The Tris McCall Report
Your Friends And Neighbors, July 13, 2004
Francophiles & Skinny Ties
From: Brooklyn.
Format: Eight track almost-LP. Francophiles is sort of a tweener between an EP and a proper full-length. Then again, in Brooklyn, bands get in, get on, and get out. The half-hour album is becoming a Williamsburg standard.
Fidelity: Acceptable indie. Francophiles & Skinny Ties sounds pretty raw and digital, like it was recorded straight to a hard-drive or a portable DAT machine. Those of you who remember the Break-Up's former incarnation as Girl Harbor will know what I'm talking about when I say that Francophiles falls somewhere between Down On The Fourth Of July and Shine On.
Genre: Garage-rock revival, angular post-punk. A source close to the band recently told me that despite their wild-man rocknroll underpinnings, AM shares more than a little of the Ex Models' art-school detachment. I think I know what he means.
Arrangements: Everything cues off of the humongous bass guitar. It snarls and snakes; enormous, thick, insistent. When AM fuzzes it out, as they do on "Sex 'N' Drugs", it rips stickily, like a chainsaw on low speed chewing through a pine tree. The guitars are trashy, overdriven and distorted. Occasionally, the group will process their six-strings and get some dime-store electronica grooves going; they fold these experiments into the mix like a secret, teaspoon-sized ingredient in industrial-sized batter. The drums are played with a commensurate recklessness, yet never sloppily. Yelped backing vocals, abrasive leads, distant and cheap whistling synth, organs on low simmer.
What's this record about?: AM head honcho James Jones is a rock and roll degenerate by design. But design implies craft, and his is a tailored persona -- a brainy, two-fisted street urchin with a taste for hard living and the wherewithal to examine his own dependence on the lifestlye. He's not arch, and nor does he joke around very much -- what looks initially like levity in his stance, is, upon closer examination, a grimace, illuminated by the electricity of the street. Unlike other Kingsborough blues-rock shouters, Jones doesn't strain to communicate snottiness-amidst-powerlessness: he may be at the whim of his milieu's caprices, but he feels very much in control of his own destiny. He can create his own love object, as he does on "Monster Heart", and he neither apologizes for nor feels ambivalent about playing Pygmalion. When he's "In The City", he knows where to go; when he's surrounded by "Sex And Drugs", he's never at the mercy of them. The spiked-heeled women who catch his eye are surveyed coolly; he might be screaming and kicking, but he's taking notes the whole time. He's a writer, he controls the flow. Subtly or not, he lets you know.
The singer: Jones has his early-Jagger sneer and his moments of Richard Hell blurt: he bends notes, sliding from phrase to phrase, mixing bluesy with straight-up boozy. It's an old New York tradition. He can sound like a petulant child at times, but that, too, comes with the territory. If on "Bloodshot", the shrieks thin out his voice a bit and make him sound more hysterical than menacing, you could never say it isn't all authentic. If these perfomances weren't one-takes, an awful lot of craft went into making them sound like one-takes. Yeah, yeah, that's what it is, I'm sure.
The band: AM begins with bassist Scott Cleveland, a rock and roll animal who grinds a ditch into the bottom of these songs. His tone is like an old lead pipe: heavy, corroded, patchy in places but solidly functional. The group succeeds because they build outward from the plumbing -- they make sure the rhythm section is in place before horsing around with the treble instruments. Jarrod Ruby beats the drums with punk energy, but he's a classic-rock skinsman at heart. He provides a loose framework for Cleveland's explorations, and generally succeeds in keeping him on the reservation. On "Quiet And Dayglo", for instance, he chase after Cleveland's rampaging part, catches it by the collar, and lets it squirm around without ever forcing it back into its seat. That's a good way to preserve the appropriate 'tude. Jones is a trash-scrawl guitar player in the grand Williamsburg style -- he doesn't really solo, but he will make constant commentary, answering his own voice, scribbling semi-legible notes in the margins of the songs. He also digs the trick of playing the same notes on the guitar that he's singing. Hey, why don't Jersey bands ever do that?
The songs: Bluesy, obnoxious, immediate, fun. They usually build to singalong choruses, but even where they don't, there's always a memorable hook or two in the verses. "Sex N Drugs", the best (or maybe just the most interesting) thing on the collection is also the trashiest: it builds from a punishing two-note riff through an explosive release in which Ruby tries to hit every piece in his kit at once.
What differentiates this record from others like it? There exist in Williamsburg pure garage-rock revival bands, historical reconstructionists like the Mooney Suzuki who strain to rid their music of any trappings of ornamentation. AM aren't like that at all. There are two tendencies pulling the group away from the rudimentary template. The first is their manifest love for the classic rock tradition and their accompanying taste for big chord power-pop. Second, and more indicative of the group's future direction, is their inclination toward angular, arty minimalism. Almost every song features elements that, if emphasized, would take AM toward spazz-out rhythmic New Wave. My guess is that as the band develops further, they will push on in this direction.
What's not so good?: I owe AM an apology. I've been sitting on Francophiles & Skinny Ties forever. Part of that was dumb luck -- when I first put all the CDs I was going to review for this column in a random order, they drew the shortest straw, and so went to the bottom of the list. But part of it is a consequence of their own production choices. Because Jones runs his voice through filters and some very harsh effects, and then pinches the hell out of it with EQ, I frequently cannot understand what he is saying. I've had long experience as a rock decipherer -- I've sat there with Clientele records, trying to disagreggate Alistair MacLean's poetry from the Space Echo, and succeeding intermittently -- so I'm no prima donna here. But AM (or just Jones, who does not always articulate) needs to do a better job of presenting their lyrics. I'd say at least a third of Francophiles & Skinny Ties is garbled beyond my recognition -- and that's after considerable exposure.
Recommended?: I like to rock, and so do you. But as summertime comes, I start to feel less like rocking: rhythm guitar begins to feel like a woolen sweater, a sweatshirt of sound. What Brooklyn bands realize that too many Jersey bands do not: those sweatshirts are suffocating, constricting. They are okay for those varsity football games, but not so good for anything else. AM understands better than many the role of their instruments -- they take care of the fundamentals, and they let the bass guitar and the drums dictate the pace and the size of the sound. I don't mean to imply that there isn't plenty of guitar here. There is. But even in garage-rock, it's how you use it that counts.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Get yourself to the official AM site. There's also a video there for the acoustic(!) read on "Monster Heart". Unashamed of their trad-pop and singer-songwriter underpinnings, these guys are.
Title: And The Maps Came Down
From: Jersey City, New Jersey. It's hard to imagine this amalgam of junkyard technology, unabashed artiness, multiculturalism, and high theory coming from anywhere else.
Format: Full-length long-player. Fourteen tracks, forty-four minutes.
Fidelity: Much of And The Maps Came Down was recorded on four-track media, and you can tell. But there aren't any sloppy or muted songs, and as arty as this band is, affecting a fashionable murkiness isn't part of the project. When it counts, they're clear and communicative. Call them mid-fi.
Genre: Art-rock.
Arrangements: Cool synthesizer and guitar buzz, flamenco hand-claps, horns, lonely recorder, casio drum machine loops, a keyed instrument that sounds remarkably like a mellotron (couldn't be...), random unidentified bubbles and burbles, rattling percussion, whispers, introspective muttering, machine whirs, chants in foreign languages, the distorted speech of passersby.
What's this record about?: It's a hypnotic European travelogue of impressions, experiences, chance encounters, and missed connections. But this is no Club Med vacation -- AWM want to bring out Europe as confusing, sleazy, foggy, threatening, decayed; usually sexy, sometimes dangerous, always alluring. Jason Cieradkowski's songs are crammed with peddlers, old buildings, ruins, airports, cafes, "chlopcy", and fetching girls whose languages he doesn't speak. Lost in a kaleidoscope of vaguely recognizable sounds and cultures, Cieradkowski's narrators drift from location to location, following barely-discenrnable signals and voices, and an unarticulated longing. Chasing chicks through grubby European streets becomes a metaphor for communication breakdown. Or maybe it's the other way around.
The singer: Cieradkowski howls, chants, scats, hisses, croons, and breathes heavy, and leaves it all on the table even if he never goes over the top. If he's more impassioned than tuneful, or if his voice is an acquired taste, well, I can only suggest you work with him -- he'll take you down some strange, frightening alleyways where you never imagined you'd go. I'd compare his cracked, side-of-the-mouth tone and approach to Phil Judd, the first singer of Split Enz, but I fear he's a forgotten man even in New Zealand. At times, (especially the walk across the rooftops of "Black Market Cologne") his cigarette-choked pipes sound remarkably like those of Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile. He's also one of the few vocalists this side of Aidan Moffat who's capable of doing spoken-word tracks and not coming off as a total idiot in the process.
The band: An intractable art-rock combo. The guitars never crunch or pulverize: instead, they play wiry, angular figures that insinuate their way into the listener's consciousness. The chilling "Dresden" proves that drummer Brian Wilson can do a four-on-the-floor beat, but he'd probably rather not -- his tastes lean toward jazzy ride cymbal and busy, unconventional snare parts. AWM likes synth pads that sound as if they were borrowed from the preset bays of disused mid-eighties digital models. It all adds to the Euro-creepiness: the feel of abandoned tower-blocks and gorgeous, polluted canals, and tourism as dislocation and flight through a panorama of intangibles.
The songs: Built around grooves. American Watercolor Movement generally take a guitar figure or rhythm, lace a melody or recicitive over it, and let it build to a climax or dissolve into ether. There's a dub streak here too -- the track is liable to fall away at the most unexpected moments, creating an aural close-up on Cieradkowski's shreiking, perplexed face.
What distinguishes this record from other indie records like it?: I'll be straight:And The Maps Came Down is a major release, and one of the most interesting rock albums to come from New Jersey in the past five years. Musical travelogues tend to be distinctive by nature, but Cieradkowski's European explorations have gone to tape with uncommon vividness. Far from home, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and beholden to a foreign logic, the narrators stumble through sonic tapestries alternately carnivalesque and menacing. The silences between the tracks feel like the spaces lost in translation.
What's not so good?: Four-track recording imposes its particular limitations on even the most imaginative acts. Here, too often, the bass guitar that should be driving these groove-pieces is milky and insubstantial, or as on "I Paparazzi", almost absent. As good as And The Maps Came Down is, it would have hit harder had the bass guitar been properly recorded and mixed.
Recommended?: This is not the easiest listen; some of the pieces, like the French riot of "Pour Les Auditeurs" or the savage post-colonial madness of "Lifestyle", are manic and abrasive. They're also great. Even the most challenging moments here are worth riddling through. And The Maps Came Down is a brilliant record, and if you're brilliant yourself (and I know you are), you owe it to yourself to pay attention to it.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Try the website first. If that doesn't work out, I think the group is affiliated with Perhaps Transparent (and if they're not, they ought to be). Even if I'm wrong, it's always worth catching up with the Perhaps Transparent vision and mission.
Title: M&G Sessions
From: Lower Manhattan. Frequent readers of my stuff may recall that Benjamin Cartel is part of the Larchmont Crew of transplanted city rockers. Cartel frontman Ben Rosenthal epitomizes many of the virtues of the crew: he's a trad-rocker and painstaking, conscientious songwriter, he's very literate, he's poised, he's a storyteller.
