#versus itunes

[guitarpornography]

Versus iTunes #24: Catch 22’s “Keasbey Nights”

If I had the stamina in me, I’d do a side by side of this with the Streetlight Manifesto version, but since I’m already behind for the week, this one will have to suffice. I continue my attempts to challenge myself to review styles I don’t have a lot of in-depth knowledge about, because I think the only time I’ve discussed ska was with the Suburban Legends’ Rumpshaker. This is no knock against ska, because I love the genre to death and I frequently compare certain elements of other musical styles to it, I just don’t usually turn my mind on full blare when I’m listening to it. Ska music is the music of fun to me, as all those bright poppy horns and fun wails and screams of the singer provide an instant backdrop of upbeat sound to just let myself go into. But the more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to say ska is a lot darker than it’s sound really suggests. I’m just running through some of the more famous numbers of the genre in my head and while they’re all rather relaxed and/or frantic, their lyrics all seem to want to range into the underbelly of society, not something I would initially think the genre the apt place to be. Keasbey Nights is of course, my sample for this, having been one of the more famous ska albums to cross my path and one that has evil eyes even as it smiles.

There’s always something I’ve wanted to say about ska that I haven’t had a venue for till now: why the hell does all guitar in ska sound exactly the same? I can’t be the only one to think this, as both chord patterns and general tone seem to all blend together when I listen to a good amount of ska back to back. Keasbey Nights isn’t going to break my feeling on this, as it has more than its share of backbeat A minor chords, but at least for the genre it has a rather prominent guitar sound. Throughout Keasbey Nights the guitar is mainly used as a tool to give a more thorough understanding of the melody, usually adding color to contrast to the rather vibrant horn sections. The title track of the album is precariously balanced on this idea, as the song intros with the chord progression that we hear played on the horns for the remainder of the song, but first enters on the guitar, giving a light wash of twinkling tone to offset the blare of the horns that follow, almost as if it’s setting the scene. Because the guitar has such a markedly different sound than the overall use of the horns, the band seems to use it to give the same ideas in all the different colors the instrument can provide, such as the contrast of acoustic and massively distorted lines in “1234 1234.” My trouble with this is that beyond the idea of tonal coloring in sparse sections of the song, the guitar is an essentially superfluous instrument. This is a trouble for many works in the genre, but it we must bear in mind that the guitar is the instrument anchoring the melody. By the midpoint of the record, all the guitar lines begin to come to that singularity point where they’re not really doing anything different than the songs that proceed it during the melody, illustrating different speeds of the same chord pattern. It’s obvious that Tomas Kolnaky has a good sense of the instrument, but doesn’t have any idea of how to make it interesting in the face of something louder, making tracks like “On & On & On” sound like he’s just rehashing another guitar line from earlier in the record so he’ll have something to with his hands while he sings. It is nice that it’s breakthroughs in the mix manage to keep the song’s melodies prominent enough so that the horns can do heroics over top of them, but I feel like I’ve caught a glimpse of something great on some songs and just didn’t get any payoff from it.

And were I in fact doing the comparative review to Streelight Manifesto, this would be the point where I tell you I much prefer the horn sound on Catch 22’s Keasbey Nights: I much prefer the horn sound on Catch 22’s Keasbey Nights. I don’t have a particularly strong reason as to why aside from the idea that the horns are clearer and more shrill. I would normally use shrill as a knock on a sound, but it makes sense hear, since you can hear nearly any flaw in the music being played and the songs take on more charm for it. “Dear Sergio,” the album’s opening track is a prime example of this, as the lead trumpet seems to constantly strain towards high notes and hit them for only a moment before he starts to crack in his delivery. It’s such a genuinely disarming thing and one of those moments that you’d think they’d edit out, but at the same time, it adds such rich flavor to the song, putting across the actual passion and effort that goes into playing the music on the record. This is a trumpet player who has been blowing his lungs out this whole time, but can’t get it every time but won’t stop because he’s just so into it. It creates a nice synergy with the visceral response you’re having, making you want to have the level of excitement he’s having. If nothing else, the horns on Keasbey Nights manage to be rather sharp and clear while always remaining distinct in which instrument is being played. While for the most part they’re all playing the same exact line, it’s always apparent what each the trumpet, trombone and saxophone are delivering, allowing their natural timbres and fluidity to bleed through. This robs the record of a little bit of consensus in emphasis lines meant to give a refrain extra punch, but it makes these repetitions more interesting on the whole since we can spend the time enjoying the prominence of one instrument over another during it rather than a mass of tangled sound. Throughout Keasbey Nights, the horns are where you go for the excitement in the melody and they never disappoint in this regard, managing to always give lines a massive amount of flavor despite always playing within the same range. The brightness of it is so invigorating, making their truncated notes deliveries so excitable, like they’re small kids stammering to get something out that they’re just too excited to say slowly. Songs like “Supernothing,” which would likely end up rather boring otherwise, are so elevated by this and it makes the record exhilarating overall.

