Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Polyvinyl
originally published January 24, 2007
I have listened to this new Of Montreal album enough times to get it not only into my head but under my fingernails, and there are still new nuances popping up. It pulses like a herd of varicolored amoebae, constantly changing shape, aggressively rushing forward then retreating inside itself. How to corral it all? Well, there’s this: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is impressively new in a surprising number of ways: it’s good (that part’s important), it’s large, and it is whatever you would call the opposite of wussing out. It is tighter than the previous efforts at more conceptual albums of driving force Kevin Barnes. It is, more than anything else, adult, which you could call almost undiscovered country for this band, even with its more recent focus on the joys of fatherhood and whatnot.
A strong sense of moral complexity is uncommon in pop songs, and perhaps the title Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (shades of Adam, Eve, the snake, and that whole nasty knowledge of good and evil business) is a clue to what the case contains. There are parts, as on 12-minute centerpiece “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal” - a whirlwind of wailing and disco beats - that can be physically uncomfortable to listen to, but with repeated listening comes the sense that that reaction is not a bad thing considering the conflict the song addresses. It’s not protracted suffering in the way Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart does it, but more the pathos of human growth; if it feels like your skin is peeling off a little too much, that might just be a molting process. The overriding influences have moved a few years closer to the present, but the dance party/ David Bowie vein is still the presiding one, flavored with cocaine-paranoia funk this time around.
Also important to note about Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is the very album-ness of it. If you just dip in for hits like “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” (no, really), “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider,” “A Sentence of Sorts in Konsinger,” and “She’s a Rejecter,” you’ll be left with an itch of sadness that’s hard to cure. This doesn't mean they're not hits. The first plays manic joy against the dark implications of what might happen when the music stops, the second captures the oceanic drunkenness of a Go Bar dance party, the third covers Blondie with sparkles, and the last sharpens up its bass, bringing out the sexual aggression of the unrequited in Barnes' hysterical vocals. In some ways, it's a mountain-shaped album, with songs about staying inside in Norway, then songs about increasing fame and fortune building up to that giant middle track, which then slides down into depression, but that would ignore the impact of “We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafing,” Hissing Fauna's concluding track, which finally conveys a sort of resolution - not one that ties things up in a happy bundle, but it at least returns to the possibility and, indeed, necessity of communion with others, however imperfect and id-frustrating that is. Hello, maturity. You’re looking very pretty these days.
Of Montreal is playing at the 40 Watt Club on Saturday, Mar. 24.
The Blow
Paper Television
K
originally published January 24, 2007
Early on during my freshman year of college, I went to a festival to see Blur, and one of the acts before them was an obnoxious rap-rock band fronted by a big fat guy. I totally ignored them until they started playing this cool '60s-sounding song and I realized they were Smashmouth and that, unfortunately, only one of their songs sounded like "Walking on the Sun."
The Blow's kinda like this; what you like them for turns out to be different from what they are. They are Jona Bechtolt, who makes the beats, and Khaela Maricich, who does the rest, and they have at least two unquestionably great songs: "Hey Boy," from their first EP as a duo, and Paper Television's "Parentheses." Both are catchy, closely-observed romantic comedies, with a sound that successfully melds classic pop and modern electro R&B. Moreover, live they're just Khaela singing over a CD, and it should suck, but it's fantastic, charming and intimate.
So The Blow's new album, which has almost none of this charm or openness, is frustrating. The vocals are muttered, buried and muddily double-tracked, so it's almost impossible to make out the words - though those that slip through are fantastic, like the economic analysis of hookups on "Pile of Gold." And the beats that get in the way are rarely worth attention, tuneless retreads of five-years-ago's electronic noises. The album contains occasional bright spots, like the pastoral-to-disco progression of "Bonjour Jeune Fille," but overall and aside from the fantastic "Parentheses," Paper Television is a disappointment.
Madeline
The Slow Bang
Orange Twin
originally published January 24, 2007
There’s a lot to say for the lo-fi home-recording aesthetic: it’s easy and cheap, for one, and it can impart a real sense of you-are-there intimacy to a song or album. The Slow Bang, the newest full-length album from Athens singer-songwriter Madeline, has intimacy in spades: it was recorded in producer Matthew Houck’s home, and at times it has that great late-night back-porch feel, as if she were singing and playing guitar right next to you.
