Apples In Stereo
New Magnetic Wonder
Yep Roc
originally published February 7, 2007
I’ve never been the biggest Apples In Stereo fan. During the heyday of the Elephant 6 collective, Neutral Milk Hotel fed the world with its gritty surrealism and The Olivia Tremor Control delivered with its expansive homemade psychedelia. Conversely, The Apples In Stereo always seemed, and not without evidence, a study in pop bookmarks. That is, the songs sounded good because they sounded like so much else; they sounded familiar.
New Magnetic Wonder is a 24-song album. It arrived in my hand completely without context. I have no idea where or when it was recorded nor can I even reveal the names of the songs. I cannot describe the cover art. Musically speaking, it’s very much what I expected from this band. It’s not horrible; nor, however, is it revelatory or immediately obvious as necessary. Recorded without a trace of space between the instruments, certain songs are wonderful. Track 13, for example, is a four-chord blend of instruments that are entirely complementary and a touching lyric (“Simple lives we once left behind / we’re so distracted now”) and a chorus that is sing-a-long magic. Track 5 is a good blend of a jumpy keyboard melody with, honestly, a disco-guitar lead in the chorus.
It might sound irritating to some, but I’ve got a soft spot for both Todd Rundgren and Chic, so it’s fine with me.
If anything, this album shows The Apples making a near-complete break from 1960s pop and embracing, yes, the 1970s rock forms of E.L.O., Styx, Supertramp and Ambrosia. Schneider uses the vocoder and/ or talk box (or their digital equivalents) all over this album. Well, so did Peter Frampton. But now, I guess I’m pushing the point.
New Magnetic Wonder is very long. Many of the songs could have been half their length. Many of the interludes between songs could have been jettisoned. Again, though, I have only the recording itself as a guide. Perhaps the liner notes hold some key to which I am not privy. Then, again, with only the music here to justify itself there is nowhere for it to hide.
I really like The Apples In Stereo as a live band. I’ve got an entire collection of records that have Robert Schneider’s production credit on them; I have mad respect for him as a studio artisan. But New Magnetic Wonder has roughly the same effect on me as the Apples' Fun Trick Noisemaker did 11 years ago - I listen to it and almost forget it’s on before it’s over.
Various Artists
Deeded to Itself: Athens Southernoise
Thor's Rubber Hammer
originally published February 7, 2007
Perhaps taking his cues from acclaimed regionally-themed noise music compilations like RRR's California triple-LP, dearly departed Athenian Lars Götrich (a former WUOG Local Music Director and a creative musician who seldom records or performs) has released this limited-edition (aren't they all?) CD-R to spotlight one of the least-savory, least-documented crannies of the Classic City's music scene: experimental artists not affiliated with Elephant Six.
Tasty jams abound, the most notable among them being Garbage Island's "Heart Skins." In its first minutes, the song emanates a spooky vibe, bells clattering alongside bracing feedback and a molten core of sludge, and the track then climaxes with a wrenching psychedelic blues tug-of-war. Less pulverizing is "Stormdrum," an atavistic wash of churning, gurgling tones from Killick, AKA mutant-instrument player Erik Hinds.
Younger acts also make impressive displays. Orthopedics (We Versus the Shark guitarist and contributing Flagpole writer Jeff Tobias) unleashes a blistering red-level onslaught of overdriven something-or-other (guitar? samples of defenseless woodland creatures in a blender?) that's over before you know it. Chartreuse (Drew Smith of Gasmask & Matchsticks) imbues a charcoal-hued ambient guitar drone with the epic thrust of a video game RGP overture. Telenovela departs from its usual soft-rock moves and matches Basho-on-cough-syrup acoustic guitar strums to pastoral flute parries and whirring electronics redolent of a souped-up lawnmower. Altruizine's contribution, a barrage of squiggly synths, upper-register sax trills and sundry knocks and screeches, is one of the comp's less immediately gratifying moments, but the cut reaches some inspired and impassioned peaks.
Two miscreants from Snellville's Black Noise label also appear. Better People shove us into an echo chamber of psychotropic amplifier belches and disembodied voices with a transcendent track called "Death and Grieving." The usually excellent Sailor Winters, however, phones it in with a study in distorted high frequencies and spoken word that sounds, at best, half-finished.
