SSM – S/T

Recycling old musical ideas and throwing them in a blender with new ideas is all the rage these days. A few years ago, the focus was on 60′s throwback garage-rock, but more recently 70′s classic stoner sounds have become more prevalent in today’s music scene, and of course post-punk bands seemingly never stopped tapping the 80′s new-wave movement for inspiration. The success of these throwback bands hinges on wether or not they can tweak their influences into a unique sound and transfer that sound into well-written songs; SSM does at least one of these right.

SSM – or (John) Szymanski, (Dave) Shettler, and (Marty) Morris – focus on the fuzzed-out guitar-pop sounds of the 60s. Overdriven, billowy guitars are the focus of course, but SSM wisely adds tasteful analog keys and some programmed percussion to the arsenal. The band is bass-less, which sort of makes the tone a little hollow, but the guitars are so fuzzy that it’s hard to tell.

The trio starts with a base of Nuggets-sytled garage-pop, adding elements of psychedelics (check out the light vocal effects on “The Fourth”) and mischievous keyboard lines. The artists stray from the usual three-chord approach, making for a more interesting take on the sound. Apparently the band uses vintage equipment for a more tangible, organic, throwback feel.

For the most part, this self-titled effort is well-written, chock full meaty guitar hooks and synth/organ accents. The drumming is pretty average, but it gets the job done none the less.

SSM definitely has the vintage sound down and does it quite well. What these guys don’t do, however, is tweak the sound to make it their own. The quality of this release is above average, but it sounds like any number of other garage-rock records. There are some excellent riffs scattered throughout the album, but the record comes off as formulaic all too often. Fans of the genre will dig it, but it doesn’t have that certain something extra to attract fans across the board.

Interview with Keith Fullerton Whitman

JD: Have you seen the reviews that have come out for Lisbon yet?

KFW: No. Somebody told me that they had posted a review on the Allmusic Guide, and that’s the only one that I know about.

JD: I’ve read three of them in the past week, maybe even more than that. They’ve all been very positive. I think the Allmusic Guide gave you 4 stars.

KFW: Well that’s fantastic. I’m glad that people are really enjoying it.

JD: What do you think of those preliminary reactions to the record?

KFW: Historically speaking, I’ve always gotten really good reviews. I don’t really know. I don’t really do anything consciously to organize that. I think it’s great. It’s really cool to me that people out there are reacting to anything I do whether it’s really negative or really positive. I guess what I’m trying to do is illicit some sort of extreme reaction in people, either people completely hate what I’m doing or completely love it and that’s great. At least I’m doing something vital then, or in some way that validates that I’m doing something vital.

JD: Unfortunately I missed your show here in Knoxville last year when you played with Greg Davis.

KFW: Steve Winwood (of classic rock band Traffic, he also sang “Higher Love,” and “Roll With It”) was playing in Knoxville that day (at our Sundown in the City concert series) in Market Square and we were eating at the same restaurant and we looked over and he was sitting next to us. Greg and I were both really star struck. We were like “Wow, Stevie Winwood!” And he was only about five feet tall! You know you always think classic rocker guys are going to be like eight foot tall and wearing platform shoes.

JD: Elton John style!!

KFW: Yeah, but he was just a little guy. Stevie Winwood, just a regular guy eating a sandwich.

JD: So, getting back to your record, with all of the positive reaction to Lisbon, do you think maybe some of it is because people have seen you as this laptop artist who does something that might be perceived as kind of cold or clinical to those unfamiliar with the genre, and then you do a live record like this and they see you sweating and bleeding like a regular rock musician?

KFW: I see where you’re going. It’s hard to say. I think I really needed to do something with that record where the goal was to make something that was that I played it and then released it, instead of recording something and then editing it and then mixing it down and then remixing it and then mastering it and spending two years to perfect something. I’m getting to the point now where I think people are getting tired of these endless computer music statements that are crafted at home and then perfected and everything is really glossy. I wanted to make something that was a little rougher. By the time I played that concert in Lisbon I’d been on tour throughout Europe for probably a month before then and I had a week off and my health wasn’t really all that well because I’d been drinking and not sleeping for a month. By the time I got to Lisbon it was like I was so in this zone where it was like I was on vacation. I was in a great mood and the concert came up and I was like “ well I’m just gonna go for it” and I played this kind of more raw, rougher thing than what I usually do and I was really happy about it.

JD: I think the recording reflects that too. It sounds really nice.

KFW: It really just overloads and it’s distorted and there’s all that room sound in there. It’s kind of all these things that I personally find really great in records, where they’re less mathematical and more emotional. I was really in the mood to do that kind of thing. I made the recording and I had this great four or five days in this beautiful city and I had a great time hanging out with everybody there. When I got home and listened to the recording I was like “Fuck Yeah!” this really captures kind of what I was going through those few days. It’s a very uplifting record even though it goes into a few really dissonant kinds of weird bits in the middle there; I think for the most part people that listen to it tell me they feel refreshed afterward instead of feeling like “Whoa.” Usually I drop some really heavy, emotional stuff and people are like “that’s kind of depressing.” But this one seems like its leaving people in a good mood, which is awesome.

JD: I’m changing the subject a bit here, but can you tell me about your involvement with Harvard?

