FALL ALBUMS 2012!!

As the Niagara region nears its foliage-colored peak, let SCQ introduce a few newer records for walks beneath the yellows, oranges and reds. All the best for these days of dying sunlight!

~ Love SCQ

Among the Leaves - Sun Kil Moon (FALL ALBUMS 2012)

Among the Leaves

Sun Kil Moon

Caldo Verde Records.

SCQ Rating: 91%

As faultless as 2010’s Admiral Fell Promises was technically, it was that same adherence to method and minimalism that occasionally parched the recordings. One might argue self-exiled songwriter Mark Kozelek had a hunch in this regard, given that in a catalog of seventy-some-minute marathons, he chose to wrap up that 2010 effort within an hour. As a penultimate growers-album sitting atop a life’s work of growers, Admiral Fell Promises confirmed that Mark Kozelek doesn’t have a lot of readily comparable contemporaries: his scope is massive but understated, his songwriting is intensely personal and, most importantly, he gets away with it.

Sun Kil Moon’s latest addition, Among the Leaves, veers unexpectedly on impulses; its seventeen tracks, much like chapters ripped directly from Kozelek’s tour-diary, dive into matters close to the singer’s heart without the former record’s relaxed, classical-guitar flourishes. This relatively direct approach allows Kozelek to detail a myriad of lyrical topics in quick succession, and make no mistake: the man has a lot to discuss. Among the road-weary muses, there’s romance (“I Know It’s Pathetic But That Was the Greatest Night Of My Life”), disdain (“Sunshine In Chicago”), and full-on fatigue (“UK Blues”, “UK Blues 2”) – all of them delivered with Kozelek’s studious ear for melancholy and dry humor. He even pens a tribute to his favourite guitar-mender on the mystery-tinged “Song For Richard Collopy”.

With his temperament placed closer to the front of the mix – making the lyrics more clearly discernable – Kozelek risks alienating casual listeners over nearly eighty minutes of storytelling; a track spent complaining about the chores of songwriting (“Track Number 8”) should, in particular, draw ire. Yet longtime fans of Sun Kil Moon will instantly gravitate to Among the Leaves’ various snapshots and emotions. The potent immediacy employed by shorter compositions creates a surprisingly digestible whole, with folk songs “Not Much Rhymes With Everything’s Awesome At All Times” and “Red Poison” bridging lengthier new classics such as “Lonely Mountain” and “Young Love”. Like a rough-hewn tapestry spanning two or so years in a working-artist’s life, Among the Leaves occupies a messily satisfying place in Sun Kil Moon’s formidable career.

Still and Moving Lines - Departures (FALL ALBUMS 2012)

Still and Moving Lines

Departures

Borana Records.

SCQ Rating: 84%

Word has it that Departures aren’t looking for an online presence, and it shows. Despite having Twitter, Facebook and Bandcamp pages, there’s precious little information to gather besides the descriptors “post-punk” and “Winnipeg”. It’s as though well-meaning friends signed them up for a host of social media tools, like parents enrolling their kids in summer soccer, but this quintet doesn’t look like the type to run with a swarm. Even the post-punk parameters that supposedly outline their debut can’t contain several breach points that make Still and Moving Lines so much more than a revivalist’s ploy.

Before “Pillars” establishes an escalating coda of intertwined guitar and taunt percussion, listeners are subjected to a minute or so of cloudy fade-in: fatigued voices in choral with a barren guitar and saloon-drunk piano. While such a non-starter can’t compete with that subsequent first single, it foreshadows a few curves in the road ahead. Between brawny, emotive rock tunes like “Being There”, the summer-long chug of “Swimming” and the memorable, sing-out-loud choruses they deliver, Departures drop wickedly unexpected gems that cater more to imaginative post-rock than any monochromatic love affair with Joy Division. Anchored on a dewy bass riff, “After Today” blossoms out of overlapping ambient swells that gradually connect for a sweet catharsis. At the opposite end of tuneful, “Winter Friend” spends half of its time in an off-kilter percussive stutter, peppered with snarling bouts of feedback, before flipping its sonic gears into an ear-pleasing remedy that rewards whatever faith listeners put into it.

