Ever come across the work of a musician who isn’t exactly new on the scene and think to yourself, “How on Earth did I not already know about this guy?!” I mean, I’m always coming across new artists I don’t know about, but usually they are young (or young-ish) and are either just starting out or finally breaking out of a regional rut. It isn’t that often anymore that I come across someone with a few decades under their belt and a significant oeuvre to boot. Shoot, last time that happened was probably when I came to the Vic Chesnutt party late (may he rest in peace), only finding out about him through a track he had on that terrific Discovered Covered Daniel Johnston tribute record.
Now I can add a new name to that list: Seth Augustus. Over the last thirty years, Augustus has drifted from DIY art punk in early 80s Boston to gritty blues in San Francisco (a transformation driven in part befriending and being mentored by the late great Paul Pena) to a stint in Tuva studying throat singing. Back now in San Francisco, Augustus has recorded and will release on February 16th via Porto Franco Records his latest album, To The Pouring Rain. A little bit of Howlin’ Wolf, a little more Captain Beefheat, Augustus sounds on “Trickeries of the Great Emptiness” the way I’d like to imagine the Kurt Cobain who sang his desperate version of “In the Pines” would sound a few decades later, with most of the demons exorcised and a relaxed acceptance of what came and was still to come.
Barzin’s Notes to an Absent Lover isn’t typically the type of album that would make it onto my short list of favorites, but there is something about the delicate nature of the record’s near-perfect arrangements that really took a hold on me in 2009. Not to say that I shy away from quiet folk, in fact I am drawn to it more often than not, but rarely is a record so steeped in sadness that you find yourself playing over and over again. In terms of bringing on the waterworks, listening to Notes is the musical equivalent of watching The Notebook; It is difficult to do without shedding tears. From start to finish the album recounts the harrowing details of heartbreak from a shattered relationship. I touched on this theme in my original review of the record back in April, but the thing that still amazes me is how easy it is to relate to so much of the material. While few have likely been through such a gut-wrenching breakup in our lives, I am sure that most of us have seen at least on love come and go in our lives, given that there are lines and situations that can bring back emotions for all of us. For me, that is the great thing about any song or record, that ability to bring back a memory or take you to a moment from your past. Putting this record on my short list is a no-brainer.
That being said, Notes is much more than just a lyrically well-written record. Musically the album is so good that you could replace the words with complete nonsense and still be able to enjoy it. In some ways it is Iron & Wine meets Bob Dylan, making the greatest breakup soundtrack of this generation: a modern-day Blood on the Tracks you could say. The sonic beauty of Notes is all in the simplicity. There is not a lot going on in any given track but it is perfectly balanced; any more would be too much and any less would be short of what is required. Tracks like “Soft Summer Girls,” “Words tangled in Blue,” and “Stayed Too Long in This Place” are standouts, each providing a certain something that will stick with you long after you lift the needle off the record. Songwriters like Barzin are a dying breed these days, with far too many artists focusing on experimentation and irreverence. In these times Notes to an Absent Lover is a breath of fresh air and something we should all take a few minutes to enjoy.
Every year or so I stumble upon a somewhat obscure album that I fall completely in love with and spend the next several months trying to force on all of my friends and anyone else who will listen. I become “that guy,” singing the praises of some band that you have never heard of and a record that you will never be able to find. This year my personal project was Mazes’ self-titled debut, which I originally touched on back in March in my now (temporarily) defunct TGIF column. At the time I had no idea how much influence the record would have on me throughout the year, and in retrospect I wish I would have given it a more proper long-form review. All of that is water under the bridge now, of course, but it doesn’t change the fact that Mazes worked their way into my permanent mental catalog over the course of the year. The band is a bit of a side project, headed by a few members of the locally legendary Chicago band The 1900′s along with a host of friends who lend their talent and instruments to various tracks along the way.
The sound of the record is predominantly lo-fi, playing out as though you are listening to the whole thing on an old AM radio. The recording quality is intentionally shoddy, a result of the fact that much of it was put to tape in various places at various times over the span of several years. As frontman Edward Anderson explains it, the project was the culmination of a whole bunch of songs written and recorded with different musicians and friends, a labor of love if you will, that finally came to a finish earlier this year. This is one of those albums that finds perfection through imperfection. Though it is overwhelmingly mellow and soothing, it is a bit rough around the edges and has a certain “I don’t give a fuck what you think” quality to it. A lesser journalist may describe it as an old Cat Stevens record struggling with a hangover on a Sunday morning. No matter how you sum it up though, the end result is an outstanding effort that was worth all of the time that went into making it. Every song sings to me in some way, which makes it difficult to talk about individual tracks, but I can say with certainty that “Cat State Comity” and “I Have Laid in the Darkness of Doubt” are two songs that will be on playlists for me well into the next decade. It’s a bit obscure and a bit quirky at times, but Mazes is a record you need to hear.
