There’s a remarkable consistency displayed in Damien Jurado’s fifteen years of carefully crafted songs. Sure, the general aesthetic varies from album to album, particularly on his decidedly rocking 2002 collaboration with Gathered in Song, I Break Chairs, and his 50s-pop-infused 2010 LP Saint Bartlett, but the many of his records subsist on a steady diet of acoustic guitar. It’s the songwriting that provides the strongest continuity: a melancholic cloud enveloping lived-in stories of lost loves and tragic histories in Middle America. Sufjan Stevens turned state-based storytelling into a gimmick for Michigan and Illinois, but Jurado’s longing cartography pops up when needed, anchoring the heartbreaking “Ohio” from 1999’s Rehearsals for Departure and the flickering nostalgia of Saint Bartlett’s “Arkansas.” What Jurado lacks in flash and fashion he more than makes up for in lasting appeal.
Despite my fondness for Damien Jurado’s catalog, I hadn’t seen him live before this week. Blame me, not him—it feels like he rolls through Boston every six months, usually on a bill with like-minded folk singers. It took a live album issued for Record Store Day to push me out the door to catch his latest tour.
Live at Landlocked catches Jurado at an in-store performance at Bloomington, Indiana’s Landlocked Records from June 13, 2010. Understandably heavy on Saint Bartlett, released the previous month, Landlocked offers five songs from that Richard Swift-produced album and one from the accompanying Our Turn to Shine EP, along with one apiece from 2006’s And Now That I’m in Your Shadow and 2008’s Caught in the Trees, and three new songs. It’s somewhat amazing that Jurado already had three new songs a month after his newest album came out, but each is a worthy addition to his catalog. “Thax Douglas #1” commemorates writing impromptu poems about bands and reading them prior to their sets. Thax recently moved down to Austin, but this song is a welcome tribute. (It also provides “Illinois” for Jurado state-name bingo.) No, “Diamond Sea” is not a Sonic Youth cover, but its yearning chorus is equally wonderful. Finally, “You for a While” head-fakes at more reserved emotion, but its enthusiastic whoops pull me off the couch.
While it doesn’t spend much time combing through Jurado’s ever-expanding back catalog, Landlocked nevertheless does an excellent job of melding past, present, and future. Saint Bartlett’s reverb-heavy production is washed away here for straight acoustic and vocals takes on those songs, and it’s compelling to hear how easily they sit alongside the older “Denton, Texas.” Jurado’s likeably sheepish stage banter cuts through the resonant melancholy of his songs, giving Landlocked the warmth of one of a living room performance. If you’re a Jurado fan, it’s a must-have; if you’re a newcomer fortunate enough to find a copy, it’s not a bad starting place.
Landlocked convinced me to finally stop waffling and catch Damien Jurado in concert, which came in an opening slot for John Vanderslice at Brighton Music Hall on May 15th. Perhaps the pairing with the unrelentingly gregarious Vanderslice made Jurado seem bashful in comparison, but Jurado’s long stage banter was the introduction of Melodie Knight of Campfire OK, who joined him for half of his set. Knight’s background vocals provided the lone accompaniment for Jurado’s acoustic guitar and expressive voice, echoing lines from Saint Bartlett’s “Cloudy Shoes” and adding harmony to several others. Jurado’s on-stage reservation was curious in comparison with Landlocked, but hardly off-putting; a gray and rainy Sunday night worked too well with the lingering sadness of his songs to worry about a less-than-chatty singer.
The song selection was a bit more varied than Landlocked, starting off with Caught in the Trees’ “Sheets,” sampling his back catalog, debuting three new songs (none of which were on Landlocked), and peaking with a spine-chilling rendition of “Ohio,” which may very well be Jurado’s finest song. If you’d like to hear the set, There There Li’l Bear has an excellent recording of it. I’ll gladly hear those new songs again.
