Tim Hecker – Haunt Me Haunt Me, Do it Again

With a departure from his techno projects under the moniker Jetone, Tim Hecker uses his real name on a pretty amazing ambient release for the Alien8 sub-label Substractif. In many respects, Haunt Me Haunt Me, Do it Again is the perfect title for this album, as it does just that. Unfortunately, for many the word “ambient” is a red flag for “do not listen,” and that really is too bad, especially nowadays with people putting out some excellent releases in this category, this one included. I would even venture to say that ambient is starting to catch on a little more with educated listeners; with Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series really beginning to draw some listeners, the musical form is becoming a little more popular.

For those who already listen to ambient and experimental music, there will be some immediate similarities to be noticed with this release to other artists. There is a definite feel of Fennesz in the tones and structure, and at points a little Oval influence can be detected. But not to worry, this is nothing even close to some sort of rip-off. Tim Hecker has amazing talent, and he proves it through this musical journey. The tracks are complex but still enjoyable, and that is an important achievement in experimental ambient, as many will just plain over do it, making for a sludge of noise that can be filed under garbage. Many people have no idea how difficult it is to create ambient pieces of this caliber. For example, while listening to this album one will hear the incredible sound manipulation and layering that is accomplished. This makes the whole album feel very complete. It is perfectly sparse.

Although this release is meant to be listened to all the way through, preferably with headphones, there are a few favorites to elaborate on. The opening track, “Music for Tundra,” is astounding. Little stabs of sound are exposed to the listeners throughout the fog of musical layers. “The Work of Art in the Age of Cultural Overproduction” is my personal favorite, as it remains so soft even as some of the sequences get a little more edge on them. The balance is pretty remarkable. There is also a melodic undertone that is very impressive but needs careful listening. “Boreal Kiss” is another strong track. It is very light and floaty, yet it still gives the perfect amount of emotion.

I highly suggest that everyone at least give this album a listen. Even if ambient isn’t your thing, you might be surprised at how great this release is. It keeps true to experimental form, but never gets boring.

Grails – Interpretations EP

When you drive through a city in the hours just before sunrise, it’s like discovering a new life. People are busy everywhere, taking care of business under the night sky as the city sleeps. Lights flash under the moonlight as street sweepers hustle down the roads, and the piercing sound of broken glass fills the air when hundreds of bottles are hurled into a recycling truck. Time seemed to stand completely still as I drove through streets of people completely unaware of my presence. I was lucky enough to have Interpretations blaring through my speakers with this little-known side of the city as a perfect backdrop. It was not music, it was an experience.

The Portland, Oregon-based quintet delivers an intensity that is not well suited to background music. It is characterized by emotions and experiences that are far too engaging to fade away behind group conversation. With each listen, you notice a new detail, whether it is the slight tingle of a violin in the background or an almost non-existent drum rumbling like thunder sneaking up in the distance. The layers peal away slowly, unveiling a depth that so many instrumentalists strive for.

The recording of the Interpretations album occurred during one of Grails’ European tours and is part of the Latitudes Series, which are limited-edition albums of unique songs by some of Southern Records’ favorite bands. This series strives to capture the spontaneous recordings of such bands done in the matter of a couple days as they pass through London while on tour that can then be delivered in small quantities throughout the world. The exquisite hand-packaged album doesn’t disappoint.

The journey begins with the slow-building bassline of Grails’ interpretation of the Flower Travellin’ Band’s “Satori”. Timothy Horner’s violin weaves its shivery melody in and out of the huge voices of the guitars and crashing drums, heightening to completely consume the listener. Goose bumps will appear with each thump as The Byrds’ “Space Odyssey” makes its way out of the dark to reveal a tale filled with hope that lies just over the horizon. The final song, Gong’s “Master Builder,” gives drummer Emil Amos a chance to shine amidst the distortion and eerie violin. Like a lover slipping away at sunrise, Grails disappears far too quickly, leaving you eager for more.

Few bands can tell such hypnotic stories without using a single word and also make all the little hairs on our arm stand up no matter how much you crank the heat in your car.

Mercury Radio Theatre – The Blue-Eyed Model

The Blue-Eyed Model continues to show Mercury Radio Theater to be twisted concept artists with a penchant for wicked math-rock instrumentals. This album follows up the band’s debut, The Death and Life of the Undead Boy, and these guys have definitely grown since then. The Blue-Eyed Model has better sound quality, more energy, tighter playing, and more ideas. Scary ideas…

Mercury Radio Theater’s rasion d’etre is to present stories – twisted stories – in narrative form. On this album, the story is about Gregor, a college student who fashions a companion from pieces of other people. I can’t quite tell whether he kills people and takes their body parts, digs up people to remove their parts, or orders his parts through the mail (maybe it’s a combination of these things). But does it matter? I mean, he’s building a date from body parts.

The story is told across the album’s 19 tracks. You’ll have a snippet of the narrative, then an instrumental track (or few) to advance the tale musically, then a continuation of the narrative, and so on. The narrator makes his voice sufficiently creepy and Vincent Price-like. As you may have guessed from the band’s name, the idea is to present a kind of updated, surreal, disturbing radio-theater experience. In this case, it’s like Pulp Fiction meets War of the Worlds.

