The Brokedowns – Six Songs EP

The Brokedowns is aggressive, fast, and sloppy, just like all good punk rock should be. So why is Six Songs so unimpressive?

It’s probably because we, as punk fans, have heard this formula so many times that it takes something really special to make a band stand out, and the Brokedowns just doesn’t have it.

Over the course of these fairly predictable six songs, the band blasts through every note with little regard for the things that have made their influences so great. Sure, the blazing verse of “Asshole Jacket” displays a talent for writing some pretty serious riffs, but the muddled playing and lack of melody in the chorus pretty much erases all the good vibes there. “Git’r'dunification” has a similar problem, when the momentum of the catchy Fugazi-eque front half of the song gets roadblocked by a slowed down second verse.

There are definitely flourishes of something special on Six Songs, but until the Brokedowns figures out how to harness those moments and flesh them out into entire songs, the band will pretty much just wade in the sea of punk rock also-rans.

This Is Radio Freedom – s/t

This Is Radio Freedom’s self-titled EP strides through 6 synthetically enhanced tracks of edgy British rock. A lot of bands screw themselves by cramming synth effects into rock music, but this time it works. This album offers a handful of progressive, full bodied rock songs.

This Is Radio Freedom sounds like a high strung mix of U2 and Blur, but with the vocals of Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke. Steady, pulsing beats anchor chiming, elevated guitars that shift into power chord mode during choruses. The more aggressive rock moments are solid, but the disc’s strength is its grooves. The bass lines and rhythmic verses drive these songs. At its core, This Is Radio Freedom is a very decent rock band.

The song lengths are perfect. Track 1, “Bombthreat”, is the band’s first single. This song quickly works itself into a rhythm. Its paced, techno-ish beat lurks below stratospheric guitars. A brief interlude sprinkled with piano and synth strings isn’t necessary but isn’t in the way, either. It’s a solid track, but not the album’s best.

“Lady Lucifer” is better. This rock song thankfully sounds a little dirtier. Again, the synth effects work with the rock aesthetic–not against it. The track moves forward with gritted teeth.

The disc’s second single is “Family Man”. Here, the synths assert themselves. But the song’s rumbling groove is unfazed by the zaps of sticky static. The vocal delivery on “Family Man” attempts more dynamics but still plays it safe. This track also boasts the album’s first solid hook.

The next two tracks drag. The digital effects on “Let It Go” sound forced, like tokens to make the song sound more progressive than it really is. But salvation is soon found, if only momentarily, when the guitar slings out a punchy Southern (USA) rock riff. The addition of brass is also welcome. “Not for You” is a stripped down balled featuring only a clean electric guitar and vocal. Doesn’t work.

“Sleep It Off” marks the album’s second successful use of brass. The paced snare beat and thick rhythms sound better when the cymbals wake up halfway through the song.

The album’s final three tracks are remixes of “Family Man”. The first, by Dan Le Sac, is beat packed but balances that with a light atmosphere. Astrosnooze’s remix features a heavy, syrupy synth line and dance beat. In contrast, Evils’ remix sounds pleasantly airy with a tempered pulse. The original track is barely recognizable here.

This Is Radio Freedom’s self-titled EP is radio friendly but not pop driven. It’s equal parts hard and alternative rock. This is not a thrilling record, and the band is not leading any revolutions. But their progressive attitude about rock music sounds good. Rock fans that enjoy digital treatments will enjoy.

Deerhunter – Microcastle/Weird Era Continued

For its third album and second full-length for Kranky, Atlanta’s Deerhunter has reigned in some of the noisier texture of last year’s excellent Cryptograms and tightened up its pop songcraft. The result is an album every bit the equal of Cryptograms in terms of quality while being vastly different in a number of ways. As the title denotes, Microcastle/Weird Era Continued is a double album and Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox has said in a number of interviews leading up to its release that this is his take on doo-wop. While it isn’t necessarily noticeable on every track, it certainly rings true several times over the course of both Microcastle and Weird Era Continued. The albums contain fragments of doo-wop and girl group pop consumed within the textural nuances of shoegaze and dream pop.

