Nothing makes me happier than a purchase out of the blue that turns out to be a highlight of the year. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is a transplanted Oregonian–and a current Brooklynite–who has completely blown my mind. None of the comparisons I am apt to make do him justice–Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Walkmen come to mind, but great as those bands are I don’t sense in them the purity of inspiration that I get from Robinson. He’s like a Bob Dylan who rocks. I’m not going to say any more, or I’ll sound like a fool, but suffice it to say I’m excited as hell about this guy. Just listen up.
Woodfriend.mp3
By any rights Sarah Jaffe will soon be famous. She’s too good to continue as an opening act for tours through Dallas. That’s not all she does, of course, but it was in that capacity I saw her. I don’t recall whom she was opening for, because she is the one I recall. She’s somewhat folky, if a bit too dark to be granola, and she plays a mean guitar in front of a truly powerful voice. Seriously: this is a voice that stills a room. All this wouldn’t mean a damn thing if her songs were weak, but her writing doesn’t let her down. She’s less country–and perhaps a tad more Lilithy–than Lucinda Williams, but that’s the company Jaffe deserves to keep. Since she’s only 21, this Dentonite has some time to get noticed. But it shouldn’t take long. Take a listen and then go buy her EP “Even Born Again” from Good Records.
Even Born Again
There’s been a tribal current flowing through the music scene in the last several years. Bands like Man Man thump the hell out of their drums while jumping and screaming onstage, Yeasayers adds chantlike sounds to their synthier sound, and Wilderness howl in their contribution from Baltimore, Maryland. Wilderness put out a self-titled album to some acclaim a few years ago and…I didn’t hear it. They put out another album called Vessel States a year later and…I didn’t hear it. In November, however, they release their third album and this time I’m all ears.
Wilderness might be the best representative of urban tribalism yet. Rhythm from multiple drumsets spreads a dark backdrop through which James Johnson throws sounds from his belly. Sometimes the sounds are words, sometime not, but it doesn’t matter. The vocals add a sort of pressing fluidity, a wavelike urgency to the already compelling drums, and they are followed by sparse Joy Divisionish riffs from the guitar which lend an element of restraint, control and beauty to the songs.
Did I say songs? Really, this is an album. I can’t listen to it at all without listening to it from beginning to end–the individual tracks are strong, but they gain from their context. The songs blend into one another, usually just changing enough to recharge the experience. It’s a pretty dark, desperate experience, but it’s one I keep coming back to. I think this might be one of this year’s creeping standouts. If you can find it before it comes out on November 4, count yourself lucky. If not, you’ll have to relish the sample below.
Silver Gene.mp3
Back when I was a Providence boy, I went to see quite a few Stringbuilder/Purple Ivy Shadows shows, and even bought a few albums. So, you’d think I would be a little quicker recognizing the elements of these bands in Death Vessel. Instead, I went the first listen and a half thinking the vocals were sung by a woman and was mystified to discover that woman’s name was Joel Thibodeau. The confusion now all cleared up, and I have my bearings.
The girlish sounding Thibodeau is the singer/songwriting force behind the misleadingly named Death Vessel. They hail from Rhode Island and present a very pleasant, light brand of Americana that prizes melodies over hootenannys. The songs often involve shy, semi-poetic vocals sung over picked guitars with a relatively sedate rhythm section. It’s pretty, but for me it doesn’t stick. I do find choruses repeating in my head after the tracks close, and I admire Thibodeau’s sense of melody, but I’m neither really challenged nor seduced by anything on this album. It just doesn’t hold my attention. It’s a shame, cause there’s a lot here to like. Just check out the utterly charming opening track below and you’ll see what I mean.
Block My Eye.mp3
Somehow I missed this band on their first release, Beautiful Seizure, but on the strength of this sophomore effort I’m completely on the Volcano! bandwagon. Paperwork is not an easy album to digest, especially if you simply let it play in the background. Don’t do that: it demands your full attention. So much is going on in most of these songs that they must have been written with flow charts. Unusual beats and time signatures merge into one another, and the melodies–sometimes several different melodies per song–clash into each other and angle off into new directions. Noisy, yes, but not noise. These guys are tight and everything is woven together very carefully. Can you say Radiohead meets Don Caballero? I didn’t think so. But if you could, you might say “Volcano!”
