The Lodger
Life Is Sweet
Slumberland
originally published May 28, 2008
The best pop records are always timeless gems. Even those inextricably linked to their era in superficial respects manage to supersede their peers by possessing a divining charm. Rather than connecting us to the period of their creation, they create a musical framework for us to experience life through. The sophomore, Life Is Sweet, album by Leeds, U.K. band, The Lodger, succeeds mostly by wrestling its 21st-century birthdate into the language of classic British indie rock. Both its musical economy and lyrical dexterity allow it to be placed alongside classics by The Housemartins, certain singles by The Jam and the absolute best of the Sarah Records catalog.
Highlight tracks are the Orange Juice-styled “The Good Old Days,” the furious “The Conversation” and the despair-via-frustration ode “A Hero’s Welcome.” Indeed, the album weaves logically and thematically through broken relationships. Also, the uniquely English sense of soft-loathing mixed with yearning romanticism is ever present. The phenomenon of alternately buoyant guitar pop and gently sung musical love letters is not, obviously, particular to the English, but there’s a particular way the best English artists manage to capture their condition. One envisions not just personas, but landscapes, cultures and attitudes. (American examples would include Hank Williams, R.E.M. and Big Black.)
Conceived as a proper album, rather than simply a collection of songs, Life Is Sweet may not be the best album for spring or summer, but after careful consideration, I can’t imagine my future autumns and winters without it.
The Buddy System
Electric Science
Kindercore
originally published May 28, 2008
To understand The Buddy System, it helps to consider the difference between a film soundtrack and a film score. While the former features a collection of songs that were used in a movie, the latter refers to the sounds penned specifically to accentuate moods and movement within the film.
The Buddy System writes scores: scores for delightful, adorable, candy-like clips featuring Lauren Gregg's rainbow-colored menagerie of characters that bop across the screen like balloon animals.
That's why it makes so much sense for the band to release its debut on DVD. This four-track limited release is an ideal, albeit brief, introduction to The Buddy System's uniquely mutualistic presentation of music and video. You can try to close your eyes and decide if the songs have enough merit to stand on their own, but it almost seems irrelevant.
For example, on the epic "Return to Horse Mountain," you are drawn into the engaging battle between bike-riding children and the evil unicorn. Just like any great action film, the music is there to help get your heart pumping, but when you're watching teeth fly and blood squirt, you hardly notice that it's there. That doesn't mean the tracks are weak, it just means they are tightly interwoven within the animation. If you tried to pull those threads and single them out, you would be left with something limp and insignificant.
The only misstep here is the live recording of "Nature's Tiny Realm." I was excited to have a visual to help me explain to people what a Buddy System show is like, but it's just unfortunate that the footage had to be taken from the pitch black of Go Bar. It's almost impossible to see the band play, and the screen is obstructed by heads and shadows which take away from the intimate experience the other tracks offer.
The Buddy System plays Flicker Theatre & Bar on May 31.
We Versus The Shark
Dirty Versions
Hello Sir
originally published May 28, 2008
Generally speaking, a band's music grows more logical and its artistic vision becomes more discernible over time. We Versus the Shark's work, however, has followed a different trajectory. When the Shark formed in 2003, it played angular, catchy post-hardcore in the vein of The Dismemberment Plan. These early songs weren't exactly linear pop tunes, but they did adhere to a recognizable template and a well-worn aesthetic. In the best material from the Shark's early days - songs like "As Good as It Gets" - the jittery, off-time segments clashed with the hooks. As the band begins to develop, I reasoned, they'll cast aside the corkscrew guitars and jarring time changes, and turn out some great rock songs.
Instead, the Shark just got weirder, noisier and more abrasive. Melodies degenerated into hoarse screams. The math-rock quirks became more pronounced as the band members became more comfortable playing together. Now, the Shark's spastic songs owe more to The Minutemen and Mike Patton than to any group of scrawny white dudes from mid-'90s D.C. or Chicago. Five years down the line, We Versus the Shark's music is a glorious mess.
Dirty Versions contains multitudes. It bludgeons us with churning sludge-metal riffs ("Gothic Y'All"), meaty post-punk grooves ("Hello Blood") and trilling Deefhoof-like guitar lines ("I Am a Caffeinated Corpse"). It takes its prettiest parts, like the piano in "I Am the Contempt Machine," and slathers them in filth and clamor. It contorts your typical 9-to-5 blues into an existential death rattle. Its final song is at once its best stab at pop, and its most tortuous suite.
