David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

Musicians who sing about their faith often are polarizing, and David Bazan is no exception. Bazan is best-known for his work with former band Pedro the Lion, which specialized in slowcore confessionals with doleful vocals. In the past, some listeners gave his lyrics a cursory glance and snidely wrote him off as just another underperforming, devout evangelical. Meanwhile, many evangelicals bristled at Bazan’s constant, not-so-subtle skewering of their culture. And his drinking.

Bazan’s struggles with faith have been a consistent theme in his work—one minute he’s singing God’s praises, the next minute he’s doubting God altogether. Until recently, though, faith has always trumped. “I could tell you why I doubt it, and why I still believe,” he sang on “The Fleecing” from 2004’s Achilles Heel.

But doubt is back with a vengeance on Curse Your Branches, so much so that Bazan has surrendered to it. Struggle has turned into defiance, belief to disbelief. “You expect me to believe/That all this misbehaving grew from one enchanted tree?” he asks on album opener “Hard to Be.” And later, on the title track, he digs his heels in harder: “All fallen leaves should curse their branches/For not letting them decide where they should fall/And not letting them refuse to fall at all.” Of all the Big Questions, the one that seems to rankle him the most is: If God is good, then why is there evil in the world? “If you knew what would happen,” Bazan sings on “When We Fell,” “and made us just the same/Then you, my Lord, can take the blame.”

In Pedro the Lion, many of Bazan’s first-person narratives weren’t (entirely) self-referential; Control (2002) was a concept album that chronicled the destruction of a fictitious marriage. But that’s not what Bazan is doing here, and the record is better for it.

And while Bazan’s voice will always be ponderous no matter the instrumentation, this new music is less sludgy. If Pedro the Lion albums were dark basement rooms, Curse Your Branches is renovated with some windows that, from time to time, even let in soft breezes, usually in the form of longtime collaborator Casey Foubert’s pedal steel or little bits of keyboard, like the synthesized strings on “Heavy Breath.” The bluesy bounce of “When We Fell” also finds Bazan at his jauntiest, but he still loves taking things at a snail’s pace (“Harmless Sparks,” “In Stitches”).

There’s nothing breezy about Bazan’s state of mind, though. He hit a crossroads and made a decision, yet he’s anything but at peace with it. There are the possible cosmic implications, but even more so, Curse Your Branches is about the effect his decision (and his drinking habit, which is indicative of that decision) has on the people around him, particularly his family. “The gap between what I hoped would be/And what is/Makes me weep for my kids,” Bazan sings on “Bearing Witness.” He also fears that his doubt will “spread like original sin,” and wonders whether his baby daughter will “soon despise the smell of the booze on my breath like her mom.”

The most heartbreaking family portrait comes on “Please Baby Please,” a phrase that describes the look in his wife’s eyes, and then is pleaded by Bazan over the phone to his silent spouse. On the last verse, his daughter (in the future) enters the grim picture: “Sunrise at the county lockup/Now our baby’s 23/She was out late drinking/Killed a mother of three/She said please daddy please.”

Bazan’s spiritual journey is far from over. On the final track he admits he still hears the voice of the “captain,” and that his daughter is lately full of Big Questions, too. So there’s more to come. But for now, this crisis of faith has led him to create the best album of his career.

mp3: David Bazan - Bless This Mess

(Also at The Other Paper)

Things

Here's what I've been up to lately over at The Other Paper:

Review of Paper Airplane's new CD, White Elephants (local)

Low Anthem/Langhorne Slim live review

Reviews of Monolithic Cloud Parade's debut, Children with Wolf Heads, and Wing & Tusk's debut, The Secret of Toadflax Tea (both local)

Live reviews of Bicentennial Bear, Miranda Sound, Jon Chinn + 1803 (locals)

More Blurting

Review of Foreign Born's Person to Person here. Wasn't blown away.

Recent release roundup

The Veils - Sun Gangs
The third full-length from the Veils finds the band progressing from its folk-influenced beginnings to something comfortably bigger, as if writing anthems was never a stated goal, just an organic consequence. The brains behind the London-based crew is Finn Andrews (son of XTC’s Barry Andrews), who has an uncommonly good voice—versatile enough to sound natural yowling or crooning. The best songs are piano-led, such as leadoff track “Sit Down by the Fire,” along with a few darkly pretty ballads. The peppier songs are hit and miss: “The Letter” is War-era U2 done well, but “Killed by the Boom” is post-punk gone awry. “Larkspur,” at 8 1/2 minutes, is a bit bloated. So Sun Gangs is inconsistent, but when it’s good, it’s really good. And when it misses, it still comes pretty close.

Tinted Windows - Tinted Windows
Tinted Windows is one of the oddest supergroups you’ll find. That’s James Iha, formerly of Smashing Pumpkins, on guitar, Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger on bass and 57-year-old Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick on drums. The singer? Taylor Hanson, the middle brother from Hanson. Not surprisingly, this is power pop (emphasis on the pop). Say what you will about Hanson, but the guy can sing a hook that’ll stick with you like a melted Blow Pop. While the mid-tempo stuff kinda sucks (“Dead Serious,” “Back with You”), zippier tracks like “Messing with My Head” and “Can’t Get a Read on You” are irresistible. As a whole, though, it’s too much. Power pop is always sugary. That’s part of the fun. But this is like pouring syrup on your Lucky Charms.

Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Let’s get it out of the way now: Smashing Pumpkins. It’s next to impossible to listen to Silversun Pickups without thinking of the Pumpkins. There’s the wall of guitars, the early-grunge loud-quiet-loud dynamic, and singer/guitarist Brian Aubert’s voice even sounds like Billy Corgan’s at times. All that has made this LA band pretty polarizing, and putting out another album in the same vein doesn’t do anything to help that. The Pickups do go overboard on the aping, and at times Swoon feels too ponderous. But I still give these guys (and girl) the benefit of the doubt. I love the giant sound of multi-tracked guitar fuzz. I like the addition of strings. Most importantly, I like the accessible yet engrossing songs.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - Outer South
Since ditching the Bright Eyes moniker, Conor Oberst sounds like a man all loosened up. Gone is the tortured, quivering boy hunched over his acoustic guitar. The cover of last year’s eponymous record showed Oberst sleeping in a hammock, and the music had a likewise peaceful, easy feeling. While I miss some of Oberst’s raw, youthful indignation, the maturation has served him pretty well so far. But he’s feeling a bit too generous on Outer South. Six of the 16 tracks are written and sung by his bandmates, with whom he has obviously jelled. That’s nice and all, but those are by far the weakest songs, especially the cringe-worthy “Air Mattress.” It’s a shame, because if you take those way, there’s close to an album’s worth of good material.

The Receiver - Length of Arms

When it comes to their music, Casey and Jesse Cooper don’t do anything halfway. The brothers who make up local band the Receiver are perfectionists, especially Casey, the apparent vision-caster who handles vocals, bass, keyboards, synth, piano, programming and all the lyrics while Jesse mans the drum kit.

With Length of Arms, the two have mastered the art of making a richly rewarding, sonically crisp studio album. Like the Receiver’s 2006 release, Decades, this new record is meant to be heard from front to back, with songs that ebb and flow into others, yet stand on their own just fine. The Coopers do one thing, and they do it quite well. If it’s not broke...

There are some subtle differences, though. Length of Arms is more densely layered with keys and synth, creating a thick, liquid sound to back up Casey’s mournful, milky voice. It’s like an electronic, alien orchestra. And just as before, having Jesse’s live drums instead of loops is crucial, grounding everything back to earth with something organic. That rich combination of sounds is maintained throughout the entire record, without a hiccup. It’s a fully realized vision. (Producer/engineer Mike Landolt no doubt had much to do with this, as well.)

Radiohead is an obvious touchstone for arty rock such as this—complex melodies presented thoughtfully, gracefully and with a fluidity that’s rarely off-putting or inaccessible. In fact, there are slightly more pop leanings on Length of Arms (see “Intervals” and “Amazing Thing”) than on the previous effort, along with more open space to allow the record to breathe; the piano intro to “Hide” is a particularly nice, airy respite.

Casey’s vaguely confessional lyrics are more about crafting a mood, stretching out a phrase like well-chewed gum. It’s nothing for a monosyllabic word to contain three or four notes. “Strength in Numbers” yearns for clarity (“I try to look past mirrors, shifting weight and dreaming in hope to view what blind men see”) while the confessional album-closer “Amazing Thing” seeks redemption (“Bearing my slate to wash it clean”). The first single, “Visitor,” seems to deal mostly with materialistic excess and consumption, echoed by the kleptomaniacal video, which is (unsurprisingly) one of the best-looking, best-produced music videos that’s ever come out of Columbus.

The Receiver’s songs worm their way a little farther into the wrinkles of your brain with each listen, and while they’re undoubtedly crafted so that layers reveal more layers over time, a few of these ambitious songs could stand to be reined in from five minutes to four. That said, no one could justly accuse the Cooper brothers of lazy composition. It’s rare to hear an album this artfully arranged.

The Receiver’s CD-release show will be held this Friday at Skully’s, 1151 N. High St. Also scheduled are Hotel Eden and a DJ set by Kelly Warner.

(Also at The Other Paper.)

Local releases: Ghost Shirt, Eric Nassau, Pocketful of Sunshine

Ghost Shirt EP
Ghost Shirt has been around only since September, but the band has already caused quite a stir, playing shows as much as humanly possible (especially at the Treehouse) and handing out a 10-song demo that felt like much more than a demo.

Led by the golden-voiced Branden Barnett (formerly of the Shatters), Ghost Shirt uses killer hooks, guy-girl harmonies, beautiful string arrangements and some good ol’ distorted guitar to craft songs that veer from chamber-pop to power pop. And the band’s captivating stage show brings to mind other local acts like Two Cow Garage (a band Ghost Shirt recently toured with) and Miranda Sound (R.I.P.).

Their new EP, which serves as the preview of an upcoming full-length, mostly captures all that good stuff. I say “mostly” because in trading in demo quality for a more professionally mixed, crisp recording, a couple of the songs lose some of the raw vigor that the demo captured in their more spontaneous state. At times, the EP feels almost too slick. I also look forward to hearing what the band does with Barnett’s gentler, acoustic tunes.

But those are minor, contextual quibbles. “Steam Engine” still feels plenty propulsive, Sam Kim’s violin melodies sparkle (especially on the “Sick with Love” outro), and the rhythm section does everything a rhythm section should. Be warned: If you pick up this EP, you’ll have no choice but to get the full album when it comes out.

Eric Nassau - What's Left of Empty Space
Eric Nassau is a quintessential troubadour, playing pubs, coffee shops and folk festivals across the country armed with his van and an acoustic guitar. In fact, he’ll be on the road pretty much nonstop before returning to Columbus for Comfest at the end of June.

But if Steve Earle is the “hardcore troubadour,” Nassau is decidedly soft. On his latest, What’s Left of Empty Space, you’ll hear lots of traditional folk with some contemporary singer/songwriter flair and country fare thrown in. His candid, conversational lyrics are endearing and instantly accessible but often lack depth and anything resembling grit (from “Sugar-coated Sugar”: “When I was a child, they said I was hyper/Till they pinned me down, found sugar in my diaper”). Nassau sings it all with full-bodied, yet nondescript, vocals. This is acoustic music as smooth and breezy as it gets.

