Enon - Akron/Family - Rufus Wainwright - Justice - Richard Hawley -
Band Of Horses - Raveonettes - Dirty Projectors - Besnard Lakes
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GRASS GEYSERS... CARBON CLOUDS - Enon
Seven years into Enon's career, fans know to expect the unexpected - which is in this case, the completely expectable. So then, frothy pop & big guitars, done well. After a four-year gap between records, Enon seem radio and arena-ready, and that's probably where they'd sound best.
Grass Geysers is full of sleek pop, but with more concentration on the equivalent of textures and accents. Case in points are; the pervasive handclaps of "Mirror on You"; the interlude of chirping birds on the otherwise lean "Colette"; the low electric gurgle of bass on "Dr. Freeze"; and the woozy robot growl of "Law of Johnny Dolittle".
The album's centerpieces, and most straightforward rockers, are "Pigeneration" and "Mr. Ratatatatat". The former opens with a drumbeat reminiscent of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" before Yasuda coos a few words over Schmersal's glistening, echoing chords. The latter is a tag-team between Yasuda and Schmersal that moves from dissonant guitar crunch to big-rock bluster.
Still, it might be the record's final third that's the most rewarding-- even if it doesn't contain any out-and-out crowd-pleasers. "Paperweights" marries stormy percussion to B-movie keyboards that never repeat the same tone twice. The scratchy drum loop that opens "Labyrinth" grabs just as much attention as the jagged scrape of guitar strings, and "Ashish" has Yasuda pleading over a dub-like throb and minimal atmosphere of early Cure records. Even with the more straightforward tracks before it, it says something that Grass Geysers... still seems like a seamless record throughout.
Download: Enon - GRASS GEYSERS... CARBON CLOUDS
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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LOVE IS SIMPLE - Akron/Family
Since their inception, Akron/Family have seemed to enjoy playing in the shadows. As the backing band for Angels of Light, the shadow personality is former Swans frontman Michael Gira. Yet, on their own records, it's a variation of folk music and electronics that hide out in the darkened corners. Love Is Simple, their latest release on Gira's Young God label, seems designed to change all that.
An absurd and occasionally awkward celebration of the natural world, Love Is Simple is Akron/Family's bold, unvarnished paean to discovering nature, through a fusion of drum-circle bliss and classic rock. The best introduction to this new style comes four tracks into the record, with the joyous "I've Got Some Friends". Initially evoking the Mothers of Invention's We're Only in It for the Money with its unhinged lo-fi folk-rock opening, the song soon segues into a hillbilly country greeting that reflects the album's sunny disposition.
The often hammy results of unmitigated hippie gaiety is sure to alienate some fans; the vaguely Phishy early cut "Ed is a Portal" is the first test for cynics, finding shape in a tribal chant and cyclical guitar figure, but the briefly discernible lyric "shamanistic Shaker spells" nicely summarizes what the band is aiming for.
The album draws largely from late 1960s/early 70s rock, with its most traditionally structured songs owing inspiration to a few of John Lennon's guises. The Mellotron-accompanied "Don't Be Afraid, You're Already Dead" contains the "All You Need Is Love"-style sing-along refrain that gives the record its name, and first single "Phenomena" oscillates somewhere between "Across the Universe" and Plastic Ono Band's "I Found Out". Appropriately, the latter's lyrics are a series of enigmatic, most likely meaningless metaphysical paradoxes, like "Things are not what they seem to be/ Nor are they otherwise."
The 15-minute-plus duo of "Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms" and "There's So Many Colors" are the album's climax, as well as its creative centerpiece. "Lake Song"'s eerie, minor-key vocal incantations open with a hazy vibe that gives way to a throbbing, incantatory drum-circle frenzy in the mold of the Boredoms' Vision Creation Newsun. The chanted first half of "Colors" is intermission entertainment, gradually swallowed by a shaggy, threadbare verse and torrential guitar outro somewhere between Neil Young & Crazy Horse's Zuma and the fiery denouement of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Effigy".
Simple's greatest success might be that it holds together as a single work despite the general senselessness of its basic narrative. Don't try to sort it out, just dig it: As the band themselves repeat when trying in song to find a perspectival spot on the horizon: "No point exists."
