self—and I keep looking at him.

Artist: Tyler, the Creator, Album: Cherry Bomb, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "In a recent appearance on "Tavis Smiley", Smiley asked the now-24-year-old Tyler, the Creator to describe himself. He replied with a candid, perhaps-practiced monologue: "I’m very bright. I’m smart. I’m annoying and obnoxious. I’m very creative and borderline genius, and I think other people are starting to see that, too." Cherry Bomb, Tyler’s fourth long-player and third official album, complements his self-professed characteristics to a T, in ways both good and bad. His greatest strength has always been world-building, using a synth-heavy blitz of candy-colored jazz chords taken straight (sometimes blatantly so) from the Pharrell handbook. Cherry Bomb isn’t exactly a hard left turn from this lane, but it is a quick swerve. He’s still occasionally obnoxious and shockingly adolescent for someone almost a quarter-century old (on "Smuckers" he defiantly raps, "Fuck your loud pack, and fuck your Snapchat" with the gusto of Ian MacKaye declaring his devotion to straight edge). His idea of a joke is making the lead single to his rap album a Stevie Wonder-inspired bop about an underage relationship. What makes the joke "land," of course, is that the song is really good, a warm-sounding piece of pop music complete with an appearance from the ineffable Charlie Wilson. It’s a smart, annoying, obnoxious, creative, and borderline genius tactic from someone still working on reaching his final form. The best thing Cherry Bomb has going for it is relative brevity. Goblin and Wolf were notoriously long, which felt like a betrayal of one of Tyler’s biggest strengths—shotgun blasts of creativity and anguish as opposed to woozy, multi-part dirges that bordered on self-parody. Cherry Bomb still features three songs that are longer than six minutes, but the songs transform within themselves, like the jazz Tyler admires, so that they almost feel like three songs in one. There's still nothing "minimalist" about what Tyler does; this tweet just about sums up his approach to this album. Opener "Deathcamp" was allegedly inspired by the Stooges, and it sounds like what would happen if you put Tyler's idea of the Stooges on top of Glassjaw on top of Trash Talk, and, it should go without saying, on top a vintage N.E.R.D. production. Your mileage may vary, but I find it thrilling—the influence of rock music, while always present in Tyler’s music, is overwhelming here, which creates a Rebirth-ian wrinkle to an album that, to its strength and detriment, mostly recycles three or four similar ideas. "Pilot" and the title track to me recall none other than Big Black—drum machine-led walls of sound that break down and start up again as Tyler struggles to be heard over the noise. He is friends with Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick (who makes an anonymous appearance on filler track "Run"), and "Find Your Wings" is Tyler’s gentlest song to date, an interlude that’s part quiet storm, part Toro, and completely without pretense or sarcasm. Kanye and Wayne have verses on "Smuckers", the album’s best song. All three artists are auteurs in their own right, and with Tyler’s verses bookending and sandwiching the track and a beat switch thrown in the middle, it’s as if he’s playing hot potato with rap’s most singular voices and inserting himself in their world, a vandal placing his imprimatur on a piece in a gallery. The thrilling part is how at home Kanye and Wayne sound having fun in this playground (Kanye’s "Richer than white people with black kids/ Scarier than black people with ideas" is an instant classic, while Wayne slides into a comfortable vintage flow). There will be a lot of talk about how unfocused or chaotic this album is, but I’ve always taken that as par for the course with any Tyler music. Tyler is still gonna do Tyler things, and it’s refreshing when an artist creates exactly the kind of art they want to create. A quick glance at the announced five alternate covers to the album was revealing—there’s a real aesthetic consistency to them. I’m reminded of the work of Marilyn Minter, an artist with a similar panache for creating intentionally ugly and tacky art, with the knowing observation, "Yes, this is ugly, but I can’t stop looking at it." That may be old hat at this point, but the idea is still such a seductive one: I know it's a mess, I put a lot of work into creating this mess, and it's your problem if you can't handle it. A funhouse mirror doesn’t make sense without knowledge of how a regular mirror works. Tyler, the Creator only creates as the sum of his exhaustive, trying, kaleidoscope self—and I keep looking at him."

Eric Copeland

Black Bubblegum

Experimental

Raymond Cummings

Eric Copeland writes slippery, chameleonic songs. Sifting through the accrued, multi-format bric-a-brac of this Black Dice member’s voluminous solo catalogue can feel unnervingly magical, like turning over the acorn cupped in your palm and discovering it was always a quarter. Merry hooks are conked far beyond delirium, gnawed upon by effects, reshuffled mercilessly to accommodate inappropriate tempos. And while it’s often remarked that no one experiences a single piece of music the same way twice, this is especially true for the entries in Copeland’s canon. With very rare exceptions—“U.F.O.s Over Vampire City” from 2011’s *Whorehouse Blues *EP, for example - vocals in Copeland’s work have been little more than floating scraps. Black Bubblegum upends this status quo somewhat, with Copeland’s voice foregrounded. The LP is ramshackle, blithe, and relatively accessible—a Blues Explosion to its predecessors’ Pussy Galore. A wobbly, piping effect guides the jaunty, absurdist “Fuck It Up,” a junkyard anthem worthy of pre-1993 Beck or Ween. Grease-fire guitars and roadhouse pianos goose “Don’t Beat Your Baby,” while “Cannibal World” dips a foot into reggae, astride watery, wavy effects that suggest a hybrid of steel drums and synthesizers. Even though the surface is smoother and and the vocals less garbled than usual, it’d be a mistake to read *Bubblegum *as a true unmasking. Filters swaddle Copeland’s voice throughout, distorting and distending it but stopping short of intelligibility; lyrically, he’s striking a tricky balance between deadpan nihilism and pop troubadour nostalgia. Nothing is revealed; the mystery continues.

Artist: Eric Copeland, Album: Black Bubblegum, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Eric Copeland writes slippery, chameleonic songs. Sifting through the accrued, multi-format bric-a-brac of this Black Dice member’s voluminous solo catalogue can feel unnervingly magical, like turning over the acorn cupped in your palm and discovering it was always a quarter. Merry hooks are conked far beyond delirium, gnawed upon by effects, reshuffled mercilessly to accommodate inappropriate tempos. And while it’s often remarked that no one experiences a single piece of music the same way twice, this is especially true for the entries in Copeland’s canon. With very rare exceptions—“U.F.O.s Over Vampire City” from 2011’s *Whorehouse Blues *EP, for example - vocals in Copeland’s work have been little more than floating scraps. Black Bubblegum upends this status quo somewhat, with Copeland’s voice foregrounded. The LP is ramshackle, blithe, and relatively accessible—a Blues Explosion to its predecessors’ Pussy Galore. A wobbly, piping effect guides the jaunty, absurdist “Fuck It Up,” a junkyard anthem worthy of pre-1993 Beck or Ween. Grease-fire guitars and roadhouse pianos goose “Don’t Beat Your Baby,” while “Cannibal World” dips a foot into reggae, astride watery, wavy effects that suggest a hybrid of steel drums and synthesizers. Even though the surface is smoother and and the vocals less garbled than usual, it’d be a mistake to read *Bubblegum *as a true unmasking. Filters swaddle Copeland’s voice throughout, distorting and distending it but stopping short of intelligibility; lyrically, he’s striking a tricky balance between deadpan nihilism and pop troubadour nostalgia. Nothing is revealed; the mystery continues."

The Vandermark Five

Airports for Light

Dominique Leone

Ken Vandermark gained his first real exposure as the young tenor sax player in Chicago avant-icon Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble in the late 80s. Along with Mars Williams, Vandermark provided an edgy, almost punky spirit to the band's music, and, after Russell's death, went on to form his own celebrated outfit with Williams, The Vandermark Five. Trombonist Jeb Bishop and the outstanding bassist Kent Kessler have appeared on all the group's records since 1997's Single Piece Flow, but Dave Rempis eventually replaced Williams. The quintet's music, like Hal Russell's, has generally maintained a space not easily pigeonholed as straight jazz, nor is it strictly avant-garde, free or jazz-rock; Vandermark might draw the easiest comparisons to New York fellow head-of-the-classer John Zorn, or more accurately, Ellery Eskelin. Airports for Light is the Vandermark Five's sixth record, and will be of interest to anyone who has enjoyed their previous five. In fact, the familiarity can be distracting: the playing is spot-on, all the time, especially from Bishop and Vandermark, both of whom display a fairly intimidating mastery of styles and timbres. The music ranges from European-styled free improvisation, rock and funk moves, sudden bursts of activity and all the cohesion you'd expect from a band of players who'd been together for much of the past decade. But if things occasionally seem a little too familiar, it's not for lack of interesting ideas. And it's not that this stuff doesn't swing-- it certainly does. "Both Sides", dedicated to legendary jazz tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson, lays it all out pretty clearly. Johnson's tenure with the pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines earned him a rep as one of the swingingest cats in town, and fittingly, Vandermark's tune is half Chicago strut and half snappy Playboy lounge blue. His solo actually reminds me of another sax-man, Plas Johnson, most famous for his playing on Henry Mancini's infamous Pink Panther theme, and a damn fine swingman in his own right. Vandermark's playing is loose, but clean; understated but obviously nuanced. He plays a perfect chorus, and Bishop's more modern sounding strains seem somehow misplaced in comparison (though not much, especially in light of the free jazz on either side of this song). The worst I can say is that the music is a tad on the comfy side-- and that's only a problem if you want it to be. "Other Cuts", dedicated to Curtis Mayfield, takes the nice-n-easy road, too, but as it applies to low-down 70s funk rather than beatnik jazz. And just as the band made quick work of swing, they have little problem finding the pocket here. Again, Vandermark's solo is precise to a fault-- not in his choice of notes or articulation, but in the way it so easily falls in line with the scores of small group funk sides of the late 60s and 70s. Think Lou Donaldson at his meanest, or The Crusaders playing a gig in a Houston dive on a weeknight. Of course, Kessler's completely free, unaccompanied solo midway through sort of blows any "authenticity" out the window, but only for the better. Airports for Light is at its best when it surprises. Several explicitly exploratory cuts-- like "Plus (for Fredrik Ljungkvist)", reminiscent of the early Art Ensemble of Chicago records, and "Initials (for Jean Tinguely)", a fairly chaotic mixture of bleating outbursts and clangs-- demonstrate that Vandermark's group is at home without the net of a genre frame (though my favorite moments are actually when their wheels start to come off, as on the blistering opener, "Cruz Campo", dedicated to artist Gerhard Richter, who was immortalized in the indie world when Sonic Youth took his Two Candles as the cover of Daydream Nation). Here, the kinetic, unhinged energy splatters all over the place, with Bishop in particular navigating the catastrophe with fresh, scatterbrained ideas. The band revisits this vibe on the closer, "Confluence (for Sonny Rollins)", though the end result is less a joyous anarchy than it is your workaday explosion of 60s-comeback era Rollins meeting post-John Zorn mash. (As a side note, Vandermark is a major Rollins fan, and some editions of this CD come with a bonus disc of six more of his songs.) The good news for folks not normally on the jazz bus is that Vandermark's records-- with this band and without-- tend to offer outsiders a helping hand. His own playing can be fierce, or noisy, and his band is always top-notch, but the tunes are hardly off-putting. In fact, in a way, The Vandermark Five are a perfect bridge for rock fans raised on the notion that jazz is the music of a secret society filled with a thousand guys named Bud or Johnny. By the same token, longtime listeners may not be knocked out of their seat, but should at least find enough of interest to invest the time it takes to make it through. Not quite as viscerally engaging as catching their set at the club, but good stuff nonetheless.

Artist: The Vandermark Five, Album: Airports for Light, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Ken Vandermark gained his first real exposure as the young tenor sax player in Chicago avant-icon Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble in the late 80s. Along with Mars Williams, Vandermark provided an edgy, almost punky spirit to the band's music, and, after Russell's death, went on to form his own celebrated outfit with Williams, The Vandermark Five. Trombonist Jeb Bishop and the outstanding bassist Kent Kessler have appeared on all the group's records since 1997's Single Piece Flow, but Dave Rempis eventually replaced Williams. The quintet's music, like Hal Russell's, has generally maintained a space not easily pigeonholed as straight jazz, nor is it strictly avant-garde, free or jazz-rock; Vandermark might draw the easiest comparisons to New York fellow head-of-the-classer John Zorn, or more accurately, Ellery Eskelin. Airports for Light is the Vandermark Five's sixth record, and will be of interest to anyone who has enjoyed their previous five. In fact, the familiarity can be distracting: the playing is spot-on, all the time, especially from Bishop and Vandermark, both of whom display a fairly intimidating mastery of styles and timbres. The music ranges from European-styled free improvisation, rock and funk moves, sudden bursts of activity and all the cohesion you'd expect from a band of players who'd been together for much of the past decade. But if things occasionally seem a little too familiar, it's not for lack of interesting ideas. And it's not that this stuff doesn't swing-- it certainly does. "Both Sides", dedicated to legendary jazz tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson, lays it all out pretty clearly. Johnson's tenure with the pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines earned him a rep as one of the swingingest cats in town, and fittingly, Vandermark's tune is half Chicago strut and half snappy Playboy lounge blue. His solo actually reminds me of another sax-man, Plas Johnson, most famous for his playing on Henry Mancini's infamous Pink Panther theme, and a damn fine swingman in his own right. Vandermark's playing is loose, but clean; understated but obviously nuanced. He plays a perfect chorus, and Bishop's more modern sounding strains seem somehow misplaced in comparison (though not much, especially in light of the free jazz on either side of this song). The worst I can say is that the music is a tad on the comfy side-- and that's only a problem if you want it to be. "Other Cuts", dedicated to Curtis Mayfield, takes the nice-n-easy road, too, but as it applies to low-down 70s funk rather than beatnik jazz. And just as the band made quick work of swing, they have little problem finding the pocket here. Again, Vandermark's solo is precise to a fault-- not in his choice of notes or articulation, but in the way it so easily falls in line with the scores of small group funk sides of the late 60s and 70s. Think Lou Donaldson at his meanest, or The Crusaders playing a gig in a Houston dive on a weeknight. Of course, Kessler's completely free, unaccompanied solo midway through sort of blows any "authenticity" out the window, but only for the better. Airports for Light is at its best when it surprises. Several explicitly exploratory cuts-- like "Plus (for Fredrik Ljungkvist)", reminiscent of the early Art Ensemble of Chicago records, and "Initials (for Jean Tinguely)", a fairly chaotic mixture of bleating outbursts and clangs-- demonstrate that Vandermark's group is at home without the net of a genre frame (though my favorite moments are actually when their wheels start to come off, as on the blistering opener, "Cruz Campo", dedicated to artist Gerhard Richter, who was immortalized in the indie world when Sonic Youth took his Two Candles as the cover of Daydream Nation). Here, the kinetic, unhinged energy splatters all over the place, with Bishop in particular navigating the catastrophe with fresh, scatterbrained ideas. The band revisits this vibe on the closer, "Confluence (for Sonny Rollins)", though the end result is less a joyous anarchy than it is your workaday explosion of 60s-comeback era Rollins meeting post-John Zorn mash. (As a side note, Vandermark is a major Rollins fan, and some editions of this CD come with a bonus disc of six more of his songs.) The good news for folks not normally on the jazz bus is that Vandermark's records-- with this band and without-- tend to offer outsiders a helping hand. His own playing can be fierce, or noisy, and his band is always top-notch, but the tunes are hardly off-putting. In fact, in a way, The Vandermark Five are a perfect bridge for rock fans raised on the notion that jazz is the music of a secret society filled with a thousand guys named Bud or Johnny. By the same token, longtime listeners may not be knocked out of their seat, but should at least find enough of interest to invest the time it takes to make it through. Not quite as viscerally engaging as catching their set at the club, but good stuff nonetheless."

SJ Esau

Wrong-Faced Cat Feed Collapse

Rock

Joe Tangari

The Anticon label is usually home to unorthodox hip-hop and electronic music, but they've made an exception for Why? cohort SJ Esau's first label-distributed solo album. Though Sam Wisternoff began his music career rapping in his hometown of Bristol, England (at age eight, no less), under the SJ Esau tag he focuses on atmospheric indie rock that borrows from the Scottish post-rock scene and Hood. A few moments stand out-- usually by impressing with a unique or unexpected texture-- but for the most part, it seems Wisternoff could stand to tighten the c-clamp on his head, as pictured on the album's cover. Focused melodies simply don't live here, which makes it hard to keep coming back to even the better arrangements. Wisternoff's reedy voice isn't bad, but he gives himself little to work with on songs like "Wears the Control" and "The Wrong Order", which seem far more concerned with creating a sound rather than doing something with that sound. The latter of the two takes textural experimentation too far, including a loop of some sort of scraping noise that drives me up the wall. Promise peeks out of first song "Cat Track (He Has No Balls)", which begins inauspiciously with Wisternoff playing the exact same melody he's singing on his acoustic guitar, but briefly breaks into a careening midsection led by a dagger-sharp violin phrase that sounds like it could have come off a mid-1970s King Crimson record. It veers back to an acoustic arrangement before a thrashing coda, manipulating pop form in an interesting way while wielding sharp dynamic shifts, but it's ultimately not terribly memorable. Wisternoff's tendency to double his vocals with keyboard, guitar or violin is one of the things that holds the album back. It's partly because the tunes are too basic and static, but it's also the fact that there's usually only one thing going on at a time, and one thing isn't enough with this kind of music. "Geography (Donkey Dancing in the Bath)" only gets interesting when he hands the vocal melody off to a solo trumpet and ramps up the arrangement with bashing drums. The best song on the album is the one that doesn't feel like it belongs here: "Halfway up the Pathway" is a solo acoustic number recorded in the most rudimentary fashion, but it has a fantastic vocal with a Syd Barrett feel and Wisternoff's strumming is spry and lively. It's just about perfect, but Wisternoff doesn't seem to agree, uselessly appending a coda that consists of the rest of the song annoyingly chopped to bits and mixed up. Though it has its moments, they're not enough to save Wrong-Faced Cat Feed Collapse from mediocrity. Wisternoff certainly knows how to handle timbre and tone, but without marrying them to song, he's created an overly uniform record that doesn't stick.

Artist: SJ Esau, Album: Wrong-Faced Cat Feed Collapse, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 4.2 Album review: "The Anticon label is usually home to unorthodox hip-hop and electronic music, but they've made an exception for Why? cohort SJ Esau's first label-distributed solo album. Though Sam Wisternoff began his music career rapping in his hometown of Bristol, England (at age eight, no less), under the SJ Esau tag he focuses on atmospheric indie rock that borrows from the Scottish post-rock scene and Hood. A few moments stand out-- usually by impressing with a unique or unexpected texture-- but for the most part, it seems Wisternoff could stand to tighten the c-clamp on his head, as pictured on the album's cover. Focused melodies simply don't live here, which makes it hard to keep coming back to even the better arrangements. Wisternoff's reedy voice isn't bad, but he gives himself little to work with on songs like "Wears the Control" and "The Wrong Order", which seem far more concerned with creating a sound rather than doing something with that sound. The latter of the two takes textural experimentation too far, including a loop of some sort of scraping noise that drives me up the wall. Promise peeks out of first song "Cat Track (He Has No Balls)", which begins inauspiciously with Wisternoff playing the exact same melody he's singing on his acoustic guitar, but briefly breaks into a careening midsection led by a dagger-sharp violin phrase that sounds like it could have come off a mid-1970s King Crimson record. It veers back to an acoustic arrangement before a thrashing coda, manipulating pop form in an interesting way while wielding sharp dynamic shifts, but it's ultimately not terribly memorable. Wisternoff's tendency to double his vocals with keyboard, guitar or violin is one of the things that holds the album back. It's partly because the tunes are too basic and static, but it's also the fact that there's usually only one thing going on at a time, and one thing isn't enough with this kind of music. "Geography (Donkey Dancing in the Bath)" only gets interesting when he hands the vocal melody off to a solo trumpet and ramps up the arrangement with bashing drums. The best song on the album is the one that doesn't feel like it belongs here: "Halfway up the Pathway" is a solo acoustic number recorded in the most rudimentary fashion, but it has a fantastic vocal with a Syd Barrett feel and Wisternoff's strumming is spry and lively. It's just about perfect, but Wisternoff doesn't seem to agree, uselessly appending a coda that consists of the rest of the song annoyingly chopped to bits and mixed up. Though it has its moments, they're not enough to save Wrong-Faced Cat Feed Collapse from mediocrity. Wisternoff certainly knows how to handle timbre and tone, but without marrying them to song, he's created an overly uniform record that doesn't stick."

Owen Pallett

Heartland

Pop/R&B

Nitsuh Abebe

If you're lucky, you might already know this guy as Final Fantasy. His reasons for dropping that name are probably boring and copyright-related, but still: The name change seems healthy on whole other extra-legal levels. I've never known anyone not to be wowed by Final Fantasy's live show, and Final Fantasy's live show is just Owen Pallett: the guy himself, a violin, and a loop pedal. It's about as solo as anything gets-- a performance, not a project. Stepping out under his own name feels like an acknowledgement of this, as if Pallett's ready to cast aside the modesty of having a "project"-- it's just this thing I've been working on-- and present himself, fully upright, as an artist. And there are a lot of things about Heartland that feel like Pallett is presenting himself more and more fully as an artist; the scope of breadth and mood of it are all grander, more assured, making ever more of a case that the guy shouldn't be viewed as a side note (string arranger for the Arcade Fire, the Pet Shop Boys) or a minor interest (D&D enthusiast, guy who titled an album He Poos Clouds). After all, one of this album's closest cousins in the indie world is a notable, well-regarded one: Joanna Newsom's Ys. Both are ambitious, classicist, cleverly arranged, lyrically high-concept, dense with possible meaning-- and, yes, a little strange. It's that density that separates them, though, and makes me regret having to review this record in any kind of timely fashion. I'm still smarting over having underrated Pallett's last full-length; I knew I loved it, but had no way of knowing it would stick with me for months, years. And this one is richer: Pallett has leaped beyond arranging for chambers and quartets, working now with electronics, with drums, with electric bass, with the Czech Philharmonic, with Nico Muhly. These are pop songs through and through-- lively, propulsive ones. But the wonder of them is in those arrangements, which are just ripe with motion and detail-- and they're not decorative (as was sometimes the case with Ys), but central. The most immediate track here, "Lewis Takes Action", has Pallett singing grand, anthemic hooks, but the parts you're most likely to wind up humming are the stately brass and woodwind figures between them-- the amount of care and pleasure in these arrangements is extremely generous. If you're wondering who "Lewis" is and what sort of action he's taking, well, this is one of the things that's just singular and fascinating about Pallett, every bit as much as his music-school voice or the charmingly mannered way he approaches his melodies. On He Poos Clouds, Pallett seemed to be singing about real people, even ordinary ones; it was just that they tended to describe their emotional states in the grand terms of Dungeons & Dragons magic and conjuring. Since then, Pallett's jumped fully into fantasy: These twelve songs are monologues from Lewis, an "ultra-violent farmer" in a world called Spectrum, as he tries to come to grips with his own creator, Owen Pallett. Daunting as that might sound-- there may be hand-to-hand combat with a cockatrice involved-- all it really means is that these are songs about power and faith and control: songs that allow you to sing lines like, "the night is split by the whistle of my amber whip," and have it be about feeling your own power, or just repeat, "I'm never gonna give it to you," and have it be about rejecting someone else's. You'll have to get back to me in a few months to see how it all unravels, but in the meantime these songs are steadily revealing ever more to love. Martial drums and strings rumbling tense in the foreground with clouds of strings overhead. The sly, soulful melody of "Oh Heartland, Up Yours!"-- something that feels new in Pallett's repertoire. A kind of orchestral motorik beat on "Tryst with Mephistopheles". The way something like an 808 kick drum loops its way darkly into "Red Sun No. 5". Hints of Kurt Weill. This stuff is rich with ideas, and they're offered in the kind of rich, warm sound that should be accessible to more fans than ever before. Those of you with the inclination to pick them up will find a lot to reward you.

Artist: Owen Pallett, Album: Heartland, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "If you're lucky, you might already know this guy as Final Fantasy. His reasons for dropping that name are probably boring and copyright-related, but still: The name change seems healthy on whole other extra-legal levels. I've never known anyone not to be wowed by Final Fantasy's live show, and Final Fantasy's live show is just Owen Pallett: the guy himself, a violin, and a loop pedal. It's about as solo as anything gets-- a performance, not a project. Stepping out under his own name feels like an acknowledgement of this, as if Pallett's ready to cast aside the modesty of having a "project"-- it's just this thing I've been working on-- and present himself, fully upright, as an artist. And there are a lot of things about Heartland that feel like Pallett is presenting himself more and more fully as an artist; the scope of breadth and mood of it are all grander, more assured, making ever more of a case that the guy shouldn't be viewed as a side note (string arranger for the Arcade Fire, the Pet Shop Boys) or a minor interest (D&D enthusiast, guy who titled an album He Poos Clouds). After all, one of this album's closest cousins in the indie world is a notable, well-regarded one: Joanna Newsom's Ys. Both are ambitious, classicist, cleverly arranged, lyrically high-concept, dense with possible meaning-- and, yes, a little strange. It's that density that separates them, though, and makes me regret having to review this record in any kind of timely fashion. I'm still smarting over having underrated Pallett's last full-length; I knew I loved it, but had no way of knowing it would stick with me for months, years. And this one is richer: Pallett has leaped beyond arranging for chambers and quartets, working now with electronics, with drums, with electric bass, with the Czech Philharmonic, with Nico Muhly. These are pop songs through and through-- lively, propulsive ones. But the wonder of them is in those arrangements, which are just ripe with motion and detail-- and they're not decorative (as was sometimes the case with Ys), but central. The most immediate track here, "Lewis Takes Action", has Pallett singing grand, anthemic hooks, but the parts you're most likely to wind up humming are the stately brass and woodwind figures between them-- the amount of care and pleasure in these arrangements is extremely generous. If you're wondering who "Lewis" is and what sort of action he's taking, well, this is one of the things that's just singular and fascinating about Pallett, every bit as much as his music-school voice or the charmingly mannered way he approaches his melodies. On He Poos Clouds, Pallett seemed to be singing about real people, even ordinary ones; it was just that they tended to describe their emotional states in the grand terms of Dungeons & Dragons magic and conjuring. Since then, Pallett's jumped fully into fantasy: These twelve songs are monologues from Lewis, an "ultra-violent farmer" in a world called Spectrum, as he tries to come to grips with his own creator, Owen Pallett. Daunting as that might sound-- there may be hand-to-hand combat with a cockatrice involved-- all it really means is that these are songs about power and faith and control: songs that allow you to sing lines like, "the night is split by the whistle of my amber whip," and have it be about feeling your own power, or just repeat, "I'm never gonna give it to you," and have it be about rejecting someone else's. You'll have to get back to me in a few months to see how it all unravels, but in the meantime these songs are steadily revealing ever more to love. Martial drums and strings rumbling tense in the foreground with clouds of strings overhead. The sly, soulful melody of "Oh Heartland, Up Yours!"-- something that feels new in Pallett's repertoire. A kind of orchestral motorik beat on "Tryst with Mephistopheles". The way something like an 808 kick drum loops its way darkly into "Red Sun No. 5". Hints of Kurt Weill. This stuff is rich with ideas, and they're offered in the kind of rich, warm sound that should be accessible to more fans than ever before. Those of you with the inclination to pick them up will find a lot to reward you."

Safety Scissors

Tainted Lunch

Electronic

Nitsuh Abebe

This stuff is intricate digital disco, squishy laptop house, and fabulous left-field pop-- and none of that is even the main selling point. The real surprises are its warmth and intimacy, humor and whimsy. These qualities aren't necessarily rare in the world of electronic music; there are always people who have more technical skills than things to say, and they've been known to fill the space around their programming with plenty of jack-around jokes. But Safety Scissors' Matthew Curry is not one of them, and Tainted Lunch is anything but the work of a clever brat-- just a loopy, funny, emotion-filled electronic pop record, one that comes off sweet, humble, and downright generous in spirit. I'm inclined to think this is important, especially when some of the decade's freshest music has come from similar places: Junior Boys and the Streets, Max Tundra and Tujiko Noriko, wide swathes of r&b--; all of them bringing the mechanics of electronic music away from the otherworldly and down toward the bedroom conversation. This is a record, after all, that features Curry cheerleading for the fly struggling in his soup, and throughout the record he manages to score smiles and tug heartstrings with the same approach-- a stoner's-eye view of food, housework, war, and (above all) distance. That fine-tuned micro-house sound comes from recording sessions in Berlin with Vladislav Delay (aka Luomo), and there's an American-abroad bemusement running through most of these songs. "Where Is Germany and How Do I Get There" has Curry wondering if he could walk the Bering Strait back to California before calling in to what must be work: "I don't think I can make it in today/ Because Germany is far away." More chipper is "Sunlight's on the Other Side", which frames long-distance love the same way Fievel the mouse once did: "Dried-out grapes are raisins/ Dried-out plums are prunes/ All for one reason/ The same sun that shines on you." On "After Disaster" you get whimsy in the way that works-- carousel circles of piano-lesson chords and banjo, with Curry and Kevin Blechdom singing about bad luck in kindergarten-teacher voices: "My pants are wet"/ "What could it be?"/ "Did I spill water?"/ "It's pee!" Consider the kind of tonal perfection it takes-- and the kind of unassuming soul voice-- to make this stuff seem more loving than arch. Consider that the bulk of this record-- the bulk of those quotes-- feels weighty and serious and heartfelt. Consider the way Curry takes a Rimbaud poem about trench warfare, sets it to deep, drizzly house, and turns its food metaphor ("I am the cheese") inside out: It's a good approximation of the way lightness and weight play with each other across the length of this disc. Curry has brought a personality out from the washes and drifts of his last full-length, and it turns out to be well-rounded-- one curious enough to interweave goofball pop with fine laptop soul. The music is just as seamless, both remarkable and remarkably unobtrusive. The programming here is intricate enough to reward close listening-- every squish, tick, roll, and stab in its place-- but it doesn't take a laptop initiate to enjoy it: Curry is just as good with the big-picture progressions of his songs, and he seems to know why good songwriting will always beat waving his computer skills in your face. Well-played guitar leads sneak through the speakers, fat woodwinds honk through the bottom end of "Sunlight's...," and the tone of it all runs from proper digital-disco pulse ("Amnesia") to left-field pop sparkle-- from MRI gone whitebread soul to something almost like those moments where Ween surprise you with a no-joke sweetheart pop song. (See also: digital Serge Gainsbourg jazz when Stereo Total's Francoise Cactus makes a cameo.) It's the plain-spoken voice and skewed writing style that unite it all, and as Curry sings about his rumpled pants and travel, he starts to seem like-- well, kind of like he'd make a good roommate. Try this one out: You can listen to it next time you're cleaning the kitchen.

Artist: Safety Scissors, Album: Tainted Lunch, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "This stuff is intricate digital disco, squishy laptop house, and fabulous left-field pop-- and none of that is even the main selling point. The real surprises are its warmth and intimacy, humor and whimsy. These qualities aren't necessarily rare in the world of electronic music; there are always people who have more technical skills than things to say, and they've been known to fill the space around their programming with plenty of jack-around jokes. But Safety Scissors' Matthew Curry is not one of them, and Tainted Lunch is anything but the work of a clever brat-- just a loopy, funny, emotion-filled electronic pop record, one that comes off sweet, humble, and downright generous in spirit. I'm inclined to think this is important, especially when some of the decade's freshest music has come from similar places: Junior Boys and the Streets, Max Tundra and Tujiko Noriko, wide swathes of r&b--; all of them bringing the mechanics of electronic music away from the otherworldly and down toward the bedroom conversation. This is a record, after all, that features Curry cheerleading for the fly struggling in his soup, and throughout the record he manages to score smiles and tug heartstrings with the same approach-- a stoner's-eye view of food, housework, war, and (above all) distance. That fine-tuned micro-house sound comes from recording sessions in Berlin with Vladislav Delay (aka Luomo), and there's an American-abroad bemusement running through most of these songs. "Where Is Germany and How Do I Get There" has Curry wondering if he could walk the Bering Strait back to California before calling in to what must be work: "I don't think I can make it in today/ Because Germany is far away." More chipper is "Sunlight's on the Other Side", which frames long-distance love the same way Fievel the mouse once did: "Dried-out grapes are raisins/ Dried-out plums are prunes/ All for one reason/ The same sun that shines on you." On "After Disaster" you get whimsy in the way that works-- carousel circles of piano-lesson chords and banjo, with Curry and Kevin Blechdom singing about bad luck in kindergarten-teacher voices: "My pants are wet"/ "What could it be?"/ "Did I spill water?"/ "It's pee!" Consider the kind of tonal perfection it takes-- and the kind of unassuming soul voice-- to make this stuff seem more loving than arch. Consider that the bulk of this record-- the bulk of those quotes-- feels weighty and serious and heartfelt. Consider the way Curry takes a Rimbaud poem about trench warfare, sets it to deep, drizzly house, and turns its food metaphor ("I am the cheese") inside out: It's a good approximation of the way lightness and weight play with each other across the length of this disc. Curry has brought a personality out from the washes and drifts of his last full-length, and it turns out to be well-rounded-- one curious enough to interweave goofball pop with fine laptop soul. The music is just as seamless, both remarkable and remarkably unobtrusive. The programming here is intricate enough to reward close listening-- every squish, tick, roll, and stab in its place-- but it doesn't take a laptop initiate to enjoy it: Curry is just as good with the big-picture progressions of his songs, and he seems to know why good songwriting will always beat waving his computer skills in your face. Well-played guitar leads sneak through the speakers, fat woodwinds honk through the bottom end of "Sunlight's...," and the tone of it all runs from proper digital-disco pulse ("Amnesia") to left-field pop sparkle-- from MRI gone whitebread soul to something almost like those moments where Ween surprise you with a no-joke sweetheart pop song. (See also: digital Serge Gainsbourg jazz when Stereo Total's Francoise Cactus makes a cameo.) It's the plain-spoken voice and skewed writing style that unite it all, and as Curry sings about his rumpled pants and travel, he starts to seem like-- well, kind of like he'd make a good roommate. Try this one out: You can listen to it next time you're cleaning the kitchen."

Gia Margaret

There’s Always Glimmer

Rock

Margaret Farrell

Gia Margaret makes folk music hand-stitched with subtle electronic embellishments, preserving emotional ordeals like depression and transition within cushioned vocal melodies. In a recent interview, the Chicago-based musician discussed her fear of hurting others with lyrics drawn from life, likening songs to weapons hurled out into the world. But on her debut album, There’s Always Glimmer, Margaret’s violent view of songwriting translates to 34 minutes of serene and perceptive storytelling. “Groceries” opens the album on a vulnerable note, pairing her confessions with a somber, humming synth that resembles a droning growl. Margaret recounts how she tried writing about her woes but ultimately found comfort in a companion. “You took me in your arms and said, ‘Though it’s not easy to see, there’s always glimmer,” she sings, revealing the album’s title. “You bought the groceries/And you let the light in.” Even in the midst of a terrible year, the song suggests, the mundane experience of having someone else buy you groceries can be enough to sustain hope. Margaret calls her music “sleep rock,” a term that captures the lullaby atmosphere of the album’s 12 songs. Combining elements of folk, ambient music, and shoegaze, her songs sometimes evoke the hushed melodies of the Postal Service or Nick Drake; images of moonlight spilling in through windows and fresh black coffee pouring into a cup have the detail of an Ansel Adams photograph. Even at times when the setting is vague, every scene is freighted with enough honest sentiment to create a vivid picture. A classically trained pianist, Margaret awakens the instrument’s rawest and most graceful potential. Second single “Smoke” opens with a breathtaking prelude; her fingers glide across the keys like figure skaters. “For Flora” invents a new kind of lullaby, layering a piano composition over faded voicemails from her mother. High and low notes waltz together as her mom’s voice peeks out from between the keys: “Just wanted to make sure you don’t forget about me.” Glimmer radiates nostalgia, but not longing. Despite the voyeuristic tone of her reminiscences, Margaret seems to understand that she can’t go back in time. On “Figures,” she sings of haunting shadows that remind her of an old lover: “The lights are on in the buildings downtown/And a figure inside moves like you.” But the illusion passes. It’s uncertainty about the future that suffuses There’s Always Glimmer. These worries have Margaret walking alone, “searching for signs, like stones sinking into water” amid the trotting beat of “Exist,” a track that shares its drifting atmosphere with an Iron & Wine ballad. On the closer, “West,” she frets about her hyperawareness of the passage of time. Margaret’s ultimately futile battle with time is well fought: Her lullabies are hypnotic enough to delay the transitions she dreads—to stop the ticking clock—for half an hour, at least.

Artist: Gia Margaret, Album: There’s Always Glimmer, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Gia Margaret makes folk music hand-stitched with subtle electronic embellishments, preserving emotional ordeals like depression and transition within cushioned vocal melodies. In a recent interview, the Chicago-based musician discussed her fear of hurting others with lyrics drawn from life, likening songs to weapons hurled out into the world. But on her debut album, There’s Always Glimmer, Margaret’s violent view of songwriting translates to 34 minutes of serene and perceptive storytelling. “Groceries” opens the album on a vulnerable note, pairing her confessions with a somber, humming synth that resembles a droning growl. Margaret recounts how she tried writing about her woes but ultimately found comfort in a companion. “You took me in your arms and said, ‘Though it’s not easy to see, there’s always glimmer,” she sings, revealing the album’s title. “You bought the groceries/And you let the light in.” Even in the midst of a terrible year, the song suggests, the mundane experience of having someone else buy you groceries can be enough to sustain hope. Margaret calls her music “sleep rock,” a term that captures the lullaby atmosphere of the album’s 12 songs. Combining elements of folk, ambient music, and shoegaze, her songs sometimes evoke the hushed melodies of the Postal Service or Nick Drake; images of moonlight spilling in through windows and fresh black coffee pouring into a cup have the detail of an Ansel Adams photograph. Even at times when the setting is vague, every scene is freighted with enough honest sentiment to create a vivid picture. A classically trained pianist, Margaret awakens the instrument’s rawest and most graceful potential. Second single “Smoke” opens with a breathtaking prelude; her fingers glide across the keys like figure skaters. “For Flora” invents a new kind of lullaby, layering a piano composition over faded voicemails from her mother. High and low notes waltz together as her mom’s voice peeks out from between the keys: “Just wanted to make sure you don’t forget about me.” Glimmer radiates nostalgia, but not longing. Despite the voyeuristic tone of her reminiscences, Margaret seems to understand that she can’t go back in time. On “Figures,” she sings of haunting shadows that remind her of an old lover: “The lights are on in the buildings downtown/And a figure inside moves like you.” But the illusion passes. It’s uncertainty about the future that suffuses There’s Always Glimmer. These worries have Margaret walking alone, “searching for signs, like stones sinking into water” amid the trotting beat of “Exist,” a track that shares its drifting atmosphere with an Iron & Wine ballad. On the closer, “West,” she frets about her hyperawareness of the passage of time. Margaret’s ultimately futile battle with time is well fought: Her lullabies are hypnotic enough to delay the transitions she dreads—to stop the ticking clock—for half an hour, at least."

HTRK

Work (work, work)

Experimental,Rock

Zach Kelly

Bands that find their voice quickly are the lucky ones. Of course, you run a greater risk of repeating yourself in the future, but by and large the hardest part is already out of the way. HTRK (pronounced "Hate Rock") aren't what you would normally consider lucky, both professionally and personally. Formed in 2003, the trio's no wave-leaning art noise found them playing alongside deities like Alan Vega and Lydia Lunch. In 2009, their debut LP, Marry Me Tonight (co-produced by ex-Birthday Party member Roland S. Howard), landed them a few high-profile opening slots for the likes of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars. And it made sense: Marry Me is doomy and romantically languid, with a pop-smart crispness that spoke of potentially good things to come. But when bassist Sean Stewart took his own life in March of last year, vocalist Jonnine Standish and guitarist Nigel Yang were left to pick up the pieces and push forward with their second full length, Work (work, work). While dark and otherworldly, much of Work doesn't feel like it has much to do with death, but everything to do with sex. But they've shifted their sound, and in the current climate they come over as zeitgeist chasers without much character. The music of the past year or so has been hot for dark and moody sounds, from the fleeting pulses of the witch house craze to the dread-stoked, depressive underpinnings that pervade various electronic and R&B offshoots. HTRK also seem to have noticed, inflecting their sound with creepy, crawling signifiers that feel currently cool or just past their expiration date. The crucial distinction is that HTRK have a noticeably minimal sound, funneling their groaning and clanking through no wave and coldwave instead of the viscous twitch-and-bounce of witch house proper (though the drum programming suggests the Three 6 Mafia presets came stock) or the lurid, lukewarm comeliness of jj or the xx (though both of these artists are good for a name-check at just about any moment on the album). So needless to say, Work is heavy on atmosphere, and while the attention paid to those aforementioned post punk totems could have set them apart (at times it feels as if HTRK could pull off a lounge-y mix-up of Sade and Suicide), there simply isn't enough to sink your teeth into. Occasionally constructed of some interesting parts (the processional G-funk organ squiggles on single "Eat Yr Heart", the pressure-crunched submarine hull moans of "Slo Glo"), nothing seems properly supported. The music feels unappetizingly narcotized and drab, not to mention uncomfortably claustrophobic despite all of the aimless sprawling and spreading the music does. The pair seems to have been so focused on creating a mood that they forgot to attach any songs along the way. Perhaps most anesthetizing of all is Standish, whose coquettish, layered vocals make all the chic disaffection feel even more purposefully (and problematically) clouded. There's nothing especially bad here, but once the smoke clears from their bland, bassed-out ambiance, HTRK are another band without a sound to call their own.

Artist: HTRK, Album: Work (work, work), Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.7 Album review: "Bands that find their voice quickly are the lucky ones. Of course, you run a greater risk of repeating yourself in the future, but by and large the hardest part is already out of the way. HTRK (pronounced "Hate Rock") aren't what you would normally consider lucky, both professionally and personally. Formed in 2003, the trio's no wave-leaning art noise found them playing alongside deities like Alan Vega and Lydia Lunch. In 2009, their debut LP, Marry Me Tonight (co-produced by ex-Birthday Party member Roland S. Howard), landed them a few high-profile opening slots for the likes of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars. And it made sense: Marry Me is doomy and romantically languid, with a pop-smart crispness that spoke of potentially good things to come. But when bassist Sean Stewart took his own life in March of last year, vocalist Jonnine Standish and guitarist Nigel Yang were left to pick up the pieces and push forward with their second full length, Work (work, work). While dark and otherworldly, much of Work doesn't feel like it has much to do with death, but everything to do with sex. But they've shifted their sound, and in the current climate they come over as zeitgeist chasers without much character. The music of the past year or so has been hot for dark and moody sounds, from the fleeting pulses of the witch house craze to the dread-stoked, depressive underpinnings that pervade various electronic and R&B offshoots. HTRK also seem to have noticed, inflecting their sound with creepy, crawling signifiers that feel currently cool or just past their expiration date. The crucial distinction is that HTRK have a noticeably minimal sound, funneling their groaning and clanking through no wave and coldwave instead of the viscous twitch-and-bounce of witch house proper (though the drum programming suggests the Three 6 Mafia presets came stock) or the lurid, lukewarm comeliness of jj or the xx (though both of these artists are good for a name-check at just about any moment on the album). So needless to say, Work is heavy on atmosphere, and while the attention paid to those aforementioned post punk totems could have set them apart (at times it feels as if HTRK could pull off a lounge-y mix-up of Sade and Suicide), there simply isn't enough to sink your teeth into. Occasionally constructed of some interesting parts (the processional G-funk organ squiggles on single "Eat Yr Heart", the pressure-crunched submarine hull moans of "Slo Glo"), nothing seems properly supported. The music feels unappetizingly narcotized and drab, not to mention uncomfortably claustrophobic despite all of the aimless sprawling and spreading the music does. The pair seems to have been so focused on creating a mood that they forgot to attach any songs along the way. Perhaps most anesthetizing of all is Standish, whose coquettish, layered vocals make all the chic disaffection feel even more purposefully (and problematically) clouded. There's nothing especially bad here, but once the smoke clears from their bland, bassed-out ambiance, HTRK are another band without a sound to call their own."

