Friday, July 31, 2009

Mercury - Somatic Responses












Mercury

Somatic Responses
Acroplane Records.

SCQ Rating: 75%

Mere months ago, Somatic Responses impressed me with their Reformation record (available at the awesome Ad Noiseam), the title track of which was so thunderous and elastic, I could hardly keep my bearings about me. No sooner had I familiarized myself with the backstory of the duo, consisting of John and Paul Healy, when Acroplane announced a second new Somatic Responses album available for free right here. Now there’s a time to ponder and a time to act, and I wasted no time downloading Mercury; a record so fiendishly subterranean and claustrophobic, I required a solid month to simply absorb its shadows.

Like its inhospitable namesake, Mercury is an uncertain venture; its bass-stabs menacing and beat-programming often intimidating, as if you’ve awoken upon a nightmarishly bleak terrain. Furthering my intergalactic descriptors is first track ‘Dead Star’, a pulsating shuffle of deep bass and unsettled synths that establishes a sinister demeanor that runs throughout Mercury. Somatic Responses’ expertise in breakcore runs through tracks like ‘Hatework’ and the apt-titled ‘Erratic’ but this second release of 2009 holds greater ambition than polishing old trophies. As boldly announced on the stuttering ‘Shinjuku Walk’, Mercury is the duo’s first dedicated foray into dub-step; a murky, urban subgenre that fits Somatic Responses like London raindrops on the window of a late-night taxi. Of course, since this is dub-step flooded with dark ambience, the results are as danceable as they are unnerving. ‘Subdared’ sounds like an old FM dial-spin of half-heard drones and archaic beats while ‘Mutated Virus’ is a suitably mixed experiment of breakcore urges and dub-step flavour; each capable of filling the gaps of your own post-apocalyptic soundtrack.

In light of such urgent, progressive soundscapes, it’s thrilling to hear the Healy brothers close Mercury with the slowly unfurling ‘Ulrich Would Be Proud’. Centered around a solid breakbeat and armed with graceful swellings of synth, this closer is a dark yet soothing farewell to an album of intriguing hostilities (that at least one Ulrich – Ulrich Schnauss – would be proud of). As an introduction to Somatic Responses’ work, Mercury is a tall order indeed; an uncompromising and gloomy song-suite that burrows under your skin. Yet, as I plan to retreat into their back-catalogue, I can’t help but wonder if anything will rival this hard-earned collection. Consider this: if Mercury is being given away, imagine how good their retail-only albums likely are.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Wilco (The Album) - Wilco









Wilco (The Album)

Wilco
Nonesuch Records.

SCQ Rating: 71%

Jeff Tweedy has always been a breeze of fresh air amid your average assemblage of egocentric songwriters. As if Wilco didn’t already own my heart in the summer of 2004 with A Ghost is Born, Tweedy gave what is hands-down my favourite Wilco interview to Pitchfork, wherein he explained the true nature of his rehab-stint. Not only did he deflate rock’n’roll rumours by admitting his time in rehab was to find remedy for his migraines and anxiety attacks, Tweedy also spoke out against artists who embrace bullshit rumours, citing Bob Dylan as a prime example of a songwriter who – if one looks into his timeline – can be seen buying into his own press. Such mysticism connected to the songwriter as an ‘enigmatic character’ meant nothing to Tweedy, and that was one of many interviews where the Wilco frontman refused to play into the rock and roll game. And ever since, I’ve believed in Tweedy because, despite his success and talent, the man never stood for any one thing. Always skirting big questions in favour of vague lyricism and a chameleon-esque set of musicians and styles, Tweedy focused on his thoughts and feelings, not the state of the nation or trendy charities. Whether that sounds quaint or selfish, that’s the role of a songwriter and not once has Tweedy forgotten his day job. Everything else is celebrity.

Upon the release of Wilco (The Album), however, and its first single ‘Wilco (The Song)’, it’s apparent that Tweedy has never said so little. Ever since the record’s announcement months ago, I’ve digested the exclamation of journalists, bloggers and fans all brimming over the album’s title, calling it “cheeky” and “clever”. Besides my opinion that had they simply rendered it a self-titled record, it would forego the cutesy and downright pointless (The Album) portion, it’s disheartening that the album’s title – or lack thereof – has earned the most headlines from this anticipated release. Yet for the life of me, I cannot grasp another angle worth brimming about in this follow-up to Sky Blue Sky, the first creative and stylistic standstill in Wilco’s decade-plus history. No, Feist’s lovely voice doesn’t change a thing.

