The Chicago based math-rock outfit with steady lineup changes, Joan of Arc, adds to their already frighteningly prolific repertoire with their latest effort, “Life Like”.
You know that you are in for a serious journey when an album begins with a track that clocks in at over 10 minutes, with the vocals not beginning until 7 minutes in. It’s the combination of math-rock and prog that no doubt inspired decisions such as this one, and helps to shape the sound of the band in general. There is also a touch of old-school emo the likes of Braid and The Dismemberment Plan evident in the treatment of the vocals where the singer’s voice is just as clean and unaffected as the guitars. It crackles with intensity throughout many of the tracks.
That opening track, “I Saw the Messed Binds of my Generation”, lays the groundwork for the entire album with its crystal clear sound, intricate contrapuntal guitar lines and a lock-step rhythm section. It seems to me that it could easily be broken into two tracks where the first 7 minutes or so are an introduction, or prelude. The final 3 minutes are what actually constitute the opening of “Life Like”.
The guitar lines across the album weave through one another much in the same way one would hear on a Dirty Projectors album. It’s that clear and clean disjointed melodic guitar work that seems to jut out in a million directions while still obviously focused on a single goal.
My prog-trained brain tells me that this is a concept album. “Life Like” projects that album-oriented sound where everything seems to be heading in a clear direction; uniform sound throughout, with intense lyrics and similarity of compositional style throughout. It just sounds like it was written to be an album and they just had to divide it up into songs. There are some obvious commonality between the songs. They very much belong together. The only problem with this is that even after several listens I can’t fully make out the concept. Joan of Arc seem to be hiding their lyrical content in a web of complex metaphors and symbolism in the same way that their guitar figuration are branching out in a million exploratory patterns. This really is a complex and deeply emotional, challenging album.
Joan of Arc - "Life Like"
Contrasting the smooth, scrolling guitar work throughout most of the album is the spastic start/stop rhythmic interjections present in “Deep State”. To that end there is also the nearly a cappella “Still Life” with only muted guitar strings doubled with drum stick clicked against the rim of the snare drum. Though this track does slowly gain momentum and density as melody begins to creep in from the shadows and we are presented with a pulsating beat with bass guitar false starts with the 2nd guitar trying a number of different approaches to break the silence. “Life Force” stands out for its use of a shoddily tuned acoustic guitar that hammers out a straight ahead quarter note rhythm. Though these tracks are the most unique on the album they still encapsulate that sound that is put forth at the very opening of the album. They still sound perfectly in place on the album and correctly sequenced.
Every song on “Life Like” seems to chart the same course, but not all are dark and hopeless. “Love Life” and “Like Minded” are bright and joyful sounding tunes, though the latter quickly seems to take a dark turn moving from cheerful to foreboding in short order. The polyrhythmic overlapping of delicately plucked guitar lines creates an interesting texture that is less abrasive than much of the guitar work featured on any other track. The song continually grows darker as the distortion kicks in and the vocals move from shouting to screaming, voice cracks and all.
Concluding the album is “After Life”, with it’s martial drum roll and drill sergeant/platoon call and response. A great lyric from this album closer states that “my discovery: I am all alone” seems to accept the irony of stating such a fact while surrounded or followed by people that shout back at you everything that you say while they march in step behind you. That track bursts unexpectedly into a distorted and frenzied guitar solo. That is not the only instance of spontaneous guitar soloing either, they seem to crop up a lot, it sounds like they are being exorcised out of frustration, or that they otherwise come from some deep, dark place and just need to be there warts and all.
The concept comes across in bits and pieces and, judging by previous work by the band, that is exactly how they like it. They like coming off as mysterious and complicated, confusing and comical. This album is certainly many of those things, all balled up in a tightly wound web of intricate guitar work, complex rhythmic shifts and symbolic lyrics that would confuse and frustrate Cedric Bixler, famous for creating equally convoluted and impossibly shrouded lyrics with At the Drive-In, who would be the hard hitting counterpart to Joan of Arc. By the looks of it though this band has no intentions on stopping.
I’ve had this blog for a few years now, but only really been seriously writing for it for just under a year. The real beginning was in July 2010 when I began writing for groovemine.com. Mark, the owner of that site, began sending me more music than I had ever heard before. I decided then that I really had an opportunity to fine tune my skills as a listener and as a critic and writer.
I’m trained as a musician. I can read music (obviously) and know a lot about music theory. I read books on music theory for fun because that is what I am interested in. In becoming a “classically trained musician” one studies a lot of “classical” music (though I abhor the term, but that is neither here nor there.) Instead of calling it “classical” music let’s just call it concert music, or serious music if you prefer. The term “classical” is weighed down with so many connotations of time period and it brings to mind dudes in powdered wigs and the idea that that sort of thing is “out of date” or only of interest to people of the upper echelon of society. Anyway, concert music is fine.
In the interest of simplicity let’s just call everything else that isn’t serious music “pop” music. Yes, all of it. Pop music. That doesn’t mean only Top 40 music, it doesn’t mean stuff that is just played on the radio, I mean music that isn’t played in the concert hall, by a string quartet, or by a symphony. Let’s just keep it simple. So there is concert music and there is pop music. We can argue ad infinitum about how to divide up pop music some other day. Let’s just pretend that Lady Gaga and Megadeth are lumped into the same group for now, ok? Ok.
