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24 April 2006

Anti-Social Music & The Gena Rowlands Band, The Nitrate Hymnal (Lujo) Rating: 7
There's something unearthly about photos and films of people now dead. The Nitrate Hymnal, a "post-punk opera" performed three years ago in a four-night stand in a Washington DC Masonic temple, ponders the disturbing nexus of memory, loss and public record. The Gena Rowlands Band's Bob Massey based his opera on a collection of 8mm film left to him by his grandfather, that showed his two grandparents gradually growing older and, he felt, losing their love. Here, augmented by Anti-Social Music, a punk-spirited, classically trained chamber collective headed by Franz Nicolay of The Hold Steady and Pat Muchmore of the World Inferno Friendship Society, Massey's work gets a chillingly beautiful treatment. There are serious musical chops at work here, liquid runs of 20th century classical violin, electrified and electrifying guitar buzz, discordant brass and even, at one point, a church organ. Hauntingly melancholy, restrained and minimalist, the music brings out the shiver in lyrics like "A time machine/There on the screen stands someone I long to touch, to hear, to smell again/There's a small kind of heaven in the movies". [Insound]
      — Jennifer Kelly
multiple audio and video clips: [MP3, windows, real]

Arkanoid, Get Yourself Influenced (Underhill) Rating: 5
Juanmi Martin is in pain. Or, at least, it sounds like he is for the duration of Spanish quartet Arkanoid's latest album Get Yourself Influenced. Martin has one of those voices that sounds like it's about thiiiis close to utterly breaking down and bawling for every second during which he's singing, an attribute that makes that voice simultaneously distinctive and distracting, ultimately defining Arkanoid's sound on this album. Lyrically, there's a pretty distinct Radiohead influence -- Burn the City / Burn your chances / Take the money and run / Empty shelves in empty houses is just one of the many sorta literal but also sorta impressionistic excerpts to be found throughout the disc. The band behind Martin is pretty solid as well, able to pull off long, synth-laden epics ("Ctrl+Alt+Supr") and pop songs in 7/8 ("Puzzle") at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, without a catchy pop hook or a truly inspired lyric in sight, there's nothing at all inspiring about Get Yourself Influenced; the easiest thing to remember about the album is its see-through album cover and art, which is neat in theory, but really makes the liner notes hard to read. Of course, this makes it the perfect cover for an album with lots of great ideas that never quite get off the ground in execution. [Insound]
      — Mike Schiller
multiple songs: [MySpace]

Hell Promise, Aim For Hell (Rocketstar Recordings) Rating: 6
Hell Promise sound exactly the way the band name wants you to think -- thick, metal slabs of guitar supported by the screaming/wailing/raging of a lead singer that wants to rupture his vocal chords. This is evident on "Chamber 35", but the group really excels on the rapid-fire assault of "Brass Knuckle Nightmare", a song you can envision The Count from Sesame Street head-banging like mad to, losing his monocle in the process. The first highlight is the take-no-prisoners metal rocker "Venom, Vice and Valor" that brings to mind old-school metal, as does "The New Black Death" where singer Brian Johnson (no, not that AC/DC Brian Johnson) actually sings somewhat on this track. The trio is quite good when they opt for the metal and less for the emo/scream tangent, especially during "Time Bomb" and the album's finest moment "Vengeance". Although it starts off suspect, the album redeems itself with some crisp, airtight metal arrangements. [Amazon | Insound]
      — Jason MacNeil
multiple songs: [MP3]

Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley, "Beautiful" feat. Bobby Brown [12-inch single] (Universal) Rating: 5
There are two ways to take this. One, accepting/declining the song for what it is. It's a love song. It's tender. It's sweet. It has a nice beat and some of you may dance to it. Or, two, considering the song in the greater scheme of things -- as in, why is a song with Bobby Brown sitting next to one of the biggest pop-social bombs of 2005, "Welcome to Jamrock"? The juxtaposition may be befuddling to Jr. Gong's newfound fanbase (and, clearly, a song like "Beautiful" is aimed at building a new audience), but is mostly nonexistent. Bobby "sings" the hook, but his voice is buried underneath so many other "background" vocalists that his presence is hardly noticeable. In short: it's a shame there ain't more Bobby... [Insound]
      — Dan Nishimoto

.: posted by Editor 7:27 AM