Silver Antlers/Seven Feathers Rainwater Split EP (Moondial, 09.09)
For: High Wolf, Animal Collective, Niagara Falls
Byline: Showcase of SLC's finest murkiest, haziest drones and textured tribal beats.
I think I start every review of a band from Utah by saying how amazing 2009 has been in terms of releases from SLC artists. I just can't get over how incredible some of the music coming out of the Beehive State is. Seven Feathers Rainwater is no exception, trust me, birthed into the fraternal "New Weird Utah" held down by mainstays Stag Hare, Silver Antlers, Navigator, Chaz Prymek, Hew Mun, etc... SFR shares a similar noise palate and deserves to be uttered in the same breath as the above luminaries. SFR's murky drones, tripped out by Eastern influenced samples and ragas, are really some of the most straight up enjoyable moments in SLC's experimental hadj towards Mecca. Looped piano drones, scattered woodwinds, wordless vocals and unfettered bursts of noise punctuate the SFR opener "Sun Rain", my vote for best album on the track. The song takes an unexpected sentimental turn right around the middle of the track as acoustic guitars, dancey percussion and the impeccable timing of NoahLennox-esque cooing fade in and out of the lusciously textured drones. This was my first time hearing Seven Feather Rainwater and needless to say, SFR is about as good as they come. TOME fav. Silver Antlers, picks up where he left off on his year-end-best-of topper Black Blood of the Earth. With this two song offering, Silver Antlers, reigns in and compresses some of the most exciting moves from BBOTE into bite size morsels of swelling guitar drones and soaring solos meets tribal meditations meets the Algerian Desert Desert blues of Terakaft at a Qawalli festival. Silver Antlers straddles a line between Western blues inspired metal riffs and the contemplative percussion and spiritualism of Eastern musical traditions. This split is a mystical journey in the vein of doomsday calendars, feathered serpents, far east shamanism and all the wonderful oddities of Salt Lake City. There is no excuse for taking this journey because Moondial is hosting this split for free! If you are feeling generous, dust off that old cd-tape-radio boombox and order it from the small-run-tape-only Moondial (see below)!
Byline: A Delicious 5 song offering of male-female harmonies and an existentialist take on country music from Michael Nau’s side-project-turned-main-project. Originally Published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission from In Your Speakers LLC.
For the longest time I thought Cotton Joneswas an ironically named Swedish singer-songwriter who left his post-rock band to cash in on burgeoning bearded folk-pop scene here in the States. I have no idea how I formulated this biography, but I was pretty much convinced. Then someone told me that Cotton Jones (formerly The Cotton Jones Basket Ride) was, in fact, Michael Nau of Page, France’s side-project-turned-main-project. So that’s where that guy went! I was pretty smitten after Page, France’s 2005 Hello, Dear Wind, I probably ended up at more Page, France shows in 2006 then I can remember. Listening to the Rio Ranger EP made merecall all the reasons why I fell in love with Page, France all those years ago.
Cotton Jones is Page, France stripped to the brass tacks. While Page, France could reach dizzying crescendos, Cotton Jones seems content with a determined, slow trundle through of country standards. Michael Nau’s honey-soaked, Townes Van Zandt affable drawl is the most prominent instrument on this collection of 5 songs. Rio Ranger starts off with “Only Minutes Young”, easing into a shuffling waltz-time signature before Nau’s voice croaks in lines about old fashioned being a state of mind instead of an aesthetic choice. Watching the slow progression of Nau from wide-eyed folk-pop wunderkid playing with a religious fervor to a wise, salty troubadour makes this line actually believable. The second track “Nicotine Canaries” features the quasi-processed percussion and underwater synth soundsacpe that recall Animal Collective or Here We Go Magic. A wonderful move on an unexpectedly lovable album.
“Always Feeling Good” is Whitney McGraw doing her best Emmylou Harris impression. Her voice, which has always been a sort of secret weapon, is displayed in full force on this track with minimal backing instrumentation. “Don’t Got a Lot of Time” complimenting vocals recall the sophisticated barroom sing along quality of She & Him, but way better. The final track, “Where you Stop for a Minute” has one of Nau’s irresistible one-liners that turn well-worn clichés in terms of genre and content into borderline Koans. “Home is where you stop for a minute/and clean your teeth”. Print that on a mug or something.
