Cellar Steps – Shakedown

Fans of spacey pop songs and experimental indie rock rejoice, because The Fatales finally have some competition. Cellar Steps are a fresh, new band with members that are anything but new to the music world – and their impressive histories definitely contribute to how well developed their sound is already. Psychedelic, catchy, and unquestionably clever, Cellar Steps’ dusky tunes are played with a certain confidence and bravado that so many new bands lack. On top of that, they happen to be just completely likable dudes.

“Shakedown” is cool. That is exactly what it is – no big words that critics use to sound effortlessly genius can describe this song better than “cool” can. It is just cool in every sense of the word. It’s a chilled-out, mellowed-out, rocked-out trip that astronauts and sci-fi nerds can enjoy along with mundane earth dwellers like us. Turn the lights down, the volume up, chill out, and let the twilight guitars and celestial sounds of Cellar Steps be your own personal Hubble.

According to their website, Cellar Steps will have their first full-length release, Strange Vacation, available in December 2005. Mark your calendars. Mark them. It doesn’t matter if that seems far off, when December rolls around, their album should be headlining your list of desired albums. Right now they’re setting the underground rock spots in Chicago on fire with their live shows, and I see no reason why they won’t set the underground rock world on fire when this album debuts.

People for Audio – And This Will Be Our Homecoming

It was only a week ago that I began to wonder why the world of post-rock didn’t have more utilization of the ridiculously versatile sound of a simple piano… and then, in a moment of sheer chance, I stumbled upon People for Audio. Now, don’t be immediately turned off by the words “post-rock”. Yes, People for Audio is a post-rock band that plays long, massive songs akin to Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and – wait, don’t hit the back button, really. You’d be missing out on an instrumental rock group that’s actually worth your time.

The first thing that should be mentioned about “And This Will Be Our Homecoming” is that this is a sprawling, 17-minute song that’s easy to get lost in – and I mean that in the most utterly enjoyable of ways. Like almost every other instrumental epic out there, this song doesn’t consist of choruses or verses; it’s a chain of vast soundscapes linked together with small interludes and shifts in mood. But unlike almost every other instrumental epic out there, inside these great sonic expanses are constantly listenable, tight little patterns and compositions. There are no sections of aimless, ambient noise or tiresome, unchanging sequences that serve no purpose but something to fast-forward through – in this song, there is always something happening, something ending, something on the rise, something exploding, or something crashing down.

The use of a basic, unmodified piano on “And This Will Be Our Homecoming” is not excessive or gimmicky – it’s used as a vital component in the little arrangements the band members craft throughout their dense, lengthy sessions. The fact that they successfully incorporate talented, lively songwriting and excellent use of something so simply original as the piano into a style of music that’s been rehashed and repackaged again and again shows that they have a gift that cannot be faked and a style that should not be ignored.

Alva Star – Escalator

Alva Star’s frontman, John Hermanson, set out to “unlearn everything he knew about songwriting and recording” when he began forging the album that is Escalator. I’m not sure what facets of his craft he actually unlearned, but apparently he retained a knack for putting together melodic songs that carry messages of self-doubt and cynicism about the intentions of others. Oh, and also some messages of doubt about the ways music gets produced and consumed these days.

Alva Star seems to be primarily a vehicle for Hermanson and his musings, relying on three others to round out the band and help him realize his vision. Certainly the songs on Escalator center around the lyrics, as it is a rare moment when there is no singing on these songs. You don’t get a lot of long instrumental passages. It’s a good thing, then, that Hermanson (and his bandmates) can sing well. The often downbeat songs benefit from the bandmembers’ winning vocal abilities.

So, in terms of the music, it’s hard to pin the band down. It’s not like the artists cover a bunch of different styles, and sonically it’s a pretty consistent record. At times it sounds like Americana without the country twang, but at times it has the feel of early Radiohead, before a lot of that band’s experimentation. This has a lot to do with the “rock” sound, a la The Bends, but also with the forlorn vocals. At other times I’ve thought that it had the feel of the quieter stuff on Failure’s Fantastic Planet or even Steely Dan and the Eagles, three bands that I wouldn’t guess have ever been put together like this. And, finally, I started thinking maybe Alva Star shares more with Pedro the Lion than anything else, owing to a similarity in their shared confessional-type lyrical style and in their simple-but-subtle approach to the music.

