Think About Life

Family

(Alien8; US: 13 Oct 2009; UK: 13 Oct 2009)

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Think About Life’s 2006 self-titled debut drew some of its strength from its abrasiveness. It could get you moving, but it was as noisy as it was danceable. The band’s latest release, Family just throws down a dance party. While it has been more than three years between records, we shouldn’t be surprised by a change in sound, but it’s just a bit disconcerting.

Fortunately, Think About Life does this sort of indie-disco well. The key track here, “Havin’ My Baby”, delivers one of the year’s great earworms, and only the band’s lack of exposure will prevent us from having to hear too many imitative falsettos in the near future. With the sandpaper removed from the electronics, the band gets more upbeat this time. From the throwback opener “Johanna” (the style and placement of which suggests some sly humor) to the slow-down of “Nueva Nueva” to the threateningly explosive “Life of Crime”, the album offers plenty to get you going, whether by a shove onto the dance floor or as a pick-me-up during the late-afternoon lull.

—Justin Cober-Lake

Various Artists

The Rough Guide to Blues and Beyond

(World Music Network; US: 29 Sep 2009; UK: 21 Sep 2009)

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Although the blues permeate through just about any form of music heard today, it can be heard as a glaring reference or a subtle slip in the mix. Its very nature as our musical architecture often allows for fascinating genre-blends and collaborations, and in others, it can be a confusing collision of sounds. By its namesake, The Rough Guide to Blues and Beyond, indicates perhaps an easily digestible and accessible entry point to the raw, expressive power of the blues; however, the music here is filtered through many genres with mixed results.

Chris Thomas King’s hip-hop opener “Mississippi Kkkrossroads” samples a basic Delta blues slide-guitar lick over a tightly programmed rhythm, but the juxtaposition of an artificial beat and an open-tuned National guitar comes across as a mangled marriage of musical styles. On the other hand, Outrageous Cherry’s fuzzed-out, slightly psychedelic take on “Lord Have Mercy on Me”, replete with braying guitars and thumping drums, tops the established masters of the juke joint, the North Mississippi All-Stars, who are also featured here with “Shake (Yo Mama)”. Robert Plant and Justin Adams’ “Win My Train Fare Home (If Ever Get Lucky)”, perhaps one of the best tracks on the compilation, is a slightly disorienting, hazy crawl through a swirling Delta drone. When stacked up alongside Corey Harris’ reggae-tinged “Mami Wata”, Tangle Eye’s R&B slow-jam, “Parchman Blues”, funk-soul excursions and West African jams, the music on The Rough Guide to Blues and Beyond ultimately creates an uneven listening experience and fails to live up to its title.

—Andrew Zender

Netherfriends

Calling You Out

(Emergency Umbrella; US: 21 Jul 2009; UK: 21 Jul 2009)

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Netherfriends are an indie pop band who mix in a bunch of different instruments into its guitar-keyboards-drums setup. The liner notes mention banjo, melodica, and glockenspiel, making the six songs on Calling You Out slightly more interesting. Sure, band mastermind Shawn Rosenblatt knows his way around a pop song, but nothing stands out. Opener “Friends With Lofts” has hyper-jaded lyrics about playing in and watching bands in the big city. That jaded attitude is a bit off-putting, but at least it gives the song an identity. The rest of this EP, from the warbling, mostly instrumental “Nunya” to the sad-sack closer “Don’t Invite Me”, is pleasant and listenable, but that doesn’t cut it when so much music out there mines similar territory.

—Chris Conaton

Alasdair Roberts

The Wyrd Meme

(Drag City; US: 20 Oct 2009; UK: 20 Dec 2009)

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Scottish singer-songwriter Alasdair Roberts has plied his trade of off-kilter folk music for many years. His resonant, sincere vocals intermingle with stream-of-consciousness/unconsciousness lyrics and instrumental quirkiness: finger-picked folk guitar, glitchy electronica, and indie rock noise. His latest, The Wyrd Meme, opens with “The Hallucinator and the King of the Silver Ship of Time”, an epic which centers around the idea of a hallucinating woman as the artistic music, while “The Yarn Unraveller” sounds like Unhalfbricking-era Fairport Convention, yearning sentiment and experiment intertwined. “The Royal Road at the World’s End” is another epic based around Roberts’ lyrical explorations of historic folk imagery. The EP’s high point, “Coral And Tar”, is a mournful, romantic lament and a paean to human connection as winter closes in. It should be a future live staple. Overall, this EP should serve to convert the unfaithful to Alasdair’s cause.