The former heir to Pedro the Lion’s open ended spiritual struggles has just evolved into our generations Glenn Campbell. An existentialist country singer.
After fronting some of the most influential, scene-starting bands such as American Football and The One Up Downstairs, spending most of his adult life touring, writing trechent critiques of himself his L'enfant Terrible of a stage persona, Mike Kinsella is ready to settle down. Recently wed and house broken, New Leaves is his homage to the normal life with all its moments of domestic bliss and pangs of regret from leaving his carefree young-adulthood behind. Lyically, these themes have been trod heavily by his earlier works, but Owen writes songs like he writes melodies, pulling out unseen truths out of repeated lines in a single key.
Up to this point Mike Kinsella's most complex song arrangements have been a product of his cottage industry recording set up. Acoustic guitars, pedals, occasional percussion and synths strewn about his mom's living room while he tries not to sing loud enough to wake anyone else in the house up. However, recording leisurely over the span of two years have led him into the legit studios of Brian Deck (Iron & Wine), Tim Iseler (Wilco) and Graeme Gibson (Califone). The new found clarity and professionalism shows, but it is difficult to describe how. Mike Kinsella has a perfectly idiosyncratic and immediately recognizable sound palate used in every release. His intricately plucked, repeating guitar lines are uniquely Kinsella (I'm pretty sure I've used 'Kinsella-like' as an adjective). Sometimes, additional instrumentation can be a sophisticated way of saying burying great ideas under the weight of too many great ideas. But on New Leaves even his most produced arrangements still have room to breathe. For example, "Amnesia and Me" steers into a decidedly country/americana direction with it's slide guitars and rhythm and blues breakdown. Stronger strummed guitars, a deep bass section and a nice electronic pitter-patter mark the confident "A Trenchant Critique" while a swooning Andrew Bird-esque bowed violin make the track almost unbearably good.
Mike Kinsella, by his own admission, is prematurely cantankerous. New Leaves while promoting a newfound thematic foil of marriage and settling is still not without its slow burn of subdued wanderlust. Like John Steinbeck said, "When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch...Nothing has worked." Or as Mike Kinsella says, "I always thought I would end up owning my own boat before a home."
Byline: Glasgow’s The Pastels and Tokyo’s Tenniscoats bridge the gap be-twee-n C86 guitar pop and today’s Japanese orchestral folk. Orignially published on www.inyourspeakers.com used by permission from In Your Speakers LLC.
If you were in High School when CMJ’s C86 cassette came out you will love this album. If you were in High School when Belle and Sebastian’sFold Your Hands Child You Walk Like a Peasant you will love this. If you have an ear for woozy, fragile-as-an-eggshell pop melodies centered around jangley guitar lines and sing-song male/female vocals…So the cyclical nature of this review goes. Two Sunsets is a collaboration of legendary twee-pop all-stars The Pastels, who rival Sonic Youth for being the longest running, musically relevant band today, and likeminded Japanese duo the Tenniscoats. Two Sunsets is a major accomplishment for both Geographically challenged bands.
The collaboration started innocently enough. A simple studio exploration of two bands who shared a mutual admiration for each other. Fans who recognize and forgive The Pastels loquacious crawl towards a perfect album (this is their firstproper release in 11 years!) shouldn’t be surprised that Tenniscoats took the Bull by its proverbial horns in this collaborative tag team. They also shouldn’t be surprised that this took 2 years to release. But what we have is definitely worth the wait.
Two Sunsets starts with a gentle instrumental track that pays homage to the two bands hometowns, “Tokyo Glasgow” and sounds exactly you would think a creative collaboration between the two capitols of mope-core pop and lullaby-core orchestral folk would sound like. Sort of like Daisuke Miyatani meets the Gentle Waves meets Teenage Fanclub. Fluttering minor-key piano lines dip in and out of a skeletal guitar and organ riff that serves as the back bone of the track while some muted trumpets and some unidentified woodwind (which makes numerous appearances on the album) drive the track along its Sunday afternoon canter.
