Various Artists – Take Penacilin Now

Reviewing compilations in general is a fairly difficult task. When it contains every artist, past and present, that a label has ever put out it becomes increasingly more difficult. So lets go track by track, shall we?

Swallowing Shit – chaotic, noisy grindcore
Warsawpack – angry political spoken word/hip-hop a la Zach De La Rocha
Clann Zu – strange, ambient-ish rock
Bakunin’s Bum – minimal, ambient electronics with a political sample layed over the top
Consolidated – melodic, socially conscious rock with semi-rapped vocals
Submission Hold – atypical rock with foreign language female vocals (previously unreleased)
Greg MacPherson Band – poorly executed southernish garagey rock (previously unreleased)
Propagandhi – poppy melodic punk (exclusive track)
Mico – spacey, atmospheric rock with somewhat emo-ish vocals (previously unreleased)
Randy – energetic garage punk (previously unreleased)
… But Alive – foreign language hardcore/punk
I Spy – emotional punk/hardcore
GFK – metallic hardcore with brutal, burly vocals
Malefaction – violent grind/hardcore/punk
Che: Chapter 127 – weird female fronted rock (yes that is their band name)
Rhythm Activism – minimal guitar and whispered spoken word (previously unreleased)
Hiretsukan – melodic hardcore with vicious screaming vocals (previously unreleased)
The (International) Noise Conspiracy – energetic and slightly heavy garage rock
The Weakerthans – punk (previously unreleased)

So uhh… there you have it. Extremely random and mostly crappy. I’m not sure why anyone would want this.

Fordirelifesake – A Daydream Disaster

Interesting… Back when it was ok for underground music fans to like emocore, these guys sucked. So now, after the sound has been butchered to death, rehashed, and rehashed, and rehashed, and rehashed until it resulted in the abomination known as Hawthorne Heights, Thorp is releasing an odds-and-ends collection by the band. And these guys still suck.

Forthosenotfamiliar (funny, eh?), Fordirelifesake tried to simultaneously rip off the sounds of older Poison the Well, Zao, and any number of lame emocore bands. Take a base of ultra-melodic leads, throw in some chunky mosh riffs, Zao-esque lizard vocals, and a slight metallic lean, and you get the basic idea.

Although I feel that two paragraphs is already giving Fordirelifesake too much credit, here goes. This genre is dead. When the genre was briefly “alive,” these guys were still hack-jobs. The only reason anyone should buy this is if they are diehard fans, as it does collect most of their non-album material. Other than that, no way.

Cordova – Lie Until it Becomes the Truth EP

First off, Cordova ain’t gettin’ any love for their artwork. To be blunt, the stuff is ugly – red and white minimalism based around a mouth with hooker-red lipstick, it’s not a very attractive rendition of the female body, even if they do have an artfully photographed nude in the booklet art (nothing showing). Thankfully, the music is much, much better. Stuck in a groove between post-hardcore frenzy, dream-pop mystery, and rock ’n roll charge, this album is the aural equivalent of a ball of fire. It’s a thunderous entry into a scene that needs some help.

At its heart, this is indie rock. There’s an almost anal-retentive attention to detail in these songs that promote them way above the charging rock-and-roll tempos they set for themselves. The sound is thick, too; these two guitars make a lot more full sound than most two-guitar bands know how to make. It’s all because the band doesn’t use the guitars to destroy, like hardcore bands and metal bands and even some indie bands do. When the guitars ratchet up to an abusive clamor on “Riot in Suburbia,” there’s a very specific point – they want to contrast against the dreamy outro that follows, making the outro seem even more beautiful.

But back to the complexity of this entire effort; this thing is woven like a tapestry. On “The Radio Has Got No Soul,” the pieces of the sound don’t just come together, they feel as if they were born together. The sound is seamless; there is not one off note, not one off-tempo moment. The transitions are flawless, as they segue liberally between rock and dreamy indie-rock (“Atomic Lipstick”) and nearly hardcore and dreamy-indie rock (“Riot in Suburbia”).

All of these songs are brilliant in the fact that none of them encounters a single cliché of indie rock. Never once. Each of these songs is a brilliantly written, perfectly performed piece of indie rock. The best example of the sound is the aforementioned “Riot in Suburbia,” which gets my vote for best song of the year (yes, the year, I’m serious about this). It starts out with a dreamy guitar/bass interaction with a pulsing, Appleseed Cast-esque vibe. The vocals come in, which are a shoegazer’s dream: a little bit breathy, a little bit pulled back in the mix, cooing, and just generally beautiful. The guys take little digressions into rock, then back to dreamy, then to a forlorn solo guitar melody before ratcheting up the intensity for a rocking-out section complete with brilliant howling vocals. Upping the ante, they bring in a backing chorus, doubling the lead vocal line, creating a spine-chilling moment before charging into the nearly hardcore guitar segment I talked about earlier. The drums go nuts in this section, which is equally spinetingling. Then back to the dreamy main line, and out.

