Odessa, the Bee Gees' fourth proper full length, from 1969, found the band returning to the lush baroque pop of 1st and Horizontal, after the more rock combo styled Idea. For those of you who only know the Bee Gees from their later incarnation as THE disco group and their iconic Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, boy are you in for a surprise. Well before any of that happened, the three brothers Gibb were masters at crafting gorgeous orchestral pop songs - think the Beach Boys, the Zombies, the Beatles, and you'll get an idea of what we're talking about.
Having three brothers in the band meant HARMONIES, and indeed, the vocal harmonies are heavenly, as is each of the brothers' voices on their own, but those angelic voices are backed up by a crack band, and some incredible orchestration. Odessa was infamous for many reasons: disputes over which single to release caused Robin to quit the band briefly, the non-Gibb guitarist Vince Melouney quite the band, the record originally came in red flocked covers that had to be discontinued because they were too expensive and workers assembling the lps complained of allergic reactions, and most importantly, the sound shifted somewhat dramatically, with the sound returning to the lush, almost overwrought, over the top sound of the first two records, and ends up being super sprawling, incorporating all sorts of psychedelic vamps, and stripped down ballads into the usual collection of perfect orchestral pop gems.
The quasi-bummer about this reissue, is that it's been expanded to a whopping 3 discs, the first two exactly the same except one is all stereo mixes, and the second is all mono mixes, while the third is called Sketches For Odessa, which is exactly that, raw takes and demos, a cool glimpse into the process of making the record, but really, only the most obsessive fans will ever listen to the 2nd or 3rd discs, cuz all you really need is the record proper, but as this is currently the only way to get Odessa, we have to say, even though it's pricey, for lovers of classic pop, it's well worth it. PLUS, the reissue has been restored to its red flocked metallic gold lettered glory!
As with the other records, Odessa is packed with the most amazing pop songs, catchy and wistful, melancholy and dreamy, lots of acoustic guitars, soaring strings, harps, subtle horns, shuffling drums, chimes bells, at it's most lush, it's almost syrupy, but then a song later, it'll be just vocals and guitar. A bunch of the songs sound SUPER Beatles-y, with the vocals more raw, the drums more propulsive, the sound pretty rocking, but even those songs are laced with strings, and are transformed into something distinctly their own. This is definitely a complicated record. Released as a double album, later as a single, lots of fantastic songs (if you loved "Holiday", off of 1st, odds are you'll find lots to love here), some strange almost variety show sounding jams, and a few far out numbers, that prove the boys never shied away from experimenting or doing their own thing. Heck, we made 1st a Record Of The Week, we probably could have / should have done the same with Idea and Horizontal, so keep that in mind when we suggest, that in some ways, Odessa might be the best / weirdest / most underappreciated of the four. So yeah, obviously recommended. Big time.
Git ready for some gritty bluesy rawk'n'roll, kids! Beehive & The Barracudas' fourth full length, the follow-up to their darkly brooding In Dark Love, gets things back on the track of their more characteristic smokin' punchy garage action! This is a band with plenty of shit-disturbin' attitude as is more than evident in their album art (an explicit collaged shamble of assorted peni and Dubya), song titles and lyrics (such as "Fuck It Out", "Stupid Asshole" and "Hitler's Cock")... not to mention the way they deliver them -- suitably slurred, sneered and snarled. Nasty!
San Diego's Beehive And The Barracudas are back at it again, but this time they're taking a rather more subdued, smouldering and angular approach than on their previous two heart-pounding, ass-kicking albums. Still it's no less raw, and certainly no less immediate -- featuring a mix of live drums and old drum machines, dingy guitars and squidgy analog synths. And it's all topped off with some rad lanky boy / saucy girl vocals. The third song "Stuck On The Bus" echoes with a certain bluesy Television-ness, and the rest of the album definitely has that early '80s New York art rock grittiness. Think of this as the soundtrack to the after-party that just might follow a whiskey 'n' jet-fueled Beehive live frenzy.
San Diego superstars ND (Rocket From The Crypt) and Dirty/Dustin join Kerry from the Red Aunts and a ton of others to form Beehive and The Barracudas. Not unlike the high octane fire power of RFTC, but more garage-y and tough. Fans of the White Stripes or the
This is the first release from this all star supergroup. Members of Rocket From The Crypt, Tanner, The Red Aunts, The Pee-Chees, and Last of the Juanitas... Oh, but don't think they sound like any of the above. As a matter of fact, it's a sweet blend of soul,
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Skweee!!! See our Museum of Future Sound review for more explanation...
