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She & Him

Volume One

Rock

Grayson Currin

The grammatical inequality in the band name She & Him is significant, even if it's a joke or a mistake: The female with the nominative pronoun is Zooey Deschanel, the actress whose credits include Elf, All the Real Girls, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The male with the objective pronoun is Matt Ward, the John Fahey and Hank Williams acolyte who in eight years has risen from indie label obscurity to, arguably, the three or four spot in the active Merge Records rotation. Both Deschanel and Ward have their own successful careers, but on Volume One-- the first offering from their new collaborative band She & Him-- him is less than she. Although Ward produced the record and closet songwriter Deschanel only started sharing her songs at his request, the album succeeds mostly because those songs feel like familiar AM radio classics and because her voice offers instant emotional empathy. Ward's tasteful playing and sparse arrangements just serve to make something good that much better. She also narrates the 11 songs here, all about her changing relations to an anonymous him: On the charming "Sentimental Heart", she's wrecked, crying on the floor, lonely without him. One song later during "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?", she's sitting on the shelf, playfully waiting for him to come over. On the petulant "Take It Back", she doesn't want to be loved, fooled, or wooed by him. One song later during "I Was Made for You", she's giddy over the smiling him in the street. The him in question changes throughout Volume One, but she relates to the masculine through a consistently naïve romanticism, whether it's riding a tandem bicycle alone on the somehow upbeat "Black Hole" or cheerfully telling girlfriends that love is a glorious but interminable conquest on "This Is Not a Test". Aside from two duets and obscurant backing vocals on one track, Ward serves as him only sonically, servicing the songs from the wings; thematically, Deschanel sings about a him that's not Ward at all. But Ward and the team he gathered for two Portland, Ore., sessions in Fall 2006 and Winter 2007-- Norfolk & Western/Decemberists/M. Ward drummer Rachel Blumberg, Saddle Creek production mainstay Mike Mogis, Devotchka violinist Tom Hagerman-- are invaluable to Volume One. Deschanel writes old pop songs built around black-and-white, simplistic emotions and dotted with vintage sexual innuendo (see "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" and "Black Hole"). Her precious delivery suggests Loretta Lynn or any number of jazz vocalists minus a bit of brio, and the band-- which either builds gradually into its walls of sound or keeps things spartan and pristine-- helps the songs make sense. Ward provides an anxious staccato string arrangement and a Mellotron hum on "Sentimental Heart", teasing an optimism that, like Deschanel's romanticism, is always denied. Above Mogis' plaintive steel sighs and Ward's indifferent acoustic waltz on "Change Is Hard", her fragility becomes personal and endearing. Blumberg's big drums and Ward's stuttering electric line offer a platform for her elation on "I Was Made For You", and when Ward trails her voice on "You Really Got a Hold on Me", he's the perfect complement, his voice the shadow behind her sunlight. Deschanel is more convincing when she's on an extreme end of romance-- either losing it or being swept into it-- than when she's trying to rationalize it. She makes that mistake three times on Volume One. The other sense of disappointment here comes from the promise Volume One suggests but doesn't deliver: Deschanel's writing is too canny ("Why do you edit? Give me credit") and her voice too natural (listen for that Feist-like crack on "Change is Hard") to sit on the tribute shelf very long. Granted, the retro exuberance here will be what sells She & Him to those beyond the indie realm. Don't be surprised when Garrison Keillor jumps on board. But with this successful introduction and the admitted homage to influences it entails finished, Deschanel has a solid foundation for building her own classic sound. After all, she's a readymade star who's already found a pretty fantastic facilitator in him.

Artist: She & Him, Album: Volume One, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "The grammatical inequality in the band name She & Him is significant, even if it's a joke or a mistake: The female with the nominative pronoun is Zooey Deschanel, the actress whose credits include Elf, All the Real Girls, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The male with the objective pronoun is Matt Ward, the John Fahey and Hank Williams acolyte who in eight years has risen from indie label obscurity to, arguably, the three or four spot in the active Merge Records rotation. Both Deschanel and Ward have their own successful careers, but on Volume One-- the first offering from their new collaborative band She & Him-- him is less than she. Although Ward produced the record and closet songwriter Deschanel only started sharing her songs at his request, the album succeeds mostly because those songs feel like familiar AM radio classics and because her voice offers instant emotional empathy. Ward's tasteful playing and sparse arrangements just serve to make something good that much better. She also narrates the 11 songs here, all about her changing relations to an anonymous him: On the charming "Sentimental Heart", she's wrecked, crying on the floor, lonely without him. One song later during "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?", she's sitting on the shelf, playfully waiting for him to come over. On the petulant "Take It Back", she doesn't want to be loved, fooled, or wooed by him. One song later during "I Was Made for You", she's giddy over the smiling him in the street. The him in question changes throughout Volume One, but she relates to the masculine through a consistently naïve romanticism, whether it's riding a tandem bicycle alone on the somehow upbeat "Black Hole" or cheerfully telling girlfriends that love is a glorious but interminable conquest on "This Is Not a Test". Aside from two duets and obscurant backing vocals on one track, Ward serves as him only sonically, servicing the songs from the wings; thematically, Deschanel sings about a him that's not Ward at all. But Ward and the team he gathered for two Portland, Ore., sessions in Fall 2006 and Winter 2007-- Norfolk & Western/Decemberists/M. Ward drummer Rachel Blumberg, Saddle Creek production mainstay Mike Mogis, Devotchka violinist Tom Hagerman-- are invaluable to Volume One. Deschanel writes old pop songs built around black-and-white, simplistic emotions and dotted with vintage sexual innuendo (see "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" and "Black Hole"). Her precious delivery suggests Loretta Lynn or any number of jazz vocalists minus a bit of brio, and the band-- which either builds gradually into its walls of sound or keeps things spartan and pristine-- helps the songs make sense. Ward provides an anxious staccato string arrangement and a Mellotron hum on "Sentimental Heart", teasing an optimism that, like Deschanel's romanticism, is always denied. Above Mogis' plaintive steel sighs and Ward's indifferent acoustic waltz on "Change Is Hard", her fragility becomes personal and endearing. Blumberg's big drums and Ward's stuttering electric line offer a platform for her elation on "I Was Made For You", and when Ward trails her voice on "You Really Got a Hold on Me", he's the perfect complement, his voice the shadow behind her sunlight. Deschanel is more convincing when she's on an extreme end of romance-- either losing it or being swept into it-- than when she's trying to rationalize it. She makes that mistake three times on Volume One. The other sense of disappointment here comes from the promise Volume One suggests but doesn't deliver: Deschanel's writing is too canny ("Why do you edit? Give me credit") and her voice too natural (listen for that Feist-like crack on "Change is Hard") to sit on the tribute shelf very long. Granted, the retro exuberance here will be what sells She & Him to those beyond the indie realm. Don't be surprised when Garrison Keillor jumps on board. But with this successful introduction and the admitted homage to influences it entails finished, Deschanel has a solid foundation for building her own classic sound. After all, she's a readymade star who's already found a pretty fantastic facilitator in him."

Ekkehard Ehlers, Paul Wirkus

Ballads

Electronic,Rock

Roque Strew

In the percussionist Paul Wirkus, Ekkehard Ehlers has found a kindred spirit: equally restless and equally intelligent. From the thistly early stretches of their new collaboration, it is clear both musicians have an appetite for lo-fi deconstruction, a weakness for austerity, and, in that always refreshing Staubgold spirit, a bottomless well of ideas for the glitch. Ambitiously linking to a grand Western tradition, one broad enough to accommodate both Robin Hood and Casey Jones, the album title Ballads hints at Ehlers' habit of appropriation. Critics like New York's Jerry Saltz believe that, even today, the concept looms large over the art world, casting a shadow that obscures its values. Certainly, at its bold best, appropriation gave us Warhol and rap: novel creations, biting comments, new avenues for the young to upset the old. But the vigor with which reviewers and consumers lapped it up led to overdemand, then to oversupply, of Xeroxed Pop, overworked breakbeats, by-the-numbers conceptualism. Thus much of the meaning and force once bound up with the act of appropriation-- that sense that no one owned culture, that everyone did, or simply that the wrong people did-- drained away. You could say that the glitch rose to a similar level of prominence as well, before it became part of everyone's schematic edginess. Where it once pointed to the broken promise of technology, or a human presence amid the machines, it eventually turned into a chic shortcut taken by every student of Ben Gibbard or Scott Herren. Ehlers and Wirkus lobby for a return to the not-so-remote past when both appropriation and the glitch held on to some form of expressive power. Toward the beginning of his career, Ehlers borrowed fragments of Schoenberg and, inspired by the Frankfurt School thinkers, glued them together into gorgeously jarring mosaics. Listeners turned into noticers when they encountered this early work, poring over the textures to connect Ehlers' theory to his practice, in a trend that continued with the train of tributes that make up Plays. There, each composition was prefixed with "Ekkehard Ehlers Plays..." and ended with iconic names like Albert Ayler and Robert Johnson, echoing the dramatic marketing of old recordings where a titanic pianist took on a titanic composer (think Horowitz Plays Rachmaninoff). The very opposite of a straightforward interpreter (think Robert Lowell), Ehlers' homages bore only a passing resemblance to the honorees, hewing closer to his own fractured dream logic. In his most explicit reference-- he prefers that term over "sampling"-- his A Life Without Fear sought to recreate, in its creator's image, the perpetual nightfall of blues music. Whatever you want to call it-- referencing or sampling-- Ehlers ladles both Alice Coltrane and Henry Flynt into Ballads. In these fleeting studies, it is easy to miss the samples, which either sweep briskly in and out of vision, or shade neatly into the surrounding song. Often the same goes for the guest's instruments, notably Kai Fagaschinksi's clarinet, which can click with the rest of the moving parts into one interlocking whole. The contributions can serve as an invisible foundation at times, as firecracking flourishes at others. (The alternately heavy and light woodwind-string tensions of Politik Braucht Keinen Feind seem to have won Ehlers over.) You can hear Fagaschinki's minimalist presence in "Bryza", nicely evoking the breeze of its title. But the dueling double-bass drama carried out by Berlin's Tang and Dafeldecker, of course, is much easier to pick out. On the album's outstanding "Guma", the two men have it out, plucking and bowing, before a wild theater of sounds: a boat creak, slashing rotors, pneumatic spray, Wirkus' whisper of tribal drums. There is an ominous hint of violence in every corner of that nearly six-minute scene. Leaning more toward freeform improvisation, Ehlers goes out of his way to avoid loop structures here-- a decisive break with Wirkus' last two records. In fact, if you trace the flight-path of Wirkus' aesthetic from 2004's Inteletto d'Amore to 2006's Déformation Professionnelle, essentially a Reichian layer cake of MiniDisc loops, an embrace of the near-mystic powers of rhythm seems to be the next stop. On the mysteriously neglected Forest Full of Drums (2008), Wirkus appropriated the rhythms and sounds of nature, dragging a drum kit into the woods. About the outdoor-recording process, Wirkus said: "Everything was already there. The trees, the wind, the birds, the muddy soil, the undergrowth, playing children, people taking walks, the distant hum of a motorway, and airplanes above. We arrived there as beginners. We had to wait for the right weather." Uncooperative weather kept Wirkus and Ehlers from repeating this Jewelled Antler style of production. In a way, this method is the extension of Mille Plateaux logic to its absurd extreme: the click, the cut, the glitch send us from the failed machine back to the edenic forms of nature. So it was no surprise that nature sounds found a way to intrude. The second track, "Okno", means "window" in Polish and, like the half-curtained panes on the record's cover, it opens up a narrow portal to the outside world. Wirkus is clearly harkening back to his last record, by prominently placing the wind, which sounds like it is flowing through metal chimes, and the birds, a swarm of chirps straight out of Messaien, in his rustic vision. Before long, this daydreamy section gives way to a more surreal blend, as percussive dials and pops swell into a carnivalesque explosion of notes and lowing cattle. Scientific order and detail abounds, but it is balanced by both members' free-jazz passion for chaos (in, for one, the lost-in-space tumult of "Ruchy") and drift (perfected in the soothing tremolo of "Wiem"). This constant motion between precise blitzkrieg and restorative détente sums up the partnership of Ehlers and Wirkus. One small quibble, which also applied to Forest Full of Drums: Almost all of these striking songs could use two or three extra minutes to unfold. Brevity is a virtue, but in the case of these two soundscape architects, listeners will wish the expansive ideas had expansive canvases.

Artist: Ekkehard Ehlers, Paul Wirkus, Album: Ballads, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "In the percussionist Paul Wirkus, Ekkehard Ehlers has found a kindred spirit: equally restless and equally intelligent. From the thistly early stretches of their new collaboration, it is clear both musicians have an appetite for lo-fi deconstruction, a weakness for austerity, and, in that always refreshing Staubgold spirit, a bottomless well of ideas for the glitch. Ambitiously linking to a grand Western tradition, one broad enough to accommodate both Robin Hood and Casey Jones, the album title Ballads hints at Ehlers' habit of appropriation. Critics like New York's Jerry Saltz believe that, even today, the concept looms large over the art world, casting a shadow that obscures its values. Certainly, at its bold best, appropriation gave us Warhol and rap: novel creations, biting comments, new avenues for the young to upset the old. But the vigor with which reviewers and consumers lapped it up led to overdemand, then to oversupply, of Xeroxed Pop, overworked breakbeats, by-the-numbers conceptualism. Thus much of the meaning and force once bound up with the act of appropriation-- that sense that no one owned culture, that everyone did, or simply that the wrong people did-- drained away. You could say that the glitch rose to a similar level of prominence as well, before it became part of everyone's schematic edginess. Where it once pointed to the broken promise of technology, or a human presence amid the machines, it eventually turned into a chic shortcut taken by every student of Ben Gibbard or Scott Herren. Ehlers and Wirkus lobby for a return to the not-so-remote past when both appropriation and the glitch held on to some form of expressive power. Toward the beginning of his career, Ehlers borrowed fragments of Schoenberg and, inspired by the Frankfurt School thinkers, glued them together into gorgeously jarring mosaics. Listeners turned into noticers when they encountered this early work, poring over the textures to connect Ehlers' theory to his practice, in a trend that continued with the train of tributes that make up Plays. There, each composition was prefixed with "Ekkehard Ehlers Plays..." and ended with iconic names like Albert Ayler and Robert Johnson, echoing the dramatic marketing of old recordings where a titanic pianist took on a titanic composer (think Horowitz Plays Rachmaninoff). The very opposite of a straightforward interpreter (think Robert Lowell), Ehlers' homages bore only a passing resemblance to the honorees, hewing closer to his own fractured dream logic. In his most explicit reference-- he prefers that term over "sampling"-- his A Life Without Fear sought to recreate, in its creator's image, the perpetual nightfall of blues music. Whatever you want to call it-- referencing or sampling-- Ehlers ladles both Alice Coltrane and Henry Flynt into Ballads. In these fleeting studies, it is easy to miss the samples, which either sweep briskly in and out of vision, or shade neatly into the surrounding song. Often the same goes for the guest's instruments, notably Kai Fagaschinksi's clarinet, which can click with the rest of the moving parts into one interlocking whole. The contributions can serve as an invisible foundation at times, as firecracking flourishes at others. (The alternately heavy and light woodwind-string tensions of Politik Braucht Keinen Feind seem to have won Ehlers over.) You can hear Fagaschinki's minimalist presence in "Bryza", nicely evoking the breeze of its title. But the dueling double-bass drama carried out by Berlin's Tang and Dafeldecker, of course, is much easier to pick out. On the album's outstanding "Guma", the two men have it out, plucking and bowing, before a wild theater of sounds: a boat creak, slashing rotors, pneumatic spray, Wirkus' whisper of tribal drums. There is an ominous hint of violence in every corner of that nearly six-minute scene. Leaning more toward freeform improvisation, Ehlers goes out of his way to avoid loop structures here-- a decisive break with Wirkus' last two records. In fact, if you trace the flight-path of Wirkus' aesthetic from 2004's Inteletto d'Amore to 2006's Déformation Professionnelle, essentially a Reichian layer cake of MiniDisc loops, an embrace of the near-mystic powers of rhythm seems to be the next stop. On the mysteriously neglected Forest Full of Drums (2008), Wirkus appropriated the rhythms and sounds of nature, dragging a drum kit into the woods. About the outdoor-recording process, Wirkus said: "Everything was already there. The trees, the wind, the birds, the muddy soil, the undergrowth, playing children, people taking walks, the distant hum of a motorway, and airplanes above. We arrived there as beginners. We had to wait for the right weather." Uncooperative weather kept Wirkus and Ehlers from repeating this Jewelled Antler style of production. In a way, this method is the extension of Mille Plateaux logic to its absurd extreme: the click, the cut, the glitch send us from the failed machine back to the edenic forms of nature. So it was no surprise that nature sounds found a way to intrude. The second track, "Okno", means "window" in Polish and, like the half-curtained panes on the record's cover, it opens up a narrow portal to the outside world. Wirkus is clearly harkening back to his last record, by prominently placing the wind, which sounds like it is flowing through metal chimes, and the birds, a swarm of chirps straight out of Messaien, in his rustic vision. Before long, this daydreamy section gives way to a more surreal blend, as percussive dials and pops swell into a carnivalesque explosion of notes and lowing cattle. Scientific order and detail abounds, but it is balanced by both members' free-jazz passion for chaos (in, for one, the lost-in-space tumult of "Ruchy") and drift (perfected in the soothing tremolo of "Wiem"). This constant motion between precise blitzkrieg and restorative détente sums up the partnership of Ehlers and Wirkus. One small quibble, which also applied to Forest Full of Drums: Almost all of these striking songs could use two or three extra minutes to unfold. Brevity is a virtue, but in the case of these two soundscape architects, listeners will wish the expansive ideas had expansive canvases."

The Ladybug Transistor

Can't Wait Another Day

Rock

Nitsuh Abebe

Can't Wait Another Day would be easier to love if it didn't keep accidentally signposting a shortage of fresh songwriting ideas. It can't help but feel symbolic when the Ladybug Transistor covers Trader Horne's "Here Comes the Rain", if only because the chorus is awfully similar to Jan & Dean's "Like a Summer Rain"-- a song this band covered a few albums back. Only a pop geek would spend much time noticing that the next track is vaguely in the style of Twinkle's 1964 hit "Terry", except that said next track is titled..."Terry". And you'd never think that the album's second-best track, "For No Other", feels a bit like a song called "Rushes of Pure Spring"-- not unless you'd heard that one on the Ladybug Transistor's second album. Oh, I'm vastly overstating the case: These are dim resemblances, not steals, and the "Here Comes the Rain" thing is surely intentional. But they do seem to reinforce the sense of a band that's still sorting out where to head next, not yet nailing it down. They can be forgiven for that, especially after the departure of key member Sasha Bell. This is a figuring-things-out album, just as the vast Ladybug & Friends roster of guest contributions suggests: Even the label's advertising copy calls it "a promise of good things to come." The good news is that they'd seem to have their eyes on a new path. A few years after 1999's fantastic The Albemarle Sound, the group's high point of paisley-covered indie pop baroque, they took a few steps back toward rock's middle ground, as if worried that all those stately arrangements and flute breaks were going out of style; it's made them more popular, but less interesting. On this record, they make some firm, decisive gestures toward a new direction: Their usual lush, languorous sound picks up tinges of well-heeled folk and country, and a few big doses of the warm, sentimental Nashville sound Lambchop used to trade in. Bobby Goldsboro gets offered as one potential inspiration, and a listen to his 1968 hit "Honey"-- lavished with strings, choir, and even theremin-- will explain the connection: Just compare with "Lord, Don't Pass Me By", the Ladybug Transistor's grand album closer. (Elsewhere, "This Old Chase" sounds, weirdly enough, like Ric Ocasek and the Cars going western.) This sound isn't in the least a bad fit: Singer Gary Olson is one of far too few guys in indie with the kind of rich, liquid baritone that can sell a slow, sad melody. That comes in handy through the rest of this record, too, which feels like a late-breaking, friends-and-all lap through the good old gorgeous: "For No Other" in particular is as deep and warm as anything they've ever done. When all those qualities come together with a solid song-- like the beautifully written "Always on the Telephone"-- it's a real thrill, even before the astounding 80s-styled sax solo. When it comes to staking out a new direction, these are solid results: You can't help but wish them lots of luck in pinning down their new sound, lineup, and working method, especially after the recent death of San Fadyl, one of the more lovable drummers in indie rock. As an album, though, this one feels like a bit of a stall-- a little filler, a little room to breathe, and a little time to make plans. The band's years making friends and fans all through the indie and indie pop worlds mean they've earned enough credit for people to bear with them, and even enjoy their work in progress-- but here's hoping they'll plow their new furrow as fully, uniquely, and single-mindedly as they did with The Albemarle Sound.

Artist: The Ladybug Transistor, Album: Can't Wait Another Day, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Can't Wait Another Day would be easier to love if it didn't keep accidentally signposting a shortage of fresh songwriting ideas. It can't help but feel symbolic when the Ladybug Transistor covers Trader Horne's "Here Comes the Rain", if only because the chorus is awfully similar to Jan & Dean's "Like a Summer Rain"-- a song this band covered a few albums back. Only a pop geek would spend much time noticing that the next track is vaguely in the style of Twinkle's 1964 hit "Terry", except that said next track is titled..."Terry". And you'd never think that the album's second-best track, "For No Other", feels a bit like a song called "Rushes of Pure Spring"-- not unless you'd heard that one on the Ladybug Transistor's second album. Oh, I'm vastly overstating the case: These are dim resemblances, not steals, and the "Here Comes the Rain" thing is surely intentional. But they do seem to reinforce the sense of a band that's still sorting out where to head next, not yet nailing it down. They can be forgiven for that, especially after the departure of key member Sasha Bell. This is a figuring-things-out album, just as the vast Ladybug & Friends roster of guest contributions suggests: Even the label's advertising copy calls it "a promise of good things to come." The good news is that they'd seem to have their eyes on a new path. A few years after 1999's fantastic The Albemarle Sound, the group's high point of paisley-covered indie pop baroque, they took a few steps back toward rock's middle ground, as if worried that all those stately arrangements and flute breaks were going out of style; it's made them more popular, but less interesting. On this record, they make some firm, decisive gestures toward a new direction: Their usual lush, languorous sound picks up tinges of well-heeled folk and country, and a few big doses of the warm, sentimental Nashville sound Lambchop used to trade in. Bobby Goldsboro gets offered as one potential inspiration, and a listen to his 1968 hit "Honey"-- lavished with strings, choir, and even theremin-- will explain the connection: Just compare with "Lord, Don't Pass Me By", the Ladybug Transistor's grand album closer. (Elsewhere, "This Old Chase" sounds, weirdly enough, like Ric Ocasek and the Cars going western.) This sound isn't in the least a bad fit: Singer Gary Olson is one of far too few guys in indie with the kind of rich, liquid baritone that can sell a slow, sad melody. That comes in handy through the rest of this record, too, which feels like a late-breaking, friends-and-all lap through the good old gorgeous: "For No Other" in particular is as deep and warm as anything they've ever done. When all those qualities come together with a solid song-- like the beautifully written "Always on the Telephone"-- it's a real thrill, even before the astounding 80s-styled sax solo. When it comes to staking out a new direction, these are solid results: You can't help but wish them lots of luck in pinning down their new sound, lineup, and working method, especially after the recent death of San Fadyl, one of the more lovable drummers in indie rock. As an album, though, this one feels like a bit of a stall-- a little filler, a little room to breathe, and a little time to make plans. The band's years making friends and fans all through the indie and indie pop worlds mean they've earned enough credit for people to bear with them, and even enjoy their work in progress-- but here's hoping they'll plow their new furrow as fully, uniquely, and single-mindedly as they did with The Albemarle Sound."

Lee Ranaldo

Between the Times and the Tides

Experimental,Rock

Grayson Currin

Pardon the hypothetical results of a theoretical survey, but if you were to ask all the world’s Sonic Youth fans what the most significant event has been in the last year for that bit of indie bedrock, most will likely tell you-- whine, even-- that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon are headed for divorce. As impressive and influential as Sonic Youth have been during the last three decades, their married leaders have become icons of a sort, a manifestation of domestic bliss that inspired creativity, not complacence. Of course, some Sonic Youth adherents took the news poorly, interpreting it as a sign that no relationship is sacred, that no artistic bond is strong enough to stand the pressures of a lifetime. But in spite of the chatter about Gordon, Moore and, concomitantly, the future of their quartet, there's another 2012 Sonic Youth story worth attention: This week, co-founder Lee Ranaldo released Between the Times and the Tides, a 10-song set that grew from a batch of acoustic ideas into a full-band production featuring Wilco's Nels Cline, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, jazz-and-jam organist John Medeski, guitarist Alan Licht, and former bandmate Jim O'Rourke. It represents a chance for Ranaldo to nab a headline without having to talk about Gordon and Moore's Facebook relationship status. This isn't Ranaldo’s first solo album. Apart from a busy Sonic Youth schedule, the guitarist's been releasing quiet bits of acoustic music and field recordings or bursts of noise since the late 1980s. He's an active collaborator, too, having worked with an expansive roster that, only to sample, includes harpist Zeena Parkins, Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker, and the singer-songwriter Wooden Wand. Still, despite a propensity for abrasion and his instantly identifiable winding guitar patterns, Ranaldo has long seemed the "quiet" member of Sonic Youth, often misplaced alongside the band's ostensible power couple. Sure, he's long been Sonic Youth's minority songwriter (between 2000 and 2006, he led only one song per album), but many of Ranaldo's tunes are essential catalogue pieces-- the long-may-you-roar "Karen Revisited", the ripping "Eric's Trip", the gently major-label "Wish Fulfillment", the manically lucid "Skip Tracer". But he often remains an afterthought, answering interview questions about Moore and Gordon despite releasing the biggest record of his solo career. Between the Times and the Tides likely won’t help: A motley assortment of Sonic Youth nods, acoustic entreaties, and cloying pop-rockers, Ranaldo's opportunity to step out of the Sonic Youth shadows and into his own proper spotlight is mostly a miss made of mediocrity. Though Ranaldo has helped guide his other band through one of music's great unpredictable repertoires, this outfit sounds both predictable and awkward. Opener "Waiting on a Dream" waves the Sonic Youth bait for the old adherents with spiraling melodies and saturated sonics, Medeski's organ taking the place of Moore's guitar grate. "Angles" simply cranks the college-rock quotient, with heavy-handed harmonies stacked behind each chorus. "Shouts" dates its makers with spoken-word samples underneath a web of guitar and kick-drum, while "Hammer Blows" turns the obvious trick of building a foreboding electric din beneath a pretty, finger-picked lament. With the help of Cline, the six-minute, two-section "Fire Island (Phases)" takes all the turns Wilco might make to get from the Krautrock march "Spiders" to the fluttering pop number "Impossible Germany". And depending on your perspective, Ranaldo's lyrics are either symptomatic or responsible for the album's banality. A published poet with an interest in abstract structures, he writes as if thumbing through a rhyming dictionary or composing a children's album alongside Mr. Rogers. "Was it something I said…/ Was I wrong in the head?" he sings at one point. Or, more telling and laughable: "I don't wanna throw a wrench in the works/ But this whole town is full of jerks." This isn't to say that Between is without its moments. Ranaldo, after all, is an accomplished and inventive player, surrounded by a score of them here. There's the dramatic push between Medeski's organ, Cline's guitar and Shelley's drumming during the last half of "Xtina As I Knew Her" and the spectral air beneath the starry-eyed love number "Stranded". Swiveling, urgent guitar harmonies open and later incite "Lost", while closer "Tomorrow Never Comes" takes shape around a drum machine before climbing into one of the most inspired instrumental breaks of these 48 minutes. But every interesting piece comes countered by multiple banal solos, clumsy transitions, or altogether unfortunate looks. The band treats "Stranded" with surprising subtlety and grace, and Ranaldo's voice conveys the perfect amount of vulnerability for such a lovesick tune. As soon as he rhymes works with jerks and phone with home, however, the song turns too silly to be taken seriously. At least "Off the Wall" has the energy and concision to break Ranaldo to a new audience-- alas, an audience he'll find via Toad the Wet Sprocket's Pandora station. It's hard not to pull for Lee Ranaldo, a songwriter, arranger and improviser who's never gotten the due he's deserved as a critical component of a near-compulsory band. But if Between the Times and the Tides reveals anything important, it's that Ranaldo's songs require the right kind of foils. Here, he's backed by old friends with distinct and familiar styles of their own, not folks who systematically push and pull his good songs until they become great. This is an album badly in need of editing and, above all, a little friction, resistance and rebuilding. I hear there's some acrimony within Sonic Youth lately; maybe they could have helped?

Artist: Lee Ranaldo, Album: Between the Times and the Tides, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 5.2 Album review: "Pardon the hypothetical results of a theoretical survey, but if you were to ask all the world’s Sonic Youth fans what the most significant event has been in the last year for that bit of indie bedrock, most will likely tell you-- whine, even-- that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon are headed for divorce. As impressive and influential as Sonic Youth have been during the last three decades, their married leaders have become icons of a sort, a manifestation of domestic bliss that inspired creativity, not complacence. Of course, some Sonic Youth adherents took the news poorly, interpreting it as a sign that no relationship is sacred, that no artistic bond is strong enough to stand the pressures of a lifetime. But in spite of the chatter about Gordon, Moore and, concomitantly, the future of their quartet, there's another 2012 Sonic Youth story worth attention: This week, co-founder Lee Ranaldo released Between the Times and the Tides, a 10-song set that grew from a batch of acoustic ideas into a full-band production featuring Wilco's Nels Cline, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, jazz-and-jam organist John Medeski, guitarist Alan Licht, and former bandmate Jim O'Rourke. It represents a chance for Ranaldo to nab a headline without having to talk about Gordon and Moore's Facebook relationship status. This isn't Ranaldo’s first solo album. Apart from a busy Sonic Youth schedule, the guitarist's been releasing quiet bits of acoustic music and field recordings or bursts of noise since the late 1980s. He's an active collaborator, too, having worked with an expansive roster that, only to sample, includes harpist Zeena Parkins, Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker, and the singer-songwriter Wooden Wand. Still, despite a propensity for abrasion and his instantly identifiable winding guitar patterns, Ranaldo has long seemed the "quiet" member of Sonic Youth, often misplaced alongside the band's ostensible power couple. Sure, he's long been Sonic Youth's minority songwriter (between 2000 and 2006, he led only one song per album), but many of Ranaldo's tunes are essential catalogue pieces-- the long-may-you-roar "Karen Revisited", the ripping "Eric's Trip", the gently major-label "Wish Fulfillment", the manically lucid "Skip Tracer". But he often remains an afterthought, answering interview questions about Moore and Gordon despite releasing the biggest record of his solo career. Between the Times and the Tides likely won’t help: A motley assortment of Sonic Youth nods, acoustic entreaties, and cloying pop-rockers, Ranaldo's opportunity to step out of the Sonic Youth shadows and into his own proper spotlight is mostly a miss made of mediocrity. Though Ranaldo has helped guide his other band through one of music's great unpredictable repertoires, this outfit sounds both predictable and awkward. Opener "Waiting on a Dream" waves the Sonic Youth bait for the old adherents with spiraling melodies and saturated sonics, Medeski's organ taking the place of Moore's guitar grate. "Angles" simply cranks the college-rock quotient, with heavy-handed harmonies stacked behind each chorus. "Shouts" dates its makers with spoken-word samples underneath a web of guitar and kick-drum, while "Hammer Blows" turns the obvious trick of building a foreboding electric din beneath a pretty, finger-picked lament. With the help of Cline, the six-minute, two-section "Fire Island (Phases)" takes all the turns Wilco might make to get from the Krautrock march "Spiders" to the fluttering pop number "Impossible Germany". And depending on your perspective, Ranaldo's lyrics are either symptomatic or responsible for the album's banality. A published poet with an interest in abstract structures, he writes as if thumbing through a rhyming dictionary or composing a children's album alongside Mr. Rogers. "Was it something I said…/ Was I wrong in the head?" he sings at one point. Or, more telling and laughable: "I don't wanna throw a wrench in the works/ But this whole town is full of jerks." This isn't to say that Between is without its moments. Ranaldo, after all, is an accomplished and inventive player, surrounded by a score of them here. There's the dramatic push between Medeski's organ, Cline's guitar and Shelley's drumming during the last half of "Xtina As I Knew Her" and the spectral air beneath the starry-eyed love number "Stranded". Swiveling, urgent guitar harmonies open and later incite "Lost", while closer "Tomorrow Never Comes" takes shape around a drum machine before climbing into one of the most inspired instrumental breaks of these 48 minutes. But every interesting piece comes countered by multiple banal solos, clumsy transitions, or altogether unfortunate looks. The band treats "Stranded" with surprising subtlety and grace, and Ranaldo's voice conveys the perfect amount of vulnerability for such a lovesick tune. As soon as he rhymes works with jerks and phone with home, however, the song turns too silly to be taken seriously. At least "Off the Wall" has the energy and concision to break Ranaldo to a new audience-- alas, an audience he'll find via Toad the Wet Sprocket's Pandora station. It's hard not to pull for Lee Ranaldo, a songwriter, arranger and improviser who's never gotten the due he's deserved as a critical component of a near-compulsory band. But if Between the Times and the Tides reveals anything important, it's that Ranaldo's songs require the right kind of foils. Here, he's backed by old friends with distinct and familiar styles of their own, not folks who systematically push and pull his good songs until they become great. This is an album badly in need of editing and, above all, a little friction, resistance and rebuilding. I hear there's some acrimony within Sonic Youth lately; maybe they could have helped?"

Destroyer

We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge

Rock

William Bowers

Dan Bejar's long-swapped 1996 debut sounds about as good as primitive lo-fi folk can on this reissue, which doesn't mean that I'd recommend it to anyone not already obsessed with Destroyer or not already a student of how so many of the previous decade's home-tapers blossomed into the indie titans of today. Maybe this was always a "fake" lo-fi album, though, about the aesthetic's endeavors and limits: Much of the playing seems forcedly "bad" to the point of risking annoyance. "Revolution" is a near exact rip of an early Pavement tune. The refrain of the limp waltz "Saddestroyer" is, "I heard you were guided by voices." The ballad-with-a-heart-murmur "Rose" announces, "Static means punk/ Tuning is junk." The kiddie instruments, stilted strumming, aborted-banshee melodica, and somnolent vocals accrue to imply that Bejar was consciously handicapping his folk (just as he synthed out his rock for Your Blues). That several choruses rise from the wreckage to have a kind of muted-sea-shanty power is testimony to his talent with incidental hooks. Bejarologists will find most of the touchstones of Bejar's later work evident: Impressively clever puns, odes to lost mini-empires, the juxtaposition of the grandly axiomatic with the penetratingly personal, songs containing other bands' names and lyrics. Four songs even bear the titles of staples by the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Judas Priest, and Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton. Is Bejar paying homage with these gestures? Is he snubbing the notion of a word or phrase being "owned" and thus unusable forevermore? Can he not be bothered with maintaining a burden of freshness for its own sake? Or is he just acknowledging how much of his brainspace is crowded with late-20th century English-language rock and pop? Listeners might find themselves thinking too much about Bejar's American counterpart, another seductive nerd about whom little is cartoonish: Stephen Malkmus. Both use a language-poetry approach to lyrics, both can bounce vocally from sexiness to whininess to sexy whininess to whiny sexiness, and both telegraph an inability to commit to either playing the role of artist or entertainer (bringing to mind a mantra from a David Berman poem: "anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship"). Malkmus used to act bummed when people would "whooo" his solos or the opening of "Grounded", and Bejar often denies his audiences the cathartic "fucking maniac" line from "European Oils". The central tension of both songwriters' really-early work results from the lengths to which they'd go to try to bury their popcraft like a treasure they didn't want anyone to find without making enough effort.

Artist: Destroyer, Album: We'll Build Them a Golden Bridge, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "Dan Bejar's long-swapped 1996 debut sounds about as good as primitive lo-fi folk can on this reissue, which doesn't mean that I'd recommend it to anyone not already obsessed with Destroyer or not already a student of how so many of the previous decade's home-tapers blossomed into the indie titans of today. Maybe this was always a "fake" lo-fi album, though, about the aesthetic's endeavors and limits: Much of the playing seems forcedly "bad" to the point of risking annoyance. "Revolution" is a near exact rip of an early Pavement tune. The refrain of the limp waltz "Saddestroyer" is, "I heard you were guided by voices." The ballad-with-a-heart-murmur "Rose" announces, "Static means punk/ Tuning is junk." The kiddie instruments, stilted strumming, aborted-banshee melodica, and somnolent vocals accrue to imply that Bejar was consciously handicapping his folk (just as he synthed out his rock for Your Blues). That several choruses rise from the wreckage to have a kind of muted-sea-shanty power is testimony to his talent with incidental hooks. Bejarologists will find most of the touchstones of Bejar's later work evident: Impressively clever puns, odes to lost mini-empires, the juxtaposition of the grandly axiomatic with the penetratingly personal, songs containing other bands' names and lyrics. Four songs even bear the titles of staples by the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Judas Priest, and Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton. Is Bejar paying homage with these gestures? Is he snubbing the notion of a word or phrase being "owned" and thus unusable forevermore? Can he not be bothered with maintaining a burden of freshness for its own sake? Or is he just acknowledging how much of his brainspace is crowded with late-20th century English-language rock and pop? Listeners might find themselves thinking too much about Bejar's American counterpart, another seductive nerd about whom little is cartoonish: Stephen Malkmus. Both use a language-poetry approach to lyrics, both can bounce vocally from sexiness to whininess to sexy whininess to whiny sexiness, and both telegraph an inability to commit to either playing the role of artist or entertainer (bringing to mind a mantra from a David Berman poem: "anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship"). Malkmus used to act bummed when people would "whooo" his solos or the opening of "Grounded", and Bejar often denies his audiences the cathartic "fucking maniac" line from "European Oils". The central tension of both songwriters' really-early work results from the lengths to which they'd go to try to bury their popcraft like a treasure they didn't want anyone to find without making enough effort."

Editors

The Back Room

Electronic,Rock

Jason Crock

The Editors debut is influenced by the same fashionable 1980s English bands heard in scores of recent indie groups, but they've gained measurable success in their native country of England with singles like "Bullets" and "Munich". In modern terms, Editors aren't the conspicuous nostalgia of the Stills, but they don't quite have the jittery bluster of bands like Maxímo Park, lying somewhere in between the two. The Back Room puts its best foot forward with the first three tracks, played with more than enough verve to compensate for their limited borrowed palette. Vocalist/guitarist Tom Smith sings in a forceful but wavering voice, like Paul Banks on the edge of distraction. On opener "Lights", the guitars move from standard jangle and reverb-heavy single notes into punctuating, echo-laden scrapes, recalling the work of U2's the Edge. Editors occasionally match a catchy vocal line with an energetic performance, like the speedy picking and memorable vocals in the chorus of "Munich" or the insistent rhythm of "Blood". More often, it's the performance that overshadows the minimal melody. When the tempos slow, the album gets ponderous, and The Back Room puts three melodramatic slow songs smack dab in its center. "Fall" features listless strumming over stark bass and drums, while Smith's drawn out-phrasing leads the band to slow-burning catharsis-- truth be told, Editors sounds more like Interpol than anyone else, and their mockingbird act betrays a lack of confidence needed to pull off their tortured posturing. Quick tempos return on "Fingers in the Factory", one of the disc's strongest performances, but momentum has been lost and the remaining songs are aimless. "Fingers in the Factory" is most memorable for it's stomping chorus, with voice drums and guitars all hitting the same staccato notes, but the same gimmick falls flat elsewhere. "Bullets" relies on forceful repetition for a hook, belting "you don't need this disease" over and over while the band cranks it up, but the dynamics are lost without a melody. Editors sound like an earnest rock band who grew up loving the same bands as the current batch of revivalists, but beyond the workmanlike interpretations of their heroes, it's hard to swallow. Editors often imitate bands with dramatic vocalists like Ian Curtis or Ian McCulloch, but the best moments on The Back Room aren't the theatrical ones-- it's when the four of them are playing and discovering their own chemistry.

Artist: Editors, Album: The Back Room, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "The Editors debut is influenced by the same fashionable 1980s English bands heard in scores of recent indie groups, but they've gained measurable success in their native country of England with singles like "Bullets" and "Munich". In modern terms, Editors aren't the conspicuous nostalgia of the Stills, but they don't quite have the jittery bluster of bands like Maxímo Park, lying somewhere in between the two. The Back Room puts its best foot forward with the first three tracks, played with more than enough verve to compensate for their limited borrowed palette. Vocalist/guitarist Tom Smith sings in a forceful but wavering voice, like Paul Banks on the edge of distraction. On opener "Lights", the guitars move from standard jangle and reverb-heavy single notes into punctuating, echo-laden scrapes, recalling the work of U2's the Edge. Editors occasionally match a catchy vocal line with an energetic performance, like the speedy picking and memorable vocals in the chorus of "Munich" or the insistent rhythm of "Blood". More often, it's the performance that overshadows the minimal melody. When the tempos slow, the album gets ponderous, and The Back Room puts three melodramatic slow songs smack dab in its center. "Fall" features listless strumming over stark bass and drums, while Smith's drawn out-phrasing leads the band to slow-burning catharsis-- truth be told, Editors sounds more like Interpol than anyone else, and their mockingbird act betrays a lack of confidence needed to pull off their tortured posturing. Quick tempos return on "Fingers in the Factory", one of the disc's strongest performances, but momentum has been lost and the remaining songs are aimless. "Fingers in the Factory" is most memorable for it's stomping chorus, with voice drums and guitars all hitting the same staccato notes, but the same gimmick falls flat elsewhere. "Bullets" relies on forceful repetition for a hook, belting "you don't need this disease" over and over while the band cranks it up, but the dynamics are lost without a melody. Editors sound like an earnest rock band who grew up loving the same bands as the current batch of revivalists, but beyond the workmanlike interpretations of their heroes, it's hard to swallow. Editors often imitate bands with dramatic vocalists like Ian Curtis or Ian McCulloch, but the best moments on The Back Room aren't the theatrical ones-- it's when the four of them are playing and discovering their own chemistry."

Andrew Bird

I Want to See Pulaski at Night

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

It’s hard to think of Andrew Bird’s new EP as an EP. It’s an appropriate seven tracks, arranged to be reasonably cohesive across a half-hour, and concerned only with a handful of musical ideas, which it teases out intelligently and patiently. So far so good. Bird fashioned the release around a single song, “Pulaski at Night”, which he wrote but did not want to hold until he had enough for a full-length. Instead, he composed a handful of instrumentals to form lengthy prologues and epilogues to “Pulaski”, comparing it to soundtracking a film. So think of the EP as the director’s cut of the main song. Or an extended mix. Or a short suite. Think of it as an EP, however, and it feels slight—never quite the sum of its parts. “Pulaski at Night” is prime Bird: tightly crafted, lyrically witty, understated yet sophisticated in its arrangement of loops and plucks and thrums and whistles. “I paint you a picture of Pulaski at night,” he sings on the chorus. “Come back to Chicago, city of light.” The galloping violin strums give that sneaky hook its subdued grandeur and steady insistence, Bird’s bow tracing the topography of the Midwestern landscape. It sounds as though he’s trying to erase the many miles between him and the person he’s addressing, who is clearly far away. At one of his Gezelligheid shows last winter, Bird explained the song’s origins and specified which Pulaski inspired him, but there’s something so teasingly vague about the song's shadowy “you” that it’s better left unexplained. On its own, the song could be about a departed friend, a distant lover, or every fan who isn’t in the town Bird is playing that night. If “Pulaski at Night” is Bird at his most dependably and stalwartly Romantic, the rest of the EP is just Bird. There is, admittedly, a warm familiarity to the plaintively whistled theme of “Lit from Underneath”, to the staccato plucks of “Hover 1”, to the evocative bowing on “Hover 1”. As well, a few unexpected flourishes illuminate some of these songs, such as the loose-limbed raga rhythm on opener “Ethio Invention No. 1” and the quickly fading notes that arc across “Logan’s Loops”. At times that familiarity curdles into predictability, and nothing else carries the sense of purpose and longing as the title track. Not that Bird needs to reinvent himself on a minor release like this one, but an EP is an ideal medium for indulging new experiments and rethinking one’s approach. The most innovative and intriguing aspect of Pulaski is not its music, but ultimately its not-quite-definable form.

Artist: Andrew Bird, Album: I Want to See Pulaski at Night, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: "It’s hard to think of Andrew Bird’s new EP as an EP. It’s an appropriate seven tracks, arranged to be reasonably cohesive across a half-hour, and concerned only with a handful of musical ideas, which it teases out intelligently and patiently. So far so good. Bird fashioned the release around a single song, “Pulaski at Night”, which he wrote but did not want to hold until he had enough for a full-length. Instead, he composed a handful of instrumentals to form lengthy prologues and epilogues to “Pulaski”, comparing it to soundtracking a film. So think of the EP as the director’s cut of the main song. Or an extended mix. Or a short suite. Think of it as an EP, however, and it feels slight—never quite the sum of its parts. “Pulaski at Night” is prime Bird: tightly crafted, lyrically witty, understated yet sophisticated in its arrangement of loops and plucks and thrums and whistles. “I paint you a picture of Pulaski at night,” he sings on the chorus. “Come back to Chicago, city of light.” The galloping violin strums give that sneaky hook its subdued grandeur and steady insistence, Bird’s bow tracing the topography of the Midwestern landscape. It sounds as though he’s trying to erase the many miles between him and the person he’s addressing, who is clearly far away. At one of his Gezelligheid shows last winter, Bird explained the song’s origins and specified which Pulaski inspired him, but there’s something so teasingly vague about the song's shadowy “you” that it’s better left unexplained. On its own, the song could be about a departed friend, a distant lover, or every fan who isn’t in the town Bird is playing that night. If “Pulaski at Night” is Bird at his most dependably and stalwartly Romantic, the rest of the EP is just Bird. There is, admittedly, a warm familiarity to the plaintively whistled theme of “Lit from Underneath”, to the staccato plucks of “Hover 1”, to the evocative bowing on “Hover 1”. As well, a few unexpected flourishes illuminate some of these songs, such as the loose-limbed raga rhythm on opener “Ethio Invention No. 1” and the quickly fading notes that arc across “Logan’s Loops”. At times that familiarity curdles into predictability, and nothing else carries the sense of purpose and longing as the title track. Not that Bird needs to reinvent himself on a minor release like this one, but an EP is an ideal medium for indulging new experiments and rethinking one’s approach. The most innovative and intriguing aspect of Pulaski is not its music, but ultimately its not-quite-definable form."

Kurt Vile

Wakin on a Pretty Daze

Rock

Jayson Greene

The concept of samsara, one of the Buddha's four noble truths, holds that all beings are trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Fueled by internal struggle, we turn along an endless wheel of suffering, passing through untold lives in our never-ending quest for enlightenment. Some meditate upon this truth for years; Kurt Vile, on "Life's a Beach", nailed it for us in two mumbled words: "Life's awhile." Vile's music has exuded this unique stoner-Yoda wisdom from the very beginning, even if you weren't searching for it. His sound-- warm, unhurried, and spacious-- doesn't demand close focus, but one of the joys of being pulled into Vile's lonely, contented universe is in discovering that he is muttering sharply self-aware things to himself.  It adds another layer to Vile's appeal; seduced by the soothing, watery-blue glimmer of that sound, which promised to make you feel like the only human in the universe, you slowly realized there's actually one other guy here, and he's kind of a wiseass. Wakin on a Pretty Daze is Vile's most spacious, becalmed record yet, and it contains some of his best-ever brand of cosmic stand-up. It opens, literally, with a stretch and a yawn: On the (almost) title track "Wakin on a Pretty Day", a wah'ed guitar rubs the grit out of its eyes while Vile beholds his furiously ringing phone with clinical detachment: "Phone ringing off the shelf/ I guess somebody has something they really wanna prove to us today," he notes. Unperturbed, he moves along, concerned with something far more pressing: "I gotta figure out what kind of wisecrack I'm gonna drop along the way -- today." The music quickens for a beat or two at this prospect, but settles back down. In Vile's universe, there is time enough for everything. Accordingly, Wakin on a Pretty Daze moves at its own stately pace and with its own serene logic and time. Songs unfurl for six, or seven, or eight minutes without peaking dynamically or changing; the tangle of finger-picked guitars on "Was All Talk" queue up like synth presets that Vile just lets roll. On most songs, four or five chords cycle for minutes on end, echoing upward into the record's warm room tone. "Pure Pain" shifts between stomping, hard acoustic chording and two wide-open billowing finger-picked chords that simply hang while Vile muses: "Every time I look out my window/ All my emotions they are speeding/ Zip through the highways in my head."  It can be occasionally frustrating to interact with a piece of music so fundamentally unconcerned with interaction, but like anything worth truly loving, Wakin on a Pretty Daze opens up slowly. The music, and the act of loving it, are exercises in patience. Or, as Vile puts it sagely on "Too Hard": "Take your time, so they say, and that's probably the best way to be." Vile's releases are small variations on each other, and discerning the differences between them comes down to intangibles, things that are difficult to point to: The fact that he only yelps his little "Woo!" twice on "Shame Chamber"  the first time around, for instance, indicating his bone-deep understanding that two "woos," for now, are plenty. Or the way the silvery guitar leads snake through the album without ever assuming the foreground, murmuring things that reward attention in the same way Vile's lyrics do. The way the drums nudge gently into the title refrain on "Girl Called Alex", and how Vile's "I wanna-" is abruptly cut off by a stinging guitar; these details, small by themselves, offer accumulated testimony to Vile's mastery of his world. Wakin on a Pretty Daze breezes past like a Klonopin dream, and radiates an easy confidence that is as rewarding to return to as a melody. "Sometimes when I get in my zone, you'd think I was stoned, but I never as they say 'touch that stuff,' " Vile sings, with a hint of mockery, on Wakin's closer "Goldtone." The song is stunning, a desert island of Kurt Viledom. Ever since Vile signed to Matador, his music has grown warmer and more expansive as he receded further into the privacy of his own mind: On Smoke Ring for My Halo's "Ghost Town," he crooned gently, "I think I'm never gonna leave my couch again/ Cuz when I'm out, I'm only in my mind." "Goldtone," and all of Wakin on a Pretty Daze, feels like the culmination of Vile's quest to get away from people, noises, civilization and find somewhere to sit and whistle his own tune. If Kurt Vile could paint a storybook Heaven, it would look like "Goldtone", and he signs it with his most poetic, self-aware koan ever:  "I might be adrift but I'm still alert/ Concentrate my hurt into a gold tone." A guitar pushes a wispy cirrus cloud across the sky, sea-blue chimes glitter, and Vile mumbles his way into the sunset.

Artist: Kurt Vile, Album: Wakin on a Pretty Daze, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "The concept of samsara, one of the Buddha's four noble truths, holds that all beings are trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Fueled by internal struggle, we turn along an endless wheel of suffering, passing through untold lives in our never-ending quest for enlightenment. Some meditate upon this truth for years; Kurt Vile, on "Life's a Beach", nailed it for us in two mumbled words: "Life's awhile." Vile's music has exuded this unique stoner-Yoda wisdom from the very beginning, even if you weren't searching for it. His sound-- warm, unhurried, and spacious-- doesn't demand close focus, but one of the joys of being pulled into Vile's lonely, contented universe is in discovering that he is muttering sharply self-aware things to himself.  It adds another layer to Vile's appeal; seduced by the soothing, watery-blue glimmer of that sound, which promised to make you feel like the only human in the universe, you slowly realized there's actually one other guy here, and he's kind of a wiseass. Wakin on a Pretty Daze is Vile's most spacious, becalmed record yet, and it contains some of his best-ever brand of cosmic stand-up. It opens, literally, with a stretch and a yawn: On the (almost) title track "Wakin on a Pretty Day", a wah'ed guitar rubs the grit out of its eyes while Vile beholds his furiously ringing phone with clinical detachment: "Phone ringing off the shelf/ I guess somebody has something they really wanna prove to us today," he notes. Unperturbed, he moves along, concerned with something far more pressing: "I gotta figure out what kind of wisecrack I'm gonna drop along the way -- today." The music quickens for a beat or two at this prospect, but settles back down. In Vile's universe, there is time enough for everything. Accordingly, Wakin on a Pretty Daze moves at its own stately pace and with its own serene logic and time. Songs unfurl for six, or seven, or eight minutes without peaking dynamically or changing; the tangle of finger-picked guitars on "Was All Talk" queue up like synth presets that Vile just lets roll. On most songs, four or five chords cycle for minutes on end, echoing upward into the record's warm room tone. "Pure Pain" shifts between stomping, hard acoustic chording and two wide-open billowing finger-picked chords that simply hang while Vile muses: "Every time I look out my window/ All my emotions they are speeding/ Zip through the highways in my head."  It can be occasionally frustrating to interact with a piece of music so fundamentally unconcerned with interaction, but like anything worth truly loving, Wakin on a Pretty Daze opens up slowly. The music, and the act of loving it, are exercises in patience. Or, as Vile puts it sagely on "Too Hard": "Take your time, so they say, and that's probably the best way to be." Vile's releases are small variations on each other, and discerning the differences between them comes down to intangibles, things that are difficult to point to: The fact that he only yelps his little "Woo!" twice on "Shame Chamber"  the first time around, for instance, indicating his bone-deep understanding that two "woos," for now, are plenty. Or the way the silvery guitar leads snake through the album without ever assuming the foreground, murmuring things that reward attention in the same way Vile's lyrics do. The way the drums nudge gently into the title refrain on "Girl Called Alex", and how Vile's "I wanna-" is abruptly cut off by a stinging guitar; these details, small by themselves, offer accumulated testimony to Vile's mastery of his world. Wakin on a Pretty Daze breezes past like a Klonopin dream, and radiates an easy confidence that is as rewarding to return to as a melody. "Sometimes when I get in my zone, you'd think I was stoned, but I never as they say 'touch that stuff,' " Vile sings, with a hint of mockery, on Wakin's closer "Goldtone." The song is stunning, a desert island of Kurt Viledom. Ever since Vile signed to Matador, his music has grown warmer and more expansive as he receded further into the privacy of his own mind: On Smoke Ring for My Halo's "Ghost Town," he crooned gently, "I think I'm never gonna leave my couch again/ Cuz when I'm out, I'm only in my mind." "Goldtone," and all of Wakin on a Pretty Daze, feels like the culmination of Vile's quest to get away from people, noises, civilization and find somewhere to sit and whistle his own tune. If Kurt Vile could paint a storybook Heaven, it would look like "Goldtone", and he signs it with his most poetic, self-aware koan ever:  "I might be adrift but I'm still alert/ Concentrate my hurt into a gold tone." A guitar pushes a wispy cirrus cloud across the sky, sea-blue chimes glitter, and Vile mumbles his way into the sunset."

Baba Stiltz

Showtime EP

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

Like a number of Swedish electronic musicians in his orbit—Axel Boman, whose Studio Barnhus label he has recorded for; Yung Lean, for whom he’s made beats—Baba Stiltz is a trickster at heart. An early EP, Our Girls, was simply the same song at progressively slower tempos, devolving from a jovial skip to a woozy, tape-warped crawl. But the 24-year-old producer is a joker with a heart of gold: One of his first singles, 2013’s “Sometimes,” interpolated a snippet of Etta James’ “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”—the same song his famous countryman Avicii had popularized for mainstream EDM fans the year before—without a trace of sarcasm. Stiltz’s twinkly deep house boasts the bright colors and rounded contours of a plastic toy, and when he sings a characteristically love-besotted plea (“I’m selfish, can’t help it, I love you so much”) he really sells it, his croon gooey with a surfeit of pure feeling. Chalk it up to his youth as a ballet dancer: Stiltz soars gracefully over thorny barriers of taste that would trip up a more heavy-handed artist. He can play it straight when he wants to, and he never beats listeners over the head with his eccentricity. But in recent years, he has increasingly let his quirks come to the fore—or near the fore. Draping his sometimes goofy, clearly untrained voice in a silky scrim of Auto-Tune, he dances around the question that invariably comes to mind: Is this guy for real? Showtime is his debut release for the iconic British independent label XL. It’s not hard to imagine that the title alludes to the step into the spotlight that signing to such a storied imprint might entail. And while the music doesn’t make a significant break from Stiltz’s previous work, it’s clear that he’s leaning into his pop proclivities. All four tracks showcase his voice, and only the two B-side cuts—the diaphanous “Serve” and the punchier “Maze,” which drizzles syrupy Auto-Tune over a crisp, synth-heavy groove—are keyed to the sound and energy levels of contemporary leftfield house. On the A-side’s two showcase tracks, the emphasis falls squarely on the producer’s heavy-lidded Lothario persona. It’s a good look. “Showtime” is particularly fun: Between his boomy register and his boastful sweet talk, Stiltz comes across a little like Johnny Cash singing Drake lyrics. Over lowing R&B horns and snippets of doo-wop vocals, he unspools a stream-of-consciousness tale of “a DJ with a good soul,” flitting from wry hedonism (“They say the drugs don’t work no more/They seem to work just fine”) to boilerplate braggadocio (of the “bags full of money” variety) whose naivety is worth its weight in imaginary gold. The beat is druggy and playful: Organs and guitars stretch and contort willy-nilly, and odd, extra beats cheerfully wrongfoot the groove when you least expect. Stiltz sums up his whole philosophy with a cheerful dis directed at no one in particular (“LOL on your whole life”), followed by a burst of sheeplike sampled laughter and a shrugged confession: “Grown man with a whole lotta downtime.” “Situation” strikes a similar balance between stoner soul and unrepentant silliness. The sampled groove sounds like it’s trapped in a waterlogged cardboard box; his come-ons (“‘Cause sexy situations call for sexy measures/Sexy situations like you and I tonight”) are about as suave as someone whispering sweet nothings with a half-dissolved gobstopper in his mouth. Stiltz is basically a big, wet dog bounding out of the water and shaking his fur, gleefully oblivious to any discomfort he may cause; that he sounds weirdly like Odelay-era Beck here may or may not contribute to that discomfort. The song is fun and fresh, if admittedly a little low-stakes—like the EP itself. It would be nice if more of the production had the sizzle of his best work. With just four tracks totaling less than 12 minutes of music, Showtime feels like a teaser; what Baba Stiltz does next remains to be seen. But if the Swedish heartthrob with the sly grin and a whole lotta downtime figures out the right balance of shtick and sincerity, we could have a pretty scintillating situation on our hands.

Artist: Baba Stiltz, Album: Showtime EP, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Like a number of Swedish electronic musicians in his orbit—Axel Boman, whose Studio Barnhus label he has recorded for; Yung Lean, for whom he’s made beats—Baba Stiltz is a trickster at heart. An early EP, Our Girls, was simply the same song at progressively slower tempos, devolving from a jovial skip to a woozy, tape-warped crawl. But the 24-year-old producer is a joker with a heart of gold: One of his first singles, 2013’s “Sometimes,” interpolated a snippet of Etta James’ “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”—the same song his famous countryman Avicii had popularized for mainstream EDM fans the year before—without a trace of sarcasm. Stiltz’s twinkly deep house boasts the bright colors and rounded contours of a plastic toy, and when he sings a characteristically love-besotted plea (“I’m selfish, can’t help it, I love you so much”) he really sells it, his croon gooey with a surfeit of pure feeling. Chalk it up to his youth as a ballet dancer: Stiltz soars gracefully over thorny barriers of taste that would trip up a more heavy-handed artist. He can play it straight when he wants to, and he never beats listeners over the head with his eccentricity. But in recent years, he has increasingly let his quirks come to the fore—or near the fore. Draping his sometimes goofy, clearly untrained voice in a silky scrim of Auto-Tune, he dances around the question that invariably comes to mind: Is this guy for real? Showtime is his debut release for the iconic British independent label XL. It’s not hard to imagine that the title alludes to the step into the spotlight that signing to such a storied imprint might entail. And while the music doesn’t make a significant break from Stiltz’s previous work, it’s clear that he’s leaning into his pop proclivities. All four tracks showcase his voice, and only the two B-side cuts—the diaphanous “Serve” and the punchier “Maze,” which drizzles syrupy Auto-Tune over a crisp, synth-heavy groove—are keyed to the sound and energy levels of contemporary leftfield house. On the A-side’s two showcase tracks, the emphasis falls squarely on the producer’s heavy-lidded Lothario persona. It’s a good look. “Showtime” is particularly fun: Between his boomy register and his boastful sweet talk, Stiltz comes across a little like Johnny Cash singing Drake lyrics. Over lowing R&B horns and snippets of doo-wop vocals, he unspools a stream-of-consciousness tale of “a DJ with a good soul,” flitting from wry hedonism (“They say the drugs don’t work no more/They seem to work just fine”) to boilerplate braggadocio (of the “bags full of money” variety) whose naivety is worth its weight in imaginary gold. The beat is druggy and playful: Organs and guitars stretch and contort willy-nilly, and odd, extra beats cheerfully wrongfoot the groove when you least expect. Stiltz sums up his whole philosophy with a cheerful dis directed at no one in particular (“LOL on your whole life”), followed by a burst of sheeplike sampled laughter and a shrugged confession: “Grown man with a whole lotta downtime.” “Situation” strikes a similar balance between stoner soul and unrepentant silliness. The sampled groove sounds like it’s trapped in a waterlogged cardboard box; his come-ons (“‘Cause sexy situations call for sexy measures/Sexy situations like you and I tonight”) are about as suave as someone whispering sweet nothings with a half-dissolved gobstopper in his mouth. Stiltz is basically a big, wet dog bounding out of the water and shaking his fur, gleefully oblivious to any discomfort he may cause; that he sounds weirdly like Odelay-era Beck here may or may not contribute to that discomfort. The song is fun and fresh, if admittedly a little low-stakes—like the EP itself. It would be nice if more of the production had the sizzle of his best work. With just four tracks totaling less than 12 minutes of music, Showtime feels like a teaser; what Baba Stiltz does next remains to be seen. But if the Swedish heartthrob with the sly grin and a whole lotta downtime figures out the right balance of shtick and sincerity, we could have a pretty scintillating situation on our hands."

The Howling Wind

Vortex

Grayson Currin

By their very name, side projects entail second-class status. They’re not a musician’s main act, or, at the very least, they’re the other outlet that’s taking attention away from the reason we care about said musician in the first place. They’re a “project,” too, an experiment taken up with no certainty that the results will work or pay off or be worthy of elevating it to a “profession.” Side projects, though, often possess a clear raison d’etre-- a musician isn’t getting everything they need from the mothership, so they start a new group to provide that opportunity. There’s an idea behind the new band, then, a goal that’s approachable and often aided by their previous cumulative experience. The Howling Wind is the black metal side project of multi-instrumentalist Ryan Lipynsky and drummer Tim Call, respective East Coast and West Coast metal musicians with exhaustive résumés. During the last two decades, Lipynsky has cycled through a series of related acts, from the black metal benders Thralldom and the futuristic sludge crew Unearthly Trance to the newly slow and brutal Serpentine Path. Thralldom’s best moments came when they treated black metal as a textural starting point and not a technical endgame, meaning Lipynsky has long worked for nearly 20 years in music that’s specialized in deliberate, tectonic quakes. Relatedly, Call seems to spend most of his time locked in distended doom epics; he toured as the drummer in Mournful Congregation earlier this year, plays with down-tuned Pacific Northwest outfit Shadow of the Torturer and powers the creeping majesty of Portland’s great, funereal Aldebaran. But as the Howling Wind, they’ve made four albums of knotty, atavistic black metal that’s shaken off the tempo torpor of their other outfits. But that’s not to say that they treat the imprint of their other acts as anathema; in fact, Vortex, their latest and fourth, succeeds because it weaves the touchstones of their résumés into these eight tracks very occasionally but very well, too. The Howling Wind have long played fast and loose with the expectations of black metal: Though their 2007 debut Pestilence & Peril mostly charged through distorted, deadpan heaviness, a labyrinth of dark industrial interludes suggested that Call and Lipynski were eager to break outside the bounds-- that’s where they came from, after all. But last year’s excellent Of Babalon moved more toward firm rock'n'roll ground, with the hard-driving “Scaling the Walls” and the concise, swift beating of “Beast of the Sea” highlighting the differences between this and their other activities. To an extent, that still holds for Vortex, which casts the Howling Wind just as often as a malevolent rock band as black metal recreationists. “At the End of the Earth” suggests stoner rock with a sugar rush, with Lipynski’s tar-thick riffs pushed along by Call’s italicized beats. While “Alignment of Celestial Bodies” takes shape around several old-school black metal sequences; it tends to rumble along like Motörhead, too, with a mid-tempo chug functioning as the glue between its flickering leads and blast beats. Most notable, though, might be the searching, psychedelic solo at song’s end. The knot of notes is too colorful to be grim. It’s an a-ha moment for the band, proof positive of their broad interests. That enthusiasm for pushing slightly but decidedly past the confines of the “black metal side project” mold keeps Vortex compelling and unstable. “Waves Come Crashing Down” begins as a blitz, with jagged riffs slicing through a relentless stomp. But an inexorable weight seems to linger from the outset, ultimately forcing the song into a slow-motion stagger, with Lipynski’s irascible tone stretched like scars over plodding drums. The two ride the groove together until the exit, the guitars decaying into a foreboding ellipsis. The patience necessary for their doom metal backgrounds shows up at the start of “Force of the Maelstrom”, which winds steadily upward from a long blues lead until, as the title suggests, the band hits high gear. Vortex both opens and ends with the sort of steely-eyed, solemn instrumentals as Pestilence & Peril, with guitar whorls and electronic edits shaping a thick gray blanket. They are exactly the preludes and postludes that you might suspect from two doom dudes making a black metal record-- they’re interesting enough, but altogether expected. What’s unexpected, though, is how the Howling Wind has now turned the traces of its past and main outlets into a record that sounds less like a side project meant for producing black metal than a proper band free to do whatever it wants.

Artist: The Howling Wind, Album: Vortex, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "By their very name, side projects entail second-class status. They’re not a musician’s main act, or, at the very least, they’re the other outlet that’s taking attention away from the reason we care about said musician in the first place. They’re a “project,” too, an experiment taken up with no certainty that the results will work or pay off or be worthy of elevating it to a “profession.” Side projects, though, often possess a clear raison d’etre-- a musician isn’t getting everything they need from the mothership, so they start a new group to provide that opportunity. There’s an idea behind the new band, then, a goal that’s approachable and often aided by their previous cumulative experience. The Howling Wind is the black metal side project of multi-instrumentalist Ryan Lipynsky and drummer Tim Call, respective East Coast and West Coast metal musicians with exhaustive résumés. During the last two decades, Lipynsky has cycled through a series of related acts, from the black metal benders Thralldom and the futuristic sludge crew Unearthly Trance to the newly slow and brutal Serpentine Path. Thralldom’s best moments came when they treated black metal as a textural starting point and not a technical endgame, meaning Lipynsky has long worked for nearly 20 years in music that’s specialized in deliberate, tectonic quakes. Relatedly, Call seems to spend most of his time locked in distended doom epics; he toured as the drummer in Mournful Congregation earlier this year, plays with down-tuned Pacific Northwest outfit Shadow of the Torturer and powers the creeping majesty of Portland’s great, funereal Aldebaran. But as the Howling Wind, they’ve made four albums of knotty, atavistic black metal that’s shaken off the tempo torpor of their other outfits. But that’s not to say that they treat the imprint of their other acts as anathema; in fact, Vortex, their latest and fourth, succeeds because it weaves the touchstones of their résumés into these eight tracks very occasionally but very well, too. The Howling Wind have long played fast and loose with the expectations of black metal: Though their 2007 debut Pestilence & Peril mostly charged through distorted, deadpan heaviness, a labyrinth of dark industrial interludes suggested that Call and Lipynski were eager to break outside the bounds-- that’s where they came from, after all. But last year’s excellent Of Babalon moved more toward firm rock'n'roll ground, with the hard-driving “Scaling the Walls” and the concise, swift beating of “Beast of the Sea” highlighting the differences between this and their other activities. To an extent, that still holds for Vortex, which casts the Howling Wind just as often as a malevolent rock band as black metal recreationists. “At the End of the Earth” suggests stoner rock with a sugar rush, with Lipynski’s tar-thick riffs pushed along by Call’s italicized beats. While “Alignment of Celestial Bodies” takes shape around several old-school black metal sequences; it tends to rumble along like Motörhead, too, with a mid-tempo chug functioning as the glue between its flickering leads and blast beats. Most notable, though, might be the searching, psychedelic solo at song’s end. The knot of notes is too colorful to be grim. It’s an a-ha moment for the band, proof positive of their broad interests. That enthusiasm for pushing slightly but decidedly past the confines of the “black metal side project” mold keeps Vortex compelling and unstable. “Waves Come Crashing Down” begins as a blitz, with jagged riffs slicing through a relentless stomp. But an inexorable weight seems to linger from the outset, ultimately forcing the song into a slow-motion stagger, with Lipynski’s irascible tone stretched like scars over plodding drums. The two ride the groove together until the exit, the guitars decaying into a foreboding ellipsis. The patience necessary for their doom metal backgrounds shows up at the start of “Force of the Maelstrom”, which winds steadily upward from a long blues lead until, as the title suggests, the band hits high gear. Vortex both opens and ends with the sort of steely-eyed, solemn instrumentals as Pestilence & Peril, with guitar whorls and electronic edits shaping a thick gray blanket. They are exactly the preludes and postludes that you might suspect from two doom dudes making a black metal record-- they’re interesting enough, but altogether expected. What’s unexpected, though, is how the Howling Wind has now turned the traces of its past and main outlets into a record that sounds less like a side project meant for producing black metal than a proper band free to do whatever it wants."

A Place to Bury Strangers

Exploding Head

Rock

Zach Kelly

About halfway through Exploding Head you really start to forget why A Place to Bury Strangers sounded so exciting on their self-titled debut two years ago. Not exactly what one wants to hear when talking about an anticipated sophomore release, especially one with a title that promises to literally split your fucking wig, or at very least serve as an alternate soundtrack to Scanners (I'm guessing Melting Face was a little too on-the-nose). While Exploding Head is no washout-- right around "Keep Slipping Away", the back half picks up where the debut left off, full of inspired pieces of paranoia-inducing industrial guitar noise and moribund pop textures-- it too often seems like a misguided attempt to connect dots for the listener. On the debut, much of the fun came from sifting through all that ball-retracting dissonance and coming out with handfuls of melodic goop. Here, after eliminating some of the harsher textures in favor of cleanlier, well-positioned rawk tunes, the music is packed with palatable songs that spook instead of uncomfortable ones that seriously unnerve. In other words, if we're still classifying A Place to Bury Strangers as Jesus and Mary Chain revivalists, it's far too early in their career for this to be their Automatic. Head is most assuredly a maturation, from the songwriting right down to the fancy effects-pedal driven magic that frontman Oliver Ackermann is so rightfully lauded for (Ackermann famously crafts customized pedals through his Death By Audio company for artists like TV On the Radio and U2, but has apparently saved some of the coolest tricks for his own band). The band sounds tight, the production full and perfectly drab. So maybe it might seem like a dick move to criticize this record for giving a fuck, but when that white-hot feral intensity only rears its head ever-so-often, the unsubtle influences that anchor Exploding Head (JAMC, My Bloody Valentine, Echo & the Bunnymen) often render songs pancake-flat. For example, on first listen, older stuff like the irrepressibly exciting "To Fix the Gash in Your Head" sounded like little more than Wall•E being crammed into a garbage disposal to the tune of "Upside Down", and still managed to be frighteningly arresting. Where here, new single "In Your Heart" doesn't offer much more than a very impressive facsimile of some of Ian McCullough and Co.'s darker imaginings, well-shaped and completely forgettable. The technical stuff on the record is pretty solid through and through, the band always retaining a much-appreciated limberness even on wishy-washy cuts like "Lost Feeling". So when big standouts like "Ego Death" (rife with ripping guitars and Nick Cave worshipping sneer) and "Everything Always Goes Wrong" (a mean and moody sock-hop jam that contains some of biggest and best pedal work on the album), Head seems like a perfect follow-up, tidier but still as fierce. Yet it's genre-nursed stuff like the noodly post-punk of "Exploding Head" or the too cleverly rationed rising power-chord chugs of "It Is Nothing" that seem to best represent how quickly that fierceness can dissolve when song structures are laid this plain (albeit still kinda groovy). It soon becomes obvious how important that wall of coronary-clutching noise was, and how painfully rewarding it was to break through it. Head just doesn't put up much of a fight in that respect, revealing it's secrets too fast and too loose. It's more than a little greedy, but by the end of Exploding Head, you can't help but feel a little disappointed to be stuck with a bucket of cleaning products and no viscera to scrape off the walls.

Artist: A Place to Bury Strangers, Album: Exploding Head, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.6 Album review: "About halfway through Exploding Head you really start to forget why A Place to Bury Strangers sounded so exciting on their self-titled debut two years ago. Not exactly what one wants to hear when talking about an anticipated sophomore release, especially one with a title that promises to literally split your fucking wig, or at very least serve as an alternate soundtrack to Scanners (I'm guessing Melting Face was a little too on-the-nose). While Exploding Head is no washout-- right around "Keep Slipping Away", the back half picks up where the debut left off, full of inspired pieces of paranoia-inducing industrial guitar noise and moribund pop textures-- it too often seems like a misguided attempt to connect dots for the listener. On the debut, much of the fun came from sifting through all that ball-retracting dissonance and coming out with handfuls of melodic goop. Here, after eliminating some of the harsher textures in favor of cleanlier, well-positioned rawk tunes, the music is packed with palatable songs that spook instead of uncomfortable ones that seriously unnerve. In other words, if we're still classifying A Place to Bury Strangers as Jesus and Mary Chain revivalists, it's far too early in their career for this to be their Automatic. Head is most assuredly a maturation, from the songwriting right down to the fancy effects-pedal driven magic that frontman Oliver Ackermann is so rightfully lauded for (Ackermann famously crafts customized pedals through his Death By Audio company for artists like TV On the Radio and U2, but has apparently saved some of the coolest tricks for his own band). The band sounds tight, the production full and perfectly drab. So maybe it might seem like a dick move to criticize this record for giving a fuck, but when that white-hot feral intensity only rears its head ever-so-often, the unsubtle influences that anchor Exploding Head (JAMC, My Bloody Valentine, Echo & the Bunnymen) often render songs pancake-flat. For example, on first listen, older stuff like the irrepressibly exciting "To Fix the Gash in Your Head" sounded like little more than Wall•E being crammed into a garbage disposal to the tune of "Upside Down", and still managed to be frighteningly arresting. Where here, new single "In Your Heart" doesn't offer much more than a very impressive facsimile of some of Ian McCullough and Co.'s darker imaginings, well-shaped and completely forgettable. The technical stuff on the record is pretty solid through and through, the band always retaining a much-appreciated limberness even on wishy-washy cuts like "Lost Feeling". So when big standouts like "Ego Death" (rife with ripping guitars and Nick Cave worshipping sneer) and "Everything Always Goes Wrong" (a mean and moody sock-hop jam that contains some of biggest and best pedal work on the album), Head seems like a perfect follow-up, tidier but still as fierce. Yet it's genre-nursed stuff like the noodly post-punk of "Exploding Head" or the too cleverly rationed rising power-chord chugs of "It Is Nothing" that seem to best represent how quickly that fierceness can dissolve when song structures are laid this plain (albeit still kinda groovy). It soon becomes obvious how important that wall of coronary-clutching noise was, and how painfully rewarding it was to break through it. Head just doesn't put up much of a fight in that respect, revealing it's secrets too fast and too loose. It's more than a little greedy, but by the end of Exploding Head, you can't help but feel a little disappointed to be stuck with a bucket of cleaning products and no viscera to scrape off the walls."

Luke Temple

Snowbeast

Pop/R&B

Jessica Suarez

Luke Temple's biography mentions his job at a candy shop in California, a time when he slept in the forest for a year, and painting murals on apartment walls for rich New Yorkers. An artist turned musician, Luke Temple discovered that a four-track layers audio the same way an artist slathers paint, though the former offered him endless chances for reconfiguration. His story, and even this easy equation ("music is painting"), builds the gentle naiveté that runs throughout Temple's second LP. "Saturday People" leads off Snowbeast and it's easily Temple's strongest song and showcases everything that's good about the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. Temple's banjo carries the brisk waltz through dynamic shifts that move him from a easy lope to a section of harmonies straight out of an early CSNY record. In fact the lines "People/ Looking-glass people/ Saturday people/ Will live one final time," when sung in that harmony (and perhaps coupled with the over-the-top "A mescaline freak-out in an off-Broadway show in the morning") invoke a variety of romanticized and alienated imagery that's snatched straight from a time when squares were there to be looked at and made strange. In that sense, "Saturday People" is a period piece, or maybe a period triptych. Aside from the outro, the song's three parts are miniature gems grouped by time signature and quasi-pyschedelic inflections; they refract and reflect each others' brilliance. "Saturday People" is solid through and through, and it's really no surprise that Temple can't keep up the momentum through the rest of the record, the song really is twice as good as anything that follows. Most of the rest of the songs seem to hinge on one melodic idea that comes and goes. Consequently, I spent most of my time waiting for those moments to crop up. In "Medicine" an almost-dramatic minor-key melody lends the opening line ("Better take your medicine") a paternalistic threat that simply peters out as the song progresses, only to revive itself when the hook returns. But it dies away again as it turns out, "your medicine was love." Oh. It's always disappointing when a songwriter tries to decode his music for the listener, but when it turns out that the equation is "x=love," there's no hope for redemption. Yet it's no surprise that the "answer" to the question "What is 'medicine'?" is "love." It's a totally conventional answer, and "Medicine" is a conventional song by design. Another acoustic slow-poke, "People Do", follows similar constraints. Though it showcases Temple's strange, lovely voice and those harmonies again, there is little to listen for besides the sheer pleasure of hearing his vocal turn miraculously from bloodless to soulful with just the slightest application of vibrato. The acoustic tracks are few and far between, though. For the most part Temple favors a melange of tinkling synths and keyboards. When he uses them for their rhythmic qualities, as on "Family Vacation", he's on firm footing, threading his melodies through a Timbaland-ish tom beat until the frenetic releases that serve as choruses. "Family Vacation" is a fun track, and it's woefully brief. More often, though, Temple uses his keyboards as texturing devices, and he tends to favor sounds somewhere in the range of his voice. This means that a song like "Serious", though it's a fine song, suffers from treble overload. The lone bass cannot support the layers and layers of high-end piled upon it. Temple is a relatively young songwriter and this, his second full-length, shows promise. Its unevenness seems like a result of his struggle with ideas, rather than a lack of ideas worth filling out. The fuller the palette he works with, the better the result. Such a frail, pretty voice needs something to support it, and in songs like "Saturday People" where it finds itself in a niche carved out especially for it, rather than adrift on a see of aimless synths, Temple's various gifts amplify each other.

Artist: Luke Temple, Album: Snowbeast, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Luke Temple's biography mentions his job at a candy shop in California, a time when he slept in the forest for a year, and painting murals on apartment walls for rich New Yorkers. An artist turned musician, Luke Temple discovered that a four-track layers audio the same way an artist slathers paint, though the former offered him endless chances for reconfiguration. His story, and even this easy equation ("music is painting"), builds the gentle naiveté that runs throughout Temple's second LP. "Saturday People" leads off Snowbeast and it's easily Temple's strongest song and showcases everything that's good about the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. Temple's banjo carries the brisk waltz through dynamic shifts that move him from a easy lope to a section of harmonies straight out of an early CSNY record. In fact the lines "People/ Looking-glass people/ Saturday people/ Will live one final time," when sung in that harmony (and perhaps coupled with the over-the-top "A mescaline freak-out in an off-Broadway show in the morning") invoke a variety of romanticized and alienated imagery that's snatched straight from a time when squares were there to be looked at and made strange. In that sense, "Saturday People" is a period piece, or maybe a period triptych. Aside from the outro, the song's three parts are miniature gems grouped by time signature and quasi-pyschedelic inflections; they refract and reflect each others' brilliance. "Saturday People" is solid through and through, and it's really no surprise that Temple can't keep up the momentum through the rest of the record, the song really is twice as good as anything that follows. Most of the rest of the songs seem to hinge on one melodic idea that comes and goes. Consequently, I spent most of my time waiting for those moments to crop up. In "Medicine" an almost-dramatic minor-key melody lends the opening line ("Better take your medicine") a paternalistic threat that simply peters out as the song progresses, only to revive itself when the hook returns. But it dies away again as it turns out, "your medicine was love." Oh. It's always disappointing when a songwriter tries to decode his music for the listener, but when it turns out that the equation is "x=love," there's no hope for redemption. Yet it's no surprise that the "answer" to the question "What is 'medicine'?" is "love." It's a totally conventional answer, and "Medicine" is a conventional song by design. Another acoustic slow-poke, "People Do", follows similar constraints. Though it showcases Temple's strange, lovely voice and those harmonies again, there is little to listen for besides the sheer pleasure of hearing his vocal turn miraculously from bloodless to soulful with just the slightest application of vibrato. The acoustic tracks are few and far between, though. For the most part Temple favors a melange of tinkling synths and keyboards. When he uses them for their rhythmic qualities, as on "Family Vacation", he's on firm footing, threading his melodies through a Timbaland-ish tom beat until the frenetic releases that serve as choruses. "Family Vacation" is a fun track, and it's woefully brief. More often, though, Temple uses his keyboards as texturing devices, and he tends to favor sounds somewhere in the range of his voice. This means that a song like "Serious", though it's a fine song, suffers from treble overload. The lone bass cannot support the layers and layers of high-end piled upon it. Temple is a relatively young songwriter and this, his second full-length, shows promise. Its unevenness seems like a result of his struggle with ideas, rather than a lack of ideas worth filling out. The fuller the palette he works with, the better the result. Such a frail, pretty voice needs something to support it, and in songs like "Saturday People" where it finds itself in a niche carved out especially for it, rather than adrift on a see of aimless synths, Temple's various gifts amplify each other."

Kyle Hall

From Joy

Electronic

Andrew Gaerig

Through no fault of his own, Kyle Hall landed in the somewhat precarious position of having Detroit's hopes pinned to him. Since the young DJ and producer debuted in 2007 on fellow Detroiter Omar S's FXHE imprint, Hall has been viewed as the great hope for the next generation of Detroit dance music. Hall kept up his end of the bargain, fostering the potent Wild Oats label, throwing parties in the city and, crucially, not absconding to New York or London or Berlin. Kyle Hall is doing it all, and his 2013 debut album, The Boat Party, sounded like it, anxiously flitting between a host of styles: electro, ghetto tech, filter disco, beat tracks. It's against this backdrop of fervent activity that Hall's second album, From Joy, stands out so fully. A richly melodic exploration that expertly balances astral reverie with rhythmic heft, it's the kind of fully realized statement no one was really expecting Hall to make. Not because he didn't have the talent, but because, well, he seemed busy. A three-LP set featuring eight expansive tracks, From Joy is ambitious but warm and approachable. In its openness, imagination, and sense of history, From Joy feels like the child of Detroit's legendary exploratory radio shows. The concept is simple: jazzy pianos, walking basslines, and probing synth explorations welded to house music's 4/4 drum templates. Jazz has always been valuable in house music—as source material and as a thematic link to another form of (largely black) outsider expression—but From Joy uses jazz a little differently than usual. Hall doesn't sample much here, instead borrowing from jazz its ensemble nature, the sense of unity achieved when the elements of a track lock together just so. Where most dance music feels sequenced, From Joy feels played. Where most machine music employs randomizations and swung notes to remind you of its human nature, From Joy just kind of flows. Hall is able to achieve this in part because From Joy sounds fantastic. You will pass entire tracks—five- and six-minutes long—zeroing in on the richness of one tone or another. For all of a synthesizer's endless possibilities, it's easy to remember that many of them were conceived with the more conservative purpose of emulating traditional instruments. And From Joy is conservative in this sense, dialing up exquisite, harmonically rich synth basslines—see opener "Damn! I'm Feeln Real Close"—and sonorous leads. One of the album's least dance-y tracks, the contemplative "Wake Up and Dip," is a showcase for a squelchy solo as expressive and felt as any old vanguard. Hall does all this without betraying his dance music bonafides, as side-long tracks such as "Dervenen" and "Strut Garden" offer DJs and dancers ample acreage. The latter track improbably lives up to its name, a whole lawn of little jukes and swaggers. Its bassline makes all the familiar moves, freeing you to make the unfamiliar ones. From Joy effortlessly functions as both dance music and a home listening experience. Kyle Hall, an artist who has built his young career around doing it all, has made an album that does it all. From Joy, imbued with the past but not overly reverent of it, is Hall cashing in on the prodigious talent glimpsed in his prior work. It's tempting to hold it up as a capital-letter statement, a totem of his hometown. It's equally tempting, and probably healthier, to spin it back and delight in its abundance.

