Faux Hoax – Your Friends Will Carry You Home 7″

This little slab of vinyl comes in a limited edition of 1,000 copies on black. As with most records these days, Faux Hoax (pronounced “folks”) comes with a download code so you enjoy the tunes on your iPod – you’ll even two extra tracks for free out of the whole deal. The band (side project? collective?) features members of Menomena, Gang of Four, Tracker, 31 Knots, and Adam Knade of Asthmatic Kitty Records.  Basement recordings by friends already committed to other projects often sound like nothing more than extended jams of interest only to the biggest fans.

A side track “Your Friends Will Carry You Home” reeks of this. This low-fi song with the title repeated over and over, spoken-word style with just simple guitar and drums over soft electronic blips initially leaves a lot to be desired. The song just seems too simplistic, but it pulls you in just as you’re about to lose interest. I’m not sure exactly what makes the tune so endearing in the end, but you’ll definitely listen to this one on repeat. ”Hippies Will Rule” is more complex, with a build-it-up/break-it-down dark rock vibe. The vocals come in about half way through and this time you’ll be greeted with the sing-spoken line, “It was better when the weather froze the glacier twice a year.”

Faux Hoax may intend to be “experimental” and “unique”, but this pair of songs is less fractured or dissonant than the term experimental often brings to mind. Your Friends Will Carry You Home is definitely unique though, almost indescribably. Those already familiar with the members’ main bands will easily be drawn to this project, but other rock fans will likely find some interesting tidbits here as well. 

Polyvinyl Records

Pinback Returns to the Road

Oct 17 @ Marquee Theatre, Tempe, AZ
Oct 19 @ Emo’s, Austin, TX
Oct 20 @ Loft @ Palladium Ballroom, Dallas, TX
Oct 21 @ Exit / In, Nashville, TN
Oct 22 @ The Masquerade, Atlanta, GA
Oct 23 @ Club Downunder, Tallahassee, FL
Oct 24 @ Common Grounds, Gainesville, FL
Oct 25 @ The Social, Orlando, FL
Oct 27 @ Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC
Oct 28 @ Black Cat, Washington, DC
Oct 29 @ Theatre of Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Oct 30 @ Irving Plaza, New York, NY
Oct 31 @ Paradise, Boston, MA
Nov 2 @ Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, MI
Nov 3 @ Bottom Lounge, Chicago, IL
Nov 4 @ Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN
Nov 5 @ Granada Theatre, Lawrence, KS
Nov 6 @ Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO
Nov 7 @ The Depot, Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 9 @ Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC
Nov 10 @ Neumo’s, Seattle, WA
Nov 11 @ Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR
Nov 12 @ Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA
Nov 13 @ Bimbo’s 365 Club, San Francisco, CA
Nov 14 @ El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
Nov 15 @ Belly Up Tavern, Solana Beach, CA

PDX Pop Now! Unveils All-Ages Festival Line Up and Announces PDX Pop Now! At City Hall

PDX Pop Now! — Portland’s premier local music advocacy organization – has announced the line up for the 6th annual festival as well as plans for a show on the steps of City Hall.

PDX Pop Now! will be returning to Rotture (320 SE 2nd Ave) on July 24th, 25th and 26th for the free, all-ages festival that showcases Portland’s diverse musical talent. This year’s festival will feature indoor and outdoor sets from Ah Holly Fam’ly, Animal Farm, Au, Autistic Youth, Benoit Pioulard, Breakfast Mountain, Chamber of Commerce (Blue Cranes + Paxselin Quartet), Church, Cull, Daniel Menche, DASH!, Deelay Ceelay, Don Hellions, Explode Into Colors, Fear No Music, Fist Fite, Grouper, Guidance Counselor, Inside Voices, Jeffrey Jerusalem, Laura Gibson, Lightheaded, Luck-One, Magic Johnson, Menomena, Morning Teleportation, MY-G, Nice Nice, Nucular Aminals, Nurses, Peter Broderick, Pierced Arrows, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Red Fang, Rob Walmart, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, Strength, Tara Jane O’Neil, Teeath, The Andrew Oliver Sextet, The Estranged, The Mint Chicks, The Minus 5, The Old Believers, The Quick & Easy Boys, The Shaky Hands, Thrones and White Hinterland.