I still have miles to go in my trek through Damien Jurado’s discography, but for once, I’m not in a hurry. While Live at Landlocked and the performance at the Brighton Music Hall underscored his strengths, they also pleaded for patience. The more time I’ve spent with each of Jurado’s records, the more I’ve enjoyed them, so giving cursory spins to the loose ends won’t help. I may advocate taking your time with his ten full-lengths (not counting the largely overlooked Hoquiam collaboration with his brother Drake), but not with starting the journey. See him live, track down Rehearsals for Departure, or snare one of the remaining copies of Live at Landlocked.
|
Belying his recent forays into stoner comedy, David Gordon Green started his career with a pair of oblique independent films: the childhood drama George Washington and the romance All the Real Girls. My viewings of these films had several prompts: recently catching up on Terrence Malick’s first two films (1973’s Badlands and the 1978 stunner Days of Heaven), both of which cast heavy shadows on Green’s work; former Parks and Recreation cast member Paul Schneider’s appearance in both films and co-writing credit for the latter; and the lingering suspicion that the lovely cinematography of Pineapple Express should be seen in its natural habitat. Such curiosity paid off; both films have stuck with me, particularly the inexperienced cast of child actors in George Washington and the worn-in relationship between Schneider and a young Zooey Deschanel in All the Real Girls. Tim Orr’s cinematography guides both films, most notably during a pair of lengthy montages ending their respective second acts. It’s here that Green’s visual storytelling shines brightest.
Those montages are not purely visual, as you might suspect, but they’re not the ham-fisted musical montages skewered by South Park. I immediately recognized the music of the passage in All the Real Girls as the Mogwai remix of “Mogwai Fear Satan” from Kicking a Dead Pig, but the strangely familiar ambient soundscape accompanying the passage in George Washington made me rush to IMDB for the credit. Sure enough, Stars of the Lid was somehow involved. Brian McBride’s side band The Pilot Ships contributed “Pilot Suicide Theory” from its 2000 LP The Limits of Painting and Poetry to George Washington’s soundtrack, and its backwards drones capture the range of emotions swirling around in the film. To Green’s credit, that’s no easy task.
Between “Pilot Suicide Theory” and McBride’s recent score for the documentary Vanishing of the Bees, I found myself wondering why contemporary ambient music hasn’t found its way onto more film scores. (Full disclosure: I rented The Lovely Bones because of Brian Eno’s soundtrack, but not even the use of “The Big Ship” over its closing credits could align the tonal mess which preceded it. Avoid.) Matt McCormick’s debut film Some Days Are Better Than Others had a head-start to finding its score from Eluvium’s Matthew Cooper, since it stars two notable indie rockers: Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney, Wild Flag, and the IFC sketch comedy show Portlandia, and James Mercer of The Shins and Broken Bells. The film is currently making the rounds at festivals and limited-run screenings, while Cooper’s score is now available on Temporary Residence.
Given the variety of sounds Cooper has delivered in Eluvium’s discography—the woozy drones of Lambient Material, the solo piano of An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death, the symphonic swells of Copia, the Eno-esque vocals of Similes—his score for Some Days could have gone in any number of directions. Picking up on the film’s thematic exploration of throwaway culture, Cooper opted to record the soundtrack with broken/malfunctioning keyboards, a decision which establishes the score’s aesthetic. There’s a playfulness to tracks like “Drifting” and “Worry and Care” that suggests both a church organ and a run-down carnival. Cooper manages to hit the droning palette of his early records on “Into Dust” and the tinkling, heavily backmasked “Pursuance.”
The best pieces on Some Days recall the interwoven layers of Eluvium’s finest work, 2005’s Talk Amongst the Trees. “Reprieve” carefully balances delicate details and thick blocks of keyboards. The title track starts with that curious carnival organ, but like Talk’s astounding highlight “New Animals from the Air,” keeps adding counterpoint melodies and textures. By the end of the song, the organ has disappeared and the tone has changed dramatically, but when exactly that happens is difficult to ascertain.
Cooper works best in these long pieces, since the shorter interstitials often lack depth. Not having seen the film, I can’t say if the church organ melodies of “It’s Never What It Seems” and “What You Leave Behind” are the perfect accompaniments for their respective scenes, but on record they’re gone too soon and don’t leave much of an impression. This issue made much of Cooper’s 2008 "solo album" Miniatures a fans-only concern, so perhaps he should stick to his stage name.
