Outformation
Traveler's Rest
Red Eye
originally published October 17, 2007
Since forming in 2002, Sam Holt's Outformation has sold out countless venues and converted legions at festivals like Bonnaroo. Unsurprisingly, the group aims with its second album to capture the spontaneity and loose-limbed energy of its concerts. Neither the liner notes nor press info for Traveler's Rest mentions whether any of these tracks were recorded at Outformation shows, but the "wide open" sound, too-loud vocals and tinny drums suggest that each cut is a live performance.
Wherever this music was committed to tape, it's full of curveballs, zany songwriting decisions that you wouldn't expect even from Frank Zappa or Bob Weir. Screwy stuff like "Winds," which kicks off with horrid new-age windchimes before coasting into heartfelt tear-in-my-Terrapin country-folk. Those chimes play a more prominent role in "Edgewater," in which their gusty ambience, a cornball keyboard line, and yacht-rock bass are tempered by Holt's singeing, singing, Allmans-esque guitar. And then there's "Anymore," with its fuzzed-out riffage and soft-rock keyboards, it's four-fifths a countrified version of Pavement's "Here," one-fifth a dudely take on Cindy Lauper's "Time After Time."
More sensible heads prevail during "Carnac," a riff-driven country-rock downer replete with a Michael Stipe-ish vocal melody. The tune's catchy and sincere, and everyone gets a solo - half the artists in this month's issue of Paste wish they could sound this engaging. And the title track, a seminar in slow-burning bummer rock that features Widespread Panic's Jojo Hermann, atones for most (but not all) of the off-balance songs that surround it.
Outformation is playing at the Georgia Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 17.
Aesop Rock
None Shall Pass
Def Jux
originally published October 17, 2007
None shall pass this jarring set of exercises in vocabulary gymnastics! Though words run smoothly as ever over each beat, rapper Aesop Rock's delivery attempts to spill the beans on an untold story or two, yet unfortunately, comes out as boot-heel thick in his vivid ramblings. "Ramblings" might be too harsh a word for an emcee with such a sharp focus and confidence, but it more or less straddles the line between babble and brilliance, ramble and free-associative obscurity. A simple word to describe what was just heard would be nothing less than "impenetrable."
Aesop Rock is that graffiti tag on the wall that even the most astute bombers can't decipher, yet has all the detailing of one, down-to-its-very-centered hip-hop heart. An oddball such as Aesop Rock enters the arena and his effect as an emcee can be neither connective nor competitive - it's alienating and mystifying. By now, he has developed his own brand of slang, where he frolics freely in Clockwork Orange-like vocabulary with loaded descriptors and a surrealistic passion.
None Shall Pass is a mixed bag with beat upon beat of murky production handled for the most part by Aesop himself and partner-in-crime Blockhead. The only grasp for solid imagery and a bit of coherence can be found on the claptrap snare'n'bruised-teenage-reflections of "Catacomb Kids" or the cryptic tales of drug overdose on "Fumes." Other jewels exist in the rubble of "Getaway Car," which is an enthralling ride equipped with a funky up-tempo drum break where Aesop deals out familiar subject matter about the successful escape from the dreaded 9-to-5.
Firm on his feet, he ends his verse with the line "How you gonna pay the rent day-job free? / Make rap records matter of fact, thanks, peace!" And as Aesop continues to live the dream through spitting knotted verbiage, any listener is left slightly intrigued, but still mostly with a question mark hovering above, waiting for a straightforward answer.
Georgie James
Places
Saddle Creek
originally published October 17, 2007
Writing a solid, catchy album is hard; doing so without giving up on originality is harder. Georgie James is a duo performing a balancing act. Linda Burhenn played fragile ballads on her own for years, and John Davis was the drummer for Dischord darlings Q and Not U. On Places, their first full-length, they teeter on the edge of indie-rock derivation, but pull each other back before they can fall in.
Georgie James draws its sound from many sources throughout the past 50 years of pop music, from New Wave to British folk, power pop and - of course - The Beatles. And that's just the first four tracks. Still, the two are able to sound consistent throughout, adding enough of themselves to keep the songs from coming across as genre pieces.
