album review – Page 4

ALBUM REVIEW: Got A Girl “I Love You But I Must Drive Off This Cliff Now”

Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead and producer Dan “The Automator” Nakamura have teamed up as Got A Girl to release I Love You But I Must Drive Off This Cliff Now, a debut album fit for the soundtrack to a stylish romance filmed in black and white. The pair met on the set of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and bonded over similar music tastes, namely the 60s French pop music that influences the record most heavily. Think bejeweled cigarette holders, high class bars, and midnight trysts in luxurious hotel rooms.

Nakamura is best known for production credits on the first Gorillaz album and has plenty of experience collaborating as part of Handsome Boy Modeling School and Deltron 3030. This collaboration with Winstead is a slight departure from his well-known works but it gives Nakamura the chance to draw from his classical music background. Whereas his work with Del the Funky Homosapien and Prince Paul ventured across the wide world of hip hop, Nakamura’s musical explorations with Winstead trek back to old pop music and sweeping band presence. This is Winstead’s first full-length musical endeavor though she has sung briefly on screen before. Her acting background adds a distinct flair to the album; she sings like she’s playing a character, a distressed ingénue that is slowly learning important life lessons. In an article for The Wrap, Winstead said about singing: “It was sort of like an extension of acting in a lot of ways, especially because it was a specific idea that we were going for…I love it, it’s the kind of music that I love, but if I was to make music on my own without Dan, it might be a totally different thing. Vocally what I do here is kind of a character, as opposed to how I just sing every day. Even lyrically it was this character that we created. It was almost like writing film and having a character but just doing it musically.”

Together, the duo has created something that is elegant, moody, and nostalgic without dwelling too much on the past. Winstead’s sweetly aloof vocals paired with Nakamura’s sweeping and detailed instrumentals come together for a sound that’s cinematic and delightful.

The album opens with chiming bells on “Did We Live Too Fast,” a slinky, sultry song about trying to avoid reality by living through sweet fantasies. Though Winstead’s range does not seem impressive, it’s her vocal control that really garners attention – she can go from breathy to playful to seductive with minimal effort. On the production side, orchestral movements are anchored by Nakamura’s low-key hip hop rhythms. Deep bass beats keep the music from being overly sugary and superficial. On “Things Will Never Be the Same”, hand percussion add to the hollowness of the song with a thundering bass line that anchors Winstead’s whispered singing. “Friday Night” plays on rhythms and instrumentation with a bit more funk, echoing languid weekend disco jams. On “Put Your Head Down,” Winstead’s wistful singing reaches gorgeous heights, paired with a lush orchestral arrangement and a deep-voiced male duet that adds something a bit more sinister on the line Hush my darling, it’s time to dream. The album saunters on elegant heels, gaining momentum in the middle from the upbeat, breezy “There’s A Revolution,” and ending with a certain note of ennui on “Heavenly,” Winstead showing off a soft vibrato paired with wispy light vocals.

I Love You But I Must Drive Off This Cliff Now – which gets points alone for best album title of the year – is a charming debut effort by this unlikely but perfectly matched duo. It’s out July 22 via Bulk Recordings, and you can stream the video for “Did We Live To Fast” below.

ALBUM REVIEW: Cold Beat “Over Me”

As far as I’m concerned, Hannah Lew–though she plays the bass–is first and foremost a vocal magician. Admittedly that’s because of her work with Grass Widow, the wondrously spooky San Francisco female trio that operates as a kind of tapestry, weaving all three of its members voices together. The result? A cloud of effortlessly harmonized soprano that rises up over post-punkish, surfer-rockish, guitar jangling. The voices are so effervescent that the harmony they make is weightless, and they’re so firmly interlocked that they sound like one big instrument.

They aren’t, though. Lew, who has been writing songs both on her own and with Grass Widow for years, began performing as Cold Beat in 2013 in order to develop on independent voice to run alongside her collaborative one. The full-length Cold Beat debut Over Me, while not quite our first taste of what Lew sounds like solo–she put out a two-song EP called Worms last November–is the first chance we’ve had to see her experiment with her full range as a songwriter.

While she was making it, Lew envisioned Over Me as a catharsis album tinged with paranoia. “Mirror,” the first single to be released, represents Cold Beat at the height of its over caffeinated anxiety, and the blood-letting doesn’t stop with high-energy freak outs. “Abandon,” coming squarely in the middle of the record, plunges us down low to new depths of bleak self-loathing, and then dissolves mid-track into an understated and moody instrumental breakdown. It’s worth noting, by the way, that while the album is unmistakably trauma-centric, I’m extrapolating each track’s particulars from the way the music sounds, not what the words are saying. Cold Beat’s lyrics, like Grass Widow’s, are often difficult to understand, beyond being ominous.

In fact, maybe the blurry lyrics have something to do with the sense of distance you can hear in Lew’s voice. She’s constantly far off on the horizon; she’s aloof in the most punk rock possible way. She soars like a flying superhero across the convulsing, repetitive music beneath her. Her voice is ethereal but bloodless, and about halfway through this album, it occurs to me that the lack of three voices on Over Me translates to a subtle lack of humanness. The aesthetic is aces, after all. The contrast of a faraway voice over a cleverly collaged mashup of retro and DIY sounds, the vague sense of anguish–all fantastically rendered.. The problem lies in that, though both vocals and music are compelling, one is forever floating above the other. Put more plainly: I like Over Me for its loveliness, but it doesn’t hook me by the guts.

Over Me is out on July 8th on Hannah Lew’s own label Crime On The Moon. Preorder your copy here! Check out the subtly bizarre video for “Mirror” below:

Cold Beat – Mirror from Renny McCauley on Vimeo.

ALBUM REVIEW: Wild Beasts “Present Tense”

In 2002, guitarist Hayden Thorpe and guitarist Ben Little met in the charming town of Kendal in the Lake District of England. After eventually outgrowing their small town, they exchanged the rolling hills of the Lake District for the industrial streets of Leeds, where their careers began to kick off after picking up percussionist Chris Talbot and bassist Tom Fleming along the way. Christening themselves Wild Beasts, the band has since moved to London, and have put out four records with Domino Records: Limbo, Panto (2008), Two Dancers (2009), Smother (2011), and now, the aptly Present Tense (2014).

Present Tense marks some serious artistic progression for Wild Beasts. While its eleven tracks won’t reach out and grab the casual listener, serious fans will love the album, which demands an attentive listen lest the details that make the album great be lost. The poetic lyrics that blur the line between sarcasm and genuine romance and the stylized and theatrical vocal interplay craftily incorporated into the album could easily be missed while listening on the subway going home from work, distracted by busking acrobats swinging from the handrails. There’s so much here that should be absorbed carefully and slowly, much of which is owed to the fact that the band composed digitally, painstakingly programming and piecing each element together.

The record doesn’t stray too far from the pop tenets that marked their previous albums; rather, it strikes a balance between the obvious and the subtle. While some tracks might swing in either direction (the melodic pop contours of “Sweet Spot” and the slow-moving “New Life” best represent the record’s polarities), the rest fall somewhere in the middle, providing the goods to satisfy one’s aesthetic and philosophical palate. There’s a considerable amount of vocal interplay; Fleming, Thorpe and Talbot, all with their trademark stylistic vocals, both compliment and contrast each other, something that the band uses to their advantage. During the darker, more guttural “Nature Boy,” Fleming’s baritone intensifies the atmosphere and adds to the masculinity of the track. “Palace,” however, the most romantic track on the album, sounds sweet and fanciful coming from Thorpe’s higher register. While most tracks highlight one vocalist over the others, most of them include at least some interaction, filling each track at some point with rich texture and harmonic complexity.

As the title of the record would imply, the most refined intricacy on Present Tense is the sense of nowness and balance that builds subtle suspense throughout the album. While all of the songs have a slow to moderate tempo, there is rarely a shortage of excitement. Wild Beasts artfully create grandiose expectancy without the least bit of flash, a feat that is best exemplified on “Pregnant Pause.” The song begins with a tentative keyboard section while the vocals whisper over the skeleton melody. The guitar peeks its head in, softly picking away at a fuller melody, indicating that the slow build is reaching its climax. Sometimes it seems like a lost cause, Thorpe coos, breathe a second, feel that pregnant…pause. The music doesn’t explode, yet we know that we’ve arrived. This compositional mastery of tension is also evident on “Mecca.” Again, Wild Beasts utilizes a stripped down introductory section, this time with no instrument to mark the tempo, and when the main melody arrives, we cherish it all the more.

Like the previous work of Wild Beasts, Present Tense is a dense album, with endless intricacies accentuated by the personal, yet mystic lyrics. The concept of balance is an overwhelming motif throughout the album, one that manifests itself both thematically and musically. The band strives to strike a balance between sarcasm and sincerity, between accessibility and mysticism, literal and figurative, soprano and bass, and the list goes on. This point is perhaps most poignantly articulated in the lyrics for “Sweet Spot”: There is a guardless state, where the real and the dream may consummate. Maybe this guardless state is what the gang had been searching for during the making of Present Tense; now, it seems, they’ve come very close to finding it.

Check out the video for “Mecca” and Wild Beasts’ US tour dates below.

WILD BEASTS US TOUR DATES:

Thu July 10 – New York, NY @ Hudson River Parks’ River Rocks (Pier 84)
Fri July 11 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer w/ Mutual Benefit
Sat July 12 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club w/ Mutual Benefit
Mon July 14 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair w/ Mutual Benefit
Tues July 15 – Montreal, QC @ Corona Theatre w/ Mutual Benefit
Wed July 16 – Toronto, ON @ The Mod Club
Fri July 18 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
Sat July 19 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival

ALBUM REVIEW: WIFE “What’s Between”

Shortly after Irish black metal outfit Altar of Plagues announced their breakup last summer, the group’s frontman James Kelly unveiled the first glimmers of a forthcoming album to come from his electronic side project WIFE. I–along with pretty much all the metal fans I know–wasn’t ready to be consoled. Altar of Plagues’ disbanding came on the heels of their third and best studio release Teethed Glory and Injury, an album that I loved for its ability to deconstruct and rework the music’s sludgy layers, its clipped, nightmarish, often waltz-time beats, and the near-visual landscape created by the album’s texture and subtle details. WIFE, on the other hand, was a kind of spacey electro-pop endeavor–no more metal. Was Kelly just being a contrarian? Was he trying to show off his eclectic musical range? Was he simply quitting while he was ahead?

