The deal:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

After releasing a string of fantastic singles, New Jersey lo-fi standouts Real Estate have just debuted their first proper full-length. See why we think it rules and then see if you agree.

Your mission:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

On the fortieth anniversary of the group’s Motown debut comes I Want You Back!, a gleaming collection of 12 unreleased tracks taken straight out of that storied label’s vault.

The skinny:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

This week’s album is Julian Casablancas’ Phrazes For the Young, the Strokes frontman’s first solo adventure.

The skinny:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

This week we’d like to know how you feel about Creed’s new reunion album Full Circle. Remember these dudes? They were the Twitter of post-grunge bands! Ten years later, people seem to be coming to the band’s defense and to be honest, the guitar work on “Higher” and “My Sacrifice” wasn’t/isn’t that bad at all. It was actually kinda good. But what do you think? Do you still hate this band? Do you still love them? Have you switched sides? Do you care? Tweet us praise and tweet us bile.

The scoop:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

This week’s album up for review is Flight of the Conchords’ I Told You I Was Freaky, sophomore full-length from New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo. Formerly, anyway.

The skinny:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

This week’s album up for review is The Flaming Lips’ Embryonic, a psychedelic comeback if we’ve ever heard one.

First, a small game plan reminder for newcomers or stragglers:

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite/TwitterHater, you can just leave a review in the comments section. We’re flexible. You’re the boss now.

This week’s album up for review is Built to Spill’s There Is No Enemy, the Boise outfit’s seventh and we think, finest this decade.

It’s possible that over the past several weeks you’ve noticed the reviews slow to a trickle around these parts. We had our reasons! Cookies weren’t involved! Okay, maybe they were! All of us at Tripwire HQ are pleased to introduce to you today a new chapter in our “take” on music criticism—by handing over the keys. Starting this week and every Tuesday hereafter, we’ll be posting a full album to stream through our friends over at LaLa. What we’d like you to do is lend us your brainwaves and tweet us whatever crosses your mind while listening. Maybe there’s a riff you can’t get out of your head. A lyric? A moment? An image? If you’re feeling ambitious, spend your 124 characters reviewing the record as a whole. Just toss those tweets over to us at @thetripwire and by the end of the week, we’ll cobble together and share the beautiful mess of a madlib it creates. Or, if you’re a complete Luddite, you can just leave a review in the comments section. You’re the boss now. So without further adieu, we give you… Tweet Release.

This week’s album is Unmap, full-length debut from Volcano Choir, a gnarly new collaboration between Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Collection of Colonies of Bees.

I got off the plane 34 hours ago. Beaches immersed in sunlight surrounded me. People drank from the moment they woke up, each body bathed in a golden hue. Sun would set late, maybe around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. We’d all go to dinner before buying liters of wine to be entertained by whatever discotheque the night chose. It’s not the real world, sure, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t live those nights like it was.  Arriving back home, where daily concerns amount to more than say, unripe peaches at a fruit-stand, was expected and predictable. Sure, there’s sun back home. But it hides somewhere beneath a legion of dark clouds intent on bleakness. Yet I was unfazed. I got home finding myself strangely impervious to the gloom outside the window. Maybe it was partly due to the post-euphoric state that a tropical climate can induce, or maybe it was the Ayrton Senna E.P. by Barcelona electro-pop quartet Delorean.

The five-song E.P. begins with the insistent “Deli” and iterates a simple thesis: “I like the time I spend with you girl.” The beautiful simplicity of such a statement serves as the album’s manifesto, both thematically and sonically: find happiness in simple pleasures. It’s this dedication to positivity that allows Ayrton Senna to shimmer and glisten without being cloying, to push their tracks relentlessly forward without ever losing our attention.

A perfect summer record, indeed; as much to please an intimate group of friends on a camping trip as an amphetamine-charged dance floor. But awarding Delorean with only the title of an excellent summer record denigrates what is a multifaceted musical accomplishment. Ayrton Senna will please the Cut Copy and Tough Alliance fan alike, along with house DJ’s inclined to Delorean because of the involvement of Barcelona DJ John Talabot. But ultimately, where Delorean transcends particular niches is their innate charm that reaches out to audiences of all types. The most obvious example being the sun-soaked anthem “Seasun”, a track so immediately entrancing that its touchstone crescendo and release almost convinced me summer would never end. The formula is not necessarily surprising, it’s just remarkably effective: chattering synth noises, serene vocals swooning and mixing, electric hand-claps and percussion refusing to sit still until an almost-comprehensible vocal loop hits. I can decipher the word “sun” and that’s about it, but this reticence only opens the doors for personal interpretation further.

I’m utterly impressed. Delorean have clearly mastered their composition leaving us only wanting more. The Ayrton Senna E.P. is infectiously positive, affording your mind the chance to transport itself somewhere placid, and whether that may be home or on a beach, Delorean are happy to take you there.

—Michael Cranston

Brian Kelly, another man out of Tuam, sings under the moniker of So Cow. He turns out songs that bristle with a charming, jittery angst – concise, yet twee at times. Not the check-out-my-cutesy-Belle & Sebastian-plush-dolls twee, but more of the check-out-my-Television Personalities-vinyl-and-the-cigarette-burn-in-my-cardigan ilk. Though if the “t-word” is deemed dirty in your vernacular, perhaps this record isn’t for you. This release collects 18 tracks that show Kelly is studied in both the classic British Invasion song structure as well as C81 and C86, both of which gave several nods to the past themselves. Most of the songs were recorded in Ireland and South Korea, a regional blur which could explain some of the lyrics’ tendencies towards that ever-so-fond feeling of being lost. I’m not sure whether it’s the words themselves or Kelly’s inflection, but tracks like “Halcyon Days” and “Shackleton” make me wince like I just saw the girl of my dreams walk out of the dance with that dick who drives a lifted Jeep Wrangler, as I’m left standing near the bleachers in the gym holding the mixtape I made for her like a hopeless romantic dunce. Because let’s be honest – love is never as pure as it is in adolescence, and Kelly captures that notion beautifully. The Irishman in love is a rocky road indeed.

—Joseph Tirabassi

If Justin Townes Earle’s sophomore effort, Midnight at the Movies, falls short in any way, mentioning his Old Man would only serve to exonerate another tiresome venture into music from a kid with a loaded last name. While most country-influenced twenty-somethings craft their lovesick songs inside a familiar bottle of wine, JTE bounces seamlessly from genre to genre, welding the Ink Spots to Hank Williams (“What I Mean to You”, “Poor Fool”), or Louis Jordan and Norman Blake (“Walk Out”, “Black Eyed Suzy”). With a voice that sounds like a farm-spliced Bing Crosby and Strangers Almanac-era Ryan Adams, nothing seems forced, his lyrical savvy therefore all the more accessible.

But what aids Midnight At The Movies in becoming not just a crammed collection of dog-eared influences from the last 80 years of modern music, but rather a complete album, are the songs that sound like, well, Justin Townes Earle. The two standout numbers (aside from the mandolin driven cover of “Can’t Hardly Wait”), the title track and “Mama’s Eyes”, sound so effortless, the immediate thought is that he must be a terrible athlete. Natural ability is specific: No matter how many late nights he tried, Kobe Bryant could not write a song like this. Earle picks the guitar like Richard Thompson on a jug of corn liquor, he has a voice like a Yosemite stream, and he kills a ‘Mats cover with a mandolin. I’m not asking him to play touch football. I’m just asking him to keep making records.

— Colin Thompson

Damn overachievers. Grizzly Bear are those kids whose parents never let them watch television or drink Coke, the ones who had their homework finished right as they got off the bus and still had time for their Suzuki violin lessons before dinner. The walls of their bedrooms are lined with blue ribbons, award certificates and any matter of plaques and medals, but no one would ever know it, because no one’s ever been invited over. They’re the quiet kids who stay to themselves, reveling in their reserved genius and leaving the rest of us to wonder just what exactly goes on inside those heads. Veckatimest is their latest A+, another flawless, carefully executed effort to hang on the fridge.

The bombast employed on this collection provides a heady compliment to the relative airiness of 2006’s Yellow House. The guitars have gotten fuzzier, the drums are a vivid cannon, and the vocals soar just close enough to the sun to allow the boys to stay adrift on their harmonies. The chunky bottom end of “Cheerleader” is brilliantly offset by the ethereal Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who appear on three of the album’s tracks. The Gershwin-aping “I Live With You” is cushioned by lush strings and horns, an honest-to-goodness rhapsody in Brooklyn. Ed Droste’s vocals are as pristine as ever, but Daniel Rossen gets to shine a bit on “Fine For Now” – you follow him down to every syllable of the raspy “we’re all fal-ter-ing.” And though the record slows here and there, the whole set feels complete and is easy to get lost in. It’ll take several listens to pick out every calculated detail, but since Veckatimest is an infinitely repeatable affair, it shouldn’t be that unpleasant a task.

—Joseph Tirabassi

The evolution of the female solo artist over the past fifteen years has been a curious one. My generation grew up on solid, strong voices with apparent themes and lyrical twists. Tori Amos, Beth Orton, and Bjork were wildly different, but carried about them an obvious gravity; even Liz Phair’s sexual irreverence was rooted in the serious problem of sexual inequality.

Through the years, this picture of the solo female as singer-songwriter has shifted in interesting and probably heartening ways; these days, we’re more than familiar with Ida Maria, Lily Allen, Marnie Stern, and Kate Nash as figures that do their share to hold up images that are strong, but with a sense of irreverence. It’s somewhere in between the perceptions of serious, earthy songwriters and saucy, somewhat edgy singers that Polly Scattergood emerges; a forceful, breathy set of vocals taking precedence over a backdrop of ethereal sound.

It’s almost as if Scattergood has taken the best moments of the last 20 years in female rock history and studied them closely. Layered between moments of bare piano tracks are synthesizer-driven beats, creating an almost shockingly poignant soundscape. From the keyboard-heavy crescendos of “I Hate The Way”, it becomes clear that Scattergood’s forte is sadness. “My doctor said I’ve got to sing a happy tune,” she sings after weaving a tale of stark heartache, creating a wonderful and wrenching ending that evokes Marissa Nadler’s best lines.

