Glös

Harmonium

Lovitt

originally published March 28, 2007

If you goes to the record store and picks up Harmoniumby Glös, you will read this quote on a sticker on the cover: "…riveting layered soundscapes of lush melody and sultry beats…"

Whenever I see quotes bookended by ellipses, I imagine a reviewer bashing the band, writing something like, "The only thing rescuing this band from utter wretchedness is this one track that features one minute of riveting layered soundscapes of lush melody and sultry beats, but overall this sucks," from which a victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat. But I digress already. I mention this because the above description could be attributed to an enormous range of music. What I think of when I read that is trip-hop, something Glös is certainly not.

The trio hails from three spots on the American map, working on its debut via file transferring. That's quite the trend in music today, enabling bands that would never exist to piece together an album in a more individual fashion. Glös features the former Denali vocalist Maura Davis, brother Keeley Davis (also a Denali member as well as frontman of post-hardcore Engine Down) and Cornbread Compton, who manned drums with Keeley in the latter. Simply combine those two bands with beats, synthesizers and a hint of canned orchestra, and you've got the recipe for Harmonium. The problem is the beats are too sultry, the soundscapes not really very riveting or layered at all, and the melodies a little on the arid side of lush.

Many who came of age during the regrettable emo boom a few years ago are following the trajectory of music that Glös traverses. This is still emo but too "sophisticated" to label as such. A track like "Employee" has all the right elements in place - soaring boy/ girl vocals, a sweeping flow overlaid with string flourishes, etc. - but a spade is a spade, and I for one am unmoved by merely competent post-emotional hardcore posing as refined rock. Pass.

Michael Wehunt

!!!

Myth Takes

Warp

originally published March 28, 2007

Hipster 1:

"Dude, have you heard Bong Bong Bong?"

Hipster 2:

"Who?"

Hipster 1:

"Clunk Clunk Clunk. Chick Chick Chick."

Hipster 2:

"Uh…"

Hipster 1:

"Their name's three exclamation points, which means you can call them any sound three times, like Bling Bling Bl…"

Hipster 2:

"Oh yeah, I know them. That 'shake your butt' song, the one about being at the schoolyard with Giuliani. They're pretty cool. Isn't dance-punk dead, though?"

Hipster 1:

"Yeah, but they've always been as much Talking Heads as dance-punk. But this new album Myth Takes? It's on Warp, which rules, and it's probably their most put-together release, and, I mean, it's awesome, but… I don't know. It's not grabbing me at all. The title track is everything that makes the band good, with snaky guitar, funky liquid bass lines, and propulsive beats, polyrhythmic everything, but I just want to skip it. But then this one, 'All My Heroes Are Weirdoes,' brings the disco full-on, and I'm seriously digging it."

Hipster 2:

"Sounds like more of the same to me."

Hipster 1:

"'Must Be the Moon' is goofy bordering on stupid, like a lot of their songs. See how I'm just going through track by track giving a short description? That's how unexciting this record is. And, c'mon, this sound should be getting me pumped up. Duh."

Hipster 2:

"Anything experimental? That would make up for its blahness."

Hipster 1:

"Actually, I was getting to that. The last three tracks made me glad I bought this. They sound more like Out Hud, singer Nic Offer's other band."

Hipster 2:

"Didn't they just break up?"

Hipster 1:

"Yeah, damn it. But 'Bend Over Beethoven' is brainlessly simple - thus good - but there's something a little different, which segues into 'Break in Case of Anything,' which is horn-driven DFA-style awesomeness. But 'Infinifold' closes out the record on a un-exclamatory note. God, it rules so hard. It's quiet and beautiful and epic somehow in only five minutes. And beatless! The band made a good move putting all the dancier stuff in the first half. In the past, its records have kind of struggled to find momentum. But still, I don't know. I want to love this album, but I just don't."

Hipster 2:

"Bro, I think, you just did a record review!"

Hipster 1:

"Yeah… that was easy!"

Michael Wehunt

Figaro

Picture This: The Mixtape, Vol. 1

Black Mane Entertainment

originally published March 28, 2007

Practically brothers with Elite tha Showstoppa (who guests on one song on this mixtape) and newly signed to Black Mane, Figaro's got, at the very least, a pretty good ear for picking backing tracks. It's not that he's vocally indistinct - it's perfectly clear what he's saying on each song - but there's also not a very strong sense of a voice yet on these 22 cuts. A lot of the local rapper's subject matter is fairly standard stuff, too: one love song, one self-blazon to sexual prowess, loads of posturing. Some of it works (“Boss” is great chest-thumping), and some of it doesn't, but mostly Picture This: The Mixtape, Vol. 1, an almost 90-minute record, needs more variety.

