As far as electronic music goes, Holy Fuck ranks amongst the preeminent for their experimental approach. The band is probably more likely to use a lawn mower than a laptop to produce a groove. Practically the whole effort of the band is to create electronic music absent of most modern looping and sampling techniques. It’s only natural that a band so focused on an organic approach to the creation process would record their third record, Latin (Young Turks and XL Records), which can easily be thought of (though not strictly) as city night music, in a barn in Ontario. While the band has had a number of line-up changes in the past few years, Latin was recorded with a consistent touring line-up. Additionally, the band got an all-star cast of assistance on the production of the record, which was engineered by Graham Walsh and mixed by Dave Newfeld (Broken Social Scene), D. Sardy (Johnny Cash, NIN), Eli Janney (Wilco), Paul Epworth (Bloc Party, Primal Scream) and Holy Fuck themselves. The result, as you might imagine, is air-tight, entrancing dance music, and at a higher fidelity than previous recordings. Latin presents a polished and progressive electronic group in full stride.
The album’s centerpiece and single, “Latin America” plays as a perfect proof-point of the tour de force this record offers. It grips you with intensity, interrupted by brief moments of clarity that hang and swirl in the air until imploding back into its primal energy. Other tracks like “SHT MTN” oscillate between sheer chaos and wonderment, like some fantastical, high speed chase. “Stilletos” gallops at break-neck pace for a more classic techno number, radiating with so much power you can taste the sweat as it peaks with arena-filling hugeness.
The drum and bass form a juggernaut on this album, with lock-tight steadiness and rupturing break beats. Droning and swelling synth offers accompanying texture, escalating and receding with a range of feedback. The mood of these instrumentals is often serious and competitive, maybe changing tempo but seldom letting up. That’s not to say it isn’t fun, cause its enjoyable as hell. Its like watching a cocky rabbit outrun the wolves. The layers and calculated build ups create a highly engaging atmosphere worth freaking out to. More than anything else this is a rhythmic record. Latin beats on with there’s-no-turning-back propulsion, so be sure to tie your shoes before you start tossing your arms up.
If you told me 10 years ago at the Warped Tour that the guitarist from Poison the Well was going to form a noise pop duo fronted by a former teen pop female singer, I probably would have said “Ha! Yea and Bob Dylan’s going make a Christmas album.” I suppose the times, they are a changin’. Since the fated day hardcore guitarist Derek Miller met singer Alexis Krauss in a Brooklyn diner, the band has escalated at break-neck pace through the indie rock sphere, having landed support from M.I.A.’s label N.E.E.T. The band’s first single “Crown on the Ground” made a common appearance in 2009 best-of lists. This week, the band released their highly anticipated debut album Treats. Consider your speakers broken.
Pushing play on Treats is more like pulling a fire alarm or walking in front of a gun turret. Most of the disc blasts with a topped-out, bleeding-red quality. This ruckus sound developed out of Miller’s desire to get a better tone out of his crunching guitar riffs. He had to blow out his drum machine to EQ with the guitar. Accompanied with Alexis’s monotonous, school-yard taunts, Treats plays like the siren songs of tattooed cheerleaders. Her fluctuations between paper thin, airy vocals to biting, attitudinal shouts push and pull you between infatuation and outrage.
The album leads with four blistering tracks, starting with “Tell ‘Em,” which sends the album rocketing out of your speakers. These are the kind of songs that come up on a mix and send your friends screeching for the volume nob. Miller brings anthemic, triumphant guitar riffs while the drum machine hammers in the background. Krauss joins with empowering, victorious advice to all the girls these days, “Let me say, let me say, let me say/you can do your best to-day/You can do your best today.” Confidence embodies Alexis’s messages, which riot with school spirit. “Kids” follows with “The breeze is nice now/I’ll tell ya right now/I sip my Kool-aid/I’m feeling better now.” It’s not rocket science, but it leaves you nodding along thinking, “Yeah, you drink that juice girl.” “Infinity Guitars” gets down-right nonsensical, “Straight wars, straight men/cowboys, Indians/red souls, red friends/infinity guitar, you’re hard.” And when the breakdown removes any iota of governor you thought was running on this album, you’re either banging along or furiously returning your radio. Maybe both.