Everything on Still and Moving Lines, from the vaguely synthetic “Left You Here”, which converts to full-band, organic momentum in the end, to the harmonizing, teeth-baring highlight “Sleepless” gels as part of Departures’ raw but alluring canvas. Much like The Wrens’ The Meadowlands, this record seems to engage several identities that, by fluke or determination, prove entirely compatible as one repeatedly surprising new voice. At the risk of upping Departures’ online profile, Still and Moving Lines deserves way more praise than the band’s willing to accept. 

Dedicate Function - Martin Eden (FALL ALBUMS 2012)

Dedicate Function

Martin Eden

Lefse Records.

SCQ Rating: 77%

Martin Eden is almost certainly someone’s birth name, but not the artist responsible for Dedicate Function. As an alias for Matthew Cooper, the ambient-romancing brain behind Eluvium, Martin Eden allows what any good disguise should afford: freedom to indulge in things typically suppressed. In Cooper’s – I’m sorry, Eden’s – case, these indulgences include pummeled beats that loop around introspective but tuneful vapours.

Its percussive momentum sprints a few miles clear of any tempo one might discern from Cooper’s past catalog but Martin Eden’s handiwork doesn’t completely abandon Eluvium territory. Let’s not forget that Cooper already branched away from traditional ambient music with 2010’s Similes, which incorporated his vocals and lyrics, and what bridged that gap – his attention to texture – works wonders again on Dedicate Function. “Verions”, with its tenderly warped synth and an overlapping swarm of horns at its centre, perfectly demonstrates how Cooper can render samples and instruments somehow lived-in. The pulse in “Etc Etc”, for example, creates rhythm out of a complex echo process that resembles the sound of fireworks ricocheting off of city buildings, whereas “Return Life” gathers its beat from some faint but gurgling found-sounds in (and likely from) nature.

An experimental reprieve from Eluvium’s somber musings, Dedicate Function could’ve easily assumed the expectations of a middle-of-the-road techno record. The melodies and rhythms aren’t especially unique, nor do they try to propel their compositions down surprising paths. But not unlike Aphex Twin, Martin Eden’s ambition lies in the microscopic, and his wealth of textural know-how deepens the hypnotic ambience behind these armchair-techno tunes to the point where the whole project’s swallowed whole. It's an engaging descent.

Offering - Bird By Snow (FALL ALBUMS 2012)

Offering

Bird By Snow

Gnome Life Records.

SCQ Rating: 76%

Fletcher Tucker knows how to compile a full-length. On his fifth outing as Bird By Snow, the songwriter weaves between tumultuous drones and rustic folk arrangements for a listening experience less about dual song-forms than about presenting a constantly transient weather pattern. Offering is anchored on mood, a woodsy serenity that nevertheless contains stormy fits over the course of the rattling “Before Names” and the dense field-recording of “Black Ocean”. It's almost too bad Bird By Snow’s drone-y ruminations have so much real estate on an album that fades out around the half-hour mark, but there's something to be said for intimacy when discussing themes as loaded as prayer and nature.

The highlights remain hinged on Tucker’s lyric-driven folk tunes, however, with “My People”, “Grace” and “Wide Open” forming meditative bones out of piano, guitar and percussion that sounds evoked from sticks and stones. Such a description, not to mention the cover-art, could easily mislabel Offering as a late addition to the freak-folk canon revived by Akron/Family and Devendra Banhart. But Bird By Snow’s eclectic and understated thoroughness dispels any kitschy categorization, instead gifting these songs of mortality and mysticism to anyone in need of solace this autumn. 

SUMMER ALBUMS 2012

August, while still very much a summer month, is when I habitually begin collecting records that'll keep me company during autumn. Like some process of reverse hibernation, I store up all of these anticipated release dates for that day the humidity falls, a cool breeze begins rising and I can step outside revitalized. 

What I’m trying to say is that August is a stupid time to unveil Skeleton Crew Quarterly’s Summer Records feature; the anticipation is long gone and the season’s hottest days are already waning. Had I not spent the past two months living out of suitcases and being separated from my laptop, my music or both, SCQ’s Summer Records 2012 would’ve posted sometime in June. Still, by no means should these three titles be restrained by dwindling temperatures when each stunner will be blasting from Skeleton Crew Quarterly’s new office well into the colder months.