KFW: I have kind of a unique relationship with them. In late 2002, Matmos came and they were officially artists in residence there for two weeks and they were giving classes and workshops and they’re both really good friends of mine, Martin and Andrew. I only live a few blocks away from Harvard, so they invited me to come down and sort of help out with teaching the classes and organize some of the more technical end of things they were working on. I’ve lived in Boston for probably fifteen years now and I went to music school here in the mid-90’s but I don’t really have any affiliations with Harvard or MIT per say. I just go to concerts there and I have a few friends that work there, but this was kind of like me getting in the back door. I went in and I befriended the people in their electro-acoustic music department and this one guy, Ian White, was like “we have this beautiful studio here and nobody really uses it unless they have to, so if you want to work on music here then occasionally teach a master class or teach a workshop on Maximus P* or some computer music and we’ll basically give you free run of the studio whenever you want it.” They gave me a pass card and after that I was in there almost every week until last summer working on something. It was like my home away from home. What was so great about it was that the powers that be at Harvard really had no idea that it was there. It wasn’t like I was this sanctioned artist in residence. It was a very low key kind of thing. I got a lot of work done when I was there. It was great; they had all these beautiful analog synthesizers that I got to work with.

JD: The reason I asked about Harvard is because I’m curious how an educated musician such as yourself, and you’ve been a critic in your own right; how do you view guitarists like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and the like who seem to go for technique explicitly? It seems like the complete opposite of an album like Multiples where you did these academic studies of specific instruments but not in the same fashion.

KFW: Yeah…..well…I guess the short answer is that I find those guys like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen laughable. The whole concept of valuing technical prowess over any sort of musical sense, prioritizing technicality over musicality, it’s silly. It might be funny to know that when I was younger I used to write for one of those guitar magazines, Guitar World. When I was 18, I think it was the first professional writing job that I had. I had a column in Guitar World where I reviewed heavy metal records called The Metal Detector.

JD: I was probably one of those kids reading your articles.

KFW: My best friend Mark and I were in high school, I don’t know how we got it, but every month we’d review heavy metal records. I got a lot of that stuff from those labels that only release records by virtuoso guitarists and it was always some amazingly fast blistering 32nd note arpeggios over really bad bullshit like generic midi backing tracks, just the worst kind of stuff.

JD: Like Marty Friedman (of Megadeth fame) and Cacophony?

KFW: YES! Exactly, like those guys. Specifically those guys, Marty Friedman and who was the other guy? Jason Becker.

JD: Isn’t he paralyzed now?

KFW: He was in David Lee Roth’s band and then he came down with some horrible spinal disease when he was recording that record (David Lee Roth’s A Little Ain’t Enough) and nobody’s really heard from him since. Whatever I think about that kind of music it’s a horrible thing to happen to somebody. That guy was incredibly talented. All of that stuff though, a universe of it, and there was a label called Shrapnel, which I thought was a great name for a label that did that kind of stuff. They would just send me everything that came out on that label. My friend Mark and I would listen to the records and basically just make fun of them. This was in 1991 or 1992 and we were probably 18 or 19 at the time.

JD: I had to ask you about that because that’s how I got started playing guitar. At first all I wanted to do was just copy those guys and for the first two or three years that I played all I did was learn their licks. It seems totally hilarious to me now, but at the time I was probably reading columns like yours and others.

KFW: To be honest, when I was a little younger than 18, probably 16 or 17, I would come home from school and I would play guitar everyday from 3:00 until whenever I had dinner. For about four hours a day, I would just sit in my room and play guitar with a metronome, playing scales. I went to Berkeley which is sort of the epicenter of that belief system. There is this one school in Hollywood where they turn out shredding guitarists. Berkeley, you show up and there are tons of guitarists ready to play you under the table. I was never into that, I thought it was ludicrous, none of these guys are making music, and they’re just playing these recycled scale patterns over and over just to see who can do it slightly faster.

JD: Style over substance.

KFW: Exactly! Style over substance, and that’s crap. It’s been proven time and time again. It’s funny to go from being really into that stuff to a few years later moving to Boston and discovering more interesting music, more visceral stuff. No-wave, punk rock, music concrete, noise….Boston was the center of this “noise scene,” at least for the U.S. I started seeing Crank Sturgeon and all of these guys; it was so much more affecting. You’d come home from a concert feeling like you’d really seen something, instead of thinking “oh that guy played a lot of notes.”

JD: And yet there are still people that buy Dream Theater records.

KFW: Dream Theater, love ‘em or hate ‘em, they have a really strong fan-base of people that are swept up in that whole world. I just don’t like that stuff. I see it as being kind of fey in a way, just fake.

JD: We have some pretty hilarious characters that come into the record store where I work and buy anything related to that band, like John Petrucci’s solo records.

KFW: This guy that lived in the next room over from me studied with John Petrruci. He was his guitar teacher before he got to Berkeley. We went and saw Dream Theater the first year we were there and we got to hang out back stage with them. I was like “wow, this is so cool. They play really fast.”

JD: This guy I’m talking about wears a cape everywhere.

KFW: That’s GREAT!

JD: He’s one of the most hysterical looking human beings I’ve ever seen. You have to ask yourself, why would someone do that?

KFW: Well at least he’s done something right because here we are talking about him. Otherwise he would just be some anonymous weirdo in a record store. He makes a great story.

JD: He’s ripping off Rick Wakeman’s style.

KFW: (laughs) Rick Wakeman’s style……

JD: Specifically referring to guys like Rick Wakeman, have you ever been afraid that your work could become that cold and sterile?

KFW: I don’t think there’s anything cold or sterile about what I’m doing now. I think it sounds very emotional. As far as the guitar stuff from Playthroughs on, that’s about as human as you can get for computer music. I’m really just playing guitar into a system and it’s very improvised and I put a lot of thought into what the whole thing sounds like. Improvisation is a human approach to making music.

JD: I certainly see a lot of warmth in both Playthroughs and Multiples and especially Lisbon too. It just seems like a lot of people who are unfamiliar with electronic music; the first thing they say is that it’s too cold sounding.