Some fans of Q and Not U will be disappointed, and most will be surprised; Davis' guitar shimmers where his old bandmate's skronked, and the duo's infectious harmonies sever Georgie James from hardcore roots completely. Still, Davis retains the force he contributed to his former band. "Need Your Needs" showcases a drumbeat with a disco-tinged shuffle. It's this energetic and propulsive drumming, in part, that holds the songs together and distinguishes Georgie James from similarly influenced contemporaries. Likewise, Burhenn's soulful singing helps to counter Davis' strong yet relatively indistinct vocals, playing Linda to Davis' Richard Thompson on songs like "Henry and Hanzy." On Places, Georgie James' greatest achievement is how the two temper and improve on each other. They might not explore much that's been untried, but they rearrange the familiar into something new.
Georgie James is playing at the Drunken Unicorn in Atlanta on Tuesday, Oct. 23.
Mama's Love
Willow Street Sessions
Independent Release
originally published October 17, 2007
First off, I'm always happy when folks making music in this town actually give props to Athens for being inextricably linked to their creations. So local band Mama's Love certainly get the thumbs up for naming this record after the street where the songs on this album were born. The 12 songs here were all written within the first six months of the band's existence and recorded this past summer.
Starting off in a distinctly Southern Rock vein with "Catch a Feelin'," the band lets the song go on a little too long and degenerate into too much jammy territory. But the core is solid. And that's pretty much the story with all the tunes on Willow Street Sessions. Songs that could have been much more concise and meaningful are loaded up with embellishments that, while not completely incongruous, tend to muddle things up.
For example, the pop vocal styling on "Be Major" is loaded with needless background vocals, choppy rhythms and a noodly guitar line. It would have worked much better as a simple acoustic number. Willow Street Sessions also suffers from being basically a menu of jam-band/ college-hippie musical clichés. There's the obligatory nod to jazz in "Ragtime Rug," the spacy reggae of "Fight To Survive" and a party-styled ode to a riverboat ("Mississippi Queen"). Then we have a typical, slow sing-a-long about loss ("Lost For The Weekend"), a brooding synthesizer-laden mid-set number ("Bloodshed And Bullets") and then a heavy white reggae number called "Tinted Blue," which is further frustrated by an inexplicable horn solo.
The positive things about Willow Street Sessions are that the songs, for all their clutter, remain somewhat focused; though they're busy and overloaded, they're arranged logically. Also, the recording quality shines through. It's cool that Mama's Love gives Athens its due, but part of what makes the Athens music scene so great is individuality and personality. Mama's Love needs more of both.
Dirty Projectors
Rise Above
Dead Oceans
originally published October 17, 2007
Ostensibly a reworking of Black Flag's 1981 album Damaged as "re-imagined from memory," Dirty Projectors' new album Rise Above is a frustrating mess of a thing. Utilizing multi-harmonic vocals, redoubled guitar lines and an ethno-rhythmic sensibility that reveals a familiarity with the form no deeper than Paul Simon's Graceland, Dirty Projectors main man Dave Longstreth has delivered this year's most solid kick in the balls - a musical "fuck you, you love me!"
Lyrically, the album only features Longstreth's half-remembered Black Flag lyrics and, for the most part, they're unintelligible. The only real reason this is a concern is because without the distinctive lyricism of Black Flag, there's nothing to nail this release to any coherent memory of that band (other than Longstreth's insistence that he has utilized Damaged as a jumping off point). Thing is, though, as a cover album, Rise Above might've worked; as an album that seeks to be an original work based on something else, however, it fails miserably simply because there's nothing really original about it. It's the musical equivalent of a college freshman poetry seminar at which eager students mistake bratty absurdity for an authentic challenge to a form. It's this year's tampon in a tea cup.
Although there are several moments on Rise Above that are genuinely creative, they only last for a few seconds before being subsumed to the artistic hamfistedness of the overall project. Still, the guitar blasts in the middle of "What I See," the string intro to "No More," the stomp-box drums on "Six Pack" and the opening guitar lines of "Thirsty And Miserable" are all great moments and, as such, evidence what could've been.
Longstreth's insistence that this album is not to be taken in comparison to Damaged rings false, as he has obviously attempted to use Damaged as the central conceit of Rise Above. The 1990s had to deal with Liz Phair doing the same thing via the super-hyped yet completely bland Exile In Guyville, but at least she was honest about it. Unlike Phair, Longstreth doesn't want to be your blow-job queen. Rather, Rise Above tells the audience to suck it.
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