Interview with Theodore Jackson of Distorted Pony

Reunions seem to be topic of discussion these days as more and more bands are doing them. Let the past be the past for music’s sake. To some, it may be the money and to others it’s an attempt regain that thrill they had long ago – the excitement of once again sharing the stage with your friends to simply rock out and have a good time. The latter is defiantly the reasoning behind this year’s Distorted Pony reunion. This is a band who earned their keep in the underground rock world, all the while playing with some memorable bands such as Nirvana and Jane’s Addiction, just to same a few. I began speaking with Theodore a few months back when he was introduced to me via Florian Marzano, guitarist for We Only Said (neither of which i’ve actually met in person).

You guys are currently practicing for the first time in 16 years and a European tour is in the works. How are things coming along?

Well, I want to first go on record as speaking only for myself, and not the whole band. I am 1/5 of the band, and in some respects, have the same vitality to DP as Flavor Flav did to Public Enemy. So, you are getting one guy’s perspective on all of this, not a band perspective. In any event..Tricia, London and I stated practicing in January. After Robert decided not to participate in the regrouping, Eddie came aboard in mid-Feb, and that was a lot of re-learning of songs, figuring our parts, etc. It was slow going but always encouraging. Then just recently, at the end of April, David came out from Austin and we practiced as a full band for the first time in 17 years. The first night was great..just huge and mean and noisy..and really exciting to all be playing the songs with a full band. The next night was torturous. Once the novelty of playing together again was over, the reality that we were not the super tight, read one another’s thoughts, cohesive unit we once were set in. We struggled to get through the songs, debated parts and sounds, and generally put some real work into everything. The final night of practice together, I thought was awesome. We had worked out the most troublesome stuff, and had some friends there and we kind of blew them away, I think. It was totally a glorious din..and it was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it. So David went back out to Austin, and will come back in May for a few more practices and then we are gonna go out and play live..on May 22.

Growing up in LA and being part of the burgeoning scene, what made you decide to get into music and performing. What were some of your earliest influences and favorite bands/albums?

This answer is totally different for everyone in the band, cause we all came from some pretty different places, but the role I think any of us played primarily was as fans. Personally, I was really into the early LA punk/roots scene. It sounds so pedestrian now, but the bands I was into were the Blasters and X and Los Lobos and Rank and File, and you need to recall that at one point, those bands were pretty “underground”. The Minutemen and Social D were early favorites, and from there on in, I kind of started to get schooled in the history of LA music and learned about the Alley Cats and Savage Republic and so many others. But the cool thing was the diversity of it all. Punk rock meant so much more than the loud fast chowder head thing it became. I was always a huge fan of the LA music scene. Robert, David. Dora and myself all met in college, working at KXLU where you were inundated with great bands and got to learn so much, from the music and the older DJ’s there. It was total living history and I think so important, as far as opening my eyes, to more and more music. David came from a similar back ground, but had a lot more knowledge of the international scene, from my perspective. Dora too. The Fall and Birthday Party, and some of the first wave UK noise stuff. And London was totally in on the early DC scene, playing in Reptile House and Dag Nasty and being around all the awesome Dischord bands.

I had been a fan of DP when it was just David and Dora and a drum machine. I think I saw all their early shows, with various lineups, and a very different sound too. The band really evolved over the years, but at one point, maybe late ‘88, David mentioned that they were looking for a percussion player to play along with the drum machine, and I asked if I could give it a go. I think he agreed somewhat reluctantly, but it worked out. After that, the goal was to just play music. Anything beyond playing in a practice space has been a huge gift.

Since Distorted Pony’s break-up in 1995, what have you been up to ?

I think we actually broke up in August of 93..the last album came out in April of 94. Everyone stayed involved in music to some degree. Robert ran Surrogate Spike Studio at the house we all shared, and recorded a ton of bands. David has played in numerous bands, like Switchitter, and currently Red X Red M and is currently finishing up his PhD., focused on indie rock and the associated life choices. Tricia played in Saraspoden with Dave Gomez from Oiler, and they put out a single. London has been in tons of bands, including a Samhain reunion, Son of Sam, Tiger Army and currently The Foul and the Fragrant and Millions of Dead Comps. He also works as a nurse at Children’s Hospital, which is very cool. They are actually all much more interesting to interview than I am. I played in a band, Go-Kart, with Steve from Slug and we put out a single..but mostly, I have been teaching, which I still do. I am in and out of school all the time..working on a second Masters degree right now. Not really sure why, but I am. Tricia and I both have two daughters (separately, not with one another). London has a son. But David and London are the true lifers, music wise. They have both always stayed involved in music and bands and continue to rock on a daily basis!

It’s been 15 years since Distorted Pony called it quits. With reunions becoming more and more prevalent, (for example, Black Flag (sorta), The Slits, the Pixies and Soundgarden) why did everyone in DP feel that, “now is the time”?.

