Record Review Archives

Record Review: Horseback’s The Gorgon Tongue: Impale Golden Horn + Forbidden Planet

Horseback: The Gorgon Tongue: Impale Golden Horn + Forbidden Planet (Relapse, 5/10/11)

Horseback: “The Golden Horn”

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Jenks Miller is the sole constant in avant-metal outfit Horseback. Miller’s output — occasionally under his own name, often as Horseback, and recently with the Americana group Mount Moriah — has been a steady trickle over the past three years, with each release offering a new glimpse of the artist’s capabilities. To consider Miller’s art only in terms of his 2010 breakout, The Invisible Mountain, is like considering an iceberg only in terms of its tip.

Such an assumption is also likely to leave you confused upon hearing The Gorgon Tongue, which compiles Impale Golden Horn (Miller’s 2007 debut as Horseback) and last year’s ultra-limited Forbidden Planet cassette. Each is radically different from the other and also from the lumbering kraut-metal/Americana hybrid upon which Horseback built its reputation.

But that reputation came after more than two years of output, slowly revealing the character of the project and the Chapel Hill musician behind it all. Horseback began as a method for Miller to focus his concentration, to help manage his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Impale Golden Horn — which Miller spent three years recording and reworking before its 2008 release — introduces Horseback as a patient, meticulous sculptor of sound. “Laughing Celestial Architect,” at 17 seconds past the 15-minute mark, is Impale’s second-longest track (behind the 17-minute opener, “Finale”). It’s a slow, smoldering rise, not unlike waking up as sunlight slowly fills the room. This mixture of ascendant dynamics, meditative repetition, and calming timbres is indicative of the collection. It’s a bluff belying all of Miller’s work to follow. It makes the improvisatory follow-up seem almost ironically relaxed.

Record Review: Low’s C’mon

Low: C’mon (Sub Pop, 4/12/11)

Low: “Try to Sleep”

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After more than 15 years of stringing together grim, minimalist lullabies that are equally at home on long walks through moonless winter eves or in well-lit churches, slowcore stalwart Low has begun to experiment a bit more with the trappings of, and opportunities created by, modern music. On its ninth record, C’mon, the band blends its signature brand of melancholia with bouncing, uptempo electronic textures, giving the 11 songs a lively, volatile feel.

In the third track, “Witches,” guitarist/singer Alan Sparhawk advises listeners to confront their problems with a baseball bat, and in the same spare voice, he tells guys who “are trying to act like Al Green” that they are weak. He sings this over drummer/vocalist Mimi Parker’s characteristically haunting “ooos” and “ahhs,” while a choppy, lighthearted guitar riff drifts over barely audible acoustic-guitar (or banjo?) plucking. Much like the song “Hatchet” on the band’s previous effort, Drums and Guns, “Witches” is a catchy number that adeptly references select facets of pop-music history and, in doing so, reveals a playful side of the band.

Record Review: Young Widows’ In and Out of Youth and Lightness

Young Widows: In and Out of Youth and Lightness (Temporary Residence, 4/12/11)

Young Widows: “In and Out of Lightness”

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More than ever, Louisville’s Young Widows is teaching listeners to appreciate the quietness in post-punk.

Consider, for contrast, the slobbering borderline silliness of Pissed Jeans, or any other band that draws on a ton of distortion. At first listen, Young Widows might seem to have something missing. The vocals lead the songs but aren’t panicked or even immediately catchy. The guitars often walk an eerie line between clean and dissonant. The rhythm section — though hardly crude, if you’re paying attention — often favors a ceremonial plod.

In between, there’s a roomy silence, occasionally breached with a wandering guitar echo or backing vocal. But soon it stops feeling incomplete. That lurking silence, and the unresolved feeling that it creates, becomes the hook.

Record Review: Wye Oak’s Civilian

Wye Oak: Civilian (Merge, 3/8/11)

Wye Oak: “Civilian”
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Since its debut album in 2008, Baltimore indie duo Wye Oak has drawn a concerning amount of comparisons to Yo La Tengo. But despite the group’s occasionally mellow tones and deliberate tempos, singer/guitarist Jenn Wasner and multi-instrumentalist Andy Stack have presented more than pleasant, easy-going moods since If Children, that promising debut.

Even onstage, Wye Oak builds a full sound largely from Stack’s straightforward but well-defined drums and Wasner’s warm and often loud guitar playing, which is very resourceful on its own. (Stack also plays some keyboard parts with one hand while drumming.) Though they always manage to sound like a fleshed-out band, the two reap at least one benefit of a two- (or even one-) person act, which is that sonics don’t distance them from the meat of a song. Even the streaks of feedback on If Children tracks “Warning” and “Orchard Fair” felt at one with the progressions of the songs, certainly anything but careless or sloppy.