Treats does bottom out in the middle for a few tracks. Keeping the pace of the first half of the album would have been exhausting, but as soon as “Run the Heart” comes on, it’s as if Alexis has removed the bandana over her mouth and is made human. Where the jeering on the rocking tracks makes you want to stomp the yard, the “ah ah ah ahs,” paired with clubby synth replace the endearing adolescent vibe with straight annoying. “Rachel” also comes as a misplaced trance number. While there needed to be some break in the album, I can’t help feeling these tracks were rushed cop-outs.
“Rill Rill” beams through the clouds as the most (if not the only) relaxed track on the album, showcasing that Alexis’s raw songwriting capabilities extend beyond their noise pop schtick. When “Crown on the Ground” hits, you’re returned to what Sleigh Bells do best- making your ears bleed with infectious rock. Overall, though Treats has a few skips, it’s damn fun and the formula has legs. Sensitive ears beware!
For me the name Broken Social Scene immediately evokes images of confetti and an over-crowded stage. The Toronto based group has in its 12 years of duration been a party unit of collaboration, ever flowing with old and new characters, maxing out at a total of 19. Since its founding by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, the duo has marched a parade of Canadian indie talent into the project, including Leslie Feist, Emily Haines of Metric, Jason Collett, Amy Millan and Evan Cranley of Stars, and Ohad Benchetrit of Do Make Say Think. While many of these alumni since their initial involvement have gone on to lead successful solo careers, each of them have left an impression on BSS’s sound. The result of the ubiquitous flow of members under Drew and Canning’s direction has been an organic, seamless and patient progression of releases. With five years passed since their last release, a number of solo project releases, and a hefty series of tours, BSS returns with their fourth record on Drew and Jeffrey Remedios’s Arts & Crafts label, Forgiveness Rock Record. It’s tightly cohesive and features a fine production quality, thanks to recording engineer John McEntire, better known for his band Tortoise. The album was recorded in McEntire’s Soma Studio’s in Chicago.
Though Forgiveness features 14 tracks, totaling over an hour of playtime, the album flows beautifully and with surprisingly few stale moments. The album’s most memorable, power rock type songs are loaded in the front half of the record, leading with the first single, “World Sick.” The track builds with ambient waves and swells, before hitting stride with an unmistakably BSS guitar line that surfs you right into the tube of this record, building you to the lazer show of guitars in the breakdown. “Texico Bitches” hops along cheerfully with equally memorable guitar riffs and the zenith of joyous exclamations, “woo!” yelled seemingly by a team of cheerleaders. On “Forced to Love,” Kevin Drew proposes with sharp annunciation a series of ideas for us to think about before chugging and coasting along into the chorus. He holds off on getting overtly political, but if you’ve been to one of Kevin’s shows, you know where he’s going with this. Each of the leading four tracks, along with the majority of the album, feature Drew on vocals.
Enter “All to All.” Its vocals were written by Emily Haines, joined by Leslie Feist, Amy Millan and Lisa Lobsinger, who also sings on a number of tracks on the album and is now acting as the bands touring female vocalist. The vocals float airily over a climbing dance beat while the supporting instrumentation bursts with scuzz on the chorus, drawing an emotional high. The song purges, grooves, rocks, and whispers playfully with quirky harmony in its breakdown. The track pulls all of the right strings and bats clean up for the album as one of the best songs of the year to date.
Following these more memorable singles are jams readied with grooving beats laid by Justin Peroff, a few ambient numbers, and cooler rock pieces. But just when you think the B-side of the record is mellowing out, it smacks you with the victoriously towering instrumental, “Meet Me in the Basement,” full with horns and strings, like a wordless take on “Underdog.” The album never settles into a style too long, rotating through a few different tastes and experimentations that keep the album moving and engaging.
