On their first full length release, Great Vengeance And Furious Fire, The Heavy proved to me that Prince-inspired neo-soul could be listened to without a sense of irony and without worrying about any undue effect on my testosterone levels. Tracks like “Coleen”, “That Kind of Man”, and “In The Morning” were capable of getting even this most jaded of listeners to jump to his feet and find his inner groove thing. It wasn’t pretty, but it was pretty righteous.
I’m probably the last person one would expect to review a record by Brand New, an act whose over-wrought screamo underpinnings violate my tastes in music at their most fundamental level. Worse than that is specific my frustration with frontman Jesse Lacey, a musician who I feel is immensely talented but has continued to stay in a very defined corner throughout his recording career. When discussing Brand New with friends of mine who are fans, my number one objection is always that the music just isn’t adventurous enough and that the band is playing it safe.
While not a KID A-style left turn for the band, Daisy indicates divergence for Brand New’s sound. It is a difficult listen, one eschews its emo heritage (for the most part) and embraces subtle layering, a more mature outlook, indie rock and even a bit roots music nostalgia. Throughout I heard touches of Isaac Brock, the Dillinger Escape Plan, and even the YYY’s Nick Zinner; all of which caused a great deal of consternation for the band’s usual audience I’m sure. But as I don’t count myself amongst that group, I found every tempo shift, unexpected stylistic departure, and discordant flourish to be surprising and engaging, particularly on the two tracks that book end the album, “Vices” and “Noro.”
Unfortunately the great leap forward made by some of the song writing makes the inadequate lapses back into the band’s more standard format disappointing. The middle of the album really suffers because of it, transitioning from the slow, palm-muted mediocrity of track “You Stole” in such close proximity to the bizarre and adventurous swamp-stomp of track ”Be Gone” that it almost feels like a mistake. The peaks and valleys only continue on from there.
Lacey has gone on record as saying that he feels that Daisy represents the band at a crossroads, and that he wasn’t sure if the band could continue on in its current form. I can certainly hear what he’s saying, as the stylistic tug of war going on throughout the album is very jarring. Whatever his feelings on the matter, and while I’m sure that the album left most the band’s audience feeling luke warm, I can say for sure that I want more of the new Brand New that Daisy displayed and less of the old.
Some American RECOMMENDS about 2/3 of Brand New - Daisy
In the summer of 2008, Tom Waits embarked on a U.S tour. Given his sporadic touring schedule, I was understandably intrigued. However, given that the aim of the tour was apparently to avoid anything resembling a coast (with the exception of a brief foray into California), the closest date to me was in Cleveland, a solid 7-8 hour drive away. A friend of mine ardently insisted that we gather a group together for a road trip and buy tickets, long distances and hellacious drives through flat middle America be damned. For reasons that escape me now, I insisted that I couldn’t afford such a trip. Looking back, I can’t remember exactly what it was that I used that money for instead. It was doubtless wasted, at least in comparison to the good use that could have been made of it had I actually gotten my act together and made it to the show. As Glitter and Doom Live, his latest release compiled of performances taken from this tour, makes abundantly clear, when Tom Waits decides to go on the road, you get yourself to Cleveland.
Adulation of Tom Waits has been well-documented on this site on more than one occasion, so I won’t go on at length about his undeniably singular oeuvre. Let’s just say that I, like most if not all of the Some American writers, dig his work. I dig it considerably.
One of the more compelling reasons to go to a Waits show (of which there are many) is to see how he chooses to reinterpret, mangle and twist his songs; he has a knack for bending songs over backwards while still retaining their original thrust. On “Goin’ Out West”, one of many cuts culled from his near-20 year output for current home Anti- Records, he sounds less like a wild man burning through the desert at top speed (as on Bone Machine’s original version) and more like a suave drifter rolling through town in a monstrous Cadillac convertible. As well as swapping the original’s ragged howl for a low, raspy croon, Waits hams it up by adding an extra repetition of the lyric “I look good without a shirt” that sounds squeezed through the cheesiest of grins. “Such A Scream”, another tune pulled from Bone Machine, shows touring guitarist Omar Torres playing like he’s in the middle of a mid-70s James Brown funk workout. The rest of the band sticks to the original version’s ramshackle clatter-and-holler aesthetic, and for reasons beyond me the combination doesn’t suck.