I don’t know that we all feel like that, necessarily. I, personally, hate reunions and had real reservations about doing this. Mostly because I feel like bands have a shelf-life and belong to a certain era, and to try and re-establish that is not a great thing. And I didn’t really think anyone cared that much. Its not like we were playing to packed stadiums in the past, we still had plenty of shows that were 3 people in Oklahoma City on a Tuesday night. But Thom Fuhrman, from Savage Republic, kinda egged us on, suggesting it would be a cool thing to go and tour Europe. We always planed to in the past, but it never happened. So that was the biggest impetus. It seemed kind of dumb, if the opportunity presented itself, not to do it. And it kinda did. In addition, it’s the twentieth anniversary of our first release, the 7” on Piece of Mind Records. So then we had to really question if this is something we want to do. And if we were going to do it, it couldn’t be, “two original members and some young kids” type of thing. And we didn’t all disband on great terms. But it gave us an opportunity to address those issues, as adults, and I think we have done that well. We like each other..we seem to click musically, and we push each other to some degree as well. And it’s kind of cool to be able to do this now without the expectation of popularity or desire to make a living with it, but just do it cause it’s a lot of fun. It was always fun, for the most part, but now, it seems, that’s really the only motivation. And if 10 people want to see us play, cool. So, the only reason that “now is the time” is that we all agreed to do it and not because we have any illusions of “This time, the world is gonna love us!”

Why the decision to make Europe your first destination for the reunion tour and not the US ?

As I said, its something we always wanted to do. When we broke up, Facebook didn’t exist…flyers were done by hand..marketing was going to shows and handing the flyers out. Now, with the Internet and Myspace and all that stuff, it seems like Europe is where there is a real desire for us to play. Originally, we had no intention of any US shows. Now, we are thinking, if people want us, we will come. But, we have some of us have lives that are no longer centered around music, so we can’t be doing 6 week tours and ignoring responsibilities like we could when we were 23, 24.

How did you hook up with Eddie Rivas and how is his addition been going thus far in DP 2010?

Eddie was a big DP fan, and remained a friend after we broke up. He played in a number of bands, including Leopold. When Robert said no, we decide it was either Eddie or one other person we were going to ask. Eddie seemed like the natural choice cause he is into the band’s music; he is low maintenance, and he a good guy to hang around with. Fortunately, he said yes..and is really into it. The only detriment is that, like David, he is a bit of a gear-geek, and anyone who has ever had to be around THOSE types of people know what a chore that is! You know, I pick up a piece of garbage on the way into practice and that’s my new gear. Eddie and David have spent years working on the tone of their amps and the right settings on their pedals, and they still are unhappy. But it’s gone great and has been really fun, and Eddie has been a great band member too, taking on stuff that the rest of us may be less than enthusiastic about. It’s been really good.

In some circles the DP back catalog are considered collector’s items. What are your thoughts about the possibility of them being re-issued as well as their current availability on iTunes, Amazon, Napster, and Rhapsody?

Well, if they are collectors’ items, I have some copies that can be bought at a fair market price. But, we have talked about reissues, maybe fleshed out with some bonus tracks are remastered…again, we don’t know that there is a huge demand. We put Instant Winner up on all those download sites, and I think are grand total is 0 downloads. Don’t really know why anyone would pay for them when they are readily available for free all over the internet..but, you know..not trying to talk anyone out of anything!

Why did DP choose Steve Albini as a producer on “Punishment Room” and “Instant Winner”?

Well, he was always insistent, and it was true, that he was not a producer. He was an engineer that may have offered his opinion in certain cases, but he never actually “produced” anything. I think we were a little frightened at the prospect of working with him. Obviously, we were big fans and DP went through a phase that was very heavily influenced by Big Black. But more importantly, he did really great work. No one can make drums sound the way he does. But, you know, we had heard so many stories about him and his cranky nature and his opinionated stances, I think we were expecting him to laugh in our face. But we contacted him and he was just a great guy. I hope that doesn’t dispel any of the myth that surrounds him, but he came out to LA, stayed at our VERY crappy, roach infested house, slept on the couch, cooked us diner, and recorded a great record in our living room.

I remember having to take a few shots of whiskey before we were beginning recording, just cause of the legend that surrounded him and I expected him to storm out and ask “What is this crap?!”, but it was always a great experience and he was/is a really good person. At the same time, we did not want to seem like we were trying to rely on his indie-rock celebrity to get our records heard and we were always very conscious of not putting his name anywhere on our album. We referenced him in smart-ass ways, but his name never appeared anywhere.

After joining Distorted Pony along with Robert pre-”fleshy drummer” London, why the decision of the group to add a percussionist, a second guitarist and not a live drummer?

DP had a live drummer in earlier incarnations. The decision to go to a drum machine was two-fold, I believe. I was not part of that decision, so I may not be 100% accurate. One, I think David and Dora were finding it really difficult to work with live drummers and get the sound they wanted. But more so, at that time, a drum machine was the exception to the rule, not the norm. So it gave the whole thing a very different feel and sound, which was the goal at the time. But then drum machine started to become much more commonplace, and even mainstream, which is what led to the switch back to a live drummer.