Have a listen, breathe in these summer days and welcome the change in the air.

~ Love SCQ

Mixed Emotions - Tanlines (SUMMER ALBUMS 2012)

Mixed Emotions

Tanlines

True Panther Sounds.

SCQ Rating: 79%

At the present moment, it’s easy to take a band like Tanlines for granted. Upon first listen, they cater to the same blog-fueled craze for 80s reinvention that’s virtually too crowded a scene to pick names out of. From that assessment alone, Tanlines efficiently checklists a myriad of obvious qualifications: lots of dated synths, echoed drum patterns, and morose but catchy choruses. But what stubbornly renders Tanlines essential listening in 2012 can be deduced less from that New-Wave formula but how the Brooklyn–based duo toys with it.

Coarsely put, Jesse Cohen and Eric Emm filter Cut/Copy’s vein of anthemic 80s-for-indie-kids’ cool down to its most visceral gears. By deconstructing much of the gloss and frills, Mixed Emotions boasts strengths that pack a more human punch than your average, overproduced synth-athon. Emm’s vocals, which add an impassioned urgency to each track, sit front and center on defused techno highlights “Not The Same” and “Brothers” while Cohen keeps the record’s percussive flair inimitable by adding a tribal sense of momentum to even-keeled tracks like “Lose Somewhere” and “Real Life”.

Mixed Emotions still has a luxurious vibe that comes naturally to fun electro-pop records, showcased most exquisitely on “Rain Delay”, “Abbey” and the sentimental “Nonesuch”, but it's never used as a means of covering for one-dimensional songwriting. Tanlines is worthy of honing the 80s muse because their hands-on approach never confuses man with machine.

Below Sea Level - Simon Scott (SUMMER ALBUMS 2012)

Below Sea Level

Simon Scott

12K Records.

SCQ Rating: 80%

Simon Scott’s first release on the 12K imprint deserves mention firstly for being his most personal. Below Sea Level is the culmination of two years the former Slowdive drummer spent visiting the Fens marshland in eastern England – a spot both agriculturally controversial and sentimental to Scott’s childhood – to track field recordings and expose the musicality of his memories. The results lay as the backbone to these seven tracks, over which Scott blurred guitar and synthesizer, in real time, during his stays there.

As well as representing Scott’s childhood and ancestral ties, Below Sea Level proves a remarkable merger of purely organic soundscapes and leftfield electronics; in short, because it’s often difficult to dissect which is which. Tracks two and three (note: each track is numerical as sequenced) bleed like reedy drones under the wavering of looping harmonics and swathes of digital backwash. But just as often, Scott steps back from the ambient tussle and lets the landscape speak back in birdcalls, amphibian croaks, water ripples, and nearby machinery. The reality of Scott’s location causes a virtual standstill during track four, overwhelming any traditional song-form, whereas it weaves a bubbling catharsis into track seven’s celestial electronics. Best yet are the tracks where Scott fingerpicks some guitar into the aural scenery, providing bucolic timbres of psychedelia that are simple but inspiring.

To those few listeners aware of the territory’s conflicted history, Below Sea Level will likely plumb deeper emotional depths but even oblivious fans should ascribe to the record’s stark and seasonal affinity. In some cases, Scott seems to be playing for the present moment, merely coexisting with a complicated patch of nature. In its most satisfying moments, however, Below Sea Level sounds like a poignant farewell.

Spanish Moss And Total Loss - Shout Out Out Out Out (SUMMER ALBUMS 2012)

Spanish Moss And Total Loss

Shout Out Out Out Out

Normals Welcome Records.

SCQ Rating: 76%

“We do play fun dance music, but the lyrical content is usually a little more dire. In terms of lyricism, it's always been important to me to be singing about things that are actually going on, and difficult for me, but I don't want the band to be a total bummer all the time.” – Nik Kozub, from Exclaim! interview. 

Everything from the band’s name down to the reputation of their catalog has seemingly hinged on a party ethic – their name elongated for mind-bending reveries, their fat beats primed for speakers aimed sloppily out of bedroom windows. At least that’s how I viewed the band and their loyal audience: as cosmic kids more interested in raising heartbeats per minute than delivering double-edged swords so sharp, they’re nearly bipolar. But that’s the clever prick of Spanish Moss And Total Loss, a carefully nuanced paradox that hides a lot of heartbreak behind the party exterior.