And as if 14 smacking new tracks weren’t enough, pre-order customers also received a download of Lo-Fi for the Dividing Nights EP. The recordings are the downtime musings of the band in Soma Studios, as brief instrumental soundscapes spawned much like album closer “Me & My Hand.” BSS puts forth a solid effort with Forgiveness, which has a little something for everybody. Though the members may change, the band continue to evolve no matter what the mix, and have done a fine job of tightening its sound on this dynamic record.
After three years in the making, the indie rocker couple from British Columbia return with the their ground-shaking fifth studio album, Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, their first on the Dead Oceans label. The Frog Eyes line-up has previously included Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown, and its members previously played in Swan Lake, a project with with Krug and Dan Bejar of The New Pornographers and Destroyer. Whether as a result of their history of collaboration or both rooting from an uncannily common vision, Krug and Frog Eyes’ singer/guitarist, Carey Mercer, steadily draw from a similar playbook. Mercer and Krug share an affinity for fantasty story telling, their songs often taking on a shape of their own. This tradition continues on Paul’s Tomb with some of Frog Eyes’ most foreboding and tumultuous work to date.
Where Krug carefully constructs dramatic and untraditional transitions and key changes, Mercer instead focuses on a looser experimentation full of crunching, gauzy guitar attacks, with no shortage of instrumental breaks. Meanwhile his wife and drummer, Melanie Campbell, provides a base of noisy rock beats. Outside of these two permanent fixtures of the band, guitarist Ryan Beattie joins for some buzzy rupturing guitar solos and Megan Boddy layers some chilling back-up vocals. In keeping with the distinctly live sound of the album, all of the vocals were recorded live off the floor, producing a raw and free-form result, to no loss of quality.
There is big space to explore on Paul’s Tomb, which builds with tension that bursts open and unravels with equal grace. On “Rebel Horn,” Mercer yips and toggles his vocals, exasperating himself even on this more upbeat track, with its rhythmic syncopations and major key progressions. They rock out on “Lear in Love,” which begins with Brit-punk attitude and snarl but quickly transcends into reverb soaked and ethereal guitar tremolo picking. Whatever the backdrop, Mercer lets forth his howl.
Mercer again proves an limber, erratic lyricist on Paul’s Tomb. While his admonishing fables can get washed out by the larger sound of the instrumentation or lost in his frenetic delivery, when the thunderous sky parts, his emphatic sermons demand our mindful reception. He shines through clear and solemn on “Violent Psalms,” the album’s centerpiece, which begins, “Silhouettes/dreaded swamps/oil baths from the factory he laid/I am dreaming of a painting from the Spring of my mind/I have defined the lines and now I shake.” Boddy accompanies Mercer’s baritone with an airy counterpart to create a dark reality that shivers your skin. Everywhere his vocals shake with a sense of real horror. Take warning.
Get ready for sexual therapy by way of massive collaboration project. What I mean is, sometimes it takes a team of +20 dudes to get that old love off your chest. Ok, ok, thats enough… You’ve maybe by now heard the soulful singles, “Gaudy Side of Town” or “Faded High” on the forth coming LP from GAYNGS, Relayted (Jagjaguwar), due out May 11. As arguably the best tracks on the album, when heard in isolation, these singles are certainly intriguing, but they don’t provide the firepower to completely entrance you, especially if heard on indie radio followed by cheerful bubblegum punk, uncomfortably snapping you out of their paralysis. Let us be the first to tell you, Relayted fully envelops you in its seductive trip. The GAYNGS collaboration was sparked by Minneapolis’s Ryan Olson, along with Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt of Solid Gold. What followed was a 25 head collaboration not limited to Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, P.O.S., and Megafaun. Throw some druggy effects and bassy rhythms into the onslaught of bluesy vocal contributions, and you arrive at some seriously sensual arrangements.