KFW: That’s weird because personally I really love a lot of cold music. I just don’t feel the need to make it myself. Like some industrial music or noise or something like that but even then I find human elements in all of that music. Stuff that I think of that’s classically cold and minimal is that bedroom DIY synth-punk from the late 70’s and early 80’s. In retrospect a lot of that stuff sounds amazing. It really sounds cool, like these individuals had no outside influence and just sat in their bedrooms and made records and released seven-inches. At the time it was like “this music’s so cold and distant and there’s no emotion in it,” now it just sounds great. I think because of what we’ve become accustomed to in pop music in the last ten years which is to me endlessly cold and endlessly inhuman, all of that classic cold stuff sounds really warm and inviting.

JD: Now they use computers to fix the voices of every single pop star.

KFW: Yeah, so this is my bone of contention. I think a record like say Boyz II Men acapella actually had more computer processing in it than any computer music of my generation. There’s more computer intervention with the sound on any pop record, even an acoustic guitar or vocal track, than there is in anything that I’m doing. The computer is just one stage in what I’m doing. I build some patches and do freezing and converting guitar notes into sine waves. It’s a very small part of my process. Everything else I’m doing is with outboard gear, I’m actually playing guitar and playing through real speakers and using microphones. Yet, I make computer music while a John Mayer song is “heartfelt roots rock n’roll.” You know the John Mayer song probably has 100 different people that are working on mastering it and mixing it and editing it and it’s all done with computers, it’s all digital.

JD: A perfect example of that is this show on MTV about this guy that used to be in the boy pop group O-Town. He has a show called Ashley Parker Angel where it’s supposed to be him going back to his roots and trying to prove that he’s a real musician. One of the first things I saw was him in the studio with the production team The Matrix. So I’m sitting there with my girlfriend who was a classically trained vocalist and she was saying “his singing is completely flat.” Of course the next thing they show is them using a pitch-correcting program to “fix” his vocal track.

KFW: And they do that with everything, there hasn’t been a song on the radio without voice-correction used in some part of the chain for about 20 years, ever since auto-tune plugs and all of that stuff. Every country record I hear on the radio has got that sound. It all has that weird, fuzzy, square wave vocal sound.

JD: And yet people think that the early Tangerine Dream records, Brian Eno, or Klaus Schulze is really cold and clinical.

KFW: That stuff is so much warmer and rougher than anything that’s being made right now because nobody’s waxing over the details. Nobody’s going “that’s five cents flat or sharp, we’ve got to fix that vibrato.” That Tangerine Dream stuff and Klaus Schulze, especially the Klaus Schulze live record, those sound so great. They’re raw and out of tune and out of time.

JD: There’s a real warmth to them.

KFW: They’re all analog too. That analog stuff sounds so great. It’s that 70’s cosmitch kind of Berlin school of electronic records. I’m not a huge connoisseur of that stuff but I have my favorites, like that Klaus Schulze record Irrlicht. Do you know that one?

JD: Yeah I know that record.

KFW: It’s a brilliant record. Some of the stuff that Klaus did was kind of schmaltzy but Moondawn and Irrlicht are really good.

JD: I have Moondawn and I love that record.

KFW: That’s the one that has all of the drums over the sequencer and analog synthesizer rhythms. It sounds really great.

JD: Getting back to your music, how much of what you do is pre-planned and how much of it is actually improvised.

KFW: I just build systems. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing with the live guitar music at least. I build systems that are sort of modular, half of it’s on the computer and half of it is kind of hardware gear. I play around with different configurations. I might want to play guitar through a synthesizer and then record that into the computer and then put that like ten minutes into the piece or I’ll start playing what I’ve just recorded into it backwards or an octave lower.

JD: When you’re preparing a composition like this do you just add parts when and where it feels natural?

KFW: It definitely has to have an evolution or flow. For example, Lisbon is basically just that concert untouched. It’s just a stereo recording of exactly how it sounded in that room. I think I had some other speakers in the middle of the room but I mixed down all of the three and four channel stuff into the stereo mix. Basically that’s how it sounded in the room though. As far as the evolution of it, I played that kind of sine wave intro for the first ten minutes and then I went “this sounds really great but something needs to happen.” So then I started bringing in some recordings and I started bringing in tapes and synthesizer then there is that one really loud square wave thing that happens. I thought it was a little too placid and I like getting into that alpha stage of music and getting to this place where the music can stay static for an extended length of time as long as it doesn’t get boring. It can be fine leaving it as it is, but then sometimes I’ll throw a wrench in there by going “wouldn’t it be great if in the middle of this beautiful sine wave drone it just got incredibly loud and incredibly distorted and slowly got there over ten minutes.” I think people would follow me there but I like turning it around and making something placid into something very aggressive. You can make beautiful sounding aggressive music and you can make really quiet music that is dissonant. I think dichotomy is part of what I’m about.

JD: I specifically think artists like My Bloody Valentine and Brian Eno exemplify what you were talking about.

KFW: Again, two different extremes of music that you just mentioned in the same breath. Eno’s stuff is as quiet as possible and My Bloody Valentine was by far the loudest concert I’ve ever been to, and yet the music had exactly the same effect. I was listening to Eno records at home and getting into this nice state of mind and then at the My Bloody Valentine show it was so fucking loud and so full-on that it was almost sensory deprivation. You can’t do anything else but hear, you can’t see anything, you can’t smell or taste anything, there is just so much sound that your brain gives up.

JD: On your recordings you use quite a bit of processed guitar.
KFW: It’s all guitar. Almost everything on that Lisbon record, the source sound, is guitar.

JD: What kind of guitar do you use?

KFW: On that concert I used this little traveler, this baby traveler guitar. These hippies in Redwood, California make these little things. It’s a collapsible modular guitar. The leg actually folds out.

JD: You have pictures of a strange guitar on your website.

KFW: The one next to all the pedals is that guitar. That’s the one I used for that concert.

JD: That is a really weird looking guitar!