The Builders and The Butchers leading the crowd at the Beachland out into the Collinwood streets to communally sing “Find Me in the Air” was the best thing I saw live this year. It was spontaneous and authentic, raucous and moving. Thank god that Rob was prescient enough to take video as the band and the crowd marched out the door. It’s nice to have a concrete reminder of something that was so awesome. For that experience alone (and the rest of the show, which was killer), The Builders and the Butchers would get a nod in our year end coverage. Happily, the album they released this year, Salvation is a Deep Dark Well, is as worthy of praise as their jaunt into the Cleveland wilderness was.
To a degree, Salvation is a Deep Dark Well served as two records for me, as I had not heard the band’s 2007 self-titled debut before. The two records blend together for me, mostly because I generally play them back to back. The things that the band did well on that self-titled record, namely establish mood, tell compelling stories and draw forth the tent-revival past of middle America are all accentuated on this year’s release. My favorite tracks from the 2007 release, “Bottom of the Lake,” “Coal Mine Fall” and the aforementioned “Find Me in the Air” all do a lot to inform and advance the work on Salvation is a Deep Dark Well. You can hear the growth from the first record on a song like “Short Way Home,” which moves through a few tempo changes and leaves the listener with a chilly pall. In the live review (and in my year end piece on Southeast Engine) I alluded to how much this band reminds me of Hallowed Ground era Violent Femmes. Take that old-timey hellfire and mix in more traditional instrumentation and you arrive, I think, at “Vampire Lake,” another of Salvation is a Deep Dark Well‘s highlights. The record even ends similarly to the first record, with the near-gospel feel of “The World is a Top” echoing “Find Me in the Air.”
Growth and consistency are two critical factors, I think, for continued success musically. The Builders and The Butchers did not lose who they were from the first record to the second, but they did refine and hone their sound. They’re very clearly the same band on both records, but they’re a touch more refined on Salvation is a Deep Dark Well. Both records bear up well to repeated listens and (this part can’t be said enough) they are a can’t miss live act.
I don’t know that we intentionally try to be iconoclastic here at Citizen Dick, but I think we pride ourselves on finding things that other people don’t find, on making connections that other people don’t make. In our rapidly expanding Best of the Year list, we didn’t actively try to include records that other blogs excluded, but we’re secretly happy that we did. Remember: we only want to write about stuff that is excellent, and we’re solely driven by that, but we get a little glimmer in our eyes when the thing that we like is unique to us. With that caveat in mind, that we’re, if not intentionally, than at least proudly reaching for the unexpected, it’s at least mildly interesting that we’ve got two artists making appearances on both our 2008 and 2009 Best of lists. We had Megafaun’s Gather, Form and Fly this year and Bury the Square last year. We’ve also got White Denim’s Exposion last year and Fits this year. Maybe this means that we’re sonically loyal; prove to us that your band means something and can produce good work and we’ll sink our hooks in deep. Given that White Denim appear to be completely incapable of recording a bad song, I’d expect to see their records on our Best of lists for as long as we’re writing them and they’re making them.
At first blush, Fits is a really different record from Exposion. White Denim seem to be tapping a darker vein, drawing from a gnarlier sonic palette. There’s more hard rock, more acid jazz, more funk. If Exposion sounded like a deep garage band crossed with Phish at times (I know I’m on an island on that one, but I’ll go to my grave saying that “IEIEI” could have been on Rift.), Fits sounds like Jim Morrison fronting James Brown’s seventies band with Ornette Coleman doing the arrangements. But. Setting aside their sonic differences, the two records strike a lot of the same chords. They’re both the musical wanderings of three really talented dudes who seem unconstrained by traditional genre boundaries. The two singles from Fits were wildly different from each other. “I Start to Run” is, kind of, a straight ahead rock song; that track’s really about the bass line, right? “Mirrored and Reverse,” especially if you count “Sex Prayer” as a part of it, is something really different, a ponderous exploration of something vaguely nefarious. That’s a jazz song, right? The layers of reverb on the vocals, the mellowed out keyboard line, the subdued hook all reek of a different idiom than something like “All Consolation,” which is damn near a Bob Seger song (in a good way). Exposion had the same kind of jumble; “Sitting” and “Shake Shake Shake” sound like they’re from different planets. Oh. And. “Regina Holding Hands” is on Fits. The first time I listened to the record, I was on the disc golf course, ipod in my ears. I stopped walking and took the ipod out of my pocket to see if it went into shuffle or something. “Regina Holding Hands” owes more to Lionel Richie than any song that I’ve loved in a long time. Fits is a big beautiful mess, but it all works. There’s not a song on here that I skip. It’s a thirty minute trip through these dudes’ brains and it is a doozy.
