Wilco – A Ghost is Born

To call A Ghost is Born “the long-awaited new album from Wilco” might be a bit of an exagerration. It has been readily available via a “web stream” on the band’s homepage for a few months now (fully legal and band-sanctioned), and Wilco has been touring with the new material since May. Still, the popularity and critical reception of their previous release, the lauded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, will surely place an unusual level of critical attention on Ghost (i.e., alert the backlash police). True to form, Jeff Tweedy and his compatriots have totally ignored whatever positive or negative expectations may have been floating in the air around the studio and made, from the sounds of it, exactly the album they wanted to. Which, as I see it, is fantastic news for the rest of us.

Ghost sees Wilco peeling back the layers of instrumentation the band has been adding since their first album. Being There haltingly introduced an array of keyboards to A.M.’s guitar-driven sound, with the now famously departed Jay Bennett adding piano, clavinet, and various organs judiciously to the mix. Summerteeth saw a move into full-bore Brain Wilson territory. Crashing waves of antique keys and glittering tremolo buoyed that album’s heart-heavy lyrical content. On Foxtrot, Tweedy, working with Jim O’Rourke (Sonic Youth), learned to manipulate an impossibly complex soundscape to tease out echoes of emotional resonance from each song by interleaving dozens of instrumental tracks recorded during several different sessions. For Ghost O’Rourke returns as producer, but his reputation for piling layer upon layer of noise is belied by this album’s simplicity of arrangement. In fact, after Foxtrot, this album sounds downright spartan. Reportedly, most of the album was recorded live, but only after the arrangements and mix had been painstakingly plotted out. This gives the songs a deceptively lo-fi quality without sounding amateurish, at least until “Less Than You Think,” the second-to-last track, which shatters the lo-fi feel by dissolving into a 10-minute sound collage that would sound at home anywhere on Foxtrot.

Between that song and “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” which clocks in at 10:50, certain fans will likely throw up their hands in exasperation, crying pretension. In a sense, they’ll be justified. After the well-publicized record industry coup that landed Wilco its deal with Nonesuch, the band must feel like it can get away with murder, and this album reflects that fearlessness. But a work like this is only self-indulgent if its accoutrements aren’t justifiable. Wilco makes every note count on this album: however miraculously, it all manages to cohere. And the songs are undeniably stunning. Listen to the melodic, piano-driven wistfulness of “Hummingbird”: “Remember to remember me / standing still in your memory / floating fast like a hummingbird.” Regret is never cast a self-pity, but rather as straight-faced resignation.

One remarkable aspect of Ghost that will likely go largely ignored is the progress Jeff Tweedy has made as a lyricist. Song lyrics, even good ones, are rarely truly good pieces of writing. At best, they are serviceable conduits of the songwriter’s intended meaning, getting the point across obliquely or directly, and the words are either pretty, jarring, or something in between, as need be. The self-contained, internal resonance of a true poem is rarely witnessed. While the words on Ghost certainly don’t transcend this, many come close, and they contain some truly arresting moments. “Hell is Chrome” meditates on a too-clean, stifling existence, but the description is undeniably inviting, irresistible: “The air was crisp like sunny late winter days. / A springtime yawning high in the haze, and I felt like I belonged.”

Juxtaposing this siren call, however, is the menace of a bloodless existence: “‘Come with me. You must go.’ / So I went where everything was clean / So precise and towering.” The lyrics reveal a preoccupation with the tyranny of an Ayn Rand sort of existence, repressive orderliness, and if this reminds anyone of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, it’s understandable. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” ends with the Yorke-ian declaration, “There’s no blood on my hands / I do as I’m told.”

However, while Yorke is often guilty of draining the blood from his very critiques of bloodlessness, Tweedy is, as usual, unwilling or unable to remove heart from the equation. His trademark, in contrast to Yorke’s, has always been his emotional nakedness, and while his work is rarely as mordant as Yorke’s, it is always more soulful. And here as always Tweedy turns inward, nowhere more powerfully than on the opening song, “At Least That’s What You Said”: “I said, ‘Maybe if I leave you’ll want me to come back home.’ / Or maybe all you mean is leave me alone. At least, that’s what you said.”

Tweedy croaks these lyrics over soft strains of piano, creating a surprisingly gripping doorway into the album. But the quiet is quickly shattered by a couple of jarring, choked electric guitar chords (overlaid by a soft Moog scale), which lead into an extended guitar coda that sees Tweedy updating Neil Young in a manic, feedback-driven frenzy. The melancholic piano vamp continues underneath the pyrotechnics, however, and in the end the outburst of noise fades as quickly as it had risen up, leaving the narrator just as bereft as he began.