Where Scattergood makes her true mark is in the ability to weave lyrical thickness with driving melody; “Other Too Endless”, “Please Don’t Touch”, and “Bunny Club” stand out immediately as very obvious and very British singles, though each track is laced with dark and contrasting imagery. Through the course of the album, her voice becomes a uniting factor, able to traverse both the twisted and the sweet through the album’s course. “Please Don’t Touch” hits a lilting note remniscent of Allen or Nash, where “Bunny Club”’s melody simply haunts.

It’s difficult not to find Scattergood’s work compelling from the very beginning, though it may take a few listens to make sense of the record as a whole. This is by no means a medley of sounds and moods; rather, it’s a well-orchestrated whole that executes each musical shift with a smooth elegance. What’s most remarkable is that no matter how far into the depths of despair Scattergood reaches (and when she channels death by suicide as in “Untitled 27″ or by cancer in “Breathe In Breathe Out”, those depths are very deep), her work retains a strange sense of hope. Polly Scattergood succeeds in evoking the serious while nodding at the irreverent, making for a most impressive debut.

I’ve heard my favorite record thus far of 2009.

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone’s Vs. Children is the most personal record I’ve heard this year. After the stellar compilation Advance Base Battery Life, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with Casiotone’s new material. Would it be more of the same? Or was the backlog cleared out with the intention of throwing down something new? As it turns out, this record is pretty in line with the general aesthetic of Etiquette (2006): a little more refined perhaps; a little more sparse on instrumentation (most notably, actually, sparse on the Casio tones), but still very much the Owen Ashworth we’ve come to know and love and from whom we’ve waited so anxiously for new material since 2006.

The first thing that hits me about this record is the rhythm section: It’s sparse and simple, usually just a bass drum with occasional tambourine, wood block or handclaps, sometimes with a bass guitar added in. But it does exactly what it’s there for — more than just laying a foundation, it begins to tell the listener what the song is about. As with most of my favorite music, the instrumentation and melodies of the songs are secondary to the lyrics. This doesn’t mean that the music is not good or memorable in itself, some of these songs have great hooks and the record is absolutely something I’d rather listen to than read. “Man O’ War” has some lovely string tones; there’s a really killer piano splash in the middle of “Harsh The Herald Angels Sing” and “Optimist Vs. The Silent Alarm (When The Saints Go Marching In)” very cleverly incorporates a traditional tune to add irony and weight to a song that sounds like something that could have easily fit onto In The Aeroplane Over the Sea. It’s just that the music serves to complement and highlight what Ashworth is trying to say, rather than generally make a statement on its own. A film critic would phrase this as “form following function” or artifice complementing content, and I believe it’s an important quality in any memorable work of art.

My favorite track is the last one on the record, “White Jetta”. Rife with that bombastic bass drum, the story of a Kansas City townie kid whose friends all leave for college closes on the mantra “to stay the same/ to never change” — an echo of the title of a film Ashworth scored last year. I haven’t gotten to see that film so I’m not sure if any elements of this song were in there or if this line is just a quiet little nod, but I love it either way.

It’s so tempting to read any song at least semi-biographically, to attempt to infer some juicy details about a musician’s personal life through what he tells us on tape: but it’s impossible to do that with Owen Ashworth. The two common thematic threads throughout the album seem to be the struggles a person in trouble has (male or female) with abortion or pregnancy (Vs. Children, get it?), and the effects of a life of crime/Bonnie-and-Clyde style robbery (the cover even features an illustration suggesting Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie Parker). A strong religious weight falls upon many of the songs as well, sometimes like an afterthought or an undertone, sometimes taking more center stage. But there’s no way Owen’s been a bank robber, a lonely housewife, or a pregnant lady. And if some lyrics can’t be trusted as autobiographical, none can — we have to read all these “he”s and “I”s and “you”s as fictional characters. (I’m finally putting my English major knowledge to work; it’s the Unreliable Narrator!)

So what, then, makes this album feel so personal to me, if the characters in the songs are just inventions? Well, for one thing, it’s not hard to believe that Ashworth has lived most of these situations, at least in some metaphorical way. When he sings in “Traveling Salesman’s Young Wife Home Alone On Christmas In Montpelier, VT”, “all I really want is you close to me/but you were already out the door/by the time that occurred to me,” he’s speaking in the voice of a very specific female character, but I’ve had that feeling before, and I’m sure Owen has too.

It seems relevant that these songs are the first of any recent Casiotone set with lead vocals handled completely by Ashworth himself; even the songs with feminine narrators aren’t sung with a female’s voice like, say, on “Scattered Pearls” from Etiquette. With the fictionalized characters and the ubiquitously-used second person narrative style, this is Ashworth’s way of taking ownership.

Also importantly, Owen Ashworth lets himself bleed physicality all over the place. We hear pretty much every time he takes a breath or parts his lips. There is no artifice here, just a real person laying out the best words he can.

Aside from the major subject matter mentioned above, the longing for the mythical place called “home” and the determination of a sense of self are usually the underlying themes behind these and any Casiotone lyrics, and that can be a deeply personal thing to any of us. Even when singing about characters in situations that many of us will never experience, somehow Casiotone for the Painfully Alone seems to strike right to the heart of what it means to be a broken human being. That’s what always keeps me coming back to see what kind of heist he’ll be pulling off next.

In the world of downloadable music, the 40-minute album is obsolete. It took six years and the latest Illinois release to make me realize this, but here I am. In fact, with the deterioration of radio along with the eradication of physical properties entirely, pop music’s ties to tradition are the demons of the art itself to slay. Simply said, if you make a 3+ minute pop tune nowadays, you only did it because everyone else did so before you. By this logic, the sans-time music world should allow unstoppable song-making machines like Prince to release an album (or whatever could be quantified as an “album” now) every week. It also makes me question the motives of artists today: Why do they wait until they have 40 minutes of material to release a “full” record any more? Can they only fill 40 minutes? Or were those just the best 40 minutes of 80? Are they happy for the resurgence of vinyl, so they can have a physical limiter of their material? The whole system is in flux and it’s freaking me out.

All of these thoughts swam through my mind while enjoying The Adventures of Kid Catastrophe, a mix of Moby-style hip-hop and power pop that offers many a delicate tune. The true realization moment arrived when I came to “Are You Coming With Me?” and my world stopped. Preceded by the kinds of wonderful songs normally reserved for Wes Anderson movies (that would be emo-pop based on 60s mod rock that you could score a wrist-slitting scene to), things came to a head on this song. Sonic grandeur arose in my ears as the song soared to the heavens, carrying everyone along with it. It’s a heartbreaker, but with realistic optimism one has to fool himself into believing he can turn a bad relationship around. It feels climactic. There’s something about pianos, harmoniums and acoustic guitars surrounded by full-volume choruses that feel like the end of prom night, and I was ready to stand and applaud.

And then the album kept going.

And going. And going. That might sound like a bad situation if the following songs weren’t so good, but the real point is that my experience opened my eyes to the sans-time capabilities of today’s music world, and it’s a capability Illinois must be aware of as well. Kid Catastrophe won’t receive a CD release until June 9, yet the album’s been available on iTunes since early May as a “Deluxe Edition,” implying there is a “Standard Edition” forthcoming. That means cuts, and that would be a shame, because the true luxury of the sans-time album — for all my pseudo-complaining earlier — means flexibility and freedom. With no time constraints, Illinois can feel free to include instrumental tracks like the lovely “Church”. A hit-seeking, time-sensitive producer would spy those one hundred seconds and see a trim target. Limited by time and the physical realm of CDs, we might also lose gems like “Old Saloon” or “Broken String” (a.k.a. “The Big Finale, Part 2″). An expansive and inviting album would near dangerously close to becoming either repetitive or unambitious.

The first mental images to come to the brain of the average Joe or Jane when mentioning Omaha, Nebraska, would likely be cornfields as far as the eye can see, Johnny Carson, steaks, a world zoo, Mutual of Omaha Insurance or tortured songsmith Conor Oberst. Now, if you happen upon a fan of the whacked out sub-genre of rock that I like to call surf Billy garage rock, Omaha conjures one prominent spector: the band that is Brimstone Howl.

With one of the many severe thunderstorms to shit on Missouri in the last few weeks raging outside my office window, I felt it was the opportune time to stay up into the wee hours of the morning, risk electrocution at my computer and review Brimstone Howl’s latest We Came In Peace. Actually, the conditions are perfect for a critique of this record; the weather is violent and unrelenting, reminiscent of those old Hammer Studios horror flicks from the 1950s and 1960s, add to that the creepy Jim Diamond of Detroit garage gods The Dirt Bombs production (Peace sounds a bit like it was recorded at the bottom of a metal trash can in a well at the very back of an immense cavern) and Peace, though ironically named, could easily be its soundtrack.

There are many moments of eerie greatness to be found here. The songwriting, delivery, setup and all around raw slickness of the songs are not unlike the gems on the classic Nuggets compilation. Every track has flashes of this, all made nearly perfect by the manically fantastic lead guitar savagery of Nick Waggoner. His wicked slide and effects drenched flamethrower is especially prominent on the track “Child Of Perdition”, a roadhouse jam that bows to Chuck Berry as much as it does X’s Billy Zoom. In fact, it could quite possibly be some of the best playing in rock and “They Call Me Hopeless Destroyer” is open nerve blues like Jack White used to play before he spread himself thin jamming in 47 different bands. Complimenting the guitar chops is vocalist/ guitarist John Ziegler. What stands out most for me about Zeigler on this record is not his playing, though it is topnotch, is his vocals. He is a strange alien creature mix of the late Lux Interior, John Doe and the swagger of a juvenile delinquent from The Blackboard Jungle if said delinquent would have had access to LSD and William S. Burroughs novels.

Perhaps the best thing about Peace is that, with it, Brimstone Howl are at the very least attempting to bring rock back to its blues, rebellious and bare boots, raw roots. Just like The Ramones did in the 1970’s, Howl borrowing from 1960’s groups like The Shirelles, The Shangri-Las and The Ronettes to hone a sound that is as much a tribute as it is original. Goddamn, there’s even a song on the disc named “Shangri La”. If that isn’t a apparent case of fandom I don’t know what is.