Brand New

The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me

Rock

Ian Cohen

At the turn of the century, emo had finally gone pop, but hadn’t felt like music for popular kids. On Clear Channel playlists, “The Middle” and “Screaming Infidelities” were boyish, bashful contrast to the goateed bullies of nu-grunge and rap-metal and the New Rock Revival’s trouser-stuffing sexuality. But while Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional were extensions of the church basement and DIY house scenes that fostered Christie Front Drive, the Get Up Kids, and the Promise Ring, they would soon be overtaken by the likes of Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, and plenty of bands who were basically jocks in ringer T’s: they were loud, rude, and thought about little other than sex. The Long Island band’s 2001 debut Your Favorite Weapon helped establish the sound and the gender politics for a time when emo would draw in more fans of both sexes than ever before, but often cleared the room of people who expected punk rock to be a welcoming or progressive environment. To this day, “Emo Night” most likely means drunken 20-somethings yelling along with “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad.” After the potent but obnoxious venting of Your Favorite Weapon, Brand New’s ambitions started to emerge two years later on Deja Entendu—they hired a guy who engineered Pixies records to produce it, wrote the acoustic weeper “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot” to prove they’d heard the Smiths, and added a guitar solo on “Good to Know That if I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do is Die” that veered so close to “Hotel California” it proved they’d probably never heard the Eagles. But frontman Jesse Lacey still inhabited a stunted, vindictive emotional viewpoint—even as he spent considerable time staring at an empty bottle, ruefully recounting the failure of copious sex and substances to provide him with any lasting happiness, he was just as quick to boast about a lifestyle that let him basically fuck and drink however much he wanted: “I wouldn’t stop if I could/Oh it hurts to be this good,” he admitted on “Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t.” His flexing and his self-loathing were both forms of the same narcissism: In this way, he was almost proto-Drake. Brand New jumped from Triple Crown to Interscope after Deja Entendu, and no one would’ve been surprised if major-label money and expectations would’ve caused Lacey to go even deeper into his vices. But based on the ensuing Fight Off Your Demons demos, Lacey was at least willing to make an effort to be the better man. “Brother’s Song” and “1996” were worldly and warm, allowing someone else’s story to be told for once. But this embryonic version of Brand New’s third album was leaked by overzealous fans (and sold back to them a decade later), causing a disillusioned and emotionally violated Lacey to retreat inward again. By the time The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was completed, he may have realized that the world didn’t revolve around him—but he was now the dark center of the universe, a howling spiritual void. Theology had always played an under-appreciated role in emo’s development. In fact, the golden era of emo was often praise music: witness the effect of Jeremy Enigk’s born-again Christianity on How It Feels to Be Something On, the exaltation of Mineral’s “Gloria,” or the existence of overtly denominational labels like Tooth & Nail. Even skeptics like David Bazan and Aaron Weiss could still quote scripture through their struggles. Besides, the mid-2000’s was a time when rock music of many stripes reasserted its faith: 2004 alone gave us Pedro the Lion’s Achilles Heel and mewithoutYou’s Catch for Us the Foxes, as well as the proudly Mormon Brandon Flowers, “Jesus Walks,” and Seven Swans. But while emo had previously been defined by passionate vocalists, desperately pleading to the heavens for salvation, Lacey was telling Jesus Christ not to bother— “I’m scared I’ll get scared and I swear I’ll try to nail you back up.” It’s teen angst blown up to literally biblical proportions, resonating like no emo band before or since to outcasts in Sunday school and high school. But as sure as Brand New is an emo band, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is not an emo record. It might actually be post-emo: “Was losing all my friends, was losing them to drinking and to driving,” Lacey mutters with unsettling resignation on the album’s first lyric. He sounds no more relieved to say in the next line, “Was losing all my friends, but I got ‘em back.” Whereas Lacey once took great pride in his ability to turn even the smallest slights into voluble LiveJournal status updates (“my tongue’s the only muscle in my body that works harder than my heart”), The Devil and God is often a dispassionate eulogy for that version of himself and his silly little feelings: “I used to be such a burning example,” “I used to care I was being careful,” “goodbye to love.” To some degree, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me can be classified as soulless—albeit “soulless” as an aesthetically powerful narrative choice. Positive reviews of The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me likened Brand New to Radiohead and Modest Mouse—“Limousine (MS Rebridge)” is loosely modeled after “Exit Music (For a Film),” but Radiohead comparisons often serve as generic shorthand for “ambitious, brooding alternative rock.” The latter reference presumably referred to the band’s newfound affinity for whammy-bar harmonics and The Moon & Antarctica’s permafrost ambience, particularly on “Jesus.” In fact, the band had originally started working with Dennis Herring, who produced Modest Mouse’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News, an unexpected commercial success that put them in a position to share a co-headlining bill with Brand New this past year. But Lacey is soulless in a way that recalls Thom Yorke on Kid A and Isaac Brock on The Moon & Antarctica—these are narrators who have lost something substantial, who have been separated from their physical being and seem to be staring down at a Sim-version of themselves. “I’m not here, this isn’t happening,” Yorke moaned, while Brock asked, “Does anybody know a way for a body to get away?” A seriously unnerving performance of “Jesus” on “Late Night with David Letterman” presents Lacey as a spiritual husk, and there are Easter egg references to the cover art of Deja Entendu as an avatar for his former self: “this bedwetting cosmonaut,” “space cadet, pull out.” The Devil and God even sounds soulless. Despite being on Interscope’s dime, the band ran out of time and money while working with Herring and switched to “fifth member” Mike Sapone, responsible for the func

Artist: Brand New, Album: The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "At the turn of the century, emo had finally gone pop, but hadn’t felt like music for popular kids. On Clear Channel playlists, “The Middle” and “Screaming Infidelities” were boyish, bashful contrast to the goateed bullies of nu-grunge and rap-metal and the New Rock Revival’s trouser-stuffing sexuality. But while Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional were extensions of the church basement and DIY house scenes that fostered Christie Front Drive, the Get Up Kids, and the Promise Ring, they would soon be overtaken by the likes of Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, and plenty of bands who were basically jocks in ringer T’s: they were loud, rude, and thought about little other than sex. The Long Island band’s 2001 debut Your Favorite Weapon helped establish the sound and the gender politics for a time when emo would draw in more fans of both sexes than ever before, but often cleared the room of people who expected punk rock to be a welcoming or progressive environment. To this day, “Emo Night” most likely means drunken 20-somethings yelling along with “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad.” After the potent but obnoxious venting of Your Favorite Weapon, Brand New’s ambitions started to emerge two years later on Deja Entendu—they hired a guy who engineered Pixies records to produce it, wrote the acoustic weeper “The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot” to prove they’d heard the Smiths, and added a guitar solo on “Good to Know That if I Ever Need Attention All I Have to Do is Die” that veered so close to “Hotel California” it proved they’d probably never heard the Eagles. But frontman Jesse Lacey still inhabited a stunted, vindictive emotional viewpoint—even as he spent considerable time staring at an empty bottle, ruefully recounting the failure of copious sex and substances to provide him with any lasting happiness, he was just as quick to boast about a lifestyle that let him basically fuck and drink however much he wanted: “I wouldn’t stop if I could/Oh it hurts to be this good,” he admitted on “Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t.” His flexing and his self-loathing were both forms of the same narcissism: In this way, he was almost proto-Drake. Brand New jumped from Triple Crown to Interscope after Deja Entendu, and no one would’ve been surprised if major-label money and expectations would’ve caused Lacey to go even deeper into his vices. But based on the ensuing Fight Off Your Demons demos, Lacey was at least willing to make an effort to be the better man. “Brother’s Song” and “1996” were worldly and warm, allowing someone else’s story to be told for once. But this embryonic version of Brand New’s third album was leaked by overzealous fans (and sold back to them a decade later), causing a disillusioned and emotionally violated Lacey to retreat inward again. By the time The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was completed, he may have realized that the world didn’t revolve around him—but he was now the dark center of the universe, a howling spiritual void. Theology had always played an under-appreciated role in emo’s development. In fact, the golden era of emo was often praise music: witness the effect of Jeremy Enigk’s born-again Christianity on How It Feels to Be Something On, the exaltation of Mineral’s “Gloria,” or the existence of overtly denominational labels like Tooth & Nail. Even skeptics like David Bazan and Aaron Weiss could still quote scripture through their struggles. Besides, the mid-2000’s was a time when rock music of many stripes reasserted its faith: 2004 alone gave us Pedro the Lion’s Achilles Heel and mewithoutYou’s Catch for Us the Foxes, as well as the proudly Mormon Brandon Flowers, “Jesus Walks,” and Seven Swans. But while emo had previously been defined by passionate vocalists, desperately pleading to the heavens for salvation, Lacey was telling Jesus Christ not to bother— “I’m scared I’ll get scared and I swear I’ll try to nail you back up.” It’s teen angst blown up to literally biblical proportions, resonating like no emo band before or since to outcasts in Sunday school and high school. But as sure as Brand New is an emo band, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is not an emo record. It might actually be post-emo: “Was losing all my friends, was losing them to drinking and to driving,” Lacey mutters with unsettling resignation on the album’s first lyric. He sounds no more relieved to say in the next line, “Was losing all my friends, but I got ‘em back.” Whereas Lacey once took great pride in his ability to turn even the smallest slights into voluble LiveJournal status updates (“my tongue’s the only muscle in my body that works harder than my heart”), The Devil and God is often a dispassionate eulogy for that version of himself and his silly little feelings: “I used to be such a burning example,” “I used to care I was being careful,” “goodbye to love.” To some degree, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me can be classified as soulless—albeit “soulless” as an aesthetically powerful narrative choice. Positive reviews of The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me likened Brand New to Radiohead and Modest Mouse—“Limousine (MS Rebridge)” is loosely modeled after “Exit Music (For a Film),” but Radiohead comparisons often serve as generic shorthand for “ambitious, brooding alternative rock.” The latter reference presumably referred to the band’s newfound affinity for whammy-bar harmonics and The Moon & Antarctica’s permafrost ambience, particularly on “Jesus.” In fact, the band had originally started working with Dennis Herring, who produced Modest Mouse’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News, an unexpected commercial success that put them in a position to share a co-headlining bill with Brand New this past year. But Lacey is soulless in a way that recalls Thom Yorke on Kid A and Isaac Brock on The Moon & Antarctica—these are narrators who have lost something substantial, who have been separated from their physical being and seem to be staring down at a Sim-version of themselves. “I’m not here, this isn’t happening,” Yorke moaned, while Brock asked, “Does anybody know a way for a body to get away?” A seriously unnerving performance of “Jesus” on “Late Night with David Letterman” presents Lacey as a spiritual husk, and there are Easter egg references to the cover art of Deja Entendu as an avatar for his former self: “this bedwetting cosmonaut,” “space cadet, pull out.” The Devil and God even sounds soulless. Despite being on Interscope’s dime, the band ran out of time and money while working with Herring and switched to “fifth member” Mike Sapone, responsible for the func"

Kevin Blechdom

Bitches Without Britches

Electronic

JT Ramsay

Kevin Blechdom has put her days of cafeteria gossip and cheerleader tyranny behind her, and fled east to Berliniamsburg. Having morphed from a diminutive pupa into a full-grown, sex-positive gadfly since her first recordings with Blectum from Blechdom, she's now spreading her wings (and legs) and confidently striking out on her own. Her identity carves itself: Bitches Without Britches sounds like the creation of an bipolar NYU freshman who, frustrated by the rigidity of her classmates' buttoned-down conformity, watched full seasons of The Simple Life and Rich Girls for inspiration, revolted against her parents, popular culture and democracy, and is now living out her Dr. Jekyll/Ms. Hyde fantasy at subway stops and bodegas between Lorimer and Canarsie. The trade-off is that in place of the Pretty Girl Conspiracy Academy now stands the Electroclash Fashionista Cadre. Sure, this album reeks of the elitism it putatively refutes. Once it gets past its saccharine absurdity, the electro-torch song "Use Your Heart as a Telephone" would sound equally at home at Marie's Crisis as it does at Luxx. One dystopian industrial lovesong later, Blechdom deconstructs the consumerist/hygiene nexus, each new product or surgery relieving the user/recipient of certain duties and concerns, and further complicating the crux of the postmodern condition ("Binaca"). The frenetic abuse of presets and Reds makes each song sound like a botched overdose, a suicide incurring unconsciousness without fatality. "I Am Nast-ay" sounds like an intellectually honest take on Kylie Minogue, and it's imaginable that one could sync the "Can't Get You Out of My Head" video with this song. Elsewhere, the exhibitionist "Boob-B-Q" sounds like a Pasolini orgy complete with "dick-rowaves" for his pleasure. Still, this all brings us back to the broader question of whether electroclash really accomplishes all it could. The genre's shameless indulgence in excess and shopping not only reinforces the sectarianism of pop culture that it should be subverting, but relies on it, making the music's absurdist, hypersexualized drama a novelty. In that spirit, Bitches Without Britches won't convert any nonbelievers, but the choir will gleefully singing its praises anyway. Regardless, the record is extraordinarily danceable and worth a number of good laughs, if not as many listens. But be forewarned: In 20 years' time, you'll be persuaded to pick up revivalist comps of this kind of stuff and love it. Don't wait for the boxset!

Artist: Kevin Blechdom, Album: Bitches Without Britches, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Kevin Blechdom has put her days of cafeteria gossip and cheerleader tyranny behind her, and fled east to Berliniamsburg. Having morphed from a diminutive pupa into a full-grown, sex-positive gadfly since her first recordings with Blectum from Blechdom, she's now spreading her wings (and legs) and confidently striking out on her own. Her identity carves itself: Bitches Without Britches sounds like the creation of an bipolar NYU freshman who, frustrated by the rigidity of her classmates' buttoned-down conformity, watched full seasons of The Simple Life and Rich Girls for inspiration, revolted against her parents, popular culture and democracy, and is now living out her Dr. Jekyll/Ms. Hyde fantasy at subway stops and bodegas between Lorimer and Canarsie. The trade-off is that in place of the Pretty Girl Conspiracy Academy now stands the Electroclash Fashionista Cadre. Sure, this album reeks of the elitism it putatively refutes. Once it gets past its saccharine absurdity, the electro-torch song "Use Your Heart as a Telephone" would sound equally at home at Marie's Crisis as it does at Luxx. One dystopian industrial lovesong later, Blechdom deconstructs the consumerist/hygiene nexus, each new product or surgery relieving the user/recipient of certain duties and concerns, and further complicating the crux of the postmodern condition ("Binaca"). The frenetic abuse of presets and Reds makes each song sound like a botched overdose, a suicide incurring unconsciousness without fatality. "I Am Nast-ay" sounds like an intellectually honest take on Kylie Minogue, and it's imaginable that one could sync the "Can't Get You Out of My Head" video with this song. Elsewhere, the exhibitionist "Boob-B-Q" sounds like a Pasolini orgy complete with "dick-rowaves" for his pleasure. Still, this all brings us back to the broader question of whether electroclash really accomplishes all it could. The genre's shameless indulgence in excess and shopping not only reinforces the sectarianism of pop culture that it should be subverting, but relies on it, making the music's absurdist, hypersexualized drama a novelty. In that spirit, Bitches Without Britches won't convert any nonbelievers, but the choir will gleefully singing its praises anyway. Regardless, the record is extraordinarily danceable and worth a number of good laughs, if not as many listens. But be forewarned: In 20 years' time, you'll be persuaded to pick up revivalist comps of this kind of stuff and love it. Don't wait for the boxset!"

Beck

Guero

Rock

Rob Mitchum

PATIENT PROGRESS ASSESSMENT: MARCH 2005 Subject: Beck Hansen, 35 years old, Caucasian Medical History: Physically, subject's health is good; no major or chronic issues, although voice suggests persistent sinusitis. Psychologically, Mr. Hansen shows a history of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), diagnosed in 1995 and treated intermittently via analysis and hypnosis. Subject's recorded personalities include: Dust Bowl-era folk singer, prone to wearing flannel, acoustic guitar always present, unable to leave house without harmonica clip (see attached materials, One Foot in the Grave). Ardent practitioner of "hip-hop," exhibits "word salad" symptomology characteristic of schizophrenics (see Mellow Gold). Self-described "space cowboy." Similar to personality #1, except with claimed origin in future, rather than past. Also known to dabble in bossa nova. (see Mutations). Smooth-talking sexaholic, race indeterminate. Causes subject to wear small outfits with big collars. Frequently does "the splits." Earnestness of personality questionable. (see Midnite Vultures). Depressive, excessively self-reflective middle-aged man. Moves at very slow pace, exhibits fetish for exotic string arrangements, and shows delusional belief that he's Blood on the Tracks-era Bob Dylan. By far his least enjoyable persona; friends report being "really bummed out" in his presence when these traits are dominant (see Sea Change). Mr. Hansen has experienced one distinct period of personality cohesion, which is widely considered to be his most healthy and agreeable time (see attached materials, Odelay). Since this psychological peak, the patient has experienced pressure to return to this state, wherein all of the above personae peacefully co-exist to create a unique and well-balanced whole. However, Mr. Hansen has appeared unable or unwilling to bend to these outside demands, instead spending periods of 1-2 years at various extremes of the above stated categories. Current Session: Lately, Mr. Hansen has shown an increased willingness to accept the advice of his peers and doctors, mounting a highly motivated and publicized effort to return to the behavioral cohesion of his Odelay period. Reuniting with his therapists of that era, the Dust Brothers (Drs. M. Simpson and J. King, M.D, Ph.D), he has made a lot of progress towards this goal, exhibiting behavior (see attached media, Guero) that appears to resemble his healthier days. But whether this restoration of character balance is merely superficial, and, furthermore, whether it is the proper attitude for the patient, remains to be determined. Note the resemblance of Guero opener "E-Pro" to Odelay's "Devil's Haircut", both tracks assembled from guitar-driven riff-loops and Mr. Hansen's drowsy talking-blues delivery. Notice that the twangy-acoustic vs. turntable-scratch paradoxes of "Jackass" are repeated on "Earthquake Weather" and "Farewell Ride". Further antecedent is seen in the quirk collage (sonar blips, harmonica, Christina Ricci) of "Hell Yes", which can be directly traced back to the earlier period's "High 5 (Rock the Catskills)". That the patient is re-visiting past combinations of his constituent personalities is not in itself a cause for worry; after all, it is what most of his support system has been suggesting for many years. But one wonders whether Mr. Hansen's heart is in the proceedings, as many of the songs appear to be little more than weak echoes of their similar predecessors. Furthermore, stray remnants of individual personality types, particularly the most recently-seen "mope" character, pop up on "Missing" and "Broken Drum," in the form of slow tempos and "Blue Jay Way" strings. Other areas give indications of new, healthy ways of rectifying the contradictions within Mr. Hansen's torrid mind. "Girl" uses an NES symphony prologue to introduce a Cali-rock pastiche, the sweetness of which overcomes its serial killer lyrics and "Hey Ya" biting. "Black Tambourine" finds the patient stripping down his usual methods, concentrating on foreboding rhythms and gimmick economy, while "Earthquake Weather" is similarly sparse, and sees Mr. Hansen using his falsetto for a purpose other than adding a musical wink to his less serious efforts. All in all, my assessment of the patient's recent advances is a mixed one. Mr. Hansen has certainly attempted to follow the regimen recommended to him, and has done his best to recapture earlier moments of lucidity and unity, but in many ways the final result feels rote and calculated. It seems likely that what worked for the subject almost ten years ago may not be appropriate at this later stage; in today's landscape, the methods seem a bit obsolete and over-prescribed. Mr. Hansen may have given us what we demanded, but, at this juncture, we should consider that his personalities have drifted so far apart that they are better left that way.

Artist: Beck, Album: Guero, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "PATIENT PROGRESS ASSESSMENT: MARCH 2005 Subject: Beck Hansen, 35 years old, Caucasian Medical History: Physically, subject's health is good; no major or chronic issues, although voice suggests persistent sinusitis. Psychologically, Mr. Hansen shows a history of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), diagnosed in 1995 and treated intermittently via analysis and hypnosis. Subject's recorded personalities include: Dust Bowl-era folk singer, prone to wearing flannel, acoustic guitar always present, unable to leave house without harmonica clip (see attached materials, One Foot in the Grave). Ardent practitioner of "hip-hop," exhibits "word salad" symptomology characteristic of schizophrenics (see Mellow Gold). Self-described "space cowboy." Similar to personality #1, except with claimed origin in future, rather than past. Also known to dabble in bossa nova. (see Mutations). Smooth-talking sexaholic, race indeterminate. Causes subject to wear small outfits with big collars. Frequently does "the splits." Earnestness of personality questionable. (see Midnite Vultures). Depressive, excessively self-reflective middle-aged man. Moves at very slow pace, exhibits fetish for exotic string arrangements, and shows delusional belief that he's Blood on the Tracks-era Bob Dylan. By far his least enjoyable persona; friends report being "really bummed out" in his presence when these traits are dominant (see Sea Change). Mr. Hansen has experienced one distinct period of personality cohesion, which is widely considered to be his most healthy and agreeable time (see attached materials, Odelay). Since this psychological peak, the patient has experienced pressure to return to this state, wherein all of the above personae peacefully co-exist to create a unique and well-balanced whole. However, Mr. Hansen has appeared unable or unwilling to bend to these outside demands, instead spending periods of 1-2 years at various extremes of the above stated categories. Current Session: Lately, Mr. Hansen has shown an increased willingness to accept the advice of his peers and doctors, mounting a highly motivated and publicized effort to return to the behavioral cohesion of his Odelay period. Reuniting with his therapists of that era, the Dust Brothers (Drs. M. Simpson and J. King, M.D, Ph.D), he has made a lot of progress towards this goal, exhibiting behavior (see attached media, Guero) that appears to resemble his healthier days. But whether this restoration of character balance is merely superficial, and, furthermore, whether it is the proper attitude for the patient, remains to be determined. Note the resemblance of Guero opener "E-Pro" to Odelay's "Devil's Haircut", both tracks assembled from guitar-driven riff-loops and Mr. Hansen's drowsy talking-blues delivery. Notice that the twangy-acoustic vs. turntable-scratch paradoxes of "Jackass" are repeated on "Earthquake Weather" and "Farewell Ride". Further antecedent is seen in the quirk collage (sonar blips, harmonica, Christina Ricci) of "Hell Yes", which can be directly traced back to the earlier period's "High 5 (Rock the Catskills)". That the patient is re-visiting past combinations of his constituent personalities is not in itself a cause for worry; after all, it is what most of his support system has been suggesting for many years. But one wonders whether Mr. Hansen's heart is in the proceedings, as many of the songs appear to be little more than weak echoes of their similar predecessors. Furthermore, stray remnants of individual personality types, particularly the most recently-seen "mope" character, pop up on "Missing" and "Broken Drum," in the form of slow tempos and "Blue Jay Way" strings. Other areas give indications of new, healthy ways of rectifying the contradictions within Mr. Hansen's torrid mind. "Girl" uses an NES symphony prologue to introduce a Cali-rock pastiche, the sweetness of which overcomes its serial killer lyrics and "Hey Ya" biting. "Black Tambourine" finds the patient stripping down his usual methods, concentrating on foreboding rhythms and gimmick economy, while "Earthquake Weather" is similarly sparse, and sees Mr. Hansen using his falsetto for a purpose other than adding a musical wink to his less serious efforts. All in all, my assessment of the patient's recent advances is a mixed one. Mr. Hansen has certainly attempted to follow the regimen recommended to him, and has done his best to recapture earlier moments of lucidity and unity, but in many ways the final result feels rote and calculated. It seems likely that what worked for the subject almost ten years ago may not be appropriate at this later stage; in today's landscape, the methods seem a bit obsolete and over-prescribed. Mr. Hansen may have given us what we demanded, but, at this juncture, we should consider that his personalities have drifted so far apart that they are better left that way."

The Clash

London Calling: 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition

Rock

Amanda Petrusich

The 25th anniversary reissue of The Clash's London Calling is satisfyingly thick and protected by a thin plastic sleeve. The package sits fat at three stories high; the spine is broad, smooth and silver. Pennie Smith's unfocused, emblematic cover shot remains intact, with Paul Simonon's bass hovering, vertical and doomed, between Elvis-baiting pink and green text. Stacked inside are three separate discs: the original 19-song album, a 21-track disc containing rehearsal sessions for the record ("the long lost Vanilla Tapes"), and a DVD of The Last Testament, Don Letts' 30-minute, after-the-fact documentary about the making of London Calling. Here, neatly lined up: preparation, realization, hindsight. Finally. This is how they did it. For those who came of age in the late 80s and early 90s, calling The Clash a punk band was (and remains) more a matter of affect than honesty-- in 2004, wholly and completely divorced from a context that never fully resonated with a global audience, The Clash are a rock band, and 1979's London Calling is their creative apex, a booming, infallible tribute to throbbing guitars and spacious ideology. By the late 70s, "punk" was more specifically linked with rusted safety pins, shit-covered Doc Martens, and tight pink sneers than any steadfast, organized philosophy; The Clash insisted on forefronting their politics. This album tackles topical issues with impressive gusto-- the band cocks their cowboy hats, assumes full outlaw position, and pillages the world market for sonic fodder and lyric-ready injustice. A quarter-century after its first release, London Calling is still the concentrate essence of The Clash's unparalleled fervor. As always, London Calling's title track holds steady as the record's cosmic lynchpin: Horrifyingly apocalyptic, "London Calling" is riddled with weird werewolf howls and big, prophetic hollers, Mick Jones' punchy guitar bursts tapping little nails into our skulls, pushing hard for total lunacy. Empowered and unafraid, Strummer reveals self-skewering prophecies, panting hard about nuclear errors and impending ice ages. He also spitefully lodges some of the most unpleasantly convincing calls to arms ever committed to tape, commanding his followers-- now, then, future-- to storm the streets at full, leg-flailing sprints. Even if The Clash were more blatantly inspired by the musical tenets of dub and reggae, "London Calling" unapologetically cops the fury of punk's blind-and-obliterate full-body windmilling, bypassing the cerebral cortex to sink deep into our muscles. From "London Calling" on, The Clash do not let go; each track builds on the last, pummeling and laughing and slapping us into dumb submission. And now, we get to watch how it fell together: Using only a Teac four-track tape recorder linked up to a portastudio, The Clash inadvertently immortalized their London Calling rehearsal sessions at Vanilla Studios (a former rubber factory-gone-rehearsal-space in Pimlico, London) in the summer of 1979, several weeks before the album sessions officially opened at Wessex Studios. One set of tapes got left on the Tube. Another got crammed into a box. The intricate (and generally convoluted) mythology of the "long lost recording" is embarrassingly familiar to rock fans-- even non-completists are awkwardly prone to chasing down bits of buried tape with insane, eye-bulging intensity. With precious few exceptions, the anticipation of a hidden, indefinitely concealed secret generally supercedes the impact of the actual artifact. Still, the possibility of stumbling into transcendence keeps the search heated, and sometimes stupidly dramatic. Earlier this month, Mick Jones bravely explained to Mojo's Pat Gilbert exactly how he uncovered the tapes: "I sensed where they were and that took me to the right box. I opened it up and found them... It was pretty amazing." Snicker all you want at the supernatural, sixth-sense implications, or at the idea of Jones' third eye blazing hot for misplaced Clash recordings-- the 21 tracks that the constitute The Vanilla Tapes are just revealing enough to justify all the smoky mysticism. The tapes feature five previously unheard cuts-- "Heart and Mind", "Where You Gonna Go (Soweto)", "Lonesome Me", the instrumental "Walking the Slidewalk", and a cover of Matumbi's version of Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me", plucked from Dylan's 1970 album New Morning and reproduced in full reggae glory-- and together they reveal producer Guy Stevens' influence on the final sound of London Calling: muddy, raw, and insistently vague, The Vanilla Tapes see The Clash working hard, but also grasping for a muse. Professionally, Guy Stevens was best known for "discovering" The Who and producing a handful of Mott the Hoople records, but it was his recreational exploits that carved the deepest cut into Britain's collective pop memory. With a frenzied halo of tightly curled brown hair and a penchant for destroying property, Stevens came to rule Wessex Studios, hurling chairs and ladders, wrestling with engineers, and famously dumping a bottle of red wine into Strummer's Steinway piano. Fortunately, Guy was far more concerned with encouraging "real, honest emotion" than with achieving technical perfection (true to form, London Calling has its fair share of slipped fingers), and consequently, the band's determination at Vanilla, coupled with Stevens' shitstorming, led to London Calling's odd and glorious balance of studied dedication and absurd inspiration. And if The Vanilla Tapes aren't enough to satisfy your voyeuristic tendencies, there's more. For The Last Testament, documentarian/DJ Don Letts (also responsible for Clash on Broadway and Westway to the World) weaves together bits of live footage, interviews with punk pundits and band members (they spout tiny clarifications between snickers and cigarette huffs), promotional videos, and a few small, grainy glimpses of the band recording at Wessex. The studio shots were culled from footage that, like The Vanilla Tapes, had been unknowingly cardboard boxed for years-- in early 2004, former manager Kosmo Vinyl up a crate containing 84 minutes of hand-held footage of the London Calling sessions. Most of the film turned out to be unusable, but Letts salvaged some revealing shots of Stevens in fine form, wrestling with ladders and banging around chairs, in a curious reversal of classic producer/band hijinx. As an instruction manual, the 25th anniversary edition of London Calling offers up bits of helpful, ordinary wisdom (he who fucks nuns will later join the church, no one gets their shit for fre

Artist: The Clash, Album: London Calling: 25th Anniversary Legacy Edition, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 10.0 Album review: "The 25th anniversary reissue of The Clash's London Calling is satisfyingly thick and protected by a thin plastic sleeve. The package sits fat at three stories high; the spine is broad, smooth and silver. Pennie Smith's unfocused, emblematic cover shot remains intact, with Paul Simonon's bass hovering, vertical and doomed, between Elvis-baiting pink and green text. Stacked inside are three separate discs: the original 19-song album, a 21-track disc containing rehearsal sessions for the record ("the long lost Vanilla Tapes"), and a DVD of The Last Testament, Don Letts' 30-minute, after-the-fact documentary about the making of London Calling. Here, neatly lined up: preparation, realization, hindsight. Finally. This is how they did it. For those who came of age in the late 80s and early 90s, calling The Clash a punk band was (and remains) more a matter of affect than honesty-- in 2004, wholly and completely divorced from a context that never fully resonated with a global audience, The Clash are a rock band, and 1979's London Calling is their creative apex, a booming, infallible tribute to throbbing guitars and spacious ideology. By the late 70s, "punk" was more specifically linked with rusted safety pins, shit-covered Doc Martens, and tight pink sneers than any steadfast, organized philosophy; The Clash insisted on forefronting their politics. This album tackles topical issues with impressive gusto-- the band cocks their cowboy hats, assumes full outlaw position, and pillages the world market for sonic fodder and lyric-ready injustice. A quarter-century after its first release, London Calling is still the concentrate essence of The Clash's unparalleled fervor. As always, London Calling's title track holds steady as the record's cosmic lynchpin: Horrifyingly apocalyptic, "London Calling" is riddled with weird werewolf howls and big, prophetic hollers, Mick Jones' punchy guitar bursts tapping little nails into our skulls, pushing hard for total lunacy. Empowered and unafraid, Strummer reveals self-skewering prophecies, panting hard about nuclear errors and impending ice ages. He also spitefully lodges some of the most unpleasantly convincing calls to arms ever committed to tape, commanding his followers-- now, then, future-- to storm the streets at full, leg-flailing sprints. Even if The Clash were more blatantly inspired by the musical tenets of dub and reggae, "London Calling" unapologetically cops the fury of punk's blind-and-obliterate full-body windmilling, bypassing the cerebral cortex to sink deep into our muscles. From "London Calling" on, The Clash do not let go; each track builds on the last, pummeling and laughing and slapping us into dumb submission. And now, we get to watch how it fell together: Using only a Teac four-track tape recorder linked up to a portastudio, The Clash inadvertently immortalized their London Calling rehearsal sessions at Vanilla Studios (a former rubber factory-gone-rehearsal-space in Pimlico, London) in the summer of 1979, several weeks before the album sessions officially opened at Wessex Studios. One set of tapes got left on the Tube. Another got crammed into a box. The intricate (and generally convoluted) mythology of the "long lost recording" is embarrassingly familiar to rock fans-- even non-completists are awkwardly prone to chasing down bits of buried tape with insane, eye-bulging intensity. With precious few exceptions, the anticipation of a hidden, indefinitely concealed secret generally supercedes the impact of the actual artifact. Still, the possibility of stumbling into transcendence keeps the search heated, and sometimes stupidly dramatic. Earlier this month, Mick Jones bravely explained to Mojo's Pat Gilbert exactly how he uncovered the tapes: "I sensed where they were and that took me to the right box. I opened it up and found them... It was pretty amazing." Snicker all you want at the supernatural, sixth-sense implications, or at the idea of Jones' third eye blazing hot for misplaced Clash recordings-- the 21 tracks that the constitute The Vanilla Tapes are just revealing enough to justify all the smoky mysticism. The tapes feature five previously unheard cuts-- "Heart and Mind", "Where You Gonna Go (Soweto)", "Lonesome Me", the instrumental "Walking the Slidewalk", and a cover of Matumbi's version of Bob Dylan's "The Man in Me", plucked from Dylan's 1970 album New Morning and reproduced in full reggae glory-- and together they reveal producer Guy Stevens' influence on the final sound of London Calling: muddy, raw, and insistently vague, The Vanilla Tapes see The Clash working hard, but also grasping for a muse. Professionally, Guy Stevens was best known for "discovering" The Who and producing a handful of Mott the Hoople records, but it was his recreational exploits that carved the deepest cut into Britain's collective pop memory. With a frenzied halo of tightly curled brown hair and a penchant for destroying property, Stevens came to rule Wessex Studios, hurling chairs and ladders, wrestling with engineers, and famously dumping a bottle of red wine into Strummer's Steinway piano. Fortunately, Guy was far more concerned with encouraging "real, honest emotion" than with achieving technical perfection (true to form, London Calling has its fair share of slipped fingers), and consequently, the band's determination at Vanilla, coupled with Stevens' shitstorming, led to London Calling's odd and glorious balance of studied dedication and absurd inspiration. And if The Vanilla Tapes aren't enough to satisfy your voyeuristic tendencies, there's more. For The Last Testament, documentarian/DJ Don Letts (also responsible for Clash on Broadway and Westway to the World) weaves together bits of live footage, interviews with punk pundits and band members (they spout tiny clarifications between snickers and cigarette huffs), promotional videos, and a few small, grainy glimpses of the band recording at Wessex. The studio shots were culled from footage that, like The Vanilla Tapes, had been unknowingly cardboard boxed for years-- in early 2004, former manager Kosmo Vinyl up a crate containing 84 minutes of hand-held footage of the London Calling sessions. Most of the film turned out to be unusable, but Letts salvaged some revealing shots of Stevens in fine form, wrestling with ladders and banging around chairs, in a curious reversal of classic producer/band hijinx. As an instruction manual, the 25th anniversary edition of London Calling offers up bits of helpful, ordinary wisdom (he who fucks nuns will later join the church, no one gets their shit for fre"

Various Artists

Ultimate Breaks & Beats: The Complete Collection

Nate Patrin

1986 was rap's first truly explosive year, when the still-nascent genre began to expand and the previously unheard of became possible: Run-D.M.C. went triple-platinum, the Beastie Boys became rap's first white superstars, the Juice Crew/Boogie Down Productions "Bridge Wars" set the early gold standard for beef, Ice-T turned Schooly D's gangsta flair into a West Coast turning point with "6'N the Mornin'", and Public Enemy laid the groundwork for a new era when they signed to Def Jam. That same year, the pairing of remixer Louis Flores and a limo driver and record collector in his early forties named Lenny Roberts set the rap world on its ear in an entirely different way. Street Beat catalogue number SBR-501, a six-song, 19 1/2-minute EP better known as Ultimate Breaks & Beats, was originally supposed to be a quick go-to for less-established and/or cratedigging-averse DJs, a collection of party-rocking tracks that were tweaked and remixed to facilitate easy mixing and beat-juggling. But as the 808 and its boom-clap beats waned in the face of affordable sampler technology, the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series-- 25 volumes in all, released between 1986-91-- quickly developed another function: a do-it-yourself production kit. Coupled with that year's James Brown comp In the Jungle Groove (which reintroduced "Funky Drummer" and a ton of other Clyde Stubblefield breaks into the hip-hop production repertoire), the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series would prove to be a roadmap for the history and evolution of the sample-era hip-hop beat, even if hardcore wax-hoarders and MPC wizards considered the series' divulging of decades-old sources to be nothing short of snitching. Of course, these days sites like the-breaks.com help even the most new-school kids brush up on their DJ Premier ingredients, which means that the recent release of Ultimate Breaks & Beats: The Complete Collection isn't the huge epiphany it could be. What it does accomplish, however, is nothing short of exhaustive (and almost certainly illegal): Two CDs with all 174 of the series' tracks as 192 kbps mp3s, plus a DVD that reproduces each song as a higher-quality .aiff file. Also thrown in is a reproduction of all the original cover art, including the Kevin Harris graf-style visuals that appeared on most volumes from No. 13 onwards. For a series that's been plagued with muddy-sounding second-hand reproductions and bootleg-of-a-bootleg white-label shadiness, everything here sounds at least as good as its source material; vinyl crackle occasionally manifests itself if you listen for it, but otherwise it richly rewards a good set of headphones. As an archival reference it's priceless, but as a musical collection it's simultaneously inviting and overwhelming. It's fun to start into an unfamiliar track, waiting for that pivotal three- or four-second moment you recognize from a classic EPMD or Gang Starr cut, but so many of the songs-- Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache", Melvin Bliss' "Substitution", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", ESG's "U.F.O.", the Mohawks' "The Champ"-- have become so integral to hip-hop production lore that it's easy to take them for granted, at least until you listen to them and remember why they rocked so many parties in the first place. Other songs seem useful only as breaks; once the vocals come in on Jefferson Starship's gonad showcase "Rock Music" or Delegation's syrupy lounge-soul "Oh Honey" it's a good time to tune out. It might also irritate the casual, non-DJ listener that Flores remixed a few tracks a bit too liberally-- it's fun to hear the cowbell for another few seconds at the beginning of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women", but slowing the break in the Winstons' "Amen, My Brother" to a drastically reduced BPM than the rest of the track is more utilitarian than entertaining. (Besides, it sounds better fast anyways, as approximately 5,000 jungle songs have proven.) But take away the break-source context of this collection, and it's a scattershot but highly entertaining and often bizarre nonlinear history of funk, r&b, soul jazz and, occasionally, rock (yes, Thin Lizzy's "Johnny the Fox" and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" are here). This is a remarkably egalitarian collection, where a James Brown track everyone knows rubs elbows with long-forgotten obscurities from Magic Touch and John Davis. And some of the more interesting moments center around rare breaks that never got much further than their first UB&B appearance. An Afrika Bambaataa-unearthed version of "Sing a Simple Song" by the Filipino funk band Please showed up on Volume 6, but it didn't catch on since the massive drum break in the Sly & the Family Stone original was already so popular. Lucy Hawkins' gutsy "Gotta Get Out of Here" suffered not just from its overtly disco unfashionability but from the fact that it appeared on 1987's Volume 11, overshadowed by omnipresent breaks like the Honeydrippers' "Impeach the President" and the Headhunters' "God Made Me Funky". And while there were probably a few parties that went crazy when the DJ threw on David Matthews' ultra-weird orchestral funk-lite mutation of the theme from Star Wars (Volume 15), I still can't recall anyone who bothered taking advantage of its resonant, R2D2-inflected break on an actual record. The Ultimate Breaks & Beats series ceased around 1991-- maybe not coincidentally, the same year Biz Markie was taken to court by Gilbert O'Sullivan over an uncleared sample. In its final years, the series hinted at a few of the changes rap production would go through in the ensuing decade: The 86-88 comps are heavy on funk and r&b, while those from 89-91 have a few more of the soul jazz sources (Lonnie Liston Smith, Tom Scott, Lou Donaldson) that would define much of East Coast rap at the end of the decade. In its absence, compilations like the psych and fusion-heavy Dusty Fingers and the RZA-centric Shaolin Soul did their part to fill its shoes, but it wasn't quite the same. With sampling proving to be a secondary or even inessential option to many modern producers, The Complete Collection serves as a double-shot of nostalgia-- both for the early-mid 70s block parties, where many of these records debuted, and the late '80s revolution that translated these breaks into rap's first golden age.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Ultimate Breaks & Beats: The Complete Collection, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 9.2 Album review: "1986 was rap's first truly explosive year, when the still-nascent genre began to expand and the previously unheard of became possible: Run-D.M.C. went triple-platinum, the Beastie Boys became rap's first white superstars, the Juice Crew/Boogie Down Productions "Bridge Wars" set the early gold standard for beef, Ice-T turned Schooly D's gangsta flair into a West Coast turning point with "6'N the Mornin'", and Public Enemy laid the groundwork for a new era when they signed to Def Jam. That same year, the pairing of remixer Louis Flores and a limo driver and record collector in his early forties named Lenny Roberts set the rap world on its ear in an entirely different way. Street Beat catalogue number SBR-501, a six-song, 19 1/2-minute EP better known as Ultimate Breaks & Beats, was originally supposed to be a quick go-to for less-established and/or cratedigging-averse DJs, a collection of party-rocking tracks that were tweaked and remixed to facilitate easy mixing and beat-juggling. But as the 808 and its boom-clap beats waned in the face of affordable sampler technology, the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series-- 25 volumes in all, released between 1986-91-- quickly developed another function: a do-it-yourself production kit. Coupled with that year's James Brown comp In the Jungle Groove (which reintroduced "Funky Drummer" and a ton of other Clyde Stubblefield breaks into the hip-hop production repertoire), the Ultimate Breaks & Beats series would prove to be a roadmap for the history and evolution of the sample-era hip-hop beat, even if hardcore wax-hoarders and MPC wizards considered the series' divulging of decades-old sources to be nothing short of snitching. Of course, these days sites like the-breaks.com help even the most new-school kids brush up on their DJ Premier ingredients, which means that the recent release of Ultimate Breaks & Beats: The Complete Collection isn't the huge epiphany it could be. What it does accomplish, however, is nothing short of exhaustive (and almost certainly illegal): Two CDs with all 174 of the series' tracks as 192 kbps mp3s, plus a DVD that reproduces each song as a higher-quality .aiff file. Also thrown in is a reproduction of all the original cover art, including the Kevin Harris graf-style visuals that appeared on most volumes from No. 13 onwards. For a series that's been plagued with muddy-sounding second-hand reproductions and bootleg-of-a-bootleg white-label shadiness, everything here sounds at least as good as its source material; vinyl crackle occasionally manifests itself if you listen for it, but otherwise it richly rewards a good set of headphones. As an archival reference it's priceless, but as a musical collection it's simultaneously inviting and overwhelming. It's fun to start into an unfamiliar track, waiting for that pivotal three- or four-second moment you recognize from a classic EPMD or Gang Starr cut, but so many of the songs-- Incredible Bongo Band's "Apache", Melvin Bliss' "Substitution", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun", ESG's "U.F.O.", the Mohawks' "The Champ"-- have become so integral to hip-hop production lore that it's easy to take them for granted, at least until you listen to them and remember why they rocked so many parties in the first place. Other songs seem useful only as breaks; once the vocals come in on Jefferson Starship's gonad showcase "Rock Music" or Delegation's syrupy lounge-soul "Oh Honey" it's a good time to tune out. It might also irritate the casual, non-DJ listener that Flores remixed a few tracks a bit too liberally-- it's fun to hear the cowbell for another few seconds at the beginning of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women", but slowing the break in the Winstons' "Amen, My Brother" to a drastically reduced BPM than the rest of the track is more utilitarian than entertaining. (Besides, it sounds better fast anyways, as approximately 5,000 jungle songs have proven.) But take away the break-source context of this collection, and it's a scattershot but highly entertaining and often bizarre nonlinear history of funk, r&b, soul jazz and, occasionally, rock (yes, Thin Lizzy's "Johnny the Fox" and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" are here). This is a remarkably egalitarian collection, where a James Brown track everyone knows rubs elbows with long-forgotten obscurities from Magic Touch and John Davis. And some of the more interesting moments center around rare breaks that never got much further than their first UB&B appearance. An Afrika Bambaataa-unearthed version of "Sing a Simple Song" by the Filipino funk band Please showed up on Volume 6, but it didn't catch on since the massive drum break in the Sly & the Family Stone original was already so popular. Lucy Hawkins' gutsy "Gotta Get Out of Here" suffered not just from its overtly disco unfashionability but from the fact that it appeared on 1987's Volume 11, overshadowed by omnipresent breaks like the Honeydrippers' "Impeach the President" and the Headhunters' "God Made Me Funky". And while there were probably a few parties that went crazy when the DJ threw on David Matthews' ultra-weird orchestral funk-lite mutation of the theme from Star Wars (Volume 15), I still can't recall anyone who bothered taking advantage of its resonant, R2D2-inflected break on an actual record. The Ultimate Breaks & Beats series ceased around 1991-- maybe not coincidentally, the same year Biz Markie was taken to court by Gilbert O'Sullivan over an uncleared sample. In its final years, the series hinted at a few of the changes rap production would go through in the ensuing decade: The 86-88 comps are heavy on funk and r&b, while those from 89-91 have a few more of the soul jazz sources (Lonnie Liston Smith, Tom Scott, Lou Donaldson) that would define much of East Coast rap at the end of the decade. In its absence, compilations like the psych and fusion-heavy Dusty Fingers and the RZA-centric Shaolin Soul did their part to fill its shoes, but it wasn't quite the same. With sampling proving to be a secondary or even inessential option to many modern producers, The Complete Collection serves as a double-shot of nostalgia-- both for the early-mid 70s block parties, where many of these records debuted, and the late '80s revolution that translated these breaks into rap's first golden age."

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

Experimental,Pop/R&B

David Bevan

Happy Birthday's Kyle Thomas just wanted some company. In late 2008, the Vermont native, who also writes and records on his own as King Tuff, had some new songs to share. He was too scared to play them out alone, so for one show he threw together a band with Chris Weisman on bass and Ruth Garbus (sister of tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus) on drums. It went over pretty well. They decided to keep playing together, and four gigs later, Sub Pop snapped the trio up. Thomas' songs can take your breath away that easily. As King Tuff, he developed a committed DIY following by sticking close to the textures of 70s power pop and glam-- T. Rex and Flamin' Groovies are two handy reference points. As Happy Birthday, Thomas and his bandmates still hang out with those sounds some, but they've also combined to make a two-faced blend of twee and grunge, a pretty natural fit for their label. Aesthetically and sonically, few other subgenres could be further away from one another, but the meet-up is a great idea executed really well. Thomas glues the pretty (Garbus' vocals) and ugly (his own screeching, see also: his work singing in Witch) together with fantastic melodies, at times so plentiful they bury one another. He also has a tendency to vocalize his guitar melodies, an effect that makes for heavy layering, burying some of his best hooks. (In opener "Girls FM", a haymaker single that's already been making the web rounds, listen closely to how Thomas' guitar twists during its runs through the coda.) But the songs that bulldoze you grant all of their moving parts a similar amount of space. "2 Shy" is a clinic in vocal harmonizing, and "Pink Strawberry Shake" is the kind of AM gold David Vandervelde's been going in circles searching for recently. Lyrically, however, Thomas spends a lot of time indoors, framing himself as an acne-splotched teen who enjoys no successes communicating with or courting the opposite sex. And without question, the sly romance of "Subliminal Message" is the crown jam here: four minutes of sugar featuring a behemoth, synth-hinged chorus that he should share with that girl ASAP. Happy Birthday falter only when Thomas chooses to burp all over a song when he should just let breathe. On "Perverted Girl", he forgoes a bridge by wrenching some sore-throated wails and racket in there instead. Or maybe it's a bridge. That short blast of scuzz and scream works perfectly within the bratty punk of "Zit", Thomas' refrain, "Now I wanna break shit/ Don't want to make shit/ Just want to waste it"-- a pretty funny line coming from a dude who's rumored to have stockpiled huge numbers of songs in his room. He should definitely keep them coming.