The effortlessly mournful tone is something that Tweedy mastered two or three albums ago, of course, but here he deploys it in a harsher context that sets these songs apart from familiar pop pathos. But they are also set apart from Wilco’s canon, another reinvention from maybe the least static band in American music.

Epigene – Popular Dissent

When my younger sister and I were children, obnoxious tricksters, we used to play this joke on my mother, and she’d fall for it every time. We found it inexplicably fascinating to trick her into believing that we were singing radio pop tunes, when in actuality we were composing the impromptu garbage on the spot. In order to make the songs believable, we would need to find a lyric that we agreed upon and run with it for the entire duration of the song, straying from the original words as little as possible. Thus, our terrible tunes were primarily comprised of repetitive lines and horrible, spontaneous melodies and harmonies that didn’t work.

Though the two of us stopped annoying our mother and abandoned this pastime long ago, Epigene seems to have revived this game from its decade-long coma. The majority of the band’s latest release, Popular Dissent, sounds like a documentation of middle-aged adults playing this game…and attempting to sell the evidence.

The Seattle foursome’s website likens the sound to a broad palette of bands ranging from acts like Blur, Clash, Supergrass, Super Furry Animals, and XTC to bands like The Police and Steely Dan. Though Epigene truly present a diverse melange of sounds, I am not convinced about the validity of most of these comparisons.

“Sugarwater” is a perfect example of the embarrassing redundance that is heard far too often throughout the release. The synthy song is composed of little more than the tired refrain, “she’s like, she’s like sugarwater / she tastes like, she tastes like sugarwater,” repeat ad nauseum.

Epigene has a gift with writing exciting, enticing intros, but the ensuing lyrics let down anticipating ears, as the musicians can’t deliver the rock with which they initially tempted us. Such is the case with “Power & Glory.” The track commences with a crescendo of footsteps that lead into a somewhat engaging guitar melody. Shortly after this, Epigene falls into the same lyrical trap of tautology that has ensnared them so many times before.

One of the stronger tracks from Popular Dissent is “New Bethany,” a tune that calls into question the issue of religion in school. Frontman Sean Bigler croons with an implacably familiar voice, and if removed from the context of this album, “New Bethany” might be a college radio indie-pop favorite in a style somewhere between Piebald and John Vanderslice.

Though Popular Dissent might contain more than its fair share of somewhat weaker tracks, the album ends strongly with a duet of brilliantly constructed tunes. “Pretty Little Noose” presents a solid pop gem with Bonnie Lykes-Bigler’s jazzy vocal interjections. “Thumbelina” begins with a pensive zither and breaks its way into a jagged rock tune with dense instrumentation and harmonies. These two songs skillfully avoid the pitfalls of earlier tracks and help save Epigene’s reputation. The artists prove that they indeed have a potentially amazing sound; perhaps it’s time for these cats to quit playing games and focus more on writing interesting lyrics to match.

As Tall as Lions – Lafcadio

I’m not sure exactly why, maybe it’s the band’s name, but for some reason I was expecting another hardcore or metal band to come roaring out of the speakers. And although some of that hard, aggressive stuff does turn up here in small spurts, Long Island, NY natives As Tall as Lions make a genuine play for something far more textured, atmospheric, and introspective on this mostly excellent debut.

Rather than smacking you silly with crushing chords, prodding riffs, and pounding drums, ATAL drown you in hypnotic waves of swirling guitars that sparkle and shimmer over the driving melodic grooves that fill the majority of this album. While labeling it “genre-bending” might be a bit of a stretch, there does seem to be a bit of something here for everyone, as the group undoubtedly displays a keen eye for integrating varying rock sounds and styles into a cohesive, well-formed whole. Certainly there is a heavy Brit-pop influence weaving its way through Lafcadio that will strike many listeners as reminiscent of Coldplay and early Radiohead (especially the stirring “Silhouettes/Silhouetting,” which focuses its energies on the triumphant interplay between the guitars and piano, and the catchy, soaring vocals delivered by Daniel Nigro), just as there are passages of thunderous, shoegazing rock that bring to mind the lush, sonic gyrations of Catherine Wheel and Ride. Also in the mix can be heard the propulsive, yet fragile swelling groove dynamics of mid 90s emo like Sunny Day Real Estate and Mineral (“My Glowing Morning Dreams” sounds like it was lifted straight from the End Serenading sessions), which provides ATAL with enough of a piercing bite to lift it above mere modern pop-rock with an edge.

