The Spinto Band – Oh Mandy

A warning is necessary before I can give you any information about The Spinto Band: the chorus of the featured song “Oh Mandy” has about a 95% chance of not leaving your head for a dangerously long period of time. Just giving you a heads-up.

The Spinto Band basically started about a decade ago after guitarist Nick Krill had a particularly inspirational romp through his late grandfather’s old possessions. This must have been a pretty magnificent romp, ‘cause the band that formed as a result of it is brimming with talent.

“Oh Mandy”’s flourishes of finely tuned acoustic instruments (is that a mandolin?) and ceaselessly driving beat bring to mind Wolf Parade songs like “Modern World,” and I think I’ll have to throw in a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah reference due to Sam Hughes’ high, affected vocals. But comparisons tend to retract from the band-in-comparison’s qualities, so don’t pass “Oh Mandy” off as a mash-up of the latest indie-pop trends – if a band can make a chorus that should have a disclaimer because of its catchiness, its no passing fad. The Spinto Band is a winner.

The Never Enders – Air Raid Romance

This shit all started with mid-90s alternative rockers Hum, Far, and the Deftones, all of whom hit upon their own unique – though vaguely similar – formulas for blending heavy-as-hell riffage with hauntingly beautiful vocal melodies and awesome hooks. New Jersey’s Cure-fixated rockers Thursday took the next logical step, mixing in some discordance and super-slick single-note picking and, most unfortunately, throwing in some brutal screaming with the clean emoting. On Thursday’s breakthrough album Full Collapse, the vocal approach was novel and occasionally compelling, if a little over the top.

However, nothing could prepare the all-ages underground for the avalanche of bands that attempted to replicate the sing/scream dynamic, to various degrees of shittiness. Now, several years down the line, bands are still plugging away at this stuff, and often making shit tons of money in the process, in the process forcing each other to become more and more “extreme” in hopes of standing out from the glut. “Metalcore” and “screamo,” in addition to being two of the worst genre names thus far, have risen to prominence as pretty much the avenues to success for young, impressionable musicians. Labels have based the entirety of their efforts on the marketing of business-savvy, fashion-conscious pop/emo/metal.

The Never Enders are most certainly following in this tradition, and as a result they are unlikely to excite anyone above the age of 18. The biggest problem with this is the tendency to do way too much in the course of a given song. Each song on this album has poppy, cleanly sung passages, dissonant screaming, and Deftones-styled riffing, mixed together without any sort of consistent flow or method. These guys are actually able to bust out a pretty sick post-hardcore part now and then, but these bright spots are buried in the avalanche of unnecessary parts, half-assed lyrics and embarrassing vocals.

Rosie Thomas – If Songs Could Be Held

If Songs Could Be Held is the sleepy, sometimes treacly new album from Rosie Thomas, her third on the Sup Pop label. She also has a Seattleite’s dreamy, rain-soaked temperament. Thomas has a great, subtly dynamic voice and an expert’s way with pop-ballad melodies. The 11 songs on If Songs Could Be Held are almost all piano ballads, mid-tempo or slower, uniformly tasteful, careful, and elegant in their execution. There aren’t many colors on Thomas’s palette: she sticks stubbornly to variations on a melancholic blue.

Lyrically, there is a lot of ruminating on love and romance. “When will it find me? Where has it gone? Why can’t I get it right? How can we keep the nice moments from slipping away?” None of this felt very interesting or compelling, though it did seem heartfelt. This is more the kind of album that washes over you rather than grabbing and holding your attention. Lament after lament, they start to all blend together, and all of Thomas’s considerable skill as a singer, musician, and composer can’t seem to create any really arresting moments, just a lot of pretty songs.

Thomas has worked with some of indie’s brighter stars, touring with Sufjan Stevens and duetting with Damien Jurado and Ed Harcourt, who guests on this album’s “Let it Be Me.” Whereas Stevens plays with lush instrumtation and Jurado makes effective use of electronics, samples, and even the occasional guitar-driven number, Thomas sticks to the lounge-piano route. The immensely talented Thomas might take note of how these colleagues of hers dress down their own brands of melancholy with experimentation and touches of humor.

Mogwai – Mr. Beast

It’s remarkable that this fifth studio album also marks the 10th or 11th year of Mogwai’s existence. Remarkable in the sense that the five Scots have sustained themselves for so long, whilst remaining so stubbornly unchanged and so sonically untravelled. From day one to the present, their primary influences – Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Black Sabbath, and, of course, Slint – have remained ostensibly the same. Sure, they’ve stretched themselves a bit from time to time, flirting with strings and brass (on 1999’s excellent and economically-titled shortform release, EP), dabbling with electronics (especially on 2003’s Happy Songs For Happy People), and occasionally deploying vocals (notably on 2001’s Rock Action). But essentially, Mogwai’s largely instrumental body of work has been built from zig-zagging loud/quiet guitars, a gentle/heavy rhythm section, and plaintive/plangent piano figures – and Mr Beast really doesn’t screw with that intuitively drilled formula.

