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June-July 2008
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The Last Count The Last Count is our archive of record reviews. Record releases are sorted by alphabetical order.
What !!! does best are the high voltage disco-punk raveups that took up 50% of their debut disc. Happily, these now take up most of the space on Myth Takes. !!!'s Nic Offer, of course, has always been one of those undimpled, cool guys that're out there on stage with overhead clapping and scissor kicks. His enthusiasm is resolutely infectious, and pushes Myth Takes's polyrhythmic pop to points far beyond Arthur Russell and Talking Heads. With explosive hooks pinned to horn driven disco-punk, the songs here best even his previous pinnacle--2004's meltdown "Me and Giuliani Down By the School Yard (A True Story)". Offer's not the best singer in the world, and this shows him up on "Sweet Life". But when he's tossing off yelps, murmurs and chants, he's in his element, always making sure the cerebral takes a backseat to the visceral, and pushing everyone on to the dancefloor. Cue the squelchy funk of "Yadnus", another high point of the album, and you'd see many more fine albums in the pipeline. (Warp, www.warprecords.com) Lee Chung Horn ~June 2007
Pocket Symphony is, well, how should I put this? - forgettable. This is a shame since their previous Talkie Walkie was such a diamond. When Air decided to work with acclaimed producer Nigel Godrich, it seemed at first like Pocket Symphony was going to be a match made in heaven. Godrich as a producer is adept at finding delicate colors to paint with on tape, and Air are experts at sonic polychromatism. But what we get is a somnambulist soundtrack where they are few, if any, signposts or hooks that we can hang on to. Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin may think they're flying their passengers back to the space-pop explorations of Moon Safari, but they've landed inside Philip Glass museum instead. There are moments, though. Jarvis Cocker turns in a brilliant vocal on breakup song "One Hell of a Party". "Left Bank" has a sweet vocal and a wonderfully organic acoustic guitar. But the rest of Pocket Symphony shows Air at their most detached. A very odd, cold record. (Astralwerks, www.astralwerks.com) Amy Maraj ~June 2007
Ellen Allien may be a dance auteur critics love to gush over, but she's also a New Romantic of the highest order. Her unabashed enthusiasm about techno and electro washes beyond the shallow panels of the dancefloor to thoroughly soak the fabric of philosophy and theory. To wit: fans who own her 2004 album My Parade may recall reading in the record's liner notes Allien's declaration that "In the end, techno will be my only friend." Without question, Thrills expands on this view. It is overwhelmingly a reflective record, never mind that it's infectiously danceable. Allien takes us on a tour of her beloved Berlin, casting it as a technological and industrial metropolis. This she does by making each track thoroughly monochromatic. On "Your Body is My Body", for instance, by excluding the possibility of difference, she forces her listeners to come round to her argument that life's monotony and repetitiveness, though oppressive, may be redeemed by the titular mantra she repeats over and over. "Your body is my body" becomes a salve of love, binding Berliners together, telling them to lean on each other’s compassion to get through the day. Her commentaries on commuting in the city ("Ghost Train"), pollution issues ("Cloudy City") and alienation ("The Brain is Lost") are not deep intellectually; but her skills with sound and arrangement provoke reflection with a facility that's nothing short of amazing. Thrills doesn't have the immediacy of Berlinette. It's less embracing. But while it seems more directed to thinkers than heads, it doesn't sound at all contrived or esoteric. More than anything else, it's the sound of a woman finding her peace in a city that's dying, and growing up. (Bpitch Control, www.bpitchcontrol.de) Lee Chung Horn ~Aug 2005
On their fourth album, Brooklyn collective Animal Collective ditches the electric storm of 2003's Here Comes The Indian for a new, refreshingly restrained pop creation. Now, pop may just be a little off the mark since the ensemble, now contracted to the original duo of Avey Tare and Panda Bear, has a formidable reputation as contrary, and often fearsome, experimentalists. Both even with their trademark psych-folk influences, wayward improv sense and love for electronics all intact, there is no mistaking that Sung Tongs is an album that would decisively move them toward a more mainstream listenership. This, of course, isn't necessarily sellout. In fact, fans who are acquainted with the group's work ethic would laugh at such an idea. It's not hard to understand why. Sung Tongs may stitch together simple chord phrases and playful choruses, but it's hardly easy fare. "Who Could Win A Rabbit" blithely allows tribal drumming and irregular handclaps to run up against simple guitar lines; while "Kids on Holiday" appears to be a child's narrative about running through an airport. Elsewhere there are short bursts of electronic loops, melodies that refuse to go where you expect them to, and guitar strums that collapse before they reach the end of the bars. But there is no mistaking the focussed brilliance of Sung Tongs; in fact, its willingness to take on less meandering structures will open doors hithertofore closed to Bear and Tare. Ladies and gentlemen, this record could be the album of the year. (FatCat, www.fat-cat.co.uk) Lee Chung Horn ~July 2004
It might be a coincidence, but the further Keren Ann strays from singing in French, the more intriguing the New York- and Paris-based Israel-Dutch chanteuse’s records become. She has always made edgier music than her café-ready croon suggests—an earlier collaboration with Bang Gang’s Bardi Johannson was a creepy children’s record that included a cover of the Velvet Underground’s "Stephanie Says"—and on this, her fifth solo record, she channels Lou Reed again via the talky phrasing on "Lay Your Head Down". Her vocal performance is often equal parts Reed and Billie Holiday, particularly on the dirty guitar stomp-and-sigh of "It Ain’t No Crime". Its unexpected distortion signals the more playful second half of the record, which closes with the sublime sound of gradually sped up beats. Recommended for those who longed for more grit on the new Feist record. (Blue Note, www.bluenote.com) Helen Spitzer ~Nov 2007
Belle and Sebastian's most lasting musical legacy hasn't been the assertion of preciousness as a virtue. Or the alchemical integration of song and liner note. Or even the reintroduction of Felt into the alt-pop vocabulary. Rather, it's been the idea that very large ensembles can make very small sounds. Since the Glaswegian septet released its first recordings, in 1996, there's been a good long run of outsized indie-pop outfits, from baker's-dozen-or-so Toronto collective Broken Social Scene to Montreal's seven-member the Arcade Fire to Melbourne, Australia, octet Architecture in Helsinki. On the last's second and latest long-player, In Case We Die, the group's eight sets of hands once again convene at the kitchen sink - though except for group choruses, you might never know you're listening to more than a quartet. Lead vocalist/prime mover Cameron Bird professes love for the Beach Boys, the Magnetic Fields, and the Wu-Tang Clan alike, and if the new album doesn't quite reflect all those influences, it at least makes a good case for the first two. With the exception of its vaguely funereal church-bell-and-chorale opening, In Case We Die indulges in plenty of sweet harmonies, off-kilter melodies, and odd, complex song structures that seem grander than they really are. Take twitchy lead-off track "Neverevereverdid": after that dark opening, it becomes a foppish, showtune-playful piano number before transmogrifying into a full-on shoutalong that's equal parts Slits and Romper Room. The lyrics, meanwhile, suggest that not everything in Cameron & Co.'s world is as Crayola-bright as their music: "Just yesterday, was walking on the moon with your stalker/And we talked about love and all the battles we'd won," go the first two lines. Similarly, the trumpet-and-guitar-driven "Frenchy, I'm Faking" not only features some of the album's best lyrics in "You let me down lightly/I killed you politely" but also demonstrates that twee pop and dance-punk can coexist-and that they go together even better when someone fools around with what sounds like an electric drill in the background. Elsewhere, "The Cemetery" marries a skittery Casio beat to some Smiths jangle," Wishbone" pairs shoop-shoop-sockhoppery with the line "We'll play dead," and "Maybe You Can Owe Me" sends electronic currents dissolving in a post-rock wash reminiscent of early Tortoise. There's even a possible left-field dance hit in "Do The Whirlwind". With each band member facing a potential 70s toes to step on, it's remarkable that In Case We Die works at all. That it does prove Architecture In Helsinki's mastery of the B&S secret: if there's a strength in numbers, it's that you don't have to show them off. (Bar/None, www.bar-none.com) Chris Hagan ~July 2005
The change's already come -- popular music has become unassailably alloyed with the World Wide Web. Every new young band would do well to consider the recent fortunes (and misfortunes) of acts like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Test Icicles, and Band of Horses. In the UK, the band most recently lionized by the English music press was the Arctic Monkeys—four lads from Sheffield—men who cleverly slipped early tracks and demos on to the internet, knowing full well that, at a later time, these same songs would be recast on a debut album in sparkling shells, ready to clamber onto the hit charts. It helped that the Monkeys made sassy music. Tunes like "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" and "Fake Tales of San Francisco" crack you up with their sarky humor while at the same time revealing a wry introspection. So you could indulge in a spot of yob fist-pumping and still convince yourself that this dance music has brain and heart. Sure, the usual ingredients that you find on Brit albums make appearances: disaffection, devil-may-care larking about, and the avuncular ghost of Jarvis Cocker. Possibly an even better classic debut than last year's offerings from Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, and Maximo Park. (Domino Records, www.dominorecordco.com) Lee Chung Horn ~April 2006
Brit band Art Brut's debut album doesn't score any marks for being original. But it's triumphantly engaging in a way that shows its creators to have been inspired, while recording the music, to a degree that's not a far way from greatness. Bang Bang Rock and Roll is an album that challenges the belief that music is foremost about compositional aplomb and instrumental ability. Lead singer Eddie Argos doesn't write perfect songs, but he creates them, using his relentless energy and smart-alecky lines to smash his band's shotgun percussion and guitar ferocity into a pleasing sensory experience. Scenesters already know the nine month-old single, "Formed A Band". They'd be glad to know there are many other jewels here. "Bad Weekend" and "Modern Art" are tracks that show that the current crop of young Brit bands aren't ready to play second fiddle to their US counterparts. Argos also has a kooky pop sense. For that, one has only to pay some attention to "Emily Kane", a song that seems to have at least three melodies running through it. And like Maximo Park and Kaiser Chiefs, Art Brut is generous with a thoroughly unforced humor. Cheeky in places, smug elsewhere, smart always--the year may well belong to Art Brut. (Fierce Panda, www.fiercepanda.co.uk) Russ Tomkins ~Aug 2005
