I’m blogging for Oklahoma Gazette about every band I see at SXSW this week. You can check that coverage out here.
I’ll be posting a few bands a day that I’ve found or were blown away by here, though:
Daniel(((s))) – Chiptune electronica with masterful live bass.
Hooves – Bearded, Avett Bros.-style folk/rock with the indignation turned up.
Deerpeople – Dance, indie, piano-pop, moshing and more combine into a unnameable brilliance.
“If there’s no grand cultural war left for you to wage, how are you supposed make friction? Indie rock responded by fanning out into a thousand sub-genre deltas, each with their own set of reference points. The best stuff, every year, is the stuff that somehow leaps across those gaps, like a firing synapse.” -Jayson Greene, Pitchfork, “Making Overtures: The Emergence of Indie Classical”
I’ve been quoting this paragraph copiously in conversation and text since it was published, because it perfectly frames the situation in which indie rock currently sits. Should you be really, really good at one genre? The answer as an extension of this paragraph is “Probably not”: the genre already has a hero (or heroes), and you’re just going to be appropriating heroes if you aspire to greatness in a genre. You should mix and match, because that’s the stuff that gets applause these days: Bon Iver abandoning pure folk for a confluence of acoustic and ’80s synthscapes, Arcade Fire adopting a wiry ’80s touch for “Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains.” If we’ve heard it all before, we must repackage it in new ways. (This is why we have “new” lawyer dramas every year.)
I disagree that there is no room for purists; folksters The Low Anthem immediately come to mind as a great example of forging forward in a historically-established sound, as well as singer/songwriters like Brianna Gaither. Still, it’s true that the hip and cool stuff right now is interdisciplinary. (The technically appropriate term would intergenrenary, but that’s a clunky, made-up word.) Everything in the world is becoming interconnected; why not music?
Gabriel and the Hounds‘ Kiss Full of Teeth is the sound of a band working hard on its interdisciplinary mix. The basic elements of the sound are stark folk in the For Emma vein, The National-style gloomy indie rock, and a composer’s sense of symphonic instrumentation (more Firebird Suite, less “Eleanor Rigby”). Like my late grandfather’s attempts to recreate Bailey’s Irish Cream from his own personal brewing and mixing, the results aren’t perfect—but they still taste great.
“Lovely Thief” is the most memorable track of the album, both for its successes and head-scratching excesses. The first minute consists of a grooving, lightly distorted guitar rhythm and comfortable tenor vocals. Trumpets, horns and oboes arrive without warning, colliding with the rhythmically solid guitar in erratic foxhunt calls. The guitar and foxhunt end simultaneously, giving way to an elegant symphonic break. Drums and guitar are then introduced on top of the continued symphonic elements. It’s a beautiful tune, especially in its final, fully-realized minute.
However, its abrupt switches show either a desire to rupture normative ideas of modern songwriting or an unfamiliarity with the delicate balance between all the song’s moving parts (or both!). The first is admirable, the second understandable; both show that they’re trying stuff. When the band sticks to one genre, they make very consistent songs that are less dynamic and interesting that their experiments: “The World Unfolds” uses strings as a support element to a straight-forward indie-rock tune; “What Good Would That Do” is Tom Waits for electric guitar.
So it’s pleasing that Gabriel and the Hounds try more ambitious tunes than standard ones: the very pretty “When We Die in South America” uses an unexpected entry point of strings to disrupt usual songwriting structure, while “Wire and Stone” sets an orchestra as the grounding point instead of traditional rock instruments. The swelling, building “An In-Between (Full Where You Are)” provides even more emphasis on symphonic composition—Colin Stetson listeners will nod and smile. “Who Will Fall on Knees” sets the symphonic arrangement against a pensive folk piece, using the strings as the forceful element in the piece.
Gabriel and the Hounds’ Kiss Full of Teeth is a wildly interesting piece of work packed with vitality and thought. The unique ideas shine, even if the pieces don’t come together in a completely unified way. It’s like listening to Regina Spektor’s Soviet Kitsch: It’s clear that she is either purposefully ignoring conventions of songwriting or isn’t yet skilled enough to write proper songs she hears in her head—regardless, Soviet Kitsch is wonderful. (Based on the markedly less erratic quality of her later output, I’d bank the latter idea.) Put another way: formal success does not ensure quality. Sometimes the half-baked mistakes are far more interesting and vital than the fully-formed, conventionally-sound work, and that’s the case for Gabriel and the Hounds. Hopefully more bands follow their lead and risk putting out this sort of genre-bending, might-be-a-mess-but-who-cares work.
