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The Catheters craft hard, agressive, and at times completely merciless rock in the strongest traditions of the genre. Their sound is menacing and fast-paced, while vocalist, Brian Standeford sounds like he either wants his vocal cords to bleed, or your head to explode starting with your ears first.
Something seems to be a bit lost here. These songs sound incredibly rushed in creation, recording, and execution. There's no polish, which some might say is an admirable quality, though I'm not so sure. Like recent albums by other larger acts, it sounds like the band set up their instruments, microphones, amps, and boards at the same setting and recorded a whole album without changing any settings over the course of a few days. There's no variety. There's no change in the aesthetic, but, in a lot of cases on this release, there's really not much change of tempo or presentation. Everything sounds remarkably the same from one song to the next. It's the few changes that make the record worth it if only for a little while. "Clock on the Wall", the album's longest track, is also its most interesting listen, with a fine melody and mild turns, all with the driving force of a band with nothing to prove. "The Door Shuts Quickly" is also a slower tempo song, and not as much of a departure, but still not the same montonous pounding of the other tracks. In fact, the only thing that seems to be missing is a variation in arrangement. The songs aren't bad, the band clearly has talent and the subject matter/lyrics/vocals are just as crushing as the music that backs it.
 
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I haven't listened to His Name Is Alive for about six or seven years, so I wasn't sure I had the right disc in my stereo when I pressed play and expected to hear the new album, 'Last Night.' The recent blitz of 4AD releases which all look thoroughly similar (computer-blurred images on a dark background digipak) didn't help my confusion, either. Instead of the dreamy His Name Is Alive indie pop I expected, what I got was a soulful, jazzy hybrid of funk and R&B with female vocals I did not recognize.
Apparently, His Name Is Alive is on a path to reinvent itself from record to record, the mark of a band which either gets bored with its sound or cannot execute the music with enough conviction to sustain it. The core of the band is now Lovetta Pippen (unrecognized soulful female vocals) and leader Warn Defever, a core lineup much like last year's 'Someday My Blues Will Cover the Earth' (a problematic prophesy when considered with this release). I tried to listen generously, but by the third song I was confused and cringing. A song like "Crawlin'" makes me cringe specifically because the lyrics seem so intent on conveying the jazz and R&B and funk sound which the band is trying to appropriate but without following through in the actual music. As a result, the lyrics appear overstretched and threadbare, exposing their own inadequacies by trying to cover the music's shortcomings. The repetition of the line "You got a lot of crawlin' to do" in conjunction with the soupy bass and wanky guitar makes my stomach ache. Songs like "I Can See Myself in Her" and "" even make brave excursions into what sounds like urban pop. All this is too large a jump for me, from my more familiar His Name Is Alive reference point of 'Mouth by Mouth.' The last straw was when I realized that the songs I could tolerate were covers: The Equals's "Teardrops" and Ida's "Maybe." On the one hand, "I Been Good Up Till Now" is a stark contrast point on the album, notable only for its retreat from the funk and the jazz and its return to repetitive bedroom ambience. On the other hand, "Someday My Prince Will Come" is an interminable eleven-minute indulgence into faux-funk, replete with horns. The majority of 'Last Night' follows this latter formula, albeit with slightly more restraint and coolness, and I am just not sure that His Name Is Alive should apply for any patents for this reinvention.
