album review – Page 5

ALBUM REVIEW + ARTIST PROFILE: New Bums

Although Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn’s initial dislike for each other when they met, a few years ago, was personal–not musical–it’s tempting to talk about, because their work together now is so dependent on their bond. They always liked each other’s music (Quinn released albums with Skygreen Leopards, Chasny with Six Organs of Admittance, Rangda, and Comets on fire, to name a few). When the pair formed New Bums, they entered into a collaboration that uniquely fused each member’s skill set into a partnership that couldn’t be broken in half. On their debut album together, Voices in a Rented Room, the group wears its intent on its sleeve: Quinn’s trademark folky lyric imagery seems to be emitting simultaneously and from the same point of origin as Chasny’s delicate instrumental ramblings.

The low-lit, husky vocals of the first song on Voices, “Black Bough,” immediately conjures a backdrop of moodiness and melancholy, and that aura stays strong throughout the album’s twelve tracks. Acoustic guitar-based melodies, bearing tight-knit likenesses to their lyrical counterparts, emerge over this backdrop, waxing and waning as the songs wear on. It’s dark, sparsely-laid stuff, with lots of chilly backup oohs and ahhs, that also brings some catchy phrasings–like the ones on “The Killers and Me”–that have kind of an old-time cowpoke feel. “The longest train I ever saw..” one line begins on “Town on the Water,” in un-showy evocation of the traditional–and great–“In The Pines.” In other spots, too, New Bums tip a quiet salute to Old, Weird America with ragged vocals and guitars that trill like mandolins. The band side-steps a direct descendant-ness from American folk, though, with switched-up rhythmic weight and a modern approach to lyrical metaphor. Though the music emerges from a couple different songwriting traditions, New Bums’ tracks are too interior, and too personally crafted, to really resemble anything but themselves. The influences are visible, but none will smack you over the head.

Separately, Chasny and Quinn have been associated with the new folk and acoustic-leaning psychedelic schools of music-making. This project’s most apparent deviation from their other lives as musicians is how dialed down the impulse to push into new, extreme turf feels on Voices. The music demands attention the way a whisper makes you quiet down to hear it. “I don’t know if anyone will notice it or care about it, but I like it because it’s sweet,” Quinn told AudioFemme last week, explaining “Town on the Water” is one of his favorite tracks off the new album. A lot of the songs on Voices, sweet or not, are like that, quiet enough to slip by unnoticed. Whether sighing like a woodsier, and slightly less devastated, Elliott Smith on “Mother’s Favorite Hated Son” or tracing the feathery, high-register melodies of “Black Bough,” Quinn and Chasny’s vocals yield more the more–and the closer–you listen to them. If you like your folk low and slow, your guitars sweet and your lyrics bleak, try Voices in a Rented Room on for size. The album’s out February 18th on Drag City. Check out the music video for “The Killers and Me” below:

Last week, I called up New Bums to talk about the recording of Voices and get some insight into their collaboration process. Turns out, there’s a mystery man named Willem Jones behind the duo, and he started it all–even directing the video you see above. The story of their initial dislike for each other became even funnier when, since the two band members were in different parts of California and I kept losing one or the other’s line when I tried to put them on conference call, they started ragging on each other like Jewish mothers. “I don’t think he has service,” Quinn said first. “Let me give you another number. Once Chasny was on the phone, Quinn dropped out. “He has a land line,” Chasny insisted. “Ask him why he isn’t using his landline.” The pair had clearly overcome their differences, and then some. Read on to discover how New Bums write their songs, where they got their name, and which of them is secretly a malevolent space alien just biding his time before pursuing world domination.

AF: We’ve heard your band is a “grudging match-up.” How did you guys meet?

Donovan Quinn: We had a mutual friend named Willem Jones and he brought us together. At first we didn’t get along for various reasons, but over time we started talking about music and different writers and found that we had a lot in common, but there are also a lot of differences to our approach. I’ve always been a fan of Ben’s music. I just jumped at the opportunity to work with him.

Ben Chasny: We had crossed paths at festivals before we started hanging out with Willem, and I think [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”][Quinn] had a dislike for me from then. Apparently we had already met once, and then I ran into him while I was at Amoeba Records shopping, and he tells me that he came up to me and I didn’t recognize him. So he got offended and wrote me off forever.

AF: So you just got off on the wrong foot? Your differences were always personal, not musical?

DQ: Yeah, I think Ben is easily one of the best guitar players in the world. He’s a shredder. But he’s also a great songwriter, and songwriting has always been my main interest. We tried to make that the focal point of the group—as opposed to the other projects we’ve each been a part of—so we always try to start a song by having the lyrics and melody together, and then work from that.

AF: You guys are both veterans, you’ve each been involved in a bunch of different collaborations.

DQ: Yeah, we’re old. We’ve both been around for a long time and have done a lot of music. When we got together and decided we wanted to start New Bums, we really wanted to come up with an idea and an aesthetic that we hadn’t done before, that would be its own thing. We do benefit from having done different albums, been involved with different bands, but it was important to make sure we were doing something new with this project.

