RECORD REVIEWS

Matt and Bubba Kadane have never been in much of a hurry to do anything, neither with their beloved ’90s outfit Bedhead nor with their current gig, the New Year. So it’s no surprise that the follow-up to 2004’s The End Is Near took the brothers more than four years. “Folios” unfolds at the same snail-on-muscle-relaxants pace that made Bedhead so maddening and sneakily rewarding—little more than a repeated guitar chord and a tapped snare—before one of the interchangeably low-singing Kadanes ends the song with an amusing confession: “I don’t think the good years I’ve got can wait.” With that, they get right to it. This self-titled third album is, by these guys’ standards, quite the rush. Thanks to a typically front-and-center drum mix by engineer Steve Albini, walkabout pacesetters “X Off Days” and “The Door Opens” feel more like a mad dash. The unrushed songs are equally appealing, gussied up with elegant guitar and piano accents and spiked with disarming lines (“camping and orgies” are whispered among other soon-to-be-unmissed pleasures on deathbed missive “MMV”). If it takes the Kadanes another half-decade to match this half-hour of sublime music, the waiting will be the hardest part, indeed. [www.touchandgorecords.com]

—Noah Bonaparte Pais

Anybody expecting this unreleased session by the man who assembled the heavenly vocal blend of the Mamas And The Papas to sound anything like that beloved combo is doomed to disappointment. Without the pipes of Cass Elliott, Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty, you’re left with John Phillips’ rather ordinary voice singing self-penned tunes (“Zulu Warrior,” “She’s Just 14”) that sound like they were fished from the Rolling Stones’ rag bag. Not surprising, as these 1976-77 Jagger/Richards-produced sessions feature guitar work by Mick Taylor and Ron Wood. Only “Sunset Boulevard” has the self-assured vibe of Phillips’ excellent 1970 solo debut, The Wolf King Of L.A. Bonus material: Five unreleased tracks have been added, including “Don’t Turn Back Now (World’s Greatest Dancer),” which finds Phillips hopelessly lost and attempting a Tom Jones-style production number. An instrumental version of Ricky Nelson’s ”Hello Mary Lou,” an outtake from the soundtrack sessions for 1976 David Bowie film The Man Who Fell To Earth, is glammed up beyond recognition by Mick and Keith. [www.varesesarabande.com]

—Jud Cost

While conventional wisdom holds that Calexico fuses mariachi and rock music, the band has always accomplished more than that. Core members Joey Burns (vocals, guitars) and John Convertino (drums) can also kick up honky-tonk sawdust, wring tears with a folk ballad or make dim lights flicker with noir-jazz ambience, and they generally sound best when they’re doing more than one thing at a time. They went wrong on 2006’s Garden Ruin by trying to boil things down to protest lyrics and big rock moves; the result was as boring as a John Mellencamp record. Carried To Dust is a return to polyglot form. Burns and Convertino have swapped sincere-yet-simplistic politics for mysterious, discursive travelogues and brought back the mariachi horns and twangy desert guitars. They also heaped on guest appearances by Sam Beam (Iron And Wine) and Doug McCombs (Tortoise) and topped it off with studio experimentation. Carried To Dust is definitely Calexico’s best-sounding record: Each voice and instrument has its place, wheeling around Convertino’s graceful drumming like dancers going around the maypole. Someone had some fun mixing Carried To Dust; on “Fractured Air,” the bass drum’s reverberations pop in and out of the song, and treated piano and steel guitars swirl vertiginously around the singing on “Red Blooms.” That fun carries over to listening; with Calexico, more is definitely more. Welcome back, guys. [www.quarterstickrecords.com]

—Bill Meyer

Though more punk than pop, the Mint Chicks aren’t so easily corralled. Signed to New Zealand’s storied Flying Nun label, the chick-less trio seems itchy in genre pants, opting instead to rummage through piles of metal riffage, punk spastics and art-pop skittering. (The band calls its musical style “troublegum.”) While not as smooth or fluid as you might hope, Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! lives and dies by its herks and jerks, its more resonant moments never obscured by stubborn sequencing. Not such a warm welcome, opener “Ockham’s Razor” wrangles and then collapses on a scuzzy bass line that wouldn’t be out of place on a Queens Of The Stone Age record. Smuggling a hard-on for both Sabbath and the Ramones (much like could-be Mint Chick Jay Reatard), the sweetly melodic codas of “This Is Your Last Chance To Be Famous My Love” and “Walking Off A Cliff Again” signal sharp-toothed transitions from the basement to the stadium. Both are strong examples of the Chicks taking a pop number and burning it sky high, but it’s the title track that wears its dirt most attractively. Riding a snare roll that’s accompanied only by the occasional six-string groan and frontman Kody Nielson’s panting, it’s as satisfying a slice of pop noise as anything put to tape in ‘08. Crazy? Yes. Awesome? Sometimes. [www.flyingnun.co.nz]

