var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-36485917-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Daily album reviews, podcasts, music news, interviews, and relevant editorials. Check back daily for new content and join our community of rabid music fans. Find us on Twitter Jacob Dixon@jtdxn Sonny Crooks@sonnycrooks Gene Priest@genepriest Ben Morgan@Benji_Ray Brian Chesman@chesman77
I'm very angry at anyone who knew about Mark Lanegan Band and didn't tell me about it already. For fans of Tom Waits, Swans, and Mississippi Delta Blues.
I think that it would be foolish to expect Geology to sound anything like mewithoutYou, as it is at its very core, a bedroom pop-folk project. Where mwY is known for shouted vocals and roaring guitars (at least in their earlier inception), Geology is introspective and hushed. North however, functions very appropriately as a mid-way point between the two, drawing musical inspiration from the more post-rock influenced Catch For Us The Foxes and the very personal lyrical qualities found in tracks like “C-Minor” from Brother, Sister. All this is packaged very nicely with the charm and personality of a bedroom recording. Take for instance the track “G Minor”, which finds Jehanian softly crooning over a clean electric guitar and simple percussion, like some throwback to The Only Reason I Feel Secure-era Pedro The Lion. Again and again he bemoans the fact that “[he has] no voice”, and as the track builds, we hear atmospheric slide guitar and background vocals filling the space left empty by the pared-down instrumentation, and to great effect.
Unlike his previous releases, North sounds more cohesive and complete; something more appropriate for a member of an act as influential as mwY. His first album, the self-titled Geology, has all of the angst and immaturity of a college dorm room recording, but through the next two EPs that lead up to North, you can see a definite transition toward something more believable and tangible. While none of these albums could or should be ignored, North is undeniably the cream of the crop, and tracks like “The Mountains and the Sea”, “G Minor”, and “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” are all the proof you could ask for.
All told, North exemplifies all of the best qualities of not only bedroom recordings, but also the introspective and personal nature of albums that belong wholly to fall and winter. This is the type of album that belongs in cars warmed against the cold, winding their way down colorful back roads in eastern Kentucky. It is made alive in the low light of Autumn and is best described as a craggy piece of driftwood: something that, by its very nature, is imperfect, but that is all the more charming for that fact.
<a href="http://geology.bandcamp.com/album/north-ep" data-mce-href="http://geology.bandcamp.com/album/north-ep">North EP by Geology</a>
For Fans of: The Microphones, Pedro The Lion, and mewithoutYou.
Key Tracks: "The Mountains and the Sea", "G Minor", and "A Temple of the Holy Ghost".
News: Midlake release title track from new album.
Jacob Dixon
Normally, this can be a death sentence for a band, but our boys in Midlake carried on, and in the months since Smith's departure, they have recorded a new album and are currently promoting its release.
Take a listen to the title track, Antiphon:
While very different from the band's previous material, especially The Courage of Others, the song does a fantastic job of breaking those expectations and setting all new ones. This new Midlake is bolder and much more experimental (side note: all of the members of the band are trained jazz musicians).
Antiphon comes out Nov. 5 on ATO Records. No official artwork has been released as of yet.
Pity Sex - Feast of Love on Run For Cover
Jacob Dixon
As stated before, if you watch anything for long enough, you’ll watch it change. By its very nature, art draws from what came before and influences what comes after, but we are in a time now where we see young bands disregarding and reinventing the Third Wave movement by more appropriately blending the elements found in Second Wave emo influences, with the pop-punk influences of the early and mid-2000s. Bands like The World Is a Beautiful Place and I’m No Longer Afraid To Die, Dads, and Pity Sex find themselves taking all of the best elements from Second Wave emo, shoegaze, and pop-punk, and mixing them together into a beautiful mélange of only slightly-angsty, but wholly enjoyable pop rock.
Unlike some of their contemporaries, Pity Sex come out swinging on Feast of Love, with the muscular “Wind-Up”, choosing instead to tuck the slow-burners into the back half of the album. This tactic works well, serving to reach out and grab the listener with reverb-laden guitars and natural baritone vocals. As if to keep the listener from getting too familiar too early, the band slips on something a bit more comfortable in the form of a The Great Destroyer-era Low ballad; female vocalist Britty Drake more than appropriately channeling a young Mimi Parker. All told, Feast of Love ebbs and flows between the aggressive and the melancholy, without ever setting up camp for too long in one or the other. It is a very self-aware album that takes the listener on a journey, rather than merely existing.
As it stands, It's incredibly encouraging to see such a young band release an album that is so rich with influence, but also wholly its own and compelling from start to finish. This isn't the type of album that the majority of bands are able to come out of the gate with, which only makes the band's future that much brighter.
Bandcamp (for their first release, Dark World EP)
Bandcamp (for Feast of Love - purchase here!)
