Read PopMatters on your Kindle
|
our brief reviews of new releases
15 September 2006
 The voice of Kerosene Kondors frontman Willie Rubio is as ruggedly beautiful as the northern California coastline from whence it first rumbled and swooned, and where the Kondors currently deliver their rustic country and western jug band blues. Their second album is playfully titled New American Standards, which promises not the latest hi-fi haute cuisine in an avant-garde reduction, but rather the meat-and-potatoes-and-whiskey-and-more-whiskey of homegrown continental sounds served up by true believers. Rubio and company are well-versed in a variety of forms, from the sass and squawk of “The Mean Old Jug Band Blues”, which well sums up the band’s central ethos, to “The Ballad of Chelsea Jones”, which morphs seamlessly from Harvest-era Neil Young NoCal (indeed, lead guitarist Buddy Stubbs has played with everyone from Crazy Horse to Gene Clark and Levon Helm in his long career) to a cowboy version of an old English murder ballad. And you’ve never heard a lyric about a severed head sung as hypnotically and seductively as by guest Angela Rose on the standard “In the Pines”. If the words “country music” ever revert to describing music about the country, the Kondors will soar high above the sorry carcasses of big-hat and big-hair wearing pretenders from sea to shining sea.
[Amazon ]
—Michael Metivier 10:00 am
| Permalink
15 September 2006
 Like most I’m a bit wary when a beloved local band makes the big jump to the majors. Such moves are almost always accompanied by cries of “sell out” which are, frequently, justified. Fortunately, San Francisco’s Persephone’s Bees has hardly changed their quirky musical stance for their Columbia Records debut. Still in place is the band’s excellent way with a hook and, of course, the silky voice of lead singer Angelina Moysov. Notes From The Underground, while decidedly more polished and produced than other efforts by the band, is still musically schizophrenic in the best way. The band runs from power pop ("Paper Plane") to uber-catchy sugar pop ("Nice Day") to surf guitar tempered by psychedelic keyboards on a song sung in Russian ("Muzika Dyla Fil’ma"). Wherever the band’s music goes there’s little doubt that the star of the show is Moysov’s beautiful, sexy voice. She’s the element that often turns average songs into special ones. When she really pushes her voice on songs like “Queen’s Night Out” she sounds a bit like vintage Grace Slick. Perhaps the ultimate disappointment with Notes From The Underground is its lack of adventure. Moysov’s voice can’t raise all the songs here beyond their simple pop rock structure, that’s surely part of the bargain that comes with moving to a major. Still you can’t deny the simple sugar coated pleasure of a song like “Nice Day”.
[Amazon]
—Peter Funk 10:00 am
| Permalink
15 September 2006
 The best thing to say about New Jersey-based quintet the Finals is that they’re not an easy band to label. They may have toured with AAA-level pop punkers like the Ataris, Midtown, and Autopilot Off, and their debut LP, Plan Your Getaway, was produced by Heath Seraceno, who has twiddled the knobs for the likes of Brand New and My Chemical Romance, but the Finals betray none of those bands’ oh-woe-is-me immature tendencies. Instead, the Finals deliver a straight-between-the-eyes modern rock punch of a band that knows that it is capable of delivering the goods. There’s plenty of twists to keep things interesting—new-wavey keys on “They’ll Never Know”, the waltzing meta-song “Something to You” ("This song won’t really change anything”, goes the opening line)—and more often than not, the Finals hit the mark. A weak closing third costs the album a point or two (memo to the band: drop the programmed drums on “Lightning and Fireworks”; you guys are an organic rock band), but it’s nice to hear a young band carve their own path rather than wallow in the ruts of their forebears.
[Amazon]
—Stephen Haag 8:00 am
| Permalink
15 September 2006
Metallic Falcons, Desert Doughnuts (Voodoo-Eros)Remember that Western movie with Sharon Stone as the gunslinger riding into the dusty desert town to blow things apart with lead and vengeance? Can you imagine if her part was split in two and played by Sierra Cassady of CocoRosie and Matteah Baim, billowing in on a cloud of patchouli and tobacco smoke? And can you imagine if they rode in at the head of a band of effete desperadoes: Devendra Banhart, Jana Hunter, Anthony and others all worried about the damage the sand and stinging winds were doing to their hair, cursing over broken nails and wearing acoustic guitars in shoulder-holsters? Would it make you happy if that imaginary movie had a strangely insubstantial soundtrack of fragile ballads, odd soft-metal moments and ambient interludes? This is the record for you.
