People call Trompe Le Monde the first Frank Black solo album, straying as it does from the Pixies' alterna-punk roots and eschewing as it does the barest songwriting contribution from Kim Deal. Under that conceit, this is pretty standard, solid, sophomore album material, as the surfier, more melodic sound of the Pixies' swan song is explored and expanded.
Only the barest vestiges of Black's screamy days remains, here he rises the a creaky caw at best, mostly swooping over crunchy acoustic chords and reverbey electric plucks: this is reaching more for Where is My Mind's buzzy grace than Debaser's hellbent rage.
It's all perfectly good. These are good songs with excellent melodies and enjoyable textures and sounds, but... there's something missing. There's no edge, nothing quite penetrates the heart and barbs into place, everything buffed solo-act smooth. One of the joys of an actual band is that the personalities grate against each other, leaving pitts and pockmarks on the songs, the disagreement assuring that good-enough is achieved without blowing past it into actually-worse just-right. This is exhibit A. Also, man, something happened to Black's voice at some point, he just can't deliver like he used to. Here he sounds like a limp impression of himself,* further undermining the songs impact.
Add the Pixies to the list of bands that just had that magic, too beautiful to live, that just couldn't survive the moment they exploded from 3/5
* and it only got worse, have you seen him try to do the screamier Pixies
songs since their reunion? Yikes double yikes yow. Bad scene.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
#655 Ty Segall - Ty Rex
My love of Ty Segall is pretty well documented around here, and I'm a pretty big T Rex fan, so what's not to like about the already retro-minded Segall doing an EP of T Rex covers?
The result is more or less what you'd expect, as long as you expect Segall to take ample liberties. There's nothing as scandalous as his blistering take on Diddy Wah Diddy here, but if you'd never heard of T Rex, you'd be forgiven for assuming this was an EP of originals. The thundering, fuzzy bass, shredded vocals, and garagey production are tempered by only the barest glammy sheen. This sounds straight out of an alternate reality where Marc Bolan had been closer to Iggy Pop than David Bowie, and where he went for it even harder than The Stooges did.
Well, when he goes for it, that is. The even-numbered, faster tracks give Ty room to kick his legs out and really show the 70's what he would've been made of, but on the slower tracks he seem weighed down by the ghost of Bolan, aping a soaring, balladic style that's outside his wheelhouse. Maybe Ty's a victim of his own success: he's so adept at slamming out a few dozen songs like this a year that he scarcely needs the blueprint, and it becomes a burden.
The result is a must-hear-once artifact for fans that fall into that center slice of that Ty / T Venn diagram. After that first listen, just pluck the best tracks for your mixes of scuzzy, glammy glory 3.5/5
The result is more or less what you'd expect, as long as you expect Segall to take ample liberties. There's nothing as scandalous as his blistering take on Diddy Wah Diddy here, but if you'd never heard of T Rex, you'd be forgiven for assuming this was an EP of originals. The thundering, fuzzy bass, shredded vocals, and garagey production are tempered by only the barest glammy sheen. This sounds straight out of an alternate reality where Marc Bolan had been closer to Iggy Pop than David Bowie, and where he went for it even harder than The Stooges did.
Well, when he goes for it, that is. The even-numbered, faster tracks give Ty room to kick his legs out and really show the 70's what he would've been made of, but on the slower tracks he seem weighed down by the ghost of Bolan, aping a soaring, balladic style that's outside his wheelhouse. Maybe Ty's a victim of his own success: he's so adept at slamming out a few dozen songs like this a year that he scarcely needs the blueprint, and it becomes a burden.
The result is a must-hear-once artifact for fans that fall into that center slice of that Ty / T Venn diagram. After that first listen, just pluck the best tracks for your mixes of scuzzy, glammy glory 3.5/5
Friday, December 7, 2012
#654 Phoenix - United
Phoenix would later make a splash with big soft Ratatatesque guitar-as-synth hooks, full of precision-crafted tones and mostly-unadventurous songwriting. Everything in its right place.
It's a bit surprising then that their debut is such a weird, sprawling hodgepodge, complete with disco revival, string-laden Air instrumentals, crunchy alt-rock riffs, spooky 80's synths, and a 9-minute autotune honkytonk/hip-hop clusterbomb as a cherry on top. Everything is still plenty overproduced, with that weird French sheen, but its a reversal of their previous work: the songs individually aren't all that memorable, but the album as a whole is so wildly adventurous that it gets your attention. United plays like a mixtape: the flow is solid, the overall tone is consistent within a certain space, but you're hearing something a little different around ever corner. If you're having a quiet, slightly funky, slightly intimate night, it might just do you right 3.5/5
It's a bit surprising then that their debut is such a weird, sprawling hodgepodge, complete with disco revival, string-laden Air instrumentals, crunchy alt-rock riffs, spooky 80's synths, and a 9-minute autotune honkytonk/hip-hop clusterbomb as a cherry on top. Everything is still plenty overproduced, with that weird French sheen, but its a reversal of their previous work: the songs individually aren't all that memorable, but the album as a whole is so wildly adventurous that it gets your attention. United plays like a mixtape: the flow is solid, the overall tone is consistent within a certain space, but you're hearing something a little different around ever corner. If you're having a quiet, slightly funky, slightly intimate night, it might just do you right 3.5/5
Thursday, December 6, 2012
#653 Larry Keel - Journey
Bluegrass, full of lazy drifters and devilborne lightning guitar work, with Keels gravelly croak crooning its crippled way over top with surprising grace. The fretboard fireworks on the first track might lead you to expect a more frenetic affair, but its actually all rather soulful, and eventually the tickettape fingerwork fades into the background.
