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Month: August 2012

Accents play fast and loose with genres, creating a unique album

It’s rare to find a band that plays strictly one genre, but Accents is going for the genre-mashing gold with Growth and Squalor. The base sound is acoustic folk, but they rope in rock, post-rock, acoustic pop and more into their amalgam. There’s a lot going on, but for the most part it comes off well.

It’s easy to name this a folk album, because the far and away best track is “Storms,” an unassuming folk tune with gentle fingerpicking, an easily singable melody, and a simple arrangement. It’s almost certainly going to be on my Top 50 Songs of the Year list; it’s the sort of song that appears from nowhere, grabs you, and then returns you to the rest of the album while you wonder what just happened. The fact that “Storms” is a calm stream in an ocean of unrest that is the rest of the album only makes this impression more stark.

“Storms” doesn’t have any drums in it, and that’s a big reason it sounds different. The drum arrangements in these tunes mark them in interesting ways. Although opener “Divide” is fingerpicked like “Storms,” the acrobatic, tom-heavy drums press the tempo and import gravitas into the tune. “With the Light” introduces syncopated snare hits that bring to mind alt-country drumming. It pretty much sounds like Dave Grohl is behind the kit in the rocked-out “Routine Movements,” while the post-rock build of “Sorrow” is accompanied by a hammering rush of cymbals and bass drum.

The variety that the songwriting styles afford are a strength and weakness here: if you’re really into the pop-rock of “The Fog” or the chamber folk of “Way Out,” you won’t hear much like it for the rest of the album. But if you’re not into it, it won’t trouble you again, and you can get to the traditional folky bliss of “Storms” unimpeded. The album is pro-ADD. However, if you can take a wider look at Growth and Squalor, it does have a nice flow that stretches from the uncertainty of “Divide” to the thrash of “Sorrow” (which is its own kind of certainty).

Growth and Squalor by Accents is a fascinating album by a band with a great number of strengths. Instead of focusing on one strength, they give each its moment in the sun. This creates a unique listening experience, but I’m uncertain it’s one that they can (or even want to) repeat. This is a band jumping out of the starting gate, and doing it well. Here’s to the future of Accents.

Quick Hits: Athletics / Keystone Kids

ProTip: Wrecking your car during a cross-country move is not a good idea. It will, at very minimum, bankrupt your productivity for the week.

I felt that AthleticsWhy Aren’t I Home? was “easily the most emotional rock experience that I’ve ever heard and/or been a part of.” So when the band announced that four of their tunes would be released in a piano and voice setting, I was thrilled. Stop Torturing Yourself does not let me down: these arrangements are beautiful. The band’s control of tension and melody transfer from the originals to here, as atmospheric instrumental performances are replaced by the resonance of the piano and the beautiful vocals. “Speaking for Everyone” is the winner here, as the haunting tune takes on an even more poignant air. The musicians in Athletics know how to convey emotions, and this release is an outstanding reminder of that.

Things Get Shaky by Keystone Kids also features some beautiful piano playing, but it’s augmented by another instrumentalist. The duo plays guy/girl indie-pop that will resonate with Mates of State fans. Both bands share a love of ’80s music in addition to piano-pop, and that’s a divide: if you’re into one but not the other, there will be moments that you want to skip. But if you’re down for both those things, the synth blast and drum machine of “What They’re Saying” will score points with you just as easily as the poignant confessional “Falling.” Fun and heavy, by turns.

Protest movements

It is disappointing to me that we live in a time rife with protests, yet produce a distressingly low level of protest songs per capita. (If there were sabermetrics for music…) Thankfully, Michael Glader’s “Corporate Corruption” is very definitely a protest tune. But old-school Dylan fans are in for a surprise: This here rabble-rouser is a slinky, trippy contraption with whirring organ and rattling percussion. Take that, helplessness blues.


School of Roccupy
is doing its very best to add protest songs to the world, however. The group’s motto is “Uniting Artists, Community, and the Occupy Movement,” and it accomplishes that by hooking up students with artists (Kate Nash and Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. so far) to write and record a song in a single day. It started in Britain, and the founders are using crowdfunding site IndieGoGo to raise money to bring the project to NYC, LA and Denver this month. If you want to read more or contribute, do so here.

While “Our Bellies Might Explode” is not an explicit protest song, songwriter Neil Campau notes that the project consists of “Electro folksongs about social war and relationships.” The description is thoroughly apt, as “Bellies” is a folky number about a relationship featuring some light distortion on the guitar and anguished vocals. If you’re into songwriters who wring amazing sounds (conventional or otherwise) out of a voice, Electrician’s in your corner.