Now that we are into 2014 it’s time to anticipate all the releases that will be coming our way soon. Really, the only significant release so far this year has been “Wig Out At Jagbags” from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, but I think that the flood gates are about to open. To be honest, that last sentence was just an excuse to type out the title of the new Malkmus album. I think that it’s clear that nobody is going to be able to out-name that album, so at least it has that going for it. I’ll be talking about it soon enough.
Right now, though, comes a new track from Real Estate. The band has recently (yesterday) announced that Dominoe is set to release their new album, “Atlas,” [I’ll give you a second to google: “real estate atlas” to find out more information] on March 4th, unless you live in the UK, then you get it a day early. Good for you. The track is titled “Talking Backwards” and is pretty much exactly what one would expect from Real Estate, which is good as 2011’s “Days” was a great recording and it’s about time that we were given some more of that. It’s another breezy, mid-tempo tune delivered lackadaisically over jangling guitars. The great thing about the band is the way that they somehow manage to capture that air of nostalgia in their songs and in their entire sound. The video manages to extend this feeling to the visual aspect, shot on grainy (super8?) film during the recording session. Something about creating distance, physically and temporally. Even though the recording probably happened less than a year ago, it comes off feeling like the band is reliving an old memory. And the song manages to capture this general sense as well. Check it out below.
Liars
Next up is Liars. Also releasing their next full-length in March. Not necessarily what one would expect from Liars, but that is actually what one would expect from Liars, that they don’t know what to expect. Well, that isn’t actually 100% true this time as the new song, “Mess on a Mission,” picks up where 2012’s “WIXIW” left off: deep into electronics and a more polished studio sound. Liars are an exciting band to keep track of because they are one of few bands around that seem not just willing to try new things all the time, but driven to do so as a rule. They seem to be combining previous elements that they have worked with over the years. Some elements of the vocal technique on their self-titled 2007 LP appear, but none of the shambling self-destructive rock of “Drum’s Not Dead” or “They Were Wrong So We Drowned” appear, at least not on this track. Who even knows what the album has in store for us. Check that one out below too.
I guess I am about 5 years or more late to the party, but I just recently, maybe within the past month or so, started listening with intent to Neon Indian and Washed Out.
I missed the bus on Neon Indian the first time around for whatever reason. Who knows what phase I was in at that point that prevented me from paying attention to anything that was going on in the world around me. Let’s just blame Lightning Bolt. That was probably what I was listening to so much that prevented me from taking my friend’s advice and listening to Neon Indian.
But, actually, Neon Indian, is not the artist that I want to talk about right now, right now I am focusing on the release that Washed Out put out this year, Paracosm. It’s another album, like so many this year, that fell through the cracks for me and I’m only just now starting to give it the attention that it deserves. My only other experience with Washed Out is through hearing “Feel It All Around” about a million times (by the way, say what you will about the show Portlandia, they could have picked a more perfect song for the intro sequence. The way that the ambience makes complete sense to Portland’s grey and rainy atmosphere as pictured).
And that brings me to my main point, and that is the music of Washed Out (and Neon Indian, and Small Black etc. etc.) places a lot of focus on a visual aspect that runs parallel to the music. Sure, it’s called “chillwave,” and it’s good that this aesthetic has gotten a name pinned to it, it helps us to generalize a little bit, but I think that the music that fits the genre is more impressionist than anything.
The seamless construction, with synth sounds that smear the harmonies, preventing any harshness, or dry attack sounds. Everything on “Paracosm” seems to buff out all the harsh contrasts, swirls the colors together and then takes a few steps back, allowing the picture to slowly fade into focus. It’s music of great emotional depth and music of nostalgia, and it’s also music that depicts light and an aura, a landscape. It does this so well that somehow we are all able to pick up on it, and accept it.
More specifically, the songs on this album are a little bit more danceable than on (my only point of comparison right now) Neon Indian’s “Era Extraña.” Where they are both, in a sense, working toward the same aesthetic, Washed Out tends to, on “Paracosm,” tilt the scales a little more toward radio-friendly pop, or as close to it as chillwave will allow.