I hope that the film Some Days Are Better Than Others gives the song “Some Days Are Better Than Others” a fittingly evocative context. It’s the centerpiece of the soundtrack, much like “Pilot Suicide Theory” and “Mogwai Fear Satan (Mogwai Remix)” anchored George Washington and All the Real Girls respectively. It’s an excellent gateway to Matthew Cooper’s work, the best of which comes under the Eluvium banner, so if you’ve seen the film and liked what you heard, start there and then circle back to this soundtrack.
|
The first song on Kyle Bobby Dunn’s Ways of Meaning is called “Dropping Sandwiches in Chester Lake.” It might be easier to extrapolate Dunn’s aesthetic from the titles of tracks three and four—“Canyon Meadows” and “New Pures,” respectively—but the seeming nonchalance of “Dropping Sandwiches” has stuck with me. Given that Chester Lake is located in the Canadian Rockies of Dunn’s former home of Alberta, the title likely carries some anecdotal resonance that the wordless drones can’t transcribe. I’m inclined to believe that Dunn broke the stillness of the lake’s surface with the sandwiches in question, hearing the distant plunk as they slice through the surface and watching each one ripple out in concentric circles. Their trajectories intersect and then glance off one another, creating a silent network of arcs both perfect and imperfect. These arcs distort the reflection of the surrounding mountains in Spray Valley Provincial Park. All of this filters back into Dunn’s composition, a work of clock-stopping tranquility. The only thing I can’t intuit is why Dunn brought so many sandwiches with him.
To a certain extent I’m cheating with this localized discussion, since Dunn’s been in Brooklyn since 2007. But as “Chester Lake” implies, Dunn hasn’t lost his connection to Alberta. His 2009 Rural Route No. 2 EP was inspired by the childhood locales of Calgary. He’s performed in Banff National Park. These songs are open-ended enough for other mental journeys, but once I thought about Chester Lake as the destination, I kept going back to it. These ambient classical compositions make more sense aligned with regal open spaces than metropolitan clatter.
Each of Ways of Meaning’s six pieces offers a unique arrangement of those intersecting sets of concentric circles. “Canyon Meadows” stands out with the close proximity of its drones, which brush against each other like reeds in the wind. But the album’s centerpiece is the fifteen-minute-long “Movement for the Completely Fucked,” which loses all track of time as it gradually ebbs and flows with volume swells and overlapping tones. Without a watch you could mistake it for one of its five-minute-long neighbors. These specific pieces are the highlights of Ways of Meaning, but as my six full spins of the album will attest, it’s remarkably easy to get lost in this album.
I’ve filed Dunn’s geographical projections alongside Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina and Stars of the Lid’s And Their Refinement of the Decline, bridging the gap between Dunn’s minimalist composer influences and his contemporary counterparts. Pärt’s influence is apparent in the moments of near silence, especially the gradual decay that comprises the final minute of “New Pures.” Stars of the Lid is an unavoidable touchstone for ambient classical, but Dunn’s purified guitar and synth drones reside in the same aesthetic sphere. I wouldn’t mind Dunn branching out with more ensemble-based recordings like this exquisite performance from the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn last year, but I'm certainly not tired of his current palette. (The very end of the clip also shows Dunn’s sense of humor and is worth waiting for.)
Ways of Meaning will be out May 23 on Desire Path Recordings, with a special art version of LP on the verge of selling out. If you need to catch up—and Ways has prompted me to do just that—the 2CD A Young Person’s Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn compiles his 2009 full-length Fervency with another hour of material.
|
If there’s one undeniable fact about Matador Records’ hardcore punk outlier Fucked Up, it’s that they do not lack material. While the upcoming David Comes to Town is only their third official full-length, there’s no shortage of loose ends to track down: a towering stack of singles, their zodiac series of EPs, a debt-reducing 2LP singles compilation Couple Tracks, the Coke Sucks Drink Pepsi live album pressed with Chunklet’s endlessly quotable Indie Cred Test book, etc. I both pity and envy any souls brave enough to attempt to collect them all.
