The Ampeater Review

AEM117 Hands and Knees

2010-08-31T04:16:12Z

Note: My brother just got married, and all I’ve been doing over the last few days is eating delicious food and wearing suits. So, prepare for a lot of food analogies. I’ll save the tie-tying analogy for next week.

Writing pop songs is a lot like baking desserts (bear with me). A novice would assume that the thing to do is to go heavy on the sugar and just make the damn thing as sweet as humanly possible. I mean, that’s what people go to desserts for, right? Sweetness and excess. However, an expert knows that the touch of salt or mint or basil is what makes for a truly superlative pastry experience. To really appreciate the sweetness of a dish, one needs a hint of something savory and unexpected. The same goes for pop music. Yes, of course, you can’t have a pop song without hooks, just the way you can’t make dessert without something sweet. But great pop songs are always garnished with just enough spice to keep you coming back over and over again. (Two examples off the top of my head: 1. The way the melody in Phosphorescent’s “Pictures of Our Torn Up Praise” pulls back so hard against the tempo that it almost doesn’t keep up with the chord changes. 2. The way Van Morrison sings the entirety of “Who Was That Masked Man?” in falsetto.) Large doses of refined and unmodulated white sugar are what get you factory pop music, and if that’s your bag, you are probably not here on this website reading this essay.

Now, I don’t know if Boston indie pop quartet Hands and Knees can bake a cake (for some reason I want to say no, but there’s no relevant information in their bio. I’ll have to tell them to update it), but I do know that they can write a bouncy power pop song that doesn’t cloy even after you’ve listened to it about 20 times in a row. Their Ampeater A-side “Dancing On Your Tears” is a perfect example, building catchy pop music out of unusual six and nine bar phrases, which phrases consist of brief guitar stabs, counterweight bass syncopation, playful drum fills, and the slurred twin vocals of Carina Kelly & Joe O’Brien (when they’ve been in a band long enough, two people can adopt the exact same vocal ticks to the point where they can double vocal lines that seem undoubleable). Some pop songs are weighed down by their artistic ambitions, but here the two are perfectly in sync. “Dancing” bounds and cascades along with so much enthusiasm precisely because it’s so formally off-kilter. The six bar verse phrase always ends just before you expect it to, crashing headlong into the beginning of the next phrase before you even know what’s happening. Then, in the chorus, the elongation of the lyrics bread and butter (buh-huh-ter) during the break stalls the bands re-entry just enough to make you feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under you, only to fly back into another rambunctious verse. Even the simplest part of the song, the lyric-less bridge, runs out two bars earlier than you’d expect, only multiplying the momentum. All this form-play might sound complicated, but the song leaps along with the boundless energy of a new puppy, and you’d never notice a thing unusual about it until you’d already heard it countless times.

B-side “The Moonlight Is Wicked” is simpler formal fare for the most part, but devastatingly catchy and dotted with major two and three chords that spice up the tonality nicely. It also features some lovely jangle-twang lead guitar over the tagged ends of the choruses and the couplet you like simple fun / I like depression, the brilliance of which speaks for itself. The rolling rim-click percussion in the verses lets the song breathe and hang back until the repeated, saucy you’s bring it to a boil and shove us on into the blissful chorus. It’s a song that’s full of indie pop touchstones: the duel boy-girl vocals, the guitar hook answering the chorus melody, the silly humor of the verse lyrics. Even the verse progression is tried and true. If I wanted to bust out a second totally unnecessary culinary analogy, I’d liken a song like “Moonlight” to a perfect pasta sauce. It’s nothing you’ve never seen before, yet when it’s put together with enough time and care, it can be the most satisfying meal you ever ate. Seriously, be careful with this one, folks. Once you pipe it into your head, it will not want to leave.

Both of these jams come courtesy of Hands and Knees’ new, as-yet-untitled full length, generously made available by the band for free perusal on their Bandcamp page. The whole record is full of gangly energy, popping snare drums and tasty guitar hooks. But not only that. Something about the album makes you feel like you are listening to your friend’s band, if they suddenly got their shit together and started writing really great songs. Hands and Knees call themselves unfussy, and it’s true. There’s something selfless and eager about these songs. They want to tag along and make your walk to work a little easier. They want to give you something to whistle while you’re making coffee. There’s no frills and no needless obscurity, just fantastic pop music with a dash of the unexpected. Heat and serve.

Gabe Birnbaum

Side A – Dancing On Your Tears Download audio file (01 Dancing On Your Tears.mp3)

Side B – The Moonlight Is Wicked Download audio file (02 The Moonlight Is Wicked.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM116 Power Animal

2010-08-26T16:36:31Z

If you’ve seen Bela Fleck in concert more than once, either by choice or by force of family who believe this singular artist to be the only point of overlap in your respective muscal interests, then you’ll begin to notice that parts of his concert routine resurface across shows. To the extent that a musical exchange can be scripted, these are, with the most notable example being that of the “virtuoso duel,” in which Fleck’s pitted against a fellow musician in an epic bluegrass shred battle. This alone would be enough to capture the interest of most audience members, and is the point at which I usually start checking Twitter on my phone, but he usually adds in a cute little twist to boot–the challenger is presented as a college educated, formally trained product of the system, while Fleck boasts a mere high school diploma to his name (nevermind that it was from a prestigious performing arts school). Inevitably, Fleck defeats his nemesis, demonstrating the superiority of good old fashioned street smarts and personal discovery over the rigid discipline of the conservatory method. While Bela Fleck’s not exactly your average front porch banjoist, his broad point is a decent one–education is no substitute for true vision and creative inspiration. Keith Hampson dropped out of high school when he was 16, and soon every class on his imaginary schedule read “music.”

Power Animal emerged from the ashes of Hampson’s failed attempt at normalcy, and like some real life rehash of Fight Club, I imagine him stepping into the cave of his own muse and finding comfort there. Throughout our exchanges, Hampson dropped subtle and no doubt unintentional hints that he’s not exactly swiming with the main stream. Days went by between e-mails, followed by an apologetic note to the tune of, “Sorry I kinda had to ‘half-ass’ the bio. I don’t have much computer time.” Given that I receive 15 e-mails a day from douchy Australian teen-rock bands with a $10k publicity budget and 4 music videos for their only song, it’s refreshing and ever so slightly jarring to hear from someone who exists mostly in the pre-digital era. Moreover, he makes a point of noting that every current member of Power Animal (all eight of ‘em) is from Northeast Philly, an area of the city supposedly bereft of musical culture, thus making Power Animal an odd singularity of its kind. Unlike Brooklynites who might drop out of CUNY to absorb the rich music scene around them, sensing tangibly that “something’s happening” and wanting to be a part of it, Hampson’s withdrawl is to a self contained space in which ideas and isolation fuse to form something original, emotive, and enormously enjoyable. Fans of compositionally obtuse musical collectives with a thorough grounding in pop (Broken Social Scene, Akron/Family and Cuddle Magic all come to mind) will dig this 7-inch.

I know summer’s winding to a close, but if there’s room on your iPods for just one more vacation mega-jam, let aptly titled A-side “Summer Came From Nowhere” be it. With a simple repeating melody, floating synth lines, and a breakdown tag complete with distorted cheers, this song’s become my charm against the impending winter months. Power Animal shuns any traditional notion of instrumentation for an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that toys with cacophony but never goes so far as to loose its hard-earned momentum. The group’s eight members are encouraged to play “every suitable instrument they [can] get their hands on other than guitar,” and if possible, all at once. Clocking in at under three minutes, “Summer Came From Nowhere” is almost a prelude, an in-your-face introduction that boldly stakes claim to the musical territory it inhabits. Taking a page from 80s pop, new wave, and even prog rock, it so thoroughly overwhelms the senses that the transition into B-side “The Turn Around” is an almost welcome reprieve.

We’re ushered into the song by children singing, “Hello, buddy just turn around” and then dropped into what I’d imagine a Books / Sufjan Stevens collaboration might sound like, but with more intensity than either of these two artists could ever put down on wax. The similarities between “The Turn Around” and the musical style regularly employed by The Books go well beyond critical comparison or mere homage–there are some direct quotes and rhythmic motifs that have been lifted almost unchanged from the original tracks. But far from being reprehensible, it’s intriguing to see an artist sport influences so recent and give them a sense of urgency and vibrance unheard on the original recording. Beck lifted the strings on Serge Gainsbourg’s “Melody Nelson” for his album Sea Change, not because he didn’t think anyone would notice, but because he had something to contribute to Gainsbourg’s musical sentiments, and the most efficient way of accomplishing this is to take the idea, quote it, and expand upon it. So too is the case with “The Turn Around” and its Books samples or Sufjan Stevens horn melodies. Like everything else Hampson writes, it’s the collective effect of these voices, coupled with some little man sitting on his shoulder shouting “GO!!! GO!!! GO!!! GO!!! GO!!! GO!!!” that makes the resulting pastiche a substantively new experience.

While nowhere near as epically famous as they deserve to be, Power Animal pulled off a successful U.S. tour this past Spring, and has a brand new record under their belt. If you have any interest whatsoever in music, I suggest you pick up a copy of People Songs, courtesy of Waaga Records and iTunes.

