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Sleepy Sun – Spine Hits (The End)
Sleepy Sun
Spine Hits
The End
Link: Sleepy Sun Official Site
When you dig through most of Sleepy Sun’s Spine Hits, it sounds like they traded their Jefferson Airplane pscyh buzz for Creedence’ Mardis Gras. More earthtoned than their previous attempt, Spine Hits is finally a step in a personalized direction.
Some looped Sleepy Sun as purist ‘70s gazing instead of wrapping a finger around their own selves and what they can do as a group. And while there are elements of that on this album, it’s not blatantly so. Maybe it’s the idea that after three albums, we are not used to ‘70s folk-rock complacency to be their identity, where we are not exactly sure what the true Sleepy Sun looks like under the mask.
But Spine Hits seems to feel more like acceptance, and that is not necessarily a bad thing here. Instead of an out-of-body experience, the band feels like they are trying to be more comfortable in their shells.
Songs like “Stivey Pond” and “Siouxsie Blaqq” channel the slow-moving guitar jam that Sleepy Sun has done well to develop, while “She Rex” is nestled in between and moves at Fogelberg pace while ending with some Rod Stewart-like crooning.. One thing you they can celebrate is for successfully being able to open up the volumes while having the discipline to control it. Don’t rule out earplugs, this song set to live is enough to let your ears ring for days.
Like the parts in “She Rex,” this album is a snapshot. And while the band does not settle on one particular sound and level, each song is distinctively Sleepy Sun.
Where “Martyr’s Mantra” opens up the choke and allows the band to add nitro to their electric guitars through a haze of smoke, “Still Breathing” is an ambient daze through comparative reality. “Yellow End” transforms into a crooner’s delight and a bar ballad that lies at the end of the world, that is if you fall off and soar into moderate ‘70s guitar jam.
If Spine Hits is any indication, Sleepy Sun will never find its place, left to wonder like rock and roll gypsies. Here you will find some destinations to blow your mind while others simply a transient stop.
Tim Foljahn – Songs for an Age of Extinction (Kiam Records)
Tim Foljahn
Songs for an Age of Extinction
Kiam Records
Link: Tim Foljahn’s Official Site
Being a character actor is one thing. Coming to the forefront and being the star is another. Tim Foljahn has labeled his career on the heels of others: Thurston Moore, Two Dollar Guitar, Cat Power, Townes Van Zant, and the list goes on.
Now Foljahn decided to go out on his own and release his debut solo project. With Songs for an Age of Extinction, it’s easy to hear the components: the experimental nature for some, the intimacy for others. Foljahn compiles it all together and that is why I am not particularly thrilled by its outcome.
It all starts out with a mantra. The meditative title track, builds a Krishna backdrop and an intensity that you would normally hear on a Dead Can Dance album. But instead of the soothing and sincere Brendan Perry, Foljahn sounds a little more like a drunk Jim Morrison. Despite the flaw, I would have loved for this album to continue in this direction. Instead, he floats through somber hymns of low-key compositions. “All Fall Away” and “Faded” do very little to entice me into believing this album is more than extraneous songs Foljahn has written during the off-season of being a contributing musician.
“War Song” perks up having that Two Dollar Guitar sound and presents marvelous guitar work. It’s a singer/songwriters dream to sound as elegant as this. But “New Light” tries too hard at being just that, a singer/songwriter. Throw in an estranged blues song “God Song,” and you will be as confused as I am.
Not sure where all of this is going, but a little better direction would have helped make this debut more memorable as a whole and less fragmented into its parts.
The Twilight Sad- No One Can Ever Know (Fat Cat)
The Twilight Sad
No One Can Ever Know
Fat Cat
Links:
The Twilight Sad on Facebook
The Twilight Sad on Myspace
Fat Cat Records home
Melancholy and sweet, borrowing much from the mid-80s British alternative/proto gothic music scene, The Twilight Sad released No One Can Ever Know earlier this year.
Occasionally energetic and aggressive, most of No One Can Ever Know features a wall-of-sound presence recalling their Scottish compatriots Idlewild, yet at other times the it is more like a mopey, shoe gazer version of lo-fi Bauhaus or Joy Division. The most obvious difference, aside from the 30-year time frame, between these bands is the absence of infectious hooks with The Twilight Sad. They’re one clear, repetitive and catchy line per song away from bringing the glory days of black nail polish and exploded hair-sprayed jet-black big hair.