He enlisted plenty of help on Empty Space, though, and those contributions allow some of these songs (mostly in the first half) to become more than just pleasant background music. Megan Palmer’s violin and vocals fill out “Big Water,” which clips along at a good pace and features one of Nassau’s best choruses. Palmer likewise bolsters “Frozen,” featuring mournful, nontraditional accompaniments that give the song a welcome eeriness. I’m also partial to Keenan Wade’s mandolin additions, which are sprinkled throughout, as well as the rockier, minor-key guitar riffs on “A Conversation.”

Turns out truly empty space doesn’t suit Nassau best. The more musicians the merrier, I say.

Pocketful of Sunshine - Target Audience of One
Drummer Paul Abbott (Woosley Band) dubbed his recent recording Target Audience of One to emphasize that all the songs center on the heartache caused by one woman in particular. But what a shame it would be if this spurned lover were the only recipient of these well-crafted songs, boasting a list of contributors that reads like a Rolodex of Columbus songwriting greats, past and present: Tim Easton, Micah Schnabel (Two Cow Garage), Megan Palmer, Lizard McGee (Earwig), Sean Beal (Big Back Forty) and Chris Burney (formerly of the Sun).

Under the moniker Pocketful of Sunshine, Abbott wrangled each of these musicians into his home studio to collaborate on a track, and the resulting stacked-with-talent album delivers with only a couple of slight missteps. Personal favorites include Schnabel’s cig-fueled, acoustic-driven “Ultimate Mixtape” and Jesse Henry’s alt-country gem “Get With You,” lovingly steeped in lap-steel. And McGee’s “My Favorite Star” could be the lead single on a new Earwig album; it’s one of the catchiest tracks I’ve heard all year. Not surprisingly, the record also boasts really good drum sounds—a detail that often gets lost in local bands’ mixes.

The gimmicky “Slowicide,” featuring Zuck’s Turkey Farm, isn’t really my bag. Neither is the final track, “Pretty Birdy (the Ballad of Shadow Cat).” But I don’t think I’d skip any other song, which is pretty amazing given the stylistic breadth and sheer number of musicians involved with the project--a testament to Abbott’s well-trained ear.

Here’s to shattered relationships!

(Also at The Other Paper)

The Antlers - Cafe Bourbon St., 3-26

Depending on their subject matter, concept albums have the potential to alienate listeners. Even the term “concept album” sounds a bit pretentious. But the truly great ones transcend story-line, using the thematic material to communicate ideas, questions, truths, emotions--or all of the above--common to the human experience. In other words, you don’t need to be a deaf, dumb and blind pinball champion to appreciate the Who’s Tommy.

The Antlers’ new album, Hospice, uses a fractured relationship between a hospice worker and a young, terminally ill girl (Sylvia) to muse about mortality and all its repercussions--loss, loneliness, anger, empathy, guilt and the like. Singer/songwriter Peter Silberman, whose lyrical and compositional maturity belie his age (23), switches vantage points throughout the album, allowing glimpses into each character’s inner workings.

Complicating matters--in a good way, it turns out--is the patient’s condition. She apparently has cancer, but it’s her mental illness and the resulting nightmares and visions that make the relationship so antagonistic and heartbreaking. In the liner notes, Silberman explains (in character of the hospice worker, it seems) that “something makes her sting, and something makes her want to kill. It made her crawl under that house, and stick her head under the stove.”

The Antlers punctuate the interactions with huge swells of sound that wouldn’t be out of place on a Sigur Ros record, and subdued sections anchored by a gingerly tapped piano or lightly strummed acoustic guitar along with shimmery, atmospheric synth textures (see “Kettering”). It’s in those quiet portions that Silberman employs his greatest attribute--a beautiful, alabaster falsetto that’s more hushed than Jeff Buckley but less wispy than Antony and the Johnsons.

Ah yes, but this is supposed to be a live review, right? The Antlers did, in fact, play Cafe Bourbon Street last Thursday as a three-piece, though few were there to see it. (Our Cat Philip, however, did not open the show, to my disappointment. Bourbon Street’s website is notoriously inaccurate. Get on the ball, Bobo!) The mostly empty bar lent the show a vibe that was more flat than intimate, and the band hasn’t completely figured out how to replicate Hospice live yet. The climaxes were even more powerful when heard at arm’s length, but the subtleties weren’t quite as subtle. And I missed the acoustic.

The hardest thing, Silberman sings on “Wake,” is “letting people in.” He wisely jumped that hurdle with the Antlers, beginning Hospice as a solo project and gradually adding contributions from others until the Antlers became a real band, not just a nom de plume. It’s a potent combination on record, but the band needs some more road-testing to match that chemistry onstage.

Still, despite those shortcomings and an incredibly short set, I’m glad I ventured out. I particularly enjoyed “Shiva,” as well as the sheer epic-ness of “Atrophy,” with its desperate coda: “Someone, oh anyone, tell me how to stop this. She’s screaming, expiring, and I’m her only witness.” Haunting, but really pretty.

So yes, the Antlers are worth seeing live, but more importantly, go pick up or download Hospice. And when you do, listen from beginning to end. It’s a concept album that demands and rewards your attention.

Photos from the show
mp3: The Antlers - Two
mp3: The Antlers - Bear
The Antlers WOXY Session

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Beware

Will Oldham is an unpredictable, eccentric fellow, but it’s probably safe to say that after 10 years and 12 albums (including live records), the Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker is his primary means of musical output. Previous pseudonyms--all variations on the word “Palace”--haven’t surfaced since 2004’s Bonnie “Prince” Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music.

As BPB, Oldham has prolifically traversed Americana terrain, dabbling in Nashville country, Southern gothic, Gram Parsons country-rock and hauntingly spare folk. His voice has matured along the way, but still retains a laconic, warbled quality.