A track-by-track tag team of Japanese and English vocals follow a linear path while Saya Takashi’s childlike lullaby compliments Katrina Mitchell’s velveteen coo.Stephen McRobbie and Teenage Fanclub’s Gerard Love’s restrained guitar lines weave a protective blanket of warmness over the entire recording. The most rewarding moments on Two Sunsets are when the unexpected flourishes, the “yeah that might sound cool” studio experimentation, take over the entire space between your headphones. For example, 70’s Spaghetti-Western harmonica and dulcimer compete for space over Gerard Love’s twinkling guitar lines in the last minute and a half of “Song for a Friend”. A really wonderful thing happens when you have to wonder when something was recorded.
Since we are on the topic of the most arresting song on the album, “Song for a Friend”, there is a moment when Stephen McRobbie’s heavily accented Glasgow croon replaces Saya Takashi’s tiny Japanese voice that takes my breath away. “Vivid Youth”, the first single off the album is a perfect accompaniment for watching sparks ascend and die out against the back drop of a starry summer night. Michell’s husky bedroom melody lilts gently over a bouncy bass line and sort of seventies T.V show jazzy guitar line. The only problem with this track is that it sounds the most like the Pastels. Where did you put those cute Tenniscoats? The great strengths about this record is that neither band really sound like themselves. Together in a collaborative embrace they take on each others signature characteristics and become a new entity all together. So when the Tenniscoats darling instrumentation and sing songy voices are gone, it is way too soon to call this a new Pastel’s record.
With a possible twee revival looming in the future -2009 has already been graced by releases by It Hugs Back, Vivian Girls and SLEEPOVER – Pastels/Tenniscoats take us back to time when “Indie” simply meant a straight ahead guitar rock band and to have “fragile” or “delicate” or even “cute” used as an adjective was both a patch of honor on your tweed jacket as well as insult hurled your way by punks with shaved heads. Ah, to be in 1986 again. Too bad I was only 2 when that happened.
The Politics of the Irredeemable (Crucial Blast, 2009)
Byline: If you hate society and you know it, clap your hands! You're not alone... HQO is here for you.
For: Sunn O))), Earth
It’s tough out there. Given general woes in the current state of things (folks taking pay cuts, having rent raised, spending more onpretty much everything everywhere, while having less than ever to buy the essentials with, watching the unemployment rate consistently, systematically rise... etc...), things just aren’t looking so hot for the country right now. Sometimes I’m at a loss for words. Modern society, when taken as the huge gulp-of-a-whole it is, can be a pretty scary place. It’s like a bully that can kick you when you’re down. You play by its rules, and when you play, you still end up losing.
It’s hard to deny that society is a little bit more than messed up sometimes. As such, a band like Human Quena Orchestra seems here for a dual purpose: as in the true spirit of the gothic attitude, their art is as much about ripping everything down as it is building something new. It’s about a terrifying cry of refusal, while being simultaneously a cathartic acknowledgement of an excruciating purgatory. But with song titles like “Progress,” or “Assention,” it can also about the future.
Though it’s a cultivated fact (I talked with the group at one of their shows) that the band has never listened to Sunn O))), a review of The Politics of the Irredeemable without mention of the black-drone Gods, doesn’t seem plausible. Like Sunn O))), HQO is a band who also relies on heavy excess of bass and sheer volume to get its message across. On a certain level, it’s cool to know that artists are generating sounds like this completely independent of one another. The majority of the record is a menacing sonic assault. Take the colossal, 12 min. plus album opener, “Progress.” With its sparse feedback and low-drone, the song creates a desolate, flat, post-apocalyptic wasteland and pummels it with nuclear explosions. And it’s in this environment we find a sole character - a voice screaming in a pain-with-rage mix of enthusiasm and dread.
Picking apart the record as a concept album seems tumultuous given the exhausting experience it can be making it through the entire album. There’s a lot here that sounds exactly like what you heard a mere ten minutes earlier... But as a whole, Politics does have an arc and shape to it, from its deep, dusty valleys (see “Denial pt. 1") to its towering peaks of layered feedback and pure destruction (see “Denial pt. 2”). Overall the art at its core seems to be the story of a struggle. It’s a voice deep inside the subconscious of the insane man in all of us. It rejects the logic of waiting in line at the DMV to pay a ticket so that we can keep driving ourselves to work every day, so that we can pay to drive our cars. If the HQO wants to rid society of “society” and call it “progress,” maybe this is more optimistic music than it at first seems to be. Indeed, the record’s final moments are in a very obviously major key, as if humbled by its previous gauntlet, symbolizing perhaps a peaceful bliss to be found - a light at the end of the tunnel.
