Caesura - Helios

Caesura

Helios
Type Records.

SCQ Rating: 83%

The first time I heard Helios was scattered across several minute-long audio samples – each of which were stunning slices of laid-back electronica – that I immediately sought to own. When I finally possessed Eingya some year and a half on and experienced my familiar samples in full-length version, a piece of my anticipation went unfulfilled. There I was, looking forward to at last hearing the patient build-up to those climax-snippets I’d committed to memory only to discover that Eingya, as a whole, is one giant climax. Every guitar was bittersweet, each touch of keyboard pitch-perfect and expertly produced; if those minute-long snippets were sugar to my electro-senses, Eingya risked landing me in a diabetic coma.

Caesura is a better record, not only as a result of my cautiously lowered expectations but because I can easily digest the entire album without feeling cynical or nauseous. Now this isn’t to imply that Helios-mastermind Keith Kenniff has learned from his ‘perfection to a fault’ recording process; in fact, Caesura features as much technical showing-off as his previous album. Only this time, Kenniff shows off how to craft an album while continuing to wow with his laptop-based post-rock. Despite the opening shuffle, a nostalgic mix of starry guitar and understated percussion similar to Eingya’s starting point, ‘Hope Valley Hill’ puts the past where it belongs with a finale of soft momentum and barely-there vocals. Tracks like ‘Mima’ and ‘Fourteen Drawings’ (the latter sounding like Ulrich Schnauss in slow motion) are eloquent compositions grounded in dense patterns of guitars and/or keys that never steal the show or surrendering to new-age mysticism. Not only does Kenniff reduce his number of compositional peaks while giving each space, he propels plateau songs like ‘Backlight’ with warped breakbeats or ‘Come With Nothings’ with its sped-up metronome. When a true climax does arrive in ‘A Mountain of Ice’, Kenniff throws the mix in favour of prominent guitar and distant vocals that nearly change the temperature of your living room. The way Helios organizes and performs this material makes Eingya feel scattershot by comparison.

Although Caesura holds more tension and increasingly complex layers, this is still a predominantly one-note affair. Such is the reality when you prepare for a new Helios album; the silent understanding that you’ll be receiving as much icing as cake. Luckily, Kenniff seems progressively more comfortable with the notion of letting his songs affect in their own way, providing pathways to choose from instead of emotional directions. Caesura is still massively emotive, no doubt, but slyly elusive. It’s as if Kenniff knows that the best way to break a listener’s heart isn’t always by hunting it down but, instead, creating something worth surrendering one’s heart to.

Love Yourself - Thunder Power

Love Yourself

Thunder Power
Slumber Party Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

Well we’ve made it this far… January is all but tied off, leaving us with another solid month and a half of chilly overcast, short days and wind-chill warnings. No better time, then, to introduce oneself to Love Yourself, the debut release by Thunder Power that’ll remind you how near and sweet Springtime is. Throughout this EP’s varied five tracks, the Nebraska band calls to mind all the vitality of those early Spring days when doors are left ajar and balconies become part of your pad’s square-footage again.

‘Take a Hike’ is a smooth lounge track derailed (and thusly saved) by the twee-rock sensibilities of Belle & Sebastian while lead-singer Kacynna has the smoke-stained allure of Chan Marshall, lending some disaffected but genuine vocals to the jangle-pop of ‘Imaginary Rules’. So yes, Thunder Power must’ve adored the Matador catalogue through the late 90s. These overt influences mix breezy acoustics with fashionably mopey vocals, finding an original concession between the sounds of their idols. The breadth of their musicianship is most deserving of attention, however, as a simple folk-pop assemblage including guitar, percussion and organ is hardly enough for Thunder Power. With its spritely tambourine and distinct keys, ‘Casanova’ blends the catchiness of The Cars with The Pretenders’ swagger. Better yet is ‘Your Pantry’, an upbeat pseudo-history lesson with its bittersweet melodica hovering over energetic drumming. Further exercising some diversity is ‘Lucky To Be Alive’’s vocal switch-up, introducing male vocals that spin yet another potential identity for this young band. It’s Love Yourself’s final track, yet the introduction of a male vocalist seems to fit a crucial piece of the puzzle into place. Thunder Power is too playful and lyrically romantic to be anything but a co-ed collaboration and Matt’s vocals (think of a less self-serious Michael Stipe) are that element I didn’t know was missing.