But sometimes you want a song to sound like it was recorded in somebody’s kitchen, and other times that’s just the best you can do. The gorgeous “I Know You Won’t,” which has a melody that keeps threatening to break out into “O Holy Night” and a great closing line that perfectly captures the emotions of a less-than-monumental breakup (“I know you won't ever remember / just how gorgeous August was, now it's September”), uses the setting the best, couching Madeline’s voice in soft guitar and rising and falling piano.
But much of the rest of the album cries out for more lush production. The guitar-and-vocals arrangements of “Sleeping Dogs” or “Fish in the Sea” (with my second favorite line: “I’ve been hunting / and bitches be fronting / when they limp like some wounded beast”) are fine, but it’s hard not to think that it would benefit from a more expansive sound. On previous recordings, Madeline has used an appealingly brash, unmistakably Southern voice, but on The Slow Bang she mostly sings in a breathier, “prettier” register that better matches the understated arrangements but occasionally wavers into squeaky-cute territory. It sounds like there’s a little Neko Case in Madeline that wants to get out, but the music needs some beefing up first.
Aside from “I Know You Won’t,” the album’s other highlight is the stately yet insistent “Good Houses,” practically a Queen track compared to its neighbors: piano, acoustic and electric guitars, drums, backing vocals. But even here, with all the elements present, you can hear Madeline and Houck bump up against the limits of the recording process. The sound of an artist’s reach just exceeding her grasp is always exciting - Madeline doesn’t quite achieve greatness on The Slow Bang, but she demonstrates more than enough potential to get there, and sooner rather than later.
Commander Chameleon
Commander Chameleon
Independent Release
originally published January 24, 2007
If nothing else, Commander Chameleon's debut full-length underscores the need for an all-ages venue in Athens. Trafficking in the same juvenile vein as groups like the Dead Milkmen and even the Bloodhound Gang (although neither as brash and clever as the former nor as populist and precise as the latter), the band would be a godsend to pubescent boys not yet concerned with actual sex, but cognizant of its existence and eager to giggle at its mention.
The 28-song album, which follows two significantly more concise EPs, is packed with unobtrusively tuneful rock music that allows the band's juvenile, dick-and-fart lyrics to come to the forefront. (Heh heh, he said "come.") It's also much slicker-sounding than the band's rough-around-the-edges live show.
But okay, how many songs? Twenty-eight. Yowch. Even brief ones - like the jaunty, country-flavored ode to molestation called "Hot for Preacher," which rhymes the words "masturbate" and "rape" - are generally one-note jokes, and they try the patience of any sober listener.
Vaguely rapped lyrics in "Publicity Stunt" layer over chiming, late-'90s indie rock guitar lines. Commander Chameleon barrels through tracks like "Freedom Tickler," "Rubberhole," "Tussin DM," the literal "My Racist Uncle" and album-closer "T.V. Hurts My Dick," making musical reference to everything from surf music to ska to keyboard pop.
It's a scattered offering from local guys Brad Metz, Matt Tamisin, Dave Williams, Ritchie Williams and Terry Wilson, who've been playing together around town since late 2003. But then, find a pre-teen boy and you'll find someone to whom "standards" are only a hazy abstraction. Both Commander Chameleon's live performances and the band's debut album would be perfect for them.
The Long Blondes
Someone to Drive You Home
Rough Trade
originally published January 24, 2007
The Long Blondes have done something unusual: they've made an album whose hooks are not its beats or riffs, but its words. Singer Kate Jackson crafts stories that fit perfectly into pop songs, following the form while still tracing a narrative arc. They're stories recognizable to anyone who's been young and foolish, although there will be a particularly strong resonance for women, whose problems Jackson focuses on with specificity and honesty.
Admirable as that is, a rock album shouldn't have as few instrumental hooks as Someone to Drive You Home. Most of the blame goes to the production, which aggressively employs the execrable British "indie" style of making everything sound like shit even when it shouldn't. The guitars sound loud only when they're being quiet, the bass is too prominent, and the drums are barely legible. Of course, the band doesn't help by writing such poor arrangements, rarely pausing to let space seep in and primarily just following the vocal melody.
Of course, with a belter like Jackson, anyone would put her up front. She can ride one note like a whole melisma, and those lyrics - man! From cross-referencing characters between songs to unusual turns of phrase, she displays a breathtaking confidence in her instrument. And when, as on Someone to Drive You Home's high point "You Could Have Both," she breaks up a song with a spoken interlude, it conjures everything from Elvis' "Love Me Tender" to Pulp's "I Spy." The Long Blondes almost deserve those comparisons.
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