Byline: Come on feel the Noize! Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission from In Your Speakers Media LLC
If we could somehow quantitatively measure all the hype this new Boys Noize album has received over the past two years in a sort of numerical representation we would probably have to invent a new number. Something like Elevenity-million, or whatever Glenn Beck used to describe the number of people at the Tea Party Protest this month. But seriously, whoever is head of PR for Boys Noize records deserves a raise. Alexander Ridha, German DJ wunderkid otherwise known as Boys Noize has pulled all the right moves since his 2007 dancefloor ready debut Oi Oi Oi. He has remixed everyone from Snoop Dogg to Feist, as well as well known club-banger remixes of Bloc Party and the Kaiser Chiefs. He has been on the other end of the remix by Justice and SebastiAn, as well as sampled for Estelle’s Kanye-graced crossover hit “American Boy.” Maybe it’s just the fact that DJ mastermind’s Boys Noize cuts are so fresh that this type of calculated hype building has been a purely organic, word-of-mouth process. To quote Jay-Z “the streets is A&R’ing this.”
Devoid of singular instruments or recognizable samples to place within the realm of reference, an instrument-by-instrument breakdown is a little tough. I can’t very well say, “that part where it’s all like ‘bu-bu-bu-ping-ping-ping, is really tight.” What I can say is that if this is pumped at extremely high volume at a dance club everyone will be on the floor. Listening to Power should be a communal act, however, a careful headphones listen yields itself to unexpected treasures from a strictly techno/electronica album. The opener “Gax” has a fluttering, ascending keyboard line that is about as elegant and exciting as Justice’s “DVNO”. This song could sell Jaguwars and Mercedes Benzs. “Jeffer” has a rare vocal sample that ties together the most punchy, outright dancy song on the album. A high frequency turn-table scratch punctuates the entire raver of a track. “Transmission” is so 3008, a dystopian computerized voice starts the track with some “Everything in its Right Place” randomized babbling before giving way to a “Motorik” beat taken straight from the ilk of Kraftwerk or Neu! “Transmission” is a very noticeable nod in both feeling and form to Joy Division’s classic “Transmission”, the self named track could either be considered a homage or a reworking of the Joy-less post-punk band. Either way it shares a similar free-floating guitar track and monotone drum sample, however, recontextualized into pure danceable bliss. Do you remember the awkward dancing of the crowds in the Ian Curtis biopic Control? Boys Noize’s “Transmission” would have the exact opposite effect.
A fantastic departure from pure love-for-the-club odes is “Trooper”, a virtual case-study in precision noise terrorism. Perhaps I am listening to this song through the ears as ardent noise fan, but I can’t help but recognize the unrelenting, tribal drumming of HEALTH or the Black Dice cleverly disguised in this track. Around 2:15 the drumming gets much more distorted and the noise-comparisons become more apparent. A really fantastic and unexpected move.
When Boys Noize makes stylistic moves, they are big moves. From classic minimalism of “Streetlights” to the micro-house groove of “Nerve”; whenever Ridha goes in he goes big. The result is a stunning Techno/Electronica album that stands up with some of the best cuts of Daft Punk, Crystal Method, Justice or 2009’s surprise success of Gold Panda. Expect this to be pounding from LA to Ibiza for years to come. If you can’t make it to the Balearic Islands this year, you can put on Power and pretend you are there. B.Y.O glowsticks.
For: Hanne Hukkelberg, Panda Bear, Paul Simon's Graceland
Byline: Concrete's front-woman takes a Hajj to Pakistan, comes back with 2009's most evocative and addictive album.