Where the future lies for bands of this sound remains uncertain. At this early stage, Thunder Power might crack a career offering folk-pop albums discernable by slight variations on theme and mood or break into an entirely different musical sphere (they do site Johnny Cash, Otis Redding and Sufjan Stevens as muses, after all). Wherever their next release takes aim, Love Yourself is an instantly likeable and impressive debut.

Blood Bank - Bon Iver

Blood Bank

Bon Iver
Jagjaguwar Records.

SCQ Rating: 76%

I avoided For Emma, Forever Ago for the entirety of 2008, moving from casually interested to critically overwhelmed. Between its personal significance for so many people and its overexposed backstory (man records in rural Wisconsin cottage for three months, man has hit album, I get it), I felt there was little remaining room for honest discovery. Even with Blood Bank, a stop-gap EP of old and new songs ready to ride Justin Vernon’s year-end success through 2009, I was unconsciously prepared to ditch any interest in his young career. ‘Blood Bank’ changed all that. I stumbled upon it Sunday morning and throughout its near five minutes stared vacantly at the flurried sky, knowing it’s undoubtedly my first great song of the year. Faint cymbals tremble behind Vernon’s three-chord strum, which crawls like a train over rusted rails, screeching harmonic feedback toward the song’s demise. That dull-knife electric is sharpened by Vernon’s voice – straightforward like Springsteen but carrying the weight of its lyrics like a cross – and words, which offer read-it-again storytelling at its best.

Beyond that title track, Blood Bank’s best arsenal is perhaps variety; something that For Emma, Forever Ago sidestepped on purpose and this four-song set chances at every turn. ‘Babys’ opens with an outbreak of heavenly piano codas that rise in volume, shift keys, build momentum and are suddenly swept up in echo to usher Vernon’s soul vocals. When the piano revs up again alongside one rapid-strummed guitar, Bon Iver sounds capable of melting every icicle of his well-documented isolation and breaking free. It’s a moment of awareness that succumbs to silence once more, however, as ‘Woods’ finds Vernon acapella, endlessly repeating:

“I’m up in the woods
I’m down on my mind
I’m building a still
to slow down the time.”

Despite being released right in time to join the Kanye West auto-tune debate, ‘Woods’ creates a “still” to leave off on; an affecting assemblage of one man’s vocal emotion, isolated but communicative among its layers, which gradually slows his energy to silence. Blood Bank accomplishes as much, providing fans of his debut with new dimensions to his songwriting and proving that For Emma…’s wide appeal was no fluke. Although nothing strikes us as feverishly as its title track, Blood Bank is – with any luck - a curiously stitched prologue of things to come.

Double Night Time - Morgan Geist

Double Night Time

Morgan Geist
Environ Records.

SCQ Rating: 73%

Just how long is a decade when measured in terms of electronic music? It’s not so simple a question. Whereas the champions of rock music a decade ago were the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead and U2 (a group who’ve remained dominant throughout the 2000s), electronica’s failure to achieve mainstream success has forced itself into a fickle predicament where the leading performers of one year may be forgotten the next (Matmos, anyone?). Not only does electronica’s inherent underground status limit one’s potential long-term success, the genre’s dependence on technology ages these records, leaving us to constantly speeding through trends for the next new sound. No doubt former dance-kings such as Prodigy or Fatboy Slim can attest to electronica’s hyperactive tastes throughout the last decade. Another late 90s colleague, Morgan Geist, steps out from behind the head-honcho desk at Environ Records and takes a break from his remixing duties to offer Double Night Time, his first album in nearly ten years.