Oldham said in a New Yorker profile a few months back that Beware (out now) would be his “big” album, meaning he would promote it with singles, photo shoots, etc. “I am Goodbye” is the first single, and it’s a good primer for the rest of the album--a downright zippy tune that revels in the concept of goodbyes using swirly guitar and mandolin.

It’s the next logical step after last year’s In the Light, a strong album I overlooked until this year. It’s a sunny record, full of arrangements that could be considered elaborate compared with the quiet starkness earlier albums like Ease Down the Road and Master and Everyone. Beware is even more elaborate, working in a full roster of musicians contributing all sorts of bits and pieces to the whole. In the final track, “Afraid Ain’t Me,” you’ll hear a flute solo, hand claps, horns and bongos, to name a few.

It’s too big for Oldham, but only slightly so. While the arrangements can sometimes serve as roadblocks (the vocal echo, strings and choir on “Heart’s Arms”), often they enhance (the marimba and pedal steel on “You Can’t Hurt Me Now”).

The more barren “There is Something I Have to Say” hearkens to those earlier albums, serving as a nice rest before ramping up again. And there’s still Oldham’s words that’ll creep you out or make you laugh. Or both: “I want to be your only friend. Is that scary?”

He can also be ominous and a little confounding, as on “Death Final”: “In a pit of bodies I am loved by all/ By ham hock and by handkerchief, by damsel and by doll/ An angel warns us with its unfinal call/ It was not death final, it was only fall.”

Referencing a ham hock in a song about death is unexpected and a bit jarring, but keeping us guessing is something Oldham has down to a science.

(Also at The Other Paper)

Elvis Perkins in Dearland

Elvis Perkins in Dearland just released its eponymous debut album, but you can think of it as a companion piece to Perkins’s 2007 solo outing, Ash Wednesday. Calling that one a solo album is a bit misleading, anyway. There were certainly some stark arrangements with just Perkins and his acoustic guitar, but more often it incorporated strings, horns, glockenspiel, vibraphone, etc.

Elvis Perkins in Dearland builds on that, as the singer/guitarist’s three touring mates help him heap more textures, more stylistic influences and more instruments on an Americana base. The songs almost never collapse under these arrangements, instead creating an ever-shifting palette for the casual vocals and poetic lyrics.

Voice-wise, Perkins has some of the idiosyncrasies of Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum and the timbre of Rufus Wainwright, but with more restraint than either of those singers. He has an easiness about him that brings to mind Leonard Cohen—not overly sentimental, yet not dry, with a slight vibrato around the edges. Nothing is rushed, nothing is forced.

This record, like the last, offers ruminations on grief and death—which, given his background, Perkins could be excused for writing and singing about for the rest of his life. His father was actor Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in Psycho, and his mother was photographer Berry Berenson. Anthony Perkins died of AIDS-related complications in 1992, and Berenson was killed aboard American Airlines Flight 11 in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Leadoff track “Shampoo”—which begins with the chirping of cicadas and crickets, flittering woodwinds and light acoustic strums—seems to use eccentric folk singer John Jacob Niles’s “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” as a reference point, intermingling themes of love and death. “Black is the color of a strangled rainbow, black is the color of my lung/Black is the color of my true love’s arrow, black is the color of a human’s blood,” he sings. The song has some reggae flare, but it’s anchored in Elvis-land with Perkins’s harmonica.

Despite the weighty material, “Shampoo” and other tunes like “I Heard Your Voice in Dresden,” “123 Goodbye” and the horn-heavy “Doomsday” are more sprightly than much of Ash Wednesday. Perkins also takes care to ensure that his lyrics don’t become overbearing. “I don’t let doomsday bother me, do you let it bother you?” he sings, letting us know that death, while devastating, is something he’s been forced to come to grips with.

mp3: Elvis Perkins in Dearland- Shampoo

Singing Through the Hard Times: A Tribute to Utah Phillips

Folk singer Bruce “Utah” Phillips identified himself as an anarchist, but that didn’t stop him from making a 1968 bid for the U.S. Senate in Utah. He lost, but he got plenty of his ideas across through his music, fed by his years as a rail rider, soldier in the Korean War and unflinching supporter and member of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union (aka “the Wobblies”).

Phillips died last year before he could hear the finished product of a compilation that was released recently, Singing Through the Hard Times: A Tribute to Utah Phillips. This 39-track, double-disc set isn’t just folk-inspired. Most of the contributors sound like folk purists—the kind of people who, when the crowd booed Bob Dylan during his electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, would have chimed right in.

Casual music fans will recognize a few big names here, such as Emmylou Harris (“Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia”), Pete Seeger (“Or Else! (One-a These Days)”) and Ani DiFranco, whose Righteous Babe Records is releasing the set. Diehard folkies will notice Tom Paxton—who won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award last month—Jean Ritchie, Rosalie Sorrels and probably a couple of others. And then there are quite a few relatively unknown singers, strummers, banjo pickers and the like.

Emmylou could sing stock-market symbols, and I’d still enjoy it. She just has one of those consistently wonderful, engaging voices. There are some strong offerings from relative unknowns, too, such as Saul Broudy’s cowboy-country take on “Starlight on the Rails” and the hypnotic drone of “Hymn Song” captured by Emma’s Revolution.

But 39 tracks is excessive for just about any compilation, so it’s no shock that there are some not-so-strong tracks. Lisa Null’s take on “All About Preachers” sounds like an open-mike out-take, and Judy Cook’s “Kid’s Liberation” and a couple of others are a stone’s throw from the folk parodies of Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind. (Those interpretations are admittedly spot-on, so that’s not a scathing critique.)