Although less jam-oriented and breezy than Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) finds the Chicago-based sextet’s prerogative virtually unchanged, ambling down ho-hum acoustic patches on ‘Solitaire’ (which hints at ‘Muzzle of Bees’ greatness but never delivers) and hokey adult-contemporary musings on ‘Sonny Feeling’ and ‘Country Disappeared’. The band’s comfort in such laid-back melodies – not to mention some journalist’s accusation of “dad-rock” - are highlighted by the lifted George Harrison track ‘You Never Know’ and worst-Wilco-chorus-ever contender ‘I’ll Fight’. By any other band these are mildly skippable tracks but, as maddeningly reminded by Wilco (The Album), these songs represent further proof that Tweedy and Co. are losing the artistic edge that made their earlier works (Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost is Born) so notorious.

As thoroughly as Sky Blue Sky shared less ingenious tracks with moments of greatness, Wilco (The Album) contains several instances of inspired resurrection. And strangely enough, these tracks are mapped out much like those on that 2007 release: a top-heavy selection of diverse Wilco hits (here we get the 70s strut of ‘Wilco (The Song)’, the supple build of a poet’s swansong on ‘One Wing’) and a piano-based closer that speaks in forevers (trade ‘On & On & On’ for ‘Everlasting Everything’). What sticks out like a black sheep (sorry…) is inevitably ‘Bull Black Nova’, a krautrock epic that breaches Wilco (The Album)’s curbed ambitions with the scope and intensity of the Wilco we knew five years ago. ‘Bull Black Nova’ and these other highlights (toss the brilliant ‘Deeper Down’ into that category) deserve better neighbours than the friendly but benign filler that pads this release.

When Tweedy blew off any notions of songwriter-mystery as journalistic hyperbole, his comments came off as brilliant because they stood on the shoulders of Wilco’s commendable, unique work. And besides those landmark albums, anyone with an interest in Wilco knew Tweedy – the lyricist who wrote some of the most cutting words alt country has ever heard, the front-man who hired and fired musicians with a dictator’s sense of power, the songwriter who detonated a division of Warner Brothers Records - was no Joe-Blow. Yet five years and two satisfactory albums later, his insistence on being a simple songwriter is beginning to make sense. After years of dodging questions into his lyrics and albums, maybe Wilco (The Album) is that empty statement Tweedy has exhaustingly sought to create. If it’s a personal victory for Wilco, it’s a shrugging delay-of-game for us.

Early Works For Me If It Works For You II - Dntel









Early Works for Me if it Works for You II

Dntel
Phthalo/Plug Research.

SCQ Rating: 74%

Life is Full of Possibilities was an important record of its time and for its listeners. Coveted by electronica fans and celebrated by indie-followers, the disc was both an underground sensation as well as a curious prologue to Jimmy Tamborello’s later fame in the Postal Service. By the grace of the music gods, Life is Full of Possibilities was pushed further from knowledge despite Tamborello’s mainstream attention, where it has flourished as the late-night, laptopia recording that birthed a gorgeous fusion later slandered ‘indie-tronica’. After Give Up’s worldwide jaunt and Dntel’s star-studded Dumb Luck, it seemed this small masterpiece would sit in limbo between his earlier, unavailable releases and his popular recent work. Earlier this year, however, Phthalo Records thankfully shed light on Tamborello’s cloudy origins with this triple-disc collection of Dntel’s first two previously out of print albums, as well as the unreleased groundwork that would one day form the landmark Life is Full of Possibilities.

Although Something Always Goes Wrong was released two years after Early Works For Me If It Works For You, it is audibly Dntel’s debut. Signs arrive early on ‘In Which Our Hero Finds a Faithful Sidekick’; a sleek track of now-predictable big-beat electronica that would’ve absolutely destroyed me back in 1994. ‘In Which Our Hero is Decapitated By the Evil King’ plays the same heavy-handed cards but in reverse, as the dark moodiness of ‘… Faithful Sidekick’ is now an ascending melody of epic proportions, tossed liberally with where-were-you rave-synths. Oh and about that decapitation thing, don’t bother: the real story to Something Always Goes Wrong is finding those early tracks where Tamborello gets it right. The accomplished soundscapes boasted on ‘In Which Our Hero Begins His Long and Arduous Quest’ and some generous atmospheres on the dreamy and well-titled ‘In Which Our Hero Falls Under a Spell’ make apparent that Tamborello was well on his way to perfecting his cerebral sense of space, that innocent use of melody. Whether Something Always Goes Wrong bears its amateur tags or not is pretty irrelevant considering electronic music has progressed fifteen years since this EP’s initial release, so it’s better ventured as a curiosity, not a contender.