BC: An interesting thing I’ve noticed throughout the years, is when two people get together to collaborate, they kind of always want to do what the other person is doing. So if you have some guy—not me, but if I take this out of my perspective—who was doing a lot of heavy metal, and he got together with someone who was doing dance music, the heavy metal guy would start wanting to do dance music and the dance guy would be like, ‘Oh, no, I want to do what you’re doing!’ That’s what always happens to me when I collaborate. With Donovan, it was apparent pretty immediately that there was a certain middle ground we were going for. I mean, what we do separately isn’t so different in the first place.

AF: Where does the name New Bums come from?

DQ: I don’t know if Ben will remember this differently, but that’s another Willem Jones thing. We would get together at his parties, and we were the only people there under sixty years old, and we were called the new bums. It just stuck. I really like the name. I don’t know if it’s the best name, but for better or worse, we just became the New Bums.

BC: It came to the point where we’d try to come up with other names. When we tried to do that, nothing else made sense, because that’s what those guys were calling us. We don’t see each other that way, but we thought it was funny.

DQ: It’s really a partnership. We wanted to have a band where, with anything we put out, we couldn’t do it without the other person. Especially because now, if you meet a band, every single person in the band has their own thing, too. They’ll play drums, or whatever, but also have their own project. We wanted to try to get away from that auteur thing and have it really be truly collaborative.

AF: Do you write songs totally collaboratively?

DQ: Usually, one of us will have an idea, and then try not to develop it too much, so that the other person can have some input. It might just be a chord change or a couple of lines, a lyric idea, and then the other person will just jump on. An example would be “Your Girlfriend Might Be A Cop,” I started with the idea of hanging out with a new friend and getting the crazy paranoid idea that this new friend of yours actually might be a cop who’s gonna turn you in. Ben saw that in a notebook of mine and came up with a melody around it. He came up with this idea of the unreliable narrator, and it being somebody’s girlfriend. That’d be an example of how we would work—somebody comes up with an idea, the other one rearranges it, and it goes back and forth.

BC: Donovan’s really lyric-oriented, and I’m more driven by chords and music. He doesn’t work on chords as much, and I definitely don’t work on words as much. But it’s funny, on the record, the songs came in every different way. Some songs he wrote all the lyrics, some songs I wrote all the lyrics, on some songs the verses are half mine and half his. The music is written mostly by one person, though. Every song seems like it was created in a different way. Which is pretty exciting. We don’t have a template.

AF: Is that an example of what you were talking about before, about picking up on what the other person in your group is doing and wanting to get into that?

BC: Yeah. That’s the reason why I’m in this band. I’m in a bunch of bands, doing different things, but the reason why I’m in this band is because of the word stuff. This is my band to work on lyrics. Also, to have a good time.

AF: Even if you did get off to a bad start, you seem to have gotten very close. Is the music you’ve made a byproduct of your friendship?

BC: Yeah, I moved away from San Francisco for a while, and we would use the band as an excuse to get together. He’d say, ‘I’ll fly up to Seattle,’ where I was living at the time, ‘We’ll finish this record!’ And he’d come up and we wouldn’t even work on it, we’d just hang out. In that way, the band was more of a vehicle for friendship, but now we’re doing it more seriously.

DQ: Like I said, I was a fan of Ben’s. I think he has a great aesthetic and a great mind for music. We’d go to the bar and talk about Townes Van Zandt for hours. I just get excited about working with someone I can see eye to eye with, and who also has ideas I never would have. Even if there was no record, or shows, we would still have become New Bums and it would have been a secret band for our own enjoyment.

AF: It sounds like a really fun and easy experience for you, making music right now.

DQ: Our idea of fun may be different than some peoples’. Both me and Ben—we aren’t known for, uh, a relaxed demeanor when it comes to music. We’re both liable to have a total meltdown during any given moment at a show, but it does help to have somebody with you who you can kind of rely upon. It is really fun. Ben says that it’s kind of like a buddy film. We try not to be ever at all lazy with the music—have space and all that, yes, but we also take a lot of time to make sure that we can listen back to a song a thousand times and there’s not something in there that we think is shitty.

AF: How did that come through on your new album, Voices From A Rented Room? What were your goals for the record?

DQ: Every step of the way, the way we came up with the songs was a product of all these ideas and dreams we had and that we had talked about for years. We tried to get the feeling of the two of us in a room playing the song together, very loose and late-night feeling. I feel that a lot of new music is really built up. Whether it’s pop, or heavy music, or whatever, it’s really pushed up to ten—armored, in a way. I think that’s because it’s hard to get attention in the music world, because there’s so much music, and so many ways to hear it, that people really want to immediately make a big impression. We kind of want the opposite of that. We want to come across naturally, the way we would if you were in the room listening to us come up with the songs and jam.

BC: I was just happy to have songs with more of a narrative—an apparent narrative—as opposed to the kind of material I usually work with, which has more of a hidden narrative and fewer words. I think if New Bums has any philosophy, it’s just…um, to record songs ourselves and not spend a lot of money. True to our name. We tried not to be very extravagant, and at the same time, we wanted to take a lot of care and pay a lot of attention. I don’t know that we have a philosophy beyond that. If we do, it’s still in the works.

AF: The first track “Black Bough,” which you’ve released already, feels very pared down and sparse.

DQ: That was the first song that we wrote for the project. After we came up with “Black Bough,” it gave us a lot of confidence to go forward with the band. That song, maybe more than any other on the album, has all the ideas that we wanted to get across with the band. It’s sparse, and has a lot of space, which we always enjoy. It’s got the kind of space you hear in seventies outlaw country music, and early hip hop, too, where the beats are really spacious.