Not surprisingly, what reverberates most on this compilation is Phillips’s storytelling and social-change sentiments. When the thread by which our country’s infrastructure hangs gets more frayed each week, there couldn’t be a more timely sentiment than the chorus from the album’s title track: “We are singing through the hard times, singing through the hard times, working for the good times to come.”

mp3: Magpie, Dan Schatz, Emma's Revolution & more... - Singing Through the Hard Times

RTFO Bandwagon - Dums Will Survive

Given RTFO Bandwagon’s curious blend of folk and punk, it’s not surprising to find the band on bills with a shitgaze act like Psychedelic Horseshit (with whom it shares a drummer) and eccentric folkies like the Super Desserts. But with the release of Dums Will Survive, RTFO’s newest offering on Dull Knife Records, the punks now have more ground to stand on when staking their claim on the band.

“Skipper Bunkum” is RTFO at its punkiest, with talk-sung vocals over insistent, distorted guitar and keys. And then there’s the in-the-red, album-closing extended jam on “Dumbs Will Survive,” a reprised version of the leadoff title track (a bouncy, catchy tune propelled by percussive guitars and call-and-response vocals).

Still, for the more folk-inclined, you’ll find French horn on the rambling “Like a Dan Shearer Over Troubled Water,” and you’ll find Old West-style piano (courtesy of Dane Terry) and lap steel on “Between the Ears.” Both songs are easy on the ears.

There’s beauty in all of it, though, regardless of the irrelevant genre tags. The record—seven tracks in all—has a ramshackle, homemade feel, and yet every instrument is present and accounted for, intricately pieced and layered together in analog warmth. (One of my favorite touches is Terry’s fuzzed-out, treble-heavy keyboard on “Dan Shearer” and “Public Relations Rag”; it sounds nothing like a keyboard.)

As far as this relatively lo-fi aesthetic goes, it’s probably one of the best-produced records I’ve heard.

RTFO Bandwagon’s release party is scheduled for March 27 at Skylab. Pre-orders are available at dullkniferecords.com; the first 50 orders will also receive a limited-edition cassette of “Like a Dan Shearer Over Troubled Water.”

(Also at The Other Paper)

Super Desserts - Barefoot in the Disenchanted Forest

The Super Desserts’ new album is called Barefoot in the Disenchanted Forest, and it features song titles like “Still Unable to Speak...Claude Somehow Manages to Express His Opinion to a Pack of Wild Cougars, Who Are Surprisingly Supportive.” The CD also comes in a colorfully decorated 7-inch sleeve accompanied by a handmade, photocopied booklet full of collages, animals, people with animals’ heads and some hilarious liner notes.

All of this should tell you this ambitious, eccentric band has a predilection for the fantastical, along with lots of twee cuteness—hand claps, ukulele, banjo, glockenspiel, etc. Featuring Eve Searls (of Bird and Flower), Justin Riley (of Terribly Empty Pockets) and other local vets and newbies, the band is only made stronger by the full roster of capable musicians, rather than being weighed down. And while there’s a whole lot going on throughout the album, there are also moments of quiet, restrained beauty, like the guitar melody on “Steve Attends the Martian Funeral.…”

It’s not just a clever name. The Super Desserts are super sweet, but not like those nasty orange peanut-shaped candies that leave you feeling sick to your stomach. More like awesome fair food that leaves you fat and happy.

Catch the Super Desserts at the Treehouse Feb. 7 with Two Cow Garage, Ghost Shirt and Tree of Fern.

mp3: Super Desserts - On the Way to the Hospital, Claude is Riding on the Back Wheel of a Backward Jeep While Clara and Her Half-Brother are Riding on the Mystical Motorbike with the Three-Legged Unicorn (aka "Funeral")

(Also at The Other Paper)

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

I can’t believe it’s happening already. Despite the calendar date, people are calling Animal Collective’s new album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, the best record of 2009. And by “people” I mean “the Internet.” Oh, bloggers. Must you become a cliché so early in the year?

When you hit “play” on the first track, “In the Flowers,” you may wonder what it is that supposedly makes this latest effort such a cut above Animal Collective’s previous output (which, in my opinion, is spotty). The song sounds like typical, droney, abstruse Animal Collective. That is, until about the two-and-a-half minute mark, when the drums kick in, the blanket of synth changes and the vocals become a head-turning melody: “Then we could be dancing, and you’d smile and say, ‘I like this song.’” That line pretty much sums up this album. It’s Animal Collective--Avey Tare, Panda Bear and Geologist (Deakin is absent)--at its most danceable, and it’s Animal Collective in its most universally appealing and accessible form yet.

Now, “accessible” in Animal Collective terms doesn’t mean the band is about to jump on tour with Hoobastank. It just means that if you’re riding in the car with your parents, and you blast this album immediately after the band’s last one, Strawberry Jam, your parents might not hate you quite as much. It appears Animal Collective will always be psychedelic and experimental--and therefore always rankling to some ears--so listening to the band still takes some patience. But the payoff from time spent with Merriweather Post Pavilion is more rewarding than any previous AC album. And it’s really the thick, gurgly, electro-soundscapes these guys create that maintain the group’s experimental feel. If you extracted just the ’60s-pop vocals, they often wouldn’t be out of place in a sunny car commercial with a sedan navigating curvy lanes.

Even Animal Collective’s lyrics, which are notoriously inscrutable, are thematically stronger on this album, if only because a theme just may exist. Several of the songs--and snippets of others--are overtly sexualized. You can’t get much more straightforward than, “I really want to do just what my body wants to/ I really want to show to my girl that I want her” (from “Guys Eyes”). Sometimes it’s not quite as sexual (“I want to walk around with you”), but you get the feeling it’s all part of the pursuit. Plus, there’s all those freak-dancey beats driving the point home.

Other songs merely ruminate about everyday happenings (“Daily Routine”). Still, few people listen to Animal Collective to parse the lyrics. The songs, and Merriweather as a whole, convey mood more than message. There’s no reason to overly analyze a simple meditation like “I don’t mean to seem like I care about material things... I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls.” It’s best just to accept that “My Girls” is a great song.