Anyway, when analyzing concert music it’s common to spend a lot of time carefully considering the cultural significance of the work. It’s also appropriate to analyze the functional harmonies, the use of chromaticism, the instrumentation, the orchestration, the tonal scheme etc. etc. There are several ways to go about this: there is Schenkerian analysis, Roman Numeral analysis, one can derive a matrix, find the different uses of tone rows, find uses of hexachordal combinatoriality, tetrachords, modes and on and on.
The thing with concert music is that there is a lot of time wrapped up in it all. The composer is seen as this guy, or gal, that sits hunched over a dimly lit desk, one hand on their head, the other desperately clutching at a pencil as they place each note down onto paper with a purpose. Every single note is wrought with meaning, every second they spend conceiving their “work” and producing it and rehearsing it has a framework of genius at work. When the work is finally completed it is foisted onto the public (which generally doesn’t want it, but that’s another topic entirely) and only after it has survived out there “in the trenches” for 10 years or more, only then does anyone take notice and finally decide, “Hey, this might be something that we might want to look at!” Eventually a musicologist spends several hundred hours hunched over a dimly lit desk, clutching his or her head in one hand and a pencil in the other marking the score, making connections and shouting “Eureka!” to an empty house. Perhaps he wakes the dog. Soon his truly genius writing is published in a journal that is only read by other musicologists, theorists and grad students that are writing papers for the musicologists and theorists.
The general public, goes about their business outside the music hall, unaware that any of this is happening, not that it would change anything if they knew that it did. They listen to people like Sarah Palin that says wonderfully encouraging things like, “arts funding is frivolous”. The general public loves this woman. She’s so much like them.
It truly is great to feel loved outside of ones art. God bless America!
John Adams is one of America’s most successful composers. He has found a niche of sorts writing works about current events. His first opera (yes, people do actually still write operas!) “Nixon in China” premiered in 1987, about Tricky Dick’s visit to China 15 years prior. He also wrote another opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro entitled “The Death of Klinghoffer” in 1991, 7 years after the trajedy. His most recent opera (hey, the guy likes to write operas, and he puts a lot of people in the seats!) “Dr. Atomic” is about the Manhattan Project. The opera premiered in 2005.
These are all great works, and I’m only taking an example from one composer for brevity’s sake. The subject matter that Adams is tackling is a tangled web of complex philosophical questions. His works are almost universally loved and accepted upon their premiere. Most composers are not so lucky, but then again most composers aren’t nearly half as good either. The problem that I see is that these works do take such an extremely long time to produce. Because of this lengthy turnaround it appears that the only things really worth writing about are these really monumental moments in extreme human struggle.
Yes these works are worthwhile, and yes they are worth more analysis and promotion. I believe that everyone should take some time to familiarize themselves with as many great works as they can. It is part of our culture, it’s far more than “entertainment”. That being said, so is pop music.
Before I delve into that I’m going to quickly tell a story about my favorite concert composer, Charles Ives.
He was born in Danbury, Connecticut. A true Yankee New Englander. His father was a musician, in charge of a military band during the Civil War and leader of several community bands in Danbury. Charles, in his compositions, would include the sounds of his childhood whether it was the sound of two marching bands coming down the street in opposite directions, the sound of Central Park at night or the sound of the local hook and ladder company. He was not interested in what many other composers were doing at the time and didn’t actually make his living with his music, nor did he want to. He was an extremely successful insurance salesman who just so happened to be one of the most important American composers of the 20th century. Nobody knew this until after he died when conductors like Leonard Bernstein and Leopold Stokowski championed his music. Though during his life he did manage to win the Pulitzer Prize in composition for his 3rd Symphony. He declined the award stating simply, “awards are the badges of mediocrity.” Yes, someone that badass wrote serious music. Serious, experimental music.
One of his experiments involved the use of quarter-tones, an idea he got from his father. His father, equally as crazy, was trying to capture the pitches played by the local church bells. He would run outside to hear, and rush back inside to the piano to try and capture the pitches. Back and forth as many times as he could while the bells were still ringing. He was unable to capture the sound of the bells and concluded that the pitches they were sounding were notes that were located “between the keys of the piano”. He heard something that was so far outside of what was normal that he was not even able to reproduce it by normal means. He needed to wander far beyond what was accepted as normal in order to bring to fruition his music. Charles, throughout his works, continued this trend. He worked in near solitude, almost completely unknown by the serious music world and was truly innovative.
His music is truly amazing and I would urge you to check out his works.
To me Ives’ use of quarter-tones is the most identifiable and most unorthodox thing that he ever did. It was certainly the most notable thing he did as far as sound. If you hear his 3 quarter tone pieces for 2 pianos you will immediately notice a difference in sound. Nobody else was doing this at the time. Now there are several composers that work with exotic scales or scales of their own design in order to brand themselves with a unique sound.
What Ives was doing was writing music that was true to him and because of that there was a sense of immediacy. His music is also much studied to this day and much performed as well. Recordings are still being made and his name is firmly in place as one of the great American composers.
The point of this story is that at the time Ives was writing his music the divide of what was serious music and what was pop music was just beginning to be created. It was the time of Tin Pan Alley where songs were being cranked out by writers that were masters of formula, much like today’s mainstream music. A lot of that music has completely disappeared, but that time also gave us the music of George Gershwin, who doesn’t neatly fit into either category. Somewhere around this time it appears that the decision was made that serious music is worth being held up on a pedestal and being preserved through repeated performance and analysis and pop music is not worthy of the time it takes to listen to it.