I guess that’s the long way of saying that Alva Star has somehow assimilated an eclectic mix of influences into a sound that, while consistently its own, feels familiar in many ways. The songs convey a maturity in composition and assuredness that isn’t always common in indie rock.

“Wouldn’t that be great / To get across / The things you feel / You must express / To tell the world / The way it is,” goes the title track “Escalator.” When these lyrics are understood in the context of a musician singing about the music business, you start to pick up on Hermanson’s disenchantment with the industry’s starmaker mentality. Escalators, after all, go up and down, as do the fortunes of many promising bands. “Comeback” follows up on the theme, with lyrics describing a performer’s fall from grace and his/her subsequent descent into obscurity in the face of the public’s fickle tastes. “Friends that you’ve lost or could care less” expresses a harsh but realistic sentiment about this theme, while “It all catches up to you sooner or later” and “Maybe no one waits for your comeback” cement the feeling.

“Cold Calculated” recalls Pedro the Lion’s expression of what it’s like to be able to say something in a song that’s hard to express directly to the people at which the song is directed. “Tornado Girl” and “The Messenger” turn up the rock quotient a little more than do the other tracks, and they’re both sad and lovely. “The Messenger,” for instance, features the lines “I thought you were with me / Thought we had it all worked out / You knew what I was about / You couldn’t do it without me. / You supplied a reason to care / A burden to bear / A beautiful complicated piece of machinery.” I’d love to have seen the lyrics for all of the songs printed in the liner notes. Instead, on the inside of the CD packaging, there’s ostensibly a newspaper article about the band, written by one Paige Turner (har har).

Taken as a whole, Elevator is both a simple and a complicated release. It’s hard to write an album like this without it coming across as either preachy (“here’s what wrong with music and people today”) or mopey (“woe is me”). Lyrics like “Curses on you all / I stab you in the back” (from the song “Today”) and “Sorry I’m so selfish / I don’t want to be that way” (from “Get Behind Me”) show that Hermanson doesn’t exempt himself from his own critical eye. In the later song, the repeated directive of “Get behind me” might mean “give me support,” or it might mean “get out of my way.” It works both ways, actually, because by the end of the album you realize that it’s a complex enough work support both readings. Not too many bands would have been able to pull this off.

Kings of Leon – Aha Shake Heartbreak

One band seems to have slipped through the cracks of rock’s second new wave, in which sympathetic reviews, sold-out tours, live records, and high-concentration poster campaigns throughout all of hipsterdom have become norm for bands like The Strokes, The White Stripes, and, more recently, The Killers. At some point during this period, The Kings of Leon, four sons of an evangelical preacher no less, arrived on the scene, slinging more grit than a chain gang and more sass than a Waffle House waitress. If the results of the 2004 presidential election are any indication, The Kings have been overlooked – the brothers Followill just may be the only band who could be equally well received at the county fair and the Hammerstein Ballroom.

Wrongly cast as a chicken-fried version The Strokes after 2003’s stellar Youth & Young Manhood, on their latest, Aha Shake Heartbreak, The Kings prove that they’re a band of significant depth and originality. “Taper Jean Girl,” still dark and Mic Jagger-riotous in it’s own right, is the only track that isn’t a significant departure from their last album. Broadening their musical reference points seems to be the task here. “Pistol of Fire” begins as a punk stomp worthy of The Buzzcocks and turns into a countrified blend of amped-up classic rock licks. “Milk,” subdued and full of tortured groans of “she’ll loan you her toothbrush, she’ll bartend your party,” reinvents itself halfway through the track, by way of delicate synths and a gentle strum-and-hum coda. The Kings take their sweet time on Aha, full of an certainty rarely seen on sophomore efforts. Caleb’s voice lingers behind the drums and gleeful guitars of “The Bucket”; it’s a conceit that buttresses Caleb’s elegiac cry of “Eighteen, balding, star.”

