Dreamend – Split EP

Monster Movie formed originally in 1989 and then, without any of the original members, re-formed in 2000. Today, Monster Movie is Sean Hewson and former Slowdive guitarist Christian Savill. Dreamend fills out the second half of this split EP. Dreamend works nicely coupled with Monster Movie, possessing a similarly layered, soft, rounded sound that shoegazers have grown to love.
“Beautiful Artic Star” opens up the CD with an 80′s style drumbeat on one layer, an encompassing lethargic keyboard imitating the low-end of an organ on another, and a brighter keyboard imitating bells as the last layer. When it’s all placed together, you can slip right into the dreamlike state that this CD sustains throughout. The vocals are repetitive and reverberate in your ear, allowing them to slip undetected into the other sounds. “Nobody Sees” greets us with a nice piano moving steadily, lowering the curtain to the distorted vocals. Midway into the verse, the harmonica – which is actually a keyboard – appears on the scene. Slowly it moves from note to note, keeping in line with the dreamlike tempo as it plays alongside the vocals. Then after just two tracks, Monster Movie leaves us.
But have no fear, Dreamend is ready to keep you rolling. To be polite, Dreamend starts off slowly as a transition to their slightly more up-tempo shoegazing. Wavering keyboards set the background, and a leisurely played electric guitar the foreground in the band’s first untitled track. The speed of the song quickens as the drums pop in, instantly but unnoticeably livening things up. Gradually the instruments work towards a tempo that adequately suits the next – and best – track, “…Ellipsis…” This track opens with a very cool keyboard taking the stage as the chorus for the song. As the verse comes, the drums pound away, keeping the cymbals moving as the guitar and bass make sure no pinholes of silence appear. Dreamend chooses not to include vocals, and I think it works very well for them, as this track evidences. The last – and also untitled – track slows things back down once again. A bass guitar plays alongside the chime-like keyboards for a few minutes, with odd sounds and dashes of drums tossed in intermittently. The guitars come swirling in about three minutes into the song, and then we are strung-out back into the dream when they cut out, and finally back into reality when the CD fades out on the low end of the keyboards. By this time, you might already be in a real dream.
All in all, these are two wonderful shoegazing bands. Monster Movie creates a lighter dream-like state, while Dreamend integrates the traditional rock instruments to assist their creation of a slightly darker, less melancholy atmosphere. While Monster Movie incorporates vocals nicely into their sound, Dreamend functions wonderfully without them. So who wins the split? (What do you mean it’s not a competition?) Well I really liked the track “…Ellipsis…” from Dreamend, so that’s my winner. But both bands are very solid, and if you have enjoyed staring at your Nike’s in the past, you should check them out yourself.

The Meligrove Band – Let it Grow

Toronto’s power-pop trio the Meligrove Band collectively have only 69 years of experience on the planet. When listening to Let it Grow, the group’s second long-player after 2000′s Stars & Guitars, it’s somewhat hard to believe that, due in equal parts to their sophisticated grasp of pop songwriting and their decidedly backwards-looking influences. Barring some mathematical anomaly, the members of the Meligrove Band – Jason Nunes on guitar, keys, and vocals, Darcy Rego on drums and vocals, and Michael Small on bass – were born in 1979, just over a decade past the era of their prime inspiration. While recording technology has long since allowed musicians to absorb material created before their time, these fresh-faced Canucks seemed to have soaked up much more vintage pop than people who double their tender ages. Were it not for Let it Grow‘s sterling production, it might sound as if it were made as a contemporary response to Pet Sounds. This would be a considerable accomplishment for anyone, but coming from 23-year-olds, its impressiveness swells still more.
Yet for all the flash and fun of Let it Grow, it struggles throughout its duration with the problem of originality. In terms of songwriting, the Meligrove Band avoids sounding formulaic or trite by a wide margin, twisting and turning their tunes many times before they’re done with them. Their performances leave little to be desired, either, with terrific harmonies and melodies as far as the ear can hear. The sound of the record, though, suffers mightily from the obviousness of its point of reference, namely, the Beach Boys. One is tempted to forgive this in an era in which even Fred Durst is inspiring bands to form, but if there’s a way to stand so close to the Beach Boys without being in their shadow, the Meligrove Band hasn’t discovered it. Every time they pull off an overly familiar swoop into falsetto, they invite the question of why someone should be listening to this when they could be hearing Brian Wilson do the same. Quite simply, Nunes, Rego, and Small would have been well-served to have devoted a larger portion of the presumably massive chunk of time they spent listening to music with artists further removed from their obvious center.
Though Let it Grow may be a bit light in the innovation department, it should be noted that innovation has led to some terribly annoying places. There are plenty of good reasons why the vast majority of the population would likely prefer the Meligrove Band to John Cage, the most important of which is the fact that the former knows full well how to write fine sunshine pop that anyone with ears can enjoy. Besides, originality is an objection that springs up much more frequently in retrospect than when a record is actually playing. If that’s damning with faint praise, then the Meligroves may have to settle for that, at least temporarily. It looks probable, however, that they won’t have to settle for too long. On the best tracks here, such as “Check Your Messages” and “A Different Ship,” they show that they may be on the verge of forging a magnetic sound of their own. If that piece falls into place, it would be the last one they’d need to start making music on a less impeachable plane.