Yet for all of its recording artist credits, perhaps the most prevalent aspect of Relayted’s composition is the lack there of. That is not to say there is minimal production (it quite quality actually) or poorly constructed songs, but there is huge amount of white space on these songs, much as on last year’s the xx. On “The Walker” which begins with such space, even after the lyrics “Baby I’m on my way” and the gun shot that follows, both of which beg for the song to tear apart, the build comes slowly and subtly, if at all. It leaves you wanting, and instead of fulfilling your carnal desires, it ends with a bizarre transition. Many of the songs do.
The album hits its most unadulterated R&B moment on “No sweat” complete with organ vibrations, sax solo (nothing says sexy tune like a sax solo), porn guitar riffs, and the opening line “Who knows how low a man’s soul can go?/I wish I could’ve made ammends/back when we were barely friends.” The heartbreak morphs into the tense but resistantly steady frenzy of “False Bottom,” an experimental, effect-heavy track with Bitches Brew type dissonance. While R&B is championed through the album’s entirety, it hits these experimental passing moments, where the soulful vocals are roped in as mere accents to some weirder, overpowering force.
These tangents and the white spaces are vital to the desire this album extracts. Sure, a rolodex of sexy-voiced friends helps. But even with their assistance, the department-store R&B synth parts or the more modern employment of auto-tuning, may have felt cheesy in another context. At times, such as “The Last Prom On Earth,” it really does. But then Vernon comes in with the Bone Thugs bounce in his falsetto and all is redeemed!
The side story of this album is Justin Vernon, whose use of auto-tuning on Bon Iver’s “Woods” seemed to run counter to his folk music. It now feels more like a stage setter for what would have felt a very unlikely direction. Needless to say, the dude is out of the cabin, singing those bendy notes and getting his swerve on. Emma who?
“I’ll be here until I’m not… My life just went by/well alright/I guess it was fine,” is the chorus that Ben Barnett screeches out on “Aluminum and Light.” The single is an upstanding representation of Blunt Mechanic’s debut album, world record (Barsuk), which runs thick with riffs and lethargic messages. This is far from Barnett’s first time hitting the record press, having previously released eight albums, six singles, and five splits under the moniker Kind of Like Spitting. But he returns with his new Seattle-based group to put forth some of his most compelling work to date.
There is a Stephen Malkmus carelessness to Barnett’s vocals. While cracking, dragging out of tune or flattening into monotone, they convey a similar message of somethingness though on the surface sound to be rambling about nothingness. The vocals on the album are consistently tracked with a home-recording rawness. Despite all of its memorable guitar tangents and feedback, this is a very lyrical album. Perhaps as the best example, Barnett takes a number without the rest of the group on “Pop Song” in which he reveals, “Every Pop song tells you one or two things/its gonna be alright or its nothing at all.” Its an undistorted window into the song writing that exists underneath the harmonized, buzzing riffs throughout the album. If there’s a lyrical hole in the album, its the jammy “Why Can’t This Be Canada,” a token fuck you to the scenesters, “hello bright and friendly hippie kids/who cast themselves as cast-off bohemians/I love you all/ya’ll fucking destroy me.” There’s plenty more tongue-in-cheek where that came from! While I side with Barnett and its worth a laugh, it loses its stay power after the first listen or two.
world record draws from 90s rock; the kind when it was still called “alternative.” Its steeped in a familiar, cheerful whatever. Musically there are enough fun and effective melodies to draw parallels to The Blue Album, but its far less geared toward mindless pop-radio sing-alongs. But the drums hit hard and the bass drives through this album, thickening the catchy, Built to Spill-influenced guitar riffs. Moments (the best ones I believe) like the breakdowns in “Proof” and “Enough” cruise like a cool and thoughtful Fugazi instrumental. “Our First Brains” is the most uplifting track on the album, which chugs along with group vocals and an open high hat chorus. This is where Blunt Mechanic sounds most unified and celebratory, joining in as bachelors with, “I won’t get married/love is just so scary/she’s my blah blah blah!/shakes hands with ha ha ha!”
