Rachel Goodrich – s/t

Just because someone has had their music featured on a cable TV show, tinkered with by a Grammy-winning producer, and been written about in The New York Times doesn’t necessarily mean they’re worth your time, money, or Internet bandwidth.  Indeed, can’t we all reference at least one artist from the past decade who boasted imposing credentials and yet turned out to be nothing more than a flash in the pan?  Since the world moved online and took to blogging, this phenomenon has become almost routine, with today’s hottest download tomorrow’s Wikipedia footnote.

Though Miami-bred pop starlet Rachel Goodrich does possess the aforementioned qualifications, her new self-titled album doesn’t seem likely to follow the same trajectory as so many of her predecessors.  Though her vocal inflection may recall Regina Spektor and her vaudeville-inspired songwriting seems to be referencing Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine-era output, Goodrich does a superb job of molding a sound which is as singular as it is varied; every track shimmers with her trademark quirk and playfulness as much as it bristles with the cunning of someone willing to take risks and make unforeseen left turns.  While this is undeniably pop music – big beats and bigger hooks abound – Goodrich has the heart of an indie aesthete, more than happy to oblige with an unorthodox song structure or an unsuspecting instrumental texture; if only the pop music clogging up the iTunes charts and Top 40 radio stations was this intelligent.

The opening moments of “Morning Light” illustrate Goodrich’s varied sonic palette, as a jaunty swing beat (think “Big Noise From Winnetka”) mingles with the sprightly strum of an acoustic guitar and the jangle of an electric.  As the song progresses, echoes of the groove from The Strokes’ “Last Night” can even be heard, while Goodrich coos lines like, “Baby when you put up a fight / you keep me up all night.”  It’s shiny, happy pop music of the highest order, and Goodrich absolutely kills with it.

Though there’s not a dud to be found – save “G Dino,” which is 40 seconds worth of dinosaur babble suffused with “Old MacDonald – it’s not exactly a cinch to point out the album’s high points either; if A&R reps still mattered in 2011, they’d hear at least five singles.  One such track is “Na Na Na”, which melds a Sleigh Bells-sized chorus with   vibraphone melodies and brass harmonies.  That, in and of itself isn’t particularly memorable, but Goodrich’s about-face from a semi-serious tone (“People move on / and they change with the times”), to an incongruous one (see the song title) is just goofy enough to work.  On “Fire,” Goodrich goes the route of the nighttime troubadour, where a plodding beat and some distant whistling evoke images of windswept landscapes and tumbleweeds blowing across deserted asphalt.  Though more dour when compared with the LP’s other offerings, “Fire” is still rich in imagery, particularly the lyrics – “Cold / cold / better keep warm / I gotta light myself on fire.”

A few cuts later, our songstress channels a little Paul McCartney on “Hold On,” which bears more than a passing resemblance to Macca’s “Blackbird” from The Beatles.  Rounding out this midtempo stomper though is a horn section, some synth harmonies and even the occasional handclap.  The track is a total effervescent rush, particularly when Goodrich sings such unwaveringly sincere lines like, “Things are gonna be alright.”

Goodrich doesn’t frontload all of her best material either; “I Fell In Love” threatens at first sight to be just another trite musing on doe-eyed romance, but what we get instead are bleating electronics and a drum machine that manage to reference everything from The Beastie Boys (think of the melody from “Girls”) to ballroom dancing (Is that tango I hear?).  The album closes out with the artfully restrained acoustic gem “Popsicle,” which supposes a halcyon image of humid summer nights: “Talking over fire / and ice cold popsicles / everyone knows how you’re feeling / cause they feel it too.”

Rachel Goodrich is marketed as a pop artist – and rightfully so – but that’s no reason to thumb your nose at her; this is the type of ear candy that holds more benefits for your diet than you realize.