“Such A Scream” also shows one of Waits’ greatest strengths as a touring musician: his ability to pick a backing band. His son Casey Waits’ off-kilter drumming on “Scream” doesn’t have a hint of a straightforward backbeat. Instead, Waits the younger leans on rolls, fills, and seemingly random hits dropped wherever in the bar he damn well pleases. I’m not sure what would be more impressive: having these parts meticulously laid-out in advance, or coming up with them on the spot without losing the plot entirely. Clearly there’s a gene marker for this sort of thing.
Another strength of Waits’ touring operation is his sound engineers. Since I missed out on the Glitter & Doom tour, I can’t attest to the quality of the sound at the shows, but what’s presented here is immaculately recorded; the most subtle hisses from the corner of Waits’ mouth are as prominent as the sound of his son’s cymbal hits clattering off the back wall of the venue. Even the crowds at these shows were well-mic’d: when they join in during the bridge of “Trampled Rose”, it sounds less like handclaps than boughs cracking, and nearly overwhelms Casey Waits’ snare hits. What’s particularly remarkable about the sound of the record is its cohesion; despite the fact that the album pulls from over a dozen performances on the U.S. and European legs of the tour, the songs sound like they could all be part of one set. That is, they could be were it not for the glaring lack of crowd banter. As those who have heard Waits’ previous live offerings or have been to any of his shows can attest, his non sequiturs and interactions with the audience are an essential part of the show. It’s puzzling, then, that on Glitter & Doom, none of this is included in the main set. Instead, we get “Tom Tales”, a 30-plus minute collage of snippets taken from various shows. Its rambling stories of uncharitable shellfish and ill-conceived ebay excursions are indeed classic Waits fare, but when presented in this format they begin to feel tiresome well before the halfway mark. As entertaining as his seemingly random comments may be, they fare better when used as interstitials in between songs.
I’ve read some other reviews of this album describing it as a crowd-pleaser for Waits fans, but ultimately unlikely to bring in any newcomers; if you didn’t like Waits before, you probably won’t like him now. I disagree completely - this may be my inner Waits fanboy talking, but if Glitter & Doom doesn’t convince you in the slightest of Waits’ staggering prowess, then perhaps, friendo, something is wrong with you.
Some American RECOMMENDS Tom Wait’s Glitter & Doom Live
That this band came into my consciousness because of the New Moon soundtrack and I bothered to take the time to listen to them is pretty remarkable. I was dead set against all things relating to that particular property, after all. Spent a lot of time on the podcast saying as much. In spite of my vitriol, the quality of the collection eventually got through to me. I even wound up paying for it. As a result, any band I had never heard who was a part of it managed to slip past my hastily erected, hateful barriers as well, which led me to my interest in Hurricane Bells, a side project of guitarist/gun for hire Steve Schiltz.
“Monsters”, the song recorded exclusively for the New Moon compilation that grabbed my attention, is an old school rock romp heard through a badass, bitcrusher filter. The hugely compressed nature of the recording makes what would be a pretty stock song dynamic and interesting, and catchy as all hell. It also perfectly encapsulates Schiltz’ ability to be both upbeat and depressing at the same time.
This dichotomy is on full display throughout his earlier full length effort, a half hour of dreamy, melancholy music that actually manages to soothe the soul just a little by the time it’s done because the sadness on display is never so overwrought as to be offensive. Much of the lyrical focus is on vaguely personal recent history, with feelings of loss and a lack of direction taking a center stage, but in a way that implies a sense of acceptance. Life can be difficult and a little confusing, but that seems to be just fine with Steve and he wants you to feel that way too.