Listening to Something Always Goes Wrong as Dntel’s first breath is the authentic story after all, recorded first but shelved for almost six years - Early Works For Me If It Works For You, Dntel’s first official release, arrived in the meantime - after an initial label deal collapsed. And it’s a sizeable advantage for those of us who came to the party late, since early Dntel fans who followed closely were the ones who incidentally heard these releases in the backwards order. In any case, the mix-up is a blessing for this package, which displays Tamborello’s talents sprouting on the second disc. From opener ‘Loneliness is Having No One To Miss’, which bounces with complex beat programming to the faraway layers of ‘Fort Instructions’, Early Works For Me If It Works For You is instilled with a graduate’s level of technical proficiency. While slower meditations like ‘Curtains’, with its plodding percussive gears, and the airborne helium-bubbles of ‘High Horses Theme’ interest me the most, I can’t ignore this record’s obvious Aphex Twin influence. ‘Danny Loves Experimental Electronics’, ‘Pliesex Sielking’ (god, in name alone) and many other tracks are indebted to Richard D. James’ gawking compositions, and while their disorienting nature fails to compliment Tamborello’s instincts, he plays the patsy with unflinching dedication. Hell, he even concocts a hybrid formula for both styles with ‘Sky Pointing’ and ‘Casuals’; looping Richard D.-inspired beats and quixotic, dreamy keys, Dntel convincingly morphs into Aphex Twin-lite… something that, even today, I’d wager there’s a decent market for.

This triple-disc bundle is a quantifiably rare listening experience, no surprise there. Yet what justifies some spotty, out-of-print albums and a demo-disc as worthwhile endeavors is how they grow into each other; with Something Always Goes Wrong, we had an undisciplined talent, with Early Works For Me…, a confident, nuanced voice in electronic music, and on Early Works For Me If It Works For You II, a collection of demos from 1998 through 2003, a composer toying with new instruments and subtleties. One of these instruments is indeed Tamborello’s voice, which wouldn’t officially appear until 2007’s Dumb Luck. So for Dntel fans and completists, this is a treasure trove of lost gems and a humble beeline through the man’s Phthalo years. Early Works For Me If It Works For You II may not be essential listening, but it’s enjoyable research nonetheless.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

COSMIC SUNDAY

Pretty much the most fantastical, outlandish thing I've ever seen...




And now I can't wait to hear it.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Ambivalence Avenue - Bibio









Ambivalence Avenue

Bibio
Warp Records.

SCQ Rating: 87%

When I purchased Vignetting the Compost a few months back, I did so solely to satisfy my ever-aching Boards of Canada addition. I make no excuses about it! And as pleasantly enjoyable as most of it was, Bibio’s third effort offered no practical bid for longevity on my stereo or vacancy in my music-muddled head. Like the first spring days that bring sunshine but remain chilly, this was a fragile album perfect for soundtracking boredom… and I don’t get bored. Little did I know that Bibio had yet another new album in the bag – this one courtesy of Warp records – which would save Vignetting… from my personal CD compost and reinstate it with new purpose: contrast. Ambivalence Avenue, Bibio’s second album of 2009, is everything Vignetting the Compost isn’t; it grows unique melodies then morphs them, branches out but never blindly, digs deep and comes up with more than plain soil.

Forgive all the gardenesque metaphors, I’m still shaking them from my boots as I step onto Ambivalence Avenue; a record positively brimming with the best material Stephen Wilkinson has written under the Bibio moniker. Ushered in by a familiarly docile guitar pattern, the title track is no departure, yet it’s immeasurably fortified by a steady beat and bolder use of vocals. Sequencing this track first seems like a caring way of pacifying fans who sought to pigeonhole Wilkinson, as once the funky, beatific ‘Jealous of Roses’ struts through their stereo, all bets on listener loyalty are off. Surprises are ceaseless from this point: the hiphop-based sample-athon of ‘Fire Ant’ wouldn’t sound out of place on a SoundBombing mixtape, ‘Cry! Baby!’ is a twisting fusion of triphop beats and spiraling guitar. This is an ambitiously eclectic mix that’ll no doubt detract fans who preferred his dreamy meandering, yet for every fan lost on Ambivalence Avenue’s account, I’m positive Bibio has gained another ten listeners by its same graces.