“All I know” plays elements against each other to great effect with its bouncing tempo and a soaring, yearning melody over the top, while the title track flutters into view, a bit more somber than some of the other tracks, vocals hiding a bit inside those blurred out colors. The addition of a slide guitar, awash in reverb and delay, is a nice added touch. Layers and layers of atmospherics continue to build, though never crowding the texture. Everything just floats out over top of everything else, there’s a sense of constant elevation that’s created; infinitely open and never claustrophobic, despite the dense fog of sound that grows and grows.
This album, and this music, is more about creating a picture than anything else out there. But that doesn’t preclude there from being great melodies and catchy pop hooks. That label that we are so ready to place on the music is merely a shroud that is draped over the form of the music. It’s the timbre that gives the music its defining characteristic, and I think the thing that I think most about when listening to this album is how good the songs would be if all of the atmospherics and aesthetic concerns were stripped away. I think that that is really the measure of an album, and it’s fair to say that had that happened with this album, it would stand up as a collection of great songs too.
I can’t help but hear “Mercy, Mercy Me” at the beginning of every phrase in the verse of “Great Escape.” And that’s a good comparison to leave you with, as it’s useful in summing up the sound that carries through the album from beginning to end. The soulfulness and attention to all the typical concerns of songwriting; creating a memorable melody, and a solid formal and harmonic structure, evoking a mood – all of those things are present here, and are what make the songs great. That extra layer of atmospherics are really what set them apart and keep me coming back again and again.
A few weeks ago I talked a bit about one particular track from Tim Hecker’s latest album, but now that I have had the chance to spend some time with it I feel that I can give it the proper review that it deserves.
There is more of a focus on not only the ambient sound that envelops the music, but also on percussive effects and layered timbres. Now, when I say “percussive effects” I guess what I am really getting at is that the sound of piano keys is recorded such that one can actually hear the striking of the string.
Hecker leaves some mysterious clues for us as audience to piece together, or at least some things that we should think about, not just as we listen, but things that we should think about the world around us. I’m not saying that each of these tracks are tone-poems by any means, though perhaps that is the way that Hecker composed them. There are a few questions raised in at least a few of the songs.
I’ve already talked about the track “Live Room” in some detail. The main point that I made was that by using Steve Reich’s motive from “Piano Phase” as source material, though detached and disjunct he was demanding us as listeners to think about the connections between that early minimalist piece and “Live Room.” Considering that could result in any number of conclusions.
Though that is only the beginning of the trail that is left for us. There are also the implications of the cover image that seems to allude to an famous picture of a prisoner being tortured at Abu Ghraib. It’s not very much of a stretch to see that those two photos are related, though Hecker places his figure inside what looks to be a church. Several things come to mind when this is investigated further. Obviously there is the surface level implication of modeling the album art after a picture with such loaded, dark and heavy implications. As soon as you notice it, it’s going to conjure up all sorts of thoughts. Perhaps you had forgotten all about Abu Ghraib, or maybe you mistook that for something that happened at Guantanamo. Either way, you are going to come to a shocking realization that both of those things happened/are happening. Right now. We live in a world that allows those things to happen.
Torture at Abu Ghraib
Then there is the fact that the album is called “Virgins” and the album cover seems to place this figure inside a church. The prisoner’s pose, as well as the figure on the cover, are like that of Christ on the cross. And all of this combined with the fact that songs have been given titles such as “Incense at Abu Ghraib,” “Stigmata I,” “Stigmata II,” and going with the latter two – “Stab Variation” that closes out the album.
That’s a lot to consider and we haven’t even started thinking about the music.
Hecker is at the helm of a larger, more varied sound palette throughout “Virgins.” Sudden shifts in timbre and dynamics intercut with his usual, decidedly ambient sound. The percussive nature of the piano is really brought out in the tracks “Virginal I” and “Virginal II,” where it is found to weave in and out of focus first in front of any drones and then behind them. Though, in “Virginal II” the minimalist piano percussives become a static pattern, though a bit off kilter in the same manner as “Live Room.” The mixed timbres and layered lines creates a crystalline shimmer like perpetually shattering glass, before a thick, low square-wave synth comes in toward the end. Again, the palette of evolving timbres as a compositional device is evident.
“Prisms” comes careening into view as the opening track, immediately bringing to our attention dense harmonies, motion and shifts in timbre. It’s the set up to “Virginal I,” where the piano comes into play. “Radiance,” “Live Room,” and “Live Room Out” work as a nice parenthetical aside between the “Virginals.” A nice little trilogy that restates the opening idea of the album.