Artist: Kyle Hall, Album: From Joy, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Through no fault of his own, Kyle Hall landed in the somewhat precarious position of having Detroit's hopes pinned to him. Since the young DJ and producer debuted in 2007 on fellow Detroiter Omar S's FXHE imprint, Hall has been viewed as the great hope for the next generation of Detroit dance music. Hall kept up his end of the bargain, fostering the potent Wild Oats label, throwing parties in the city and, crucially, not absconding to New York or London or Berlin. Kyle Hall is doing it all, and his 2013 debut album, The Boat Party, sounded like it, anxiously flitting between a host of styles: electro, ghetto tech, filter disco, beat tracks. It's against this backdrop of fervent activity that Hall's second album, From Joy, stands out so fully. A richly melodic exploration that expertly balances astral reverie with rhythmic heft, it's the kind of fully realized statement no one was really expecting Hall to make. Not because he didn't have the talent, but because, well, he seemed busy. A three-LP set featuring eight expansive tracks, From Joy is ambitious but warm and approachable. In its openness, imagination, and sense of history, From Joy feels like the child of Detroit's legendary exploratory radio shows. The concept is simple: jazzy pianos, walking basslines, and probing synth explorations welded to house music's 4/4 drum templates. Jazz has always been valuable in house music—as source material and as a thematic link to another form of (largely black) outsider expression—but From Joy uses jazz a little differently than usual. Hall doesn't sample much here, instead borrowing from jazz its ensemble nature, the sense of unity achieved when the elements of a track lock together just so. Where most dance music feels sequenced, From Joy feels played. Where most machine music employs randomizations and swung notes to remind you of its human nature, From Joy just kind of flows. Hall is able to achieve this in part because From Joy sounds fantastic. You will pass entire tracks—five- and six-minutes long—zeroing in on the richness of one tone or another. For all of a synthesizer's endless possibilities, it's easy to remember that many of them were conceived with the more conservative purpose of emulating traditional instruments. And From Joy is conservative in this sense, dialing up exquisite, harmonically rich synth basslines—see opener "Damn! I'm Feeln Real Close"—and sonorous leads. One of the album's least dance-y tracks, the contemplative "Wake Up and Dip," is a showcase for a squelchy solo as expressive and felt as any old vanguard. Hall does all this without betraying his dance music bonafides, as side-long tracks such as "Dervenen" and "Strut Garden" offer DJs and dancers ample acreage. The latter track improbably lives up to its name, a whole lawn of little jukes and swaggers. Its bassline makes all the familiar moves, freeing you to make the unfamiliar ones. From Joy effortlessly functions as both dance music and a home listening experience. Kyle Hall, an artist who has built his young career around doing it all, has made an album that does it all. From Joy, imbued with the past but not overly reverent of it, is Hall cashing in on the prodigious talent glimpsed in his prior work. It's tempting to hold it up as a capital-letter statement, a totem of his hometown. It's equally tempting, and probably healthier, to spin it back and delight in its abundance."

Pusha-T

Darkest Before Dawn

Rap

Craig Jenkins

Pusha T occupies a unique spot in hip-hop. He's a twenty-year veteran with access to the swankiest production but very little of the nagging pressure to surf mainstream trends that runs his peers ragged. He wrestled the major label rap machine and won, and his scathing sneer has menaced a decade of hip-hop top dogs, from Lil Wayne to Drake. He's the rare instance of a rap talent sharpening over time; few who made their first recordings in the late '90s, as he did as one half of the Clipse, can be argued to possess a firmer grasp on their voice today than in their youth. Since jumping to Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music after the Clipse began a now-permanent hiatus, Pusha T has zeroed in on a mercenary style both weathered and totally disrespectful; he's seen whole labels, crews, and organizations dissolve, and he's happy to tell you how yours will come apart on you if you're not careful. A popular rapper with a disdain for the machinery of hip-hop fame is a dangerous assassin, and Pusha spends a good piece of his sophomore studio album Ki**ng Push – Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude pulling back the curtain on rap stardom to reveal it for smoke and mirrors. "M.F.T.R." razzes rappers who'd "rather be more famous than rich," and "Crutches, Crosses, Caskets" shames a platinum rapper whose "momma lives in squalor," before smirking that Push's own mother is "in the Bahamas for the month/ She probably sittin' in her pajamas, having lunch." In a year where a multi-platform media mogul like 50 Cent declared bankruptcy, and Drake and Lil Wayne grumble publicly about Cash Money not paying up, Push's dart in the Biggie-sampling lead single "Untouchable" about which companies' checks don't bounce is sound business advice as savage quip (or vice versa). Darkest Before Dawn isn't all trash talk; Pusha still takes inspiration from his dealer days, both good and bad. Some of the more revealing corners of the record delve into how he coped when things went sour. "The crash don't kill, it's how you survives it," he raps on "Keep Dealing." Early on in "F.I.F.A." he snaps "I'm my city's Willy Falcon/ How you niggas celebrating Alpo?" in reference to the Floridian coke trafficker who once beat charges of pushing nearly 80 tons of white by bribing the jury and the Harlem shooter Alpo Martinez, subject of the movie Paid in Full. Pusha's second act, both after his group folded and after the Clipse's former manager pled guilty to charges alleging he was a drug kingpin, is a rebirth few inside rap or out have enjoyed. Irv Gotti was never the same after the Feds ran into the Inc offices, and try as he might, Family Hustle Tip will never be King again. Imagine Tony Montana slipping out of the country scot-free ahead of his career-ending Scarface raid, and you arrive at the cocktail of spite and incredulity fueling Darkest Before Dawn. The swing from moneyed gall to grizzled paranoia is a well-trodden path in hip-hop and elsewhere, but the eye for detail in the writing and the claustrophobic, foreboding sonics set it apart from other rote goon rap fare. That these 10 songs hang together is testament to the writer's bleak vision, since they're technically flotsam from the forthcoming King Push (hence the protracted The Prelude subtitle). Perhaps the prevailing feeling he's not trying to impress us comes from the records he really intends to impact radio being saved for a different project. Whatever the case, Pusha dragged a crack team of rap maestros well outside their respective comfort zones for the occasion. The production on Darkest Before Dawn is uncompromising headphone boom bap from people who don't really make it anymore. The curt "Intro" is a Metro Boomin beat uncharacteristically light on hellacious synths and heavy on cavernous, tribal stomp. For "Untouchable," Timbaland leaves his trademark bells and whistles behind for a skeletal array of dizzyingly tricky bass and snare hits. "M.P.A." is the most unfussed Kanye West production since "Otis." "F.I.F.A." gets a sputtering Rick Rubin style breakbeat from Q-Tip. Rap producers are dying to make and sell weird shit like this, but thirst for easily recognizable signature sounds pigeonholes rapper and beatsmith alike. Pusha T getting his collaborators to set aside their pet sounds is the mark of fearless showmen and inimitable chemistry. To that end, Darkest Before Dawn is best explained as an exercise in pure craft for everyone involved, the kind of record being scared out of existence because chickenshit execs won't fund what they can't see topping the charts. The beats sound like money, and the raps are whip smart and cleanly tailored. Like Pusha's career post-Clipse, it's godly providence everything has gone as swimmingly as it has here. The resourceful hustler always finds his way.

Artist: Pusha-T, Album: Darkest Before Dawn, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "Pusha T occupies a unique spot in hip-hop. He's a twenty-year veteran with access to the swankiest production but very little of the nagging pressure to surf mainstream trends that runs his peers ragged. He wrestled the major label rap machine and won, and his scathing sneer has menaced a decade of hip-hop top dogs, from Lil Wayne to Drake. He's the rare instance of a rap talent sharpening over time; few who made their first recordings in the late '90s, as he did as one half of the Clipse, can be argued to possess a firmer grasp on their voice today than in their youth. Since jumping to Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music after the Clipse began a now-permanent hiatus, Pusha T has zeroed in on a mercenary style both weathered and totally disrespectful; he's seen whole labels, crews, and organizations dissolve, and he's happy to tell you how yours will come apart on you if you're not careful. A popular rapper with a disdain for the machinery of hip-hop fame is a dangerous assassin, and Pusha spends a good piece of his sophomore studio album Ki**ng Push – Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude pulling back the curtain on rap stardom to reveal it for smoke and mirrors. "M.F.T.R." razzes rappers who'd "rather be more famous than rich," and "Crutches, Crosses, Caskets" shames a platinum rapper whose "momma lives in squalor," before smirking that Push's own mother is "in the Bahamas for the month/ She probably sittin' in her pajamas, having lunch." In a year where a multi-platform media mogul like 50 Cent declared bankruptcy, and Drake and Lil Wayne grumble publicly about Cash Money not paying up, Push's dart in the Biggie-sampling lead single "Untouchable" about which companies' checks don't bounce is sound business advice as savage quip (or vice versa). Darkest Before Dawn isn't all trash talk; Pusha still takes inspiration from his dealer days, both good and bad. Some of the more revealing corners of the record delve into how he coped when things went sour. "The crash don't kill, it's how you survives it," he raps on "Keep Dealing." Early on in "F.I.F.A." he snaps "I'm my city's Willy Falcon/ How you niggas celebrating Alpo?" in reference to the Floridian coke trafficker who once beat charges of pushing nearly 80 tons of white by bribing the jury and the Harlem shooter Alpo Martinez, subject of the movie Paid in Full. Pusha's second act, both after his group folded and after the Clipse's former manager pled guilty to charges alleging he was a drug kingpin, is a rebirth few inside rap or out have enjoyed. Irv Gotti was never the same after the Feds ran into the Inc offices, and try as he might, Family Hustle Tip will never be King again. Imagine Tony Montana slipping out of the country scot-free ahead of his career-ending Scarface raid, and you arrive at the cocktail of spite and incredulity fueling Darkest Before Dawn. The swing from moneyed gall to grizzled paranoia is a well-trodden path in hip-hop and elsewhere, but the eye for detail in the writing and the claustrophobic, foreboding sonics set it apart from other rote goon rap fare. That these 10 songs hang together is testament to the writer's bleak vision, since they're technically flotsam from the forthcoming King Push (hence the protracted The Prelude subtitle). Perhaps the prevailing feeling he's not trying to impress us comes from the records he really intends to impact radio being saved for a different project. Whatever the case, Pusha dragged a crack team of rap maestros well outside their respective comfort zones for the occasion. The production on Darkest Before Dawn is uncompromising headphone boom bap from people who don't really make it anymore. The curt "Intro" is a Metro Boomin beat uncharacteristically light on hellacious synths and heavy on cavernous, tribal stomp. For "Untouchable," Timbaland leaves his trademark bells and whistles behind for a skeletal array of dizzyingly tricky bass and snare hits. "M.P.A." is the most unfussed Kanye West production since "Otis." "F.I.F.A." gets a sputtering Rick Rubin style breakbeat from Q-Tip. Rap producers are dying to make and sell weird shit like this, but thirst for easily recognizable signature sounds pigeonholes rapper and beatsmith alike. Pusha T getting his collaborators to set aside their pet sounds is the mark of fearless showmen and inimitable chemistry. To that end, Darkest Before Dawn is best explained as an exercise in pure craft for everyone involved, the kind of record being scared out of existence because chickenshit execs won't fund what they can't see topping the charts. The beats sound like money, and the raps are whip smart and cleanly tailored. Like Pusha's career post-Clipse, it's godly providence everything has gone as swimmingly as it has here. The resourceful hustler always finds his way."

Liz Janes

Poison & Snakes

Folk/Country

Nick Sylvester

I know there's a place for this sort of self-satisfied, not-too-alt-country schmaltz-- maybe some Greenpoint dive where young newlyweds go after watching "Last Call With Carson Daly", or some hip free-trade coffeeshop in San Diego with so much tracklighting you can see the members of Liz Janes' band smiling and nodding at each other whenever she "really starts getting into it"-- but I'm pretty sure this place isn't for me just yet. Poison & Snakes is Janes' second album, and it's pretty much everything you'd expect from a seasoned singer, songwriter, and performer who may very well refer to herself as a "seasoned singer, songwriter, and performer". Janes can sing pretty well, and she writes decent enough songs, but she knows both of these things, and Poison & Snakes sounds a little too house proud. Technically, the album's "about" the American West, and Janes' country doo-wop twang complements her more relaxed lovey-dovey numbers nicely enough, as on the let-you-down-easy lullaby "Wonderkiller", the potsy-panny, sometimes throaty "Deep Sea Diver", and the album's title track, for which Fifel Goes West And Plays The Album's Token Harmonica Solo. Elsewhere, I don't know, it's all just too much. Janes goes for bonsai countrified punk on "Streetlight", but the whole thing comes out sounding like a Burger King commercial. "Sets To Cleaning" is unhinged and rickety, but not without the drummer's most transparent efforts to sound like he's completely autistic. The canned piano-and-kiddie-vox opener of "Desert" kicks up just enough post-rock dirt for the noodling to hit the seven-minute mark, but by the end the song still has nothing to say for itself. "Go Between" also sounds like a Burger King commercial, but in fairness, there are some scenes from Dances With Wolves it reminds me of as well. I try not to get wrapped up in the folk authenticity or "Who's faking the folk?" debates about tradition, eclecticism, and so forth. Really, my biggest concern is whether an album makes me feel old, and this one definitely does. Poison & Snakes is quality but adult-contemporary, a fine piece of Waterford crystal or Cat's Meow memorabilia that I can't yet appreciate-- if I'll ever want to.

Artist: Liz Janes, Album: Poison & Snakes, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "I know there's a place for this sort of self-satisfied, not-too-alt-country schmaltz-- maybe some Greenpoint dive where young newlyweds go after watching "Last Call With Carson Daly", or some hip free-trade coffeeshop in San Diego with so much tracklighting you can see the members of Liz Janes' band smiling and nodding at each other whenever she "really starts getting into it"-- but I'm pretty sure this place isn't for me just yet. Poison & Snakes is Janes' second album, and it's pretty much everything you'd expect from a seasoned singer, songwriter, and performer who may very well refer to herself as a "seasoned singer, songwriter, and performer". Janes can sing pretty well, and she writes decent enough songs, but she knows both of these things, and Poison & Snakes sounds a little too house proud. Technically, the album's "about" the American West, and Janes' country doo-wop twang complements her more relaxed lovey-dovey numbers nicely enough, as on the let-you-down-easy lullaby "Wonderkiller", the potsy-panny, sometimes throaty "Deep Sea Diver", and the album's title track, for which Fifel Goes West And Plays The Album's Token Harmonica Solo. Elsewhere, I don't know, it's all just too much. Janes goes for bonsai countrified punk on "Streetlight", but the whole thing comes out sounding like a Burger King commercial. "Sets To Cleaning" is unhinged and rickety, but not without the drummer's most transparent efforts to sound like he's completely autistic. The canned piano-and-kiddie-vox opener of "Desert" kicks up just enough post-rock dirt for the noodling to hit the seven-minute mark, but by the end the song still has nothing to say for itself. "Go Between" also sounds like a Burger King commercial, but in fairness, there are some scenes from Dances With Wolves it reminds me of as well. I try not to get wrapped up in the folk authenticity or "Who's faking the folk?" debates about tradition, eclecticism, and so forth. Really, my biggest concern is whether an album makes me feel old, and this one definitely does. Poison & Snakes is quality but adult-contemporary, a fine piece of Waterford crystal or Cat's Meow memorabilia that I can't yet appreciate-- if I'll ever want to."

Saturday Looks Good to Me

Every Night

Rock

David Moore

Indulging imprinted nostalgia is a tricky business. It's to the credit of Fred Thomas and his army of collaborators in Saturday Looks Good to Me that they so consistently connect with a weirdly instinctual recognition of the generalized 60s music from which their own music is drawn. For the most part, their audience's perception of that music is purely indexical, informed only by second-hand documents of the era. For the same reason, my parents would never spin Every Night or All Your Summer Songs when they could flip on an oldies station or mine their LP collection instead: SLGTM are catering to a perception of the 1960s that never actually existed; they channel their own experiences into decades they've never lived, and speak to an audience who can appreciate Phil Spector references, bombastic Pet Sounds percussion, garage organ, and the kind of tambourine that once grounded a rhythm rather than embellished it, but necessarily can't experience these components with the same kind of time-warp authenticity that the music exudes. If SLGTM didn't recognize the fundamental conflict of recontextualizing a style of music for which most of their listeners have only an abstract historical context, their music would fall apart. The success of Every Night, much like All Your Summer Songs before it, is entirely dependent on its contemporary relevance in the guise of almost fetishistic devotion to 60s pop nostalgia. "Since You Stole My Heart", a mono-friendly girl-group love letter that smacks of the sickly sweetest trip down a boardwalk you've never been on, represents the far extreme of SLGTM's direct emulative powers. But gradually, a darker world of thrift stores, cheap cigarettes, and rum & Cokes pierces through the band's façade of straight-faced homage, hinting at something more compelling and contemporary beneath. The divide between the band's affected 90s lo-fi feel and genuine 60s recording fidelity is a delicate one, and pushing too far to either side damages the band's inspired but fragile aesthetic. Summer Songs achieved this balance nearly flawlessly, but Every Night occasionally loses its footing. A few largely acoustic tracks (particularly the heavy and oddly polished "Dialtone" and "We Can't Work It Out") fail to adequately veil Thomas' narcissistic pretense as a lyricist. Where the pop-mysticism of "If You Ask"'s psych-lite production effectively hides the song's weighty lyrical undercurrent, the relatively hi-fi demo quality of "Dialtone" brings Thomas' brooding relationship with an ex-love to the forefront of the song, relegating the blithe piano and tambourine arrangement to mere set dressing. The resulting song feels overproduced and too distinctly current, and temporarily hinders the album's retro charm. Many songs, however, achieve the same heights of Summer Songs; the reverb-drenched, Spector string-heavy "Until the World Stops Spinning", Nuggets outtake "Keep Walking", and effervescent sunshine vibe of penultimate "Lift Me Up" are frozen in an ambiguous moment that reasonably could have been culled from any point in time between 1960-1967, with just enough contemporary lyrical context and modern vocal affectation to connect the band's musical conceits to more current influences. If the band's established sound wasn't such a direct homage, replication of a former release might be considered a major fault. However, SLGTM construct their songs from such a deceptively diverse palette that their reserve of material, though all vaguely familiar, is potentially endless. Their scope may be limited, but their wealth of source material is as broad as the subconscious vinyl fantasies of their audience.

Artist: Saturday Looks Good to Me, Album: Every Night, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Indulging imprinted nostalgia is a tricky business. It's to the credit of Fred Thomas and his army of collaborators in Saturday Looks Good to Me that they so consistently connect with a weirdly instinctual recognition of the generalized 60s music from which their own music is drawn. For the most part, their audience's perception of that music is purely indexical, informed only by second-hand documents of the era. For the same reason, my parents would never spin Every Night or All Your Summer Songs when they could flip on an oldies station or mine their LP collection instead: SLGTM are catering to a perception of the 1960s that never actually existed; they channel their own experiences into decades they've never lived, and speak to an audience who can appreciate Phil Spector references, bombastic Pet Sounds percussion, garage organ, and the kind of tambourine that once grounded a rhythm rather than embellished it, but necessarily can't experience these components with the same kind of time-warp authenticity that the music exudes. If SLGTM didn't recognize the fundamental conflict of recontextualizing a style of music for which most of their listeners have only an abstract historical context, their music would fall apart. The success of Every Night, much like All Your Summer Songs before it, is entirely dependent on its contemporary relevance in the guise of almost fetishistic devotion to 60s pop nostalgia. "Since You Stole My Heart", a mono-friendly girl-group love letter that smacks of the sickly sweetest trip down a boardwalk you've never been on, represents the far extreme of SLGTM's direct emulative powers. But gradually, a darker world of thrift stores, cheap cigarettes, and rum & Cokes pierces through the band's façade of straight-faced homage, hinting at something more compelling and contemporary beneath. The divide between the band's affected 90s lo-fi feel and genuine 60s recording fidelity is a delicate one, and pushing too far to either side damages the band's inspired but fragile aesthetic. Summer Songs achieved this balance nearly flawlessly, but Every Night occasionally loses its footing. A few largely acoustic tracks (particularly the heavy and oddly polished "Dialtone" and "We Can't Work It Out") fail to adequately veil Thomas' narcissistic pretense as a lyricist. Where the pop-mysticism of "If You Ask"'s psych-lite production effectively hides the song's weighty lyrical undercurrent, the relatively hi-fi demo quality of "Dialtone" brings Thomas' brooding relationship with an ex-love to the forefront of the song, relegating the blithe piano and tambourine arrangement to mere set dressing. The resulting song feels overproduced and too distinctly current, and temporarily hinders the album's retro charm. Many songs, however, achieve the same heights of Summer Songs; the reverb-drenched, Spector string-heavy "Until the World Stops Spinning", Nuggets outtake "Keep Walking", and effervescent sunshine vibe of penultimate "Lift Me Up" are frozen in an ambiguous moment that reasonably could have been culled from any point in time between 1960-1967, with just enough contemporary lyrical context and modern vocal affectation to connect the band's musical conceits to more current influences. If the band's established sound wasn't such a direct homage, replication of a former release might be considered a major fault. However, SLGTM construct their songs from such a deceptively diverse palette that their reserve of material, though all vaguely familiar, is potentially endless. Their scope may be limited, but their wealth of source material is as broad as the subconscious vinyl fantasies of their audience."

DJ Food

Solid Steel Presents: Now, Listen!

Electronic,Jazz

David M. Pecoraro

In 1939, avant-garde composer John Cage took a pair of records containing test tones, and a pair of phonographs specially designed to play at different speeds and used them to create music. The result, a piece entitled Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is commonly regarded as the first piece of turntable music. Though a few other avant-garde composers of the time would follow Cage's lead, it would be decades before the turntable's capacity as a musical instrument would truly be explored again. The 80s and 90s saw the simultaneous rise of the CD as the premiere form of recorded music and of the turntable as a musical instrument, as the discoveries of a few kids in the Bronx gave birth to a musical movement the likes of which they could never have imagined. The last few years have seen the turntablist break free of his connections with the realm of hip-hop, with DJs turning up in bands of every shape style and form. Meanwhile, artists like Christian Marclay and Kid Koala continue to push the limits of what can be done with a few record players. Still, despite the turntable's newfound commonplace status, one can't help but get the feeling at times that turntablists are the Rodney Dangerfields of the music world. No respect and all that. In the minds of many, the turntablist is not a musician, but a presenter of music. Of course, this assumption is ridiculous. As anyone who's tried their hand at manipulating vinyl will tell you, there's far more to it than just dropping a needle and pressing play. Still, it often seems that no number of amazing feats performed upon the wheels of steel will ever change the minds of the doubtful masses. Certainly, the turntables have attracted their fair share of drugged-out ravers and lazy would-be musicians. We've all been to parties where wannabe-DJs did little more than play one record after another, and we've all been bored to death by some guy at some lame club whose experimentation never developed past a simple beatmatch. But these half-assed DJs are nothing more than the turntable equivalent of your girlfriend's brother, sitting in the garage with his out-of-tune thrift store guitar, playing along to Weezer tabs he downloaded online. Real DJs-- those who take their art with all the seriousness of the most skilled classical pianist-- often show more ingenuity and creativity in the use of their instrument than most so-called "real musicians." And logically so. The turntable isn't like a guitar or a piano; there is no preconceived "proper way" to play it, no set of rules, no charts or theory to learn. It's a skill wide open to interpretation, and as such, the best turntablists are constantly redefining their craft, finding new approaches to making sound. Take Now, Listen, the newest release from DJ Food (a rotating team of musicians whose lineup currently consists of PC and Strictly Kev) and co-conspirator DK, for example. Technically speaking, this is a compilation of other people's music-- a mix CD. But the credit for the album lies, without a doubt, in the hands of the three who assembled it. It's important to note that I'm not just praising the musical tastes of the trio at the helm here. Any DJ worth their salt can compile two-dozen worthwhile tracks with his or her eyes closed. What makes or breaks an album like Now, Listen is flow. And DJ Food have it in spades. Indeed, it's the long-practiced, well-polished ability of all the artists involved here to paste together bits of sound into a cohesive whole that makes Now, Listen far more than just the sum of its parts. Equal parts hip-hop, jazz, dance, experimental, rock and IDM, all pasted together with an assortment of vocal samples (a trademark of the Solid Steel show), the record serves as a fine introduction to the sort of freeform radio these guys have been putting together for years. Since 1988, when Matt Black and Jonathan More (today you know them as Coldcut) took on a weekly late-night, freeform radio program on a London pirate radio station, Coldcut's weekly "Solid Steel" program has served as an outlet for turntablists more interested in making music than playing it. The thirteen years since have seen a lot of changes to the program. Today, "Solid Steel" is broadcast on one of London's best-known radio stations, streamed over the Internet and syndicated the world over. The show frequently plays host to guest DJs (Squarepusher, Tortoise, most of the Ninja Tune clan, etc.) and Coldcut's hosting duties have been split with DJ Food's Strictly Kev, while producer DK's role has expanded to encompass realms both creative and technical. Now, Listen is the first in a proposed series of discs intended to recreate the spirit of these broadcasts. Starting off with a crackly old big band recording before quickly jumping ship into a torrential ocean of scratches and samples, the work of the DJs is immediately apparent. After the introduction, we're off with Jeru the Damaja-- rapping and scratches-- mixed seamlessly with a downtempo instrumental by the Cinematic Orchestra. From this point on, it becomes more and more difficult to tell one ingredient from the other. There's an old saying in the DJ world that you can give 80 DJs copies of the same record and you'll never hear it played the same way twice. If only that were actually the case. Recent mix albums by DJ Spooky and Fila Brazilia have disappointed, despite excellent ingredients, due to less-than-thrilling mixes. In each of these cases, the DJs did little but build short bridges between the songs, their contributions limited to the first and last few seconds of each track. DJ Food and DK, on the other hand, use turntables, effects pedals, samplers, and sound clips from film and television and vinyl to cause their chosen songs to bleed together like cheap colored paper left out in the rain. Take the seamless layering of a Ray Bradbury monologue over David Shire's horn-heavy suspense-thriller-style "The Taking of Pelham 123." Or the Herbie Hancock-discussing-his-love-for-electronics sample from "Nobu" that flawlessly links tracks by Four Tet, the Art of Noise and Boards of Canada. Or the amalgamation of Mr. Scruff's minimal electro-funk groove "Ug," with the relentless verbal flow of Motion Man's "The Terrorist" and Peshay's drum-n-bass opus "Miles from Home." Sure, there are missteps, like the failed attempt to turn the Beat's "Mirror in the Bathroom" into an IDM track by setting it to Mask's Aphex-ian "Square Off." And while rare awkward moments like this may disrupt the album's flow from time to time, there are more than enough treats here to make up f

Artist: DJ Food, Album: Solid Steel Presents: Now, Listen!, Genre: Electronic,Jazz, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "In 1939, avant-garde composer John Cage took a pair of records containing test tones, and a pair of phonographs specially designed to play at different speeds and used them to create music. The result, a piece entitled Imaginary Landscape No. 1 is commonly regarded as the first piece of turntable music. Though a few other avant-garde composers of the time would follow Cage's lead, it would be decades before the turntable's capacity as a musical instrument would truly be explored again. The 80s and 90s saw the simultaneous rise of the CD as the premiere form of recorded music and of the turntable as a musical instrument, as the discoveries of a few kids in the Bronx gave birth to a musical movement the likes of which they could never have imagined. The last few years have seen the turntablist break free of his connections with the realm of hip-hop, with DJs turning up in bands of every shape style and form. Meanwhile, artists like Christian Marclay and Kid Koala continue to push the limits of what can be done with a few record players. Still, despite the turntable's newfound commonplace status, one can't help but get the feeling at times that turntablists are the Rodney Dangerfields of the music world. No respect and all that. In the minds of many, the turntablist is not a musician, but a presenter of music. Of course, this assumption is ridiculous. As anyone who's tried their hand at manipulating vinyl will tell you, there's far more to it than just dropping a needle and pressing play. Still, it often seems that no number of amazing feats performed upon the wheels of steel will ever change the minds of the doubtful masses. Certainly, the turntables have attracted their fair share of drugged-out ravers and lazy would-be musicians. We've all been to parties where wannabe-DJs did little more than play one record after another, and we've all been bored to death by some guy at some lame club whose experimentation never developed past a simple beatmatch. But these half-assed DJs are nothing more than the turntable equivalent of your girlfriend's brother, sitting in the garage with his out-of-tune thrift store guitar, playing along to Weezer tabs he downloaded online. Real DJs-- those who take their art with all the seriousness of the most skilled classical pianist-- often show more ingenuity and creativity in the use of their instrument than most so-called "real musicians." And logically so. The turntable isn't like a guitar or a piano; there is no preconceived "proper way" to play it, no set of rules, no charts or theory to learn. It's a skill wide open to interpretation, and as such, the best turntablists are constantly redefining their craft, finding new approaches to making sound. Take Now, Listen, the newest release from DJ Food (a rotating team of musicians whose lineup currently consists of PC and Strictly Kev) and co-conspirator DK, for example. Technically speaking, this is a compilation of other people's music-- a mix CD. But the credit for the album lies, without a doubt, in the hands of the three who assembled it. It's important to note that I'm not just praising the musical tastes of the trio at the helm here. Any DJ worth their salt can compile two-dozen worthwhile tracks with his or her eyes closed. What makes or breaks an album like Now, Listen is flow. And DJ Food have it in spades. Indeed, it's the long-practiced, well-polished ability of all the artists involved here to paste together bits of sound into a cohesive whole that makes Now, Listen far more than just the sum of its parts. Equal parts hip-hop, jazz, dance, experimental, rock and IDM, all pasted together with an assortment of vocal samples (a trademark of the Solid Steel show), the record serves as a fine introduction to the sort of freeform radio these guys have been putting together for years. Since 1988, when Matt Black and Jonathan More (today you know them as Coldcut) took on a weekly late-night, freeform radio program on a London pirate radio station, Coldcut's weekly "Solid Steel" program has served as an outlet for turntablists more interested in making music than playing it. The thirteen years since have seen a lot of changes to the program. Today, "Solid Steel" is broadcast on one of London's best-known radio stations, streamed over the Internet and syndicated the world over. The show frequently plays host to guest DJs (Squarepusher, Tortoise, most of the Ninja Tune clan, etc.) and Coldcut's hosting duties have been split with DJ Food's Strictly Kev, while producer DK's role has expanded to encompass realms both creative and technical. Now, Listen is the first in a proposed series of discs intended to recreate the spirit of these broadcasts. Starting off with a crackly old big band recording before quickly jumping ship into a torrential ocean of scratches and samples, the work of the DJs is immediately apparent. After the introduction, we're off with Jeru the Damaja-- rapping and scratches-- mixed seamlessly with a downtempo instrumental by the Cinematic Orchestra. From this point on, it becomes more and more difficult to tell one ingredient from the other. There's an old saying in the DJ world that you can give 80 DJs copies of the same record and you'll never hear it played the same way twice. If only that were actually the case. Recent mix albums by DJ Spooky and Fila Brazilia have disappointed, despite excellent ingredients, due to less-than-thrilling mixes. In each of these cases, the DJs did little but build short bridges between the songs, their contributions limited to the first and last few seconds of each track. DJ Food and DK, on the other hand, use turntables, effects pedals, samplers, and sound clips from film and television and vinyl to cause their chosen songs to bleed together like cheap colored paper left out in the rain. Take the seamless layering of a Ray Bradbury monologue over David Shire's horn-heavy suspense-thriller-style "The Taking of Pelham 123." Or the Herbie Hancock-discussing-his-love-for-electronics sample from "Nobu" that flawlessly links tracks by Four Tet, the Art of Noise and Boards of Canada. Or the amalgamation of Mr. Scruff's minimal electro-funk groove "Ug," with the relentless verbal flow of Motion Man's "The Terrorist" and Peshay's drum-n-bass opus "Miles from Home." Sure, there are missteps, like the failed attempt to turn the Beat's "Mirror in the Bathroom" into an IDM track by setting it to Mask's Aphex-ian "Square Off." And while rare awkward moments like this may disrupt the album's flow from time to time, there are more than enough treats here to make up f"

Trey Songz

Intermission EP

Pop/R&B

Meaghan Garvey

Last year’s Trigga arrived at an interesting point in Trey Songz’ nearly decade-long career. Mr. Steal Your Girl has never been in danger of falling off, but on his sixth album, he seemed to have more competition than ever as the dude-R&B sphere over-brewed with stylized, specific points of view. Ty Dolla $ign had officially arrived, with "Or Nah" creeping up the Hot 100 and "Paranoid" still in radio rotation; Chris Brown was somehow bigger than ever, riding high off addictive-but-repugnant single "Loyal"; Jeremih had gotten his second wind, steadily becoming rap’s favorite guest vocalist, and PARTYNEXTDOOR, the Weeknd, and a league of imitators were occupying the moody lane left open as Drake drifted away from R&B. As his less firmly established peers have dipped their toes into the "alt-R&B" pool or flirted with EDM to stay relevant, Trey’s point of view has remained trendy but traditional, his generation’s best candidate for R. Kelly’s torch-bearer; and while he’s subtly evolved over the years, gracefully embracing hip-hop and R&B’s increasing cross-pollination, he hasn’t made too many pronounced stylistic shifts. He might lack the crossover appeal or critical darling status of, say, The-Dream or the Weeknd, but his singles discography is unimpeachable—not to mention, he can sing any of the aforementioned under the table. Trigga emphatically reaffirmed Trey’s hit-making pedigree: The album spawned a whopping six singles, best among them Nicki Minaj collaboration "Touchin, Lovin". Trey and production team The Featherstones dabbled in the surefire 2014 hit strategy, "interpolate a '90s classic" (in this case, Big and Kells’ "Fuck You Tonight"), but made sure to slyly note, "If we talkin’ bout sex, girl you know I invented that"—a reminder of his indelible stamp on millennial baby-making jams. But Trey’s alpha-male anthems have always had a bit of a chauvinistic edge, and "Touchin, Lovin" succeeded in no small part because it allotted space for a strong female perspective as a counterpoint to the bro-y narcissism of a guy used to having his way. If you squint, Trey’s recent six-song Intermission EP, a stopgate to tide fans over until Trigga: Reloaded this summer, does what Trey does best: provide a no-skips-required sex playlist, or at least an escapist fantasy for zoning out at your desk. The satiny synths, leisurely finger-snap percussion, and evocative bass rumbles, all providing a cushion for Trey’s velvety tenor, are the aural equivalent of scattered rose petals and lit candles. But the fantasy quickly fades: almost every song doubles down on the #meninist platitudes and reductive misogyny more than anything he’s released to date. Intermission feels like a conceptual homage to pick-up artist bible The Game. "Don’t Play" starts seductively enough, with its spacious, Jeremih-esque atmospherics, but quickly devolves into negging on wax. "You got my time, girl, don’t you disrespect it," he huffs, barely concealing his impatience with his companion’s sexual ambivalence. "Good Girls vs Bad Girls" has Trigga reducing half the earth’s population to an Archie Comics trope, then wondering why he can’t seem to find meaning within this sad binary. "Boss", perhaps unwittingly, provides the EP’s only real moment of vulnerability. The track borrows a feeling from Drake circa 2010 (a time when Drizzy needed Trey’s co-sign to get a leg up, strange as that may seem now), not just in mood and cadence, but in the same defensive paranoia, obsessed with the idea that women are attracted by his status and adjusting his expectations accordingly. "I don’t judge her, don’t judge her/ But I could never love her/ ‘Cause I’m just an entertainer/ And soon she gon’ fuck another," he sings, a riff on Drake's guarded "Miss Me" verse and a flash of context for the surrounding callousness. But it still doesn’t make the project’s overwhelming misogyny any easier to swallow, sexy as the sound may be. It’s a move as perplexing as it is disappointing. Meninist flailing is for dudes struggling to overcome their terrible personalities, like Eminem. And Intermission’s spite towards women is especially baffling considering they comprise the vast majority of his fandom. What part of The Game is that?

Artist: Trey Songz, Album: Intermission EP, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Last year’s Trigga arrived at an interesting point in Trey Songz’ nearly decade-long career. Mr. Steal Your Girl has never been in danger of falling off, but on his sixth album, he seemed to have more competition than ever as the dude-R&B sphere over-brewed with stylized, specific points of view. Ty Dolla $ign had officially arrived, with "Or Nah" creeping up the Hot 100 and "Paranoid" still in radio rotation; Chris Brown was somehow bigger than ever, riding high off addictive-but-repugnant single "Loyal"; Jeremih had gotten his second wind, steadily becoming rap’s favorite guest vocalist, and PARTYNEXTDOOR, the Weeknd, and a league of imitators were occupying the moody lane left open as Drake drifted away from R&B. As his less firmly established peers have dipped their toes into the "alt-R&B" pool or flirted with EDM to stay relevant, Trey’s point of view has remained trendy but traditional, his generation’s best candidate for R. Kelly’s torch-bearer; and while he’s subtly evolved over the years, gracefully embracing hip-hop and R&B’s increasing cross-pollination, he hasn’t made too many pronounced stylistic shifts. He might lack the crossover appeal or critical darling status of, say, The-Dream or the Weeknd, but his singles discography is unimpeachable—not to mention, he can sing any of the aforementioned under the table. Trigga emphatically reaffirmed Trey’s hit-making pedigree: The album spawned a whopping six singles, best among them Nicki Minaj collaboration "Touchin, Lovin". Trey and production team The Featherstones dabbled in the surefire 2014 hit strategy, "interpolate a '90s classic" (in this case, Big and Kells’ "Fuck You Tonight"), but made sure to slyly note, "If we talkin’ bout sex, girl you know I invented that"—a reminder of his indelible stamp on millennial baby-making jams. But Trey’s alpha-male anthems have always had a bit of a chauvinistic edge, and "Touchin, Lovin" succeeded in no small part because it allotted space for a strong female perspective as a counterpoint to the bro-y narcissism of a guy used to having his way. If you squint, Trey’s recent six-song Intermission EP, a stopgate to tide fans over until Trigga: Reloaded this summer, does what Trey does best: provide a no-skips-required sex playlist, or at least an escapist fantasy for zoning out at your desk. The satiny synths, leisurely finger-snap percussion, and evocative bass rumbles, all providing a cushion for Trey’s velvety tenor, are the aural equivalent of scattered rose petals and lit candles. But the fantasy quickly fades: almost every song doubles down on the #meninist platitudes and reductive misogyny more than anything he’s released to date. Intermission feels like a conceptual homage to pick-up artist bible The Game. "Don’t Play" starts seductively enough, with its spacious, Jeremih-esque atmospherics, but quickly devolves into negging on wax. "You got my time, girl, don’t you disrespect it," he huffs, barely concealing his impatience with his companion’s sexual ambivalence. "Good Girls vs Bad Girls" has Trigga reducing half the earth’s population to an Archie Comics trope, then wondering why he can’t seem to find meaning within this sad binary. "Boss", perhaps unwittingly, provides the EP’s only real moment of vulnerability. The track borrows a feeling from Drake circa 2010 (a time when Drizzy needed Trey’s co-sign to get a leg up, strange as that may seem now), not just in mood and cadence, but in the same defensive paranoia, obsessed with the idea that women are attracted by his status and adjusting his expectations accordingly. "I don’t judge her, don’t judge her/ But I could never love her/ ‘Cause I’m just an entertainer/ And soon she gon’ fuck another," he sings, a riff on Drake's guarded "Miss Me" verse and a flash of context for the surrounding callousness. But it still doesn’t make the project’s overwhelming misogyny any easier to swallow, sexy as the sound may be. It’s a move as perplexing as it is disappointing. Meninist flailing is for dudes struggling to overcome their terrible personalities, like Eminem. And Intermission’s spite towards women is especially baffling considering they comprise the vast majority of his fandom. What part of The Game is that?"

These New Puritans

Expanded (Live at the Barbican)

Electronic,Rock

Ian Cohen

These New Puritans are "post-rock" in an unusually literal way—since encrypting post-punk on 2008’s wiry, caustic Beat Pyramid, they’ve been an avant-garde band with a major-label budget, integrating classical composition, jazz instrumentation, musique concrete, primitive folk, dancehall, basically everything but rock'n'roll. More importantly, while they’ve maintained something of a power trio lineup, no one asks them a question so often posed to “rock bands”—“How are they going to pull this off live?” The apt comparisons to the otherwise incomparable Talk Talk are warranted, as the creation of Hidden and Field of Reeds were similarly defined by the trio’s isolation—from trends, from budgetary constraints and from the mundanity of the album cycle. Likewise, they use near-mythical tales of studio trickery to tease fans rather than singles, as Victoria’s Secret money gets funneled into Foley effects and falconry, Britain’s lowest voice and eight-foot Japanese taiko drums. But if they are going to pull this off live, These New Puritans aren’t ones to half-ass anything and so, this is how we arrive at Expanded—performing with a 35-piece orchestra, at "Europe's largest multi-arts and conference venue." This isn’t just the best means of presenting Field of Reeds live, it might be the only way. Another commonality These New Puritans share with late-period Talk Talk is a status of being commercial non-entities in the States and believe me, no matter how suave they look on stage, this is awkward as hell in a rock club that might otherwise host, say, Finch or Marilyn Manson in 2014—earlier this year, I saw an impeccable performance interrupted by Sunset Strip stragglers and a Brazilian guy on Molly who kept requesting “Elvis”. By comparison, the polite clapping that accompanies Expanded may puncture the hermetic seal, but it doesn’t take all of the air out; if anything, it serves as a reminder that this is not a typical rock show. Jack Barnett has been forthcoming about his lack of instrumental or compositional knowledge, but he is an exacting boss; these musicians are trained to not fuck up and they are not held to lower standards because These New Puritans are technically a pop band. So the alterations are minor, if any: “Fragment Two” was Field of Reeds’ most conventional moment and that’s obviously relative. And so it’s subject to the most conventional effect of live performance, which is that it plays slightly faster and looser than its studio counterpart. Meanwhile, “Island Song” goes straight into the incantatory portion of its mesmerizing coda rather than teasing it out as it does on the record. Even the most inscrutable sounds on Field of Reeds evolved from an organic source and the most “how’d they do that?” moments are captured with startling clarity—the undulating, magnetic resonator-piano melody that snakes throughout “Island Song”, the hypnotic motifs of “Organ Eternal”, the glass-shattering crescendo of “The Light in Your Name”. In fact, Barnett and his charges are so adept at recreating the subtle complexities of Field of Reeds, that they don’t just render Expanded a total misnomer. They call its entire reason for existence into question. With the exception of a two-minute “Intro Tape”, These New Puritans play Field of Reeds almost verbatim—in its exact order, with little, if any variation from the original versions. So why listen to this instead of Field of Reeds? Barnett considers Expanded to be on the level of TNP’s albums and called these performances improvements over the originals; but it’s too close to call even for those who’ve completely immersed within Field of Reeds’ otherworldly environs, which is even more disappointing than the typical refractory release, i.e., the well-intentioned and often terribly-executed remix album. Considering the austerity of its arrangements and their open-ended structure, Field of Reeds actually stands as a rare instance of a record that could lend itself to total teardowns. The price of admission is warranted once the record-setting basso profundo of “Field of Reeds” fades out; new composition “Spitting Stars” is another lovely, pastoral collaboration with Graham Sutton, but considering the long latency periods and wild deviations from one These New Puritans record to the next, it’s likely an appendage to Field of Reeds rather than an indication of where they might go next. There are also two selections from Hidden, the more intimidating, less “orchestral” predecessor to Field of Reeds and the record that would have been better suited to this format. For all of its stunt sonics—smashed watermelons, sharpened knives, M.I.A. interpolations—much of it was proudly composed on cheap keyboards. As such, “We Want War” embodies the entire timeline of human combat, from sticks and stones to modern digital strikes. But with the addition of Portuguese fado singer Elisa Rodrigues and the orchestral replacements for those digital dancehall patches, the textures of “We Want War” and proto-Yeezus banger “Three Thousand” are too cohesive, sounding closer to the overblown bombast of Michael Bay or Metallica’s S&M. But it's more of a disappointment than a failure—at the very least, it might serve as someone's introduction to These New Puritans. But there is precedent for bands just as studiocentric properly utilizing this style of live performance: Kraftwerk's Minimum-Maximum, Portishead’s PNYC, Spiritualized’s Royal Albert Hall, October 10, 1997: Live —and if Expanded doesn’t reach that level by any means, at least it’s more worthwhile than the track-by-track, aggressively redundant cash-ins of the Cure’s Trilogy or Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion Live. But if it takes a classic rock cliche to emphasize how far beyond rock These New Puritans really are, then Expanded is a total success.

Artist: These New Puritans, Album: Expanded (Live at the Barbican), Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "These New Puritans are "post-rock" in an unusually literal way—since encrypting post-punk on 2008’s wiry, caustic Beat Pyramid, they’ve been an avant-garde band with a major-label budget, integrating classical composition, jazz instrumentation, musique concrete, primitive folk, dancehall, basically everything but rock'n'roll. More importantly, while they’ve maintained something of a power trio lineup, no one asks them a question so often posed to “rock bands”—“How are they going to pull this off live?” The apt comparisons to the otherwise incomparable Talk Talk are warranted, as the creation of Hidden and Field of Reeds were similarly defined by the trio’s isolation—from trends, from budgetary constraints and from the mundanity of the album cycle. Likewise, they use near-mythical tales of studio trickery to tease fans rather than singles, as Victoria’s Secret money gets funneled into Foley effects and falconry, Britain’s lowest voice and eight-foot Japanese taiko drums. But if they are going to pull this off live, These New Puritans aren’t ones to half-ass anything and so, this is how we arrive at Expanded—performing with a 35-piece orchestra, at "Europe's largest multi-arts and conference venue." This isn’t just the best means of presenting Field of Reeds live, it might be the only way. Another commonality These New Puritans share with late-period Talk Talk is a status of being commercial non-entities in the States and believe me, no matter how suave they look on stage, this is awkward as hell in a rock club that might otherwise host, say, Finch or Marilyn Manson in 2014—earlier this year, I saw an impeccable performance interrupted by Sunset Strip stragglers and a Brazilian guy on Molly who kept requesting “Elvis”. By comparison, the polite clapping that accompanies Expanded may puncture the hermetic seal, but it doesn’t take all of the air out; if anything, it serves as a reminder that this is not a typical rock show. Jack Barnett has been forthcoming about his lack of instrumental or compositional knowledge, but he is an exacting boss; these musicians are trained to not fuck up and they are not held to lower standards because These New Puritans are technically a pop band. So the alterations are minor, if any: “Fragment Two” was Field of Reeds’ most conventional moment and that’s obviously relative. And so it’s subject to the most conventional effect of live performance, which is that it plays slightly faster and looser than its studio counterpart. Meanwhile, “Island Song” goes straight into the incantatory portion of its mesmerizing coda rather than teasing it out as it does on the record. Even the most inscrutable sounds on Field of Reeds evolved from an organic source and the most “how’d they do that?” moments are captured with startling clarity—the undulating, magnetic resonator-piano melody that snakes throughout “Island Song”, the hypnotic motifs of “Organ Eternal”, the glass-shattering crescendo of “The Light in Your Name”. In fact, Barnett and his charges are so adept at recreating the subtle complexities of Field of Reeds, that they don’t just render Expanded a total misnomer. They call its entire reason for existence into question. With the exception of a two-minute “Intro Tape”, These New Puritans play Field of Reeds almost verbatim—in its exact order, with little, if any variation from the original versions. So why listen to this instead of Field of Reeds? Barnett considers Expanded to be on the level of TNP’s albums and called these performances improvements over the originals; but it’s too close to call even for those who’ve completely immersed within Field of Reeds’ otherworldly environs, which is even more disappointing than the typical refractory release, i.e., the well-intentioned and often terribly-executed remix album. Considering the austerity of its arrangements and their open-ended structure, Field of Reeds actually stands as a rare instance of a record that could lend itself to total teardowns. The price of admission is warranted once the record-setting basso profundo of “Field of Reeds” fades out; new composition “Spitting Stars” is another lovely, pastoral collaboration with Graham Sutton, but considering the long latency periods and wild deviations from one These New Puritans record to the next, it’s likely an appendage to Field of Reeds rather than an indication of where they might go next. There are also two selections from Hidden, the more intimidating, less “orchestral” predecessor to Field of Reeds and the record that would have been better suited to this format. For all of its stunt sonics—smashed watermelons, sharpened knives, M.I.A. interpolations—much of it was proudly composed on cheap keyboards. As such, “We Want War” embodies the entire timeline of human combat, from sticks and stones to modern digital strikes. But with the addition of Portuguese fado singer Elisa Rodrigues and the orchestral replacements for those digital dancehall patches, the textures of “We Want War” and proto-Yeezus banger “Three Thousand” are too cohesive, sounding closer to the overblown bombast of Michael Bay or Metallica’s S&M. But it's more of a disappointment than a failure—at the very least, it might serve as someone's introduction to These New Puritans. But there is precedent for bands just as studiocentric properly utilizing this style of live performance: Kraftwerk's Minimum-Maximum, Portishead’s PNYC, Spiritualized’s Royal Albert Hall, October 10, 1997: Live —and if Expanded doesn’t reach that level by any means, at least it’s more worthwhile than the track-by-track, aggressively redundant cash-ins of the Cure’s Trilogy or Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion Live. But if it takes a classic rock cliche to emphasize how far beyond rock These New Puritans really are, then Expanded is a total success."

The Focus Group

The Elektrik Karousel

Nick Neyland

Almost 10 years have passed since Julian House introduced the fitful rhythms of the Focus Group to the world. It's a music that exclusively trades on finding beauty in the awkward fit, both in the way it sounds and the way it's executed. When listening to a Focus Group album, expect to hear organ drones collide with the clatter of typewriter keys, with indecipherable dialogue extracted from impossibly obscure European art films laced over the top. There is no neat segue between parts. Instead, it sounds like House is sticking pieces of tape together by hand, quickly cycling through fragments of pop culture ephemera in tracks that last two minutes or less (it's usually less). He's probably not working that way, but it's a nice image to have in mind when listening to the Focus Group: House, the mad inventor, lost in a blizzard of unspooled tape that he's gradually feeding into an old Studer, the whole process only making sense to him alone. That working model served House well initially, but in recent times he's branched out a little. There's been a blurring of the lines between the Focus Group and Broadcast, to the point where it's no longer clear where one group begins and the other ends. The ...Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age album bore both their names; a subsequent Broadcast tour (sadly their last due to the subsequent passing of singer Trish Keenan) drew heavily on films made for them by House; and Broadcast's soundtrack to Berberian Sound Studio lent hard on the kind of cut-up work they'd undertaken on Witch Cults. Now, this album bears the credit: "All titles composed by the Focus Group with help from Broadcast." Still, Elektrik Karousel feels like the vision of one man, whose bastardization of the word "carousel" in the title couldn't be more appropriate. The whole thing passes in such a blur of color that you feel winded just trying to keep up. Concerns may arise from anyone well-versed in this stuff, especially as the "hauntology" sub-genre has had its moment, and other Focus Group albums were delivered with a similar love of parcelling everything up in small packets of multi-colored splendor. But the Ghost Box label has been surprisingly resilient. Last year's Pye Corner Audio album for the label is among their best releases, effortlessly surpassing most of the sub-par John Carpenter clones littering up download folders. Elektrik Karousel works in the opposite direction, strengthening House's position in a field in which he's mostly alone. He's shed many of the horror leanings here, instead bringing the folkier side of the Focus Group into tighter view. The styling of titles like "Kinky Korner Klub" and "The Kool Kranium" bring Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos to mind, but the mood throughout is more wistful autumnal picnic than it is occultist dinner party at the Dakota. Those folk elements always existed in the Focus Group's palette, but the prevailing mood on prior albums could mostly be divided up into gleeful tinkering with vintage pop elements and the giallo chills that partly made the Ghost Box label so notable. On Elektrik Karousel there's a stronger sense of melancholy, lending this music a weight it didn’t reach for in the past. It's even there in the most experimental pieces, such as the positively epic (by Focus Group standards) six-minute piece "The Magic Pendulum", which builds around a sad horn motif and leaden organ drones. At times it's stunningly pretty-- the one-minute plinky-plonky loop that "Let's Listen" works around is one of the few times that House should have worked against his instinct for brevity. But that's the Focus Group, moving on quickly, leaving tiny mysteries trailing behind. Except this time a piece of the puzzle, an explanation for the shades of sorrow, is provided in the liner notes: "Thank you Trish for the sounds you sent".

Artist: The Focus Group, Album: The Elektrik Karousel, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Almost 10 years have passed since Julian House introduced the fitful rhythms of the Focus Group to the world. It's a music that exclusively trades on finding beauty in the awkward fit, both in the way it sounds and the way it's executed. When listening to a Focus Group album, expect to hear organ drones collide with the clatter of typewriter keys, with indecipherable dialogue extracted from impossibly obscure European art films laced over the top. There is no neat segue between parts. Instead, it sounds like House is sticking pieces of tape together by hand, quickly cycling through fragments of pop culture ephemera in tracks that last two minutes or less (it's usually less). He's probably not working that way, but it's a nice image to have in mind when listening to the Focus Group: House, the mad inventor, lost in a blizzard of unspooled tape that he's gradually feeding into an old Studer, the whole process only making sense to him alone. That working model served House well initially, but in recent times he's branched out a little. There's been a blurring of the lines between the Focus Group and Broadcast, to the point where it's no longer clear where one group begins and the other ends. The ...Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age album bore both their names; a subsequent Broadcast tour (sadly their last due to the subsequent passing of singer Trish Keenan) drew heavily on films made for them by House; and Broadcast's soundtrack to Berberian Sound Studio lent hard on the kind of cut-up work they'd undertaken on Witch Cults. Now, this album bears the credit: "All titles composed by the Focus Group with help from Broadcast." Still, Elektrik Karousel feels like the vision of one man, whose bastardization of the word "carousel" in the title couldn't be more appropriate. The whole thing passes in such a blur of color that you feel winded just trying to keep up. Concerns may arise from anyone well-versed in this stuff, especially as the "hauntology" sub-genre has had its moment, and other Focus Group albums were delivered with a similar love of parcelling everything up in small packets of multi-colored splendor. But the Ghost Box label has been surprisingly resilient. Last year's Pye Corner Audio album for the label is among their best releases, effortlessly surpassing most of the sub-par John Carpenter clones littering up download folders. Elektrik Karousel works in the opposite direction, strengthening House's position in a field in which he's mostly alone. He's shed many of the horror leanings here, instead bringing the folkier side of the Focus Group into tighter view. The styling of titles like "Kinky Korner Klub" and "The Kool Kranium" bring Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos to mind, but the mood throughout is more wistful autumnal picnic than it is occultist dinner party at the Dakota. Those folk elements always existed in the Focus Group's palette, but the prevailing mood on prior albums could mostly be divided up into gleeful tinkering with vintage pop elements and the giallo chills that partly made the Ghost Box label so notable. On Elektrik Karousel there's a stronger sense of melancholy, lending this music a weight it didn’t reach for in the past. It's even there in the most experimental pieces, such as the positively epic (by Focus Group standards) six-minute piece "The Magic Pendulum", which builds around a sad horn motif and leaden organ drones. At times it's stunningly pretty-- the one-minute plinky-plonky loop that "Let's Listen" works around is one of the few times that House should have worked against his instinct for brevity. But that's the Focus Group, moving on quickly, leaving tiny mysteries trailing behind. Except this time a piece of the puzzle, an explanation for the shades of sorrow, is provided in the liner notes: "Thank you Trish for the sounds you sent"."

Hatchback

Colors of the Sun

Electronic

Andy Beta

When the Weeknd premiered his latest single, "Can't Feel My Face", on Apple Music back in June, its discofied groove suggested both a "Get Lucky" retread as well as a sign that some eight years on, mid-'00s Scandinavian cosmic disco might have finally wormed its way from blog backwaters on through Cadillac car commercials and into the mainstream. How else to explain a handsome, remastered-at-Abbey-Road, heavyweight gatefold sleeve reissue of an obscure nu-disco album from California's Hatchback, first released to little regard in 2008? Originally released by Lo Recordings and !K7, Sam Grawe's debut Colors of the Sun has since been resuscitated by upstart UK reissue imprint, Be With Records, whose catalog ranges from yacht rock demiurge Ned Doheny to South African singer Letta Mbulu. But most fascinating are the albums that Be With zero in on from the '00s, when compact discs remained the medium of conveyance and pressing up vinyl was cost-prohibitive. So far, Be With has done vinyl reissues of everything from the Streets' A Grand Don't Come for Free to a Wilco side project to Cassie's prophetic minimalist nu-R&B classic. Where Hatchback's debut fits in amid this eclectic, baffling roster is hard to gauge. Even as a fan of everything nu-disco/Balearic of that era, I'm only familiar with Hatchback's music via a 17-minute remix courtesy of Prins Thomas (these remixes were almost de rigueur circa 2007). His music occasionally recalls the vintage keyboard squiggles of Prins Thomas & Lindstrøm or else that of Klaus Schulze. Perhaps Grawe's perspective from Northern California gives such German and European electronic influences a touch of sunshine and open air here, a surfer's mentality informing both his Hatchback persona as well as duo Windsurf. "Everything Is Neu" might wear its krautrock heritage on its sleeve, but rather than the Autobahn, it suggests a leisurely drive down the PCH, detouring from that motorik beat with piano-laced breakdowns suggestive of Michael Rother's post-Neu! albums. "Comets" and "White Diamond" both begin as Cluster homages, before Grawe astutely adds other layers—a laidback guitar figure, a contemplative synth melody—that take the tracks into more rarefied air. And had Boards of Canada decamped for the West Coast from Scotland, they might have made something like "Closer to Forever". In hindsight, it's easy to see how the album might have not gotten a fair shake, favoring low-key melodic turns and gentle movements rather than the grander moves of his contemporaries. Outside of a 2013 single, there hasn't been much heard from Hatchback since 2011's follow-up, Zeus & Apollo. A quick search turned up the fact that Grawe worked first at Dwell and now serves as editorial director for furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, whose ergonomic Aeron chair I'm currently sitting in as I type this. It makes a certain kind of sense that Grawe gravitated toward modern architecture and design, in that Colors of the Sun suggests an astute sense of craft, even if its expert design becomes almost imperceptible due to its functionality.

Artist: Hatchback, Album: Colors of the Sun, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "When the Weeknd premiered his latest single, "Can't Feel My Face", on Apple Music back in June, its discofied groove suggested both a "Get Lucky" retread as well as a sign that some eight years on, mid-'00s Scandinavian cosmic disco might have finally wormed its way from blog backwaters on through Cadillac car commercials and into the mainstream. How else to explain a handsome, remastered-at-Abbey-Road, heavyweight gatefold sleeve reissue of an obscure nu-disco album from California's Hatchback, first released to little regard in 2008? Originally released by Lo Recordings and !K7, Sam Grawe's debut Colors of the Sun has since been resuscitated by upstart UK reissue imprint, Be With Records, whose catalog ranges from yacht rock demiurge Ned Doheny to South African singer Letta Mbulu. But most fascinating are the albums that Be With zero in on from the '00s, when compact discs remained the medium of conveyance and pressing up vinyl was cost-prohibitive. So far, Be With has done vinyl reissues of everything from the Streets' A Grand Don't Come for Free to a Wilco side project to Cassie's prophetic minimalist nu-R&B classic. Where Hatchback's debut fits in amid this eclectic, baffling roster is hard to gauge. Even as a fan of everything nu-disco/Balearic of that era, I'm only familiar with Hatchback's music via a 17-minute remix courtesy of Prins Thomas (these remixes were almost de rigueur circa 2007). His music occasionally recalls the vintage keyboard squiggles of Prins Thomas & Lindstrøm or else that of Klaus Schulze. Perhaps Grawe's perspective from Northern California gives such German and European electronic influences a touch of sunshine and open air here, a surfer's mentality informing both his Hatchback persona as well as duo Windsurf. "Everything Is Neu" might wear its krautrock heritage on its sleeve, but rather than the Autobahn, it suggests a leisurely drive down the PCH, detouring from that motorik beat with piano-laced breakdowns suggestive of Michael Rother's post-Neu! albums. "Comets" and "White Diamond" both begin as Cluster homages, before Grawe astutely adds other layers—a laidback guitar figure, a contemplative synth melody—that take the tracks into more rarefied air. And had Boards of Canada decamped for the West Coast from Scotland, they might have made something like "Closer to Forever". In hindsight, it's easy to see how the album might have not gotten a fair shake, favoring low-key melodic turns and gentle movements rather than the grander moves of his contemporaries. Outside of a 2013 single, there hasn't been much heard from Hatchback since 2011's follow-up, Zeus & Apollo. A quick search turned up the fact that Grawe worked first at Dwell and now serves as editorial director for furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, whose ergonomic Aeron chair I'm currently sitting in as I type this. It makes a certain kind of sense that Grawe gravitated toward modern architecture and design, in that Colors of the Sun suggests an astute sense of craft, even if its expert design becomes almost imperceptible due to its functionality."

The Go! Team

Proof of Youth

Rock

Rob Mitchum

For every artist that starts out with a solo home-recording project, hitting the road circuit can present a problem: It necessitates the recruitment of other musicians, a reworking of overdubs and sample-laden material for live performance, and a general shift away from the original plot. After a couple of hundred shows and radio sets, these adjustments can become part of the artist's musical DNA, redirecting all future work away from those lonely, antisocial earlier days, and towards a crowd-pleasing, stage-translatable compromise. The Go! Team know this challenge well: After Thunder, Lightning, Strike became a surprise hit on both sides of the Atlantic, auteur Ian Parton found himself with a demand for a live version of his kitchen-sink project. By the end of 2006, he'd played every festival from Austin to Australia with his merry crew, slowly evolving from shy, nervous rookies to seasoned party-rock veterans, with the multimedia backdrop and headbands to prove it. When Parton found himself ready to record album #2, he likely discovered that his band was nothing like where he'd left it on his debut; for one, there were a lot more people in it. In reaction, Parton seems to have overcompensated for these changes, turning Proof of Youth into more of a sequel that replays the Thunder, Lightning, Strike formula rather than allowing the new personnel to push the Go! Team mission in a new or different direction. That decision brings both pros and cons with it: On one hand, the Go! Team sound remains a pretty singular blend of unlikely sonic companions, but revisisting that approach risks hitting the bottom of the creative well. First single "Grip Like a Vice" is the thesis statement to Proof of Youth's copycat philosophy: It instant-replays the template of "The Power Is On", staccato playground chants and roller-rink organ building to sports-highlight fanfare and caustic guitar peaks. It's a relief, at least, to hear that the addition of non-sampled vocals-- most courtesy of rapper Ninja-- hasn't changed Parton's approach to production: Her words are still low and faded in the mix, as if he recorded her, pressed it to vinyl, and then sampled it just to maintain his aesthetic. "Grip Like a Vice" isn't the only "Power" clone, though it's probably the best: "Titanic Vandalism" and "Keys to the City" find diminishing returns as the novelty of the approach wears thin. The other welcome news is that the guest-star buddies that the Go! Team have accumulated don't do much to break up the gameplan either, as appearances by Bonde do Role's Marina Ribatski, the Rapper's Delight Club kids, and the Double Dutch Divas fade right into the grainy mix. Only Chuck D stands out: "Flashlight Fight"'s paranoid sirens and clattering drums hearken back to the Bomb Squad's urgent soundscapes. While the kid-chants-as-hip-hop-maneuver bit starts to show signs of staleness on Proof of Youth-- even in spite of the album's guests-- other aspects of the Go! Team's philosophy provide more replayable highlights. "Fake ID" is less old-school rap pastiche than twee indie-pop given a supercharged engine, with glockenspiel and child-like vocals propelled by fuzz bass and Parton's voluminous drums. "Doing It Right" shuffles those poppier elements into the jump-rope rhyming and horns template, intercutting the proto-rap with a dreamy chorus. But would it kill the band to include a few more instrumental interludes like the Alan Parker cover "My World", which offer a welcome relief from the frenetic pace while sucker-punching memories of Sesame Street Super-8 interludes and weird Morricone-knockoff cartoon scores? Those quieter moments may have been the necessary sacrifice to the Go! Team's new extrovert status, and if so, it's a fair but troubling tradeoff. Proof of Youth mostly recaptures the enthusiasm and unique sensibility of Thunder, Lightning, Strike, further filling that niche for lo-fi sample-based old-school-noise-rap we never knew we needed filling. But in retracing his earlier steps, Parton is beginning to flirt with the dangerous point where a thrilling new sound becomes a one-trick pony, allowing the band to drift more towards exclusively making the kind of music that plays big on stage.

Artist: The Go! Team, Album: Proof of Youth, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "For every artist that starts out with a solo home-recording project, hitting the road circuit can present a problem: It necessitates the recruitment of other musicians, a reworking of overdubs and sample-laden material for live performance, and a general shift away from the original plot. After a couple of hundred shows and radio sets, these adjustments can become part of the artist's musical DNA, redirecting all future work away from those lonely, antisocial earlier days, and towards a crowd-pleasing, stage-translatable compromise. The Go! Team know this challenge well: After Thunder, Lightning, Strike became a surprise hit on both sides of the Atlantic, auteur Ian Parton found himself with a demand for a live version of his kitchen-sink project. By the end of 2006, he'd played every festival from Austin to Australia with his merry crew, slowly evolving from shy, nervous rookies to seasoned party-rock veterans, with the multimedia backdrop and headbands to prove it. When Parton found himself ready to record album #2, he likely discovered that his band was nothing like where he'd left it on his debut; for one, there were a lot more people in it. In reaction, Parton seems to have overcompensated for these changes, turning Proof of Youth into more of a sequel that replays the Thunder, Lightning, Strike formula rather than allowing the new personnel to push the Go! Team mission in a new or different direction. That decision brings both pros and cons with it: On one hand, the Go! Team sound remains a pretty singular blend of unlikely sonic companions, but revisisting that approach risks hitting the bottom of the creative well. First single "Grip Like a Vice" is the thesis statement to Proof of Youth's copycat philosophy: It instant-replays the template of "The Power Is On", staccato playground chants and roller-rink organ building to sports-highlight fanfare and caustic guitar peaks. It's a relief, at least, to hear that the addition of non-sampled vocals-- most courtesy of rapper Ninja-- hasn't changed Parton's approach to production: Her words are still low and faded in the mix, as if he recorded her, pressed it to vinyl, and then sampled it just to maintain his aesthetic. "Grip Like a Vice" isn't the only "Power" clone, though it's probably the best: "Titanic Vandalism" and "Keys to the City" find diminishing returns as the novelty of the approach wears thin. The other welcome news is that the guest-star buddies that the Go! Team have accumulated don't do much to break up the gameplan either, as appearances by Bonde do Role's Marina Ribatski, the Rapper's Delight Club kids, and the Double Dutch Divas fade right into the grainy mix. Only Chuck D stands out: "Flashlight Fight"'s paranoid sirens and clattering drums hearken back to the Bomb Squad's urgent soundscapes. While the kid-chants-as-hip-hop-maneuver bit starts to show signs of staleness on Proof of Youth-- even in spite of the album's guests-- other aspects of the Go! Team's philosophy provide more replayable highlights. "Fake ID" is less old-school rap pastiche than twee indie-pop given a supercharged engine, with glockenspiel and child-like vocals propelled by fuzz bass and Parton's voluminous drums. "Doing It Right" shuffles those poppier elements into the jump-rope rhyming and horns template, intercutting the proto-rap with a dreamy chorus. But would it kill the band to include a few more instrumental interludes like the Alan Parker cover "My World", which offer a welcome relief from the frenetic pace while sucker-punching memories of Sesame Street Super-8 interludes and weird Morricone-knockoff cartoon scores? Those quieter moments may have been the necessary sacrifice to the Go! Team's new extrovert status, and if so, it's a fair but troubling tradeoff. Proof of Youth mostly recaptures the enthusiasm and unique sensibility of Thunder, Lightning, Strike, further filling that niche for lo-fi sample-based old-school-noise-rap we never knew we needed filling. But in retracing his earlier steps, Parton is beginning to flirt with the dangerous point where a thrilling new sound becomes a one-trick pony, allowing the band to drift more towards exclusively making the kind of music that plays big on stage."

Jóhann Jóhannsson

Virðulegu forsetar

Experimental

Mark Richardson

Listening to music by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson reminds me of optical illusions, those little diagrams where you can't believe this line is really the same length as that line, or you're amazed that the swirling circle isn't really rotating. Our brains are complex computers but it doesn't take much to short the circuits. We're constantly constructing patterns based on context. Virðulegu forsetar is a long piece in four parts that depends heavily on juxtaposition. Over the course of an hour it continues to repeat a single phrase on trumpets, french horns, and tubas. Though simple, it's a bold little cluster of notes with an inherent grandeur, and the brassiest voicing early in the piece suggests a fanfare before a great announcement. But Jóhannsson invests the refrain with a host of different meanings by slowing it down, shifting the pitch, putting it beside all sorts of interesting drones, and making it disappear completely for minutes on end. Over its length the piece undergoes remarkable shifts in mood and feel, which is even more notable considering the basic instrumentation (in addition to the brass, it's scored for organs, piano, bass, glockenspiel, and subtle electronics) is the same throughout. So Virðulegu forsetar is about minimalism and repetition, obviously, but it's also one of the most patient records I've heard. Where last year's equally great Englabörn album consisted of chamber pieces at pop-song length, Virðulegu forsetar should be taken in all at once and in a proper way. Listen to it loud and the organ/electronic rumble connecting the melodic bits comes alive, with odd bits of noise perfectly mucking up the pristinely deep bass pedals. The held tones become vitally important as the piece progresses and the primary motif slows to a crawl; with more space between the notes the connecting drone that stretches to infinity becomes the focus. The horns are always around the corner. At times they're wounded and barely able to sound, but they're always there. Toward the end there's a stretch of silence almost two minutes long before one last gasp of the opening theme carries the piece out on an exhausted note. This gorgeous package contains a DVD audio disc with a 5.1 surround sound mix that attempts to replicate the feel of the original performance (I don't have the technology to hear it, unfortunately). Virðulegu forsetar was first performed in 2003 at Hallgrimskirkja, a large cathedral in Reykjavik, and the album was recorded in the same space. During that first performance, players were positioned on all sides of the audience; it was spring in Iceland which meant a show starting around 11:00 p.m. would finish as the sun was setting. As a visual accompaniment, Jóhannsson filled the cathedral with helium balloons that were slightly underinflated, so that over the course of the piece they fell extremely slowly into the crowd. Think for a moment what a fantastically beautiful image this is. And yet, there's nothing to it. An epic space, sure, but beyond that we're talking balloons, horns, and a keyboard. Careful gestures, simple tools, and a good mind are all Jóhannsson needs. This is the way to live.

Artist: Jóhann Jóhannsson, Album: Virðulegu forsetar, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.8 Album review: "Listening to music by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson reminds me of optical illusions, those little diagrams where you can't believe this line is really the same length as that line, or you're amazed that the swirling circle isn't really rotating. Our brains are complex computers but it doesn't take much to short the circuits. We're constantly constructing patterns based on context. Virðulegu forsetar is a long piece in four parts that depends heavily on juxtaposition. Over the course of an hour it continues to repeat a single phrase on trumpets, french horns, and tubas. Though simple, it's a bold little cluster of notes with an inherent grandeur, and the brassiest voicing early in the piece suggests a fanfare before a great announcement. But Jóhannsson invests the refrain with a host of different meanings by slowing it down, shifting the pitch, putting it beside all sorts of interesting drones, and making it disappear completely for minutes on end. Over its length the piece undergoes remarkable shifts in mood and feel, which is even more notable considering the basic instrumentation (in addition to the brass, it's scored for organs, piano, bass, glockenspiel, and subtle electronics) is the same throughout. So Virðulegu forsetar is about minimalism and repetition, obviously, but it's also one of the most patient records I've heard. Where last year's equally great Englabörn album consisted of chamber pieces at pop-song length, Virðulegu forsetar should be taken in all at once and in a proper way. Listen to it loud and the organ/electronic rumble connecting the melodic bits comes alive, with odd bits of noise perfectly mucking up the pristinely deep bass pedals. The held tones become vitally important as the piece progresses and the primary motif slows to a crawl; with more space between the notes the connecting drone that stretches to infinity becomes the focus. The horns are always around the corner. At times they're wounded and barely able to sound, but they're always there. Toward the end there's a stretch of silence almost two minutes long before one last gasp of the opening theme carries the piece out on an exhausted note. This gorgeous package contains a DVD audio disc with a 5.1 surround sound mix that attempts to replicate the feel of the original performance (I don't have the technology to hear it, unfortunately). Virðulegu forsetar was first performed in 2003 at Hallgrimskirkja, a large cathedral in Reykjavik, and the album was recorded in the same space. During that first performance, players were positioned on all sides of the audience; it was spring in Iceland which meant a show starting around 11:00 p.m. would finish as the sun was setting. As a visual accompaniment, Jóhannsson filled the cathedral with helium balloons that were slightly underinflated, so that over the course of the piece they fell extremely slowly into the crowd. Think for a moment what a fantastically beautiful image this is. And yet, there's nothing to it. An epic space, sure, but beyond that we're talking balloons, horns, and a keyboard. Careful gestures, simple tools, and a good mind are all Jóhannsson needs. This is the way to live."

Willow

Ardipithecus

Pop/R&B

Cameron Cook

It's been five years since Willow Smith released "Whip My Hair," her undeniably catchy, exuberant debut single. It was light. It was fun. It was a good song. At nine years old, she was the youngest-ever signee to Roc Nation: perhaps not an astonishing fact given who her parents are, but hitting the limelight before middle school can be tough on the psyche no matter how silver your spoon is. Therefore, it was a pleasantly surprising decision when, a few years later, Willow decided to bail on starring in a remake of Annie, canned all follow-ups to her burgeoning music career, and focused on growing up with whatever artistic integrity the world would allow her. Although still in the public eye, giving increasingly mature and existential interviews, and sporadically releasing music online, Willow has now released what amounts to her first official album, Ardipithecus (which is "a genus of an extinct hominine that lived during Late Miocene and Early Pliocene in Afar Depression, Ethiopia," according to Wikipedia, FYI), and the fact that it is such a pointed departure from her earlier musical forays is a surprise to no one. Nepotism and talent aren't mutually exclusive, but behind all the psychic awakenings and blossoming chakras, something about Ardipithecus remains unbaked. The potential is there, definitely—Willow's complete subversion of R&B/pop tropes (shaved head, age-appropriate sexuality, asymmetrical fashion) is a breath of fresh air, and comes off as totally natural, not the posturing of someone pretending to be cooler than they are. Her vocals are untrained, but not gratingly so, coming off as throaty and confident even when she misses notes. The current alternative R&B landscape is filled with artists who may not be the most powerful vocalists (Frank Ocean, FKA twigs) but more than compensate with lyrical style and production skills. It's clear that this is what Willow aspires to; however, by focusing so heavily on her mystical lyrics and desire to express her worldview, the overall production value takes a backseat. Can the spiritual musings of a high school student, albeit one with above-average life experience, sustain themselves for an entire record? And furthermore, is Willow's persona enough to detract from her somewhat forgivable artistic shortcomings? Even after multiple listens to Ardipithecus, frankly, those questions persist. Ardipithecus' problems are even down to its track sequencing—by the time the album picks up at "Stars," an uptempo, synth-lead collaboration with frequent musical partner JABS, you're already twelve songs in, many of which aren't complex or structured enough to hold much of your attention. "Why Don't You Cry," the record's lead single, is also its closer, a puzzling decision which, again, seems much too little too late after a full listen. It's a shame, because many of the ideas within Ardipithecus are solid, just shoddily executed. Willow is able to flow from tribal chanting (the fast-paced and shuddering "Natives of the Windy Forest," an early highlight) to more traditional R&B leanings ("IDK," a song that proves that when her lyrics about mortality and spirituality are slightly subdued, the effect can actually be arresting), which is no small feat. But at the same time, Willow has written and produced the whole album pretty much by herself, and it shows. When she sings, on opener "Organization & Classification," "I'm just a teenager/ But I feel angrier than a swarm of hornets," it's a painfully unnecessary statement, because literally no other type of person would follow it up with a song that's unironically called "dRuGz," which includes the line "I'm the heroin inside the syringe/ And I'm not going in/ I'm just the girl." But if you were Willow Smith, would you care? Her crown as Most Woke Millennial is secure, and her mission of completely abandoning her pop past has definitely been accomplished. In the same way that the leap between ages 10 and 15 is gigantic, so is the leap between 15 and 20, and in another five years, if not sooner, it's absolutely plausible that Willow could deliver the polished, brilliant record she is clearly capable of. It's just that, in between bursts of inspiration, Ardipithecus is largely a record of growing pains.

Artist: Willow, Album: Ardipithecus, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "It's been five years since Willow Smith released "Whip My Hair," her undeniably catchy, exuberant debut single. It was light. It was fun. It was a good song. At nine years old, she was the youngest-ever signee to Roc Nation: perhaps not an astonishing fact given who her parents are, but hitting the limelight before middle school can be tough on the psyche no matter how silver your spoon is. Therefore, it was a pleasantly surprising decision when, a few years later, Willow decided to bail on starring in a remake of Annie, canned all follow-ups to her burgeoning music career, and focused on growing up with whatever artistic integrity the world would allow her. Although still in the public eye, giving increasingly mature and existential interviews, and sporadically releasing music online, Willow has now released what amounts to her first official album, Ardipithecus (which is "a genus of an extinct hominine that lived during Late Miocene and Early Pliocene in Afar Depression, Ethiopia," according to Wikipedia, FYI), and the fact that it is such a pointed departure from her earlier musical forays is a surprise to no one. Nepotism and talent aren't mutually exclusive, but behind all the psychic awakenings and blossoming chakras, something about Ardipithecus remains unbaked. The potential is there, definitely—Willow's complete subversion of R&B/pop tropes (shaved head, age-appropriate sexuality, asymmetrical fashion) is a breath of fresh air, and comes off as totally natural, not the posturing of someone pretending to be cooler than they are. Her vocals are untrained, but not gratingly so, coming off as throaty and confident even when she misses notes. The current alternative R&B landscape is filled with artists who may not be the most powerful vocalists (Frank Ocean, FKA twigs) but more than compensate with lyrical style and production skills. It's clear that this is what Willow aspires to; however, by focusing so heavily on her mystical lyrics and desire to express her worldview, the overall production value takes a backseat. Can the spiritual musings of a high school student, albeit one with above-average life experience, sustain themselves for an entire record? And furthermore, is Willow's persona enough to detract from her somewhat forgivable artistic shortcomings? Even after multiple listens to Ardipithecus, frankly, those questions persist. Ardipithecus' problems are even down to its track sequencing—by the time the album picks up at "Stars," an uptempo, synth-lead collaboration with frequent musical partner JABS, you're already twelve songs in, many of which aren't complex or structured enough to hold much of your attention. "Why Don't You Cry," the record's lead single, is also its closer, a puzzling decision which, again, seems much too little too late after a full listen. It's a shame, because many of the ideas within Ardipithecus are solid, just shoddily executed. Willow is able to flow from tribal chanting (the fast-paced and shuddering "Natives of the Windy Forest," an early highlight) to more traditional R&B leanings ("IDK," a song that proves that when her lyrics about mortality and spirituality are slightly subdued, the effect can actually be arresting), which is no small feat. But at the same time, Willow has written and produced the whole album pretty much by herself, and it shows. When she sings, on opener "Organization & Classification," "I'm just a teenager/ But I feel angrier than a swarm of hornets," it's a painfully unnecessary statement, because literally no other type of person would follow it up with a song that's unironically called "dRuGz," which includes the line "I'm the heroin inside the syringe/ And I'm not going in/ I'm just the girl." But if you were Willow Smith, would you care? Her crown as Most Woke Millennial is secure, and her mission of completely abandoning her pop past has definitely been accomplished. In the same way that the leap between ages 10 and 15 is gigantic, so is the leap between 15 and 20, and in another five years, if not sooner, it's absolutely plausible that Willow could deliver the polished, brilliant record she is clearly capable of. It's just that, in between bursts of inspiration, Ardipithecus is largely a record of growing pains."

Shipping News

Flies the Fields

Metal,Rock

Jason Crock

Shipping News has allowed former or current members of Rodan, June of 44, and Rachel's a chance to apply their post-rock chops in different contexts: angry rockers, more restrained experiments, nautical themes. The first track from Flies the Fields is yet another diversion: "Axons and Dendrites" is a slow-builder with a jaunty rhythm that only reveals a melody just before its abrupt finish. But, on the whole, Flies the Fields doesn't build on the experimentation of their three most recent EPs-- collected on Three-Four. Instead, this record sounds like a step backward. The majority of Flies the Fields is bogged down by too much discipline. The guitar jangle of "Louven" is a bit flat-footed, and "It's Not Too Late" toes the line between tense and droning before crawling into the latter. The performances here are capable, but the melodies consistently interlock and drone, and the drums merely underline the crescendos. "While songs like '(Morays or) Demons' may flirt with rocking out, the album feels like a jam session that was never edited or arranged into proper songs ("proper" being relative to the genre). The ominous, whisper-sung vocals, creeping bass, jangling guitars, and prodding drums have all been used to greater effect in countless other places-- heck, they've been pulled off better by the members of Shipping News themselves. Stranger still is that the songs with variation or texture are pushed to the end of the record. The final third of Flies rewards your patience: "The Human Face" starts slowly, drops off into silence, and returns with the album's most spirited, rocking performance and stop-start precision from the rhythm section. "Untitled w/Drums" features a truly stunning melody sung by overlapping male and female vocals, and shows the band stepping out of the stiff roles they've been playing on Flies up until now. "Untitled" segues into the final "Paper Lanterns", a creepy, industrial throb that I'd label as an album highlight-- just as its original version was a highlight of the Three-Four compilation. The new "Paper Lanterns" may be even more captivating than the original, but it could also be a warning sign that the Shipping News' collective pen is running dry.

Artist: Shipping News, Album: Flies the Fields, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 6.7 Album review: "Shipping News has allowed former or current members of Rodan, June of 44, and Rachel's a chance to apply their post-rock chops in different contexts: angry rockers, more restrained experiments, nautical themes. The first track from Flies the Fields is yet another diversion: "Axons and Dendrites" is a slow-builder with a jaunty rhythm that only reveals a melody just before its abrupt finish. But, on the whole, Flies the Fields doesn't build on the experimentation of their three most recent EPs-- collected on Three-Four. Instead, this record sounds like a step backward. The majority of Flies the Fields is bogged down by too much discipline. The guitar jangle of "Louven" is a bit flat-footed, and "It's Not Too Late" toes the line between tense and droning before crawling into the latter. The performances here are capable, but the melodies consistently interlock and drone, and the drums merely underline the crescendos. "While songs like '(Morays or) Demons' may flirt with rocking out, the album feels like a jam session that was never edited or arranged into proper songs ("proper" being relative to the genre). The ominous, whisper-sung vocals, creeping bass, jangling guitars, and prodding drums have all been used to greater effect in countless other places-- heck, they've been pulled off better by the members of Shipping News themselves. Stranger still is that the songs with variation or texture are pushed to the end of the record. The final third of Flies rewards your patience: "The Human Face" starts slowly, drops off into silence, and returns with the album's most spirited, rocking performance and stop-start precision from the rhythm section. "Untitled w/Drums" features a truly stunning melody sung by overlapping male and female vocals, and shows the band stepping out of the stiff roles they've been playing on Flies up until now. "Untitled" segues into the final "Paper Lanterns", a creepy, industrial throb that I'd label as an album highlight-- just as its original version was a highlight of the Three-Four compilation. The new "Paper Lanterns" may be even more captivating than the original, but it could also be a warning sign that the Shipping News' collective pen is running dry."

Heros Severum

Plague Dogs

Rock

Sam Ubl

My first, promising reaction: What a weird band. They come at you with blustery post-punk and easygoing Peach State twang all at once, one vocalist (Eric Friar) coughing clenched half-syllables, the other (Sheryl Branch) honoring the homeland in silken diphthongs. Percussive clatter, wormy synths, shrill interlocking guitars, and sax skronk play musical chairs around lots of really interesting melodies. Clearly this trio has studied its Jawbox and Burning Airlines LPs, taken additional cues from Smart Went Crazy, the Dismemberment Plan, Les Savy Fav, and Giddy Motors, and simplified those sources to a basic linear geometry. The Athens thing is a red herring: Except a brief spate of ethereal vocal harmonics on "A Nice Haircut" and some of Branch's backup singing, nothing here bespeaks a psychedelic indolence. Plague Dogs reaches even further back into the 90s for its frissons. What, because we're into the second half of this decade bands can start cribbing from the second half of the last? If they do it as confidently, creatively, and playfully as Heros Severum, I say let 'em go nuts. Plague Dogs weatherstrips sorta-obscure vestiges of late 90's indie rock, reminding us of when syncopation was cool and J. Robbins recorded every fourth album. Whereas Robbins' projects tended to spotlight thick, sludgy/funky bass, Heros Severum do without the instrument altogether. When your drummer's as good as Davey Staton, having a pared-down (read: one man) rhythm section is emancipating, like Little Timmy losing his training wheels. Staton performs many tricks, including limber open stroke rolls ("3kh2") and dizzying tom-kick whirligigs ("And Introducing"). Guitars prove their chops by keeping up, weaving polyrhythmic formworks. Near-constant vocals give direction to the cosmology, but some songs satisfy a wanderlust through hypnotic call-and-response vamps. In other words, Heros Severum are the kind of band that could list "jam band" on Myspace for larfs and wouldn't be lying entirely. Dare you to call their bluff, but the could-be-joking bits function as well as humor-- even when they essay smarmy rap slang. "And Introducing..." first practices less-is-more around the vocal, drawing focus to Branch's jive talk ("Got a chicken neck, coke bottle, broken back spine/ Better watch it, man, 'fore I whoop your behind"), then, as if to contraindicate such use of singsongy hip-hop affect, the band let rip on some intricate kicks, words ousted by floating vowel sounds. Friar's lyrics are uniformly terse and nonsensical; he sings like he lacks the breath for more than one or two syllables at a time. The style enables him to issue galvanizing rally cries, which sound more meaningful than they probably are. On "Sick Dog", at what may be the album's apogee, he screams fearlessly, "Can't keep a brother down," over molten sax blurt. "A Nice Haircut" asks, "Were ya raised proper?" (like this is a band to talk!), then schools in skeletal groove, tamped down tight and shot from Gang of Four's stiff-is-the-new-loose bazooka. Heros Severum are obviously not the first to use levity as a foil against what's at heart complex and quite measured songwriting, but they've made it the crux of a surprisingly fresh record.