—Kieran Curran

Aerosol

Airborne

(n5MD; US: 6 Oct 2009; UK: 2 Nov 2009)

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In the past few years, the n5MD label has been responsible for putting out a slew of great ambient electronic releases. The second full-length album by Danish artist Rasmus Rasmussen under the Aerosol moniker may not hit the artistic heights of other n5MD projects, but it is a solid exercise in post-rock-influenced electronica nonetheless. On Airborne, Rasmussen uses short, circular snippets of melody (most strikingly with acoustic guitar on tracks like “Dreams Flow Wide” and album closer “Softly Slipping”) to craft shimmering soundscapes that recall latter-day Cocteau Twins.  Building upon simple ideas for long stretches of time, Rasmussen’s tracks sometimes beg for another melodic element to break up the monotony of the longer pieces, but the album is gently absorbing nonetheless.

—AJ Ramirez

The Darlings

Yeah I Know

(Famous Class Records; US: 9 Jun 2009; UK: 9 Sep 2009)

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With a name like the Darlings, there’s no saying this band is as Californian as shrimp tostadas. Bulked up and tattooed like the Offspring, the band brings to the saturated MySpace ether golden ‘90s punk that’s pummelled by dirty guitar work a la the Strokes and the odd Brian Wilson-style melodic purity. Unfortunately, with lyrics on its sophomore effort Yeah I Know seldom more sophisticated than the desire to get “fucked up in the car” with a friend with admirably skinny legs, this quartet of post-college-age amp-blasters may be found no more attractive than shrivelled-up iguanas beyond the college circuit. The Darlings suffer from the double whammy of appearing like a band past its prime, while making music past its prime. The only aspect of Yeah I Know that seems to have some artistic license is its cover, and the irony of this highly pixilated image of three Mancunian-looking lads circa 1978 with arms crossed is piercing.

—Estella Hung

People Eating People

People Eating People

(Control Group; US: 3 Nov 2009; UK: 3 Nov 2009)

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People Eating People’s eponymous release, the solo project of Nouela Johnston (formerly of Mon Frere), is being touted as a record resembling the early work of Tori Amos and Regina Spektor. Granted, such comparisons are often employed by marketing gurus to package albums, and as such, they tend to be a little uninformed. Certainly Nouela’s songs are anchored by righteous piano playing like Amos, and her voice possesses the jittery, stop-start qualities of Spektor. However, alongside this is a unique soulfulness that falls somewhere between Nina Simone and Fiona Apple.

The album opens with “Darling”, and its upbeat and churning jazz piano brings to mind Apple’s on Extraordinary Machine with the vocal delivery of a young Gwen Stefani. She takes this up a notch with “All the Hospitals”, which rollicks with a dark sense of humor. By the third track, “I Hate All My Friends”, Johnston lets her rage loose. It isn’t until “For Now” that the artist becomes truly accessible. Anchored by a simple melody, the song echoes the album’s quietly thematic obsession of empowerment, while also harking to romantic allusions without seeming overtly syrupy. This follows by perhaps the album’s highlight, “Building Armor”, which somehow manages to sound like a Lilith Fair version of “I Will Survive” between intermittent fits of angst-ridden splendor. Although many will recoil at the thought of unearthing a musical fad that seemed to have petered out by the late ‘90s, others will relish the opportunity to indulge in this virtuous female-led contemporary release.

—Omar Kholeif

Vandana Vishwas

Meera - The Lover

(Factor; US: 11 Oct 2009; UK: )

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Meera opens with a flat North American male voice introducing the first song. It’s a trend that continues throughout the release, and the contrast between his flatness and Vandana Vishwas’ agility is so great it is like trying to swim while someone behind you jerks at your foot every five minutes. (Thankfully, there is a version that doesn’t come with the introductions.) Meera Bai, born at the end of the 1400s, was a princess who left her royal life to become a pilgrim, a devotee of Krishna, the author of myriad devotional poems. Meera is a cycle of her lyrics set to music, which flows like a river filled with sitar, tabla, and other Indian instruments, On"Chala Wahi Des”, there’s a repeated whirl, and the song becomes excited, but through most of the album the mood is one of devout serenity and subtle modulation.

—Deanne Sole