Let's revise some rock history. After the end of Squirrel Bait, Kentucky-born guitarist/songwriter David Grubbs - now an elder statesman of sorts in avant-rock circles - formed Bastro with Clark Johnson and drummer John McEntire. Both Grubbs and McEntire would later rewrite the course of rock, but at the time of Bastro, both were kids barely out of their teens, wet behind the ears, and bursting with ideas and theorems they eagerly flung into their art. 1989's Diablo Guapo, in retrospect, isn't all that different than the morass of Chicago-styled thrash noise that was the rage at the time, but Bastro astutely avoided messiness, staying well-structured and surprisingly musical. But the time Sing the Troubled Beast appeared a year later, it was obvious Grubbs' ragged punk instincts had acquired a stately melodic underbelly, and he was clearly a poet. The poetry found its apotheosis in Gastr del Sol and Grubbs' solo records whose lyrics read worryingly like English major tomes, but revisiting Sing The Troubled Beast now feels like a tender replay of scratchy, old tapes. Grubbs' guitar bore intimations of a Hammond organ, he liked chords; and the rhythm section was obviously the work of young people who had the facility for (and were challenged by the rigor of) small-scale time-keeping. So Bastro was really more than a dorm room experiment, it paved the way for what was to come later. A dramatically revised version of "Recidivist" shows the band's first steps to weaving a heavy sonic tapestry, a style that would influence bands like Drive Like Jehu and Don Caballero. Sadly, Bastro was gone in a matter of years, just when audiences were beginning to understand what they were going after. These two albums are nostalgic, yes, but not in the tear-dabbing way. They melt down your speakers. (Drag City, www.dragcity.com) Lee Chung Horn ~ July 2005
Even after the excitable Neutral MiIk Hotel comparisons die down, Gulag Orkestar may well end up as 2006's best debut album. Sure, Zach Condon spins the indie folk genre as if it were an old, magic umbrella left behind by the Elephant 6 army, but his music's huge charms are genuine, dirt-flecked, and leaves a taste of salt on your buds. Whatever it was that possessed Condon to drop out of college to travel the Balkan States shows up powerfully in his Eastern European folk-flavored songs. The rhythms and melodies enter your brain, and soon you're carried atop a jubilant wave of notes, claps, percussion and ukelele. The instruments Condon plays (he's a multi-instrumentalist) are traditional (and sound traditional), but they really shine because they're beautifully framed by the brass swells offered up his collaborator, A Hawk And A Hacksaw leader, and NMH alumnus Jeremy Barnes. Then there's Condon's voice--lithe, lazy, sweet, full-lunged. The boy's no punk shouter, he holds notes for twelve beats; he's no mere crooner either, and you find no awkward mannerism or affectation, only joy and pride. On the accordion-suffused Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)-- and this applies to much of the other songs--that's a lingering stately grace in his vocals. Only on Scenic World does Condon allow a little melodrama and grandiosity to seep into his pipes. Postcards from Italy is now all over the internet, pulling in the acolytes and bloggers with its irresistible trumpet; while Prenzlauerburg is a slightly forbidding beast-is it a Balkan wedding waltz, or a hymn from the Orthodox Church? Delightful on many counts, this ambitious and precocious album heralds the arrival of a new talent. (Ba Da Bing! www.badabingrecords.com) Lee Chung Horn ~Sep 2006
I'm waxing nostalgic on this one. As an admirer of Belle and Sebastian, and the first Singaporean writer to pen a feature on the Scottish band (that story appeared in the now-defunct BigO magazine), I am most bewitched, like many of the collective's fans, by 1996's If You're Feeling Sinister, and the three subsequent EPs, but let down by the ensuing releases, which were, to my mind, patchy. I never forgave Stuart Murdoch for allowing his other band members to contribute songs--why could he not see that their efforts diminished the records' brilliance? But 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress was a pleasing comeback. Murdoch reclaimed charge of songwriting, and got Trevor Horn to do the old nip-and-truck. The result was their best album in years. The new The Life Pursuit sees the band uprooting to LA to work with producer Tony Hoffer-- to me, a tantalizing prospect since the latter was responsible for one of my favorite albums Stars' Set Yourself On Fire. In many ways, The Life Pursuit is informed by the same adventurous spirit as its predecessor. There's the electric glam of "White Collar Boy" and the spare funk of "Song For Sunshine". Even the disco beats on "We Are the Sleepyheads" sound perky in a hobbled but ultimately attractive way. There's also plenty that stay close to Murdoch's well-worn blueprint, though. "Another Sunny Day"'s simple jangle could have come from any of their older albums, while "Dress Up in You" deploys choirboy vocals, soft piano, and a heartbreakingly droll lyric. I've just played the record for the ninth time, and my opinion stays resolute--it may not be up to If You're Feeling Sinister's standards, but it is very, very good. (Matador, 625 Broadway 12th Floor, New York, New York 10012) Lee Chung Horn ~March 2006
Punk's most beloved moppets have grown up. Well, just a little, so you'd agree they're more moppets now than Muppets. But somewhere in the move to Southern California, Jemima Pearl and her team (which now includes a new drummer) has lost some of their early, raucous, scowling energy. Their playing has become better, and putting in touches of glam, we now get snappier flourishes, new wave poses, and big clouds of glitter. This isn't necessarily bad. One has to accept that with the band members' ages now hitting a mean of 20, they've now joined that new generation who would see that American hardcore punk as more than a platform for intense, frustrated guys to thumb fingers at the world. It's also time to get happy, and for good-time kids to jump around. The track "Becky" (available only on XL's UK version of the album) is especially high-school delicious. Relating the trauma of a breakup but couching it in knee-jerk petulance, not tear-stained pain, Pearl screams "Give me back all the clothes you borrowed/ Don't give me bullshit, bring them to school tomorrow!" The guys in the band even step up to shout "We don't like Becky anymore!" (Ecstatic Peace, www.ecstaticpeace.com) Russ Tomkins ~April 2008
The place of Israel in the world, or against the world if you'd like to consider it that way, has always been, and continues to be, a fascinating subject. When this history is examined by a Jewish mind, the refracted perspective is particularly illuminating. Expositions of the Jewish experience, of course, exist in many forms. In music, for one, you'd find a complete rendering, couched in genres ranging from traditional klezmer tunes to postmodern compositions. New Montreal collective Black Ox Orkestar plays a European Jewish music that seems to embrace the last seven or eight decades of musical idioms. That itself would not be remarkable were it not for the fact that the players -- Thierry Amar and Jessica Moss from A Silver Mt Zion, Gabe Levine from Sackville, and singer Scot Levine Gilmore -- have chosen to run their output through a brave filter of free jazz, folk and indie rock sensibilities. Listeners familiar with the Constellation oeuvre would know this isn't pop, but it isn't post-rock either. Whatever you call it, it's haunting, poignant and carries a whiff of history so heady you'd probably drop whatever it is you're doing to give your undivided attention to the notes coming out of your speakers. The title track "Ver Tanzt?" may be a klezmer tune sung in Yiddish, but you'd not fail to notice its tight, punk roots -- its political anger is that unmistakeable. So is "Toyte Goyes In Shineln", a track that features lyrics from Jewish writer Itzik Fefer. Through the course of thirteen songs, the band pulls in arrangements from Balkan, Greek, and Turkish traditions, whatever they need to weave the mystery. The songs contain a dizzying amount of detail, and its interlocking parts suggest a fetid imagination that could only have come from personal pain. And as much as Jewish history has revolved around promise and apostasy, diaspora and return, the music of Black Ox Orkestar beckons and pushes, never letting you know what's around the bend. (Constellation, POB 42002, Montreal, QC, Canada H2W 2T3) Len Cho ~July 2004
Every January, the British rock press reflexively throws up a meal of new Brit bands which they go on to tout as the new wave of the new wave, or the hot new things to watch. Both Spin and Rolling Stone do this as well, picking out a crop of US acts, but their predictions are never as prescient, or their choices as fascinating. Well, the best new Brit band for 2005 for my money is Bloc Party. The Kaiser Chiefs come a close second, but Bloc Party seem unembarrassed to dream of becoming an indie guitar band capable of commanding decent audiences. Frontman Kele Okerere has called his band's sound "technicolor", meaning it has big hooks, shiny sound, energy and ambition. His mates aren't in it for messing around; they're not your typical US indie types, too afraid to dress up, too eager to sound incoherent, and not clearheaded enough to smile and ask for the big time. So Silent Alarm is a record that's every bit as tight as the singles. The latter are collected here - lead single "Banquet" is as good as Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" to dance to; the opener "Like Eating Glass" has tidy hooks, and smartly detailed rhythm stops and starts. It helps that Okerere has a fabulous rock voice, one that's as capable of falling to a hushed whisper as pulling off the strangled-back-of-throat thing. I've no doubt people would like this record, it's better than Kasabian or Doves, and you get everything - the pretty pop songs, the heavier stuff, the stylish guitar rock tricks. And that, believe it or not, is enough. (V2, www.V2music.com ) Lee Chung Horn ~Mar 2005