On July 16th, PDX Pop Now! will host “PDX Pop Now! at Portland City Hall,” a free all-ages show on the steps of Portland’s City Hall (1221 SW 4th Avenue) from 5-8:30pm. This lead-up to the PDX Pop Now! festival will feature performances by Y La Bamba, Point Juncture WA, and YACHT. “PDX Pop Now! is thrilled to once again bring local music to the steps of Portland City Hall in a celebration of the unique climate of civic support independent music enjoys in our town. By presenting a free, all-ages concert featuring some of the most exciting musicians creating in Portland today, and doing so in the middle of downtown just as many people are getting off of work and looking for a way to enjoy a summer evening, we intend to provide an accessible form for Portlanders to discover and appreciate the staggering wealth and diversity of incredible music being made by their neighbors.” Adding, “Additionally, we hope to throw a bright light on the fact that involvement in one’s local arts community is a legitimate and productive form of civic involvement, and one that can serve as a conduit to broader interest and participation in neighborhood and municipal affairs.”

The 2009 PDX Pop Now! compilation is now available for purchase at local retail outlets and online at CD Baby here. Proceeds from sales of the album go towards funding the festival and the rest of organization’s activities. The 6th installment of the heralded compilation features 40 tracks, including music from M. Ward, the Thermals, Jared Mees & The Grown Children, Starfucker, and Sandpeople as well as rare or previously unreleased tracks by Grouper, The Mint Chicks, Ethan Rose & Laura Gibson, Dykeritz, Explode Into Colors and Thrones.

The compilation and festival is brought to you in part by generous sponsorships from CD Baby, OPB Music, Button Magazine, Spectre Entertainment Group, Cravedog Inc., Rotture, 230 Publicity and Performer Magazine.

About PDX Pop Now!
PDX Pop Now! is a volunteer-driven, 501(c)3 non-profit organization committed to celebrating and promoting Portland’s vital music community. Begun in 2004 in true DIY fashion by a dozen or so members of a local indie-pop email list, the group has produced five previous music compilations and FREE, ALL AGES multi-day music festivals, to which scores of Portland artists both nationally-heralded (including The Decemberists, The Thermals, Lifesavas, Menomena, Blitzen Trapper and The Blow) and little known have contributed recordings or performances. The festivals, which allow the public to see up to 50 of Portland’s finest bands in one central, accessible venue, have drawn audiences in the thousands. The compilations have generated considerable play from local and national FM radio and sold thousands of copies combined, mostly through local independent record stores, to help fund the yearly festival. Additionally, through outreach programs, PDX Pop Now! has worked successfully with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, local businesses, schools and the broader community to make more safe all-ages concerts possible and allow young Oregonians to participate more fully in the local arts community.

*PDX Pop Now! 2009 is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council and Work for Art.

*This project is also supported in part by a grant from the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

* PDX Pop Now! at Portland City Hall is coordinated in partnership with Portland City Hall

The Bats- The Guilty Office

First off, kudos to The Bats for this cover art. Isn’t it great? It’s just 4 rooms, but it seems so subtle and serene. And it’s pretty fitting, really. The Bats has that very subtle quality about it that makes the band such a great listen. You can hear so much beauty in one of the group’s songs, yet you can’t pinpoint the beauty’s source. Or if you find the source, it reveals only simple guitar strums, which is a quality that seems to embody subtlety. Take for instance, “Broken Path.” The guitars keep their steadfast approach to the song, but a simple melody change sets off the song into a really gorgeous place. Subtlety, baby!