If there’s a similar thread linking this collection to Bibio’s past work, it’s the equal allotment of Wilkinson’s two loves: English folk and electronica. ‘Lover’s Carvings’ is a summery reverie spent half in the grass, half running through lighthearted chord-jumps, even as ‘The Palm of Your Wave’ captures a dormant urgency in his strong vocals and pale acoustics. His folk compositions here would each act as a centerpiece on any of his previous albums, yet what makes Ambivalence Avenue the shock to his discography are his electronic tracks. ‘Sugarette’ is a gorgeous loop of twilight-looming keys punctuated by sampled voices and a crunching beat, which Bibio then magnifies by indulging in his own 8-bit cut-ups (!!). This previously unexplored dark side pops up again on ‘Dwrcan’, an everyday hiphop track that becomes submerged in Bibio’s better judgements; guitars sink their teeth in, menacing beats push its decaying tones up for air, and an ethereal choir – part voice, part machine – fades to black. Hearing Bibio give it a shot is surprise enough, the fact that his talents are so evolved is what’s unnerving. After all those years of aping his Scottish idols, ‘Dwrcan’ actually sounds like an exciting, leftfield Boards of Canada track.

Wilkinson’s duality between folk and electronica was both commended and critiqued in my review of Vignetting the Compost, as I longed for him to quit isolating them and risk the experiment of melding these styles into a cohesive whole. Bibio has accepted the challenge with ‘Haikuesque (When She Laughs)’, matching solemn folk with tight beats while ‘S’vive’ combines, well, everything into a well-rounded collage. How long had Bibio been crafting this lean beast of an album and where along the way did Warp get involved? Was Vignetting the Compost just an obligatory swansong from his home at Mush Records before he fled for greener pastures? However Ambivalence Avenue came together, it’s a courageous step in several directions, and singlehandedly makes a bid for the quickest artistic turnaround in recent memory.

Monday, July 13, 2009

My Spine's in Love with a Parkay Floor



SCQ Headquarters has been a constant blur of business lately, writing a bunch of album reviews while reorganizing our furniture for some essential lie-on-the-floor-with-headphones space. It'll come in handy over the coming weeks...

July kicked off with more than just fireworks as I’ve been welcomed aboard the staff of No Ripcord. It’s a great opportunity to work for a website I’ve read throughout the years, so be sure to check it out. Alongside the new position, SCQ will continue as always with new album reviews and features. There are a few hot releases currently en route toward my mailbox as well as some older additions being written for SCQ Reviews.

Keep in mind, July 20th is the deadline for entry into this month’s SKLTN Contest. No skill-testing question, no mail-in offer… simply click “Follow” on Google’s Friend Connect and you’re entered to win SKLTNZ Vol. 1; a prize-pack containing at least one disc compiled of ‘ish you’ll love and some random frills. Do the contents really matter? Everyone loves getting mail! Only one week left!

Oh yeah, my first No Ripcord reviews are up:

1999-2004 by Royal City

Wait For Me by Moby

Any questions, comments or suggestions are always welcome at theskeletoncrewquarterly@gmail.com. Stay cool out there..

Love SCQ.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Eternal - Sonic Youth









The Eternal

Sonic Youth
Matador Records.

SCQ Rating: 71%

Three years ago, I spent a few days visiting a close friend who, as timing would have it, became plunged into the uncertainty and dread of a pregnancy scare. For the last twenty-four hours of my visit, her apartment seemed hostage to a stifling static. We attempted to distract ourselves with movies and conversation but such efforts were useless. The truth – perhaps, the inevitable! - was out of our hands, beyond the parameters of foresight or planning and lost into the coarse law of cause and effect. I agreed to stay until pregnancy test results were conclusive and alas: she (and her clueless one-time lover) were not pregnant, and I was able to say goodbye with a smile instead of condolences. Yet her phantom-child haunted my Greyhound bus back to London, reminding me how our commitment-free lifestyle hung precariously like clouds above “the real world”. As a celebration of my own freedom reinstated by my friend’s fright, my first order of business was to pick up Rather Ripped upon arrival in London, and all night, I swooned to its melodic – and unusually romantic – songs above my selfish, untouchable cloud. It was a needed distraction and, somehow, a rite of passage.

