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Tim Simenon’s 20-year career has yielded many hits and even more surprising juxtapositions, but only four Bomb the Bass full-lengths. He’s always worked with a wide variety of vocalists; on his first album in 13 years, the biggest surprise is “Black River,” featuring the vocals of Mark Lanegan (always a pleasure). Paul Conboy of Corker/Conboy stars on five of the nine tracks, sounding somewhat Thom Yorke-ish; other guests are Fujiya and Miyagi, Jon Spencer, and Toob. With Portishead and Tricky already having made fine comebacks this year, the trip-hoppy production of some tracks is perfectly timed (but then, Simenon was a major precursor of the genre); elsewhere he’s spacier (think Orb/ambient), or occasionally more dancey. It all coheres nicely nonetheless and is in my top ten electronic albums of 2008.
A bit of a departure for Ray Raposa, this starts out in Loren Connors territory with an echoey, acidic solo guitar piece and on most subsequent tracks continues to feature droning yet coruscating guitar high in the mix, with Raposa’s vocals raspingly primal on the most sonically aggressive tracks, conversationally drawling on more ingratiating tracks, angelic on the gospel cover “I’ll Fly Away,” and – on that track’s exact opposite, “Shadow Valley” – eerily detached on the proclamation “long as I’ve lived I’ve wanted to die/long as I’ve loved you I’ve been saying goodbye/It’s okay to die.” Recorded in three weeks of desert isolation, then slightly ornamented later with overdubs, most notably Jana Hunter’s harmony vocals adding a slight suggestion of warmth, this is absolutely stark and utterly refreshing in its bold focus on timbre (downright avant-garde at times), totally disconcerting in its lyric about-faces and desolateness, an album that will take a while to absorb, possibly years, but seems certain to stand up to many repeat listens.
Stern’s debut album was very guitar-focused and kinda mathy, a daring punk-metal-prog hybrid. This time out, still working with Hella drummer Zach Hill (plus alternating bassists), she’s refined her writing and structures, putting her machine gunnish hammer-on guitar heroics in more substantial frameworks. And her singing’s gotten better, though not much less aggressive, conveying her wry witty lyrics with punchy power. This is still some wild and crazy stuff, but just enough more accessible (without compromising her sound) to be a great leap forward for her.
I’ve heard a fan complain on first listen that this isn’t as adventurous as Deerhoof used to be, but to me it just sounds more focused and subtle, and they’ve added a second guitarist to fill out the textures. “More focused” doesn’t mean they don’t still draw influences and sounds from all over the map, though, from African guitar music to German prog to post-punk and more. It’s still impossible to guess what will happen from track to track, whether it will be a noisy explosion or cute or quirky or quietly beautiful or throbbingly intense, and that’s why we all love Deerfhoof, right?
The Dears were rockin’ the Canadian collective m.o. before it was popular (yup, they beat Broken Social Scene to the punch by four years) and continue to largely fly under the radar despite making fine albums chock-full of catchy songs. No Cities Left should have made them stars four years ago, but instead they bounce from label to label. They may have fallen out of fashion, now overshadowed in their native Montreal by Arcade Fire, but when every two years or so they make a new album, it’s always rewarding. The credits here are (seemingly deliberately) confusing and possibly incomplete, but apparently the band’s core is now a multi-instrumentalists duo of leader Murray Lightburn and the only other remaining original member, Natalia Yanchak, who along with a shifting cast of session players pile up layers of keyboards with corrosive guitar bursts mixed in for a thick, dirty sound that’s orchestral in density and more than a little reminiscent of Radiohead in tone, but looser and more varied from track to track.
After breaking through to a national audience with the gritty, distorted, fuzzy sounds of Return to Cookie Mountain, TVotR defies expectations with a stripped-down, electro’d-up album. That’s not to say they’ve gotten slick; there’s still plenty of grit, but it’s buzzing, throbbing, funky grit this time out. Yes, funky – check out “Crying” and especially “Golden Age.” Other highlights include the pretty, keyboard-hooked haunters “Family Tree” and “Love Dog,” the Afro-pop-tinged “Red Dress,” and the propulsive “Dancing Choose.” The band retains its love of off-kilter hooks and knack for anthemic songs that avoid any sense of self-indulgence, if anything honed even more sharply. Scene-spotters will note guest appearances by Antibalas and Katrina Ford of Celebration.
At this point I never have any preconceptions what HNIA will sound like, because they’ve had so many sounds. This 30-minute, four-song EP from 2007 opens with a cover of Sufjan Stevens’s “I Can See a Lot of Light in You” sounding like early (first three albums) HNIA minus the disjunctions, and two tracks later a song from that period, “There’s Something Between Us and He’s Changing My Words,” is remade. Now built over a drone, it’s much more sustained, not only in length (7:29 as opposed to 1:20) but in feeling; vocalist Andrea Francesca Morici (credited here as Andy FM) even sounds like original singer Karin Oliver. The long closing instrumental also drones, and chirps and jangles; it may explain the thanks to Alice Coltrane. I’d say that Warn Defever has his mojo back.
With as many styles as DiFranco has used, she’s still never made a record quite like this before. Half the tracks are flavored with synthesizer; even a mostly acoustic song such as “Way Tight” gets a bit of sweetening. On the other hand, both takes of the title track, reflecting her time in New Orleans, feature the Rebirth Brass Band, the reprise being the most N’awlins in sound. A lot of the arrangements recall the moody chamber rock of Evolve, but sometimes cheerier. In fact, DiFranco seems to be emerging somewhat from her period of darkness on this mix of political and personal songs. An artist as good and prolific as DiFranco will, at this point of her career, have trouble matching her best, but she’s still challenging and growing, and that keeps everything she does interesting and worth hearing.
Their fifth U.S. release is the first CD of new material from this Japanese psych-folk band since 2004. It finds them less folk, less psych, and more like very gentle, hypnotic sunshine pop; the psychedelic edge that remains comes from jagged electric guitar and the droning character of the songs. Oh, and what started out as a duo is now firmly a quintet. Enough categorizing. I would buy this just for the booklet with the English translations of the Japanese lyrics. Somebody here (I don’t know whether Shinji Shibayama or Masako Takeda write the words, or both) is one of the great poets of our time. “Premonition”: “Birds singing/End of evening/Arriving somewhere else/Drinking dew on the grass/Somewhere else/Drinking dew on the grass/Take me to the heaven/A bird carrying a seed/Signs of morning.” The dreamy music is like a bonus wrapping around the words.
When your debut is produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone can be heard helping out, it makes people listen. There’s a lo-fi feel despite very clear moments; the production deliberately drifts in and out of focus. One minute the instruments are starkly in-your-face, the next they’re gauzy and shoved to the back. That complements MBAR’s singing, since he usually sounds either like he’s half-asleep or drunk, slurring his words and mumbling or half-shouting. It gives his music a sing-along quality magnified by loose backing vocals. Song structures are loose as well, allowing for such magical moments as when “Above the Sun” halfway through turns mid-phrase into a harmonium-powered instrumental of delicate beauty. At other times, the band erupts into bursts of ramshackle guitar fury worthy of Neil Young (and “The Ongoing Debate Re: Present Vs. Future” recalls the chord progression of “Words”). All of this supporting/surrounding lyrics of desolate debauchery, anomie, and despair, as though trying to turn “Holocaust” into party music. Intense.