Maybe, but a listen to WIFE’s new album What’s Between, which came out June 9th on Tri Angle, goes a long way toward elucidating the jump between Kelly’s work with Plagues and where he is now. From the first track, “Like Chrome,” What’s Between demonstrates a lot of restraint. It’s an establishing shot that takes its time in developing, expunging any other thoughts and sounds that may be rolling around a listener’s head, effectively clearing a space for the music to come.

That music is strange–slightly dystopian, slightly doom-y–and though I would not call the collection optimistic, Kelly finds a way to develop a sense of wonder, awe, and curiosity as a result of the spaciousness he creates. Even the scary songs, like “Tongue,” get their spookiness from suspense. If an Altar of Plagues album were a horror film, What’s Between would be a psychological thriller. “Tongue” uses every sound at its disposal, shaking and rattling twitchily, like a monster waking up from hibernation and flexing all ten of its talons. That said, the music’s aggression remains implicit, and at no point dominates the album.

The nine songs on this album run about average length, varying from two and a half up to just over seven minutes, but often feel as if they’re on the long side. Many of the tracks, especially “Tongue” and “Heart Is A Far Light,” contain several moods. A poppy and playful couple of minutes give way to larger dreamscapes or house-like heartbeat rhythms. It’s not as if Kelly was ever a conventional black metal musician, but those looking for something to put up the horns to will find it, sort of at least, in “Salvage,” whose distinct and aggressive beat hearkens back to the pounding three-four rhythms of Teethed Glory songs like “God Alone.”

Now that I’ve listened to the album, this observation sounds like it should have been obvious from the beginning, but Kelly’s fixations and devices aren’t all that different as an electronic musician than they were when he was making metal. The album–like the first two Plagues albums, White Tomb and Mammal–runs a little introverted, more interested in developing its themes than in engaging the listener. To be fair, it took three albums to make Teethed Glory. It seems like Kelly could have chosen any aesthetic–metal, electronic, pop, or any other–and go about making music in a similar way: he builds a minimal foundation and expands to fill the space between the walls he’s erected. In the case of Altar of Plagues, Kelly followed the black metal thread until he was satisfied he’d reached the end of the line, and then he moved on. If What’s Between isn’t a perfectly realized electronic pop album, that probably means that WIFE’s not done yet.

Listen to the eerie “Tongue,” off What’s Between, below via SoundCloud. What’s Between is out now on LP, CD and digital release via Tri Angle. Get it here!

ALBUM REVIEW: Cerebral Ballzy “Jaded & Faded”

Let’s get fucked tonight, cuz it’s pretty in the city. Let’s just dance tonight, cuz it’s pretty in the city. Let it go tonight, cuz it’s pretty in the city. One of these days we’ll take the town, but for now we’ll just buy a 40 oz

Cerebral Ballzy entered the music scene in 2011 when they released their self titled album. One thing was pretty clear: the band’s members, Honor Titus (lead vocals), Melvin “Mel” Honore (bass), Mason (guitar), Jason Bannon (guitar) and Tom Kogut (drums) are some hedonistic dudes. They like to drink themselves silly, drug themselves dumb, skate, have sex, and other fun things, all in the overwhelming and chaotic environment of NYC. They documented their various hijinks with heavy basslines, explosive drumming, inaudible singing and guitar riffs that whiz by at a dizzying speed. Their self-titled debut became a hit within the local punk circle, which landed them a spot on Julian Casablancas’ Cult Records. The band enlisted the help of Dave Sitek (TV On The Radio) to produce their sophomore album, Jaded & Faded.

It seems that the members of Cerebral Ballzy have matured both creatively and personally since we’ve last heard them. They still like to get drunk, but maybe not so much that they puke on the subway turnstiles they’re too broke to go through. They still like to have sex, but maybe with the same girl more than once (Woah I’ll never ever forget her, cuz she’s so rad. Got her name tatted right down to the letter, cuz she’s so bad. City slows when we’re together, cuz what we have). Though they were in high school when they hit the scene and in no position to look at their band as anything more than fucking around, they’re now college freshman. With “reality” on the horizon, it’s clear they’ve decided to capitalize on the professional connections they accidentally made and try to extend the life of the project, even if it means taking a band with a goofy name semi-seriously.

Cerebral Ballzy’s sound has also grown adjacent to their song themes. On Cerebral Ballzy, the guys knew only one tempo: fucking fast. On Jaded & Faded, the gang experiment with tempo. Most of the tracks on Jaded & Faded include some tempo changes. The intro to “Another Day,” for instance, slows things way down, giving it a hungover feel. After the melody has been established, the guitar accelerates and the music bursts into chaos around the lone guitar riff. The considerable restraint that Cerebral Ballzy shows on the track appears again and again on the new record, making the pockets of combustion that much more intense. On “Parade Of Idiots,” Kogut demonstrates his drumming capabilities by actually holding back on the introduction before erupting at unfathomable speeds throughout the song.

In a way, Jaded & Faded is something of a landmark for band, as they also seem to have developed an ability to work together and listen to each other more than ever before. This is most audible through the interaction of Bannon’s and Mason’s guitar parts on “Fake I.D.” One guitar plays a fuzzy and distorted chordant section while the other picks away at a faster, flashier melody. This interaction creates a fuller, richer sound than they might have gotten if both instruments were simply going full throttle for the entire song. Wild abandon takes a lot of stamina; these boys are now smartly banking on compositional elements to highlight the their ability to shred and let loose, a move that could even earn them a little respect.

Titus, too, gets in on the act, experimenting with new vocal styles, usually with a surprising level of enunciation. From a guttural growling on “Speed Wobbles” to a more melodic “Better in Leather” and an almost-rapped “Fast Food,” Titus finds many ways to stretch the signature bratty snarl that dominated the debut. As much as his aggressive sneer was a highlight on early singles, the explorations on Jaded & Faded give unique personalities to each track, lending them new dimensions. The raw energy of the band’s last record made up for the fact that at times, it could feel flat, but with Jaded & Faded, fans now have the best of both worlds.

Cerebral Ballzy introduced the punk scene to its kick ass, high energy sound on its debut album. Jaded & Faded digs just a little bit deeper, representing a more matured, cognizant stride towards the sound that they have already begun to establish. If the title of the record is telling, they’ve done that all under the guise of feeling tired and bored of all the excess, but I’m willing to bet they’re cementing a game plan that will only extend the life of the party. Jaded & Faded is out June 17th.

ALBUM REVIEW: Sam Smith “In the Lonely Hour”

British crooner Sam Smith finally released his debut album, “In the Lonely Hour”, on May 26 with Capitol Records. After a year prepping for his debut with his critically acclaimed EP “Nirvana” and features on hit songs with Disclosure and Naughty Boy on top of touring even before his album was released, Smith has gained wide recognition not just in his home country but in the U.S. as well. With all these accolades and even TV exposure – on Saturday Night Live no less – it’s no wonder that “In the Lonely Hour” became one of the most anticipated albums of 2014.

The biggest reason for his steadily growing exposure is most likely his powerful, heartbreaking voice. Smith can sing and when he does, everyone will stop and listen and feel a bit more breathless than before. He doesn’t grasp for notes, he easily caresses them and glides through them with incredible passion and dedication. He’s fearless in his vocals, daring to soar to the highest notes and play with dynamics.

Of course with this sort of voice, he especially shines in the genre of “tear-inducing, earth shattering unrequited love music” which is basically the premise for “In the Lonely Hour”. Most of the songs on the album are mid to slow tempo appeals to a lover that will never return Smith’s feelings. The instrumentals also range from isolating guitar lines to grand orchestral movements, all adding to the sweeping loneliness that Smith reinforces with his moving vocals. But other than Smith’s phenomenal voice, there isn’t anything here that could really separate it from other sorrowful, self-pitying albums. The lyrics aren’t particularly arresting; sometimes they almost seem surface-level and at other times, they’re nearly unhealthy in their obsession over this unreturned feeling. It’s not an album you should listen to in large doses unless you want to be pulled down into the abyss of self-loathing and hopelessness.

If this album was put on a heart monitor, it would be a relatively even line with spikes in the beginning for “Money on My Mind” and “Stay with Me” and at the end for “Lay Me Down”, which all happen to be singles. The middle of the album is forgettable although “Like I Can” and “Life Support” attempt to change the pacing. Overall, it’s a solid and safe debut; the only experimentation Smith tries is with his own voice. In a way, it’s somewhat unsatisfying because with such vocal talent, he has a chance to explore different kinds of instrumentation and lyrics. Even if he’s making his words accessible to a wider audience, perhaps something more personal, more specific would’ve given more life to his songs. It’s a concrete start and it’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here. “In the Lonely Hour” is available now in the UK and will be released in the US on June 17.

ALBUM REVIEW: Archie Bronson Outfit “Wild Crush”

Hailing from the charming city of Bath in southwestern England comes Archie Bronson Outfit, who make the kind of blistering rock n’ roll more commonly associated with acts on our side of the pond. Since their debut in 2004 with Fur, Archie Bronson Outfit have released Derdang Derdang (2006), Coconut (2010), and most recently, Wild Crush, all on Domino Records. Consisting of Sam Windett, Mark “Arp” Cleveland, and Kristian “Kapital K” Robinson (who replaced founding member Dorian Hobday) the band has made a name for themselves by creating retro tunes with tight composition, guitar heavy melodies, and quirky instrumental combinations.

Longtime fans of Archie Bronson will note the striking presence of longtime collaborator Duke Garwood, who is featured on the baritone sax for many of the tracks on Wild Crush and provides rich new textures that were absent on previous albums. The tracks here are diverse – so much so that initially, it sounds as though they could’ve come from nine different bands. But upon further investigation, certain underlying compositional characteristics can be extracted from the LP as a whole.

