Posts tagged Rock
[Review/Listen] - The Dandy Warhols - “This Machine”
I honestly can’t tell you how many times I’ve rocked out to “Welcome to the Monkey House”, Portland alt-rock group The Dandy Warhols’ 2003 album. It’s one of those albums that successfully bridges the gap between ‘experimental’ and ‘commercial’. I distinctly remember “We Used to Be Friends” being on every mixtape I made for anyone for over two years. The Dandy Warhols have never returned to the quality of that album (or their 2000 masterpiece “Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia”), but they’ve really given it their best shot.
“This Machine” sees The Dandy Warhols taking another different turn, exploring straightforward garage psychedelia with a stoner rock edge. The result is an enjoyable (if immediately forgettable) album. Perhaps the title of the album, “This Machine,” is both a nod to Woodie Guthrie and a statement of intent. The album showcases the band mostly devoid of studio trickery and electronic rambling, similar to the way conventional folk music strips the music down to its most basic message.
Many songs on “This Machine” remind me of post-punk anthems and 80s radio hits. Songs like “Enjoy Yourself” and “Rest Your Head” are quite good, capitalizing on the band’s ability to write radio-savvy mood pieces that hearken back to the era of 90’s underground hits. The album is peppered with songs like these two, which will surely become fan favorites; the rest of the album, however, is largely monotonous and forgettable. Often I enjoy entire albums more than individual songs (I’m a bit of a purist), but this is definitely one of those albums that I’d recommend purchasing singular songs from.
“This Machine” makes for a really laid-back, (moderately) consistent, and predictable listen. Nothing particular, outside of a few interesting guitar riffs, jumps out or surprises, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The Dandy Warhols have a bad habit of promising a lot with their music, but never quite delivering the full-on rock experience. Most of their songs (especially on this album) start in one place and never change dynamically. It’s simultaneously interesting and terribly boring. Oftentimes, I found myself bobbing my head to the beat, but never being able to concentrate what was actually going on.
The album closes with “Don’t Shoot She Cried”, a pseudo-drone song of washed out, reverberating harmony; and “Slide”, a dark piece of melancholy psychedelia fueled by feedback loops and repetitious drumming. Together they form a disappointing ending to an album that needed a strong, upbeat closer.
“This Machine” is a step up from their last three albums, but The Dandy Warhols still can’t deliver in the way they used to. I’m glad to see the band stripping down their sound and returning to the roots of garage rock, but their execution is flawed. With only two or three redeeming songs, “This Machine” is rather monotonous and uninteresting as a whole. Once again, The Dandy Warhols have the concept down, but they haven’t quite nailed the content.
Connect with The Dandy Warhols: Facebook | Twitter | Official Site
Review/Listen: Jack White - “Blunderbuss”
When the news broke that The White Stripes had officially broken up back in February of 2011, my feelings were somewhat mixed: of course, The White Stripes were and still are one of my favourite bands, one of the few bands active in my lifetime whose discography seems to warrant obsessing over and scouring through in the same fashion as those of many more established legends, and, of course, you always look forward to a new album from your favourite band. The discovery that no such new album would ever come was naturally something of a disappointment.
But there was an excitement too: it had already been five years since the last White Stripes record, and you won’t find many people who would be willing to put “Icky Thump” and “Get Behind Me Satan” on the same critical pedestal that “Elephant”, “White Blood Cells” and “De Stijl” have risen to over time. The White Stripes may have broken up in 2011, but even to diehards it was obvious that the project was losing steam some time before that. With the break up announced, it was finally possible to anticipate a Jack White solo album, an album free from the much-commented upon, self-imposed restrictions of The White Stripes, or any of the obligations of working with a collaborator. Press releases in the build up to “Blunderbuss” stressed that these songs could not have been recorded as anything other than a Jack White album, and so anticipation heightened: “Blunderbuss” would be “Jack White: Unbounded”, or perhaps, given the turmoil of band breakup and White’s separation from his wife Karen Elson in the same year, “Jack White: Unhinged”.