While Nik Kozub makes clear that the band’s matching of good vibes and sour lyrics has been a well-trodden approach, it’s arguably never been as addicting as on Spanish Moss And Total Loss. Of course it never hurts to have a barn-burning opener like “Now That I’ve Given Up Hope, I Feel Much Better” to launch things properly, its elastic bass and handclap rhythm thrown off-kilter by a haunted piano refrain. From that highlight, Shout Out Out Out Out dive into spaced-out kosmiche (“How Do I Maintain, Part 3”), vocoder-fed techno (“Wayward Satellite”) and saxophone-assisted electro-pop (“Never the Same Way Twice”) without betraying the emotional duality that creates their simmering conflict.

The Edmonton-based six-piece don’t repeat themselves although their template does show some dilution by the time “Knowing” lurches tepidly to a close. Preceding track “Lessons In Disappearing” anticipates that soft collapse, taking the swagger from late disco on an autopilot romp. One could argue that Spanish Moss And Total Loss bails on the party by its final third but, more than likely, the back-end’s busy synths provide an artifice to distract from the band’s declining emotional commitment. Maybe that numbness is an honest result after the party’s peak has passed, or who knows – maybe Shout Out Out Out Out are lessening their grip on the vocoder in order to express deeper analog-based chasms. 

Now That I've Given Up Hope, I Feel Much Better from aAron munson on Vimeo.

SPRING ALBUMS 2012

Considering how vacated 2012 looked at the onset of January, I'm pleased to present a shortlist of topnotch recordings that, among other qualities, collectively forecast a beautiful Spring. Here in Ottawa, the weather remains closer to snow pellets than refreshing rain but these albums have nonetheless instilled SCQ Headquarters with the air of open-windows. 

Wishing you all the most mild of days,

~ Love SCQ

Le Voyage Dans La Lune - Air (SPRING ALBUMS 2012)

Le Voyage Dans La Lune

Air

Astralwerks Records.

SCQ Rating: 80%

Moon Safari’s lasting legacy has certainly been paved around futurist ideals but that hasn’t topped its status as a pioneering, modern-day make-out record. The sensuous mood elicited from Air’s 1998 classic has continuously teased expectations since, throughout the androgynous 10,000 Hz Legend and Love 2’s mixed bag, but it’s as ingrained a trademark as the duo’s French accents. Le Voyage Dans La Lune, Air’s second soundtrack-based effort, may focus more on the astronomical wonder of the moon but, like George Melies’ famed 1903 sci-fi, it’s no less rooted in fantasy.

Making a soundtrack operate like an album takes delicate craft but it’s helpful when the artisans have built a career defying easy categorization. As with their proper full-lengths, Le Voyage Dans La Lune feasts on aloof experimentation: one track features Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel on vocals, others refer those duties to special guests (Au Revoir Simone, Beach House’s Victoria Legrand), while others still explore vast instrumental possibilities. Even when compartmentalized this way, Le Voyage Dans La Lune embellishes a ten-minute narrative with complimentary shades and emotions. The shimmering “Moon Fever”, which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Pocket Symphony, offers a rippling calm for listeners to survey Air’s alien landscape, whereas “Cosmic Trip” fuels a momentous coda of bass, toy-box keys and smeared strings. The vocal tracks also echo the space cadets’ journey, dropping woozy anxieties (“Who Am I Now?”) and starry-eyed yearnings (“Seven Stars”) to deepen the gravity of a film that has amazed for well on a century.

Surprisingly, the few tracks that reveal their score-bound intentions – namely, the ones that compliment the mis-en-scene most rigidly – are indeed the most rewarding. “Parade” boasts an otherworldly but salacious guitar hook that spikes over a choral and live-drum terrain while “Sonic Armada” rockets sci-fi synth-work and 70s funk to a psychedelic extreme. Such experiments can be understood via Le Voyage Dans La Lune’s accompanying DVD or absorbed as part of the record’s fully out-there moments. Either path results in the same satisfying adventure, so long as you aren’t trying to make out with anyone at the time.

