King of Prussia
Save the Scene
Independent Release
originally published February 21, 2007
John Collins, producer for the New Pornographers, once said that his trick was to turn the reverb up all the way so it brings out all the sparkles, i.e. those aspects lurking at the top end of guitars and voices and cymbals, the ones you normally wouldn't notice. It's possible someone involved with King of Prussia (there are nine) took notice of this, because the band's debut CD, Save the Scene, is sparkle city.
It's also a remarkable, wonderful album, pleasurable and surprising in equal measure, and the kind of introduction that should, by all rights, lead to bigger and better things. Take that sparkle, for instance: it's there on "Terrarium" when the backing vocals come in halfway through the first verse, filling up the track with an airy beauty, but then you notice that there's a slide guitar there, too, slinking its way through the opposite channel, and by the time you've processed that, they're already two sections ahead, and you're about to have the absurdly catchy chorus stuck in your head for the next few hours. This is the model for almost all the other tracks here (there are only seven, which is appreciated - leave us hungry for more) and it's so effective you're almost not sure if the songs are any good or not.
Almost. There wouldn't be room for all those details without strong melodies, and they're here in abundance, along with quick but supple section shifts and strong instrumental performances, particularly the vocals. The lyrics edge toward twee, but never quite get there, with songs about finding love in the drab hotels of an electoral campaign, unsuccessfully courting religious girls in Spain, and delusions of heroism. This is no Pet Sounds throwback or big-band-making-a-big-sound collectivism. This is carefully considered and joyously executed pop music. There are songs with banjos, songs that sound like the Rentals, and songs that sound like Richard Hawley, and it's a hell of a band that can draw such disparate comparisons.
But there's a reason to start this review with the New Pornographers. King of Prussia is as much a supergroup as its Canadian forebears, a project formed from seasoned scene members and veterans of numerous bands (Beijing, The Envelopes, etc.). And, like the New Pornographers, this originally began as a recording project, and though it would be nice to say that this doesn't show, that any band can make a record as good as this if the members tried hard enough - it shows. The initial goal must necessarily be live performance, and so they tailor their sound to this, making sure everyone has something to play and that the sound as a mass sounds as good as possible. But by focusing on the recorded product instead, King of Prussia has ensured that nothing is there that does not belong, and that it's arranged to sound good in a pair of headphones, not blaring from crappy PA speakers. It does make a difference, at least if this album, one of the nicest surprises and purest pleasures in recent memory, is any indication. Bring on the supergroups and coat them all in sparkle.
Dr. Dog
We All Belong
Park The Van
originally published February 21, 2007
Rock revivalists? It’s time to just admit that classic rock never went anywhere. Let the term describe a genre rather than a period in history, then allow Philly-based Dr. Dog to prescribe it to you in addictive doses.
We All Belong is missing a needle-to-vinyl hiss, and not much else. Even with obvious influences embroidered on their sleeves, the members of Dr. Dog make secondhand-coat rock that is pleasantly fresh and untamed. Picture the mountain backdrop and the wild horses in cigarette ads. Someone brought a keg. Someone brought something else. There’s a bonfire. You’re in the spirit world now, Chavez.
Simultaneously psychedelic (“The Girl”) and soulful (“Worst Trip”), We All Belong is seemingly the result of the Beatles spending spring break with The Allman Brothers Band and getting delirious with sunburn all over their 24-track, two-inch tape machine. The burping bass line, cavernous vocal reverb and fuzzy guitar leads on “The Way The Lazy Do” all encourage escape to the beanbag chair and reduction of illumination so that only the dull red glow of your lava lamp remains.
Jeremiah Cymerman
Big Exploitation
Solponticello
originally published February 21, 2007
That scores of young axe-slingers can be chided/ commended for shamelessly ripping off Derek Bailey, the late British improvising guitarist who made music so fractured and atonal that even the folks who like it can rarely summon enough forbearance to actually listen to it, should remind us that technique and internal logic can suffuse even the most abstract and cacophonous sound art, that the spontaneous can be mapped out as a system and reproduced. Such charting can of course turn improvisation into dry, overburdened regurgitation, but it can also lead more pleasurable bursts of spontaneity.
