Soundpool – Mirrors in Your Eyes

One of the many aspects about Kim Fields’ voice – and the most obvious one for that matter – is that it sounds softly hushed while still maintaining a breathy lushness that matches her band’s music fittingly well. Soundpool aren’t so much another electronic group because in essence, this is a true band making some gripping, terrific music. While they’ve always prevailed with a strong sense of electronics and how reverbs can make for moving times, their singer has always been the one to make it all sound, well, that much better.

Though they’ve definitely caught our attention with their fantastic “And It’s So” single, a lead song that quite frankly transcends beyond its own specific genre. Fields’ voice, gentle and stirring, is a force to be reckoned with because it combines all the elements into one swooping fist of color. It provided a landscape that would be hard to beat – given the effectiveness of both of its dancefloor ready cuts and the melodic timbre – but on Mirrors in Your Eyes, the outcome is both exemplary and blindingly excellent.

These are the kinds of sounds that make it far too easy to get lost into. Waves of heavy synths can take over one song and little by little you have the influence of other notable guitar-heavy bands, most notably someone like U2 and the way the Edge would curtail his guitar to match any given mood or theme. On “I’m So Tired,” the drums and keyboards paint a sweetly tailored room that is waiting for any kind of tension. When the guitar comes crashing in, it almost sounds as if “Ultra Violet (Light My Way)” is roaring into the night, when really it’s just the sound of the band turning into something far more substantial than expected. Such lasting moments come on every song and it makes for a rewarding album on every possible level.

When mentioning ‘dancefloor cuts,’ you have to realize what premise it carries on its own. “But It’s So” is, as expected, perfectly positioned after the opening song’s honest introduction; but it’s the album’s sequencing and overall cohesive feel that makes it that much more likely to age well. “Kite of Love” comes through with a funky bass that leads into a musically rich layer filled with cloudy synths and 90s style beats. In channeling past shoegaze experts like Blonde Redhead, Soundpool is able to inject the right amount of modifications and alterations to reveal a strong showing of skill. It especially comes in handy on something like “Listen” and its moving percussion line and rumbling guitar. Shower it with the right mix of noisy feedback (never too aggressive to disturb), add layers of pedal tones on top of minor chords and top it off with a singer that is able to also adapt her voice to fit the music and you have a winning formula.

The same could be said about many other bands out there but one feature that’s hard to attain and invaluable is the masterful craft of flow. Not only does Mirrors in Your Eyes contain an undeniable amount of wonderful songs, it also presents them in one of the finer sequencing jobs of the year. It adds up to Soundpool being able to showcase all of their strengths and yes, that voice too, in what is yet another solid amount of captivating music.

“But It’s So” by Soundpool

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Killer Pimp

Small Black – EP

Falling sonically somewhere between Rogue Wave and Clinic, Small Black’s EP (simply called “EP”) manages to breathe some life into the bedroom-Casio scene. The duo has picked up some positive press and has some international dates lined up, testifying to its uptick in popularity. Plus, the band is on the Jagjaguwar label, which doesn’t hurt.

It could be that the band has an earnestness and warmth that comes through in its simple songs: never overreaching, not pretentious… and also not cheesy, despite the 80s-style canned rhythms. The beat that starts early in “Kings of Animals” doesn’t do much more than act as a metronome. Same thing on all the songs, really. The warped, distorted samples and keyboard lines really define the sound. It’s like Ariel Pink but without the guitars. The vocals inhabit a gauzy, reverbed world unto themselves, spreading out in the space. It’s a little otherworldly. The MBV-like “Baby Bird Pt. 2″ spends its first half in a fog of atmospherics before returning to Earth for a quiet and peaceful closure.

The top marks go to Small Black’s seemingly signature song “Despicable Dogs,” another animal-themed title. If it were given Depeche Mode production treatments, it would be the kind of thing kids would play at prom: melodic, dreamy, and dancey. In its actual, lo-fi state, it conveys something completely different and sad.

Kind of haunting, this sincere record feels both claustrophobic and expansive, hopeful and sad. It’s somehow affecting where it could have easily been indulgent and pedestrian.

The White Ravens – Gargoyles and Weather Vanes

Inspired by previous sibling efforts by the likes of Sparks (also the name of the first song on this album) and the less hereditary rock and roll of Electric Light Orchestra, this second album from Ann Arbor duo The White Ravens is heavy on twee, occasionally silly, bright pop music marked by twitchy eccentricity.