Download: Akron/Family - LOVE IS SIMPLE
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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POSES - Rufus Wainwright
Rufus Wainwright has quite the life. After he cut his first demo with producer Pierre Marchand, his father, Canadian folk giant Loudon Wainwright III, passed it on to legendary arranger Van Dyke Parks, who in turn saw that it found its way to Dreamworks executive Lenny Waronker. With a simple glance at the Dreamworks logo on the back of Poses, I trust you can connect the dots for yourself. If only it could be that easy for everyone, right?
No, wait. I forgot to mention that Rufus Wainwright deserves it. On his 1998 self-titled debut, Wainwright managed to pull together myriad strands and meld them into a grand, cohesive vision. And now, with Poses, he takes that vision and refines it, resulting in an epic album that speaks with grand gestures and a refined eloquence rare in young songwriters.
Of course, it never hurts to have a killer cast of collaborators to help you achieve your vision, and Wainwright has certainly assembled one for this record. Drummer Jim Keltner (Elvis Costello, Ry Cooder) returns on the traps, trading off spots with Victor Indrizzo (Chris Cornell, Redd Kross). Paul Weller cohort Pete Wilson mans the bass, and Dennis Farias (Burt Bacharach) provides colorful trumpet accents. Propellerhead Alex Gifford, Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Robyn Hitchcock), and Damian LeGassick (Blur) combine for production that veers effortlessly from the dark strings of "Evil Angel" to the beat-infused "Tower of Learning," and widely across a lot of terrain in between.
Poses opens and closes with the Tin Pan Alley tribute "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," recalling some of the Divine Comedy's more playful moments with its ode to subtle addictions and the way our compulsions rule our lives ("If I should buy jellybeans/ I have to eat them all in just one sitting"). In between, we get everything from a Ouija board session with the ghost of Jeff Buckley ("The Consort") to the faithful and endearing cover of Loudon's classic "One Man Guy" that proves Rufus has at least a touch of dad's folk roots in him.
The album's title track stands as one of Wainwright's finest songs, with an aching melody and Spartan piano backing. It also illustrates how far his voice has come since his debut. He's become far more expressive in the last few years and his voice is a bit less of an acquired taste than it used to be. The funky "Shadows" is coated in thickly layered vocal harmonies that betray a definite debt to vocal jazz, although the swelling strings might sound a little more at home on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Still, it's pretty fantastic stuff, and Rufus takes pains to breathe life into his Frankensteins, never letting them degenerate into limp genre exercises.
"Tower of Learning" is more impressive still, opening wide up in the second verse over programmed beats in an arrangement that looms over the rest of the album. Barring the reprise of "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," Poses is closed on a somber note with the beautifully simple "In a Graveyard," a soulful reflection on moribund themes that momentarily leaves the oboes and strings at the door for a direct heart-to-heart with the listener.
It's always refreshing to see a recording this singular find its way out the door of a major label, and it's heartening to know that Wainwright probably has a secure home at Dreamworks. With Poses, he proves that he's swinging for the big leagues, and that he has every right to be there.
Download: Rufus Wainwright - POSES
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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CROSS - Justice
Everyone should be wary of using the following two statements, and yet they fit Justice like a pair of $500 jeans: 1) If it's too loud, you're too old, and 2) Age ain't nothin' but a number. Given the hilariously horrified reaction that many in the dance music community have when confronted with the music of French duo Justice, you'd think they were two 300-pound rampaging Huns who sacked Berlin's Panorama Bar and made off with Ricardo Villalobos and Ellen Allien over their shoulders. Instead, Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay-- high school kids when Daft Punk's Homework dropped over a decade ago-- grew up, like many a young Parisian, filtering hard rock (never a French strong suit) through disco until it sounded more Judas Priest circa 1983 than Stardust circa 1998. Their "new French touch," as the genre's being termed, actually feels like the caress of a sledgehammer.
Throughout †, Justice takes the history of the French rave era and blows it away by embracing 21st-century stadium-rock production. They squeeze everything into a mid-range frequency band so loud that the riffs on tracks like "Let There Be Light" and "Stress" practically bitch-slap you in the face. The drums on "Let There Be Light" and their big breakthrough single "Waters of Nazareth" are the rat-a-tat rhythms of electro scraping like Freddie Krueger's fingertips. That's it-- engorged electronic riffs, dizzying astringent strings, vocal samples torqued to all hell, and nasty metallic drums. It's astoundingly unsubtle stuff and bracing as fuck, a decade's worth of French electronic music stripped down like a Peugeot parked overnight in a bad neighborhood.