Taken as separate albums, Microcastle is the suit and tie to Weird Era Continued‘s t-shirt and jeans. Both albums are phenomenal but Microcastle gives off the impression of being worked on intensely and structured very carefully while Weird Era has a loose, winsome feel. “Cover Me (Slowly)” begins Microcastle with a brief, mostly instrumental space-guitar waltz. The string bent guitar riff sounds like the high, whistling notes in Johnny Mathis’ “Wonderful Wonderful.” Then there’s “Agoraphobia.” This second track is one of the most beautiful songs the band has written so far and reminds me of The Appleseed Cast circa Low Level Owl and Sonic Youth at the same time. Another similarity to The Appleseed Cast’s magnum opus is the song suite containing “Calvary Scars,” “Green Jacket,” and “Activa” that is similar in makeup to Low Level Owl trilogy “Flowers Falling From Dying Hands,” “Messenger,” and “Doors Lead to Questions.” “Never Stops” is the kind of short, near-perfect pop song destined to be an instant classic. On the opposite end of the spectrum, “Nothing Ever Happened” sees the band applying prog basslines to its formula and spinning an otherwise ordinary sounding song into an angular riffed showcase of the band’s razor sharp attention to detail. “Twilight at Carbon Lake” finishes the album with an arpeggiated guitar riff and waltzing rhythm straight out of Marvin Berry and the Starlighters’ “Earth Angel” cranked to eleven with an ending that blasts off on a crest of glorious feedback. All that being said, Microcastle definitely sounds like the work of Deerhunter in its current incarnation.

Weird Era Continued is a beast completely unto itself. It, like Microcastle, is pretty astounding although it sounds a little closer in style to the more pop-oriented back half of Cryptograms mixed with some girl-group pop than it does to the material from Microcastle. If we’re calling Cryptograms a weird era for Deerhunter then this is definitely the more obvious continuation of that sound. Several tracks contain obvious nods to the Phil Spector sound popularized by The Ronettes and The Crystals. Also contained here is another version of “Calvary Scars,” bringing the recorded count of that song to three if you include the one that was on Deerhunter’s Daytrotter sessions. Where the version from Microcastle is extremely brief and sounds like a song slowly coming untethered, this one ends Weird Era Continued on a drawn out, twinking stairway to the stars over the course of its ten minute run time.

The successes of Deerhunter’s Microcastle/Weird Era Continued make one thing abundantly clear – they aren’t about to run out of ideas anytime soon. For frontman Bradford Cox this makes three albums released in one year including his Atlas Sound full-length. Unsurprisingly, given the guy’s work ethic, there’s already another Atlas Sound full-length on the horizon along with a steady stream of digital seven-inches available from the Deerhunter blog. Unlike other groups that seem to get more inconsistent with a massive wave of releases, Deerhunter has stepped its game up immensely. One of the must have albums of 2008 to be sure.

Detox Retox – Hard To Swallow EP

Washington DC based Detox Retox (Michael Parker – vocals/guitar, Nate Frey – lead guitar, Kevin Glass – bass/vocals and Kabir Khanna -drums) have hit the indie scene as purveyors of disco tinged “sexy rock and roll”, citing everything from classic rock such as The Rolling Stones to newer (and infinitely less impressive) UK indie scenesters The Arctic Monkeys as influences. As far as I’m concerned this EP pisses all over The Arctic Monkeys material from a great height, for two reasons; 1) they’ve actually hit their target of creating short, danceable and impossibly catchy rock songs and 2) they are accomplished musicians (perhaps The Monkeys are, but they do hide it very well). With humorous, cheeky lyrics and a ridiculously tight rhythm section Detox Retox can’t fail in winning over even the most jaded indie fan.

Highlights on this five track EP include “Groovebox”, with a stunning, fast-paced disco tempo that you can’t help dancing to as the song rolls along with an inevitable momentum of its own. With Parker spitting out his vocals behind the sinuous winding of the bass and high hat of the drums, this reminds me of sleazy, UK Indie glam rockers Pink Grease, minus the synths. The lyrical content, “There’s a killer in this concrete disco/ And if you find her she’s already had her way/ There’s a killer in this concrete disco/ You’ll never, you’ll never, you’ll never know”, is admittedly plugging the same Arctic Monkeys obsession of looking at people “on the dance floor”. However, there’s something a bit more interesting here; this song kind of has that Ladytron vibe going on; very fun, danceable music but strangely unnerving lyrics. This is a great song though, I had it on repeat for about an hour.

There’s a theme developing with “Evil Disco”, a rumbling, grimy number with a great catchy chorus you embarrassingly can’t help but find yourself singing in the most inconvenient situations. “Then I
wave, wave, wave like a magic wand/ Now I know, she’s a natural/ Wave, wave, wave like a magic wand/Now I know, I see the natural blonde.” I’d suggest that it’s more than a little unambiguously filthy, but with the directly preceding, “I met a girl who makes love like a saint, she fucks like a sinner/ has two boys for breakfast, tequila for dinner/ When she licks her lips and raises her hips/ I know we’re going to get it on”, what ambiguity remained disappears; this is a song about having sex with someone you probably shouldn’t be having sex with.

