Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Mercury Program: Chez Viking

Jeff Laughlin, February 26, 2010 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

There are times, when hearing an album or band, you feel truly alone.  I’ve had so many of these times with Mercury Program, I can hardly imagine them playing to a crowd (even though I have seen them do so more than once).  What makes these guys so separatist? What divides the seas of humanity when the bassline hits?  Why is a jazz-influenced instrumental band so paramount to my insular personality? I set to find out with their newest release– one that came after a long absence– Chez Viking.

As the opening keyboard riffs sprinkled over me, there was no realization.  Not immediately.  By the time the song settled into its groove, I realized that Mercury Program are unlike any other band on the planet.  The smoothness of opening track “Chez Viking” nailed their biggest strength: transitions.  From the poppy and full intro to the settled-in vibe of “Arrived/Departed,” the transition from poppy and angular to bass-heavy jazz quartet is damn-near perfect.

Hearing this is no surprise.  The band had a seamless quality throughout their career.  There is something different in “Chez Viking,” however. They have become more accomplished playing music apart than they ever could have staying together for the past few years.  Chez Viking has dynamic changes that never existed before.  They are still built on the repetition of the guitar, the meandering-yet-insanely-tight basslines and the light sprinklings of drum fills and rhodes/vibes.  Listening to Mercury Program’s new album is like rereading a classic– one you liked in college, but devour now.

As the album continues, the bass pulsates and drives.  The guitar, especially in “Backseat Blackout” curls in and out of songs, and Chez Viking ebbs and flows like any good record should.  Then, “Katos” remembers me to my task. The band hits a stride.  There is a dynamic of quiet-loud without the unnecessary explosions of other instrumental rock bands.  There is an interplay in the rhythm section that is unrivaled.  They play the simplest song to the maximum ability it can be played.

Therein lies the mastery of this band.  They have their craft so solidly penned, that they could play the same song night after night and it would rarely sound the same.  We are not lonely when we listen to the Mercury Program, we are just choosing to ignore the rest of the world.  We choose to shut out the honking cars, the creepy silence of the morning commute, the attention-grabbing hordes in the parks, the television blaring and even our friends telling the same stories again and again.  It’s because their stories aren’t as good two times as any one of these seven songs is 100 times.  No one can listen to this album without concentrating on how good it really is.  Even through sleep (trust me on this one), the foot will tap and the brain will continue to slink alongside the bass as if all along.

By the time “Stand and Sing” ends the all-too-short Chez Viking, I’ve learned more than enough to know that there’s no analyzing perfection.  I just let the instruments coagulate.  When they do, the song is over before I noticed how good it really was, so I play it again– all the while ignoring my surroundings and getting lost in my own head.  It’s a special talent that few bands have; continually surprising and beckoning a listener without words, and Mercury Program has it in spades.

First Listen: Surprises’ All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Die

Dean Blumberg, February 25, 2010 in Initial Response and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Suprises is the moniker for Brooks Paschal, a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music producer (and probably a bunch of other things) from Orlando, Florida.  All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Die is Surprises’ debut album, and like one might glean from the title, it walks the fine line between melody-driven introspection and bedroom-pop sappiness.  But this is a first listen, right?  And hell, there is nothing wrong with a grown man recognizing the beauty of a well-crafted pop song, and Surprises offers up a handful of them in this 14-track long-player.

All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Die is the kind of record you could listen to with your parents. That’s not a back-handed comment, but rather speaks to the mainstream appeal of Surprises.  Acoustic guitar, piano, textured percussion/drums and the occasional inclusion of strings are the vehicle for Paschal’s vocals, which will certainly have a polarizing effect on listeners.  On this first listen, there were times when the sentimentality and sheer unsurprising-ness of Surprises left me kind of bored, like something was held back.  Yet there are definitely some gems here, especially when Surprises is stripped down to a single, capoed guitar and a melody.

