Television Personalities - My Dark Place

Domino
Released: 03.21.06

Does knowledge of who an artist is affect the way we hear the music? I'd say there are three categories to the answer. Robert Johnson would still be the first recorded bluesman to play with a powerful, driving rhythm even if no one knew the myth of his deal with the devil. His life simply adds to his legacy. Syd Barrett's music begs the listener to ask the question, "What turmoil was going on in this guy's head?" The music and the artist are so wholly intertwined that the question becomes irrelevant. Then there's something like Eric Clapton. Songs like 'Layla' and 'Tears in Heaven' are always accompanied by "It's about George Harrison's wife," or "It's about his son dying." The stories serve no real purpose, but they're always there.

The Television Personalities leader, Dan Treacy, has a story unlike anyone else. But let's see how the music holds up on its own. Unless, of course, it falls into that second category.

Uncompromising in every way, My Dark Places is quintessentially British. It is unashamedly moody to the point of sounding like a desperate cry for help at times, but then quickly moving into playful, childish odes to boyhood heroes. It is musically dissonant with little sense of release from the cacophony. Treacy does no favors for anyone.

Without question, the highlight of the record is 'Velvet Underground.' This song couldn't sound any more unlike its subject. An up-tempo vaudevillian piano melody drives the song, with fake horns adding color sporadically, sometimes borrowing the melody of 'Here Comes the Bride' for no apparent reason. "The eighth mystery of the world I've found, How did the Velvet Underground get that sound," repeats, like everything in the song, sporadically, along with, "Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone but Lou Reed." The verses are just Treacy rambling about "how did they get it? I thought we had it." Like I said, this is the highlight of the record.

In the past 35 years, Treacy and company have made some of the most inspired music on record. At times - particularly 1984’s The Painted Word - Treacy has fallen into that second category with powerful results. My Dark Places teeters on that brink, but there is a self-consciousness that has never interfered with a TVPs records before this one. Treacy’s story is worth investigating for anyone who’s asked the question posed at the start of the review.

- Dave Wolkensperg

Inca Ore with Lemon Bear's Orchestra - The Birds in the Bushes

5RC
Released: 08.22.06

If Eva Saelens (aka Inca Ore) shows up at your house, expect her to pull all of the pots and pans out of the cabinet, and beat on them while she meows, stutters in nonsense languages, and chatters like a territorial squirrel. Expect her to demand your attention as she berates you one minute and strokes your head the next. You'll want to throw her out, but you won't, because even though Inca Ore comes across as a total head case when you first meet her, a few minutes later you'll realize that she's a complicatedly interesting head case.

On Inca Ore's second album, The Birds in the Bushes, she recruits the help of Lemon Bear to create eleven songs that invoke a wide range of emotions. This is Inca Ore and Lemon Bear's true talent. They'll set up the sounds of an entire garden of flowers facing the sun while ants carry leaves and bees gather pollen. Somewhere in the garden there is a deadly fight. We hear the loser's screams and the winner's triumph. The result is unfocused but complete. It's like listening in on every apartment on a city block. Love, hate, anger, happiness, sadness are all around us all the time; this album tries to show all of them taking place at the same time.

The Birds in the Bushes isn't an album made for most people. More interesting than enjoyable, you have to give it your full attention and several listens before you appreciate it. Even after you've discovered what makes it great, you'll probably only pull it out to make your friends listen to a track or two.

- Matt Thompson

Faun Fables - The Transit Rider

Drag City
Released: 05.16.06

Dawn McCarthy created The Transit Rider, an ambitious theatrical production of an original song cycle, from her experiences on the New York subway system in the 1990s. The physical stage is set to resemble a light-rail train, with a row of chairs along a wall and images created by visual artist Eric S. Koziel appearing out of framed window space. As each actor reaches their “stop,” they perform a song into a microphone located in front of the train door and then exit the stage. The story is an arcane, fantastical journey in which McCarthy often interacts with a chilling train conductor and is unsure of how or where to find her stop.