 
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It's easy for pop musicians to get a complex about being taken seriously in the music world. We've been through the 80's fetishists attempt to reclaim pop music via forced kitsch, and we've seen would-be pop singers succumb to the trend du jour by lacing their otherwise straight-ahead songwriting with up-to-the-minute studio trickery that is bound to sound dated in a few years. Luckily, Sing-Sing are smarter than this. On "The Joy of Sing-Sing," they get down to the business of making pure, catchy pop music with a tried and tested set of sounds and production techniques that never get old if they are used in the right way. And they are here, as evidenced by the fact that I woke up this morning with their single "Feels Like Summer" repeating on infinite loop in my brain, and I didn't mind. While most of the press surrounding Sing-Sing seems intent on comparing this album to the two songwriters' previous body of work, and ultimately telling you what this album IS NOT (it is, after all the product of people who have been involved with other bands) I feel like it's more interesting to tell you what Sing-Sing IS! It's bitter-sweet lyrics about friends and lovers that falls nicely between the two unbearable extremes of chic lounge indifference and embarrassing heart-on-sleeve open-ness. You won't know what side of the bed singer Lisa O'Neil wakes up on, but she's also not so flippant towards her miniature tales of personal connections that you don't lose interest. And therein lies the allure of Sing-Sing. The looped beats and layered guitars are interesting enough to draw you in while delicate vocal harmonies allow you to take the songs with a grain of salt, or to pour your heart and soul into every crisply recorded breath. Sing-Sing is pop music for people who remember liking pop music at one point, and aren't afraid to like it again, but don't want to have to like it with their tongue always planted firmly in cheek. Sing-Sing write songs that take three minutes to move from point A to point C by way of B without drawing attention to the formula that makes them work, and are intelligent enough not to be seen as a guilty pleasure. This is the kind of album that will make you want to go to a show and (gasp) buy a t-shirt again. It can be easy to get stuck in a rut of listening to nothing but 'serious' music, and we all need a break now and then, and Sing-Sing has the perfect recipe. It's music you don't have to get involved in to enjoy, but it' that much richer if you do. Oh, and Emma from Lush is in it. Read More
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Moonsanto's Fraud - Hell - Dope goes awry in the first minute and never gets back on track. It's a concept album, and right off the bat that means it has a lot more work to do to keep me from saying "oh, come on already." Don't get me wrong, there are some great concept albums where the result of a deeply rooted idea being fleshed out over the course of an album yields a result greater than the sum of the parts. This is not one of them. The story here is about "Professor Dr. Goodseed" and his ultimate pesticide, and well, I don't really have to finish that thought, because it all gets much more silly as it goes along. Is this supposed to be creepy or diabolical? If it is, it achieves that tone only in the way a Scooby-Doo villain does. The background noise is just that: relatively uninspiring electro-acoustic mishmash of instruments and digital blurbs. On its own, it wouldn't make an engaging record. What intensifies my frustration is the near constant voice-over that vaguely tells the story of Moonsanto, the Professor, and Mary Ann in a pitch-shifted and nearly cartoonish voice. It's like the Teletubbies trying to trip you out, and it's not working. There are a few worthwhile moments where the composition makes sense and is intriguing, but for the rest of the release Moonsanto is either assuming that being vague and faux-spooky will be enough for me to suspend my disbelief, or being ironic and tounge-in-cheek to cover up the utter lack of real content. Either way, Hushush is usually on point with odd music that a lot of other labels wouldn't touch, but with this one, they cast the net a little too far. Reel it in. samples:Read More
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Picture the scene: Three hundred wide-eyed and crazy club kids from the Ukraine, desperate for a place to hold the mother of all parties, hi-jack a dormant soviet submarine and load it up with a massive sound system, a bar, and several cases of glowsticks. They descend into the icy waters and let the rumble begin. Meanwhile, Andrew Duke, a Canadian Naval sonar operator picks up a faint throb from the distant party sub as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. The gurgling beats are mangled by the time he receives them several thousand nautical miles away, but as he listens for signs of hostile intent, he begins to tap his foot, and the impetus for "Sprung" is born. He leaves the Navy with deep-sea sonar recordings in tow and buys a laptop where he begins to splice the faint, distressed beats and pulses with more audible scratches and pops and the Bip-Hop label is more than happy to release the results. I'm not sure if that's exactly how the recording of "Sprung" went down, but if you sit back with a copy of "Sprung," and a pair of headphones and picture that wayward sub and its crew of tripped-out dancing kids slowly descending through the darkness until the pressure squeezes the infinite beat into submission, you'll have the perfect soundtrack. Read More
After releasing three singles on SharkAttack! and providing very little information about themselves, Charlene release their eponymous debut full-length. While the singles were simple, sparse, and often brief, these recordings feature a denser sound, with more instruments and a clear evolution in production.