Former Classic City resident Jeremiah Cymerman has pulled off the latter with his 11-member Big Exploitation ensemble. Since relocating to the Big Apple, Cymerman has performed under the watchful eyes of Butch Morris and Walter Thompson, two eminent figures in New York avant-garde circles who use systems of cues to conduct large group improvisations. Cymerman has adapted these men's conducting techniques to lead his own unit, which features musicians from both Athens and NYC.
As mentioned before in these pages, Big Exploitation is a visceral outfit: amplified and acoustic strings burn at both ear-hemorrhaging and trouser-soiling frequencies, saxes and trumpet testify in perverse registers a la the instruments in Ornette Coleman's orchestral Skies of America, and stank-nasty grooves dropkick out of the ether. This liveliness distinguishes Big Exploitation from the art gallery-minded groups in which Cymerman was introduced to conducting. But Cymerman's intentions aren't as subversive or resistant as they at first appear: one of his goals with this project was to help the players "truly become a band." With this album, he's made good on his aims, piloting his crew through eight combustive jazz-, metal- and New Music-rooted explorations that capture the energy and eschew the throat-clearing and path-of-least-resistance noodling of dynamic early 1970s free-form bands like Henry Cow, Min Bul and Ray Russell's groups.
Travis Williams
Reparations: The Rape Tape Vol. 1; The Official Mix Tape
Independent Release
originally published February 21, 2007
Athens rap leans entirely to the consciousness side, even among its slightly more crunk or gangsta participants, who also feel the need to include a couple of songs about social problems or personal hardships, and Travis Williams is one of the most firmly planted in that camp.
A law student, a sometime WUOG-er and now debuting his first mixtape, Williams might dress more like Kanye (polos, the occasional backpack), but his revolutionary vibe is a lot closer to Dead Prez. There’s a lot of political anger on the album, whether directed at the current administration (as on “Dick, Bush,” set to Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick, Push”) or at BET’s "106th and Park" (“Quality of Music,” for one), but isn’t the latter ironic when rapped over Yung Joc’s “It’s Goin’ Down,” a huge radio hit that's precisely about what Williams’ song rejects? Maybe that’s Williams' point, but he undermines himself a little by how catchy the repetitive little keyboard line remains. Williams is smart to keep his record pretty short, and the last track, an acoustic reprise of “Stand Up” (which appeared earlier on the album), shows something interesting, a fusion of acoustic folk/ rock and rap that’s relatively successful.
Outrage usually comes across better when tempered with humor - the spoonful of sugar you’ve heard of - as in Lil’ Wayne’s “Georgia… Bush,” which is just as angry as anything on Reparations but also morbidly amusing. Williams can no doubt let loose on a personal level; now let’s see if he can chill just a bit on tape.
The 63 Crayons
Spoils For Survivors
Pixel Studios
originally published February 21, 2007
"9/11 changed everything." You can't say it now with a straight face (because people went too far with it, took it to mean "changed everything totally" rather than "changed everything a little bit"), and the administration's constant invocation of that particular timestamp has become a running gag that isn't funny. But just because we've misconstrued the event doesn't make it less meaningful. 9/11 drove the country a little crazy, which you can see both in our politics and our conversations. The lead-up to the midterms felt like emerging from a bad dream for a reason: we were all seeing the same things again, agreeing at least on what was reality and what wasn't. (A judgment call that neither side had a particular monopoly on previously.) This is why there hasn't really been a work of art truly about 9/11 yet. Artists realized, consciously or not, that we were still too close to the event to make sense of it, which is another way of saying that we were still all a little crazy.
But hey, Athens' The 63 Crayons decided to give it a try anyway on Spoils For Survivors, figuring if they actually make an album about what it's like to be crazy in these crazy times it'll work out okay. So they let their fruitcake fly, with songs called "Forget About The War, Let's Go Shopping!" and "Let Fission Ring" (despite the fact that this is neither a Fall Out Boy nor a !!! album), but also "Crisis Nerviosa" and "Save Us." As those titles reflect, the album feels like drifting in and out of moments of clarity.