But I promised I’d talk about how dark this record is so… let’s take a look at the lyrics for “Keasbey Nights”: “I still remember/That day like the day that I said/That I swear/"i'll never hurt myself again"/But it seems that I'm deemed to be wrong/To be wrong/To be wrong/I've got to keep holding on.../They always played a slow song./When they come for me/I'll be sitting at my desk/With a gun in my hand/Wearing a bulletproof vest/Singing my my my/How the time does fly/When you know you're going to die/By the end of the night.” I think the natural inclination due to the chorus is to believe some sort of criminal undertones to the song, but instead I read it as one of the more potent pictures of disaffection with one’s background. The verse lyrics conjure this image of a youth in transition, trying to make themselves a better person who can escape their own lifestyle, but constantly gets pulled back into it, always doomed to make the same sort of mistakes over and over again. They’re doomed to be who they are and are somewhat trapped by this and though they’d like to fight their way out, as seen in the chorus, they’ve become fatalistic about the possibility of success. It’s so hard to sort this out during the actual playing of the song because everyone is so damn exuberant. Kalnoky’s voice never matches the idea that something bad might be being said in his lyrics, instead just shouting these lyrics at the top of his lungs. But in its own way, this cathartic, as the upbeat music matched to the shouting lyrics seems dismissive of all ther personal troubles that run through the record, turning the troubles of hometown living into something beautiful and powerful. The album de-powers the lyrcs in this way, allowing you to hear the slips of worldly troubles, but then delivers them in a way that kind of laughs them off and uses them as a foundation for all the good things that happen as life goes on.

Keasbey Nights is a record I’ve listened to any number of times and as good as it is, there’s still something that keeps me from pulling the trigger on calling it perfect. It may the lack of emphasis on rhythm, the missing opportunities for multi-voiced choruses or a general aimlessness on a few songs, but that is what it is. And Keasbey Nights still remains a very fun record with just enough under the hood to keep you interested enough to come back for more.

Is It Guitar Pornography?: I said it before, that it’s moreso than most ska records I’ve heard. I just still wish it was more so. A guitar solo maybe?

Who I’d Recommend It To: Anyone having a bad day or year or whatever, because by the end of the record your spirits will lift at least a little. Those who enjoy them some mother fucking trumpet in their rock music. Fans of Talking Heads, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Arcade Fire, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash and Chicago. Those who can dig into drumming and guitar work on a record or just don’t mind not having a lot of it. Readers who dig a little too much for meaning and anyone from a small town.  Anyone going on a car ride that just wants to shout lyrics as loud as they can when they’re driving. People who want to capture an energy similar to a live show or just realize flaws make things all the more beautiful.

An Arbitrary Rating: 8/10

Favorite Track: Sick and Sad

[guitarpornography]

Versus iTunes #18: Cryptopsy's "None So Vile"

I had something different in mind at first for today, but moods are a fickle mistress, so this week... FUCKING BRUTALCAVEINTHESKULLOFYOURENEMYWITHAROCK DEATH METAL! My introduction to death metal comes largely from a close friend of mine who was getting into the genre I was getting into metal in general. Every week he would be buying tons of death metal CDs from the local now-defunct record shop, barely having time to keep up with listening to them as they piled higher. The general theory behind his purchasing of so many death metal records seemed have sprung from the basic truth that few genres are filled with as many technicians, each seeming to be able to use the stable trappings of their musical choice and then delve into a world of twisting time signatures, atonal high speed riffs and rapidly oscillating solos, giving each song a similar feel but a distinct flavor. Yet, for all the talent that goes into making a death metal recording, it is viewed as such an outsider style by most, depending upon a certain type of listener who is willing to unravel its confrontation and look deep into the maelstrom to find the beating heart which is so filled with chaos. Cryptopsy's None So Vile is one such record, having stood above many in my friend's collection and became one his templars of what makes death metal so great. 