—David Bevan

On paper, at least, this Louisville, Ky., power-pop trio would appear to be an utterly faultless proposition, an aging hipster rock critic’s proverbial wet dream. Broadfield Marchers have all the right moves and touch all the requisite musical reference points: a hefty slice of Radio City-era Big Star meets the Raspberries via Badfinger, with added echoes of The Who Sell Out, a whole lot of sub-Byrds Rickenbacker jangle and just a smidgen of R.E.M. mystique. All this plus a neat line in vocal harmonies and a succinct attitude toward song length (only two of the 19 tracks on sophomore effort The Inevitable Continuing clock in above the three-minute mark), and both this magazine and Mojo have lauded the band. What’s not to love, right? And yet, it’s all so interminably dull. The Inevitable Continuing is certainly pretty, and it possesses a certain psych-pop fragility. But nothing here ever gets under the skin. It’s as if it’s been airbrushed and buffed into near nothingness, calling to mind the last Shins album (another musical reference point), which promised so much and delivered so little. Ultimately, The Inevitable Continuing is a pleasantly inconsequential experience that wafts by and is gone before you know it. [www.rainbowquartz.com]

—Neil Ferguson

This legendarily eccentric dub-reggae producer has been steadily releasing albums since the early ’80s after he torched his Black Ark studio and fled Jamaica. However, it’s overwhelmingly Lee “Scratch” Perry’s work behind the mixing board in the ’70s that’s allowed him to pack clubs and festivals as a performer. Arguably, much of his solo material over the last quarter-century is no more disappointing than reggae itself has been since its ’70s heyday, which Perry contributed to mightily. It’s no small irony that Repentance is being heralded for its production, which isn’t by Perry, but by party-metal musician and motivational speaker Andrew WK. Of course, the degree to which the album works depends on the degree to which you can forget about all the amazing work Perry has already done. In fact, Repentance is a lot of fun. The naughty “Pum-Pum,” with its sexual moans and dime-store synth riffs, has the potential to be a club classic. In some ways, it’s trademark Perry, mixing schoolyard sex references with comments about Jesus. “Santa Claus” manages to mention Mickey Mouse, Judgment Day and, yes, Jesus; over a smart, hyper groove, he repeats these words and phrases over and over until, somehow, his randomness reveals its own sense. Not surprisingly, Repentance is least effective when Perry deals with straight reggae, as he does on “God Save His King.” There are simply too many superior grooves to be had to settle for this, both on this album and in Perry’s endless back catalog. [www.narnackrecords.com]

—Bruce Miller

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially if she happens to be a songwriter with the means to release her fury. Summer Of The Whore isn’t just a break-up album, it’s a vivisection. In brutally frank terms, it outlines the betrayal and dissolution of Shannon McArdle’s marriage to Timothy Bracy, her creative foil in the now-defunct Mendoza Line. From the outset, you know things aren’t good. “Poison My Cup,” though sonically lush and jangly, is lyrically toxic: “Don’t open that good wine, no honey, just fuck me up.” Things get darker from there, as song titles “Leave Me For Dead,” “I Was Warned” and “He Was Gone” suggest. Yet with words as her catharsis, music becomes McArdle’s salve, unspooling strings-laden Americana, ethereal dream pop, upbeat indie rock with a ’60s girl-group flavor, strummy folk rock and more. That her inviting murmur—a cross between Tift Merritt, Jenny Lewis and Chan Marshall—is so warm and not iced over from her ordeal makes Summer Of The Whore all the more intoxicating. In hindsight, the Mendoza Line was, despite its decade-long tenure, a combination of alt-rock influences in search of a firm identity. It’s worth noting, however, that a recurring theme in the group’s songs was personal/sexual politics, so it’s difficult not to imagine that whatever tension was brewing behind the scenes was mirrored on its albums. On Summer Of The Whore, McArdle takes that tension and pulls it until it snaps violently, leaving both artist and listener more than a little stunned. [www.bar-none.com]

—Fred Mills

When did setting poetry to music become cool again, you ask? Well, it didn’t, of course. Ask around on the street, and most folks would likely rather rip their eyeballs out with a plastic fork than listen to that sort of thing. Chamber Music and Recitement aren’t for them, but listeners more amenable to a poetry/music pairing might want to check out these two albums, assembled and composed by Fire Records head James Nicholls and Dutch musician Stephen Emmer, respectively.

