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our weekly collection of shorter reviews
Huon,
The Hollows,
Blue Spark,
Jim O'Rourke
Mulch,
Physics,
7 Seconds,
The Scoldees
Sofa,
Neutrino,
Gonzo's Moonwomb,
Valentine
The Montgomery Cliffs,
Silo,
Jessica Six,
Kilowatthours
99cent dream,
More Complete
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Okay, I'm not even going to try to get into the genealogy of Huon. Suffice it to say that the people in Huon have been and are in about 3 mozillion other bands, most of which I've never heard of before. But that's my problem, and judging by the 19 (count 'em!) tunes on Songs for Lord Tortoise, they're probably pretty good bands! Huon plays mellow, atmospheric, mostly guitar-based rock, with boy/girl vocals switching off each song. "Guitar-based" isn't really fair though, because there are all sorts of little surprises that keep popping up, like strange accordion riffs, banging pipes, samples from old records, and so on. Almost every song reminds me of Galaxie 500 in one way or another, so I guess I should say that they sound a lot like Galaxie 500...except that they don't, really. It's more the mood that their music evokes -- the sort of sad, sort of drifting, sort of reverby thing that Galaxie 500 does so well. "Merri Creek" is a full-on Jesus and Mary Chain 3-chord reverbfest, albeit a mellow one. "Crusty" is a weird polka-like thing in a broken elevator. "Money" is a spooky, sort of primitive, acoustic techno sounding number... The more I listen to this CD, the stranger and more surprising it gets. That's pretty exciting. I think I'll go listen to it again. (Songs for Lord Tortoise also contains a multimedia component which includes photos, lyrics, comics, etc.) -- ib
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The Hollows / Descend / Low Watt (CD)
Descend is comprised of five genuinely pleasant alt-rock type songs.
I'm more than a little reminded of Gin Blossoms. Vocalist Ted Comerford has a slightly wistful quality in his voice that is the perfect compliment to the bordering-on-tender atmosphere of The Hollows'
music. It's difficult to avoid labeling this as "college radio fodder"
though, and I can't escape the feeling that there must be thousands of bands
that sound pretty much the same as this. Still, a song like "Strength" is
really too pretty to dismiss as average. -- nw |
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Blue Spark / Transmitter / Good Ink (CD)
It's hard to pinpoint a dominant musical style on this honky-tonk, B-3 organ-tinged release. While the general consensus recognizes the apparent rock influences, there are also subtle-yet-effective country, folk and blues
strains tucked in the nooks and crannies of Transmitter -- see
the potent "Two Trains," with its inspired steel guitar playing, and the
charming, mid-tempo ballad, "This Town." With a well chosen selection of styles
and rousing vocals you can put your own voice over, there’s not much to not
like (Slow down, read it again -- Ed.) about Blue Spark’s debut CD. -- am
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Jim O'Rourke / Halfway to a Threeway / Drag City (CD)
If you listened to O'Rourke's Eureka CD earlier this year and felt
that his pop sensibilities were somewhat blunted by his experimental leanings
and artsy embellishments, take heart; this may be the Jim O'Rourke CD for you.
It's only an EP, but Halfway to a Threeway presents O'Rourke with the
fat trimmed from his compositions. The instrumental "Not Sport, Marital
(or Martial,
depending upon who you trust) Art" demonstrates this clearly with
sublimated horns
and a cleverly cyclical jazz-evolved rhythmic progression, while "Fuzzy
Sun" extracts
the essentials of orchestral pop in an understated, gently proggish style.
