Grass Widow's Internal Logic

One of this year's best rock records came out on Tuesday...That would be Grass Widow's Internal Logic, reviewed yesterday at Blurt.

Grass Widow
Internal Logic
(HLR)

Grass Widow's third album balances the sharp and the smooth, easing jittery obliqueness with the soft solace of vocal harmonies. Last summer's single, "Milo Minute" runs anxious Delta Five bass vamps (that's Hannah Lew) into sawtoothed guitar lines (Raven Mahon) and punchy, half-slanted drum beats (Lillian Maring). It would be classic late-1980s post punk (the band has, after all, opened for the Raincoats) except for the singing, all three Grass Widows together, voices twining and soaring in well-manicured harmonies.


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Also check out Nick D'Amore's interview feature at Blurt today.

Man Forever

Man Forever is an experimental, mostly-drumming project from John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions from Oneida), whose third album Pansophical Cataract came out last month on Thrill Jockey. It is not, I think, for everyone -- you have to really like drums, for one thing -- but it is pretty visceral. My friend Bill Meyer, who is much smarter about improv than I am, said, "There's more to Man Forever than manic bashing. There’s a science to these sounds. The drum skins are tuned to ensure the presence of certain frequencies, so that tones dance and weave between the beats." Read more here.

I'm thinking about going to see Man Forever at the Flywheel next month, but I'm not sure I can get anyone to go with me.

Royal Headache

Another in an impressive string of Aussie bands, Royal Headache is from Sydney, not Melbourne, and while essentially a punk outfit, splices in some Northern Soul-ish DNA via singer Shogun.

My review ran yesterday at Blurt:

Royal Headache
Royal Headache
(What's Your Rupture?)

Royal Headache's debut begins in a pounding, pummeling riff-based rampage, all double-timed guitar strumming and frantic one-two drumming. "Never Again," the lead off track, runs as fast and hard and ragged as any punk anthem, taking the corners with two wheels off the ground. Yet fine as the band's all-out mayhem can be, that's not what sets this Aussie foursome apart. You see, Royal Headache is a punk band with a secret weapon, the sandpaper-y sweet, classic-rock-into-1960s soul vocals of Shogun, the singer whose raspy romanticism calls up memories of Jam-era Paul Weller, Ted Leo, Kevin Rowland of Dexy's Midnight Runners, even Rod Stewart in his rougher, earlier, Faces days.

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New Burma...even louder than before

I've been listening to the new Mission of Burma album Unsound for a week or so, not really long enough to let it sink in, but enough to hear that it's rougher and more explosive than either of the post-reunion albums, and maybe more in-your-face than Vs.. It's also more irregularly structured I think, or possibly the structures are more complicated and harder to grasp right away. As I said, I need to listen to this more before I really get it.

Doesn't hurt that the lead-off track is named after my friend Michael's band. (Oh, I know, it's probably not. Probably working out housekeeping issues...) anyway, here it is.

"Dust Devil"


It's on Fire Records (not Matador this time) in July.

Mystery Jets' giant record collection

There's plenty to like about the Mystery Jets' latest album Radlands, a kind of shiny, clever, brit poppy thing, with echoes of Pulp and the Kinks. Still for music geeks, really, it's all about the first song, "Greatest Hits," in which a very well put together album collection is divided asunder...whatever else happens, for instance, the singer is keeping Double Nickels on the Dime and rightly so.

Have a listen, and see how you have...


My wonderful, way-too-grown-up son is going to prom tonight and I am all teary about seeing him in a tux like he's getting married, which he will some day, I suppose, lucky girl...

Anyway

Red Kross Re-Krossed

Red Kross, the SoCal punk band that pretty much invented teen-powered, melodic post-hardcore, will release its first album in 15 years this summer. Researching the Blues, which features the Neurotica-era line-up of Jeff and Steven McDonald, Robert Hecker and Roy McDonald, follows a series of reunion shows at Coachella, All Tomorrow's Parties and with the Hoodoo Gurus in Australia.

It's on Merge this summer. Here's the title track...pretty great, IMHO.

"Researching the Blues"

Malcolm Middleton's trying not to be angry

Interesting swerve in direction from the former Arab Strap mainstay....