Artist: Heros Severum, Album: Plague Dogs, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "My first, promising reaction: What a weird band. They come at you with blustery post-punk and easygoing Peach State twang all at once, one vocalist (Eric Friar) coughing clenched half-syllables, the other (Sheryl Branch) honoring the homeland in silken diphthongs. Percussive clatter, wormy synths, shrill interlocking guitars, and sax skronk play musical chairs around lots of really interesting melodies. Clearly this trio has studied its Jawbox and Burning Airlines LPs, taken additional cues from Smart Went Crazy, the Dismemberment Plan, Les Savy Fav, and Giddy Motors, and simplified those sources to a basic linear geometry. The Athens thing is a red herring: Except a brief spate of ethereal vocal harmonics on "A Nice Haircut" and some of Branch's backup singing, nothing here bespeaks a psychedelic indolence. Plague Dogs reaches even further back into the 90s for its frissons. What, because we're into the second half of this decade bands can start cribbing from the second half of the last? If they do it as confidently, creatively, and playfully as Heros Severum, I say let 'em go nuts. Plague Dogs weatherstrips sorta-obscure vestiges of late 90's indie rock, reminding us of when syncopation was cool and J. Robbins recorded every fourth album. Whereas Robbins' projects tended to spotlight thick, sludgy/funky bass, Heros Severum do without the instrument altogether. When your drummer's as good as Davey Staton, having a pared-down (read: one man) rhythm section is emancipating, like Little Timmy losing his training wheels. Staton performs many tricks, including limber open stroke rolls ("3kh2") and dizzying tom-kick whirligigs ("And Introducing"). Guitars prove their chops by keeping up, weaving polyrhythmic formworks. Near-constant vocals give direction to the cosmology, but some songs satisfy a wanderlust through hypnotic call-and-response vamps. In other words, Heros Severum are the kind of band that could list "jam band" on Myspace for larfs and wouldn't be lying entirely. Dare you to call their bluff, but the could-be-joking bits function as well as humor-- even when they essay smarmy rap slang. "And Introducing..." first practices less-is-more around the vocal, drawing focus to Branch's jive talk ("Got a chicken neck, coke bottle, broken back spine/ Better watch it, man, 'fore I whoop your behind"), then, as if to contraindicate such use of singsongy hip-hop affect, the band let rip on some intricate kicks, words ousted by floating vowel sounds. Friar's lyrics are uniformly terse and nonsensical; he sings like he lacks the breath for more than one or two syllables at a time. The style enables him to issue galvanizing rally cries, which sound more meaningful than they probably are. On "Sick Dog", at what may be the album's apogee, he screams fearlessly, "Can't keep a brother down," over molten sax blurt. "A Nice Haircut" asks, "Were ya raised proper?" (like this is a band to talk!), then schools in skeletal groove, tamped down tight and shot from Gang of Four's stiff-is-the-new-loose bazooka. Heros Severum are obviously not the first to use levity as a foil against what's at heart complex and quite measured songwriting, but they've made it the crux of a surprisingly fresh record."

Carsten Jost

Perishable Tactics

Electronic

Philip Sherburne

Carsten Jost is a co-founder of Hamburg’s Dial Records, a label responsible for minimalist classics from Lawrence, Efdemin, and Pantha du Prince, among others. Jost (aka David Lieske) released his debut album, You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows, way back in 2001, when Dial’s favored strain of moody, minimalist house was still relatively novel; the deep house revival wouldn’t happen for another decade. Since then, he’s put out very little else, even as the style he helped establish has become ubiquitous in underground dance music, from the Smallville label’s twinkly-eyed tone poems to the muted chords and buffed textures of the so-called “lo-fi house” phenomenon. Since 2007—with three new Carsten Jost tracks that year, it was an uncharacteristically prolific period—his output has slowed to a trickle: one song on Dial’s *2010 *compilation; a split single with Lawrence in 2011; another compilation cut in 2015. Lieske put out a full-length with his duo Misanthrope CA last year, but that album’s dissonant, doom-laden ambient is a long way from his ruminative and rhythmic sweet spot. Finally, however, the wind seems to have blown him back into the studio. The resulting album goes to the heart of the Dial aesthetic: wistful, hypnotic, and torn between ecstatic abandon, cool remove, and encroaching dread. The bookending “Intro” and “Outro” are stylistic outliers. Closer in spirit to Misanthrope CA, they combine ethereal orchestral samples with drifting synthesizers and distant scrapes and drones, suggesting Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS project if Voigt had been brought up on a steady diet of Ligeti and doom metal. The album’s nine remaining tracks proceed almost like a set of variations upon a theme. His grooves invariably emphasize the thud and hiss of classic Roland machines, and his crisp claps and flashing hi-hats cut through the swirling murk like searchlights. He likes his chords plaintive and his reverb trails long. A few cuts are more melodic; the bittersweet “Atlantis II” features a bassline vaguely reminiscent of Ricardo Villalobos’ “Dexter,” and its layered string pads are unabashedly sentimental. “Love,” originally released on a split 12” in 2007, carves out a clean-lined counterpoint between Rhodes keys and a rich, tonal conga pattern. Mostly, though, he applies his layers of synthesizers like watercolors, and the blurred edges of his melodies seep outward like the outline of a stain. Like much dance music, Perishable Tactics seldom gestures beyond its immediate environs; it’s a music of immersion, of immediacy, and also of deep isolation. Whereas most dance music is social, Lieske spins his fibers into a soft, hermetic cocoon. But the occasional crack in the façade affords a glimpse of ideas not often found in conjunction with house music, beginning with the militaristic theme that runs through titles such as “Army Green” and “Dawn Patrol,” as well as the ominous cover photo of a shirtless figure crouching beneath a Mylar space blanket, clutching some kind of heavy weaponry. The theme becomes explicit on “Platoon RLX,” in which a brief snippet of dialogue echoes in an incessant loop over mournful strings and a restless drum groove. “How’d you get the nickname?” asks a voice; “The killer?” whispers another in reply. The clip comes from The World of Charlie Company, a 1970 documentary that the CBS News reporter John Laurence made while embedded with an American rifle company in Vietnam. It’s worth bearing in mind that the Bob Dylan lyric that’s quoted in the title of his debut album has a deeper historical significance: That line, from “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” inspired the name of the Weather Underground, colloquially known as the Weathermen, the ’60s radicals who took up arms against the U.S. government. With these echoes of the civil unrest and military disasters of last century, Lieske adds even more sinister overtones to his already unsettling atmospheres. As it happens, the Weathermen have recently been back in the news: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s shadowy right-hand man, cryptically shouted out the leftist revolutionaries in a 2010 speech. If Carsten Jost is a kind of dance-music Cassandra, complicating club music with some serious end-of-the-world vibes, Lieske couldn’t have picked a more appropriate time to bring him back.

Artist: Carsten Jost, Album: Perishable Tactics, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "Carsten Jost is a co-founder of Hamburg’s Dial Records, a label responsible for minimalist classics from Lawrence, Efdemin, and Pantha du Prince, among others. Jost (aka David Lieske) released his debut album, You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows, way back in 2001, when Dial’s favored strain of moody, minimalist house was still relatively novel; the deep house revival wouldn’t happen for another decade. Since then, he’s put out very little else, even as the style he helped establish has become ubiquitous in underground dance music, from the Smallville label’s twinkly-eyed tone poems to the muted chords and buffed textures of the so-called “lo-fi house” phenomenon. Since 2007—with three new Carsten Jost tracks that year, it was an uncharacteristically prolific period—his output has slowed to a trickle: one song on Dial’s *2010 *compilation; a split single with Lawrence in 2011; another compilation cut in 2015. Lieske put out a full-length with his duo Misanthrope CA last year, but that album’s dissonant, doom-laden ambient is a long way from his ruminative and rhythmic sweet spot. Finally, however, the wind seems to have blown him back into the studio. The resulting album goes to the heart of the Dial aesthetic: wistful, hypnotic, and torn between ecstatic abandon, cool remove, and encroaching dread. The bookending “Intro” and “Outro” are stylistic outliers. Closer in spirit to Misanthrope CA, they combine ethereal orchestral samples with drifting synthesizers and distant scrapes and drones, suggesting Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS project if Voigt had been brought up on a steady diet of Ligeti and doom metal. The album’s nine remaining tracks proceed almost like a set of variations upon a theme. His grooves invariably emphasize the thud and hiss of classic Roland machines, and his crisp claps and flashing hi-hats cut through the swirling murk like searchlights. He likes his chords plaintive and his reverb trails long. A few cuts are more melodic; the bittersweet “Atlantis II” features a bassline vaguely reminiscent of Ricardo Villalobos’ “Dexter,” and its layered string pads are unabashedly sentimental. “Love,” originally released on a split 12” in 2007, carves out a clean-lined counterpoint between Rhodes keys and a rich, tonal conga pattern. Mostly, though, he applies his layers of synthesizers like watercolors, and the blurred edges of his melodies seep outward like the outline of a stain. Like much dance music, Perishable Tactics seldom gestures beyond its immediate environs; it’s a music of immersion, of immediacy, and also of deep isolation. Whereas most dance music is social, Lieske spins his fibers into a soft, hermetic cocoon. But the occasional crack in the façade affords a glimpse of ideas not often found in conjunction with house music, beginning with the militaristic theme that runs through titles such as “Army Green” and “Dawn Patrol,” as well as the ominous cover photo of a shirtless figure crouching beneath a Mylar space blanket, clutching some kind of heavy weaponry. The theme becomes explicit on “Platoon RLX,” in which a brief snippet of dialogue echoes in an incessant loop over mournful strings and a restless drum groove. “How’d you get the nickname?” asks a voice; “The killer?” whispers another in reply. The clip comes from The World of Charlie Company, a 1970 documentary that the CBS News reporter John Laurence made while embedded with an American rifle company in Vietnam. It’s worth bearing in mind that the Bob Dylan lyric that’s quoted in the title of his debut album has a deeper historical significance: That line, from “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” inspired the name of the Weather Underground, colloquially known as the Weathermen, the ’60s radicals who took up arms against the U.S. government. With these echoes of the civil unrest and military disasters of last century, Lieske adds even more sinister overtones to his already unsettling atmospheres. As it happens, the Weathermen have recently been back in the news: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s shadowy right-hand man, cryptically shouted out the leftist revolutionaries in a 2010 speech. If Carsten Jost is a kind of dance-music Cassandra, complicating club music with some serious end-of-the-world vibes, Lieske couldn’t have picked a more appropriate time to bring him back."

Grouper

A I A : Alien Observer

Experimental

Mark Richardson

The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music these last few years, this collection of elements may sound familiar, possibly bordering on cliché. But it's all in how you fit the pieces together. Despite sharing characteristics with a lot of other current music, Harris' has a distinctive sound that she pretty much owns. These short LPs, released at the same time and that share an overall aesthetic, sound beamed in from another realm, and they also sound like they could have come from no one else. Part of the distinctiveness can be traced to Harris' voice, which floats above the music and can sound delicate and shrouded and mist and can also evince an approachable earthiness. Particularly on Alien Observer, she layers her voice in a way that occasionally brings to mind Julianna Barwick, but Harris sounds comparatively distant and less immersive. Her voice haunts these songs instead of leading them; it's a presence and not a personality, and the voice and instruments are in balance, serving each other without any one element becoming more prominent. The other aspect that sets Grouper apart is an approach to sound that feels somehow both cruder and more sophisticated than the majority of the lo-fi crop. It's crude in the sense that it seems to hearken back to the dark, home-recorded songs of an earlier era. David Pearce's music as Flying Saucer Attack, recorded mostly during the 1990s, was often referred to as "rural psychedelia," and that description would fit this pair of records. This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them. The sophistication comes from the care in presentation. This music doesn't sound like it was built from mistakes or thrown together, it seems precisely ordered and arranged even while it's often muffled and warbly and distorted. Every sound exists for a reason. Alien Observer is the more accessible of the two discs, and also has a slightly better arc. The opening "Moon Is Sharp" begins one of those impossibly beautiful vocal drones that just tears out your insides, as Harris begins in shapeless ethereality and gradually finds her way to an unadorned but breathtaking melody. The title track does away with the drone and puts Harris' vocal over a quivering keyboard line. On "Vapor Trails" and "She Loves Me That Way" the record turns a few shades darker, but a twinkling music box melody that opens "Mary, on the Wall (Second Heart Tone)" feels like awakening from an uneasy sleep, groggy and halfway hallucinating as you re-enter the world. The closing "Come Softly (For Daniel D)" feels like a proper conclusion, as Harris' naked voice over a skeletal keyboard figure gradually disappear over the horizon. Dream Loss is heavier on the distortion and EQ, and with an atmosphere that alternates between the hissy, open drift of the stratosphere with the thick, all-encompassing immersion of the ocean floor. The tracks here feel less like songs and more like moods, studies, and shapes. "I Saw a Ray" flirts with noise music, with a bit of industrial grind added to the held tones, while "Soul Eraser" seems to crumble into dust and regenerate itself simultaneously. Harris has indicated that the two records, dating from different periods (the tracks on Dream Loss are older), have threads connecting them. They certainly feel like companions. Dream Loss is only slightly less engrossing than its counterpart, and the differences are minor. But placed on a continuum, these records highlight how 2008's luminous Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, her last full-length album, was an unusual entry in the Grouper catalog. That record was built almost exclusively with acoustic guitar and voice, and the songs had an ancient air to them, like they'd been carved into petrified wood with a hammer and chisel. These records are closer to the narcotic drift of earlier records like 2007's Cover the Windows and the Walls. But it all feels like Grouper, and whether she's working in realm of rough-hewn folk or amniotic drift, this is music that takes you places.

Artist: Grouper, Album: A I A : Alien Observer, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music these last few years, this collection of elements may sound familiar, possibly bordering on cliché. But it's all in how you fit the pieces together. Despite sharing characteristics with a lot of other current music, Harris' has a distinctive sound that she pretty much owns. These short LPs, released at the same time and that share an overall aesthetic, sound beamed in from another realm, and they also sound like they could have come from no one else. Part of the distinctiveness can be traced to Harris' voice, which floats above the music and can sound delicate and shrouded and mist and can also evince an approachable earthiness. Particularly on Alien Observer, she layers her voice in a way that occasionally brings to mind Julianna Barwick, but Harris sounds comparatively distant and less immersive. Her voice haunts these songs instead of leading them; it's a presence and not a personality, and the voice and instruments are in balance, serving each other without any one element becoming more prominent. The other aspect that sets Grouper apart is an approach to sound that feels somehow both cruder and more sophisticated than the majority of the lo-fi crop. It's crude in the sense that it seems to hearken back to the dark, home-recorded songs of an earlier era. David Pearce's music as Flying Saucer Attack, recorded mostly during the 1990s, was often referred to as "rural psychedelia," and that description would fit this pair of records. This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them. The sophistication comes from the care in presentation. This music doesn't sound like it was built from mistakes or thrown together, it seems precisely ordered and arranged even while it's often muffled and warbly and distorted. Every sound exists for a reason. Alien Observer is the more accessible of the two discs, and also has a slightly better arc. The opening "Moon Is Sharp" begins one of those impossibly beautiful vocal drones that just tears out your insides, as Harris begins in shapeless ethereality and gradually finds her way to an unadorned but breathtaking melody. The title track does away with the drone and puts Harris' vocal over a quivering keyboard line. On "Vapor Trails" and "She Loves Me That Way" the record turns a few shades darker, but a twinkling music box melody that opens "Mary, on the Wall (Second Heart Tone)" feels like awakening from an uneasy sleep, groggy and halfway hallucinating as you re-enter the world. The closing "Come Softly (For Daniel D)" feels like a proper conclusion, as Harris' naked voice over a skeletal keyboard figure gradually disappear over the horizon. Dream Loss is heavier on the distortion and EQ, and with an atmosphere that alternates between the hissy, open drift of the stratosphere with the thick, all-encompassing immersion of the ocean floor. The tracks here feel less like songs and more like moods, studies, and shapes. "I Saw a Ray" flirts with noise music, with a bit of industrial grind added to the held tones, while "Soul Eraser" seems to crumble into dust and regenerate itself simultaneously. Harris has indicated that the two records, dating from different periods (the tracks on Dream Loss are older), have threads connecting them. They certainly feel like companions. Dream Loss is only slightly less engrossing than its counterpart, and the differences are minor. But placed on a continuum, these records highlight how 2008's luminous Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, her last full-length album, was an unusual entry in the Grouper catalog. That record was built almost exclusively with acoustic guitar and voice, and the songs had an ancient air to them, like they'd been carved into petrified wood with a hammer and chisel. These records are closer to the narcotic drift of earlier records like 2007's Cover the Windows and the Walls. But it all feels like Grouper, and whether she's working in realm of rough-hewn folk or amniotic drift, this is music that takes you places."

Ricardo Villalobos

Thè au Harem d'Archiméde

Electronic

Nick Sylvester

I suspect that a lot of this tech-house stuff is easy to make. Perhaps process shouldn't be a determining factor in the opinion of a final product, but nevertheless I respond pretty consistently to Kompakt and Force Tracks and especially Perlon releases in part because the tracks just sound more thought-out and labored over. If anything, they're extremely detailed. Sometimes detail work makes us dance harder, and on rare occasions it can even give a track some unexpectedly human quality: Michelangelo Matos talks about the thread of pessimism that courses through Luomo's Vocalcity, for instance. Whatever gives icy tracks like "Tessio" or Jan Jelinek's "Tendency" such emotional depth, Fruity Loops definitely doesn't have a preset for it-- at least just yet. Blame the detail work, the drugs, or the greasy long hair in his eyes: Ricardo Villalobos' Thè au Harem d'Archiméde is the sound of paranoia, a ticking bomb that never quite goes off. Nine well-carved tracks fidget violently within a remarkably controlled spectrum of sound. While tech-house in 2004 widened its scope for bigger sounds, trading computers for synths and hard grooves for genre and song structure, Villalobos approaches Thè au Harem with a monkish, almost classical degree of top-down restraint. It seems as if the Chilean-Berliner sticks to only seven or eight percussive sounds throughout the whole album, running them through every possible permutation, milking them till they're miraculously warm and woozy. Villalobos gave us great hooks on 2003's Alcachofa; here he stalks us in a sweaty haze of Amazon rhythm, challenging us to find the hooks ourselves. Dizzying and sometimes nerve-wracking, Villalobos is hardly a shyster though, hooking up Thè au Harem's hardest working listeners with fantastic payoffs throughout the mix. While the first three tracks flaunt grooves as tightly-wound as Maurizio twelves, Villalobos still finds an unsettling amount of wiggle room for wind-chime strings in "Hireklon", swashbuckling slurps in "Serpentin", and noirish synth accents in "For All Seasons". As the album progresses, tracks become livelier and more unpredictable, each building on the rhythmic developments of the one before. Lush pun-on-title-track "Thèorème d'Archiméde" is the tipping point, thereafter Villalobos insisting on increasingly chaotic routines: "Temenarc 2" spins like a shattered Tiefschwarz record, and follow-up "Temenarc 1" all but bats its way out of an aluminum trash can. By the time the aptly-named "True To Myself" finishes out Thè au Harem, Villalobos has become quite the derelict, offering 14 minutes of weary chants and ghostly yelps. Think Dani Siciliano in Downtown 81 drag, chasing us through the jungle.

Artist: Ricardo Villalobos, Album: Thè au Harem d'Archiméde, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.2 Album review: "I suspect that a lot of this tech-house stuff is easy to make. Perhaps process shouldn't be a determining factor in the opinion of a final product, but nevertheless I respond pretty consistently to Kompakt and Force Tracks and especially Perlon releases in part because the tracks just sound more thought-out and labored over. If anything, they're extremely detailed. Sometimes detail work makes us dance harder, and on rare occasions it can even give a track some unexpectedly human quality: Michelangelo Matos talks about the thread of pessimism that courses through Luomo's Vocalcity, for instance. Whatever gives icy tracks like "Tessio" or Jan Jelinek's "Tendency" such emotional depth, Fruity Loops definitely doesn't have a preset for it-- at least just yet. Blame the detail work, the drugs, or the greasy long hair in his eyes: Ricardo Villalobos' Thè au Harem d'Archiméde is the sound of paranoia, a ticking bomb that never quite goes off. Nine well-carved tracks fidget violently within a remarkably controlled spectrum of sound. While tech-house in 2004 widened its scope for bigger sounds, trading computers for synths and hard grooves for genre and song structure, Villalobos approaches Thè au Harem with a monkish, almost classical degree of top-down restraint. It seems as if the Chilean-Berliner sticks to only seven or eight percussive sounds throughout the whole album, running them through every possible permutation, milking them till they're miraculously warm and woozy. Villalobos gave us great hooks on 2003's Alcachofa; here he stalks us in a sweaty haze of Amazon rhythm, challenging us to find the hooks ourselves. Dizzying and sometimes nerve-wracking, Villalobos is hardly a shyster though, hooking up Thè au Harem's hardest working listeners with fantastic payoffs throughout the mix. While the first three tracks flaunt grooves as tightly-wound as Maurizio twelves, Villalobos still finds an unsettling amount of wiggle room for wind-chime strings in "Hireklon", swashbuckling slurps in "Serpentin", and noirish synth accents in "For All Seasons". As the album progresses, tracks become livelier and more unpredictable, each building on the rhythmic developments of the one before. Lush pun-on-title-track "Thèorème d'Archiméde" is the tipping point, thereafter Villalobos insisting on increasingly chaotic routines: "Temenarc 2" spins like a shattered Tiefschwarz record, and follow-up "Temenarc 1" all but bats its way out of an aluminum trash can. By the time the aptly-named "True To Myself" finishes out Thè au Harem, Villalobos has become quite the derelict, offering 14 minutes of weary chants and ghostly yelps. Think Dani Siciliano in Downtown 81 drag, chasing us through the jungle."

The Dead Science

Villainaire

Experimental

Brian Howe

The latest album by Seattle's the Dead Science asks a lot of questions, the foremost being, "What the fuck?" You've got Sam Mickens' voice, which blends showtunesy brio with high-strung jitters, and makes him sound like Judy Garland in the throes of some dire psychosexual discomfort. For source material, you've got Wu-Tang Clan and Marvel Comics (the latter already looming large in the former's pantheon of mythology), leading to song titles like "Make Mine Marvel" and lyrics like "Villainaire/ Ice Grillionaire." And you've got the music itself: disarticulated guitar scrollwork full of awkwardly splayed chords and spidery progressions. The easy explanation for these juxtapositions would be indie irony-- a throwaway gag where a cynical appropriation of otherness masquerades as thematic depth-- or a parlor trick with archetypal collisions. But this isn't going to be that easy. Mickens writes insightfully about rap music for Seattle's The Stranger, and however inscrutable it is, this record has the marks of genuine investment. So again: What the fuck. The short answer is that this is music by music critics, for music critics. Dig this rather leading question that Mickens asked the RZA in a Stranger interview: "Do you feel like Bobby Digital is a format in which you're looking at the more serious value of things like Marvel Comics-- things that people might be real deep on as kids and then come to greater understandings of later in life?" On Villainaire, Mickens attempts to answer his own question. As someone who, approaching 30, has begun to seriously revisit the comics and rap music (especially Wu-Tang) that informed his developing perceptions of heroes, villains, power, and weakness, I'm sympathetic. It can't be a coincidence that superhero movies and the comics industry have enjoyed an incredible mainstream resurgence post-9/11, and these ostensibly childish fantasies, which reveal collective hopes and fears, are bursting with current relevance. But music is better at insinuation than analysis, and Mickens' themes seem like they'd be more fruitfully framed as a dissertation. When he sings, amid the needling guitars and ghoulish strings of "Monster Island Czars", "Daydream of being married to/ A wave of bullets racing through my body," we at least catch a whiff of some kind of point about violence-as-fantasy, and "gangster white walls" is a terrifically compacted lyric that operates on at least three levels of significance. But when he quotes "Triumph" and sneaks in a reference to "golden arms" on the slithering chamber rock of "Make Mine Marvel", it smells of red herring. Villainaire's ambitious themes are partially stillborn, but the music itself is grotesquely alive. The Dead Science occupy a very specific and yet-to-be-properly-named caste of art-rock (I propose Theater of the Insane) characterized by queasy vibrato, tangled guitars, abstruse transgressive themes, allegiance to Scott Walker, and supplementary non-rock instrumentation (e.g. the harp runs preceding the swarming guitar attack of "Throne of Blood (The Jump Off)"). They reside there alongside Xiu Xiu, Parenthetical Girls, and Shudder to Think. It's hard to imagine, but Mickens' voice is even more uncompromising than Jamie Stewart's or Craig Wedren's. At once lacy and flinty, it isn't softened by lush flutters like Stewart's, which is particularly apparent on "Fabulous Muscles"-style, vanishing ballads like "Lamentable". Nor is it fortified by Wedren's operatic fluency, whose cameo on "Death Duel Productions" emphasizes how rigidly Mickens' voice sits astride the careening music. His voice is as ambiguous as his themes and shattered arrangements, all of which conspire to render Villainaire such an intriguing, exasperating, fitfully rewarding record.

Artist: The Dead Science, Album: Villainaire, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "The latest album by Seattle's the Dead Science asks a lot of questions, the foremost being, "What the fuck?" You've got Sam Mickens' voice, which blends showtunesy brio with high-strung jitters, and makes him sound like Judy Garland in the throes of some dire psychosexual discomfort. For source material, you've got Wu-Tang Clan and Marvel Comics (the latter already looming large in the former's pantheon of mythology), leading to song titles like "Make Mine Marvel" and lyrics like "Villainaire/ Ice Grillionaire." And you've got the music itself: disarticulated guitar scrollwork full of awkwardly splayed chords and spidery progressions. The easy explanation for these juxtapositions would be indie irony-- a throwaway gag where a cynical appropriation of otherness masquerades as thematic depth-- or a parlor trick with archetypal collisions. But this isn't going to be that easy. Mickens writes insightfully about rap music for Seattle's The Stranger, and however inscrutable it is, this record has the marks of genuine investment. So again: What the fuck. The short answer is that this is music by music critics, for music critics. Dig this rather leading question that Mickens asked the RZA in a Stranger interview: "Do you feel like Bobby Digital is a format in which you're looking at the more serious value of things like Marvel Comics-- things that people might be real deep on as kids and then come to greater understandings of later in life?" On Villainaire, Mickens attempts to answer his own question. As someone who, approaching 30, has begun to seriously revisit the comics and rap music (especially Wu-Tang) that informed his developing perceptions of heroes, villains, power, and weakness, I'm sympathetic. It can't be a coincidence that superhero movies and the comics industry have enjoyed an incredible mainstream resurgence post-9/11, and these ostensibly childish fantasies, which reveal collective hopes and fears, are bursting with current relevance. But music is better at insinuation than analysis, and Mickens' themes seem like they'd be more fruitfully framed as a dissertation. When he sings, amid the needling guitars and ghoulish strings of "Monster Island Czars", "Daydream of being married to/ A wave of bullets racing through my body," we at least catch a whiff of some kind of point about violence-as-fantasy, and "gangster white walls" is a terrifically compacted lyric that operates on at least three levels of significance. But when he quotes "Triumph" and sneaks in a reference to "golden arms" on the slithering chamber rock of "Make Mine Marvel", it smells of red herring. Villainaire's ambitious themes are partially stillborn, but the music itself is grotesquely alive. The Dead Science occupy a very specific and yet-to-be-properly-named caste of art-rock (I propose Theater of the Insane) characterized by queasy vibrato, tangled guitars, abstruse transgressive themes, allegiance to Scott Walker, and supplementary non-rock instrumentation (e.g. the harp runs preceding the swarming guitar attack of "Throne of Blood (The Jump Off)"). They reside there alongside Xiu Xiu, Parenthetical Girls, and Shudder to Think. It's hard to imagine, but Mickens' voice is even more uncompromising than Jamie Stewart's or Craig Wedren's. At once lacy and flinty, it isn't softened by lush flutters like Stewart's, which is particularly apparent on "Fabulous Muscles"-style, vanishing ballads like "Lamentable". Nor is it fortified by Wedren's operatic fluency, whose cameo on "Death Duel Productions" emphasizes how rigidly Mickens' voice sits astride the careening music. His voice is as ambiguous as his themes and shattered arrangements, all of which conspire to render Villainaire such an intriguing, exasperating, fitfully rewarding record."

White Fence

Is Growing Faith

Rock

Martin Douglas

Tim Presley comes from a growing faction of hard-working throwback rock'n'roll artists who share both a love of vaguely garage and punk music but also display a pertinacious work ethic. Seemingly dissatisfied with the "one album every 18 months" approach of some of his peers, Presley serves as frontman for neo-psych group Darker My Love, guitarist for garage-poppers the Strange Boys, and still found time to release the self-titled debut of his solo project, White Fence, late last year. All in all, White Fence played like many solo bows: It was a solid-but-sometimes-unfocused tour through the artist's mental Rolodex of influences and flights of fancy. In Presley's case that happens to be the sort of 1960s and 70s folk-rock that emits a vapor trail of psychedelia behind it. Is Growing Faith, the second White Fence album in under a year, finds Presley trimming the fat and applying stringent focus on improving as a songwriter without discarding his dealer's phone number. While songs like lead single "Lillian (Won't You Play Drums)", "Sticky Fruitman Has Faith", and "And By Always" continue Presley's attachment to bright guitar lines and delightfully meandering guitar solos, Is Growing Faith also finds him in a more exploratory mood. "Stranger Things Have Happened (To You)" sneaks a little country twang into the template, while the laconic, bouncy "Your Last Friend Alive" leads into a jangly riff that quickly turns into the lead on cacophonous surf-rock tune "Enthusiasm". Tracks such as those help this record feel like a more thought-out work rather than a cobbled-together collection. The most drastic left-turn is "The Mexican Twins/Life is... Too $hort", on which Presley trades his psych influence for hip-hop. The first half of the song is a bizarre, keyboard-driven spoken word track, complete with Presley's voice being pitch-shifted to sound eerily similar to Madlib alter-ego Quasimoto; the latter-- named for the classic Bay Area rap album-- mercifully pulls in the reins musically. Presley's greatest successes come from putting away the drums, sitting an acoustic guitar on his lap, and showcasing his gratifyingly woozy voice. "Tumble, Lies & Honesty" finds him double-tracking his vocals and harmonizing with himself while a wobbly keyboard line sends the humble optimism of the song's lyrics to near-soaring heights. With all the psychedelic instrumental flourishes on Is Growing Faith, closer "When There is No Crowd" follows the advice of its title and is presented completely unadorned. Featuring just Presley's voice and a guitar, the song features some of the strongest songwriting on the album, with an earworm of a melody and lyrics that combine laid-back nostalgia, uncomplicated romance, stream-of-consciousness imagery, and even a little advice: "You might go to college, and you might go to school/ And you may find religion, but don't be nobody's fool." Ultimately, "When There Is No Crowd" is the most appropriate way to end the record, with the image of Presley seated alone and hunched over a tape recorder, sounding more truly comfortable for the first time in his career. Even with all of the bands he punches the time card for, it's starting to become very clear that, with Is Growing Faith, his solo efforts are the ones that reap the most rewards.

Artist: White Fence, Album: Is Growing Faith, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Tim Presley comes from a growing faction of hard-working throwback rock'n'roll artists who share both a love of vaguely garage and punk music but also display a pertinacious work ethic. Seemingly dissatisfied with the "one album every 18 months" approach of some of his peers, Presley serves as frontman for neo-psych group Darker My Love, guitarist for garage-poppers the Strange Boys, and still found time to release the self-titled debut of his solo project, White Fence, late last year. All in all, White Fence played like many solo bows: It was a solid-but-sometimes-unfocused tour through the artist's mental Rolodex of influences and flights of fancy. In Presley's case that happens to be the sort of 1960s and 70s folk-rock that emits a vapor trail of psychedelia behind it. Is Growing Faith, the second White Fence album in under a year, finds Presley trimming the fat and applying stringent focus on improving as a songwriter without discarding his dealer's phone number. While songs like lead single "Lillian (Won't You Play Drums)", "Sticky Fruitman Has Faith", and "And By Always" continue Presley's attachment to bright guitar lines and delightfully meandering guitar solos, Is Growing Faith also finds him in a more exploratory mood. "Stranger Things Have Happened (To You)" sneaks a little country twang into the template, while the laconic, bouncy "Your Last Friend Alive" leads into a jangly riff that quickly turns into the lead on cacophonous surf-rock tune "Enthusiasm". Tracks such as those help this record feel like a more thought-out work rather than a cobbled-together collection. The most drastic left-turn is "The Mexican Twins/Life is... Too $hort", on which Presley trades his psych influence for hip-hop. The first half of the song is a bizarre, keyboard-driven spoken word track, complete with Presley's voice being pitch-shifted to sound eerily similar to Madlib alter-ego Quasimoto; the latter-- named for the classic Bay Area rap album-- mercifully pulls in the reins musically. Presley's greatest successes come from putting away the drums, sitting an acoustic guitar on his lap, and showcasing his gratifyingly woozy voice. "Tumble, Lies & Honesty" finds him double-tracking his vocals and harmonizing with himself while a wobbly keyboard line sends the humble optimism of the song's lyrics to near-soaring heights. With all the psychedelic instrumental flourishes on Is Growing Faith, closer "When There is No Crowd" follows the advice of its title and is presented completely unadorned. Featuring just Presley's voice and a guitar, the song features some of the strongest songwriting on the album, with an earworm of a melody and lyrics that combine laid-back nostalgia, uncomplicated romance, stream-of-consciousness imagery, and even a little advice: "You might go to college, and you might go to school/ And you may find religion, but don't be nobody's fool." Ultimately, "When There Is No Crowd" is the most appropriate way to end the record, with the image of Presley seated alone and hunched over a tape recorder, sounding more truly comfortable for the first time in his career. Even with all of the bands he punches the time card for, it's starting to become very clear that, with Is Growing Faith, his solo efforts are the ones that reap the most rewards."

The Caribbean

Plastic Explosives

Rock

Joe Tangari

"Americana" is a word frequently applied to music that somehow feels connected to traditional Appalachian folk, blues, and country, genres we tend to think of as quintessentially American. It seems, though, that in the past half-century, the essence of American-ness has changed-- or rather, expanded-- to the point where the word Americana only captures a tiny part of what makes American life and culture distinctive. I'm not suggesting that we redefine a semi-useful critical tag, but I'd like to posit that the Caribbean's music is a sort of Americana, albeit a different sort than we're used to. The simple fact is that in 50 years, the stuff that this band sings about-- office supplies, airport security, long-distance correspondence, and dayjob malaise-- will likely be more central to American life than coal mining, farming, and church. That's if they're not already. Songs about crime, another staple of Americana, will probably still resonate far and wide, and the Caribbean simply updates that, from murder ballads to small-time drug production and white-collar dishonesty. The D.C. band wraps its tales of modern life in a musical cocktail that arranges piles of instruments into a constantly shifting mix. Guitars, marimbas, beatboxes, banjos, drums, violins, and accordions share air with turntables, radios and samplers, which add a touch of modern glitch to the otherwise smooth, spacious arrangements. Producer Chad Clark keeps all these elements from stepping on each other, giving the band a roomy sound that comes across like an alternate-universe Death Cab. Michael Kentoff's soft, Ira Kaplan-ish vocals wander through these elements like one person through a towering city, as if awed by everything they see and hoping not to get lost. This fact and the band's singularly odd way with lyrics make Plastic Explosives nearly impossible to sing along to-- none of the songs are arranged in convenient verse-chorus-verse packages, instead flowing from thought to thought in mostly complete sentences. It can get awkward at times-- try putting a melody to "As we ripped out our networks, I kept it in mind: Save the mirror or else pretty soon you'll find you can't see/ You can't hear" and see how far you get. Kentoff's lyrics are at their best on "The Truth Hurts Jamie Green", which that tells the story of a girl adrift with just a few fractured images, the best being the last: "A voice assumed buried rang on another line." The songs here have an uncanny flow from one to the next, to the point where they feel indelibly joined, a feeling heightened by the little sketchy instrumentals that cushion them from each other like sonic packing peanuts. After three albums and a couple of EPs, the Caribbean sound at home in this strange little white-collar rock place they've built for themselves. It's the folk music of the new American service economy.

Artist: The Caribbean, Album: Plastic Explosives, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: ""Americana" is a word frequently applied to music that somehow feels connected to traditional Appalachian folk, blues, and country, genres we tend to think of as quintessentially American. It seems, though, that in the past half-century, the essence of American-ness has changed-- or rather, expanded-- to the point where the word Americana only captures a tiny part of what makes American life and culture distinctive. I'm not suggesting that we redefine a semi-useful critical tag, but I'd like to posit that the Caribbean's music is a sort of Americana, albeit a different sort than we're used to. The simple fact is that in 50 years, the stuff that this band sings about-- office supplies, airport security, long-distance correspondence, and dayjob malaise-- will likely be more central to American life than coal mining, farming, and church. That's if they're not already. Songs about crime, another staple of Americana, will probably still resonate far and wide, and the Caribbean simply updates that, from murder ballads to small-time drug production and white-collar dishonesty. The D.C. band wraps its tales of modern life in a musical cocktail that arranges piles of instruments into a constantly shifting mix. Guitars, marimbas, beatboxes, banjos, drums, violins, and accordions share air with turntables, radios and samplers, which add a touch of modern glitch to the otherwise smooth, spacious arrangements. Producer Chad Clark keeps all these elements from stepping on each other, giving the band a roomy sound that comes across like an alternate-universe Death Cab. Michael Kentoff's soft, Ira Kaplan-ish vocals wander through these elements like one person through a towering city, as if awed by everything they see and hoping not to get lost. This fact and the band's singularly odd way with lyrics make Plastic Explosives nearly impossible to sing along to-- none of the songs are arranged in convenient verse-chorus-verse packages, instead flowing from thought to thought in mostly complete sentences. It can get awkward at times-- try putting a melody to "As we ripped out our networks, I kept it in mind: Save the mirror or else pretty soon you'll find you can't see/ You can't hear" and see how far you get. Kentoff's lyrics are at their best on "The Truth Hurts Jamie Green", which that tells the story of a girl adrift with just a few fractured images, the best being the last: "A voice assumed buried rang on another line." The songs here have an uncanny flow from one to the next, to the point where they feel indelibly joined, a feeling heightened by the little sketchy instrumentals that cushion them from each other like sonic packing peanuts. After three albums and a couple of EPs, the Caribbean sound at home in this strange little white-collar rock place they've built for themselves. It's the folk music of the new American service economy."

Lloyd

King of Hearts

Pop/R&B

David Drake

No contemporary R&B singers approximate the elusive stomach-butterfly rush of infatuation as consistently as Lloyd. "Lay It Down", King of Hearts' peak moment and a lead single that predates the record by nearly a year, is an exemplar: Its innocent, almost naïve earnestness is married to a preternatural sense for R&B vocal acrobatics, giving dimension and believability to his devotion. A distinctive talent, Lloyd often let his vocals dance around the periphery of a song, giving his best tracks a spacey, removed quality. As a whole, the LP takes a major step toward streamlining his sound, pushing Lloyd's voice to the center and making a bid for a higher level of recognition in the R&B world. Despite a few missteps, it is a major success, in large part due to the chemistry of Lloyd with producer Polow Da Don. Lloyd's knack for endearing romanticism is a vehicle for great music, and when the record falters, it feels like a misunderstanding of how his talent operates. The superfluous intro track can be forgiven thanks to its brevity and a surprisingly clunker-free verse from the Game. But "Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)", the first full song on the album, is bizarre and clumsy. The generic, faux-Motown beat frames the track as a joke, along the lines of Cee Lo's "Fuck You". Perhaps the right performance could have saved lyrics that fetishize the vagina as a relationship's vestigial remnant, but it's hard to buy the tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation of a line like "I'm about to kill this bitch!" from an artist typically so wrapped up in enthusiastic sincerity. Aside from this misstep and a platitudinous track aptly titled "World Cry", King of Hearts seems perfectly matched to fit Lloyd's strengths. Polow clearly understands those strengths. Outside the occasional producer's flourish-- like the grinding bass break that opens Young Jeezy's verse on "Be the One"-- his work is primarily devoted to underlining Lloyd's vocals for maximum impact. On "Naked", Lloyd's performance has a dreamy distance from the physical reality of sexuality; instead, his vocals are draped in softly descending washes of guitar and muted trumpet lines, giving a sensuous texture to this awestruck ode to beauty. Single "Cupid"'s exuberant chorus baits cynical listeners: It works so well as a radio single because, through mild repetition, the hook's infectious idealism overwhelms any resistance. The heart of the record, though, are tracks like the euphoric headrush "Jigsaw", where Lloyd's sense of rhythm lets his vocals dance confidently in the subdivisions of the groove, balancing sugary enthusiasm with deft physicality. Many of the album's best songs seem to inspire comparisons with dancing: There is a connection to the idea of dance as liberation here, as Lloyd's blushing sincerity builds up potential energy, the nimble performance acts as a release valve. In an echo of Aaliyah's "Loose Rap", album highlight "Shake It 4 Daddy" finds Lloyd dancing atop a vocal shadow; somehow, in his hands, even strip club storytelling comes across as boyish flirtation. Although the lyrics imply he's in the audience, the song's excitement suggests Lloyd is the one performing.

Artist: Lloyd, Album: King of Hearts, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "No contemporary R&B singers approximate the elusive stomach-butterfly rush of infatuation as consistently as Lloyd. "Lay It Down", King of Hearts' peak moment and a lead single that predates the record by nearly a year, is an exemplar: Its innocent, almost naïve earnestness is married to a preternatural sense for R&B vocal acrobatics, giving dimension and believability to his devotion. A distinctive talent, Lloyd often let his vocals dance around the periphery of a song, giving his best tracks a spacey, removed quality. As a whole, the LP takes a major step toward streamlining his sound, pushing Lloyd's voice to the center and making a bid for a higher level of recognition in the R&B world. Despite a few missteps, it is a major success, in large part due to the chemistry of Lloyd with producer Polow Da Don. Lloyd's knack for endearing romanticism is a vehicle for great music, and when the record falters, it feels like a misunderstanding of how his talent operates. The superfluous intro track can be forgiven thanks to its brevity and a surprisingly clunker-free verse from the Game. But "Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)", the first full song on the album, is bizarre and clumsy. The generic, faux-Motown beat frames the track as a joke, along the lines of Cee Lo's "Fuck You". Perhaps the right performance could have saved lyrics that fetishize the vagina as a relationship's vestigial remnant, but it's hard to buy the tongue-in-cheek self-deprecation of a line like "I'm about to kill this bitch!" from an artist typically so wrapped up in enthusiastic sincerity. Aside from this misstep and a platitudinous track aptly titled "World Cry", King of Hearts seems perfectly matched to fit Lloyd's strengths. Polow clearly understands those strengths. Outside the occasional producer's flourish-- like the grinding bass break that opens Young Jeezy's verse on "Be the One"-- his work is primarily devoted to underlining Lloyd's vocals for maximum impact. On "Naked", Lloyd's performance has a dreamy distance from the physical reality of sexuality; instead, his vocals are draped in softly descending washes of guitar and muted trumpet lines, giving a sensuous texture to this awestruck ode to beauty. Single "Cupid"'s exuberant chorus baits cynical listeners: It works so well as a radio single because, through mild repetition, the hook's infectious idealism overwhelms any resistance. The heart of the record, though, are tracks like the euphoric headrush "Jigsaw", where Lloyd's sense of rhythm lets his vocals dance confidently in the subdivisions of the groove, balancing sugary enthusiasm with deft physicality. Many of the album's best songs seem to inspire comparisons with dancing: There is a connection to the idea of dance as liberation here, as Lloyd's blushing sincerity builds up potential energy, the nimble performance acts as a release valve. In an echo of Aaliyah's "Loose Rap", album highlight "Shake It 4 Daddy" finds Lloyd dancing atop a vocal shadow; somehow, in his hands, even strip club storytelling comes across as boyish flirtation. Although the lyrics imply he's in the audience, the song's excitement suggests Lloyd is the one performing."

Bo Anders Persson

Love Is Here To Stay

Marc Masters

The music Bo Anders Persson made in the late 1960s and early 70s may not have spread wide, but its influence went deep. While his Swedish groups Pärson Sound, International Harvester, and Träd, Gräs Och Stenar didn’t sell tons of records, for a certain cross-section of the underground, their sprawling swirl of psych, folk, noise, and abstraction was a sound ripe for worship. Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, and Sunburned Hand of the Man all owe their smoky trails in part to the paths that Persson’s bands blazed. Persson’s solo music might have made as much impact over the past five decades, if anyone had actually heard it. One piece did make a small dent: the 1967 tape-loop protest “Proteinimperialism,” released in 1970 on a split LP with fellow countryman Folke Rabe. But it turns out Persson had a lot more going on before he formed his avant-rock groups with fellow students at Stockholm’s Royal College of Music. Inspired to “play music the way I myself imagined that it should sound,” he crafted tape-based experiments and ensemble compositions that rival his pioneering later work. As heard on the archival compilation Love Is Here to Stay, these early Persson pieces reflect their times and predict later advances, yet ultimately stand as the unique work of a singular vision. Granted, Persson was influenced by Terry Riley, whom he met when his mentor, the composer Jan Bark, brought him to Sweden to lead a version of In C in which Persson played electric organ. You can hear Riley’s musical voice echoing through Persson’s tape experiments, which build and expand the way Riley’s did. But there’s a simplicity to Persson’s approach that makes his work more primal, and more personal. Most of his pieces use just a few sonic elements, and are clear about where they are and what they’re doing. Their power comes not from overwhelming your ears but focusing them, directing concentration to detail rather than density. They also make a fascinating study in combining tapes with other instruments, in ways that end up like collaborative duets. On “Invention” parts I and II, Persson intersects his recorders with the flute of Björn J:son Lindh, creating what at times sound like embryonic versions of Phill Niblock’s rock-solid drones. Even more intriguing is Persson’s use of Maylen Bergström’s singing. On “Piece I”, her free-form vocalizing evokes Patty Waters’ height-scaling and Yoko Ono’s quiver. Persson grounds those flights with loops both rhythmic and responsive, supporting Bergström without blocking her. Later, on “Piece II”, tape repetitions move forward, soaking the vocals until they become pure waves. Persson’s ensemble compositions also feature interlocked partnership. “Små toner mer eller mindre,” from a 1967 Swedish radio broadcast, uses five players, yet it’s still thoroughly, calmly minimalist. No individual element dominates; at times it seems as if everyone is playing one instrument together, lending intimacy to something that could have sounded crowded. “Love Is Here to Stay”, by contrast, has moments of clutter, and is the clearest foreshadow of Persson’s group work, as his conga rhythms turn it into a kind of rock meditation. But even this piece feels personal, more the echoes of a mind than the rumblings of a collective. Love Is Here To Stay ends with its only previously-released track, the aforementioned “Proteinimperialism”. Its overt political slant, based on a repeated phrase signifying the environmental dominance of the Western World, is also unique among these pieces. In fact, were you to listen to the rest ofthe album without further context, you might think Persson’s solo work was significant primarily for its formal experimentation, at a time when minimalism was just starting to gel and infect genres outside of academic composition. That wouldn’t be wrong, but there’s more going on here than aesthetic progress. Persson was particularly concerned about the environment—he took up music after abandoning engineering because of machines’ impact on nature—and a love of surroundings, an appreciation of the organic, is evident throughout the album. (Not coincidentally, Persson now devotes most of his waking hours to farming his own food). The music develops with little restriction and, even at its most tape-manipulative, doesn't sound artificial. Perhaps the loudest message of Love Is Here to Stay is that complex ideas are sometimes best expressed in the most uncomplicated ways.

Artist: Bo Anders Persson, Album: Love Is Here To Stay, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "The music Bo Anders Persson made in the late 1960s and early 70s may not have spread wide, but its influence went deep. While his Swedish groups Pärson Sound, International Harvester, and Träd, Gräs Och Stenar didn’t sell tons of records, for a certain cross-section of the underground, their sprawling swirl of psych, folk, noise, and abstraction was a sound ripe for worship. Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, and Sunburned Hand of the Man all owe their smoky trails in part to the paths that Persson’s bands blazed. Persson’s solo music might have made as much impact over the past five decades, if anyone had actually heard it. One piece did make a small dent: the 1967 tape-loop protest “Proteinimperialism,” released in 1970 on a split LP with fellow countryman Folke Rabe. But it turns out Persson had a lot more going on before he formed his avant-rock groups with fellow students at Stockholm’s Royal College of Music. Inspired to “play music the way I myself imagined that it should sound,” he crafted tape-based experiments and ensemble compositions that rival his pioneering later work. As heard on the archival compilation Love Is Here to Stay, these early Persson pieces reflect their times and predict later advances, yet ultimately stand as the unique work of a singular vision. Granted, Persson was influenced by Terry Riley, whom he met when his mentor, the composer Jan Bark, brought him to Sweden to lead a version of In C in which Persson played electric organ. You can hear Riley’s musical voice echoing through Persson’s tape experiments, which build and expand the way Riley’s did. But there’s a simplicity to Persson’s approach that makes his work more primal, and more personal. Most of his pieces use just a few sonic elements, and are clear about where they are and what they’re doing. Their power comes not from overwhelming your ears but focusing them, directing concentration to detail rather than density. They also make a fascinating study in combining tapes with other instruments, in ways that end up like collaborative duets. On “Invention” parts I and II, Persson intersects his recorders with the flute of Björn J:son Lindh, creating what at times sound like embryonic versions of Phill Niblock’s rock-solid drones. Even more intriguing is Persson’s use of Maylen Bergström’s singing. On “Piece I”, her free-form vocalizing evokes Patty Waters’ height-scaling and Yoko Ono’s quiver. Persson grounds those flights with loops both rhythmic and responsive, supporting Bergström without blocking her. Later, on “Piece II”, tape repetitions move forward, soaking the vocals until they become pure waves. Persson’s ensemble compositions also feature interlocked partnership. “Små toner mer eller mindre,” from a 1967 Swedish radio broadcast, uses five players, yet it’s still thoroughly, calmly minimalist. No individual element dominates; at times it seems as if everyone is playing one instrument together, lending intimacy to something that could have sounded crowded. “Love Is Here to Stay”, by contrast, has moments of clutter, and is the clearest foreshadow of Persson’s group work, as his conga rhythms turn it into a kind of rock meditation. But even this piece feels personal, more the echoes of a mind than the rumblings of a collective. Love Is Here To Stay ends with its only previously-released track, the aforementioned “Proteinimperialism”. Its overt political slant, based on a repeated phrase signifying the environmental dominance of the Western World, is also unique among these pieces. In fact, were you to listen to the rest ofthe album without further context, you might think Persson’s solo work was significant primarily for its formal experimentation, at a time when minimalism was just starting to gel and infect genres outside of academic composition. That wouldn’t be wrong, but there’s more going on here than aesthetic progress. Persson was particularly concerned about the environment—he took up music after abandoning engineering because of machines’ impact on nature—and a love of surroundings, an appreciation of the organic, is evident throughout the album. (Not coincidentally, Persson now devotes most of his waking hours to farming his own food). The music develops with little restriction and, even at its most tape-manipulative, doesn't sound artificial. Perhaps the loudest message of Love Is Here to Stay is that complex ideas are sometimes best expressed in the most uncomplicated ways."

The Deadly Syndrome

Nolens Volens

Rock

Ian Cohen

A brief history of the Los Angeles rock scene, post-2007: Silversun Pickups are Best New Artist Grammy nominees for their second LP, a former McSweeney's and Men's Health writer hit the VH1 big time with Airborne Toxic Event, No Age's the Smell becomes a nationally recognized landmark, Devendra Banhart dates Natalie Portman, the lead singer of West Indian Girl marries Trent Reznor. And yet, all of those seem less implausible than the second Deadly Syndrome record being received so quietly. This band was on its way three years ago-- galvanizing live shows, fervent local support, and The Ortolan, a record which hit enough populist-indie pleasure points to transcend the notion that they were mere beneficiaries of Silver Lake's hype cycle. I don't know exactly what happened to the Deadly Syndrome in the time since, but judging from Nolens Volens not much of it was good. The record sounds haunted by missed opportunities, isolation, and spiritual crisis. Solo acoustic opener "Villain" announces Nolens Volens as a totally different record than its predecessor-- the carnival instrumentation is dialed way back. You will no longer be hearing Wolf Parade comparisons. More startling are singer Chris Richard's vocals, which sound sapped of all hope, his yelp turned into a confessional plaint almost ashamed of itself before he turns accusatory ("why don't you just go fuck off and die? Is there anything you need?"). Despite a dangerously sweet piano lead, "Doesn't Matter" is no brighter, Richard shrugging through another morning wasted on sleep. "Party City" and the "Paint It, Black"-drone of "Deer Trail Place" conjure drawn blinds and the disappearance of once-familiar faces, but while they're visceral, they're not muscular. Instead, they convey a feeling the record as a whole absolutely nails, the twitchy confusion borne of someone feeling trapped by their own inaction. As with The Ortolan, Nolens Volens rounds out with a synthetically composed epilogue, but the differences between the two are the most vivid illustration of the Deadly Syndrome's attitude shift. "This Old Home" was a Casio-heavy lark that conveyed a sense of humor the band mostly evidenced outside of their actual songs. "Heresy" is eight minutes of mournful drones and chipping snares. Hell, in the end I don't know if Nolens Volens predicts the band packing it in or hitting a crucial turning point. I'm hoping for the latter-- for all The Ortolan's pleasures, in retrospect it feels like a record that was going only as far as its ability to draw name-drops. Nolens Volens may be more sonically spare and emotionally despondent, but it's exponentially more honest and direct. This might not be the band's debut, but it feels like the first time we're really hearing what the Deadly Syndrome have to say.

Artist: The Deadly Syndrome, Album: Nolens Volens, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "A brief history of the Los Angeles rock scene, post-2007: Silversun Pickups are Best New Artist Grammy nominees for their second LP, a former McSweeney's and Men's Health writer hit the VH1 big time with Airborne Toxic Event, No Age's the Smell becomes a nationally recognized landmark, Devendra Banhart dates Natalie Portman, the lead singer of West Indian Girl marries Trent Reznor. And yet, all of those seem less implausible than the second Deadly Syndrome record being received so quietly. This band was on its way three years ago-- galvanizing live shows, fervent local support, and The Ortolan, a record which hit enough populist-indie pleasure points to transcend the notion that they were mere beneficiaries of Silver Lake's hype cycle. I don't know exactly what happened to the Deadly Syndrome in the time since, but judging from Nolens Volens not much of it was good. The record sounds haunted by missed opportunities, isolation, and spiritual crisis. Solo acoustic opener "Villain" announces Nolens Volens as a totally different record than its predecessor-- the carnival instrumentation is dialed way back. You will no longer be hearing Wolf Parade comparisons. More startling are singer Chris Richard's vocals, which sound sapped of all hope, his yelp turned into a confessional plaint almost ashamed of itself before he turns accusatory ("why don't you just go fuck off and die? Is there anything you need?"). Despite a dangerously sweet piano lead, "Doesn't Matter" is no brighter, Richard shrugging through another morning wasted on sleep. "Party City" and the "Paint It, Black"-drone of "Deer Trail Place" conjure drawn blinds and the disappearance of once-familiar faces, but while they're visceral, they're not muscular. Instead, they convey a feeling the record as a whole absolutely nails, the twitchy confusion borne of someone feeling trapped by their own inaction. As with The Ortolan, Nolens Volens rounds out with a synthetically composed epilogue, but the differences between the two are the most vivid illustration of the Deadly Syndrome's attitude shift. "This Old Home" was a Casio-heavy lark that conveyed a sense of humor the band mostly evidenced outside of their actual songs. "Heresy" is eight minutes of mournful drones and chipping snares. Hell, in the end I don't know if Nolens Volens predicts the band packing it in or hitting a crucial turning point. I'm hoping for the latter-- for all The Ortolan's pleasures, in retrospect it feels like a record that was going only as far as its ability to draw name-drops. Nolens Volens may be more sonically spare and emotionally despondent, but it's exponentially more honest and direct. This might not be the band's debut, but it feels like the first time we're really hearing what the Deadly Syndrome have to say."

Bell Biv Devoe

Poison

Pop/R&B

Brendan Frederick

They’d been talking about Bell Biv DeVoe for four minutes straight, and Ralph Tresvant was getting pissed. All six members of R&B group New Edition were back together, sitting on BET’s black leather “Video Soul” sofa for an interview, and these three guys who usually sang backup for Ralph—Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe—wouldn’t shut up about their little hip-hop side project. Tresvant decided to interrupt and set it straight. “Mike keeps stressing BBD—it’s not a BBD moment,” he said. “It’s a New Edition reunion.” This was 1990, and the trio’s debut single “Poison” was on the verge of breaking into the Top 10. Their album, also called Poison, had just dropped, and it was on its way to selling 4 million copies. By the end of the year, Billboard would declare BBD the biggest new pop group of 1990. It was definitely Bell Biv DeVoe’s moment. Poison was a conceptually groundbreaking pop album that reinvented the relationship between R&B and hip-hop for the ’90s. BBD even had a neat little mission statement to explain their vision: “Our music is mentally hip-hop, smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it.” They stamped the slogan on their album cover and flashed it on screen during their videos. They talked about it in every interview, including that day on BET. The show’s host wasn’t sure what to make of it: “And like...what does that mean?” Ricky Bell spoke up: “You have to listen to the music to understand what we’re talking about.” You’ve heard “Poison” too many times, probably at a wedding or a school dance or some perennially bad episode of “Carpool Karaoke.” But Bell Biv DeVoe is more than just a song, and their debut album represents a critical leap in the evolution of R&B. A collaboration with revered Public Enemy production crew the Bomb Squad, Poison embodied the style and sound of hip-hop in a more convincing way than any R&B album before it. For better or worse, Bell Biv DeVoe set the stage for three decades of singers who want to talk, dress, and act like rappers. Back when he was only 14, Michael Bivins introduced himself to the world with a little rap on New Edition’s 1982 breakout hit “Candy Girl”: “She walks so fast, she looks so sweet/She makes my heart just skip a beat.” The group made smiling, bubble-gum electro-pop, but Bivins had the cool confidence of a rapper, even if he was stuck singing background vocals most of the time. As New Edition grew from boys to men, embracing a sophisticated sound on their 1988 album Heart Break, Bivins was quietly establishing his hip-hop credibility. On the 1989 single “N.E. Heartbreak,” Mike foreshadowed the BBD attitude with a more aggressive rap style: Strolled in the party, walked to the bar Playing incognito like I ain’t no star F-F-Fellas looking jealous And girlies looking horny Saw a foxy young lady—her man was corny In the song’s music video, Bivins rolls through the party with Heavy D as his wingman. Months later, Biv appeared in Eric B. & Rakim’s gritty black-and-white video for “In the Ghetto,” walking down a dark alley with the God MC and his crew. “The engine for Bell Biv DeVoe was Michael Bivins. He had a vision for the group,” said Hank Shocklee, leader of the Bomb Squad and the producer who would help shape Poison. “New Edition was all about wearing suits and dressing upscale. Michael brought it back to the street realm. They really brought out the hip-hop element by wearing Timberland boots and sagging pants. This is what gave the group their visual look.” At the 1989 Soul Train Awards, New Edition took the stage wearing grown-and-sexy tailored suits—except for Bivins, who was rocking a gold chain, green baseball hat, and baggy green leather pants. He had played his role for seven years, but now that Tresvant and Johnny Gill were going solo, the questions had started: What are you gonna do? Bell and DeVoe were in the same position. As the New Edition tour was ending in the summer of 1989, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis suggested they start a trio: Bell, Bivins, and DeVoe. Louil Silas Jr., the executive VP of black music at MCA Records, did not want Bell Biv DeVoe to make a rap record. “Louil wanted to have them back in suits like they were still in New Edition,” remembered producer Alton “Wokie” Stewart. Wokie and his partner Timmy Gatling were fresh off producing sophisticated R&B singer Christopher Williams when Silas asked them to record with BBD. The sessions produced a pair of safe, sensitive slow jams, “When Will I See You Smile Again?” and “I Do Need You,” that appear at the end of Poison. They feature zero rapping, a saxophone solo, and a seductive quiet storm monologue. “(Mainstream black music) doesn’t deal with the kids on the street anymore,” Shocklee said at a black radio conference in 1988. “It’s now being made for people who drive Mercedes, not people who ride the buses.” More and more radio stations were advertising their “no rap” programming policy, despite the fact that young people were buying a ton of rap records. Tone Loc’s 1989 hit “Wild Thing” became the top-selling single of the late ’80s, but one in six radio stations refused to play it because “the program directors dislike rap music or found the song sexually suggestive,” according to Billboard. Public Enemy was the biggest thing in rap, but their music got no love from quiet storm R&B radio. In 1988, frontman Chuck D wrote a cover story for Black Radio Exclusive, a radio trade magazine, in which he criticized the black radio industry for ignoring hip-hop. “Rap gives you the news on all phases of life, good and bad, pretty and ugly: drugs, sex, education, love, money, war, peace… you name it. R&B doesn’t do that anymore,” said Chuck. “R&B teaches you to shuffle your feet, be laid back, don’t be offensive, don’t make no waves because, look at us! We’re fitting in as well as we can!” “Hip-hop and R&B were in two separate spheres, two separate universes,” said Shocklee, who invited BBD to work with the Bomb Squad, which also included his brother Keith and programming wiz Eric “Vietnam” Sadler. At their first session in late 1989, Ricky, Mike, and Ron were all dressed up, looking like they came straight from a New Edition show. To break the ice, Keith Shocklee brought them up to the “hip-hop spots” in Harlem to shop for new clothes—jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts. When they came back, they were ready to make some rap music. Based on their strengths, Shocklee assigned them roles: Ricky would be the singer, while Mike and Ronnie would stick to rapping. “For me, it was about crafting a sound [where] the rappers and the singer co

Artist: Bell Biv Devoe, Album: Poison, Genre: Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "They’d been talking about Bell Biv DeVoe for four minutes straight, and Ralph Tresvant was getting pissed. All six members of R&B group New Edition were back together, sitting on BET’s black leather “Video Soul” sofa for an interview, and these three guys who usually sang backup for Ralph—Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe—wouldn’t shut up about their little hip-hop side project. Tresvant decided to interrupt and set it straight. “Mike keeps stressing BBD—it’s not a BBD moment,” he said. “It’s a New Edition reunion.” This was 1990, and the trio’s debut single “Poison” was on the verge of breaking into the Top 10. Their album, also called Poison, had just dropped, and it was on its way to selling 4 million copies. By the end of the year, Billboard would declare BBD the biggest new pop group of 1990. It was definitely Bell Biv DeVoe’s moment. Poison was a conceptually groundbreaking pop album that reinvented the relationship between R&B and hip-hop for the ’90s. BBD even had a neat little mission statement to explain their vision: “Our music is mentally hip-hop, smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it.” They stamped the slogan on their album cover and flashed it on screen during their videos. They talked about it in every interview, including that day on BET. The show’s host wasn’t sure what to make of it: “And like...what does that mean?” Ricky Bell spoke up: “You have to listen to the music to understand what we’re talking about.” You’ve heard “Poison” too many times, probably at a wedding or a school dance or some perennially bad episode of “Carpool Karaoke.” But Bell Biv DeVoe is more than just a song, and their debut album represents a critical leap in the evolution of R&B. A collaboration with revered Public Enemy production crew the Bomb Squad, Poison embodied the style and sound of hip-hop in a more convincing way than any R&B album before it. For better or worse, Bell Biv DeVoe set the stage for three decades of singers who want to talk, dress, and act like rappers. Back when he was only 14, Michael Bivins introduced himself to the world with a little rap on New Edition’s 1982 breakout hit “Candy Girl”: “She walks so fast, she looks so sweet/She makes my heart just skip a beat.” The group made smiling, bubble-gum electro-pop, but Bivins had the cool confidence of a rapper, even if he was stuck singing background vocals most of the time. As New Edition grew from boys to men, embracing a sophisticated sound on their 1988 album Heart Break, Bivins was quietly establishing his hip-hop credibility. On the 1989 single “N.E. Heartbreak,” Mike foreshadowed the BBD attitude with a more aggressive rap style: Strolled in the party, walked to the bar Playing incognito like I ain’t no star F-F-Fellas looking jealous And girlies looking horny Saw a foxy young lady—her man was corny In the song’s music video, Bivins rolls through the party with Heavy D as his wingman. Months later, Biv appeared in Eric B. & Rakim’s gritty black-and-white video for “In the Ghetto,” walking down a dark alley with the God MC and his crew. “The engine for Bell Biv DeVoe was Michael Bivins. He had a vision for the group,” said Hank Shocklee, leader of the Bomb Squad and the producer who would help shape Poison. “New Edition was all about wearing suits and dressing upscale. Michael brought it back to the street realm. They really brought out the hip-hop element by wearing Timberland boots and sagging pants. This is what gave the group their visual look.” At the 1989 Soul Train Awards, New Edition took the stage wearing grown-and-sexy tailored suits—except for Bivins, who was rocking a gold chain, green baseball hat, and baggy green leather pants. He had played his role for seven years, but now that Tresvant and Johnny Gill were going solo, the questions had started: What are you gonna do? Bell and DeVoe were in the same position. As the New Edition tour was ending in the summer of 1989, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis suggested they start a trio: Bell, Bivins, and DeVoe. Louil Silas Jr., the executive VP of black music at MCA Records, did not want Bell Biv DeVoe to make a rap record. “Louil wanted to have them back in suits like they were still in New Edition,” remembered producer Alton “Wokie” Stewart. Wokie and his partner Timmy Gatling were fresh off producing sophisticated R&B singer Christopher Williams when Silas asked them to record with BBD. The sessions produced a pair of safe, sensitive slow jams, “When Will I See You Smile Again?” and “I Do Need You,” that appear at the end of Poison. They feature zero rapping, a saxophone solo, and a seductive quiet storm monologue. “(Mainstream black music) doesn’t deal with the kids on the street anymore,” Shocklee said at a black radio conference in 1988. “It’s now being made for people who drive Mercedes, not people who ride the buses.” More and more radio stations were advertising their “no rap” programming policy, despite the fact that young people were buying a ton of rap records. Tone Loc’s 1989 hit “Wild Thing” became the top-selling single of the late ’80s, but one in six radio stations refused to play it because “the program directors dislike rap music or found the song sexually suggestive,” according to Billboard. Public Enemy was the biggest thing in rap, but their music got no love from quiet storm R&B radio. In 1988, frontman Chuck D wrote a cover story for Black Radio Exclusive, a radio trade magazine, in which he criticized the black radio industry for ignoring hip-hop. “Rap gives you the news on all phases of life, good and bad, pretty and ugly: drugs, sex, education, love, money, war, peace… you name it. R&B doesn’t do that anymore,” said Chuck. “R&B teaches you to shuffle your feet, be laid back, don’t be offensive, don’t make no waves because, look at us! We’re fitting in as well as we can!” “Hip-hop and R&B were in two separate spheres, two separate universes,” said Shocklee, who invited BBD to work with the Bomb Squad, which also included his brother Keith and programming wiz Eric “Vietnam” Sadler. At their first session in late 1989, Ricky, Mike, and Ron were all dressed up, looking like they came straight from a New Edition show. To break the ice, Keith Shocklee brought them up to the “hip-hop spots” in Harlem to shop for new clothes—jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts. When they came back, they were ready to make some rap music. Based on their strengths, Shocklee assigned them roles: Ricky would be the singer, while Mike and Ronnie would stick to rapping. “For me, it was about crafting a sound [where] the rappers and the singer co"

Noah and the Whale

Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down

Rock

Marc Hogan

Let's face it: I just don't watch 'em anymore. Movies, I mean. Six months go by between trips to the multiplex. If Netflix still turns a profit after recent financial events, it'll be because of two DVDs my wife and I have been meaning to send back (unseen) since, ohh, August. So in other words, those early Wes Anderson flicks are still pretty huge for me, even as a divided pop culture has helped big-budget schlock conquer actual film snobs. Anderson and many effective fey indie-poppers have real similarities: obsessive detail, pitch-perfect verbiage, outlandish characters, bookish humor, Harold and Maude-retro aesthetic, supersized cult followings. No surprise, then that Noah and the Whale take their name from director Noah Baumbach and his Anderson-produced The Squid and the Whale. Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, the debut LP by the London folk-pop quartet, bites its best sensitive-indie forebears and then pukes up all the most superficial chunks. You've got your boy-girl harmonies: Charlie Fink sounds like a UK Jens Lekman covering Pedro the Lion; Laura Marling is more Amelia Fletcher. You've got your quirky, mostly sprightly arrangements: acoustic guitar, ukulele, banjo, glockenspiel, handclaps, fingersnaps, strings, horns, eccentric percussion... the full Sufjan Stevens. You've also got your trite generalities, ridiculous philosophical musings, utterly banal narrator, and, most damningly, no recognizable sense. of. humor. at. all. This is twee pop you might order in a kit, ask Dad to put together, and then leave on a shelf for the dust to cover up (the sooner the better). I'd have to be getting re-educated Clockwork Orange-style or else a paid album reviewer even to listen past sunnily ba-ba-ba-ing opener "2 Atoms in a Molecule", which is to the concept of metaphor what the 1980s Tampa Bay Buccaneers were to the concept of pro football: "If love is just a game, then how come it's no fun?/ If love is just a game, how come I've never won?" But still we press on, only to hear the similarly twee-by-numbers "Jocasta" fill spaces with the word "oh" the way us inarticulate Gen-Yers tend to say "like" or "you know." Timpani-rumbling "Do What You Do" and piano-backed "Give a Little Love" offer practical advice, generally of the "Do what you do" or "All is fleeting/ Yeah, but all is good" sort. By the time the whistling starts over "Brimful of Asha" chords on highest-charting single "5 Years Time" ("Sun, sun, sun!" "Fun, fun, fun!" "Love, love, love!"), smoking "stupid little cigarettes" and drinking a few boxes of "stupid wine"-- oh, respite and nepenthe!-- sounds like the second-best activity to stupid little murder-suicide. "We're all just matter that will one day scatter," Fink points out on the slow-motion, F-bombing title track. It's all ample grist for Noah and the Whale II: Vote for Pedro.

Artist: Noah and the Whale, Album: Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 2.6 Album review: "Let's face it: I just don't watch 'em anymore. Movies, I mean. Six months go by between trips to the multiplex. If Netflix still turns a profit after recent financial events, it'll be because of two DVDs my wife and I have been meaning to send back (unseen) since, ohh, August. So in other words, those early Wes Anderson flicks are still pretty huge for me, even as a divided pop culture has helped big-budget schlock conquer actual film snobs. Anderson and many effective fey indie-poppers have real similarities: obsessive detail, pitch-perfect verbiage, outlandish characters, bookish humor, Harold and Maude-retro aesthetic, supersized cult followings. No surprise, then that Noah and the Whale take their name from director Noah Baumbach and his Anderson-produced The Squid and the Whale. Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, the debut LP by the London folk-pop quartet, bites its best sensitive-indie forebears and then pukes up all the most superficial chunks. You've got your boy-girl harmonies: Charlie Fink sounds like a UK Jens Lekman covering Pedro the Lion; Laura Marling is more Amelia Fletcher. You've got your quirky, mostly sprightly arrangements: acoustic guitar, ukulele, banjo, glockenspiel, handclaps, fingersnaps, strings, horns, eccentric percussion... the full Sufjan Stevens. You've also got your trite generalities, ridiculous philosophical musings, utterly banal narrator, and, most damningly, no recognizable sense. of. humor. at. all. This is twee pop you might order in a kit, ask Dad to put together, and then leave on a shelf for the dust to cover up (the sooner the better). I'd have to be getting re-educated Clockwork Orange-style or else a paid album reviewer even to listen past sunnily ba-ba-ba-ing opener "2 Atoms in a Molecule", which is to the concept of metaphor what the 1980s Tampa Bay Buccaneers were to the concept of pro football: "If love is just a game, then how come it's no fun?/ If love is just a game, how come I've never won?" But still we press on, only to hear the similarly twee-by-numbers "Jocasta" fill spaces with the word "oh" the way us inarticulate Gen-Yers tend to say "like" or "you know." Timpani-rumbling "Do What You Do" and piano-backed "Give a Little Love" offer practical advice, generally of the "Do what you do" or "All is fleeting/ Yeah, but all is good" sort. By the time the whistling starts over "Brimful of Asha" chords on highest-charting single "5 Years Time" ("Sun, sun, sun!" "Fun, fun, fun!" "Love, love, love!"), smoking "stupid little cigarettes" and drinking a few boxes of "stupid wine"-- oh, respite and nepenthe!-- sounds like the second-best activity to stupid little murder-suicide. "We're all just matter that will one day scatter," Fink points out on the slow-motion, F-bombing title track. It's all ample grist for Noah and the Whale II: Vote for Pedro."

Palta

Universel

Experimental

Philip Sherburne

With his debut album as DJ Sports, Milán Zaks was the first in Aarhus, Denmark’s Regelbau collective to make a splash beyond the crew’s homegrown network of DIY labels. But his brother Natal Zaks, best known as DJ Central, is right behind him. Together, the two producers have smudged Regelbau’s odd footprint while teasing out the intricacies of their 1990s house fixation, and on his own, Natal has been even more active than his brother. In addition to three EPs on Amsterdam’s influential Dekmantel label, he’s also been responsible for three of the best records to come from the collective to date, including the dreamy Basil EP for Help Recordings and the ambient breakbeats of “Drive,” with the Danish singer Erika Casier, on Regelbau itself—and that’s just a smattering of what he’s been up to. With a new record for Jonny Nash’s Melody as Truth label, this time under his Palta alias, Natal Zaks reveals yet another side to his sound. Until now, his music has tended to be rooted in ’90s dance dialects like West Coast deep house or flickering electro/freestyle hybrids, but here he moves away from the dancefloor entirely, putting pulse over rhythm and atmosphere over melody. Just five tracks and 31 minutes long, Universel is essentially a mini-LP (a favorite format of Melody as Truth’s founder), but it’s still immersive and enveloping despite its brevity. Universel’s opener is as far out as Zaks has ventured yet. With his synth tuned to an organ-like patch, a fistful of chords provides the watery backdrop to free-flowing drumming on deep, boomy toms; raindrop-like synth blips and the flicker of a ticking sprinkler lend to the misty air. There’s no discernible meter or tempo, just a wide arc of glistening pitter-patter scattered through the track. The freeform approach calls to mind the New York group Georgia’s “Ama Yes Uzume”; shorn of context, it would be easy to imagine it as something off a no-name new-age cassette thrifted from some remote town in the California redwoods. With “Tabt Optagelse” (“Lost Recording”), Zaks locks into a steady, mid-tempo groove, loosely weaving shakers and hand percussion into a rippling approximation of a barefoot drum circle. This is as driving as the record will get, yet it still feels ambient: The synths are drifting and diffuse, and there’s no real separation between foreground and background. The percussion stretches out across the stereo field in such a way that it feels like you’re standing in the middle of a forest clearing, ringed by crickets and birdsong and gentle rainfall. “På Gensyn” (“See You Again”) veers off piste once again, with brushed cymbals and bubbling arpeggios churning away while gravelly bass tones dive almost too low to register as actual notes. There’s no evidence of MIDI clock or any other kind of electronic timekeeping; in its accidental rumbling, it sounds like the collision of a weather system and a drum closet. “At Ville,” a gelatinous moiré of pulse and ping, is more rhythmic but similarly abstract; it sounds a little like a dubbed-out take on the ambient house Zaks records as Olo, with all the beats muted and the analog delay unit submerged in a bucket of soap bubbles. Only with the closing “Optagelse 16A” does Zaks return to the land of groove. It doesn’t take long for it to say pretty much everything it has to say, yet it keeps on rolling for nine and a half minutes, dubby and deeply tranquil; it’s less a song than an invitation to dissolve into Zaks’ fantasy world-building. He’s made other records that are more complex, more tuneful, and even more immediately satisfying, but when it comes to blissed-out, absent-minded reverie, Universel marks the sweet spot.

Artist: Palta, Album: Universel, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "With his debut album as DJ Sports, Milán Zaks was the first in Aarhus, Denmark’s Regelbau collective to make a splash beyond the crew’s homegrown network of DIY labels. But his brother Natal Zaks, best known as DJ Central, is right behind him. Together, the two producers have smudged Regelbau’s odd footprint while teasing out the intricacies of their 1990s house fixation, and on his own, Natal has been even more active than his brother. In addition to three EPs on Amsterdam’s influential Dekmantel label, he’s also been responsible for three of the best records to come from the collective to date, including the dreamy Basil EP for Help Recordings and the ambient breakbeats of “Drive,” with the Danish singer Erika Casier, on Regelbau itself—and that’s just a smattering of what he’s been up to. With a new record for Jonny Nash’s Melody as Truth label, this time under his Palta alias, Natal Zaks reveals yet another side to his sound. Until now, his music has tended to be rooted in ’90s dance dialects like West Coast deep house or flickering electro/freestyle hybrids, but here he moves away from the dancefloor entirely, putting pulse over rhythm and atmosphere over melody. Just five tracks and 31 minutes long, Universel is essentially a mini-LP (a favorite format of Melody as Truth’s founder), but it’s still immersive and enveloping despite its brevity. Universel’s opener is as far out as Zaks has ventured yet. With his synth tuned to an organ-like patch, a fistful of chords provides the watery backdrop to free-flowing drumming on deep, boomy toms; raindrop-like synth blips and the flicker of a ticking sprinkler lend to the misty air. There’s no discernible meter or tempo, just a wide arc of glistening pitter-patter scattered through the track. The freeform approach calls to mind the New York group Georgia’s “Ama Yes Uzume”; shorn of context, it would be easy to imagine it as something off a no-name new-age cassette thrifted from some remote town in the California redwoods. With “Tabt Optagelse” (“Lost Recording”), Zaks locks into a steady, mid-tempo groove, loosely weaving shakers and hand percussion into a rippling approximation of a barefoot drum circle. This is as driving as the record will get, yet it still feels ambient: The synths are drifting and diffuse, and there’s no real separation between foreground and background. The percussion stretches out across the stereo field in such a way that it feels like you’re standing in the middle of a forest clearing, ringed by crickets and birdsong and gentle rainfall. “På Gensyn” (“See You Again”) veers off piste once again, with brushed cymbals and bubbling arpeggios churning away while gravelly bass tones dive almost too low to register as actual notes. There’s no evidence of MIDI clock or any other kind of electronic timekeeping; in its accidental rumbling, it sounds like the collision of a weather system and a drum closet. “At Ville,” a gelatinous moiré of pulse and ping, is more rhythmic but similarly abstract; it sounds a little like a dubbed-out take on the ambient house Zaks records as Olo, with all the beats muted and the analog delay unit submerged in a bucket of soap bubbles. Only with the closing “Optagelse 16A” does Zaks return to the land of groove. It doesn’t take long for it to say pretty much everything it has to say, yet it keeps on rolling for nine and a half minutes, dubby and deeply tranquil; it’s less a song than an invitation to dissolve into Zaks’ fantasy world-building. He’s made other records that are more complex, more tuneful, and even more immediately satisfying, but when it comes to blissed-out, absent-minded reverie, Universel marks the sweet spot."

The Decemberists

The Crane Wife

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

For a few years now, the Decemberists' stagey, hyperliterate folk-rock has played well at indie labels Hush and Kill Rock Stars. The quintet has occupied a small community-theater space with gleefulness and confidence, but now it's accepted a scholarship to Capitol Records, which means a larger stage and a bigger audience. Can the band still project, or will its voices be lost in a cavernous auditorium, rejoined only by crickets and barely stifled coughs of boredom? Will nine-minute mariner epics play in Peoria? Given the band's graduation from minor to major leagues, The Crane Wife may prove to be the most crucial record the Decemberists will release in their lifetime. Fortunately, their fourth album further magnifies and refines their strengths. Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers-- but they've got a lot more tricks up their sleeves than previous albums had hinted. The Crane Wife employs an impressive variety of styles and sounds to tell Meloy's imaginative stories: There's the band's usual folk-rock, honed to an incisively sharp point, but they also deploy a smuggler's blues ("The Perfect Crime"), a creepy lullaby ("Shankill Butchers"), a Led Zep stomp ("When the War Came"), and, perhaps most divisively, a multipart prog track ("The Island") that stretches well past the 10-minute mark. No epic chantey this time, though. Meloy's inventive songwriting is the binding force, emphasizing character but remaining ever in thrall to stories, savoring the way they always play out to the same conclusions. Along with the homosexual undertones that have informed Decemberists songs from every album, he jettisons most of the archetypes that inspired Picaresque and cuts his characters loose in their own tales. They still do what they're fated to do-- the thieves thieve and run amok, the lovers love and die tragically, the soldiers soldier on and pine for peaceful homes-- but they seem to do it more out of free will than authorial design. Meloy focuses mainly on matters of war ("But O did you see all the dead of Manassas/ All the bellies and the bones and the bile?") and love ("No, I lingered here with the blankets barren/ And my own belly big with child"). On the duet "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)", Meloy plays the part of an errant, possibly dead Civil War soldier while singer-songwriter Laura Veirs cameos as his "sweetheart left behind." It's Cold Mountain writ poignantly small, its sweet, wordless chorus perfectly life-size. Lumbering menacingly, the martial march of "When the War Came" smells of gunpowder and singed hair, although it sounds like it's anchored in Neverland despite trying to comment on real-world events. Meloy's taletelling will always define the Decemberists, but The Crane Wife puts as much weight on the music as on the lyrics, and here the band gels into a tight, intuitive unit. The musicians give each song a particular spark and character, not just reinforcing the lyrics but actively telling a story. They create a breezy eddy of guitar strums and piano chords to enhance a windborne melody and an undercurrent of peril on "Summersong", and the tragedy of "O Valencia"-- any good song about star-crossed lovers must end in death-- is countered by the pep of the music, especially Chris Funk's ascending and descending guitar, which seems to take a particular glee in the inevitable denouement. The band isn't just able-bodied, but ambitious to boot. It makes the brainy prog of that monster second track, a distillation of the musical reach of their 2003 EP The Tain, sound like a natural extension of their base sound. They troll confidently from the rumbling overture and heated exposition of "Come and See" to the final rueful notes of "You'll Not Feel the Drowning". The song is chockablock with progisms-- organ runs, dampered cymbals, laser synths-- but manages to shake off the genre quote marks as the band jam with convincing menace. Their range allows them to be precociously diverse, but everything fits naturally. The Crane Wife sounds like their most shapely album to date, resembling a spirited story arc in its set-up, rising action, climax, and resolution. In this structure the three title segments, despite essentially bookending the tracklist, form the album's thematic centerpiece, the music and story meshing gracefully and tenderly to retell a Japanese fable. "The Crane Wife 3" opens the album with a ruminative flourish as John Moen's drums push the sensuous thrust of the music and Meloy's delivery of the lines "each feather it fell from skin" colors the resignation of "I will hang my head hang my head low." It opens the album en medias res, setting up the subsequent story-songs as the narrator's rueful reminiscences. "The Crane Wife 1 and 2" comprise a medley towards the album's end, starting slow and soft but gradually reaching crescendo in an unfurling finale, with Meloy breaking the word "heart" into multiple syllables over an unraveling drum beat. Restrained yet resonant, the song's (and album's) climax is a remarkable moment. As it segues into the rousing coda of "Sons & Daughters", the Decemberists sound like a band that knows exactly where they're going and won't be satisfied until you come along for the trip.

