Autumn 2009

As warm and lovely as September has treated most of us here in central Canada, the leaves are a’ falling and with those cooler gusts we instinctively, primordially reach inward again. To soundtrack this slow withdrawal from getaway weekends and outdoor-living, SCQ has handpicked some records to rediscover your reflection in. Following in the footsteps of this year’s Spring and Summer features, Fall 2009 contains a bevy of recent releases (as opposed to last year’s retread of older seasonal faves); the alt country storytelling of Richmond Fontaine, Royal City’s last low-key recordings, the latest left-field folk by Six Organs of Admittance, and some crisp as foliage beats by Luga. A few of these are No Ripcord reviews from the summer that I've held onto for the right moment. They'll sound better now, I promise...

Now that another Quarterly feature is through, I’m outta here for the weekend… catching a stranger’s wedding and catching up with some hometown friends. Be sure to follow my callous attempts at relevance on Twitter and sign on to follow this blog as another SKLTN Contest is in the works. The long-delayed SKLTN MIX Vol. 1 is complete and en-route to last contest’s winner; I’ll post some pictures of it once he’s seen it first.

Don’t be a stranger,

Love SCQ.

We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River - Richmond Fontaine (Autumn 2009)

We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River

Richmond Fontaine
Décor Records.

SCQ Rating: 84%

Hell, I’ve been kicking leaves, running backstreets each night while the sun sets earlier and earlier. Something about autumn seems to make surroundings feel real again; the haze and humidity that clouded the skyline and our lungs dissipates and one night you look out at the view from your balcony and see each distant apartment light, every midnight star, clearer than you had in months. Like a seasonal moment of clarity, these leaves and sweet breezes harness all the gravitas that felt useless during summer’s spontaneity and appropriately, We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like a River, the ninth studio album from this Portland, Oregon five-piece, feels as lived-in and precious as your favourite fall jacket.

At first listen, Richmond Fontaine sounds like a band of Americana drifters picking the sweet weeds laid down by Uncle Tupelo and early Ryan Adams, and there’s truth in such lofty comparisons. As surely as Willy Vlautin’s vocals share the smoked-out introspection of Jeff Tweedy, no one would be shocked had the guitarists of Richmond Fontaine turned out to be Heartbreaker-peddlers David Rawlings and Gillian Welch. Leave it to the title track’s establishing shot of abandoned homes and empty pools filled with shopping carts to kill the comparisons then, as we’re introduced to Vlautin’s life in the shadow of the freeway. Because it’s beautiful; a love-song for someone he lived with on the outskirts of nowhere, counting quarters and dozing off to the current of overhead traffic. Wisely, it’s also a catalyst – their humble abode is broken into and ravaged – for the album’s turn into bittersweet nostalgia and subsequent tales of moving on. There’s the account of ‘Ruby and Lou’ whose chance encounter with a homeless youth kickstarts their aimless journey, and the aging boxer in ‘The Pull’ who eventually has his retina detached and is forced to retire.

Forget spoilers: the sting in these stories lies far deeper than my rough summaries reveal and besides… the best tales belong to Vlautin’s autobiography. As the ascending chorus of ‘You Can Move Back Here’ finds the band rebounding from their earlier burglary with determined percussion and delicate piano accompaniment, the roots-driven guitar of ‘The Boyfriends’ gives way to a mariachi crest, where Vlautin admits a frightening realization linking the strange men who once courted his mother to his own one-night stand. Even his friends, who in the case of ‘Lonnie’ apparently live harder than our lead-singer protagonist, reflect the core elements to Vlautin’s expertise, highlighting through hearsay the self-abuse and desire that equips the best-armed songwriters. Although We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River is predominantly mid-tempo, Richmond Fontaine rarely stay still, alternating between bittersweet reflection, classic Dylan-esque narratives and pulsating barn-burners. Take ‘Two Alone’, a ragged and unruly stomp that finds the band at their tensely composed then cymbal-crashing best while Vlautin spits rebellion toward what commoners consider his predisposed legacy.

Yes, there’s a catharsis at work, one as stubborn as it is volatile, yet never does Willy Vlautin’s lyrical curve swing beyond the needs of a composition and into whiny self-righteousness. And that’s a clear distinction which divides the whole of Americana down the centre: those who sing about past experiences and those who re-live them. With We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River, Richmond Fontaine deserve that latter category, fleshing out their liquor and love yarns with sweeping instrumentals that connect these near stream-of-conscious recollections; ‘Sitting Outside My Dad’s Old House’ dwells from the porch like a quiet evening while ‘Walking Back to Our Place at 3 A.M.’ is carried by finger-picked and choral elation, as if resolving any trauma of the album’s opening robbery. Inevitably, it’s a false ending trumped by ‘A Letter to the Patron Saint of Nurses’, a spoken-word account of hospital horrors and dying dreams that sheds a different angle on the idyllic relationship that opened the disc. Despite the contrast of diseased reality and healthy lethargy, Vlautin and his lover remain comfortable but restless, in love yet indifferent. The life-lessons of being a nurse don’t instill renewed purpose, so much as find the couple losing optimism, and as broke as they started out.

We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River has its cyclical moment, sure, where resolution seems to evade Vlautin and his assorted cast of characters in favour of repetition, but that’s hardly the goal. What Richmond Fontaine (rounded out by Dave Harding, Sean Oldham, Paul Brainard and Dan Eccles) offer here are moments in time, as eloquently performed as they are lyrically detailed, which glimpse beyond the surface events without grasping for metaphysical purpose. How a band of this caliber – from Oregon, no less – remains more popular overseas than here in the West remains a mind-blowing mystery to me yet, make no mistake, this record belongs among the genre’s upper echelon. A tragic, triumphant modern classic for dying, autumnal days.

1999-2004 - Royal City (Autumn 2009)

1999-2004

Royal City
Asthmatic Kitty Records.

No Ripcord Rating: 8/10
SCQ Rating: 79%

The hazards of B-side compilations are known and revered like almighty tablets of truth; discount these fair warnings and risk feeling ripped off. Such releases are commonly (I.) excused as label cash-ins, (II.) composed of experiments gone awry or rough ideas abandoned and (III.) destined for completists and die-hard fans only. Having obeyed these tablets of truth faithfully throughout the years, I admit my approach to 1999-2004, the posthumous rarities compilation by Royal City, was guarded by a few preconceptions.

And yet I couldn’t ignore the tizzy this release was causing from the band’s hometown of Guelph, Ontario, through their adopted city of Toronto. Magazines and bloggers alike were issuing exclamation-mark riddled statements of “FINALLY” while a collective of well-known Canadian artists recently held a concert-vigil consisting exclusively of Royal City covers. So why all the commotion about a B-sides album? Are the band members reuniting? Is this some mythological album recklessly buried or shelved by a disputing label? No, none of the above. These are last remnants… the odds and sods of a band five years dead, tied lovingly into a hardback package courtesy of Asthmatic Kitty. Its spine smells of suffocated library books, its title reads as an epitaph, graceful but unadorned. That this collection of scraps has been feasted upon so ravenously by press and fans should suggest Royal City were underappreciated during their tenure, and in these twelve songs, Asthmatic Kitty makes a solid bid to multiply the band’s devotees.