Indeed, songs like the majestic “Break Blossom” and the equally impressive follow-up, “96 Heartbeats,” are nearly impossible to resist: riveting, full-throttle, guitar-driven scorchers that rely on their ambitious arrangements and unbridled energy to pull them through. It doesn’t hurt that Nigro understands how to put his warm, soulful baritone to good use, as a gorgeous contrast and catalyst for the many churning guitars building their way into breathtaking crescendos. The more straightforward “The Carousel” may proceed in a familiar verse-chorus-verse pattern, utilizing big, booming drums and heavily strummed guitars to drive the music, but the melodies are so enticing and memorable that the repetition is welcome, if not downright essential. Equally potent are the frenetic “If I’m Not Out Burning” and the cathartic “Ghost in Drag,” which reach for more explosive heights with simmering angular riffs and stormy breakdowns that should give the emo and hardcore set plenty to cheer about at their shows.

Lafcadio does lag at times, but even ATAL’s most predictable and directionless material will eventually wander into a phrase or two of such startling and beguiling beauty that help to keep things from falling completely apart at the seams and makes skipping tracks a shifty proposition. There is definitely a lot here to take in, so repeated listenings might be in order before this release can work its considerable magic on you. It’s not often that I am completely blindsided by a new band or album, but there were moments here where I was just plain awestruck by the ingenuity and artfulness of this recording. This is bold, expansive, dramatic songwriting delivered with heartfelt passion and truckloads of talent. Pick this one up immediately.

Thee Shams – Please Yourself

With so many great bands hailing from Ohio these days I’m completely surprised that Thee Shams – formerly The Shams – haven’t received much more attention. The Cincinnati area foursome, featuring brothers Zachary and Andrew Gabbard as well as Chad Hardwick and Keith Fox, is directly channeling the rhythm and blues of 1960’s garage rock. These guys have all the heart and soul of that era without the silly mod-style suits so many current bands are trying to pull off.

Please Yourself is the group’s second full-length album and the first on the bluesy Fat Possum label. And if you get past the half naked woman on the cover, you’ll find a lot to love about Thee Shams. The music is raw and rough around the edges, the vocals are swaggering and gravelly, and the band even throws in a lovely Hammond organ on some tracks. Basically, this band picked a style, adopted it without losing the gist of it, and took off running. There is nothing absolutely ground breaking here, but the point for this group seems to be playing great rock n’ roll not making waves.

There is a scorching cover of Bob Dylan’s “If You Gotta Go” on Please Yourself, but the focus here really is on the band’s own creations. “Come Down Again” reminds me of Muddy Waters with its thick as molasses blues and ever-so-slight country twang. Other tracks, like “Want You So Bad” and “Can’t Fight It” sound almost as though Thee Shams stole Mick Jagger for a few hours to record some tracks. This Rolling Stones groove is where Thee Shams seem most comfortable, and with the exception of a few slower tunes this is where most of the other tracks find their roots.

Please Yourself is a solid album that any R&B or garage rock fans are sure to love. It’s solid, unpretentious, and packed full of simply great songs. The members of Thee Shams have the chops, and I hope they continue pumping out groovy garage rock without changing a thing.

Clair de Lune – Marionettes

The latest edition to Deep Elm’s roster, Minnesota’s Claire de Lune is perhaps one of the most intense bands on the label. While the formula of powerful guitar that’s intense yet melodic, intricate percussion, driving bass, and dual vocals is not unique, Claire de Lune’s approach is unique enough to make Marionettes a wonderful post-hardcore album.

In large part, the difference is due to the band’s talent. These songs shift and morph throughout, changing pace, flowing from blindingly intense to moody and melodic quickly. There are no simple power riffs here; instead, these musicians are so talented that every moment of Marionettes feels inspired. And like labelmates Desert City Soundtrack, Claire de Lune integrates piano into almost every song. No, it’s not the most obvious post-hardcore instrument, but it works exceptionally well here.

