Man Man – The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face

Their songs have titles like “Werewolf (On the Hood of Your Heartbreak)” and “White Rice, Brown Heart.” They rant like half-drunk hobo poets about gorilla suits and pornography over a slapdash combination of horns, drums, and fat bottomed licks. The Moonstone Pre-School Choir contributed their naïf vocals to the opening track “Against the Peruvian Monster.” They look like a Yugoslavian circus troupe after a decade long expatriation to central Mexico, complete with compulsory scruff and handlebar moustaches. Their last song ends only after seven minutes of ocean tides and seagulls.

Their names are Honus Honus, Tiberius Lyn, Blanco Flesh Taco, and Clint Killingsworth, and they collectively make up Man Man. This is about all I know of the closeted quartet (and, according to label Ace Fu, all they know as well); the band refuses to provide any useful biographical information. But this type of idiosyncrasy is justified when you hear this debut, The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face. Its shanty rock is as meticulously crafted in its composition as other noteworthy eccentrics, namely Zappa, Beefheart, and Tom Waits, and catchy to boot.

Speaking of the legendary growler, the living ghost of his career shifting Island trilogy has a serious presence throughout Blue Turban, infecting it with that careening wharf-like appeal that has defined much of Waits’s post-Swordfishtrombones music. The same chaotic percussions and chiming circus refrains that make an album like Frank’s Wild Years a drunken delight reconstitute themselves in songs like “10lb Moustache,” “White Rice, Brown Heart,” and “Magic Wand.” They practically reek of seawater and wet cigars. And although lead singer Honus’s growl bears more resemblance to Beefheart, his delivery matches Waits’s bellow-when-necessary approach.

But make no mistake; Man Man’s infusion of jazz carefully balances out the band’s more baroque influences, making Blue Turban not only wild at heart but wildly infectious. For instance, “Man Who Make You Sick” evolves from its kicking, bass-heavy melody into a Can-esque freeform jam to a tribal drum-and-organ breakdown filled with nonsensical chants and solos/Animal Collective drunk on ouzo at a big fat Greek wedding surrounded by howler monkeys.

I was thinking of using a family metaphor, the aforementioned influences being the older siblings with Man Man as the younger brother. But that gives a sense of unoriginality, instead implying a need to emulate rather than create. Instead, I’d like to think that the bands all hang out at the same bar and get drunk together, and slam frothy mugs on stained tables, and shout at each other over shit like old whores and Pall Malls, and forget whose in what band when they’ve had enough drink to get on stage. Then, when they’re sober enough, they make their separate ways into different studios, producing their own individual sounds.

Next time you’re in a bar, try to convince the bartender to play The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face. Maybe you’ll see a midget carnie peek his head through the door and give you a knowing look before he heads back to the tilt-a-whirl. But then again, who the fuck cares? You’ll be entertained regardless.

Pale Man Made – Show of Hands EP

The title track on Pale Man Made’s third album, Show of Hands, may be as good as anything you’re likely to hear from an underground band this year. Or it may be better, depending on how you feel about the combined catalogs of The Pixies, Sleater Kinney, Joy Division, and The Fall. If you’re inclined to see the aforementioned bands as the standard bearers of a certain roguish post-punk ethos that sought to transpose punk’s thrumping legacy into more melodic and personal manifestations, then the three-track Show of Hands will seem terribly promising and disappointingly brief. Those indifferent to the aforementioned bands will likely see this EP as a damn fine alternative to actually buying one of those Pixies albums’ you’ve seen in the possession of some of your cooler friends.

But the title track… it’s just marvelously done. By all counts, it’s a single, an anthem, a song that should land on any upcoming full-length release by Pale Man Made. Counterpoising two vocal leads over the verse – one male, one female – the song, though lacking an easily definable hook, is relentlessly catchy. The jangle of guitars, alternately muted and distorted, and the swirling melodic leads make this track undeniably listenable.

The second track, “Winning Streak,” while more immediately furious than the title track or the somewhat uneven “Annual Ritual,” loses some of the complexity of the title track. Frank Black’s undeniable influence makes a welcome appearance here, manifesting itself in the form of Pale Man Made’s lead singer intonations, “I hated love, it messed me up.” Richard Pryor makes also what seems to be an uncredited appearance here – I won’t tell anyone – in the form of a sample. It’s a fitting addition to an EP that, like the best underground music, makes sonic rebellion seem both familiar and urgently new.