Until now I’ve stuck with the “major” titles in Fucked Up’s discography, but David’s Town was too intriguing to pass up. A tie-in release for the concept album David Comes to Town, David’s Town is tagged as a compilation of bands from Byrdesdale Spa, England, from the late ’70s. Spoiler alert: it’s actually Fucked Up channeling bands from the era with a smattering of guest vocalists. If you’re expecting progressive-leaning hardcore, wait for David Comes to Town; if you’re up for a loose romp through Brit-pop, early punk, and pub rock, by all means, come on in.
The fun of David’s Town comes from figuring out which songs evoke which bands. I won’t spoil that for you, since knowing all of what to expect from David’s Town lessens its impact (and I’ll likely be off anyway), but highlights include Grain’s “Light Rain,” which is dead-on Fleetwood Mac pantomime with Simone Schmidt donning Stevie Nicks’ gypsy wardrobe, the charging Brit-punk of Hateful Coil’s “Bull Thunder,” the girl-group perkiness of Redstockings’ “Unrequited Love,” the insistent melodies of In Good Company’s “Harmony’s Double” (guest vocals from A.C. Newman), and the goofy charm of Wonderer’s “It’s Hard to Be a Dad” (with Cloud Nothings’ Dylan Baldi). Like any compilation, real or fake, there are both hits and misses. Be prepared to stand by your turntable and move the needle past a few of the less inspired tracks after your first spin.
I won’t claim that David’s Town is essential listening. This sort of record is always in danger of being more fun for the band to record than for the fans to hear, and there are certainly a few points when that’s the case on David’s Town. What I will claim is that it’s a perfect Record Store Day release. It’s an entirely optional lark for fans and a chance for the band to continue stretching out their wings. I’d much rather bands do something like David’s Town for RSD than repress one of their albums on a previously unavailable color of vinyl or in double ten-inch form. David’s Town is a reward for fans, not an obligation, and that’s an essential distinction.
If you missed out on grabbing a physical copy, don’t lose sleep or your kid’s college fund acquiring a copy on eBay: a download of this album will be included in the massive pre-order package for David Comes to Town (along with four seven-inches, five non-album tracks, and a gallon zip-lock bag full of Pink Eyes’ body hair).
|
Pinback’s been awfully quiet of late. With only a 2008 tour EP (Ascii) and an appearance on Yo Gabba Gabba since their 2007 full-length Autumn of the Seraphs, the group has been put on the backburner for its primary members. Armistead Burwell Smith IV (or Zach Smith, for brevity’s sake) polished off an excellent solo debut in 2009, Systems Officer’s Underslept, a natural extension of Pinback’s intricately layered pop. He also returned to his pre-Pinback outfit, Three Mile Pilot, for their 2010 reunion album The Inevitable Past Is the Forgotten Future. I recently ran through Rob Crow’s labyrinthine discography in a write-up of Heavy Vegetable’s two full-lengths, but he’s been less frenzied of late, offering the 2008 sophomore release from his metal band Goblin Cock (Come with Me If You Want to Live) and an internet radio show. But their primary outlet is slowly waking up, starting with this Record Store Day single.
Information Retrieved, Part A is Pinback’s first release with Temporary Residence Limited since signing with the label in 2009 after the demise of Touch & Go. If you’re worried that time or the label switch has altered the group’s DNA, fear not: “Sherman” and “Thee Srum Proggitt” are immediately recognizable as Pinback concoctions. Crow and Smith trade off verses on “Sherman,” then cascade over each other on the chorus. Tightly snapping rhythms, back-masked guitar, and vocal-mimicking keyboards lay the instrumental foundations, but the song’s success comes from those exquisite vocal arrangements. “Thee Srum Proggitt” is a languid Crow-fronted song loaded with Dark Star samples (the John Carpenter film which provided the group its name), but Smith pops in for a few lines. I’ll likely stick to the a-side for future spins.