It’s beautiful, it’s heavy, it rocks, it emotes, it’s all in under four minutes, and it’s a huge middle finger to the verse/chorus/verse pattern that music has fallen into. You could play it on the radio (it fits in the timeslot) if you could get past the no-chorus issue. And that’s the general message that Cordova is sending here: forget modern music. It’s gone, and we’re here. Listen to us instead. And I say go with their logic.

Lie Until it Becomes the Truth is the type of album that makes it all worth it. Writers like I sometimes sit through a stack of CDs without ever seeing something worthwhile, but this album is one that makes all that other crap we have to sit through absolutely negligible. This is a band that other artists will listen to, then sit back and say, “Why can’t we be this good?” Really though. Why can’t everyone be this good? The world would be an awesome place. If you like indie music, you’ll like Cordova. I promise you.

Bellafea – Split 7"

One of the advantages of reviewing split 7” records is that there’s always a ‘saving grace’ possibility – i.e., if one band’s music sucks hard, the other band could possibly be awesome enough to change the gravitational pull of the universe, thus saving the existence of the vinyl. One of the disadvantages of 7” records is that, sometimes, both bands just don’t bring anything exciting to listen to. That disadvantage often makes indie music reviewers very sad pandas.

Both bands represented on this split 7” are of the drum-and-guitar variety. The A-side, “I Send Jolly to Raleigh,” finds Des Ark bringing a rather caustic mashup of art rock and dance punk. Spurts of the female vocals sound ‘ghastly’ – the desired affect seems to be ‘haunting,’ but the end result is basically abrasive caterwauling with traces of an echo-effect added on. The segmented rhythms are faux-jagged and mathy, and they do nothing at all to save the track.

The B-side, Bellafea’s “Stranger,” fares better than its counterpart, though not much. The opening strains sound like Castlevania, as droning atmospheric noises float through the track’s ominous opening. When the drums roll in, the track doesn’t quite pick up like it should, and as such, the slightly PJ Harvey-esque female vocals sound a bit too much like someone pouting in a graveyard on a spooky night. The band doesn’t quit, though, and the guitar and drums squeeze in a decent coda before the track peters out. The music itself is passable in pieces, but the vocals are grating and the song feels directionless.

This split 7” is the musical equivalent of castor oil; listening to it isn’t painful or anything, but seconds after taking it in, the best thing to do is to quickly wash the taste out by listening to something more pleasant.

Tiger Saw – Sing!

I was ready to fall in love with Tiger Saw. The cover of the group’s third record, Sing!, was my introduction, and it certainly made a good first impression on me. How could I not fall for birds perched on flower-sprouting cameras against the backdrop of a pastel-purple sunset? It looked as cute as a twee-pop album cover only less annoying. It stood out among the promos in my pile, at least. When I popped the CD in my disc-changer, I had high hopes for 40 minutes of overly precious, sensitive-guy indie pop. Sing! met my surface expectations almost perfectly. Unfortunately, the record’s charming chamber-pop arrangements proved a thin veneer for its plodding slow-core style of indie rock. Upon repeated listens, the beautiful façade struggled to obscure the bland and underdeveloped compositions within.

Since its inception in 1999, Newburyport, Massachusetts-based Tiger Saw has had a revolving-door cast of characters. Though founding member and singer/songwriter Dylan Metrano may be the backbone of the group, Tiger Saw has the sound of a true musical collective. Indeed, the defining motif heard throughout Sing! is the repeated use of a makeshift choir on a number of uplifting refrains that fill the record and justify its title. The opening title track is the best and most representative example of the technique. Sounding like it could have been performed by the Polyphonic Spree, it’s not quite as euphoric (or as cultish and creepy) as “Light and Day,” but one could certainly envision small crowds of dumb-faced saps singing along to it hand in hand or arm in arm.

With its purring strings and warm chorus, “Sing!” marks an auspicious beginning. Unfortunately, when its three minutes and 44 seconds are finished, there’s nowhere for the record to go but downward. To be fair, it’s not exactly a straight shoot down – Tiger Saw never loses its quaintness. The rest of the album is full of subtle ditties and pretty arrangements. Though it can be cloying at times, it’s too slow and deliberate to sound completely shallow. The problem is that, despite boasting plenty of choir-backed sing-alongs, Sing! is almost completely devoid of memorable hooks. As a result, Sing! quickly becomes a monotonous listen. The irony: the insistent use of a choir forces the record’s mediocre melodies down listeners’ ears. There they hover about the listener’s eardrum but never quite stick.