Artist: The Decemberists, Album: The Crane Wife, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.4 Album review: "For a few years now, the Decemberists' stagey, hyperliterate folk-rock has played well at indie labels Hush and Kill Rock Stars. The quintet has occupied a small community-theater space with gleefulness and confidence, but now it's accepted a scholarship to Capitol Records, which means a larger stage and a bigger audience. Can the band still project, or will its voices be lost in a cavernous auditorium, rejoined only by crickets and barely stifled coughs of boredom? Will nine-minute mariner epics play in Peoria? Given the band's graduation from minor to major leagues, The Crane Wife may prove to be the most crucial record the Decemberists will release in their lifetime. Fortunately, their fourth album further magnifies and refines their strengths. Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers-- but they've got a lot more tricks up their sleeves than previous albums had hinted. The Crane Wife employs an impressive variety of styles and sounds to tell Meloy's imaginative stories: There's the band's usual folk-rock, honed to an incisively sharp point, but they also deploy a smuggler's blues ("The Perfect Crime"), a creepy lullaby ("Shankill Butchers"), a Led Zep stomp ("When the War Came"), and, perhaps most divisively, a multipart prog track ("The Island") that stretches well past the 10-minute mark. No epic chantey this time, though. Meloy's inventive songwriting is the binding force, emphasizing character but remaining ever in thrall to stories, savoring the way they always play out to the same conclusions. Along with the homosexual undertones that have informed Decemberists songs from every album, he jettisons most of the archetypes that inspired Picaresque and cuts his characters loose in their own tales. They still do what they're fated to do-- the thieves thieve and run amok, the lovers love and die tragically, the soldiers soldier on and pine for peaceful homes-- but they seem to do it more out of free will than authorial design. Meloy focuses mainly on matters of war ("But O did you see all the dead of Manassas/ All the bellies and the bones and the bile?") and love ("No, I lingered here with the blankets barren/ And my own belly big with child"). On the duet "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)", Meloy plays the part of an errant, possibly dead Civil War soldier while singer-songwriter Laura Veirs cameos as his "sweetheart left behind." It's Cold Mountain writ poignantly small, its sweet, wordless chorus perfectly life-size. Lumbering menacingly, the martial march of "When the War Came" smells of gunpowder and singed hair, although it sounds like it's anchored in Neverland despite trying to comment on real-world events. Meloy's taletelling will always define the Decemberists, but The Crane Wife puts as much weight on the music as on the lyrics, and here the band gels into a tight, intuitive unit. The musicians give each song a particular spark and character, not just reinforcing the lyrics but actively telling a story. They create a breezy eddy of guitar strums and piano chords to enhance a windborne melody and an undercurrent of peril on "Summersong", and the tragedy of "O Valencia"-- any good song about star-crossed lovers must end in death-- is countered by the pep of the music, especially Chris Funk's ascending and descending guitar, which seems to take a particular glee in the inevitable denouement. The band isn't just able-bodied, but ambitious to boot. It makes the brainy prog of that monster second track, a distillation of the musical reach of their 2003 EP The Tain, sound like a natural extension of their base sound. They troll confidently from the rumbling overture and heated exposition of "Come and See" to the final rueful notes of "You'll Not Feel the Drowning". The song is chockablock with progisms-- organ runs, dampered cymbals, laser synths-- but manages to shake off the genre quote marks as the band jam with convincing menace. Their range allows them to be precociously diverse, but everything fits naturally. The Crane Wife sounds like their most shapely album to date, resembling a spirited story arc in its set-up, rising action, climax, and resolution. In this structure the three title segments, despite essentially bookending the tracklist, form the album's thematic centerpiece, the music and story meshing gracefully and tenderly to retell a Japanese fable. "The Crane Wife 3" opens the album with a ruminative flourish as John Moen's drums push the sensuous thrust of the music and Meloy's delivery of the lines "each feather it fell from skin" colors the resignation of "I will hang my head hang my head low." It opens the album en medias res, setting up the subsequent story-songs as the narrator's rueful reminiscences. "The Crane Wife 1 and 2" comprise a medley towards the album's end, starting slow and soft but gradually reaching crescendo in an unfurling finale, with Meloy breaking the word "heart" into multiple syllables over an unraveling drum beat. Restrained yet resonant, the song's (and album's) climax is a remarkable moment. As it segues into the rousing coda of "Sons & Daughters", the Decemberists sound like a band that knows exactly where they're going and won't be satisfied until you come along for the trip."

o F F Love

Probably Love

Electronic,Rock

Andrew Gaerig

A cinephile friend recently described a gross tactical error made by Oscar-fave The Artist: It approached silent films as a genre rather than a method for making them. Musicians make this mistake too. Consider vocal processing. The amount of time spent warping, burying, and looping the human voice has increased exponentially as artists have found it an effective tool for bridging the gaps between man and machine (James Blake), ecstasy and violence (the Weeknd), past and present (Ariel Pink). R&B's delirious emotional states have proven particularly fertile ground for artists like Jacques Greene, How to Dress Well, and Autre Ne Veut. Successful applications, all, and while actual output varies, these artists have enough in common that foggy vocals have become a zeitgeist of modern underground music. Enter o F F Love, a French transplant living in Berlin, who-- you guessed it-- has mistaken this choral thicket for an end-game. With its sounds of pop and R&B stylized to abstraction, it is impossible to imagine Probably Love, o F F Love's debut LP, dropping any time but the present. One year ago it would've seemed obscure; one year from now, it will sound archaic. o F F Love exists as a prism that refracts the most facile aspects of chillwave, witch-house, and PBR&B to deleterious effect and, in doing so, provides a glimpse of how damaging indie rock's obsession with memory and obfuscation can be. o F F Love's penchant for obscurity is not just musical. Little is known about the producer, who hides his face behind a scarf and ballcap. Mangled phonetics (e.g. "Makeupworz", "Missthemway (Again)") aid in building the mystery, I suppose. What little o F F Love media exists-- a spare website, a YouTube channel, a SoundCloud-- indicate an interest in teen-pop fanaticism, potentially fecund territory for a deconstructionist. This fascination proves to be entirely visual, however, as Probably Love establishes a template of queasy vocal refrains, dull kick drums, and aerosol-laced synths. The vocals are provided by o F F Love himself. Or they're sampled. Either way, human voices are slathered in Auto-Tune, reducing the opportunity for a big reveal or the establishment of a discernible vocal presence. I suspect Probably Love was recorded entirely using software, but ultimately that doesn't matter: What matters is that this album sounds like it's been filtered through an overheated laptop's cooling fan, so shrill is its palate. Probably Love smolders in this dissonant, digital pit, its every minor chord, snare hit, and intonation laid to waste by hot, harsh circuits. The tempos do not help. Probably Love sputters, distended phrasing and echoing snares left to linger: The shrieking, nauseous interjections of "Be Around U" and rudderless vowels of "Everyday, My Holy Day" are egregious offenders. The cumulative effect is advanced narcolepsy, someone blowing spit bubbles with soft synths and drum machines. When o F F Love does allow a quicker tempo to invade-- such as on the almost pretty masturbation fantasy "Beating for You"-- it predictably drags his vocals out of the muck as well. Perhaps you think I'm missing the point, that o F F Love's blur&B contains some hard-won beauty or relevant commentary. But Probably Love isn't beautiful; its ugliness and pessimism exhaust me. And what greater point could he be making? Probably Love is the frightful dead-end of so many recent trends, the point at which we lose sight of what question is being answered, what volley is being returned.

Artist: o F F Love, Album: Probably Love, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 2.9 Album review: "A cinephile friend recently described a gross tactical error made by Oscar-fave The Artist: It approached silent films as a genre rather than a method for making them. Musicians make this mistake too. Consider vocal processing. The amount of time spent warping, burying, and looping the human voice has increased exponentially as artists have found it an effective tool for bridging the gaps between man and machine (James Blake), ecstasy and violence (the Weeknd), past and present (Ariel Pink). R&B's delirious emotional states have proven particularly fertile ground for artists like Jacques Greene, How to Dress Well, and Autre Ne Veut. Successful applications, all, and while actual output varies, these artists have enough in common that foggy vocals have become a zeitgeist of modern underground music. Enter o F F Love, a French transplant living in Berlin, who-- you guessed it-- has mistaken this choral thicket for an end-game. With its sounds of pop and R&B stylized to abstraction, it is impossible to imagine Probably Love, o F F Love's debut LP, dropping any time but the present. One year ago it would've seemed obscure; one year from now, it will sound archaic. o F F Love exists as a prism that refracts the most facile aspects of chillwave, witch-house, and PBR&B to deleterious effect and, in doing so, provides a glimpse of how damaging indie rock's obsession with memory and obfuscation can be. o F F Love's penchant for obscurity is not just musical. Little is known about the producer, who hides his face behind a scarf and ballcap. Mangled phonetics (e.g. "Makeupworz", "Missthemway (Again)") aid in building the mystery, I suppose. What little o F F Love media exists-- a spare website, a YouTube channel, a SoundCloud-- indicate an interest in teen-pop fanaticism, potentially fecund territory for a deconstructionist. This fascination proves to be entirely visual, however, as Probably Love establishes a template of queasy vocal refrains, dull kick drums, and aerosol-laced synths. The vocals are provided by o F F Love himself. Or they're sampled. Either way, human voices are slathered in Auto-Tune, reducing the opportunity for a big reveal or the establishment of a discernible vocal presence. I suspect Probably Love was recorded entirely using software, but ultimately that doesn't matter: What matters is that this album sounds like it's been filtered through an overheated laptop's cooling fan, so shrill is its palate. Probably Love smolders in this dissonant, digital pit, its every minor chord, snare hit, and intonation laid to waste by hot, harsh circuits. The tempos do not help. Probably Love sputters, distended phrasing and echoing snares left to linger: The shrieking, nauseous interjections of "Be Around U" and rudderless vowels of "Everyday, My Holy Day" are egregious offenders. The cumulative effect is advanced narcolepsy, someone blowing spit bubbles with soft synths and drum machines. When o F F Love does allow a quicker tempo to invade-- such as on the almost pretty masturbation fantasy "Beating for You"-- it predictably drags his vocals out of the muck as well. Perhaps you think I'm missing the point, that o F F Love's blur&B contains some hard-won beauty or relevant commentary. But Probably Love isn't beautiful; its ugliness and pessimism exhaust me. And what greater point could he be making? Probably Love is the frightful dead-end of so many recent trends, the point at which we lose sight of what question is being answered, what volley is being returned."

The Lemonheads

The Lemonheads

Rock

Nitsuh Abebe

Evan Dando makes more sense as a story than as a singer. Start in the late 1980s, when Massachusetts was still the mightiest indie rock state in the union and Dando was just one member of bread-and-butter Boston punk act the Lemonheads-- and then fast-forward to the turn of the 90s, when he took control of the band and began to reshape it in his own image. Dando was a folkie and a country fan, and he'd fallen in love with the genial jangle of Australian indie; his punk roots receded and pop became the central focus. Result: 1992's It's a Shame About Ray, an album that sounds surprisingly good to this day; there's an easy-going slacker charm to it, a puppyish campfire feel that backs up every hook. (Plus: Juliana Hatfield on backing vocals.) Bonus result: The band scores minor hits with the title track and a cover of "Mrs. Robinson"-- and since the 90s alternative-rock gold rush is picking up steam, some folks at Atlantic Records start thinking. This Dando guy sure has an awfully square jaw, doesn't he? Long-haired, sensitive, deep voice, teenage girls think he's dreamy. Suddenly it's decided all around that Dando's going to be a massive alt-rock heartthrob who makes top-selling records, and the sooner the better. Unfortunately, Dando's smoking too much crack (literally-- dude smoked crack) to either object or deliver an album that actually backs those plans up. Result: Used CD bins full of 1993's Come On Feel the Lemonheads, a mix of half-decent songs and dippy cast-offs. (It's actually one of the better songs that includes these memorable lines: "If I was a booger, would you pick your nose?/ Where would you keep it? Would you eat it?") After that, Dando enters rehab, releases one more record (1996's Car Button Cloth), and then seems to spend the rest of the 90s wandering around with an acoustic guitar, playing his lovely old songs like some kind of high-profile busker. And the folks at Atlantic Records, not having learned their lesson, decide maybe they can turn Juliana Hatfield into a heartthrob instead. It's not as if Dando hasn't released records since then, but this one is a major step-- it's his first using the Lemonheads name in a decade. He's also rounded up a couple of former Descendents for his band (plus J Mascis for some guitar cameos, check), and he's promising a return to the old loud punk. And while this is most certainly not the old loud punk-- not for a second-- there's a half-kernal of truth in there somewhere: After all that time as the acoustic guitar-toting hippie, Dando's clearly having a blast playing rock again, solos and breakdowns and all.  And weirdly, The Lemonheads even sounds like an actual reunion, like a bunch of guys getting the old band back together in the garage. There's not the barest whiff off Dando accommodating new trends, or shocking us with what he's learned-- the band just jams loose and happy-- It's a Shame About Ray with more guitar and fewer worthwhile songs. Of course, the songs on this record aren't always much to write home about-- they may be more sophisticated than most in the band's past, but they also feel a lot plainer. (Also, country number "Baby's Home" is actively horrible.) This leaves just Dando's charm and enthusiasm to carry the weight, which, after a few listens, it starts to manage. On the tracks that really work-- "Rule of Three", "Poughkeepsie", or the part of "December" that just rewrites Ray's "Confetti"-- the band sounds wonderfully breezy. It's windows-down driving-in-summer stuff, and a nice nostalgic contrast to a lot of the more pinched and nervy sounds of today. (It's not a matter of time, either: Dando's songs felt nostalgic in 1992, too.) So far as the Dando story goes, it's a treat to see him recapture the vibe he very nearly got famous on-- all the old tricks, just with more riffs and bigger amps. Plus, he's still genial and dippy: Everyone else writes angry songs about the Bush administration; his feel-good take on it is called "Let's Just Laugh", because, umm, "We can never do anything about anything anyway." He writes the same candied uptempo hooks, and he still takes his voice up into a higher register when he wants to create the illusion of the last verse of a song being more exciting. Most listeners with a soft spot for those early-90s Lemonheads records will get a good spin out of The Lemonheads; it's always good to see old friends and have them come off this happy and unchanged, even if you don't really need them in your life anymore. The bigger question is whether anyone else will be sold on it. The 90s throwback vibe says no-- who's itching for strummy power-pop these days, and why not just pick up Ray instead?-- but Dando's damned unprepossessing charm just might drag a few fun-lovers across the line.

Artist: The Lemonheads, Album: The Lemonheads, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Evan Dando makes more sense as a story than as a singer. Start in the late 1980s, when Massachusetts was still the mightiest indie rock state in the union and Dando was just one member of bread-and-butter Boston punk act the Lemonheads-- and then fast-forward to the turn of the 90s, when he took control of the band and began to reshape it in his own image. Dando was a folkie and a country fan, and he'd fallen in love with the genial jangle of Australian indie; his punk roots receded and pop became the central focus. Result: 1992's It's a Shame About Ray, an album that sounds surprisingly good to this day; there's an easy-going slacker charm to it, a puppyish campfire feel that backs up every hook. (Plus: Juliana Hatfield on backing vocals.) Bonus result: The band scores minor hits with the title track and a cover of "Mrs. Robinson"-- and since the 90s alternative-rock gold rush is picking up steam, some folks at Atlantic Records start thinking. This Dando guy sure has an awfully square jaw, doesn't he? Long-haired, sensitive, deep voice, teenage girls think he's dreamy. Suddenly it's decided all around that Dando's going to be a massive alt-rock heartthrob who makes top-selling records, and the sooner the better. Unfortunately, Dando's smoking too much crack (literally-- dude smoked crack) to either object or deliver an album that actually backs those plans up. Result: Used CD bins full of 1993's Come On Feel the Lemonheads, a mix of half-decent songs and dippy cast-offs. (It's actually one of the better songs that includes these memorable lines: "If I was a booger, would you pick your nose?/ Where would you keep it? Would you eat it?") After that, Dando enters rehab, releases one more record (1996's Car Button Cloth), and then seems to spend the rest of the 90s wandering around with an acoustic guitar, playing his lovely old songs like some kind of high-profile busker. And the folks at Atlantic Records, not having learned their lesson, decide maybe they can turn Juliana Hatfield into a heartthrob instead. It's not as if Dando hasn't released records since then, but this one is a major step-- it's his first using the Lemonheads name in a decade. He's also rounded up a couple of former Descendents for his band (plus J Mascis for some guitar cameos, check), and he's promising a return to the old loud punk. And while this is most certainly not the old loud punk-- not for a second-- there's a half-kernal of truth in there somewhere: After all that time as the acoustic guitar-toting hippie, Dando's clearly having a blast playing rock again, solos and breakdowns and all.  And weirdly, The Lemonheads even sounds like an actual reunion, like a bunch of guys getting the old band back together in the garage. There's not the barest whiff off Dando accommodating new trends, or shocking us with what he's learned-- the band just jams loose and happy-- It's a Shame About Ray with more guitar and fewer worthwhile songs. Of course, the songs on this record aren't always much to write home about-- they may be more sophisticated than most in the band's past, but they also feel a lot plainer. (Also, country number "Baby's Home" is actively horrible.) This leaves just Dando's charm and enthusiasm to carry the weight, which, after a few listens, it starts to manage. On the tracks that really work-- "Rule of Three", "Poughkeepsie", or the part of "December" that just rewrites Ray's "Confetti"-- the band sounds wonderfully breezy. It's windows-down driving-in-summer stuff, and a nice nostalgic contrast to a lot of the more pinched and nervy sounds of today. (It's not a matter of time, either: Dando's songs felt nostalgic in 1992, too.) So far as the Dando story goes, it's a treat to see him recapture the vibe he very nearly got famous on-- all the old tricks, just with more riffs and bigger amps. Plus, he's still genial and dippy: Everyone else writes angry songs about the Bush administration; his feel-good take on it is called "Let's Just Laugh", because, umm, "We can never do anything about anything anyway." He writes the same candied uptempo hooks, and he still takes his voice up into a higher register when he wants to create the illusion of the last verse of a song being more exciting. Most listeners with a soft spot for those early-90s Lemonheads records will get a good spin out of The Lemonheads; it's always good to see old friends and have them come off this happy and unchanged, even if you don't really need them in your life anymore. The bigger question is whether anyone else will be sold on it. The 90s throwback vibe says no-- who's itching for strummy power-pop these days, and why not just pick up Ray instead?-- but Dando's damned unprepossessing charm just might drag a few fun-lovers across the line."

Telepathe

Chrome's On It EP

Electronic,Rock

Joe Colly

With only a handful of singles and EPs to their name and a tendency towards frequent genre overhauls, it hasn't been easy to discern exactly where Telepathe is coming from. On their early recordings, the Brooklyn-based group-- which has entertained a rotating cast of contributors around core bandmembers Busy Gangnes and Melissa Livaudais-- aimed for droney experimentalism (typified on 2006's Farewell Forest EP) before trying on a delicate strain of funereal pop for "I Can't Stand It", the band's gorgeous contribution to Rare Book Room's Living Bridge compilation. Recently though, Telepathe has drawn inspiration from Hot 97-style club bangers and propulsive techno, and the group's current incarnation represents a shift towards haunted, beat-heavy electro pop. Chrome's On It is an EP that features two new tracks (the title cut and "Bells") arranged by Telepathe and Don Caballero's Eric Emm. It serves both as an official introduction to the band's rejiggered formula and a primer for Dance Mother, their long awaited, David Sitek-produced LP set for release in early 2009. The record also offers several remixes of each song by notable knob twiddlers such as Diplo's Mad Decent crew and Frankmusik, and it feels like Telepathe is using the release to drive home the point that, as of now at least, the band is making club music, albeit of the leftfield sort. Both original songs are fascinating and, in many ways, sound like the work of a completely different band than the one that recorded "I Can't Stand It" less than a year ago. "Chrome's On It" rides elliptical drum patterns and distorted, squeaking synths before co-opting a Cash Money machine-gun beat about a minute in. "Bells", meanwhile, sounds simultaneously ghostly and danceable, its pallbearer vocals set apart from a reverse-looped rhythm that still manages to lurch forward. And despite the material's complicated production (dozens of tracks are stacked upon each other in each song), both cuts lend themselves well to reinterpretation, their individual bits easily unglued and re-affixed at different points for different outcomes. "Chrome's On It" is remixed here by Mad Decent, L.A. spaz-pop outfit the Mae Shi, and British vocalist/producer Frankmusik. And surprisingly it's the Mae Shi who make the most of the track. Their version fashions a new chorus by chopping Gangnes' and Livaudais' vocals into smaller parts and places them above a high-energy electro-house beat and catchy syncopated drums. For a guitar-based band that specializes in noisy outbursts, it's a very accomplished slice of melodic techno. The disc's "B-side" offers re-imaginings of "Bells" by electro-funk/post-punk duo Free Blood as well as Bobby Evans, the beatmaker for L.A. hip hoppers Brother Reade. The former's offering is superior, turning the song into a seedy, slow-building dirge with screeching guitars upping the spookiness factor. More than anything, Chrome's On It announces Telepathe's capacity for exciting, eccentric dance music and emphasizes their love of the beat. Judged as a complete entity, the EP only lags because of its self-imposed repetitiveness-- one's patience for consecutive variations on the same template doesn't endure repeated listens-- and a few lackluster remixes. The Mad Decent contribution (which, perhaps tellingly, doesn't have Diplo's name specifically attached to it) is the real disappointment; the track seems unable to decide between worldly ghettotech and subterranean dubstep and never really takes off as a result. I would argue that Chrome's On It would have been more potent (and listenable) had the band decided to trim the fat, keeping only the Mae Shi and Free Blood reinterpretations alongside its two original pieces. But despite this bit of bloat, the best tracks here are quite strong and hint that the anticipated Dance Mother might be as good as we hope it will be.

Artist: Telepathe, Album: Chrome's On It EP, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "With only a handful of singles and EPs to their name and a tendency towards frequent genre overhauls, it hasn't been easy to discern exactly where Telepathe is coming from. On their early recordings, the Brooklyn-based group-- which has entertained a rotating cast of contributors around core bandmembers Busy Gangnes and Melissa Livaudais-- aimed for droney experimentalism (typified on 2006's Farewell Forest EP) before trying on a delicate strain of funereal pop for "I Can't Stand It", the band's gorgeous contribution to Rare Book Room's Living Bridge compilation. Recently though, Telepathe has drawn inspiration from Hot 97-style club bangers and propulsive techno, and the group's current incarnation represents a shift towards haunted, beat-heavy electro pop. Chrome's On It is an EP that features two new tracks (the title cut and "Bells") arranged by Telepathe and Don Caballero's Eric Emm. It serves both as an official introduction to the band's rejiggered formula and a primer for Dance Mother, their long awaited, David Sitek-produced LP set for release in early 2009. The record also offers several remixes of each song by notable knob twiddlers such as Diplo's Mad Decent crew and Frankmusik, and it feels like Telepathe is using the release to drive home the point that, as of now at least, the band is making club music, albeit of the leftfield sort. Both original songs are fascinating and, in many ways, sound like the work of a completely different band than the one that recorded "I Can't Stand It" less than a year ago. "Chrome's On It" rides elliptical drum patterns and distorted, squeaking synths before co-opting a Cash Money machine-gun beat about a minute in. "Bells", meanwhile, sounds simultaneously ghostly and danceable, its pallbearer vocals set apart from a reverse-looped rhythm that still manages to lurch forward. And despite the material's complicated production (dozens of tracks are stacked upon each other in each song), both cuts lend themselves well to reinterpretation, their individual bits easily unglued and re-affixed at different points for different outcomes. "Chrome's On It" is remixed here by Mad Decent, L.A. spaz-pop outfit the Mae Shi, and British vocalist/producer Frankmusik. And surprisingly it's the Mae Shi who make the most of the track. Their version fashions a new chorus by chopping Gangnes' and Livaudais' vocals into smaller parts and places them above a high-energy electro-house beat and catchy syncopated drums. For a guitar-based band that specializes in noisy outbursts, it's a very accomplished slice of melodic techno. The disc's "B-side" offers re-imaginings of "Bells" by electro-funk/post-punk duo Free Blood as well as Bobby Evans, the beatmaker for L.A. hip hoppers Brother Reade. The former's offering is superior, turning the song into a seedy, slow-building dirge with screeching guitars upping the spookiness factor. More than anything, Chrome's On It announces Telepathe's capacity for exciting, eccentric dance music and emphasizes their love of the beat. Judged as a complete entity, the EP only lags because of its self-imposed repetitiveness-- one's patience for consecutive variations on the same template doesn't endure repeated listens-- and a few lackluster remixes. The Mad Decent contribution (which, perhaps tellingly, doesn't have Diplo's name specifically attached to it) is the real disappointment; the track seems unable to decide between worldly ghettotech and subterranean dubstep and never really takes off as a result. I would argue that Chrome's On It would have been more potent (and listenable) had the band decided to trim the fat, keeping only the Mae Shi and Free Blood reinterpretations alongside its two original pieces. But despite this bit of bloat, the best tracks here are quite strong and hint that the anticipated Dance Mother might be as good as we hope it will be."

Badly Drawn Boy

It's What I'm Thinking (Part One: Photographing Snowflakes)

Rock

Stuart Berman

"His time is now!" So screamed the headline of the December 16, 2000 edition of the NME. The words appeared atop a photo of a grinning Damon Gough, who wasn't just smiling over the Flavor Flav-style clock strapped to his neck: his universally acclaimed full-length debut, The Hour of Bewilderbeast had snagged the UK Mercury Prize for best album of the year. Upon arrival, Gough was a hyper-prolific songwriter who could pull charmingly ramshackle soft-rock lullabies out of his toque as easily as getting water from a tap, but little did we realize how literal the NME's definition of "now" would prove to be. Rather than rise to the echelons of the songwriters who so clearly inspired him-- John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Drake-- Gough spent the rest of the decade weathering the familiar fate of former next-big-things, watching his critical and commercial stock decline over a series of lukewarmly received releases, and switching labels album to album in an effort to reignite his career. Of course, Badly Drawn Boy is hardly the first artist to peak on his first album, but as Gough's latest release attests, so few are willing to use that lingering sense of disappointment and wasted potential as the conceptual framework for a trilogy of albums. Recorded during a reported surge of inspiration that carried over from last year's Is There Nothing We Could Do?-- a soundtrack companion to the UK telefilm The Fattest Man in Britain-- the hastily conceived and recorded *It's What I'm Thinking (*to be released over the next year in three parts, Robyn-style) sees Gough reunite with Bewilderbeast co-conspirator Andy Votel and considerably tone down the eager-to-please ostentation that marred 2004's One Plus One Is One and 2006's Born in the U.K. The songs on this first installment, Photographic Snowflakes, are ostensibly about making amends and starting over, but not so much in the context of a stagnant relationship as that of a career at the crossroads: "I'm ready to be in love again," Gough sings optimistically amid the Spectorized sleigh-bell strut of "Too Many Miracles", an address that seems directed less at an old flame than his old fans. At the outset at least, Photographing Snowflakes carries the promise of rekindled romance: opener "In Safe Hands" bears a spare, spectral quality largely unheard in Gough's work since Bewilderbeast, while the album's most captivating track, "The Order of Things", sees Gough lay out all his doubts and insecurities over a tick-tock drum-machine track, while triggered snare rolls, synth textures and radio frequencies gently amplify the feeling of hermetic, fever-dream psychosis. (At one point, he even casts blame for his creative inertia to the "birds in the sky" who "steal my melodies.") But for all its surface similarities to Gough's definitive debut-- "A Pure Accident" even directly references signature song "Magic in the Air"-- Photographing Snowflakes is ultimately more an echo of Bewilderbeast than an answer to its challenge, mostly because Gough used to be a far more playful and expressive vocalist, whereas his unaffected, plain-spoken performances here serve only to magnify the repetitious quality of his songwriting. Whether you feel Photographing Snowflakes is a true return to form will depend on your reception of its six-minute title track centerpiece, on which Gough drowsily monotones his way through 10 increasingly whimsical verses with no chorus in sight; you'll either find its slow-motion, pedal-steeled sway charmingly wistful or tediously self-satisfied. Then again, when your time is no longer now, what's the point of watching the clock?

Artist: Badly Drawn Boy, Album: It's What I'm Thinking (Part One: Photographing Snowflakes), Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.5 Album review: ""His time is now!" So screamed the headline of the December 16, 2000 edition of the NME. The words appeared atop a photo of a grinning Damon Gough, who wasn't just smiling over the Flavor Flav-style clock strapped to his neck: his universally acclaimed full-length debut, The Hour of Bewilderbeast had snagged the UK Mercury Prize for best album of the year. Upon arrival, Gough was a hyper-prolific songwriter who could pull charmingly ramshackle soft-rock lullabies out of his toque as easily as getting water from a tap, but little did we realize how literal the NME's definition of "now" would prove to be. Rather than rise to the echelons of the songwriters who so clearly inspired him-- John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Drake-- Gough spent the rest of the decade weathering the familiar fate of former next-big-things, watching his critical and commercial stock decline over a series of lukewarmly received releases, and switching labels album to album in an effort to reignite his career. Of course, Badly Drawn Boy is hardly the first artist to peak on his first album, but as Gough's latest release attests, so few are willing to use that lingering sense of disappointment and wasted potential as the conceptual framework for a trilogy of albums. Recorded during a reported surge of inspiration that carried over from last year's Is There Nothing We Could Do?-- a soundtrack companion to the UK telefilm The Fattest Man in Britain-- the hastily conceived and recorded *It's What I'm Thinking (*to be released over the next year in three parts, Robyn-style) sees Gough reunite with Bewilderbeast co-conspirator Andy Votel and considerably tone down the eager-to-please ostentation that marred 2004's One Plus One Is One and 2006's Born in the U.K. The songs on this first installment, Photographic Snowflakes, are ostensibly about making amends and starting over, but not so much in the context of a stagnant relationship as that of a career at the crossroads: "I'm ready to be in love again," Gough sings optimistically amid the Spectorized sleigh-bell strut of "Too Many Miracles", an address that seems directed less at an old flame than his old fans. At the outset at least, Photographing Snowflakes carries the promise of rekindled romance: opener "In Safe Hands" bears a spare, spectral quality largely unheard in Gough's work since Bewilderbeast, while the album's most captivating track, "The Order of Things", sees Gough lay out all his doubts and insecurities over a tick-tock drum-machine track, while triggered snare rolls, synth textures and radio frequencies gently amplify the feeling of hermetic, fever-dream psychosis. (At one point, he even casts blame for his creative inertia to the "birds in the sky" who "steal my melodies.") But for all its surface similarities to Gough's definitive debut-- "A Pure Accident" even directly references signature song "Magic in the Air"-- Photographing Snowflakes is ultimately more an echo of Bewilderbeast than an answer to its challenge, mostly because Gough used to be a far more playful and expressive vocalist, whereas his unaffected, plain-spoken performances here serve only to magnify the repetitious quality of his songwriting. Whether you feel Photographing Snowflakes is a true return to form will depend on your reception of its six-minute title track centerpiece, on which Gough drowsily monotones his way through 10 increasingly whimsical verses with no chorus in sight; you'll either find its slow-motion, pedal-steeled sway charmingly wistful or tediously self-satisfied. Then again, when your time is no longer now, what's the point of watching the clock?"

Reatards

Teenage Hate

Rock

David Bevan

"Guitar, screaming, and pounding." That's how Jimmy "Jay" Lindsey credited himself in the liner notes of his first proper LP, 1998's Teenage Hate. He also billed himself as Jay Reatard, the pseudonym he would use on a staggering number of recordings until his death early last year. According to a transcript included with this deluxe reissue of Teenage Hate, Reatard was a name taken on one night not long before the material was recorded, during a live set comprised of Bay City Rollers covers. "After our first song some guy with a big green mohawk yelled out 'you guys are fucking reatarded [sic],'" he said. "So at the next garage party we played, I announced us as the Reatards kinda as a joke but the name fit so we kept it." The name Reatard was both a self-deprecating goof and an homage to Ramones and Oblivians, the latter being the Memphis-born garage-punk crew that served as his friends and mentors. Eric Oblivian's (née Friedl) Goner Records shop acted as Reatard's library, just as the Goner imprint is responsible for Reatard's first releases, including this one. Greg Oblivian (née Cartwright, currently of Reigning Sound) sat in on drums for Fuck Elvis, an added bonus collection of mostly solo four-track recordings originally released on cassette. As a first step, both Teenage Hate and Fuck Elvis Here's the Reatards are astonishing. All the energy one could hear in Reatard's better-known work is here in it's rawest, most volatile form. It's the same electricity he was able to funnel into his synth-punk adventures in Lost Sounds and later harness for 2006's Blood Visions, not to mention his more polished work for Matador just before his death early last year. "Guitar, screaming, and pounding" was an accurate credit. We know that Reatard was prolific. But it's made especially clear here how whole-heartedly and violently he hurled himself into music from the beginning. Teenage Hate in particular has a hot, fantastically gritty quality to it. It's a rough and rude sprint through Southern-inflected, punk-driven garage rock. Reatards were a three-piece that included Steve Albundy Reatard ("Guitar, Occasional Yells") and Elvis Wong Reatard ("The Skins, Hollering, and Pickin'"), but it's quickly clear that Jay's presence is what sets them apart. You can hear it in the three-chord thwack of ultra-bleak opener "I'm So Gone" or the cyclonic sneer of "I Love Living", and it only intensifies from there. "It Ain't Me" is a two-minute runaway train. The chorus of "Quite All Right" lands like a warhead, as does the choir of howled "motherfuckers" on "Down in Flames". While the lyrical themes are standard punk fare (he's bored, horny, angry, and lonely; he hates Memphis as much as he loves it), the screaming, red-faced delivery makes them feel personal and true. On "When I Get Mad", we get a look at the Jay Reatard who had a reputation for throwing punches. "When I get mad, I don't think/ Said, I don't give a shit about anything." Reatard talked a bit in interviews about growing up in Memphis, where Elvis' legacy was inescapable. And though he takes on a few of Elvis' vocal tics here, it's a young Kurt Cobain who comes through most, particularly in the bloody coughing of "Memphis Blues". He screams so hopelessly that you'd swear he'd conk himself out from exhaustion. Through 18 tracks just as unfiltered, he never quits. And though its recording quality renders it flat in comparison, Fuck Elvis is a welcome addition as far as bonus reissue material goes. Many of its songs can be found on Teenage Hate with added muscle and clarity, so it plays more like a cache of early demos. The aforementioned "Memphis Blues" makes a blurry appearance, Reatard introducing it with a very appropriate, "Are you ready to rock'n'roll? Well, here I go..." There's a lot to dig into in the bonus material, much of it still coming into focus but all of it stamped Reatard's own. Alongside covers of Fear and Buddy Holly, Reatard offers herculean takes on Lil Bunnies' "Carrot Belly Bunny Blues" and early Beatles' B-Side "I'm Down", a live recording tacked on to close the set. It's insanely sloppy and dissonant, Reatard's screams barely audible over cymbal crash and sludgy guitar, all the way to the finish. "We're the Reatards," he says. "Thanks." People shout for encores.

Artist: Reatards, Album: Teenage Hate, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: ""Guitar, screaming, and pounding." That's how Jimmy "Jay" Lindsey credited himself in the liner notes of his first proper LP, 1998's Teenage Hate. He also billed himself as Jay Reatard, the pseudonym he would use on a staggering number of recordings until his death early last year. According to a transcript included with this deluxe reissue of Teenage Hate, Reatard was a name taken on one night not long before the material was recorded, during a live set comprised of Bay City Rollers covers. "After our first song some guy with a big green mohawk yelled out 'you guys are fucking reatarded [sic],'" he said. "So at the next garage party we played, I announced us as the Reatards kinda as a joke but the name fit so we kept it." The name Reatard was both a self-deprecating goof and an homage to Ramones and Oblivians, the latter being the Memphis-born garage-punk crew that served as his friends and mentors. Eric Oblivian's (née Friedl) Goner Records shop acted as Reatard's library, just as the Goner imprint is responsible for Reatard's first releases, including this one. Greg Oblivian (née Cartwright, currently of Reigning Sound) sat in on drums for Fuck Elvis, an added bonus collection of mostly solo four-track recordings originally released on cassette. As a first step, both Teenage Hate and Fuck Elvis Here's the Reatards are astonishing. All the energy one could hear in Reatard's better-known work is here in it's rawest, most volatile form. It's the same electricity he was able to funnel into his synth-punk adventures in Lost Sounds and later harness for 2006's Blood Visions, not to mention his more polished work for Matador just before his death early last year. "Guitar, screaming, and pounding" was an accurate credit. We know that Reatard was prolific. But it's made especially clear here how whole-heartedly and violently he hurled himself into music from the beginning. Teenage Hate in particular has a hot, fantastically gritty quality to it. It's a rough and rude sprint through Southern-inflected, punk-driven garage rock. Reatards were a three-piece that included Steve Albundy Reatard ("Guitar, Occasional Yells") and Elvis Wong Reatard ("The Skins, Hollering, and Pickin'"), but it's quickly clear that Jay's presence is what sets them apart. You can hear it in the three-chord thwack of ultra-bleak opener "I'm So Gone" or the cyclonic sneer of "I Love Living", and it only intensifies from there. "It Ain't Me" is a two-minute runaway train. The chorus of "Quite All Right" lands like a warhead, as does the choir of howled "motherfuckers" on "Down in Flames". While the lyrical themes are standard punk fare (he's bored, horny, angry, and lonely; he hates Memphis as much as he loves it), the screaming, red-faced delivery makes them feel personal and true. On "When I Get Mad", we get a look at the Jay Reatard who had a reputation for throwing punches. "When I get mad, I don't think/ Said, I don't give a shit about anything." Reatard talked a bit in interviews about growing up in Memphis, where Elvis' legacy was inescapable. And though he takes on a few of Elvis' vocal tics here, it's a young Kurt Cobain who comes through most, particularly in the bloody coughing of "Memphis Blues". He screams so hopelessly that you'd swear he'd conk himself out from exhaustion. Through 18 tracks just as unfiltered, he never quits. And though its recording quality renders it flat in comparison, Fuck Elvis is a welcome addition as far as bonus reissue material goes. Many of its songs can be found on Teenage Hate with added muscle and clarity, so it plays more like a cache of early demos. The aforementioned "Memphis Blues" makes a blurry appearance, Reatard introducing it with a very appropriate, "Are you ready to rock'n'roll? Well, here I go..." There's a lot to dig into in the bonus material, much of it still coming into focus but all of it stamped Reatard's own. Alongside covers of Fear and Buddy Holly, Reatard offers herculean takes on Lil Bunnies' "Carrot Belly Bunny Blues" and early Beatles' B-Side "I'm Down", a live recording tacked on to close the set. It's insanely sloppy and dissonant, Reatard's screams barely audible over cymbal crash and sludgy guitar, all the way to the finish. "We're the Reatards," he says. "Thanks." People shout for encores."

Mick Jenkins

Wave[s]

Rap

David Drake

Mick Jenkins' sophomore tape The Water(s) stood apart in a competitive Chicago scene. With a resonant baritone that telegraphed masculine authority, Jenkins jumped from not mentioned at all to one of his city's most promising rookie candidates. He combined an ear for poetic language with a principled consciousness and a no-bullshit persona, a formula which quickly snowballed into a substantial underground fanbase. Since that time, in numerous profiles and interviews, Jenkins has wrestled with what this sudden success means. His art has been in many ways about seeking truth in a system designed to obscure it, as an uncompromising, conscientious moralist unafraid to cut through the noise. It's a relatable pose, but one that doesn't necessarily lead artist and listener to the same destination. Wave[s] is a new direction, and it may upset expectations, pushing him away from his more strident instincts. Even if it isn't his best, it's probably for the best. What that means in practical terms is a shift from the somber blues and greens of The Water(s) into a more colorful earth-toned exploration of musical possibility. Although his poetic approach and political conscience are still in play, it feels less like a focal point and more a part of the music's texture. With Haitian-Canadian producer Kaytranada and Chicago-based musical collective THEMpeople providing the backdrop, Wave[s] is influenced primarily by a jazzy neo soul—to be reductive about it—sound. In a time when artists have been celebrated for chasing fashionable worlds of influence through a bottomless hard drive, Jenkins has opted to stick to a core set of inputs, a closed circuit of musical inspiration, and is finding himself within that limitation. His more orthodox listening tastes are refreshing, a reminder of how constraints can provide a framework for freedom. So when Jenkins opens up his world, it's for this tradition, one that gives him the grammar to relieve a pressure that had previously driven his work. Thus "40 Below" lets him tell a story of lost love that doesn't carry the burden of representing some sort of larger structural critique, or the obligation to wake up the world. Jenkins had painted himself in a bit of a corner, and Wave[s] is a sly sidestep, an exploration of possibility from an artist whose overriding purpose had previously eliminated that opportunity. Jenkins could risk didacticism, but it was his willingness to do so that initially cultivated such a loyal following; Wave[s] gives him an opportunity to shake those who may have valued his work only inasmuch as it provided that function. As a whole, Wave[s] isn't as strong as The Water(s), and may ultimately be seen as a bit minor in Jenkins' catalog. His biggest strength as an artist is his pen: as a writer, Jenkins has a gift for poetic turns of phrase and clever wordplay, delivered with potent urgency. The level of applied skill in his writing—the work that suggests he could one day rival some of rap's biggest names in a larger arena—hasn't quite been applied to his songwriting. His choruses are things like: "Get Up, Get Out, Get Down!", bordering on blank cliches in need of workshopping. Even "Your Love"—the album's far-away highlight, with the potential to cross over—interpolates Lupe Fiasco for its ingratiating hook. Meanwhile, THEMpeople provide a vigorous experimental backdrop, but relative to the style's jazzy vanguard—think the Los Angeles world of Low End Theory parties, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, and To Pimp a Butterfly—the group is still establishing its voice, working toward a unique approach. This is not to suggest that the album is a failure, or that Jenkins' new direction is a bad one; if anything, it points to an artistic flexibility that will pay dividends down the road. The room to grow is there, should he decide to pursue the colors Wave[s] has opened up for him. The artistic success of "Your Love" suggests he has the right instincts, even if the execution is, for now, more of an exploration than a destination.

Artist: Mick Jenkins, Album: Wave[s], Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: "Mick Jenkins' sophomore tape The Water(s) stood apart in a competitive Chicago scene. With a resonant baritone that telegraphed masculine authority, Jenkins jumped from not mentioned at all to one of his city's most promising rookie candidates. He combined an ear for poetic language with a principled consciousness and a no-bullshit persona, a formula which quickly snowballed into a substantial underground fanbase. Since that time, in numerous profiles and interviews, Jenkins has wrestled with what this sudden success means. His art has been in many ways about seeking truth in a system designed to obscure it, as an uncompromising, conscientious moralist unafraid to cut through the noise. It's a relatable pose, but one that doesn't necessarily lead artist and listener to the same destination. Wave[s] is a new direction, and it may upset expectations, pushing him away from his more strident instincts. Even if it isn't his best, it's probably for the best. What that means in practical terms is a shift from the somber blues and greens of The Water(s) into a more colorful earth-toned exploration of musical possibility. Although his poetic approach and political conscience are still in play, it feels less like a focal point and more a part of the music's texture. With Haitian-Canadian producer Kaytranada and Chicago-based musical collective THEMpeople providing the backdrop, Wave[s] is influenced primarily by a jazzy neo soul—to be reductive about it—sound. In a time when artists have been celebrated for chasing fashionable worlds of influence through a bottomless hard drive, Jenkins has opted to stick to a core set of inputs, a closed circuit of musical inspiration, and is finding himself within that limitation. His more orthodox listening tastes are refreshing, a reminder of how constraints can provide a framework for freedom. So when Jenkins opens up his world, it's for this tradition, one that gives him the grammar to relieve a pressure that had previously driven his work. Thus "40 Below" lets him tell a story of lost love that doesn't carry the burden of representing some sort of larger structural critique, or the obligation to wake up the world. Jenkins had painted himself in a bit of a corner, and Wave[s] is a sly sidestep, an exploration of possibility from an artist whose overriding purpose had previously eliminated that opportunity. Jenkins could risk didacticism, but it was his willingness to do so that initially cultivated such a loyal following; Wave[s] gives him an opportunity to shake those who may have valued his work only inasmuch as it provided that function. As a whole, Wave[s] isn't as strong as The Water(s), and may ultimately be seen as a bit minor in Jenkins' catalog. His biggest strength as an artist is his pen: as a writer, Jenkins has a gift for poetic turns of phrase and clever wordplay, delivered with potent urgency. The level of applied skill in his writing—the work that suggests he could one day rival some of rap's biggest names in a larger arena—hasn't quite been applied to his songwriting. His choruses are things like: "Get Up, Get Out, Get Down!", bordering on blank cliches in need of workshopping. Even "Your Love"—the album's far-away highlight, with the potential to cross over—interpolates Lupe Fiasco for its ingratiating hook. Meanwhile, THEMpeople provide a vigorous experimental backdrop, but relative to the style's jazzy vanguard—think the Los Angeles world of Low End Theory parties, Thundercat, Flying Lotus, and To Pimp a Butterfly—the group is still establishing its voice, working toward a unique approach. This is not to suggest that the album is a failure, or that Jenkins' new direction is a bad one; if anything, it points to an artistic flexibility that will pay dividends down the road. The room to grow is there, should he decide to pursue the colors Wave[s] has opened up for him. The artistic success of "Your Love" suggests he has the right instincts, even if the execution is, for now, more of an exploration than a destination."

Smog

'Neath the Puke Tree EP

Rock

Matt LeMay

When I was younger, I always displayed a penchant for botany. So much, in fact, that I had the entire plant world broken up into three botanical classifications. There were the "things that go ouch," such as stinging nettles and briar, "things that make itch," like poison oak and poison ivy, and "things that smell bad," like the cat pee-smelling ailanthus, and the vomit-smelling, fruit-bearing female ginkgo tree. Granted, I was working within a very limited geographical scale. The world outside the Northeastern United States undoubtedly contains many, many more prickly, poisonous, and smelly plants than I've encountered. For me, a puke tree will forever be a female ginkgo, but I get the distinct feeling that God's green earth is home to many, many more plants that smell like vomit. When I first saw Smog's new 'Neath the Puke Tree EP, I immediately assumed that the EP's title alluded to the ginkgo. But then I looked on the back of the jewel case, and noticed that the EP was recorded in Melbourne, Australia, a place that is no doubt home to more puke-scented flora than even New York City. But that's not the only level on which I'm failing to connect to this record. For the first time in a while, I'm starting to get the feeling that Bill Callahan's instincts aren't working to his advantage-- a scary and depressing thought, considering the amazingly consistent body of work he's produced in the past decade. 'Neath the Puke Tree has a decidedly more country feel to it than Callahan's past work. And no, I don't mean "alt-country," with its twanging Telecasters and torn denim jackets. There's a serious, old-school country influence at work here, especially on the EP's opener, "I Was a Stranger". Utilizing a simple but effective motif of strummed acoustic guitar, relatively straightforward drumming, and flourishes of slide guitar, the track effectively paints a dusty picture of a sun-drenched desert that would be very much at home in modern-day western music. Breaking slightly away from this formula, the record's second track is its standout. Barren and desolate, "Your Sweet Entrance" is classic Smog, full of vague romantic longing as expressed through Bill Callahan's claustrophobic vocals. It also contains one of the most masterfully executed weirdo chord changes I've heard in ages. Unfortunately, at about this point, Callahan seems to have forgotten the first rule of recording sparse, guitar-driven ballads: tune the fucking thing! "A Jar of Sand" could be a great track for all I know, but I just can't get past the fact that his guitar is so painfully out of tune. I'm not sure what would be worse: if the guitar were out of tune due to general laziness, or due to a shoddy attempt at adding an "experimental" feel to the track. Either way, it's not any fun, and makes what would otherwise be a perfectly listenable couple of tracks (this and the fourth track, "Orion Obscured by Stars", are both plagued by this problem) unbearable. Yet, even with these few thoroughly frustrating tracks, 'Neath the Puke Tree manages to yank itself out of the abyss in time for its closer, the swampy "Coacheecayoo". After having this EP on repeat play for a few hours, I'm feeling three conflicting emotions. First, I'm frustrated that Bill Callahan didn't bother tuning the damn guitar (we've established that, right?). Secondly, I'm grateful that this isn't a full-length, because even though it's at times really likable, none of the tracks have the same punch as the better of Smog's album tracks. Finally, I'm hoping that my two major gripes with this EP won't carry over to the next full-length. I mean, shit, maybe it's just really hard to find a tuning fork in Melbourne.

Artist: Smog, Album: 'Neath the Puke Tree EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "When I was younger, I always displayed a penchant for botany. So much, in fact, that I had the entire plant world broken up into three botanical classifications. There were the "things that go ouch," such as stinging nettles and briar, "things that make itch," like poison oak and poison ivy, and "things that smell bad," like the cat pee-smelling ailanthus, and the vomit-smelling, fruit-bearing female ginkgo tree. Granted, I was working within a very limited geographical scale. The world outside the Northeastern United States undoubtedly contains many, many more prickly, poisonous, and smelly plants than I've encountered. For me, a puke tree will forever be a female ginkgo, but I get the distinct feeling that God's green earth is home to many, many more plants that smell like vomit. When I first saw Smog's new 'Neath the Puke Tree EP, I immediately assumed that the EP's title alluded to the ginkgo. But then I looked on the back of the jewel case, and noticed that the EP was recorded in Melbourne, Australia, a place that is no doubt home to more puke-scented flora than even New York City. But that's not the only level on which I'm failing to connect to this record. For the first time in a while, I'm starting to get the feeling that Bill Callahan's instincts aren't working to his advantage-- a scary and depressing thought, considering the amazingly consistent body of work he's produced in the past decade. 'Neath the Puke Tree has a decidedly more country feel to it than Callahan's past work. And no, I don't mean "alt-country," with its twanging Telecasters and torn denim jackets. There's a serious, old-school country influence at work here, especially on the EP's opener, "I Was a Stranger". Utilizing a simple but effective motif of strummed acoustic guitar, relatively straightforward drumming, and flourishes of slide guitar, the track effectively paints a dusty picture of a sun-drenched desert that would be very much at home in modern-day western music. Breaking slightly away from this formula, the record's second track is its standout. Barren and desolate, "Your Sweet Entrance" is classic Smog, full of vague romantic longing as expressed through Bill Callahan's claustrophobic vocals. It also contains one of the most masterfully executed weirdo chord changes I've heard in ages. Unfortunately, at about this point, Callahan seems to have forgotten the first rule of recording sparse, guitar-driven ballads: tune the fucking thing! "A Jar of Sand" could be a great track for all I know, but I just can't get past the fact that his guitar is so painfully out of tune. I'm not sure what would be worse: if the guitar were out of tune due to general laziness, or due to a shoddy attempt at adding an "experimental" feel to the track. Either way, it's not any fun, and makes what would otherwise be a perfectly listenable couple of tracks (this and the fourth track, "Orion Obscured by Stars", are both plagued by this problem) unbearable. Yet, even with these few thoroughly frustrating tracks, 'Neath the Puke Tree manages to yank itself out of the abyss in time for its closer, the swampy "Coacheecayoo". After having this EP on repeat play for a few hours, I'm feeling three conflicting emotions. First, I'm frustrated that Bill Callahan didn't bother tuning the damn guitar (we've established that, right?). Secondly, I'm grateful that this isn't a full-length, because even though it's at times really likable, none of the tracks have the same punch as the better of Smog's album tracks. Finally, I'm hoping that my two major gripes with this EP won't carry over to the next full-length. I mean, shit, maybe it's just really hard to find a tuning fork in Melbourne."

Blondie

Greatest Hits: Sound and Vision

Rock

Jess Harvell

Blondie's conceptual coup wasn't pairing punk's tautness with bubblegum hooks. It was being good at it, in the actual putting-records-in-the-charts sense. Arguably the Ramones got there first and certainly had a more lasting impact on whatever we think of as pop-punk (or punk-pop depending on your feelings on modifiers). But Blondie were also never going to inspire someone like avant composer Rhys Chatham to start a punk guitar trio as an adjunct to his explorations in post-academic minimalism. The Ramones were as much a conceptual art project with pudding bowl haircuts as a pop band. It certainly didn't hurt that Blondie had one of the most appealing frontwomen of the late 20th-century-- who looks positive H-O-T on the cover of Sound and Vision, the latest repackaging of their greatest hits, despite (because of?) wearing just a pillow case and red electrical tape. Whereas the Ramones had four praying mantis in girl's Jordache. And while the Ramones were positively vicious in their devotion to pre-hippie rock (recording with Phil Spector, for one) and transforming the starchy blandness of '70s suburbia into a positive aesthetic, Blondie embraced what we now know as The Future-- disco, hip-hop, reggae-- while helping to invent new wave. (Your feelings on that one may vary). It's hard to imagine a time now when that seemed heretical, probably because it's hard to remember a time now when Blondie was a punk band with a capital P, trading dirty looks with Legs McNeil and waiting backstage with Richard Hell. All of these songs, most especially the big hits, have become part of the shared classic rock heritage of anyone born after 1970. They belong to the Two-Fer Tuesdays and budget priced '80s comps now. And it's hard to imagine the members of Blondie-- don't forget, "Blondie is a Band"-- seeing this as anything less than a total good. Through sheer willpower they achieved their goal: to become one of the great pop bands of all time. So why buy another reiteration of songs everyone knows? Well, if you don't already own a Blondie best-of for one thing. I've had a copy of The Best of Blondie since I was about 8, but those Fisher Price record player needles were hell on vinyl, so I'm happy to have *Sound and Vision in lieu of looting through Goodwill bins. (*The Best of Blondie is still available on CD, of course, and that's an A+++/five star/10.0 record. So take that for what it's worth.) Everyone knows the songs, but I'll give special shouts to: "Hanging on the Telephone" (gender flip-flop new wave frustration); "One Way or Another" (the Pretenders in situ, with added sass); "Heart of Glass" (Abba for the legwarmers generation); "Atomic" (the single having the best record sleeve ever); "Dreaming" (buzz-saw bubblegum with caveman drums); "The Tide Is High" (proto-Gwen Stefani cod-reggae); "Rapture" (the first time I ever heard of anything called "rap" though I wouldn't have known it from Adam). Marks against: it contains neither "X Offender" or "(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear", both of which are on the European version. (Not really a reason to book that ticket for Berlin but there was certainly room on the CD.) It also contains a few au courant (if this was 2001) electro-flavored remixes in favor of the originals that need to get gone yesterday. It ends with a goofy mash-up of "Rapture" with the vocals from "Riders on the Storm", which is fun the first time, but the compilers made the right decision sticking it where they did. The other reason to buy is that Sound and Vision comes with a DVD of all of Blondie's videos, which, yes, may seem like a cynical grab at your wallet, especially if you already forked out for another compilation or the album re-masters that came out in 2001. With the advent of VH1 Classic-- and stand alone DVD collections-- owning your own copy of "Heart of Glass" might not seem so cool as when we were all fussing with VHS doorstops but you'll want it if you get off on the cheap charms of early music video. Plus there's the always luminous Deborah Harry, who could give boiling asparagus an erotic charge, all while looking too bored to live.

Artist: Blondie, Album: Greatest Hits: Sound and Vision, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Blondie's conceptual coup wasn't pairing punk's tautness with bubblegum hooks. It was being good at it, in the actual putting-records-in-the-charts sense. Arguably the Ramones got there first and certainly had a more lasting impact on whatever we think of as pop-punk (or punk-pop depending on your feelings on modifiers). But Blondie were also never going to inspire someone like avant composer Rhys Chatham to start a punk guitar trio as an adjunct to his explorations in post-academic minimalism. The Ramones were as much a conceptual art project with pudding bowl haircuts as a pop band. It certainly didn't hurt that Blondie had one of the most appealing frontwomen of the late 20th-century-- who looks positive H-O-T on the cover of Sound and Vision, the latest repackaging of their greatest hits, despite (because of?) wearing just a pillow case and red electrical tape. Whereas the Ramones had four praying mantis in girl's Jordache. And while the Ramones were positively vicious in their devotion to pre-hippie rock (recording with Phil Spector, for one) and transforming the starchy blandness of '70s suburbia into a positive aesthetic, Blondie embraced what we now know as The Future-- disco, hip-hop, reggae-- while helping to invent new wave. (Your feelings on that one may vary). It's hard to imagine a time now when that seemed heretical, probably because it's hard to remember a time now when Blondie was a punk band with a capital P, trading dirty looks with Legs McNeil and waiting backstage with Richard Hell. All of these songs, most especially the big hits, have become part of the shared classic rock heritage of anyone born after 1970. They belong to the Two-Fer Tuesdays and budget priced '80s comps now. And it's hard to imagine the members of Blondie-- don't forget, "Blondie is a Band"-- seeing this as anything less than a total good. Through sheer willpower they achieved their goal: to become one of the great pop bands of all time. So why buy another reiteration of songs everyone knows? Well, if you don't already own a Blondie best-of for one thing. I've had a copy of The Best of Blondie since I was about 8, but those Fisher Price record player needles were hell on vinyl, so I'm happy to have *Sound and Vision in lieu of looting through Goodwill bins. (*The Best of Blondie is still available on CD, of course, and that's an A+++/five star/10.0 record. So take that for what it's worth.) Everyone knows the songs, but I'll give special shouts to: "Hanging on the Telephone" (gender flip-flop new wave frustration); "One Way or Another" (the Pretenders in situ, with added sass); "Heart of Glass" (Abba for the legwarmers generation); "Atomic" (the single having the best record sleeve ever); "Dreaming" (buzz-saw bubblegum with caveman drums); "The Tide Is High" (proto-Gwen Stefani cod-reggae); "Rapture" (the first time I ever heard of anything called "rap" though I wouldn't have known it from Adam). Marks against: it contains neither "X Offender" or "(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear", both of which are on the European version. (Not really a reason to book that ticket for Berlin but there was certainly room on the CD.) It also contains a few au courant (if this was 2001) electro-flavored remixes in favor of the originals that need to get gone yesterday. It ends with a goofy mash-up of "Rapture" with the vocals from "Riders on the Storm", which is fun the first time, but the compilers made the right decision sticking it where they did. The other reason to buy is that Sound and Vision comes with a DVD of all of Blondie's videos, which, yes, may seem like a cynical grab at your wallet, especially if you already forked out for another compilation or the album re-masters that came out in 2001. With the advent of VH1 Classic-- and stand alone DVD collections-- owning your own copy of "Heart of Glass" might not seem so cool as when we were all fussing with VHS doorstops but you'll want it if you get off on the cheap charms of early music video. Plus there's the always luminous Deborah Harry, who could give boiling asparagus an erotic charge, all while looking too bored to live."

Boston Spaceships

The Planets Are Blasted

Rock

Paul Thompson

Drinking buddies, well-wishers, and pen-pals Bob Pollard's got in droves; what the guy needs is a band. The best of the records Pollard helmed under the Guided by Voices name in the mid-1990s were laid down wherever an outlet could be found by Pollard and a fairly tight crew of four-tracking cronies. Although they'd have plenty of successes after the post-Under the Bushes dissolution of the band's "classic" lineup, that core of Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, and Kevin Fennell is still Bob's band to beat. Sure, these days Pollard's got as many musical pseudonyms as he's got auxiliary recycling bins-- the Circus Devils, the Takeovers, this new Cosmos thing with Richard Davies, to name but a few-- and his frequent collaborations with producer and multi-instrumentalist Todd Tobias is as close to a working relationship as any Pollard's had over the years. But fans knew something was up when Pollard took the Spaceships out for their maiden voyage last fall, following the release of their stellar debut, Brown Submarine, announcing all the while to anyone sober enough to remember that its follow-up was already in the can. It's clear the Boston Spaceships is Pollard's new band, not just another project. It's clearer still, after a couple records in less than six months' time, that the man's pretty okay with that. As he should be. Brown Submarine was, until recently, the single finest LP Pollard's been associated with since the dissolution of Guided by Voices in the middle of this decade. Now-- but only by a nose-- The Planets Are Blasted has staked its claim on that increasingly less dubious title. The breezy Brown Submarine brimmed with hooks and neat little instrumental flourishes and, most important, vitality. Picking up where that record let off, The Planets Are Blasted most often than not just rips, opting for a slurry Zeppelin-y stomp even at the expense of some of its predecessor's catchiness. To my ears, Pollard hasn't put out a good ol' drinking record like this one in forever: heady, quick to inspire the raising of glasses, with complexities that linger far after the initial buzz wears off. It certainly doesn't hurt that Pollard's once again brought nothing but good stuff to the party. There was hardly a song worth saving on January's miserable solo LP The Crawling Distance, but Pollard's just piling 'em on here, matching bouncy verse with tension-building pre-chorus to fist-pumping tagline in nearly every song. What could've been a trio of memorable little one-minute ditties at the back end of Alien Lanes become knotty, breathless three-minute barnstormers on The Planets Are Blasted; take, for example, the fantastic "Tattoo Mission", which matches a beery groove of a verse or two into a swirling Slusarenko-arranged string hook that positively explodes into sweetly symphonic pop through its last minute. Too often, Pollard's recent tunes are lucky to get two out of the three right, but here, even the weak spots seem to carry their weight, propelled by some of the most engaged-sounding Pollard vocal performances in memory. More credit must be given to drummer John Moen and particularly guitarist/bassist Chris Slusarenko, who helped buoy Brown Submarine and keep Planets Are Blasted moving ever-skyward. Moen's just got more to play with here than he did on the fairly straightforward Submarine songs, and his burly tromping keep the big moments pumping through your chest long after they're over. But it's Slusarenko who's really got Pollard's number, filling in the blanks in the tunes with punchy bass work and note-perfect guitar stabs. Instrumentally, Pollard's solo work all too often zigs when it seems stupid not to zag. But Slursarenko seems to have a clear sense of how best to serve the songs, and when to get the hell out of the way. Even a relative lowlight like "Catherine From Mid-October", which suffers from the same dowdy structural bloat as a lot of Pollard's 00s cuts, manages just finen thanks in no small part to Slusarenko's steady hand. There's a passage in "Sight on Sight" where the slightly distended thump the song eases into after minute one slides into a sprightly acoustic guitar line that eventually settles into another, better tune. That moment right there is in many ways the perfect distillation of what makes these Spaceships work; Pollard's operating in the mode he's always been best in (Bee Thousand is made up of transitions, after all) and sounding better than he has in years, with a couple of guys behind him who seem to understand what fits and what doesn't. In many ways, Pollard's still Pollard-- lyrically inscrutable, as generous with hooks as he is with bewildering sonic left-turns, and probably slightly mad-- but the Pollard who made the Planets Are Blasted sounds a lot more like the guy still blowing Dayton School District paychecks on beer and Maxells some 15 years back than whoever it was who laid The Crawling Distance on us. And, if the guys making the racket behind him might not be Mitch and Kevin and Toby, they're doing a better job of it than anybody who's come along since. Robert Pollard needs a band, and we oughta be awfully glad he's settled on this one.

Artist: Boston Spaceships, Album: The Planets Are Blasted, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Drinking buddies, well-wishers, and pen-pals Bob Pollard's got in droves; what the guy needs is a band. The best of the records Pollard helmed under the Guided by Voices name in the mid-1990s were laid down wherever an outlet could be found by Pollard and a fairly tight crew of four-tracking cronies. Although they'd have plenty of successes after the post-Under the Bushes dissolution of the band's "classic" lineup, that core of Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, and Kevin Fennell is still Bob's band to beat. Sure, these days Pollard's got as many musical pseudonyms as he's got auxiliary recycling bins-- the Circus Devils, the Takeovers, this new Cosmos thing with Richard Davies, to name but a few-- and his frequent collaborations with producer and multi-instrumentalist Todd Tobias is as close to a working relationship as any Pollard's had over the years. But fans knew something was up when Pollard took the Spaceships out for their maiden voyage last fall, following the release of their stellar debut, Brown Submarine, announcing all the while to anyone sober enough to remember that its follow-up was already in the can. It's clear the Boston Spaceships is Pollard's new band, not just another project. It's clearer still, after a couple records in less than six months' time, that the man's pretty okay with that. As he should be. Brown Submarine was, until recently, the single finest LP Pollard's been associated with since the dissolution of Guided by Voices in the middle of this decade. Now-- but only by a nose-- The Planets Are Blasted has staked its claim on that increasingly less dubious title. The breezy Brown Submarine brimmed with hooks and neat little instrumental flourishes and, most important, vitality. Picking up where that record let off, The Planets Are Blasted most often than not just rips, opting for a slurry Zeppelin-y stomp even at the expense of some of its predecessor's catchiness. To my ears, Pollard hasn't put out a good ol' drinking record like this one in forever: heady, quick to inspire the raising of glasses, with complexities that linger far after the initial buzz wears off. It certainly doesn't hurt that Pollard's once again brought nothing but good stuff to the party. There was hardly a song worth saving on January's miserable solo LP The Crawling Distance, but Pollard's just piling 'em on here, matching bouncy verse with tension-building pre-chorus to fist-pumping tagline in nearly every song. What could've been a trio of memorable little one-minute ditties at the back end of Alien Lanes become knotty, breathless three-minute barnstormers on The Planets Are Blasted; take, for example, the fantastic "Tattoo Mission", which matches a beery groove of a verse or two into a swirling Slusarenko-arranged string hook that positively explodes into sweetly symphonic pop through its last minute. Too often, Pollard's recent tunes are lucky to get two out of the three right, but here, even the weak spots seem to carry their weight, propelled by some of the most engaged-sounding Pollard vocal performances in memory. More credit must be given to drummer John Moen and particularly guitarist/bassist Chris Slusarenko, who helped buoy Brown Submarine and keep Planets Are Blasted moving ever-skyward. Moen's just got more to play with here than he did on the fairly straightforward Submarine songs, and his burly tromping keep the big moments pumping through your chest long after they're over. But it's Slusarenko who's really got Pollard's number, filling in the blanks in the tunes with punchy bass work and note-perfect guitar stabs. Instrumentally, Pollard's solo work all too often zigs when it seems stupid not to zag. But Slursarenko seems to have a clear sense of how best to serve the songs, and when to get the hell out of the way. Even a relative lowlight like "Catherine From Mid-October", which suffers from the same dowdy structural bloat as a lot of Pollard's 00s cuts, manages just finen thanks in no small part to Slusarenko's steady hand. There's a passage in "Sight on Sight" where the slightly distended thump the song eases into after minute one slides into a sprightly acoustic guitar line that eventually settles into another, better tune. That moment right there is in many ways the perfect distillation of what makes these Spaceships work; Pollard's operating in the mode he's always been best in (Bee Thousand is made up of transitions, after all) and sounding better than he has in years, with a couple of guys behind him who seem to understand what fits and what doesn't. In many ways, Pollard's still Pollard-- lyrically inscrutable, as generous with hooks as he is with bewildering sonic left-turns, and probably slightly mad-- but the Pollard who made the Planets Are Blasted sounds a lot more like the guy still blowing Dayton School District paychecks on beer and Maxells some 15 years back than whoever it was who laid The Crawling Distance on us. And, if the guys making the racket behind him might not be Mitch and Kevin and Toby, they're doing a better job of it than anybody who's come along since. Robert Pollard needs a band, and we oughta be awfully glad he's settled on this one."

Bohren & Der Club of Gore

Piano Nights

Jazz

Mike Powell

Piano Nights, the eighth album by the German band Bohren & der Club of Gore, is functionally the same as their seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, and first. The mood is solemn, the tempos are slow, and each note carries within it the suggestion that it might be the band’s last. In some cases, repetition is a sign of laziness or lack of imagination; in others—like Bohren’s or the Ramones’—it’s a show of commitment to an idea so elegant in its original design that changing it would constitute betrayal. “We always offer our music in the same way and with the same enthusiasm,” the band’s saxophonist and keyboard player, Christoph Clöser, recently told an interviewer—which is to say with no discernible enthusiasm at all. “If the audience is strong enough to suffer uneventful music, we and the listeners can celebrate as a kind of mass.” One reason Bohren persists in being so interesting despite their uneventfulness is that their music contains a kind of secret history. Lounge jazz, dark ambience, the languorous adagios of classical-music requiem, and the saturated romance of Italian film soundtracks: All of it is folded into Piano Nights. Heard at a distance, the album can sound uniform and insubstantial; up close, it not only covers a lot of ground, but ground you might not expect to overlap. For as gentle as their sound is, the band has always played with intensity and conviction. At their slowest tempos a Bohren song feels like a series of notes both disconnected from the ones before it and yet articulated with total clarity, like bright stars forming a constellation in an otherwise dark sky. When I saw the band live in 2008, the tension in the room wasn’t a function of volume or speed, but the contrast between the certainty of the notes they played and the silences that followed. Watching them—four hunched German men in charcoal and black—was like watching horror-movie zombies lumber toward their next kill: Each blow was just a matter of time. If there’s been an evolution in the band’s approach, it’s mostly sonic. Their earliest recordings were chilly and even brittle; Piano Nights is luxurious in its warmth. Nearly every track is backlit by vaporous ambience; the cymbals seem to ring in slow motion. The sharpest voice in the mix is usually the saxophone, which Clöser plays with the persistent, exhausted tone of someone trying to explain something they’ve tried to explain a thousand times before—too tired to fight but not tired enough to give up. Yes, this music gets dull—it’s supposed to. I can’t imagine listening to it all the time for the same reasons I can’t imagine trying to cook an entire meal using only a garlic press. But in their limited pursuits Bohren captures a mood other music either struggles to or just doesn’t bother with: Not sadness (too acute), not angst, but a sumptuous, all-purpose melancholy, the kind of thing you might experience watching a frozen field from the window of a slow-moving train. Clöser had used the word “mass.” The highlights on Piano Nights—“Fahr zur Hölle,” “Verloren (Alles),” “Segeln ohne Wind”—feel like church music. The sly, suggestive blue notes of jazz give way to processions of organ and horn. What was once threatening and concealed feels stewarded toward the light. “Triumph” is too corny a word for a band like Bohren & der Club of Gore. But for the first time, it might fit.

Artist: Bohren & Der Club of Gore, Album: Piano Nights, Genre: Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Piano Nights, the eighth album by the German band Bohren & der Club of Gore, is functionally the same as their seventh, sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, and first. The mood is solemn, the tempos are slow, and each note carries within it the suggestion that it might be the band’s last. In some cases, repetition is a sign of laziness or lack of imagination; in others—like Bohren’s or the Ramones’—it’s a show of commitment to an idea so elegant in its original design that changing it would constitute betrayal. “We always offer our music in the same way and with the same enthusiasm,” the band’s saxophonist and keyboard player, Christoph Clöser, recently told an interviewer—which is to say with no discernible enthusiasm at all. “If the audience is strong enough to suffer uneventful music, we and the listeners can celebrate as a kind of mass.” One reason Bohren persists in being so interesting despite their uneventfulness is that their music contains a kind of secret history. Lounge jazz, dark ambience, the languorous adagios of classical-music requiem, and the saturated romance of Italian film soundtracks: All of it is folded into Piano Nights. Heard at a distance, the album can sound uniform and insubstantial; up close, it not only covers a lot of ground, but ground you might not expect to overlap. For as gentle as their sound is, the band has always played with intensity and conviction. At their slowest tempos a Bohren song feels like a series of notes both disconnected from the ones before it and yet articulated with total clarity, like bright stars forming a constellation in an otherwise dark sky. When I saw the band live in 2008, the tension in the room wasn’t a function of volume or speed, but the contrast between the certainty of the notes they played and the silences that followed. Watching them—four hunched German men in charcoal and black—was like watching horror-movie zombies lumber toward their next kill: Each blow was just a matter of time. If there’s been an evolution in the band’s approach, it’s mostly sonic. Their earliest recordings were chilly and even brittle; Piano Nights is luxurious in its warmth. Nearly every track is backlit by vaporous ambience; the cymbals seem to ring in slow motion. The sharpest voice in the mix is usually the saxophone, which Clöser plays with the persistent, exhausted tone of someone trying to explain something they’ve tried to explain a thousand times before—too tired to fight but not tired enough to give up. Yes, this music gets dull—it’s supposed to. I can’t imagine listening to it all the time for the same reasons I can’t imagine trying to cook an entire meal using only a garlic press. But in their limited pursuits Bohren captures a mood other music either struggles to or just doesn’t bother with: Not sadness (too acute), not angst, but a sumptuous, all-purpose melancholy, the kind of thing you might experience watching a frozen field from the window of a slow-moving train. Clöser had used the word “mass.” The highlights on Piano Nights—“Fahr zur Hölle,” “Verloren (Alles),” “Segeln ohne Wind”—feel like church music. The sly, suggestive blue notes of jazz give way to processions of organ and horn. What was once threatening and concealed feels stewarded toward the light. “Triumph” is too corny a word for a band like Bohren & der Club of Gore. But for the first time, it might fit."

Le1f

Hey EP

Rap

Andrew Ryce

"Ask a gay question/ Here's a black answer" is a bomb of a line hidden in the opening track of Khalif Diouf's—aka Le1f—big indie label debut, a refutation of the uninvited politics that seem to follow him wherever he goes. It's a hefty moment on an otherwise lighthearted five-tracker that serves to introduce the New York rapper to a new audience on what could be the biggest release of his career so far, his first for Terrible Records (and jointly put out by XL). In an alternate universe, it'd be the first transmission from some plucky pop artist being groomed for stardom. Instead, the short EP is both an announcement and a confident distillation, the essence of what makes Diouf so captivating, packaged up into something mass consumable and effortlessly fun. "I’m pretty much always leaning toward futuristic, progressive beats, so if something sounds even a couple months dated to me then I’m already over it," Diouf recently told Vogue in an interview surrounding his signing to Terrible/XL. For this one he's still aligned with his longtime collaborators—underground producers like Matrixxman, Boody and Dubbel Dutch—but the beats are pared down and utilitarian, skeletal backdrops that contrast his wordplay rather than wrap around it. Compare that to Fly Zone or last year's Tree House, brilliant mixtapes where Le1f took on weirder and more ambient beats as an implicit challenge to write odd flows that dove and soared across the wide contours. "Hey", on the other hand, is a mere whistle and some horns, which makes the music feel timeless instead of trendy. More importantly, it gives Le1f's venomous slither center stage. And he's more ornery than ever; or maybe determined is a better word. Hey is aimed pointedly at its prospective audience: latecomers, hangers-on and fawning journalists alike. Diouf sounds both hungry and content, like he's trying to persuade you of his skills but confident enough to know that he will succeed. Hey is all about identity—about reclaiming, defining and reinforcing it—and he snarls like the leader of a pack. "Sup" is the the kind of autotuned bragging-about-your-crew number that could centrepiece a drill tape out of Chicago, and on "Boom" he spits "new world order/ LGBT cuties all over the world are diamonds and pearls" like he's leading a march out into the open. He's still a fiercely sexual lyricist too, even directly referencing his own penchant for frank and decadent fantasies ("he wanna hanky panky but he can't handle how otherworldly I am"). As slimmed-down as the beats might be, Diouf still finds ways to instil them with personality. On "Buzz," he embellishes the chorus with buzzing bee vocalizations and layers his voice deliriously through the verses, creating a surrealist smear of vocal fry and processing artefacts that feels truly alien without being alienating. A string of Pokémon mentions on "Hey" and a pileup of Starbucks references on "Sup" are humorous and witty, the kind of densely packed writing we take for granted from Le1f that make him such a fascinating lyricist beneath all the surface dazzle. There's a newly mastered version of 2012's "Wut", Le1f's biggest hit so far. It's an opportunist move that makes the EP feel more like a marketing tool than a statement, but Hey is most likely a stopgap on the way to something bigger. It's still impressive how Diouf takes to the song's knotty twists and turns with ease, motoring through its virtuosic second verse with pure finesse. Taking on a new resonance in light of Macklemore's moral hijacking of gay issues in rap and (alleged) direct hijacking of 5kinandbone5's original beat, "Wut" now sounds like a veteran doing his thing like a pro. So maybe Hey isn't the cry of a scrappy newcomer—rather, a reminder that he's an incredible rapper and wordsmith regardless of the bullshit. Ask him a gay question, and he'll give you a rap answer.

Artist: Le1f, Album: Hey EP, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.6 Album review: ""Ask a gay question/ Here's a black answer" is a bomb of a line hidden in the opening track of Khalif Diouf's—aka Le1f—big indie label debut, a refutation of the uninvited politics that seem to follow him wherever he goes. It's a hefty moment on an otherwise lighthearted five-tracker that serves to introduce the New York rapper to a new audience on what could be the biggest release of his career so far, his first for Terrible Records (and jointly put out by XL). In an alternate universe, it'd be the first transmission from some plucky pop artist being groomed for stardom. Instead, the short EP is both an announcement and a confident distillation, the essence of what makes Diouf so captivating, packaged up into something mass consumable and effortlessly fun. "I’m pretty much always leaning toward futuristic, progressive beats, so if something sounds even a couple months dated to me then I’m already over it," Diouf recently told Vogue in an interview surrounding his signing to Terrible/XL. For this one he's still aligned with his longtime collaborators—underground producers like Matrixxman, Boody and Dubbel Dutch—but the beats are pared down and utilitarian, skeletal backdrops that contrast his wordplay rather than wrap around it. Compare that to Fly Zone or last year's Tree House, brilliant mixtapes where Le1f took on weirder and more ambient beats as an implicit challenge to write odd flows that dove and soared across the wide contours. "Hey", on the other hand, is a mere whistle and some horns, which makes the music feel timeless instead of trendy. More importantly, it gives Le1f's venomous slither center stage. And he's more ornery than ever; or maybe determined is a better word. Hey is aimed pointedly at its prospective audience: latecomers, hangers-on and fawning journalists alike. Diouf sounds both hungry and content, like he's trying to persuade you of his skills but confident enough to know that he will succeed. Hey is all about identity—about reclaiming, defining and reinforcing it—and he snarls like the leader of a pack. "Sup" is the the kind of autotuned bragging-about-your-crew number that could centrepiece a drill tape out of Chicago, and on "Boom" he spits "new world order/ LGBT cuties all over the world are diamonds and pearls" like he's leading a march out into the open. He's still a fiercely sexual lyricist too, even directly referencing his own penchant for frank and decadent fantasies ("he wanna hanky panky but he can't handle how otherworldly I am"). As slimmed-down as the beats might be, Diouf still finds ways to instil them with personality. On "Buzz," he embellishes the chorus with buzzing bee vocalizations and layers his voice deliriously through the verses, creating a surrealist smear of vocal fry and processing artefacts that feels truly alien without being alienating. A string of Pokémon mentions on "Hey" and a pileup of Starbucks references on "Sup" are humorous and witty, the kind of densely packed writing we take for granted from Le1f that make him such a fascinating lyricist beneath all the surface dazzle. There's a newly mastered version of 2012's "Wut", Le1f's biggest hit so far. It's an opportunist move that makes the EP feel more like a marketing tool than a statement, but Hey is most likely a stopgap on the way to something bigger. It's still impressive how Diouf takes to the song's knotty twists and turns with ease, motoring through its virtuosic second verse with pure finesse. Taking on a new resonance in light of Macklemore's moral hijacking of gay issues in rap and (alleged) direct hijacking of 5kinandbone5's original beat, "Wut" now sounds like a veteran doing his thing like a pro. So maybe Hey isn't the cry of a scrappy newcomer—rather, a reminder that he's an incredible rapper and wordsmith regardless of the bullshit. Ask him a gay question, and he'll give you a rap answer."

Hot Chip

DJ Kicks

Electronic

Mark Pytlik

Pop songs repetitive enough to appeal to the dance set. Dance sets poppy enough to beg constant repetition. Fun songs about love. Love songs about fun. These are just some of the reasons why Hot Chip may be the closest thing we have to an indie music Switzerland. Different factions may try to claim them as their own, but the London electro-pop quintet has managed to remain largely nondiscriminatory with their output. It's so-called "poptimism" of the best kind: Hot Chip's answer to every genre always seems to be a resounding, open-armed "yes." Spanning blue-eyed soul, synthpop, r&b, and geek-rock, Hot Chip's musical hybrid is a lovable (if unlikely) one-- and, mostly for utilitarian reasons, it's not one you'd expect them to clearly communicate during the course of a single-CD mix. Nonetheless, that's exactly what they do with their entry in !K7's acclaimed DJ Kicks series. A mulched-up whirlwind of pretty much everything they hold near and dear, the disc darts through drivetime FM soul, goofy techno, cartoonish fun, and big synthpop moments, taking the best few minutes (or in some cases, few seconds) of each of these 24 tracks and cramming it all into a breakneck 68 minutes. As you might imagine, the only way anyone could ever pull this off would be to cop to a bit of A.D.D., so DJ Kicks flits excitedly and unapologetically from one listening station to the next. Amidst the madness, though, there is a vague sense of order in the form of four loosely defined acts: a) The goofy party stuff, b) The retro block, c) The techno half-hour, and d) The closing free-for-all. It's a structure that basically mimics that of their more substantial live DJ sets, albeit on a much more condensed scale. Hot Chip's occasional proximity to yacht rock has been well-documented, and it's a sound they good-naturedly embrace here by bookending their mix with two derivatives; first, the opening ballad "Nitemoves", courtesy of new act Grovesnor (aka former Hot Chip drummer Rob Smoughton), which starts with a WKRP-ready palette of Rhodes piano and blue eyed vox before sputtering into a mess of programmed drums and synth squibbles; later, Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out", which they show deference to by playing out in full. There's also pinches of hip-hop here and there, such as a quick verse from Positive K's 1992 hit "I Got a Man" and current Baltimore phenom Young Leek's "Jiggle It". That the latter is preceded by New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" and followed by Etta James' "In the Basement" should clue you in to what you're in for. This is fun by the minute-- no buildup, all payoff, but happily, it works. The mini techno set in the latter half of the mix provides a bit of room to breathe, and gives Hot Chip a chance to acquit themselves as guys who are just as capable of spinning at five a.m. as midnight. Selections from Dominik Eulberg, Gabriel Ananda, and Marek Bois all stand out, but it's Noze's off-kilter "Love Affair" that has the last laugh, melding a tight, clattering groove with an English lyric made charming by the French accents singing it: "I wash my fit and I feel so good/ I brush my tiff and I feel so good/ I clean my nose and I'm ready for my love affair/ For my love affair!" A beguiling mix of technical precision, fun pop, and dumb humor, it's the one track on the mix you suspect Hot Chip probably feel closest to. At the end of the day, though, the reason this works so well is because Hot Chip never seem too close to any of the music presented; there's a nice democracy to the way this stuff's been blenderized to a neon pulp. It provides the sense that they're too busy rummaging through their record bags for the next big moment to worry all that much about things like pace and structure. Turn yourself over to those moments for an hour, and you won't end up worrying much about anything at all.

Artist: Hot Chip, Album: DJ Kicks, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Pop songs repetitive enough to appeal to the dance set. Dance sets poppy enough to beg constant repetition. Fun songs about love. Love songs about fun. These are just some of the reasons why Hot Chip may be the closest thing we have to an indie music Switzerland. Different factions may try to claim them as their own, but the London electro-pop quintet has managed to remain largely nondiscriminatory with their output. It's so-called "poptimism" of the best kind: Hot Chip's answer to every genre always seems to be a resounding, open-armed "yes." Spanning blue-eyed soul, synthpop, r&b, and geek-rock, Hot Chip's musical hybrid is a lovable (if unlikely) one-- and, mostly for utilitarian reasons, it's not one you'd expect them to clearly communicate during the course of a single-CD mix. Nonetheless, that's exactly what they do with their entry in !K7's acclaimed DJ Kicks series. A mulched-up whirlwind of pretty much everything they hold near and dear, the disc darts through drivetime FM soul, goofy techno, cartoonish fun, and big synthpop moments, taking the best few minutes (or in some cases, few seconds) of each of these 24 tracks and cramming it all into a breakneck 68 minutes. As you might imagine, the only way anyone could ever pull this off would be to cop to a bit of A.D.D., so DJ Kicks flits excitedly and unapologetically from one listening station to the next. Amidst the madness, though, there is a vague sense of order in the form of four loosely defined acts: a) The goofy party stuff, b) The retro block, c) The techno half-hour, and d) The closing free-for-all. It's a structure that basically mimics that of their more substantial live DJ sets, albeit on a much more condensed scale. Hot Chip's occasional proximity to yacht rock has been well-documented, and it's a sound they good-naturedly embrace here by bookending their mix with two derivatives; first, the opening ballad "Nitemoves", courtesy of new act Grovesnor (aka former Hot Chip drummer Rob Smoughton), which starts with a WKRP-ready palette of Rhodes piano and blue eyed vox before sputtering into a mess of programmed drums and synth squibbles; later, Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out", which they show deference to by playing out in full. There's also pinches of hip-hop here and there, such as a quick verse from Positive K's 1992 hit "I Got a Man" and current Baltimore phenom Young Leek's "Jiggle It". That the latter is preceded by New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" and followed by Etta James' "In the Basement" should clue you in to what you're in for. This is fun by the minute-- no buildup, all payoff, but happily, it works. The mini techno set in the latter half of the mix provides a bit of room to breathe, and gives Hot Chip a chance to acquit themselves as guys who are just as capable of spinning at five a.m. as midnight. Selections from Dominik Eulberg, Gabriel Ananda, and Marek Bois all stand out, but it's Noze's off-kilter "Love Affair" that has the last laugh, melding a tight, clattering groove with an English lyric made charming by the French accents singing it: "I wash my fit and I feel so good/ I brush my tiff and I feel so good/ I clean my nose and I'm ready for my love affair/ For my love affair!" A beguiling mix of technical precision, fun pop, and dumb humor, it's the one track on the mix you suspect Hot Chip probably feel closest to. At the end of the day, though, the reason this works so well is because Hot Chip never seem too close to any of the music presented; there's a nice democracy to the way this stuff's been blenderized to a neon pulp. It provides the sense that they're too busy rummaging through their record bags for the next big moment to worry all that much about things like pace and structure. Turn yourself over to those moments for an hour, and you won't end up worrying much about anything at all."