Longtime fans might wonder whether Geist will return to his post-disco motivations or brave new electronic ventures but the answer is truly neither here nor there. Between digging up the past and moving forward, Geist spins a circle, exercising some very modern takes on retro electro-pop while gravitating to the 80s-synths of his first love: Detroit Techno. Never is this more evident than in ‘Detroit’, a restrained dancefloor track that earns its spritely bleeps under the wise crooning of Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys). ‘The Shore’ misses nary a beat and delves deeper into 80s pop, once again utilizing Greenspan’s velvet vocals while evoking early Madonna (seriously). Despite some brisk (and just mentioned) elements of retro-cheese, Geist keeps things upbeat and entertaining; ‘Most of All’ is a standard post-disco affair of laser-keyboards and bubbling basslines while ‘Lullaby’ showcases Geist’s abilities when flying solo.

To answer precisely where Double Night Time lands on a timeline between his previous album, The Driving Memoirs, and new, cutting-edge electronica is unsurprisingly 2006; the year the Junior Boys released So This is Goodbye. What makes enjoying this album confusing is that it’s a phantom Junior Boys album; same blippy arrangements, same vocalist, same approach to the Junior Boys’ trademarked bedroom-pop sound. It’s difficult to toss plagiarism charges around since Greenspan is an overwhelming presence here (singing on five of nine tracks), but Geist’s nearly identical approach on ‘Ruthless City’ questions the man’s reputation (a pedigree which has sustained him throughout a lengthy period of cameos and remixes). Where Double Night Time deviates slightly from So This Is Goodbye is in its less-disguised retro-love and quicker BPMs, taking it to the fringes of bedroom-pop and better suited to the dancefloor.

If you’re imagining a spunkier Junior Boys album, you’re halfway there. Where Double Night Time surpasses the average Junior Boys song in superficial energy, it surrenders in terms of tension and emotional layering. Call it Junior Boys-lite, if that helps. In any case, Geist’s work supplies several new additions to your pick-me-up dance playlist or, perhaps, a stand-in release until the new Junior Boys record drops. This is gratifying dance music from an artist who clearly knows how to achieve a particular sound… I only wish he had sought out his own.

SCQ's Winter Albums

Dear SCQ Readers,

With SCQ’s first Spring, Summer and Autumn now buried in snow, it is with great pleasure and rather cool timing that I present SCQ’s Winter Albums as the first feature of 2009. Not only do these albums wrap up the “Quarterly…” stipulation of my blog name, they celebrate a full year of SCQ blogging (or 365 days since this) as well as my 200th blog post here on the SCQ Homepage. Milestones, galore! The past year has welcomed new and old faces alike to visit and comment, and I appreciate YOU taking the time to stop by.

For those of you looking to increase your blog-time, check out some great videos from the best of 08 on Mr. Pibb’s new blog: 3 Up, 3 Down. Those of you who are particularly keen on SCQ (hello…?) may be vaguely familiar with Yusif, my infrequent contributor, who now operates his blog TriptownSounds (currently featuring a blizzard-proof edition of Yusif VS Ryan). Both of these young sites are recommended and clickable from SCQ’s right-hand margin.

In the coming weeks, look out for new album reviews, RIPPED OFF 08 (click here for a refresher), and a listening-party write-up of Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavillion from Montreal. Forget about all that for now, though, and take one of the following records into a snowstorm. You won’t regret it.

( ) - Sigur Ros (Winter Albums)

( )

Sigur Ros
Fat Cat Records.

SCQ Rating: 88%

Picasso’s Blue Period, as far as I’m aware, was never meant to be interpreted beyond its aesthetic. Its signature - that the artist discovered and explored his allure to monochromatic contrasts – wasn’t nearly as durable as its name, which has been re-appropriated and reinterpreted countless times under emotional guises. Many artists since have explained their crafts as having been born from an affecting “blue period”, noting that personal conflicts (a break-up, addiction, death, etc.) became imbedded to their professional work. ( ), Sigur Ros’ follow-up to the much-heralded Agaetis Byrjun, is truly the Blue Period of my generation; a recording that deals in melancholic shifts as strictly as it abides by its monochromatic aesthetic.

