Once again, we proud citizens, we dicks, we Citizen Dicks are back with another batch of EPs for your consumption and consideration. This week, we have a somewhat NYC-centric batch, though that is tempered with a healthy dose of Midwest. At first I thought about apologizing for it, but then decided it seemed apropos, what with our (mostly) Cleveland roots and the ongoing music mania that is CMJ New York this week.
For those of you who don’t dig the geographical favoritism, however, fear not – it won’t be like this forever. I mean, hopefully we’ll be rocking Cleveland forever (though if some university in a place like Quebec or San Francisco or New Orleans wanted to give me a fat contract, I’d have the conversation), but we’ll add some spatial diversity to these EP blasts soon enough. In fact, over the next few weeks, we have plans to cover all sorts of regions, from the west coast (San Francisco) to the Confederate south (Athens, GA & Oxford MS) to small-town Midwest (i.e., towns with names like Appleton, Rock Island, and Kent), and even a touch of the international (Tokyo). And, of course, we’ll be back to the Big Apple, with a couple Brooklyn bands. But at least this time the Williamsburg Indie Rock Association will have company. We promise.
All Tiny Creatures – Segni
To prove the point, our first band up today hails from Madison, Wisconsin, home no longer to just those Battlin’ Badgers but also a thriving rock scene. Primarily the all-instrumental of scene veteran multi-instrumentalist Thomas Wincek (Colonies of Bees, Volcano Choir), All Tiny Creatures operates much like a tight jam band, with the focus not on sprawling expansiveness, but rather on vertically layered repetition. Track to track, the ambience varies, but the overarching theme continues apace: this is a band for musicians to listen to. Not just any musicians, either, but learned and technically astute musicians that will be able to identify the craft at work when other, more casual listeners start to wonder if something got caught on repeat.
Segni, the debut EP from All Tiny Creatures, was released on Hometapes on August 4th. You can purchase the 12″ vinyl (white) version here and receive high quality download of the entire four-track album for free. Keep an eye out for the release of their full-length album in early 2010, which promises to feature contributions from numerous indie rock aristocrats, including Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Ryan Olcott (12 Rods, Mystery Palace), and members of Megafaun.
All Tiny Creatures – To All Tiny Creatures
Calypso – Teen Age
More than any other record in this multi-EP review post, Calypso has brought us a rock and roll album. I’ve not seen these gents live, but I gotta figure the frontman mixes Stones swagger and Spoon cool. Yeah, there’ll probably be skinny jeans up there on stage, but whatever. There’ll also be a lot of awesome. They are the band we all wish Kings of Leon would’ve become when they decided to drop the country and score the chicks. Think of it this way, young Mick Jagger can be found in every nook and cranny on Teen Age. The closest to Jagger the “New” Kings of Leon ever come is right between the air quotes of the P.R. man charged with creating that band’s new image.
Rather than that kind of 5th Avenue plastic, Calypso showcases a rebelliousness that anywhere else I might find tiring. I mean, we’re not talking high-affect, Black Lips “Hey, I just kissed another dude on stage right after pissing on one fan and just before punching another one” manufactured edginess. Nope, we’re just talking about a demeanor that seems to come naturally, a “fuck it, let’s play some rock and roll and sing” ethos that’s at the heart of the thing. Lately, not for philosophical or medical reason, I’ve found myself drinking less and less. Calypso is a band that’ll end that kind of trend, particularly when busting out tracks like “Son of a Gun” with its up and down guitar buzz-surges, lazy vocals, and momentary 50s throwbacks, and the Velvet Underground meets Oscar Zeta Acosta lounge-worthiness of “Oh Santiago!” This is a band that’ll make me reflexively throw out a fist pump next time I see their name on a coming soon list for any of our fine local venues here in Cleveland-land.
Calypso’s Teen Age was released on August 20th by The Orchard. The album can be purchased here, and New Yorkers and lucky CMJ attendees can catch the band perform tracks from Teen Age live this Saturday night at the Bowery Electric.
Calypso – Casually Sad Mercedes
Secondstar – Teeth
Liam Carey is Secondstar. Liam Carey’s also a but of a complicated dude, a former higher math student who left the academic path with the kind of wanderlust that makes you pull stints in all the great western cultural capitals. A year or so ago, he settled – as much as a man like Carey can settle – in Brooklyn, putting down just enough roots to put down the tracks you hear on Teeth.
A rich, dark folk, Teeth reflects the life and observations of a talented man who has likely found himself as much a part of as apart from communities and collectives the world over. This is music where the head is often lower than the shoulders, even as the eyes are up high, bright and alert. Carey has an instinctive sense of melody, and writes simple tales of loss and hope and lost hope. At certain moments, like especially in “Kites & Arrows” a listener might detect elements of similarly described regional European folk (think Frightened Rabbit or The Swell Season), while other tracks (particularly “Great Machine”) get considerably more raucous and American in style. Throughout it all, however, a central perspective and orientation toward life and music making is maintained, and that perspective must be what we can consider Carey’s artistic voice.
