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our brief reviews of new releases
Emily Herring, My Tears Will Be Relieved (self-released)This Portland, Oregon-by-way-of-Texas musician mixes blues with a hearty helping of country, although her vocals aren’t the strongest thing I’ve heard. “What Will I Do?” has her moving from a bluesy swagger to a country lilt to even a falsetto-meets-yodel. It’s quite odd, but keeps you listening. Her playing is what seals the deal with this song though, a mean Delta feel complete with the slide guitar. A better effort is “Doc Bronner”, which is suitable to her voice—a slow, honky-tonky kind of tune that brings to mind early k.d. lang. Meanwhile, the title track is almost like a tribute to the style of Hank Williams; even the structure has a swinging quality to it. The same can be said for the waltz-y Tex-Mex flavoring on “No Se Parece A Nada”. But the songs are often nowhere in the middle; they’re either really good or really not good, with “Blues in the Key of C#M” falling unfortunately into the latter. It’s quickly forgotten about with the finger-picking-filled “(Don’t) Step It Up and Go”, an acoustic boogie blues based tune that clocks in under two minutes. What should be forgotten is the hokey “Okie from Muskogee” Haggard lyric on the hokey “Has Country Gone to Hell?” Remember instead one of the later highlights is a fine “By Heaven”.
[Amazon ]
—Jason MacNeil 2:00 am
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 Is the era of microtrance now upon us? It would seem the obvious evolution for trance, which has grown staid in the past couple of years, and it would be a good new subgenre for trance’s parent style, electronica. All of this labeling rhetoric is really so much splitting of hairs, though. Swiss DJs Crowdpleaser and St. Plomb bring us music, and that is all that matters. Whatever you want to call it, their sound is solidly grounded, yet fresh enough to earn the album its name of 2006. Minimal and esoterically funky, ambient but unrelaxing, with post-glitch clicks and nicks, the duo do to established boundaries what sound manipulators are meant to: they take the envelope and they stretch it to create something new. Mostly instrumental, Kate Wax delivers creepy (but still somehow sexy) vocals on “Cash on Time”, while Paris’s chant in the background of the Aphexy “Shift” could easily be mistaken for either a Budweiser frog or a Gyuto monk. A spare and cerebral album, your brain will be doing all the dancing, so your feet don’t have to. 2006 is headphone techno for today.
[Amazon]
—Michael Keefe 11:00 am
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Edgar Allen Floe has most of the elements to “make it” in the rap game: a slightly inflated ego, credible beatsmiths like 9th Wonder and Khrysis tossing him loops, and a knack for wordplay blended with a personable character. But in order to climb the lofty ranks of the hip-hop world, Floe still has some kinks to work out, as his mixtape release Floe Almighty simply offers a peek into all things Floe. Over the course of the album, which clocks in at just shy of 40 minutes, Floe rides the syrup-glazed backdrops with ease, connecting the tracks with a breezy soul thread. Unfortunately, Floe seems to be holding back, as his lyrical content is based on the safety net of pimping his status as an up-and-comer on almost all of the record’s tracks. On “Floe Free Style”, produced under his beatmaking alias Slicemysta, Floe raps over a crumpled jazz riff with the lines “My man Otis compares me to the Game / And I started to wonder / OK, I am a newcomer / I got legends cosigning me / And I got backstabbers out there denyin’ me.” Despite his limited content, Floe creates carefree hip-hop and delivers in variant ways, like on the rapid-fire “Hostility” and the previously released “The Torch”, managing to keep his music lively and palpable throughout. But while there is surely more to Floe than creamy beats and wordplay, a fuller release can only reveal if Floe can match his boasts as part of the next hip-hop generation.
[Amazon]
—Steven J. Horowitz 9:00 am
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Persil is from Amsterdam and blends pop with various other effects, samples and loops. Getting off to a very good start with the bubble gum power pop number “Light Up My Life”, Persil doesn’t sound mechanical at all, even if the dreamy, mid-tempo “Vox” has more electronic elements, including an effective militaristic backbeat. The joyous wall of guitar is what brings it all together. Singer Martine’s sweet timbre is also an asset, as the band drives headlong into a slow-building and gear-shifting “Feet”. Persil occasionally misses the mark, as it does with “Arkadelphia”, which might be better suited on Bowie’s Outside album, or on some Elastica b-side compilation. Fans of Imogen Heap would take to “Alice Austen” and its opening, before the group moves into a rocky, radio-friendly format. A better take on this blueprint has to be the hook-riddled and punchy “Hipper”, which is indeed hipper. Even the lighter, flighty tunes such as “More Special Days” have grooves that are difficult to pass on. Martine shines during “Dance to This!” and “PS”, which have a lot in common with the Cure in its softer moments.