The drastic divides between ( ) and the band’s previous output has been both drooled over exhaustively and, well, super-obvious, so I’ll sum it up quickly: the band tore apart its awe-inspired orchestral sound, Jonsi Birgisson embraced an imaginary language, songs were refused titles, and the resulting album was titled with punctuation. Oh, and their drummer was replaced, as if disoriented fans had a chance to notice. Interesting how all these innovations which make for such curious fanboy banter accumulate to make ( ), a record that is at once their most shockingly original full-length as well as a virtual blank canvas for listeners. So richly detailed one could spend a year disassembling its layers (for example, max out your stereo speakers and start ‘Untitled 2’ to hear this record’s ghosts being reborn), yet so sparsely designed as to comply with most modern ambient templates, ( ) is truly an elusive masterwork. Although most every track moves at a funereal pace, and although the nine minute dirge of ‘Untitled 6’ glides effortlessly into the nihilistic thirteen minute ‘Untitled 7’, ( ) overcomes its purposeful sterility with a ton of heart. ‘Untitled 1’ breaks its crest over waves of wrenching vocals and ‘Untitled 3’ dances over a starry piano coda, but it’s ‘Untitled 8’ that deems this album a classic; an easy acoustic refrain that morphs into an aggressive behemoth, detonating every careful nuance that came before it. After ( )’s second half lulled us into no man’s land, ‘Untitled 8’ is a perfectly timed explosion to remind us how thrilling Sigur Ros are.

The believed intent of performing all of ( )’s lyrics in Hopelandic was so each listener could interpret them personally and write them along the blank liner notes. Whether that’s fact or wishful thinking, I strongly stand by the theory. A record this oblique can undoubtedly mean something – no matter how varied or far-reaching – to anyone who gives it a chance. For me it was in a closet-sized student house in the winter of 2002; trying desperately to outgrow my adolescence. I never took to writing lyric interpretations through my CD liner notes although even now, listening to Jonsi’s hollow phrasing six years later, I remember old sensations - like phonetic memories - provoked and sculpted from his every word. It technically means nothing, yet somehow in that verbal vacuum it comes to mean everything we attached to it; a Blue Period we fans shared with the band responsible. Meanwhile, how Picasso’s Rose Period escaped all this reinterpretation is beyond me...

Love is Hell - Ryan Adams (Winter Albums)

Love is Hell

Ryan Adams
Lost Highway Records.

SCQ Rating: 93%

Love is Hell Volume 1 shook me to the core. I bought it on a Friday, took it to my friend’s apartment that night, shot some rum, drank some codeine, passed out and walked home before sunrise. When I listened to it alone the next morning, I had no idea I would spend the next three days holed up in my room completely entranced. I lay in bed and memorized the words, I sat at my desk and studied the grays of his photography. Those days were an uninterrupted hangover caught in slow movements, where my body felt fine but my heart and mind suffered from something undiagnosed. I skipped meals and classes and phonecalls. I wondered how anyone could write self-absorption and desire and confusion and self-loathing with the barreled-out accuracy that Ryan Adams had.

Love is Hell Volume 2 woke me up with wintry overcast and hustled me out into a bitter-cold January of snow-stiff jeans and chimney clouds. I wanted a girlfriend who didn’t love me, I fucked over a bunch of people who didn’t die, I too wondered if it was snowing in space. Moreover, I believed it was… December through March, above the coal-black skies of Southern Ontario, tiny crystalline flakes I kicked around were arriving from unseen planets. I assumed, from lack of experience, that love was hell. It was impossible to explain to anyone how much I loved this record, or what songs represented it best. It still is. When I pass Love is Hell in a record store, I wish I could buy it again if only to experience that dirge of a honeymoon once more. When faced now with the task of reviewing it, I cringe with jealousy at the idea of someone discovering such an album for the first time. When I tell people that Love is Hell isn’t Ryan Adams’ best record, I’m telling the truth and lying all at once.

School of the Flower - Six Organs of Admittance (Winter Albums)

School of the Flower

Six Organs of Admittance
Drag City Records.