White Denim also made a stop in Cleveland this fall. We’d long heard that they were the truth live. The live show propelled Fits to another level for me; hearing these songs erupt from the sweaty trio gave them a more visceral feel, made them more real in my mind. (And they were really nice guys. I know that doesn’t matter and I know that talent and good-nature don’t have to coincide, but it’s nice when they do. James Petralli is a dude you’d take home for Thanksgiving. It’s nice to see nice guys do well.) I scored Fits and Exposion on vinyl at the show (as did Kevin) and I’ve spun them as much as anything else since I brought them home. I’ll be eagerly awaiting White Denim’s next record and their next stop in Cleveland. It’s a lock that I’ll be writing about both in 365 days.
Our first mention of Pale Air Singers came way back in May when I dropped a drunken review of their debut album into the Citizen Dick ether. Since then it has been one of a very small handful of albums that I have made a point to squeeze into my regular rotation this year. I am often considered one of the more finicky Dicks when it comes to embracing new albums, but this record did it for me from day one and I will probably still be spinning it consistently at this time next year. Though I typically approach bands made up of members from other bands, particularly ones with multiple vocalists, with a bit of apprehension, the cohesiveness of this record and the flow of the tracks is astonishing. This isn’t to say that the record is monotonous or repetitious, because that would be the farthest thing from the truth given the incredible diversity of sound that emerges from the Canadian quintet. What I mean here is that it sounds like these guys have been writing songs together for years, which is even more incredible when you realize that the entire album was written and recorded over the course of less that three weeks with the band holed up in a studio, hashing out what might be my favorite album of the last twelve months.
The first track that I came across from this record was the raw and folky “Swill and Grits,” and I knew right away that I was onto something potentially great. As I mentioned in my review many months ago, that song bears a strong resemblance to Midlake’s “Roscoe,” which is one of my favorites from the earlier part of the decade. Having heard that, diving into the rest of the record provided me with one of my most pleasant musical surprises of the year. Much of the record, by comparison, trends far more toward the electronic alternative end of the spectrum. Tracks like “Cubby , He Chopped Me Down” and “Horse Trade” remind me of an Americana laden cross-pollination of OK Computer and Kid A, while the eerie “The Moving Floor” recalls shades of Sam Beam’s haunting lyricism and subdued strumming. On the whole, this record is perfect for fans of Radiohead and Iron and Wine, yet manages to combine hints of both sounds without alienating either or coming across as disjointed as it flows back and forth; this is truly a monumental accomplishment given the genealogy of the band and the circumstances under which the record was written and recorded. If for some reason you missed this one back in the spring, I implore you to retrace your steps and give it a shot. This is one album from 2009 that you will be sorry you didn’t hear.
The infectious rhythmic strum of “Two” hit the blogosphere like a wildfire earlier this year, and, fittingly, the rest of the album wandered into the stratosphere just as quickly. We’re hugely aware that Hospice is on nearly every major year-end list, and our inclusion isn’t obligatory. The album is simply that good. The soft underbelly of this album is, to me, the ease with which tracks impact the listener. Nearly orchestral arrangements cleanse tension and force contemplation. The lullaby beauty of “Bear” is fairly impossible to beat this year, and no matter which track listeners choose to chew on, an incredibly mature, complex, yet acessible album is what is left. It was a great year for music, folks, but Hospice sets the bar pretty high for everything else. To me, it stands pretty strongly with Veckatimest in lofty musicianship. It’s about as pristine as they come, weaving everything into its mix. Psychedelia, strings, synths, huge percussion elements, and the gorgeous harmonies are big enough to fill a stadium. Or, perhaps more listeners hit this record like I do, alone, with headphones and and undivided attention.
I don’t have a lengthy list of attributes that I’ll attach to this album today. That’s already been done, and everything’s been said about how great Hospice is. Instead, to me, what’s important is how this album manages to isolate me. When I’m listening to “Wake” or “Atrophy” I essentially leave everything else behind. Perhaps one marker for a great album is how much attention it requires, and if I’m accurate, this requires more direct contact than nearly any album released all year. Songs like “Kettering” somehow wire directly into my brain, the soft vocals sending me somewhere that can only be described as internal. For many of the tracks, the hypnotic rhythm is what snags me most, particularly in “Sylvia” and the off-kilter fuzzy bounce pulls me in every time.
I’ve spent a great part of the year with a careful eye on hype, trying my best not to fall prey to it; I suppose I like to think that I’ll stay ahead of the game that way. Nonetheless, many albums get hyped for a reason. I’ll concede this one with ease. Hospice deserves a top shelf housing in any modern music collection. Its swirling anthems will remain with me long after the ball drops tonight. If for some reason, this album passed you by, make it your first important purchase in 2010.
Mrs. Citizen and I braved the suddenly fierce Cleveland winter last night, trudging to The House of Blues to see Rusted Root. As I’ve written here before, Mrs. Citizen and I have a strong emotional connection to Pittsburgh’s finest neo-hippies, so we were well-primed for a killer set. We weren’t disappointed. It’s been seventeen years since Cruel Sun came out (and it still gets consistent spins from me) and Michael Glabicki still has an astounding set of pipes. He does the emphatically joyous nonsense syllable and ecstatic tribal ululation as well as anybody. (Is there anybody else that does a lot of ululating at all?) The songs, as always, are grounded in thudding, vaguely tribal percussion, subtly show-offy guitar work and Glabicki’s vocal ability. Tack on the dude’s strong stage presence and it’s a great live show.