"A Touch Of Brimstone" was intended to be the 10th anniversary release for the Dutch ambient / industrial duo Beequeen (Frans De Waard and Freek Kinkelaar), but the nature of Beequeen's extensive side projects delayed the anniversary by almost 4 years. Nevertheless, this album collects a number of (mostly) unreleased tracks from 1989 to 1995, with the one previously released track coming from their debut recording "Scala Destillans" which was issued in a whopping pressing of 250 copies. The Beequeen sound has been and probably will always be a synthesis of a number of pre-existing ideas. At this time, those references for Beequeen were the phasing ambience of Klaus Schultz and Brian Eno, the isolationist practices of Maeror Tri, the clinical feedback noise of early SPK, and the magickal psychedelia of the Legendary Pink Dots. Thus, soft drones, ghosts of songs, and distant drum machine pulsatsions structure Beequeen's ongoing activities.
Beequeen is but one of the many sides to Frans De Waard - the Dutch vangardist who has also explored post-techno minimalism in Goem, blissful guitar drone work in Shifts, musique concrete in Kapotte Muziek, and about a half-dozen other smaller projects. As with all of those aforementioned projects, De Waard typically follows the lead of a 'trendy' line in experimental music -- PanSonic, Main, Pierre Henry, etc. For Beequeen, it's a little more vague, originally taking off from the Legendary Pink Dots (as De Waard met fellow Beequeen member Freek Kinkelaar out of their mutual admiration of Ka-Spel and Co.), but more recently picking up cues from the Temporary Residence aesthetic of quiet guitar led introspection and moody post-rock atmospheres espoused by Sonna and Tarentel. As with the majority of the De Waard projects, Beequeen mimics its influences remarkably well.
Frans De Waard and Freek Kinkelaar have been very active in the Dutch experimental sound community for well over two decades in far too many projects to count. Beequeen was one of those projects, having originally producing some lovely post-Eno driftwork ambient pieces; yet, over the past three album, De Waard and Kinkelaar have steadily pulled atmospheric songs and folk structures out of that ambience. Sandancing is the latest venture and really seems to be mining the same skeletal songwriting as Low had on Secret Name. It doesn't hurt that the two have recruited vocalist Olga Wallis to join their project, as she's got a voice eerily similar to Low's Mimi Parker.
Pete Swanson's post Yellow Swans trajectory into the uncharted realms (at least uncharted by most other noise making weirdos originally from the "floorcore" scene) of twisted, noise drenched avant techno, takes a not entirely drastic detour here. On the oddly named Hobo On The Face Of Music, Swanson joins up in a duo with his pal Brian Sullivan, adopting the moniker Beer Damage, and proceeds to lay out a slab of churning rhythmic noise, warped industrial ambience and dense textured experimentation, a sound that most definitely harkens back to the days of his old duo, but pushes the sound way further, into the furthest reaches of garbled, rhythmic, free-noise psychedelia. Sonically somewhat aligned with an outfit like, say, Campbell Kneale's Our Love Will Destroy The World, Swanson and Sullivan take a similar tack, of burying rhythms and distorted melodies, beneath thick, roiling, chopped up layers of sound, stuttering and dizzying, some serious WTF? sonic carnage, that occasionally coalesces into dark beauty, or driving rhythmic churn. The A side launches directly into a jumbled Jeckian soundscape of warbling loops and woozy tangled melodies, splintering into squalls of haywire machinery, spewing, bleeps and bloops and sheets of crunchy gristle. All eventually buried beneath a cascade of glitched out whir and swirling collaged plunderphonia. There are still lots of rhythms going on, what sounds like primitive beat-boxing at one point, accompanied by detuned drones, a barrage of twisted babel-like vox, a crumbling soundfield pelted by squelches from all sides. Amidst all this chaos lurks some loveliness too. Blurred sprawls of smoldering jazz-noise drift, wistful and melancholic, but doused in grime and grit, but even the pretty parts, eventually transform into stuttering grooves, dementedly chopped and looped into haphazard blurts of murk and twisted melting sound effects.
The flipside seems a bit more tranquil and serene, but really only a bit, starting out super pretty, but still plenty warped and warbly, detuned varispeed plucks hurled from on high and landing with a series of sonic splats over looped swirls of cosmic garble. The side begins to drift into rhythmic territory again, with some clipped and glitched out weirdo grooviness, before crumbling into a blackened decaying noisiness, wreathed in muted guitar freakout, all blurred into prismatic psychedelic smears. Finally the record ends not with a bang, or a whimper, more like a strangled, demented sprawl of stumbling, collaged lysergia, a sample-delic robot-noise, that sounds almost carnivalesque, with truncated voices, and even some harmonica (?), a twisted finale, that sounds like it was filtered through a malfunctioning transistor radio in the hands of a restless toddler with ADD. Phew! Warped, and weird, and really kind of dementedly wonderful.