Early on, the accompanying album works, with McCarthy leading us through a plot introduction in “Transit Theme,” followed by easily one of the finest versions of “House Carpenter” ever recorded. Here her voice floats over our heads and her thespian presence redefines one of our finest traditional songs. However, after the first three tracks, starting with “In Speed,” the vocal contributions of second Fable, Nils Frykdahl, become more prominent. This is a disaster. His habitation here is the equivalent of eating ten Twinkies in one sitting. It’s too much of a bad thing. All the fluff is then exposed, including a mildly funky schlock catastrophe (“The Questioning) and a couple boring folk prances (“Roadkill,” “Earth’s Kiss”).

In its most interesting form, The Transit Rider is to be seen as well as heard. Unfortunately though, theatricality tends to exasperate when not provided with all your senses (sight in this case). So rather than having a peculiar, yet cohesive performance art piece, we are given a rather lengthy and exposed mistake. Even as McCarthy begins to smuggle her extraordinary voice into our progressive sensors, it is again displaced out by the presence of Frykdahl’s operatic rankness.

As a performance, The Transit Rider has received remarkable praise, with one personal friend even calling it, “the most direct and sensational piece of art I can ever remember seeing.” Well, The Transit Rider may indeed be a brilliant or at least engrossing production, but as a record it begins to spoil and the whole encouraging and exciting concept of it eventually shits itself.

- Kent Thompson

Akron/Family - Meek Warrior

Young God records
Released: 10.03.06

This, the newest Akron/Family odyssey, is possibly the most beautiful and non-cohesive record of the year. One moment it’s taking a hatchet to your leg and the next it’s warmly embracing your entire body with pillow arms. Dear lord it’s a charming formula.

All four members share vocal duties throughout, often crossing and connecting their voices in chants, yelps, and lullabies. Whether it’s in the context of a dense psychedelic outcry (“The Rider”) or an acoustic hymnal (“Love and Space”), it is these mingling voices that keeps Meek Warrior sharp, jubilant, and overwhelmingly entertaining throughout.

Opener “Blessing Force” is the busiest tune, switching direction numerous times, the whole while abusing scatterbrained guitars and downright filthy percussive rhythms courtesy of master free jazz drummer Hamid Drake. Again, the vocals are a playful masterpiece in their own right, sounding like harmonized playground laughter. The song begins by luring like a post rock bender, and then switches into a bizarre vocal call, then a natural, straight rock surge, followed by an Afro beat percussive breakdown before finally settling on and ending with a noisy free for all. In fact, there is so much jaw dropping stuff in this first track that it leaves your brain violated. The rest of the album serves as the not-so-logical but entirely wonderful explanation for this feeling.

After “Blessing Force” we are shown a different side of our new lover. They throw us a delicately layered acoustic piece (“Gone Beyond”), followed by the perky and magnetic psychobabble of the titled track. Through the fog we stumble upon more fog, courtesy of the gorgeous drone and percussive takeover of “No Space in This Realm.” Here, right at the mid-point and high point of Meek Warrior, we are defenseless.

If listened to carefully, Meek Warrior can serve as a medley of life moments, combining into one your first kiss, a car wreck, that wonderful drug experience, this unforgettable party, a time you screamed into a pillow, and so on. It’s a vivid canvas. Stare at it as long as you can.

- Kent Thompson

Dmonstrations - Night Trrors, Schock!

GSL
Release Date: 10.17.06

The truth about reviewing handfuls of CDs in a brief period of time is that after 1 or 2, said reviewer starts to realize how short life is. CDs begin to fall into 1 of 2 categories: 1) discs that immediately grab attention and never let up, and 2) Rhett Miller. The incorrectly spelled Dmonstrations is the kind of band that makes you dance in your seat before you even realize that you are moving your cheese-filled American ass. And by dance, I'm referring to the Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu, Boredoms type.