SCQ Rating: 82%

Opening with a fury of cymbals and drums over one lonely, reverberating organ, School of the Flower’s first minute and a half could be the audible equivalent of a birth, a war, or some unspecific rift in Ben Chasny’s utopia. When the dust of ‘Eighth Cognition/All You’ve left’ settles into its softer, second suite, we have a better understanding of Chasny’s gift; a no-man’s land cross between droning noise and expertly crafted folk. For those who’ve followed his prolific career (encompassing at least one album per year since 1998), School of the Flower’s first impression hardly cries for attention. Yet when given repeated listens, this 2005 debut for Drag City Records expands and clings, stretching its meager running-time like endless prairie vistas and cements its vocal harmonies to your brain.

Few artists in the “progressive-folk” canon are as qualified to be named preposterous-flagship act as Six Organs of Admittance, largely due to Chasny’s love for acoustic ragas and lo-fi noise experiments. Although ‘Thicker Than A Smokey’ and ‘Saint Cloud’ meld raga with repetition to spellbinding effect, the thirteen-minute title track will surely test some listeners’ patience. The drones may also divide fans (i.e. what I consider a breathtaking bridge of feedback in ‘Home’, my girlfriend calls a “dying whale”), but those who enjoy contemplative folk mixed with some innovative noise elements will find that School of the Flower is obscenely mastered in the field.

What makes his eighth album his best is not only its accessibility but its production, which is further polished than previous efforts. Rustic strums are clean and shimmering, and with an array of bells and ambient sounds as heard in ‘Procession of Cherry Blossom Spirits’, School of the Flower is an expansive set of Appalachian folk and backwoods meditations. Next to a hot cup of tea, this is probably the best companion you could have on a frozen morning when you’re lucky enough to have nowhere to go.

Vespertine - Bjork (Winter Albums)

Vespertine

Bjork
Elektra Records.

SCQ Rating: 91%

If I endured one actual cool music-moment throughout the decade of my adolescence, it wasn’t obsessing over the Offspring in ’94, Smashing Pumpkins in ’95 or Third Eye Blind in ’97. Beyond loving those bands, there was an innate comfort to following such popular guitar bands; they were aggressive, they were catchy and I’ll be damned if they weren’t constructed ideally for teenage boys. My one cool music-moment wasn’t even falling head over heels for Hayden’s debut at the juvenile age of twelve, although that comes close. It was stealing my sister’s copy of Post when she went out with friends, playing ‘Enjoy’ or ‘I Miss You’ over and over on headphones (lest anyone hear it coming from my room!), and acquiring tastes that compared to my favourite artists were nothing short of otherworldly. By the time I discovered Vespertine, I was luckily several years older and far removed from caring what people heard playing in my room. From the sounds of this album, so was Bjork.

After invigorating dance music and electro-pop throughout the 90s and finishing the decade with the seminal Homogenic, Bjork looked inward. The digital mash of loops and beats that signified both Post and Homogenic were inspired by her five year relationship with DJ-artist Goldie; the former a testament to head-over-heels love, the latter a post-breakup onslaught. With her personal strife healed and behind her, Bjork began composing more minimal song structures that incorporated more ambient and electronic influences. Both genres are generously treated on the near X-rated ‘Cocoon’ and haunted whirls of ‘An Echo, A Stain’, while Bjork’s impressive beat-programming gives an organic pulse to album highlight ‘It’s Not Up To You’. Although equally dense in arrangements and diverse instrumentally, Vespertine is Bjork at her most pensive and intimate; her voice largely reduced to coos and echoes, her beats spliced into fluttered snowflakes, and lyrics that uncover her most private moments.

What makes Vespertine an ideal candidate for winter listening is its uniformed icy condition. ‘Frosti’ makes for an ideal mid-album instrumental, ‘Undo’ moves through orchestrated breezes like an oncoming blizzard, and even the percussive element of ‘Hidden Place’ is seemingly melting, as if Vespertine’s establishing shot takes place in an igloo. Perhaps Bjork’s finest moment behind the soundboard is on ‘Aurora’, however, where she melds recorded footsteps in deep snow to her own crunching beat-work. Whether you’re listening to its cold heartlessness or its window-steamed warmth, Vespertine is the perfectly sequenced, beautifully written artistic statement critics hoped for and fans thought she’d already delivered.

EP - Surf City

EP

Surf City
Morr Music Records.

