As a format, singles accommodate brevity better than wistfulness. As Pumice, New Zealand’s Stefan Neville takes a different path. In Persevere, he performs as if he had an entire afternoon to burn. His drowsy style is charming, but it is Neville’s economy as a musician that really holds this record together.
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I found this CD in a small shop full of musty vinyl, fanzines, crates of tapes, and neatly arranged homemade and self released CDRs on a recent trip to Portland, Maine. I had no idea what kind of music I would find on the disc, but liking the cover, I took a stab at it. I did remain skeptical knowing next to nothing about what I had just purchased. What I found was a very humble and unassuming album of non-pretentious lo-fi folk meanderings. On listening my attitude of skepticism quickly relaxed under the pastoral melodies Jeremy Pisani coaxed from his acoustic guitar.
Spilling over with trembling strings and thunderous crescendos, "Coward" foreshadows the electric energy that is to be found throughout Vic Chesnutt's newest record. With members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Silver Mt. Zion, and Fugazi once again contributing, At the Cut is populated by giant melodies, quiet meditations, and intense studies on mortality and memory. But, for all its bombast, At the Cut is probably most notable for Chesnutt's unwavering honesty and cathartic power. Because of these qualities it has quickly become one of my favorite and most played records this year.
Pelican's latest proves that you don't need a crooner to rock, and that you don't have to ramble on for a quarter of an hour just because your band doesn't have a singer, either. This is an album full of gritty, muscular songs that makes the case for hard rock bands releasing instrumental versions of their albums.
Ka-Spel's follow up to last year's excellent Part One is similarly organized, but features vastly different results. More disjointed and even jarring at times, this album mines new emotional territory. Uncertainty and dread give rise to paranoiac self-effacement on this melancholic gaze into the underworld.
It's hard to imagine a better guide to vintage European prog/psych than The Bevis Frond's Nick Saloman. Here he curates another compilation of quality obscurities from the late '60s and early '70s, this time originating primarily in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Ireland, and Britain. While not every selection is a lost classic, this collection is thoroughly entertaining.
Juana Molina's music is a child-like and eruptive force of nature. On her fifth album she has refined her musical vocabulary and crafted a work that rejoices in playfulness and unrestrained dynamism.
Lauded often as the zenith of their career, this album manages to be richer and more unified by actually being more disjointed: rather than the nine distinct pieces that made up Information Overload Unit, Leichenschrei is 14 shorter tracks that bleed over into one another, often invisibly. Taken as a whole there is a certain thematic linkage that pulls the album together into one of darkest, bleakest ones in existence, one that loses none of its power nearly 30 years since its release.