The songs that do have it stand out. “Ride,” for example, covers familiar ground in its tale of cruising, purple drank and ogling ladies, but its summer thunderstorm of voices on the chorus mixes well with the largeness of the sound as a whole. “In GA,” an ode to the state we call home, complete with a roll call that ranges from Martin Luther King Jr. to Young Jeezy, evokes something like statetriotism; maybe the Georgia tourist bureau should be trying to reach new markets with it. Even the intro, “Do Something,” which talks about the desire to, well, you know, has some charm in its praise of the hustle.

But, there are too many songs and too many songs that don't quite have it. You can rap about shooting people and dealing drugs as much as you want if you make it creative, come at it obliquely, stretch your powers of metaphor, but you need that unexpectedness to be present throughout. All we've got on this mixtape is potential.

Hillary Brown

Sister Vanilla

Little Pop Rock

Chemikal Underground

originally published March 28, 2007

The horrible band name is only one of the many obstacles that Sister Vanilla throws at listeners with Little Pop Rock. The project was conceived by Jesus and Mary Chain siblings William, Jim and Linda Reid, and long-time cohort Ben Lurie. Though the album is not an entire failure, it is the weakest entry in the Reid family catalogue… Yes, it’s even worse than Munki, if that’s possible.

Opening number “Pastel Blue” is a sweet and day-dreamy number that would work well in a Sesame Streetmontage, and “Jamcolas” could have easily been culled from some long-forgotten cache of Psychocandyouttakes. But as soon as little sister Linda’s airy croon takes shape, the album’s finer qualities are stripped away.

“Can’t Stop the Rock” is the discernible breaking point. Linda’s voice bares an unmistakable family resemblance, evoking the most brilliant moments of her brothers’careers. But amidst the inane lyrical chatter and the circa 1997 alternative rock radio melodies, her singing is quite tormenting. The slinky, sultry grooves and druggy sneer in “Totp” and “The Two of Us” reeks of the studio pop song-craft once taken to the airwaves by the likes of Garbage and the Cardigans. This aesthetic carries over from the songs to the pseudo slick Photoshop cover art. Everything about Little Pop Rockscreams ‘90s alternative chic, when a dose of ‘90s noise would do this brand of pop a lot of justice. These guys should know; they pioneered the sound.

Chad Radford

Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid

Tongues

Domino

originally published March 28, 2007

After a fairly fried viewing of the Flaming Lips' emotionally intense documentary The Fearless Freaks, it dawned on me that the formula for an artistically successful band is simply the two-pronged combination of a) good ideas and b) a good drummer. Everything else is, as they say, gravy. Tonguesdistills this theory to such a great extent that I would assume that Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid are, much like our U.S. government, monitoring my every move and thought. The former is more commonly known for his work as Four Tet, wherein the Brit solo artist Hebden produces buzzing, humming layers of soft sonics coupled with warmly benevolent hip-hop beats that seem antonymous to their origins: a cold, dead laptop computer. The latter's resume is all the percussive snap and swing behind Miles Davis, James Brown, Fela Kuti and others. The union of jazz and electronic music conjures nothing so much as the mental image of blonde dreadlocks and some dude trying to sell me crystals for holistic purposes, but given Hebden and Reid's pedigree, there isn't much surprise that this collection of jams is mostly right on.

And I do mean jams: all 10 dialogues on Tongues are improvised in full. Even though Hebden's squelching beeps and pop-up-book samples sound scattered and occasionally disassociated with one another, this is undoubtedly the sound of two people in a room playing together. Reid's drums in particular own that room-mic'd quality that are as much a part of the larger history of jazz as the man himself. If I had to say there was any sort of follow-the-leader involved, I would probably surmise that Hebden's dots and loops were the crux of the sessions. The organics spilling from the speakers are dynamic and playful, with Reid often given the challenge of playing along with the repetitive synth pads that Hebden sets in motion. Reid's contributions are the most unexpected of the two - his beats don't recall so much jazz as they do Krautrock; these songs don't swing, they percolate. Old dog, new tricks, etc.

It's the meandering qualities at play here that sometimes yield less-than-rewarding results, with most of the songs ending abruptly, accompanied by the mental image of the two guys looking at the engineer and shrugging. And by virtue of the off-the-cuff techniques at play, hooks aren't as plentiful as grooves, collisions, and rhythmic whirligigs. But the peaks and valleys are traversed with ease, and the finished result is far more engaging than one might guess. Hebden's world of new-school rabbits exploding from various hats is a pretty charming match to Reid's reserved but psychically engaging drumwork, and the pair exceed the world of jazz-electronic collaborations by a few heads. Wallpaper it's not, and that in itself is an accomplishment.

Jeff Tobias