Ladyhawk
Shots
Jagjaguwar
originally published March 5, 2008
Ladyhawk recorded Shots in Canada in a turn-of-the-(previous)-century farmhouse under siege by encroaching suburbia. Essentially, the themes visited in the British Columbia-based band's 2006 self-titled debut - mall culture angst and the footloose follies of youth - are still present, but Shots represents a wiser, undoubtedly weathered, yet equally rambunctious band.
Gone are the odes to jackknives and skating rink-family van backdrops, but even the touch of cynicism that comes with being a couple of years older doesn’t dissuade this four-piece from dealing with life’s increasingly heavy shit loudly and lightheartedly. Album opener “I Don’t Always Know What You’re Saying,” with its chugging bass line, splashing cymbals and indecisive guitar interplay, offers immediate evidence. Thankfully, the band doesn’t let polish or technical proficiency interfere with Labatt-enhanced emotional delivery. Concerns for the future of rock and roll are laid to rest when the group borrows Lou Reed’s "do-do-do" colored girls, and Duffy Driediger howls, “And I shed my clothes / And I shed the day / And I thrust myself, huh, into you night,” before a thunderous outro threatens to incite a Marshall stack avalanche on “Night You’re Beautiful.” It is three minutes of bliss.
More inebriated and less bookish than Stateside contemporary The Hold Steady, these bonus room rockers are neck and neck with cheaper prescription(less) pharmaceuticals in the derby to determine the finest Canadian export to hit U.S. soil, ever.
Please Quiet Ourselves
Please Quiet Ourselves
Mushpot
originally published March 5, 2008
Listening to this debut record by seven adolescents from Berkeley reminded me of the central metaphor in author Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, the first film adaptation of which hit theaters in December (The Golden Compass). All the characters in a particular universe have daemons, i.e., little critters that embody each person’s soul. When you’re an adult, your daemon is one particular thing - a snow leopard, a monkey, etc. - but before you reach that point, while you’re still in the throes of adolescence, it’s always changing, shifting shape depending on your mood. It’s important that Please Quiet Ourselves is a very young band for this reason, and its self-titled album encapsulates the benefits and drawbacks of mutability. It’s a difficult collection of songs to box up or nail down, ranging in length from a minute and a half to nearly six. Some tracks are peppy, some quiet, some full of amiable yelling, some tightly constructed and others seemingly thrown together in the seconds prior to recording. But this ability to try on different identities and fearlessness about doing so are a real upside of still being young. It means you can toss glockenspiel into a song without a second thought (e.g., “Sunburn”) or build a lead single around a list of colors and a lightly arpeggioed tune that becomes steadily more punk rock while never abandoning prettiness (“Color Chart”). You can stop dead 30 seconds into a track, then whisper “one-two-three-four” before diving back in with no less energy (“You’re Still in My Heart”). You can jam and jam on a melody driven by what sounds like a mouth-powered keyboard (“The Light”). Sometimes the results are a mess that works, and sometimes they’re a mess that doesn't, but they’re rarely less than charmingly conceived, and, with this many contributors, chances are at least some of them will mature into even better things.
Bipolar Bear
Mountain Dewd
Yosada
originally published March 5, 2008
Bipolar Bear is not likely a commentary on the burgeoning power of the pharmaceutical industry, nor is it a cry out against the scarcity of an endangered species. This becomes evident when the band describes itself as sounding “like old people sex.” With politically lewd song titles such as “Gaza Strip Club,” you have to wonder what you’re getting yourself into. The truth is - it’s difficult to see anything overtly subversive through all the kitsch, especially when already distorted vocals are overpowered by unrelenting funk metal. Maybe that’s the point. By directing the listener towards the ludicrous, the band is telling us to stop trying so hard to make sense.
If initial tracks such as “The Entertainer” cue you towards Rage Against the Machine, keep listening and check your pulse. Bipolar Bear’s sound is oftentimes even more jarring and dissonant; yet, the album gets surprisingly more melodic and anthemic as it crashes towards its final moments. Mountain Dewd’s math-rock inspired guitar work shares more in common with Steve Albini gems like Slint’s post-rock masterpiece, Spiderland. With interlocking guitar parts and compound rhythmic subdivisions (“Bah Nah Nah”), each track conceals an underlying complexity that the impatient listener might quickly write off as meaningless noise.