The musicianship here excels. In the early parts of the disc, the band hits you with some fierce punk-math playing. Later, as they slow things down to match the storyline, some of the guitar lines have a surf quality to them (think high-octane Lawndale), while others have a spaghetti-western feel. The bass and drums speed all over the place, syncopated and halting when they feel like it and full-on power at other times. All of the playing is really tight. I think the band has played out quite a bit, and this album shows that.

Its live show adds in “projected visuals” as a way to keep the audience clued in to the storyline, but when you buy The Blue-Eyed Model, you get with it a pretty sophisticated liner-notes-cum-comic-book insert. It spells out the whole story graphically with some really garish artwork. I don’t know comics at all, but it reminded me of the box from the movie Corpse Bride, or maybe Edward Gorey.

The band obviously spent a lot of time with this project, considering that it consists of a story, a comic-like booklet, and songwriting on top of it. Really, this undertaking almost doesn’t need music at all, but the music it has is pretty high quality. This release shows the power of the band’s imagination and enterprise, and it’s a good thing that the story is just a fun exercise in the macabre. It is just for fun, right? Right?

Slowride – C/S

Texas trio Slowride began life as an enjoyable Jawbreaker-influenced pop-punk act with big-rock inflections a la Foo Fighters, then shifted into the world of acoustic country ballads and garage stomp on the second Deep Elm effort. The band’s latest sees the artists successfully synthesize both of their previous identities and toss in a healthy dose of heavy riffage in the style of Queens of the Stone Age, and the result is one of the most well-realized rock records in recent memory.

The fuzzed-out opening track “A New Day is Upon Us” opens with some acoustic strumming before the crunch kicks in, the end riff leaving no doubt that there’s some serious noise to come. “The Year of the State” displays the elements which will carry Slowride through the remainder of the record – propulsive drumming underneath urgently driving guitar and bass that never lets up. Dan Phillips’ vocal style is gruff yet tuneful, alternately channeling Josh Homme and Blake Schwarzenback, with plenty of his own southern drawl to give him a unique edge.

“Rust Killer” boasts an expansive chorus as a complement to the focused, spot-on simplicity of the verses. This is no small feat for a three-piece band without a whole lot of room to move. The raging “Elouisa” is the highlight of the album, finding Slowride at its most Foo Fighters-esque. The two bands share a similar penchant for crafting emotionally affecting music without letting up on the rock fury.

Slowride earns the “garage” tag by nature of the musicians’ devil-may-care hard-rocking spirit, but they are worlds away from the world of three-chord 60s revivalists or sleaze-punk nonsense. It’s fast, it’s hard, it’s youthful, but it’s also nuanced, tuneful, and carefully arranged. There is a passion and an original edge that is increasingly hard to find in the world of punky, poppy, rock and roll.

Interview with The Lesser Birds of Paradise

Mark Janka may have a gift for crafting frighteningly fragile acoustic lullabies, but, when it comes to spinning tales about his band’s enigmatic name, the tender-voiced frontman for Lesser Birds of Paradise admits he’s at a loss for words.

“I thought I made up a lie that was a good story for that, but I forgot the story,” said Janka during a conversation that took place after the Chicago trio recorded The Scenery, a six-song follow-up to this year’s majestic String of Bees.

The band’s moniker was pulled from a random line of poetry, Janka said, a sentiment that spoke to his love of birds as metaphors and symbols.

“That’s the best I got,” he joked. “I’m working on making up a better story than that. If you’ve got one, send me an e-mail.”

Jokes about the obscure history of the band’s name aside, this seems to be a fitting introduction to an emotive ensemble that seems to shimmer brightest when a little lack of clarity is left in the mix, when the tender stories don’t all follow clearly delineated lines and arcs, and when some references go unreferenced.

A native Midwesterner, Janka cut his teeth not on the tender folk and lush, acoustic pop that have become the Lesser Birds’ calling card, but on the alternative and indie-rock scenes of the 1980s and early 1990s. While in college, Janka said some of his biggest influences were American Music Club, Pavement, The Replacements, and Magnetic Fields, bands that informed his early efforts at songwriting and performance with the rock act Pillar Box Red.

“That was what you’d expect a college band to sound like in 1993,” said Janka, who described the band — which also featured future Lesser Bird multi-instrumentalist Tim Joyce — as a hybrid of Pavement and Smashing Pumpkins. “It was power chords. I guess we didn’t know a lot of those big solos.”

After Pillar Box Red recorded a demo with John McEntire, Janka said the group disbanded and began focusing more on what he bluntly calls “real life.” While Joyce recently moved to Montana to teach music, Janka’s day job is in the classroom, teaching English courses at Proviso High School in Maywood, Ill.

Janka’s love for music, though, didn’t wane.

Since 1998, Janka, Joyce, drummer/percussionist Greg Thomas, and former bassist Tony Bianchi have always made time for the Lesser Birds. The group released its full-length debut, A Suitable Frame, in 2000 and, a year later, came out with the It isn’t the Fall EP. A four-song split EP with Illinois-based singer/songwriter Jared Grabb followed in 2003, containing a “loud,” radio-friendly version of “Josephine,” an addictive pop exercise that reared its head again on 2004’s String of Bees.