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

The Echo of Pleasure

Rock

Paul Thompson

A whole lot of life happened to the Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s Kip Berman in the run-up to his fourth LP, The Echo of Pleasure. He got married in 2014, shortly after the release of that year’s Days of Abandon. And much of Pleasure was recorded just at the onset of Berman’s wife’s third trimester, the point at which shit tends to get particularly real. From the initial rush to the all-too-familiar crash, the Pains have spent the better part of a decade charting the highs and lows of young love. But Berman, like many of us, isn’t quite so young anymore. What happens when all the love in your life is no longer as fleeting as a three-minute pop tune? Echo of Pleasure tries to get to the heart of the matter. Helmed again by Days of Abandon producer Andy Savours, Echo of Pleasure is largely a Berman solo joint. As on Abandon, the great Jen Goma of A Sunny Day in Glasgow is Berman’s closest foil, providing the prismatic backing harmonies and taking another star turn at lead on glimmering late-LP highlight “So True.” The sound of Pleasure is a click or two lusher and more grandiose than the simple and sure hand Savours brought to Abandon. Berman and Savours weave twinkling keyboards and some surprisingly slippery drumwork into an iridescent, instantly familiar synth pop that trades the relative economy of Abandon for a decked out Sadie Hawkins dance dazzle. While a couple new wrinkles have emerged—“The Garret” rides a buckled groove that shares more than a little something with early R.E.M.—Pleasure largely drapes the rippling Johnny Marr-isms of Abandon in a bevy of Psychedelic Furs, a meticulous, bigger-ticket sound that pushes Berman ever further from the bedroom-born urgency of his earliest work. Playing spot-the-influence here has lost some of the luster it’s had in the past. Berman’s not only swapped out his earlier, geekier forebears for more perennial favorites—less Bunnygrunt, more Bunnymen—but his songwriting has calcified to the point where, no matter how many keyboards he layers on, he mostly sounds like himself. In many ways, he’s a changed man on Pleasure: less concerned with the things he doesn’t have, more concerned with holding onto the things he does, or soon will. The ineffable combo of anxiety and joy that accompanies late-stage pregnancy is written directly into the DNA of these tunes. Berman has never been one to telegraph his every move. Lyrically, he opts instead for a kind of emotional skywriting, drawing out feelings big enough to cover just about everybody. But these songs are devotionals, re-dedications to something larger than himself. Berman retains a flair for the dramatic—“I wanted to die with you” is a fairly typical chorus—but there’s a longview here that’s a very different look from the pie-eyed, gin-soaked kid chronicling all that young adult friction. While each Pains album has seen a fairly seismic shift in sound—from the blush-of-youth urgency of their debut to the towering bubblegrunge of Belong—Berman’s way with melody hasn’t changed much. The guy’s always known just how to punch up a chorus, how to deck out an instrumental coda, the kind of songwriting nuts’n’bolts plenty of his peers never quite mastered. Pleasure lays the extended outros, glowing keyboards, and intricate background harmonies on fairly thick, but the song pretty much remains the same. Among all these gleaming exteriors, Berman occasionally loses something in the glare; overlong and sickly sweet, mid-LP trifle “When I Dance With You” is the record’s only real stinker. Pleasure’s onslaught of surface pleasures aren’t quite enough to fully rescue the title track from its laborious chorus, or to pull “The Cure for Death” from its warmed-over you-know-who worship. Echo of Pleasure could be the last Pains LP; Berman wasn’t even sure he’d get this one in the can. If Abandon was the sound of a young man in flux, then Pleasure is the sound of settling. Maybe Berman’s got a mid-fatherhood return like Double Fantasy in him some years down the road, when his kid’s a little older, and they can look back at this album and be proud of what they made together.

Artist: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Album: The Echo of Pleasure, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "A whole lot of life happened to the Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s Kip Berman in the run-up to his fourth LP, The Echo of Pleasure. He got married in 2014, shortly after the release of that year’s Days of Abandon. And much of Pleasure was recorded just at the onset of Berman’s wife’s third trimester, the point at which shit tends to get particularly real. From the initial rush to the all-too-familiar crash, the Pains have spent the better part of a decade charting the highs and lows of young love. But Berman, like many of us, isn’t quite so young anymore. What happens when all the love in your life is no longer as fleeting as a three-minute pop tune? Echo of Pleasure tries to get to the heart of the matter. Helmed again by Days of Abandon producer Andy Savours, Echo of Pleasure is largely a Berman solo joint. As on Abandon, the great Jen Goma of A Sunny Day in Glasgow is Berman’s closest foil, providing the prismatic backing harmonies and taking another star turn at lead on glimmering late-LP highlight “So True.” The sound of Pleasure is a click or two lusher and more grandiose than the simple and sure hand Savours brought to Abandon. Berman and Savours weave twinkling keyboards and some surprisingly slippery drumwork into an iridescent, instantly familiar synth pop that trades the relative economy of Abandon for a decked out Sadie Hawkins dance dazzle. While a couple new wrinkles have emerged—“The Garret” rides a buckled groove that shares more than a little something with early R.E.M.—Pleasure largely drapes the rippling Johnny Marr-isms of Abandon in a bevy of Psychedelic Furs, a meticulous, bigger-ticket sound that pushes Berman ever further from the bedroom-born urgency of his earliest work. Playing spot-the-influence here has lost some of the luster it’s had in the past. Berman’s not only swapped out his earlier, geekier forebears for more perennial favorites—less Bunnygrunt, more Bunnymen—but his songwriting has calcified to the point where, no matter how many keyboards he layers on, he mostly sounds like himself. In many ways, he’s a changed man on Pleasure: less concerned with the things he doesn’t have, more concerned with holding onto the things he does, or soon will. The ineffable combo of anxiety and joy that accompanies late-stage pregnancy is written directly into the DNA of these tunes. Berman has never been one to telegraph his every move. Lyrically, he opts instead for a kind of emotional skywriting, drawing out feelings big enough to cover just about everybody. But these songs are devotionals, re-dedications to something larger than himself. Berman retains a flair for the dramatic—“I wanted to die with you” is a fairly typical chorus—but there’s a longview here that’s a very different look from the pie-eyed, gin-soaked kid chronicling all that young adult friction. While each Pains album has seen a fairly seismic shift in sound—from the blush-of-youth urgency of their debut to the towering bubblegrunge of Belong—Berman’s way with melody hasn’t changed much. The guy’s always known just how to punch up a chorus, how to deck out an instrumental coda, the kind of songwriting nuts’n’bolts plenty of his peers never quite mastered. Pleasure lays the extended outros, glowing keyboards, and intricate background harmonies on fairly thick, but the song pretty much remains the same. Among all these gleaming exteriors, Berman occasionally loses something in the glare; overlong and sickly sweet, mid-LP trifle “When I Dance With You” is the record’s only real stinker. Pleasure’s onslaught of surface pleasures aren’t quite enough to fully rescue the title track from its laborious chorus, or to pull “The Cure for Death” from its warmed-over you-know-who worship. Echo of Pleasure could be the last Pains LP; Berman wasn’t even sure he’d get this one in the can. If Abandon was the sound of a young man in flux, then Pleasure is the sound of settling. Maybe Berman’s got a mid-fatherhood return like Double Fantasy in him some years down the road, when his kid’s a little older, and they can look back at this album and be proud of what they made together."

Ben Kweller

On My Way

Rock

Amanda Petrusich

Despite a handful of noble efforts, dude-next-door Ben Kweller seems destined to spend the remainder of his career attempting to claw his way out of little brotherdom. Blame his goofy guitar stomps, moppish locks and toothy grin, or the enduring legacy of an infamously anticlimactic high school gig (the heavily hyped, quickly forgotten Radish), but know that Ben Kweller is having a crap of a time escaping our distracted head-pats and condescending smiles. Check standard Kweller-crit protocol: The elders glance and chortle, crinkle their noses, dub him "adorable!" or "a wunderkind," and then proceed with white-knuckled noogies. Never mind that Kweller's scrappy, Violent Femmes-ish alt-rock is not really all that different from what his aged peers (see Evan Dando, Ben Folds) perpetually crank out, or that he's married, and 23, and two records into a fairly successful recording career. Somehow, it still feels far more appropriate to hide his bicycle in the bushes and play the infuriating Wayne to Kweller's sheepish Kevin Arnold. Maturity, then, is Kweller's shiny-haired Winnie Cooper: elusive, confounding, and perpetually out of reach. Kweller's latest, On My Way, takes a gallant stab at adulthood, toning down the slappy bursts and over-energized slams, and simultaneously erasing all the awkward, bumbling charm (comparing sex to eating spaghetti?) that made us notice him in the first place. Mostly, Kweller's very-well-intentioned efforts have simply led to an unfortunate critical snafu: Record reviewers have long chastised Kweller for his naivete, but those same folks will probably frown when faced with Kweller's loaded, listless shot at the big kids' table. On My Way is a far less goofy effort than 2002's Sha Sha, and suffers remarkably for its comparable lack of inanity-- no longer powered by the youthful glee of his solo debut, Kweller's hooks sag and fade, contrived and loose. Like countless twenty-somethings hovering on the cusp on self-realization, Kweller's grasps at actualization fall just a little bit short, inadvertently positioning his younger flailings as the far more attractive choice. "Hospital Bed" sees Kweller returning to the depths of his well-pilfered Beatles collection, channeling the (irritatingly plucky) spirit of Bens cohort Ben Folds, mixing in twinkly piano bits and octave-jumping vocals; it's the closest Kweller comes to recreating Sha Sha's cocky charisma, with hyperactive la-la-la's and pounding electric guitar. Kweller's boyish vocals, which have always felt vaguely unhinged, work best when singing absurd, yelpy love songs to his stuff-- see his tender ode to his cat-filled Brooklyn apartment: "My apartment/ The home where I hide/ Away from all the darkness outside/ I'm there all the time." Kweller mixes in some sweet acoustic ballads (the title song is an unassuming acoustic monument to his girl: "She makes hats with her hands/ She is such an artist/ I'm her biggest fan/ And I'm teaching her to sing"), but his folky promises are still far less convincing than his leg-flailing, adolescent rockers, like "The Rules". Ben Kweller is clearly trying hard to do the right thing-- to grow up, brush off, evolve. But On My Way-- as its title so brazenly suggests-- is also unforgivably transitory. Subsequently, the record becomes an oddly limp testament to Kweller's newfound inertia, and listeners are left feeling a little empty-nested.

Artist: Ben Kweller, Album: On My Way, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Despite a handful of noble efforts, dude-next-door Ben Kweller seems destined to spend the remainder of his career attempting to claw his way out of little brotherdom. Blame his goofy guitar stomps, moppish locks and toothy grin, or the enduring legacy of an infamously anticlimactic high school gig (the heavily hyped, quickly forgotten Radish), but know that Ben Kweller is having a crap of a time escaping our distracted head-pats and condescending smiles. Check standard Kweller-crit protocol: The elders glance and chortle, crinkle their noses, dub him "adorable!" or "a wunderkind," and then proceed with white-knuckled noogies. Never mind that Kweller's scrappy, Violent Femmes-ish alt-rock is not really all that different from what his aged peers (see Evan Dando, Ben Folds) perpetually crank out, or that he's married, and 23, and two records into a fairly successful recording career. Somehow, it still feels far more appropriate to hide his bicycle in the bushes and play the infuriating Wayne to Kweller's sheepish Kevin Arnold. Maturity, then, is Kweller's shiny-haired Winnie Cooper: elusive, confounding, and perpetually out of reach. Kweller's latest, On My Way, takes a gallant stab at adulthood, toning down the slappy bursts and over-energized slams, and simultaneously erasing all the awkward, bumbling charm (comparing sex to eating spaghetti?) that made us notice him in the first place. Mostly, Kweller's very-well-intentioned efforts have simply led to an unfortunate critical snafu: Record reviewers have long chastised Kweller for his naivete, but those same folks will probably frown when faced with Kweller's loaded, listless shot at the big kids' table. On My Way is a far less goofy effort than 2002's Sha Sha, and suffers remarkably for its comparable lack of inanity-- no longer powered by the youthful glee of his solo debut, Kweller's hooks sag and fade, contrived and loose. Like countless twenty-somethings hovering on the cusp on self-realization, Kweller's grasps at actualization fall just a little bit short, inadvertently positioning his younger flailings as the far more attractive choice. "Hospital Bed" sees Kweller returning to the depths of his well-pilfered Beatles collection, channeling the (irritatingly plucky) spirit of Bens cohort Ben Folds, mixing in twinkly piano bits and octave-jumping vocals; it's the closest Kweller comes to recreating Sha Sha's cocky charisma, with hyperactive la-la-la's and pounding electric guitar. Kweller's boyish vocals, which have always felt vaguely unhinged, work best when singing absurd, yelpy love songs to his stuff-- see his tender ode to his cat-filled Brooklyn apartment: "My apartment/ The home where I hide/ Away from all the darkness outside/ I'm there all the time." Kweller mixes in some sweet acoustic ballads (the title song is an unassuming acoustic monument to his girl: "She makes hats with her hands/ She is such an artist/ I'm her biggest fan/ And I'm teaching her to sing"), but his folky promises are still far less convincing than his leg-flailing, adolescent rockers, like "The Rules". Ben Kweller is clearly trying hard to do the right thing-- to grow up, brush off, evolve. But On My Way-- as its title so brazenly suggests-- is also unforgivably transitory. Subsequently, the record becomes an oddly limp testament to Kweller's newfound inertia, and listeners are left feeling a little empty-nested."

Zola Jesus

Conatus

Electronic

Brian Howe

Nika Roza Danilova began her Zola Jesus project with a formidable arsenal already in place. She had a richly gothic perspective honed by a rural upbringing and studies in philosophy, a background in opera conjoined with a taste for industrial music, and a scarred-yet-commanding voice. The albums and EPs she issued over the last couple of years were startlingly realized for such a young artist, but Conatus, a big record that keeps turning dark and strident, makes them seem like warning shots. Most traces of obscuring murk have burned away, so that every pock and ridge in the rugged, elemental music stands out distinctly. It's new wave mounted on a geological scale, where Danilova's solipsistic spirit-- "I was able to communicate this universe that is my prison," she said of "Vessel"-- assumes epic proportions. Her bouts of nihilism feel nervier and more bracing in the unforgiving light of sonic clarity. The closer she gets, the more enigmatic she's revealed to be. Conatus is mainly built from thundering toms, majestically revolving synthesizers, and warm courses of classical stringed instruments. "I kept having these primal images," she said of the music, "just quite strange landscapes and shapes I couldn't shake." That may sound like a meaningless gloss, but on "Swords", the minute-long opening track, you can hear exactly what she means. Concussive drums and scrolling mechanical textures vividly evoke a terrain. Whatever biosphere you choose to project on it (I get desert), Danilova's voice remains fixed on a faraway horizon, receding as you approach. When she bursts into the foreground on "Avalanche" and stays there for the remainder of the album, the impression of impassable distance lingers. This is partly because of the authority of Danilova's voice, and partly because the music gives nothing away, thrumming along with power that shades into ambivalence toward the shifting emotional register of the singing. The results are dramatic but never melodramatic, as Danilova maps the dimensions of her self-imprisonment with resolve. There has always been something almost subliminally idol-killing about the Zola Jesus project, and it really comes into focus here. Danilova's childhood opera aspirations are subverted into something nearly opposite. Opera singing is narrative and flows smoothly from deep within. Danilova is more allusive and tortuous. Her voice keeps getting caught in her throat, where it's stressed and twisted by transient emotional surges. Though the theatricality and the epic-pop trappings may evoke artists like Dead Can Dance, the vocals have the passion of blues singing. Danilova is equally iconoclastic when it comes to industrial influences like Throbbing Gristle, finding ways to make abrasion as musical as possible without sacrificing tension. Her touchstones have been digested into a personal style that is much more substance than reference. She has said that she struggled with the psychological pressures of opera singing. You could regard her early run of Zola Jesus recordings as a direct reaction against intricate formality and classical perfection: an eruptive loosening of strictures and simultaneous retreat into shadow. Though some may miss the rough and raw approach of her last two EPs, it's refreshing and exciting to hear music that relies on bone-hard essence rather than gauzy trimmings to create an aura of mystery. There's a newfound sense of purpose, as if, having tested her abilities, Danilova now understands exactly what she's doing.

Artist: Zola Jesus, Album: Conatus, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Nika Roza Danilova began her Zola Jesus project with a formidable arsenal already in place. She had a richly gothic perspective honed by a rural upbringing and studies in philosophy, a background in opera conjoined with a taste for industrial music, and a scarred-yet-commanding voice. The albums and EPs she issued over the last couple of years were startlingly realized for such a young artist, but Conatus, a big record that keeps turning dark and strident, makes them seem like warning shots. Most traces of obscuring murk have burned away, so that every pock and ridge in the rugged, elemental music stands out distinctly. It's new wave mounted on a geological scale, where Danilova's solipsistic spirit-- "I was able to communicate this universe that is my prison," she said of "Vessel"-- assumes epic proportions. Her bouts of nihilism feel nervier and more bracing in the unforgiving light of sonic clarity. The closer she gets, the more enigmatic she's revealed to be. Conatus is mainly built from thundering toms, majestically revolving synthesizers, and warm courses of classical stringed instruments. "I kept having these primal images," she said of the music, "just quite strange landscapes and shapes I couldn't shake." That may sound like a meaningless gloss, but on "Swords", the minute-long opening track, you can hear exactly what she means. Concussive drums and scrolling mechanical textures vividly evoke a terrain. Whatever biosphere you choose to project on it (I get desert), Danilova's voice remains fixed on a faraway horizon, receding as you approach. When she bursts into the foreground on "Avalanche" and stays there for the remainder of the album, the impression of impassable distance lingers. This is partly because of the authority of Danilova's voice, and partly because the music gives nothing away, thrumming along with power that shades into ambivalence toward the shifting emotional register of the singing. The results are dramatic but never melodramatic, as Danilova maps the dimensions of her self-imprisonment with resolve. There has always been something almost subliminally idol-killing about the Zola Jesus project, and it really comes into focus here. Danilova's childhood opera aspirations are subverted into something nearly opposite. Opera singing is narrative and flows smoothly from deep within. Danilova is more allusive and tortuous. Her voice keeps getting caught in her throat, where it's stressed and twisted by transient emotional surges. Though the theatricality and the epic-pop trappings may evoke artists like Dead Can Dance, the vocals have the passion of blues singing. Danilova is equally iconoclastic when it comes to industrial influences like Throbbing Gristle, finding ways to make abrasion as musical as possible without sacrificing tension. Her touchstones have been digested into a personal style that is much more substance than reference. She has said that she struggled with the psychological pressures of opera singing. You could regard her early run of Zola Jesus recordings as a direct reaction against intricate formality and classical perfection: an eruptive loosening of strictures and simultaneous retreat into shadow. Though some may miss the rough and raw approach of her last two EPs, it's refreshing and exciting to hear music that relies on bone-hard essence rather than gauzy trimmings to create an aura of mystery. There's a newfound sense of purpose, as if, having tested her abilities, Danilova now understands exactly what she's doing."

Various Artists

I Am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey

Matthew Murphy

Five years after his death, John Fahey continues to loom large over the underground landscape-- and not solely through his legendary work as a musician. Inquisitive listeners also draw benefits from Fahey's activities as a record collector, music historian, and label operator via the ongoing works of his Revenant imprint and the numerous archival labels it has inspired. Yet oddly, these projects-- coupled with Fahey's truly breathtaking virtuosity as a guitarist-- have often served to obscure his significance as an innovative American composer. It's this curious imbalance that co-producers M. Ward and Stephen Brower clearly intend to address with I Am the Resurrection, a collection that features 13 current indie folk/rock acts paying homage to Fahey and his brilliant, eccentric creations. As a composer, Fahey's initial source material was the primitive folk and blues culled from his vast collection of vintage 78s. But his distinctive style rapidly expanded to reference Bartok, Indian ragas, Gershwin, musique concréte, and whatever else happened to attract his voracious curiosity. And as with many such 20th century innovators, Fahey's true genius was in making his wild stylistic unions seem not only organic and logical but virtually inevitable. However, his intricate compositions do pose unique challenges for the covering artist, primarily because there are so few guitarists who possess the technical ability to faithfully interpret his work. Nevertheless, I Am the Resurrection is resolutely a guitar players' album, with 12 of its 13 tracks centered upon Fahey's main instrument. (Only Howe Gelb has the horse sense to transpose the ragtime of "My Grandfather's Clock" to an upright piano, noting astutely that Fahey played guitar like a piano player.) In addition, the collection possesses an air of reverent nostalgia that likely would've irritated Fahey to no end. Nearly all of the songs gathered here originate from his classic 60s Takoma albums, ignoring the more dissonant, abstract material of his later years almost entirely. Thankfully, the album includes appearances by some of Fahey's most gifted acolytes. Peter Case acquits himself nicely on his solo acoustic version of "When the Catfish Is in Bloom", in the set's most fearlessly literal interpretation. Guitarist Jack Rose, playing here with his trio Pelt, contributes a dazzling take on "Sunflower River Blues", a piece that also appeared on Rose's 2005 album Kensington Blues. Cul De Sac deliver a reprise as well, offering a 1997 live version of "The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, CA" from their debut album, with Robin Amos adding concussive electronic effects to Jones' immaculate guitar arpeggios. Lovely as these two pieces are, attentive fans might wish that Rose and Jones had instead taken a new crack at alternate works from the Fahey catalog. Considerably less successful is Sufjan Stevens, whose typically fussy arrangements prove an ill match for the contours of Fahey's "Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion at Magruder Park". In his original version, Fahey incorporated portions of the traditional hymn "All Creatures of Our God and King", and here Stevens has reversed the process, ignoring Fahey's song as much as possible to focus on the hymn, torpidly stalling the album's quiet momentum. Likewise, M. Ward's electric rendition of "Bean Vine Blues No. 2" here falls completely flat. A slight tune that Ward claims to have selected for its sense of humor, it's a track that in this context appears decidedly frivolous and perfunctory. Elsewhere on the album, Calexico do an admirable job on "Dance of Death" by adding upright bass and marimba to enhance the melody's simmering core. And Devendra Banhart submits a slow, thoughtful version of the exquisite "Sligo River Blues", getting his performance across with fervent passion rather than pristine chops. Though Lee Ranaldo does mutely acknowledge Fahey's late-90s work with the impressionistic "The Singing Bridge of Memphis, Tennessee (Brooklyn Bridge Version: The Coelcanth)" one wishes that the compilation's architects had roamed further afield to include more experimental, non-American, or non-idiomatic voices. Such an approach would've been a truer representation of the scope of Fahey's work, and perhaps a better indicator of his actual influence. As it is, the best that can be said of I Am the Resurrection is that it makes one want to go spend some serious hours listening to John Fahey records-- an accomplishment that might be tribute enough in itself.

Artist: Various Artists, Album: I Am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "Five years after his death, John Fahey continues to loom large over the underground landscape-- and not solely through his legendary work as a musician. Inquisitive listeners also draw benefits from Fahey's activities as a record collector, music historian, and label operator via the ongoing works of his Revenant imprint and the numerous archival labels it has inspired. Yet oddly, these projects-- coupled with Fahey's truly breathtaking virtuosity as a guitarist-- have often served to obscure his significance as an innovative American composer. It's this curious imbalance that co-producers M. Ward and Stephen Brower clearly intend to address with I Am the Resurrection, a collection that features 13 current indie folk/rock acts paying homage to Fahey and his brilliant, eccentric creations. As a composer, Fahey's initial source material was the primitive folk and blues culled from his vast collection of vintage 78s. But his distinctive style rapidly expanded to reference Bartok, Indian ragas, Gershwin, musique concréte, and whatever else happened to attract his voracious curiosity. And as with many such 20th century innovators, Fahey's true genius was in making his wild stylistic unions seem not only organic and logical but virtually inevitable. However, his intricate compositions do pose unique challenges for the covering artist, primarily because there are so few guitarists who possess the technical ability to faithfully interpret his work. Nevertheless, I Am the Resurrection is resolutely a guitar players' album, with 12 of its 13 tracks centered upon Fahey's main instrument. (Only Howe Gelb has the horse sense to transpose the ragtime of "My Grandfather's Clock" to an upright piano, noting astutely that Fahey played guitar like a piano player.) In addition, the collection possesses an air of reverent nostalgia that likely would've irritated Fahey to no end. Nearly all of the songs gathered here originate from his classic 60s Takoma albums, ignoring the more dissonant, abstract material of his later years almost entirely. Thankfully, the album includes appearances by some of Fahey's most gifted acolytes. Peter Case acquits himself nicely on his solo acoustic version of "When the Catfish Is in Bloom", in the set's most fearlessly literal interpretation. Guitarist Jack Rose, playing here with his trio Pelt, contributes a dazzling take on "Sunflower River Blues", a piece that also appeared on Rose's 2005 album Kensington Blues. Cul De Sac deliver a reprise as well, offering a 1997 live version of "The Portland Cement Factory at Monolith, CA" from their debut album, with Robin Amos adding concussive electronic effects to Jones' immaculate guitar arpeggios. Lovely as these two pieces are, attentive fans might wish that Rose and Jones had instead taken a new crack at alternate works from the Fahey catalog. Considerably less successful is Sufjan Stevens, whose typically fussy arrangements prove an ill match for the contours of Fahey's "Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion at Magruder Park". In his original version, Fahey incorporated portions of the traditional hymn "All Creatures of Our God and King", and here Stevens has reversed the process, ignoring Fahey's song as much as possible to focus on the hymn, torpidly stalling the album's quiet momentum. Likewise, M. Ward's electric rendition of "Bean Vine Blues No. 2" here falls completely flat. A slight tune that Ward claims to have selected for its sense of humor, it's a track that in this context appears decidedly frivolous and perfunctory. Elsewhere on the album, Calexico do an admirable job on "Dance of Death" by adding upright bass and marimba to enhance the melody's simmering core. And Devendra Banhart submits a slow, thoughtful version of the exquisite "Sligo River Blues", getting his performance across with fervent passion rather than pristine chops. Though Lee Ranaldo does mutely acknowledge Fahey's late-90s work with the impressionistic "The Singing Bridge of Memphis, Tennessee (Brooklyn Bridge Version: The Coelcanth)" one wishes that the compilation's architects had roamed further afield to include more experimental, non-American, or non-idiomatic voices. Such an approach would've been a truer representation of the scope of Fahey's work, and perhaps a better indicator of his actual influence. As it is, the best that can be said of I Am the Resurrection is that it makes one want to go spend some serious hours listening to John Fahey records-- an accomplishment that might be tribute enough in itself."

Ester Drang

Infinite Keys

Rock

Brandon Stosuy

I imagine there are big ol' skies in Oklahoma. Though I've never been there, I associate the labor-conquers-all state with ridiculously wide expanses of blue that at times seem oppressive in their beauty. I can only assume these atmospheric conditions, though: I've not been to Oklahoma, only its neighbor Kansas, and that state is endless from one side to the other. I was on one road during my entire drive through the state, but as I looked left and right I wasn't sure if I should laugh or let myself fall apart at the site of so much repetition made real. So in the spirit of full disclosure, you should know now that I wrote this review with a sleeveless promotional CD and had no idea that the cover art for Infinite Keys is in fact a photograph of a blue sky over a green field. I only saw that afterward. And though it does make me want to trust my instincts-- maybe go into graphic design as a second career?-- it had no bearing on the review as written. Onward: Ester Drang are a five-piece from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and seem to be writing music based on cloud formations. I imagine them waiting patiently for a patch of white to explode, for a break in the otherwise steady weather, allowing them a chance to experiment with dynamics in response. Since 1995 they've put out a single, a now out-of-print EP, and last-year's somewhat lauded LP Goldenwest on Burnt Toast. With each release they've been charting a pretty straight path toward Infinite Keys, their first full-length for Jade Tree. And here, in the present, the preordained Ester-Drang cosmology doesn't shake much. From the first to the final fade, the music is a whisper. Each piece washes in dusty sheets, as though the band is literally assigning particular notes and durations to patterns in the sky. If that were the case, it could end up as a form of environmental music like the work of Chicago sound artist Collin Olan who, for example, inserted two contact microphones into a block of ice, submerged the block in water, and recorded the sounds it made as it melted. I like that-- I like theory-- but I can't invent intentions for Ester Drang and, ultimately, they don't seem to have such lofty or eccentric goals. I think, really, they really just kind of dig Radiohead. Or a section Radiohead as re-interpreated by The Gloria Record. Here and there, I've read comparisons to The Flaming Lips, and I don't get it. Though they share the same home state, and in the past collaborated with Steven Drozd on a single, the folks pushing Ester Drang as participants in some kind of Oklahoma-grown sound are stretching things to fill an easily processed critical canvas. "One Hundred Times" is where they're most openly taking from Radiohead; it's also when the stock elements of their wistfulness gel temporarily. The vocal lines cascade and plummet, little bleeps and buzzes make sense in relation to the overall density of the music, and, more importantly, there are enough pauses, build-ups, sputters, and redirections to make you feel like you're flying somewhere, leaping over your mundane town in a single bound. "Oceans of You" is the indie-rock version of Coldplay, shouting gracefully about "problems" fading. Incandescent shit-- I can imagine them performing this with an orchestra at the Grammys: lights flicker, the orchestra blows a fuse (some dude passes out in row one!), and as I watch from my living room floor I wonder if I'm supposed to feel something. The music is pretty-- it's difficult to deny that-- but so are the sounds of cars driving by your house at 4AM, or how the world muffles a bit when you put your ear up to a puddle. When your music is light and airy, you need to make sure it's compelling. While Radiohead are often bogged down by over-ambitious themes, they're at least constructing a poetics of experimentation, as well as a cogent if somewhat scattered message beyond their plush walls of sound. All I can cull from this music are empty exercises in pseudo-orchetral ear candy. Which is fine to a point: Sigur Ros (an easy comparison) move people to tears without the majority of their audience comprehending a single word of their lyrics, and like Ester Drang, they aren't exactly breaking new ground. Unlike Ester Drang, their stuff is a gale of goddamn triumph; Infinite Keys rumbles by like a draft through a cracked window, a tiny shift in the atmosphere, leaving only the vaguest of impressions.

Artist: Ester Drang, Album: Infinite Keys, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "I imagine there are big ol' skies in Oklahoma. Though I've never been there, I associate the labor-conquers-all state with ridiculously wide expanses of blue that at times seem oppressive in their beauty. I can only assume these atmospheric conditions, though: I've not been to Oklahoma, only its neighbor Kansas, and that state is endless from one side to the other. I was on one road during my entire drive through the state, but as I looked left and right I wasn't sure if I should laugh or let myself fall apart at the site of so much repetition made real. So in the spirit of full disclosure, you should know now that I wrote this review with a sleeveless promotional CD and had no idea that the cover art for Infinite Keys is in fact a photograph of a blue sky over a green field. I only saw that afterward. And though it does make me want to trust my instincts-- maybe go into graphic design as a second career?-- it had no bearing on the review as written. Onward: Ester Drang are a five-piece from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and seem to be writing music based on cloud formations. I imagine them waiting patiently for a patch of white to explode, for a break in the otherwise steady weather, allowing them a chance to experiment with dynamics in response. Since 1995 they've put out a single, a now out-of-print EP, and last-year's somewhat lauded LP Goldenwest on Burnt Toast. With each release they've been charting a pretty straight path toward Infinite Keys, their first full-length for Jade Tree. And here, in the present, the preordained Ester-Drang cosmology doesn't shake much. From the first to the final fade, the music is a whisper. Each piece washes in dusty sheets, as though the band is literally assigning particular notes and durations to patterns in the sky. If that were the case, it could end up as a form of environmental music like the work of Chicago sound artist Collin Olan who, for example, inserted two contact microphones into a block of ice, submerged the block in water, and recorded the sounds it made as it melted. I like that-- I like theory-- but I can't invent intentions for Ester Drang and, ultimately, they don't seem to have such lofty or eccentric goals. I think, really, they really just kind of dig Radiohead. Or a section Radiohead as re-interpreated by The Gloria Record. Here and there, I've read comparisons to The Flaming Lips, and I don't get it. Though they share the same home state, and in the past collaborated with Steven Drozd on a single, the folks pushing Ester Drang as participants in some kind of Oklahoma-grown sound are stretching things to fill an easily processed critical canvas. "One Hundred Times" is where they're most openly taking from Radiohead; it's also when the stock elements of their wistfulness gel temporarily. The vocal lines cascade and plummet, little bleeps and buzzes make sense in relation to the overall density of the music, and, more importantly, there are enough pauses, build-ups, sputters, and redirections to make you feel like you're flying somewhere, leaping over your mundane town in a single bound. "Oceans of You" is the indie-rock version of Coldplay, shouting gracefully about "problems" fading. Incandescent shit-- I can imagine them performing this with an orchestra at the Grammys: lights flicker, the orchestra blows a fuse (some dude passes out in row one!), and as I watch from my living room floor I wonder if I'm supposed to feel something. The music is pretty-- it's difficult to deny that-- but so are the sounds of cars driving by your house at 4AM, or how the world muffles a bit when you put your ear up to a puddle. When your music is light and airy, you need to make sure it's compelling. While Radiohead are often bogged down by over-ambitious themes, they're at least constructing a poetics of experimentation, as well as a cogent if somewhat scattered message beyond their plush walls of sound. All I can cull from this music are empty exercises in pseudo-orchetral ear candy. Which is fine to a point: Sigur Ros (an easy comparison) move people to tears without the majority of their audience comprehending a single word of their lyrics, and like Ester Drang, they aren't exactly breaking new ground. Unlike Ester Drang, their stuff is a gale of goddamn triumph; Infinite Keys rumbles by like a draft through a cracked window, a tiny shift in the atmosphere, leaving only the vaguest of impressions."

U2

The Best of 1990-2000

Rock

William Bowers

As anyone who has read this site's reviews of The Eminem Show or Source Tags & Codes knows, Interscope bought Pitchfork editor Ryan Schreiber one of those personal, surfable wave pools like the guy from Mötley Crüe has. Otherwise, why would we review this? Pitchfork's quasi-pride is in opening reader ears to new music, and unless you're a Kaczynskian separatist, these songs have already been smuggled into your pop consciousness like drugs into Woodstock 99. Speaking of that rape-tastic festival and time-lapse history of market forces, what from the 90s will be remarkable to future armchair musicologists? The subcurrents way outperformed the mainstream, and even those subcurrents look to be outperformed by the 00s' bustling underbelly-dwellers. Please tell me that, as fads recycle, 2013 won't see the kids snorting coke off of each other's ripped-up leather as they rock out to industrio-clash. U2 spent the 90s either in a war with Negativland, or marketing themselves as a celebration of, spoof of, critique of, and source of rampant consumption and multimedia force-feeding. No one in the 90s thought of warplanes when they heard the name U2; they thought it referred to the band's exponential unit-shiftin'. Having a remotely acronymic name put U2 in good company in the eighties (REM, XTC, PIL, INXS), while the 90s saw the proliferation of TLC, KFC and AIDS. So I can hardly blame U2 for becoming a satire of U2, then a lite-techno version of U2, only to emerge in 2000 as a U2 tribute band. As if the band internalized the poet Wallace Stevens' line, "We have been a little insane about the truth," U2 flagrantly tested the elasticity of their sound, appearance, attitude, and fanbase. One thing the band hasn't dicked around with is how many ways they'll grub for your filthy lucre, releasing, as is well within the rights of any band this huge, a zillion different nation-specific versions of their singles, and even several different limited import versions of this comp: There's a bonus-track edition with "The Fly", a Japanese set with 31 tracks, and another two-disc version including a DVD and many of the one-disc version's curious absentees, albeit in B-side (sigh) remixed form. Best of luck to any stormchasers who want to pay shipping for all that; I'll stick to discussing the 16-track version you're most likely to find at Wal-Mart or Jaded Colonel's Aging Towny Discs and Vinyl. If'n I was an exec at the band's label, I'd have recommended wide-releasing a two-disc lookbackamajig rather than equitably represent the lesser material. Simply repackage the gorgeous Achtung Baby as The Best of 1990-2000, and then include a bonus disc anthologizing high points from their other recent records, entitled either a) the humbling Things We Dropped Along the Way, b) the 80s-linking Still Haven't Found What We're Looking For, c) the Clinton-nodding Mistakes Were Made, or d) the spiritual When There Were Only Two Sets of Footprints, That's When the Rhythm Section Was Carrying Us. By now you've no doubt heard the limerick (apropos for this Irish quartet) so popular with sixth graders who, preferring to blame the man who made PJ Harvey boring, overlook the work of sirs Eno, Lanois, and Orbit: There once was a band named U2, Who ruled and then mightily blew. When asked, "Hey, what happened?" The band took a crap and Flood had someone remix their pooh. But there's something interesting about U2's willingness to endlessly reconfigure their recent songs. Either they're admitting that the quality of their output has declined and is no longer utterly singular, or they're admitting that they're tired of operating under the weight of having their work regarded as so damn canonical. The band definitely, and consciously, shed its sacrosanctity in the 90s, and it's fitting that one of this collection's brand new songs appears in a remix version, while the "original" is relegated to a B-side of one the many versions of its remix's single, as if the band disdained it. Maybe all the tinkering is an attempt to circumvent how the populist, but diluting, dance touches of Zooropa and Pop date themselves. That new song, "Electrical Storm", is a fine one for this version of U2, which means that it plays like a funkier, happier, more colossally passionate Coldplay/Radiohead hybrid. "Electrical Storm" also brings up the quandary of why two songs from 2002 are on a collection that's supposed to be an honest-to-goodness decade-spanner. Please tell me these tunes weren't tossed together unscrupulously in order to spice this November release up for that clusterfucked "holiday" that blends druids and messiahs and credit limits and gorging on mall foodcourt slurry. The other brand new tune on 1990-2000 is the theme from Gangs of New York, Scorsese's ambitious film about a magician's rivalry with a younger version of the cowardly lion of Oz for the heart of a transvestite, set against the backdrop of the riots that almost destroyed the Muppet Christmas Carol soundstage. Instead of living up to the film's gleeful taste for swindle and skullduggery, the song, "The Hands That Built America", is a woozy wedge of that empty grandeur that plagued the band's return to seriousness on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. See that album's pre-9-11 "New York", or the band's 9-11 tribute during the tragedy's subsequent Super Bowl. The band's heart is in the right place, but in that heart/place lie stupid songs. With the heavy-handed "Hands", U2 have finally penned their answer to "This Used to Be My Greyhound", or whatever that Madonna song was a commercial for. Another way "Hands" sucks is that it pillages the cool operatic moment from "Miss Sarajevo", a song otherwise a pillage of a Velvet Underground chorus and a pillage of The Byrds' pillage of Ecclesiastes, from U2's clever Passengers project, a record of songs for fictional movies that worked as a tongue-in-cheek statement about how good the movies have been to U2, a band whose image and tours have always seemed larger than life. Even the videotaped footage of the indignant Bono goose-stepping through "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was somehow cinematic in scope, and made their later film Rattle and Hum a no-brainer. One prays that an Imax feature isn't looming if U2 devolves into the Stones. In addition to the Gangs theme, and the Pavarotti-sampling film-fake "Sarajevo", this disc features soundtrack work from Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World and Batman Forever (U2's song is, of course, their orchestral-rock action-franchise counterpart to McCartney's Bond-anthem "Live and Let Die"). Curiously

Artist: U2, Album: The Best of 1990-2000, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 5.6 Album review: "As anyone who has read this site's reviews of The Eminem Show or Source Tags & Codes knows, Interscope bought Pitchfork editor Ryan Schreiber one of those personal, surfable wave pools like the guy from Mötley Crüe has. Otherwise, why would we review this? Pitchfork's quasi-pride is in opening reader ears to new music, and unless you're a Kaczynskian separatist, these songs have already been smuggled into your pop consciousness like drugs into Woodstock 99. Speaking of that rape-tastic festival and time-lapse history of market forces, what from the 90s will be remarkable to future armchair musicologists? The subcurrents way outperformed the mainstream, and even those subcurrents look to be outperformed by the 00s' bustling underbelly-dwellers. Please tell me that, as fads recycle, 2013 won't see the kids snorting coke off of each other's ripped-up leather as they rock out to industrio-clash. U2 spent the 90s either in a war with Negativland, or marketing themselves as a celebration of, spoof of, critique of, and source of rampant consumption and multimedia force-feeding. No one in the 90s thought of warplanes when they heard the name U2; they thought it referred to the band's exponential unit-shiftin'. Having a remotely acronymic name put U2 in good company in the eighties (REM, XTC, PIL, INXS), while the 90s saw the proliferation of TLC, KFC and AIDS. So I can hardly blame U2 for becoming a satire of U2, then a lite-techno version of U2, only to emerge in 2000 as a U2 tribute band. As if the band internalized the poet Wallace Stevens' line, "We have been a little insane about the truth," U2 flagrantly tested the elasticity of their sound, appearance, attitude, and fanbase. One thing the band hasn't dicked around with is how many ways they'll grub for your filthy lucre, releasing, as is well within the rights of any band this huge, a zillion different nation-specific versions of their singles, and even several different limited import versions of this comp: There's a bonus-track edition with "The Fly", a Japanese set with 31 tracks, and another two-disc version including a DVD and many of the one-disc version's curious absentees, albeit in B-side (sigh) remixed form. Best of luck to any stormchasers who want to pay shipping for all that; I'll stick to discussing the 16-track version you're most likely to find at Wal-Mart or Jaded Colonel's Aging Towny Discs and Vinyl. If'n I was an exec at the band's label, I'd have recommended wide-releasing a two-disc lookbackamajig rather than equitably represent the lesser material. Simply repackage the gorgeous Achtung Baby as The Best of 1990-2000, and then include a bonus disc anthologizing high points from their other recent records, entitled either a) the humbling Things We Dropped Along the Way, b) the 80s-linking Still Haven't Found What We're Looking For, c) the Clinton-nodding Mistakes Were Made, or d) the spiritual When There Were Only Two Sets of Footprints, That's When the Rhythm Section Was Carrying Us. By now you've no doubt heard the limerick (apropos for this Irish quartet) so popular with sixth graders who, preferring to blame the man who made PJ Harvey boring, overlook the work of sirs Eno, Lanois, and Orbit: There once was a band named U2, Who ruled and then mightily blew. When asked, "Hey, what happened?" The band took a crap and Flood had someone remix their pooh. But there's something interesting about U2's willingness to endlessly reconfigure their recent songs. Either they're admitting that the quality of their output has declined and is no longer utterly singular, or they're admitting that they're tired of operating under the weight of having their work regarded as so damn canonical. The band definitely, and consciously, shed its sacrosanctity in the 90s, and it's fitting that one of this collection's brand new songs appears in a remix version, while the "original" is relegated to a B-side of one the many versions of its remix's single, as if the band disdained it. Maybe all the tinkering is an attempt to circumvent how the populist, but diluting, dance touches of Zooropa and Pop date themselves. That new song, "Electrical Storm", is a fine one for this version of U2, which means that it plays like a funkier, happier, more colossally passionate Coldplay/Radiohead hybrid. "Electrical Storm" also brings up the quandary of why two songs from 2002 are on a collection that's supposed to be an honest-to-goodness decade-spanner. Please tell me these tunes weren't tossed together unscrupulously in order to spice this November release up for that clusterfucked "holiday" that blends druids and messiahs and credit limits and gorging on mall foodcourt slurry. The other brand new tune on 1990-2000 is the theme from Gangs of New York, Scorsese's ambitious film about a magician's rivalry with a younger version of the cowardly lion of Oz for the heart of a transvestite, set against the backdrop of the riots that almost destroyed the Muppet Christmas Carol soundstage. Instead of living up to the film's gleeful taste for swindle and skullduggery, the song, "The Hands That Built America", is a woozy wedge of that empty grandeur that plagued the band's return to seriousness on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. See that album's pre-9-11 "New York", or the band's 9-11 tribute during the tragedy's subsequent Super Bowl. The band's heart is in the right place, but in that heart/place lie stupid songs. With the heavy-handed "Hands", U2 have finally penned their answer to "This Used to Be My Greyhound", or whatever that Madonna song was a commercial for. Another way "Hands" sucks is that it pillages the cool operatic moment from "Miss Sarajevo", a song otherwise a pillage of a Velvet Underground chorus and a pillage of The Byrds' pillage of Ecclesiastes, from U2's clever Passengers project, a record of songs for fictional movies that worked as a tongue-in-cheek statement about how good the movies have been to U2, a band whose image and tours have always seemed larger than life. Even the videotaped footage of the indignant Bono goose-stepping through "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was somehow cinematic in scope, and made their later film Rattle and Hum a no-brainer. One prays that an Imax feature isn't looming if U2 devolves into the Stones. In addition to the Gangs theme, and the Pavarotti-sampling film-fake "Sarajevo", this disc features soundtrack work from Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World and Batman Forever (U2's song is, of course, their orchestral-rock action-franchise counterpart to McCartney's Bond-anthem "Live and Let Die"). Curiously"

Pistol Annies

Interstate Gospel

Folk/Country

Mike Powell

Whenever I think about Pistol Annies, I think, invariably, of something Ashley Monroe told an interviewer shortly after the trio formed in 2011. Talking about her nickname within the group—“Hippie Annie”—Monroe explained, “I always said I was a hillbilly hippie. I want everybody to be fine; I want everybody to be calm and love each other, and the world to be bright and pretty. But I’ll do yoga while I’m watching ‘Cops,’ because I’m a redneck, too.” Like the band’s music, the quote is funny, honest, and liable to give you just a little bit of whiplash; “Cops”—not squirrel gravy or making your own clothes or some other rural fetish on which one could hang a medal of authenticity, but a reality TV show about trashy people in the heat of some really bad luck. Though often framed as a rebuttal to the polish of modern country, the band never seemed like they were trying to stop time or return to an imaginary place of roots. If anything, what makes them stand out is the suggestion that these old, unvarnished sounds—honky-tonk, southern rock, tinges of bluegrass—are compatible not only with modern attitudes but with the concision of pop. In the world of Pistol Annies, “daddy” is less the weatherworn figure of self-sacrifice than the guy talking conspiracy theories over Christmas turkey, and the proverbial bottle—country’s totem of personal decline—isn’t filled with whiskey, but prescription pills. Their songs’ protagonists—women, always women—are either sacking up or breaking down, “third-generation bartenders” with bumper stickers that read Honk If You’re Horny limping toward the next car payment. For them, the good old days is just a corny idea you might use to sell country music. Plenty has happened in the five years since their last album, Annie Up. Monroe and Angaleena Presley, both of whom were primarily songwriters-for-hire when the band began, have become successful solo artists, releasing some of the better country-adjacent albums of the decade (Monroe’s Like a Rose and Presley’s Wrangled, among others). Miranda Lambert, already a platinum-selling artist when the Annies started out, solidified herself as the most visible—and bankable—feminist in country, and one of the sharper living songwriters in general. As for their personal lives, I defer to Lambert, who in a recent interview described the passage from Annie Up to Interstate Gospel by saying, “We have stats. We have two ex-husbands [Presley, Lambert], two husbands [Presley, Monroe], two kids [Presley, Monroe], one on the way [Presley], and 25 animals.” In a video of the interview, you can see Lambert ticking these markers off with her finger like battle scars, then turning to the DJ and smiling—with full teeth—a tight smile that seems to say that that’s the last any of them have to say about that. Co-produced by longtime collaborator Frank Liddell, Interstate Gospel is earthier than Annie Up, and a little more poised than their 2011 debut, Hell on Heels. There are flashes of bluegrass (“Interstate Gospel”) and New Orleans funk (“Sugar Daddy”) and big-sky psychedelic rock (“Commissary”)—sounds that frame the band not as industry veterans but as outlaws and mountain mamas. The album’s cover pictures them barefoot, and the sound follows. Like a lot of great country music, the songs here are staked not on novelty but on convention, on familiar stereotypes captured in unfamiliar depth. Take “Cheyenne,” the bad girl with the trashy tattoos set in motion by sadness so powerful it almost looks like freedom. Or the small-town housewife of “Milkman,” who passes into old age satisfied with the delusion that she kept her regrets a secret. Or the new divorcee of “Got My Name Changed Back,” who comes on like a paradigm of self-sufficiency before confessing—with a bitterness I have almost never heard outside a rap record—that at least she got the fucker’s money. As always, the premium remains on real talk, which the band dispenses with the unsparing resolve of someone who’s been listening the whole time but has not been paid attention to until now. These are attractive characters, and repellent ones; women you either want to be or talk shit about. The most nuanced of them—on “Best Years of My Life,” “Milkman,” and the haunting “Commissary”—seem animated not by anger but by guilt so deep-seated it has become chromosomal. Like the polar bear sent into an existential tailspin because he feels cold, the women on Interstate Gospel seem not at odds with themselves so much as the roles to which they’ve been assigned. Listening to Interstate Gospel, I felt a reservoir of sympathy for my mother. Thrice married and thrice divorced, survivor of domestic abuse, holder of a dozen careers, well-educated but as foolish as any of us, nobody has taught me more about the transformational power of loss. And still, I have watched her laugh and watched her be happy; watched her, hours after signing the papers on her second divorce, standing at the blender with a margarita in hand telling my kid brother to tell his teachers she couldn’t help him with his homework because, in her words, “Mom got drunk.” (He did; the school called.) Stubborn, funny, occasionally regretful, and proudly proud, she soldiers on. These songs—the hot mess of “Stop Drop and Roll One,” the numbed reckoning of “Best Years of My Life,” the regrets of “Milkman” and the redemption of “Interstate Gospel”: These are my mother; these are what I know of mothers; these are what I think of when I think of strong women. And yes, women, and not men, who mask their pettiness with justification and their regret with self-pity. I remember the day when my mother called me from the steps of the courthouse, happy as could be that she had once again reclaimed the name with which she was born. Hopped-up, bittersweet, twice bitten, and unshy, it sounded a little like this.

Artist: Pistol Annies, Album: Interstate Gospel, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "Whenever I think about Pistol Annies, I think, invariably, of something Ashley Monroe told an interviewer shortly after the trio formed in 2011. Talking about her nickname within the group—“Hippie Annie”—Monroe explained, “I always said I was a hillbilly hippie. I want everybody to be fine; I want everybody to be calm and love each other, and the world to be bright and pretty. But I’ll do yoga while I’m watching ‘Cops,’ because I’m a redneck, too.” Like the band’s music, the quote is funny, honest, and liable to give you just a little bit of whiplash; “Cops”—not squirrel gravy or making your own clothes or some other rural fetish on which one could hang a medal of authenticity, but a reality TV show about trashy people in the heat of some really bad luck. Though often framed as a rebuttal to the polish of modern country, the band never seemed like they were trying to stop time or return to an imaginary place of roots. If anything, what makes them stand out is the suggestion that these old, unvarnished sounds—honky-tonk, southern rock, tinges of bluegrass—are compatible not only with modern attitudes but with the concision of pop. In the world of Pistol Annies, “daddy” is less the weatherworn figure of self-sacrifice than the guy talking conspiracy theories over Christmas turkey, and the proverbial bottle—country’s totem of personal decline—isn’t filled with whiskey, but prescription pills. Their songs’ protagonists—women, always women—are either sacking up or breaking down, “third-generation bartenders” with bumper stickers that read Honk If You’re Horny limping toward the next car payment. For them, the good old days is just a corny idea you might use to sell country music. Plenty has happened in the five years since their last album, Annie Up. Monroe and Angaleena Presley, both of whom were primarily songwriters-for-hire when the band began, have become successful solo artists, releasing some of the better country-adjacent albums of the decade (Monroe’s Like a Rose and Presley’s Wrangled, among others). Miranda Lambert, already a platinum-selling artist when the Annies started out, solidified herself as the most visible—and bankable—feminist in country, and one of the sharper living songwriters in general. As for their personal lives, I defer to Lambert, who in a recent interview described the passage from Annie Up to Interstate Gospel by saying, “We have stats. We have two ex-husbands [Presley, Lambert], two husbands [Presley, Monroe], two kids [Presley, Monroe], one on the way [Presley], and 25 animals.” In a video of the interview, you can see Lambert ticking these markers off with her finger like battle scars, then turning to the DJ and smiling—with full teeth—a tight smile that seems to say that that’s the last any of them have to say about that. Co-produced by longtime collaborator Frank Liddell, Interstate Gospel is earthier than Annie Up, and a little more poised than their 2011 debut, Hell on Heels. There are flashes of bluegrass (“Interstate Gospel”) and New Orleans funk (“Sugar Daddy”) and big-sky psychedelic rock (“Commissary”)—sounds that frame the band not as industry veterans but as outlaws and mountain mamas. The album’s cover pictures them barefoot, and the sound follows. Like a lot of great country music, the songs here are staked not on novelty but on convention, on familiar stereotypes captured in unfamiliar depth. Take “Cheyenne,” the bad girl with the trashy tattoos set in motion by sadness so powerful it almost looks like freedom. Or the small-town housewife of “Milkman,” who passes into old age satisfied with the delusion that she kept her regrets a secret. Or the new divorcee of “Got My Name Changed Back,” who comes on like a paradigm of self-sufficiency before confessing—with a bitterness I have almost never heard outside a rap record—that at least she got the fucker’s money. As always, the premium remains on real talk, which the band dispenses with the unsparing resolve of someone who’s been listening the whole time but has not been paid attention to until now. These are attractive characters, and repellent ones; women you either want to be or talk shit about. The most nuanced of them—on “Best Years of My Life,” “Milkman,” and the haunting “Commissary”—seem animated not by anger but by guilt so deep-seated it has become chromosomal. Like the polar bear sent into an existential tailspin because he feels cold, the women on Interstate Gospel seem not at odds with themselves so much as the roles to which they’ve been assigned. Listening to Interstate Gospel, I felt a reservoir of sympathy for my mother. Thrice married and thrice divorced, survivor of domestic abuse, holder of a dozen careers, well-educated but as foolish as any of us, nobody has taught me more about the transformational power of loss. And still, I have watched her laugh and watched her be happy; watched her, hours after signing the papers on her second divorce, standing at the blender with a margarita in hand telling my kid brother to tell his teachers she couldn’t help him with his homework because, in her words, “Mom got drunk.” (He did; the school called.) Stubborn, funny, occasionally regretful, and proudly proud, she soldiers on. These songs—the hot mess of “Stop Drop and Roll One,” the numbed reckoning of “Best Years of My Life,” the regrets of “Milkman” and the redemption of “Interstate Gospel”: These are my mother; these are what I know of mothers; these are what I think of when I think of strong women. And yes, women, and not men, who mask their pettiness with justification and their regret with self-pity. I remember the day when my mother called me from the steps of the courthouse, happy as could be that she had once again reclaimed the name with which she was born. Hopped-up, bittersweet, twice bitten, and unshy, it sounded a little like this."

Code of Honor

Complete Studio Recordings 1982-1984

Metal,Rock

Zach Baron

As early hardcore schtick, Code of Honor's central conceit-- an actual, 11-part honor code-- ranks somewhere below 7 Seconds' eye-black and batting gloves stage-wear, and a little above Minor Threat's X-ed up hands. Totally ridiculous, but explicable: Eighties hardcore, famous for being Neanderthal music (see: Youth of Today), was still remarkably conceptual-- ridiculous, goofy, but nevertheless thought through. So there's really no good way to contextualize, or even describe, the weirdness of the rebirth of bands like Code of Honor into the contemporary, and wildly inhospitable, review cycle. Where today's bands generally have their context handed to them-- all things being equal on the internet or in the digital download store-- Code of Honor are a relic of a different time when bands fought fiercely merely to explain what the fuck they were. Hence the honor code. Code of Honor guitarist Michael Fox was, then and now, a linchpin of the San Francisco punk scene. Co-founder of Subterranean Records, the label that released Flipper onto the world (plus the seminal SF Underground 7" comp), Fox was a Maximumrocknroll darling who played in a series of respected Bay Area bands: Tools, Sick Pleasure, and eventually, Code of Honor. In California, Black Flag, Bad Religion, and the Adolescents already had records out; in their native San Francisco, Code of Honor were immediately and consistently eclipsed by the Dead Kennedys. In the east, Minor Threat and Bad Brains ruled; in the Midwest, it was Hüsker Dü and Die Kreuzen. Like Articles of Faith, Chicago's proto-emo thrash band of that era, Code of Honor were known by many but only loved by a very few. Even Code of Honor's label was better known for issuing records from the San Fran "freak scene," including what Simon Reynolds called "the San Francisco counterpart to No New York," the live comp Live at Target. Articles of Faith, a similarly marginal band, embarked on a reissue campaign in the 1990s and when the recordings resurfaced, they were a shock. Here was a band, it turned out, that had been obviously worshipped by acts as diverse as Born Against and Rites of Spring, presaging a far thrashier hardcore even as they laid down a bunch of the groundwork for emo as an eventual genre. Code of Honor, graced with the re-release of their Complete Studio Recordings: 1982-1984, turn out to have no such surprises in store. They were an average era group. They showed flashes of Minutemen funk ("What Are We Gonna Do??") and flirted with the type of melodic hardcore that Dag Nasty and others would later perfect ("Attempted Control"). "Beware the Savage Jaw" is a better 7 Seconds than 7 Seconds ever managed. But their songs are less visionary than completely of their time. As gentle reprimand, then, to today's largely apolitical music world, the decision by Subterranean to release Code of Honor's Complete Studio Recordings makes a lot more sense. Having had their entire context demolished-- when these recordings were originally released, the band was part of a popular and widespread first wave hardcore movement that loved speed and loathed Reagan in equal measure, and made song after song about it-- they're not wrong to remind people they once existed. This a band, after all, that wrote the following in 1982: "The destruction of peace in the Far and Middle East/ They playing their game/ We all know what it's for/ Their eyes are money/ They're planning for war." Code of Honor were inspiring, though, for the same reason that it's almost impossible to get through Complete Studio Recordings in one sitting: a relentless, monotonous, note of a protest. You don't have to miss four chord thrash and atonal yelling to wonder why it's so difficult for another act, any act, to say something as simple as "Kill your leaders/ They all must go/ Like Ronald Reagan's fascist soul/ They're like a plague that never ends/ They create death/ They're not our friends...Fight or die!"

Artist: Code of Honor, Album: Complete Studio Recordings 1982-1984, Genre: Metal,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "As early hardcore schtick, Code of Honor's central conceit-- an actual, 11-part honor code-- ranks somewhere below 7 Seconds' eye-black and batting gloves stage-wear, and a little above Minor Threat's X-ed up hands. Totally ridiculous, but explicable: Eighties hardcore, famous for being Neanderthal music (see: Youth of Today), was still remarkably conceptual-- ridiculous, goofy, but nevertheless thought through. So there's really no good way to contextualize, or even describe, the weirdness of the rebirth of bands like Code of Honor into the contemporary, and wildly inhospitable, review cycle. Where today's bands generally have their context handed to them-- all things being equal on the internet or in the digital download store-- Code of Honor are a relic of a different time when bands fought fiercely merely to explain what the fuck they were. Hence the honor code. Code of Honor guitarist Michael Fox was, then and now, a linchpin of the San Francisco punk scene. Co-founder of Subterranean Records, the label that released Flipper onto the world (plus the seminal SF Underground 7" comp), Fox was a Maximumrocknroll darling who played in a series of respected Bay Area bands: Tools, Sick Pleasure, and eventually, Code of Honor. In California, Black Flag, Bad Religion, and the Adolescents already had records out; in their native San Francisco, Code of Honor were immediately and consistently eclipsed by the Dead Kennedys. In the east, Minor Threat and Bad Brains ruled; in the Midwest, it was Hüsker Dü and Die Kreuzen. Like Articles of Faith, Chicago's proto-emo thrash band of that era, Code of Honor were known by many but only loved by a very few. Even Code of Honor's label was better known for issuing records from the San Fran "freak scene," including what Simon Reynolds called "the San Francisco counterpart to No New York," the live comp Live at Target. Articles of Faith, a similarly marginal band, embarked on a reissue campaign in the 1990s and when the recordings resurfaced, they were a shock. Here was a band, it turned out, that had been obviously worshipped by acts as diverse as Born Against and Rites of Spring, presaging a far thrashier hardcore even as they laid down a bunch of the groundwork for emo as an eventual genre. Code of Honor, graced with the re-release of their Complete Studio Recordings: 1982-1984, turn out to have no such surprises in store. They were an average era group. They showed flashes of Minutemen funk ("What Are We Gonna Do??") and flirted with the type of melodic hardcore that Dag Nasty and others would later perfect ("Attempted Control"). "Beware the Savage Jaw" is a better 7 Seconds than 7 Seconds ever managed. But their songs are less visionary than completely of their time. As gentle reprimand, then, to today's largely apolitical music world, the decision by Subterranean to release Code of Honor's Complete Studio Recordings makes a lot more sense. Having had their entire context demolished-- when these recordings were originally released, the band was part of a popular and widespread first wave hardcore movement that loved speed and loathed Reagan in equal measure, and made song after song about it-- they're not wrong to remind people they once existed. This a band, after all, that wrote the following in 1982: "The destruction of peace in the Far and Middle East/ They playing their game/ We all know what it's for/ Their eyes are money/ They're planning for war." Code of Honor were inspiring, though, for the same reason that it's almost impossible to get through Complete Studio Recordings in one sitting: a relentless, monotonous, note of a protest. You don't have to miss four chord thrash and atonal yelling to wonder why it's so difficult for another act, any act, to say something as simple as "Kill your leaders/ They all must go/ Like Ronald Reagan's fascist soul/ They're like a plague that never ends/ They create death/ They're not our friends...Fight or die!""

Twist

Distancing

Rock

Calum Marsh

Buzz Records was born in a house off Spadina Avenue in Toronto’s Chinatown as a way to release cassette tapes of concerts held in the garage. Over the last seven years, it’s grown to become one of the most prominent record labels in the city—as indispensable to the burgeoning indie scene today as Arts & Crafts was to the indie rock renaissance that fostered Stars, Feist, and Broken Social Scene in the early 2000s. From Weaves to Dilly Dally to Odonis Odonis—whose bassist Denholm Whale founded the label with friend and roommate Erik Jude—the Buzz roster has a sound and vision, as punk and DIY as you’d expect from its origins. The aesthetic is represented well by Twist, whose second album, Distancing, is entirely typical of the Buzz aesthetic and the philosophy that has brought it forth from the underground. Twist is singer-songwriter Laura Hermiston, who shares with Dilly Dally’s Katie Monks and Weaves’s Jasmyn Burke a similar attitude of rock abandon and creative invention. She makes an expressive indie-pop that uses a sound-expanding echo to fill out her otherwise straightforward compositions. Distancing is an album full of counterintuitive decisions with an elusive spirit—playful and sometimes slippery—that makes this record a compelling listen. Her songwriting has something of the pop simplicity of the girl groups of the 1960s: sunny vocal melodies, big pop punch, understated lyrics with familiar sentiments both cheerful and melancholic. On Distancing, she develops a number of simple, lucid themes: cold lovers, long roads, open doors. She might be “waiting for the feeling of love” on “Tides,” or else reflecting that she’s “been in love so many times” she’s lost count on “Waves.” (It’s no coincidence that both titles work the same image.) She finds ways to poke and prod these lines with her voice, like the way it curves up toward the end of each sentence in the middle of “Towers” as she asks simply, “Does it make you feel good?” She gets a lot out of that little “good.” The production is dense, busy, and prominent throughout, to the point that many of these songs are unrecognizable from how they’re performed live. Brian Borcherdt, of the beloved Canadian instrumental electronic band Holy Fuck, comes on as producer. He has an obvious, even ostentatious influence, so much so that he seems more active collaborator on the album’s soundworld than merely the technician shepherding it to fruition. Still, his deft touch, most clear on the strikingly dancey “Waves,” gives Hermiston the latitude to be more adventurous, and she integrates even the most unmistakably Borcherdt-ish flourishes into her work with ease and intrigue. This approach—simple songwriting juiced up with a complicating frisson on the backend—is rewarding even if it exhausts its potential just as the album draws to a close. Still, resourcefulness and imagination are Twist’s key strengths, the reasons for her place on Buzz, and what lifts Distancing above common underground rock and into rarer air.

Artist: Twist, Album: Distancing, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "Buzz Records was born in a house off Spadina Avenue in Toronto’s Chinatown as a way to release cassette tapes of concerts held in the garage. Over the last seven years, it’s grown to become one of the most prominent record labels in the city—as indispensable to the burgeoning indie scene today as Arts & Crafts was to the indie rock renaissance that fostered Stars, Feist, and Broken Social Scene in the early 2000s. From Weaves to Dilly Dally to Odonis Odonis—whose bassist Denholm Whale founded the label with friend and roommate Erik Jude—the Buzz roster has a sound and vision, as punk and DIY as you’d expect from its origins. The aesthetic is represented well by Twist, whose second album, Distancing, is entirely typical of the Buzz aesthetic and the philosophy that has brought it forth from the underground. Twist is singer-songwriter Laura Hermiston, who shares with Dilly Dally’s Katie Monks and Weaves’s Jasmyn Burke a similar attitude of rock abandon and creative invention. She makes an expressive indie-pop that uses a sound-expanding echo to fill out her otherwise straightforward compositions. Distancing is an album full of counterintuitive decisions with an elusive spirit—playful and sometimes slippery—that makes this record a compelling listen. Her songwriting has something of the pop simplicity of the girl groups of the 1960s: sunny vocal melodies, big pop punch, understated lyrics with familiar sentiments both cheerful and melancholic. On Distancing, she develops a number of simple, lucid themes: cold lovers, long roads, open doors. She might be “waiting for the feeling of love” on “Tides,” or else reflecting that she’s “been in love so many times” she’s lost count on “Waves.” (It’s no coincidence that both titles work the same image.) She finds ways to poke and prod these lines with her voice, like the way it curves up toward the end of each sentence in the middle of “Towers” as she asks simply, “Does it make you feel good?” She gets a lot out of that little “good.” The production is dense, busy, and prominent throughout, to the point that many of these songs are unrecognizable from how they’re performed live. Brian Borcherdt, of the beloved Canadian instrumental electronic band Holy Fuck, comes on as producer. He has an obvious, even ostentatious influence, so much so that he seems more active collaborator on the album’s soundworld than merely the technician shepherding it to fruition. Still, his deft touch, most clear on the strikingly dancey “Waves,” gives Hermiston the latitude to be more adventurous, and she integrates even the most unmistakably Borcherdt-ish flourishes into her work with ease and intrigue. This approach—simple songwriting juiced up with a complicating frisson on the backend—is rewarding even if it exhausts its potential just as the album draws to a close. Still, resourcefulness and imagination are Twist’s key strengths, the reasons for her place on Buzz, and what lifts Distancing above common underground rock and into rarer air."

Islands

Arm's Way

Rock

Rebecca Raber

This should be a victory lap for Islands. After all, their uniformly excellent debut resuscitated Paul Simon's Graceland as an indie pop touchstone back when Vampire Weekend were still playing in the quad. And with that album's bouncy calypso rhythms and hip-hop bursts, Jaime Thompson and Nick Thorburn (previously known by their noms de rock J'aime Tambeur and Nick Diamonds), succeeded in laying to rest the ghost of their beloved former group, the Unicorns. Since then, they have honed their breezy, buoyant sound on the road, and, despite Thompson's departure from the lineup, the Montreal-based sextet seemed on the verge of a major breakthrough, as demonstrated by moving from tiny indie label Equator to Anti-, home of such classy "career" acts as Nick Cave and Billy Bragg. But Arm's Way, which does away with the musical levity and genre experimentations of Return to the Sea, is much darker and more conventional than its predecessor, and not, unfortunately, to its benefit. Islands' new obsession with darkness does, however, make sense. The throughline between all of Thorburn's records (with Islands and the Unicorns) is a lyrical obsession with death in all of its forms-- from the corporal (bones) to the metaphysical (ghosts)-- so it was only a matter of time until his band tried to match its outward sound to the inner themes. Gone are the guest rappers, the acoustic nuevo-country twang, and the sunny Afro-Caribbean flourishes (though there are still a few brief flashes of them, as on chugging rocker "J'aime Vous Voire Quitter", which, two minutes in, implodes into a Bahamian "La Bamba" breakdown). In their place are theatrical string arrangements, layers of silvery, minor-key guitars, and lots of gothy synthesizers. To be fair, almost any record would suffer by comparison to their breathless first one. These songs may be less immediately catchy, but all of them have a moment in which they break away from their straightforward guitar-rock underpinning and allow strange, spacious moments to burble up from within. On "Creeper", the most memorable sing-along here, it's when the stomping 80s guitar melody briefly gives way to off-kilter bursts of steel drum. On "Abominable Snow", a song which predates Return to the Sea, it's a winsome vocal interlude that's nestled before the final crashing chorus-- a breathy call-and-response waltz that's laid against elegant violin embellishments and delicate guitar pulses. And on the record's best song, "In the Rushes", it comes after five minutes of tightly coiled build-up driven by sawing strings and Thorburn's choked, whispery warble, when the song explodes into major-key harmonies, galloping guitars, and sweetly twinkling glockenspiels. Thorburn is an imaginative songwriter and his voice (both literally and figuratively) has always been unusual. Though he often overstuffs his compositions, sometimes that excess works to his advantage. Rambling opener "The Arm", which navigates terrain that's both spare and baroque, is better off for its sprawl. Its melody matures as it encompasses soaring strings, moments of prickly pizzicato and a welcome section of last-album levity that marries golden harmonies to bright polyrhythms. Islands are at their best when they are weird. And there is plenty of weirdness on Arm's Way-- like 11-minute, three-movement album closer, "Vertigo (If It's a Crime)", and its trial-to-gallows plotline-- but it's bracketed by much more rock pomp than was expected or (probably) necessary. Bravo to the band for sidestepping the trap of trying to replicate a winning debut; if only the resulting sophomore effort didn't so blatantly feel like a losing effort.

Artist: Islands, Album: Arm's Way, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.2 Album review: "This should be a victory lap for Islands. After all, their uniformly excellent debut resuscitated Paul Simon's Graceland as an indie pop touchstone back when Vampire Weekend were still playing in the quad. And with that album's bouncy calypso rhythms and hip-hop bursts, Jaime Thompson and Nick Thorburn (previously known by their noms de rock J'aime Tambeur and Nick Diamonds), succeeded in laying to rest the ghost of their beloved former group, the Unicorns. Since then, they have honed their breezy, buoyant sound on the road, and, despite Thompson's departure from the lineup, the Montreal-based sextet seemed on the verge of a major breakthrough, as demonstrated by moving from tiny indie label Equator to Anti-, home of such classy "career" acts as Nick Cave and Billy Bragg. But Arm's Way, which does away with the musical levity and genre experimentations of Return to the Sea, is much darker and more conventional than its predecessor, and not, unfortunately, to its benefit. Islands' new obsession with darkness does, however, make sense. The throughline between all of Thorburn's records (with Islands and the Unicorns) is a lyrical obsession with death in all of its forms-- from the corporal (bones) to the metaphysical (ghosts)-- so it was only a matter of time until his band tried to match its outward sound to the inner themes. Gone are the guest rappers, the acoustic nuevo-country twang, and the sunny Afro-Caribbean flourishes (though there are still a few brief flashes of them, as on chugging rocker "J'aime Vous Voire Quitter", which, two minutes in, implodes into a Bahamian "La Bamba" breakdown). In their place are theatrical string arrangements, layers of silvery, minor-key guitars, and lots of gothy synthesizers. To be fair, almost any record would suffer by comparison to their breathless first one. These songs may be less immediately catchy, but all of them have a moment in which they break away from their straightforward guitar-rock underpinning and allow strange, spacious moments to burble up from within. On "Creeper", the most memorable sing-along here, it's when the stomping 80s guitar melody briefly gives way to off-kilter bursts of steel drum. On "Abominable Snow", a song which predates Return to the Sea, it's a winsome vocal interlude that's nestled before the final crashing chorus-- a breathy call-and-response waltz that's laid against elegant violin embellishments and delicate guitar pulses. And on the record's best song, "In the Rushes", it comes after five minutes of tightly coiled build-up driven by sawing strings and Thorburn's choked, whispery warble, when the song explodes into major-key harmonies, galloping guitars, and sweetly twinkling glockenspiels. Thorburn is an imaginative songwriter and his voice (both literally and figuratively) has always been unusual. Though he often overstuffs his compositions, sometimes that excess works to his advantage. Rambling opener "The Arm", which navigates terrain that's both spare and baroque, is better off for its sprawl. Its melody matures as it encompasses soaring strings, moments of prickly pizzicato and a welcome section of last-album levity that marries golden harmonies to bright polyrhythms. Islands are at their best when they are weird. And there is plenty of weirdness on Arm's Way-- like 11-minute, three-movement album closer, "Vertigo (If It's a Crime)", and its trial-to-gallows plotline-- but it's bracketed by much more rock pomp than was expected or (probably) necessary. Bravo to the band for sidestepping the trap of trying to replicate a winning debut; if only the resulting sophomore effort didn't so blatantly feel like a losing effort. "

Gang Gang Dance

Saint Dymphna

Experimental

Marc Masters

Gang Gang Dance's third album, God's Money, remains a revelation three years after its release. Pouring the muffled art-beats of 2004's Revival of the Shittest and the extended space-jams of 2004's Gang Gang Dance into structured songs, the record was starry and dreamy, yet also taut and focused. It made evident what was implicit from the start-- that these four hyperactive talents with underground pedigrees (see the Cranium, SSAB Songs, Angelblood, et. al.) could funnel their ideas into melodic pop without diluting them. It also suggested that Gang Gang Dance might become an all-out pop band. But three EPs since God's Money have defied such expectations. Though gems like "Nicoman" did surface, Hillulah, Retina Riddim, and RAWWAR were mostly mysterious experiments akin to the band's earlier releases. Not that any of them were anything less than good-- but none were the pop epiphany the band on God's Money seemed poised for. It turns out they had been working on that all along, and with Saint Dymphna their patience pays off. So clear and shiny it makes God's Money seem murky by comparison, this is predominantly a relative dance-pop album. But it still sounds completely like Gang Gang Dance, preserving their core of new-wave synths, tribal beats, otherworldly singing, and Residents-style loops. The biggest difference this time around is a lack of cavernous atmospheres. Here every sound and beat is laid bare, with no heavy reverb blanketing the songs like fog. The newfound clarity produces neither thinness nor tedium, but simply a direct, unadulterated power. That power is clear immediately, when opening instrumental "Bebey" melts into the rhapsodic "First Communion". Here Lizzi Bougatsos' dreamy poetry ("Prisms have kissed my lids/ Sea salt has rubbed on my hips") and the band's coiled rhythms (particularly the beat-and-synth workouts of band MVP Brian DeGraw) hit on a momentum that could easily be the album's climax. But so many peaks pop up along Saint Dymphna's continuous stream that it's tough to catalogue them all. Two moments in particular show that the more Gang Gang Dance change, the more they stay the same. After a lengthy synth opening, "Princes" becomes an actual hip-hop song featuring a rap from Tinchy Stryder. Sure, it's slightly jarring to hear his pulsing cadence paired with Bougatsos' ethereal howls, but the band's familiar elements-- especially Josh Diamond's wiry guitar line-- fit snugly around him. Even more surprising is "House Jam", a gleeful rip-off of Madonna circa "Holiday". But put the track on repeat and you might be more surprised that you never realized how well Gang Gang Dance's sound could work as 80s disco-pop. Saint Dymphna ends with "Dust", a beatific instrumental that carries the band away like a magic carpet. Often when a group with avant-garde leanings flies close to the pop sun, the results can sound forced or off-key. But since accessible melodies have always bubbled beneath their music's surface, Gang Gang Dance's evolution sounds supremely logical. And anyone who thought that the cloudy sound of previous albums was a smokescreen should think again-- it turns out the band behind that curtain really is made up of wizards.

Artist: Gang Gang Dance, Album: Saint Dymphna, Genre: Experimental, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "Gang Gang Dance's third album, God's Money, remains a revelation three years after its release. Pouring the muffled art-beats of 2004's Revival of the Shittest and the extended space-jams of 2004's Gang Gang Dance into structured songs, the record was starry and dreamy, yet also taut and focused. It made evident what was implicit from the start-- that these four hyperactive talents with underground pedigrees (see the Cranium, SSAB Songs, Angelblood, et. al.) could funnel their ideas into melodic pop without diluting them. It also suggested that Gang Gang Dance might become an all-out pop band. But three EPs since God's Money have defied such expectations. Though gems like "Nicoman" did surface, Hillulah, Retina Riddim, and RAWWAR were mostly mysterious experiments akin to the band's earlier releases. Not that any of them were anything less than good-- but none were the pop epiphany the band on God's Money seemed poised for. It turns out they had been working on that all along, and with Saint Dymphna their patience pays off. So clear and shiny it makes God's Money seem murky by comparison, this is predominantly a relative dance-pop album. But it still sounds completely like Gang Gang Dance, preserving their core of new-wave synths, tribal beats, otherworldly singing, and Residents-style loops. The biggest difference this time around is a lack of cavernous atmospheres. Here every sound and beat is laid bare, with no heavy reverb blanketing the songs like fog. The newfound clarity produces neither thinness nor tedium, but simply a direct, unadulterated power. That power is clear immediately, when opening instrumental "Bebey" melts into the rhapsodic "First Communion". Here Lizzi Bougatsos' dreamy poetry ("Prisms have kissed my lids/ Sea salt has rubbed on my hips") and the band's coiled rhythms (particularly the beat-and-synth workouts of band MVP Brian DeGraw) hit on a momentum that could easily be the album's climax. But so many peaks pop up along Saint Dymphna's continuous stream that it's tough to catalogue them all. Two moments in particular show that the more Gang Gang Dance change, the more they stay the same. After a lengthy synth opening, "Princes" becomes an actual hip-hop song featuring a rap from Tinchy Stryder. Sure, it's slightly jarring to hear his pulsing cadence paired with Bougatsos' ethereal howls, but the band's familiar elements-- especially Josh Diamond's wiry guitar line-- fit snugly around him. Even more surprising is "House Jam", a gleeful rip-off of Madonna circa "Holiday". But put the track on repeat and you might be more surprised that you never realized how well Gang Gang Dance's sound could work as 80s disco-pop. Saint Dymphna ends with "Dust", a beatific instrumental that carries the band away like a magic carpet. Often when a group with avant-garde leanings flies close to the pop sun, the results can sound forced or off-key. But since accessible melodies have always bubbled beneath their music's surface, Gang Gang Dance's evolution sounds supremely logical. And anyone who thought that the cloudy sound of previous albums was a smokescreen should think again-- it turns out the band behind that curtain really is made up of wizards."

Arp

More

Electronic

Nick Neyland

It's been a while since Alexis Georgopoulos worked under his Arp moniker, leaving three years trailing in the wake of his last full-length album, The Soft Wave. He's worked in art and modern dance in the interim, but Georgopoulos has clearly spent some time thinking about how to retool this project as well. The Soft Wave was all balmy synth textures and endlessly repeating figures, sometimes lightly prickled by waves of bass and distorted guitar. Georgopoulos found his voice toward the close of that record, forgoing his mostly instrumental work to deliver a pitch-perfect pastiche of Brian Eno's 70s vocal work on "From a Balcony Overlooking the Sea". Surprisingly, it's a thread he picks at for the bulk of MORE, settling into a more song-oriented incarnation of Arp that might cause people familiar with his older work to check the package to make sure it's not some other band. Where Georgopoulos has landed is somewhere in-between various strains of the British art school tradition, where the mundane and the fantastic are equally enthralling. It's part Roxy Music sci-fi fantasia, part Blur down-the-chip-shop scruffiness. Georgopoulos is interested in glamour for sure-- song titles here include "High-Heeled Clouds" and "A Tiger in the Hall at Versailles"-- but it's a scruffy, vaudevillian form of it. The sad, clangorous end to "Clouds" feels like a paean to actors who couldn't quite make it, to singers who had a shot at the big time and just fell short. It's heavy on pastiche, but very well done at times. You won't hear a better piece of Eno worship than "Judy Nylon" this year. Even the title is wonderfully Eno-esque. It's too bad Georgopoulos waits until the closing track, "Persuasion", to get anywhere near the same sense of pop euphoria again. So there's a strong sense of someone not reaching particularly hard to get beyond their influences, but even that takes on an appropriate hue as the album progresses. MORE edges into the feel of low-rent theater at times, where the makeup starts to run under the lights, where the performer on stage is revealed to be a fraud. Georgopoulos does a blues track and he calls it "(MORE) BLUES". He's emptied out pop and found a bunch of dead ends, all circling back in on themselves. Still, this isn't an exercise in the futility of writing this stuff in 2013; it's more like a light, cheerful prod at the parameters of pop. Along the way we get plenty of ambient interludes, hints of Brill Building pop, a dose of Beatles-y goodness. There's a sense Georgopoulos isn't sure what Arp should be, allowing him to resist being shaped, packaged, and neatly filed away. In among all the switching up there's a centerpiece to all of this, if one can exist in such a baffling, un-centered piece, titled "Gravity (For Charlemagne Palestine)", which is one-part Steve Reich repetitive build, one-part Spiritualized-style astral gazing. Naturally, going from that to the cheeky end-of-seaside-pier tracks takes some adjusting. But MORE is an album that takes some time to settle in, to really get to grips with all its diverse tendencies. Already it feels like it could become a weightier work over time if Georgopoulos leaves all this behind and moves on elsewhere, causing this album to perpetually spin in its own odd orbit. It's mostly a delight to return to, with its misshapen ways sometimes working toward a bigger picture until Georgopoulos flushes it all down the u-bend via another baffling turn. Here he's got a musical outlet that's not defined at all, and that's a strange and occasionally beautiful thing.

Artist: Arp, Album: More, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 7.0 Album review: "It's been a while since Alexis Georgopoulos worked under his Arp moniker, leaving three years trailing in the wake of his last full-length album, The Soft Wave. He's worked in art and modern dance in the interim, but Georgopoulos has clearly spent some time thinking about how to retool this project as well. The Soft Wave was all balmy synth textures and endlessly repeating figures, sometimes lightly prickled by waves of bass and distorted guitar. Georgopoulos found his voice toward the close of that record, forgoing his mostly instrumental work to deliver a pitch-perfect pastiche of Brian Eno's 70s vocal work on "From a Balcony Overlooking the Sea". Surprisingly, it's a thread he picks at for the bulk of MORE, settling into a more song-oriented incarnation of Arp that might cause people familiar with his older work to check the package to make sure it's not some other band. Where Georgopoulos has landed is somewhere in-between various strains of the British art school tradition, where the mundane and the fantastic are equally enthralling. It's part Roxy Music sci-fi fantasia, part Blur down-the-chip-shop scruffiness. Georgopoulos is interested in glamour for sure-- song titles here include "High-Heeled Clouds" and "A Tiger in the Hall at Versailles"-- but it's a scruffy, vaudevillian form of it. The sad, clangorous end to "Clouds" feels like a paean to actors who couldn't quite make it, to singers who had a shot at the big time and just fell short. It's heavy on pastiche, but very well done at times. You won't hear a better piece of Eno worship than "Judy Nylon" this year. Even the title is wonderfully Eno-esque. It's too bad Georgopoulos waits until the closing track, "Persuasion", to get anywhere near the same sense of pop euphoria again. So there's a strong sense of someone not reaching particularly hard to get beyond their influences, but even that takes on an appropriate hue as the album progresses. MORE edges into the feel of low-rent theater at times, where the makeup starts to run under the lights, where the performer on stage is revealed to be a fraud. Georgopoulos does a blues track and he calls it "(MORE) BLUES". He's emptied out pop and found a bunch of dead ends, all circling back in on themselves. Still, this isn't an exercise in the futility of writing this stuff in 2013; it's more like a light, cheerful prod at the parameters of pop. Along the way we get plenty of ambient interludes, hints of Brill Building pop, a dose of Beatles-y goodness. There's a sense Georgopoulos isn't sure what Arp should be, allowing him to resist being shaped, packaged, and neatly filed away. In among all the switching up there's a centerpiece to all of this, if one can exist in such a baffling, un-centered piece, titled "Gravity (For Charlemagne Palestine)", which is one-part Steve Reich repetitive build, one-part Spiritualized-style astral gazing. Naturally, going from that to the cheeky end-of-seaside-pier tracks takes some adjusting. But MORE is an album that takes some time to settle in, to really get to grips with all its diverse tendencies. Already it feels like it could become a weightier work over time if Georgopoulos leaves all this behind and moves on elsewhere, causing this album to perpetually spin in its own odd orbit. It's mostly a delight to return to, with its misshapen ways sometimes working toward a bigger picture until Georgopoulos flushes it all down the u-bend via another baffling turn. Here he's got a musical outlet that's not defined at all, and that's a strange and occasionally beautiful thing."