On opening song “Sparks”, any Mael brother connections are not overtly alluded to unless the music was inspired by them, which is still highly possible. It’s lyrically flawed, with lines like “life’s a big joke” best left confined to teenage angst-ridden bedrooms and diary entries, but the lovely chorus steers it clear of the mundane, driven by twinkling synths and Amy Bennett’s soaring vocals. “Tick Tock” is infinitely better though, a complex arrangement that shifts into different moods within the one song, again held together by an awesomely catchy chorus.

But just when that seems to be the M.O. for this album, those White Ravens still find ways of twisting and turning into other surprises. “Eulogy” is a suitably downbeat closer, at a contrast with the generally positive mood of the rest of the album. “Detritus” begins with a jagged, rattling guitar unlike anything heard so far on Gargoyles and Weather Vanes, even Bennett’s almost saccharine vocals have a menacing edge here. However this doesn’t necessarily work as well and a lot of the charm is lost, this comes across as a personality devoid rock jam that it’s hard to get too excited about.

Regrettably that could be applied to much of the rest of the album. Though they’re clearly capable of moments of pop mastery, evident from the first few songs on this album, many of the tunes melt into obscurity and sail past fairly pleasantly but indifferently all the same. There’s potential for greatness here without doubt and there’s a lot of variety spread across the album, but the trouble is that the variety is too sporadic and often unrewarding. Too many good ideas are undeveloped or crammed into too small a space, the resulting sounds are just too uneven and jarring, and while that works for some people, it just doesn’t work here.

They’ve already shown by this point that they can do better, but for most of Gargoyles and Weather Vanes they just can’t do it often enough. Its an album with a few high points but it’s ultimately frustratingly inconsistent and disappointing overall.

Company Man – The Headless

Steve Slovacek’s story is fascinating, he grew up a closeted-homosexual/atheist in a devout Mormon family. While in college at BYU, he dropped out and eventually ended up in New York City. New York starts scaring the hell out of Steve, so he moves with his parents in the Czech Republic to a Mormon church in Prague. With an EP already under his belt, the Czech Republic offers Steve a new space to begin working on his first full-length album. Except he’s not really in the position to record in style. He uses Radio Shack microphones, a desktop computer, two laptops, Cool Edit Pro, and Adobe Audition Software. Not exactly what Phil Spector would have set up. The instruments are rickety acoustic guitars and a few others are bought on eBay, learned quickly and then sold off. The percussion is made up of kitchen utensils, handclapping, and a lot of other resourceful items. This is Company Man; broken and kept together by Scotch tape.

Company Man, for its simplicity of instruments, is not simple in sound. It can’t be described in one sentence. Sometimes you’ll find foot-stomping pop songs with a tight groove, and sometimes there are laid-back reflections. It should go without saying that this is a lo-fi recording, so instruments tend to bleed together taking the vocals down with it. This grittiness fits Company Man perfectly, because Slovacek’s melodies are slow burners. There isn’t a hook to them that makes them immediately accessible, but he keeps pushing the melody up against the deformity that is that music and watches his melody flourish. In no way a disrespect to Slovacek – and a compliment if anything – this record isn’t about him. His melodies are an afterthought behind the star of the record, the instrumentation, which I’m sure Slovacek recorded anyway. The instrumentation is mad-genius great. The music is a constant flurry of homemade noise, held together with thick basslines. “A Cancer in Her Lungs” is the best example of this and it’s the album’s best song. Everything chaotic comes together to make a fully formed song with a terrific rhythm, giving the piece a memorable hook.

Songs like “22 in 2005,” “Children,” ”The Safer Parts of the City,” and “Utah” are winners, as is almost every other song. It’s certainly an interesting listen, just to hear the noises mesh together. But The Headlessis very good, more than just a parlor trick where a guy uses knives and forks to make sounds. Not just a solid debut, but something legitimately making a splash that deserves to be checked out.

Walking Sleep – Measures

Until recently known as the Flying Tourbillon Orchestra, the newly rechristened Walking Sleep continue to craft smartly written and arranged pop with an understated delivery that substitutes confident control for ostentation.

The unadorned guitars and organic keyboards that make up the bulk of Measures‘ instrumental palette give the songs a sort of throwback feel, and the production has a narrower range of dynamic which adds to the sense that Walking Sleep are not trying to overwhelm with any modern audio wizardry. But along with the undemonstrative nature of the band’s sound comes a quietly adventurous style of songwriting on the part of vocalist and main-muse Hunter Curra. His songs move with a graceful subtlety that may be lost on the listener the first time through, but don’t neglect stuff like the shifts in feel on “In a Dream,” from choppy syncopation to breezy groove, culminating in a series of nonchalant key changes in the fade, all to the same basic chord change.