Ben Heller

Side A – Summer Came From Nowhere Download audio file (01 Summer Came From Nowhere.mp3)

Side B – The Turn Around Download audio file (02 The Turn Around.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM115 Bunny’s a Swine

2010-08-25T16:29:41Z

“Our sound has been called tweegrunge by some, awkpop by ourselves, and indie rock by others,” explained guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist Candace Clement when asked to describe Bunny’s a Swine. While the distinction may be largely semantic, I concur with Clement that awkpop is the most suitable and certainly the most telling classification for this unconventional trio from North Hampton, MA. Those other labels might still apply, but they fail to capture the essence of Bunny’s a Swine. What separates these guys from other indie rockers out there is that they’re so fucking awkward. It hit me the first time I heard A-side “I Should Have Left the Bushes Hours Ago” and numerous spins later, I still can’t get over it. Even if you haven’t heard the music, take one look at the press photo accompanying this review and you’ll probably be nodding enthusiastically in agreement. What could be more awkward than some scruffy hipsters standing in front of a faux-dramatic nautical backdrop striking convoluted poses? Even the name “Bunny’s a Swine” seems pretty awkward. I asked the band for the story behind it and their answer only confirmed my suspicions. “We really liked referring to things using ‘bunny’s a…’,” they explained, “like ‘bunny’s a tour’ or ‘bunny’s a show’ or ‘bunny’s a swingle,’ a reference to a 3 song single CD we made for a weekend tour in Vermont. Its really infectious after a while.” Major-league awkward.

But in case you haven’t noticed, awkward is the new cool. Many musicians nowadays subscribe to the outcast mantra, embracing the embarrassing traits for which they might have gotten their asses kicked and their milk money stolen in elementary school and recasting them as quirky or charming. Bunny’s a Swine simply pushes that mantra to its limits and, I should add, succeeds gloriously in doing so. The untempered awkwardness is irresistible. I adored Bunny’s a Swine after hearing just a few notes. I don’t mean strictly that I adored the music. More precisely, I adored the lovely people behind the music and was struck by an unshakable urge to give each of them a big hug.

In addition to Clement, Bunny’s a Swine features Dustin Ashley Cote on drums and Emerson Stevens on 3-string guitar. The latter instrument is another good indication of just how awkward this band really is. Perhaps you haven’t heard of the 3-string guitar but one needn’t think too hard to imagine the conditions under which this unusual instrument might have been born. The inability to string a guitar, the failure to master anything beyond power chords, and a lack of money to purchase new strings were the primary hypotheses to jump to my mind. As it turns out, there’s a little truth in all of them. Stevens found his first guitar in a dumpster and never bothered to restring it. “My interest never was in being a great guitarist,” he clarifies. “I wanted to write songs and found that pounding out bar chords on some piece of junk with 3 strings was more than enough to do that.” But even Clement, the de-facto virtuoso of the group, plays nothing so technically demanding that somebody who has played guitar for only six months wouldn’t be able to master it. “Much of what we do derives from our beginnings as a band,” explains Cote. “We started out as a two piece, Emerson and I, neither of us really knowing how to play.” Bunny’s a Swine rejects virtuosity in favor of simple might. The lo-fidelity recording techniques employed by the band accentuate this decision, creating the sensation that the music never left the attic in which it was born.

Among the many awkward traits that make Bunny’s a Swine so damn endearing is unabashed sloppiness. The creative process is pretty transparent. Most of the songs originate with Stevens but when he brings them to rehearsal, everybody sings whatever they feel like singing until, eventually, something interesting emerges. Clement explains, “most of the time we have no idea what the others are singing about until months after we’ve finished the song.” A band with multiple lead vocalists who pay little heed to one another will inevitably devolve into chaos. Bunny’s a Swine simply harnesses this chaos and transforms it into an exhilarating tension. Distinct vocal melodies pile sloppily together, vying for the listeners attention, and then converging in brief flashes of harmony. To catch the words is nearly impossible. As soon as you hone in on one lyrical thread, another will butt in over it. And yet, miraculously, Clement observes, “the meanings almost always sync up. Bushes is a great example. It wasn’t until we recorded that track that we knew both people were singing about very similar themes of voyeurism.”

The song Clement refers to is “I Should Have Left the Bushes Hours Ago” Beginning with calm and luxuriously paced instrumental introduction, it kicks into second gear when the whole band starts to sing and shout simultaneously. A punchy melody delivered in sloppy unison by an out-of-tune baritone and screechy tenor is tempered by a delicate and melodic soprano line. Select words cut through the mix but are quickly drowned out, evoking the atmosphere of a crowded house party—incidentally, the kind of event at which I’d most like to see this band perform—in which only fragments of conversation manage to rise above the roar of the room. The music gradually escalates in speed and volume until the climatic moment when vocal melodies finally intersect. “Please do not turn out your inside light,” the band shouts in harmony. This flash of clarity packs a strong punch after such a long buildup. B-side “Fuck Bunny’s a Swine” employs many of the same techniques but is notably more schizophrenic in form. Beginning with a steady instrumental dirge to back Stevens’ deep and unrefined voice that at times channels Johnny Cash, the song unexpectedly jumps into to a doubletime punk feel about halfway through before finally returning to a tranquil refrain with harmonies reminiscent of The Carter Family. Not that such references were premeditated. I get the impression that Bunny’s a Swine was simply having a good time. The common thread linking these sections is a raw energy so earnest it could not have been forced.

After commending Bunny’s a Swine on its sloppiness, awkwardness, lack of instrumental prowess, and other traits not generally deemed praiseworthy, I feel compelled to stress that my appreciation is not in any way ironic. I admit to enjoying certain bands because they’re so bad they’re good but Bunny’s a Swine really isn’t one of those bands. Only when you strip away technical virtuosity and fancy production does it become clear what a band is really made of. Occasionally you’ll find a band that has a heart beneath the superficial gloss but more often, virtuosity and production mask a disappointing inner void. So many bands lack genuine substance, which is precisely what makes Bunny’s a Swine so refreshing and, probably, so awkward. Sincerity can be embarrassing. Ever wonder why rock stars never smile? Bunny’s a Swine is a labor of love. Wait, scratch that! Was labor really involved? This band doesn’t practice, it plays, and the joy of playing shines through every note—wait, scratch that! The joy of playing simply shines because without the gloss, there’s nothing to stand in its way.

Nate Greenberg

Side A – I Should Have Left the Bushes Hours Ago Download audio file (01 I Should Have Left the Bushes Hours Ago.mp3)

Side B – Fuck Bunny’s a Swine Download audio file (02 Fuck Bunnys a Swine.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM114 Blissed Out

2010-08-24T16:43:06Z

There’s a moment-a bunch of moments, actually-in Jay-Z’s 2009 monster-jam “Empire State of Mind” where, hidden underneath the real-estate shout outs and bends-inducing compression like a C-section scar on a TV actress, you can pick out something wrong, jarring, fucked-up. Tune in at around 21 seconds and you can hear it: this high-pitched clip, like a CD skipping or a steak knife striking a glass table. It’s a strange little imperfection to find in a more or less immaculately constructed pop song, something ostensibly unrelated to musicianship or writing, but still too much there to be considered an oversight. Every ten seconds or so it pops up out of nowhere, grinding at the gears of the chorus, tearing the whole jam apart from the inside out like an armful of bot fly babies.

I bring this up not only because Blissed Out, an NYC-based duo specializing in all kinds of trunk-rattling audio detritus, have a genius edit of this track, but because that millisecond-long mistake in “Empire” and the massive circuit-bent mixology this group throw down flow from the same old-school source. Rap is quite a bit different today than it was a decade ago, sure, but where most heads like to whine about the lyrical transition from the socially-conscious to the fiscally-conservative, it’s also important to note how that thematic shift has been mirrored in the genre’s musical methodology. Sampling, record scratching, the infinite repetition of a breakbeat were all transcendent sonic malfunctions, punk gestures stemming from the same kind of technological anti-humanism as playing slide guitar with a lead pipe or cutting up your torso with a bunch of broken beer bottles thrown hatefully at the stage. Synth-crazed Mannie Fresh-ness, on the other hand, no matter how great it might sound vibrating the tinted windows of your Escalade, doesn’t inspire fear of a black planet, just envy of a black AmEx. Which is why, when Hova’s biggest hit in years comes accidentally equipped with incessant, intrusive noisiness, we not only get a throwback to the auto-destructing golden years of rap, but an exciting insight into how this sort of musical antagonism could pop a hole in hip-hop’s fat-suit. This is where Blissed Out really come into the picture, taking that phantom peak off “Empire” and spinning it not only into a single remix, but an entire project’s worth of deeply damaged low end theory. If these guys were somehow selected to produce Jigga’s next album, it would be released on Deaf Jam, and instead of being Black, it would be the kinds of colors you see when someone punches you really hard in the face.

“Both hip hop and noise involve re-appropriating instruments and technology, removing them from their intended contexts and creating something new with that,” says Alex, one half of the group, on Blissed Out’s conceptual heritage. “There also is a physical connection between hip hop and harsh noise. That is, a physical feeling one gets when listening to it, created by the frequencies. With hip hop, this is found in the extreme low tones used and with noise the extreme highs that are often found.” It’s usually bad news when rock writers conflate signature sonics with biography—Ray Charles’ ivory style mimicking a heroin score, Justin Beiber’s pedophile-baiting croon being anything more than an accident of prepubescence, and so on—but this dichotomy of found sound and physical pain, a devastating low to a redemptive, ear-cleansing high, seems distinctly related to the band’s formation. When asked about it, Alex says, obliquely, “I almost died. But a little less than 2 years before that, I met Sasha…” Sasha being dude number two in BO. Long story short, Alex got sick for an entire year, underwent surgery, confined himself to his apartment and rediscovered an old sampler he had bought when he was younger. A series of early morning electro workouts followed, these one-man-jam seshes culminating in an extended improvised sound check with Sasha one evening in 2009 at a house show in Bed Stuy. Like Gillespie meeting Parker, or Cash joining Carter, it was pure Bliss.

It’s rare to find a band with this refined an aesthetic, let alone one that’s been playing together for less than a year. Falling somewhere between Merzbow-ian tape-fuckery, the distorted narco-haze of 90s shoegaze, 808s and heart disease, Blissed Out manage to condense and amplify the elemental nightmare of new-century pop music—that it’s made by machines, that it has no soul—into something that makes assimilation into SkyNet not seem like such a terrible idea after all. Plenty of people are pushing electronica in emotive, wonky directions, but where the vibe of something like Disaro and witch house is spooky in an anachronistic way—old, creaky houses and super-8 film—Blissed Out excels in thoroughly modern modes of terror, the sound of your brain cells turning into numbers, the rape-breathing of a thousand sentient samplers, the holographic image of Peter Brotzman conducting a full-blown army of pixelated machine guns.