Sonically Tonight Is The Ghost artfully borrows elements of My Morning Jacket, Death Cab For Cutie, and M. Ward into something not entirely new but not wholly derivative either. It is very divergent sounding from “Monster”, with most tracks taking a longer, more meandering course to their conclusion, and possessing a downbeat feel. Densely layered drums (which may in fact be sampled in some cases), slide guitars, and reverb drenched synth parts, all played by Schiltz himself, also contribute to how relaxing the whole experience is. Ghost is an almost ideal soundtrack to a late summer’s evening spent on a porch, alone of course.
If you’re the type to get nostalgic, or dare I say wistful, over the long gone end of summer, then Hurricane Bells first effort could be the exact record to fix you up and leave you feeling a ok. After all, there are always warmer days ahead. Hopefully there will be another Bells album as well.
Some American RECOMMENDS Hurricane Bells - Tonight Is The Ghost
Brode Dalle is to Joan Jett what Mark Lanegan is to Tom Waits (what J-Devil may be to Mick Jagger, what that dude from the Darkness is to Diamond Dave, etc.), that is to say she is as close as it comes to a contemporary re-embodiment of a singular original. Her work with the Distillers was hypnotizing because as a front woman she was brazen and ballsier than basically every contemporary she had at the time, circumventing the conventions of what is perhaps the most quintessentially male genre in popular music.
In other words, her restraint is not what got her noticed.
I am surprised, then, to find that on the vast majority of her first outing with new act Spinnerette, Brody has elected to show us a softer, restrained side. The signature full throttle howl has largely been replaced with more delicate (and admittedly lovely) intonations, and the battering ram guitars have been traded for touches of synth and furtive leads. There are no three-chord punk heroics to be found, and the flashes of brilliance peppered throughout defy that expectation, with tracks like the eerie, barn burning “Impaler” and “Cupid” demonstrating an experimental flare that held my rapt attention for repeated listens. Ditto with the 8 + minute album closer “A Prescription For Mankind”, which is pure stoner-metal theatrics (QOTSA fans should take note… I did). However, while all of this adds up to a great collection of material, with arrangements and instrumentation that owe a lot to the tried and true combination of bombastic low end and Alain Johannes, the album never quite got around to brutalizing me in the way that I was hoping for.
As a final aside, I do have to pick one bone with this record, and it concerns the fact that both “Valium Knights” and “Bury My Heart” are nowhere to be found. Why? Why leave two of your BEST songs, which you previewed in the lengthy run up to release day, off of your full length debut? Era Vulgaris syndrome must be catching, I guess.
Spinnerette took a long time to give us this record, and for the most part the waiting seems to have paid off, in spite of the fact that it takes its intended audience in a vastly different direction than expected. And yes, you can count me amongst the belly-aching masses, someone who is confounded by the unexpected change of pace. But then again, given her history, maybe that is exactly what Ms. Dalle is going for.
Some American RECOMMENDS Spinnerette - Self-Titled (and the Ghetto Love EP too).
Anytime a Western artist embraces a style of music of an origin that is decidedly foreign to them, eyebrows raise. Although genre-bending is arguably more commonplace now than it was in the days when George Harrison confounded his mainstream audience by hanging out with Ravi Shankar and fiddling about with a sitar, there is still a certain stigma attached to artists who dip their toes into “exotic” musical waters. Many assume, often rightly so, that such efforts to incorporate the traditional forms of music of other cultures into a pop musician’s oeuvre amount to nothing more than cultural tourism. In choosing to draw heavily from traditional Pakistani music in her latest release under the Taken By Trees moniker, East of Eden, Victoria Bergsman is fighting an uphill battle from the start.