For instance, the trio definitely have an ear for what instruments sound cool together. The combination of cello, keyboard and saxophone on “Lori From The Outer Reaches” is nothing short of beauty. “Love To Pin You Down” melds together a chordant keyboard, melodic saxophone and droning guitar. On lead single “Two Doves on a Lake,” the saxophone plays a rambling discordant melody over a heavily distorted whammy guitar while the bass cuts through to create a powerful and energetic instrumental.

Perhaps the most interesting pairing on Wild Crush is that of Windett’s voice with other instruments as a means for harmonization. The band loves to use vocals as instruments for harmonization any chance that they get. On “We Are Floating,” the vocals and the bass come together at the end of the second verse to initiate the guitar solo and again to finish the song. On a sugar-sweet “Country Miles,” an organ harmonizes at different intervals with the vocals throughout the song. The vocals even harmonize with a flute on “Two Doves On A Lake.” Throughout the record, Windett’s vocals remain diverse, from the restrained spaciness of “Lori From The Outer Reaches” to the aggressive, theatrical “Hunch Your Body, Love Somebody” and the shaky, almost-nervous intonations of “Love to Pin You Down,” a rare track in which the singer’s accent adds a dandy British flair.

The element gluing Wild Crush together most effectively remains the band’s penchant for rollicking solos. Each song diverges slightly from its structure to include a prolonged instrumental section, and oftentimes, that’s where the caterwauling, unhinged sax comes in. All of the songs are driven by distinct and heavy guitar riffs, too, reminding us all that first and foremost, Archie Bronson is a rock Outfit.

And if you need further reminders of that reality, look no further than the myriad nods the band gives to their rock and folk predecessors on Wild Crush. Sometimes it is subtle – the vocals in “Two Doves On A Lake” for instance, would be right at home on metal bands of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and one can’t help but sense a connection to modern-day acts like Queens of The Stone Age. Other times, the parallels are more blatant. The harmonious vocals on “Glory, Sweat and Flow” call to mind The Byrds, while the chorus is strikingly similar to The Velvet Undergrounds’ “I’ll Be Your Mirror.” And whether accidental or lifted as a means of homage, the lyric melody follows Silver Apples’ “I Have Known Love” almost to the note.

Their musical influences may be a little too evident at times, but somehow, Wild Crush doesn’t quite come off as a wholly derivative album. On the contrary, the band seems to have mastered an understanding of their genre and have developed a self awareness of where they fit inside it. By embracing the sounds of their predecessors they are ironically carving out a space for themselves through the subtle implementation of a number of distinct and overlaying musical characteristics. Through the development of these signature characteristics, they position themselves more as authorities than copy cats.

Like archaeologists unearthing artifacts and reappropriating them for a new era, Archie Bronson Outfit has found the innovation in the retread, cohesive themes in the random, and complexity in the simplistic.

They’ll be playing a handful of dates, including some festivals, throughout Europe this summer. No word on when they’ll make it to the states for some live appearances. Wild Crush is out now, and you can watch a video for “We Are Floating” below.

ALBUM REVIEW: Fresh & Onlys “House Of Spirits”

House Of Spirits, out June 10th on Mexican Summer, is the newest release from San Francisco psych-rock janglers The Fresh & Onlys, is a study in subtle kookiness. Fronting vocalist Tim Cohen, who wrote many of the songs on this album alone on a ranch in the Arizona desert, has a voice that seems inherently gentle and intimate. His ear for wistful pop harmonies–with golden arpeggios to match from guitarist Wymond Miles–often place this group squarely in the sphere of indie endearingness that reaches backwards towards nostalgia, not forwards towards absurdity. That was the very much the case on the group’s last full-length, 2012’s Long Slow Dance, an album brimming with romantic earnestness and stellar pop songs. But House Of Spirits is a little different.

Though the melodies don’t often give way to Cohen’s more experimental songwriting tendencies, they’re a shade spookier than par, and–especially in the first few tracks–dwell distinctly in the province of dreams. Album opener “Home Is Where?” begins innocently enough, with sweetly plodding piano chords and a quiet vocal line whose lyrics are sort of extolling the comforts of being home and knowing where you belong, and then all the sudden the song derails with the line “There is something that is off, for example there’s a bowl full of eyes on the floor.” It’s more than an impeccable instance of dream logic, this track also sets the bar for surreality. Anything is fair game, essentially, on House Of Spirits: there will be twists, and you will not be able to see them coming.

According to Cohen, all of House Of Spirits represents a search for home and the disorientation of not recognizing a place that should be familiar. However, the record’s back half takes place in waking life, as opposed to in a dream, and the kookiness gets a little watered down once the images of bowls full of eyes and stewpots full of hearts succumbs to conscious thought. The album ambles onward into daylight, and loses a lot of its sharpness. The affectionate “Ballerina” would feel more at home on Long Slow Dance, and even so, the track lacks passion. Next, though the repetition of the melody over horns on “Candy” offers a coolly sinister ending, it’s otherwise a one-dimensionally sunny song. The lack of curveballs in the latter tracks is all the more disappointing because we’ve been set up to expect twisting and turning, and we keep waiting for the song’s sinister side to poke its head up from underneath the surface. Only on the last cut, “Madness,” do we return to the disoriented search for familiar territory that kicked off House Of Spirits. Experimental, distorted guitar parts flood a gentle vocal line, reassuring lyrics give way to spooky echoes, and all the music melts into noise, and finally silence. At no point is “Madness” as catchy as “Home Is Where?” or the album’s three frontloaded scorchers– “Who Let The Devil,” “Bells of Paonia,” and “Animal of One” –but it does belong to the same surreal, imaginative dreamscape.

House Of Spirits will be out via Mexican Summer Records on June 10th. The New York Times is streaming the album in full, and you can check out “Who Let The Devil” below via Soundcloud:

ALBUM REVIEW: Parquet Courts “Sunbathing Animal”

Following their highly acclaimed 2012 album Light Up Gold, Brooklyn-based punks Parquet Courts delve into something more disembodied and fragmented in Sunbathing Animal, out June 3 via What’s Your Rupture? and Mom + Pop Music. Their sound is essentially the same – still plenty of the lively guitars and driving drums that drew the mass of listeners that religiously follow them now – but there’s something more exact about it, more complete. The 13-track endeavor was inspired by the band’s time on the road and that feeling of displacement and transit is reflected in the lyrics and sound.

The opening track, “Bodies,” is a great introduction to the album as it plays on themes of separation and introspection. As lead vocalist Andrew Savage sings of “bodies made of slugs and guts,” the accompanying guitar follows in spirals and the repetition of phrases and rhythms creates a nearly out-of-body experience where the mental becomes separated from the physical. This effect is repeated in “What Color Is Blood” and “Instant Disassembly” where a dissociation of body and spirit makes the listening experience that more meaningful.

Sunbathing Animal is an album that can be listened to – and should be listened to – from first track to last in order to get its full impact. Shorter, one-minute tracks like “Vienna II” and “Up All Night” act as transitional interludes that really capture the wandering sense of being on tour with the band, feeling their moments of freedom and captivity, and the not-much-longer “Always Back In Town” hinges on ebullient transience. That central theme is visited and revisited in different ways, and at every pace: “Dear Ramona” unwinds slowly for moments of contemplative limbo, “She’s Rollin” stretches into a dissonant harmonica jam by its end, “Raw Milk” captures stumbling, early morning disorientation, and the sneering “Ducking & Dodging” as well as the intense energy and searing drive of the title track are tailored for rowdy live iterations, built to anchor yet many more tour dates in DIY spaces and moldy basements of house shows. As a whole, the album is a strong sophomore follow-up to their early success, their sound more precise and their exploration of different themes relevant especially in times like these, when it often seems as if everything is always in transition.

Watch an animal sunbathing in the video below (+ tour dates):

June 2, 2014 Houston, TX – Fitzgerald’s w/ Radioactivity
June 3, 2014 Dallas, TX – Club Dada w/ Swearin’, Radioactivity
June 4, 2014 Memphis, TN – The Hi-Tone w/ Protomartyr, True Sons of Thunder
June 6, 2014 Columbus, OH – Double Happiness
June 7, 2014 Detroit, MI – PJ’s Lager House w/ Tyvek, Protomartyr
June 8, 2014 Toronto, ON – Horsehoe Tavern w/ Tyvek, Protomartyr
June 9, 2014 Montreal, QC – Il Motore w/ Tyvek, Protomartyr
June 10, 2014 Boston, MA – TT the Bears w/ Protomartyr
June 11, 2014 Brooklyn, NY – Sugarhill Supper Club w/ Protomartyr, Future Punx, Xerox
August 2, 2014 Chicago, IL – Lollapalooza
August 3, 2014 Happy Valley, OR – Pickathon

ALBUM REVIEW: Guy Blakeslee “Ophelia Slowly”

Whether performing with a trio or a quartet or semi-solo, whether in full psychedelic mode or reinterpreting the blues, Guy Blakeslee has a fantastic knack for making music that sounds haunted and doomed. June 10th marks the release of Ophelia Slowly, which, though not Blakeslee’s first solo release, is the first to come out under his real name instead of some permutation of the stage name Entrance. It hasn’t been long since Blakeslee released a record–The Entrance Band’s Face The Sun came out last November–and both that album and Ophelia Slowly chronicle a journey out of darkness and tumult, and into the proverbial light. Blakeslee has a history of substance abuse and was struggling to get clean when he wrote many of the songs on both these albums, so it’s natural that they would share a preoccupation with the material, but Blakeslee manages not to repeat himself at all with the release of Ophelia Slowly. Face The Sun was a rock album, heady and guitar-driven, with watery melody lines and psychedelic wah-wahing that trafficked in symbol and metaphor more than it did straightforward storytelling.