I’m incredibly excited about Bowerbirds’ new album, which I will hear and review very soon. Until then, here’s a breathtakingly gorgeous video for “Tuck the Darkness In.”
This black and white period piece is an enthralling piece of storytelling. Kudos to Sunset Television for this beautiful mini-movie set to “Vagabonds” by Beirut.
Dustin Wong, whose optimistic prog-rock is purveyed under his own name and as part of Ponytail, is doing a cool fan-based project. He encouraged each fan to record himself or herself retelling a dream he or she has had and upload it to Soundcloud. Wong chose the most evocative of them and created songs around the words. He then completed the tune by setting the spoken word recordings on top of these instrumentals. The first of these, “Dave Sutton’s Dream: Gold Dust and Skateboarding” is online now. There are four more of these to come. I hope they will all be this interesting.
Plants and Animals‘ The End of That enthusiastically and successfully combines “Wonderwall”-esque Brit-pop with modern indie bombast a la Frightened Rabbit (“Lightshow,” “2010”). If you’re excited about that sentence, check out the aforementioned tunes and then go forth to the album. If you think, “I’ve heard that before,” you’re correct—analysis of that sentiment follows.
Plants and Animals understands that in 2012, people ask a lot of indie bands. They’ve got to churn out a single, a viral video, and a fully-formed album to be seen as the complete package. Some bands excel so greatly at one aspect (Sleigh Bells, OK Go, Radiohead, respectively) that their attempts at the other two go underappreciated or even maligned.
That’s in the left hand. In the right hand is a growing “end of history” mentality in indie-rock, which was neatly encapsulated last week when Jayson Greene of Pitchfork pondered: “If there’s no grand cultural war left for you to wage, how are you supposed make friction?” (Greene’s response: “Indie rock responded by fanning out into a thousand sub-genre deltas.”) People are genuinely worried that there’s nothing left to say, not just in indie-rock but in, uh, everything. Simon Reynolds spends all of Retromania laying the death of creativity at the feet of a myriad of sources that include YouTube and Flying Lotus. What’s a band supposed to do when it’s asked to do more than ever, but people believe less than ever that it is saying and sounding something meaningful?
Answer: whatever it wants. In a critical environment that’s so hyper-analytical, so backward-referencing, so instantly affirmative or negative, there’s no recourse but to simply put stuff out. I hope this sounds reductive, because it is. Bands shouldn’t be afraid of or even antagonistic toward critics anymore, because hot on the heels of both the aforementioned quandaries is a third problem that is purely a critic’s concern: readers of criticism now have access to whatever they want. Critics don’t have exclusive access to the goods anymore, and that means that the original power of the critic is greatly reduced.
Lest I pull the trigger on the gun pointed at my foot, a clarification: The original power of the critic was the power to exalt or destroy, by telling people to not waste their cash on something terrible. Because cash is now not a bar to access, the writer’s power to destroy is much less; the critical backlash to Tapes’N’Tapes was almost a palpable thing at one point, but people still listened to the band’s music. (And the band still put out more music.) Critics, even the still-hugely-influential Pitchfork, can’t kill a band. (Not even Black Kids.)
With that in mind, there’s a conclusion here that relates to the very short but specific review of The End of That posited above: There is now no reason to write bad reviews. Why would space that could be given to something incredible be dedicated to something mediocre? Part of the reason indie music is wallowing in mediocrity (if you agree that it is, but that’s a different article altogether) is that we consistently foreground it. By giving bad reviews and mediocre reviews equal space and footing in our media outlets, critics create an environment that gives the all-coveted “exposure” to bands that are just okay. This is devastating to the state of music because “exposure” is the critic’s new power: a ready-made audience, dedicated to reading what the writer has to say. The access is available to all, but if “all” doesn’t know that the access is there to be had, no one accesses it.
“Lightshow” and “2010” are great tunes, and that’s where the review kicked off. Honestly, the review could have ended there, and that would have said (most of) what I wanted to say. I left off naming any other songs, because in my analysis they should be left off, as they aren’t particularly as exciting as the first two. However, the album as a whole can be praised as a well-conceived long-player for a certain audience. That includes shades of the Jayson Greene analysis, for sure, but that is still a recommendation for people who are into that particular subgenre.
But does my par-for-the-course analysis of “Crisis!” and “Why & Why” mean that those songs don’t have as much worth as “Lightshow”? No. There are writers out there enthusiastically parsing their depths. With the myriad of available voices, a critic is only as quantifiably meaningful as the size of his audience. As Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will note, not even the whole current critical audience moving in one direction is all-powerful. So even though this review will not result in Plants and Animals ending up on my year-end list, it is entirely likely that someone will read it, hear “Lightshow,” and love it—which is what I intended the first line of this review to do, because “Lightshow” might end up on my 50 best songs of the year list. It’s that good.
