TV on the Radio – Young Liars EP

You know, it’s the strangest thing. That could be the introduction to some sort of surprising concept to come in this review, but really, it’s best left to describe this music, as any of my petty ideas pale in comparison. How can someone amalgamate every good idea to have come out of punk, indie, and other such genres dependent at least ostensibly on organic instrumentation throughout most of its duration in a compendium of “electronified” instruments? I don’t have any idea, but I think TV on the Radio is on to something.
The drums are tinny, cheap-sounding clicks and booms – only infrequently do the regular skins make subterranean appearances. The bass is low, droning, and buzzing; it sounds like something that just came out of some cheap-ass mix program like Hip-Hop eJay. The guitars are heavily distorted and wash down in sheets of electronic noise, hardly distinguishable from the mobile block of gelatin that is TV on the Radio’s music. It makes for a shifting, fraternal sound, inviting yet alternately cold and mechanical.
But there’s something conspicuously missing from that description, and conspicuously occupying center-stage on Young Liars, and that is Tunde Adebimpe’s vocals. His voice box’s vibrations sound stranger than his name, yet more familiar than John Smith. He harmonizes with himself, simultaneously propping up ideas, slashing down melodies, and cutting a lasting memory into the listener. His range is noteworthy, alternating between a low bellow and a high whine. But what’s truly remarkable is the calculation with which Adebimpe switches tones; everything is set to elicit a strong emotional response from the listener.
“Satellite” is a bumbling mess of skipping percussion, insistent bass, and galloping vocals. Adebimpe proclaims that he’s “waiting for a signal or a sound,” presumably a signal to detonate this band’s explosion into the world of indie progression and influence. “Staring at the Sun” opens with gentle “oo’s” and a Spanish news announcer. The song cascades into a tension-soaked landscape of contrasting pessimism and optimism: “I am the conscience clear in pain or ecstacy.” “Blind” is slow as molasses, oozing its way through seven minutes of hazy reminiscence. But the real surprise is saved for last: the hidden track is an a cappella remix of the Pixies’ “Mister Grieves,” replete with saccharine barbershop “oo’s,” “ah’s,” “doo’s,” and snaps. The result: a haunting, totally left-field success. Adebimpe’s voice is poignant and desperate, layered miles thick with syrupy harmonizing. Incredibly, TV on the Radio took a formula destined for failure (a cappella cover of the Pixies?) and turned it into an irresistible success.
But TV on the Radio isn’t doing it alone; the band does have the support of some of the New York indie all-stars. Aaron Hemphill of Liars guests, as do Brian Chase and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. This artistic support combined with the absolutely transcendent 25 minutes that TV on the Radio has been able to press to disc nearly ensure an explosion onto the indie scene, provided the band can continue riding this wave of creativity onto a well-executed full-length. Until then, I can only wait and listen to the remarkable achievement that Young Liars already is.