Similarly languid are the beginnings to “Soft,” but the song ends in The Kings’ characteristic revival-meeting rave ups. “I danced around your folk and soul,” Caleb sings. The lyric is both a reference to the song’s main character (“I used to see you every day”) and, presumably, a reference to The King’s sonic syncretism. Seemingly tired of the whole Red State/Blue State schism, The Kings decided to throw little out, and they end up sounding far less effete and more mature than their counterparts in New York. As references go, Aha’s got what other second new wavers don’t (everything from Joy Division, to Velvet Underground, to Aerosmith, to, yes, The Almans are visited on this album). Saints alive, for the brothers Followill, there’s room under the tent for all of God’s licks.

Coralie Clement – Bye Bye Beaute

You can tell Coralie Clément is sexy without ever seeing her photo. It’s not because she’s French or because she actually is quite beautiful (and she is). It’s that voice, that half-whispered, come-hither murmur that will make all men (straight or gay) drip in their jeans. When I first listened to Coralie’s newest, Bye Bye Beauté, damn! I immediately renewed my visa, donned a Parisian beret, trimmed my beard into a goatee, and booked the first flight to the City of Lights…only to later learn sweet Coralie is also a resident of that unforgiving bitch goddess, New York City. Damn you, Coralie! Why must you taunt me with your light-as-air voice and foreign eyes! Man, I need to get laid.

Regardless, Clément’s latest record is a soothing balm for these troubled times of international disunity: 12 tracks of sofa-lounging vocals and subdued arrangements that hearken Bebel Gilberto as much as they do Blonde Redhead. Even though our respective countries may currently be involved in an international “I’m not talking to you” impasse, it doesn’t mean us Americans can’t enjoy a breathy female vocalist from across the pond. Well, if that’s so wrong, than I don’t want to be right…even though I’m a leftist. Anyway, the music, please maestro!

Bye Bye Beauté opens with the brooding “Indécise,” all staggered drumming and after-midnight bass plucks. Coralie’s vaporous voice rides an absinthe wave of Mariachi trumpets and fluctuating sound manipulations. “Avec ou sans moi” hooks you with its adolescent flippantness and groovy bar stomp. You can almost see Coralie smiling coyly in the light of lifted lighters. Her singing is both pissed and sexy, and the end-track clapping and whistles nicely segues into “Un beau jour pour mourir,” where Coralie receives assistance from male backing vocals and arm-lifting trumpet blasts. “Kids” treads back into bar band territory, or maybe it’s the haunting, mid-90s taint that makes the song sound like it could have been sung on a very special “Party of Five.” Careful, Coralie. The fate of diplomacy rests in your hands.

By the time “Ta révérence” rolls around, it is clear that the album is lacking in surprises. While all 12 songs merge into one another seamlessly, it still grows a touch wearisome toward the finale. Very little variation in arrangement (aside from the occasional tape manipulation or electronic tweakage) makes for a lack in dynamics that Coralie all but rescues with her beatific vocals. The title track, however, is a rumbling homage to the Velvet Underground. Coralie drifts in and out of the mix with echoing vocal peeps and whispers, and at the two minute mark, the guitar and drums pick up speed as if the ghost of Lou Reed were hot on their tail, brandishing a leather whip and wearing a shit-eating grin. What? Lou Reed isn’t dead? Well, I’ll be a Venus in furs…

In the end, Bye Bye Beauté is an immensely satisfying listen that tends to wear on the ear ever so slightly. Coralie’s music puts you directly into a sunlit French café, full of tinkling laughter and cappuccinos on the house. And through the haze of Gauloise smoke, you can make out a pretty brunette in a leather coat, cooing into an antique microphone. And if you’re lucky, she’ll look at you through a tangle of hair and grin straight into your bitter American heart. If only that were enough.

The Postal Service – We Will Become Silhouettes EP

Somehow, the Postal Service experience has eluded me to this point. That’s surprising, seeing as how I have most Death Cab for Cutie albums and enjoy them considerably, but the side project of Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello, for all its upbeat electro-pop goodness, just passed me by. But it stuck with others, making this the second best-selling band on Sub Pop (to Nirvana) and putting the band’s songs in television shows and mall clothing stores.

There’s no denying that the music is good, as evidenced by the fact that the band’s last full-length, Give Up came out in late 2003 and the buzz has barely died down. CD singles such as this one, featuring the Give Up track “We Will Become Silhouettes,” usually preceded or immediately follow an album’s release, but this one seems to be a reinforcement, a way to keep the band in the public eye. And why not? The song may not have been the first single, but it’s deservingly worthy of focus.