I did not take extensive notes on the setlist, but I can vouch for the presence of old-school favorites. I know that we heard about ninety percent of When I Woke, including “Martyr,” “Laugh as the Sun,” “Lost in a Crowd,” and the ubiquitous “Send Me On My Way.” (Extended aside: There’s a part of me that is really bummed out that the largest cheer of the evening came for the band’s radio song. We saw the Violent Femmes a couple of times in the late nineties and I got the same feeling when they played “Blister in the Sun.” Both acts have an impressive catalog, which you have to assume the audience is at least passingly familiar with. The House of Blues was packed last night and the ticket price was a bit steep; folks probably weren’t out to hear one song. This wasn’t Modern English for ten bucks on a Tuesday. “Send Me On My Way” probably doesn’t crack the top ten for me, yet it remains the song that people want to hear. I wonder if that’s as depressing for the band as it is for me. Does it suck to have people love you the most for a song that you recorded thirteen years ago and have probably played a thousand times live? The new material, while good, didn’t get nearly the reception that “Send Me On My Way” did. Does that mean anything? If they had opted out of playing “Send Me On My Way,” there would have been a riot right? “Tree” is a thousand times better as a song, but they haven’t played it live since 2001. It was not a radio song. They didn’t play it last night, and I was okay with that, but I wonder if they’re okay with that. If you’re in Rusted Root and you have an answer to this question, please hit the comments.) The band also blended in several songs from the recently released Stereo Rodeo; the show opened with the first song on the album, “Dance in the Middle,” which translated really well live. Rusted Root closed the encore with “Ecstasy,” which sent the crowd home pleased. Overall, it was a nice blend of the old and the new. The band has a few scattered dates in January, which are well worth the trip. For Mrs. Citizen and me, it was a show that threw us back to being seventeen, which is pretty sweet. I imagine that Rusted Root has that sort of time travel power for a lot of folks.
I did not take any audio last night, mostly because I was fearful of the apparently Draconian House of Blues. (We had to sign a lengthy disclaimer to take photographs and it seemed to me that audio capturing would not be kosher, even though Rusted Root is into taping. I think I also signed away my right to be critical of the venue as well. Leave it at this: I may or may not find Cleveland’s House of Blues to be distastefully corporate and contrived; I may or may not have paid four dollars for a sixteen ounce PBR and I may or may not hate taking a piss at a rock show and smelling potpourri and seeing a restroom attendant.) I do have a version of “Martyr” from a recent gig in Florida that sounds a lot like the one I heard last night.
Hardly Art put up a little stand underneath the tent at The Pitchfork Festival this summer, and while there’s not a lot of time to scurry back and forth between acts on each of the three stages, we were able to stop and talk to Sarah who was peddling all sorts of merchandise and promoting her bands. On her request, we headed over to the side stage to catch The Dutchess & The Duke. It was midway through the afternoon, our vodka was nearly gone, and we were pretty tired, to be frank. When the band of whistling hipsters walked on to the stage, we didn’t realize that the band was essentially Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison. They rolled onto the stage without any pretense with several pals from other bands and did nothing less than blow the densely packed crowd away in a short 35 minute set. As I sat in the photo pit with my measly point-and-shoot, I began to notice something unfold in the music. I turned around and looked at the crowd. Asses were shaking, heads were bopping, and a near square dance mentality was surging through the crowd. My confusion was pretty intense, because the lyrics coming out of Lortz and Morrisons’ mouths were entirely morose and brooding. What fun. Sunset/Sunrise is a power packed album of formulaic folk with about enough wicked sneer to raze buildings. What’s so noteworthy about this release is how well the live material is equally matched in the recording studio. Lively country folk with dreary lyrics. It’s not a new formula. What’s so unique about this album, as opposed to many others of similar ilk, is that Lortz and Morrison do it sincerely, and the push and pull of tortured relationships and pining regret are gorgeously contrasted with a wide spanning variety of upbeat and burning, edgy folk.
James wrote a pretty killer reviewof Sunset/Sunrise upon its release, and I bought the vinyl shortly thereafter, inspired in large part by their amazing peformance at the festival. I spun “Scorpio” thirty or forty times in a row before I even finished listening to the album in its entirety. The roundabout vocals and slightly distorted hollow-body guitar solos pepper the entire album. Equal parts jangle, country, traditional folk and a splash of rockabilly are all beautifully employed into a kind of warm solid gold sound. A soft grainy distortion envelopes each track, and it’s easily one of the best vinyl purchases I’ve made all year. “Hands” is the initially leaked track that we’ve posted below, but it’s not super indicative of the entire record. The black and white of this album is spectacular. Tales of despair and stark emotional balladry found a home on many turntables this year, but none did it more superbly and, believe it or not, happily, than The Dutchess & The Duke.
