Okkervil River have given fans a Christmas gift a few weeks early. The Austin-based rockers released a free covers EP, Golden Opportunities 2, today. Download it here. The sequel to their 2007 covers collection of the same name, Golden Opportunites 2 is “intended as [gifts] to fans”. It was recorded in one day using a live-to-tape setup, featuring covers of songs by Ted Lucas, Jim Sullivan, The Triffids, and Bill Fay. The first two tracks are my favorite:

01. It is So Nice to Get Stoned [Ted Lucas cover]
02. U.F.O. [Jim Sullivan cover]
03. One Soul Less On Your Fiery [the Triffids cover]
04. Plan D [Bill Fay cover]
05. Dry Bones [Traditional]

The covers EP follows the band’s full-length earlier this year,  I Am Very Far.

Official Site / BUY

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Of all the upstate NY bands to show promise in the last five years – only to fizzle out – did any show more promise than the Kamikaze Hearts? If there was, I didn’t hear them. No other band quite captured the feel of the region quite as well.

See, I know upstate NY. I grew up there. It’s a bit like the American South… more relaxed, but with a heavier edge of fatalism; electric instruments don’t seem right in it. Distortion and noise there seems mostly like a younger brother imitating the NYC older brother. Punk there is mostly a chronicle of the minutia of local gossip. Yet acoustic groups also don’t quite capture the feel of the area, though they come closer. Caffè Lena, where I frequented, and where the Kamikaze Hearts played several of their earliest and most memorable shows, is supposedly the oldest Caffè in America. Don McLean supposedly wrote “American Pie” in The Tin and Lint, a bar down the street (where I also met two very drunk Oxycontin dealers on one dollar draft night, a story for another occasion), then performed it for the first time at Lena’s. A very young Bob Dylan was almost booed off the stage until an irate Lena Spencer supposedly yelled to the crowd to “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” between sets. Among the various couches on which the great Dave Van Ronk slept, it hosted one of the most prominent ones. The place is littered with ghosts and folklore which unfortunately took over the space after the battle for control over it that occurred after Lena’s death.

The Caffè Lena I grew up near was one of the several hubs for Saratoga-based music, but it was also a graveyard of dried-up folk revivalists, who – because of the Caffe’s non-profit charter – were carted up in a seemingly unending cycle as a way to show the country’s culture or something. They played the same couple boring Dylan covers and traditional folk songs (never the juicy murder ballad stuff though) with the same boring Peter Paul & Mary harmonies, the sort of people who honestly saw a cultural line between Clarence Ashley and John Denver. It was embarrassing. America was a much more strange and dingy place than that. That wasn’t our culture. That was the dessicated remains of a dead plagiarism culture, that of the folk revival of the 1960s.

The Kamikaze Hearts – taking liberally from the Neil Young tradition but with enough of their own swagger, craft, and dinginess to distinguish themselves – stood out brilliantly from their first and now impossible-to-find self-titled release. Each successive release grew stronger and stronger, their confidence behind the instruments and behind the board growing exponentially. A wonderful porch-rock sound cushioned the plaintive whines of singers Troy Pohl and Gaven Richard, who sang about common afflictions like pining after women, addiction, and long road trips, but added specifically upstate flavors; they often were couching narratives in civil war imagery, listing off local stalwarts without fanfare, all in a catalog-like fashion. A frequently performed song in live performances, but now only available on the solo Gaven Richard release Wayward Puritan, was “Mahogany Ridge”. It highlighted a broken down bar near Delucia’s Deli in Malta NY with very interesting prose; the narrative was not commemorative, but rather the specific setting simply positioned an internal narrative. People don’t have conversations in Kamikaze Hearts songs, except with themselves.

Foxhole Prayers would not have been their greatest release if the group had continued and finished their final record. I remember a show I saw shortly after the release of Oneida Road; they were the best they’d ever been. The subdued sound of Oneida after I brought it home seemed a disappointment; the show had been more enervating and exciting, more uptempo than any I’d seen by a punk band in the area. Songs off later live recordings such as “Galaxy Room” and “Boston Wailer” offered a glimpse into what could have been.

