Record Reviews
Caroline
originally published April 5, 2006
In the wake of poppy, ethereal vocals tethered to harshly rhythmic symphonic quilts from the likes of Björk, Feist and countless would-be American idols, Caroline Lufkin offers a debut album aptly titled Murmurs. A seeming divergence in genre from the label that exposed Explosions in the Sky and Mono, Caroline, who drops the clunky shoe of a surname while in stage persona, comes off as what one would assume Kelly Clarkson would sound like if caught in the fractaling, mechanical blizzard of Vespertine without a coat. At times, the soundscapes woven by Andreas Bjorck can carry the melody and deliver all that could be expected from a song with a solid standing of 17 or maybe 18 on Kasem’s Top Forty, but the I-learned-English-as-a-second-language-via-Disney-movies lyrics tend to breed an unshakable self-consciousness when you catch your foot tapping out the rhythm.
While there are pleasant moments and submersing swells of music that do, when all is said and done, blend fairly well with the layered vocals, there’s a noticeable lack of hooks, which tend to be requisite when looking to garner any sort of longevity in the cruel world of pop rotation.
Murmurs is an interesting debut, and what could mark the inauspicious beginning of a good-looking girl from Okinawa’s career as an indie-pop, slow-dance jukebox. With a bit of musical maturity, she could easily crack the Top 40 stations of any given XM receiver. Keep your eyes - ears, too - on this one.
David ComminsRecord Reviews
Pushbutton
originally published April 5, 2006
Chris Uhde writes pop songs the way babies fall out of beds. His full-band ensemble augments these completely natural songs live, but Close To Final, Pushbutton's debut disc, was largely recorded with Uhde playing everything. Through this album’s 13 tracks, Uhde, formerly of local band Annaray, runs the small gamut of guitar-based power pop. Although easy comparisons include Guided By Voices and Superchunk, Uhde is no mere copyist. Rather, he is a fellow traveler.
Displaying a keen sense of timing, most of these tracks hover around the pop-appropriate time limit of three minutes. Beginning with a guitar rave-up called “Take Aim” and then leading right into the restrained riff-pop of “Time Well Spent,” the album defines its terms early on. The simple keyboard backing to “Falling” serves as a delicate platform for Uhde’s shaky vocals on the track. It’s a nervous sounding, paper-thin song that sounds as if he’s about to burst through it. The gorgeous and sad “Allison” has Uhde layering guitars to wonderful effect and is augmented by soaring keyboard swashes.
The heaviest track, “Lie To Me” has Uhde veering into Dinosaur Jr. territory with walls of fuzz and super-rock guitar leads. It’s less satisfying than the rest of the album, if only because it doesn’t fit the rhythm and feel of the project. The same is the case with “Goodbye,” whose chord progression and vocal stylings are simply too close to Kiss’ “Hard Luck Woman” for me to imagine anything else.
Close to Final is the type of album where every song sounds like something you swore you’ve heard before. Previous criticisms aside, this isn’t Uhde ripping off other bands. It’s him speaking a common language. And as far as articulate pop conversation goes, you could do a lot worse than Pushbutton.
Gordon Lamb Pushbutton is playing at the Caledonia Lounge on Saturday, Apr. 8.Record Reviews
Sparks
originally published April 5, 2006
Sometimes it’s hard to believe Sparks is still around, especially if you’re sitting around watching Valley Girl on TV and hear one of their songs in that time capsule. They haven’t been noticed in the United States in your current college freshman’s lifetime, but that doesn’t mean they’ve slowed down. The new album Hello, Young Lovers has a crop of cute bunnies on the cover, and the familiar mix of pop tones exhibit wit and a desire to poke you in the ear in a way that makes you uncomfortable. One song becomes another song in a way that’s hard to notice, and while sometimes this can lead to monotony, in this case, it results in something that’s very album-centric, while not neglecting the demands of the quicker music consumer.
If you’re listening on headphones, you’ll get a better impression of how it works, with the brothers Mael almost always both chanting/ singing in both your ears. The vocals (and the overload of instrumentation and style, from strummy acoustic guitar to thrash in the course of a single track) wrap around your eardrums, squeezing the air out of your head space. Of course, this seems right at home with their aim. It’s a relationship album, and it’s specifically about the way in which claustrophobia and exhilaration come from the same place.