Certainly there are signs on “Blunderbuss” that White’s songwriting has been informed by the tumultuous events of 2011. On the crunching single “Sixteen Saltines” White wails “Who’s jealous of who? If I get busy then I couldn’t care less what you do”. Similarly, on opening track “Missing Pieces”, he describes the departure of a partner as a process of painful disembodiment, albeit disguised by an upbeat tune and White’s faintly comic delivery of key lines – “I woke up and my hands were gone, yeah, I looked down and my legs were long gone.” All disguise, whether musical or tonal, is dropped for the track’s final, biting line: “Sometimes someone controls everything about you” and when that person leaves, they “take a part of you with them.” It’s hard not to imagine that White is describing Elson here, though it could just as easily be Meg White. After all, Jack did claim in a recent interview that “Meg completely controlled The White Stripes”.
Just whose presence it is that seems to pervade White’s lyrics here is ultimately not something to get hung up on: White showed plenty of bile as a member of The White Stripes and, given his obvious continuing readiness to put music ahead of personal history [Elson provides backing vocals on this album], it hardly seems fair to assume that hints of hostility here pertain to the real world any more than they did in his past work. White’s greatest talent, besides his breathtaking skill as a guitarist, has always been in fanciful first-person storytelling with an emotional punch.
Besides, beyond the prickliness of some of the opening tracks, “Blunderbuss” moves away from any remotely confessional territory and evolves into a genre-hopping joyride. The transformation begins with lead single “Love Interruption”, a fairly simple folk number whose macabre metaphors don’t make for the same uplifting reading on paper as they do when heard to a tune. It’s followed by the title track, an old western love story with an impeccably measured pedal steel guitar opening. White displays his punning chops as he and his lover flee from her previous man, “a romantic bust, a blunder turned explosive blunderbuss.”
Later White tackles old fashioned rhythm and blues on “I’m Shakin’” – the highlight of which has to be his tongue in cheek exaggeration of Little Willie John’s pronunciation of nervous [he’s “noy-vus”] – before some irresistibly cheery honky-tonk on “Trash Tongue Talker” and “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy”. The result of all this good cheer is that by the time the upbeat final number, “Take Me With You When You Go”, comes around, the only thing preventing it from being bundled into the same category as previous, light-hearted White Stripes album closers like “It’s True That We Love One Another”, “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)”,and “Effect & Cause” is that “Blunderbuss” exhibits the same charm and ‘wink wink, nudge nudge’ attitude as those songs do for almost half of its length, not just at its conclusion. Oh, and also the fact that “Take Me With You When We Go” explodes into the hardest rocking track on the album at exactly its halfway point. The riff ranks among White’s finest and makes for an absolutely killer conclusion.
The only complaint that can really be borne against “Blunderbuss” is that it doesn’t feature a little more of the powerful riffing that it closes with and that people have come to expect from Jack White, though his music has been trending that way for some time. The result is that “Blunderbuss” doesn’t simply come off as “Jack White: Unbounded”, an explosion of raw creative energy in a newly personal context; rather, it’s simultaneously reserved and adventurous, reeling in the hard rock while putting out feelers everywhere else, and, importantly, it’s just a total blast.
[Review/Listen] - Spiritualized - “Sweet Heart Sweet Light”
I never quite know what to say about Spiritualized. Jason Pierce (or J Spaceman), frontman of the band, has expertly sculpted out a niche for the band as the neo-psychedelic space-rockers obsessed with heartbreak and painkillers. It’s become a cult of sorts. Consider “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” a perpetuation of that phenomenon. It’s heavy and smooth, dense and perfectly produced. Spiritualized has created an album of epic proportions, draped in layers of symphonic melody and prolonged heartbreak. “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” seems like an improvement upon what they set out to do on “Songs in A&E”. While that album was sprawling and inconsistent at best, “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” takes the bravado and consistency of 90’s Spiritualized and blends it with the bittersweet orchestral harmonies of J. Spaceman’s modern ensemble.