The piano returns on “Black Refraction,” though (again) with a different timbre than before. This time the bare piano is played sans all harshness, sostenuto, with the overtones collecting in the lower register over a repeated pattern. Minimalist repetition seems the M.O. across many of the tracks on “Virgins,” but there is great care taken to break down the patterns, cut out parts, divide them up into smaller pieces that are then repurposed, electronically manipulated (there are some pitches that are synthetically drawn out for emphasis on “Black Refraction,” allowing certain lines to be brought out in a different way without necessarily changing anything musically, only changing the timbre) buried and then brought back.
Closing the album with “Stigmata I,” “Stigmata II” and “Stab Variation” (the last of which I can’t help but think is another reference to help create the image of Christ on the cross with the stigmata being related to the violence of being nailed to the cross) just brings us back full circle. We are still left to wonder what the connotations of the music and imagery that is put forth on this album could ultimately mean. As “Stab Variation” comes to a close, is that the vague remnants of Reich’s theme buried in the background? Does the minimalist repetition go with the torture and christ imagery in an effort to say that this isn’t the first time that humans have brought upon horrible atrocities to other humans, and this won’t be the last? Is it that we are forever doomed to a never ending cycle only periodically broken? There are any number of unanswerable questions raised throughout this album. It’s up to us to decide what it all means.
The album is set for official release on October 14 as a CD or double LP and can be pre-ordered through Kranky (Kranky 153) by following the link at the bottom of the post:
Catch Tim Hecker live, currently out on tour:
December 14 / Chicago, IL / Constellation
December 8 / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil / Oi Futuro
November 16 / Minneapolis, MN / Walker Art Center
November 8 / Seattle, WA / Chapel Performance Space
November 6 / Los Angeles, CA / Human Resources
October 31 / Paris, France / Théâtre du Châtelet (TBC)
October 17 / Vancouver, Canada / Vancouver New Music Festival October 12 / Chicago, IL / TBC
October 5 / Essen, Germany / Denovali Swingfest / Weststadt Halle
October 4 / Milano, Italy / Centro Culturale San Fedele
October 2 / Bologna, Italy / Palazzo Re Enzo Web//Kranky Records//Twitter//
MGMT is finally releasing a follow up to 2010’s superb “Congratulations.” The new eponymous album is set for release on September 17 and is available for pre-order on iTunes, where it is referred to as the “optimizer deluxe edition.” The pre-order comes with an instant download of the song “Your Life is a Lie,” which can also be heard/seen below.
Since we don’t have much of the album to play, I can relay to you how caught off guard I was when first seeing the album cover. When I went to school in Western New York (Fredonia, to be exact) I lived in the neighboring city. The album cover was taken across the street from what was my bank when I lived there. I remember riding past “Stylz Unlimited” on my bike all the time. It more often than not looked like a garage sale exploded on the front lawn. My apartment was maybe a half-mile away.
The reason that they were in that shithole of a town is that Dave Fridmann’s Tarbox Road Studios is not very far away in the other direction, in neighboring Cassadaga. This is also the reason why I accidentally walked into an MGMT show in 2006 at BJ’s, a bar in Fredonia. A few months later their song “Kids” become hugely successful, and because of that success MGMT opened for of Montreal when I saw them a few months later in Buffalo.
The Flaming Lips also record at Tarbox Road, which is why often times while standing in line at the Starbucks on Fredonia’s campus one will find themselves standing behind Wayne Coyne. But I digress.
Pre-order the album. Check out the songs. “Your Life is a Lie” is instantly catchy, and much more upbeat than the title would suggest. And so far the album has 5-stars on iTunes, apparently based off of this song alone. So there’s that. Oh, and check out the link below to Tarbox Road Studios, where Fridmann keeps a daily log of the goings on at the studio.
I understand that this album came out 5 months ago, but I also a.) don’t care and b.) think that this is not only her best album to date, but probably one of the best albums to be released so far this year.