While the String of Bees version of “Josephine” — all pedal-steel weeping, finger-picked acoustic guitars, and half-moaned, half-whispered vocals — feels more somber and heart-wrenching than its electric-guitar predecessor, the sentiment below the surface is more universal.

“Josephine / I think you know just what I mean / When I say the tank is full / And Philadelphia’s 12 hours away,” Janka sings on the track, which sits at the intersection of a road song and a plaintive ballad about heartbreak and romantic longing. Sound like a tall order to fill? Read on: “Romeo / He’s a boy that lives around the way / Romeo / I know you think he treats you okay / And he might take you to all the dances thrown right here in town / But I will take you from disapproving glances thrown when you’re around / Josephine, won’t you drive away with me?”

Janka said the hunger in the song to return to Philadelphia is tinged with autobiography. Though he grew up outside Chicago, his parents were Philly-raised, and, on his journeys back to their childhood homes, he felt a connection with the neighborhoods and the landscapes there.

“I just kind of wanted to see a different view of the world,” Janka said. “I somehow felt (Philadelphia) was somehow more real life.”

Driving also plays more than just a metaphorical role in the lives of Lesser Birds’ vocalist/guitarist. Janka said he often scribbles down lyrics and threads for song ideas while making the 40- to 45-minute commute to and from work every day.

“In the true folk tradition, I’ve been kind of using a Palm Pilot lately,” said Janka, who noted that lyrics often precede music when he’s writing new material. Sometimes, he said, he’ll hear something on National Public Radio (NPR) — a topic, a phrase — that catches his ear and he’ll jot it down in his Palm while driving.

Other pieces of cultural ephemera also make their way into Lesser Birds songs. The title of one String of Bees track, “Because We are Also What We Have Lost,” was pulled from the film Amores Perros, Janka said.

Janka’s English students, however, are only sparingly welcomed into the songwriting process.

“There’s a few select students that kind of know (about Lesser Birds),” said Janka, when asked how much his day job and his musical career blend together. “We had a little secret songwriters club.”

String of Bees almost is the opposite extreme. In addition to the band’s core four members (Janka, Joyce, Thomas, and Bianchi, who left the band recently), the 11-track disc features performances by Mark Greenberg of The Coctails, Joe Murphy of Dollar Love Plus, and Max Crawford of Poi Dog Pondering. Norman Phipps (father to String of Bees recording engineer and Coctails alum Barry Phipps) even made a guest appearance on the disc when he played along on the banjolin.

While mention of the band’s “hometown” of Chicago might call to mind the punk- and indie-rock circles of labels like Touch and Go and Quarterstick, Janka said the region is increasingly kind and welcoming to folk acts, which are being viewed as more accessible than they were even five years ago.

That’s a good thing for musicians like Janka, who referred to his folksy, finger-picking style of acoustic guitar playing as something that “is starting to become a minor obsession of mine.”

“When we have to define it, I guess we realize we’re a folk band,” Janka said. “I guess we feel we’re making folk music for indie kids.”

Well, when you’re driving through the night, racing on some impulsive trip to Philadelphia, perhaps, and you need something warm and enveloping to pour out of your stereo speakers, who better than a band that’s already been down that road?

—

Greater Birds: Mark Janka and Tim Joyce offer second thoughts on String of Bees

Two of the Lesser Birds discuss the stories behind the songs on String of Bees, each of which makes for interesting reading. See for yourself…

“A Magnet in You”

Mark Janka: This is one of several songs that has California in it. I work under the assumption that many Midwesterners have a love/hate relationship with California. California is our geographical “other.” I suppose that’s how it’s crept into so many of my songs even though, at the time of writing String of Bees, I’d only been to California once.

Tim Joyce: The “Magnet” sound was made with a cymbal and a Cole’s ribbon microphone. Since I was little, I have always put things up to my ears and put my ears up to things to see how the sounds they make will change. Same principle applied here. I liked the sound of the cymbal while listening from the side. If you move your head above the plane of the cymbal you get one sound. If you move below it, another. So I put a cymbal on my index finger and would hit it with a mallet and physically move the cymbal above and below the ribbon on the Cole’s microphone. The panning was done later in the process.

“When the Devil Does a Drive-by”

MJ: When you start getting into finger-style guitar, you start listening to country blues. And, when you start listening to country blues, you generally begin with the biggies — Robert Johnson, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, et cetera. I was listening to such fellows and experimenting with open-D tuning (sometimes called “natural” tuning) when I wrote this. I wanted to incorporate some of the style of the guitarists I’d been listening to without writing a “blues.” I felt that it was not my place to write a blues song, but I think I ended up with one anyway.

This song, like “Magnet,” was written during the year and a half that we were working on String of Bees. It was new enough that when we recorded it, I never actually sang the line “When the devil does a drive-by….” I meant to sing that in the last verse, but I just forgot. We liked the take enough to feel like it wasn’t worth re-doing. We did the acoustic guitar and the drums at the same time live in the same room, so there’s lots of bleed which give it a nice “real” sound. I don’t think any of the other songs on String of Bees were recorded this way. Our recent EP, The Scenery, was recorded almost entirely “live.” I think this track influenced our approach to The Scenery, and gave us the confidence to record that way.

TJ: Greg’s muted drumming and Barry’s microphone placement and choice on this song really makes this song work for me. Remember: there is always room for a little reversed baritone guitar.