The first thing I’ll say is that “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” is a grower. It’s initially unimpressive and uninteresting, but with every subsequent listen the melodies become more pronounced and catchy. Often forgoing their guitars and synthesizers, Spiritualized turns to a full-blown orchestra and choir for much of the instrumentation on “Sweet Heart Sweet Light”, and it works fairly well. The sheer breadth of songs like “Too Late” (my personal favorite, a real downer of a ballad; “My momma said when she got so concerned/Don’t play with fire and you’ll never get burned/Don’t touch the flame and you’ll never find out/My momma said that’s what love’s all about.”) are only realized by dozens of musicians performing on the track. The single “Hey Jane” hearkens back to “Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space”, with interweaving melodies and a sudden, spacey, psychedelic noise breakdown before the song builds itself back up again. “So Long You Pretty Things” starts out as a soft lullaby and escalates (over eight beautiful minutes) to an epic singalong in Spiritualized’s trademark fashion.
Those three songs (“Too Late”, “Hey Jane”, and “So Long You Pretty Things”) are enough reason to call “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” probably the best album the band has recorded in the last fifteen years, but I have a few reservations about the album:
It treads no new ground at all. Spiritualized have always been huge, epic, symphonic pioneers of sound, but “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” contains little along the lines of experimentation. Every song runs one of the same two formulas: either it’s an orchestral ballad or a straightforward, guitar-driven rock song. Simply by listening to the first ten seconds of each track, you can determine exactly what the song is going to sound like. On top of that, the lyrics are mostly unmemorable and repetitive, reiterating the same things we’ve heard on every Spiritualized album since ever: depression, lost love, and heartbreak. It’s good to be consistent, but after a while, you have to start doing something new. I wouldn’t actively choose this album over anything Spiritualized has recorded before, especially their first few albums from the 90s. “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” has some good moments on it, but it’s slightly underwhelming compared to their masterpieces, and once again, it doesn’t tread any new ground. I’d more readily pick up “Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space”.
The thing is, these are minor gripes on a largely enjoyable album, the best Spiritualized had done in a long time. They have perfected their epic, heartbreaking ballads on “Sweet Heart Sweet Light”, but while it’s technically accomplished, the quality of songwriting and experimentation leave a little to be desired. “Sweet Heart Sweet Light” is a hit-or-miss album that leans heavily on orchestral arrangements and sweeping ballads, and despite being a little flawed, it’s a great and worthwhile listen.
Connect with Spiritualized: Facebook | Twitter | Last.fm | Website
[Review/Listen] - Pulled Apart By Horses - “Tough Love”
I think it is very good practice for music writers to get outside their genre of expertise, their niche of comfort on occasion. I think they can get so caught up in their own favorite genre of music that perhaps they forget that entire universes of other sounds and emotions are being generated, and with quite a bit of talent at that. So that’s why this little suburban raised white girl who usually listens to folk music is writing about British punkers-sometimes-even-screamers Pulled Apart By Horses. You see, I also write for another blog called Musical Mathematics and the posts/statuses/cries of delight by the UK punk-metal-rock loving guys who run that publication over this release were too overwhelming for me to completely ignore. I had to see what all the fuss about their latest record “Tough Love” was really about.
Hailing from Leeds in Britian, the band is composed of four members and are often dubbed “post-hardcore” which pretty much just means still hardcore and the term hardcore was invented so long ago that music bloggers got tired of using it and tried to make it sound newer again. This is their second album and it was produced by Gil Norton, the same man who produced the Foo Fighters and The Pixies, which explains the overall loud, clean sound on some songs and fuzzy woozy rock on others.
I imagine that the process of actually pulling someone apart by horses was a torture device, bent on ensuring a slow and painful death. Elements of the intensity of this experience exist in their music, and they often write about pain and with anger, but the experience of listening to this band is actually extremely enjoyable. Starting off with the fuzzed- out track “V.E.N.O.M”, the leaps between pace and shout-sung spelled out chorus lead into the rest of this rip-roaring record. Often when I listen to music of this caliber, I feel like the anger and intensity in the songs is directed at me, as if I the listener somehow joined in the grand conspiracy against the band, but I will say as a compliment to PABH that I always feel like I am on their side when I listen to their music. The pure, unabashed passion in this record immediately won me over to empathize with their complaints, experiences and plights.
One of the strongest features of their songs is the way that the pace changes several times within the span of one song. This works especially well on “Wolf Hand” which alternates from a relatively slow and talk-sung verse to an anthem-like chorus backed by heavy guitars and then later melts into a complete sound free-for-all.