The two tracks posted here come off the group’s White Triangle cassette, recorded live at Silent Barn and released by Mirror Universe Tapes in June. A-side “+Empire State of Mind Edit+” we mentioned before, and B-side “+Tropical Fantasy+” retains a similar payload of skittering, underwater beatwork wrapped inside a variegated caul of bit-crushed dub. The song titles all have pluses at either end, kind of like a battery with only positive ends.

Keeping in tune with that hopeful tip, Alex concludes, “I get the most inspired to create by listening to hot 97, reading art and fashion magazines, late night walks around the city, and the people that are around us. Even before recording music for Blissed Out, I had fallen into something where I kept meeting people, then, following that, discovering they were creating music. Seeing all of these kids around me doing it made me realize that creating music wasn’t an unattainable goal.” Alicia Keyes, dodging the demon clip, playing the world’s loudest piano, said it herself: there’s nothing you can’t do. Out of New York, that is.

Ben Lasman

Side A +Empire State of Mind Edit+ Download audio file (01 Empire State of Mind Edit.mp3)

Side B +Tropical Fantasy+ Download audio file (02 Tropical Fantasy.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

Ampeater is on WFMU’s Free Music Archive!

2010-08-05T18:39:54Z

That’s right kids, Ampeater’s now in league with WFMU’s Free Music Archive, a repository of high quality mp3s that are available free for download. We’re working with the FMA to get our entire back catalog up on their site, and from this point forward all Ampeater digital 7-inches will be automatically published to the FMA. This is a big step forward in our mission to help underexposed artists, and we’re thrilled at the opportunity to spread the music featured on this site to an even greater audience. As a celebration of this glorious union, we’ve released a special compilation for WFMU. The tracks were selected by the FMA’s Jason Sigal in conjunction with Ben Heller at Ampeater. The whole album’s embedded below for easy listening, but you can also visit its FMA page for more information. Enjoy!

Ampeater Voted One of “7 Emerging NYC Music Blogs” by Deli Magazine

2010-07-18T03:04:20Z

Pretty cool, right? Apparently the Deli Magazine’s caught onto what we’re doing here at Ampeater, and they like it. This is the kinda thing that puts bounce in our step, and smiles on our partially bearded faces. Like Dr. Scholl’s, or Vampire Weekend getting sued for $2 million. We’re pumped, so thanks Deli Mag! You can download and read the whole issue in PDF here. We’re on page 11.

AEM113 We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves

2010-07-16T17:58:18Z

We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves is one the most enigmatic bands I’ve encountered recently. They may hail from Brooklyn like damn-near everybody else these days, and their songs, though incredibly well crafted, are hardly genre-bending. But when I came across their press kit in the Ampeater submissions box, I was immediately struck by their response to the question, “describe your music….” While most bands take this prompt as an opportunity to explain just why exactly they’re so fucking awesome, We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves launches into a scathing and borderline-nonsensical self-critique. “One should be careful not to expect much from (our music)”explains vocalist/guitarist Giovanni Saldarriaga. It’s “delightfully unimportant, in poor taste, demonstrably demonic, satanically pointless and thus,” he concludes, “absolutely fatal to art history majors, compost or compote enthusiasts, and class-conscious bores.” I suppose one should expect a reasonable degree of self-deprecation from a band named We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to what Saldarriaga was saying than the mere sum of the words coming out of his mouth. Was it modesty? Irony? A desperate plea for attention? Crossing off theory after theory, I finally arrived at one that seemed a bit closer to the truth—poetry. Perhaps Saldarriaga will cringe at this conclusion. “You’ve got it all wrong,” he’ll retort, “it’s satanically pointless!” But there’s a world of difference between “satanically pointless” and “pointless” and my verdict holds. Some might call this distinction merely rhetorical but the implications are actually quite vast. I wouldn’t waste my time with pointless music but satanically pointless music is another matter altogether.

I agree wholeheartedly with Saldarriaga that We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves is satanically pointless. And what’s so captivating about the satanically pointless? How is it poetic? I’m not drawing comparison to the poetry of Neruda or Rilke or Pushkin or anybody so serious. We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves approach their craft more like Velimir Khlebnikov, Lewis Carrol, or even Dr. Seuss. They’re of a breed of artist that, while lambasting the medium in which they work, never cease for a moment to delight the senses. “(Our music is) inspired by Buddy Holly’s music, the Brandenburg Concertos and cat food commercials from the nineteen nineties,” Saldarriaga continues. “Sometimes it’ll send you into orbit, sometimes Miami Beach circa 1948, a very tame year for bikinis and bathing trunks.” Or, to put it a different way, “if you keep asking us these ridiculous questions, we’re going to keep giving you ridiculous answers.”

In addition to Saldarriga, the trio features Caley Monahon-Ward on drums and Michael Leviton on bass—at least that’s the standard lineup, but the band of multi-instrumentalists mixes it up whenever appropriate with the addition of keyboards, harmonicas, whatever… Front-man Saldarriaga has spent the last several years playing clarinet and guitar in hot-jazz ensembles. Monahon-Ward drums for a number of New York area bands including Extra Life. Leviton is an established singer and songwriter who, incidentally, toured with They Might Be Giants in 2006. To paraphrase, each member of the trio is a veteran performer. Perhaps that’s why they approach We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves as a side project, a diversion from more serious pursuits (“we got together over the winter to record… only after realizing we all have mothers named Olga,” explains Saldarriaga), even though the music is sufficiently potent to warrant more attention.

A-side “Charming Man” springs into action with a sparse but energetic beat in which the power of the floor tom is tempered by the playfulness of a tambourine. Enter jangly guitar and bass followed quickly by vocals. Saldarriaga‘s accent and hyper-melodic vocal hooks bring to mind Belle & Sebastian and yes, if you insist, cat food commercials, but the final product is somewhat more manly than the former and considerably less obnoxious than the latter. The song escalates at a perfect pace. Guitar and drums launch it into a double-time feel at the first chorus and the delightfully indulgent harmonies which kick in at the onset of the second verse up the ante once more. Falsetto counterpoint throughout the third verse, a maneuver that strongly evokes the Beach Boys, and a mildly spastic guitar riff in the final chorus carry the song to a euphoric end.

Clocking in at over five minutes long, B-side “Liza (They Don’t Call This Dancing)” lacks the radio-friendly brevity of “Charming Man” but the payoff is huge when you arrive at the dance-off outro about which Saldarriaga remarks, “I thought really sold it as a plausible Motown number.” I’m not sure if I’d call it Motown but an irresistible shuffle pulse and buoyant vocals certainly make for an explosive finale. Not that the beginning of the song is lacking in hooks; employing many of their usual tricks (lush harmonies, copious tambourine, and a vocal line that dives from high to low but remains sufficiently simple that somebody listening for the first time could probably sing along), We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves offer the listener another pop masterpiece, one that’s less conventional than “Charming Man” but equally addictive

We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves‘ debut mini-album One Belongs Here More Than You was the the serendipitous fruit of a blizzard last February. “For two days,” recalls Saldarriaga, “we laid up in the dilapidated sacristy of St. Cecilia’s convent in Greenpoint where the pew fell apart on touch and where the janitor reported to us that he played the original Toxic Avenger from the eponymous film series.” With the exception of a few vocal overdubs, all seven tracks were recorded live, an impressive feat for a band that’s yet to play a gig. In between takes, Monahon-Ward filled the role of sound engineer and producer while Leviton corrected papers on photosynthesis and Saldarriaga studied Russian. A productive way to spend two days snowed in, no? It’s one of the best self-production jobs I’ve heard. But as I keep reiterating, these guys know exactly what they’re doing at every turn along the way. And maybe that’s why they can’t take themselves seriously. They’ve seen every trick in the pop-music book and consequently recognize them for what they are—tricks. “The coronary thrombosis behind Liza,” analyzes Saldarriaga “is a little more far out than the insouciant pleading behind Charming Man.” I couldn’t have put it better. Knowing the formula to pump out hit after hit is a valuable skill indeed and one that few bands have acquired… but I suppose it could take a little bit of the fun out of the songwriting process. Oh well. If they can’t enjoy themselves, at least others will.

Nate Greenberg

Side A – Charming Man Download audio file (01 Charming Man.mp3)

Side B – Liza (They Don’t Call This Dancing) Download audio file (02 Liza.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM112 Villagers

2010-07-14T03:12:59Z

Villagers’ Conor J. O’Brien will probably draw a lot of comparisons to another well-known singer-songwriter named Conor (doesn’t hurt that he looks a bit like him too), but where Oberst’s music, at least in its prime, was all about catharsis and abandon and wild generalizations and accusations that feel really good to yell (no matter how uncool or over-the-top or not-really-true they may be), O’Brien’s is oblique and careful. Subtle, even. His lyrics slip easily from first to second to third person, and even the first person songs seem somehow distanced, easier to hear as a narrative device than a soul-bearing, this-is-the-deeply-buried-truth-about-Conor-J-O’Brien kind of thing. In fact, O’Brien is more interested in the elusive nature of truth than in any grandiose, whitewashed statements. In the quiet, brooding, sleigh-bell touched “The Meaning of the Ritual” (the gorgeous, delicate home-made animation for which (link) is 100% worth your time and happens to be one of the only videos I’ve ever seen that made a song clearer and more powerful instead of just distracting me from it), he sings: my love is selfish and I bet yours is too / what is this peculiar word called ‘truth’. And again, in Ampeater A-side “Becoming A Jackal”: before you take this song as truth / you should wonder what I’m taking from you. This fixation on the mutability of things dominates O’Brien’s lyrics, and actually makes him more of an inverse-Oberst. Rather than shouting the capital-letter Truth, he’s exploring the multitude of truths. The songs are quite decisive, but I have no idea what I am doing, or where I am going, he says in his absurdist press bio, and though some of it may be a faux-naïf pose (Once the songs took shape, I asked some friends of mine to help me play them to people. When they kindly agreed, I decided that we would present ourselves as ‘Villagers’ – I don’t really know why.), as contrived as any other publicity stance (PR is inescapably fake; even directness becomes a mediated game of authenticity), it’s still rather refreshing to hear someone say that songs should always be treated with humor, no matter the subject matter, or that his goal in songwriting is to surprise himself. Right on, Conor.