I’m not enamored by this first listen by any means, but given that I’m sick as a dog and it’s near blizzard conditions here in the mountains of North Carolina, giving a straight-up acoustic pop album like All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Die some more plays seems like a good idea.  Who knows, it might make me feel better.

Editor’s Note:  name your price for the album here, peoples. Enjoy.

Short Cuts: Fang Island

Joe O., February 25, 2010 in Music Reviews. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Fang Island kicks off their self-titled full-length debut with both literal and figurative fireworks, and by the end of it they sound like they’re headed toward some kind of rock n’ roll promised land. The big problem is the journey in the middle- I just couldn’t find enough musical or emotional hooks along the way to get very attached to it.

I wanted to love this album. The band seems like they’ve absorbed valuable lessons from a couple of my favorite records (Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet, Green Day’s American Idiot), particularly the art of mixing punk, prog and stadium rawk with Pentecostal fervor. Apparently, though, Fang Island simply didn’t care to learn much about the songwriting fundamentals that make those other two records so great.

Of course, not every album needs to know how to write potential hit singles to succeed, especially if it doesn’t necessarily want to be some other band’s album. In the end, Fang Island just wants to be Fang Island. I can dig that, and I’m glad this band exists.  But even so, Fang Island practically cries out for more structure and the consistent presence of a lead singer.  The more I listened, the less I heard it as a fun mostly-instrumental record with occasional outbursts of singing, and the more I heard a record that could have been great if someone hadn’t accidentally deleted the lead vocal tracks.

The band certainly has chops. Once in a while, they’ll whip out a killer riff or a high-wire transition that really shakes my blood, but those moments are dwarfed by the melody-starved spaces in between. Even the roller-coaster dynamics become less enjoyable as the album goes on, as the rises and falls grow increasingly predictable. If you were to graph the intensity levels of Fang Island over its running time, it would probably resemble a string of uniform upper-case Ms.

To Fang Island’s benefit, songwriting is a craft that a young band can hone, and the enthusiasm which they already possess in spades is something that can’t be taught. I may not have fallen for their debut, but I’ll keep an ear out for what they’ll do next. If they ever try to write their own “Carry On Wayward Son,” it’ll be downright dynamite.

First Listen: The Besnard Lakes’ Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night

Jeff Laughlin, February 24, 2010 in Initial Response and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Ah, the first listen. A wealth of opportunity lies within that initial response we all know and love so much.  And the Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night is a record, despite it’s ridiculous title, with no expectation for me.  This being their second LP, I am catching on at the right time.  This is a big, beautiful album.  It swirls and spits over male and female vocalists and a wealth of noise.  Pianos, guitars and high-pitched falsettos abound.

Since I am listening a second time as I write this, I’m quite sure there will be a second review.  Since they employ members of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, The Dears, Stars, and A Silver Mt. Zion, I’m pretty sure I understand that this is a Canadian All-Star band.  Since I love this the second time around too, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a kick-ass reviewing process.  Since the album comes out in early March, you can expect the review pretty soon.  And, finally, since I have bored you with this “since” format, I’ll let the old songs speak for themselves.  Hope you enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed this new jam.

Past Lives: Tapestry Of Webs

Justin M., February 24, 2010 in Music Reviews. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Past Lives was formed  from the fragments of The Blood Brothers and a few other bands in 2007. Tapestry Of Webs marks their second major output and their first full-length follow up their debut EP from 2008, Strange Symmetry.  If nothing else, this album serves as a testament to the validity of the 10Listens mission statement, because it was only after many, many listens that I was able to form a coherent, stable opinion of Past Lives’ offering. Unfortunately for the album the more time I spent, the more my opinion started to veer towards the negative as little imperfections became glaring inadequacies.