There has been a constant and steady development across Marnie’s releases beginning with “In Advance of the Broken Arm” from 2007. That album was a great statement as a debut. The guitars were mindblowing, the melodies were catchy and the lyrics were deeply personal. That the album starts with a barrage of lightning fast guitar and Zach Hill’s bat-shit insane drumming set the tone for not only that release, but for Marnie’s sound as a whole.
With each album her overall sound has gotten tighter. The roughness in the production of earlier releases has been replaced with cleaner, more intricately layered guitar lines, with her voice alternating between the familiar highs with the increasing presence of more relaxed and effortless singing in her lower range. For example, on the track “Noonan,” we hear the line “don’t you wanna be somebody, don’t you want to be, don’t you wanna be somebody?” sung in the latter part of the song almost unaccompanied, save for a few dropped in guitar chords.
And, sticking with that song, it creates a good deal of space in the verses with different layers of guitars taking prominence, rising and falling in the mix. Marnie is in control of an entire ensemble of guitars. It no longer feels like the guitar tapping that she has been recognized for (and recognized for good reason) is felt to be the primary element of each of the songs.
Though, there is (immediately following “Noonan”) “Nothing is Easy,” that sounds a bit more like something that would be on an earlier release, but finding places to stretch out, once again. Some of the structures of earlier albums, like the terrific despite its blockiness “Roads? Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roads,” from her album “This is it…” are abandoned for more standard verse-chorus fair. That is part of what makes this album sound all the more polished. It’s the tightening of these structures into more palatable forms that gives “Chronicles” a higher degree of accessibility.
There were always prog-ish elements to many earlier songs that explored tricky meter changes and several otherwise disconnected sections. And though these things worked well in those album, were interesting and part of the overall sound due in no small part to Hill’s drumming, the focus throughout “Chronicles” really shows what a great songwriter and vocalist Marnie can be. That is to say that a hint of prog remains, for example in “East Side Glory” and “Hell Yes,” but they hardly beg to be noticed, or take anything away from the overall cohesion of the track.
There does remain a degree of experimentation across this record. Stern is shown to be tooling more with the recording process, finding new ways to create textures with an array of different techniques, never relying too heavily upon one over another. As a result the album is more balanced. Perhaps this is partly a result of the departing of Zach Hill on drums, which are also, as a result, trimmed back a little bit. Again, this leaves not only a bit more space but also means that the songs don’t always feel the need to be super busy guitar vs. drums affairs. Songs are able to grow and take shape in much different ways.
Each previous release has pointed in this direction. There haven’t been any absolutely drastic changes in style from one album to the next, it’s just that with each album the elements that have always been present continue to grow and to be improved upon, while shedding a bit of the excess. On the surface the music still sounds and feels complex, but at its core this album is full of songs that are more stripped down but no doubt just as powerful as always.
As an added bonus, Marnie has released a new track for the previously mentioned Adult Swim compilation, “This Was It,” which can be heard below. As an added added bonus Kill Rock Stars has put all of Marnie’s albums on sale at her bandcamp page for $5 until the end of August. So head over there and download everything. There are also some upcoming tour dates throughout September that are posted below.
09/05 Raleigh NC Hopscotch Festival
09/09 Minnapolis MN Fineline (with DEERHUNTER)
09/10 Chicago IL Metro (with Deerhunter)
09/11 Cleveland OH Beachland Ballroom
09/12 Toronto ON Phoenix Concert Theatre with Deerhunter
09/13 Columbus OH Skully’s
09/16 Boston Ma Royale
09/20 Lexington KY Boomslang Festival
Please somebody, tell me what they are putting in the water supply in Chicago. I have always been a fan of the Chicago rock scene since I was in high school and loved Hum and The Smashing Pumpkins like it was my job, but now – between Smith Westerns and Twin Peaks – there is a whole generation of bands that grew up after those bands were out of commission (I know, I know. Hum still plays semi-regularly, or at least sometimes and don’t even get me started on the Pumpkins. The pumpkins died after Machina II. What is touring now is not the Smashing Pumpkins, but rather Billy Corgan trying to convince everyone that he is still relevant and then crying like a baby when people scream for him to play the hits.) But I digress…
Maybe rather than questioning what they are putting in the water supply in Chicago, I should ask what they are putting in the school lunches in Chicago. Smith Westerns were playing the Pitchfork Music Festival the same weekend as their senior ball, and that was right around the time that their 2nd album came out. Now we have Twin Peaks, who are barely old enough to drive, and they’ve released easily one of the best things that I have heard this year so far.