In past reviews of earlier Beets records, we found ourselves imagining them as the result of some sort of Thee Oh Sees / Shaggs sonic breeding experiment, a mix of naive primitivism and fuzzy reverby garage rock pound, and on this latest, not too much has changed, although the things that have, only serve to make these guys sound better than ever. The production is way less lo-fi, the more polished production perfectly complimenting the stripped down instrumentation, and the songs, still stripped down and minimal, sound somehow more fully fleshed out and way catchier (although subtly so). The vibe is also a bit darker and dronier, with a huge Velvets vibe, woozy and druggy and hypnotic, most of the songs with just one or two parts, repetitive and jangly, with the more upbeat jams sounding almost Beatles-esque, classic three chord jangle pop, over shuffling drums and peppered with some twisted atonal sort-if-solos (there's even some flute!!). For the most part though, this is just some perfectly dreamy, jangly, catchy, stoney and droney left field ramshackle folk pop bliss, that we just can't seem to stop listening to.
And like all of their other records, more of that immediately recognizable cartoon cover art depicting the theme of the record (all The Beets records have themes), this one about "letting the poison out of your system."
Now available on cd!
Captured Tracks is turning into the go to label for rad and limited vinyl pressings (and cd's!) of some of the most interesting and offbeat damaged garage pop bands around. Recent releases from the label include records by Blank Dogs, Brilliant Colors, Dum Dum Girls, etc. The Beets fit perfectly with the label's aesthetic, these are some way lo-fi reverbed out rudimentary garage pop gems with a charming kind of innocence about them. We hear a kinship with Thee Oh Sees, especially circa Sucks Blood, as these tracks have that same kind of stoned and lacka-daze-ical quality. Imagine what it might sound like if Dwyer and company did a bunch of Shaggs covers and you'd pretty much have the Beets. There is something so refreshingly effortless and free flowing about this record. Maybe it's their name but we have dreams of seeing them play live in a friend's kitchen as we nibble on snacks and they use everything in the kitchen sink to create totally endearing lo-fi punk rock brilliance.
There is something about knowing your sound and keeping your focus which is kind of crucial when you are a band playing very primitive ramshackle DIY folk/punk. The Beets know this so well, in fact right on the cover it says this is a collection of thirteen new songs about staying home. And many of the tracks are in fact about why the world can often make staying in your own room the only viable alternative. They keep all the subject matter very simple yet painfully honest. It's about relationships, regret, fear, longing...all delivered in a way stripped down lo-fi left-field garage pop sound. Following in the tradition of folks like Daniel Johnston, The Shaggs, Half Japanese, Beat Happening and Jonathan Richman, The Beets remind us that when done right, less can be so much more!
From the same label that brought us the blissed out raga ritualism of High Mountain Tempel, and elsewhere on this week's list, the psychedelic kosmische drift of Raagnagrok, comes something a little different, the first (only?) release from Beggars, a name you might not know, but odds are you know some of the players, Glenn Donaldson (Jewelled Antler, Skygreen leopards, etc.) and Steven R. Smith (Thuja, Hala Strana, etc.) as well as a member of Maquiladora. But before you go expecting some field recording flecked psychedelia, get ready for something a bit more mellow, and a lot more country. The opener "Ghost Coyote" is a twang flecked smolder, that sounds a bit like a slower, druggier, instrumental Mazzy Star, but then "Eureka, My Love", find the sound slipping into something closer to Townes Van Zandt, melancholic, sad sack country, rife with warmly organ, steel string strum, aching vocals, all reverie and softly echoey, the follow up reminds us a bit of stoner country geniuses Souled American, all druggy, and drowsy. Some of the tracks to get a little trippy, like the warmly angular melodies on "2-3-74 Floating", or the entirety of the nearly 23 minute countrified drone jam "Midget Decapitates Clown", which begins strum my and drifty, before mutating into something much more abstract and dense, tripped out and psychedelic, almost like the soundtrack to some strange psychological thriller from the seventies.
But then the second disc gets right back into it, woozy, soft psych and countrified dream folk, shades of the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, that sort of thing, lazy, hazy country folk, back porch, sun dappled dreaminess, with subtle bits of experimentation here and there, but really, pretty much straight up psychedelic country folk, that while well removed from the Jewelled Antler sound of old, is still pretty nice.
Double cd housed in a fancy full color digipak.