Human Don’t Be Angry
Human Don’t Be Angry
Chemikal Underground

In Arab Strap and in the five solo albums since, Malcolm Middleton has always sounded like a man squinting into unexpected daylight, grasping for a cigarette and piecing together the unfortunate (but never, it sounds like, entirely unexpected) events of the night before. He is disconsolate in the way that romantics often are, but without much real rancor. To listen to Malcolm Middleton is to recognize and be forgiven for all the ways that human beings fall short with each other.


Human Don’t Be Angry, then, is an odd departure, mostly downplaying Middleton’s frayed-edge tenor, his dead reckoning of human weakness (including his own) and the surprising warmth and humane-ness that has, in the past, lifted the weight of negativity. Instead, we get a primarily instrumental, loop-based collection of tracks, built out of bright, clear electronic elements – keyboards, drum machines, synths – and layered in intricate, repetitive patterns. The more lyrical elements of Kraut (bands like Cluster and Tangerine Dream) seem to be prime influences, though certain passages sound like subdued Mogwai and others (especially the ones with xylophone) like Tortoise.

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The "theme" at Soundcloud.

Stanley Clarke interview

My Stanley Clarke interview runs today at PopMatters.

Bringing the Bass Up Front: An Interview with Stanley Clarke

By Jennifer Kelly 24 May 2012

It’s 1975. Stanley Clarke, the bass player for Return to Forever, has just released his second solo album Journey To Love. The single “Silly Putty” has begun climbing up the pop charts. He and his band are playing a sold-out concert in Indiana. The reception is wildly enthusiastic. But later, as Clarke heads backstage, he runs into a promoter, shaking his head, profoundly unsettled by the idea of a bass player writing songs, leading a band and headlining at a large rock arena. “He just couldn’t believe it,” says Clarke. “To have the bass player standing out in front of the band and the guitar player in back and the keyboard player over there and the horn players over on the side ... to have me, the bass player, talking to the audience and playing and laughing and all crazy, it was weird to this guy. No singer, and the place was packed. Something was wrong.”


Clarke laughs at the memory, half a lifetime past the days when a bass player as band leader was a radical idea. “At that point, I just recognized this was not fashionable, but I kept doing it and it started something,” he says. “Going on stage as a bass player is a total natural thing now. But then, for the bass player to play shows and release an album, it was a no no.”

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A darker, warier Hallelujah the Hills

One of my favorite why-aren't-they-bigger bands has made a new album, and it's considerably less buoyant the celebratory than the others...but still very much worth hearing. Check out my review of Hallelujah the Hills' No One Knows What Happens Next at Blurt today.

I said: No One Knows is more downbeat than previous Hallelujah the Hills outings, warier, more contained and considerably less exuberant. There are still massed horn sections and all-hands, group-shouted choruses, but less of them. There's a lot more smoulder between the explosions. "Get Me in a Room," the album's first single, sounds like Telephono-era Spoon, taut, world-weary, minimalist and the opposite of the giddy, literate excesses you expect from Hallelujah the Hills. "Nightingale Lightning" is more true to form, bulging with trumpet solos and weird string-and-opera-singer-samples and unstoppable in its upslanting chorus. Yet there's no mistaking the disgruntled, discouraged tone of an album that includes songs titled "Care to Collapse," "Dead People's Music" and "Hello, My Destroyer."

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While you're over at Blurt, why not read Ron Hart's piece on Flying Nun at 30.

Bad man, good songwriter: Cory Branan

Mutt, which is Cory Branan's third album and out today on Bloodshot Records, is not just the best country rock album I've heard this year, but maybe, in some ways, the best rock album. Branan reminds a lot of Richard Buckner on his slow songs, like "The Corner," he's got that same heart-breaking flutter in his voice that just rises above the grit. But the places where he really knocks me out are the faster, more rocking songs where he's as fast and rough and beautifully sloppy as Paul Westerberg...check out "Bad Man," which is the lead-off single from this really excellent album.

Nice boots, eh?

Sigur Ros

I quite enjoyed the new Sigur Ros, called Valteri and out next month on XL...and didn't think my review for Blurt would see daylight until the print issue came out this summer. But look, here it is on the site, a bit early.