The only crystal clear ape of any bands on this disc is the track “Easy to Dream”. If they could have gotten Sweet Lou Reed to do (I won’t say sing) the lines, it could have been sold as a companion piece to “Venus In Furs” and The Doors exorcism that is “The World Will Never Know.” But is that a crime? Borrowing from your heroes? Burying you enemies in flattery? Brimstone Howl are one of the best of the new crop of garage punks that loot and pillage music history like so many guitar wielding Vikings. It’s clear that they walk in the footsteps of their forefathers but luckily they don’t seem content to merely be a cover band like some others that shall remain nameless here.

The drumming of Calvin Retzlaff is pounding, stick splintering playing at it’s finest. He is Dick Dale with a drum set instead of a Strat. The first sound the listener hears on Peace is the steady, lightning fast, flaw free time and it only gets more aggressive with every progressive track thereafter. The bass of Chauncey Patton is as dense as a trucker’s midnight cup of coffee. In short, the band is in top form, showing an improved confidence since 2007 Guts of Steel. They mix the different elements within the band expertly. There’s slower tracks (“Easy To Dream”), speedy blues numbers (“Catamite Blues”, “They Call Me Hopeless Destroyer”) and the just plan weird random tune (“The World Will Never Know”).

Brimstone Howl are like the strange friend that lives in his mom’s basement and talks at length about UFOs, The Twilight Zone, going to Buenos Aires and government conspiracies. As you sit there listening you think to yourself, “this cat is totally fucked in the head. I should split.” But you don’t. You sit there, you listen, you get sucked in because, after awhile, it starts making sense. That’s what it’s like listening to We Came in Peace. This Omaha band is the crop circles, Bigfoot, ghosts and alien abductions of rock; a far out phenomenon that gathers steam and a flock of new believers the more their name is whispered. Brimstone Howl… Brimstone Howl…… Brimstone Howl……..

If 1991 was the year that punk broke, then 2009 is most certainly shaping up to be the year that punk-goes-prog. Led by bands like Mind Eraser, Iron Age and most notably, Fucked Up, the face of hardcore has been changing over the past few years, embracing a new ideology, one that favors lengthy interludes, actual singing, thematic songwriting and epic push-pull crescendos over moshy breakdowns and gruff shouting; call it the school of The Mars Volta, if you will. Baltimore’s Pulling Teeth clearly prescribe to this aesthetic, and their third album, Paranoid Delusions Paradise Illusions is a kaleidoscopic conceptual journey that takes their modern slant on the hardcore idiom and refracts it through a distinctly Floydian lens.

True to its illusory title, nothing here is quite what it seems; songs begin life as serene paeans to the wonders of nature and like a surprise squall, abruptly, violently shift gears into brutish, swollen-guitar dirges that drag the listener into the seventh circle of hell. These wolves in sheep’s clothing abound throughout Paranoid/Paradise, take “Ritual”, with its massive dynamic shifts, like tectonic plates jutting out and then suddenly retracting beneath your feet, sending you plunging, helpless, into the icy waters below, or the furious lurch of “Bloodwolves”, which feels like being dragged across a field of glass and shrapnel at 200mph only to be unceremoniously flung into a soft meadow as its soaring guitar solo kicks in and sends the whole thing shuddering into a triumphant blaze of white light. But this is all but a funeral march to the immense, nearly 14-minute closing crush of the title-tracks; epic in both scope and duration, this is the album’s final journey, and like a clipper ship trapped in a maelstrom, it’s undulating rhythms, hyper-modulated Moog squelches and sky-whirl guitars are tumultuous, cathartic and rejuvenating, often in the span of a single verse.

By jettisoning the “traditional” hardcore formula they’ve undoubtedly cast themselves asunder. However, there’s also a liberation in the shedding of such arcane practices, and when all is said and done, it’s that freedom, of launching head-first into an unknown abyss, that makes Paranoid Delusions Paradise Illusions an unqualified and uncompromising success.

Brooklyn is experiencing quite the revival when it comes to heavy music. Or maybe it’s just that people outside of NYC are taking notice again. Hardcore and metal have always thrived in The Rotten Apple in the face of trends, with bands like Batillus and So Hideous My Love receiving a lot of attention of late. On all the up and comers, Tombs are definitely one of the biggest Brooklyn success stories. Since their inception in 2007, their EP on singer/guitarist Mike Hill’s Black Box Recording has sold out a couple of pressings and last year’s split 12” with German metal merchants Planks continues to sell briskly, especially on the heels of their tour with Isis and Pelican.

All these factors have heightened the anticipation for a full-length. The new record is called Winter Hours and its aptly named. There is very little that is light here, whether it be tonally or texturally, but what did you really expect? They are a metal band from Brooklyn called Tombs, and on Relapse, no less. Mike Hill and company make a fearsome noise that will take your ears prisoner and do very bad things to them. The trio sounds a lot like Neurosis doing their favorite Black Flag tunes at Swans tempos. While drums (and your ears) are given very little respite over the ten tracks, Tombs remain decidedly monolithic regardless of the tempo, hell-bent on crushing anything in their path. After the almost six-minutes of caustic sound the opening “Gossamer” subjects you to, the opening of “Golden” pummels you from the drop before adding insult to injury and getting even heavier. And you’re not even at track three yet, so strap on in.

Caustic tones are the order of the day on Winter Hours. Tracks like “Filled With Secrets” are brash and excoriating with very little in the way of mercy for your eardrums. “Merrimack” is a departure of sorts, using smoother tones to invoke a Jesu/Isis feel. In fact, a lot of the quieter moments on Winter Hours recall Justin Broderick, especially the end of “Filled With Secrets”. It sets up the epic “Seven Stars The Angel Of Death” like a jab to your chest setting up a right cross to your face, but you’ll like it anyway. While Winter Hours is staunchly abrasive, if you listen closely, there are definite filigrees of melody throughout. Little sonic oases like “The Great Silence” offer small periods of respite with clean guitar and more atmospheric tones, but this is not a record for the faint of heart. Winter Hours is definitely not going to be the soundtrack for your next holiday gathering. Unless you’re perhaps a member of the Manson family.

You’ll either love this album …

On the full-length debut Manners, Michael Angelakos appropriates and amplifies the elements that made Passion Pit’s Chunk of Change EP a success. He remains unabashedly loyal to his shrill voice, supplementing its high-pitched yelps with infectious pop hooks and relentless energy. Emerging last fall, Angelakos was just a sensitive northeastern frat-boy penning songs to his ex-girlfriend. The winter passes and he’s a boldly confident indie-star that records in fancy-studios with producer Chris Zane (Les Savy Fav, The Walkmen), books back-up children’s choirs, and has the sessions covered by The FADER. Out of the dorm-room into the spotlight, indeed. “Look at me,” he declares on the Red Bull-infused lead single “The Reeling”. It’s vigor sets a precedent: Chunk of Change was meant for his girlfriend’s bedroom and Manners is meant for Times Square. “The Reeling” is an attention-grabbing (“here I am! Won’t someone understand?”) and self-absorbed affair, but one that is utterly awesome. As badly as I want to roll my eyes when he mutters something about his “confounding destiny,” the all-encompassing chorus immediately trumps my cynicism.

Though bigger is definitely the operative word in describing the shift from EP to LP for Passion Pit, his girlfriend remains a dominating topic. Themes of partnership and loyalty permeate Manners as he toys with grand language and convoluted metaphors. On “Little Secrets”, he talks about “outlining wet sidewalks in halogen” before the chorus’ proclamation: “no one needs to know we’re feeling higher and higher!” “Eyes As Candles” comes off as a total love anthem while the sing-a-long “na na na” chorus epitomizes his pop sensibilities. In other cases, it seems he’s just trying to come to grips with his new attention (“my world astir and sickly”).
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The seamless flow between tracks is a product of Zane’s experience and grants Manners a strong cohesion. The songs converse with one another and ultimately make Manners sound like the product of a full band realizing their own sound.

Or you’ll hate it …

Michael Angelakos’ shrill falsetto rambles worse than before. Firstly, he sings without direction or care. The helium-sucked screams on tracks like “To Kingdom Come” and “Little Secrets” aggravate more than appeal. Secondly, his saccharine lyrics reek of vague generalities and vacuous moralizing. “So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh just to prove I’m alive,” sings Angelakos on “Make Light”. The rest of the album is plagued in Angelakos’ self-absorbed pontifications of his purpose on this world: “everyday I lie awake and pray to God today’s the day.” Frankly, it’s hard to ever know what he’s talking about. (See: “that’s a frosty way to speak/ to tell me how to live next to your potpourri.”) Without care for syntax, grammar or general sense, his words flail amongst a cacophony of Atari-like noises and cookie-cutter pop structures.

Album launch pad “Make Light” picks up right where we left off. Angelakos shrieks unintelligible nothings like a prepubescent girl in the back seat of a long car ride. It’s truly cringe-worthy to hear Angelakos emulate Jackson 5 and belt out, “let this be our little secret/ no one needs to know we’re feeling/ higher and higher!” And Sweet Moses, is there actually a song called “Let Your Love Grow Tall”? And did he actually just affix the lyric “tall as the grass in the meadow?” to the song title? Worst is Angelakos’ self-victimizing when he boldly claims he want to “make light of my treacherous life.” Cry me a thousand rivers. “We’re swimming in a flood, you know?” No, I don’t. Chunk of Change was characterized by charmingly saccharine devotion, but Manners is full of obtuse nothings without ever being poetic.

Angelakos is putting the cart before horse. This album defines his artistic persona: an uninhibited and anxious grandstander, not unlike Brendan Flowers or Adam Levine. This is fine, if you have the hype to justify it, but Passion Pit doesn’t. Manners only confirms that “Sleepyhead” is still the best track.