"The Workplace,"
a gentle office anthem, can be recommended on the strength of its
co-vocalists (Sam Prekop
and Archer Prewitt), and the title track gives you O'Rourke, alone with his
acoustic guitar,
in the disc's most subtle and moving moment. Perhaps O'Rourke is best in
smaller doses. -- gz
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Mulch / Reasons to Quit / Ditch Bank (CD)
With Long Beach, California churning out so many Sublime-esque bands these days, it's nice to see that there's still some rock left in the area. Up and comers Mulch do their best to fill out SoCal's alternarock category, and they actually do it quite well. Fifteen tracks of power guitar riffs and intense drumming, with vocals by a guy named Snydley (who could replace Michael Stipe in a heartbeat) fill Reasons to Quit. With a sound much like REM, The Foo Fighters and even a little bit of The Dave Matthews Band, Mulch are a major-label shoo-in whose sound makes them seem like they'll get snatched up soon. If their live show is as energetic and powerful as their cd, get out to see these guys live before the clubs get too crowded, which won't take long at all. -- ha-n
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...In which post-rockers Physics crank out a pair of quarter-hour-long
instrumentals. Both tracks are dense, roiling, intricate and downbeat,
arcing more towards the psychedelic-goth end of the musical spectrum
(as opposed to the freeform jazz turf worked by Tortoise and their
ilk). The second cut (damned if I could find track names anywhere) is
superior, hitting a number of intense, emotionally-charged peaks -- what
you might call "payoff" moments when all the elements align to create
sonic perfection. Because of the length and complexity of the music,
2.7.98 holds up well for multiple sequential listens -- there's always
something new to discover. -- gz
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7 Seconds / Good to Go / Side One
Dummy (CD)
With Good to Go, Cali hardcore punk mainstays 7 Seconds return to
give their fans another dose of what they want: pile-driven rhythms, riffy
rock 'n' roll and hardhitting lyrics. Frontman Kevin Seconds has lost
nothing in the 18 years he's spent leading one of hardcore's most influential
bands. He's as forceful and opinionated as ever. Good to Go's 16
tracks don't stray much from the hardcore formula, but the lyrics seem to have matured with the band's age. With lines like "We're getting old, no big surprise, you stress on it, and you despise the fact that someday we
all die, and daily you keep asking yourself why?" I'm left to ask the
question, "If this is punk at mid-life, what will octogenarian punk sound
like?" -- nw
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The Scoldees / My Pathetic Life / Off Hour Rockers (CD)
You'll probably hear the Scoldees on commercial radio some time
in the next year. They're well suited to that crazy Adult Album
Alternative sound -- poppy and a bit edgy, but ultimately inoffensive.
It doesn't hurt that vocalist Nancy Sirianni's clipped vocal delivery sometimes sounds like Alanis Morrissette, either. The eleven
songs on My Pathetic Life run the gamut of hip folky-pop,
and are uniformly pleasant, if bland, but I didn't feel the urge
to listen to any of them over and over again. The press
materials that accompanied My Pathetic Life cast the Scoldees
as Music's Next Big Thing, to the point where I expected a bit more
than than faux alt-rock I found. -- gz
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The first thing I have to say about grey is that the packaging is lovely. The CD comes in a hand-folded case of grey cardboard with a square cut out of the middle that lets the insert show though. The CD itself has a plain grey surface. It's very nice. For some reason CDs from Québec almost always have the best packaging. Anyway, the music on grey, while not exactly "nice", is also quite interesting. It's fairly spare, aggressive, guitar driven stuff, but the guitars are much more Fugazi or Joy Division than say, Pearl Jam. The vocals tend toward the "tortured male" variety, which I don't always have much patience for, but it never gets too bad here, and the tunes for the most part have enough energy to keep things interesting. "ch.2chi." is a sharp, fast guitar attack. "red lake" is much mellower, and pairs a curiously upbeat guitar line with barely audible, hopeless-sounding vocals. "medicine hat", on the other hand, is a pretty generic-sounding mid-tempo rock tune. It goes on like that -- a few interesting tunes followed by a few predictable rock songs. Sofa clearly has something good going here; they're creative, enthusiastic players and they write interesting songs. It would be great if they could just go a step farther, and pull it all together to create something more consistently compelling. -- ib
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Neutrino / Motion Picture Soundtrack / Divot (CD)
Listening to Motion Picture Soundtrack's dense, thumping rhythms might remind
some of that time in grammar school when that big bully smashed your head into the
drinking fountain because you wouldn't give him your milk money. Others might find Neutrino a tad reminiscent of Fugazi in their tight song
structures and brash instrumentation. And still others of you might liken the
album to tap dancing in a minefield, where a slow quiet moment is quickly
blown apart by shrieking guitars, frantic drumming, or in some cases flying chunks of metal shrapnel. No matter what experiences Motion Picture Soundtrack might remind you
of, listening to it is an experience all its own (And now that Neutrino have left us, it's a posthumous experience, too -- Ed.). -- jj
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Gonzo's Moonwomb / Suggested Serving / Gonzo's Moonwomb (CD-R)
Inspired by the frenetic time-signature madness of more prominent
Japanese noise bands like The Ruins or The Boredoms, this Melbourne-based
trio undertakes everything from grooving, frenzied keyboard Zorn blasts on
"Water It Down Some More" to the chaotic and absurd "Onan the Librarian,"
whose thumping bass lines punch out the rhythm as Grove the trumpeter shows
off his brass unit. It's a twisting, unpredictable excursion through three