I said, "Sigur Rós has, in the past, caught flack for valuing static beauty over development, building icy, gorgeous landscapes that remain nearly motionless over the course of a song. Here, however, momentum lurks in even the prettiest tableaux."

More here.

Easter Island

Another recent acquisition, this languid, serene, shoe-gaze-referencing self-release from the Athens, Georgia-based Easter Island. I've listened to Frightened twice, going on three times, since putting it on my iPod yesterday and like it more every time...

So, why, that's the difficulty. I probably haven't thought it through sufficiently, but here are some random observations. There's a bit towards the end that sounds quite like the XX, and I think you can draw connections to Cocteau Twins and (possibly) My Bloody Valentine. Which is to say there's some lovely translucent guitar texture, some airy girl and boy vocals...and also a bit of roil and turmoil underneath. The sort of glistening, reverberating character of the guitars reminds me a little of Explosions in the Sky, a dreamy, driftiness recalls Experimental Aircraft, but there is also a good deal of electro pop. Anyway, check it out...I haven't totally processed it yet, but I like it very much.

Dead Rat Orchestra

I put a bunch of new stuff on my iTunes yesterday for the first time in a while, and one of the records I'm most taken with is The Guga Hunters of Ness from the Dead Rat Orchestra.

The Dead Rat Orchestra plays the kind of altered-folk-slanting-into-ethnic-classical music that you might associate with The Eyesores, Cerberus Shoal and the World Inferno/Friendship Society. They use a lot of things that you might recognize as instruments -- guitar, banjo, organ, violin, accordion, percussion -- and a few others that you might not (saws, toy birds, sine waves). The overall effect, at least on this album, is serene, rather than crowded, however...unlike some of these overpopulated groups, Dead Rat Orchestra seems to be about music primarily, and performance art second.

Their latest album was composed as a soundtrack to accompany the documentary The Guga Hunters of Ness, which, according to the Critical Light website, "follows the journey of ten men from the community of Ness on the Isle of Lewis as they embark on a traditional hunt for gannets."

There's a soundcloud stream, if you're curious.


The record's out on July 9th on Critical Light.

Fawn...like a cannonball?

Fawn, out of Detroit, is a new band, made up of people from old bands (Von Bondies, Thunderbirds Are Now!, Javelins) and hawking an early 1990s-ish, screaming-guitars-and-catchy-melodies kind of sound that reminds me a lot of the Breeders. The new album Coastlines will be out late in June on Quite Scientific Records, but meanwhile, check out "Pixels", the first single.

Detroit's MetroTimes describes their sound like this: "Enticing hooks and major tones – pop without the saccharine perkiness; sunny-day melodies decorating otherwise gna"rly guitar roars, the always evocative (especially if complimentarily-synced) boy-girl harmonies over kicking, spilling drum bursts and good ol’ 90’s indie rock guitar-torches.

And, just for fun, here's the Breeders' video for "Cannonball"

Sam Moss

Sam Moss is a singer, guitarist and banjo player who lives pretty near by in Brattleboro (VT), and he knows some people that I know, but I've never met him or heard him play live. I did like his new EP, Neighbors, and I was sort of planning on reviewing it here, on my blog. Then I finished it, and it seemed like a shame to put it somewhere that only a few people would see it...so I sent it to Otis and, to my surprise, he decided to run it. So it's in Dusted today.


Sam Moss
Neighbors
(self-released)


Sam Moss works the raw, wounded end of Americana, thumping a plaintive rhythm out of banjo strings, singing long mournful notes that twist upwards at the end, like tendrils scrabbling for a few rays of sun. His “Neighbors,” which kicks off this six-song EP, echoes Sam Amidon’s simplicity and Theo Angell’s blues-rooted anguish in untamed, unmannered fashion.

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You can listen to the whole EP at Sam's bandcamp site.


We got DSL yesterday, so now we have internet like everyone else. I was thinking about going back on MOG, but it looks like it's completely different now and I'm not sure I want to anymore.

