Album Review

New Year, New Music, The Decemberists, Akron/Family, Radiohead & More

It’s been a while, but I guess it’s time I got off my ass and de-mothballed this site and started posting again. What can I say?  My blogging-self likes to hibernate. Actually, that’s a bunch of bullshit.  I’m just a lazy writer.  I’m not, however a lazy listener. I have been rocking a ton of great new (or new-to-me) music in the past couple months and I thought I’d kick off 2011 (little late!) with some quick and dirty reviews of some of the highlights of 2011 so far.

The Decemberists – The King Is Dead

With a splash of harmonica, The Decemberists open their latest effort, The King is Dead, and leave behind the prog tinged epics of recent years. I was worried about this group. After their explorations of heavy prog and album-spanning epic tales it seemed possible that they had painted themselves into a corner. Where does a group go from there? Do they dare to write an even better concept album? Expectations can be the ruination of a band.

Not to be daunted, The Decemberists took their time and, this time out, they’ve delivered American folk-rock at its finest.  The King Is Dead is a collection of four-minute songs that tell of our lives and the world around with jangling guitars, infectious beats and, yes, Colin Meloy’s penchant for English-Major vocabulary words.  While there is no single story or evident concept holding these songs together, they cohere beautifully in what make for a delightful listen.  Songs of love, songs of war, and even songs about gardening (sounds lame when I say it that way but it’s cool), weave together with steel guitar, harmony vocals, and just enough rock and roll to make me want to leap from my seat.

If you’ve ever liked The Decemberists, seek out this record.

http://decemberists.com/

Akron/Family – ST II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey of Shinju TNT

When I saw these guys last year, it was clear that they were well past the “freak-folk” genre that I and others had saddled them with back in the Love Is Simple days. Extended explorations of noise ripped through the room and demolished preconceptions.  Yes, they can do quiet meditations (and still do) but this band had a direction that it felt compelled to follow. After that tour, the group set to recording what would become Shinju TNT and struck a balance between noise and melody. Like a wrangler breaking a wild mustang, they have tempered the wild abandon, corralled it, and given it purpose and direction.

Each of these songs detail movement and/or destination with lyrics evoking the both metaphysical and the concrete taking the listener along on an amazing journey that spans four sides of vinyl.  And so, we find ourselves moving from the dreamscapes of “Island” to the raw, rock riffs of “So It Goes” (a nod to Vonnegut) to the rapid fire, noisy, guitar licks of “Another Sky” to the soaring beauty of “Canopy”.  The heavily layered progression of “Light Emerges” reminds me a bit of Animal Collective in a sort of intangible way but it’s followed by the pastoral harmonies of “Cast A Net” that could only be Akron/Family.  It’s this many-headed-beast nature that defines Akron/Family as a leading voice in modern, psychedelic, music and this voice that makes Shinju TNT one of my favorite albums in some time.

http://akronfamily.com/

Radiohead – The King Of Limbs

“Bloom” opens the album with a synth space and off-kilter drum beat that take me right back (in my twisted mind) to where In Rainbows left off. The track builds, layering elements until Thom Yorke’s languid vocal oozes from the speakers. With that, Radiohead is back.

Out of nowhere, we got word that Radiohead would be releasing a new album. Pre-order now, get digital on the weekend and vinyl in a month or two… Sounds good to me. How could I not bite on that offer? I jumped a day later and a couple days after that we all had our digital copies and last.fm seemed to think there was only one band in the digital world for a day or two. It was nearly true. As with any Radiohead release, The King Of Limbs will probably take months to fully digest and longer to grok if such a thing is even possible but I felt compelled to include it here because I can’t stop going back to it.

Don’t mistake my opening sentence; this is no continuation of In Rainbows. It inhabits a darker, almost creepy space. When you hear the hand claps in “Lotus Flower” it’s striking to hear such an terrestrial noise within this realm. This space that they create feels familiar, though. It is undeniably Radiohead music and some will mark that down as a negative, saying that they’re not moving forward, but I find myself compelled to listen as they explore their own sound- pushing out new corners in that vast world of theirs.

http://kingoflimbs.com/

Additional Listening:

Ducktails – Arcade Dynamics : Lo-fi, experimental, pop & psych from Real Estate guitarist Matthew Mondanile. Check this song, “Hamilton Road”

Moon Duo – Escape : A side project of Wooden Shjips, this gets darker and deeper into the psyche grooves. I like that.