But on Ophelia Slowly, Blakeslee’s voice and lyrics become the focal point of the music. In the interest of holding the spotlight on the story line, Blakeslee keeps the music very simple, and many of the songs–“Smile On” and “Ophelia Brown,” notably–maintain a straight, sing-song-y structure that recalls elements of his early work, back when Entrance was a solo project and Blakeslee liked to reconfigure the blues and give it a psychedelic twist. However, despite the simple rhythms and emphasis on narrative, there’s little on Ophelia Slowly that’s musically reminiscent of the blues–the album’s foundation consists primarily of looped synth lines and an unassuming drum machine track.

Blakeslee has long been fascinated by states of trance. This album–which is, essentially, his version of an introspective, songwriter-y project–concocts swirling, circular guitar parts and a tightly rhyming vocal line that escalates, like a spiral staircase, as it moves from phrase to phrase. For Blakeslee, the music tells a story best once it’s in this hypnotic state. This concept is familiar turf–in the twenty years he’s been making music, Blakeslee has perfected the trick of creating a whirlpool inside a song–but Ophelia Slowly manages to maintain this churning, circular state for almost the full length of the album. That’s not a complaint. Actually, it’s impressive that the record’s repetition never wears out its welcome. “Told Myself” is a great example: with quiet, whining anguish, Blakeslee plays with the phrase “You were true and a liar too,” shifting meaning and replacing a word occasionally as he relentlessly repeats the lyric. “You were clean and a junkie too,” the song finally concludes, in the same stretched-out, high pitched melody, over a strummed acoustic guitar. They’ve got potential for melodrama, but in Blakeslee’s hands, the songs are beautifully ragged. As a collection, Ophelia Slowly is foreboding, not too optimistic, and full of compelling grit and fatigue.

You can check out “Kneel & Pray,” off Ophelia Slowly, below. The full album will be out June 10th.

ALBUM REVIEW: Sharon Van Etten “Are We There”

“I can’t wait ’til we’re afraid of nothing,” sings Sharon Van Etten, in her silvery and harmony-braided way, on the opening track of her new album Are We There. “I can’t wait ’til we hide from nothing.” The song– “Afraid Of Nothing”– has a sweeping clean-slate quality to it: it’s a fresh start, a New Year’s resolution. Maybe it’s the lyrics, or maybe it’s the flourishing, diva-esque piano chords, but there’s weight to this beginning. With its very first chords, Are We There establishes a low center of gravity. These songs are sturdy, they’re in it for the long haul.

That’s the power of skillfully deployed vocal acrobatics and complete mastery of your subject matter. Big, theatrical romantic breakdown has long been at the core of Van Etten’s musical landscape, and her sharpest tool is a voice that can be bent but never broken. Her albums–there are four of them now, beginning with 2009’s Because I Was In Love–are stories of how she uses the latter to navigate the former, a journey that the title of this latest record suggests is still ongoing.

And on Are We There that path is as satisfying and surprising as ever. Van Etten’s major themes haven’t changed much, but her aesthetic has expanded in every direction. On some tracks, like this album’s opener, she traverses an Adele-esque range and corresponding sense of drama–her sadness so straightforward it’s almost cloying–but elsewhere, her voice is stretched to its strange outer limits as pain gives way to blood-letting.

Just look at “Your Love Is Killing Me,” only three songs into this thing. It is possibly my favorite cut on the album, and it’s a great example of the far end of Van Etten’s sweet-spooky spectrum. The song begins with a vaguely militant beat that reappears in the chorus as triplets of crisply pissed off snare rapping. Then there’s her voice, so stridulent at its apex that she barely sounds human. “Break my legs so I won’t walk to you. Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you,” she sings. This goes on: “Burn my skin so I can’t feel you. Stab my eyes so I can’t see… you like it when I let you walk over me.” Behind the exorcism, behind the declarations of brokenness, there’s powerful orchestration–swirling guitar lines, cycling piano chords–backing up these words.

Van Etten’s speaking voice is downright cute, and sometimes, listening to her talk, it’s easy to imagine that she sings love songs of the quietly forlorn, tea-drinking-while-moodily-gazing-out-windows-onto-overcast-skies variety. And though there’s plenty of sadness on Are We There, it never sounds neutered: even the songs that never rise above a whisper come with the reminder that they know how to snarl.

Are We There ends on another highlight: the deceptively simple, deceptively sweet “Every Time The Sun Comes Up.” Van Etten arranges the lyrics into a sing-song-ish pattern, like a riddle, and the mood straddles optimism and gloom. There are flashes of self-contained thoughts, like the coyly meta “People say I’m a one hit wonder, but what happens when I have two?” Then the song settles into a kind of moody anti-love song, with “I washed your dishes then I shit in your bathroom.” Listening to the song feels like being inside Van Etten’s head, trying to follow a string of thoughts and fluctuations that aren’t explained or organized into a performance. It’s the most interior song on the album, and in a way, it’s also the most obscured. The journey from the album’s opening track “Afraid Of Nothing,” which is a performance not only in its theatricality but also in the sense that Van Etten has a specific audience–the complicated, ever-present love interest that has ravaged and fascinated her music since she began playing publicly.

But by this album’s end, we feel that Van Etten isn’t on stage anymore, but is right beside us, spilling her guts in a less organized, and perhaps more mundane way. That doesn’t make her guts uninteresting–the evocative snippets that we get on “Every Time The Sun Comes Up” are some of the most intriguing on an album full of compelling lyrical lines. Mundanity, in Sharon Van Etten’s case, is anything but.

Are We There dropped on May 27th via Jagjaguwar. Go here to buy it via iTunes. Watch the great and profoundly depressing video for “Every Time The Sun Comes Up” below:

ALBUM REVIEW: Alex Banks “Illuminated”

By the end of 2011, Brighton-based Alex Banks had already distinguished himself as a DJ and producer with distinctively complex and spacey live sets as well as a smattering of gorgeous remixes (Bonobo, Husky Rescue). His debut full-length, out June 2nd, has been two years in the making, and it shows: Illuminated is a meticulously crafted record, with beats that escalate and mellow, moods that warm and cool, and subtle textural intricacies that demand an immersive listen.

At twenty seconds shy of an hour, it’s a pretty hefty collection, with a full spectrum of instrumentals. Some of the loveliest moments on Illuminated come when Banks juxtaposes a pulsing beat against a string section, or highlights an instrumental melody with featured vocalist Elizabeth Bernholz’s pristine soprano. These revelations usually come from the combination of opposite effects. Conversely, when the album is at its most interior–in the middle section of Illuminated, somewhere around “Initiate,” “Lights,” and “Phosphorus”– its playfulness dials way down, and the music is too clean and rigid, too controlled. The album’s early tracks have great surprise twists, like the spot in “All You Could Do” wherin Banks layers his Bach-ish acoustic guitar arpeggios over Bernholz’s whispery vocal line as the rhythm builds to a sparkly crescendo. It’s awesome. Which makes it all the more disappointing when other parts of the album don’t live up to it.

In what’s perhaps a skill learned from his DJ career, Banks knows the importance of letting music absorb you. His process of recording the album consumed him, just as playing it will consume a listener. When Illuminated feels restrictive, it’s because its inwardness becomes too single-minded to know when to stop grooming the music and allow for coincidence and experimentation.

Illuminated will drop on June 2nd, and will be preceded by the All You Could Do EP, which will be available digitally and on 12″ vinyl next month. Check out “All You Could Do,” my favorite track off Illuminated, below!

ALBUM REVIEW: Haley Bonar “Last War”

Last War is immediately, unmistakably different than any record Haley Bonar‘s made before. Her catalogue is impressive: with ten releases in just ten years, and four full-lengths excluding the newest one, Bonar, pronounced bawn-er, has put a solid stake into her style of dark, quiet, vocal-heavy folk music. Her voice is cradle-rocking singalong, and she tends to end verses in extremely sad-sounding sustained notes that back the bleak lyrics of the lines she’s singing. On her sparsest album, 2006’s Lure The Fox, Bonar’s minimalism crosses over into what feels more like a live recording than anything laid down in a studio. String squeaks and between-verse breath exhalations creep onto the tracks; listening to it is like sitting in Bonar’s lap. That kind of microscopic access to Bonar’s vocal acrobatics is a treat, but interior minimalism piled on top of grim lyrics makes for a bit much of a muchness, and sometimes the bleaker extremes of Bonar’s early stuff drag her voice from prettily sorrowful into dour and self-indulgent.

Simply put, Last War is Bonar’s scuzziest record. In the pros column, the greater dose of reverb and percussion here rescues the album from any danger of turning weepy. In fact, she sounds sadder than she does pissed off, especially on early single “No Sensitive Man.” For them that would complain that her most acoustic stuff gets boring, Last War offers a more twisted take on Bonar’s alt-country licks and lullaby lonesomeness. On the other hand, I’m inclined to argue that shaking up the style comes at the expense of her voice, which still paints broad-brush singalong arcs and still hovers in a held note over the emotionally ripe ends of each verse, but is on this album less of a focal point. Bonar’s vocal line gets swept up along with the larger machine of grit and distortion on this album, and that really saps the liveliness that made her folk persona so remarkable in the first place.

Now, that isn’t true from cover to cover. Last week I criticized Bonar’s disparaging vocals on “No Sensitive Man” as bored-sounding: I really struggled with the way she brought lyrical themes of exasperation into her vocal lines, which ultimately weren’t any more likable than the feelings the song describes. But other tracks, like “Bad Reputation,” display a lot more complexity on both lyrical and musical fronts without letting go of Bonar’s large, flexible vocal range. “I got a bad reputation,” she sings on that track, “I probably need medication.” Baldly delivering grim sentiments in a pretty voice, Bonar finally seems to hit the right balance between showcasing her vocals and showing us her teeth.

Still, she’s ultimately a singer best appreciated under a microscope. This album represents several steps in the hookier direction for Bonar, but it’s still not a record that will necessarily grab you if you’re hearing it passively. That’s why I’m puzzled by so much of the noisier parts on this album, which aren’t as rewarding to an intimate listen as Bonar’s voice would be unadorned. She proves on this album that she can turn out a decent rocker, but with a songwriterly vision like the one she showed us on Golder in 2011, or the Sing With Me EP the year before that, why would Bonar want to? Compared to the intricacy of those albums, the reverb-y sections on Last War seem to water down the album more than they enhance it.