The percussionist was kind of always there in one form or another. As the band progressed and the sound changed and the influences changed. You can probably really reference bands like Savage Republic and Einsturzende Neubauten for that influence. And as the band became more aggressive and intense, the additional guitar seemed to really lend itself to that sound. Plus, Robert was a really good friend who was involved with DP in many different capacities, and he just kind of worked himself into the band in that respect.

Would you mind telling me your favorite experience while a member of Distorted Pony, as well as anything else you’d like to add about some of the bands you’ve played with?

Well, I could tell some stories personally, but I am a married man with kids now and a teacher and don’t know that I want that stuff going into print. But we met so many cool people, who welcomed us into their homes, it was so cool. I always found that the people you expected to be the must fucked up and cracked, based upon their music, were often the most friendly, funny nice people you could meet. Neurosis is a perfect example. Just really nice, friendly sweet people who make some scary as shit music! But they were always the coolest, nicest people. I think we are all kind a bunch of goofs, never really into any sort of drug scene or getting laid on the road. Probably my favorite experiences were touring and meeting people. Playing with and becoming friends with bands..meeting people I admired and respected. The Kinman brothers, who I loved from the Dils and Rank and File became friends and we played with them a lot while they were doing Blackbird. That was really a thrill for me. Jawbreaker were good friends and I remember sitting in the basement at the Chameleon in San Francisco with Blake and just talking about girls and relationships. Slug were our total brothers and best friends and greatest competition. We always wanted to be as good as them! Sandy Duncan’s Eye are in that same category. I had a great time with the guys from God and Texas, smoking cigars and drinking. The Braniac guys were a lot of fun. Mecca Normal was another band that became true friends and we had a lot of fun together. Playing a show with Tar and Jawbox on the same bill was kind of a music fan’s members wet dream for me…unnamed members of the band being arrested for unnamed charges was pretty funny..touring with Ron (from Beekeeper and Karate Brand Records) was great cause he was a good friend and we had a ton of fun together. David and me bugging the shit out of everyone in the van with our stupid in-jokes and renditions of “Old Man River” throughout every tour. You know, we all got along well..we had a lot of fun..and as grueling as touring could be, it was also a lot of fun. And on a personal note, playing with Nirvana and Tad at Raji’s in LA, where I was drunk out of my mind and sat at the bar with Chris all night explaining to him everything I disliked about Nirvana.

What is DP’s ultimate goal behind deciding to reunite after all this time?

Europe was, and may still be, the ultimate goal. At least the prospect of it was what got us talking about playing together again. But that has been put on hold for now, and we do have any plans set in stone. It’s obviously not an attempt to cash in, as their was never any cash there in the first place! I don’t think we have talked much about it. We have our first show in 17 years coming up on May 22, and nothing scheduled after that. It could end there…it could go on well beyond that. I don’t think any of us are considering Distorted Pony a full time thing though. It would be nice to come together a few times a year, do some shows or short tours. It really depends on kinda what we said at the start of this conversation. If people want to hear us, we will play. If no interest exists, then you can’t flog a dead horse.

New Album from Florene out now

Florene’s Homemade Extacy is out now.

“Deal With It”

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“Space Cadets”

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Aaron and Gavin met while working at a camera shop in North Texas. Aaron had recently been in an epic pop group of large membership that had seen its demise with diverging musical opinions and member relocations. Gavin had been making solo electronic music under his own name and the two of them quickly realized they had similar musical interests and abilities so they got a rehearsal space at rubber gloves in Denton, bought some drum machines/synths/samplers, and started making their own brand of music.

After befriending and getting the approval of some phenomenal local musicians such as Sleep Whale (mom), Matthew & The Arrogant Sea, Shiny Around The Edges, History At Our Disposal, Bryce Isbell, Wanz Dover, and Lars Larsen, the two continued to play live and self-release their own music. Since the beginning, Florene now has 6 self-releases including singles, EPs, splits, and live recordings, not to mention being a part of many local, national, and international compilations or mixtapes. After embarking on a ten day midwest tour, they are now preparing for a west coast tour of the same length, working on a remix for Merok Records’ Comanechi, and released a cassette tape put out by the Copenhagen based label Skrot Up.