KFW: It’s an ugly ass guitar. It’s like cosmetically I feel embarrassed to take it out of the case. The cool thing about it is the two pick-ups. It has an electric pick-up, a single coil for the bridge. And then it has an acoustic pick-up built into the body, like contact mics. It’s got two separate outputs so you can run the electric pick-up to one thing, such as the pedals. Then you can run the acoustic pick-up to another thing, such as the computer. It’s like having two different guitars. You can get two distinct sounds at the same time.

JD: What do you think it is about the electric guitar that keeps leading musicians back to it? Specifically what I’m talking about is how even forward thinking electronic musicians such as yourself and Christian Fennesz and Oren Ambarchi, you guys all use guitars. I think that is significant considering that there was this sentiment toward the end of the 1990’s that guitar rock was dead or dying. Then Radiohead released Kid A and people thought it was going to be the end of guitar rock.

KFW: But where are they now? People are still making guitar records. (laughs) I think what it boils down to is this, when I was a kid and I was growing up playing guitar and later when I was listening to electronic records at the same time, I was trying to find my own voice and going through all of these phases. I went through a phase where I played with this free jazz orchestra playing guitar in the style of Derek Bailey. Then I went through a phase where I played noise, straight up feedback, freak-out guitar noise. After a while I got more into electronic sampling and did the Hrvatski stuff for a number of years. At the end there are all of these really great elements that I find all dear. I don’t value one over the other, so why not just make a single music that has aspects of everything that I’m into? I guess that’s where I am right now. I differentiate less between the stuff I make as Hrvatski and the stuff that I make under my own name because ultimately I’m the same person making all this music. Why not play guitar on a track with breaks or put weird, messed-up rhythms in the middle of a guitar track. At some point you become the accumulation of all these influences instead of focusing on one thing or another.

JD: So I guess you’re still doing the Hrvatski stuff then?
KFW: I still do occasionally. It’s not a real priority. I get a lot of gig offers to play as Hrvatski, it’s really strange. I haven’t put out a Hrvatski record since 2002, so almost four years ago at this point. Probably every month I play somewhere in the world. I can make a lot of money to show up and play a Hrvatski gig. Open up my laptop and play these same tracks that I recorded over ten years ago. People just want to hear that stuff. It goes to show that nothing ever really entirely goes out of fashion. Somewhere in the world there are always going to be people that are into something. The same thing happened in the 90’s with metal. On the surface, as far as the press was concerned, nobody was listening to metal in the 90’s, everybody was listening to Nirvana. All of a sudden in the mid-90’s there was all this incredibly popular metal that was selling millions of copies. People were like “where did these people come from,” but in actuality they never went away. They were always there.

JD: In reference to things not going out of style, it seems like here in the South people are still fascinated with terrible records.

KFW: But that isn’t entirely true though. You can go to San Francisco and buy terrible records. There is always a scene for everything.

JD: We seem to have a really serious problem with nu-metal here. There are all of these awful second-rate Tool sort of bands, and Knoxville is one of their number one tour stops.

KFW: We call them drop-D metal, or five string metal. Seven string guitar and five string bass metal. Just because we aren’t into that stuff doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of people out there that love that stuff. They don’t read the same magazines as you and I, but that stuff can still permeate them wherever they are. Someone wrote me to let me know that there was this review of the Lisbon record in Terrorizer magazine. I find it really amazing, that this English metal magazine had done a feature review for my record.

JD: KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN: METAL AS FUCK!!!

KFW: (laughs) It was a really positive review too! They were like “this is a new type of guitar music, it’s loud and repetitive and you should like it.”

JD: They should like it, or at least I feel like they should like it.

KFW: Why not? What makes anything that I’m doing any different than what Sunn((O))) or Boris are doing? Same sound, same instrument, maybe I’m coming at it from a different angle. I think the end result is very similar. I saw Sunn((O))) in concert before Christmas and I went and talked to Stephen O’Malley before that, he’s a really nice guy. They played their show and the first 20 minutes of their set was just a tape piece that Oren Ambarchi made. They turned off all the lights and they played this tape piece before they went on stage, at full volume. The whole crowd at this sold out show was just standing there with their eyes closed.
JD: I was wondering if you felt any affinity or commonalities you see between yourself and groups like Sunn((O))), Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine or individuals like Derek Bailey, John Fahey, Christian Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi, and others?

KFW: Again you’re mentioning this really disparate group of musicians that really the only common bond that they have is that they all play guitar. Mentioning John Fahey and Derek Bailey in the same breath is so strange to me because they both play acoustic guitar but stylistically speaking if you remove the instrument from that music and you’re talking about two completely different things. Fahey is kind of minimalist Americana and Bailey is doing improvisation. It is two completely different ways of looking at music. Of course because of the sound of the instrument itself, people like you and me, we find commonalities. There are some, but they aren’t overt. Stuff like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth, you can’t help but be influenced by that. Especially My Bloody Valentine for me, who I saw when they first came over here. It was so awesomely overloaded. They played this part that was one chord for fifteen minutes. It was so beautiful, but I remembered thinking that the people who were there at the concert would never go see a solo guitar drone concert. They were there because it was this band with a singer playing “actual songs.”

JD: It’s really interesting how Loveless seems to be a pivotal point for many people. It’s probably my favorite record by any band.

KFW: It has a strong effect on almost everybody that is remotely interested in loud, repetitive music. It’s definitely in my all-time top ten. It’s just great all the way through, every song. The writing and the chord progressions are so comforting. The way that record sounds is so detail oriented, it’s not some flavor of the week disposable shit. I think people really appreciate the craftsmanship of that record.