There’s definitely some of the impish kind of playfulness with classic pop forms that a band like the Shins has fun with. The slow swing of “Shake the Cold” has a 1950s, last-song-at-the-prom kind of feel with its eight-note piano chords and sweet harmonies. It’s an example ably working in elements of different eras of pop into a recognizably current form. “What We Forget” rides a gently pulsing drum pattern under a chiming verse into the release of an instrumental chorus, a set of changes that flow easily from one to the next, rendering the ambition of the arrangement invisible behind its natural momentum and sweet appeal.

Walking Sleep has the sense to balance their sweetness with lots of rhythmic drive to tempt the pop-fan to move beyond contented contemplation of songform into action (dancing, perhaps). “The Cause” has an infectious bounce that defies any jaded disengagement while the “Final Chapter” bounds along with irresistible glee, each regardless of Curra’s vanilla vocals. His modest singing doesn’t exactly command attention – even when paired in simple boy/girl harmony with the equally plain voice of bandmate Sara Radle – not a huge deal, but a more expressive set of voices would have been nice to hear.

Measures soft-pedals its charms a bit, but it only makes it more appealing when you notice them.

The Amazing – Wait for a Light to Come

You know the music the beach happens to make or cause when you see it, hear it, feel it or are even just able to be around it? It’s the sound that everyone from surf bands, to The Beach Boys, to No Age have all tried to create. And most definitely, this is something that most argue would be subjective. I mean, you have Santana’s guitar and the way it sounded back in the 70s, or even something Neil Young wrote when his guitar was still being shredded, or whatever new surf act you’re following sounds like. It’s hard to be creative with it anymore, let alone be innovative, and it’s a lost art that few bands are even willing to attempt.

Now take someone like Sweden’s The Amazing and let them work their magic. They share members of Dungen, bringing along guitarist and drummer Reine Fiske and Johan Holmegard respectively and, along with Christoffer Gunrup and Fredrik Swahn, have made an outstanding album with Wait for a Light to Come. The movements of music that propel these six songs are subtle and still, rooted in the lightness of life. Imagery is an easily identifiable facet but if there’s one thing about The Amazing that is obvious from the outset, is that with “Evil” and “And it Looks Like Today”’s folk tendencies, this is a lilting affair but slowly and surely, it only gets better.

When studying the cover art, the dark is bleak and foreshadows a gloominess that never seems to come. When you open it, you have the shadows of palm trees in what appears to be a sunset at the beach and that’s when it all comes together. These are the sound scapes of what happens after the sun sets: the tranquility of the waves, the instances where everything seems to die down and pick up again and even, the moments where a few passerbys walk by and just marvel in its vision. The band is heard in choral unison on the ending song, the title track “Wait for a Light to Come,” and it provides the image of everyone waking up, to the simple tune of an acoustic guitar, waiting for the sun to rise – it’s affective and downright superb.

And at even just six songs in length, there is nothing speedy about their delivery. The songs are presented as what they are, six pieces of music that make up one tightly wrapped album. Even through its composure, its musicians make everything sound loose and fresh, especially when they start to jam out. “Defect” is the album’s hardest-hitting song, the one that’s choppier around the sides and bursting at the seams with energy. The opening three minutes are light and dressed with summery vocals before Fiske takes over with his guitar solo. Delving deep into virtuosity, the guitar is amplified but always melodic and in tune to what the harmonics are doing around him; it juxtaposes the call and response progressive rock vibe of “Islands,” another standout.

The ending solution is one that refreshingly finds a band fully-secured, fully-aware and fully-able of making rousing music. It might not be the most unique of sounds but The Amazing have, without a doubt, offered up an invitingly strong re-creation of what the beach sounds like to them. The outside may seem dark and hardly recognizable but at the core of this band is a stellar amount of craft that goes beyond their years. Wait for a Light to Come is both a welcome and welcoming start to anyone’s summer.