Closer “Resurrection” goes down a completely different avenue. Starting off with a very Rolling Stones inspired classic rock riff, it descends into a Queens of the Stone Age style bluesy guitar solo. Parker sounds strangely like Liam Gallagher here, and the song actually has that epic Brit Pop quality that early Oasis had. The best way of describing this is if you imagine Oasis back in the (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? days, with Josh Homme on lead guitar performing lyrics written by Jack Black, “Get down on your knees and pray to the God’s of rock and roll, to save your life, to save your soul/ Remember how we used to pour our hearts out on guitar, this is a rock and roll resurrection, who do you think you are?” This is a pretty awesome song actually, and shows that Detox Retox can definitely do things other than short, funky party songs.

A few US reviewers seem to think that these guys sound stale in the current indie scene, however from a UK perspective Detox Retox is a refreshing change from the “stripped down and simplified” (read: we can’t play our instruments and we can’t write music) sounds coming out of a lot of UK bands at the moment. I look forward very much to hearing a full-length release from these guys.

Midsummer – Inside The Trees

It’s unusual that a band of Midsummer’s tenure and experience would just now be releasing a debut full-length album. After three EPs, a film score, a decade of playing together, and three years working on Inside The Trees, the LA band’s first LP is finally here.

It’s also unusual for a collection of tracks to contain many diverse musical styles navigating through various genres while being twisted into a different whole that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is technically solid. But Midsummer have managed to put together such an album, combining prog-ish post-rock and shimmering indie-rock with ambient soundscaping tendencies, to form something that sounds like a more rocked-out Album Leaf, or a mellower, less schizophrenic Most Serene Republic.

Melodic, piano-based orchestrations are used as a base from which the band build their tunes into a densely layered indie/art/prog/post-rock hybrid that includes brooding and dynamic instrumentals similar in style to Godspeed You Black Emperor! and shimmering, atmospheric indie-rock like Sigur Ros and Stafraenn Hakon. In addition, the ambitious endeavor displayed on Inside The Trees includes some open and soothing passages as well as more adventurous and exploratory musical segments that provide originality and distinction and are enjoyable to listen to.

Blasting guitars and smooth, deep bass lines wail over majestic keyboard passages while gently rolling drums and strings temper the mood. Louder, more dynamic rhythms build from softer, subtler tones to include periodic waves of placid keyboards and bright, fuzzy guitar leads. Midsummer do not follow any blueprint or stick to any one formula, but over the course of the record, similarities to all of the RIYLs permeates the music.

Inside The Trees is a bombastic and superior mix of hyphenated rock styles, executed with technical precision and polished with a surreal atmosphere. Anyone who enjoys any of the RIYLs should definitely check out this release.

The Lost Revival – Homemade Confetti

As an alternative to American Music Club’s Everclear you could do worse than The Lost Revival’s Homemade Confetti. Its rootsier than most of AMC’s earlier output but still fires on many of the same cylinders – most especially in the vocals.

Homemade Confetti‘s Americana stomps and boozes its way through 10 tracks of pleading confessionals. There’s the tent-revival strain of “Jesus Loves You” and the harmonica-accented “Powerlines” to keep you in the right frame of mind. “A Bird on a Chain” has a little bit of Grandaddy seeping into its beats, a departure from the shuffling beat of “Driftwood” and the rock/dance of “Thin Man’s Mile.” It all points to Lost Revival’s attempts to break out of the cardboard, one-dimensional approaches taken by the glut of Wilco wannabes.

If opener “Whiskey Lake” takes you through the gutter as a slow-tempo jeremiad, closer “First Day” gives you hope again, despite its solemn intonation that “Today is the first day of the end of your life.” It finishes the album with falsetto, hymn-like refrains that can lift your spirit after dragging you through the mud.

Eivind Opsvik – Overseas III

Blurring the lines of musical genres in this 21st century western society is no easy feat. iTunes and its digital brethren have practically issued a mandate to the contrary, ensuring that the habitual process of categorizing, organizing, and archiving one’s music is rewarded by a quick and orderly retrieval later. Indeed, working in the vacillating world of musical performance these days requires a high degree of resilience, as our digital consumer culture continues to pigeonhole artists in the name of playlist tidiness. But what of that rare musician who can defy these conventions and still create something evocative and profoundly original, worthy of your precious time and hard earned money? Meet Norwegian-born bassist Eivind Opsvik. His stylings may be comfortably rooted in contemporary jazz, but there’s a strong notion of “everything but the kitchen sink” on this record.

