Special EP Review Post – Brown Recluse Sings, Go Home Robot, Monogold, and ZAZA
We here at Citizen Dick HQ get a lot of music crossing our desks and filling our headphones and sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we just can’t get to everything. Speaking for myself, one of the first things that tends to determine the importance that I assign to some new releases is whether it is a full-length effort or not. Call my biased, maybe even foolish, but I tend to hold the full-length efforts in higher regard, or at least give them fuller attention. Even I, however, know that doing so can occasionally be a stupid mistake, so periodically I like to go through the stacks and give the EPs a spin. I went through one of these inbox house-cleanings the other day and, in doing so, found some really interesting work that I thought some of you might be interested in.
As a result, today I’m doing something a little different. Rather than spend the whole nut writing a long essay on one particular album, I’m giving you quicker hits on four different shorter albums. I hope you don’t mind the trade-off. This won’t happen all the time, but next time I go through the EPs and find some more otherwise ignored (by me) gems, I’ll be back for another one of these.
For now, though, prepare to meet a handful of acts, all hailing from east of the Mississippi: Philadelphia’s Brown Recluse Sings, Arlington, Virginia’s Go Home Robots, and a pair of bands out of Brooklyn, Monogold and ZAZA.
Brown Recluse Sings – The Soft Skin
Recorded in 2007, The Soft Skin is Brown Recluse Sings’s follow-up to 2006’s well-received EP, Black Sunday. After line-up changes and natural evolution, the current Brown Recluse Sings effort finds the band at a deceptively sunny point. The four-track album is filled with beauties that deserve both head-bopping and careful listening. Although the Spector-esque dude-pop sounds recall mid-career Beach Boys, the lyrics reflect the neurotic and frequently passive-aggressive underbelly of modern love. For example, witness the narrator’s comparison/contrast exercise between his breakfast fruit and his lover in “Rotten Tangerine” (”I’m eating a rotten tangerine/Its skin is twice as soft as yours/but its juice is half as sweet”) and in-the-moment anxiety in “Rainy Saturday” (”Through your teeth I hear you softly sigh/as you gently run your fingers down my thigh/are you counting down the time until you die”).
Overall, think Peter, Bjorn, & John meets major-chord Nick Drake, with songs written by a calm Woody Allen. All four tracks are enjoyable, but the stand-out is arguably “Rotten Tangerines,” with its mildly psychedelic and romantic portrayal of a regular winter morning. Like Allen, the band bears a sense of the auteur, particularly with the satirical explanations – sometimes sub-titular, others epigraphical – after each song’s listing in the insert. Accordingly, the listener is prepared to receive “Rotten Tangerines” as a “nostalgic reverie triggered by the morning routine” while the message accompanying “Night Train” is more a twitter-worthy short story split title, “destitution and virtue don their hat and scarf for the winter; or, an optimistic reflection on the coming of spring.”
The Soft Skin will be released on August 25th through Slumberland Records. Check out the Brown Recluse Sings website here and keep an eye out for the band’s full-length release in early 2010.
Brown Recluse Sings – Night Train
Brown Recluse Sings – Contour and Context
Go Home Robot – Candles and Bombs
Virginia-based Go Home Robot’s sound is a little more difficult to capture, if only because their approach veers so wildly between each of Candles and Bombs six tracks. When I first start listening to a new band, I can’t help but call to mind other bands it reminds me of. Eventually, after enough time and thought, a picture more unique to the band forms in my mind and I can think of more direct and less comparative ways to describe that band’s sound. I’m not there yet with Go Home Robot, and don’t know that I’ll ever be, simply because the band changes so much.
“Locusts” sounds like it was recorded by a harder art-noodle band, a punkier and simpler Akron Family, say, while “Safe in the City” is softer pop. The guitar noodling is still there, but more melodic, and eventually the band builds to Franz Ferdinand-esque close, constructing sort of a chorus at the end of the song. “Pighook,” however, is Ric Ocasek on Quaalude’s. The song is anchored by a simple bass riff with a catchy guitar hook repeated throughout, though in various keys and styles, including an occasional dark, late 80s metal bite at times. At points distorted guitar effects are thrown in, and the band closes the track hard and heavy. The next song, the album’s title track, changes gears entirely, bringing a post-rock sound comparable to a heavier The Sea and Cake. The EPs closing track, “Scratch on the Piano,” is the album’s most powerful. It begins with a piano interlude and eventually becomes an unholy marriage between Yeasayer and Black Sabbath (if such a thing was even imaginable), as the vocalist belts out a dark, demonic tale. The track is highly theatrical, with moments of instrumental madness, and the simple string work at the end is a top-notch production touch.