To describe The Bats, I hear some Interpol in the music (or I guess I hear The Bats in Interpol, since The Bats came first.) Frontman Robert Scott sings with a similar melancholy inflection to Paul Banks. The guitars are clean, strumming machines, not unlike something those Interpol boys would pull off. Chords are thoughtfully arranged to richly fill the songs and as simple as they seem, they provide a really nice landscape for the melodies that Scott lays down. And on that note, I’m giving Scott’s unique melody style the MVP of the album. It’s really quite simple, but one word or phrase in a chorus will gently rise above the melodic stream, something that works extremely well, consistently throughout the album. Again, that’s a minor detail that Scott allows to shape the song. Minor details define this album, as nothing about The Bats is theatrical; there are no crescendos to send rushes of energy through songs. Most songs, however, are accented with a third party that enriches the song; some strings, an accordion, and even some harp. They’re gentle touches that almost subconsciously affect the music, but their warm presence is felt. Also, I don’t want to speak with a lot of authority on this subject, but from my headpones, this album also has a quaint lo-fi feel to it. The music seems confined, almost like it’s being played through a tin can, but it works, and I like it.

My favorite stretch of The Guilty Office are tracks 9 through the closer, 12. The most solid, catchy stretch on the album is a phenomenal way to close things out. “Steppin’ Out” is the most upbeat song to be found here, with the drums playing a bit bigger factor than normal. Some nifty guitar work puts the cherry on top of an already really good song, carving out a nice melody to stand alongside Scott’s. “The I Specialist” makes a run a best song with a Neil Young-ish melody, that is beautifully haggard. Not to be outdone, the title track also makes a strong case for best song with a more traditional take on beauty. The guitars play by the same template as before, but the chords are extra sweet, making this a delicious listen. The melody is brittle and is perhaps the best one to be sung by Scott on the album. The music carries on without Scott, picking up a flickering guitar riff along the way, to close the song out perfectly. I feel like I should be waiting for at the bus stop in the rain when I hear that song, it just has that kind of mood to it. A string heavy “The Orchard” closes out the album, with Scott doing his thing, leading the charge of another great song.

With 27 years as a band, the New Zealanders have been around the game a long time. To themselves and their fans, this is probably just another good Bats record. To newcomers, like myself, this is a great record that really deserves to be checked out. And I’m eager to see how this compares to their previous work. But on this one, they never work outside of themselves. There isn’t anything wrong with this album, everything is well done. It’s the perfect blend of melancholy, subtlety, catchiness, and musical savviness.

Clock Hands Strangle – Distaccati

Isaac Brock may be years away from retirement, but Modest Mouse already has more than its share of tribute bands. They range from the splendid (Cymbals Eat Guitars) to the swindlers, and Clock Hands Strangle is a regrettable example of the latter. On Distaccati, the band’s sophomore release, CHS borrow liberally from The Lonesome Crowded West era Modest Mouse without distinguishing themselves from that sound or adding anything to it. The end is result is a predictable album which fails to separate the band from all the other legions of “Brock-Rock” bands currently polluting the indie music scene.

Having said that, the growth potential for this Florida five-piece is undeniable. The musicianship is impeccable, the tunes are well-structured, and Todd Portnowitz’s lyrics are rich and literary. The advance press on Distaccati fancies it a kind of lyrical travelogue, and that’s not a hard notion to argue against; the title track, for instance, imagines a cross-country journey between the narrator, Walt Whitman, and the Biblical Job. Other tracks evoke a particular place during a particular time; “Cotton” is a lazy acoustic number which thrusts the listener deep into the Alabama countryside, complete with thick cotton fields that appear on “both sides of the road.” Portnowitz is a clearly gifted writer, and the lyrics on this album are a joy to decipher and dig into.