El-P – Fantastic Damage

Profundity in mainstream hip-hop is as rare a commodity as water in the Sahara; it just doesn’t exist save for a few sparse and surprising oases. Sure, there is an ever-improving level of production spurred by producers such as Timbaland, but in a genre so reliant on lyrical content, no one seems to have anything to say. When lyricists such Nas (at his best) lay pen to paper, however, their urban eloquence is a relief from the dry, played-out content saturating the mainstream. But to hear such nuggets of lyrical ability, one must sift through countless lazily stupid rhymes. It’s because of this lack of verbal integrity that I was so jubilant to have stumbled upon a record with such eloquence and awareness that I actually want a lyric booklet: El-P’s Fantastic Damage.
El-P was one-third of the now ubiquitous Company Flow, possibly the seminal underground hip-hop group. After Company Flow, El-P (short for El-Producto) founded what is probably the, uh, definitive underground hip-hop label, Definitive Jux. Since then he has produced label-mates Cannibal Ox’s record The Cold Vein and has released a full-length of his own.
From the first resonating buzz, the most immediate standout quality of Fantastic Damage is its production. El-P demonstrates an incredible skill for piecing sounds together; he meshes sonic fragments to form a jumbling, shifting web of melody upon which he slides his smooth vocal delivery. “Deep Space 9mm” features one of the most atmospheric and original beats I’ve heard all year. A dozen sounds occupy individual loci over and in between the driving percussion and fall in line perfectly to create a shuffling, spacey groove. El-P uses deep, heavy buzzes and large, driving percussion throughout the album to create a decidedly modern and overwhelming effect. “Stepfather Factory” actually sounds like an assembly line; whistles blow, buzzers buzz, workers drone, and the percussion stamps and welds on conveyer belts. The beats are coherent throughout the album but never fall into the monotony of the sameness that many other bold production attempts have fallen into
El-P shows the first signs of his unique brand of paranoid social commentary on “Deep Space 9mm”: “This is for the fringes and such / my generation just sit like dust / feed ‘em off of us and ask what I trust” and “My generation ain’t friends with slugs / thank God for the drugs and drums / tell these to read it, I’ll be right here hidin’ from guns” are easily recognizable signs of a social awareness not found often in mainstream hip-hop. While most rappers attempt to glorify the “ghetto” lifestyle, P is well aware of the uselessness and tragedy involved with it.
El-P takes on the role of a CEO of a robot manufacturer in “Stepfather Factory.” His company creates robotic stepfathers to fill in the masculine void present in many less fortunate families (P’s included). At the end of the song he reveals that in “a few unsubstantiated clinical trials” alcohol caused the machine to abuse its family. After the beat is silenced, he whispers “Remember, no cash returns / only credit towards future purchases” and the robot chimes “Why are you making me hurt you? / I love you.” It’s a draining emotional experience, and the track that follows only sucks more out of the listener. “T.O.J.” is an extremely personal confession of a relationship that didn’t work out (“I haven’t loved many people / I grew up afraid that I was crazy… / I used to be in love”). This particular track comes as a refreshing breath of modesty and contrasts sharply with the lyrical content of most mainstream hip-hop; while rappers like 50 Cent are content with flashing the cool player front with false icons like “da magic stick,” El-P tells the story of a failed relationship climaxing in a frenzied verse accepting blame and defeat while wishing his ex well. The one-two punch of “Stepfather Factory” and “T.O.J.” is the emotional high point of the album; it’s the spear-tip of P’s assault on the bland, trite lyrics of many of his colleagues.
El-P injects modesty, integrity, and graciousness in a genre generally accepted by the masses as callous and pompous. El-P’s magnum opus is innovative in both production and lyrical content; songs like “Deep Space 9mm” and “T.O.J.” cover lyrical ground rarely treaded in the mainstream. First with Company Flow and now solo, the man behind Def Jux has helped usher in two new ages of music. In a genre tired by stereotypes and those willing to fill them, El-P is breathing new life into hip-hop.

The Constantines – Shine a Light

A spacey beep opens and betrays Shine a Light; this album is neither lavish production nor modern space-rock. No, it’s something entirely different indeed. One could argue that rock music has been the most influential single genre on the mainstream in the last 30 years, and one probably wouldn’t be contested. But something has gone horribly awry since the advent of MTV (I know, I’m so predictable); rock has become more image than substance, more posturing than punishing, more Good Charlotte than Led Zeppelin. But image-rock is on its way out, and major record labels have been searching tirelessly for the remedy to the “last big thing,” and they have certainly overlooked one possibility: saviors of rock as we know it, the Constantines.
But perhaps this pill is just a little too jagged for the everyman’s ears. Dry, angular guitars twist and mesh; massive, bare drums pummel; but most of all, Bry Webb’s rough, too-many-Marlboros voice crowns this Caesar with a threateningly thorny (and shamelessly unmarketable) wreath. But no one said great music was easy, and the Cons take the road more traveled and rough it up to restore the appeal it once had.
The Constantines absolutely peal through “National Hum” and immediately apparent are the edges left unsmoothed. The Cons obviously aren’t messing around; they’re on a mission to resurrect rock. “Nighttime/Anytime (It’s Alright)” slithers its way into a pounding showcase of fantastic urban poetry: “It’s hard not to surrender / but I will dance down through the alleyways / with one foot in the gutter / the city is my sister / and the nighttime is my lover.” Here, the ubiquitous-but-effective description of their sound as Bruce Springsteen meets Fugazi is fully realized. The Cons hybridize Springsteen’s urban poetry with Fugazi’s angular post-punk to create something not unheard of but completely unparalleled.
The most notable change from their self-titled (and excellent) debut album is the addition of Will Kidman on keyboards. While the keys definitely serve to flesh out their sound on songs such as “Insectivora,” they also sometimes smooth the corners a bit too much and detract from the edge so vital to the Cons’ sound.
This becomes a minor complaint, however, as the rest of the album unfolds. “Young Lions” is classic rock infused with modern post-punk, and the Cons handle the stylistic collision with great agility. “Tiger & Crane” is a perfect concoction of Apes and Spoon without sounding anything like either. But it’s the somewhat more suppressed moments in “Goodbye Baby and Amen” and “On to You” that really ground the album. The former features Webb feebly crooning over sparse, plucked chords. The drums struggle not to overpower the delicate keyboards and brittle horns. It’s a moment of absolute balance and epiphany: you don’t necessarily have to be hard to rock. “On to You” immediately follows, showcasing the Constantine’s most balladic work yet; Webb mixes equal parts rasp and croon, and instead of simply fleshing out their sound, Kidman’s keyboards add just a little bit of sugary pop to the melody. It’s a natural progression from their debut, to be sure, but it also manages to pleasantly surprise.
Shine a Light doesn’t defy genres; it defies poseurs. It isn’t fashionable; it’s a staple. Only what the Constantines accomplished with their debut could culminate in such revelations as “Nighttime/Anytime (It’s Alright),” “On to You,” and “Sub-Domestic.” Instead of abandoning musical conventions, the Cons embrace the best of rock’s Valhalla and stitch a patchwork of influences into something worth more than a sum of its parts. What better tribute to a genre than a perfect summary of itself?

