#bryan daly

[why-its-kai]

this is so fucking good

[dustedmagazine]

Woolen Men — Post (Dog’s Table)

Post by Woolen Men

"Amateur" is not only the word softly wailed at the end of a song of the same name on Woolen Men's Post. Amateur is a word that can be carefully held up like an apple against Woolen Men's oeuvre, checked for worms and then snapped into with verve. Hundreds of songs into a disheveled decade, on Post, Woolen Men have written nine of their best.

The gasoline that fueled some of their earlier straight-punk has all burned off, but like well-stoked embers, the promise of a fire is ever present. The songs with the most urgent beats, like the moving "Brick Horizon", or the raspier "Twin Flames" bounce without malice on clean guitar, sounding like the Feelies caught somewhere between their first two albums. The trio makes more space than ever before by flashing melody in turns apart and together between voice and the guitars. The unhurried release of emotionally rich melodies glows softly and steady. Woolen Men can manifest into a number of different bands, and here also play-up a motorik tick that clears the path for the wide-eyed observation of the amateur.

On Post, facile instrumentation and concrete observations are dyed in in their own private language. Here the surreal is most effectively routed in the mundane, so that lines like, "anyway, you're dead,” snap the listener's neck with their plainness. The post of the title is almost certainly the wooden kind seen on the cover, inelegantly tethered to the earth, because while the band's winking, omnivorous approach to music is indeed post-modern, the Woolen Men direct our attention to the inherent puzzle of plain earthliness.

A nice thought on the amateur: because their craft is thought below the expert, they often continue on forever for the joy of the pursuit. Quietly and uncompromisingly amateurs become masters, all the while maintaining an unexhausted love for their craft. It calls to mind the lesser used definition of that word, meaning one who loves. Post is in that way a record of love, a catalogue of the remarkable peculiarity of the daily pursuit, and the everlasting sublime of making meaning through music.  

Bryan Daly

[dustedmagazine]

Cindy Lee — Act of Tenderness (W.25th)

Act Of Tenderness by Cindy Lee

Anyone who has ever enjoyed a player that thoughtfully chewed on tapes, or treasured slowly losing the signal of a station while driving along the highway will find appeal in Cindy Lee’s combination of melody and disintegration. Though noise nearly envelops several of the songs, it’s not to conceal a lack of ideas or songwriting ability. On Act of Tenderness, Cindy Lee crafts melodies that feel inevitable but never cliché, and with a sweetness inside the din that can wrap these songs tightly around your heart.

Act of Tenderness experiments with a few sounds not found on Malenkost, which like this album was originally issued in 2015 (both newly reissued by Superior Viaduct’s W.25TH imprint). “What I Need” lopes along, aided by what sounds like a combination of synth and a life-support machine, complete with the hiss of a breathing tube and the bleeps of the heart monitor. It’s pretty and distant, like Siouxsie Sioux played through six feet of concrete. This foray into a 1980s electronic sound works as well on the shrill and groovy “Operation,” with a catchy eccentricity similar to the Flying Lizards. 

More impressively, noise plays effectively against melody, and creates cohesion between songs. “Bonsai Garden,” a full-bore feedback fest, typifies this excursion into noise, with heartfelt, soul-bearing howling reminiscent of Haino Keiji’s equally intimate work on Watashi Dake. Instead of serving as a diversion from the more traditional songs, experiments like these present the clear reaches of the project, exploring further territory where pleasure and pain mix. The way the album marches from the triumphant, sun-cresting-over-the-mountain of “Fallen Angel,” through total destruction and back into familiar melody feels natural. Album highlight “Miracle of the Rose” emerges from that dense forest and sounds like a spiritual sister of “Venus in Furs,” complete with the ghost of Nico’s unearthly baritone. 

Bittersweet, the word that so often comes to mind often when listening to Act of Tenderness, is also the name of a ubiquitous New England vine. Bittersweet will smother and choke the entire landscape if left unchecked, yet despite its destructive nature, bittersweet both flowers and fruits. Cindy Lee also threatens to choke and obliterate through noise, but through sweet melody and a tender falsetto, Act of Tenderness blossoms also. 

Bryan Daly

[why-its-kai]

me when bertha theme by bryan daly

[dustedmagazine]

Grouper — Grid of Points (Kranky)

Grid Of Points by Grouper

Grid of Points further diminishes the music Liz Harris has been making as Grouper for the past decade, arriving at a point that is confrontationally light. Though the length of each successive Grouper album wastes away, at only 22 minutes Grid of Points provides such compelling sketches that the lost minutes only manifest after the music has stopped. Harris’ sound has always been haunting, but by investigating absence on Grid of Points she haunts herself, capturing a restlessness that has returned to make sense of its ending.