Artist: Happy Birthday, Album: Happy Birthday, Genre: Experimental,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Happy Birthday's Kyle Thomas just wanted some company. In late 2008, the Vermont native, who also writes and records on his own as King Tuff, had some new songs to share. He was too scared to play them out alone, so for one show he threw together a band with Chris Weisman on bass and Ruth Garbus (sister of tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus) on drums. It went over pretty well. They decided to keep playing together, and four gigs later, Sub Pop snapped the trio up. Thomas' songs can take your breath away that easily. As King Tuff, he developed a committed DIY following by sticking close to the textures of 70s power pop and glam-- T. Rex and Flamin' Groovies are two handy reference points. As Happy Birthday, Thomas and his bandmates still hang out with those sounds some, but they've also combined to make a two-faced blend of twee and grunge, a pretty natural fit for their label. Aesthetically and sonically, few other subgenres could be further away from one another, but the meet-up is a great idea executed really well. Thomas glues the pretty (Garbus' vocals) and ugly (his own screeching, see also: his work singing in Witch) together with fantastic melodies, at times so plentiful they bury one another. He also has a tendency to vocalize his guitar melodies, an effect that makes for heavy layering, burying some of his best hooks. (In opener "Girls FM", a haymaker single that's already been making the web rounds, listen closely to how Thomas' guitar twists during its runs through the coda.) But the songs that bulldoze you grant all of their moving parts a similar amount of space. "2 Shy" is a clinic in vocal harmonizing, and "Pink Strawberry Shake" is the kind of AM gold David Vandervelde's been going in circles searching for recently. Lyrically, however, Thomas spends a lot of time indoors, framing himself as an acne-splotched teen who enjoys no successes communicating with or courting the opposite sex. And without question, the sly romance of "Subliminal Message" is the crown jam here: four minutes of sugar featuring a behemoth, synth-hinged chorus that he should share with that girl ASAP. Happy Birthday falter only when Thomas chooses to burp all over a song when he should just let breathe. On "Perverted Girl", he forgoes a bridge by wrenching some sore-throated wails and racket in there instead. Or maybe it's a bridge. That short blast of scuzz and scream works perfectly within the bratty punk of "Zit", Thomas' refrain, "Now I wanna break shit/ Don't want to make shit/ Just want to waste it"-- a pretty funny line coming from a dude who's rumored to have stockpiled huge numbers of songs in his room. He should definitely keep them coming."

The New Cars

It's Alive

Rock

Marc Hogan

It's not uncommon for a has-been band to reunite without its original frontman (Doors of the 21st century), not even when that frontman is still alive (Creedence Clearwater Revisited, No Talking Just Head). Sure, reunion tours rarely follow a few years after the death of the band's other, equally integral vocalist, but everybody's gotta put food on the table, right? So while the Cars' latest incarnation-- which follows the passing of former co-leader Benjamin Orr-- doesn't break ground for nostalgia-vendor shamelessness, the mostly live jawn It's Alive is still an unusual project with sadly predictable results. Rock'n'roll rehashes make strange bedfellows. New Cars vocalist and venerable pop/rock eccentric Todd Rundgren was making arena fare both alone and with his band Utopia when the original Cars rose to jittery, synth-spiked prominence in the late 1970s and early 80s. So it's not like New Cars' old Cars holdovers Elliot Easton (guitar) and Greg Hawkes (keyboards) are pulling a Fuel and signing up some "American Idol" also-ran. Rundgren, knowing his role as a hired gun, neatly adopts Ric Ocasek's hiccuping delivery, and his longtime collaborators Kasim Sulton and Praire Prince show up for bass and drums, respectively. The first hour or so of It's Alive is perfect for Cars fans so diehard they'd not only pay for a live album of songs they mostly already own, but a live album 20 years after the fact with only two original members and a different lead singer. The New Cars have no time to waste on showmanlike build-up, opening with a straightforward "Just What I Needed" before cruising through some other hits: "Candy-O" with particularly candied-up guitar wanks, "Good Times Roll" with its "Good Day Sunshine"-ripping hook, and "Moving in Stereo" for those of you who haven't seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Yes, "My Best Friend's Girl" and "You're All I've Got Tonight", too. But there's something unsavory about the false-innocent backing harmonies-- think Mike Love's Beach Boys. It's a form of live-band karaoke, sure, but the setlist isn't all stage-worthy, let alone "Idol"-able. Rundgren also contributes two of his own compositions. He Tom Joneses daftly through 1972 soft-rocker "I Saw the Light", while Nazz nugget "Open My Eyes" still isn't as good as the Who's "I Can't Explain" no matter how hard it cops the riff (plus, this version is sadly lacking in the original's wah-wah psychedelia). Meanwhile, on 1980s supermodel ballad "Drive", Sulton fills in for Orr's velvety vocal. Did I mention there are three new songs? Recorded in a studio? Single "Not Tonight"-- the one with awkward attempts at Blackberry humor-- also appears in live form. Rundgren's trembling vocal here falls somewhere between Ocasek and Roy Orbison, and while the jerky arrangement is vintage Cars, didn't the Strokes and others do this better a few years ago? Slow, ponderous "Warm" sounds like Dream Theater covering "Stairway to Heaven" with outerspace sound effects and lyrics (about seasons!) that lack rhyme and reason and make you insane. Then, like the conclusion of a Hollywood blockbluster with a prewritten sequel, Cars-by-numbers closer "More" confirms our worst fears-- they think they've left us wanting, um, more.

Artist: The New Cars, Album: It's Alive, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 2.8 Album review: "It's not uncommon for a has-been band to reunite without its original frontman (Doors of the 21st century), not even when that frontman is still alive (Creedence Clearwater Revisited, No Talking Just Head). Sure, reunion tours rarely follow a few years after the death of the band's other, equally integral vocalist, but everybody's gotta put food on the table, right? So while the Cars' latest incarnation-- which follows the passing of former co-leader Benjamin Orr-- doesn't break ground for nostalgia-vendor shamelessness, the mostly live jawn It's Alive is still an unusual project with sadly predictable results. Rock'n'roll rehashes make strange bedfellows. New Cars vocalist and venerable pop/rock eccentric Todd Rundgren was making arena fare both alone and with his band Utopia when the original Cars rose to jittery, synth-spiked prominence in the late 1970s and early 80s. So it's not like New Cars' old Cars holdovers Elliot Easton (guitar) and Greg Hawkes (keyboards) are pulling a Fuel and signing up some "American Idol" also-ran. Rundgren, knowing his role as a hired gun, neatly adopts Ric Ocasek's hiccuping delivery, and his longtime collaborators Kasim Sulton and Praire Prince show up for bass and drums, respectively. The first hour or so of It's Alive is perfect for Cars fans so diehard they'd not only pay for a live album of songs they mostly already own, but a live album 20 years after the fact with only two original members and a different lead singer. The New Cars have no time to waste on showmanlike build-up, opening with a straightforward "Just What I Needed" before cruising through some other hits: "Candy-O" with particularly candied-up guitar wanks, "Good Times Roll" with its "Good Day Sunshine"-ripping hook, and "Moving in Stereo" for those of you who haven't seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Yes, "My Best Friend's Girl" and "You're All I've Got Tonight", too. But there's something unsavory about the false-innocent backing harmonies-- think Mike Love's Beach Boys. It's a form of live-band karaoke, sure, but the setlist isn't all stage-worthy, let alone "Idol"-able. Rundgren also contributes two of his own compositions. He Tom Joneses daftly through 1972 soft-rocker "I Saw the Light", while Nazz nugget "Open My Eyes" still isn't as good as the Who's "I Can't Explain" no matter how hard it cops the riff (plus, this version is sadly lacking in the original's wah-wah psychedelia). Meanwhile, on 1980s supermodel ballad "Drive", Sulton fills in for Orr's velvety vocal. Did I mention there are three new songs? Recorded in a studio? Single "Not Tonight"-- the one with awkward attempts at Blackberry humor-- also appears in live form. Rundgren's trembling vocal here falls somewhere between Ocasek and Roy Orbison, and while the jerky arrangement is vintage Cars, didn't the Strokes and others do this better a few years ago? Slow, ponderous "Warm" sounds like Dream Theater covering "Stairway to Heaven" with outerspace sound effects and lyrics (about seasons!) that lack rhyme and reason and make you insane. Then, like the conclusion of a Hollywood blockbluster with a prewritten sequel, Cars-by-numbers closer "More" confirms our worst fears-- they think they've left us wanting, um, more."

Charlene

Charlene

Pop/R&B

Amanda Petrusich

Charlene released their self-titled debut way back in November, its ten tracks set up as a vigorous chaser to the handful of comp cuts and seven-inches the Boston duo had already put out on their Sharkattack! label. Though the record's liner notes claim it was recorded intermittently between September 2001 and May 2002, Charlene seem oddly synched up to the early August ethos of right now, suggesting (with boyish, hands-in-pockets smugness) that we're all about to ram, unknowingly, into the beginning of the end-- that something stricter is poised to infringe upon loopy summertime bliss in big, dramatic ways. Conceptually, it's sorta old news: the incorrigible melding of melody and noise, of disintegration, of static and gnashing feedback interrupting otherwise charming, palatable hooks. But Charlene's screechy intrusions are soothingly organic and deeply foreboding at the same time, thick with inevitability; reverb-heavy drums (and lots of drum machines), white noise, keyboards, guitars, and smooth, plaintive vocals build persistently repetitive verse/chorus tracks that never properly climax or transition, but keep worming around, making suggestions, promising things. Muscular and sometimes heaving, Charlene's overarching sound might be vaguely reminiscent of the heady spin of bands like Catherine Wheel or the Jesus & Mary Chain, but Charlene's take on noise-pop is an oddly evasive one, and it's almost impossible to figure out which of the sounds here are real and which have been coyly synthesized-- each track unfolds like a spacey, fuzz-heavy jostle through a closet full of noisemakers, where everything is perfectly fine until, groping around in the dark, you knock something over and can't get it to shut the hell off. Opener "Ripoff" is steady and controlled, featuring dull, pounding beats and consistently reeling guitars that (while not exactly rousing) are pretty far from complacent-- their intermittently squealing bursts break scene well. The track finally culminates in a maddening drum machine hammer that doesn't age brilliantly from listen to listen, but still makes its point about the songs that follow: pretty doesn't always last very long. "Shot Down" is a lit-up electronic rain, a simple, clean keyboard melody loping along over shaky beats and disembodied guitar whine, while "Sugarblocker" is a blurry soundscape of trilling beats and earnestly breathed vocals. The half-acoustic "Ender" shows that Charlene aren't necessarily wedded to their formula: a soft, subdued dirge, its lush keyboard and docile guitar melody prove Charlene have the songwriting prowess to exist without tricks, that they can pull off slow-burning, sleepy sincerity in a way that's both tender and unexpected. The band deserves credit for infusing a familiar formula with weight and tension, and for brewing a lingering unease. It's not exactly a seasonal record, but Charlene is suffused with the kind of awkward, transitory disorientation that marks our calendar year. Autumn inches closer.

Artist: Charlene, Album: Charlene, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Charlene released their self-titled debut way back in November, its ten tracks set up as a vigorous chaser to the handful of comp cuts and seven-inches the Boston duo had already put out on their Sharkattack! label. Though the record's liner notes claim it was recorded intermittently between September 2001 and May 2002, Charlene seem oddly synched up to the early August ethos of right now, suggesting (with boyish, hands-in-pockets smugness) that we're all about to ram, unknowingly, into the beginning of the end-- that something stricter is poised to infringe upon loopy summertime bliss in big, dramatic ways. Conceptually, it's sorta old news: the incorrigible melding of melody and noise, of disintegration, of static and gnashing feedback interrupting otherwise charming, palatable hooks. But Charlene's screechy intrusions are soothingly organic and deeply foreboding at the same time, thick with inevitability; reverb-heavy drums (and lots of drum machines), white noise, keyboards, guitars, and smooth, plaintive vocals build persistently repetitive verse/chorus tracks that never properly climax or transition, but keep worming around, making suggestions, promising things. Muscular and sometimes heaving, Charlene's overarching sound might be vaguely reminiscent of the heady spin of bands like Catherine Wheel or the Jesus & Mary Chain, but Charlene's take on noise-pop is an oddly evasive one, and it's almost impossible to figure out which of the sounds here are real and which have been coyly synthesized-- each track unfolds like a spacey, fuzz-heavy jostle through a closet full of noisemakers, where everything is perfectly fine until, groping around in the dark, you knock something over and can't get it to shut the hell off. Opener "Ripoff" is steady and controlled, featuring dull, pounding beats and consistently reeling guitars that (while not exactly rousing) are pretty far from complacent-- their intermittently squealing bursts break scene well. The track finally culminates in a maddening drum machine hammer that doesn't age brilliantly from listen to listen, but still makes its point about the songs that follow: pretty doesn't always last very long. "Shot Down" is a lit-up electronic rain, a simple, clean keyboard melody loping along over shaky beats and disembodied guitar whine, while "Sugarblocker" is a blurry soundscape of trilling beats and earnestly breathed vocals. The half-acoustic "Ender" shows that Charlene aren't necessarily wedded to their formula: a soft, subdued dirge, its lush keyboard and docile guitar melody prove Charlene have the songwriting prowess to exist without tricks, that they can pull off slow-burning, sleepy sincerity in a way that's both tender and unexpected. The band deserves credit for infusing a familiar formula with weight and tension, and for brewing a lingering unease. It's not exactly a seasonal record, but Charlene is suffused with the kind of awkward, transitory disorientation that marks our calendar year. Autumn inches closer."

Mount Moriah

Miracle Temple

Rock

Jessica Hopper

Mount Moriah is a real college town band-- though not in the pejorative sense. The band formed from a record counter friendship between singer Heather McEntire and guitarist Jenks Miller at the since-shuttered Schoolkids Records, on the University of North Carolina campus. On the band's rootsy, countrified second album (and Merge debut) Miracle Temple, McEntire sings of a life in a town ruled by student seasons, where you stay after everyone goes, leaving summer wide open. Album opener "Younger Days" ends on a question: "August is over so when are you coming back?" McEntire sings it with resigned hope: when they're gone, they're gone. The album is nostalgic for people and times that can't be had again, no matter what magic you attempt. "You know I really tried, girl/ To lift your small town summer malaise," she sings, in ode to a wild girl who just couldn't hang. "How I tried for years to return there," goes "Union Street Bridge", recalling misspent youth. Most of the songs are in the past tense and measure the chasm between the innocent spoils of then and the sadness of now by what's been lost in the interim: fearlessness, blind love, the ability to make someone weak in the knees. "Go on, disappear," she sings on "I Built a Town", casting out this awful ghost of the perfect past. Miracle Temple orients itself from the knowledge that there is no being restored. McEntire grew up on Southern Baptist hymns and Springsteen; the influence of both are evident here. The plaintive appeals in her lyrics and the soulful burr in her voice are church skills since refined for secular use. There is some Darkness on the Edge of Town within Miracle Temple; dreams too big for a small town, highways beckoning getaway from all that conspires to keep you there. In lieu of Jersey, high school sweethearts, and Carter-era gloom, it's the Outer Banks, straight girls' drunken flirting, and cruel summers. But McEntire could be singing about anything with lyrics deep or dumb, and it would hardly matter-- there is that voice of hers. The comparison to young Dolly Parton is not undue; the quiver as she gets to the song's emotional center, the way she reigns herself in right before you expect her to belt it. Like Parton, she reserves her big voice for when she needs to bring out the drama. McEntire often gets pegged as post-punk, due to her proximity to the DIY scene she came up in, but on "White Sands", she stretches "kids" to nearly four syllables (something like "key-yuh-hid-s" with a little hiccup in the middle)-- conclusive proof that girl is country. Alas, the rest of the band is not. They are very much Southern, but that is not that same thing. They lay in and drift a bit between punctuating, shuffling rhythms-- their loose hooks mimicking a drawl. Jenks Miller, a guitarist with enough confidence to occasionally venture solo as Horseback, keeps his accompaniment spare; his long single note runs to accent McEntire's melody lines fill in the excited silence. The album's stand out track is "I Built a Town", which is the sort of Muscle Shoals throwback many attempt and few land. The strings swell, the organ whirrs, and you imagine a bouffanted McEntire, a la Dusty in Memphis, wiping her tears away as the back-up girls coo. She gave it all, and now, now there's nothing. It's easy to imagine that doing an entire record that straight would just be a showy genre exercise for them, but that can't keep a girl from wishing for more. The rest of the band obviously knows that McEntire is the showpiece-- songs like "Those Girls" show that they do, setting up her big moments with subtlety and understatement-- reminding us that the real power is in restraint.

Artist: Mount Moriah, Album: Miracle Temple, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Mount Moriah is a real college town band-- though not in the pejorative sense. The band formed from a record counter friendship between singer Heather McEntire and guitarist Jenks Miller at the since-shuttered Schoolkids Records, on the University of North Carolina campus. On the band's rootsy, countrified second album (and Merge debut) Miracle Temple, McEntire sings of a life in a town ruled by student seasons, where you stay after everyone goes, leaving summer wide open. Album opener "Younger Days" ends on a question: "August is over so when are you coming back?" McEntire sings it with resigned hope: when they're gone, they're gone. The album is nostalgic for people and times that can't be had again, no matter what magic you attempt. "You know I really tried, girl/ To lift your small town summer malaise," she sings, in ode to a wild girl who just couldn't hang. "How I tried for years to return there," goes "Union Street Bridge", recalling misspent youth. Most of the songs are in the past tense and measure the chasm between the innocent spoils of then and the sadness of now by what's been lost in the interim: fearlessness, blind love, the ability to make someone weak in the knees. "Go on, disappear," she sings on "I Built a Town", casting out this awful ghost of the perfect past. Miracle Temple orients itself from the knowledge that there is no being restored. McEntire grew up on Southern Baptist hymns and Springsteen; the influence of both are evident here. The plaintive appeals in her lyrics and the soulful burr in her voice are church skills since refined for secular use. There is some Darkness on the Edge of Town within Miracle Temple; dreams too big for a small town, highways beckoning getaway from all that conspires to keep you there. In lieu of Jersey, high school sweethearts, and Carter-era gloom, it's the Outer Banks, straight girls' drunken flirting, and cruel summers. But McEntire could be singing about anything with lyrics deep or dumb, and it would hardly matter-- there is that voice of hers. The comparison to young Dolly Parton is not undue; the quiver as she gets to the song's emotional center, the way she reigns herself in right before you expect her to belt it. Like Parton, she reserves her big voice for when she needs to bring out the drama. McEntire often gets pegged as post-punk, due to her proximity to the DIY scene she came up in, but on "White Sands", she stretches "kids" to nearly four syllables (something like "key-yuh-hid-s" with a little hiccup in the middle)-- conclusive proof that girl is country. Alas, the rest of the band is not. They are very much Southern, but that is not that same thing. They lay in and drift a bit between punctuating, shuffling rhythms-- their loose hooks mimicking a drawl. Jenks Miller, a guitarist with enough confidence to occasionally venture solo as Horseback, keeps his accompaniment spare; his long single note runs to accent McEntire's melody lines fill in the excited silence. The album's stand out track is "I Built a Town", which is the sort of Muscle Shoals throwback many attempt and few land. The strings swell, the organ whirrs, and you imagine a bouffanted McEntire, a la Dusty in Memphis, wiping her tears away as the back-up girls coo. She gave it all, and now, now there's nothing. It's easy to imagine that doing an entire record that straight would just be a showy genre exercise for them, but that can't keep a girl from wishing for more. The rest of the band obviously knows that McEntire is the showpiece-- songs like "Those Girls" show that they do, setting up her big moments with subtlety and understatement-- reminding us that the real power is in restraint."

Icebird

The Abandoned Lullaby

Rock

Nate Patrin

As shaky as his output was in the years since he first set hip hop orthodoxy aside, writing RJD2 off as a total loss seems premature. The Third Hand's dippy bedroom-pop flopped in the way that only abrupt stylistic detours can, but when he honed that lite-funk sound on last year's decent-enough follow-up The Colossus, he seemed on his way toward actually taking it into appealing places. Factor in this year's oddball side project as the Insane Warrior, the 1980s horror soundtrack/electro-prog/library music pastiche We Are the Doorways, and he's already put out a couple of solid pieces of work in the last few years that retain his adventurous nature without letting the burden of his early rep stifle him. Maybe all he really needs to do is keep working out the kinks and find a way to let his beat-making chops translate more readily into traditional song arrangement. Plus, teaming up with a pretty good vocalist wouldn't hurt. Enter Aaron Livingston, a singer originally out of Philly who flirted with fame via a guest spot on the Roots' "Guns Are Drawn" and showed up on The Colossus six years later to lend his talents to "Crumbs Off the Table". That went so well that Livingston and RJ recorded another dozen songs under the name Icebird, and if The Abandoned Lullaby is the best piece of evidence so far to justify RJD2 Mk. II, it's also a good showcase for an eccentric singer on the verge of reaching a wide, receptive audience. Both parties click together because they're willing to let genre be an afterthought, yet they still avoid succumbing to a rootless, stylistically overreaching identity crisis. Identity crises being what they've been over RJD2's career, the fact that he's pulled together a number of familiar elements from his past repertoire is unsurprising but well-executed. Fans enamored with the rangy, all-things-1970s blowout Since We Last Spoke will find some good moments to grab on here-- there's still no gymnastic drum-break sample flipping, but RJ's geeky ear for cross-genre fusion pays off in a similarly satisfying way. The "Move on Up" vibe of "Just Love Me" and the minor-key, piano-driven skulk of "Please, Don't" are retro-funk 101, but their straightforwardness is driven by a marked flair for percussive arrangements that hit with more oomph than anything on his last two solo records. And his sense of ambition starts cresting on the album's dramatic, moody second half, where he indulges in the best instincts of his prog affinity to ends both icily ambient ("The Return of Tronson") and arena-rock heavy ("Gun for Hire"). Livingston, meanwhile, makes for a good foil to RJ's occasionally grandiose production. There are moments where he switches from a casually conversational way of singing into a full-on jolt of unadulterated joy or frustration with Swiss-watch timing. He works his raspy tenor well enough to make the moments where he drops flat, bum notes (like the quasi-Egyptian chorus in "King Tut") more of a jokey, self-aware idiosyncrasy than actual sandbagging. Best of all, he's got enough charisma to break out of pro-forma neo-soul roles: an optimist getting frustrated in the face of aggravating bullshit on "Going and Going. And Going", the desperately haunted lover on "Spirit Ache", the recidivist begging not to be led back into temptation on "Please, Don't". He doesn't have the show-stopping voice or the lyrical incisiveness of a Cee-Lo to justify the surface-level Gnarls Barkley comparisons The Abandoned Lullaby might rack up-- and RJ's not quite at the full command of a landmark signature sound like Danger Mouse was a couple of years back, either. But if there's been a better two-man indie-funk producer/singer superduo to come out of the woodwork since "Crazy" dropped, I must have missed it.

Artist: Icebird, Album: The Abandoned Lullaby, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "As shaky as his output was in the years since he first set hip hop orthodoxy aside, writing RJD2 off as a total loss seems premature. The Third Hand's dippy bedroom-pop flopped in the way that only abrupt stylistic detours can, but when he honed that lite-funk sound on last year's decent-enough follow-up The Colossus, he seemed on his way toward actually taking it into appealing places. Factor in this year's oddball side project as the Insane Warrior, the 1980s horror soundtrack/electro-prog/library music pastiche We Are the Doorways, and he's already put out a couple of solid pieces of work in the last few years that retain his adventurous nature without letting the burden of his early rep stifle him. Maybe all he really needs to do is keep working out the kinks and find a way to let his beat-making chops translate more readily into traditional song arrangement. Plus, teaming up with a pretty good vocalist wouldn't hurt. Enter Aaron Livingston, a singer originally out of Philly who flirted with fame via a guest spot on the Roots' "Guns Are Drawn" and showed up on The Colossus six years later to lend his talents to "Crumbs Off the Table". That went so well that Livingston and RJ recorded another dozen songs under the name Icebird, and if The Abandoned Lullaby is the best piece of evidence so far to justify RJD2 Mk. II, it's also a good showcase for an eccentric singer on the verge of reaching a wide, receptive audience. Both parties click together because they're willing to let genre be an afterthought, yet they still avoid succumbing to a rootless, stylistically overreaching identity crisis. Identity crises being what they've been over RJD2's career, the fact that he's pulled together a number of familiar elements from his past repertoire is unsurprising but well-executed. Fans enamored with the rangy, all-things-1970s blowout Since We Last Spoke will find some good moments to grab on here-- there's still no gymnastic drum-break sample flipping, but RJ's geeky ear for cross-genre fusion pays off in a similarly satisfying way. The "Move on Up" vibe of "Just Love Me" and the minor-key, piano-driven skulk of "Please, Don't" are retro-funk 101, but their straightforwardness is driven by a marked flair for percussive arrangements that hit with more oomph than anything on his last two solo records. And his sense of ambition starts cresting on the album's dramatic, moody second half, where he indulges in the best instincts of his prog affinity to ends both icily ambient ("The Return of Tronson") and arena-rock heavy ("Gun for Hire"). Livingston, meanwhile, makes for a good foil to RJ's occasionally grandiose production. There are moments where he switches from a casually conversational way of singing into a full-on jolt of unadulterated joy or frustration with Swiss-watch timing. He works his raspy tenor well enough to make the moments where he drops flat, bum notes (like the quasi-Egyptian chorus in "King Tut") more of a jokey, self-aware idiosyncrasy than actual sandbagging. Best of all, he's got enough charisma to break out of pro-forma neo-soul roles: an optimist getting frustrated in the face of aggravating bullshit on "Going and Going. And Going", the desperately haunted lover on "Spirit Ache", the recidivist begging not to be led back into temptation on "Please, Don't". He doesn't have the show-stopping voice or the lyrical incisiveness of a Cee-Lo to justify the surface-level Gnarls Barkley comparisons The Abandoned Lullaby might rack up-- and RJ's not quite at the full command of a landmark signature sound like Danger Mouse was a couple of years back, either. But if there's been a better two-man indie-funk producer/singer superduo to come out of the woodwork since "Crazy" dropped, I must have missed it."

The Nels Cline Singers

Instrumentals

Experimental,Jazz

Brendan Reid

Yeah, singers. Like Cher. Cher sings on this album. And Madonna. And Sting. In fact, everyone who only has one name, they all sing on this album. If you didn't fall for that, good for you. The recently assembled Nels Cline Singers are guitarist Nels Cline's current touring outfit featuring Devin Hoff on contrabass and Scott Amendola on drums/electronics. And Instrumentals, though issuing forth from the titanic loins of these so-called Singers, is as unsullied by human voice as the rest of guitarist Cline's non-rock work. While Nels spends his days axing for the Geraldine Fibbers, noodling with Thurston Moore, shopping for shoes with Mike Watt, etc., all he's ever really wanted to do was go home and toss back a can of that cold, frothy jazz. Of course, given his background, Cline's never been afraid of inflecting the idiom with ideas borrowed from the more remote quarters of the rock world (exotic pedals, dictatorial spaz-mandates, etc). That he does so without ever approaching "fusion" is to his enduring credit. While Instrumentals suffers a bit in comparison to Cline's previous studio work with the huge Destroy All Nels Cline ensemble, it's mostly because the three-piece lineup curtails some of the wild tonal exploration done on that record. Don't fret, though, these folks still have an awful lot going for them. They can be furiously tight, for one thing, when in rock-mode. "Cause for Concern" and "Ghost of the Piñata" both make for sublime chase music; the former spits convoluted back-alley riffs out from between clenched teeth, while the latter heat-shimmers with backwards reverb and crystalline arpeggios. "Suspended Head", dedicated in the liner notes to the awesome SF-based experimental art-rock band Deerhoof, comes off as an even more elastic, unhinged version of the same. In the presence of these tracks, the even more straightforward "blues mutation" "Lowered Boom"-- a showcase for Hoff's menacing bow-work and Cline's rawhide chops-- even starts to sound a little lackluster. They more than make up for it, though, on the less structured pieces. The most immediately likable of these, the fifteen-minute "Blood Drawing", slowly churns a soup of Can-ish string squeals into a spacy, arabesque guitar workout. Though it's hard to tell who's doing what at times, it often seems like Amendola is the most interesting noisemaker of the group, stringing together drum loops on the fly and then letting them decay beyond recognition. On the "freer" pieces, "A Mug Like Mine" and "Lucia", it's Amendola too who acts as the loosest cannon, battering away wildly enough to give Cline and Hoff's follow-the-leader skronk the appearance of regularity. All right, you knew I was going to have to use "skronk" sooner or later (and dammit, you would have said it, too). Given the amount of it that's made it onto this record, though, the Singers' capacity for melody and delicacy is pretty remarkable. Cline's relatively spare figures, Hoff's sobbing vibrato, and Amendola's electronic manipulations on "Harbor Child" are all equally elegiac. The closer, "Slipped Away"-- probably the most "composed" piece on the album-- is just as simply, sadly beautiful, pursuing the fundamental in slow-motion through a wasted chordal countryside. What's amazing is that this isn't really anything that new for Nels; the faces (and the warped musical personalities behind them) have changed, but it's mainly just another addition to a growing and worthwhile body of work.

Artist: The Nels Cline Singers, Album: Instrumentals, Genre: Experimental,Jazz, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Yeah, singers. Like Cher. Cher sings on this album. And Madonna. And Sting. In fact, everyone who only has one name, they all sing on this album. If you didn't fall for that, good for you. The recently assembled Nels Cline Singers are guitarist Nels Cline's current touring outfit featuring Devin Hoff on contrabass and Scott Amendola on drums/electronics. And Instrumentals, though issuing forth from the titanic loins of these so-called Singers, is as unsullied by human voice as the rest of guitarist Cline's non-rock work. While Nels spends his days axing for the Geraldine Fibbers, noodling with Thurston Moore, shopping for shoes with Mike Watt, etc., all he's ever really wanted to do was go home and toss back a can of that cold, frothy jazz. Of course, given his background, Cline's never been afraid of inflecting the idiom with ideas borrowed from the more remote quarters of the rock world (exotic pedals, dictatorial spaz-mandates, etc). That he does so without ever approaching "fusion" is to his enduring credit. While Instrumentals suffers a bit in comparison to Cline's previous studio work with the huge Destroy All Nels Cline ensemble, it's mostly because the three-piece lineup curtails some of the wild tonal exploration done on that record. Don't fret, though, these folks still have an awful lot going for them. They can be furiously tight, for one thing, when in rock-mode. "Cause for Concern" and "Ghost of the Piñata" both make for sublime chase music; the former spits convoluted back-alley riffs out from between clenched teeth, while the latter heat-shimmers with backwards reverb and crystalline arpeggios. "Suspended Head", dedicated in the liner notes to the awesome SF-based experimental art-rock band Deerhoof, comes off as an even more elastic, unhinged version of the same. In the presence of these tracks, the even more straightforward "blues mutation" "Lowered Boom"-- a showcase for Hoff's menacing bow-work and Cline's rawhide chops-- even starts to sound a little lackluster. They more than make up for it, though, on the less structured pieces. The most immediately likable of these, the fifteen-minute "Blood Drawing", slowly churns a soup of Can-ish string squeals into a spacy, arabesque guitar workout. Though it's hard to tell who's doing what at times, it often seems like Amendola is the most interesting noisemaker of the group, stringing together drum loops on the fly and then letting them decay beyond recognition. On the "freer" pieces, "A Mug Like Mine" and "Lucia", it's Amendola too who acts as the loosest cannon, battering away wildly enough to give Cline and Hoff's follow-the-leader skronk the appearance of regularity. All right, you knew I was going to have to use "skronk" sooner or later (and dammit, you would have said it, too). Given the amount of it that's made it onto this record, though, the Singers' capacity for melody and delicacy is pretty remarkable. Cline's relatively spare figures, Hoff's sobbing vibrato, and Amendola's electronic manipulations on "Harbor Child" are all equally elegiac. The closer, "Slipped Away"-- probably the most "composed" piece on the album-- is just as simply, sadly beautiful, pursuing the fundamental in slow-motion through a wasted chordal countryside. What's amazing is that this isn't really anything that new for Nels; the faces (and the warped musical personalities behind them) have changed, but it's mainly just another addition to a growing and worthwhile body of work."

Bryan Scary

Flight of the Knife

Pop/R&B

Stuart Berman

As far as puns on rock icons named Brian go, Bryan Scary is as appropriate an appellation for its glam-boyant eponymous frontman as the Brian Jonestown Massacre is for that band's brand of sinister psychedelia. But the kind of scary that Bryan deals in is of a decidedly Rocky Horror variety: His second album, Flight of the Knife, sucks in all kinds of 1970s-- the canonic glitter-rock of Sparks and Queen, the MOR pop of Wings and ELO, and the fleet-fingered prog of Yes and early Genesis-- but its crafty construction betrays a staunch determination to make a whole decade of once-guilty pleasures feel innocent all over again. Ironically, one definitive 70s rock act that Bryan Scary doesn't immediately bring to mind is Roxy Music-- in contrast to his namesake Ferry's debonair cool, Bryan Scary projects a gentle, childlike presence that seems forever on the verge of being overpowered by the time-signature trickery and noodly arpeggios swirling around him. But like Bob Pollard and Carl Newman before him, Scary understands that prog-rock is really just psychedelic pop with the between-song gaps removed-- and if you want people to buy into your crazy cosmic concepts, you better make sure they have something to sing along to first. The end game is not so much prog as power-pop with chops. That Flight of the Knife's title track is broken up into two book-end tracks-- the first, a rhapsodic overture complete with jazz-funk interludes, the latter a rollicking, boogie-woogie-- implies some sort of overarching storyline (in short: the sky is high and space is the place), and the ecstatic energy with which Scary prances through character pieces like the celestial "Venus Ambassador" and the giddy, piano-pounded freak-out "Imitation of the Sky" suggests he’s already fantasizing about a crossover theatrical adaptation. But it'll be one narrative logic takes a back seat to spectacle: in just four minutes, "The Purple Rocket" alternates between head-bopping power-pop and jarring prog-jazz breaks, before settling on a "ba ba da ba ba” group chorus that sounds like a jingle for a kids' cereal commercial-- for no apparent reason other than it can. Scary's aggressively eager showmanship and ADD-addled arrangements threaten to exhaust himself and his audience equally-- by the time we hit the plasticine pop of "Son of Stab", the song's whip-lashed change-ups feel more the product of indecision than ingenuity. So the penultimate piano ballad "Heaven on a Bird" feels all the more triumphant for its McCartneyian modesty: "It's such a fantasy," Scary admits of the titular travel plan, but if heaven is out of the question, he'll at least settle for Broadway.

Artist: Bryan Scary, Album: Flight of the Knife, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "As far as puns on rock icons named Brian go, Bryan Scary is as appropriate an appellation for its glam-boyant eponymous frontman as the Brian Jonestown Massacre is for that band's brand of sinister psychedelia. But the kind of scary that Bryan deals in is of a decidedly Rocky Horror variety: His second album, Flight of the Knife, sucks in all kinds of 1970s-- the canonic glitter-rock of Sparks and Queen, the MOR pop of Wings and ELO, and the fleet-fingered prog of Yes and early Genesis-- but its crafty construction betrays a staunch determination to make a whole decade of once-guilty pleasures feel innocent all over again. Ironically, one definitive 70s rock act that Bryan Scary doesn't immediately bring to mind is Roxy Music-- in contrast to his namesake Ferry's debonair cool, Bryan Scary projects a gentle, childlike presence that seems forever on the verge of being overpowered by the time-signature trickery and noodly arpeggios swirling around him. But like Bob Pollard and Carl Newman before him, Scary understands that prog-rock is really just psychedelic pop with the between-song gaps removed-- and if you want people to buy into your crazy cosmic concepts, you better make sure they have something to sing along to first. The end game is not so much prog as power-pop with chops. That Flight of the Knife's title track is broken up into two book-end tracks-- the first, a rhapsodic overture complete with jazz-funk interludes, the latter a rollicking, boogie-woogie-- implies some sort of overarching storyline (in short: the sky is high and space is the place), and the ecstatic energy with which Scary prances through character pieces like the celestial "Venus Ambassador" and the giddy, piano-pounded freak-out "Imitation of the Sky" suggests he’s already fantasizing about a crossover theatrical adaptation. But it'll be one narrative logic takes a back seat to spectacle: in just four minutes, "The Purple Rocket" alternates between head-bopping power-pop and jarring prog-jazz breaks, before settling on a "ba ba da ba ba” group chorus that sounds like a jingle for a kids' cereal commercial-- for no apparent reason other than it can. Scary's aggressively eager showmanship and ADD-addled arrangements threaten to exhaust himself and his audience equally-- by the time we hit the plasticine pop of "Son of Stab", the song's whip-lashed change-ups feel more the product of indecision than ingenuity. So the penultimate piano ballad "Heaven on a Bird" feels all the more triumphant for its McCartneyian modesty: "It's such a fantasy," Scary admits of the titular travel plan, but if heaven is out of the question, he'll at least settle for Broadway."

Various Artists

Crayon Angel: A Tribute to the Music of Judee Sill

Stephen M. Deusner

There are cult artists, and then there are cult artists. Judee Sill is a little of both. In one sense of the word, she remains an obscure singer-songwriter with only a passing familiarity with the mainstream (she wrote "Lady-O", a hit for the Turtles) but with an avid audience devoted to tracking down every note she recorded. In the other sense of the word, Sill's songs have many of the trappings of an upstart California cult: astral planes, heavenly spaceships, apocalypse, and a unique understanding of a certain crossmaker. By today's standards, it can sound a bit loopy, but also much more benevolent than other cults and cult artists. Hers is a distinctly compassionate worldview, which seems natural given that music served as an escape from the harsh burdens of her reality: broken family, heroin addiction, health problems, stalled career, and an early death. Perhaps that explains why fans are often so protective of Sill's legacy and also why this new tribute album often sounds so noncommittal. Her complex songs-- which typically emphasize swooping melodic lines and eschew choruses-- demand complete devotion from listeners and performers, and only a handful of these fifteen artists give themselves over so completely to the material. Ron Sexsmith and P.G. Six open and close the compilation with pretty but mundane versions of "Crayon Angel" and "'Til Dreams Come True", respectively, and in between the Bye Bye Blackbirds reimagine "There's a Rugged Road" as a Gram Parsons lament, which isn't that much of a re-imagining. Meg Baird doesn't have the vocal presence to convey the melody on "When the Bridegroom Comes"; she gets lost in the song. And then Marissa Nadler ignores melody altogether. Accompanied by Black Hole Infinity, her dark, cramped take on "The Kiss" favors dull trip-hop atmosphere and a breathless delivery, but feels neither erotic nor celebratory, just grayly downcast and overlong. For fans, this collection will be of special interest for including two recently discovered compositions that Sill never recorded. "Reach for the Sky" turns the hold-up line into a spiritual imperative, but it makes more sense-- at least autobiographically-- as a Sill tune than as a Beth Orton tune, where the message sounds obligatory rather than felt. Bill Callahan's carefully, patiently, glacially paced "For a Rainbow" shuffles along for eight long minutes. He doesn't always hold your attention, but his efforts toward eccentricity are appreciated. The best moments on Crayon Angel are created by the truest believers, whose own idiosyncrasies compete with Sill's. Final Fantasy arranges "The Donor" as a variegated pattern of keyboard lines, reducing the tune to 1s and 0s and finding a liturgical melody at its heart. Similarly, Nicolai Dunger's "Solder of the Heart" shouldn't work but does; his performance, which combines the vocal mannerisms of an earthier Jeff Buckley and the accompaniment of a Sunday afternoon piano lesson, sounds both refreshingly unrehearsed and evocatively over-the-top. Daniel Rossen resurrects the demo "Waterfall" and fills it out nicely, and Princeton not only samples Sill's live introduction to "Down Where the Valleys Are Low", but recasts the song as a short, sweet hymn full of oddball percussion, mewing keyboards, and distracted vocals. But the real gem here-- the reason to visit and revisit this collection-- is Frida Hyvönen's "Jesus Was a Crossmaker", a lovely, lonely gospel number that features the Swedish singer-songwriter layering her vocals into a celestial choir and unearthing new veins of meaning in the ambiguously scriptural lyrics. More than any other artist on Crayon Angel, Hyvönen understands Sill's intentions and appeal, and this cover sounds positively inevitable, as if Sill had prophesied it years ago.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Crayon Angel: A Tribute to the Music of Judee Sill, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "There are cult artists, and then there are cult artists. Judee Sill is a little of both. In one sense of the word, she remains an obscure singer-songwriter with only a passing familiarity with the mainstream (she wrote "Lady-O", a hit for the Turtles) but with an avid audience devoted to tracking down every note she recorded. In the other sense of the word, Sill's songs have many of the trappings of an upstart California cult: astral planes, heavenly spaceships, apocalypse, and a unique understanding of a certain crossmaker. By today's standards, it can sound a bit loopy, but also much more benevolent than other cults and cult artists. Hers is a distinctly compassionate worldview, which seems natural given that music served as an escape from the harsh burdens of her reality: broken family, heroin addiction, health problems, stalled career, and an early death. Perhaps that explains why fans are often so protective of Sill's legacy and also why this new tribute album often sounds so noncommittal. Her complex songs-- which typically emphasize swooping melodic lines and eschew choruses-- demand complete devotion from listeners and performers, and only a handful of these fifteen artists give themselves over so completely to the material. Ron Sexsmith and P.G. Six open and close the compilation with pretty but mundane versions of "Crayon Angel" and "'Til Dreams Come True", respectively, and in between the Bye Bye Blackbirds reimagine "There's a Rugged Road" as a Gram Parsons lament, which isn't that much of a re-imagining. Meg Baird doesn't have the vocal presence to convey the melody on "When the Bridegroom Comes"; she gets lost in the song. And then Marissa Nadler ignores melody altogether. Accompanied by Black Hole Infinity, her dark, cramped take on "The Kiss" favors dull trip-hop atmosphere and a breathless delivery, but feels neither erotic nor celebratory, just grayly downcast and overlong. For fans, this collection will be of special interest for including two recently discovered compositions that Sill never recorded. "Reach for the Sky" turns the hold-up line into a spiritual imperative, but it makes more sense-- at least autobiographically-- as a Sill tune than as a Beth Orton tune, where the message sounds obligatory rather than felt. Bill Callahan's carefully, patiently, glacially paced "For a Rainbow" shuffles along for eight long minutes. He doesn't always hold your attention, but his efforts toward eccentricity are appreciated. The best moments on Crayon Angel are created by the truest believers, whose own idiosyncrasies compete with Sill's. Final Fantasy arranges "The Donor" as a variegated pattern of keyboard lines, reducing the tune to 1s and 0s and finding a liturgical melody at its heart. Similarly, Nicolai Dunger's "Solder of the Heart" shouldn't work but does; his performance, which combines the vocal mannerisms of an earthier Jeff Buckley and the accompaniment of a Sunday afternoon piano lesson, sounds both refreshingly unrehearsed and evocatively over-the-top. Daniel Rossen resurrects the demo "Waterfall" and fills it out nicely, and Princeton not only samples Sill's live introduction to "Down Where the Valleys Are Low", but recasts the song as a short, sweet hymn full of oddball percussion, mewing keyboards, and distracted vocals. But the real gem here-- the reason to visit and revisit this collection-- is Frida Hyvönen's "Jesus Was a Crossmaker", a lovely, lonely gospel number that features the Swedish singer-songwriter layering her vocals into a celestial choir and unearthing new veins of meaning in the ambiguously scriptural lyrics. More than any other artist on Crayon Angel, Hyvönen understands Sill's intentions and appeal, and this cover sounds positively inevitable, as if Sill had prophesied it years ago."

Boy Kill Boy

Civilian

Rock

Rachel Khong

Repetition's key when it comes to pop music, but please boys, this is ridiculous. While made-for-Misshapes, UK indie-dancerockers Boy Kill Boy get A's for effort, debut Civilian is little more than overhyped, albeit danceable déjà vu-- repeating and threepeating ad infinitum, nauseum. Boy Kill Boy don't simply give nods to Killers, Maxïmo Park, Hot Hot Heat, Kaiser Chiefs, Interpol, and whatever slew of 1980s and 90s bands the aforementioned exalt, they're pulling John Travoltas à la Face/Off-- turning out near-spitting images of their precursors, contributing little else to a no longer cozy dancerock niche. What's more, Boy Kill Boy don't just replicate, songs recur even internally: "Back Again" needs no backup singers; Chris Peck might as well be four people, boldly echoing where few men have echoed before. Fair warning came with 2005's Fierce Panda single "Suzie", a nightmarish carousel of a song, whining "Countdown, countdown, countdown to the disappointment." As track three on Civilian, it foreshadows the album's trajectory. Opener "Back Again" is Boy Kill Boy at their most listenable; from there, Civilian grows exponentially exhausting: Nearly all tracks bear identical starts and drum beats, and those that don't fall remarkably flat. "Showdown" meanders down a relatively snail-paced road that Boy Kill Boy should avoid; "Ivy Parker" falls victim to identical feeble, circular sluggishness; likewise, "Shoot Me Down" starts off mimicking an Interpol song, then turns into what's poised to be our generation's elevator muzak. Then there's that voice: Peck's Paul Banks/Chris Martin pipes are exactly like the guy from Stellastarr and just as incredibly, irritatingly grating, affected, and peppy-- lyrically alluding to woes when they're better off embodying the happy-go-lucky. Case in point: It's hard to take Peck seriously while he's warbling, "Close to madness/ So demanding, I can't breathe anymore/ I'll never be the same again/ Please forgive me, and forget me." The forgetting's easy; the forgiving less so.