The problem with Distaccati, then, lies in its stubborn refusal to be anything except a lost Modest Mouse record. The previously mentioned Cymbals Eat Guitars won all kinds of accolades earlier this year because they built upon Modest Mouse’s sound without ripping it off entirely. Taking elements of a band’s sound and building upon it is one of music’s great traditions, after all; recall that Modest Mouse themselves sounded like Built To Spill when they first started out. Clock Hands Strangle, on the other hand, doesn’t build on a sound so much as completely heist it and claim it as its own, without any discernible differences from the source material. There’s nothing on Distaccati that hasn’t been done better by Modest Mouse, in other words.

Oddly enough, Clock Hands Strangle works best when they strip away the layers of noise and go acoustic. The aforementioned “Cotton” is a highlight, as is the brilliant “A Stone Questions its Sculptor” and the quirky “Ode To Green”. Perhaps these tracks stand out because Modest Mouse never worked as well when it lowered its decibel levels (the beginning of “Third Planet” notwithstanding). It just goes to show that the best music takes an existing sound and improves upon it, rather than just stealing it outright. Clock Hands Strangle would do well to learn this, because they have all the right tools to become an essential band. Until then, it is imperative for them to take bold action and do something Isaac Brock would never do: burn every Modest Mouse album they own. That would be a good start.

Beware of Safety – Dogs

Beware of Safety has shown up on the scene with an epic full-length debut called Dogs which falls squarely within the dramatic build-and-release brand of post-rock perfected over ten years ago by Mogwai and subsequently rehashed by Explosions in the Sky and subtly expanded on by Mono. It is absolutely free of vocals and filled with crisp production and technically proficient instrumental performances. The effects pedals are set on pensive-yet-aching and there are many dynamic shifts to be had. Unfortunately, Dogs is also a soulless beast, following all the rules but forgetting to fashion any memorable tunes in the process.

Lead track “Nu Metal” fades in mysteriously for a minute before a fairly run of the mill three or four note melody dings in and repeats for three minutes over backgrounded stark lead guitar figures. The track then fades to a whisper for a minute with more weak 3-4 note guitar noodling bubbling up from the ether, which slowly builds and builds into another pause. More soft noodling around the same notes and some Doogie Howser keyboard hold up the next two or three minutes of the song. At the 7:45 mark, there is finally a somewhat memorable little riff that does a little ascending jump high on the neck. At 8 and a half minutes, the song explodes with intensity for a minute and a half, maintaining the memorable little riff amid the noise. The chords then vibrate and drone out for another minute until the song hits the ten and a half minute mark. This happens in different combinations and with mild variations about ten times over the course of this marathon album.

Hardcore fans of this sort of pensive, dramatic post-rock might be able to lap this up better than I can, simply because the band seem to have quickly mastered this particular sound. It just seems like there is no meat to the individual tunes, no focal point to depart from and return to, like an album full of bridges with no verses or choruses to grasp onto. The old two-note high-to-low repeating sequence can’t sustain interest for a whole song, let alone over more than an hour of music.

The key to making a great album in this style is to take the lesson learned from the dynamics of one song and apply it to the album as a whole. The listener pretty much knows that eventually every song in this genre is going to have a slower, quiet part that is going to get really loud and abrasive. Post-rock lovers have come to “expect the unexpected” so to speak. Performing this catharsis routine repeatedly with little variation in production values, instrumentation, or overall pattern simply makes for a boring full-length album. Any style overdone turns into background music.  A little depth and variation isn’t that much to ask, especially of people who seem to put as much time and energy into their music a Beware of Safety seem to on Dogs. Change things up with a bass-led number, maybe bang out some commanding piano chords for a few minutes, or simply check in every once in awhile with a slow burner to ask the listener if they R still in 2 it. Yes, you may be a long way from home, but you’ll feel more strongly for it.