Starting off with a primal roar, None So Vile is an exercise in rawness. From top to bottom each moment of the album is about experiencing the pure visceral nature of the band’s sound, slowly drawing you into the same nightmarish landscape they inhabit. I usually talk about good things first to butter people up for the bad but I think this might be a good time to reverse this. My biggest overall problem with None So Vile comes from the production of the album. Like most death metal in the 90s, Cryptopsy comes from a background in creating underground mix tapes to circulate between bands, resulting in a certain expectation of sound degradation. This carried over for a lot of bands when they were actually able to sit down and hammer out their ideas in actual recording studio. None So Vile has a weird disparateness in the sound of the instruments being played, highlighting the gaps volume between the varying instruments. Rarely does it feel like all the parts are being played on the same song, creating these places where you can trace the artifice of totality slipping away which ends up lightening the overall experience. A song like “Slit Your Guts,” which features prominent individual parts from the different instruments requires us to believe that instruments are merely slipping out of the song for a second to paint their own twisted vision of the overall thematic concern, but since we are always hearing them separated out in the mix it ends up feeling weird and off-putting… well, not in the same way the rest of the music is supposed to.  The weird thing is that this works for certain songs on the album, as that kind of distant echo of instruments can create a more brutal sound, one that acts as blunt force trauma raging against your eyes. “Graves of the Fathers” works on this principle, as even the guitar seems to lose its melodic drive in favor of creating entirely huge blocks of rhythm laid against the drums to create these massive explosions, these moments that sound like coming torrent of war. With a little separation in the mix it gives us a chance to appreciate the more focused sound and hear distinctly what each instrument is playing since they’re all working with the same idea. But so many of the songs on None So Vile are exercises in wonderful technical mastery, the different instruments creating diverging lines that are meant to intertwine each other at various points and create a further dissonance when separated. With the mix left so sterile it makes it difficult to connect them back as one larger piece of thought and even loud volumes do little to save this.

And this feeds back into my other problem with None So Vile, which is vocalist Lord Worm. It feels weird to criticize a death metal vocalist, because death growls are a really love ‘em or hate ‘em sort of deal and for the most part I appreciate the powerful statement that is given by that animalistic understanding of the music’s power. But Lord Worm is just a very uninteresting vocalist. Don’t get me wrong, I think he is way better than Mike DiSalvo ever was for the band, but Worm doesn’t seem capable of really making the vocals on None So Vile do anything for the song. His range, even for a growl, is weirdly limited, as if he is having trouble giving each song a distinct flavor that makes it feel intense and directed from a specific dark place. This is not at all helped by the general lack of variety in his rhythm, which always seems to hit that “word every half beat” style that allows for a little separation between individual words, but doesn’t give us a chance to see how this particular moment fits in with the varying influence of the other instruments being played. He has some really stellar overall moments on the record that immediately draw notice, such as on “Benedictine Convlusions,” which shows off a bigger range. The song features him hit both fevered scream and that weird dripping evil of black metal vocals all at once, giving us more interesting noises to show the confrontational nature and above all else, hauntedness that is being created with in the cathedral of drum and guitar. It ends up being a much stronger vocal record on the second half, which really leads me back to the production as the problem. I know the words of death metal are staggered screams of consciousness vomited back into the face of the listener who has allowed them to happen, but without some intelligibility in the presentation that end up falling flat and make that Othering of the human voice come off as hollow and without point.

So if I dislike that what do I like? The answer could easily just be said as “everything else.” None So Vile is a record that doesn’t allow you to rest or try to understand it but instead constantly twists back around on you, always getting directly into your face and making you stare back at your own reflection its eyes. I like the precarious game the band plays, as we have an expectation that death metal will be the ultimate landscape of harshness, the blighting of all things beautiful, yet the band isn’t simply trying to make loud, angry sounds. Cryptopsy is one of those great groups of technicians where you can really sense that every instrumentalist is immensely talented and could just easily show off their talents for a whole record without a thought to songwriting. Yet, their songs are so weirdly tight in their construction, coiling around you until it’s too late to realize that you’ve fallen under their spell. I trashed “Slit Your Guts” production, but it is truly one of the great masterpieces of technical death metal as each member seems intent on making the song’s title literal. Guitarist Jon Levasseur creates these driving needles, not so much thread as bloody tattoo ink, always seeming to be off in tone but close enough that you can recognize its sound. His guitar slingshots back and forth to the brinks of different carnality, always hammering in these blocks of riffs before suddenly hitting this jaw dropping sweep pick. Levasseur is never staying in one place with his playing and you just want to see where the train of thought is going next. And I will always appreciate a song where I can actually hear the bass. I don’t want so pretend like Eric Langlois is the most talented bass player in the world but his rhythm is more tightly locked than the drums on this one, which makes it all the more surprising when the rest of the song drops out and he plays that atonal bass solo which immediately summons that feeling of isolation. It’s a perfect moment of surprise, a moment where you don’t expect to hear the brutality give way to the strangeness of it all, giving the already nightmarish music a feeling of aloneness.