Last War comes out May 20th. Preorder here via Graveface. Til then, try “Bad Reputation” on for size! You can also listen to “No Sensitive Man” and spend more time with Haley Bonar on Facebook.

BAND OF THE MONTH: Sylvan Esso

Sylvan Esso’s self-titled debut is a beautiful study in synergy. Combining the timeless, self-possessed sound of Amelia Meath’s velveteen vocals with cleverly nuanced, exultant electronic production from Nick Sanborn, the project has captivated an ever-growing fan base that includes the industry’s heaviest hitters (they’ve supported the likes of Justin Vernon and Merrill Garbus on national tours) all on the strength of just three Soundcloud offerings. The tracks on Sylvan Esso (streaming now on NPR) are as deceptively simple as those that precede its May 13th release on Partisan Records; all that’s at work here are Sanborn’s synths and beats and Meath’s melodic acrobatics, but the dynamics between these two elements elevate the abilities of the other at every turn.

If the formula seems done to death, it must be said that these two work so exquisitely together it feels entirely fresh. They both come from folksier backgrounds; Sanborn played with Megafaun while Meath was a founding member of Mountain Man. Much as she did during her time with that band, Meath elevates everyday experiences, thus revealing the poignance that can exist within the mundane. The narrative in “Uncatena,” for instance, centers on washing dishes and writing letters. Sanborn’s handling of Meath’s swooning, antiqued melodies comes off as preternatural; whether he lets them rest unadorned over subtle textures or manipulates her lines entirely to serve as a beat or movement in and of itself, it’s always expertly executed, respectful, and perfectly at home in its broader context.

Last January, we caught up with the pair as they kicked off a headlining tour at Baby’s All Right. Their easy give-and-take was apparent even in the way they riffed effortlessly on Star Trek, the inherent un-sexiness of playing baritone sax, or an upcoming tour stop in California in which each admitted they were looking forward to being served “overpriced juice” from a “surfer dude-babe” (Meath) or “vegan girl with an undercut” (Sanborn). “We can’t describe how grateful we feel to be headlining shows at all at this point. I mean we have like three songs on the internet. We’re just so grateful to people for being attentive,” gushes Sanborn.

There was plenty reason to take note of the band’s early online presence. “Hey Mami” introduced the group with a forward-thinking look at the realities of street harassment, though couched as it was in cheery playground handclaps it was just as easy to dance to as it was to provoke conversation about the dually damaging and uplifting nature of unwarranted comments from bystanders. “Cat-calling… happens, and it upsets me. You don’t know what to do,” Meath admits. “Sometimes, it happens and you’re like, ‘Fuck you, I feel really threatened and unsafe,’ and then someone will do it and you’re like, ‘Awww yeah! I’m gonna go home and think about you later.’ Or it’s an old guy who’s like ‘Bless you,’ and you’re like ‘YES!’”

The song was released on 12” as a means of placing the band’s music in a specific frame of reference from the get-go. Sanborn says, “We really wanted to contextualize it right away. We had this idea to do just an old school format – a 45RPM single with the full acapella instrumental. I’m a DJ, and all the old 12 inches I would buy [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][were like that]. It invites remixes, it puts it in a context that we always wanted it to be in since we started working together.” Though it appeared as a b-side to “Hey Mami,” “Play It Right” was actually their first collaboration. “I did a remix for a song she wrote for Mountain Man and that became ‘Play It Right’ and we just kept sending each other stuff that we thought the other one would be into,” Sanborn explains. Meath adds, “We both have very, very distinct sounds which are actually kind of disparate. People keep calling us fucking ‘electro-folk.’”

Call it whatever you want, but it works so well it’s hard to imagine either of them involved in projects more well-suited to their strengths (not to mention playing up each other’s). “Each of us tends to have instincts to do what we’re gonna do, which is why we have individual voices. But we try to serve the song first,” says Sanborn. His DJ intuition serves Sylvan Esso especially well on pumping club anthem “H.S.T.K.” Meath’s vocals are spry and jazzy at the song’s outset, bouncing over springy beats before growing sultry and daring on the line Don’t you wanna get some? Sanborn loops that line and builds the mood into a frenzy in which tiny, thoughtful flourishes pop like flashbulbs. Tracks like this are especially vibrant when performed live, perfectly suited for the sensual, hip-hop inspired gyrations Meath executes with a dancer’s grace.

Sylvan Esso have kept up a pace that could be hard for other bands to maintain. “It’s just two of us. It’s not like we have some machine that’s just gonna keep going for us,” Sanborn says. “We can predict what will be fun for us and what will be not fun for us. Already we’ve said no to things that we thought were a bad idea.” Meath cites the importance of naps, perspective and nutrition when it comes to stamina and maintaining a good attitude, stating, “The minute I start getting to be a Grumpus Maximus, [I know] something’s going on. What’s going on? Maybe you just need to eat a bagel.” “Could I Be,” a standout track on the LP, perfectly elucidates the exhilaration and exhaustion of that hustle. And it’s incredibly effective as a motivational tool; the chugging synths and persistent beats mirror the locomotion of the “train” that Meath refers to even as Sanborn distorts her voice into a mechanical whistle. Like “The Little Engine That Could” the moral of the story is that any goal is well within reach given solid hard work.

But it’s a respect for what the other brings to the table that makes this collaboration a resounding success. “We’re a partnership, just a man and a woman in a band on completely even footing, and that’s how we treat everything,” Sanborn says. “Really early on we established this relationship of being hyper honest when we didn’t like something. One of the best aspects of this band has been being able to argue pretty vehemently and not have emotions be involved.” Meath adds, “I’ll have this hook, I’ll sing it to him, and he’ll be like ‘Okay, cool. I have this beat.'” Then, Sanborn continues, “We just keep working on it til it’s something that we both like.”

It’s an exchange best illustrated by the metaphors within “Coffee,” a breakout track for the band that, at its most simple, is about dancing with a partner. Though it had been released only days prior, the audience at the Baby’s show knew every single word from opening lines True, it’s a dance, we know the moves / The bow, the dip, the woo, to the infectious Get up / Get down of the chorus, and Meath’s imploring Do you love me? sung so confidently you get the sense she knows the answer is always going to be ‘yes.’ She wrote a treatment for the joyous video that would accompany the track. “I sat down and studied music videos for like a week,” she says, detailing a syllabus that included TLC’s “No Scrubs,” Jon Hopkins’ “Open Eye Signal,” and Sean Paul’s “Get Busy.” It splices slow-mo scenes from various dance parties – subuirban gymnasium hoe-downs, 50’s sock-hops, jaded hipster house parties, and finally, a futuristic flash mob styled by Sylvan Esso’s friends at Dear Hearts, a boutique in their hometown of Durham, North Carolina. Sanborn says the video reflects “our whole aesthetic, referencing pop but pulling the things out of it that we love.”

Pop sensibility drives every track on the record. It comes from the rustic traditions that inform Meath’s style of singing as much as how her vocal gets filtered through Sanborn’s modern approach. “With electronic music you kind of have to reinvent the wheel a little bit,” he says. “Every facet of it: hardware, software… every part of musicianship and instrumentation is changing constantly. It’s really immediate and not entirely predictable. Electronic music is moving out of rigidity.” Whether highlighting the sinister courtship rituals of the modern male on “Wolf” or listless teenage shenanigans on “Dreamy Bruises,” Meath’s imaginative lyrics and their easygoing delivery haunt those purlieus with a finesse and elegance that magnifies the contributions of both performers. “It’s mostly just being really good partners in crime,” Meath says. They’re hardly committing felonies, though; as a record, Sylvan Esso feels more like a gift.

Sylvan Esso play NYC in May 8th at The Westway, and as supporting act for tUnE-yArDs at Webster Hall June 22nd and 23rd.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

ALBUM REVIEW: crash “Hardly Criminal”

Awww yeah.

That’s my initial and abiding reaction to “Motion Animal,” the first single off Chris Richard aka crash‘s solo debut, Hardly Criminal. Crash, backup singer for the Magnetic Zeros and frontman for Deadly Syndrome, finally gets to spotlight his tenor at its sultry finest on this dressed-down soul track, and the motown gods are surely pleased.

Anyone familiar with the singer’s work would be surprised to see him stick fully in one genre for a full album, though, and Hardly Criminal expands satisfyingly from soul outward. Crash grew up in Louisiana, imbibing a country-fied blend of Americana, folk, and New Orleans street-performer blues, and he can do all those styles with equally endearing swagger. “Motion Animal” comes two tracks in and holds its title as the catchiest number through the end of this record, but we hear plenty of that danceability on the down-homier “If God Was A Cajun” and the string-happy “All My Friends.” What’s especially impressive about Hardly Criminal, though, is how well crash pulls off the slower, sweeter stuff. On the succinct “Song For The Birds,” crash keeps his oddball charm in the lyrics (“Was feeding you worms/but I forgot that you don’t eat them”) but strums introspective layers of round-like, repetitive acoustic guitar, angling his voice away from soul flourish and towards a simpler, more vulnerable croon. “Britches Catch Fire,” one of the album’s most impressive demonstrations of crash’s sheer power to sustain a high note, hints at gospel in the harmonies. His versatility looms large, and surprises again and again on this record.

All told, the quieter tracks add up to a majority of Hardly Criminal, and I would have liked to see the album filled out with a couple more swingers – “Motion Animal” left me jonesing for more groove – but both in terms of songwriting and vocals, crash skillfully pulls off every style he ambles into on this collection. No matter the flavor, every single track on Hardly Criminal is worth a replay. This cat is it.