As if sequenced to be a revelation, 1999-2004 kicks off with a full-blooded take on Iggy Pop’s ‘Here Comes Success’, matching their knack for folk-rock dynamics with vocalist Aaron Riches’ punk roots. With ‘A Belly Was Made For Wine’ and ‘The Nations Will Sing’, the record settles into mid-tempo rarities that are as welcoming as they are slapdash, sounding impressively live off the floor. Yet the heart of this record recedes from sporadically sunny harmonies, choosing to dwell predominantly in moodier arrangements that reveal Royal City’s true gifts.

Make no mistake, 1999-2004 is a ceiling-watching, wine-drinking assault on one’s fleeting sense of nostalgia. You can feel the supple descent of guitars squeeze your heart as ‘Postcards’ finds Riches refusing all pictures and postcards, both being needless reminders that he’s “blue”. It’s a rain-soaked testimonial to little moments spent alone, an intimacy revisited in the acoustic ‘I Called But You Were Sleeping’ and again in ‘O You With Your Skirt’; a song of such bittersweet memory, its piano-accompanied chorus and wailing harmonica warrant its consideration as one of the year’s best songs… written eight years ago. And speaking of nostalgia, their take on The Strokes’ ‘Is This It?’ is a banjo-led lament, tempered and dreamy in its simplicity.

Of course, such a release occasionally admits its B-side status, digging out a few audible throwaways like the four-track recorded ‘Can’t You Hear Me Calling’ or the endearing ‘Dog Song’; the former merely breathing into harmonica, the latter floating on field-recordings and static. Yet these sketches lend their vulnerable acoustics well to this collection’s autumnal vibe, achieving a cathartic but unconscious rite of passage.

Some of Royal City’s aforementioned die-hards might think I’m a poor advocate for this release, having wandered into the band’s epilogue after missing their story (as well as their three much-loved albums). Yet 1999-2004 is no common compilation, feeling as varied and vital as a new album and, in the process, completely derailing my guarded misconceptions. Yet for those either as new to Royal City as myself or haunted by the hazards of B-sides, be not afraid. 2009 might be Royal City’s most successful year yet.

(This review was originally published on No Ripcord...)

Luminous Night - Six Organs of Admittance (Autumn 2009)

Luminous Night

Six Organs of Admittance
Drag City Records.

No Ripcord Review: 8/10
SCQ Rating: 82%

School of the Flower, my first encounter of Six Organs of Admittance, was the kind of listening-experience that filled a void I’d never actually felt. Pensive and mystical, folky yet at times nearly ambient, that record followed me on snow-scuffled walks to winter’s end. It was a work of chilling comfort, where the instrumentation – not just the lyrics – communicated an ethereal connection with nature, a transition from the isolation of winter to the fruits of spring. Ever since, Ben Chasny’s work as Six Organs of Admittance has held a defiant vacancy in my mind. As influential as School of the Flower was, my perpetual intrigue is more likely caused by the man’s constant output, having issued no less than nine releases since that 2005 album. So when the prolific wanderer offered nothing new last year, I should’ve seen Luminous Night coming.

Commonly, artists of such productive nature inadvertently dull their own impact, spreading their creativity thin over multiple projects instead of patiently crafting one prime set of songs. RTZ, a triple-disc compilation of unavailable tracks released in January, should have been that marker of creative exhaustion, but instead acts as a mopping-up of Chasny’s early lo-fi career. Luminous Night is, without doubt, the commencement of a new chapter; an eloquent package that finds Chasny’s sound fully realized without abandoning those irrefutable Six Organs… trademarks. Each of these eight tracks thrive off their bigger arrangements – most of which are full-band excursions featuring viola, flutes and subtle electronics - as well as the increased studio production heard on Shelter From the Ash. ‘Actaeon’s Fall (Against the Hounds)’ ushers in like opening credits from a period piece, an instrumental of old English folk that separates Luminous Night from earlier works. Those hints of antiquity are complimented by the forward-thinking ‘Anesthesia’, which laments its vengeful lyrics with background hues of psych-folk guitar-work. It’s a beautiful and provocative track made all the more alluring by Chasny’s vocals, which are markedly emboldened, carrying the same poise but with greater command. Dividing the record in half is ‘Cover Your Wounds With the Sky’, a trinkle of piano over drones that prove how capably Six Organs of Admittance can juggle avante-folk with starry ambience.

If School of the Flower had one glaring misstep, it was the title track’s excessive mantra, which circled itself for thirteen minutes (thereby amounting a third of the album’s running-time) while constantly teasing my skip button. This love of repetitive ragas is ever-apparent on Luminous Night but here Chasny has managed to ingrain them with style, locked in groove under a striking viola solo on ‘River of Heaven’. Even with a title so grand, 'River of Heaven' is the closest thing to an epic here, rounding out nicely at seven-plus minutes (unlike The Sun Awakens’ twenty-three minute ‘River of Transfiguration’). With each composition given equal attention and detail, the result is Six Organs of Admittance’s best-conceived offering… lavishly scored and, in some cases, downright sinister. For exit music, we’re confronted with ‘Enemies Before the Light’, a claustrophobic drone that unleashes Chasny’s electric and leads a squall worthy of upsetting any chance for a pretty fade-out. This isn’t psych-folk anymore, for whatever that term was worth. This is goth-folk.

In true form, Luminous Night illustrates the innate mood of a season – in this case, autumn – and although released in the dog days of August, this eleventh official album carries the same nomadic sentiments that feel as honest and imperative as the dying foliage around it. Sequenced beautifully to balance lyrical narratives with haunting instrumentals, it’s another Six Organs of Admittance album… but so much more.

(This review was originally published on No Ripcord...)

Be May Day - Luga (Autumn 2009)

Be May Day

Luga
Distant Noise Records.

SCQ Rating: 78%

Luga isn’t an artist who takes his craft lightly. As 2008 saw the electronic genre battle between retro pastiche and left-field self-consciousness, Sending Triangles was a breath of fresh air, reminding purists that electronica can be soulful instead of ironic or trendsetting. For all of that record’s sleek confidence, few would’ve guessed that Sending Triangles was actually Luga’s debut… not to mention Distant Noise’s flagship release. Indeed, Luga – also known as Lewis Broad-Ashman – provided the label a mission statement to revert laptop-based music to its humble yet transcendent elements… a notion that is deservedly Distant Noise’s birthright.

Arriving mere months after his first outing, Be May Day somehow feels years evolved, as if Luga snipped the wings off his debut’s airborne arrangements and taught them to stomp around. The result is an album still looking skyward but rooted in heavier percussion and darker melodies. This progression is captured amid the dual speeds of ‘Home’, as plodding beats steady a rapid-fire rhythm of keys, or in ‘Be Mine’s addictive loops and resonating atmospherics. Alongside these waves of haze are some unexpectedly creepy moments; the warped carousel segue in ‘Plonk’ and the tense undercurrents of ‘Yellow Lily’ - which resemble ominous Geogaddi-era intermissions - ensures this sophomore a more reclusive nature. Despite such playful trickery, Luga has allowed himself no refuge for lost ambience in these compositions. Even ‘Monitron’, which is as wide-eyed as anything from Sending Triangles, features crisper production and clearer sonic details. Be May Day showcases some notable new skills, sure, but the most obvious is certainly its use of organic (or painstakingly organic-sounding) instrumentation; namely, the surprising live drums which propel ‘Ploriad’ and the treated vocals which render ‘Understand Theory’ an album highlight.