With my blog I am directly challenging that idea. Pop music deserves better analysis, and serious consideration. The analysis of pop music needs to match the immediacy of the music. One can’t spend 20 years thinking about the implications of a certain album or a certain style of music because by then it is most likely irrelevant. The music deserves to be considered in its own time and it deserves to be considered by people that know what to consider, which is to say that typical blog-style analysis is not good enough for pop music.
I have read too many reviews that describe how an album makes the reviewer “feel”. That analysis is irrelevant to everyone except the reviewer. I want to know exactly why the guitar line is doing what it is doing. Where are things going harmonically and how does that compare to other music that we are currently hearing right now? I want to know where each band is getting their ideas from. I want to know why bands from Toronto sound different than bands from Bushwick. There are answers to all of these questions and the only way that they are going to be found is through repeated listening. Not just listening to one album over and over again, but listening to every album you can get your hands on, because each album is a piece of the puzzle and will help answer all of the questions that you have and bring to light some new ones.
The current state of pop musicology is ill equipped to handle this task. Most of them are still busy pondering the significance of Nirvana while the rest of us have moved far beyond that. Things take far too long in the university world, and by the time any studying is done the significance is completely lost.
Quartertonality is a word that is made up, but the meaning is real. Quartertonality is looking for new ways to do things. It is taking a serious analytical approach to current, worthwhile popular music. It’s the belief that just because something isn’t popular that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth looking into. It’s finding the motivations behind everything, the reason behind things, digging further than anyone else, listening more than anyone else and providing thoughtful, honest analysis that is based less on opinion and more on fact. One has to move quick because the amount of music that comes out every week is staggering. There isn’t enough time to sit on an album for 20 years and then write about its significance because that changes every single day.
Figurines is a poppy rock trio based out of Denmark that has been touring fairly relentlessly since their formation. Their latest self-titled release is 11 tracks of tight songwriting, catchy hooks and memorable melodies.
Though their most recent album was released in September 2010, the band has yet to make it to the United States in its support. That is all going to change in June when they play a few dates along the East coast in Boston, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. That they are touring here in the Summer seems apt as their songs encompass an aura of sunniness with an upbeat attitude.
Each of the songs on “Figurines” remind me a little bit of the catchiness of The Spinto Band, but the opening track, “Hanging From Above” is especially great. The strings soar while the guitar echoes the exuberant vocals in the chorus. It’s sweet, bright, catchy and infectious. That’s a pretty good formula for a good summer hit. Maybe listening to this song in the months leading up to summer can help us all ignore the grey skies and rain for a bit.
Head to Figurines’ Bandcamp to grab “Hanging From Above” on vinyl or digitally.
There has been much talk online about w h o k i l l, the 2nd full length album from Merrill Garbus’ near-solo project tUnE-yArDs. Every review places it in a favorable light which positions it firmly as a stand out hit of the 2nd quarter of 2011. It just seems to have the aura of “Best of 2011″ surrounding it. I’m no different in that respect. There really isn’t anything out there right now that sounds quite like this album.
Recognizable and quirky right on down to the proper capitalization of the project’s name and the sound which the album contains. Garbus has created songs that are complex yet compact, pulling inspiration equally from Graceland-era Paul Simon and The Talking Heads as much as they do Prince. It’s a very rhythmically vibrant album with passionate vocal lines that crackle with energy.
Lead-off single “Bizness” seems to encapsulate all of the ideas of the album and compresses them to one 4 and a half minute gem. The melodic lines right off the bat seem to leap right out of the speakers before Merrill’s voice begins to fiercely intone the verse. It’s not long before saxophones are adding a new layer to the already contagiously catchy, energetic tune.
The album w h o k i l l is out now and if you don’t already own it, you should. It’s available digitally through iTunes and physically through 4AD.
Halifax natives Sloan are celebrating their 20th year as a band with an album full of hook laden power pop perfection. As usual the album title serves as a double meaning. Double cross meaning 2 xs, the Roman numeral for twenty, or perhaps it’s a reference to something more disquieting? It’s the former, not the latter.
It seems that every time one reads about Sloan it’s the same thing: something along the lines of “4 songwriters with distinctive voices and styles”. That is usually followed by a reference to The Beatles, such as the “Canadian Fab 4” or some such nonsense.
It really is a shame that Sloan is not more popular in the U.S. I feel that their albums are strong, for the most part, and nobody anywhere can write a song as good as these guys. I’m not saying that being popular in the United States would mean that they have finally “made it”. I’m just saying that they deserve a worldwide audience and if the U.S. didn’t have such terrible taste in pop music, and people knew what was good for them, they’d be playing Sloan on radios across the country. If more people had a chance to hear them I don’t doubt for a second that they would have a much larger following.
But alas, they are (at least in the United States) something of a cult band, with the inherent small but loyal following. Sloan manages to produce consistently great material even within less popular albums, such as Pretty Together and Action Pact the one-two punch of mediocrity that their fans love to hate. It seems that those two albums went against their sound that usually remained pretty well in tact from album to album with nothing too jarring happening on sequential releases.
Recently they seem to be back on track in a big way with 3 really solidly fantastic albums. “Never Hear the End of It”, an amazing double album from 2006, “Parallel Play” from 2008, the “Hit and Run EP” of 2009 and now “The Double Cross” continues that trend.
Their output, even going back as far as the landmark album “Twice Removed” from 1994, never seemed to follow current trends. Sloan seems content and determined to consistently chart their own path.