One blogger recently made a rambling argument that Animal Collective was made for, by and on the Internet, meaning, Animal Collective wouldn’t exist without online communities of vociferous hipsters trumpeting their urbane musical tastes as much as they trumpet Animal Collective’s genius. That may very well be true, but that can be said for countless bands today, and to jettison any artist solely because of that is equally grating.

So whether Merriweather Post Pavilion is 2009’s best album is beside the point. What’s clear to me is that this band has created its best album yet, while also (potentially) increasing its listening audience. Let’s let that be enough.

Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs

I’m usually not much for the unrealistic notion of beginning a new year with a clean slate, but as a music reviewer, it’s a good time to clean out the musical attic clogging my my brain. Digitally serviced zip files are vying for mental space next to watermarked promo discs and countless, breathless press releases promising the most genre-bending, life-altering batches of songs heard in decades.

A friend recently lent me some John Lee Hooker, and getting back to the blues has helped cleanse the musical palate. I figured some good ole country songs--of the grizzled, noncommercial variety--could do the same. Released in December, Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs has filled that role quite nicely, though its appeal goes beyond my original, utilitarian intent.

There aren’t too many country singers with more cred than Louvin, now an 81-year-old Country Music Hall of Famer. Louvin and his brother, Ira, got their start as the Louvin Brothers, racking up hits on the country charts until Ira died in a car crash in 1965. Charlie continued on with a successful solo career, inspiring Gram Parsons (who famously covered “The Christian Life” and “Cash on the Barrelhead”) and the next generation of alt-country acts.

Louvin had a comeback of sorts in 2007 when Tompkins Square released his first album in 10 years, a self-titled, Grammy-nominated collaboration with folks like Jeff Tweedy, Elvis Costello and Will Oldham.

Tompkins also released a box set last year called People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938, which apparently tickled Louvin’s fancy, since he included nine of those songs on this new album. Louvin’s got a cracker-jack band to back him on these vintage, three-chord country/folk songs, but it’s his worn, fraying vocals that give them a soul.

Some of the tracks are tragedies meant to break your heart (“The Little Grave in Georgia”), while others have a comedic edge (“Dixie Boll Weevil”). “Down with the Old Canoe,” which tells the Titanic story around the theme of hubris, serves as a warning so we can avoid such an untimely end by not getting too big for our britches: “When you think that you are wise, then you need not be surprised/ That the hand of God should stop you on life’s seas.”

“Wreck on the Highway” feels the most personal, as it could be right out of Louvin’s life. “There was whiskey and blood all together, mixed with glass where they lay/ Death played her hand in destruction, but I didn't hear nobody pray” goes one verse, and the sorrow is punctuated on each chorus, as Louvin sings at the top of his warbled, lonesome register, “I didn’t hear nobody pray, dear brother.”

It’s cathartic for Louvin, I’m sure, but the same goes for the listener. In this veteran’s take on old traditionals, even death itself can sound cleansing.

Welcome to the Welcome Wagon

Sufjan Stevens is woefully behind on that whole 50-albums-about-50-states project he started a few years ago. He covered Michigan in 2003 and Illinois in ’05, but since then all we’ve heard, other than a Christmas box set (which I recommend--’tis the season!), was 2006’s Illinois outtakes, The Avalanche.

I, for one, have been getting impatient for more Sufjan, and now, finally, I have something to sate my need for Soof. No, there’s still no new release, but the Stevens-produced debut from the Welcome Wagon is a more-than-capable stand in ’till then.

The husband-wife team of Vito and Monique Aiuto form the band’s core, and like Stevens, much of the Aiutos’ music is biblically anchored, though more overtly in this case. Given Vito’s day job as pastor of a Presbyterian church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (remember “Vito’s Ordination Song” on Michigan?), it’s not surprising. A few of the songs on Welcome to the Welcome Wagon are reworked versions of old spirituals, and the album cover and jacket are filled with dated, Precious Moments-evoking images. It’s purposefully campy and perhaps a bit ironic, but you get the feeling the couple is also sincere when the cover says, “May it help to comfort and sustain you.”

In the liner notes--written by Stevens, of course--he describes the Welcome Wagon as gospel music that is “refreshingly plain,” explaining that “it doesn’t impose its religious pitch on the listener with hyped up garnishes of sound; it merely conveys the deepest of convictions with the deadpan verdict of a surgeon.”

That’s pretty accurate. The Welcome Wagon manages to write gospel music that preaches without preachiness. Part of that’s the unadorned way in which the couple sings: Vito sounds astoundingly similar to Sufjan, and Monique’s voice is so childlike and dryly sweet that disliking it is akin to punching a puppy. The record’s charming, homespun vibe also plays a part in the band’s lack of pretense. The last song ends with Monique admitting, “Um, I screwed up twice.”

Old spirituals aren’t the only revamped source material here. The Auitos try their hand at the Smiths’ “Half a Person” and the Velvet Underground’s “Jesus,” and Daniel Smith (of Danielson) gets the songwriting credit for “Sold! To the Nice Rich Man.” It’s not surprisingly the most springy, near-danceable track.

Stevens’s fingerprints are all over the album, which makes sense, as he produced, recorded, engineered and mixed it, not to mention added vocals, banjo, bass, guitar, drums and on and on--more instruments than Vito and Monique combined. And in typical Sufjan fashion, some of the arrangements are overly ambitious (“I Am a Stranger”) and threaten to topple the “refreshingly plain” songs. But others, like the woozy marching-band romp of “You Made My Day,” are perfect.

So yes, it’s an album to tide you over till the next Sufjan Stevens outing, but it’s more than that, too. For me, that realization crystallized on the songs Vito wrote himself, like “American Legion.” At times it’s just Vito and a simple acoustic guitar recounting a somber memory. “If I’d been there I’d surely have stayed with you/ If I’d been there I’d surely have prayed for you, I want you to know,” he sings. It’s one of several moments where I realized this pastor and his wife are something special, with or without their friend with the funny first name.

