PopMatters home | short takes home | archives

10 May 2006

Dog Fashion Disco, Adultery (Rotten)
Saddled by a strange name and stranger album artwork over the years, Dog Fashion Disco should hit the big leagues with Adultery. With its apocalyptic horns, twisted humor, and short attention span, the band recalls Mr. Bungle, down to Mike Patton's various vocal inflections. Adultery runs through metal, lounge, ska, and even country; "Desert Grave" features banjo and a dead-on Johnny Cash impression. Despite the genre skipping, the album is coherent, thanks to a storyline involving one man's descent into debauchery. The comic book artwork perfectly matches the music's film noir feel. Five albums into its career, Dog Fashion Disco has mastered songwriting. Cinematic interludes make Adultery a smooth, dark listen; if Sin City had a metal soundtrack, it would be this. [Insound]
      — Cosmo Lee
multiple songs: [MySpace]

Function, The Secret Miracle Fountain (Locust)
For an album that was recorded in pieces all over the world and then brought together and mastered in two different countries, The Secret Miracle Fountain is wonderfully coherent. It's a soundscape, featuring the pale, strong voices of Matthew Nicholson and several women singing along with the sounds of birds, pianos, groans, chatter, violins, humming, drums, forests, keyboards, trumpets, fire, and a host of other things, including, according to the credits, a "falsetto dimentia choir" and a "duck's arse" -- tho' I think those ones are tongue-in-cheek. There's something earnest and proggy about it but not in a bad way. The musician wants to gather us all up and invite us on a trip. Here we are in the valleys, listening to something like the theme music to "It's A Small World." Here we are on the mountains with an unexpected rock guitar. Here we are in a fjord with a mistily reverberating set of wine glasses. Well, perhaps the earnestness gets wearing after a while. But the inventive progginess is great. [Amazon | Insound]
      — Deanne Sole
"Beloved, Lost to Begin With": [MP3]

Turnstiles, 13 Telephone Towers (self-released)
Debut albums often sound like the product of a limited musical vocabulary, mainly because many of them are exactly that. Bands usually overcome this constraint in one of two ways: 1) slowly but steadily increasing their skills with each album; or 2) using such limitations as inspiration for experimentation. On 13 Telephone Towers, New Brunswick's Turnstiles suggest they'll take the latter path. The band compares its sound to that of Wilco -- rooted in tradition while innovative, but the Turnstiles are coming at experimentation from the other end. While many of the songs on this debut are indeed catchy, clever, and indicative of a band with great potential, the overall impression is of a band forced to use a wide arsenal because they aren't proficient with any single weapon. This isn't necessarily bad; genius is often the offspring of necessity (the Edge's guitar sound, anyone?), and the Turnstiles have enough of a solid footing in melody and hooks to produce something great down the road. [Insound]
      — Michael Franco
"Better Off Lost": [MP3]
"My Town Is on Fire": [MP3]
"Get Out": [MP3]

Time Again, The Stories Are True (Hellcat)
The Stories Are True's title track features Rancid's Tim Armstrong on guest vocals -- a pretty redundant appearance, since Time Again has already thoroughly aped that band's sound, and it's even signed to Armstrong's Hellcat label. While lacking the songwriting talent or sharp musical skill of Rancid (no great Matt Freeman bass runs here), Time Again runs through the familiar lyrical checklist of opposition to cops, violence, racism, and drug abuse. Singer Daniel Dart also catalogs his romantic infidelities on "Fountain & Formosa", which runs a bit counter to the values I've always admired in punk. At any rate, Time Again isn't terrible, exactly, just utterly generic, which actually makes it less interesting than something truly disastrous. [Insound]
      — Whitney Strub
multiple songs and videos: [official site]

.: posted by Editor 8:01 AM