MySpace Site: http://www.myspace.com/florenemusic

Tour Dates for Blood Red Shoes

READING AND LEEDS FESTIVAL ANNOUNCED!
we’ve been keeping this under wraps for a while now but the PEOPLE IN CHARGE say we’re finally allowed to tell the world…we are happy to say we’re playing this year’s reading and leeds festival. for leeds that actually means it’s our 4th year in a row playing the best part is, we’ve been given a slot 3rd from top on the Festival Republic stage so we’re on about 8pm then we can all go watch guns n roses after. check out below for all our festivals across the globe, plus our massive european tour after that :

18 June	FRANCE Lyon	Les invites de Villeurbanne // Stage B
19 June	POLAND Warsaw	1500m2
25 June	FRANCE Paris	Solidays // Stage B
26 June	UK Pilton	Glastonbury // Queens Head Stage 5pm
1 July	FRANCE Rouen	Terrasses du Jeudi
3 July	UK Abersoch	Wakestock Festival // Main Stage
8 July	FRANCE Saint Tropez	Plage de Rock
12 July	SWITZERLAND Montreux	Montreux Jazz Festival
13 July	ITALY Pescara	Le Canarie
14 July	ITALY Rome	Circolo degli Artisti
15 July	SWITZERLAND Gurten	Gurten Festival // Second Stage
16 July	GERMANY Nordholz	Deichbrand Festival
17 July	GERMANY Ferropolis	Melt! Festival // Main Stage 7pm
24 July	UK Sheffield	Tramlines Festival // DiS Outdoor Stage
25 July	UK Oxfordshire	Truck Festival
8 August	JAPAN Tokyo	Summersonic
13 August	GERMANY Rothenburg	Taubertal Festival
14 August	GERMANY Haldern – Rees	Haldern Pop Festival
15 August	GERMANY Eschwege	Open Flair Festival
20 August	BELGIUM Hasselt	Pukklepop // Marque Stage
21 August	HOLLAND Biddinghuizen	Lowlands Festival // Grolsch Stage
27 August	UK Reading	Festival Republic Stage 8pm
29 August	UK Leeds	Festival Republic Stage 8pm
6 October	U.K. Manchester	Club Academy
7 October	U.K. London	Electric Ballroom
7 November	BELGIUM Leffinge	De Zwerver
9 November	FRANCE Tourcoing	Le Grand Mix
10 November	HOLLAND Utrecht	Tivoli
11 November	HOLLAND Breda	Mezz
12 November	HOLLAND Arnhem	Luxor Live
14 November	GERMANY Dussledorf	Zakk
15 November	GERMANY Hannover	Bei Chez Heinz
16 November	GERMANY Rostock	Mau Club
17 November	GERMANY Bremen	Lagerhaus
18 November	GERMANY Leipzig	Conne Island
19 November	CZECH REPUBLIC Prague	Lucerna Music Bar
20 November	AUSTRIA Dornbirn	Conrad Sohm
22 November	ITALY Milan	La Casa 139
23 November	AUSTRIA Kufstein	Kulturfabrik
24 November	AUSTRIA Salzburg	Rockhouse
25 November	GERMANY Augsburg	Ostwerk
26 November	GERMANY Heidelburg	Karlstorbahnhof
27 November	SWITZERLAND Lausanne	Les Docks
29 November	SWITZERLAND Zurich	Abart
30 November	GERMANY Nuremberg	Der Hirsch
1 December	GERMANY Frankfurt	Batschkapp
2 December	GERMANY Saarbrucken	Garage
3 December	GERMANY Bielefeld	Kamp
4 December	FRANCE Strasbourg	La Laiterie
5 December	FRANCE Clermont-Ferrand	La Co-operative de Mai
7 December	FRANCE Paris	Le Trabendo

Official Site:  bloodredshoes.co.uk |

MySpace Site:  myspace.com/bloodredshoes

Emeralds – Does It Look Like I’m Here?

Sometimes you’ve got to wonder why bands label-hop. Why’d Low leave Kranky for Sub Pop, or Polvo trade Merge for Touch and Go? In the case of Emeralds, putting out music on multiple labels makes sense, since they produce and release so much material. So moving from one label to another isn’t such a dramatic deal for them, but their recent move is instructive of the direction their music has moved.  Their last widely available release, What Happened, came out on the experimental noise label No Fun whereas the new one, Does It Look Like I’m Here? is out on experimental electronic label Mego Editions. The former fit well with its No Fun labelmates, fairly formless and stretched out, with a lot of buzz and fizzle. The switch to Mego comes along with what sounds to be a switch from analog to digital gear, and a proclivity for microsounds and metered progress heretofore unexplored by the band, not to mention much shorter track lengths.

Unfortunately, the short form doesn’t work that well for Emeralds over the length of the album, though the individual pieces are sometimes mesmerizing. The album leads off with “Candy Shoppe” which wows with its patience and use of space, building from a spare music box melody to dizzying depths in the span of 5 minutes. Most tracks here build in intensity over the course of 3 to 5 minutes into dense webs of arpeggiated momentum, but then drop off the scene quickly, only to start the process right over again. As a listener it feels like the process of trying to blow up a balloon, but then losing your grip as you try to tie it, and then seeing it fly across the room as it deflates, over and over again.