Bear in Heaven is coming to play for students at Case Western Reserve early in the new year, and even if I have to crawl inside a guitar case to smuggle myself into the show, I’ll somehow manage. To put it mildly, Brooklyn-based Bear in Heaven’s Beast Rest Forth Mouth was a huge blast of refreshing energy to my music arsenal this year. If anyone has a music list without this album squarely featured, they’re missing the boat. In my October review of the album, I couldn’t have used a better simile than “It’s like someone’s singing you a lullaby while your bed’s on fire.” This ten track album is epic in scope, full in sound and intensity, and intricate in its arrangement. We’re excited to host the band in Cleveland in a few short weeks, and even more intrigued to hear these tracks in a live setting. Jon Philpot has alluded in interviews that many of the tracks on BRFM have been honed over the long haul since their debut LP, and one listen in its entirety brings this idea home abruptly and pleasantly. To put it mildly, there’s not an album released in 2009 that sounds like this. In this business, that’s saying something.
Much of BRFM’s value lies in the multiple listens it requires. Huge tracks with major prog-rock tendencies are laid out with multiple layers of sound, spiraling between primal percussion and swirling synth driven pulsing. Most of the record is electronically situated, but what makes the album sing is that it doesn’t have that feel to it. It’s gritty and loud, intense, and full of hooks. “Ultimate Satisfaction” is one of my favorite tracks of the year. Much hype has been given to “Lovesick Teenagers” due to the pushing of Edward Droste and our great pals at Pitchfork, and while the song is good, it’s in no way indicative of the largeness of the album. Tightly coiled rhythms bounce and pummel throughout the album, and create a catchy and infectious vibe that remains edgy enough to tense the shoulders and hit people with. Songs like “Dust Cloud” and “Drug A Wheel” soar into nearly freakout mode, but the band always manages to rein things in just enough to keep their sound from exiting the arena. From percussion, to synthesizers, blips, sludgy fuzz, to soaring and cinematic vocal delivery, this album has a present for every listener.
In the year that was, much heraldry was placed on the experimental side of things in the indie world. I’ve come to the conclusion that experimental doesn’t always equate genius or intelligence. I’ve listened to a lot of music this year, and Beast Rest Forth Mouth takes home the blue-ribbon in about fifteen indie categories, and they do it with enough intricacy to keep this on your turntable for years to come. Enjoy the aforementioned, “Lovesick Teenagers,” and “Wholehearted Mess.”
I just thought I’d tell you. All the demons have been slain. Cotton Jones’ Paranoid Cocoon was softly released by Suicide Squeeze records to not a whole lot of fanfare early in 2009, and it holds quite a bit of sentimental value to most of the writers here. I reviewed this album in late January and from the jump, I fell into Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw’s sultry one-part Johnny Cash/one part Jim Morrison mixture of psych-driven folk. I don’t know much about Nau’s home state of Maryland, but at times, the easy melodies and subtly driven hymns of tainted optimism seemed perfectly bred for the hardened outer shell of the rust belt here in Cleveland. We hooked up with our pals at the local record store, Music Saves, and had Nau and McGraw come in to do an in-store just before they played the hospitable Beachland Tavern. It’s great to see performers strip down their sound into something viable and intimate, and when the two launched into “Blood Red Sentimental Blues,” I was hooked even further. Not only was this our first in-store sponsorship, but it kicked ass, too. Nau is one of those performers that doesn’t have to overwork to expose his vocal talent. Beat up classical guitar and sexy maiden along for the ride. It works, and every song on this album has stayed with me through each season of this year.
Most of the album is about the aura and lyricism. It really is a collection of tracks poised for duality, and can be enjoyed from multiple perspectives. On one hand, the record pops off about as calm as can be, serving lazy times and soothing moods. For most of the year, Paranoid Cocoon was my background soundtrack. I’m mopping the floor, “I Am the Changer” is fueling it, I’m sipping a pre-work espresso, and “Gone the Bells” relaxes me. On the other hand, Nau and McGraw don’t let listeners go so easily, and that’s what makes this album much greater than its initial listen or two. Nau’s lyricism has never been marked with flowers and bunny rabbits, but there’s a cathartic emphasis on lights at the end of the tunnel and freer days. No matter how many times I listen to this record, I uncover something new, some new snippet of metaphorical wisdom or ambiguous value. On a surface level, the album is fabulous musically. It propelled me through a long winter in Cleveland and stayed with me through the dog days of summer. If you were in the market for neatly packaged and soothing folk with an edge, there was none better than Cotton Jones this year. Enjoy the live vids of the in-store we sponsored, along with “Blood Red Sentimental Blues” and a live version of “Gotta Cheer Up” from LaundroMatinee at MOKB.