Format: Four-song EP. My tracklisting is totally messed up -- the sleeve on the CD has "Angela" second and "Leave Me Be" last. But on the CD I have, "Angela" is third and "Amelia" is last. I know Ghostface Killa screws up his tracklisting all the time, but in music like the Cartel's, properly communicating the song title is important.
Fidelity: Excellent for an indie release. There's nothing about the sound here that I'd change. If I ran the radio, this would be radio quality. There's an immediacy to M&G Sessions that wouldn't be there if it was more polished. Genre: Roots-rock, Americana. Benjamin Cartel is essentially a folk-rock act.
Arrangements: Big, swinging drums with a slap that might remind you of Damn The Torpedoes, groovy bass, guitar (probably Telecaster) mixed with that heartland twang, super tremelo on the downbeats of "Amelia", roller-rink Hammond on "No One", twinkly Buckingham-"Gypsy" lead on "Angela", something that sounds like the "You Got Lucky" synth on "Leave Me Be", but which might be a treated guitar. Rosenthal almost never strums his six-string in big sheets; he strikes it like a rhythm instrument, and keeps it out of the way of the vocals.
What's this record about?: Well, one song is called "Angela", another is called "Amelia" -- you tell me. These are songs about girls; some of whom Rosenthal is after, some of whom he can't forget. But Benjamin Rosenthal has always been the toughest-minded of the Larchmont crew, and his romanticism is often tempered by a strangely sympathetic petulance. On Salt Water, the Cartel's 2002 full-length, he was always as prepared with a kiss-off as he was with a kiss, and the balance between those two desires made the album fascinating. M&G Sessions catches Rosenthal in a better mood. But while the ambivalence has been softened, it's still there. "No one works as fast", he shouts on the opener, likening a woman to a quick-acting medication. But it's also a put-down; it's stormy and disgusted, he can't keep up with his object of affection, he's outclassed. "I can't think about her without feeling sorry for myself", he offers to another woman on "Leave Me Be". Generous, sure, but it also comes wrapped in a threat. "You'd better leave me be", he growls, and it's more cautionary than helpful. Even the awaited homecoming in "Angela" also promises restiveness, vague dissatisfaction. "Can't you see where I've been coming from?", the narrator entreats. She can't. These men and women don't understand each other, the communicate uneasily, they sidestep toward a truce.
The singer: Benjamin is the most conventionally sweet-voiced of the Rosenthal clan -- he's got some of Milton's warmth and steam and some of the St. James Stars' sweat, but he also has the capacity to croon like a troubadour, and he takes it. "Amelia" is probably the most winsome performance here, but much of "Angela" is lovely, too. He can sound tough when he wants to. That isn't often.
The band: There is an incredibly audible fuck-up at the beginning of "Amelia" -- the bass guitar comes in a little late. I cannot thank Benjamin Rosenthal enough for leaving it in. It only interrupts the groove for a split-second. If there's one thing I'm tired of, it's records with no mistakes on them. You listen to classic stuff from the seventies -- Van Morrison, the Boss, Joni Mitchell -- and all of those albums preserve mistakes. Making mistakes is a part of making music, and one misplaced beat or wrong note shouldn't scupper a take with a good feel. But Benjamin Cartel has always been about feel -- Rosenthal isn't the flashiest drummer working this territory, but he's got a real swing. And nothing he's played on ever sat there inert for three minutes. Likewise for the guitar stuff on M&G Sessions: never earthshaking, but always effective.
The songs: There are those who don't think we need any more Tom Petty songs. Then there are people like me, for whom too many Tom Petty songs are never enough. The Cartel's resemblance to the Heartbreakers have been pointed out for years, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Rosenthal, as he improves, seems to be writing more like Petty. Relative minors, folk-rock progressions, singalong choruses, general Byrdsiness, you get it all here. Slot any of these songs into Hard Promises, and they'd fit in seamlessly. You might not think that's high praise. I do.
What differentiates this record from others in its genre? Next to nothing. As we've come to expect from Larchmonters, Rosenthal is more literary than his peers. But he never hits you over the head with it -- it's just there, right under the surface, if you want to engage with it. And if you don't, Rosenthal has no problem with your uncomplicated desire to rock along.
What's not so good?: For a singer committed to clarity, and who rejects melisma or ornamentation out of hand, it can be very difficult figuring out what the hell Rosenthal is saying. Much of the first verse of "No One" is garbled, and it took me about five passes to catch the hook in "Angela". I'm not sure it's a performance issue -- in concert, Rosenthal enunciates clearly, and is peculiarly easy to follow. I think it's probably an EQ issue. But it's one he should really correct: Cartel lyrics are always solid, and they should be foregrounded more.
Recommended?: This is the best recording I've heard out of the Cartel so far, and I dug Salt Water a lot. Four excellent trad-rock songs with good stories, solid arrangements, an undercurrent of undeniable tension, and Rosenthal's own proletarian but sympathetic folkster vocals. What's not to like?
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: I'd start with the artist's website. Alternately, you can hang around Pete's Candy Store. You're sure to run into one of the Rosenthals there before too long.
Title: Drama Queen
From: A strange wasteland between Williamsburg and Hudson County called "Manhattan".
Format: This is a long long-player. Twenty-one songs stretched out over two imaginary sides; sixty-six minutes of Krieger's music.
Fidelity: Lo-fi. Instruments drift a bit, as does Krieger's voice. I'm not sure what microphones he used to make these four track recordings, but it doesn't sound like there were any compressors handy.
Genre: Singer-songwriter. I would even say "Asbury Park singer-songwriter", but for the unfortunate fact that Krieger isn't from Asbury Park. All of the elements of Asbury music are here: wistful, traditional folk-rock songs, a voice that sounds channeled from classic radio, insecurity, the winter wind blowing through the amusement park.
Arrangements: Strummed acoustic guitar, lead electric, some bass, machine drums playing rock patterns, backing vocals at all the appropriate moments. Krieger knows the trick of making his electric sound like a pedal steel by rolling the volume pedal back and forth. Hey, it always works.
What's this record about?: Heartbreak, romantic failure, feelings of inadequacy. Krieger's narrators all seem to be in the midst of breaking up, getting left behind, being spurned. They maintain tremendous humanity throughout, though, taking their blows with dignity. Ironically, the key to understanding and inhabiting Krieger's perspective might be the one non-love song on this collection of twenty-one tracks: "Five-Foot Three", which finds the hero at a rock concert, unable to see over the perms and mullets of his fellow concertgoers. "If I had one wish...", sings Krieger, with a longing that can't be counterfeitied. The stories play out against a New York City backdrop of bars, record shops, streetsm subways and apartments. But these narrators aren't partygoers or barflies -- they're just Manhattan citizens, hoping that a few extra inches might make all the difference.
The singer: Krieger sings in a classic Seventies quaver; he sounds like he's stepped out of a Bread album cover. He can do Seventies-rough just as well as he can do Seventies-sensitive, too. Even when he loses pitch, he does so with the charm of Mick Jagger. He recognizes his voice is an asset -- it's mixed to the front of almost all of these tracks.
The band: This is song-presentation music. Krieger has stories to tell, and the instruments are supporting characters; outlines, really. The rock and roll drum programming is effective, even if the patterns feel pre-set at times. Some of the best songs, like "Jarrod and the January Girls", are just guitar and voice: strummed or twinkly patterns on the acoustic, ballpoint-thin lines of electric lead. The twin guitar logic might remind you of...
The songs: The liner notes to Drama Queen end by letting you know that Mirror Blue is "now playing" in Krieger's house. Honestly, he didn't have to tell us. On a few of these songs, he's practically on a Vincent Black Lightning. But if you're going to wear your influences proudly, why not pick the best? If Drama Queen reads as a lo-fi version of the lighter side of Richard Thompson's Capitol records, well, that's not criticism, that's praise. This is traditional British and American folk-rock songcraft. Krieger has an ear for pleasing melodies, too, and the variations on his basic songwriting logic never sound reiterative.
What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: If you're going to be in anybody's presence for over an hour, you'd better find them likeable. Krieger understands this instinctively -- or perhaps he doesn't need to. At any rate, he's an sympathetic writer, and manages to animate his characters with warmth, frailty, and humanity. The stretch of songs from "All My Tears" to "Jarrod & The January Girls" is an arc of great beauty and poise.
What's not so good?: Drama Queen was recorded on Cakewalk software, which does allow you to quantize. Still, many of the parts here don't exactly sync up. Some of the guitar sits poorly with the bass and/or the machine drums. I'm not a fascist about compression, but still, I have to wish that the vocal signal here didn't drift quite so much. Moreover, though it's not as bad as its t-shirt title makes it sound, the "Beer Won't Break Your Heart" scenario is beneath Krieger. I know that Richard Thompson also liked to throw in a few substandard tracks on his records just to keep his audience honest, but still, Drama Queen probably could have benefited from a final edit.
Recommended?: I recommend that everybody in Asbury Park (particularly Tommy Strazza, whose music Drama Queen sometimes resembles) extend honorary membership in the Jersey Shore scene to Ben Krieger. I also recommend that they drop whatever the hell they're doing at the Stone Pony and get Krieger up on stage to play "Denver". That room was built to air songs like this one.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: As you might have ascertained by now, Krieger is a real sweetheart, and a booster of local music. His Gun Street Radio site promotes his music, but also provides links and descriptions of other local acts in Krieger's orbit. He's a community-builder, and his generosity extends to his album notes. Drama Queen comes with two red cardboard inserts containing all the lyrics, and some very winning explication of the recording decisions. And in a rock scene cluttered with bands twisting your arm to "play loud", Krieger includes a memorial picture of an old pet, and insists "this CD should not be played until you've walked your dog". Sympathetic to the end, this guy is.
Title: On My Way
From: Texas, originally, though he now lives in Brooklyn. Sha Sha, Kweller's first solo record, was largely set in Texas. The songs and stories on On My Way unfold in New York City. This record represents the real first fruits of Kweller's transformation from a child star (in Radish) to a NYC hipster icon.
Format: Full-length.
Fidelity: A shade below radio-quality. Some of this will probably get airing on alternative shows. Ben Kweller isn't shooting for Z-100, but he's got a large enough fan base that he can probably expect token mainstream interest in his work.
Genre: Power-pop. Because of his occasionally wild singing, Kweller has picked up an emo following, but really, he's much more interested in classic Seventies pop songwriting and structure than in primal release.
Arrangements: Nothing too fancy. Rock rhythm section, acoustic rhythm guitar in places, a much dirtier electric lead that Kweller's used in the past, some piano (but not enough of it), intermittent backing vocals. There's a little bit of xylophone on "The Rules", and harmonica on "Hear Me Out". In both cases, I wish there were more. Most of these songs are guitar-bass-drums-Kweller's voice.
What's this record about?: Innocence, new awakening, new love, growing up, transition to a new city. Kweller likes to play the naif. It's a double-edged approach: on the one hand, it's hard not to feel sympathy for his wide-eyed perspective, on the other, he can sometimes come off a bit disingenuous. The love songs here ("Believer", "I Need You Back", "Down", the last verse of "On My Way") are pure, heartfelt, and simple, and for the most part, they work. But you might find the "turtle shell" of "I Need You Back" and the retreat of "My Apartment" overly sensitive. Kweller still looks like a kid, but by Dylan's standard (one he clearly holds himself to) he's already an old man. The refreshingly childlike tone of his early work has begun to be ill-fitting.