Neuro-Typical – The Long Walk EP

Let me just say that I have no problems at all with experimental or home recordings. Low budget, lo-fi, d.i.y. affairs can be intimate experiences and often reveal greater depth and substance than over-polished, overwrought major studio fare. But there has to be some sort of discretion between what is used for private listening and what is distributed to the public for consumption. Case in point is Neuro-Typical’s six-song EP The Long Walk. This poor recording sounds like the band decided to string up a couple of mikes in the ol’ rehearsal space and run them through a Fisher Price ‘My First Boom Box’. I have recorded this way myself, and it always turn out exactly the same. The method is a formula for annihilating audio quality, and inevitably it is the rhythm section that suffers the most: the snare and toms sound like paper plates being pounded with chopsticks, the cymbals are awkwardly loud, and the bass tone is muddy, when it can be heard at all. It probably wouldn’t sound so bad if the band didn’t insist on being so dynamic.
Normally I would have nothing but praise for this all-important, often overlooked songwriting element, but every time Neuro-Typical kicks on the distortion, the recording level mysteriously drops and suddenly everything sounds as if it’s coming from some other room down the hall. A word of advice, fellas: just because you can hear every nuance and chord progression buried in your no doubt painstakingly constructed songs, doesn’t mean that we can, too. Some parts here are simply inaudible. This is a murky, muddled, unbalanced mess of a recording.
It’s a damn shame, too. I had to don my headphones to clarify the music, but when I did I was pleasantly surprised. Neuro-Typical write clever and crafty indie-rock/emo songs with simple but effective arrangements. The twin guitar assault they employ is particularly impressive, elegantly juxtaposed to build tension and heighten the sense of drama. At times they are soft and bittersweet, quiet and reflective like sparkling moonlit pools, and at others they are thick and aggressive like twin jackhammers, providing a good backdrop for the soaring and spacious vocals, which move from a fragile wisp to a soul-shaking roar. “Could You/Would You” features some gorgeous acoustic strumming and tender vocals providing a nice melodic center for this EP to revolve around. It’s a nice respite from the swirling storm of soft-to-loud guitars that surround it.
More than anything I’m impressed with the pacing of thier music. Neuro-Typical never rushes into anything and nothing here sounds forced. Wisely, the group allows the music to come to them and lets the songs occur naturally without constricting their flow or dictating their direction. It’s a neat trick that even more mature and established bands have difficulty pulling off. Now if they could just get themselves a decent recording they would be doing us all a service.