Harris is far removed from the effect-driven loops of her earliest work, where the title Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill appropriately described the weight of her dense collages. She has lately stripped away the scuzz and hiss, revealing a startling clarity where lone notes of hammered piano walk through the mist of an occasional chord. Grid of Points isn’t just a continuation of Ruins, her first album working exclusively with this palette, it’s a provocative step toward even less, not only minimal but almost unfinished. Even the ambient sounds of tape hiss or wind command attention in this austere formation, the echoes suggesting the vastness of the Wyoming landscape where the album was recorded.   

On “Birthday Song”, sweeps of airy, angelic voice trail a discordant piano melody with the sustain pedal held down by lead. It could almost be Mark Hollis, so great are the spaces between sounds and the pensiveness of each tone. Harris also evokes the work of early impressionist musicians, though her tone-pictures are especially liminal, as in parking lots, not bridges. A sudden cluster of falling notes on “Driving” persists in the memory as a larger event than if the song were more fully developed. Moments linger with the permanence of a flash of color caught looking through the window of a car on a long, grey highway. 

Liz Harris was interrupted by a fever in the process of recording, and the sense of abbreviation renders Grid of Points a ghost town. Like the ashen figures of Pompeii or the permanent shadows of Hiroshima, these songs capture a sudden cessation of life, lacking closure.  For such a slight record, Grid of Points challenges more than any other Grouper album. “Breathing” fades out with the rushing exhalation of a train, ending both the song the album before these sketches resolve into the familiar. In a short span of time, the apparition of this album turns you too into a ghost, returning to search for resolutions that are forever out of reach.  

Bryan Daly

[dustedmagazine]

E — Negative Work (Thrill Jockey)

Negative Work by E

Travelling the through the prairie on a cloudy day feels counter-intuitively claustrophobic. The flat land is vast, but without the infinite promise of the sky, the plains feel tight. When bright orange light punctures the grey carapace, you can almost feel yourself lifted into it. In the same way, Negative Work, the second album by Boston band E operates on a grand scale, surreal release unconfined by earthly proportions.

All three principals involved in E— Thalia Zedek, Jason Sanford and Gavin McCarthy — have been operating in bands for several decades, and bring with them a laundry list of credentials. But for what might be the dozenth project for these veterans, E brings the vitality and sense of possibility of a first band. Negative Work overflows with ideas and riffs, and a willingness to experiment typifies these ten songs. One excellent riff replacing another (often three or four times in the same song) defines the natural experience of the record. Despite the youthful vigor, evident experience here brinks on mastery. Tube-warm guitar builds portent in negative space and extreme color in the positive. The practice room production showcases ability unpretentiously. Small moments — a drumroll at the beginning of the "The Projectionist", the skronky half-solo on "Cannibal Chatroom" — energize the sound nearly as well as would a stage.

Thalia Zedek's voice serves as the ultimate foil to these beautifully constructed songs. "Pennies" courses out like slow lightning, her voice as unctuously overdriven as the guitars with the lived-in wisdom and rasp of Patti Smith. In a genre dominated by male voices, Zedek's voice sounds simultaneously august and uncommon. All three members contribute vocals, and the best showings are either Zedek alone or working alongside another member. Gavin McCarthy's nervy yelp is a functionally counterpoint to Zedek's. It's a familiar style that serves the energy of the songs, as on "Down She Goes." Jason Sanford, formerly of Neptune, deadpans theatrically like a late Lou Reed. He shines in small doses, especially on "The Projectionist," where he nearly serves as a Kim Gordon to Zedek's Thurston Moore. On his own however he sometimes weighs down the otherwise buoyant music. Nearly every guitar band has tried and failed to write something as simple and strong as "Hole in Nature", and while Sanford's creepy camp prevents the song from staling, Zedek's visceral wail is a noticeable gift withheld.

The absence of Zedek’s voice on several songs creates another kind of deeply felt negative space on this album. That’s what Negative Work is: carving structure out of absence. The conversations between voices and instruments on E are as profound in silence as in sound. Ultimately the camaraderie of shared responsibility in songwriting and the way the team treasures taking risks is what makes this album special. To want the trio to not share singing responsibilities defies the spirit of the project. Angular guitar music that both soothes and seethes attracts devotees that border on hagiographic, evidenced by the completist Unwound reissues, and the sustained cult around bands like Bitch Magnet and Drive Like Jehu. Fans of inventive guitar music should herald E now while they are here, creating music bright and powerful enough to drag you into the sky.  

Bryan Daly