[Amazon]
—Daniel Spicer 6:00 am
| Permalink
15 September 2006
Manual, Bajamar (Darla)Don’t let the five songs fool you, as Danish musician Jonas Munk Jensen takes you through an eclectic, pleasing, and thoughtful 43-minute ambient landscape. Beginning with the title track that slowly builds, and I do mean slowly, Jensen’s minimal approach is an acquired taste. The title track acts more like an intro for “Celebration”, a vast, expansive, ethereal track along the lines of M83 or Vangelis. It’s like waves washing over you, with subtle but appealing undercurrents throughout. It has some fabulous ebb and flow, with “Reminiscence” settling things down yet further, and it could almost put you to sleep, its calming nature quite impressive, resembling a tide going in and out. “September Swell” is the centerpiece at some 15 minutes, bringing to mind perhaps Pink Floyd’s “Marooned” without Gilmour’s guitar licks, but with a slightly ominous conclusion. And the song just flies by perfectly. “La Torche” rounds out this brilliant piece of work.
[Amazon]
—Jason MacNeil 4:00 am
| Permalink
15 September 2006
Lady & Bird, Lady & Bird (Yellow Tangerine)There are two child-creatures, intelligences trapped inside bodies. They don’t know how to make contact with anybody in the world except one another. One day they’re discovered by a man named Shepherd. To the girl he says, “Your name is Lady,” and to the boy, “Your name is Bird, but you cannot fly.” Lady and Bird try to attract the attention of adult society by calling, “Help! Hello! We’re lost!” but no one can hear them so they jump off a bridge. This is the story of Lady & Bird, a concept album that came out of an ongoing collaboration between Bardi Johansson, of the Icelandic band Bang Gang, and the French singer Keren Ann Zeidel. The premise sounds like tweetybird teen angst when you write it down (Nobody understands me: I’m going to die), and yet the two characters with their grave, high voices are affecting creations. When Lady says plaintively, “Will you be nice to me, Bird?” you know your buttons are being pushed, but it’s not a bad feeling. They cover “Suicide is Painless” and the Velvet Underground’s “Stephanie Says”, along with a number of original songs that advance the story. Their music has the wandering quality of a fairytale.
[Amazon]
—Deanne Sole 3:00 am
| Permalink
15 September 2006
Andy Stott, Merciless (Modern Love)Andy Stott’s debut, Merciless, opens quietly, building a minimal-aquatic aesthetic—warm synths, hi-hat and simple snare, strings in the background. This is minimal dub, with song arcs so low the wash is almost constant, and the unobtrusive beats fade into the background. Sound almost apologizes for its presence breaking the silence. This is especially true on “Hi-Rise”, for example, which is minimal house to the point of dissolution, and the title track “Merciless”, all ambient pianos and synths without percussion, hardly making an impression on the speakers. “Choke” provides a welcome change with broken beats and a series of intertwining robot-twiddles, and is indicative of the small-scale innovations. Elsewhere, it’s a rattlesnake patter in “Come to Me”, or the small-scale broken beats of “Herzog”, a neat track that begins to build up, only to back away again into synth-pad veiled house. As the ambient wash of closer “Peace of Mind” fades, the music reminds you of those solitary games in the Myst series, where you wandered around a deserted world by yourself, trying to solve insoluble riddles, to the accompaniment of these otherworldly synth pulses. It’s an accompaniment, or a film score. Andy Stott refuses to coerce attention, and that’s precisely the way he likes it.
[Amazon]
—Dan Raper 2:00 am
| Permalink
14 September 2006
 Rasmus Møbius is one half of the production brains behind Melk, a duo that took me by surprise last year with a fantastic piece of dub-influenced hip-hop beats and well-placed guest stars. Medicine Walk is Møbius’s debut without his Melk partner-in-crime Anders Christopherson, and if it’s any indication, it was Møbius himself that was largely responsible for much of the dub influence. Medicine Walk sounds like Melk’s Sports might have if not for the guest vocalists, with even more concentration on a reggae/dub sound placed on its hip-hop backbeats. The unique thing about Møbius is the way he manages to create that sound—it’s not an organic thing played live on instruments. Rather, he cuts up synth and organ sounds and arranges them into rhythms that approximate the sound he is so obviously in love with. When you start hearing the cut-ups, they can sound disorienting and even distracting, but as Medicine Walk continues, Møbius wisely chooses to keep from changing the feel of the songs too much, allowing his listeners to get comfortable with his unorthodox approach. This means it’s an album with very few highlights (save, perhaps, for album closer “Mint”, which incorporates a little bit of horn-blowing in its latter half), but a consistent, highly listenable, and most importantly, original feel.
[Amazon]
—Mike Schiller 10:00 am
| Permalink
|
|