Best wrangled with in one sitting, with your mind's (over)analytical faculties switched off, Dirty Versions follows in the tradition of the ambitious, visceral, post-everything punk rock heard on labels like SST, Touch and Go, and Dischord in the '80s and early '90s. As the rock underground increasingly looks to DIY scenes in Baltimore and L.A. for fresh takes on the American punk ethos, one hopes that this record - which is far more potent than recordings by No Age or any of the denizens of Charm City - will channel national attention to the band that's been rocking Athens house parties for half a decade.
The Wedding Present
El Rey
Manifesto
originally published May 28, 2008
Though The Wedding Present’s big comeback in 2005 after an eight-year hibernation has been trickling, the beloved British indie-rock band is finally following up with this new album. It seems the grief that haunted frontman David Gedge from the collapse of his 14-year relationship with girlfriend and Cinerama collaborator Sally Murrell, the same sentiment that made Take Fountain such a burningly crestfallen album, has finally abated. About time, too.
El Rey is notably lighter in spirit and livelier in step. But the best sign that it’s good times again is the return of the beefy rock wallop. Lyrically, Gedge still bares himself, but the heaviness is now refocused into a thicker, more ebullient sound. Most importantly, the grinding, gloriously desperate jangle that was so central to the band's formula is back. The gruff vocal stylings of Gedge’s yore have even come back into play.
Apart from the cringing-ly trite Seinfeld reference in “Soup,” the collection is consistently solid. The bottom-heavy “Santa Ana Winds” establishes the album’s righteous sonic intent from the outset with digging grooves and a wide-open drive. Other highlights include the straightforward, but effective, “I Lost the Monkey,” which moves by in big swings and muscular groans. “The Thing I Like Best about Him Is His Girlfriend” shows its dynamism through shifts in scale, pace and boy/girl vocals.
Sonically, El Rey shows the style and proportion of a seasoned band. What makes it special, however, is that it packs the gusto that made The Wedding Present's early work thrill.
Kuroma
Paris
Self-released
originally published May 28, 2008
Familiarity with Hank Sullivant's tenure as bassist for The Whigs will do little to prepare one for the first album by Kuroma, his solo project. With the help of James Richardson, Nick Robbins, John Mills, Kyle Spence and producer Billy Bennett, Sullivant has crafted eight songs that draw from '70s album rock and psychedelic pop. These compositions are lengthy, proggy and druggy. This isn't what we were expecting.
Folks who dig The Whigs for their crisp hooks probably won't feel at home with this epic, reverb-drenched album. Paris will probably sit best with listeners from Sullivant's parents' generation. For one thing, Sullivant truly gets Led Zeppelin, especially for a guy in his 20s. In "Alexander Martin," he nails the acoustic side of Led Zep's sound, pairing a slinky blues riff with a fat syncopated bass line. "Maybe I'm Lazy" is more akin to "Black Dog" - it's a mountain-sized slab of tumbling drums, trippy vocals and crunchy guitar. Elsewhere, Sullivant tips his hat to Bowie, Eno and The Stones. Throughout the album, modern production and Sullivant's eccentric songwriting style keep Kuroma from being a mere tribute project.
At times, Paris feels a bit hollow, like a simple exercise in form. Despite his ability to creatively blend influences, Sullivant lacks presence. His vocals and drums are unassertive, and his lyrics unmemorable. His songs are good, but for now, they fail to tell a story bigger than the sum of their parts.
French Kicks
Swimming
Vagrant
originally published May 28, 2008
Among the glut of New York rock earlier this decade, French Kicks stood out in perhaps a more unassumingly traditional, yet no less legitimate way - by writing fine songs. The debut album One Time Bells and its preceding EPs were crisp, and full of choppy guitars. The 2006 album Two Thousand, however, found the band focusing on its pop hooks and crafting more accessible songs - not abandoning the more hardcore aspects of both its garage rock peers and forebears, but refining them into something a little less abrasive. That trend continues on Swimming, an album packed with a seeming willingness to take risks.
The band says that most of the songs on the album are the result of first or second takes, and that’s easy to believe; it’s neither overpackaged, overthought nor over-recorded. Rather than focusing on the raw power of ‘60s and ‘70s garage bands, Swimming borrows more from the less aggressive songs of bands like The Kinks, and even, T. Rex. Unexpectedly rewarding flourishes present themselves throughout the album: the sinewy guitar on “Atlanta,” the high-pop grandeur of the handclaps and strings married to the jaggy rock-and-rollisms on “Abandon,” and the joyous riffery of “Carried Away.”