Opsvik and his veteran lineup of Tony Malaby (tenor sax), Jeff Davis (vibraphone), Jacob Sacks (keyboards), and Kenny Wollesen (drums/percussion) have made their mark twice before with Overseas I and II, but this third installment of the triptych is the most engaging listen of all. With agile pedal steel guitarist Larry Campbell (most notably a member of Bob Dylan’s band) on board, the possibility for innovation is even greater. Though occasionally namedropped alongside luminaries such as John Zorn and Coltrane, Opsvik’s compositions, so densely layered with texture and peppered with a sweeping range of influences, are a stunning force all their own. It’s Aphex Twin without the white noise, Pink Floyd without the egos, Neil Young without the lyrics, and Brian Eno without the manifesto. Whether your preference is for a haunting melody, an unnerving sequence of harmonies, or an unconventional song structure, Opsvik and his Overseas Ensemble deliver the goods.

Overseas III starts out accessibly enough with “Neil,” a slow burner that gradually gathers steam as layers of keyboard and a sparse drumbeat give way to Campbell’s silky guitar work and a vaguely atonal melody played by the tenor sax and doubled by the vibraphone. It may be a tribute to Neil Young’s 1972 Harvest album, but Opsvik’s composition is far from an Americana send up. The nimble guitar may cry alt-country, but the slow funk of the rhythm section and electronic noodling scream Medeski, Martin, and Wood.

After such a stunning opener, some listeners may be put off by the nine minutes of ill-boding atmospheres in “Everseas,” but the unusually spacious combination of timpani, whisper-level saxophone, and Fender Rhodes is a compelling way to lead into the more uninhibited “Silver.”

In addition to being the most overtly joyful cut on the album, “Silver” also backs up Opsvik’s claims that he has been “directly influenced by growing up in a thriving Norwegian jazz culture, combined with playing for the last ten years with some of the best musicians in the world in New York City.” The track features a very woozy and sentimental introduction care of Larry Campbell on the guitar, before Opsvik himself sets up an infectious ostinato groove on his double bass. As the song reaches its climax, the drums, vibraphone, and guitar all freely intermingle as Tony Malaby goes for broke with a tenor sax solo that reaches for the stratosphere.

Just beyond the album’s midpoint where we find the ensemble painting a series of soundscapes to compliment your favorite Fred Astaire flick (“Ginger Rogers”), there exists a triage of compositions that are all at once affecting despite the awkward titles. Reveling in the bucolic setting of his youth while also enjoying some alliterative word play, Opsvik presents “Breath Of Bark,” “Whiff Of Wood,” and “Lull Of Lumber.” But the real knockout of the three is the finale, a 15 minute epic which makes good on Opsvik’s natural talent for taking unfussy ideas and expounding on them to give the listener just a bit of everything he has to offer. With a melancholy yet sultry prologue that features some of Malaby’s most undisguised melodies, “Lull Of Lumber” is all jazz at first: extended harmonies on the piano while the tenor saxophone floats above a solid groove from the rhythm section. After almost an entire album of providing texture, Sacks is finally given some of the solo limelight on piano before the song abruptly changes direction at the midway point. Wallowing for a few minutes in the murky territory of “Everseas” and “Whiff Of Wood,” the album’s closer wraps it all up in ensemble mode, with Opsvik’s bass chops finally at the front of the mix while the band’s remaining members groove alongside him in mid-tempo bliss. With all of the atonal frenzy of prior tracks, this is a clever way to bring the curtain down.

Being a veteran of collaboration and having the ability to soak up inspiration like a sponge has served Eivind Opsvik well on this latest release. Let’s hope that more time spent in the fertile New York jazz scene is going to lead to another genre-exploding burst of creativity in the near future.

Transient Songs – Plantation To Your Youth

I couldn’t find out very much about Transient Songs aside from the facts that there are two of them and that they originate from Seattle. John Frum and Jimmy Andrews are specialising in what is a heady mixture of classic 80s (I swore I’d never use the word but here it is) Shoegaze – the surf harmonies, the downtuned fuzztone guitar harmonics, and borderline psychedelia that evokes the weightier end of the mid 80s Folkrock scene that gave us The Long Ryders and The Rain Parade – and an inescapable and unmistakeable songwriting debt to REM, which for all (or perhaps because of) REM’s mainstream success throughout the 80s/90s and more recently, I don’t ever really recall hearing too many bands on whom REM were a noticable influence, and it’s taken my hearing Plantation To Your Youth to properly bring this to my attention.