If you missed out on Pavement, Built to Spill, and Dinosaur Jr. the first time around because you were too stoned to skate to the record store, this is a fresh and current chance to understand what they were getting at. The entire album is a time warp. Or if you are just looking for a soundtrack to your apathy, let Barnett join you on that disgusting couch in your basement and drop some knowledge on your blown out eardrums, “shut that creaky door/trying to prove to the world you’re sure/and you’re not sure.”
On his sophomore album, The Wild Hunt (Dead Oceans), Kristian Matsson, better known as The Tallest Man on Earth, tells a well-constructed collection of intimate and emotional acoustic tales. While this description might bring a knee-jerk recollection of derivative rubbish, these are masterfully crafted songs that tear your heart out, only to mend it anew. Having tightened up his song writing and vocal capabilities, the Swedish one man act delivers this modest yet triumphant return to his debut LP, Shallow Grave (Gravitation). Matsson first started turning heads during his support for the 2008 tour of Bon Iver, who was riding high on the success of his cathartic winter masterpiece, For Emma Forever Ago. Some of the unshackling, drowsy warmth of Justin Vernon’s song writing has seeped its way into Matsson’s repertoire of scuttling finger-picking and clever, rustic lyrics. Bring in Matsson’s unique, nasally vocals and you have one hell of a folk album.
There is, as with his debut, an unmistakable influence of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan (circa Freewheelin’ and The Time’s They Are A-Changin’) in much of Matsson’s music. You can imagine a young Matsson huddled next to the speakers in his home in Dalarna, Sweden pouring over his parents’ dusty copy of the Smithsonian’s Anthology of American Folk Music. He channels this style on tracks like “Troubles Will Be Gone” which gracefully carries a bittersweet melody through a fervor of string plucking. He shares with his great predecessors a youthful hopefulness while acknowledging a world of darkness: “Still the day is never done but there’s a light on where you’re sleeping/so I hope somewhere that troubles will be gone.” Its a very visual album, referring to glaciers, country houses, or the blurring open plains from a car window that he has tastefully selected for the album cover. And much like early Dylan, there is a sincerity and humbleness that meets worldly wisdom in little lyrical gems. Verses come at times in gusts of rambling story telling that are riddled with little glimpses of universal contemplation such as, “and I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone.” Its this rare combination of lyrical wit, picking capability, fervent energy, and vocal uniqueness that sets Matsson apart from an endless list of mediocre imitators.
Yet, Matsson’s time with Justin Vernon has clearly extracted a common thread of catharsis. While the songs tower in their Dylan-esque earnestness, The Wild Hunt shares the same effusing power of For Emma. He shows us a rupturing, open-heart on “You’re Going Back,” in which he breaks through the gentleness of his music, “you said driver please don’t go that FUCKING way/you said just let it go away.” He hits another breaking point on “Kids on the Run,” the album’s piano ballad closer, when he lays into, “Ohhhh lets break some hearts,” as if Springsteen were playing to a mourning barn church. He peters to these cracking moments with laboriously sung vocals, often falling in the upper half of his range, which impresses upon the listener a vigorous passion that validates his songs’ honesty. Yet where Vernon reaches wallowing levels, Matsson keeps a chipper pace while melodies remain spirited. He takes his troubles in stride with a skip in his step, appreciating their gravity but allowing them to pass and moves on like a rolling train, as only the Nordic can. And through all his rasp, croaking, and acquired country twang, Matsson displays an impressive range and tonality on The Wild Hunt.
While there is a solitude to the music, much like with Vernon’s, if there is Americana country sorrow, its with the promise of a new dawn. Whether set to open strumming on capoed chords or gently finger-picked chords, The Wild Hunt feels full of wondrous possibility, even if its through a rear-view reflection that leaves behind safety and love. Seemingly simplistic in their stripped nature, these ten heart-warming folk songs are built on more lyrical, vocal and structural complexity than they lead on, which will undoubtedly allow them to age well.