SCQ Rating: 79%

Last June I recoiled deep into a love affair with Morr Music, writing about how blown away I was by their bold move from delicate electronics into amplified indie-rock. The album in context was Sleep Well by Electric President, which was recently crowned my favourite of 2008, and I was really only commenting on their blistering finale ‘When It’s Black’. No less than two weeks after finishing that year-end list I pick up Morr’s most recent signing, Surf City, only to discover that the German imprint have pushed their sonic palette even further into indie-rock. Not only does Surf City site Pavement and Animal Collective as influences (throw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah in there, as far as I’m concerned), they actually live up to the challenge; morphing idling riffs with passionate vocals into one awesome debut EP.

Like the painted letters that scrawl the New Zealand band’s name on EP’s cover, everything included in this nineteen minute set is of-the-moment and ready to explode. Songs like ‘Dickshaker’s Union’ and ‘Headin’ Inside’ launch out of the gate and complete rapid-fire guitar licks without ever feeling undercooked. While those two handle some of EP’s more aggressive moments, ‘Records of a Flagpole Skater’ and ‘Mt. Kill’ compliment as melodic highlights by fleshing out their songwriting skills from the volume.

By the time you’ve heard ‘Free the City’ – the only song to breach the five minute mark, and twice the length as most other tracks – drive recklessly from classic-surf music into a killer guitar line, EP’s cover-art rooster suddenly seems less, well, stupid. Suddenly this power-mad, gun-toting bird looks capable of demolishing buildings or leading a police chase with Surf City blaring out amid the chaos. It’s the band’s urgency that creates such vivid imaginary cases of rooster-disorder; a heaviness which, unlike most Morr albums that require contemplation, instead requires physical participation. In other words, if you’re capable of listening to Surf City without jumping, dancing or playing air-guitar around your apartment, you’re no fun. Get over it.

Alt Ctrl Sleep - Alt Ctrl Sleep (SCQ Detox 2 of 2)

Alt-Ctrl-Sleep

Alt-Ctrl-Sleep
Lakeshore Records.

SCQ Rating: 72%

This past November, while living in limbo at my parent’s house, I undertook hour-long searches for new music I may have missed while overseas. The house was fast asleep as I’d fight off my musical-jetlag at 4am with a glass of wine and several band-names I sought to uncover. Possibly the best of these finds is Alt-Ctrl-Sleep, a record I’ve yet to find in physical format that in soft reverberation and lo-fi ambience kept me company those quiet nights.

The duo, comprised of husband and wife Joe and April Diaco, create stunning dream-pop as languid and fragile as windshield frost. Splitting vocal duties evenly over these sixteen tracks, their numb voices sound shut-in, withdrawn from natural light and soaked in lovesick effects. If ‘You Alone’ and ‘Take Care’ evoke the acoustic slow-core of Mazzy Star, ‘In the End’, with its live-drum pulse and easy strums, is accomplishedly theirs; one of several tracks that start by exercising their indie-heroes’ trademarks before rising above into their own sound. This mature mark on lo-fi pop is also heard in the hazy aftermath of ‘Ones and Zeros’, the bittersweet keys of ‘Kandy’ and ‘Satellites (Venus to Mars)’ – a concoction of skittering drums and confident chords that sound epic compared to the album’s unassuming tip-toeing.

An album of such lush slow-core is bound to get monotonous, and while fifty-one minutes of fuzzy balladry will send most screaming for something upbeat, this duo have crafted an elegant mood piece for those who need it. Although sixteen tracks of tepid dream-pop is a bit indulgent (‘Ho-Hum Song’ definitely pushes it), Alt-Ctrl-Sleep sequence it well with a few instrumental segues (the electronic ‘Catching Up To You’ or twinkling lullaby ‘Sleep’) scattered to ensure fluent pacing. That said, Alt-Ctrl-Sleep remains a very low-key album that is best saved for nights alone or quiet bus rides.

Nouns - No Age (SCQ Detox 2 of 2)

Nouns

No Age
Subpop Records.