The singer: Kweller is gifted with a sweet kid's choir-voice that only becomes more magnetic and galvanizing when he goes nuts. That means that his outros are frequently the most compelling parts of his songs -- when he slips from the plaintive croon of the verses to his climactic tantrums, it carries the authority of the mercurial, Promethean kid down the block. The best example here is "The Rules", a straightforward rocker that's kicked into a higher gear by Kweller's final declamations, delivered in a wonderfully shredded shout. Elsewhere, he tries a falsetto here and there (outro of "Believer", "Different But The Same"). It's better when he's raging and shouting.
The musicians: Kweller has always led superior bands. On My Way boasts a great rock rhythm section -- poised and respectful, but never afraid to tear into the song when necessary. Lead guitar solos are perfunctory, and don't add much to the songs. Kweller himself is an uninteresting guitarrist, humping away at barre chords like your standard rock mook ("Ann Disaster", "I Need You Back"). On the piano, though, he's a transformed man: sure of himself, innovative, ready to take chances. I realize Kweller is already drifting dangerously close to an "Elton John of emo-pop" designation/pigeonhole, but I don't think he should be afraid of it. Kweller's recordings are always better when he plays piano: he contributes an instrumental voice strong enough to sit with his outstanding rhythm section.
The songs: Traditional but undeniable. Kweller bleeds classic pop hooks. He knows how to point a song toward a singalong chorus, how much melodicism to give away in the verses, when to use a relative minor, when to drop the bass under a chord. He's brought his unerring sense of musical poise to On My Way, and much of the record feels like an expression of his harmonic mastery. Yet, to his credit, he's also interested in sounding like a citizen of his adopted city. So next to McCartney-esque ballads like "Different But The Same", he tosses a few attempts at Brooklyn garage rock -- "Ann Disaster", "The Rules", "Down". The best song here ("Hospital Bed") fuses a Seventies art-pop verse with a faux-garage chorus and some very inspired piano playing. It's probably the direction he'll go in, as long as he remains in NYC.
What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: The high quality of Kweller's formal musical songwriting. That and his wonderful performances when he's roused.
What's not so good?: Ben Kweller certainly isn't a bad lyricist: at times he can be funny, and he can tell a (limited) story. Yet, too often, he falls back on easy rhymes and, like many power-poppers, he'll go through the motions and use cliched language. He also consistently represents his narrators as uncomplicated, which undercuts their authority, and he puts childlike phrases in their mouths, which undercuts our ability to take them seriously. This places an enormous burden on the musical aspects of his songwriting: he's forced to try to come up with fantastic melodies every time out. He's constantly compensating, and the musical overdrive can become wearisome in its showiness.
Recommended?: I understand why Kweller annoys people. If many of his songs still sound like the theme to the Ben Kweller Show, I think we ought to bear with him anyway. He's a heckuva talent, and melodicists this effective don't come along every day. On My Way cleans up a few of the problems that plagued the Ato version of Sha Sha: some of the slick major-label polish is gone, and Kweller has been set loose to sing the way he surely wants to. I am not at all satisfied that the lyrics are improving, but they've moved with him to New York City, and that's a good sign: he's in touch with his surroundings. On balance, we're lucky to have him.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: This is the first thing I've reviewed here that you can probably pick up at Sam Goody. Or try the Ato Records site -- but don't get suckered into taking a flier on any of the label's other offerings. Well, to be fair, My Morning Jacket is interesting....
Title: Bloody Tales From The Suburbs
From: Jersey City. At least the frontwoman is; she really is a Friend & Neighbor. Her flat is about a three-minute walk from my front door.
Format: Six songs. Boomslang has also recorded a three-song EP titled Grim Faced Coloured Folks In Fancy Clothes. It repeats "Won't Shed A Tear", a song that's given a better interpretation here. My tracklisting is a little mixed up: "The Next Sound You Hear" is supposed to be last, but it's actually fifth.
Fidelity: Bloody Tales From The Suburbs is very live-sounding. It sounds like somebody hooked up a digital eight-track to a good coffeehouse sound system, captured Boomslang during a gig, and pressed up the resultant recording. The drums feel extremely separated, and high-frequencies are pinched, as they'd be through a stage PA. It sure as hell doesn't sound like radio-friendly, but if Boomslang's intention was to communicate a performance vibe, they've succeeded.
Genre: Acoustic rock. This band goes at it pretty hard, but there's no electric guitar here to muddy up the midrange or compete with the big voice.
Arrangements: Rock drums, a bass that's either fretless or played with such aggressiveness that the strings (and fretboard) is bending naturally, and souped-up acoustic guitar. Karen Davis's six-string doesn't sound like an Ovation or a hollow-bodied electric-acoustic -- just a regular axe run through some kind of chorus. There are no backing vocals, and no overdubs.
What's this record about?: Prevailing oppression, resistance, silences forced and silences chosen, family dynamics, vexed relationships. Davis isn't in a good mood on this record, and her narrators are melancholy when not infuriated. Homes are claustrophobic, advice given by elders and authorities turns out to be troubling, characters cut themselves on the rough edges of their own histories. "Ask no questions", the young subject is told on "Beautiful Girl", before being prodded toward dishonesty and violence. The shutdown continues on "Uninvited": "How can she tell a story", asks Davis "that doesn't have any words?" Davis's characters have had their language to express themselves stolen from them in a shell game, muted in the name of love and concern -- "Walk away, walk away, shut your mouth and close your eyes", she coos to a lover in "Butterfly Kiss". Yet the actors here don't all turn inward -- if the damage is visible and the lies apparent and intractable, there's still room for kicking back. "The Next Sound You Hear" from the plummeting protagonist isn't bottom being hit, but "the striking of the match", and "the shot that's fired first". Even in defeat, her eyes are on revolution, on evening the score.
The singer: Her low, breathy verses sound like Jackie McShee at her most thistledowned, but the bellowed choruses are pure Grace Slick. And not the crooner of "White Rabbit", either, I mean the Slick who gave us "Mexico" and "Greasy Heart", and demanded the motherfuckers up against the wall. Davis isn't the type of vocalist who holds anything back: she shoots the works whenever she can. If that makes her sound strident at times, it always matches the subject matter. There's not a lot of humor in what she does, and the critique on Bloody Tales From The Suburbs is pretty unremittant. Davis can be pitchy at times; when worked up (and she usually is) she has a tendency to pull sharp. You could say the same thing about Morrissey, though.
The band: Boomslang drummer John Hummel is ambitious -- he likes dramatic, tribal buildups, and when in doubt, he throws in a fill. Yet Bloody Tales From The Suburbs contains many, many drum mistakes, and a few of them are jarring. Bassist John Hummel is given plenty of room to explore, and he takes advantage of the latitude; his parts are sinuous, busy, elastic. Davis likes open chords, and usually keeps something droning on the top. More often than not, she strums, and sometimes the patterns get as furious as the singing. The chorus of "Butterfly Kiss", for instance, is strummed at a speed that would make Luka Bloom's head spin.
The songs: In 1971, after she hit with Blue, Joni Mitchell started exploring recicitive in her pop music: the melody and structure followed the words, rather than the other way around. She ceased to repeat herself, and instead saw the verse-chorus structure as a limitation. Acoustic singer-songwriters have, ever since, been trying to import a little of that formal aggressiveness into their own writing. Karen Davis also has too much to say to let herself become reiterative; she'll opt to let a tag-line stand in for the chorus. Verses aren't confined to any particular length, and she'll suspend chords and melodies rather than resolve them neatly. "Alone" is the best example of this approach -- it's elliptical, it flows, it follows the story. But all of the other songs have at least a little bit of sturctural looseness to them. I find Boomslang catchy, and as with Tori Amos's records, it's frequently the weirdest moments here that get stuck in my head.
What differentiates this record from others in its genre? Davis's immense presence and instant vocal I.D., her willingness to take chances, and the coherence of her writing.
What's not so good?: I'm a big believer in bands getting their recordings the hell out there and not being too prissy about mistakes. But if Bloody Tales From The Suburbs was my record, I think I would have spent a day or two in a home studio adding a bit of polish. I wouldn't break the bank or anything; I'd just perform a few tweaks that would make a substantial difference. Here's what I'd do: I'd fix some of the drum mistakes with ProTools, I'd throw some pitch correction on Davis's vocals, I'd try to warm up the snare with a reverb plug-in, and while I was at it, I'd see if I could defrost the guitar tone a bit, too.
Recommended?: This is a very serious record, and I understand that girls just want to have fun, especially on a spring day when the sun is shining. Party music Boomslang is not. It's probably too raucous for the bedsit, too. But there's still a segment of the listening public that likes to sit there and engage with a voice and a perspective, and for us, it's a good thing that artists like Davis and Boomslang exist. As long as they keep it thoughtful and literate, I promise to keep paying attention.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: No Mp3s available on the Boomslang site, but there's an upcoming events page. The group will be at the Black Potatoe festival in Clinton, New Jersey during June, and they'll instantly be the most aggressive and incendiary act on those stages.
Title: She Went Black
From: You cannot get any more Williamsburg than this. It's the Brooklyn sound with extra layers of artfulness, literary irony, jokes in bad taste, and intellectual detachment. If you could somehow cram the corner of Bedford and Metropolitan into your iPod, this is what it would sound like.
Format: Five-song EP.
Fidelity: Good; maybe a little too good. The Break-Up rose out of the wreckage of Girl Harbor, whose Shine On EP still stands as one of the finest testaments to the intrinsic quality of super-cheapo, trashy NYC digital rock recording. She Went Black is cleaner and more pro-sounding, and much of the white-noise wash that made Girl Harbor (semi) famous has been gated out.
Genre: New York City rock and roll.
Arrangements: Beats lifted from Motown records, hyperactive walking bass, hard-hit electric piano, new wave organ, dispassionate girl backing vocals courtesy of Allison Langerak, a trail synthesizer that sounds like a bratty kid pulling a raspberry, squalling blues guitars, and Jamie Sparber's brash vocals. In Sparber's projects, everybody usually plays at once, and as furiously as they can. But The Break-Up is better at, well, breaking things up than Girl Harbor ever was -- this is by no means a dub record, but there are moments where solo instruments are spotlighted.
What's this record about?: On Girl Harbor's "Ask Me Again", Sparber tells a girlfriend "I'm not the devil, but I guess I'm not that nice". Booze-addled, caddish, witty-snotty, alternately open-armed and catty, Sparber's character dominates his songs. He can sing about "waiting for the snow" and simultaneouly invoke the turning of the seasons and a drug jones; he can wail brattily about his own ambivalence, and then turn his own mystification into glassy-eyed outrage. We watch him stumble through relationships, late-night longings, disappointments: he's reactive, questionable things always seem to be happening to him, and his flailing responses are invariably sympathetic in spite of the nasty edge. Androgyny, inexplicable romantic failure, domination, impatience, miscommunication, boredom: a writer's attitudinous take on city living.