In the middle of the album come two long form pieces. These are a good idea, as it seems that Emeralds aren’t allowing themselves enough time to develop a piece and still have time to end it. Still, from an album perspective, they seem out of place among the shorter tracks, like the guys just couldn’t control themselves and had to shoot for the stars a few times. On “Genetic” Mark McGuire’s guitar is starting to show the faintest whiffs of staleness, recycling the same triumphantly mysterious riffs we’ve been hearing from him for a while now, and next to the new textures the other guys have brought to the table, it’s disappointing to hear the wheels spinning. Even as the music is moving, mood-wise the track sets itself on cruise control for 9 minutes of squiggles and guitar soloing, and then closes things out with 3 more minutes of fluttering squiggles. Sure it doesn’t sound bad, but it bores over its 12 long minutes. McGuire compliments what the other two are doing here much better when he’s sticks to minimal patterns, for instance on “Double Helix” and “Shade”.  The title track is the other long song, but it makes good as it traverses dancy, krauty, overblown noise, and languid space rock territory.

Despite a lot of momentum seepage and fatigue-inducing repetition, there are some gems here. “Science Center” wrings emotion out of the same old robotics with slurring and filtering effects, like Endless Summer-era Fennesz, and shows as much attention to how the track ends as how it begins – a rarity for Emeralds. “Summerdata” also benefits from slowing the sonics down and allowing them some room to breathe, calling to mind seeing a sunset through a screened in sunporch. “Goes By” is sandwiched between the two behemoth tracks and is the most refreshing piece on the album, slowly transitioning a sweet drone to a twinkling arpeggio, and then into sputtering digital debris. The whole thing feels like you’re slowly traveling from the atmospheric environment to the subatomic level.

For Emeralds, the future could hold anything. . It’s interesting that they chose to work in miniature this time out, as it seems to go against their strengths. They seem to have a good grasp of the new equipment, and extract some pretty great sounds from it; even as the songs sometimes are weighted down by too much arpeggiated clutter. To answer their titular question, sometimes it doesn’t look like they are here controlling the direction of the songs, instead letting the synths run amok and soloing on autopilot. Hopefully the next release will see them fold everything they’ve learned on this release into their longer-form, anything-goes style.

Emeralds

Editions Mego

Mutant Beatniks – Blazen

As the electronic music scene continues to re-invent itself, it all too often arrives at some very familiar destinations; at the same co-ordinates which Giorgio Moroder and Ralph Hutter took as their startpoints in the late 1970s. Essentially, the monophonic repeated note, performed at varying frequencies, remains the basis of the electropop world : da da da da da de de de do do, just add disco and you may share the same moment of sequenced discovery that characterised the best known work of both Kraftwerk and Donna Summer. Other German producers such as Konny Plank moved into more experimental and less mainstream -friendly areas, but it took Cabaret Voltaire’s Extended Play EP to highlight what a combination of oscillators and tape effects could fully achieve, and there wasn’t a more challenging and forward looking record released in 1978. Equally, the shock of the new has never really quite worn off from the repetitive hyperdriven beats of “I Feel Love” and “Trans Europe Express”.

So exactly where does a record as seemingly unclassifiable as Blazen fit in amongst the plethora of electronically based music available to listeners today? If it is necessary to constantly hark back over three decades to find the exact blueprints of what we listen to nowadays, then the earliest work of Cabaret Voltaire can provide as comfortable a pigeonhole as needed for an album that is as atonal, metallic and insidiously listenable as anything the earliest incarnations of either the Cabs or the Human League confronted audiences with at the very dawning of the electronic era. Opening track “Rapture” begins in a rush of drill noise which is quickly supplanted by some screeching feedback and a keyboard motif that introduces a barely audible operatic vocal which is itself faded to make way for what sounds like some big band jazz played backwards. If this sounds chaotic and a bit mad then that’s exactly what it is, but Mutant Beatniks retain a rhythmical structure to their sound collage which prevents their combination of sampling and sound generation from loosing focus entirely, although they also quite happily deconstruct this with second track “Axiom” which appears to rely entirely on a combination of white noise and effects chamber insectoid hisses to which are added swathes of garbled circuitry.

Over ten tracks, Mutant Beatniks repeat their formula with a marked variation in results, and while they appear determined to avoid presenting their listeners with anything that could conceivably match the description of a tune, (with the possible exception of ninth track “Wall”), they also mange to avoid the trap which I’ve heard many similarly avant garde experimentalists fall into, which is to say that Blazen is at least a consistently interesting auditory experience and perhaps a work of quite real compositional merit which could find itself filed alongside John Cage and Stockhausen as well as Mobius and Four Tet. I don’t expect everyone reading this will find the entire album of actual interest but those DOA readers whose interests extend to the farther reaches of experimentalism will definitely get something from the multiplicity of sounds and arrangements Mutant Beatniks have collated, all forty five or so minutes of it. Improvisation in any form inevitably presents erraticism as its most obvious feature, but Mutant Beatniks are very able to turn this seeming disadvantage to their own purposes, and their sense of enthusiasm carries onto Blazen with relative success within its own artistic terms.

http://www.myspace.com/edgeofthecosmos

Puracane – I’ve Been Here the Longest

If Portishead’s trip-hop freaked you out a little bit and Mazzy Star’s shoegazey dream pop was just too saccharine, then Brooklyn’s Puracane might just have the remedy. Lacking the melodramatic Sturm und Drang of Depeche Mode but too groove-oriented to qualify as ambient chill, Puracane’s amalgam of electronic loops, ghostly vocals, and bass-heavy textures is often hypnotizing but rarely captivating.

