Short Takes on Three Albums

Lissie – Catching a Tiger
Fat Possum

http://www.lissie.com/

My first exposure to Lissie was the excellent “Little Lovin’” – a magical tune that straddles the lines between all out pop and alt-country. The song first appeared on her EP Why You Runnin (also a Fat Possum release) last year. I love this infectious song in all its hand-clapping glory. Lissie’s voice is superb, the music is upbeat, and you will definitely sing along. Catching a Tiger is one of those situations where you ruin the surprise by peeking at the presents. Although most of the songs here are good, there’s too much Sheryl Crow and not enough Neko Case for my tastes. There is a lot of substance here, so take a chance if you haven’t already been spoiled.

Betsy Franck and the BareKnuckle Band – Still Waiting
Self-Released

http://www.myspace.com/betsyfranck

This Athens, GA band has been together for close to a decade and have apparently made their way around the Southern circuit to some success. Still Waiting, the group’s second release, is eight songs of bluesy-rock peppered with bits of soul, Gospel, and country. The keys and horns on songs like “Lowdown” and “Backbone” are nice touches that help fill out the overall sound the group is aiming for. The only thing missing for me is that extra goose pimple oomph. Perhaps Betsy Franck and the BareKnuckle Band are best live, which wouldn’t be a surprise given the mix of styles they present. On Still Waiting I’m left wanting something a little harder and definitely a lot grittier than the mostly radio-ready blues-rock being offered up by Betsy Franck and the BareKnuckle Band.

Kathryn Williams – Relations
One Little Indian (US, 2010/UK, 2004)

http://www.kathrynwilliams.net/

Apparently Kathryn Williams is a quite well known singer-songwriter in the United Kingdom, but I have to admit I’d never heard of her before listening to Relations. The 14-song album was originally released in the UK in 2004 and finds itself re-released this year on One Little Indian in the United States. Relations is a collection of cover songs that are approached in a fairly straightforward folk manner. Williams’ cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is particularly pretty, as is her version of Jackson Browne’s “These Days”. Many of the songs are given a light string treatment, which works perfectly with Kathryn’s overall vibe. I don’t know that I’ll ever fully appreciate re-releases; this one is definitely worth checking out even if you’ve never heard of Kathryn Williams.

The Gypsy Nomads – Happy Madness

Happy Madness, the fourth album from the duo affectionately know by fans as “Frenchy and the Punk”, is chock full of bouncy, fun cabaret punk. The Gypsy Nomads – Samantha Stephenson (percussion, vocals) and Scott Helland (guitar, vocals) – are hard to pin down to any one style. If the Violent Femmes and and Katzenjammer had babies, this is what it might sound like. It’s a steampunk fairytale with a serious case of wanderlust.

The New York City based duo keep things pretty simple on Happy Madness. Their flare comes in the form of raw grit as opposed to polished stones. While a good chunk of The Gypsy Nomads’ sound is reminiscent of the 80′s, it’s the strange bedfellows of the caravan, campfire singalongs and inner city, seedy bar brawling that swirls this mess into a seriously fun album. And by mess, I don’t mean anything even remotely negative – on the contrary, it’s hard not to feel carefree while listening to Happy Madness.

Opener “Make Out” is a foot stomping rocker about meeting a beau in the parking lot for a make out session. It’s a little lascivious, a little silly, and a great tune to sing along with. After this jumping off point, The Gypsy Nomads explore little bits of everything – punk, folk, gypsy – but in the end it’s all wrapped up in a cabaret or street minstrel style. However, while many of today’s gypsy punk bands drip with their preferred style to the point of over saturation, Stephenson and Helland seem to have a firm grasp on the art of nuance and a heavy helping of good humor about themselves and their music.

I’m not entirely sure how to feel about Happy Madness when it’s stacked up next to many of this year’s releases, but one thing is undeniable – it’s a hell of a lot of fun to listen to. While some folks sniff at any album that isn’t part of the latest hipster buzz, my preference will always be for the groups – like The Gypsy Nomads – out there doing what they love for an appreciative audience.