And even the things that make Wye Oak records a bit difficult say more for them than against them. The sample of indistinct chatter that begins the new Civilian, for instance, gives opener “Two Small Deaths” an aptly unsettling place from which to sneak up. Don’t count on re-settling all that often, even when things are as pretty as you’d expect.

Record Review: Obits’ Moody, Standard and Poor

Obits: Moody, Standard and Poor (Sub Pop, 3/29/11)

Obits: “Shift Operator”

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Few bands have had their first live shows bootlegged by fans. But when Obits‘ January 12, 2008 gig at the Cake Shop in New York City leaked on the Internet, few were surprised. Followers of Rick Froberg‘s previous bands, Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes, had been anxiously awaiting his new partnership with Sohrab Habibion, of Washington, DC-based Edsel, since the band began writing and rehearsing together in 2006.

After a fan leaked the lo-fi recordings, things moved quickly for the Brooklyn-based indie rockers. Obits posted two of the songs to its MySpace page, was subsequently signed to Sub Pop in late 2008, and released its first record, I Blame You, in March of 2009.

Its follow-up album, Moody, Standard and Poor, finds Obits further honing its gutsy blend of melodic garage punk without sacrificing the energy that defined its first release.

Record Review: Kurt Vile’s Smoke Ring For My Halo

Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador, 3/8/11)

Kurt Vile: “Baby’s Arms”

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During the few years that he’s been putting out proper records, Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile has played equally the singer-songwriter and the free-form sonic tinkerer. He seems unwilling to force too much to happen in either capacity. He’s sincerely catchy but shy of being blatantly earnest. He’s tempted by the inviting fizzle of tape hiss, reverb, drum machines, and Casios, but can put a simple guitar part at the front when it suits him.

His new album, Smoke Ring For My Halo, is a lot more orderly than Constant Hitmaker (2008) or Childish Prodigy (2009). The frequent, fun instrumental twiddling of Hitmaker is just about entirely gone, and Prodigy‘s push toward rocking clarity continues in a mellow acoustic vein. It no longer sounds like each song was patched together in slightly different circumstances and varying qualities of tape. He achieves a new consistency on Smoke Ring and doesn’t strain himself to get there.

Record Review: Ghostly International’s SMM: Context

V/A: SMM: Context (Ghostly International, 3/1/11)

Christina Vantzou: “11 Generations of My Fathers”

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In most cases, if the typical, well-respected independent label were to take a risk in compiling an ambient-heavy compilation with artists who were mostly unknown outside their respective hyper-insulated circles, most fans of that label would probably skip the compilation without much thought.

But then there is Ghostly International, a Ann Arbor, Michigan-based label with an eclectic roster comprising Matthew Dear, Loscil, Shigeto, and Dabrye, among others. For its new compilation record, Ghostly chose to dust off SMM, an offshoot of the label created back in 1994, to present a refined aesthetic within a particular — to borrow from the compilation’s title — Context.

Record Review: Parts & Labor’s Constant Future

Parts & Labor: Constant Future (Jagjaguwar, 3/8/11)

Parts & Labor: “Constant Future”

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In 20 years, we will wistfully misremember that all of indie rock sounded like a handful of reliable, definitive bands. It will be tempting to include Parts & Labor in that pleasant exercise of self-delusion. Then again, it wont make our memories any easier to process or simplify.

The electro-rock group’s co-founders, Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw, write lots of lyrical phrases that don’t express a simple opinion or definite image but are tempting to repeat like aphorisms. On the chorus of “A Thousand Roads,” one of the best songs and finest examples of what they’ve achieved on the new album Constant Future, they conjure up one of many fragmentary but astutely realized landscapes: “Come on, praise the progress made, the sharpened grays of a thousand roads / all delays, no lazy days, the latent phase of a thousand roads.”

It may be about touring-band life, or how America seems to measure its worth in paved surfaces. Because it’s not didactic or preachy, though, it can gradually sink in and play with your head, with the internal rhymes and alliterations indicating that there’s some coherent thought running through it that can’t wait to get out.

Parts & Labor’s music also sounds like it reads. Friel’s electronics crawl through the songs like power-line hum given life and dimension, but the hooks, punk-shout-along-worthy choruses, and Joe Wong‘s drums keep insisting that it’s going to make sense to your instincts.

Record Review: Earth’s Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light Vol. 1

Earth: Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light Vol. 1 (Southern Lord, 2/22/11)

Earth: “Father Midnight”

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Dylan Carlson‘s best work as Earth often creates a crushing sense of inevitability. Between the long-form guitar griddlings of Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version in 1993 and the panoramic beauty of The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull in 2008, Earth has erratically transitioned from smothering to sparkling.