But as it stands, it’s a lovely release. A combination vinyl EP and mini-CD, the cover stencil of an old man would not have been out of place in John O’Brien’s Vermont trilogy or the kitschy blarney paintings of The Parting Glass, a local bar. I remember working at WSPN Skidmore Radio and playing the songs off it before it was actually released for sale so I could use the recording of my radio show as a bootleg of the album. On a grainy Tascam cassette I sat rewinding “Cinnamon Life” over and over in the grey-silver boombox I’d taken to the backyard to be alone with my discovery.

Opener “Tennessee” has a slow shuffle and repeated guitar line that makes it a direct descendent and refinement of the similarly excellent album opener to their earlier Seven More Wonders of the World album, “Weekend in Western New York”. Pohl’s voice comes across soft with an edge, delivering matter-of-fact punches with such lines as “you always seemed to be that clever and able / to swallow the natural instinct to scream.” The effect isn’t chilling so much as oddly entrancing in its resignation, the workmanlike attention given no matter what one’s station. Chilling, what Sufjan Stevens unsuccessfully strove toward in his strained and promiscuous regionalism.

“Lubbock, TX” is the EP’s other gem, another narrative of people stuck in places. It is interacting with them, almost as much as the other characters in the narrative. In a tone of heartbreak so strained, so urgent, and so marked with déjà vu it approaches trailer park absurdities, the band reaches a pinnacle. The backing stops and starts, stops and starts, stops and starts…

Seven More Wonders of the World, also sometime mistakenly referred to as the self-titled album, is a wonder of vocal tensions and instrumental rejoinders, with strumming patterns tight as tied twine. This is the most emotionally volatile Hearts album, less tinged with regret than with the chaos of recollections and yelps of rationalization, especially on standout tracks “Accident”, an account of a military massacre, and “War Horse”.

Military imagery spots the albums like the fading discolorations of old stone buildings. “Grand Tactics”, perhaps the album’s greatest track, merges both the lovely slow harmonies the group executed so well with a rallying dynamic coda. A rare gospel influence works it’s way into later tracks “Secret Handshake” and “In My Way”.

The song links above are all clips. The following are full song MP3s courtesy of Kamikaze Hearts:

Kamikaze Hearts – Five Point Turn
Kamikaze Hearts – Beverly Hills
Kamikaze Hearts – Ash Wednesday
Kamikaze Hearts – No One Called You a Failure

RIYL: Neil Young, Ish Marquez, Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, Quichenight, Jayhawks, Grapes of Wrath

Official Site / BUY

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Jeff Tweedy, lead singer and songwriter for Wilco, was recently interviewed by The Sun. What he revealed about the band’s lyrics was a bit surprising.

“As a writer I don’t take my lyrics nearly as seriously as a lot of people do,” he said. “I enjoy singing them not because they’re poignant, but because they make me smile a bit – they’re kind of funny.”

Tweedy also defended Wilco’s most recent album, The Whole Love, released in September. He said, “People claim we’re forever dumbing down. I think we’ve been pretty dumb all along. And defiantly so. It’s pop music.”

Wilco is best known for 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004’s Grammy-winning follow-up A Ghost Is Born. The majority of critics find Wilco’s recent releases to be lacking the quality of past albums, some daring to use the term “Dad rock” to describe the band’s most recent sound. Oh well — most bands would kill to have Wilco’s stretch from ’96 to ’04. They made some truly great albums during that period.

MP3: Wilco – Jesus, Etc

Wilco – I Might

Official Site / BUY

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01. The Crystals – “He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)”
02. R. Stevie Moore – “I Wanna Hit You”
03. Whipping Boy – “We Don’t Need Nobody Else”
04. Wilco – “She’s a Jar”
05. Roger Klug w/ Billy Action – “Baby Teeth”
06. The Critters – “Younger Girl”
07. R. Dean Taylor – “Shadow”
08. Momus – “A Dull Documentary”
09. P. Vert – “Stickball”
10. Clarence Ashley – “My Sweet Farm Girl”
11. Half Japanese – “Karen”

DOWNLOAD NOW>>> (46.38 MB)
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Preview:

R. Stevie Moore – I Wanna Hit You

R. Dean Taylor – Shadow

Momus – A Dull Documentary

The Critters – Younger Girl

Wilco – She’s a Jar

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Compilation Notes, written by Daniel Levine:

Love, as those who have been in it can attest, is a finely tuned balancing act of emotions and expressions, one which can be tilted askew by the slightest bit of overindulgence, made threatening by the tone-deafness of a proclamation.