Having made the record in Pakistan with local musicians, Bergsman can hardly be faulted for going about this album half-heartedly. If her goal was to combine traditional Pakistani music with the understated, subdued folk-pop she plied on her 2007 debut Open Field, then she was certainly successful. The local players she enlisted for the session seem not just competent at playing their nation’s traditional style, but exceedingly proficient, particularly in the rolling hand percussion on “Day By Day”, one of the better songs here. The problem with East of Eden, then, lies not in a disingenuous approach to adopting this “foreign” music, but in Bergsman’s performance. While her reserved, quiet vocal style works (to varying degrees of success) within the confines of what could be considered her style up until this album, it falls flat when presented in this new context. “Wapas Karna”, a track in the second half of the album, features a female Pakistani singer, and no discernible contribution from Bergsman. Admittedly, she may have played some instrument on the song or controlled the song’s development, but the piece sounds so decidedly Pakistani that she may as well have contributed nothing. The vocals on “Wapas Karna” recall traditional Pakistani singing (think warbling… lots and lots of warbling), and have an impassioned, almost strained quality to them; this singer sounds like she is pushing herself. While I don’t like “Wapas Karna” and wonder why it was included at all – if Bergsman has no discernible presence, what makes it a Taken By Trees song? – the vocal performance here stands in stark contrast to Bergsman’s style. As I said earlier, whenever a Western pop musician begins to play around with music from cultures drastically different from their own (especially when they do so over the course of an entire album), their sincerity is called into question – what reason do we have to believe that this is not just some fleeting infatuation with some branch of world music? In a style of music that traditionally relies on energetic vocal performances, Bergsman’s sullen delivery and limited range make her sound completely removed from the proceedings; while I admit that she was, in all likelihood, thoroughly personally invested in this album, she sounds like she simply doesn’t give a fuck.
Globetrotting recording process aside, what will no doubt garner East Of Eden the most attention in the media is Bergsman’s inclusion of a slight revision of Animal Collective’s “My Girls”, here renamed “My Boys”. While it is a rather charming version of one of the best songs released so far this year, it is dragged down, like the rest of the album, by Bergsman’s vocal performance. Part of what makes “My Girls” so good is the unabashed exuberance of the vocals, and Bergsman completely fails to capture that, once again singing in her unwavering mumble. Ultimately, “My Boys” suffers from the same problem that plagues the album as a whole: with East Of Eden, Bergsman has taken a variety of rather interesting musical ideas and styles and used them to create something that is ultimately quite boring.
Some American DOES NOT RECOMMEND Taken By Trees’ East Of Eden.
Oh, if only this EP had come out at the beginning of the summer, rather than during its dying gasps. It certainly would have been a welcome addition to a season that witnessed the never-ending onslaught of The Black Eyed Peas. I hear they reinvented the album, or something. Under the Washed Out moniker, South Carolina’s Ernest Greene crafts dense, hazy electropop that evokes muggy summer nights in the same way that Kyuss evokes the arid climes of the southwest. Greene avoids sounding like cliché summer beach music, however, by drenching his analogue synths with layers of reverb and fuzzed-out bass lines. This is not music you listen to while lounging on a deck chair, but rather while driving home after the sun has gone down.
While most of the songs on Life of Leisure coast along on a similar laid back groove, “Hold Out” is the one exception that could pass for club-ready dance music, and also features what is possibly Greene’s strongest vocal performance, stacking tight vocal harmonies underneath the pounding bass and cascading keyboards. Greene’s vocals throughout manage to sound hazy and distant, but without the sense of detachment that plagues many of his peers. Although his vocal performances do sound rather similar from one song to the next, it comes across not so much as a lack of imagination than as a conscious decision to not fix what isn’t broken.
The overall tone and mood of the songs remain consistent throughout the EP, and would have made for a thoroughly coherent and well-sequenced piece, if not for one glaring fault. A few of the tracks here end far too abruptly, sounding as through Greene simply chopped off the last few seconds of each song. A jarring enough sensation in and of itself, it sticks out like a sore thumb in a collection of songs that would have benefited hugely from sequencing that melted one track into the next. To be fair, Greene did record the entirety of Life of Leisure in a bedroom in his parents’ house, so the odd blemish is to be expected, and doesn’t prevent it from being the blissed-out gem that it is.