SCQ Rating: 65%

You need to have a significant level of talent to make two-chord, lukewarm punk songs worth hearing, and No Age are making a pretty solid, young career out of it. ‘Eraser’, one of their most popular songs no doubt, is a great example by executing its first half in warm-up mode before jamming the volume knob and completing the punk-rock puzzle with vocals and distortion. Yeah, that’s fine but… do they have anything else to offer? Thankfully, No Age answer with a collection of swelling post-punk fuzz and blinding bravado, jumping between the excited anthem of ‘Teen Creeps’ to botched collage-work as heard in ‘Impossible Bouquet’.

Nouns is as much about attitude as it is songwriting… which attests for several songs bleeding harmlessly into one another. I can dig a record that is intentionally muddled and abrasive on purpose, and I can appreciate a band that chooses to create in such lo-fi squalor. When that perfectly OK record becomes a celebrated piece of pop-art as dictated by critics who also hoisted Saturday=Youth onto Year-End lists everywhere, however, I worry that posturing (of both band and critic) is what’s truly being distinguished here. Is Nouns really an incredible record or does its ragged punk-ethos simply give credence to fans and critics who value attitude over aptitude? Like a thousand indie-rock bands before them, No Age are occupying the indecipherable lyrics and metropolitan-weathered looks we’ve seen before. Consider how many bands of the past five years have covered the same terrain and count how many have surpassed it to truly matter. I can tell you now: the bands who’ve surpassed have done so with music, not swagger.

The SCQ Detox (1 of 2)

Dear Comrades,

I would’ve loved to start the new year with some reviews of amazing 2009 albums, but that’ll have to wait a few weeks (until a few important, much anticipated records see the light of day). So instead of letting the first half of January slide by unnoticed, SCQ decided to rummage through some of 2008’s releases that didn’t warrant attention at the time. There will be a second wave of these 2008 reviews arriving later this week, featuring albums that were released late in the year.

Once the last traces of 2008 have been commented on, SCQ will move forward with regular features (including RIPPED OFF 08) and new reviews. Note that archived reviews for every artist or band are now clickable from the main page’s right margin, further fusing this blog with the SCQ Review. Feel free to leave messages or reminders if you'd like to see other changes fulfilled. I've had two friends give me an ear-full about records I've neglected to review, so if anyone else knows of a good album I've missed, write a comment or email me at theskeletoncrewquarterly@gmail.com.

Happy New Year to you all… I think it’s going to be a good one.

Love SCQ.

Lost Wisdom - Mount Eerie (SCQ Detox 1 of 2)

Lost Wisdom

Mount Eerie
P.W. Elverum & Sun Records.

SCQ Rating: 63%

Phil Elverum’s songwriting has always maintained a faint grip on early 70s folk ideology, where the hippie-metaphors and flower-power muses were left for dead and instead replaced with introspective bouts of clarity. Much of Elverum’s best work (the Microphones’ The Glow Part 2 or the Mount Eerie EP) dealt closely with his childhood but was smartly universalized by making himself a character in a work of imaginative fiction. Five years later, Lost Wisdom retains the skeleton of his cherished fables but finds Elverum closer to ever to that early 70s introspection. Dark, brooding guitars meander over the weak hiss of these ten home-recordings that find Mount Eerie better prepped for vinyl than ever before. Julie Doiron and Fred Squires guest.

Entirely acoustic and performed by guitar and voice alone, Lost Wisdom continually flirts with monotony over its quaint twenty-three minute running-time. Songs like ‘Voice in Headphones’ and ‘You Swan, Go On’ are needed respites from Elverum’s self-seriousness, but too few tracks here deviate the isolated tone pushed by ‘If We Knew’ or ‘Grave Robbers’. As brief as Lost Wisdom is, I’m still left a bit stir-crazy from being inside Elverum’s lo-fi mind for so long. If only he closed the disc with a righteous track of confident rebuttal to all his unrequited longings that, like the front image of a cabin burning to the ground, would’ve rendered his claustrophobic introspection worth undertaking.

Radio Retaliation - Thievery Corporation (SCQ Detox 1 of 2)

Radio Retaliation

Thievery Corporation
ESL Records.