[Amazon]
—Jason MacNeil 7:00 am
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 A collaboration between Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos and Kevin Moore, former founding member of Dream Theater, OSI (or Office of Strategic Influence, to be specific) is very similar to recent prog metal duo Head Control System (a side project by members of Ulver and Sirius), in that it tends to stray from the typical metal template in an attempt at something a little more electronic influenced. The end result on the project’s second album, while not as enthralling as Head Control System, still has its moments, as songs like “Go” and “Free” sound like Gary Numan interpreting metal compositions. “Bigger wave” follows the example of Radiohead and the Gathering in its blend of electronic and guitar rock, and “Better” has a bubbly synth melody meshing with Matheos’s power chords, but if there’s a main fault, it’s that Moore’s vocals tend to have one note all the way through, and his monotonous droning does get tiresome. It’s an album that will be a challenge to fans of both Fates Warning and Dream Theater, and one that will surprise those who think this is just another slice of flashy prog metal bombast.
[Amazon]
—Adrien Begrand 5:00 am
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 When a group gets recognized more for the fact that they have a song that is used by the WWE as a pay-per-view theme song than anything they’ve done with five previous albums, you have to scratch your head. And such is the case with Eighteen Visions, an Orange County band who blend meaty riffs courtesy of Keith Barney and Ken Floyd along with the run-of-the-mill pipes of James Hart. “Our Darkest Days” sounds like a cross between Nickelback and Linkin Park, while they hit gold with the rougher, cocksure “Victim”. For the bulk of the album, Eighteen Visions see their assets as creating dark and murky hard rock tracks that are sure to get a 15-year-old boy’s knickers in a knot as the foot-stomping, head-bobbing “Burned Us Alive” is churned out with a rather flaccid chorus but great bridge. A solid departure and surprise has to be the mid-tempo pop rock of “Broken Hearted”, which has some bite and pizzazz going for it. Meaty, thick, and testosterone-heavy are three words to describe the record and tracks like “Coma” and “Another Pretty Suicide”, which sounds like a lightweight Velvet Revolver. There are also the obligatory “power” ballads such as “Last Night”. All in all, nothing new in these visions.
[Amazon]
—Jason MacNeil 3:00 am
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 As derivative as its Stoogelike aural assault is, Awesome Color nonetheless delivers an undeniably compelling and convincing performance on its self-titled debut LP. Spitting vocals of barely-contained menace through clenched teeth, Derek Stanton plays guitar by pounding his pick against strings like a rock on flint, shooting sparks that ignite in an oily puddle of distortion. Drummer Allison Busch keeps it appropriately loose, and bassist Michael Troutman sticks it deep inside—the pocket, that is. Proto-punk tracks like “Grown” seethe with lust and boredom, and the flailing blues-skronk of “Dinosaur” is as sleazy as anything Mudhoney has dished up in years. The jazz-croak of a saxophone blows through “Hat Energy” like the pissed-off ghost of Albert Ayler, and “Ridin’” steers straight for the funhouse. Only on requisite closing jam “Animal” does Awesome Color stumble, with a plodding mess that fails to retain the ferocity of what preceded it; “L.A. Blues” it is not. Still, this is one impressive debut, and a great example of what can be done within the confines of an historical legacy that all too often inspires only complacent imitation. Awesome Color move beyond merely sounding like the Stooges to inhabit the primal instincts that animated those pioneers.
[Amazon]
—Whitney Strub 11:00 am
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 The Lonesome Heroes hail from Austin by way of Brooklyn. As such, the group touts themselves as country music with a psychedelic slant. They are neither as epic nor stoned as the Flying Burrito Brothers or the Beachwood Sparks, but hints of Mazzy Star and Galaxie 500 shoegaze meanderings are present. The Lonesome Heroes’ haze is closer to sunstroke when objects start to take on a wobbly, oil-slicked outline. On the EP Don’t Play to Lose, Rich Russell details the cold, hard country facts with a steady lead guitar and punctuated vocals while Landry McLean’s highly polished resonator and heavy lap steel reverb create a watery distortion that floats through each track. The resulting layered fuzzy contrast is what drives their sound. The tracks “The Moon and the Sun” and “Oyster” highlight McLean’s haunting and captivating vocal that sound like she snuck away from the campfire in the middle of the night to record. The five tracks are not enough to determine if the Lonesome Heroes can by carried by more than McLean’s steel, but keeps you adequately interested to see what will come.
[Amazon]
—Alexa Lim 9:00 am
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"Doc Bronner" M3U