Some American RECOMMENDS Washed Out’s Life of Leisure EP
Life of Leisure is available as a digital download now and on 12” vinyl (only 1000 pressed) from early October at Mexican Summer
Modest Mouse’s latest release, the No One’s First And You’re Next EP, puzzles me. I don’t mean it’s a particularly strange record that challenges any of my musical sensibilities or preconceptions or anything like that. In fact, the EP is by and large a rather pleasant, undemanding affair: most of its songs gently roll along at a mid-tempo, devoid of any jarring sudden changes. What I don’t understand about this release is precisely who it’s intended for. Consisting of eight previously released B-sides from the band’s two previous albums, Good News For People Who Love Bad Newsand We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, it surely can’t be intended for die-hard Modest Mouse completists; they will already have heard these songs. I’m not entirely sure how well the EP will go over with more mainstream audiences, either. As I said before, the majority of the material here is rather easy on the ears, bouncing innocuously from one track to the next. However, that’s precisely where the EP’s greatest weakness lies. These songs, with some exception, sound exactly like what they are: B-sides. None of the songs here are so radically different from everything on the band’s two previous releases that they couldn’t have been included therein. For the most part, they simply sound like they got left on the cutting room floor, and for good reason.
The EP isn’t completely without its charms, though. You’ve doubtless already heard of “King Rat” for its Heath Ledger-directed video, and the song itself is a dark, stomping affair that strikes a perfect balance between protracted swells and sudden crashes. The strengths of “King Rat” are what actually serve to highlight the weaknesses of the rest of the EP. While the verses in “King Rat” have a similar mid-tempo, nonchalant feel to “Satellite Skin” or “History Sticks To Your Feet”, “King Rat” succeeds where they fail by building momentum and actually going somewhere – it’s the transitions between the horn- and banjo-heavy verses and the brooding, snarling chorus built around Isaac Brock’s repeated refrains of “Deep water, deep water” that lend the song its sense of urgency. “The Whale Song” is the other standout here, with a chorus built around a line that showcases Brock’s knack for hinting at feelings of paranoia and self-doubt:
“I know I was a scout I should have found a way out
So everyone could find a way out”
Surrounding the chorus are two long instrumental passages that recall both the crashing waves of “Ocean Breathes Salty” and the dark isolation of that runs throughoutThe Moon and Antarctica. I don’t think I’m being overly effusive when I say that either of these two songs hold up against some of the best numbers on the band’s previous two albums (and stand head and shoulders above some of the weaker ones, I’m looking in your general direction “Missed The Boat”…). However, outstanding though they may be, they don’t make up for the faults of the rest of the EP. While none of the songs here are particularly bad, most of them aren’t particularly good either. Since everything here has already been released in some form or another, one can’t help but wonder whether No One’s First And You’re Nextis just an attempt by Modest Mouse’s label to generate some cash while the band works on its next proper release. Puzzling, indeed.
Some American DOES NOT RECOMMEND Modest Mouse’s No One’s First And You’re Next EP
If Wind’s Poem is anything to go by, Phil Elverum is a sponge. A goddamn musicalsponge. The creative force behind Mount Eerie, Elverum has claimed that he has, of late, been heavily influenced by black metal acts such as Xasthur. The onslaught of opening track “Wind’s Dark Poem” supports this claim instantly with its dense squall of pummeling guitars bathed in layers of distortion. Although the first few bars sound alarmingly like they were written by some funeral makeup-wearing gentlemen from the icy expanses of Scandinavia, once Elverum’s voice creeps in it becomes clear that that’s not quite the case. Rather than an incomprehensible guttural roar, Elverum sings with a slight, vulnerable voice that sounds as though, regardless of the fact that it is surrounded by thunderous guitars and crashing drums, it could be knocked over by a gentle breeze. His voice is one of the few constants throughout the album, never deviating from the quiet, humble tone established in the opening track. This lack of change never feels tedious, however, since everything around Elverum’s voice is constantly in flux, shifting moods, tones and genres between songs (and sometimes within them). Although he cites black metal as a primary influence, it’s clear that Elverum draws from whatever genres he sees fit. Although the dense, crashing sounds of “Wind’s Dark Poem” pop up throughout the album on tracks like “The Hidden Stone” and “The Mouth of Sky”, he frequently veers wildly away. At times, he sounds like The Flaming Lips, in the delayed piano and reverberated guitars of “Ancient Questions”, and at other times he sounds like Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits, with the chicken-scratch guitars and vibraphones of “Between Two Mysteries”, possibly the album’s best song.
