PopMatters Music Short Takes

Griddle, Klimty Favela (Your Permanent)

Griddle’s third album, Klimty Favela is exactly what one might expect from an album that comes with a comic book—colorful, sprawling, and adventurous. The album’s melodic sensibility and playful psychedelic experimentalism recall the Flaming Lips, but no comparisons can adequately prepare listeners to experience Klimty Favela. The album encompasses everything from sing-along pop goodness ("Dr. Becky Bolanky") to soaring, falsetto-warbling weirdness ("City Made of Teeth"). For most of their compositions, the band members assembled clips from their jam sessions to make songs. At times, this improvisatory approach causes the music to meander. Overall, though, the album’s many virtues, which include clever songs, interesting arrangements, and genuine humor, far outweigh its faults. [Amazon]

Scissors for Lefty, Scissors for Lefty EP

Despite widespread acclaim in the blogoshpere, this elusive San Francisco quintet has only been available through Rough Trade Records from outside the U.S. This four song tease displays the band’s undeniably poppy sound. Available only to radio stations, the EP includes blog faves such as “Ghetto Ways” and “Mama Your Boys Will Find a Home”. The opening synth riff in “Lay Down Your Weapons” is delectable and leaves you wondering when the band’s hipster sound will be heard in the States. “Inevitable Thieves” features the borderline falsetto of Bryan Garza over a soft organ and steady bass. With the successful UK release of the band’s debut album, Underhanded Romance, it seems inevitable that the band will return triumphantly home to the States. This is some top-notch pop punk, with more emphasis on the pop and light on the punk. [Amazon]

Bunalim, Bunalim (Shadoks)

So there you are, wondering which of the last 12 months’ Turkish 1970s re-releases you should lavish your hard-earned on. Edip Akbayram, for the paisley groaning? Selda Bagcan, for the goosepimple voice and socially conscious message? Gençlik Ile Elele for the dark-sunglasses hipness of the thing? Or Bunalim, because this band sounds like the missing link between Turkish folk, acid rock, and The Guess Who? Bunalim, because I’ve had “Bir Dünya da Bana Ver” on for three days now and it’s still my favourite song of, oh, the past month at least, what with its tricky opening that starts off howling and transforms itself into the most perfect vocal hook this side of “Mehmet Emmi”? Bunalim, because it’s not often that rock music incorporates sixth-century Turkish poetry, or any antique poetry at all, and still manages to sound, unselfconsciously, like the work of a garage band? Bunalim, because no matter whether the musicians really did run naked down Istiklal Street or not, they sound as if it’s something they might have done, and you can’t say that about Akbayram or Bagcan? Ouch, the choices you people have to make. I don’t envy you. Really I don’t. [Amazon]

Hecker, Recordings for Rephlex (Rephlex)

Certainly not to be confused with Tim Hecker and the scratchy, overdriven beauty of Harmony in Ultraviolet, this is the new album from Vienna noise art veteran Florian Hecker.  Unlike that other Hecker and various meticulous noise alums of 2006 (Lithops and Nick Forte spring to mind), Florian Hecker has no discernible interest in “music”, instead choosing to sculpt directly with raw noise generation.  Though toned down from the assault of 2003’s Sun Pandamonium, Recordings remains far from descriptors like “textural” or “atmospheric”, and in fact consists of mostly unassailable material:  shrieking digital feedback, endless phased snapping, disembodied squelches.  There seem to be rigorous academic underpinnings to the lot of it, evidenced in the booklet’s referencing of “Gingerbreadman functions”, “spatiotemporal confusion”, and “pulsar synthesis”, apparently as an explanation, but such will certainly fly below the radar of most listeners.  Only the manically varied abrasion of the twelve minute “In Actu” hints at deeper structure, complexity, and possibly, hints of narrative, but even that is mostly impermeable to analysis.  Which, most likely, is just fine for Hecker.  More artist than musician, his work challenges without offering any clues as to how to approach it. [Amazon]

Valencia, This Could Be a Possibility (I Surrender)

It’s a general policy of mine to hate any and all emo/pop/punk bands. The utter lack of originality in this genre has to be the only reason that people keep paying even a smidgen of attention to Fall Out Boy or Saves the Day. Being a relatively old fart I actually remember when emo had legitimate ties to punk rock. Fuck man, I grew up in Washington DC, I knew Rites of Spring and you, my young friends, are no Rites of Spring. All such charges are overdone anyway. Emo as a genre is dead. Let it go or at least make up a new name. Such terms are more often shunned then embraced these days. What we’re hearing now are the meek remains of what has gone before, the naked ambitions, the blatant plays for stardom. There is no sincerity left here, it is a formulaic means to an end, packaged and wrapped and presented. There isn’t even a deviation in vocal cadence from band to band anymore and a single melody seems to be passed around like a drunk girl at a party in the unfinished cul de sac.

