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.
Paper Airplanes – “Scandal, Scandal, Scandal Down in the Wheat Field”
Earlier this week Airhouse records released Paper Airplanes’ “Scandal, Scandal, Scandal Down in the Wheat Field.” The release successfully bottles heady, thematic, album oriented rock music that is driving and passionate, and even more importantly, exciting and at times joyful and exuberant. A full album, that takes advantage of every minute that it has to offer. Like many song-cycle albums, it’s dense. There is a lot of material, but that is not a negative aspect in the least. I am of the opinion that the job of an album, and the job of an artist, a true musician, is to be able to create music that needs to be heard. The trick with an album constructed in this way is that the artist needs to create an entire album that needs to be heard as an album. Sure there are some songs that the listener will grab onto more than others, but in order to fully grasp the reality of the disc one must settle in and listen from front to back.
Paper Airplanes have managed to create such an album. A rare feat.
Like any good song cycle album, the listener is taken on a journey. The sequencing of the tracks is just as important as it would be with any other album, but this has the extra added challenge of needing to tie each element into the larger shape of the narrative arc. “Scandal…” deftly accomplishes the feat of creating a cohesive album of songs that are bound to each other to create a truly engaging solitary work.
Singer Marcus Stoesz’s voice stretches out from octave to octave, exploring the various shadings of tone in multiple ways for dramatic affect. One minute soft, relaxed and low, while brittle, reaching and tenuous the next. “Assembly” is a good instance of this type of song where the voice is reaching, soaring into the sky in a chorus that joyfully continues almost indefinitely in its soulful refrain.
The guitar tone, on that track, and throughout the album, is decidedly bright and clean. Everything is clean. Stoesz’s voice is very unique, and instantly recognizable or. In many ways, and I’m sure that this comparison has been drawn before, but there are elements of Paper Airplanes’ sound that are similar to that of The Decembrists. Aside from the album length narrative structure that ties all of the songs together. The way that everything was recorded, and the arrangements (beautiful use of strings appear throughout this album, as well. They underpin perfectly the keyboard and guitar led ensemble in the quieter moments. The band really does know how to use their resources to provide each song with a terrific amount of emotional depth) tend to be reminiscent of The Decembrists.
There are elements of this album that have the shade of prog-rock to it. The presence of the drums, and the large scope of the album in general are both big contributors.Something like “Chisolm Trail” that comes at the end of the album, takes its time building up momentum. A trumpet rises out of the keyboard texture only to become the backdrop to the climactic outro.
From the opening fingerpicked tension filled steel string acoustic, to the exuberant beginning of “An Account of Surprising Accuracy, Given the Messenger,” “Scandal…” simply floats from song to song.
The band is exceedingly adroit in building everything up to an exciting and memorable climax, but knowing when to back off and when to keep things simmering a bit. Take some time to listen to the album above, give it the honest listen that it deserves, maybe give it 2 or 3. You’ll be glad you did.
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//
Anyone that has been paying attention to this blog for the past couple of months already knows that I have been eagerlywaiting for this album to come out.
Well, tomorrow is the day that Kill Rock Stars will officially release Quasi’s 9th studio album. “Mole City” is not only the band’s 9th studio album, but also an album released on their 20th year as a band.
The album is stacked, for starters. Not including the bonus EP of cover songs that comes along with the album there are 24 tracks spanning over an hour of music. Right out of the gate after the brief initial organ solo opening of “*,” the track “You Can Stay But You Gotta Go” begins with a low rumble and charges through with ultra-fuzzed, guitar that (I think) has been run through a whammy pedal, or something similar, to send the pitch down an octave. I mean, it could be a bass guitar, but there are times when the line goes above the range of the bass…of course I could be wrong.
Anyway, that’s not the point. I’m getting off track here. The album amps up Quasi’s early rock influence with several tracks built upon a bar-room piano riff foundation overtop of which squealing, howling guitar noise is placed. This is exactly the structure of “Fat Fanny Land,” with the added shuffling backbeat laid down by Weiss. It’s built on a standard 12-bar blues form, with Coomes’ vocals and rhodes piano adding a nice dose of grit to the mix. And there’s even more blues piano on “Headshrinker,” which presents an interesting case. The song builds so slowly, taking the majority of its 4-plus minutes to get to it’s wildest. And what is done during that slow, steady build is even more interesting (to me at least) in that this build consists entirely of one chord. When the Brian May type doubled guitar sol enters toward the end of the song it’s a real breath of fresh air. That solo is also the only part of the song that really moves away from the primary chord.
That’s quite a feat. It’s a challenging thing to create a song on a single premise without straying from that idea or adding to it while at the same time holding interest, avoiding monotony. Coomes and Weiss, however, manage this with relative ease.
There are some other blues based rockers, such as “Nostalgia Kills,” a song that also benefits from the slap-back echo on the vocals. “Nostalgia Kills” would be right at home on classic rock radio, with a guitar riff that sounds like something straight out of Molly Hatchet, or Lynyrd Skynyrd. Another country/blues guitar jam, “Bedbug Town,” features the spot on harmonies of Janet. Their voices work so perfectly together, and Weiss’ harmonies are always spot on. Speaking of Weiss’ voice, she has the chance to take center stage, singing the lone vocal on track “R.I.P,” with only a country style finger picked steel string guitar. Later in the album the track “One and Done” matches the sound of “R.I.P” with its quick guitar work in a similar finger-picked style, though this time considerably brighter with the addition of the slide guitar doubling.
Because of their inclusion of the honky-tonk style piano and ultra fuzzed out guitars or the distorted Rhodes, those songs often sound like they are coming out of a saloon in the wild west on acid. Though, lyrically, the songs are often dark and/or heartbreaking. That darkness is often hidden behind bouncy piano lines and early blues rock guitar hooks. In “The Goat” Coomes sings, “where’s the crime in tryin’ to get you to love me again?…I’ll be the goat if it makes it any better,” obscured in exactly this way. There are moments, such as in “Geraldine,” where the darkness is let to sound loud and clear.
Short bursts of noise such as “*,” “Chrome Duck,” and the sound collage of “Mole City” break the album up nicely, serving to create convenient divisions in the album that serve as waypoints guiding the listener through the album.
Finally, the addition of the covers EP (available to those that pre-ordered “Mole City”) makes total sense in creating the connections between the Quasi sound with bands like Queen and Black Sabbath, as well as Marvin Gaye and Nick Lowe. Come to think of it though, after listening to the dark lyrics of the preceding album Queen’s lyrics “don’t stop me now, I’m havin’ a good time, havin’ a good time” can’t help themselves but sound a bit ironic. But anyway, if you haven’t heard their cover of “Heaven and Hell” that appeared as a bonus track on 2010’s “American Gong,” then do yourself a favor and check that one out. Janet’s ability to replicate Keith Moon’s style couldn’t be closer to perfection.
Mole City is out October 1st (ie tomrrow) on Kill Rock Stars and can be found at your local independent record store or at the link below. The album is available on vinyl (coke-bottle clear while supplies last, otherwise black) CD or as a digital download.
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+
