Link: http://www.zooseven.com/ (Download The Album For Free On The Website)

Irish rock has been tainted by the success of U2. Del Currie follows in the footsteps of a realized sound and the standards that we have come to expect from an Irish rock band: big sound, open spaces, conclusive behavior, living in the moment. Maybe Currie is not messed up enough to transcend into Therapy? territory. And maybe Currie isn’t drunk enough to follow The Pogues claim to fame.

It’s his contemplative nature and clear-coat oxygenized vocals with just enough gruff to be convincing. He knows how to make his rock opuses click. When the keys sink in on “Love Like Aerosol,” he takes you beyond a high you thought you could not reach on a song like this. “I’ll give you everything, everything I can give,” he sings. We believe it.

“Painted” has a lush string arrangement, driven by bass-driven electronic fuzz. As beautiful as he presents it, the music twists with enough down notes to turn mystery into frightful paranoia. It continues his theme of inner turmoil and conviction.

At times we get glimpses of late-era Psychedelic Furs, when other times we want to reach up and grasp for our copy of Black Celebration.

Blending hard rock with accents of lush orchestration, Zoo Seven is a band that will impress you with their capabilities, but Lifesaver paints by the numbers. It’s nice to know that Currie is doing everything he can to keep rock and roll from dying, but he needs to throw the textbook away.

Links:
Gary Lucas: http://www.garylucas.com/
Dean Bowman: http://deanbowman.net/

Gary Lucas remains one of the premier virtuosic guitar players of our time. Expert slide work and lock stock and barrel mastery of the fretboard, his passion for music of all types rifles out from his axe on countless collaborations and solo albums. Recently endeavoring to compose and arrange works in the styles of raga and Chinese pop, Lucas recognizes the importance of emotion rather than just instrument proficiency in his music. This time, he has teamed up with baritone jazz/blues journeyman Dean Bowman on Chase the Devil.

Two seasoned vets who have performed their inspiring and electrifying set of spiritual roots and gospel music to New York City crowds, Lucas and Bowman aren’t evangelizing so much as they are rallying for emotional intensity.

Lucas is outright impressive in his playing throughout. Blazing Strat fingerpicking licks behind Bowman’s frenzied lines on “God is a Good God”. It’s hard to tell who’s trying to keep up the pace, what with Lucas’ wailing leads and Bowman’s relentless hand-clapping.

“Jerusalem” is a wonderful selection, and praise is owed for this remarkably touching performance. Also inclusive of Chase the Devil, Lucas and Bowman fit well together on the very stripped-down version of the John Fahey-renowned ode “In Christ There is No East or West”.

The first two tracks are originals written for the release followed by ten renditions of traditional folk, blues, gospel, and Hebrew numbers. Joining the ranks of a few of the artists covered on this thrilling LP, and rightfully so, Chase the Devil achieves as another exemplar to true spiritual roots music.

Link: http://www.wakeuplucid.com/

Look Alive People is a modest rock affair. Comprised of six moderate-paced songs. There is no glitz and glamour in Wake Up Lucid’s camp, just blue-collar strutting. Take, for instance, the opener “A Minor,” the band pulls the quick chord jerking with poise. Throw in a celebratory guitar solo and you will be head bopping before half of the song is over.

The album plays through as if I was pulling out my L.A. Guns and Faster Pussycat albums. The only difference is that Wake Up Lucid take their rock and roll seriously.  Whether its vocal ranting (as they do in “Two Cents”) or upbeat poppy texturizing as on “Words,” this band means what they say. You cannot walk away an album like this without pulling out a gyrating song about a woman; they do it with the garage rock style of “Black Hair Woman.”

And when it’s time to rock, as they do towards the end of “The Other Side Of The Road,” it’s time to put it all down on the line as they give it everything they have.

Links:
Pontiak: http://www.pontiak.net/
Thrill Jockey: http://www.thrilljockey.com/

Can we not simply enjoy an album for the simple idea that it’s just cool to listen to? Pontiak’s Living is dang cool. If there is a deep, philosophical meaning buried in the music, I don’t care. The only deep philosophy I want to have preached to me is the heavy groove-laden guitars and chunky bass lines that gyrate beyond gyration.