I won’t try to tell you this record isn’t heavy, it certainly is. But it is heavy with a purpose, it has an artistic direction and contains content both lyrically and musically that progresses outside the realm of just metal or just punk. I would even call it thoughtful at times, like on “Night Of The Living (I’m Scared Of People)” in which they poke fun at the idea of zombies by contrasting them to the actual mayhem that living humans can create too. Speaking of song titles that are jokes, “Bromance Ain’t Dead” always makes me giggle, although the song by no means makes me giggle, more it just makes me bang my head back and forth and pretend to be a hardcore twenty-something British guy.
I think my favorite track might be the album closer “Everything Dipped In Gold”, which features echoey spaced out guitars in parts that are reminiscent of The War On Drugs, along with the same passionate choruses and other intense guitars that mark the rest of the record. Certainly check “Tough Love” out if you listen to alternative/punk/metal-/rock/post-hardcore… I bet you will love it. Also check it out if you realize that the last ten albums you bought probably all fall into the same genre and you want to expose yourself to other types of music. I was pleasantly surprised how much I admired the band for this record and how much I enjoyed listening to it.
Connect with Pulled Apart By Horses: Website | Facebook | Last.fm
[Review/Listen] - Tall Tall Trees - “moment”
Tall Tall Trees’ self-titled debut album was phenomenal. The NYC quartet seamlessly blended banjo-plunking bluegrass, moody folk, and driving indie rock into one ceaselessly interesting and fun album…
[Review/Listen] - Dr. Dog - “Be The Void”
If you know Dr. Dog at all, then you know they’ve made a career of turning lo-fi musings and blatant stylistic influences into coherent, upbeat, psychedelic-throwback pop songs. “Be The Void” is no exception, except that it’s also quite different from other Dr. Dog albums. The band decided to take a different approach to this album: they structured their recording process around their live shows. Instead of endlessly fussing about in the studio, they captured the record in all its imperfections, preserving the energy of the raw take.
“Lonesome” is, without a doubt, one of the best songs on the record. It’s a junkyard, country-worn, rollicking, foot-stomping rock song. Shouts of “Hey!” break up the verses; slide guitar sloppily layers the background. It’s a bold opener, and the rest of the record doesn’t disappoint. Lots of songs on “Be The Void” channel this same energy. “That Old Black Hole” features some smooth drumming and witty lyricism: “It’s like that old black hole, no matter how you try/You set out each day never to arrive.” “Get Away” contains some tight roots rock and Fleet Foxes-esque vocal harmonies. Even better, “Vampire,” my personal favorite, sees Toby Leaman wailing (and almost screaming) into the microphone while guitars wail in the background with searing riffs that channel the late great Beatles.
Perhaps “Be The Void’s” biggest flaw (and Dr. Dog’s in general) is its inability to shake its obvious influences. It’s too easy to go through each song and name another song or band that it sounds exactly like. I find it quite difficult to listen to “Be The Void” without thinking of this other music. Another gripe I have is how the band can sometimes drag a song out a little too long. On this record it’s even more evident, as these songs don’t contain the electronic experimentation and drastic song arrangement changes that their older albums do. Songs like “Warrior Man” (which is kind of silly…) and “Do The Trick” just go for one chorus too long, so, by the end, you’re tired of the repetition.
On the plus side, these songs are absolutely killer. Every single one of them will make a great addition to live sets and they all complement Dr. Dog’s back catalog. I’m sure this album will spawn many singles and see the band even more into the limelight. Even on my second listen, I started to sing along to all the tracks and get to know their individual personalities. More than any other Dr. Dog album, “Be The Void” seems more like a collection of songs than a coherent album, but not in a bad way.
“Be The Void’s” biggest strength is the amount of raw energy it contains. Although Dr. Dog don’t take many risks here, their unapologetic songwriting and stylistic influences are right up front, making “Be The Void” a strong release in line with some of their best work.
Connect with Dr. Dog: Official Website | Facebook | Twitter
[Review/Listen] - Cloud Nothings - “Attack on Memory”
The amount of Rock records has been decreasing at a surprisingly steep pace in the past 10 years, as many bands have begun to embrace untechnical rhythms, hazy vocals, and instruments laced in reverb. The resultant change birthed several great bands (Japandroids, Cymbals Eat Guitars) and hundreds of horrible ones (practically all the rest). From somewhere in the middle of those camps came Cloud Nothings’ debut album last year.