If any of these songs sound pretentious or obnoxiously obfuscated to you, then lend an ear to Long Legged Woman's cheekily titled "It's the End of the World (And We Don't Know It)." The clean guitar is downright pretty, and the echoed-into-oblivion vocals evoke Boredoms' exuberant sun-worship. Euphoric and unabashedly hedonistic, the song celebrates lose-yourself indulgence, championing obliteration of the ego as a means of spiraling into elevated states of consciousness. Call this music wanky, off-putting or perverse, but also recognize each song as a force that subsumes its performer's individual voice with an annihilating field of jammed signals - noise - and discovers liberation in this blood sacrifice. With over-earnest, self-mythologizing singer-songwriters and ego-tripping, consumptive rappers failing us right and left, maybe it's time to get with the "I"-abolishing program in whose favor these nine artists rally.
The Heart Attacks
Hellbound and Heartless
Hellcat
originally published February 7, 2007
Filthy, loud, cocky and ridiculous are all words that could easily describe The Heart Attacks, or the band's first album, Hellbound and Heartless. At the start of the first track, "You Oughtta Know by Now," a wave of old-school '70s punk and fist-in-your muthaf*ing-face rock and roll floods the room, punches you in the neck, and then acts like it's your fault. Nevertheless, being that Lars Frederiksen (Rancid, Bastards) produced the album, it's no small wonder. What unfolds from this disc is one of the most genuine and adept exhibitions of a group inspired by bands like The Stooges, The Dead Boys, and true '50s rock, that has ever existed in the Dirty South. Title track "Hellbound and Heartless" is a rollercoaster of sound, speeding up and slowing down over a chorus of chaotic "ahs," and sounding more like the New York Dolls than any "post-punk"-influenced band from the last 10 years. And as if stepping into some über-sweet time machine, as a bonus, Joan Jett's timeless voice moans out feigned interest to our new heroes in the track "Tearstained Letters." This album was meant for all those who miss the scene and vibe this CD imbues. And maybe for those who don't mind a barroom brawl every now and then.
Niobe
White Hats
Tomlab
originally published February 7, 2007
Yvonne Cornelius has a name to make her a star. Her project Niobe gives a wonderful reason to believe her voice could as well. White Hats is a genre-masher, to be sure, and ultimately its failings can lay their blame at this doorstep. If there's a dominant feel to the album, the fourth under the Niobe moniker, it's breezy bossa nova, but the tracks skip from dank dungeons to the club to the beaches of Brazil.
One truly sparkling gift Cornelius possesses is her ability to create a particular ambience using her voice. She's truly inventive when it comes to her vocals, whether processed or just recorded in a certain way. "Well and Wise" is thus the highlight of White Hats. Cornelius doubles her vocal track then runs the double through bizarre filtering, rendering the combination slightly mechanical. Otherwise the song would be a pseudo-gospel yawn.
And again, therein lies the problem. I spent so much time admiring the quality of Cornelius' techniques that once the record was over, it faded like a dream. I couldn't remember if I actually, y'know, enjoyed it. And the second time through was the same: interesting, certainly, but vacuous. White Hats' actual songs themselves don't linger, no matter how well-crafted and sparkling.
Giddy Motors
Do Easy
Fat Cat
originally published February 7, 2007
When I first heard Giddy Motors' Make It Pop in 2002, it made me realize how much I missed Jesus Lizard. Not just David Yow's howling mess of a band, but the entire early-'90s Touch & Go scene. Shellac, Arcwelder, et al. were collectively a blip in post-hardcore history that is mostly hidden in a dusty corner now. London act Giddy Motors obviously misses those days, too. Make It Pop was a visceral debut that was soon overwhelmed by critics' use of the word visceral. The band's particular nostalgia was pureed with free-jazz and the urgent violence of grind metal. It was a complicated soup, and easy to choke on, but it was deliciously filling.
Now Giddy Motors has returned with Do Easy, and the essential difference in the recipe these days is a single cup of straightforward accessibility. (That is, relative to the debut disc.) The violence is still in place, from the opening bars of "Sick" through the closing insanity that is "Dot Dot Dot," an eerie/ pretty soundscape punctuated by shrieking shards of noise.
But while Make It Pop crammed dozens of ideas into every track, aiming to shock and awe with complex breaks and polyrhythms, each part of Do Easy - which barely tops half an hour - is tailor-made and shrewdly focused. Make It Pop was a surprising, banging success, but it's this honed-down version of Giddy Motors that's most satisfying.
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