The arrangements in Villagers‘ songs are equally subtle and delicate, choosing the intimate gesture over the grand flourish so as to keep the dramatic element of the music subdued. O’Brien’s voice burns with a gentle heat, and you’re more likely to encounter gentle piano-guitar or guitar-bass unisons than washes of strings or booming brass (though there are touches of strings and french horn on other tracks of Becoming A Jackal, the band’s Domino LP). O’Brien has a knack for writing songs that would be perfectly solid acoustic troubadour pieces and then adding just one more section that manages to bring out the the shape of the whole song the way ice brings scars to the surface of your skin.

On “Becoming a Jackal”, a rolling 6/4 tune that manages to seem circular and winding in form without really departing much from convention, this takes the form of the section that begins when I got older. It’s a section that manages to advance both the musical tension of the song and the narrative arc of the lyrics all at once. Finally we get the harmony vocals the song has been hinting at the whole time (with the doubling of key lines like that first always rearranged; the fact that the chorus is sung, doubled, at different places in the stereo spectrum from the verses; and the one tantalizing harmonized line in the second chorus).

At the same time, the story leaps forward. All along the narrator has been daydreaming at the window, both cared for and imprisoned by the song’s you, who in turn is abused by the jackals. Here he finally escapes into the streets, literally following his dream, and learns a new way to move from those jackals. The meaning of the song is elusive, as it should be, but it seems to have at its core a paradox: the need to betray something (alternatively: someone) you once loved in order to grow. It could be anything from rebelling against your parents to “selling out” as a musician, though in this case the next set of lyrics, set against a series of rhythm section breaks that make them stand out like nothing else in the song, implies the latter. O’Brien is literally selling us his fears in the form of songs, but the fact that he knows this and does it anyway gives the line an inverted meaning: releasing songs about how untrustworthy songs are is an act that has to mean he has weighed it out and decided that there is still something important and meaningful that can be conveyed in a song. Once again: right on.

B-side “Twenty Seven Strangers” is more oblique yet, a story of taking a city bus home that simultaneously begs and shrugs off interpretations, but seems to revolve around the anonymity and confusion and powerlessness of city life (anytime anyone sings the phrase fluorescent light you can bet this is what they’re getting at: nothing says urban dehumanization like fluorescent lights). The musical accompaniment is sparse, resigned and melancholy in a lovely way, just like riding home with exhausted commuters in the lighted rectangle of the evening bus. Throughout, reverby wordless vocal melodies, fingerpicked acoustic guitar and minimal drums provide the backdrop for O’Brien’s precise and even lead vocals. Not one thing changes musically in the song until 2:19, when that moment of liftoff arrives (an arranging trick that forces you to really focus on the lyrics up to that point, and also reflects the endless repetition hinted at in those lyrics), just as it does in “Becoming a Jackal”. The harmony vocals and bass finally arrive to fill out the song for the last few lines before a new wordless vocal-piano melody arrives, rising through the crashing cymbals on the first three notes as if it might transcend the song, but then sinking back down in beat-down resignation.

The very end of “Twenty Seven Strangers” is in fact my favorite moment in the entire 7”. The original melody reappears twice. The first time it’s suspended over the full band and drenched in reverb just as it was at the songs start. The second repeat is pared down to just O’Brien’s voice and guitar, the same two instruments with which the song began, only this time his voice is up close, stripped of the distancing effects that hid its texture and flaws. We listen to his voice hold the final, gentle falsetto note and then crackle and sputter out like a guttering candle, the sound of the anonymous soul stepping off that city bus.

Gabe Birnbaum

Side A – Becoming a Jackal Download audio file (01 Becoming a Jackal.mp3)

Side B – Twenty Seven Strangers Download audio file (02 Twenty Seven Strangers.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM111 The Window Right

2010-07-13T09:40:58Z

The Window Right are a three piece space rock musical outfit. Right? Suppose so. Space is a nice place for these Brits. None of their tracks can seem to stay grounded. There’s an skyward trajectory to their instrumental stylings, an upward lift that breaks songs open from a jog to a gallop to a sprint. Combine the grand scope of prog rock, plus terse jazz nods, with the epic vistas of krautrock, and circumscribe the action inside the crisp lines of Brit pop, and you have the Window Right. They are a live band’s live band. Grinding out technically accomplished digital/analog jamouts that preserve an unleashed spontaneity alongside the precision. Though the three piece has performed with the likes of Damo Suzuki, famed Can vocalist and all around avant garde rock god of the 1970s, the Window Right’s music trends towards the ultra-contemporary. In their pulsing metric machismo, the guitar/bass/drums/laptop ensemble achieves the automaton flair of a mellower Richard D. James. The gentle valleys and peaks are even reminiscent of pre-suck Coldplay (yes, there was a time they didn’t suck), though when the band dials up the intensity they match the aggressive ferocity of neukrautrock and hausrock contemporaries Dinowalrus (in the US) and Drum Eyes (in the UK). The scope of the Window Right’s music spans a vast emotional and historical divide, the sort of reach that only instrumental music, without the articulated commitment to topical ephemera, can accomplish.

The affinity between The Window Right’s approach and some of the classic Krautrock has spawned an ongoing collaboration with Damo Suzuki. The three members of The Window Right - Matt, Neil, and Smudge - bring a new school element of laptop sampling and electric beats to the old “meat and potatoes” rock ensembles of yore. When the new and old school elements meet each other halfway on the shared common ground of live improvisation the results can be pretty magical. A recent TWR/Damo gig at the Hoxton Square Bar in London was an exercise in pure spontaneity, sheer creation, a rock ‘n’ roll séance. None of the songs were premeditated, preplanned; the night unfolded as an adventure of raw musical intrigue, a Lizard King odyssey importing digital elements back into the primordial analog soup of surly, sweaty invention. With such an superlative rapport, the upcoming TWR/Damo gig at the Hebden Bridge Trades Club at the end of July is not to be missed.

Chainsaw guitar chews through the first minute-and-a-half of the A side “BOW SONG”, a metal machine monument to sonic violence. For The Window Right, the industrial siren song acts as entrée to a more primitive landscape that relies on the textural possibilities of sound over the melodic. A warm walking bass opens up a grand vista premised on the vagaries of a spare, warbling three or four note guitar lick. Barely a lick, a skeletal apparition of a musical theme. This is music for the millennial masses, part of the wayward joint drift of the avant-garde and popular consciousness away from the ideological mainstream of modernist constructivism. A Beatles/Stockhausen presentation of a Can/Reich production of a Neu/Glass film. The Window Right chases after the profane peculiarities of transcendence in songs that wrinkle and flex between opposed poles of ectoplasmic desire and astroliminal logorrhea: grade-A existential jabberwocky. The song opens up with a light touch reminiscent of a new age minimalism, but the percussion bites down hard, the sting and moan of the electric guitar radiates a feverish intensity that militates against the too easy mystico-spiritual solutions of the unicorn-and-seashell elite. In the contrapuntal variations of light and dark you can hear the bloodbath of the mid-20^th century, the total annihilation that sucked the air out of Western civilization for a generation, the lingering embarrassment of rehabilitation, the survivor’s guilt. “BOW SONG” searches for a clarity free of remorse, but uncovers only the needling tension of an anxious soul trapped in a hall of mirrors.

The fragile pitter-patter of a bright-eyed Telecaster ushers in an air of sobriety on the B side “GREENDIVIDEDBBLUE”. Gone are the Sisyphean gesticulations of “BOW SONG”. In their stead a palpable calm overtakes the music, as slow and gentle as an advancing cloud. The guitar notes pass crisply and clearly; the hi hat rings clean; the bass leads you by the hand. The overall approach is so well calibrated that you hardly register the quickening pace, the rush of the cymbals, the measured ecstasy of the slide to double time right before the three minute mark. As if a wind picked up; as if a jet pulled off the tarmac; as if a wild horse had jumped the fence, headed at breakneck pace into the highlands, the sinews straining with mad grace, becoming a blur, a speck on the horizon, then lost into the free nothing. The Window Right’s B side is an acceleration into empty freedom, free of pain and devoid of hope.

A new EP and a new album are in the works for The Window Right. The trio are feverishly recording material now, esconced snugly in their studio above a London carwash. Hours and hours of live jams are being put down in search of that magical moment. The method speaks to the Window Right’s commitment to the live sound, the limitless challenge of capturing the uncapturable, sustained by the enduring belief, which all musicians share (except DEVO), that music is a moving image of eternity. A hearkening to the immutable gyrations of the celestial spheres. A six-stringed paean to the gods supported by beer, perspiration, and the white noise hum of a warm amp. More gigs are on the horizon for The Window Right, around the UK and on an upcoming Scandinavian tour, so look them up before the album comes out because nothing replaces the experience of live music.