So if critics can’t kill a band, but they might expose its work to the masses if it does something awesome, why not go make something completely, idiosyncratically its own? And critics, ignore those idiosyncratic things unless and until you love them. Readers, support the bands that you find and love with money (in the form of album sales, Kickstarter contributions, donations to the band while they’re on tour, whatever). The mediocrity be lessened; the good will out; music will grow.
If you’re like me, you have a draw toward things that are different. This holds true across many spectrums, but it’s especially true in the music department. Hearing the same songs or structures again and again bores me like none other. I’d assume most of you are at least partially like this, otherwise you wouldn’t be checking out a music discovery site such as IC.
Thankfully, there are many acts out there that satisfy my desire to hear the unique and creative. Neal Morgan’s 2012 LP In The Yard is one of those albums.
Morgan is most noted for his drumming on Joanna Newsom’s album Have One On Me, but In The Yard, released January 24th on Drag City Records, marks his second solo LP release. The record is a drum and voice masterpiece that includes soloing, poetry, spoken word, improvisation, and Simon & Garfunkel-esque background vocal melodies. Morgan covers all the bases.
Tracks like “I Stand on a Roof” feature brilliantly-written, poetic lyrics with eccentric drum fills spacing about the whole cut. Other cuts, like “Thinking Big,” combine vocal harmonies, killer grooves and more of Morgan’s signature spoken word over the top and interlaced throughout the track. As a drummer, I naturally am drawn to this work for Morgan’s groove behind the kit.
A small disclaimer here: I would definitely recommend Morgan to the adventurous listener. If nothing else, it feels good to try something new. But for me, this certainly deserves several more listens to fully grasp just how unique and refreshing this album is.
In The Yard is a tough album to capsulate into one post. The sound is unique and not something that is heard every day. For an artistic change of pace, Morgan’s album is the perfect fit. —Clark Foy
I have waxed rhapsodic over the joys of the compilation album before, but here’s a reminder: I love the idea of twenty or more bands all chilling on the same disc. SXSW is kind of like one giant compilation, if you conflate seeing music live and hearing it recorded.
But what’s even better than a great comp is a great comp from a high-quality label. If that label is a homegrown, upstart indie, all the better! And Community Records (no, really, that’s the awesome name) has released just such a disc with their Compilation Volume 3: Old Dog, New Tricks. The album showcases 26 (!) bands associated with the New Orleans-based label; a footnote states, “Download free music from all of these bands on our web-site.” (That’s prolific!)
Some well-known bands like A Billion Ernies, Marathon and Swear Jar are present here, alongside a slew of up-and-comers. The music falls into five general genres: pop-punk, ska, hardcore/post-hardcore, acoustic and reggae-ish stuff.
The pop-punk is the lion’s share of the material. Caddywhompus’ “The Weight” won my heart by incorporating prog-based rhythms and melodies into its pop-punk, giving the song a very Fang Island-esque feel. Safety’s “Alone Together” throws down great melodies and energy in an early-2000s pop-punk style; the action-packed 91 seconds of The Rooks’ “The Benefit of Fish Tacos” throws all sorts of things into an unconventional song structure. The off-kilter “I’m Not Done Yet” by All People is oddly catchy as well.
The highlights of the ska offerings are the wildly varied tune by A Billion Ernies, the rhythms-not-horns ska of “They Can’t Fix Me” by Matt Wixson’s Flying Circus, and the gruff ska-punk of Brunt of It’s “Bad Sign.”
I wasn’t too into the loud stuff or the reggae, but the acoustic offerings are worth note: my favorite tune on the whole comp is See You in Mexico’s “Human Race.” It starts off as a pensive, moody tune in the Deja Entendu vein, then kicks into acoustic-punk high gear for the satisfying conclusion. The vocal melodies and harmonies are especially notable. Closer “Live On” by Matt Wixson (minus the Flying Circus) is a charming, lo-fi acoustic pop song that could be sung around campfires forever. “Summer’s Slumber” by Dominique LeJeune is a poignant, female-fronted acoustic love song that made me swoon a bit.
There’s all sorts of things inbetween, from woozy, New Orleans-style jazz bombast (Stuck Lucky’s “Finland”) to the indie-rock haze of Sun Hotel’s “Talks.” I mean, with 27 tracks, there’s almost something for everyone who even remotely likes the idea of modern punk. That should be a strong motivator for you to check out Community Records’ Old Dog, New Tricks.