Useless Keys – Is the Painting Changing EP

The lugubrious angst and anomie of the 1990s are still hangin’ around in the form of this band that revels in the soft verse / loud chorus dichotomy and a slow, dissonant churn of distorted, sharp guitars, menacing bass undertow, and emotionally disaffected vocals from Michael Bauer with lyrics that verge on the paranoid.  It’s no surprise that the songs on this EP follow in the footsteps of the greats of the 90s like Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and Alice In Chains, but there is also an early Sonic Youth-type buzz to the guitars and song structures.  While not of the caliber of the aforementioned bands, Useless Keys brings an unsettled tension to the proceedings, along with occasional female supporting vocals that lighten the mood.

There’s a hint of danger and dissonance to “White Noise” with Michael resembling a hybrid of a laid-back Thurston Moore (Wait, isn’t that an oxymoron?) and Kurt Cobain without the emotional heft.  Michael is backed by lighter female vocals that lift the tune out of its slowly spiraling depression.

“Down Threw” replicates the paranoia of some of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics as Michael sing-talks in a murky tone, his words merging so that it’s hard to tell if he’s saying “Keep a gun in a safe place” or “Keep a gun for Sundays” (and it’s possible he’s alternating both phrases through the song).  Female vocals lurk lightly in the shadows, along with fluid, bright guitar lines that mesh with lower tone guitar, a pushing beat, and tambourine shaking, and then suddenly the song turns on a dime and becomes dreamier with brief, floating female “Oohs” that don’t go along with the paranoiac feel at the song’s start.

The play on words continues in “Arizona State Highway” as Michael intones “Don’t let them find you” and “Don’t let it define you” as the bass guitar drives the song in an ominous cycle.  There’s a clacking beat and little riffs of strummed guitar, along with weird arcade machine noises, hushed vocals from Michael, and cooing female vocals that again sound too sweet for the nightmare scenario tone.  At the 2-minute mark fuzzed-out guitars take over and Michael goes for angsty exclamations that mimic Kurt Cobain as he repeatedly warns “They’re gonna take you down.”

“Is the Painting Changing” is a drawn out comedown with pained vocals from Michael, measured pace bass guitar, and drums and cymbals that crash and bang at odd intervals.  The skeleton of the song is pure noir-country, but it’s fleshed out with a rock guitars and pronounced drums and cymbals.

Interview with Tim Booth and Jim Glennie of James

James embarked on a North American tour in support of the U.S. release of The Morning After The Night Before, a unification of their two, U.K. released, mini-albums. The fifth stop on the tour was Boston’s Paradise Rock Club on September 25, 2010 and after being allowed to witness the soundcheck, musicologist DJ Ambient and I were able to secure some time before the actual show to speak with band members Tim Booth (vocals and lyrics) and Jim Glennie (bass). Without a quiet and comfortable place to conduct the interview within the club, we were kindly invited into the band’s comfy tour bus, and what ensued was more like a congenial conversation about James and the new album, rather than a formal interview.

It seems like you guys are more focused and re-energized, even more so than when you guys first re-formed for Hey Ma, do you feel that same way?

TB: Yeah, we do.

JG: I think Hey Ma sounded like a James record to me, like we were re-establishing ourselves, like we went back, to some degree, where we left off. And I think that kind of gave us the platform to look for something a little bit different this time. I think we tend to do that. Don’t we tend to react to the record we’ve just released?

TB: Yes

JG: And I think this record’s a bit more like, okay let’s just push things a little bit, let’s kinda see where we can go with this.

TB: How can we shake it up a bit more.

It seems like the guitars are more part of it now. It seems like there’s a lot more atmospheric guitar effects swirling around in the background. Is that intentional or is that the way you guys wrote the songs or did it just kind of happen?

TB: I think what you’re hearing are quite likely not guitars. It could be keyboards, it could be trumpet, because they’re all messing around with effects and often the sound guys hear the record and they come to approach us and then they go, oh I thought that was a guitar, and it ends up being something completely different. So there’s a lot of effects that people are using and playing with all the time. Basically on Hey Ma, we were in a dilapidated French Chateau and each person in their room had their own computer and their own system and we discovered that nearly everybody could operate their own recording studio. So once we discovered that, it was like, how could we utilize that? So that was partly the thinking that lead to the next album. Which was let’s put it all on the internet and people can download it, fuck around with it in their own studios and then put it back on the internet and let’s see what happens.