Mike Gutierrez

Side A – BOW SONG Download audio file (01 BOW SONG.mp3)

Side B – GREENDIVIDEDBYBLUE Download audio file (02 GREENDIVIDEDBYBLUE.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM110 Hank and Pigeon

2010-07-09T21:33:33Z

New York City, more than any other place I’ve ever lived or visited, isn’t so much an objective location as it is a flexible concept. My New York isn’t Your New York, and it’s definitely not His or Her New York, or god forbid, That Guy’s New York. Most people carve a comfortable space for themselves that’s situated between the extremes of Gotham City’s criminal dystopia, Sex & The City’s 5th ave glitz, and GG Allin’s East Village nest of debauchery. Somewhere in this mess of fictional bubbles is an objective portrait of the city at large that accounts for the millions of people struggling to reconcile their fantastic projections of life in the big city with the reality that most of us wake up, go to work, do some shit, go home, eat some shit, and go to bed. We value good art as a culture because it pulls us just a little bit outside this reality and into the liminal space that separates the daily grind from what we always thought life would be like “when we grew up.” That’s good art, but truly great art keeps us there long enough to grasp whole handfuls of fantasy. It’s a precious thing. The dream isn’t to escape the metropolis but to feel like we’re living inside some highly stylized version of it that could only exist in someone’s head, and for but a moment at that. Filmmakers have it easy, they can literally mold a world and present it to viewers, and writers have hundreds of pages to describe and expand upon their thoughts, but songwriters have a meager 2 to 5 minutes to do the same, and so pop songs seldom grant listeners this level of creative freedom. But when I hear Hank and Pigeon, I imagine two people, living in a New York that’s not mine and can never be mine; a New York in which pigeons become trapped inside apartment walls, in which people stand on opposite street corners talking on the phone, in which songs are written like letters to a friend, and in which all of this can be boiled down into a simple melody.

Morgan Heringer and Alex Wernquest hardly knew one another when they began the odd practice of songwriting as correspondence. Wernquest had a background in blues guitar; Heringer in jazz vocal music and composition. The story of Hank and Pigeon tows the line between truth and fiction in so much as the truth is so perfect that it’s hardly believeable. When Bob Dylan first came to New York City he claimed to have been born from a Cherokee mother who abandoned him at birth with a traveling circus coming through New Mexico, so compared to that it’s believeable, but it nevertheless reads like the kind of urban fairytale that I’d expect to resurface as the plot of a quirky Swedish art film or animated short at Sundance. Heringer and Wernquest had played together in a band, but not the kind of band that sleeps in a touring van together–rather, the kind that hangs out every once in a while to record and play the occasional gig. They happened to be on the phone discussing one such gig when they met at opposite street corners in Manhattan. It would have been a simple matter to hang up and continue the conversation in person, but the two stood there in plain sight, talking. Add rain and replace Wernquest with John Cusack and you’ve got yourself a PG-13 romanic comedy. The incident, however cute in retrospect, went unnoticed by Wernquest until he showed up to an open-mic at the Sidewalk Cafe. Heringer took the stage, and as Wernquest sat listening he heard a line float by that went something like, “The things you say to me on the other side of the street.” Heringer had taken their conversation, or rather the situation surrounding it, and turned it into a song. But it wasn’t just a song. It was a song to him, a song for him, and an invitation of sorts. Wernquest did the only thing he could–he wrote a song back. And Heringer wrote a song back. And so they became Hank and Pigeon.

Hank and Pigeon is two voices, very much separate but interminably attune to one another. Each song is identifiably a Hank or Pigeon composition, usually according to the principle vocalist. There’s a consistency to their songs, even though each writes with a wholly different background and approach. Heringer’s songs are often modal, with chords expressive of her background in jazz. She writes on the ukulele, which as a relatively new instrument in her repertoire, affords her the opportunity to experiment with chords and harmonies that wouldn’t necessarily occur to her otherwise. Wernquest’s background in blues draws him towards more basic harmonic structures with an emphasis on the interaction between vocals and accompaniment. The variety of sentiments and moods that the two are capable of creating is extraordinary, and since each lends his or her finishing grace to the other’s compositions, the album reads like letters written by one and edited by the other such that both voices are always present but in varying roles. While sitting together during an open mic, the two began jotting down ideas and phrases, just little mental snippits. Unplanned, each went home and wrote a song based on their collective brain droppings that evening. Heringer wrote “Feathers and Fur,” the B-side of this digital 7-inch, and Wernquest wrote “When Will We Become,” the closing track on their phenomenal donation-optional album available on Bandcamp. One listen will tell you that theirs is a special kind of collaboration, different from the great songwriting pairs that come to mind, but somehow also better. Recurring themes run through their songs, most of them shared stories between Heringer and Wernquest that through the course of the album implant themselves upon listeners. As these little quirks reveal themselves to us, we get closer and closer to Hank and Pigeon, until we become a part of the discussion, watching their conversation unfold while taking part in it ourselves.

A-side “In the Ridge” introduces us to the pigeon character. Heringer and Wernquest sing, “I’m a pigeon and I’m living in the ridge between the walls.” It’s born of a true story, in which Wernquest consistently woke to strange sounds within the walls of his apartment, and imagined that such cacophany could only be caused by a pigeon flying around inside. From an academic perspective, this whole scenario situates Wernquest on the edge of a fictional Kafka-esque New York in which pigeons actually do nest in apartment walls. It’s a crazy alternate reality that I so desperately want to be true, and “In the Ridge” makes it so for a beautiful two and a half minutes. The song opens with a 5 (and a half) year old’s rendition of the song, which he renders as “whoopee cushion, whoopee cushion, tooshie tooshie, tooshie tooshie, whoopee cushion, whoopee cushion, whoopee cushion, whoopee cushion, whoopee cushion, whoopee cushion.” The lyrics pick up considerably in scope and depth after that, but I really like something about starting a song with a child’s voice. When most artists cull vocal samples they look for snippits that can be construed as sinister, like The Books sampling a deadbeat dad ignoring his child, or Neutral Milk Hotel sampling a kid putting down punk music, but here the sample reminds me that sound is sound. A beautiful song is essentially the same thing as a whoopie cushion, and it’s useful to be reminded of that. It’s also nice to hear it from a 5 year old and not John Cage. “In the Ridge” is a Wernquest composition, and alternates between two main chords for the entire song. Yet somehow, the vocals are layered over this sparse accompaniment to give the impression of fullness, completeness, and near-perfection. Wernquest’s restraint on the guitar is commendable, and his style of playing is just casual enough to be truly endearing. The recording itself is part of the magic, done live on a TEAC 1/4″ reel to reel in a single 12 hour marathon session that went well into the morning hours, during which Heringer and Wernquest recorded all 9 of the songs that appear on their album. Wernquest explained to me that this was the first time he’s ever made music with someone and had no idea what it was supposed to sound like. There was no formula for Hank and Pigeon, no musical template. In fact, they never really had any intentions of forming a proper band. It just happened, and the result is something so natural that it’s almost impossible to hear without feeling some deep and abiding attachment to the music. As a lyricist, Wernquest is among the best we’ve featured on Ampeater. His words read like a pastiche of modern literary greats, mixed with the surreal experience of living with 8.5 million other New Yorkers. Take a look:

Woke up this morning
Sky was falling
Walls were cracking
Tumbling down
Was startled by the sound

Crack in the window
Hit my pillow
While red rain was
Pourin down
My brain spilled on the ground

I heard a moon man
Brushing his hand
On the glass and
Plaster cracked
Was flat on my back

Now I’m a pigeon
And I’m living
In the ridge
Between the walls
Hoping the plaster falls.

In so much as the main figure in the song actually transforms into a pigeon, it’s hard not to recall The Metamorphoses, and the general expression of Kafka’s utterly disorienting and yet somehow comforting prose style. It’s magical realism at its finest, and it recalls the aforementioned liminal space (in this case, literally as well as figuratively, given that the pigeon is trapped inside the wall) between an objective reality and the one that exists in the songs of Hank and Pigeon.

B-side “Feathers and Fur” is a showcase for Heringer’s extraordinary voice. There’s something about it that immediately dispells any thoughts of “girl with a ukulele” syndrome, an oft lamented part of any open mic performance. Heringer is above all else highly trained, and her emphasis on precision separates her from the masses of songwriters that have also chosen this particular instrumental combination. I’m most struck by her control of each vocal phrase, as she ever so slightly tapers the closing note without sacrificing sound quality or pitch. If there’s any effort required to produce such a natural tone, it’s almost impossible to hear it in Heringer’s performance. The tune opens with a ukulele, cycling through a chord progression that’s so far off the beaten path it needs snowshoes. And yet, it benefits from the same simplicity that makes “In the Ridge” truly memorable. As a listener I’m swept along by the inconstant motion of the song, like an old music box playing some long lost waltz subject to oddly timed variations in tempo as its rusty cogs struggle to keep pace. It’s a song that belongs to the night–both written and recorded after midnight, and it has a patience and calmness that reminds me why it’s worth staying up until the day’s frantic movements have faded away. The relative quiet of the early morning hours really does work wonders.

It’s difficult to determine at times whether Pigeon is being used as a pseudonym for Wernquest or perhaps refers to an actual bird. The wonderfully playful line “Don’t break your clavicle crushing acorns in the park.” suggests the latter, while “Pigeon if you’ll be my muse then I will be the best friend a boy could ever hope to never see” (a terrific line, by the way) provides equally compelling evidence for the former. Moreover, Heringer directly references “In the Ridge” in the song’s last line: “And the walls are slowly caving in.” The pigeon is ultimately untouchable, a dream pigeon that exists only in the mythology of Hank and Pigeon, and any reference to it duly functions as a placeholder for Wernquest as a person. There aren’t many bands that have successfully developed such a complex set of allusions on their first album, and I doubt there are any bands that have done so without conscientiously setting out to do so. But Hank and Pigeon evolved as the natural outgrowth of two creative spirits interacting through their art. It’s not at all contrived; this is about as real as it gets. Even on my most jaded days, when the monotony of existing’s worn a hole in the fabric of my imagination, Hank and Pigeon somehow remind me that I can still daydream, that I can still imagine a world in which pigeons burst through walls, or in which every cell phone conversation takes place on opposite street corners. So put on Hank and Pigeon, and if it strikes you just right, head downstairs, out to the corner, and give someone a call. Maybe they’re closer than you think.