Performed by an eclectic selection of bands and artists, Chamber Music (Fire) scores James Joyce’s 1907 poetry collection of the same name. A virtual who’s-who of indie-rock luminaries—including the Minus 5, Mike Watt, Mercury Rev, Flying Saucer Attack, Kinski and Bardo Pond—spans these two discs, which are beautifully packaged though criminally skimpy on track-by-track credits. Most of the songs here, such as Venture Lift’s retooling of Syd Barrett’s 1970 interpretation of “Golden Hair,” offer a simple framework for the equally straightforward verse, written years before Joyce’s more infamous experimental prose. What’s initially surprising is how well Joyce’s formal lyrics fit into traditional pop forms, but that makes sense on reflection. Chamber Music, as its title suggests, was intended as a collection of lyrics by a writer who was well-versed in the popular music of his day and, by all accounts, had an excellent tenor voice, too.

Recitement (Supertracks) presents a more traditional collection of poetry and prose readings (some new, some archival) set to original music by Emmer. The combination of texts and readers here is dizzying. Lou Reed reads Paul Theroux, Richard Burton reads Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino reads Yoko Ono; a few writers, Allen Ginsberg and Jorge Luis Borges among them, read themselves. Recitement is set to reserved if slickly produced music, but only on a couple of string-and-brass-laden tracks does it shoot for “soaring” and verge on “syrupy.” What’s interesting about Recitement are its small touches, like a quick blast of noise in an otherwise serene setting or the revelation that Reed’s nasal recitation sounds more interesting when he reads someone else’s words. As on Chamber Music, the tension produced when the texts meet the music provides the deepest enjoyment. [www.firerecords.com; www.recitement.com]

—Eric Waggoner

If My Brightest Diamond’s 2006 debut Bring Me The Workhorse was singer/songwriter Shara Worden’s dramatic move away from the clutches of her bud/boss Sufjan Stevens, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth is a damn fine second act. Beyond the too-grand operatic rush of her tunes, it should be noted that the New York-based Worden has a great shushy voice powered by a delicious warble at its center. It’s as if Björk and Jeff Buckley got together to listen to Queen’s A Day At The Races, only without ever becoming annoying. Worden writes powerfully worrisome, anti-romantic lyrics when she isn’t cribbing from Ravel (“Black And Costaud”), and she’s suspicious and carnivorous on the mammoth roar of “Goodbye Forever.” Star-struck by string sections, harps, vibraphones and horns, Shark’s Teeth is imbued with classicist elements throughout, from the rush of “Inside A Boy” to the tinkle of “The Ice & The Storm.” Though there are crinkled guitars and tiny beats slipped into the mix, they only add to the eloquence of the lush affair. [www.asthmatickitty.com]

—A.D. Amorosi

“I just want it to be weird,” Jim James told MAGNET last summer, when his still-gestating Evil Urges barely registered as a nefarious inclination. By that standard alone, My Morning Jacket’s fifth LP has one outright success: “Weird” is definitely the word to describe the industrial-funk “Highly Suspicious,” the album’s third song and even-money lightning rod. Any MMJ fans wondering when James would give in and embrace his inner Divine will thrill at the track’s over-the-top nitrous-oxide giggles and breathy, orgasmic squeals; for the Kentucky band’s legions of Bonnaroo-lording, Skynyrd-loving beardo diehards, it may be akin to FBI lifers finding out J. Edgar Hoover liked wearing dresses on the weekends. That said, the weirdest thing here is that nothing else is remotely weird; it’s actually a far milder affair than the musical-genre Cuisinart of 2005’s Z. The evilest urges James has are to spin some bald Eagles soft rock on “Thank You Too” and sex up a bookworm on the Donovan-esque “Librarian.” There’s Prince-ly panting here and a little Lenny Kravitz crooning there, but the straight-ahead rock and country numbers (“Remnants,” “Sec Walkin’”) fare better. “Touch Me I’m Going To Scream Part 2” has James remixing the album’s bland second track into an eight-minute, beat-based electro dream. Forget Evil Urges entirely; call this one Zzz. [www.atorecords.com]