Buzzard Lope – Daybreak

Daybreak has been a long time coming for Buzzard Lope, over two years in the making, to be exact. Wouldn’t it be terrible if their patience was met with apathy or chilliness? Well, the concept of Buzzard Lope is maybe a bit dull but, somehow, they make what they do work. Led by piano, they kind of take The Fray’s piano-pop aesthetic, but unlike The Fray, they don’t suck. They’re actually pretty good.

Buzzard Lope takes hints of jazz piano, brass, and bass and incorporates them into melodic pop nuggets. The vocals are chill and very melodic, forming a tandem with the piano in crafting hooks. The music tends to swell around in the piano in sections where Buzzard wants to really sell the song. It’s done tactfully, not indulgently, so it doesn’t sound like overproduced fodder; in doing so, Buzzard Lope is extremely sharp in being able to deliver their hooks and make their songs stick.

“The Great I Am” is probably the strongest song on this mini-LP, consisting of an intertwining piano line and a subtle string section. ”For Your Troubles” borders closely to pure sap but, at some point, you just have to give in and admit it’s a really pretty song. “Stumbling Block” is a jazzy, more vocally inclined Talk Talk type song. Buzzard Lope definitely have a warm, attractive album ready for you. They’ve been through a lot and they’re only asking a mini-LP’s worth of your time. As deemed by me, they’re worth it.

The Chicago Odense Ensemble needs YOU!

Chicago Odense Ensemble is a unique collaboration with Tortoise, Causa Sui, Isotope 217 musicians. The special album is released online under a subscription/pre-order process. “Despite our best intentions, this project is in danger if it doesn’t get enough pre-orders. We need YOU, fans, to support the project by pre-ordering NOW so the album can be printed.

Wanna help? Go there and pick your copy: http://www.ChicagoOdenseEnsemble.com If you love vinyl, then don’t miss the double 180g LP! You can also listen to a track. Thanks again for your support, trust and patience. This project won’t be possible without you! Adluna Records.”

Adluna Records has released music with Rob Mazurek (Tortoise, Chicago Underground), Doug Scharin (June of 44, Mice Parade, HiM), Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell… The label works as a collaborative project and is a no moneymaker business, its approach is to share musical projects with other people, like… cooking for friends.

Julie Christmas releases solo album in November

Brooklyn singer Julie Christmas has announced the upcoming release of her first solo record, The Bad Wife, this fall. Often celebrated for her intense vocal acrobatics in heavy-hitting bands like Made Out of Babies, Battle of Mice and the supergroup Spylacopa (featuring members of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Candiria and Isis), Christmas’ solo debut finds her pushing the range of her already iconoclastic genre-melding work. Ahead of the album’s release, the song “July 31st” is featured on the soundtrack for the Paramount movie, Wrong Turn at Tahoe, starring Harvey Keitel and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Check out the track “July 31st” (HERE)from The Bad Wife.

Of late, Christmas has been busy expanding her repertoire. She is currently is collaborating with Nix Turner, renowned illustrator of worldwide counterculture icon, Emily the Strange, to create a book titled The Scribbles and Scrapes of Amy Anyone: (A Multiple Personality Autobiography).  Christmas wrote the story and is working on music for the release of an accompanying CD, featuring a tone signaling the reader to turn the page.

In addition, the singer recently worked on the soundtrack for a French indie film “Le Debut,” in which a young couple resorts to infanticide when faced with the challenges of poverty, depression and parenthood. Christmas’s band, Made Out of Babies, is currently writing their fourth full-length album, scheduled to be released in the spring of 2011.

The Bad Wife will be available on CD/LP and digital download via Rising Pulse Records on November 9th, 2010.

On the Web:
myspace.com/juliechristmas

Lovers – Dark Light

Since 2001, Carolyn Berk has been the enchanting voice behind Lovers’ sweetly decorated pop gems. As a voice that is both immediately soothing and enthralling, it’s an easy job getting lost in the Portland-based band’s melodically-enriched pop music. For Dark Light, Berk enlisted the help of Kerby Ferris and Emily Kingan in bringing these ten songs to life. It’s obvious that from the outset, with “Barnacle,” the steadfast trio know how to work well together. Each musician compliments their counterparts’ weaknesses with careful attention and, in the end, Dark Light is exactly as its title depicts with its oxymoron: sadly uplifting.