The greatest thing about year end reviewing is that nobody sets any sort of rule about how long I’m supposed to spend with an album before I can attest to its value. Nobody’s technically allowed to question or argue my assessment process or evaluation techniques, right? It’s my list, so buzz off (hypothetically). As a teacher, I create evaluation rubrics to score student achievement. I evaluate data, I look at trends, I streamline assessments so that they effectively test student knowledge. I suppose music can be scored the same way, or at least an attempt can be made. As I’ve moved through the first year of this blog, I’ve often wondered if there’s a super rubric that can systematically evaluate art and complexity. Of course, no such thing exists, and if you’ve not caught onto my sarcasm just yet, it might be best to carry on with whatever you were doing when you began reading. Of course, the idea of evaluating musical merit on some sort of scale is daunting, and more importantly, degrading to art in the first place. Nonetheless, for some reason, we feel like we need approval before we buy something. We turn to “experts” or “point systems” to somehow project this art’s value over that art’s value. Who, then, are we actually evaluating? The unfortunate thing is that we end up evaluating the evaluators. If Bill says it’s good, and Bill has a nifty rating system and vast knowledge, it therefore must be noteworthy. This is all horseshit, and Bowerbirds’ 2009 release, Upper Air creeped on me like no other, soaring with beautiful and classical harmonies and soul-baring melodies. You can evaluate me if you wish, but I have no point system or solid scoring guide to describe this album’s merit. I simply know that it makes me feel. Very few albums did this to me this year. That’s saying something, I think.
Upper Air was a huge part of my summer this year. While on tour with Megafaun throughout most of July/August, Bowerbirds rocked The Beachland Tavern, and needed a place to crash. I rounded up a case of beer, three pizzas and we had a blast hanging out with both bands. When Brad Cook of Megafaun was trading old DeYarmond Edison tapes on my staircase with Phil Moore, I think I knew I was hosting some killer musicians at my house that night. The tricky thing is that, ashamedly, I had really gone to see the show that night to catch Megafaun. Gather, Form and Fly was all I was spinning at the time, and while that record is on our list, it took a little while for Upper Air to sink in. A week later, we covered the Pitchfork festival, and the trio stunned me. Shortly thereafter, Pichfork also threw up some vids of them playing in an old cathedral (see below). The rest was history for me. This album has been with me in the car, through two breakups, and all of my travels back and forth for the holidays. It’s introspective, gorgeous, and ambitious. Well worth all the acclaim it receives and was not worthy of my initial brush off. Hopefully this makes amends.
“Chimes” may be my favorite track of the year, hoisting a near vaudevillian sound with Beth Tacular’s accordion wails, sitting underneath a darkly strummed classical guitar. Most tracks move this way, but this track is the moneymaker. The album moves through beautifully arranged nu-folk brilliance on tracks like “Northern Lights,” “This Day,” and “Teeth.” Much of this album is about the gut-wrenching haunt that Moore and Tacular’s vocals present. It’s incredibly easy to fall into its clutches, but it probably won’t happen on the first listen. For me, it took quite a few spins in the background before it fully came to life. This certainly isn’t a knock on the album, but more of a nod to its consistent aura. Once the overriding mood sinks in and the songs begin to pop, that’s when the incredible beauty of Upper Air resonates. I’m not sure if any other album in 2009 got this kind of consistent attention from me. “Northern Lights,” for example, manages to inspire me and also lull me into peaceful, lucid moments of complete ease. Sometimes art isn’t an 8.2 or three stars out of four. It’s simply therapeutic for its audience. Word.
This is, in effect, something of an elegy. Harlem Shakes’ Technicolor Health got a ton of spins at Citizen Dick’s Eastern Campus over the past twelve months (at least partially because Mrs. Citizen fell in love with it on the first listen); there are a couple of songs on the album that are composed of things that I’ve not really heard in the indie-sphere (mainly “Winter Water,” but more on that later) and the songs that don’t strike boldly out into uncharted territory are universally well executed (probably “Niagara Falls” is the best example, but, again, more on that later). The only soft spot to my ear is the titular last track, but even the mildly blase conclusion is palatable as a part of a stellar whole. Add to the studio brilliance of Technicolor Health (their debut long-player) the killer live show Harlem Shakes dropped on Cleveland in early March (ably taking the headlining spot for an under-the-weather Tokyo Police Club) and we all felt that Harlem Shakes were a band we could hang our hat on for a good long while. But they broke up. Bastards. I was gearing up for the sophomore record that built on the ideas of this one and a proper headlining tour complete with triumphant return to Cleveland, but that’s not in the cards. We can hope for great things from Todd Goldstein’s Arms, but we’re not getting more Harlem Shakes in the foreseeable future. (Fellas, if you’re reading this, get back together for me. It’s like my poppy indie rock parents got divorced. Is it my fault? Do you still love me?) So, to sum up, I come to both bury and praise Harlem Shakes.