Delicate Steve – Wondervisions : A wide ranging instrumental debut that laces psych onto pop, African rhythms, fuzzy guitars and more.
Delicate Steve – Butterfly by popgunbooking

Top Ten Albums of 2010

It’s that time of year again and I’m finally ready with my favorite records of 2010. These have been selected by an utterly subjective process of constant listening to almost exclusively 2010 releases for the past couple weeks. This has allowed me to rediscover a couple records that perhaps came out early and have since fallen off my radar (none of those made the cut) and also to catch up with some that I missed altogether and, of course, the more recent releases. Here you’ll find all kinds of music (Country AND Western!) but really only a sampling of the stuff that I really like to listen to and hope to listen to for years to come.

Here we go:

10 – Tame Impala – InnerSpeaker
Hows about of Australian psych-pop to kick things off. Seriously., a record like this is a good place to start anything. This record (and band) really captured my imagination in 2010 and it all started with the terrific single, “Solitude Is Bliss”. There are weirder bands out there (Stardeath And White Dwarfs, anyone?) but these guys perfectly blend rough edged psyche with the polish of brit-pop.

9 – Aloe Blacc – Good Things
Proper soul music that nails it in every category: vocals, lyrics, performance, and arrangements. Elements of Heron and Mayfield are recognizable in this rapper-turned soul singer latest record. Oh, and how about that riveting take on VU’s “Femme Fatale”? A good friend hipped me to this and I’ve enjoyed it from the first note.

8 – Admiral Radley – I Heart California
Jason Lytle (who topped this list last year) teamed up with two members from Earlimart and made their first appearances at this year’s SXSW under the guise, Admiral Radley. The record soon followed and complements Lytle’s catalogue with his humour and slacker psych rock. The songs are great, and the hooks are strong, making this a fun listen.

7 – Junip – Fields
This record came out-of-the-blue for me. a few friends were raving about it and I figured it would be just another indie record that I’d play once and move on but I quickly fell for its charms. Krautrock trances, indie-pop melodies and dizzying production that includes vocals nestled tightly in the mix make this my favorite driving record of the year- as long as the sun is up or I’ve had my coffee. Sleepy isn’t the word but it can induce a meditative state if you are susceptible to such a thing. Myself? I might be; but I dig it, too.

6 – Broken Bells – Broken Bells
Danger Mouse has led a semi-charmed life on this site of late. This project, a collaboration with The Shins’ James Mercer, continues the win streak with a collection of entrancing songs. The hooks are stellar and the whole record pays off with repeat listens. This is another one which did take a few listens to fall for the entire record (although the opening cut, “The High Road” is one of the more infectious pieces of the year) but it begged additional listens and the reward is rich.

Click through to see the top five and more! Continue reading →

Megafaun – Heretofore

Megafaun - Heretofore

Carolina folk/psych troubadors, Megafaun have released a new EP. Heretofore, out today, September 14th, is being released as a means to hold us all over while they finish their full-length follow up to 2009’s Gather, Form & Fly. After a few listens, I can tell you that it most certainly will keep me on the hook for whatever they have in store.

The record opens with the title track, a trippy invocation to the band’s overall sound. The vocals come almost as a chant while swirls of effects and found sounds ride above a muted kickdrum. Next comes a straight ahead country-fied rocker entitled, “Carolina Days”. Phil Cook (guitar, banjo, etc) has called this a “love song to Durham, North Carolina.” Durham should be flattered. Continue reading →

Dr. Dog – Shame, Shame

Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame

Great records are like old friends. As we move through life, we often drift apart due to geography, time limitations, other relationships that might have taken precedence, whatever. But, being friends, we reconnect periodically. Some you only see at a party; others for a quiet evening at home. Sometimes you get together and it’s a flurry of intense catching up- reliving details of the past and intervening years- other times history and time passed need not be rehashed and the present can simply be as if there were no time apart. All of this can be true with great albums and even ordinary albums that you love. With “Shame Shame”, Dr. Dog has blended the new with the familiar and crafted a new old friend for all of us. Continue reading →

Rediscovering Oar

Chatting with a friend the other day, we stumbled onto the topic of ‘legendary’ or ‘landmark’ records. We made little distinction between those two labels and that of ‘infamous’ but a few titles tumbled out onto the table. “Pet Sounds” was one of the first and, when my friend noted that he hadn’t dug it for years after first listening until he learned more about its genesis, I expressed a bit of shock and countered with a confession of my own.

“A classic album stands up on its own whether you know its history or even like the music. Hell, you couldn’t have gotten me to like My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” back in the 90’s but I could tell that they were doing something powerful on there.”

(That’s true. In the mid-nineties, while I was expanding my musical vocabulary with older music across the boards of rock, pop, jazz, and folk, I neglected much of the contemporary material. I’ve been working to rectify this over the past ten years.)

As our discussion progressed, he asked me about Alexander ‘Skip’ Spence’s acclaimed solo record, “Oar”. Was it really a masterpiece as he’d often heard? Who was Skip Spence, anyway? Continue reading →