“This is the Song I Wrote Last Night”

MJ: Played in the DADGAD tuning. The demo was recorded as a humble little folk tune, but we wanted to put more movement and drama into the song. (After all, it is basically the same part repeated five times.) Max Crawford’s string arrangement does that 10 times over. We ended up toning it down a little in the last verse. There were so many great ideas in that arrangement that we could pull one out and there was still plenty of great music happening.

“This Is the Song…” was written after coming home from a summer tour in 2002. The title was originally meant to be temporary, but I decided I like the way it allowed the song to remain in present. That way it’s not always about coming home in 2002.

TJ: The noise track on this song was an idea Mark had always had about the band arrangement for the song, and at some point I decided it would be fun to be able to have noise and be able to manipulate it in real time while we played. The truth of the matter is, the most portable thing available to me was a four-track, but it always worked out. Most of the sounds in here are lap-steel and melodica manipulated with delays and cassette tape flips. I think the four-track was actually played onto one track in the recording process. And I think if you listen really hard you can hear Greg take his headphone off and set them on his snare drum at the end of the song.

MJ: It was important to me that we leave in the sounds of the song being made (Greg taking off his headphones, et cetera). I thought it grounded the lofty arrangement and, like the title, adds to the illusion that the song is always new (or just created).

“Mermaid on the Blvd.”

MJ: This song was inspired by an episode of the NPR program This American Life about trans-sexual and transgender “girls” in Los Angeles. I wanted to do something with the great slang, symbols, and locales associated with this scene: bricks, being clocked, The Little Mermaid, Benito’s Tacos…. That covered the verses. The choruses came from a little Internet research. I’m still not sure if I pronounced the names of those drugs correctly.

This song uses many stable, jazz chords. That contributed to the lounge feel of the verses. The choruses were known as “the Barney Miller part” due to the walking nature of the chord progression and bass line. That left us with the refrain riff which Barry called “the ‘Jessie’s Girl’ part.” We thought that part was too square to suit the rest of the song. This is where having your record recorded by a former Coctail really pays off. If a part needs to be garage-lounged up, there’s nothing like the Coctails’ network to deliver the goods.

“Where the River Meets the Sea”

MJ: This song was originally written as a fast, loud song. Some recordings of our attempts at this still exist on a hard drive somewhere. Sometimes I wonder what the hell we were thinking. This was also written on the Palm IIIc while driving. I feel I should mention that writing on you Palm while driving is not the safest practice in the world. I don’t really do it much anymore. I’m a bad enough driver as it is.

It was a real treat to have Barry’s father play on it, and Mark Greenberg’s work on the choruses makes the song for me.

TJ: Mark Greenberg’s OmniChord and pump organ parts in this song give me goose bumps every time I hear them. A perfect complement to Mark’s words and overall idea for the song.

“Because We are Also What We Have Lost”

MJ: I love the way Max Crawford’s string arrangement makes the song sound like it ends in a very natural way. You can almost see the fade to black. Without the strings, my guitar part is out of time and sounds rushed.

TJ: The hammer dulcimer is something I have always wanted to get into a Lesser Birds song, and this seemed like a natural choice. I don’t claim to really play that thing, but is amazing what an open tuning will accomplish. I especially like the mixing choices that went into this song. Barry did a great job of making a lot of potentially very disparate elements come together.

“You Snooze, You Lose”

MJ: This is one of the first songs we worked on. We were very pleased with how it built up and how naturally the odd little noises dropped in. I think I wrote these words to the tune of a different song (a Palace song, maybe). By the time I got around to using them in one of my songs, I’d forgotten the source tune. It’s not unusual for me to have words lying around in a notebook (or on the Palm) for a year or more before I get around to actually finishing the song or coming up with the right music to fit the tone of the lyrics.

For some reason, when I play this song I think of California’s Highway One and my honeymoon (which was in California) although the words were written before I was married and before I’d ever been to California.

“Assorted Aphrodisiacs”

MJ: I used to play in a pop band called Dollar Love Plus with Joe Murphy (who plays guitar on this song). “Aphrodisiacs” was a song I wrote for Dollar Love Plus that I thought could also work as Lesser Birds’ song. We’d never recorded it with Dollar Love Plus, but we played it at many a show. I like to think of this as my version of “Sixteen Blue.” If Tommy Stinson grew up in a place like Naperville, Ill., instead of a place like Minneapolis, this would be his song.

TJ: If you listen closely, in middle of the bridge you can hear Mark say “Ahhhhh?” like he just drank a giant glass of lemonade. There was a bit of debate about whether that should be an “Ahhhhh” or a smooth, Barry White “Damn…!” I think the “Ahhhh” won out, but I still think I hear the “Damn…!” way down there in the mix.

MJ: Actually the “Ahhhh” was the idea of Bill Murphy (Joe’s older brother) who played bass in Dollar Love Plus. He was also in an alt-country band before there was alt-country called Bucket #6. Those of you who were kids in the 70s in Chicagoland get the reference of the band’s name, I’m sure.

“Josephine”

MJ: People are dying for this to be about a real person or a real experience. In fact, the story is fictional, though I feel the impulses narrator are very real.