So you guys didn’t necessarily all come together for this new record?

TB: You mean for the Night Before?

JG: Over here it’s just one record isn’t it.

TB: Yes, over here it’s one record. In our heads it’s The Morning After, The Night Before. The Morning After’s one record, The Night Before’s another. The Night Before was created, we did 20 minute jams, 40 minute jams, me, Larry (Gott) and Jimmy. We put them on an internet site, the band members could download them, chop them up, put them back on the internet site, download, chop up, put their parts on. And it just became this relay race that was going on. And then finally after we gave a two month deadline, Lee Baker took it and shaped them, with us overseeing it. So that’s half the album. The other half was done five days in a studio, in the middle of a tour, let’s play everything live.

So that was The Morning After?

TB: That was The Morning After. So the lower key songs were done in that way, and the more kind of “chakka!”, triumphant sounding epic songs were done on the internet.

That leads me to my next question, why two mini-albums?

TB: Two totally different characters and people’s short attention spans.

Although in the US it’s one album.

TB: It was always going to be put together, I think, in our heads, someway. But it enabled us to do the low key stuff too. We always have low key songs but we haven’t released an album of them since Laid. And it was like, well let’s do a little mini-album of all these really nice, slightly more mellow songs.

JG: If you listen carefully, a James record kind of goes up and down, and so we fall into that area of writing really, really easily and naturally, and most of the time we write with a drum machine and the drum machine is banging away. When you switch it off, someone will just start playing something and, very organically and naturally, drift into something lovely and very, very beautiful. But at the end of it you wind up with ten of these things and you say what are we going to do? And again instead of having one you’ve got many to put somewhere on the album, at the beginning or the end or something. And we thought instead of having to leave all these things behind, let’s try and make something around them, like that’s the body of the work. I think having two approaches to the songs and having two parts, with The Night Before a lot of the initial attention of a release of a record was on that record, at least we perceived it like that. So on the second one I think we felt we could just be a bit more like nobody was watching. We could just kind of throw things around and use more broad strokes and I think that that’s benefitted that approach as well.

We were touring and so were playing really well and you’ve got to get things together very quickly. You can’t go back and repair. You can’t go back and fiddle around or overdub, so it’s about people listening and playing and so things get a bit fragile, but it’s okay, it’s got a kind of nice, natural element to it.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you have to overcome to play these songs you made in the studio and actually play them live? Is that difficult at times?

TB: Some of them present themselves as more obviously going to work live. Some of them fall into place really effortlessly and some of them are real devils and take a lot of pursuing and sometimes we give up. We’ve always used our soundchecks to discover and to discover old songs and discover new songs and so this new thing we’ve got where fans can come and pay and see the soundcheck is playing to our strengths. I’m really enjoying this and it sets a really nice mood before we go on. It’s like you meet people.

JG: You’ve broken the ice haven’t you.

TB: In a humorous light way too. Cause I can get terribly nervous before concerts.

Get out of here!

JG: Oh he does yes, even after all these years.

TB: It somehow takes some of the edge off.

Do you ever forget the words to some of the songs?

TB: Oh yeah. But because it’s James and we’re allowed to improvise, if I forget the words I’m just improvising.

JG: Pretend it’s poetry.

TB: We make mistakes all the time.

JG: Things go wrong all the time. I mean lots of technical things as well but a lot of things can go wrong. Things break, things go out of time, the wrong song starts. We used to beat ourselves about that and we’d get very tense and uptight. Now it’s just kind of funny and we just realize, oh it’s real, things can go wrong.

TB: We actually think it’s part of our originality. We know bands who, before tours, they rehearse for three or four weeks.

JG: And the same set and the same songs

TB: Day after day and I can’t think of anything more dull.

JG: So destroying.

TB: We’re lucky we get a day or two.

That’s what I was going to ask you guys. Do you guys play the same songs every gig?

TB: We change every night.

