Category Archives: Alternative
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.
Dirty Ghosts- Metal Moon (Last Gang Records)
Dirty Ghosts
Metal Moon
Last Gang Entertainment
Links:
- Dirty Ghosts Official Site
- Dirty Ghosts on Myspace
- Dirty Ghosts on Facebook
- Last Gang Records Official Site
Dirty Ghosts drift their way from San Francisco with Metal Moon, a ten-track LP dropped from Last Gang Entertainment. Experience in the music world (Parchman Farm and Teen Crud Combo) has trained primary member Allyson Baker’s Dirty Ghosts to emerge after a five-year period of planning and plotting.
Metal Moon is a fun and infectious pop-rock-disco-electro hybrid album produced by Aesop Rock. With plenty of hooks, plenty of upbeat dance-rock beats and riffs and plenty of repeated vocals; this is an interesting, yet slightly disconnected album. Most songs have a great presence all their own, but most never seem to burst; instead the songs mostly feature continuous crescendos that never quite get to ecstasy.
The opening track, “Ropes That Way,” is a perfect example. The nice and tight 4/4 beat (à la Song #2 from Blur) with alt-blues bass line bouncing about starts the song out energetically, and the break downs leave nice breathy spaces for throwing down some funky dancing. The lyrics “And on a better day/Gonna finally say/That I’ll never gonna leave you with / The ropes that way” are repeated over again, building up to a catchy bridge, but in the end, the climax never gets there.
Borrowing the bass from late ’70s pop funk and the drums from disco, “No Video” uses alarm samples and dirty single-note blues guitar to deliver the most structured cut. “No Video” has one of the l The fuzzy vocals and echoes blend very well with fuzzy strings so well as to evoke a hot and sweaty roller disco.
The production on Metal Moon is clear and bright, sounding very much like an updated version of 90s darlings Luscious Jackson, mixing in a touch of the White Stripes. Putting “Ropes That Way” on the front of the LP shows good production and planning.
The songs individually sound pretty similar but not to the point of a fully coherent album. The tempos are similar, as are the very warm and stand-out bouncing post-hip hop bass grooves, and Baker’s vocals are clean with plenty of multi-tracked vocals and occasional overuse use of echo effects.
Allyson’s smoky and passionate voice sounds well-suited for dance-pop and takes to digital manipulation so well; I’d be surprised if she isn’t hounded by DJs and electronic music producers asking to sample her voice for music samples.
RIYL: Luscious Jackson, pop-funk, any female-fronted Grand Royale Records release from the 1990s.
The Jukebox – Andrew Johnston’s “Don’t Need To Know”
(Click on label to listen/download the song.)
The sun is out, the birds are chirping. You have a lot of stuff to do, but you don’t want to do any of it. What you would rather do is put on that great pop song and take a work into eternity. With that great song, the day will never end. Park life is just a means to something else more magical than what you were doing before.
For Andrew Johnston’s “Don’t Need To Know,” it’s the celebration to the day. Put this in the background and it’s sure to be an accent to the carefree life you want. The soaring guitars and pulsing drums pushing beyond the chorus, Johnston’s comfortable vocal abilities smooths everything out.
I can see fans of Johnston’s debut full length to immediately fall in love with this song. For those who enjoyed late ‘90s indie pop that leaned more toward alternative pop should chase after this song. Everyone else may think this to be just another standard pop issue until it clicks and then you realize something good is coming out of artist’s ambitious attitude to write a great pop song.
Sharon Van Etten – Tramp (Jagjaguwar)
MP3: “Serpents”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Sharon Van Etten
Tramp
Jagjaguwar
Links:
All songwriting and performing is personal. Everything a musician releases has a little piece of their heart and soul in it. Even if it’s only because he or she had to rehearse and rewrite the song a million times before your wanting ears hear it, each song has been constructed from tiny yet important fragments of the artist’s heart and soul.
Such is the case with Tramp, the new album released by Sharon Van Etten. With the assistance of a host of helpers, Matt Barrick of The Walkmen, Thomas Bartlett of Doveman, Jack Condon of Beirut and Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, Tramp has the worn-in presence of a raggedy scrapbook — as heartfelt as any old blues music. The album is somewhat standard adult-contemporary work meets bluesy alternative rock, yet it reveals enough emotion to rival a high school drama troupe.