Professor Murder – Professor Murder Rides the Subway EP

In a recent interview, Al Cisneros of Sleep/Om fame stated that “scenes of any kind seem to be havens for sheep people.” I tend to agree with the statement and have always frowned upon bands that place status in a scene before other considerations. A band should never try to consciously play the role of shepherd. Professor Murder is a scene band. It formed to cater to a certain scene that exists in New York City, and, as such, it creates simple music that strives to fill a small corner of that scene while expending as little effort as possible. Like Om, the band is basically a hulking rhythm section, but the similarities really end there. While both bands place a strong emphasis on rhythm, they still remain near polar opposites. While Om capitalizes on the slick groove of a well-greased rhythm section, Professor Murder constructs its songs out of very static rhythm, utilizing mostly percussion and simple, stiff bass plucks.

Professor Murder claims to be the future of post-punk, tossing around the term “progressive post-punk” in biographical material. If anything, the music found on the Professor Murder Rides the Subway EP approximates an opposite of the progression of the post-punk ideal, a “reductive post-punk” that distills the genre into the core necessities and operates from there. There’s really not much to Professor Murder at all: a few introductory keyboard strokes and then bangin’ and shoutin’ away for the remainder of whatever song it is the guys happen to be playing.

Still, while Professor Murder is a young band jumping on to the dance-punk wagon that’s been cruising the States in recent times (and lately only seems able to spin its wheels under the weight of all those piled aboard), the band’s highly percussive take on the genre is a little refreshing. Having as many as three members playing percussive instruments at one time is a welcome change from the usually excruciating synthesizer and guitar tones that overwhelm modern dance-punk songs. It’s much easier on pretty much anything music can effect (one’s ears, mood, psyche, spiritual well-being, sexual performance, desire to commit monstrous crimes, suicidal tendencies, etc) when some art-jerk’s Casio isn’t cranked up to 10 and run through five phaser pedals. While most of the tracks on Professor Murder Rides the Subway do use keyboards that occasionally border on irritating, they aren’t a central focus and at times are down-right tasteful, as in the strong closer “Free Stress Test.”

Perhaps Professor Murder hasn’t rubbed me the wrong way because the songs don’t stick around long enough to do so. At 16 minutes, Professor Murder Rides the Subway is finished before you even have a chance to think of a reason to hate it (or love it, for that matter). Its mix of hip-hop and dub-influenced booty-shaking and odd, chanting vocals is hardly memorable, and that may be the best part. Its immediacy directly serves its ultimate purpose, and there’s no need to give the band a second thought until it comes time to bump-da-bump again. Professor Murder certainly isn’t the worst band in one of history’s most shallow musical genres, and it isn’t the only band out there looking to take advantage of a currently “hot” scene. Professor Murder Rides the Subway is perfectly suited to a night of mindless dancing, and last I checked, NYC was filled with that. I suppose in that respect, Professor Murder can’t truly be faulted; it’s a mindless buyer’s market, and these guys certainly bring the mindless goods.

Midlake – The Trials of Van Occupanther

It could be a sophomore slump or maybe an adjunct pop exploration in what will become a long and industrious career. But ultimately the music speaks for itself, and only time will tell. But one thing is for sure, The Trials of Van Occupanther sees this quintet from Denton, TX shifting gears from the atmospheric psychedelics of its debut, Bamnan and Slivercork.

Midlake has downshifted a bit and have traded delicately layered, atmospheric pop and charming quirkiness for a kinder, gentler, and charming dream pop. It may not be a step backwards, but it is definitely a step back in time, as most of the tracks on Trials are built upon a stratum of 70′s soft-rock influences. And while definitely a pop record, many of the songs have classical undercurrents, not only in the diverse arrangements with various breaks and transitions but also in the variety of instrumentation employed, including piano, flute, french horn, double bass, bassoon, and violin in addition to the standard rock tools.

Fortunately for us, head Laker Tim Smith has a keen songwriting aptitude, and we are equally fortunate that the band members are adept multi-instrumentalists capable of producing pleasant melodies with adventurous arrangements. So while the subdued vocal harmonies and acoustic folk influences of 70s pop bands Chicago and America can be heard, there is enough intricately layered dream-pop floating around the fleshed-out orchestrations to keep indie-rock fans contented.

Some of the best music on the disc can be found on the opening track “Roscoe,” along with “Bandits,” “Head Home,” and “In This Camp.” Showing hints of the same blithe alternative pop as World Party and The Shins, these tracks contain well-crafted, bouncy rhythms and vibrant interludes, including dreamy keyboards and slick electric guitar leads reminiscent of Dire Straits. Although a bit more wistful than the others, “Young Bride” is the standout track. With a layered, minor-key melody and a cool, trippy beat, the odd lyrics and tender vocals captivate the listener while the violins waft aesthetically.

Unfortunately the other six tracks don’t contain enough of the same luring enchantment as those mentioned above, and so they tend to wallow in the vapors of 70′s soft rock. Although not as engaging or memorable, they are mostly pleasant and strongly polished due to the sagacious songwriting and excellent musicianship.

Midlake has taken its music in a different, if not unexpected, direction and has me wondering aloud what direction the band will take next. But in the meantime, I’m going to sit back and enjoy The Trials of Van Occupanther since it contains enough amiable and alluring dream-pop with ample atmospheric charm to overlook its few weaknesses and prove it a rewarding venture.

Betrayed – Substance

As every review out there will tell you, Betrayed is composed of Carry On and Champion members. I was into those bands, and I haven’t warmed up to Betrayed as much yet. These guys basically play competent melodic hardcore, but it’s nothing uncommon. I’ve noticed plenty of hype and expectations surrounding Substance, but it’s just an average piece of hardcore.

Betrayed’s lyrics can be a metaphor for the album. They’re certainly personal and have a lot to proclaim, but they are cliche-ridden at the same time.

“The City Lights” has a long, boring introduction, but then it sparks into one of my favorites from the package. That could mean the songwriting needs to develop some more, and I can’t fault the band for that on the debut. The songs are mainly mid-tempo with a little bit of rock influence in the riffs (“Bring it to Life”). If you’re wondering about the vocals, maybe picture a less annoying Bane? Aram Arslanian’s forte is yelling his words clearly, with a constant muscular delivery.