Ether – Great Ocean Road

The only thing I can think of when I start listening to this album is exactly how much it sounds ready-made to be in a car commercial. I don’t mean those hip, neo-bohemian “karmic unity through bank loans” commericals where they license Aisler Set songs that end up on Kazaa labeled “VW CAR TEHCNO AD SONG.mp3″ – I mean those Mazda commercials where the car is driving in slow-motion around a mountainside overlooking the ocean and the announcer is going on about all-wheel handling and 240 horsepower. And when that song’s done, you get eight more tracks of milquetoast radio Velveeta. Whoopee.
It’s obvious that this is a band full of capital-M-musicians (one of whom is also in Thirty-Odd Foot of Grunts); they use about a thousand different types of guitar on the album, and the whole thing is performed and produced flawlessly. Of course, if absence of flaw was an earmark of a talented band, Kenny G would be selling out coluseums and Bob Pollard would be teaching full-time. None of this album’s components add up to an engaging sum. Not that they don’t have a solid bag of tricks: the shuddery “How Soon Is Now” guitar and vocoded vocals on “The Link;” the REM-esque combo of faint distorted guitar backed up by mandolin on “Long Way Home;” the two-step harmonica and barroom harmonies on “Questions” – in better songs, with better bands, these would make for excellent decoration on presumably-solid material. But Ether’s songs are all frosting and no substance. This is the sort of music you put on to ignore – certainly not a goal any band should aspire to. Furthermore, the lyrics are, without exception, completely comprised of filler and without merit. (Samples from three consecutive songs: “”Where is there road that all sorrows end?” “Maybe this is the end of the road?” “Why did I take the long road home when you were so close?” Ugh.)
Considering that Great Ocean Road is self-released, and considering how professional it sounds, one has to assume that a lot of time, money, and energy went into this project. It’s disconcerting to think that throughout this process, nobody stopped to remind them that their songs were boring. I’m guessing they’re aiming to be picked up by a major label and cross-marketed, which is dissapointing, especially with musicians who obviously have talent. Until they wise up, if they ever do, file Ether under “boring, regrettable side-projects by people in Russell Crowe’s band.”

Radiogram – All the Way Home

It’s very late right now, and I’m awfully tired, so perhaps the horns that are sliding through the mix of “Gone to Stay” don’t have quite the uplifting effect that they should, but I can tell that Radiogram is on to something. All the Way Home is the sophomore album for Radiogram, a Canadian collective playing for the fine Canadian label Endearing, and they play the sort of lovelorn, wistful, alt-country (and why not label things?) that’s made itself quite a name lately, what with Ryan Adams and Wilco stomping all over dorm rooms everywhere. They refer to the music as “canamericana,” which is kind of ridiculous, but I’ll let it slide if you will.
The songs are pretty enough, if not a bit hit or miss. As mentioned above, the horns and melody of “Gone to Stay” are pretty much what anyone could ask for from this genre. In fact, at their best, Radiogram conjures images of Uncle Tupelo and all the other obvious comparisons, as well as theatric folk-pop of Neutral Milk Hotel. When the formula doesn’t work, it’s not a total disaster, but it’s often just enough to reach for the fast-forward button. For instance, the opening few bars of “Self Helpless” had me thinking “generic indie-band” faster than you can say “Bright Eyes,” but things smoothed out with the arrival of a warm organ halfway through the song. I’m never totally convinced by the drinkin’ sadness of “Whiskey in My Bed,” and the six and a half minute-plus length doesn’t help it’s cause.
As sick as I am of the “radio-saved-my-life” theme, “Summer Song Summer” recalls Being There with remarkable clarity, as does “Love Vigilantes.” “Buy the Farm” screams Spiritualized, but the melody is good enough to survive some cringe-inducing lyrics. “(Waiting For) The Merry Go Round” brings those lovely horns back, and the female harmony vocals could perhaps have been mixed better, but they still add quite a bit to the song. The dirge-like mood of the song contrasts well with the lyrics, and it ends up being one of the better songs. The final track, “Not Here,” is a Neil Young homage that mixes a plinking piano with a shimmering guitar, and manages to come up with a great melody for the chorus. The discordant fiddling is excellent. A great song, and although I’m very aware of the importance of a strong closing track, they shouldn’t have buried this one.
Radiogram aren’t going to incite Wilco-ish hysteria, nor are they going to be joining Mr. Adams in a Gap ad, but they do play their music pretty convincingly. The lyrics are a weak link, but when the songs are good enough – and they are at least half the time – you won’t notice. Another strong release for Endearing Records. A little better editing perhaps could work wonders for this band, but I have very little to complain about here. Canamericana it is.

Golem – Libeshmertzn…(Love Hurts)