Back in stock! This 1996 release by BTPNLSL -- featuring members of Mukilteo Fairies, Noggin and Tight Bros From Way Back When -- still rocks hard as fuck in 2004. An ear-splitting cacophony - 20+ short, fast bursts of frenetic hardcore (average song length being about 45 seconds) combined with a thick wall-of-noise punctuated by evil violin scree, and unlike much modern noise / metal / whatever, completely sans irony. This stuff rocks hard. Seriously hard. While their namesake may have been a Deicide song, their music comes from the '90s school of chaotic, complex punk / grind that has given birth to bands like Heroin, The Locust, Antioch Arrow, Clickitat Ikatowi, although the vocals are way less growly and demonic and more wildly gutteral stuck-pig squeal. Aside from having their own string section (in the form of the violinist from Northwestern free noise mavens Noggin) they also manage to pull off the best hardcore-and-saxophone combination ("Zero Zero Night Vision") since Siege's '84 dirge "Grim Reaper." Brutal and unrelenting like the best of them, yet smart too... underneath the neo-satanic stylings you can see their twisted Olympia-style humor (campy metal interludes lifted from Ted Nugent and "Heavy Metal Parking Lot") as well as lyrics with political themes and references to gay sex. Hardcore fans, noise-rock enthusiasts, metal warriors, homopunk faithfuls -- all will gratefully bow before the mighty Prophet!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The 3" cd format is perfect for this band's music, as their ultra-technical instrumental metal is so intense that it could easily compact itself into an "infinitely hot dense dot" and I guess a 3 inch cd is the next closest thing! Two songs, 11 minutes is plenty really 'cuz when it's over you'll just want to hit play again and again in order to absorb fully the head-jarringly complex and crazy compositional mayhem these guys crank through with seemingly effortlessness. The interestingly named Behold...The Arctopus is a trio featuring Colin Marston on "hyperfutureguitarbass" (or, the 12-stringed instrument otherwise known as the much maligned Chapman stick), Charlie Zeleny on "lead drums", and Mike Lerner playing the "nuclear yellow guitar" whatever that means. He sure knows how to play it anyway. We know Colin from his other band Infidel!/Castro? and here he proves that the hints of prog-metal we thought we heard in that rather more experimental, electronic group weren't just in our imagination! This is chopsy progressive metal taken to a ridiculous extreme, like Tony Macalpine vs. Melt Banana in a computer simulation of WWWIII. Definitely not for everyone, but if you know and enjoy such bands as Watchtower, Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Theory In Practice, and if GIT (Guitar Institute Of Technology) and PIT (Percussion Institute of Technology) aren't bad words for you, you'll probably consider the purchase of a Behold...The Arctopus disc to be six bucks well spent. It's the first in a series of 3" cds on the Epicene imprint devoted to "complex, difficult" music, and we imagine it's gonna be hard to top this one.
More teched-out uber-complex instru-metal madness from this celebrated math-metal unit, at last! Technically (and these guys are technical all right) this is only their 2nd full-length album, though they have released several densely-packed eps as well. But this is their first release in several years, following 2007's Skullgrid, about which we said: "chock full of their usual blazing fast fretboard acrobatics (on instruments with WAY more strings than most guitarists would want to contend with) and blasting superprogalistic complexpialidocious drumming."
Well, after all these years, things haven't changed much in the BTA camp, except that they have the infamous Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers, Hatewave, Burmese, etc.) on drums now, making 'em even scarier! He's the newest crazed cog in the chaotic clockwork of this trio, also featuring guitarist Mike Lerner (Direwolf) and Warr guitar maestro Colin Marston (who is also a member of technical black metal maniacs Krallice, alongside Mick Barr).
So, slap this on, stand back, and prepare to be both blasted and boggled, via such dense, deathly, demented ditties as "Monolithic Destractions" and "Putrefucktion"... For fans of Electro Quarterstaff, Krallice, Melt-Banana, Meshuggah...
First lesson you learn from these guys: you don't mess around with something like nano-nucleonic cyborg summoning. Leave it to the pros. It's dangerous, but that's what they're paid to do. Paid handsomely, in fact, as this $14.98 cd turns out to be only 17 minutes and 38 seconds long. But again, start cutting costs and those nano-nuke cyborgs could just get loose and wreak havoc. But the only havoc being wreaked here is all by the Behold The Arctopus guys, whom it will be remembered last blew our prog-lovin' minds with the instrumental tech-metal tour-de-force of their Arctopocalypse Now...Warmageddon Later 3" cd. Now that they've graduated to the 5" cd format, you can only imagine how much more insane their music has gotten! These musical nerd-athletes will bring a gleeful smile to the face of anyone into the extremes of technical complexity practiced by, say, Meshuggah or Melt-Banana. Headspinning stuff, recommended to all who think that the Chapman Stick is the under-utilized lead instrument that most other metal bands are lacking, and that somebody should do something about it -- that somebody being Behold The Arctopus' Colin Martson (also of Infidel!/Castro?, who have a new double cd coming soon on Crucial Blast by the way). Those for whom straightforward, 4/4, less than triple digit bpm drumming is a problem will also happily approve of this.
So, again, sorry this is so relatively expensive for the length -- but for sure they do cram a fuck of a lot of music in those 1,058 seconds!!