Twin Peaks
“Sunken” is a guitar heavy, echo laden, mass of jangle and energy. It’s an infectious cross between pop and some of the grittier rock that I have heard lately. Though the album is barely 20 minutes long (they are apparently playing the Japandroids’ game of “how short can we make an album while still calling it an album?”) but despite that short length it packs quite a punch. “Fast Eddie” could easily be a radio hit with a guitar line that I just can’t get enough of (though I have always been a sucker for the tasteful use of echo). The chorus really opens up, and even though I can’t figure out what the words are, I want to sing along.
“Ocean Blue” sounds like something that could have been on the first Beach Fossils release. Or Real Estate. Its swirl of reverb is hypnotizing. Normally I would say that nobody should use a crash cymbal that much, but here it really does add to the sound, it’s a necessary component. And “Stand in the Sand” is another stand out track on an album full of stand out tracks. I could go on about the catchiness, but I think that by this point you get the picture. Oh, and you are in luck because you can listen to that track below.
For kids this young to be able to tie an album together this well is astonishing. If you are 35 and still picking up guitars off the wall at your local guitar center hoping one day that you’ll “make it,” just know that you are going to end up playing Molly Hatchet covers in a dive bar on the outskirts of town while these guys are doing it right. It’s great to hear players so young that are able to capture something, and have it down so well and know their sound inside and out. Perfect summer album. It’s out now and you can purchase it on vinyl or as a digital download by clicking here.
They do have a couple tour dates left on the west coast in the coming week, so if you live out here then you should try to catch them.
8/6: Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex!
8/7: Fullerton, CA @ Burger Records
9/13-15: Chicago, IL @ Riot Fest & Carnival 2013 (Exact Date TBA)
9/18 Dallas, TX @ Three Links+
9/19 Austin, TX @ Mohawk+
9/20 Houston, TX @ Fitzgeralds+
9/21 Baton Rouge @ Mud & Water+
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]
Pepper Rabbit, with their most recent release, “Beauregard”, have produced a stripped down, folky version of ethereal dreampop with a bit of honky-tonk barstool blues added to the mix. The music has a familiar sound that is quite inviting, like music that friends would make some evening while sitting in front of a fire. The traditional “rock band” sound has been expanded to include clarinet, trumpet, ukulele, and mandolin, all of which assist in providing the songs with the aforementioned “folk” sound. The creative instrumentation doesn’t seem to bog down the process though. Each instrument is given proper consideration and space and most importantly never seem to not be exactly what the song calls for. Pepper Rabbit seem to be going against the “army of people on stage” ethos of Broken Social Scene and the like. Less is more in terms of orchestration. Finding just the right sound is much more preferred to figuring out parts for everything all the time. I think that the best way to get across an accurate description of Pepper Rabbit’s sound would be to compare them to a less guitar driven, less crowded sounding Arcade Fire. Pepper Rabbit can be quiet and introspective in much the same manner as Grizzly Bear, and they hit all the right emotional spots.
Pepper Rabbit photo by Brittney Bush Bollay (http://www.threegigs.com)
The songs are hopeful, catchy, sentimental, reminiscent and perhaps a bit remote and sorrowful, yet Pepper Rabbit singer and multi-instrumentalist Xander Singh, bassist Shay Spence, and drummer Luc Laurent are able to turn that sorrow into a celebratory remembrance of the past. Their sound is at once haunting and beautiful, to sum it up as succinctly as possible. Feelings are described perfectly with honest lyrics that are set effectively. Take for example the lyric, “That’s when you find there’s nothing there. Drink when you see that no one cares. You said I’ll see you soon, and back there’s the Harvest Moon” from “Harvest Moon”. The trumpet in that track echoes with a little help from the pulsation of a distant organ while the rhythm chugs along through a sea of voices.
With “In the Spirit of Beauregard” the normal pop-tune structure, which the band doesn’t deviate too far from through most of the album, is challenged. The songs goes through several changes with honky-tonk piano, followed by jovial klezmer band clarinets, followed by an upbeat quickstep and back again to the ethereal dreampop in an extended outro. These changes would probably never even occur to most bands, but Pepper Rabbit makes sense of it all in the spirit of pop experimentation.