Below is the full restored film, accompanied w/ portions of Air's score:

Ask Me This - Alcoholic Faith Mission (SPRING ALBUMS 2012)

Ask Me This

Alcoholic Faith Mission

Alarm Music.

SCQ Rating: 78%

It has become something of an institution for Alcoholic Faith Mission to issue a release in the springtime. 421 Wythe Avenue, Let This Be the Last Night We Care as well as 2011’s And the Running With Insanity EP each blossomed onto the scene at winter’s end and resonate as though they are unburdening the cares collected the previous year.

Ask Me This, however, wastes no time in presenting a change of season we weren’t expecting. Opening track “Down From Here” sets the tone via an impassioned group a cappella, building in bombast but remaining rigidly sober, before “Alaska” finds an almost industrial crunch replacing the typical warmth of this Copenhagen-based sextet. Ask Me This could’ve been considered a departure on the basis of sonic tinkering alone but that merely accentuates the tonal shift: that on these ten songs, Alcoholic Faith Mission are holding their burden tightly, consumed with and fueled by the conflicted emotions they once sought to emancipate. The sunny disposition of “Running With Insanity”, which owned the headliner spot on last year’s EP, only gradually feels at home here on account of its painstaking layered arrangement, as breathless harmonica, handclaps and vocal harmonies form the song’s foundation (whereas guitar and piano get relegated to the status of happy accessories).

Which brings me to my next point: Alcoholic Faith Mission’s break-neck speed of releasing material can only be outshone by their evolving song-craft, which undergoes another upgrade on Ask Me This. Whether it’s the spliced symphonics on “Reconstruct My Love” or the stuttering drum machine on “Into Pieces” that sound so alien to ‘aFm’ loyalists, repeated listens find those experimental qualities being absorbed into the same emotional vein that rendered past records so magnificent. In particular, “I’m Not Evil” likely stands as one of the band’s best tracks yet; its cascading piano line latched to a subtly rendered bass and percussion shuffle.

Small efforts truly make Ask Me This a more nuanced animal than its predecessors, even if the end results fail to shine quite as brightly. Saying this new record gets personal wouldn’t really explain much, given some of the band’s previous talking-points, but one could definitely call it insular. And that pervasive overcast succeeds in shedding strange new light on a disciplined band transforming before our very ears.

Barchords - Bahamas (SPRING ALBUMS 2012)

Barchords

Bahamas

Universal Music.

SCQ Rating: 83%

“Lost In the Light”, the slowburning opening track to Afie Jurvanen’s sophomore outing as Bahamas, wasn’t only written last – at the close of the recording sessions that would produce Barchords – but was nearly held back for some unforeseen release down the road. That piece of trivia may sound worthless to some people, but those are people who likely haven’t heard “Lost In the Light” yet. Frankly, the song’s a game-changer; the sort of profile-raising, singer-songwriter gem that transcends “indie” by digging its heels into a bluesy nerve that borders on some slow-waltzing gospel. And luckily for those of us “in the know”, it’s but the first track on a record brimming with beauties.

A buoyant sense of variety gets roped in by Jurvanen’s smooth croon, which calms the surf-rock tinged spikiness of  “Caught Me Thinking” and soaks up emotion on the haunting ballad “Never Again”. In fact his delivery almost makes for easy dismissal on account of just how smooth it sounds, calling to mind the laid-back meanderings of Jack Johnson or Jason Mraz. A few dedicated listens will open a whole new understanding of Bahamas, however; one likened far more to Neil Young than Jack Johnson. Classic acoustic songwriting and tasteful musicianship stand hand-in-hand on the subtle stomp of “Be My Witness”, the electric licks punctuating “Your Sweet Touch” and the rustic swoon of “Time and Time Again”. Barring the sparse, demo-styled grays of “Any Other Way” and “Montreal”, it’s difficult to envisage a better album to usher us into spring than Barchords, an album light in touch but deceptively resonant in human emotion. 

SCQ's Winter Records 2012

Walking home from work the other evening – headphones on and lost in thought – I suddenly caught the distant sound of bird chatter. I tore off my headphones and stood alert in the night street, assured that those sounds of nature were separate from the music, but all I could detect was a dull wind. Unsurprisingly, I relocated the chirps of winged things after returning to my iPod, the upcoming Ulrich Schnauss album and a field recording nestled in the silence between tracks that I’d never heard before.