It’s unclear whether these songs will appear on the full-length Information Retrieved, which has now been pushed back to 2012. I chose to willfully ignore that possibility and grab this nicely packaged single, which comes in a sealed paper bag, offers a nice picture sleeve inside, and may be on colored vinyl (I got marbled blue). If your local store sold out, Pinback’s on tour through the middle of May (although I'm just guessing that they'll have copies with them) and Temporary Residence Limited will put a small amount of singles up for sale on May 1st.
|
The first time I listened to Callers’ Life of Love was in the car. I cite the situation as an alibi for not immediately recognizing their mid-album cover of Wire’s “Heartbeat.” If I’d seen the track title, perhaps it would have registered immediately as their take on the quietly intense song from Chairs Missing, an album firmly stationed in my all-time top ten. Instead, I had a gradual realization starting midway through the first verse. Sara Lucas’s soulful vocals are the biggest red herring; whereas Wire vocalist Colin Newman’s hushed performance mutes every word, Lucas revels in her delivery, exploring new cadences and elongating notes. My internal debate continued until the first instance of the titular line, at which point I wondered how I ever could have doubted it. Credit Callers for completely making the song their own. Even Big Black’s 1987 version begins with Steve Albini evoking the calm blood pressure of Newman’s delivery before ramping up to industrial chants. If “Heartbeat” is Wire’s “first overt love song,” as producer/fifth Beatle Mike Thorne claimed, Callers’ take is even more overt.
Callers’ cover of “Heartbeat” is also the Rosetta stone for Life of Love: a signifier of the post-punk underpinnings percolating beneath Lucas’s chanteuse vocals. It would be easy to hear a few of the more straightforward songs—the title track, the 50s pop of “How You Hold Your Arms”—and slot Callers in the pre-punk era, somewhere between jazz night clubs and early ’70s folk. But Ryan Seaton’s guitar work keeps Life of Love unpredictable, spiking out with no wave atonality on “You Are an Arc,” making a pointillist bed of acoustic plinks on “Dressed in Blue,” and tip-toeing upwards on closer “Bloodless Ties.” These moves often put Seaton’s guitar at odds with Lucas’s expressive vocals, parrying for space and attention.
So who wins these fencing matches? Lucas, every time. It’s impossible to upstage her voice, which wobbles knees on “Roll” and demonstrates powerful range on “Young People.” She could easily be recording stacks of standards back in New Orleans, but challenging her voice with Seaton’s quick jabs is a more compelling long-term option, even if the lone cover on Life of Love demonstrates more heart (no pun intended) than any other track on the album.
Callers’ current tour with Wye Oak hits a sold-out Middle East Upstairs tonight, so if you’re fortunate enough to have tickets, you’ll get a stellar pairing of contrasting developments. Jenn Wasner’s recent emergence as a solo-shredding guitar hero didn’t happen overnight, but every Wye Oak release has been full of character and catharsis. Callers, on the other hand, have an assured aesthetic on their second album, but would benefit from opening up. Hopefully they’ll each take notes for the Wye Oak Callers Mega-Band album in 2012.
|
Dischord Records cult favorites Lungfish haven’t released anything since 2005’s Feral Hymns, but its members continue to channel that group’s unique energy into their recent projects. Punk rock prophet Daniel Higgs has explored distorted mouth-harp, cosmic gospel folk, and meditative chants in a string of predictably confounding solo albums. These ventures recently culminated in a welcome return to rock with The Skull Defekts’ excellent Peer Amid. Former bassist Nathan Bell, who anchored personal favorite The Unanimous Hour, occasionally echoes Lungfish’s instrumental plateaus in Human Bell. But the most elemental evocation of Lungfish’s repetitive melodies comes in guitarist Asa Osborne’s solo project Zomes, now on its second LP, Earth Grid.
There’s no getting around the surface-level simplicity of Osborne’s Zomes. Each song is a modal exploration using keyboards and tape-looped drum beats. There’s no clutter of overdubs, no latticework of intersecting melodies, no polyrhythmic swirl. Songs last as long as necessary—ranging from fifty seconds to five minutes—although a two-minute composition may feel just as long its four-minute counterpart. Recorded at home to cassette, Earth Grid’s muted lo-fi palette gives a feeling of a third-generation dub or a live performance recorded by a downstairs neighbor.
Yet much like Lungfish, the mesmerizing quality of Zomes’ meditative compositions defies their innate simplicity. The droning, lightly distorted keyboard melodies are curiously inviting, with only a brief trill at the beginning of “Step Anew” approaching abrasion. The fourteen songs fit together as one piece, yet each one offers a tonal variation. Listening to the appropriately titled lead-off track “Openings” will give you a good sense of what’s to come, but each song could be pointed out as a valid starting point.