Being that they’ve been around for so long, and because of the 4 distinct songwriting styles, Sloan fans have mostly aligned themselves with one band member or another. Much can be written about the distinct stylistic virtues of each member as a songwriter, though I don’t intend to do go down that road. That’s the easy way out. It seems that nobody is too willing to talk about Sloan in terms of the band, Sloan. Fans will often cry out about apparent inconsistencies within albums stemming from the different approaches and sometimes that seems the way to go. Album efforts don’t always feel like band efforts. Sometimes the style shifts from song to song can be a bit much. Perhaps these complaints can be mostly boiled down to fans missing the “good old days” of Sloan.
In my opinion these “good old days” are typically fans projecting unfair expectations onto the band in order to cease forward momentum of their career in order to preserve their own personal memories of that time in their life when they first discovered the band. Music fans, it seems, want bands to stay the same, but not too much the same, because they’ll typically complain either way. Sloan has continued to grow, and for better or worse, have always done their own thing.
Sloan has been around long enough to have “eras”. The most recent such era I would say starts with “Never Hear the End of It”. I feel that this album marks the beginning of a prolifically great songwriting rebirth that followed two albums in which they seemed to be making a concerted effort to change their sound. Since this rebirth it seems as though they have been trying to strike a balance between working separately and working as a band. “Never Hear the End of It” used the technique of melding songs nearly seamlessly together by painstakingly organizing the tracks by key which helped immensely with the flow of the album. They did this before, on their 1999 album “Between the Bridges” though with “Never Hear the End of It” people had a bit more of a difficult time holding interest through to the end, as it was a rather lengthy double album.
Sloan - "The Double Cross"
That album was put together over an extended period of time, and they documented the process with a series of videos on Youtube that I eagerly anticipated watching each week.
“Parallel Play” was the same return to form but it seems a lot more fragmented. The separation from song to song was far more noticeable, though each of those songs were catchy, well written and impeccably produced. Fans again spoke up about a band that seemed unwilling to work together. Even the name of the album seemed to be admission from the band that they were not really working together, but instead took a “separate but equal” approach, convening later to decide democratically what material would make it to the album.
Following “Parallel Play” was the “Hit & Run” EP. It’s a solid offering that experimented with a digital only release and was the perfect addendum to “Parallel Play”.
As I mentioned before, fans try to lump each songwriter’s works together as if each album is a compilation of 4 separate bands, but this discounts how well the albums actually work as albums. Just as “Never Hear the End of It” goes for long stretches patching the songs together and linking them in ingenious ways, so does “The Double Cross”. In addition Sloan utilizes more inter-band participation. Other band members sharing verses, singing background, etc. Such as Chris singing on the bridge of Andrew’s “She’s Slowing Down Again” which introduces a new texture to the rambling rock and roll sound of the track. Chris also appears on the Jay penned “Beverley Terrace”.
The album has a general warmth to it, with very present bass frequencies. It sounds lush and full even on MP3. It sounds like it was mastered for vinyl; it’s not thin sounding at all, or overproduced and compressed to all hell. Standout track “Green Gardens, Cold Montreal” features a delicately plucked acoustic steel string guitar with a perfectly placed ascending Rhodes line. It’s that sort of AM radio quality song that seems to be their niche lately, and they make it work really well.This is also the case for “Your Daddy Will Do”, which has the added bonus of featuring some doubled vocals by Patrick on the verses.
“It’s Plain to See” brings some upbeat, rockabilly flavor (flavour if you’re Canadian), to the album. The ultra-close, multi-tracked vocals are super clean and precise but I think that if the entire group were singing them that the variety of vocal timbre would have helped to thicken things up a bit. The track “Unkind” features some Thin Lizzy guitar work and slapback retro-echo on the vocals that is quite effective.
The Double Cross serves as a great celebration of 20 years of music by a band that deserves more attention. They really should be playing in large venues around the world as there are so few groups that are able to do what they do as well as they do it. If you’ve never heard Sloan, or haven’t figured out where to begin listening, this album would serve as a good introduction to the group.
And be sure to check out their youtube channel where they have included little interviews about each song on the album: http://www.youtube.com/user/sloanmusic
(I haven’t included any tracks from this album as I’m fairly certain that the band would not be happy with that. I have, however, already pre-ordered the vinyl and would like to highly encourage you to do the same here. You can also preview every track from the album at that link as well, so what are you waiting for? Go!)
Go ahead: admit the first thing that popped into your head when you read the title. Yeah, that’s what I thought, sicko. Well that’s not how this reviewer read it at all. I read it as “My blank is Pink” because I am classy and sophisticated and a terrific liar.
Perhaps the provocative title, or non-provocative title as the case may be, serves as the point of entry for the album. Upon reading the title the listener is probably lead to expect something confrontational, something that challenges and pushes the envelope a bit. This album certainly does all of those things to a certain degree. An apt comparison in sound and approach can be drawn from Sleigh Bells to Colourmusic, though stating it that simply is selling Colourmusic quite short.
Sleigh Bells stormed onto the scene with a recognizable “meters in the red” and completely overblown, overdriven sound that, to me, tries a little too hard to get noticed and can be filed away as “gimmicky”. Colourmusic tones it down a bit while still maintaining a powerful and edgy sound that is more organic, yet still charged up. It comes off sounding a lot more realistic and believable. The band doesn’t have an overbearing synthetic sound. Live drums pound behind shredding, layered buzzsaw guitars.