Artist: Boy Kill Boy, Album: Civilian, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.1 Album review: "Repetition's key when it comes to pop music, but please boys, this is ridiculous. While made-for-Misshapes, UK indie-dancerockers Boy Kill Boy get A's for effort, debut Civilian is little more than overhyped, albeit danceable déjà vu-- repeating and threepeating ad infinitum, nauseum. Boy Kill Boy don't simply give nods to Killers, Maxïmo Park, Hot Hot Heat, Kaiser Chiefs, Interpol, and whatever slew of 1980s and 90s bands the aforementioned exalt, they're pulling John Travoltas à la Face/Off-- turning out near-spitting images of their precursors, contributing little else to a no longer cozy dancerock niche. What's more, Boy Kill Boy don't just replicate, songs recur even internally: "Back Again" needs no backup singers; Chris Peck might as well be four people, boldly echoing where few men have echoed before. Fair warning came with 2005's Fierce Panda single "Suzie", a nightmarish carousel of a song, whining "Countdown, countdown, countdown to the disappointment." As track three on Civilian, it foreshadows the album's trajectory. Opener "Back Again" is Boy Kill Boy at their most listenable; from there, Civilian grows exponentially exhausting: Nearly all tracks bear identical starts and drum beats, and those that don't fall remarkably flat. "Showdown" meanders down a relatively snail-paced road that Boy Kill Boy should avoid; "Ivy Parker" falls victim to identical feeble, circular sluggishness; likewise, "Shoot Me Down" starts off mimicking an Interpol song, then turns into what's poised to be our generation's elevator muzak. Then there's that voice: Peck's Paul Banks/Chris Martin pipes are exactly like the guy from Stellastarr and just as incredibly, irritatingly grating, affected, and peppy-- lyrically alluding to woes when they're better off embodying the happy-go-lucky. Case in point: It's hard to take Peck seriously while he's warbling, "Close to madness/ So demanding, I can't breathe anymore/ I'll never be the same again/ Please forgive me, and forget me." The forgetting's easy; the forgiving less so."

Woven Bones

In and Out and Back Again

Rock

Paul Thompson

Vibe's a tough thing to nail; some got it, some surely don't. It doesn't stop a whole mess of bands from aiming to nail down the same vibes, among them the garage-throb in the Velvets/Spacemen 3 vein. Woven Bones work in that sound, as do fellow Austinites the Black Angels; mainstays like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Warlocks have long made the stuff their stock-and-trade. But on their debut LP, In and Out and Back Again, the airtight, breathless Woven Bones set themselves apart from every one of those bands by, well, somehow coming closer to the intangible qualities these groups valued from Spacemen, et al. in the first place. Bones leader Andrew Burr's tunes are lean little rumblers, built around the thwack of the drum and the ceaseless thump of Matt Nichols' bass. They're so skeletal that 10 seconds of strum at the top of "7 Year Mirror" seems an eternity amidst all the go-go-go. Verses and choruses seem almost interchangeable, though there's hardly any time to decide which is which. These tunes seem almost too cool for melody, favoring instead a dry, mesmeric peal. You'd be hard-pressed to finger a highlight amidst these 26 svelte minutes, given the record's compositional tunnelvision, yet the effect's not samey but, rather, hypnotic. Burr's voice sounds built for dirty rock'n'roll--all bratty disaffection somewhere between Iggy circa Fun House and Echo and the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch. He and the Bones have a superior sense of economy-- there's no mistaking that these songs are built from just bass, guitar, and drums. Burr's not crafting true takeaway moments yet, but the mood In and Out carries seems to linger, and prolonged exposure pulls the dark curtains back a bit to shed a little light on these sneaky almost-hooks. It's that sullen mood, though, that's In and Out's greatest success-- it sounds lively, whipsmart, and half-drunk, like the band can't wait to set up and bum out. True, In and Out would be a better record were the songs a bit better defined, but its brief runtime and distinctly dingy feel go a long way to make up for any compositional shortcomings. This is garage-drone with a distinct whiff of carport about it, and that's just not a vibe you can convincingly fake.

Artist: Woven Bones, Album: In and Out and Back Again, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "Vibe's a tough thing to nail; some got it, some surely don't. It doesn't stop a whole mess of bands from aiming to nail down the same vibes, among them the garage-throb in the Velvets/Spacemen 3 vein. Woven Bones work in that sound, as do fellow Austinites the Black Angels; mainstays like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Warlocks have long made the stuff their stock-and-trade. But on their debut LP, In and Out and Back Again, the airtight, breathless Woven Bones set themselves apart from every one of those bands by, well, somehow coming closer to the intangible qualities these groups valued from Spacemen, et al. in the first place. Bones leader Andrew Burr's tunes are lean little rumblers, built around the thwack of the drum and the ceaseless thump of Matt Nichols' bass. They're so skeletal that 10 seconds of strum at the top of "7 Year Mirror" seems an eternity amidst all the go-go-go. Verses and choruses seem almost interchangeable, though there's hardly any time to decide which is which. These tunes seem almost too cool for melody, favoring instead a dry, mesmeric peal. You'd be hard-pressed to finger a highlight amidst these 26 svelte minutes, given the record's compositional tunnelvision, yet the effect's not samey but, rather, hypnotic. Burr's voice sounds built for dirty rock'n'roll--all bratty disaffection somewhere between Iggy circa Fun House and Echo and the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch. He and the Bones have a superior sense of economy-- there's no mistaking that these songs are built from just bass, guitar, and drums. Burr's not crafting true takeaway moments yet, but the mood In and Out carries seems to linger, and prolonged exposure pulls the dark curtains back a bit to shed a little light on these sneaky almost-hooks. It's that sullen mood, though, that's In and Out's greatest success-- it sounds lively, whipsmart, and half-drunk, like the band can't wait to set up and bum out. True, In and Out would be a better record were the songs a bit better defined, but its brief runtime and distinctly dingy feel go a long way to make up for any compositional shortcomings. This is garage-drone with a distinct whiff of carport about it, and that's just not a vibe you can convincingly fake."

King Crimson

The Power to Believe

Rock

Dominique Leone

"The only reward the musician receives is music: The privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes unto its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes unreal."                                                                                 --Robert Fripp, 1992 For all his scholarly quips and curmudgeonly demeanor, King Crimson founder and guitarist Robert Fripp has gone to great pains to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. Unlike some of his first-generation progressive rock peers of the late 60s and early 70s, he never allowed his band to leap into the abyss of new age fantasy or wanky tech-pomp. At all points during Crimson's many-membered lifetime, Fripp has been the model of humble workmanship: You can usually count on him to 1) hate the music business, 2) refuse to rest on his laurels, and 3) practice his guitar. It makes sense that he wouldn't expect much pleasure from record sales or a cult of fans as obsessive as they come-- after all, it's the musician's job to strive for excellence in the face of commerce and compromise. And it shouldn't bother him that during the course of his 35-year, single-minded crusade he's left himself on a desert island with only his comfortable legion of fans and bandmates to keep him company. It's been a few years since he was painting London red with Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and David Bowie, and these days Fripp mostly celebrates advanced middle age with his wife, English garden and the latest version of his storied band. Sure, his records sound more than a little like shadows (albeit of the highest quality) of his classic past efforts, but it's not as if rock history is littered with grandfatherly figures re-inventing the wheel. "Hey man, lay off Fripp-- King Crimson is the best prog band ever!" I know it is, I do; I really wish I could get past the irony of a progressive rock band being unable to progress. The Power to Believe is the band's 13th studio LP, and the third featuring the current lineup of Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto. Last year, the buzz about this record was that it was going to be the result of Crimson's ear to xFC-metal, and having toured with Tool-- in fact, the working title was Nuovo Metal. Last year's Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With EP offered some preliminary tastes of this direction, as did the deluge of recent live releases, including 2001's Level Five, and the Projekcts albums. I'm happy to report that Power is much less awful than that EP, and more consistently interesting than the sprawling live CDs. That said, there is an omnipresent residue of stagnancy that has covered just about everything King Crimson have released since 1995's Thrak, and this record is no less stained. Fans of the mid-1970s lineup should find the most to enjoy on Power to Believe, as it not only finds King Crimson playing with muscular aggression similar to that period, but also revisiting the group improvisation that set them so far apart from other 70s prog bands. The title suite-- arranged in four movements; Fripp still loves the symphonic form-- begins and ends as a sort-of haiku verse penned by Belew, but the middle sections are reminiscent of the lengthy excursions from 1992's excellent Great Deceiver box set, of their 1973-74 tours. Exotic percussion (Jaime Muir, where are you?), floating Frippertronics, and fretless basslines (ahem, "Warr guitar") flesh out what seems like very familiar territory. It is, of course, a credit to the band that they manage to retain the adventurous spirit of past incarnations, whether or not the end result is a tad stale-- Fripp's solo on "Part III" is pretty cool, after all, and the driving, minimal "Dangerous Curves" reminds me of "The Talking Drum" from Larks' Tongues, right down to the repeating bassline and ending on a wall of dissonant noise. The band also throws a few bones to modern electronic music with "Level Five" and "Elektronic". The former tune is a fairly standard instrumental in the style of "Red", or more recently, "Thrak"-- though not quite as ferocious as either. However, Mastelotto's drum parts are injected with occasional glitch and Aphex-style stutter, giving the groove a somewhat refreshing (at least for anyone who never heard Aphex) wrinkle. The latter tune fares better, if only because the efforts don't seem like hopeless catch-up exercises. Oh wait, yes they do, because I'm pretty sure those Prodigy beats were stale about six months into 1997. Anyway, the tunes are right on time for Crimson fans, and if you wanted to, you could easily tune out the barely there computer touches. There are moments without many redeeming qualities: The dad-joke "Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With" survives in full form from its self-titled EP here, and alas, is still embarrassingly out of touch. Likewise, "Facts of Life" features just as clueless a take on metal as the former tune, and Belew's ridiculously holier-than-thou lyrics detailing how "some of us build, and some of us teach" (he forgot the ones who provide public service announcements), and how "nobody knows what happens when you die." These things are "fact[s] of life," he says. Now, if he could only throw in a verse about how "the president thinks he's so smart, but you know what, he's not," we'd be set. Despite all the unfortunate narrative (which, in itself is reminiscent of most Crimson records) and quaint "updates" in sound, this record should please quite a few fans. Even as my brain tells me that the Crimson well is probably dry, my fist wants to pump during the breakdowns in "Level Five". Fact is, very few bands have a command of their own voice as well as Fripp and Crimson, and I suppose when you've been at it for so long, mastery comes with the territory. I can admit to feeling some of that old Crim magic a few times during Power to Believe, but would be kidding myself if I thought it was as potent a spell as their adventures of yore.

Artist: King Crimson, Album: The Power to Believe, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: ""The only reward the musician receives is music: The privilege of standing in the presence of music when it leans over and takes unto its confidence. As it is for the audience. In this moment everything else is irrelevant and without power. For those in music, this is the moment when life becomes unreal."                                                                                 --Robert Fripp, 1992 For all his scholarly quips and curmudgeonly demeanor, King Crimson founder and guitarist Robert Fripp has gone to great pains to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. Unlike some of his first-generation progressive rock peers of the late 60s and early 70s, he never allowed his band to leap into the abyss of new age fantasy or wanky tech-pomp. At all points during Crimson's many-membered lifetime, Fripp has been the model of humble workmanship: You can usually count on him to 1) hate the music business, 2) refuse to rest on his laurels, and 3) practice his guitar. It makes sense that he wouldn't expect much pleasure from record sales or a cult of fans as obsessive as they come-- after all, it's the musician's job to strive for excellence in the face of commerce and compromise. And it shouldn't bother him that during the course of his 35-year, single-minded crusade he's left himself on a desert island with only his comfortable legion of fans and bandmates to keep him company. It's been a few years since he was painting London red with Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel and David Bowie, and these days Fripp mostly celebrates advanced middle age with his wife, English garden and the latest version of his storied band. Sure, his records sound more than a little like shadows (albeit of the highest quality) of his classic past efforts, but it's not as if rock history is littered with grandfatherly figures re-inventing the wheel. "Hey man, lay off Fripp-- King Crimson is the best prog band ever!" I know it is, I do; I really wish I could get past the irony of a progressive rock band being unable to progress. The Power to Believe is the band's 13th studio LP, and the third featuring the current lineup of Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto. Last year, the buzz about this record was that it was going to be the result of Crimson's ear to xFC-metal, and having toured with Tool-- in fact, the working title was Nuovo Metal. Last year's Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With EP offered some preliminary tastes of this direction, as did the deluge of recent live releases, including 2001's Level Five, and the Projekcts albums. I'm happy to report that Power is much less awful than that EP, and more consistently interesting than the sprawling live CDs. That said, there is an omnipresent residue of stagnancy that has covered just about everything King Crimson have released since 1995's Thrak, and this record is no less stained. Fans of the mid-1970s lineup should find the most to enjoy on Power to Believe, as it not only finds King Crimson playing with muscular aggression similar to that period, but also revisiting the group improvisation that set them so far apart from other 70s prog bands. The title suite-- arranged in four movements; Fripp still loves the symphonic form-- begins and ends as a sort-of haiku verse penned by Belew, but the middle sections are reminiscent of the lengthy excursions from 1992's excellent Great Deceiver box set, of their 1973-74 tours. Exotic percussion (Jaime Muir, where are you?), floating Frippertronics, and fretless basslines (ahem, "Warr guitar") flesh out what seems like very familiar territory. It is, of course, a credit to the band that they manage to retain the adventurous spirit of past incarnations, whether or not the end result is a tad stale-- Fripp's solo on "Part III" is pretty cool, after all, and the driving, minimal "Dangerous Curves" reminds me of "The Talking Drum" from Larks' Tongues, right down to the repeating bassline and ending on a wall of dissonant noise. The band also throws a few bones to modern electronic music with "Level Five" and "Elektronic". The former tune is a fairly standard instrumental in the style of "Red", or more recently, "Thrak"-- though not quite as ferocious as either. However, Mastelotto's drum parts are injected with occasional glitch and Aphex-style stutter, giving the groove a somewhat refreshing (at least for anyone who never heard Aphex) wrinkle. The latter tune fares better, if only because the efforts don't seem like hopeless catch-up exercises. Oh wait, yes they do, because I'm pretty sure those Prodigy beats were stale about six months into 1997. Anyway, the tunes are right on time for Crimson fans, and if you wanted to, you could easily tune out the barely there computer touches. There are moments without many redeeming qualities: The dad-joke "Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With" survives in full form from its self-titled EP here, and alas, is still embarrassingly out of touch. Likewise, "Facts of Life" features just as clueless a take on metal as the former tune, and Belew's ridiculously holier-than-thou lyrics detailing how "some of us build, and some of us teach" (he forgot the ones who provide public service announcements), and how "nobody knows what happens when you die." These things are "fact[s] of life," he says. Now, if he could only throw in a verse about how "the president thinks he's so smart, but you know what, he's not," we'd be set. Despite all the unfortunate narrative (which, in itself is reminiscent of most Crimson records) and quaint "updates" in sound, this record should please quite a few fans. Even as my brain tells me that the Crimson well is probably dry, my fist wants to pump during the breakdowns in "Level Five". Fact is, very few bands have a command of their own voice as well as Fripp and Crimson, and I suppose when you've been at it for so long, mastery comes with the territory. I can admit to feeling some of that old Crim magic a few times during Power to Believe, but would be kidding myself if I thought it was as potent a spell as their adventures of yore."

To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie

The Patron

Experimental,Rock

Aaron Leitko

In order to correctly critique capitalist society via anthropomorphic metaphors, Animals needed some talk-box guitar solos. To capture the desperation of a rock star at war with Japanese Robots, Kilroy Was Here needed a short film. To tell the underlying love story of two merging companies, The Patron necessitates a sampler. And some foot-pedals. And probably some Max/MSP plug-ins. Concept albums are the arbiters of new rock technologies. They're the proving ground where musicians can try out exorbitant, faddish, and gimmicky gadgets to see if they go up to 11. With its hazy abstractions and digital futzing, To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie's concept record The Patron probably makes use of several unproven instruments, and it at least ends up with some pretty decent textures. The album's convoluted storyline centers on some sort of abstract corporate entity and its eventual slide into betrayal and destruction. Or something like that. Vocalist Jehna Wilhelm's lyrics are too obscured among the showers of reverb and storms of glitchy distortion to catch much of the convoluted sci-fi plot. Meanwhile, the few discernable phrases tend to be oblique I-Ching style couplets like "Generous exchange/ Leave nothing to chance." But Kraftwerk's Computer World wasn't a great record because of the clarity of its political commentary, but because, with its talking machines and analog synths, it had an amazing sound. Similarly, the crafty manipulation of gadgetry provides The Patron's best moments. "The Man With the Shovel is the Man I'm Going to Marry" slowly evolves from a soothing synth pattern into swirl of chattering drum machines and effect-heavy layered loop-cannons of Wilhelm's tiny voice. On "Long Arms", buzzing samples and distortions give way to a swelling march that recalls the spacey-headed crescendo rock bands. Compared to the concept albums of the past, though, something seems to be missing. The Patron could use a few drums solos, maybe, or a medley or two. For all of its myriad atmospheric charms, the sampler-and-guitar set-up inhibits TKPB a little. Plodding lifeless rhythms largely dominate the record and any dynamic shifts come slowly, if at all. Not that TKPB have committed a Mindcrime or anything. The Patron's songs may have little in the way of variation or structure, but the duo's combination of pop melody and lo-bit-rate noise provides plenty of lilting and creepy moments. To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie's gadgets don't go up to 11 on The Patron, but they do make a lot of noise.

Artist: To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie, Album: The Patron, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "In order to correctly critique capitalist society via anthropomorphic metaphors, Animals needed some talk-box guitar solos. To capture the desperation of a rock star at war with Japanese Robots, Kilroy Was Here needed a short film. To tell the underlying love story of two merging companies, The Patron necessitates a sampler. And some foot-pedals. And probably some Max/MSP plug-ins. Concept albums are the arbiters of new rock technologies. They're the proving ground where musicians can try out exorbitant, faddish, and gimmicky gadgets to see if they go up to 11. With its hazy abstractions and digital futzing, To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie's concept record The Patron probably makes use of several unproven instruments, and it at least ends up with some pretty decent textures. The album's convoluted storyline centers on some sort of abstract corporate entity and its eventual slide into betrayal and destruction. Or something like that. Vocalist Jehna Wilhelm's lyrics are too obscured among the showers of reverb and storms of glitchy distortion to catch much of the convoluted sci-fi plot. Meanwhile, the few discernable phrases tend to be oblique I-Ching style couplets like "Generous exchange/ Leave nothing to chance." But Kraftwerk's Computer World wasn't a great record because of the clarity of its political commentary, but because, with its talking machines and analog synths, it had an amazing sound. Similarly, the crafty manipulation of gadgetry provides The Patron's best moments. "The Man With the Shovel is the Man I'm Going to Marry" slowly evolves from a soothing synth pattern into swirl of chattering drum machines and effect-heavy layered loop-cannons of Wilhelm's tiny voice. On "Long Arms", buzzing samples and distortions give way to a swelling march that recalls the spacey-headed crescendo rock bands. Compared to the concept albums of the past, though, something seems to be missing. The Patron could use a few drums solos, maybe, or a medley or two. For all of its myriad atmospheric charms, the sampler-and-guitar set-up inhibits TKPB a little. Plodding lifeless rhythms largely dominate the record and any dynamic shifts come slowly, if at all. Not that TKPB have committed a Mindcrime or anything. The Patron's songs may have little in the way of variation or structure, but the duo's combination of pop melody and lo-bit-rate noise provides plenty of lilting and creepy moments. To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie's gadgets don't go up to 11 on The Patron, but they do make a lot of noise."

Tom Petty, The Heartbreakers

Damn the Torpedoes

Rock

Eric Harvey

Before he was the American bard of the wandering, willful, and stoned, Tom Petty was an ornery Southerner who migrated from a Florida college town to scrape together a record deal in the rotten heart of the Southern California record business. Four years after signing with Shelter Records, and in the midst of recording the third Heartbreakers album for the label, it all went bad. When MCA bought Shelter’s fledgling parent company ABC in 1979, Petty tried to opt out of his contract—in which he’d naively ceded all publishing royalties—and MCA and Shelter sued him in L.A. Superior Court. Refusing to be “bought and sold like a piece of meat,” Petty threatened to shelve his band’s new album, and MCA counter-threatened to confiscate the band’s session tapes—legally, their property. Petty then privately told a studio assistant to hide each day’s reels in a secret location without his knowledge. Petty’s final blow was filing for bankruptcy, which opened his current contracts to renegotiation and signaled that he wasn’t about to flinch. Remarkably, MCA and Shelter caved. MCA kept Petty on contract, but it was now far more lucrative with significant creative latitude. They also returned to him all publishing rights and gave him his own boutique label, Backstreet. It was a rare victory in a cutthroat business: a musician called a major label’s bluff and forced them to fold. The album the Heartbreakers released that October, a day before Petty’s 29th birthday and four months after his Chapter 11 filing, was appropriately titled Damn the Torpedoes. ”We didn’t sit around and talk about making an album about that experience,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 1980, “but we knew we were. They get you pinned in a corner, and the last thing you can do to keep your sanity is write songs.” Especially for someone who specialized in songs about losers trying to get by, Torpedoes was a positively triumphant moment. Thanks in large part to the studio wizardry of producer Jimmy Iovine and engineer Shelly Yakus, “Refugee,” “Don’t Do Me Like That,” and “Here Comes My Girl” sounded massive on FM radio. After two studio albums, after “Breakdown” barely cracked the Top 40 and “American Girl” didn’t even chart, after four years in the industry mines and a few months of court battles, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had finally conquered the pop world. Torpedoes sat at No. 2 on the Billboard albums chart for seven weeks—kept from the top spot by Pink Floyd’s The Wall—and would eventually sell nearly three million copies. The band’s stardom was actually validated through MCA’s own blinkered corporate logic. Having learned no lessons from testing Petty’s will, the label determined that the Heartbreakers now qualified for its unscrupulous “Superstar Pricing,” an increase from $8.98 to $9.98 already applied to big sellers like Steely Dan’s Gaucho and the Xanadu soundtrack from ELO and Olivia Newton-John. Yet again, Petty threatened to withhold the LP—arguing that his label was trying to price-gouge his fans—or title it Eight Ninety-Eight. MCA decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Petty won again, and named the followup Hard Promises. The Heartbreakers—guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Stan Lynch, and bassist Ron Blair—split the difference between a lot of styles: They weren’t massive UK art-rock or the arena-sized metal of AC/DC and Van Halen. They were an L.A. band, but without the slick, expensive sound of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. They fit somewhere between spiky new wave, the blue-collar rock of Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen, and the emergent crop of critically-beloved, acerbic UK traditionalists Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Graham Parker, and Joe Jackson. In the previous few years, the Heartbreakers had opened for everyone from Blondie to Bob Seger, the Kinks, Al Kooper, Rush, even the jazz-rock ensemble Tom Scott and the L.A. Express—but had never headlined their own tour. Their second album You’re Gonna Get It! had gone gold, but Petty was tired of being a support act. He wanted the third album to be different, and definitely bigger. Enter Jimmy Iovine. Four years earlier at 21, he’d stumbled into engineering Born to Run and studied Bruce Springsteen’s studio perfectionism during some long sessions at New York City’s Record Plant. Springsteen’s insistence on perfecting Max Weinberg’s drum sound on the album—three weeks’ worth of insistent tracking and re-tracking—even forced Iovine to quit on one occasion. A few years later, Iovine signed on to produce Patti Smith’s third album Easter while he was engineering Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. Knowing that Smith’s long-delayed third LP had no lead single, he coaxed Springsteen into giving Smith a skeletal tune he’d shelved—just a chorus, really—called “Because the Night.” Smith finished the song, and her scenery-chewing romantic mini-opera was easily her biggest hit. It sounded great, too, thanks in large part to veteran engineer Shelly Yakus, whom Iovine loved. The Heartbreakers loved “Because the Night”—I mean, everyone loved it—and Lynch was particularly fond of Yakus’ drum sound on the record. Shelter brokered an introduction between Petty and Iovine, and when Petty played him the demos of “Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl,” Iovine was instantly sold. “It’s the first and last time I’ve ever said to anyone that they don’t need any more songs,” Iovine later recalled. “I’ve never said that to anyone since.” According to Petty, after he played the songs, Iovine looked around the room and exclaimed: “We’re all going to be millionaires!” Iovine signed on to produce Torpedoes and showed up in Van Nuys’ Sound City studio with Yakus as his engineer. The first single released from Torpedoes, the roller-rink R&B of “Don’t Do Me Like That,” was the band’s highest-charting yet, reaching the Billboard top 10 and saturating rock radio playlists through 1980. The song dated back to demos from Petty’s first band, Mudcrutch, and packed significantly more Gainesville choogle than anything else on Torpedoes, or either of the first two records, for that matter. Petty was planning on giving it to the J. Geils Band, which made perfect sense—their 1981 hit “Centerfold” would borrow its bounce—until Iovine insisted that the Heartbreakers re-record it. It’s a unique single in the band’s discography, as close to the proto-MTV new wave as the Heartbreakers would get. Tench’s piano plinks and tangy organ licks play tag with Campbell’s chicken-scratch riffs and Lynch’s tumbling fills, while Petty spits admonitions in a sprechgesang that owed as much to St

Artist: Tom Petty, The Heartbreakers, Album: Damn the Torpedoes, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.2 Album review: "Before he was the American bard of the wandering, willful, and stoned, Tom Petty was an ornery Southerner who migrated from a Florida college town to scrape together a record deal in the rotten heart of the Southern California record business. Four years after signing with Shelter Records, and in the midst of recording the third Heartbreakers album for the label, it all went bad. When MCA bought Shelter’s fledgling parent company ABC in 1979, Petty tried to opt out of his contract—in which he’d naively ceded all publishing royalties—and MCA and Shelter sued him in L.A. Superior Court. Refusing to be “bought and sold like a piece of meat,” Petty threatened to shelve his band’s new album, and MCA counter-threatened to confiscate the band’s session tapes—legally, their property. Petty then privately told a studio assistant to hide each day’s reels in a secret location without his knowledge. Petty’s final blow was filing for bankruptcy, which opened his current contracts to renegotiation and signaled that he wasn’t about to flinch. Remarkably, MCA and Shelter caved. MCA kept Petty on contract, but it was now far more lucrative with significant creative latitude. They also returned to him all publishing rights and gave him his own boutique label, Backstreet. It was a rare victory in a cutthroat business: a musician called a major label’s bluff and forced them to fold. The album the Heartbreakers released that October, a day before Petty’s 29th birthday and four months after his Chapter 11 filing, was appropriately titled Damn the Torpedoes. ”We didn’t sit around and talk about making an album about that experience,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 1980, “but we knew we were. They get you pinned in a corner, and the last thing you can do to keep your sanity is write songs.” Especially for someone who specialized in songs about losers trying to get by, Torpedoes was a positively triumphant moment. Thanks in large part to the studio wizardry of producer Jimmy Iovine and engineer Shelly Yakus, “Refugee,” “Don’t Do Me Like That,” and “Here Comes My Girl” sounded massive on FM radio. After two studio albums, after “Breakdown” barely cracked the Top 40 and “American Girl” didn’t even chart, after four years in the industry mines and a few months of court battles, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had finally conquered the pop world. Torpedoes sat at No. 2 on the Billboard albums chart for seven weeks—kept from the top spot by Pink Floyd’s The Wall—and would eventually sell nearly three million copies. The band’s stardom was actually validated through MCA’s own blinkered corporate logic. Having learned no lessons from testing Petty’s will, the label determined that the Heartbreakers now qualified for its unscrupulous “Superstar Pricing,” an increase from $8.98 to $9.98 already applied to big sellers like Steely Dan’s Gaucho and the Xanadu soundtrack from ELO and Olivia Newton-John. Yet again, Petty threatened to withhold the LP—arguing that his label was trying to price-gouge his fans—or title it Eight Ninety-Eight. MCA decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Petty won again, and named the followup Hard Promises. The Heartbreakers—guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, drummer Stan Lynch, and bassist Ron Blair—split the difference between a lot of styles: They weren’t massive UK art-rock or the arena-sized metal of AC/DC and Van Halen. They were an L.A. band, but without the slick, expensive sound of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. They fit somewhere between spiky new wave, the blue-collar rock of Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen, and the emergent crop of critically-beloved, acerbic UK traditionalists Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Graham Parker, and Joe Jackson. In the previous few years, the Heartbreakers had opened for everyone from Blondie to Bob Seger, the Kinks, Al Kooper, Rush, even the jazz-rock ensemble Tom Scott and the L.A. Express—but had never headlined their own tour. Their second album You’re Gonna Get It! had gone gold, but Petty was tired of being a support act. He wanted the third album to be different, and definitely bigger. Enter Jimmy Iovine. Four years earlier at 21, he’d stumbled into engineering Born to Run and studied Bruce Springsteen’s studio perfectionism during some long sessions at New York City’s Record Plant. Springsteen’s insistence on perfecting Max Weinberg’s drum sound on the album—three weeks’ worth of insistent tracking and re-tracking—even forced Iovine to quit on one occasion. A few years later, Iovine signed on to produce Patti Smith’s third album Easter while he was engineering Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. Knowing that Smith’s long-delayed third LP had no lead single, he coaxed Springsteen into giving Smith a skeletal tune he’d shelved—just a chorus, really—called “Because the Night.” Smith finished the song, and her scenery-chewing romantic mini-opera was easily her biggest hit. It sounded great, too, thanks in large part to veteran engineer Shelly Yakus, whom Iovine loved. The Heartbreakers loved “Because the Night”—I mean, everyone loved it—and Lynch was particularly fond of Yakus’ drum sound on the record. Shelter brokered an introduction between Petty and Iovine, and when Petty played him the demos of “Refugee” and “Here Comes My Girl,” Iovine was instantly sold. “It’s the first and last time I’ve ever said to anyone that they don’t need any more songs,” Iovine later recalled. “I’ve never said that to anyone since.” According to Petty, after he played the songs, Iovine looked around the room and exclaimed: “We’re all going to be millionaires!” Iovine signed on to produce Torpedoes and showed up in Van Nuys’ Sound City studio with Yakus as his engineer. The first single released from Torpedoes, the roller-rink R&B of “Don’t Do Me Like That,” was the band’s highest-charting yet, reaching the Billboard top 10 and saturating rock radio playlists through 1980. The song dated back to demos from Petty’s first band, Mudcrutch, and packed significantly more Gainesville choogle than anything else on Torpedoes, or either of the first two records, for that matter. Petty was planning on giving it to the J. Geils Band, which made perfect sense—their 1981 hit “Centerfold” would borrow its bounce—until Iovine insisted that the Heartbreakers re-record it. It’s a unique single in the band’s discography, as close to the proto-MTV new wave as the Heartbreakers would get. Tench’s piano plinks and tangy organ licks play tag with Campbell’s chicken-scratch riffs and Lynch’s tumbling fills, while Petty spits admonitions in a sprechgesang that owed as much to St"

Youngblood Brass Band

Center:Level:Roar

Jazz

Scott Hreha

Anyone who's taken Black Music History 101 during his or her college tenure knows the New Orleans brass bands' importance to the development of jazz. Tracing the evolution of those ensembles from leaders of funeral processions to whorehouse accompanists to their ultimate destination up the Mississippi River is the cornerstone from which any understanding of post-Depression Era music is derived. From there, any number of paths are possible-- with the right map you can get to John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix or Jay-Z-- but without that foundation there's little chance of meaningful academic travel, not to mention bagging anything higher than a C. Too didactic? Probably, but that's what listening to Madison, Wisconsin's Youngblood Brass Band is like-- not only do they prefigure that people don't know anything about the history of Black Music and the links between jazz and hip-hop, but they also assume that folks don't know much of anything at all. Maybe it's a result of the band members' doubling as teachers in their spare time, but I can't help but feel beat over the head with a social justice/"know your history" party line that's far more elaborate than the music itself. Youngblood Brass Band is nine players strong, but two of them can be held accountable for the one-dimensional mess that is Center:Level:Roar: composer/sousaphonist Nat McIntosh and emcee/snare-drummer David Henzie-Skogen. McIntosh's charts admirably attempt to erode the lines separating big band polyphony and breakbeat rhythm, but his lack of compositional dynamics causes the band to blare along at a brutal decibel level-- a sound that's way more Maynard Ferguson than Stetsasonic. In fact, the only track on the entire disc that makes me rethink my initial impulse to send them a complimentary case of Harmon mutes is the instrumental "Nate McCavish Handbills for No Man", where the Youngblood horns do a striking IDM impersonation with the help of some electronic effects. McIntosh's weaknesses might be open to rehabilitation, but Henzie-Skogen's rapping is just downright inexcusable. Where the strides made by underground hip-hop have opened up any number of possibilities for non-traditional flows, cadences and lyrical approaches, Henzie-Skogen doesn't even measure up under that expanded criteria. When not shouting out distorted song titles Zack de la Rocha-style ("The Movement", "Avalanche"), he's playing the social consciousness card with all the skills of a poor man's Talib Kweli-- who, incidentally, guests on a recent non-album Youngbloods single to prove that not even a top-notch emcee can lead them to the next level. But where Kweli backs up his bold observations with one of the best voices in contemporary hip-hop, Henzie-Skogen is all words and no tone; a combination that's bound to alienate more potential sympathizers to the cause than it recruits. I really do wish these guys had pulled this together more successfully, because, in theory, I still think it's a good idea that could withstand further exploration, especially since The Roots have almost entirely abandoned the jazzbo tip from whence they came. But the Youngbloods' good intentions are beyond compromised for now by a limited vision that effectively reduces them to a high school pep band trying to be down with the hip-hop kids-- only to reveal themselves for the cheerleaders they truly are.

Artist: Youngblood Brass Band, Album: Center:Level:Roar, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 3.4 Album review: "Anyone who's taken Black Music History 101 during his or her college tenure knows the New Orleans brass bands' importance to the development of jazz. Tracing the evolution of those ensembles from leaders of funeral processions to whorehouse accompanists to their ultimate destination up the Mississippi River is the cornerstone from which any understanding of post-Depression Era music is derived. From there, any number of paths are possible-- with the right map you can get to John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix or Jay-Z-- but without that foundation there's little chance of meaningful academic travel, not to mention bagging anything higher than a C. Too didactic? Probably, but that's what listening to Madison, Wisconsin's Youngblood Brass Band is like-- not only do they prefigure that people don't know anything about the history of Black Music and the links between jazz and hip-hop, but they also assume that folks don't know much of anything at all. Maybe it's a result of the band members' doubling as teachers in their spare time, but I can't help but feel beat over the head with a social justice/"know your history" party line that's far more elaborate than the music itself. Youngblood Brass Band is nine players strong, but two of them can be held accountable for the one-dimensional mess that is Center:Level:Roar: composer/sousaphonist Nat McIntosh and emcee/snare-drummer David Henzie-Skogen. McIntosh's charts admirably attempt to erode the lines separating big band polyphony and breakbeat rhythm, but his lack of compositional dynamics causes the band to blare along at a brutal decibel level-- a sound that's way more Maynard Ferguson than Stetsasonic. In fact, the only track on the entire disc that makes me rethink my initial impulse to send them a complimentary case of Harmon mutes is the instrumental "Nate McCavish Handbills for No Man", where the Youngblood horns do a striking IDM impersonation with the help of some electronic effects. McIntosh's weaknesses might be open to rehabilitation, but Henzie-Skogen's rapping is just downright inexcusable. Where the strides made by underground hip-hop have opened up any number of possibilities for non-traditional flows, cadences and lyrical approaches, Henzie-Skogen doesn't even measure up under that expanded criteria. When not shouting out distorted song titles Zack de la Rocha-style ("The Movement", "Avalanche"), he's playing the social consciousness card with all the skills of a poor man's Talib Kweli-- who, incidentally, guests on a recent non-album Youngbloods single to prove that not even a top-notch emcee can lead them to the next level. But where Kweli backs up his bold observations with one of the best voices in contemporary hip-hop, Henzie-Skogen is all words and no tone; a combination that's bound to alienate more potential sympathizers to the cause than it recruits. I really do wish these guys had pulled this together more successfully, because, in theory, I still think it's a good idea that could withstand further exploration, especially since The Roots have almost entirely abandoned the jazzbo tip from whence they came. But the Youngbloods' good intentions are beyond compromised for now by a limited vision that effectively reduces them to a high school pep band trying to be down with the hip-hop kids-- only to reveal themselves for the cheerleaders they truly are."

Throw Me the Statue

Moonbeams

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

The cover of Throw Me the Statue's debut album, Moonbeams, features a topless swimmer arced in mid-air, turning a fall into a graceful dive. Taken by Norwegian photographer Heidi Johansen, the image has the feel of an unstaged vacation souvenir: There's a boat in the background, a towel draped loosely around another woman's head, and a big toe intruding into the lower-left hand corner. It's well chosen: The casual composition and playful flash of nudity say quite a bit about the music contained therein, despite not including the name of the band or the title of the album. Moonbeams is a collection of loosely staged fuzz-pop songs about travel and sexual treachery, possessing a lens flare of regret even as they portray the singer-- or at least his first-person counterpart in these songs-- as a "lusty" soul living from one hook-up to another. Throw Me the Statue is the clunky pseudonym for Scott Reitherman, who plays almost every instrument on *Moonbeams * and even released it on his own label before signing with Secretly Canadian. He introduces opener "Young Sensualists" with a brief overture of bright synths, then fades into darker, droning chords for his tale of a beach-set love triangle. The simple plucked strings, programmed beat, and melodic guitar solo give the impression of one guy turning himself into a band. And yet, just as the title hints at youthful self-mythologizing, the vacation details suggest that the inspiration came not from a postcard tacked to a bedroom wall, but seemingly from real experience. The rest of Moonbeams bolsters that impression. Reitherman comes across as far too social-- and far too well-traveled-- for such a solitary pursuit; as the cover art suggests, he's too worldly and musically curious to shut himself in. Moonbeams features a small backing band and a revolving roster of guests, including multi-instrumentalist/producer Casey Foubert, who has worked with Pedro the Lion and Sufjan Stevens. There are horns on "Groundswell", samples on "Yucatan Gold", and what sounds like an ambient accordion on the title track. Occasionally Throw Me the Statue's musical range seems like an end in itself, as if eclectica were its own genre, but generally Reitherman's range highlights his hooks and wordplay. "About to Walk" begins with a static-crusted pong beat before Reitherman launches into a vocal melody that has him reaching into his upper range. "Yucatan Gold", another tale of a vacation dalliance, begins with a syncopated percussion sample that nods to Latin American music, but as the other instruments enter, all that remains of it is the cowbell, twitching on offbeats. "She's a crazy animal when she screams," Reitherman sings. Overly dramatic and more than a little self-satisfied, it's a silly refrain-- an indie-pop nod to Girls Gone Wild. Following the "juvie malaise" of "A Mutinous Dream" and the hopped-up horn section of stand-out "Groundswell", the Hallmark imagery and funereal trumpet on the title track sounds too pedestrian, even for a song about his dead grandfather (well, especially for a song about his dead grandfather). Sure, it leads Reitherman to realize he'll be dead a hundred years from now, but that's a well-worn idea. Moonbeams is best when it is least sentimental, when Reitherman's antihero coldly accounts for his own actions and confusions. Fortunately, the album doesn't end with Reitherman flipping through old family photos, but with him softly singing "The Happiest Man on This Plane", a drifting acoustic valedictory that confuses sex with love. Again. Adding a bit of carnality to an often asexual genre, Throw Me the Statue's candor is compelling.

Artist: Throw Me the Statue, Album: Moonbeams, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "The cover of Throw Me the Statue's debut album, Moonbeams, features a topless swimmer arced in mid-air, turning a fall into a graceful dive. Taken by Norwegian photographer Heidi Johansen, the image has the feel of an unstaged vacation souvenir: There's a boat in the background, a towel draped loosely around another woman's head, and a big toe intruding into the lower-left hand corner. It's well chosen: The casual composition and playful flash of nudity say quite a bit about the music contained therein, despite not including the name of the band or the title of the album. Moonbeams is a collection of loosely staged fuzz-pop songs about travel and sexual treachery, possessing a lens flare of regret even as they portray the singer-- or at least his first-person counterpart in these songs-- as a "lusty" soul living from one hook-up to another. Throw Me the Statue is the clunky pseudonym for Scott Reitherman, who plays almost every instrument on *Moonbeams * and even released it on his own label before signing with Secretly Canadian. He introduces opener "Young Sensualists" with a brief overture of bright synths, then fades into darker, droning chords for his tale of a beach-set love triangle. The simple plucked strings, programmed beat, and melodic guitar solo give the impression of one guy turning himself into a band. And yet, just as the title hints at youthful self-mythologizing, the vacation details suggest that the inspiration came not from a postcard tacked to a bedroom wall, but seemingly from real experience. The rest of Moonbeams bolsters that impression. Reitherman comes across as far too social-- and far too well-traveled-- for such a solitary pursuit; as the cover art suggests, he's too worldly and musically curious to shut himself in. Moonbeams features a small backing band and a revolving roster of guests, including multi-instrumentalist/producer Casey Foubert, who has worked with Pedro the Lion and Sufjan Stevens. There are horns on "Groundswell", samples on "Yucatan Gold", and what sounds like an ambient accordion on the title track. Occasionally Throw Me the Statue's musical range seems like an end in itself, as if eclectica were its own genre, but generally Reitherman's range highlights his hooks and wordplay. "About to Walk" begins with a static-crusted pong beat before Reitherman launches into a vocal melody that has him reaching into his upper range. "Yucatan Gold", another tale of a vacation dalliance, begins with a syncopated percussion sample that nods to Latin American music, but as the other instruments enter, all that remains of it is the cowbell, twitching on offbeats. "She's a crazy animal when she screams," Reitherman sings. Overly dramatic and more than a little self-satisfied, it's a silly refrain-- an indie-pop nod to Girls Gone Wild. Following the "juvie malaise" of "A Mutinous Dream" and the hopped-up horn section of stand-out "Groundswell", the Hallmark imagery and funereal trumpet on the title track sounds too pedestrian, even for a song about his dead grandfather (well, especially for a song about his dead grandfather). Sure, it leads Reitherman to realize he'll be dead a hundred years from now, but that's a well-worn idea. Moonbeams is best when it is least sentimental, when Reitherman's antihero coldly accounts for his own actions and confusions. Fortunately, the album doesn't end with Reitherman flipping through old family photos, but with him softly singing "The Happiest Man on This Plane", a drifting acoustic valedictory that confuses sex with love. Again. Adding a bit of carnality to an often asexual genre, Throw Me the Statue's candor is compelling."

The Depreciation Guild

In Her Gentle Jaws

Experimental,Rock

Adam Moerder

Wielding a blocky 8-bit arsenal, the Depreciation Guild's more likely to attract attention from video game blogs than music publications. Considering the tacky rep the video game aesthetic carries in indie circles, this doesn't seem like such an unfair relegation for the Brooklyn duo. However, as the Nintendo generation continues producing new bands-- especially those who know no world before the Famicom system-- the use of these 8-bit blips doesn't smack so strongly of nostalgic novelty so much as it represents an integral musical element in these people's lives. In that vein, the Guild's debut In Her Gentle Jaws sticks its neck out further than Nintendocore staples like the Advantage or Minibosses, never resorting to tongue-in-cheekery while decorating its original compositions in NES furnishings. As appropriate as it is that In Her Gentle Jaws kicks off with a cinematic title track tailor-made for an RPG start screen, it's the only song here that could plausibly come from an NES cartridge-- and even that's a stretch. Despite being heavily steeped in the four-channel efficiency of legendary Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, the instrumental turns to moody Disintegration-style reverb guitar for some extra muscle by the song's midway point. By the dense shoegaze of second track "Sky Ghosts", the duo's already winnowed their virtual stylings into mere ornamentation for In Her Gentle Jaws' two weapons of choice-- laptop pop and shoegaze. Surprisingly, the mishmash of these two genres with video game music feels organic, and by the end of In Her Gentle Jaws these monophonic pulse channels don't stick out any more than a guitar with fuzz distortion. The Guild pull this off especially well when they play up the genres' least common denominators-- escapism, emotional expression, and, of course, the fact that these styles of music are conducive to brooding alone in your bedroom. Nothing cures the blues like a few levels of "Super Mario Bros.", so naturally the romantic pathos of "Butterfly Kisses" gets introduced by spaceship launch SFX straight from "Metroid". The bouncy laptop melodies and tender vocals of Kurt Feldman and Christoph Hochheim may bite Ben Gibbard a little, but the Guild's seldom so up front about their feelings. For example, is the chorus of Cocteau Twins 2.0 song "Sky Ghosts" ("Whatever cloud you're on/ I will find you") a heartfelt plea to a lost love or a trash-talking gamer threatening the Hammer Brothers? The back half of In Her Gentle Jaws jettisons any emo tendencies, instead opting to explore the recesses of this semi-digital realm they've created. Although not quite as enticing as the first half's rapid-fire hooks and ADD song structures, the latter tracks form a formidable wall of sound, albeit one built using a lot of coin blocks. Closer "Heavy Eyes" builds mostly on ethereal guitar and vocals, but it can't climax until the 8-bit lead comes in, sounding strangely feasible in what could pass for a Slowdive song. If video game music's ever to have a Loveless, the Guild's taking a serious stab at it, regardless of how many mushroom power-up jokes you got for them.