Like the air in an old man’s bar, most of the production is hazy, sticky and drab. Some songs clip the production; the rumbling distortion successfully emphasizes the desperation in Van Etten’s voice. The sonic power of the album ebbs and flows, whereas the writing stays strong. Biting criticisms and lamentations dance with swirling siren’s calls to balance out the work.
While her sensibility is apparent in every cut, not all the tracks seem to belong on the same album. The intensity of Ms. Van Etten’s lamenting on more aggressive tracks like “Serpents” and, to a lesser degree, “All I Can” contrasts with more subdued songs like “Joke or a Lie” or “I’m Wrong.”
The production and her vocals mostly unite Tramp; most of the tracks are more low-key, dirge-like tracks that I imagine could be played during a dinner party or get-together. In this way the more upbeat songs (tempo and presence-wise) stand out as successful singles that are vaguely related to the other tracks. There is of course no requirement that every song on an album share the exact same production and feeling,
Sharon’s vocal skills remind me a bit of ’90s-era Margo Timmins of Cowboy Junkies; her confident and bluesy tone summons the image of a performer who spent ten too many nights at a bar smoking and drinking and hearing endless pick-up lines from would-be suitors without a single chance in hell.
Sharon Van Etten recently performed “Serpents” on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show to promote Tramp. The piece swells to full power in less than a minute and stays strong with its rambling vocals and mock-cadence drumming. Basic two to three-chord structure is repeated over and again in a dream-rock ambient jam causing the listener’s attention to stay on the lyrics: “You enjoy sucking on dreams/ so I will fall asleep/ with someone other than you/I had a thought, you would take me/ seriously and listen up.”
“Serpents” was the best choice for a single. It’s a great song, the best on the record by far when considering the poetry and cutting lyrics. The problem with this is that “Serpents” does not represent the rest of Tramp for the same reasons. After some research, the live video performances show that a number of other songs get a kick in the ass when done on stage. The caffeinated versions are better than those from the studio, which are an incentive to see Ms. Van Etten live. But one would have to do their homework to know this ahead of time.
“All I Can” is more indicative of the rest of the songs on Tramp. “All I Can” relies more on Van Etten’s vocal prowess and backup harmonies, where “Serpents” relies on building guitars and drums. The track swells, albeit at a slower pace, to a grand finale with horns, harmonies, drums and guitars. Van Etten’s voice slides between notes in her words without twang or yodeling (thank god), deliver her wanting to show/ I want my scars to help, and heal/ how much you wanted/ so much you found”
“Ask” is another powerful track to check out. Van Etten’s voice shows its depth and range from solo smoky lows to bright, soaring harmonies. The struggle to ask for help from a dark place is laid out in beautiful melancholy for the near three-minute struggle. Acknowledging we all get down and stuck sometimes, Van Etten admits though it’s easy to feel tough and self-sufficient, it’s sometimes simply not enough.
A set of songs from a show in Philadelphia in early February has been turned into videos that can be found on YouTube. Check them out. Do it.
The Cure – Bestival Live 2011 (Sunday Best Recordings)
The Cure
Bestival Live 2011
Sunday Best Recordings
4.5 out of 5
Link: The Cure’s Official Site
All Hail the return of the melon collie!
Bestival Live 2011, a double album set, boasts thirty-two of The Cure’s classic and greatest hits including “Why Can’t I Be You,” “Lullaby,” “One Hundred Years,” “Friday I’m in Love,” “Jumping Someone Else’s Train,” “Close To Me,” “The End of the World,” “Fascination Street,” “The Walk,” “A Night Like This,” “Lovesong” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” among a laundry list of others.
Never before in their thirty plus year existence has The Cure put together a set for a live album like they have with this one. Diehard and casual fans alike will enjoy this album from beginning to end. Notable tracks off the album include a stunning rendition of “The Catepillar,” and a blast from the past of tracks off their first ever album Three Imaginary Boys/Boys Don’t Cry including “Grinding Halt,” “10:15 Saturday Night” and “Killing and Arab.”
All profits of the album will go to the Isle of Wright Youth Trust which is a charitable, independent and professional organization offering counseling, advice, information and support services to young people 25 years old and under. The Youth Trust has been working on the Isle for 27 years and has made a positive input to the well-being of its local people. For more information on the Trust, please visit www.iowyouthtrust.co.uk.