A kind of embarrassing tale to admit, given that we’re stuck in the darkest month of a Canadian winter, but it’s also fascinating to acknowledge how stretches of one season can make us long for even the finest details of another. With regards to hearing bird chatter at night, we residents of the globe’s northern reaches have a few months yet to wait, so why not embrace the cold with Skeleton Crew Quarterly’s latest winter recommendations?

Less than two months to go…

~ Love SCQ

Low Roar - Low Roar (SCQ's Winter Records 2012)

Low Roar

Low Roar

Tonequake Records.

SCQ Rating: 79%

“I won’t wake a wealthy man someday, cause the sun don’t follow me,” Ryan Karazija insists in the opening lyrics to Low Roar’s eponymous debut, and it’s a tough pessimism to pierce. As a twelve-song ode to the challenges of moving from California to Iceland and trying to adapt to a startling new life, Low Roar already carries some metaphorical (and literal – sorry, had to) baggage. But the self-titled record proves a harder nut to crack in light of how it projects that baggage, choosing a consistently dreary mood that reduces each song’s tempo to a chilling crawl. That uphill battle, daunting though it may be, beguilingly sets the stage for the many reasons you, dear reader, will want to stick around.

Each song plucked from the self-titled’s first handful of tracks conveys acoustic ruminations backed by two disparate palettes: a molasses-slow smear of buzzing organ (‘Give Up’ and ‘Patience’, the latter sounding like a minimal reduction of Coldplay’s grandiose ‘Politik’) and electronic ambience (‘Nobody Else’). Karazija establishes his Thom Yorke-styled vocals elegantly into both environments and somehow merges the wintry isolation of his words with a nestled coziness drawn out by his arrangements. His songwriting knack neither lightens nor slips over the course of its near hour, although one could argue that the remote feeling intentionally driving Karazija’s muse becomes detrimental to the album as a whole. As much as I appreciate the merits of later songs like ‘Rolling Over’ and the mournful ‘Help Me’, it’s tough to stick by the record uninterruptedly. That Low Roar’s single, ‘Tonight, Tonight, Tonight’ appears at the close of the song-cycle might be acknowledgement of the record’s long journey but it’s telling that I can’t tell you what it really sounds like.

Obviously a work of extreme intimacy, Low Roar bears a lyrical directness like the diary of a man abandoned to the edge of humanity. Still, it proves lush and evocative beyond Karazija’s supposedly stark confines and looks to connect with anyone susceptible to melancholy. If given the proper time to digest, Low Roar has all of the makings of an overlooked, if arduous, classic.

Always In Postscript - willamette (SCQ's Winter Records 2012)

Always In Postscript

willamette

Own Records.

SCQ Rating: 77%

In terms of a winter record, Always In Postscript is a no-brainer for both its tundra-like façade and being released amid the cavernous lows of January. It could be argued that the quality of ambience captured by willamette over these eight transient compositions has the potent chops to attach itself to any season and, while that could ultimately be the case, the moods swept up by these progressions breathe best in closed-up, wind-ravaged rooms. The album title seems to encourage an aftermath

Always In Postscript’s title references this notion of aftermath best, instilling further the collection’s winter-still sense of finality and remembrance through a minimal selection of blurred tape loops and subdued orchestration. Keyboard melodies rise just audibly above the clouded forces of ‘un court theme pour lyla’ and ‘balustrade’, allowing our minds to fasten these fragments into something personal. Often it’s the suggested elements of willamette’s composition that help Always In Postscript sidestep the expected Stars Of the Lid comparisons, while still providing an insular soundtrack to devote our memories to.

Noting how the difference between “insular” and “isolated” can carry giant repercussions on the resonating impact of an ambient record, it’s important to note that Always In Postscript bears too much warmth through its disciplined instrumentation to truly feel barren. Its blank slate landscape will absorb the listener’s surroundings and naturally react, with ‘images d’une longueur de cheveux’ and the title track likely to imbue an austere but romantic quality as well. However icy and fogged over its domain may sound, the listener remains sheltered. For that reason, Always In Postscript stands most impressively as a hibernation record.