Though it magnifies its own greatest weakness, Sing! is still a mildly effective record. It’s almost unfailingly innocuous (if listeners are willing to pardon the mind-boggling repetition of the line “Over and over and over and over” on “The Sun” and some off-key, wavering vocals on “For Molly”) and more than occasionally pleasant, even heartfelt. As indie pop’s equivalent of elevator music, it’s almost first rate. Still, here’s hoping that there’ll be better songs to sing the next time Metrano and his compatriots bring back the choir.

Hanin Elias – Future Noir

Hanin Elias is a cornerstone of the modern goth/electronic scene, as well as one of its better-known figures. This is part of the reason why her third solo album is such a disappointment – if this is the best that the genre has to offer, it is surprising that so many people still invest themselves in this music.

As part of the German collective Atari Teenage Riot, Elias provided a sultry counterpart to Alec Empire’s fiercely confrontational persona, helping to propel the band to the forefront of the scene that sprung up around their Digital Hardcore imprint. Their brand of futurist electronic music blended the passion and anger of punk with the heaviness of industrial, sounding not unlike a far-more gritty and fucked-up Prodigy. After the band’s demise following the collapse of their major label home, Grand Royal, Empire shifted his focus to his less-accessible ambient/techno hybrids, leaving Elias on her own.

Future Noir sees Elias retain the political fury of her Atari Teenage Riot days, primarily her pronounced feminist streak. Unfortunately, while her previous band was always close to the forefront of the experimental rock/electronic scene, her solo work is a much more pedestrian attempt at crafting dark dance-rock anthems, and is ultimately handicapped by her limited abilities to carry these songs on the strength of her vocals and personality alone. While her voice is darkly seductive, over the course of these 13 songs she stays confined to a very limited palette of emotional expression and melodies, primarily focused on her disconnected, supposedly futuristic posing. While her vocals were an integral aspect of ATR’s sonic assault, here she is required to carry songs that don’t carry much in the way of bite.

In Arcadia – If it Bleeds, We Can Kill It

Man, I hate overachievers. I say that with baited tongue, cause a lot of people consider me one of “those types,” but seriously. When there’s that one guy who tries everything and mostly succeeds at all of it, that hacks me off. Leave some space for the other guys, why don’t you? And so when an overachiever finds something that he utterly tanks at, everyone’s attention is diverted to that instead of the rest of the things that he’s great at. Ha.

Well, In Arcadia’s members are the overachievers of the music scene. By the sixth song on this album, these guys have displayed their chops in playing straight-up hardcore, punk-core, post-hardcore, pensive indie rock, and downtrodden, depressed indie rock. The amazing part is that they excel at most of it – the hardcore is blistering, the post-hardcore churns with an otherworldly passion, the pensive indie rock is genuinely creative, and the beautiful, downtrodden indie rock of “Fathom the Brig’uns” is simply instrumental perfection (yeah, they do kick in the post-hardcore at 2:00, but that’s pretty much perfect too). This band has chops out the wazoo, and they use them in every possible configuration they can think of.

Opener “Olson Twins Pornography” starts out with a brutal hardcore section before seguing into…punk-core? You bet. And while the sung vocals leave something to be desired (namely, melodies that don’t sound like old-school Brand New), the instruments infuse enough creativity into the song to manage to keep me listening. That’s the only real downfall on this album: the sung vocals. They just never achieve the emotional punch and clarity that the screamed vocals and the instruments capture. They come close on “Super Teeth,” but everywhere the vocals are a little bit cringe-inducing.

Other than the sung vocals, “Super Teeth” is another great example of the band’s attention-deficit sound. It starts out with a mega-fuzzed out indie-rock guitar line before dropping down to some seriously pensive indie rock, complete with intense drumming/pretty guitar contrast. Then the band ratchets up the indie rock again for a long, really cool outro.

“Megadeth Fiero” mashes a punk riff and an indie riff together for the lead riff, and “There’s No Crying in Baseball” unleashes some tasty hardcore bits on us. The Appleseed Cast would’ve loved to have written the intro to “Bitch, You Ain’t Got No Old Navy Jacket,” before In Arcadia turns the song into a post-hardcore barn-burner.