 
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Let me just say this one thing to our entire British audience before I get started with this review: Just because you guys import our urban music by the barrel doesn't mean we Americans should have to put up with any quantity of yours. Sure, we'll take the occasional Craig David track and play the video on M2, but we have no interest in your "So Solid" UK Garage (save for the R&B-like MJ Cole and Artful Dodger). That being said, my heart is filled with nothing but the purest of pity for the poor A&R over at Vice Records who's going to lose his or her job in the crash and burn effort to attain some level of crossover success with The Streets. Sole member Mike Skinner may speak directly to the British youth in the same way that Eminem speaks to suburban white teenagers, but he's speaking an entirely different language than what this market speaks. The lyric sheet that came with this promo CD is essential for any attempt to understand the heavy slang here, although some translations would be even more useful (birds = bitches; geezers = UK garage wiggers). While I could waste far too much of my time slagging The Streets' total lack of lyrical flow, I'll just say that it really takes away from the mediocre tracks underneath. The peppy single "Has It Come To This?" sounds like a radio spot where the hyper-caffeinated disc jockey babbles on, unable to oblige the listeners by shutting the fuck up and go back to the music they actually tuned in for. Sadly, this song stands among the few-and-far-between decent moments of the album. Tracks like "Sharp Darts," "Don't Mug Yourself," and "Too Much Brandy" are so ridiculously bad that I am stunned that a reputable music magazine like NME praised 'Original Pirate Material' as a "landmark record." Still, a handful of the songs would have worked as instrumentals, namely the moody two-step lurch of "Geezers Need Excitement" and the string washes of "It's Too Late." Though I'll take another twelve Damon Albarn side-projects before I listen to anything like this again, 'Original Pirate Material' does manage to come out sounding better than that last Vincent Gallo compilation, destined to be the worst CD of the year no matter how many more British MCs release albums in 2002.
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The peculiarity of Pavement's music to me has always been its indifference. A song like "Loretta's Scars" is at once dreary as well as rousing. Stephen Malkmus's slackeristic vocals contribute to the indifference, but I think it has more to do with the unconventional composition of Pavement's songs. On the one hand, at the time 'Slanted and Enchanted' was recorded, you had a bunch of fellows who, at best, had moderate skill with their instruments, yet a fairly intimate connection with them. On the other hand, part of the band was living outside NYC, while the other part was back in Stockton, California, and so the result is a sort of bicoastal composition which successfully hybridized a bunch of antagonistic pairs: Malkmus's melody craft with Kannberg's explosiveness; menacing snarls with mournful croons; an East Coast melancholy with a west coast optimism.
The bridge straddling these poles is Malkmus's lyrics, a literal glue holding together the music which is constantly threatening to disintegrate. I always felt that the comparison between Pavement and the Fall was most pertinent in terms of the lyrics of the two bands. I can no more pierce the meaning of "Conduit For Sale!" than I can "Prole Art Threat." No two bands have ever made a better case for incoherent musical ramblings to equal great literature, mostly because no two bands have ever created such poignant verbal formulations with their lyrics and titles.
Matador has just released a tenth year anniversary edition of Pavement's first album, called 'Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe and Reduxe.' It is a two-disc set with forty tracks comprising: the original songs, remastered; two Peel sessions; a live set recorded at Brixton Academy (originally released on a bootleg entitled 'Stray Slack'); the 'Watery, Domestic' EP; nine B-sides and unreleased takes from both the 'Slanted' and 'Watery' sessions.
Inside the embossed slipcase is a booklet which contains liner notes, detailed thoughts from Malkmus, Spiral Stairs (a.k.a. Scott Kannberg), and others, and archives some of Malkmus's personal lyric notes. The entire package is handsome. Some of the high points on Matador's reissue are the Peel sessions, which feature a furious rendition of "Here," as well as a thoughtfully meandering song "Secret Knowledge of Backroads," which would later turn up in a different version on the Silver Jews's 'Arizona Record.'
On the second disc, 'Watery, Domestic' sessions songs "So Stark (You're a Skyscraper)" and "Greenlander" are two tracks which are simply indispensable. The first starts with a lull and slowly builds to a howl and then relapses, only to crescendo again in a screech which sounds like it is tearing Malkmus's left lung into thirty-four ravaged pieces. The second is a soft, mossy exploration which vitally bounces up and down, intermittently dipping into a paralytic ice-encrusted pond for three brief moments where the music's pulse simply halts. Both songs are gems, and similar jewels populate the rest of the selections. The re-release of 'Slanted and Enchanted' validates Pavement as one of those seminal bands to which they were compared ten years ago. And if their election into the aristocracy of the indie rock empire was already tacitly accepted by many, then you can consider this reissue the official coronation ceremony.