Their fifth release in two years, Living contrasts from their previous releases in the fact that they did not spitfire record this album like Sea Voids. But the brothers Van, Lain, and Jennings Carney still keep their montage of musical roughness at bay. Even though more time was spent on Living, it was recorded using reel to reel and laid down on 2-track tape.

So when you hear the chugging of the guitars and the hypnotic stoner rock instrumentals, you are hearing this band in its natural state, both the filth and the fury of rock and roll, chugging along like a dusty steam train.

Instead of diving into a catatonic state of epic-length exploratory rock songs, Pontiak blooms from the epicormic state of rock and roll by utilizing the timing ideology of the three-minute pop song construction.

While the songs are not hurried, moving the album along in quick pace only works to help Living be instantaneous. Before you blink twice, you are halfway down the song list.

With the short attention span, you cannot really call Living krautrock, but you can take the climactic points of krautrock and throw it into Living. There is not build up on this album, Pontiak goes straight for the gut.

“Young” sounds like a warm-up session for Frank Zappa during his Apostrophe days, while “Second Sun” takes notes off of Amon Duul II. Then there is “This Is Living,” which sounds like the band just came off of a daze of listening to Deep Purple’s Machine Head all night.

As rock cliche as it sounds, Living is all killer and no filler, and for a rock album that can jam its socks off, it does not get much better than this.

Link: http://www.discobiscuits.com/

Here in their fifteenth year of activity, The Disco Biscuits continue to load up ubiquitous genres in the trunk with their fifth studio album Planet Anthem. Once holding deep roots in the soils of jammy incongruity, this collection flutters high in the sky with breezes of melody and intelligent song craft. Featuring plenty of East Coast hip hop vibe, Planet Anthem is a rambunctious busybody; the fruits of which spawned from collaborations in the recently purchased Philadelphia studio space once owned by DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Appointing big name producers and other outside hands, such as Don Cheegro and Dirty Harry and Roc-A-Fella’s co-founder Damon Dash, maintains the fatty sheen of gaudy production. How appropriate, however.

Electro hop “On Time” is on deck for the pop charts with the lead vocal track sheathed in dripping Auto-Tune and one of the most toothsome breakdowns you will hear. “You and I” sounds 3OH!3-approved with pandemic hooks and teasing drum breaks. Arabian nuances add refreshing mystique to the otherworldly trance of “Über Glue”. Tracks “The City” and opener “Loose Change” can be heard influenced by countless white-boy underground hip hop records of the past decade and a half.

Verse for verse, “Fish Out of Water” is as close to indie rock as they get; however, the chorus falls back upon something that could of come from the Fun Lovin’ Criminals canon—minus the politics, of course.

The Disco Biscuits run the gamut from synth-rock to electronica to alternative hip hop. So wildly all over the place, it’s amazing how everything gels together. While lyrically nothing to write home about, Planet Anthem is still replete with convivial, radio-friendly pop songs.

Links:

Sweet Apple: http://www.myspace.com/sweetapplesongs
Tee Pee Records: http://www.teepeerecords.com/

Radio stations come and go, and when you grow up in Indianapolis there’s one ever-present constant: WFBQ Q-95.  They dabble with new songs every ten program directors or so, but for the most part they’ve delivered a non-stop stream of what we now refer to as “classic rock.”  The “Classic” really only goes back as far as the ’60s and is probably most dominated by music recorded in the ’70s. Having grown up in the ’70s, the steady stream of Boston, AC/DC, Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Bob Seger, etc. cranked out by The “Q” served as the soundtrack to countless drives to work and back.   Over the years I’ve grown to hate the radio station, yet love it all the same.  The older I get, there’s comfort in knowing that in a sea of shitty Indianapolis radio stations, at least Q-95 will be there to play “Lunatic Fringe”, or “Ah! Leah” (we aint learned our lesson yet!), only  when you’re lucky enough to knuckle-dust your way across the station at just the right time.  Of course, for every “Turning Japanese” you’ll earn fifty fucking Poison songs, a steaming pile of Guns & Roses, and hot stream of Tom Petty to greet you the next time you’re looking for something good on the radio.  You eventually gain the ability to identify a song by the first 3 notes played (or any 3 section of the song for that matter) and this survival technique adds hours of precious life by skipping the bad ones (see: anything by Jeff Lynne).