Danny Pruitt – Codeine Dreams EP

Alt-country artists usually bore me because they are too slow, overly reliant on country motifs, eager to infuse their records with too many instruments, or commit a combination of these sins. Danny Pruitt avoids all three errors on his new solo EP, Codeine Dreams. While his three-year-old band, Shiloh Fivecoat, was on hiatus last year, Pruitt recorded the seven-track Codeine Dreams with Shiloh Fivecoat’s bassist, Chris Stellman. This gentle, passionately performed EP was recorded in a clean, minimalist vein, and Pruitt’s voice is beautiful, often crushing.

Codeine Dreams opens with the catchy “Aubade in D.” After a brief, slow harmonica introduction, Pruitt gradually strums his guitar and sings about the old neighborhood and memories of ruined relationships from his past. The aching chorus, “Don’t remind me / Don’t remind me,” is sung once with great impact, right before Pruitt ends his opener with more sad harmonica lines. Although lyrically pessimistic, “I Won’t be There” has an up-tempo guitar structure that recalls Indigo Girls’ finer moments. On this reflective track, Pruitt offers some of his most insightful imagery: “Sitting in the back yard / Looking through that fence / And everything I’m trying to forget / Is on my mind like fingerprints.”

The appropriately titled nonverbal track, “Instrumental,” is a soft, sensitive interplay of guitars with slightly echoed tones that equally fits relaxed Sunday afternoons and nostalgic moments on any day of the week. Pruitt’s best vocal performance is on “He Knows He’s Leaving,” in which he demonstrates an impressive range that recalls Liberty Horses’ Neill MacColl. Pruitt’s quivering, pained voice indicates some acceptance of the inevitable end that his harmonica stingingly symbolizes.

Pruitt has a gift for expressing his melancholy in stories that spur curiosity on a melodic level and even more interest in their plots. Codeine Dreams is a richly detailed and beautifully plain EP whose best songs, including the stunning title track, instantly forge cinematic scenes in the listener’s mind. Pruitt has raised the bar for future solo recordings and releases with Shiloh Fivecoat.

Lock and Key – Pull Up the Floorboards

Pull Up the Floorboards is the kind of album that, in the late-90s, would have been my most treasured possession. But that’s not to say it’s dated; I just don’t listen to the style that often anymore. It takes a band like this to remind me why I loved it so much in the first place.

Lock and Key has a definite Hot Water Music vibe, even down to singer Ryan Shanahan’s hoarse voice that, when singing, is gruff and when screaming impassioned. The instrumentation is loud and intense, taking a page from the band’s heroes like Hot Water Music and Fugazi, incorporating emo and post-hardcore into a vicious blend of pounding rhythms, driving yet reasonably melodic guitars, and vicious intensity. It’s the way emo used to sound before it became a dreaded four-letter word: pure urgency and powerful guitars and rhythm.

Really, this band flirts with the “post-” in post-hardcore. Songs like “Process of Molting” have plenty of Planes Mistaken for Stars-style hardcore to them, aggressive and in-your face. “Volatile” is, as the name suggests, volatile, with perhaps the most crunchy guitars on the album, and “Albatross” manages to remain catchy while being heavy. “Winston Churchill” is all power and aggression, ripping off guitar riffs and shouted vocals.

Still, there’s a sense of melody that underlies even the most aggressive songs. See the guitar lines and hints of sung vocals on “Alchemy” that compliment that shouts. “Ammonia” is all-out power-rock, with shout/sung words and aggressive guitars, but it has its more subtle melodic breakdown and group-sung parts that are highly effective. On “Cover the Tracks,” the band has a less powerful feel, which gives the song a kind of more Thursday-esque emo feel. Saving the best for last, the guitars especially shine on the closer “Opening,” both tight and melodic and driving at once.

Pull Up the Floorboards is the first full-length from Lock and Key, and it’s a great release, well produced and well played. If it sounds like it could have been on Deep Elm’s late-90s Emo Diaries releases, well, that can be forgiven when it’s done so well. It definitely reminds me of a style that’s never really died out.

Engine Down – S/T

Richmond, Virginia-based quartet Engine Down is a model act for rock-band evolution. The band started with the DIY ethic, playing basements and releasing 7″ splits. Progress hasn’t exactly been slow; the band’s formation was only in 1996. Now these guys have signed onto a new label (Lookout! Records) and toured with acts popular as Thursday. Positive profiles in Alternative Press magazine are another accomplishment the band enjoyed in 2004.