Artist: The Depreciation Guild, Album: In Her Gentle Jaws, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Wielding a blocky 8-bit arsenal, the Depreciation Guild's more likely to attract attention from video game blogs than music publications. Considering the tacky rep the video game aesthetic carries in indie circles, this doesn't seem like such an unfair relegation for the Brooklyn duo. However, as the Nintendo generation continues producing new bands-- especially those who know no world before the Famicom system-- the use of these 8-bit blips doesn't smack so strongly of nostalgic novelty so much as it represents an integral musical element in these people's lives. In that vein, the Guild's debut In Her Gentle Jaws sticks its neck out further than Nintendocore staples like the Advantage or Minibosses, never resorting to tongue-in-cheekery while decorating its original compositions in NES furnishings. As appropriate as it is that In Her Gentle Jaws kicks off with a cinematic title track tailor-made for an RPG start screen, it's the only song here that could plausibly come from an NES cartridge-- and even that's a stretch. Despite being heavily steeped in the four-channel efficiency of legendary Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, the instrumental turns to moody Disintegration-style reverb guitar for some extra muscle by the song's midway point. By the dense shoegaze of second track "Sky Ghosts", the duo's already winnowed their virtual stylings into mere ornamentation for In Her Gentle Jaws' two weapons of choice-- laptop pop and shoegaze. Surprisingly, the mishmash of these two genres with video game music feels organic, and by the end of In Her Gentle Jaws these monophonic pulse channels don't stick out any more than a guitar with fuzz distortion. The Guild pull this off especially well when they play up the genres' least common denominators-- escapism, emotional expression, and, of course, the fact that these styles of music are conducive to brooding alone in your bedroom. Nothing cures the blues like a few levels of "Super Mario Bros.", so naturally the romantic pathos of "Butterfly Kisses" gets introduced by spaceship launch SFX straight from "Metroid". The bouncy laptop melodies and tender vocals of Kurt Feldman and Christoph Hochheim may bite Ben Gibbard a little, but the Guild's seldom so up front about their feelings. For example, is the chorus of Cocteau Twins 2.0 song "Sky Ghosts" ("Whatever cloud you're on/ I will find you") a heartfelt plea to a lost love or a trash-talking gamer threatening the Hammer Brothers? The back half of In Her Gentle Jaws jettisons any emo tendencies, instead opting to explore the recesses of this semi-digital realm they've created. Although not quite as enticing as the first half's rapid-fire hooks and ADD song structures, the latter tracks form a formidable wall of sound, albeit one built using a lot of coin blocks. Closer "Heavy Eyes" builds mostly on ethereal guitar and vocals, but it can't climax until the 8-bit lead comes in, sounding strangely feasible in what could pass for a Slowdive song. If video game music's ever to have a Loveless, the Guild's taking a serious stab at it, regardless of how many mushroom power-up jokes you got for them."

Best Coast

Crazy For You

Rock

Larry Fitzmaurice

Scene-famous boyfriends, a quote-generating Twitter feed, scuffles with bloggers, and the most meme-generating feline since Keyboard Cat got carpal tunnel: Yeah, it's safe to say Bethany Cosentino, who writes and records with cohort Bobb Bruno as Best Coast, is a long way away from her days as a member of drone/psych outfit Pocahaunted. Best Coast's full-length debut, Crazy for You, serves only to increase that distance from the outré-music scene; the brief record delivers on the promise of a strong string of singles released over the past year. Just as Pocahaunted loosely capture the basic feel of dub and reggae, Crazy for You is a meditation on the stickier hooks of classic indie pop, with slight detours into surf-rock ("Bratty B") and countrypolitan balladry ("Our Deal"). While Pocahaunted cover their signifiers under piles of static and delay-triggered noise, Best Coast take the opposite route, slathering honey over every song and letting them drip-dry in the sunshine. The record's overall gorgeousness has a whole lot to do with Cosentino's voice, which hits every pitch with equal clarity and intention of tone. Good thing, too, since Crazy For You is an especially vocal-heavy record; excluding the bonus track "When I'm With You", there are few moments here where Cosentino's voice isn't featured. She backs herself wordlessly, fills in non-verbal gaps (especially in the California-highway chorus of "When the Sun Don't Shine"), and repeats simple sentiments like mantras ("I wish he was my boyfriend," "I want you so much," "That's not your deal, that's not my deal"). That last function has become a sticking point for many who complain that, as a lyricist, Cosentino lacks a certain depth and overall intelligence. It's true that she's not exactly the Randy Newman of the beach-pop game-- there's a few too many "crazy/lazy" rhyme schemes, and feel free to snicker at the "I wish my cat could talk" line from "Goodbye". But it's easy to miss that, just as these songs are relatively basic in construction, she's never aimed for any sort of lyrical grandiosity-- just feelings, presented as straightforwardly as possible. Simply put, she knows what she's doing-- and, lo and behold, there's more lyrical complexity to this record than a fault-seeking light listen would glean. Just when you think you've gotten the point of "Boyfriend", Cosentino flips the script and reveals that she isn't just envious-- she feels inadequate, too: "The other girl is not me/ She's prettier and skinnier/ She has a college degree/ I dropped out when I was 17." In "The End", she verges on nihilistic, admitting in the song's chorus that she'll ruin it all permanently for temporary wish fulfillment: "You say that/ We're just friends/ But I want this/ Till the end." She's not being submissive or simple-minded-- she's being honest, and regardless of sweeping appeal, it's endearing that she puts herself out there instead of throwing on some sunglasses and using irony as UV protection. "Endearing" is the key word that comes to define Crazy for You; while most of the guitar-based indie pop that's made waves over the past few years has been characterized by scenester antagonism and attempts to fit in (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Beach Fossils), this record is carefree and instantly likable-- even if it doesn't seem to care what you think of it. Just as you don't have to be into bong rips and strains of Indo to laugh at Cosentino's 140-character riffs on Katy Perry and True Blood, even the least indie-inclined of listeners can find plenty to love here. It may be a summer album by design (I mean, for Christ's sake-- that cover), but I'll place my bet that Crazy for You will sound pretty great all damn year, and beyond.

Artist: Best Coast, Album: Crazy For You, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "Scene-famous boyfriends, a quote-generating Twitter feed, scuffles with bloggers, and the most meme-generating feline since Keyboard Cat got carpal tunnel: Yeah, it's safe to say Bethany Cosentino, who writes and records with cohort Bobb Bruno as Best Coast, is a long way away from her days as a member of drone/psych outfit Pocahaunted. Best Coast's full-length debut, Crazy for You, serves only to increase that distance from the outré-music scene; the brief record delivers on the promise of a strong string of singles released over the past year. Just as Pocahaunted loosely capture the basic feel of dub and reggae, Crazy for You is a meditation on the stickier hooks of classic indie pop, with slight detours into surf-rock ("Bratty B") and countrypolitan balladry ("Our Deal"). While Pocahaunted cover their signifiers under piles of static and delay-triggered noise, Best Coast take the opposite route, slathering honey over every song and letting them drip-dry in the sunshine. The record's overall gorgeousness has a whole lot to do with Cosentino's voice, which hits every pitch with equal clarity and intention of tone. Good thing, too, since Crazy For You is an especially vocal-heavy record; excluding the bonus track "When I'm With You", there are few moments here where Cosentino's voice isn't featured. She backs herself wordlessly, fills in non-verbal gaps (especially in the California-highway chorus of "When the Sun Don't Shine"), and repeats simple sentiments like mantras ("I wish he was my boyfriend," "I want you so much," "That's not your deal, that's not my deal"). That last function has become a sticking point for many who complain that, as a lyricist, Cosentino lacks a certain depth and overall intelligence. It's true that she's not exactly the Randy Newman of the beach-pop game-- there's a few too many "crazy/lazy" rhyme schemes, and feel free to snicker at the "I wish my cat could talk" line from "Goodbye". But it's easy to miss that, just as these songs are relatively basic in construction, she's never aimed for any sort of lyrical grandiosity-- just feelings, presented as straightforwardly as possible. Simply put, she knows what she's doing-- and, lo and behold, there's more lyrical complexity to this record than a fault-seeking light listen would glean. Just when you think you've gotten the point of "Boyfriend", Cosentino flips the script and reveals that she isn't just envious-- she feels inadequate, too: "The other girl is not me/ She's prettier and skinnier/ She has a college degree/ I dropped out when I was 17." In "The End", she verges on nihilistic, admitting in the song's chorus that she'll ruin it all permanently for temporary wish fulfillment: "You say that/ We're just friends/ But I want this/ Till the end." She's not being submissive or simple-minded-- she's being honest, and regardless of sweeping appeal, it's endearing that she puts herself out there instead of throwing on some sunglasses and using irony as UV protection. "Endearing" is the key word that comes to define Crazy for You; while most of the guitar-based indie pop that's made waves over the past few years has been characterized by scenester antagonism and attempts to fit in (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Beach Fossils), this record is carefree and instantly likable-- even if it doesn't seem to care what you think of it. Just as you don't have to be into bong rips and strains of Indo to laugh at Cosentino's 140-character riffs on Katy Perry and True Blood, even the least indie-inclined of listeners can find plenty to love here. It may be a summer album by design (I mean, for Christ's sake-- that cover), but I'll place my bet that Crazy for You will sound pretty great all damn year, and beyond."

Twilight

III: Beneath Trident's Tomb

Grayson Haver Currin

Long before its release, III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb became a punchline for both heavy metal and indie rock fans. Less than a year after news of his split with Kim Gordon (and the concomitant break-up of Sonic Youth) surfaced, Thurston Moore joined Twilight, an amorphous pan-American supergroup that had previously collected metalhead lifers such as Leviathan’s Wrest, Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd, and Krieg’s irascible leader Neill Jameson. Xasthur’s Malefic and Isis’ Aaron Turner had recorded with Twilight, too. Moore wasn’t a stranger to black metal, of course—he’d written about it in Arthur, professed his rather nascent love for its hate to Decibel, and had generally been part of the caustic form’s larger cultural uptick. His own vision of noise and volume had an undeniable impact on the evolution of heaviness during the last two decades, evidenced simply by his admission into the band itself. Still, it was hard not to feel a little embarrassed for the 55-year-old, in the same way you might grin but worry when a newly single parent admits they’ve squandered a chunk of retirement change on a candy-apple sports car. An indie rock icon prepared for his corpsepaint makeover. Moore’s personal crisis wasn’t Twilight’s only moment of ignominy, either: In 2011, Jef Whitehead, or Wrest, had been charged with sexual assault and he was eventually convicted of aggravated domestic battery and sentenced to two years of probation. Though Judd doesn’t play on Beneath Trident’s Tomb, he did appear in band photos with Moore after he broke the news of the guitarist’s inclusion. In the past year, he’s been accused of ripping off fans and bandmates, arrested for theft, and ultimately revealed that he was retreating the scene with hopes of beating his substance-abuse problems. What’s more, when the group finally announced its long-delayed third album, it added a seemingly inevitable asterisk: III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb would be Twilight’s final album, because, effective immediately, the band was finished. If it was drama and excitement Moore sought, he had doubtlessly found it. This tale of turmoil could go two ways for Beneath Trident’s Tomb, of course. It might provide an obstacle for Twilight to overcome, adding a core of tension and urgency to their process. Twilight could create its own pre-emptive Behind the Music and counter with their most wrenching album to date. Or the fuss could simply become the ballyhoo before the album’s eventual bust. Really, these six songs offer a little of both: The collective scrapes through a mess of black metal and sludge, industrial accents and noise countercurrents, post-punk switchbacks and atmospheric interludes. The music itself can be delightfully dense, with Moore and the Atlas Moth vocalist/guitarist Stavros Giannopoulos providing layer upon layer of leading riffs and antagonistic din. Moore plays the part of noise addendum perfectly, adding thin layers of dissonance and quick flashes of power when needed. Chicago producer Sanford Parker again adds electronic disarray, retrenching the album’s pronounced industrial direction. Given the band’s new mass of guitars, they’re able to ratchet volume and intensity constantly. On “Seek No Shelter Fevered Ones”, for instance, they add an additional damaged layer of vocals or sub-surface shot of feedback at seemingly every turnaround. That same strength-in-numbers strategy works for the album’s best song, “Oh Wretched Son”. Twilight pinball from ghoulish lurch to bass-led sludge, from claustrophobic black metal to hardcore upheaval in a matter of minutes. They render each part with the precision of a veteran squad and the energy of five players enthusiastically building a collective musical map. They’re questioning in real-time what this version of Twilight is, and they’re answering rather loudly. But that is the exception to Tomb’s blasé rule. Most of these songs suffer from a lack of motion or a mere inability to edit the excess away from that motion. Opener “Lungs” certainly sounds mean, but it lashes at the same theme at the same tempo for most of its four-minute runtime. It’s hard not to stare at the track time in anticipation of any change. As though acknowledging the tedium, Twilight does speed up for a short-lived coda, but even that feels like an afterthought, a footnote of excitement meant to mask general ennui. “Swarming Funereal Mass” is a tormented mid-tempo march, its doleful plod accented by drum machines and desperate vocals. There’s a riveting break toward the middle, where a gale of guitar noise overruns everything and seems to send even the band into shivers. But they soon drift into the same rote clip, extending one idea unnecessarily. That’s even true of the otherwise powerful “Seek No Shelter for the Fevered Ones”. At nine minutes, it’s impossibly bloated, a track whose placid introduction, steady buildup, and squall-infested midsection could have been condensed into a harrowing four minutes. As is, though, you’ll get too accustomed to the attack to be scared by it; Twilight’s apparent need to turn every little thought into very grand statements fosters a kind of sensory acclimation, where you become so used to the maneuvers they fail to leave any lasting effect. Taken collectively, Twilight’s three finished albums feel like a decision still waiting to be made: What did this band hope to accomplish musically, other than to corral a handful of scene celebrities into a room every few years? Was their heart with the primal roar of their self-titled debut, a blunderbuss of invective and torment? Or was their head with Monument to Time End, a sophisticated sophomore album that seemed to take the talents of its members and apply them to more audacious structures than ever before? Given some refinement, that approach could have made Twilight incredible, a supergroup worth the noise that surrounds them. More than anything, Beneath Trident’s Tomb seems like an attempt to avoid any such stepwise intentionality, choosing instead to let a few aging dudes throw a fit in a recording studio behind a small set of underdeveloped songs. Beneath Trident’s Tomb shows flashes of brilliance. But those limited sparks add up to a disappointing final bow from a band whose sordid reputation and fable-like storyline will likely outlast the music it made. __ Correction: an earlier version of this review misstated that Jef Whitehead was convicted of sexual assault; he was initially charged with sexual assault and ultimately convicted of aggravated domestic battery.

Artist: Twilight, Album: III: Beneath Trident's Tomb, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Long before its release, III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb became a punchline for both heavy metal and indie rock fans. Less than a year after news of his split with Kim Gordon (and the concomitant break-up of Sonic Youth) surfaced, Thurston Moore joined Twilight, an amorphous pan-American supergroup that had previously collected metalhead lifers such as Leviathan’s Wrest, Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd, and Krieg’s irascible leader Neill Jameson. Xasthur’s Malefic and Isis’ Aaron Turner had recorded with Twilight, too. Moore wasn’t a stranger to black metal, of course—he’d written about it in Arthur, professed his rather nascent love for its hate to Decibel, and had generally been part of the caustic form’s larger cultural uptick. His own vision of noise and volume had an undeniable impact on the evolution of heaviness during the last two decades, evidenced simply by his admission into the band itself. Still, it was hard not to feel a little embarrassed for the 55-year-old, in the same way you might grin but worry when a newly single parent admits they’ve squandered a chunk of retirement change on a candy-apple sports car. An indie rock icon prepared for his corpsepaint makeover. Moore’s personal crisis wasn’t Twilight’s only moment of ignominy, either: In 2011, Jef Whitehead, or Wrest, had been charged with sexual assault and he was eventually convicted of aggravated domestic battery and sentenced to two years of probation. Though Judd doesn’t play on Beneath Trident’s Tomb, he did appear in band photos with Moore after he broke the news of the guitarist’s inclusion. In the past year, he’s been accused of ripping off fans and bandmates, arrested for theft, and ultimately revealed that he was retreating the scene with hopes of beating his substance-abuse problems. What’s more, when the group finally announced its long-delayed third album, it added a seemingly inevitable asterisk: III: Beneath Trident’s Tomb would be Twilight’s final album, because, effective immediately, the band was finished. If it was drama and excitement Moore sought, he had doubtlessly found it. This tale of turmoil could go two ways for Beneath Trident’s Tomb, of course. It might provide an obstacle for Twilight to overcome, adding a core of tension and urgency to their process. Twilight could create its own pre-emptive Behind the Music and counter with their most wrenching album to date. Or the fuss could simply become the ballyhoo before the album’s eventual bust. Really, these six songs offer a little of both: The collective scrapes through a mess of black metal and sludge, industrial accents and noise countercurrents, post-punk switchbacks and atmospheric interludes. The music itself can be delightfully dense, with Moore and the Atlas Moth vocalist/guitarist Stavros Giannopoulos providing layer upon layer of leading riffs and antagonistic din. Moore plays the part of noise addendum perfectly, adding thin layers of dissonance and quick flashes of power when needed. Chicago producer Sanford Parker again adds electronic disarray, retrenching the album’s pronounced industrial direction. Given the band’s new mass of guitars, they’re able to ratchet volume and intensity constantly. On “Seek No Shelter Fevered Ones”, for instance, they add an additional damaged layer of vocals or sub-surface shot of feedback at seemingly every turnaround. That same strength-in-numbers strategy works for the album’s best song, “Oh Wretched Son”. Twilight pinball from ghoulish lurch to bass-led sludge, from claustrophobic black metal to hardcore upheaval in a matter of minutes. They render each part with the precision of a veteran squad and the energy of five players enthusiastically building a collective musical map. They’re questioning in real-time what this version of Twilight is, and they’re answering rather loudly. But that is the exception to Tomb’s blasé rule. Most of these songs suffer from a lack of motion or a mere inability to edit the excess away from that motion. Opener “Lungs” certainly sounds mean, but it lashes at the same theme at the same tempo for most of its four-minute runtime. It’s hard not to stare at the track time in anticipation of any change. As though acknowledging the tedium, Twilight does speed up for a short-lived coda, but even that feels like an afterthought, a footnote of excitement meant to mask general ennui. “Swarming Funereal Mass” is a tormented mid-tempo march, its doleful plod accented by drum machines and desperate vocals. There’s a riveting break toward the middle, where a gale of guitar noise overruns everything and seems to send even the band into shivers. But they soon drift into the same rote clip, extending one idea unnecessarily. That’s even true of the otherwise powerful “Seek No Shelter for the Fevered Ones”. At nine minutes, it’s impossibly bloated, a track whose placid introduction, steady buildup, and squall-infested midsection could have been condensed into a harrowing four minutes. As is, though, you’ll get too accustomed to the attack to be scared by it; Twilight’s apparent need to turn every little thought into very grand statements fosters a kind of sensory acclimation, where you become so used to the maneuvers they fail to leave any lasting effect. Taken collectively, Twilight’s three finished albums feel like a decision still waiting to be made: What did this band hope to accomplish musically, other than to corral a handful of scene celebrities into a room every few years? Was their heart with the primal roar of their self-titled debut, a blunderbuss of invective and torment? Or was their head with Monument to Time End, a sophisticated sophomore album that seemed to take the talents of its members and apply them to more audacious structures than ever before? Given some refinement, that approach could have made Twilight incredible, a supergroup worth the noise that surrounds them. More than anything, Beneath Trident’s Tomb seems like an attempt to avoid any such stepwise intentionality, choosing instead to let a few aging dudes throw a fit in a recording studio behind a small set of underdeveloped songs. Beneath Trident’s Tomb shows flashes of brilliance. But those limited sparks add up to a disappointing final bow from a band whose sordid reputation and fable-like storyline will likely outlast the music it made. __ Correction: an earlier version of this review misstated that Jef Whitehead was convicted of sexual assault; he was initially charged with sexual assault and ultimately convicted of aggravated domestic battery."

Freelance Whales

Weathervanes

Electronic,Rock

Ian Cohen

From Tommy Lee's rotating, airborne cage to John Bonham's gong, rock drummers have made crowd-pleasing gimmicks a time-honored tradition. Freelance Whales' Jacob Hyman' addition to this legacy is... incorporating a watering can into his kit. I wouldn't bring this up if everyone else didn't-- it's the most oft-repeated factoid regarding Freelance Whales in all of their pre-release hype. But I'll be damned if I could pinpoint that watering can on record. It's basically a cutesy affectation without actual purpose, which isn't a bad metaphor for the band itself. Freelance Whales are gaining attention for good reason. Besides being on Frenchkiss, a label with a great recent track record of locating bands with quality plus commercial appeal (Passion Pit, the Antlers, Dodos, Local Natives), FW sound on the surface a lot like 00s Indie Hall of Famers Arcade Fire, Ben Gibbard, and Sufjan Stevens. Freelance Whales have plenty of band-camp orchestrations, complete-sentence lyrics, and banjo; but their predecessors' work was so resonant because it felt birthed out of necessity and populated with real people and relatable emotion. Here, everything is based in stunted adolescence and rote ideas-- you almost wonder if they think storks bring babies to this world. The cloying overload starts with "Hannah", wherein frontman Judah Dadone empties a vault of Manic Pixie Dream Girl clichés-- martinis, balconies, chance encounters on spiral stairs. He also unveils an early contender for the most eye-gouging lyrical run of 2010: "Every now and again she offers me a lemon Now & Later/ Please don't play the matchmaker/ Please don't be a player hater/ If you dig her recent work/ You should go congratulate her." They should've just been up front and titled this song "Zooey". Most of Weathervanes is serviceable modern rock, so it will find an appreciative audience despite its egregious derivativeness and a lyricist who seems like he'd use the word "inebriated" to talk about how drunk he got last night. "Kilojoules" fascinates itself with bodily function in a manner similar to Death Cab's "Tiny Vessels" or "We Looked Like Giants", but while Gibbard's lyrics were awkward in a vitally hormonal way, Dadone's are awkward merely as a result of bad poetry: "You liken me to a vampire/ My left hand was wearing fake plastic teeth all winter." "Ghosting" doesn't trust the understated delicacy of its acoustic motif enough to convey beauty, so it dumped an entire Christmas' worth of bells and choirs over stilted nostalgia. Freelance Whales are a far cry from the unforgivable Owl City, but it's kind of amazing this Nick & Norah-core is both surviving and thriving. At this rate Death Cab are staking out Pearl Jam status in the 2010s, i.e., a band that gave many astute listeners an entry to more outré sounds but ultimately became reviled for the shitty music they, through no fault of their own, inspired. Now that the Etsy set's poet laureate has married its prom queen, you wonder if guys like Freelance Whales are trying to draw a wedge between Gibbard and Deschanel by somehow sullying both of their work. As a document of high-concept revenge, Weathervanes is actually kind of fascinating. Alas, that's likely not to be the case, and as just plain music it's not very fascinating at all.

Artist: Freelance Whales, Album: Weathervanes, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 4.2 Album review: "From Tommy Lee's rotating, airborne cage to John Bonham's gong, rock drummers have made crowd-pleasing gimmicks a time-honored tradition. Freelance Whales' Jacob Hyman' addition to this legacy is... incorporating a watering can into his kit. I wouldn't bring this up if everyone else didn't-- it's the most oft-repeated factoid regarding Freelance Whales in all of their pre-release hype. But I'll be damned if I could pinpoint that watering can on record. It's basically a cutesy affectation without actual purpose, which isn't a bad metaphor for the band itself. Freelance Whales are gaining attention for good reason. Besides being on Frenchkiss, a label with a great recent track record of locating bands with quality plus commercial appeal (Passion Pit, the Antlers, Dodos, Local Natives), FW sound on the surface a lot like 00s Indie Hall of Famers Arcade Fire, Ben Gibbard, and Sufjan Stevens. Freelance Whales have plenty of band-camp orchestrations, complete-sentence lyrics, and banjo; but their predecessors' work was so resonant because it felt birthed out of necessity and populated with real people and relatable emotion. Here, everything is based in stunted adolescence and rote ideas-- you almost wonder if they think storks bring babies to this world. The cloying overload starts with "Hannah", wherein frontman Judah Dadone empties a vault of Manic Pixie Dream Girl clichés-- martinis, balconies, chance encounters on spiral stairs. He also unveils an early contender for the most eye-gouging lyrical run of 2010: "Every now and again she offers me a lemon Now & Later/ Please don't play the matchmaker/ Please don't be a player hater/ If you dig her recent work/ You should go congratulate her." They should've just been up front and titled this song "Zooey". Most of Weathervanes is serviceable modern rock, so it will find an appreciative audience despite its egregious derivativeness and a lyricist who seems like he'd use the word "inebriated" to talk about how drunk he got last night. "Kilojoules" fascinates itself with bodily function in a manner similar to Death Cab's "Tiny Vessels" or "We Looked Like Giants", but while Gibbard's lyrics were awkward in a vitally hormonal way, Dadone's are awkward merely as a result of bad poetry: "You liken me to a vampire/ My left hand was wearing fake plastic teeth all winter." "Ghosting" doesn't trust the understated delicacy of its acoustic motif enough to convey beauty, so it dumped an entire Christmas' worth of bells and choirs over stilted nostalgia. Freelance Whales are a far cry from the unforgivable Owl City, but it's kind of amazing this Nick & Norah-core is both surviving and thriving. At this rate Death Cab are staking out Pearl Jam status in the 2010s, i.e., a band that gave many astute listeners an entry to more outré sounds but ultimately became reviled for the shitty music they, through no fault of their own, inspired. Now that the Etsy set's poet laureate has married its prom queen, you wonder if guys like Freelance Whales are trying to draw a wedge between Gibbard and Deschanel by somehow sullying both of their work. As a document of high-concept revenge, Weathervanes is actually kind of fascinating. Alas, that's likely not to be the case, and as just plain music it's not very fascinating at all."

Stars

In Our Bedroom After the War

Electronic,Rock

Ryan Dombal

For Canadian romantics Stars, love is war. And their modern love is strikingly similar to the world's modern war: confusion and anxiety topped with a sense of semi-staged dread. The presentation is great-- clean production, fine instrumentation, and careful arrangements-- but its undercurrent is pure self-doubt and longing. So while the quintet pushes its passion-based politics to the fore and includes the phrase "after the war" in the title of its fourth album, the emphasis is still "in our bedroom." Assuming you can dodge enough bullets to make it there. Of course, the intricacies of relationships have always been Stars' specialty. "I am trying to say what I want to say without having to say I love you," chirped co-leads Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan on 2004's minor masterpiece Set Yourself on Fire, and the line's roundabout Valentine's Day logic could double as a band mantra. What sets their new album apart from previous material is setting, scope, and a newly inflated theatrical bent. Considering his decade-spanning IMDb resume-- not to mention an award nomination for 1983's boy-meets-sea creature drama The Golden Seal-- Campbell's mannered, Moz-y vocal delivery is hardly surprising. He's a ham, plain and simple. The singer's over-the-top preening is Stars' most divisive characteristic but, instead of toning things down, his acting chops and sense of Broadway pomp permeate Bedroom's high-gloss pop more than before. And, as any Hollywood-type will tell you, an actor is only as good as his script. Playing a pill-popping whore looking to shatter his dead-end existence on the U2-style "Take Me to the Riot", Campbell brings his pitiful role to life with compassion. Backed by smashing cymbals and chiming tones, his ad-libbed plea to "let me stay, let me, let me stay!" erases the distance between the performer and his character. The Les Mis-esque weeper "Barricade" doesn't fare as well: Its storyline is trite (a couple brought together-- then torn apart-- by a common, radical cause!) and, accompanied by a lone piano, there's nothing for Campbell to hide behind. But even if it approaches cheeseball bluster, at least it's sorta ballsy. Muddled by forced postmodern nonsense and an oddly lifeless narrative, "Life 2: The Unhappy Ending" is about as boring as its title. Ironically, though she might not possess a SAG card, Millan's dramatic abilities often trump her partner's on Bedroom-- she's more subtle and natural whether nailing the album's straight-ahead pop songs on her own or bringing out Campbell's best on a couple stand-out duets. Both "My Favourite Book" and "Bitches in Tokyo" find Millan pining for affection in unequivocal terms. "Book" runs with the blind optimism of the group's indie-hit "Ageless Beauty"-- a rare moment of guilelessness buoyed by an easy listening backdrop that would make Burt Bacharach giddy. The song provides a brief but welcome respite from the hurt and rejection surrounding it. (As if to immediately deflate the cheeriness, Millan snaps out of her rose-pedal haze with the first words of the following track: "Sweetness never suits me." Never say never.) "Bitches" isn't as dizzy-- after a plethora of "mistakes," "lying" and "sabotage," Millan can't help but beg an ex to take her back. But even with all that baggage, the singer makes a convincing case with the help of some blistering girl-group drums, piano and horns. Short and without reservation, the song avoids some of the indulgent outros and solos that tank Bedroom's lesser Millan-sung tracks including the guitar-grinding "Window Bird" and lethargic pep talk "Today Will Be Better, I Swear!" As on Set Yourself on Fire's incredible "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead", which had Campbell and Millan not just backing each other up but interacting and playing off each other in a bittersweet boy-girl tale, Bedroom's "Midnight Coward" and "Personal" take full advantage of the band's unique two-headed attack. The former is a neurotic internal analysis of that oh-so-important first-date question: Should I stay or should I go? "I don't want to say too much," whispers Millan, rifling through the night's possibilities before finally joining Campbell into the unknown: "I can see what's coming, but I'm not saying it." On the surface, "Personal" is a gimmick-- a song written in personal ad parlance ("Wanted single F/ Under 33/ Must enjoy the sun/ Must enjoy the sea"). But both vocalists give the song their most impressive performances-- Campbell distant and cold, Millan vulnerable and pained-- turning its showy conceit into something genuinely wrenching. The ambiguously antiquated details emphasize its timeless central struggle: Stamped missive or Match.com, the face-to-face (dis)connection's the thing. Growing more staged, warier, and a little less playful with age, Stars don't quite match the wily rush of Set Yourself on Fire here. After three albums of artistic quantum leaps, they slow down gracefully on Bedroom, replacing Fire's indie-symphony twists and turns with more overt dramatic airs that can fall into blubbering melodrama, e.g., the title track, which suffocates under its own ticker-tape parade epic-ness. But when they're on, Stars are one of only a few current bands that can make war seem so appealing.

Artist: Stars, Album: In Our Bedroom After the War, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "For Canadian romantics Stars, love is war. And their modern love is strikingly similar to the world's modern war: confusion and anxiety topped with a sense of semi-staged dread. The presentation is great-- clean production, fine instrumentation, and careful arrangements-- but its undercurrent is pure self-doubt and longing. So while the quintet pushes its passion-based politics to the fore and includes the phrase "after the war" in the title of its fourth album, the emphasis is still "in our bedroom." Assuming you can dodge enough bullets to make it there. Of course, the intricacies of relationships have always been Stars' specialty. "I am trying to say what I want to say without having to say I love you," chirped co-leads Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan on 2004's minor masterpiece Set Yourself on Fire, and the line's roundabout Valentine's Day logic could double as a band mantra. What sets their new album apart from previous material is setting, scope, and a newly inflated theatrical bent. Considering his decade-spanning IMDb resume-- not to mention an award nomination for 1983's boy-meets-sea creature drama The Golden Seal-- Campbell's mannered, Moz-y vocal delivery is hardly surprising. He's a ham, plain and simple. The singer's over-the-top preening is Stars' most divisive characteristic but, instead of toning things down, his acting chops and sense of Broadway pomp permeate Bedroom's high-gloss pop more than before. And, as any Hollywood-type will tell you, an actor is only as good as his script. Playing a pill-popping whore looking to shatter his dead-end existence on the U2-style "Take Me to the Riot", Campbell brings his pitiful role to life with compassion. Backed by smashing cymbals and chiming tones, his ad-libbed plea to "let me stay, let me, let me stay!" erases the distance between the performer and his character. The Les Mis-esque weeper "Barricade" doesn't fare as well: Its storyline is trite (a couple brought together-- then torn apart-- by a common, radical cause!) and, accompanied by a lone piano, there's nothing for Campbell to hide behind. But even if it approaches cheeseball bluster, at least it's sorta ballsy. Muddled by forced postmodern nonsense and an oddly lifeless narrative, "Life 2: The Unhappy Ending" is about as boring as its title. Ironically, though she might not possess a SAG card, Millan's dramatic abilities often trump her partner's on Bedroom-- she's more subtle and natural whether nailing the album's straight-ahead pop songs on her own or bringing out Campbell's best on a couple stand-out duets. Both "My Favourite Book" and "Bitches in Tokyo" find Millan pining for affection in unequivocal terms. "Book" runs with the blind optimism of the group's indie-hit "Ageless Beauty"-- a rare moment of guilelessness buoyed by an easy listening backdrop that would make Burt Bacharach giddy. The song provides a brief but welcome respite from the hurt and rejection surrounding it. (As if to immediately deflate the cheeriness, Millan snaps out of her rose-pedal haze with the first words of the following track: "Sweetness never suits me." Never say never.) "Bitches" isn't as dizzy-- after a plethora of "mistakes," "lying" and "sabotage," Millan can't help but beg an ex to take her back. But even with all that baggage, the singer makes a convincing case with the help of some blistering girl-group drums, piano and horns. Short and without reservation, the song avoids some of the indulgent outros and solos that tank Bedroom's lesser Millan-sung tracks including the guitar-grinding "Window Bird" and lethargic pep talk "Today Will Be Better, I Swear!" As on Set Yourself on Fire's incredible "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead", which had Campbell and Millan not just backing each other up but interacting and playing off each other in a bittersweet boy-girl tale, Bedroom's "Midnight Coward" and "Personal" take full advantage of the band's unique two-headed attack. The former is a neurotic internal analysis of that oh-so-important first-date question: Should I stay or should I go? "I don't want to say too much," whispers Millan, rifling through the night's possibilities before finally joining Campbell into the unknown: "I can see what's coming, but I'm not saying it." On the surface, "Personal" is a gimmick-- a song written in personal ad parlance ("Wanted single F/ Under 33/ Must enjoy the sun/ Must enjoy the sea"). But both vocalists give the song their most impressive performances-- Campbell distant and cold, Millan vulnerable and pained-- turning its showy conceit into something genuinely wrenching. The ambiguously antiquated details emphasize its timeless central struggle: Stamped missive or Match.com, the face-to-face (dis)connection's the thing. Growing more staged, warier, and a little less playful with age, Stars don't quite match the wily rush of Set Yourself on Fire here. After three albums of artistic quantum leaps, they slow down gracefully on Bedroom, replacing Fire's indie-symphony twists and turns with more overt dramatic airs that can fall into blubbering melodrama, e.g., the title track, which suffocates under its own ticker-tape parade epic-ness. But when they're on, Stars are one of only a few current bands that can make war seem so appealing."

Sampha

Dual EP

Electronic

Zach Kelly

Part of the charm of SBTRKT's 2011 self-titled debut was the presence of Sampha Sisay, a now 24-year-old South Londoner who lent his voice to nearly every track on the album. There was never a doubt that, based on raw talent alone, Sampha was not only an artist to keep a close eye on (the same year found him collaborating with then-upstarts Jessie Ware and Lil Silva), but one with star potential. On the bracing "Hold On", his vocals-- warm but damaged, understated yet dynamic-- ache with loneliness, whereas on more movement-minded concoctions like "Sanctuary", it's transformed into a conduit for light-speed, future-minded R&B. In other words, Sampha's instrument is a dexterous one, effortlessly commanding attention in whatever context it's placed. Now after spending the past few years as an integral part of SBTRKT's live show, he's finally stepping out on his own with the deeply personal Dual EP. Last month, Drake debuted his new single "The Motion" in anticipation of his forthcoming third record Nothing Was the Same, with Sampha in tow on both vocal and production duties. Though Sampha's singing isn't featured prominently, the melancholic tug of his presence is felt in nearly every corner of the track, from the lighter-than-air atmospherics to his downcast, honeyed croon. It signified what could be a more noticeable arrival for Sampha, especially when coupled with the the release of Dual. But somewhat surprisingly, it feels as if he's pushing against the idea of an elevated profile with the 17 minutes of music that make up his first solo venture. Instead of acting as a grand coronation, Dual is a patient piece of work that finds Sampha in no rush to capitalize on a moment, instead opting to showcase simple, relatable musings on loss, uncertainty, and moving forward. At the same time, Dual carries a strange urgency with it, as if these songs had to come out of him now (despite their genesis going back years, in certain cases). The result is unexpected, but refreshing, with Sampha comfortably inhabiting the role of an artist interested in staying true to himself. So it goes without saying that Dual isn't something you'll find yourself dancing much to (save maybe for the sultry "Without", complete with plastic bucket street drumming and bleary synths). Instead, these ruminative, revealing songs paint a more intimate portrait of Sampha. There are ghosts hiding around almost every corner, like on the lost lullaby "Beneath the Tree", which finds him wishing a monster would "take all its things and go." Anchored by his delicate piano, it's the first thing that truly springs to life on the EP (it follows opener "Demons", one of two very short, homemade sounding one-offs). Sampha's relationship with keys are important to Dual; almost everything here seems to orbit around his voice and piano. The radiant "Indecision", with its gospel-like quality, feels as if it would be just as effective unplugged. But to do away with all the wonderful details, like those strange, mechanized backing vocal snippets, would be to ignore Sampha's deft ear for detail and his restrained but vibrant approach to mixing. These songs are nuanced and uncluttered. At the same time, the humanizing imperfections are never lost. (It's no wonder Drakes has revered him as a producer as much as a singer.) Unfortunately, this probably means that many won't pay as much attention to Sampha as a bonafide songwriter. And it's a shame, because while a passing glance at these songs may not reveal many layers, his use of repetition and unfussy language afford Dual some startling emotional relevance. Closer "Can't Get Close" is sung for his late father, who Sampha lost at the age of nine and still regards as one of his most important musical influences. Tapping into something haunting and pure, he sings over a mournful weave of pitched vocals, lamenting, "I can't get close to you." The desperation is something that will resonate with anyone familiar with the helplessness of loss. For someone so willing to lay himself this bare as a first impression is rare, but in terms of the music found on Dual, nothing could be more natural. It's further proof that following the sound of your own voice is often more fruitful and rewarding than doing what everyone else expects of you.

Artist: Sampha, Album: Dual EP, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Part of the charm of SBTRKT's 2011 self-titled debut was the presence of Sampha Sisay, a now 24-year-old South Londoner who lent his voice to nearly every track on the album. There was never a doubt that, based on raw talent alone, Sampha was not only an artist to keep a close eye on (the same year found him collaborating with then-upstarts Jessie Ware and Lil Silva), but one with star potential. On the bracing "Hold On", his vocals-- warm but damaged, understated yet dynamic-- ache with loneliness, whereas on more movement-minded concoctions like "Sanctuary", it's transformed into a conduit for light-speed, future-minded R&B. In other words, Sampha's instrument is a dexterous one, effortlessly commanding attention in whatever context it's placed. Now after spending the past few years as an integral part of SBTRKT's live show, he's finally stepping out on his own with the deeply personal Dual EP. Last month, Drake debuted his new single "The Motion" in anticipation of his forthcoming third record Nothing Was the Same, with Sampha in tow on both vocal and production duties. Though Sampha's singing isn't featured prominently, the melancholic tug of his presence is felt in nearly every corner of the track, from the lighter-than-air atmospherics to his downcast, honeyed croon. It signified what could be a more noticeable arrival for Sampha, especially when coupled with the the release of Dual. But somewhat surprisingly, it feels as if he's pushing against the idea of an elevated profile with the 17 minutes of music that make up his first solo venture. Instead of acting as a grand coronation, Dual is a patient piece of work that finds Sampha in no rush to capitalize on a moment, instead opting to showcase simple, relatable musings on loss, uncertainty, and moving forward. At the same time, Dual carries a strange urgency with it, as if these songs had to come out of him now (despite their genesis going back years, in certain cases). The result is unexpected, but refreshing, with Sampha comfortably inhabiting the role of an artist interested in staying true to himself. So it goes without saying that Dual isn't something you'll find yourself dancing much to (save maybe for the sultry "Without", complete with plastic bucket street drumming and bleary synths). Instead, these ruminative, revealing songs paint a more intimate portrait of Sampha. There are ghosts hiding around almost every corner, like on the lost lullaby "Beneath the Tree", which finds him wishing a monster would "take all its things and go." Anchored by his delicate piano, it's the first thing that truly springs to life on the EP (it follows opener "Demons", one of two very short, homemade sounding one-offs). Sampha's relationship with keys are important to Dual; almost everything here seems to orbit around his voice and piano. The radiant "Indecision", with its gospel-like quality, feels as if it would be just as effective unplugged. But to do away with all the wonderful details, like those strange, mechanized backing vocal snippets, would be to ignore Sampha's deft ear for detail and his restrained but vibrant approach to mixing. These songs are nuanced and uncluttered. At the same time, the humanizing imperfections are never lost. (It's no wonder Drakes has revered him as a producer as much as a singer.) Unfortunately, this probably means that many won't pay as much attention to Sampha as a bonafide songwriter. And it's a shame, because while a passing glance at these songs may not reveal many layers, his use of repetition and unfussy language afford Dual some startling emotional relevance. Closer "Can't Get Close" is sung for his late father, who Sampha lost at the age of nine and still regards as one of his most important musical influences. Tapping into something haunting and pure, he sings over a mournful weave of pitched vocals, lamenting, "I can't get close to you." The desperation is something that will resonate with anyone familiar with the helplessness of loss. For someone so willing to lay himself this bare as a first impression is rare, but in terms of the music found on Dual, nothing could be more natural. It's further proof that following the sound of your own voice is often more fruitful and rewarding than doing what everyone else expects of you."

Morrissey

Your Arsenal

Rock

Douglas Wolk

The title of Morrissey's third solo studio album is a sly triple-entendre. It can mean "the power you command," or it can be a pun on "your arse an' all," but it's also a joke about an association football club as subcultural identity. That suggests a song that might be a key to the record—a song that's not actually on it, but one that Morrissey had used to end his 1990 videotape Hulmerist and would use as entrance music some years later. The specter of "You'll Never Walk Alone", the king of all football-fan sing-alongs thanks to its association with Liverpool (and Pink Floyd), hovers over the whole album: the chopped-up football-kop voices in the middle of "We'll Let You Know", the chord progression and sentiment of "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday", and most of all the relatively uncharacteristic first-person plural Morrissey uses and implies throughout Your Arsenal. Viewed in that light, beginning the album with a song called "You're Gonna Need Someone on Your Side" seems formally appropriate. By 1992, that's exactly what Morrissey needed; he had apparently realized that, as Oscar Wilde might have put it, the only thing worse than being in a rock band was not being in a rock band. Your Arsenal, unlike the previous year's Kill Uncle, sounded like the work of a real group—as indeed it was. He'd assembled guitarists Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer, bassist Gary Day, and drummer Spencer Cobrin for the extensive Kill Uncle tour, and kept them around to record. (Boorer is still playing with Morrissey today, and Whyte stayed with him until 2004.) Boorer had previously played with rockabilly revivalists the Polecats, who'd had minor British hits with covers of David Bowie's "John, I'm Only Dancing" and T. Rex's "Jeepster". And Morrissey roped in one of the former song's architects to produce Your Arsenal: Mick Ronson, who'd been Bowie's guitarist and principal creative foil in the early 1970s. Morrissey has never been shy about paying homage to his favorite records, but Your Arsenal comes off at first like an out-and-out glam rock pastiche—"glam rock" defined, for these purposes, as "Bowie plus T. Rex minus the strings". "Glamorous Glue" stomps like "The Jean Genie", "Certain People I Know" cops its guitar licks from "Ride a White Swan", and "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" winks so hard at "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" that Bowie winked back, covering it a year later on Black Tie White Noise. The homage that eventually emerges from Your Arsenal, though, is closer to home: it often sounds like Morrissey and Whyte (who co-wrote eight of its 10 songs) doing their best approximation of the Smiths. It's odd to intimate that someone would be imitating his own band, but really: there could have have been endless ways to arrange "Seasick, Yet Still Docked" that didn't sound quite so much like the Smiths' "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore", for instance. On Viva Hate and Kill Uncle, Morrissey had been demonstrating what his voice and his oddball sense of tune could do with collaborators who distinctly weren't Johnny Marr; this time, his band does their damnedest to recapture the old vibe. It was inevitable that someone would be disgruntled with whatever Morrissey decided to do, and his habit of amplifying anything that annoys anyone means he's more Morrisseyesque than ever before here. That was great news for his singing—his tics are his glories—but it often blindsides his lyrics. Morrissey's commitment to ironizing everything including his own irony ends up undercutting any position he might be staking out. Hence "You're the One for Me, Fatty", whose hook's cleverness leaves him flailing for other utterances to follow it up with. Hence also the (more or less) trumped-up furor over "The National Front Disco": Morrissey is clearly declaring "England for the English" in great big quotation marks, especially considering that at the end of the previous track he's announced that "we are the last truly British people you'll ever know"—nationalism pumped up until it disintegrates into meaninglessness—but all the kisses he's blown to creeps and thugs make it harder to swallow. Morrissey can't resist ironizing his own team spirit, either, which leads straight to the album's best song and his solo career's best joke, "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful". (Egotists are always funnier when they can mock their own egotism.) Its "we" is a delicious bit of rhetoric—it presumes the listener's agreement—and so is the whiplash sequence of perspective shifts at the end: "You see, it should've been me... Everybody says so." And what is it that makes Morrissey's work so different, so appealing? He spells it out: "Loads of songs/ So many songs... Verse/ Chorus/ Middle eight/ Break, fade." Nobody else is doing that! Naturally, Morrissey has now doubled down on the annoyance factor of his last few reissues by tinkering with the track listing of Your Arsenal a bit—"Tomorrow" has been replaced by its American single mix. In lieu of a tacky badge, this edition comes with a slightly muddy but passable live DVD filmed at California's Shoreline Amphitheatre in October, 1991, four months or so after the concert that became the Live in Dallas video. The only song it's got in common with the album is "We Hate It...", which was then still six months away from its appearance as Your Arsenal's first single. The new band is solid, and they even work up a bit of rockabilly heat here and there, but nobody's threatening Morrissey's position as the captain of the team, so he's not particularly fighting for it.