A band that would earn the fourth second of my time and fit right in alongside the better songs featured on any classic rock station is Sweet Apple.

Let’s face it – “supergroups” suck.  I hate to even mention that Sweet Apple falls in this category but it’s unavoidable.  The band includes J. Mascis (look him up), Tim Parnin and John Petkovic from Cobra Verde, and Witch’s Dave Sweetapple.  The story of the band’s formation is compelling:  After his mom’s death from a “long, horrible illness,” Petkovic’s hopped in his car and headed eastward.  Four hundred miles later, he eventually connected with Sweetapple.  Sweetapple called the rest of the guys and they promptly recorded 25 songs, 12 of which landed on their debut album.

Despite the band’s forming from personal tragedy, the album doesn’t bleed despair or darkness.  If anything, it plays out with a renewed sense of spirit and attitude.  If Mascis isn’t your thing, don’t let that stop you from giving the album a try.  Mascis primarily appears as a backing vocal, and is featured a bit more prominently on “I’ve Got a Feeling (That Won’t Change),” and it really works!  The production is just slick enough to appeal to the mainstream, the performance is tight enough to earn respect, and the hooks are abundant.  Although some of the lyrics become repetitive in some cases (“Flying Up A Mountain”), this doesn’t take away from the total air-guitarability of each track.  Revisiting the “classic rock” theme of this review, these songs aren’t necessarily timeless but could easily, certainly, been hits in the 70s and in that alternate reality would still be played on Q-95 today.  The vibe on many tracks evoke Phil Lynott and the Thin Lizzy groove, which is a great counterpoint to the boot-stomp whiskey-soaked cigarette dive bar sound that would otherwise dominate the listening experience; the album rocks and grooves all at once.  The inner turmoil that sent Petkovic on his eastward odyssey bleeds through in the chorus of “Can’t See You”, yet manages to never become a downer on any level, and that’s pretty much the way the album plays out.  The only misstep in the sequence of songs is “hold Me, I’m Dying”.  Any listener aware of the back story of this band would assume that’s the tune that manifests the tragedy of loss and they’d be wrong.  In fact, this one is mostly innocuous and really sort of sucks.  The chorus is marred with some sort of synthesized pseudo-horn effect that reminds me of when many ’70s rock bands started goofing around with lousy keyboard effects (Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden – I’m looking at you).  However, the album quickly shakes off the bad track and hits you with big balls and heavy riffs via “Blindfold.”  A few tracks later is the lovely “Dead Moon,” which could be the best song Beck never recorded and Brian Wilson forgot to write.

Love & Desperation is a really, really good album chock full of great rock & roll songs.  The hooks are there, as are the power chords and twists of a phrase that grab your attention.  You’ll hear bits that remind you of many bands both classic and current and while it might not make anyone’s “best of the year” list, it would certainly bring a much-needed shot of energy that “classic rock” radio needs.  Indianapolis radio listeners deserve that much at least, and Sweet Apple deserves a listen.

Links: http://www.myspace.com/curranrock

I have never felt more proud about the state of rock and roll until I popped in Reform School Girls. Nick Curran is a time capsule. But instead of treating his music like a retro piece of jewelry, he pretends like the ‘50s/’60s rock scene just broke loose and re-immerses himself within that genre.

Reform School Girls sounds just as fresh now as it would have back then. And that is because Curran spent very close to detail. Not only did he pay close attention to preservation, but you can feel the true spirit of roots rock in every fiber of his being. On listen and you immediately know this guy lives it. And he does it so well, using a gritty production scheme while keeping things as raw and in the moment as he possibly can.