Ben Heller

Side A – In The Ridge Download audio file (01 In The Ridge.mp3)

Side B – Feathers and Fur Download audio file (02 Feathers and Fur.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM109 Hallelujah the Hills

2010-07-08T15:27:55Z

Albums, posters & other assorted promotions for Boston’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-aw-fuck-it-let’s-mic-up-the-sink indie rock band Hallelujah the Hills all bear the same distinctive collage style. In it, color and grayscale are mixed freely. Perspectives crash into one another, creating a mindfuck of Escher-esque intensity, only without that cute, logic-puzzle element of resolution. Photographs and drawings and computer graphics join forces to create single figures. Ragged edges show. Enormous pencils rain down on a boat that looks to have arrived directly from a renaissance painting. A man drowns another in a pond next to what looks sort of like a filled in multiple choice test. Scientists cribbed from a technicolor film still point to a hand drawn arrow. Stray ink splotches show around the letters that make up the band name, remnants from stamps. It’s loose and surreal and unpredictable, but it somehow manages to sustain a consistent mood: an eerie melange of pulp novels, playful non-sequitors, conspiracy theories and David Lynch’s nauseous unreality, tempered with the occasional moment of beautiful clarity. It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about Hallelujah the Hills, because it manages to be a perfect illustration of what the band sounds like. Rough-edged, surreal, funny, eerie, packed with lyrics that sound like they were lifted from a pamphlet run off in someone’s basement, and dotted with those moments of epiphany (said epiphanies being created by ingenious arranging touches and/or stirring, shouted choruses). For example, there’s the moment in “Allied Lions” (a track from the bands most recent album, Colonial Drones) in which a frothy, building rock song suddenly disappears, leaving the line everything’s a dream except for this moment we’re in now hanging over the void, the lyric broken into three equal parts with audibly different effects on each, collage-style. Then an alarm clock rings.

The art and the songs are both the product of the mind of lead singer Ryan Walsh, formerly of The Stairs, though the arranging is done by the full band together, who between the seven of them can cover all the usual rock band bases with the addition of trumpet, trombone, cello and sampler. The arrangements are often what catapult the songs out of the realm of rock-with-smart-and-weird-lyrics into a fully formed, coherent, mood-inducing sound, complete with the occasional epic crescendo, for which, as we all know by now, I am a grade A sucker. Take their Ampeater B-side “That Ticking Sound You Hear,” which commences with some minimal two-note guitar strumming, the gentlest mallet-struck cymbals, and a cascading melody fragment that’s Walsh at his softest and most lyrical. After making a brief appearance earlier, muted trumpet and cello appear to punctuate the lines out of context / on a substance with startling clusters that disappear just as fast as they arrived. Like Shai Erlichman’s songs, the moment is memorable for what it leaves out (the parallel clusters that don’t appear after the next two lines) as for what it contains. Soon afterward there is a rising, discordant guitar and trumpet trill which dies into a found sound squeal which abruptly breaks into a bridge that sounds tailor-made for some pounding drums and enormous guitars. Instead, we get more high pitched noises and arhythmic cymbals that fight the core of the song in a way that makes its ominous lyrics all the more ominous, and the full band crash we’d expect is reserved for the very last repeating chorus, where its anthemic potential runs up against the fact that the last repeating chorus is built in elusive five-bar phrases. The arrangement is brilliant because “Ticking” isn’t a song that should soar. It’s the lament of a conspiracy theorist who’s either correct or batshit crazy, and either way things aren’t going to turn out well. Even in the last moments of the song, when the vocals have landed safely on the root, the tension remains in the trumpet, which hangs on the major 7 and refuses to resolve upwards the way our western ears want it to.

Walsh’s lyrics are full of brilliant and rhythmic one-liners like the master painters all look ashamed / they don’t know the thrill of a jukebox fade, which call to mind the non sequiturs of The Silver Jews’ David Berman, with whom Hallelujah the Hills has shared bills (and shares some stylistic markers), only steeped in disaster movies instead of wry, cowboy toughness, and John Ashbery poems instead of whiskey. This attention to words (I have it on good authority that Walsh has been known to perform “Google Purity tests,” a concept coined and invented by Berman which involves searching for lyrical ideas to make sure that they are entirely original) pays off in spades, for where most bands in the indie rock world get stuck exploring the same ideas with the same words and making them sound cool via loud guitars or some such, Hallelujah the Hills’s lyrics are full of couplets that are clever and funny and touching and use words that you have probably not recently heard in a rock song, like, say, documentarian or cohorts, without sacrificing any of the rhythm that lyrics have to have to carry a rock song. AND they have loud guitars. What more could you ask for?

A-side “Introductory Saints” (another classic Hallelujah the Hills title) showcases the less moody side of the band, laying those propulsive lyrics over a bouncy backbeat, garnished with some some light country (those twangy lead lines over in your left ear, the way the melody dips from the root up an octave at the end of the chorus, that last ringing major 6 chord) and soul-pop touches (organ smears, those repeating guitar stabs in your right ear, the fat brass longtones), and ending in the Hallelujah the Hills staple of an enormous, rousing gang-vocal chorus (something about Walsh’s trebly voice becomes electric when he jumps up the octave into a shout at a climactic moment; it always gets me, (you can also hear it leaping out from the gang vocal mix on Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor). From the first line, this song really brings out the way Walsh’s lyrics fit together just loosely enough to leave endless space open for potential meaning. The opening couplet of Gentlemen / he said forever opens so many possibilities it’s easy to project your own meanings onto it, something that’s so often true of his songs.

Hallelujah the Hills have released these two songs to celebrate their departure on a summer tour opening for Titus Andronicus (who members of Hills will also be joining onstage to provide cello, brass, keys and gang vocals), a one two punch you’d be wise to check out. With so many members, Hallelujah The Hills have the ability live to create an enormous, euphoric wall of sound, especially when all of the members are not only playing at top volume but shouting a big, unison hook that hangs over the entire room. You’ll find it hard not to feel the upward pull of those enormous clouds of melody, and it will bring a little joy to your heart.

Tour dates
July 8 – Allston, MA – Great Scott
July 9 – Brooklyn, NY – Union Hall
July 10 – New Haven, CT – Lily’s Pad*
July 11 – Northampton, MA – Pearl Street*
July 12 – Albany, NY – Valentine’s*
July 13 – Buffalo, NY – Ninth Ward at Babeville*
July 14 – Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern*
July 15 – Grand Rapids, MI – Intersection Lounge*
July 16 – Chicago, IL – Subterranean*
July 18 – Youngstown, OH – Lemon Grove Cafe
* = Opening for Titus Andronicus

Gabe Birnbaum

Side A – Introductory Saints Download audio file (01 Introductory Saints.mp3)

Side B – That Ticking Sound You Hear Download audio file (02 That Ticking Sound You Hear.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM108 Woodsman

2010-07-07T06:12:14Z

Quite a bit of the press on Denver, CO quartet Woodsman leans towards discussions of longish songs and instrumental jamminess, two musical qualities that might be notable if you think Tangerine Dream and the String Cheese Incident belong on the same bill by virtue of their thematically foodie names. Of course, in situations where longish, jammy music is appropriate, length and jamminess turn out, ironically, to be the least notable points of interest. Like a film review describing a Holocaust documentary as “dark” and “historical,” it’s like tell me something I don’t know! Whoever is there came prepared. The biggest problem faced by any band pushing supertight guitar-and-drums instrumentals, vulnerable to the metaphysical trappings of “post-rock” (as if rock had a metaphysics to begin with), whose notions of song-structure place vibe above parts a, b and c is a categoric rather than a creative one. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that instead of the Nuggets anthology, there was something similarly enormous and comprehensive called Noodles: Bands That Didn’t Know When to Stop 1965-1979. It’s a terrifying prospect, imagining a Kilimanjaro-sized stack of vinyl, two songs to a side, “packaged” in 200 acres of pristine Vermont farmland. I point all this out because Woodsman, despite their bucolic namesake, are percolating a very different kind of longishness and jamminess than either term would have you believe outright, something closer to Dusseldorf than Dartmouth, something that demands your zone-outs with an urgency that’s almost political.

I got into this band backwards, seeing them live without foreknowledge and then digging into their Internet presence in the aftermath. To say something is lost in translation between the stage and the silicon isn’t a dis by any means, just the acknowledgement that different acts inevitably have their ideal mediums and Woodsman’s happens to be packed, million-degree basements where the collective sweat of some two-hundred odd strangers actually acts as an electro-spiritual conduit for an almighty suburban Shango. The setup is ritualistically symmetrical, two guitarists and two drummers in a square configuration like telephone poles in a cornfield. Operating like the world’s simplest circuit, these guys loop the voltage for forty-five killer minutes while the collective brain hovering invisibly over the rafters draws an infinite series of connecting doodles between them. It’s a powerful thing, shuddering reverb distress signals undercut by rapidly complicating motorik patterns and vocals like ghosts in some superlatively advanced German-made machine. How long were these songs? I didn’t check my watch once.

Compressing this kind of physical sensationalism into something you can own and play at home is certainly no small task. Smartly, Woodsman’s recordings are different enough from their show tunes as to discourage direct comparison. For one, they’re softer. For two, they’re cleaner. Think of a pristinely rendered two-dimensional blueprint viewed with the understanding that some day it will become a house you can inhabit. They’re kind of like that, a concise symbolic language for communicating and making permanent the ephemeral, a work of taxidermy designed to inspire admiration for the animal, alive and in its native habitat. Both “Beached” and “Balance” come off the five-song Mystery Tape EP that was released on Lefse records earlier this month.

