Jeremy Messersmith
The Alcatraz Kid
Princess
originally published July 25, 2007
Minnesota's Jeremy Messersmith has recently finished his first full-length album full of melodic, heartfelt odes and catchy simplistic ditties about life, love, work and self-medicating. Airy vocals and acoustic instrumentation mixed with melodramatic orchestral arrangements automatically make this a necessary indie/ baroque pop album to own. The best thing about The Alcatraz Kid is the balance it's able to strike between the hauntingly morose and somewhat dark lyrics and the beautiful sanguineness of the music, a rather perfect melding of melancholy and mirth to take its place alongside The Decemberists and Badly Drawn Boy. Messersmith also draws comparisons to bands like The Doves, Sufjan Stevens and The Shins. But more than anything else, from the very first riff of Messersmith's well-crafted and thoroughly intelligent songs to their absolute last chords, the presence of Elliott Smith pervades The Alcatraz Kid.
The song, "Easy Lovers, Hardly Friends," describes how physical desires sometimes/ somehow outweigh emotional needs despite our best efforts. "Scientists" is probably not the best song on the album, depending on what your mood is, but it is the best written song, with its sturdy melody and enchanting choral harmonies; even the lyrics are above par. However, the piece that takes the cake would be "Old Skin," a proclamation of love enduring till death, and a perfect ending to an already charming album.
Jeremy Messersmith is playing at Farm 255 on Saturday, July 28.
Bobby Conn
King for a Day
Thrill Jockey
originally published July 25, 2007
Bobby Conn, sometime preacher in the style of Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping - though not nearly as obviously tongue-in-cheek - has said that this, his most recent album, is a) the ultimate Bobby Conn album and b) inspired by the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky. It's a little sad that the former might be true, but if the latter is your goal, you're definitely going to mix aggravation heftily with your enjoyment. Having recently sat through El Topo, I can see the connection. There seems to be a plot - or at least a point - but actively searching for it bears no fruit. What you must instead resign yourself to is long passages of plotlessness or pointlessness connected by a thin thread of daydreams and with the occasional glimmer of delight.
Conn has always had a great voice, which he's used to drive glam-rock/ disco numbers, and here it's put to great effect on the title track, a floaty, sweet song with a lovely melody and some discordant instrumentation that builds to a screamy climax. The problem is that there are a lot of songs on which you don't get to hear that voice at all. Those are the equivalents of the parts in Jodorowsky's films when you tune out, and the catchier tunes, like "Love Let Me Down" (a Zombies-esque track with beautiful chimes) correspond to the bits when you tune back in and aren't sure if you actually stopped paying attention.
Oh, yes, there are also semi-religious rants that may remind you of your late-night college radio youth. Still, Conn's ambition is something to praise and glimmers are better than nothing.
Bobby Conn is playing at the Team Clermont Blue Ribbon Ball at the 40 Watt Club on Saturday, July 28.
Arizona
Fameseeker and the Mono
Independent Release
originally published July 25, 2007
Kudos to Arizona for piquing my interest with Dark Tower references. They refer to themselves as a ka-tet (group of people bound together by fate) and nod to Blaine the Mono train in this EP's title. So being a fan of Stephen King's seven-volume opus, I'm listening to the seven tracks here, straining to hear further lyrical shout-outs to Roland the Last Gunslinger and his own ka-tet. Alas, it is not to be, unless I read deeply between the lines.
But all is not lost, for the EP (the NC-by-way-of-NY band's third release) is a somewhat sparkling affair. It's a fluffy sort of low-fat psych-pop/ folk hybrid, along the lines of a more naïve Grizzly Bear without a laptop. "Midday Midnight" strums and picks through a simple enough melody that's a backdrop for some nice boy/ girl vocal harmony and humming. "Life is Great," however, is largely too weak and thin for the electric guitar to carry, but the choruses fill up quick, and when the horns slide in, the track soars. Not as marshmallowy as Belle & Sebastian, and lacking the unpredictability of the bulk of new folk-pop, it's hard to say how the 26 minutes here work - other than the obvious, which is that Arizona's a nice little quintet playing no-frills pop.
I'd liken the record to later Badly Drawn Boy more than anything else: hints of greatness, but damn it, c'mon, what are you doing? At least in this case, Arizona has a better chance of an upward trajectory than Damon Gough does now. Hile, gunslingers.
Arizona is playing at the Team Clermont Summer Festival at the 40 Watt Club on Friday, July 27.