Bonnie "Prince" Billy-Greatest Palace Music (Palace/Drag City) Let's get the facts right here. Will Oldham isn't offering you his greatest hits. Honestly, he doesn't have any. What he's doing on his new record is re-interpreting his greatest music. This clarification opens up the window, and purges the new project of the confusion that initially clouded it. Quite undeniably, Oldham has been the author of a very significant body of work, many parts of which could be accepted as great, or even important. From his earliest days in the 90s as the Palace Brothers, Oldham has led an oddball existence outside the musical mainstream. But his refusal to be part of the chi-chi set (his closest "brush" with celebrity was touring with Bjork) has never stopped him from attracting curious onlookers, and, increasingly, a legion of devoted obsessives. Instead of just stringing together a pre-Bonnie "Prince" Billy repertoire (released as either Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music, or Palace), Oldham's wayward muse has led him this time to re-record a set of his most loved early songs. His contingency of fans determined what these would be by sending votes to the Drag City website. Wilfully, Oldham also chose to record with a corral of traditional Nashville sessioneers. This almost heretical act wouldn't surprise observers (though it may disturb admirers of his shaky, bare style) since Oldham as Garth Brooks is an entirely credible proposition. For his stylistic makeover, Oldham has requested luscious string sections, tinkling piano and pedal steel brushes, transforming his music into big screen movies. "The Brute Choir" is no longer the rock beast it was on Viva Last Blues. Instead it's a beautiful ballad reminiscent of Kitty Wells or Roy Orbison. The opposite (but equally affecting in impact) is true of "I Am Cinematographer" which is whipped into a joyful singalong. Fans should listen without prejudice to other songs like "New Partner" and "Gulf Shoes" whose new instrumentation has cast them in a delicious, new light. Oldham's collaborator, musician Andrew Bird, crafts poignant strings for the music, while old friends (and relatives) like Ned and Paul Oldham, Colin Gagon David Berman, ex-Jesus Lizardman Duane Denison, and assorted Lambchop members make appearances. Oldham is in fine voice on all the tracks, lifting up his pipes where previously he was content to whisper or mumble. It's a old saw but always a fresh one - reinvention is the spice of life - and you should accept Oldham's invitation to you to cross over. ((Palace Records/Drag City, P O Box 476867, Chicago, IL 60647) ) Lee Chung Horn ~June 2004
The sixth proper full-length by Conor Oberst and company begins with two minutes of teasing orchestral tension that feels like a torturous scene from Polanski's Repulsion. And then, release. It's become a staple of the songwriter to test our patience in the beginning of an album, but never has the delivery been so effective. After years of concentrated drama and vitriolic angst, Oberst finally sounds like he picked the pieces of himself up off of the floor, there's an air of comfort on Cassadaga. While producer/best friend Mike Mogis has always been a vital contributor and a silent partner, his multi-instrumental worth becomes more and more apparent on Cassadaga, much like the driving piano and organ work of Nate Walcott. Together the three forge a bond that hits a pinnacle on the dynamic country swing of "Soul Singer in a Session Band" and the rollicking spin that is "Hot Knives," both of which get a lift from the verve of ex-Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss. On the other side is "Make A Plan to Love Me," perhaps Oberst' most beautiful creation to date; it's a heavenly waltz enhanced by a placid choir of cherubic female vocals. John McEntire's percussive blitz redirects the focus a little in the second half, but whether it's the subtleties of "Middleman" or the wash of Tortoise-ian flecks and Hassan Lemtouni's throaty chant on "Coat Check Dream Song," Bright Eyes feel more revitalized by such a different path. (Saddle Creek, www.saddle-creek.com) Cam Lindsay~Aug 2007
The verdict's out--Garden Ruin is Calexico's most straightforward pop record. Whether that comes down as a compliment or not would depend on whether you've fallen under the spell of the band's mariachi-flavored Tex-Mex sambas. Certainly, Tex-Mex has been the dominant element in John Convertino and Joey Burns' music for close to fourteen years. Maybe the two guys need to make a break with the past, but straight-ahead pop is what they now want to try their hand at, following their recent collaboration with Iron & Wine. So like many other people, I was saddened to find that Garden Ruin does not feature the frenetic genre shifts--jazz to flamenco to dub--that adorned 2003's Feast of Wire. True, Garden Ruin is a thoughtfully conceived record in its own right. Its pop songs come with gorgeous vocal layering, and, on "Lucky Dime", Burns' harmonies are the best ones he's ever recorded. Also, "Roka (Danza de la Muerte)" rediscovers that spooked spaghetti Western vibe Calexico have so long mastered, with acoustic guitar and a mellifluous Spanish chorus. This song also offers the record's sole political lyric--a commentary on US-Mexico immigration: "So close your eyes/ Slow your breath/ Dream of northern lights/ Around this dance of death." But highlights notwithstanding, by the album's end, you'd probably find that something's missing. We've waiting for the next one, boys. (Quarterstick, POB 25342, Chicago, IL 60625) Amy Maraj ~Aug 2006
On her new album Black Cadillac, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash opens the door to a world of loss, hers. Her late father, folk legend Johnny Cash, had been her inspiration and idol. But Rosanne Cash, had lost, not only her father, but also, in the space of two years, her stepmother June Carter Cash, and her mother Vivian Cash Distin. On her earlier 2003 album Rules of Travel, Cash had sung a duet
with her ailing father before he died. "September When It Comes" was a
haunting anticipation of loss. The subject on Black Cadillac is more
forthright, it's the actualization of that loss. "I wish I was a Christian, and knew just what to believe" she whispers on "World Without Sound." Her struggle isn't so much with finding a courageous belief that her father's life had been worthwhile. This she cannot say, or would not, say. Neither can she surmise with any certainty that their lives were lived as they ought to have been. The chink of light she finds is the knowledge that much could have been said, and that, in the presence of love, there could have been more, or better, love. Carving out her usual musical territory with country and western, folk, some rockabilly, and a dab of blues, Black Cadillac possesses a striking unity. Long time fans may not be enthralled by the recent silverscreen biopic Walk The Line, but would find in the album's thirteen songs, a personal epiphany. (Capitol Records) Lee Chung Horn ~Aug 2006
Two years ago, Nick Cave surprised the world by writing The Proposition, a violent Australian western about rape, murder and justice in the outback. With his trusty compatriot Warren Ellis, he also scored the music. Now he's offered up The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, another tilted Western that's less daubed in the sadism of spaghetti westerns than The Proposition, but certainly no less disturbing. The musical score of Jesse James is cocooned in a elegaic, hypnotic shroud that's of a texture with the haunting performances of its stars, Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. Capitalizing on the stylistic silences in the movie where the characters don't speak, Cave and Ellis play with musical cues that they develop into motifs that repeat to simultaneously menacing and pretty effect. "Rather Lovely Thing" is reprised later as "Another Rather Lovely Thing", but its doleful piano and sour fiddle is instantly remembered. "Song for Jesse" a filigree of bells and keyboards that floats like a wisp in the air is probably the phrase most often heard in the movie's score, and, as the story lumbers towards its tragic ending, probably its most poignant. Cave actually appears in the film's last minutes, singing the chestnut folk paean to Jesse James, and in that moment, your mind's arc speeds runs through the man's life, from his early primal punk past through the deep blues period, and then the years as sad balladeer until you stop in the present. It's a fantastic finale, and a golden bouquet to a great artist. (Mute, www.mute.com) Lee Chung Horn
On North Star Deserter, Vic Chesnutt's best moments come on the shorter, quieter songs. The closing track "Rattle" doesn’t make it past the second minute, but its simple lyrics ("Keeping it on the road/Keeping it on the road/Can't say I didn't rattle below/But I'm keeping it on the road") and beautiful acoustic guitar bring you a life-affirming, warm glow. On the jaunty "You Are Never Alone", Chesnutt describes a litany of life-changing events (abortions, religious conversions and heart bypasses) and tells us to simply "keep on keeping on", despite the enormity of such events. With Fugazi’s Guy Piciotto, the entirety of A Silver Mt. Zion and Bruce Cawdron of Godspeed You! Black Emperor along for the ride, no other singer-songwriter this year made a record as affecting as this one. Russ Tomkins ~Jan 2008
Unlike many of their fellow Brits, The Clientele aren’t shoegazers—they’re cloudgazers. Two previous helium-powered albums found them to be a fully formed flotational unit that drifted into oblivion more often than not. This time out, they're tethered to the ground, and ready to look around, finding a happy balance between lilting loveliness like the folky "From Brighton Beach to Santa Monica" and the fey pop of "Bookshop Casanova". (The latter could actually find The Clientele on the dancefloor, however sheepishly.) Throughout, their trademark delicate electric guitar and brushed drums are embellished by tasteful string sections and ethereal pedal steel guitar, elements that elevate a previously one-dimensional band, and help bring their overall haze into a much clearer focus. A perfect start to your summer days. (Merge, www.mergerecords.com) Michael Barclay ~Nov 2007
Comet Gain come from London, and that's something you'd never forget when you play their records. But their London isn't Oxford Street or Piccadilly or Westminster. Rather, it's quiet mews, desperate bedsits, smelly grocers, despondent lives, fag ends, and post-grad smallness. If this description suggests that David Christian's group are a mopey lot, it'd be important to point out that that's strictly not true, either. While it is true Christian does quarter-life crisis with great aplomb and a fetchingly admirable lack of direction, he is also a tune-loving soul, filling his songs with organs and synths that parp along every so charmingly. The band's last album Realistes was a brilliant gem, and City Fallen Leaves, their fifth, is a sturdy follow-up. "White Radiance of Eternity" is all of seven-minutes of fuzz guitar, languorously sweet, but high-spirited as well. "The Fist's in the Pocket" is a queer fish but definitely likeable--check out the chorus where two chummy voices chime a little out of time with each other. "Days I Forgot to Write Down" is dusted with a coat of synths that threaten to vaporize if Christian shouted a little louder. The emotions, of course, are deeper, as they always are with Christian. For example, his protagonist on "The Punk Got F**ked" struggles with ennui: "Should I stay and fight, or go out tonight or just turn out the lights?" Between backbeat and longing, we reckon Comet Gain's trajectory is going to run, and run. (Kill Rock Stars, www.killrockstars.com) Russ Tomkins ~ March 2006
In his decade-long career as the maestro of art-rock pack the Danielson Famile, Daniel Smith has practically defined the term "cult artist." His records-- all of them highly conceptual paeans to God -- occupy the outermost left end of the left field. Filled with unpredictable twists and turns, Smith's songs can be frustratingly exhausting, or downright incomprehensible. Vocally, Smith is also a challenge. Indie rock audiences have a lot of patience for non-conventional, non-attractive voices, but Smith's may take the cake. Still, his fervent cult find, in his bleats, splutters and yelps, a ragged joy that's infectious and wholly celebratory. On Ships, Smith shortens his band name to Danielson, and makes the best album of his career. It's also possibly the best album of 2006. Filled to the gills with a irresistibly triumphant, sonic bluster, it's beautiful, dense, chaotic, and all of these descriptors fail to even capture a tenth of what's captured in the record's grooves. For the record, Smith brought together some 20 musicians including West Coast brethren Deerhoof, Famile folks, Anticon member Why?, rock band Serena Maneesh, folksters Half-Handed Cloud, and longtime associate Sufjan Stevens. Collectively, the album rocks out in a way that precious few other indie releases this year have dared to do. The music rises and rises, fearless and proud. For instance, on "Ship the Majestic Suffix", the chords build to nearly breaking point, before allowing a release that's in itself a climax of contrasts. This album was a difficult first listen for me because I was unprepared for its denseness. By the second play, Ships had revealed itself to be a powerful record, one that's unafraid to play by its own, squawking rules, and take you captive on a wild ride. (Secretly Canadian, www.secretlycanadian.com) Lee Chung Horn ~Aug 2006