JG: Every night, every day. Cause, you know we’re there every night

TB: It’s a pain in the ass sometimes

JG: It is, we’ll argue.

Like how can you really get into the song if you’re playing the same thing every night, every night.

JG: You switch off after a while or it becomes mundane, your mind can drift yet you’re still playing, and for us that’s kind of not being there. One of the things that fuels us is the fear. The fear we have to come and make it work. You have to focus, you have to concentrate. That’s why we wrote new songs or play songs that we’ve not played like in a thousand years, like “Jam J” we played in the soundcheck. I think we’re going to do that in the gig. What, 14 years do you reckon? (TB nods in agreement). It’s like that fear to make it happen and compete with the songs around it which everybody knows.

TB: And we’ll be looking at each other because we don’t know the cues, but that adds to the song. It isn’t a detraction, it isn’t amateur, we’re purposely putting one hand behind our back.

JG: You’ve got to challenge yourselves, you’ve got to keep challenging yourselves to pull the most out of yourself. It’s very easy to sit there and run through the same set of things people know or just cruise through it week after week, that’s just so destroying.

You played at this same place a couple years ago and I noticed than that you didn’t play anything off of Millionaires or what was the other one?

JG: Pleased To Meet You.

Was there a reason for that? Did you purposely avoid those?

TB: No

Jim remembered you didn’t play anything off of Pleased To Meet You so there must have been a reason.

TB: Well, there’s probably a couple things there. One is, probably at that point maybe we had a few memories of making those albums that were not pleasant.

I see, and I don’t think Larry (Gott) was on those records.

TB: And Larry wasn’t on them so he’d have to learn stuff fresh if he were going to (play them). Millionaires, I don’t think we play much from Millionaires do we, I don’t think, very often, like anything for that matter.

JG: Don’t we?

TB: I don’t think so.

Well tonight I want you to play something off of Millionaires.

TB: We’re doing more and more from Pleased To Meet You.

That’s cool too.

TB: We’ve done “Fine”, not this tour, “Getting Away With It” will probably get played

JG: Sure

TB: I can’t think of any others

JG: “Alaskan Pipeline”, “Vivacious” we played the last tour

TB: We did. We’ve got some of them down for next year.

DJ Ambient: My vote’s for “Go To The Bank”, I love that song.

JG: “Go to the Bank”!

TB: We’ve never played that as live song.

JG: We’ve never done that live?

TB: I think we may have tried but I don’t think we could do it to our own standards.

JG: Yeah there’s a few difficulties.

DJ Ambient: That took me immediately the first time I heard it, wow this is good song.

TB: Maybe we should look at that next time, that’s such a weird little beat. Mark (Hunter) wouldn’t have the stuff with him now.

I like how you were getting the crowd to sing the chorus to “Tell Her I Said So” during the soundcheck, but on the record it sounds like children.

TB: It is, yeah. Saul (Davies) went into his son’s school and recorded his classmates.

Who is Dr. Hellier? Is he a real person?

JG: Haha.

TB: No

JG: You have to be careful now don’t you.

Based on a real person?

TB: Actually yes, with a changed name. What do you say? All characters bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead. I had a few experiences last year with surgery, not just for me but for a friend who underwent some cancer surgery. And it was kind of equating that with the weaponry used in Afghanistan where they are chasing the Taliban and they take out a wedding party in the process and that kind of love, that gung ho-ness about technology, they hype the precision of these things that end up not being that precise in the end. And there’s also something about American surgeons, I’ve noticed they all tend to be like James Bond, rather than in England they tend to be looked upon like healers. They aren’t making a million a year.

Do you have a particularly favorite James album or one that you’re particularly proud of?

JG: It changes around but I suppose Gold Mother and Laid if I was going to pick two.

How about you Tim?

TB: I don’t know. I don’t go back and listen to them a lot. I mean we literally could go years, and you only go back and listen to it because you’ve got some work to do, to learn a song, or you’re stoned and you think, I don’t do drugs very often, I wonder what it sounds like in this state. Which is about once every three years.