One thing that remains, though, is how Carlson and his assorted bandmates move through their instrumentals: with slow but ever-emphatic steps. Since Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method in 2005, people have often said that Earth is creating something more like “Americana” than its earlier doom metal. That isn’t wrong at all, but more fundamentally, Earth’s recent music revels in the basics of melody. It often uses blues-like scales — though rarely as grindingly dissonant as those on Earth 2 — but always explores them with an almost mad patience. It has the frank sureness of a force that knows it will catch up with you eventually.

The new Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light, Vol. 1, might be roughly part of the Hex phase, and might sound just as good as Bees, but with the addition of cello and greater willingness to vary Earth’s format from song to song.

Carlson has said that he likes to find his melodies “within the drone.” It’s clear on the new Angels that he’s as ready as he’s ever been to let his collaborators seek alongside him within the expanses of sound they create. Where Bees relied largely on layers of guitar from Carlson, and, on three tracks, Bill Frisell, Angels finds bassist Karl Blau and cellist Lori Goldston — both new members — pushing right alongside him, and sometimes ahead of him, rather than simply thickening up the core melodies.

Record Review: Thank You’s Golden Worry

Thank You: Golden Worry (Thrill Jockey, 1/25/11)

Thank You: “1-2-3 Bad”

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Thank You‘s third album, Golden Worry, proves that the Baltimore trio is a band worth rooting for, and one that’s a step closer to making clear what it wants.

Like a few other recent albums to come out of Baltimore — namely, Pontytail‘s Ice Cream Spiritual and Dan Deacon‘s Bromst — Golden Worry stages a good-faith meeting between experimental impulses and an enthusiasm for amiable hooks. This hasn’t always been the case with Thank You. On the band’s last album, Terrible Two, its obsession with rhythm threatened to dry up the guitars, keys, and vocals into a tuneless murk.

Thank You has a compact feel that sometimes works for it and sometimes against it. The drums clamber actively on top of the song, often taking the lead but not always filling up the low end, and the guitars work up a noise-rhythm complement that, while often aggressive, doesn’t pursue a lot of fun back-and-forth with the percussion. As for vocals, only sometimes there and only sometimes coherent, they’re another constant variable in an open-ended format. It might help to know that Thrill Jockey’s bio for Thank You credits each member simply with “everything.”

Record Review: Zs’ New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion!

Zs: New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion! (The Social Registry, 1/25/11)

Zs: “AcresRMX” (Gabe Andruzzi Remix)

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It would be just like the beaten-to-death art of the remix to take on new life in scorched earth.

Nothing about New York avant-garde group Zs has a hook to give people a happy thrill of recognition when it pops up combined with something unexpected. Not only do sax player Sam Hillmer and his bandmates create sounds that no sane instrument maker could have intended, they do so systematically, in drawn-out patterns of percussive fury.

It certainly has elements of noise and free jazz to it, but even that doesn’t do credit to Zs’ disciplined pursuit of alien, enveloping sound mass. Processing its music can be so demanding — the band has a stated goal of “challeng[ing] the physical and mental limitations of both performer and listener” — that making sense of it might as well be a constructive act of hands-on interpretation.

Refreshingly, the remixers on New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion! use the opportunity to explore the sounds that Zs pried from extended technique and beyond-maddening feats of repetition on the first New Slaves. Three tracks — “New Slaves,” “Concert Black,” and “Acres Of Skin” — get two remixes here. Neither pair immediately seems to come from the same source, and that’s a great sign.

Record Review: Deerhoof’s Deerhoof vs. Evil

Deerhoof: Deerhoof vs. Evil (Polyvinyl, 1/25/11)

Deerhoof: “Merry Barracks”

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It’s so easy to get caught up in Deerhoof’s little eccentricities that it’s worth reminding people that the quartet is also a solid rock outfit — albeit with a supremely jagged sense of rhythm. Deerhoof tends to play these sides against each other expertly: Satomi Matsuzaki’s vocals are usually the first thing to throw people off, but they also often center the songs with hooky energy. Greg Saunier’s scurrying, splattered drums give the songs a feeling of constant ambush, but also let you know that all this madness is definitely going somewhere.

Deerhoof’s work often shows how much craft, instinct, and care goes into sounding bonkers. Deerhoof Vs. Evil bets that those qualities can remain when the racket is turned down. That’s not to say the record lacks the band’s usual joyous frivolity, or even that there’s less of it going on at once; it just offers chances to slow down and appreciate how pretty Deerhoof’s music can be.

That’s a refreshing direction to hear after the band’s last full-length in 2008, Offend Maggie. For as strong as that album is, the blocky, straining chords of “The Tears And Music Of Love” and “My Purple Past” sound like a band trying to wear itself out on blunt-force rocking for good. Evil looks for resources outside the drum-driven rock format and exerts unabashed, spit-shined control over what it finds.