The singer: The transformation of Jamie Sparber into the capable frontman of She Went Black has been one of the most interesting trajectories to follow in New York indie rock. When Sparber and Break-Up guitarrist Jeff Mensch first arrived in New York in 1998, their group was Come On, and they walked the thin line between rock abandon and parodic self-consciousness. Sparber didn't really know what he was doing back then, and shows often devolved into slugging matches and piles of musicians (and audience members) falling over each other. But he had his models, and he had his education, and he had the capacity to apply that education to his performances. What that meant was that in Come On, his Dionysian excursions were almost always "rock", in quotes; he'd scream, because screaming was the appropriate marker to place after a garage-revival guitar solo. There was very little emo in his core: his stance struck a pose of great attitude, but it was an aggressively superficial one. Of course I loved it -- "aggressively superficial" wraps up exactly what was great about the new wave. Throw in a little intellectual remove, as Sparber always did, and you've got the recipe for entertaining me down pat. But Sparber wasn't in this game to entertain me; no, he and the rest of the boys had their hearts set on the Top of the Pops. How frustrating it must have been for Sparber and Mensch to watch Jet, a band that was essentially Girl Harbor minus the wit, humor and intelligence, move their million copies. And as Girl Harbor evolved from garage rock redux to something more like an art-punk band with pop overtones, Sparber's attempts to communicate frustration and impatience began to sound shockingly genuine. By She Went Black, he's singing outright, and when the screams come, they feel backed up by hard experience. It could be a trick of realism, sure, and nobody is ever going to mistake this for Dashboard Confessional. But Sparber the poised ironist has been eclipsed here by Sparber the method actor. He embodies these characters, and that means their emotions, too.
The band: Mensch keeps it bluesy -- the solos are pentatonic, overdriven, at times bordering on sixties-psychedelic. Girl Harbor wasn't always keen on stretching out; She Went Black gives the underrated guitarrist some room to flex. He's sort of the Harold Baines of Williamsburg indie -- you don't always notice him in the lineup, but if you look at the back of the bubblegum card, you can see he's contributed plenty to victory after victory. Greg Altman is another Larchmont rocker, which might explain his deep vocabulary of classic beats: he can switch from Motown to Spazz-town and back in a heartbeat. Either his skills have improved since joining Girl Harbor, or he's just gotten more comfortable with these guys. Former Blue 88s singer Allie Langerak throws the ringer in this collection, adding psych-leads on organ and taking an out-of-control solo on "Waiting For The Snow" that sounds like the Pied Piper after too many vodka tonics. Her Wurlitzer electric piano drives several of these songs, and the organ on "One Little Sign" could have come straight from an early MTV time capsule. The bassist, identified here as Jay H., had big shoes to fill: the supremely talented Jens Carstensen's departure from Girl Harbor prompted the lineup and name change. But the full fury of Carstensen's performances were never adequately captured by prior recordings, and the new guy sounds enough like the old guy (complete with the psychotic sixteenth-note blues riffing) that I doubt any hard-core fans will complain much.
The songs: Blues-rock, garage-pop, Brooklyn-style. The Break-Up dispenses with the formal conventions of the blues, but cling to its harmonic and melodic rules. "She Went Black" establishes a I-III-IV groove, and doesn't deviate from the progression; "Life Of Crime" is built around a wild guitar riff, and it pounds away on it, varying the backbeat at times but mainly sticking to the game plan. Both "Don't Save Me" and "One Little Sign" are verse-chorus compositions that move from angular sections to poppier, more radio-friendly refrains. The former could be a play for mainstream attention, but it's the latter, a J. Geils-in-disguise new wave revival number, that their handlers ought to be pushing. The final number, "Waiting For The Snow", is the most experimental, and the one that best conjures the weirdness the Sparber-Mensch combination has always generated: a guitar lick from some toxic bayou, a slowed-down middle section haunted by Langerak's unearthly vocals, a hypercaffeinated drum track, two false endings, and a concluding series of Sparber's best hellacious shrieks.
What differentiates this record from others in its genre? A close associate of the group recently confided in me that the Break-Up is an art band that thinks they're mainstream. I agree with the former, but with the latter no longer. With She Went Black, these guys have slid into a grudging acceptance of the fact that for better or for worse, they are more intelligent, more literary, and more experimental than most groups stalking this territory. No shame in that, even if it hurts them in negotiations with the label folks.
What's not so good?: I have nits to pick, and they're mostly with the third track. "Don't Save Me" seems to have been mixed according to a strange logic: the EQs don't really match up. There's much too much vocal here -- particularly Langerak's backing vocal, which would have sounded nice pushed back. Upfront, it almost overwhelms Sparber's. It's a one-note part, and it probably shouldn't have been. Sparber's performance on "Don't Save Me" isn't the equal of the rest of them here; he sounds out of control, sure, but his voice breaks a little tunelessly. I think the mix engineer might have thought that the fuzz bass was obnoxious enough that it could withstand burying. Bad call, guy. Elsewhere: the organ (while great) is too loud on "One Little Sign", and "I'm just sitting here waiting for you/I don't know what to do but I wanna adore you" is a dopey, simpleminded refrain by Sparber's previously-established standards. Overall, if it was my beach and I could wave a magic wand, I'd give She Went Black a remixing with a little more emphasis on the chaos, but there's nothing here I can't live with.
Recommended?: You bet.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Try the band website.
Title: Cazwell EP
From: New York City via Worcester, Massachusetts.
Format: A seven-song, twenty minute EP. As a bonus track, Cazwell adds his collaboration with electroclash refugees Avenue D, "The Sex That I Need". The women of Avenue D are all over this EP: if you found them annoying and gimmicky in 2002, nothing they do here will change your mind.
Fidelity: Decent. Like many recent underground NYC rappers, Cazwell favors the relatively lo-tech sound of mid-eighties hip-hop.
Genre: Cazwell emcees, and clearly has hip-hop aspirations. But the presence of Avenue D and the nostalgic adherence to the arrangement logic of yesteryear tugs these songs in the direction of the Berliniamsburg and Squeezebox parties. New Yorkers will know what I'm talking about. Everybody else: file under "electroclash".
Arrangements: Ticky-ticky drum machine, sticky synthesizer, a few distant sirens, unobtrusive scratching that sounds sampled rather than performed, the obligatory answering machines. Nice creative use of the "please stand clear of the closing doors" subway message.
What's this record about?: If you don't know, Cazwell is the gay rapper. Actually, he is one of several currently bubbling under the mainstream. Nature abhors a vacuum, but not nearly as much as capitalism abhors an untapped demographic. Cazwell is less obsessed with his sexuality than others working this territory, but if you are looking for explicit descriptions of gay get-downs, you won't be disappinted. Name-checking Speedo and KY-Jelly, respectively, "Do You Wanna Break Up?" and "The Sex That I Need" are the two raunchiest numbers here. Others barely mention sex at all, but concentrate on Cazwell's sub-themes: "City Sounds" and the charming-but-clumsy "Get Up New York City!" both scope Manhattan with wide-eyed, out-of-town bewilderment. Elsewhere the emcee displays a streak less angsty than cranky -- "Moody" and "All I Want To Do" intersperse jokes amid a litany of complaints unusual in their vehemence for hip-hop or electroclash. Tellingly, the best song here is a straight rapper's boast: "Watch My Mouth", performed in tandem with former Morplay partner Crasta Yo.
The vocalist: Cazwell is a very good emcee by electroclash standards, which isn't exactly like being the tallest man in the pygmy tribe -- but considering the competition, it's not a difficult accolade to garner. His enunciation is generally better than his flow, and he favors a rapid-fire, associative delivery that at times is uncomfortably reminiscent of Eminem. When in a good mood, as he is on "Watch My Mouth", he can be sympathetic and and engaging. When complaining about failed relationships (too often), he effects a dismissive affect that sounds more peevish than tough. Some punch-lines are funny, others are overindicated. In sum, Cazwell's batting average is high, but he strikes out too often.
The tracks: Stock but entertaining. Again, "Watch My Mouth" -- with its robotic chorus and Licensed To Ill spastic drums -- is the most successful, but most songs here have memorable choruses and breaks.
The rhymes: Clever, dripping with amusing pop-cultural references. "Moody" name-checks Sister Souljah and Judge Judy in the same line; on "Do You Wanna Break Up?", Cazwell dismisses a boyfriend by telling him "you wanna get peed on/and listen to Celine Dion". Nasty, yes, but funny -- as is rhyming Mother Theresa with "slice you up like a pizza". Like Eminem, Cazwell relies heavily on internal rhyme, assonance, and word association.
What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: You might think that being the gay rapper is distinctive enough. It probably is, but in the wake of the success of Queer Eye and programs like it, this territory is about to get much more crowded. Sony Music, for instance, has already reserved www.gayrapper.com for Caushun, an emcee whose debut is set to drop this summer. The forums at gayhiphop.com are filled with starter rhymes by queer emcees with anthems to publicize. Cazwell's wit and balance already place him miles ahead of the pack, but that's just to say his role will probably be one of leader and pioneer, rather than lone voice crying out in the wilderness of boring straights.
What's not so good?: Cazwell is in a difficult position. He is undoubtably at his best when he is attempting hip-hop, but Jay-Z he will never be. Hip-hop culture has not exactly been friendly to boys who like kissing boys. Electroclash is far more welcoming to queer voices, but electroclash audiences demand of their artists a self-dramatizing kitsch completely at odds with the traditional values of the emcee. Cazwell tries to have it both ways -- he writes rhymes and emcees like a rap true believer, but he allows Avenue D and the nostalgic production to drag him toward the campiness of electroclash. This makes the Cazwell EP a schizophrenic listen.
Recommended?: If you are a rap music purist, you aren't going to like this. If you are steeped in hip-hop tradition, and demand from your emcees skills like breath control, flow, and rhythmic precision, you will probably find fault here. But if you're one of the thousands of casual rap listeners who respond best to the cleverness and word-association of rhyming -- if you dig Princess Superstar, Gillette, FannyPack, and don't thrash your CD player when they skid off course --the Cazwell EP would be a solid addition to your electro-rap collection.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: At the artist's website. The site also features a club-music remix of "Watch My Mouth" that will convince you, if anything will, that Cazwell really ought to be trying to do hip-hop.
Title: The New Beginning
From: Jersey City.
Format: Full-length LP, and oh, is it ever long! Seventy minutes, no skits.
Fidelity: Troubling. Sometimes albums come back from the masterer too "hot"; in other words, the treble sounds overly shrill and harsh. I think that's what's happened here. Many of these songs are fried -- the vocals are pinched, distorted. It doesn't wreck the experience of listening to A New Beginning, but I can't say I don't sit here wishing a remasterer could have a crack at adjusting the EQ.
Genre: Underground hip-hop. Not Hot-97 music -- C-Fury doesn't do R&B hooks. He does give us rhymed choruses, and they're catchy and immediate, but you'd never mistake this for mainstream radio rap.
Arrangements: Programmed drums, sweep synthesizer, some tinkly piano, the requisite explosions, samples of old songs. Most tracks start with the big beat, introduce a bass tone, and build either to a sampled hook or a C-Fury declamation. Picture Criminal Minded with a better synth bank, and you've got a pretty good idea of how C-Fury puts his records together.