Zomes’ Earth Grid makes the most sense when viewed as a chronological aberration in Lungfish’s evolutionary arc. Instead of being a postscript to that group’s gradual dismissal of unnecessary traits, Zomes is the primordial goo which evolved into the mighty beast. This circular development is perfectly appropriate for Lungfish, especially given the epochal “Creation Story” from Rainbows from Atoms (“As a fish realized it held a monkey inside itself / And expelled it on the beach in a larval salamander form”). The clear benefit of such prior contextual knowledge makes Earth Grid less of a starting-point recommendation for the greater world of Lungfish than The Skull Defekts’ Peer Amid, but embrace that circularity: at some point you’ll come back here and begin anew.
|
Since the mighty Lungfish’s last (but hopefully not last) LP, 2005’s Feral Hymns, its punk-rock shaman/vocalist Daniel Higgs has released no fewer than seven decidedly outré solo records. (It’s hard to keep track of limited-edition, cassette-only entries.) If Lungfish’s ultra-repetitive punk-rock meditations are an acquired taste, Higgs’ ventures into distorted mouth-harp jams, cosmic/religious folk songs, and bizarre banjo instrumentals are the musical equivalent of Anthony Bourdain’s travels on No Reservations. Higgs can make those excursions palatable, but I still long for something resembling meat and potatoes. Fortunately, his newest turn as the frontman for Swedish post-punkers The Skull Defekts is an unexpectedly expected return to genuine—if twisted—rock music.
All of this build-up would be irrelevant if Higgs’ idiosyncratic vocal style failed to coalesce with The Skull Defekts’ experimental brand of post-punk. But the biggest surprise for Peer Amid is the naturalness of the pairing. You won’t mistake Peer Amid for a lost Lungfish LP, but hearing Higgs’ incantations of primitive mysticism linger over the unwavering intensity of the Skull Defekts’ locked-in rhythms, raga-informed guitar riffs, droning menace, and tribal percussion feels like a logical progression from his past work. Don’t fret if you come to Peer Amid without prior knowledge of Lungfish, Higgs, and the Skull Defekts’ considerable discographies—it’s just as valid of a starting point for newcomers.
Peer Amid covers considerable ground from the opening creaks of Higgs’ voice on the title track to the closing repose of “Hidden Hymn” (provided you’ve picked up the 2LP version with this bonus song and an alternate track order). “Peer Amid” circles mercilessly over its nine-minute runtime, lashing out with occasional venomous strikes, but the overall effect is less of a vicious assault and more of a suffocating constriction. “No More Always” is an energetic, raga boogie—a nihilistic hit single on some distant world of lizard people. The droning “Gospel of the Skull” finds Higgs ruminating on “your resonating skull sound” like no one else on earth could. The wordless chants of “The Silver River” evoke Indiana Jones peering in on the sacrificial rites of an evil cult. The eight-minute “In Majestic Drag” treats Higgs’ otherworldly cries as another element in an unnerving soup of tribal drumming, buzzing electronics, and malfunctioning guitar riffs. CD closer “Join the True” pairs Higgs’ unsettlingly calm delivery (“Join the true / Easy to do / Be as one / Who passes through”) with another hypnotic groove as you’re indoctrinated into this bizarre cult.
Time will tell if Daniel Higgs’ collaboration with The Skull Defekts is a one-off or an ongoing venture. The circular nature of these compositions—that tail-eating snake on the cover is no accident—might imply that Peer Amid is a closed loop, but I’d prefer if this collaboration continues. It won’t stop Higgs from venturing into the great beyond for inspiration, but it will provide a more accessible gateway for those interested in his cosmic sermons.