In the time it takes to read this review, your head would have spun around about 1000 times if you'd been listening to this album, instead. It's the latest tour de force from hyper technical math metal geeks Behold The Arctopus, and it's chock full of their usual blazing fast fretboard acrobatics (on instruments with WAY more strings than most guitarists would want to contend with) and blasting superprogalistic complexpialidocious drumming. Imagine a jazz fusion band called Melt-Meshuggah, with Eddie Van Halen sitting in to shred, that's kinda what BTA is all about. Whew! We can really only stop and stare at the stereo when these boys get going, though they do let up for some post-rock atmospheric bits too at times. It's all instrumental, also as per usual, with song titles like "Canada", "Scepters", "You Are Number Six", and the sorta Champs-ily named "Some Mist".
Wherein these two bands try to outdo each other (and everyone else in the world) at being absolutely the most INSANE, frenzied, complex, technical-prog-metallic-masturbatory band ever. Good thing it's so short (two tracks, a little under nine minutes total for the disc) 'cause both bands (and listeners!) would be utterly exhausted if they went on any longer.
In one corner, you've got Behold The Arctopus from New York, who have wanky prog gizmo the Chapman Stick in their instrumental arsenal. In the other, from right here in San Francisco, guitarist Mick Barr's Orthrelm, and Mick don't need no stinkin' Stick. Well, get this and you can judge who is the winner.
Pretty clearly, fans of either or both bands need this for sure, and will additionally be tickled pink by the cool cover artwork, by none other than Voivod drummer Away (who's got an art book coming out on Troubleman sometime soon, we hear).
It's been couple years at least since we last heard from Beirut, and knowing the meticulous care that goes into each release, we imagined it would be well worth the wait, and were VERY excited to discover this brand new 7". Turns out that "East Harlem" while never recorded before, was written by Beirut boy wonder Zach Conden, when he was just 17 years old. An orchestral pop stunner on which he plays trumpet, ukulele, Hammond organ on top of his usual guitar and vocal duties. The B side is pretty dang great too, "Goshen" opens with somber piano and Conden's emotive vocals setting the stage for the perfect Sunday morning serenade. We hear bits of Rufus Wainwright, Antony, and Jeff Buckley in both these great tracks, and Conden has proven he belongs in that great league of amazing singers with equally stunning musical minds.
It would be all too easy and short-sighted to draw up a musing comparison such as "if The Arcade Fire were a band of Balkan gypsy minstrels, they would be Beirut", but it might be a pretty accurate place to start. Now let's take into consideration that Beirut is one nineteen year old Albuquerque lad, Mr. Zach Condron. Quite a boy wonder, indeed he's been making music for a quarter of his life, and it's not been the usual crashing 'n' bashing about in the garage expected of restless youths nor is it just the regurgitative sounds of musical heroes. Condron finely crafts a remarkably broad spectrum of timeless music well beyond his years. His singing voice is reminiscent of Adrian Belew and David Byrne, and his lilting, often calypso-y melodies also bring to mind the offbeat, worldly elements that those two venerable artists have embraced in their music over the years. You can easily envision the brass instruments glowing in the light of oil lanterns as they emerge from the shadows bringing in tow a carnivalesque procession of accordion, mandolin, clarinet, piano, ukelele, cello and bustling percussion. It's not at all surprising that he's become comrades with Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trosk of the very like-minded A Hawk And A Hacksaw (both of whom assisted Condron in the studio). An utterly captivating listen. Recommended.
Here's a new five song ep from Balkan gypsy music revisionists Beirut! Mainman Zach Condon has picked right up from where his luminous debut album Gulag Orkestar left off... and he's assembled a full band in the process! You might recall that A Hawk And A Hacksaw's Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trosk provided musical support on the album. This ep is comprised of four new songs and an alternate full band version of "Scenic World" (which originally appeared on the album). If you dig the abovementioned A Hawk And A Hacksaw, you're probably already familiar with their pals and collaborators Beirut (and vice versa). If not, what're you waiting for? Wonderful stuff!
Previous Beirut records have taken the listener on a Gypsy tour of Europe, narrated by the croon of frontman/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Zach Condon. The first disc of this newest release, March of the Zapotec, takes us instead to Mexico, where Condon's instrumental proficiencies are utilized beautifully, though his vocals only really appear on one of the tracks. The first track is a thirty second field recording "of an unknown band" (so says the liner notes), which sets up the brevity and Mariachi-influence of the rest of the disc. Accompanying Condon on three of the tracks is Band Jimenez, a 19 person orchestra from Oaxaca. Needless to say, these tracks are even fuller and lusher than the fullest and lushest of any of Beirut's previous recordings. Though the cover of the record boasts of "new recordings from the state of Oaxaca," only 2.5 of the tracks were actually recorded there, our guess is because of the expense of flying all 19 members of Band Jimenez to Brooklyn.