Those guitars are more likely to churn out riffs that sound like they were ripped straight out of the Black Sabbath playbook, while the vocals tend to sound a bit more ethereal and akin to Animal Collective. Take for example the vocals in the chorus of “We Shall Wish (Use Your Adult Voice)”. There are moments there that conjure the same sound-world from which Animal Collective operates with lush multi-layering and plenty of breathy reverb. Colourmusic’s songs go beyond exploring one particular sound. The songs have instrumental appeal in addition to those explorations, meaning that they sound like a band playing instruments, rather than creating music that relies heavily upon the manipulation of other sounds. Instead, Colourmusic seems to be interested in having the listener focus on the layers of sound that one instrument or even one note can produce.
Colourmusic - "My___ is Pink"
The opening of “You For Leaving” states simply the staccato attack of one chord on a piano that is sustained, allowing the listener to hear all of the overtones intermingling and growing into a mass of sound right before the song opens up to a full chorus and pipe organ. It’s an approach that is akin to the work of spectral analysts that compose music where every idea for a composition is literally derived from information that is found in one small fragment of a sound. Colourmusic is adept at extrapolating ideas from sounds but their scientific attention to detail doesn’t diminish their ability to write a dancey, fun song like “Dolphins & Unicorns”.
That song, like “The Little Death (In Five Parts)”, moves between opposing textures starting with a danceable rhythm and moving to more ambient territory. The beginning of “The Little Death (In Five Parts)” though is more like a false start that anticipates a pummeling, raunchy guitar line that is thick and densely distorted, covering plenty of rhythmic ground before the vocals actually begin in a cloud of arrhythmic echoes. The track continues to spend 6 minutes tearing through material that moves from driving guitar work, into a slow dirge of fuzzed out metal before decaying into spacious minimalist territory.
Serving as a counter to all the abrasive guitars are the passionate vocals that appear on tracks like “Feels Good to Wear” and “We Shall Wish” where a sense of longing and pain can be gleaned. The usual ambient effects of the voice in the latter track are placed on the instruments temporarily which is a welcome flipping of the texture. The instrumental breaks cast that song into an arena rock light where the track just opens up , pushing and pulling against the wall of sound that is barely contained by the band.
The band is agile enough to handle jumping between styles and textures even within the same song. They can move from loud and powerful to quiet, spacious and delicate and make it make sense. The construction of their songs is tight enough and logicalto the point where these changes don’t seem jarring.
Rounding out the end of the album is the track “Whitby Harbour”, which is simply the sound of waves lapping up on the shore. Perhaps this serves as a point of respite from a fairly intense album, or perhaps this is moving more in the direction of finding the music within sounds. A bit of spectral analysis of nature.
This album, “My ____ is Pink”, is nearly unclassifiable. It sounds loud and psychedelic in spots, but direct and danceable in most others. Somewhere between electronic and rock with songs that have intricately crafted dynamic shapes and tight, well thought out structures.
This post was originally published at here at Tympanogram.com on April 15, 2011:
Jerseyband
Jerseyband is a unique group. They play a style of music that they have dubbed “lungcore” – a hard-edged version of prog-metal fronted by a horn section. The amalgam of jazz elements with metal make complete sense in their hands, and they have happily produced six full length albums of fun, tricky and hard hitting music over the course of their decade of existence. I have personally been a fan of their music since 2006 when a friend let me borrow their 2003 album Little Bag of Feet for Shoes. What struck me right away was the perfection in their playing, the sudden turns, the death metal stabs of low end guitar and the way that the sax section really worked as one. Sure, they are blending several different styles of music, but they really make it something wholly original. I never thought I would bang my head to saxophone music, but I had never heard music like this before.
Their live album Lungpunch Fantasy showcased compositions that had never been committed to disc before, with the added bonus of putting their live chops on display. The amazing thing is that it serves to prove that their tightness is not a result of any studio trickery. These guys are the real deal. Discovering that they have all graduated from the prestigious Eastman School of Music brings things even more into focus.
Jerseyband has recently completed the recording sessions for what they hope to be their seventh full length album. This is where we come in. They need help funding the mastering, mixing and production and are trying to do so through Kickstarter. If you aren’t familiar with how the site works, basically someone proposes a project and it is only funded fully if enough people pledge money within the time limit. Though a lot of the projects may seem frivolous, there are quite a few that are worthwhile. I see it as a way to independently do anything. Visit the site, take a look at the goodies that can be had for pledging at a certain level, and consider helping this band bring some new music into the world. You can check out all of their music on their Bandcamp page and watch them in action on Youtube.
Record Store Day this year is April 16th, this coming Saturday. In case you aren’t aware, it is the annual celebration of independent music stores. If I remember correctly it started out as a pretty small endeavor with only a few fanatical people paying any attention to it at all. It has grown to something significant with record stores all over the country in big cities and small all taking part. The day serves as a reminder to people that music is still made on vinyl and CD and it encourages everyone to go out, support local shop owners and musicians.
Over the years an increasing number of musicians and bands have started producing special releases for Record Store Day to help give even more of an incentive for people to get out there and support music. To honor this day, and give it a little bit more promotion, I’d like to recount some of my fondest memories of my favorite record stores in several different cities.
Rochester, New York:
The Bop Shop: www.bopshop.com
274 Goodman St. N #B123
Rochester, NY 14607
The focus at this store is on jazz, prog and garage. Every single album is in brilliant condition. Tons of used 45s and even an extensive amount of victrola records.