Pop music, never known for its subtlety and largely celebrated for its lack thereof, is a particularly fertile rose bed of wrong. How wrong you say? How wrong is this: in the compiling of this mixtape, a scale bounced right and left in my head, everything had to be in the right proportion (though this might be as good a time as any for excess): don’t want too much pedophilia, don’t want it to crowd out the domestic violence, and stalking I had to just toss out completely due to the sheer volume of them. Here’s a list of songs considered with notes, an appetizer for all the unappetizing morsels to come, a little stocking stuffer for all the rock ‘n’ roll restraining order die-hards out there, conveniently broken into 3 sections:

In on the joke:

-The Police – “Every Breath You Take” (and “Don’t Stand Too Close to Me”, “Can’t Stand Losing You”, and the list goes on and on)
-Randy Newman – “Suzanne” (“I’m gonna wait in the shadows/for you to come by”, or how about “I’m gonna rub my fingers through your hair/and love you everywhere”)
-The Beatles – “Run for Your Life”

Would get the joke if it was explained slowly to them

-Blondie – “One Way or Another”
-Duran Duran – “Hungry Like the Wolf” (“I’m on the hunt/I’m after you”)
-Tegan and Sarah – “Living Room” (“My windows look into your bathroom/where I spend my evenings watching you get yourself clean”)
-The Turtles – “Happy Together”

Awaiting their court date

-Clay Aiken – “Invisible”
-Hunters and Collectors – “Throw Your Arms Around Me”
-Def Leppard – “Two Steps Behind” (“I’ll be two steps behind you/wherever you go”)

There are dozens more of course, and that doesn’t even begin to take into account the songs about objects of stalking. Singing Stalk-ees may be a future Obscure Sound mixtape if this article gets enough, though the whole concept of stalkers may  be a quaint anachronism in the post-Facebook world.

Enough honorable mentions. Let’s get to the tape. I’ve arranged it into “Domestic Violence”, “Underage Love”, and “Unclassifiable Wrong”.

We start off the tape playing the hits: “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)”, “I Wanna Hit You”, “She’s a Jar”, and “We Don’t Need Nobody Else”. Notes by song:

“He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)” by the Crystals is infamous now, the bizarre hiccup in the otherwise innocuous Back to Mono collection of Phil Spector productions. Carole King wrote it supposedly after hearing Little Eva talk about an incident with her then-boyfriend. It’s a pop culture relic of a time when attitudes toward these things were much more confused than they are now, to be put historically with the scene in Play It Again, Sam where Diane Keaton’s character says she’d welcome a rapist. Keaton later starred in Looking For Mr. Goodbar, which featured a climactic rape/murder scene and Phil Spector was put in prison for shooting a woman in the face. If a hit felt like a kiss, god only knows what that felt like. Most telling is Spector’s tone-deafness. Take away the lyrics and it could be any other product from Philly’s hit factory.

R. Stevie Moore’s “I Wanna Hit You” could be taken as a prequel to “He Hit Me”. This song, more aware of its dimensions, begins innocuously enough with professions of love on the part of a narrator who finds the woman in question wise, beautiful, sweet, and sexual, but takes a bipolar turn in the chorus. The delivery is a shrug. “What can I say, I wanna hit you.” The music video only deepens the creepiness.

“We Don’t Need Nobody Else” by Whipping Boy tempers its domestic violence narrative with plenty of self-awareness, Radiohead guitar swirls and Lou Reed speak-singing. It seems to be strictly taking on the dimensions of the issue until the mid-song taunt of bravado: “That really hurt, you said/ Yeah! And you thought you knew me!”. Disturbing.