- Peter Berkowitz

Warmer Milks - Radish on Light

Troubleman Unlimited
Released: 09.12.06

When Warmer Milks put out their Early Castles CDR a few years ago, I fell in love with its vaguely psychedelic, vaguely folk tunes within a few listens. Not immediately accessible, it does take a few listens. But those who stuck it out through unexplained 7-minute silences and the breaking off mid-song when a string goes out of tune found some seductive and contemplative songs. Never the type to retrace their steps, they moved on with gusto, making a half-hour hypnotic jam of Penetration Initials, the tape manipulations of Aja Braun that I’m pretty sure consisted mostly of burps, farts, and gargling, and a harshly chaotic group of songs (frankly, I’m not even sure what it’s called since there wasn’t any indication and I was half-drunk when I got it at a show) that I could only describe as summoning the devil and raping him. It seemed that every time I looked them up, Warmer Milks were handing around new recordings that varied greatly from each other. And each one was fully realized. There was no half-assing about it. Warmer Milks was all about commitment.

So it’s a little disappointing to find out that Warmer Milks is no more. Still, they’ve left us the most proper of their releases, Radish on Light on Troubleman. Don’t be disappointed that there are only four songs. Each one packs a wallop, sounding like the basement recordings of a post-apocalyptic serial killer. Mikey T’s voice squirms over bending guitars and lackadaisical drums on “In the Fields” before screaming himself horse. “The Shark” gives us a brief rest, washing our ears with smooth noise. But not for long. Soon a beat comes into action, barely holding together a bass line that thrives in the dark corner and two guitars clanging against each other. The body is jittered by “Pentagram of Sores”’s twisted rhythms, coming across at first as a good friend and then dragging barbed wire across your back. Thank god for the healing power of a Sabbath riff that anyone can, not exactly bang your head to, but nod very aggressively. The fifteen-minute “Radish on Light” once again blows some cool air over our lobes. We needed it. Feedback surrounds us. Yes, we’ve killed you, but it we did it out of love. Let us wrap you in a blanket of warm fuzz and say goodnight to one of the most constantly surprising and fearless bands I’ve ever heard. There is no self-consciousness here. Sleep well.

- Matt Thompson

Joanna Newsom - Ys

Drag City
Released: 11.14.06

With her new record, Joanna Newsom has expanded how she as a songwriter works. While her 2004 breakthrough Milk Eyed Mender was a brilliant 12 song folk/pop record that happened to be written and performed with a harp, Ys is an exponentially more ambitious, 5 song, 55 minute emprise. Her simple harp and vocal presentation has gained a cohort in the form of a full orchestra (even including banjo and accordion) conducted by Van Dyke Parks (Beach Boys, various TV and film scores). The orchestral elements augment the intense nature of Ys, allowing the songs to continually take a variety of forms, whether they are solemn, hyper, violent, etc. For instance, on the nearly 17 minute “Only Skin,” the string and brass backing builds with the hectic drama of Newsom’s harp, making it both anxious and fun. It steers this epic lyrical creation (199 unrepeated lines!) away from becoming tedious and instead affords it the title of unforgettable.

And then there’s Newsom’s voice, a tool so far beyond even astonishing that its force calls to mind unspeakable images of beauty and brutality rather than cheap musical comparisons. On Ys, like Milk Eyed Mender, every sharp pronunciation and each unorthodox stanza spits and kisses with styled confidence. Furthermore, her lyrics themselves are fantastical tales of people, animals, and places we might not understand, but the fashion in which the words bounce off of each other, with clever and emotive agility, is reminiscent of nothing before it.

For an album of only 5 songs, there are countless highlights, none the least of which is “Sawdust and Diamonds.” This is the lone track Newsom performs without Van Dyke’s arrangements, articulating only with her harp strokes and magnetic delivery. It’s the type of song that anyone anywhere can hear and feel something deeply personal. As she sings “I will swallow your sadness, and eat your cold clay, just to lift your long face,” the morrow in our bones boils; our guts shake. Yes, it is perfect because nothing else is this original, charming, or affecting.