I’ll start by talking what this album does right. If you like songs that run in a deeper pitch, driven by bass and percussion rather than blaring electric guitar, this album can offer you some fitting tracks to suit your needs.  What makes the emphasis on bass and low chords so effective is the immediate contrast it creates with the higher-pitched vocals of lead singer Jordan Blilie. In particular, the opening track, “Paralyzer” is a great start to the album.  It is dominated by a few simple, omnipresent bass chords supplemented with drumsticks clicking together and slight support from the lead guitar. Add Blilie’s falsetto-esque pitch into the mix and it creates a perfectly moody air that mirrors the tune’s subject matter, which plays on the themes of arousal and impotence.  Furthermore, the true strength of this simplistic bass line is the way in which it magnifies the two hearty tempo changes in the song, the first around the 2:00 minute mark and the latter at 3:05; the contrast is entertaining, and as the song drifts to the latter of these two shifts in tempo, accompanied by the sonorous echoes of backing vocals and cymbals, one cannot help but think, “Yes! This is an album headed in the right direction!”

And you’d be wrong, quite wrong. No sooner has the first song ended than you are greeted with the cockpunch that is this album’s second track, “Falling Spikes”. Oh, how I loathe this song. The subtle, evocative qualities of the first song, and the stellar buildup it engenders is replaced by brash, nearly incoherent screaming. Literally, the song starts off with Blilie forcibly yelling the title of the song into your earhole. It so harshly clashes with the song before as to be completely aggravating and off-putting. This 2:40 minute track could never be over soon enough in my opinion, though I’m sure there are some people who enjoy Past Lives’ aggressive style.

The relationship between these first two tracks is a perfect microcosmic representation of the faults of this album as a whole: it is horribly put together. This trope of slow/quiet, bass-driven songs being followed by faster/louder counterparts happens again and again. Halfway through we encounter “Deep In The Valley,” a stripped-down, instrument-driven, melancholic ballad that is almost girlish in its delicacy (to say nothing of the fact it sounds like there’s actual female backing vocals). This song dabbles in sublime synthesizer-based effects and reverberations that perpetuate the quality of  a dream. Of course, what follows it is the song “K Hole,” a track that introduces itself with a sound effect that literally sounds like the loud honking of a decrepit horn from an early 1900s automobile.

To be fair to this album, “K Hole” does mark the beginning of a  string of four tracks that are all consistent in their general sound. They are full of  guitar energy and aggressive cymbal play the highlight of which is “Hospital White,” perhaps the only fast-paced song I enjoyed on every listen, probably because it was the last of this group of four and I was actually finally used to this tempo after all of the aforementioned flip-flopping. And then, of course, the album veers back to rip off three straight tracks of just the opposite types. We’re back into the realm of instrumental playfulness and subtle vocals. The concluding track “There Is A Light So Bright It Blinds” forms a nice counterpart to the initial song on the album, as they are both cut from the same cloth. So if nothing else, I can safely say that this album did bookend itself nicely, though I have to ask: whither consistency for everything else in between?

EXCLUSIVE First Listen: Equestrian’s Better Posture (free download)

B. Michael Payne, February 23, 2010 in Initial Response and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Equestrian does lo-fi right. Their first album, Better Posture, is a slim, nineteen minute portrayal of the transition from youth to adulthood. Instead of distilling its sound through carefully selected thrift store amps and analog mixing consoles, the album sounds like it was made mostly in GarageBand. It sounds like the kind of album the people who made it would sound like. The lead guitar work is capable. The rhythm guitar is endearing. Save the first song, the drumming is sparse, and the bass is meant to fill out mix. Yet the sum of its parts—like the sum of a person’s early-to-mid twenties—exceeds its particulars. A rambling, upbeat mood permeates the album. A few of the songs sound like they could score a Volkswagen commercial. But many of the songs are dinged up. They have depth and character. I’m looking forward to getting better acquainted with Better Posture.

Editors Note: FREE SWAG.  This album is free, free, free.  Enjoy. Don’t forget who loves you, baby. We do. 10Listens loves you. That’s who you should not forget as per the aforementioned love thing.