On two tracks, he sounds like Morrissey, on the others, Damon Albarn. But singer-songwriter Murray Lightburn is not just another North-American with a stiff Brit accent, and his Montreal-based band The Dears more than a Blighty-obsessed get-up. In fact, No Cities Left is a choreography of emotions so raw you'd blush. But the soul-deep performances burn with a fierce originality that surprises you, while the lyrics ("Two days have passed/And all I want is to feel better/They won't be back/And the long weekend is coming up/I left the house/It was just to see you for an hour") turn with a deftness that convinces you that Montreal may be experiencing a creative awakening after nine years or so of moldy post-rock. Released quietly in 2004, this baby tries to quietly break your heart, and succeeds. (Bella Union, www.bellaunion.com) Lee Chung Horn ~ April 2005
How does one follow up an album as delightful as Apple O' ? As tall as that order may sound, San Francisco art-punks Deerhoof may have achieved it with their new album Milk Man. Again melding high-concept art and pop immediacy, the quartet giggles and blazes its way through a set of songs without paying any mind to the indie rock rulebook. The stakes are higher this time, since Milk Man appears to be a concept album about a Pan-like character who leads children to a heavenly hideaway to kidnap them. Japanese vocalist Satomi Matsuzaki's English remains as endearingly fractured as before. Strangely, even without having to raise her voice much, her presence is never overshadowed by her mates' huge guitar hooks, irregular drum meters and spiraling keyboards. The melodies are big ones on this record, "Milk" features an anthemic chorus, while the free-floating shimmer of "Song of Sorn" effectively rein in the record's more prog-inspired moments. For the weird quotient, Milk Man's high moment must surely be "Dog on the Sidewalk", a lullaby of child-like electronics that folds into its hem a ticker-tape of blips and patter. Very much a band on the rise, it should only be a matter of an album or two before Deerhoof joins the first tier of avant indie rock bands. (5 Rue Christine, POB 1190, Olympia, WA 98507) Len Cho ~June 2004
This is a strange one. Ever heard of Cambodian rock? Well, Long Beach, California has it. Or rather, it has the largest Cambodian community outside of Cambodia in the world today. And if that's a fact, then so's Cambodian rock. Dengue Fever doesn't come from Long Beach, but they may be the first white LA band to play their imagined take on late 60s acid-psych-garage rock. And they have a genuine Cambodian woman from Long Beach singing lead. At the risk of sounding pretentious, this record is sort of like a mid point between the Nuggets compilations and South East Asian gong-and-cymbals bands. Dengue Fever deploys sax, farfisa, drums, bass and electric guitar in a dizzy mix for vocalist Chlom Nimol who, legend has it, sang for the Cambodian royal court before fleeing to the US. As Nimol sings in her native tongue, Dengue Fever may sound like the ultimate niche-market band. But man, is it exotic fun - reverb surf guitars, spooky organs and smooth sax tricks. (Web of Mimicry, www.webofmimicry.com) Toby Small ~Oct 2004
For the better part of a decade, Toronto's Do Make Say Think have been filtering the improvisational sensibility of jazz into post-rock. You, You're a History in Rust is the band's fifth album, and their best. It's less jagged than their earlier music, and suggests a new confidence in emotional investments over abstracted academics. Fans of the Constellation stable of artists would remember DMST's ties to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but over the last three years, DMST have all but jettisoned their early reliance on big crescendos. Choosing to record in rustic barns and then bringing the tapes into a studio, you'd often be thrilled by tape hiss, laughter and improvisatory interludes. All this is evident on You, You're a History in Rust where shimmering guitar sections and prancing woodwind evolve unexpectedly into indie rock idioms. The vocals (when they appear) are bleary---nothing's kept in obsessive focus--- and the songs don't stop when you expect them to. After triumphant codas, DMST often continue to develop and extend their songs for several more minutes, always to astonishing, stunning effect. The two most straight-forward songs are "The Universe!" and "Executioner Blues", where stately piano bump against feedback and beefy drums. (Constellation, POB 42002, Montreal, QC, Canada H2W 2T3) Lee Chung Horn~Jun 2007
Finnish singer Mauri Heikkinen is Drowsy, and his second album Snow on Moss on Stone is an altogether beefier affair than his 2005's tentative Growing Green. The latter cobbled together the work of three to four years, no doubt the lad's wilderness days in the town of Joutseno, and wistful in a Nick Drake-ish way. But something's still missing from the new songs. Many of them feel strained, or too folky--and it becomes an issue if your best song is your most tossed-off. I worry about this because on "Off You Go All Authors" Heikkinen screams-shouts his lyrics, and in the process clarifies himself to me. The stronger blues feel to the way the songs are arranged makes him interesting ("Bakery"), and also the way his soft voice makes like a growl ("Treehouse"). Best song is "Good Od Odd Gold" - it's loud, ballsy, the drums beat your brain to a pulp, and the keyboards twinkle in some kind of freak-folk caper. Mind you, it's an instrumental. (FatCat, PO Box 3400, Brighton, BN1 4WG) Len Cho ~Mar 2006
Short of saying everything Vadim touches turns to gold, there are very few projects that the enigmatic Russian turns his hand to that don't produce a quality product. And his latest collaboration is no exception to that rule. Children of Possibility is imbued with his trademark innovative musical stylings, but it's a group effort in the truest sense of the word. Here Vadim's production draws on an intellectually challenging palette--sitars, Japanese flutes, flamenco guitars, a new-found love of Caribbean dub and funk--drawing these influences together to spit out a polished gem. But it's the two personalities upfront that are the real revelation of this record, in particular Yarra Bravo. Her sultry spoken word and sing-song vocals snake their way around Blu Rum 13's skilful rhymes with a sense of timing and phrasing to rival that of any jazz great. Standouts like "Bluebird" and "Be Your Own" will color your summer. This is hip-hop eclecticism at its best. (Ninja Tune, www.ninjatune.net) Russ Tomkins ~Oct 2005
Has the backlash begun? Why are people saying that Duffy's no good compared to Amy Winehouse? Why has she even been dubbed the new Winehouse? Why are people who contend that she should be called the new Norah Jones making sense? Or is the latter comparison really a back-handed insult? Duffy's voice is richer in texture than Jones's, her melodies are more memorable, and the retro soul-pop arrangements of her three producers less insipid. But like Jones, Duffy is sorely lacking in the personality department. Her schtick is that of a fragile lass-next-door. She needs to be seen to stand up more, something her very good voice would easily help her to do. Top-dog producer Bernard Butler competently dresses the songs in retro-Motown vibes but foolishly throws in some saxophone-sprinkled sentimentality along the way. As Simon Cowell would say with that nasty shrug of his, it's a pity. (Mercury, www.mercuryrecords.com) Len Cho~April 2008
Check hot Boston rapper Edan's new manifesto: it's saved his life. On his new album's lead single "I See Colours", he declares: "Prince Paul already used this loop/But I'ma keep it movin'/And put you up on the scoop." His take is this: yes, it's been done before, so what; it's never been done this way. This new realization earns him a tray of kudos: suddenly he's no longer the jokey brainiac he was on his debut LP Primitive Plus, but someone wiser, someone who's made the leap to "serious artist". "I See Colours" is stunningly replete with 60s jangle and gurgling Moog effects, but it's only one among a brilliant set that runs from the homage gush "Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme" to the spooky "Murder Mystery" to the mock-horror sampledelic fest of "Torture Chamber". Beauty and the Beat is also a rock n' roll record, which may seem to be a surprising aspiration for a hip-hop artist if you forget the fact that Mos Def did pretty much the same thing last year. So we get references to Black Sabbath, Velvet Underground, and Talking Heads; only in Edan's hands, it's refreshing and effective in a way that Def's record was not. On the record's second half are three sample-packed masterpieces that mash drum loops, found sounds, strings, feedback, and Moog into a potpourri that complements Edan's MC skills to devastating effect. Possibly the best hip-hop album of the year already. (Lewis Records) Lee Chung Horn ~ July 2005
While musing on the current fashion for all things 80s and English, I've often wondered why nobody has tried to be Echo & The Bunnymen to go with Bloc Party's ersatz Gang of Four impression and Interpol's Joy Division stylings. Naturally, it was only a matter of time. And if you're going to wear your influences on your sleeve, they may as well be good ones. Thus, among suitable moody black-and-white photography, Editors have the choppy and trebly Crocodiles-era guitars in place. The lyrics sometimes try to sound all profoundly philosophical: "All sparks will burn out in the end." And Tom Smith is unashamedly going for McCulloch's dewy-toned, detached vocal mannerisms. In their favor, unlike some of the other revivalists abounding, their hearts seem to be in it. Parts of the record stand up well, and may grow on you. The opening "Lights" has all the overt elements, its bleak lost romance ideal fodder for their hometown Birmingham's urban greyness. The following "Munich" adds some early U2 martial drumming to the template. "Blood" is even more anthemic-some listeners will make the Killing Joke connection in more than the title. Thieving from past greats is one of the fine traditions of rock--the trick is to add something to make it your own. Taken in isolation, The Back Room is not a bad record. But it does pale in comparison to its all-too-apparent antecedents. (Kitchenware, www.kitchenwarerecords.com) Ross Clelland ~Sep 2005