Candles and Bombs is currently available for free download through Rock Proper. Check out Go Home Robot’s website here and download Candles and Bombs here.
Go Home Robot – Safe in the City
Monogold – We Animals
The thing I dig most about my discovery of Monogold is how it happened. One day, not all that long ago, I received a blind email from one of the fellas in the band, asking if I’d be willing to listen to their new EP. We get quite a lot of these emails, and while I try to give most things a listen, I don’t always give them the full attention they probably deserve. The day I received the mp3s that comprise We Animals, I was in the middle of some time-consuming computer-related chores, mindless but necessary – the perfect time to put on the headphones and listen to some new stuff, with fingers half-crossed hoping to find a gem.
I found one in Monogold. And it makes me a lot more likely to give the next few bands that randomly send me their music a much more attentive listen.
Monogold operates out of Brooklyn, indie rock ground zero almost this entire decade, and the folks in this band have soaked up the rich environment around them and processed it into something new and fantastic. This seven-track EP is filled with seven diggable tunes, particularly album-opener “Traps/Offerings” and “Dead Sea Minerals.” In fact, “Dead Sea Minerals” might be one of the top songs I’ve heard this entire year, with its anthemic joy, killer drumming, happy guitars, and smooth tenor vocals. Best of all, the good stuff isn’t limited to just those two tracks – there is a lot going on in each one of these songs, like a lot of albums that come out these days. Unlike many of those other albums, however, We Animals never seems like there is something hiding under extra tracks, but instead like each new sound or level of distortion was an inspired new puzzle piece cleverly and astutely added in to the mix. This is vintage post-college Liberal Arts major/music minor indie pop and I love it. (I also love the album cover art.) (And has anyone been keeping count of how many times I’ve used the word “love” in this blurb so far?) (Or parenthetical digressions?)
This band is still early into its development, but I’m optimistic on where they are going to go. A while back I listened to an EP by another band from New York, Suckers, and told a friend that, based only on the songs on that short album, there was a solid chance those guys could be my next favorite band. I won’t go that far on Monogold, yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself saying something similar whenever their next album comes out. In the meantime, I have a hunch I’m going to be paying a lot more attention to NYC concert listings, hoping for a magical weekend when one of those bands is playing somewhere on a Friday and the other somewhere else on a Saturday. At that point, I can assure you I’ll be making phone calls to friends who live there, arranging couches to sleep on and pals to go to the shows with.
We Animals will be released through iTunes and CD Baby in September. Check out Monogold’s website here.
ZAZA – Cameo
Part of me was tempted to just flip a coin and decide if I was going to frame this band as mellifluous noise or complicated shoegaze. I can’t really decide. Song after song on Cameo features beautiful melodies that are covered up and warped by noisy dissonance, leading to some strange compositions that work most of the time, though not always. Other than the melody versus noise battle taking place on each track, there are two other hallmarks to ZAZA’s sound: uncommonly ethereal male vocals and quite pronounced drum work. The overall vibe is complicated and rhythmic and sometimes even psychadelic. This is an EP that can be difficult to listen to – not because it is unpleasant (it is not), but because it just isn’t very easy to wrap your ears and brain around. For those of you that like a challenge, you might discover your new favorite shoe-pop band. For those of you that prefer something more straightforward, classifiable, and navigable, you might want to look elsewhere.
As I mentioned, some tracks put the sound composition better together than others. “Always On” works in a great fuzzy guitar jam that comes in between the vocals and the drums just perfectly, but track-opener “The Call” always seems to be swirling around a song idea rather than ever fully becoming one. Similarly, “Repitition” is a grand and delightful mess of echoes and guitar, with the drumming providing a road-map for the listener to follow along to, while “Faith in the Faithless” has waves of artifice getting in the way of everything natural. On Cameo, ZAZA has convinced me that they have chops and a sound. More importantly, they’ve got my attention. Now I’m waiting to see where that sound goes.
Cameo will be released on August 18th through Kanine Records. Check out ZAZA’s website here.
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