Listening to Substance and its 13 tracks pressed my snooze button. Apparently I can’t be in love with every melodic hardcore band out there. I will say Kurt Ballou’s production is top-notch as expected, but the songs still don’t hit me hard enough.

The Silver Lining – Well Dressed Blues

Judging from the album Well Dressed Blues, I would wager The Silver Lining puts on an exciting live show. The band’s vitriolic brand of rock and blues harkens back to an older, simpler time – when men were men and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley were poisoning youth culture with up-tempo rebel rousing and animated stage antics. Add in some raucous piano hits, a slick bottom end, and a smokey alto voice in one Anna Price, and you got yourself the ultimate band to kick back with your best buddies and drink yourself stupid at your local watering hole. A real man (or woman)’s kind of place. Not that trendy imported beer-serving hotspot sports bar. I’m talking about that dive in a back alley that closes up shop when the health inspector comes. The kind of bar that’s got the soul and character and still lets you smoke inside (hah). The kind of place that welcomes old-fashioned, no-frills-necessary, gravely blues-rock tunes like “Cemented Steps” and “Even We Were Happy” as the theme songs to countless tussles between seedy pool hustlers and rowdy marks swindled out of their shirt.

The Silver Lining also shows off its versatility on Well Dressed Blues, proving these guys can cool down and doll out some breathing room as much as they can heat things up, taking it down a notch with slow shuffles like “Battered Senseless M.I.A Heart.” Tracks like “Nosedive” and the titular “Well Dressed Blues” are muddy romps, full of that crisp, Fender Bluesman twang and golden harmonies. If you’ve ever been entranced by a wispy 12-bar phrase, The Silver Lining is the band to check out.

Though some might knock The Silver Lining for rehashing every standard blues riff in the book, Well Dressed Blues doesn’t pretended to take the genre to new heights. It takes the classic formula and polishes it up, clothing it in some snug and snazzy modern attire. And what’s wrong with that? The time-tested three-piece suit is just as sharp as ever, and Well Dressed Blues looks mighty good to me.

The Drift – Streets/Nozomi

The Drift’s instrumental passages are just perfect for sending its listeners on a drift of their own. Inspired by the album’s title, this writer embarks on a drift inspired by the unique, jazzy post-rock.

October 11, 1999:
Unoccupied, a nocturnal alley meets the traffic of St. Charles Place at its conclusion. The 4/4 pound of an upright bass is distinct over the approaching automobiles and café chatter — there’s live jazz in front of The Clef. Light taps on the ride keep the time while a lone electric guitar feeds back; all prepare for the snare brush that heralds the trumpet. Its entrance, at this point, is anticipated as an extension of that bass. Brass triplets lock in place with bass quarter notes as the guitarist arpeggiates with understatement. The quartet’s really moving now, but the pavement forces Allan Street’s departure; foot travel demands another destination. The music can still be heard clearly as he continues away from the well-lit center and passes a row of houses. Activity is slight, windows are dark, and it’s just the bass again, marking out the footsteps. Suddenly, the sound ceases, leaving the trumpet’s report to fade slowly as he approaches the St. James intersection. On that note, a low-slung Mercedes prowls by, halting at a red light hung between pines. A glance at the passenger’s window reveals only a 6% tint. As a pedestrian at a nearly empty intersection, Allan continues unchecked across to the other side of St. James. The engine behind roars throatily and then fades into a distant right turn. Reverb chords accompany it down the road. The jazz also fades as he heads deeper into the residential section. Insufficient streetlights leave little visible but the line of dark conifers against the falsely illuminated city sky.

Meanwhile, NASA’s Nozomi (“hope” – Japanese) approaches Mars, hesitates, and miscalculates a main thruster burn, sending it back into heliocentric orbit for four years. Small course corrections leave the spacecraft wanting fuel; hence it swings its winged figure forlornly back towards Earth. 33 kg of instruments and a somewhat deficient quantity of fuel accompany the 225 kg Nozomi sunward. As it approaches Earth for the second time, it is struck by a solar flare (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1998-041A.html).

Daughters – Hell Songs

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few years, you’re probably already aware of the Providence, RI group Daughters. Already the most polarizing grindcore band since The Locust, Daughters is managing to alienate as many fans as it garners. The release of Canada Songs in 2003 cemented the act into the playlists of just about any hardcore, metal, or noise enthusiasts with 10 minutes (the length of the entire full-length) to spare.

The haters will begin by telling you how much they loathe Lex’s vocals on Hell Songs. Anyone paying attention would’ve already noted that a few of these vocals were already there on Canada Songs, and by the time the band’s version of “Marry Me (Lie, Lie)” appeared on Three One G’s Release the Bats tribute to The Birthday Party, it was apparent that these guys were extremely reluctant to be pigeonholed as some run-of-the-mill grind act.

So what do the vocals sound like now? Gone are the manic shrieks of Canada Songs in favor of Nick Cave-esque howls circa The Bithday Party. Any moronic scene kid that doesn’t know shit about music will try and say that it sounds like he’s drunk or some television evangelist. These kids have obviously never heard The Birthday Party, a group that informed a considerable amount of the tight pants, dyed black hair, white belt set before the style was co-opted. Nearly all of the Gravity Records, Three One G, and GSL records rosters have been considerably influenced by the early goth sounds of Bauhaus, The Cure, and The Birthday Party. So you can make fun of Peter Murphy all you want for hanging upside down like a bat, but the fact is that those arty hardcore bands found something fiery and potent in In the Flat Field, Pornography, and Junkyard. So it comes as no surprise to me that Daughters would want to mainline some of that doom-laden filth into their own evil music.