Of course, if that's all † was, it would be unbearable for a full hour, and Justice's critics might have half a point. But the album's more varied than most give it credit for. "D.A.N.C.E." is the album's slightly incongruous, Schoolhouse Rock-esque filter-disco track, and Justice's only obvious stab at a capital-P pop crossover hit.
Cheekily disregarding so many things that good dance music is "supposed" to have - especially, you know, bass - they've somehow managed to split dance music into a brother-against-brother battle, turning message boards into minefields and blog posts into mini-manifestos. Not sure this record is for everyone, but it's a journey you won't forget in a hurry.
Download: Justice - CROSS
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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LADY'S BRIDGE - Richard Hawley
Richard Hawley's 2005 album Coles Corner was refreshingly and, in many ways, reassuringly retro. The album exuded romance in every sense, set to a gorgeous backdrop redolent of the classic Sun Records rockabilly sound and classy post-WWII pop. The record was one big beautiful swoon from start to finish. It is also not the sort of disc that's easy to follow up. By default, Hawley was forced to take one of two routes: Either stray from his stylistic path or stick with the tried and true. With Lady's Bridge he chose the latter.
Like the title of its predecessor, Lady's Bridge is a reference to Hawley's hometown, Sheffield. More specifically, the town's oldest bridge, located in the center of the city. The album, too, is right in the middle, an echo of Coles Corner without quite as much of that disc's lonely late-night impact. Hawley has an astute sense of craft, and when the acoustic strum of opener "Valentine" gives way to a lush, fully orchestrated swell, it's hard not to be taken aback by his earnest appropriation of a bygone sound.
Hawley peps things up with "Serious" and opening single "Tonight the Streets Are Ours", but rather disappointingly wimpers to a pause. Perhaps Lady's Bridge could do with a bit more pizzazz, and there's plenty of room to do that, as witnessed in the way Hawley's friend and cohort Jarvis Cocker applies his own croon. Lady's Bridge instead hones so rigidly to Hawley's established template that even such pretty tracks as "The Sea Calls" come across as anti-climactic.
Even as the disc winds down with the setting-sunisms of "Our Darkness" and "The Sun Refused to Shine", Lady's Bridge's mellow conclusion doesn't sound terribly unlike its mellow start or mellow middle. There's been no journey, no emotional progress, and little emotional payoff. For an album and artist so otherwise focused, the effect winds up more soporific than satisfying, however stylish and serene. It's like listening to a faded photo album, albeit one that's well thumbed and loved.
I had such big hopes for this record, and maybe my expectations were too high. It would be remiss to consider this album not worthy of your attention, especially if it leads to further investment in Hawley's other works, Low Edges and Coles Corner.
Download: Richard Hawley - LADY'S BRIDGE
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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CEASE TO BEGIN - Band Of Horses
Following the success of their debut Everything All the Time and the subsequent departure of founding member Mat Brooke, the remaining members of Band of Horses moved from Seattle to Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, and set to recording their follow-up, Cease to Begin. Thousands of land-locked miles across the Great Salt Lake, this cross-country change of scenery is subtly apparent: If Everything All the Time was a Pacific Northwest indie album with flourishes of country and Southern rock, then Cease to Begin reverses the equation. Even putting a different regional spin on their tender-hearted indie rock, it doesn't change the sound too much - the guitars still churn and crest majestically, Bridwell's vocals still echo with grandiose reverb - it simply creates an atmosphere evocative of something like autumn in a small town.
This geographical move and musical development both seem like logical progressions for Band of Horses, and not just because Bridwell originally hails from the South. The trio sounds more at home on Cease to Begin, and more confident writing about this specific neck of the woods. As a result, they shed many of the comparisons that dogged Everything All the Time last year: Every review had to mention the Shins, My Morning Jacket, or the Flaming Lips (me: guilty). Cease to Begin finds them opening up their sound, drawing in more ideas and giving the music the loping quality of a long walk down a dirt road.