The visual representation on The Bitters new album is a blood spattered, faded blue drawing of a fetus curled in an amputated body. Needless to say, brace yourself for some gritty rock & roll. East General (Mexican Summer) is the ruckus debut LP from Toronto-based duo, Aerin Fogel and Ben Cook. The band had previously released Wooden Glove, a well received EP from Captured Tracks. For those familiar with Ben Cook’s (or his moniker “Young Governor’s”) work with punk-enthusiasts, Fucked Up, the name immediately cues hardcore. The surprise in The Bitters music comes from Fogel who finds a strikingly melodic puzzle piece to fit with Cook’s half, which is typically accompanied by the guttural growlings of Fucked Up front man and occasional Fox News guest speaker, Damian Abraham (or “Pink Eyes”).
Like headlights in a blizzard, Fogel broadcasts 50’s pop-influenced melodies through the relentless crashing and crunching of heavily distorted guitars and piercing crash cymbals. The familiarity of her tunes struggle through the downpour of Cook’s post-punk instrumentation. Competing with the volume, Fogel’s vocals come predominantly as shouts that screech out of range or bend between notes, but at times also reach a cool relaxation and hang in an impressive vibrato, likening her to Debbie Harry. The Bitters first received considerable attention for their single “Warrior” later in 2009, as one of the catchiest tunes of the year. Fogel produces a similar set of cracking, pop battle cries on East General, including the infectious “Travelin’ Girl” and “Wild Beast.” Her imagery at times borders on down-right pestilent, which can be gathered from a read through of the track list: Nurtured Disease, Nails In the Coffin, No Anchor… you get the idea. Lyrics like “And then this animal/inside takes hold of me/the restless feeling of/the beast I’ve known to be” further legitimize the clamorous sound of the music. The double tracked vocals, occasionally mismatched in the timing of when they drag on the pitch, manage to even create tension in otherwise harmonious refrains.
Cook’s guitar work upholds a fairly steady level of blistering distortion throughout the album, though it can range in shades of destruction. Often there is an obvious Pixies flavor to his sound in the simplicity of his distorted riffs that rupture into fields of static and feedback on choruses, only to recede back to the original cooler riffs. He selects only the ugliest, crunchiest distortion, and only the grungiest of supplementary chorus and flange effects. While his selections tend to lean toward his roots in post-punk, there does exist some gauziness on the verses of “Impatient as Can Be.” Meanwhile, the outro track, “I’m Feeling Good” sludges along chillingly with a dark groove, which if it “feels good” at all, is due to a drug score.
East General is an interesting meeting of planes. The divergence of influences in Fogel and Cook’s contributions is clear, but they achieve a unique symbiosis. Though unsettling and conflicting, this is exactly the type of music Cook has been making throughout his career. The addition of Fogel enables his music with a rare opening of accessibility. There’s a pop sensibility to it but the modern violence of it suffocates any anachronistic label that plenty of modern lo-fi bands are boxed by. The album tops out at blinking red levels and is heedless through its duration, pulling back only to a canter on “Beggar.” The duo has self-proclaimed their sound as “cave pop,” describing the music as “murky” and “filfthy,” reaching a tone they’ve arguably called “mid-fi.” A reasonable statement, given East General is comparatively an upfront rock delivery against today’s reverb-soaked trends. For those already restless with modern lo-fi and Brian Wilson-borrowing garage rock, here begins your exit point.
Formed in 2009 by Sanae Yamada and Erik Johnson (Wooden Shjips), Moon Duo is the latest shade of San Francisco noise. Much like Johnson’s work with Wooden Shjips, Escape is full of thick, fuzzing jams. Supported by Yamada on organ and keyboard, Johnson manages to fill the remaining void of would-be Shjips’s backing with a massive presence from his guitar. The album runs for an ethereal 30 minutes, each of the songs totaling greater than 6 minutes. The duo previously released Killing Time, an EP on Sacred Bones Records in 2009, and returns with a four song LP on Woodsist.