Very knowledgeable, friendly and helpful staff that can be found typically listening to Sun Ra or Syd Barrett solo albums on the stereo that broadcasts throughout the store. They also bring in musicians to play in front of the store. One recent concert featured the ICP (instant composer’s pool)orchestra.
You can check their obsessively cataloged and rated vinyl on sale at their webstore.
Memorable purchase: My copy of The Mothers of Invention’s “Freak Out”, original pressing in pretty good condition. He was asking a certain price and cut it in half for me, and also ran it through his Nitty Gritty and it plays beautifully. I was also there once when he realized a copy of “Pet Sounds” had a minor ding in it, so he handed it to me for free.
Although the original store, the one that I frequented, is no longer operating, they have a new location. When I was visiting the store both locations were open, but the original was closer to the school I was going to, so I would often skip class to go buy records.
That original location focused heavily upon CDs. New and used, and accepted trade-ins, as I’m sure they probably still do. What I remember most, and what I was there most often for was going through the aisles of used records that were shelved to the ceiling of the almost secretive basement back room.
Differing from The Bop Shop in that the record collection here seemed to focus more on quantity than quality, they did have everything. Showtunes, classical, metal, prog, rarities, punk etc. Very little in the way of new vinyl, comparatively but I was into prog. rock at the time so it was perfect for me.
It smelled like a basement, but felt comfy and cozy. I would spend hours there just searching around, never really looking for anything specific but always walking out with at least one purchase.
Memorable Purchase: King Crimson’s “Starless and Bible Black”. I set it onto the turntable that they would allow you to use to preview purchases and decided that I wanted it within about 4 rotations.
Easily the best record store in Buffalo. I’m going to go with the Phoenix rising from the ashes cliché on this one. The original location was devastated by a fire and the owner, with the help of a huge outpouring from the community, managed to re-open the store in an even better location than before. It’s small and friendly with a lot of new vinyl and some used showcasing a love for old school hard-core punk. Concert tickets are also available at the location and talking to the owner is always a great time.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Rotate This: www.rotate.com
801 Queen St. West
Toronto, ON, Canada M6J 1G1
I used to spend a lot of time in Toronto, being that it is only a 2 hour drive from where I currently reside. I think I only visited the former location once, but their current store is like a beautifully organized cavern of records. From what I remember you can purchase concert tickets here as well. Lots of used vinyl, but they have plenty of new 12″ and 45s as well as CDs. No trip to Toronto is complete with a stop at Rotate.
Memorable Purchase: The only Silver Jews album that I own, “Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea”, was bought here. People say that it is the worst of their albums, but I didn’t know any better and I came to love it.
Criminal Records: www.crimedoesntpay.ca
493 Queen St. West
Toronto, ON, Canada M5V 2B4
I always thought of Criminal Records in Toronto as the “hip” record store. Bright and white on the inside with turntables, shirts, belts and belt buckles for sale in addition to their vinyl. This store is more of a boutique setting with, like the Record Archive in Rochester, a focus on quality over quantity. Also, someone told me that Wayne Petti of Cuff the Duke, one of my favorite bands, works there. I always hoped to find him behind the counter when I stopped in, but alas….
Chicago, Illinois:
Reckless Records: www.reckless.com
1532 North Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, Il 60622
Ok, so their website is an abomination, but trust me the store is pretty much the opposite. This was the first record store in Chicago that I ever visited. In July 2006 I was extremely overwhelmed by everything that was in the store, so much that I couldn’t figure out what to buy. At that point I was still scared to a certain extent to listen to unfamiliar music. Meanwhile my brother and his wife were running all over, talking to the clerks about some, what I thought to be, obscure music that I had never heard of.
One of the things I like about the store is the description on every record. They have pithy reviews on everything they sell, which makes it easier for people like the 2006 me to branch out and try new things.
Memorable Purchase: Kraftwerk’s “Radio Activity”. It’s a reissue that I have, but I still remember it for being one of my first purchases there. I also have a t-shirt designed by Dan Ryan that I bought there.
These dudes are insane. Lance, Liz and Dave run an amazing little shop that showcases their love for garage rock. They have in-stores (BYOB!), their own label and a podcast that amazes me every single month with the amount that these guys know about seemingly intensely obscure acts. They also write incredibly detailed emails every month describing exactly what they have in stock. I would feel completely comfortable just picking up anything at random that they suggest and giving it a spin. If you aren’t in Chicago and you want an education in new music, listen to their podcast, I can’t urge you strongly enough.
The important thing now is that you go out and support your local record shop. Buy a record or CD this saturday. There are tons of special releases coming out just for this event. You can check the official Record Store Day site here.
And if you don’t live near a record store (like me) then you should check out some record label’s online stores. My personal favorites are Polyvinyl, Kill Rock Stars, Touch and Go and Sub Pop.
Grand Lake, having recently released their truly wonderful EP “Leaves Ellipse” has now put out the 2nd single from that EP.
“Christmas, California”, described perfectly by Grand Lake bandleader Caleb Nichols as “drenched in springtime sunshine, total California ear-candy.” It’s a fun song and one of the many highlights of “Leaves Ellispe”.
The song will also be available on a vinyl-only compilation released on Record Store Day by Burnside Distro – also featuring HAD Records label-mates the Heavenly States, as well as the incomparable Sea Of Bees. You should definitely look for that on Record Store Day, which is April 16 this year.
Check out the song here, as well as the video that was filmed around the band’s new home of San Luis Obispo, California. The video is framed as a polaroid picture that captures the sunniness of the song.