Atmosphere – Seven’s Travels

In the world of modern hip-hop, there exist two main camps: the mainstream and the underground. While it is possible to subscribe to both simultaneously, the caustic discourse between the zealots of the two communities has become tiring. It’s discouraging to listen to the simplistic barbarism of most mainstream rappers, yet the sometimes over-complicated underground response can also be a bit too daunting. Thankfully, I’ve discovered an hour-and-a-half block devoid of any such worrying one-sidedness: Atmosphere’s Seven’s Travels.

Much like the last 500 Def Jux album-openers I’ve heard, a mostly instrumental, abridged opening track warrants an immediate depression of the “seek” button. “Trying to Find a Balance” also begins much as any number of Def Jux hits; the rapper must establish credibility and refute any critics of their “unique sound”; “Atmosphere finally made a good record / yeah, that shit almost sounds convincing.” Immediately different from both the mainstream and Jux-dominated underground, however, is the organic guitar track and crystal-clear vocal delivery sans Ebonics colorings. Rapper Slug and producer Ant utilize this cooperative clarity to their advantage; set apart from most indie rappers’ clouded beats and convoluted delivery, Atmosphere comes across as a dose of common sense.

The first startlingly different track is “Cats Van Bags.” A massive fuzzed-out bass slides malevolently over lethargic percussion while Slug blasts out a desperately frenetic cadence of shocking lyrics: “Navigatin’ through this basement that masquerades as a nation / practicin’ my acetate masturbation.” Guest Brother Ali contributes an equally frantic delivery, culminating in an abrasive shout-along chorus. After a few accustoming listens, “Cats Van Bags” stands out as one of the most original and successful songs on Seven’s Travels.

Lyrical gems include “Apple,” “Lift Her Pull Her,” “Shoes,” and “National Disgrace.” “Apple” is a manifesto of MC conduct: “Just cuz you’re an MC doesn’t mean that you get to be an asshole / Just cuz you’re a man doesn’t mean you get to act like a bitch / Stand over here / do a favor, use your head to hold this apple / And I’ll go twenty pace, take a shot, swear to God I won’t miss.” “Lift Her Pull Her” is the token eloquent relationship story, but Ant’s production lends this track an urgency that rarely comes across effectively in such an archetypal song. “National Disgrace” sarcastically pledges allegiance to Bill Clinton, Anna Nicole Smith, and anyone else who has “utilized their fifteen minutes of fame to realize their true dreams of being an absolute jerkoff.”

The highlight of the album is “Shoes,” a drum-n-bass classic that Slug propels to greatness with a highly tuneful, bored cadence. The song comes off as an extremely skillful freestyle, utilizing the perfect hip-hop metaphor. Shoes are universal: everyone has “em, people use “em to represent their individuality, etc. It’s not too complicated, and it rhymes with a lot of stuff. The song’s delivery is as notable as its brevity; at one second over three minutes, it exists just long enough to absolutely burn itself into your melody-memory and not a second longer.