Secondstar’s Teeth EP was released independently on June 26th. It can be downloaded for free here (and handmade CD covers can be purchased for a nominal fee – see above for the image). Interested listeners can catch live performances of the music around the New York area this fall.
The Static Jacks – Laces
An earnest punk band with a touch of technique, at one moment The Static Jacks have you imagining them in a filthy club with beer flying, but another have you thinking of swimming pool gigs played by the likes of Akron/Family. The band moves through the five songs on this EP quickly – not one is longer than 3 1/2 minutes and more than half are less than 3 minutes long – and hits the standard themes of youthful anthemic punk: anxiety, alienation, violence (“Revolver”), and vulnerability, all gift-wrapped up for the listener with a big bow of superiority on top.
In terms of songwriting, the band frequently follows the verse/chorus/verse operation, sometimes inverting. In general, their chorus writing is fine, though the verses tend to try squeezing in too many words and losing meaningfulness in the mix. Witness, for example, “Parties and Friends (and Bullshit),” where the song starts with a pithy series of lines (“I don’t like your parties/I don’t like your friends/And I don’t like the beer you drink”) before devolving into unfocused emoting. Other songs are similarly mixed, like the knowing references to “art school wine” and requisite name drops of bands like the Replacements (though Art Brut handled that one much more cleanly, humbly, and humorously) getting lost in a jumble of words and feelings on “Who Are The Replacements?” The most capably handled song is the EP’s closer, “My Parents Lied,” which minimizes the rhetoric and focus and, in so doing, allows the band to show off its indie punk chops better than it does anywhere else on the album. It also has what is arguably the best line on the record (other than perhaps the aforementioned “art school wine” hook) in its first stanza: “We’ve been stuck inside/Either something changes or my parents lied.”
The best thing about this band is that it is at the beginning of its career. There are plenty of times to build on the strengths (i.e., the arrangements, the occasional lyrical hook), and work out what needs to change (i.e., abandoning the focus on silly themes like loving one’s gun and being a bad big brother).
The most recently released of today’s selections, Laces came out October 6th. The self-released album can be purchased here, and new fans can make plans to catch Jersey-based The Static Jacks as they tour up and down the northeastern seaboard this fall.
The Static Jacks – My Parents Lied
Emily – First of all, thank you for reading so carefully and intently. That’s why we do this thing – for folks to read it – and naturally our readers won’t always agree with what we say.
As for your comment, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you know someone in that band. Here’s why: you ignored all the positive stuff I said and hyper-dwelled on the negative. You also rushed to defend these guys in a way that makes it somewhat clear you don’t really know their music well.
I’ll grant you a couple points. First, you are right that these guys are young and in transition. I acknowledged as much in the review and said that as they mature as songwriters and individuals we have much more to look forward to as listeners. Second, “to write about what you know, how you feel, what you want to experience … that is art”. Well, yeah. Duh. Actually, that’s a kind of art, but art as an abstract concept is far more wide-ranging than even your definition. But we aren’t arguing about what is and what isn’t art. We are debating the merits of my original review and your response.
While I agree with you on those counts, I disagree with you on others. Regarding the Replacements reference, have you listened to Art Brut’s “The Replacements”? If not, you should, because (a) it is a killer tune and (b) you’ll immediately understand why I referred to that track as more humble than the Static Jacks song. Art Brut’s version has the narrator admitting how little he knows in that particular instance, while the Static Jacks version is putting the lack of knowledge on the third-person party-goers.
As for your connotation that “Revolver” has no connection to violence, well, I have the lyrics sheet right in front of me. How about this one:”My gun is grinning”? That line begins the song’s chorus, and while it is followed up by “but you’re a shot that I can’t fire” – which isn’t exactly a threat – it is also accompanied by lyrics about not being able to deal with life anymore and “there ain’t nothing here except the tick tick tock.” Maybe the violence being referenced would be turned inward in the hypothetical narrative, rather than outward. Who knows? Point is, these guys were the ones who chose to write a song about frustration and pair it with metaphors about weapons. How is that not violent?
Finally, your initial point that the review was an ad hominem attack is flawed. I don’t know these fellas, beyond brief email correspondence with one person in the band soliciting our coverage, but they seem like decent enough guys. And I’m certainly not the one who called them “kids” – that was you. And I didn’t cast aspersions on them in any sort of personal way – I just said that as their music matures, which it needs to do, we’ll have something to look forward to. Remember the part where I said they have plenty of time to build on their strengths as they work out their weaknesses? I mean, these guys aren’t the Beatles – they didn’t hit it out of the park their first time at the plate, and they probably won’t their second time either. But down the road, they might, which is why I wrote about them in the first place. If it was garbage, it never would’ve made the website.
Emily,
Word to that. Keep on reading. We love to haggle over here.
Kevin