As crunchy guitars give way to light strings on "Ode to LRC", Bridwell sings about a stray dog and a "town so small how could anybody not look you in the eye or wave as I drive by." He's one of few indie artists who can sell a line like "the world is such a wonderful place" or get away with singing "la-dee-da" with open-hearted amazement. On "Detlef Schrempf", for example, he sings, with heartfelt gravity, "Watch how you treat every living soul," and still somehow sounds bold and genuine.
On the other hand, Cease to Begin's looser vibe preempts the big moments that gave Everything All the Time its gravity. These songs go for texture and shade over size and scale, an admirable shift even if Band of Horses don't always pull it off. On "Cigarettes Wedding Band", they can't churn up enough bile to convey Bridwell's bitter lyrics; instead of contrasting the album's sweet-tea tone, the song simply reflects it, revealing the limits of their range. Still, Bridwell does accomplish the nifty trick of turning an accusation into a formidable pop hook: "While they lied-dee-die! Lah-dee-dah! While they lied!"
As they move southeasterly, Band of Horses may bear some derision as dad-rock at best, or as granola at worst. And yes, there are moments here that support those stereotypes: The sequencing of two downtempo ballads ("No One's Gonna Love You", "Detlef Schrempf") slows the album's first half almost to a halt. But even if Cease to Begin is a little creaky and uneven, and even if it never finds the resting spot the album title promises, Band of Horses do guitar-based indie very well. Well enough, at least, that the next generation of American indie bands may bear comparisons to them. The album closes with "Window Blues", a slow, aching number that fades into a simple "Rainbow Connection" banjo outro that gives the album a snowglobe quality, despite the warmer Carolina climate. These songs depict a personal world in great detail, contained within a small space. Sure, Band of Horses could stand to shake it up a bit, but for now Bridwell seems content just to enjoy the view.
Download: Band Of Horses - CEASE TO BEGIN
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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LUST LUST LUST - Raveonettes"I fell out of Heaven to be with you in Hell" is an example of the dark, rather sinister lyrics that The Raveonettes provide on their third album Lust Lust Lust. When sung by the beautiful and soft vocals from Sune Rose Wagner and Sharen Foo, a fierce and effective juxtaposition leers from below the murky waters where the music lies.
The Raveonettes' effortless musical style reminds of Metric in their approach to music but not in a way that it appears copied or unoriginal; instead it is a signature style that is to be loved or to be hated with each song covered in a film of white noise.
The juxtaposing aspect of the music production extends into the songs on the album. Whilst opening track 'Aly, Walk with Me' is mellow and dark and foreboding enough to be a nineties Garbage production, Wagner and Foo manage to use this same formula to conjure love songs that have an upbeat approach that have a perhaps surprising toe-tapping quality. 'You Want the Candy' is something perhaps a darker version of The Pipettes would have written if they had spent their school years disliking their parents and purchasing Emily the Strange merchandise. Likewise, 'The Beat Dies' reveals "I'm in love" to provide a softness to the already varied album.
Each song is barely over three minutes and whilst certain songs such as 'Lust Lust Lust', the band’s first release from the album, leave you feeling that you could have continued listening, others, such as the murky and unsatisfied 'Expelled from Love' find you relieved that the CD has moved on.
Yet, it is an album who's schizophrenic nature makes it almost beautiful. Maybe it is the soft Emily Haines-esque vocals of the band or the blurred and confused sound that acts as a paradox to this, but the combination creates an almost three-dimensional sounding album that it is impossible not to submerge yourself within.
Download: Raveonettes - LUST LUST LUST
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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RISE ABOVE - Dirty Projectors
Dave Longstreth, like a lot of visionaries, is so full of bright ideas he can barely keep his shit together. Part of the problem is that he's indiscriminate about what he devours: Gustav Mahler, reggaetón, Malian guitar music, Cole Porter, band members. He's helmed a different roster of musicians for each Dirty Projectors album, and each one has had its own agenda. "Jolly Jolly Jolly Ego", from 2005's The Getty Address, plays like a parade of his fetishes: dissonant folk, looped bassoons, a rhythm track sounding like it was lifted from an R. Kelly record, and Longstreth in the middle, throttling his poor falsetto with vibrations violent enough to knock a drinking glass off a table.