“Winter Water” is in the running for my favorite song of the year. (It’s the welterweight of the remaining contenders; it’s not going to match the punching power of “Impressions of the Past” or “Gravelly Mountains of the Moon” and it doesn’t have the sneakiness of “Tattoo Mission,” but it is light on its feet. Don’t count it out.) The subdued keyboard intro, slow build, killer hand-claps, spaced-out doo-wop and smart-guy surety make it an absolute winner. Shit, it’s got the greatest ever lyric: “If we are sleeping, we’re sleeping together” and this as a backup: “Learn how to gamble or learn how to swim.” Done and done. I love this thing. “Winter Water” encapsulates what’s good about this record: hooks, cleverness and a willingness to take some risks. There’s a lot of stuff going on in this song. (Is it a stretch to say that is sounds like the lovechild of “Paranoid Android” and “Hey, Mickey?” Probably.) Tack on the easy accessibility of “Niagara Falls” and you’ve got a clear picture of the record: solid pop music made by dudes who considered a lit major at some point.
Thank god for records. Harlem Shakes have shuffled off the squirming coil, but we’ll have Technicolor Health to remember them by for as long as vinyl lasts or hard drives remain uncorrupted. It must have sucked to live in the 1200s; if your favorite lute qaurtet stopped making the rounds of the great halls, you were pretty much screwed. (Also, I’ve heard the plague was a bummer.) We’ll conclude Harlem Shakes’ Viking funeral with two tracks, the aforementioned “Winter Water” and the lead single, “Strictly Game.” (Note: I almost never post tracks that I don’t have express permission to post, but I’m making an exception for “Winter Water.” If you’re Harlem Shakes and/or Gigantic Records and you object, please let me know. If you’re not one of those people, buy the record.)
It makes me proud to put this one on the list. It’s not homerism, but a legitimate endorsement of a really good record that just happens to be a product of Clevelanders. The Modern Electric could be from Topeka and I’d love this record. For what it is, essentially a really distilled bit of angst, it’s about the best there was this year. Dudes are wailing about loss and heartbreak and all the rest of it, but it sounds good every time. Their range doesn’t get too far out of catharsis, but that’s irrelevant. The cherry on top that is that The Modern Electric call America’s North Coast home, but the actual sundae is composed of the songs themselves.
There are four or five songs on this record that I can’t live without at this point. “David Bowie (Save Us All)” is the tits. I can’t tell you why, but it is the catchiest song ever written by man; it sticks in your brain like (insert piss-poor simile here; something like popcorn in your teeth, but less hacky). Listen to it once and you’re listening to it forever. The zither-like guitar solo in “Sharp as Knives” gets me every time, as does frontman Garret Komyati’s salt-the-fields vocal approach; he’s not good at good-byes, which works out to our benefit. “The Anti Sing-Along” and it’s bombastic piano intro (and deep hookiness and pseudo-Elton John pose) make it a winner. “Mistakes” is just a good song, no embellishment needed.
The Modern Electric were at the Beachland a couple of days ago I had Christmas dinner at my Grandparent’s house, it was snowing and I was tired. I meant to go to the show, but I wound up sitting on my couch. I made the excuse to myself that they’re from here; I can see them whenever I want. My bad. If The Modern Electric drop another record like their self-titled debut, I won’t have the luxury of seeing them whenever I want; cats are going to be touring the world, taking their rust-belt vibe to the globe. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll be at the Beachland on January 15 for the Modern Electric’s next gig.
We’ve been enjoying the holidays here at Citizen Dick, tending to the homefires and (for the most part) neglecting the blogosphere. You, faithful reader, probably have been doing the same, making the jaunt from hearth to hearth, exchanging the gifts, roasting the Yule log and so forth. Tomorrow, we kick our Best of 2009 retrospective back into high gear, tossing our last few choice picks into the ether. A few days after that, we’ll all be back to work cramming you full of new things to listen to and think about. It’s been a whirlwind first year for us and we’re glad that you’ve been with us for the ride.
Last Saturday was right in the middle of all of my family obligations, so I’m a bit tardy on this one. It’s the last Lazy Saturday of the year, so I’m going to wrap up at more or less the same place that I started: hard jamming hippie music. I love “Backwoods Rose” like a sister and this version is particularly stellar. Enjoy. Next Lazy Saturday is in a new decade; I’m stoked.
Today’s Singles Club offering has got to win the 2009 award for best song title of the year. Although I went with the singular “Ovipositor” in the headline, the full name for this track is actually “I’ll Ram My Ovipositor Down Your Throat and Lay My Eggs In Your Chest, But I’m Not An Alien!” (Apparently an ovipositor is what insects use to lay eggs, which is also referred to as oviposition. Check out this link for more information on all things ovipositorish, but be warned, this is some serious Sigourney Weaver-Aliens shit.) The band that brings it to us, Kalamazoo’s appropriately named The Reptilian, describes itself as somehow post-hardcore, screamo, and math rock, and while you don’t really get all that on today’s track, which is the opener on The Reptilian’s 2009 Boys’ Life EP (Count Your Lucky Stars Records), the live show images from the band’s myspace page seem to confirm the appropriateness of such descriptors.