You can tell a lot from a good album opener, and Clair de Lune open incredibly strong with “Sailor Beware.” Driving guitar, thrilling bass, power drumming, and the ever-present piano mix nicely as the song catapults into intensity. It just builds and builds until a perfect mid-song breakdown. “Ghost of the Hill” is slightly less aggressive, and keyboards replace the piano, while “Passenger View” builds back up over powerful drumming and layered guitars and vocals. Fans of Red Animal War will appreciate the punk-infused energy of the brilliant “Machinegun Lipstick,” definitely my favorite track on the album, as the lead singer belts out “This blood has stained our hands for centuries.” And “Blue Ribbon” reminds me of former Deep Elm band The White Octave. Album closer “Varicose” is a quick blast of high-powered intensity that nicely bookends the album with “Sailor Beware.” The shouted chorus of “Lights out! Lights out!” is a suitable end.

Some of the most unique moments here are the band’s best. The gorgeous intro and outro to “Life on Remote” – with piano and impeccable bass – startle me every time I hit the track. The piano on the short “Twenty Threes” is chilling and moody, and acoustic guitar comes in to add to that tone. “Relapse” starts very slick, more chilled and atmospheric, and I really like this approach, and it’s a nice contrast when the song really builds to its climactic moment of power and intensity.

Claire de Lune combines punk-rock urgency with emo intricacies and hardcore intensity. The formula itself isn’t unique, but the band has incredible talent, and the incorporation of piano and keyboards is a nice touch. This album, in the best tradition of Deep Elm, shows an incredibly talented band putting intensity and energy first and foremost. I’m impressed, and I can only imagine how good Claire de Lune is live.

Slow Jets – Remain in Ether

Over the past few months, I’ve been given the recommendation, on more than one occasion, to pick up something by the Slow Jets. This suggestion had come because I’m a pretty good-sized Guided By Voices fan, and that this “Slow Jets” was described as walking in that band’s footsteps. I was intrigued. However, Baby needed a new pair of shows, and so on, so I hadn’t been able to part with the green. A few weeks ago I got my DOA review package, and low and behold there was Slow Jet’s new release, Remain in Ether. Daddy likes!

Knowing that I had been tipped off to a GBV similarity, I had to listen closely and try to keep my journalistic cred and stay open-minded throughout the entire listen so my decision wouldn’t be swayed in either direction. Once I hit play, there it was – someone had tapped into Pollard and Company’s magic box. “Move While the Door is Open” starts with a little toy piano meets synthesizer riff. This runs through a couple bars, and I prayed to the Indie Rock God, “Please, oh please, most exalted One, please let this tune kick into a tasty guitar riff.” And the prayers were answered nearly instantaneously. A guitar came in, followed by sliding chords and Marc Berrong’s pounding drums. Moments later, vocalist and guitarist Greg Preston came on the vocal scene, up front and proud.

Visions of a Pollard Jr. flooded my mind. I see him standing out in front of the band, at stage’s edge. One foot propped up on a monitor, a hand clutching mic and stand, and the other dually grasping a beer and a smoke. Fuck, yeah, this sounds great! Then almost as quickly as this euphoria washes over me, I’m jerked into a direction where the music sparses up and the voice is starting to sound vaguely familiar. Not Mr. Pollard’s, but something from the past. More honestly English than Bob’s Ohioan tribute to the Beatles. Then WHAM! Like another jerk on a roller coaster ride, the song quickly goes into another direction with a guitar run leading my ears around. Then there’s this heavy, washed out keyboard melody, and WHAM! We’re back to the edge-of-stage-rock-out bit. A few more changes and the song is over.

The second song, “Famous Flaws of King Ubu,” comes in with another smack of familiarity. And about half way through it becomes monstrously clear! This record sounds like A-grade, non-demo-y, Under the Bushes Under the Stars-era GBV music with indie-rock-charged, late 80s-sounding Robyn Hitchcock vocals and lyrics. Only two songs in and I’m diggin’ this scene hard.

Once “Drinkers for the Sun” kicks in I can totally hear that Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians Globe of Frogs/Queen Elvis sound. It also becomes very clear that the Slow Jets, who handled their own recording of Remain in Ether, practice a true commitment to quality, indie-rock home recording. As the album moves on, it pulls away from a GBV sound and more into an experimental 80s pop sound. Which actually completes the circle of life, because that’s the era where GBV was fixin’ to do its thing.

From here I would normally go into a run down of each tune and its highlights. However, I’m going to just capsulate, so you can get to the record store quicker. A darker, heavier guitar side; tune made up of three movements (a plus for Tolkein fans); Tim Baier’s noteworthy supporting vocals; fast, pop number guitar assault verging on the Ventures; cool gurgling, space keyboards with a nearly spoken beer-hall chorus and sparse strumming guitar ending; “Private Idaho” vibe with spacey, Theremin-like sound, and crazy distorted noises; drum machine lead, with layers of acoustic guitar and piano; and poppy, yet heavy tinged cascading and meandering guitar riff.