Although Luga has added some grit to his electronic-meets-shoegaze style, Be May Day proves all the better for it, anchoring his melodies to head-nodding beats and, in the process, giving his music a palpable sense of humanity. If Sending Triangles was an ideal soundtrack for a head in the clouds, Be May Day is my choice for walking beneath them; an ideal soundtrack for late summer adventures.

Okay EP - Venice is Sinking

Okay

Venice is Sinking
One Percent Press Records.

SCQ Rating: 73%

Hot on the heels of recent full-length AZAR, this Okay Maxi-Single arrives in stores tomorrow looking to compliment its parental album with some unheard recordings and alternate versions. Strutting in on their A-side, Venice Is Sinking open this EP on a note far breezier than AZAR's, as ‘Okay’’s cascading piano and surging bass match a sunny brass-section. Setting such an upbeat pace, one would almost think Okay’s cover-art - a ground-shot more interested in the sky and powerlines than the small-town fences and graffiti below – would be a ruse, looking so emotionally washed out while Venice is Sinking celebrate.

Not so much… and that’s a good thing. That image’s any town, anywhere landscape perfectly suits follow-up ‘Compass’, which opens with Karolyn Troupe’s morose viola ascending into Daniel Lawson’s clear yet clouded lyrics “I consume all the sadness…”. It’s a ruminating track that, for the life of its grief, can’t remain low-key and drifts toward orchestral release, making the most of Troupe and Lawson’s boy/girl harmonies. Beyond these being good Venice is Sinking songs, what deems ‘Compass’ and fellow-track ‘Give Up’ so pertinent is that they’re actually covers of the California-based band Okay. It isn’t surprising, as both cover versions sound slightly at odds with the Venice is Sinking oeuvre, but the Athens-based band do startle with these renditions, elbowing enough room to lay down their dream-pop fingerprint without re-writing the originals.

Closing on an alternate version of the title track, Okay is more than just a convoluted series of Okay-references. This maxi-single compliments AZAR’s notion of taking inspiration from your surroundings but is unique in how it voices such disdain through another band’s work (aptly called Okay, at that). And honestly, who doesn’t love maxi-singles?!? Cheers to Venice Is Sinking for sticking by the format with this varied release. For those who've yet to hear AZAR, it's worth checking out; read the review below!

AZAR - Venice is Sinking

AZAR

Venice is Sinking
One Percent Press Records.

SCQ Rating: 81%

The sepia-stained shot that adorns AZAR is something to marvel at. We’ve all lived in a town like this: half-developed commercial lots, small businesses, a handful of apartments reaching for a cityscape, and always on the outskirts of something greater. Even its framing is perfect, providing a view that, at ground-level, many of us see every day. And as ‘Azar One’ opens with gloomy keys and some treated guitar, this record, perhaps appropriately, could be the work of just about any band, in any number of genres. As the strings swell and military percussion kicks in, we’re given a first slice of the grandeur that permeates Venice Is Sinking’s work; contemplative pools of rock-ambience met by a track like ‘Ryan’s Song’, which glides on a web of guitar tones under Daniel Lawson and Karolyn Troupe’s vocal harmonies.

Such is AZAR’s difficult task for duality, to proceed in hopscotch fashion through hazy melodious slowcore and instrumental suites alike without revealing its bipolarity. Given the brevity of most suites (entitled ‘Azar One’ to ‘Azar Four’), these segues are largely sympathetic to the album’s more structured compositions, providing electronic experimentation (‘Azar Three’) or ambient asides (‘Azar Two’) without being cumbersome. And although each suite deals with its own sonic palettes, they collectively share an ominous mood that unites the record thematically. The great achievement of AZAR, however, is how this quintet from Athens manages the same gracefulness with their bread-and-butter rock compositions, melding the 50s girl-group swoon of ‘Wetlands Dance Hall’ to the sighing near-waltz of ‘Young Master Sunshine’. Better yet is the one-two punch of ‘Sun Belt’ and ‘Iron Range’, the first featuring the heartbreaking viola and timbre of Troupe, the latter an affecting composition that combines brass and strings into tremendous heaves that could soundtrack a sunrise. Inevitably, ‘Sun Belt’ and ‘Iron Range’ represent AZAR’s best arrangements, striving outward in their own ways, respectively adventurous and symphonic. In these songs and those faultless transitions, AZAR earns its epic nature… which is no small feat given that the record runs at a purposeful forty-plus minutes.

That the cover-art’s matter-of-fact angle disguises the emotional weight of these songs is a no-brainer, although I don’t think that was Venice is Sinking’s purpose. As AZAR was recorded during an uncertain, stressful time for the band, this shot encompasses a ground-zero for aspiration and failure; the place you start out from being the same place you risk falling back into. This pressure of completing what could’ve been their final album forced Lawson and Troupe, backed by Lucas Jensen, James Sewell and newcomer Jeremy Sellers, to re-evaluate the importance of Venice is Sinking, and the resulting performances prove this band’s unity. We’ve all lived in AZAR… but this album makes that existence grander and sweeter.

Harmonium - The Soundcarriers (No Ripcord Review)

Harmonium

The Soundcarriers
Melodic Records.

No Ripcord Rating: 6/10
SCQ Rating: 63%

Let’s get down to brass-tax for a moment: we all love a good runaway. Ducking out the backdoor, faking a sick day, skirting confrontation, letting sleeping dogs lie. I mean, here we are riding the crest of Foreclosure-America, Recession-Globe, Jihad-Tora Bora, Indie-label Bankruptcy… all of which are jagged rock-tips spiking over black oil and glacier-fresh water. Man, 2009 is one hell of a harsh buzz-kill. Screw it… what say we ditch our day-jobs, borrow your uncle’s van and drive on down the coast? My brother’s shacked up on a farmhouse an hour from San Fran with some draft-dodgers and grass; we can stay with them, live off the land, find some girls, get spiritual. That’s right: I’d say it’s high-time for a 60s revival! When the world’s got you blue, when the pressures of daily life corner you, take that backdoor. Revivalism is the great escape.

Were those naive impressions – captured by The Mamas and the Papas, The Byrds, etc. - really the 60s or was that decade simply the catalyst for every wide-eyed band to mimic and adorn their backwards-looking pop with narcotic-fueled cover-art? In other words, is Harmonium, the first full-length by Nottingham’s The Soundcarriers, a pastiche of flower-power stereotypes or an authentic revivalist record? It’s a question of purpose and integrity, one that this Nottingham-based quartet skillfully rebuffs with ‘Time Will Tell’s patient, percussive build of organ and keys that, when peaked, unleashes a molasses-thick bassline to anchor Leonore’s angelic timbre. Followed quickly by the lingering keys and sporadic bass-momentum of ‘Uncertainty’, Harmonium launches forward like a glorious hybrid of Stereolab and early, Legal Man era Belle and Sebastian. And although the sequencing proves hampered by the constantly mellow groove, The Soundcarriers hit a bullseye with ‘Been Out to Sea’, a track that, despite its title, pushes lazily forward like a humid, desert stumble to cymbal-crashing redemption.