With “Josephine,” I was trying to emulate the songs of the Vulgar Boatmen. In the early 90s, the Vulgar Boatmen would come to Chicago about once a month, and I went to nearly all of their shows. Many of their songs are about driving, leaving, planning to leave, or deciding to stay after all. Many of their songs use girls’ names in the titles and city names in the lyrics. While the story of the song is an attempt to write a Vulgar Boatmen song, the music is not. I think of the chords as just regular old song chords — something to keep the whole project afloat.

For a long time I tried to write a song that was exactly like a Vulgar Boatmen song. Their songs are technically simple; I thought I could do it. However, I never felt like I could capture that purity — the essence of the Vulgar Boatmen — so I gave up on it. “Josephine” is all I have to show for those efforts.

“Come to the City”

MJ: Tim wrote this one. I love the way this songs has strong elements of doom that run through it. (In some ways, I see it as the sister song to “When the Devil Does a Drive-by.”) The song is so solid in its mood, you hardly notice that the chords progressions could just as easily support a surf song (though most surf songs are not in waltz time). The trumpet and the strings give it a great spaghetti western vibe, but not so much that it’s being campy.

TJ: This songs idea came from two places. The verses are a drawn from a discussion I overheard a friend from Montana (Aaron Taylor) have with his mother. She had a distant friend who was psychic who had a dream that Aaron was in. There was an evil giant black cloud over Chicago and another over Charleston, S.C. The scary part is she had no idea that this guy lived in Chicago at the time and had already made the decision to move to Charleston.

Soon after all this I wrote the verses and decided myself to change locales and move out to Montana. I taught grade-schoolers out there and also have some nieces and nephews that live in a small town out there. I lived in a very small town, too, but could never decide if I could make it out there for the rest of my life. I always imagined being able to commute between Montana and Chicago and being able to show these small town kids something bigger. There is definitely a push-pull here between the city and the country. Certain parts of Max’s arrangements that are more right on the money than I could have ever heard them in my head.

MJ: That cello line, for instance.

“Back There on Foot”

MJ: This song was originally written for my friend Darlene Poole to sing, but the original version sounded too Indigo Girls for me. By the time I worked up a better version, it didn’t seem like there would be a proper outlet for her to use it. Fortunately, we got her to contribute some vocals to the track.

The title of the record is a misheard lyric in this song. The real line is, “Around my neck’s a string of beads.” Which is much less interesting than a string of bees. I often sing the bees line when we play it live because I like it more.

Please note the California reference.

TJ: I think Barry came up with the paddy-cake idea. I just wish I would have had a camera to film Barry and Greg sitting in the middle of the studio in front of a Neuman clapping hands like old pros. One take, folks!

—

And…

Scene Two, Take One: Mark Janka and Barry Phipps on The Scenery

Mark Janka: The Scenery EP mentioned here is a six-song (five new Lesser Birds songs and a cover of Pavement’s “Here”), short-run recording done for Barry Phipps’ new label, Tight Ship Records. You can purchase The Scenery EP at Lesser Birds’ shows or at www.tightshiprecords.com.

Barry Phipps: I was really proud of the way the Lesser Birds worked on String of Bees. It was recorded off and on over a period of 18 months. Most of the ideas were developed in the studio through lots of experimentation. They would lay down tons of overdubs and we would sift through them to find the gems. They recorded many songs that didn’t fit the tone of the record and had the good sense to leave them off. Some songs were recorded several times in different ways until they developed into the matured versions on the LP. There were no compromises through tight deadlines, so it just matured until it was naturally complete.

The Scenery EP followed the completion of String of Bees.

The idea for The Scenery was to have them come in to the studio with six songs completely finished that we would record live and simultaneously mix straight to my Ampex 1/4″ two-track, which is the way all recordings were made before the invention of the first multi-track in the late 50s. I felt that it would be very satisfying to make a good record that was completely finished in about four hours, which is what we basically did.

They played in the same room with no separation and no headphones. I did end up recording it to six tracks instead of going straight to the two tracks, but in the spirit of the original idea, I spent no more than 10 to 15 minutes of mixing for each song. We ended up throwing two overdubs to Naomi, “Are You Lonely?,” which was a baritone guitar and a flute, but the recording is still very sparse and open, as it was only three people playing at one time. This is my favorite-sounding record that I’ve recorded, and by far the most satisfying.

MJ: For the record, we also overdubbed the singing on “Here,” too. And with that, I still sang the words all wrong, but who really knows the words to that song anyway?

Fields of Gaffney – Cosmic Chicken and Egg

Once upon a time, two gentlemen, one by the name of Lou and the other named Eric, set out and started a band, and they called that band Sebadoh. Little did they know what they were getting in to, or how seminal their music would become for an entire generation of indie-rock fans and so many bands that would follow. Eventually, fed up with all the attention placed exclusively on the increasingly demanding Lou, Eric parted ways, and the media and fan-base continued to love Lou and his various side projects until he became the veritable renaissance man of indie rock. But Eric didn’t stop making music. No, he continued, working quietly and for the most part outside the blinding glare of the limelight. That’s right, Eric Gaffney, co-founder of one of the most influential indie-rock bands of all time, continued to make music. And boy is it awful.