“She’s a Jar” by Wilco, while a wonderfully catchy piece of pop songwriting, should serve as a warning sign to Jeff Tweedy’s wife (if not, mid-album murder ballad “Via Chicago” should do it). The song is littered with non-sequiters, but finale “you know, she begs me not to hit her” stands out the first couple spins. The full gravity never sinks in that the casual relation implied in the “you know” brings the song around from shocking to unnerving.

We move away from violence to more tender and unquestionably illegal waters with a suite of songs wherein love knows no bounds, but is especially ignorant of those bounds pertaining to statutory rape statutes! AND THE HITS KEEP ON COMING!

Billy Action’s “Baby Teeth”. Commentary on any song whose chorus consists of “She’s still got her baby teeth/but I lost mine” would redefine the term superfluous.

“Younger Girl”, written by the Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian and a hit for The Critters in 1964, continues our countdown of pop in the (under-)age of Lolita! The premise is one of pure lust. “One look in her eyes and you’ll forget everything you were waiting to say.” Fine. Most people have inappropriate thoughts, but he keeps sticking foot firmly in mouth until asking the listener “should I hang around, acting like her brother? In a few more years they’ll call us right for each other”. This is a burning desire that can’t be quenched. If he waits, he’ll “just die”. No! Bad critters! Leave it alone, she’ll soon just be “The Little Girl You Once Knew”…

“Shadow” by R. Dean Taylor. A declaration of lust for a girl who Mr. Taylor repeatedly clarifies is “only 14 years old.” Now we know why Indiana really wanted him.

“A Dull Documentary” by Momus. Momus waits for the child to go to sleep so he can get to the babysitter, but when the kid wakes up again…

We’ve seen the bed, the bath, now let’s go…beyond.

“Stickball” by P. Vert starts out with a laid-back groove and nostalgic spoken-word reminiscent of childhood that could’ve come straight out of “Coney Island Baby”. But Mr. Vert wants to do a bit more than “play football for the coach”. You want to turn away, but how many other songs can you name that follow an exhortation to “whip some skull on me bitch!” with a proclamation of sainthood?

“My Sweet Farm Girl” by Clarence Ashley is one of the few 78s to feature a 69. The innuendos get more and more bizarre as they go on. “I keep her garden all free from bugs and weeds.” While the sexual element is obvious, the hygiene is enigmatic. Salad is tossed: “I trim her hedges/I clean out her backyard”.

“Karen” by Half-Japanese. Flute is rarely utilized on Half-Japanese’s albums, nor are female guest vocalists. Both converge here for a song one might feel less than comfortable spinning late at night.

The post Pop’s Creepiest Treasures: Lost and Found appeared first on Obscure Sound: Indie Music Blog.

The crisp, jangly guitar-pop that The Wandas produce recalls the playful power-pop of Teenage Fanclub and Big Star. It is touched with a dose of modern accessibility, with the familiar song structures and sweet harmonious vocal backings bringing to mind ‘90s alt-rock acts like The Verve Pipe, Collective Soul, and – during The Wandas’ more ambitious moments – Wilco. The Boston-based four-piece boast the sort of chugging rock that alternates freely between expansive southern-rock like the twangy “Everyday (Is as Bad as Monday)” and lush string-drenched country-pop flair of “Please Come Home”. “So I pick up my phone and try to talk to you,” Keith McEachern sings on the latter. “Instead I talk to your answering machine, ‘cause you’re not home I’m alone.” The lyrical musings are very simple and straightforward, much like the power-pop work of Matthew Sweet. Endearing and romanticized, for sure, but not without the proper instrumentation to back it – whether it be invigorating jangle of polished guitars or the melancholic cry of acoustics and strings.

The Wandas often sit at the fringe of immediate radio accessibility. “Bending Over Backwards”, with its quick guitar skiffle and high-pitched Teenage Fanclub-like chorus of exuberance, is the closest to that realm. It truly is a wonderfully infectious song, predictable structurally but enjoyably so – the chorus is one of those hooks that you await with anticipatory enjoyment. Perhaps or guitar solo or two could have been thrown in for variation’s sake, but no need to stretch this one past the four-minute mark anyways. This is a short and sweet song that is placed properly at the beginning of the album. It is able to convince listeners to continue listening to New Wave Blues, the band’s 2009 debut, so its methodic intelligence is also commendable. It’s just a good pop song.