But the same cannot be said about the album as a whole; at an hour and 30 minutes long, it is far too lengthy to function as a coherent hip-hop record. This has long been a problem with indie hip-hop and rarely a problem with the mainstream flavor. The album is even split into three mini-sections: there’s the guitar-driven first third, the inventive-production second third, and the percussion-heavy closing third. The third movement is capped by “Always Coming Back Home,” set conveniently at a length of 9 minutes 11 seconds. The first half of the song is driven by a laid-back, melancholy guitar lick and extra-loud drums, while the second half changes the mood up with dreamy chords and skipping percussion. The last few minutes of the song is dedicated to boring little cities: “So if the people laugh and giggle when you tell them where you live, say shh / if you know this is where you wanna raise your kids, say shh / if you’re from the Midwest and it doesn’t matter where, say shh.” This exercise draws a couple of interesting contrasts; here, Slug’s delivery is relaxing and stands in stark contrast to his frantic, fire-and-brimstone delivery on the rest of the record. Also interesting is the plea to “say shh.” Most rappers want the audience to get as loud and rowdy as possible, but with this line, Slug highlights their difference from most other rappers: they’re from the quiet Midwest. The record ends in quietly, presumably while Atmosphere returns home, and we are left in comforting white noise.

The main question surrounding an Atmosphere release is its consistency, and I’m pleased to say that Seven’s Travels holds its own against most of its kind. The only real flaw is “Good Times (Sick Pimpin’)”, a faux-lounge crooner that makes fatal mistakes in more areas than just its title. At five minutes, it’s boring and lengthy; the drawing point to most of Atmosphere’s songs is Slug’s neo-philosopher urbanism raps, and it seems he failed to show up to write on this dud.

Shuttling effectively between the mainstream and the independent scene, Slug and Ant have successfully siphoned enough of the underground flavor to maintain lyrical interest and originality; Seven’s Travels is easily enjoyed in self-designated bite-sized pieces. At an hour and a half, Atmosphere may have bit off a bit more than they can chew, but it’s easily digested.

Service Group – Minimum R&B

Service Group is a great new band that does one thing really well: genu-wine power-pop with great rock hooks. It’s funny, because while Minimum R&B is a fantastic and totally enjoyable album, releasing a record like this in today’s metal- and hip-hop-centered culture is complete commercial suicide. It’s like the band is admitting, right up front, that it doesn’t care about selling a bunch of records or doing arena tours or having groupies.
Which means that either Service Group really loves the music, or that these musicians have a fear of success. I think that we can rule out the fear of success thing, though, because half the band comes from more established and fairly popular bands such as Big in Japan (Todd Smailes, guitar), Ozma (Ryen Slegr, keyboards), and Crushstory (Kirklyn Cox, drums), and Service Group’s main songwriter and creative force, Dylan Hay-Chapman, is/was a member of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast. Songwriter/bass player Kevin Whitman rounds things off for this outfit of power-pop disciples.
From the beginning to the end of this album there are tons of great rock moments within each catchy, sublime, and intoxicating song. “Dream vs. Dreamer” starts things off with a perfect pop beat, crunchy guitar, and splashy samples. It’s followed by “C.M.E.M. (Complicated Man Eating Machine).” This song has one of the sunniest guitar hooks ever played on it, and beautiful harmonies that soar through the verses, bridge, and chorus. “Good Mourning” and “Manufacto” rock, too.
This is a great debut album, and it’s awesome to hear new bands flying the power-pop flag. Each song has great lyricism, hooks, and guitars on its side. While there’s not much of a chance this will turn up on MTV or your local mega-radio station, it’s still worth seeking out and hearing.

Anadivine – S/T EP

Kingston, NY must be an interesting place to hang out in right now. The locale seems to be sprouting emo-metalcore bands faster than . . . well, faster than anyplace else seems to be. It’s the home of such underground luminaries as Coheed and Cambria, Autopilot Off, and Matchbook Romance. Anadivine was born unto the world the same year Coheed and Cambria stepped out of the basement: 2001. Claudio Sanchez even makes a guest vocal appearance on the EP (Cross Your Heart). They’ve hit the stage with Thursday. Got an idea of what they sound like yet? Thought you might. The melodic metal influences are in full effect on this self-titled EP, put out by SideCho Records in Anaheim, CA. It seems that Anadivine are already destined for greater things, though. The Militia Group has got dibs on their first full-length, due in 2004. Sean Paul Pillsworth (vocals, guitar), Mike Cashen (vocals, bass), Bill Manley (guitar, vocals), and Justin Meyer (drums, percussion) have got three things going in their favor: chops, hooks, and melody, and all three are present on this CD.