As a songwriter, Berk treads the beams of melancholy stories about innocent hearts that get caught in the crossfire we call love. These Lovers know that ultimately, you’re bound to get rejected and turned down, but it’s the outcome from those missteps that count. On “Boxer,” Berk sings “What a drag not to know how you are, or which of us got the raw deal,” in bluntly succinct terms. The music guides with an 80s-drive that’s equipped with its own atmospherics and, in the same sense, it’s like the soft pop of The XX. Dreamy and engagingly gentle, Lovers always give their music the faintest touches of care and their songs benefit from such contemplative selections of pop.

Despite the fact that all of the promotional shots for the album resemble the same images Arcade Fire chose for The Suburbs, there is also a great deal of nostalgia and reflection in the roots of Dark Light. Surely the likeness is coincidental, on “To Be a Dancer (I Am Alive)” the band livens up the air with an impressive mix of electronics and capricious melodic vocals. It’s the seasoned, opportunistic kind of song that could blow over inside of any club, or in the backyard of any local house party, with its bumping beats and energized music. The pace is always at the front of the beat and it’s a direct change of pace for what is, mostly, a laid-back stand-off.

Taking in all of the swift decisions, the album’s core of music is always the sentimentally-charged kind. Songs drift in and out of the pensive realm with an outlook that drafts the instruments passionate exploration. On their first album together, Berk seems to be the one most enjoying herself: her voice sounding as if it’s five years younger and, naturally, the other members thrive because of it. Dark Light, as they sing on the aforementioned song is about making decisions: “Raise your flag, it’s do or die now,” and in turn, moving on.

The subject material is just what you’d expect from an album of its drifting ability. You wouldn’t want to have the subtle tones and under-movements clouded with anything other than gloomy words. Lovers are the essential flag-bearer for a movement that is both about representation and acceptance – Dark Light is just another step in the right direction.

Badman Recording Co.

Stellarscope – Call Me Destroyer

Stellarscope’s This Is Who We Are album was released in February and this EP is a follow up of sorts; not quite a new full release but far from merely outtakes from the album sessions either. If the album had an overall feel to it, it was one of Stellarscope displaying a lightness of touch which balanced their weightier moments with some practised skill. A lo-fi approach to some mesmeric guitar tunes that placed emphasis on their songwriting and brought an evocative, actually retrospective air to some proper rock tunes.

The four tracks on Call Me Destroyer are a little different. They certainly sound different. The guitars are louder and carry more depth, the drums and bass are bigger. The subtleties of This Is … put to one side as Stellarscope turn it up louder, shifting from ethereal dream-pop to a more direct approach that starts in mathrock and has similar twists and spirals to their earlier 2010 release, except everything is taken on a larger scale – production, musicianship, and attitude.

“The Age To Come” shifts perceptibly between edgily clipped rhythm and bursts of contorted thrash guitar, and ends with an abruptness missing from what I heard from Stellarscope previously. It has the edgy quality of a demo track that was too good to disregard. “Is It Me?” is an altogether more composed track; its purposefully timed intro and relatively lengthy guitar solo break sees Stellarscope developing a prog dimension to their songs that was perhaps kept aside from the less dense soundscapes of This Is … Final track “killstealliedie” is a ferocious slice of no-wave nihilism, taken at a breakneck pace and every bit as desperate and discordant as the 80s Manhattan art-punk it perhaps takes inspiration from. My personal favourite of the four is however the second track, “This Is Something New” and, while its the track that most closely resembles the approach of their earlier work, it’s also Stellarscope combining their sometimes conflicting energies with skill and imagination – the lightness of the intro colliding with the monolithic powerchordage of the songs chorus, and the way in which its melody fractalises throughout the song’s slightly too brief three (exactly three) minutes.