Here you have the catchy “We Will Become Silhouettes” from Give Up as well as a Matthew Dear remix of the song. The track is already driven by Tamborello’s electronic beat and smooth atmospherics, and Gibbard gives it a sweet and melancholy feel, but remixing such songs seems almost redundant. Dear, surprisingly, adds some acoustic guitar not heard in the original, and he seemingly strips the song down instead of layering on unneeded beats and electronics (an approach for which he should be applauded).

Also included here are the B-side “Be Still My Heart” and another remix, this time of “Nothing Better” as reworked by Styrofoam. The former is as good as any song on Give Up, I feel, with the kind of simple sweetness that Gibbard’s songwriting always imparts. And the chorus gets more upbeat and pristine, bringing the beats up a little more and adding female vocals to Gibbard’s for a truly memorable moment. Only Styrofoam’s remix seems unimportant here; it’s a good enough song, but the beats and studio knob-wrangling seem enough like the Postal Service’s own style that it could be. It does demonstrate how appropriate Matthew Dear’s approach to the title track was, however.

Perhaps my favorite part of this release is the artwork, an absolutely perfect creation by Kozyndan (www.kozyndan.com), a duo of artists who managed to create a wonderful sad winter scene for this release (even if it’s marred by Sub Pop sneaking its logo into the scene on the back cover). The artwork is a little something special for those completists who would seek this out anyway for the B-side and remixes.

The Mountain Goats – We Shall All Be Healed

Conviction can count for a lot. It’s easy to believe any statement that is said with enough conviction, even if there is no empiric evidence to support it. And there has arguably been no musician that has blurred the line between truth and fiction as finely as John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. Even though he has adamantly denied being the “I” of his ardent communiqués, the frenzied strumming of his acoustic guitar and the desperate urgency in his voice have often led us to believe otherwise; at times, it sounded as if he was addressing our joys and failures, effectively distorting the distinction between listener, narrator, and writer.

So we followed Darnielle to the farthest reaches of the globe, tracing his footsteps to locales as far-flung as Entebbe, Uganda to tiny townships as sweetly mundane as Galesburg, Illinois. We watched his literate and neurotic narrators, swathed in mythological allusions, collapse under the weight of their own fears and insecurities. We bore witness to a couple too intoxicated to realize that their love had neither the strength nor the will to die properly. And now, after 10 years of passionate and frenetic sermons touching on everything from Golden Boy peanuts to desperate love, the protagonists of his ardent flash-fiction narratives delicately balanced on that fine line between truth and conviction, our Man in the Field presents us with a set of songs that are – GASP! – admittedly autobiographical.

But 2004’s We Shall All Be Healed presents more than a turn in the lyrical – it also marks a turn in the musical, with longtime friends Peter Hughes, Franklin Bruno, Christopher McGuire, and John Vanderslice actively joining the fray. Of course, this is not the first Mountain Goats album to feature either collaborators or full studio production; however, it is the first that manages to truly capture the Mountain Goats as an entity that can exist outside the static tape hiss and immediacy that marked Darnielle’s most memorable releases. The production – helmed by Vanderslice – is lush yet sparse, adding an extra textural dimension to the songs without intruding on Darnielle’s carefully economic songwriting. And more importantly, Vanderslice knows that Darnielle’s acoustic guitar is more than just melodic accompaniment; it is a ragged and abrasive instrument with its own personality, as essential as Darnielle’s words in defining the sordid characters that populate the songs’ desolate, trash-filled settings.

However, the production takes a secondary role to the lyrics. And Darnielle, in presenting a set of songs culled from a shaky life filled with sober regrets and tarnished friendships, is just as affecting as ever; even if we cannot identify with the tweakers and the victims presented in these songs, we are still moved by the act of a man exorcising demons from his past.