Certainly, part of the band’s durability is explained through external factors. The irascible Scotsmen have rarely stopped themselves from making a few choice media-attracting comments (baiting critics, slating easy-to-target corporate indie stalwarts like Starsailor). The group has made friends with some prominent tastemakers (erstwhile NME-scribe Keith Cameron once proclaimed them evangelically to be the “only punk-rock band left in the world”) and canny music industry svengalis (latterly with manager and former Creation Records supremo Alan McGee). Most crucially, they’ve been shrewd enough to surf the tides of fashion to their advantage, surfacing originally as an antidote to Brit-pop and the dying embers of grunge, going to ground when the post-rock backlash paved the way for the alt-country boom and resurfacing again recently just when the likes of Godspeed, Explosions in the Sky, and Silver Ray have made it hip again to have no singers. Thus, Mogwai has strategically swung back into orbit with a solid – albeit unadventurous – long-player, which refines instead of redefines and consolidates more than it innovates.

The opening – and aptly named – “Auto Rock” is an obvious Mogwai tune, steadily adding layers of distorting guitars, militaristic drums, and electro burble on to the top of an insistently memorable piano motif, until it reaches an anti-climatic conclusion that taunts any listener expecting a glorious eruption. “Glasgow Mega-Snake,” on the other hand, goes satisfyingly straight into a wonderful wall-to-wall mess of Sonic Youth-style six-string abuse. “Acid Food,” however, recalls one-time labelmates Arab Strap, with its robotic drum machines, laid-back pedal steel, and low-murmured vocals acting as a nice enough bridging piece, although it’s hardly a singer/songwriter-like statement. In its wake, “Travel is Dangerous” ratchets things up into a brutish MBV-meets-Bardo Pond mélange, with threatening vocals compressed beneath a dense wave of sound. The next trio of songs – “Team Handed,” “Friend of the Night,” and “Emergency Trap” – are more low-key and mournful affairs – largely driven by placid yet purposely keyboards – that would have sat well with the intermission-like pieces on the band’s still-listenable 1997 debut, Mogwai Young Team.

However, by the time of “Folk Death 95,” the amps are sizzling once more, to reach a rather routine crescendo. The penultimate track, “I Chose Horses,” brings things down to a shimmer, a hum, and a drone to cloak enigmatic guest vocalist Tetsuya Fukagawa – of Japanese hardcore outfit Envy – in eerie gentility. It would have made a fine closer, had it not been beaten to the finale by the frankly deafening “We’re No Here,” a hardcore sludge-fest that churns Mr Beast into an uncompromising ending.

So Mr Beast is Mogwai on auto-pilot: self-indulgent and safe but ultimately brutal and beautiful. We can forgive these musicians this time, on the proviso that they use their refreshed bravado to really push the envelope in future; otherwise, complacency could damn them to become the “Oasis of post-rock.” Now that would really be a beastly fate…

The Beatings – If Not Now, Then When? EP

This is one of those awkward reviews, coming as it does between a widely praised release that I’ve not heard (2002’s Italiano) and a new disc that is already gracing your general store’s CD racks as we speak (2006’s Holding on to Hand Grenades). This Boston outfit has garnered a fair amount of praise for its classically post-punk-influenced sound, fellow Boston outfits Mission of Burma and Husker Du chief among those influences. The best of If Not Now, Then When? seems to justify that praise with some pummeling melody alternating with a little slinky menace.

If the Beatings can manage to top opener “Feel Good Ending” on a regular basis, well then forget it, these guys clearly rule. ‘Rip snorting’ would be a fair description of the tune’s
approach and appeal, with the rough edge and mania of Superchunk but more aggressive, with a hardcore howl alongside the anthemic, slashing guitars. It’s bracing, the type of eye-opening blast of stinging riffs and hooks that could never get old. And it’s about as good an introduction to a band as you’re likely to hear on any given day.

The remainder of If Not Now, Then When? is less immediate but only fails on the title song where the band’s noisier aspect get the better of it and a forgettable roar ensues. Better are the dual vocals on “All Dead Heroes,” guitarist E.R.’s authoritative croon alongside the slightly tempered wails of fellow guitarist Tony Skalicky (note: it’s possible I have those vocal duties backwards). And the aforementioned menace is present in the whispered vocals of bassist Erin Dalbec during the slow lurk of “Stockholm Syndrome Relapse.” All these make strong use of the eternal two-guitar/bass/drum lineup, mixing cathartic slashing with quieter dynamics wrung from the plainly recorded guitars.