Dylan Baldi, a student at Case Western Reserve University, began Cloud Nothings as a solo project to give himself something to do between classes. The music that came out of this idle time felt expectantly escapist and airy, and many critics, including myself, pegged Cloud Nothings as “Just Another Guitar Band”. A “guitar band” is basically a band that plays guitars, just like a Rock band, but which makes music that is too shiftless and flighty to be properly Rock. It’s music that’s destined to soundtrack commercials for Toyota Camrys, for a generation that has become increasingly accustomed to that sort of thing.
So you might understand the reaction I had when I first heard “No Future, No Past”, the lead single off of “Attack On Memory”. I was floored. The steady, proficient drumming, Baldi yelping that lyrical refrain with actual verve and grit, the fact that I could actually hear each instrument, with each note given it’s own ample sonic space - was I listening to the same band? “No Future, No Past” sounds like Nirvana covering Radiohead from somewhere in the flat Ohio countryside, wind whipping Baldi’s unbuttoned flannel shirt into a billowing cape as he screams his heart out about love gone sour. There’s no marshmallow fluff hooks on “Attack on Memory”. This is like when Ministry dropped their spangled synthpop act and released the brutalist “The Land of Rape and Honey”. This is a Rock record with a capital R, and one of the first great albums of a year destined to be full of them.
Although the stylistic shift from lo-fi powerpop to turbulent punk rock was clearly of the band’s own design, it’s impossible not to recognize recording engineer Steve Albini’s fingerprints on the sound of this record. The Big Black/Shellac frontman and “In Utero” producer might have been playing Scrabble on Facebook while the album was being recorded, as Baldi suggests in interviews, but the acoustics in his warm studio space, and his collection of vintage tube-amps, heighten the album by bringing Cloud Nothings down to Earth. Guitars growl and cuss, drums make all the sounds that your morning bowl of Rice Crispies did, and where vocals on previous releases sounded like they could have been sung into Baldi’s Macbook, they now feel sharp and weighty. “Our Plans” in particular, with it’s military-grade drumrolls and bass that bounces like it was trapped into a pinball machine, benefits from the sonic upgrade. The song’s chorus “No one knows our plans for us/We won’t last long” is brought into melancholy clarity, and when those jagged guitar leads rise up out from behind Baldi to steal the show with a teeth-baring solo of ferocious feedback, one wonders why the band didn’t just start out sounding so alive in the first place.
“Attack on Memory” is, according to Baldi, an “attack on the memory of what people thought the band was”. But the risks taken on this record go beyond the obvious changes from saccharine, C86-flecked guitar-bandery to a more aggressive, emo-influenced sound. This is the first of Baldi’s records to entirely focus around one concept, that being the end of a long, turgid relationship. Like the previously mentioned Ministry record, “Attack On Memory” is an exercise in brutalism, except of the lyrical variety rather than instrumental.
Thus, when Baldi sings of his heartbreak, he does so with all the fat trimmed off, vamping on the same three or four lines over and over again. “I miss you ‘cuz I’m not damaged/I need someone I can hurt” Baldi states matter-of-factly for the last minute of “Cut You”, all obliqueness pushed aside until the words ring as clear as the sound quality. “I need time to start moving/I need time to stay useless” he explains on “Stay Useless”, the album’s strongest hook and proof that Cloud Nothings isn’t aiming for Antlers-like levels of emotional trauma on “Attack on Memory”. The chorus of “Fall In” is the title shouted over and over again, and because it is mixed at such a higher level than the verses, they might as well be the song’s only lyrics. It’s a startlingly effective method of peeking inside a broken man’s psyche: I have found myself humming “Stay Useless” at work, the gym, and in the shower, the lyrics rattling around in my head much like the memories of a relationship gone awry rattle around a post-breakupee’s.