So with that said, is it possible that Valencia can rescue the whole bleeding mess? No. Putting the album’s lead single aside, the super catchy “The Space Between” which now lives in the same box of guilty pleasure that holds Poison’s “Every Rose Has a Thorn” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, This Could Be a Possibility is more of the same: The power chords are played, the poses are struck, the lyrics are all heartbreak and waxy solitude.

This Could Be a Possibility isn’t a bad record. It’s simply an unoriginal one. The musicianship is fine, there’s even a hint of passion now and then, but it’s a sound that you can find blasting through just about any suburb in America. Go ahead and download “The Space Between” from iTunes, it’s worth the .99 cents. The rest is a story you’ve already heard. [Amazon]

KTL, KTL (Mego)

Stephen O’Malley has developed into a rewarding, continually evolving by demonstrating that there are in fact many, many ways to build slate-toned, inch-per-hour monolithic drones. He’s expanded doom metal’s vocabulary in SunnO))) and Khanate, infused post-rock with an appetite for destruction in Aethenor, and administered gut-probing massage therapy with various installation pieces. In KTL, laptop nut Peter Rehberg (best known for his Pita and Fenn O’Berg projects) helps O’Malley approximate the unheimlich clangor of the hull of an alien spacecraft. Four-part buzzfest “Forest Floor”, a glacially paced blend of black metal and power electronics, accounts for the album’s meat. The duo is at its most convincing, though, during 25-minute opener “Estranged”. Here O’Malley lays stark, bent electric guitar notes over a bed of ominous whooshes and whirrs; it’s a bit like hearing Loren Connors perform an Angelo Badalamenti score. Slow and deadly wins this race. [Amazon]

No Luck Club, Prosperity (Igloo Cartel)

Cinematic flair and historical sensitivity are only two of the assets that distinguish No Luck Club from its instrumental hip-hop peers. The group’s latest outing, Prosperity, is split into four three-song sections, which feature colorful instrumentation and create distinctive atmospheres. In the third section, which includes “Our Story” and “Valuable Lives”, the group uses vocal samples to discuss attitudes towards Chinese immigration in a way that should speak to anyone who’s ever been an outsider. Fortunately, Prosperity‘s music is just as compelling as its social ideals. The album displays an astonishing range of timbres and textures and is alternately funky and reflective. Prominent turntable improvisation gives the music an old-school hip-hop vibe that, along with all the other elements of Prosperity, helps the album find its own niche in the cluttered electronic scene. [Amazon]

Darien Brockington, Somebody to Love (ABB Soul)

The underground soul movement, which, as inconsequential and absurd as it may sound in relation to its mainstream counterpart, allows its categorized artists to put a creative twist on the rigid stereotypes of the genre. Darien Brockington, a Justus League affiliate and go-to collaborator, uses his debut Somebody to Love to formulate such melodic success by offsetting soul-washed production with traditional and octave-thrashing vocals. Although his voice may be a bit too thin to give the album a rounded-out feel, Brockington exudes effortless talent on every track without the backhanded overexertion that clouds mainstream rhythm and blues. On Somebody to Love, the lyrics are generally concerned with what the title suggests, sometimes seeming excessive in earnest sincerity, but in the tradition of soul, Brockington moves through the various stages of romance, easily swinging from naïve hopefulness on the autumn “Think It Over” to bad-blooded break-ups on the low-swinging “Crazy.” While the album sometimes lacks depth in terms of emotional diversity, it compensates with glistening production from 9th Wonder, Khrysis and newcomer E.Jones, all of whom are musically conjunct in scooping the hip-hopped soul that characterizes all of the Justus League releases. But although Love is sign that Brockington may be at a loss in terms of mainstream appeal, his debut outlines the qualities of what mass-distributed soul should surely represent. [Amazon]