We can always count on Radiohead to change the game from album to album. Because of this I feel that their latest album, “The King of Limbs”, deserves something beyond the usual track by track review. Everything that Radiohead does, musical or otherwise, is subject to an extraordinary level of scrutiny such that few, if any, other musical acts in existence today have to contend with. Not many would know how to cope, let alone be able to utilize all of that scrutiny and turn be able to turn it into something productive. This is one of the reasons why Radiohead is the most important bands active today. The public expects an almost inhumanly high standard from the band, who in turn are able to consistently live up to that standard by consistently producing groundbreaking albums that regularly change our ideas of what is new in current music. They are the singular arbiters of pushing the boundaries and raising the bar to a point where no other act can reach. Any attempts at following in their footsteps are hopelessly cast in their shadow.
Despite this the band, in interviews and concerts, don’t seem to think of themselves as so important. They manage to be immensely popular while at the same time retaining artistic credibility. It is a rare thing to have mainstream success while maintaining a high degree of indie acceptance. They constantly sell out the largest venues, yet remain out of the headlines and still manage to appear guarded about their personal lives. To me this points to them as not involved in music for the fame. They are creating intelligent music with artistic integrity. This flies in the face of anyone that thinks you can’t push boundaries, and still have something to say while retaining a sense of relevancy and importance with a large and emphatic audience.
As an audience we are responsible for elevating them to such a place of popularity and even importance. We are the ones that overly scrutinize every musical decision that they make. We are the ones cataloging every song they’ve ever performed live, comparing it to the previous instances of its live appearances and how those versions, in turn, compare to the recorded version. A song may not have been committed to tape until 10 years after it first debuted on stage in Stockholm but we are the ones that can chart its development and have therefore cast it into the realm of importance.
We are also the ones that argue over the validity of each version and whether the version that ended up being recorded, having therefore gained a level of permanence that the bootlegs and live versions lack, is the “definitive” version or not. The audience is responsible for deciding if what an artist is doing is good or bad, or more appropriately, they decide whether or not they are happy with the direction the band is taking and what it means for their cultural musical superiority, dominance and importance. All separate things.
Of course all of these things are done without the consent or approval of the band, who in turn seem perfectly content with going their own way and charting a unique path. Personally, I wonder how much the members of Radiohead use this information to guide their decisions. Do they think about manipulating the way that we are going to think about this album? Do we try to compensate for this by heading them off at the pass, intellectually, by taking into account that they think they know what we think and are therefore going to change our thoughts about their actions based on what we think they think we are thinking?
Radiohead - "The King of Limbs"
It’s all ridiculously convoluted, and you can see where the role of artist and audience member is challenged in this instance. It’s complex and perhaps you would think that it isn’t happening, but it is. Right now. The scrutiny, the over-thinking, the critical analysis, all of it is a testament to the importance of this band that we are even bothering to wrap ourselves up in this kind of process.
That process is my whole premise. Listening to a new Radiohead album has transcended the traditional listening experience to a point of a self-critical paranoia inducing obsession that eventually leads to submission.
With anything so new and different from anything that we have recently been listening to, the initial exposure to “The King of Limbs”, much like that first listen to “Kid A” is a point of aggravation to a certain degree. The mind is overcome with such a new and surprising experience that it doesn’t quite know how to process all of the information. We become overwhelmed.
Do our expectations exceed what we have been given? The answer to this question always seems to be an unconditional “Yes” at this point. We sit and try to pick out the memorable material, which is quite literally impossible at such an early stage as the music is passing through our ears for the first time. We wait for upbeat tunes, interesting contrapuntal textures, complexities in the lyrics that speak to us in coded, metaphoric language about politics (possibly). It’s difficult to find all of these things and explore them all at once, in one go. Frustration and awe are residing in equal parts within us as the end of the album draws near and we are left with choosing between “forget it, it’s a mess” and “I gotta listen to this again, there must be something in there.”
This is where Radiohead truly takes charge as a musical group of cultural importance. We trust that they are doing something that we need some time to understand, we trust in them. We have faith in their integrity that they have done something deserving of multiple listens.
After the release of “In Rainbows” there were discussions in several online forums that tried to unravel a code in binary that people thought existed that the band was hinting at all over the place, and had been for years. I don’t recall anything productive coming from those discussions, which ran parallel to surface arguments that stemmed from their “pay what you want” model that they had developed for the album. This is where most of the focus of the mainstream media was. People reached their own conclusions. Some felt that the physical release of the album was an admission from the band that their experiment had failed. Everyone ignored the main point the whole time was that if you release something officially, ahead of people that are going to just give it away for free anyway, there is some control there.
The real key is that people were talking. People were trying to unravel a supposed mystery, and nobody can conclude that it has been completely uncovered. Because of this we continue searching.
After a few listens one begins to sort things out. A few short motifs are memorized and the picture begins to come into focus. The acoustic guitar in “Give Up the Ghost” that sounds so intimate and subdued. The way in which that song opens up when an electric guitar makes a brief appearance and the vocals are looped and repeated, harmonizing into a swirl of dissipating sound before the bassline becomes the only thing we can hear.
Electronic glitches and other clipped up sounds permeate most of the album. Percussion and vocals are clearly the most prominent aspects of “The King of Limbs”. At first this makes the work difficult to grasp. There doesn’t seem to be enough melody and harmony to grab onto and hum along with. Perhaps this is the point. What ends up happening instead is really great. This alteration of the foundational elements allows the band to explore shifting metric pulses as the generators of the song structure. The songs exist without our participation. We can’t immediately internalize them, or sing along.