Shearwater: The Golden Archipelago

B. Michael Payne, February 23, 2010 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Shearwater’s The Golden Archipelago reminded me of hobbits even before I learned the album was the final part of a three-part series. It doesn’t have have any songs that are specifically redolent of fantastic creatures. There are no pan flutes. But the album feels like a circumscribed epic. It feels longer than its thirty-eight minutes would imply. Its the feverdream of a precocious youth. At its best, the album sounds huge and warm like spending an endless, sunny day at the beach. Sometimes it feels like how it feels when you spend too much time in the sauna: overheated and limpid. TGA, for better or worse, answers the question ‘What would it sound like if Yanni were a twentysomething naturalist indie rocker?’

Hobbits? Yanni? This is not some super cool indie rock album. I am sure that there is someone in the band whose job it is is to be the ‘percussionist.’ I am sure that it would be hilarious if demo versions of some of the songs were released (”Black Eyes” and “Castaways,” for instance). I am sure that principle auteur behind Shearwater, Jonathan Meiburg, is a very serious dude. What I am not sure about is whether I like this album.

If I hadn’t listened to it more than ten or fifteen times this past week, I doubt I would have listened to it once. Rook, Shearwater’s previous album, gained the band considerable amounts of hype. That album feels a little shaggier and a lot more muscular. In a way, then, you could read TGA as a bit of a retreat. The lyrics are near uniformly about nature, yet they’re cut of a more introspective, Wordsworthian cloth. They evoke the interior experience of adventure rather than adventure itself. In a way, the music mirrors the lyrics. It often sounds thrilling, yet in a somewhat tacky, staged way. It’s as if the album were composed to be the soundtrack to an epic Planet Earth-type show. It is about how sweep and grandeur decay. It is about human solitude among the floral/faunal multitude. But it is always about these things rather than the things themselves.

I know it is ridiculous to expect an album literally to be the decay of sweep and grandeur. Except that it isn’t. Some of the truly great pop albums literally are the thing they’re about. Think of Kid A, Loveless, and Illmatic. Those albums manage to become or embody what they were about. They suppress the supposed lifetime that lay between thought and expression. They are immediate. Shearwater’s TGA never feels immediate. Yet its ambition is obvious. Like I said, it makes you think of hobbits and Yanni and epic, sunlight adventures. This is not a great album, but it might not have to be great if you’re interested in is ambitious, baroque pop music.

Hot Chip: One Life Stand

Paul, February 22, 2010 in Music Reviews. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Slightly short of a masterpiece. I don’t know much about Hot Chip. A week before I first heard this record, their 2006 tune “Over And Over” played on a barroom juke box and I recall thinking, “what an annoying song.” I may have winced at a photo of them dressed in that ultra-ironic style with which only Londoners can trump Brooklynites in terms of garishness. That was the extent of my knowledge.  So I can’t tell you about how this record (their fourth studio recording) sits in context to their previous releases. I don’t know anything about the backstory of the band, their previous accolades, their critics–none of it. All I have is this brilliant, effusive, bubbling little record. It spans decades of songwriting and production styles, canvasses a multitude of emotions, and falls a hair below uninterrupted brilliance.

Something I’ve often noticed with popular modern English music is its willingness to embrace elements of popular culture that might be considered gauche in current prisms. The Klaxons did so with rave (perhaps only to the extent of their clothing; it’s debatable) and Lily Allen embraced a ska sensibility long after the fashionable porkpie hats.  Naturally, One Life Stand begins with an onslaught of retro instrumentation: squiggly synths, string samples, Big Beat kicks… Only the production standard (effervescent in its mixing–one of the more modernistic electronic treatments I’ve heard in a while) betrays that this wasn’t a 1992 release. On first listen, I was tempted to write it off. Another London Group Without Originality Replicates The Past (La Roux, anyone?). It’s not that easy to dismiss, however. Perhaps the chap with the Keytar really is a virtuoso.