Perhaps “awful” in itself is a bit of an extreme adjective, but awfully disappointing, uninspired, rehashed, and drenched in damning nostalgia are certainly apt descriptions. Gaffney steps out from behind the kit on Cosmic Chicken and Egg, straps on a guitar, and dusts off his windpipe, taking the frontman position and backed by Jessica Cowley and Richard Marshall as the rhythm section. Gone is most of the experimental flair that Gaffney brought to some of Sebadoh’s work, though here and there one occasionally finds the trio tiptoeing outside of the tight comfort zone in which they seem to have enclosed themselves.

Some may find it encouraging to see Gaffney still sticking to the do-it-yourself, lo-fi mentality, but it is undeniable how overdone the style of music he chooses to play is. It sounds as though Gaffney still exists in the early 90s, refusing to let go of what made Sebadoh so charming, as though he could start all over again. But the world has moved on, things have changed, fads and genres and clichés have risen and fallen, and when Cosmic Chicken and Egg begins to spin in the player, it soon becomes for the listener a task in staving off boredom. It is too generic, too homogenized, too been-there-done-that.

The fact that the sparse liner notes indicate the CD-R was recorded over the course of a year could either be its curse or its blessing. On one hand, it could be nothing more than a collection of foolings-around over the course of a year, or on the other, it could be the end product of a year’s worth of hard work. A visit to Gaffney’s website states that Cosmic Chicken and Egg is a collection of unreleased tracks and alternate takes on previously released Fields of Gaffney songs. Perhaps it is a good thing that it stands as a collection of songs that were never supposed to be album-worthy, possibly just a poor picture of his efforts overall or a relic for established fans. Still, at barely 40 minutes long, Cosmic Chicken and Egg seems to trudge on eternally, like one song burned 15 times so that the CD is sufficiently filled. Not much changes: not the washed out vocals, not the feeble, distorted guitar tone, not the plodding bass lines nor the pish-pish of the hi-hat that carries each tune. Even the dumb day-in-the-life lyrics (“Losers in my living room / Out the door, out the door”) and Cowley’s bland Kim Gordon-esque backing vocals creak under the burden of all the musical ground that’s been covered before them.

I almost feel guilty for the way I feel about this album. Surely Eric Gaffney deserves a level of respect not many others in the indie-rock scene warrant. I feel like I should listen to this album 20 times until I get it, until I’ve explored its every last nuance and fine peculiarity, until I can stand up and shout from the rooftops of the hidden genius that this CD-R is bubbling with if you’d just give it a chance. But there’d be little point. Mr. Gaffney hasn’t provided any nuances to uncover, any unique minutia that ignite some spark of excitement at their discovery, like personal little messages to the careful listener. It doesn’t have any of those things, just a suffocating sense of mediocrity and a desire to do little else than what has been done countless times before, and with infinitely better production. Lo-fi or Eno-produced, the fact that some music is uninspired and simply spinning its wheels can’t be hidden, and it’s tragic that something with potential like Cosmic Chicken and Egg is ultimately so forgettable.

The Casting Couch – Row Your Boat

On its debut EP, 5 Songs, the Casting Couch sounded equal parts charming, tentative, and amateurish. Row Your Boat, the group’s debut full-length, is a bolder, slicker affair; unlike 5 Songs, it shows real ambition. More interestingly, Row Your Boat finds the alt-country/indie-pop outfit countering its low-key coyness with more upbeat rhythms and brighter instrumentation. The new incarnation of the Casting Couch is occasionally bubbly, if not quite effervescent, and it certainly places a greater emphasis on the indie-pop ethos that appeared on 5 Songs only as a glimmer, seemingly suffocated by plodding tempos.

Perhaps in an attempt to answer allegations of having fostered a methodically lazy sound, the group opens the album with a bop-bop pop song that sounds like early Wilco gone twee. Replete with a mid-song breakdown and an up-tempo reprise at the end, the title track, “Row Your Boat,” holds up surprisingly well against the compositions of more seasoned tweesters such as Tullycraft and All Girl Summer Fun Band. Even the lyrics fit the mold. “He had 16 bottles of wine, seven copies of the New York Times / And if they’d just give a dime / For every crossword letter he’d be feeling fine,” sings vocalist Wendy Mitchell, in broken phrases.

The album’s auspicious opener introduces the more polished sound of the Casting Couch’s second release and the pop-infused energy that propels several of its tracks. According to the refrain of “Strawberry,” a mid-tempo ray of sunshine featuring trumpets, hand-claps, and cheery vocals, “Even broken words are right two times a day.” Sung over music this good, the lyrics – which might sound cloying elsewhere – come off as truly affecting, even witty. Even better is “Mix Tape,” a smooth keyboard number with a scat-sung chorus (“ooo weee, oh oh oh oh / sha la la”) that is as infectious as the song’s underlying melodic line. In a husky baritone, a male vocalist sings: “That old mix tape he made for Valentine’s day still has all your favorite songs / And you still wear the sweater that he bought you for Christmas even now that he’s gone.” The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt is an obvious reference point.

Though “Strawberry” and “Mix Tape” fulfill the promise of the title track, the album opener is still something of a misleading tease. Row Your Boat hardly abandons alt-country for fuzzy pop; in fact, the record is full of slow-burner ballads with gentle twang. It is during these songs that the Casting Couch finds itself in the same overarching struggle of its debut EP: to make simple, plaintive songs with little harmonic or melodic movement sound poignant rather than boring. Row Your Boat finds the Casting Couch honing that skill but often still failing to engage the listener.