Then there’s the band itself. In the space of a year, Cloud Nothings has morphed from a bedroom solo project to a full-fledged group, with Baldi culling players from members of his touring act. The result are songs that feel composed rather than merely performed, Baldi’s unstudied drum-and-bass-playing replaced by clean, efficient downbeats and rolling basslines. “Wasted Days”, the album’s finest track, utilizes the new lineup to full, awe-inspiring effect. Beginning with showers of guitar sparks that emulate the sound oft the Foo Fighters being played through an alarm clock radio, the band tears through the first three minutes of “Wasted Days” like they have something to prove, with those drums getting attacked like Baldi has taped a picture of his girlfriend cavorting with Adolf Hitler on each drumhead. The tune is ferocious; Baldi sounds suicidal, as if he’s about to drive his car off the biggest cliff he can find, right into Lake Michigan, while taking his band with him.
Then, at 3:02, everything goes underwater. The only member that has managed to keep his head dry is Baldi, who rides a serrated surf-rock riff as his bandmates heads start to bob above the ocean surface. Finally, at 3:26, they begins to swim. The next five minutes are less Foo Fighters and more Fucked Up’s “Baiting the Public”, Baldi furiously downstroking on his guitar, waves of feedback propelling the song to a fiery climax, as if merely by playing as fast and frantically as they possibly can, upping the tempo with each passing measure, they can help Baldi forget. Those are the single most thrilling five minutes in music so far this year.
“Attack on Memory” forgoes the “sophomore slump” and provides a valid argument for Cloud Nothings as purveyors of a rare brand of Rock music that exists beyond trends. Now that they’re supposedly settled on this new sound, I think it’s about time for a name change.The name Cloud Nothings is saccharine, recalling the sort of sugar-coated, supplicating pop music that this band doesn’t make anymore. Their new name should reflect who they are now: a group of fine young gentlemen playing shitkicking, in-your-face power chords with all the panache of your favorite bands in high school. After a couple years spent contentedly quiet, it’s about time that Cloud Nothings made some noise.
[Introducing] - Mujeres
When I discovered that Barcelona quartet Mujeres (Women) was actually formed by four men, I immediately thought of Girls, initially a male duo. The comparisons with the San Francisco band stop there though, since sonically the two bands are worlds apart (and not just because they’re from different continents).
The four-piece, comprised of Yago Alcover and Martí Gallén (guitars and vocals), Martín Gutierrez (bass and howls, according to their Facebook info) and Pol Rodellar (bass and balls - seriously, I’m just translating), met in college while studying film and decided to keep in touch after graduating by forming a rock band. The rest, as they say, “is unimportant”.
As I listened through their self-titled debut album, released in 2009, I immediately thought of Atlanta band Black Lips, as both bands make filthy garage rock and have a don’t-give-a-damn attitude with regards to much else. They’re the typical band that wants you to like them for their music, not sweetening their persona up in order to gain a larger appeal. Lead vocalist Yago Alcover even admitted in an interview hating The Beatles (gasp!), citing “A Day in the Life” as a song that he hates loving.
Clocking in at just 27 minutes, with no songs over the 3-minute mark, “Mujeres” (the album) goes by incredibly fast, but will only be enjoyed by those looking for a rough ride. The record can be perfectly summed up in the first 15 seconds of the opening track “Blood Meridian”, which at first features a clean guitar riff, and is then backed by a heavy distorted guitar and some howling (I guess Gutierrez is really doing his part) that really bring the energy that is maintained throughout the first half, until “Right On”, the sixth number, slows things down for just a bit, allowing the listener to catch their breath briefly, before hitting hard with another six relentless songs.
But Mujeres aren’t just about making a racket (something they’re damn good at). Buried under the noise, distortion and lo-fi production are hooks, with jangly guitars in abundance, one of my favorite moments comes in “Oh My!”, and choruses such as the one in “L.A.”. “Wanna Boom” serves as a good closer, summing up the band’s sound nicely, presenting maybe a cleaner version of what the band is capable of, backup vocals included.
The four-piece is getting ready to head into the studio to record their sophomore effort, which is expected in February. We’ll have to see if the band clean up their act, à la “Good Bad Not Evil” or if they prefer to go down a dirtier path. I, for one, will be intrigued to hear the final result.
Connect with Mujeres - Facebook | Website | Last.fm
Mujeres - L.A. by ListenBeforeYouBuy