Instead, what you get on this track is some smart and technical noodling layered over and under this simple yet persistent percussion, while the occasional hoarse vocal drops in. If the vocals were more languid, or at least less thrash-rap, I could see this band opening a bill that eventually ended with Akron/Family (though you might call me crazy for suggesting such a thing.)
When I listen to Blackmarket, I think one thing: is anyone in this band related to the Gallagher brothers? If so, that would explain a lot. For example, how dudes who couldn’t possibly have come of age in the 90s have such a quintessential 90s sound. And if familial relations are good, it would explain how the band could afford such an over-the-top super-professional approach to recording and putting out their music. Perhaps a little backstory is in order, lest that sound like more of a slam than it should.
This trio from Arizona got their first (first) record produced by a pair of dudes that, between them, had done work for Radiohead, Dinosaur Jr., Hole, Morphine, Weezer, and Elliot Smith. Sure, they were on a label (No Office Records), but not one with that kind of budget. And, hell, look at their myspage page. This is pretty top-notch. Unless one of those three does design work on the side, that sucker didn’t come cheap.
Now, none of this means anything about the art. I’m just saying that these dudes come out of relatively nowhere, all well-financed and well-connected, and the gossipy little jerk in my wonders what the scoop is. I don’t know, maybe some of you readers do. If so, I’m all ears. Otherwise, let’s talk about the art.
“Tongue Twister Typo” is the first single to be released on the band’s sophomore effort, St. Vincent Decor, out early 2010 on Mine and Yours Records (a label that has virtually no web presence, outside of mentions of this album – the mystery deepens). As indicated before, the track bears a heavy dose of Oasis, but frontman Daryl Lamont’s voice, especially right up front, reminds me so much of someone I listened to back in the mid-90s I can’t believe it. More unbelievable, still, is the fact that I can’t remember the name of this singer I’m reminded of by Lamont’s croon. The guitar work on the track is solid, and I’d like to hear Lamont, who also pulls the weight here, get outside of the box a little more. Actually, that goes for the whole band. Langdon Chieffo is a fine drummer and Mike Emerson knows his way around the bass, yet the effort they make sounds too clean and straight. While there are most certainly benefits to being so well-produced and professional, it’d be nice to see (and nicer still to hear) these fellas take a step back into the entry-level music biz grime and get filthy with their more organic sound.
Merry Christmas, friends. We here at Citizen Dick really and truly appreciate your continued support and loyal readership, and after all, what’s more supportive and loyal than tuning in on Christmas day to see what the final track for our 12 Days of Holiday Dick series is going to be.
Well, this one is a treat. Putting this series together, I listened to a few dozen different indie rock holiday songs and of all of them, this one by Portland’s Blue Skies for Black Hearts was my favorite. Off the XO holiday sampler like Monday’s Jessie Torrisi cover of Alvin & the Chipmunks, “Wishing You A Merry Xmas” somehow pulls together a banjo and piano boogie with a slight punk rock snarl. The snarl is not without a corresponding smile, though, as the background vocals between the repeated titular refrain drone out little quips like “What about Kwanzaa” and Where are the presents?”
It is altogether fitting and proper that this particular San Francisco band decided to release as its first single off its first record this song. Longtime Mission District veterans, Matos and bandmates Ben Reisdorph, Joe Miller, and Joe Lewis have been in the indie rock game in the Bay area long enough to be able to make some regal pronouncments and wind up pretty darn near the mark in doing so. The experience shows in Words of the Knife, the band’s first album together, and especially in today’s Singles Club entry, “High Priest of the Mission.”
Starting with a tiny bit of 70s-style organ noodling (is that a Farfisa?), the tropical guitar strumming comes in next, followed by drums and then Matos and his young-Tweedy vocals (minus the damaged artist affectation). It all comes together to form a beachside romp, the song’s sound is far more gentle than the indictment in the lyrics (i.e., lines like “you are a nuclear reactor/you are the desert sand” and “you talk about but you say nothing”), further betrayed by a subtle “high priest of submission” riff in the second half of the song.
PS – Like how I dropped some Lincolnesque shit on you at the beginning of this post? What can I say? I’m a proud son of Illinois.
Those of you who already have problems with the alleged “child-like” nature of Daniel Smith’s voice are really gonna hate this one. Not only does Smith sing, there are actual children on this track. If that sounds like some creepy record hipster parents would buy their toddlers for Christmas, don’t worry, it isn’t that. Rather, it is kind of like some wacko experimental song that Smith recorded at a family get-together the night before Christmas. Given the nature of Danielson as a band and Smith’s recording style, that just might be how this went down.
The track has Smith singing, except for moments when the kiddies pop in, with a pretty cool deconstruction about half-way through, with the keyboard stuttering and little kiddie voices rapping “Hey, hooray” – if you’d described this song to me before and left out the Danielson connection, there’s no way I’d predict liking it. As it is, though, I’m loving it and plan to put it on one last time before hitting the hay myself tonight.
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