Subliminal Sounds

Debut EP from Freebass features 3 U.K. bass guitar legends

FREEBASS – Two Worlds Collide – EP

Featuring THREE of Manchester’s bass guitar legends; Peter Hook (Joy Division / New Order), Andy Rourke (The Smiths) & Gary “Mani” Mounfield (The Stone Roses / Primal Scream), FreeBass has had a long gestation process. Pressed to find the perfect lead singer, they asked their famous friends to contribute with Tim Burgess (Charlatans UK), Pete Wylie (The Mighty Wah!) & Howard Marks (Mr Nice) responding to the call. Burgess’ track, “You Don’t Know This About Me” is a melodically epic tune with a bass line recalling New Order’s single “Ceremony” surrounding Tim’s voice. On “The Milky Way Is Our Playground,” Wylie takes vocal duties on an anthemic journey into euphoric space rock, reflecting on the universe with his star-struck cerebral lyrics. Howard Marks AKA raconteur & beatnik Mr Nice, delivers a sterling monologue on “Dark Starr,” a grungy piece of rock & roll mischief. Finally “Live Tomorrow You Go Down,” finds Hooky growling his way through a pulsating dance track whose raved-up bass line, crunching beats & Giorgio Moroder-esque electro flourishes closes the EP with a punkish techno vibe.
Release Date: Jun 1, 2010 (Digital)  |  Aug 10, 2010 (CD)

Listen: FREEBASS – “You Don’t Know This About Me”

European Tour for Ganglians

Ganglians head out on the road for a European Tour and will begin tacking their new record upon their return.

Ganglians “My House” mp3: www.bantermm.com/tracks/Ganglians-MyHouse.mp3

Ganglians on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/ganglian

Ganglians European Tour

5/28 – Barcelona, ES – Primavera Sound Festival
5/29 – Barcelona, ES – Primavera Sound Festival
5/31 – Faenza, IT – Clandestino
6/1 – Bari, IT – Eremo
6/2 – Terracina, IT – Le Scallete
6/3 – Roma, IT – Circolo Degli Artisti
6/4 – Torino, IT – Spazio 211
6/5 – Paris, FR – Villette Sonique @ Parc de la Villette
6/8 – Malmo, SE – Debaser
6/9 – Gothenburg, SE – Pusterviksbaren
6/10 – Oslo, NO – Revlover
6/11 – Stockholm, SE – Debaser
6/14 – Helsinki, FI – Semi Final
6/15 – Turku, FI- DYNAMO
6/17 – Copenhagen, DK – Loppen
6/18 – Hamburg, DE – Prinzenbar
6/19 – Dresden, DE – Ostpol
6/21 – Prague, CZ – Club 007
6/22 – Berlin, DE – Bang Bang Club
6/23 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
6/24 – Ghent, BE – Pleasure
6/25 – Nottinham, UK – Bodega Social Club
6/26 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
6/27 – London, UK – Bardens Boudoir

Solvent – Subject to Shift

Don’t think for a moment that as Solvent, Jason Amm hasn’t gotten his share of accolades. Well respected and regarded by many as one of the tenured electronic producers on the up and up, he’s also fought through a share of adversity in creating such hard to pinpoint music. But his music is both a pleasure and a superb blend of beats and melodies that come at you from every direction. It’s never something that might have you begging for more but in pushing forward an invitingly open mix of terrific sounds, it’s a major success.

Take something as darkly presented as “No One Should Be Living Here” and its diminished chords and bubbling basses. Forget that the title alone suggests a haunted home where all its dwellers are lead to unfortunate situations, the array of instruments that are dancing around is unheard of. And it’s an awesome sound for someone that is mostly known for his upbeat 80s pop style; there is nothing even remotely nice about this song. That even for a moment when he comes at you, heart on sleeve, on something like “Loss for Words,” it’s all brilliantly sequenced.

The brief introduction of “Elevator Up (Intro)” is almost what you wish the rest of Solvent’s Subject to Shift sounded like. Its bleepy sweep of precision-labeled synths, its retro-inverted melody that is sprinkled from the sides and on top and its wealthy bridge of synths that are all tightly layered within a thick nest of beeps make for an exceptional opening. But as you slowly come to understand his scope and what exactly he is going for, you understand that the music on this album is much more than just a building of sounds. “Formulate” is fittingly titled in that it’s formula is one of the easiest tricks in the business: dress it up with a manically repetitive beat that will have everyone dancing, decorate it with treatments and atmospherics for good measure and top it off with sing-along lyrics about how “I got you on my mind, make it stop” and you have a club hit. Wide and expansive, this is moving music.