brains that sharply deviates from your everyday musical normalcy, while
grasping enough common ground to tease your ears into listening. -- am
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Valentine / Walkin' Shoes / Vamtech (CD)
Here's a fairly reliable rule I've discovered: you can tell how cheesy
an album is going to be by scanning the song titles for words that
should
end in "ing," but have been abbreviated to "in'" -- walkin', jumpin',
kissin', lovin',
operatin', masturbatin', etc. If the total goes above three, chances are
you're buying
either a Molly Hatchet album or a CD by a bar band whose members haven't heard
a new song in ten years. Walkin' Shoes has the title track, plus a
song called
"Sometimes I Just Feel Like Cryin'", so it comes in just under the bar --
but there's
also a song called "Love is the Answer." While Valentine seems like a
competent
musician, I found his subject matter tired, his music predictable and his
lyrics
heavy-handed and cliché-ridden. Walkin' Shoes may have been
a passionate,
heartfelt effort, but it's so mired in bad bar-band conventions that it's hard to hear it as anything but a parody. -- gz
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The Montgomery Cliffs / Christmas Stocking Stuffer / RPM USA (CD)
This one came too late to be included in our Holiday Music
That Doesn't Suck feature -- which is a shame, because it's one of the
year's best. In addition to a punky take on "O Come All Ye Faithful" and a
loungey-jazz spin on "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", the Cliffs have penned
a potential new classic -- "Christmas Lights". Bouncy and poppy and catchy
as all hell, "Christmas Lights" deserves a long life -- if Elvis Costello
knows what
he's doing, he'll cover it for next year, complete with its "Little Drummer
Boy"
chorus. You'll be humming it and muttering lyrical snippets for hours. There
are two other songs here ("Andiamo in a Nutshell" and "Eddie (as it was
written)"),
but I'll have to come back to them on December 26th. I'm stuck on
"Christmas Lights". -- gz
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Silo / Instar / Swim (CD)
In the mood for some thick, mid-tempo guitar symphonies? If
so, look no further than Instar. Though there are a few
brooding tracks -- album closer "Deckwork" comes to mind -- most
of Instar is energetic and intriguing, full of texture and intrumental
interplay, as on the aggressive "Asset". Think of it as post-punk with
a dash of prog-rock and a little electronic decoration -- interesting, but definitely understated. -- gz
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Jessica Six were a Houston pop-punk band that went defunct in 1998. All
Good Things is their retrospective album. It's kind of odd
to be reviewing a retrospective album by a band I've never heard of. By
their own admission, Jessica Six's influence never reached outside the Lone
Star State, but a careful read of the CD's liner notes reveals a genuinely successful
regional band. Over 3 years they played almost 60 shows, sharing bills
with bands I have heard of -- Man or Astroman?, The Mr. T
Experience, Sweep the Leg Johnny, Pansy Division and Tsunami. "Newport Millionaire" is a nice example of the kind of melody-friendly punk that JS offered Houstonians for a trio of years. Here's to all the little
bands of good quality that just never quite broke out! -- nw
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Kilowatthours / All Things Regarding / The Temporary Residence Ltd. (CD)
Crashing guitars. Thundering drums. Airy vocals. Tinkly piano/keyboards.
Kilowatthours have figured this formula out pretty well...which isn't hard,
considering
how many bands have employed it in the past. The six songs on All
Things Regarding
are very enjoyable, alternating between thunderous power and delicate beauty, but I couldn't hum one of them if you put a gun to my head.
And that's not just because guns make me nervous, either -- it's the dearth of deal-closing hooks that's to blame. The piano stuff makes
an impression,
but not a big enough impression to get me running around, babbling "Hot
damn! Have you heard Kilowatthours?" to anyone who'll listen. Good, but not life-changing. -- gz
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Listening to 99cent dream is like having hot air balloons tied to each of
your extremities -- it gives you the opportunity to float above and look
inside a person's mind to find out what it is that makes him/her tick. Irreverent popmeister Jamey Gray is at it again, concocting tunes that
slither their way into your brain and stay there for days. Though a short
ride, II is well worth the price of admission. Splicing together crunching
guitar, dreamy keyboards and sublime vocals, Gray creates splinters of perfect
pop. Chiming guitars, winding piano and a pared-down beat propel the
instrumental "Your Space" upward to greatness, while on the
gleaming "All the Guns and Roses Songs We Knew" Gray's hushed vocal
delivery that allows the song to saw through your heartstrings. I only wish
A Bouncing Space would start to release this material on CD, making it more
easily accessible to all those who should own this album. Mind you,
everybody should own this album. -- jj
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More Complete /
self-titled / Life of Sin (CD)
Like their noisy D.C. post-punk counterparts, More Complete send forth a
fuzzed out, guitar-centric sound that's dense, angry and capricious. The
band’s marriage of melodic punk to blistering rage is unharmonious in its
description, yet utterly tangible in its presentation. A few vocals tracks
detract from the band’s musical maelstrom as they drearily trudge through
the motions, sounding like a record that’s not playing at exactly the right
speed. However, with a secret track at the end, you can safely raise your
air guitar in praise of noisy six string explosions, thudding drums and
in-your-face vocals that'll quell any masochistic tendencies that cross
your mind during the Holidays. -- am
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gz - george zahora | nw - noah wane | am - andrew magilow | ib - irving bellemead
jj - jason jackowiak | ha-n - heidi anne-noel | dd - deirdre devers
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