Nite Jewel
Good Evening
When we're first introduced to Ramona Gonzalez's voice, on "Bottom Rung," it's buried; perhaps it is the rung.
And yet it's all around us, enfolding the sanctuary- or pagoda-suited keyboard, as if she's pulling a curtain of raindrop beads.
Read my review of Good Evening here.
Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest
On Grizzly Bear's follow-up to the much-praised Yellow House, they again draw inspiration from setting. This time the title is a little island off Massachusetts that isn't even recognized by the Census Bureau. But that's only the start of the mystique.
Read my review of Veckatimest here.
Speck Mountain
Some Sweet Relief
The sophomore album from Chicago's Speck Mountain is infused with a spiritual energy. Just don't expect mitres and pulpits.
Read my review of Some Sweet Relief here.
The Flaming Lips
Embryonic
Listening to Embryonic, I can't help but think it was meant to be experienced in a format other than CD. Vinyl, maybe: spread out over two or three records. Or perhaps on cassette, giving it an A side and a B side. Or maybe its songs were meant to be beamed directly into your brain and arranged to match your mood, care of some device to be invented decades from now.
Of course, this is the same band that released Zaireeka, a four-disc curiosity intended to be consumed simultaneously. (In other words, you'd need four different stereos.) Unlike The Soft Bulletin (1999), which came two years after Zaireeka, and unlike Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) or At War With the Mystics (2006), Embryonic scales back the pop melodies and indulges in atmosphere. This atmosphere vacillates from frenetic and clattering ("Aquarius Sabotage," "Scorpio Sword") to peaceful and drifting ("The Impulse").
"Gemini Syringes" is trance-inducing space rock: As German mathematician Thorsten Wörmann deliberates on an equation, the slow throb of Michael Ivins' bass sways us into a haze. And there's an intermittent clacking, too. It sounds reptilian (but is later revealed to be ... Karen O[!]).
In quiet ballads "Evil" and "If," which could be parts I & II of the same song, Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd examine the good-vs.-evil duality of human nature. They show considerable sensitivity in these, Coyne wanting in the former to spare someone pain, and in the latter Drozd weighing which human motivation is stronger. Bad news: They conclude it's evil, although they do preface that by implying we have more than a small choice in the matter. Drozd sings, "They can be gentle, too / if they decide."
In that spirit, Coyne and Karen O collaborate, almost flirtatiously, on "I Can Be a Frog," with her providing imitations of whatever animal he mentions. There are moments when the two nearly break out in laughter, but Coyne's sincerity sells it. You can bet that even as he throws O a loop, like tossing in "helicopter" before "wolf," he has the underlying message in mind, which is that the woman in the song can be anything she wants to be. (Perhaps coincidentally, O did the soundtrack for the 2009 big-screen adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are.") It's remarkable how tickled and carefree she is here, given how cold she can come across in her Yeah Yeah Yeahs material.
With another cameo --- this one an uncredited David Bowie (or if not, an amazing likeness) --- Coyne picks up the thread of good and evil and loops it around the stargazing theme. After Bowie/pseudo-Bowie counts up to 10 (signifying blast-off?), he gives voice to the dark side ("Free to eat the fruit / from the evil tree"). Also, it seems that those sticky-palmed heathens grant their bodies and/or their souls to "the silver machine" in exchange.
Planets and stars, whether astronomy or astrology in nature, fit the Lips' proclivities; after all, they did spend the better part of the past decade working on their eccentric sci-fi venture, the film "Christmas to Mars." Yet there's a Pink Floyd-esque vastness about Embryonic. Wonder how it would sync up to "The Wizard of Oz." Or would "2001: A Space Odyssey" be more appropriate?
Crocodiles
Summer of Hate
When I write poetry, I most commonly do it as a form of exorcism. I have feelings I need to vent, whether frightful or painful or thoughtful, and writing them down allows me to process them, or to make sense of them, or to move past them. This has the side benefit of allowing me to create something out of a raw experience. Sometimes I end up with something beautiful, even if all I started out with was something troubling.
I suspect musicians do this, too. Certainly not all the time, but it's wonderful when their irrepressible impulse to share love or humor or angst or despair culminates in a great piece of music. Think of all the breakups and setbacks and breakthroughs they survived or overcame or championed. And it might never have been, had they chose to, say, go watch TV.
Crocodiles, a band from San Diego, have funneled their throbbing temples and clenched teeth and aching hearts and wistful stares into a 34-minute nerve net of emotion. Merging tremeloed guitar with drum programming and '60s pop sensibility, Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell capture the tender as well as the brutal.
Some tracks spurt confrontational energy. "Refuse Angels" lashes out with rapid-fire rimshots. "Flash of Light," which begins with swing and swagger, disintegrates into a full minute of caustic, repellent shooshing effects, like an aural strobe gone haywire. In the latter song, Welchez sings, "Tonight I'm gonna set my house on fire. ... Gonna rewrite my life."