Beware of Safety

The Mylene Sheath

Depeche Mode – The Dark Progression DVD

You’ve got to have some serious chutzpah to even consider encapsulating an influential band’s 30 year career into a 95 minute documentary (an unauthorized one, no less). More audacious still, is the choice to pursue said documentary without the blessings of the band in question. When the band happens to be Depeche Mode – perhaps the most brilliant electronica act of all time – this move might seem even more ludicrous, given the group’s storied personnel changes, frequent image makeovers, and harrowing personal battles with rock star excesses that nearly tore them apart. With 12 studio albums as epic as the stadium shows they continue to sell out to this day, one might be expecting a Beatles-esque multi-volume boxed set that breaks down each song and subsequent synthesizer drone with obsessive analysis. The Dark Progression does indeed dabble with the minutiae of Depeche Mode’s music, but only by condensing their first 5 years into a half hour of footage and ignoring the past 14 as though they were just an epilogue to a career that officially flamed out in 1995 when Alan Wilder left the band and frontman Dave Gahan was injecting a nearly lethal dose of heroin into his bloodstream.

The Dark Progression is fairly formulaic in its presentation. Moving along in a chronological fashion that stretches back to the dawn of the 1980’s when Vince Clarke, Martin Gore, and Andy Fletcher were first flirting with their own take on New Romanticism, a pattern is quickly setup in which the band’s evolution is categorized and compartmentalized based on the major themes of each album release. Speak & Spell was the sound of a band finding its footing in a land overpopulated with New Wave acts. Construction Time Again is where the group first hinted at the influence to be found in the industrial textures of German industrial pioneers like Kraftwerk. By the time Music For The Masses dropped in 1987, Depeche Mode was functioning at the zenith of its powers, performing for massive audiences on both sides of the pond and even playing to a capacity crowd at the Rose Bowl.

Considering the unauthorized nature of the film, it should come as no surprise that in lieu of fresh commentary from the members of Depeche Mode, most of the interviews are conducted with electronic music aficionados (Mark Prendergast and Thomas Dolby), studio engineers (Dave Bascombe and Daniel Miller), and other musicians of the electronic ilk (Gary Numan and OMD’s Andy McKluskey). Suffice it to say, much of the perspective here is of a technical slant; for all the time spent crediting Depeche Mode’s quests for studio perfection and originality, little attention is given to the relationships between band members, the songwriting process, or even the inspirational ideas that led to the creation of certain songs.

But as you listen to the barrage of techie talk from some very thickly-accented British men, you can’t help but marvel at just how much thought DM actually put into pushing the envelope on their sound without alienating or rejecting their core fanbase. Perhaps miraculously, Depeche Mode were able to take the quirky bounciness of synth pop and steadily mold it into a far more shadowy creature that electrified both longtime fans and first time listeners. The film shows this most notably in its comprehensive coverage of Black Celebration, where Depeche Mode embraced life’s darker side full on against a metallic clatter of keyboards and percussion. Until the release of Songs Of Faith & Devotion, The Dark Progression suggests a group that, despite some anxiety, adapts remarkably well to fame and the pressures that come with it. The songs got bolder, the tours got larger, and the influences were more diverse. This is most obvious in the footage chronicling the aforementioned release of 1993, in which Gahan – long hair and goatee in place – takes on the appearance of a grunge god while his band mates dig deeper into guitar-based rock.

With Depeche Mode having been gradually returning to form ever since 1997’s Ultra, it is certainly disappointing that the producers of the film chose to mark the subsequent studio releases (2001’s Exciter, 2005’s Playing The Angel, and this year’s Sounds Of The Universe) as a footnote on an epic journey to popular music’s upper echelon. And on a trivial but no less frustrating note: where the hell is Andy Fletcher?
The most reclusive member of the Mode barely even gets name checked after the first few minutes of the film.

The Dark Progression is certainly an uneven affair, but for those who just fancy an examination of what many regard to be Depeche Mode’s most fruitful period (Black Celebration through Songs Of Faith & Devotion), this low budget music history lesson delivers.

Depeche Mode

Forever on tour

Portland, Oregon-based rock, post-punk, garage band Forever is on tour.

