Possibly a guilty pleasure, but even so, a late year highlight, this debut album from London's Veronica Falls...named, I think, after a place, not a clumsy Archie character. Anyway, my review, which doesn't begin to convey how much fun this record it, ran late last week at Blurt.
Veronica Falls
Veronica Falls
(Slumberland)
Had enough of drone-y, dissonant, reverb-drenched R ‘N R? Too bad. It's time to suck it up and make room for one more band with bright-and-shadows harmonies, rackety riffs and a thing for guitar effects. Veronica Falls, out of London, runs way ahead of the Pains-of-Being-Dum-as-a-Vivian Girl pack with a bittersweet debut. They nod to all the usual influences - Jesus & Mary Chain, VU, Orange Juice etc. - but in fresh and unaffected ways. "Found Love in a Graveyard" may explore a nexus of death and teen love as old as, say, Wayne Cochran's "The Last Kiss," but it sounds unencumbered by history, as if these four had just cottoned onto the scary idea of mortality.
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Monday, October 10, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Side Toure live
My review of the Sidi Toure show went up yesterday at Blurt.
Intricate, staccato sounds drift out onto the street on a warm, October night, the plink of something like banjo pattering against ringing lattice work of guitar and an insistent percussive sound halfway between slap and pop bass and blues guitar. It's hard to believe that there aren't any drums in play, as Malian guitarist Sidi Touré holds court, flanked by two musicians, the one on his left Jambala Maiga, playing a small gourd-shaped instrument called a kuntigui, the one on his left, Douma Maiga, a pair of elongated one- and two-stringed kurbus, and he, in the middle, wielding a traditional guitar, though one bent to some strange, evocative desert sounds.
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"Bon Kum"
Friday, October 7, 2011
Silver Tongues
I've got a review up today at Dusted of an odd but intriguing debut CD from the Louisville (KY) based Silver Tongues.
Silver Tongues
Black Kite
Karate Body
The members of Louisville’s Silver Tongues haven’t quite settled on what kind of band they want to be. The band’s first entry into the blogosphere came in the form of the single “Ketchup,” a blistering, burst of fuzz-radiant guitar rock that sounds like Japandroids crossed with Joshua Tree era-U2. Yet its first album, Black Kite, is mostly radically different from “Ketchup,” built on ghostly country blues melodies and only touched with the textures of rock and pop. The title track is far more representative than the single, a slow-moving mesh of strummed guitars and David Cronin’s spectral, echoing voice, braced by occasional booming drums and a blare of amp feedback. Here and elsewhere, you get the sense of backwoods introspection that has been given the sheen and glare of mid-1980s arena rock, of porch folk ballads glowing with radioactive tones of synthesizer.
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"Ketchup"
Silver Tongues
Black Kite
Karate Body
The members of Louisville’s Silver Tongues haven’t quite settled on what kind of band they want to be. The band’s first entry into the blogosphere came in the form of the single “Ketchup,” a blistering, burst of fuzz-radiant guitar rock that sounds like Japandroids crossed with Joshua Tree era-U2. Yet its first album, Black Kite, is mostly radically different from “Ketchup,” built on ghostly country blues melodies and only touched with the textures of rock and pop. The title track is far more representative than the single, a slow-moving mesh of strummed guitars and David Cronin’s spectral, echoing voice, braced by occasional booming drums and a blare of amp feedback. Here and elsewhere, you get the sense of backwoods introspection that has been given the sheen and glare of mid-1980s arena rock, of porch folk ballads glowing with radioactive tones of synthesizer.
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"Ketchup"
Thursday, October 6, 2011
OBN Ills
So, the only things I know about OBN IIIs is that the band shares at least one member with Bad Sports, they're out of Texas and they absolutely kill on this one track, "New Innocence" that I found on Raven Sings the Blues.
Isn't that enough?
Isn't that enough?
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
This new Megafaun is extremely good...
...much better and certainly more interesting than hyped-to-the-gills Bon Iver.
"Life's not fair," I say (in my Jeremy Irons doing Scar the lion voice), but it's kind of a trip, anyway. Here's a bit from my review, up today at Blurt.
"Megafaun's self-titled album seamlessly integrates an easy-going tuneful-ness with a nearly mystical devotion to tone and texture. Better recording quality helps. These are tunes that have a lot of parts, and the extreme clarity of sound allows you to hear them all at once, separately and together. It's like peering to the bottom of a very deep, very clear pond. But more than that, the Cook brothers, Phil and Brad, and Joe Westerlund, seem to have found a balance between the warmth and purity of their country rock influences and the intellectual challenge of continuing experimentation. This is the album that pulls it together, their best yet, and who knows, maybe the one that will get people to say, '"Justin Vernon? Isn't he the guy that left Megafaun just before they hit it big?'"