JG: Or somebody may come back on the bus and say I was listening to Strip Mine the other day, there’s some great songs on it, you should listen to this or they’ll individually go back to an album they’re inspired by and convince everyone to try it.

TB: And to play it live.

Believe it or not, a lot of people in the States haven’t heard of you guys.

TB: Of course

And every time I tell them I love James they always ask what kind of music do they play.

TB: Impulsive.

And I’m like, I can’t describe it. Do you have any advice for me on what I should tell them?

TB: In one sense, we named the band James, because we wanted a name that didn’t give away what type of music we play. That was one of our major arguments wasn’t it?

I heard that you named it after Jim (Glennie).

JG: Kind of, but we stuck with my name because we wanted a person’s name, that’s it basically.

TB: Because we knew that would literally confuse people and we think we’ve been successful.

It makes it very hard to Google and find your music online.

TB: Unfortunately it was before the days of Google. It’s unfortunate that we’re victims of the search engines now. It was very effective for us in the end.

JG: It’s good fun, people not knowing really what we are

TB: And we wanted it to be as variable as an individual, so it wasn’t tied to something.

I’m looking forward to the show.

TB: Good, it should be fun. I think we’re going to do quite a weird little set tonight. I feel a strange set coming on and I have a really interesting idea on how we can end it. We’ve never done before.

JG: Okay.

Well, alright, thank you very much, good luck tonight and have fun up there.

TB & JG: Thank you and take care.

Petra Haden and Yuka Honda collaborate on album

Salt on Sea Glass is the debut album from If By Yes is the collaborative project helmed by two of the most original talents in pop music. Petra Haden, the vocalist behind the groundbreaking vocal projects Imaginaryland and Petra Haden Sings The Who Sell Out, is known for her inventive harmonies and complex voicings and touring and studio stints with the Foo Fighters, Decemberists, Beck, Twilight Singers, Ricki Lee Jones and more. Yuka Honda’s kaleidoscopic audio production methods first came to public attention as a member of Cibo Matto, but she’s been playing jazz, hip-hop, funk, pop and avant-garde music in various New York City bands for the past 15 years (including Floored By Four with mike watt, Nels Cline [now her husband] and Dougie Bowne). The pair began writing together almost ten years ago, letting their unique sound evolve slowly and organically.

If By Yes also includes guitarist Hirotaka “Shimmy” Shimizu and drummer Yuko Araki, both long time members of the Japanese band Cornelius and, while the music is familiar, it has a non-linear, adventurous style that places it outside the parameters of most pop.  It is both swank and subversive.

The warmth and excitement of the band’s mutual creativity shines through on every track of If By Yes. “You Feel Right” is a soothing, sensuous love song with an exquisite, subtle, samba-like groove supplied by Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada), Honda’s shimmering keyboard textures and Haden’s lush, breathless vocal. Haden’s expansive, wordless coda is full of unrestrained joy. Haden and David Byrne duet on “Eliza,” a cryptic waltz, full of longing and unresolved tension. Araki plays clay pots, special guest Nels Cline’s lap steel guitar adds long mournful grace notes, while Byrne and Haden croon the melancholy melody.

http://www.myspace.com/ifbyyesmusic

Album out now from Starlings, TN

[MP3]:

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“With their bowed dulcimer, droning echo, and mysterious psychedelic touches, Starlings, TN combines the otherworldliness of John Cale-era Velvet Underground with the tradition of string and bluegrass bands of the ‘20s and ‘30s.” – All Music Guide

Since hurricane Katrina ravaged the gulf coast in late August of 2005, Steven Stubblefield has been working on a new Starlings, TN record. “That storm was like a bad acid trip,” Stubblefield says. “It lasted as nearly as long too. It was eight hours of chaos that left years destruction in its wake.”

Stubblefield, who had been exposed to gospel music in his Baptist minister grandfather’s church, drew inspiration from listening to the archival albums of renowned folk collector Alan Lomax and from meeting noted dulcimer player David Schnaufer (Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams Jr.). Stubblefield eventually came upon the sound he wanted when he bought a dulcimer and took lessons on the instrument from Schnaufer.