Radiohead
Think of the opening section of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”. There is the only melody at the very beginning of the work. The metric pulses seem to be lost in an ethereal state of suspended animation while the melodies are constantly spun out. Despite the unorthodoxy and apparent complexity the melodies have a fairly high level of memorability. That section gives way to a pounding, primal turn that features heavy use of downbowed strings with shifting accents that continually catch the audience off guard. That is where this album exists. In that juxtaposition. Where the rhythmic complexities take prominence and melody and harmony, though still very much there, are subjected to a more secondary role.
Music seems to change as we listen to it. Rather, our perception of the music adjusts as we listen and become more acquainted. We need to compartmentalize as humans. We have a space in our head for only a certain kind of music, so we force this album into that box. We change what we hear to what we want to hear, what we can hear and what we can understand. Soon, after a few dozen listens we are singing along to “Little by Little” while simultaneously wondering if that title is the band’s sly way of letting us know that that is exactly how we are coming into understanding this album.
They are still three steps ahead of us.
As the physical release date for the album approaches the band has announced that they will be publishing a newspaper. It will be free and available in major metropolitan areas. Nobody knew what exactly what was going to be published in the newspaper until yesterday, which is undoubtedly adding to the mystique surrounding the album release. Unfortunately people are also using this to dismiss the release as another piece of evidence that the band has lost its way. Do they really need to innovate everything, from the inside out with every release? What is a “newspaper album” anyway and does Radiohead really need to rush out and be the first band to release one?
There is also curiosity about the albums length, the shortest release by the band to date, as to whether or not there is going to be more to it. Will there be another release hot on its heels like the twins separated at birth that were “Kid A” and “Amnesiac”? The former seen by most as the first major point of departure for the band. The curiosity is no doubt stemming from the same people that were trying to break the binary code of “In Rainbows”.
The album opens with melodic and memorable looped opening that is soon overtaken by overlapping rhythms and disjointed bass. That very opening seems to spring to mind a state of déjà vu. It seems as though this has come from somewhere before. Perhaps it is just a result of listening to the album obsessively trying to get a firm understanding of it. The pulsating loops from the opening are then relegated to background bed track on top of which the remainder of the song is built. It serves as a constant pedal point that the rest of the material is weighed against. Peals of trumpets add a new layer, mimicking and varying the themes of Thom Yorke’s vocals.
“Morning Mr. Magpie” with its palm-muted guitar in driving rhythm with the off kilter hi-hat beating out borrowed metric pulses creates an incredible sense of restraint. Yorke’s voice is clear with a subtly distant shout of the lyrics. The interaction of guitars and bass here is similar to “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” from their “In Rainbows” album.
This seems to be their newly reinvented guitar arrangement style. Less like early Radiohead’s clear division of the standard rhythm guitar vs. lead guitar where Jonny Greenwood would hold back before bursting forth with angular lines with feedback drenched crunches and squeals out of the blue. The lines have once again become blurred.
The video for “Lotus Flower” has already been fed to the wolves at the meme machine of youtube, appealing to yet another level of audience. That audience seems to consist at least partly, if not mostly, of those that don’t even bother trying to listen to, let alone understand the music, instead creating a viral market from the ground up. Some of the results, though few original and none surprising, can be entertaining. It is appropriate that this song is the lead single, being that it is the most “song like” off the album and catchy with Yorke’s bluesy vocals spinning out a few hooks, though those hooks are unlike anything one would normally or previously think of as “catchy”.
After “Lotus Flower” the album seems to reach a breaking point. The feel doesn’t so much change as much as the style. Piano on “Codex” is shrouded in reverb, similar to that of “Pyramid Song” from the “Amnesiac” album. The peals of brass are also present on this track. “Give Up the Ghost” inserts a brightly strummed acoustic guitar into their sonic landscape.
“Seperator” sharply returns us to the style of the beginning of the album with very clean, clear mix and the drums re-entering and up front. The line that truly haunts from this song is “If you think this is over then you’re wrong” which seems to remind us that we think that there may be more to this. There may be a piece of the puzzle that we are missing. It seems that they really are playing with us. This song, like so many others on the album, has a way of really blossoming as it moves forward.
Not only does that song leave us wanting more, in a desperate search for something, but even after several listens we still don’t know what it is exactly that we are looking for. By this point it doesn’t really matter, we have succumbed to the album. We have allowed it to change the way that we think about listening to music, and what we typically expect from an album. This last track ends with a harmony that seems to go somewhere separate from the vocals. Yorke’s voice extends the harmony that is already rich with intervals that one would typically not find outside of jazz.
“The King of Limbs” charts a path of exploration which is usual for Radiohead, but it seems to want to, at the same time, break off into a new direction within the album itself. Harmony is secondary to rhythm for parts, and then the opposite on the latter half of the album. The songs don’t necessarily feel segmented or choppy, they feel natural and are well written and intricately put together with utmost attention to detail. It’s this fission that develops across the album that helps get us to listen again and again in rapt attention as our minds adjust to Radiohead changing the game again. It meets our expectations by exceeding them, and that is why Radiohead will always have the upper hand.
[audio:http://quartertonality.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/03-Little-By-Little.mp3|titles=Little By Little]
[audio:http://quartertonality.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/07-Give-Up-The-Ghost.mp3|titles=Give Up The Ghost]
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