Jacob Furr‘s folk EP Farther Shores opens up with the high desert feel of “Voices on the Sea,” which he kindly allowed us to debut. Furr’s fully-realized vision gives a strategically-placed shaker equal footing with accordion and pedal steel in creating the mood, while warbling background voices conjure images of awe-inspiring ghost riders. “Set Your Mind” follows in the same Southwestern sort of mindset before giving way to the more emotional last three tunes of the set. The fingerpicked “Farewell Old Friend” is an intimate, quiet tune that sits in stark contrast to the stately, carefully-arranged tracks before it. “Sailed Away” and “Sunrise in the City” show that he can arrange for emotional effect as well as the theatrical, but the fragile beauty of “Farewell Old Friend” gets to the heart of the matter: leaving means sadness at what’s behind and wonder at what’s before. Here’s to that idea, and to one of the first truly memorable songs I’ve heard all year.
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Soft Swells‘ self-titled debut has several things going for it: the duo knows how to orchestrate a mid-tempo pop song, mesh fuzzy synths and acoustic instruments together seamlessly, and use a good melody when they’ve got it. The first two qualities appear throughout the ten-song album, while the third is mostly concentrated in the first half of the order. “Every Little Thing” establishes the soft but energetic sound and sells it with a desperate white boy melody/lyric of “You look so much smarter than me!” The killer track here is “Overrated,” which kept me humming along for a few days with perky synths and vocal melodies in a narrator’s attempt to “trust this love isn’t overrated.” The acoustic-led “Say It Like You Mean It” breaks up the consistent feel that the band has established, but it doesn’t stick—the band is too enamored with its titular sound to build this into a Transatlanticism-style indie-pop adventure. Still, the early songs are a ride in and of themselves.
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FU is a Japanese indie-rock band led an enthusiastic guitarist/vocalist who goes by Ubi Quitous. I mention the nationality for two reasons: A) to make the point that despite the country, there’s not that much difference in indie rock structure and B) To explain why I can’t quote most of the song titles in ON THE EARTH!!!. And that first point rings remarkably true, as the three-piece blazes through guitar-based music that calls up everything from The Appleseed Cast’s optimistically growing epics to Rage Against the Machine’s guitar noodling to the Gin Blossoms’ mid-’90s alt-countryish guitar rock. I have no idea if FU has heard of any of these bands, but American listeners will make the comparisons quickly. The fact that all of this is mashed into one sound is distinctly interesting; it’s held together by neat guitar/bass interplay and the fascinating, beautiful guitar tone. The one cultural difference: the theatrical, affected vocal style is a bit of an acquired taste, but I think it’s worth it. The 16-song album offers up interesting offerings throughout, but, admittedly, there will be some who can’t get through the element noted in the previous sentence. For those on the opposite end of the spectrum, the band will be in America later this year.
Here are three poignant videos from bands with bird names, and one awesome one from a band with a gorilla name.
Watch the full video at Baeblemusic.com
The Wooden Birds know their sound perfectly: “Long Time to Lose It” is the second pitch-perfect music video they’ve released from their latest album Two Matchsticks. It features a woman walking calmly around in the beautiful wilderness, as well as a stop at an interesting house. It is beautiful.
“Life is Good” by I Used to Be a Sparrow is ascendant, triumphant indie-rock that recalls everyone and no one. The band features Andrea Caccese of Swedish post-rock band Songs for the Sleepwalkers, and a wintry, elegant Swedish landscape gets significant play in the clip. Despite the enthusiastic musical charge and beautiful visuals, the narrative is pretty heavy.
About “The Clearing” by Bowerbirds from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.
Keeping the heavy theme, here’s a mini-documentary from Bowerbirds. It’s about how they got back together, recorded an album and built a house. It is visually incredible, and the music is equally sonically amazing.
Great parodies sneak up on you, and the video for The Gorilla Press’s mega-fantastic “On Fire” is a great parody of music videos and Kung Fu action. I love the ending sequence.
Little things can make an amazing difference. Rebecca Zapen strums a cavaquino—a South American relative of the ukulele featuring non-metallic strings—for most of her folky album Nest, and the change of string tone elevates this album. The delicate nature of these 13 songs is accentuated by the fact that there are few (if any) jarring moments on the album- hard stops are just difficult to do on this graceful instrument.