I have a pretty high-tolerance for things that could feasibly be played in a New Age Bookstore (my very first tape I ever bought was Enigma's "Return to Innocence"). Classic guitars, Gamelans, Didgeridoos, Indigenous flutes, Chimes, Crystals - none of this stuff really bothers me when it is put in a familiar context. I fall every time for albums by Stag Hare and Niagara Falls; if you cringe at the thought of a pan-spiritual pilgrimage to a third-world country by a Swedish musician known for unleashing "Young Folks" on the world, you would still probably dig East of Eden. Keep in mind, this isn't some dude with a ponytail aping some long dead musical tradition. This was recorded in Pakistan with traditional Qawwali musicians accompanying Victoria Bergsman through a sparkling Swedish avante-garde/Qawwali cultural exchange. I don't know which approach is more disingenuous. But Taken By Trees, whether it is authentic, ethical or whatever, is pure addictive ear candy and one of the most evocative releases of 2009.
"To Lose Someone" starts off the album with a full-throated Nick Cave like tale of loss, regret and suspected foul play. Before we can be bogged down by the subject matter a clamor of piping woodwinds, a sexy classical guitar line, and vocal accompaniment from late Qawwali legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan give the track an all access visa to a cosmopolitan village market. "Oh Anna" is interspersed with field recordings and a warm cooing chorus courtesy of fellow world-traveler Noah Lennox of Animal Collective/Panda Bear. "Watch the Waves" and "Grayest Love of All" benefit greatly by Bergsman's seemingly awestruck admiration of the Qawwali tradition. she does not try to mimic the vocal patterns or attempt to play the sitar, or anything that the west has been guilty of. Instead she brings her warm-bath vocal purr to the table and lets the musicians around her amaze her. In fact, this is the greatest strength of the album is that in all of this Bergsman remains a tourist. She keeps the collaborations at arms length, both contributing and sitting back and letting the compositions move her. This feeling of admiration explains the albums only misstep, "Wapas Karna", a field recording of a Qawwali singer that feels out of place on an album of dialectic exchange.
Indie-primitvism and responsible parenting a given a spiritual head-nod to Noah Lennox by Bergsman's stripped down cover of "My Girls", titled "My Boys". Somehow Taken By Tree's version seems truer to the songs spiritual core with its pan flutes, Xylophones and plucked classical guitars. The album ends on a meditative drone that reminds the listener, if you aren't in a deep meditative trance and haven't conversed with the Almighty, right about now would be a good time.
Byline: Introspective, shoegazey electro-pop from Glasgow.
If something was really, really awesome do you think it would be given away as free? Capitalism doesn't have a word or a place for things of really high quality being given away as free. If something is free it is labeled "complimentary" and usually involves plastic and overseas slave labor. Luckily the internet and a young Scot calling himself I Like Where I Live have leveled the playing field, putting out a downright charming EP for 100% gratis. I Like Where I Live play the same kind of upbeat M83 style shoegaze synths with a driving electronic back beat but filtered through the UV killing Scottish fog. Scottish Mope-Core has a way of turning a four-on-the-floor pop song into a floor-gazing, introspective act of cathartic release. Like knowing the world is at large is a pretty depressing place but dancing through unchanneled angst. "At Sea with the Microcat" has the type of unabashed sincerity and longing that could only express itself within the format of a dance track. Masking such personal feelings in the communal act of the dancy electro-pop song lets the introspective lyrics outside of the standard "kid-with-a-guitar-and-a-bunch-of-sad-songs" trope. The result are beautiful, aspiring and ultimately beautiful colleciton of songs that reach way beyond anything that we at the Tome expected.
4 Track Songs/Music For Falling From Trees (Type Records/Erased Tapes, Western Vinyl)
For: Max Richter, Johann Johansson, Early Iron & Wine
Byline: Two incredibly beautiful instrumental and vocal pieces from the prolific Northwestern-via-Denmark composer.
2009 saw two criminally overlooked classics from the young multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick. The prolific musician put out two stellar records of neo-classical and lo-fi songs, became a touring member of the Danish outfit Efterklang, moved to Denmark and is putting out a release with TOME fav. Machinefabriek later this year.