Weaving metal, pop-punk, and emo into a thick sweater of popular dissent and dark emotional scars with sharpened needles is something Anadivine seems to relish. Nearly every song on this EP (there’s a total of eight, but two are instrumentals) makes mention of overwrought emotions, mental stress, death, and/or substance abuse. The disc is heavy and black with images of the futility/impossibility of supporting a doomed loved one, murder, coroner visits, and suicide.

“Emily’s under blankets, tucked in by paramedics. A lullaby of sirens flood this town. And I’ve got a bad idea where envy drinks ’til my eyes get heavy. My alibi just seems so watered down.” These are lyrics from “Emily,” a song about the psychotic reactions of a jealous boyfriend and the intense physical violence that ensues. In front of the mother, no less. All of the lyrics are delivered in a passionate expression that would do any hairspray-drenched metal popper proud. That’s a compliment.

Juxtaposed against this edgy and somber lyrical content is a musical modern rock tour-de-force that’s accomplished, tuneful, and poppy. The music struts, rocks, and jaunts its way across the sound stage with an upbeat attitude that belies the words being sang across it. This is thanks mostly to the very metal guitars that tear through punk chord progressions and customary metal breakdowns, and the huge drum sounds, mixed up tight and top 40. The CD is unbelievably well produced, filled with great guitar and drums sounds with some keyboard and samples thrown in for ambience’s sake.

This EP was only ever intended to be swallowed one way: whole. Maybe a couple of the songs could be taken as singles (“The Stalker and the Songwriter” or “Emily”), but this recording was meant to be heard in its entirety. If there is a new breed of indie-emo-metal-whatever bands out there which Anadivine seems to be part of, it would seem that they all take the art and concept of the recorded album very seriously. That’s a good thing. It’s nice to hear music that was meant to be listened to, rather than just consumed while shopping at the mall. You will not hear this album shopping at the mall, unless maybe you live in the Netherlands.

The Bled – Pass the Flask

There isn’t much mystery or middle ground to a band such as Tucson, Arizona’s The Bled. You either enjoy their bruising mix of crushing hardcore and technical metal or you don’t. Personally, I would find metalcore a lot more interesting and dynamic if more of the vocalists involved would at least occasionally drop the incessant, tuneless, makes-every-song-sound-the-same screaming and adopt some more melody, rather than allowing the guitars to do all the work. While I can understand the cathartic value of this sort of red-throated vehemence, it is still – when everything is said and done – a one-trick pony.
Still, I’m certain that The Bled will make no apologies for its music or the belligerent, panic-ridden approach to songwriting found on the 10-song debut, Pass the Flask. And these musicians are certainly terrific at what they do, channeling their rage and combustive energy into brutal, explosive songs chock full of pummeling riffs and searing rhythms. The band also wisely steers away from the more predictable tendencies of the genre, experimenting liberally with the hardcore and metal form and utilizing ambitious arrangements that carry elements of emo, punk, and indie rock. Songs like the punishing “Red Wedding,” “You Know Who’s Seatbelt,” and “We Are the Industry” are dark, intricate, boiling corkers that also float unexpectedly into more beguiling, atmospheric spaces.
But for my money, “I Never Met Another Gemini” is the real gem here, combining thick torrents of pulse-pounding guitars and rock-solid drums with a haunting midsection that showcases the band’s more poetic tendencies. The vocals are also not quite as overbearing. Similar to Refused, they retain the same snarling tenacity, but with more a more focused melodicism that is sorely lacking from most of the album. There are exceptions, of course. The sinister “Porcelain Hearts and Hammers For Teeth,” for instance, begins with sparkling guitars underlying vocalist James Munoz’s surprisingly hypnotic vocals, nearly lulling you to sleep before setting things ablaze again with another fierce volcanic eruption.
Pass the Flask is not for the faint of heart. It is an uncompromising, in-your-face LP that is as visceral as it is complex. Listening to it requires a certain amount of endurance, a tolerance for thundering guitars, blistering rhythms, and punishing vocals that will be tested to the limits. My guess is that if you like bands such as Atreyu, Poison the Well, and Eighteen Visions, you’ll love this record.