—Noah Bonaparte Pais

Let’s get this right out in the open: Yes, Fleet Foxes sound like My Morning Jacket and, in turn, Band Of Horses. Buckets of vocal reverb and a taste for jangly roots music will do that. But looking beyond first impressions, this Seattle band’s rustic warmth and ’70s-shaded ambition deserve more than a brisk rundown of influences. Building on the promise shown on this spring’s Sun Giant EP, Fleet Foxes’ full-length debut showcases a gift for folk-adjacent mini-epics that evolve in unexpected directions yet never lose their organic center. “Ragged Wood” begins with a shuffling twang, but before settling too deeply into standard top-down Americana, the song downshifts into a loose, lovesick midsection whose eventual peak feels as natural as it does surprising. Yet for all the skillful touches shown throughout (the gorgeous piano closing “He Doesn’t Know Why,” the crescendo soaring over the flute-accented “Your Protector”), Fleet Foxes is practically stolen by “White Winter Hymnal,” a deceptively simple campfire nursery rhyme. At two-and-a-half hypnotic minutes, the song—like the rest of the album—may sound familiar, but it also is remarkably close to perfect. [www.subpop.com]

—Chris Barton

Is there trouble brewing in pop paradise? It sounds like someone’s been cheating on Mates Of State’s watershed fifth album. A stately Steinway has wedged itself between Kori Gardner and her beloved simple synth loops, and a whole suite of horns and strings is married to Jason Hammel’s steady, bare-bones drumbeats. It’s been an eventful two years for the East Haven, Conn., pair, who had two babies and have made the best album of their career for a second straight time. Building considerably on the subtle expansion of 2006’s Bring It Back, the powerhouse Re-Arrange Us is both natural progression and quantum leap. It’s notable, too, for matching the Mates’ loveliest music to their most doomsayer lyrics. Each hummable track contains an indelible “da-da-da/da-da-da” melody and a disturbing line such as “Everything’s gonna get lighter/Even if it never gets better.” On “My Only Offer” and “The Re-Arranger,” shining round-robin verses and soaring choruses belie relationship death knells. “We’re nearing the end,” confesses Hammel on self-explanatory summit “You Are Free.” For our sake, at least, say it ain’t so. [www.barsuk.com]

—Noah Bonaparte Pais

ROYAL BANGS: We Breed Champions [Audio Eagle]
Listen to the weary vocals and languid, Strokes-like guitars on “Broke Calculator,” and you could peg Royal Bangs as snotty, post-punk New York brats. The five-piece, in fact, comes rumbling and beeping out of Knoxville, Tenn., with a rough tangle of garage guitars and low-budget electronics. It’s no mystery why this self-produced debut found a home on Audio Eagle, the label run by the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney: There’s mud and grease smeared all over “Cat Swallow.” But there’s also considerable divergence from any one playbook, with cut-up hip-hop beats invading “Let’s Get Even” and closing-time keyboards bolstering the Wheat-like “Japanese Cars.” With no outside assistance—aside from “vocal and instrumental coaching” credited to the Pabst and Miller brewing companies in We Breed Champions’ sleeve—Royal Bangs are free to party out of bounds. [www.audioeaglerecords.com]

Read More »

For a group that earned its reputation for the confessional nature of its debut album (2006’s Declare A New State! was written and recorded as the duo broke off, then resumed, a romantic relationship), the L.A.-based Submarines have returned with a surprisingly sprightly sophomore effort. The direct, insistent choruses of songs such as “Maybe” seem to be crafted solely for their sing-along ease, while even the more brooding numbers (“Fern Beard”) are buoyed by singer Blake Hazard’s light-as-air voice. Things come together most effectively on “Thorny Thicket.” The song relies on copious amounts of glitchy electronica and warm, analog keyboards, over which Hazard and husband John Dragonetti (former frontman for Boston alt-rockers Jack Drag) wend their way through soaring harmonies about love in a way that’s either blissfully happy or perversely ironic. It’s a unique admixture of the serene and the sappy, of pop formality and contemporary experimentation, making the Submarines notable for more than just their romantic backstory. [www.nettwerk.com]

—Jason Ferguson

Not much happens on Russian Circles’ sophomore album. In fact, you’ll be nearly three minutes into the opening “Campaign” before the slowly expanding sound reaches a volume loud enough to grab your attention. At that particular moment, the guitars and drums swell to a glorious crescendo, and then … fall largely silent. This play on dynamics—lots of melodious quietude, punctured occasionally by loud, frenetic exertions—was also evident on the Chicago group’s 2006 debut, Enter. But for Station, Russian Circles emphasize the solid, flexible drumming of Dave Turncrantz. It’s quite easy for a post-metal instrumental group to get lost in guitar effects and noodled notes (and these guys have plenty of both), but a strong, understated drummer is a secret weapon. Without relying on overly complex time signatures or flashy skin-bashing, Turncrantz subtly guides the ship into interesting waters. Though Station only gets fully cranked twice (the Battles-esque title track, the explosive “Youngblood”), Turncrantz’s surefooted playing will keep your interest from flagging. [www.suicidesqueeze.net]

—Jason Ferguson