Reviews: May 2004
North Mississippi Allstars – Polaris (Tone Cool/Shock)
For their third effort the Memphis four piece considerably expand their horizons both musically and physically, the outcome is the sound of the blues coming to the bright lights of the big city.
Most of the rough edges have been smoothed away to leave the music veering through pop (‘One To Grow On’) actual blues (‘Never In All My Days’) and ultimately a slick 70’s Stepphenwolf type southern rock (‘All Along’), this final sound the most prevalent throughout.
With over 20 guests adding to the guitar, bass and drums – organ, brass, strings, woodwind, vocal harmonies, oh and Noel Gallagher, it’s a lot to take in. Is this the blues? If so, it’s in an unfamiliar obit all of its own.
Howard – Intermental Music And Collage (Independent)
There is something refreshing about the groove heavy excursions that make up this album. Without vocals glossy gimmicks’ adorning its cover or the referenced personality of individuals, the music has an openness to it that you can interpret your own way and turn into something more personal.
The Sydney producer who is Howard has teamed up with a multitude of musicians to bring a very organic left-field sound, the electronics do grow throughout the album but never in any particular persuasion, a series of eleven collages with infectious baselines and a building of beats threading it together.
Eclectic in nature, the lack of detail on the outside makes for and interesting excursion. Like a day trip from a dairy farm to a night-club dance floor.
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore – Black Earth (Wonder/Ipecac/Shock)
Not Metal but Jazz! gothic jazz in an old Europe sense of the word. It is this that first drew Mike Patton to Black Earth and care of his label, now two years after its initial release to the rest of us.
Conveying a laborious, brooding and bleak sound, its horror is not in the vein of say a bloody demise but more so an empty and desolate fear. While the music (consisting of drums, saxophone, piano and double bass) and it’s musicians hail from Germany the space between the notes seems filled with the raw air of the Siberian wastelands.
Tracks like ‘Crimson Waves’ grieve the way the songs of Godspeed You! Black Emperor do and amongst it all is a solace that rekindles the spirit and will brings you back to this remarkable album again.
The Cops – Ep (Reverberation)
Five Melbournites on a nu-rock post-punk trip, throw down four amped-up tunes of melody, piss n’ vinegar. Ten minutes of audio leaving you jarred from a slap across the face that you want all over again. Go out and cop a handful!
Loretta Lynn
Van Lear Rose (Universal/Interscope)
The grand old lady of sweet soundin’ sorrow has not sounded this raw and believable since mono.
Reinvented here through the awe, amps and orchestration of The White Stripes’ Jack White, Lynn sounds both from a time so very long ago and more on the money than most of today’s Nashville. Combining her lyrics – all self-written for the first time in her 45 year career – with her backing band, The Do-Whaters and White create music that is pure high plains country with pedal steel and brushes. By the fifth track though (‘Have Mercy’) this all gives away to a thunderous caterwauling guitar riff not heard before in her music.
Mr Cash may have left us but there are still some pioneers out there creating some of the most stirring and outstanding music of their careers. As for the kids, how’s-about you here get an education!
Tweaker
2 a.m. Wake Up Call (Waxploitation/Shock)
Tweaker is Chris Vrenna, ex-drummer of Nine Inch Nails and with this his second solo foray he combines his haunting and daunting sonic explorations with some of the finest voices on the fringes of modern music.
Opening with ‘Ruby’ which see the voice of Will Oldham mix with a barrage of guitars, the two working to surprising results. The songs morph into each other as cult figures like David Sylvian, Robert Smith and guitarist Johnny Marr also meld with the songs various shadows.
The music is an uneasy mix of mainly moody electronics, live instrumentation and interjections of pummelling guitars. All delivered through a nightmarish and insomnia induced narrative – this is an enthralling journey through the hours most of us rarely explore.
City City City
Dawn And The Blue Light District (Sensory Projects/Big Leg)
As the title suggests, the music within inhabits a space that is neither day nor night, rock or jazz or anything easily tagged with a genre.