Hardly Criminal drops May 6th. You can preorder it here, and check the “Motion Animal” music video below for a soulful blast of groovy get-down:

ALBUM REVIEW: “Enter The Slasher House”

Avey Tare has put out some nine-odd albums with pioneering psych-electronic quartet Animal Collective, but this decade, he’s focused more on solo work than he has on the band that originally made his bones. His latest creation, Slasher Flicks, feels like a deliberate push towards something new, in part because it’s really more super trio than it is side project, featuring ex-Dirty Projectors multi-instrumentalist Angel Deradoorian and Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman, who recently collaborated with Dan Deacon. Enter The Slasher House bears obvious family resemblance to Tare-fronted Animal Collective tracks, with similarly off-kilter harmony and a grab bag of digital effects and reverb.

With a name like Slasher Flicks, you might expect the album to sound cartoonish–and you’d be correct. It’s more funhouse than b-movie horror, though. The album is packed with bouncy synths, surreally poppy hooks, and rhythms that appear to operate at the whims of a metronome gone psychotic. Often, the latter is a highlight. Hyman skillfully controls his ear-catchingly angular drum lines, which never shy away from being the focal point of the tracks on this album. In fact, sometimes they’re the scaffolding the rest of the music hangs around. On songs like “Outlaw” and “Catchy (Was Contagious),” the strength of the drum beat leaves Tare’s singing in the dust.

Slathered in production and reverb, the vocals come across a little wimpy. When the songs are at their most instrumentally complex, Tare’s voice seems faint and watery, as if he’s singing from far away or his voice has been unceremoniously inserted to echo the melody. Tare’s anxious, yelling vocal style is easily recognizable, but his presence on this album doesn’t match the authority he cultivated in Animal Collective. Instead, the vocal melody defers to the rest of the music, or we lose it altogether.

The exception to that comes with “Little Fang,” a fantastically catchy number that brings all this group’s elements into synch. A pop hook and an irresistible bass lines serve as the big draws for this track, but lyrical repetition (“You’re always crashing into teeth,”) bolsters its blissfulness. Somehow, despite all the clicks and crashes of its oddball underbelly, the song comes across as sweet and summertime-simple as a Beach Boys single. Sadly, the magic balance “Little Fang” nails doesn’t stick in place for the rest of Enter The Slasher House – the bubbliness soon gives way to manic obnoxiousness, and the angularity of the rhythms turn toward chaos.

Check out the terrifying video for “Little Fang” below!

ALBUM REVIEW: Toujours

On a retreat from the relentless pep that her native Brazilian Girls exuded, Sabina Sciubba has come forth with Toujours, a debut solo album celebrating the artists’ many moods. I had the pleasure of seeing Sabina last month at The Highline Ballroom, where she put on a show I’m not soon to forget. I loved her music live, but it lost no charm in the studio.

The songs range between uplifting and mournful, and every beat in between. On the sorrowful side, you have tracks like “Cinema,” “The Sun,” and “Fields of Snow,” all of which share an overwhelming proximity to Nico in both vocal styling and dreary minimalism. “Cinema” in particular resounds with far more notes of Lou Reed than those of the German Uber Dame, but it’s Velvet Underground all over. It recounts the story of a broken old whore, of whom Sabina wryly asks: “Who are you today? Propaganda or art?” These are the kind of poetic gems that illuminate Sabina’s absurdly astute command of language—all four of them. Sabina speaks Italian, German, English, and French, on top of being a songwriter, visual artist, and actress. Her skillset is enough to inspire blatant self-loathing, and she’s beautiful to boot.

“Sailor’s Daughter” is more on the sexy side of things. With all the sensuality of a Prince ballad, it bares the oft-ignored sensitive side of the German language. Cradled by sweet “oohs” and searing horns, it’s part Marvin Gaye, part David Byrne, but all Sabina.

There isn’t a song I would skip on this record, but of course I have my preferences, and surprisingly, they’re of the upbeat variety. The title track is just weird enough to pique interest but risks none of its pop sensibility. The song opens with shrill pulses of electric organ that sound like the frantic cousin of a Hammond B3. These first sharp cries send me straight into the dark-carnival concocted on Tom Waits’ 1983 beauty Swordfishtrombones. The rest of the song is of course more approachable, but just that little beat of screeching keys is the perfect dose of strange. Latin drumbeats and staccato vocals add interest and exemplify Sabina’s style, which always includes a vibrant mixture of world music.

“Viva L’amour” is another high point on the album. Sabina’s voice is at its most conversational and sultry. She talks more than sings in a blasé narration that reminds me of “Spill the Wine and Take That Girl” by Eric Burden and War. Yet the song also boasts references to 1960s surf pop and Bossa Nova.

“Mystery River” also takes notes from the ‘60s. The song is rooted by a steady blues beat, but more so the one attempted by bands of the British Invasion than Muddy Waters. I’m hearing Them and early Stones accompanied by a simple bass riff, and surprising jolts of mariachi horns.

Sabina has created an album as diverse as her own linguistic abilities, and it’s a pleasure to understand Toujours, despite my own lingual handicaps.

ALBUM REVIEW: Nathaniel Rateliff “Falling Faster Than You Can Run”

At eighteen, Nathaniel Rateliff moved from his hometown of Bay, Missouri, population 60, to Denver. He focused first on finding work, but after a mysterious bout of health issues forced him to take a break from his job at a trucking company, he slid into the indie folk scene sideways, quickly becoming a local darling of Americana and indie folk. American music, as Rateliff knows, comes from a patchwork of styles, half accidentally thrown together, half borne of different kinds of musicians playing together. Rateliff’s path into music reflected some approximation of this same amalgamation. He’s played in a number of groups, including folky rock group Born In The Flood and his more recent soul project The Night Sweats, and he released an early, homemade batch of recordings as Nathaniel Rateliff and The Wheel. Monikers and fluctuations of style notwithstanding, though, Rateliff is recognizable in any project he lays hands on, and that’s all due to the reedy, pulse-happy rhythms of his singing.

On his second full-length solo album, Falling Faster Than You Can Run, Rateliff takes us further down the direction of interior, quietly catchy songwriting he established on his Rounder Records debut In Memory of Loss, which came out in 2010. The two albums also share a penchant for bleakness. The acoustic spaciousness of the tracks on Falling Faster highlight Rateliff’s voice, and that voice often sounds pretty sorrowful: sharp, emotional volume spikes on the choruses make each song into a miniature nervous breakdown, with plenty of room for wallowing in the acoustic guitar line. Many of the tracks were written on the road, when Rateliff was touring, and you get a real sense of nomadic loneliness listening to this collection. The lyrics are songwriter-intimate but bear far remove, as if the songs look down at their subjects from thirty thousand feet.

Falling Faster‘s best lyrical moments come when Rateliff reveals the cheekier side of his charm, as is the case on the comparatively bouncy and lighthearted “Laborman” (“I’m begging your pardon if I kinda like the way it feels,” Rateliff sings, and you can practically hear him smirking into the microphone.) Those moments of sunniness serve the album well, and a few more would have not only expanded Falling Faster‘s range, but placed well-deserved focus on the gorgeous flexibility of Rateliff’s voice.

Watch the official video for “Still Trying,” off forthcoming album Falling Faster Than You Can Run, below:

ALBUM REVIEW: The Vickers “Ghosts”

Ghosts opens with a bassline that worms its way into your brain, immediately hypnotic and catchy. The track, “She’s Lost,” unfurls with reverberating electric guitars that, at some points, craft a smooth wall of echoes and at other points, shred with gnarly intention. It’s a pretty accurate indicator of what the whole ten-track album holds: a blurring of the lines between ’60s psych fuzz and ’90s garage fuzz.

Ghosts is the sophomore full-length release from Italian four-piece The Vickers, who have been making waves in their home country since 2009. Andrea Mastropietro, Francesco Marchi, Federico Sereni, and Marco Biagiotti self-produced the album, and even recorded part of it in their own home studio in Florence, which makes the well-executed density of their songs even more impressive. This album would please even the most staunch psych-rock purists, taking cues from trailblazers like The 13th Floor Elevators. The Vickers play with instantly recognizable psychedelic tools, like trippy organs and reverb-drenched guitars that create a hazy and wobbly texture, but they approach the sound with garage-grunge sensibility.

The fifth track, “All I Need,” for example, borrows a little more from punk rock than classic psych, with its driving bass and percussion and significantly more clear, taut guitar and vocal work that brings The Arctic Monkeys to mind. “Walking On A Rope,” on the other hand, is a distinctly Beatles-inspired number that goes through several changes, switching from a somewhat jangly-pop sound to a wide open, falling-down-the-rabbit-hole sensation. The whole affair is practically an homage to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Meanwhile, “Hear Me Now” and album closer/title track “Ghosts” stand out amongst the bunch as more subtle and simple songs—the former has a sludgy, grungy edge, while the latter is laid back with an air of contentment. All ten of Ghosts’ tracks together form a very well rounded bunch, with a variety of influences that present psychedelia in new lights. The entire album is now streaming on Bandcamp.

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ALBUM REVIEW: The War on Drugs “Lost in the Dream”

Three years ago, The War on Drugs wowed the world with their sophomore full-length album, Slave Ambient: proof that they were an impeccably strong band with or without Kurt Vile in the mix. Their chilled out Americana vibe garnered overwhelmingly positive responses, and along the way, the band were frequently likened to classic rock and folk kings like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Neil Young—you get the point. The comparisons seem, undoubtedly, a little grandiose, but they’re undeniably on point, and today, they still hold up against The War on Drugs’ newest release, Lost in the Dream.

The ten-track, hour-long album, due out March 18th on Secretly Canadian, is a dream itself—a trip that evokes images of rolling landscapes and sunlight filtering through the windshield; a dreamy soundscape that teeters between vivid, active moments and gauzy, casual balladry. Truly, the album demands a long, winding road to stretch out on. This music is the stuff of long road trips to beautiful, American landmarks like the Grand Canyon.