What's this record about?: C-Fury believes in family, friends; he believes in New Jersey, and he believes in himself -- his talent, his merit, his drive. He wants you to know how great his eight-year-old is, and he giftwraps one of his best tracks (the Do You Want More?!?!-ish "L'il Tahj") for her to rhyme over. Like most underground emcees, phonies and industry-sanctioned gangsters distress him, but he doesn't attempt to out-tough them: he just wants to beat them in a rhyme battle. Similarly, while he's not above a quick and dirty encounter ("A Hit And Run"), he is much more likely to treat his female characters with respect. While he's quick to assert that family, or "blood" comes first for him, he can be remarkably frank about the social and economic price of following his muse. Like Posdnuos on Bionix, C-Fury surveys a life spent in music from the perspective of a rueful adult, a family man, wondering about the effect on the people around him. On "Believe", the centerpiece of A New Beginning, the rapper self-interrogates with remarkable ferocity ("C-Fury, he's been wasting his time/fifteen long years and he's still writing rhymes?/C'mon, when he think this bullshit's gonna pay off?/Tell him to take a day off!") For C-Fury, it's the magic of musical alchemy that justifies the effort, if not the hours spent bagging groceries. If The New Beginning can feel at times like a hip-hop version of The Meadowlands, well, there are many, many twisted dreams rising out of these Jersey swamps.
The rapper: It takes an excellent emcee to turn "sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g/first comes love, then comes marraige" into a genuine hip-hop hook that holds up under repeated listens. C-Fury is adept, passionate, precise; he has some of Ghostface's crybaby-emotion in his vocals, some of Black Thought's storytelling directness, and some of Acey's compassion. He doesn't bother with hyperactive passages or triplets -- he's straightforward, hardcore, communicative. There's also very little jargon on A New Beginning: sports metaphors are about as esoteric as C-Fury gets. He's a communicator. Consequently, I find his flow outstanding: he's about meaning first, fireworks only afterward.
The music: The RZA may have gotten the mainstream hip-hop audience accustomed to dissonance, but underground emcees had been throwing accidental major and minor seconds into their tracks from the moment they started sampling. The New Beginning has moments of jarring dissonance -- mostly when the borrowed snatches of music are incorporated, and caused by harmonic friction between the played track and the incoming idea. "I'm A Bad Man", for instance, is in F# major -- the body of the song consists of a standard walk-up pattern played on the synthesizer. But the sample introduces a bass note completely out of the chord. Hey, it doesn't bother me. But then again, I'm a polychord kind of guy. If you're the sort of rap listener who requires pristine pentatonic harmony, you may be a little taken aback by the approach.
The rhyming: C-Fury's favorite cadence is one-two-three-four-FIVE, one-two-three-four-FIVE, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four-FIVE. It's a rhyme pattern I associate most closely with the Jungle Brothers -- and, upon reflection, Afrika Babybam is a good comp for C-Fury.
What differentiates this record from others in its genre? The compassion, thoughtfulness, and formal excellence of the rapper. He's the most sympathetic and human-sounding Jersey emcee I've heard in years.
What's not so good?: Though The New Beginning goes sixteen tracks deep, it's pretty consistent -- there's nothing here that screams to have been left off the collection. This would be a very easy seventy-minute listen for a rap fan were it not for the uneven recording quality: the distorted high-end that creates listening fatigue, and the occasionally muffled sound of the drum machine and voice. My "stereo" at home, in case you are wondering, is a twelve-inch Sony boombox; I am not, as a rule, checking for sonics. But I listened to A New Beginning on a nice system, just to see if I wasn't reacting to some kind of a format incompatibility. I wasn't. This album needs to be remastered.
Recommended?: Jersey City's rap subculture may not get a lot of press, but it's there, and like everything else in Jersey City, it offers a less ostentatious, more refelctive, accomplished, intelligent, warm and self-deprecatory alternative to the stuff across the river. If you're looking for a way in, A New Beginning is a great place to start.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: That's a damned good question. I can't find a website for C-Fury. There's no address on the CD. The record company, The Attack Group, lists a link, but when you access it, you get a "page under construction" notice. You could try the publicist at info@deevel.com, or just keep your eyes posted around Jersey City for an upcoming gig.
UPDATE: Well, what do you know -- several people (including C-Fury himself) wrote to me explaining where to get the album. It's available at Dealtime through Shopping.Com, and also at Amazon. Rock!
Title: Chariot!
From: Jersey City. This record was built at Grisly Labs, a fantastic recording studio on Fifth Street off of Brunswick Avenue, right around the corner from Madame Claude's. You'd hardly know it was there -- it's extremely spacious, but it's located in an unassuming blue aluminum-sided building that I'm sure passing pedestrians mistake for a garage. Really, it's more like the BatCave: when you enter, the immensity of the complex doesn't seem to corroborate at all with the exterior. You feel like you're stepping into an extradimensional space.
Format: Fourteen song album. Only the distorted "Cruise Missile" breaks the four-minute mark. It's a very manageable listening experience, clocking in at a little over forty minutes. Old cassette-dubbers will know what I mean when I say it'd fit comfortably on one side of a 90. You could put both Giraffes records on the other side, open a bottle of Jack Daniels, and have yourself a freakout.
Fidelity: Very good, if unconventional. Chariot! is not trying to make a record that sounds like modern rock radio. They're trying to make a record that sounds like classic rock heard through the speakers of a station wagon in 1973. Since they have the best recording technology in town at their disposal, they succeed.
Genre: Classic-rock revival, garage-rock, Southern rock. Chariot! can boogie like Molly Hatchet. Since that's rarely attempted in the Yankee haven we call Hudson County, they're a pretty anomalous area act.
Arrangements: Twin guitars, bass, drums, acoutrements. To get that authentic gutbucket sound, the Beast spends most of his time on baritone guitar. It's a good choice: the barry doesn't sound all that dissimilar from a toughened-up Telecaster, but it forces the harmonic center of these tracks lower than they'd otherwise be. When venturing into Allmans territory, getting that deep-swamp growl is half the fight. The lead guitar is almost always an overdriven, thick zipper of sound. For a group so committed to punishing rock, there is more organ and synthesizer here than you'd guess there'd be. Huge organ stabs drive "Coke Bottle Girl", and a queasy ribbon of Korg runs through the heart of "Diamond All The Way" (the closest thing here to an acoustic number). The shouted backing vocals never fail to come in the appropriate places, and there's even a little cowbell at the beginning of the title track. Chariot! makes sure to dot the I's and cross the T's.
What's this record about?: Booze, girls, getting booze to get girls, automobiles and trucks, rock and roll cities, horror movie monsters, blowing your thumb off with your own weapon. Chariot! operates with a kind of puerile wit that keeps a cretin like me smiling throughout. This is the sort of writing that is called "willfully stupid" by those who don't realize they're impugning the entire rock and roll tradition. Chariot! can get stuck in reiterative choruses, but when they allow themselves a little narrative flexibility, they're almost always amusing within the tight parameters they've set for themselves. If the message to most of this music boils down to a Seventies-chill "get stoned, crack jokes, and relax as the car swerves out of control", I'm really not complaining about the "Casey Jones" logic: they embody the vibe so well that it becomes as persuasive as it was on Workingman's Dead.
The singer: D-Lux is the principal voice here; it's bemused, caustic, obnoxious, sometimes hilarious. He never exactly sings; he chats, wheedles, decaims and screams his way through the songs, and occasionally verges on total meltdown. At times, it feels like he's challenging the listener to take him seriously -- but just when you're sure he's putting you on, he'll rip into a line-reading that's both immediate and heartfelt. The Grisly Labs producers make sure to filter his vocals through demented distortion, echo, and reverb effects; on "Cruise Missile", it sounds like he's singing through an intercom on a Russian submarine. At times, the result can be incomprehensible, yet they make sure we don't miss any crucial information. The exception is the otherwise bracing (and appropriately-named) "James Gang Bang", which I can't make heads or tails of. It's a series of staccato grunts that might best approximate human language if by "language" we mean early caveman hunting exclamations. Feral for sure, but still: I can't tell you it doesn't work.
The band: Chariot! regularly gets a good, drunken groove going, and while these guys can certainly play, they're never so tight that they dishonor their ramshackle sources or suffocate the essential friendliness out of their songs. "Detroit" is probably the most ferocious thing here, but even on that stomper, they do their best to avoid oppressive guitar midrange. Beast and Buzz, the band's twin guitarists, can get sludge-happy, but they keep it to limited doses: Chariot! is digestible by heavy-rock standards because they're so scrupulous about varying tones. Bassist Maestro gets lost in the mix sometimes, but he's so loose and laid-back -- even when playing ferociously -- that it's his heartbeat that keeps Chariot! so amicable. And Q, the drummer, has a great right hand on the ride cymbal. He slams it hard and lets it ring like Birmingham steel, just like they used to do in the Alabama roadhouses. At least I think they did.
The songs: The album opens with a spirited cover of Link Wray's "Rumble"; later, the group offers a punishing rendition of "Shapes Of Things" by the Yardbirds. "Coke Bottle Girl" includes a quote from "California Girls", and at least two other songs sound like they could morph into "Smoke On The Water" at any point. Chariot! isn't too concerned about original songcraft. Most of the songs here are based around familiar-sounding blues riffs. Yet it's notable that when the group stretches out a little, they prove they've got the ability to craft hooks. "Diamond All The Way" and "All Nite In The Life" start out derivative, but explore avenues away from the main thoroughfare. And "Celtic Sharpie" builds from a throbbing synthesizer and a whipping-post riff to a surprisingly Floydish release. Finally, you could have hung out at Wetlands for months without hearing fake-Dead as convincing as "Henry's Ex", the closer.
What differentiates this record from others like it? Chariot! has a better sense of humor than the Brought Low, and are probably a bit more approachable because they pick their spots to get ferocious. They're much more willing to experiment with recording hijinx than the guys in Bad Wizard are: they're more playful, more elastic. And yes, I'm comparing Chariot! to New York bands. There isn't so much of this stuff in Jersey -- since about a third of our state is actually below the Mason-Dixon line, I think we tend to be more self-conscious in our approximation of Southern-rock. We're either intimidated or overly reverent. Chariot! are neither.
What's not so good?: I have to draw the line somewhere, and for me, it's "Dracula's Baby". I find the metaphor facile (even by mook-rock standards), the faux-horror music choppy, and I'm completely unconvinced by D-Lux's perfomance. Where he's usually effective, here he sounds overly parodic, and maybe even a little whiny.
Recommended?: This is an immensely enjoyable rock record that I've given spin after spin. They don't take themselves too seriously, and they don't ask you to, either. But since Chariot! is so stylized, it's worth asking whether it's exploiting its target: are these guys making fun of boogie bands, or are they a boogie band themselves? I don't really think it matters one way or the other, but I think whatever their original intentions were, they're worth taking seriously as formalists. Loose, cheeky, playful formalists, sure, but authentic revivalists nonetheless.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Chariot! is available through Useless Records. The website features a great video for "Detroit", complete with car chases, dancing girls, and old autos doing impossible low-rider tricks.
Title:: Crayon Rosary
From: New Brunswick. I'm not sure if they're Rutgers students, but this is a very collegiate project, so that's my guess. In any case, Crayon Rosary has a sleepy-Sunday dorm room feel to it. Their label is headquartered in Bayonne, so this is another of the many Hudson-Middlesex projects to cross this desk recently.