If you’re holding out hope for a Lungfish reunion, the current Skull Defekts tour offers you a tease. Lungfish guitarist Asa Osborne’s Zomes solo project opens up for the Higgs-equipped Skull Defekts. Maybe you’ll get a few quick performances from Higgs and Osborne’s The Pupils.
|
For an entirely instrumental ambient/noise album, there are plenty of thematic jumping-off points for Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath, 1972. First is the evocation of MIT’s piano drop tradition in the title of the opening track, the album’s cover art, and the year mentioned in the album title. That cover image—a photograph (of a photograph) of the first piano drop back in 1972 licensed from the MIT museum—is striking, a precarious tipping point of impending violence against a tangible musical object. Hecker has mentioned the increased sterility of the event, and having attended the wholly underwhelming 2008 event, I can vouch for his interpretation. Hecker has also mentioned his obsession with “digital garbage,” citing the Kazakh government’s bulldozing of millions of pirated CDs and DVDs. Finally, the base tracks for the album were recorded on a pipe organ in a Reykjavik church, then split apart by Hecker’s digital editing process, which circles back to the death of tangible music suggested by the album title.
I’ll give Hecker credit: by choosing his artwork carefully, picking evocative album and song titles, and dropping thematic discussion points in promotional materials and interviews, he’s provided templates for most reviews of Ravedeath, 1972. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t feel like these thematic touchstones are necessary to appreciate or discuss Ravedeath. (Nor do I wish to write another one of them.) Ravedeath is filled with natural discourses, which don’t mandate prerequisite reading for participation.
What strikes me the most about Hecker’s music is the constant sense of internal tension. There’s no sense of relief in the quieter, less abrasive moments of Ravedeath, 1972. They hint at the squalls of feedback which came before or which will come next. You may even be able to hear those moments off in the distance, as a threatening rumble beneath a placid calm. Similarly, even in the most abrasive, noise-driven moments of Ravedeath, there’s a melodic phrase or an emotional reserve pulsing beneath the bluster. Hecker comes close to resolving this tension a few times on Ravedeath, with the sub-aquatic drones of “No Drums,” the gentle feedback arcs of “Analog Paralysis, 1978,” and the processed piano coos of “In the Air III,” but those ghostly elements prevent a full exhale.
That tension extends to the instrumental palette. Some songs have a dominant instrument: opener “The Piano Drop” offers tremolo-filtered synthesizer; “In the Fog II” is built upon an oscillating pipe organ phrase; “Hatred of Music I” evokes the sci-fi noir of Blade Runner with its wailing, saxophone-esque synthesizer; and “In the Air I” suspends fragmented piano lines over buzzing noise. Yet most of these parts reappear in new forms, whether fractured, modulated, or buried. The three multi-song suites on the album excel at such instrumental give and take. The four songs appearing outside of those suites provide some relief from this haunting déjà vu, but still set the tone for what’s to come and provide their own set of double-takes.
None of this is wholly new for Hecker, whose body of work thrives on bridging gaps between genres, styles, and moods. His last LP, An Imaginary Country, dialed down the tension for more moments of unfettered beauty, while its predecessor, Harmony in Ultraviolet, offered greater contrast at both ends of the noise/ambient spectrum. 2004’s Mirages has discernable guitar tones, if not distinct parts. Hecker’s first two albums, Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again and Radio Amor show the foundations of his sound in more explicit glitch electronic. I’ve spent time with each of these records since first hearing Ravedeath, and I’ve been impressed by how much well each album stands up on its own while still informing his subsequent works. Yet my itch is to declare Ravedeath, 1972 the most accomplished of the batch.
If Hecker’s work is all driven by various forms of tension—ambient vs. noise, electronic vs. analog, glitch vs. drone—Ravedeath, 1972 presents the best balancing act between these forces. It finds the perfect moments to tip the scales in one direction or the other, but never pushes hard enough to topple the mechanism. It’s an easy album to appreciate—especially if you go ahead and consider the thematic fodder discussed at the top—but it’s also a surprisingly easy album to enjoy. I make that differentiation often, but few albums thrive equally in both modes.
|
Newsflash: Tao of the Dead is …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead’s fourth LP since their heralded 2002 LP Source Tags & Codes.This fact is surprising because I’ve treated each of their previous three LPs as a chance to properly follow up ST&C’s majestic blast of ordered chaos, making it seem like Groundhog Day, 2004. The resulting disappointment with each record is my fault as much as the band’s; at some point, I had to accept that Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway* is as much of an influence on them as Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation and adjust my expectations accordingly. That point occurred with my first glimpse of the album cover for Tao of the Dead, a manga-meets-Super-Nintendo-meets-fantasy-novel design by frontman Conrad Keely. (The package also includes a graphic novel.) There’s no doubting the group’s prog-rock intentions when you wonder, “Is that Starfox on the cover?” The ST&C Trail of Dead is gone, no question about it.