The shattering glass and strangely organic squeals of opening track “Slow West Vultures” sets an oddly expectant tone, before bursting into the upbeat, sunny pop of “Palmcorder Yajna.” However, this tale of shared depravity and camaderie soon turns ominous when Darnielle, accompanied by a single insistent piano key, sings “If anybody comes into our room while we’re asleep / I hope they incinerate everybody in it.” The conflicting theme of friendship, despair, and paranoia is furthered in the bouncy rhythm and undulating synths of “Letter From Belgium,” where Darnielle and his friends are “chewing their tongues off / waiting for the fever to break,” worrying “that the people next door / might close in like a wolf pack / should [they] make one small mistake.” Regret is another theme that recurs throughout the songs, best exemplified in the anthemic “The Young Thousands” and the vitriolic “Home Again Garden Grove.” In the former, Darnielle sings about a “closet full of almost-pristine video tape / documenting sordid little scenes in living color,” accompanied by his battered acoustic and a chorus composed of his own distorted voice; in the latter, he conjures grand plans composed of violent imagery lost to the pragmatism inherent in maturity, all the while angrily beating on his guitar like a man possessed.

The quieter moments on the record are just as grand and rich in meaning: “Mole” has a weary Darnielle addressing a friend chained to a hospital bed, both denied “information” in place of “medication”; the jazzy “Cotton” is a gentle ode to the people “who tell their families that they’re sorry / for things they can’t and won’t be sorry for,” imploring the listener to “let ‘em all go.” However, the most poignant moment is perhaps in “Your Belgian Things,” where, while detailing the removal of a friend’s belongings by sinister men in biohazard suits, our normally verbose storyteller falters, plaintively intoning “I guess / I guess / but Jesus, what a mess” over a backdrop consisting of a delicate guitar and warm piano chords.

The album ends appropriately enough with a song titled “The Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of,” where our narrator sings triumphantly of his victory over the “dark messengers” that seek to tempt him. And by the end of the song, we feel as if we are holding a live document of that very struggle. Aurally and lyrically, We Shall All Be Healed is nothing less than a tangible record of a man wresting the turmoil from his history, exposing these ghosts to the sunlight in an effort to reconcile his past with his present. This is a revelatory album for the Mountain Goats and the listeners; both Darnielle and the audience find new strength in his open vulnerability. And while we might miss the tape-grind and homemade charm of his early ultra lo-fi work, his conviction and ardor is still present; if anything, they resonate with us more emphatically as his past, with its highs and lows, becomes ours.

The Mass – City of Dis

This is one of those CDs you pop into the stereo, sit back, and think to yourself: “What the hell is going on?” Much like other Crucial Blast artists (see Genghis Tron), The Mass fusees together several different sounds that are seemingly polar opposites, but the band makes it work, and makes it work well.

I suppose you could call City of Dis mathy, no-wave-influenced post-punk mixed with splashes of thrash and grindcore, featuring prominent use of the saxophone. Genre-blending is becoming more and more popular, but doesn’t this seem just a little bit ridiculous? Yeah. But do these guys pull it off? You bet.

Start with a base of Sweep the Leg Johnny-style math rhythms, add the start/stop insanity of Dillinger Escape Plan, some jazzy tempo shifts, and a few Slayer-esque thrash riffs here and there and you get the idea of what this sounds like musically. The vocals are for the most part strained yells and burly grunts, but they also throw some death-like growls and other aggressive vocal styles throughout.

The songs themselves all follow the same general formula, but they have their own special variations. Usually they start out with a few minutes of bizzarre, mathy hardcore and then the vocals usually cut out and the saxophone takes over, playing sax-lead acid-jazz-freak-metal. It is outlandish and kind of freaky, but executed immaculately.

If Sweep the Leg Johnny, Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Mr. Bungle, and the Dillinger Escape Plan had an orgy while eating sheets upon sheets of acid, The Mass would be the dirty, stinky mess left on the sheets. Truly too eccentric to be explained properly, you must listen to this a few times to wrap your head around it. Easily the most intriguing release thus far in 2005.