Format: Seven-song EP.
Fidelity: Passable indie-pop quality. The acoustic guitar here sounds a little rough, and the moments where the louder instruments kick in can get out of control. The two vocals don't always match up properly, either, but that may have more to do with the singers than the recording quality. Nonetheless, if you like pristine harmonies, Crayon Rosary might not be for you.
Genre: Indie-pop, with an acoustic-punk edge to it. Crayon Rosary singers (identified here only as Keith and Brendan) don't croon breathily like most fashionable indie-poppers do these days -- instead, they're whiny, geeky. Coupled with their reliance on big acoustic guitar chords, the vocal approach puts the Rosary closer to eighties lite college rock like Miracle Legion than Marlborough Farms. Give this pair a brogue, and you could mistake them for the Proclaimers.
Arrangements: Broad strumming on acoustics, reedy mini-synthesizer, a few drum loops, toy piano, xylophone and bicycle bell (or something that sounds quite like one), a sparingly-used fuzz electric, voices in unison and in harmony. "Fisherman", the lead track, brings in a full drum kit -- perhaps as a consequence, it's the least successful recording here. Nonetheless, Crayon Rosary is at their best when they've got some kind of beat to play to: the Casiotone rhythm tracks might sound puny, but they do hold the songs together.
What's this record about?: Romantic longing, mainly; not the sort that singes the fingers, but the gently simmering kind. The boys of the Crayon Rosary present themselves as good eggs, shy around the girls, but mainly earnest in their desire to be helpful. They're after women, sure, but they also seek to measure up to propriety. They frame themselves as precocious juveniles, after their rewards but also a bit concerned about maintaining approval of the grownup world. On "A New Book", Keith and Brendan fret about becoming gentlemen -- and "New York City" is big, loud and terrifying, no matter how much the objects of their affections might like to stay there. "With the sunrise behind you/you make a beautiful skyline", they coo, relishing the innocence and incongruity of the statement. These just aren't anguished souls, and they're more than capable of kicking out a pure and heartfelt ballad like "Loving You Back". Curses are mild -- a "sucked" here, a "goddamned" there -- and language is precise and measured. They're worried about the effects of their own moderation, as "Siren Song" suggests, and maybe a little jealous of those who can unironically affect a "rock and roll swagger", but not enough to do anything about it. Keith and Brendan stretch out a bit on "Fisherman", and attempt a dialogue, and while it's engaging to hear the Rosary interact like this, it's a little hard to follow.
The singers: One of these guys (I don't know which is Keith and which one is Brendan) handles the high, straightforward parts, while the other is deep and bluff, and mutters his lyrics onto the tape like long-held secrets. The low vocalist has an interesting vision and microphone approach, but he cannot hold pitch. This isn't such a problem when he's singing by himself, as he does on "Beehive" or the very good "Your Bed (Again)". But when he joins his partner in unison or harmony, his tonal inaccuracy can be seriously disorienting. The high, whiny singer is a much more conventional college-rock weenie, but he nails most of his marks. I like him.
The band: The acoustic guitar passages are strummed with some fervency -- there's not much finger-picking or weaving here. Instead, Crayon Rosary spills out six-string barre chords, and can usually get them close enough in time with the drum loops to keep things propulsive. The synthesizer is the descant instrument, and just about everything played on it is right on the money. The Rosary stretches synth melodies over the chord progressions in classic eighties lo-fi style, brightening what would otherwise be folksy arrangements, and making sure that the songs read as playful and as childlike as possible. In case the Casiotone doesn't do the trick, Crayon Rosary has on hand their toybox filled with cheap toddler-rock percussion instruments, and they're used here to successful effect. The duo is a little young to be so nostalgic for their childhood, but hell, it beats cashing in their chips and becoming bankers, right?
The songs: The three songs sung by Keith differ notably from the four sung by Brendan. (Mind you, I'm guessing here with the names -- it could be the other way around. I just think that Keith is a lower-voiced name than Brendan.) Keith's compositions, particularly "Beehive", have an ebb and flow to them, and don't conform strictly to verse-chorus expectation. Keith is willing to write hooks, but he's not obsessed with foregrounding them -- his songs wade in, build to tension points, and then wade out. Brendan, by contrast, is a tight, epigrammatic composer: his phrases are usually succinct, direct, and melodic. His four tracks are immediate and catchy, especially "Siren Song". He doesn't sing unusual intervals, but he will pen melodies that take big leaps from note to note. Luckily, he's got the vocal precision necessary to realize his ambitions. Because Keith and Brendan often sing together, the dissimilarity in their writing approaches never feels jarring. If the pop-punk directness of Brendan's four songs leave the other three feeling like something of an afterthought, the Keith-sung ones manage to sink in over repeated listens, and provide a respite from the hyperactive, ingratiating tone of his partner's more memorable numbers.
What differentiates this record from others like it? I think Crayon Rosary would like to be defined by their use of children's instruments, but there isn't quite enough of that stuff here to turn the trick. The acoustic guitar dominates most of these tracks, and the toys and gadgets usually feel like ornamentation. Pianosaurus they are not.
What's not so good?: I'm a Grateful Dead fan, which means -- among other unpleasant things -- that I have an awfully high threshhold for out-of-tune harmonies. The Crayon Rosary cross that threshhold. Pitchy singing can humanize an otherwise slick and distant project, but the Rosary aren't slick. Next time out, they need to go back and revisit their vocal parts, and make sure there's more harmony in their harmonies. What's more, when two singers are in unison, their voices absolutely must mesh; otherwise, it's just carnage. Keith and Brendan manage to get in sync most of the time, but when they don't, it can be ugly.
Recommended?: I don't know these guys at all, but my gut tells me that they won't be working together for long. Their styles and proclivities are not an obvious match, and I can already feel them pulling in different directions. That said, it's worth catching Crayon Rosary while the duo is still hanging together. It's rough, and there are mistakes galore, but this is nonetheless an interesting act, and one to watch. Their songwriting is, in most cases, skilled, and they've put out an EP of engaging pop recordings with well-crafted melodies. They're young enough to be on the Jersey scene for awhile. If this is a starter project for these guys, it's an awfully well-realized one.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: The Crayon Rosary album is avaliable through XOXO Records. Also, I didn't know where to mention this, so I'll put it here: if the name of the group sounds familiar to you, you're probably an S&G fan. It's taken from a line in Paul Simon's "Poem On An Underground Wall".
Title: The Spirituality
From: Brooklyn (I think). Brooklyn bands sometimes give Manhattan addresses, but it's rare that a non-Brooklyn band would give a Brooklyn P.O. box. But this isn't "Brooklyn-sound" -- even if the Desert Fathers live in Williamsburg, they make music that would sound at home at avant-garde lower Manhattan spaces like the Knitting Factory.
Format: Short full-length. Ten songs, three of which clock in at less than two minutes.
Fidelity: The Spirituality was recorded by Steve Albini, who merits his own fidelity category. As Nirvana fans know, Albini does a superior job achieving balance between several grisly guitar tones: he can meld a belch with a skronk with a nails-on-the-blackboard scrape better than anybody. The guitars on this album sound fantastic, if by "fantastic" you mean go-for-the-throat visceral weirdness. If you're looking for clarity, pick up a Shaun Colvin album.
Genre: Art-rock/experimental. A few of these tracks ("A Practical Joke", "Peace In That") are legible as extremely warped pop songs of the early-Laswell variety, and one of them ("Gloria in Excelsis Deo") is a legit hymn. Albeit one built out of feedback.
Arrangements: Huge, dirty bass, big rock drums, the ambience of ringing strings, treated vocals, and springing guitar overdub after boinging guitar overdub. Much of The Spirituality suggests what it would sound like if I somehow plugged my old boxspring into a amplifier and then jumped vigorously on the bed. If a bunch of Slinkys got together and formed a rock group, this would be it.
What's this record about?: In the middle of the The Spirituality, there's a gag ("Evolution"), and it's a pretty funny one, too. In the voice of an old fogey professor, one of the Desert Fathers does a spoken-word bit about monkeys: "up in the trees, running wild, throwing coconuts at each other... and then one day, they turned into people!" This irreverence is extended throughout The Spirituality: many of these songs approach religious and scientific questions from skewed angles. My best guess is that most of this writing casts a skeptical eye at reason, but it's not possible to know for sure -- the Desert Fathers might be satirizing spirituality, too. The pitbulls on the cover are misleadingly cute: on the record, they represent entropy and a kind of anti-social savagery.
The singer: The liner notes list the members of The Desert Fathers as: "Acquaman", "the Real", and "Levitas". I'm not sure which one of those guys -- if they are guys, and not states of mind or emotional conditions -- is responsible for the vocals. The Desert Fathers don't scream, but they do testify. The lead vocalist sounds, at times, remarkably like Adrian Belew on Discipline: that intellectual's primal howl.
The musicians: Outstanding. The rhythm section is exacting and powerful, and the guitar playing is imaginative enough to stand with its sources. I just played The Spirituality back to back with Larks Tongues In Aspic. It suffered by comparison, but what wouldn't? It's in the same ballpark, though. It's hard to make that claim for other recent entries in the art-rock sweepstakes.
The songs: Built around riffs or guitar phenomena, mostly. This isn't a songwriter's record. Yet it's notable that when the Desert Fathers get down to writing a poppier piece, they've got the capacity to be tuneful, even if they're never exactly hooky. "Peace In That" is a well-built song that probably wouldn't fall aprt if you tried to render it on acoustic guitar. And some of the feedback washes -- particularly "Life After Life Everlasting" cohere as formal songs through the force of their beauty.
What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: Much. The Spirituality isn't wanna-be art-rock, it's the genuine article. Art-rockers sacrifice commercial potential for a wider latitude of personal expression. These guys take advantage of the freedom. The guitar sound here is unusual, bracing; the address is wry, ironic, intelligent.
What's not so good?: I have come to think of the Desert Fathers (and, to a lesser degree, their labelmates/compadres in the Forms) as Material redux. But while I never knew what the hell Material was singing about, I have a pretty good idea why the Desert Fathers howl and rage as they do. This is a conceptual project, and try as you may, you can't express a concept through sounds and tones. You've got to use words. The Desert Fathers do -- but the guitarrorism here is so all-encompassing that it's frequently impossible to make out what they're saying. Next time out, I want them to pay lyrical clarity a little attention. It's not like they don't have anything to say.
Recommended?: Yes. The Spirituality is a challenging, ballsy record; funny at times, and never uninteresting. If you dig art-rock and you don't mind noise excursions, The Desert Fathers should go to the head of your list of new groups to check out.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: The Desert Fathers are part of the Threespheres collective of likeminded rock and roll maniacs. They just came off national tour, so ideally, the best time to have written this was two months ago. Well, I had some things to finish up. I'm back now. A review a day -- 'til I make some kind of dent in this pile to my right!
Title: Peppers And Jelly
From: The mountains of West Jersey. During one of the many spoken interludes on Peppers And Jelly, Alex Radus mumbles something that sounds like he's saying he's from Flemington. Duende is probably better known in eastern Pennsylvania then they are in Jersey, but there's a thick crop of folksters growing all over the Hunterdon hills. Those of us who know New Jersey only as a series of Turnpike exits are missing out on the reason we're called the Garden State.