Woods and Amps for Christ fuse folk with noise

Another one of those split CDs from stylistically aligned artists...in this case, the pieces seem complementary, but you do not see a lot of active mutual influencing. (For example, there's not much "here's Amps sounding a bit like Woods" or vice versa...at least no more than there would have been before the split.) Anyway, enjoyed the album, couple of really good songs on it. My review at Dusted today:

Woods/Amps for Christ
Woods/Amps for Christ
Shrimper

In Amps for Christ, Henry Barnes may have, in some ways, anticipated Woods’ noise-inflected folk pop. Coming out of hardcore and metal in the mid-1990s, he explored ways to place churning distortion in harmony with delicate, multi-ethnic plucking, sounding more like latter day Woodsist outfits (Woods, but also MV +EE) than first wave lo-fi bands (Sentridoh, GBV etc.). This split CD shows how the two bands are closely aligned but distinct from one another, with slightly different approaches to the blend of buzz, drone and melody.

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The Feelies in Northampton...best band ever?

I've been meaning to see the Feelies for a while, almost went last November at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and then didn't, and finally accomplished the deed last Friday. They were so, so, so good. If you get a chance, go.

Here's my write-up in Blurt.

The Feelies: Live in Northampton

The Feelies have always had an uneasy relationship with time. Crazy Rhythms, the band's first album, revved and stuttered with at-the-gate energy, eager to be off, giddy with a hormonal rush, but palpably blocked and frustrated. The Good Earth, five years later, was fluid, languid, circular, its jangling hooks moving forward, then catching on themselves so that they doubled back. Last year's post-reunion album Here Before was even more serene and rearview oriented, full of admonitions to slow down, take time, see what happens later on. There is very little "now" in the Feelies' recorded cannon, but quite a lot of past and future.


That said, they were definitely "present," in every sense of the word, at their two-set, two-encore gig in Northampton this Friday, the band's two-percussionist line-up (that's Stan Demelski on kit and Dave Weckerman on tambourine, maracas, woodblock, cowbell and general sun-glassed, decadent rock-star ambience) lighting a fire under even the most placid Feelies tunes. There was nothing elegiac about Glenn Mercer's bounding, lunging, windmilling guitar work, either, and even stolid Bill Millions ("Look at Bill. He looks like a science teacher," said someone behind me) got into an antic groove by the end of the first set. There was very little banter, just an occasional "Thank you," from long-time bassist Brenda Sauter, and then the woodblock or tambourine or tom beat would kick in again, Mercer would execute one of his rubbery, vibrato-filled guitar licks, Millions would strum a stinging jangle and the band would be off again.

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Shark Fucks

I've got this new Sic Alps 7", always a fun thing, but the best thing about it, in my opinion, is that it covers the Tronics' wonderfully nonsensical, anarchic "Shark Fucks."





Couple of notes on Mother's Day...Saturday I got noticed from the NH State Goverment that my son's totally unsubsidsized but state-pooled health insurance was being cancelled as of August 31st. I hope that these tea party bastards someday need something from Sean's generation and that they get screwed as painfully and senselessly as they have done to the young people.

Also, in a more upbeat and pleasant vein, we had some very nice, unhurried time together this weekend, watched the new Almodovar movie (very creepy), some hoops, and saw the Feelies (that was just me and Bill, Sean is way too beat on Fridays to go out late), who were amazing. I also got about half of the flower garden weeded and repotted my tomato plants.

Lee Bains III

Really enjoyed this record, purchased on a whim at a very underattended P.G. Six/Citay/Lee Bains III show last month...

Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires
There is a Bomb in Gilead
Alive
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Lee Bains III was a late addition to The Dexateens, joining the punk-spliced-to-Muscle Shoals outfit’s three-guitar attack in 2008, in time for the band’s final album Singlewide. The Dexateens, along with The Quadrajets (and later, The Immortal Lee County Killers), defined a certain kind of southern garage punk in the early ’00s, incorporating not just blues, but gospel, redneck rock (Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, Allmans) and soul into an incendiary onslaught. Lee Bains III and The Glory Fires picks up where the Dexateens left off, with ragged blues, rampant stomps and barroom guitar brawls. There is a Bomb in Gilead is as deeply felt as it is deeply fried, as indebted to Al Green as to Iggy and the Stooges.

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Bains and his guys did a show on WFMU, so there's a bunch of live tracks at the Free Music Archive.