With its debut CD, Under the Pretense of the Present Tense, Engine Down offered volatile Drive Like Jehu-esque guitars with angst-ridden screams. This hardcore influence is understandable considering guitarist Jonathan Fuller was fresh out of Sleepytime Trio. The following three full-length progressively refined the band’s sound. Each of Engine Down’s releases sound more focused, and this self-titled release completes the pattern.

On Demure, the precursor to Engine Down, the band’s trademark brooding introductions were abundant. On Engine Down, the band abandon the drawn-out nature right from the getgo. Demure‘s “Songbird” was five-plus minutes of guitar exploration and wandering vocals. The rhythm opens casually by its lonesome, with drummer Cornbread Compton sporting a maraca in one hand. In contrast, “Rogue” (opener of this self-titled album) bursts in with pounding drums, a fat bass line, and anthemic choruses. The band’s style has clearly altered, but the transition is graceful, making Engine Down another enjoyable release. Brian McTernan’s glossy production method and the more poppy style could give cynics something to cry about, but McTernan has successfully produced bands like Texas is the Reason and Thursday, and Engine Down gets equally memorable treatment.

The energetic “Pantomime” off Demure became a fan favorite with its blasting riffs and a popular show opener. No other song on Demure instantly begins as intensely. Engine Down seemingly took the “Pantomime” blueprint to base the self-titled album on. The new batch of songs are compact and embrace tight riff-rock much more than older songs. When bursts of distorted guitar open “And Done,” the band succeeds in making it both catchy and heavy. Engine Down is full of upbeat rockers, which clearly makes the album more accessible. Singer Keeley Davis has improved vastly since the last CD, and his high voice sounds powerful as opposed to whiny. To Bury Within the Sound, another earlier work, is a stark contrast with its melancholic tone and yearning vocals. Fans of earlier material will still dig the new release but probably listen to it apart from the older, cathartic music.

Still, as a longtime fan of the band, I’m partial to Demure and earlier albums. Engine Down doesn’t flow great from beginning to end; it feels more like a “singles” disc. This isn’t always a bad thing; quality songs like “Rogue,” “And Done,” “Cover,” and “101″ make the purchase worth it. Demure is admittedly stronger in comparison with its honestly emotional music. In short, I skip around the self-titled release, but I have to listen to Demure in its entirety. The new disc is a safer venture than the old stuff, with plenty of nonabrasive straight-forward rock. The older material sounds stronger with more complexities than the more traditional thing they’re doing now. The earnest passion of Demure is one of a kind, though, so I can respect that these guys are going new places.

Daniel Carlson – Now

Daniel Carlson’s solo debut Now is a tidy, five-song EP that introduces Carlson as a talented, if somewhat derivative, pop balladeer.

Carlson writes dreamy, introspective pop songs in a style that goes back to 1970s singer/songwriters like Carole King and Jackson Browne. Like those progenitors, Carlson revels in the deeply textured pop orchestration of a committed Brian Wilson fan, but his melodies lack the subtlety or sophistication of either of those artists. Carlson has graduated Beginning Bacharach 101 but hasn’t quite moved on to the advanced course.

The result is a collection of elegant but somewhat sleepy (and conventional) ballads and some truly nice moments of twinkling Wurlitzers and Chamberlins (I’m a sucker for antique keyboards). “Gold” begins as the most promising track but turns out to be just a bit of instrumental filler. It’s too bad, because the spidery melody it develops could have been the EP’s high point, with its sly, James Bond-style sneakiness.

For his part, Carlson is hamstrung a bit by his solid but almost featureless voice. His better instincts for instrumentation carry the load somewhat, but before he can really come into his own, Carlson needs to go back to the woodshed with a stack of Jon Brion-produced albums. He’ll see how to take those influences and make them sing.

The Language of Flowers – Songs About You

Belfast’s the Language of Flowers are intent on returning the listener to the days of guileless, jangly pop circa mid-80s Sarah Records with wispy female vocals singing modest songs of everyday loves and losses. For about half of Songs About You the band succeeds only at tweaking those memories (if you have them) and little more. Much more interesting, though, are the other four or five numbers that go beyond just mimicking those innocent maneuvers and offering songs worth remembering for their own charm and effervescence, not just their similarity to bands that provided the soundtrack to your first foray under a bespectacled girls gingham skirt.