It is an apt time for New Wave Blues to be re-released, as the band’s new album theWANDAS will drop later this year. Their excellent debut is now available at a whopping 60% discount on GroopEase, at a mere $4 for the entire album. This is a steal for an enjoyably paced, sweetly harmonized album like this. Other highlights include “Trepidation”, a raucously crunchy alt-rock ode to nonchalance, and “Fighting a War”, a melodic break-up ballad that fuses both acoustic and electric elements. “Should I abandon you, leave you?” McEachern asks on the latter. “Tell me what to do.” The indecisiveness on his part in understood and expressed wonderfully, over somber stretches of twangy guitars and abrupt acoustical transitions. What he should not have to convince you, however, is to pick up their debut. Especially with the 60% discount, it is highly recommended for all fans of alt-rock and twangy power-pop.

RIYL: Teenage Fanclub, Big Star, Wilco, The Verve Pipe, Collective Soul, Matthew Sweet, The Elected, Rilo Kiley, HAL

The Wandas – Bending Over Backwards

The Wandas – Please Come Home

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Christopher Owens reached indie-rock gold by the end of last year. After steadily putting out a handful of singles throughout the year – “Hellhole Ratrace” in July and “Lust for Life” in September – he released Girls’ debut full-length, Album, to nonstop acclaim. A year-end list felt invalid without Girls’ laudable effort reaching the top twenty (I had it #18 on mine). So it only makes sense that a follow-up of any kind would be widely anticipated.

Girls’ new six-song EP, Broken Dreams Club, was recorded in San Francisco, but judging by the opening “Thee Oh So Protective One”, you would think it was made in a tropical paradise made out of palm trees instead. The soulfully tropical feel is defined by a mariachi-like fervor, with a verse of heavily melodic guitar flutters evolving to a marching procession of horns. Owens’ voice gets more perky here, and already it becomes prevalent that Girls have retained their most enjoyable aspects (hooks and no-shrills pop-rock) with some stylistic expansiveness. The sound on Broken Dreams Club is more massive and flexible than on Album. This is probably best demonstrated by “Substance” and “Alright”, the latter actually implementing some free-jazz into thunderous alt-rock riffs. Radiohead comparisons are not too far off here. This is easily the most ambitious track on the release, as the instrumentation dominates any vocal cues. It even begins to resemble post-rock toward the end, and judging by these excellent closing moments I would love to see Owens pursue more of the style.

“Substance” is also pretty interesting – and pretty. As Owens sells a mystery substance that can cure all mental and physical deficiencies, the initial youthfulness makes a stern transition into a bleak plea for societal integration. “Who wants something real, when you can have nothing,” he sings over a delicate ‘60s-inspired riff, not ascending above a somber whisper. It is a successful effort for sure, laudably not getting too caught up in the melancholic mood to ignore Girls’ catchy pop-driven hooks as well. The reverbed guitar strum is one, along with the guitar lead that begins right before the three-minute mark.

“Heartbreaker” and “Broken Dreams Club” are both on the more conventional side, the latter perhaps too much so with its languid pacing. “Heartbreaker”, though, is fantastic and easily competes with any track on Album. In its gleeful progressions flying high over somber lyrics, Owens begins to resemble Felt’s Lawrence in more ways than one. He packs a nasally snarl during the verse, complemented by acoustic strums that align with his heightening range. The chorus introduces a gorgeous set of keys that twinkle alongside Owens’ plying “why”s, many of which add an alt-country feel expanded more upon in the subsequent “Broken Dreams Club”.