What’s great about these tracks (both at the virtually radio-friendly durations of 4:41 and 4:37, respectively) is how they communicate the tension-wire tautness of the group’s gigs into a domestic night-terror, exchanging volume for eeriness and echo, distortion for space and clarity. From the submarine siren guitar on “Beached” to the skittery forrest-floor rhythms on “Balance”, the band allows unknowable evil presences to maneuver unchained through its etherized instrumental atmospheres. Post-rock has burdened itself with a number of distasteful connotations over the past two decades, but where other groups come off as embarrassingly bathetic (Explosions in the Sky) or comically overblown (Fucking Champs) or disingenuously mopey (Mogwai), Woodsman—like Neu! or Harmonia—comprehend the cumulative value of restraint, repetition, the acid-streak euphoria you get from listening to the same hypnotic ritual again and again. What if “Kick out the Jams” had been a literal and clairvoyant criticism of every air-sucking, self-indulgent rock act ever to grace the festival circuit in its wake? Woodsman is the hypothetical heir to that alternate reading, a repossession of the epic in the name of the simply exceptional.

Ben Lasman

Side A – Beached Download audio file (01 Beached.mp3)

Side B – Balance Download audio file (02 Balance.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

AEM107 Francois Peglau

2010-07-06T07:33:44Z

“I may have 3 passports, all fake” jokes Francois Peglau, “but I consider myself first of all Peruvian. That is where my roots are. But don’t tell that to the French embassy!” The question “where are you from” has got to be a difficult one for Peglau, a self described “Peruvian/French/Argentinean” artist who currently resides in London. He grew up in Peru and achieved moderate fame throughout Latin America as vocalist and guitarist in Lima-based indie-rock quartet Los Fucking Sombreros, arguably the best band name ever. Upon moving to London three years ago, Peglau decided to start up a solo project. He began writing in English as an “exercise” to help himself adapt to his new environment. But like the man himself, Peglau’s music is worldly, transcending international borders and drawing inspiration from all of the many places he’s called home. Citing influences that range from Elliot Smith to the politically charged folk songs of Cuban artist Silvio Rodreguez, Peglau brings refreshing perspective to the scene.

A-side “One Minute to Midnight Dream (So Sad)” would sound a little like the Beatles if you stripped away the disco drums and bass that makes it so damn groovy. You might also have to can the syncopated guitar strokes and lo-fi vocals, which bring to mind the classic reggae recordings of Horace Andy. But I promise you, there’s a healthy dose of classic British pop-rock’n’roll buried in there somewhere, most noticeably in the melodic hook that beings, “while I was waiting,” and culminates in the refrain, “so sad,” at which point the dance party takes over again. The lyrics, along with most of the lyrics of Peglau’s self-titled album, are charmingly self-deprecating. He describes them with a critique: “I’m always bitching about the system but at the end I always play by the rules.” The production value is so spot on that it’s hard to believe Peglau recorded and produced it in his bedroom, playing nearly all the instruments (guitar, bass, ukelele, keyboard, drums, electronics) himself. He did receive a little help from Lucia Vivanco on violin, however, who’s sublimely catchy riff accentuates the groove. As you can see, there are a lot of pieces coming together in Peglau’s music.

B-side “I’ll Never Be Alain Delon” pays homage to the film star that Peglau regrets he’ll never become. It’s more than a whimsical fantasy, however, and he addresses a world in which broken dreams are the norm. Maybe that sounds a bit over the top but I pose the question, who wouldn’t like to be Alain Delon? This guy was the French James Dean, only he lived long enough to relish in the spotlight and enjoy flings with supermodels across the European continent. “People tell us the future is ours to change but I can’t change it,” Peglau sings, “and neither you nor your friends.” The question that Peglau seems to be getting at is whether we’re masters of our own destinies or whether our lives are predetermined. Heavy stuff, but it’s masked behind a groove so fat and a vocal melody so catchy that you might not notice on the first listen. It’s a common trait in Peglau’s songs, which rarely let serious subject matter get in the way of a good time. The chorus hits hard with a classic rock chord progression and crunchy guitars. The second verse is backed by an absolutely infectious synthesizer hook, while the samples from a Delon interview, in which he explains the role he so often played—le solitaire, the mysterious and dashingly handsome loner—spice things up later on.

While Peglau has lived in London for several years now, to say that he’s settled down would be a bit deceptive. He gigged recently in Mexico City and Lima in addition to London and a trip to Buenos Aires is already in the works for the coming year. I find that to be one of the most intriguing things about him. While pop stars can tour internationally and let their record labels foot the bill, watching the world go by from the comfortable vantage point of a private jet, the independent musician’s tour is typically constrained by the price of gasoline and the amount of time it takes the van to break down. Peglau evades this problem by playing with a different band in every city he tours. “This is a good way of solving one of the biggest problems when you tour, transportation costs,” he explains. “And it’s a great way of making friends. It’s a little bit stressful to rehearse in 3 days the whole repertoire but until now it has worked.” But it’s more than budget that constrains the majority of indie acts to a single country and quite often, a single city. These are typically bands that build grassroots followings through consistent gigging in a concentrated area. And, well, it’s pretty fucking difficult to do that if you’re spread between continents. How many times have you seen a out of town band that’s hot shit in its home city playing for a crowd of 5 or 6 on their first out of state tour? It’s not that these bands aren’t hot shit, they’ve simply yet to achieve a geographically diverse following. So how does Peglau do it? Part of the answer may lie in the fact that his shit is absolutely steaming but part of it lies in his creative use of multimedia and online distribution.

Peglau has recently begun creating low budget but highly entertaining videos to accompany his music. “The idea is to work in a single format, with a video for every song,” he explains. “We try not to be pretentious and just have fun. And we always get some help from friends. It is just a labor of love….” The love is pretty evident–just check out the videos for “One Minute to Midnight Dream (So Sad)” and “I’ll Never Be Alain Delon” and you’ll see what I mean. The former begins with a shot of Peglau taking a comically oversized pill from a bottle marked “Sweet Dreams?” Hallucinations and dance sequences ensue. The latter is a mock trailer shot in black and white to evoke Delon’s classic films. It’s chocked full of all the scenes that make a good trailer—the kisses, the slaps, the gunshots—exaggerated to hilarious extents. These videos are produced and directed the help of wife Maria Elena de Losada who incidentally sings background on several of Peglau’s songs and whom, for reasons rational or not, I imagine looking like Penelope Cruz’s character of the same name in Vicky Christina Barcelona. They share a charming home-video aesthetic but when it comes down to it, they’re a lot better than any home video I’ve seen recently, resembling more closely the work of a professional trying (and succeeding) to be cute than the work of an actual amateur.

All of Peglau’s videos are available on youtube.com and he’s made his entire album available at bandcamp.com for free. In addition to the above mentioned sites, he’s relied heavily on blogs to disseminate his music throughout the world. It seems Peglau has learned better than just about any other musician out there how to utilize the internet. Through his innovative and decidedly non-commercial approach he’s made his music available to all, and that could be a big part of the reason he can fill clubs in all corners of the world. He isn’t just making great music—he’s pioneering a new path to becoming an internationally successful musician. I supsect that in the decades to come we’ll see a lot more artists following this path. Peglau’s just a bit ahead of the times. With this review I hope to introduce him to a primarily American audience. Let’s just hope the French embassy isn’t reading. We wouldn’t want to have one of those passports revoked…

Nate Greenberg

Side A – One Minute to Midnight Dream (So Sad) Download audio file (01 One Minute to Midnight Dream (So Sad).mp3)

Side B – I’ll Never Be Alain Delon Download audio file (02 Ill Never Be Alain Delon.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

Manic Productions and Ampeater Music Present: Twin Sister and Memoryhouse

2010-07-02T19:51:19Z

On August 10th, Ampeater Music is teaming up with Manic Productions to bring Twin Sister and Memoryhouse to New Haven, CT. While Ampeater was conceived in New York City, our writers are scattered across the 5 boroughs and around the world–South Korea, Philadelphia, and even Connecticut (that’s me). My biggest concern in making the move from the big city out to what in comparison seemed like a provincial community of subsistence farmers, was whether I’d be able to continue seeing live music with the same frequency as I had in New York. As it turns out, not only is there plenty of good music to be had, but concertgoing is actually more enjoyable up here than it ever was in New York. Since the market for promising independent music isn’t completely over-saturated, the listening public actually gets excited about shows. The venues are smaller and more intimate, which means that I don’t need to show up an hour early to secure a decent spot. Plus, the artists usually hang around and chat up fans, which as a music writer is pretty convenient. The reason this all exists is largely thanks to a fellow named Mark Nussbaum, or “Manic Mark,” who runs the best local booking and promotion agency, Manic Productions. Their goal is to “help the best local and regional acts into a brighter spotlight, while proving to national acts that Connecticut is a legitimate and important tour stop by running well organized and promoted, and therefore well attended, shows.” That first bit sounds an awful lot like Ampeater’s mission to help underexposed artists, and so we got a-talkin’ with Manic about doing something in CT. Next thing we knew, we’re throwing a bash on August 10th at Cafe Nine in New Haven with Twin Sister, Memoryhouse, and a killer local band (TBA). Sweet!

