Time has been harsh on all of us whether we want to admit it or not. The past is, at best, a disheartening trial and error process gone horribly awry at the exact wrong moments. This woman or man at this exact point is but an idea, and as a friend at work told me recently, “We’ll all turn to dust anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” What a boring thought, then, the past. The Wooden Birds have a past. Look them up on the interwebs and learn that past. For me, this is an album that arrived in my hands months after it debuted, but has had a wonderful effect on me, their past projects be damned. They are the proof of a world where style is substance; where lyrics that are mere representations of other lyrics make sense, fit perfectly and craft a world that does not need to matter. Magnolia is an album of repetition and it spills over itself with no overwhelming leaps. Magnolia is a good album that relies on the specific talents of The Wooden Birds and asks nothing more of the listener than to let style serve its purpose. Analyzing is for the weak, we are all mired in our past, forward thinking is for the (wooden) birds. Take the face value once in a while and maybe, just maybe, you can grieve less on your petty failings and just look out the window and smile at humanity. If we are to die, then let “Choke,” “Hailey” and “Sugar” be our funeral marches. This album is a bloodless non-revolution. I’m for it and so be it and all that. If we are to be dust, let Magnolia lead us home. It might be the most relaxed we’ve been in this life since we cried upon entering.
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Kurt Vile’s Childish Prodigy provides an ideal soundtrack to a 42-minute train ride for someone with plenty to think about. The songs chug forward with steady locomotive rhythms, and the album as a whole encapsulates that Zen-like railroad-riding state of mind- especially if you’re still buzzed from the night before and in desperate need of sleep. Thoughts flow in a muddy stream of nebulous consciousness; recurring flashbacks drift into internal rehearsals for future conversations, grievances not yet aired, true feelings still hidden; gut-scraping anger and disgust yield to resignation and tenderness, and back again, and back again, resonating with daydream reverb against the walls of inner space; time seems frozen under an Impressionistic magic hour sky, even as the outside world zips across the window.
It’s an absorbing soundscape, particularly through headphones. The deft mix of apparent influences is equally enchanting: the endearing, spontaneous amateurism of Robert Pollard bathed in Tom Petty’s Southern jangle and topped with a splash of Iggy Pop’s bile. Throughout most of Childish Prodigy, the gorgeous and gritty formula works wonders. I was hooked from the start by rockers like “Hunchback,” “Freak Train” and “Monkey,” while more tranquil songs like “Dead Alive,” “Overnite Religion” and “Blackberry Song” grew on me more with each spin. Too bad the album loses most of its steam toward the end. Despite some neat flourishes- the heartwarming trumpet in “Amplifier,” the train-whistle harmonica of “Inside Lookin Out”- the record’s uninspired final third has little to offer. By the end of it all I feel restless and frustrated, like when you zone out and miss your stop and now you’re stuck on the express for 15 more minutes. Then you think to yourself: oh well, at least the scenery’s still pretty.
It’s been nearly four years since the last Strokes record, and Julian has traded scuzzy garage rock for a poppier synth sound. The first few listens through the album, I loved it. It was great to hear one of the best voices in music again. But the more I listened, the more it’s flaws stood out.
Phrazes for the Young is short time wise, but with only 8 songs, each individual song is long and several feel so long they drag down the album. Having said that, the album starts out with a bang. “Out of the Blue” is a fantastic song, it’s upbeat and peppy even as Julian ’sings a song of faded glory.’ “Out of the Blue” also has the best line on the album “Yes, I know I’m going to hell, in a leather jacket/ at least I’ll be in another world, while you’re pissing on my casket.’ The next two songs keep the theme established in the first song, they are upbeat and full of bright synths while reflecting on his past.
The album starts to lose steam with “4 Chords of the Apocalypse,” which is slower and dark, and grinds to a complete halt with “Ludlow Street,” a dirge-like ode to the good old days on Ludlow Street in New York. Pardon me while I yawn for a minute. I’m sure Julian thought this was a tribute but to the listener it sounds like whining and lame nostalgia. Complaining about yuppies seems inauthentic coming from Julian’s background. The last three tracks rebound to make it a solid disc, especially River of Brakelights.
Despite it’s shortcomings, I like the album, the first three songs are as good as anything he did with The Strokes and bodes well for the future. However, if he does do another solo album, I hope that he reigns in some of the synths and funeral procession songs.
I’ve wanted to write a book called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Metal.” I don’t want to write it to be smarmy or make a bunch of points about how metal is overlooked or beautiful in its own right. I don’t want to poke fun at metal folks or make grand points about the habitually overused riffs and shitty lyrics. You see, I like metal– albeit a certain brand of metal. I have a go-to list of angry albums, ones that nurture me through the shittiest of days. No, my book would just be conversations people have while listening to metal. Put on an album like Converge’s Axe To Fall in a group setting sometime. You will notice changes instantaneously and not just people’s eyes rolling or someone asking what the hell you are playing.
Axe To Fall is a disaster of riffs (compliment) and a study in how to sustain destruction for a long period of time. For nine songs, the listener hardly gets a break from insane drumwork, persistent screaming and an overall sense of enlightened-yet-disheartened, emotive lyrics. What I talk about when I talk about this album: shit is brutal for awhile; a long while. Then, the album shifts to downtempo indie riffs for the last couple of songs– almost as if the band has decided to let the listener settle for a shelter after a tornado ripped the roof off of their house.