Casual music listeners often find it difficult to appreciate electronic artist Ekkehard Ehlers' music. (If they stumble across his works, that is.) To be sure, Ehlers is often esoteric. The Frankfurt-based musician clearly derives greater pleasure in the rigorous discourse of music abstraction than the instant vivaciousness of pop. But on "A Life With Fear", he undertakes a departure of sorts. No, Ehlers has not jumped ship to jostle with the hundreds of young hopefuls that throng the pop marketplace. Rather, he's made a blues album. On his own, distinctive, sampling terms. Using the blues more as a starting point and a concept than as a blueprint, Ehlers transplants the vocals of traditional blues songs onto the blues guitar playing of his long time collaborator Joseph Suchy. The opener "Ain´t No Grave" is created using this structure, only towards the end, Ehlers slowly pulls apart the said blues elements to reclaim his distinctive of abstraction. Then there is "Frozen Absicht", in which Ehlers and Suchy begin an improvised piece that gathers a set of blues elements, and then abstracts them to a degree that would make it hard to perceive the song as a blues in any alternate context. If you fear that the theorizing that goes on in this type of music would make for a bloodless record, you'd be surprised by how emotional it all sounds. Perhaps it's the power of the blues genre, but it's also probably because Ehlers is, never mind his claim that he's just a record collector, a brilliant conceptualist. In what is the most heart-rending moment of "A Life Without Fear"-- the suite of "Misrodzi" and "Maria & Martha" -- the first a mourning song for a death in the family and the second a slow meditation paraphrased with a symphonic grandeur, an elegaic trumpet and Suchy's eloquent guitar take the listener on a journey through decades of the greatest blues. (Staubgold, www.staubgold.com) Lee Chung Horn ~Oct 2006
Ekkehard Ehlers is one of the most intriguing figures in electro-acoustic music today. In the last three years, he has been increasingly noticed, particularly through his acclaimed Plays series of EPs. The latter, an exploration of avant personalities like Albert Ayler and Cornelius Cardew, sees Ehlers digitally processing interpretations of their compositions. The end-product blurs the line between 'classical' and 'punk', and audaciously presents old work as new art. Despite its name, Politik Braucht Keinen Feind (or 'Politics doesn't need Enemies') doesn't sound political. With the emphasis here being compositional, it also sounds less improvisatory than Ehlers' earlier works. The opening "Maander" is a study for bass clarinet. Here, Ehlers drums together a large collection of bass clarinet tracks and kneads them into sluggish chords. A clarinet's tone is transformed digitally into loops, and the track's final section dissolves into a cascade of synthesized bells. "Blind" sounds almost romantic despite its minimalist structure, while the closer "Woolf Phrase" flips a string ensemble into a sometimes uneasy, sometimes joyous work. It's 21 minutes of electro-acoustic epiphany---turn down the lights, put your feet up and listen without prejudice. (Staubgold Records, www.staubgold.com) Lee Chung Horn ~March 2004
The Morr set have an identity problem. Musos who've liked their output have in recent years overdosed on the label's brand of laptop electronica - unique for being slight (or too polite), melodic (or twee), and white (not possessive of a funky bone at all). The problem is not that there is no identity but that the identity has become stale. The young Florida duo of Electric President--Ben Cooper and Alex Kane--don't have a perfect solution to this, but coming from across the Atlantic, and walking into the crisis as they have, they do thankfully have a partial one. Their eponymous album is another pot of pretty, percolating electro-pop, but it's addled with a strange measure of hip-hop that shifts it toward fatter, funkier latitudes. If you're sick of another Ben Gibbard voice, you'd be pleased to find here feisty rock guitars, and lyrics that don't have to just hang on your sleeve all the time. There's some delight to all this: instrumentally, Electric President are less slick compared to their German labelmates, and Cooper's voice cracks in a way pleasing enough to suggest electronica could do with some mess. It doesn't work all the time - opener "Good Morning, Hypocrite" sounds derivative and fussy, and "Grand Machine No. 12" underworked. Maybe Morr is beginning to realize there is a need for invention. If so, Cooper's fumbling way with his mutter ("Goddammit!") may be the first swim to a new shore before we all get IDM'ed to death. (Morr, www.morrmusic.com) Lee Chung Horn ~March 2006
One of the greatest ironies punk has ever had to face up to is the importance of history. For a musical genre (and socio-cultural movement) that embraces the rejection of the establishment -- kill your idols, indeed --history became little more than something to trample on while you rush on to create the new. The irony is: as much as punk repudiated history, it has now itself, 30 years on, become the subject of history. And this, surprisingly, is not only welcome but hugely enjoyable, too. In 1976, 15-year-old Londoner Susan Whitby renamed herself Lora Logic and joined her buddy Marion "Poly Styrene" Elliot to form X-Ray Spex. Logic's enthusiastic saxophone squawks on the band’s first single, "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!", presaged an enlargement of the punk perimeter. She later left X-Ray Spex to form Essential Logic, a punk ensemble that is the subject of Fanfare in the Garden. Logic threw herself into her new music, her honking sax may not always be pretty but layered over a danceable groove, it made for an exciting agit-pop. Logic's voice, too, was something you took notice of: it went from falsetto to rough babble, always unusual, sometimes scary. This two-disc collection (featuring history-intensive liner notes by Greil Marcus) is an important post-punk document. You may not have heard Essential Logic the first time around, but between the angular dance of "Quality Crayon Wax O.K." and the death disco of "Brute Fury", you will doubtless trace lines to today's punk-funk practitioners you never knew existed before. (Kill Rock Stars, www.killrockstars.com, POB 418, 120 NE State Ave, Olympia, WA 98501) Lee Chung Horn ~March 2004
Three years between albums is a long time in the hyper-real world of experimental electronic music. But that's how long it's taken Austrian wunderkind Christian Fennesz to create a followup to 2000's groundbreaking Endless Summer. Venice is Fennesz's fourth studio full-length album, and, already on first impressions, a very important addition to his canon. The laptop composer had been kept busy in the three years, not just with touring but also with remixing and musical collaborations. So it's a supreme delight that Venice comes across as an unhurried, and attentively crafted work. Continuing the playful dalliance with pop first sampled on Endless Summer, Venice is pretty and accessible. "Rivers of Sand", the album's opening track tacks cavernous bass notes to sheets of feedback. "The Other Face" offers up another surprise--vocal samples were never a staple in Fennesz's music--but here they flit in and out of a repeated cycle of buzzing like disembodied spirits in search of release. The album's two highlights, depending on your preference, would either be "Circassian" or "Transit". Fans of Fennesz are always able to hear the latter's My Bloody Valentine fixation. Well, they would thrill to "Circassian", a manipulation of mutated power chords that wouldn't feel out of place on Isn't Anything. On the other hand, "Transit" features David Sylvian on vocals, and locates its still, focussed beauty on a lone organ. Quite obviously, Fennesz is a musician who's not afraid to spend as much time as he needs fashioning melodies and pursuing that perfect texture. For that unique quality alone, we should be grateful. (Touch, www.touchmusic.org.uk) Lee Chung Horn ~June 2004
Minimal techno is ground zero in hip this year, but a great album in this genre needs to do more than split the difference between a mere whittling down and still preserving a big moment for melodic effect. Swedish producer Axel Willner accomplishes the remarkable: he dumps the listener in the deep end from the get go, enveloping him with a wistful simplicity with micro-slivers of musical information. With a technique that suggests Steve Reich as much as Jeff Mills, From Here We Go Sublime is 2007’s most luxuriant record. Lee Chung Horn ~Jan 2008
Do you like Dungeons and Dragons? If you do, you might be thoroughly impressed by He Poos Clouds. The latter is private universe unto itself, the type of fantasy world geeks and idiot-savants lock themselves in, because it's just so much more absorbing than real life. Final Fantasy is really Owen Pallett, a composer-violinist who's part of Canadian band The Arcade Fire. Listening to the record, even if you don't understand all the magical imagery that get's thrown around, you get the feeling that one man and his violin has multiplied himself and his instrument, and the swooping, keening strings are part of an elaborate spell that gets more exciting at each turn. Pallett's first album Has A Good Home was well received by cult audiences, but He Poos Clouds should win him even more fans. The album's liner notes wisely pronounce that Pallett intends it to a "preposterous statement of devotion" to defuse the type of seriousness often attributed to music written for a string quartet and voice. The opening 'Arctic Circle' introduces a soft swell of voices, while the title song is more ambitious, and lavishly arranged. On this song, Pallett passionately declares: "Gotta rescue Michael from the White Witch! Gotta find and kill my shadow self! Gotta dig up every secret seashell!". "Many Lives ->49mp" reveals Pallett to be one of the finest young songwriters around-it's succinct, literate, melodic and breathtakingly masterful. If new talents like Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird floated your boat last year, don't miss out on a man who won't be a closely-guarded secret for very long. (Tomlab, www.tomlab.de) Russ Tomkins~Sep 2006
After a six year sabbatical from the 4hero project, Marc and Dego have returned with a beautiful, funk-filled breaks and R&B album. Picking up where Creating Patterns left off, each track has the same esoteric tonality and addictive vocal hook of former anthems such as "Hold it Down", "Starchasers," and "Another Day." The progression from hardcore through jungle and drum & bass to soulful breaks finally seems to have resolved itself with an unmistakable signature sound always hinted at by the previous transitions. Their music is more organic than ever, and almost every track is accompanied by a host of familiar vocalists including Carina Anderson of "Les Fleur" fame and poetic collaborative mainstay Ursula Rucker. R&B legend Larry Mizell also guests on the eponymous album track and there are contributions from Bembe Segue and Little Brother's Phonte. From the first moment, it's apparent that 4hero are back in full effect with warm bass lines, pristine instrumentation, lightly sprinkled beats, and richer textures than ever before, but it does not become much evident until the end quite how much their music has matured. This finally feels like the 4hero sound Marc and Dego have always been striving for. (Raw Canvas, www.rawcanvasrecords.co.uk) Len Cho ~Aug 2007