For Fans of: TWIABP, Low, and Sunny Day Real Estate.
Key Tracks: "Wind-Up", "Sedated", and "St. John's Wort".
Case Studies - This is Another Life on Sacred Bones Records
Jacob Dixon
Equal parts Andrew Bird and Antony Hegarty, Case Studies’ This Is Another Life has all of the charm of a bedroom recording, but with the muscle of a bigger release, though it at no point sacrifices listenability for believability. It’s lush in scope but sparse in delivery, making for a perfect rainy day album, similar in that respect to the whole of Shearwater’s discography.
This Is Another Life begins with the Tom Waits-esque barroom piano ballad “In a Suit Made of Ash” which sets an appropriate tone for the 10 tracks that will follow. Interestingly enough, though the album features a downtempo style and slightly more serious themes, it never suffers from these elements. Much like Other Lives’ Tamer Animals, the existence of such melancholy in the songs is the wind in their sails, and while it may not appeal to the broadest of audiences, it’s encouraging to see artists willing to sacrifice mass appeal for the sake of artistic integrity.
Probably the most appealing aspect of the album is the way it shifts and evolves over the 11 tracks. Some songs are downtempo piano ballads, and others are slightly more upbeat acoustic affairs. There are even throwback Americana endeavors that belong on roadtrip mixes somewhere between Willie Nelson and Wilco. Each song is, in and of itself, complete, adding to the cohesiveness that is felt over the whole of the album. All told, This Is Another Life is an album that deserves to be played on a record player while a crisp Autumn breeze rattles the leaves outside your window.
Spotify
For Fans of: Antony and The Johnsons, Andrew Bird, and The Duchess and The Duke.
Key Tracks: "In a Suit Made of Ash", "Villain", and "Driving East, and Through Her".
It makes perfect sense if you think about it though; you create a wall of sound, and then you have someone stand atop it, aggressively shouting into the wind. Leave the breakdowns and the chugs for younger bands with fancier hair, turn the lights down low, and create an aural landscape the like of which has never been seen before.
From the first notes of Sunbather’s opening track, “Dream House”, it’s easy to tell that Deafheaven are far from anything that you’ve heard before. From there, it’s full steam ahead for nearly 10 minutes, ebbing and flowing like the Deepwater Horizon tide, licking the land with its black tongue. Much of the rest of the album plays out in the same way, sounding much like some otherworldly supergroup made up of the members of This Will Destroy You and Converge. Really, the album is quite beautiful, and is an album that so transcends genre that even those that shy away from more aggressive music will find something that draws them in.
If you pay attention to anything for long, you’ll see it played out and driven straight into the ground. Metal and hardcore are some of the most readily available examples of this, having as many sub-genres are there are bands and little deviation from the standard model. Sunbather however, is what I would consider to be one of the strongest and most innovative hardcore albums to come out in recent years, breaking free from the fold and laying the groundwork for a new sub-genre that is long overdue. What the album did right is it took a tired genre and breathed new life into it. My only hope is that this record makes its way into the hands of the kids that will be picking up their first guitars and soon to start bands of their own.
Spotify
For Fans of: Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, and Converge.
Key Tracks: "Dream House", "Please Remember", and "The Pecan Tree".
Desert Hymns: It's been more of a 'See Ya' than a 'Goodbye'.
Desert Hymns: It's been more of a 'See Ya' than a 'Goodbye'.
In the beginning, Desert Hymns started as a writing exercise. Since I was in my teens, I have always felt as though I have a book inside of me somewhere, and over the years, I have tried more times than I care to admit to sit down and commit it to paper. Fiction, non-fiction, memoir, science fiction, and each time it failed because I didn’t have discipline. I didn’t know what it meant to sit down every day and dedicate time to writing. Thus, Desert Hymns was born. I would write an album review every day, which would get me into the habit of writing consistently and prepare me for the eventual book that I felt gestating. Little did I know just how this little writing exercise would evolve.
During the life of Desert Hymns, we went from 1 person to 5, we had the opportunity to interview a band named the “#1 band to see at SXSW” by Time Magazine, and to attend Rhythm N’ Blooms Fest in a professional capacity. At the time when we decided to give up the ghost, we also had several big things in the pipeline. As I mentioned before though, the model wasn’t self-sustaining for long and in looking back, I'm surprised that it lasted as long as it did. We were creating the amount of content that other, bigger websites put out, but on an unpaid skeleton crew, necessitating the need for day jobs. For the first few months we ran on momentum alone, but it didn’t take long before we were running on fumes.
I don’t know that there is one thing that I can pinpoint as being the final nail in the coffin. Even though we knew it was coming to an end, Sonny, Ben, and I continued pushing forward and trying to find a way to keep fanning the embers, hoping that they would spring back up and reignite. Ultimately, the decision wasn’t a difficult one; we all felt a great deal of relief. We had allowed this beautiful thing that we loved to turn into a source of frustration, stress, and dissatisfaction.