Ghost Town - Owen (SCQ's Winter Records 2012)

Ghost Town

Owen 

Polyvinyl Records.

SCQ Rating: 83%

CMG Rating: 78%

Mike Kinsella doesn’t mince words. Which is to say, he’s a songwriter that finds little value in allusion or flowery imagery when he owns such a convincing arsenal of blunt honesty. Whether he’s bemoaning those who come out to his shows as “the idiots in the back” (“Curtain Call”) or detailing the vices of colleagues he despises (“Bad News”), Kinsella’s body of work under the Owen moniker often steers the introspection entitled to singer-songwriters toward a therapeutic extreme. For the first half of the 00s, Kinsella’s muse bounced between romantic betrayal and self-righteous self-pity; he typically starred as the victim and recorded these albums at his mother’s house. You’re probably starting to get the picture.

Nonetheless, Owen has amassed a humble career by telling it how it is, and it works because that unflinching honesty which bandages his bad days also unravels Kinsella’s vast emotional core. Ghost Town mostly busies itself with the latter task. The Chicago-based musician’s keen ear for tender arrangements has rarely found such a match, muse-wise, as when Kinsella executes the father/daughter coming-of-age lullaby  “Mother’s Milk Breath”. Owen’s vocal delivery managed to poeticize plain speech even back when he was singling out random bar girls to score with (on “Poor Souls”, from 2002’s No Good For No One Now), so it’s hardly surprising to hear how disarmingly his timbre sits upon balladry that deals with anything other than him being an asshole.

Luckily, as his focus on formative heartbreak has slowly graduated to the trials of marriage and children, Owen’s catalog has likewise matured in sound. Supplementing his once stark acoustic foundations and intricate electric guitar flourishes are lush accompaniments – like the heart-string tugging orchestral bits underlying “Too Many Moons” and “An Animal” – that rendered New Leaves (2009) such an upgrade. As well as deepening the dramatic stakes, Ghost Town offers fresh bite with a dissonance that takes center-stage in “No Place Like Home”’s peppered guitar work and “I Believe”’s defiant, kick-drum riddled climax. 

Keep in mind: these are Owen-styled rock songs, in essence his sad-sack acoustic fare boosted to mid-tempo with extra feedback. Still, Ghost Town’s poles present a curious divide for Kinsella to walk following the perfectly measured and orchestrated New Leaves. Gone is that album’s wistful nostalgia and unhurried tree-ring counting; here, Owen has illustrated a scene greater than his ego, one that jostles between faith and resignation with regards to loved ones, family, friends, and the greater socio-political headaches we consider rites of passage. 

In what stands as perhaps his sole – if overarching – allegory, the “ghost town” Owen sketches out over these nine tracks is just bittersweet reality; the expectation and eventual hope that whatever house and people you leave on the way to the office (or, say, week one of a two-week tour) will be changeless when you return. “I’m home and somehow while I was gone,” he sings on “The Armoire”. “This house I’d left for dead had lingered on.” Despite singing “I’ve a thirst for skirts and hell to raise…” a few songs later, Kinsella now accepts the cozy shackles of his lifestyle with a minimum of begrudging sentiment. And if it’s within that claustrophobic, anti-rock star environment that brings Owen his songwriting transcendence, the irony certainly isn’t lost on him.

(This review was originally published on CokeMachineGlow...)

SCQ's Autumn Records 2011

Maybe it’s because I spend the latter half of summer anticipating fall, but finding autumn records is never a chore. Not only are there ample amounts of releases that match this season’s sense of seclusion, but each year a few bona fide examples come along that effortlessly await October days like today.

Still, winter waits for no one. Get out into your city or town's beautiful spots and soak up the foliage while you can. These top choices won't let you down.

Love SCQ

I Found Your Faces Of Montreal - You Are My Symphonic (SCQ's Autumn Records 2011)

I Found Your Faces Of Montreal

You Are My Symphonic
Independent


SCQ Rating: 88%

Some records you hold onto for just the right moment; still, this was a tough one. Released on the cusp of summer after a three-year recording process, Vishal Kassie’s second record under his You Are My Symphonic moniker instills a still-life beauty ideal for autumn wanderings. Granted, June worked out pretty well regardless, as one can actually hear these songs blossoming into being via pristine acoustic instrumentation and crisp electronic layers. But it’s Kassie’s mournful edge that offers I Found Your Faces Of Montreal its auburn melancholy, a reflective spirit that touches gently on love and loss – themes this record knows all too well.