Elverum has described the sound of his latest release as “black wooden”, which seems to encapsulate both the direct influence that black metal has had on his own sound and the tone of his work in general: he writes dark, haunting songs that rely on (at times excessively) heavy evocation of natural imagery. Wind’s Poem frequently reminded me of Grouper’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. If Liz Harris were a) male and b) willing to explore the furthest extremes of both the delicate and harsh aspects of her music, then her next album might sound a whole hell of a lot like Wind’s Poem. It is Elverum’s willingness to explore and stretch his sound in different directions, however, that often births the album’s weakest points. All of the heavier songs on the album sound infuriatingly similar, relying on the same wall of noise guitars and endless cymbal crashing, and the left-field sonic experiments of “(something)” are self-indulgent, meandering, and worst of all, pointless. Although it may be inconsistent in terms of quality, Wind’s Poem does manage to evoke a continuous sense of melancholy and expansiveness: the whole album feels like a soundtrack to sitting on a mountainside at dawn and feeling gloomy. While it is most certainly a complete downer (oh GOD would I love to see someone put this album on at a party), it is so thoroughly evocative and persistent in its emotional themes that it’s almost a pleasure to sit back and let the gloom and doom set in.
Some American RECOMMENDS Mount Eerie’s Wind’s Poem
So, Radiohead have gone and done it again. Much like they did with In Rainbows in 2008, they’ve managed to sneak up on the world with some new music. Either they have somehow managed to prevent the early leaks that plague virtually every major release today, or they have begun putting material out within days of its completion. I’m going with the latter. Unlike the fall of 2008, though, this time around we’re greeted not with an entire album’s worth of (stunning) new material, but two songs (singles? Who’s even counting anymore) released in the same week, “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” and “These Are My Twisted Words”. Given Radiohead’s unorthodox means of releasing music (i.e. trickling new material out on a song-by-song basis), this will be a somewhat unorthodox considered opinion. But enough of my rambling –the songs:
Thom Yorke was allegedly inspired to write “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” upon hearing a BBC interview with the titular veteran, who, up until his recent death, was the oldest living World War One survivor. The song’s lyrics are all either directly taken from or inspired by this interview, and it’s no surprise that Yorke felt moved to put Patch’s story to song. The interview, which can be heard here, is a haunting insight into the experiences and memories of a man who refused to speak of the war (even to his wife) for 80 years. Working around Patch’s experiences should have been a walk in the park for Yorke, always one for a spot of doom n’ gloom. It’s genuinely puzzling, then, that “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” feels so flat. Consisting solely of strings arranged by Johnny Greenwood and Thom Yorke’s yearning warble, it doesn’t even come close to evoking the haunting sensation of listening to Patch himself. Yorke’s vocals sound as though they were shoe-horned to fit around Greenwood’s string arrangement, which sounds like a mixture of a poor man’s Sigur Rós and schmaltzy film scores.
Following quickly on its heels, “These Are My Twisted Words” makes the shortcomings of “Harry Patch” even more evident. Built around a shuffling beat that recalls some of the more driving numbers on In Rainbows and arpeggiated guitars that sound simultaneously fragile and menacing, “Twisted Words” takes its time to warm up, with an instrumental intro lasting until the 2:30 mark. Once they finally do arrive, the vocals are sparse and distant, with Yorke stranded in a distant tunnel of reverb. Though the lyrics are far more oblique and vague than those in “Harry Patch”, Yorke’s repeated chorus of “When are you coming back? I just can’t handle it” sounds far more desperate and urgent than his direct use of Patch’s words.
Ultimately, while “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” is a compelling idea on paper, and makes for a half-decent eulogy, the execution falls considerably short of its potential. And, while “These Are My Twisted Words” is by no means a great song (and one that certainly doesn’t measure up to some of In Rainbows’ highlights), its lonely pleas and tense guitars shine in comparison.
Some American DOES NOT RECOMMEND Radiohead’s “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)”
Some American does, however, RECOMMEND Radiohead’s “These Are My Twisted Words”