As for individual instruments, drummer Blake Thomas is to be highly commended; in the world of hardcore/post-hardcore, it’s extremely easy to ruin the sound by overpowering. He never overpowers the sound, but is always spot on with the insane beats (“Bitch, You Ain’t Got…”). He never abuses loudness, and he has aesthetics firmly in his pocket. If this CD is any indication of his prowess, I would not hesitate in declaring him one of the best drummers in indie rock today, not only because of his immense technical prowess (I swear, some of his 16th-note stuff is madness) but because he knows how to move a song forward without overshadowing the other work in a song. Anyone who can willingly take a backseat when they have that much talent to offer is simply incredible. Here’s to Blake Thomas.

So there you have it. If you like post-hardcore/hardcore/punk-core/indie rock, In Arcadia is your band. These guys have fused all these genres together into one huge quilt of awesomeness entitled If it Bleeds, We Can Kill It. Their work isn’t seamless yet, but with another album or two, these guys will be untouchable in the post-hardcore scene. Maybe I’m behind the curve in proclaiming In Arcadia, or maybe I’m ahead, but nevertheless, any band that can throw a piano into a post-hardcore album (“Domino, Motherfucker”) and not come off as overly sentimental is pretty ridiculously good.

Turin Brakes – Jack in a Box

In Philly, WXPN is the mighty Adult Alternative behemoth that has convinced a thousand exurban Volvo-pilots that they are somehow “with it.” Under the aegis of the University of Pennsylvania, it broadcasts in impeccable fidelity over a large area, has its own state-of-the-art concert hall, and is home to the widely syndicated show World Café Live. All of its good intentions aside, WXPN is terribly boring, featuring artists like Lucinda Williams, John Hiatt, and Dar Williams on its claustrophobically “tasteful” roster, artists who seem to appropriate enough of an unimpeachable rootsiness and adult lyrical sensibility to become terminally respectable – and fatally unexciting.

Sure, those latter-day Elvis Costello songs may provide the soundtrack for certain unattainable mothers in law as they contort their lithe, yoga-toned bodies in and around heavy furniture in an effort to remove dust only they can see, but WXPN’s anodyne playlist has also seduced too many people into believing that new Natalie Merchant is the same as new music.

London duo Turin Brakes has found itself a receptive home on the station, and initially, WXPN’s patronage was enough to sour me on the band. Looking back over the two previous releases, the music wasn’t strong enough to overcome this reluctance either, even had I given it a greater chance. While the songs has always been impressively melodic, they’ve seemed a bit like also-rans amid a glut of similarly expansive folkified rockers, such as Starsailor. And though that band’s namesake may be the elder Buckley (that would be Tim), Turin Brakes are at times uncomfortably reminiscent to his equally ill-fated offspring (that would be Jeff). These weren’t killing factors, though. Both 2001’s The Optimist and 2003’s Ether Song had lovely moments – especially the former – and Olly Knights’ honeyed voice is always a pleasure to listen to.

In a lifetime of rash judgments, my dismissal of Turin Brakes is one of the less damning, but it’s still nice to hear the new Jack in a Box change my mind. The songwriting is more consistent, the ballads are sweet, and they even manage to rock out convincingly in places. Featuring rolling arpeggios and Knights’ lovely pipes, the Nick Drake-ish “Building Wraps Around Me” is a fragrant delight of delicate English folk. And the folk feels more genuine on this record overall, “Above the Clouds” being another example of a quiet, affecting ballad benefiting from the just-right production.

That’s fine, but the biggest surprise may be these gentle Brits can turn out the harder-edged pop of “Red Moon” – allegedly inspired by Outkast’s “Hey Ya” of all things – and do a bangin’ job of it. And again, Olly’s voice sounds great as he takes on a pleading tone in the bouyant “Asleep With the Fireflies,” popping away like fellow Brit faves Supergrass.

All in all, this is a very impressive record, one that succeeds on just about every little tweak of the pop idiom it attempts. Its comfortable production and surfeit of friendly acoustic guitars may have tempted me to dismiss it as a self-consciously adult work, lightweight and devoid of true pop smarts, but it is anything but. As for WXPN… damn! – they’re actually playing the Clash right now. Alright, who else got semi-credible when I wasn’t looking?!

Kudzu Wish – En Route EP

Kudzu Wish was one of those bands that sounded great on album but somehow found a totally different realm in a live setting. The band plays a style of melodic yet ferocious pop-influenced punk… or punk-influenced pop, it’s hard to say. The guitars are fast yet possessing a just-barely restrained pop structure, and the vocals can be sweet and catchy one moment, spat out with ferocious intensity the next. Somehow, even at the band’s most intense moments, the whole thing is catchy, making you want to bounce and sing along more than take out someone’s girlfriend in moshing mayhem.