Despite our relief upon deciding to put it down and once the dust had some time to settle, Ben and Sonny and I sat back down and were surprised when we came to the conclusion that, while Desert Hymns had broken its chain and gotten away from us, we still very much loved the work and the fun that we had doing it. We loved writing and discovering, but most of all, we loved the podcast. That was what our readers responded best to, and the thing that we most looked forward to. The thought of leaving all of that behind was at first a relief, but then quickly became the most unpleasant of thoughts. The decision was made to take some time to regroup and to breathe deeply, and then to return with more determination and vigor than ever.
This is something that we are very much looking forward to: a new and much-improved Desert Hymns that will begin at a much more manageable pace, based primarily around a new (and much funnier) podcast. We are starting fresh and we will know all of the pitfalls to avoid. More than anything though, we will be doing it for ourselves, rather than adhering to unrealistic expectations that may not even exist. Keep an eye out for new content and announcements in the coming weeks.
When it comes to releasing a debut album, you’re setting the bar by which all subsequent releases will be judged. In the case of Sharks, No Gods was bright and bigger-than-life, sizzling with a youthful exuberance that is reserved exclusively for punk rock. It was a nod to those that came before, but it was also very much a sharpened machete used to cut down the thickest brush to carve out a trail all its own. It was smart and showed the promise of a strong and powerful new name in the punk rock game.
Just over a year after the release of No Gods, the band released Selfhood, an album which, upon first listen, I was incredibly disappointed by. There was no mistaking that this was the same band, but all of that youthful exuberance and lip-curling edge that was seen in abundance on No Gods had taken a back seat to much more advanced songwriting. The band wanted to show off some new chords that they had learned and I was left unimpressed. Then I listened again.
It’s true; Selfhood is a tamer endeavor, but that doesn’t make it somehow inferior. Less anthemic in nature, Selfhood is a slow-burner that, once it gets going, burns brighter and for longer than its predecessor. It is a testament to a band growing older and wiser, and shows that rather than pandering to some formula, it’s possible to turn the overdrive down a bit and still be able to rock just as hard as ever. Just ask The Hold Steady.
What this all boils down to is, simply put, that my expectations are oft times inappropriately set. I wanted No Gods v2.0 and what I got was something much more appropriate and much more enjoyable. They spent the last year growing up, and they are much better for it. Here’s to hoping that the band is always honest and that they are always willing to push themselves further and harder than before for the sake of producing such powerful art.
For Fans of: The Gaslight Anthem, The Hold Steady, The Clash
Key Tracks: Selfhood, The More You Ask The Less I’m Sure, Room With a Gray View
The National - Trouble Will Find Me on 4AD
Ben Morgan
The worst feeling I get during this record is a simple feeling of gratefulness. It’s nice that a band can deliver over and over again in a consistent way. At it’s worst this album is exactly what you expect from the National. It’s a sad, down tempo rock song with lush guitars, powerful drums, and a melancholy voice dug in behind it all. In spite of any barrier I could put up, this album dogged my expectations and my fears, chipping them away until I was left with all of the old brilliance.
Let’s take a second and recognize that this is a strong sound to variate on. Each member of this band is so uniquely talented (The Dessner’s guitars, Devondorf’s drums, Berninger’s aching delivery) that it’s tough to knock them for making the kind of songs they like and sticking to them. In particular on this record the vocals and the drums, long the hallmark of this band, leap to the forefront more often than not. The guitars sit back in the mix a bit letting the rhythm and vocals lead, perhaps a more populist choice on the part of the band to lean into their strengths. In a lot of ways this record carries a referential tone. Morrissey, the Violent Femmes, Nirvana, Elliot Smith, and even Alligator, the band’s 2005 album, are called out in explicit references or quoted lines.
Berninger’s references “alligators in the sewers” during “Demons” and further calls back to being a “birthday candle in a circle of black girls” on Alligator’s “All the Wine” by stating in “Pink Rabbits” he felt like “a white girl in a crowd of white girls in a park”. His characters here are over the edge or dangling right over it, often in dangerous and desperate ways.They exist at the bottom of a bottle and an unhappy ending. The attitude reads closest to Alligator without a lot of the visceral anger of “Abel” or “Mr. November” at the front of these tracks.
It’s impossible to talk about my favorite tracks because if I listen a few more times before this posts they might all change. Right now it seems like “I tried to call you from the party, it’s full of punks and cannonballers” is the greatest line ever set to music. Each track here slowly erodes and bears itself up as useful and beautiful in its own right. The National’s longest album by a few minutes, this could have lost at least one track and been alright. But, I feel like even that might be hard to heartily argue after a few more spins. The best trick the band ever pulled was making me think they hadn’t made another delicious, difficult slow burn of an album.