After the triumvirate of throwbacks to the 90s, Stand eases itself into the album’s first single and title track. It’s a song that needs coaxing to achieve full greatness–many of the tracks on this album do, in fact songs hit the bridge and change course dramatically in several instances. Layering steel drums, hand claps and laser stabs over a stubby, sawtooth bass line, Hot Chip slide into a smooth vocal mix repeating a simple mantra, “I only want to be your one life stand/Tell me, do you stand by your man?” Slightly distorted synth– I could have sworn I heard on Momus’ 1988 Tender Pervert LP– separate verses with some more of the record’s previous retro embrace. Five minutes later and the band has seemingly felt emboldened, ready to take a chance (the oddly hypnotic “Slush”).

Lyrical simplicity is another of the nice little nuances found here. Nothing gets too complex or long-winded. Probably the most matter-of-fact couplets we hear are on the outstanding track “Alley Cats”: “Well, we sleep inside of blankets in bed/Planted like the crocuses/And I wish my mother could/See the ring I bought”. It’s one of the few instances of the lyrics of Stand explicitly telling a story, quickly fading back to the overlying ethos of the record’s words–more ideas rather than recollections, “You painted a song/It started when I was young/Now it is in my lung”.

One Life Stand never really changes from its foundation of synth-based dance music. It’s what’s added in the small fills, the breaks before a chorus or bridge that make the lasting difference. It’s the song structure, the turns into darkness (or euphoria, on terrific closer “Take It In”) that set the album apart from the rest. So what makes it one pound less than a grand?

Well, two songs, to be specific. Penultimate track “Keep Quiet” seems almost sheepishly formulaic; it has none of the lily-gilding touches of brilliance that grace the other tracks, nor the personality to survive on its own. “Brothers,” a sort of pub chant-cum-Pulp riff falls into annoying territory after third listen. Too bad. One Life Stand is one of those records anyone who loves music is elated to find: a surprise turn, a changed opinion, an album that seizes your emotions for a good week or two and leaves you obsessed. It’s a record bathed in aural references to the past yet feels cutting-edge. I just wish it was one that I could turn on and let play out in its entire, evocative glory.

First Listen: Fang Island

Joe O., February 19, 2010 in Initial Response and Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , .

fangisland_cover

I just listened to Fang Island’s self-titled debut and what the hell just happened there? That was something like Crosby, Stills, Nash & W.K. It all happened so fast, except for the parts where it was all slow and gospel-like. They might have been singing in tongues half the time.

I can say for sure that Fang Island commanded my attention. What I can’t say for sure yet is if I’ll give it the full 10 Listens. Part of me is thrilled by the possibility to finally use the term “influenced by Andrew W.K.” in a music review. Another part of me wonders how quickly the novelty will fade. If I had to bet, I’d say yes, I will give Fang Island a closer look, because heaven knows that when it’s time to party, I will party hard.

Decoration Ghost: The Haze of Wine and Age

Jeff Laughlin, February 18, 2010 in Music Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

There is a world that exists outside of popular music, or even the culturally important “underground.”  We all know it exists.  We all know people making albums and laboring over their projects.  For some reason or another, these albums and bands fall into the cracks in the floor of popularity; they fly over the cities that make the rules and no one looks up to see what kinds of jets are making all that racket above them.

We all know these bands from our college towns.  Maybe we played in these bands.  And we all know the bands that deservedly drew crowds or sounded better than the rest of us.  We know those bands are/were amazing, and yet  getting paid to make their music eludes them.  Maybe they have jobs.  Maybe they got kids or went back to school or got bored.  Maybe they never got exposure.  Maybe they weren’t they weren’t that good.  None of it really matters, because these bands are the backbone of music.  They are the reason I started really caring about music in the first place and the reason I write for this site.  For me, they are Merge Records in the early 90s, Dischord for two decades, Lovitt Records in the Late 90s, et al.