Pepper Rabbit - "Beauregard"
The warmth of the songs, with layers of instruments with a recognized and welcomed style of thoughtful, introspective lyricism truly helps the music to achieve maximum accessibility. The band seems to also have a unique willingness to stand nearly unadorned and sing touching songs that have the ability to grab the listener’s attention based on the lyric’s emotional content alone. Alternately they can make really big statements with lush orchestrations of those same simple ideas. Take the song “Older Brother”, one of the more stripped down tracks consisting mostly of simple ukulele and voice. Incidentally I feel that “Older Brother” stands out as the song that could be the biggest “hit” with a rather upbeat and catchy chorus. They even tread pretty closely to pure ambience on “Song for a Pump Organ” with drones of sound, waves of voices and a glockenspiel ringing clearly through the cloud of sound. Anything to help bring a song to life. Nothing seems to be off limits here.
This is certainly one of the more carefully crafted albums to be released recently. It’s great to hear an album where songwriting stands front and center resulting in a moving album with subtlety and style.
Los Angeles’ Wonder Wheel is back with their trademarked brand of pulsating rock music that stands somewhere between a dream-like haze, drugged out reality and a hallucination. The music shimmers with retro keyboard sounds amongst the swirl of delayed guitars and vocals.
On this latest release the vocals are not quite as buried in the mix, or as washed out in delay as previously heard on Paul A Rosales’ album “Wonder Wheel I”, which was released as a solo album, but in actuality a collection of previous work by Wonder Wheel. All in all this album shows a band that is in a constant state of evolution, with this album showing them at their best yet. There is some truly catchy material here in the choruses. The songwriting has become much more direct, and the songs themselves are structured in a more traditional manner. This familiarity helps make their unique sound a bit more accessible than before.
There is an honesty in Rosales’ vocal delivery. Sometimes it is double tracked, harmonizing with himself, sometimes his voice stands out in the open, solitary. It is more confident and pitch perfect here with the feeling of the lyrics coming across loud and clear. The album speaks mostly of a longing to not feel so alone. The sound captures the sadness and confusion of being in an unfamiliar place with nobody around to share your feelings. Truly something that each of us can relate to. There is a real connection to human emotion with these songs. The songs speak about that human connection that we all want to have. It is frightening to be out in the world alone, it’s like wandering through a fog in an unfamiliar city. Just hearing a song like “A Million Miles Away” with the lyric, “I’m alone, I’m sick and I’m alone” and later, “I need you, I want you” one can immediately grab onto that feeling of desperation in trying to make a connection. This feeling is unmistakably clear throughout.
The band captures a sound that I can only think to describe as “caught in between”. We hear something between a dream and reality with aspects of minimalist repetition with dreamy waves of sound from the delayed effects swirling around reminiscent of shoegaze. But, the familiarity also comes from a sound similar to the much lauded “chillwave” sound that seems to have popped up out of nowhere this past summer through bands like Neon Indian and Nite Jewel. Wonder Wheel does share a similarity in sound to these bands through their analog, DIY recording techniques and the heavily effected instruments and production.
Wonder Wheel - "Brave New World"
Even with these comparisons to other artists and classifying them into this genre Wonder Wheel has a very unique sound that is all their own and therefore very recognizable. The album begins with a very short synth crescendo before the throbbing pulsations of the full band kicks in. I detect a pronounced influence of The Cure on songs like “After Dark”, especially when the lead guitar line enters. “Wednesday” bounces jubilantly with its Bo Diddley groove, sounding like early Interpol in it’s brooding mood.
“IMHO” is an uptempo gem that is quite catchy and would really work well as a single with a spacious verse and rapid fire lyrics in the chorus. The rhythm change up at the end finds the band sliding into a half-time feel much like in the track “I Know (It’s All Good)”. These rhythmic shifts really add a new dimension of intensity to the songs by seemingly taking all of the energy of the song to that point and suddenly putting the brakes on. All of the forward motion generated by the song up to that point is being held back, just trying to break through the surface.
Wonder Wheel has something that few bands possess, and that is consistent and prolific output. They are constantly creating new material. This release is their 36th self-recorded album since June of 2003. Instead of working one EP or album into the ground until the songs get old and tired, they are continuing to work, writing songs, releasing material and touring. This album was recorded between May 4 and July 27, 2010 and is available for purchase on cassette right now over at Sixteen Tambourines.