This realization took much longer than it should have. Half of Trail of Dead’s ST&C line-up has since departed, with bassist Neil Busch departing for “severe health problems” in 2004 prior to the release of Worlds Apart and guitarist Kevin Allen leaving the group prior to Tao of the Dead. They went from having Keely and Jason Reece switch off drumming duties to having two drummers and a keyboard player in their six-person line-up circa So Divided to a freshly pruned four-piece for Tao. They went from smashing their equipment on stage with an independent label budget (i.e. nothing) to smashing their equipment every night on stage with Interscope’s funding (which turned their destructive tendencies into mere habit) to smashing their former major label. They went from having three songwriters trading off lead vocals (Keely, Reece, and Busch) to one dominating the albums (Keely). Their album covers have featured the history of human warfare, a Final Fantasy-esque female face, a World of Warcraft-aping airship, and an intricate pen drawing that is the end-all, be-all of high-school notebook sketches. They founded their own label, Richter Scale Records, but partnered with Universal. This history is filled with contradictions, resets, new hope, The Phantom Menace, and a towering stack of Yes albums. It would make a thoroughly entertaining episode of Pitchfork: Behind the Music.
It does not, however, provide a solid foundation for Trail of Dead’s endless ambition. Not enough has been made of Neil Busch and now Kevin Allen’s departures from the band. In addition to losing Busch’s songs (most notably Madonna’s “Mark David Chapman”), they lost the push back-and-forth between Keely, Reece, and Busch for slots on the album. They lost accountability, since I seriously doubt the group’s third substitute bassist is going to put his foot down** about the unnecessary “Pure Radio Cosplay (Reprise)” making the cut for Tao of the Dead. Most of all, they lost that sense of instrumental coherence that makes ST&C so replayable. Scott Tennent’s 33 1/3 book on Slint’s Spiderland (an excellent volume I’ll review in full one of these days) explains how the group spent an entire summer rehearsing four songs from Spiderland, five days a week, six-to-eight hours a day. I have no doubt that such laborious diligence helped perfect Slint’s material. I can’t claim to know Trail of Dead’s rehearsal schedule or writing process, but if the proof is in the pudding, the switch from natural, proven dynamics to jarring shifts that have been smoothed over with production touches might indicate less time rehearsing the songs and more time tinkering with their demos on a computer, cutting and pasting pieces together. Think of how many potentially great post-ST&C songs have been submarined by an inexplicable or unnecessary part. My two favorites, “Will You Smile Again” and “Isis Unveiled” (helped by a video edit!), each start with focus and inspiration***, but veer off course rather wildly. Pulling in prog-rock influences shouldn’t mean the absence of editiorial control, should it?
If you’re looking for cohesion—the molecules between pieces fitting properly—then Tao of the Dead is a marked improvement over So Divided and The Century of the Self. If you’re looking for coherence—those pieces making sense as a whole—good luck with this jumble of grand melodies, periodically nimble riffs, shout-along choruses, boggy, synth-laden bridges, spoken-word pretention, acoustic whimsy, and distorted bluster. The rock-opera scope of Worlds Apart and The Century of the Self remains, but the links between scenes have been lost on the cutting room floor. Tao of the Dead is an epically long 52 minutes, with the final 16 of those covered by the five-part pastiche “Strange News from Another Planet.” If you pare it down to the good ideas and sturdy songwriting, there’s a 20-minute EP waiting to be released. And I mean “released” in the “from the clutches of the evil warlock high atop Mount Doom” sense of the word.
Why bother, you ask? For the same reason I’ll watch virtually any mediocre-to-crappy action/sci-fi movie. If they pull it off, it’s surprisingly entertaining; if they don’t pull it off, it’s bound to be a spectacular failure. That’s the silver lining of unattainable ambition. I’d rather face it than middling aims meeting modest success. Maybe the next Trail of Dead album will feature both cohesion and coherence to go along with its inevitable space-opera album art. Maybe there will be a perfect film adaptation of Dune. Who knows!
|
|