The title track and "I Wanna Kill" would seem similarly inclined, although "I Wanna Kill" displays a gallows humor. Featuring a riff that could have been cribbed from The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me," the song links a man's meager beginnings to his present frustration. It's the poppiest song on the album, with a back-and-forth chorus that includes "all the kids sing swan songs / all the kids sing along with me." This is somewhat more disturbing when you take into account that Welchez is a teacher by day.
Often, the message might be one of struggle, but the mood is anything but oppressive. "Sleeping With the Lord" assembles majestic vibratoed synths, almost like a take on Vangelis' classic theme "Chariots of Fire."
The CD, containing no liner notes, is scrawled "lovingly dedicated to Willy Graves." Graves was their bassist in a previous band, The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. He died in autumn 2008 at the age of 28. So it's reasonable to assume his passing informed or influenced the tone of at least some these songs. Death and the afterlife is a recurring theme, with religious imagery popping up in several songs.
Summer of Hate has many highlights, but "Here Comes the Sky" is something extra special. Rowell's tremolo really shines here, shimmering amid a wavering synth that flows over it like an aura. There's something crushing about this track's tenderness, in the same way that some of Brian Wilson's songs go for that lump in your throat. Welchez tells us that his love has departed --- nothing special there --- but when he confesses, "In your absence, my heart's overflowed," it's such a powerful and unusual statement. He's not mad at her (or him, I suppose, although he equates her/him to a rose, which is a pretty strong feminine symbol); he actually has so much in his heart that it pours out. Continuing the metaphor, he says, together, they could grow to the sky, "where the weeds who are after us dry up and die."
It's so fanciful, so preposterous: a garden in the sky! And yet he's so unfaltering in his delivery, there's no denying that this is a deep avowal. Core-deep. It's a hope that we know is a dream. An impossible dream.
And Rowell's guitar gently weeps.
The Raveonettes
In and Out of Control
Bang!
Read my review of In and Out of Control here.
Mulatu Astatke
and the Heliocentrics
Inspiration Information, Vol. 3
Contrary to what you might expect from the title, this is the first album made by Mulatu Astatke and the Heliocentrics. Together, that is. He's an Ethiopian jazz master, and they're a young U.K. band with worldly tastes (which is to say that their talents encompass instruments beyond the standard, Anglo-centric array of guitar, bass, drums, piano and keyboard). Their pairing was facilitated by the Strut record label of London for its Inspiration Information series, an influential-veteran-meets-hotshot-newcomer arrangement.
The two have chemistry, for sure. Ghostly Moog whines in "Dewel" give way to a chorus of horns, the sax, trumpet and trombone pattering in common conversation. Waiting in the bass groove, Astatke emerges with twinkles of vibraphone. Then the horns chatter anew.
The bulk of the songs were composed by Heliocentrics members, who number Malcolm Catto (drums), Jake Ferguson (bass), Oliver Parfitt (keys and synths), Adrian Owusu (guitar), Jack Yglesias (flute and percussion), Tom Hodges (theremin and saw), Dan Keane (cello), Kat Arney (harp), James Arben (clarinet and sax), Shabaka Hutchings (tenor sax) and James Allsop (bass clarinet). It's a full house.
Mulatu Astatke (piano, percussion) seems more mentor than bandleader here, although the tracks are bent toward traditional Ethiopian arrangements rather than new age eclecticism. Some guest players bring in washint, krar, begena and masenqo, instruments little-heard in Western music. Dawit Gebreab plays washint on "An Epic Story," the flute tones offset against a synth wind. It would seem befit for a warrior, one surveying his future kingdom from atop a bluff, perhaps at the cusp of daybreak.
The players save the best for last, though. "Anglo Ethio Suite" unfolds with suspense, a deliberately paced composition with a solemn and recurring cello theme. Malcolm Catto's kit skittering opens the piece, and Kat Arney dusts the scene with harp before Jake Ferguson's combo of bass and begena establishes the hypnotic groove. Astatke, at the piano, darts out, then retreats. Dan Keane's thin, high strings squeak out, and from there the track narrows in on cello and flute, as if the two are trapped in the face of impending tumult. The strings worry and scurry, then scrabble feverishly. A clarinet squeals. The end is near. Literally.
Mastodon
Crack the Skye
With Crack the Skye, Mastodon have charged into the realm of accessibility. Sung vocals, avoided by some metalheads like a strain of the pox, are in steady supply here. Throughout, the Atlanta metal quartet's musicianship remains enviable: They tear through savage riffs and runs, pulling tempo change-ups on a dime, an equilibrium of ferocity and control. Sabbath would be proud.