AF: What was the process of recording that song like?

BC: We were just trying to figure each other out, at that time. We lived really close to each other, and he would come over late at night. He had that song, and I remember just playing it my garage, because I was lucky enough to have a garage in San Francisco at that time. I remember drinking a lot, and not remembering how to play the song. It was a pretty fun song.

AF: It’s funny you should say that, because the song—and the whole album—also seems very melancholy. Do you both prefer darker stuff?

DQ: Yeah, me and Ben have that in common. We tend to do dark music. Different people have different things that make them want to write, and usually I write when I’m looking back on something. I write a lot of songs about relationships—romantic, family, friendships—but the point of view I find it easiest to write from is when it’s over, and you’re looking back on it, which is inherently sad. So that leads me into darker territory more often than not.

AF: What’s your favorite song on the album?

DQ: I have a couple. I really love “Your Girlfriend Might Be A Cop” and “Black Bough.” “Town on the Water” is kind of a band favorite. It’s one of those songs where I don’t know if anyone will notice it or care about it, but I like it because it’s sweet. It’s a kind-hearted song, which is hard for our band to write. We’re better at the dour, shattered songs. “Town on the Water” is about combing your hair to go out on a date, dancing in the hallway and stuff. I was really excited to have a song like that, that I thought my mom would like. In fact, Chasny gave his father the album and he said that was his favorite song. We were pretty excited about that.

AF: Earlier, Donovan, you mentioned that Ben kind of thinks of your band as a buddy film. If we were watching “New Bums” The Movie, how would that buddy film end?

BC: Well, I would hope it would be a sci-fi buddy film. Donovan would definitely end up being an alien. Or one of us would, at least—much to the surprise of the other one. Not a nice alien. A real mean alien. But an alien that wouldn’t harm the other band member. It would be like—oh wow, here is this creature that’s usually really mean, but it’s been nice to me this whole time.

AF: So Donovan the Alien would wreak havoc on the world, and then spare you?

BC: Maaaaybe. It would be a big question mark. Just like The Thing, at the end. Would I actually be spared, or not? In fact I think there’s a good chance that that’s actually how the band is gonna end. Maybe without the alien part.

AF: Well, that leaves room for a sequel.

BC: Precisely. A big question mark.

Many thanks to Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn for entertaining our questions! Once again, Voices in a Rented Room is out 2/18/14 via Drag City; you can pick up your copy and learn more about the Bums here. Listen to “Black Bough,” the first track off the album, via SoundCloud:
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ALBUM REVIEW: Kins

Thomas Savage’s anxious tenor takes center stage on Kins‘ eponymous album’s opener, “Pale Faced Fear.” Channeling both the chilliness and unhindered expression of Radiohead’s frontman, a fellow Thom, Savage saunters over the track, his voice cascading over all its low beats and lingering echoes. That spaciness gives Kins the feel of an album made someplace dark and cold, and in fact, it was: the sometimes-quartet relocated, in the winter of 2012, from its Australian home base to a basement apartment by the water in Brighton, England to record Kins.

As idyllic as the Brighton seaside may sound, the album has a lot of bleakness to it. Savage’s voice recedes from the forefront as Kins wears on, never again to be as clearly in focus as it is on “Pale Faced Fear.” Instead, the vocals become part of a backdrop of smudged harmonies, swirling bass and keys. The impressionistic layering of the instrumentals conjures a pretty sound, but though its foundation is solid, Kins develops into an album that never really settles on a focal point.

Which seems like an easy conclusion to come to, given that the band has a track called “Aimless” on here. In fact, that song is one of the more driven on Kins. “Aimless” makes a bid for the return of a strong vocal line, adhering to a conventional song structure more so than the preceding tracks. Then, “Under The Radar” pairs voice with understated, bubbling instrumentals that—more than anywhere else on the album—draw the group’s rhythmic complexity into a balanced arrangement.

It’s clear that Kins’ focus is on subverting the ear’s expectations, stretching out phrases and avoiding easy rhythmic progressions. But, in this case, that intent leads somewhere uninspiring. While the album can be beautiful, it is just as often boring, and the complex evocation created by Kins’ orchestration ultimately amounts to backdrop—a painstakingly created stage set with an unclaimed microphone in the center.

Head over to Kins’ Facebook page, and listen to “Under The Radar,” off Kins, below!

ALBUM REVIEW: Morgan Delt “Morgan Delt”

“I think we’ve become stuck in time and everything is going to happen all at once from now on,” Morgan Delt has commented, regarding the resurgence of sixties and seventies influences in the impressive amount of psychedelic- music coming out today. It’s an interesting phenomenon, one that gets more prevalent all the time–new music sounding like it’s from an old decade–and it’s not just one era new music is channeling, it’s all of them: eighties and nineties throwbacks occur almost as often as sixties and seventies throwbacks do. What makes Delt’s self-titled debut, out yesterday on Trouble In Mind Records, interesting isn’t his carefree-Californian psych-rocker theme, it’s the way he goes about making that theme happen in the music.