And at the same time, Hello, Young Lovers is still utterly singable, especially the madly catchy “(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country,” which thumps the listener into submission through repetition. Even if you think you don’t like it at first, you’ll find yourself earwormed a few days later.
Hillary BrownRecord Reviews
Yea Big
originally published April 5, 2006
Yea Big is Stefen Robinson, an eccentric art school vet who, under his birth name, roller-skates competitively, and, under his alias, creates noisy, difficult, omnivorous sound collages. Like most young musicians, he does not attempt to work without exhibiting a certain inspirational debt to hip hop. But, like many of his confederates in the shut-in electro-experimental underground, he eschews hip hop’s fluctuating standards of integrity, subscribing only to his wild range of influences (in interviews, he often name-checks Jim O’Rourke) and his wild imagination.
On The Wind That Blows The Robot’s Arms, his full-length debut, Robinson takes us on an ADD-damaged hopscotch through 25 tracks. The presentation is stunning - the arrangements and the production boast a depth rarely heard on this sort of adventure. At the same time, a lot of the music sounds as though he made it on stuff he got from a Happy Meal. Yea Big’s is an aesthetic at once forbidding and playful, a mix of steely chaos dating back to the earliest electronic music and a good-natured sense of humor placing it squarely in the goofy, wondrous present. While the music ain’t always catchy, the chi always is.
My friend Chris hates this and describes this as “what death sounds like,” so I won’t guarantee that any one person will swing on it. And yet, I wish everyone could hear it. While it isn’t the easiest thing to love, creative types tend to pursue the elusive. And any art and music influenced by Yea Big is art I’d like to see, music I’d like to hear.
Emerson DameronRecord Reviews
16 Horsepower
originally published April 5, 2006
16 Horsepower never really fit into any of those neat little No Depression cubbyholes that it was continuously crammed in to. It was too weird for Americana, and, strangely enough, too goth to be considered American gothic. The live Hoarse is a fine document of the band’s genre-hopping tendencies, as well as the David Eugene Edwards-led ensemble’s brand of homespun creepiness.
Originally released in 2001, Hoarse’s contents are taken mostly from a 1998 stint in the band’s home base of Denver. Arriving well after the buzz generated by their ’96 release Sackcloth and Ashes, it nonetheless captures the band at the height of its powers. Originals like “American Wheeze” and the moody “Black Soul Choir” emphasize Edward’s caterwauling wail, and their near-unrecognizable freak-out on CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” is as well-executed as covers get. The band’s goth cred is also touched upon by a revamping of Joy Division’s “Day of the Lords” and, for the more traditionally inclined, the group picks the living bejeezus out of the banjo-driven coal-miner’s stomp “Black Lung.”
These days, 16 Horsepower isn’t quite as menacing, nor engaging, as it used to be. However, this upfront, liner notes-less package ably documents what an undisputed powerhouse it once was.
Michael AndrewsRecord Reviews
Prefuse 73
originally published April 5, 2006
Not far into Security Screenings, the fourth proper full-length from Scott Herren's Prefuse 73 moniker, a radio deejay (probably real) says to Herren regarding last year's Surrounded By Silence, "I gotta be honest, I'm not liking it. Could you have any more guest spots on there?" I was thrilled with Surrounded the first several listens, and still enjoy it, but I find myself returning time and time again to that signature glitch-hop of Prefuse's first two albums that's both laid-back and kinetic. Perhaps Herren agrees, for Security Screenings, the first of two Prefuse albums scheduled for this year, does return to that comfort zone. "Keeping Up With Your Quota" squiggles and squelches along to cut-and-paste perfection, while "When the Grip Lets You Go" skitters with alternately jazzy and downtempo inflections.
You'll not find the spoken word featuring here much at all. The first is with Four Tet on "Creating Cyclical Headaches," and admittedly it is one of the highlights. This is a collab right there with the EP Prefuse put out last year with The Books. A straightforward beat is buried beneath scraping, guitar noise and a rolling keyboard loop. "We Leave you in a Cloud of Thick Smoke and Sleep Outro" processes the soulful voice of TV On the Radio's Babatunde Adebimpe into an ambient, well, cloud of thick smoke and sleep. Elsewhere Herren's up to his old tricks, and it might be simply the tried-and-true, but in such a busy year for Herren's many projects, I'm not complaining.
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