Since forming in 1999, Puracane has reached the big leagues a few times, having had the opportunity to open for major attractions like Duran Duran, Jane’s Addiction, and the aforementioned godfathers of synthpop. Their music has made cameo appearances in several TV shows, and often garners comparisons to genre pioneers like Sneaker Pimps and Massive Attack.

If all of the name dropping is any indication, Puracane’s music should have the appeal to reach a massive audience. But therein lies the dilemma: the group’s downtempo electronica is indeed quite appealing, but rarely does it shoot for the sort of emotional apex that could qualify it as gripping. Nearly any warm blanket or ice cream sundae analogy I could conjure here would be apt; both have the immediate appeal of soothing indulgence, but neither would lead you to an emotionally resonant epiphany. Lead singer Ali Rogers’ siren-like voice dominates the mix throughout, and the layer of reverb that comes with it indicates that atmosphere is often tantamount to melody.

I’ve Been Here the Longest, for all of its accessibility, only has a few standout tracks. The first is “Daylight,” an ethereal slowburner that paints vivid imagery of a metropolis in the hazy hours just before dawn. Ali Rogers’ celestial cooing brings goose bumps while a killer dub bass line from Paul Simon (not the one you’re thinking of) is augmented by the sparse yet affecting drumming of Andrew Griffiths. “Watershed” – which oddly enough, sounds like it copped a riff from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite – has an exotic Middle Eastern quality that cuts through the melancholy electronic burbles and keyboard countermelodies. As with many other tracks, Rogers’ voice recalls the ebb and flow of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, where fluid transitions from a feather whisper to an aching moan are the norm.

“Sirens” actually finds Puracane engaged in the process of layering, a technique the band avoids on most other cuts. What sounds at first like faux-harp on a New Age compilation slowly evolves over the span of five minutes with the addition of a simmering synth pulse, club-worthy breakbeats, and swirling keyboard tones.

The remaining eight songs aren’t necessarily to be avoided, but nor are they bursting with the type of energy that would render them memorable. Opener “God Can Make You Pay” – in which Rogers goes for more of a Hope Sandoval tone quality – has little verve to speak of, despite the messages of karma and retribution. Built around a loop, “Got Nothing” manages to be both hyponotic and danceable, while lacking any type of discernible emotional arc. “I Need You” puts Puracane in Zero 7 territory, boasting a noticeable jazz lounge influence. “Destroy Me” juxtaposes a delicate keyboard melody with fuzzy industrial noise. The chordal cadences and Rogers’ use of her upper tessitura suggest that some sort of cathartic release might be coming, but it never arrives.

I’ve Been Here the Longest, despite its lack of ingenuity, isn’t a total loss. When the beats are this crystalline and the vocals this angelic, it’s difficult to argue against the allure of trip-hop and its electronic offshoots; Puracane’s music has a luster and shimmer that are definitely hard to deny. But unlike a Portishead, Four Tet, or Pantha Du Prince, there’s not much going on once you scratch beneath the surface.

Foals – Total Life Forever

For a lot of people in the music writing biz, the aughts will go down as the era of marketable post-punk. Two decades after Ian Curtis & company invented the genre, a legion of disciples (Interpol, The Libertines and Bloc Party) took their borrowed sounds to the top of the international charts and festival billings alike. But now in 2010 all is not well for these post-punk upstarts commercial interest is waning, bands are breaking up, and former critical darlings are entering their fourth or fifth record release. For the first time these formerly fresh-faced revivalists are veterans of the scene, in their thirties, their best work behind them – hell, the big crossover hits of the last two years (Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective) are quite different than Arctic Monkeys and The Cribs before them.

Foals entered the fold at the scene’s cretaceous period; early 2008, with a curious, if a little yawn-inducing brand of disco-informed emo-rock. They’ve done a good job of eluding the gelatinous blob of mediocrity that swallowed up most late-period revival acts, and made the prospect of a sophomore effort a much more exciting proposition than, say, the fourth Kaiser Chiefs album. In fact, Total Life Forever is one of the best albums we’ve seen from the British post-punk camp in the past five years, and hints that the 2000-sound may not be all the way dead yet.