The closing track, “Carolina”, again brings up some surprising comparisons – Radiohead, Wilco, Sonic Youth, and Dennis Wilson. Owens’ voice has sporadically resembled the late Beach Boy before, and the comparison to Wilson – who wrote two phenomenal albums – emerges most triumphantly during the song’s final minutes, where Owens’ “doo-wob wob wob – doo-wob wob wob” harmonizes beautifully with his enthusiastic yelps proclaiming “Carolina, caroooliina!”. He sings this after a build-up that blends both post-rock and alternative. After the abrupt guitar halts and anthemic vocals in the following bridge, the vocal harmonizing feels like a calming after a storm. This is one release where the only issue is length; understandably it is generous for an EP at 35 minutes, but several of these tracks are so gorgeous that my desire for a new Girls EP has increased even more, which I didn’t think was possible at this point.

9.0/10.0

RIYL: The Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson, Sonic Youth, Wilco, Bob Dylan, Jonathan Richman, Best Coast, Wavves, Surfer Blood, Real Estate, Beach House

Girls – Thee Oh So Protective One

Girls – Alright

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by Josh Taylor

Imagine being at an indie/rock show at a trendy Los Angeles venue. Then, all of a sudden, everything flashes back to the ‘90s. This is what I first thought as I listened to The Spies’ newest release Televolution. What better mix could you get than that? As a huge ‘90s music fan, and equally being a fan of the current indie/rock scene, this band reminds me of why I started listening to music in the first place. Honest lyrics, catchy hooks, and an overall good time. Televolution is the furthest thing from the sophomore slump that most bands worry about during their second album release. It is a quality album with one great song after the next.

The Los Angeles-based quartet was initially a collaboration between two Philadelphia friends, Leo Francis and Mark Matkevich. Francis had moved to LA in hopes of becoming the next big musician and Matkevich, like most that move to the City of Angels, got into acting. Francis and Matkevich eventually got back into the studio to work on Francis’ solo album, which solidified the idea of forming a band together. Later they added Adrian Barrio and Dylan Giagni to complete The Spies’ lineup.

Televolution is the band’s follow-up to the 2007 release of Old Ghosts. With ten solid tracks, there is not much room for disappointment. The album opens with a booming piano and a pounding kick drum, followed by a unique bass line and captivating guitars. The band is well aware of how to keep the listener’s attention track after track.

The album’s title track, “Televolution”, is an interesting song. With lyrics like “Let’s start a revolution baby, and take off this disguise, let’s get with evolution baby and it really isn’t much of a surprise,” and “the revolution will be televised, televolution.” Despite the conventional rhyming, the band has more of a message than typical Los Angeles indie-rockers.

“National Pastime” is probably the highlight of the band’s album. It has a Wallflowers-meets-John Mellencamp feel. It could have easily been the theme song to any WB show from the ‘90s and even a current CW sitcom. Speaking of WB sitcoms, does anyone remember Dawson’s Creek? The Spies’s vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Mark Matkevich had a small part on the show (Drue Valentine anyone?) This is the song that the suits would consider “the radio hit.” I myself will agree with that. I can already hear it on the radio.

Having a catchy chorus is key if you are going to get anywhere near radio today. This was in the back of the band’s mind when they recorded “Radio Caller”.  By simply repeating the word “miscommunication” the band has you singing along by the second chorus. I do love sing-alongs.

“You’ve Got Some Nerve” serves as the albums mid-point. The song has quite a groove to it, which you can easily imagine being played in a smoky bar scene in the next big-budget Hollywood movie. This song has dual vocals that really complement each other well in the chorus and throughout the remainder of the track.

Another one of my favorites off the album is “Paper Trail”. This song has the perfect balance of guitars throughout the song and the vocals are convincing. The backing vocals are also a strong part to the bridge. It talks about the blue-collared life, the blandness of working a 9-5, and having the same boring day over and over; it is the feeling like you’ve accomplished close to nothing. One of my favorite lines is, “The hand is dealt so place your bets, with whiskey mouth and cigarettes. The paper trail is running out, I’m a working man.”

The Spies have a tightly concise sound that can that can only be explained by hours of practice and years of dedication. Francis and Matkevich display their vocals across the album together in a perfect blend of harmonies and overall accompaniment of one another. Dylan Giagni is a seasoned drummer who uses unique fills to give each song the overall fullness it needs to make this album a professional release, and not your ordinary DIY demo. Bassist Adrian Barrio is also not new to the music world. You can tell from his bass lines that he does not lack in originality or talent, for that matter. The keys make for a nice background; they help guide the song through without stealing the limelight, similar to how Coldplay incorporates the instrument into their sound.