And oh goddamn the drums. Flo Mounier really seals the deal on “Slit Your Guts” because of just how controlled his chaos is, like an octopus beating every drum at once as fast you can so its so loud you can’t think. But you can think and it’s just aggressive and satisfying because its working through all the aggression for you, getting you back to those primal distant calls of drums from time immemorial. Mounier, for me, is the highlight of this record. Please note that I do not say this lightly. I play both bass and guitar and can do vocals on occasion, so drums have never been the most important instrument to me in music listening, but Mounier hooks you in and gives you that satisfaction of confrontation, that attack on the central nervous system that makes it difficult to understand what you’re feeling but that apex of feeling that you need to. The immediate thing I noticed was how much Mounier incorporates splash cymbals into his playing, which isn’t something I normally associate with death metal, what with blast beats usually utilizing bass drums and snare to exclusion. Cymbals have such a natural vibrance to them, but here they become monstrous, the death knells sounding in the distance. It creates these imeddiate flashes of attention to something you’re hoping can lift you towards the light but is revealed to be just as dark as the rest of it. Songs like “Phobopile,” which are so technical in their execution become all the more chaotic through his playing, but he finds the ley lien that brings it all back together, giving you at least something to headbang to or jump around in spastic flails, as his snare fills create moments of spurious attack. I can’t really go too much longer with this because the obvious technical skill he possesses manages to always come back into traumatic brutality, and there’s only so many ways to say that it is what inspires the songs to match ferocity.

None So Vile is not for the weak of heart or even those with a mostly functioning one. It is an excessive record about all those things we try to buy within ourselves laid out in sonic form. Cryptopsy manages to be both brutal and technical in degrees and you’re always wondering how idea might switch within a song. Though the production fails it and their vocalist does at times as well, it is one of the all-time great death metal records.

Is It Guitar Pornography?:  It is going to be a rare day when I don’t lay this mantle on the backs of a death metal group. Death metal is probably THE place to go for instruments based totally on technical skill and the guitar is a major part of this.

Who I’d Recommend It To: People with problems who need to work them out and those who just want an outlet for all their energy. Fans of Meshuggah, Immolation, Necrophagist and most shockingly of all, Krzysztoff Penderecki, because I always associate death metal with modern classical since both about getting outside what makes you comfortable. Those who just want to shake their whole bodies and those who need purporseful white noise. Fans of music theory and those into it simply for the power it gives. Anyone who needs to be shaken from a rut or wants to shake others out of theirs. And maybe, just maybe… those who need a first death metal album to give to someone.

An Arbitrary Rating: 8.5/10

Favorite Track: Phobophile

[guitarpornography]

Versus iTunes #14: Animal Collective’s “Merriweather Post Pavilion”

A semi-review on demand, as my good friends Lars and McKenna both are really into Animal Collective and I’m… well, not. It almost makes no sense, as another band that sounds good to me on paper has ended up leaving me rather hollow. And this is not for lack of trying, as I have five of their albums and two of their EPs on my computer. So in an effort to hopefully understand my feelings better regarding the band, I have chosen to review Merriweather Post Pavilion which I am assured is from the band’s more accessible period. Up to this point, I’ve been using the phrase “weird for the sake of weird” to describe Animal Collective, as I often find their varied instrumentation and use of eclectic tonal patterns to feel as if they’re completely disconnected from any musical idea altogether. While abstraction is a powerful tool in music, such as its marked place in the world of jazz, for whatever reason I’ve been left hollow by Animal Collective’s attempts to create a lush kingdom of sound, as the background patterning at times subverts the primary melodic understanding of the song. This is only the case when the band is trying to be melodic at all and sometimes I feel like they might not be, Sung Tongs seeming to stick out in my mind as an example of this. I don’t like disliking music, especially when my friends like it and I guess this is my chance to evaluate once and for all what I do and do not like about the band. Wish me luck.