We find ourselves more drawn to the second disc, entitled Realpeople Holland, despite the lack of horns. It's full of muted electronic percussion and strange keyboard lines, with Condon's voice turned WAY up in the mix. Sometimes his lyrics betray his youth (the corny naivete of "And I believed her then, ohhhhhh..."), but his vocal tone adds beautiful layers, so we end up not really caring what he's saying. The keyboards sound like something out of an '80s sci-fi movie soundtrack with just a hint of flange thrown in for good measure. There's a bit of variation in the instrumentation too on the fourth track "The Concubine," where an accordion and a triangle revolve around a pulsing acoustic drum beat. This track sounds more like previous Beirut records than anything else on this disc, the other songs bearing more resemblance to Walter Carlos or the Magnetic Fields on an acid trip.
Recommended.
At nineteen, Zach Condon (vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and mastermind behind Beirut) released a delightful solo album of Balkan folk music which sounded so far beyond his years. Now, almost a decade has gone by, allowing age and experience to lend themselves to his timeless craftsmanship on new album, No No No. The title track playfully starts off with a distant arcade game intro before diving into the round, harmonious vocals and type of bouncing arrangement we've come to associate with Beirut's ingenious style of pop. "As Needed" features the most whimsical, lilting strings and "Perth" follows with the warmest, most intimate horn interludes. The instrumental and vocal palette of the group's fourth full-length album is so wonderfully rich that at times their sound seems as though it has been lightly dipped in liquid gold. No No No is a romp, and while maybe nothing could truly make us want to roll around in a field full of daisies with our best childhood friend (hay fever is brutal!), Beirut has come damn close with this one.
On Beirut's third album main man Zach Condon has shaken up their Balkan gypsy music-centric status quo with a baker's dozen less specifically Eastern European folk inspired numbers. Even with this unexpected, freshly broadened scope, Beirut still charms with a lushly beautiful, captivatingly otherworldliness. In fact Condon's transformed himself into something of a balladeer with a dramatic lilting croon that draws easy comparisons to Adrian Belew. Now living in France, you can hear the influence his new home is having on him. Check out the melancholic carousel waltz of "A Sunday Smile" and the deceptively titled sprightly paced "In The Mausoleum". It's like being privy to a stranger's vivid sepia toned memories of distant lands, lives and loves. As always, very recommended!
Zach Condon and his entourage are back for another album of lush, orchestral pop. Piano, pump organs, horns, keyboards, and more creating the rich tapestry for Condon's soaring and emotive vocals. Sure to please fans of the band, as this displays both their more subdued and melancholic side as well as their more bright and poppy leanings. Music that makes you want to head to the shore with nothing more then a blanket, a small bag of your most precious belongings and a bottomless bottle of red wine.
Special deluxe packaging while they last, cloth-covered hardback sleeve, both the cd and vinyl (the latter of which comes with mp3 download code).
So many good releases on the Swedish label Hapna, it's hard to keep up! But we didn't want to overlook this one, 'cause Italian experimentalist Andrea Belfi is one half of the duo known as Crista Pfangen, whose Watch Me Getting Back The End, an album of (in our words) "fragmented yet melodic, experimental avant-indie pop", appeared earlier this year on Die Schachtel, and got a big thumbs up from us.
As a solo artist, Belfi delves here into a weird (but successful) conceptual minimalist electro-acoustic experiment based around something about making music from ordinary household sounds. Hmm... it's an interesting house Belfi must live in! It's a dwelling of gentle drones, glitchy mystery, and shimmering, skitteringly propulsive percussion (sounding at times not unlike that recent excellent Tarentel double cd). And the neighbors doing strange things upstairs, moving furniture and stuff. Field recordings, electronics, vague voices, and regular ol' instruments mesh into a lovely bit of work here. Definitely worth investigating especially if you're into the Italian scene populated by Belfi's pals like 3/4hadbeeneliminated, Stefano Pilia, Giuseppe Ielasi, etc.
Believer is the new musical project of Danny Paul Grody and Trevor Montgomery (both from Tarentel and The Drift as well as various other side projects and solo outfits including Lazarus, and Moholy-Nagy). For their debut release put out by Land And Sea, who brought us the Coconut 7" from a couple of lists ago, the duo recorded three expansive synth-based compositions that are beautifully minimal and impressionistic. Using loops, sweeping bell tones and guitar washes, the three tracks encompass a kind of melodic formlessness, beginning with a pattern and then slowly letting it dissolve into something much airier, all the while still maintaining a sense of gravity and musical purpose. A fine debut that makes us look forward to whatever comes next. Super limited to 50 copies in handsewn paper covers (that you have to rip or cut open to get to the disc!). Highly Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Believer is always a good read, but you won't want to miss the 2005 Music issue. Plenty of good reading this time around as well: articles about Beck, the Danielson Famile, Carrie Brownstein of Sleater Kinney interviews Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a discussion between comedian Patton Oswalt and musician Aimee Mann, an interview with teenage rock combo Smoosh, an article about singing drummers and much much more. But you also get a cd jam packed with Aquarius faves, covering -other- Aquarius faves: the Decemberists cover Joanna Newsom, Spoon covers Yo La Tengo, the Constantines cover Elevator To Hell, the Espers cover Fursaxa, the Mountain Goats cover the Silver Jews, Coco Rosie cover Damien Jurado, The Shins cover Postal Service, San Serac cover Ida, Josephine Foster covers the Cherry Blossoms, Cynthia G. Mason covers Richard Buckner, and Jim Guthrie covers the Constantines. Wow!