The facts: Charlotte Gainsbourg has a famous father Serge. Her notorious, debut splash in 1984 portrayed her as a Lolita-esque nymphet. In 1986, she made a forgettable, and forgotten debut synth-drenched album, Charlotte For Ever, which accompanied a film of the same name. Her biggest turn came with the 2003 movie 21 Grams in which she had a small, but riveting part. Now, she has returned with her sophomore, full-length. And the verdict is 5:55 is a slight album, neither offensive nor groundbreaking. It has similarities to her 2002 guest spot with Badly Drawn Boy and even her 2001 spoken word appearance for Madonna, but ultimately, its cooing tones add little to the family musical legacy. Gainsbourg's fans would argue that her whispery, London-accented vocals (her mother is English actress Jane Birkin) belies her considerable interpretive powers. And certainly, she sounds sexy and not loopy on the groove-locked "The Operation"; and her moan about being "drunk here on the edge of space" on "Af607105" sounds thankfully nothing like William Shatner. Tellingly, too, the album's other contributors all sound too timid. Nigel Godrich's production work falls into lounge camp; Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon proffer witty lines that come off sounding lightweight. The whole pastiche may be stylish, but brewed in the shadow of Gainsbourg's huge shadow, it's hardly immortal. Len Cho~June 2007
Let's cut to the chase: The Odd Couple isn't going to better St Elsewhere given the colorful, anything-goes brilliance of the latter, and - it doesn't. It is a lot flatter, mood-wise and music-wise. Cee-Lo seems to be mining a manner of self-doubting, gut-searching soul music, singing about isolation and uncertainty on almost every track. In this way, he's become more focussed. He's not just banging things together the way he often did on St Elsewhere. On his side, Dangermouse has made his beats muddier and less taste-of-the-moment, which means you get a pot of warm 60s grooves. "Surprise" samples The 5th Dimension, "Going On" twists up a load of sunny organ and hand-claps, and "Charity Case" even has Cee-Lo copying the ooh-aah backing vocals from Sam Cooke's "Chain Gang". But The Odd Couple is also crazy because Dangermouse's beats are darker and more psychedelic, and trip hop heads would swear "Open Book" takes a page from Tricky. Why Gnarls have chosen this road is anyone's guess, just don't miss out on this record--it's just going to be an important transitional record till the next, hopefully, out-of-this-world one. (Atlantic, www.atlanticrecords.com) Lee Chung Horn ~April 2008
Whether they were rocking out on "Jeeze Louise" or just keeping time with the stately, Phillip Glass-inspired "Oxygen/Auxsend", Jason Lyte and his band Grandaddy has submitted their final essay on a career that swung from functional to stellar. Their sound drew comparisons with Sparklehorse and Mercury Rev but they didn't have the former's weird, sweet tangents, or the latter's oftentimes earthshaking space-rock experimentations. Grandaddy were more earthbound, but their pop songs on a good day had no rival. "Rear Window" on this final album is an example, simple, unadorned and perfect. "Elevate Myself" veers to electro-pop, while Lyte, who's always been good with mid-tempo numbers, stands the course with an outstanding "Campershell Dreams". You would never have guessed that this was a band in the throes of implosion, but you'd be thankful for another of life's strange ironies--often the best stuff comes at the end. (V2, www.V2music.com) Amy Maraj~Oct 2006
I've been a fan of David Grubbs for so long that I've learned to read his musical signatures like the veins on the back of my hand. Grubbs's long shed the math-rock tics of his youth - when he played in Louisville's seminal Bastro and Squirrel Bait. He still shows a fondness for the avant-folk touches and spacey repetitions that distinguished his collaborative work with Jim O'Rourke in Gastr del Sol, but his latter-day solo work is best characterized by a desire to cut the encircling communications, and get dirty and direct. Rickets and Scurvy was a startlingly good album because it rocked, and really more because it enjoyed so heartily the levity of the change. Grubbs' new A Guess at the Riddle finds him continuing his search for heartfelt poppiness. The record opens with "Knight Errant", a sassy assertion of self-determination. Grubbs sings "I'll choose the next/I'll choose whatever's next" atop a shimmering bed of twelve-string and electric guitar. It's amazingly confident, and casual, at the same time. "A Cold Apple" picks up the thread, hanging loose and flying like a ball that's just been batted out the field. Indeed, the locomotive thrill of Grubbs' new songs now comes from Mice Parade's Adam Peirce, who drums on most of the tracks. The upbeat tempo later slows down on "Wave Generators", a track that features lyrics from Ice Storm author Rick Moody and cello from Nikos Veliotis. As the mood continues to shift to reflective on Mayo Thompson's pristine "Magnificence as Such", you'd begin to pick up lyrical clues to the conundrum of the album's title. This is when the album's numerous references to rain, fog, convection, and storms become unmistakeable. My guess is Grubbs has tried to compose a concept album, and he's decided that the best way to avoid pretentiousness is to loosely string together a stream of water imagery that converges on nature's endless cycle of the elements. He's succeeded on this count, and his collaborators (including Calexico's Thomas Belhom and singer Hannah Marcus) have fallen in behind him, to make this record as inventive and vibrant as any in his canon. (Drag City, POB 476867, Chicago, IL 60647) Lee Chung Horn ~ Aug 2004
London quintet Hot Chip is hot property. They have the ultra-cool veneer of Junior Boys, but are equal-opportunity funsters who'd do anything to play the fool at your party. Certainly, their two recent singles "Over and Over" and "Boy From School" have fired up expectations for their next record. Well, the latter has now arrived in the shape of Made in the Dark, an album that's, surprisingly, so stuffed with contradictions that the howl of their fans might just drown out the sleek sonics contained within its tracks. Problem #1: the band has chosen to string together so many genres and musical options that it's hard, on the first few listens, to locate the easy charm of their earlier work. The second fault is about half of the songs are more self-conscious constructions than inspired creations. Of course, Hot Chip's ballads have always been delicious, and here they again do the better service to the band's songwriting skills. For example, with its meandering vocal melody, a bright beat, and a blanket of reverbed vocals, "We're Looking for a Lot of Love" is easily the record's highlight. Another brilliant moment is the gospel exercise of "In the Privacy of Our Love". A third pleasing touch is the title track whose languid chill recommends it for future remixes. But there isn't much more. So, Hot Chip has not quite bettered The Warning, and to do better, they'd have to go back to the drawing board, and rethink their modus operandi for the future. (Astralwerks, www.astralwerks.com) Len Cho
We were leery of the hype when both Spin and Rolling Stone ran full page features of these French guys in their 'Breaking Artists' section. But circumspection and analysis be damned, † is very well the dance album of 2007, no, make that album of the 2007. There is nothing immoderate about this record, it's in-your-face, brassy, fluid, bass-heavy, shimmery, dealing two big hands when one would've sufficed. No, Justice's not the next Daft Punk simply because they've outshone Daft Punk, and if you didn't heed the advance warning of infectious 2006 single 'We Are Your Friends,' you only have yourself to blame. In the ensuing process, Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay slipped in a jawdropping hit remix of Simian's 'Never Be Alone' and it -- their earlier mixes of Britney Spears, NERD and Fatboy Slim -- was all history. While the fact that Auge and de Rosnay were graphic design students explains their love of the lurid pop-art ethos favored by the Parisian Ed Banger Records label, it offers up no answer as to the origins of their musical genius. The latter is an overflowing cup. 'D.A.N.C.E.' features a chorus of children's voices, backed by disco orchestration and springy bass lines. Whether it's truly a tribute song to Michael Jackson as they've claimed in interviews or not, it's an amazing song, pumping excitement and hope in a genre that's become increasingly formulaic and jaded. 'New Jack' utilizes a spliced, jittery vocal effect; and dreamy synths introduce 'Valentine', interspersed with static, and ultimately backed by a dance beat comparable to 'We Are Your Friends'. It buries a sample of Britney Spears' 'Me Against The Music inside its beats. Pundits would point out that 'The Party' incorporates the vocals of rising star Uffie, but the latter's association with Ed Banger doesn't make for a recommendation anymore, given how big Justice has now blown. Elsewhere the record deploys samples ranging from Devo to obscure tracks like 'Goblin's Tenebre', but never in a manner that's showboating or obstentatious. Turn down the lights, crank up the system, and hear for yourself if † isn't the find of the year. (Vice, www.vicerecords.com) Lee Chung Horn~Aug 2007
Any indie rocker over the age of 35 who's kept any watch over the heyday of guttersnipe punk is likely to have a level of familiarity above a vestige with retard-garage revivalists Royal Trux. But eversince Neil Michael Hagerty said goodbye to Jennifer Herrema, the argument has been going like this: she does her thing, and he does his better. The latter has meant that all of Hagerty's Drag City solo albums have been about rescuing the blues from the far shore of irrelevance by either ghettoizing the idiom's canonized techniques or giving 'all comers what they want. All Night Fox, like its predecessors, embraces both approaches. It's a mad patois of southern harmolodic skank, Motown-splashed rock, and 60s Texas garage. Referencing the Count Five and Monks, Hagerty plays like a brain-addled guitar hero bumping against his mates which, this time round, includes July McClure (purportedly the daughter of a Vegas bandleader), erstwhile mechanic Lynn Madison, and drummer Peter Denton, "a confirmed, hard-living Aries" who also straps on second guitar. If hickweed orneriness, irony and freakhouse showiness turn you on, you're at the right address, sir. (Drag City, www.dragcity.com) Lee Chung Horn~Feb 2006
The storyline goes like this: young lass busting her behind trying to make it in the Toronto music scene discovers local music hero was her long lost uncle, reunites with him, and gets him to help with her debut record. Such was Kathryn Calder's serendipitous history, but, with or without her uncle New Pornographer Carl Newman, it's inevitable her strong voice and musical talent would have got her a spin in the limelight sooner or later. Calder (who also sang all over Twin Cinema) performs the indie style best called "power pop". Her band Immaculate Machine has only two other members, but you'd never guess it - their loud keyboard-driven, harmony-laden tunes chronicle the trials of middle-class white adolescence without, surprise, sounding whiney in any way. Someone said they should land OC appearances, and it's a true statement. But maybe that's unfair as well since the album's first four cuts alone drop like fruit heavy with genuine sweetness. Opening track "Broken Ships" cuts to the chase with a winsome grace, while "So Cynical" and "No Way Out" burn like emotional bonfires lusting for release. A convincing case that earnestness doesn't always have to mean you're inexperienced. (Mint, POB 3613, Vancouver, BC V6B 3Y6) Lee Chung Horn ~Feb 2006