The overwhelming success of the revamped, Jared & Coady-aided Melvins has been a mixed blessing for Big Business; as their duties with King Buzzo’s crew have increased, so too have their profiles, yet, it’s greatly detracted from their actual output as a band. It’s been more than two years since they dropped Here Comes the Waterworks on a largely unsuspecting public that proceeded to flip their collective wig for its brutalizing bottom-end power and bludgeoning lyrical cunning. A couple of tour-only EPs have attempted to sate the salivating monkeys demanding new Big Biz, but to little or no avail, as it only served to further whet their appetites for the next main course. One that’s been far too slow in the coming. Now, finally, after countless months of speculation and blog/Twitter/MySpace rumor, their latest full-length is ready for mass consumption.

More nuanced and finely-honed than their sophomore effort, Mind the Drift is the next chapter in the newly trio-fied Biz’s sonic oeuvre, eschewing the battering-ram splendor of its predecessor for a patchwork-textured malevolence that they’ve only hinted at in the past (most notably on “Another Beautiful Day in the Pacific Northwest”). The addition of touring jack-of-all-trades Toshi Kasai to the permanent fold has widened their sonic palette vastly, and as a result, not only do we, for the first time, get whiffs of gnarled serpentine guitar to supplement the standard bass/drum devastation, but loads of burbling analog synths and meticulously-placed bells, whistles, bird calls and raygun-squelches as well. This shifting of sonic priorities takes some getting used to, as texture and nuance aren’t terms one normally associates with Warren & Wills, and while there’s nothing as thunderously thrilling as “Heads Up!” or “Focus Pocus” to be found here, the spooky avant-punk leanings of “Cats, Mice” and the whiplash pop underbelly the keeps “Gold and Final” and “Cold Lunch” from wallowing into the sludge are a welcome change of pace.

That said, whereas Here Comes… was the perfect distillation of their live performance energy on tape, Mind the Drift is the sound of a band in flux, confident, yet stumbling around in their new space, not quite sure what to do/make of all the new toys at their disposal. Uncharacteristic missteps like the plodding “Ayes Have It” and the title-track’s terse build-up with no real payoff are proof of that, while the multi-tracked drum mayhem of opener “Found Art” could well be a Nude with Boots cast-off. Still, while they occasionally fall flat on their faces, it’s encouraging to listen to them fight through the growing pains rather than retreat back to a simpler formula. While it’s not the unstoppable juggernaut of an album we know they have in them, Mind the Drift is, nevertheless, an enjoyable bridge between their sludge-mongering past, and a much brighter future.

Hydra Head Records

As rock bands go, Arizona’s Meat Puppets have never been what one would classify as normal. At their calmest you could say that their approach to music is unorthodox and at their wildest well, they are flat out, full-speed-ahead weird.

Since forming in Paradise Valley, Arizona in early 1980, the band has released seminal albums, including the SST classic Meat Puppets 2, created their own style of punk rock by combining psychedelic rock (and tons of actual hallucinogens), country music and the off beat vocal delivery of twin brothers Cris and Curt Kirkwood, to make a sound solidly that of the brothers Meat.

The sound the Kirkwoods fostered was not embraced by the mainstream, the one exception being 1994’s Too High To Die, but it was borrowed from and built upon by some of the most influential bands of my generation including Nirvana, Soundgarden, The Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr., Nada Surf, the Replacements to name just a few. The band’s latest album, Sewn Together [Megaforce] is exactly that, a sewn together tapestry of all the influences and substances that morphed into the creature that is The Meat Puppets.

The album’s title track is a singsong campfire distortion touched country rock gem that would make Gram Parsons and his Flying Burrito Brothers proud. That is just one of the pop infused gems to be found on the album ironically released by metal gods Metallica’s first label residence.

“Blanket of Weeds” is a harmonized tune with a distortion jam filling out it’s midsection; “Sapphire” shows that the at times stellar band Concrete Blonde may have been Puppets followers as well. “Go to Your Head” has a feeling that yes, in fact, Michael Stipe stole his voice from Cris Kirkwood and Peter, Bill and Mike pilfered their best ideas from the bluegrass lovin’ Arizona punks.

But longtime fans don’t be fooled by the rock conformity. Oh no, there are some moments that we’ve come to know, love and attribute to an acid consumption on par with Hendrix. The most likely suspect of this and the perhaps the best song on Sewn Together is the whistle lead, “The Monkey and The Snake”. Strange lyrics abound here: “This is the story of the monkey and the snake/the monkey hit that sucker with a rake/snake bit the monkey and the hand/now the monkey’s singin’ in a band.” And believe it or not it gets weirder from there. Drum solos, flange guitar, mandolin and funky bass are in full force here.

To put it simply, Sewn Together is a beautifully strange album that proves the Meat Puppets are still relevant and have much to offer the world of “indie” rock.

The point of the many comparisons to other bands in this review is not do to a lack of imagination on my part; or is it to imply that The Meat Puppets have reached the end of their creative rope after twenty-nine years. That couldn’t be further from the truth; it is merely to show the influence that band has had on Alternative music. Without the Meat Puppets, alternative as we know it would have an entirely different sound or may not exist at all.

Thank you Jesus for the Kirkwood brothers. Sewn Together is one of the top five best albums I’ve heard so far this year and more importantly, it is yet another step in The Meat Puppets’ journey of greatness.

Canada has some good exports going on: beer, nuclear fuel, bacon. Ontario’s Junior Boys fall right in line with these tasty acquisitions, releasing 2006’s wistful and unadulterated So This Is Goodbye to critical acclaim and a world tour that followed suit.

Such a praise is hard to draw from with the duo’s newest release Begone Dull Care, which truthfully is fairly saddening to stomach. The tracks on the eight song album reflect more of a transitory approach and sometimes lose focus on nailing a hook, the Boys wading a bit in their keys trying to find a clear path.

Starter “Parallel Lines” employs lite Depeche Mode industrial congos, also being a bit slower in beat but still harboring a nice change in pace for an opening song. This attitude also spills into “Work”, which induces a more downtempo feel instead of the Boys’ usual upbeat tactics.

There are proud attempts for more dancefloor tracks, however. “Hazel” is most successful, and I want so badly for this to be more of the album, as it integrates a fantastic pop element, hook and feel to compliment singer Jeremy Greenspan’s breathier vocals, which finally break away from his more quieter moments to make an appearance here. “Bits and Pieces” offers synth slightly reminiscent to Sega’s Sonic 3, but Greenspan’s singing here again is lined up much sexier and stronger, evocative of last album’s “The Equalizer.”

But songs like “Sneak A Picture” and “Dull To Pause” don’t tell me anything new, and sound like rehashing from an old studio session. Closer “What It’s For” lays the album out flat as a finale, dry and abandoned. The album cohesively seems muddled, and while gems like “Bits and Pieces” seem like a step in the right direction, it’s hard to distinguish how the guys even feel about the album themselves. It seems like the Junior Boys are swimming a bit to try and regain footing in the striking element that made both Last Exit and So This Is Goodbye such gorgeous albums to strap your headphones on for.

There comes a time in any illustrious artist’s career where the river
risks running dry. While Bonnie “Prince” Billy (aka Will Oldham) is still putting out material at a prolific rate, the relevance of it seems to be diminishing the quicker his output flows. To Oldham’s defense, no record he has put out in his career has been bad, but as 1999’s I See A Darkness and 2006’s The Letting Go were valued statements on lush, orchestrated song form and audacious lyricism, Beware is a safe record by his standards.

The song structures that build Beware are full of sparse arrangements, Celtic melodies, and hints of Americana twang — truly a culmination of his most endearing work. But where as previous records highlighted Oldham’s dry vocals at the front of the mix, they grow comfortable into the environment around him, making it harder to focus on his always witty, uncompromising lyricism. Although he is becoming more comfortable in his own skin as far as his vocal timbre goes, the awkward lyrical phrasing that always put him at the top of New Weird
America seem to be absent on Beware.

But speaking in terms of the New Weird America scene that Oldham was often claimed a pioneer of; his career has fallen in line more Americana and its developments over recent years. With the lines of the genre being explored and skewed on a invariable basis, Bonnie “Prince” Billy has been following the ethos of the genre for a lengthy period of time now. By using traditional instrumentation, sporting a voice that doesn’t make the stomach settle easily, and searching for ways to speak the common person’s struggle in a new light, Oldham has become a figure that people remain loyal to because of these characteristics. And lets face it folks — the common “struggle” no longer has to do with just Southern stereotypes (and yes, Oldham was born and raised in the South) and the country clichés, but its become much more universal. By not appealing to the unanimous struggle so to speak, the very essence of Americana is being shunned. Oldham understands this, and Beware is a record more conscious of this as a whole than any of his previous work.

Beware isn’t any kind of misstep, its actually quite the logical progression for Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s career. But for the fans that visit his records on a casual basis for a different outlook on life’s inner-turmoil, they can’t keep hearing it set to the same backdrop. The
music itself has got to revive them the same way his lyricism always has, or the newcomers may stop coming.

Nina Persson’s music has always had a strength and singularity of vision. All of her past works have had a distinct thematic push, informing everything from the melodies to the songwriting and lyricism, through to the visualization of the works. She’s been a retro Swedish sweetheart, a plastic pop dream girl, an Appalachian lullaby-cooing songbird and a hardened love worn soul in search of a co-conspirator. It’s been this singularity if vision that has always left her fans enthralled by her latest, as well as her next move.

While A Camp has always been The Cardigans‘ Nina Persson’s solo project, which truly evolved out of her own needs to express her own vision, with her second A Camp release, Colonia, this is no longer true. A Camp is now a band. Atomic Swing’s Niclas Frisk, Shudder To Think’s Nathan Larson and Nina Persson are now a fully realized band, and it shows. From the musicality, the production and the execution, it’s clear that this is a collaboration. This is not to say that this is a shortcoming, it’s just a new A Camp.

And Colonia is full of change. While the record still has a strong thematic center, “historical imagery,…from the opium den to the Belgian Congo, from the Namibian desert by starlight to Victorian New York by gaslight, and the Bowery of the ’70s by neon,” it’s definitely not pared down and singular. And, yes, the lyrics, mood and music all feed this grand vision. Oddly, the album’s track progression belies the fact by setting forth the first four songs as A Camp circa 2001’s “business as usual.” By the fifth track, though, the gears shift. The tunes then begin to run from swelling film score to 60s girl group pop, and from royal pomp to melodramatic circumstance.