Over time, these instruments and hard drives were replaced and in early 2009 the bug struck and Stubblefield began writing and recording once again. “I’m really proud of the way How Dark It Is Before The Dawn came out as finished album. It was a tough record to make. I went through a lot during the time I spent making this record and am looking forward to brighter days.”

Official Site: http://www.starlingstn.com/starlings/

North Atlantic Oscillation – Grappling Hooks

Grappling Hooks, the debut record by North Atlantic Oscillation, is a wondrous experience. Fusing elements of post-rock, synth pop, electronica with fearless experimentation, it’s surprisingly melodic and cohesive. However, as is sometimes the case, it is best heard in small doses; hearing the entire thing at once can be a chore.

The duo of Ben Martin (percussion, programming, synths) and Sam Healy (vocals, guitar, bass, saxophone, and more) met in Edinburgh in 2005. They spent several years fusing influences like Brian Wilson, GS!YBE, Blur, Orbital, Sigur Rós, The Flaming Lips, and Radiohead (of course) into a spectacular live show. They’ve also toured with Explosions in the Sky, White Dwarfs, and Everything Everything, to name a few. The result is a smooth combination of classic 1960s pop production, laptop programming, soothing vocals, and pure excitement.

With dissonant chord changes and a falsetto outcry, “Marrow” begins. Soon synthesizers go crazy and drums crash, and Healy’s voice melts into the mix. With “Hollywood Has Ended,” the duo proves that melodies and songwriting are just as important as wild electronic fanciness. Healy’s voice possesses lush warmth; it’s very reminiscent of recent pop greats Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) and Todd Casper (the Great Depression), and overall the album as a whole feels like a more structured Engineers record.

While most of Grappling Hooks sticks to a simple formula (catchy songs underneath outrageous yet ingenious production) that make it both accessible for English dance clubs and complex enough for deep analysis, some tracks are totally unexpected (in a good way). “Audioplastic,” with it’s manipulation of rhythms as well as effects, is rather progressive, and “Star Chamber” mixes the guitar riff focus of recent Porcupine Tree with the delicate piano of earlier Porcupine Tree, and the whole thing is wrapped in a hectic synth blanket. Nearly every second on here is fascinating.

While quite brilliant overall, Grappling Hooks can be a bit overbearing if listened to in one sitting. The heavy emphasis on electronica gives the whole album a similar sound, and while NAO do their best to make each track unique, the arguably unavoidable way it blends together equates to some repetitiveness and redundancy. Still, compared to similar artists, it’s very diverse and intriguing, so NAO do it better than most.

Grappling Hooks would be a great album if it was done by a full band well into their career; the fact that it’s a duo’s first album makes it a tremendous accomplishment. Martin and Healy are a perfect team—they create and perform like two halves of a visionary whole—and they easily earn their place on Kscope Records fantastic roster. You’d being missing out on something special if you didn’t give Grapping Hooks a spin.

Last Harbour – Lights

Given their involvement in other musical operations (brave timbers, Anna Kashfi, Samson & Delilah), demanding day-jobs (including running Little Red Rabbit Records) and geographical dispersal, it’s somewhat remarkable that the members of Last Harbour continue to be so prolific and committed over ten years down the line.  It’s also gratifying that the band’s attention to craftsmanship continues to embolden with each release.  Admittedly though, the group’s dark muse isn’t open to everyone and at times a full-length Last Harbour LP can be intimidating to those with a passing interest or unconfirmed affection.  Thus, the ensemble is often best introduced through the EPs and mini-albums that have dispersed themselves in the Last Harbour discography over the years.  In fact, the likes of 2000’s Hidden Songs 7”, 2001’s An Empty Box Is My Heart mini-album and 2005’s October EP have also provided some of the group’s best material to date.  This latest lovingly-packaged mini-album – the 6-track Lights – can also be added to that illustrious and inviting list of Last Harbour wares.