Now get this: three years on, during a similar June day in which The Eternal was released, I arrived at work to discover that my colleague had (A) been twelve weeks pregnant, (B) miscarried, and (C) been oblivious of both cases until her doctor told her. Again, this bizarre nature of truth – this law of the eternal! – crawled up through the day-to-day vapours that keep us all intoxicated to remind us of that “real world”. No study in cause or effect, no morale to the story; just a pin-prick wakeup, a phantom-funeral. So I left work and wasted no time purchasing The Eternal, an album so impossibly titled and infinitely gorgeous to look at, only a band this vital - despite nearly thirty years together – might have the key to decode its meaning.

The predicament of diving into something as vague and endless as ‘the Eternal’ is ironically compounded by Sonic Youth’s equally endless citations, from ‘Calming the Snake’’s apparent references to the Dead C, the MC5 and Neu to ‘Thunderclap (for Bobby Pryn)’’s origin of bed-jumping with Helen Killer, Mary Rat and Trudi. Who? Yeah… Seriously, The Eternal should come bundled with a reference guide. Some lyrics and ideas ring true to their inspirations, like the savagely awesome ‘Anti-Orgasm’ which breaks down sex laws of the 60s, or mix of fantasy and desire on the patient ‘Antenna’. But when the two-minute ‘Sacred Trickster’ is detailed as a “hardcore matinee track (…) saluting French painter Yves Klein and (…) noise artist Noise Nomads”, does that offer its listener deeper meaning? Does NYC beat poet Gregory Corso’s belief that life on Earth is that of a leaky lifeboat make ‘Leaky Lifeboat’ a better rock song? Does anyone besides the hungriest Sonic Youth fan care? Trying to follow the band’s inspiration behind The Eternal is intellectual Snakes and Ladders, and the directness of several tracks implies their theoreticals didn’t translate in studio. (You’re welcome to read all of Sonic Youth’s track-by-track here.)

The Eternal may be as accessible, if intentionally messier, than Rather Ripped, but where that 2006 release featured heart-felt lyrics and pristine performances, this feels like a band wrapping their heads around a thousand ideas but strangely limited by their musical boundaries. Perhaps this vast pool for thought came as Sonic Youth’s contract ended with Geffen, the major-label that the band recently claim made compromising impact to their last few albums. Such an admission about major-labels shouldn’t shock anyone but I’m surprised; Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped don’t sound compromised in the least. In fact, those records seem anchored and purposeful next to The Eternal, a record that seeks the immediacy of their early Kill Yr Idols work but rarely transcends the aggression. Their most affecting tunes – ‘Malibu Gas Station’, ‘No Way’ – reflect their recent, “compromised” years best, while final track ‘Massage the History’ unfurls into a soft ten-minute jam, hazy and lovely as Rather Ripped’s ‘Pink Steam’.

In those moments, I’m reminded of Sonic Youth’s rockin’ majesty, their ability to unnerve you with guitar antics or dig deep with a shrill vocal. And The Eternal certainly extends Sonic Youth’s late, great period as a collection worthy of significant attention. These songs have context – I’ve read up on it – and while they clarify certain objectives, they still don’t impress a greater meaning to disguise their existence as rock songs. If anything, this album is a side-step for their discography; not an improvement, far from a disappointment, and certainly not the autopilot paragraph journalists turn to where they summate how this encapsulates all of Sonic Youth’s previous career-markers. In my mind, The Eternal maintains Sonic Youth’s pedigree as a band capable of transcending, of emphasizing the grit and violence of the “real world” while giving it a spiritual, otherworldly aura. If it’s compromised by anything, the record spent too much time gestating in the clouds.

Insides - Jon Hopkins









Insides

Jon Hopkins
Domino Records.

SCQ Rating: 73%

Jon Hopkins may be the perennial outsider. A piano composer who obsesses about electronica, an indie artist who rose to notoriety co-producing Coldplay, Hopkins’ contradictory nature is at once attention-grabbing and marginalizing. Nestled between these ominous instrumental tracks, after all, is the original seed that spawned ‘Life in Technicolour’ off Viva La Vida, making Hopkins an artist millions of people aren’t aware they’ve heard. It’s this push and pull that encapsulates Insides, Hopkin’s third album, which alternates between glitchy electronica and dewy sweet soundscapes with varied success.