But while this mixture of styles and themes may be the strength of the album to some, it will also feel like it’s downfall to others. Even though the signatures of her work are still outstanding, long-time fans may long for the stronger on-point message most have come to expect from Persson. But one must also realize that this is still her band and her vision. The real message is: A Camp is now a band. To those who prefer Persson as a solo artist, this may not justify the changes, but to her, it’s simply her next move.

I first experienced the Crystal Antlers at last year’s CMJ. I wasn’t there to see them; I was basically there to partake in the free drinks. The boozy hipster crowd was quite loud and sociable amongst themselves, until the Antlers strummed the first feedback drenched riff of their set and propelled head first into one of the most clamorous-yet-invigorating rock shows I had seen all week.

From that point forward, the attention was all on them. The high-energy mix of shredding guitars, pounding organs (that sounds wrong), squealing saxophones and shrieking lyrical delivery was an all-encompassing unruly performance that could not be ignored. It was a high energy; take no prisoners approach that I questioned if it would be possible to contain with in a studio album.

Finally, with their debut LP released on Touch and Go, I have an answer to my question. Tentacles is a riotous album from the six piece SoCal outfit, whose recorded songs are just as pummeling as they are in concert. But what is more prevalent in the album is how ambitious and heavily orchestrated these psychedelic, garage rock tunes powered by the spiraling, propulsive shriek of lead singer, Jonny Bell actually are.

“Dust” and “Time Erased” are songs that invoke late 60s garage rock, while “Andrew” is a great bluesy number that adds a little R&B swagger to their musical bludgeoning. “Tentacles” is just a ruthlessly delivered song equipped with a weighty prominent bass line and killer dual guitars soloing intermittently through out the song. “Until The Sun Dies Part 1” and “Memorized” are the spacey psychedelic songs that at some point remind me of the likes of Pink Floyd, until the signature Crystal Antlers shredding ensues.

If you are a fan of lo-fi garage rock with a classic rock edge then this is most definitely the album for you. It’s loud, in your face rock music that showcases an extremely talented band that is able to pull from many different genres and meld them in to an unique blend of rock that some how sounds vintage, yet new and refreshing at the same time.

Eleven years into their life as a band, Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s Dexateens are finally starting to get the notice they so richly deserve. Formed around the core of guitarists John Smith and Elliott McPherson, the band quickly added a third guitar and set to tearing up every rinky-dink roadside bar and honky-tonk they could weasel their way into. Local heroes The Quadrajets took the band under their wing, showing the five-some the ways of the road and helping Dexateens coalesce into a three-guitar juggernaut that left many a hometown band weeping into their post-set PBRs.

Dexateens then made an aborted effort at recording a debut with Bruce Watson from Fat Possum behind the boards, but both parties mutually agreed to abort the sessions. Tellingly, their self-titled debut was eventually recorded with garage-punk guru Tim Kerr. Released on Estrus, the record was raucous and in your face, but with strong melodies underpinning it all. The debut was a more than adequate snapshot of a band finding itself, but was just as obviously a single frame capturing a band in motion. Kerr returned less than a year later to man the boards for the second record Red Dust Rising, as Dexateens refined their sound and channeled their inner Black Oak Arkansas.

An Alabama band with three guitars is bound to get some notice from Patterson Hood of Drive By Truckers, and notice he did, talking them up to everyone who would listen and lending a hand to the band as they made their third record with David Barbe. Barbe and Hood got The Teens in touch with their inner Big Star on Hardware Healing, layering the vocals and adding a bit more gloss to the proceedings, as well as steel guitar and keys. Finally, the planets seemed to finally align for the Alabama quintet. The Alex Chilton meets Crazy Horse single “Neil Armstrong” pricked up a lot of people’s ears and led to high-profile tours with DBT and Lucero, raising their profile considerably outside the South.

Deaxteens have always displayed diy ethics. The band managed to capitalize on their growing notoriety by parleying it into a distribution deal for their label Cornelius Chapel. Released through Thirty Tigers and Sony’s Red Distribution, the new record Singlewide is released in conjunction with fellow Alabama indie Skybucket Records. Singlewide dispenses almost entirely with the blazing guitars that played so much of a part in their early music. The band approached the record with a Creedence state of mind, building every song around an acoustic guitar and really pushing the harmonies. They found a sympathetic production ear in Nashville maverick Mark Evers, solidifying his role as the go-to guy for recording oddball Nash Vegas stuff like Bobby Bare Jr. and The Silver Jews.

The Dexateens are no stranger to rocking, but with the help of Evers, Singlewide finds the band exploring more of their quiet side. “New Boy” is a beautiful song reminiscent of the slower Two Cow Garage material that seems ripe for drunken singalongs. “Hang On” is just as lovely, a chiming Big Star homage that screams to be played way too loudly on a car radio. The record builds to the closing “Can You Whoop It”. Former Silver Jew Dave Berman makes a guest appearance, responding in a robotic affirmative to the seemly rhetorical question. It’s that song that seems to embody the Dexateens aesthetic: the narrator avers that he likes Ronnie Dio, Vaseline and living “in the space that compromise provides”. That simple statement crystallizes succinctly the two worlds that Dexateens straddle. Equal parts soulful croon and raging bombast, Singlewide makes every song seem like one you’ve sung along to a million times. If they have any say in the matter, Dexateens will have you sing along a million times more.

To what degree is it absurdly patronizing that I didn’t take Laura Marling seriously because she’s a 19-year-old British female-folk/pop singer? Let’s call a spade a spade here: if you’re a young artist, you’re afforded little respect. If you’re a young woman, you’re afforded even less. These are entrenched stigmas in critical culture. It doesn’t help Marling’s cause that her songs are anchored on tales of failed or unrequited love. To sum it up: good-looking blonde teenager sings songs about her ex-boyfriend. Play coy all you want, but we both know transcending that persona on a critical level is pretty fucking tough. But we’re not talking about the Jonas Brother or Miley Cyrus here — we’re talking about Marling, who exudes a unique maturity in interviews; she is comfortable in the spotlight and admirably reticent. She doesn’t play to the camera; she plays to herself. She dismisses compliments about her maturity saying such self-analysis is unnecessary. And truthfully, she has little to nothing to do with her youthful contemporaries, but more with accomplished artists like Leslie Feist or Lykke Li.

So Marling wins points on personality, but points on songwriting? Definitely a few, but there’s plenty of work to do. She sings acceptable, innocuous folk songs. Lead single “Ghost” is Marling at her best with vulnerability on full display. But all the songs showcase this emotion to some degree, and they all basically sound the same: finger-picking guitar, accompanying piano or lead guitar, verse-chorus structure, gentle vocals. It’s tough to pretend like these songs differentiate from one another. Not to say they aren’t enjoyable, none are unbearable and none irritating — a listening experience not dissimilar to Coldplay — but ultimately, the listening experience is akin to a 38-minute coffee-shop performance. Alas, I Cannot Swim’s 12-tracks trot by without a change in momentum or character.

Marling’s touted maturity comes from her poetic maneuvering. She is clever and self-deprecating, but not self-pitying. Though unfamiliar hearing a 19-year-old dish existential advice, “don’t cry kid/ you’ve got so much more to live for,” she redeems herself often. It’s hard not to be charmed in the title track (hidden at the end of the disc) when she quips, “there is a boy across the river/ but alas, I cannot swim.” Her vivid imagery of ex-boyfriends is so accomplished that I can hardly believe they were written by someone so young: “At one in the morning the day has not ended/ by two, he is scared that sleep is no friend/ by four, he will drink but cannot feel it.” The best tracks bookend the album with “Ghost” opening and “Your Only Doll” finishing – both admirably earnest moments.

While the Avril Lavigne’s of the world claim to circumvent the “Label-Creates-the-Star” paradigm by maintaining personal autonomy, they reek of artificiality more than the Miley’s. But there is a real feeling Marling has nothing to do with them; she’s a talented bedroom musician being taken along for the corporate ride. Alas, I Cannot Swim is a satisfactory beginning; with character in check, and a knack for lyrics that feel ten times her age, Marling’s young career will hopefully evolve into something musically-original and artistically-engaging.

Astralwerks

Doug Sahm is a man whose role in Texas Music is not to be underestimated. Combining blues and country with the sounds of the Mexican music he heard growing up in San Antonio, Sahm was a fountain of music who died at 52 as one of the pillars of Tex-Mex music. Considered a child prodigy on the mandolin, steel guitar and fiddle, he made his debut on the Texas airwaves at age five. Taking the name Little Doug Sahm, by age eight he was a featured player on country radio mainstay Louisiana Hayride and sharing stages with many of the honky-tonk heroes of the day, including Webb Pierce and Hank Williams. By his teens, Sahm had been offered a regular gig on The Grand Ol’ Opry but had to refuse when his parents insisted he finish school. He met lifelong friend and musical foil Augie Myers soon afterward. The two left their respective bands to assemble The Sir Douglas Quintet at the behest of local producer Huey P. Meaux. Growing their hair and adopting a Cajun two-step beat, TSDQ was Meaux’s stab at trying to capitalize on The British Invasion that was sweeping the U.S. at the time. The result was the huge 1965 hit “She’s About A Mover”.

An inopportune marijuana bust the following year stopped the Quintet’s momentum and prompted Sahm to hightail it to San Francisco just as The Summer Of Love was about to burst into bloom. Ever the musical sponge, Sahm absorbed the Haight-Ashbury vibes, playing with The Grateful Dead and releasing a number of successful solo records before returning to Texas in the early 70s. Ever the wanderer, he spent time in Sweden and Canada before returning to Texas in the early 80s with the idea to form a Tex-Mex version of The Traveling Wilburys. Texas titans Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez joined Sahm and Meyers to form The Texas Tornadoes, a unit that came to be one of the most successful Texas bands ever. In his later years he formed a new version of The Sir Doug Quintet with his sons and even released a straight R&B record before dying unexpectedly from a 1999 heart attack while vacationing in New Mexico.