For a band putting out quality albums at the rate of every other year (Swimming is the band’s fourth full-length), French Kicks have been able to tap into their energy, exploit their creativity and maintain their momentum. The result is Swimming, a welcome album from a band that could’ve easily stumbled like some of its NYC rock brethren, but that, thankfully, hasn’t.
Royal Bangs
We Breed Champions
Audio Eagle
originally published May 28, 2008
These Mufreesborovians actually already put out this record themselves a couple of years ago, but now it’s more available for your purchase, and purchase you might should. Not all of the energy of their live performance comes across, but it’s hard to get that effect when your fleshly appearance includes jumping around on the monitors and lightboxes that pulse to the rhythms of the two guitars as they zig-zag musically back and forth.
Royal Bangs has the kind of highly patterned sound that, when played extremely loud, can make even a committed song flipper like myself pay attention for five minutes. It’s like Hot Hot Heat slowed down a bit, and with an attitude that takes more from the “we deserve your attention” school of rock than the bratty “pay attention to us” one of many younger bands. There’s no question that Royal Bangs are electronica in some fashion - they make heavy use of repetitive keyboard lines, and there are plenty of bleeps and bloops - but they sacrifice no testes in their reliance on technology.
Singer Ryan Schaefer pushes his vocals until they, too, have a kind of feedback not dissimilar to that produced by the instruments, and the drums bash and crash away happily in the middle of things, lending a little chaos to the overall control.
Amelia
A Long, Lovely List of Repairs
Adrenaline Music
originally published May 28, 2008
A Long, Lovely List of Repairs is the third full-length from Portland trio Amelia. Composed of bassist Jesse Emerson (ex-Decemberists), vocalist/drummer Teisha Helgerson and multi-instrumentalist Scott Weddle, the band specializes in a mournful, contemplative sound that draws equally from late-night jazz, emotive singer/songwriter fare and vaguely weird and rustic Americana.
Noir-ish guitars on a few songs provide balance to Helgerson’s pillowy vocals, and flourishes like these scattered throughout the album - a surf-y guitar lick here, a Latin rhythm there, a steel guitar’s mournful wail, too - elevate the band’s sound above what could’ve otherwise been a more predictable collection of torch songs and lovelorn laments. At 14 songs, though, the album contains too few of those moments among its many ideas, and A Long, Lovely List of Repairs could've benefited from some more judicious editing when it came time to narrow down the track list.
With just enough personality to let it stand out from the crowd, A Long, Lovely List of Repairs points in several promising directions while fully committing to none. Still, the album’s slightly better than most out there, and would be a worthy find for anyone looking for some dusky, moody tunes: clean, uncomplicated and to the point.
Mates of State
Re-Arrange Us
Barsuk
originally published May 28, 2008
Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel used to be regulars on the local stage, passing through Athens and frequently hitting up Tasty World earlier this decade. As the pop band’s profile has risen, its stops in town have diminished, so we’re left with recorded music rather than the wife-and-husband duo’s charmingly lovestruck stage presence.
For Re-Arrange Us, Gardner has set aside her ubiquitous Electone organ and opted instead for an old-fashioned piano. While the organ’s omnipresence always hinted at sounds from the ‘70s, the light(er) rock sounds of the piano on the aptly named new album sound more of the ‘70s, lacking the oomph and giddy flightiness of earlier albums.
Two years ago, they flirted with the idea of string arrangements on the album Bring It Back, though those sounded more like an afterthought rather than a commitment to exploring new sounds. Re-Arrange Us, though, goes full-on in its augmentation, adding strings, guitar and horns. Somehow, though, the additional instruments sound like the band - normally a lean, two-person drums-and-keys combo - is stretching too far and overcompensating. The bigger sound makes the people involved seem smaller, quieter and less prominent.
Turn an ear to a song like “Help Help,” though, and it’s clear that Mates of State are still well capable of handling creative pop songwriting. The layered vocal harmonies bob and weave, and there’s a mischief reminiscent of the band’s early days that pops up. Re-Arrange Us is a stumble, but not a fall, and the band’s willingness to experiment suggests that this subdued offering is not necessarily a permanent shift.
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