What makes Total Life Forever more affecting than most everything else in the genre lately is that it disowns the morose, throaty (and oft-disingenuous) emotion that most ‘serious’ chart-rock bands go for, and instead builds songs out of a certain watery nuance. That means no shout-along choruses, no easily-discerned lyrics, and no familiar melodies. This is Foals down the rabbit hole, rock flecked with IDM, maybe even a little bit of Caribou. The centerpiece “This Orient” is one of the smartest thing radio-listeners will be hearing in quite a while, leaning on sliced-up vocals and brain-bendingly layered guitar lines – it earnestly sounds like if The Books tried to write a rock song. It’s not something the general music populace is used to hearing; Total Life Forever packs every inch it’s given with knuckleballs.

That’s not to say that it won’t find listenership. Total Life Forever is still intrinsically rooted in the band’s pop sensibilities, and it’s not necessarily going to sound out of place next to their label-mates, but on a musical level, it’s clear that Foals are more interested in creating art than churning out hits. One listen to the uber-complex leveling job on “After Glow” confirms that these songs were incubated in a studio for quite some time. And even with all that evolution, Total Life Forever is still thoroughly identifiable as a Foals album, their personality and songwriting quirks shine through even the thickest of creative haze – they’re making pop out of art, which is a pretty good recipe for a young band.

Foals

Transient Songs – Cave Syndrome

Primarily the work of a duo, Transient Songs sounds like a full band on Cave Syndrome. Even though the group likes to compare itself to The Church and The Chameleons, its music reaches back a bit farther, into the neo-psych of Green on Red or Dream Syndicate quite a bit.

This stuff is really singer-songwriter work. You know how it is: acoustic guitar and some strings, vocals earnest and up front in the mix, bluesy at times, sometimes drums with brushes (“Golden Gardens”). The electric guitar takes it all into mild psychedelia, especially once the reverb starts consuming the singing. “Smoking Slows the Healing” gets pretty thick and lush, with the expected guitar digressions mid-way through. The album has a few surprises. “The Cancer In Our Bloodlines” has some sort of key change that takes it from depressing and hopeless to pointed and uplifting. Some of the lines get a little clunky or cliched (“There’s an old fire burning / Right between your thighs” and “How long should you live before you live for yourself?” don’t quite come across as profoundly as intended). The rollicking bridge and meandering finish to the song defy the album’s patterns.

“Sin Through The Summer” works up a sweat and gets as close to a rock sound as anything else on the record, and it’s offset by the spooky old-school psychedelia of “Astoria”, whose narrative of lost places fits its melodic mood. The song ends before it even gets going, though, leaving it feel unfinished.

You can tell that the band takes its compositions seriously, even if it works over certain tropes until they wear thin. That’s why it’s pleasant to hit on a song like “Greenwood Backyards,” where the mid-song shift from jumpy piano to Dead Meadow stylings make you remember that these guys have more ideas than they really let you in on unless you’re paying attention.

The Pineapple Thief – Someone Here is Missing

The Pineapple Thief were always a band who wore their influences on their sleeve. However, even with undeniable similarities to Radiohead, Ozric Tentacles, and Porcupine Tree, they consistently deliver catchy, emotive songwriting and progressive rock innovation. Someone Here is Missing places some new production techniques over their trademark qualities, solidifying their status as a very special group with some very moving and exciting music.

Formed at the end of the 90s, the history of The Pineapple Thief is also similar to fellow English act Porcupine Tree. Creative mastermind Bruce Soord released two solo albums under the name (which grew a cult following) and eventually he decided to turn TPT into a real band. Since then, they’ve released several albums and EPs, with 2008’s Tightly Unwound easily being their best yet. With Someone Here is Missing, Soord wanted to craft “a record of dark edges, full of love and regret; my life in the last eighteen month pretty much.” It carries the juxtaposing beautiful heartache and thunderous jams we’ve come to expect, albeit with a new coating of keyboards and sampling.

Someone Here is Missing opens with “Nothing At Best,” a pounding combination of electronica and rock that bares comparison to Muse. Of course, Soord’s vocals are always more subdued and fragile than Matthew Bellamy, and his songwriting is always more subtle (not to discredit Muse, who are great as well). Lyrically, Soord has a habit of mixing the sadness of an ended relationship with simple threats against his ex, and this holds true here with lines like “Just stay with me tonight? And I will bury you along with our lives.” It’s a thrilling way to start the record.

“Wake Up The Dead” feels like a continuation as it maintains the aforementioned electro/rock aesthetic. Here, Soord vows to understand the subject’s suicide (who he’s speaking to is anyone’s guess). His vocal is smoother here, and the music is a bit more sparse and ominous, focusing on an intriguing drum beat, harsh guitar riffs and sound loops. “The State We’re In” is where Soord lets all of his glorious melancholy shine. A very affective melody (which is certainly a trademark of TPT) is complemented by the tapping of high hats, guitar (of course), orchestration and piercing falsetto harmony (another trademark). Soord is best when he bares his soul behind lush production, and this track is a great example of that.