Sahm’s passing left a huge hole in Texas music, whether it be Tejano, R&B, Blues or some combination of the three. His life and music have been celebrated since his passing through regular SxSW tributes and posthumous releases like The Return Of Wayne Douglas and in 2002 St. Louis roots rockers The Bottle Rockets released an entire record of Sir Doug covers on Bloodshot entitled Songs Of Sahm. November 2009 will mark the 10th anniversary of his passing. To commemorate his life and body of work, Vanguard Records has released Keep Your Soul: A Tribute To Doug Sahm. Rarely has there been a better mix of contemporaries and collaborators. Greg Dulli makes an unexpected appearance with a stellar (yet creepy) take on “You Was For Real”. Los Lobos and Terry Allen are among those representing for the non-Texas set, but it’s his Lone Star cronies that really shine here. Alejandro Escovedo takes a great turn with his version of “Too Little, Too Late”, but the hands-down best cover here is Jimmie Vaughn and his take on “Why, Why, Why”. Vaughn captures the laid-back Austin intensity like few can, nailing the sound and the vibe to make sweet love to your ears like he was Joe Tex himself.

While Sahm was much beloved by fans and friends, his musical family always came first. They give the love right back on Keep Your Soul. Tejano accordion legend and former Texas Tornado bandmate, Flaco Jimenez held an historic session in the beginning of this year, drafting in Doug’s son Shandon and Augie Myers along with Sahm sidemen West Side Horns to re-record an incendiary take on the Tornadoes chestnut “Ta Bueno Compadre (It’s Ok Friend)”. Joe ‘King Carrasco’ also ropes in Los Tornados to do “Adios Mexico” before Shawn Sahm closes things with a faithful turn on “Mendocino”. All are fitting tributes to one of the finest purveyors of what Gram Parsons called The Cosmic American Music. Whether you enjoy Doug Sahm with The Sir Douglas Quintet, as a Texas Tornado or through his solo career, Keep Your Soul: A Tribute To Doug Sahm is a fine complement to the body of work from one of America’s greatest musical treasures.

Manchester Orchestra’s sophomore album Mean Everything to Nothing is an exhilarating live rock assault chock full of evocatively raw lyrics and heavy guitar driven melodies sung with dramatic punk rock urgency. It’s a loud; in your face album produced in an unrefined bare-bone style that gives the album an authentic live rock band feel.

Manchester Orchestra immediately kicks the album in to high gear with “The Only One”, a blistering 2-minute 39-second opener which sets the energy precedent and flows seamlessly into the dramatic rise and fall of “Shake it Out!”. Another raw urgent rock number that has lead singer Andy Hull emotively barking the chorus of “You Gotta Shake it out! Shake it out! You gotta break it down.” Hulls cathartic shriek is bursting with angst creating an enthralling emotional loud/soft dynamic to the song. The next track, “I’ve Got Friends”, is undoubtedly the catchiest song on the album with a larger than life anthemic orchestration equipped with booming guitar riffs, full band sing-a-longs, melodic piano and a fist pounding chorus “I’ve got Friends in all the right places, I know what they want and I know that they want me to stay!” It’s a killer rock song that is a well-balanced assault with a lyrically beautiful edge.

The pacing of this album is almost ruthless as each and every song bleeds in to one another leaving no time to rest. By the time “I’ve Got Friends” flows in to “Pride” I was a little exhausted. “Pride” is a slow burning number that builds into a rhythmic anthem that I found a little too over the top for my taste. Thankfully, Hull and the band lets up a little bit on the dramatics for the second half of the album starting with “In My Teeth” — a grunge influenced tune that reminds me of Nirvana at their peak. Another change of pace occurs with “I Can Feel a Hot One”, which is a beautiful song that replaces the guitar assault with piano and cello forcing Andy Hull’s impressive lyrical storytelling ability to the forefront.

Mean Everything to Nothing is a great listen from start to finish. I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child was an amazing debut album, but Manchester Orchestra has managed to produce a sophomore album that is even more expansive in scope and sound than it’s predecessor and reflects a band that has really come in to their own.

Favorite Gentlemen/Canvasback Music

You may not know Red Fang by name, but if you’ve been near the internets recently, you’ve probably seen the video for their debut single “Prehistoric Dog”. It’s ‘gone viral’ as the kids say, and rightfully so: it’s easily one of the best videos of the last five years. Incorporating host of visual delights, including excessive beer consumption, live action role playing, creative recycling and Monty Python-esque gore, you owe it to yourself to seek it out immediately. In fact, the video is so good that you might be distracted from the fact that Red Fang are much more than an awesome video. That would be doing the four Portland natives a great disservice, as a trip through the self-titled Red Fang debut will assert quite definitively that they are nothing less than a full-on four-piece Metal onslaught.

It’s a good time to be in a metal band. Mastodon and The Sword are nabbing Grammy nominations while classic acts like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest draw the same huge numbers they did in their 80s heydays. Even more notably, the crowds are comprised of increasingly larger numbers of young fans with their parents. Who says metal doesn’t promote good family values?

Like The Sword, Red Fang owe more to the Black Sabbath or Motorhead end of the spectrum. There’s some heavy cowbell and ride action going on here, and it’s not even close to being ironic. Red Fang aren’t a one trick pony, either. On tracks like “Sharks”, they change tempos at will, and before you know it, you’re pretty much helpless to avoid flailing around like you’re a dozen beers in at a Melvins show. It’s not normally in my nature, but by the middle of said song, I was very glad that I live alone. By the end, I was pretty sure there were good reasons for that status. In my defense, the song is named “Sharks” and metal rules of conduct mandate a certain level on enthusiasm.

For a four-piece, Red Fang make a hell of a lot of a racket. There are times when they get almost Nirvana with it, due in no small part to drummer John Sherman’s non-stop pummeling. This guy hits hard, whether it’s on the swaggering “Good To Die” or in slower, sludgy parts like the ones on “Humans Remain Human Remains” that come close to the Melvins side of the Nirvana sound. Perhaps maybe a bit too much: the chorus hook and its similarity to “Heart Shaped Box” may very well precipitate a call from Ms. Love, especially given her recent squandering of her ill-gotten gains. Musical similarities aside, the vocals are hardly warmed over Creed-ified Kurdt Vedderisms. Props also have to be given to singer/guitarist David Sullivan. Here is a man with some pipes on him. He’s equally comfortable with a gritty rasp or a grungy yowl and adds the final piece to the headbanging awesomeness that is Red Fang. There’s a pronounced animal theme here, but lest you think they are a one trick pony, rest assured that the themes of fire, destruction, thunder and human remains are also addressed. Such things are comfortable in their familiarity.

All of the metal planets have aligned on Red Fang. If you consider yourself a fan of heavy music, it would be impossible for you to not like this record. Each track has a barbarian swagger that doesn’t ignore the fact that while we are basically evolved apes, we’re not dumb apes. Check the average Red Fang crowd maybe four beers into their set and tell me you don’t see evidence of Darwinism. Red Fang the band will definitely appeal to your primal side, but Red Fang the record shows that you can bang your head and still think with it.

It begins with the dry, uneven rumble of a bass drum. It’s a simple sound, uncompressed and clear. Years ago, the drum was probably covered in bright colors, but the paint is all faded now. You could sit there all day listening to that bass drum.

La Strada hail from New York, but adapt what they call old-world instrumentation (meaning accordion and strings) to their laid-back folk songs. The result lies somewhere between a sea chanty and a Beirut song, but it is some of the best folk-pop music this side of The Decemberists.

The songs are carnival-esque at times, majestic at others, and mostly addictive. Mostly. Opener “Orphan” with its lullaby tempo and saccharine lyrics “Wake up, you silly / Shake your sleepy head,” is a little too pretty, a little too cute. But this artificial sweetness is cut short by the salty wheeze of the accordion on the anthemic “Sun Song”, which escalates into a march while lead vocalist James Craft’s fragile tones climb higher, summitting on the glorious sentence every teenager in America longs to hear: “You’re 21!” This is where the real meat of the record lies: in La Strada’s talent for melody, their odd sense of humor, and their ability to surprise.

Ernest Jenning Record Co.

Full Disclaimer: Hospice is both a thorough and ambiguous narrative, written by The Antlers‘ frontman, Peter Silberman. A well-formed opinion of Hospice is predicated on a detailed understanding of this narrative, but due to the aforementioned ambiguity, understanding is predicated on personal interpretation. Thus, all impressions formed and presumptions taken are based on my reading (and probably my own experiences, which I subconsciously project). If your copy of Hospice is digital, I encourage you to print or read the liner notes to form your own impression.

Hospice refers to palliative care given to terminally ill patients. Essentially, it works to ready a patient for death. Hospice, the album, is a fictional narrative set in hospice care with two central characters: The Narrator (referred to as “I”) and The Patient (who seems to be his girlfriend). The story begins with the Narrator learning the Patient will die. The album’s time frame is a likely a few weeks or months until her inevitable death. The Narrator blames himself for her sickness, but most of all, for failing to comfort or alleviate her emotional pain. She is intensely resentful, yet he returns to her masochistically. “I wish that I had known in that first minute we met, the unpayable debt that I owed you,” Silberman sings on “Kettering”, a track whose intimacy is so vivid that we live vicariously through the pain. “I didn’t believe them when they told me there was no saving you.” Hospice is an album reminiscent of Spiritualized’s “Songs in A&E”, with the references to death and the terminally ill, while hinting at qualities of Antony’s melodrama. There are times when his voices remarks on Win Butler’s token urgent and often teary yelps. (Though these comparisons are merely points-of-reference.)