After five or so years of cherrypicking from large groups of musicians, he's streamlined to a rock quartet, and they actually seem to matter to him in ways he can't shake: touring guitarist Amber Coffman and drummer Brian McOmber play on Rise Above; bassist and vocalist Angel Deradoorian hadn't joined yet, but has since been filling the parts played here by Nat Baldwin and Susanna Waiche. Hearing the band rip through material from last year's New Attitude EP on a recent Daytrotter session was like watching the glass slipper slide on.
While Longstreth's initial albums were mostly string-backed folk, he's now given himself up to rhythm - in his words, his compositions have become more "horizontal" than "vertical." The horizontal's great for dancing - an opportunity that arises a few times here - but verticality is still the source of the songs' tensions. Coffman and Waiche's coos stack harmonies with Longstreth's bleat like little car wrecks, and even though the guitars move like a West African dance band, the songs seem propelled by the constant resolutions of notes rather than the beats themselves.
Then again, it's the combo - a synthesis of heavy rhythms with an addiction to delicacy and ornament - that makes Longstreth an innovative, paradoxical writer. "Spray Paint (The Walls)" is half-Soundgarden, half-Outkast. Some of this record sounds like Phish and some of it sounds like the Police. There's a verse in Esperanto. When Longstreth strides into the singer-songwriter spotlight, he's so determined to express himself he forgets the idea is to share, instead employing melisma that's so brutal it's almost embarrassing. And he sounds like he's having fun! And that's scary. Rise Above is serious, somewhat inhuman stuff, which is possibly why the band never smiles onstage: Longstreth, wide-eyed and focused, hair like wild grass; Deradoorian and Coffman looking eerily cornfed, as blank as backup singers in Mullholland Drive, their hands responsible for a completely different set of rhythms than their voices; McOmber a pair of arms occasionally rising above the wall.
Rise Above will drop plenty of jaws, and, like Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors are restructuring rock on a compositional level rather than a sonic one. To murder a cliché, whatever unfurls from Longstreth's brain next isn't anyone's guess. Rise Above, for all its fastidiousness and minor drawbacks, finally displays the perfect counterargument to the portrait of him as another nutso college dropout: it displays a pattern.
Download: Dirty Projectors - RISE ABOVE
(available for 7 days from date of post)
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VOLUME 1 - Besnard Lakes
To gauge what kind of a year the Besnard Lakes have had, you need only consider that the Montreal band was virtually unknown when they released their latest album, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, nine months ago, and now they've already earned their first reissue. Originally released on the band's own Break Glass imprint in 2003, Volume 1 was a patient, languid counterpoint to the frantic, anthemic pop that would soon make Montreal famous, and as such, the album did not reverberate far beyond the band's immediate circle. While their peers in Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade and the Unicorns were reshaping the city's musical landscape, the Besnards sounded more in tune with another time-honored Quebecois passion: Floydian prog-rock. As their friends embarked on North American tours, Besnards co-founders Jace Lacek and Olga Goreas had to content themselves with playing the roles of supportive parents seeing their kids off to college and holding down the fort back home (specifically, at Lacek's increasingly busy Break Glass studios).
The critical success of Dark Horse, however, has changed their stature considerably, scoring the band a Polaris Prize nomination in Canada, and an upcoming tour with Peter Bjorn and John. In light of that album's time-lapsed grandeur and swooning choruses, the title of Volume 1 now feels especially appropriate - not just because it's the band's first album, but because it underscores the album's formative, work-in-progress feel.
Volume 1 is also notable for showing the paths that the Besnards have since chosen not to follow, namely with the urgent, agitated Breeders-style distorto-pop of "Thomasina," driven by Goreas' "Cannonball"-sized bass groove. But if Volume 1 sounds very much like a debut effort, both in its streamlined mid-fi production and exploratory, sometimes directionless drift, its closing track spells out the Besnards' future: "Life Rarely Begins With the Tungsten Film #1" may be a mouthful, but its space-bound guitar charge and dreamily ascending melody show the way to the Besnards' second volume.
Download: Besnard Lakes - VOLUME 1
(available for 7 days from date of post)