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Terrastock 5 was an outrageous weekend-long nostalgia fest. By the evening of Sunday I'd really had enough of musty old psychedelic rock. The day had been disappointing. I was mostly hanging out at the bar, happy for any distraction from the music that came my way when suddenly, in the middle of it all, SubArachnoid Space made my day. They punched through all the dross, chatter, space and bodies and captivated my attention. At last, here was the prog rock aesthetic demonstrating its superior durability by sweeping away all the psych cobwebs of the weekend. Despite some technical issues, their sound was excellent—very loud but tight, punchy and clear. The first rate drumming, which reminded me of Police-era Stuart Copeland and of Trans Am's second album, combined with massive wedges of bass (sufficient to cause a perceptible draft) to lay down the groove while ingenious guitar figures and washes filled out the well delineated compositions. This was so good that, in a guilty, devil-may-care frame of mind, I broke the terms of my unemployment and bought a couple of their CDs. The first, "These Things Take Time" on Release was recorded live at KFJC in Silicon Valley in 1999 and the second "Play Nice" is a self-released 2002 tour CDR comprising bootleg-quality recordings from rehearsals and concerts. To be candid, if SubArachnoid had played like they did on these CDs in their T5 set, I wouldn't have bought any CDs. "Play Nice" holds some of live set's powers (check the samples) but overall the material is, unfortunately, much more psych than it is prog. While SubArachnoid's set at T5 was (blessedly) on the fringes, the music on these CDs would have been right in the middle of the T5 spectrum, almost definitive: lugubrious noodling jams with lashings of space echo on the guitar — pleasant enough in their own right, sometimes breaking the barrier into interesting, a long way from being enthralling and almost memorable. The good news is that SubArachnoid Space are working on a new album.
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When Mineral disbanded following the completion of their second record, 'EndSerending,' many fans of their brand of plaintive and emotional rock were stunned and dismayed. In just a short time, Mineral had not only amassed a loyal following and had been courted by a number of major labels—even signing with Virgin but calling it quits before they could record anything—but they had also nearly changed their sound completely. Once a punk-laced energetic emo band like Sunny Day Real Estate, they were now fans of sprawling melodic structures with even more soaring vocals. Founding members Chris Simpson and Jeremy Gomez decided to continue making music together under the moniker The Gloria Record, and released several EPs and singles on Crank!. With this, their first full-length, the Gloria Record accomplishes the same growth in sound Mineral showed from their first LP to 'Endserenading.'Arena Rock
Where as before their sound was more acoustic in nature, with mellower songs and themes, now The Gloria Record is an accomplished indie rock band with some very interesting textures and flavors. They've finally hit their musical stride, featuring keyboards and distinct drumming, chiming Sundays-like guitars, and Simpson's vocals soaring above it all with a renewed sense of glory. The album opens with the synth-drenched title track, but soon shifts to the fervor and drive of "Good Morning Providence," eclipsing anything these musicians have been involved with previously. Things move pleasantly along with "Cinema Air," with its lyrics the most impressive of the lot—and the frolic of "The Immovable Motorist," which is a mostly somber affair with a hospital/death mixed with driving theme. "My Funeral Party," "I Was Born in Omaha," and "The Ambulance" are phenomenal arrangements, surpassed only by "The Overpass," burying them all in piano and Simpson's falsetto. Fans of Mineral should like this new sound, but fans of Death Cab for Cutie and the like will also love this release.
 
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For their second release, this Montreal-based drum, bass, and tape trio has mellowed out their punk-influenced musical assault, and have somewhat filled the space with a wider variety of sounds and techniques. The result is a diverse collage of musique concrete- and beatbox-inspired instrumentals. Throughout the album, the musicians stay true to their rock roots. Even when bits of DSP are employed, the overall sound is stripped-down and unpretentious. "Gauss" opens the album with some low bass and brooding bass clarinet, establishing the album's stark and gloomy mood. Most of the songs combine a slow, moaning, three- or four-note bassline with some solid mid-tempo breakbeat drumming and noisy tape and computer processing. "Voiceboxed" is an excellent track; it is propelled forward by a repeating one-note guitar part (played by Mike Moya of Hrsta) and reel-to-reel tape manipulations, while some well-crafted digital effects shift in and out. "Ice Storm" starts as a semi-interesting medley of instrument cable buzzes and intermittent static; a downtempo beat and some clarinet emerge for a while but then the piece gets quiet and abstract again for the last minute. "My Country Is Winter" has an almost hip-hop beat and one of the better bass melodies as all manners of tape noises and strange electronic sounds whirl about. Exhaust have used the studio effectively in constructing this album; at various points the drums cut out and are seamlessly replaced or augmented by filtered and machine-produced rhythms. The reel-to-reel tapes were my favorite part of Exhaust's debut, and that element isn't as high-profile as I would have liked this time around, but there's so much more detail and variety of sound on this album that it definitely deserves a closer listen than its predecessor. The mixing of organic rock instrumentation with more abstract electronic elements makes 'Enregistreur' an entertaining and interesting release.
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