Hospice is not easy-listening but is incredibly rewarding — a “grower” in every sense. My first impressions were not necessarily positive; the intensity was too heavy-handed and music too maudlin. However, after granting the album some patience, listening to it entirely through, and following the storyline, the musical nuances and literary developments were startlingly compelling. The way Silberman articulates and establishes the main characters and their relationship shows his craftsmanship. The Narrator is constantly contrite, though never having done wrong, to the Patient who refuses his advances. “In your dreams, I’m a criminal, horrible, sleeping around. While you’re awake, I’m impossible, constantly letting you down,” he sings chillingly on “Atrophy”. The blog-hit “Bear” culminates the album’s first half with Silberman admitting, “you’ll keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re fucked, and not getting un-fucked soon.” There is a heart-wrenching futility in his voice. The story’s turning point comes during the lovely “Two, Or, I Would Have Saved Her If I Could” as he says, “[The Doctor] brought me out into the hall, and told me something that I didn’t know that I wanted to hear: That there was nothing I could do to save you, the choir’s gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you.” Admission is always the first step. From here, the album’s final songs soar. “Wake”, detailing the Patient’s funeral service, harbor’s the album’s most accomplished moment in the final stanza. Whether it’s the Narrator speaking, or being spoken to, the sentiment is The Narrator’s emotional liberation: “Don’t be scared to speak … don’t take that sharp abuse/ Some patients can’t be saved/ But that burden’s not on you.”

Hospice has been on repeat for me in the past week, and secured its place as one of the best albums of the year. It’s a romantic relationship gone wrong. It’s an implacable parent. It’s the sick patient who tears apart the family. Hospice is any or none of these things. Silberman is reticent to unveil the personal experience that inspired Hospice. However, he needs to add little context to the album because it is carried out with such literary proficiency. I truly hope listeners and critics don’t dismiss the album as merely an album about death; sure, its morose subject matter may be intense at times, but Silberman’s story is too intriguing for impatience. Besides, if you listen close enough, it’s as much about personal recovery and self-affirmation as it is dying.

Mouthbreather is yet another quintet representing for the ever-fertile Richmond, VA punk scene. For a fairly small river city, Richmond shows a diversity in their punk bands that rivals bigger scenes like the East Bay or Austin. Avail, Ann Beretta and Strike Anywhere come to mind, but they are but a few of the bigger names to come out of RVA in recent years. The average outsider would say the aforementioned bands all sound the same, but to split hairs, it’s more accurate that all of the bands sound like Richmond.

Like their neighbors in D.C., Richmond is a capital city with a crime rate as high as its median income is low. It’s a city just Southern enough to rankle politically correct Northerners, but such ‘old world’ sensibilities are juxtaposed against the fact that the fairer-complected old guard is very much a minority. Both groups have embraced the epochal “give me liberty or give me death” proclamation that rang through the city so many years previously, displaying an uneasy tendency towards the latter in recent years. While Richmond is hardly the Gaza Strip, it breeds a tension in the city that you can feel in bands like Mouthbreather.

Excoriating guitars and shouted vocals meet pounding drums and shattered cymbals here to make some pissed-off post-Flag aggro rock that will turn your head and then shred your eardrums. Born from the ashes of Wow! Owls and The SetUp, Mouthbreather released a demo a couple years ago that got a fair amount of attention. The five-piece promptly undertook a healthy touring regiment on the back of that buzz, eventually arranging for one of said tours to end in Louisville so that they could record their debut full-length with Lords drummer Chris Owens. They tracked a dozen songs in a week-long session at his HeadBangingKillYourMama Studios and claimed in Summer 2007 that they would be would be releasing the material imminently. Fast-forward to early 2009, and the Mouthbreather debut finally coming out courtesy of the good folk of Kiss Of Death. Coyly entitled Thank You For Your Patience, the debut Mouthbreather full-length pairs five songs from the demo with an equal number of new ragers, all ten of which peel paint at twenty paces.

“Dropping Cylinders” survives from the demo, appearing in a more polished form, but still taking little to no time to bore its spiky riff into your head and make you like it. Gamma-irradiated versions of other demo standouts like “Best Of Seven” and “The Nazarene” also reappear, but it’s little departures like the almost Menegaur-esque “When A Scientist Dies” and “Barium” that are the real eye-openers, showing glimmers of potential far beyond it’s horrible pun of a title. Thank You For Your Patience offers little relief for your poor beleaguered ears in the thirty-three minutes it takes to come to fruition, but its sonic headbutt is a sweet pain you’ll quickly grow addicted to. Don’t fight it; It’s really for the best. Mouthbreather take Richmond anger and pairs it with Louisville recording sensibilities to spawn a musical miscegenation that is a win-win for all parties.

Dent May and his Magnificent Ukulele is quite a delicious listen, he plays tuneful ukulele-drenched retro pop that will definitely be appealing to any fans of Jens Lekman, Beirut or Sufjan Stevens. His music is a melting pot of influences mainly from the 50s drawing from vintage doo-wop, Tropicália, and a classic American crooner sensibility that is reminiscent of Glenn Campbell.

The Feel Good Music of Dent May is a perfect name for the album. Every song has a sunny ukulele composition and simple yet endearing lyrics that, when augmented by a band, produces a wonderfully laid back vibe. What better way to kick off such an accessible album than a song called “Welcome”? An acapella number where Dent May introduces you to his album and it’s themes, it’s a warm welcome that flows perfectly in to “Meet Me At The Garden” — which is one of the strongest and most charming songs on the record with it’s maracas, ukulele and marimba vibe. “Oh Paris” has Dent adding some horns to the mix, creating a quirky marching band quality that when incorporated with the ukulele and background shooby doobies, generates an appealing backdrop for his thoughtful croon of “I finally know/ That I belong here in this world.” In the bluesy, doo-wop number “Girls On The Square”, dual electric guitars solo together in Queen-like fashion that oddly meshes quite well with the melodramatic vocals of the song. “God Loves You Michael Chang” and “I’m An Alcoholic” are humorous songs that shows Dent’s funny-side and his ability to weave them into his delivery in a thoughtful manner.

Admittedly, the use of the ukulele does get a little repetitive by the end of the album, but the charming quality of Dent May’s composition holds my interest through the full CD. He definitely has a unique style that is as quirky as a Wes Anderson film. For those of you looking for a little feel good music to cheer you up, Dent May has revitalized the classic American crooner for the 21st century and given it a geeky hipster edge that makes this an extremely delightful listen.

Paw Tracks

Cursive’s breakout album, Domestica, was one they never intended to make; as such, its heavy-hitting portrait of a marriage dissolved into divorce was something of a final fling in its own right. Since that point, Tim Kasher’s second-wind as a songwriter has found him crafting more melodic and well put-together works. The downside to this is that the albums that followed — The Ugly Organ, their biggest success to date, and its follow-up Happy Hollow — captured Kasher in a vicious cycle of trying to pin down scenes of middle-class life while backpedaling into writing songs about songwriting itself.

Whether the effort has been a conscious one or not, it often ends up that Kasher writes his best lines about his narrators’ own struggles. On Cursive’s latest, Mama, I’m Swollen, the band hits the on button from the get-go, marrying the angular guitars of its early years with the tighter structures of experience. The result is something that Kasher’s been working towards for years: a melding of Cursive with his second band, the lighter, more forelorn-sounding The Good Life.

Here, too, there’s an interesting lyrical twist. While the songs-about-songs element hasn’t entirely disappears, it has evolved into a broader discomfort with the eloquence of modernity itself. The sentiment is kicked off in blunt fashion on album opener “In The Now” with the admission: “Don’t wanna live in the now / don’t wanna know what I know.” Thus begins an album that fights not only problems with words, but with our shared history.

Mama’s first single, “From The Hips”, is a wonderful example of what happens when Cursive gets everything just right. “I don’t wanna know the goddamn words,” Kasher practically croons from the get-go, and what follows is an ode to the dangers of repetition and the problem of what exactly happens when a creative mind becomes too aware of itself. Elsewhere, “Caveman” not-so-subtly hints that evolution hasn’t always been kind. “Donkeys” paints a picture of seedy suburban life, and “We’re Going To Hell”, “Mama, I’m Satan,” and “Mama, I’m Swollen” are, as their titles suggest, battle against self and society.

Mama, I’m Swollen is an album full of sounds: organs and horns are not used shyly, and they provide an appealing backdrop to the disturbed themes that circle through its songs. More consistent than its predecessor but less immediate than The Ugly Organ, it covers not-unfamiliar terrain while managing to make progress on a larger scale. At its best (”From The Hips”), it’s remarkable; at its weakest (”Donkeys”), it’s unapologetic.

Nearly four years ago now, Edmonton quintet Faunts came out of nowhere with an album of blistering, mercurial post-rock/shoegaze that ranked right up with greats like Young Team and Nowhere, that left pink-pop/noise aficionados slack-jawed and awed in its wake. They’d taken the baton of The Lassie Foundation and sped off at light speed, carrying the same natural influences (MBV, Hum and Smashing Pumpkins) towards new sonic vistas that combined their raging-yet-angelic bombast with a soft pink underbelly of gooey pop thrills. But four years is eons in terms of a band, and echoing the changes of the world around them, Faunts’ second full-length record is, in terms of pure sound, a vast departure from their debut.

The sonic transformation that Feel.Love.Thinking.Of. documents will undoubtedly inspire mixed feelings, and, depending on your personal tastes, will either be viewed as a cause for celebration that finds them moving in a bold new direction, or a cause for alarm that they’ve ditched their slow-burning shoegaze persona (i.e. heavy phasing, feedback maelstroms and loping rhythms) for seemingly ineffectual electro-pop. To their credit, their reinvention never sounds forced or awkward, nor does it reek of bandwagoneering, rather, it seems a natural progression towards more pop-based songwriting and an insistence that no longer shall they hide their stellar melodies and worldly chops behind walls of static and noise. Still, one can’t help but wonder what the title-track or “I Think I’ll Start a Fire” would sound like given the full-blown-out treatment that the Faunts of old were so fond of.

As someone who greatly enjoyed the shimmering, pedal-damaged bombast of High Expectations/Low Results, this album feels a bit flat and lacking anything truly dynamic, but with full realization that puts me in the minority, it’s not out of line to say that Faunts’ brand of synth-bedecked electro-pop is head and shoulders above that of their peers. And in that regard, even if old guard fans aren’t happy with the results, Feel.Love.Thinking.Of. is a rousing success that should land them at the top of their newly chosen heap.

Friendly Fire Recordings

Telekinesis!’ Michael Benjamin Lerner is an extremely talented individual. Not only does he craft irresistibly catchy pop songs, but he also plays basically every instrument on his self-titled debut, (produced by Death Cabs For Cutie’s Chris Walla); an album filled with high energy, smartly written power-pop with an indie rock immediacy.