You all remember November 11th 2009 as an important date, right? Well, that’s the date we released Twin Sister’s Ampeater 7-inch, which is still available as a free download right here. You might also remember January 8th as a slightly less important date–well, maybe not. That’s when the giants over at Pitchfork caught on to Twin Sister and featured their first Forkcast track, which happened to be the B-side of Twin Sister’s Ampeater 7-inch. Coincidence? Yes, probably, but we still got there first [basks in warm glow of self-satisfaction]. Ahh, that’s the stuff. In his review, Ampeater writer emeritus Jacob Brunner wrote, “Twin Sister are a true pop band’s pop band. There may not be any overt innovations in their music, but it’s so well conceived, so well crafted and, most importantly, so well executed that you’d be foolish not to give their music a serious listen. A-side “Ginger” is a crash-course on everything the band does well. It starts off with a wave of texture so simultaneously diaphanous and huge it feels like U2 hallucinating in a cathedral. Insistent drums pound out a simple rhythm on toms and snare, a tinny acoustic guitar creeps stealthily in the left headphone, a beautifully cheap keyboard holds down the bass line. It’s the element of restraint that makes the track so successful. The marriage of sophisticated textures with streamlined structures makes for an irresistible hypnotic thrust. By the time the guitar stabs creep in towards the end of the verse, you’re almost paralyzed by bliss. Finally the curtain draws back, revealing a chorus like a wave of melodic reverb. At times it sounds like bouncy guitar pop of the Smiths slowed down to the speed of a slow-moving liquid. In a word: heavenly. They wisely ride out the chorus to victory, throwing in a beautiful guitar solo and a goosebump-inducing harmony of the words “I love you.” If it sounds corny on paper, get thee to a listening station and revel in great pop’s transformation of the familiar into the unfamiliar.” That listening station would be right here.

With Twin Sister come Memoryhouse, the recently dubbed king and queen of the burgeoning dreamwave/chillwave movement. It’s appropriately named–this is music to sit to, to think to, to dream to, and it bodes to be a great pairing with Twin Sister, whose textural approach to pop music is refreshing if not revelatory. The best description of Memoryhouse I’ve heard to date comes courtesy of Coke Machine Glow, and describes their sound as “a [Brian] Eno vinyl so deep in dust you could mow it.” I actually have a couple Eno records with the requisite amount of dust, and the statement above pretty much holds true. This is the kind of show that encourages listeners to tune in and drop out, to let the music work its magic and patch things up from the inside out.

For those of you who call New York City home, New Haven’s just an hour and 40 minute ride on the Metro North, and this show’s a great chance to escape the summer heat and get out for a bit. I officially offer anyone who needs it a bed/couch/floor at my place and a ride to/from the train station. Seriously.

Ben Heller
(this post also appears on CTindie.com)

LOCATION:
Cafe Nine
250 State Street
New Haven CT
$8 – 9:00PM – 21+

DIRECTIONS:
Click here

BUY TICKETS NOW:
Click Here

Casual Business 02: Kleenex Girl Wonder – Fancy Pants of Central California

2010-07-01T20:08:49Z

GENESIS
When Graham Smith accepted my invitation to participate in this fledgling Casual Business series he also offered to write two new songs for the occasion. To this I intuitively responded “hell fuckin’ yeah.” Like any real man he made good on his promise. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present to you this 2-song record entitled Fancy Pants of Central California, which consists of the songs “Jobs Jeans” and “Cuperchinos.” Trust Graham. He knows exactly what he is doing.

PRE-GENESIS
Several years ago, Zachary Mexico turned me onto Kleenex Girl Wonder with the album Ponyoak. As promised, it was a delight. Graham recorded these very sophisticated, ultra melodic pop songs all by himself presumably in his parents house. This record came out originally in 1999. Stand out tracks include: “The Nearest Future,” “The Sound of Paul,” and “The Mohican Antler Yard Alphabet”. Listen and buy directly from Smith here.

CREW
So for those who don’t know, Kleenex Girl Wonder is historically Smith’s one-man show, although he’s frequently surrounded himself with strong allies. For our session, which occurred on June 7th 2010, he enlisted a very capable duo of men to help with the bringing of the rock. We had Mr. Matt LeMay (Get Him Eat Him) on the drums and Mr. Thayer McClanahan on the guitar. Smith handled the bass.

GEAR

Smith arrived to the session sporting a sweet pair of what he considers to be “Jobs Jeans,” those loose-ish and sensible denim pantalones that frequently dangle from the ass of one Mr. Steve “Jobs Jeans” Jobs. We taped this session on the day Jobs unveiled the iPhone 4G. Smith opted to not wear the signature Jobs turtleneck.

GAME
Smith lived in the iso booth for this session. The booth can be a steamy place when inhabited by a rock-maker exerting himself. Fortunately, he either doesn’t naturally generate much body heat or the new Vornado fan my lovely wife donated to the studio works very well. While he inhabited it, Smith owned that boof. He’s the type of singer who knows exactly what to do and does it again and again. He’s decisive. It’s comforting to be around someone this certain.

His songs would be difficult to cover if only because the words would be a challenge to memorize. Who else but Graham would be able to sing this stuff?

TWO JOINTZ
“Jobs Jeans” is the peppier of the two and undoubtedly will go down as the A-Side. Inject this number into your ear-holes and you’ll find twisting chord changes, exquisite manipulations of language and what seems like three distinct sections catchy enough to be referred to as sweet chorii. Yes, “Jobs Jeans” might be a good place to start for the G. Smith neophyte.

Pre-take control room chatter slated B-Side “Cuperchinos” as Kleenex Girl Wonder’s “Slint song.” Now wait, it was Shellac. Yeah it’s their “Shellac song.” Special kudos to manly-drummist Matt Le May for his pummeling man-beats on this one. Musically, this ominous pounder hits the target but I don’t know if Albini would ever rock couplets like these:

“The things we crush
And turn to dust
Always end up blown back at us.
A woman’s lips,
A blunderbuss
The repercussions are thunderous!”

I didn’t know what a “blunderbuss” was so I had to look it up. According to Wikipedia, a the blunderbuss is a muzzle-loading firearm with a short, large caliber barrel, which is flared at the muzzle, and used with shot. A-HA! Then it made so much sense. Oh, I see. This is for real. I emailed Smith and asked him to send me the lyrics. I followed along while listening to the songs. He’s not just kidding around writing joke songs about Steve Jobs’ pants. Well he kinda is, but this is one man’s unique voice and this is some next-level shit. “A woman’s lips, a blunderbuss … the repercussions are thunderous!” Good line, sir! What better way for a man to express the simultaneously terrifying and seductive nature of the lady-piece!

I took the liberty to publish the full libretto for Fancy Pants of Central California below. Follow along and engage yourself. Grasping this artist’s use of language will enhance your enjoyment of the music! Visit KGW.me to listen to the entire Graham Smith ouvre and to read along with the lyrics, provided by the artist himself, for every song.

THA STRUGGLE
We’d like to bill this session as Kleenex Girl Wonder but Smith was served with a cease and desist order in late ’99 by the colossal booger control corporation mentioned in this band-name and nowadays goes by Graham Smith or KGW or Graham Smith and KGW. But as long as Graham doesn’t mind too much, I’m taking the liberty to bill this session as Kleenex Girl Wonder within these paragraphs. This is the same name that appears of the cover of Ponyoak, the song cycle that knocked me and presumably thousands of other bat-eared nerds on our asses. Graham, if the booger control corporation’s jackals hunt for you I’ll make it my mission do anything in my power to defend you. For now I’m satisfying my rock phantasies. I recorded Kleenex Girl Wonder and it was awesome.

THA HUSSLE
Smith issues his music and commix on his own micro-indie enterprise, a nerve center called REESONABLE. It will make you happy to pay this site a visit at rsnbl.com. You might also enjoy kgw.me and twitter.com/grahamsmith

PS — Stay tuned to breakthruradio.com for a BreakThruRadio Live Studio session taped on the same evening as these selections. The band rips through ten other songs live in the studio plus Smith sits for a probing interview. This is essential listening. Hysterical!

FIN

JEANS!

Travis Harrison

Side A – Jobs Jeans Download audio file (01 Jobs Jeans.mp3)

Side B – Cuperchinos Download audio file (02 Cuperchinos.mp3)

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

Jobs Jeans
Too loose
To be comfortable.
Too soon!
Mine only runs Turbo–
Turbo.
Turbo, what did you do?
The secret to control
Is having nothing to lose

But you know
You knew
That it was unstable.
So you changed a label,
You might’ve moved a table.
You’ve got something to prove,
You know truth is based on fables.
Half the time, the way the days go
Faith is hanging by a cable!

Look–
And listen, it’s a good position
But everybody’s running out of shit to do
So take a minute
And make a decision:
Who is it in there?
Because it isn’t you

And those jeans are lookin’
Bigger and bigger too…

Hold me.
You can’t hold me back!
If I could attack
Like it was a movie
You’d just move me back.
What use are the facts
When the truth gets redacted?

So uproot
And become hollow
To find truth
You have to blindly follow
Follow?
Follow up with a joke.
Pretend that you’re laughing
Whenever you choke

And you don’t,
But you do
Without hypocrisy.
Yet all your views
Are filtered through mockery
So how can I properly
Render an obloquy
Obligatorily
Without you prompting me?

It is written.
But things have shifted:
Priorities, as well as baggage bounced in-flight.
So split the difference:
It’s over/We did it
Just know that historically, some soundless night

You’ll call me
Or you’ll call me back
Recursively to retract
All these things
You called me
Back when it was your primary tactic
And you nailed me
But you owed me that
It’s been on the roadmap
So long the sales team
Has stopped overreacting
And honey, you KNOW what that means…

Jeans.

Cuperchinos
The moon lay down on a bed of stars
It said to you,
“Get a better car.”
It said to me,
“Get better friends.”
I said to you,
“This never ends.The things we crush
And turn to dust
Always end up blown back at us.
A woman’s lips,
A blunderbuss
The repercussions are thunderous!”

But you need percussion to cut a rug.
Just like you need discussion to pull a plug.

You need production,
You need support.
You need something

You need to snort
Or chew
Or smoke
Or do
But everything

Just comes up short–

The sun came up at 6 a.m.:
“About the time that God made men…
Not all stories are spun from thread;
So crash the conclave and bust some heads.

I spy with my closed eye
A huge big boy and a tiny li’l guy.
As to which is which, honey, I can’t decide;
Listen, certified spirit guides are hard to find!