So, if you think REM the great surreal countryfied stylists of the last two decades, would you necessarily appreciate Transient Songs? First track “Greenwood Backyards” is about a minute and a half of reverb laden semi-acoustic chords overlaid with keening mandolin and slide parts which, while its visceral energies recapture the machine grind of Snakedriver era JAMC, is really only an introduction to the title track, which both builds quite spectacularly on its abbreviated predecessor and displays some of the oblique lyrical touch of the best of REMs late 80s work. The song hangs around a great juddering wall-of-sound hookline that effortlessly evokes the orchestral grandiosity of pre-sandpit Brian Wilson, and the heavily layered production takes what is the most basic three chord structure to a quite staggering conclusion. Following on from this, “Southern City Saturdays” is most obviously the track which could slip unnoticed into an REM b-sides collection, a relatively more restrained acoustic based song. This is followed with “Locust Shells”, which has an undeniable late 60s feel to both its structure and instrumentation, shares the majestic production style of the title track, and takes a detour quite firmly into Scott Walker territories. Final track “Living With Decay” is also, there is little doubt in my mind, a quite definite echo of some of those lesser known Stipe/Buck/Mills/Berry compositions, REM being a very good example of the type of band whose work I think I know, and were the track released as a single today it might do something similar to what is my own favourite REM semi-obscurity, “Lotus”,which made #36 in the UK charts around a decade ago.

But all these comparisons probably won’t do much to please Transient Songs themselves: their hard-lived lyrics and dextrous musicianship really are entirely their own.

Dylan Trees – The Charlie Horse EP

A British musician based in Venice, California creates just the type of music one might imagine – a sweet amalgam of British psych-folk drenched in sunny California dreamin’. Singer-songwriter Jeremy Simon emigrated to the Los Angeles area from his native England in 2006 in the hope of cross-pollinating his already well-honed folk chops with a bit of Americana. After rustling up a merry band of studio musicians to play with, the graceful The Charlie Horse EP was recorded last year.

On first listen, The Charlie Horse EP is warm and and sweet, but not altogether overwhelming. The California influence on Simon’s songwriting seems obvious, but the overall sound is distinctly British. Maybe it’s his voice or lyric style, but the sun and surf of Simon’s adopted Venice, CA hasn’t diminished his roots. While the first two tracks, “Henry Collapse” and “Ruby” are quite lovely, it is not until “Long Nights Journey” that it begins to sink in that you haven’t heard anything quite like this before. The last song on the EP is the title track, and it is any easy favorite for its lush, vibrant swirl of British and American folk.

The songs here are deeply rooted in a few blatantly obvious styles, but Dylan Trees is clearly poised on the edge of something exciting. You may not fully appreciate the four-track The Charlie Horse EP immediately, but this one will grow on you rather easily. Jeremy Simon gathered together a different set of musicians after recording this disc, in order to flesh-out a more permanent line-up. If they work with his songs anywhere near as well as the session players on this EP did than Dylan Trees could just blossom into something truly great.

Caves – Get On With It

Caves is from modern-day Portland, Oregon, but if you didn’t know better, you’d think the members were from the UK circa 1980. Danceable and addictive, these guys might be a bit too late to ride the Rapture/Franz Ferdinand wave, but unlike those two bands, you can enjoy these guys with little guilt.

What all that means is that Get On With It is steeped heavily in the angular, melodic punk tradition of Television and Gang Of Four with a bit of U2 thrown in. They’re definitely less abrasive than those bands, but where the guitars of those bands pierced your eardrums, Caves pushes the vocals to the forefront. That’s a good thing when you have a singer like Jacob Carey, who has a soaring, new wavy voice, even if it is affected with a slight British accent.

When the guitars are on display, they don’t disappoint though. Carried by a bouncy baseline, the title track allows the guitars to wander Television style, accenting the song rather than driving it. “Optimist, Pessimist” is a similar track, although there are times where the guitars are more central here, but they stand up to the task. There’s also even more of a mid-80s new wave feel on this track and others, adding yet another wrinkle in the band’s already dynamic sound.

A single listen to Get On With It is certainly not enough to appreciate everything the album has to offer, but it is enough to tell this band has the unquantifiable “it” that drives special musicians to make special music. There’s a lot of texture and a surprise within almost every chord change, but none of it sounds tacked on or forced. When the band is on, every transition is smooth and every note sounds effortless. None of this is to say this is a perfect album (the latter third of the album definitely lags), but if the members of Caves have one in them, no one should be surprised.

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