Sometimes combining these styles, other times restraining them, Insides features no short supply of stable concoctions which commonly mix piano compositions with punctuated, mid 90s-era beats. Prime examples are found in the beautifully uncertain ‘Vessel’, which flaunts elegant arpeggios and beat-programming beneath an eerie fog of ambience, as well as the playful ‘Wire’, which coolly bounces like a vintage Ulrich Schnauss track. In fact, Hopkins shares more than a few production tricks with label-mate Schnauss, from their modern incorporation of 90s breakbeats to their focus on soothing beds of synth. Yet Insides bares a decidedly glitchier fingerprint, preferring hyperactive laptop rhythms to layered keys, and the results are often jarring. The title track buoys on its sinister tones and Unsolved Mysteries-reminiscent melody but is suffocated by cluttered lazer-effects while ‘Colour Eye’ attempts to highlight both the piano-led solace and heavy beats equally, incidentally revealing which end Hopkins excels at.

Despite his programming efforts, Hopkins achieves best with melody, ensuring his greatest work contains only a studied background in electronica. With the collective heave of violins in ‘A Wider Sun’ through the solo piano of ‘Small Memory’, Hopkins has mastered how to pull heartstrings with a minimum of laptop-fuss, evoking the sepia-stained cinematics of Sigur Ros. It’s the simplicity of a track like ‘A Drifting Up’ – combining casual beats with a tinkered piano, amid rising strings – that deems his more convoluted IDM-inspired tracks so unnecessary. Less is more… and the fact that his beats are shoved so prominently in the mix - despite being rather average - makes noise out of potential beauty.

Insides, for all its loveliness, won’t affect Hopkin’s outsider status; the man is an instrumental composer dabbling in laptop-wars, not an electronic artist at heart. This distinction is crucial, as Hopkins’ pretty fusions of ambience and piano will have far more success in mainstream endeavors (like feature films, advertising) than underground shows. Unlike contemporaries in the electronic genre, Insides lacks a conflicted dimension, offering sleek soundtracks to daily life instead of the restlessly inaccessible beat-work that thrives off anonymity. What much of Hopkins’ latest may lack in robustness, however, is made up for in hypnotic details, moments that will have you listening in for months to come.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Back and Fourth - Pete Yorn









Back and Fourth

Pete Yorn
Columbia Records.

SCQ Rating: 85%

As a thorough Pete Yorn fan, I’ve always been slightly irked by the knowledge that so many of his songs – many of which, my favourites – were written from the perspective of someone else. Perhaps I’ve grown accustomed to my self-obsessed songwriters of choice but it was difficult to understand someone’s interest in being a musician if they honest-to-god had nothing personal to say. Now I’m accepting of some wayward inspiration, like how 2006’s ‘How Do You Go On’ was written with his 90 year-old grandfather in mind, but it’s hard to pretend I didn’t once read an interview in which Yorn discussed how ‘Sense’ (my favourite off MusicForTheMorningAfter) was written to empathize with Hailey Joel Osmond’s character in The Sixth Sense. I know, deep down inside, I still haven’t made peace with that. So I was thrilled to read that Back and Fourth featured lyrics close to Yorn’s heart, written during a difficult period of relationship anxiety and self-imposed isolation. The results, first heard on single ‘Don’t Wanna Cry’, are a turning-point for a somewhat middling career, displaying the only perspective I want to hear on a Pete Yorn record – his.

What makes ‘Don’t Wanna Cry’ (and Back and Fourth as a whole) a success involves far more than a simple shift in songwriting perspective. Yorn made decisions: he abandoned his studio digs in Los Angeles for the rural plains of Omaha, Nebraska and enlisted producer Mike Mogis. As much as I kinda blamed Mogis for Cassadaga’s blatant overproduction, I was relieved to hear the album would be unified by one producer (as opposed to the FIVE who jumbled up Nightcrawler). With Mogis, who provides a breadth of instrumental wisdom, and a studio band in tow, Back and Fourth is the first Yorn record in which Yorn doesn’t play just about everything. The difference is unmistakable, particularly on ‘Four Years’, as haunting piano notes creep about a tragic narrative, and ‘Close’, where cautiously employed strings compliment Yorn’s sweetest track since ‘Crystal Village’. Each decision made – the change in scenery, in musicians, in songwriting and production – make this the artistic statement I feared impossible, one so cohesive it makes his “morning, day and night” trilogy seem positively coincidental by comparison.