Modey Lemon

The Curious City

Electronic,Rock

Jason Crock

Modey Lemon have been a perfectly capable band with obvious influences, attacking proto-punk and garage rock with aplomb, ability, and a glint of self-awareness. For fans who've been following them closely, hearing the occasional electronic detour in their meat-and-potatoes rock stew, The Curious City is the sound of your band all grown up. Compared to previous album Thunder + Lightning there's more melody, more ambitious structures, more psychedelic detours, and more surprises here. "Bucket of Butterflies" sets the tone, moving from a sludgy, lumbering opening riff into a lighter, melodic shuffle through strummed sparkling pop into a three-note Disney villain gallop onto a snarling chorus and adroitly back to square one to start again. The streamlined "Sleepwalkers" is little less flashy, but still weaves electronic and psychedelic influences into a sleek whole, and the ghostly organs on the bouncy "In Another Land" provide some of the album's most psych-rock moments. They can also pull back and quiet down, as on the melodramatic mid-tempo "In the Cemetery", and the record's lyrics are sung with clarity and restraint. The fluidity dulls some of the immediate punch of the songs might have otherwise-- the brief chorus to "Bucket of Butterflies" would make a fine song itself if the band wanted to keep things static-- but seamlessness is it's most impressive quality, especially following the apparently simple Thunder + Lightning. That old band appears every once in a while, popping up for a moment in "Bucket of Butterflies" or the reckless riffage and wailing of "Mr. Mercedes" like a hand gripping the inside brim of a boiling cauldron, but never for more than a moment. The relentless shifting works best when not spending too long on any one idea, and when leaning on the monumental drumming of Paul Quattrone. "Bucket of Butterflies" is ably carried through hairpin turns in tempo and rhythm, and scurrying keyboard riffs like the one to "Red Lights" are pummeled senseless. Without Quattrone, the band couldn't get away with all this. They don't get away with everything, though; The organ drenched "Fingers, Drains" gets bogged down in execution, and while the acoustic plucking of "Countries" is a pleasant change in sound, it's not nearly as captivating. Plus, the groove to the closing "Trapped Rabbits" is deadly, but not enough to sustain its 16-minute runtime. But that's another surprise: These 10 tracks feel epic with all their twists and turns, but rarely exceed the five-minute mark, and lose none of the urgency of the band's earlier work.

Artist: Modey Lemon, Album: The Curious City, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.5 Album review: "Modey Lemon have been a perfectly capable band with obvious influences, attacking proto-punk and garage rock with aplomb, ability, and a glint of self-awareness. For fans who've been following them closely, hearing the occasional electronic detour in their meat-and-potatoes rock stew, The Curious City is the sound of your band all grown up. Compared to previous album Thunder + Lightning there's more melody, more ambitious structures, more psychedelic detours, and more surprises here. "Bucket of Butterflies" sets the tone, moving from a sludgy, lumbering opening riff into a lighter, melodic shuffle through strummed sparkling pop into a three-note Disney villain gallop onto a snarling chorus and adroitly back to square one to start again. The streamlined "Sleepwalkers" is little less flashy, but still weaves electronic and psychedelic influences into a sleek whole, and the ghostly organs on the bouncy "In Another Land" provide some of the album's most psych-rock moments. They can also pull back and quiet down, as on the melodramatic mid-tempo "In the Cemetery", and the record's lyrics are sung with clarity and restraint. The fluidity dulls some of the immediate punch of the songs might have otherwise-- the brief chorus to "Bucket of Butterflies" would make a fine song itself if the band wanted to keep things static-- but seamlessness is it's most impressive quality, especially following the apparently simple Thunder + Lightning. That old band appears every once in a while, popping up for a moment in "Bucket of Butterflies" or the reckless riffage and wailing of "Mr. Mercedes" like a hand gripping the inside brim of a boiling cauldron, but never for more than a moment. The relentless shifting works best when not spending too long on any one idea, and when leaning on the monumental drumming of Paul Quattrone. "Bucket of Butterflies" is ably carried through hairpin turns in tempo and rhythm, and scurrying keyboard riffs like the one to "Red Lights" are pummeled senseless. Without Quattrone, the band couldn't get away with all this. They don't get away with everything, though; The organ drenched "Fingers, Drains" gets bogged down in execution, and while the acoustic plucking of "Countries" is a pleasant change in sound, it's not nearly as captivating. Plus, the groove to the closing "Trapped Rabbits" is deadly, but not enough to sustain its 16-minute runtime. But that's another surprise: These 10 tracks feel epic with all their twists and turns, but rarely exceed the five-minute mark, and lose none of the urgency of the band's earlier work."

Double Dagger

333

Rap

Zach Kelly

Before anyone had a chance to hear 333, the fourth and final full-length from Baltimore garage punk purists Double Dagger, the band's corpse had already begun to reek. The hometown DIY heroes decided to call it quits back in 2011, rounding out their career by recording of the final six songs offered up here, as well as a brief farewell tour. Along for that ride was filmmaker Gabriel DeLoach, who chronicled Double Dagger's last days on the road, cataloging their manic live performances. The resulting footage eventually became the feature-length documentary If We Shout Loud Enough (a DVD of it came bundled with 333 as a Record Store Day perk), which focused not only on Double Dagger's demise, but the larger story of Baltimore's gritty music scene, featuring Future Islands, Dan Deacon, and music historian Tim Kabara, among others, espousing the virtues of Charm City's underground music and arts community. "Most bands now don't have a personality, they have a haircut. And they don't have a point of view, they have a publicist," frontman Nolen Strals mentions in a trailer for the film. "I'm happy as hell that you could never say that about Double Dagger." Over Double Dagger's nine years of activity, the trio never strayed from their core principles. Musically, things couldn't get much more basic, with Bruce Willen on bass, Denny Bowen on drums, and Strals on vocals. Fundamentally, they were amongst a dwindling number of bands using punk as a soapbox, decrying false prophets, the commodification of art, the hollowness of social climbing, and just about anything else that smelled fishy to them along the way (they're the same band that denounced the futility of a life spent online before Facebook had even been invented). But instead of allowing their slavish adherence to a set of pre-prescribed ethics translating as chilling, Double Dagger used these seemingly simple guidelines to reinforce and strengthen their sound and aesthetic. As musicians, Double Dagger are rare in their ability to make so much out of so little, with Bowen smashing away at his kit like a pissed off Thing, and Willen defying the limitations of what most assume a bass guitar can do, coaxing a wide variation of sounds from his instrument while still (sometimes simultaneously) conjuring an earthquaking thrash. And Strals, alternating between plainspoken rants and throat-ribboning shouts, was often as invaluable as a piece of human projectile as a mouthpiece. (His role as mouthpiece was, in fact, an inspiring one-- having a microphone in his hand was the only real remedy for his pronounced stutter.) You could fault the band for being a bit too preachy, a bit too rigid in their outlook, too smart aleck-y for their own good. But more often than not, Double Dagger did things with such passion, humor and energy, these slight annoyances barely scanned. Plus, they were a band that got better with each release (see 2010's sharpened Masks EP for evidence), and 333 is once again no exception. 333 is an incredibly personal album, and not only for the obvious reasons. As a band that always found clever ways to circumvent their limitations-- layering memorable and varied melodic hooks underneath their tubular heaviness-- the songs on 333 take this approach even further, reinforcing their surprising capability of eliciting emotion and transformation. There's still room for classic punk contrarianism here ("Supply/Demand"), but in looking back, Double Dagger really do make the most out of what little time they have left here. "Foreign Bodies" takes all the parts of what made these guys interesting-- the grandstanding, the unbridled thrashing joy, the slyly pop-friendly hooks-- and crushes it into a tiny, 160 second diamond. On the knuckle-dragging opener "The Mirror", Strals confronts his speech disorder head-on ("When you're up on that stage, you have so much to say/ But when we're face to face, you just can't get it out"), building to a wildly cathartic climax. And with "Space Dust", one of two instrumental pieces on the record, things slow to a ruminative pace. Its simple and somewhat discombobulated parts recreate the endorphin sustaining disorientation you might feel leaving a particularly loud rock show, with a mishmash of buzzes and melodies still dancing around your head. It can't be easy to make a recording when you know it's going to be your last. In a way, imploding acrimoniously might be something of an envious prospect. But expectations aside, 333 is as good a final document as most bands could ask for, and not of sheer coincidence-- Double Dagger were a thoughtful, hardworking band that found ways to leaven and refresh their sound while still staying true to themselves, and 333 is that bittersweet piece that completes the puzzle. As a final statement of purpose, there's closer "Heretic's Hymn", a scrappy crowd shout-along warning of a future we've long been living in, where we "banish ideas and only worship what sells." As the song drifts into a lullabied dirge, Strals makes a final plea: "I hope you won't forget: You're only free making art outside." Double Dagger is dead, but "Heretic's Hymn" is a eulogy that will keep their spirit alive. The fact that it's out there for younger bands to discover is as optimistic a prospect as they could ask for.

Artist: Double Dagger, Album: 333, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "Before anyone had a chance to hear 333, the fourth and final full-length from Baltimore garage punk purists Double Dagger, the band's corpse had already begun to reek. The hometown DIY heroes decided to call it quits back in 2011, rounding out their career by recording of the final six songs offered up here, as well as a brief farewell tour. Along for that ride was filmmaker Gabriel DeLoach, who chronicled Double Dagger's last days on the road, cataloging their manic live performances. The resulting footage eventually became the feature-length documentary If We Shout Loud Enough (a DVD of it came bundled with 333 as a Record Store Day perk), which focused not only on Double Dagger's demise, but the larger story of Baltimore's gritty music scene, featuring Future Islands, Dan Deacon, and music historian Tim Kabara, among others, espousing the virtues of Charm City's underground music and arts community. "Most bands now don't have a personality, they have a haircut. And they don't have a point of view, they have a publicist," frontman Nolen Strals mentions in a trailer for the film. "I'm happy as hell that you could never say that about Double Dagger." Over Double Dagger's nine years of activity, the trio never strayed from their core principles. Musically, things couldn't get much more basic, with Bruce Willen on bass, Denny Bowen on drums, and Strals on vocals. Fundamentally, they were amongst a dwindling number of bands using punk as a soapbox, decrying false prophets, the commodification of art, the hollowness of social climbing, and just about anything else that smelled fishy to them along the way (they're the same band that denounced the futility of a life spent online before Facebook had even been invented). But instead of allowing their slavish adherence to a set of pre-prescribed ethics translating as chilling, Double Dagger used these seemingly simple guidelines to reinforce and strengthen their sound and aesthetic. As musicians, Double Dagger are rare in their ability to make so much out of so little, with Bowen smashing away at his kit like a pissed off Thing, and Willen defying the limitations of what most assume a bass guitar can do, coaxing a wide variation of sounds from his instrument while still (sometimes simultaneously) conjuring an earthquaking thrash. And Strals, alternating between plainspoken rants and throat-ribboning shouts, was often as invaluable as a piece of human projectile as a mouthpiece. (His role as mouthpiece was, in fact, an inspiring one-- having a microphone in his hand was the only real remedy for his pronounced stutter.) You could fault the band for being a bit too preachy, a bit too rigid in their outlook, too smart aleck-y for their own good. But more often than not, Double Dagger did things with such passion, humor and energy, these slight annoyances barely scanned. Plus, they were a band that got better with each release (see 2010's sharpened Masks EP for evidence), and 333 is once again no exception. 333 is an incredibly personal album, and not only for the obvious reasons. As a band that always found clever ways to circumvent their limitations-- layering memorable and varied melodic hooks underneath their tubular heaviness-- the songs on 333 take this approach even further, reinforcing their surprising capability of eliciting emotion and transformation. There's still room for classic punk contrarianism here ("Supply/Demand"), but in looking back, Double Dagger really do make the most out of what little time they have left here. "Foreign Bodies" takes all the parts of what made these guys interesting-- the grandstanding, the unbridled thrashing joy, the slyly pop-friendly hooks-- and crushes it into a tiny, 160 second diamond. On the knuckle-dragging opener "The Mirror", Strals confronts his speech disorder head-on ("When you're up on that stage, you have so much to say/ But when we're face to face, you just can't get it out"), building to a wildly cathartic climax. And with "Space Dust", one of two instrumental pieces on the record, things slow to a ruminative pace. Its simple and somewhat discombobulated parts recreate the endorphin sustaining disorientation you might feel leaving a particularly loud rock show, with a mishmash of buzzes and melodies still dancing around your head. It can't be easy to make a recording when you know it's going to be your last. In a way, imploding acrimoniously might be something of an envious prospect. But expectations aside, 333 is as good a final document as most bands could ask for, and not of sheer coincidence-- Double Dagger were a thoughtful, hardworking band that found ways to leaven and refresh their sound while still staying true to themselves, and 333 is that bittersweet piece that completes the puzzle. As a final statement of purpose, there's closer "Heretic's Hymn", a scrappy crowd shout-along warning of a future we've long been living in, where we "banish ideas and only worship what sells." As the song drifts into a lullabied dirge, Strals makes a final plea: "I hope you won't forget: You're only free making art outside." Double Dagger is dead, but "Heretic's Hymn" is a eulogy that will keep their spirit alive. The fact that it's out there for younger bands to discover is as optimistic a prospect as they could ask for."

bEEdEEgEE

SUM/ONE

Electronic

Nick Neyland

Watch any live footage of Gang Gang Dance and your eyes will eventually fall on Brian DeGraw, stuck in a corner of the stage, clutching a drum stick between his teeth, seemingly doing five different things at once. It's not hard to imagine him holed up in a studio into the wee hours, relentlessly tweaking the band's sound until he gets it just right. His group's desire to pull so many styles into their music calls for that level of detail—without it they'd be wading through a morass of overlapping genres with no central unified force to lean on. bEEdEEgEE is DeGraw's solo guise, but it's not so different to his work elsewhere. SUM/ONE, his debut LP under this name, has an air of familiarity, with DeGraw's fondness for splicing up musical juxtapositions executed with the same feel of floaty optimism that pervades the most recent Gang Gang Dance records. What's most surprising about this album is how little it strays from DeGraw's tried and tested formula. There are snatches of feel-good balearic house getting scuffed up by grime and trap-influenced beats, often layered over with the kind of sheer synth lines that surfaced often on 2011's Eye Contact. SUM/ONE feels very much a part of the Gang Gang eco-system instead of a branch away from it, ultimately resembling a natural extension of work undertaken in his day job instead of a chance to try out new ideas. If there is a difference it's in the lack of cohesion. The best Gang Gang Dance songs tend to find a point where ragged post-punk thinking can sit comfortably with hippy idealism. Here, on idea-packed tracks like "Helium Anchor" and "Bricks", the transitions are less fluid, the movement more blocky. There's a sense of ill-fitting pieces not quite finding the right space in which to come together. Fortunately there are plenty of moments here when DeGraw eases up on the clutter, giving SUM/ONE an acre or two of room to stretch out into. "Like Rain Man" is the most successful collaborative track, perhaps because it's with his Gang Gang bandmate Lizzi Bougatsos, but also due to its slow-reveal nature. Elsewhere, Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor has the effect of turning the sound a little too close to his own band, while a couple of attempts at working in a pure pop template fall flat. Even those ventures feel anchored in DeGraw's other world, with customary raindrop keyboard sounds stirred into the mix, coupled with a bout of genre hopping through a diverse, if slightly predictable, array of styles. It doesn't add much to what DeGraw has achieved elsewhere, but the overall feel is of a welcome gap-filler for anyone looking for a fix in between albums by his other band. In a sense SUM/ONE suffers because of the higher standards DeGraw has already set. A track like "Overlook" is a decent halfway point between stuttering rhythms and sunshine pop, but it doesn't naturally sit with much else here until he loops back around to something resembling it with the closing "Quantum Poet Riddim". Gang Gang Dance records function as tight, intransigent worlds, but here there's too much fraying around the edges, too many loose ideas left to flap around in the breeze. It resembles a users guide to the building blocks DeGraw utilizes before he stitches his ideas together, almost feeling instructional in tone. This is a set of arrangements looking for a song, ultimately lacking the emotional dark/light contrast that DeGraw can usually divine from the source material he plunders. It's an intermittently thoughtful album, but one that doesn't stray far from offering process-laid-bare insight into the beautiful pile-up that is Gang Gang Dance.

Artist: bEEdEEgEE, Album: SUM/ONE, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Watch any live footage of Gang Gang Dance and your eyes will eventually fall on Brian DeGraw, stuck in a corner of the stage, clutching a drum stick between his teeth, seemingly doing five different things at once. It's not hard to imagine him holed up in a studio into the wee hours, relentlessly tweaking the band's sound until he gets it just right. His group's desire to pull so many styles into their music calls for that level of detail—without it they'd be wading through a morass of overlapping genres with no central unified force to lean on. bEEdEEgEE is DeGraw's solo guise, but it's not so different to his work elsewhere. SUM/ONE, his debut LP under this name, has an air of familiarity, with DeGraw's fondness for splicing up musical juxtapositions executed with the same feel of floaty optimism that pervades the most recent Gang Gang Dance records. What's most surprising about this album is how little it strays from DeGraw's tried and tested formula. There are snatches of feel-good balearic house getting scuffed up by grime and trap-influenced beats, often layered over with the kind of sheer synth lines that surfaced often on 2011's Eye Contact. SUM/ONE feels very much a part of the Gang Gang eco-system instead of a branch away from it, ultimately resembling a natural extension of work undertaken in his day job instead of a chance to try out new ideas. If there is a difference it's in the lack of cohesion. The best Gang Gang Dance songs tend to find a point where ragged post-punk thinking can sit comfortably with hippy idealism. Here, on idea-packed tracks like "Helium Anchor" and "Bricks", the transitions are less fluid, the movement more blocky. There's a sense of ill-fitting pieces not quite finding the right space in which to come together. Fortunately there are plenty of moments here when DeGraw eases up on the clutter, giving SUM/ONE an acre or two of room to stretch out into. "Like Rain Man" is the most successful collaborative track, perhaps because it's with his Gang Gang bandmate Lizzi Bougatsos, but also due to its slow-reveal nature. Elsewhere, Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor has the effect of turning the sound a little too close to his own band, while a couple of attempts at working in a pure pop template fall flat. Even those ventures feel anchored in DeGraw's other world, with customary raindrop keyboard sounds stirred into the mix, coupled with a bout of genre hopping through a diverse, if slightly predictable, array of styles. It doesn't add much to what DeGraw has achieved elsewhere, but the overall feel is of a welcome gap-filler for anyone looking for a fix in between albums by his other band. In a sense SUM/ONE suffers because of the higher standards DeGraw has already set. A track like "Overlook" is a decent halfway point between stuttering rhythms and sunshine pop, but it doesn't naturally sit with much else here until he loops back around to something resembling it with the closing "Quantum Poet Riddim". Gang Gang Dance records function as tight, intransigent worlds, but here there's too much fraying around the edges, too many loose ideas left to flap around in the breeze. It resembles a users guide to the building blocks DeGraw utilizes before he stitches his ideas together, almost feeling instructional in tone. This is a set of arrangements looking for a song, ultimately lacking the emotional dark/light contrast that DeGraw can usually divine from the source material he plunders. It's an intermittently thoughtful album, but one that doesn't stray far from offering process-laid-bare insight into the beautiful pile-up that is Gang Gang Dance."

Azealia Banks

Broke With Expensive Taste

Rap

Craig Jenkins

It’s been three years since Azealia Banks sprung up from the New York underground fully formed with "212", her confrontationally profane lead single. "212" was the seed for all of the triumph and adversity that followed—the prodigious rap skills, the casual genre-bending, and the bratty disdain for authority. In its wake, Banks charted a career path typical of a budding rap talent. She dropped the promising, beat-jacking pre-album mixtape (2012’s unrelenting Fantasea) and the compact retail EP of brash originals (2012’s nostalgia tripping 1991). She navigated through mettle-testing beef with her peers. The tiffs were negligible as long as the music was nourishing, and for a while Azealia’s war on the rap establishment was excitingly disruptive. But as work on her Interscope Records debut commenced, Banks hit a tight spot. The deal soured as her new tracks were met with indifference from label liaisons. Her uncompromising social media demeanor landed her in quaffs both hysterical (See: her merciless ribbing of T.I. and Iggy Azalea) and injurious (that time she defended her right to call Perez Hilton a gay slur), but vocal criticism of Baauer, Pharrell, and Disclosure began to cost her profitable collaborators. Her early career goodwill nearly spent, Banks finally caught a break: Interscope let her out of her deal with the rights to all the songs she’d recorded during her tenure there. Broke With Expensive Taste arrived this month with very little fanfare, its release announced with a simple tweet. Its lengthy gestation is, of course, its chief foible. Older material accounts for roughly half the tracklist, and some of it doesn’t mesh well with the fresher, weirder stuff around it. It helps to see Broke With Expensive Taste, then, as an anthology, The Portable Azealia Banks. Three songs in, it’s clear why Interscope didn’t know what to do with the thing. Opener "Idle Delilah" bursts in effortlessly crossing elements of house, dubstep, and Caribbean music. It’s followed by "Gimme a Chance", a bass-heavy post-disco romp that takes a hairpin turn into smooth merengue halfway through, as Banks flits from rapping and singing in English to perfect unaffected Spanish. "Desperado" borrows a beat from early 2000s UK garage whiz MJ Cole’s "Bandelero Desperado" as Banks puts on a rap clinic, flaying adversaries in a flow so neat you might miss the fact that every piece of every line rhymes. Her voice is often the sole unifying force from track to track here, and it’s easy to see a label’s trepidation about pushing this thing on listeners who haven't followed her every move. "Nude Beach a Go-Go", for instance, a late album collaboration with Ariel Pink, is every bit the what-the-fuck moment it sounds like on paper. By the end of Broke With Expensive Taste you’ll come to see Azealia Banks as a dance pop classicist underneath the flailing. The capable but unfussy approach to melody on deep cut confections "Soda" and "Miss Camaraderie" as well as Fantasea holdover "Luxury" and the massive "Chasing Time" showcase Azealia as a singer who’s studied her Robin S. and Technotronic. Coupled with her bullish rhyme skills, Azealia’s chops as a house vocalist make for a true rapper-singer double threat. (Credit is due to Drake and Nicki Minaj, but both sound like they picked up singing on the job.) She’s an angel on the choruses, but for the verses in between, she’s a formidable spitter whose flash and flow are unmistakably Harlem. The party line among hip-hop aficionados is that New York rap currently lacks a distinctly New York identity. There’s some truth to it. The city’s biggest success stories of late involve locals breaking out by spicing Big Apple grit with outside flavors, from A$AP Mob’s Texas screw fixation to French Montana’s trap circuit traction to Nicki Minaj’s day-glo EDM daze. But the scene in 2014 can’t look like it did in 1994 or even 2004, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Statlers and Waldorfs pining for a new age of rappity boom bap wouldn’t notice a new New York if it came up and offered them molly in a Brooklyn bar bathroom. Well, Azealia Banks is it, and Broke With Expensive Taste is a reminder that the corner of Harlem that she claims is walking distance from both Washington Heights and the Bronx, where you’re as likely to hear hip-hop booming out of apartments and passing cars as freestyle, reggaeton, house, or bachata. It’s a quick subway jaunt away from the landmark clubs where ball culture persists, as well as perennial dance parties at Webster Hall and the glut of eclectic Lower Manhattan concert venues. Broke With Expensive Taste glides through all of these, just like the faithful 1 train sampled on "Desperado". Both album and the artist revel in the freedom of a New York City where divisions between these sounds and scenes have ever so slowly ceased to exist.

Artist: Azealia Banks, Album: Broke With Expensive Taste, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 8.0 Album review: "It’s been three years since Azealia Banks sprung up from the New York underground fully formed with "212", her confrontationally profane lead single. "212" was the seed for all of the triumph and adversity that followed—the prodigious rap skills, the casual genre-bending, and the bratty disdain for authority. In its wake, Banks charted a career path typical of a budding rap talent. She dropped the promising, beat-jacking pre-album mixtape (2012’s unrelenting Fantasea) and the compact retail EP of brash originals (2012’s nostalgia tripping 1991). She navigated through mettle-testing beef with her peers. The tiffs were negligible as long as the music was nourishing, and for a while Azealia’s war on the rap establishment was excitingly disruptive. But as work on her Interscope Records debut commenced, Banks hit a tight spot. The deal soured as her new tracks were met with indifference from label liaisons. Her uncompromising social media demeanor landed her in quaffs both hysterical (See: her merciless ribbing of T.I. and Iggy Azalea) and injurious (that time she defended her right to call Perez Hilton a gay slur), but vocal criticism of Baauer, Pharrell, and Disclosure began to cost her profitable collaborators. Her early career goodwill nearly spent, Banks finally caught a break: Interscope let her out of her deal with the rights to all the songs she’d recorded during her tenure there. Broke With Expensive Taste arrived this month with very little fanfare, its release announced with a simple tweet. Its lengthy gestation is, of course, its chief foible. Older material accounts for roughly half the tracklist, and some of it doesn’t mesh well with the fresher, weirder stuff around it. It helps to see Broke With Expensive Taste, then, as an anthology, The Portable Azealia Banks. Three songs in, it’s clear why Interscope didn’t know what to do with the thing. Opener "Idle Delilah" bursts in effortlessly crossing elements of house, dubstep, and Caribbean music. It’s followed by "Gimme a Chance", a bass-heavy post-disco romp that takes a hairpin turn into smooth merengue halfway through, as Banks flits from rapping and singing in English to perfect unaffected Spanish. "Desperado" borrows a beat from early 2000s UK garage whiz MJ Cole’s "Bandelero Desperado" as Banks puts on a rap clinic, flaying adversaries in a flow so neat you might miss the fact that every piece of every line rhymes. Her voice is often the sole unifying force from track to track here, and it’s easy to see a label’s trepidation about pushing this thing on listeners who haven't followed her every move. "Nude Beach a Go-Go", for instance, a late album collaboration with Ariel Pink, is every bit the what-the-fuck moment it sounds like on paper. By the end of Broke With Expensive Taste you’ll come to see Azealia Banks as a dance pop classicist underneath the flailing. The capable but unfussy approach to melody on deep cut confections "Soda" and "Miss Camaraderie" as well as Fantasea holdover "Luxury" and the massive "Chasing Time" showcase Azealia as a singer who’s studied her Robin S. and Technotronic. Coupled with her bullish rhyme skills, Azealia’s chops as a house vocalist make for a true rapper-singer double threat. (Credit is due to Drake and Nicki Minaj, but both sound like they picked up singing on the job.) She’s an angel on the choruses, but for the verses in between, she’s a formidable spitter whose flash and flow are unmistakably Harlem. The party line among hip-hop aficionados is that New York rap currently lacks a distinctly New York identity. There’s some truth to it. The city’s biggest success stories of late involve locals breaking out by spicing Big Apple grit with outside flavors, from A$AP Mob’s Texas screw fixation to French Montana’s trap circuit traction to Nicki Minaj’s day-glo EDM daze. But the scene in 2014 can’t look like it did in 1994 or even 2004, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Statlers and Waldorfs pining for a new age of rappity boom bap wouldn’t notice a new New York if it came up and offered them molly in a Brooklyn bar bathroom. Well, Azealia Banks is it, and Broke With Expensive Taste is a reminder that the corner of Harlem that she claims is walking distance from both Washington Heights and the Bronx, where you’re as likely to hear hip-hop booming out of apartments and passing cars as freestyle, reggaeton, house, or bachata. It’s a quick subway jaunt away from the landmark clubs where ball culture persists, as well as perennial dance parties at Webster Hall and the glut of eclectic Lower Manhattan concert venues. Broke With Expensive Taste glides through all of these, just like the faithful 1 train sampled on "Desperado". Both album and the artist revel in the freedom of a New York City where divisions between these sounds and scenes have ever so slowly ceased to exist."

Trouble Books

Concatenating Fields

Electronic,Rock

Zach Kelly

If you're familiar with Akron, Ohio's Trouble Books, there's a good chance that it's thanks in part to Trouble Books and Mark McGuire, last year's collaborative LP that found Keith Freund and Linda Lejsovka enlisting the titular guitar experimentalist and Emeralds member to bounce ideas off of. That album turned out pretty terrifically, with two like-minded parties intertwining their sounds to create something both unified and representative of their respective strong suits. It also helped that it was an awfully pretty record. But with Concatenating Fields, the pair has decided to strike out on their own, unabated by a third wheel. Just knowing that McGuire wouldn't be present felt like an automatic strike against the album, seeing what kindred spirits they ended up being. Instead, Trouble Books just so happen to be a singular act, and the lack of collaboration (though it should be mentioned that Tusco Terror pitch in on a track) fosters a more intimate feel. Though McGuire's presence is felt in swirling electronic blips and bubbles and melancholic guitar tones, Trouble Books' own warmth and heady concepts are able to flourish, unencumbered. For example, there's the album's title, as well as Freund's own mention of abstract geometrical visual artists serving as inspiration. "But I don't know, it's not supposed to be super conceptual or anything," he adds. "Just a cool album of nighttime grass thoughts." For someone who struggled with the basic definition of "concatenation," I think the latter description suits just fine. "Grass thoughts" makes for a nice double entendre, and despite a more pointed focus on the electronic aspect of Trouble Books' music, Concatenating Fields is a surprisingly organic sounding record, as if it just sprouted up in the garden overnight. Synthetic cicada whirs abound, as mechanized lightning bugs blink back and forth at each other. It's a perfect album for the season, with bursts of warmth and color giving way to dark washes of rainy dissonance, both of which feel equally nourishing. Tracks like two-parter "Aloft/See-Through III" seem to capture this almost effortlessly, inviting you to tuck yourself inside of them. But as much as Concatenating Fields could be considered a mood record, there is also a refined focus on making honest-to-goodness minimalist pop tracks, like highlight "Lurk Underneath". Lejsovka's sleepy-stoned vocals (which are more successful than Freund's similarly-minded vocal approach) help reinforce the overarching feeling of loneliness and peacefulness, demonstrating how these two emotions have more in common than we often recognize. Freund and Lejsovka are a married couple, something you could probably pick up on having no previous knowledge of the project. It feels like a secret language is being spoken, as guitars playfully nudge up against each other, while at the same time ambient sounds and loops coexist quietly together. Trouble Books have another kindred spirit in Windy & Carl, their Michigan neighbors to the North. That married couple's latest record, We Will Always Be, focused largely on tumult, but Concatenating Fields feel oppositely blissful. There is a similar voyeuristic quality to it, equally as intimate but also endearing, a testament to shared space that feels tailor made for quiet bedrooms at daybreak and private patches of backyard at sundown. Suffice it to say, this is music you could totally make out to. Which isn't to say that this is a record that you can't take with you or call your own. In fact, it practically begs that you do. It has a pleasantly lost quality to it, evidenced by the lovely (and aptly titled) "Cocooning", which features some Shields-ian guitar drone that Sofia Coppola would kill to get her hands on. Despite being able to conjure images of flora and fauna with ease, this is music that would work just as well accompanying walks through unfamiliar cities or drunken beach stumbles. It's one of the beauties of music, in that it can become many different thing to many different people, all depending on where you are and who you're with. And with continued successes on the level of Concatenating Fields, there's no saying the same can't be said for Trouble Books.

Artist: Trouble Books, Album: Concatenating Fields, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 7.2 Album review: "If you're familiar with Akron, Ohio's Trouble Books, there's a good chance that it's thanks in part to Trouble Books and Mark McGuire, last year's collaborative LP that found Keith Freund and Linda Lejsovka enlisting the titular guitar experimentalist and Emeralds member to bounce ideas off of. That album turned out pretty terrifically, with two like-minded parties intertwining their sounds to create something both unified and representative of their respective strong suits. It also helped that it was an awfully pretty record. But with Concatenating Fields, the pair has decided to strike out on their own, unabated by a third wheel. Just knowing that McGuire wouldn't be present felt like an automatic strike against the album, seeing what kindred spirits they ended up being. Instead, Trouble Books just so happen to be a singular act, and the lack of collaboration (though it should be mentioned that Tusco Terror pitch in on a track) fosters a more intimate feel. Though McGuire's presence is felt in swirling electronic blips and bubbles and melancholic guitar tones, Trouble Books' own warmth and heady concepts are able to flourish, unencumbered. For example, there's the album's title, as well as Freund's own mention of abstract geometrical visual artists serving as inspiration. "But I don't know, it's not supposed to be super conceptual or anything," he adds. "Just a cool album of nighttime grass thoughts." For someone who struggled with the basic definition of "concatenation," I think the latter description suits just fine. "Grass thoughts" makes for a nice double entendre, and despite a more pointed focus on the electronic aspect of Trouble Books' music, Concatenating Fields is a surprisingly organic sounding record, as if it just sprouted up in the garden overnight. Synthetic cicada whirs abound, as mechanized lightning bugs blink back and forth at each other. It's a perfect album for the season, with bursts of warmth and color giving way to dark washes of rainy dissonance, both of which feel equally nourishing. Tracks like two-parter "Aloft/See-Through III" seem to capture this almost effortlessly, inviting you to tuck yourself inside of them. But as much as Concatenating Fields could be considered a mood record, there is also a refined focus on making honest-to-goodness minimalist pop tracks, like highlight "Lurk Underneath". Lejsovka's sleepy-stoned vocals (which are more successful than Freund's similarly-minded vocal approach) help reinforce the overarching feeling of loneliness and peacefulness, demonstrating how these two emotions have more in common than we often recognize. Freund and Lejsovka are a married couple, something you could probably pick up on having no previous knowledge of the project. It feels like a secret language is being spoken, as guitars playfully nudge up against each other, while at the same time ambient sounds and loops coexist quietly together. Trouble Books have another kindred spirit in Windy & Carl, their Michigan neighbors to the North. That married couple's latest record, We Will Always Be, focused largely on tumult, but Concatenating Fields feel oppositely blissful. There is a similar voyeuristic quality to it, equally as intimate but also endearing, a testament to shared space that feels tailor made for quiet bedrooms at daybreak and private patches of backyard at sundown. Suffice it to say, this is music you could totally make out to. Which isn't to say that this is a record that you can't take with you or call your own. In fact, it practically begs that you do. It has a pleasantly lost quality to it, evidenced by the lovely (and aptly titled) "Cocooning", which features some Shields-ian guitar drone that Sofia Coppola would kill to get her hands on. Despite being able to conjure images of flora and fauna with ease, this is music that would work just as well accompanying walks through unfamiliar cities or drunken beach stumbles. It's one of the beauties of music, in that it can become many different thing to many different people, all depending on where you are and who you're with. And with continued successes on the level of Concatenating Fields, there's no saying the same can't be said for Trouble Books."

José González

Live at Park Avenue EP

Rock

Marc Hogan

If you thought the music industry was in a state of flux, then consider the state of the live album. Thanks to YouTube, bit torrents, and YouSendIt-style file-transfer sites, amateur concert recordings are available as never before, almost instantly, to anyone in the world who wants to hear them. At the same time, indie listeners' growing acceptance of electronic-based music has made for live shows that are more about fans' communal experiences than any notes actually being played "live"-- just ask anyone who has ever seen Girl Talk, or go pick up Justice's unconventional A Cross the Universe live CD. It's no surprise, then, that some of last year's most rewarding live albums came from the vaults: Otis Redding's Live in London and Paris, Neil Young's Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968. José González, the brooding Swedish bard of Argentine breeding, is in some ways a throwback to that earlier era. The songs on González's haunting sophomore album, 2007's In Our Nature, have the focused political fury and stripped-down arrangements of another generation of acoustic troubadours. But González's minimalist folk-pop shows a painterly appreciation for the nuances of organic sound-- a foot tap here, an off-mic murmur there-- that you won't find from your average coffeehouse singer-songwriter. The nine-song, half-hour Live At Park Avenue EP (available via ThinkIndie or in certain independent record stores) exemplifies one way to keep live recordings relevant at a time when they, like recorded music itself, are both ubiquitous and underappreciated. Although it can't capture all the subtlety of González's studio output, the EP is also an ideal introduction for González noobs. Park Avenue CD in Orlando, Fl., isn't exactly Carnegie Hall, but the instore crowd gives González's slow, moody polemics the kind of patient silence that never ceases to amaze me about the audience on Bob Dylan's Live at Carnegie Hall 1963 EP. The five songs from In Our Nature on Live At Park Avenue are clandestine descendants of protest songs like "With God on Our Side". Written after reading atheist extraordinaire Richard Dawkins, "Abram" blasts organized religion over descending acoustic guitar arpeggios gentle enough to cut the bitterness-- "well, most of the time." The terrible prophecies coursing through the percussive bass lines of "How Low" (performed here with murmuring introspection that belies its political fire) and the droning high strings of "Down the Line" will outlive the Bush administration-- and, I'm sorry to say, the Obama administration, too. González directs the intimate, elemental "Time to Send Someone Away" at someone who goes "walking over bodies/ just to witness something new"; you think Gonzo's in for that? No way, José. "The Nest" is about birds the way "The Ant and the Grasshopper" is about Aesop's entomology research. The philosophical underpinnings of the songs from González's Pink Moon-esque debut album, Veneer, come to the surface next to his In Our Nature material. Pensive charmer "Deadweight on Velveteen" opens Live at Park Avenue with a slightly brighter guitar tone than its Veneer original, though still fuming against base dishonesty. With a refrain as catchy as its main guitar figure is repetitive, "Hints" shifts from Gonzalez's usual second-person lyrics to the first-person plural, including us in a community of independent thinkers; the flattery works. Vivid Veneer standout "Crosses", like the religious icons of its title (or Massive Attack), offers protection, and González doesn't disappoint on probably his best-known number, "Heartbeats". The imagery of devils, wolf's teeth, and hands from above goes a long way to explain why the Knife's song suits his repertoire so well. Live at Park Avenue EP features near-flawless performances of most of González's best songs, and the sound quality is fine, if a bit less appealing than on his lo-fi debut or its immaculately recorded sequel. There's little in the way of between-song banter, and the tracks stay pretty faithful to the originals. So if you already have the albums, this EP is a lovely live document-- just don't expect anyone to break new ground. Although an artist's ability to play well live on traditional (read: non-electronic) instruments has fuck-all to do with the quality of his records, live performances of those records tend to be more enjoyable when the performers-- imagine this-- know what they're doing. González's harrowing way with an acoustic guitar will be sure to please stuffy authenticity squares as well as listeners more interested in minor-key artistic relevations. But don't hold that against him.

Artist: José González, Album: Live at Park Avenue EP, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "If you thought the music industry was in a state of flux, then consider the state of the live album. Thanks to YouTube, bit torrents, and YouSendIt-style file-transfer sites, amateur concert recordings are available as never before, almost instantly, to anyone in the world who wants to hear them. At the same time, indie listeners' growing acceptance of electronic-based music has made for live shows that are more about fans' communal experiences than any notes actually being played "live"-- just ask anyone who has ever seen Girl Talk, or go pick up Justice's unconventional A Cross the Universe live CD. It's no surprise, then, that some of last year's most rewarding live albums came from the vaults: Otis Redding's Live in London and Paris, Neil Young's Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968. José González, the brooding Swedish bard of Argentine breeding, is in some ways a throwback to that earlier era. The songs on González's haunting sophomore album, 2007's In Our Nature, have the focused political fury and stripped-down arrangements of another generation of acoustic troubadours. But González's minimalist folk-pop shows a painterly appreciation for the nuances of organic sound-- a foot tap here, an off-mic murmur there-- that you won't find from your average coffeehouse singer-songwriter. The nine-song, half-hour Live At Park Avenue EP (available via ThinkIndie or in certain independent record stores) exemplifies one way to keep live recordings relevant at a time when they, like recorded music itself, are both ubiquitous and underappreciated. Although it can't capture all the subtlety of González's studio output, the EP is also an ideal introduction for González noobs. Park Avenue CD in Orlando, Fl., isn't exactly Carnegie Hall, but the instore crowd gives González's slow, moody polemics the kind of patient silence that never ceases to amaze me about the audience on Bob Dylan's Live at Carnegie Hall 1963 EP. The five songs from In Our Nature on Live At Park Avenue are clandestine descendants of protest songs like "With God on Our Side". Written after reading atheist extraordinaire Richard Dawkins, "Abram" blasts organized religion over descending acoustic guitar arpeggios gentle enough to cut the bitterness-- "well, most of the time." The terrible prophecies coursing through the percussive bass lines of "How Low" (performed here with murmuring introspection that belies its political fire) and the droning high strings of "Down the Line" will outlive the Bush administration-- and, I'm sorry to say, the Obama administration, too. González directs the intimate, elemental "Time to Send Someone Away" at someone who goes "walking over bodies/ just to witness something new"; you think Gonzo's in for that? No way, José. "The Nest" is about birds the way "The Ant and the Grasshopper" is about Aesop's entomology research. The philosophical underpinnings of the songs from González's Pink Moon-esque debut album, Veneer, come to the surface next to his In Our Nature material. Pensive charmer "Deadweight on Velveteen" opens Live at Park Avenue with a slightly brighter guitar tone than its Veneer original, though still fuming against base dishonesty. With a refrain as catchy as its main guitar figure is repetitive, "Hints" shifts from Gonzalez's usual second-person lyrics to the first-person plural, including us in a community of independent thinkers; the flattery works. Vivid Veneer standout "Crosses", like the religious icons of its title (or Massive Attack), offers protection, and González doesn't disappoint on probably his best-known number, "Heartbeats". The imagery of devils, wolf's teeth, and hands from above goes a long way to explain why the Knife's song suits his repertoire so well. Live at Park Avenue EP features near-flawless performances of most of González's best songs, and the sound quality is fine, if a bit less appealing than on his lo-fi debut or its immaculately recorded sequel. There's little in the way of between-song banter, and the tracks stay pretty faithful to the originals. So if you already have the albums, this EP is a lovely live document-- just don't expect anyone to break new ground. Although an artist's ability to play well live on traditional (read: non-electronic) instruments has fuck-all to do with the quality of his records, live performances of those records tend to be more enjoyable when the performers-- imagine this-- know what they're doing. González's harrowing way with an acoustic guitar will be sure to please stuffy authenticity squares as well as listeners more interested in minor-key artistic relevations. But don't hold that against him."

Pole v. Four Tet

Pole v. Four Tet EP

Mark Richard-San

The concept for this brief EP is simple: Stefan Betke (Pole) and Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) each created an original track, and then each remixed the other's work. I was half-ignorant when I put this one on the turntable, since I still hadn't heard a Four Tet full-length. I had, however, heard some of Hebden's remixology. His outstanding reworking of Aphex Twin material is probably the only track off the mediocre Warp 10+3: Remixes compilation I still listen to. And since I'm already a fan of Pole's post-iron-curtain dub, getting these two together sounded intriguing. First, the originals. Pole's "Heim" is a solid, undulating cracklefest that's not too far from the material off 3-- it actually would have been among that record's better tracks. It veers more toward faint melody and steady bass groove, and away from abstract ambience relative to his first full-length. "Heim" is not going to win Pole any new converts-- it's hard to imagine what he might do that would at this point. But if you have his kind of itch, it scratches nicely. Four Tet's "Cload" is a fast, upbeat track with a bit of rock and some dub-style production. The drums are typically precise, with the overall energy of the piece compensating for its lack of melodic development. The EP's standout, by far, is Four Tet's remix of Pole's "Heim." Whatever elements remain of the original are slight; some vinyl crackle, maybe. (It could just be my copy.) But the beauty comes in the added material: Four Tet adds a crisp, penetrating beat to anchor the track, and working against the confines of this ridged pulse is a sampled piano passage consisting of impressionistic piano flourishes. In any other context, the piano might come off melodramatic, at best. But after the tension builds in this Old World v. New World battle, loops twisting and expanding, the piano finally emerges alone for a sad, delicate, and truly affecting coda. The record closes with Pole's brief remix of "Cload," adhering fairly closely to his formula, but maintaining interest through the subtle weaving of the source material. This short one-off EP may not be easy to track down, but with three solid tracks and one really great one, it's got my recommendation.

Artist: Pole v. Four Tet, Album: Pole v. Four Tet EP, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "The concept for this brief EP is simple: Stefan Betke (Pole) and Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) each created an original track, and then each remixed the other's work. I was half-ignorant when I put this one on the turntable, since I still hadn't heard a Four Tet full-length. I had, however, heard some of Hebden's remixology. His outstanding reworking of Aphex Twin material is probably the only track off the mediocre Warp 10+3: Remixes compilation I still listen to. And since I'm already a fan of Pole's post-iron-curtain dub, getting these two together sounded intriguing. First, the originals. Pole's "Heim" is a solid, undulating cracklefest that's not too far from the material off 3-- it actually would have been among that record's better tracks. It veers more toward faint melody and steady bass groove, and away from abstract ambience relative to his first full-length. "Heim" is not going to win Pole any new converts-- it's hard to imagine what he might do that would at this point. But if you have his kind of itch, it scratches nicely. Four Tet's "Cload" is a fast, upbeat track with a bit of rock and some dub-style production. The drums are typically precise, with the overall energy of the piece compensating for its lack of melodic development. The EP's standout, by far, is Four Tet's remix of Pole's "Heim." Whatever elements remain of the original are slight; some vinyl crackle, maybe. (It could just be my copy.) But the beauty comes in the added material: Four Tet adds a crisp, penetrating beat to anchor the track, and working against the confines of this ridged pulse is a sampled piano passage consisting of impressionistic piano flourishes. In any other context, the piano might come off melodramatic, at best. But after the tension builds in this Old World v. New World battle, loops twisting and expanding, the piano finally emerges alone for a sad, delicate, and truly affecting coda. The record closes with Pole's brief remix of "Cload," adhering fairly closely to his formula, but maintaining interest through the subtle weaving of the source material. This short one-off EP may not be easy to track down, but with three solid tracks and one really great one, it's got my recommendation."

Erik Friedlander

Block Ice & Propane

Experimental,Jazz

Grayson Currin

"Airstream Envy" jolts open with a shriek of pure panic. Erik Friedlander's bow grates across the strings of his cello, wrenching notes into a stunted, disdainful exclamation. Imagine Friedlander-- now one of the world's top cellists with a Rolodex of collaborators from John Zorn and Laurie Anderson to John Darnielle and Courtney Love-- as a boy from New York's hinterlands, maybe 14 or 15 years old, out West in an RV sitting atop a 1966 Chevrolet pick-up truck. His mother, father, sister, and dog are along for the ride, as the truck barrels down an interstate. Suddenly, an Airstream trailer-- "sleek, silver...throwing our reflection back at us"-- zips past the Friedlander summer home. More than three decades later, this is how Erik Friedlander remembers his family losing a piece of their pride. The initial shock passes quickly, but with his cello, Friedlander continues to espouse a peculiar mix of curiosity and fear with regard to the shiny new beast. The Airstreams zip by, while the boyish Friedlander seems to pick up confidence, an adult intrigue vesting in its possibility. Suddenly, his playing is hopeful and bright, like he's just discovered the future in polished metal. Friedlander knows this feeling from experience: Every summer, Friedlander's family would gather in its RV and wend their way across America, as his father-- the famous scenic and music photographer Lee Friedlander-- completed assignments between both coasts. On Block Ice & Propane, Friedlander's first solo disc since 2003's Maldoror, the cellist revisits those summers, capturing their scenes by painting them with 13 mimetic or metaphorical compositions and improvisations. His memories push from minutiae-- seeing an Airstream for the first time or hearing the piercing sound of a pressure cooker-- to milestones, the easy, sweet dreams of a child anticipating the summer or the unbridled joy of seeing the countryside with young, wide eyes. Block Ice & Propane, then, is a boy's folk anthem-- sweet, naïve, intrigued-- gathered and transformed through a virtuoso's adult memory. Friedlander's résumé suggests that he's a player suited for a wide range of feelings, techniques, and situations. Beneath John Darnielle's voice on "Dilaudid", from the Mountain Goats album The Sunset Tree, he plays in abrupt, pungent ostinato, his stern repetition emphasizing doomed lines like, "You just can't do things your body wasn't meant to." In his own cello/sax/bass/drums Topaz Quartet, though, Friedlander leans on his funk influences to lock into a groove and bump hard against its ridges. Friedlander wields not only unfathomable technical ability but also uncommon inquisitiveness tailed by imagination. Block Ice, more personal than his previous solo work, is the product of such breadth: In his hands, the cello is capable of long, daunting tones, hanging, impressionistic pizzicato phrases, and short, furious hybrid bursts of both. During the masterful "Rusting in Honeysuckle", the boy who seems to have enjoyed the vistas of summer but perhaps fretted his removal from society and the perils of the open road unites all three as a man, whistling birdsong around brief, panicked cello howls. Elsewhere, Friedlander adds elements of gentle, loping plucks that imitate the sound of big, worn steel strings on an acoustic guitar, finger-picked into a folk ballad. "Yakima", for instance, sounds like a backseat journey along curvy roads in the temperate airs of the Washington state viticultural area. Quixotic side trips peal from the main theme; new sites grow familiar by journey's end. This album-- solo cello certainly, but so specific of time and place it applies generally to anyone who has ever found wonderment in either travel or childhood-- unfolds in much the same way.

Artist: Erik Friedlander, Album: Block Ice & Propane, Genre: Experimental,Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: ""Airstream Envy" jolts open with a shriek of pure panic. Erik Friedlander's bow grates across the strings of his cello, wrenching notes into a stunted, disdainful exclamation. Imagine Friedlander-- now one of the world's top cellists with a Rolodex of collaborators from John Zorn and Laurie Anderson to John Darnielle and Courtney Love-- as a boy from New York's hinterlands, maybe 14 or 15 years old, out West in an RV sitting atop a 1966 Chevrolet pick-up truck. His mother, father, sister, and dog are along for the ride, as the truck barrels down an interstate. Suddenly, an Airstream trailer-- "sleek, silver...throwing our reflection back at us"-- zips past the Friedlander summer home. More than three decades later, this is how Erik Friedlander remembers his family losing a piece of their pride. The initial shock passes quickly, but with his cello, Friedlander continues to espouse a peculiar mix of curiosity and fear with regard to the shiny new beast. The Airstreams zip by, while the boyish Friedlander seems to pick up confidence, an adult intrigue vesting in its possibility. Suddenly, his playing is hopeful and bright, like he's just discovered the future in polished metal. Friedlander knows this feeling from experience: Every summer, Friedlander's family would gather in its RV and wend their way across America, as his father-- the famous scenic and music photographer Lee Friedlander-- completed assignments between both coasts. On Block Ice & Propane, Friedlander's first solo disc since 2003's Maldoror, the cellist revisits those summers, capturing their scenes by painting them with 13 mimetic or metaphorical compositions and improvisations. His memories push from minutiae-- seeing an Airstream for the first time or hearing the piercing sound of a pressure cooker-- to milestones, the easy, sweet dreams of a child anticipating the summer or the unbridled joy of seeing the countryside with young, wide eyes. Block Ice & Propane, then, is a boy's folk anthem-- sweet, naïve, intrigued-- gathered and transformed through a virtuoso's adult memory. Friedlander's résumé suggests that he's a player suited for a wide range of feelings, techniques, and situations. Beneath John Darnielle's voice on "Dilaudid", from the Mountain Goats album The Sunset Tree, he plays in abrupt, pungent ostinato, his stern repetition emphasizing doomed lines like, "You just can't do things your body wasn't meant to." In his own cello/sax/bass/drums Topaz Quartet, though, Friedlander leans on his funk influences to lock into a groove and bump hard against its ridges. Friedlander wields not only unfathomable technical ability but also uncommon inquisitiveness tailed by imagination. Block Ice, more personal than his previous solo work, is the product of such breadth: In his hands, the cello is capable of long, daunting tones, hanging, impressionistic pizzicato phrases, and short, furious hybrid bursts of both. During the masterful "Rusting in Honeysuckle", the boy who seems to have enjoyed the vistas of summer but perhaps fretted his removal from society and the perils of the open road unites all three as a man, whistling birdsong around brief, panicked cello howls. Elsewhere, Friedlander adds elements of gentle, loping plucks that imitate the sound of big, worn steel strings on an acoustic guitar, finger-picked into a folk ballad. "Yakima", for instance, sounds like a backseat journey along curvy roads in the temperate airs of the Washington state viticultural area. Quixotic side trips peal from the main theme; new sites grow familiar by journey's end. This album-- solo cello certainly, but so specific of time and place it applies generally to anyone who has ever found wonderment in either travel or childhood-- unfolds in much the same way."

Big Boys

Lullabies Help the Brain Grow

Jason Heller

Post-hardcore’s point of conception is as vague and debatable as that of post-punk, but a strong case can be made for placing the former's genesis at “Sound on Sound,” a remarkable track from Big Boys’ 1983 album Lullabies Help the Brain Grow. The title is a tipoff: “Sound on Sound” is built on a stratum of radio-degraded voice samples and static, and over all of that, a lopsided rhythm of minimal drums and wiry bass limps along, stretching empty space over its own rickety skeleton. Guitar harmonics ping like sonar, and no riffs are brought to bear. Guitarist Tim Kerr takes the mic from the band’s buoyant, bellicose frontman Randy “Biscuit” Turner, and instead of bellowing, he speaks simply yet cryptically, his voice both intimate and distant. It’s spacious, but that space screams. Contemporaries like Mission of Burma sound metal by comparison. The subtle stasis of tension and release is enough to pluck nerves. Lullabies, along with Big Boys’ swansong, 1985’s No Matter How Long the Line at the Cafeteria, There’s Always a Seat, are being reissued as discrete entities after spending two decades shoehorned together on the Touch and Go anthology The Fat Elvis. Post-hardcore is not what either album is best known as; while the band’s fellow pioneers of the Austin punk scene—most notably MDC, the Dicks, and Offenders—each nailed down its own consistent vision of punk rock, Big Boys loved funk. Granted, they weren’t the first to do so, as Gang of Four and Minutemen will attest. Lullabies is particularly beholden to the latter, as gleefully evident on jerky, syncopated songs like “Jump the Fence” and, well, “Funk Off”. But Big Boys had much more going on in their sound than simply providing a bridge between Minutemen and Red Hot Chili Peppers. “We Got Your Money” sports a shout-along, garage-rock populism that openly mocks the frat boys who loved them. More convolutedly satirical is the funk-fired, horn-injected “White Nigger”, especially in light of the Big Boys’ legendary feud with Bad Brains over homophobic taunts (the late Turner was openly gay). Musically and lyrically, the song is only a hair away from being a parody of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music”, one that acknowledges its creators’ whiteness in a far more confrontational and problematic way. It’s so far from “Sound on Sound”, it’s hard to believe it’s the same band. At a time when hardcore brooked little ambition or experimentation, that’s ultimately a good thing. The horns—but thankfully not the racial commentary—reappear on No Matter. The two years between the two albums sheared off some of Big Boys’ loose ends*,* as No Matter is more cohesive, settling into a punk-funk groove that closes the gap between circle pit and campus kegger. Turner's ragged howl had taken on a soulful melancholy as he grew less sure of hardcore—and less sure of his place in it—and that battle-scarred maturity is best heard on “Which Way to Go”. Sung in tandem by Turner and Kerr, it’s a cousin to the ringing, melodic, introspective mutation of hardcore that Rites of Spring was playing at the same time in Washington, D.C.—one that Hüsker Dü had helped instigate, too. Big Boys didn’t invent emo, but with a singular, heart-piercing song, they helped shape it. In the same way that punk was nowhere near finished when post-punk rose in the late ’70s, hardcore still raged in 1983 as Big Boys set the pace for what was to come—and still, hardcore rages on during both Lullabies and No Matter, records that boast far more restlessness and recklessness than almost any of its contemporary influences. The former's “Brickwall” is a 40-second dry-heave of asphyxiated punk that doesn’t even provide enough processing time for panic to set in, and No Matter’s opening song, “No”, is a sneer-and-squeal spasm of angst that imagines Jello Biafra seizing control of Black Flag. Still, Big Boys were never a self-styled street-gang perpetrating Reagan-era nihilism. A bleak sense of humor and a desperate underbelly lurked beneath their alternately derivative and innovative stream of anthems—but they lit and lifted that darkness with a surplus of savage joy. Post-hardcore would ultimately take a more dour route; heard as a whole, though, Lullabies and No Matter comprise a pastel-smeared, bursting-with-life reminder that things could have gone another way.

Artist: Big Boys, Album: Lullabies Help the Brain Grow, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Post-hardcore’s point of conception is as vague and debatable as that of post-punk, but a strong case can be made for placing the former's genesis at “Sound on Sound,” a remarkable track from Big Boys’ 1983 album Lullabies Help the Brain Grow. The title is a tipoff: “Sound on Sound” is built on a stratum of radio-degraded voice samples and static, and over all of that, a lopsided rhythm of minimal drums and wiry bass limps along, stretching empty space over its own rickety skeleton. Guitar harmonics ping like sonar, and no riffs are brought to bear. Guitarist Tim Kerr takes the mic from the band’s buoyant, bellicose frontman Randy “Biscuit” Turner, and instead of bellowing, he speaks simply yet cryptically, his voice both intimate and distant. It’s spacious, but that space screams. Contemporaries like Mission of Burma sound metal by comparison. The subtle stasis of tension and release is enough to pluck nerves. Lullabies, along with Big Boys’ swansong, 1985’s No Matter How Long the Line at the Cafeteria, There’s Always a Seat, are being reissued as discrete entities after spending two decades shoehorned together on the Touch and Go anthology The Fat Elvis. Post-hardcore is not what either album is best known as; while the band’s fellow pioneers of the Austin punk scene—most notably MDC, the Dicks, and Offenders—each nailed down its own consistent vision of punk rock, Big Boys loved funk. Granted, they weren’t the first to do so, as Gang of Four and Minutemen will attest. Lullabies is particularly beholden to the latter, as gleefully evident on jerky, syncopated songs like “Jump the Fence” and, well, “Funk Off”. But Big Boys had much more going on in their sound than simply providing a bridge between Minutemen and Red Hot Chili Peppers. “We Got Your Money” sports a shout-along, garage-rock populism that openly mocks the frat boys who loved them. More convolutedly satirical is the funk-fired, horn-injected “White Nigger”, especially in light of the Big Boys’ legendary feud with Bad Brains over homophobic taunts (the late Turner was openly gay). Musically and lyrically, the song is only a hair away from being a parody of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music”, one that acknowledges its creators’ whiteness in a far more confrontational and problematic way. It’s so far from “Sound on Sound”, it’s hard to believe it’s the same band. At a time when hardcore brooked little ambition or experimentation, that’s ultimately a good thing. The horns—but thankfully not the racial commentary—reappear on No Matter. The two years between the two albums sheared off some of Big Boys’ loose ends*,* as No Matter is more cohesive, settling into a punk-funk groove that closes the gap between circle pit and campus kegger. Turner's ragged howl had taken on a soulful melancholy as he grew less sure of hardcore—and less sure of his place in it—and that battle-scarred maturity is best heard on “Which Way to Go”. Sung in tandem by Turner and Kerr, it’s a cousin to the ringing, melodic, introspective mutation of hardcore that Rites of Spring was playing at the same time in Washington, D.C.—one that Hüsker Dü had helped instigate, too. Big Boys didn’t invent emo, but with a singular, heart-piercing song, they helped shape it. In the same way that punk was nowhere near finished when post-punk rose in the late ’70s, hardcore still raged in 1983 as Big Boys set the pace for what was to come—and still, hardcore rages on during both Lullabies and No Matter, records that boast far more restlessness and recklessness than almost any of its contemporary influences. The former's “Brickwall” is a 40-second dry-heave of asphyxiated punk that doesn’t even provide enough processing time for panic to set in, and No Matter’s opening song, “No”, is a sneer-and-squeal spasm of angst that imagines Jello Biafra seizing control of Black Flag. Still, Big Boys were never a self-styled street-gang perpetrating Reagan-era nihilism. A bleak sense of humor and a desperate underbelly lurked beneath their alternately derivative and innovative stream of anthems—but they lit and lifted that darkness with a surplus of savage joy. Post-hardcore would ultimately take a more dour route; heard as a whole, though, Lullabies and No Matter comprise a pastel-smeared, bursting-with-life reminder that things could have gone another way."

Fucked Up

David Comes to Life

Metal

Larry Fitzmaurice

Punk rock has had its share of ambitious bands producing ambitious records-- Double Nickels on the Dime, Zen Arcade, Sandinista!, and The Shape of Punk to Come spring to mind-- but few groups in this sphere have pushed the envelope as often as Fucked Up. For the last few years, they've been releasing singles as part of a series based on the Chinese Zodiac, each of which usually runs over the 10-minute mark. For a 2007 charity Christmas single, they managed to get James Murphy, Nelly Furtado, and "Degrassi: the Next Generation"/"90210" actress Shenae Grimes (among many, many others) to appear on the same song; during a 12-hour (!) NYC concert in 2008, they got moshers to smash along to Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig doing Descendents covers. Their reach continues unabated on their new album, David Comes to Life, a 78-minute rock opera. The story of David Comes to Life is fairly complicated and, at points, heavily meta. It concerns a factory worker named David Eliade who falls in love with a woman named Veronica Boisson. They conspire to build a bomb together and death, destruction, and redemption follow; along the way, the story's narrator does battle with David for control of the plot. There's a long tradition of rock concept albums that aren't easy to understand, and this one is no exception; but enjoying it doesn't depend on decoding the tale. The record is divided into four separate acts, with a narrative focus that shifts from scene to scene-- a few songs are told from the overarching narrator's perspective, while David's ex-girlfriend, Vivian Benson, offers her side of the story in the album's back half. While a few guest vocalists are employed to help out-- Cults' Madeline Follin and singer/songwriter Jennifer Castle represent Veronica and Vivian, respectively-- the story is largely told by the band's screaming frontman, Damien Abraham, aka Pink Eyes. Taking into account the album's relatively limited range-- almost an hour and a half of straight-up bashing and riffage, with moments like the jangly acoustic figure that opens "A Slanted Tone" as a rare respite-- it becomes apparent that you will need a few listens and a lyric sheet to apprehend David Comes to Life's ambition and follow its labyrinthine storyline. Or, you could just sit back and let the record's dense, visceral blast of guitar squall wash over you. More than any single Fucked Up record, David Comes to Life is thick with walls of noisy melody. It's hard to get a handle on just how many guitar tracks are on a given song, and Shane Stoneback deserves a medal for mixing the sheer bulk of the sound into something so clear. But for all the shoegazey textures and blistering sonic assault, David Comes to Life is also direct and immediate. Hooks are piled on top of hooks, bursting through torrents of spacey noise ("I Was There") and peppy rhythms ("The Recursive Girl") alike. At points, the primal appeal of the blunt and effective riffing even brings to mind the bar-band rock of the Hold Steady. Out front, Abraham still retains his scorched-earth bark. He's been finding ways to broaden his voice's impact, and it's never sounded better than it does here. Abraham knows his range and limitations and is finding new ways to work within them while adjusting to the band's forward lurch, in effect becoming another instrument in the mix. His stomping melancholia on "Turn the Season" feels like a gut-check, while he follows up his sole quiet moment on album closer "Lights Go Up" by shouting amidst curled screams, "I'm still in love with you/ After all of this time!" Besides the aforementioned appearances by Follin and Castle, Kurt Vile delivers a typically slack backing vocal on "Lights Go Up", too-- but, really, this is The Pink Eyes Show, and it's never been so compelling to watch. That said, all the howling and the album's extreme length might be a tough thing for those new to Fucked Up. For people in this category, it might be best to check out Hidden World first; it's a good representation of how fun and hooky Fucked Up are when they're in the zone, and in many ways it's a simpler, spiritual precursor to this record. Regardless, David Comes to Life is absolutely worth the commitment, a convincing demonstration of what can happen when a band works without limitations.

Artist: Fucked Up, Album: David Comes to Life, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "Punk rock has had its share of ambitious bands producing ambitious records-- Double Nickels on the Dime, Zen Arcade, Sandinista!, and The Shape of Punk to Come spring to mind-- but few groups in this sphere have pushed the envelope as often as Fucked Up. For the last few years, they've been releasing singles as part of a series based on the Chinese Zodiac, each of which usually runs over the 10-minute mark. For a 2007 charity Christmas single, they managed to get James Murphy, Nelly Furtado, and "Degrassi: the Next Generation"/"90210" actress Shenae Grimes (among many, many others) to appear on the same song; during a 12-hour (!) NYC concert in 2008, they got moshers to smash along to Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig doing Descendents covers. Their reach continues unabated on their new album, David Comes to Life, a 78-minute rock opera. The story of David Comes to Life is fairly complicated and, at points, heavily meta. It concerns a factory worker named David Eliade who falls in love with a woman named Veronica Boisson. They conspire to build a bomb together and death, destruction, and redemption follow; along the way, the story's narrator does battle with David for control of the plot. There's a long tradition of rock concept albums that aren't easy to understand, and this one is no exception; but enjoying it doesn't depend on decoding the tale. The record is divided into four separate acts, with a narrative focus that shifts from scene to scene-- a few songs are told from the overarching narrator's perspective, while David's ex-girlfriend, Vivian Benson, offers her side of the story in the album's back half. While a few guest vocalists are employed to help out-- Cults' Madeline Follin and singer/songwriter Jennifer Castle represent Veronica and Vivian, respectively-- the story is largely told by the band's screaming frontman, Damien Abraham, aka Pink Eyes. Taking into account the album's relatively limited range-- almost an hour and a half of straight-up bashing and riffage, with moments like the jangly acoustic figure that opens "A Slanted Tone" as a rare respite-- it becomes apparent that you will need a few listens and a lyric sheet to apprehend David Comes to Life's ambition and follow its labyrinthine storyline. Or, you could just sit back and let the record's dense, visceral blast of guitar squall wash over you. More than any single Fucked Up record, David Comes to Life is thick with walls of noisy melody. It's hard to get a handle on just how many guitar tracks are on a given song, and Shane Stoneback deserves a medal for mixing the sheer bulk of the sound into something so clear. But for all the shoegazey textures and blistering sonic assault, David Comes to Life is also direct and immediate. Hooks are piled on top of hooks, bursting through torrents of spacey noise ("I Was There") and peppy rhythms ("The Recursive Girl") alike. At points, the primal appeal of the blunt and effective riffing even brings to mind the bar-band rock of the Hold Steady. Out front, Abraham still retains his scorched-earth bark. He's been finding ways to broaden his voice's impact, and it's never sounded better than it does here. Abraham knows his range and limitations and is finding new ways to work within them while adjusting to the band's forward lurch, in effect becoming another instrument in the mix. His stomping melancholia on "Turn the Season" feels like a gut-check, while he follows up his sole quiet moment on album closer "Lights Go Up" by shouting amidst curled screams, "I'm still in love with you/ After all of this time!" Besides the aforementioned appearances by Follin and Castle, Kurt Vile delivers a typically slack backing vocal on "Lights Go Up", too-- but, really, this is The Pink Eyes Show, and it's never been so compelling to watch. That said, all the howling and the album's extreme length might be a tough thing for those new to Fucked Up. For people in this category, it might be best to check out Hidden World first; it's a good representation of how fun and hooky Fucked Up are when they're in the zone, and in many ways it's a simpler, spiritual precursor to this record. Regardless, David Comes to Life is absolutely worth the commitment, a convincing demonstration of what can happen when a band works without limitations."

Azeda Booth

In Flesh Tones

Electronic,Experimental,Pop/R&B

Brian Howe

Consider the lullaby: sets simple melodies to simpler rhythms; sounds twinkly; native to habitats as diverse as the music box, the mobile, and the matronly au pair; makes babies sleepy. Synonymous with being soothed and coddled. Makes adult humans sleepy too, which presents a problem for bands who want to avail themselves of the lullaby's somnolent power while keeping their audience alert. Because you know, when someone says that a band puts them to sleep, they don't usually mean it as a compliment. Azeda Booth's solution is to render lullabies on the scale of anthems. The Calgary, Alberta, quintet's starry meditations for laptop, synths, and guitars are as delicately formed and colored as soap bubbles, yet they drift with a paradoxically leaden sense of weight. They've created a signature sound that is both idiosyncratic and durable enough to sustain a whole album: Each track on In Flesh Tones is comprised of chirpily androgynous vocals (with hints of subterranean soul), ice-baths of beatific mood, and insistently sputtering glitch tracks that thread a thin wire of urgency through the indeterminately unfurling melodies. In Flesh Tones should appeal to fans of the laptop-ier side of Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins (specifically, Adore), the Notwist, and Broken Social Scene-- maybe imagine an album's worth of "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl"-- but these comparisons are insufficient, and this is a crucial part of Azeda Booth's appeal. At a time when many popular bands' touchstones can be divided without remainders into Blogger tags, there simply isn't anyone doing exactly what these guys are doing right now. From the first fluctuating tones and galloping, hard-panning snares of "Ran"-- even before the first airy gusts of singing appear-- you feel yourself immersed in a profoundly intuitive musical vision. Intuition seems to govern the songs' general movement as well as their particulars-- they are meandering yet memorable, a rare combination. Forget progression, this is osmosis. The syncopated lope of "In Red" flattens out into halting flourishes on the one-beat so gradually that the transition is all but undetectable. "First Little Britches" is a marvel of loose cohesion, with drifting refrains subbing in for verses, ambient tone beds for bridges, a few well-placed, shaggy claps for choruses. Furthermore, the individual tracks blur into one another cunningly-- the frictionlessly skating chords that open "Big Fists" seem shaken loose from the shuddering electronic drum circle that caps "Numberguts". This meandering quality might put off some listeners, but to my ears, Azeda Booth have figured out how to reconcile pop music's infectiousness with ambient music's nebulous aura, and have produced one of 2008's most unique and immediately pleasurable albums.

Artist: Azeda Booth, Album: In Flesh Tones, Genre: Electronic,Experimental,Pop/R&B, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Consider the lullaby: sets simple melodies to simpler rhythms; sounds twinkly; native to habitats as diverse as the music box, the mobile, and the matronly au pair; makes babies sleepy. Synonymous with being soothed and coddled. Makes adult humans sleepy too, which presents a problem for bands who want to avail themselves of the lullaby's somnolent power while keeping their audience alert. Because you know, when someone says that a band puts them to sleep, they don't usually mean it as a compliment. Azeda Booth's solution is to render lullabies on the scale of anthems. The Calgary, Alberta, quintet's starry meditations for laptop, synths, and guitars are as delicately formed and colored as soap bubbles, yet they drift with a paradoxically leaden sense of weight. They've created a signature sound that is both idiosyncratic and durable enough to sustain a whole album: Each track on In Flesh Tones is comprised of chirpily androgynous vocals (with hints of subterranean soul), ice-baths of beatific mood, and insistently sputtering glitch tracks that thread a thin wire of urgency through the indeterminately unfurling melodies. In Flesh Tones should appeal to fans of the laptop-ier side of Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins (specifically, Adore), the Notwist, and Broken Social Scene-- maybe imagine an album's worth of "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl"-- but these comparisons are insufficient, and this is a crucial part of Azeda Booth's appeal. At a time when many popular bands' touchstones can be divided without remainders into Blogger tags, there simply isn't anyone doing exactly what these guys are doing right now. From the first fluctuating tones and galloping, hard-panning snares of "Ran"-- even before the first airy gusts of singing appear-- you feel yourself immersed in a profoundly intuitive musical vision. Intuition seems to govern the songs' general movement as well as their particulars-- they are meandering yet memorable, a rare combination. Forget progression, this is osmosis. The syncopated lope of "In Red" flattens out into halting flourishes on the one-beat so gradually that the transition is all but undetectable. "First Little Britches" is a marvel of loose cohesion, with drifting refrains subbing in for verses, ambient tone beds for bridges, a few well-placed, shaggy claps for choruses. Furthermore, the individual tracks blur into one another cunningly-- the frictionlessly skating chords that open "Big Fists" seem shaken loose from the shuddering electronic drum circle that caps "Numberguts". This meandering quality might put off some listeners, but to my ears, Azeda Booth have figured out how to reconcile pop music's infectiousness with ambient music's nebulous aura, and have produced one of 2008's most unique and immediately pleasurable albums."

No Kids

Come Into My House

Rock

Marc Hogan

No Kids are the non-children of P:ano, a Vancouver-based indie pop group who borrowed from an unusual array of influences-- from Broadway to post-disco-- over a catalog of three little-heard albums, one 7" single, and an 11-track EP. After the departure of co-founding member Larissa Loyva, P:ano's remaining threesome have returned as No Kids, changing course from 2005's ukulele-driven Ghost Pirates Without Heads for a debut that rivals the Dirty Projectors' The Getty Address in its art-saturated omnivorousness, though its appetites aren't always within its means. On Come Into My House, everything from present-day urban radio to kitchen-sink chamber-pop to college glee clubs serve as fodder for F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque depictions of effete East Coast student loneliness. This old beach house is an extravagant one, peopled by characters who probably weren't hurt by the housing-market slump. Plenty of indie pop bands borrow from 1960s Motown, but No Kids' appropriation of contemporary r&b puts them in a lineage that runs from Orange Juice's Chic-style guitars and Scritti Politti's soulful balladry to Hot Chip's self-aware electropop-- and, alas, labelmate Hey Willpower's un-FutureSex-y Timberlake sounds, too. When the compositions are as engaging as the intricate percussion, as on advance mp3s like piano-based male-female duet "For Halloween" or the falsetto-frosted "The Beaches All Closed", songwriter Nick Krgovich conjures a world of empty vacation homes and full scrapbooks. The T-Pain-esque Auto-Tuning on "Listen For It/Courtyard Music" comes off as an eccentricity next to what sounds like bassoon, but Krgovich's protagonists have eccentricities instead of girlfriends. "Neighbour's Party" interpolates the slinky piano riff from Amerie's "Crush" as if it were a sample; the obviousness of the reference is a painful reminder that Amerie would be a lot more fun to hear blasting from your neighbor's party. Of course, No Kids know this, too. "It's a dance in my heart," Krgovich and Julia Chirka sing-- not a night in the club. Opener "Great Escape" describes "wandering around the gardens on this great estate" with the band's Jimmy Jam-Terry Lewis fascination hidden behind lush orchestration, marching-band drum rolls, and quiet wistfulness. When the time comes for celebration on "I Love the Weekend" or "Old Iron Gate", Krgovich's melismas flit over Brazilian rhythms instead of icy-hot r&b. "Four Freshmen Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down" sets barbershop-style harmonies atop unobtrusive strums. Lyrical mentions of upper-crust academic life are about as frequent here as musical allusions to the pop charts. In Fitzgerald novels like The Beautiful and Damned, the characters may come from the WASP elite, but their passions burn like the booze in which they can't help but overindulge. Come Into My House represents another side of paradise-- the yearning of the well-to-do young intellectual who doesn't do well when it comes to matters of the heart, the insider who finds himself on the outside (with his pockets full of saltwater taffy). The album could use a little more of Fitzgerald's fiery extremes, and a bit less of meandering disappointments like "You Looked Good to Me" or "Dancing in the Stacks", but at its best it's a clever piece of musical storytelling by a band unintimidated by genre.

Artist: No Kids, Album: Come Into My House, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "No Kids are the non-children of P:ano, a Vancouver-based indie pop group who borrowed from an unusual array of influences-- from Broadway to post-disco-- over a catalog of three little-heard albums, one 7" single, and an 11-track EP. After the departure of co-founding member Larissa Loyva, P:ano's remaining threesome have returned as No Kids, changing course from 2005's ukulele-driven Ghost Pirates Without Heads for a debut that rivals the Dirty Projectors' The Getty Address in its art-saturated omnivorousness, though its appetites aren't always within its means. On Come Into My House, everything from present-day urban radio to kitchen-sink chamber-pop to college glee clubs serve as fodder for F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque depictions of effete East Coast student loneliness. This old beach house is an extravagant one, peopled by characters who probably weren't hurt by the housing-market slump. Plenty of indie pop bands borrow from 1960s Motown, but No Kids' appropriation of contemporary r&b puts them in a lineage that runs from Orange Juice's Chic-style guitars and Scritti Politti's soulful balladry to Hot Chip's self-aware electropop-- and, alas, labelmate Hey Willpower's un-FutureSex-y Timberlake sounds, too. When the compositions are as engaging as the intricate percussion, as on advance mp3s like piano-based male-female duet "For Halloween" or the falsetto-frosted "The Beaches All Closed", songwriter Nick Krgovich conjures a world of empty vacation homes and full scrapbooks. The T-Pain-esque Auto-Tuning on "Listen For It/Courtyard Music" comes off as an eccentricity next to what sounds like bassoon, but Krgovich's protagonists have eccentricities instead of girlfriends. "Neighbour's Party" interpolates the slinky piano riff from Amerie's "Crush" as if it were a sample; the obviousness of the reference is a painful reminder that Amerie would be a lot more fun to hear blasting from your neighbor's party. Of course, No Kids know this, too. "It's a dance in my heart," Krgovich and Julia Chirka sing-- not a night in the club. Opener "Great Escape" describes "wandering around the gardens on this great estate" with the band's Jimmy Jam-Terry Lewis fascination hidden behind lush orchestration, marching-band drum rolls, and quiet wistfulness. When the time comes for celebration on "I Love the Weekend" or "Old Iron Gate", Krgovich's melismas flit over Brazilian rhythms instead of icy-hot r&b. "Four Freshmen Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down" sets barbershop-style harmonies atop unobtrusive strums. Lyrical mentions of upper-crust academic life are about as frequent here as musical allusions to the pop charts. In Fitzgerald novels like The Beautiful and Damned, the characters may come from the WASP elite, but their passions burn like the booze in which they can't help but overindulge. Come Into My House represents another side of paradise-- the yearning of the well-to-do young intellectual who doesn't do well when it comes to matters of the heart, the insider who finds himself on the outside (with his pockets full of saltwater taffy). The album could use a little more of Fitzgerald's fiery extremes, and a bit less of meandering disappointments like "You Looked Good to Me" or "Dancing in the Stacks", but at its best it's a clever piece of musical storytelling by a band unintimidated by genre."

Gnaw

Horrible Chamber

Metal

Grayson Currin

Gnaw, from New York, are a five-piece band. But the noise metallurgists churn around one clear and inarguable point of darkness—vocal torturer Alan Dubin. Horrible Chamber, the band’s much-improved second album, starts without him. An out-of-tune piano plinks a diatonic melody ahead of and then in sync with a concussive electronic thud. It’s a chilly sound, sure, but it’s like waiting in line for a haunted house, where the anticipation of what’s about to come offers the true scare. When Dubin’s pitchy scream, stuck somewhere between a lupine howl and a serpentine hiss, cuts in after the 40-second prelude, you’re finally pushed through the front door. “Humming, humming, outside, outside, humming,” Dubin speak-screams slowly, splitting every word of his harangue with rests flooded by static and a sidecar of anxiety. “You left your window open, nice lady.” The next five minutes are purely repetitious, Dubin redelivering his lines in broken fragments and slipping briefly into talk of knife play. The band behind him controls the shock that surrounds the sound, like night watchmen looking out for the perpetrator and not the victim. It’s a point-of-view horror movie. Dubin has done this before, of course. In the 90s, he was the singer of O.L.D., a collaboration with James Plotkin that specialized in weirdo, post-Patton industrial metal. And during the last decade, he infamously offered the curdled tone at the center of Khanate, the leaner and more terrorizing doom sideshow to member Stephen O’Malley’s drones in Sunn O))). But Gnaw released its 2009 debut, the nine-song fisticuffs This Face, a month after Khanate released its posthumous finale. The implication was clear: Gnaw was custom-built to harbor Dubin’s demented invective, to make his screams the bloody, bloodying star. By mixing jagged digital shards, relentless power electronics, piercing guitar amplifiers, and mid-tempo metal drums, Gnaw created a violent, volatile place for Dubin to work. But This Face tried to do a bit too much at once, as though the band were overenthusiastic about its savage charge. The meld of heavy metal electrics and harsh noise electronics were sometimes nebulous, mostly causing the songs to feel more slight than scary. Horrible Chamber is more focused and deliberate, and the net effect is much more threatening. Dubin limns scenes of murder and decay (in both cases, his own and that of others), and the band not only paints the text with music to match but stands back far enough to let him work. During that gambit about the open window, the manipulated piano eventually starts to sound like wind chimes plinking together calmly and creepily while madness happens inside. Across its 10 minutes, “Widowkeeper” morphs slowly from a catacomb drone, where Dubin death-whispers about cold hands and rotting bodies above combative electronics, into a full-on doom torment, where the singer drags his beleaguered voice over broken guitar waveforms like a bag of bones. It’s a brilliant move that allows suspicion to become a visceral, terrifying reality. “Of Embers” is a tale of chest-beating, mad-eyed domination. “I bring the mist,” Dubin bellows at one point. “We’ll take this city, burn their beds,” he promises. The band pairs the ultimatums with what’s ultimately its most punishing metal—a grueling crawl across peak-and-valley drums and through hyper-distorted guitars. In the past, Gnaw might’ve crowded the action with tape hiss or effected malfeasance. But here, the squelchy din simply supports the roar rather than hamstring it. It’s more than a move of economy; Gnaw have gotten better at serving as Dubin’s vehicle of choice, at conveying the danger he means to share. Horrible Chamber arrived in mid-October, just as plastic ghouls began to populate small-town storefronts and black-cat cutouts arrived in little front yards. Those fake boogeymen remind us annually of the horror of haunting and the tingle of danger. Gnaw get beyond all that, pushing their tirades and tales to the point where actual destruction seems just beyond the door. So much of that rests with Dubin, just as it has with every band he’s called his own. But this time, much of it rests with the band itself, too, which approaches Dubin’s rampages with newfound reserve and purpose. Gnaw might still lack the dramatic thrall and endless volume of Khanate, but they’ve begun to build themselves stepwise around a masterful instrument and centerpiece that no one else has.

Artist: Gnaw, Album: Horrible Chamber, Genre: Metal, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Gnaw, from New York, are a five-piece band. But the noise metallurgists churn around one clear and inarguable point of darkness—vocal torturer Alan Dubin. Horrible Chamber, the band’s much-improved second album, starts without him. An out-of-tune piano plinks a diatonic melody ahead of and then in sync with a concussive electronic thud. It’s a chilly sound, sure, but it’s like waiting in line for a haunted house, where the anticipation of what’s about to come offers the true scare. When Dubin’s pitchy scream, stuck somewhere between a lupine howl and a serpentine hiss, cuts in after the 40-second prelude, you’re finally pushed through the front door. “Humming, humming, outside, outside, humming,” Dubin speak-screams slowly, splitting every word of his harangue with rests flooded by static and a sidecar of anxiety. “You left your window open, nice lady.” The next five minutes are purely repetitious, Dubin redelivering his lines in broken fragments and slipping briefly into talk of knife play. The band behind him controls the shock that surrounds the sound, like night watchmen looking out for the perpetrator and not the victim. It’s a point-of-view horror movie. Dubin has done this before, of course. In the 90s, he was the singer of O.L.D., a collaboration with James Plotkin that specialized in weirdo, post-Patton industrial metal. And during the last decade, he infamously offered the curdled tone at the center of Khanate, the leaner and more terrorizing doom sideshow to member Stephen O’Malley’s drones in Sunn O))). But Gnaw released its 2009 debut, the nine-song fisticuffs This Face, a month after Khanate released its posthumous finale. The implication was clear: Gnaw was custom-built to harbor Dubin’s demented invective, to make his screams the bloody, bloodying star. By mixing jagged digital shards, relentless power electronics, piercing guitar amplifiers, and mid-tempo metal drums, Gnaw created a violent, volatile place for Dubin to work. But This Face tried to do a bit too much at once, as though the band were overenthusiastic about its savage charge. The meld of heavy metal electrics and harsh noise electronics were sometimes nebulous, mostly causing the songs to feel more slight than scary. Horrible Chamber is more focused and deliberate, and the net effect is much more threatening. Dubin limns scenes of murder and decay (in both cases, his own and that of others), and the band not only paints the text with music to match but stands back far enough to let him work. During that gambit about the open window, the manipulated piano eventually starts to sound like wind chimes plinking together calmly and creepily while madness happens inside. Across its 10 minutes, “Widowkeeper” morphs slowly from a catacomb drone, where Dubin death-whispers about cold hands and rotting bodies above combative electronics, into a full-on doom torment, where the singer drags his beleaguered voice over broken guitar waveforms like a bag of bones. It’s a brilliant move that allows suspicion to become a visceral, terrifying reality. “Of Embers” is a tale of chest-beating, mad-eyed domination. “I bring the mist,” Dubin bellows at one point. “We’ll take this city, burn their beds,” he promises. The band pairs the ultimatums with what’s ultimately its most punishing metal—a grueling crawl across peak-and-valley drums and through hyper-distorted guitars. In the past, Gnaw might’ve crowded the action with tape hiss or effected malfeasance. But here, the squelchy din simply supports the roar rather than hamstring it. It’s more than a move of economy; Gnaw have gotten better at serving as Dubin’s vehicle of choice, at conveying the danger he means to share. Horrible Chamber arrived in mid-October, just as plastic ghouls began to populate small-town storefronts and black-cat cutouts arrived in little front yards. Those fake boogeymen remind us annually of the horror of haunting and the tingle of danger. Gnaw get beyond all that, pushing their tirades and tales to the point where actual destruction seems just beyond the door. So much of that rests with Dubin, just as it has with every band he’s called his own. But this time, much of it rests with the band itself, too, which approaches Dubin’s rampages with newfound reserve and purpose. Gnaw might still lack the dramatic thrall and endless volume of Khanate, but they’ve begun to build themselves stepwise around a masterful instrument and centerpiece that no one else has."

