Music

I’m not sure that anybody can accurately describe the OOIOO sound. Started by Boredoms drummer Yoshimi, OOIOO is a highly talented, experimental four-piece that specializes in polyrhythms and genre destroying.

XBXRX are closer to being performance art than being a band. Yes, they play songs, but those are really just ancillary to their modus operandi. If you’ve ever seen these pseudo-androgynous spazz rockers live, you likely know what I mean.

Best known, to me anyway, as the stellar producer of The Mountain Goats’ releases Tallahassee, We Shall All Be Healed, and The Sunset Tree, John Vanderslice also steps out on his own once in a while, and this is one of the better results.

Joel Peterson, a.k.a. Broken Spindles, is probably always going to be somewhat left of center, even in an industry where center chases left of center. Inside/Absent is no exception. This is not his surprise cowboy pop record.

The third New Pornographers record is actually a time machine. No, not because it sounds like any particular band from the 60s, 70s, or any other decade, but because it reminds you of a time when indie music was first getting big in the mid-90s.

Is it acceptable, nay responsible, for a record reviewer to describe an album as beyond description? Crap, I should start over then. Giving Up the Ghost moves through moods as easily as said spirit slips through the walls of an old house.

Freedom and Weep is all fine enough, cleanly executed and moderately compelling, drifting between straight country and indie pop. But it’s got no bite.

Once you stop giggling about their name, Flotation Toy Warning’s debut Bluffer’s Guide to the Flight Deck will unscrew you from your head and leave you floating out by Neptune. It’s that kind of album.

Members of Mobius Band have apparently relocated to Brooklyn. Lord knows Brooklyn needed more young, scruffy, literate indie musicians, who only make up approximately 99% of the borough’s current population, all of them hunting for an audience not composed solely of other striving art bands.

I first heard Pelican about two years ago when Joemama let me borrow Australasia, along with a CD by the band 5ive (he didn’t get them back for almost a year, my bad). Anyway, what struck me about Pelican’s first album was the wall of sonic distortion that hit me; my ears struggled through it all to pick out the nuances hiding behind that wall.

The fact that this album exists kinda pisses me off. It’s not even as terrible as I first thought, but it’s pretty bad. The people who decide what records get put out should be held more accountable for their products.

For over 20 years, Daniel Lanois has been creating some of the most influential, awe-inspiring, and colorful work popular culture has heard. From his apprenticeship with Brian Eno (Ambient 2:The Plateaux of Mirror and Ambient 4:On Land) to his production work with U2, Marianne Faithful, and Willie Nelson, Lanois has earned his place in the music history books.