The closing track on Televolution, “It Comes in Waves”, is the perfect ending to an impressive album. The build-up to the first verse sets a great atmosphere around the song. The tone of the keys and the melody used throughout the verses is one of my favorite portions. Giagni’s drums sound like a marching band, with crashing cymbals and thumping drum hits. “You aren’t the only one, it comes in waves.” These are the lyrics that replay throughout the song to reiterate the song’s overall theme.

With five years of playing together under their belts, it is no mystery why the The Spies’ sound is so tight and consistent. With the release of Televolution, this band should have no problem taking the Los Angeles music scene by storm and attracting a few A&R reps to their shows. Well, if they even exist these days.

RIYL: Spoon, White Rabbits, Wilco, New Pornographers, Menomena, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, Cold War Kids, TV on the Radio, The Hold Steady, Arcade Fire, Tapes n’ Tapes, Built to Spill, Dr. Dog, The Black Keys, Okkervil River, Free Energy, The Thermals, Rogue Wave

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The Spies – You Got Some Nerve

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The Spies – National Pastime

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by Jon Chapple

Every time I go to listen to Band of Horses’ third and latest long-player in iTunes, I type ‘B-A-N’ (and possibly a ‘D’ if I’m feeling adventurous) and am always instantly rewarded not with Infinite Arms, but Music from Big Pink. “Isn’t that apt?”, I think. “The daddies of country rock and and their young heirs, side by side. Two generations of rootsy Americana, neatly rubbing shoulders in the sterile confines of the ‘Column Browser.’” And each time I smile a knowing little smile to myself.

But the problem is that Infinite Arms is hardly any more of a country or roots rock album than it is a jazz record, and I’m struggling to think about how this got into my head in the first place. It could be the fact that most live performances I’ve seen of the group tends to see them kitted out in some kind of curious cowboy-lumberjack hybrid attire (think flannel shirts with stetsons) could have something to do with it. The name, also, surely plays a part in it: ‘Band of Horses’; they’ve got to live on a ranch, right?. But no, despite my initial first impressions, Infinite Arms is none of the above; it’s a polished, restrained and relatively straight-forward pop-rock album, albeit one with the occasional ‘roots’ flourish or effect.

However, as much as I admittedly do have a soft spot for The Band, that’s by no means a criticism. The record kicks off with two of the strongest openers I’ve heard on a new album in a good few years; “Factory” floats along prettily on waves of ethereal strings, its closely-harmonized dual lead vocals and slow-building orchestral pomp swelling beneath them working to create a serene, lullaby-like atmosphere, whilst “Compliments”, a yearning, irresistibly catchy mid-tempo pop-rocker straight out of 1972, provides a welcome change of pace which compliments its predecessor perfectly.

The rest of Infinite Arms fails to live up to the potential of its incredible starting momentum, but song-wise, there are still a few other highlights. The unremarkable “Laredo”, another rocker in the vein of “Compliments” (but with far less melodic appeal) certainly isn’t one, but “Dilly”, with its sing-a-long chorus and some impressive interweaving vocal acrobatics from vocalists Ben Bridwell and Tyler Ramsey is pure pop gold. “Older” is a country-styled ballad (I know, but it’s the only one!) overlaid with some attractive, tasteful pedal steel guitar lines, whilst “Blue Beard”, a sparse, evocative number about love lost under a “grey and cold” Midwestern sky sees the group trying their hand at ornate, Brian Wilson-patented multi-part harmonies, which works relatively well but is spoiled by its sterile production, which is irritating and can make the voices involved sound unnatural and digital.

