Dark Meat

Universal Indians

Cloud Recordings

originally published September 13, 2006

Universal Indians isn’t a punk record, thirsty for the blood of its forebears. It isn’t a “deep fried,” horn-infused hybrid of stadium rock and R&B. It isn’t a throwback to those mad, loud, dirty smokestacks Amphetamine Reptile used to put out. It’s not a long-form channeling of Crazy Horse’s trucker mysticism. And it’s not an experimental record. It does share ground with all of the aforementioned conceits. But it’s a rock record, straight up. And it’s a great one.

Like any great straight-up rock record, Universal Indians introduces itself with a monumental one-two. Exile On Main Street had “Rocks Off” and “Rip This Joint;” Universal Indians, the first release from the festive Athens outfit Dark Meat, has “Freedom Ritual” (a seven-minute cleanser that knows how to balance catharsis and vertigo) and “Well Fuck You Then” (a swaggering shout-along ode to domestic turbulence best heard repeatedly, with a cheap sixer at hand).

If Dark Meat kept up this clip, Universal Indians would get exhausting, then predictable, then imminently forgettable. But Dark Meat is smarter than that. “Dead Man” provides the vital track-three turning point, a gospel steamer with a self-loathing so deep it’s environmentally hazardous. (“The fish slept on the ocean / And the gulls all did die / And the boats smashed the piers / But you can’t murder meat.”) And the album remains ever interesting, even as it keeps the angry energy simmering. “Three Eyes Open” disintegrates into an Albert Ayler-ish noise-fest. “Angel of Meth” could be a country song, as no other genre knows so well the pathos in a horrifying, hilarious drunk story. It could be, but it isn’t quite, because it doesn’t really want to be, and is thus doubly impressive. The hits keep coming, particularly the cryptic, oddly syncopated barnburner “Assholes For Eyes.”

At a time when music is so plentiful and surprises are so few, Universal Indians plays like a whole career’s worth of highlights. To sound at once this adventuresome and this resolute, Dark Meat must’ve picked the best of dozens and dozens of songs.

Who’s to say whether the album’ll make some shitheel’s Top Ten list, or whether an entire scene of immense, loosely defined rock bands (with lots of brass, backup singers and mile-wide senses of humor) will grow around it? When an album comes out with this many songs that sound like - and are as good as - Lona’s “Daydream,” Athens can safely rejoice.

Emerson Dameron Dark Meat is playing a CD release show at the Georgia Theatre on Wednesday, Sept. 13. See feature story [here].

Emerson Dameron

Dark Meat is playing a CD release show at the Georgia Theatre on Wednesday, Sept. 13. See feature story [here].

Bear

Ready Fo’ Me

T-Nebula Productions

originally published September 13, 2006

The point of comparison here is Ya Boy Brell’s Jumping Off the Porch, released earlier this year by the same Athens production company /rap collective (they have a live show coming up this weekend, showcasing even more artists). Bear’s album Ready Fo’ Me is a little shorter (14 songs, no skits) and mildly tighter, but the main thing is that it’s more mellow. Brell was laid-back but ready to go; Bear is warmer, softer, more like s’mores.

Also known as Stackman, Bear ranges from DMX gruff vocals (the first and titular song) to gentler, higher-pitched stuff (“You Hurt Me”). Maybe it depends on what he’d been doing the night before. Topics are a little heavy on the title sentiment, a classic one in the rap world and one that rarely proves true. There aren’t that many people doing something incredibly revolutionary in the field, and Bear isn’t one of them. That doesn’t mean his stuff is bad in the slightest; just that as with Brell, it’s impressively competent, though what’s sampled and what’s not in the production is impossible to tell without liner notes. Brell is a little nimbler verbally, but Bear’s touch resembles the horns that are prevalent in his songs; it glows a bit more, and songs like “This Is Love,” which pay tribute to everyone who helped him along the way, work better than a diss track like “F.U.,” which follows the opposite strategy.

“Let Me Touch Ya” is another track worthy of note, though it’s hard to tell how serious a seduction song it is when the narrator slips in a mix of Hershey’s syrup and whipped cream - twice. T-Nebula hasn’t produced anything jaw dropping yet, but, point is, they’re still evidently a team to watch.

Hillary Brown Bear is playing a CD release show at the Caledonia Lounge on Friday, Sept. 15.

Hillary Brown

Bear is playing a CD release show at the Caledonia Lounge on Friday, Sept. 15.

Harvey Milk

Special Wishes

Troubleman Unlimited

originally published September 13, 2006

“How do you think old glory feels / Displayed over battlefields / After so long folded away?” asks Harvey Milk frontman and mastermind Creston Spiers in the opening lines of “Silly and Small,” one of his new album’s flagship songs. A reference to “old glory” in Special Wishes, being the first new Harvey Milk album in eight years, might as well be considering the local three-piece itself as it does our red, white and blue. Andee Connors of Tumult Records, who re-issued Harvey Milk’s 1996 limited-production second album Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men on CD in 2000, once said that Harvey Milk was “too heavy to be post-rock; too weird to be metal; too everything to be anything.”