There are not enough superlatives in the world to describe Joanna Newsom and Ys. Still, this is the greatest album of 2006, by our finest, most talented modern songwriter. That should be enough.

-Kent Thompson

My Morning Jacket - Okonokos

RCA/ATO
Released 09.26.06

My Morning Jacket is a live band. Or, they always had been. Then Z came out. It was critically acclaimed and generally loved by their fans, but it was also a huge sonic departure. The greatest change was a focus on studio craft. Their earlier albums were very much natural recordings, capturing the players in their live element. Was Z such a studio-based album that the songs couldn't survive live? Not only does Okonokos confirm that the songs from Z can sound just as impressively epic on the stage as on record, but by including a good deal of older material, it lays bare that though the band has gone through some eclectic changes, these songs can work together as a magnificent whole. That being said, the 2 discs of Okonokos almost work as two different documents of an event. On the first disc, the band follows their recorded work almost to a T. The songs sound like what you've heard on the records. The second disc, starts with "Dondante", which singer Jim James strips to its emotional core. The disc continues to let loose, with the band subtly reinterpreting bits and pieces of familiar songs, though always keeping the basics intact. For someone who hasn't seen the band for a few years, I left the record promising myself I would make a point not to miss them again.

-Dave Wolkensperg

The Evens - Get Even

Dischord Records
Released: 10.18.06

Ian Mackaye is all grown up and he plays sitting down now as the strumming half of The Evens.

But the fire is still there and though the lyrics and instrumentation both are more direct, stripped down, a pillowcase next to Fugazi's tapestry, the stitches are still tight --how corny, right-- and their second album Get Evens makes your room a little better to be in.

Mackaye's jangly syncopated change-ups are there, though he lingers more in the slow melodious realm, singing more than yelling, strumming more than assaulting, though there's some of that too. And let's not forget The Evens' other half, Amy Farina who not only lays down some snappy drum action, but awful strong, purdy vocals to boot.

A lot of the album is overtly political with jabs at Bush like, 'everybody knows you are a liar', 'you're fired!', and 'your plate is overflowing, can't you see you've had enough' peppered throughout. This would be distracting if they weren't so damned earnest. When trying to get a singalong going at The Evens' show at St. John's Church last month, Mackaye implored the small audience, 'come on now, nobody try to be cool.' This totally unhip sincerity (singalongs at a show! huh?) comes through on the album, and whether or not you voted on the 7th, or like Fugazi, or shop at Diesel, or whatever, the uptempo optimism of Get Evens might just make you smile.

It's not Fugazi nor is it Anti Flag and it's certainly not 'Ian Mackaye's new side project', it's just two friends making music together. Aw.

- Nathan Tempey

El Perro Del Mar - s/t

The Control Group
Released: 05.30.06

Some of my favorite pop music ever has come out of Sweden (Abba, Eggstone, and Dungen). I hold Swedish pop music to a higher standard than most. And even for a self-confessed Swedophile like myself, I have to give this album two opposable thumbs up – but for completely different reasons than I like most Swedish music. I was singing along with the opening track “Candy” before the end of the first listen. Vocal melody seems to be where the Swedes soar, but El Perro del Mar (translation “Sea Dog”) adds a refreshing twist with a production style that sounds more like quintessential American “wall of sound” than it does any of the obvious earlier Swedish influences. Press for El Perro Del Mar always points to her Motown and Spector girl group influence. It is there no doubt. But I find myself trying to imagine this album coming out in the early 60’s. The lyrical content is way too melodramatic, and even tragicomic, to have been on the radio in the 60’s – even too revisionist girl group and un-commercial to be on the radio in 2006 for that matter. Heartbreak and misery haven’t felt this good in a while. I would recommend for fans of Motown girl groups, Broadcast, and Joanna Newsom- and some Neil Young fans as well.

- Jeremy Midkiff