For Fans of: Local Natives, The Smiths, The Black Swans
Key Tracks: Don’t Swallow the Cap, Graceless, I Need My Girl
Sam Amidon - Bright Sunny South on Nonesuch
Ben Morgan
A debut for Nonesuch and the promise of a well deserved wider audience has done nothing to stifle the talent or ambition of Amidon and his producer/collaborator Thomas Bartlett (Doveman). Amidon takes a song, usually a traditional folk song, and pulls the lyrics out while reworking the melody and pairing it with his soft, enchanting voice. Often he incorporates electric instruments or digital sounds into a spare mix of banjo or guitar to achieve a sound that hovers between timeless and modern. “He’s Taken My Feet” meditates over a song of religious yearning and descends into a dissonant electric guitar. Songs like “Bright Sunny South” and “Pharoah” similarly brood and meditate over religious stories and concerns of war. Amidon brings a fervency to the material that overrides any sense of preaching or worship. He’s more into the composition and stripping bare the core idea in each song.
“Shake It Off” twists a Mariah Carey jam into a contemplative piano ballad. Elsewhere Amidon straightforwardly covers Tim McGraw’s “My Old Friend” revealing a painful, soulful track from a genre that’s easy to dismiss. This pulling from every era and corner of music lends Amidon a unique feeling all his own. He’s wise enough that he can dance the common line of a pop song and a 19th century folk standard. Amidon unleashes on “As I Roved Out” a scathing, soulful track that nicely contrasts the measured burn of other tracks. It’s common for Amidon to descend into himself and peel back bright sounding songs into darkness, so it’s nice to see some levity on this record. Where previous releases have felt almost cloistered, Bright Sunny South feels, if not quite as open as the title suggests, like it can at least see the sky.
The closing track, “Weeping Mary”, is song that was old when Amidon’s parents recorded it for Nonesuch in the late 70s. It’s a perfect coda, laying out all of Amidon’s skill set in a beautiful revelation. This record manages the mean feat of keeping solid roots while reaching out and announcing a talented, exciting sound born of both past and present. Certainly music history is rich in its own right, but it’s just so enchanting to watch antiques be melted down and built into something new.
For Fans of: early Dylan, Sufjan Stevens,
Key Tracks: Bright Sunny South, As I Roved Out, Weeping Mary
Daft Punk - Random Access Memories (2013) on Columbia Records
Sonny Crooks
Random Access Memories is progressive in texture and scope. It takes us on a journey that we haven’t seen taken seriously since the mid-70’s. “Lose Yourself to Dance” morphs from a very simple vocal refrain by Pharell into an opening number on Soul Train: 2176 AD; the conceit of “Fragments of Time” is, apparently, there’s a Hall and Oats cover band aboard the S. S. Gary Numan, Interstellar Space Cruiser; as if the only way to advance the dance scene of 2013 is to travel backward and forward in time simultaneously. Closing track “Contact” even features astronaut radio chatter; setting the mood for either a laser show or a curtain call. Each and every track has saccharine sweet melodies keeping you stuck to your seat for the ride’s hour-fourteen-minute duration.
Epics like Dark Side of the Moon served as transportation for journeys like this over thirty years ago, before the role was road blocked by Punk. Nobody ever blamed Daft Punk for wearing the past on their sleeve, still, this album proves that chronology is irrelevant to a melody; a good song is a good song whether it's 1976 or 2176. This very specific philosophy, as well crafted as turns out, also constitutes the few but obvious lows of the album.
Daft Punk has always been universal. That trait kept them from being a niche-genre-interest; allowing them to attract an eclectic cult fan base. My one worry for Random Access Memories is in its lack of said universality. It’s an overwhelmingly a great album but this is not the album I’d use to help anybody jump on the Daft Punk bandwagon. It’s this one detriment Daft Punk can blame for this album not becoming a commercial success despite the critical praise it’s likely to receive. The ambitions and inspirations have noticeably narrowed Daft Punk’s target market. It’s also the first Daft Punk album that feels “of the times” instead of “from the future”. This is of no fault of the robot brothers though; it’s just we’ve already heard the chronologically dubious glamour tracks like “Instant Crush” in some fashion from Air, Chromeo, M83, and The Chromatics. None of this is so much a detriment to the album as much as markers for where it fits into the interstellar journey Daft Punk seem to be on. If all the prophesies are true and there is an album that can bring laser-shows back into vogue; Random Access Memories is The Chosen One.
For Fans of: Justice, Air, Deadmau5
Key Tracks: Lose Yourself to Dance, Get Lucky, Doin' It Right
Rating: 8/10
Listen to the single "Get Lucky ft. Pharell Williams" and pre-order the album on iTunes:
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