Where many bands performing music of a similar style choose to emphasise the country and folk sides of their music, Stellarscope take the psyche-pop template and add to it a metallic intensity. I think it’s sometimes known as spacerock, but Stellarscope somehow exist outwith categorisation, and both they and their songs contain more than just an element of originality.

Listen to the full “Call Me Destroyer” EP

Jesse Harris – Cosmo

Jesse Harris may not be a household name, but this singer/songwriter multi-instrumentalist left a noteworthy stamp on 21^st century popular music when his formidable songcraft skills on “Don’t Know Why” helped to land jazz chanteuse Norah Jones three Grammy Awards back in 2003.  An enterprising musician who, since his debut album in 1995, has collaborated with everyone from Jones to Bright Eyes to Ethan Hawke, Harris has carved out a niche for himself as a purveyor of the sweet and earnest, which makes the union of his jazz/folk/rock influences a perfectly natural one.

Never one to rest on his laurels, this past year found the New York City native dropping two LP’s, the second of which is an all-instrumental affair that amalgamates Harris’ penchant for acoustic guitar melodies, soft jazz textures, and introspective movie scores. Working with longtime drummer Kenny Wollesen and bringing in a wealth of guest artists that include Eivind Opsvik and Doug Wieselman, Harris spends most of Cosmo in the sort of terrain that give romantic comedies their feel-good appeal.  The musicianship and technical facility are never less than impressive, but a majority of the songs never take flight, instead coasting on loose improvisations and repetitive melodic ideas.

An album that splits the difference between original compositions and reworked versions of songs from this summer’s Through the Night, Cosmo also lends itself to nighttime mysteries and starlit searches for meaning.  Opening cut “Little Star” makes this approach fairly obvious, with Harris spinning out contemplative acoustic guitar melodies over a midtempo groove and shimmering organ harmonies.  It’s the sound of somebody willing themself onward after a rough night.  The title track operates on similar terms, though this time the piano steps to the fore as the object of Harris’ melodicism.  Wollesen’s kit work on the tune is steeped in jazz, the cymbal play figuring more prominently than the drums.  Muted trumpet licks flitter by, lending the song a sense of quiet resolution.  It’s not something we haven’t heard many times before, but Harris excels at bringing a sense of barely detectable pain to a song that would otherwise go down with sugary sweetness.

The Norah Jones connection becomes more discernible on a track like “Somewhere Down the Road,” which is jazz of the smoothest variety.  Comprised solely of upright bass, drums, and piano, the song’s dreamy texture and leisurely tempo sound tailor made for any jazz vocalist who needs that wistful ballad on their next album.  “Strange Bird” is more directly indebted to blues than contemporary jazz, its grooves made of equal parts guitar, marimba, and Hammond B3 organ that give the song a smoky backwoods disposition.

For all the perfectly wonderful things Harris can do in this idiom, Cosmo’s best moment come when he strays from jazz/folk hybrid.  “Pixote” is set in a frenzied 12/8 groove that pits the organ and trumpet against one another in a Calexico-esque Tex-Mex jam.  “I Think You’re Hiding Something” seems to go to the Santana playbook, with two main chords that make it easy for jamming and Latin percussion that lends the track an added air of authenticity.  “No Way Out” is an odd-meter composition that unifies Dylan-inspired organ work with clever application of chromaticism, while “Over the Bridge (and into Queens)” finds Harris finally indulging his rock n’ roll vices with distorted electric guitar and a thumping bass line.

To his credit, everything Jesse Harris attempts on Cosmo is done with a veteran’s finesse and a professional’s work ethic; there’s not one track here that he doesn’t sell as a laudable attraction.  Sadly though, there’s very little here that commands a sense of urgency or importance.  Music doesn’t have to be difficult all the time, but in choosing not to push the envelope on Cosmo, Harris is unlikely to distinguish himself from the myriad other musicians who cite Burt Bacharach as an influence.