Connected to last year’s ambitious Volo album, through the inclusion of its last two tracks (“Lights” itself and a remixed “If They’re Right”) and bolstered by four brand new tracks, the mini-LP captures Last Harbour’s distinct line in baroque rustic noire in a sustained subtle and serene mood; favouring melancholy over melodrama.  So whilst the opening title-track does reach a near-climatic crescendo, it doesn’t totally force itself upon us, leaving open inviting spaces for the ensuing songs to nuzzle inside warmly.  Hence, the alluring “Alone For The Winter” goes for an earthy simplicity worthy of Willard Grant Conspiracy’s most big-hearted moments, with also perhaps a hint of Neil Young at his most contented and countrified.  The fresh and possibly superior mix of “If They’re Right” follows with plaintive prettiness moving into restless discomfort and then back again.  The second triumvirate of tracks burrow even deeper into bittersweet beauty and invention; with “Boy In The Photograph” and “Animals Once More” being particularly blessed by Sarah Kemp’s intuitive violin-playing and “Be Happy Tonight” adding trailing ambient layers that provide an atypical sense of bliss, that extends into the backwards vocals and piano twinkling of the super-short hidden track which closes proceedings.

On the basis of this sterling 6-track suite, perhaps Last Harbour should even consider skipping the next few albums and go straight to the ‘what-would-have-been-in-between’ releases.  Whilst this might not be the most cost-effective and marketable means of releasing music, the self-proclaimed collective might eventually cut a mid-length shot of magic on par with the Palace Songs’ Hope, Neko Case’s Canadian Amp or Iron & Wine’s Woman King. Whilst they mull over what comes to follow though, this will more than suffice as an interlude collection.

Little Red Rabbit Records

Last Harbour – If They’re Right (J.T. Mix)

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Destroyer – Kaputt

In the long, disjointed list of “themes alluded to or avoided” in the press release to Dan Bejar’s 9th LP as Destroyer, Kaputt, a couple lines stick out as more serious-minded than others: “The hopelessness of the future of music” and “The pointlessness of writing songs for today.” If perhaps a little sour and self-handicapping, they struck me as intellectual – something Bejar often receives credit for – and after listening to his self-examining musings on such themes on recent 12″ b-side “Grief Point” I was half expecting some more straightforward handling of lyrical content this time around. As it turns out, I was wrong, and Bejar has passed through the musical valley of the shadow and came back the same cool, cryptic dude. The music, after chilling in the pleasantly liquid, laid back “European Blues” of his last two records, has taken an unexpected turn toward a mix of smooth jazz, adult contemporary, and 80′s dance pop. It’s hilarious and relaxing, and not without some moments of exhilarating experimentation. But like Will Oldham’s countrypolitan rerecording of Palace Music’s greatest hits as Bonnie “Prince” Billy with a band of Nashville session wringers, the whole thing will make you scratch your head.

This hard-slotting into a quaint style is reminiscent of the midi-stylings of Your Blues (2004), though that foray came off as more genuine, a fitting coupling of words with sound. Perhaps composing in adult contemporary smooth jazz was a challenge which made music interesting to Bejar again, or choosing such a maligned mode is a statement about the “pointlessness of writing songs for today.” Or maybe he’s just listening to a lot of smooth music and was compelled to explore it himself. As per his M.O., the intention is likely meant to be slippery, indefinite, and difficult to answer. The intentions of this stylistic change aside, the elephant in the closet here is that Bejar hasn’t written a truly great Destroyer song since Your Blues, which was chock full of them. Lightning isn’t supposed to strike in the same place twice, but “Notorious Lightning” has been rehashed in thinly veiled disguise on Destroyer albums repeatedly for the last five years. While it’s admittedly a neat trick with impressive linguistic and attitudinal attenuations, the emotional payoff of Destroyer tracks has dropped as the running times and lyric sheets have lengthened. Kaputt is filled with light, sprightly textures, all pleasant and groovy, but the album still seems to lumber along with breezy but basic sequencer rhythms, indistinct melodies, and sax blowing similarly all the way through.