The Foundry Field Recordings
Fallout Station EP
Emergency Umbrella
originally published July 25, 2007
There is nothing heavy about this stuff, despite evocations of iron smelting and molding in the name of the band, by which I don't mean that these folks don't have loud guitars (they have plenty of them, fuzzed out and doing lots of things) or what seem to be important lyrics. They're not heavy because they're not grounded. This impatience may be a personal flaw rather than the band's problem, but I shouldn't have difficulty paying attention while listening to a five-song EP.
These are the sorts of songs that people call lyrical and complex, songs that both drift into each other and break apart into their elements mid-tune, but one could also call them not focused enough. There are pretty moments here that suggest the Flaming Lips, especially that band's song "Do You Realize??," but they are also separated by too much noodling around and don't contain enough strong singing. Say what you will about the Lips' move into hippie sunshine, enforced fun and a bit of jam: at least Wayne Coyne sings the heck out of some songs, while the Foundry Field Recordings don't seem to have the energy to do that (too busy looking at their shoes). Dude. Have a Coke and a smile.
The Foundry Field Recordings are playing a happy hour show at the Caledonia Lounge on Wednesday, July 25.
Pelican
City of Echoes
Hydrahead
originally published July 25, 2007
Pelican's debut full-length Australasia didn't offer much that seemed to warrant the attention the group had garnered from the metal semi-underground. At the time, the bandmembers seemed to basically be comfortably fanning themselves in the shade of Isis, which had just recently made significant strides to escape the long and jagged shadow of Neurosis (largely by simply conjuring the dynamic sensibilities of Mogwai). If anything separated Pelican from its lumbering contemporaries, it was a greater willingness to employ major-key passages, at times evoking a sort of confounding, but not unpleasant, happy-doom sensibility. Pelican sounded like a dirge-doom band whose anti-depressants were beginning to really work.
On City of Echoes, the band's third instrumental full-length, the excessive quiet/ loud/ always slow Mogwaisms that have surprisingly come to define a flimsily-coined "post-metal" sub-genre (see also: Tides, Conifer, Mouth of the Architect, Minsk, etc.) are refreshingly tempered by an apparent reverence for mid-'90s rock like that of Hum, or even the shimmery side of early Smashing Pumpkins on songs like "Spaceship Broken - Parts Needed," "Lost in the Headlights" and the title track. Metallic qualities remain emblazoned via some breakdowns in "Bliss in Concrete" and "Dead Between Walls" that sound more like Pantera than Isis or Neurosis - on "Bliss in Concrete" in particular, you can appropriately imagine a drunken, gravel-throated frontman suggesting that the listener "fuck shit up." Such headbangable moments, though, are fleeting amongst the contemplative jangle.
It is not surprising that this disparity of influences never really coalesces into something that is definably "Pelican." However, City of Echoes is a commendably ambitious work. At its best, this album is a strike against the boring nappy-time/ wake-up dynamics that have made many of Pelican's contemporaries sound creatively lazy. The band hasn't worked out all of the kinks necessary to unify its various and far-reaching ideas into a potent potential elixir, but Pelican has made considerable progress.
Pelican is playing at the 40 Watt Club on Wednesday, Aug. 1.
A.R.S.
Welcome 2 Clarke County
G-Boy / GA
originally published July 25, 2007
A little research has turned up nothing on what the A.R.S. might stand for other than Agricultural Research Service (given the title Welcome 2 Clarke County, the A could reasonably be expected to signify Athens, but my imagination fails me thereafter), but this local rapper's taste for brevity as exemplified in his moniker carries through to his mixtape, a mere 12 songs and 51 minutes long. This still may not be short enough, however; keep in mind that the first Ramones record is less than 30 minutes and forever burns itself into one’s brain in that brief time.
A.R.S. does nothing particular to offend anywhere, but the CD also doesn’t seem to convey a strong personality. A.R.S. likes Athens. Also: cars, rims, asses, strippers, drinking. You know, the usual. There have been plenty of great songs written about these topics - even T. Pain’s “Buy You a Drank,” which is about several of the above, had the appeal to last a whole summer - but “Shake,” “24s” and so on aren’t great songs, they're just okay ones.
Where A.R.S. shows most promise is in his ability and willingness to collaborate with underutilized local female singers and rappers, like Candace and Lil’ C, the latter of whom brings some strong energy to “What’s 2 Kno;" on these songs, he seems more driven and perhaps better balanced all-around. Maybe it stands for All Right with Sisters?
Welcome 2 Clarke County is available directly from A.R.S. via www.myspace.com/arsondatone.
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