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"State/Meant"
I went to see Sidi Toure last night and had a pretty good time. More on that later.
"Life's not fair," I say (in my Jeremy Irons doing Scar the lion voice), but it's kind of a trip, anyway. Here's a bit from my review, up today at Blurt.
"Megafaun's self-titled album seamlessly integrates an easy-going tuneful-ness with a nearly mystical devotion to tone and texture. Better recording quality helps. These are tunes that have a lot of parts, and the extreme clarity of sound allows you to hear them all at once, separately and together. It's like peering to the bottom of a very deep, very clear pond. But more than that, the Cook brothers, Phil and Brad, and Joe Westerlund, seem to have found a balance between the warmth and purity of their country rock influences and the intellectual challenge of continuing experimentation. This is the album that pulls it together, their best yet, and who knows, maybe the one that will get people to say, '"Justin Vernon? Isn't he the guy that left Megafaun just before they hit it big?'"
More
"State/Meant"
I went to see Sidi Toure last night and had a pretty good time. More on that later.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Trentemøller
The Danish electronic artist Trentemøller has a new album of remixes coming out the day after my birthday (on November 8th...I turn the clock over on November 7th, and yes, flowers are a nice touch).
It's two discs worth of a) other people like Modeselektor, Efterklang and Andrew Weatherall remixing tracks from his last album Into the Great Wild Yonder and b) Trentemøller remixing other people...including, ahem, Depeche Mode, Franz Ferdinand and typographically linked electronica artist the Dø. (See how they both put a cross through their vowels, as if to say "absolutely no Os permitted!)
Anyway, it's good stuff, and I am surprisingly taken by Trentemøller's revisitation of Depeche Mode's "Wrong." I never liked them, except for that one song, "Your Own Personal Jesus" which probably seemed more subversive to me than most people, having grown up in the Bible Belt, but it's good, weirdly, to hear those voices again.
Anyway, the man's touring the U.S. and Canada later this month:
10/12 Boston, MA - Royale
10/13 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts
10/14 New York, NY - Webster Hall
10/15 Montreal, QC - Metropolis
10/16 Toronto, ON - Phoenix
10/18 Chicago, IL - Metro
10/19 Lawrence, KS - Liberty Hall
10/21 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
10/22 Salt Lake City, UT - Complex
10/25 Tempe, AZ - Marquee
10/26 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
10/27 Los Angeles, CA - The Music Box
10/29 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
10/31 Portland, OR - Roseland Theater
11/1 Seattle, WA - Showbox at the Market
11/2 Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom
Let's see, live Trentemøller, what would that be like? Like this.
Trentemøller: Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider Go!!! – The Video
It's two discs worth of a) other people like Modeselektor, Efterklang and Andrew Weatherall remixing tracks from his last album Into the Great Wild Yonder and b) Trentemøller remixing other people...including, ahem, Depeche Mode, Franz Ferdinand and typographically linked electronica artist the Dø. (See how they both put a cross through their vowels, as if to say "absolutely no Os permitted!)
Anyway, it's good stuff, and I am surprisingly taken by Trentemøller's revisitation of Depeche Mode's "Wrong." I never liked them, except for that one song, "Your Own Personal Jesus" which probably seemed more subversive to me than most people, having grown up in the Bible Belt, but it's good, weirdly, to hear those voices again.
Anyway, the man's touring the U.S. and Canada later this month:
10/12 Boston, MA - Royale
10/13 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of the Living Arts
10/14 New York, NY - Webster Hall
10/15 Montreal, QC - Metropolis
10/16 Toronto, ON - Phoenix
10/18 Chicago, IL - Metro
10/19 Lawrence, KS - Liberty Hall
10/21 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
10/22 Salt Lake City, UT - Complex
10/25 Tempe, AZ - Marquee
10/26 Solana Beach, CA - Belly Up Tavern
10/27 Los Angeles, CA - The Music Box
10/29 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
10/31 Portland, OR - Roseland Theater
11/1 Seattle, WA - Showbox at the Market
11/2 Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom
Let's see, live Trentemøller, what would that be like? Like this.
Trentemøller: Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider Go!!! – The Video
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