Studying those old Sun recordings like it was his textbook, “Ain’t No Good” is a rockabilly romp that shows off his guitar chops and swings with the best of them. The title track contains the iconic ‘50s “Leader of the Pack” boom—boom-boom-bap drum intro that we’ve heard a million times, and yet Curran makes it seem like it’s the freshest craze; the rock balladry wraps around you like the haunts of black-and-white teenage rebellion. He goes two steps farther with “Kill My Baby” — “I’m going to kill my baby if she don’t quit messin’ around.” It’s like a wild hot rod chase through the Hollywood hills.

The association to Ronnie Dawson and something like “The Lowlife” to Dawson’s “Monkey Beat City “is obvious. Read into his career and it makes sense when you discover that at the age of 19, Curran got his start touring with the godfather of Rockabilly.

Reform School Girls gives the illusion of a top-notch ‘50s rock album where bands like the Stray Cats and Reverend Horton Heat would have been influenced by it. The wild thing that we know is that it’s the other way around.

There are no gimmicks here, no fluffery, Reform School Girls is an amazing rock album in the purest of forms.

Links:
The Pinx on MySpace:  http://www.myspace.com/thepinxatlanta

Here’s the recipe:

Take 1 portion each Queens of the Stone Age and Black Crows. Mix in what Led Zeppelin or later-days Who would have sounded like if they formed in 1990. Bake at 1969 degrees, remove from oven immediately to cool. Eat while warm. Or high.

Atlanta’s own power trio come with the noise in spades. Look What You Made me Do is more no-bullshit rock, by definition. Look it up. Go ahead. I’ll wait. You back now? Great. Sit down. This is what hair-metal bands from the 80s wanted to sound like the whole time: rockin’ solos, warm tight drums, screeching vocals, and simple lyrics. From the 2:30 minute electric guitar-powered instrumental jam track “The Owl,” to the lead track “The Desert,” to the 4 minute high-heat burner “Impatience,” the entire LP is produced in a very classic rock sound- slightly clipping guitars, vocals, and bass, with the soft, warm snare drum. Talented noodling guitar arpeggios, spastic, syncopated drums and woo-woo vocals are all in order.

I can smell the bare feet, the bad weed, and the spilled beer. I can see the paisley sheets and beads used for curtains swaying in the (very) smoky and slow breeze. I can see the dark aviator glasses, the black porno-moustaches, the tight ringer shirts, the bad early 70s haircuts, and the dirty jeans.(Whad’yaknow- without seeing the picture first, this almost exactly describes their picture on their promoter’s web page as indicated here:

RIYL:  Black Crows, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Kinks, and  (insert any roots-rock band name here).

Origin: Birmingham, England
Style: Progressive Rock

So you got through Chris Welch’ Close To The Edge (Omnibus Press, 2000) and maybe you picked up Yesstories: Yes In Their Own Words (Tim Morse and Yes: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) which does a decent job at filling in the gaps.

Welch’ story ends with contemplation by guitarist Steve Howe. The year is 2000 and they just played an unbelievable show at the Royal Albert Hall. Fans got a wide array from the band’s career as Welch paints a picture showcasing that the band can still dip back into their catalog while maintaining authentic diversity all of these years later. For the band themselves, they felt a rejuvenation from the world tour that supported their pre-2000 release The Ladder. Howe talks about the future.

“What will we do next? I guess we’ll still be on the road. It gets tiring but I enjoy it tremendously and there is great joy in what we do. Were still crazy after all these years!” (p. 275).

But as the story continued, Yes did not just continue touring, they went back into the studio to create Magnification, which was released on September 11, 2001.

Despite some critical response to The Ladder as some say it overstepped the life of the band and was disappointing to band members like Anderson, Welch’s story tells something different, something more successful and satisfying to the band . And it’s more common than not that Yes is and always will be a ‘70s band (Conrad Leviston’s review – www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=yes=mag and username Bryan’s review on progreviews.com, January 4, 2004, for example. Prog Rock Reviews contain page after page of reviews from various Yes fans and worth skimming through.).