The album is piercing, destructive and whirlwind, yet there’s a sense that there’s too much going on at times. A cavalcade of guest stars litters the songs– spare riffs from some of their favorite musicians, though they are not the selling point of the album, thankfully. These extra solos and level of grating noise don’t hinder, but rarely help the band. They earmark certain tracks and falsify others– at times the album’s production overshadows its sole purpose. The purpose of metal is not to educate or reason: it is to destroy. Pure, simple destruction. And this album does that most of the time. And I’m cool with it. What I talk about when I talk about Converge: kicking ass. Axe To Fall certainly kicks ass, so there’s not much to talk about, actually. Just listening is enough.
Barn Nova, the latest record by the hyper-prolific musical collective known as MV & EE, resembles a majestic, gigantic, moderately psychedelic Appalachian tree. It’s rooted deep in the soil and its branches reach high enough to sway in the stratosphere. It’s a perfect place to spend an afternoon daydreaming in the shade, or an evening of stoned stargazing. Unfortunately, its biggest limitation is that it never really goes anywhere.
The album begins pleasantly and promisingly with a little sunny-morning ditty called “Feelin’ Fine.” Like all the songs here, it’s less of a composition than a sparse framework for various acoustic, electric and steel gee-tar licks to ramble, mingle and evaporate like wisps of incense smoke. The drums are pretty much there just to keep time and provide a minimal pulse, and Matt Valentine’s phantasmal, reverb-saturated vocals simply fill in the spaces where vocals are supposed to go. The second track, “Get Right Church,” picks up a funkier, trippier vibe while Erika Elder takes the mic and half-whispers a simple blues melody in her aloof sweetheart voice.
After listening to these tracks for the first time, I got my hopes up that Barn Nova would prove to be a special record, a beautiful marriage between the jaunty, half-cracked noodling of Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born and the sensual, shimmering haze of Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See. But then the album seems to lie down in the grass for a short weed nap, and it doesn’t quite recover. The wistful, ethereal “Snapperhead” evokes little more than a scrapped outtake from The Flaming Lips’ sessions for The Soft Bulletin. “Summer Magic” features flashes of inspired guitar heroics, including some by special guest star J Mascis, but those moments occur far between wide stretches of oppressively melancholy atmosphere. Around the 10-and-a-half minute mark of another fitfully engaging dirge called “Bedroom Eyes,” the drums start to rev up, as if the band’s finally ready to set the controls for the heart of the sun and blast off. To my dismay, those triple-time drum fills amount to nothing more than a tease, and the song fizzles to a close less than thirty seconds later.
In a folky Neil Young-like ballad called “Fully Tanked,” Valentine asks, “How can I miss you if you never leave?” and whenever I hear it, I can’t help but be reminded of how I feel about Barn Nova; though I have a soft spot for MV & EE’s laid-back intoxication, I tend to easily lose patience when they drift through the valleys because they so rarely explore the peaks.
There is always a concern when a so called ‘indie’ band signs to a major label, especially one as prolific as the Avett Brothers. But those concerns evaporated as soon as I heard I and Love and You for the first time. Rick Rubin’s production work does a great job supplementing the band’s sound rather than overpowering it. The addition of strings on many of the songs add an additional dimension to the already stellar harmonies.
Editor’s Note: “Short Cuts” is a new (hopefully weekly) segment featuring new-ish albums. The reviewer is still going to listen 10 times, but the reviews will be short and staid. Enjoy.
What is it with random euro post-punk/math/indie bands coming around about once a year and blowing my face off with rad walls of guitar rock? Mutiny on the Bounty from Luxembourg are the latest in a long (though sparse) line of these bands starting with Refused in 1998 and steadily continuing through others like JR Ewing, and more recently, Ungdomskulen. They are, in the most basic sense, loud, screamy mathrock. What they are not is boring, if occasionally stupid lyrics don’t mess up your guitar-boner. (Such is life in the english-as-a-second-language music world. My hips don’t lie.)
Originality is not the name of the game with Mutiny on the Bounty. Execution on the other hand is commendable. For instance, if we were to play the Which-Favorite-Bands-Are-They-Like game, I would count among their peers Fall of Troy, (Minus the endless tech jack-off,) Mars Volta, (Minus the endless jam/vocal jack-off) and maybe even modestly expressed bits of the Frodus/Bluetip/Unwound camps. While their influences are clear and obvious, they absolutely do justice to the genre, and moreover, have crafted something that is a great deal of fun both for the band, and for us.
Danger Mouth, their debut, opens with the polyrhythmic “Call Me Cheesus,” a joyous math-guitar bombast, and doesn’t let up for 40 minutes. The vocals are mostly screams, sometimes harmony and generally great, if fairly unpolished. A few of the tracks are instrumental numbers, ranging from the techy “Cruz Candelaria” to the epic finisher “One Man Orchestra.” Like I said, if you are a big lyric-reader, you may be left wanting (see track 8: “1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare Thumb War”), but otherwise I can’t recommend Mutiny on the Bounty highly enough.