(Editor’s note: The last two Lazy Saturdays, we’ve gone with bands that might not be on your radar yet paired with a live track or two; you’ve seemed to be into that, so we’re going to keep it up this week with a slight twist. The two bands we’re highlighting today released records earlier this year that we didn’t comment on at the time; to a degree, we’re looking backwards instead of ahead. Both records, however, are deserving of praise and this seems like a good venue to heap it on them. Lastly, that’s E.V. Sumner and his staff up there. He was the oldest cat to serve in the Civil War, so he’s super old. In other news, I wish my day job would allow me to carry a saber around. That would be sweet.)
Mrs. Citizen and I caught A Hawk and a Hacksaw opening for Andrew Bird in April; at the time I found their deeply Eastern European sound to be intriguing, if mildly static, and a good way to warm up for the Birdman. After listening to Delivrance, their May release on The Leaf Label, a few times through, I realized I was selling the band short. The initial reaction to the record is that is very foreign, layered with the sounds of Eastern Europe and dripping with musical idioms that sound wildly exotic to the American ear. Spiral a little deeper into the record, peeling away a bit of the overt alienness, and you start to hear how complex and entrancing it is. “The Man Who Sold His Beard,” the album’s killer third track, is a pounding, swirling blend of accordions, horns and top-drawer string work; imagine a stereotypical oompah band playing high energy dance music and you’re in the ballpark. (Side note: That makes me think of this for no good reason. That inevitably makes me think of this. Which is a good thing. That’s some funny shit.) There’s a whole raft of stuff going on here that I don’t quite have the lexicon to define crisply; verbunkos and klezmer are words that I know, but I won’t pretend to have a bunch (or any) records that could be defined as either. As such, the fact that a record like Delivrance works is all the more stunning; the band is putting out records to a buying public that (largely, I’ll assume) isn’t wildly conversant in the ideas they contain. That’s admirable and, happily, really listenable.
The principal members of A Hawk and a Hacksaw are violinist Heather Trost, wildly talented and prominently featured on most of the tracks, and percussionist Jeremy Barnes, recognizable to hipsters as the drummer from Nuetral Milk Hotel. Both of these folks force you to pay attention; the violin is sweet throughout and the number of permutations in the percussion is pretty nifty as well. While most of the tracks on Delivrance are instrumental, there are vocals on a few cuts (including “Kertesz,” one of my favorites). It’s a record worth checking out in that it sounds like nothing else I’ve listened to this year and it’s of particularly high quality.
A Hawk and a Hacksaw – Foni Tu Argile
Next up today is a psych-rock act from Peru. This is another really good example of a band that I got to hear about through the blog. The folks in Serpentina Satelite saw our review of White Hills, thought we might like their sound and shipped us a record. I’ll guarantee that if I wasn’t writing for the blog, I wouldn’t be hip to too many Peruvian psych-rock acts, so I feel pretty lucky. Serpentina Satelite’s Nothing to Say, released in January on Germany’s Trip in Time records, is fifty minutes of heavy, often mildly nefarious, space rock, replete with crunchily distorted guitars lacing into towering solos and big muscular riffs, barely decipherable lyrics delivered intermittently in both English and Spanish and, in general, a load of musicianship and attitude. The title track, below, is pretty representative of the album as a whole, with its aggressive sonic pummeling. The record has a lot of nuance as well, with tracks that have enough twists and flourishes to keep the experience engaging and rewarding. The album closes with “Kommune 1,” a twenty minute-plus exploration of the limits of groove and feedback. (I’ve complained in the past about artists refusing to stretch out and embrace a jam or two. Serpentina Satelite engender no such compunction.) The guitar solo around the twelve minute mark manages to be both yearning in nature and incendiary in delivery, which is a solid trick. The band has more than one gear, however, as the terse “Madripoor,” which lays a fuzzy drone over an almost traditional blues solo attests. Overall, I’m glad that Nothing to Say showed up in my mail. It’s an album you want to track down if White Hills was up your street.
Serpentina Satelite – Nothing to Say
I thought that since we flew to the outer limits this week (Eastern European folk, South American psychedelia), it might be a nice counterpoint to go with an almost uncomfortably idiomatic American band for this week’s live cuts. Two covers from New Riders of the Purple Sage’s classic lineup in an opening gig for the Grateful Dead on the Europe ’72 tour fit the bill, right? The slight manipulation of “The Weight” gives an interesting twist to a canonical track (it’s pretty faithful, but also clearly not The Band) and the guitar work on Ray Charles’ “I Don’t Need No Doctor” is solid. Enjoy.
New Riders of the Purple Sage – I Don’t Need No Doctor – Live, 1972