So with a less than complete grasp on what the Beatings are up to, If Not Now, Then When? introduces us to a band that manages to exist alongside its forbearers comfortably, if inessentially for the most part. These guys assert themselves near-perfectly for one of these five songs, however, and that’s the primary lure, and so we wait in anticipation for that full-length.

Sicbay – Suspicious Icons

It’s at times like these that I am glad that I’m not the only reviewer in the world. Because as much as I fluff it up, this review is going to come down to two sentences: 1) Sicbay has a very unique songwriting style. 2) I’m not fond of that songwriting style.

These songs clamor and clang with a revolutionary fervor, and the songwriting isn’t bad by any means, but for some reason, this just doesn’t strike home for me. The set-up is guitar/guitar/drums, but one of the guitars has some extremely low-end lines going on – so much so that it sounds like a bass player is actually playing. The occasionally-angular guitars interact nicely, the drums thrash, and the guitarist yells punk-rock style on top of it. These vocals give even the most slow-moving songs (“Tears of the Siren”) a shot of passion. The choppy guitar-rock sound that they create sounds good on paper, but in stereo it just doesn’t seem urgent enough to me. There’s substance but no style.

The one song that stands out to me is “Riposte in Pieces” – it’s faster, more angular, more attitudinal, and much more urgent than any of the other songs here. It takes all the parts of the Sicbay sound and maxes out the knobs on them, making a frantic, pulsating, wildly interesting song. “Suffering Submarines” and “Roiling the Panacea” each come close to “Riposte in Pieces” in passionate thrashing, but “Riposte in Pieces” still wins.

Sicbay doesn’t suck; the guys have a very unique songwriting style that just didn’t sit well with me. If you like guitar-rock that has a lot of angular leads, this may be up your alley. Or you may find in it the same lack of urgency that I did. To each his own.

Adam Gnade – Run Hide Retreat Surrender

The lofty issues San Diego wordsmith Adam Gnade tackles on Run Hide Retreat Surrender are nothing if not ambitious and far-reaching, chief among them the need to escape jobs, tired relationships, and a prison of substances, sexuality, and social contexts by simply hitting the road. But the long-form narrative Gnade unfurls in his mumbled, Beat-inspired drawl is one kept alive by illuminating moments and tiny details. The nine-song disc, a spoken-word storyline punctuated with instrumental interjections and only occasional verse-chorus-verse tangents, aims to pack all the linguistic wallop of On the Road, but it delivers its theses and conclusions with an attentive ear to the minutia and sometimes-unseen clutter of American lives.

In the most basic sense, the Loud + Clear disc recounts a trek cross-country inspired by a need to flee everything you know. It begins in a west coast apartment, amid a fight in wintertime, and quickly finds itself on the country’s highways, leaving behind all that is familiar, the horizon both literally and figuratively stretched before it. Gnade has an eye for the way the world writes its truths below the surface, and the listener doesn’t need to wait long for him to find a lyrical rhythm that snakes around all sorts of descriptive turns of phrases and colorful observations aspiring to Ginsberg’s “Howl.”

Once he hits the road, his descriptions are all the more enveloping, flickering by in a rapid stream of consciousness that echoes the way the world appears, half-blurry and ever-changing, from a passenger-side window. The music, though far from the record’s driving force, follows suit — expanding from the spare, fragile guitar asides of “So Long Darling / It’s No Use” to the late-time bluesy sway of “Old Lover,” from the slowly building bass-pop backdrop of “Room for Three and the Bayou Summer” to the danceable, almost edgy clatter of “Dance to the War.” (Even without the words, the jaunty folk-blues of “New Yorkers Don’t Care About Anything / A People’s History of Delaware” and the melancholy closing track are captivating.)

But the words are what intoxicates, and Gnade knows it, even bringing the listeners into the world of creating the text with reflexive nods to the actual act of bringing the record from the road to your stereo. “Sloppy to kill memories, run hide retreat surrender,” Gnade mutters in “The Old Lover.” “It’s OK, it’s OK. You’ll save yourself from yourself, and write a book and a record about it, too. And Dan will play guitar and hand you a mic and plug you in and you’ll drink together and he’ll run the tape all night and all will be alright. Because we will fix ourselves, you think. We will, we will, we will.”

Before any sense of repair or closure approaches, though, we get an interesting travelogue of sorts: Magazine deadlines in southern California. Dixieland performers in New Orleans. The sands of Florida, fog over the Chesapeake. Treks up the New Jersey Turnpike. Cigarettes in Brooklyn, jokes on the NYC subway. We also get a litany of asides that ground Gnade’s tale in everyday life, be it the jabs about working “the jobs you hate, making money that goes God knows where” or the constant presence of the war in Iraq, the reminiscing with high school friends, the presence of 7-Eleven coffee or beer in mundane stryofoam cups. It’s not always a welcoming place, but, even in its lulls, Gnade’s world crackles with the fascination he seems to find in all of its corners, all the more reason it’s tough to leave it behind when the record ends.