For all the Stereolab or Belle and Sebastian comparisons in the world, Harmonium’s loveliest tracks can only affect so much as throw-back songs. After all, it’s one thing to drink from the same retro well as those artists, but another thing entirely to craft something new from the much-celebrated decade. The vocals on the rather stalemate ‘Volcano’, for example, are no easier to decipher than your average Black Moth Super Rainbow vocoder-overdose, but at least that Pennsylvania-based band is embedding hippie-culture with more freakishness than it can handle. And as soothingly sweet as Leonore’s vocals are a dead-ringer for Trish Keenan’s (of Broadcast), it’s a comparison that finds The Soundcarrier’s hopelessly conservative, unable to either adapt their muse with modern ideas or think beyond songwriting constructs that were radical fifty years ago.

With their clear love of 60s soundtracks and sky-bound psychedelia, combined on ‘Let It Ride’s breezy finale, I can’t deny that I dig what the Soundcarriers are aiming for. Harmonium is as sunny and affable for outdoor get-togethers as it is sexified for one’s swinging bachelor pad. And perhaps I’m pushing what is clearly a talented band to reach further, to surpass their inspirational zeitgeist at the risk of conformity, but a new direction, however uncharted, is always more commendable than taking the revivalist backdoor.

(This review was originally published on No Ripcord...)

Seek Magic - Memory Tapes

Seek Magic

Memory Tapes
Rough Trade Records.

SCQ Rating: 88%

When Rough Trade announced its upcoming release of Seek Magic, limited to one thousand copies and packaged with a rare second disc of bonus material, I decided against picking it up. Yeah it’s a collectible and sure it’s packaged with some cool frills but paying twelve pounds plus shipping (which, as a Canadian, rounds out to nearly thirty dollars) simply wasn’t jiving with my financial situation. Well, turns out it would’ve been worth it; following Memory Cassette’s attention-grabbing Call and Response EP a few months back, Dayve Hawk returns with alterna-alias Memory Tapes to craft what might be his first masterpiece.

Now in all fairness, Call and Response EP pulled a George Costanza, going out on a high note after its brief but extraordinary twelve-minute running-time. Appropriately, those four songs shot on all cylinders. Was it reasonable to expect no less of Hawk on Seek Magic, despite it bearing a different moniker and spanning the man’s first full-length effort? Maybe… OK yes, but Memory Tapes delivers more than left-field electro-pop here, sequencing dreamy breakbeat landscapes next to mountainous symphonies that, like Seek Magic’s cover-art, melt the notion of pop into gorgeous rainbow puddles. That’s just the beginning; ‘Swimming Field’ acts as a Cocteau Twins placebo, catching our allured ears and sinking us into its soft haze before the blender-pop of ‘Bicycle’ revs in, trading unsettled verses for electro chorus embellishments, and climaxing with a feel-good triumph best described as Air France covering Daft Punk with Robert Smith on guitar… but better. From there, you’ll have to wait until the percolating keys and long sighs of finale ‘Run Out’ to catch your breath again as Seek Magic maintains its chemical high with ‘Green Knight’’s smooth disco and the gauntlet which is ‘Stop Talking’; a seven-minute centerpiece that intersects Hawk’s take on electro, IDM and shoegaze. Now using the term blender-pop seems misleading, likely stirring up comparisons to Girl Talk’s last mash-up record, but Seek Magic finds the descriptor taking on new meaning as its wide influences are filtered so wisely and showcased so fluently, there’s nothing jarring or primitive about it. Even the record’s most blatant double-take, ‘Plain Material’, which opens with lo-fi guitar and quickly evolves into Hawk’s singer-songwriter debut, replete with laptop snaps and sampled chorals, feels ingrained to the album’s spontaneous, irresistible vibe.

Unlike that Memory Cassette EP, which carried its marvelous instability like a guerilla mixtape, Seek Magic belongs to a higher order, free of homemade stitches and featuring some impressive vocals. It takes an outsider to pull something of this magnitude and Hawk is up to the challenge, crafting a full-length of his creative surplus and quashing all the rules modern electronica didn’t know it was shackled with. In the process, Seek Magic debuts an author breaking beyond his remixing gig with a fresh angle to unmitigated pop. Um, is it too late to pre-order?

Haunt the Upper Hallways - The Declining Winter (No Ripcord Review)

Haunt the Upper Hallways

The Declining Winter
Home Assembly.

No Ripcord Rating: 4/10
SCQ Rating: 47%

Objectivity can be fleeting. Despite my attempts to ignore the band’s name, their snowy cover-art and even their blizzard-loving promotional video, I still hear Haunt the Upper Hallways as a wintry retreat from all civilization. Perhaps it’s unavoidable too… that this Leeds-based group’s clear admiration for cold weather should taint these compositions so. Yet when a band clings to a muse so stringently that it occupies their very identity, I have the habit of pulling back and reassessing. After all, I’m writing and you’re reading this for the music within these beautifully packaged sleeves… so I ask why The Declining Winter couldn’t trust their songs to capture and relate this winterized imagery on their own?

The answer to that question lies in wait throughout Haunt the Upper Hallways, the fourth release by Richard Adams (formerly of Hood) and his ensemble compiled from other bands. As a rising chord progression falls into circular pattern, the title track opens the disc in tense, full-band form with light cymbal taps, accompanying violin and distant voices. Besides its steady build, the track needlessly approaches six minutes and dwarfs most of the subsequent sketch-like tracks… in length if not in quality. The band fares better on focused arrangements like ‘My Name In Ruins’ and ‘Where the Severn Rivers Tread’, the latter succeeds best in evoking their restlessness with shackled rattling and violins crawling over each other before the band tightens into a smooth post-rock trajectory. Despite these frigid folk tunes, the most interesting material on Haunt the Upper Hallways is the segues; ‘Drenched’, all treated layers that might’ve once been vocals and ‘Red Brick Houses’, which loops violins amid growing urgency, are unformed and explorative, representing brief reprieves from this disc’s consistent ‘cabin fever’ vibe.

So why all the snow-blind overkill from The Declining Winter? Well, it’s an easy way to contextualize a lightweight album. In one respect I give props to The Declining Winter for proudly cornering their music into such a narrow and bleak framework but sadly, Haunt the Upper Hallways is as one-note musically as their imagery, no more or less creative than the wintry snapshots of roadways and branches posted on their website. Most of the guitar-based tracks are claustrophobically similar and, for a disc of thirty-one minutes, this mini-album feels gratuitously over-padded. Sure, the remix of ‘Carta’ would be an appropriate finale, what with its manipulated codas providing a warmth indicative of spring (or dare I say it… the declining winter…), but it extends an uneventful six minutes and is then followed by an instrumental mix of another Haunt the Upper Hallways track. For a release of such unique proportions – a 7” bundled with a CD – where the rules are already bent in their favour, why stretch their already thin album thinner? The answer, I’ll wager, is lost in the packaging.

(This review was originally published on No Ripcord...)