June 26 Athens, GA @ ATHFEST
June 27 Richmond, VA @ Show Pending / Playing a radio show in the day
June 28 Washington DC @ The Girl Cave
June 29 Philadelphia, PA @ JR’s Bar
June 30 New Brunswick, NJ @ TBA
July 1 Brooklyn, NY @ Death By Audio
July 3 Brooklyn, NY @ Dead Herring House
July 4 Boston, MA @ Great Scott
July 5 Greenfield, MA @ The People’s Pint
July 6 New England TBA
July 7 New England TBA
July 8 Providence, RI @ AS220
July 9 Portland, ME @ Slainte
July 10 Buffalo, NY @ Sugar City
July 11 Pittsburgh, PA / Cleveland, OH @ TBA
July 12 Columbus, OH @ Monster House
July 13 Detroit, MI @ The Lager House
July 14 Chicago, IL @ TBA
July 15 Milwaukee, WI @ TBA
July 16 Minneapolis, MN @ 501 Club
July 17 St Louis, MO @ Dickberg House
July 18 Kansas City, MO @ The Pistol
July 19 Denver, CO @ Old Curtis St Bar
July 20 Salt Lake City, UT @ TBA
July 21 Missoula, MT @ Zoo Town Arts Collective
July 22 Seattle, WA @ TBA

Official Forever site: www.myspace.com/foreverisnow 

Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records
www.hhbtm.com
www.happyhappybirthdaytome.blogspot.com

Olekranon – Gaitan

Olekranon’s new full-length release, Gaitan, is another entry in the increasingly visible, small-run, one-man-band vein. Without much presence online, there isn’t much to go on aside from the liner notes which state that the music was done by one Ryan Huber. You wouldn’t be able to guess the nature of the project by listening, though. There is enough simultaneous sensory output on this album to account for a full band chugging ahead on all cylinders.

Gaitan is a dark, heavy slab of music. However, unlike its close brethren in the doom camps, this music doesn’t sacrifice a sense of fluidity or the freedom of glorious sloppiness. Also unlike the doomists, the darkness cultivated on this album isn’t the product of formal conventions like detuned riffage and hammy demonic vocals. Instead, the melody lines actually sound creepy, dysphoric, and unsettling. Sheets of feedback and noise, sometimes overwhelming and sometimes soft, provide a setting from which the tracks emerge. The result is a soundworld which evokes dreary survival amid futuristic industrial ruin, just a dim flashlight available to navigate a maze of rainy sewers and sparking neon signs.

The recording sounds like it was captured live instead of recorded in a studio, and the energy of the playing is really palpable. Another thing I like about Gaitan, and another thing that sets it apart from similar music, is the steady and prominent presence of loud, lively drum beats. Where most dark instrumental music would have plodding drums down in the mix until it was time to explode into a maelstrom of crescendos, Olekranon employs wet, slappy drums high in the mix, giving the music the slightest bit of swing and a counterpoint that provides both a backbone and a tension to the more repetitive droning elements coming from the guitars and keyboards.

Huber takes what he wants from industrial, techno, ambient drone, dub, and noise, and mixes them into something uniquely Olekranon. Lead track “Clusters” wastes no time introducing the mood with loud echoing drums and an emergency siren guitar loop. Title track “Gaitan” is an eerie slow burner with archaic sounding church organ stabs providing a steady rhythmic torture before the track is overtaken by hissing waves of static. Standout track “The Elite” is anchored by a slinky bass line and a sprightly drum pattern, hearkening back to the industrial/noise/electronic fusion of early 90’s acts like Girls Against Boys, Cop Shoot Cop, and Filter. “In a Day” provides an interlude of lighter buoyancy before “Nolan” screeches back in response, blackening all the windows to hide from the beacon canvassing the area for signs of life in the distance. “Bundles” is all erratic guitar and bumping deep meditation before losing its way and falling into the chaos of what sounds like a deep sea monster interrupting an opera. “Amilda” brings back the slinky bass and adds some more heavenly keyboard lines to bring some hopeful emotions to the end of the album, which ends in the spaced out drones of “Skipjack”.