Antony and the Johnsons – Swanlights

Although we’ve come to know him as a modern workhorse, Antony Hegarty has always been able to keep his work with the Johnsons that much more invigorating. Whether he’s remixed mainstream artists or assisted on electronic records, albums like I Am a Bird Now and The Crying Light were always adorned with particular touches you couldn’t find elsewhere. So it’s suitably fitting for Hegarty, now his fourth album, to release what just might be his most challenging album to date with Swanlights. Not only are there songs that lack piano, there’s a various collection of rhythms, styles and modes that shift in and out of focus. And while fans will surely enjoy the album’s weighty material, it might take that much longer for possible new fans to come around to it.

The styles that parade their way onto Swanlights would probably be the most noticeably diverse change from what happened on previous albums. You still have Hegarty’s gloriously strong words but this time, like on “I’m In Love,” the drums pound a tribal beat against Hegarty’s almost scat-like singing. And on “The Spirit Was Gone,” the piano stands as the song’s sole melody but it’s so entirely free-moving and abruptly short, that it acts more as a transitional section to the lead single and ensuing closing suite of songs. The breathtaking instrumentation and compositions are easily still here – the sheer repetition of hearing Hegarty sing the song’s title with a clarinet to pair is remarkable – they’re just going to take a little more attention to decipher.

One of the album’s earnest highlights is Hegarty’s duet with Björk on “Fletta.” Björk takes the lead throughout, allowing the piano to gently follow behind her while Hegarty lulls in and out. The threading piano line chimes such a fantastic melody and in direct harmony, both Hegarty and Björk combine for a wonderful blend of voices. Each is singularly stunning and intuitively captivating, they always support each other, showcasing impeccable strengths. While Björk’s guest appearance only lends a small hand to the album’s overall theme, because it follows the lead single, “Thank You for Your Love,” you’re left with two of the most upbeat songs in one swift section. It makes the impact that much more significant but the all the more desirable, too.

There’s always been a subtle beauty to Antony and the Johnsons’ music, on “Everything is New,” the minor-ridden piano patters a jagged rhythm before introducing a soaring vocal line that is the exact opposite (linear and glowing) of what relentless playing the piano was doing before. Hegarty’s music is in constant adaptation on Swanlights; as he sings “I cry everything…everything is new” against the dissonant swirl, the music itself is taking on a completely new disguise.

Challenging or not, in many ways, it’s the perfect way to start the album as it represents the engrossing fusions that Hegarty will perform. Two albums in two years – with two EPs somewhere in there too – is a noteworthy accomplishment. They’re radiantly dissimilar and still, each is an exceptional new expression in Hegarty’s music. Unlike the brimming new-year feel of The Crying Light in 2009, Swanlights is the ending swoon to 2010.

Secretly Canadian

The Capstan Shafts – Revelation Skirts

Dean Wells is approaching Robert Pollard levels of ridiculous prolificacy at this point. He’s averaged about two records a year for the past decade, all of which have gone more or less unnoticed by the indie press bloodline. His music has stayed constant, a tuneful, increasingly clear-channeled garage-pop structured in modest guitar/drums/bass arrangements, all played by Wells himself. He wears his GBV influence proudly on his sleeve and his songs hardly ever make it past the two minute mark. So naturally, this deep in a career an album like Revelation Skirts is going to have a few drawbacks for the uninitiated, and it tends to get by more on the lore and myth behind the production than the actual songs.

That’s not to say the songs are bad, but there’s nothing even in the same galaxy as groundbreaking here. Skirts alternates between commonplace mod-rock staples; acoustic, swinging melodies (“Little Burst of Sunshine”) and power-stance mid-tempo guitar jams (“Heart Your Eat Out” and plenty of others) none of which exactly jump off the record into your brain, this is an album of mostly forgettable niceties that somewhat manage to make up for their own boringness by just how charming of a personality Mr. Wells is. He has no delusions of triumph (or even adequacy *ba-dum tish*) and sings mainly about not being in love, and ramps up one of his more energetic choruses with a repeated “the sky’s the limit.” It’s all wrapped up in a package that he’s graciously priced for about five bucks. Is Revelation Skirts great? God no, I wouldn’t even call it good, but despite its awful first impression it gives off a specific charm that might make it worth paying attention to.

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