Dustland - The Gentleman Losers

Dustland

The Gentleman Losers
City Centre Offices.

SCQ Rating: 72%

Some albums jump out at you, grab your attention and get spun tirelessly. Others crawl behind you, catching eye contact each time you turn and step over it. That’s what Dustland has been these past few months; a record among heaps that I ought to review but due to its low-key mood I always hold off, expecting its soft nuances to hammer me over the head with understanding someday. Yet of these crawling albums, a tiny percentage will neither reveal themselves as worthwhile growers nor gentle disappointments, instead keeping a guarded middle-ground between listener and artist. As Samu and Ville Kuukka of The Gentleman Losers understand, a good dose of elusiveness not only attracts a more dedicated audience but eventually creates a bond, or at least a settlement, of acceptance with its listener.

At first you’ll simply fight to categorize it; for two months, I didn’t hesitate to think of Dustland as petal-soft post-rock for Air fans, serene with touches of old country. Upon closer listens I located its significant electronic fingerprint – its treated guitar tones, sampled vinyl static, warped keys. Now I shrug with an all-of-the-above answer, giving Dustland the reputation of a tightly-sewn soundtrack spanning Americana’s history with electronica’s chameleon-charms. How else could one identify ‘Wind In Black Trees’, which is an honest-to-god drone composition doted over by petal-steel? Or how about ‘Lullaby of Dustland’ and how it layers its keys and morose guitar as if the Finnish brothers are a slow-motion Tortoise? Once you attempt to bypass Dustland’s genre, you’ll find the real challenge is the record’s snail-like pace, which submerges its listener in mood more often than it leads them through. ‘Midnight Of the Garden Trees’ and ‘Pebble Beach’ adequately represent The Gentleman Losers’ specialty, that being their spectrum of prodding; as the former loiters in minor-key arpeggios and ambient electronics, the latter matches a similar prodding guitar to shimmering keys, echoed drums and cymbal rushes to dreamy effect. Between these two tracks, Dustland presents its choice of pace as respectively risky and lovely, but few could doubt they’re perfect accompaniment for quiet reflecting. I know that, personally, each time I hear ‘Ballad of Sparrow Young’, whether I’m watching incoming rainclouds or staring at a computer screen, I’m transported to a wild plateau far removed from my city’s concrete confines. With its clean guitar and subtle electronic soundscapes, Dustland aurally encompasses its own domain; it may not be an exciting or hyper-real place to live, but it’s at peace with itself. Although this sophomore isn't for everyone, The Gentleman Losers prove to be a wise pick-up for City Centre Offices.

September Update

Dear Comrades and Skltnz,

Despite these late great summer days, the odd auburn hue or falling leaf assures us that Autumn is closing in and with it, the last release dates of ‘09 worth getting excited about. With half of September in the books and an upcoming October full of anticipated albums, I thought I should update you on a few SCQ events coming your way.

1.) First off, I’m excited to announce an upcoming feature on SCQ. As opposed to last year’s The Cool & Weird ‘year-in-news’ write-up, I’ve enlisted some gracious artists, bands and label-bosses to delve into their favourite records, songs and moments of 2009. While I’ll keep details of the guest-list a secret, you can certainly get a sneak-peak by backtracking some of SCQ’s higher ranked reviews. The feature, which should be rather sprawling, will be posted mid-November. Since I’m a huge fan of everyone who has so far signed on, this feature nearly surpasses the personal hype I’m putting on SCQ’s year-end lists.

2.) Speaking of which, year-end lists are being nourished and disciplined weekly. Sticking with tradition, December’s content will round out with SCQ’s Top Fifty Songs of 2009, followed a few days later by SCQ’s Top Twenty Albums of 2009. Both will be challenging to finalize but, with any luck, enjoyable to breeze through after a few eggnogs.

3.) Between those two focuses and the growing influx of promotional materials coming through SCQ (keep ‘em coming!), I’ve decided to push my Top Fifty Albums of the 00s into 2010, where it rightly belongs. It’ll be the most cumbersome, impossible feature to get right and I’d rather not rush it… especially when I’ll have nothing better to write about in January.

Enough rambling. Any questions, comments or likewise rants can be emailed to me at theskeletoncrewquarterly@gmail.com

Thanks for reading and keep posted; the next few months should be massive!

Love SCQ.

Ursa Major - Third Eye Blind

Ursa Major

Third Eye Blind
Mega Collider Records.

SCQ Rating: 86%

Six years is an eternity for a pop band. It’s longer than most bands’ hiatuses, however indefinite, and longer than any artist has taken to write their masterpiece. Upon the release of Red Star EP last fall, I detailed how frustrating a six-year wait can be for a fan but personal complaints aside, this lengthy absence was downright dangerous for the band. If there was ever a serendipitous marker in their career screaming “get your shit together”, it should’ve exploded like a cherry bomb under Stephan Jenkins’ pillow following the commercial disappointment of Out of the Vein. Forget that it remains their best album; Elektra was folding in 2003 and 3eb, stuck with a dying label’s marketing prowess (only ‘Blinded’, the unlikely first single, received video treatment), were left to fend for themselves. Derided by many journalists as a 90s band, that should’ve been the end of Third Eye Blind, capped predictably by their greatest hits package in 2006. So it’s worth looking back over six largely unproductive years in the life of a time-capsule band when the long-delayed, nearly fictitious Ursa Major arrived in stores last month and landed on the Billboard’s Top Three. If you listen closely, you'll hear the clatter of journalists spinning through old rolodexes for 3eb's press agent.

Of course, I’d forego the crude history lesson and fist-pumping had Ursa Major become the letdown everyone was expecting. Yet this long-awaited fourth album not only avenges the tragic mismanagement of Out of the Vein commercially, it reinstates Third Eye Blind in all its rocking, quirky, guilty-pleasured glory. ‘Summer Town’ evokes everything you first loved about Third Eye Blind, from its catchy, San Fran-soaked chorus to Jenkins’ hopeless love for rapping, while ‘Can You Take Me’ reclaims the lost art of legitimizing power-pop with, you know, quality songwriting. As surely as Ursa Major contributes several new hit singles to their catalog (the unforgettable drum-fills of ‘Don’t Believe a Word’, future hit ‘Bonfire’), Jenkins and Co. also bare gifts for the dedicated fans who recall ‘Motorcycle Driveby’ or ‘The Red Summer Sun’ as their classics. ‘Dao of St. Paul’ captures all the intimacy and unsung details of Jenkins’ traumatic lovelife, sewn tightly with the same lyrical strengths that made ‘Good Man’ or ‘The Background’ so irresistible. And like those songs, the most pressing catalyst for Jenkins’ turmoil goes unnamed here… an omission that inevitably points to him. Still, ‘Dao of St. Paul’ and ‘Monotov’s Private Opera’ together showcase a growth for the songwriter, whereby regrets and outrages presented on past albums are here given a silver lining of self-understanding, even redemption, on well-assembled chorals which close both songs.