Gaitan is an immersive experience, with thoughtful pacing and sequencing, and offers a lot in the way of musical variety. If you like dark music but tend less toward purism and more towards experimentalism, this album provides the twists and turns that will have you coming back for more, attending to different details on repeat listens. Simply by putting some effort and creativity into the drum patterns, Olekranon give their music something more than formalistic clichés to feed off of, and deserve credit for injecting some liveliness into what often ends up being a predictable approach that is doomed to boredom.

Olekranon

Inam Records

The Lemonheads – Varshons

Evan Dando is certainly no slouch when it comes to cover versions.  In fact, many of his most memorable moments over the years – especially with the on/off/on again Lemonheads – have been via other people’s songs.  From the snotty-but-sincere punk-pop assault on Suzanne Vega’s “Luka,” via a warm chugging reheating of Michael Nesmith’s “Different Drum,” inside a loving restoration of Gram Parsons’ “Brass Buttons,” through the loved/hated high-octane conversion of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” and up to Smudge’s “The Outdoor Type,” Dando’s knack for making second-hand material fit seamlessly into his enduring repertoire has nearly made him the post-Hüsker Dü answer to Johnny Cash.  Even some supposed Lemonheads and solo Dando ‘original’ standards – like “Into Your Arms” and “Hard Drive” respectively – were written by or with composers outside his various band line-ups.  With all this in mind then, a full album of Lemonheaded covers seems like a logical and easy career-saver for Dando, after the somewhat one-dimensional laziness of 2006′s The Lemonheads LP.  But is it?

On the surface, the wryly-anointed Varshons is some form of retreat from the self-distracted meandering that has dogged Dando since 1996′s Car Button Cloth.  There are a handful of genuine gems gathered within, that feel both effortless and focused.  A swooning country-jangle through Gram Parsons rarity “I Just Can’t Take It Anymore” is a fine opening salvo.  An acoustic re-soldering of Wire’s previous post-punked “Fragile” is plaintively endearing, as is a fiddle-edged take on Townes Van Zandt’s “Waiting Around To Die.”  A couple of late-’60s psychedelic flashbacks also work well in pushing Dando and his hired-in company beyond normal comfort-zones; allowing for a tabla-framed attempt at Sam Gopal’s “Yesterlove” and a patchouli-scented boogie-squelch through July’s “Dandelion Seeds.”  The hallucinogenic-haze even spills over into a lysergic re-landscaping of erstwhile garage-rock relic “Green Fuz.”

Outside the aforementioned creditable offerings, proceedings are far shakier.  G.G. Allin’s murder ballad “Layin’ Up With Linda” is tossed-off with deadpan disconnection, Fuckemos’s “New Mexico” is rendered as a sludge-like plodder, and a dissolute strum through Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” is just the boring side of ironic.  Equally troublesome is Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” - that even its author has failed to improve upon since the first classic 1967 studio incarnation – which is delivered flaccidly with celebrity guest tones from actress Liv Tyler.  More bizarre is the lead vocal deployment of supermodel Kate Moss on an startlingly straight facsimile of Arling & Cameron’s novelty-electro nugget “Dirty Robot.” Designed as either a studio in-joke or a fan-aggravator, it merely falls between both stools ambivalently.

Overall, there is sufficient sun-kissed pleasure on Varshons to extend the patience of Evan Dando-devotees a little bit longer but not enough to surpass past makeover masterstrokes.  Although still an intriguing prodigal son to keep one ear out for, it does feel like Dando could now genuinely benefit from the challenge and direction of a more democratic group or a firmer-handed producer. 

(Territorial Release Note: Varshons is available on The End Records in the US and via Cooking Vinyl for the UK & Europe.)

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