4 Track Songs - I kind of go crazy over things like this. I love the idea of self-prescribed limitations within recordings like TuNe-YaRdS n0-fi recording or Angil/Hiddntracks Oulipo like refusal to use the letter "E" in writing their album. Originally released in 2006 the story goes like this. Peter Broderick wanted to make an album exclusively using the range of the 4-track recording machine. To make this album he mandated that each track on the recording machine must be utilized by some sort of instrument. This should be a home-run for someone who loops at least 4 instruments on every live song right? The limitation, for Peter, is not in having to find a place to put that 3rd or 4th instrument over a simple guitar line. The limitation is not putting the 5th or 6th instrumental flourish in to accompany the track. The results are beautiful string, piano, banjo and guitar arrangements stripped down to the bare essentials and recorded with all the fuzzy warmth of analog tape. The songs sound purposefully minimal and simple, the sort of fragile beauty perfect for accompaniment on fall drives and reading in parks. His song-writing chops (which are featured prominently on his 2008 stunner "Home") are very much on display here, especially in songs like "The Cold" which has the same minimal quality as some of the best songs on "Home". His initial idea was to release this album for free on his myspace page. If you e mailed him he would send it to you free of charge. Unfortunately that didn't work out, no one really bought it. Now, since it has been picked up and distributed by Type records people are seeking this album out for purchase. Weird. But it is easy to see why.
Songs For Falling From Trees - SFFFT is a collection of songs written for a contemporary dance piece by Adrienne Hart. The piece narrates what Hart describes as, "the piece is set in a psychiatric hospital and centered around one man's struggle to retain his identity in the most extreme of circumstances." Peter scored this piece after retreating to a barn loft for a few weeks and produced one of the most beautiful piano/string pieces I have heard all year. The retroactively written piece has a narrative quality that is beautiful in parts and quite intense in others. It is amazing that this album can pull so much emotion and narrative flow out of a play that he scored sight unseen . This stuff really fascinates me, the impetus of an idea or a theme and a musician retreating for a few weeks with a few instruments in a barn and recording something that is debuted in concert halls in London and abroad. It makes overproduced production and lengthy recording sessions in Hawaii or some tropical locale seem like a joke. Without ever seeing the piece the album stands alone as a delightful and solemn listening experience.
Classical music in 2009 has been brought down from it's lofty place among concert halls and dusty corners of the library into it's rightful place among listeners who want to connect with something on a purely emotional and intellectual level. Composers like Peter Broderick are forging a new path that takes classical music out of it's perceived irrelevancy and back into the hands of young musicians willing to move beyond the tag of instrumental music as "classical" into something more amorphous and exciting. A live show by Peter Broderick is not to be missed.
Byline: Golden, druggy pop songs and life-affirming ballads from a band destined to rise above the curse of having a really, really crazy back story. Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com Used by permission from
In Your Speakers Media LLC
A simple Google search of “Girls” is utterly fruitless and a huge distraction when you are trying to write a record review. However, typing in “Girls Album” will take you directly to review after review praising this duo from San Fran’s woozy, sunny pop songs and comments on lead singer Christopher Owen’s Axl Rose like hair do. Like every buzz band with a hit 2008 single, iconoclastic image and sound, and ironic name (both males. Ha.), Girls have had a literal deluge of attention paid to them from virtually every corner of the internet. Luckily, Girls have a back-story, an attitude, and an album chock full of some of the best stand alone singles this year has seen to warrant such an interest.
First, the back story. According to an already famous Guardian interview in which Christopher Owens retells his life story of growing up in the infamous Children of God cult that grew out of Hunnington Beach in the late sixties. According to the interview he grew up traveling the world proselyting the cult’s apocalyptic Christian message while his mother practiced “flirty fishing” (see: religious prostitution). He was given his first guitar by Fleetwood Mac’s Jeremy Spencer (a high profile member of the cult), Owens eventually became disenfranchised with the Children of God and ran away to Arizona where he became heavily involved with the punk scene. Given a second chance by a benevolent millionaire he found a direction in life and moved to San Francisco where he met Chet “JR” White. The duo began banging out sunny, druggy, Gold Coast pop songs and the rest is yet to be written.
Considering this lengthy back story, this duo of California misfits absolutely warrant the interest this biography gives. Girls play sun-tinged slacker pop with a lo-fi recording approach borne both out of necessity and aesthetic choice. Christopher Owen’s voice dips from a whiny falsetto to a Roy Orbison-like croon on a scale that would make Mariah Carey take notice. Jangly three-chord, four on the floor bangers are interspersed by some incredibly moving and life-affirming ballads. The resulting Album is a totally sincere homage to Buddy Holley, Brian Wilson, My Bloody Valentine, The Byrds, and Jesus and the Mary Chain.