Performance Evaluation Shuffle.mp3
This album has absolutely knocked my shit out. I’ve enjoyed previous Made Out of Babies efforts as a sort of a loud novelty, admiring their punk commitment, but I was unprepared for The Ruiner. Reminiscent of Silverfish, Daisy Chainsaw, and some of the Amphetamine Reptile bands of the 90s, MOB comes in with a pummeling bass and layers of guitar sounds that make me want to punch holes in my walls. Julie Christmas, the band’s vocalist, sounds like a damaged Bjork screaming (right on pitch, mind you) over the band’s screwy hooks and drives. This is like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with balls. I’ll bet not many reviewers have this next to Devotchka on their year’s best list, but who cares. Love it.
Cooker.mp3
Six years ago The Notwist released Neon Golden, the best album of that year. Mixing beautiful songs with glitchy beats, they beat The Postal Service to the punch and, in my opinion, their songs have remained fresh while those of Gibbard and Tamborello have faded. A good part of the reason is that The Notwist uses guitars to excellent effect, both in establishing rhythm and in supplementing the melody. This summer sees the band return with more of what makes them great. Markus Acher’s songs are as strong as ever, with lyrics that remain intriguing by dodging the obvious and with tunes that have to be forced out of the head before they take it over. The Devil, You + Me doesn’t knock me over like Neon Golden, but that’s a lot to ask Expectations are high, and to be sure, music has moved on a bit since 2002, so there’s no revolution coming with this album. Nevertheless, it’s bound to be one of my favorite albums of the year, and I suspect that if its ranking is determined purely by number of spins in my player it will be a competitor for the very top place.
Gloomy Planets.mp3
If you’re going to name a band after a celebrity, you couldn’t do any better than Abe Vigoda. After all, it was Barzini all along. AV has generated a goodish amount of buzz with the releast of “Skeleton,” their second release, and touring with fellow Los Angelenoids No Age has raised their profile even further. It was hearing about their live show–hearing that it blew No Age off the Stage–that led me to check out the album. My judgment, in the end, is that I wish I’d seen them live. Not that the album is bad. It’s certainly not: it packs a consistently hard punch from track one to track fourteen. Led by furious drums and layered, ringing guitars, every song is a swirling soup of sound. It is, though, a little too consistent for my tastes. It’s not hard to catch on to the tricks here, and though I really like both the ideas and the execution, it’s a little bit one-trickish. I’m also not wild about the muted production which keeps the drums and guitars from popping out of the speakers and leaves the vocals consistently low in the mix. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to be impressed, and some people willgo wild for this. If you like the idea of hearing Man Man meet Animal Collective, you might be one of them.
Bear Face.mp3
The kids will not dance to “The Ken Burns Effect” by Stars Like Fleas, and I doubt it will make its way among your treadmill tunes, but if you are the type who actually sits down and listens to albums–not songs, but albums–this might be one of the more rewarding releases of the year. More than the sum of its parts, TKBE moves through harsh acoustic dissonances to peaceful and woodsy folk and then through a sort of improvised jazz to complete the tour. Comparisons generally escape me with these guys. With ten members, a horde of additional players, and a stack of instruments that could supply a symphony (from fiddle and banjo, to flugelhorn, cello and Wurlitzer) it’s no wonder they are hard to pin down. I suppose they count as experimental, but they are not the awkward songless type. Its more as if the patchwork quilt of sounds allows the true beauty of the songs to rise forth. Check em out on their myspace page and give the below a listen. But remember: this is an album, not a playlist, so the proof will be in the slow sitdown, not the quick click.
Berbers in Tennis Shoes.mp3
David Gedge has been writing about leaving and being left, cheating and being cheated upon, and the various other vicissitudes of love and lust for as long as I’ve known what any of these things are. The Wedding Present has been his main vehicle since 1986, and at various points between then and now his band has been the best guitar pop band in the world. In recent years, his focus has seemed to be upon his newer band, Cinerama, which is a lighter, even more poppy affair, with every song sounding like it was composed during a champagne vacation on the French Riviera. The Wedding Present is back this year, however, with El Rey. While it doesn’t have the grit and punch of many earlier WP records, it has the layers of guitars we love with a little extra crunch from Steve Albini’s production. Nevertheless, on the first couple of listens, I was not terribly impressed. I liked the sound of the guitars, and I liked the basslines which are more interesting than they usually are for The Wedding Present, but somehow the songs never really caught fire. The lyrics and vocals seemed somehow less integrated with the music, floating above it but neither driving it or being driven by it, and the two-timing tales seemed a little contrived after all these years. On listen number three, however, I was singing along and getting excited by the tunes and some of the twists the band is throwing in to their song structure. Granted, I’m a diehard fan of these guys, but in the end I’ll bet I give this album a lot of play. They’re quite simply one of the funnest bands out there even after 20 years. El Rey isn’t even close to their best, but it still beats most of what is out there hands down.
Santa Ana Winds.mp3