Jim Dugan – Marigold

Never in my life have I heard a more pretentious album than Jim Dugan’s self-released and self-acclaimed gem, Marigold. At first listen, the album is pure cheese, with lyrics like: “I will give you water / I will drink with you my friend,” which refers to seeds Dugan planted at the age of 6. But upon further research on the album and Dugan himself, the sheer pretentiousness of the artist and his album shines through, making the album next to unlistenable.
Jim Dugan lists John Mayer as one of his prime influences yet, at the same time, also claims to be better than Mayer, stating that the tracks on Marigold “could effortlessly stand up against John Mayer’s Room For Squares.” Umm, how about no. Comparing yourself to a critically (not self-) acclaimed, Grammy award-winner with an album that barely even pales in comparison is not a good idea. Every track on Marigold is a carbon copy of each other. It is a boring and repetitive album trying to be groundbreaking, when in actuality it is too far above the ground, not to mention reality, to be breaking anything. Take for example the album’s closing track, “Om Shanti.” Yoga fanatics will recognize this phrase as a traditional prayer/chant used for relaxation. Dugan took the chant and made it into “an accessible pop song.” Well, it would be accessible if the song wasn’t so weird and affected that it instantly turns off listeners. Note to all aspiring musicians: ancient prayers are not a good framework when making “accessible pop songs.”
So now that I’ve trashed the album, I do have a few positive things to say about Mr. Dugan, well one positive thing: he can sing, and very well. Dugan’s voice is soft with a hint of roughness, and his passion and tenderness are apparent in every note sung. Dugan certainly has a love for music… and a love for himself. There’s nothing wrong with having faith in your work, but when your album comes across as a stuck-up attempt at becoming “the next big thing,” you might want to ease up on the confidence.
Now, I am sure I will get the usual slew of hate mail for writing such a negative review, but at times criticism is necessary and in Jim Dugan’s case there is a lot to criticize.

Natural Dreamers – S/T

It happened so quickly that you might not have noticed it, but in the quietest revolution ever, the avant-garde end of experimental rock has managed to slide nearly into the center lane of independent music. Sure, we always had Sonic Youth and Captain Beefheart as the primers for those who wanted to write songs with wildly elastic structures and few concessions to tonality, but most of those working on the more abstract end of the spectrum tended to retain a sort of marginalized notoriety of the sort typified by bands like the Residents, a group weird enough that everyone has heard of it but so puzzlingly esoteric that few aside from the obsessives have more than a passing knowledge of their its work. Now, however, with the likes of Erase Errata, Lightning Bolt, Black Dice, and Wolf Eyes garnering near unanimous underground (and even some mainstream) acclaim, noise is in and threatening to make any overt nods to melody seem as archaic as parlor music. And while they don’t make quite the hard turn toward abstraction that some of the aforementioned do, Natural Dreamers cast its lot with the sonic explorers with its debut release.
Admittedly, the potted plant and pure white backdrop of the cover seem to suggest the domestic tranquility of a reformed 60s sunshine-pop band more than a trio of free-form fanatics, making the actual contents somewhat startling in their meandering abrasiveness. There are some Deerhoof references to be made (as John Dieterich and Chris Cohen happen to share guitar duties in that band, as well) but that band’s trademark avant-bubblegum is here subverted in favor of the exclusion of almost all concessions to traditional structure except in the most fleeting of moments. More developed melodies do wander in and out at times, but most of the songs fall somewhere between post-rock instrumentals and impressionistic avant-garde tinkering. Maybe most unusual is the almost complete reliance on little more than the frantic interweaving of John Dieterich and Chris Cohen’s guitars over drummer Jay Pellicci’s turn-on-a-dime drumming. Where many bands go for aural saturation to overwhelm their listener, the aesthetic here is founded upon using structure to dazzle and confuse. And for the most part, it works.
“The Singer” screeches forward with Southern-rock guitar solos, only to abandon them for pulsing chords and downright pretty electric picking. “The Golden Pond” is nearly as picturesque as its title suggests, with guitar lines lazily rising and falling until collapsing into disorder. “Arthur” is a carnival ride/gypsy boogie that lurches forward and back before dissolving into a cloud of complex guitar patterns and sour scales. The spazz-core turned light jazz of “The Natural” is, in one song, the study in contrast that typifies the entire disc. Throughout, the mood is in constant flux, from frenzied to pensive, poignant to restless, often within the course of one track, leaving little rhyme or reason to the predict just where the next move will be.
Sure, it’s a cliché, but this is the type of music where the listener can genuinely find something new nearly every time the album’s chaotic clatter fills a room, as the complexities of the song structures don’t lend themselves to easy translation. There is liberating power in a stray guitar line and spastic drum roll, and such freedom is not only the modus operandi here, it’s the album’s true saving grace. It’s not always easy to follow, and that’s the most salient point. The listeners are asked to surrender their higher functions to the cacophonous void, ensuring that the music’s constituent elements are universal enough to appeal to a barely realized internal logic.
In all honestly, it’s hard to know what the most reasonable diagnostic criteria is to separate genius and confirming pure grating noise, as such standards are likely to change not only from listener to listener but even in the same listener depending on mood. What makes one bleating guitar more interesting or valid than another? What is the proper balance between innovation and simple artistic excess? Where does concept reasonably trump creation? Natural Dreamers don’t answer those questions, but their album is posited upon all of them. Listen, and you might come up with some answers.