All of that is, of course, paramount to me introducing you to Decoration Ghost.  They are a piecemeal representation of several bands I loved in college.  The names of the former bands are not important, but this current incarnation of all of them is.  For the first time since I left, I feel connected to my college town and not for nostalgic principles.  It’s because I really like The Haze of Wine and Age.  Allow me to shut the fuck up about the past I usually refuse to acknowledge and tell you why it’s good; you know– the meat of the review.

The opening track, “Father’s Fist” is a rocker.  The drums attack and the distorted guitars lead.  It’s all I want in an opener, actually.  Quiet-loud dynamics, driving bass and introspective, emotive lyrics involving drinking.  As the song uses an instrumental rock-out to finish up, it’s obvious that this album is going to, at very least, kick ass.  All this to lead into the best song on the album, “The Haze of Wine and Age.”  The simple intro– each instrument begins a measure after the preceding– leads into back-and-forth vocals.  As the vocals feed off of each other, the chorus turns into a raucous sing-along: “The crowd that owns you,/ so go back go back go back now…” The song, at times, has personal albeit vague lyrics, but the payoff is to look around you, headphones on, and study your surroundings.  “Put your orange neon on try to blend in with the crowd.”

The next two songs, “I Thought You Were Night Courting” and “Camera Bag and a Backpack” are the continuation of a fantastic ethos: keep pounding.  The songs roam through short, well-maintained songwriting.  “Camera Back” spins a simple yarn about a hike and like many of the songs, digests easily.  The vocals are a strong point in the song– not something that is always true in an album so hellbent on making the listener focus on rhythmic beats and big rock riffs.

Speaking of big riffs, “Unpaid Actors” is a beautiful example of what is right with The Haze of Wine and Age.  It is a short, strong representation of their talents– nice early riffs leading into a big, angry yell-off.  There’s even a tidy metaphor.  And speaking of metaphors, the best lyrics on the album belong to “Thick Tan Rope.” No reason to disseminate them, they speak well for themselves here.  The song itself is a mid-tempo jam that rises nicely from a subdued intro and middle.  It’s a “sea-soaked dream” in their own words and a beautiful lead in to the tail end of Haze.

Though simple, the rhythm lead-in to “Repay the Spark” pays the listener in spades as it explodes into a great opening line: “Cigarette, it probably saved our lives.”  LaFollette’s bass throughout is remarkably loud and necessary as the vocals meander through the layout of the song– it seems the verses and chorus are basically interchangeable (not a detriment in the least).  As the album winds down into “Horizon,” another rocker in the vein of “Father’s Fist,” the entire band gets in on the vocals.  It’s almost as if they are describing the horizon of the album itself: the end is really not an ending but an invitation to continue listening.  All of them have been making music for so long, that at this point there’s no ending to an album other than the continuation of the next.

That’s exactly why the forgotten and overlooked rock albums we cherish are so goddamned important.  There is no greater feeling than listening to an album that’s roots grow within you, except when that album is outstanding.  My first listen to this was a wary one.  That mistake was not repeated.  I opened up to the album as though it was hyped; as though people throughout the cultural ranks had been telling me that this was the anthem of the winter.  My reward was an anthem not only for the winter, but for a long time to come.  There is a musical world that exists outside of the plane we’ve been introduced to. It may not have the production value, the studio tricks or the guest stars.  It may not inspire blogs with fancy typesets or sell a ton of records.  It’s fucking earnest, though, and soulful.  It’s just as talented a world, with more to prove.  It’s too important to ignore.

One last note: do yourself a favor and watch these.  They will be the most important videos you watch all day.  The Often Awesome Army is fighting ALS because they fucking believe in someone.  Decoration Ghost isn’t just another name to add to itunes.  I promise you, it will matter more than my lame opinions.  Also, click to buy this album.  Please.  Thanks.