I consider Magnification the Brett Favre syndrome of their career. When Keys To Ascension would have been the high note to end their dynasty, they kept going and going. And when The Ladder was just decent, Magnification is more of the same, just with that Yes twist of trying to morph beyond the possibilities.

Compare Yes of the 21st Century with Yes of the 1970s and you would not recognize the two if it were not for Jon Anderson’s distinctive vocals. Jason Warburg of The Daily Vault notes that the band was so far removed from the mainstream during the making of  this album that they incorporated tactics even unheard of for Yes (http://www.dailyvault.com/toc.php5?review=1804).

Gone are Oliver Wakeman’s keyboards, stripping the band’s sound down to a guitar-bass-drum combination. But to add depth and continue the tradition of not sounding like a traditional rock band, they enlisted a full orchestra.

It’s hard to listen to this album at first. What sounds like Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore” throughout the entire album, Jethro Tull or even Mike Oldfield if you stripped out any electronics, it takes a little time for the ear to adjust and focus on what the band is trying to tell you.

Vocalist Jon Anderson once considered Yes as a crusade (Close To The Edge, p. 3), and that was the staying power of this band. Magnification tries to stay true to the ethics of breaking out of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll phenomena in rock, and forcing the spiritual ethics of the self into it. Most songs exemplify this philosophy, but “Don’t Go” is indicative to the guide of ethics the band developed as they feed off of their own song, building on layers and rolling around in your own imaginative structure.

One thing I can say about Magnification is that beyond the strange fantasies and Anderson’s over-abundant vocals, the musicianship still meets Yes standards as it takes a special degree of talent to be able to keep up and move with the time signature and tempo changes while making it sound so effortless.

An by looking at this album with that in mind, Yes final release is not so bad after all, if not a shame that during a time when people needed positivity in rock the most, this album was not as outspoken as it should have been.

Yes – Don’t Go (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxJXlwtocrY)

Cross-Reference: Alan Parsons, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd

Kevin Hearn is no stranger to the music world, going on album number five of his solo career and 14 years and counting as a member of Barenaked Ladies.

It’s his work with Thin Buckle that really brings out the best in Hearn’s talent, like driftwood on water and a style departure from his work with Barenaked Ladies. Let’s not downplay the efforts of Thin Buckle; the group is largely responsible for making Havana Winter so pleasing to the ears.

If this album was made in the early ‘60s, I could use the word “googie” without flinching. Cool bleeps and fashionable theremin sounds turn several of the songs into an out-of-this world pop fashion statement, taking these traditional songs to a whole new level.

“On The Runway” exemplifies this in every way. Using electronics to bring out the best in the melodies and accentuate them outside the stratosphere, you almost forget that slight twain in Hearn’s voice.

You get this from the very beginning of “Coma,” building up like a re-awakening until the band swirls around with gorgeous sounds like you just laid your body down in a bed of flowers. And before it ends, the band pulls a classic Who trick and turns up the amps almost beyond their capabilities, blowing your mind.

But that’s just part of it.

It’s the more contemplative moments that stand out. “Reeling” best defines this album with twinkling orchestrations and meandering pianos under a canopy of lush vocal harmonies. This is where Hearn is at his most honest.

With a bluegrass foundation, “In The Shade” moves back to that down home touch Hearn is so great at capturing. This slightly bluesy number is a realization with Spector-esque results including a more pronounced theremin solo that hug up to a sliding guitar.

There is nothing that immediately stands out on this album beyond simply the album as a whole. In fact immediacy is not even a concern. Despite a few songs, what Hearn and Thin Buckle have created is a well-rounded album of all the things you come to expect from a great pop rock band.

Links:

Kevin Hearn And Thin Buckle: http://www.kevinhearn.com/
MySpace Link: http://www.myspace.com/kevinhearnthinbuckle