Botany

Raw Light II

Electronic

Jay Balfour

The music made by Austin-based producer Spencer Stephenson (aka Botany) has an air of psychedelic spirituality. Stephenson has toyed with narrative frameworks to bolster this impression: His third album, an instrumental project released last year called Deepak Verbera, was presented as a continuation of the 20th-century work of an Argentinian metaphysical researcher named Horris E. Campos. Except, it’s not entirely clear that Campos was real. “Horris is kind of my Ziggy Stardust, a character that I feel like I channel music through in some way,” Stephenson told FACT Magazine a few months ago. As Botany, Stephenson builds his production like a loose-handed collage artist. He doesn’t interlock his samples—obscure and unexpectedly funky loops, religious chanting, Eastern psychedelic sounds—so much as neatly pile them atop one another, setting into motion paralleling trajectories. Sometimes Stephenson’s beats seem to end in two different places, resolving separate beginnings. The former jazz drummer has also become increasingly indifferent to consistent percussion, often letting his creations meander with a casual disregard for traditional structure that borders on ambient. *Raw Light II *is Stephenson’s fourth album as Botany, but he’s billed it as a follow-up and companion piece to his sophomore record Dimming Awe, the Light Is Raw. Both albums were mastered by the L.A. beat scene mainstay and Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid, but the new one is a little shorter and entirely instrumental, skipping out on the welcome vocal appearances of the original. Stephenson’s beats are certainly busy enough to stand alone and command their own attention, and they just as frequently demand some patience. Stephenson often barely avoids cacophony, but seems to revel in his nearness to the effect. At the middle of “Yon,” Stephenson strips away everything but a throbbing bottom-end kick, maybe just to splay out the absurd intrigue of the sounds he’s lifting. Is that a cow mooing? Suddenly it sounds perfectly nice underneath an anxious shout and hymnal vocal bops. The density of Stephenson’s sample-stitching can obscure the accomplishment of the pairings themselves. There are plenty of sounds and interesting moments I heard only through headphones and furrowed concentration, but I’m not sure I enjoyed the record that way any more than setting it in motion and zoning out. Still, some of the tracks are convoluted enough to constitute a slog. “Janis Joplin,” a short burst of a track in the middle of the record, stands apart. It stutters and clanks along, but it serves up the most immediately digestible, loopy funk here, like an intermission palette-cleanser. I found myself returning to the song often, but never enjoyed it as much out of context. It’s the same effect Stephenson nurtures throughout, arranging unexpected sounds and somehow making them sound perfectly, weirdly in sequence together.

Artist: Botany, Album: Raw Light II, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.9 Album review: "The music made by Austin-based producer Spencer Stephenson (aka Botany) has an air of psychedelic spirituality. Stephenson has toyed with narrative frameworks to bolster this impression: His third album, an instrumental project released last year called Deepak Verbera, was presented as a continuation of the 20th-century work of an Argentinian metaphysical researcher named Horris E. Campos. Except, it’s not entirely clear that Campos was real. “Horris is kind of my Ziggy Stardust, a character that I feel like I channel music through in some way,” Stephenson told FACT Magazine a few months ago. As Botany, Stephenson builds his production like a loose-handed collage artist. He doesn’t interlock his samples—obscure and unexpectedly funky loops, religious chanting, Eastern psychedelic sounds—so much as neatly pile them atop one another, setting into motion paralleling trajectories. Sometimes Stephenson’s beats seem to end in two different places, resolving separate beginnings. The former jazz drummer has also become increasingly indifferent to consistent percussion, often letting his creations meander with a casual disregard for traditional structure that borders on ambient. *Raw Light II *is Stephenson’s fourth album as Botany, but he’s billed it as a follow-up and companion piece to his sophomore record Dimming Awe, the Light Is Raw. Both albums were mastered by the L.A. beat scene mainstay and Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid, but the new one is a little shorter and entirely instrumental, skipping out on the welcome vocal appearances of the original. Stephenson’s beats are certainly busy enough to stand alone and command their own attention, and they just as frequently demand some patience. Stephenson often barely avoids cacophony, but seems to revel in his nearness to the effect. At the middle of “Yon,” Stephenson strips away everything but a throbbing bottom-end kick, maybe just to splay out the absurd intrigue of the sounds he’s lifting. Is that a cow mooing? Suddenly it sounds perfectly nice underneath an anxious shout and hymnal vocal bops. The density of Stephenson’s sample-stitching can obscure the accomplishment of the pairings themselves. There are plenty of sounds and interesting moments I heard only through headphones and furrowed concentration, but I’m not sure I enjoyed the record that way any more than setting it in motion and zoning out. Still, some of the tracks are convoluted enough to constitute a slog. “Janis Joplin,” a short burst of a track in the middle of the record, stands apart. It stutters and clanks along, but it serves up the most immediately digestible, loopy funk here, like an intermission palette-cleanser. I found myself returning to the song often, but never enjoyed it as much out of context. It’s the same effect Stephenson nurtures throughout, arranging unexpected sounds and somehow making them sound perfectly, weirdly in sequence together."

Telefon Tel Aviv

Map of What Is Effortless

Electronic

Mark Pytlik

At the time of its release in 2001, the liquid, jazz-inflected electronic of Telefon Tel Aviv's Fahrenheit Fair Enough provided welcome respite from IDM's relentlessly brittle and increasingly boring routine. Steeped in the same burbling warmth that defined Scott Herren's pre-Barcelona output as Savath & Savalas, Fahrenheit politely suggested a new direction that electronic music might take, one that relied as heavily on the Rhodes as it did the Cubase VST. Although it wasn't a radical approach, it was enough to differentiate Telefon's languid post-rock from the digital drill bit sounds buzzing out from every other 18 year-old's laptop. Temporarily, anyway. Three years is an eternity in electronic music's timeline; certainly more than enough to expose the inherent limitations in making chillout music for a subset that defined themselves by never going out much to begin with. In 2004, more of Telefon's once-novel blend of digital squiggles and organic arrangements would seem passe, a little late to its own party. So, rather than scale back the soul in their electronic music, Tel Aviv's Joshua Eustis and Charles Cooper downsize the electronic in their soul, in the process adding two singers and re-emerging as a sort of twerkier Zero 7. Where Fahrenheit Fair Enough was entirely instrumental, seven of the nine tracks on Map of What Is Effortless feature vocals. Singing duties are split by Damon Aaron, whose reedy tenor is serviceable but never exceptional, and L'Altra's Lindsay Anderson, whose disaffected vocals-- with only one exception, and only then with the help of some mansized DSP work-- are similarly unremarkable. But even with better performances from its singers, Map of What Is Effortless would still be a deeply flawed record. The reason for this is simple: The addition of vocalists and the move to a song-oriented structure demands better songs, and yet Telefon Tel Aviv continue to lean on immaculately sculpted sonics and massive orchestral swoops for their drama. Without decent source material, the singers are left to languish, and usually, they take the songs with them. Frustratingly, the instrumentals account for two of the album's best three tracks. Opener "When It Happens It Moves All by Itself" is a rolling slice of string-noir that invites comparisons to Cinematic Orchestra, while the album's title track contains an achingly bittersweet string motif that builds to a muted climax before slipping nimbly out the backdoor. To be honest, I'm not even sure if the third standout, "My Week Beats Your Year", stands out because it's particularly good or simply because it's something other than prettified, meandering neo-soul. Featuring Anderson's icy, mulched vocals, a clapback rhythm and a staccato keyboard line, it plays like Tel Aviv's approximation of a Richard X clubfloor track. But everything else, from the wandering "I Lied" (propped up by a well-placed rush of strings) to the stillborn "What It Was Will Never End" (propped up by a well-placed surge of guitars), just kind of hopelessly meanders, waiting, as if the arrangements might suddenly do something different to redeem it. Sometimes that happens, but too often, Map of What Is Effortless just plods, one track lazily into another, lukewarm and glazed over, all dressed up, nowhere to go.

Artist: Telefon Tel Aviv, Album: Map of What Is Effortless, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 6.3 Album review: "At the time of its release in 2001, the liquid, jazz-inflected electronic of Telefon Tel Aviv's Fahrenheit Fair Enough provided welcome respite from IDM's relentlessly brittle and increasingly boring routine. Steeped in the same burbling warmth that defined Scott Herren's pre-Barcelona output as Savath & Savalas, Fahrenheit politely suggested a new direction that electronic music might take, one that relied as heavily on the Rhodes as it did the Cubase VST. Although it wasn't a radical approach, it was enough to differentiate Telefon's languid post-rock from the digital drill bit sounds buzzing out from every other 18 year-old's laptop. Temporarily, anyway. Three years is an eternity in electronic music's timeline; certainly more than enough to expose the inherent limitations in making chillout music for a subset that defined themselves by never going out much to begin with. In 2004, more of Telefon's once-novel blend of digital squiggles and organic arrangements would seem passe, a little late to its own party. So, rather than scale back the soul in their electronic music, Tel Aviv's Joshua Eustis and Charles Cooper downsize the electronic in their soul, in the process adding two singers and re-emerging as a sort of twerkier Zero 7. Where Fahrenheit Fair Enough was entirely instrumental, seven of the nine tracks on Map of What Is Effortless feature vocals. Singing duties are split by Damon Aaron, whose reedy tenor is serviceable but never exceptional, and L'Altra's Lindsay Anderson, whose disaffected vocals-- with only one exception, and only then with the help of some mansized DSP work-- are similarly unremarkable. But even with better performances from its singers, Map of What Is Effortless would still be a deeply flawed record. The reason for this is simple: The addition of vocalists and the move to a song-oriented structure demands better songs, and yet Telefon Tel Aviv continue to lean on immaculately sculpted sonics and massive orchestral swoops for their drama. Without decent source material, the singers are left to languish, and usually, they take the songs with them. Frustratingly, the instrumentals account for two of the album's best three tracks. Opener "When It Happens It Moves All by Itself" is a rolling slice of string-noir that invites comparisons to Cinematic Orchestra, while the album's title track contains an achingly bittersweet string motif that builds to a muted climax before slipping nimbly out the backdoor. To be honest, I'm not even sure if the third standout, "My Week Beats Your Year", stands out because it's particularly good or simply because it's something other than prettified, meandering neo-soul. Featuring Anderson's icy, mulched vocals, a clapback rhythm and a staccato keyboard line, it plays like Tel Aviv's approximation of a Richard X clubfloor track. But everything else, from the wandering "I Lied" (propped up by a well-placed rush of strings) to the stillborn "What It Was Will Never End" (propped up by a well-placed surge of guitars), just kind of hopelessly meanders, waiting, as if the arrangements might suddenly do something different to redeem it. Sometimes that happens, but too often, Map of What Is Effortless just plods, one track lazily into another, lukewarm and glazed over, all dressed up, nowhere to go."

Dizzee Rascal

Showtime

Rap

Scott Plagenhoef

Ah, moaning about celebrity. Even when the complaints of the rich and famous are valid, they're still often insufferable. It's no surprise that films about the horrors of being chased by the paparazzi or how awful it is for poor Julia Roberts to sit through media junkets fall flat on their egos. And musically, negative responses to the klieg and camera lights haven't been much better. Tracks about the pitfalls of celebrity culture or the trappings of wide-scale admiration and fabulous wealth-- from Pink Floyd's "Money" to Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me"-- are often patronizing and grating. There are exceptions, of course: Eminem has been playing a compelling game of cat-and-mouse with his persona, fans and critics ever since he first hit the charts, and Kurt Cobain's wrestling with both self-hatred and a success he simultaneously courted and recoiled against are well explored on Nirvana's In Utero. When Dizzee Rascal was promoting his debut record, 2003's trenchant Boy in Da Corner, he famously cited In Utero as his favorite record of all time. Perhaps then it's no surprise that follow-up Showtime often deals with the London savant's fishbowl life as he negotiates both the expectations of those who hope he swims and the sharpened knives of those who wish he sinks. Rascal's level of fame isn't close to any of the above artists-- he thanks the 100,000 people who bought his debut, and he's still pleased just to open for Jay-Z rather than throwing rocks at Jigga's now-abdicated throne-- and that's part of his problem. "Still Dylan the villain from around the way," Rascal is big enough that his detractors want to bring him down and small enough that they probably can. So while a multiplatinum seller like Nelly can wonder, "What good is all the fame if you're not fucking the models?", Dizzee is not only mercifully teased by a woman on Showtime's "Face"-- she calls him a one-hit wonder and mocks his thin wardrobe and low-budget video before ultimately wishing a Jay-Z promo is on MTV Base-- but her words hurt. "People are going to respect me if it kills you," Dizzee mutters on the follow-up track, and if that's the central goal on Showtime, he's likely to accomplish it. The album naturally lacks the shock of the new, the jolt of Boy in Da Corner-- instead, it's a consolidation of his strengths, lyrically and sonically, and a more satisfying listen than its predecessor. Musically, Rascal continues along many of the same paths-- explorations into orientalism and modal composition; the lurching, clattering futurerattle of jungle, dancehall, and hip-hop echoing through concrete tenements-- although the finished product is much more muscular and confident. Lyrically, he balances his paranoia with the spoonfuls of homespun advice and dew-eyed rallying cries that colored both his debut and Treddin' on Thin Ice, the solo bow from Wiley, another Roll Deep vet. In short, Rascal is keeping his feet on the ground, reaching for the stars, and looking over his shoulder for those who want to lay him in the gutter. Single "Stand Up Tall" has its finger on "Pulse X" and the exuberance and immediacy of Boy's "Fix Up, Look Sharp". "Hype Talk" ice dances with glitch-pop better than anything on Vespertine. "Imagine" takes fleeting elements of emo and the "Girl/Boy Song" to somehow magical results. "Learn" demonstrates that Rascal can do orientalism as beats-and-banger instead of just minimalist soundtracks to introspection. He also looks further afield to Jamaica ("Face") and America ("Everywhere", "Flyin'"), and gets playful on the one-two combination of "Dream" and "Girls". The latter features the Kano-like cadence of Marga Man as he and Rascal wink and whistle at women over the track that sounds most like it could have tumbled off of Boy. The former is the song that will likely receive the most attention, and could be the make-or-break point for Showtime fencesitters. Taking its sing-song, Casio-tinkling chorus from Rodgers & Hammerstein via Captain Sensible's "Happy Talk", "Dream" is the record's most overt Jay-Z reference (it's a close cousin to "Hard Knock Life") and could become its commercial equivalent to "Dry Your Eyes", a recent UK #1 for The Streets. "Dream" has a loopy charm and simple philosophy, and Dizzee's infectious exuberance for the track leaves him unable to resist adding his off-key vocals to the central lyric: "You've got to have a dream/ If you don't have a dream/ How you gonna have a dream come true?" Even when something doesn't exactly work, there are other elements to buttress the missteps: "Knock, Knock"'s central lyrical conceit is propped up by the track's tea-kettle sighs as it moves at night down Jefferson Avenue (it's much too slow for the Autobahn). The female vocal on "Get By"'s chorus (which is more indebted to Kanye than the thug/diva duet template) has a bit of a square-peg/round-hole quality, but the song contains some of Dizzee's most quotable lyrics. "If I can't find my around/ I'll find a way across/ And if I can't find my across/ I'll bore straight through," Dizzee insists on album closer, "Fickle". Not a Smiths reference ("fame, fame, fickle fame"), the track is perhaps the record's highlight, and the best example of Rascal's approach-- a mix of pragmatism and optimism, of demonstrating bravado without denying his vulnerability. Rascal's is a three-dimensional world, then-- not black and white, us vs. them, me against the world, me against the music, playas vs. hatas, underground vs. mainstream, or mo money, mo problems. There are elements of each of those cliches in his tracks, but he's smart enough to seek the nuances and contradictions in each of those supposed dichotomies rather than approach them as absolutes, an either/or, or a matter of right vs. wrong.

Artist: Dizzee Rascal, Album: Showtime, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 8.6 Album review: "Ah, moaning about celebrity. Even when the complaints of the rich and famous are valid, they're still often insufferable. It's no surprise that films about the horrors of being chased by the paparazzi or how awful it is for poor Julia Roberts to sit through media junkets fall flat on their egos. And musically, negative responses to the klieg and camera lights haven't been much better. Tracks about the pitfalls of celebrity culture or the trappings of wide-scale admiration and fabulous wealth-- from Pink Floyd's "Money" to Pink's "Don't Let Me Get Me"-- are often patronizing and grating. There are exceptions, of course: Eminem has been playing a compelling game of cat-and-mouse with his persona, fans and critics ever since he first hit the charts, and Kurt Cobain's wrestling with both self-hatred and a success he simultaneously courted and recoiled against are well explored on Nirvana's In Utero. When Dizzee Rascal was promoting his debut record, 2003's trenchant Boy in Da Corner, he famously cited In Utero as his favorite record of all time. Perhaps then it's no surprise that follow-up Showtime often deals with the London savant's fishbowl life as he negotiates both the expectations of those who hope he swims and the sharpened knives of those who wish he sinks. Rascal's level of fame isn't close to any of the above artists-- he thanks the 100,000 people who bought his debut, and he's still pleased just to open for Jay-Z rather than throwing rocks at Jigga's now-abdicated throne-- and that's part of his problem. "Still Dylan the villain from around the way," Rascal is big enough that his detractors want to bring him down and small enough that they probably can. So while a multiplatinum seller like Nelly can wonder, "What good is all the fame if you're not fucking the models?", Dizzee is not only mercifully teased by a woman on Showtime's "Face"-- she calls him a one-hit wonder and mocks his thin wardrobe and low-budget video before ultimately wishing a Jay-Z promo is on MTV Base-- but her words hurt. "People are going to respect me if it kills you," Dizzee mutters on the follow-up track, and if that's the central goal on Showtime, he's likely to accomplish it. The album naturally lacks the shock of the new, the jolt of Boy in Da Corner-- instead, it's a consolidation of his strengths, lyrically and sonically, and a more satisfying listen than its predecessor. Musically, Rascal continues along many of the same paths-- explorations into orientalism and modal composition; the lurching, clattering futurerattle of jungle, dancehall, and hip-hop echoing through concrete tenements-- although the finished product is much more muscular and confident. Lyrically, he balances his paranoia with the spoonfuls of homespun advice and dew-eyed rallying cries that colored both his debut and Treddin' on Thin Ice, the solo bow from Wiley, another Roll Deep vet. In short, Rascal is keeping his feet on the ground, reaching for the stars, and looking over his shoulder for those who want to lay him in the gutter. Single "Stand Up Tall" has its finger on "Pulse X" and the exuberance and immediacy of Boy's "Fix Up, Look Sharp". "Hype Talk" ice dances with glitch-pop better than anything on Vespertine. "Imagine" takes fleeting elements of emo and the "Girl/Boy Song" to somehow magical results. "Learn" demonstrates that Rascal can do orientalism as beats-and-banger instead of just minimalist soundtracks to introspection. He also looks further afield to Jamaica ("Face") and America ("Everywhere", "Flyin'"), and gets playful on the one-two combination of "Dream" and "Girls". The latter features the Kano-like cadence of Marga Man as he and Rascal wink and whistle at women over the track that sounds most like it could have tumbled off of Boy. The former is the song that will likely receive the most attention, and could be the make-or-break point for Showtime fencesitters. Taking its sing-song, Casio-tinkling chorus from Rodgers & Hammerstein via Captain Sensible's "Happy Talk", "Dream" is the record's most overt Jay-Z reference (it's a close cousin to "Hard Knock Life") and could become its commercial equivalent to "Dry Your Eyes", a recent UK #1 for The Streets. "Dream" has a loopy charm and simple philosophy, and Dizzee's infectious exuberance for the track leaves him unable to resist adding his off-key vocals to the central lyric: "You've got to have a dream/ If you don't have a dream/ How you gonna have a dream come true?" Even when something doesn't exactly work, there are other elements to buttress the missteps: "Knock, Knock"'s central lyrical conceit is propped up by the track's tea-kettle sighs as it moves at night down Jefferson Avenue (it's much too slow for the Autobahn). The female vocal on "Get By"'s chorus (which is more indebted to Kanye than the thug/diva duet template) has a bit of a square-peg/round-hole quality, but the song contains some of Dizzee's most quotable lyrics. "If I can't find my around/ I'll find a way across/ And if I can't find my across/ I'll bore straight through," Dizzee insists on album closer, "Fickle". Not a Smiths reference ("fame, fame, fickle fame"), the track is perhaps the record's highlight, and the best example of Rascal's approach-- a mix of pragmatism and optimism, of demonstrating bravado without denying his vulnerability. Rascal's is a three-dimensional world, then-- not black and white, us vs. them, me against the world, me against the music, playas vs. hatas, underground vs. mainstream, or mo money, mo problems. There are elements of each of those cliches in his tracks, but he's smart enough to seek the nuances and contradictions in each of those supposed dichotomies rather than approach them as absolutes, an either/or, or a matter of right vs. wrong."

Kanye West

Late Registration

Rap

Sean Fennessey

"Can I talk my shit again?" Contrary to popular opinion, hubris does have a righteous appeal. Those who claim Kanye West's antics hinder his work are missing the point. His self-importance is obvious, but the arrogance that comes pre-packaged with his insecurity is what makes West the most interesting hip-hop figure of the past five years. That's the reason he landed on "Oprah" and the cover of Time Magazine last week, rather than 50 Cent or Nelly or Slug. It's not sales; it's souls. That said, at the end of the day, it's his ear, a golden instrument, and his adventurous collaborative spirit that have made him the most fully formed artist of his genre. The sprawling Late Registration is the year's most accomplished rap album, and in turn, he's done something that his heroes-- the Pharcyde and Nas, and father figure Jay-Z-- couldn't do: deliver on a promise the second time around. With the help of co-producer Jon Brion, West has taken his jumbled personae, buoyant enthusiasm, and vision for the grandiose, and transformed his chattering, seemingly unrealistic ideas into an expansive, imperfect masterpiece. Without Brion, this album probably sounds a lot like its predecessor, The College Dropout-- full of tough horns, jacked soul, and flashes of brilliance. What the former Fiona Apple maestro brings to the proceedings, aside from a conductor's wand and a smile, is the ability to inflate and infuse West's ideas with even more life. A case in point is "Hey Mama", a track that leaked more than a year ago. The song is traditionally purty, dominated by handclaps and a flittering sample of Donal Leace's "Today Won't Come Again"; basically a trad-Kanye production. The Brion redux inserts a moaning vocoder, tin pan alley drums, a xylophone solo, and cascading synth coda, all without mucking up the heart in the middle. Flashes like this surround the sometimes urbane, often cheeky West with a new resonance. Where would "Crack Music", a blustery martial stomp, be without its soaring choir and biblically extended outro? Probably somewhere on the Game's album. Could Kanye have single-handedly fused the showboating old school boom bap of "We Major" with its build-it-up and watch it all fall down production without Brion or co-producer Waryn Campbell? Not likely. By opening the studio to admired colleagues, he's allowed himself room to think even bigger than the multi-tracked "Jesus Walks". On the mic, West sounds sharper and more battle-tested, though he'll never have the effortless insouciance of Jigga or teeth-gritting religiosity of Nas. To his credit and detriment he continues to surround himself with superior MCs like Common (on the sober "My Way Home"), impressive newcomer Lupe Fiasco (Just Blaze's life-affirming "Touch the Sky"), and the ineffable Cam'Ron, who continues his magical run with savant-like witticisms on "Gone". Even Houston's Paul Wall manages to fit "illuminate," "insinuate," and "caterpillar" into 16 bizarre bars on the woozy "Drive Slow". All this to go along with curious shouts from two conflicted giants, Jay and Nas, who hang like specters over the album. Unlike the "great" hip-hop releases of yore, the productions here are so insistent that even a charismatic voice like West's can become an afterthought. Only "Roses" delivers the endearing sentimentality of "Jesus Walks" or "Family Business". "Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)" offers some admirable if dubious political grandstanding, but as with every colossal undertaking, you gotta pay the cost to be the boss. The album's worst track, "Bring Me Down", overwhelms with silly orchestral pomp, courtesy of Brion. It also presumes that anyone still cares about Brandy, who sounds like she's recording her voice through a Cuisinart. "Celebration", too, is a busy, empty exercise in, well, celebrating. Barring those two tracks, and a few innocuous if unnecessary skits about a fraternity for the financially impaired called Broke Phi Broke, the rest is aces. "Addiction" is unsophisticated in concept but inspired in delivery. "Gold Digger" is also simple but not subtle, tearing into the realm of the obvious with a Ray Charles-aping Jamie Foxx and recycled drums, but succeeding with humor and reverence. Opener "Heard 'Em Say" might be the most bandied about joint here, thanks to the presence of Maroon 5's Adam Levine, but guess what? He sounds great. Off-key and blue-eyed selling his soul, but like nearly every risk here, the syrupy pop works. "We all self-conscious" has not taken on a new meaning post-Dropout. Conjecture about West revolutionizing the sound of modern hip-hop is mostly a fallacy. Not much has changed, though a few Brion hacks might appear to offer someone like Cassidy an oboe loop or two. In general, what makes West's sound and personality so vital is that it is completely singular. The maddening contradiction, the goofball ridiculousness, and the furious fist-raising still comprise an original voice. Though you'll notice I hesitate to use the phrase "everyman" to describe West. Not every man could have written a headphones album that'll rattle your trunk.

Artist: Kanye West, Album: Late Registration, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 9.5 Album review: ""Can I talk my shit again?" Contrary to popular opinion, hubris does have a righteous appeal. Those who claim Kanye West's antics hinder his work are missing the point. His self-importance is obvious, but the arrogance that comes pre-packaged with his insecurity is what makes West the most interesting hip-hop figure of the past five years. That's the reason he landed on "Oprah" and the cover of Time Magazine last week, rather than 50 Cent or Nelly or Slug. It's not sales; it's souls. That said, at the end of the day, it's his ear, a golden instrument, and his adventurous collaborative spirit that have made him the most fully formed artist of his genre. The sprawling Late Registration is the year's most accomplished rap album, and in turn, he's done something that his heroes-- the Pharcyde and Nas, and father figure Jay-Z-- couldn't do: deliver on a promise the second time around. With the help of co-producer Jon Brion, West has taken his jumbled personae, buoyant enthusiasm, and vision for the grandiose, and transformed his chattering, seemingly unrealistic ideas into an expansive, imperfect masterpiece. Without Brion, this album probably sounds a lot like its predecessor, The College Dropout-- full of tough horns, jacked soul, and flashes of brilliance. What the former Fiona Apple maestro brings to the proceedings, aside from a conductor's wand and a smile, is the ability to inflate and infuse West's ideas with even more life. A case in point is "Hey Mama", a track that leaked more than a year ago. The song is traditionally purty, dominated by handclaps and a flittering sample of Donal Leace's "Today Won't Come Again"; basically a trad-Kanye production. The Brion redux inserts a moaning vocoder, tin pan alley drums, a xylophone solo, and cascading synth coda, all without mucking up the heart in the middle. Flashes like this surround the sometimes urbane, often cheeky West with a new resonance. Where would "Crack Music", a blustery martial stomp, be without its soaring choir and biblically extended outro? Probably somewhere on the Game's album. Could Kanye have single-handedly fused the showboating old school boom bap of "We Major" with its build-it-up and watch it all fall down production without Brion or co-producer Waryn Campbell? Not likely. By opening the studio to admired colleagues, he's allowed himself room to think even bigger than the multi-tracked "Jesus Walks". On the mic, West sounds sharper and more battle-tested, though he'll never have the effortless insouciance of Jigga or teeth-gritting religiosity of Nas. To his credit and detriment he continues to surround himself with superior MCs like Common (on the sober "My Way Home"), impressive newcomer Lupe Fiasco (Just Blaze's life-affirming "Touch the Sky"), and the ineffable Cam'Ron, who continues his magical run with savant-like witticisms on "Gone". Even Houston's Paul Wall manages to fit "illuminate," "insinuate," and "caterpillar" into 16 bizarre bars on the woozy "Drive Slow". All this to go along with curious shouts from two conflicted giants, Jay and Nas, who hang like specters over the album. Unlike the "great" hip-hop releases of yore, the productions here are so insistent that even a charismatic voice like West's can become an afterthought. Only "Roses" delivers the endearing sentimentality of "Jesus Walks" or "Family Business". "Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)" offers some admirable if dubious political grandstanding, but as with every colossal undertaking, you gotta pay the cost to be the boss. The album's worst track, "Bring Me Down", overwhelms with silly orchestral pomp, courtesy of Brion. It also presumes that anyone still cares about Brandy, who sounds like she's recording her voice through a Cuisinart. "Celebration", too, is a busy, empty exercise in, well, celebrating. Barring those two tracks, and a few innocuous if unnecessary skits about a fraternity for the financially impaired called Broke Phi Broke, the rest is aces. "Addiction" is unsophisticated in concept but inspired in delivery. "Gold Digger" is also simple but not subtle, tearing into the realm of the obvious with a Ray Charles-aping Jamie Foxx and recycled drums, but succeeding with humor and reverence. Opener "Heard 'Em Say" might be the most bandied about joint here, thanks to the presence of Maroon 5's Adam Levine, but guess what? He sounds great. Off-key and blue-eyed selling his soul, but like nearly every risk here, the syrupy pop works. "We all self-conscious" has not taken on a new meaning post-Dropout. Conjecture about West revolutionizing the sound of modern hip-hop is mostly a fallacy. Not much has changed, though a few Brion hacks might appear to offer someone like Cassidy an oboe loop or two. In general, what makes West's sound and personality so vital is that it is completely singular. The maddening contradiction, the goofball ridiculousness, and the furious fist-raising still comprise an original voice. Though you'll notice I hesitate to use the phrase "everyman" to describe West. Not every man could have written a headphones album that'll rattle your trunk. "

Various Artists

Immediate Action

Mark Richard-San

My initial exposure to John Hughes III's Hefty label was the none-too-inspiring math-rock outfit Chisel Drill Hammer. There was something so very Chicago about that record, from the Albini recording to the geometric packaging to the Slint-strumental guitar rock that wasn't really rock. Even with my limited exposure to the scene, I had a vague feeling that Hughes was trying to cast Hefty in the Thrill Jockey mold. Chisel Drill Hammer braced me for a spate of uninspired copies. Thrill Jockey still seems like an inspiration, but Hefty seems to have overhauled the quality control department. The label still keeps a finger in the post-rock pie, and like Thrill Jockey, also dabbles in fusion and free jazz. But lately, electronic music seems to be coming to the fore for Hefty. Unlike Thrill Jockey, which licenses most of its experimental electronic music from Europe, Hefty's IDM talent pool is drawn primarily from the States, with releases by Scott Herren (as Savath + Savalas), Twine, and Hughes himself (as Slicker). In late 2000, Hefty released a series of 12-inches under the heading Immediate Action. These records had a limited print run and were packaged and presented in a simple manner intended to keep the focus on the music. In addition to featuring artists from the Hefty stable, Immediate Action releases included exclusive tracks and remixes from artists on others imprints. If you weren't one of the 700-or-so people to acquire each vinyl release, you have a second chance, as Hefty has gathered the tracks together on two shiny, portable compact discs. Casting aside the aim of the original vinyl issues, Immediate Action is a fine collection on its own, and a perfect example of what a multi-artist label compilation should be. Like Mille Plateaux's famous compilations, Immediate Action avoids the tired "here are some tracks by some artists on our label" approach in favor of a wide-ranging statement of belief. And what does Hefty believe in? While the styles on display throughout Immediate Action are familiar to followers of experimental indie music (glitch, machine dub, jazz fusion, etc.), Hefty seems to show a preference for accessibility, and few tracks could be described as cold, sterile or abstract. Hearing Scott Herren's organic work as Savath + Savalas again, after time spent with to his Delarosa + Asora and Prefuse 73 guises, is illuminating. "Two Blues for Marion Brown" is mellow electric jazz with glowing keyboards, a patient rhythm and distant hints of machine noise. "Yesterday's Throwaway and Reprise," with its double bass, vibes, and crisp drumming, moves even further from the hard-drive IDM and glitch-hop of more recent Herren projects. Also on the jazzy tip is the Samadha Trio, a groovy combo with a forthcoming Hefty full-length. They remind me of a more relaxed Medeski, Martin and Wood with a penchant for heavy post-production. Live recordings of the electric keyboard/bass/drum trio are tweaked and reconfigured into a refreshing and slightly disorienting mix. The rhythm in "Amidha" drops out suddenly as bits of static bubble through, while the Bill Evans-ish acoustic piano in "Satoric" competes with a background conversation that could be a film sample. England's Process represents the less musical end of Immediate Action's spectrum, but even his computerized soundscapes are engaging and accessible. "Define" seeks the warm cloud of static Jan Jelinek likes to float in, while "Diffusion" touches on the slightly harsh industrial drone music of Janek Schaefer. In a similar vein is Twine's excellent "Surn," which combines a regal piano melody with digital noise and a hesitant, unsteady beat. Further diversity comes from Johnny Herndon of Tortoise and Isotope 217, who contributes two inviting tracks of melodic electronic dub under the unfortunate moniker A Grape Dope. Most interesting on Immediate Action are the tracks where Reaktor programming meets pop vocals. Bogdan Raczynski's remix of Hughes' "Yet You're Here" find him immersing Hughes' deep voice in the crunchy, music-box-gone-wrong sound so prevalent on his recent full-length, My Love I Love. Better still is the Slicker collaboration with the Aluminum Group on "Next Time," which contrasts rich machine noises with the dry, brittle sound of Navin's typically crafty vocal. An album-length project with these two camps would be more than welcome. Immediate Action finds Hefty in the thick of what's happening in the crowded zone between indie rock and the experimental electronic fringe. The label is gaining character and complexity with age, and this encouraging two-disc set feels much more "pre" than "post."

Artist: Various Artists, Album: Immediate Action, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "My initial exposure to John Hughes III's Hefty label was the none-too-inspiring math-rock outfit Chisel Drill Hammer. There was something so very Chicago about that record, from the Albini recording to the geometric packaging to the Slint-strumental guitar rock that wasn't really rock. Even with my limited exposure to the scene, I had a vague feeling that Hughes was trying to cast Hefty in the Thrill Jockey mold. Chisel Drill Hammer braced me for a spate of uninspired copies. Thrill Jockey still seems like an inspiration, but Hefty seems to have overhauled the quality control department. The label still keeps a finger in the post-rock pie, and like Thrill Jockey, also dabbles in fusion and free jazz. But lately, electronic music seems to be coming to the fore for Hefty. Unlike Thrill Jockey, which licenses most of its experimental electronic music from Europe, Hefty's IDM talent pool is drawn primarily from the States, with releases by Scott Herren (as Savath + Savalas), Twine, and Hughes himself (as Slicker). In late 2000, Hefty released a series of 12-inches under the heading Immediate Action. These records had a limited print run and were packaged and presented in a simple manner intended to keep the focus on the music. In addition to featuring artists from the Hefty stable, Immediate Action releases included exclusive tracks and remixes from artists on others imprints. If you weren't one of the 700-or-so people to acquire each vinyl release, you have a second chance, as Hefty has gathered the tracks together on two shiny, portable compact discs. Casting aside the aim of the original vinyl issues, Immediate Action is a fine collection on its own, and a perfect example of what a multi-artist label compilation should be. Like Mille Plateaux's famous compilations, Immediate Action avoids the tired "here are some tracks by some artists on our label" approach in favor of a wide-ranging statement of belief. And what does Hefty believe in? While the styles on display throughout Immediate Action are familiar to followers of experimental indie music (glitch, machine dub, jazz fusion, etc.), Hefty seems to show a preference for accessibility, and few tracks could be described as cold, sterile or abstract. Hearing Scott Herren's organic work as Savath + Savalas again, after time spent with to his Delarosa + Asora and Prefuse 73 guises, is illuminating. "Two Blues for Marion Brown" is mellow electric jazz with glowing keyboards, a patient rhythm and distant hints of machine noise. "Yesterday's Throwaway and Reprise," with its double bass, vibes, and crisp drumming, moves even further from the hard-drive IDM and glitch-hop of more recent Herren projects. Also on the jazzy tip is the Samadha Trio, a groovy combo with a forthcoming Hefty full-length. They remind me of a more relaxed Medeski, Martin and Wood with a penchant for heavy post-production. Live recordings of the electric keyboard/bass/drum trio are tweaked and reconfigured into a refreshing and slightly disorienting mix. The rhythm in "Amidha" drops out suddenly as bits of static bubble through, while the Bill Evans-ish acoustic piano in "Satoric" competes with a background conversation that could be a film sample. England's Process represents the less musical end of Immediate Action's spectrum, but even his computerized soundscapes are engaging and accessible. "Define" seeks the warm cloud of static Jan Jelinek likes to float in, while "Diffusion" touches on the slightly harsh industrial drone music of Janek Schaefer. In a similar vein is Twine's excellent "Surn," which combines a regal piano melody with digital noise and a hesitant, unsteady beat. Further diversity comes from Johnny Herndon of Tortoise and Isotope 217, who contributes two inviting tracks of melodic electronic dub under the unfortunate moniker A Grape Dope. Most interesting on Immediate Action are the tracks where Reaktor programming meets pop vocals. Bogdan Raczynski's remix of Hughes' "Yet You're Here" find him immersing Hughes' deep voice in the crunchy, music-box-gone-wrong sound so prevalent on his recent full-length, My Love I Love. Better still is the Slicker collaboration with the Aluminum Group on "Next Time," which contrasts rich machine noises with the dry, brittle sound of Navin's typically crafty vocal. An album-length project with these two camps would be more than welcome. Immediate Action finds Hefty in the thick of what's happening in the crowded zone between indie rock and the experimental electronic fringe. The label is gaining character and complexity with age, and this encouraging two-disc set feels much more "pre" than "post.""

Pony Up!

Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes

Rock

David Raposa

There's something to be said for the unapologetic tweeness of Pony Up!'s self-titled 2005 debut EP, even if said thing contains a generous helping of words that would make Baby Jesus cry. Despite cloying instrumentation and schmindie vocals extolling things like the virtues of Matthew Modine, the quartet's eponymous recordings got by on an awkward amateurish charm. Part of that charm was a result of the group still finding its voice. Even when the results were less than favorable (and a song about Matthew Modine's lusciousness is a hell of a thing to choke down), they were giving it the old DIY try. On its debut full-length, Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes, the quartet has come a long way, but often not for the better. Whatever darling ramshackle insouciance Pony Up! once flaunted has been subsumed by a boring ramshackle sincerity. See one emo-esque record title for Exhibit A of this newfound maturity, and whenever they put away their toys and get serious, their po-faced songs write a check that their musical chops just can't cash. The album starts with a prime example of this clumsy seriousness. "Dance for Me" is a turgid ballad that tries to be both somber ("You rode in on a horse/ I took him, I took him down") and sinister ("Because I've got that look in my eyes/ And you know I could just eat you alive"). Maybe in someone else's hands, or maybe when Pony Up! get more miles under their belt, these moods would be evoked successfully. Instead, we get four minutes of a peppy indie-pop group proving that they just can't drive in the slow lane. They also can't do country-- "The Best Offence" is a game attempt at twang, but gets tangled in its dreary tempo and rote end-rhymes. The production/engineering tandem of Arcade Fire knob-twiddler Howard Ian Billerman and Amerindie everyman Brian Paulson does the group no favors. They simply record the band as-is, letting the group sink or swim on their own. In the case of the slower songs, they should stick to the shallow end. That said, this growing-up the group went through did wonders for its more spry numbers. Exchanging their EP's pop-culture fixation for more serious considerations in this album's lyrics, however, lends their zippier compositions some welcome ballast. Numbers like "The Truth About Cats and Dogs (Is That They Die)" and "Make, Model, #" manage to work out relationship-spawned angst without succumbing to it. The album's best song, "What's Free Is Yours", plays off this friction perfectly, selling a line like, "I don't care if you take my heart" to both believers and cynics. When Pony Up! are good, they're very, very good, and it's moments like this that give me hope these girls figure out their strengths when they return to the studio.

Artist: Pony Up!, Album: Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.0 Album review: "There's something to be said for the unapologetic tweeness of Pony Up!'s self-titled 2005 debut EP, even if said thing contains a generous helping of words that would make Baby Jesus cry. Despite cloying instrumentation and schmindie vocals extolling things like the virtues of Matthew Modine, the quartet's eponymous recordings got by on an awkward amateurish charm. Part of that charm was a result of the group still finding its voice. Even when the results were less than favorable (and a song about Matthew Modine's lusciousness is a hell of a thing to choke down), they were giving it the old DIY try. On its debut full-length, Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes, the quartet has come a long way, but often not for the better. Whatever darling ramshackle insouciance Pony Up! once flaunted has been subsumed by a boring ramshackle sincerity. See one emo-esque record title for Exhibit A of this newfound maturity, and whenever they put away their toys and get serious, their po-faced songs write a check that their musical chops just can't cash. The album starts with a prime example of this clumsy seriousness. "Dance for Me" is a turgid ballad that tries to be both somber ("You rode in on a horse/ I took him, I took him down") and sinister ("Because I've got that look in my eyes/ And you know I could just eat you alive"). Maybe in someone else's hands, or maybe when Pony Up! get more miles under their belt, these moods would be evoked successfully. Instead, we get four minutes of a peppy indie-pop group proving that they just can't drive in the slow lane. They also can't do country-- "The Best Offence" is a game attempt at twang, but gets tangled in its dreary tempo and rote end-rhymes. The production/engineering tandem of Arcade Fire knob-twiddler Howard Ian Billerman and Amerindie everyman Brian Paulson does the group no favors. They simply record the band as-is, letting the group sink or swim on their own. In the case of the slower songs, they should stick to the shallow end. That said, this growing-up the group went through did wonders for its more spry numbers. Exchanging their EP's pop-culture fixation for more serious considerations in this album's lyrics, however, lends their zippier compositions some welcome ballast. Numbers like "The Truth About Cats and Dogs (Is That They Die)" and "Make, Model, #" manage to work out relationship-spawned angst without succumbing to it. The album's best song, "What's Free Is Yours", plays off this friction perfectly, selling a line like, "I don't care if you take my heart" to both believers and cynics. When Pony Up! are good, they're very, very good, and it's moments like this that give me hope these girls figure out their strengths when they return to the studio."

Saint Etienne

Tiger Bay

Electronic,Rock

Marc Hogan

Many great pop songs can be said to have their own personality. Saint Etienne's have their own sense of place. Last June, Swedish dance-pop duo Air France released "GBG Belongs to Us", a three-part multimedia tribute to their hometown of Gothenburg. The Swedes explained their intentions in words lovingly similar to the ones they'd used to describe Saint Etienne in a Pitchfork interview a few months earlier: "For us, geography and architecture are essential elements of pop." That goes for Pete Wiggs, Bob Stanley, and Sarah Cracknell. As anybody who recognized the above reference to early Saint Etienne album cut "London Belongs to Me" already knows-- and many more people are just in time to discover. The UK trio's first two albums, 1991's Foxbase Alpha and 1993's So Tough, were metropolitan through and through, building 1990s ambient-house modernism onto a foundation of 1960s Swinging London mod. Add the slightly twee romanticism of record-collecting indie kids, and the results transported listeners someplace new and fantastical. (Full disclosure: Stanley, a music journalist, has contributed to Pitchfork.) Faster than you could say "Live Forever", though, there went the neighborhood. As if those first two albums weren't far enough out of step with the prevailing trend toward grunge, then along came Britpop, which picked up Saint Etienne's Anglophilia only to mire it, with a few happy exceptions, in retro guitars and lad culture. The group kept on moving-- and just as well, too. Tiger Bay was where they successfully confronted that Difficult Third Album by taking the M4 through the British countryside. Finisterre was where, after a record or two in the (relative) wilderness, they revisited their old London and once again made it new. Both, as the latest in an ongoing series of 2xCD reissues from this influential but still underappreciated band, have plenty to offer, to longtime [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| followers and curious newcomers alike. Tiger Bay is sort of Saint Etienne's best album. I say "sort of," because it depends who you ask, but also because it depends which version you ask them about. There are different track listings and different covers and everything. This deluxe edition stays truest to the original UK release, which is a bit odd, seeing as in the liner notes Stanley is quoted as saying that Tiger Bay "needed a couple more punchy pop songs." The 1996 German reissue, an editorial favorite around here, includes probably the group's punchiest pop song: Eurodance smash "He's on the Phone", which isn't on either disc of this volume. No matter. Originally released in 1994, Tiger Bay still makes for the subtlest, most cinematic, and pretty much indisputably last of Saint Etienne's astounding initial burst of albums. The record's blend of pastoral folk and silvery electronics was worlds apart from Union Jack-waving contemporaries' phony Beatlemania. More recent atmospheric-folk records like Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree haven't quite been able to get there, either. The geographical Tiger Bay bustled as a 19th-century Welsh port, gave its name to a 1950s Hayley Mills slice-of-life film, and has since been rebranded as Cardiff Bay, a contemporary leisure and entertainment district. Saint Etienne's Tiger Bay can evoke all three locations at once. Just see "Like a Motorway": It borrows the melody of traditional song "Silver Dagger", coolly recounts a suburban melodrama, and runs on pulsating synths befitting Giorgio Moroder. It never breaks for a chorus. The rest of the album brilliantly explores this crossroads between pre-modern, modern, and ultramodern. Underworld's Rick Smith, who mixed and engineered "Like a Motorway", also lends a futuristic sheen to instrumental opener "Urban Clearway" and wordlessly urgent harmonica trip "Cool Kids of Death". For orchestral folk, there's acoustic ballad "Former Lover". Sometimes Tiger Bay wants too much, like dub meeting traditional song on "Western Wind / Tankerville", or Massive Attack's Shara Nelson howling into a gale on the downtempo "On the Shore". The poppier moments hold up best: the flamenco-Eurodance weirdness of "Pale Movie", the Bacharach-house swoon of "Hug My Soul", the unadorned yearning of "Marble Lions". Eight years later, Finisterre was a return to urbane form for Saint Etienne. After a pair of albums that were, by their standards, underwhelming-- comparatively old-fashioned 1998 Sub Pop debut Good Humor (no "u"), recorded in Sweden, and sprawling 2000 Sean O'Hagan/To Rococo Rot collaboration Sound of Water, recorded in Berlin-- the group jetted back to London. The city was in transition, and so were they. The clever spoken-word samples they'd used until Tiger Bay were here again, and the stylish dance-pop was, too, only with a crucial difference. No longer the café-hopping naïfs of the early years, these were suburban adults reclaiming the city nightlife. That's more or less the subject of surging acoustic-house opener "Action". Sometimes they mature gracefully, as on the easy-listening "Stop and Think It Over", but not always: Would you check out the electro muscle on critic-baiting "Amateur"? Other times they remember not to grow up at all, whether with galloping vocoder flirtation "New Thing" or the gorgeously textured stomp of "Shower Scene". Slinky, self-referential "B92" continues to impress even after Annie's "Heartbeat" and Little Boots' "Stuck on Repeat" have helped take this idea to fluxpop extremes. Wildflower's cutesy rap on "Soft Like Me" still isn't fashionable, but the song's title is an invitation; those who accept it won't mind. Elsewhere, the bonus tracks are the expected hodgepodge. On Tiger Bay's second disc, German-edition tracks "Hate Your Drug" and "I Buy American Records" are welcome, as are the Christmas songs-- add them to your holiday playlists now, before you forget-- while the previously unreleased demos, though historically interesting, are no match for the album versions. Finisterre has its hidden gems, too, such as "Soft Like Me"-like instrumental "Primrose Hill" or the laidback pop of "Anderson Unbound". But it's mostly curios: an electro banger for a canceled "Dr. Who" compilation, a Serge Gainsbourg genre exercise, and pretty decent Lee Hazlewood and Beach Boys covers. The low point comes on Tiger Bay extra "Black Horse Latitude", when Cracknell wonders, "Is Michael Jackson's Dangerous as 'bad' as people say?" For people who own the original records, the best reason to shell out some cash this time around is probably the film c

Artist: Saint Etienne, Album: Tiger Bay, Genre: Electronic,Rock, Score (1-10): 8.7 Album review: "Many great pop songs can be said to have their own personality. Saint Etienne's have their own sense of place. Last June, Swedish dance-pop duo Air France released "GBG Belongs to Us", a three-part multimedia tribute to their hometown of Gothenburg. The Swedes explained their intentions in words lovingly similar to the ones they'd used to describe Saint Etienne in a Pitchfork interview a few months earlier: "For us, geography and architecture are essential elements of pop." That goes for Pete Wiggs, Bob Stanley, and Sarah Cracknell. As anybody who recognized the above reference to early Saint Etienne album cut "London Belongs to Me" already knows-- and many more people are just in time to discover. The UK trio's first two albums, 1991's Foxbase Alpha and 1993's So Tough, were metropolitan through and through, building 1990s ambient-house modernism onto a foundation of 1960s Swinging London mod. Add the slightly twee romanticism of record-collecting indie kids, and the results transported listeners someplace new and fantastical. (Full disclosure: Stanley, a music journalist, has contributed to Pitchfork.) Faster than you could say "Live Forever", though, there went the neighborhood. As if those first two albums weren't far enough out of step with the prevailing trend toward grunge, then along came Britpop, which picked up Saint Etienne's Anglophilia only to mire it, with a few happy exceptions, in retro guitars and lad culture. The group kept on moving-- and just as well, too. Tiger Bay was where they successfully confronted that Difficult Third Album by taking the M4 through the British countryside. Finisterre was where, after a record or two in the (relative) wilderness, they revisited their old London and once again made it new. Both, as the latest in an ongoing series of 2xCD reissues from this influential but still underappreciated band, have plenty to offer, to longtime [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| followers and curious newcomers alike. Tiger Bay is sort of Saint Etienne's best album. I say "sort of," because it depends who you ask, but also because it depends which version you ask them about. There are different track listings and different covers and everything. This deluxe edition stays truest to the original UK release, which is a bit odd, seeing as in the liner notes Stanley is quoted as saying that Tiger Bay "needed a couple more punchy pop songs." The 1996 German reissue, an editorial favorite around here, includes probably the group's punchiest pop song: Eurodance smash "He's on the Phone", which isn't on either disc of this volume. No matter. Originally released in 1994, Tiger Bay still makes for the subtlest, most cinematic, and pretty much indisputably last of Saint Etienne's astounding initial burst of albums. The record's blend of pastoral folk and silvery electronics was worlds apart from Union Jack-waving contemporaries' phony Beatlemania. More recent atmospheric-folk records like Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree haven't quite been able to get there, either. The geographical Tiger Bay bustled as a 19th-century Welsh port, gave its name to a 1950s Hayley Mills slice-of-life film, and has since been rebranded as Cardiff Bay, a contemporary leisure and entertainment district. Saint Etienne's Tiger Bay can evoke all three locations at once. Just see "Like a Motorway": It borrows the melody of traditional song "Silver Dagger", coolly recounts a suburban melodrama, and runs on pulsating synths befitting Giorgio Moroder. It never breaks for a chorus. The rest of the album brilliantly explores this crossroads between pre-modern, modern, and ultramodern. Underworld's Rick Smith, who mixed and engineered "Like a Motorway", also lends a futuristic sheen to instrumental opener "Urban Clearway" and wordlessly urgent harmonica trip "Cool Kids of Death". For orchestral folk, there's acoustic ballad "Former Lover". Sometimes Tiger Bay wants too much, like dub meeting traditional song on "Western Wind / Tankerville", or Massive Attack's Shara Nelson howling into a gale on the downtempo "On the Shore". The poppier moments hold up best: the flamenco-Eurodance weirdness of "Pale Movie", the Bacharach-house swoon of "Hug My Soul", the unadorned yearning of "Marble Lions". Eight years later, Finisterre was a return to urbane form for Saint Etienne. After a pair of albums that were, by their standards, underwhelming-- comparatively old-fashioned 1998 Sub Pop debut Good Humor (no "u"), recorded in Sweden, and sprawling 2000 Sean O'Hagan/To Rococo Rot collaboration Sound of Water, recorded in Berlin-- the group jetted back to London. The city was in transition, and so were they. The clever spoken-word samples they'd used until Tiger Bay were here again, and the stylish dance-pop was, too, only with a crucial difference. No longer the café-hopping naïfs of the early years, these were suburban adults reclaiming the city nightlife. That's more or less the subject of surging acoustic-house opener "Action". Sometimes they mature gracefully, as on the easy-listening "Stop and Think It Over", but not always: Would you check out the electro muscle on critic-baiting "Amateur"? Other times they remember not to grow up at all, whether with galloping vocoder flirtation "New Thing" or the gorgeously textured stomp of "Shower Scene". Slinky, self-referential "B92" continues to impress even after Annie's "Heartbeat" and Little Boots' "Stuck on Repeat" have helped take this idea to fluxpop extremes. Wildflower's cutesy rap on "Soft Like Me" still isn't fashionable, but the song's title is an invitation; those who accept it won't mind. Elsewhere, the bonus tracks are the expected hodgepodge. On Tiger Bay's second disc, German-edition tracks "Hate Your Drug" and "I Buy American Records" are welcome, as are the Christmas songs-- add them to your holiday playlists now, before you forget-- while the previously unreleased demos, though historically interesting, are no match for the album versions. Finisterre has its hidden gems, too, such as "Soft Like Me"-like instrumental "Primrose Hill" or the laidback pop of "Anderson Unbound". But it's mostly curios: an electro banger for a canceled "Dr. Who" compilation, a Serge Gainsbourg genre exercise, and pretty decent Lee Hazlewood and Beach Boys covers. The low point comes on Tiger Bay extra "Black Horse Latitude", when Cracknell wonders, "Is Michael Jackson's Dangerous as 'bad' as people say?" For people who own the original records, the best reason to shell out some cash this time around is probably the film c"

Fischerspooner

Entertainment

Electronic

Jessica Suarez

It's been nine years since Larry Tee, the man who coined the term "electroclash," put on the first Electroclash festival. Rather than looking at how that scene died, it's interesting to see how many of those festival headliners-- Fisherspooner, Peaches, Ladytron, Scissor Sisters-- survived. (Not to mention that nobody sniffs at later electro-pop bands like Hot Chip, Justice, Crystal Castles, CSS, etc.) Maybe the key for the the duo behind Fisherspooner (composer Warren Fischer and singer/performer Casey Spooner) is that they don't consider themselves "dance musicians" in the conventional sense. "I mean our music isn't really dance music," Fischer told Pitchfork's Tom Breihan in a recent interview. "I don't really know what genre it would lie in. I guess it's kind of like indie pop or pop music." They always were, and still consider themselves, an art project first (notice he says "our music" rather than "we"). As they said, they get commissioned for dance pieces (the kind performed in concert halls), not for remixes. Their shows are built on spectacle rather than the charisma of any one of their players, including frontman Spooner. Unfortunately for a band that tries to turn glitter and polish into art, Entertainment is a lackluster performance. Here they almost become the indie pop group they claim they've always been, but the irony of their cries against capitalism and artifice ultimately fail without compelling songs to keep them afloat. Entertainment begins promisingly. Lush opener "The Best Revenge" scans as old Fischerspooner sleaze for its first few seconds, but then the track shudders awake with broken keyboard notes and a dated but delightful horn line-- the kind where you hope someone yells "Blow, daddy!" But no one ever does. "At what cost? There is a price," warns Spooner. He lives by this admonishment throughout Entertainment (the title perhaps evoking that other anti-capitalist "dance" band, Gang of Four). The stance is funny (though understandable) coming from a band you'd always suspect was created exclusively for readers of BlackBook. Some of his warnings-- "Currency can only do so much" ("Money Can't Dance"), "What's real? What's fake" ("In a Modern World"), or "It's no one's fault but our own," from their slippery anti-war track "Infidels of the World Unite", ring insincere, an unfortunate side-effect of Spooner's deadened vocals. Fischerspooner's bolder attempts at pop, like the flute-backed twee verse towards the end of "Money Can't Dance" and the more personal "Door Train Home", hint at something more interesting. The latter song is unusual here: though Spooner's still deadpan, his specificity and intimate lyrics make up for the rather broad strokes of sawtooth synth and whining guitar from his partner. But there are far too many tracks on Entertainment where both members are sleepwalking. "We Are Electric" comes off particularly half-hearted; Fischer cycles the song's tinny, repetitive synth pattern though different filters while Spooner intones the title line over and over. Both halves play like they were written for different songs with no thought given to how they'd get along. For a group not making dance music, their danciest tracks are still their best. "To the Moon" coalesces in all the right ways: found audio detritus blends into a likable, warm synth melody and a layered, exultant beat. Slivers of violin and keyboards are inserted into all the best spots, and even Spooner finds an elementary vocal melody before backing out gracefully. It works in this context, for a group that seems all about context. Like, "Danse En France"'s textured, fractured pieces and spoken intro don't work until you know that the song was commissioned for a particular dance company, and is based on a hilarious story of casual sex via boneheaded Americanism. So Entertainment might be music for their performances, it might be for others' dance performances, but it's not for the dance floor. Those halves that don't quite fit? They're begging to be pulled apart and put back together by heavier hands.

Artist: Fischerspooner, Album: Entertainment, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 5.8 Album review: "It's been nine years since Larry Tee, the man who coined the term "electroclash," put on the first Electroclash festival. Rather than looking at how that scene died, it's interesting to see how many of those festival headliners-- Fisherspooner, Peaches, Ladytron, Scissor Sisters-- survived. (Not to mention that nobody sniffs at later electro-pop bands like Hot Chip, Justice, Crystal Castles, CSS, etc.) Maybe the key for the the duo behind Fisherspooner (composer Warren Fischer and singer/performer Casey Spooner) is that they don't consider themselves "dance musicians" in the conventional sense. "I mean our music isn't really dance music," Fischer told Pitchfork's Tom Breihan in a recent interview. "I don't really know what genre it would lie in. I guess it's kind of like indie pop or pop music." They always were, and still consider themselves, an art project first (notice he says "our music" rather than "we"). As they said, they get commissioned for dance pieces (the kind performed in concert halls), not for remixes. Their shows are built on spectacle rather than the charisma of any one of their players, including frontman Spooner. Unfortunately for a band that tries to turn glitter and polish into art, Entertainment is a lackluster performance. Here they almost become the indie pop group they claim they've always been, but the irony of their cries against capitalism and artifice ultimately fail without compelling songs to keep them afloat. Entertainment begins promisingly. Lush opener "The Best Revenge" scans as old Fischerspooner sleaze for its first few seconds, but then the track shudders awake with broken keyboard notes and a dated but delightful horn line-- the kind where you hope someone yells "Blow, daddy!" But no one ever does. "At what cost? There is a price," warns Spooner. He lives by this admonishment throughout Entertainment (the title perhaps evoking that other anti-capitalist "dance" band, Gang of Four). The stance is funny (though understandable) coming from a band you'd always suspect was created exclusively for readers of BlackBook. Some of his warnings-- "Currency can only do so much" ("Money Can't Dance"), "What's real? What's fake" ("In a Modern World"), or "It's no one's fault but our own," from their slippery anti-war track "Infidels of the World Unite", ring insincere, an unfortunate side-effect of Spooner's deadened vocals. Fischerspooner's bolder attempts at pop, like the flute-backed twee verse towards the end of "Money Can't Dance" and the more personal "Door Train Home", hint at something more interesting. The latter song is unusual here: though Spooner's still deadpan, his specificity and intimate lyrics make up for the rather broad strokes of sawtooth synth and whining guitar from his partner. But there are far too many tracks on Entertainment where both members are sleepwalking. "We Are Electric" comes off particularly half-hearted; Fischer cycles the song's tinny, repetitive synth pattern though different filters while Spooner intones the title line over and over. Both halves play like they were written for different songs with no thought given to how they'd get along. For a group not making dance music, their danciest tracks are still their best. "To the Moon" coalesces in all the right ways: found audio detritus blends into a likable, warm synth melody and a layered, exultant beat. Slivers of violin and keyboards are inserted into all the best spots, and even Spooner finds an elementary vocal melody before backing out gracefully. It works in this context, for a group that seems all about context. Like, "Danse En France"'s textured, fractured pieces and spoken intro don't work until you know that the song was commissioned for a particular dance company, and is based on a hilarious story of casual sex via boneheaded Americanism. So Entertainment might be music for their performances, it might be for others' dance performances, but it's not for the dance floor. Those halves that don't quite fit? They're begging to be pulled apart and put back together by heavier hands."

Vex

Sanctuary: The Complete Discography

Jason Heller

“No future,” screamed Johnny Rotten in the Sex Pistols’ 1977 single “God Save the Queen". In 1984, punk had more need of God’s help. By then the British punk movement had been bashing its head against the establishment for eight years straight. Outside of the cartoonish, spiky-haired nihilist Vyvyan on BBC’s "The Young Ones*",* punk had little to show for it. The chart-storming gains made by the Pistols and the Clash had given way to marginalization and self-caricature. The Exploited’s 1981 anthem “Punks Not Dead” was already a hollow echo. Punk’s founders had moved on to noise, dub, metal, pop. The most visible face of post-punk was not Rotten, nor even Public Image Ltd.’s John Lydon, but a flower-waving crooner named Morrissey. The year George Orwell had so ominously predicted had finally arrived. But instead of being the vanguard of the resistance against Big Brother, punk was something peddled to King’s Road tourists on the backs of postcards. In the midst of that, Vex’s sole release, Sanctuary, came out. A four-song 12” issued by Fight Back, an imprint of Conflict’s label Mortarhate, Sanctuary was a part of the collective document of a U.K. anarcho-punk underground that had managed to not only survive, but flourish well into the 80s. Conflict, along with the similarly political Crass, was a leader of the scene; Vex was a minor participant, a footnote to a footnote. The band was also short-lived, which was the order of the day. Crass had previously vowed to break up if it ever lasted long enough to see 1984, although it reneged on that promise, later naming their anthology Best Before 1984 in reference to it. “No future” had come to roost. Accordingly, anarcho-punk bands sounded far more dark, desperate, raw, and apocalyptic than anything at the time (at least this side of a new music springing up in Europe that would come to be called black metal). Vex had desperation to burn. And on Sanctuary, burn it does. Throbbing with ominous, semi-industrial precision, the song slams along to a martial beat and splintery guitars, a dance track for the gleefully damned. Like a tribe of cyborgs, the band turns anger into something almost mystically ritualistic. It’s an approach Killing Joke had already solidly established by then, and the Killing Joke influence on “Sanctuary” is pronounced—as it is on “It’s No Crime", whose tense, slashing riffs bears a marked similarity to “The Wait”, one of Killing Joke’s most famous songs. Lead singer Scrote also borrows liberally from Jaz Coleman’s robo-goth howl. But where Killing Joke cloaked its anger in code, Vex was more direct. But not by much. The anarcho-punk approach left little room for poetic half-measures, and “World in Action” spews wrathful outrage even as Scrote chants, in an escalating spasm of stereo-panned paranoia, “There is a theory that this has already happened / There is a theory that this has already happened.” “Relative Sadness” sinks deeper into the ethereal, a clanking skeleton of a song that borders on the early deathrock of Theatre of Hate. Perhaps realizing that a more oblique attack might be better than a frontal assault, anarcho-punk as a whole was beginning to adopt a broader sound at the time. By 1986, one of Vex’s closest contemporaries, the far better known Flux of Pink Indians, would shorten its name to Flux and put out its daring, dubby, Adrian Sherwood-produced album Uncarved Block. Sanctuary doesn’t go that far. Vex’s final release, though, shows how much potential the band had. Sacred Bones’ new reissue of Sanctuary includes the bonus track “Rushing to Hide”, a song from Fight Back’s 1985 compilation We Don’t Want Your Fucking Law! that combines Scrote’s knack for panicked anthems with dense percussion and steely sheets of atonal guitar. The reissue’s remaining three bonus tracks—“It’s No Crime”, “Pain”, and “Pressure”—hail from Vex’s 1983 cassette demo. Flat, lo-fi, and corrosive, they’re prickly sketches of a group-in-progress still beholden to Killing Joke. When the refrain “The pain!/ The pain!” pops up in “Pain”, it’s another open nod to “The Wait". Given time, Vex may have grown beyond that hero worship and become an influential force all its own. Not that the record isn’t relevant. The shivering, savage, post-punk howl of Sanctuary can be heard in lots of current bands, from Iceage to Arctic Flowers, although it’s a safe bet that Vex hasn’t directly inspired any of them. But the sound itself echoes. Punk, in England and elsewhere, weathered the confusion and disillusionment of the 80s. It’s as vital now as it ever was. Vex may never have envisioned a future for itself, but the spastic, atmospheric passion of Sanctuary has taken care of that for them.

Artist: Vex, Album: Sanctuary: The Complete Discography, Genre: None, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "“No future,” screamed Johnny Rotten in the Sex Pistols’ 1977 single “God Save the Queen". In 1984, punk had more need of God’s help. By then the British punk movement had been bashing its head against the establishment for eight years straight. Outside of the cartoonish, spiky-haired nihilist Vyvyan on BBC’s "The Young Ones*",* punk had little to show for it. The chart-storming gains made by the Pistols and the Clash had given way to marginalization and self-caricature. The Exploited’s 1981 anthem “Punks Not Dead” was already a hollow echo. Punk’s founders had moved on to noise, dub, metal, pop. The most visible face of post-punk was not Rotten, nor even Public Image Ltd.’s John Lydon, but a flower-waving crooner named Morrissey. The year George Orwell had so ominously predicted had finally arrived. But instead of being the vanguard of the resistance against Big Brother, punk was something peddled to King’s Road tourists on the backs of postcards. In the midst of that, Vex’s sole release, Sanctuary, came out. A four-song 12” issued by Fight Back, an imprint of Conflict’s label Mortarhate, Sanctuary was a part of the collective document of a U.K. anarcho-punk underground that had managed to not only survive, but flourish well into the 80s. Conflict, along with the similarly political Crass, was a leader of the scene; Vex was a minor participant, a footnote to a footnote. The band was also short-lived, which was the order of the day. Crass had previously vowed to break up if it ever lasted long enough to see 1984, although it reneged on that promise, later naming their anthology Best Before 1984 in reference to it. “No future” had come to roost. Accordingly, anarcho-punk bands sounded far more dark, desperate, raw, and apocalyptic than anything at the time (at least this side of a new music springing up in Europe that would come to be called black metal). Vex had desperation to burn. And on Sanctuary, burn it does. Throbbing with ominous, semi-industrial precision, the song slams along to a martial beat and splintery guitars, a dance track for the gleefully damned. Like a tribe of cyborgs, the band turns anger into something almost mystically ritualistic. It’s an approach Killing Joke had already solidly established by then, and the Killing Joke influence on “Sanctuary” is pronounced—as it is on “It’s No Crime", whose tense, slashing riffs bears a marked similarity to “The Wait”, one of Killing Joke’s most famous songs. Lead singer Scrote also borrows liberally from Jaz Coleman’s robo-goth howl. But where Killing Joke cloaked its anger in code, Vex was more direct. But not by much. The anarcho-punk approach left little room for poetic half-measures, and “World in Action” spews wrathful outrage even as Scrote chants, in an escalating spasm of stereo-panned paranoia, “There is a theory that this has already happened / There is a theory that this has already happened.” “Relative Sadness” sinks deeper into the ethereal, a clanking skeleton of a song that borders on the early deathrock of Theatre of Hate. Perhaps realizing that a more oblique attack might be better than a frontal assault, anarcho-punk as a whole was beginning to adopt a broader sound at the time. By 1986, one of Vex’s closest contemporaries, the far better known Flux of Pink Indians, would shorten its name to Flux and put out its daring, dubby, Adrian Sherwood-produced album Uncarved Block. Sanctuary doesn’t go that far. Vex’s final release, though, shows how much potential the band had. Sacred Bones’ new reissue of Sanctuary includes the bonus track “Rushing to Hide”, a song from Fight Back’s 1985 compilation We Don’t Want Your Fucking Law! that combines Scrote’s knack for panicked anthems with dense percussion and steely sheets of atonal guitar. The reissue’s remaining three bonus tracks—“It’s No Crime”, “Pain”, and “Pressure”—hail from Vex’s 1983 cassette demo. Flat, lo-fi, and corrosive, they’re prickly sketches of a group-in-progress still beholden to Killing Joke. When the refrain “The pain!/ The pain!” pops up in “Pain”, it’s another open nod to “The Wait". Given time, Vex may have grown beyond that hero worship and become an influential force all its own. Not that the record isn’t relevant. The shivering, savage, post-punk howl of Sanctuary can be heard in lots of current bands, from Iceage to Arctic Flowers, although it’s a safe bet that Vex hasn’t directly inspired any of them. But the sound itself echoes. Punk, in England and elsewhere, weathered the confusion and disillusionment of the 80s. It’s as vital now as it ever was. Vex may never have envisioned a future for itself, but the spastic, atmospheric passion of Sanctuary has taken care of that for them."

Michael Mayer

Fabric 13

Electronic

Scott Plagenhoef

My wishlist of albums from artists who have yet to record full-lengths is as follows: Superpitcher, Junior Boys, Vitalic and, most of all, Michael Mayer. Whenever a new Mayer project is announced, it serves as a reminder of how few of his productions have been released. Yet whenever I hear these projects-- whether they be remixes, another release on his peerless tech-house label, Kompakt, or his ground-shifting mixes-- I'm reminded how thankful I am that he's at least out there doing what he does. The latest work from Mayer is his contribution to one of London club/label Fabric's mix series. Fabric's label division has been spoiling us recently with outstanding contributions from Swayzak (Fabric 11) and Jacques Lu Cont (Fabrclive.9), among others, but this is arguably the strongest release in its history. Incredibly, it also challenges 2000's Immer as the best release in Mayer's catalog, effortlessly drawing from his own Kompakt pool as well as eight other labels, including Playhouse, Plong, and Volt. Like most of Fabric's releases, Mayer's record is made with the dancefloor in mind so it's more ferocious than Immer, but like that dissection of the blissed-out end of German microhouse, it retains a Big Picture overview. In the past, Mayer's mixes have often seemed to be an attempt at taking a definitive snapshot of a particular sound from Neuhouse's mission statement, from the effortlessly blended, almost soothing and silken Immer to the schaffelfieber of Mayer's recent Peel Session (which is available only on mp3, not that we endorse that sort of thing, etc.) to the collection of Kompakt's more banging 12\xA5\xA5 sounds on Speciher. Instead, Fabric 13 is a more eclectic set, blending the differences between the seductive warmth and melody-- and increasingly pop and nu-glam-- sounds of Kompakt and adding underlying tones of menace and melancholy. Connecting the dots between elements of not only his own label but of German tech-house as a whole, Mayer offers a panoramic view of the scene. He even steps overground on a couple of occasions, utilizing both Jackson's Midnight Fuck remix of "Run into Flowers" by French nu-shoegazers and Pitchfork faves M83 and a remix of Westban's German hit "Oldschool, Baby". With vocals by Nena (of "99 Luftballoons" fame), who wields her retro charm as a weapon, "Oldschool, Baby" flits between quoting small elements of Italo-piano and acid house and 80s electro, drawing on the charms of the past without ever rooting itself in one place and time. "We are the moment/ Here to last," Nena claims on a track that even outdoes the set's other great pop moments, the pair of mixes of Heiko Voss' contagious "I Think About You" that bookend the mix. (Voss' oftentimes partner Thomas Schaeben appears twice, including a collaboration with Geiger and Schad Privat called "Really Real", a swoon song whose superfluous title fits its overflowing sound.) Elsewhere, the always thrilling Superpitcher is represented by his Total 5 glam-shuffle track "Mushroom", and a newer Mayer favorite, Richard Davis, is tossed into the mix a couple of times-- most memorably on "Bring Me Closer", a nightmare filled with haunting skips and jumps, baroque strings that seem to move in multiple directions at once, and an uneasy central pulse. The central pulse on Fabric 13, Villalobos' "Easy Lee", is more of a solemn, battered lub. One of the highlights of his Alcachofa album, the Chilean ex-pat's woozy, weak vocodered voice sounds even more ominous and mournful among the near-gothic tones of Mayer's mix. Villalobos' work is a fitting foundation for this record, a mix of surging, sharp dance rhythms which never build to any of the kind of overpowering peaks that could keep home listeners and/or tech-house novices at arm's length. Every so often Mayer will get the odd criticism that he's simply an excellent ringleader and idea man, sort of the Dave Eggers of tech-house. Well, that line of talk is frankly wrong. He expertly scouts and attracts the talent, sequences the tracks, and sets the tone for the entire sound-- despite his own productions remaining sadly few and far between. Michael Mayer's two mixes and his Peel Session mark him as one of the year's most vital artists, a sort of weatherman who determines which way the wind blows in Berlin, Cologne, and any place where ears are cocked.

Artist: Michael Mayer, Album: Fabric 13, Genre: Electronic, Score (1-10): 8.5 Album review: "My wishlist of albums from artists who have yet to record full-lengths is as follows: Superpitcher, Junior Boys, Vitalic and, most of all, Michael Mayer. Whenever a new Mayer project is announced, it serves as a reminder of how few of his productions have been released. Yet whenever I hear these projects-- whether they be remixes, another release on his peerless tech-house label, Kompakt, or his ground-shifting mixes-- I'm reminded how thankful I am that he's at least out there doing what he does. The latest work from Mayer is his contribution to one of London club/label Fabric's mix series. Fabric's label division has been spoiling us recently with outstanding contributions from Swayzak (Fabric 11) and Jacques Lu Cont (Fabrclive.9), among others, but this is arguably the strongest release in its history. Incredibly, it also challenges 2000's Immer as the best release in Mayer's catalog, effortlessly drawing from his own Kompakt pool as well as eight other labels, including Playhouse, Plong, and Volt. Like most of Fabric's releases, Mayer's record is made with the dancefloor in mind so it's more ferocious than Immer, but like that dissection of the blissed-out end of German microhouse, it retains a Big Picture overview. In the past, Mayer's mixes have often seemed to be an attempt at taking a definitive snapshot of a particular sound from Neuhouse's mission statement, from the effortlessly blended, almost soothing and silken Immer to the schaffelfieber of Mayer's recent Peel Session (which is available only on mp3, not that we endorse that sort of thing, etc.) to the collection of Kompakt's more banging 12\xA5\xA5 sounds on Speciher. Instead, Fabric 13 is a more eclectic set, blending the differences between the seductive warmth and melody-- and increasingly pop and nu-glam-- sounds of Kompakt and adding underlying tones of menace and melancholy. Connecting the dots between elements of not only his own label but of German tech-house as a whole, Mayer offers a panoramic view of the scene. He even steps overground on a couple of occasions, utilizing both Jackson's Midnight Fuck remix of "Run into Flowers" by French nu-shoegazers and Pitchfork faves M83 and a remix of Westban's German hit "Oldschool, Baby". With vocals by Nena (of "99 Luftballoons" fame), who wields her retro charm as a weapon, "Oldschool, Baby" flits between quoting small elements of Italo-piano and acid house and 80s electro, drawing on the charms of the past without ever rooting itself in one place and time. "We are the moment/ Here to last," Nena claims on a track that even outdoes the set's other great pop moments, the pair of mixes of Heiko Voss' contagious "I Think About You" that bookend the mix. (Voss' oftentimes partner Thomas Schaeben appears twice, including a collaboration with Geiger and Schad Privat called "Really Real", a swoon song whose superfluous title fits its overflowing sound.) Elsewhere, the always thrilling Superpitcher is represented by his Total 5 glam-shuffle track "Mushroom", and a newer Mayer favorite, Richard Davis, is tossed into the mix a couple of times-- most memorably on "Bring Me Closer", a nightmare filled with haunting skips and jumps, baroque strings that seem to move in multiple directions at once, and an uneasy central pulse. The central pulse on Fabric 13, Villalobos' "Easy Lee", is more of a solemn, battered lub. One of the highlights of his Alcachofa album, the Chilean ex-pat's woozy, weak vocodered voice sounds even more ominous and mournful among the near-gothic tones of Mayer's mix. Villalobos' work is a fitting foundation for this record, a mix of surging, sharp dance rhythms which never build to any of the kind of overpowering peaks that could keep home listeners and/or tech-house novices at arm's length. Every so often Mayer will get the odd criticism that he's simply an excellent ringleader and idea man, sort of the Dave Eggers of tech-house. Well, that line of talk is frankly wrong. He expertly scouts and attracts the talent, sequences the tracks, and sets the tone for the entire sound-- despite his own productions remaining sadly few and far between. Michael Mayer's two mixes and his Peel Session mark him as one of the year's most vital artists, a sort of weatherman who determines which way the wind blows in Berlin, Cologne, and any place where ears are cocked."

Apostle of Hustle

Folkloric Feel

Rock

Brian Howe

Apostle of Hustle is a project that Andrew Whiteman founded concomitantly with his more well-known band, Broken Social Scene, and his breathy vocals and radiant guitar style will be immediately recognizable to BSS adherents. By all accounts, Folkloric Feel is the product of Whiteman's crush on Cuban music, which he became drawn to while living for two months in Havana. A sharp, anxious intake of breath here is understandable-- culture jacking can produce laughable and even offensive results, and there's no friend you avoid with more diligence than the one who just returned from Scotland and insists on wearing a kilt to the bars. But the much-ballyhooed Cuban flavor is subtle, a point of departure rather than a destination. Whiteman has shown admirable restraint in burying the borrowed culture deeply within the record's gliding, murky expressivity. It mainly rears its head in certain clattering polyrhythms-- which are a familiar staple of Broken Social Scene anyway-- and in the tactful use of the tres, a Cuban guitar-like instrument that looks like an overgrown mandolin, with three courses of two (or three, in the Puerto Rican variation) strings. The tres's plinking, arpeggio-friendly tone is a staple of the Apostle of Hustle sound, albeit one swathed in a surplus of Broken Social Scene-style distortion and striated atmosphere. Besides the Cuban influence, Whiteman claims allegiance to Manu Chao, John Zorn, and "the Ancestors and Mentors"-- an apparent reference to old-time musicians and their longer attention span. A long attention span is a must for the title track, a nearly eight-minute long instrumental conversation that evolves so swiftly and complexly the listener feels rather dragged behind it like a muffler sparking on the pavement. It kicks off with a plucky, spiraling tres figure that recombines and ramifies over stark stabs of bass and rattling percussion that grows incrementally more clangorous, more Waitsian. A couple minutes in, a core melody has emerged, which is batted to and fro by call/response style organs and guitars. The evolution is so purposeful that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the song changes from baroque folk to a Broken Social Scene seether, and by the time it dilapidates, the poor melody has been battered through an overwhelming multiplicity of inflections and moods. From here the album unfurls like a snapping gray flag: "Sleepwalking Ballad" is an up-tempo box step with flashes of grandeur when the melody intermittently shouts its theretofore tacit crescendo. "Baby, You're in Luck" finds Whiteman at his most Notwist, trading breathy, lovelorn lines with Amy Milan over a shuffling electro-blues track. "Gleaning" sounds of a piece with Clinic's Walking With Thee, with its gently humming organ and whispery, scatted vocals (which are pretty cool, except for one part when they get a little too forceful and begin to sound a little like the guy from Korn). And "Dark is What I Want / Strutter's Ball" is full-bore, swaggering space rock, inflected with a jazzy swing, and contains the record's only scorching guitar solo, which is impressively forceful juxtaposed with the more arcane maneuvers it nestles in. By Whiteman's own admission, Apostle of Hustle is a sort of catchall for ideas that are too inscrutable or personal for his other projects. Folkloric Feel impresses itself on your consciousness slowly, by creeping degrees. The songs are mostly too fluid and multivalent to sum up with much fidelity; only the broadest gestures can be encapsulated, and the particulars get lost in the morass. You couldn't chart their changes and components with any more precision than you could a cloud as it moves imperturbably through the sky, and it's from this mutability that the record derives its peculiar appeal, moving in the blink of an eye from genial opacity to vivid bas-relief.

Artist: Apostle of Hustle, Album: Folkloric Feel, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.7 Album review: "Apostle of Hustle is a project that Andrew Whiteman founded concomitantly with his more well-known band, Broken Social Scene, and his breathy vocals and radiant guitar style will be immediately recognizable to BSS adherents. By all accounts, Folkloric Feel is the product of Whiteman's crush on Cuban music, which he became drawn to while living for two months in Havana. A sharp, anxious intake of breath here is understandable-- culture jacking can produce laughable and even offensive results, and there's no friend you avoid with more diligence than the one who just returned from Scotland and insists on wearing a kilt to the bars. But the much-ballyhooed Cuban flavor is subtle, a point of departure rather than a destination. Whiteman has shown admirable restraint in burying the borrowed culture deeply within the record's gliding, murky expressivity. It mainly rears its head in certain clattering polyrhythms-- which are a familiar staple of Broken Social Scene anyway-- and in the tactful use of the tres, a Cuban guitar-like instrument that looks like an overgrown mandolin, with three courses of two (or three, in the Puerto Rican variation) strings. The tres's plinking, arpeggio-friendly tone is a staple of the Apostle of Hustle sound, albeit one swathed in a surplus of Broken Social Scene-style distortion and striated atmosphere. Besides the Cuban influence, Whiteman claims allegiance to Manu Chao, John Zorn, and "the Ancestors and Mentors"-- an apparent reference to old-time musicians and their longer attention span. A long attention span is a must for the title track, a nearly eight-minute long instrumental conversation that evolves so swiftly and complexly the listener feels rather dragged behind it like a muffler sparking on the pavement. It kicks off with a plucky, spiraling tres figure that recombines and ramifies over stark stabs of bass and rattling percussion that grows incrementally more clangorous, more Waitsian. A couple minutes in, a core melody has emerged, which is batted to and fro by call/response style organs and guitars. The evolution is so purposeful that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the song changes from baroque folk to a Broken Social Scene seether, and by the time it dilapidates, the poor melody has been battered through an overwhelming multiplicity of inflections and moods. From here the album unfurls like a snapping gray flag: "Sleepwalking Ballad" is an up-tempo box step with flashes of grandeur when the melody intermittently shouts its theretofore tacit crescendo. "Baby, You're in Luck" finds Whiteman at his most Notwist, trading breathy, lovelorn lines with Amy Milan over a shuffling electro-blues track. "Gleaning" sounds of a piece with Clinic's Walking With Thee, with its gently humming organ and whispery, scatted vocals (which are pretty cool, except for one part when they get a little too forceful and begin to sound a little like the guy from Korn). And "Dark is What I Want / Strutter's Ball" is full-bore, swaggering space rock, inflected with a jazzy swing, and contains the record's only scorching guitar solo, which is impressively forceful juxtaposed with the more arcane maneuvers it nestles in. By Whiteman's own admission, Apostle of Hustle is a sort of catchall for ideas that are too inscrutable or personal for his other projects. Folkloric Feel impresses itself on your consciousness slowly, by creeping degrees. The songs are mostly too fluid and multivalent to sum up with much fidelity; only the broadest gestures can be encapsulated, and the particulars get lost in the morass. You couldn't chart their changes and components with any more precision than you could a cloud as it moves imperturbably through the sky, and it's from this mutability that the record derives its peculiar appeal, moving in the blink of an eye from genial opacity to vivid bas-relief."

Barton Carroll

Together You and I

Folk/Country

Stephen M. Deusner

Barton Carroll is the kind of songwriter that gets taken for granted. In a modestly fragile tenor, he relates real stories instead of impressionistic poetry or woe-is-me folk confessions, full of acute observations and complex emotional developments. It's literary in the sense that he has a strong grasp of character and voice, not in the sense that he favors big words or clever turns of phrase. Carroll may never be called innovative, but he can't be called showy either, which places him in the school of troubadours like Freedy Johnston and John Hiatt, who have a similar folksy bent and a shared itch to try on new perspectives. Carroll's fourth solo album, Together You and I, marks a great step forward from his previous releases, which were mostly solid collections of studied songs and varied lives. On the new material, he sounds more comfortable in these disparate points of view, and thanks to producer Graig Markel, he can better bend the musical elements to reinforce the lyrics. Illuminated by Craig Flory's raunchy-sweet saxophone, the witty "Past Tense" struts with a Sun Studios shuffle that bolsters the bluster of its narrator, who is hot for teacher: "Well, Little Miss Professor's got a problem with me/ Ever since you went and got a master degree." Throughout "The Poor Boy Can't Dance", Carroll's narrator-- an American immigrant in Britain-- steels himself to dance with the boss' daughter at a wedding, swallowing shot after shot. Rather than leave his fate undetermined, Carroll soldiers through to a potentially happy ending as a swing band cuts in to remind listeners of both the setting and the stakes. "Rich as a Rolling Stone" recounts a very different romantic encounter, one full of miscommunications and cross purposes between an overeager man and a grounded woman. She counters and contradicts his practiced compliments, revealing a realistic outlook that only seems like cynicism: In fact, she wants a man who "would be beautiful like Buddy Holly and rich as a Rolling Stone," and she's not afraid to keep looking. Playing referee, Carroll sings with an uneasy tone, slurring his words almost drunkenly but pushing the song at a subtly nervous clip that implies a fraught exchange. Carroll flirts with cliché in many of these songs, but only so he can twist the story. "Shadowman" plays out as a tale of a favored son and a black sheep, and just when the story seems most predictable, it flies off into darker territory as Carroll sketches out the unexpected tragedies that fill every life. Dispelling certain easy notions of true love and secure relationships, Together You and I recounts characters trying desperately to turn chance meetings and petty hook-ups into something longer and more meaningful. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asks an unidentified woman on a song with the same title. "I don't need to finish my beer." No one ever finishes their beer on Together You and I, and it's to his considerable credit that Carroll makes clear that many of these denizens come to regret leaving that glass half emptied.