Musically, Hell Songs is more of the same: insanely high-pitched guitar work that hits your ears like a million needles, 1000 miles-per-hour blast beats, and distorted bass grooves. Apart from some violin and brass on a few parts, you won’t find anything out of line coming from the heart of the band. So do the vocals make that much of a difference? Yes and no. On the one hand, the group has enough fans that are starving for something different, and Daughters are trying to show them the way. On the other hand, now instead of sounding like The Locust, the group sounds like another of its contemporaries, Ex-Models. Now I’m not knocking Daughters for sounding like either of these bands, it’s just that they aren’t doing anything groundbreaking here.

What it all comes down to is this, do you care? Do I care? No. Hell Songs is a great grindcore record. While fans of Canada Songs may be initially disappointed, I highly encourage repeated listens to ease the adjustment.

Silverstein – 18 Candles: The Early Years

Emo, what happened? You used to be popular and make good grades. Now people see you and laugh. They say you are played out and that you are “so yesterday.”

But don’t worry. Your star will shine again. After all, the same folks calling you old news are currently enjoying a new rehashing of Joy Division, Talking Heads, Metallica, and Guns n’ Roses. So be patient. In 2015, some dilettante will learn to appreciate you for who you really are, and you will alternately sing and scream your way back into the kids’ hearts.

Anyway, Silverstein is an emo band formed in Ontario in 2000. For a band that is six years old, releasing a disc titled The Early Years may sound a bit presumptuous. But evidently, a lot of tour mileage and time away from home has made six years feel like 10, and that is old in band years. And, most likely, Silverstein and Victory Records’ release of this collection of independently released early recordings stems from a loyal fan base’s interest in the material and the label’s and band’s willingness to play along and make a few bucks on the deal.

The first third of this disc features material supposedly recorded after two months of band practice and released in 2000 as the EP Summer’s Stellar Gaze. The vocals are bad, as confessed to and explained in the liner notes, but the production is passable and the guitars adeptly play standard metallic pop hooks. The pleasure, though, is in hearing a pretty good band in its infancy. Otherwise, who cares, right?

The second third of the disc contains songs from 2002′s independently released When the Shadows Beam. On these recordings, one guitarist was replaced, the music got edgier, and vocalist Shane Told started screaming.

The final third of the disc is filler: two acoustic versions of Silverstein’s recent material, three live songs, and one remix. Silverstein’s 18 Candles: The Early Years is for the band’s loyal followers and perhaps the few kids foolhardy enough to still like emo.

The Never – Antarctica: A Storybook Record

It’s tough to review an opera one’s never seen. North Carolina’s The Never is touring Antarctica: A Storybook Record this summer, and, although I have the album and the 50-page illustrated storybook sitting in front of me, putting these two pieces together without seeing the show feels like I’m missing an important part.

However, that’s not because of the album’s weakness. On the contrary, Antarctica’s music is a confident, competent, and altogether charming combination of Death Cab for Cutie and Some by Sea: intense but low-key string- and keyboard-accentuated pop music that takes itself more than a little seriously. Lyrically Antarctica owes a great debt to Roddy Frame and Paddy McAloon, and a higher compliment is difficult to pay.

Antarctica has some glorious pop moments. The label recommends for airplay “Summer Girl/Old Man Winter,” “Cavity,” and the title track. While I agree with “Summer Girl,” a generously indulgent slice of the purest pop with a heavily orchestral outro that could be a fairly serious hit if anyone could get this on the radio, and the title track, with its soaring harmonies and swerving lyrics (from a little odd to absolutely opaque in two lines: to “But in Antarctica, a place where I don’t feel alone / And in Antarctica, our words are buried in the snow / And the witch can’t fine me here / And all of my friends are there / And I’ll find my heart in Antarctica”), I disagree with the inclusion of “Cavity” because, although musically arresting, lyrically I can’t escape its double entendres (consider the alternative meaning of cavity — that is the one that doesn’t mean tooth rot — and consider the lyrics: “You’re a cavity / You’re mine all the time / Although it hurts it’s good for me / You’re mine all the time / Get it right the first time / Or you’ll be alone”; see what I mean?) and would have recommended instead “March of the Minions,” as that grabbed my attention on the first listen and continues to grab it now on listen number eight or 10 or whatever.

Let me say here that I usually only listen to an album twice to review it (and, according to some, that’s generous — unlike Nick Hornsby, I don’t have the luxury of dismissing an album based on cover art, for instance). That The Never’s effort has taken me, like, 10 listens to review says a great deal about the album’s depth.

Anyway, “March of the Minions” grabs the listener by the throat, tells the listener about this terrible nowhere job (“Working in the madhouse”), then throws him down and walks away with a vicious stuttering rhythm that’s impossible to ignore. I can understand why The Never doesn’t do this on every song — it’d make the band a different kind of band than what these guys want to be — but that hasn’t stopped me from backing up the CD and listening to “March” over and over. Further, “The Winter’s Coming” turns into a much bigger song than it initially seems, and one listen with both ears all the way through quickly turns this, too, into an album highlight.

The album’s slower, smaller tracks (some of which feel like the listener must scoot forward in his chair to better hear them they’re so small… like, taped-off-of-AM-radio kind of small) are equally rewarding. “Farmland,” “The Sharpest Place,” and “Snow Starts to Fall” are all solid tracks; heartfelt but not trailblazing, they do a fine job of rounding out an album of, if the world gave artists who deserve it the respect they undoubtedly earn, maybe a half-dozen college radio pop hits.

But The Never wants more than this. And that’s the downside to the Antarctica album. It’s designed as a contiguous narrative about, well, as the album’s interior says, “the journey of a country boy returning a nuclear bomb to the city.” This makes some songs goofy as hell out of context. Lyrically interspersed with these half-dozen chiming, serviceable pop tunes are casual mentions of bombs, cold, hills, snow, trees, witches, and several other things that just don’t make sense unless you have the storybook that’s to accompany Antarctica: A Storybook Record.