Traipsing down a path carved out by bands such as Can, Tortoise or Sydney’s Prop, this
Melbourne seven-piece leaves no room for vocals within their expansive instrumental journeys. With at least four of the 10 songs around or past the 10-minute mark, tracks like ‘Prat’ take jazz’s West Coast cool and spice it up with electronics and a dub groove while ‘Days Like Levin’ playfully intertwines sombre yet intricate sound textures of a futuristic nature.
The band interjects a few moments of rock, but for the most part anyone who has enjoyed Chicago’s post rock scene of the last 10 years will find familiar and enjoyable territory on this album, adding yet another interesting tangent to the outcomes of cross-pollination.
They Might Be Giants – Indestructible Object (Hornblow/Shock)
A surprisingly electronic TMBG’s return with this four track EP, a prelude to their full-length album out in July. ‘Am I Awake’ is in stark contrast to their bubbly reputation and the songs have a sombre maturity to them that actually has them sounding fresh after decades of whimsical pop.
The Icarus Line
Penance Soirée (V2)
Opening with a bass sound and aggression to rival Big Black, it’s clear that for their second album The Icarus Line have not tempered their rage.
Frequencies and feedback swarm through the songs giving them so much weight that they usually implode, when combined with the agonising sound that vocalist Aaron North has, it’s like a wild animal in the death throws of a bear trap. They are a band that takes rock somewhere new, not hardcore but more, a frenzied aural panic-attack.
It’s a seedy picture painted with drugged up individuals ‘Spike Island’, lost souls ‘Getting Bright At Night’ and songs like snapshots of de-railed lives easily believed in this day n age. A brilliant album to fuck your own head up with.
Automato
Self-Titled (EMI)
For their debut, this NYC hip-hop collective lay down from the outset something rarely heard in the genre – not in the lyrical flow but with live instrumentation. Just the sound of a real snare, hi-hat and bass sounds so fresh in a time of programmed clicks and scratch trickery.
The rhymes are up to par with the music, holding a J-5 vibe both celebrating and questioning but without ever needing to diss or preach. Team these six kids with the production of DFA and you have got a perfect mix of organics and a sharp clear booming sound, which regardless of how cold the weather’s getting, tracks like ‘Focus’ and The Single’ will get you throwing back the blankets and bustin’ it out.
BT
Monster O.S.T. (Embrace The Future)
Metamorphosis, it could be claimed, is the only constant that has existed in the career of producer/musician BT. For his latest soundtrack he has taken to live instrumentation as the grounding for his electronic soundscapes.
So grand is BT’s vision of what should be encompassed, what he delivers is a 15-track CD version and a 24-track DVD version in dts 5.1 digital surround plus visual extras, not as a limited edition but as standard.
The music is lucid and flowing, ‘The Bus Stop’ sombre with its forlorn piano while ‘Girls Kiss’ has a rural, almost Americana feel to it. The tracks all meld with the ebb and flow of the mood, creating a sort of stylised folktronica.
The violent tendencies of the film are deeply hidden here, creating a humanistic balance to a very difficult story.
Broken Spindles
Fulfilled/Complete (Saddle Creek)
Taking time out from his main Job as bassist in The Faint, Joel Peterson takes past electronic tendencies and for this his second solo outing creates songs possibly a little brighter or maybe just a little more unhinged.
Dark? No. But spooky? Yes. The guitars are crunched and pummelled under thrashing beats in ‘Move Away’, only for the instrumental interludes to lighten-up the mood considerably and this to-ing and fro-ing intensifies as the songs mutate and spawn.
More futuristic than The Rapture or Faint, let’s hope this doesn’t end up like the lost rays of sunshine at the end of Bladerunner.
Obi
Diceman Lopez (Cooking Vinyl/Shock)
Only around since 2000, this London four-piece for their second album continue with their off kilter pop formula creating a scewed and polarising sound.
Bittersweet stories of wayward souls build upon song folk in their traditions but also amped up and completely continental – housing a diverse array of acoustic instrumentation that’s reminiscent of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. One minute rocking out only to fade into a introspective guitar-line, ‘Creatures’ could be a QOTSA tune if it wasn’t for the fact that it was so refined, well mannered and beautifully orchestrated.