Gushing aside, Ursa Major isn’t perfect; in fact, it’s the band’s first record that feels a tad disjointed, as between every handful of superb, 3eb tracks, there’s a nagging track destined to disrupt momentum. Prime example ‘One in Ten’ somehow evades the cutting-room floor with a well-intentioned but hopelessly lazy ode to a love guttered by lesbianism. At least ‘One in Ten’s greatest defense is its brevity, whereas ‘About To Break’ is just plodding, boasting no obvious strengths or weaknesses. These are minor imperfections unlikely to warrant the skip button but associative to the record’s patchy groove, even when Ursa Major, by percentage, has the most balladry of any 3eb record.

When, two years ago, Jenkins stated that Ursa Major - at that point, still titled The Hideous Strength - would be a very political record, I couldn’t help but cringe. Such an idea was topical during George Bush’s first run and exploitive during his inexplicable second term, so when ‘Non-Dairy Creamer’ arrived - complete with Jenkins’ ironic jab on Bush’s “mission accomplished” moment - after Obama had won the presidency, I had thoughts of throwing in my 3eb towel. Politics move too quickly for someone carrying six years of writer’s block, and mercifully, this full-length rejects the leftist’s pop-culture handbook with Jenkins’ progressive but non-preachy commentary. It’s one of many aspects to this collection I didn’t expect to enjoy, yet another that cements Ursa Major as an uncompromising comeback.

Sure Is the Risk Made - Conelrad

Sure is the Risk Made

Conelrad
Munch House Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

Among the great many things to love about Boards of Canada’s sound, it’s worth noting that even sound-alikes - who in most music fields would be roundly rejected - can create some wonderful material without being panned. Not only is this true because Boards of Canada basically represents an entire sub-genre of electronica (making it pretty hard for others artists to share the sandbox) , but also because the Scottish duo’s frugal output hints at so many possible directions; the wide-eyed melodies of Music Has the Right to Children, the subliminal disturbia of Geogaddi, and on and on. Without such landmarks, we wouldn’t have Ulrich Schnauss or Epic45 or Millimetrik or Conelrad, the nameless PhD student responsible for Sure Is the Risk Made, an album that channels BoC’s hazy melodies into a beautiful, sometimes inscrutable release.

If we were to play the name-that-BoC game, Sure Is the Risk Made would definitely pinpoint The Campfire Headphase for all intents and purposes; using treated guitar over his waterlogged soundscapes, most of these songs carry the soft-edged serenity that 2005 album sought to perfect. And for the first few songs, Conelrad makes a solid bid to dethrone it. ‘Up Periscope’ washes in with percolating keys and resonating guitar for a head-nodding daydream while ‘Charger Paris Mirage’ steals attention with a pillowed guitar pattern and soothingly warped keys. By the end of ‘Byford Dolphin’, which slides at a glacial pace into a beat-driven meltdown, I needed no further convincing that Sure Is the Risk Made is comfort-music, destined for comatose Sundays and late-night noodling. After that three-peat, Conelrad settles into the record’s moody core with ‘Paternoster’, a stuttering evolution of beats anchored by a distant squall, and ‘S.O.S. To the Entire World’, an elegant slab of slo-core electronica that plays its drama like your favourite trance song dragged to a hypnotic groove.

At seven minutes each, those two tracks act as a hard-to-beat centerpiece, separating the poppier – admittedly top-heavy – half from the more elusive ambient back-end. From low-key symphonics on ‘Daughter (For Sara)’ to the barely there ‘Magnet’, Sure Is the Risk Made lets go of the reigns near the end, as if Conelrad sequenced this song-cycle around the premise that his listeners should be asleep by this point. It wouldn’t surprise me; as well as insisting that his music remain free (did I not mention that this album, not to mention all his others, are free?), Conelrad claims to create music as a method of relaxation. As this record is therapeutic to him, I have no doubt Conelrad would take Sure Is the Risk Made’s rep for being an excellent bedtime companion as a point of pride. Until the Scottish duo emerge with anything new (or, you know, update their website for the first time since summer 2006), I recommend familiarizing yourself with Conelrad’s latest.

Succubus - Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation

Succubus

The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation
Ad Noiseam Records.

SCQ Rating: 79%

On the 15th of January 2009, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble gathered at a studio in the Netherlands to shake out the rust before going on tour. One wisely recorded improv session later, these film buffs emerged with a seventy-five minute love-letter to the movie they habitually watched while recording: Jess Franco’s Succubus. Capturing the taboos and temptation of its source-film’s eroticism, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble transformed themselves into The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, trading their past efforts in metal for a greater emphasis on free-form jazz. A Succubus – meaning, a demon that fornicates with human prey – deserves a soundtrack of such alluring menace.

With the lead-off track’s deep drones and loose cymbal hits, ‘The Sexy Midnight Torture Show’ doesn’t sound like the taping of an S&M performance at all; in fact, it sounds as if whoever was responsible for recording jetted for the venue’s dark back-alley. Into the shadows, after all, is ultimately where Succubus belongs, amid the gothic gloom of urban and social decay. As the echoed drums of ‘Perverted Pleasure Party’ clatter like rain on trashcans, the violin in ‘Fleeing the Scene’ seems to ricochet across the buildings of an abandoned metropolis. Needless to say, Succubus can illustrate morose bleakness to the extreme. Mercifully, the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation avoids completely bumming us out with a scattered handful of tracks that individually combat this near-impenetrable darkness. ‘Erotic Love Queen’ for example, parts the grisly clouds of its preceding segue with warm bass movements and soaring trombone while album highlight ‘The Admiral’s Game’ incorporates such elements into a visceral build worthy of post-rock’s pioneers. It’s a strategic success; after a few tracks of androgynous drones weigh us down, the collective eases you back with the tender sighs of trombone and muted vocals. Such instruments are as fundamental to the soul of Succubus as they are payoff for us listeners.

Although Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation don’t intend for this release to stand as soundtrack to Jess Franco’s 1969 cult favourite, it certainly ebbs and flows with the sympathy necessary to compliment moody cinema. In the case of ‘A Bad Trip’, the soundtrack is purely subconscious, operating on the minimal scale of tense bass and distant brass before ‘A Place for Fantasies’ subtly rises into trombone-squiggles and foggy ambiance. By the record’s last third, there’s little point trying to distinguish this track-by-track; as surely as Succubus was recorded live in one take, it deserves to be heard as such. Pertinent to its muse, this follow-up to the Mutations EP is a tad frightful but wholly encompassing, and while it’s best heard at night, don’t dare play Succubus in the dark.

Be One of Us and Hear No Noise - Metavari

Be One of Us and Hear No Noise

Metavari
Crossroads of America Recordings.

SCQ Rating: 66%

“It will be an adventure that will open new sights in familiar surroundings,” claims an ancient sample that opens Be One of Us and Hear No Noise, as its first song, ‘Kings Die Like Other Men’, builds from electronic keys and cut-up guitar to peak on the shoulders of a live percussion jam. Now my experience in turntablism tells me that when samples aren’t chosen to pinpoint an author’s focus of interest (be it political or wrapped in the theme of its parent album), it’s often chosen because it sounds bizarre, even ironic, when removed from its source material. The Avalanches’ Since I Left You was all about that, as was much of the early Ninja Tunes output. While Metavari, a Midwestern post-rock trio, admittedly have few turntablist moments on this latest release, there’s a palpable irony in that aforementioned sample… one that I pray isn’t lost on the band.

