Shapes and Sizes
Shapes and Sizes
Asthmatic Kitty
originally published March 7, 2007
A lazier reviewer of Shapes and Sizes' self-titled album might dig out his old review of Arcade Fire's Funeral and change a few phrases. Not I, boys and girls. I go the extra mile for you.
That said, this members of this West Coast Canadian quartet sound uncannily like their Montreal contemporaries - fragile, effeminate vocals, monumental climaxes, a nod or two to both British Invasion bands and Talking Heads' Fear of Music , and enough stylistic shifts to make Mike Patton jealous. All this genre-smashing and preciousness seems to divide audiences. Indeed, Shapes and Sizes is not for the masses. Co-singers Rory Seydel and Caila Thompson sing beautifully, and sometimes convincingly, though about what I'm not sure. This is kind of cool, however, since it allows for endless rounds of guess-that-lyric, sometimes to comical effect. On "Topsy Turvy," Thompson, in a mid-tempo, Juliana Hatfield stance, sings something like "I'm a hurly, early piece of meat." On the following track, "Oh No, Oh Boy," Seydel goes further, topping Thompson's flair for abstractness with the soon-to-be-classic line, "Would you pull me out on maggot-tires?"
Granted, they may be singing something else entirely. This complements the music handsomely, since both the vocals and instrumentation sound spontaneous.
American Cheeseburger
American Cheeseburger 7"
Tsunami
originally published March 7, 2007
I don’t know what the local guys in American Cheeseburger think they’re doing with this project, but I know what I think they’re doing: everything exactly right. When a band is named “American Cheeseburger,” there’s a cartoon drawing of a lightning bolt zapping the World Trade Center on the back of their record, and the music is as much of an awesome iron fist in the face as this self-titled 7”, you have to remember to forget about “figuring it out.” With American Cheeseburger, there is nothing to figure out; there is only the will and the right to thrash, and by “thrash” I mean spill the blood of a beer-spitting, circle-pitting, greasy-haired beast.
For all their nonsense of presentation, the music of the big Cheese is a refreshingly raucous pipe-bomb blast to the sternum that perfectly typifies the swirling abandon lying at the heart of all true rock and roll. Some might call this punk rock, though there are guitar solos here played by Steve Armstrong, a man who clearly reveres guitar solos without a shred of irony, and it totally makes sense. The guitar solos don’t necessarily make the music not punk rock - they simply make it honest. This recording accurately captures the fast and mean reality of American Cheeseburger, a band that might, literally, kick you while you’re down. Lyrics such as “it always seems like there’s someone who prefers merch sales to mayhem,” spewed from James Greer’s glass-gargling larynx, hint at the general modus operandi of the group: this music is played simply because the members must play it.
Too many “heavy” bands - especially from small towns like Athens - are so self-conscious (almost ashamed, it often seems) about being heavy or fast that they hide behind some ridiculous façade, not actually bothering to create music worth listening to, but being able to pretend that they don’t care because “it’s just a joke, anyway.” This record burns those bands to death and buries them in the ashes of their own charred skulls.
Jesu
Conqueror
Hydra Head
originally published March 7, 2007
I have to go ahead and state for the record that Justin Broadrick could possibly be a genius. That's a title I don't throw around lightly, but after so many projects and consistency over the years, I'm willing to consider it. Broadrick is perhaps best known as the founder of extreme metal act Napalm Death. He also influenced the grind genre as Godflesh, hardcore electronica as Techno Animal and Ice, and has released truly brilliant abstract ambient records under the name Final. With the exception of the latter, his greatest alter ego is likely Jesu.
Metal is exciting again as it has in recent years leaked into so many styles, and Broadrick has dabbled in a great many of these blends. Jesu could be called metal shoegaze, a fitting description, but I'm reminded more strongly (and strangely) of a heavier, drugged-out Jets to Brazil. Broadrick's vocals even sound like a doom-tinged Blake Schwarzenbach. The title track leads off the album Conqueror and is easily the most immediate track. Within the slow explosions is a genuine pop song to rival Ride's gauziest beauty. There's even a sprightly piano to round things out.
Picking up where last year's Silver EP left off, all eight tracks are far less harsh than most Broadrick fare and all the better for it. There's plenty of badass riffage to be had, but it's all hushed and underwater.
Word on the street has it that Broadrick has already begun a couple of new projects, but for now, for a while, I will be slowly raising my lighter to Jesu.