A hypnotic guitar line and more sound loops invite Soord to mix a bit more anger with his betrayal on “Preparation for Meltdown.” Again, as listeners, we hang on his every word, imagining how we’d feel if dealt the same hand in life. An aggressive crash of rock segments the quieter verses, and a stunning blend of synthesizers adds to its evolution. Things settle down for the middle section, allowing Soord to sing alone momentarily before a buzz saw guitar and programmed drums build things up again. It’s wonderful noise.

An acoustic guitar and piano welcome us into “Barely Breathing,” another tear jerker. With its gorgeous melody (sung perfectly, of course), warm instruments and subtle orchestration, it’s easily one of the best songs on the album, if not TPT’s entire career. Still holding on to memories of waking up in love and regretting what he did to screw it up, Soord agonizes about how he could never “make it up to you, my love.” A great artist can harbor on the same themes and topics for their entire career and always keep it interesting. TPT certainly do.

Heading back into more destructive rock, “Show a Little Love” excels as a great example of dynamics. The verse is calm and the chorus is heavy, almost like a rollercoaster carrying different levels of intensity. As always, they use distinctive timbres to keep their freak outs unique. “Someone Here is Missing” is another somber ballad that will stay with you for awhile. A simple acoustic introduction leads into the more catchy and forceful verse and chorus. Soord’s voice cracks as he lets his passion excel his range, but that’s the sign of a true artist, and it’s the type of song that unveils more layers and textures upon repeated listening.

“3000 Days” (which shares its name from the fantastic double disc retrospective released almost a year ago) brings back the slightly psychedelic guitar tone TPT used a lot in the past. Its rhythmic melody is quite catchy and the chorus features harmony just audible enough to make it stand out. More trademark timbres highlight the guitar and keyboard accompaniment and it carries a great vibe that makes you want to blast it through speakers.

Several of The Pineapple Thief’s outputs conclude with an epic track, and “So We Row” is no exception. At almost ten minutes, it’s absolutely the most bombastic, heavily produced and progressive track. Beginning with guitar, drums, synths, horns and other percussion playing around of 7/4, we already know that the song is going to erupt into progressive rock madness by the end. Soord’s vocals are confident and feature several overdubs as the instrumental tension increases. Things calm down in that typical psychedelic/prog fashion of putting layers of odd sounds and echoes over the ambience (surely an intermission before a complex eruption). A minute or two later, this explosion occurs as the same instruments keep pounding away, this time with louder horns. Soon Soord reprises his melody, first unaccompanied but soon joined by vocal countermelodies (which is a very interesting trick). The final seconds consist of Soord singing “So we row” a cappella. It’s an impressive closer.

If there are any gripes I have with Someone Here is Missing, it’s that it’s simply not as progressive and complex as what we’d expect. On previous albums, TPT would really go into new territory and show some really interesting arpeggio ideas and skill at their instruments. This album seems to lack that a bit, fitting more into a standard rock criteria. Also, the songs just aren’t as affective and memorable as they should be. Don’t get me wrong, some of these tracks will become instant classics in their catalogue and deserve to be considered amongst the best, but other tracks don’t satisfy expectations. Check out “Tightly Wound” for a great example of how the two sides of TPT combine expertly.

Someone Here is Missing is another fine addition to discography of a very special band (there just isn’t another word as fitting to describe them). Again, while their sound may be largely similar to other bands, they way they construct their pieces are very unique, and Soord has an exceptional way of writing songs. Honestly, I think Tightly Unwound is definitely a better studio album and 3000 Days is a fantastic introduction for newcomers, but this one is well worth your attention too.

The Sunset Curse – Artificial Heart

If you missed The Cubists’ Mechanical Advantage, last year’s dark horse surprise of a smorgasbord of indie styles whipped into an intoxicating and entertaining brew, make sure you don’t miss this year’s candidate, The Sunset Curse’s first full-length album, Artificial Heart. It may not pack quite the eclectic and stylish punch as the former, but it shares the same experimental edge and pop smarts.

Using Band Of Horses’ lush twinkle of swirling guitars and highly reverbed, high-strung vocals as a starting point, The Sunset Curse add thumping electro-rhythms to make a more dynamic sound and give it more of an edge. With sleek synths accentuating the textured guitar-rock they not only embrace a creative and structured indie-rock hybrid but indulge their blissed-out, space-rock impulses as well.

Some tracks pulse with stimulating, polyrhythmic dueling guitars and pounding drums, while others explore a rich and full alt-rock sound with delicate guitar leads. Still others offer a melancholic respite from it all with softer touches of shoegazing drones and swells of hallucinatory, and heavily reverbed, guitars, and most maintain a soothing back porch charm that’s easy to relate to.

The Sunset Curse mix the abstract and the quirky with a surreal mix of electronics and indie-rock in a sharp style and with a clever charm that makes Artificial Heart an engaging listen worth many repeated plays.

RIYL: Band Of Horses, The Cubists, Thee More Shallows, Dead Heart Bloom and Radiohead

Helmet Room Recordings

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