REVIEWS ARCHIVE
New Releases 2008
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
BEACH HOUSE
"Used To Be" [single]
Part of me wants desperately to believe that releasing a seven inch in 2008 isn't an act of vanity, but rather proof that a cylinder of vinyl, seven inches in diameter with a single on one side and a b-side on the other, is still the basic unit of pop music. Maybe it's because two of the best and quietest bands in indiedom-Low and Beach House-are releasing a 7" this fall (curse you, Low, for only releasing yours in the UK).
The Beach House seven inch, however, is available in the state Low hails from (it's also available, sigh, digitally). It's called "Used To Be" and has an unremarkable demo version of "Apple Orchard" on the b-side. The song itself, however, is fantastic-mining the same languid and lovely territory of this spring's wonderful Devotion. The music is as laconic as ever, with Victoria LeGrand's rich vocals pushing through a rudimentary drum machine beat, Alex Scally's slightly louder than usual guitar and the haze of her own keyboard-in short, the song is dream pop done right.
What's best about "Used To Be" is how it stands out in its own right-Devotion works as a haze of melody, each song sliding into the next without calling undue attention to itself; it's easy to remember moments from the album, more difficult to remember songs. In contrast, the micro-movements of "Used To Be" are all clearly memorable without sacrificing the tuneful narcolepsy that made Beach House great in the first place.
THE BLACK WATCH
Icing the Snow Queen (Eskimo)
The last time I reviewed a Black Watch record in this publication (2006's splendid Tatterdemalion), the band was using thick, distorted guitars as an end in themselves, in an attempt (ending in triumph) to channel the mood of a bygone shoegazing tradition. On new LP Icing the Snow Queen, those guitars are still present, but used more for texture and coloring on a breezier set of fast and loose pop songs. That allows the band to plagiarize the melody from Tatterdemalion's title track on the new "Jenny Holly Wally Martin" without necessarily repeating itself. The band has a specific niche, but works the many varieties of post-punk era underground sounds very nicely. I also mentioned in that previous review that chief Black Watchman John Andrew Fredrick holds a Ph.D. in English literature. It was probably beside the point back then, but this time around he's entitled a song "The Jean Rhys Appreciation Society" (it's not hard to appreciate Jean Rhys, but it maybe takes a grad student to want to write a song about her). Well, fear not. That song is instrumental, and Fredrick is no practitioner of literary erudition. This album is more akin to any recent Robert Pollard record than to a doctoral thesis, though much less slipshod and frankly much better. I'll end with an appeal to the reader: this band is virtually unknown, despite decades of quality work, and desperately needs your kind ears to hear their lovely songs! They seem to suffer more from poor distribution of their records than anything else, because there is no reason they shouldn't be moderately well-known by now.
DEATH VESSEL
Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us (Sub Pop)
Fleet Foxes are fairly macho in a woodsy way, while fellow new folkies Death Vessel are the beautiful androgynes. Much has been made of head vessel Joel Thibodeau's impressive falsetto, and indeed, the fact that he sounds like a woman is the most pleasurable thing about this album. But the strength of the songs is apparent even as you rejoice in the eunuch's chords. "Bruno's Torso" is a standout, especially when the Civil War snares kick in and Thibodeau starts to hit the highest registers. Reviewer and kindred spirit Jack Rabid encouraged the readers of his magazine The Big Takeover to "bathe in it" when that other Joel (Gibb) released The Smell of Our Own with The Hidden Cameras, and now, dear listener, here lies Death Vessel. Bathe in it!
FUCKED UP
The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador)
Fucked Up rock pretty hard, but their approach to hardcore punk often reeks too much of the academic. For examples: that flute doesn't add much to what would otherwise be a blistering album intro; leader Pink Eyes sounds more like the idea of a punk singer rather than a legitimate angry dude. The band doesn't commit any major sins like the Dirty Projectors, whose tepid reworking of Black Flag's Damaged could inspire the same rage that drove that raging guy to shatter a mirror on the album's cover. Damaged is a great album, great art maybe, but nothing about it suggests that it should be played like bad jazz. It is not compositionally interesting, just brutal, dumb and damn catchy. Is Pitchfork to blame for this insistence on popular music's "intellectual" qualities, over and against its beautiful unpretentiousness? Whatever the case, Fucked Up squeak through just because their sound is so thick. "Black Albino Bones" has some great melodies bubbling up through the skull crushing, and it is one place on the album where I don't feel that the band has thought too much about punk rock without really feeling it.
JULIE OCEAN
Long Gone and Nearly There (Transit of Venus)
Four guys from a number of old DC-area power pop bands got together to record this fantastic 25 minute album in early 2008 and then disbanded last week. It's a small legacy, but Long Gone and Nearly There earns a place in the canon of economic and energetic pop albums: Milo Goes to College, It's A Shame About Ray, etc. For those on a time budget, or those who believe that 35 minutes is the ideal album length (and that not much is sacrificed to pull it in under 25), here's your new favorite album. "Here Comes Danny" is vintage mid-90s indie rock (today!) vying for a place on modern rock radio, while the rest is short, snappy, tuneful, unpretentious and infinitely repeatable.