Put frankly, the quote is a near-perfect summation of Be One of Us and Hear No Noise; an album that envelops the sound of several well-known acts who operate on a similar post-rock/electronic fringe while providing their own “new sights” along the way. Many of their swirling emotive tracks (‘Pacific Lights’, above all) act as leaner, slicker takes of Explosions in the Sky’s epic instrumentals, while others (‘Kings Die Like Other Men’, the title track) are almost trademarked Album Leaf territory, utilizing his pristine electronic piano and backing beats before they break into a momentum that reveals their three-piece band set-up. Even the richly contemplative ‘The Priest, The Shore and The Wait’ feels locked between an ambitious Album Leaf and a sloppy Keith Kenniff of Helios. So yes, Metavari offer “familiar surroundings” in bulk but little of it feels lifted so much as borrowed as foundation for their eventual, dependable climax-building. In fact, a few slices of Be One of Us and Hear No Noise are real adventures, trading echoed menace for childhood innocence on ‘Shimmer Marina’ and indulging some Icelandic inspiration with the vocal-shards of ‘Twilight Over Akaishi’. These tracks find Metavari successfully scouring new terrain with similar tactics, which to me implies that the compositions here aren’t the issue so much as the cloying, safe arrangements.

As with Helios, The Album Leaf and Explosions in the Sky, Metavari also now share a stake in the debate of whether modern post-rock has any vitality left. Be One of Us and Hear No Noise sounds fully loaded on early listens: elegant keys and chimes rounded out by bass and guitar while fluttering electronics fill the gaps of comfortable post-rock pacing. Yet like other contemporary post-rock acts who seem limited to romancing widescreen, hipster imaginations, this new release works best at surface level and should adequately soundtrack a lot of upcoming television and film work. For listeners in search of the genre’s next wave, hold tight… and for fans of easy-listening post-rock, let me introduce you to Metavari.

A Juvenile Rush - Seams

A Juvenile Rush

Seams
Website.

SCQ Rating: 78%

Recently I was introduced to a remix of Bibio’s ‘All the Flowers’, a beatified extension of that brief, near-segue off of Stephen Wilkinson’s wonderful Ambivalence Avenue. As surely as Seams fleshed out that record’s shortest track with harmonious stutters and hip-hop flavour, he also displays an economic caution; using pliers to tweak Wilkinson’s composition instead of the hammer most remix-artists depend on. Always one to jump down the rabbit-hole, I looked into Seams’ (AKA James Welch) prior work and found the fresh-faced A Juvenile Rush, released not two months ago.

While Welch leaves his Bibio-love wisely to the remix – no English folk squeezed between beats here – A Juvenile Rush thrives off combining acoustic instruments with his laptop loops. The results are immediate and inviting; from the twilight serenade of horns over 4/4 beats on ‘Approach’ to the fuzzy guitar over string samples on ‘Drone’, Welch imbeds a warmth that defies these song’s inherent electronic nature. As the brief intermissions of ‘AMBE’ and the early Aphex-ish ‘STRB’ make clear, this debut isn’t about great arcs or narrative exploits - just playful, addictive combinations of sound that more often than not become more than the sum of their parts. ‘Glitch’ is a densely arranged pop song of left-to-right speaker tones, reverberating keys and blown-out bass while rightful centerpiece ‘Circuit’ is a three-act song; at first, swarming with deep catacombs of keyboard codas, then relaxing with an untouched guitar plateau before melding the two halves into a dramatic final third.

As the cover implies, these instruments – looping independently or colliding together - are the focus of A Juvenile Rush, and their tonal ecstasy supersedes any instinct Seams may covet for showboating. Still, the greatest thrill of this debut is hearing moments that suggest otherwise - like ‘Circuit’, among others - which hint at Seams’ talent for grander compositions. In these instances, James Welch stands not only at the forefront of his instruments but on the edge of something greater.

Wait For Me - Moby (No Ripcord Review)

Wait For Me

Moby
Mute Records.

No Ripcord Rating: 5/10
SCQ Rating: 56%

As far as artistic relevance goes, Moby has been virtually inactive for nearly a decade. Much of this indifference wasn’t his fault. So the guy became a poster-boy for selling out… but selling out from what, obscurity? It isn’t as though Moby was taken seriously by electronic purists in the first place and besides, this was the 90s; a period of decadence that the 80s is credited with but the 90s pushed to the brink. And tellingly, Play sold over nine million units – a near impossibility by today’s standards – while Moby licensed away all eighteen of the album’s songs for a multitude of movies, TV shows and car commercials. By the time 18 arrived in 2002 with his star-padded video for ‘We Are All Made of Stars’, the indie-rush had already resorted to the garage-rock of yore, and Moby’s soft backlash turned to public disinterest.

Having donned a few metaphorical wigs since, from Hotel’s sterile guitarist to Last Night’s urban DJ, Moby’s new album Wait For Me carries a similar pretext. And while these announcements of genre-hopping begin to sound gimmicky – say, indicative of a once-affirmed artist reaching for inspiration, one music-style at a time – I embraced the idea of Moby-gone-ambient. Described as more personal and insular than past efforts, Wait For Me is a self-produced, bedroom record hell-bent on orchestrated moodiness. On paper (or website, where Moby initially posted the album’s details), this sounds appropriate, as if his microscopic moments of still-life beauty had found sanctuary from his otherwise genial clubbin’ focus. On record, however, these intentions are complicated by an unavoidable truth; namely, that Mr. Richard Melville Hall lacks the compositional chops for anything one would consider understated. What is an ambient album without subtlety? For that matter, what is an electronic album – an implied mood-piece, at that – without texture?

Indeed, what reads like a new direction with Wait For Me is actually stripped-down, bare-boned, predictable Moby, who by aiming for the same aural pleasure-centers, achieves the same tried-and-true results. An immersive opening of finger-picked, morose guitar sinks suddenly into a mid-tempo instrumental (‘Scream Pilots’) that recalls to a fault the elementary-level piano twinkling that made ‘Porcelain’ so popular. A smoky-voiced female carries ‘JLTF’ through another series of simple piano progressions while Moby contributes his Bowie-lite vocals on ‘Mistake’, a New Order-esque anthem that begs to avoid making the same errors of the past all over again. Urg… is now the right time to just level with him? With such rigid, pace-keeping use of percussion and a bevy of comfortable chord movements, Wait For Me is listenable – at times downright likeable – but tantamount to Moby’s past mistakes.

What makes this déjà-vu frustrating is that Wait For Me begins its sorrowful dive in rather graceful form, setting the tone with a mournful synth piece before engaging some tiptoed bass and restrained breakbeats in ‘Pale Horses’. Carrying effortlessly into the compressed guitar and live drums of first single ‘Shot in the Back of the Head’, Moby’s ability to evoke a feeling, a time and place – however syndicated – earns our attention outright. Then the wheels start coming off; ‘Study War’ reclaims the banal art of littering spoken-word samples over sappy orchestration, allowing what sounds like an old Evangelical to repeat, ad nauseum, “the battle will be over”. There’s no context, nothing to connote an impression that this “battle” is anything more than universal rhetoric, or proof that Moby isn’t through reducing gospel to repetitive nonsense quite yet. And that’s without exploring the ankle-deep spirituality of the title track’s lyrics, which progress as such: “I’m going to ask you to look away / I love my hands but it hurts to pray”. In their generic artifices, these tracks betray the quiet resolve of Wait For Me’s better material, reminding us that as intelligent as Moby (the humanitarian, the all-around nice guy) is, he’s inexplicably taxed to create anything deeper than healing music for drama kids.