“Song About Dying,” “Replaced,” and “Circumstance” form a trio of sparse, slightly melancholy, thoroughly innocuous ballads. There is never a jarring moment as the group’s lead singer and songwriter Wendy Mitchell slowly plows through these numbers in her down-to-earth, fragile, yet empowered voice. Nor are there melodies – not even fragments here or there – that are the least bit memorable. Mitchell is an endearing vocalist, but the melodies of her ballads are spectacularly unremarkable; she writes lovely verses but often struggles to seal the deal with an addictive chorus. On all three of the aforementioned ballads, Mitchell settles for a workmanlike one-line refrain. It’s a crutch, and it makes for melodies that are always workable but seldom great.

In my review of the Casting Couch’s debut EP, I ended on a note of skepticism. “It remains to be seen whether the Casting Couch is capable of making a full-length record that consistently rises above background music,” I remarked. Row Your Boat is a clear evolution from its predecessor, 5 Songs, and its highlights – particularly “Strawberry” and “Mix Tape” – hint at even better things to come. Like 5 Songs, however, the Casting Couch’s debut album has trouble asserting itself when its less-memorable melodies blur together until they drift to the back of the listener’s consciousness. Ultimately, Row Your Boat is best described as extremely promising; as to the question of whether the Casting Couch can make an entire album of engaging songs, it still remains to be seen.

Mono – You are There

Why is everyone always hating on Mono? Look at a few of the reviews for the Japanese post-rockers’ last album Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and Sun Shined and you’ll find nothing but reviewers spewing forth the most vile contempt for the band. Even our own DOA hated on that record, although it made my own personal top-ten albums of 2004. So how come Mono gets such different treatment than labelmates Explosions in the Sky, who get a royal ass kissing from most indie media outlets?

Let’s do a sort of side-by-side comparison. Explosions in the Sky is an instrumental post-rock group from Texas. Mono is an instrumental post-rock group from Japan. Both groups call Temporary Residence Ltd. home. Explosions in the Sky apes Mogwai’s Young Team on Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die and then covers the same ground Mogwai covered on Come on Die Young on the band’s own second LP The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. While Explosions was busy ripping off early Mogwai to the delight of rock critics everywhere, Mono was being touted by John Zorn on his Tzadik label. Sure Mono also engaged in a little Mogwai worship on One Step More and You Die, but the band was also smart enough to switch gears and actually produce a third LP while Explosions in the Sky has tinkered around unsuccessfully with soundtrack work for football movies (Friday Night Lights).

For two bands that have so much in common, it seems that Explosions in the Sky is the favored son while Mono seems to be the black sheep of the family. Mono has even been accused of making “by-the-numbers post-rock.” I wish I could tell you that with You are There that all of that is about to change, but I have a feeling that this record will only inspire even more poor reviews for the band. Too bad for those critics who easily dismiss Mono, as You are There is a fine example of post-rock that outshines both Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s latest or last affairs.

On album number four, Mono mixes the loud/soft dynamic so common to the genre with Ennio Morricone-style spaghetti western drama ala The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Gorgeous string sections wind around taut and heavy drumming that is far more crushing than anything you’ll find on Mr. Beast. While Explosions in the Sky cowers somewhere trying to imagine a decent follow up to that lovable last album, Mono captures the essence of what makes instrumental music so great and synthesizes it into six tracks of powerful rock.

Lack of Knowledge – The Grey CD

I love post-punk music, and I was a fan of the style long before it became fashionable in the late 90s to combine powerful guitars, keyboards, melancholic stream-of-consciousness lyrics, passionate singing with a faux-British accent, and the word “The” before your name. Seeing The Chameleons live in Rochester in October 2002 was the fulfillment of a dream; I wish I had been old enough to have experienced The Sound live in 1985; and the steady flow of classic post-punk reissues by labels like LTM and Renascent inspires and excites me.

My affection for post-punk makes me a particularly scrutinizing fan of the genre, and I was anxious to hear The Grey CD, a new remastered collection of the Grey EP and Sirens are Back LP, recorded by Lack of Knowledge in 1983 and 1984, respectively. With a sound often compared to Joy Division and Gang of Four and two members who later joined The Buzzcocks, I had great expectations of The Grey CD.

There are a few terrific songs here, and Lack of Knowledge’s tone is an instant travel back to the gloom and passion of Britain’s post-punk halcyon days, but the overwhelming majority of tracks on the compilation drag with seeming disregard for melody. The Grey CD opens with a batch of its strongest recordings. “We’re Looking for People” offers an apocalyptic vision with reverberating guitars and massive beats. In a call to the masses, the lyrics stream with great drama: “In the corner of a burnt out building you sit with the bomb / Don’t sleep now it’s almost time / Outside snow begins to fall as the car turns the corner / A figure rushes into the street clutching the deadly symbol of freedom / Lets loose the destruction made of desperation.”