Indeed, on Special Wishes the band displays ripping classic rock-style guitar leads (“Once in a While”), gentle acoustic passages (“Silly and Small”) and suffocating time changes amid tar-pit-fumed, slow-and-low heaviness (“War”). Also, epic chord progressions evoke the end credits of some apocalyptic space-war film (“Mother’s Day”) and throat-ripping bluesy vocals (“Love Swing”). Guitarist-vocalist Spiers, bassist Stephen Tanner and drummer Paul Trudeau juggle them all like flaming chainsaws. The band has always drawn comparisons to the Melvins, and this is unlikely to change with Special Wishes, but there also remains an especially off-kilter, gut-wrenching quality that Harvey Milk has always had which propels it far beyond the status of mere hero worship.

Harvey Milk has never been ahead of its time or behind the times; the band has operated strictly by its own calendar, which has lead the small number of die-hards the band has attracted in its 14 years to constantly bemoan their “criminally overlooked” status. With this new album, an opening slot for the Melvins this October at the 40 Watt, and another re-issue of Courtesy… via metal juggernaut Relapse Records last week, the band might be about to receive some of that past due credit.

However, Harvey Milk is as beautiful and profound as it is because it has always been more concerned with making music as a manner of breathing than as a manner of achieving externally delivered hallmarks. With Special Wishes, this old glory makes it clear that it never really left the battlefield, and that no matter who does or doesn’t want to write its name in the sky, Harvey Milk will remain amid the mud and the blood below, smashing perceptions of what rock music is and should be from the skulls of anyone within hammer strike.

Jace Bartet Harvey Milk is playing at the 40 Watt Club on Saturday, Oct. 28.

Jace Bartet

Harvey Milk is playing at the 40 Watt Club on Saturday, Oct. 28.

Yo La Tengo

I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass

Matador

originally published September 13, 2006

Since 1997, the cagy veteran folks in Yo La Tengo have released an album exactly every three years. They're like the Olympics, minus 52 weeks. You could say they're about as old as the Olympics, too, but that would be cruel and unfounded. But with age comes wisdom, sometimes, and if any single quality has been most apparent during Yo La Tengo's all-star career, then it is most assuredly wisdom. They're wise enough to know what to steal, who to steal from, and how to use that theft as distinctively and impressively as possible.

They also know that, by this point, they've earned the right to do whatever the hell they want. Maybe that's why I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass starts off with "Pass The Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind," an 11-minute epic that coasts on layered sheets of feedback and a six-note, minimally funky bassline. It's an amazing song, but not something that'll likely endear them to the uninitiated. That's also maybe why they then immediately segue into the uncharacteristic piano and horns of "Beanbag Chair" and "Mr. Tough." Both songs explore the sort of classic '60s pop songcraft popularized by folks like the Association and the Left Banke; this isn't exactly new territory for Yo La Tengo, but this time it's executed with greater stylistic fidelity than usual.

Even when we get more of what we expect, there's often a slight surprise in store. "I Feel Like Going Home" is another atmospheric weeper highlighting Georgia Hubley's beautiful voice, but with piano and strings all over the place. Bassist James McNew takes his obligatory turn behind the mic on "Black Flowers," and winds up delivering the band's most overt Beach Boys homage since the cover of "Sloop John B." On "I Should've Known Better," the suddenly ubiquitous piano is replaced by the band's faithful old organ; instead of the thick waves of sound that normally billow out, though, we hear an almost stereotypical garage-rock number that could've come from Nuggets.

I Am Not Afraid Of You is a cut above the band's last album. It could be called a return to form, but Yo La Tengo never got far enough away from that form to require a return in the first place. Instead, it's another fine album from the one of the longest-running and most consistent bands around.

Garrett Martin

Garrett Martin

Great Lakes

Diamond Times

Empyrean

originally published September 13, 2006

For a band that writes pretty much straightforward, country-folk-rock songs, Great Lakes, once based out of Athens, has always been shrouded somewhat in mystery. Perhaps it’s by design or perhaps it’s just me, but it remains to be seen if this effect will still serve Great Lakes now that the music has moved away from pop psychedelia and into more traditional, classic, singer-songwriter territory. Eh, screw it. It worked for Grandaddy.

Hands down, Diamond Times has some gorgeously composed and executed songs. The opening track “The Pinks and The Purples” is steeped in self-resignation and attendant sadness, and the melody recalls early '70s-era Jackson Browne. The current live band of Ben Crum (guitar, vocals), Kyle Forester (bass, backing vocals) and Mike Fadem (drums), along with co-songwriter Dan Donahue, takes the best elements from the bloated corpse of "classic" rock, drawing from Neil Young, Gram Parsons and Elvis Costello. There’s no filler on here at all and at a super-economical 10 tracks, the album is a pleasant listen, if not a thrilling ride.