Even through the first listen of Remain in Ether, there’s a comfortableness that feels like you’re home. With their original take of blending two different of classic eras, the Slow Jets, have crafted a sound all to their own, and are quickly becoming Baltimore, MD’s, best-kept secret.

Paris, Texas – Like You Like an Arsonist

Paris, Texas’s Like You Like an Arsonist is the sound of a collision between The Alkaline Trio’s demented glee and a grunge-rock band, which is the magic formula for the movement we now call garage rock (it used to be called rock’n'roll). The music isn’t exactly angry or happy: chunky, forceful riffs lay out a sound that could best be described as rebellious. The band is more comparable to an angrier Jet, or a less caustic Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or a more polished Hives.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stay rebellious for very long. Despite the opener “Bombs Away” being a killer track, the rest of the album doesn’t compare to it. “Bombs Away” features three different awesome riffs (the climactic chorus hook is actually the best riff on the album), catchy vocals (the shouted refrain of “So I got the power, to ruin re-vo-lu-TIONS!”), and a general aura of “take this, establishment!” If the rest of the album could deliver punch like “Bombs Away” did, this would be an excessively good album.

But, by song two, they fall into monotony. There are brief flashes of brilliance, such as the intricate vocals on “Your Death,” the quirky intro to “One Hot Coma,” and the fractured, punky riff from “Hip Replacement” (amongst others), but often, their songs just don’t do anything new. Listening to the guitars, you wonder where you’ve heard the sound before; listening to the drums, you wonder why the drummer uses cymbals so much; listening to the bass, you wonder why someone so good is even in this band (the bass lines are propelled, complex, and – if mixed higher in the mix – could’ve been the savior of this album).

There is hope here though; the closer “Gemini” is also quite brilliant, which means that the band effectively book-ended a lackluster album with two amazing tracks.
If you love the first track, you may like the album; if you love the second track, you’ll love the album. If you don’t like garage rock, don’t go for this; you’ll want to burn it – whereas the band will like you, you arsonist, you.

Happy Chichester – Live @ Aladdin Theatre, Portland , Or.

Happy Chichester has enjoyed a lengthy career as a founding member of three unheralded bands (funkers Royal Crescent Mob, rockers Howlin’ Maggie, Greg Dulli’s Twilight Singers), and his stubborn 15-year stretch in the biz is admirable. There are many layers of operation in the world of music, and Happy has got to be near the bottom of most of them. Yet if (insert favorite band name here) has taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need a high-profile to dispense quality, completely ignored product or to become someone’s all-time favorite so-and-so. Here, offering enthusiastic solo acoustic renditions of songs from his catalogue, he has at least tempted this small Portland crowd away from their heroin parlors, however briefly.

Half of these songs were originally performed by Howlin’ Maggie, and the others sound eager for an equally electrified treatment. Happy’s forceful down strumming and dramatic chords are somewhere between Nirvana and Coldplay with the melodic riffage of the former and the minor-key atmospherics of the latter. Delivered in this stripped-down way, they sound like an inspired demo for a bigger project. Though I’m largely unfamiliar with Howlin’ Maggie, I’d have to suspect that it may have been that very project. “Alcohol” sounds fine here, and Happy sings zestfully in his strong yet anonymous voice. It sounds even better in full groove on Maggie’s Honeysuckle Strange from 1996, although there Chichester’s voice is a little too reminiscent of Jeff Buckley.

Maybe it’s the overall lack of individuality that’s to blame for his invisibility. Though he writes strong, hook-heavy songs, no single quality stands out as uniquely Happy. But “A Man Needs an Airplane” has a sad, rich melody and, purity be damned, it would sound great with its drama fleshed out by a big fat arrangement. It also has an unnecessary bridge, excessive length, and some superfluous vocal flourishes that I mention only because they reappear a number of times throughout the disc and I thought you should know. “If I Could Murder the Right Man” is a song whose previous incarnation I am not familiar with, but it’s a darkly pretty slow burner here with P.J. Harvey possibilities. I’d rather hear those possibilities than imagine them, not only because it’s just easier that way, but also to get a sense of Happy as an interpreter. What is/was his larger vision for these tunes?