SCQ Rating: 48%

Long have Thievery Corporation been accused of catering their chill-out talents to the musically-inexperienced, from their outlandishly whored-out ‘Lebanese Blonde’ to The Richest Man in Babylon’s foothold on the downtempo industry. Much of the duo’s criticism stems from their tourist-take on world music, as they borrow heavily from Indian, Jamaican, Middle-Eastern and South American genre staples. And while their broad use of ethnic otherness has resulted in several highlights, Radio Retaliation does little to deter the usual stereotype that fans of this Washington D.C. duo are commonly professional pedestrians who care little for electronica, or authentic world music.

It’s easy to see how such a strange stereotype could have truth behind it, as Thievery Corporation have always been best at creating music that offers a minimum of substance beneath the gloss. ‘Mandala’ may feature Anoushka Shankar on sitar and ‘Vampires’ might boast a meaty Fela Kuti cameo but neither give depth to their respective international scene, or push Thievery Corporation to new challenges. This lack of evolution is disappointing given the advances accomplished on 2005’s The Cosmic Game, which found the band (in cooperation with some of indie-rock’s elite) crafting some original takes on their usual, intercontinental palette.

Without doubt, the most spellbinding moment on disc is closing track ‘Sweet Tides’; a druggy Brian Jonestown Massacre guitar line melded to standard breakbeats and sung over by LouLou. It could soundtrack long roadtrips, vacation getaways and just about any movie ending one can imagine. Yep, Thievery Corporation haven’t changed much since ‘Lebanese Blonde’; same technique, same crossover potential, same criticisms. Only on Radio Retaliation, it sounds as if all signs of development have settled into this benign mix of late 90s connect-the-samples. Despite their global awareness, I think the world has moved on.

Words & Music - Aqualung (SCQ Detox 1 of 2)

Words & Music

Aqualung
Verve Records.

SCQ Rating: 45%

Dear Matt Hales,

What the hell? Do you realize how hard it was for me to convince people that Memory Man was actually good after you sweet-talked our mothers in with that 'Brighter Than Sunshine' tune off the schmaltzy Strange and Beautiful? One day you’re top forty’s new bashful boy, the next you’re a one-man symphony of bittersweet electronic-pop, turning out songs like ‘Pressure Suit’ and ‘Garden of Love’ as if your soul would implode if you didn’t. A year and a half later, I discover that your follow-up is ready for release; it’s called Words & Music, which is an immediate worry, and it’s released on jazz-label Verve. Still, I gave you the benefit of the doubt.

Listening to Words & Music, I’m hopelessly reminded of Paul McCartney… not the work he did with the Beatles but the drivel he churned out with Wings and in much of his solo career. You know the sound well… that of a moderately talented band-member taking ill-advised inspiration from his lazy, stay-home-while-the-wife-works, domesticated life, where songs deal with post-wedding memories, hackneyed piano arrangements, and predictable lyrics (“falling at your feet”, “on my knees, saying please”, “holding my heart” and “nananananana”… all poisonous one-liners on their own, are actually from the same chorus of ‘On My Knees’). In fact, I can imagine you working any tension or creativity out of these songs in some well-lit living room, sunshine streaming through the bay-window onto your baby-grand. Who knows, you could’ve written Memory Man under the same conditions but things were different then. You were reaching for something or someone in those songs, something or someone that I think you’ve found now cause this happy collection of sap is familiar. I’ve heard the same sap from other songwriters who ran out of superficial conflict and felt they could get by on Paul Simon covers or honkytonk piano melodies.

There are a few reminders of your talent present: ‘Nothing Else Matters’ retains some great hooks and ghostly studio echoes, while ‘Arrivals’ ends the disc as a frustratingly great celtic-based, orchestrated piece. Both these tracks incorporate your good ear for arranging symphonic pop and while they still suffer from a significant sap-factor, they prevent me from kicking myself too much for anticipating this album. After the depth of emotion found on Memory Man, Words & Music is truly little more than what’s promised in the title.

Know that had you never made Memory Man, I wouldn't have bothered with this album in the least. Turns out we were both at fault.

Better luck next time,

SCQ.