Killick Erik Hinds / Dennis Palmer / Bob Stagner
A.S.A.P. Wings
Solponticello / Shaking Ray
originally published March 7, 2007
Free-improvisational live albums are often willfully impenetrable. The recording quality is usually shoddy, with low-end tones barely discernible. Outside of the studio, many improv artists up their noodling quotients, leaving us with lengthy, often unrewarding digressions to wade through. And a night’s worth of such digressions often sends a concert well beyond the 80-minute mark, meaning that plenty of live improve records span two, even three discs.
In other words, I understand why A.S.A.P. Wings - a document of an evening of unnotated music performed by Chattanooga’s Shaking Ray Levis (Dennis Palmer on synth, Moog, and samples, Bob Stagner on percussion) and Athenian H’arpeggionist Killick Erik Hinds - might, on paper, sound unappetizing. But this May 2006 concert has the arc and even the restraint of a well-conceived album.
The trio begins by pelting the crowd with ostentatiously discordant grooves that recall the 1970s Zappa-Beefheart-Henry Cow avant-rock vanguard. Like those artists, these men prefer aural slapstick to subtlety - just listen to the histrionic vocals, delivered with a dash of primitivism in a thick hillbilly accent. But by the opening of “Dog Descending,” the fourth piece, Hinds is caressing long, dirge-like notes from his modified cello as spectral clatter and tortured moans spirit alongside him; the atmosphere transforms from confrontational to genuinely chilling. A cover of The Residents’ “Red Rider” finds the group yanking the innards out of an already deconstructed pop song, and closer “Fun on a Cloud” is as elegant and subdued as Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way .
For all its clamor, the performance captured on A.S.A.P. Wings is ultimately a tightly controlled one.
True Primes
We Have Won
Locust
originally published March 7, 2007
We Have Won sounds sloppy at first, with its woozy vocals, irregular snare cracks and seeming disregard for rhythm and melody as interdependent elements of a structure. But it only sounds sloppy because, unlike much of what we talk about when we talk about “psychedelic rock,” it doesn’t pile on the noise in an attempt to overwhelm. True Primes have their own thing going, and it’s pretty far out there, but they present it in its naked, minimal essence. Take it or leave it.
In some regards, We Have Won ’s in a similar spirit to that of Mark Robinson’s TeenBeat Records in its innocent heyday. Unrest and company gave this same sort of treatment to a certain kind of “pop” that linked ‘50s doo-wop and ‘60s girl groups with the Ramones. True Primes do it with a certain sort of spaced-out, time-insensitive… uhh… “rock,” of the sort that links Kenneth Anger soundtracks with Gang Wizard and Sun City Girls. They simulate it, distort it, flatten it and, in the process, transform it. We Have Won wouldn’t work without the emotional depth in the vocals, which often conjure a imaginative, homesick child three hours into a family reunion, five minutes after she’s first begun to understand death, three seconds after the camera has shot and the pose has dropped. They confess confusion, they sing of a nameless, endless melancholy… without really saying anything. (Harder than it sounds.) If they seek any sort of reassurance, they don’t seem to hold out much hope for it. They ramble along in loose collaboration with the languid, stumbling rhythms. Sometimes, they’re swallowed by a horde of electronic cicadas. We Have Won is a five-song, 30-some-minute EP. It’s not a comprehensive testament, but it’s a striking introduction.
Valkyrie
Feeding the Lesser Keys
Independent Release
originally published March 7, 2007
As a fan of black metal, I take notice of names such as Valkyrie. In Norse mythology, valkyries were female deities that would sweep from the sky to carry battle-slain heroes to Valhalla to drink mead with Odin. Of course, much of black metal's image and subjects are drawn from the Norse gods. So when the Athens duo bearing this name makes it immediately clear that black metal is not for dinner, I was momentarily disheartened. But expectations are one thing, and the actual music is another; there is a bit of dark ambience lurking in Feeding the Lesser Keys , the second release from a hermetic local band which it seems has never played a live show here in town. When it comes to primarily synth-driven music, a balance of light and dark is very tricky to pull off, and thankfully Valkyrie treads the more angelic waters.
There's the spirit of Robin Guthrie's atmospheric Cocteau Twins here, as much of the album swirls gauzily between that band's early days and the beginnings of shoegaze. Drop this elixir in a beaker along with late-'80s Depeche Mode's goth synth-pop and a pinch of Pixies dust and you've got a potentially tasty cocktail. And Valkyrie is almost tasty, almost there.