Two years on, it's easy to see why Turn on the Bright Lights was so divisive. Interpol avoided format and formula, they had nothing but disdain for the radio single route, and were happier communicating dread and discomfiture than singing about breaking up with your girlfriend. Two years on, it's also easy to see how the band connected with their fanbase - their music was so visceral and affecting. But in retrospect, Turn on the Bright Lights also sounded, strangely, more like a sophomore album than a debut. Its songs were truculent and ill-tempered, like a statement from a very popular band trying to withdraw from what it perceives as overexposure and sellout. Well, Interpol's new Antics is no reinvention, repetition, or repudiation. Paul Banks and his mates are still doing their stuff in a world grown smaller, meaner and more fearful. The new music is very heavy but very pristine at the same time. Some of the muddiness of the debut album has been scoured away, leaving behind a clarity that throws the band's musical singularity into sharp focus. "Next Exit" jarringly opens the proceedings, its initial soft percussion and doo-wop organ are surprising counterpoints, but effective. "Narc" will attract interest because its weave of synth strings recalls the major lift of Joy Division's early work. This, plus the deliberateness of "A Time to be So Small" evokes the haunted chill of Ian Curtis's vocals around the time of Closer. The album's middle section features three rather epic-sounding songs: "Take You on a Cruise", "Not Even Jail", and "Public Pervert", all of which display a confidence that suggests Interpol has only just started to make great music. This is a band that's stingy on the laughs - you may not understand why this record is called Antics - but there's no debate they have scored another bull's eye. (Matador, www.matadorrecords.com) Lee Chung Horn
Sam Beam, who is Iron & Wine, is one of those prolific songsters who can pump out album after album of, for the most part, flawless tunes. On his new The Shepherd's Dog, Beam explores a variety of sounds, eschewing for the most part the minimal lullaby style of Our Endless Numbered Days. The opening "Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car" showcases a repetitive jazz-piano line and reversing sitar-like guitars, but settles you immediately with a genius line that belongs right there with Beam's best work: "Now was a promise made of smoke in a frozen coax of dreams." "White Tooth Man" on the other hand throws old fans for a loop--it's more psychedelic stomp than porch-style folk. Then, as if to challenge us further, Beam trips off on a massive, almost Wilco-like deviation in "Love Song of the Buzzard", cleverly fusing feel-good organ with bluesy slide-guitar. Listeners who loved the Calexico-Iron & Wine collaboration two years ago would be glad for "Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)", an inspired song from those sessions. There's also the clap-heavy single, "Boy with a Coin", the closest thing to straight-ahead pop that Beam has ever done. (Sub Pop, www.subpop.com) Lee Chung Horn ~Nov 2007
Isan are London duo Robin Saville and Antony Ryan. They play laptop pop, and got into the act early in 1998 with Beautronics, an album of brightly struck keyboad tinkles and waifish drum patterns. Although they've not often been regarded as the progenitors of the genre, they influenced a generation of laptop electronica musicians. Now that the subgenre seems about to choke from surfeit, it's interesting to revisit Isan's legacy. As an exhibit item, Meet Next Life does its creators no favors. Although Saville and Ryan have added acoustic guitar and glockenspiel to their music, the new songs float by in a pleasant but non-memorable haze of notes that would have been more stunning if they didn't evaporate that quickly. Also disturbing is the fact that the music has little of a low end. Without a bottom to anchor them, tunes like "Birds Over Barges", "Sat 73" feel suspended and formless. Churlish suggestion or not, I'd say a dance beat would help. (Morr Music, POB 550141, 10371 Berlin) Russ Tomkins ~May 2004
Virðulegu forsetar was first performed in 2003 at Hallgrimskirkja, a large cathedral in Reykjavik, Iceland. Its composer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, decided to later record the piece in the same space, bringing it subsequently into the studio to edit and tuck and weave. The end-result is a bewitching work whose subtle textures and mesmeric motifs are best appreciated in its entirety. This isn't necessarily easy to do because Virðulegu forsetar is a long piece in four parts. For one hour, it patiently repeats a single phrase on trumpets, tubas and French horns, an attractive counterpoint of notes that's hopeful and calming. Early on, this theme has a brassy shrillness, but its tone changes at later passages, becoming faint and hesitant, and coming back at the end - after a stretch of silence almost two minutes - to carry the work towards closure. Jóhannsson is a reputed master of drones in many quarters, but his idiom has never sounded so pretty- shifting in pitch, wandering through tempo changes, and dancing with subsonic electronics. Released last year, this fantastic record - simple and carefully nuanced - received a flurry of critical praise. (Touch, www.touchmusic.org.uk) Lee Chung Horn ~April 2005
Austin, Texas is the kind of town that gives birth to bands who exude a marrow-curdling sense of place. Knife In The Water has that sort of talent in abundance. Over layers of softly reverbed pedal steel, acoustic guitar, and tentatively swished brush, singers Aaron Blount and Laura Krause gently wrap their voices around a bag of sad tales that recall Low, Bedhead and Pinetop Seven. But the five members of this band are not content to conjure up creaky floorboards in the American West, they also dip their fingers in pop and psychedelia. The best example of the former is found in the bright-eyed skip of "Massacre", while the organ-drenched "Threads of Carbon in Watercolor" suggest that the band has a few Doors records in their record collections. The record's saddest moment arrives when Blount diffidently sings: "Well, you can't make someone see what you can't show," on "Lighthouse to the Blind". In that one reductive moment, Knife In The Water sound like haunted ghouls, folks who can't escape their present (and have no wish to) because they know the future mayn't be any better. (Aspyr, POB 5861, Austin, TX 78763) Russ Tomkins ~May 2004
Who would have thought New Jersey and dance-punk would mix, let alone get together and produce a hugely talented child? James Murphy is that child, born in Jersey, but spiritually he'd long ago crossed the Hudson to glittery NYC where, with partner Tim Goldsworthy, he put his stamp on a big closet of club tracks, and, most notably, The Rapture's album Echoes. Murphy's own project LCD Soundsystem got attention in 2002, thanks to one butt-shaking single "Losing my Edge". Then came a string of mostly underground singles that only the ultra-hip know. These singles ("Yeah", "Beat Connection") are now collected on the second of this two-disc collection, while thirsty devotees will gravitate to the new material on the first disc. The new stuff burns rubber: "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" is jerky and punchy like a latter-day Talking Heads song, while "Movement" explores rigidity and fluidity without ever thinking they're inimiscible qualities. "Disco Infiltrator" 's weird funk looks set - like everything else Murphy and Goldsworthy's done - to become a hip classic. Watch out now, the boys are going to cross over again - not a river this time, but continents. (DFA, www.dfarecords.com) Lee Chung Horn ~April 2005
Lekman’s even friskier on his new album, leaping from asthma inhalers to purple memories of his first kiss to, gosh, faking death to cheat his insurance company! Musically, he’s also extended his reach, dumping a grand bank of strings on opener “And I Remember Every Kiss” and kneading in a sample of the Stylistics’ “Can’t Give you Anything But My Love” on “Sipping On the Sweet Nectar”. A gorgeous pop album to last through the seasons. Len Cho ~Jan 2008
Malkmus is 38, no puppy, and Face The Truth is the new album. It's his third solo outing post-Pavement, and continues the story -- of how his great, ex-band made a slew of truly great records before packing it in, and how we were all shocked by how MOR (or jammy, depending on how you would have it) the first two solo records were. Everyone's holding his breath now: is this one good, or what? Well, Face the Truth is a mixed bag. It's a guitar album (check out "Pencil Rot" 's towering guitar solo), but the golden boy has fallen in love with synthesizers. Yes, even to the point they're on the same song. Hence, the guitar-encrusted "Pencil Rot" opens with a squelchy synthesizer that rocks like a rough Human League figure. This eclecticism continues with "It Kills", which references Pig Lib's extended guitar fantasies but reigns in largesse sufficiently to serve up, ta-da, a lightly toasted pop song buttered with sinewy edges. Then, "No More Shoes" noodles on for a full five minutes before returning to Earth, at which point Malkmus reports for work with one final vocal verse. Verdict: he's virtuosic, yes, but not wanky; his guitar work is better, peppered with spontaneity and an elegant phrasing. For me, the album's other highlights include the fuzzy "Baby, C'mon", and "Freeze the Saints", the latter for its hang-dog bathos. Newcomers to Malkmus should have their socks knocked off; geriatrics may stop holding their breath, and draw new hope--you can age gracefully without existential sag. (Matador, 625 Broadway NYC 10012) Lee Chung Horn ~July 2005
What are the possibilities of the duet form? Plenty - if you are as well versed in music history as Canadian songstress Carolyn Mark. One could zoom in on the appeal of the novelty tune, or the man-versus-woman bedroom fight. Then there's the duet that trades verses, then meets in the choruses. Mark knows all of this. She's brought more to the table, serving up duets with a host of Canadian collaborators who share her dark-eyed humor and hard-boiled emotion. Just Married's songs (some written by Mark or her guests, some covers) are built on some very familiar templates. "Fireworks" with NQ Arbuckle conjures up Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, while the saucy "Done Something Wrong" with Ford Pier could almost be a country version of any R n' B tune by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. On all the songs, the singers sound like they're having a ball, making Just Married the most down-homey record Mark has ever made. "Rocket Piano Man", which splices David Bowie's "Space Oddity" with Elton John's "Rocket Man" is the album's only misstep, its laugh-a-second vibe is an awkward fit on an albums of melodrama and claws. Near the record's end, Mark sings with Frog Eyes' Carey Mercer. "Claxton's Lament" is going to be a shock to folks who haven't heard Mercer before. His voice a wound-up stage whisper, it rides roughly over Mark's sweet tones, all but crushing it. Mark has riffed on a previous album on the pros and cons of collaboration. On this one, the pros win out. (Mint, POB 3613, Vancouver, BC V6B 3Y6) Len Cho ~Feb 2006