A couple of these (“Me & My Machine,” “Artificial Fanfare”) aren’t worth the effort, a little shrill and lacking an essential charm. The rest however indicate a guy with a knack for writing some biting melodies and singing them with conviction. Oh you do that too, do you? Who doesn’t? But Happy Chichester has the songs to prove it. The question is: what is he gonna do with them?

Tempertwig – Split 7"

Alrighty, gotta take this one in first-person, unfortunately … See, here’s the thing. I absolutely LOVE listening to music on vinyl. My turntable is one of my most prized possessions, and I seriously shudder when I stop to think about how much it would suck if anything bad ever happened to it.

For the most part, I dig the concept of 7” records, too. I mean, it’s a neat feeling to put on a peppy 7” (like Pulby’s “Water From Different Falls,” for example) and dance around the room, then run over to the turntable to pick the needle up and drop it again so I can “keep on dancin’” … (and dammit, that’s from The Gentrys and not that No Doubt song).

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, the two main ones in this case being: 1) when each side of the 7” is shorter than 120 seconds, because that just turns into a lot of work with all the getting up/vinyl flipping/needle dropping, etc, and 2) when the material on the turntable is so lush and dreamy that it induces a stage of not wanting to get up. This here 7” record falls under exception number 2 of the Gary Blackwell’s Exceptions to Enjoying 7” Records rules.

Tempertwig’s “Bratpack Film Philosophy” isn’t so much an exception, actually (though it is an amazingly clever song title). The droning lyrics (“sick and tired of another wasted summer…”) are mostly spoken, and the music is pretty dream-poppish until the chorus, when a slight barrage of shoegazer guitars slides in. Overall, though, the song is pretty laid back, with the basic tone of the track being perfectly encapsulated by the lyrical bit, “If Bratpack Film Philosophy is the only thing that’s good for us / Well, so be it.”

Air Formation’s “Seethrustars,” however, is an exception of the highest quality. This track is the kind of slow, deliberate shoegazer fare that makes me want to crash in my bed for days at time without a care in the world. This song makes me wish I never had to take my headphones off, and that I could just lay happily motionless, being lost in the music for as long as my feeble mind would let me. The track is a very guitar-driven, lush experience (there’s even a band credit given to someone responsible for ‘drones’, heh) that measures up to the material of My Bloody Valentine or Swervedriver’s Ejector Seat Reservation album. The best description I can give is that “Seethrustars” sounds like Kevin Shields covering something from The Cure’s Disintegration album. The only bad thing I can say about this side of the 7″ is that I hate having to keep getting up to restart the record, because I get so lost in the song that I don’t want to have to think about anything at all … But I absolutely have to keep getting up to re-start the record because, well, the song really is that good.

So, yeah … Both songs here are solid (though Tempertwig’s spoken-lyric style does take a listen or two to get used to), though it’s Air Formation’s side of this 7” that’s truly a blowaway affair. Recommended for fans of this sort of thing (though be forewarned, only 330 copies of this self-released 7” were pressed – U.S. ordering information is available at www.tonevendor.com).

Icewater Scandal – No Handle

New York City is famous for many things, and good art rock is amongst them. Face the facts – Sonic Youth is probably one of the most influential bands in indie rock in the past 20 years. It would be nearly impossible to doubt that any art-rock band has some of its influence in there somewhere. Icewater Scandal is no exception. No Handle was even produced by Sonic Youth’s own Lee Ranaldo. It is a good starting point for a band such as this but also lacks something that may come with time: direction. No Handle meanders through early-80s no-wave like a textbook example. The guitars clang, the drums bang, and the bass lopes along in the back. Icewater Scandal has all the makings of a band that could be very good, and No Handle shows lots of promise, but something is missing.

“Klat” starts things off sounding like a maimed animal hobbling away from an attack barely intact. The vocals leave a little to be desired, but then again most bands like this don’t really give much thought to them. After a minute or so, the guitar starts speeding up sounding like its getting ready to take off, the drums leave and come back in for a see-sawing rhythm part. Somewhere in the middle, the song gets lost and just starts treading water, only to come back in later on where it should have just continued earlier.

“Muddy Blue” is a little more streamlined. It is much shorter and stays on a pretty direct path from start to finish. This is more of what I would like to see from this band; not necessarily songs that are as short as this one but that they stay focused.

Icewater Scandal has all the makings of a band that could be great at what it does. Since this is the band’s first full-length, I blame inexperience. I would like to see what this band does with its second record. Can it overcome these small obstacles and craft a no-wave record that is flawless? Only time will tell, the missteps are small and would be easy to correct at such an early stage.

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