Anyone responsible for helping make such stunning sounds over the years with Stars Of The Lid definitely demands our undivided attention with any other related project or band. So when we heard that Brian McBride of Stars Of The Lid had a new band with Kenneth Gibson of Furry Things, we knew we needed to check it out. With a large ensemble backing them up, the two have crafted an immaculate orchestral pop record, that sounds nothing like any of their previous bands, but proving that McBride is a master of creating such beautiful and moving sounds no matter what shape or genre he is working with. Imagine the dreamiest version of The Byrds, the emotional impact of Elliott Smith, the most seductive elements of the Beach Boys, the shoegaze country vibes of Mojave 3, and you start to get an idea of the warm sounds that make up this beautiful debut.
Understated yet totally lush and full of soft sweeping melody. There doesn't seem to be a lot of press or hype surrounding this, but under the radar, Bell Gardens have crafted six of the most satisfying songs of the year!
Arcade Fire alert! Sonically the Canadian ensemble, who go by the name Bell Orchestre, distill together all of the disparate sounds of the highly lauded music collective lead by Godspeed You Black Emperor and Broken Social Scene, but it actually features members of, yes, Arcade Fire! At times richly and expansively atmospheric, at others things adhere to more traditional pop structures. Incorporating traditional and less traditional instrumentation (yes, lots of bells, brass, strings, metallic percussion, recordings of animals, a typewriter and other noisemakers), Recording A Tape The Colour Of The Sky is quite a wonderful encapsulation of the many fine sounds coming out of Canada these days (Montreal, in particular), sans vocals. Fevered violin bowing here, a roaming gypsy-ish interlude there, a driving beat here, a lonely french horn over there. And to endear it even more to our ears, the album all begins in a similarly wistful, foghorns in the distance fashion as recent AQ fave Yha Hamaraa by the Finnish band Paavoharju. Packaged in a cool die-cut cardboard sleeve.
Chris Bell was an original member of mighty pop legends Big Star, but quit the band after their debut, #1 Record failed to propel them to super stardom. For the next few years years, Bell struggled with depression while recording demo after demo. In 1977, Bell released the single "I Am The Cosmos", an amazing little slab of practically perfect pop, an absolutely beautiful gem, dense with wistful harmonies and glistening instrumentation, which ended up being a big enough hit that it drove Bell to form a band to begin work on a new album. But before that could happen, Bell died in a tragic car accident. I Am The Cosmos was a collection of all of his unreleased demos, but played like some lost classic album. As good as any of the Big Star records for sure. A dark and brooding, dreamy and glistening pop masterpiece, from beginning to end. Super varied, from crunchy melodic power pop to deep introspective ballads, but somehow all the parts fit perfectly. So goddamn good.
180 gram vinyl!
This Train is most definitely a solid record, one that serves as a compliment to film auteur David Lynch's recent solo effort, Crazy Clown Time. Cave-like reverb that echoes and deepens, surf-esque tremoloed guitars, simple drum loops and synth pads. Chrysta Bell, unknown to us until this record arrived, has a superb voice: pretty but not showy, thick but not overbearing. She's no Julee Cruise, though, and this record is not The Voice of Love. Missing are the unique songwriting skills of Angelo Badalamenti, his emotional depth and incredible sense of melody. Whereas Crazy Clown Time held its own (the humor, the strange meditational rant in the middle of the record), This Train feels a bit flat at times. Overall, it has a very soothing mood, the production and the tones, but it's not a very energetic or varied record. Halfway through, "Real Love" and "Bird of Flames" pick up the pace a bit and add some heavier sounds and distortion. The opening track "This Train" also stands out. Bell sings on every song, backed up by Lynch and Dean Hurley (Lynch's collaborator on Crazy Clown Time), and John Neff.