At the very beginning of last year, Delt released a 6-track cassette called Psychic Death Hole. Being on the short side, it didn’t do anywhere near justice to Delt’s potential for scope, but it did do a pretty good job of convincing everyone who listened to it that he could do sixties psych-pop. The familial resemblance was blandly straightforward, though, like Delt had copy and pasted straight out of the Unknown Mortal Orchestra songbook. This isn’t to imply that the music had no imagination of its own, just that it wore its influence on its sleeve very conventionally. No one could have extrapolated anything about psychedelic music from hearing Psychic Death Hole that they couldn’t get anywhere else.

Morgan Delt was finally released yesterday, after a couple of track teasers that left the AudioFemmes of wintry New York salivating for a sunnier climate (here and here). It’s an intricate album, very colorful and intelligently orchestrated. There’s plenty on here to recall the sixties, too, although many of the bells, whistles and ambient noise that turn up between those smoky hooks come off surprisingly futuristic. Time collapses, and musical memories aren’t presented in terms of narrative or chronology. Instead, Delt rips up all his idols into confetti, tosses them in the air, and makes it rain. The resulting mosaic is what he knits together out of the snippets.

Delt’s method of picking and choosing–with a greater fidelity to his own project than to any of the influences he cites–suggests self-portraiture: he’s tying the album together based near-solely on his own vision, despite the genre turf he treads. There’s certainly enough space on this album–unlike the preceding cassette–to get a long look at its creator. “Morgan Delt’s debut LP expands on [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”][Psychic Death Hole‘s] tracks and brings forth a fully realized glimpse into the California native’s twisted brain,” reads the album notes. If that’s true, I don’t think Delt’s brain is all that twisted–it’s a whimsical album with a lot of color, but is overall pretty lighthearted. And the textures on this album–the crisp instrumentals on “Mr. Carbon Copy,” the melty smear of vocals on “Sad Sad Trip”–are delightful to listen to.

It’s interesting, though, to think that self-portraiture emerges out of a lack of alignment with chronological history–that, having liberated his songwriting of narrative continuity, Delt could create a collage that, taken altogether, approximates the inside of his brain. I’m not totally sold on this theory. The album may not be memoir, but at the very least, Morgan Delt is a fully-realized glimpse of something.

What do you think? You can buy Morgan Delt’s self-titled album here, and listen to “Obstacle Eyes” below
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ALBUM REVIEW: New Electric Ride “Balloon Age”

The dream of acid-era Beatles pop is alive in UK quartet New Electric Ride, whose debut full-length Balloon Age will be out February 25^th via Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records. Balloon Age checks all the boxes: the hooks are tight, the love songs are cute, and the ear-happy vocal harmonies share spotlight with spooky, tripped-out psychedelia.

It may be pastiche, but it’s well-executed pastiche. Balloon Age‘s appealingly jumpy transitions and instrumental menagerie takes us on a whiplash-ride through the sixties, all its incense and dripping surreality. Familiar life in the exterior world gives way, when you least expect it, to the twisty tunnels inside your head. The catchiest songs on this album exhibit such skillfully laid care that it barely matters that they’re derivative; the bluesy and round-like “I Feel So Excited” stands out not for originality but for, at just under a minute long, hitting a bulls-eye with a formula so well-worn that it’s hard to compellingly pull off. Particularly on the second half of the album, New Electric Ride demonstrates not only a deep saturation in the genre but also the fresh enthusiasm they have for this kind of music, even if, to all appearances, it’s been done to death. The quartet’s loyalty lies unquestionably with songs, and the album can be best understood as a lovingly assembled collection of details and imagery.

It’s in these details that you’ll see New Electric Ride’s contemporariness. “Isn’t it mean how no one can dream about writing a submarine song anymore?” warbles the wistful chorus to “A Submarine Song.” This might be the first time I’ve been happy to discover that a band’s being meta —if they weren’t, they wouldn’t just be taking inspiration from The Beatles, they’d be flat-out ripping them off. “A Submarine Song” teems with whimsical images—including the central one—straight out of the original Submarine song, with an “I Am The Walrus” intro and a bit of “Strawberry Fields” thrown in for spice. The pervasiveness of sixties pop, the song argues, makes it difficult to return to its ideals in new music. Echoing with repetitions of the line “have you heard this tale before,” New Electric Ride pays homage to a sub-genre whose very greatness closes off its vivid imagery and singular direction to new bands.

2013 was a good year for psychedelia. It seemed like everywhere new bands with weird scale patterns and inscrutable lyrics were springing up to push their experiment in unexpected directions, as though it weren’t so much a genre as a way of looking at all kinds of music. Long, layered rock patterns jammed and droned and forewent choruses. Elsewhere, other groups, like The Entrance Band, used heady and occasionally unfriendly tendencies to explore more psychological turf, using the music as metaphor for a excavation of the depths within their heads. Either way, when it was successful, the music’s form felt like a traveling companion, on albums that could be taken as long, exploratory journeys. At the end of a good psych album, I always feel a little drained.

And that, I think, gets at what I don’t like about Balloon Age. The way that New Electric Ride employs psychedelic pop doesn’t have as much to do with their musical experience as it does the experience of the music they’re imitating. It’s not used as a vehicle on this album, it’s a recreation of how sixties groups used it as a vehicle. Or, to put it another way: it’s not a spaceship—it’s a picture of a spaceship, drawn by a really skilled portrait artist.

Balloon Age comes out February 25th on Beyond Beyond is Beyond Records. Until then, you can get your New Electric Ride fix with “Bring What You Expect To Get,” via SoundCloud!