As the album is a self-contained entity we must naturally consider the means by which it achieves its totality and whether such totality has defined structure. In this regard, Merriweather Post Pavilion is a bit of an oddity, as the tracks themselves are rather disparate and yet fit so naturally together. Anchoring this is the fact the opening track, “In the Flowers” and the closing track “Brother Sport” are perhaps the standout tracks of the album. “In the Flowers” reminds me of a more carnivalesque My Bloody Valentine song, seeming to orbit in and out of shoegaze-like white noise to offer stronger spikes of treble. Rather than simply wash out the voices and rhythm section that serve as the song’s primary melody, the white noise instead acts as a way to keep the more eclectic noises that crop up together, something that is especially poignant when its cocoon sheds at song’s end to create a textured guitar sound with a more defined vocal sound. The result is like a cool, delirious fog, every individual element coming together under the banner of a larger sound but giving one many different directions to look. As an opener, I feel as if this makes a rather definitive statement about how the rest of the album plays, always a little washed out with repetitive drones, but each song different, ebbing and flowing into one another. Animal Collective gives us the idea of a beautiful center and each song works toward extracting a new form for this. Of course, this all ends up capped rather nicely by “Brother Sport,” which is far and away the jauntiest song on the album. Propelled by an opening focused upon a call and response vocal structure, reminding me of the work of Fleet Foxes, the singing really feels in tune with the kind of celebratory attitude given by the needly synthesizer backing track. “Brother Sport” possesses a dynamic structure to say the least, as if the band is getting everything they can out their system before signing off, something that would make a great deal of sense in the context of the larger album, as the number of noises slowly increases into infinity until we’re left to return to silence.

Now I’ve said before that one of the things that turns me off of the band is purposeless noise and I don’t think they manage to totally avoid this. I get the feeling that once they manage to find a sound they like they want to play around with it, bouncing different lyrics or instrumentation off it until they all either stick or simply shed off. “Lion in a Coma” is a good example of this, primarily being played on hat I can only describe as a digital didgeridoo. While it seems to be used to give an impression of the sounds of nature, it can be extremely distracting, becoming more and more pushed forward as the track continues.  As the song continues, the band seems either too playful or too confused about what they’re trying to present, switching rhythms mid-verse on vocals and percussion but maintain the same droning sound, making it difficult to focus on how exactly the new dynamic is meant to juxtapose to the previous. It all feels rather chaotic at times, like the band is just trying to say everything they can all at once and at times this all just collapses in on itself. This is somewhat abated by the fact that the songs have a rather broad tendency towards pop for most the album, which usually serves as a solid basis for their forays into the realm of the unreal. Songs like “My Girls” and “Daily Routine” start in a rather straight forward, riff-like manner but use the chance to expand upon the idea of a pop song, breaking down the usual rhythm structure and affable instrumentation to create moments of isolated poetry. I like the songs the best when they feel like pop songs but are really something more, a weaving of the power of pop music into a wall of vaunted sound.

Which brings me to the vocals.  This is a weird sticking point for me, as I both like them and do not. They’re often difficult to discern, mimicking the monolithic cacophony that back them and creating another blanket for the song to ruminate under. Yet, this seems to deny the purpose of having vocals to begin with, as they’re not using a non-literal language to make their sound. While I did have to look it up, there are in fact lyrics to Merriweather Post Pavilion and vocalists Avey Tare and Panda Bear seem content to make them extremely difficult to hear. Since so many of the tracks are really busy in their sound, we’re rarely given the chance to listen closely to them unless they’re played in total isolation and even this is likely to give way to a layering of off-harmonies. As tool of melody, this is intriguing as, the sound of the human voice is so distinct, often adding to the trance qualities of the music. We hear the vocals as distinctly distant, something we’re straining to make sense of but they’re constantly being pulled back from us, much like the scene at the end of La Dolce Vita in which Marcello cannot hear the voice of the beautiful woman he has just encountered. And much like this scene it implies a distance in relation with humanity, a shaping text rather than a direct communication of emotional value. By having the vocals fall into the overall sound rather than be their own entity it denies us the ability to directly access the vision of each song, but rewards us by painting with a broader sound palette.

I have ended up liking Merriweather Post Pavilion more than I thought I would, but I still feel a bit distant towards it. It rarely feels like a record that wants me involved in anyway and instead makes me look through the glass at what their artistry is creating. While the tracks are rarely bad, some feel too cluttered, too in love with their own sound to the point where they make little sense. If you can embrace a stratified musical experience of both total noise and tiny movements, I do believe you will like this album quite a bit.

Is It Guitar Pornography?: I know there is guitar on there, but it hardly ever sounds like much. I’m going to pass on this one.

Who I’d Recommend It To: Those who wish to simply close their eyes but never fall asleep. People in need of a good gatekeeper for their friends taste in music. Fans of Do Make Say Think, Sigur Ros, Captain Beefheart, the American Analog Set and Ihsahn. Those who love David Lynch's films and people who attend a lot of art installations. Readers of the great beat writers and virtually anything where we see the unconscious unfold on paper. Fans of pop music that need to see how much broader it can be. Those who weird for the sake of being weird and people into cohesion through difference.

An Arbitrary Rating: 7/10

Favorite Track: My Girls