Mark Mulcahy – In Pursuit of Your Happiness

Clearly expounding the theory that a long-lasting musical career, albeit a commercially unsuccessful one, relies a lot more on feeling rather than surface presentation, Mark Mulcahy is undoubtedly one stubborn anti-visionary. With his early-80s to late-90s years spent fronting much-maligned (and painfully unlucky) folk-rockers Miracle Legion, Mulcahy clearly had no intention of following a linear career path when he released his much-acclaimed solo debut Fathering around 1998. Since then, live shows have been sporadic in number and quality, veering from the snooze-inducing to the sublime. Gaps between releases have grown longer due to a studio work rate that would shame a major label rock behemoth, with 2001’s sophomore Smile Sunset taking exactly a year to record. Now comes Mulcahy’s long-overdue third album, In Pursuit of Your Happiness, adorned with a front cover that puts the sleeve-designing trade into disrepute. Evidently Mulcahy is a man steadfastly set on hiding his considerable light under a bushel. But if you can make it past the foggy façade you’re in for a real treat here.

Building further on the ensemble-playing that made Smile Sunset a much more rewarding affair than the stark, somewhat underdeveloped minimalism of Fathering, this is Mulcahy finally valuing his musical ideas as much as his vocal and lyrical gifts. It certainly helps also having J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), Joey Santiago (Pixies), and Smile Sunset drummer Pasquale D’Albis amongst the throng to give these songs some eclectic wings.

The opening title-track makes for a swooning introduction with Mulcahy’s warm towering tones set simply set against an electric accordion with almost theatrical poise. The soaring “I Have Patience” follows a little later, fusing a Miracle Legion-like jangle to the glide of Bowie’s “Heroes.” The gentle sway of the cello and piano-led “Be Sure” puts a light classical edge to the fore. The sparse winsome “A World Away From This One” echoes the better moments from Fathering, perhaps even the mighty “Hey Self Defeater.” Elsewhere “A Smack on the Lips” slips in a pretence-free jazz swing, the peppy “Propstar” delivers a dollop of Big Star-like guitar-pop bliss, and the closing “He Vanished” ebbs the record out on a soul-tinged slow tide.

Beneath all this stylistic expansion percolates the comforting wordplay of someone eternally philosophical about life’s curveballs and painfully modest of his own abilities. Mulcahy’s lyrics paint an idealistic picture of isolationistic bliss, where love is always sought but attention is best avoided. He’s “a lonely macaroon in your biscuit head,” the man keen to remind us that “it’s okay to not know everything,” and someone who believes “nothing but a silver medal will do.” Naturally he’s undervaluing himself again, because In Pursuit of Your Happiness has so many golden, and even diamond-encrusted, moments that the jewellery industry might consider stocking it in glass cabinets. Make sure you grab a copy before they do, because records this good are a seriously rare and precious commodity.

Brian Michael Roff – In the Analog Woods EP

It’s refreshing, halfway through the first decade of the 2000s, to know that computers, electronics, and a love of the digital age have not completely overcome our sensibilities. Rebelling almost without trying, there’s always been a slate of folk artists who approach music the way it’s been done for hundreds of years: with simple instruments and voice. We’ve heard so much rock – plugged in and loud – and experimental electronic noise that to go back to albums such as Brian Michael Roff’s In the Analog Woods seems quaint.

It’s almost like you’re in those analog woods with Roff, sitting across from a camp fire while he plays you his tunes. Roff is a subtle songwriter, willing to embrace simplicity for sincerity’s sake. On this EP, Roff set himself rules some basic rules: use only his 4-track and use only banjo, guitar, accordion, and vocals. The result is quiet and light folk-influenced songs.

The banjo lends a kind of down-home sensibility to the simple “The Never-ending Cause of Everything,” as does the very simple accordion playing. Better is his quiet singer/songwriter numbers, like the softly sweet “Emergency” and the heartfelt “The New Me,” which adds Roff’s own backing vocals as one of his four tracks. Roff’s voice breaks a little on “Rocks and Minerals,” probably the best track and the one that shows off his songwriting abilities to its fullest. The accordion is a better accompaniment on “In and Of Itself,” and banjo is a pretty backing to the acoustic guitar of “Make it a Dime.”

Roff is the kind of singer/songwriter who embraces the past, and you can hear long decades of singer/songwriters that came before him in these songs. There’s little new ground to be broken in the genre, but that doesn’t take the welcome sensibility out of these six tracks. In the Analog Woods is a welcome album, quiet and simple and pleasantly analog, almost the anti-2005 album. Try turning this one up loud.

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