Summer Jams. I have been trying to avoid summer jams all summer long. It seemed totally depressing to me to listen to some guy sing over loud, fuzzy guitars about going to the beach, getting high, and sleeping in while I waited for a bus in 100 degree weather on my way from working full time to school. Perhaps it was an act of cathartic release facing a recession and a warming planet that prompted so many similar sounding bands to pump out ode after ode to the BEST SUMMER EVER XOXO! But Girls found a way to crack my shell. 30 seconds into “Summertime” I was tapping my toes and imagining myself on some golden, ageless beach as the songs chugging three-chord progression, CCR back beat, and Owen’s ultimately sincere vocals took me away to some sort of beer commercial or Old Navy advertisement. A heavily distorted wash of reverb drenched Jesus and the Mary Chain guitar attack totally sealed the deal. In spite of myself, and regardless of it being mid-September, I had a summer jam.
Like I said earlier, Album is chock full of amazing singles. The first such ballyhooed single was 2008’s “Hellhole Ratrace” a touching ballad that serves as a synecdoche for the whole Girls experience. Despite mistakes, studio mess-ups, break-ups, and drug addictions, there is a lot of beauty that comes out of the whole experience. “Yeah, I don’t want to C-r-r-r-r-ry (his voice drops a few octaves here)/my whole life through/Yeah I want to do some dancing too” could be someone’s new mantra. Similar ballads that share this same Capra-esque, shiny eyed optimism about lost love and friendship are, coincidently, entitled “Laura” and “Lauren Marie”. The most arrestingly catchy song on the album, which can be easily passed off as whimsical, bratty and superficial, but becomes increasingly eerily autobiographical and sincere, is the appropriately titled and totally not ripping off Iggy Pop opener “Lust For Life”. His requests range from, “I wish I had a father/yeah, then I would have turned out right/but now I’m just crazy/yeah, totally mad”. To, “I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine”. Don’t we all.
Girls make albums like they used to. While there may be some filler, the singles and ballads are endlessly listenable, in fact they DEMAND repeated listening. Girls almost have the challenge and burden of a famous star’s kids band or a famous kid star’s band. If the media backlash of a fascinating back-story catch up to Girls they will have to struggle like hell to stand on their own outside of it. Fortunately, Album is all the proof we need that Girls have already risen far, far above anyone’s expectations.
For: Apples in Stereo, Circulatory System, Ben Folds
Byline: Nothing like the real M. Bison. Tuneful, piano driven pop.
Where would Indie Rock be today without video games? We wouldn't have bands like Final Fantasy, Rival Schools (plus their album United By Fate). Hmmm, Can anyone help me out here with some more? In turn we wouldn't have hordes of pre-pubescent metal heads in the nineties yielding uzi-machine guns in Aerosmith's Revolution! Oh yeah, and those fighting games with the Wu Tang Clan and Def Jam artists, 50 Cent! Moonwalker! The moral of the story I guess is that you either have to be really obscure to be named after a video game or be really famous and awesome to have a video game made after your likeness.
Anyway, M. Bison seem like a couple of really nice dudes from Seattle, totally unlike their sadistic, end-boss, tournament host in Street Fighter. M. Bison's Self Titled Album is a virtual Sybil of musical personalities battling for dominance. The first five songs of the album sound like a tribute band to the Elephant 6 collective (303!). Driving, 60's British Invasion guitar lines, swirling keyboards, and a playful vocal patterns characterize the first half of the album. Pure Kinks style chugging riffage. I have no idea what lyrical approach M. Bison try to take, however. One second they are playing straight ahead Apples in Stereo the next they spouting lines that the Moody Blues wish they wrote, like, "A Crystal Labyrinth it curves into the sky/You wander corridors as coursing through your mind". Yikes. Both a savior and a millstone propping up each song are punchy, poppy, and downright complex piano lines a la Ben Folds. Remember him? Everyone had a big fat girl crush on him at one time right? The "I think I am way more clever than I am?" type songwriter that wins over every girls heart. Well, for better or worse M. Bison's main man sounds a lot like him. Even down to the over-emoting over lines like "Cinema Smiles/through the turnstiles/wide angle lens/whispering 'oh honey you care'". The ballads are almost unbearable. Two songs that don't fall into the Elephant 6/Ben Folds camps are "Follow Me to the Lake" that has a dark, prog-like build that reminds me of a late Sunny Day Real Estate or Mew. "All Things To All People" follows a similar trajectory, starting with a "Space Oddity" style synth intro before moving into darker territory. Piling on xylophones and a irresistible pitch-shifted Keyboard hook reminiscent James Dewees. To be fair though, this type of thoughtful, clever, complex, and ever so catchy type Seattle Indie-Bar-Pop beats the tuneless, grating High-School-Drop-Out-Bar-Rock that you find anywhere else. The piano is spot on. The tunesmanship and talent are undeniable. Just I don't know. M. Bison always seemed like a total jerk.