That grace lends tunes like “Swamp Pit,” “Lakewood,” and “Grandfather’s Song” a lilting, gentle quality that sets them apart from other musicians’ works. It’s likely that these songs would not sound as arresting with a metal-strung acoustic guitar. The strummed instrument in “I’m Gonna Make So Many Things For You” has a resonance and string squeak that are indicative of a standard acoustic guitar; the song sounds much more like Sandra McCracken and other upbeat female folksters than the rest of the tunes. “I’m Gonna” is a very good song, but its charms come from its vocal melody and rhythm patterns, not from its tone. The rest of the songs, which draw all of those three elements together, truly shine.
But Zapen isn’t a one-trick pony, as she proves with “Colorado.” The state-inspired closer actually sounds more like it should be called “Ireland,” as Gaelic-reminiscent cello and violin lines accompany Zapen’s tender voice in a very Unthanks-esque tune. It’s pretty, but certainly unusual in the context of the album. Then again, it’s not as strange as the bossa nova cover of “Addicted to Love” (seriously) that directly precedes it. This is not your average album in many ways.
Nest‘s brightest moment is the aforementioned “Swamp Pit,” where poise meets charm, and tone meets melody. The arrangement is subtle, yet strong: understated, but confident in it. Rebecca Zapen realizes a fully formed vision, and it is unsurprisingly resonant emotionally. The rest of the tunes attempt to hit that height, and succeed to smaller degrees: “Jarcaranda” probably comes in second, although the Simon and Garfunkel-esque ballad doesn’t display her own idiosyncratic vision as strongly. The clarinet in “Grandfather’s Song” helps create a beautiful tune as well.
Nest is a beautiful album that draws the light toward a talented, unique songwriter. It is not without room to improve, but it certainly offers a lot to hear and revel in.
Songs:Ohia plays a critical role in my musical history, somewhat akin to the lack of respect Bob Welch gets for keeping Fleetwood Mac together until they could get around to recording awesome things.
In my transition from “Super Good Feeling” to “Get Lonely,” Songs:Ohia was one of two artists who would entice me to jump from the poppy precipice of Transatlanticism to the downtempo jeremiads of Damien Jurado and The Mountain Goats. Without the influence of those latter two bands, this blog would probably not still exist. So, indirectly, you and I both owe a debt to Jason Molina (and David J of Novi Split, who was the second guide).
The emotions that Elephant Micah‘s Louder Than Thou conjures up in me match almost exactly the ones I felt while listening to Songs:Ohia’s “The Lioness” as a teenager. This is an incredible statement: I had chalked up this intense connection with S:A’s slow, weighty songs up to “my first time.” For a band to repeat in me that sort of emotion amid my now-steady diet of folk and singer/songwriter is stunning.
Pre-Magnolia ELectric Co. Jason Molina originally intrigued me for several reasons. I am intrigued by Joseph O’Connell (the songwriter behind EM) for the same reasons:
1. He is very talented, although the simple musicianship bears no ostentatious markers of technical skill.
2. He imbues songs with honest, weighty emotion.
3. He is unafraid to play a slow, quiet song for a very long time.
I started to feel the old longing during the second track, “Won These Wings.” A slowly thumped tom and sparse yet terse notes on an acoustic guitar create the backdrop for O’Connell’s plaintive voice; far-off background vocals and some sort of woodwind form intermittent ghostly asides. The whole thing just feels heavy; but more than that, it feels compelling. Instead of being wallpaper music, this is gripping. You know those movies where the soundtrack is so integral and vital that it should be credited as a supporting actor? The 7:25 “Won These Wings” is that sort of tune.
The length here is notable in the context of everyone else’s work, but not so much in comparison to the rest of the album. The six songs on Louder Than Thou run just over 36 minutes, meaning that one EM song averages the span of two pop songs. The shambling, uplifting “My Cousin’s King,” the shortest song, clocks in at 4:29. It could have gone longer and been totally fine: these songs sprawl, and they’re all the better for it.
That’s the lesson to be learned from “If I Were a Surfer,” which is the song that caused me to think of Songs:Ohia for the first time in years. The strum pattern isn’t complicated, the drum part isn’t difficult, and the vocal line isn’t virtuosic. But the parts come together in such a heart-rending way that none of that matters. “Let it lie where it lands / I’ll start all over again,” O’Connell sings with female harmony over a graceful, whirring organ. It’s no lyric shooting for the heart of reality, nor is it a hugely orchestrated epic moment. It is, instead, a testament to patience, dignity and craft. It is beautiful.
The skill and hard work it takes to write songs of such seemingly effortless elegance is hard to overstate. Elephant Micah‘s Louder Than Thou is not louder than much, really. But it is far more resonant than most, and that’s why I can’t stop listening to it.