Like the storybooks wherein a cue is provided for one to turn the page and continue following along, The Never’s storybook has cues on the bottom of pages that signal when the listener is to turn the page based on the time elapsed in the accompanying song. Unlike many people, I don’t own an iPod nor do I listen to my music through my computer — I kick it old school and put CDs in my actual stereo, which is across the room from where I’m writing this. Without the telltale beep to signal page turning, following the storybook’s narrative with the album is a bit of a challenge, but I can’t think of a better way to do what The Never has done.

The storybook is a 50-page illustrated narrative poem. Although it looks like it’s for children, it falls into the genre of children’s literature for adults, a surprisingly large genre (springing to mind is Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, a story no child could ever discern the truth of but that makes parents feel like better parents… and if you loved The Giving Tree when you were little, please go back and read it again before you tell me I’m full of crap). The storybook does, indeed, trace the adventures of Paul after he discovers a nuclear bomb near his forest home. He allies with Alice, his friend from the city, in an effort to return the bomb to its rightful owner. All the while, Paul and Alice are pursued through pristine forest and decaying city by the evil witch and her henchmen, who want, for reasons unexplained, to detonate the bomb in “the mountains and forested land” right near Paul’s home and (in another nod to Silverstein) the tree he loves so much. Eventually captured by the witch, Paul remembers the carving on his favorite tree (more nodding at Silverstein) and convinces the witch not to drop the bomb, but signals get crossed and the bomb is dropped in the heart of the city, where it doesn’t explode and instead becomes a symbol of the wasted lives of the city’s inhabitants. The city rejuvenated and the witch rehabilitated, Paul and Alice stroll off into the snowy landscape.

Although the plot is a change of pace (I doubt you’ll see a Disney film about a boy handing a witch a nuke), the sentiment is, sadly, an old hat. Nearly concluding with the lines, “Life is so perfect in all of its flaws / but we forget to slow down, forget to just pause,” the storybook says the reader should, in essence, carpe diem and stop and smell the roses and all that stuff, which is nice, but unless you’re just dumb, you probably knew this already, and having a four-piece from Chapel Hill tell you so is probably redundant.

The poetry itself is amateurish but heartfelt. Numerous minor grammatical errors plague the text (the frequent misuse of everyday for every day — it’s one word only when used as an adjective, dammit! — is particularly egregious), the lines don’t scan, and more than a few lines are forced to rhyme although it perverts regular sentence order to do so, turning some into a mishmash of filler. Take a look:

Around the bomb, the streets start to fill.
The crowd just gets bigger, it builds and builds.
They gather around and slowly begin
to lift the thing up and stand it on end.
Now it’s a constant reminder for all those who pass,
to live everyday like it was their last.

Insert sic’s where necessary; this is what the text really says. The repetition of start and begin in lines 1 and 3 lend an unfinished quality to scenario (when, exactly, do they finish and end?). The word just is unnecessary. Crowd is singular and doesn’t agree with the opening They in line 3. The phrase “lift the thing up” is repetitive (one doesn’t often lift things down, does one?). Now is unnecessary, as is “all those who pass” (for who else would it influence?). The comma should be deleted at the end of line 5. In line 6, that everyday should be every day, and that like it was should be as if it were.

If this seems pedantic, it is, but it’s why the storybook can’t stand on its own: it’s not great poetry. It is poetry — it’s rhythmic in its own way — but the storybook only works when combined with the album and the book’s illustrations.

And what beautiful illustrations these are. Noah Smith, The Never’s vocalist/guitarist/bassist who is responsible for the storybook’s poetry and drawings, outdoes more than a few professional illustrators with the storybook’s watercolors. The dark and complex depiction of the witch’s henchmen that is to accompany “March of the Minions,” for example, captures perfectly the song’s sentiment. Those in the front of the piece are discernibly human, but toward the back they become less so and more skeletal. The orange-brown sky and the barbed wire lend a concentration camp air to the piece, and, as one remembers from earlier, who hasn’t felt like his job was actually a concentration camp — a madhouse — and he was just waiting to get sent to the showers?

The piece complementing the conclusion of “Searching and Chasing” captures Paul riding the bomb, the bomb tied to his wagon, being chased by a pair of Suburbans. Paul’s expression is a combination of resignation (“Why did I do this?”) and concern (“Yep, they’re still back there”). Both Paul and one Suburban are catching air, making them appear, possibly, as two sides of the same coin. “There, but for the grace of God,” might wonder Paul, “go I.”

Although Smith needs to develop more as a poet, his development as an illustrator is what I’m really looking forward to. These pieces are fantastic by themselves, and they align perfectly with both storybook and album.

I want to take this as a whole. I really do get the sense that without seeing the stage show (which is supposed to include The Never playing with “a small orchestra and projecting the art from the book on screens as they play through the album”), I’m missing a vital part of what The Never have achieved with all the parts of Antarctica: A Storybook Record.

The achievement is sweeping, ambitious, and more than a little dangerous. This is only The Never’s second album, and attempting something on such a grand scale smacks of pretension and overreaching. And, at times, Antarctica is pretentious, and, at times, Antarctica does overreach, but it does so for the best of reasons: a unique multimedia vision that borders on operatic.

The Never plays Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and the band’s native North Carolina before the tour wraps up at September’s end. Here’s hoping a live DVD is forthcoming, because if The Never got even as close as San Diego or Vegas or Phoenix, I’d get out of my chair and drive from Orange County, California, and go see the act. Once you’ve experienced Antarctica, you really want the whole experience and all that that entails. Antarctica: A Storybook Album is a fantastic accomplishment that everyone should have the opportunity to experience, and to limit it to just those folks who are fortunate enough to live in the Northeast and Midwest is just cruel.

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