ALBUM REVIEW: together PANGEA “Badillac”

Up until now, LA three-piece together PANGEA has perfected an undiluted garage rock aesthetic, with two straight albums filled with track after blisteringly high-speed track of violent, maniacally fun and often sort of garish punk-informed rock and roll. It was kind of one-note, but the note was a good one: the group’s aesthetic trafficked in irreverent energy and sexual frustration, and was bolstered by the disparaging deadpan of frontman William Keegan’s vocals, as well as the spininess of the group’s stripped-down instrumentals. This instrumental simplicity and unchecked energy worked in the young band’s favor. Even when the group lacked breadth, their noise turned to full blast for the length of an entire album, it played into together PANGEA’s disheveled, youthful style.

The group’s new album, Badillac, clearly holds this framework as its headquarters, but doesn’t take long to begin wandering outside of together PANGEA’s well-worn stomping grounds. The production is slightly cleaner and more mature-sounding than what we’ve seen in the past from them, the album is thematically a bit more melancholy, but the most noticeable shift is in the weightiness of the instrumental lines. Heavy, hard rock bass lines add heft to Badillac‘s composition, and serve as a gratifying extra kick to the energy of the album.

By halfway through, you may be wondering whether together PANGEA has finally grown up. The answer, “Sick Shit” will tell you, is no: “My dick is soft/these things mean nothing to me,” Keegan whines, before the song launches into a punchy, moshable hook that would be heartbroken if it weren’t so damn snotty.

“No Way Out,” though, is a bleak, pensive little number: much quieter than the kind of sound for which together PANGEA is known. The song still maintains a very simple structure, lush with cello and vocal lines that cycle broodingly over the track like vultures. Though it isn’t my favorite track on the album—the repetition, ultimately, doesn’t bring us anywhere remarkable– “No Way Out” establishes the low point of a dynamic range that helps the highs hit higher.

However, the next and last track on Badillac, “Where The Night Ends,” is much more satisfactory, and manages to apply the entire spectrum of the album’s emotional range to just one song. Simmering and catchy, “Where The Night Ends” matches the intensity of its dark, power-packed riffs with a vocal line that’s first whispered, then screamed. The deconstructed intimacy the group hints at throughout the album is finally, undeniably realized with the hidden track that emerges after a minute of silence following “Where The Night Ends.” Stripped down, distorted vocals and guitar end Badillac on an introspective, and beautifully weary note. At its close, the album zooms out, away from the music’s violent immediacy, and offers a bird’s eye view of the wreckage left in its wake.

Go here to purchase Badillac, out January 21st, and listen to the title track off the new album below:

ALBUM REVIEW: Gringo Star “Float Out To See”

Though the world is hardly hurting for sixties-inspired doo-wop indie rock, Gringo Star‘s latest release, Floating Out To See, skews rock and roll in an irrepressibly colorful direction that’s too much fun not to pay attention to. Brothers Nicholas and Peter Furgiuele grew up raiding their parents’ record collection, and it shows: the Atlanta-based trio composed of the two brothers and, most recently, multi-instrumentalist Chris Kaufmann repurpose sunny riffs and hummable harmonies from sixties rock. Sometimes, their music could fit right onto a record from that decade, but more often a Gringo Star song feels like more than imitation: they recall the atmosphere of blissful excitement behind a Beach Boys song or a Turtles song, but along with evocative chord progressions and a generous helping of reverb, Gringo Star mix in plenty of modern-day psychedelic bells and whistles to bring off the finish.

The name, in fact, is not a Beatles reference. As the group told one interviewer a couple of years ago, it’s inspired by Mexican slang they’d picked up working in kitchens. That anecdote gives you a decent idea of what to expect going into Floating Out To See: the project was entirely DIY, the first of the group’s three albums to be put together without a producer, and the tracks on this thing are short, catchy, and crackling. The album sounds like a brilliantly half-baked bid for glory, but if you listen closer, the distortion on this record cloaks a lot of melodic detail and very strong musicianship. It’s as if Gringo Star wants to make simply-constructed instant hits, but can’t resist slipping him an extra riff or harmony here and there.

Then there are the unexpected instrumental breaks that pepper this album. Though they don’t seem to fit into the rest of the music at all, the musical lines are a pleasure to listen to, both on their own and laid over the rest of the band. The first song on this album, “In The Heat,” barely sees a vocal line, instead giving itself over to an easy beat that saunters through the track from start to finish. It’s an unpredictable opener for a band like Gringo Star, and although so many of the group’s beats and harmonies are well-worn, it’s only one of the ways in which Float Out To See defies expectations. Six tracks in, “Satisfy My Mind” melts from a fast-paced cut-and-copy rock number into an extended drum solo, which lasts for a solid thirty seconds.

With tightly controlled musicality, the album speeds up, and slows down, and speeds up again. Sometimes brooding, sometimes barely containing its excitement, Float Out To See contains an impressive number of elegant shifts in mood and intent. Gringo Star hits a gorgeous balance of immaturity and sophistication here, which, hopefully, will afford them room to experiment for many albums to come.