Clocking in at a mere 23 minutes, Mountain Dewd is one burst of explosive maniacal surrealism, and like any good punk rock album, it's a physical experience more than anything else. So why stop there? Check out hidden tracks: “Tastes like Shiite,” “Pander Bear” and “Iran Into Your Arms Race.”
Magic Apron
Orphan Harmony
New Street
originally published March 5, 2008
For the last half-decade, Atlanta-based songwriter David McClung has released music under the name Thesoulraydio. For this album, he joined forces with singer Joanna Bajandas and adopted a new moniker. It's a lovely pairing, as both voices melt together, Low-style, into lulling melodies. Instrumentation, too, is warm, natural, well-proportioned; it's a blend of acoustic and electric guitar, Rhodes piano, E-bow, keys and light percussion. Sometimes the results are folksy ("Bells in Our Fingernails"); sometimes they're reverb-y and dreamy ("Jackknife Swan"); and sometimes they're a little distorted and fuzzy ("Eleanor"). At all times, the songs are organic and coherent.
Plenty of nonsexual bedroom intimacy runs throughout the album. You can feel it in the candlelit shrine on the cover and the hushed, calming tones of the music. But lyrically, Bajandas and McClung keep us at arm's length. They keep their sentiments vague and overly abstract: "One rhyme to chase a line / Facing time we're tracing after all." And the images aren't imaginative enough to justify such obfuscation. The cold ambiguities in Magic Apron's lyrics are no match for the skillfully blurred boundaries of the music.
The Terrordactyls
The Terrordactyls
Pankof
originally published March 5, 2008
It’s not a surprise when the familiar voice of the Moldy Peaches’ Kimya Dawson enters on the love song “Devices,” halfway through the first record of this Olympia, WA, college-age duo. Kazoos, off-key chanting, unexpectedly sweet harmonies, goofball lyrics that turn serious at times, and a generally strummy anti-folk sound all call to mind her sometime band. Michael Cadiz and Tyrel Stendhal, despite both being dudes, even have voices that mingle in a similar way to those of Dawson and Adam Green: one deeper, one higher and more delicate.
The Terrordactyls do a particularly nice job rushing through songs. Only two break the four-minute mark, and most are far shorter. This is a fine ethos when the song is annoying (some of them are) and equally so when it is not (leave ‘em wanting more). If it weren’t for the occasionally dark lyrical content, some of the songs, such as “Zombie Girl,” a tale of adoration and brain-eating, would be a perfect sing-along for the preschool set, with its simple, cute melody. The song itself reflects this impression, with a chorus of children singing "yay" at the beginning. If you’re too mature for this sort of thing, with its dips into childishness and sophomoric humor, then you may want to stick with your Jandek. But if you like tiny, chiming instruments and tart weirdness, you might at least want to google these guys.
Holy Fuck
LP
Young Turks
originally published March 5, 2008
This Toronto group's second album is the fruit of months of chaotic improvisation, a constantly changing lineup, and a sporadic recording schedule. None of these songs were fully written before they were laid to tape. Most of the instruments used were obsolete analog devices salvaged from junk heaps.
But you wouldn't guess any of this upon first hearing LP. In the studio, Holy Fuck developed loose improvisations into hypnotic, catchy rock jams and coaxed thick, engrossing tones from the members' cast-off instruments. These mostly instrumental tunes are, for the most part, as accessible as ballsy, electronica-infused indie-rock gets. They'll probably remind you of Battles' most cogent songs and Trans Am's most earnest material.
If Holy Fuck's experimental approach to album-making is at all apparent here, it's in the fact that no track sounds like the one before it. A whirlwind of psychedelic delay effects and barely audible yelps is followed by a disconcerting combo of mile-high drum tracks and serene keyboard melodies; all of which leads into a meandering slice of 8-bit video game rock. And those are just the first three songs.
As manic and visceral as LP is, buried within it are a couple of fantastic songs in which the band displays commendable patience. In "Lovely Allen," the musicians thread a saccharine hook through an array of stirring tempo shifts and spaced-out effects. "The Pulse" is even better: it opens with a jittery keyboard vamp and builds to a krautrock throb, with adept drum fills punctuating each measure. In these songs, Holy Fuck is as skillful and vibrant as it is conceptually innovative.
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