After this storming opener comes the best song on The Grey CD, “Another Sunset.” With a lush keyboard intro that recalls The Wake, “Another Sunset” quickly offers vivid lyrical imagery that prompts pondering: “The dying sun, red and swollen, goes down for the final time in a blaze of glory / A symphony of colour / Orange, red, green and violet dance across the horizon, leaving a vast perfect skyline, a sad goodbye to humanity.” Based on the lead vocalist’s earnest, emotional delivery and the stunning guitar playing, it would be easy to mistake Lack of Knowledge for The Sound with Adrian Borland at his peak. “Another Sunset” possesses a perfect mix of lyrical reflections and instrumental flourishes.

The two remaining songs from Lack of Knowledge’s Grey EP, which appear on The Grey CD as the third and fourth tracks, are less impressive but still interesting affairs. “Girl in a Mask” and “Radioactive Man” benefit from sudden tempo changes on the former and a combination of manipulated sounds and a terrific rhythm section on the latter. The Grey CD then loses its edge. The siren that opens “Danger to Life” is the track’s most interesting element, and it’s hard to remember the declaratory “State of Being” even after several listens.

Although Lack of Knowledge conceived perfect post-punk song titles like “The Bunker,” “Disaster Level,” and “Last Victory,” the formulaic tempered rants that dominate Sirens are Back (tracks 5-14 on The Grey CD) never grab hold of the listener. The band’s drummer and bassist were clearly talented, but the hooks are as rare as a smile on this doom-laden album. A 10-track LP with so much passion and not a single song that comes to mind just minutes after listening to it is a frustrating discovery. The jerky “Born Leader” and stripped-down “Flamethrower,” which close The Grey CD, are worthy attempts to break the monotonous sound of the album, without success.

Following two outstanding songs and a pair of solid post-punk recordings in the form of the Grey EP, the tedious Sirens are Back is a major disappointment and spoils The Grey CD. I’m not sure what limited the commercial success of Lack of Knowledge, but the band’s inability to consistently fuse stimulating lyrics with catchy melodies like The Sound and The Chameleons probably had something to do with it.

Half-Handed Cloud – Halos & Lassos

Before I put this album on the other day, I honestly (ok, not honestly, but for the sake of crappy humor) would have thought “twee pop” referred to the sound a Keebler Elf made after eating too many chocolate sandwich cookies. It was a word that wasn’t an active entry in my lexicon and a genre I hadn’t the foggiest notion about. Apparently it’s the choice phrase for classifying Half-handed Cloud, and I think I now have a pretty good conception of what “twee” might mean, even without the help of dictionary.com.

Pointless intro aside, Half-handed Cloud is a unique thing indeed. Halos & Lassos is almost so sophomoric and playful that as someone not aware of its brand of pop music, it’s hard to not take it as a joke. John Ringhofer’s voice is so high and childish it’s like playing a James Taylor song through a pitch shifter. With the average length of a track on Halos & Lassos being slightly under two minutes, the first listen through the album can be disorienting and largely forgettable, especially if you have no prior knowledge of Ringhofer’s modus operandi.

However, the next time through, maybe even towards the end of the first listen, you start to notice just how much Ringhofer has packed into what seem to be, at first impression, mere fleeting thoughts. Ringhofer reveals himself to be a masterful arranger, and the subtle touches in each of his songs are a testament to how seriously he takes his craft, no matter how immediate and whimsical they may sound when he finally unveils them. Even if you’re not a fan of simple, drum machine-driven two-man pop (the other man being recorder and mixer Brandon Buckner), it’s hard not to appreciate Ringhofer’s musically flamboyant writing style and ear for instrumental interaction. Here and there a bell tinkles, a banjo twangs out a little diddle, an accordion playfully wheezes. In addition to these and the ever-present acoustic guitar and Omnichord utilized by Half-handed Cloud, Ringhofer is a touring trombonist with Sufjan Stevens, and the instrument makes many appearances in his own songs.

A lot of press about Half-handed Cloud makes mention of its inherently Christian message, though opinions seem to scale it anywhere from some wholesome communication delivered by a man who receives free board for caretaking a church to some confused, intensely personal, twisted introspection on faith á la a mysterious figure like David Eugene Edwards. Lyrically, Ringhofer is certainly a faithful Christian, and it is easy to understand that Half-handed Cloud is a way of exploring his own faith and forging a deeper connection with the religion that permeates his life. However, it is not a soapbox from which to preach his sermon, it is not a witnessing tool to the faithless, and it certainly is not concerned with pleasing an exclusively Christian audience. It is John Ringhofer working with something he knows well and dearly and is comfortable with, and frankly, with his ear for musical arrangement, it wouldn’t matter much if his lyrics were Buddhist, sung in Chinese, or recitals of Satanic occult spells. Ringhofer is sincere and unconcerned. Though it may not appeal to everyone, he makes music for the very reason music exists.

On Halos & Lassos, as on all of his releases, Half-handed Cloud takes a laundry list of influences and eccentricities that, when combined, could potentially turn a lot of people off to his music. Yet with care and passion, Ringhofer crafts these oddities into something truly unique, utterly sincere, and, most importantly, full of life. I don’t take Ringhofer’s message to be predominantly Christian in nature; it’s something a little more grand and that many people can call their own. It’s about enjoying life, whatever it may bring, and, to borrow from the words of Portuguese neurologist Antonio Damasio, to always remember that “you are the music while it lasts.”

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