JENNY LEWIS
Acid Tongue (Warner Bros.)
It's fitting that the Acid Tongue disc is designed in the fashion of a vintage 1970s Warner Bros. vinyl recording, as the album itself milks the Rumours songbook with great success. That's not to say Lewis covers or even references Fleetwood Mac, but if Rabbit Fur Coat was her country rock album extraordinaire, here she is inserting herself into the American rock 'n' roll tradition (the strand of the tradition that was ruled by hairy men and fairy women in the 70s). She's no wholesome American girl after all, but a talented songwriter with plenty of idiosyncrasies. "Black Sand" is minimal and metronomic enough to deserve a place on Plastic Ono Band, and Lewis's vocals are weirdly controlled and aloof. She sounds downright intimidating.
SECRET SHINE
All of the Stars (Clairecords)
At the time, 2007 seemed like a banner year for shoegazing, but the resurgence, if there even was one, didn't last. "5.15 Train" by Philadelphia's A Sunny Day in Glasgow (and the rest of the magnificent album it's featured on) should have registered with the same shockwaves as My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, but it didn't. She, Sir, from New York, released a splendid EP called Who Can't Say Yes, warm and drenched in distortion, but they're still so little known that they might as well not exist. The Twilight Sad, a band that understands loudness and catharsis, made a small splash, but they're off in their own niche and only those desperate enough to insist upon it can call them shoegazers. Well, here's reason to rejoice in 2008. The album dropped earlier this year, but it's worth looking back that far, because 1990s shoegazers Secret Shine have reemerged with the very nice All of the Stars. There should be no anxiety over classification, because these guys were around during the sub-sub-genre's beginnings. I haven't heard their earlier work, but this one definitely earns them a place among the Big Seven (Catherine Wheel, Slowdive, Pale Saints, Ride, Swervedriver, MBV, Chapterhouse). The track called "Know" is a knockout, moving between the dreamy and the ear-splitting (bass drum! high-pitched vocals!) with great ease and greater beauty (and, dare I say it, greatest authenticity).
SPRINGHOUSE
From Now to OK (Self-released)
Here's an album ten years in the making and the band's first in 15 years. That's two things that Springhouse has in common with Guns N' Roses. The similarities end when one considers that this album has got to be infinitely superior to whatever Chinese Democracy might turn out to be, while it will sell virtually zero copies to GnR's Best Buy juggernaut. But enough about that. Springhouse is the trio of Mitch Friedland, Larry Heinemann and Jack Rabid, who long ago fell in nicely with the shoegazery sounds of the early 90s and here take a turn towards orchestral pop. The band's influences are in keeping with the music that drummer Jack Rabid celebrates in the fabulous music magazine he has edited for the past three decades, The Big Takeover (to name a few: The Zombies, The House of Love.just flip through an issue of BT and you'll come up with a list of hundreds more). Mr. Rabid also sings what is currently my favorite song on the album, "Time Runs Out." He doesn't sound like someone who ought to be singing, but he has a workmanlike and sympathetic voice that navigates through a lovely melody that builds in fine fashion.
MARNIE STERN
This Is It... (Kill Rock Stars)
Call it Still In Advance of the Broken Arm. Here's a very fine album that may seem a little less than fine because it doesn't have the same novelty appeal as Marnie Stern's brain melting debut last year. I mean novelty only in the sense that until Marnie came around, I wasn't aware of the existence of such beautifully excessive shredding and drum cascading, nor my desire to have such sounds push me to the threshold of tinnitus. There's more of that here, oh yeah!
THE WEDDING PRESENT
El Rey (Manifesto)
When The Wedding Present brought in Steve "The Man" Albini to record their great 1991 album Seamonsters, it resulted in one of the most jaw-dropping eruptions of distorted guitar in music history, on opener "Dalliance." Their new collaboration and first in 17 years, El Rey, hasn't produced anything as beautifully brutal as that moment (maybe Albini and Wedding Present leader David Gedge have mellowed since their younger days), but Albini has again brought out some sinister vibes in Gedge's pop songs of love and lust. This is an album recorded in and inspired by the city of Los Angeles, and unlike Scottish rockers Idlewild, who concluded on 2005's Warnings/Promises that L.A. is "strange," Englishman Gedge seems to have adopted the city as his own. One doesn't need to dig deeper than titles like "Model, Actress, Whatever." to sense that Gedge is successfully navigating the dating scene there with the detached interest of a songwriter. There's a jangly pop song here called "Spider-Man on Hollywood," but even though this album is not nearly as loud as Seamonsters, it is thick with the same dark undercurrents that the band has been carrying down through the years since their start in the post-punk days of 1980s England.