When the music locks into a recognizable precursor – for example New Order, Saint Etienne, The Postal Service – the record becomes more fun to listen to, because the trainspotting allows the listener a chance to participate. That said, it seems like Bejar and company are getting close to a viable fusion at times, usually during instrumental breaks. The high points here happen when the sounds break out from their expected roles – the taser-buzzing electric guitar of “Blue Eyes”, the sax shredding on “Suicide Demo for Kara Walker” (which also sports the album’s most enduring melody), the cacophony that plays out “Song for America” – and if Bejar is really going to succeed in this mode, he needs to foreground these incongruities and express at least a minuscule connection between why things sound the way they do and what the words are saying. The lyrics here could easily be traded out for any on the last two albums without much diminishing or improving the experiences.

Back to the difference between Oldham and Bejar: What sets the Bonnie “Prince” Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music record apart from Kaputt is that there’s a sense that Oldham’s just having a little shiteating fun demythologizing his previous invention, while Bejar holds tight to his own self-referencing mythology, simply adding another awkward style to his repertoire as a layer of pseudo-complexity. The main problem isn’t the inscrutability, as many artists – Destroyer included – have found a way to couple obscurant lyrics with levity and energy. The problem gets to be the selling of the idea that cross-references, non-sequiturs, tragicomedies, and self-aware asides are a manifestation of intelligence and unique talent when they aren’t. Ultra-conscious interconnection is the present we’ve all been living in for a good while now, and working in that vein in itself is no longer enough. Until Bejar once again travels beyond the mere bulk of observation and awareness to say something about how we got there or where we are headed, his art is going to seem more attention-seeking than attention-grabbing.

Destroyer

Merge Records

The White Wires – WWII

Been there, done that is one way to describe the sun-soaked garage-punk heard on The White Wires’ sophomore effort WWII.

The Canadian trio of Ian (vox/guitar), Luke (bass/vox) and Allie (drums) dive head first into a playful and melodic, yet somewhat formulaic, mix of sun-soaked garage-punk. The power chords are crisp, executed with a youthful enthusiasm and seasoned with just the right amount of fuzzy pop. The vocals fit seamlessly as the juvenile lyrics are sung with a smooth energy and a slightly scornful snarl. The songs are short and sweet (12 songs in 27 minutes) with propulsive four-chord stanzas and concise, snappy choruses. The one exception to the rule is closer “Bye Bye Baby” which softens the blow with a heavily reverbed, surf-pop guitar line. The nifty black and white, Ska-like graphics completes the tight little package.

I like sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and fun in the sun as much as the next guy, but I like my music with a little more originality and creativity.  And although The White Wires put a fun, sunshiny spin on things, this type of music has been played out by countless bands ever since The Ramones perfected the formula in the mid-70′s.  But if you’re just looking for something rowdy, fast and fun for the drive to your favorite party spot, put on WWII and crank it up!

Dirtnap Records

Eric & Magill album out now

“All Those I Know” [MP3]:

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Eric & Magill’s debut album All Those I Know was written over e-mail with Osterman while Weber was living in Armenia, the initial process of creating All Those I Know was so successful that Weber began to collaborate this way with many more of the musical friends he had made over the years, including artists responsible for creating such bands as: Shearwater, The Dirty Projectors, Joan of Arc, The Promise Ring, Dashboard Confessional, and Decibully, and many more. Mike Kinsella of indie legends Cap’n Jazz is featured as a vocalist on the album’s title track.

Weber and Osterman have been forming the relationships that weave the fabric of All Those I Know for years. Beginning in 1998 as members of the “post-emo-neo-spacepop” band Camden, Weber and Osterman made two records with Death Cab For Cutie’s Chris Walla and toured constantly with The Promise Ring, Pele, and The Gloria Record among others.

Following Camden’s demise, Weber became a member of The Promise Ring for the band’s career defining Wood/Water album recorded for the revered Anti- Records label with legendary producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, The Cranberries). Weber then went on to co-found the band Decibully and produce four of the band’s albums.

Official Web Site: http://www.ericandmagill.com/Site/Eric_%26_Magill.html

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