The City on Film – American Diary EP

The City on Film has been a solo outlet for the prolific and multi-talented Bob Nanna even during his days fronting Braid and later Hey Mercedes. It wasn’t until after Hey Mercedes broke up, however, that Nanna finally was able to release the debut full-length under the City on Film moniker, In Formal Introduction, last summer. I didn’t have the chance to hear that release, but

The album opens with “Mary, I’m Ready,” a deliberately low-fi affair, with Nanna’s voice softly muted and accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, some tape fuzz, and the sound of a dog barking at its end. It’s really an intro, as “Pony’s Last Trick” is vintage Nanna. Now you get the stellar, crisp electric guitar, upbeat rhythms, and Nanna’s own unique vocal styling. A little more gentle than the hardcore-hinting Braid or emo-styled Hey Mercedes, this track owes a debt as well to Bob Mould’s solo offerings. It’s a fantastic song that epitomizes the songwriter’s new direction.

On “Astray! Astray!”, a bouncy, bass-driven song and an emphasis on the vocals takes American Diary in an even better direction. I’m reminded, to some degree, of Buffalo Tom’s style of pop-rock songwriting. If that throws you a little, the blazing guitars and rock-driven sound of “You’re Gonna Need That Patience Soon” is right out of late Braid and every bit as good. The softly flowing “Well, it Goes Like This” shows a mellow, almost textured style, and “Conclusion” finishes off the too-short EP by coming full circle and picking up the gentle sounds of “Mary, I’m Ready,” only shifting seamlessly from acoustic guitar to piano.

Bob Nanna has constantly honed his songwriting skills, ever since that first incohesive yet insanely appealing Braid album. The City on Film showcases Nanna – backed by musicians that include members of Minus the Bear – keeping to his indie-rock roots but adding more emphasis on the singer/songwriter styles that draw from Bob Mould to Elliott Smith in an oddly cohesive and comforting way. It proves Nanna’s songwriting skills are at their peek and still getting better. This is a highly enjoyable release.

Athlete – Tourist

England’s musical climate seems to be more conducive to heavily orchestrated heart-on-your-sleeve rock than that of the United States; witness Oasis, Coldplay, Stereophonics, etc. For some reason, the Brits seem more capable of producing straight-up pretty rock, while our mainstream-seeking musicians tend to gravitate towards bankrupt heavy rock that largely rests on an invisible line between Creed and Nickelback. Maybe it’s a personal preference, but there seems to be more emotional investment in string-laden ballads and opaque love/loss lyrical themes than tough-guy posturing and muscular guitar riffs.

Athlete is a relative newcomer to the world of fey British pop music, and while these artists are hardly on the level of some of their contemporaries and obvious influences, they have put together a solid collection of delicate songs. It’s not tremendously exciting, but at least it’s not offensive, which puts Athlete on stronger footing than the majority of American bands without any sort of indie inclinations or background.

Athlete isn’t anywhere near as good as Coldplay, a band that has mined similar territory to great success over the last few years. Few bands are, but then again few bands attempt to sound as similar. As a result, most of this record pales in comparison to Chris Simpson and the boys. The musicians in Athlete are at their strongest when they stick to piano-driven ballads such as the opening “Chance,” which is probably the high point of the album. Unfortunately, most of the lead piano lines tend to sound similar to each other over the course of these 11 songs, further diluting the simple beauty of their melodies.

This one is recommended for anglophiles who’ve worn out their old favorites and are in the market for something new and non-threatening. Those with only a passing interest in this style will find themselves much better off with one of their better-known counterparts. At least it’s not “post-grunge.”

Struck Down – Revolution

I am thoroughly convinved that Indianola Records will bring upon us the appocalypse, and not in a good way. I don’t think I have ever listened to a record the lable put out without anxiously awaited the end of it. Struck Down is doing absolutely nothing to reverse that trend.

Hailing from Erie, PA, Struck Down’s members look like they range in age from 15 to 18, and I am being generous. Not that age or the way a band looks has anything to do with the music, but this honestly sounds like some high schoolers trying their hardest to recreate the sounds of their hardcore heroes.

Showing their “since of humor” (that’s the way it is spelled in the band’s promo materials), the song “Moshpit” showcases the brilliantly penned lyrics “I don’t care if you’re old or new moshpit / move around circle pit old school moshpit / swing your arms kick the air moshpit / here comes the sing a long you know what to do moshpit.” The bold signifies the laughable gang vocals.

What more needs to be said? This is an incredibly weak effort from a band that ought to reconsider its career path.

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