Klezmer music is traditionally played at Jewish weddings and holiday celebrations in Eastern Europe. New York-based klezmer band Golem (named after the legendary Jewish Frankenstein of Prague) has infused the World Music scene with a breath of fresh air by injecting Eastern European melodies and Old World songs with ferocious energy, sex, and humor.The album includes tracks in Yiddish, Russian, French, Serbian, and Ladino, each a different story of love and pain set to its own driving beat.
Gathered from source material from all over Eastern Europe, and from other locations as diverse as Jewish nursing homes in the Bronx to gypsy taverns in Belgrade, Serbia. The six member group then transforms the material and creates something new and all its own.
The music gets increasingly interesting when you follow along with the lyric sheet, in which the lyrics have been translated. The topics of the songs are sometimes strange; for example, the lyrics from a Russian traditional called “Spitting Song”: “An old man sits down to think about getting married again. He thinks and thinks and thinks… If I take an old wife, my equipment might not stand up to the job… But if I take a young wife, she might not love me… And even if she loved me, she might not kiss me… And if she kissed me, she’d turn and spit on the floor… He sits and thinks and thinks… and thinks… Maybe getting married again isn’t such a good idea.”
All in all, I think this CD serves as a good palette cleanser because personally, I don’t own any other klezmer albums, so putting this on in between hardcore and punk CDs works very nicely – a danceable beat, melody, and topnotch musicality which everyone can appreciate. Its different enough that it transitions well to pretty much anything. Also, Golem is probably is available to play for your next wedding or bar mitzvah.

Various Artists – Quincy Shanks Sampler #4

Punk samplers are a dime-for-two-dozen. Go to your local record store or read a punk zine, various artist samplers come in all shapes and sizes. From benefit compilations to unadulterated “quote this is what we’ve been up to lately” smorgasbords, labels like putting out comp CDs and we all like buying them. Get the most bang for your buck, that’s the American way. But I’m not complaining, I do a radio show so compilations do my show a great service in providing a wide array of artists for less money; on my budget, good comps are about as welcomed as the latest issue of Alias sitting in my folder at Heroes & Dragons.
This particular offering to my sacrificial altar of album reviews is from the Chicago-area punk label, Quincy Shanks. On first look, I only recognized two bands; 4-Squares got a review in a recent issue of Heartattack, and Biscayne jogs a bit of memory from somewhere that I can’t recall. Judging by the cover art, I attempted to use those ever-so-useful context clues to determine what was in store for me. The cover of the promotional copy I received features a kid puking nasty green sludge into a brown paper bag bringing to mind those lovably messed-up Garbage Pail Kids. So I’d done enough guesswork, and finally decided to put the actual album on.
Biscayne kicks things off with a bouncy but not particularly memorable emo/pop punk number that reminded me of a cross between Lifetime and the Ataris; two horribly underrated bands. I don’t mind this band on a compilation, but I couldn’t see myself listening to much of their album. The 4-Squares step up to the plate next and miss badly with some tough guy-postured hardcore with gruff vocals and lots of attitude that sounds like Sick of it All with lots of underlying insecurities about their manhood. As harsh as that may sound, this band redeems themselves with a poppier, more melody-laden track near the tale-end of the comp.
Tricky Dick and The Brockmeyers both check in with sloppy pop-punk numbers that just don’t do it for me. But don’t say I am knocking them for being soft, Little Man Complex offers up some crappy hardcore with raspy, screeched vocals; again here we see a band with little insecurities, this time ever more ironic because of the band’s name and the inherent connotations there within.
Tracks #6-8 lend some definite quality to this sampler and more overall power to the proceedings. The Undesirables stay true to the sound of their name, playing pissed-off political punk with some vocal tones that bring to mind Davie Havok of AFI. Munition features a melodic hardcore sound with a rather unique half-sung vocal delivery and some subtle hooks. Also doing the hardcore here are The Hitmen whose music is quick-paced and to the point.
The home stretch of this compilation features a second Biscayne song that is once again pretty decent, a Tricky Dick track that sounds like a really drunk version of Less Than Jake minus the horns, and also the aforementioned redeeming number from the 4-Squares. The last song here is a really bizarre hip-hop song done with gruff hardcore vocals. Not normal and definitely not any good, sort of something that was just thrown on for kicks.
With a running time of just 22 minutes, this sampler from Quincy Shanks is definitely on the low-end as far as volume of content goes. This makes for a short, easy listen, this is something that can’t be said for most similar samplers. But while the compilation is short and only features 12 tracks, I wouldn’t want to hear much more from these bands except from potentially the Undesirables. This is definitely a one-listen record.