Welcome to the Welcome Wagon is out Dec. 9 on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

mp3: The Welcome Wagon - Sold! To the Nice Rich Man

Local roundup

Reviews of recent (and not so recent) Columbus albums:

The Lost Revival - Homemade Confetti
Let me first say that I'm way late on this one. The Lost Revival released its debut, Homemade Confetti, earlier this year, but it somehow passed me by. That band wasn’t hiding under a rock, either. The seven-piece multi-instrumentalists have become known for their intense live shows, earning them a spot opening CD101’s Summerfest this year.

Homemade Confetti, which was apparently recorded in one weekend, doesn’t sound the least bit like a rush job. It’s a big record, with lots of atmospheric layering in the background, providing a thick blanket in which to wrap Kevin Collins’s throaty vocals--like a less lackadaisical, sea-urchin-swallowing version of the Black Swans’ Jerry DeCicca.

Collins must be a Bob Dylan devotee, given some of his phrasing, harmonica style and religious imagery. (Not to mention the intro guitar riff to “Jailbait” sounds just like “Hurricane,” and “Thin Man’s Mile” is probably not a coincidental allusion to “Ballad of a Thin Man.”) But with all those instruments and dark overtones, any sort of “Americana” tag would be misleading--especially on a song like “A Bird on a Chain,” the best on the album. The Lost Revival has a sound entirely its known, and a good one.

Karate Coyote - Move EP
Just the name Karate Coyote exudes playfulness, so it’s no surprise this up-and-coming band’s debut EP, Move, is filled with hand claps and a friskiness that brings to similar-minded acts like Los Campesinos!.

Playful is cool with me, especially when it’s done this well. “Move yourself to dance,” instructs Karate Coyote on the bouncy leadoff track, “Move Yourself,” and if no one’s looking, you’ll no doubt find yourself heeding the advice. Surprises abound on this little EP, like the bluesy guitar solo on “Easy” and the synth outro on “Incogneat-o.”

KC is a new band, so there’s room to grow, of course. I could use more of the back-and-forth guy-girl vocals, and I think the singers in general are buried too deep too often on these tracks. They’re good enough to be front and center--a position Karate Coyote should get used to if it continues down its current path.

mp3: Karate Coyote - Move Yourself

Melty Melty - Rise of the Birdmen
A few weeks ago I told you about the whole debacle Melty Melty went through while recording Rise of the Birdmen, i.e. losing the entire album to a computer crash and having to start from scratch. It makes for a good story, but good stories only matter if the record follows suit. This one is so good you won’t really care how it came to fruition.

Like Sean Gardner’s other projects (Bookmobile, Winter Makes Sailors), Melty Melty continues his pattern of making highly accessible but no less artful indie rock, this time with an unmistakable deference to Pinback--a comparison I wouldn’t make lightly.

Rise of the Birdmen is polished and spacious. “Walls” is built around a simple, repeating guitar bend, and “Killing Time” is Melty Melty at its dreamiest, Gardner and former Kopaz compadre Kevin Davison making tasteful use of analog synths, eerie guitar and found sounds. “Same Situation” would be the obvious first single, if singles still mattered. Gardner’s instantly recognizable tenor has a tendency to wander too far into whiny land, but it usually anchors the songs nicely; his inventive vocal melodies provide the majority of the album’s hooks.

Nothing against the band’s label, We Want Action, but Melty Melty deserves something bigger, and with this debut, the band just might get it.

This week's Other Paper

I'm getting lazy, so I'll just refer you to TOP's site for stories with my byline this week:

Concerts
Live review of Magnetic Fields (above) at the Southern Theatre last Friday

Locals
Review of Times New Viking's just-released Stay Awake 7"

Review of Ugly Stick's Still Glistening, the band's first release in 14 years

Review of Team Smile and Nod's Look Both Ways Before You Die

To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story

On the DVD included in the just-released box set To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story, Simone explained to an interviewer in 1970 the effect she wanted her music to have. “I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub when I’ve performed, I just want them to be to pieces,” she says. “I want to go in that den of those elegant people with their old ideas, smugness, and just drive them insane.”

What’s fascinating about Simone is not just how well she succeeded in shaking people up, but how she did it in so many different ways. Just when you think you’ve got her figured out, she jumps ship, using genres like jazz, soul, blues and folk as mere stepping stones, yet putting her full weight on each she goes by.

Ironically, her penchant for skipping around stylistically is probably also what held her back from mainstream stardom--in the U.S., that is. Simone (born Eunice Waymon) had great commercial success in the U.K. during her lifetime. She’s probably known best to a younger generation through artists like Feist and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) covering her songs, which is fitting for a woman who spent much of her career reclaiming other artists’ songs.

On this 51-track, three-disc (plus DVD) retrospective, the “High Priestess of Soul” tackles show tunes (“Feeling Good,” “Ain’t Got No-I Got Life”), French pop (“Ne Me Quitte Pas”), Dylan (“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” “The Times They Are A-Changin,’” “Just Like a Woman”), the Beatles (“Here Comes the Sun”) and plenty more. To my ears, the only essential track missing is Simone’s take on the African-American spiritual “Sinnerman.”

Her fierce advocacy for civil rights was inseparable from many of her re-appropriated songs, but originals such as “Four Women” and “Mississippi Goddam”--a song she wrote after four girls were killed in an Alabama church bombing in 1963--boldly display Simone’s outrage. The live version of “Mississippi” on this compilation penetrates even more deeply since it was performed on April 7, 1968--just days after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Those live tracks are some of the best inclusions in this retrospective. They reveal a performer whose aberrant voice and persona were so huge they often needed to be set free from the confines of the studio and loosed onto an open stage. A medley of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and “Today is a Killer,” complete with some of Simone’s improvised lyrics, waxes and wanes for a full 18 minutes.