Bella lead the charge of Vancouver's next generation of new new new wavers! Surprising how a trio of such dour faced kids can whip up such peppy synth pop. No doubt there reside a few Blondie, New Order, and Kim Wilde records (ahem, cds?!) in their music collections? We're not complaining though 'cause while these gals and guy are not winning any originality awards, they are winning our hearts with their youthful exuberance and infectious hooks. No One Will Know was recorded with the very complimentary help of John Collins of New Pornographers as well as Roddy Bottum and Will Schwartz of their genre elders Imperial Teen. In fact, many tunes here could easily be mistaken for those of a younger I.T. Super breezy and catchy, and oh so teen movie soundtrack ready!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
On one half of this little 4-song slice of Belle & Sebastian heaven, the band gets all charmingly '80s funky with lotsa ching-a-ling guitars, grooving synths, tight drumming ("Your Cover's Blown" and a remix version). The other two songs are of their more characteristic sunshiney pop -- the deliriously wonderful "Wrapped Up In Books" from their Dear Catastrophe Waitress album and "Your Secrets". Some AQ folks wince at the B&S toothsomeness, but Cup adores it... particularly their ability to bring together the wide-eyed sugar and the sharp-tongued wit. So if you share her sweet-tooth and/or dig B&S yourself, you'll prolly wanna scoop this up asap. Truly a fan's delight, the 'enhanced' disc is filled with other fun B&S stuff too -- namely a video and computer game!
Belle & Sebastian remixed??!! On paper that sounds like a potential recipe for disaster. And we have to be honest, when we first saw this 12" we were kind of hesitant to listen to it at all, but after really digging the Interpol remix 12" we decided to give it a spin. We're glad we did cause the Cold Cave remix of "I Didn't See It Coming" from the last Belle & Sebastian album, Write About Love, is one of the best remixes of the year. Cold Cave turns the twee indie pop song into a soft synth stunner. They don't try to make Belle & Sebastian all techno and dark (which we had feared) but instead give it a slight dancefloor push, reminding us a lot of the sound of Stephen Merrit's electro-pop project Future Bible Heroes. The other two remixes come from Richard X, and Tony Doogan, and there's also a brand new song called "Blue Eyes Of A Millionaire."
For a lot of folks, myself included, Belle and Sebastian always seemed a trifle too fey, too twee, too foofy and melodramatic, with their aloof beret-wearing, Pynchon-reading misunderstood hipster vibe and affected disaffectedness. And musically too, their sound was too 'lite', a little too wispy and bittersweet, even for those of us who love wussy pop. But this new record has us reconsidering all of that, and thinking maybe we ought to go back and re-assess our B&S position, mayb it was BS. Although it should be noted that part of our new found appreciation, stems from the fact that the new Belle And Sebastian are a whole different beast that the B&S of old. Okay, maybe not a WHOLE different beast, but you can tell from the opening track that something is very different. A bouncy, perfect power pop gem that sounds remarkably like AQ faves Silver Sun, or maybe the High Llamas, with a jaunty, bouncy rhythm, lush Beach Boys-esque harmonies, and hooks galore. The next few tracks manage to retain some of that power pop quirkiness while veering back towards more decidedly familiar B&S sonic territory. Eventually things do settle down, the mood gets a bit more somber and the sound becomes much more like the B&S of old, but that opening salvo's effects can still be felt all the way through the very last note.
Massive collection of videos, live performances, interviews, outtakes, TV appearances and a full length documentary. Over two hours of goodies. Haven't watched the whole thing, but from what we've seen it's pretty great, set up nicely, and some of the footage is truly breathtaking, fuzzy and dream like, while the behind the scenes stuff is pretty fun and funny. As the title makes clear, fans will definitely need this!
We figured that since all the B&S records were getting the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment, we might as well re-list the cds as well as they have long been big sellers around these parts.
Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant was Belle & Sebastian's fourth album. Although this album from 2000 is still filled with their early trademark fey Scottish songsmithery that so frequently is compared to Nick Drake and Donovan, it proved to be a leaping off or transitional point for the band as they pushed open the garden gate to venture beyond the twee boundaries into grander scale productions. The results are heartmeltingly splendid, but not without a wonderfully wry bit of biting humor here and there.
A li'l cd ep for all you Belle & Sebastian fans out there. Three songs in all. As you'll be happy and not at all surprised to discover, their folksy, honeyed, bittersweet romance brand of Scottish pop is in full bloom. With a puppy dog record sleeve to match the soft'n'cuddly tunes.
We figured that since all the B&S records were getting the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment, we might as well re-list the cds as well as they have long been big sellers around these parts.
If You're Feeling Sinister was Belle & Sebastian's second album and was first released back in 1997. It continued in the same ultra soft folk pop vein as its predecessor Tigermilk. So mellow and twee it could almost be a suitable soundtrack to a child's storybook if it weren't for the occasional darker lyrical twists. The musical equivalent of an Edward Gorey bedtime story. Adorable and precocious. Over the years, this is the album that invariably got recommended most to folks seeking "the best early B&S album"... that is, until their formerly very hard to find debut Tigermilk got rereleased. Now we have to say it's sort of a toss up as to which is "better". Aww heck, get 'em both, you probably won't be disappointed!
Three new tracks from these delicately fey, ever-popular Scottish types: "Johnathan David", "Take Your Carriage Clock And Shove It", and "The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner".