Find Gringo Star on Facebook, and watch the music video for “Find A Love,” off Floating Out To See, here:

ALBUM REVIEW: “Face The Sun”

The three members of The Entrance Band—frontman Guy Blakeslee, Paz Lenchantin on bass and drummer Derek James–have expressed displeasure with the stoner rock classification often used to describe their music, and indeed, the November 2013 LP Face The Sun is too tricky to fall into one just one category: channeling elements of psychedelic trance, trippy garage rock, the grungier end of metal and a touch of rockabilly, the new record melds various eras and evocations in service to the ideas it expresses. Themes run expansive on Face The Sun; lyrics like “Blood, sweat, sugar and spice, light and dark, fire and ice/shedding tears of sacrifice at the gates of paradise” set up the collection as an exploration of extremes and a journey from one end of the spectrum to another.

Face The Sun isn’t a straight shot from darkness to light, though, nor is it a story of transformation exactly. The music’s intensity focuses more closely on playing with the tensions between those extremes, with noodling vocal lines that shift from major to minor mode or float heroically over distorted, spellbinding instrumentals. If there’s a redemption story here, it’s an incomplete and messy one.

The reaper does come calling on this album, without a doubt. “Spider,” the best and most diabolically infectious track on Face The Sun, contains all the sunburnt misery and grim determination of Alice In Chains’ early nineties track, “Rooster.” Frontloaded in “Medicine,” “Spider” and “The Crave” (tracks two, three and four), the rhyme-driven narrative focus creates an angst that’s catchy and extremely compelling. In “The Cave”, the line “When I’m in my grave, no more good times will I crave” quotes verbatim Elizabeth Cotten’s early twentieth-century standard “Freight Train.” The recollection, itself embroiled in hard times and an escape from darkness, tinges Entrance with weighty folk, recalling Blakeslee’s past lives as a hard rock and blues musician.

The end of the LP, like its beginnings with “Fine Flow”, conjures spacey, surreal ambiance. But whereas the first track opens urgently, the final song, “Night Cat,” evokes a sleepy moodiness. The band forgoes straight trajectory in favor of a non-linear album-long line that weaves between extremes of light and darkness, and the downside to this complexity comes when, at the end, “Night Cat” shows little progression beyond “Fine Flow,” and a marked decline in momentum. Both tracks trend psychedelic and repetitive, and both could stand to be much shorter. The meat of the album lies in the middle, where each track features a traversal of big themes and big evolution unto itself. The first and last track of the album feel redundant by comparison, bookending an already complete project with a beginning and ending.

Listen to “Fire Eyes,” off Face The Sun Here, via Soundcloud:

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ALBUM REVIEW: “Surrender To The Fantasy”

Magik Markers’ career began with an impressively long and prolific streak, with almost forty releases since their 2002 debut Beep Beep. February 2010’s Volodor Dance, though, was followed up by nearly four years of (no pun intended) radio silence. The band’s lyrics, album titles, and even the name Magik Markers evoke a fun, whimsical refusal to grow up (to say nothing of founding member Leah Quimby’s decision to leave the band and pursue a career in ventriloquism in 2006) but it appears that the break in Magik Markers recording stretch came about partially due to an onslaught of adult realities. The band’s three members scattered, geographically speaking, and members Pete Nolan and John Shaw had children.

In spite of, or more likely because of, the changes that the band has undergone (since their last release), the November 2013 album, Surrender To The Fantasy, is a lavish love letter to the teenage rock and roll dream. Liberated, context-less noise rock, thoroughly distorted and by turns joyous and disillusioned, Surrender sounds like it’s being performed underground, which in fact it was. Much of the recording took place in the basement of guitarist Elisa Ambrogio’s father’s house, returning the band to to the hard, unadorned sound of its earliest efforts. There’s a vulnerability to that unadornedness, courtesy of Ambrogio’s sweetly dissonant voice, which transports standout tracks like “Bonfire” and “Mirrorless” back in time to seventies-era rock recordings.

I wouldn’t call Surrender a nostalgic album, more of an attempt to get back to basics. Tracks that would otherwise be straight noise rock are informed by a droning, generous pace—almost every song breaks the five minute mark—but do away with the flinching self-reflection that often comes along with the introspection and spaciness applied to this record. The last track, “WT” (standing for “White Trash,” presumably) features refreshingly snotty vocals over clanging guitar riffs that aren’t afraid to be ugly, and that zero-fucks-given attitude serves the band well over the course of the album.

Surrender To The Fantasy comes out tomorrow on Drag City in the form of an (imitation) SOLID GOLD USB DRIVE! In the meantime, watch the video for “Mirrorless” here, via Youtube:

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ALBUM REVIEW: Jon Hopkins – Immunity

A protégé of Brian Eno is sure to be a success. Therefore, Jon Hopkins was. With multiple Mercury Prize nominations and many headlining artists knocking at his door, Hopkins has always been an innovator of looping ambient beats and, experimental conflicting sounds. Produced in under a year, Immunity showcases Hopkins’ true talent for providing a story, this one said to have been modeled after a night out. Subtle vibes of Trainspotting are sure to be sensed.