Tracks like "Walk Away" and "Dissipate" border on wonderful homages to that hallowed era. Haunting male and female vocals, Cure-ish bass lines, and the ever-present swirl of keyboards and guitars make for a promising effort. It's just that the overall effect is just a bit thin, a little too New Age-flavored. I'll be keeping an eye on Valkyrie, and you'd be hard pressed to find something in this style that's as passionate. There's a real talent for atmosphere as well as songwriting on display on Feeding the Lesser Keys , and Valkyrie's almost there.
Max Richter
Songs From Before
130701 / Fat Cat
originally published March 7, 2007
What is it that makes Max Richter so hip? His primary instrument is the piano, and he never sings = not hip. His music contains gorgeous string section passages and frameworks, but there are no drums = not hip. No guitars = not hip. In short, he composes classical music. Not "HIP." And yet both of his albums have been released on Fat Cat's sub-label 130701. Hip! He describes his own music as "post-classical." There's some hip in there. It seems every genre contains one artist it's okay for indie kids to like, but I'd never have predicted that the world of classical would have such a breakout.
To stop the rambling, let me say I've loved Max Richter ever since I heard the first note of The Blue Notebooks , his sophomore album from 2004. I won't go into his immaculate pedigree, because it's not important; all that matters is he crafts music that is heartbreaking, poignant, majestic and all those other appropriate words.
Just like past recordings, Songs From Before features spoken-word passages, this time poetry recited by none other than Robert Wyatt. But while I felt these passages distracted from The Blue Notebooks ' grandeur, that's not the case on Songs From Before . Richter's sense of dramatics hasn't changed any. He still uses electronic underpinnings (here processed shortwave radio recordings). His music still speaks of the quiet and the grand, the touching and the touched. I could throw around classical terms like rubato and triads and adagio, but this is also unimportant. Just imagine sitting in a theater watching a film, and the score is so beautiful that it ruins the movie, and the images take a back seat to the sounds. That's Max Richter. That's hip.
Ideal Free Distribution
Ideal Free Distribution
Happy Happy Birthday To Me
originally published March 7, 2007
The music of the 1960s youth that sounds the least dated is that which never consigned itself entirely to a genre or movement. Specifically, bands that were experimental but not interested in excoriating the past. For me, this sound peaked circa 1965–1966 and it is a sound that Benton, KY, band Ideal Free Distribution practices nearly without flaw. Thoroughly conversant in both early psychedelic music and pop tunesmithing, Ideal Free Distribution recalls no one so much as The Monkees. Not the Monkees of TV fame (well, yes, that band, but read on…) but the Monkees who were allowed a few self-penned tracks on their largely authored-by-others LPs. This is a band influenced by, and largely in love with, major musical shifts from across the pond but adept at translating them into a distinctly American dialect. The deep cuts to be found on Monkees LPs are as worthy of attention - and in some cases, given their underdog status where credibility is concerned, worth more - as anything The Beatles, Kinks or Stones were doing at the time; likewise, Ideal Free Distribution should properly be seated at the right hand of The Olivia Tremor Control.
Beginning with the slightly baroque “Apples and Oranges,” the band sets the listener up gently before gliding into the upbeat, chills-inducing bliss of “Saturday Drive.” The darkly, slow-paced “Someone’s Gonna Die” is punctuated with piercing single-note blasts of guitar that could only have been more poignant if the album was recorded on mono. Significantly, the band makes much use of clean, almost acoustic-sounding guitar tracks. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was indeed a time when guitars weren’t processed within an inch of their lives or artificially fuzzed into pointless overdrive. The overall musicality of Ideal Free Distribution is both refreshing and comforting without being trite. The band controls its sound without forcing it.
"Son of a Gun" utilizes a Stones (or even Townshend) big guitar riff then feeds the song through a quick mid-point of relative downtime before exploding again. "Nine on a Side" weaves through a slow-paced minute of distorted vocals and looped guitar before the drums lead into a softly bouncing tune detailed with sitar and keyboard.
Unfortunately, much of the lyricism on Ideal Free Distribution is incomprehensible. Even after repeated listens, I couldn’t make out what the supposedly political lyrics were about. For those that can hear them, perhaps you’ll get a different experience with this album that I did. But I'd hope not - mine was absolutely wonderful.
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