It's hard to say if this album is simple or complex, and maybe that's its strength, the ability to be both and reap the twin benefits of being interesting and soothing all at once. Keels voice occasionally loses its stage presence without gaining the gravitas of vulnerability, hovering in a weirdly inelegant place, but those moments aside, this is a strangely compelling album that a surprising number of folks might enjoy if they dared let themselves 4/5
It's hard to say if this album is simple or complex, and maybe that's its strength, the ability to be both and reap the twin benefits of being interesting and soothing all at once. Keels voice occasionally loses its stage presence without gaining the gravitas of vulnerability, hovering in a weirdly inelegant place, but those moments aside, this is a strangely compelling album that a surprising number of folks might enjoy if they dared let themselves 4/5
#652 Speedy Ortiz - Sports EP
Check it out free here!
I keep dinging these LocalMusicBoston bands for having albums that don't live up to their live shows, but its my way of giving them their due while giving an honest impression of good-but-unspectacular albums. Speedy Ortiz won me over with their frantic, precise post-Nirvana thrash, a live show bristling with bottledup electric energy.
This EP's opener gives you your best taste of what to expect, with 90's dissonance, skitterey drumming and deft start-stop blasts of guitar noise. It's exciting, in that kind of "I'll be these guys are awesome live" kind of way. Good. Your instints are good. They are.
But then everything else sags by comparison, swaying instead of juking, riding Built to Spill bend and chime instead of more straightforward riffage. Which is fine, I just think their strongest suit is scalpelstorm aggression and its a shame not to see more of that here. The other exceptions are the infernal closing segments to Silver Spring and Suck buddies, which turn the backhanded Built to Spill comparison on its head, evoking the euphoric highs of the closing sections of songs like Some or Carry the Zero. Now just make one that closes like Kicked it in the Sun and we're good.
So if you like the 90's at its underground precision pretty noise best, you'll find a lot to like here. I just came in expecting too much. Who's fault is that? Stop being so good live, Boston 3.5/5
I keep dinging these LocalMusicBoston bands for having albums that don't live up to their live shows, but its my way of giving them their due while giving an honest impression of good-but-unspectacular albums. Speedy Ortiz won me over with their frantic, precise post-Nirvana thrash, a live show bristling with bottledup electric energy.
This EP's opener gives you your best taste of what to expect, with 90's dissonance, skitterey drumming and deft start-stop blasts of guitar noise. It's exciting, in that kind of "I'll be these guys are awesome live" kind of way. Good. Your instints are good. They are.
But then everything else sags by comparison, swaying instead of juking, riding Built to Spill bend and chime instead of more straightforward riffage. Which is fine, I just think their strongest suit is scalpelstorm aggression and its a shame not to see more of that here. The other exceptions are the infernal closing segments to Silver Spring and Suck buddies, which turn the backhanded Built to Spill comparison on its head, evoking the euphoric highs of the closing sections of songs like Some or Carry the Zero. Now just make one that closes like Kicked it in the Sun and we're good.
So if you like the 90's at its underground precision pretty noise best, you'll find a lot to like here. I just came in expecting too much. Who's fault is that? Stop being so good live, Boston 3.5/5
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
#651 Daft Punk - Discovery
I love it when an album just goes for it on an album level, when the record as a whole represents a gesture beyond the sum of its parts, coalescing into a narrative, a rumination on themes, an emotional arc or just a cohesive, flowing, 30-90 minute or so listening experience. That's something that happens here, augering Daft Punk's peerless live shows / albums, a pinnacle of flow and experience.
While I found Homework rather icy, Kraftwerkian in its robotic detachment, this is full of downright human notes, a real sense for beauty and emotional ebb and flow, evoking later acts like The Avalanches and Girl Talk that would spin cohesive listening arcs from even more disparate parts. From the disco pulse of Voyager, to the weird proggy interlude of Verdis Quo, to the honest to god Jamiroquai via Hot Chip ravers that close the album, there is interest in well-measured affirmation and subversion of expectation at every turn.
My only quibble is actually One More Time, which sets things off on a Stereotypes-on-The-Great-Escape-level unduly ugly party vibe, but once you get part that it's some laser-smooth sailing, straight on through 4.5/5
While I found Homework rather icy, Kraftwerkian in its robotic detachment, this is full of downright human notes, a real sense for beauty and emotional ebb and flow, evoking later acts like The Avalanches and Girl Talk that would spin cohesive listening arcs from even more disparate parts. From the disco pulse of Voyager, to the weird proggy interlude of Verdis Quo, to the honest to god Jamiroquai via Hot Chip ravers that close the album, there is interest in well-measured affirmation and subversion of expectation at every turn.
My only quibble is actually One More Time, which sets things off on a Stereotypes-on-The-Great-Escape-level unduly ugly party vibe, but once you get part that it's some laser-smooth sailing, straight on through 4.5/5
#650 Charles Mingus - Pithecanhropus Erectus
Boppy jazz buoyed by Mingus's driving bass, sounding mostly upbeat. The exception, and most noteworthy track is A Foggy Day, creating a cityscape of honks, foghorns, whistles, and squeals out of horn sounds - a rather nice trick that evokes chaos and unease and now sounds well ahead of its time.
Not much fun to actually listen to though. So it goes with experimental music, in rock and jazz alike.
The highlight, unsurprisingly, is the man with his name on the record, and the bass is expressive, nuanced and impossibly deft, rewarding close listening. Nice enough record from a genre that I make no secret of knowing fuckall about 3.5/5
Not much fun to actually listen to though. So it goes with experimental music, in rock and jazz alike.
The highlight, unsurprisingly, is the man with his name on the record, and the bass is expressive, nuanced and impossibly deft, rewarding close listening. Nice enough record from a genre that I make no secret of knowing fuckall about 3.5/5
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