Immunity could be likened to Eno’s Small Craft On A Milk Sea (which he also helped co-produce) with its shimmering and clashing electronic beats and atmospheric vibrations. It’s an eight-track trip through Hopkins’ stewing mind. Immunity is a far cry from 2010’s Monsters, which is more like a movie score (something he is very much acquainted with). This album overall has an erratic and vibe, kind of like a journey to find oneself, but not as lame. Because I have a weird penchant for timing in music and I notice these shenanigans right away, the time signature seems off through 97% of the album but it somehow works with the concept. Mismatched rhythms are an unchanging theme, especially prevalent on “Open Eye Signal,” a jagged sounding pill of a track akin to a comedown from drugs. “Collider” reminds me of those songs you put on in the background to do things you couldn’t do without a repetitive flow, like studying or writing an album review (ahem). Most of the songs seem to stay steady and build up without a release, like a melodious tease, whose beauty one doesn’t mind being immersed in for a while.

Halfway through, the album makes a 180 with “Abandon Window.” A sporadic piano composition begins, surely conceived near a rain-streaked window in the afternoon, contemplating life’s faults and setbacks. That same undertone continues into the next track, “Form By Firelight,” which provides more of a beat and thus feels more tangible. The sweeping, nearly 10-minute-long closing title track wraps everything together with a tidy, piano-driven bow and makes you wonder how Eternal Sunshine For The Spotless Mind was made without it.

Jon Hopkins is a creator, that’s for sure. He can collaborate with the best of them (Coldplay, Eno, Imogen Heap to name a few) and turn out his own highly accredited albums. Immunity is surely a presentation of what’s on the horizon for Hopkins.

Hopkins is embarking on a world tour and making a stop in Manhattan at the Santos Party House on November 16th. Until then, catch the video for his single, “Open Eye”, here via Youtube.

ALBUM REVIEW: Mutual Benefit “Love’s Crushing Diamond”

In reading the title Love’s Crushing Diamond, one might expect to hear an album full of screeching metalheads lamenting their mistakes in love. Mutual Benefit’s release is quite the opposite. It is flowy and ethereal and light-as-air and takes the listener on a journey alongside singer Jordan Lee as he sweetly explains his views on life and love.

From the opening track, Lee sets the tone of what to expect: “Strong River” is introduced with the sound of chimes blown together by the wind as the music wanes in and out with various string and woodwind instruments. Lee doesn’t sing until near the end, and when he does, it’s in a calming and soft — albeit a bit shaky — voice. That shakiness only adds to the charm of Lee’s well composed pieces. Lee has admitted to have created some of his earlier music during times when he was under the influence of psychedelics; and while this album has a psychedelic touch to it, it’s equally polished and exemplifies Lee’s professionalism and positive spirit that has evolved since he began making music.

Lee’s lyrics compliment the comforting sound of the instruments. They are overwhelmingly positive, which is pretty rare to come across when delivered in such a soft manner. In “Golden Wake,” he croons, “We weren’t made to be this way/ we weren’t made to be afraid,” after talking about quitting his job and the way his mind wanders. He then sings of his head and heart joining together to destroy the hold time has on him. Later, in “Let’s Play/ Statue of a Man,” he sings, “There’s always love, even when you think there’s none to give.” Comforting and motivational.

Album standout “Advanced Falconry” consists of the same flowy style as other tracks, but seems to offer a little bit more than the rest, with grand, swelling violins opening the track and plucky banjo and percussion providing support. He sings about a girl who seems to be out of his reach, but he doesn’t mind. He’s content to simply listen to her talk, although he can’t make out what she’s saying.

Many of the tracks feature a female vocalist joining Lee for sweet harmonies. On “The Light That’s Blinding,” they are also accompanied by piano, the addition of which contributes a distinct melody that gives it a different feel overall, while maintaining the calming style prominent on other tracks. Almost every song begins with an instrumental section, which makes for a nice introduction, keeping the flow and providing continuity from track to track, as if no more or no fewer songs are needed.

Closing track, “Strong Swimmer” channels the ocean and waxes metaphorical about overcoming rough waves. Lee previously dedicated a six-track album to the sea, but this song still sounds fresh and admiring of the powerful natural element.

Lee wants to celebrate the mystery and joy that is life, and does it well through this collection of calm, yet upbeat tracks. In a time when synth-heavy music seems to prevail and abound, it is a nice break to hear Lee’s multi-instrumental styling.

Listen to Mutual Benefit’s “Let’s Play/Statue Of A Man” here, via Soundcloud:

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ALBUM REVIEW: Arcade Fire “Reflektor”

Despite conspicuously broadening the instrumental range of their albums and going through a battalion of members since the outset of its career, Arcade Fire has retained many of the themes that defined Funeral, the band’s first album, just over nine years ago. Reflektor–which came out on October 29th, 2013–features churning, string-heavy verses that build up to high-energy choruses, overachieving lyrical themes, and a general sense of bleakness juxtaposed with lush, orchestral instrumentation–all hallmarks of Arcade Fire’s previous work. In addition to this, though, Reflektor dials the role of electronic instruments way up on this album and brings the drum beat further into the foreground, creating a kind of driving pulse to back nearly every track.

Die-hard Arcade Fire traditionalists, fear not. All changes work in service to the band’s sound. By trading out some of their former graininess in favor of strong, eighties-inspired beats on tracks like “We Exist,” Arcade Fire heightens the drama behind devastating, cyclical chants–“You’re down on your knees, begging us please, praying we don’t exist/But we exist. We exist. We exist”–and adds an epic, mythical quality to the anxiety that’s always been behind the group’s songs. Arcade Fire seems to have achieved, with this album, a more expansive take on instrumentation, and they’re operating with every tool they’ve got.