Never overstated, the only drawback is moments when songs such as the title track have possibly too many good ideas within and some of the sounds get lost but it’s this same scenario that makes the album so compelling.
Various Artists
Shanti Project Collection 3 (Badman)
Conceived to aid awareness for the Shanti project, a volunteer organisation that assists and enhances the quality of life to people with life threatening illness. This third volume binds together five bands that communicate more heart-wrenching emotions than a Wim Wenders film.
The Black heart Procession, Sigur Ros, Kinski, Califone and Arab Strap all provide two songs each with over half the songs previously unreleased and a few astoundingly reworked. Intertwining sounds of souring strings mix with cacophonous guitars, brittle americana and uplifting eulogy’s.
Told different ways with different instruments from four different corners of the world, there lies one thing within all these songs that makes them chapters of one story – remorse. Not the easiest to communicate but when done as well as it is here is genuinely liberating.
Carla Bozulich
I’m Gonna Stop Killing (DiCristina Stair Builders)
On the back of last years-glorious ‘Red Headed Stranger’ which saw Bozulich and Willie Nelson update the Americana classic, this single – come live album highlights the exquisite nature of the material.
The first two tracks are from the album, ‘Can I sleep in your arms’ a duet with Nelson, with the seven-remaining tracks recorded live over 2002-03. Not only live versions of album tracks, but also covered is Neil Young’s ‘Running Dry’ and a few tracks penned by Bozulich, of which the 13 minute track ‘Outside Of Town’ is elegantly unhinged.
The magic ingredient in all this though has to be (now Wilco) guitarist Nels Cline. Here his lap steel and electric guitar ache and echo the vast wasteland that lies within the songs, showing that the accomplished vision within these artists goes far beyond Nelsons original work.
Mission Of Burma
On Off On (Matador)
The Rolling Stones should die! Mission Of Burma should live!
Masters of amped up melody and intensity, one of America’s most influential punk originators return not to relive past glories but to re-write the rule book and burn it.
It’s like they stockpiled every ounce of tension between their demise in 83’ to their rebirth in 01’, only to now open the floodgates unleashing a torrent of rock density. ‘The Enthusiast’ flares with frigid guitars and taught bass drums tug-of-war, “Falling” could be the perfect Guided By Voices blueprint, it certainly initiates the reoccurring paradox between Burma and the great rock revivers of the 90s of who came first – the chicken or the egg.
The Minutemen, Sonic Youth and Husker Du all basked in Burma’s sun as peers and avid fans and here lies the evidence that nothing has been lost.
Patti Smith
Trampin’ (Sony)
Smith has always shared more with Woody Guthrie or the beats chasing their lost horizons than the world of rock or even punk. Decades, fads, scenes and deaths later smith’s words call out with more determination and haunting poignancy than ever.
Tales of joyous and innocent rebellion (‘Cartwheels’) mix with burning decrees of the human spirit (‘Gandhi’) and wrap these words in a tone, wise and without any age or doubt.
The music holds Smiths words well but never raises up to challenge or push the sum of its parts into new territory and it is this that let down her vision, undeniably unique and it would seem, growing in desperation.
A wonderful poet, who deserves her praise, just not backed up by a collection of songs to further inspire.
Modest Mouse
Good News For People Who Love Bad News (Epic/Sony)
So the rest of the world’s finally caught up and discovered modest mouse, about time. Having honed their agitated guitar charms over six albums, Good News… in fact makes good on the brilliance that lied just beneath the surface of their previous album The Moon and Antarctica.
Trumpeting their arrival with an appropriate horn intro, Issac Brock’s voice quivers into view wrapped in the crazed genius of Dr. Frankenstein. By the time the drums of ‘Float On’ drop it is clear that the process from obscurity to proclamation is complete, like the first time you heard David Byrne scream “Psycho Killer” or Tom Waits declare he’s “Goin’ Out West”, its pure rebellion, prophetic and right on the mark.
As for the rest of the album, ahh hell, it just gets better and more sublime and by the time the Flaming Lips show up it is clear post-punk just got a taste of future-punk – Now Dance Hall!
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