Sweatmaster – Sharp Cut

Sweatmaster is yet another Scandinavian band out to teach Americans about their rock ‘n roll roots. On Sharp Cut, the band’s debut album, they offer up 12 songs in just under 30 minutes, taking punk rock succinctness and sentiment, adding a bit of Grand Funk and the Sonics mixed with Sly and the Family Stone, and creating one loud, catchy album.
This Finnish trio makes garage power rock, infused with soulful, catchy chops that you can shake your ass to. The upbeat, party music belies the fact that Finland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. It’s doubtful that these boys wiled away their youth dancing the tango, even though it’s Finland’s national obsession. They likely spent those 70 days of sunlight and 50 nights of darkness listening to and playing very up-tempo rock ‘n roll.
They may not have the suits the Hives sport or the sophisticated sound of The Soundtrack of our Lives, but Sweatmaster does have an honest sound, and surprisingly for a Scandinavian import, seemingly no image to present. They’re just three kids banging out short, driving, fun-time rock, creating tracks that ooze passion and lust. So even though they may not be the most accomplished musicians ever to record an album, they do know that less can sometimes be more – and they prove it on every song. Lots of drop-outs and plenty of fill-ins, riding the vocals of Sasu Mykkänen, who also doubles on bass. He is backed by Mikko Luukko’s fine, riffing guitar and Matti Kallio’s driving drums.
Sweatmaster may well have a hit on their hands with “Hold On,” a fast, catchy song with soul-infused vocals that add up to one hip-shaking, head-bobbing, hand-clapping, good time rock ‘n roll song. Other standouts include, “I Am a Demon and I Love Rock n’ Roll,” “Well Connected,” “Get It, Get It,” and “Too Much Love.”
While these songs may sound similar, they do accomplish what you want a good rock song to do: they get you moving and smiling. Besides, the album’s brief length guarantees that the repetition isn’t a problem – it’s all over very quickly.

Eyes of Autumn – Hello

The most creativity seems to come from the apathy and naïve brilliance of youth. When you are young, you have a right to feel any emotion, things never go your way, and that need for some sort of vent is the deepest. Eyes of Autumn purify the thoughts that still arise from those days. They are three guys from the Seattle area, and they are about as close as you can get to going back to those days, all being between 17 and 20, making music that’s easy to listen to and easy to relate to.

“As a child I played ‘guns’ with guns.”

The outward aspect of Eyes of Autumn seems to be that very youthful outlook on things. The album title Hello and band name is hand-written on the cover, but it doesn’t really reflect what is really behind the band’s music. The confidence and tightness of the tempo changes and strong rhythm’s convey a mature talent few bands seem to have today. Even when the band seems to fall apart near the end of certain songs like “(Distance + Time),” they seem to fall apart together. The guitarist plays random strings to random drums, but it honestly works. If you listen to it expecting some cool indie rock, you’ll be happy. If you listen to it expecting some cliché indie rock you’ll be amazed. There’s a lot of detail you could easily overlook on this album.

At times throughout the many times I listened to this CD, I thought of the chaotic feeling of Peralta (but not as dark) and Braid (but not as vocally). There are parts of the album that remind me of old Little House on the Prairie, like the fifth song “If I Could See Myself Now.” It’s 1 minute and 49 seconds of lo-fi guitar, strings, and a nice southern sound in the singing. The more I listen to the song, the more I find a band discovering their own sound and blossoming out of immaturity.

Eyes of Autumn have the amazing talent that bands need to get recognized. If only the indie scene was popular, these guys would be right up there. There’s a great amount of emotion and depth to the album, and it’s not hard to see. They don’t hide what they are trying to say behind random screaming and crunching guitars that get hard to listen to after three listens. Some people call this sleeping music, but the band is not at all dull. The music is very interesting, and I call it the new-age way to get acquainted with the way you felt when you didn’t care about politics and money.

Putrescine – S/T

Shouted vocals, insane rhythm, shrieking guitar lines, this is the formula for Putrescine’s musical machine. The band’s real name is H2NCH2CH2CH2CH2NCH2, but Putrescine is somewhat easier to type.
The disc starts out with “Maginot Line,” and it draws you in so quickly with the angry hooks and rhythms that by the time “Museum of Abrasives” arrives and the CD is over, you think you’ve just listened to an hour’s worth of music packed into six songs.
The lyrics may illustrate the power of this band a little better. From the second track “Critical Mass Revisited”: “This potential has run dry with recurrent thoughts of disgust you have achieved perpetual motion you are the altar you are the sacrifice for this morbis lack of vision.” And the CD is chock full of cryptic lyrics to go along with the brutal musical force behind them.
Putrescine is a nice reminder of what hardcore is to me, and though they may not be the best band ever, they’re certainly not the worst band to walk the earth. Give them a try, and maybe they’ll remind you of what hardcore means to you too.

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