Canadian husband-and-wife duo Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the two founding members of Arcade Fire still in the band, continue to sing duet on many of the tracks of this album. Their call-and-response style provides a familiarity that’s even more satisfying after listening to the farther-out passages of Reflektor. David Bowie–who also put out a new album in 2013– lightly graces the album’s title track with his vocal stylings, amping up the album’s grandness. The theatrics aren’t disconcerting; they feel like the logical result of Arcade Fire’s career up to this point.

Does the album feel, at any point, over-doctored? Well, with any band that’s seen this many members, there’s a case for the too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen argument. Many styles appear on this album, interweave, stop on a dime and melt into each other. There’s a lot going on here. But all ends of the spectrum are fully explored, every idea gets sussed out and masterfully articulated. The hypnotic final track, “Supersymmetry,” lives up to its name with an elegant and ambient chorus of strings and electronic instruments, perfectly balanced and weaving benevolently around each other. The last artist I can think of to put forth this kind of ambition in a record, and to pull together so many disparate styles and negotiate them into harmony with each other, is Kanye West on his 2013 album Yeezus.

There’s an example of the kind of balance I mean right at the beginning of “Here Comes The Night Time,” the first thirty seconds of which alone are worth the price of the album. The song begins with the ambient sounds of people talking, maybe somebody kind of half-heartedly playing a drum beat far away. Then, the real drum beat kicks in, and the track immediately jumps from kind of a lazy ambivalence into frenetic, siren-wailing, powerhouse rock and roll. Then, not fifteen seconds later, everything kind of slows and backslides into a sultry, bass-heavy rhythm that takes us into the first verse. It’s one of the many airtight phrases on Reflektor, flawlessly coordinated and immediately engaging.

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EP REVIEW: Headcage by Matthew Dear (Ghostly)

I remember the first time I heard the Matt Dear track “Tide”. I was driving aroundDetroit with my sister. It was the dead heat of summer. We were trying to find the Masonic Temple to attendwhat was rumored to be an amazing dance party thrown by a little known recordlabel out of Ann Arbor that was, and still is, near and dear to us both.

As we circled ’round and ’round the Cass Corridortrying to find parking and hoping not to miss anyone’s set, she (this sister of whom I speak) put “Tide” on,and asked me if I had heard it yet. At the time, Matt Dear—one of said label’s co-creatorsand first signatories—was still just some enigmatic DJ who composed exclusivelytechno; so I was surprised to suddenly hear his deep, now distinctive singing voice emerge from the noise. Andalthough I didn’t think too much of it (the singing thing, that is) I secretly hoped it wasn’t some weirdgimmick, because I could imagine him parlaying this particular genre-hybrid he had created, into something quite extraordinary. It was 2004then. In 2011 Black City came out andblew everyone’s mind, and to me, was the culmination of something seminal aboutthat particular summer.

During the three or so times last year that I saw him and hisband (handsome and dramatically impeccablein their three piece suits) perform Black City—with trumpet player and all—I felt that same little kernel of anxiety that I rememberfrom the summer of 2004: that this amazing music might go away, like avanishing mythological creature. I felt like I shouldn’t get too attached, for fear that it may turn out to be just another fleeting iteration of one of his manyaliases.

**Listen to “Tide” Here, because apparently I’m not sophisticated enough to copy and paste code from Soundcloud.**

Anyway, you can imagine my sigh of relief upon learning that the band version of Matt Dear,Matthew Dear, would be putting out an EP in the New Year. And Headcage is pretty awesome indeed. In fourtracks it both assuages the fear I spoke of, that he’ll cease to make the songs that I love the most–those that simultaneously propel the listener into new frontiers of artsy electronic, and take him or her back to some unnameable era of dance music–and suggests to me what the next phase of his polymathic (no, I don’t really know if that’s a real adjective) career might entail .

The first track, “Headcage” is an immediate nod to the highlights of Black City (namely “Shortwave” and “You Put A Smell On Me”, I think). It combines entrancing beats and heavy, nostalgia-inspiring synthetic melodies with insightful lyrics that juxtapose Matt’s laconic persona. “Around The Fountain” and “Street Song”, are a bit slower and more psychedelic, but pack a punch for their marked lack of traditional “techno” indicators. For example, “Street Song”, is underpinned by what can best be described as a barely perceptible, irregular sounding heartbeat.

“In The Middle (I Met You There)”, is the wild card of this EP. It starts off sounding like a hip hop jam, with a line from the chorus looping over a funky beat. The melody slowly emerges from a distant synth without the listener even knowing it. Then, Johnny Pierce (from the Drums) starts to croon what has become an addictive opening verse, building up to the refrain, during which all the background music stops. Then the chorus hits, with Matt Dear’s baritone voice entering dramatically, singing along with Pierce, only an octave lower. It’s at this point we find out that “In The Middle” is actually a love song (“The waves will keep on crashing in/sometimes we lose sometimes we win/you saved me from myself again/baby I don’t know how this will end”). This lyric repeats for a minute or so before the whole thing descends into instrumental chaos. It’s both familiar and surprising, and it’s the moment of Headcage that hooks me, in typical Matt Dear fashion, leaving me yearning for more. Good thing the full length album will be out next year.

At a Matt Dear show, right before we lit a fire in a bad location

Tag: album review