What I mean is this: Diamond Times is a fine album if your goal is to listen to a decent record of fine songwriting, but as Great Lakes has adopted more of a mainstream sound, the band has taken on more of the mainstream ballast of relative anonymity. Still, songs such as “Shaky Faith” and the Springsteen mock-up horns present on the title track serve as warning that I will wind up playing this album over again. And enjoying it just as much, too.

Gordon Lamb

Gordon Lamb

Everclear

Welcome to the Drama Club

Eleven Seven

originally published September 13, 2006

I’m not really that familiar with Everclear, despite it having been relatively big in my formative adolescent years of the mid-1990s. So where these guys ever got their supply of credibility is a mystery to me, at least from this most recent album, which features Everclear as frontman Art Alexakis and a bunch of new dudes he recruited to carry on. The production is sort of halfway between Red Hot Chili Peppers and contemporary Nashville, with a heavy dose of Southwestern sentimentality.

In the band’s better moments, it might reach into current Aerosmith territory (e.g., “Jaded”) or the land of California pop-punk, but too often it’s more Dave Matthews than anything else. There’s far too much talking about “making love” in the ickiest fashion, the kind of “oh baby, you’re so beautiful you can save me from my tragic self” nonsense that doesn’t play once you're old enough to pay your own rent.

The thing is, some people are boring whether they’re on drugs or not, and while I feel bad for Alexakis’ difficulties throughout his life, that doesn’t make him a particularly talented songwriter or lyricist. That said, the single “Hater” is a punchy little slice of pissiness and deservedly a hit. Invest in the single download and ignore the rest, unless you’ve got a crush on the guy.

Hillary Brown

Hillary Brown

Snowden

Anti-Anti

Jade Tree

originally published September 13, 2006

Anticipation nearly always leads to disappointment, and such is the case with Anti-Anti. No, it’s not a bad record at all; its root melodies and vocal harmonies are solid and reveal evidence of authentic songwriting. It’s just that I expected, I don’t know, something overwhelmingly grand. Maybe that's my own fault, but that’s not the case here.

Atlanta's Jordan Jeffares is, for all practical purposes, Snowden. The songs written for this album are deeply emotive without being sappy or sentimental. The best stuff here demonstrates his ability to work slowly around a tune and utilize simple chord arrangements to full effect. Were Jeffares to have remained a solo artist, however, and just kept recording himself in his bedroom, Anti-Anti would have never been created. Still, the album sounds less like a band and more like some dudes haphazardly arranging another person's songs; it makes the listening experience less than fulfilling.

The best tracks (“Anti-Anti," “Black Eyes," “Stop Your Bleeding”) are full of wonderful lyricism and magnetically dark melodies that benefit from a full band arrangement. Ironically, given that Snowden is constantly, and incorrectly, compared to across-the-pond bands such as Ride and The Cure, Anti-Anti is closer in nature to the best realized efforts of fellow Atlanta native Chan Marshall (Cat Power).

So: Anti-Anti is a fine record. Taken by itself it’s not at all unpleasant or bereft of originality. Any disappointment I harbor is probably only the result of my own unrealistic expectations which constantly call on a band to transport me rather than just entertain me.

Gordon Lamb

Gordon Lamb

Kind Of Like Spitting / Lemuria

Your Living Room’s All Over Me

Art Of The Underground

originally published September 13, 2006

This split release between Buffalo, NY outfit Lemuria and Portland, OR group Kind Of Like Spitting is daringly good humored, beginning with the title's cheeky send up of Dinosaur Jr. The Lemuria tunes contained herein are pure '90s-style indie rock. Think Superchunk, Magnapop and The Fastbacks. Utterly tuneful and unselfconsciously - more importantly, unironically - personal, the songs simply pour out of the stereo and into a time warp. Lemuria is an incredibly deft combo and although the sound has waned in popularity in recent years, there’s always going to be more than enough room, and sometimes a certain amount of need, for solid guitar-based pop that is unafraid to lay itself bare.

The tracks by Kind of Like Spitting are more complex in their structure. I am resisting with all my might to avoid calling this "emo." Watch me fail. Truth is, KOLS is classic second-wave emo. And although the band-list review tends to suck completely, there’s no way to talk about Kind of Like Spitting without mentioning its clear similarity to Mineral, Braid and even Death Cab for Cutie. Hell, Death Cab main man Ben Gibbard is himself a Kind of Like Spitting alum.

Weirdly, unlike so many emo bands from the '90s, Kind of Like Spitting sounds fairly fresh within this sound. It could be that it’s been so long, or it could be that the band does it better than many others did. I’m leaning toward the latter but prepared to accept the former.