Maybe I’m biased, having experienced that exact road trip when I was young with my family, accompanied by the Dire Straits and Supertramp. But that seems to be the magic of Lost in the Dream: it’s nostalgic in a way that feels personal and poignant, blending with my own memories of mom’s long hair and dad’s Elton John sunglasses without the slightest hint of cheese. It’s impressive, actually, how well The War on Drugs maneuver their way through ’80s and ’90s sensibility, avoiding the tacky potholes that artists fell in those days and are still falling in today. “Disappearing,” for example, kicks off with distinctly ’80s-sounding percussion and bass that might, in lesser hands, be in danger of coming off as trite, but the band take their time fleshing out the hazy, synthy sound, carefully crafting a gorgeous track.

“Eyes to the Wind,” on the other hand, has a very classic sound, with elements that bring Dylan and Petty to mind (particularly with lead singer Adam Granduciel’s voice and style), but it still manages to sound original and engaging. The song also features a lush piano riff that envelops the listener with its sweetness and gentle catchiness. In fact, throughout the entire album, band members Patrick Ergery, Dave Hartley, Robbie Bennett, and Granduciel do an expert job of layering instruments—quietly reverberating guitars, piano, tambourine, harmonica, saxophone, synthesizers—to achieve a really rich and dynamic sound.

The last song, “In Reverse,” is a major highlight. It begins quite minimally, washing over you with waves of soft guitar feedback. The music comes into focus as a faraway object would, like something you’re trying really hard to make out, and Granduciel’s lyrics reflect the feeling: “Through the haze there’s no one there / Wonderin’ if you care / Calling out your name in the darkness.” But, slowly, the blurred edges harden and you finally know exactly what you’re looking at. The song is surely catchy, but not in the traditional definition wherein catchy implies simple, or irresistible like your favorite candy bar; instead, “In Reverse” keeps you pressing replay because it makes you feel something. Seven minutes somehow feels too short for this track.

Granduciel closes the album with the lyrics “I’ll be here fading away,” but rest assured Lost in the Dream leaves an imprint on you that won’t soon be fading.

ALBUM REVIEW: Skaters, “Manhattan”

Here’s a band that can make The Strokes seem, once and for all, obsolete—which is saying something considering The Strokes were lauded as “vital” and “indispensable” back in their day. Consider Skaters the new “vital” rock band; in fact, there’s a lot of comparisons to be made between the two bands: The Strokes rode a wave of hype into the music scene; Skaters are now doing the same. The Strokes debuted with a critically hailed album featuring 11 solid tracks; Skaters are now doing the same. You get the point.

And the similarities don’t stop there. All the elements that made Is This It such a strong rock album are prevalent on Skaters’ debut full-length, Manhattan, due out Feb. 25th on Warner Bros. Records. Manhattan opens up with the dark-sounding “One Of Us,” a super straightforward rock song that builds around the repeating line “Fun and games.” But there’s no fuss or messing around on this album: you come to find that each minute of each of the Skaters’ 11 tracks is worthwhile. They are not wasting any time here. The album’s third track and lead single “Deadbolt” is a prowling, thumping number that breaks open during the chorus, when lead singer Michael Ian Cummings howls “Won’t you give me one more try?” in as close to a Julian Casablancas impression as anyone could get.

Much of the midsection of the record features much more optimistic sounding, effortlessly catchy tunes like ‘To Be Young” and “Symptomatic,” which feature fast-paced, driving rhythms by guitarist Josh Hubbard and drummer Noah Rubin that make you want to get up and dance. “Schemers” is particularly pop-tinged and one of the album’s major stand-outs, with the same kind of anthemic magic that The Strokes managed on Is This It’s “Last Nite.”

But here’s where the two bands differ, and what keeps things truly interesting on Manhattan: Skaters confidently and deftly incorporate a variety of influences to bring some unexpected songs to the table, beginning with “Band Breaker.” Anchored by bassist Dan Burke, the song is colored with a reggae sound that brings The Specials to mind—a sort of unpolished, gritty aesthetic that simultaneously has a modern sheen to it. “Fear of the Knife,” one of the album’s most dynamic songs, continues in a similar, reggae-influenced tone and features a listless Cummings singing morbid lyrics about an operation and doctors who “get paid when you’re six feet underground.” “Nice Hat,” on the other hand, punches up the punk, drawing from the hard-and-fast style of hardcore bands like Black Flag and Fear. And with snippets of the city’s sounds—overheard drivel, drunken conversations with taxi drivers, announcements in the subway—sprinkled in between songs, the record plays like a genuine homage to quotidian New York City.

The album closes with as much primal energy as its opening—the fuzzed out electric guitar still shredding, the drums still thrashing, and the bass still throbbing. Skaters are, through and through, a rock band, but with a lot more to offer than power chords and great melodies. Manhattan is familiar yet novel, packed with material that’s strong enough to carry Skaters from the basement to the Bowery Ballroom and beyond. Catch ‘em while you can.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Barzin “To Live Alone In That Long Summer”

Though his songwriting dwells in intimately confessional territory, Canadian singer/songwriter Barzin Hosseini himself is a pretty enigmatic figure. Publicly, he appears as Barzin or Barzin H, with little biographical detail apart from what’s in in his songs. His presence as a songwriter, though, displays a poetics-heavy musical sensibility, with spotlight awarded to lyrical rhythms and manipulations. Instrumental lines—melancholic and cyclical—take their cues from the themes the words set in motion. “In this place, I’m loyal to memory,” Barzin sings in the fourth, and most urgent, track on his new album, To Live Alone In That Long Summer, “Stealing Beauty.” “You look inside houses to see how others live/ and you make the same mistakes, the knowledge comes too late.” Guitars dust pretty arpeggios over the track, always in support of the vocals.

If Barzin’s last release, 2009’s Notes To An Absent Lover, was a breakup album, To Live Alone deals with the reorganization of life after that breakup. The song collection plods through the process of re-learning how to live alone, and to that end, Barzin first envisioned an instrumentally minimalist album. That idea adapted, as his project took shape, to include input from a slew of musician friends. Bolstered by backup vocals from Tony Dekker, Daniela Gesundheit, and Tamara Lindeman, To Live Alone—while circling lyrical themes of isolation and loneliness—is Barzin’s most inclusive record.

Since its inception as Hosseini’s solo act in 1995, the project has regularly expanded to incorporate an array of musicians. Despite all those additions, alterations, and guest appearances, the group’s musical foundation hasn’t changed much. Although additional musicians make for a more filled-out record, you can hear the minimalist impulses behind Hosseini’s voice no matter how many people he’s playing alongside, and the melancholic lyrics and matching sad music that are the new record’s signature have been key to Barzin’s work from the beginning. It’s no surprise that, by now, Hosseini has mastered the turf. He’s able to more or less eschew over-sentimentality on this record, which is a feat considering how introspective and nostalgic the songs unfailingly are. That’s because, as much as To Live Alone becomes engrossed in remembrance, the album details an obsession with deliberate forward motion. Like stacking building blocks, the tracks take us through the work of building (or re-building) a life, and the anxiety of not being able to figure out how other people have successfully done so.

The record shows growth for Barzin in a few different categories—instrumentally, there’s a bit more dynamic range than on previous releases—but not as much as you might imagine, given that the outfit’s been around for almost twenty years, and that their last album came out way back in 2009. The guitar lines, though clean, are extremely repetitive—sometimes frustratingly so—and the songs’ build-ups come very subtly, with faint pay-off. The forward momentum of To Live Alone‘s moving-on idea is its most interesting component, and the biggest source of progression over the duration of the album.

To Live Alone In That Long Summer is out February 25th via Monotreme Records. Pre-order it here. Or, for a taste of the new album, listen to the first track “All The While” below via Soundcloud:

BAND OF THE MONTH: Fenster

This month’s Band Of The Month is the Berlin quartet Fenster, whose new album we can’t quite get enough of. It comes out March 4th on Morr Music, and is garnering raves already. Be sure to catch these guys on one of their many tour stops (listed below) including a handful of SXSW shows. Here are our thoughts about the elusive German lo-fi group’s forthcoming album, The Pink Caves: International quartet Fensters sophomore collection, The Pink Cavescreates its own reality: self-contained, rich, surreal. Vocals and instrumentation feel entirely synched in their intent, and draw together a lush and layered aesthetic that’s as unspecifically visual as the soundtrack to a David Lynch film. That uniformity makes sense, considering the nuts and bolts of the way the album was put together: the group (Jonathan Jarzyna, JJ Weihl, Rémi Letournelle and Lucas Chantre) laid down the tracks on this album simultaneously, in an East Germany cabin with its wiring rigged to distribute different elements of the recording process over four rooms. So while the album retains all the polish of a studio recording—more polish than many studio recordings, actually—you do get the feeling of togetherness listening to The Pink Cavesas you might expect to find in an especially well-orchestrated live show. I wouldn’t call it spontaneity—on the contrary, every move the group makes in this album is palpably deliberate. However, the music maintains remarkable cohesion throughout. The Pink Caves‘ seamlessness makes it a little difficult to find a point of entry into the album. The world the group imagines is so self-sufficient, it’s hard to locate Fenster in any one era or style. The lyrics, while subtle, feel directed towards high philosophy, and a brief investigation will tell you that The Pink Caves seeks to grapple with an imaginary heaven that is at once both pointless and triumphant for the fact that it exists only in your mind. This idea weaves in and out of the music, but is often buried pretty deep: so closely do the instrumentals parallel this concept of spaciness and alienation that it’s often hard to grasp what the group’s aiming for. Without focus, the music becomes aimless and melts into a swirling, crushed-velvet panorama that’s mesmerizing, but leads to nowhere. The male-female call and response duets go a long way towards humanizing the album. In these sections, The Pink Caves takes on a sweetness that mellows out the stark, albeit beautiful, passages . Although I was too distracted by the gorgeously complex fabrications taking place in opening track “Better Days” and the suavely faraway vocals of “In The Walls” to crave more narrative, when the duet in “Mirrors” showed up, it occurred to me that having a more clearly delineated vocal line structure may be exactly what The Pink Caves is missing. There’s no danger of any listener mistaking Fenster’s musical landscape for ordinary, and there could never be, even if all of the album’s vocals were as accessible as they are on “Mirrors.” Using vocals as a foothold would strengthen the album’s philosophical bent, too: The Pink Caves’ message lies layers deep, like a shadow always turning around a corner before it’s fully in view. Though this contributes to the album’s dystopia, that aesthetic wouldn’t be lost if its foundation were more explicit. In fact, the experience of listening to the album would benefit from having a narrative guide through its dreamworld. Listen to “Mirrors,” off The Pink Caves, below via Bandcamp: We had the opportunity to chat with Fenster regarding life, love, inspiration and music, of course. Here’s what they had to tell us: AF: Bones is such a different sounding album than The Pink Caves. While the latter is difficult to assign to any genre, Bones seems to be more folk-pop influenced. What inspired digressing towards the abstract?