Artist: Morrissey, Album: Your Arsenal, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "The title of Morrissey's third solo studio album is a sly triple-entendre. It can mean "the power you command," or it can be a pun on "your arse an' all," but it's also a joke about an association football club as subcultural identity. That suggests a song that might be a key to the record—a song that's not actually on it, but one that Morrissey had used to end his 1990 videotape Hulmerist and would use as entrance music some years later. The specter of "You'll Never Walk Alone", the king of all football-fan sing-alongs thanks to its association with Liverpool (and Pink Floyd), hovers over the whole album: the chopped-up football-kop voices in the middle of "We'll Let You Know", the chord progression and sentiment of "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday", and most of all the relatively uncharacteristic first-person plural Morrissey uses and implies throughout Your Arsenal. Viewed in that light, beginning the album with a song called "You're Gonna Need Someone on Your Side" seems formally appropriate. By 1992, that's exactly what Morrissey needed; he had apparently realized that, as Oscar Wilde might have put it, the only thing worse than being in a rock band was not being in a rock band. Your Arsenal, unlike the previous year's Kill Uncle, sounded like the work of a real group—as indeed it was. He'd assembled guitarists Alain Whyte and Boz Boorer, bassist Gary Day, and drummer Spencer Cobrin for the extensive Kill Uncle tour, and kept them around to record. (Boorer is still playing with Morrissey today, and Whyte stayed with him until 2004.) Boorer had previously played with rockabilly revivalists the Polecats, who'd had minor British hits with covers of David Bowie's "John, I'm Only Dancing" and T. Rex's "Jeepster". And Morrissey roped in one of the former song's architects to produce Your Arsenal: Mick Ronson, who'd been Bowie's guitarist and principal creative foil in the early 1970s. Morrissey has never been shy about paying homage to his favorite records, but Your Arsenal comes off at first like an out-and-out glam rock pastiche—"glam rock" defined, for these purposes, as "Bowie plus T. Rex minus the strings". "Glamorous Glue" stomps like "The Jean Genie", "Certain People I Know" cops its guitar licks from "Ride a White Swan", and "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" winks so hard at "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" that Bowie winked back, covering it a year later on Black Tie White Noise. The homage that eventually emerges from Your Arsenal, though, is closer to home: it often sounds like Morrissey and Whyte (who co-wrote eight of its 10 songs) doing their best approximation of the Smiths. It's odd to intimate that someone would be imitating his own band, but really: there could have have been endless ways to arrange "Seasick, Yet Still Docked" that didn't sound quite so much like the Smiths' "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore", for instance. On Viva Hate and Kill Uncle, Morrissey had been demonstrating what his voice and his oddball sense of tune could do with collaborators who distinctly weren't Johnny Marr; this time, his band does their damnedest to recapture the old vibe. It was inevitable that someone would be disgruntled with whatever Morrissey decided to do, and his habit of amplifying anything that annoys anyone means he's more Morrisseyesque than ever before here. That was great news for his singing—his tics are his glories—but it often blindsides his lyrics. Morrissey's commitment to ironizing everything including his own irony ends up undercutting any position he might be staking out. Hence "You're the One for Me, Fatty", whose hook's cleverness leaves him flailing for other utterances to follow it up with. Hence also the (more or less) trumped-up furor over "The National Front Disco": Morrissey is clearly declaring "England for the English" in great big quotation marks, especially considering that at the end of the previous track he's announced that "we are the last truly British people you'll ever know"—nationalism pumped up until it disintegrates into meaninglessness—but all the kisses he's blown to creeps and thugs make it harder to swallow. Morrissey can't resist ironizing his own team spirit, either, which leads straight to the album's best song and his solo career's best joke, "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful". (Egotists are always funnier when they can mock their own egotism.) Its "we" is a delicious bit of rhetoric—it presumes the listener's agreement—and so is the whiplash sequence of perspective shifts at the end: "You see, it should've been me... Everybody says so." And what is it that makes Morrissey's work so different, so appealing? He spells it out: "Loads of songs/ So many songs... Verse/ Chorus/ Middle eight/ Break, fade." Nobody else is doing that! Naturally, Morrissey has now doubled down on the annoyance factor of his last few reissues by tinkering with the track listing of Your Arsenal a bit—"Tomorrow" has been replaced by its American single mix. In lieu of a tacky badge, this edition comes with a slightly muddy but passable live DVD filmed at California's Shoreline Amphitheatre in October, 1991, four months or so after the concert that became the Live in Dallas video. The only song it's got in common with the album is "We Hate It...", which was then still six months away from its appearance as Your Arsenal's first single. The new band is solid, and they even work up a bit of rockabilly heat here and there, but nobody's threatening Morrissey's position as the captain of the team, so he's not particularly fighting for it."

Kyle Bobby Dunn

Fervency

Rock

Brian Howe

What does New York mean to you, musically? Is the birthplace of hip-hop? Ground zero for American punk? Or does it boil down to Brooklyn indie rockers? For a legion of young bands, New York is attractive for a wealth of history you can feed on, but need not think about too much. It's the hub where blogs and social networks seem to connect, where bands flock to make as much noise for as many people as they can, as quickly as possible. Kyle Bobby Dunn-- not at all a country singer, as his name might suggest-- is part of the shadow vanguard of grave, taciturn young composers and sound artists who provide a necessary foil to the boom-and-bust cycles of the NYC hype-market, working in ways that are diametrically opposed to indie rock's vigorous self-promotion. Dunn's New York resides in the shadow of Morton Feldman and other downtown art-music titans who worked in self-effacing quietude, a debt he repays in compositions that are patience incarnate, and which, in context, can't help but sound like a rejection of blog-culture's rapid digestion and cult of personality. It's somehow heart-lifting to know that there are young conceptualists keeping the city's stern modernist spirit alive. On Fervency, Dunn himself is concealed behind the impenetrable curtains of five surpassingly ascetic drone pieces that stretch out to 10, 14, 17 minutes. This is familiar territory for fans of William Basinski and Stars of the Lid: Long tones evolve at a glacial pace, the various frequencies and timbres weaving deep patterns from palpitating oscillations. "Butel (Kersey)" rolls through your headphones like a foghorn, with high trembles shining through sweetly. The mournful peals of "The Tributary (For Voices Lost)" are complicated by an almost sub-audible bass flutter you don't really notice until it swallows everything at the end. "Mobiles (There Is No End)" has a skimming, insistent pulse, as if the placid waters of the first two tracks were suddenly ruffled by a fierce wind. This is part of a steady climb of intensity, which ramps up through the prismatic organ chords of "Promenade" and culminates in the cyclical turbulence of "Baltic Sea Kisses (Viul Winter Remix)". We leave the album with a sense of stunned pacifism, and only the merest intuition of Dunn's personality. Dunn is just not that interested in letting us know who he is-- the music speaks for him. Google his name, and you'll discover a volume of work that drastically outstrips its promotional trimmings. What info there is impresses: enthusiastic clips from The Wire and Keith Fullerton Whitman, and notices about fascinating-sounding live collaborations and commissions. Most of this information is related concisely and without fanfare on his MySpace page, its ghostly gray-and-white template seeming faintly embarrassed to exist just this side of the visible. The "Influences" section is giving over to Dunn's current listening, which at press time includes Kevin Drumm, Arvo Pärt, Sunn O))), and Henri Chopin. He also specifies that he is a "21st-century composer." His reverence for musical history and his insistence on now-ness comprise a tacit thesis-- that the project of NYC's postwar avant-garde is far from finished. Thank goodness!

Artist: Kyle Bobby Dunn, Album: Fervency, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "What does New York mean to you, musically? Is the birthplace of hip-hop? Ground zero for American punk? Or does it boil down to Brooklyn indie rockers? For a legion of young bands, New York is attractive for a wealth of history you can feed on, but need not think about too much. It's the hub where blogs and social networks seem to connect, where bands flock to make as much noise for as many people as they can, as quickly as possible. Kyle Bobby Dunn-- not at all a country singer, as his name might suggest-- is part of the shadow vanguard of grave, taciturn young composers and sound artists who provide a necessary foil to the boom-and-bust cycles of the NYC hype-market, working in ways that are diametrically opposed to indie rock's vigorous self-promotion. Dunn's New York resides in the shadow of Morton Feldman and other downtown art-music titans who worked in self-effacing quietude, a debt he repays in compositions that are patience incarnate, and which, in context, can't help but sound like a rejection of blog-culture's rapid digestion and cult of personality. It's somehow heart-lifting to know that there are young conceptualists keeping the city's stern modernist spirit alive. On Fervency, Dunn himself is concealed behind the impenetrable curtains of five surpassingly ascetic drone pieces that stretch out to 10, 14, 17 minutes. This is familiar territory for fans of William Basinski and Stars of the Lid: Long tones evolve at a glacial pace, the various frequencies and timbres weaving deep patterns from palpitating oscillations. "Butel (Kersey)" rolls through your headphones like a foghorn, with high trembles shining through sweetly. The mournful peals of "The Tributary (For Voices Lost)" are complicated by an almost sub-audible bass flutter you don't really notice until it swallows everything at the end. "Mobiles (There Is No End)" has a skimming, insistent pulse, as if the placid waters of the first two tracks were suddenly ruffled by a fierce wind. This is part of a steady climb of intensity, which ramps up through the prismatic organ chords of "Promenade" and culminates in the cyclical turbulence of "Baltic Sea Kisses (Viul Winter Remix)". We leave the album with a sense of stunned pacifism, and only the merest intuition of Dunn's personality. Dunn is just not that interested in letting us know who he is-- the music speaks for him. Google his name, and you'll discover a volume of work that drastically outstrips its promotional trimmings. What info there is impresses: enthusiastic clips from The Wire and Keith Fullerton Whitman, and notices about fascinating-sounding live collaborations and commissions. Most of this information is related concisely and without fanfare on his MySpace page, its ghostly gray-and-white template seeming faintly embarrassed to exist just this side of the visible. The "Influences" section is giving over to Dunn's current listening, which at press time includes Kevin Drumm, Arvo Pärt, Sunn O))), and Henri Chopin. He also specifies that he is a "21st-century composer." His reverence for musical history and his insistence on now-ness comprise a tacit thesis-- that the project of NYC's postwar avant-garde is far from finished. Thank goodness!"

Cat Power

The Greatest

Rock

Amy Phillips

The dirty little secret about Chan Marshall is that she may actually have her shit together. As a recent Harp magazine interview pointed out (in between Marshall's musings on interest rates, real estate, and finances), she's spent the past decade building a successful career without even employing a manager. It's a feat that few, if any, of her contemporaries have been able to pull off-- and given that, at this very moment, a significant portion of the indie music world is salivating for tomorrow's release of the seventh Cat Power record, it would seem she's pulled it off quite well. Of course, the Cat Power allure has always been tied up in Marshall's notoriously seasick live performances. In 2001, the woman who jumped into the audience mid-performance and shoved me aside while tearfully fleeing the Irving Plaza stage certainly didn't seem capable of balancing a checkbook, let alone single-handedly negotiating a more generous contract with her record label (as the Harp article alleges). But then, the public-vs.-private tightrope-walk is as old as marketing itself: Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, either. Still, it's impossible to ignore the pull of the Beautifully Tortured stereotype, no matter what reality lies behind it. But if we didn't want Beautifully Tortured, we'd be obsessing over Norah Jones. That brings us to The Greatest. Not to knock Norah, but she isn't tortured-- and neither is this album, which, if Nic Harcourt or VH1 get their hands on it, could be battling "Don't Know Why" for airplay supremacy on Mom's car stereo in the coming months. Like all Cat Power records, The Greatest is a mostly sad, heartbroken, hopeless, rainy-day affair; it just isn't damaged. For that reason, it's also going to gain her a lot of new fans. The Greatest was recorded in Memphis, with several of that city's veteran studio musicians serving as her backing band, including Mabon "Teenie" Hodges on guitar, his brother Leroy "Flick" Hodges on bass, and Steve Potts on drums. These soul legends have played with Al Green, Booker T. and the MG's, Aretha Franklin, Neil Young, and more; in other words, they don't seem like the kind of dudes who'd stand much tortured diva bullshit from some no-name white girl off Matador Records. These are first-rate professionals, and their contributions-- a far cry from those of Steve Shelley and Dirty Three, or even Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl-- add as much to the album as they detract. The title song opens the album with the same halting, thick-fingered piano style Marshall has relied on since 2000's The Covers Record, but here it's swathed in Henry Mancini strings, teary delay effects, gently nudging drums, and Marshall's own multi-tracked voice echoing her lead vocals like Mary and Flo on the Supremes' loveliest ballads. "The Greatest", with its evocative lyrics of nostalgia and regret is, like "Colors and the Kids" and "Good Woman" before it, bleakness at its most pristine. But Marshall doesn't wallow long, following the track with "Living Proof", Cat Power's most conventionally sexy song yet. As it swaggers on lazy horns and careening "Like a Rolling Stone" organ, you can almost picture Marshall in a pair of tight jeans, swinging her hips in front of a jukebox. "Lived in Bars" retains that Southern-fried sensuality in its back half: After beginning as a late-night smoky bar lament, the song lifts off on shoo-ba-doo harmonies and a bouncy beat; all of a sudden, it's getting hot and heavy in a pickup truck. The marriage of Marshall's offbeat musical sensibility to her new backing band's in-the-pocket playing bears its most successful fruit on those three songs. At heart, they're smooth, accessible lite-R&B; tracks-- as close to Chan in Memphis as the album gets. Still, if that's what adult-alternative sounds like in 2006, sign me up for the AARP. But the middle chunk of The Greatest just feels old. It's beyond "adult": These songs seem musty and outdated, like stuff my grandparents might have danced to during The War. "Could We", "Empty Shell", "Islands", and "After It All" are all finger snaps and jazz hands, Marshall twirling her umbrella in the park as Fred Astaire woos her with clicked heels and a top hat. "Thank you/ It was great/ Let's make/ Another date/ Real soon/ In the afternoon," Marshall purrs over call-and-response horns and hotel bar piano. "After It All" even features whistling and the kind of cabaret melody Nellie McKay drops into a song right before she threatens to kill you. Worse is "Where Is My Love", the album's rock-bottom low. Marshall moans the title ad infinitum (interspersed with "bring him to me" and stuff about horses galloping and running free) in some sort of high school musical approximation of Nina Simone. She's accompanied only by Cheez Whiz piano scales and those same heart-tugging strings from "The Greatest", only this time they sound creepily manipulative, not heartbreaking or beautiful. I envision Marshall in a fluffy white gown with a plunging neckline singing this song out of a balcony window. At the end, a dove lands on her outstretched finger. This is not what I want from Cat Power. It's not what I want from anybody, not even Norah Jones. The Greatest regains its composure as it nears the finish line, ending with a pair of songs that wouldn't have seemed out of place on any Cat Power album since What Would the Community Think. "Hate", the only track that might scare off newcomers while delighting her original fanbase, is Marshall alone with her guitar, playing stark, cutting riffs, and murmuring "I hate myself and I want to die." "Love and Communication" is the album's first three tracks as viewed through a fun-house mirror: Instead of the Memphis crew welcoming Marshall into their world, the closing track sees Marshall luring the studio vets down her dark, claustrophobic alley. The strings, horns, and organs press forward in deliberate staccato stabs, advancing on the ear as if programmed by Dr. Dre. The biggest challenge of this album isn't going to be commercial success; just stick "Could We" on the soundtrack to a hip romantic comedy, and it'll take off on its own. The difficult part will be proving to longtime fans that Chan Marshall is the one in control here. She's made an album that, for the most part, is polished and accessible. For better or worse, she's stretched her musical horizons far beyond the close-knit indie rock world-- a world that likely doesn't want her to change.

Artist: Cat Power, Album: The Greatest, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "The dirty little secret about Chan Marshall is that she may actually have her shit together. As a recent Harp magazine interview pointed out (in between Marshall's musings on interest rates, real estate, and finances), she's spent the past decade building a successful career without even employing a manager. It's a feat that few, if any, of her contemporaries have been able to pull off-- and given that, at this very moment, a significant portion of the indie music world is salivating for tomorrow's release of the seventh Cat Power record, it would seem she's pulled it off quite well. Of course, the Cat Power allure has always been tied up in Marshall's notoriously seasick live performances. In 2001, the woman who jumped into the audience mid-performance and shoved me aside while tearfully fleeing the Irving Plaza stage certainly didn't seem capable of balancing a checkbook, let alone single-handedly negotiating a more generous contract with her record label (as the Harp article alleges). But then, the public-vs.-private tightrope-walk is as old as marketing itself: Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, either. Still, it's impossible to ignore the pull of the Beautifully Tortured stereotype, no matter what reality lies behind it. But if we didn't want Beautifully Tortured, we'd be obsessing over Norah Jones. That brings us to The Greatest. Not to knock Norah, but she isn't tortured-- and neither is this album, which, if Nic Harcourt or VH1 get their hands on it, could be battling "Don't Know Why" for airplay supremacy on Mom's car stereo in the coming months. Like all Cat Power records, The Greatest is a mostly sad, heartbroken, hopeless, rainy-day affair; it just isn't damaged. For that reason, it's also going to gain her a lot of new fans. The Greatest was recorded in Memphis, with several of that city's veteran studio musicians serving as her backing band, including Mabon "Teenie" Hodges on guitar, his brother Leroy "Flick" Hodges on bass, and Steve Potts on drums. These soul legends have played with Al Green, Booker T. and the MG's, Aretha Franklin, Neil Young, and more; in other words, they don't seem like the kind of dudes who'd stand much tortured diva bullshit from some no-name white girl off Matador Records. These are first-rate professionals, and their contributions-- a far cry from those of Steve Shelley and Dirty Three, or even Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl-- add as much to the album as they detract. The title song opens the album with the same halting, thick-fingered piano style Marshall has relied on since 2000's The Covers Record, but here it's swathed in Henry Mancini strings, teary delay effects, gently nudging drums, and Marshall's own multi-tracked voice echoing her lead vocals like Mary and Flo on the Supremes' loveliest ballads. "The Greatest", with its evocative lyrics of nostalgia and regret is, like "Colors and the Kids" and "Good Woman" before it, bleakness at its most pristine. But Marshall doesn't wallow long, following the track with "Living Proof", Cat Power's most conventionally sexy song yet. As it swaggers on lazy horns and careening "Like a Rolling Stone" organ, you can almost picture Marshall in a pair of tight jeans, swinging her hips in front of a jukebox. "Lived in Bars" retains that Southern-fried sensuality in its back half: After beginning as a late-night smoky bar lament, the song lifts off on shoo-ba-doo harmonies and a bouncy beat; all of a sudden, it's getting hot and heavy in a pickup truck. The marriage of Marshall's offbeat musical sensibility to her new backing band's in-the-pocket playing bears its most successful fruit on those three songs. At heart, they're smooth, accessible lite-R&B; tracks-- as close to Chan in Memphis as the album gets. Still, if that's what adult-alternative sounds like in 2006, sign me up for the AARP. But the middle chunk of The Greatest just feels old. It's beyond "adult": These songs seem musty and outdated, like stuff my grandparents might have danced to during The War. "Could We", "Empty Shell", "Islands", and "After It All" are all finger snaps and jazz hands, Marshall twirling her umbrella in the park as Fred Astaire woos her with clicked heels and a top hat. "Thank you/ It was great/ Let's make/ Another date/ Real soon/ In the afternoon," Marshall purrs over call-and-response horns and hotel bar piano. "After It All" even features whistling and the kind of cabaret melody Nellie McKay drops into a song right before she threatens to kill you. Worse is "Where Is My Love", the album's rock-bottom low. Marshall moans the title ad infinitum (interspersed with "bring him to me" and stuff about horses galloping and running free) in some sort of high school musical approximation of Nina Simone. She's accompanied only by Cheez Whiz piano scales and those same heart-tugging strings from "The Greatest", only this time they sound creepily manipulative, not heartbreaking or beautiful. I envision Marshall in a fluffy white gown with a plunging neckline singing this song out of a balcony window. At the end, a dove lands on her outstretched finger. This is not what I want from Cat Power. It's not what I want from anybody, not even Norah Jones. The Greatest regains its composure as it nears the finish line, ending with a pair of songs that wouldn't have seemed out of place on any Cat Power album since What Would the Community Think. "Hate", the only track that might scare off newcomers while delighting her original fanbase, is Marshall alone with her guitar, playing stark, cutting riffs, and murmuring "I hate myself and I want to die." "Love and Communication" is the album's first three tracks as viewed through a fun-house mirror: Instead of the Memphis crew welcoming Marshall into their world, the closing track sees Marshall luring the studio vets down her dark, claustrophobic alley. The strings, horns, and organs press forward in deliberate staccato stabs, advancing on the ear as if programmed by Dr. Dre. The biggest challenge of this album isn't going to be commercial success; just stick "Could We" on the soundtrack to a hip romantic comedy, and it'll take off on its own. The difficult part will be proving to longtime fans that Chan Marshall is the one in control here. She's made an album that, for the most part, is polished and accessible. For better or worse, she's stretched her musical horizons far beyond the close-knit indie rock world-- a world that likely doesn't want her to change."

Nobody

And Everything Else...

Rap

Ryan Dombal

Based on their many partnerships both on tour and on record, I like to think of Prefuse 73, Four Tet, Caribou, and Nobody as a tightly-knit bunch of like-minded innovators that cherry-pick the past in order to advance the future of brain-bubbling beatmaking. I also like to think they often argue over whose oh-so-mysterious alias is the coolest ("It's, like, before 'fuse,' man. Way before."). And since all four members of this elite class have recently graduated from indie darlings to veteran indie darlings, the time is ripe to dole out some milestone-marking superlatives. Best Dressed, of course, goes to Prefuse and the tinted Onassis sunglasses that nearly overshadowed the lackluster material from this year's Surrounded By Silence at recent shows. Caribou gets Most Spirited for his tenacious drumming and overall sense of overflowing sonic enthusiasm. By consistently violating the instrumental-dude "no smiling" rule on his album covers and press photos, Four Tet takes Friendliest. Which leaves us with Nobody aka Elvin Estela, the shadowy, hairy member of the de facto troupe. With his first album for L.A.-based label Plug Research (Daedelus, Dntel), the Calm, Cool & Collected recipient combines the varying textures of his jazzy debut LP Soulmates and its superior psych-infused follow-up Pacific Drift: Western Water Music Vol. 1, surfacing with a canny mix of West Coast indie-hop beats and hazy, flowing aural hallucinations. The album's seemingly defeatist title matches Estela's similarly downtrodden moniker, but And Everything Else... is anything but a rainy-day collection of odds 'n' sods. Best experienced with the sun beating down, the taught 12 tracks mark the producer's most diverse and song-based work yet. The trippy, shimmering tone is established by opener "The Coast Is Clear (For Fireworks)", which rides a smooth-knocking shuffle along the California shoreline as wafts of blurry, delayed guitars, cheery keys and charming firework noises pop and burst in the distance. A tame, organ-heavy cover of the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin ballad "What Is the Light?" featuring members of Beachwood Sparks on vocals follows, but its lethargic pace and surprising lack of experimentation render it a boring and predictable lowlight. Most of the record's collaborations hit their mark though, like the Mia Toi Dodd assisted "You Can Know Her", a sparkling lullaby that uses the singer's lofty, sea-nymph delivery to stunning effect. "Tori Oshi" is the second collaboration between Estela and Scott Heren under their La Correccion banner and it's a nimble, finger-picking electro-folk jaunt; it serves as a welcome contrast to the plodding "La Correccion Exchange" featured on Prefuse's Surrounded by Silence. Even on the record's more hopped-up songs like the wind-up toy bumping "Wake Up and Smell the Millennium", Estela is still playing the effortless host to his own infinite California-daze slumber party. Nobody offers grooves that won't interfere with your daily routine as much as enhance it from the outside in, sneakily setting a distinct mood without really trying. Then, before you can even ask him to sign your yearbook, he's disappeared into the hot-pavement fog.

Artist: Nobody, Album: And Everything Else..., Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Based on their many partnerships both on tour and on record, I like to think of Prefuse 73, Four Tet, Caribou, and Nobody as a tightly-knit bunch of like-minded innovators that cherry-pick the past in order to advance the future of brain-bubbling beatmaking. I also like to think they often argue over whose oh-so-mysterious alias is the coolest ("It's, like, before 'fuse,' man. Way before."). And since all four members of this elite class have recently graduated from indie darlings to veteran indie darlings, the time is ripe to dole out some milestone-marking superlatives. Best Dressed, of course, goes to Prefuse and the tinted Onassis sunglasses that nearly overshadowed the lackluster material from this year's Surrounded By Silence at recent shows. Caribou gets Most Spirited for his tenacious drumming and overall sense of overflowing sonic enthusiasm. By consistently violating the instrumental-dude "no smiling" rule on his album covers and press photos, Four Tet takes Friendliest. Which leaves us with Nobody aka Elvin Estela, the shadowy, hairy member of the de facto troupe. With his first album for L.A.-based label Plug Research (Daedelus, Dntel), the Calm, Cool & Collected recipient combines the varying textures of his jazzy debut LP Soulmates and its superior psych-infused follow-up Pacific Drift: Western Water Music Vol. 1, surfacing with a canny mix of West Coast indie-hop beats and hazy, flowing aural hallucinations. The album's seemingly defeatist title matches Estela's similarly downtrodden moniker, but And Everything Else... is anything but a rainy-day collection of odds 'n' sods. Best experienced with the sun beating down, the taught 12 tracks mark the producer's most diverse and song-based work yet. The trippy, shimmering tone is established by opener "The Coast Is Clear (For Fireworks)", which rides a smooth-knocking shuffle along the California shoreline as wafts of blurry, delayed guitars, cheery keys and charming firework noises pop and burst in the distance. A tame, organ-heavy cover of the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin ballad "What Is the Light?" featuring members of Beachwood Sparks on vocals follows, but its lethargic pace and surprising lack of experimentation render it a boring and predictable lowlight. Most of the record's collaborations hit their mark though, like the Mia Toi Dodd assisted "You Can Know Her", a sparkling lullaby that uses the singer's lofty, sea-nymph delivery to stunning effect. "Tori Oshi" is the second collaboration between Estela and Scott Heren under their La Correccion banner and it's a nimble, finger-picking electro-folk jaunt; it serves as a welcome contrast to the plodding "La Correccion Exchange" featured on Prefuse's Surrounded by Silence. Even on the record's more hopped-up songs like the wind-up toy bumping "Wake Up and Smell the Millennium", Estela is still playing the effortless host to his own infinite California-daze slumber party. Nobody offers grooves that won't interfere with your daily routine as much as enhance it from the outside in, sneakily setting a distinct mood without really trying. Then, before you can even ask him to sign your yearbook, he's disappeared into the hot-pavement fog."

Hush Arbors

Landscape of Bone

Experimental,Rock

Matthew Murphy

Hush Arbors is the work of the enigmatic, Virginia-born Keith Wood, a man whose restless travels have led to loose associations with such premier underground outfits as Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, and Six Organs of Admittance. On recent recordings each of those form-shifting acts can be heard nudging away from more definable acid-folk territories, so it seems only reasonable that artists like Wood should be standing ready to move in and tend the mystic fires in their absence. Following a pair of releases on Digitalis as well as the usual crop of handmade CD-Rs, the five-song Landscape of Bone now appears as part of Three Lobed's intriguing new Modern Containment series, and it again provides instant transport to Hush Arbor's singular lost domain. The most prominent distinguishing feature of Hush Arbors' music is Wood's gentle, slightly dazed falsetto. His fragile vocal delivery-- which here seems generated somewhere northward from Neil Young or Pearls Before Swine's Tom Rapp-- can lend even his most straightforward material a strange, asymmetric wobble. This vague discombobulation is further heightened by Hush Arbors' gauzy, outstretched fields of phased guitars, hand percussion, and unmoored drones-- all recorded with a lo-fi naturalism that recalls the open-aired environments of Jewelled Antler Collective acts like Skygreen Leopards or Blithe Sons. True to the album's title, each song on Landscape of Bone works the word "bone" somewhere into its lyrics-- "Broken Bones", "Oar of Bone"-- as Wood dreamily sifts through the tangled knots of memory and regret. Despite this mini-album's brevity, he makes use of his limited space to consider a full spectrum of emotional terrain. His blurred enunciation sometimes makes his words indecipherable, but the opening "Bones of a Thousand Suns" has a distinct elegiac quality, its mournful liturgy framed by deep-earth hums and soft coils of fuzz guitar. Adorned with subtle slide guitar work, "Broken Bones" could almost pass for a particularly fried Townes Van Zandt creation, filled as it is with empty whiskey bottles and lost-love despondence ("I've died and I've died and I've died some more.") Soon, however, the album's mood reverses on the spirited "Bones By the Sea" which matches Wood's ecstatic garble to a melodic, tradition-steeped Appalachian folk cadence. Wooden Wand himself (aka James Toth) makes a cameo appearance on the dazzling "Nine Bones", a grainy 10-minute recessional that closes this short collection with a heady blast of free-rock drumming and barely-harnessed electricity. Like his friend and sometime collaborator Ben Chasny-- who last year also contributed liner notes to Hush Arbors' self-titled album-- Keith Wood here shows the ability to take the barest ingredients of folk and psych-rock traditions and transmute them into his own unique form of sorcery. Three Lobed have already announced that future installments of their Modern Containment series will feature EPs from the likes of Bardo Pond, MV & EE, Mirror/Dash and Sun City Girls, so hopefully this engaging Landscape of Bone might also serve as a harbinger of further treats to come.

Artist: Hush Arbors, Album: Landscape of Bone, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Hush Arbors is the work of the enigmatic, Virginia-born Keith Wood, a man whose restless travels have led to loose associations with such premier underground outfits as Sunburned Hand of the Man, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, and Six Organs of Admittance. On recent recordings each of those form-shifting acts can be heard nudging away from more definable acid-folk territories, so it seems only reasonable that artists like Wood should be standing ready to move in and tend the mystic fires in their absence. Following a pair of releases on Digitalis as well as the usual crop of handmade CD-Rs, the five-song Landscape of Bone now appears as part of Three Lobed's intriguing new Modern Containment series, and it again provides instant transport to Hush Arbor's singular lost domain. The most prominent distinguishing feature of Hush Arbors' music is Wood's gentle, slightly dazed falsetto. His fragile vocal delivery-- which here seems generated somewhere northward from Neil Young or Pearls Before Swine's Tom Rapp-- can lend even his most straightforward material a strange, asymmetric wobble. This vague discombobulation is further heightened by Hush Arbors' gauzy, outstretched fields of phased guitars, hand percussion, and unmoored drones-- all recorded with a lo-fi naturalism that recalls the open-aired environments of Jewelled Antler Collective acts like Skygreen Leopards or Blithe Sons. True to the album's title, each song on Landscape of Bone works the word "bone" somewhere into its lyrics-- "Broken Bones", "Oar of Bone"-- as Wood dreamily sifts through the tangled knots of memory and regret. Despite this mini-album's brevity, he makes use of his limited space to consider a full spectrum of emotional terrain. His blurred enunciation sometimes makes his words indecipherable, but the opening "Bones of a Thousand Suns" has a distinct elegiac quality, its mournful liturgy framed by deep-earth hums and soft coils of fuzz guitar. Adorned with subtle slide guitar work, "Broken Bones" could almost pass for a particularly fried Townes Van Zandt creation, filled as it is with empty whiskey bottles and lost-love despondence ("I've died and I've died and I've died some more.") Soon, however, the album's mood reverses on the spirited "Bones By the Sea" which matches Wood's ecstatic garble to a melodic, tradition-steeped Appalachian folk cadence. Wooden Wand himself (aka James Toth) makes a cameo appearance on the dazzling "Nine Bones", a grainy 10-minute recessional that closes this short collection with a heady blast of free-rock drumming and barely-harnessed electricity. Like his friend and sometime collaborator Ben Chasny-- who last year also contributed liner notes to Hush Arbors' self-titled album-- Keith Wood here shows the ability to take the barest ingredients of folk and psych-rock traditions and transmute them into his own unique form of sorcery. Three Lobed have already announced that future installments of their Modern Containment series will feature EPs from the likes of Bardo Pond, MV & EE, Mirror/Dash and Sun City Girls, so hopefully this engaging Landscape of Bone might also serve as a harbinger of further treats to come."

Danger Doom

The Occult Hymn EP

Rap

Rob Mitchum

Over the past couple of years, the Cartoon Network has slowly shifted its target market from a grade-school audience to a more reliable demographic: stoners. Sure, since the channel's origin, the overnight schedule-- with its trippy reruns of 1970s fare like "The Harlem Globetrotters" and "Wacky Races"-- appealed to viewers under the influence. But since the advent, and subsequent rapid expansion, of its original Adult Swim programming, the network has seemingly tailored its programming to college students and late-night tokers, two groups with a pretty big overlap on a Venn diagram. Not for nothing is the block's most popular show about talking fast food. Where cartoons and weed are being prioritized, you're sure to find MF Doom, so it was no surprise that his collaboration with fellow Topps Future Star Danger Mouse ended up being Adult Swim-affiliated. Just as cartoons like "Sealab" and "Harvey Birdman"-- with their pregnant pauses, quarter-hour runtime, and no-plot plots-- are suited to the marijuana mind, so too are Doom and Danger's loping beats, clever rhymes, and tee-hee dialogue snippets. Yet even with this compatibility, Danger Doom's debut album, The Mouse and the Mask, suffered from the diminishing rewards of its constant cartoon-voice intrusions. Like many hip-hop skits, the samples were funny at first, tedious at third, and unbearable by the fifth listen-- in no small part due to the irritating frequency range used by most Adult Swim voice actors (all three of them). Only with Danger Doom, the skits were the songs in a lot of cases, making a surgical skit-ectomy procedure on one's iPod impossible, and contaminating highlights like Ghostface's fiery verse on "The Mask". The Occult Hymn EP, a free download available at adultswim.com, is suffused with snippets from second-tier Adult Swim shows. The Cartoon Network's graveyard shift has started to Xerox itself with shows like "Squidbillies" (a hick "ATHF") and "12 oz. Mouse" (the asymptote of the block's crude style), and so appropriately this epilogue album is largely made up of remixes and sequels, with only one purely original track, the ho-hum "Korn Dogz". For both cartoon and record, these echoes are mere dilutions of the original, save Madlib's elevator-music makeover of "Space Ho's". Danger Mouse and MF Doom can be forgiven for phoning a few in, given the various large-scale projects the producers are currently busy promoting and preparing. Nonetheless, the new versions on Occult Hymn largely strip back the mutated Saturday morning theme songs of the original in favor of tired jazz-loop wallpaper, with both the "El Chupa Libre" and "Sofa King" remixes relying on generic electric-piano fusion. Doom, meanwhile, sounds drained on his new verses, laboring to conjure an extended Back to the Future reference on "Chupa", and sprinkling in lukewarm accolades about the new Adult Swim fare. You can't hate too hard on a free EP though, and as promotional material and branding maneuver, the Danger Doom collaboration has been an unqualified success. There could be worse music-industry innovations than a patronage industry for rappers to make songs about their favorite TV shows; I'd definitely right-click on a Cam track about "Mythbusters" or Kanye rhapsodizing about "Project Runway". However, the pitch has to reflect the product being sold, and The Occult Hymn's second drafts don't reflect the bizarre pacing and twisted humor of Adult Swim the way The Mouse and the Mask's highlights did. Even when your audience is predominantly stoners, you can't get away with half-grassing it.

Artist: Danger Doom, Album: The Occult Hymn EP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 4.6 Album review: "Over the past couple of years, the Cartoon Network has slowly shifted its target market from a grade-school audience to a more reliable demographic: stoners. Sure, since the channel's origin, the overnight schedule-- with its trippy reruns of 1970s fare like "The Harlem Globetrotters" and "Wacky Races"-- appealed to viewers under the influence. But since the advent, and subsequent rapid expansion, of its original Adult Swim programming, the network has seemingly tailored its programming to college students and late-night tokers, two groups with a pretty big overlap on a Venn diagram. Not for nothing is the block's most popular show about talking fast food. Where cartoons and weed are being prioritized, you're sure to find MF Doom, so it was no surprise that his collaboration with fellow Topps Future Star Danger Mouse ended up being Adult Swim-affiliated. Just as cartoons like "Sealab" and "Harvey Birdman"-- with their pregnant pauses, quarter-hour runtime, and no-plot plots-- are suited to the marijuana mind, so too are Doom and Danger's loping beats, clever rhymes, and tee-hee dialogue snippets. Yet even with this compatibility, Danger Doom's debut album, The Mouse and the Mask, suffered from the diminishing rewards of its constant cartoon-voice intrusions. Like many hip-hop skits, the samples were funny at first, tedious at third, and unbearable by the fifth listen-- in no small part due to the irritating frequency range used by most Adult Swim voice actors (all three of them). Only with Danger Doom, the skits were the songs in a lot of cases, making a surgical skit-ectomy procedure on one's iPod impossible, and contaminating highlights like Ghostface's fiery verse on "The Mask". The Occult Hymn EP, a free download available at adultswim.com, is suffused with snippets from second-tier Adult Swim shows. The Cartoon Network's graveyard shift has started to Xerox itself with shows like "Squidbillies" (a hick "ATHF") and "12 oz. Mouse" (the asymptote of the block's crude style), and so appropriately this epilogue album is largely made up of remixes and sequels, with only one purely original track, the ho-hum "Korn Dogz". For both cartoon and record, these echoes are mere dilutions of the original, save Madlib's elevator-music makeover of "Space Ho's". Danger Mouse and MF Doom can be forgiven for phoning a few in, given the various large-scale projects the producers are currently busy promoting and preparing. Nonetheless, the new versions on Occult Hymn largely strip back the mutated Saturday morning theme songs of the original in favor of tired jazz-loop wallpaper, with both the "El Chupa Libre" and "Sofa King" remixes relying on generic electric-piano fusion. Doom, meanwhile, sounds drained on his new verses, laboring to conjure an extended Back to the Future reference on "Chupa", and sprinkling in lukewarm accolades about the new Adult Swim fare. You can't hate too hard on a free EP though, and as promotional material and branding maneuver, the Danger Doom collaboration has been an unqualified success. There could be worse music-industry innovations than a patronage industry for rappers to make songs about their favorite TV shows; I'd definitely right-click on a Cam track about "Mythbusters" or Kanye rhapsodizing about "Project Runway". However, the pitch has to reflect the product being sold, and The Occult Hymn's second drafts don't reflect the bizarre pacing and twisted humor of Adult Swim the way The Mouse and the Mask's highlights did. Even when your audience is predominantly stoners, you can't get away with half-grassing it."

Tangerine Dream

Electronic Meditation

Electronic

Dominique Leone

Psychedelic music spawned so many fragmented genres of rock in the late 60s, it's easy to forget that at one point, most of the bands were trying to accomplish the same, basic thing: To change the world with music. Failing that, they might have settled for freaking themselves out, but exploration into the unknown was the key. Peace and love? Sure, sometimes. Surreal visions of the beyond? Check. Crazy backwards guitar solos? Extra nice. This kind of faith in a better tomorrow through experimentation (or at least the aping of experimentation, in the hopes of stumbling over a little second-hand wisdom) is one of the aspects of late-60s music culture that makes it so unique, and consequently why, in many ways, it was the last time rock was free of its own self-conscious ambition. American and British bands were quick to establish national schools of psychedelia, but continental European bands evolved differently. Countries like Germany and Sweden, far from the epicenters of pop and rock flourish, got their news via weekend radio shows and imported LPs. German guitarist Edgar Froese, playing with a beat combo The Ones, had already formed a long-distance attachment to Jimi Hendrix when he met Salvador Dali, and was inspired to form the earliest version of Tangerine Dream (named after a lyric in The Beatles' "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds") in 1967. Froese met Berlin club owner Conrad Schnitzler, himself a student of avant-garde sculpture and music (via his former teacher Karlheinz Stockhausen), and later, drummer Klaus Schulze. Along with organist Jimmy Jackson, they formed the version of TD that produced their first LP, Electronic Meditation. TD oozes their way out of the gate with the primordial muck of "Genesis": A short, but telling introduction to a world apart from your mom's wholesome rock and roll. Fuzzy guitar flutter and Schulze's rin-tin-tinny cymbal rattle the stage clear for Schnitzler's basso profundo cello moan. That moan, for better or for worse, is the "melody" here, and I suppose that makes the quivering electro-effects a counterpoint. Flautist Thomas Keyserling (uncredited on the original release) bubbles here and offers a glissando there; at the height of synergetic convergence, Shulze drops a caveman stomp on the toms. If this was hippie music, it was borne of the most sincerely gone magick available. The two epics (a compositional preference Froese never abandoned) are "Cold Smoke" and "Journey Through A Burning Brain", both of which sound much more in tune with music Shulze and Schnitzler would go on to create than anything TD became famous for. In fact, parts of "Journey" remind me of each of Schnitzler's Kluster LPs, with unidentified sound effects and a hard-line approach to free improvisation: Any melodies are purely coincidental, and should not detract from the generally horrific vibe. The band does lapse into prototypical krautrock beat-mantra midway through, but makes sure to mix in sufficiently atonal flute soloing, and Froese's boundless, rhythmless guitar stylings. "Cold Smoke" begins with a different strategy, one much closer to what most folks think of when TD is mentioned: Keyboard-dominated atmospherics. That strategy lasts for exactly one minute before Shulze's cymbals rip apart the solemn organ chords; the organ tries to come back, and Shulze destroys it again. In the end, things end up fairly similar to the previous tune, though the seeds of a gentler TD have been planted. "Ashes to Ashes" takes the organ from "Cold Smoke" and adds some Doors-ish cocktail-rock drumming, and of course, more free guitar and flute. On Electronic Meditation, this tune is as close to rock as the group played, and in places is not unlike concurrent Grateful Dead (or more accurately, Amon Duul II). "Resurrection" tidies up the biblical concept with church organ and a backwards sermon (devilish!), and a return of the gooey acid-ballet of the opening song (hereby allowing TD to corner the market on psychedelic, freeform biblical concept albums from Germany). It was a far cry from the mystical impressionism of their mid-70s LPs (with only Froese remaining from this trio), and anyone who thinks the band is good for little more than New Age background moods will be surprised by this music. Shulze left the band before Electronic Meditation was released, and Schnitzler stayed on only long enough to see the induction of 16-year old drummer Chris Franke into the band. Schnitzler's replacement was the rambunctious organist Steve Shroyder (himself a member for only one album). The trio of Froese, Franke and Shroyder (along with two guest musicians) recorded TD's second record, Alpha Centauri, and had little difficulty living up to the freaky promise of the Dream's debut. Pieces like "Sunrise In the Third System" (an organ-led mystic processional) and the single (!) "Ultima Thule Part 1" (with a very non-TD rock thud) proved the band were learning how to pour maximum mood into more compact structures. That said, the centerpiece is the massive title-track: Not only does this piece take up the bulk of Alpha Centauri, it's an almost perfect summation of everything they'd accomplished up to that point. Beginning with distant flute, and gigantic cymbal swells, the track (like many before) takes a while to get off the ground, but when Froese's brand new VCS3 synthesizer makes with the siren calls, the outer limits are within reach. Even at this early point, Froese was fascinated with the possibility of the synthesizer, though he hadn't quite mastered its range. Flautist Udo Dennebourg plays a starring role for much of the piece, adding melodic, if flighty, direction to an otherwise malleable form. Dennebourg begins announcing something at the close of the piece, and wordless, choral backing vocals deliver the dark finale. Each of these records (as well as 1972's Zeit and 1973's Atem) were originally released on Ralf-Ulrich Kaiser's legendary Ohr imprint, also home to the first recordings of Ash Ra Temple, Popol Vuh and Amon Duul. Over the years, Tangerine Dream has undergone a number of personnel changes, and Froese gradually transformed the chaotic Technicolor of his band's first recordings into an altogether different trip. However, as products of the psychedelic era (and the budding German experimental rock scene later dubbed "krautrock"), these albums are fine nuggets indeed, even if the best was yet to come.