For the longest time, the Zimbabwe-born producer has been both aided and hindered by being categorized as someone who’s too diverse for his own good. Whether it was the fact that his sounds are too deeply rooted in the 80s for the beat-makers to love it, or maybe that his music was just too intelligently melodic for techno fanatics or even just the fact that at times, it’s pop music in all its wonder. But what makes Amm’s music all that more purposeful is just how creatively basking it is: both in its sweep and grandeur. It’s still the kind of electronic music to either simply bop your head to, or just bliss out to, your pick.

And for what you take away from it, it’s simple: a solid collection of electronic sounds that are reliable and consistent. When everyone out there is trying to re-invent themselves and when snobby people (like yours truly) pushes an agenda to get many to change their sounds and grow, there are tried and true methods to many successful acts around. The music on Subject to Shift are positioned well and delivered with a re-assuring amount of premise; in the end, it’s still a varied, fluid, compatible fusion of tremendous sounds.

Ghostly International

The Dead Weather – Sea of Cowards

Regardless of your listening habits or past run ins with The Dead Weather’s expansive musical family tree – The White Stripes, Kills, Queens of the Stone Age, and Raconteurs among them – it’d be difficult to refute the evidence that their sophomore LP unrepentantly rocks hard and heavy. Whether or not the furious barrage of dark blues-rock on Sea of Cowards makes an indelible mark however, depends largely on what you’re jonesing for when you give it that first spin. If it’s vicious and unrelenting catharsis (35 minutes, to be exact) that you seek, look no further; Jack White and Alison Mosshart exhibit the kind of devilish, vitriolic performance that’s hard to ignore. But if it’s textural nuances and carefully sequenced bits of tension and release that you’re after (peppered with the occasional sing-along melody), don’t hold your breath. If this album was an epic action flick, it’d be like starting and stopping the film to coincide with the final battle scene.

Seriously though, didn’t we all see this coming? In the past ten years, White first spurred a garage rock revival with The White Stripes and then indulged slightly more psychedelic ambitions with the art pop of The Raconteurs. As eclectic as each act was however, a penchant for classic rock and blues flowed thick in the blood of both, and with The Dead Weather, one of indie rock’s most enigmatic figures finally gets to let it all hang out.

Returning only a mere ten months after the release of Horehound, this supergroup – which also includes QOTSA veteran guitarist Dean Fertita and bespectacled Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence – plays with the same kind of ferocity and ravenous hunger that was the focal point of their debut. Blues legend Robert Johnson once sang about a hellhound being on his trail – a shadowy and evil specter lurking just over his shoulder. On Sea of Cowards, The Dead Weather leaves a blackened trail of smoldering blues wreckage trying to outrun similar demons.

The band operates at full throttle from the downbeat of “Blue Blood Blues” and never looks back. Anchored by Fertita’s sludgy guitar riffage, the tune is all sass and sinew as White happily bashes away on the kit and spews lines like, “All the neighbors get pissed when I come home / I make ‘em nervous.” The track has all the devil-may-care posturing of the other ten tracks, but succeeds largely because it shows deference to something the album’s latter half does not: hooks and melodies. “Hustle and Cuss” is maddeningly repetitive, but it’s awesome listening to Mosshart and White trading vocal jabs with one another (“Hustle and cuss / and lick on the dust”) while the band jams on a swamp-funk Jack Lawrence bass line. Lead single “Die by the Drop” is delightfully perverse, coming off like the most unsettling marriage ceremony you’ve every witnessed as the two vocalists exclaim, “I’m gonna take you for worse or for better” over a bedrock of raging guitars and drums. A rarity on Sea of Cowards, the song – which doesn’t completely explode into chaos until the first minute has passed – is a good example of how much more satisfying a chorus can be when you’re made to wait for it.

Sadly, the album devolves into gratuitous and monotonous jamming on its second side. The last five tracks are all less than three minutes in length, and seem slipshod by comparison. “Gasoline” has a fluttering organ rhythm that intrigues, but the continuously abrasive vocals and serrated guitar lines quickly grow dull. Closer “Old Mary” is a macabre take on the famous Catholic prayer (Old Mary / full of grief / your heart stops within you”), set to caterwauling guitar and keyboard effects.

Sea of Cowards, for all its snarkiness and caustic overtones, is ultimately a fun record, but it’s likely the band had way more fun playing it than I did listening to it. Cranking the volume up to 11 and rocking out is always a good time, but boredom creeps up more quickly when you’re the one with the headphones on instead of the guitar.

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