Definitely worth a listen. Their unique sound, catchy hooks and emotional lyrics combined with an evolved sound, tighter songwriting and contagious energy is sure to make a connection.
Every once in a while an album comes along that can only be described as “massive”. Working for a Nuclear Free City’s double-disc “Jojo Burger Tempest” is one of those albums. Eighteen tracks that clock in at nearly an hour and a half but never feels cumbersome. Each track showcases an endless stream of ideas that have been carefully stitched together to complete a much larger idea. This is certainly an album about large ideas, with many of the tracks being continuations of previous tracks and a final track that is over a solid half an hour of idea after idea after idea pasted together into one gigantic medley. That final track is “The Jojo Burger Tempest”, the namesake track that is a summation of what the entire album is about.
The sheer originality and outright ingenuity present are something to be marveled at. There is just so much content to grab onto, yet the band doesn’t seem to be looking to change things up too drastically from track to track. The ideas are not wildly bounding from one thing to the next. They manage to come up with variations that fit within the parameters set forth in the song and they don’t leave, they only make things more and more interesting. There is always a new element added that seems to fit perfectly, that seems to be exactly what the song was missing up to that point and can propel the song to new heights without ever becoming too much.
I couldn’t see classifying this album as anything but prog-something. It’s not necessarily straight up prog-rock, I think that I would be more comfortable considering it as prog-electro/rock/shoegaze. There are elements of dreamy shoegaze that are ever present while at the same time merged with synth heavy dance pop. But there are also songs like “Low” that display the influence of mid-90s era Brit-pop as well as the hypnotic “Inokashira Park” that will leave listeners transfixed with its slow build of layered minimalism. Meanwhile “Buildings”, a stripped down mid-tempo acoustic gem with flighty vocals that speaks from a reverb drenched cathedral, is about as close as one can get to an acoustic guitar driven ballad. This isn’t to say that they are trying to cram as many genres together as possible for the sake of doing so, but rather their sound is so all encompassing that to ignore the effect of these influences on their music would be foolish.
As I said, I want to shy away from labeling this album as pure “prog” because usually what one expects from a “prog” band or a “prog” album are very segmented songs that are non-developmental, the kind of songs that display the musicians as all brain and no heart and this is certainly not the case with this album. Tracks like “B.A.R.R.Y.”, with its lush string arrangement and delay-drenched guitar, sound ethereal and surround the listener in their warm sound. The songs are firmly planted, for the most part, in standard forms. There are verses and choruses and hooks galore throughout. Each song has at least one memorable bit that, personally, had me coming back for more.
Working for a Nuclear Free City - Jojo Burger Tempest
There is a common thread of crystal clear production and virtuosic musicality present throughout “Jojo Burger Tempest”. This could be considered as one of the binding elements from track to track along with the thumping bass, clean guitar and a plethora of synth sounds that range from adding crunch to the low end to lifting the songs up with bright arpeggios and lead lines that cut through everything else. The vocals are clearly taking a backseat to all of the instrumental and electronic wizardry that is present though we do get a bit of vocal harmony reminiscent of Caribou’s “Andorra”, Klaxons and The Birds on the lead single “Silent Times”. The fact that whenever vocals are present they are pushed far back and made nearly unintelligible by effects shows that they are a group that is truly focused on the music more so than the words.
The organization as far as track order and song styles really benefits the work as a whole. This really is album oriented music and a lot more can be taken away from experiencing the whole sequence of songs in a sitting. The final track stands out as nearly an album in itself with its seamless melding of tons and tons of musical ideas and elaborations carefully worked into a song that is far beyond pastiche, it actually ends up making complete sense and is the most enjoyable 30+ minute track that I have come across in a long time. One goes through quite a journey in the process of listening to that song, just as one goes through quite a journey listening to this album. This is a great piece of work that is very worthy of your attention.
![Radiohead - "The King of Limbs"](http://quartertonality.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/thekingoflimbs-1024x914.jpg "Radiohead - "The King of Limbs"")
![](http://quartertonality.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/kr58.jpg "Pepper Rabbit - "Beauregard"")