Artist: Tangerine Dream, Album: Electronic Meditation, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Psychedelic music spawned so many fragmented genres of rock in the late 60s, it's easy to forget that at one point, most of the bands were trying to accomplish the same, basic thing: To change the world with music. Failing that, they might have settled for freaking themselves out, but exploration into the unknown was the key. Peace and love? Sure, sometimes. Surreal visions of the beyond? Check. Crazy backwards guitar solos? Extra nice. This kind of faith in a better tomorrow through experimentation (or at least the aping of experimentation, in the hopes of stumbling over a little second-hand wisdom) is one of the aspects of late-60s music culture that makes it so unique, and consequently why, in many ways, it was the last time rock was free of its own self-conscious ambition. American and British bands were quick to establish national schools of psychedelia, but continental European bands evolved differently. Countries like Germany and Sweden, far from the epicenters of pop and rock flourish, got their news via weekend radio shows and imported LPs. German guitarist Edgar Froese, playing with a beat combo The Ones, had already formed a long-distance attachment to Jimi Hendrix when he met Salvador Dali, and was inspired to form the earliest version of Tangerine Dream (named after a lyric in The Beatles' "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds") in 1967. Froese met Berlin club owner Conrad Schnitzler, himself a student of avant-garde sculpture and music (via his former teacher Karlheinz Stockhausen), and later, drummer Klaus Schulze. Along with organist Jimmy Jackson, they formed the version of TD that produced their first LP, Electronic Meditation. TD oozes their way out of the gate with the primordial muck of "Genesis": A short, but telling introduction to a world apart from your mom's wholesome rock and roll. Fuzzy guitar flutter and Schulze's rin-tin-tinny cymbal rattle the stage clear for Schnitzler's basso profundo cello moan. That moan, for better or for worse, is the "melody" here, and I suppose that makes the quivering electro-effects a counterpoint. Flautist Thomas Keyserling (uncredited on the original release) bubbles here and offers a glissando there; at the height of synergetic convergence, Shulze drops a caveman stomp on the toms. If this was hippie music, it was borne of the most sincerely gone magick available. The two epics (a compositional preference Froese never abandoned) are "Cold Smoke" and "Journey Through A Burning Brain", both of which sound much more in tune with music Shulze and Schnitzler would go on to create than anything TD became famous for. In fact, parts of "Journey" remind me of each of Schnitzler's Kluster LPs, with unidentified sound effects and a hard-line approach to free improvisation: Any melodies are purely coincidental, and should not detract from the generally horrific vibe. The band does lapse into prototypical krautrock beat-mantra midway through, but makes sure to mix in sufficiently atonal flute soloing, and Froese's boundless, rhythmless guitar stylings. "Cold Smoke" begins with a different strategy, one much closer to what most folks think of when TD is mentioned: Keyboard-dominated atmospherics. That strategy lasts for exactly one minute before Shulze's cymbals rip apart the solemn organ chords; the organ tries to come back, and Shulze destroys it again. In the end, things end up fairly similar to the previous tune, though the seeds of a gentler TD have been planted. "Ashes to Ashes" takes the organ from "Cold Smoke" and adds some Doors-ish cocktail-rock drumming, and of course, more free guitar and flute. On Electronic Meditation, this tune is as close to rock as the group played, and in places is not unlike concurrent Grateful Dead (or more accurately, Amon Duul II). "Resurrection" tidies up the biblical concept with church organ and a backwards sermon (devilish!), and a return of the gooey acid-ballet of the opening song (hereby allowing TD to corner the market on psychedelic, freeform biblical concept albums from Germany). It was a far cry from the mystical impressionism of their mid-70s LPs (with only Froese remaining from this trio), and anyone who thinks the band is good for little more than New Age background moods will be surprised by this music. Shulze left the band before Electronic Meditation was released, and Schnitzler stayed on only long enough to see the induction of 16-year old drummer Chris Franke into the band. Schnitzler's replacement was the rambunctious organist Steve Shroyder (himself a member for only one album). The trio of Froese, Franke and Shroyder (along with two guest musicians) recorded TD's second record, Alpha Centauri, and had little difficulty living up to the freaky promise of the Dream's debut. Pieces like "Sunrise In the Third System" (an organ-led mystic processional) and the single (!) "Ultima Thule Part 1" (with a very non-TD rock thud) proved the band were learning how to pour maximum mood into more compact structures. That said, the centerpiece is the massive title-track: Not only does this piece take up the bulk of Alpha Centauri, it's an almost perfect summation of everything they'd accomplished up to that point. Beginning with distant flute, and gigantic cymbal swells, the track (like many before) takes a while to get off the ground, but when Froese's brand new VCS3 synthesizer makes with the siren calls, the outer limits are within reach. Even at this early point, Froese was fascinated with the possibility of the synthesizer, though he hadn't quite mastered its range. Flautist Udo Dennebourg plays a starring role for much of the piece, adding melodic, if flighty, direction to an otherwise malleable form. Dennebourg begins announcing something at the close of the piece, and wordless, choral backing vocals deliver the dark finale. Each of these records (as well as 1972's Zeit and 1973's Atem) were originally released on Ralf-Ulrich Kaiser's legendary Ohr imprint, also home to the first recordings of Ash Ra Temple, Popol Vuh and Amon Duul. Over the years, Tangerine Dream has undergone a number of personnel changes, and Froese gradually transformed the chaotic Technicolor of his band's first recordings into an altogether different trip. However, as products of the psychedelic era (and the budding German experimental rock scene later dubbed "krautrock"), these albums are fine nuggets indeed, even if the best was yet to come."

Stereo Total

Paris-Berlin

Electronic,Pop/R&B

Nitsuh Abebe

Paris-Berlin is the best thing Stereo Total have released in a while, and it's turned out that way for fairly simple reasons. Judging by recent interviews, the duo went into the studio looking for a back-to-basics live sound, showing up with their new songs already well-developed, well-rehearsed, and ready to burst out. Unsurprisingly, it pays off: The sound of this set isn't any different from the band you might already know, but it's tight, loaded with a precision and verve that's more sustained and consistent that most anywhere else in their catalog. Which is pretty useful, when you happen to be playing the sort of music these two do-- stuff we could tag as some kind of new-wave/garage/punk/electro/pop/Serge Gainsbourg hybrid, even though that's a million times more complicated than it actually is. What it is is two mature French and German hipsters just generally having fun, getting arch and giddy: Verve is essential here. Just to reassure you that they haven't changed (in case you were deranged enough to think they might), here's a sampling of Françoise Cactus's English-language lyrics from this record … - I wanna be plastique too! Less like me and more like you! - CBGB! Chelzee Otel! [stuff in German] Buddee Olly! Zgene Veen-cent! Seed Veecious! - There will be no revolution without sexual revolution. … Masturbation is counter-revolutionary. - Patty Hearst: princess and terrorist! - Relax, baby, be coooool. [repeat for two minutes] - This is punk! This is rock 'n' roll! This is modern music! [repeat in French, English, and German] Some of these quotes actually belie the fact that Paris-Berlin also has better themes and preoccupations than usual, and that they keep knotting up with one another in fascinating ways. Those lines about revolution are actually borrowed from The Raspberry Reich, a film that has a Patty Hearst-style figure being kidnapped by revolutionaries from a "homosexual Intifada." That little nexus of topics-- sexual revolution and revolutionary chic, fucking and terrorism-- has so inspired Stereo Total that they've written, in addition to this great record, a mini musical about Patty Hearst. It also dovetails neatly with Cactus's longstanding fixation on Lolita, which she-- like a lot of good readers-- sees mostly as a story about how the staggering power of teenage sexuality makes Weapons of Mass Destruction look safe in comparison. I can't think of too many bands that are both clever enough to dig into this stuff and smart enough to know that the results should be hilarious. We can skip the quizzes about Nabokov and the Baader-Meinhof Gang, though, because the point is the sound that backs it up. I mean, Stereo Total also complain that electronic music in Berlin is getting too homogenized, but then they back up the grousing with "Mehr Licht", a ridiculously great basement dance stomper with a keyboard bassline as tweaked-out as any Bpitch record. (Fans of German literature: Think hard and see if you can remember whose last words the title contains.) In the latter of a couple perfect one-two punches on here, that's followed by a heavy-breathing disco track that sounds like Serge Gainsbourg just joined Flight of the Conchords-- "Ta Voix Au Téléphone", my new favorite Stereo Total track. There's also classic new-wave energy on "Plastic", and a sweet garagey one-two starting with "Baisers de l'Enfer de la Musique", plus more than enough verve to keep the game going even when they get more sedate and poppy-- which, being bold and insouciant, they do starting on the very first track. Oh, they're clever this time out-- the exact kind of clever that knows "relax, baby, be cool" is the perfect refrain for a song, so long as the song's being song in German by a French woman. Faux-smug European cool-cat voices are always part of the draw with these two, especially for anyone more interested in how the Department of Homeland Security can profitably be name-dropped than in vocals being particularly in tune. Let me just note that I would never have expected, back in 1997, that Stereo Total would be sounding this good a decade later. But things have only changed in their favor; it's as if they should have been touring with CSS but accidentally formed a band too early. Better still, they've aged in their own favor: More and more, they sound right as hipsters in the old sense, the kind of kitschy hat-wearing cats who should be running a thrift store and telling kids stories about bands they saw decades ago. It suits them, and they're indie treasures, and so long as they keep up their game like they have on this one, there's no reason they shouldn't have plenty of new kids listening to anything they have to say.

Artist: Stereo Total, Album: Paris-Berlin, Genre: Electronic,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Paris-Berlin is the best thing Stereo Total have released in a while, and it's turned out that way for fairly simple reasons. Judging by recent interviews, the duo went into the studio looking for a back-to-basics live sound, showing up with their new songs already well-developed, well-rehearsed, and ready to burst out. Unsurprisingly, it pays off: The sound of this set isn't any different from the band you might already know, but it's tight, loaded with a precision and verve that's more sustained and consistent that most anywhere else in their catalog. Which is pretty useful, when you happen to be playing the sort of music these two do-- stuff we could tag as some kind of new-wave/garage/punk/electro/pop/Serge Gainsbourg hybrid, even though that's a million times more complicated than it actually is. What it is is two mature French and German hipsters just generally having fun, getting arch and giddy: Verve is essential here. Just to reassure you that they haven't changed (in case you were deranged enough to think they might), here's a sampling of Françoise Cactus's English-language lyrics from this record … - I wanna be plastique too! Less like me and more like you! - CBGB! Chelzee Otel! [stuff in German] Buddee Olly! Zgene Veen-cent! Seed Veecious! - There will be no revolution without sexual revolution. … Masturbation is counter-revolutionary. - Patty Hearst: princess and terrorist! - Relax, baby, be coooool. [repeat for two minutes] - This is punk! This is rock 'n' roll! This is modern music! [repeat in French, English, and German] Some of these quotes actually belie the fact that Paris-Berlin also has better themes and preoccupations than usual, and that they keep knotting up with one another in fascinating ways. Those lines about revolution are actually borrowed from The Raspberry Reich, a film that has a Patty Hearst-style figure being kidnapped by revolutionaries from a "homosexual Intifada." That little nexus of topics-- sexual revolution and revolutionary chic, fucking and terrorism-- has so inspired Stereo Total that they've written, in addition to this great record, a mini musical about Patty Hearst. It also dovetails neatly with Cactus's longstanding fixation on Lolita, which she-- like a lot of good readers-- sees mostly as a story about how the staggering power of teenage sexuality makes Weapons of Mass Destruction look safe in comparison. I can't think of too many bands that are both clever enough to dig into this stuff and smart enough to know that the results should be hilarious. We can skip the quizzes about Nabokov and the Baader-Meinhof Gang, though, because the point is the sound that backs it up. I mean, Stereo Total also complain that electronic music in Berlin is getting too homogenized, but then they back up the grousing with "Mehr Licht", a ridiculously great basement dance stomper with a keyboard bassline as tweaked-out as any Bpitch record. (Fans of German literature: Think hard and see if you can remember whose last words the title contains.) In the latter of a couple perfect one-two punches on here, that's followed by a heavy-breathing disco track that sounds like Serge Gainsbourg just joined Flight of the Conchords-- "Ta Voix Au Téléphone", my new favorite Stereo Total track. There's also classic new-wave energy on "Plastic", and a sweet garagey one-two starting with "Baisers de l'Enfer de la Musique", plus more than enough verve to keep the game going even when they get more sedate and poppy-- which, being bold and insouciant, they do starting on the very first track. Oh, they're clever this time out-- the exact kind of clever that knows "relax, baby, be cool" is the perfect refrain for a song, so long as the song's being song in German by a French woman. Faux-smug European cool-cat voices are always part of the draw with these two, especially for anyone more interested in how the Department of Homeland Security can profitably be name-dropped than in vocals being particularly in tune. Let me just note that I would never have expected, back in 1997, that Stereo Total would be sounding this good a decade later. But things have only changed in their favor; it's as if they should have been touring with CSS but accidentally formed a band too early. Better still, they've aged in their own favor: More and more, they sound right as hipsters in the old sense, the kind of kitschy hat-wearing cats who should be running a thrift store and telling kids stories about bands they saw decades ago. It suits them, and they're indie treasures, and so long as they keep up their game like they have on this one, there's no reason they shouldn't have plenty of new kids listening to anything they have to say."

Black Milk

No Poison, No Paradise

Rap

Jayson Greene

Detroit producer/rapper Black Milk favors sounds that hurt just a little—drums tweaked sideways so they check you in the shoulder instead of landing straight, synth sounds with big gaps in the frequencies. He has a diehard golden-age revivalist fan base, but the farther away from Native Tongues revivalism his music travels, the more willfuly ugly it becomes, the better he gets—the waveform of his best beats would look like a grin full of broken teeth. No Poison No Paradise, his latest, features some of the ugliest- sounding, and therefore best and most fully-realized, music of his career. It's a serrated, mud-caked album, one that rattles and bangs like a box full of old machine parts. Black Milk opens it with a quick feint, almost a joke: nine seconds of murmuring jazz organ suspiciously similar  "Electric Relaxation" breeze by before a blurt of static cuts through and"Interpret Sabotage", a rusted tanker crunching its treads over Reagan-era synth equipment, rolls through. "Fell in love with a certain era of music, never thought it would've came with a curse," he raps grimly, in tight, martial 6/8, the music nipping gamely at his heels. The album is easily Black Milk's darkest. Even 2010's Album of the Year, which wrestled with a series of devastating losses and setbacks, was light-hearted by comparison, its colorful tumble of live instruments and loops keeping a semblance of a party going. On No Poison No Paradise, despair rots all the way into the hull. The terrifically dark "Codes and Cab Fare" turns a Hammond organ and a sliding bass pitch into a  sustained moan, a slow plummet in free space. "Dismal"'s woodblock knock recalls OutKast's "Elevators," but the atmosphere is minor key and uneasy,  gas fumes rising off an evaporated Neptunes production. The knock on "Black Sabbath" is hard enough to send furniture tipping over, and suggests Milk could have been a meaningful contributor in the room where Yeezus was hashed out. There are a few wistful moments on No Poison that recall Milk's spiritual father figure Dilla. He reminisces about squirming uncomfortably in church pews on "Sunday's Best", a song that fades cleverly into "Monday's Worst", both songs breezing by on late-summer-light soul loops. Dreamlike sequencing touches like this are the only obvious marks of the concept behind No Poison, which, Black Milk tells us, functions as series of dreams inside the head of a character named Sonny, Jr. There's a reason reason this conceptual framework feels vague and mushy, and it's Black Milk's career-long elephant in the room: He's a technically strong rapper, someone who writes vividly and honestly, who continually shuffles complex rhyme patterns, who audibly pops veins with his desire to say something. But his vocal tone is grit, sawdust, completely lacking in character. He suffers from a severe case of what Andrew Noz years ago dubbed "Black Thought Syndrome," wherein a rapper with a surplus of substance suffers from a severe lack of style. For a guy with such a golden ear, you'd think he would have figured out a way to weave his vocals more musically, or more distinctively, into the richly tactile music he produces in the studio. Nonetheless, he seethes impressively here, performing with the determination of someone who has weathered a career's worth of these sorts of dispiriting notices. A few of his lines burst through via a sheer force of iron will, like on"Black Sabbath": "You know them slums where them slugs hum past your wig."  His near-military focus and conviction carries the day. And he stretches out here and there—he hasn't always been the guy you think of when you think of "baby-making music," but he sounds relaxed on the convincingly slinky and unzipped "Parallels," like someone who is not only about to have sex, but conceivably enjoy it. On "Sonny, Jr.," he brings in Robert Glasper, a vital jazz pianist and producer who has been working double-time to complicate that resume with hip-hop and R&B collaborations, for an extended workout that could itself be diced up for five or six different loops. The album is full of ear-snagging textures like this, and its most compelling moments are career highlights.

Artist: Black Milk, Album: No Poison, No Paradise, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Detroit producer/rapper Black Milk favors sounds that hurt just a little—drums tweaked sideways so they check you in the shoulder instead of landing straight, synth sounds with big gaps in the frequencies. He has a diehard golden-age revivalist fan base, but the farther away from Native Tongues revivalism his music travels, the more willfuly ugly it becomes, the better he gets—the waveform of his best beats would look like a grin full of broken teeth. No Poison No Paradise, his latest, features some of the ugliest- sounding, and therefore best and most fully-realized, music of his career. It's a serrated, mud-caked album, one that rattles and bangs like a box full of old machine parts. Black Milk opens it with a quick feint, almost a joke: nine seconds of murmuring jazz organ suspiciously similar  "Electric Relaxation" breeze by before a blurt of static cuts through and"Interpret Sabotage", a rusted tanker crunching its treads over Reagan-era synth equipment, rolls through. "Fell in love with a certain era of music, never thought it would've came with a curse," he raps grimly, in tight, martial 6/8, the music nipping gamely at his heels. The album is easily Black Milk's darkest. Even 2010's Album of the Year, which wrestled with a series of devastating losses and setbacks, was light-hearted by comparison, its colorful tumble of live instruments and loops keeping a semblance of a party going. On No Poison No Paradise, despair rots all the way into the hull. The terrifically dark "Codes and Cab Fare" turns a Hammond organ and a sliding bass pitch into a  sustained moan, a slow plummet in free space. "Dismal"'s woodblock knock recalls OutKast's "Elevators," but the atmosphere is minor key and uneasy,  gas fumes rising off an evaporated Neptunes production. The knock on "Black Sabbath" is hard enough to send furniture tipping over, and suggests Milk could have been a meaningful contributor in the room where Yeezus was hashed out. There are a few wistful moments on No Poison that recall Milk's spiritual father figure Dilla. He reminisces about squirming uncomfortably in church pews on "Sunday's Best", a song that fades cleverly into "Monday's Worst", both songs breezing by on late-summer-light soul loops. Dreamlike sequencing touches like this are the only obvious marks of the concept behind No Poison, which, Black Milk tells us, functions as series of dreams inside the head of a character named Sonny, Jr. There's a reason reason this conceptual framework feels vague and mushy, and it's Black Milk's career-long elephant in the room: He's a technically strong rapper, someone who writes vividly and honestly, who continually shuffles complex rhyme patterns, who audibly pops veins with his desire to say something. But his vocal tone is grit, sawdust, completely lacking in character. He suffers from a severe case of what Andrew Noz years ago dubbed "Black Thought Syndrome," wherein a rapper with a surplus of substance suffers from a severe lack of style. For a guy with such a golden ear, you'd think he would have figured out a way to weave his vocals more musically, or more distinctively, into the richly tactile music he produces in the studio. Nonetheless, he seethes impressively here, performing with the determination of someone who has weathered a career's worth of these sorts of dispiriting notices. A few of his lines burst through via a sheer force of iron will, like on"Black Sabbath": "You know them slums where them slugs hum past your wig."  His near-military focus and conviction carries the day. And he stretches out here and there—he hasn't always been the guy you think of when you think of "baby-making music," but he sounds relaxed on the convincingly slinky and unzipped "Parallels," like someone who is not only about to have sex, but conceivably enjoy it. On "Sonny, Jr.," he brings in Robert Glasper, a vital jazz pianist and producer who has been working double-time to complicate that resume with hip-hop and R&B collaborations, for an extended workout that could itself be diced up for five or six different loops. The album is full of ear-snagging textures like this, and its most compelling moments are career highlights."

Centro-matic

Distance and Clime

Rock

Dan Kilian

Guided by Voices: an American rock band who became the standard bearer for lo-fi in the early 90s with Robert Pollard's home recordings. Pollard created a Picasso-like sense of unfinished masterpieces through what seemed to be drunken toss-offs. The clear affection GBV held for the Beatles, coupled with a melodic sense all their own, created a sound with all the deconstructive energy of punk, yet the melodicism of 60s pop. Flaming Lips: Eccentric neo-psychedelic guitar band, with a singer who sounds like Neil Young gargling glue. Their sound evolved into bombastic prog-rock of epic proportions on their heralded 1999 album The Soft Bulletin. I know that, unlike the obsessive staff of Pitchfork, you, the reader, might not have heard these rather seminal indie bands. But I understand. There's a hell of a lot of music out there being called "essential." There are a slew of great books you need to read as well. Sadly, it's costly and time consuming, and you suspect they might not be as enjoyable as the experts make them out to be. These are valid concerns. That's one reason why I've bored the experts with my descriptions of these two bands, which, when combined and diluted of some twee, approach the sound of Centro Matic. The other reason is that I don't have much else to say about this Texas band. They sound like Lips singer Wayne Coyne fronting a tighter version of GBV. There's nothing much else that grabs me. But I'll go on. Watch: The songs on Distance and Clime, Centro-Matic's sixth full-length album, seem to be quality when I hear them, but I can never sing them back. The rhythm section is wonderfully invisible, propelling the songs like the Fantastic Four's Susan Storm. Will Johnson's guitar buzzes like a thousand bees, but as singer, he often lingers in misshapen triplets over his three syllable words, as if he's a little too in love with the smartness of his cryptic verses. It's a little hard to understand what the words "in his pantlegs are hidden the blueprints to the stripmalls and the bloodbanks" (from "Janitorial on Channel Fail") might mean, but Johnson caresses them like an ancient incantation. At least he doesn't sneer them all tongue-in-cheek, or try to be British like Robert Pollard. I can't stress how important it is that this band isn't twee, a worthy accomplishment given their influences. Instead of mimicking pre-schoolin' little boys, Johnson's opts for grittier vocals; instead of sing-songy, joyous melodies, they infuse the sound with a ballsy rock roar. After a while, you start to sense some Archers of Loaf pervading the mix. Archers of Loaf: 90s Chapel Hill band distinguished by angular inventive guitar sounds and a mournful, gravel-voiced singer, Eric Bachmann. Bachmann is now reported to be singing ballads about booze-ridden losers with his new project, Crooked Fingers. He's like Neil Diamond, but hip. I don't want to disrespect this band too much. Perhaps the songs will finally catch up to me on a later listen. Of course, that would be much later, since, after ten times through, I'm at a loss. Still, if you like the combination described above, don't just rush out and buy it. Look at that cover art first.

Artist: Centro-matic, Album: Distance and Clime, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Guided by Voices: an American rock band who became the standard bearer for lo-fi in the early 90s with Robert Pollard's home recordings. Pollard created a Picasso-like sense of unfinished masterpieces through what seemed to be drunken toss-offs. The clear affection GBV held for the Beatles, coupled with a melodic sense all their own, created a sound with all the deconstructive energy of punk, yet the melodicism of 60s pop. Flaming Lips: Eccentric neo-psychedelic guitar band, with a singer who sounds like Neil Young gargling glue. Their sound evolved into bombastic prog-rock of epic proportions on their heralded 1999 album The Soft Bulletin. I know that, unlike the obsessive staff of Pitchfork, you, the reader, might not have heard these rather seminal indie bands. But I understand. There's a hell of a lot of music out there being called "essential." There are a slew of great books you need to read as well. Sadly, it's costly and time consuming, and you suspect they might not be as enjoyable as the experts make them out to be. These are valid concerns. That's one reason why I've bored the experts with my descriptions of these two bands, which, when combined and diluted of some twee, approach the sound of Centro Matic. The other reason is that I don't have much else to say about this Texas band. They sound like Lips singer Wayne Coyne fronting a tighter version of GBV. There's nothing much else that grabs me. But I'll go on. Watch: The songs on Distance and Clime, Centro-Matic's sixth full-length album, seem to be quality when I hear them, but I can never sing them back. The rhythm section is wonderfully invisible, propelling the songs like the Fantastic Four's Susan Storm. Will Johnson's guitar buzzes like a thousand bees, but as singer, he often lingers in misshapen triplets over his three syllable words, as if he's a little too in love with the smartness of his cryptic verses. It's a little hard to understand what the words "in his pantlegs are hidden the blueprints to the stripmalls and the bloodbanks" (from "Janitorial on Channel Fail") might mean, but Johnson caresses them like an ancient incantation. At least he doesn't sneer them all tongue-in-cheek, or try to be British like Robert Pollard. I can't stress how important it is that this band isn't twee, a worthy accomplishment given their influences. Instead of mimicking pre-schoolin' little boys, Johnson's opts for grittier vocals; instead of sing-songy, joyous melodies, they infuse the sound with a ballsy rock roar. After a while, you start to sense some Archers of Loaf pervading the mix. Archers of Loaf: 90s Chapel Hill band distinguished by angular inventive guitar sounds and a mournful, gravel-voiced singer, Eric Bachmann. Bachmann is now reported to be singing ballads about booze-ridden losers with his new project, Crooked Fingers. He's like Neil Diamond, but hip. I don't want to disrespect this band too much. Perhaps the songs will finally catch up to me on a later listen. Of course, that would be much later, since, after ten times through, I'm at a loss. Still, if you like the combination described above, don't just rush out and buy it. Look at that cover art first."

The Raveonettes

Lust Lust Lust

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

Lust Lust Lust is best heard loud loud loud. At a medium volume, it loses vitality. Any lower and it's a complete waste of time. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo's twisted update on early rock riffs and Jesus and Mary Chain distortion was built for intensity, and when cranked up to speaker-rattling levels, that agenda is clear. Granted, any album would gain new (and not necessarily pleasing) power at exaggerated volumes, but Lust Lust Lust sounds specifically engineered for eardrum-exploding impact. The few instruments-- guitar, drums, bass, guitar, synths, vocals, and guitar-- all bleed together into an aggressively trebly jangle, Wagner's riffs and waves of distortion washing over you like a bad trip. Lust Lust Lust is the Raveonettes' third full-length, and on first spin, it might sound like a step backwards. Their previous effort, 2005's Pretty in Black, was a look-at-me effort that scrubbed the grime off their past work and expanded the duo into a full band with guests like Mo Tucker and Ronnie Spector. But it also proved the Raveonettes don't clean up very well; they're most presentable when they're not presentable, so the return to distortion is a welcome regression. Lust Lust Lust relies less heavily on the early-rock influences that informed the 2002 EP Whip It On! and 2003's Chain Gang of Love, as the Raveonettes have learned to better integrate them into a fuller arsenal of sounds. Opener "Aly Walk With Me" is the record's best argument for maximum volume. Over a coldly steady heartbreak-stroll drumbeat, Wagner and Foo chant verses between eruptions of scalding guitar distortion. "Aly, walk with me in my dreams/ All through the night," they sing in dead-eyed harmony. Part wet-dream manifesto, part invocation to a soiled muse, the track makes an ideal introduction into the gutter world of Lust Lust Lust, where Foo's gauzy vocals rise out of the din and where desire can seriously fuck with your color registration. What makes the Raveonettes so compelling-- and what elevates their nostalgia above pure gimmickry-- is their refusal to separate sex from drugs from rock'n'roll. They're all the same sin, and all worthy of the same distortion. "You Want the Candy" disguises its sordidness ("tastes so sweet makes good love bad") with sugary pop hooks that might have you believe Wagner means "candy" literally. The Raveonettes usually sound best when they play fast: "Blush", "Dead Sound", and "Blitzed" rush by on Foo's shoegaze/girl-group vocals, synths that sparkle like stars over slums, and Wagner's back-alley Silvertone approximation, quickening the pace as they convey barely contained excitement of some dark need. But slower songs like "Expelled From Love" and "Sad Transmission" allow Wagner to play around a little more, crafting pulsing beats from a drum machine or a guitar and translating old styles into new contexts. In the past, Wagner has held himself to certain restrictions as a means of sonically defining a release: On Whip It On! the Raveonettes played all their songs in the key of B-flat minor using only three chords. For Chain Gang of Love, they switched to B-flat major. On Lust Lust Lust, there are no stated restrictions, just the unavoidable limitations of one guy playing only a few instruments. Wagner can only get so many sounds out of this array, so even at 12 well-sequenced tracks (14 counting the U.S. edition's two bonus tracks), the album occasionally seems overlong and repetitive, not because the songs are weak but because not every one of them shows us something new. A case could be made that this musical dynamic mirrors the machinations of desire, as Lust Lust Lust details the many ways that good love can grow stale, with or without new things to want. But really, for the most part these shortcomings can be drowned out with sheer volume.

Artist: The Raveonettes, Album: Lust Lust Lust, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Lust Lust Lust is best heard loud loud loud. At a medium volume, it loses vitality. Any lower and it's a complete waste of time. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo's twisted update on early rock riffs and Jesus and Mary Chain distortion was built for intensity, and when cranked up to speaker-rattling levels, that agenda is clear. Granted, any album would gain new (and not necessarily pleasing) power at exaggerated volumes, but Lust Lust Lust sounds specifically engineered for eardrum-exploding impact. The few instruments-- guitar, drums, bass, guitar, synths, vocals, and guitar-- all bleed together into an aggressively trebly jangle, Wagner's riffs and waves of distortion washing over you like a bad trip. Lust Lust Lust is the Raveonettes' third full-length, and on first spin, it might sound like a step backwards. Their previous effort, 2005's Pretty in Black, was a look-at-me effort that scrubbed the grime off their past work and expanded the duo into a full band with guests like Mo Tucker and Ronnie Spector. But it also proved the Raveonettes don't clean up very well; they're most presentable when they're not presentable, so the return to distortion is a welcome regression. Lust Lust Lust relies less heavily on the early-rock influences that informed the 2002 EP Whip It On! and 2003's Chain Gang of Love, as the Raveonettes have learned to better integrate them into a fuller arsenal of sounds. Opener "Aly Walk With Me" is the record's best argument for maximum volume. Over a coldly steady heartbreak-stroll drumbeat, Wagner and Foo chant verses between eruptions of scalding guitar distortion. "Aly, walk with me in my dreams/ All through the night," they sing in dead-eyed harmony. Part wet-dream manifesto, part invocation to a soiled muse, the track makes an ideal introduction into the gutter world of Lust Lust Lust, where Foo's gauzy vocals rise out of the din and where desire can seriously fuck with your color registration. What makes the Raveonettes so compelling-- and what elevates their nostalgia above pure gimmickry-- is their refusal to separate sex from drugs from rock'n'roll. They're all the same sin, and all worthy of the same distortion. "You Want the Candy" disguises its sordidness ("tastes so sweet makes good love bad") with sugary pop hooks that might have you believe Wagner means "candy" literally. The Raveonettes usually sound best when they play fast: "Blush", "Dead Sound", and "Blitzed" rush by on Foo's shoegaze/girl-group vocals, synths that sparkle like stars over slums, and Wagner's back-alley Silvertone approximation, quickening the pace as they convey barely contained excitement of some dark need. But slower songs like "Expelled From Love" and "Sad Transmission" allow Wagner to play around a little more, crafting pulsing beats from a drum machine or a guitar and translating old styles into new contexts. In the past, Wagner has held himself to certain restrictions as a means of sonically defining a release: On Whip It On! the Raveonettes played all their songs in the key of B-flat minor using only three chords. For Chain Gang of Love, they switched to B-flat major. On Lust Lust Lust, there are no stated restrictions, just the unavoidable limitations of one guy playing only a few instruments. Wagner can only get so many sounds out of this array, so even at 12 well-sequenced tracks (14 counting the U.S. edition's two bonus tracks), the album occasionally seems overlong and repetitive, not because the songs are weak but because not every one of them shows us something new. A case could be made that this musical dynamic mirrors the machinations of desire, as Lust Lust Lust details the many ways that good love can grow stale, with or without new things to want. But really, for the most part these shortcomings can be drowned out with sheer volume."

Mach-Hommy

Fete Des Morts AKA Dia De Los Muertos EP

Rap

Paul A. Thompson

It would take thousands of dollars to acquire the full Mach-Hommy discography—not because his records are long-forgotten or out of print, but because he’s charging what he sees fit. Market price, cold commerce. Those price tags (upward of a thousand dollars for records like DUMP GAWD: HOMMY EDITION and Dollar Menu 2) give the rapper’s music a cryptic mystique, but they aren’t gimmicky; Mach-Hommy seems profoundly uninterested in gimmickry. To wit: this fall’s excellent DUMPMEISTER, which retailed for the delightfully unsubtle $187, plays like a breathless best-of, no pauses, no frills—just the blunt rhythms of a card number, expiration date, and security code. For his latest effort, the $111.11 Fete Des Morts AKA Dia De Los Muertos, Mach-Hommy taps Earl Sweatshirt for beats and dives back in. (On his Bandcamp, the record is credited, confusingly, to DUMPMEISTER.) Fete Des Morts is a compelling look at Earl’s influences and instincts behind the board—including a soul bent that bypasses turn-of-the-century Roc-A-Fella—but it transcends because Hommy uses it as yet another venue to argue for himself as one of the East coast’s finest working rappers. The New Jersey-based Hommy was briefly affiliated with the Conway- and Westside Gunn-helmed Griselda Gang, but has since splintered off into his own section of the genre. His major work is Haitian Body Odor, an LP he sold directly to fans through his Instagram DMs last year, before finally putting it online for free this March. HBO is a remarkable record, dense and patient. Its cover is a portrait of Michéle Bennett, the former Haitian first lady who fled the country in 1986; Hommy litters his writing with the relics of French colonization, class revolt, and Giuliani-era New York. Songs unfurl slowly: “1080p” has a 60-second prelude before its first verse, but once he starts rapping, he goes in fits and starts, lamenting that “nobody love you when you alive,” remembering how his friends blanched at how seriously he took The War Report. By contrast, Fete Des Morts feels like a series of contained exercises. Songs flow seamlessly into one another; the 70-second exhale of “Henrietta LAX” gives way to “TTFN,” which itself abruptly stops for Mach to mock “social media metrics” and let off a gunshot. Earl’s beats are uniquely post-Dilla in their treatment of vocal samples and in his affinity for warm tones cut by jagged textures. (There’s even an exultant airhorn at the beginning of “Bridge of the Water G-d.”) The artists’ partnership, then, is compulsively listenable: acrobatic writing over no-nonsense beats by another verbose MC, who knows where to leave the crevices. It’s tempting to classify huge swaths of East Coast rap from this decade as post-Marcberg, full stop. The comparisons to the vaunted half-revivalist Roc Marciano are not unfounded, but Hommy is a more unpredictable writer. He’s more likely to pick up a narrative thread for an extended period, or to start writing in discursive lines, filled with the pronouns and prepositions. There are also stark, fascinating diversions: “Embarrassment of Riches,” which is produced by Navy Blue rather than Earl, opens with an extended bit of singing, before transitioning back into razor-tongued raps. Structurally, Fete Des Morts frees Hommy to try a quick series of different ideas: a Twitter-nodding crime vignette on “Manje Midi,” a modern-day “Les Mis” on “THEJIGISUP.” The themes he explored in such depth on HBO—familial honor, the weight of tradition—reappear here mostly through implication, while the writing is more overtly concerned with naturalistic, often grim details. And that’s where the EP succeeds so beautifully. It exists, on one level, as a clean, distilled 22 minutes of exceptional rap music. But it also serves as a companion piece to both Mach and Earl’s larger catalogs, continuing old threads and hinting at directions either one might pursue in the new year.

Artist: Mach-Hommy, Album: Fete Des Morts AKA Dia De Los Muertos EP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "It would take thousands of dollars to acquire the full Mach-Hommy discography—not because his records are long-forgotten or out of print, but because he’s charging what he sees fit. Market price, cold commerce. Those price tags (upward of a thousand dollars for records like DUMP GAWD: HOMMY EDITION and Dollar Menu 2) give the rapper’s music a cryptic mystique, but they aren’t gimmicky; Mach-Hommy seems profoundly uninterested in gimmickry. To wit: this fall’s excellent DUMPMEISTER, which retailed for the delightfully unsubtle $187, plays like a breathless best-of, no pauses, no frills—just the blunt rhythms of a card number, expiration date, and security code. For his latest effort, the $111.11 Fete Des Morts AKA Dia De Los Muertos, Mach-Hommy taps Earl Sweatshirt for beats and dives back in. (On his Bandcamp, the record is credited, confusingly, to DUMPMEISTER.) Fete Des Morts is a compelling look at Earl’s influences and instincts behind the board—including a soul bent that bypasses turn-of-the-century Roc-A-Fella—but it transcends because Hommy uses it as yet another venue to argue for himself as one of the East coast’s finest working rappers. The New Jersey-based Hommy was briefly affiliated with the Conway- and Westside Gunn-helmed Griselda Gang, but has since splintered off into his own section of the genre. His major work is Haitian Body Odor, an LP he sold directly to fans through his Instagram DMs last year, before finally putting it online for free this March. HBO is a remarkable record, dense and patient. Its cover is a portrait of Michéle Bennett, the former Haitian first lady who fled the country in 1986; Hommy litters his writing with the relics of French colonization, class revolt, and Giuliani-era New York. Songs unfurl slowly: “1080p” has a 60-second prelude before its first verse, but once he starts rapping, he goes in fits and starts, lamenting that “nobody love you when you alive,” remembering how his friends blanched at how seriously he took The War Report. By contrast, Fete Des Morts feels like a series of contained exercises. Songs flow seamlessly into one another; the 70-second exhale of “Henrietta LAX” gives way to “TTFN,” which itself abruptly stops for Mach to mock “social media metrics” and let off a gunshot. Earl’s beats are uniquely post-Dilla in their treatment of vocal samples and in his affinity for warm tones cut by jagged textures. (There’s even an exultant airhorn at the beginning of “Bridge of the Water G-d.”) The artists’ partnership, then, is compulsively listenable: acrobatic writing over no-nonsense beats by another verbose MC, who knows where to leave the crevices. It’s tempting to classify huge swaths of East Coast rap from this decade as post-Marcberg, full stop. The comparisons to the vaunted half-revivalist Roc Marciano are not unfounded, but Hommy is a more unpredictable writer. He’s more likely to pick up a narrative thread for an extended period, or to start writing in discursive lines, filled with the pronouns and prepositions. There are also stark, fascinating diversions: “Embarrassment of Riches,” which is produced by Navy Blue rather than Earl, opens with an extended bit of singing, before transitioning back into razor-tongued raps. Structurally, Fete Des Morts frees Hommy to try a quick series of different ideas: a Twitter-nodding crime vignette on “Manje Midi,” a modern-day “Les Mis” on “THEJIGISUP.” The themes he explored in such depth on HBO—familial honor, the weight of tradition—reappear here mostly through implication, while the writing is more overtly concerned with naturalistic, often grim details. And that’s where the EP succeeds so beautifully. It exists, on one level, as a clean, distilled 22 minutes of exceptional rap music. But it also serves as a companion piece to both Mach and Earl’s larger catalogs, continuing old threads and hinting at directions either one might pursue in the new year."

Nightmares on Wax

DJ Kicks

Electronic,Jazz

Paul Cooper

George Evelyn, lone survivor of Nightmares on Wax, curates the latest in Studio !K7's uptown DJ Kicks mix series. And following the path of greatest predictability, Evelyn sequences music you'd imagine he'd compile. This should not have been the case for several reasons. A Word of Science, Nightmares on Wax's debut as a trio, reveled in a warped aesthetic that peaked with the hallucinatory "Aftermath," a track so twisted and evilly looped that Second Summer of Love casualties are known to wander throughout Greater London muttering the thought-crimping vocal refrain. With Evelyn abandoned by his crew, he turned his musical attention from funk-avant-garde, to just honest-as-the-Earth hip-hop. No more messin', Evelyn wanted to slam some real street shit on us. And well qualified he seemed to do this. "Night's Interlude" had become one of the Ur-texts for James Lavelle's Mo'wax roster, eliminating the necessity for anyone to get up and strut their bad selves. Nope. Just bob yer 'ead, mate and that'll show your appreciation. But the signifiers got more than a little muddled. Unlike Sotheby's auctioneers trained to notice and respond to the merest suggestion of a flick of a bidder's wrist, one couldn't distinguish between a too-cool-for-this-shit Mo'wax devotee or the involuntary head-lolling of some zee-onked bong-boy. The unhappy result of this indistinguishability was the sloppy deluge of trip-hop, amid which subsequent Nightmares on Wax albums Smoker's Delight (prosecution rests!) and Carboot Soul barely floated. With the opportunity to assemble a mix disc for Studio !K7, I'd hope that Thomas would put down the pipe and give us something noteworthy. I'd like to imagine that a mix disc from a respected label such as Studio !K7 would seek to be part of the great tape-compilation tradition. Obsessive pause-button compilers across the world, sweaty-palmed with the excitement of introducing friends, family and the mail-room guys to music outside of their usual zone, challenge themselves to juxtapose pleasant oddities. An Otis Redding soulwrencher against a Sandy Denny lament, perhaps, for a natural and expected collision. I remember the compilation tape my hippie friend Mike made for me that introduced me to the Third Bardo, the Third Ear Band, and Love. If I ever lost that tape, I'd be devastated. So, commercially available compilation CDs should ideally be replaceable irreplaceables. Studio !K7 have provided us with at least one such disc. Nicolette's installment swerved effortlessly and logically between Shut Up and Dance urban hardcore and deep ambient to IDM stalwarts Plaid. The never-disappointing Nuphonic label has become the motherlode of such desirable compilations. Not only have they released the two David Mancuso Loft sets, but also Norman and Joey Jay's Notting-Hill-Carnival-in-your-living-room Good Times. It irks me to report that you'll have just okay times with Nightmares on Wax's compilation. It's not that any of the tracks are cornball or turgid. The artists and the labels represented have all licensed high quality drops of wax. From "Ay, Ay, Stutter," Saukrates' unintentional tribute to UK comedy rappers Morris Minor and the Majors, to the nu-oldskool breaks of Grand Unified's "Shake Up"; from the Stax horn section-adoring "Ease Jimi" by Nightmares on Wax to the jazz-disco of Syrup's "Chocolate," Evelyn plays one good record after another. Though he thankfully didn't attempt to turntable some cross-fader action, or to perform the crab-walk, the scoozy, the backspin-shuffle, or even a salvo of triplicate zickity-zags, Evelyn could have done something a bit special than wait until one record was fading out before pressing the start button on another. This just lends a blandness to a disc that could have been an ear-opening, run-down, dumpster-strewn alleyway of musical unexpectations. Free of anything out-of-the-ordinary, the Nightmares on Wax's contribution to the DJ Kicks series will find favor with those who love their music barely audible, and with those who cherish their music collections more as qualifications for admittance into the scenester clique. Or, of course, with those who spend time prospecting for a missing eighth (last seen underneath a sofa cushion... or was it in the freezer cabinet?) than considering the quality of the contents of their disc-changer.

Artist: Nightmares on Wax, Album: DJ Kicks, Genre: Electronic,Jazz, Score (1-10): 5.5 Album review: "George Evelyn, lone survivor of Nightmares on Wax, curates the latest in Studio !K7's uptown DJ Kicks mix series. And following the path of greatest predictability, Evelyn sequences music you'd imagine he'd compile. This should not have been the case for several reasons. A Word of Science, Nightmares on Wax's debut as a trio, reveled in a warped aesthetic that peaked with the hallucinatory "Aftermath," a track so twisted and evilly looped that Second Summer of Love casualties are known to wander throughout Greater London muttering the thought-crimping vocal refrain. With Evelyn abandoned by his crew, he turned his musical attention from funk-avant-garde, to just honest-as-the-Earth hip-hop. No more messin', Evelyn wanted to slam some real street shit on us. And well qualified he seemed to do this. "Night's Interlude" had become one of the Ur-texts for James Lavelle's Mo'wax roster, eliminating the necessity for anyone to get up and strut their bad selves. Nope. Just bob yer 'ead, mate and that'll show your appreciation. But the signifiers got more than a little muddled. Unlike Sotheby's auctioneers trained to notice and respond to the merest suggestion of a flick of a bidder's wrist, one couldn't distinguish between a too-cool-for-this-shit Mo'wax devotee or the involuntary head-lolling of some zee-onked bong-boy. The unhappy result of this indistinguishability was the sloppy deluge of trip-hop, amid which subsequent Nightmares on Wax albums Smoker's Delight (prosecution rests!) and Carboot Soul barely floated. With the opportunity to assemble a mix disc for Studio !K7, I'd hope that Thomas would put down the pipe and give us something noteworthy. I'd like to imagine that a mix disc from a respected label such as Studio !K7 would seek to be part of the great tape-compilation tradition. Obsessive pause-button compilers across the world, sweaty-palmed with the excitement of introducing friends, family and the mail-room guys to music outside of their usual zone, challenge themselves to juxtapose pleasant oddities. An Otis Redding soulwrencher against a Sandy Denny lament, perhaps, for a natural and expected collision. I remember the compilation tape my hippie friend Mike made for me that introduced me to the Third Bardo, the Third Ear Band, and Love. If I ever lost that tape, I'd be devastated. So, commercially available compilation CDs should ideally be replaceable irreplaceables. Studio !K7 have provided us with at least one such disc. Nicolette's installment swerved effortlessly and logically between Shut Up and Dance urban hardcore and deep ambient to IDM stalwarts Plaid. The never-disappointing Nuphonic label has become the motherlode of such desirable compilations. Not only have they released the two David Mancuso Loft sets, but also Norman and Joey Jay's Notting-Hill-Carnival-in-your-living-room Good Times. It irks me to report that you'll have just okay times with Nightmares on Wax's compilation. It's not that any of the tracks are cornball or turgid. The artists and the labels represented have all licensed high quality drops of wax. From "Ay, Ay, Stutter," Saukrates' unintentional tribute to UK comedy rappers Morris Minor and the Majors, to the nu-oldskool breaks of Grand Unified's "Shake Up"; from the Stax horn section-adoring "Ease Jimi" by Nightmares on Wax to the jazz-disco of Syrup's "Chocolate," Evelyn plays one good record after another. Though he thankfully didn't attempt to turntable some cross-fader action, or to perform the crab-walk, the scoozy, the backspin-shuffle, or even a salvo of triplicate zickity-zags, Evelyn could have done something a bit special than wait until one record was fading out before pressing the start button on another. This just lends a blandness to a disc that could have been an ear-opening, run-down, dumpster-strewn alleyway of musical unexpectations. Free of anything out-of-the-ordinary, the Nightmares on Wax's contribution to the DJ Kicks series will find favor with those who love their music barely audible, and with those who cherish their music collections more as qualifications for admittance into the scenester clique. Or, of course, with those who spend time prospecting for a missing eighth (last seen underneath a sofa cushion... or was it in the freezer cabinet?) than considering the quality of the contents of their disc-changer."