This haziness comes, in part, from the music, with almost all the vocals hiding behind reverb and delay, and the bass coming from keyboards, thus lacking the attack of a bass guitar. But the production doesn't match the actual songs at times, nor does it mesh with the definitions that comprise the text of the booklet (new wave, progressive rock, psychedelic, punk rock). The reasoning isn't clear until we reach the second half of the album and songs that more fully embody the sound at work here: dub. On steadier songs like "Science," the members of 63 Crayons sound actually unhinged, bass pushing steadily forward, organ pulling back, drums taking their time, vocals twisting. Musically, it's wonderful, patient and interesting, placing its sounds with precise reasoning and fully engaging the listener.
When this sound is applied to speedier songs, though, the haze becomes an undifferentiated blur, and it ends up sounding like nothing, just a band playing on the other side of a wall. These songs may be standard retroisms, or they may be good, but it's almost impossible to tell, and songs of this kind make up the bulk of the Spoils For Survivors. That haze ends up acting like the craziness that's engulfed us, making some things better (after 9/11, for instance, New Yorkers broke out of their isolation and engaged with each other as human beings), but blocking us from fully coming to grips with everything else.
Elekibass
Welcome Wonderful World
Happy Happy Birthday to Me
originally published February 21, 2007
Amusement at the weirdnesses of another country (say, Japan) and its artists can easily slip over into cultural chauvinism, if it isn’t already. That is, calling attention to Engrish, the ubiquity of Hello Kitty and the devotion to cute is not only old news, but also vaguely racist, so what does one do when a band comes along that lives up to the stereotype in so many ways?
Elekibass is undeniably adorable, somewhat incomprehensible and obsessed with fried chicken, but the members are also sonically composed of half early Of Montreal (see: “It’s Springtime”) and Apples in Stereo (“Baby Woo and the Little Ziraf”) and half the bands that influenced those more recent popsters, including, most strongly, the Beatles (“Almanack”). And, after all, the lyrics to “I Am the Walrus” are at least as strange as anything Shonen Knife has offered up. So maybe one should just loosen the hell up and sink into the sea of hilarious Jell-O Elekibass creates.
Welcome Wonderful World is 15 songs long, with three final live tracks that could be considered a bonus, and is full of kazoos, harmonies and a deep love of and respect for music. Some of the tunes made an appearance the last time the band played Athens in 2005, and the record captures the live feel - novelty, hilarity, sing-alongs - pretty well, with crowd noise incorporated into a few songs. So don’t pick up Welcome Wonderful World purely because you’re amused at it. Buy it because you have a weakness for cute (which is, of course, a survival tactic built into babies and animal young) and a jones for tight, pretty melodies. It’s got tons of both.
Deerhunter
Cryptograms
Kranky
originally published February 21, 2007
On its first album, 2005's Turn It Up Faggot!, Atlanta's Deerhunter sounded like a typical early-oughts dance-punk band which, while mixing its record, first discovered the awesomeness of the delay pedal. The effect was slathered inelegantly upon the band's Fall-esque rock songs, in the process turning a good but unextraordinary record into something inspired. With Cryptograms, the band blasts past the endearing and infectious clumsiness of that debut, emerging with one of the finest psychedelic noise-pop records of the last few years.
Cryptograms finds Deerhunter perched perfectly upon the intersection of accessibility and experimentation. The band aims squarely for listeners who like a challenge, but Cryptograms is neither cold nor distant enough to alienate fans of pop music. It's a nice balancing act, and one well illustrated by the title track. At its core, "Cryptograms" is a propulsive post-punk song that's not too unlike early Public Image Limited. As the song approaches the chorus, though, it forgoes a traditional hook in favor of swirling noise and delayed vocals. This pattern is closely repeated on "Lake Somerset," but with a added patina of paranoia that almost raises the song to Birthday Party levels of creepiness. Even on the less linear pieces, like the gorgeous "Octet," there's still a recognizable song plugging away beneath the sonic miscellanea. No matter how nebulous the music gets, there's still a song-shaped center to grab hold of.
Cryptograms certainly isn't perfect - "Strange Lights", for instance, is a little too straightforward - but it is a remarkably accomplished record by a genuinely distinctive band. Yeah, there is much Deerhunter could be compared to, from the impressionistic drones of Animal Collective to the skeletal anti-music of Excepter, but in the end, the band's particular strain of catchy psych jams is unmistakable. It's only February, true, but 2007 could have a hard time bringing forth a record better than Cryptograms.
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