Braden J McKenna Superpost: WYLD WYZRDZ + Weighted Pines

A partial list of Braden J McKenna's varied musical projects include: Navigator, WYLD WYZRDS, Sleepover, Mario Kart, and Braden J McKenna, as well as frequent collaboration with members of High Country and Stag Hare to name a few. With such a storied back catalogue I am dipping into 2009 to showcase two albums that slipped by me last year when I was so busy trying to keep up with the landslide of amazing music coming out of SLC. The pace of amazing music coming out of SLC has slowed this year (I blame the economy), allowing me to play catch up on McKenna's insanely prolific output. First up...Weighted Pines.

Weighted Pines

Weighted Pines (Magic Goat, 2009)

For: Sad, Sappy Sucker-era Modest Mouse, Beach Fossils

Ever wondered how the misanthropic, bedroom tape-recording Isaac Brock went from singing into answering machines and primitive four-track recorders into becoming the misanthropic, mega-rockstar Isaac Brock? This is a question that McKenna takes up on his bedroom pop experiment Weighted Pines. The spirit of the earliest incarnations of Modest Mouse haunt these collections of songs, which often sound like they are coming from a basement bedroom where a young man plays crouched over his amp, trying not wake his parents. Calling McKenna's output anything but lo-fi up to this point would be a mistake. His output has ranged from the self-parodied, fidelity-as-incendiary-weapon with Mario Kart to his recent forays into cleaner fidelity with WYLD WYZRDS. Weighted Pines disregards low fidelity as an aesthetic choice and recalls the days when strictly analog was a strict necessity. Coming in at 14 tracks in almost as many minutes, Weighted Pines is a study in conservative pop songs. Not that there is anything necessarily conservative about the sound, McKenna nicely utilizes the four-tracks provided him, and fills in every possible nook and cranny with fuzzed out guitar lines, cavernous drum fills, and his barn-door creak of a voice. Brief squelches of noise punctuate "Trick or Treat" and "low" while the rest of the album rests on about one single hook per song. That is all McKenna really needs, and usually that hook is strong enough to demand repeated listens. This may be my favorite of all McKenna projects, that is until he re-emerges with some new creation spiraling out of the WYLD WYZRDZ universe. Until then I am latching onto this project as my go-to for nostalgia tinged, 90's inspired bedroom pop.

Ryan H.

Download Here

WYLD WYZRDZ

Millennium Breeze (Magic Goat, 2009)

For: White Rainbow, Silver Antlers

WYLD WYZRDZ, McKenna's ambient drone project, has always displayed a keen sense of timing. Millennium Breeze is a 25 minute track with a traceable ark from gorgeous buzzing, chirping ambient guitar sounds into a tribal/free-jazz tribal dance party, and then back again. The first six minutes of Millennium Breeze begin with a sustained guitar tone that gradually stacks guitar drone on top of guitar drone with ample amounts of volume swells bringing the whole anthill of sound to the absolute peak in how much beauty the guitar is allowed to produce until the immediate (somewhat jarring) introduction of tribal beats and single note guitar lines break the tension and ushers in the sea change that Millennium Breeze goes through. Then, just wait for it, a gorgeous alto saxophone makes it's triumphant palm-sunday march into the track. If you thought the saxophone killed music in the eighties, like some unnamed TOME contributor, and have held a grudge against its place within the realm of rock and roll, be prepared to have your ears cleansed in the celebratory revelry of Millennium Breeze. Sax-slayer Jake Birch displays some serious talent and virtuosity to sustain a twelve minute improvised solo while still riffing in and out of McKenna's fresh beats. The beats stop suddenly, and Birch's sax fades gently into the resurgance of McKenna's gorgeous guitar tones. Top-notch stuff, and as always it can be downloaded for free at Magic Goat. Link below.

Ryan H.

Millennium Breeze

Grizzly Prospector

Old Mountain Radio (2009, Magic Goat Music)

Byline: Fragile Folk songs from a bygone era.

For: Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Sam Amidon, Woody Guthrie

On a cold night circa 2007 I wandered into a coffee shop and encountered a young man in a confrontation with his guitar and his gentle, fragile voice. After cutting the show short and mumbling a heartfelt apology to the 10-15 of us there I walked back out into the biting cold and the name "Grizzly Prospector" was filed somewhere in my subconscious. Fast forward to 2009 and "Grizzly Prospector" is back in the forefront of my mind. I don't know much about Parker Yates, the man behind the grizz, but I do know there is something about his short, simple songs that grab me with a fragile, tangible grasp for the few minutes they are on. Recorded with a decided lo-fi approach, Grizzly Prospector wraps his short, sweet tunes, and his fragile yet assuringly confident voice in a thin sheen of tape hiss that sounds like an old 45 you saved from your Grandmothers estate sale. I suppose this is the aesthetic he is going for on Old Mountain Radio, tiny depression-era folk songs about love, mountain men, grizzly bears, and a kindly old narrator who introduces the album with an inexplicable cajun accent. Bookmarking each end of the album is a spoken word piece titled "Bare Hands/Bear Hands" that seems to begin and end the journey of loss, love, and discovery on this little disc that clocks in at just under 24 minutes. Stand out tracks include "Medley" and "True Love will Find You in the End" which include some of the best strummed guitars + voice I have heard all year. These two tracks are sandwiched between a handful of pretty instrumentals, short song cycles and good starts. What must have been a frustrating night two years ago has turned into a small victory for both Grizzly Prospector and Magic Goat Music who is hosting this album for free! You can't miss this opportunity to grab yourself some pure mix-tape-to-the-one-you-love gold.