While many of their California rock contemporaries consume themselves with garage rock and 60’s pop influenced lo-fi, Moon Duo replaces catchy hooks with piercing guitar improvisations and Yamada’s dazing rhythms. Escape’s psychedelic rock entrances with its heavy guitar jaunts. The band’s website references Silver Apples, Royal Trux, Moolah, Suicide, and Cluster as influences, adding that Moon Duo “plays space against form to create a primeval sound experience.” These early experimental electronic and synthpunk influences contribute to the band’s wanderings in the fields of noise. But there also persists a thick, jamming rock element to the music that places Jesus & Mary Chain in that mix, an influence that’s getting plenty of current dosage.
On “Stumbling 22nd St.” the minimalistic drum machine beats along with simple, repetitive beats. Representative of the album, the focus of the music leans largely instead on the deafening guitar parts with trancey synth samples laying the groundwork. While the modes explored by Johnson fashion a seriousness on Escape, there is a sensuality in the grooves throughout the album. The band best captured this concept on the video from “Ripples” on Killing Time. Similarly, Escape invites you to loose yourself in its carnality. Its a liquid experience that flows with repetitive riffs and libidinous vocal stylings likened to Jim Morrison, minus the self-righteous poeticism, or any vocal decipherability for that matter. If you thirst for a heavy rock trance, there is a lot to be experienced with this album.
When I saw Harlem earlier this year, Michael Coomer stepped away from his mic between songs to sloppily tie a bandana on as a headband, during which he spilt a full beer on his amp. When he returned to the mic after leaving the spilt beer to soak and laughing with Curtis O’Mara, whom he splits drum/guitar duties with, he demanded a new one and picked up where he left off: harassing the crowd and his tour-mates. There was a fine balance of good fun, sarcasm at the expense of the crowd, and self-loathing at the expense of the band that was unsettling to decipher. Meanwhile, they lost track of the setlist, howled in unison to each of the songs and seemed uncertain about when the set would end. The whole performance felt very impromptu.
Its the looseness of their raucous performances and stage banter, mixed with highly memorable melodies that has catapulted the Austin-based trio to their current success. The 16 recordings on their second release, Hippies (Matador Records), play like a live album with peaking vocals and crudely recorded drums. This “live” approach to the record attempts to most purely capture the spontaneity and energy of their performances. Though somehow it plays cleaner than their prior release, Free Drugs LP (Female Fantasy), for which they had received considerable local attention. Since the release of their more recent singles “Friendly Ghost” and “Gay Human Bones,” the band has reached new levels of acclaim.
There’s an infectious pop charm that accompanies the recklessness in Harlem’s music, which is the axel that keeps the wheels from flying. This can best be heard on “Be Your Baby,” which demands a go-go sideways head bob or the swim. But paid closer attention, even these seeming love ballads come with a contrasting wry smile, “If I could be your darlin’/You just gotta stop ballin’/ for all the bullshit I give you.”
Perhaps most notable is the fun-loving, anarchistic attitude throughout Hippies, revealed from the very beginning, “Someday soon you’ll be on fire/and you’ll ask me for a glass of water/and I’ll say no/you can just let that shit burn/and you’ll say please please please put me out…” When the whole band hits “Pleeeeease” in unity on the chorus, you can’t help but join the fun and let that sucker burn. In similar rebellious fashion, “Stripped Sunset” cranks and cuts like a Pogues or Clash blues track. The Pixies can be heard on tracks like “Torture Me,” which enters with a sketchy guitar solo and ensues with a raw and simple rock melody, falsetto backups included. But always the footloose humor plays: “My basketball team’s name is Gay Human Bones.”
If there is one thing to be learned from Hippies, its that this Austin trio can write a damn good song. And they make it memorable by delivering it with an insane casualness that begs intrigue, as if the band is just a big inside joke. But with tongues this sharp, try not to yell anything at the band, less you become a target for relentless ridicule.
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