Artist: Barton Carroll, Album: Together You and I, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "Barton Carroll is the kind of songwriter that gets taken for granted. In a modestly fragile tenor, he relates real stories instead of impressionistic poetry or woe-is-me folk confessions, full of acute observations and complex emotional developments. It's literary in the sense that he has a strong grasp of character and voice, not in the sense that he favors big words or clever turns of phrase. Carroll may never be called innovative, but he can't be called showy either, which places him in the school of troubadours like Freedy Johnston and John Hiatt, who have a similar folksy bent and a shared itch to try on new perspectives. Carroll's fourth solo album, Together You and I, marks a great step forward from his previous releases, which were mostly solid collections of studied songs and varied lives. On the new material, he sounds more comfortable in these disparate points of view, and thanks to producer Graig Markel, he can better bend the musical elements to reinforce the lyrics. Illuminated by Craig Flory's raunchy-sweet saxophone, the witty "Past Tense" struts with a Sun Studios shuffle that bolsters the bluster of its narrator, who is hot for teacher: "Well, Little Miss Professor's got a problem with me/ Ever since you went and got a master degree." Throughout "The Poor Boy Can't Dance", Carroll's narrator-- an American immigrant in Britain-- steels himself to dance with the boss' daughter at a wedding, swallowing shot after shot. Rather than leave his fate undetermined, Carroll soldiers through to a potentially happy ending as a swing band cuts in to remind listeners of both the setting and the stakes. "Rich as a Rolling Stone" recounts a very different romantic encounter, one full of miscommunications and cross purposes between an overeager man and a grounded woman. She counters and contradicts his practiced compliments, revealing a realistic outlook that only seems like cynicism: In fact, she wants a man who "would be beautiful like Buddy Holly and rich as a Rolling Stone," and she's not afraid to keep looking. Playing referee, Carroll sings with an uneasy tone, slurring his words almost drunkenly but pushing the song at a subtly nervous clip that implies a fraught exchange. Carroll flirts with cliché in many of these songs, but only so he can twist the story. "Shadowman" plays out as a tale of a favored son and a black sheep, and just when the story seems most predictable, it flies off into darker territory as Carroll sketches out the unexpected tragedies that fill every life. Dispelling certain easy notions of true love and secure relationships, Together You and I recounts characters trying desperately to turn chance meetings and petty hook-ups into something longer and more meaningful. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asks an unidentified woman on a song with the same title. "I don't need to finish my beer." No one ever finishes their beer on Together You and I, and it's to his considerable credit that Carroll makes clear that many of these denizens come to regret leaving that glass half emptied."

O'Death

Head Home

Rock

William Bowers

Finally, someone has found a unique angle for the execution of tired "Southern" tropes: be from New York! What a genius plan this sextet has concocted, to bring their hoedown-core to the nation's music-blog-and-press-hub so that typists and hypists don't have to (sigh) seek them out in the cultural landfill that is (yawn) non-New-York America, and then the band can bask in the boring language of this genre's typical, lazy, ghetto-izing reception: "haunted," "Appalachian," "swamp," "mountain," etc. City slickers might be surprised by how unswampy most mountains are, and vice versa. Anyway, bits of the o'death boys' affected vocals and influence-recycling barely escape being lampoonable as striving to embody Clap Y'alls Hands Say Yeehaw. At the risk of seconding the provincialism of Pace picante sauce commercials, the group does contain one actual Southerner, the manically talented drummer David Rogers-Berry, who is from my home state, the often (justifiably) maligned South Carolina. (The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle is fond of saying "North, by god, Carolina," and Stephen Malkmus repeatedly used Charleston gigs as opportunities to mock "South Carolina rock history.") But the Palmetto State has contributed respectably to "cool" culture lately, what with the rise of tunesmiths Band Of Horses and Iron & Wine, as well as comedians Stephen Colbert and Aziz Ansari. Rogers-Berry's geography-cred isn't enough to save Head Home's title from occasionally seeming as dishonest as fast food chain Hardees' "come home" (to a franchise?) campaign. Too many of these songs seem so hurriedly basted in campy rascality that you might imagine the Cramps and Wes Craven staging a musical called The Hillbillies Have Eyes, or Gremlins having taken over the Grand Ole Opry, or, I don't know, Little Shop Of Horrors redone with a giant bilious honeysuckle. The hell-raising, fiddle-driven "All The World" rules supreme over the rest of the album's spooky material, and it tellingly arrives during the more settled second half. No one's demanding that hootenannies be pokerfaced, but when o'death reins in the mugging, they can resonate as powerfully as recent outsourced-Southernness acts such as Portland's Horse Feathers, Seattle's the Lights, Brooklyn's the Boggs, and so forth. Maybe o'death's yowl is trying to tell Frank Black that his current down-home phase could use a pinch of Black Francis; "Nimrod's Son" is a staple of this band's reputedly awesome live show. The more genial tracks such as "Travelin Man", "Jesus Look Down", and "Gas Can Row" are lived-in and powerful enough to help the listener forgive the anachronisms, best symbolized by the coalminer photos on the band's MySpace page. It's not o'death's fault that the stunning existential spiritual "O Death" got used during the weak Mel Brooksian Klan-rally scene in O Brother Where Art Thou, or that they're basically re-enacting incidental music for a mode of reckoning that is mostly gone. (As a little girl, my milltown-bred mother used to tie junebugs to each of her fingers and marvel at them; now her late adulthood leisure-time is spent clutching a remote control during autopsy-porn on CBS.) O'death wear their throwback jerseys well when their lyrics aren't mired in Bible-belt Mad Libs, and their passion for what they're doing-- as well as their cathartic energy-- is undeniable. One would have to outright hate the paranormal not to grant the stringy final minute of "Ground Stump" its cold chills, or be a neat freak to resist the use of what sounds like kicked broken bottles as percussion on "Rickety Fence Teeth."

Artist: O'Death, Album: Head Home, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.8 Album review: "Finally, someone has found a unique angle for the execution of tired "Southern" tropes: be from New York! What a genius plan this sextet has concocted, to bring their hoedown-core to the nation's music-blog-and-press-hub so that typists and hypists don't have to (sigh) seek them out in the cultural landfill that is (yawn) non-New-York America, and then the band can bask in the boring language of this genre's typical, lazy, ghetto-izing reception: "haunted," "Appalachian," "swamp," "mountain," etc. City slickers might be surprised by how unswampy most mountains are, and vice versa. Anyway, bits of the o'death boys' affected vocals and influence-recycling barely escape being lampoonable as striving to embody Clap Y'alls Hands Say Yeehaw. At the risk of seconding the provincialism of Pace picante sauce commercials, the group does contain one actual Southerner, the manically talented drummer David Rogers-Berry, who is from my home state, the often (justifiably) maligned South Carolina. (The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle is fond of saying "North, by god, Carolina," and Stephen Malkmus repeatedly used Charleston gigs as opportunities to mock "South Carolina rock history.") But the Palmetto State has contributed respectably to "cool" culture lately, what with the rise of tunesmiths Band Of Horses and Iron & Wine, as well as comedians Stephen Colbert and Aziz Ansari. Rogers-Berry's geography-cred isn't enough to save Head Home's title from occasionally seeming as dishonest as fast food chain Hardees' "come home" (to a franchise?) campaign. Too many of these songs seem so hurriedly basted in campy rascality that you might imagine the Cramps and Wes Craven staging a musical called The Hillbillies Have Eyes, or Gremlins having taken over the Grand Ole Opry, or, I don't know, Little Shop Of Horrors redone with a giant bilious honeysuckle. The hell-raising, fiddle-driven "All The World" rules supreme over the rest of the album's spooky material, and it tellingly arrives during the more settled second half. No one's demanding that hootenannies be pokerfaced, but when o'death reins in the mugging, they can resonate as powerfully as recent outsourced-Southernness acts such as Portland's Horse Feathers, Seattle's the Lights, Brooklyn's the Boggs, and so forth. Maybe o'death's yowl is trying to tell Frank Black that his current down-home phase could use a pinch of Black Francis; "Nimrod's Son" is a staple of this band's reputedly awesome live show. The more genial tracks such as "Travelin Man", "Jesus Look Down", and "Gas Can Row" are lived-in and powerful enough to help the listener forgive the anachronisms, best symbolized by the coalminer photos on the band's MySpace page. It's not o'death's fault that the stunning existential spiritual "O Death" got used during the weak Mel Brooksian Klan-rally scene in O Brother Where Art Thou, or that they're basically re-enacting incidental music for a mode of reckoning that is mostly gone. (As a little girl, my milltown-bred mother used to tie junebugs to each of her fingers and marvel at them; now her late adulthood leisure-time is spent clutching a remote control during autopsy-porn on CBS.) O'death wear their throwback jerseys well when their lyrics aren't mired in Bible-belt Mad Libs, and their passion for what they're doing-- as well as their cathartic energy-- is undeniable. One would have to outright hate the paranormal not to grant the stringy final minute of "Ground Stump" its cold chills, or be a neat freak to resist the use of what sounds like kicked broken bottles as percussion on "Rickety Fence Teeth.""

Swans

To Be Kind

Rock

Stuart Berman

Swans were hardly the first 1980s underground-rock fixtures to resurface in the new millennium, and they’re not the only ones who've resisted the nostalgic trappings of reunion tours to make a respectable showing as a rebooted recording act. But they are the rare band of their vintage who seem less concerned with living up to or building upon a past legacy than establishing a completely different one. In retrospect, the 14 years that elapsed between 1996’s Soundtracks for the Blind and 2010’s My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky were less a break-up-induced hiatus than a gestation period. The bigger, brawnier Swans that Michael Gira has assembled in its wake (complete with a strapping, bare-chested gong-smasher named Thor) are beholden neither to the primordial, industrialized sludge of the band’s infamous ’80s catalogue nor the post-goth serenity of their ’90s work. Instead, they’ve perfected a new means of transforming grostequerie into grandeur and vice versa. With 2012’s astonishingly colossal The Seer, Swans pulled off the unlikeliest of coups: A record that, over its six sides and two-hour-plus running time, was seemingly designed to test the commitment of the band’s most ardent followers yet, amazingly, expanded their audience to an unprecedented degree. (This summer, Swans are even playing the odd free festival date in outdoor public squares, which could conceivably earn them a few new fans in the grandparents-and-strollers demographic.) But while Swans have always been the last band to pander to audience expectations, Gira nonetheless seems aware that anticipation for a new Swans album has arguably never been greater. And so he’s responded in the best way possible: by producing a record that, in structure and scale, is every bit The Seer’s equal, yet possessed by a peculiar energy and spirit that proves all the more alluring in its dark majesty. The relationship between the two albums can essentially be gauged by their respective album covers. Though there’s a similarity in composition, To Be Kind’s artwork trades *The Seer’*s dark shadows for a bright mustard tone, and the central feral-dog figure for cute baby faces (as rendered in a series of six by L.A. painter Bob Biggs), suggesting a more approachable ethos at play. But as any new parent can tell you, an infant is as volatile and destructive a creature as the wildest of field animals and, likewise, the John Congleton-produced To Be Kind boasts a more focused attack—with a preminum on taut, throbbing grooves and blackened blues—that initially tricks you into thinking it's more accessible than its predecessor. (Hey, there's even a song named in honour of Kirsten Dunst.) Yet it’s ultimately accessible in the same way a prison gate is accessible—getting in is relatively easy; getting out unscathed is an entirely different story. Upon hearing the introductory Cajun-funk strut of “A Little God in My Hands”, I initially worried that Swans were crossing over into the sort of campy, Southern-fried creepiness you’d hear on the soundtrack to an episode of "True Blood". But after that destabilizing blast of brass and synapse-frying synth beam appears out of nowhere at the 90 second mark, “A Little God in My Hands” carries on as if infected by a virus; it tries to keep its cool, but the once-sprightly rhythmic bounce is now ridden with a nervous tension, while the encroaching chorus of dead-eyed female voices transform the song into a mutant-zombie version of its former self. On To Be Kind, this is what constitutes a lead single. Close observers of Swans will notice that seven of the 10 songs here were previewed in some form on last year’s limited-edition concert album/demos collection Not Here/Not Now (whose sales funded the new album’s production). But most have since been subjected to dramatic embellishment or rearrangement. Not Here/Not Now’s tense, acoustic-strummed closing sketch “Screen Shot” has been recast as To Be Kind’s louche, slow-boiling “Yoo Doo Right”-styled opener and, in the process, illuminates the great contradiction at the core of the 21st-century Swans sound: as their sonic vocabulary has grown more elaborate and texturally detailed, Gira’s sense of melody has turned all the more minimalist and mantric. Thirty years ago on the deadpan dirge, “Job”, Gira sang from the perspective of the world’s most bored axe murderer (“Cut off the arms/ Cut off the legs/ Cut off the head/ Get rid of the body”) as a metaphor for soul-destroying, day-to-day workplace drudgery; on “Screen Shot,” he more eagerly sings of a different sort of dismemberment  (“No touch/ No loss/ No hands/ No sin”), of purging urges—and the body parts used to indulge them—as way to achieve a state of spiritual purity. The ensuing songs on To Be Kind present variations on this theme—of unleashing an outsized sound to find an inner peace, and reclaiming one's innocence by way of insolence. But, of course, this being a Swans record, salvation never comes easy. When, amid the “Dirt”-covered funereal march of “I’m Just a Little Boy” Gira pleads, “I need loooooooooooove,” he’s answered by a Greek chorus of devious, derisive laughter. (Of all the terrible, humiliating experiences detailed in Swans songs over the years, that moment just might count as the cruelest.) And if the 34-minute centerpiece “Bring the Sun”/“Toussaint L’Ouverture” initially summons our planet’s primary life-source with all the trance-inducing elation and desperation of a remote-island pagan sect praying to their gods for a bountiful harvest, its more sinister second act—wherein Gira maniacally howls the name of the titular 18th-century Haitian revolutionary while drowning in a swamp of dub spewage—transforms the track into an after-hours seance gone wrong. As it plays out, To Be Kind starts to resemble a cult procession unto itself, a mesmerizing spectacle of an omnipotent band whose sound continues to expand in scope and ranks swell in size. Much like The Seer, To Be Kind sees a formidable and evermore prominent coterie of female vocalists—from the insurgent Cold Specks to reigning freak-scene queen St. Vincent to avant-rock veteran Little Annie—falling under Swans’ sway. And rather than provide a calming counterpoint to Gira’s stentorian croon, their voices ultimately serve the album’s hypnotic force. From the teeth-gnashing ferocity of “Oxygen” to the calamitous, battering-rammed climax of “She Loves Us!”, To Be Kind adheres to a policy of transcendence by any means necessary, even if it means repeatedly bashing you in the face with a mallet until you’re seeing stars and col

Artist: Swans, Album: To Be Kind, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 9.2 Album review: "Swans were hardly the first 1980s underground-rock fixtures to resurface in the new millennium, and they’re not the only ones who've resisted the nostalgic trappings of reunion tours to make a respectable showing as a rebooted recording act. But they are the rare band of their vintage who seem less concerned with living up to or building upon a past legacy than establishing a completely different one. In retrospect, the 14 years that elapsed between 1996’s Soundtracks for the Blind and 2010’s My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky were less a break-up-induced hiatus than a gestation period. The bigger, brawnier Swans that Michael Gira has assembled in its wake (complete with a strapping, bare-chested gong-smasher named Thor) are beholden neither to the primordial, industrialized sludge of the band’s infamous ’80s catalogue nor the post-goth serenity of their ’90s work. Instead, they’ve perfected a new means of transforming grostequerie into grandeur and vice versa. With 2012’s astonishingly colossal The Seer, Swans pulled off the unlikeliest of coups: A record that, over its six sides and two-hour-plus running time, was seemingly designed to test the commitment of the band’s most ardent followers yet, amazingly, expanded their audience to an unprecedented degree. (This summer, Swans are even playing the odd free festival date in outdoor public squares, which could conceivably earn them a few new fans in the grandparents-and-strollers demographic.) But while Swans have always been the last band to pander to audience expectations, Gira nonetheless seems aware that anticipation for a new Swans album has arguably never been greater. And so he’s responded in the best way possible: by producing a record that, in structure and scale, is every bit The Seer’s equal, yet possessed by a peculiar energy and spirit that proves all the more alluring in its dark majesty. The relationship between the two albums can essentially be gauged by their respective album covers. Though there’s a similarity in composition, To Be Kind’s artwork trades *The Seer’*s dark shadows for a bright mustard tone, and the central feral-dog figure for cute baby faces (as rendered in a series of six by L.A. painter Bob Biggs), suggesting a more approachable ethos at play. But as any new parent can tell you, an infant is as volatile and destructive a creature as the wildest of field animals and, likewise, the John Congleton-produced To Be Kind boasts a more focused attack—with a preminum on taut, throbbing grooves and blackened blues—that initially tricks you into thinking it's more accessible than its predecessor. (Hey, there's even a song named in honour of Kirsten Dunst.) Yet it’s ultimately accessible in the same way a prison gate is accessible—getting in is relatively easy; getting out unscathed is an entirely different story. Upon hearing the introductory Cajun-funk strut of “A Little God in My Hands”, I initially worried that Swans were crossing over into the sort of campy, Southern-fried creepiness you’d hear on the soundtrack to an episode of "True Blood". But after that destabilizing blast of brass and synapse-frying synth beam appears out of nowhere at the 90 second mark, “A Little God in My Hands” carries on as if infected by a virus; it tries to keep its cool, but the once-sprightly rhythmic bounce is now ridden with a nervous tension, while the encroaching chorus of dead-eyed female voices transform the song into a mutant-zombie version of its former self. On To Be Kind, this is what constitutes a lead single. Close observers of Swans will notice that seven of the 10 songs here were previewed in some form on last year’s limited-edition concert album/demos collection Not Here/Not Now (whose sales funded the new album’s production). But most have since been subjected to dramatic embellishment or rearrangement. Not Here/Not Now’s tense, acoustic-strummed closing sketch “Screen Shot” has been recast as To Be Kind’s louche, slow-boiling “Yoo Doo Right”-styled opener and, in the process, illuminates the great contradiction at the core of the 21st-century Swans sound: as their sonic vocabulary has grown more elaborate and texturally detailed, Gira’s sense of melody has turned all the more minimalist and mantric. Thirty years ago on the deadpan dirge, “Job”, Gira sang from the perspective of the world’s most bored axe murderer (“Cut off the arms/ Cut off the legs/ Cut off the head/ Get rid of the body”) as a metaphor for soul-destroying, day-to-day workplace drudgery; on “Screen Shot,” he more eagerly sings of a different sort of dismemberment  (“No touch/ No loss/ No hands/ No sin”), of purging urges—and the body parts used to indulge them—as way to achieve a state of spiritual purity. The ensuing songs on To Be Kind present variations on this theme—of unleashing an outsized sound to find an inner peace, and reclaiming one's innocence by way of insolence. But, of course, this being a Swans record, salvation never comes easy. When, amid the “Dirt”-covered funereal march of “I’m Just a Little Boy” Gira pleads, “I need loooooooooooove,” he’s answered by a Greek chorus of devious, derisive laughter. (Of all the terrible, humiliating experiences detailed in Swans songs over the years, that moment just might count as the cruelest.) And if the 34-minute centerpiece “Bring the Sun”/“Toussaint L’Ouverture” initially summons our planet’s primary life-source with all the trance-inducing elation and desperation of a remote-island pagan sect praying to their gods for a bountiful harvest, its more sinister second act—wherein Gira maniacally howls the name of the titular 18th-century Haitian revolutionary while drowning in a swamp of dub spewage—transforms the track into an after-hours seance gone wrong. As it plays out, To Be Kind starts to resemble a cult procession unto itself, a mesmerizing spectacle of an omnipotent band whose sound continues to expand in scope and ranks swell in size. Much like The Seer, To Be Kind sees a formidable and evermore prominent coterie of female vocalists—from the insurgent Cold Specks to reigning freak-scene queen St. Vincent to avant-rock veteran Little Annie—falling under Swans’ sway. And rather than provide a calming counterpoint to Gira’s stentorian croon, their voices ultimately serve the album’s hypnotic force. From the teeth-gnashing ferocity of “Oxygen” to the calamitous, battering-rammed climax of “She Loves Us!”, To Be Kind adheres to a policy of transcendence by any means necessary, even if it means repeatedly bashing you in the face with a mallet until you’re seeing stars and col"

All Night Radio

Spirit Stereo Frequency

Rock

Amanda Petrusich

In 2001, Boston College professor Michael Keith wrote a book called Sounds in the Dark: All-Night Radio in American Life. In it, Keith explores the socio-cultural motivation behind middle-of-the-night radio broadcasts, prodding at the occasionally curious demographics of all-night radio listeners-- think people in sweaters driving cars and drinking black coffee from plastic thermoses, security guards flipping through decks of cards, janitors pushing buckets, or insomniacs eating crackers and gnawing their fingernails. As a companion, all-night radio is warm and crackly, vaguely surreal, and encoded in the way that late-night activities always are. Everyone thinks just a little bit differently at night: familiar objects become encrypted by darkness, taking shapes that aren't their own; dimensions are expanded, images are distorted, and everything inadvertently and suddenly becomes really, really weird. Thus, the meandering, blowsy psych-rock of All Night Radio. Fronted by ex-Beachwood Sparks members Dave Scher and Jimi Hey, All Night Radio have successfully captured the shape-shifting, peculiar magic of midnight crackles and shitty speakers, freaky callers and awkward on-air personalities. The band's full-length debut, Spirit Stereo Frequency, is, happily, just as fuzzy and unpredictable as its namesake suggests, with high, hissing vocals, archaic-gone-futuristic blips, pedal steel, keyboards, glockenspiel, and a barrage of other noisemakers helping to build a thick, spacy stretch of soft 60s psychedelia. Opener "Daylight Till Dawn" mixes Scher and Hey's gentle, lapping vocals with whiny guitar, their rousing chorus of "I wanna wake up in the morning!" tempered by a bum-bum-bum vocal breakdown and plenty of echo. Most of Spirit Stereo Frequency comes in short waves: "We're on Our Wave" is framed by samples of crashing tides and filled with sweet, Byrds-ish whispers, each vocal dose perfectly rising, cresting and falling, while "Sky Bicycle (You've Been Ringing)" is a galactic, meandering high, with tinkling melodies blowing up and then subsiding in a tiny cloud of pink and yellow smoke. Much like a sleepless night, Spirit Stereo Frequency lags a bit in the middle, mimicking the inevitable dip and sag of insomnia: the initial rush of adrenaline wanes, resources are gradually exhausted, and, somehow, there are still plenty of empty hours to fill before daybreak. When the moon finally sinks, the sun-spotted reward turns out to be well-worth your patience: closing self-anthem "All Night Radio" is a buoyant singalong, the perfect soundtrack to careening down the interstate at 4:00am or launching streaming blue rockets into space. Awesomely, Scher and Hey claim to have composed these songs based on non-stop bandwidth signals from the sun, and caution that signal content can vary based on "atmospheric conditions." It's entirely possible that they're right-- depending on exactly what brand of moonlight you end up dancing under, Spirit Stereo Frequency can be an empathetic buddy, an omnipresent guide, or just the perfect accompaniment to the most illogical of all human situations.

Artist: All Night Radio, Album: Spirit Stereo Frequency, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "In 2001, Boston College professor Michael Keith wrote a book called Sounds in the Dark: All-Night Radio in American Life. In it, Keith explores the socio-cultural motivation behind middle-of-the-night radio broadcasts, prodding at the occasionally curious demographics of all-night radio listeners-- think people in sweaters driving cars and drinking black coffee from plastic thermoses, security guards flipping through decks of cards, janitors pushing buckets, or insomniacs eating crackers and gnawing their fingernails. As a companion, all-night radio is warm and crackly, vaguely surreal, and encoded in the way that late-night activities always are. Everyone thinks just a little bit differently at night: familiar objects become encrypted by darkness, taking shapes that aren't their own; dimensions are expanded, images are distorted, and everything inadvertently and suddenly becomes really, really weird. Thus, the meandering, blowsy psych-rock of All Night Radio. Fronted by ex-Beachwood Sparks members Dave Scher and Jimi Hey, All Night Radio have successfully captured the shape-shifting, peculiar magic of midnight crackles and shitty speakers, freaky callers and awkward on-air personalities. The band's full-length debut, Spirit Stereo Frequency, is, happily, just as fuzzy and unpredictable as its namesake suggests, with high, hissing vocals, archaic-gone-futuristic blips, pedal steel, keyboards, glockenspiel, and a barrage of other noisemakers helping to build a thick, spacy stretch of soft 60s psychedelia. Opener "Daylight Till Dawn" mixes Scher and Hey's gentle, lapping vocals with whiny guitar, their rousing chorus of "I wanna wake up in the morning!" tempered by a bum-bum-bum vocal breakdown and plenty of echo. Most of Spirit Stereo Frequency comes in short waves: "We're on Our Wave" is framed by samples of crashing tides and filled with sweet, Byrds-ish whispers, each vocal dose perfectly rising, cresting and falling, while "Sky Bicycle (You've Been Ringing)" is a galactic, meandering high, with tinkling melodies blowing up and then subsiding in a tiny cloud of pink and yellow smoke. Much like a sleepless night, Spirit Stereo Frequency lags a bit in the middle, mimicking the inevitable dip and sag of insomnia: the initial rush of adrenaline wanes, resources are gradually exhausted, and, somehow, there are still plenty of empty hours to fill before daybreak. When the moon finally sinks, the sun-spotted reward turns out to be well-worth your patience: closing self-anthem "All Night Radio" is a buoyant singalong, the perfect soundtrack to careening down the interstate at 4:00am or launching streaming blue rockets into space. Awesomely, Scher and Hey claim to have composed these songs based on non-stop bandwidth signals from the sun, and caution that signal content can vary based on "atmospheric conditions." It's entirely possible that they're right-- depending on exactly what brand of moonlight you end up dancing under, Spirit Stereo Frequency can be an empathetic buddy, an omnipresent guide, or just the perfect accompaniment to the most illogical of all human situations."

Xiu Xiu

Nina

Experimental,Rock

Mark Richardson

Cover albums should at this point come with low expectations. You think of things like filling contracts, overcoming writers block, maybe doing a favor for an old friend. And Sometimes you get a couple of decent songs out of it. But hearing that Xiu Xiu would be covering songs identified with Nina Simone on a new release, it was hard not get excited. There’s an obvious spiritual connection between the artists, a sense of fearlessness and deep belief in the transformative power of expressing raw emotion. Looking at the titles, I could close my eyes and almost hear how some of these songs would play out. Sure, it would be a challenge. Nina Simone is giant, an artist of great complexity whose music is hard to grapple with and harder still to summarize, so there would be the question of which Nina Simone to cover: the jazz belter, the ethereal balladeer, the bold activist, the shattered lover, the gifted interpreter of the American songbook. But you could imagine Jamie Stewart finding a way to channel his frayed edges and matchless intensity into something powerful that would highlight something about Simone’s many-faceted approach. Alas, it was not to be. Nina is a low-key release that is not "the new Xiu Xiu album" but it’s still hard not to be disappointed at this wasted opportunity. If it were too abrasive or too faithful, that would be one thing, but Nina is guilty of an even deeper sin: These interpretations shed no light on Simone’s artistry and add nothing to the force of these songs. The strangest thing of all is that the failure is due almost entirely to Stewart’s vocal conception. He doesn’t have the widest range as a singer, but he has found ways to circumvent his limitations and find modes of expression to suit his songs. And he also has a deep bag of effects—shrieks, cries, howls, and even an engaging croon that hints at blackest goth and the androgyny of new pop. But for whatever reason he chose to sing these 11 songs almost entirely with a pinched, trembling whisper that makes melody irrelevant while not offering any compensatory emotional gestures. It’s a deeply theatrical register, sounding put-on and "artificial" in a way that has to be intentional, but it never signifies. You keep waiting for the songs to lurch in an unexpected direction but they never do; Nina is a low simmer that never comes close to approaching a boil. There are a few things to recommend here. One, Stewart’s song selection is pretty good, even if he never finds a way to do much with them."Wild Is the Wind" and "The Other Woman" are brilliant tunes that Simone owned, and her versions of "Don’t Explain" and "Pirate Jenny" are essential versions of frequently covered classics. So just hearing the songs he chose—most of which, incidentally, Simone did not write—and trying to hear how he connects them to her interpretations and tweaks lyrics here and there to personalize them holds some parlor game interest. And the arrangements by drummer Ches Smith are distinctive and varied, moving between music-box twinkle, Tom Waits-style junkyard jazz, and harsh atonal bleats. There's an interesting sound here, a shell of an idea. But there is ultimately very little melody or personality for the arrangements to support and the record winds up sounding weirdly conservative.

Artist: Xiu Xiu, Album: Nina, Genre: Experimental,Rock, Score (1-10): 4.7 Album review: "Cover albums should at this point come with low expectations. You think of things like filling contracts, overcoming writers block, maybe doing a favor for an old friend. And Sometimes you get a couple of decent songs out of it. But hearing that Xiu Xiu would be covering songs identified with Nina Simone on a new release, it was hard not get excited. There’s an obvious spiritual connection between the artists, a sense of fearlessness and deep belief in the transformative power of expressing raw emotion. Looking at the titles, I could close my eyes and almost hear how some of these songs would play out. Sure, it would be a challenge. Nina Simone is giant, an artist of great complexity whose music is hard to grapple with and harder still to summarize, so there would be the question of which Nina Simone to cover: the jazz belter, the ethereal balladeer, the bold activist, the shattered lover, the gifted interpreter of the American songbook. But you could imagine Jamie Stewart finding a way to channel his frayed edges and matchless intensity into something powerful that would highlight something about Simone’s many-faceted approach. Alas, it was not to be. Nina is a low-key release that is not "the new Xiu Xiu album" but it’s still hard not to be disappointed at this wasted opportunity. If it were too abrasive or too faithful, that would be one thing, but Nina is guilty of an even deeper sin: These interpretations shed no light on Simone’s artistry and add nothing to the force of these songs. The strangest thing of all is that the failure is due almost entirely to Stewart’s vocal conception. He doesn’t have the widest range as a singer, but he has found ways to circumvent his limitations and find modes of expression to suit his songs. And he also has a deep bag of effects—shrieks, cries, howls, and even an engaging croon that hints at blackest goth and the androgyny of new pop. But for whatever reason he chose to sing these 11 songs almost entirely with a pinched, trembling whisper that makes melody irrelevant while not offering any compensatory emotional gestures. It’s a deeply theatrical register, sounding put-on and "artificial" in a way that has to be intentional, but it never signifies. You keep waiting for the songs to lurch in an unexpected direction but they never do; Nina is a low simmer that never comes close to approaching a boil. There are a few things to recommend here. One, Stewart’s song selection is pretty good, even if he never finds a way to do much with them."Wild Is the Wind" and "The Other Woman" are brilliant tunes that Simone owned, and her versions of "Don’t Explain" and "Pirate Jenny" are essential versions of frequently covered classics. So just hearing the songs he chose—most of which, incidentally, Simone did not write—and trying to hear how he connects them to her interpretations and tweaks lyrics here and there to personalize them holds some parlor game interest. And the arrangements by drummer Ches Smith are distinctive and varied, moving between music-box twinkle, Tom Waits-style junkyard jazz, and harsh atonal bleats. There's an interesting sound here, a shell of an idea. But there is ultimately very little melody or personality for the arrangements to support and the record winds up sounding weirdly conservative."

Pernice Brothers

Nobody's Listening/Nobody's Watching

Rock

Stephen M. Deusner

The title of the Pernice Brothers' live album and DVD could be a self-deprecating comment on the relentless obscurity that afflicts even the most talented and hard-working of indie bands, dogging them for album after album as their audience either grows incrementally or stagnates altogether. Or, possibly, it's a slight to the band's diehard fans who regularly turned up at shows to lend their shouts and applause to the background of this live recording. Despite the title's tongue-in-cheek bitterness, we should at least give the Pernice Brothers the benefit of the doubt-- and not just because they thank their fans in the liner notes. The band, lead by real-life Pernice brothers Joe and Bob, has been creating letter-perfect pop since 1997, manufacturing three albums of songs wherein each lyric, each harmony, each bridge was precisely calibrated to elicit a particular listener response. As a result, albums like Overcome By Happiness and Yours, Mine & Ours sound so pristine, polished, and practiced that they can tend toward unexciting. By definition, a live album like Nobody's Listening-- recorded at the Mercury Lounge in New York-- cures part of that problem in that no matter how much a band practices, each performance is affected by uncontrollable variables from crowd reaction to venue temperature to PA differences. Nobody's Listening adds a few much-needed blemishes to Joe Pernice's songwriting gems: Engineered and mixed by bass player Thom Monahan, the sound is rougher and more ragged but livelier and more dynamic than their studio albums. Joe Pernice's vocals are low in the mix, and sometimes he sounds like he's straining alternately to hit notes and to be heard. The keyboards on "Sometimes I Remember" sound dissonant and sub-Casiotone, and elsewhere instruments sometimes get lost in the mix. In some cases, these factors might be considered flaws; on Nobody's Listening they lend the songs a sense of spontaneity. "Working Girls" now sounds as gritty as its subject matter. "Crestfallen" drips with disdain as Joe remarks "it's hard to read her simple mind." The raw guitars bring out the desperation and deprecation on "Grudge Fuck", a song from the Pernice brothers' previous band, the Scud Mountain Boys. Their cover of the Pretenders' "Talk of the Town"-- which is the only non-album track on Nobody's Listening-- rumbles along thanks to James Walbourne's piano and Patrick Berkery's drums. And "Flaming Wreck" ends with a noisy barrage of instruments that closes the show perfectly. As documented on the Nobody's Watching DVD tour diary, the Pernice Brothers have spent most of the past seven years on the road, playing small clubs for varying audiences. That experience has made them a better live than studio band, as Nobody's Listening amply displays.

Artist: Pernice Brothers, Album: Nobody's Listening/Nobody's Watching, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.4 Album review: "The title of the Pernice Brothers' live album and DVD could be a self-deprecating comment on the relentless obscurity that afflicts even the most talented and hard-working of indie bands, dogging them for album after album as their audience either grows incrementally or stagnates altogether. Or, possibly, it's a slight to the band's diehard fans who regularly turned up at shows to lend their shouts and applause to the background of this live recording. Despite the title's tongue-in-cheek bitterness, we should at least give the Pernice Brothers the benefit of the doubt-- and not just because they thank their fans in the liner notes. The band, lead by real-life Pernice brothers Joe and Bob, has been creating letter-perfect pop since 1997, manufacturing three albums of songs wherein each lyric, each harmony, each bridge was precisely calibrated to elicit a particular listener response. As a result, albums like Overcome By Happiness and Yours, Mine & Ours sound so pristine, polished, and practiced that they can tend toward unexciting. By definition, a live album like Nobody's Listening-- recorded at the Mercury Lounge in New York-- cures part of that problem in that no matter how much a band practices, each performance is affected by uncontrollable variables from crowd reaction to venue temperature to PA differences. Nobody's Listening adds a few much-needed blemishes to Joe Pernice's songwriting gems: Engineered and mixed by bass player Thom Monahan, the sound is rougher and more ragged but livelier and more dynamic than their studio albums. Joe Pernice's vocals are low in the mix, and sometimes he sounds like he's straining alternately to hit notes and to be heard. The keyboards on "Sometimes I Remember" sound dissonant and sub-Casiotone, and elsewhere instruments sometimes get lost in the mix. In some cases, these factors might be considered flaws; on Nobody's Listening they lend the songs a sense of spontaneity. "Working Girls" now sounds as gritty as its subject matter. "Crestfallen" drips with disdain as Joe remarks "it's hard to read her simple mind." The raw guitars bring out the desperation and deprecation on "Grudge Fuck", a song from the Pernice brothers' previous band, the Scud Mountain Boys. Their cover of the Pretenders' "Talk of the Town"-- which is the only non-album track on Nobody's Listening-- rumbles along thanks to James Walbourne's piano and Patrick Berkery's drums. And "Flaming Wreck" ends with a noisy barrage of instruments that closes the show perfectly. As documented on the Nobody's Watching DVD tour diary, the Pernice Brothers have spent most of the past seven years on the road, playing small clubs for varying audiences. That experience has made them a better live than studio band, as Nobody's Listening amply displays."

Drake

More Life

Rap

Jayson Greene

Drake’s VIEWS was a commercial pinnacle and a creative and personal dead end. He scored the biggest hit of his career with “One Dance,” but the album surrounding it was so aggrieved and solipsistic you felt like you were insulting Drake by listening to it. His telepathic bond with producer Noah “40” Shebib had turned stale and over its punishing 80-plus minutes he wrung every last drop of sour grapes from his Beta-Male Conqueror persona. He had crushed his frenemies, seen them driven before him, and heard the lamentations of their women—or at least purposefully ignored their texts. What was next but exile? He seems to be tacitly admitting to this stagnation throughout the warm, pulsing, and generous More Life. His solution is a “Playlist” (not a big old serious Album, the implication goes, nor one of those little “mixtapes” other rappers bother with) that forces Drake out into the sunlight again, where he can once again mingle with the people. On More Life’s closing track “Do Not Disturb,” he acknowledges the bleak spot he was in: “I was an angry youth while I was writing VIEWS/Saw a side of myself that I just never knew.” He even lets his mother pipe in with a voice message two-thirds of the way through the record on “Can’t Have Everything” as she admonishes her son for the hostile, suspicious streak he was nurturing. “That attitude will just hold you back in this life, and you’re going to continue to feel alienated,” she advises. He doesn’t exactly drop the attitude, but he does play the background on More Life, implicitly acknowledging that he is often the least appealing element of his massively successful art. Dialing back on his self-pity allows all his skills that have kept him on top to float back to the surface: his ear for melodies, his sophisticated tastes, his curation skills. The more voices he lets into the frame, the fuller and richer the results, and More Life bursts with energy and lush sounds—more guests, more genres, more producers, more life. It is as confident, relaxed, and appealing as he’s sounded in a couple of years. Drake steps back and lets the dusky-voiced 19-year-old British singer Jorja Smith soar over a sinuous club track from the rising South African house producer Black Coffee on the gorgeous “Get It Together.” Black Coffee and Jorja comprise at least 80 percent of the song; Drake is mostly relegated to mumbling or doubling the hook. Sampha bleeds his gorgeous hurt over the entirety of “4422,” with no one else in sight, and Skepta claims an entire track, boasting that he “died and came back as Fela Kuti.” Young Thug steals not one but two songs, spitting a dense verse with no vocal filter on “Sacrifices” and yelping along with the roots-reggae horns of “Ice Melts.” Throughout, Drake’s appetite for the music of other cultures remains ravenous. “I switch flow like I switch time zone,” he raps on “Gyalchester,” the song title itself a patois nickname for the neighborhood of Manchester. On “Sacrifices,” he boasts “I got Dubai plates in the California state.” In both reach and sound, Drake may now be one of the most global pop stars in history. He is shrewd and relentless about his globe-trotting on More Life: “Dis a habibis ting, yeah?” he asks on the intro to a track called “Portland,” invoking a vivid zone of confusion where Arabic and Caribbean slang collides with Atlanta’s own Quavo somewhere in the rainy Pacific Northwest. As always, there are moments when it’s unclear what Drake thinks he is borrowing. He tackles “No Long Talk” in an unsteady tough-guy patois—“things” turns to “tings” but then sneaks back into “things” when he’s not watching it, so he sounds a bit more like a kid with a hairbrush in the mirror than he probably intends. He also proudly shouts out his bodyguard Baka Not Nice, a man who faced human trafficking charges and was imprisoned on domestic assault charges (Drake boasts that Baka’s “quick to let a motherfuckin’ TEC slam”). It’s a reminder of his unsavory tendency to borrow street credibility from figures like Baka who have paid the price for it, the same impulse that had him pointing to a “prison visit” on his song “Two Birds, One Stone” as evidence that he wasn’t some “privileged kid.” Who stunts about visiting a prison? As one of the first rap superstars forged entirely outside the crucible of the American drug war, Drake has always had a confused relationship to the “rules” of hip-hop. This makes his moments of flexing interesting if only for the friction they generate between the role he’s assuming and the figure he cuts. He opens More Life with “Free Smoke,” a hard-charging and take-no-prisoners track, the sort of moment on a rap album where you ruthlessly cut down challengers and re-establish your dominance. But he spends it remembering how he used to eat Applebee’s and Outback, or the time he drunk-texted J. Lo (“It was an old number so it bounced back”). He does address his disgraced foe Meek Mill, who fell on a sword trying to expose Drake as a fraud: "How you let the kid fighting ghostwriting rumors turn you to a ghost?” he taunts. This is a peculiarly self-skewering line of attack, a bit like punching yourself in the face before going for your opponent’s gut. It doesn’t exactly elicit the classic, crowd-of-bystanders “ooooh!” that direct shots are supposed to incite; more of a “uh...hmmm.” This pluralistic and self-contradicting identity has always been part and parcel of Drake’s inheritance to hip-hop; it will be a large part of his legacy. Name a pop star who has ever had a clearer picture of their place in the culture, who senses exactly what they can get away with and what they can’t (other than Taylor Swift). He knows himself and his worth, at least as a market entity. “They don’t know they gotta be faster than me to get to me, no one’s done it successfully,” he boasts, truthfully, on “Do Not Disturb.” More than anything,* More Life* plays like a just-in-time course correction to the excesses of VIEWS, a remarkable feat of troubleshooting that assures that October’s Very Own—whose catalog passed 10 billion Spotify streams before this release—continues to own several Octobers henceforth. More Life is long, for sure. It is, of course, designed to be long, to swallow up all of your streaming bandwidth. Twenty-two songs all but asks you forget other rappers and musicians exist for a while. This is the new power play in an age of digital infinitude. He doesn’t offer insight in return, really—eight years into examining the wages of his success, he’s still stumbling on thoughts like, “How you run out of gas on the road

Artist: Drake, Album: More Life, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 7.8 Album review: "Drake’s VIEWS was a commercial pinnacle and a creative and personal dead end. He scored the biggest hit of his career with “One Dance,” but the album surrounding it was so aggrieved and solipsistic you felt like you were insulting Drake by listening to it. His telepathic bond with producer Noah “40” Shebib had turned stale and over its punishing 80-plus minutes he wrung every last drop of sour grapes from his Beta-Male Conqueror persona. He had crushed his frenemies, seen them driven before him, and heard the lamentations of their women—or at least purposefully ignored their texts. What was next but exile? He seems to be tacitly admitting to this stagnation throughout the warm, pulsing, and generous More Life. His solution is a “Playlist” (not a big old serious Album, the implication goes, nor one of those little “mixtapes” other rappers bother with) that forces Drake out into the sunlight again, where he can once again mingle with the people. On More Life’s closing track “Do Not Disturb,” he acknowledges the bleak spot he was in: “I was an angry youth while I was writing VIEWS/Saw a side of myself that I just never knew.” He even lets his mother pipe in with a voice message two-thirds of the way through the record on “Can’t Have Everything” as she admonishes her son for the hostile, suspicious streak he was nurturing. “That attitude will just hold you back in this life, and you’re going to continue to feel alienated,” she advises. He doesn’t exactly drop the attitude, but he does play the background on More Life, implicitly acknowledging that he is often the least appealing element of his massively successful art. Dialing back on his self-pity allows all his skills that have kept him on top to float back to the surface: his ear for melodies, his sophisticated tastes, his curation skills. The more voices he lets into the frame, the fuller and richer the results, and More Life bursts with energy and lush sounds—more guests, more genres, more producers, more life. It is as confident, relaxed, and appealing as he’s sounded in a couple of years. Drake steps back and lets the dusky-voiced 19-year-old British singer Jorja Smith soar over a sinuous club track from the rising South African house producer Black Coffee on the gorgeous “Get It Together.” Black Coffee and Jorja comprise at least 80 percent of the song; Drake is mostly relegated to mumbling or doubling the hook. Sampha bleeds his gorgeous hurt over the entirety of “4422,” with no one else in sight, and Skepta claims an entire track, boasting that he “died and came back as Fela Kuti.” Young Thug steals not one but two songs, spitting a dense verse with no vocal filter on “Sacrifices” and yelping along with the roots-reggae horns of “Ice Melts.” Throughout, Drake’s appetite for the music of other cultures remains ravenous. “I switch flow like I switch time zone,” he raps on “Gyalchester,” the song title itself a patois nickname for the neighborhood of Manchester. On “Sacrifices,” he boasts “I got Dubai plates in the California state.” In both reach and sound, Drake may now be one of the most global pop stars in history. He is shrewd and relentless about his globe-trotting on More Life: “Dis a habibis ting, yeah?” he asks on the intro to a track called “Portland,” invoking a vivid zone of confusion where Arabic and Caribbean slang collides with Atlanta’s own Quavo somewhere in the rainy Pacific Northwest. As always, there are moments when it’s unclear what Drake thinks he is borrowing. He tackles “No Long Talk” in an unsteady tough-guy patois—“things” turns to “tings” but then sneaks back into “things” when he’s not watching it, so he sounds a bit more like a kid with a hairbrush in the mirror than he probably intends. He also proudly shouts out his bodyguard Baka Not Nice, a man who faced human trafficking charges and was imprisoned on domestic assault charges (Drake boasts that Baka’s “quick to let a motherfuckin’ TEC slam”). It’s a reminder of his unsavory tendency to borrow street credibility from figures like Baka who have paid the price for it, the same impulse that had him pointing to a “prison visit” on his song “Two Birds, One Stone” as evidence that he wasn’t some “privileged kid.” Who stunts about visiting a prison? As one of the first rap superstars forged entirely outside the crucible of the American drug war, Drake has always had a confused relationship to the “rules” of hip-hop. This makes his moments of flexing interesting if only for the friction they generate between the role he’s assuming and the figure he cuts. He opens More Life with “Free Smoke,” a hard-charging and take-no-prisoners track, the sort of moment on a rap album where you ruthlessly cut down challengers and re-establish your dominance. But he spends it remembering how he used to eat Applebee’s and Outback, or the time he drunk-texted J. Lo (“It was an old number so it bounced back”). He does address his disgraced foe Meek Mill, who fell on a sword trying to expose Drake as a fraud: "How you let the kid fighting ghostwriting rumors turn you to a ghost?” he taunts. This is a peculiarly self-skewering line of attack, a bit like punching yourself in the face before going for your opponent’s gut. It doesn’t exactly elicit the classic, crowd-of-bystanders “ooooh!” that direct shots are supposed to incite; more of a “uh...hmmm.” This pluralistic and self-contradicting identity has always been part and parcel of Drake’s inheritance to hip-hop; it will be a large part of his legacy. Name a pop star who has ever had a clearer picture of their place in the culture, who senses exactly what they can get away with and what they can’t (other than Taylor Swift). He knows himself and his worth, at least as a market entity. “They don’t know they gotta be faster than me to get to me, no one’s done it successfully,” he boasts, truthfully, on “Do Not Disturb.” More than anything,* More Life* plays like a just-in-time course correction to the excesses of VIEWS, a remarkable feat of troubleshooting that assures that October’s Very Own—whose catalog passed 10 billion Spotify streams before this release—continues to own several Octobers henceforth. More Life is long, for sure. It is, of course, designed to be long, to swallow up all of your streaming bandwidth. Twenty-two songs all but asks you forget other rappers and musicians exist for a while. This is the new power play in an age of digital infinitude. He doesn’t offer insight in return, really—eight years into examining the wages of his success, he’s still stumbling on thoughts like, “How you run out of gas on the road"

Kevin Morby

Still Life

Rock

Paul Thompson

Kevin Morby's a wanderer, a journeyman: here today, gone tomorrow. Pretty much every song on Still Life—the second LP in a year's time from the former Woods bassist/Babies co-founder—finds Morby on the move, setting off to sea or motoring away, never to return again. Listening to the rich, reflective Still Life, it's easy to picture Morby with a wineskin under his arm, his every worldly possession hitched to his back, an eye constantly fixed on some faraway point on the horizon. All this wayfaring's clearly taught him a few things; catch him in just the right mood, and he's got stories to share, hard-earned wisdom to impart. Morby's joined on Still Life by guitarist/bassist Rob Barbato (who also produces), drummer Justin Sullivan, organist Will Canzoneri, and—on three songs—bassist H. Hawkline. This skeleton crew—many of whom joined Morby on last year's similarly gorgeous Harlem River—gives Still Life its scrupulous, unshowy sound: deliberate fretwork, sparse percussion, wisps of organ and tinkling pianos dancing around the edges of the frame. Morby's warm, reedy sigh is front-and-center throughout most of these songs, and his halting, ruminative delivery keeps you hanging on his every word. Still Life is steeped in Dylan's back-to-basics period at the turn of the '70s, carefully adorned but never skeletal; from the beating-heart bassline that sits underneath "Drowning" to the drunken horns that close out the eight-minute "Amen", Still Life is sumptuous, slightly rickety, offhandedly gorgeous. Morby's a judicious lyricist, able to flesh out a scene with just a few carefully-chosen details. The situations on Still Life never quite seem to have a fixed beginning or end, as though Morby's knows it'd take too long to explain exactly where he's been and can't rightly say just where he's going to end up next. Two songs in, we meet Arlo Jones, a drunken lout of Morby's acquaintance. Halfway through the song, Morby quite literally starts listing off everything he can remember of the titular Jones, yet he only gets to number three on this nine-item rundown before he begins to repeat himself. But you come away from "The Ballad of Arlo Jones" learning just as much about the guy telling the story as you do its subject; Morby's impassioned wails of "He was my friend!" suggest a longing for connection, no matter how temporary. The short, spirited "Motors Running", a none-too-fond fare-thee-well to a fellow traveler, gives you almost nothing in terms of backstory: "We had just gotten started," Morby sings, "with black shadows coming out of your door." But in just a few lines, he manages to tell you everything you need to know: you can stay, Morby seems to be saying, but I've gotta keep moving. Throughout Still Life, Morby will introduce a character or describe a situation, but you never get the sense that these are permanent fixtures in Morby's life so much as markers on the long, oft-lonesome road he's traveling on. All this roving has Morby thinking long and hard about impermanence; if travel is Morby's favorite subject, death is an awfully close second. "I'm not dead," he assures himself halfway through "Amen", "but I'm dying—so slow, so slow." The song ends with a vision: the phrase "expect death" comes to him "gently, like a leaf on top of water." It's as though Morby, after years on the road, can actually feel himself coming unmoored, and this—like everything else—he seems to greet with a kind of quiet acceptance, a wisdom well beyond his years. Still Life doesn't dwell on the past, but occasionally, Morby alludes to the things he's left behind with a certain stoicism: "They say all that i've done wrong/ One day is gonna find me" he sings on "Drowning". Morby, forever playing things close to the chest, might not take the time to spell out every mistake. But when he delivers that line, there's an ocean of regret lingering in his throat. The title Still Life is both a nod—to a piece by New York pop artist Maynard Monrow—and something of a joke: Morby recently pulled up roots in Brooklyn and became a full-time Los Angelino. Throughout Morby's many travels, you can sense a longing for some stability, a homebase, a place of his own to return to. "If you don't see me in the evening," he sings on the closing "Our Moon", "look at our moon, up in its night." By the song's end, Morby seems to've finally found himself some suitable company, someone to join him as he makes his next move. "Sing to me in the morning," he asks, "keep me warm from the storm outside." In just a few words, Morby manages to say everything he needs.

Artist: Kevin Morby, Album: Still Life, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.9 Album review: "Kevin Morby's a wanderer, a journeyman: here today, gone tomorrow. Pretty much every song on Still Life—the second LP in a year's time from the former Woods bassist/Babies co-founder—finds Morby on the move, setting off to sea or motoring away, never to return again. Listening to the rich, reflective Still Life, it's easy to picture Morby with a wineskin under his arm, his every worldly possession hitched to his back, an eye constantly fixed on some faraway point on the horizon. All this wayfaring's clearly taught him a few things; catch him in just the right mood, and he's got stories to share, hard-earned wisdom to impart. Morby's joined on Still Life by guitarist/bassist Rob Barbato (who also produces), drummer Justin Sullivan, organist Will Canzoneri, and—on three songs—bassist H. Hawkline. This skeleton crew—many of whom joined Morby on last year's similarly gorgeous Harlem River—gives Still Life its scrupulous, unshowy sound: deliberate fretwork, sparse percussion, wisps of organ and tinkling pianos dancing around the edges of the frame. Morby's warm, reedy sigh is front-and-center throughout most of these songs, and his halting, ruminative delivery keeps you hanging on his every word. Still Life is steeped in Dylan's back-to-basics period at the turn of the '70s, carefully adorned but never skeletal; from the beating-heart bassline that sits underneath "Drowning" to the drunken horns that close out the eight-minute "Amen", Still Life is sumptuous, slightly rickety, offhandedly gorgeous. Morby's a judicious lyricist, able to flesh out a scene with just a few carefully-chosen details. The situations on Still Life never quite seem to have a fixed beginning or end, as though Morby's knows it'd take too long to explain exactly where he's been and can't rightly say just where he's going to end up next. Two songs in, we meet Arlo Jones, a drunken lout of Morby's acquaintance. Halfway through the song, Morby quite literally starts listing off everything he can remember of the titular Jones, yet he only gets to number three on this nine-item rundown before he begins to repeat himself. But you come away from "The Ballad of Arlo Jones" learning just as much about the guy telling the story as you do its subject; Morby's impassioned wails of "He was my friend!" suggest a longing for connection, no matter how temporary. The short, spirited "Motors Running", a none-too-fond fare-thee-well to a fellow traveler, gives you almost nothing in terms of backstory: "We had just gotten started," Morby sings, "with black shadows coming out of your door." But in just a few lines, he manages to tell you everything you need to know: you can stay, Morby seems to be saying, but I've gotta keep moving. Throughout Still Life, Morby will introduce a character or describe a situation, but you never get the sense that these are permanent fixtures in Morby's life so much as markers on the long, oft-lonesome road he's traveling on. All this roving has Morby thinking long and hard about impermanence; if travel is Morby's favorite subject, death is an awfully close second. "I'm not dead," he assures himself halfway through "Amen", "but I'm dying—so slow, so slow." The song ends with a vision: the phrase "expect death" comes to him "gently, like a leaf on top of water." It's as though Morby, after years on the road, can actually feel himself coming unmoored, and this—like everything else—he seems to greet with a kind of quiet acceptance, a wisdom well beyond his years. Still Life doesn't dwell on the past, but occasionally, Morby alludes to the things he's left behind with a certain stoicism: "They say all that i've done wrong/ One day is gonna find me" he sings on "Drowning". Morby, forever playing things close to the chest, might not take the time to spell out every mistake. But when he delivers that line, there's an ocean of regret lingering in his throat. The title Still Life is both a nod—to a piece by New York pop artist Maynard Monrow—and something of a joke: Morby recently pulled up roots in Brooklyn and became a full-time Los Angelino. Throughout Morby's many travels, you can sense a longing for some stability, a homebase, a place of his own to return to. "If you don't see me in the evening," he sings on the closing "Our Moon", "look at our moon, up in its night." By the song's end, Morby seems to've finally found himself some suitable company, someone to join him as he makes his next move. "Sing to me in the morning," he asks, "keep me warm from the storm outside." In just a few words, Morby manages to say everything he needs."

Skyphone

Fabula

Electronic,Jazz

Brandon Stosuy

By now, it's common knowledge that only a few laptop artists have the ability to connect with their audiences in a live setting. Thus far, in my experience, most mouse-draggers are unmasked on stage as composing non-visual video games for "avant-garde" adults. But there are a handful of electronic acts that fare well in the club, and judging from Fabula, Skyphone might be one of them. On their debut, the Danish laptop-rock trio mesh analog and digital with live and pre-recorded instruments, creating a lovely downtempo hybrid that milks interesting aspects from both approaches. Though this is a debut, the three have been acquainted musically/personally for some time, and have played in a number of rock bands prior to committing to Skyphone in 1999. They mention somewhere being inspired by glitch as well as 80s mood-rock and folk, and the rock interplay certainly establishes an enjoyable dynamic. A number of these 11 tracks share a vibe similar to Tape's recent release, Milieu, but Skyphone usher in a more digitally hermetic, sprawling sound. Sure to be at least generally enjoyed by fans of Boards of Canada, Matmos (especially The West), Four Tet, et. al., the band generally avoids generic laptopisms, managing to locate a sweetly naturalist groove within even the most drag/click tracks. Opener "Monitor Batik" mixes sounds by the dozen: Occasional radio hiss (or rain), tone patterns, toy bells (or xylophone), and the triad of delicate notes at song's end stand out clearly, unmarred by the detailed layers. Close listening illuminates abrupt/attenuated percussion, wind chimes, quavery sci-fi satellite tones, maybe even the lapping waves of an ocean. Otherwise, the strongest (and for some reason briefest) tracks flaunt the analog/digital disconnect. "Cent Gauge"'s fluttery music box pulses, taps, and digital wind opens quietly to drifting folds of gently sunny psych-folk guitar. "Into Hill Country" similarly juxtaposes guitar strums with synthesized buzzes and sighs. A longer piece, "Airtight Golem", provides a bright patch of sun shadows and a diaphanous exhale layered over water-drop percussion, a quicker techno beat placed so far back in the mix you'll strain to grab its prettiness. Between the glories, though, are the ho-hum doldrums: "Sinne Gas" is run-of-the-mill besides the gentle interweaving of acoustic guitar, steel-drum style percussion, and rotating hiss. The pretty but vacant guitar pulses of "In Our Time" noodles here, flanges there, but doesn't budge. And in the end, this ability to multi-track ad infinitum makes me nostalgic for the more inventive punk rock splices pioneered by Marinetti, Schwitters, Cage, etc. I don't know, call me a Luddite, but there's something about making music on the same machine that orders your books, types your papers, and downloads your porn that just isn't all that sexy. I'm not necessarily calling for a return to a razor-blade and tape method (though many admirable composers still operate solely in that old-timey realm), but it seems to me that the intermittent use of real-life incisions amongst software-heavy compositions could bring something more to the music. My idealistic desire for naturalism aside, Skyphone certainly know to utilize space. And ultimately, it's Fabula's rich, uncluttered soundscape, as well as its sometimes darkened, brocade corners, that wins me over more often than not to those electro-acoustic charms.

Artist: Skyphone, Album: Fabula, Genre: Electronic,Jazz, Score (1-10): 7.3 Album review: "By now, it's common knowledge that only a few laptop artists have the ability to connect with their audiences in a live setting. Thus far, in my experience, most mouse-draggers are unmasked on stage as composing non-visual video games for "avant-garde" adults. But there are a handful of electronic acts that fare well in the club, and judging from Fabula, Skyphone might be one of them. On their debut, the Danish laptop-rock trio mesh analog and digital with live and pre-recorded instruments, creating a lovely downtempo hybrid that milks interesting aspects from both approaches. Though this is a debut, the three have been acquainted musically/personally for some time, and have played in a number of rock bands prior to committing to Skyphone in 1999. They mention somewhere being inspired by glitch as well as 80s mood-rock and folk, and the rock interplay certainly establishes an enjoyable dynamic. A number of these 11 tracks share a vibe similar to Tape's recent release, Milieu, but Skyphone usher in a more digitally hermetic, sprawling sound. Sure to be at least generally enjoyed by fans of Boards of Canada, Matmos (especially The West), Four Tet, et. al., the band generally avoids generic laptopisms, managing to locate a sweetly naturalist groove within even the most drag/click tracks. Opener "Monitor Batik" mixes sounds by the dozen: Occasional radio hiss (or rain), tone patterns, toy bells (or xylophone), and the triad of delicate notes at song's end stand out clearly, unmarred by the detailed layers. Close listening illuminates abrupt/attenuated percussion, wind chimes, quavery sci-fi satellite tones, maybe even the lapping waves of an ocean. Otherwise, the strongest (and for some reason briefest) tracks flaunt the analog/digital disconnect. "Cent Gauge"'s fluttery music box pulses, taps, and digital wind opens quietly to drifting folds of gently sunny psych-folk guitar. "Into Hill Country" similarly juxtaposes guitar strums with synthesized buzzes and sighs. A longer piece, "Airtight Golem", provides a bright patch of sun shadows and a diaphanous exhale layered over water-drop percussion, a quicker techno beat placed so far back in the mix you'll strain to grab its prettiness. Between the glories, though, are the ho-hum doldrums: "Sinne Gas" is run-of-the-mill besides the gentle interweaving of acoustic guitar, steel-drum style percussion, and rotating hiss. The pretty but vacant guitar pulses of "In Our Time" noodles here, flanges there, but doesn't budge. And in the end, this ability to multi-track ad infinitum makes me nostalgic for the more inventive punk rock splices pioneered by Marinetti, Schwitters, Cage, etc. I don't know, call me a Luddite, but there's something about making music on the same machine that orders your books, types your papers, and downloads your porn that just isn't all that sexy. I'm not necessarily calling for a return to a razor-blade and tape method (though many admirable composers still operate solely in that old-timey realm), but it seems to me that the intermittent use of real-life incisions amongst software-heavy compositions could bring something more to the music. My idealistic desire for naturalism aside, Skyphone certainly know to utilize space. And ultimately, it's Fabula's rich, uncluttered soundscape, as well as its sometimes darkened, brocade corners, that wins me over more often than not to those electro-acoustic charms."

Marissa Nadler

Songs III: Bird on the Water

Folk/Country

Grayson Currin

At first, Marissa Nadler's Songs III: Bird on the Water doesn't seem especially notable. It's a 12-track breakup album detailing Nadler's pervasive loneliness, her gentle finger-style guitar augmented with cello, percussion, mandolin, synthesizers, and electric guitars. Her voice is remarkable from the outset-- a sad, husky air that climbs to perfect grace notes with ease-- but by the time Nadler sings, "Oh my lonely diamond heart/ It misses you so well," 100 seconds into opener "Diamond Heart", you're pretty sure you've heard this one before. Not so fast: As Nadler and her gorgeous, incredibly isolated Songs III would have it, there's plenty worth waiting for. Nadler doesn't want empathy for the hurt that caused her to write "Diamond Heart" in a hotel room bathtub in New Jersey or "Bird on Your Grave" for a friend who died mysteriously; she's just trying to ease some of that monumental pain into the next space. And-- though its micro-payoffs may come in the form of a solitary harmony here, a hushed mandolin chord there, or the eerie bells lending a richer atmosphere to the beautiful "Dying Breed"-- such a feeling makes Songs III one of the most focused and engaging singer-songwriter releases so far this year. Of course, that can be a tough sell for folks accustomed to concentrated emotional whomp. Aside from its presiding atmosphere of pain, little about Songs III feels direct. It peels free in slow, steady layers, Nadler's sorrow ensconced in impressionistic phrases and careful musicianship. As a songwriter, she's still painting relationship trauma in grayscale sadness, occasionally calling on stunning images-- "eyes as deep as brandy wine," "red-painted lips and a jezebel crown," "breaking on the daylight"-- to better realize sullen torment. But that latter layer makes Songs III much more effective than Nadler's 2005 debut, The Saga of Mayflower May. Nadler's a bandleader now: With acoustic wonderment still in place, she brings most of Philadelphia's Espers to bear here. They augment without distracting, building on her gravitas with quietly breathtaking nuance: A cymbal-scrape pallor from Otto Hauser, or Jesse Sparhawk's weeping mandolin; like Helena Espvall's doubled cello parts smeared over Nadler's "rose-colored dreams" on "Thinking of You", these sounds highlight the words. Even the album's loudest moment, Greg Weeks' piercing electric lead on "Bird on Your Grave", won't wow you from afar, but it will pull you close enough to identify with Nadler's pain. As a vocalist, Nadler stretches this environment towards infinity: By doubling and tripling her vocals and lacing several distinct interpretations of one melody, she implies that her despair is now as it was then as it always will be. During a splendid, organ-and-guitar take on Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat", for instance, the narrator's desolation comes doubled in verses, tripled in the chorus, and chased consistently by the organ. Doom follows her like a rain cloud, it seems, soaking her feelings but powering this, her best set of songs yet. Sure, that's a mundane thing to say about an artist, but on Songs III, it's notable after all.

Artist: Marissa Nadler, Album: Songs III: Bird on the Water, Genre: Folk/Country, Score (1-10): 8.1 Album review: "At first, Marissa Nadler's Songs III: Bird on the Water doesn't seem especially notable. It's a 12-track breakup album detailing Nadler's pervasive loneliness, her gentle finger-style guitar augmented with cello, percussion, mandolin, synthesizers, and electric guitars. Her voice is remarkable from the outset-- a sad, husky air that climbs to perfect grace notes with ease-- but by the time Nadler sings, "Oh my lonely diamond heart/ It misses you so well," 100 seconds into opener "Diamond Heart", you're pretty sure you've heard this one before. Not so fast: As Nadler and her gorgeous, incredibly isolated Songs III would have it, there's plenty worth waiting for. Nadler doesn't want empathy for the hurt that caused her to write "Diamond Heart" in a hotel room bathtub in New Jersey or "Bird on Your Grave" for a friend who died mysteriously; she's just trying to ease some of that monumental pain into the next space. And-- though its micro-payoffs may come in the form of a solitary harmony here, a hushed mandolin chord there, or the eerie bells lending a richer atmosphere to the beautiful "Dying Breed"-- such a feeling makes Songs III one of the most focused and engaging singer-songwriter releases so far this year. Of course, that can be a tough sell for folks accustomed to concentrated emotional whomp. Aside from its presiding atmosphere of pain, little about Songs III feels direct. It peels free in slow, steady layers, Nadler's sorrow ensconced in impressionistic phrases and careful musicianship. As a songwriter, she's still painting relationship trauma in grayscale sadness, occasionally calling on stunning images-- "eyes as deep as brandy wine," "red-painted lips and a jezebel crown," "breaking on the daylight"-- to better realize sullen torment. But that latter layer makes Songs III much more effective than Nadler's 2005 debut, The Saga of Mayflower May. Nadler's a bandleader now: With acoustic wonderment still in place, she brings most of Philadelphia's Espers to bear here. They augment without distracting, building on her gravitas with quietly breathtaking nuance: A cymbal-scrape pallor from Otto Hauser, or Jesse Sparhawk's weeping mandolin; like Helena Espvall's doubled cello parts smeared over Nadler's "rose-colored dreams" on "Thinking of You", these sounds highlight the words. Even the album's loudest moment, Greg Weeks' piercing electric lead on "Bird on Your Grave", won't wow you from afar, but it will pull you close enough to identify with Nadler's pain. As a vocalist, Nadler stretches this environment towards infinity: By doubling and tripling her vocals and lacing several distinct interpretations of one melody, she implies that her despair is now as it was then as it always will be. During a splendid, organ-and-guitar take on Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat", for instance, the narrator's desolation comes doubled in verses, tripled in the chorus, and chased consistently by the organ. Doom follows her like a rain cloud, it seems, soaking her feelings but powering this, her best set of songs yet. Sure, that's a mundane thing to say about an artist, but on Songs III, it's notable after all."

Shannon and the Clams

Dreams in the Rat House

Rock

Martin Douglas

Oakland trio Shannon and the Clams have a broad musical vocabulary that belies their simple, trad setup. Their sound contains lo-fi's distorted treble, the gruff tumble of rockabilly, the soaring heights of R&B balladry, and the weirdness of mid-60s psychedelia. Their albums have the feel of a freeform AM station whose DJs and programmers get their jollies from being gleefully unpredictable, the kind that wouldn’t think twice about following up a tender oldie like “Oh Louie” with a punkabilly romp called “Cat Party”. Songwriters Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard frequently switch duties as lead singer, sometimes within the same song, which is testament to both their differences and the clarity of their shared vision. They’re singers whose range and timbre often makes it difficult to tell which of them is singing lead (which is more interesting than it is negative), but they're sharp lyricists with very different writing styles. On Dreams in the Rat House, Shaw’s “Ozma” is a touching eulogy about her dearly departed dog, while Blanchard’s “Heads or Tails” is a fictional narrative about a vagabond with a coin in his pocket that he flips whenever he needs to make a critical life decision. Dreams in the Rat House combines elements of their debut, I Wanna Go Home (particularly the off-the-cuff hijinks and threadbare fidelity), with the songwriting focus of their great second effort, Sleep Talk. Songs like “If I Could Count” and “The Rabbit’s Nose” toy with complex melody and song structure while exhibiting the fine art of making it all look easy. “Rip Van Winkle” takes a generations-old fable and turns it into a monologue from a heart-struck woman waiting for a lover to return to her, and has a glittery lead guitar part and a soaring chorus that combine to far more than the sum of its parts. In the number of years they’ve played together, Shaw and Blanchard have learned how to disassemble the parts and rebuild them in a way that sounds both classic and wild at the same time. But their chief attribute is how fun their songs sound. They can do sinister, ghastly garage-punk like the Mummies (“Bed Rock”) or throw faux-ghoulish noises that suggest parody but never cross that line (“Rat House”) without coming across as a novelty act. Blanchard and Shaw are dedicated enough to songcraft to the extent that it’s evident they’re not just fucking around. One common misconception about certain corners of garage rock is that there's a lack of serious-mindedness among its proponents. But there’s a broad line between having a good time and making a joke out of something. When Shannon and the Clams pull out a ballad as affecting as “Unlearn”,  it becomes apparent that they’re just as good at tugging heartstrings as cackling after tracking those googly noises in “Rat House”. When they craft a goodbye as poignant in its simplicity as “I Know”, it’s like Shaw and Blanchard know you’re going to realize you’ve underestimated the emotional resonance of their songwriting. And that’s when they know they’ve got you hooked.

Artist: Shannon and the Clams, Album: Dreams in the Rat House, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 7.1 Album review: "Oakland trio Shannon and the Clams have a broad musical vocabulary that belies their simple, trad setup. Their sound contains lo-fi's distorted treble, the gruff tumble of rockabilly, the soaring heights of R&B balladry, and the weirdness of mid-60s psychedelia. Their albums have the feel of a freeform AM station whose DJs and programmers get their jollies from being gleefully unpredictable, the kind that wouldn’t think twice about following up a tender oldie like “Oh Louie” with a punkabilly romp called “Cat Party”. Songwriters Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard frequently switch duties as lead singer, sometimes within the same song, which is testament to both their differences and the clarity of their shared vision. They’re singers whose range and timbre often makes it difficult to tell which of them is singing lead (which is more interesting than it is negative), but they're sharp lyricists with very different writing styles. On Dreams in the Rat House, Shaw’s “Ozma” is a touching eulogy about her dearly departed dog, while Blanchard’s “Heads or Tails” is a fictional narrative about a vagabond with a coin in his pocket that he flips whenever he needs to make a critical life decision. Dreams in the Rat House combines elements of their debut, I Wanna Go Home (particularly the off-the-cuff hijinks and threadbare fidelity), with the songwriting focus of their great second effort, Sleep Talk. Songs like “If I Could Count” and “The Rabbit’s Nose” toy with complex melody and song structure while exhibiting the fine art of making it all look easy. “Rip Van Winkle” takes a generations-old fable and turns it into a monologue from a heart-struck woman waiting for a lover to return to her, and has a glittery lead guitar part and a soaring chorus that combine to far more than the sum of its parts. In the number of years they’ve played together, Shaw and Blanchard have learned how to disassemble the parts and rebuild them in a way that sounds both classic and wild at the same time. But their chief attribute is how fun their songs sound. They can do sinister, ghastly garage-punk like the Mummies (“Bed Rock”) or throw faux-ghoulish noises that suggest parody but never cross that line (“Rat House”) without coming across as a novelty act. Blanchard and Shaw are dedicated enough to songcraft to the extent that it’s evident they’re not just fucking around. One common misconception about certain corners of garage rock is that there's a lack of serious-mindedness among its proponents. But there’s a broad line between having a good time and making a joke out of something. When Shannon and the Clams pull out a ballad as affecting as “Unlearn”,  it becomes apparent that they’re just as good at tugging heartstrings as cackling after tracking those googly noises in “Rat House”. When they craft a goodbye as poignant in its simplicity as “I Know”, it’s like Shaw and Blanchard know you’re going to realize you’ve underestimated the emotional resonance of their songwriting. And that’s when they know they’ve got you hooked."

Big K.R.I.T.

Last King 2: God's Machine

Rap

Jayson Greene

Last King 2: God's Machine bears an unfortunately portentous title for what it delivers: essentially, it's a mixed grab bag of Big K.R.I.T.'s various guest spots over the last year, on a series of iffy-to-forgettable indie rappers' records. It's the first utter non-release K.R.I.T. has allowed his name to touch in a career otherwise built on stringent quality control. His handsome, still-resonant full-length mixtape Return of 4eva came out just last April, and his high-profile Def Jam debut Live From the Underground lies just around the corner. God's Machine adds almost nothing worthwhile to this conversation, except to introduce the first noticeable wobble in what has otherwise been a flawless slow-burn brand-building campaign. Worse, the mixtape presents K.R.I.T. in his weakest, most anonymous light: as a rapper on other people's songs. While he's ferociously talented, K.R.I.T. just isn't the type of rapper to muscle his way aggressively into another rapper's universe: he's best left to himself, where he can settle into a rich background of his own nostalgia-steeped production like sitting back in a rocking chair. God's Machine paints him, unfairly, as just another serviceable, UGK-biting rapper currently clogging up Southern rap-blog feeds. The song choices are mystifying: no one in the world needed to hear K.R.I.T.'s tacked-on verse to Berner's "Yoko", rapping alongside Chris Brown, but here it is. No one needed to hear him sharing air time with Cyhi Da Prince. But here that is too ("Hometeam"). There are a few genuine sparklers strewn throughout-- "Fulla Shit", a perverse boasting session with Yelawolf and fellow trailer-trash white speed-rapper Rittz, is one of the year's most satisfying rap songs. K.R.I.T. acquits himself admirably while still, lamentably, getting out-shined by the flamboyant personalities flanking him. The same goes for the chunky rap-rock crossover number "Born on the Block"-- after Killer Mike lays waste to the track, there's not much left for K.R.I.T. to do but show up and stay in the pocket. The humidly bluesy "The Big Payback", which opens the mixtape, is the most characteristically K.R.I.T. thing here, consisting of nothing but K.R.I.T.'s agreeably platitudinous raps laid over electric organ and some looped voices. It's over in less than two minutes, but it's the most reassuring reminder of his artistic imprint to be found on God's Machine. On "The Big Payback", K.R.I.T. self-importantly reminds us that his name is an acronym for "King Remembered In Time." The name doesn't jibe -- there's nothing particularly pharaonic about his presence-- but the touch of self-mythology is a reminder of the fascinating transition K.R.I.T. is undergoing. Over the past year or so, he has been slowly embracing his role as the savior of the conscious-rap underground. It shows signs of suiting him nicely, but the transformation has been fitful: on Return of 4eva, generic country-rap-tune bangers about candy paint and mentions of pimping split time awkwardly with powerful, impassioned treatises like "Another Naive Individual Glorifying Greed and Encouraging Racism". The impression was of an artist stranded in uncertainly between the UGK revivalism he started with and the early-era Common figure he might become. A more combustible on-record personality might be able to fuse these strands, but K.R.I.T., an affable, low-key guy, mostly sounds confused. God's Machine feels like a symptom of that confusion, which will hopefully clear up in time for Live From the Underground's main event.

Artist: Big K.R.I.T., Album: Last King 2: God's Machine, Genre: Rap, Score (1-10): 6.4 Album review: "Last King 2: God's Machine bears an unfortunately portentous title for what it delivers: essentially, it's a mixed grab bag of Big K.R.I.T.'s various guest spots over the last year, on a series of iffy-to-forgettable indie rappers' records. It's the first utter non-release K.R.I.T. has allowed his name to touch in a career otherwise built on stringent quality control. His handsome, still-resonant full-length mixtape Return of 4eva came out just last April, and his high-profile Def Jam debut Live From the Underground lies just around the corner. God's Machine adds almost nothing worthwhile to this conversation, except to introduce the first noticeable wobble in what has otherwise been a flawless slow-burn brand-building campaign. Worse, the mixtape presents K.R.I.T. in his weakest, most anonymous light: as a rapper on other people's songs. While he's ferociously talented, K.R.I.T. just isn't the type of rapper to muscle his way aggressively into another rapper's universe: he's best left to himself, where he can settle into a rich background of his own nostalgia-steeped production like sitting back in a rocking chair. God's Machine paints him, unfairly, as just another serviceable, UGK-biting rapper currently clogging up Southern rap-blog feeds. The song choices are mystifying: no one in the world needed to hear K.R.I.T.'s tacked-on verse to Berner's "Yoko", rapping alongside Chris Brown, but here it is. No one needed to hear him sharing air time with Cyhi Da Prince. But here that is too ("Hometeam"). There are a few genuine sparklers strewn throughout-- "Fulla Shit", a perverse boasting session with Yelawolf and fellow trailer-trash white speed-rapper Rittz, is one of the year's most satisfying rap songs. K.R.I.T. acquits himself admirably while still, lamentably, getting out-shined by the flamboyant personalities flanking him. The same goes for the chunky rap-rock crossover number "Born on the Block"-- after Killer Mike lays waste to the track, there's not much left for K.R.I.T. to do but show up and stay in the pocket. The humidly bluesy "The Big Payback", which opens the mixtape, is the most characteristically K.R.I.T. thing here, consisting of nothing but K.R.I.T.'s agreeably platitudinous raps laid over electric organ and some looped voices. It's over in less than two minutes, but it's the most reassuring reminder of his artistic imprint to be found on God's Machine. On "The Big Payback", K.R.I.T. self-importantly reminds us that his name is an acronym for "King Remembered In Time." The name doesn't jibe -- there's nothing particularly pharaonic about his presence-- but the touch of self-mythology is a reminder of the fascinating transition K.R.I.T. is undergoing. Over the past year or so, he has been slowly embracing his role as the savior of the conscious-rap underground. It shows signs of suiting him nicely, but the transformation has been fitful: on Return of 4eva, generic country-rap-tune bangers about candy paint and mentions of pimping split time awkwardly with powerful, impassioned treatises like "Another Naive Individual Glorifying Greed and Encouraging Racism". The impression was of an artist stranded in uncertainly between the UGK revivalism he started with and the early-era Common figure he might become. A more combustible on-record personality might be able to fuse these strands, but K.R.I.T., an affable, low-key guy, mostly sounds confused. God's Machine feels like a symptom of that confusion, which will hopefully clear up in time for Live From the Underground's main event."

Tacocat

Lost Time

Rock

Laura Snapes

The third album by Tacocat starts with a clean garage-rock tribute to discerning "X-Files" lead "Dana Katherine Scully." It's typical for the Seattle four-piece, who mix songs about their love of pop culture—they just did the theme to the "Powerpuff Girls" reboot—with tirades about periods, pervs, and the patriarchy. Released in 2014, Tacocat's NVM riffed on IM slang for "never mind," a reference to the city's most famous sons, and essentially mocked how far we'd veered from Kurt Cobain's future-female ideals. Its vibrant spirit ran on the kind of energy you'd only otherwise get from chugging a giant sports drink before egging someone's house. Lost Time (another "X-Files" reference) delves into some of the same subject matter. "FDP" is an SOS from the first day of lead singer Emily Nokes' period, "Plan A, Plan B" mocks the wrongheaded GOP idea that women use the morning-after pill as contraceptive, and "Talk" sounds a little like fellow Pacific Northwester Laura Veirs reincarnated as a frustrated millennial, wishing she and her friends would ditch their iPhones for living room dance parties. "Men Explain Things to Me" takes its name from the Rebecca Solnit essay that popularized the term "mansplaining." "Though I know all about the words you're spitting out, the floor is yours without a doubt," Nokes sings, her typically sharp tongue cutting some blowhard down to size. They also widen the net, in terms of inspiration. "I Love Seattle" references "The Really Big One," a New Yorker article about the earthquake that will destroy much of the coastal Northwest. There's nowhere else they'd rather be, but admit, "at least no-one's pretending like that would even be bad." The highlight of Lost Time is "I Hate the Weekend," which explains their ambivalence about Seattle falling into the Pacific. In a melody Jenny Lewis wouldn't be ashamed to stick on her recent records, Nokes paints an incisive portrait of how tech bros haven't just whitewashed the city's thriving culture ("paint the rainbow shades of beige"), but terrorize the streets when they "cut loose" at weekends. "Got a hall pass from your job just to act like a fucking slob," they sing, filled with catchy disdain. And that kind of fire is what Lost Time sorely needs more of. There's no question that many of Lost Time's lyrics are funny, but the attitude that fueled NVM feels crushed. In both the vocal delivery and the driving guitars, the vibe is damper, the color somewhat drained. Sometimes the fruit hangs a little low: "The Internet" is a straight-strummer about trolls. With that in mind, it's unsurprising that the peppier songs here are the ones about the things you do for pleasure and pleasure alone. Lost Time's most inventive song, "Horse Grrls," is a fully enthused stop-start shredder about equestrian obsessives: "They know the different breeds of all their favorite steeds!" And "Night Swimming," too, is lovely—a splashy, beatific jam about breaking into a lake at night, where the only rule is, "You can bring a boombox, but you can't play R.E.M." The final song, "Leisure Bees," is ambitious and engaging, shifting between Beach Boys-indebted harmonies, girl-group coos, and shaggy nostalgic jams. It makes sense that the record starts with an ode to Scully, whose artful eye-rolls have become the internet's go-to meme in the face of the men who plague your @-replies. Tacocat have always approached feminism from a point of fun rather than anger, but inevitably, when bros keep bro-ing and your city's falling apart, and nothing ever seems to change, it's gonna get hard to see the funny side. It feels like perpetuating all that bullshit to even call them on it: U**gh, I can't believe you can no longer laugh at these things for my entertainment. They sound as weary as anyone would.

Artist: Tacocat, Album: Lost Time, Genre: Rock, Score (1-10): 6.1 Album review: "The third album by Tacocat starts with a clean garage-rock tribute to discerning "X-Files" lead "Dana Katherine Scully." It's typical for the Seattle four-piece, who mix songs about their love of pop culture—they just did the theme to the "Powerpuff Girls" reboot—with tirades about periods, pervs, and the patriarchy. Released in 2014, Tacocat's NVM riffed on IM slang for "never mind," a reference to the city's most famous sons, and essentially mocked how far we'd veered from Kurt Cobain's future-female ideals. Its vibrant spirit ran on the kind of energy you'd only otherwise get from chugging a giant sports drink before egging someone's house. Lost Time (another "X-Files" reference) delves into some of the same subject matter. "FDP" is an SOS from the first day of lead singer Emily Nokes' period, "Plan A, Plan B" mocks the wrongheaded GOP idea that women use the morning-after pill as contraceptive, and "Talk" sounds a little like fellow Pacific Northwester Laura Veirs reincarnated as a frustrated millennial, wishing she and her friends would ditch their iPhones for living room dance parties. "Men Explain Things to Me" takes its name from the Rebecca Solnit essay that popularized the term "mansplaining." "Though I know all about the words you're spitting out, the floor is yours without a doubt," Nokes sings, her typically sharp tongue cutting some blowhard down to size. They also widen the net, in terms of inspiration. "I Love Seattle" references "The Really Big One," a New Yorker article about the earthquake that will destroy much of the coastal Northwest. There's nowhere else they'd rather be, but admit, "at least no-one's pretending like that would even be bad." The highlight of Lost Time is "I Hate the Weekend," which explains their ambivalence about Seattle falling into the Pacific. In a melody Jenny Lewis wouldn't be ashamed to stick on her recent records, Nokes paints an incisive portrait of how tech bros haven't just whitewashed the city's thriving culture ("paint the rainbow shades of beige"), but terrorize the streets when they "cut loose" at weekends. "Got a hall pass from your job just to act like a fucking slob," they sing, filled with catchy disdain. And that kind of fire is what Lost Time sorely needs more of. There's no question that many of Lost Time's lyrics are funny, but the attitude that fueled NVM feels crushed. In both the vocal delivery and the driving guitars, the vibe is damper, the color somewhat drained. Sometimes the fruit hangs a little low: "The Internet" is a straight-strummer about trolls. With that in mind, it's unsurprising that the peppier songs here are the ones about the things you do for pleasure and pleasure alone. Lost Time's most inventive song, "Horse Grrls," is a fully enthused stop-start shredder about equestrian obsessives: "They know the different breeds of all their favorite steeds!" And "Night Swimming," too, is lovely—a splashy, beatific jam about breaking into a lake at night, where the only rule is, "You can bring a boombox, but you can't play R.E.M." The final song, "Leisure Bees," is ambitious and engaging, shifting between Beach Boys-indebted harmonies, girl-group coos, and shaggy nostalgic jams. It makes sense that the record starts with an ode to Scully, whose artful eye-rolls have become the internet's go-to meme in the face of the men who plague your @-replies. Tacocat have always approached feminism from a point of fun rather than anger, but inevitably, when bros keep bro-ing and your city's falling apart, and nothing ever seems to change, it's gonna get hard to see the funny side. It feels like perpetuating all that bullshit to even call them on it: U**gh, I can't believe you can no longer laugh at these things for my entertainment. They sound as weary as anyone would."