Ryan H.

Download Grizzly Prospector - Old Mountain Radio

Mario Kart/Braden J. McKenna

Independence Day/Gigantic Monster Cave (07.09, Magic Goat)

Byline: Twin offering from Mr. Mckenna.

For: Navigator, Microphones, 2009 lo-fi pop-punk

Mario Kart: Summer jams. Bah-humbug. That's cool that it's 100 degrees outside and being recession proof means working a ridiculous amount of hours as a waiter on top of the three hours of school a night.

But if you guys want to do drugs and hang out a non-existent beach in your ray-bans, by all means Rainbow Bridge, Crocodiles, Wavves, Real Estate, etc.. is your soundtrack to a totally awesome summer. For those of us who only feel the effects of the sweet summer sun only when it is pounding in our faces as we wait for the bus, we have Mario Kart. Mario Kart is Braden J Mckenna of well, Braden J. Mckenna, Navigator, and Wylde Wyzyrds and Stephen Walter. Mario Kart is 13 track 20 minute tornado of self aware lo-fi fuzz pop-punk ripping through a trailer park of a stale musical trend that has been running for the past 2 years. Mario Kart seems bent on proving that anyone who can play 3 chords, has access to crappy recording equipment, can bang out songs that Pitchfork and any unassuming wavves clone would go nuts over. I'm talking tin can drumming, the indistinguishible vocals over/under surf/blues guitar riffs, you know the uush. I am not coming out and saying this is a parody of young bands cashing in on an unsustainable sound, but I think it is a little early for an homage. Mario Kart is an embrace of all the cringe worhy elements of lo-fi pop punk that make this whole craze a lot of fun. And it is free!

Download 4th of July Here!

Braden J. McKenna: Stepping out from behind the wall of tape hiss of Mario Kart and the latest Navigator album, Braden McKenna drops one of the most endearing acoustic albums of the year. 2009 has already been a prolific year for Braden, Bad Children, Mario Kart, and Wylde Wyzyrds all inhabit a different space in the McKenna-verse, however Gigantic Monster Cave sounds like Braden playing Braden. Multi-tracked, strummed guitars and his affable warble steps beyond the pale of his previous projects in stark transparency. Listening to Gigantic Monster Cave has a sense of intimacy and immediacy as if you were in the bedroom that Braden recorded this in, watching as each idea was reproduced in the form of short-mini tracks, a "Paprika"-like parade of pitch-shifted character voices, and a sense of child like wonder present in each song. The stand out track by far is deep into the album, "The Parade of the Monster Cave" has the same kind of looped-harmony haziness that made Person Pitch such an exciting album. It is exciting to see what else Braden will put out this year, great stuff. And it is all free! Check out the link below.

Download Gigantic Monster Cave Here!

Navigator

Bad Children (05.09, Magic Goat)

For: Bird Names, Times New Viking, Weird America + New Weird America

Byline: New Weird Utah. 06/19/09. Copyrighted. I got dibs on it.

In 1952 little known music archivist, record collector, filmmaker, mystic and all around bad ass Harry Smith put out an anthology called the Anthology of American Folk Music. This anthology was a three disc-80+ song collection of folk songs recorded from 1927 to 1932 collected from rotting crates full of old 78's, thrift store dumpsters, and deceased relatives attics. The collection revealed a weird underbelly of American folk music that had never before been catalogued, blind blues players, white jazz bands, gutbucket groups from the hills of Appalachia; songs about death, betrayal, outlaws and bandits. This compilation showed just how weird America was if you strayed from the brand new inter-states. Far from being a piece of ephemeral from America's amnesiac memory, Harry Smith took these works to be important compositions worth archiving. Fortunately, so did a lot of early bohemians living in New York at the time, and thus the New York folk scene was born. I am not sure if it was that easy but the sentiment is cool, old folk songs from the most marginalized and economically depressed regions of America directly influencing some of the most influential and radical protest-folk singers, it exists as a nice thought. Fast forward to the New weird America where musicians such as Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective, Josephine Foster, 1,000 years of Dust, and countless others are borrowing he dusty old aesthetic of the outsider/troubadour and incorporating the lump sum of decades worth of influences ranging from psychedelia to punk to create something weird and beautiful. The epicenter is once again NYC, but not to be overlooked, Utah is entering this new era with their birthright assured as a depository of centuries of weird musical and societal influences that are inciting a rebirth and a movement I am un-creatively calling "New Weird Utah". Bam. Patent. 

REVIEW STARTS HERE:

This is where Navigator comes in. Braden McKenna is one of the many bearded mystics at the forefront of this movement and with Bad Children he puts his stamp on what is already turning into an amazing year for Utah music. Bad Children, as is noted in Forest Gospel, spans the divide from his freak-folk, spiritual Throwing Tongues to the lo-fi, rocking concept album Songs for Mei and Satsuki. Borrowing from both, Bad Children retains a sense of four-on-the-floor, pop songs underneath a sonic wall of noise of lo-fi bands like Times New Viking and Psychadelic Horses*** to the upbeat, spirituals of Bird Names or songs from Throwing Tongues.  A sense of childlike energy flow through each song of love and faith with Braden's lovable warble underneath it all. Braden truly goes all the way in both directions, on one part this is really a lo-fi ripper and on the other this really is a straight up folk album inspired from the dusty corners of the Old Weird America. A very real sense of earnestness and optimisim holds these ramshackle tunes together and make it an incredibly infectious and touching statement of life in the great Salt Lake. Fortunately, Magic Goat is releasing this album free digitally before it's physical release date. 

Download Bad Children