I only wish bands like the Field Mice or Heavenly were there for my first such adventure (I think it was Foghat instead), but the half of Songs About You that rises above mere okay-ness will suffice for any future attempt to score. We can begin with the cute “Botanic Gardens,” a sprightly major-key song of gentle courtship conducted as only an English Lit student from the UK would. Those lighter-than-air girlie vocals were always an acquired taste, and they remain so, but the slight turnaround of the chorus is sweet and shy and works just fine.

Even better is the title song’s combination of chiming chorus and bass-driven verse, sung by the delightfully deadpan bassist Colm McCrory. And if Tara Simpson’s slight wisp of a voice evokes a timid Dolores O’Riordan (of the Cranberries) on “Leaving,” you’d be a cur to complain once the songs frostiness melts into a lovely, cherubic chorus.

That darker “Tara Mascara” (New Zealand faves Look Blue Go Purple are summoned here, to great effect) really does stand head and shoulders above the rest of the disc. As nice as the majority of this debut is, it lacks consistent spark in the songwriting department, resulting in pleasant but forgettable tunes like “Summer’s Been and Gone” that hang around like an unobjectionable stranger: nice to meet but without any need to exchange phone numbers.

The band does stretch its sound a bit on a couple of songs but to no great effect. A sharper honing of the members’ writing could result in an excellent record if the highlights of Songs About You are any indication, but for now the jury is decidedly out. Still, you have to believe there’s more magic to uncover in those ringing guitars and bookishly romantic themes, and the Language of Flowers has at least stumbled on a bit of it. Only time will tell what else these folks have up their skirts.

Cul de Sac – Abhayamudra

When it comes to rock music, few practitioners have been more pivotal than Can. With such albums as Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi, Can has done as much to expand rock and roll’s vocabulary as virtually anybody else. Their importance is massive and undeniable. At the band’s artistic peak, Can’s lead singer was a manic sage from Japan named Damo Suzuki. His elliptical, impenetrable vocals were a perfect fit for Can’s challenging music. He is one of the most distinctive and startling of vocalists, and usually fascinating to listen to.

Cul de Sac, meanwhile, is a band of earnest experimentalists based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their sound has been characterized primarily by Glenn Jones’ cosmic guitar work, which is assisted heavily by various pedals and effects, and the work of multi-instrumentalist Robin Amos. Cul de Sac combines the psychedelic noise of Jones and Amos with complicated rhythms and insistent basslines and winds up with something that sounds greatly indebted to Can, among others. I’ve always been intrigued by their recordings, but for the most part have found them to be sort of dull. I like the idea of Cul De Sac more than the presentation. They were pretty fantastic live, though, the one time I saw them in Athens 10 years ago or so.

The combination of Cul de Sac and Suzuki makes a whole lot of sense, and it seems like an exciting proposition. Unfortunately, the album does not live up to expectations. Consisting of 11 long improvisations, recorded live, and spread out over two discs, Abhayamudra is a good two hours long and about as mixed a bag as you’ll ever get. The quality level ebbs and flows not just from song to song but regularly within individual pieces.

The first song, “Beograd 1,” starts off with vigorous drumming, a taut two-note bass-line, and some bewildering, high-pitched, squealing gibberish from Suzuki. A guitar floats in like a spiraling butterfly, reflecting sound from the heat of Jones’ amp, and a synthesizer (or something like it) burns violently in the background. It goes on for 15 minutes, though, and despite some amazing sounds being wrung out of the guitar and synthesizer, it grows tedious. The next track, the slow-starting “Halle 2,” sounds like it could be Joy Division at the band’s most dour. The song’s highlight comes at its halfway point, about 10 minutes in. Suzuki’s vocal melody, the surging rhythm, and the shrieks and drones kicked up by Amos and Jones merge into a fantastic few minutes of disorienting psychedelic majesty. That gradually dissolves into a boring passage that lasts until the piece finishes its 20-minute running time.

Other pieces are similarly spotty. “Berlin 4” has moments of great beauty, and Jonathan LaMaster’s violin and the vaguely Middle Eastern flavor distinguishes it from the rest of the album. “Zagreb 3” builds up a transcendent drone for three minutes or so and then devolves into the worst song on the album. “Kopenhagen 3” cultivates a graceful and atmospheric ambience, only to squanders it 14 minutes in with some truly aggravating vocalizations. Such inconsistency is the fundamental problem with this record.