Telekenisis! is a great album for the spring, every song is filled with a breezy youthful exuberance that makes me want to blast this album as I cruise down the Pacific Coast highway with the windows rolled down basking in the heat of the sun. In others words, this is the perfect music for an OC spin-off that Alexandra Patsavas does music supervision for. What sets this album apart from most other power-pop outfits is the sheer craftsmanship of each song. They are all completely flawless pop gems that immediately get stuck in your head. After “Rust”, a slow number to kick off the album, “Coast of Carolina” sets the sun drenched energetic margin up a couple of notches with a guitar driven tune filled with “Na Na Nas” and a chorus of “ Turn it Up, Turn It up!” From then on the album is kicked into overdrive as Lerner plows through one catchy song after another. The major stand-outs are “Tokyo” — an irresistible song that you can’t stop but bob your head to while singing along with the full chorus at the end; “I, I, I went to Tokyo.” Immediately following “Tokyo” is “Look At The East” which is another high-energy song with a killer hook that brings to mind old school Fountains of Wayne. “Awkward Kisser” and “Imaginary Friends” are two cutesy numbers that embody the nostalgic summer love of the teenage years.

Basically every song on this album is appealing, they are short, sweet perfect little pop gems. So if you pick up this CD, be prepared for it to be the soundtrack of your summer.

The Shaking Hands hail from Gainesville, one of the few oases of bearable living in the deceptively idyllic state of Florida. Sharing half of their ranks with Young Livers, the feisty foursome play fist-pumping street punk well-informed of both the close-shorn and spiky ends of the spectrum. It’s a bit of a departure for a band from Gainesville, as Hot Water Music still wields a formidable influence over the jewel of Alachua County. Punk rock super-indie No Idea Records and its companion punk rock Fall Social The Fest continue to cast a long shadow in G-Ville, but The Shaking Hands are much more from the whoa-oh end of the spectrum, and not in a cheesy MxPx sort of a way.

Cut from the same working-class cloth as Rancid and The Clash, The Shaking Hands are pissed, and not (just) in the drunk way, either. Founded in the wake of the right-wing reactionary opinions that were no doubt endemic to in Florida post 9/11, The Shaking Hands the band and The Shaking Hands the record definitely represent for the common people. Populist science is dropped all over their eponymous debut. Check out “History Does What?” for a taste of where the kids are coming from. Drop the laser and you’ll find The Shaking Hands comes out the gate swinging. “Liars Are For Punching” sets the mood nicely, but the gents play it a little close to the vest for the first five or so songs. Then things really start catching fire. Even with the slow start, all of your favorite punk rock components are here: the band is tight, the hooks are big and virtually every chorus is a sing a long. “Battling Decay” has one of the best in the lot and the breakdowns in “Breathe” and “Jackson’s Hole” are not to be sold short either. Trust me, you’ll like this.

The eleven songs on The Shaking Hands pass in under a half hour, but you get a bumper crop of whoa-oh and gang vocal parts in that time. Breakdowns and syncopated vocal parts are in full effect, tailor-making most of the tunes for PBR-fueled beardo sing-a-longs from Gainesville to San Diego. Even seeming missteps like “You Should Really Get That Looked At” and its acoustic faux-Strummer intro are pretty much exonerated by its explosive electric coda. More importantly, they walk it like they talk it. A lot of faux-politico punk franchises spew a lot of dogma, but still make time to play tours sponsored by car and soft drink companies. The Shaking Hands are coming a little bit deeper than that, even going so far as to claim that they want to make ‘music of significance’ on “I Believe This Knife Is Yours”. The Shaking Hands seem to have accomplished their goal. With their self-titled debut, these sons of the Sunshine State come correct with the music and the message.

Appleseed Cast came on the scene for most people in 1998, when they signed to the then-mighty emo powerhouse Deep Elm Records. They were a textbook Deep Elm Band, appearing on the second (and arguably best) of the seminal Emo Diaries comps alongside early rare tracks from The Blacktop Cadence and Pop Unknown. As emo as Appleseed Cast is as a name, you may be surprised to find that the band initially took form under the even-more-emo moniker of December’s Tragic Drive, itself a lift from a Sunny Day Real Estate lyric. They played dynamic guitar-driven rock in the tradition of SDRE and Mineral and were much more interesting than the average Midwestern band. Appleseed got under way formally in Lawrence, KS, and sounded a lot like Midwestern bands from the era, but actually initially took form in late 90’s California around the core of guitarists Chris Crisci and Aaron Pillar. Their sound sounded much like mainstays like No Knife and Boilermaker, maybe too much for some people.

As the new millennium dawned and the sound they purveyed became less in fashion, Appleseed Cast pursued more of a post-rock direction. The band releasing a sprawling post-rock opus entitled Low Level Owl in two contract-fulfilling volumes six months apart. Keyboards figured more prominently and vocals faded into the background, obfuscated by long reverbs and thematically repetitive guitar lines. There is a fine line between ambitious and pretentious, but the band won a good deal of acclaim from long-time fans as well as outlets that had snubbed them previously, even garnering the oft-bandied “American Radiohead” title for a time.

The new Appleseed Cast release Sagarmatha comes on the heels of an ambivalently received follow-up to Low Level Owl entitled Two Conversations on the blink-and-they’re-gone faux-indie Tiger Style. The following record, Peregrine was their first for The Militia Group and seemed to coalesce the best parts of their early, more conventionally structured material with the epic post-rock leanings of Low Level Owl. While Peregrine was well-received by fans and critics and well-loved by Crisci and Pillar, Sagarmatha returns to more of an LLO sensibility, with only two of the songs featuring any sort of vocals.

In recent years, Appleseed Cast have been incorporating more electronic elements into their music, embracing a Minus The Bear sound replete with loops and sampling. A bit of a Death Cab fixation features prominently as well. Sagarmatha’s opening “As The Little Things Go” features a very DCFC intro and coda, stretching to a pleasant eight minutes plus of reverb and arpeggiated guitar that gets almost Pinback at times. Sagarmatha was mostly home recorded and self-produced, which may account for the epic length of some of the tracks.There are no vocals at all until three or four songs into the record, but you won’t miss them with the tasteful arrangements. A couple moments seem very familiar, like the opening of “Raise The Sails”. It’s one of the strongest tracks, but may be guilty of sounding a wee bit like Minus The Bear remixing Death Cab’s “The President Of What?” Now that Death Cab are a big deal, I can see someone from Atlantic having a quiet word with the Appleseed gents about just how far those apples fall from the tree. Similarities aside, from where I’m sitting Sagarmatha is the best Appleseed Cast release yet, rarely boring and splitting the difference nicely between the electronic and the organic.

Vagrant Records

There are few musicians who deserve the respect that Dan Deacon merits. Through all of the successes he has enjoyed recently, he has remained a man of the people — and of his people. Not only does he still play on the floor amongst the fans whenever possible, but he has tried with much effort to bring as many of his friends and fellow musicians to prominence with him. These are the reasons we like Dan Deacon. These are the reasons we respect Dan Deacon. But none of these — or the many other reasons I’m sure there are to be a fan of Dan — would mean a thing if he didn’t produce good music. So after a three-year recording hiatus and a full two-years after the release of Spiderman Of The Rings, many of us have been anticipating with wonderment what will become of Mr. Deacon’s trademark sound?

We read the quotes about Dan bringing a darker, more mature aspect to his sound. This might have scared a lot of people, but for a man who has spent much of the last two years on the road, there must have been considerable time to contemplate some pretty weighty subjects. And so we’re left with Bromst; a record that takes the spazz-out party and integrates enough maturity to allow those outside of the warehouses to appreciate what Deacon can produce. To put it quite simply, Bromst is — in this editor’s opinion — the best record of 2009 to date.

There’s still a lot of time left in ‘09 for sure, but in Bromst, we are reminded that Dan is a classically trained musician even if his spectacles are missing a few parts. There is more singing on his sophomore Car Park release (both by Dan and others), there is more instrumentation (as evidenced by his 14-person touring ensemble), and he has brought in guests to help (as evidenced by his Baltimore Round Robin tour last year), but the beauty of Bromst lies in it’s recognizability. For all of the movement forward, for all of the new sounds and lusher production, there is nothing available today — nothing — that you can compare to Dan Deacon’s sound, and his signature is all over Bromst. Whether it’s his shouts through a vocoder, the spazz-out moments or the ascending build-ups to the climax that will leave all the kids screaming, it’s still all there — it’s just crafted and produced better and with many more layers. When you hear the lead into the opening track, appropriately titled “Build Voice”, you can’t help but get excited. And it’s so representative of what we should expect. Dan’s real voice is used to sing a beautiful melody while the layers underneath seamlessly work together to build our anticipation of what he will break into next. You can almost picture the green skull and and floor boards bouncing.

Comparisons are hard to come by sonically, but references to Bromst’s importance can be drawn. Remember when DJ Shadow put out Endtroducing, and it combined the fun elements of hip-hop with a serious undertone that struck a nerve with more people than any DJ record prior had? Remember when Refused dropped The Shape Of Punk To Come and brought an intelligent theme to hardcore that will allow the record to live on in a timeless bubble? Remember when Neutral Milk Hotel put out In The Aeroplane Over The Sea — an indie rock record that made us forget the genre was nearly a decade old and we all felt better when listening to it? Of course Bromst sounds nothing like any of these, but it deserves to live next to them in it’s scope.

It’s extremely rare for me to commend an artist so gratuitously, so I feel like I should stop this blow job of a review, but whether or not you are a fan it must be noted that Bromst will live alone in 2009. It will forever stand as a testament to originality, community and that good feeling you get when you hear the perfect song at the perfect moment. Because when all is said and done, music that makes us feel good will always stand the test of time, and at it’s core, Bromst is a near-perfectly crafted pop record — made even more incredible by the fact that all but two-tracks time in at over 4-minutes in length.

Dan Deacon is already one of the most innovative musicians of this generation, and now Bromst can live harmoniously next to the definitive albums of any generation.