Unfortunately, that is a key problem with the album as a whole. Whilst, as already mentioned, it would be a stretch to call Infinite Arms an Americana release, lyrically it is a completely different story, and I would prefer if the production reflected this. “Blue Beard” isn’t the only song where far-flung American geography features prominently; “NW Apt.”, a middling, power-chord driven indie rocker without anything resembling a hook to speak of takes place in Oakridge, Oregon (“I’m driving over in Oakridge, baby, with the whole neighborhood in tow”), the six-and-a-half-minute closing epic “Neighbor”, which combines an achingly gorgeous melody with a lengthy build-up and cymbal-crashing climax that Explosions in the Sky would be proud of, makes frequent use of rural North American imagery (chipmunks, border towns and lights on porches) and the previously-mentioned “Compliments” contains the lines: “Deep in the heart of the country was a house I built from logs / a raven and a lady hawk” and “Quiet and calm through the day, see the sun burn through the fog / approaching was a yellow dog.” John Fogerty would be proud, I’m sure you’ll agree. And yet there’s no warmth or natural air to the recording to compliment such rustic sentiments; instead, for the most part, the album sounds shiny, brittle and thin. A deliberate artistic decision or simply pandering to the iPod generation? I’ll let you decide.

Out of the twelve tracks on offer here, only the aforementioned “rockers” (“Compliments”, “Laredo”, “NW Apt.”, and possibly “Neighbor” and “Dilly” if we feel like being liberal with the term) really provide any diversity to the album’s overall sound, mood or tempo (slow). I’ll draw the line at labeling the record as a concept album for fear of tarring the poor boys with a brush they may not appreciate, but I don’t think it is any coincidence that “Compliments” and “Laredo” were selected to be the first two singles drawn from the album, and – if I were a betting man (which I’m not) – I’d wager that the next will similarly be a component of my expertly-picked Rocker List featured above, simply because the more upbeat numbers feel a bit out of place in the sea of deliberate, precious mood pieces that bookend them. Think three (or five) “Sloop John B”s and you kind of get the picture.

Incidentally, I think Pet Sounds might be a good analogy here. Like that most hallowed and revered of musical creations, Infinite Arms is clearly designed to work as a whole; it is a neat little musical package that should to be listened to and digested in one fell swoop. But unfortunately, whereas Mad Mr. Wilson’s symphonic masterpiece is certainly comprised of a collection of similar-sounding tracks, it still has enough diversity, energy and – most importantly – melodies to keep to the listener hooked, something Band of Horses just achieved here. I wouldn’t say it’s a chore to persevere to the end, but it’s just not interesting enough on Infinite Arms to make the effort.

And that is the real killer blow to any lasting appeal Infinite Arms may possess. With a few obvious exceptions (notably, of course, the two killer openers) the album just fails to make much of a lasting impact, with around half of its songs meandering around with little confidence, seemingly filling the time for the sake of it. I can see what they were trying to do; there’s an almost Sigur Rós-y pseudo-‘epic’ vibe apparent on most tracks, but here it feels more like a necessity because of a lack of memorable material, and the concept of marrying said atmosphere with lyrics lifted straight from the golden age of roots rock is – dare I say it – an almost pioneering one, but it just doesn’t work. There’s also a distinct lack of hummable melodies or obvious hooks present, with the band seemingly more concerned with creating a ‘mood’ first and a decent song second. I haven’t found myself humming these songs when I’m walking to the shops or involuntarily hearing them in my head before I go to sleep at night, and on an album of four-minute pop songs, that’s simply unforgivable.

It’s a real shame and a wasted opportunity, because the non-filler material (“Factory”, “Compliments”, “Blue Beard”, “Dilly”, “Older”, “Neighbor”) is music really worth getting excited over, but the album just has too much sub-par material for me to be able to truly recommend it as a whole. But get a hold of the tracks listed above, and you’ve got easily the best EP of 2010 so far.

5.0/10.0

RIYL: My Morning Jacket, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Rogue Wave, Death Cab for Cutie, Frightened Rabbit, Arcade Fire, Midlake, Manchester Orchestra, Bright Eyes, M. Ward, Blitzen Trapper, The Band, Okkervil River, Built to Spill, Iron & Wine, Minus the Bear, Wilco

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Band of Horses – Factory

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Videos for “Compliments” and “NW Apt.”

Official Site

MySpace

BUY

The post Band of Horses – Infinite Arms (2010) appeared first on Obscure Sound: Indie Music Blog.