Bones was our first record, made in a state of pure naive bliss. We had never played a show before and it came from a world that was really all in our heads. I guess it was a record that really reflected that time, the influences we had gathered as individuals and the special chemistry between us and our producer. It was very much a winter record and very much a Berlin record for us. It was made in a basement and recorded with one old Russian ribbon microphone. We wanted to capture the simplicity and dark playfulness of morbid dreams, coupled with the sounds of the city and the sounds of objects we found that inspired us, like shovels and slamming doors. After that record came out and we started touring a lot, our world sort of exploded. Everything we thought we knew was kind of turned upside down, and we encountered so many extremes. We were exposed to so many new places and people and music and we just took it all in I guess, whether it was conscious or subconscious I think the world changed and shaped us both as people and as musicians. When we decided to take a break from touring and compose and record a new album, we found that the influences and instruments we had been inspired by simply changed and instead of trying to recapture that minimal innocence, we embraced this new world we felt emerging, following the different aesthetics we were drawn to, which were maybe more psychedelic and wobbly than before.

AF: You have New York and Berlin listed as places the band members hail from. What has been the most rewarding aspect of having those different perspectives? Do you find your sound changing in relation to the geography you inhabit?

JJ is a born and raised New Yorker, Jonathan is half Polish and from Berlin, Rémi and Lucas are from France and our producer Tadklimp is Greek. I guess the music has benefited from not really belonging to one place although Berlin is a sort of Never Never land at the moment where a lot of different people from different places seem to collide, so Fenster definitely owes its existence to what Berlin is right now. It’s hard to tell if that has really shaped our sound but I guess it always adds some kind of dimension when different cultural references and backgrounds meet.

AF: Your website is almost as dizzying as your music. What is the story behind some of that imagery? The bone-headed dinosaur, the man bent backwards, the religious icons…

The website was made by our friend and collaborator Florian Sänger who embodies a particular kind of understated genius that one rarely encounters. The inspiration for the imagery came out of long afternoons spent in junk shops trolling through crumbling children’s books, medical encyclopedias from the last century and religious propaganda pamphlets. We wanted the website to be an entrance into the world of the album which for us meant a creepy dream logic where Jesus is on street signs and men float through the air. After we handed over the piles of collected materials to Florian, along with some images from our own dreams, he basically channeled it all into that website. Word.

AF: What contemporary bands are you most interested in collaborating or playing with?

Ahhhh there is so much good music being made at the moment, but there are two artists that are particularly inspiring to us… Connan Mockasin and Sandro Perri.

AF: Your music exists in a space that is difficult to label; because of that it is difficult to imagine your songwriting process. How do you typically commence the creation of a song? Its kind of different every time…some ideas have been festering for years, some just appear out of the clear blue sky. But our process is that once we have collected enough little bits and pieces of ideas, we go somewhere and make little pre-recordings or sketches of each song with all of the arrangements mapped out. We write and re-write lyrics dozens of times, singing and reading them out loud to see if they stick. Its important for us not to judge the creation as its happening, that comes later in the recording process when things become more concrete.

AF: I attempted researching what Fenster meant. Aside from a last name it appears to refer to a tectonic window. Also, maybe some sort of tape? Where did you get the name? Yeah, Fenster means window in German. A window fell on JJ’s head when we were recording Bones, but other than that we just like that its kind of an empty word, an object you look through instead of at.

AF: I read in Morr Music that you are fans of post-apocalyptic novels. Any favorites?

The Drowned World by JG Ballard is a classic and as for post human novels, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

AF: Given the change from your first album to your sophomore, where do you see your direction going in the future? Sonically speaking.

Sonically speaking, the next record will probably be completely different than the last two. We don’t like repeating ourselves, and at the same time we can’t force things…we like to sort of let them happen naturally and somehow be true to where we are in our lives at the time.

AF: What have you been listening to most recently?

Basically everything…Milton Nascimento’s 80s stuff, Fleetwood Mac (mostly Tusk), 70s Turkish disco, The Art of Noise, the new Japanther record, Caramel by Connan Mockasin, Impossible Spaces by Sandro Perri, sleazy french composer Francis Lai, Carol King!, Aphex Twin always, Kendrick Lamar, just discovered the album Trans by Neil Young, German krautrock legends Holger Czukaj and Irmin Schmidt…

AF: Do you find that what your listening to greatly effects your songwriting, or do you try to separate the two?

Everything that goes in has to come out somehow…The world and books and movies and music and stuff all play a part, but some things are more influential than others. Sometimes you hear, see or read something that unscrews something in your brain and you feel inspired instantly and other things leave you totally cold but maybe these things also contribute somehow. It’s mysterious and unpredictable and we like it like that.

AF: The Pink Caves is an interesting album because at on instant it is romantic, another mournful, and then the song changes and you want to dance. It also has so many digital and instrumental intricacies that it’d be a shame to miss them. Given the dynamism of the record what environment would you say is the best way to listen to it? Headphones? Live?

Wherever you listen to it, definitely listen to it loud! Maybe because we watch so many movies it feels like some weird soundtrack to a film, so listening to it while driving in a car or riding your bike or your horse around town could be cool. It’s definitely worth trying to listen to it as a whole album. That’s at least what we were going for because we personally really love records that take you on a trip.

AF: You mention finding interest in graveyards, and religious iconography. Surely being from Berlin and New York you must have some favorite cemeteries and cathedrals. Care to share for your fans with the same taste for the macabre?

There is a truly crazy and macabre cathedral in Portugal made of bones and skulls and decorated with a golden skeleton called Capela de Ossos and a church outside of Prague in Kutna Hora that is decorated with intricate sculptures made of human skeletons that were apparently designed by mad and blind monks. Paris is always a fun place for graveyards and Vienna has more dead inhabitants than living ones.

AF: Where does your fascination with the strange, morbid and mystical come from?

Its sort of engrained in everything…you just have to look for it. We like the autumn, its the time of year when everything dies. Dried flowers are just more beautiful, more timeless. We’ve always been really fascinated by cults, by movements of people that believe something so strongly they would die for it. The mystical is actually just another way of looking at the ordinary. Some people see a mirror and find it endlessly fascinating and mysterious and some people just look at themselves.

AF: I was watching your music video for “Oh Canyon.” It’s certainly proof of your sense of humor. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Wes Anderson’s imagery, but what did you guys have in mind while making it?

Our good pal and long time collaborator Bryn Chainey who has made three videos for us came up with the concept which was to make a sort of fake documentary about the “Amateur Cosmozoology Society” exploring questions like, “space, what is that?” and the history of animals being catapulted into the cosmos to try to figure out what’s out there. The found footage he incorporated of monkeys holding hands and cats freaking out in zero-gravity spaceships is absurd and fascinating. Science!

AF: You’ve been consistently lauded for your ability to render songs both sweet and eerie. Is there a band mate who contributes to one aspect of the sound more than the other? Basically, who is the creepy one in the band?

Maybe the band has a mind of its own that’s greater than the sum of its parts…we’re all huge Cronenberg fans and we like sci-fi a lot. Keep it sexy, keep it spooky and keep it real in 2014. Peace and love.

AF: WE SURE AS HELL WILL!! Thanks for speaking with us and congrats on being named AF’s band of the month. Much love to you, from NYC to Berlin.

The Pink Caves is out March 4th. Go here to read more on the band and listen to more of the new album! Below, watch the teaser for The Pink Caves.

TRACK PREMIERE: Blackstone Rangers “You Never”

Descendant opens with a pulsing beat and glimmers of what’s to come in the next 27 minutes: a washed out, floating female voice, distorted guitar freak-outs, and catchy, upbeat pop rhythms. These six tracks are the work of relative newcomers, Blackstone Rangers, a trio from Texas consisting of Ruth Smith on synths and vocals, Daniel Bornhosrt on drums, and Derek Kutzer on guitar and vocals. Descendant is their second EP, released via Saint Marie Records, and it’s a doozy of a release, oozing indie, shoegaze-y pop a la Beach House, with a bit more punk sensibility.

The opener, “Descendant Of,” is a blistering, rock-leaning number that stands out among the other friendlier tracks. The listener is quickly submerged in the music, as the band takes its time unravelling its possibilities from the depths of their warped instruments. “Judas Tree” is the first to show the their pop inclinations, picking up the pace and setting a catchy foundation with the repeating line, “Did you hear me the other night?,” as vague yet affecting as their actual sound. It’s with songs like this one that the band manages to exude a badass energy and presence while maintaining their haziness.

But without a doubt, the two standouts on the EP, are “Frozen Echo”, and “You Never” — hypnotic numbers that have Smith warbling enchantingly over steady drum beats and fuzzy guitar distortion. She wields her chiffon-y vocals artfully, like a painter, diminishing the need for lyrics to keep the song interesting, and opting instead to let the music beckon us into her world.

Descendent is a great showcase of the band’s talent for woozy pop and wall-of-sound textures: in less than half an hour, you’ll find songs you can bang your head to, and others you can twirl around in a daze with. We can’t wait to see what is in store for this talented young project.

The EP is due out at the end of the month. In the meantime catch them on one of their many tour stops including 5/1 at Cake Shop with Blessed Isles & FIELDED and 5/2 at Radio Bushwick with Dead Leaf Echo. Until then, check out the Audiofemme premier of the ever-haunting, “You Never”, right here:

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Tag: album review