What works so well here can be attributed to what went so wrong on Nightcrawler, a record that was both overproduced and undercooked, polished up and sloppy. Songs like ‘Vampyre’ and ‘Maybe You’re Right’ were undernourished while older, previously released tracks (one from the first Spiderman soundtrack, the other a Warren Zevon cover) were inexplicably tossed in. Some light was shed on this period in a recent interview, where Yorn reflected critically, insisting he had some “rockstar” tendencies he needed to grow out of. Whatever demons he needed to exorcise, Yorn sounds more dedicated to a sound than ever before; from the breezy escape of ‘Paradise Cove’ to the meditative loneliness of ‘Thinking of You’, Back and Fourth encompasses an acoustic plateau of scarred hearts, dusty memories and, eventually, some emotional redemption. Thematically, these feelings either show progress or withdraw. ‘Country’ reflects on the carefree, endless drives of a blossoming love, ‘Social Development Dance’ breaks it down to empty picture frames. Back and forth, indeed.

“You know I’d never lost before,” Yorn repeats at one point, and it’s a line that resonates like a riddle across his discography. Most critics would insist Yorn lost with Day I Forgot, a sophomore panned by all but his true fans. Others would claim Nightcrawler sealed his career with a public indifference, ensuring his early promise would never reemerge. As someone who enjoys all of Yorn’s work, I can’t deny that I’ll miss Yorn’s “rockstar” side, the persona that wrote ‘For Us’ and ‘Policies’… but I wouldn’t trade anything off this record (well, maybe 'Shotgun'...). However Yorn truly lost, the occasion clearly bolstered him with renewed energy, encouraging him to take risks beyond his control and seek inspiration from within. For these distinctions, Back and Fourth is easily Yorn’s darkest album, mourning the past as often as Yorn tries to deny it. For my money, it’s also his most affecting.

Rainwater Cassette Exchange - Deerhunter









Rainwater Cassette Exchange

Deerhunter
Kranky/4AD Records.

SCQ Rating: 70%

In last year’s review of Microcastle, I marveled at how the inexhaustible Deerhunter (and lead creative force Bradford Cox) had risen to the ranks of indie-princes within twenty months. With that double-record’s success and this Spring’s Lotus Plaza debut, I hardly expected I’d be introducing yet another addition to the Atlanta quartet’s ouvre, but this band is never one to pin down. Such a statement can be applied in more ways than one to Rainwater Cassette Exchange, the latest – and briefest - chapter in Deerhunter’s exceptionally young saga.

Where Cryptograms opened in found-sound collage, Fluorescent Grey EP with lone piano and Microcastle armed in wistful organ swansong, it’s almost a disappointment to hear the no-frills immediacy to ‘Rainwater Cassette Exchange’. Swampy and psychedelic, here’s a title track that follows the same pop progressions found on Microcastle… yet the results are looser, murkier, as if that the former's duality uncovered a new rabbit-hole to fall into. ‘Disappearing Ink’ tightens up significantly, obliterating their old shoegaze tags while – perhaps incidentally – referencing how distant their ambient pieces circa Cryptograms (like, um, ‘Red Ink’ or ‘White Ink’) feel next to this comparatively straight-ahead indie-rock.

Need I emphasize comparatively? Sure I do…; Deerhunter, at their most accessible, remain planets removed from your average meat’n’potatoes rock band. Yet as the band continues to flex their melody muscles, their songs become increasingly direct. Even the five minute ‘Circulation’ (which indeed consumes a third of Rainwater Cassette Exchange’s running-time, if that’s a sign) bares only the presence of its verse/chorus push and far-off television banter. The weight and uncertainty that loomed lovingly over Cryptograms and parts of Weird Era Cont. are entirely absent from this EP; an element more crucial to their sound than many might realize. Even though Rainwater… follows Microcastle as a similar appendix to how Fluorescent Grey tidied up Cryptograms, this five-song suite feels detached from the Deerhunter canon, in part because it lacks a left-turn, mostly because it lacks an identity.

Despite their meager size, each of these songs manage to fulfill themselves but, as a catch, you really need to listen closely to appreciate the passing details. As momentary a thrill as these tracks offer, you’ll also fight to authenticate Rainwater Cassette Exchange as more than simply “five new Deerhunter songs”. Such a buying incentive is a tough pill to swallow for fans, as we all remember how, just last year, a Deerhunter release meant so much more than that. Let’s pray for another left-turn somewhere in the fold.