Their third LP, the gloomy No One Can Ever Know is a breath of fresh air in these stale days of reverb non-surf indie rock that currently floods and washes out the music scene. Generally adhering to the modern lo-fi sound with the occasional clipping of vocals or instruments, the album stays consistent without overdoing the sound or lyrical feel.
The third track, “Sick,” is a standout song. As a perfect example of the influence from the 80s alternateen music scene, “Sick” uses muted, rapid-fire electronic drums and lightly distorted guitars to carry singer James Graham’s heavy Scottish accent. Toward the close of the song, strong, building synthesizers add a strong crescendo to off set Graham’s dying words “Until the party ends, until the part when we retire.”
“Don’t Look At Me” is the strongest song on the record. Heavy bass lines lay over an accordion (sounding much like a synthesizer in its relentlessness) and odd-timed drums carry the song through four minutes of near-constant aural massage. Lacking an obvious chorus to repeat, opting instead to repeat a changing set of lyrics over a more defined musical chorus, “Don’t Look at Me” never allows the listener to get to an easy ending point. This matches the lyrical content as well. Leaving out the beginning of the story by starting with “And I still watch you/ It’s not the right thing to do,” Graham moves to repeat “I hated watching you grow old” near the middle, and circles back to asserting “and I still watch you,” the song never fully starts or resolves—forcing the listener to hit the repeat button.
Addison Groove – Transistor Rhythm (50 Weapons)
Addison Groove
Transistor Rhythm
50 Weapons
Links:
- 50 Weapons
- Addison Groove Facebook
- Addison Groove Soundcloud
- Addison Groove Twitter
- 50 Weapons Facebook
Anthony Williams (aka Addison Groove) plays electronic music like a pile of space junk soaring through space. His sound is dirty, gritty, and likes to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. It makes for great compliments to your Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Photek collection.
Transistor Rhythm is very much in your face. The album fires off strange samples and antiquated Casio-style effects to ill repute. If it’s a means of being quirky or paying homage, it’s modern art that does not mix well with the progressiveness of the album. But when these elements take a back burner and the elements of progressive house and ghetto bass tek come into play, this is where Addison Groove etches his mark on influential electronic music. Followers of the Dubstep scene would gravitate to these elements.
The album waxes and wanes throughout. At times, the music is revolutionary, other times, it is just annoying. Repetitious Hip Hop samples litter stages of the album as if Eazy E was portrayed as Max Headroom. It’s not something I particularly admire in a song, but I cannot deny that Addison Grooves creativity and experimental values to electronic music, primarily House and Dupstep are well played.
Transistor Rhythm may have you wanting to dance it off, but most of the album is more for listening and admiring as it spins through styles quickly while morphing from one aspect to the next with little warning.
Zambri – House of Baasa (Kanine Records)
Zambri
House of Baasa
Kanine Records
Link:
Christi Jo and Jessica Zambri are on a roll. The sisters have been making music since children and it shows because only these two collectively can pull off an album like House of Baasa. It’s an interesting debut that blooms with vivid imagination but does little to blow my mind.
A result from a lifetime of warping imaginations together, it’s a fantastical aura of strange dimensions and New York art rock that has fed through the minds of various genres, but most distinctly the age of Dream Pop. “All You Maybes” soars with roaring synth samples that make for nice layering, but that’s it. There is no main purpose to all of this except to formulate a higher depth of consciousness.
“ICBYS” feeds off the night and a Darkwave dance movement that is circulating through the New York scene. Add a sense of pop accessibility and you have a standout. It’s when they utilize their environment (many found sounds leak into their songs) that takes this song to the next level. It’s the same sentiment with “Hundred Hands,” but I cannot help but recall the love song from Top Gun. There are a lot of Berlin references you could throw into House of Baasa, but nothing quite as blatant as this.
“Carry” tries to bring in the ‘60s girl group aesthetics into their ideology, and for me, the results are not as exciting, acting like that song you would skip from the atypical alternative Synthpop album from the late ‘80s because it was too much out of context to what the rest of the album was trying to prove. But “Hundred Hands” changes that as they make you fall into a sea of dreams.
I love their haunting qualities that blend in a feeling of bliss. It’s not as dreamy as you might think as the two add more punch to the mix. I wish there was even more experimental qualities to this album. Sometimes the album just needs something more for it to stand out, but with its present charm, it’s not a bad debut.