As I said earlier, this album was recorded entirely live and entirely improvised. That has much to do with Abhayamudra’s hit-or-miss quality. Much of the album is formless and disjointed, and the performers’ lack of direction is frequently transparent. Also, despite the ever-shifting tones choked out of Jones’ guitar, the record is monochromatic and repetitive. This, combined with its extreme length, makes it very hard to listen to in one sitting. I imagine much of this material would be far more impressive live; on record, however, it’s less than spectacular.

Black Moth Super Rainbow – Start a People

Something about Black Moth Super Rainbow releases makes all of them seem familiar. Maybe it’s because the basic overall sound of most of the band’s releases comes off like some weird amalgamation of muzak, Kraftwerk, primitive video game MIDIs, and the background music used in high school science education films from the 70s. The description is strange, but even stranger is the fact that despite the seemingly outdated simplicity of the sound as a whole, Start a People sounds remarkably crisp and fresh.

While this album may indeed be called Start a People, it seems the general theme is as much about death as it is life. Based on the tone of the songs themselves, it could be argued that thematically, this disc could represent an endless cycle of various takes on rebirth, regeneration, and/or reincarnation. Most of the disc is instrumental, and the few vocals that occur on the disc are very ambiently distorted. Still, the lyrics themselves are like primitively ambitious, poetically-minded thoughts on life that seem to center on the concepts of sunrise and sunset (i.e.: “The sun came up late / Tomorrow never came” from “Hazy Field People,” “Sunshine came late today / Sundown came late today / When we die, we go away” from “Vietcaterpillar,” or “There is death and love and awful things / The sunlight takes away all that it brings” from “Seeeds” [sic]).

Black Moth Super Rainbow is quite sensible about its approach to such an entangling lyrical vibe, though, as keeping both the music and the lyrics so incredibly simple (yet intriguingly layered) prevents the material from seeming heavy-handed. There’s nothing worse than ham-handedly bludgeoning a listener into thinking about topics best approached out of the realm of curiosity, and not forced necessity. This is the real genius to Black Moth Super Rainbow – the fact that every word and every note on Start a People is handled with a delicate, childlike demeanor that turns this set of recordings into something far greater than the sum of its meager parts.

The band has been dropping releases prolifically for quite some time now (before the Black Moth Super Rainbow name, this project had material released under the name Satanstompingcaterpillars), each with its own marvelous little musical glow about it. Various tracks appear on multiple releases in different forms (Start a People’s “Vietcaterpillar” and “I Think it is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too” also appeared on the band’s Falling Through a Field disc), which makes it seem that these releases could all tie together in one big brain orgasm of a ‘plotline’ of sorts somehow. The problem with acknowledging such things is that it makes Black Moth Super Rainbow’s music sound brainy and difficult, when in all honesty, the band’s material manages to be quite carefree, upbeat and fun despite its thematic overtones.

The best possible way to even consider explaining Start a People for the masses? How’s this – imagine giving DJ Shadow an Amiga, an old school Casio, and an old 808 synth/drum machine and telling him to create a soundtrack to life and the reasoning behind human existence. Admittedly, Black Moth Super Rainbow’s style is something more cult audience-oriented than anything else, and it’s hard to imagine that any other artists are treading ground anywhere near this. Hell, it really doesn’t matter anyways – because if anyone was, it sure as hell couldn’t be as good as this.

The Adored – S/T EP

The Adored is Los Angeles’ latest secret. The band has shared bills with Supergrass and with The Futureheads, and the guys played a private party hosted by Interpol. LA Weekly nominated the band for “Best Dance Artist” of 2004, and Buzzcocks frontman, Pete Shelley, is such a fan that he appears as a guest vocalist on this debut EP. Not a bad start for four guys who’ve barely toured outside of their native California.

The band’s five-song EP takes the danceable energy of British pop, the apathetic attitude of 70s punk, and the eye makeup of new-wave and California-izes it. The result sounds like The Buzzcocks meets the Circle Jerks. Androgynous pretty boys with a love for everything British (even the name is borrowed from a Stone Roses song), the ambiguity is flaunted in a track called “She’s a Boy,” “She’s a boy / girl problems have become history / She’s a boy / my problems, your problems.”

The Adored doesn’t sound like your average LA band; it sounds like an above-average British band. Maybe that’s not an entirely original way to go, but then again everyone rips everyone else off. So as long as these guys are making good music, I can accept the fact that these songs would have easily fit on a record by The Undertones or Blur.

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