John Singer Sergeant

John Dufilho is one of those great, underappreciated songwriters, the main guy behind the Deathray Davies and I Love Math and the drummer for Apples in Stereo. Apparently, he doesn't really like his own voice, though, because, for his latest project he has enlisted a whole mess of vocalists to interpret his songs. They range from semi-famous -- Ben Kweller, Rhett Miller, Bob Schneider, Chris Walla -- to relatively obscure (and possibly imaginary), these singers, but weirdly, they all take on Dufilho's world-weary, shrug of a style, murmuring wonderful lines (my favorite: "it's hard to run uphill...on stilts...it's not my fault that's just the way I'm built") in the most unassuming manner.

I'm really liking a few of these, let's see Kweller's "Mountains, Oceans, Elephants," Brandon Carr & Dylan Silvers' "Why Does Your Moog Affect Me So?" (a dead ringer for "Midnight at the Black Nail Polish Factory"), and Salim Nourallah's "Crooked Teeth Like A Broken Piano."

American Songwriter is streaming the whole album here.

Great Name, Crappy Album: Guantanamo Baywatch

I have a crabby, disgruntled review of Guantanamo Baywatch's Chest Crawl up today at Dusted: Guantanamo Baywatch Chest Crawl Dirtnap Guantanamo Baywatch is a pretty good all-instrumental surf band with a terrible singer. Chest Crawl, the band’s second album (and first for Dirtnap), puts vocals on all but three of its 11 songs, attempting Cramps-style, reverbed rants, Trashmen-esque shouted call and response, Elvis-y 12/8 balladry and hiccuping rockabilly vamps and sheep-bleating, vibrato’d yelps, all badly off-key and dreadfully recorded. Without the singing, Guantanamo Baywatch is tight and credible “Barbacoa”’s rampaging snare intro, its syncopated chords, its whomping, thumping bassline builds a sense of headlong rush into Dick Dale-like instrumentals. Later, “Chest Crawl” bristles with staccato tension, its rapid-fire guitar bravado in sync with drums and bass. And “Massage My Taj,” near the end, picks up from a slow, dull beginning to swagger and strut. Though never exactly hi-fi, these tracks are crisp enough to follow. There are sudden stops and abrupt onslaughts, everyone together, everyone in tune. But something happens when vocals come in. More

S. Carey's Hoyas

Sean Carey came to our attention as a member of Justin Vernon's extended Bon Iver family, and like Vernon, he makes slow, dreamy, multilayered pop that has a great deal more experimentation and chops to it than you'd think, first time through. The Hoyas EP follows a full-length called All We Grow from last year, and continues a soft focus exploration of voice, percussion, rock instruments and a bit of brass.

Free download "Two Angles" is probably the EP's prettiest track, but not necessarily the bravest or most interesting. That would be "Avalanche" where Carey toys with some hip hop/electronica type influences, a la Vernon in Kanye's "Lost in the World."

RIP Maurice Sendak

Here's to hoping that there's dinner, wherever he is now, and that it's still hot...

Liars go quiet, evocative with WIXIW

Finished a review of the new Liars' album WIXIW, and while I can't tell you what I said, I will say that the spasmodic, funk-damaged Liars (i.e. "Mr. You're on Fire Mr.") is probably never coming back. Instead we've got a chilled, kind of beautiful aesthetic, heavy on the machine-beats, but inward looking and hardly hedonistic at all. And, as ever, worth checking out.




It's out on Mute next month.

Happy Refugees

Acute Records -- the ones who unearthed the Prefects half a decade ago and got the Nightingales running again -- have once again found a long-lost, unjustly forgotten post-punk outfit, this time the Happy Refugees. I could not possibly improve upon the Acute Records Blog entry on how they found the Happy Refugees, who they were and why you should care about them, so here it is:

Just how did Acute Records discover Happy Refugees? Good question! Many many years ago, there was a time when the internet did exist and it was possible to quickly reach strangers in far off lands, but there was a shortage of what’s called “bandwith”, so while you could electronically talk to people, it was not yet quite possible to simply send music and other media quickly over the wires. I don’t remember how I came into contact with the record dealer Steve in the Netherlands, (rec.music.marketplace.vinyl?) but I did. Now back in those days, record dealers would make mix tapes on cassettes of things they thought you might like to buy. Steve made me such a mix and it contained the classic Hamburger Boy by Happy Refugees. Steve had been in touch with the band, so a few years later when I finally decided it was time to try to reissue it, he got me in touch with them. And only 5 or 6 years later we have Return to Last Chance Saloon! Steve meanwhile is still spreading the news at his blog Low Down Kds and selling the goods here. Thanks Steve. As we roll out this release, it’s been really interesting to hear people’s response. This is definitely one of those “I can’t believe I’ve never heard this before”, “where has this been hiding”, “you’ve changed my life” kind of releases. This isn’t post-punk-era barrel-scraping. This is a fully formed awesome record without a bum song. The references that people dig up have been interesting. Lots of comparison to the likes of The Fall, Marc Riley, Nightingales and Mekons, all favorites. DIY favorites like Swell Maps, Homosexuals, Desperate Bicycles. The early Flying Nun/New Zealand scene. Velvets and Stooges, Reed and Cale and Iggy solo. OK, I needed to get that lame name-dropping referencing out of the way. Taken on their own, Happy Refugees are a great rock band and Return to Last Chance Saloon is a great, shambolic, emotional and catchy rock album. Check it out, meet them on Facebook and come see them in NY.

You can download their whole live WFMU set at the Free Music Archive. And, as the Acute piece implies, they played some shows late last year in NYC...so there is some video as well:

More Beach House...but nothing very new

Why do you need Bloom if you've already got Teen Dream? Beats me, unless you're a committed more-is-better type.

Beach House
Bloom
Sub Pop

Beach House’s last album, Teen Dream, represented a startling advance. The band’s gauzy sound gained a solid footing in live drums. Singer Victoria Legrand’s voice turned deeper, more sensual and nuanced, little curves in the notes suggesting earthier genres like soul and R&B. The glittering surfaces of partner Alex Scally’s guitar lines hinted, somehow, at deeper, stranger currents underneath. The whole thing seemed realer, more grounded, more weighted with significance than its pretty predecessors, though still imbued with a drifting, codeine strangeness.

Bloom, the band’s fourth full-length, will be fine with listeners looking for more of the same.

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Gravenhurst

Another really pretty album from Gravenhurst, though perhaps not quite as pretty as The Western Lands....

I said in Blurt:

"The Ghost in the Daylight (Warp) is a quieter, more overtly folky album than 2007's Western Lands. There is no obvious focal point - nothing like gorgeous, pick-clawed "Trust" from the previous album - only a series of acoustic songs that flare gently from rueful nostalgia to sudden melancholy. "The Prize," the album's first single, builds the subtlest kind of momentum in its close-harmonized chorus, an unsweep of interlocking vocals that is only partly moderated by its message, that "the ties that bind us blind us to the emptiness of the prize." The cut is delicate, spare and moving, a folky ephemera right up to the end, when the future breaks in with howling, descanting guitar feedback and billows of stringed instrumenta.

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First track meet today...My fingerprints came back from Homeland Security clean (again), so i think I am good to go, yay!

Lower Dens' Nootropics

Jana Hunter's second album as Lower Dens is spacey, trippy electro-drone, pretty far removed from her guitar-toting, freak folk beginnings. I like it though, especially "Nova Anthem," a song near the end that hovers like mist over a river, pearlized, indefinite and chillingly beautiful.

Here's my review of Nootropics, up today at Blurt:

Lower Dens
Nootropics
(Ribbon Music)

With 2010's Twin Hand Movement, sometime freak folk diva Jana Hunter immersed herself in the sonics of a full rock band, surrounding her clear, strange, road-weary voice in a glimmering web of guitar strumming, slithery bass and backlit drums. Her singing, which had, in solo albums, sounded like a lost girl group survivor, a muted cousin of Karen Dalton, an otherworldly siren, remained untouchable, but the sound was rough and grounded. Now, with the second Lower Dens album, Hunter has moved even further from her guitar-toting beginnings, bringing on Carton Tanton for the synthesizers, which, along with machine-precise drums, usher Nootropics into the neighborhood of Krautrock.

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"Brains"

I interviewed Jana Hunter a long time ago for Neumu.

That Carton Tanton, he's everywhere, isn't he?