Carolyn Mark is some gal. She’s been cast as the hardest working woman in the Victoria, British Columbia honky tonk music scene, a descriptor she’d earned after her wide-ranging gigs leading the Bad Bad Boys and then Her Room Mates, partnering Neko Case as the Corn Sisters, working on a tribute album to Robert Altman’s 1975 cult movie Nashville and now fronting a new collective called the New Best Friends. Her new album The Pros and Cons of Collaboration may not quite be a treatise on friendship and covenant. But it’s rollicking fun and piled full of her trenchant humor and big-hearted nous. While Mark's older albums have often cast her as the gin-soaked life of the party, this time around she's reined herself in. She’s assembled a strong portfolio of songs about human relationships, all cribbed from her observations of human foibles and the most down-at-heel of life’s moments. Her songs are as robust than ever, they’re often dressed up like heartfelt folk until you hear the words and feel the sting of blood. "Chantal and Leroy" and "Yanksgiving" are songs written on her travels on the road. The former describes Mark crashing at her friends’ pad: "I was a guest/in a sublet love nest/Waylon and Willie on the Harmon Kardon." After a round of after-dinner drinks, she heads out with her hosts to check out a bar band, only to return doused and disappointed. In the morning, while making a trip to the bathroom, she passes the open door to her hosts' bedroom, and sees them asleep and naked. The sight upsets her, violating what had been a pleasant enough evening, and forever coloring it. The odd feeling of discomfiture compels her to leave, and she awkwardly does without saying goodbye. "Yanksgiving" is as catchy and worlds happier, it describes Mark’s Thanksgiving at songwriter Jon Rauhouse's cabin in Washington. She has a great time eating and watching TV: "Last thing I remember was Sheryl Crow/in leather pants playing bass on the Farm Aid show/On a pillow and blanket on the orange shag carpet/belly distended and pants undone." Mark sounds like Natalie Merchant at times but she never takes herself as seriously. In fact, the most focused and resonant moment on this record is found on "Not a Doll", a coffeehouse folk tune that features the line "Everything happens either not at all, or at the same time". Elsewhere we’re treated to a pair of covers- The Movie Stars' "Bigger Bed" and Mike McDonald's "Slept All Afternoon" sewn together as a medley. Quite clearly a step forward from 2002’s Terrible Hostess, The Pros and Cons of Collaboration sounds like an album that could break Mark onto a bigger stage. She’s now less concerned with shoring up her brusque, bigger-than-life persona (think "beaver-flavored chips"), and seems willing to delve into a lot more soul searching. And emerging, she's cooler, more focused and more committed. (Mint Records, POB 3613, Vancouver, BC Canada V6B 3Y6, www.mintrecs.com) Lee Chung Horn ~Oct 2004
Rather than carrying over the pompous if rough indie rock of their former band, At The Drive-In, Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez decided to plunge into prog rock with their new project The Mars Volta. Divvying rabid riffing and double kick drums into an aesthetically overpowering apotheosis on De-Loused in the Comatorium, the duo had clearly chosen to move on. Two years on, Frances The Mute is a technically more proficient effort. It has only five tracks but each one is boldly etched in sharply cut meter-changes and guitar polyrhythms. There are very few guitar solos, this being a guitar album notwithstanding. Instead there is tremendous sense of rhythm, and for the duration of its 77 minutes, Frances The Mute never stops chugging. Opening track "Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus" tells the story of an HIV-positive male prostitute, while "Widow" is a rock ballad with an insistent melody. "Cassandra Gemini" runs on for 30 minutes in some kind of macabre circumlocution. Quite possibly already a contender for album of the year. (Universal, www.universalrecords.com) RussTomkins ~Mar 2005
Like almost every other new British rock band these days, Newcastle's Maximo Park worships at the altar of punk forerunners Gang Of Four, the Jam, Buzzcocks, and XTC. What this means is highly creative deployment of four-part harmony vocals, tightly-wound live energy, and bouncy melodies that are as catching as the cold going around your office. Frontman Paul Smith has a charismatic eloquence that makes him a dead ringer for a young Jarvis Cocker. His Geordie accent is all over the record, and is all the more disarming around a line like "You've left your home town, where you grew up/ I hadn't noticed how your accent had changed" ("Signal and Sign"). His irrepressible way with a lyric makes the songs fly ("What are we doing here if romance isn't dead?") while the beautiful "The Coast Is Always Changing" is driven around by strong guitar playing by Duncan Lloyd. Tell me, when was the last time you heard the word "riposte" in a pop song? Well, Smith sings it. On the basis of its considerable attractiveness, A Certain Trigger is unlikely to be lost in the shuffle of new Brit rock albums this year, but you never know. With the London bombs going off, music looks set for a downward slide. But it would be a shame if you missed this smart little cracker. (Warp, www.warprecords.com) Len Cho~July 2005
Rob Mazurek-Sweet and Vicious Like Frankenstein (Mego) As a musician, Rob Mazurek has had a long history. His first connection with the cornet occurred at the age of ten when he began playing the instrument in his school band. He later played in Chicago where his early hard bop style earned him a residency in Edinburgh's 1993 Fringe Festival. While his 1995 album Badlands still bore vestiges of these fairly traditional roots, Mazurek was, by then, hearing a new sound, and yearning to move on. The siren call, a combination of less anchored influences ranging from Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Henry Threadgill, climaxed in the formation of a new ensemble, the Chicago Underground Orchestra. Mazurek devoted his time to the Chicago Underground Orchestra but was also a frequent player in Chicago's fertile post-rock movement. His contributions to records by Tortoise, Stereolab, Sam Prekop, and Gastr del Sol made him a figure of interest to rockers. His new album, Sweet and Vicious Like Frankenstein, however, sees him laying down his horn, to work with electronics and computer programming. The record is on the avant-leaning Mego label, so it's not surprising that Sweet and Vicious is a very digital, and often times, rarefied-sounding, record. The first track, "Body Parts (Spectral White)", which runs on for 37 minutes, is composed of a stream of field recordings (hissing pipes, soft drones, watery gurgles, and metallic clanging) and IDM-influenced keyboard passages. The record's other track (there are only two tracks), "Electric Eels (In Half Light)", is darker and louder. Its harmonics build like a textured squall, and unless you're utterly focussed, it would be easy to be distracted by the track's lack of a melody line. Fans of Mazurek's highly rhythmic style with the Chicago Underground may come away disapppointed with this rather experimental record. It's unclear if Mazurek would stay with this style for his future work. What's certain is: Mazurek wouldn't have had the chops to make a record like this if he hadn't been the fearless innovator that he is. For that, we should be thankful. (Mego, www.mego.at) Lee Chung Horn ~Aug 2004
Bluegrass from the Lone Star state served up with fiery flavors and bottom-of-the-glass bathos - that's what The Meat Purveyors specialize in. On their fifth album, Pain By Numbers, the band's melodies are more delicious than ever, their lyrics smart as hell, and their throats fetchingly hoarse. "How can I be so thirsty today when I had so much to drink last night?" is one of just too many lines that anyone who hides a soft spot for whiskey would appreciate. Certainly the band continues to fly against the wisdom that country music thrives on a hit-or-miss relationship with joking around. But The Purveyors aren't clowns; and Pain By Numbers isn't an attempt at making a hit comedy. While humor underpins most of the songs, the album's dark moments are challenging and cheese-free. A putdown like "Her boyfriend is as useless as tits on a bull" is more wicked than slapstick, and when when guitarist/songwriter Bill Anderson spins a line like "Now I'm chasing three aspirin with a tall-boy/To get this pressure off my head", you'd immediately appreciate the band's mining for desperation, not laughs. There are excellent covers of Dusty Springf |
!!!-Myth Takes (Warp)
Air-Pocket Symphony (Astralwerks)
Ellen Allien-Thrills
(Bpitch Control)
Animal
Collective-Sung Tongs (FatCat)
Keren Ann-Keren Ann (Blue Note/EMI)
Architecture in Helsinki-In Case We Die (Bar/None)
Arctic Monkeys-Whatever People Say I Am, That's
What I'm Not (Domino)
Art Brut-Bang Bang Rock and Roll
(Fierce Panda)
Bastro-Diablo Guapo/Sing the Troubled Beast
(Drag City)
Beirut-Gulag Orkestar (Ba Da Bing!)
Belle
& Sebastian -The Life Pursuit (Matador)
Be Your Own Pet-Get Awkward
(XL / Ecstatic Peace)
Black
Ox Orkestar-Ver Tanzt? (Constellation)
Bloc
Party-Silent Alarm (Wichita/V2)
Bright Eyes-Cassadaga (Saddle Creek)
Calexico-
Garden Ruin (Quarterstick)
Rosanne
Cash-Black Cadillac (Capitol)
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis-The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
(Mute)
Vic Chesnutt--North Star Deserter (Constellation)
The Clientele-God Save The Clientele (Merge)
Comet
Gain-City Fallen Leaves (Kill Rock Stars)
Danielson-Ships
(Secretly Canadian)
The Dears-No Cities Left (Bella Union)
Deerhoof-Milk
Man (5 Rue Christine)
Dengue
Fever-Dengue Fever (Web of Mimicry)
Do Make Say Think-You, You're a History in Rust
(Constellation)
Drowsy-Snow on Moss on Stone (FatCat)
DJ Vadim presents One Self-Children of Possibility
(Ninja Tune)
Duffy-Rockferry
(Mercury)
Edan-Beauty and the Beat (Lewis)
Editors-The Back Room (Kitchenware)
Ekkehard Ehlers-A Life Without Fear (Staubgold)
Ekkehard Ehlers-Politik braucht keinen Feind (Staubgold) 
Electric President - Electric
President (Morr)
Essential Logic-Fanfare in the Garden: An
Essential Logic Collection (Kill Rock Stars) 
The Field-From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)
Final Fantasy He Poos Clouds (Tomlab)
4hero-Playing with the Changes (Raw Canvas)
Charlotte Gainsbourg-5:55 (Because/Atlantic)
Gnarls Barkley-The Odd Couple
(Atlantic)
Gorillaz-Demon Days (Virgin)
Grandaddy-Just Like The Fambly Cat
(V2)
David
Grubbs-A Guess at the Riddle (Drag City)
Hot Chip-Made in the Dark
(Astralwerks)
Justice-†
(Vice) 
The Howling Hex-All Night Fox (Drag City)
Immaculate Machine-Ones & Zeros (Mint)
Interpol-Antics
(Matador)
Iron & Wine-The Shepherd's Dog
(Sub Pop)
Isan-Meet
Next Life (Morr)
Jóhann
Jóhannsson-Virðulegu forsetar (Touch)
Knife
In The Water-Cut The Cord (Aspyr)
Lali
Puna-Faking the Books (Morr) Truth be said, Faking The Books will disappoint many people.
Listeners who came to Lali Puna, the electronic duo of Markus "Notwist'
Acher and vocalist Valerie Trebeljar, because of their superb 2001 album
Scary World Theory may still be very pleased with the new album's
clean-cut swishes and clicks and beautiful crafting, but they wouldn't be
thrilled by the record's lack of thrills and climaxes. Ironically, Lali Puna
seems to have become more 'rockist' with this and other recent releases, but
this, sadly, has not meant the duo have become more emotionally direct. Mind
you, Faking the Books is no bloodless affair - its soft, precise
tones have a honest prettiness not unlike the vibe bands like Mum and Ms
John Soda whip up, but Acher and Trebeljar should really throw some menace
and sarcasm into what with true inspiration could be transformed into a
devilishly potent brew. (Morr, 
LCD Soundsystem-LCD Soundsystem (DFA)
Jens Lekman-Night Falls Over Kortedela (Secretly
Canadian)
Stephen Malkmus-Face the Truth (Matador)
Carolyn
Mark-Just Married: An Album of Duets (Mint) 
Carolyn Mark and the New Best Friends-The Pros
and Cons of Collaboration (Mint) 
The
Mars Volta-Frances the Mute (Universal)
Maximo Park-A
Certain Trigger (Warp)
Meat
Purveyors-Pain
by Numbers (Bloodshot)