The Necks

Body

Experimental

Grayson Haver Currin

Spoiler alerts do not apply to the Necks. For nearly three decades, the instrumental Australian trio has often followed a deceptively simple formula, both in the studio and on stage: Begin in miniature, with discrete thoughts stated patiently with grand piano, upright bass, and spare drums. Over the course of an hour or so, ratchet up the intensity and density of those phrases, expanding and interlocking them until they suggest much more than those primitive elements—perhaps a symphony, sustaining a crescendo as if holding a collective breath, or a large free-jazz ensemble, locked inside an unexpected moment of improvisational communion. There are, of course, exceptions. Sometimes they update their palette, adding a guitar here, an organ there; sometimes they invert the mold, so a monolithic sound breaks down rather than building up. But listening to the best of the Necks’ 20 albums can feel like watching a favorite movie for the 10th time; you get the plot and have even memorized some of its tricks, but changes in your own perspective let you see it anew, to discover a new thread inside a pattern you thought you knew. That said, spoiler alert: Almost halfway into Body, the trio’s engrossing and overwhelming 20th album, the Necks shoot from a slumber of pensive bass and piano into a clanging post-rock eruption, where walloped drums swing hard and heavy beneath pounded keys and shrieking electric guitar that washes everything in vivid neon streaks. The first time you hear it, you may jolt upright with surprise, as if a boogeyman has suddenly appeared from around a corner in that movie you thought you knew so well. But this is not a blip. For a quarter-hour, the Necks grind away at this theme, rending a basic rock’n’roll riff and rhythm into utter dust. Tony Buck, who tortures his drums and tames the electric guitar here, is the anchor and the aggressor. But it’s Chris Abrahams, ducking behind the cover of Buck and bassist Lloyd Swanton, who dances inside the din with boogie-woogie piano lines. Like funhouse mirrors, his harmonies reflect and reshape foundational rock chords, offering flickers of light from inside the storm. The unexpected stretch matches the delirious heights of the reborn version of Swans, when Michael Gira’s big band would lash out at a melody for half an hour, or the dizzying swirl of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, where one chord played over and over against a swinging beat somehow produces a trance. This is ecstatic music, as engrossing and powerful as anything the Necks have ever made. The middle of Body is so jarring and thrilling it runs the risk of overshadowing the rest of the album. Divided into four unequal movements, though, these 57 minutes include some of the Necks’ most delicate and considered playing this decade, and especially since their 2013 opus, Open. The first section is a classic Necks incantation—infinite piano glissandi scaling the sides of kinetic percussion and bulbous bass thuds. It conveys a restless and anxious feeling, the equivalent of watching a lab rat scurry inside some booby-trapped labyrinth. At one point, Buck divides the beat by shuffling brushes or perhaps a chain over his snare drum, evoking a snake’s threatening hiss. In the brief second section, the Necks linger inside a quiet world of organ whirrs, repetitive piano chords and bass tones, and sweeps of acoustic guitar. It is ominously still, setting up the sense that something cataclysmic is going to happen, that something has got to give. The eruption that follows—those 15 minutes when the Necks become a glorious post-rock band—is an escape valve for pressure that has nowhere else to go. It cannot last, either. The Necks allow it to collapse into a reverie of bowed bass, chiming bells, granulated piano, and crackling electronics. The drums occasionally flare up into aftershocks, but the end is mostly about surveying the damage, like waking up after a party or emerging after a tornado and deciding what’s next. As it fades into a distended hum, Body offers no clues or answers—only a little light for you to see what remains. The Necks’ iterative framework has always allowed for individual interpretation. Decorated only with minimalist art or august landscapes, their records have been like expressionist paintings, meticulously constructed but emotionally conducive to the user’s own narrative and meaning. That applies to Body, sure, but something feels different here—ominous, urgent, melancholy. All this action builds only to fall apart, leaving us in a void of silence. For a trio that has reveled in building its own little worlds for three decades, Body feels newly reflective of our space and time, a stark and jarring statement about the precipice of modern life. This is as high as the Necks have ever taken us and, as such, as low as they’ve ever left us. This time, it’s hard to listen to the Necks and hear anything but our world, sounded back.

Artist: The Necks, Album: Body, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Spoiler alerts do not apply to the Necks. For nearly three decades, the instrumental Australian trio has often followed a deceptively simple formula, both in the studio and on stage: Begin in miniature, with discrete thoughts stated patiently with grand piano, upright bass, and spare drums. Over the course of an hour or so, ratchet up the intensity and density of those phrases, expanding and interlocking them until they suggest much more than those primitive elements—perhaps a symphony, sustaining a crescendo as if holding a collective breath, or a large free-jazz ensemble, locked inside an unexpected moment of improvisational communion. There are, of course, exceptions. Sometimes they update their palette, adding a guitar here, an organ there; sometimes they invert the mold, so a monolithic sound breaks down rather than building up. But listening to the best of the Necks’ 20 albums can feel like watching a favorite movie for the 10th time; you get the plot and have even memorized some of its tricks, but changes in your own perspective let you see it anew, to discover a new thread inside a pattern you thought you knew. That said, spoiler alert: Almost halfway into Body, the trio’s engrossing and overwhelming 20th album, the Necks shoot from a slumber of pensive bass and piano into a clanging post-rock eruption, where walloped drums swing hard and heavy beneath pounded keys and shrieking electric guitar that washes everything in vivid neon streaks. The first time you hear it, you may jolt upright with surprise, as if a boogeyman has suddenly appeared from around a corner in that movie you thought you knew so well. But this is not a blip. For a quarter-hour, the Necks grind away at this theme, rending a basic rock’n’roll riff and rhythm into utter dust. Tony Buck, who tortures his drums and tames the electric guitar here, is the anchor and the aggressor. But it’s Chris Abrahams, ducking behind the cover of Buck and bassist Lloyd Swanton, who dances inside the din with boogie-woogie piano lines. Like funhouse mirrors, his harmonies reflect and reshape foundational rock chords, offering flickers of light from inside the storm. The unexpected stretch matches the delirious heights of the reborn version of Swans, when Michael Gira’s big band would lash out at a melody for half an hour, or the dizzying swirl of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, where one chord played over and over against a swinging beat somehow produces a trance. This is ecstatic music, as engrossing and powerful as anything the Necks have ever made. The middle of Body is so jarring and thrilling it runs the risk of overshadowing the rest of the album. Divided into four unequal movements, though, these 57 minutes include some of the Necks’ most delicate and considered playing this decade, and especially since their 2013 opus, Open. The first section is a classic Necks incantation—infinite piano glissandi scaling the sides of kinetic percussion and bulbous bass thuds. It conveys a restless and anxious feeling, the equivalent of watching a lab rat scurry inside some booby-trapped labyrinth. At one point, Buck divides the beat by shuffling brushes or perhaps a chain over his snare drum, evoking a snake’s threatening hiss. In the brief second section, the Necks linger inside a quiet world of organ whirrs, repetitive piano chords and bass tones, and sweeps of acoustic guitar. It is ominously still, setting up the sense that something cataclysmic is going to happen, that something has got to give. The eruption that follows—those 15 minutes when the Necks become a glorious post-rock band—is an escape valve for pressure that has nowhere else to go. It cannot last, either. The Necks allow it to collapse into a reverie of bowed bass, chiming bells, granulated piano, and crackling electronics. The drums occasionally flare up into aftershocks, but the end is mostly about surveying the damage, like waking up after a party or emerging after a tornado and deciding what’s next. As it fades into a distended hum, Body offers no clues or answers—only a little light for you to see what remains. The Necks’ iterative framework has always allowed for individual interpretation. Decorated only with minimalist art or august landscapes, their records have been like expressionist paintings, meticulously constructed but emotionally conducive to the user’s own narrative and meaning. That applies to Body, sure, but something feels different here—ominous, urgent, melancholy. All this action builds only to fall apart, leaving us in a void of silence. For a trio that has reveled in building its own little worlds for three decades, Body feels newly reflective of our space and time, a stark and jarring statement about the precipice of modern life. This is as high as the Necks have ever taken us and, as such, as low as they’ve ever left us. This time, it’s hard to listen to the Necks and hear anything but our world, sounded back."

Wale

Ambition

Rap

Jayson Greene

Ambition: Wale certainly can't be faulted for it. After his 2009 Interscope debut Attention Deficit bricked, selling a chastening 28,000 copies its first week, most presumed he would disappear soundlessly, like his fellow 2009 XXL Freshmen classmates Asher Roth and Charles Hamilton. He had failed to become a serious pop star, represent his D.C. hometown, or smuggle social consciousness into the rap mainstream-- his three bedrock campaign promises. But instead of disappearing, Wale caught the eye of Rick Ross, just as the Miami kingpin was transforming into commercial rap's all-devouring center of gravity, and climbed aboard Rozay's ascendant Maybach Music Group. Ambition, the result of a pairing nobody saw coming, inaugurates the curious second phase of Wale Folarin's increasingly fascinating career. The record is a testament to the virtue in the album's title. Never say Wale doesn't learn from mistakes: Everything that dragged down Attention Deficit, from hipster-baiting to its bewildering guest roster, has been jettisoned, along with introspection and any lingering modicum of respect for women. On Ambition, Wale is reborn as an unrepentantly shallow strip-club rapper, and the production is a gleaming phalanx of freshly minted beats from Ross' MMG assembly line. The album is unmistakably a product of Planet Boss, the lurid neon kingdom of B-movie saxes and cartoon excess in which Rick Ross has built his empire. And Ambition provides a remarkably effective demonstration in how a shpritz of Planet Boss can jumpstart a flagging rapper's fortunes. Wale's complete persona 180 will strike his original fanbase as repellantly cynical, and there is something vaguely unsavory and disorienting in the eagerness with which he embraces his new role. But it turns out that many of the gifts that got him noticed in the first place-- a nimble tongue, a high-stepping flow-- lend themselves as well to flossy nonsense about watches and women as they did to examining the sociopolitical implications of Soundscan. And Ambition is a high-velocity parade of flossy nonsense, with an extremely dense ratio of Headslaps-Per-Minute: "I'm sort of like Socrates in a Prada T"; "I aspire for awesome/ That requires some flossin'"; "Fuck rap, I get pussy off of haiku." There is a Sandra Bullock namedrop that references the 1992 sci-fi comedy Love Potion No. 9. Everything is fast-moving, breezily entertaining, and patently ridiculous. Even swilling champagne at the winners' table, however, Wale remains something less than "fun." He always had the gift for seeing the negative that you might expect from someone who structured an entire mixtape around clips of old Seinfeld dialogue, and it rears its head in a lot of ranting about silencing his critics. "Sippin Moscato with models, havin exotic dishes/ But it don't mean shit unless I know that my genre respected," he gripes on "Don't Hold Your Applause". And his smooth-loverman approach, bluntly, needs fine-tuning: on the treacly slow jam "Lotus Flower Bomb", he offers the hilariously stilted compliment "Took you forever to get dressed/ I acknowledge your effort." Uh, thanks, Wale! The production, however, from a cannily sourced collection of lesser-known beatmakers and big names, sounds uniformly incredible: Ambition is the first sign that Maybach Music Group has flowered into a full-blown production house. Mark Henry, who has produced some sledgehammer beats for Fat Joe, gives Wale the fleet-footed "Miami Nights", which pipes in some woolly sax from Ross' "Maybach Music II", and the window-fogging funk of "Double M Genius". Toomp chops up strings like early-millennium Just Blaze on "Legendary". MMG stalwart Tone P serves up, among others, the brain-rattling "Chain Music". The album will sound devastating pounding out of passing Escalades, and it is currently slated to pound out of many; early estimates peg Ambition's first-week sales at around 170,000. Those numbers will surely provide a certain vindication for Wale, but above all they signal a triumph for Maybach Music. When Ross signed Wale, I joked that Rozay must have lost his taste for money. But his imprint has taken a temperamental rapper whose name had become synonymous with commercial kryptonite and molded him into a passable pop star. Listening to Ambition, I began to wonder what delirious commercial miracles Bawse might cook up for Pill, Meek Mill, and the other seemingly unmarketable rappers on his roster: Meek Mill with a No. 1? Pill with a gold plaque? Who knows. What Ambition proves beyond a doubt, however, is that commercial rap, right now, is Ross' world. People like Wale, if they are lucky, get to live in it.

Artist: Wale, Album: Ambition, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Ambition: Wale certainly can't be faulted for it. After his 2009 Interscope debut Attention Deficit bricked, selling a chastening 28,000 copies its first week, most presumed he would disappear soundlessly, like his fellow 2009 XXL Freshmen classmates Asher Roth and Charles Hamilton. He had failed to become a serious pop star, represent his D.C. hometown, or smuggle social consciousness into the rap mainstream-- his three bedrock campaign promises. But instead of disappearing, Wale caught the eye of Rick Ross, just as the Miami kingpin was transforming into commercial rap's all-devouring center of gravity, and climbed aboard Rozay's ascendant Maybach Music Group. Ambition, the result of a pairing nobody saw coming, inaugurates the curious second phase of Wale Folarin's increasingly fascinating career. The record is a testament to the virtue in the album's title. Never say Wale doesn't learn from mistakes: Everything that dragged down Attention Deficit, from hipster-baiting to its bewildering guest roster, has been jettisoned, along with introspection and any lingering modicum of respect for women. On Ambition, Wale is reborn as an unrepentantly shallow strip-club rapper, and the production is a gleaming phalanx of freshly minted beats from Ross' MMG assembly line. The album is unmistakably a product of Planet Boss, the lurid neon kingdom of B-movie saxes and cartoon excess in which Rick Ross has built his empire. And Ambition provides a remarkably effective demonstration in how a shpritz of Planet Boss can jumpstart a flagging rapper's fortunes. Wale's complete persona 180 will strike his original fanbase as repellantly cynical, and there is something vaguely unsavory and disorienting in the eagerness with which he embraces his new role. But it turns out that many of the gifts that got him noticed in the first place-- a nimble tongue, a high-stepping flow-- lend themselves as well to flossy nonsense about watches and women as they did to examining the sociopolitical implications of Soundscan. And Ambition is a high-velocity parade of flossy nonsense, with an extremely dense ratio of Headslaps-Per-Minute: "I'm sort of like Socrates in a Prada T"; "I aspire for awesome/ That requires some flossin'"; "Fuck rap, I get pussy off of haiku." There is a Sandra Bullock namedrop that references the 1992 sci-fi comedy Love Potion No. 9. Everything is fast-moving, breezily entertaining, and patently ridiculous. Even swilling champagne at the winners' table, however, Wale remains something less than "fun." He always had the gift for seeing the negative that you might expect from someone who structured an entire mixtape around clips of old Seinfeld dialogue, and it rears its head in a lot of ranting about silencing his critics. "Sippin Moscato with models, havin exotic dishes/ But it don't mean shit unless I know that my genre respected," he gripes on "Don't Hold Your Applause". And his smooth-loverman approach, bluntly, needs fine-tuning: on the treacly slow jam "Lotus Flower Bomb", he offers the hilariously stilted compliment "Took you forever to get dressed/ I acknowledge your effort." Uh, thanks, Wale! The production, however, from a cannily sourced collection of lesser-known beatmakers and big names, sounds uniformly incredible: Ambition is the first sign that Maybach Music Group has flowered into a full-blown production house. Mark Henry, who has produced some sledgehammer beats for Fat Joe, gives Wale the fleet-footed "Miami Nights", which pipes in some woolly sax from Ross' "Maybach Music II", and the window-fogging funk of "Double M Genius". Toomp chops up strings like early-millennium Just Blaze on "Legendary". MMG stalwart Tone P serves up, among others, the brain-rattling "Chain Music". The album will sound devastating pounding out of passing Escalades, and it is currently slated to pound out of many; early estimates peg Ambition's first-week sales at around 170,000. Those numbers will surely provide a certain vindication for Wale, but above all they signal a triumph for Maybach Music. When Ross signed Wale, I joked that Rozay must have lost his taste for money. But his imprint has taken a temperamental rapper whose name had become synonymous with commercial kryptonite and molded him into a passable pop star. Listening to Ambition, I began to wonder what delirious commercial miracles Bawse might cook up for Pill, Meek Mill, and the other seemingly unmarketable rappers on his roster: Meek Mill with a No. 1? Pill with a gold plaque? Who knows. What Ambition proves beyond a doubt, however, is that commercial rap, right now, is Ross' world. People like Wale, if they are lucky, get to live in it."

Desertshore

Drawing of Threes

Stephen M. Deusner

San Francisco's Desertshore ostensibly took their name from Nico's 1970 album, the one where she began writing her own songs and exerting more control over her sound and style. A decidedly more personal than commercial album-- with a few songs in German and one sung by her son-- Desertshore was not a hit, at least not on par with her debut or her albums with the Velvet Underground, but it continues to attract as many listeners as it repels. Similarly, Desertshore the band represents guitarist Phil Carney's first step away from sideman status, after a stint in Red House Painters and a few appearances on albums and tours by former Painters frontman Mark Kozelek. Carney favors patient, shimmery repetitions of notes that establish tone instead of melody, and the group, which also includes pianist Chris Connolly and a rotation of percussionists, trades in glacial instrumentals that echo the sepiatone reminiscences of the best Painters tracks. Desertshore, however, do not represent a conscious attempt by Carney to escape that band's orbit; it's less a solo or even a duo project than it is a collaborative entity. Kozelek signed the band to his own Caldo Verde label and contributed to their 2010 debut, Drifting Your Majesty. Now, almost inevitably, Kozelek has more or less joined the group: On their follow-up, Drawing of Threes, he plays barely noticeable basslines and adds lyrics and vocals to six of these 10 songs. It may be as close to a Red House Painters reunion as we will get-- at least until Kozelek reconvenes the original Sun Kil Moon line-up. As a result of Kozelek's participation, Drawing of Threes will sound deeply familiar to anyone who's heard any of the bands mentioned so far. His voice remains distinctively hollow-eyed, his vocal melodies sound as eloquently understated as ever, and the guitars ring in a darkly ruminative mood that sets Desertshore in the same 3 a.m. universe as Old Ramon and Ghosts of Great Highway. In other words, Kozelek dominates this album. Of the four instrumental tracks, only one-- the standout "Matchlight Arcana"-- exceeds the two-minute mark, while the others sound like soundtrack interstitials consigned to the album's second half. It's an odd dynamic: the guest plays the lead, the name band becomes the support. Whether that speaks to Desertshore's modesty or timidity is never quite clear. Still, it's obvious why the musicians gravitate toward one another, not only here but on previous tours and Kozelek solo records: Their particular instruments suit each other evocatively, each bringing out something intriguing and perhaps unnoticed in the other. In that regard, Drawing is best when it casts the familiar elements in a new light. "Vernon Forrest" sets Kozelek's vocals against Connolly's sunlight-on-water piano ripples, like a demo for the vox-and-keys album you know Kozelek has in him. "Randy Quaid" is a laundry list of half-remembered summertime totems that includes "Immigrant Song" and the troubled Vacation actor and manages to rhyme "Spalding Gray" with "the Brothers Quay." It's an especially playful song for a notoriously depressive singer-songwriter, and Carney's chiming guitar evokes a specific perspective rather than a general sense of nostalgia. Crucially, it sounds more like the memory of summer than summer itself, which lends the song a bittersweet tone. Because Drawing sustains a similar mood across 10 tracks, the album sounds cohesive, if not exactly revelatory. For Kozelek, this is a not unpleasantly minor effort that allows him to stretch out a bit, but it only hints at what all Carney and Connolly can do together.

Artist: Desertshore, Album: Drawing of Threes, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "San Francisco's Desertshore ostensibly took their name from Nico's 1970 album, the one where she began writing her own songs and exerting more control over her sound and style. A decidedly more personal than commercial album-- with a few songs in German and one sung by her son-- Desertshore was not a hit, at least not on par with her debut or her albums with the Velvet Underground, but it continues to attract as many listeners as it repels. Similarly, Desertshore the band represents guitarist Phil Carney's first step away from sideman status, after a stint in Red House Painters and a few appearances on albums and tours by former Painters frontman Mark Kozelek. Carney favors patient, shimmery repetitions of notes that establish tone instead of melody, and the group, which also includes pianist Chris Connolly and a rotation of percussionists, trades in glacial instrumentals that echo the sepiatone reminiscences of the best Painters tracks. Desertshore, however, do not represent a conscious attempt by Carney to escape that band's orbit; it's less a solo or even a duo project than it is a collaborative entity. Kozelek signed the band to his own Caldo Verde label and contributed to their 2010 debut, Drifting Your Majesty. Now, almost inevitably, Kozelek has more or less joined the group: On their follow-up, Drawing of Threes, he plays barely noticeable basslines and adds lyrics and vocals to six of these 10 songs. It may be as close to a Red House Painters reunion as we will get-- at least until Kozelek reconvenes the original Sun Kil Moon line-up. As a result of Kozelek's participation, Drawing of Threes will sound deeply familiar to anyone who's heard any of the bands mentioned so far. His voice remains distinctively hollow-eyed, his vocal melodies sound as eloquently understated as ever, and the guitars ring in a darkly ruminative mood that sets Desertshore in the same 3 a.m. universe as Old Ramon and Ghosts of Great Highway. In other words, Kozelek dominates this album. Of the four instrumental tracks, only one-- the standout "Matchlight Arcana"-- exceeds the two-minute mark, while the others sound like soundtrack interstitials consigned to the album's second half. It's an odd dynamic: the guest plays the lead, the name band becomes the support. Whether that speaks to Desertshore's modesty or timidity is never quite clear. Still, it's obvious why the musicians gravitate toward one another, not only here but on previous tours and Kozelek solo records: Their particular instruments suit each other evocatively, each bringing out something intriguing and perhaps unnoticed in the other. In that regard, Drawing is best when it casts the familiar elements in a new light. "Vernon Forrest" sets Kozelek's vocals against Connolly's sunlight-on-water piano ripples, like a demo for the vox-and-keys album you know Kozelek has in him. "Randy Quaid" is a laundry list of half-remembered summertime totems that includes "Immigrant Song" and the troubled Vacation actor and manages to rhyme "Spalding Gray" with "the Brothers Quay." It's an especially playful song for a notoriously depressive singer-songwriter, and Carney's chiming guitar evokes a specific perspective rather than a general sense of nostalgia. Crucially, it sounds more like the memory of summer than summer itself, which lends the song a bittersweet tone. Because Drawing sustains a similar mood across 10 tracks, the album sounds cohesive, if not exactly revelatory. For Kozelek, this is a not unpleasantly minor effort that allows him to stretch out a bit, but it only hints at what all Carney and Connolly can do together."

San Fermin

San Fermin

Rock

Jeremy D. Larson

After graduating with a degree in music from Yale, Ellis Ludwig-Leone stole away to the Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies to write his self-titled debut LP under the moniker San Fermin. For six weeks at this artist space on the border between Alberta and British Columbia, the composer filled pages with arrangements, took afternoon walks up the mountain, and came down to blacken the pages some more. In that isolated environment, with years of classical training, inspiration from working with Nico Muhly, and a playlist that included the avant pop of Sufjan Stevens and Dirty Projectors, Ludwig-Leone's ideas started to only fit on grand scales. The final score for his debut required over 20 players, including a string quartet, a brass quartet, a vibraphone, and operatic sopranos. Coupled with inspiration from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (Ludwig-Leone grabbed the name "San Fermin" from the famous Pamplona festival where they hold the Running of the Bulls), William Henry Hudson romance novels, and the self-imposed profundity that comes with being an anxious love-lorn 22-year-old college graduate, San Fermin arrives as an ambitious chamber pop debut. It’s a loose concept album that grazes, and sometimes dives into the complexities of young love, and slips in and out of dreams that often are just as absurd as the idea of a relationship actually working out. Ludwig-Leone wrote lyrics for the baritone voice of Allen Tate, as well as the breathy sopranos of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of the band Lucius. The three interweave parts across the album, trading off leads, and joining back together for ornate duets. Some initial thoughts may run to how much Tate sounds like the National's Matt Berninger, not just in register, but in cadence, inflection, and sometimes lyrics. Or how Wolfe and Laessig’s whispery, hyper-accurate voices recall the women in Dirty Projectors' tight harmonies as well as the kind of choirs used on* Illinois.* The mosaic of sounds on San Fermin align with much of what has often been done before in chamber pop and indie, and on a song-by-song basis there’s plenty of side-eyeing. But the album works best as a cycle, as a series of movements rather than individual songs. In that regard, Ludwig-Leone’s world, imbued with a fanciful style that balances the pop and the obtuse, is very much his own. The two “characters” Leone created are representations of ideologies, with Tate’s low voice handling the maudlin pleas and Wolfe and Laessig working together as his dry, world-weary counterweight. “I will tie to my body some roses/ I will fly till I get you alive” Tate sings on “Methuselah” an early-morning acoustic ballad in the first half of the album. It’s a bit much, but soon enough the female character undercuts the purple prose: She’s introduced with the line “I wouldn’t worry/ Your melodramas are embarrassing” on the aptly named “Crueler Kind”. The conversation between the two places San Fermin directly in the current of high-stakes love. At its most turbulent, Ludwig-Leone writes palms-up climaxes deftly executed at three tentpoles on the album: the early highlight “Sonsick”, the finale “Deadalus (What We Have)”, and the beating heart of the album, “Bar”. Of all the exalting pleas for emotional catharsis, “Bar” is by far the most successful. On the track, the thrill between the two is like "a drug in the arm/ makes you weak when you’re young," a line that's sung in a thick blanket of harmonies between the singers. It’s one of those perfect 21st Century indie arena songs, the kind you play through your iPhone with a crush, the ear buds split between the two of you while you watch fireworks go off in the distance. That said, when you hear Tate sing “Dead of the night/ I’m alone with the tigers” you might have a difficult time not also hearing “It’s a terrible love/ and I’m walking with spiders.” Hiding around the three peaks are several interludes, and it's in these mini neoclassical compositions that Ludwig-Leone really shines. The pieces offer a rest from the broad-spectrum emotions found in the proper songs, also texturing the album with more curious sounds like spitting cellos, a xylophone under dissonant string drones, and a surprise crackling of a faulty synth patch. They manage to cut down some of the weight of the sung pieces, casting them in a more unique light, while giving San Fermin much needed tension and even a bit of violence. The menagerie of baroque sounds on the album can be a bit more decorative than purposeful, but under the brambles, it's really just a story of two people wrestling with the love that exists between them. There’s a recurring phrase peppered throughout San Fermin, something about falling asleep in someone’s arms. It’s hard to say exactly what happens to these two people in the end, as the album closes with a ghostly Gustav Mahler-type epilogue that leaves both the music and the story unresolved, but San Fermin is less about a narrative plot and more about abstract ideas and those lucid dreams that happen just before sleep.

Artist: San Fermin, Album: San Fermin, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "After graduating with a degree in music from Yale, Ellis Ludwig-Leone stole away to the Banff Centre in the Canadian Rockies to write his self-titled debut LP under the moniker San Fermin. For six weeks at this artist space on the border between Alberta and British Columbia, the composer filled pages with arrangements, took afternoon walks up the mountain, and came down to blacken the pages some more. In that isolated environment, with years of classical training, inspiration from working with Nico Muhly, and a playlist that included the avant pop of Sufjan Stevens and Dirty Projectors, Ludwig-Leone's ideas started to only fit on grand scales. The final score for his debut required over 20 players, including a string quartet, a brass quartet, a vibraphone, and operatic sopranos. Coupled with inspiration from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (Ludwig-Leone grabbed the name "San Fermin" from the famous Pamplona festival where they hold the Running of the Bulls), William Henry Hudson romance novels, and the self-imposed profundity that comes with being an anxious love-lorn 22-year-old college graduate, San Fermin arrives as an ambitious chamber pop debut. It’s a loose concept album that grazes, and sometimes dives into the complexities of young love, and slips in and out of dreams that often are just as absurd as the idea of a relationship actually working out. Ludwig-Leone wrote lyrics for the baritone voice of Allen Tate, as well as the breathy sopranos of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of the band Lucius. The three interweave parts across the album, trading off leads, and joining back together for ornate duets. Some initial thoughts may run to how much Tate sounds like the National's Matt Berninger, not just in register, but in cadence, inflection, and sometimes lyrics. Or how Wolfe and Laessig’s whispery, hyper-accurate voices recall the women in Dirty Projectors' tight harmonies as well as the kind of choirs used on* Illinois.* The mosaic of sounds on San Fermin align with much of what has often been done before in chamber pop and indie, and on a song-by-song basis there’s plenty of side-eyeing. But the album works best as a cycle, as a series of movements rather than individual songs. In that regard, Ludwig-Leone’s world, imbued with a fanciful style that balances the pop and the obtuse, is very much his own. The two “characters” Leone created are representations of ideologies, with Tate’s low voice handling the maudlin pleas and Wolfe and Laessig working together as his dry, world-weary counterweight. “I will tie to my body some roses/ I will fly till I get you alive” Tate sings on “Methuselah” an early-morning acoustic ballad in the first half of the album. It’s a bit much, but soon enough the female character undercuts the purple prose: She’s introduced with the line “I wouldn’t worry/ Your melodramas are embarrassing” on the aptly named “Crueler Kind”. The conversation between the two places San Fermin directly in the current of high-stakes love. At its most turbulent, Ludwig-Leone writes palms-up climaxes deftly executed at three tentpoles on the album: the early highlight “Sonsick”, the finale “Deadalus (What We Have)”, and the beating heart of the album, “Bar”. Of all the exalting pleas for emotional catharsis, “Bar” is by far the most successful. On the track, the thrill between the two is like "a drug in the arm/ makes you weak when you’re young," a line that's sung in a thick blanket of harmonies between the singers. It’s one of those perfect 21st Century indie arena songs, the kind you play through your iPhone with a crush, the ear buds split between the two of you while you watch fireworks go off in the distance. That said, when you hear Tate sing “Dead of the night/ I’m alone with the tigers” you might have a difficult time not also hearing “It’s a terrible love/ and I’m walking with spiders.” Hiding around the three peaks are several interludes, and it's in these mini neoclassical compositions that Ludwig-Leone really shines. The pieces offer a rest from the broad-spectrum emotions found in the proper songs, also texturing the album with more curious sounds like spitting cellos, a xylophone under dissonant string drones, and a surprise crackling of a faulty synth patch. They manage to cut down some of the weight of the sung pieces, casting them in a more unique light, while giving San Fermin much needed tension and even a bit of violence. The menagerie of baroque sounds on the album can be a bit more decorative than purposeful, but under the brambles, it's really just a story of two people wrestling with the love that exists between them. There’s a recurring phrase peppered throughout San Fermin, something about falling asleep in someone’s arms. It’s hard to say exactly what happens to these two people in the end, as the album closes with a ghostly Gustav Mahler-type epilogue that leaves both the music and the story unresolved, but San Fermin is less about a narrative plot and more about abstract ideas and those lucid dreams that happen just before sleep."

Rosie Thomas

When We Were Small

Rock

Brad Haywood

Every review I've read of Rosie Thomas-- of anything she does-- makes sure to mention her stand-up alter-ego, Sheila, an extremely self-conscious social outcast who wears coke-bottle glasses and a neckbrace. Some are thrown off by the comedy act, especially juxtaposed with Rosie's otherwise earnest and passionate stage show. But me, I find it adorable. In all honesty, I find Rosie Thomas adorable. I get a tingle just thinking of her. Rosie, if you're out there, I love you. Now make me babies. Have I said too much? Okay, since the cat's out of the bag, I'll just admit it. At 25 years of age, I have a crush on someone I've never met (although Rosie must share my affections: I also have a non-sexual man-crush on Brad Pitt). Rosie won me over at a concert last fall, when all I knew of the young songstress was that she'd made a cameo appearance on Damien Jurado's "Parking Lot" (off Ghost of David). I didn't like the tune that much, but recognizing her association with Jurado's low-key, honest folk-pop, I felt I couldn't lose. In the final analysis, I lost two things: jack and shit. The show was amazing, really, a reminder that some indie rockers can actually sing. Rosie's voice is stunning-- a delicate timbre, a beautiful hushed passion, with the requisite lung-power when she needs to drive home a melody. If singing range were a climbing rope, Rosie would ring the bell, and ring it often. To hit the high notes, Thomas employs a gorgeous (and apparent) transition to falsetto. You can tell she likes that shift, and the falsetto itself, as a number of the tunes on her album make that vocal acrobatic a prominent part of the melody (e.g. "Lorraine"). Moreover, in concert, Thomas obviously had a keen sense of dynamics-- during the quieter moments it became clear that, except for Thomas, the venue was in utter silence, captivated. Until she releases another album, however, I must romanticize my love for Rosie. The soundtrack to my dreams will encompass only a few of the songs on When We Were Small, notably "Farewell" and "Bicycle Tricycle," the most sparse and fragile. I like to imagine Rosie alone on stage with a piano, a guitar, and otherwise utter silence. Her sparse compositions reveal a stunning vulnerability, her voice allowed the full measure of its expressiveness. An album with ten tracks of that sort of pure, barren indie-folk would be spellbinding. It's not unfortunate so much as it is just a fact, but much of the rest of the album is more pedestrian, weighing in with melodies and compositions that tend towards the "pop" end of the folk-pop spectrum. Like "Finish Line," for example, which harks of Sarah McLachlan, or the darker "I Run," which features a hackneyed melody and orchestration that fails to sell the mood (not to mention that the repeated lyrics "I run far from you" are a tad weak). None of it ramps up the tempo much, or adds density to the mix-- it's not bad stuff, just somewhat unexceptional. There are some who will fall in love with this album. Others will fall asleep to it. Both will agree that it's a solid debut, long on talent but maybe a bit short on melody or lacking in appropriate production. I had big expectations, some of which were met, but others of which were disappointed. Nonetheless, I remain devoted. Now make me babies.

Artist: Rosie Thomas, Album: When We Were Small, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Every review I've read of Rosie Thomas-- of anything she does-- makes sure to mention her stand-up alter-ego, Sheila, an extremely self-conscious social outcast who wears coke-bottle glasses and a neckbrace. Some are thrown off by the comedy act, especially juxtaposed with Rosie's otherwise earnest and passionate stage show. But me, I find it adorable. In all honesty, I find Rosie Thomas adorable. I get a tingle just thinking of her. Rosie, if you're out there, I love you. Now make me babies. Have I said too much? Okay, since the cat's out of the bag, I'll just admit it. At 25 years of age, I have a crush on someone I've never met (although Rosie must share my affections: I also have a non-sexual man-crush on Brad Pitt). Rosie won me over at a concert last fall, when all I knew of the young songstress was that she'd made a cameo appearance on Damien Jurado's "Parking Lot" (off Ghost of David). I didn't like the tune that much, but recognizing her association with Jurado's low-key, honest folk-pop, I felt I couldn't lose. In the final analysis, I lost two things: jack and shit. The show was amazing, really, a reminder that some indie rockers can actually sing. Rosie's voice is stunning-- a delicate timbre, a beautiful hushed passion, with the requisite lung-power when she needs to drive home a melody. If singing range were a climbing rope, Rosie would ring the bell, and ring it often. To hit the high notes, Thomas employs a gorgeous (and apparent) transition to falsetto. You can tell she likes that shift, and the falsetto itself, as a number of the tunes on her album make that vocal acrobatic a prominent part of the melody (e.g. "Lorraine"). Moreover, in concert, Thomas obviously had a keen sense of dynamics-- during the quieter moments it became clear that, except for Thomas, the venue was in utter silence, captivated. Until she releases another album, however, I must romanticize my love for Rosie. The soundtrack to my dreams will encompass only a few of the songs on When We Were Small, notably "Farewell" and "Bicycle Tricycle," the most sparse and fragile. I like to imagine Rosie alone on stage with a piano, a guitar, and otherwise utter silence. Her sparse compositions reveal a stunning vulnerability, her voice allowed the full measure of its expressiveness. An album with ten tracks of that sort of pure, barren indie-folk would be spellbinding. It's not unfortunate so much as it is just a fact, but much of the rest of the album is more pedestrian, weighing in with melodies and compositions that tend towards the "pop" end of the folk-pop spectrum. Like "Finish Line," for example, which harks of Sarah McLachlan, or the darker "I Run," which features a hackneyed melody and orchestration that fails to sell the mood (not to mention that the repeated lyrics "I run far from you" are a tad weak). None of it ramps up the tempo much, or adds density to the mix-- it's not bad stuff, just somewhat unexceptional. There are some who will fall in love with this album. Others will fall asleep to it. Both will agree that it's a solid debut, long on talent but maybe a bit short on melody or lacking in appropriate production. I had big expectations, some of which were met, but others of which were disappointed. Nonetheless, I remain devoted. Now make me babies."

This Heat

Deceit

Experimental

Dominique Leone

This Heat were many things, but popular was never one of them. It's almost funny to see this record getting so much deserved attention recently due to its reissue, because before now, I only knew a few people who had even heard of the thing. It's especially strange to see all the praise in light of Gareth Williams' death on Christmas Eve last year. He wasn't a person who ever really wanted to be famous or even known as a musician, and yet will doubtlessly be better known henceforth than he'd ever been during This Heat's existence. English drummer/vocalist Charles Hayward (fresh from working with Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera in the avant-prog/fusion outfit Quiet Sun) formed This Heat with Charles Bullen (guitar, clarinet, viola, etc.) and Williams (bass, keyboards, tape manipulation, etc.) around 1975. Hayward had worked with a fairly broad array of jazz and prog bands (and post-This Heat, would continue to do so), though Bullen and Williams were much less traveled, even as they were accomplished musicians. Hayward and Bullen had been playing together as a duo for a few years prior to This Heat, and began playing with Williams only after Hayward completed his duties with Quiet Sun. Williams would actually leave the band before this album, Deceit, was released, and maintain a very busy career as an engineer for John Barry and various symphonic recordings. His interest in recording techniques may have provided the impetus for This Heat to experiment with tape loops and editing, which would play very large roles in their studio output. This Heat's sound was something like a confrontation of prog, free-jazz and contemporary electronic music (think early Stockhausen, not Kraftwerk). They often get lumped into the post-punk (or even just "punk") camp, for no better reason other than they started at the same time. They certainly sounded as if they were angry about something, and taking a glance at the lyric sheet for this album (and you'd better, as often the vocals seem more musical element than communicative force), they had fairly intense political/social statements to make-- though pinning down their position is often as hard as pinning down their sound. In any case, they were "progressive" in the literal sense of the word, and though they came up with the first wave of punk, they didn't really sound like anyone else of the time (save a few other English radicals like Henry Cow or Art Bears, occasionally). Deceit was the band's second and final album (not counting posthumous releases, including the excellent BBC session release Made Available). As odd as it sounds on the surface, it's actually the more immediately appealing of their two albums, at least partially because of a greater emphasis on drive and something like song structure (though the music here is quite a ways from typical "songs"). The vocals-- mostly handled by Hayward-- were probably the weakest link for This Heat, though they don't really take away from the music so much as push it into yet a stranger realm. "Sleep," the first track, is actually an atypically calm song, almost like a fractured lullaby. Layers of what sound like African percussion, and a simple piano line support a very low-key melody, wherein lines like, "Softness is a thing called comfort/ Doesn't cost much to keep in touch/ We never forget you have a choice," make me wonder if there isn't some kind of subversive commentary about consumer ethics and advertising at work. This shortly leads to the rave-up "Paper Hats" with its brawny, pouncing rhythms and subtly acrobatic guitar lines. This is a piece with several sections, none of them having too much to do with each other. Some, like the lengthy outro, sound like archetypical math-rock, with repetitive, complicated rhythmic patterns, while the brief middle section is more viscerally dynamic, or perhaps even "noisy." Lyrically, the band was as eclectic: "Well, what do we expect?/ Paper hats?/ Or maybe even roses?/ The sound of explosions?/ Oh no." I'd like to know what they expected, but I'm not sure what they got instead, and am certainly in the dark about to whom they protested. "Triumph" is a Dadaist collage of various noises, musical and otherwise. There's a brief accordion intro, leading to what sounds like a kazoo lament accompanied by someone scraping a few pieces of metal and wood together. Then, Hayward mentions something about the angles being reversed, and the garbage symphony makes its grand conclusion-- all in less than three minutes. Perhaps this was a prologue for "S.P.Q.R.," which throws out any ideas of abstract noodling in favor of pure rock expression. The high-speed beat threatens to overpower a droning duo vocal line ("We organize via property as power/ Slavehood and freedom imperial purple/ Pax Romana!"). This track doesn't run through a myriad of stylistic changes; it makes its case via sheer persistence. Hayward's interest in all manner of world rhythms and percussion manifested itself in tracks like "Shrink Wrap" and "Independence" (words provided by one Thomas Jefferson), where kinetic drum orchestras and ancient rain forest flutes and strings lent the music an otherworldly quality which further removed it from recordings by This Heat's angry peers. "Radio Prague" features more electronic trickery, and what sounds like someone actually tuning in and out of a Czech radio broadcast. There's a steady pitter-patter underneath, and some rather dark drones in the background (along with a haunting cello), and though I'm tempted to say this could have influenced Godspeed You Black Emperor!, it's more likely an isolated vignette. In a way, the entire album seems removed from typical musical happenings-- even the underground. Maybe that's why it's taken so long for This Heat to start receiving their due. The band got its digs in once more for "A New Kind of Water," expressing the rage that seems to have been implied throughout the record, though rarely shown directly. Phrases like, "We were told to expect more/ And now that we've got more/ We want more, we want more," offer some of the only clear ideas about the feelings behind Deceit, and the music is appropriately insistent (crashing drums, wailing group vocals, very precise, discordant guitar lines). Over the years, there have been bands to play as aggressively, or even as strangely, but very few have been able to rise from their collective influences and histories to create music so singularly distinctive and inspiring. I don't know that Hayward, Bullen and Williams were trying to inspire (and that they debated over whether to release

Artist: This Heat, Album: Deceit, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 9.0 Album review: "This Heat were many things, but popular was never one of them. It's almost funny to see this record getting so much deserved attention recently due to its reissue, because before now, I only knew a few people who had even heard of the thing. It's especially strange to see all the praise in light of Gareth Williams' death on Christmas Eve last year. He wasn't a person who ever really wanted to be famous or even known as a musician, and yet will doubtlessly be better known henceforth than he'd ever been during This Heat's existence. English drummer/vocalist Charles Hayward (fresh from working with Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera in the avant-prog/fusion outfit Quiet Sun) formed This Heat with Charles Bullen (guitar, clarinet, viola, etc.) and Williams (bass, keyboards, tape manipulation, etc.) around 1975. Hayward had worked with a fairly broad array of jazz and prog bands (and post-This Heat, would continue to do so), though Bullen and Williams were much less traveled, even as they were accomplished musicians. Hayward and Bullen had been playing together as a duo for a few years prior to This Heat, and began playing with Williams only after Hayward completed his duties with Quiet Sun. Williams would actually leave the band before this album, Deceit, was released, and maintain a very busy career as an engineer for John Barry and various symphonic recordings. His interest in recording techniques may have provided the impetus for This Heat to experiment with tape loops and editing, which would play very large roles in their studio output. This Heat's sound was something like a confrontation of prog, free-jazz and contemporary electronic music (think early Stockhausen, not Kraftwerk). They often get lumped into the post-punk (or even just "punk") camp, for no better reason other than they started at the same time. They certainly sounded as if they were angry about something, and taking a glance at the lyric sheet for this album (and you'd better, as often the vocals seem more musical element than communicative force), they had fairly intense political/social statements to make-- though pinning down their position is often as hard as pinning down their sound. In any case, they were "progressive" in the literal sense of the word, and though they came up with the first wave of punk, they didn't really sound like anyone else of the time (save a few other English radicals like Henry Cow or Art Bears, occasionally). Deceit was the band's second and final album (not counting posthumous releases, including the excellent BBC session release Made Available). As odd as it sounds on the surface, it's actually the more immediately appealing of their two albums, at least partially because of a greater emphasis on drive and something like song structure (though the music here is quite a ways from typical "songs"). The vocals-- mostly handled by Hayward-- were probably the weakest link for This Heat, though they don't really take away from the music so much as push it into yet a stranger realm. "Sleep," the first track, is actually an atypically calm song, almost like a fractured lullaby. Layers of what sound like African percussion, and a simple piano line support a very low-key melody, wherein lines like, "Softness is a thing called comfort/ Doesn't cost much to keep in touch/ We never forget you have a choice," make me wonder if there isn't some kind of subversive commentary about consumer ethics and advertising at work. This shortly leads to the rave-up "Paper Hats" with its brawny, pouncing rhythms and subtly acrobatic guitar lines. This is a piece with several sections, none of them having too much to do with each other. Some, like the lengthy outro, sound like archetypical math-rock, with repetitive, complicated rhythmic patterns, while the brief middle section is more viscerally dynamic, or perhaps even "noisy." Lyrically, the band was as eclectic: "Well, what do we expect?/ Paper hats?/ Or maybe even roses?/ The sound of explosions?/ Oh no." I'd like to know what they expected, but I'm not sure what they got instead, and am certainly in the dark about to whom they protested. "Triumph" is a Dadaist collage of various noises, musical and otherwise. There's a brief accordion intro, leading to what sounds like a kazoo lament accompanied by someone scraping a few pieces of metal and wood together. Then, Hayward mentions something about the angles being reversed, and the garbage symphony makes its grand conclusion-- all in less than three minutes. Perhaps this was a prologue for "S.P.Q.R.," which throws out any ideas of abstract noodling in favor of pure rock expression. The high-speed beat threatens to overpower a droning duo vocal line ("We organize via property as power/ Slavehood and freedom imperial purple/ Pax Romana!"). This track doesn't run through a myriad of stylistic changes; it makes its case via sheer persistence. Hayward's interest in all manner of world rhythms and percussion manifested itself in tracks like "Shrink Wrap" and "Independence" (words provided by one Thomas Jefferson), where kinetic drum orchestras and ancient rain forest flutes and strings lent the music an otherworldly quality which further removed it from recordings by This Heat's angry peers. "Radio Prague" features more electronic trickery, and what sounds like someone actually tuning in and out of a Czech radio broadcast. There's a steady pitter-patter underneath, and some rather dark drones in the background (along with a haunting cello), and though I'm tempted to say this could have influenced Godspeed You Black Emperor!, it's more likely an isolated vignette. In a way, the entire album seems removed from typical musical happenings-- even the underground. Maybe that's why it's taken so long for This Heat to start receiving their due. The band got its digs in once more for "A New Kind of Water," expressing the rage that seems to have been implied throughout the record, though rarely shown directly. Phrases like, "We were told to expect more/ And now that we've got more/ We want more, we want more," offer some of the only clear ideas about the feelings behind Deceit, and the music is appropriately insistent (crashing drums, wailing group vocals, very precise, discordant guitar lines). Over the years, there have been bands to play as aggressively, or even as strangely, but very few have been able to rise from their collective influences and histories to create music so singularly distinctive and inspiring. I don't know that Hayward, Bullen and Williams were trying to inspire (and that they debated over whether to release"