Format: Long LP recorded live at the Sidewalk Cafe, the Kendall in Cambridge, and a place called Home Sessions in Sparta. That's probably somebody's house. Hell, it could be their house. Tracks six, ten, and twelve are Radus's stage banter, so that's ten songs (plus the requisite hidden encore) spread out over seventy minutes. Duende is unafraid to do long songs -- the title track is eight and a half minutes, "West Virginia" storms on for over ten.
Fidelity: Pretty good for a live indie CD. The quality isn't discernably poorer than it is on Duende's well-recorded studio album. The guitars are a little boingy, but I think that may just be the way Radus and Maria Woodford play. Once you cross over South Mountain and you're out of the WFMU broadcast range, you're dealing with entirely different sonic standards, and ones I don't always immediately understand.
Genre: Folk-rock, singer/songwriter. These aren't traditional ballads, they're Radus and Woodford's own compositions.
Arrangements: Two acoustic guitars, two voices, some comments and chuckles from the peanut gallery. Frequently one guitar will bang out chords while the other riffs up at the top of the neck; not an unusual division of labor, I know, but Radus and Woodford are accomplished guitar players. They don't sing in harmony quite as often as you might like, but when they do, Peppers And Jelly takes off.
What's this record about?: Hardships and bemusements of the touring life. Radus tackles the bemusement -- the wistful, half-spoken "Peppers and Jelly" is a winking, road-weary travelogue complete with coyotes, flats on the highway from El Paso, and appreciative crowds making the hassle worthwile. Woodford covers the hardship department, and her stories of loneliness and alienation on tour (check "Travelin' On", one of the higlights of the set) are straightforward and heartfelt. This is not groundbreaking stuff. But for the most part, they don't embarrass you. "The BBC" is a topical piece about news junkies and car radios -- it has a very bad (bad meaning silly, not naughty) off-color joke in it, but the song is pretty amusing nonetheless.
The singers: Alex Radus sings in a small, friendly campfire deadpan, reminiscent at times of Dave Weschler from Pinataland. There's very little dissonance between his singing and his speaking tone, and he takes advantage of the similarity to slip between modes a la Harry Chapin. The quieter and chattier his singing is, the more approachable his songs become. Maria Woodford has a much bigger voice, and will shoot the works when necessary: her blues-roots explorations here ("Overboard", parts of "West Virginia") are authentic and forceful. Yet, like Radus, she's most effective when she restrains herself -- her low, plaintive performances are more intimate, and more personal, than the shouters. But Radus and Woodford really shine when they sing together: their voices blend like siblings, and the harmonies they find are gorgeous and often haunting. Because Radus does so much speaking on Peppers And Jelly, his voice, and by extension his perspective, dominates the set. Some old folkies out there might know what I'm talking about when I say it's sort of like the dynamic on Pentangle's Sweet Child: Bert Jansch does so much talking to the audience that Jacqui McShee starts to feel a little marginalized.
The players: Extending the Pentangle comparison further, Radus and Woodford are, like Jansch and Renbourn, well-trained and technically proficient acoustic guitarrists with a penchant for incorporating blues and jazz into their extensive folk workouts. Yet while the Jansch and Renbourn had an ace rhythm section supporting them, Duende go it alone. This means they end up strumming more -- and with greater speed and fervor -- than they'd probably like to. "West Virginia" blows by like a ten-minute thunderstorm: chords up on the neck, breakneck riffing, some musical quotes from popular songs, doubletake-inducing fretboard acrobatics. Its bracing, but it threatens to overwhelm the vocals. Yet to be fair, however much Woodford and Radus burn to strut their stuff, the songs are never excuses for guitar excursions -- there are built-in showcase sections, like on "Reflections" or "Overboard", but you never feel like you're listening to launching-pads, or marking time between the solos. When they do come, they're always worth it: they'll have you pressing rewind, or scanning backward on your CD player, to marvel at the gravity-defying phrases.
The songs: Traditional folk exercises and adaptations. Duende is not about expanding the song form: there are verses, there are choruses, there's a handful of basic building blocks, and there are very few departures. Radus is the Dylanesque writer, and by that I mean his songs are very logically built according to time-honored folk models. Woodford has a wider chord vocabulary (check "Indian Summer", for instance) and a better ear for melody, but she's not the hook-writer that Radus is, and she's much more prone to come up with lyrics that are mere placeholders. "West Virginia" and "The BBC" are co-credited, and they're two of the best things on Peppers And Jelly. Like everything else about Duende, Woodford and Radus are at their best when they work together.
What differentiates this record from others like it? If you're a frequent reader of this space, you probably know I don't exactly care for the sound of the acoustic guitar. When it's left dry, it's never sonorous enough, and when it's souped up, it's the most frequency-spectrum saturating element in the lexicon of popular music. Two acoustic guitars are, generally, two too many. But there's no way to deny the excellence of these two players: while I might like it better if they didn't strum so much, or if some of the rhythmic responsibility could be delegated to an actual rhythm section, I acknowledge that the two members of Duende are good enough at their instruments that they can play them for seventy-one minutes and not bring about listener fatigue. This is extraordinarily rare on folk or singer-songwriter records. Usually by the second song, I am sick to death of both the guitar tone and the limited bag of instrumental tricks. Duende's reserve of ideas on their instruments seems inexhaustible.
What's not so good?: I don't mind all the talking and stage-banter that Radus indulges in; as I mentioned, it diminishes Woodford's status somewhat, but he's self-deprecating, and in a few places, it even helps to ground the song. What drives me crazy is the audience response. Cackling, inappropriate laughter, stupid comments, applause in inappropriate places, general coffehouse irritation, all preserved for posterity. Peppers And Jelly reminds me exactly why I hate going to folk shows -- it's not the bands that bother me, it's the aggressively comfortable middlebrow attendees. Give me the Court Tavern any day.
Recommended?: As a Hudson County resident, I often forget about the parts of New Jersey west of the Hackensack, let alone the fist line of ugly-stepchild Appalachians that separate the coastal plain from the Somerset hills and Hunterdon highlands. It's tempting to level a class critique against the whole region -- Morristown is posh and suburban, and therefore whatever's going on over there couldn't possibly be worthy of the attention we ought to bestow on the latest dirthead band from Passaic. I hear that critique all the time: maybe not spelled out in such vulgar terms, but still pretty evident in the cloaked justifications that the coastal media uses to ignore the western counties. Hey, I do it, too. But while Somerset boasts that Wegman's supermarket on 202 and Morris may have the highest median income of any county in America, there are huge pockets of working-class semi-urban communities in these hills. WNTI broadcasts from Hackettstown, Jack Devaney does his proletarian festival every year in Clinton, many of the best bands in the state make the trek to Krogh's in Sparta, even Morristown and Flemington has their share of raucous nightlife. Beyond that, who's to say that rich people can't rock? You'd have to disqualify half of Williamsburg if you started eliminating trust-fund kids from this game. Duende are not trust-fund kids: they're from West Virginia originally, and they seem to epitomize improvisational rock 'n' roll living. Their success, aesthetic and otherwise, is profound evidence of the thriving folk and roots music scene located just a forty-five minute drive into the woods.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: I ought to set up a macro for this: try the band's website. Check for upcoming dates, too; they tour constantly.
Title: G, or Gentleman Never Tells
From: Brooklyn. Singer Aaron Lazar draws heavily on the horror of his post-industrial Ohio upbringing, but the Giraffes are as blackhearted and toxic as the Gowanus Creek.
Format: Six-song EP. It's a bit of a cheat, though, since the bookend tracks are instrumentals. As wonderful a guitarrist as Damien Paris is, The Giraffes just aren't the Giraffes without Lazar's sociopathic stories and performances.
Fidelity: Standard indie rock.
Genre: Surf-rock/metal. No, really. Imagine Uriah Heep or Deep Purple doing Ventures covers. There's an undercurrent of carnival music here, too; the Romany feel of some of the interludes add to the "bloodstained funhouse" atmosphere.
Arrangements: The Giraffes stick to the basic Van Halen arrangement logic: one drum kit, one bass guitar, one hyperkinetic guitar guy riffing and (rarely) chording, and a big-voiced singer over the top. There are occasional backing vocals, and some very intermittent organ, piano, and accordion. You could probably count the overdubs on this EP on one hand.
What's this record about?: First, it's important to get it on the record that I know these guys personally, and they're all generous, courteous, thoughtful, and good to their girlfriends. In my experience, it's the gentle indiepop people (like me) who are trouble, not hard-drinking, cussing, hell-raising motorbike bands like the Giraffes. Okay, now that I've cleared my throat: the Giraffes sing about murder, violence against women, emotional blackmail, and abduction -- from the perspective of the murderers, blackmailers, and abductors. Certainly Lazar's poetry is best understood as exorcism of the demons of bad male behavior, but still, this is an unremittingly sinister listen. "Don't cry/don't fight/you're mine/you know I've got the right" he purrs in "On Lover's Lane", and it gets scarier from there. "Get In The Car", grainy as a snuff film, is a hitchhiking-gone-wrong story; "Help My Blood Count" a barroom rant that simmers with rage. "There's no hell like me", he sings to his unsuspecting victim. You believe him.
The singer: To make matters more terrifying, Lazar rarely sounds like a hellion. He comes off as a disturbed but compelling next-door-neighbor; seductive, ambivalent, and very, very dangerous. You know that the guilt expressed is legitimate, and what's more, you know the characters aren't going to let that guilt check their worst impulses. On Helping You Help Yourself, the band's 2002 LP, Lazar was a towering figure, bellowing in a lucid, melodic tremolo rare for this type of music. On this EP, his voice is cloaked in a heavier reverb, and he saves his most tender and tentative reads for his most disturbing lyrics. Lazar is still capable of holding a quavering, operatic note for fifteen seconds -- as he does at 2:20 of "Lover's Lane" -- but the new subtlety he's cultivated makes those explosive moments all the more demented.
The band: Guitarrist Damien Paris is one of the most protean instrumentalists in New York City, but here he sticks to his self-imposed genre limitations: this is the dark side of surf-rock he wants to explore, and he does so with letter-perfect Ventures reconstructions. He sets up Lazar's narratives with twangy, low-string riffs, and only rarely does he combust into the sort of incendiary leads that have made him semi-famous. To his credit, Paris manages to sound huge while never choking the singer with big chords -- his sinuous and percussive lead lines are winding enough to carry the treble. Likewise, powerhouse drummer Andrew Totolos checks his snarehead-breaking tendencies in favor of complicated paradiddles, marches, rolls, and "Hawaii Five-O" builds. And his stuttering tango of "Help My Blood Count" evokes the rhythmic exploration of Tom Waits's later records.
The songs: Blues with a twist. Perhaps its the surf-rock influence again, but The Giraffes borrow standard progressions from European traditions (flamenco, gypsy music) as well as American standards. Nothing they do harmonically will surprise you, but the songwriting syntax can be unusual: The Giraffes don't shy away from multi-section compositions, shifting feel and time-signature when necessary. But they're also keen on juxtaposing epic tracks with other, more elliptical songs (like "Of This Transaction") that wrap suddenly and leave open questions.