And as great as the music is, live the band is even more intense. When singer Adam Thorn leaps from the stage, risking life and limb, and shouts out his lyrics right in the giddy face of a front-row fan, you can’t help but appreciate this act. And the instrumentation never suffers. It’s pretty impressive, and that makes it all the more disappointing that the band called it quits in 2005 after releasing En Route.

En Route sees post-hardcore producer extraordinaire J Robbins taking over production, and he brings out a decidedly more melodic direction than on the band’s preceding release, the stunning Reverse Hurricane. “Do the Woo,” for example, starts off so slick, so catchy, even bringing in some playful backing “da da da” vocals, before it rips into the aggressive vocals about a minute in while maintaining the song’s more poppy precision.

Don’t get too comfortable, though, and think this is watered-down emo-pop. On “I Am Rocket,” the guitar licks come fast and strong, the vocals more spat out than poppy, but the catchy chorus is undeniably the song’s strongest moment. I hear Boy Sets Fire in its more poppy moments on the catchy yet intense “A Sound Mind,” which has some decidedly hardcore backing vocals and shouts. All of this is prologue for the rapid-fire rhythm and guitar riffs of the title track, which is incredibly strong yet still decidedly bouncy and catchy. “Afraid of the Bomb” finishes things – far too early – as the album begins. It starts light and poppy, then rips into political blasting and strong riffs behind sung/shouted vocals and – of all things – hand claps. This band certainly likes to throw in a little of everything.

I was lucky to see Kudzu Wish play my town, and there wasn’t a fan in the crowd who wasn’t completely sold by the band’s too-short but plenty-sweaty set. I just longed to see shows in the band’s hometown, where everyone knew the lyrics and shouted along with as much joy and intensity as I. Robbins brought out the best in Kudzu Wish, no doubt. The band also offers a retrospective release featuring some new songs and other odds and ends through its MySpace page. I’m going to seek one out. It’s rare the best live bands sound this good on CD, so I highly suggest you seek one out as well.

Picastro – Metal Cares

Toronto’s Picastro had a good thing going with its debut album, Red Your Blues on Pehr Records. After having seduced many reviewers with its ghostly atmospheric sound, leaving many people to stretch out of their seats looking for comparisons that range from wily indie babes to post-rock instrumentalists from countries where there still might be vikings, the band said goodbye and found its way to Polyvinyl, to release a viking of a album that attacks the senses in a Beowulf-ic fashion. Metal Cares poetically dances through track by track as much as a slow-core album can move by seeding a tone at the very beginning that is consistent through out the album.

If the idea and approach of Picastro is the seed to the album, singer and guitarist Elizabeth Hysen is the sunlight and water that makes this album flourish. Alternating between a worn/melancholic to a folky cross-over to indie rock voice, Hysen’s vocals, along with the many other instruments used herein, give the songs a morose personality that makes this album not one for when the buddies are over. Without even listening to the lyrics, but paying attention to the tone and the instrumentation, you might come to a conclusion that Picastro’s influences come from a dark area or two. I really think, though, these guys are pulling one over on us with this. If Hysen and the band were as morose as our first impressions with this album leaves us to believe, I wouldn’t be sitting here reviewing this album.

At some points in Metal Cares, the sound is just raw and downright scary. “Common Cold” is one of these songs. Hysen’s icey voice is as cold and helpless as waking up to finding an impenetrable layer of ice over your car in the morning. Ironically, most of the vocals on this song are “I’m on fire.” “Sharks” is probably my favorite song on the album, as all instruments seem to kick in gear. The viola, cello, drums, and guitar, along with Hysen’s vocals, give the song its high and lows for probably the most approachable song.

I cannot stand the Cat Power or Godspeed You! Black Emperor comparions, so do not be fooled. You might be better adept to compare Hysen to Patti Smith or PJ Harvey. Hysen certainly has the lyrical ability to keep every song interesting. Also, as much as it is tempting to focus this album on Hysen’s lyrics and vocal tendencies, the band is spot on and beautiful. I have given this album multiple listens and found myself coming back often just to listen to the instrumentation. On “Blonde Fires,” for example, the band sends off in so many different directions yet somehow manages mesh together, making this my second-favorite song on the album.

This album is dark and scary, and it may release – or better yet, wake up – your inner demons. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because I love bands like Picastro that are willing to push the senses out of our mental and musical comfort zone. Metal Cares is definitely worth the effort on all levels. Either you go into this one running all your mental cylinders or don’t bother. This is album is too good to do otherwise.

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