The record has in effect been written twice; the first being halfway finished when stolen as part of a laptop heist in 2008, the second being Kassie’s present labour of love – rewritten, rearranged, expanded upon and (if we can trust the author’s word) greatly improved. Following 2009’s instrumental wedding-score Afternoon Birds Of Arima, I Found Your Faces Of Montreal has the air of a debut proper. Capturing the same bucolic loveliness that coloured his past ambient efforts, opener ‘Meet Me In Trinity’ unlocks a door by ushering in Kassie’s prowess on the acoustic guitar and a new dimension to You Are My Symphonic’s sound. It has a widescreen appeal, expanding in echo-drenched ivories on ‘Autumn Will Fall In Love’ and rippling over the Ulrich Schnauss-approved ‘Under Your Umbrella, with grandiose aspirations that should no doubt turn off some cynics. Yes, that latter example finds melodies fully maximized, stretched to their life-affirming potential without much thought of restraint, and on early listens can be misunderstood as schmaltzy.

That sentimental veneer is to be cherished, however, as it coats some of the record’s devastating highlights. ‘Rooftop’’s shimmering reverberations house biting details of a dead relationship, the soaring synth on ‘My Father And His Sister’ counteracts some rather glitchy beats, while the title track bears Kassie’s haunting yet irresistible multi-tracked vocals. Like the storied history of the recording process itself, emotions run deep throughout I Found Your Faces Of Montreal’s sprawling eight compositions. Uplifting and heartbreaking – often all at once – You Are My Symphonic has staked himself proprietor of an ambient-folk scene positively alien to Montreal. And on that island’s island, I Found Your Faces Of Montreal is a landmark release waiting to be found.

Autumn Will Fall In Love from You Are My Symphonic on Vimeo.

Thelma - Benoît Honoré Pioulard (SCQ's Autumn Records 2011)

Benoît Honoré Pioulard Plays Thelma

Benoît Honoré Pioulard
Desire Path Recordings.


SCQ Rating: 84%

The hit-or-miss qualities of ambient music are intensely personal; a patient test of tonal shifts and buried details which eventually latch onto one’s mind-frame, their personality, or fall by the wayside. The majority of today’s ambient fare assumes the latter’s fate but those rare exceptions, in my experience, usually become the sort I cherish for years on end. Finding records of this quality used to be difficult but Desire Path Recordings is dutifully making my search easier. Setting pace with memorable releases by Solo Andata and Kyle Bobby Dunn, the new imprint has now struck a three-peat with Benoît Pioulard’s enigmatic score Thelma.

Documenting an imaginary landscape – what Pioulard refers to as “a lake within a haze” – this mini-album wastes no time transporting listeners to a foreign place. ‘Malick’ opens the set already in bloom; a reserved piece circling its quaint corners but also instilling a sense of familiarity, of belonging. That warmth bleeds into the stretching strings of ‘A Land Which Has No End’, tuneful bouts of reverberation in ‘Calder’, and the heavenly coda of aptly titled ‘Autochoral’ with a retiring, autumnal sensibility. Pioulard’s gift for incepting so many mixed emotions in these pieces is trumped only by an ability to place listeners within his aural geography. Yes, Thelma’s lovely cover-art (featuring photograph done by Sean Curtis Patrick) goes some distance in establishing the song-cycle’s peaceful, remote vibe but Pioulard imparts each track with its own textural character – be it one that lurches from the clouds (‘Malick’), one that pools as if from a leaky tap (‘Pidgin’) or as a textile of lost voices (‘Hushes Gasp’).

None of these strengths properly explain my obsessive connection to Thelma, but that’s par for the course with desirable ambient records. As a mini-album, Benoît Honoré Pioulard Plays Thelma’s direct but still teasing, engaging but fleeting. It colours moods that are explicitly autumn to me, and I’ve no doubt that Pioulard’s latest will remain a coveted favourite of mine for years to come.

Benoît Honoré Pioulard - Calder by desire path recordings