What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: While The Giraffes have refined and complicated their approach from the ham-fisted (but exhilarating) metal of Helping You Help Yourself, Lazar is still the selling point of this group. His characters are so intensely believable in their daily evil that it's impossible to walk away unscathed from an encounter with his writing and performances. But that's Brooklyn for you; in a borough that oozes poetry, even the homicidal maniacs are literati at heart.
What's not so good?: Especially when arrangements are as straightforward as these are, I require more bass guitar in my mixes. Too frequently, the bass parts are swallowed up by the toms and spaghetti-Western guitar -- but there are other moments where the instruments clear away, and you still can't hear the bass.
Recommended?: I strongly recommend this recording to the PMRC and to Tipper Gore, because I want to see the looks on their faces when they listen to "On Lover's Lane".
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Apesauce is the studio and the label (and home away from home for drummer Totolos, who handles the recording), but I don't think they've got their own website. Oh, wait a second, they do! The Giraffes have a site, too, and here's a sampling of some of their poster art. Bands don't always sound like their fliers, but when an aesthetic is this consistent, you know you're facing some conceptual coherence: so check it out.
Title: Macadamia Cuts
From: This isn't the Higgins from Weehawken. This is the South Jersey Higgins. Macadamia Cuts was recorded in Audubon, and the Haddon Heights Police Department is thanked in the liner notes. Because I am a smartass, I wanted to review both Higginses, or Higgi, together. But the North Jersey act never seems to have a copy of their record on them.
Format: Three-song EP, a little over ten minutes long.
Fidelity: Solid indie. The drums are a little bit thuppy for my taste, and the vocal reverbs are chilly, but it's a safe bet this EP was not recorded on top-dollar hardware. In general, this is another good job done on a shoestring budget. Everybody else can learn a lesson in frugality from indie rockers.
Genre: Modern rock.
Arrangements: Two guitars, recorded relatively clean; "The Drone" gets a little distorted, but Slipknot this ain't. The drummer keeps things straightforward, but will throw in some march measures for Larry Mullenesque effect.
What's this record about?: The opening song, "Kamikaze", does not appear to be metaphor -- it's a psychological exploration of a suicide attacker. I guess the language could be figurative, but I'm hoping it isn't. On closer inspection, the straightforward reading holds up better than the symbolic one: "glass of champagne/the only thing I have to my name", sings Michael Diemer, "strap me in today/not tomorrow/I'm ready now, but tomorrow I just don't know". The sympathy-for-the-devil move works well, even if Diemer's voice is an unlikely fit for a holy warrior. "Ben 4" is a little more inscrutable, but still evocative -- it could be a long-distance relationship song, a small-town sketch, a nonchalant statement of cool, or none of the above. "The Drone", the last song on the EP, is a bad-boy come on; the figure of Death speaking though the lips of the arrogant rocker. Throughout, Higgins seems interested in decay, compulsion, and the cruelties of fate. The lyrics here aren't a thicket of associations, but this is not a thematically light band.
The singer: Michael Diemer tries a few different voices here -- on "Kamikaze", he's soaring, questioning, powerful, "Ben 4" he's gruff, seedy, and slightly dangerous. Sometimes he works against his subject matter, (ostensibly) on purpose. "The Drone", which, on paper, calls for tough-guy tactics is sung in a weird, strained holler. I like it, I like it. The "Kamikaze" performance might be more radio-ready, but isn't as interesting.
The band: I beg your pardon if you've heard this lecture before, but since New Jersey Online is a relatively new platform for me, I feel the need to reiterate one of my central rants, for the sake of the uninitiated. When rock started out, and guys like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino were making the records that still stand as the templates for three-minute recorded art, there was no big rhythm guitar dominating the mixes. You had a singer (usually a mammoth presence) an electric or standing bass player who steered the song, and a drummer, whose kit was never close-miked piece by piece. Treble instruments were for soloing, coloring. What's happened to rock since 1959 has been a subtraction by addition: as recording techniques have improved, the urge to stick a microphone on everything and everybody, just because we can, has increased. As a consequence, recorded drums no longer sound like a kit -- they sound like gigantic, bassy, whopping thunderheads. Great if you're trying to piss off your neighbors, but useless at The Hop. And since everybody wants to strap it on and play guitar, the rock group has expanded to accomodate two, and sometimes three, guitar players. It's extremely difficult to make a two-guitar lineup work. That's because guitar is a frequency-spectrum saturating instrument -- once you've added one rhythm guitar, there's hardly any room for additional sounds. I don't mean to single out Higgins here, because they're no different from anybody else stalking this modern rock territory. But they are an object lesson, because the bass player here is driven by the treble section -- and to some degree the drummer -- to hug the roots of the chords. That's all he does. On "Ben 4", for instance, one of the two guitars opens with low line that crowds the bass part to the periphery, and the drum solo on "The Drone" is so bottom-ended that you'd swear the bassist is playing along. He's not -- as K-ROCK listeners know, that's just how modern rock drums get mixed. If you're a modern rock fan, and you're used to this approach, you probably won't even notice. But me, I have always argued that great musical recordings are, at essence, duets between a lead instrument (usually a singer) and a bass instrument (usually a bass). Higgins needs to free up some space for their bass player to interact with their singer. (Just like every other indie band in the state.)
The songs: Not iconoclastic or anything, but Higgins is willing to experiment with form. The group isn't bothered by open-ended structure. "Kamikaze" starts with a guitar pattern and vocals, and opens up into a release that feels like a chorus. Yet that section is never repeated: instead, Higgins returns to the verse and builds to an entirely different release. The shifting architecture of the song mirrors the instability of the narrator, and traces the pattern of his flight. "The Drone" repeats one chromatic change over and over, before moving to a walk-down pattern on the choruses. They're flexible.
What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: I don't think Higgins is trying to be particularly distinctive. But nor are they hemmed in by generic conventions. They don't shy away from challenging subject matter, and this three-song teaser suggests an interesting, if nascent, perspective.
What's not so good?: Higgins must use its bass guitar better, or convince the guitarsts to play chords other than those implied by the bass root. I know, I could probably say the same thing about 90% of the groups in New Jersey, but theirs is an exaggerated case.
Recommended?: Higgins plays far away from the town I call home. Yet if I was a South Jerseyan or Philadelphian, I would definitely go out of my way to check this group out.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Try the band's website. They've got MP3s there of all three songs from the EP.
Title: Julia
From: St. Petersburg. Russia, not Florida. Though it's pretty clear her base of operations is now Jersey City.
Format: A five song EP. I could be wrong here, but I think it's a teaser for an upcoming full-length.
Fidelity: Relatively lo-fi, but you'll never notice. This is singer-songwriter music, and Vorontsova's performances are so quietly intense that the last thing you'll be concerned about is sound quality.
Genre: Folk. By any definition, this is world music, too.
Arrangements: One young woman, one guitar. My guess is that her axe is a nylon-stringed job -- its tone is delicate, faraway, naturally compressed. Vorontsova rarely strums; instead she picks at the instrument in hypnotic, circular patterns. Both her voice and guitar are suffused in a misty reverb.
What's this record about?: Vorontsova sings her songs in Russian. I can sound out the cyrillic writing on the CD cover, but that's as far as I can get. Anybody got a translation? An account with Babelfish?
The singer: Her press materials report that Julia Vorontsova is eighteen years old, but you'd never know that by her voice, or, for that matter, her performances. Vorontsova sings in a heavy, world-weary whisper; it's intimate, aching, intoxicating as brandy, and twice as addictive. My CD doesn't have a clear tracklisting, but it hardly matters -- Vorontsova's breathy, husky alto is consistent from track to track, bending acrobatically from note to note, gracing these melodies, pleading, persuading. This is a turn-out-the-lights-and-stare-out-the-window voice, an introspective voice resonant with lived experience. Of course, without a translator, I can't tell you what that experience is, but these letter-perfect folk performances are resonant with tantalizing clues.
The guitar: Usually a pitter-patter of notes or a scrape of strings in a dusty corner, but sometimes an elegantly-weaved pattern or a gently percussive, insistent thrum. Julia's production reminds me of that of the Nick Drake's outtakes that became Time Of No Reply, and Vorontsova communicates some of that same austerity -- that same disturbing calm. This is about as far from rock guitar patterns as you can get, but any six-string fan can surely recognize that Vorontsova's approach to her instrument is steeped in folk idiom and subtly accomplished. She never loses her poise, her inner sense of rhythm, or her grace, and she is as good a guitar player at eighteen as any young singer-songwriter I've ever heard.
The songs: Built around descending chord patterns that sound foreign, but never unfamiliar. A fragile melody escapes from the chords of the opening track ("Rome", I think it's called -- I am guessing with these based on some light-type words printed across the back of the sleeve); "Love", another minor-chord ballad, alternates between low, muttered phrases, and transparent, fragile held notes on its angelic release. Both are repetitive -- as folk music generally is -- but they're also relatively short, surprisingly propulsive, and consistently compelling. "Picnic", the most aggressive song here, is also the most identifiably Russian -- even without Vorontsova's vocals, this melody and accompaniment would get you halfway to Red Square. "Faberge" is short and luminous, and functions as preparation for the final track: a killer called "Grandfather" with a bleak verse and a gorgeous chorus that swings open like an iron gate. I don't know if Voronsova wrote these songs, or if they're adaptations, or if they're straightforward traditional material. If they're hers, she's a hell of a tunesmith -- if they're not, she's a terrific curator of her own aesthetic choices.
What distinguishes this record from other records of its genre?: I know there's plenty of traditional Russian music, but it's safe to say that the vast majority of it is in Russia. Most critics and other amateur musicologists like to feign a great breadth of multi-culti knowledge, but honestly, this is the closest most of us rockers and folkies are going to get to Moscow spring.
What's not so good?: I can't think of anything to say here. Somebody help me out; knock Julia Vorontsova for something, anything. She's just a kid, we don't want her getting a swelled head. Hmm, I suppose the EP could have been mastered more effectively -- the third track comes in a little too softly, and the reverb bath on the second song could have been better compensated for, too. Man, talk about your minor quibbles. When all you've got to complain about is the mastering, you've just got to give it up to the artist.
Recommended?: I remember back in 2002 I was in Greenpoint before walking to practice, and I went into a Russian juice bar. The guy behind the counter was playing these Eastern European rap records, and they were amazing -- musically innovative, attitudinous, posturing, hypnotic. I stayed in the bar for an hour, just listening to the emcees and wishing I knew what the hell they were saying. Now, I don't usually do that well with instrumental music, and you all know I like to throw stones at abstract art: if it doesn't have words I can follow, I generally want to leave it at the counter and go and put on a Randy Newman record. Julia Vorontsova's music does have words -- they're just not words I understand. Like the salseros and merenguistas in my old neighborhood in Union City, she sings so well that she draws me into her songs -- her universe -- anyway. In so doing, she's managed to accomplish what all my professors could not: she makes me wish I knew Russian.
Where can I get a copy/hear more?: Vorontsova's music is being released through Jersey City-based Abaton Book Company, a small local label that knows a thing or two about startlingly talented teenagers.
Title: We Could Connect Or We Could Not
From: Jersey City. Our town isn't known for chic electronica. Look at the roster over at Uncle Joe