For: Broken Social Scene, Ivory Coast, Sundays Best
Byline: Impressive debut by these young Canuks blast out some serious Indie-Erotica under the tutelage of Kevin Drew Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com Used by permission from
In Your Speakers Media LLC
There are just some albums you can’t listen to on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Black Flag’s Damaged is one of them. Still Life Still’s Girls Come Too is another. On first blush there is really no reason why Toronto’s newest addition to the Arts and Crafts label shouldn’t fit in between naps and Miyazaki films. They possess the same luscious, mid-tempo instrumentation and understated vocal melodies of most artists on Arts and Crafts. Still Life Still has an undeniable talent for creating lush soundscapes that plumb an almost impossible aural depth that is inexplicably stuck between the two poles of low and high fidelity. Sounds like something to kick back to and enjoy the last few nice days right? Well, I don’t know about you but post-adolescent sexual frustration is my life 6 out of the 7 days of the week. Sunday, I need a break. (Just kidding. I am a newly wed.)
Still Life Still wraps a persistent sense of sexual urgency in a shimmering cloak of post-emo, mid-nineties indie rock innocence. I immediately start thinking of criminally overlooked bands that filled up Polyvinyl’s roster in the mid-nineties like The Ivory Coast, Sunday’s Best, Paris, Texas, etc… Dancy tempos, stop-start chord progressions, jangly verse-chorus change ups, and epic breakdowns find a comfortable home with some of those mid-western forgotten icons. Girls Come Too openers “Danse Cave” and “Flowers and a Wreath" start off with break-neck urgency and immediacy before peaking over and over in starry-eyed moments of pure pop bliss that channel crescendo-horders Passion Pit and fellow A&C bedmates Stars. This is pretty par for the course on a majority of songs on the album. Brendan Saarinen’s delicate grasp on bitter nostalgia on “Kid” is a fragile ballad that is a welcome peek into the depth of the bands songwriting chops. Brendan Saarinen’s voice recalls traits of Francois Virot, Noah Lennox, and Dismemberment Plan’s Travis Morrison.
Driving these crescendos, as well as the force majeure that interjects itself, often stopping a track dead in its tracks, is the Henry Miller-like sexual starkness that rears it’s head in two ways. First, there is an underlying “indie-eroticism”; a downright sexy swing that is the aural equivalent of a “come-hither” stare. “Planets” is as close to a slow jam as Canadian Indie Rock will ever come. The other side of the coin, however, is slightly more mis-directed. You know your couple-friends who “talk openly” about their sexual relationship? You know how awkward and uncalled for it is? Well, “T-Shirts” has a line that, albeit real, would be an absolute conversation killer. It took a few more listens to convinced me that like some 2 minute odes to how messy love actually is, some youthful indiscretions should be overlooked.
In a way, what would you expect of a band under the tutelage of producer and Broken Social Scene Auteur Kevin Drew. Need I remind you what “Lovers Spit” is really about? Or remind you of lines in “TBTF” or “It’s All Gonna Break”? Well, those are fantastic songs, right? They stand alone as amazing tracks, besides some real creepy stuff going on in the subtext. This is exactly how Girls Come Too should be approached. The sacred is mixed with the profane with ease and grace. The sexed up romp has an incredibly moody and moving break down. The moving ballad recounts with equal feeling parental spousal infidelity and grade school hyper-awareness of the difference between girls and boys. Girls Come Too has too many incredible moves to justify a Tipper Gore like qualifier before totally falling in love with this album. This is one come-on you should totally give into.