Simone’s catalog is vast. She was known for releasing seven albums in a three-year span. In that same interview on the DVD, Simone said she was scared of not going fast enough to do everything she was supposed to do before she died, which she did in 2003. But after listening to this impressive compilation, I’d say she surely did everything. And then some.

Columbus releases: The Flashing Clock, Two Cow Garage

The Flashing Clock - Hot Brown
Dan Spurgeon is probably better known for his other band, Bush League All-Stars, but the Flashing Clock just might change that with its new album, Hot Brown.

Recorded by Datapanik’s Nick Schuld, it consists of 11 two- and three-minute ditties that sound like they were all put to tape in a creative frenzy one substance-fueled night. The songs are devoid of frills and (high) fidelity, just old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll with a dash of punk thrown in.

Lyrically, it’s doubtful any of these songs will have you pondering your place in this world. (Take the hook in “Teardrop Tattoo”: “Teardrop tattoo, don’t know what I’m gonna do.”) But rock music doesn’t always have to do that. Sometimes all you want is distorted guitars and a catchy chorus, and the Flashing Clock delivers. I absolutely love “Knife Fight” and “Have You Seen.” Let’s hope Spurgeon (or “Cosmo Time,” as the CD sleeve refers to him) keeps this project on the front burner.

RIYL: Bush League All-Stars, the Patsys

The Flashing Clock and You’re So Bossy are on the bill for the Evil Queens’ (possibly) last show Saturday night at Ruby Tuesday.

Two Cow Garage - Speaking Cursive
Speaking in Cursive, the fourth full-length from Two Cow Garage, follows in the same vein of the band’s last one, III, but this talented band’s cowpunk just keeps getting better—probably a result of constant touring.

“Bastards and Bridesmaids” and “Your Humble Narrator” are destined to become Two Cow classics. “Swingset Assassin” is a folk song that highlights singer Micah Schnabel’s knack for storytelling, tracking his childhood musical journey from the Beatles through Black Flag: “I wrapped myself up in Black Flag and flew it as my own...But in the end punk rock just left me empty and alone.” But Schnabel never discarded any of those influences completely; all of them have been incorporated. Two Cow Garage’s sound wouldn’t be the same without that punk edge--due in part to Schnabel's shredded vocals--alongside the country and pop-rock sounds.

Along with tackling death, drugs, self-doubt and heartbreak, Speaking in Cursive continues Schnabel’s attempts at reconciling his love for music with its destructive force in his life. In “Folksinger’s Heart,” he mentions a bit of advice he received: “My father, and the truth: ‘Destroy the thing you love, son, before it destroys you.’”

Good thing for us he’s not heeding his father’s warning.

RIYL: Haynes Boys, Drive-By Truckers, Replacements

(Also at the Other Paper)

Blitzen Trapper - Furr

Furr is Blitzen Trapper’s first release for Sub Pop, a label that has begun to reshape its sound into something pretty and pastoral, especially when you consider this is the label that released Nirvana’s Bleach and Mudhoney’s self-titled debut a little less than 20 years ago.

In its roster now are bands like Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses, Iron & Wine, Grand Archives and Loney, Dear. So it should come as no surprise that Furr is significantly less skronky than last year’s Wild Mountain Nation, a loose, lo-fi affair that harkened as much to Pavement as it did to alt.country and Deliverance-style banjo pickin’.

Still self-recorded by Blitzen’s singer/songwriter/producer, Eric Earley, Furr’s edges are more rounded. Even the songs with a runaway-train-falling-off-the-tracks approach (“Love U,” “Fire + Fast Bullets”) feel quieter and more restrained. And in between touring, Earley must have been listening to a lot of Dylan, because that troubadour’s influence can be felt all over this record—lyrically, melodically and even in Earley’s intonation.

For a band like Blitzen Trapper, it’s dangerous to “mature,” especially when what made Wild Mountain Nation so fun was its carefree, all-over-the-map aesthetic. But fortunately, maturity suits this Portland band, and the cohesion of Furr more than makes up for any real or perceived lack of spontaneity.

The title track is the keystone of the album, a warm folk song featuring only Earley’s voice and guitar (and a little harmonica) that revels in the band’s less noisy, more melodic new direction. Earley starts the song as a 17-year-old who wanders into the woods, hears the howling of a wolf and decides to join the pack: “So from the cliffs and highest hill we would gladly get our fill/Howling endlessly and shrilly at the dawn/ And I lost the taste for judging right from wrong/ For my flesh had turn to fur.”

The second verse finds the narrator on his 23rd birthday, the day he meets a girl similarly wandering in the woods and settles down on a farm with her to raise children. The fur has become skin again, and the narrator is now in a world “I confess I do not know.”

It’s a superbly written song, one I’ve listened to over and over. It works as a metaphor for all the various ways a man goes off to sow his wild oats (going to college, not going to college, starting a band, etc.), then eventually settles down. But the transition is never easy. It’s hard to shake that yearning for the freedom of the prodigal years. Still, Earley advises, “If you’re gonna get made, don’t be afraid of what you’ve learned.”

“Lady on the Water” and “Not Your Lover” are similarly mellow, the latter using a rickety old piano that found a place on several tunes, mostly to their betterment.

Blitzen Trapper hasn’t completely forgotten its past. Opener “Sleepytime in the Western World” melds old and new Blitzen, and “War on Machines” reminds me a lot of “Wild Mountain Nation,” not a bad thing. The band has found a way to refine and hone without becoming boring.

Furr is an album that with each listen may have you reconfiguring your top 20 list of 2008. And then your top 15. And your top 10.

mp3: Blitzen Trapper - Furr

(also at The Other Paper)