Despite the inclusion of those clunkers, Wait For Me remains Moby’s most interesting album since Play, trading his ADD stylistic jumps of that 1999 breakthrough for a more meditative, cohesive affair. A risky move, one that pays off (with the mysterious ‘Ghost Outfit’, the elegant ‘Isolate’) as seldom as it truly screws up. Between these two extremes lies the majority of Wait For Me, which hugs the middle of the road with such caution, it’s strenuous to either love or hate. In a desert-island neck-and-neck, this would easily be my Moby album of choice, not because it’s his best, and not because its cover-art is only useful for building a campfire. Here’s a record you can zone in or out of with equal concentration; that’s about as close to ambient as Moby will ever get.

(This review was originally published on No Ripcord...)

Outer South - Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band

Outer South

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band
Merge Records.

SCQ Rating: 48%

Well, I put this off as long as I could. Since its release, I’ve spent the majority of these four intervening months in denial that Outer South really arrived in stores. I mean, in its current form; with half of its sixteen tracks written and performed by backing-band members, in such ragged condition spawning an unedited seventy-minutes, and featuring such atrocious cover-art. With each of these encroaching details unveiled prior to its May release, I watched my window-of-hype slowly shrink… and don’t dare call that prejudice! For the man who has singlehandedly (forget Mike Mogis) forged his demons onto recordings with the scorching intimacy that earned die-hard fans and divisive acclaim, the very premise of Outer South was an uphill battle from the beginning. If last year’s Conor Oberst was an underwhelming grower, it sympathetically foreshadowed the letdown this follow-up dishes out.

Establishing itself along the same desert highway that charmed us on last year’s ‘Sausalito’, Outer South lazes forward with ‘Slowly (Oh So Slowly)’ and ‘To All the Lights in the Windows’; the former a hokier take on his alt-country self-titled, the latter a slight – but elongated – improvement. From there, Conor feels he’s set an appropriate pace and steps back to let the Mystic Valley Band sing a few… and inadvertently slaps his fanbase across the face with the Cars-ish, synth-pop embarrassment of ‘Air Mattress’ and the Wallflowers cover-band blues of ‘Bloodline’. The Mystic Valley Band manages to reign in an interesting alternative take of ‘Eagle on a Pole’ but too many of their front-and-center contributions resemble a Midwestern bar’s open-mic night. There’s a insincerity at work that Oberst might hurdle but these unknown vocalists reek of, and by the time ‘Snake Hill’ opens with an unfamiliar nasally voice stating “I was born on Snake Hill…”, I’m shaking my head and saying “no, you weren’t”. The worst part about these multiple low-points isn’t that Conor sat in studio and let these songs out, but that they might’ve been decent had Oberst manned the vocals. You don’t buy a Springsteen album to hear Max Weinberg sing, you don’t buy a Conor Oberst record to hear him play rhythm guitar.

This is an escape, sure… one strikingly similar to other once-prodigious, “new-Dylan” types; Ryan Adams ditched the solo pressure by burying his name in the Cardinals, Tweedy sidestepped expectations by honing a few adult-contemporary Wilco records. Like his colleagues, Oberst seems to be escaping a legacy set out for him by the press by, you know, jamming with his buds, but don’t completely buy it: Oberst is secretly smitten with his reputation as a generational singer-songwriter. How else could you explain the existence of Outer South as an artistic statement, not to mention a commercial product? The only thing more distressing than Oberst’s interest in this mess of an album is that he expected us to lap it up simply because it showcases his name.

Harmony Handgrenade - Oxygen Ponies (No Ripcord Review)

Harmony Handgrenade

Oxygen Ponies
Hidden Target Records.

No Ripcord Rating: 7/10
SCQ Rating: 73%

“When life gives you lemons… make them hand grenades!” is the anonymous claim headlining the Oxygen Ponies’ website, and despite the twenty-one members who contribute to the band, the source of such a statement could only be Paul Megna. The centerpiece of an orbiting – and overwhelming – mythology, Megna’s biography is vividly crafted to include tales of childhood trauma, being shot in the neck by a sniper, saving his girlfriend during a suicide-attempt, and bailing on his wedding. To boot, the ringleader of Oxygen Ponies is dutifully compared to all-stars of 20th century misery, citing Megna’s place next to Elliott Smith, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Drake. If such a biography fails to proclaim Megna as the king of understatement, it’s no surprise that Harmony Handgrenade goes one further; a boisterous, dramatic and occasionally jarring collection that, as suggested, forms impressive sonic-weapons out of sour memories.

For all the stories and theories about this songwriter’s enigmatic persona, it’s Megna’s voice, drowsy yet ferocious, that sells his oft-unfathomable history. Such sorrow is palpable despite the jaunty tempo of ‘Tryna Get to Heaven’, and equally in-limbo between hopeless and hopeful on the stirring ‘Love Yr Way’, which moves from lilting acoustics to a full-band crescendo of choir and strings. As often as compositions retaliate suddenly, Harmony Handgrenade crests on rock-steady American folk-rock, treating these ten tracks like heavy heaves or quiet sighs. ‘Fevered Cyclone’ is a white-flag call to a lover, replete with ambling percussion, yet one track later, on the bar-band riffs of ‘The War is Over’, Megna appears to have moved on to seduce a new complication. One can’t help but suggest that these conflicts and lemons in his life lay at the roots of his muse, as Oxygen Ponies’ best tracks are commonly his moodiest. ‘Villains’ delves into minor-key guitar patterns and twinkling piano that should creep and comfort one’s overcast day, and while it plateaus out much like its “long drive home” lyrical refrain, the arrangement sheds sunlight and, eventually, sheer volume on the road ahead. Moments this heartrending forcefully outweigh the few casual rockers (‘Smile’) and overblown arrangements (‘Grab Yr Gun’) present, coming to identify Harmony Handgrenade as the powerful sophomore album of, yes, a potential songwriting genius.

Perhaps the most relevant aspect of Paul Megna’s curious biography is that he starred in an off-Broadway play as Kurt Cobain, during which Jeff Buckley trained him on a Fender and Megna began writing his own material. It’s a true account that questions how Oxygen Ponies have remained an undiscovered act these past years. While I haven’t any leads as to why that is, I can tell you an autobiographical story of my own. In the twilight hours of a misty July night, I wearily took to the streets and haphazardly decided to indulge my first listen of Harmony Handgrenade. Miles from sleep in a hometown where taxis are mirages, I should’ve entrusted my tired ears to something familiar, yet not only did my first impression of Oxygen Ponies insist on a second listen, I eventually arrived home having spun the record three times. If anything will jolt this band out of obscurity, it won’t be stories of sniper-wounds or comparisons to Nick Drake. It’ll be Harmony Handgrenade… the one statement that matters.

(This review was originally published on No Ripcord...)