Birddog – Songs From Willipa Bay

Without a doubt, one of the best parts of being an indie-rock journalist is that you are granted near-immediate victory in any game of cooler-than-thou one-upmanship. As the game of pretentiousness can quickly descend into a battle to see who can dig into obscurity to find the clearly brilliant band from the past that no one has ever heard or the up-and-coming artist that will soon be hailed as the savior of recorded music as we know it, the indie-rock scribe can hold his or her position while being rarely challenged by those who have to buy their CDs in order to listen to them. The (often wrong) assumption is that a person who gets free CDs in the mail must also have an orderly index of every style-obsessed garage band in New York City and has access to the secret list that bares the names of the bands that will be cool and gone before the average hipster knows they exist. For sure, it’s advantageous and altogether easy to allow that smug assumption to rest unchallenged, but there are always bands that emerge that can lay bare the journalist’s insecurities, making him or her realize that it’s impossible to catch every genuinely worthwhile artist that slides under the door and that such breaches in intelligence have left you seriously vulnerable to attack from the unwashed masses. Birddog is one such band.
The brainchild of Bill Santen, a talent so verifiable that Elliott Smith and Edith Frost have both contributed to his recordings, Birddog is the type of band that elicits disbelief when it’s realized that his band has released four albums to this point. Largely consisting of shimmering, shivering acoustic indie pop, Santen’s songwriting aesthetic is doused in a murky backwater veneer (conceptually if not sonically) that places him on strangely ominous conceptual footing. Nearly as pristine as dream pop, with soft, reverby guitar tones that fill a room so imperceptibly that they could smother you before you notice them, Santen’s songwriting is puzzlingly literate, disturbingly visual, and understatedly beautiful. Radiating a ghostly ambiance with a sly electric slide guitar moaning like it’s mad at having the blues sucked out of it, “The Play” is a perfect slice of dark-winged indie pop, offering a rhetorical drama that invests the song with an undercurrent of uneasiness. That song’s counterpoint, the plaintive rustic strum of “Beaches” evokes the ghastly resonance of Will Oldham (which might be appropriate, as his brother Paul contributes keyboards, bass, and vocals to the album), with startling imagery dropping on clear ringing electric piano.
As such, the effect is as often as unsettling as it is soothing, making you feel somewhat guilty (or at least paranoid) as the bewitching melodies can convince you to take little notice of the tension inherent in the lyrics. For his part, Santen plays the doomed prophet role perfectly, croaking like Isaac Brock on the surprisingly pretty “The Cities” and filling up the illusion of Western expanse with the doom hook of “Red Red Wine,” a song that falls somewhere between a spiritual and a funeral dirge and in a whole other universe from the UB40 track of the same name. Most surprising is the almost stereotypical honky-tonk of “Sycamore,” with trite pedal steel sway overlaying Santen’s Neil Young-crossed-with-Gram Parsons intonation.
All in all, it’s the type of release that could make you positively shame-faced for having not heard of its author. Even at seven tracks, it’s easy to see why Elliott Smith deemed Santen worthy of his collaborative efforts, even though the two come from slightly different ends of the indie angst spectrum. In the end, it’s the kind of album that simply reeks of authenticity and gravity, the type you might want to associate with when an upstart challenges your hipster mettle.

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