Owls - Two

Owls
Two
25 March 2014
Polyvinyl

4 stars out of 5

 

Owls’ second LP, the very accurately titled Two, sees the band formerly known as Cap’n Jazz offering up some pleasing experimental emo tunes. It has moments which sound like early Foals (“Why Oh Why”), others which sound like Mary Timony (“The Lion”), still others which recall The Dismemberment Plan (“This Must Be How”), and still still others which contain echoes of late Sunny Day Real Estate (“Ancient Stars Seed”). All of these moments are good moments, as is the rest of the record. This group of talented and visionary musicians has released three albums to date, the one and only Cap’n Jazz LP back in 1994 (they would break up the following year), the first LP as Owls in 2001 (they would break up again the following year), and now a third session (after reuniting in 2012) and a third LP in 2014.

The LP begins deceptively accessibly (by Owls standards) with “Four Works of Art,” then veers into left field with “I’m Surprised,” an attempt at a pop song that is as catchy as it is unconventional. “Why Oh Why” begins to chomp at the bit a bit more eagerly, trying to break free of the restraints of “rock and roll” while still retaining some traditional aspects. With tracks seven and eight—“It Collects Itself” and “I’ll Never Be”—Two discards any remaining semblances of pop song pretention and heads straight for the abstract/experimental exhibit. This is some of their strongest material under either band name.

Two is a sleeper. It slowly and quietly sends its tendrils to climb your legs and arms to ensnare you and then sinks its hooks into you so you can’t escape. And you won’t want to escape. With each listen the album becomes more intense, more powerful, and—like a good opiate should—more addictive.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

Ages and Ages - Divisionary

Ages and Ages
Divisionary
25 March 2014
Partisan

2.5 stars out of 5

If future genetic engineers ever decide to combine the DNA of Animal Collective with that of Fleetwood Mac, let’s hope they get a lot better results than Ages and Ages. I assume this Portland seven piece is an entertaining live act—with every member of the band singing along to some very sing-along-able material, how could they screw that up? Gospel music without the whole annoying religion thing would probably be a good time, even if somewhat troubled by cognitive dissonance. In short, it would take a lot effort for such a band to suck live. In the recording studio, however, where you can’t depend on stage gimmicks and crowd participation, you’re stuck with just your mediocre tunes, and no amount of “C’mon people, clap your hands!” is going to save you.

There is definitely a market for bland music. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t have Jack Johnson, Barenaked Ladies, and such as. And if Ages and Ages can find a niche for themselves in that vacuous world, good for them. Someone needs to fill the hockey arenas of the Sioux Falls of this world, right? There’s always people who want to hear major chords played on acoustic guitar and single-note piano melodies, accompanying vocal harmonies with all of the edges sanded off and all of the imagination and inspiration mechanically separated. Much of Divisionary is the musical equivalent of a Chicken McNugget: lacking much in the way of colour, flavour, or texture, easy to swallow, requiring minimal mastication or digestion, and instantly forgettable.

I hesitate to describe Ages and Ages as a novelty act—I made that mistake when Beck first appeared and have been proven again and again to have been dead wrong—but there’s a whole lot of gimmickry going on here. Indeed, a good novelty act uses liberal doses of scathing satirical social commentary, whereas Ages and Ages appear to be one hundred per cent honest and earnest in their blandness. While I suppose there is some virtue in being bland and proud (as opposed to being ironically bland), most virtues, like this record, aren’t all they’ve been hyped up to be.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

Future Islands - Singles

Future Islands
Singles
24 March 2014
4AD

3 stars out of 5

 

Singles is the fourth studio LP by Baltimore’s (by way of Greenville, North Carolina) synthpop ensemble Future Islands. For a quick musical description, imagine Van Morrison fronting Simple Minds (or perhaps Feargal Sharkey fronting Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). Singer Samuel Herring’s mouth, throat, and lungs work together to produce some crazy-ass soulful sounds, providing an unexpected counterpoint to Gerrit Welmers’s New Wave-y synth melodies, which in turn sometimes sit rather awkwardly on the same cramped loveseat as William Cashion’s post-grunge-y guitars, but are usually accompanied by the latter’s rather more appropriate picked bass.

When it works, as it does with the second track, “Spirit,” it works very well. At other times, such as during all of “A Song for Our Grandfathers,” nothing works. I could toss around accusations of cheese and sap, but it’s not worth my time. And, for some unknown reason, Herring decides to invoke the extreme metal gods and unleash a few death growls on “Fall from Grace,” an otherwise very un-metal slow synthpop track. Luckily, the album closes with the much stronger “A Dream of You and Me,” a New Wave-y ditty that would have gotten regular rotation on the airways 30 years ago. The last line of lyric on the record is “staring at the sea,” although, in case you were curious, nothing on this LP resembles The Cure in the slightest.

Future Islands is one of the weirder American synthpop-revival bands out there today, mostly because of Herring’s singing. Musically, they toe the straight and narrow, but Herring continuously colours outside the lines with his adventurous vocal pencil crayons. Perhaps if their music became as adventurous as the vocals this would be a very good band, but for the time being they’re just a very good idea for a band.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

The Hold Steady - Teeth Dreams

The Hold Steady
Teeth Dreams
25 March 2014
Washington Square

3 stars out of 5

 

The sixth LP by Brooklyn’s The Hold Steady, Teeth Dreams, sees the trad rockers resting in a comfortable place, content with their basic guitar rock template which has proven so successful in the past. Singer Craig Finn’s lyrics are still multi-faceted stories of (sub)urban angst, full of pain, drugs, mistakes, and long lost lovers. This album doesn’t have the energy or the massive hooks of their 2006 classic Boys and Girls in America, but then who has even come close to that in the last eight years? Nobody. One of the unfortunate consequences having created such an undisputed masterpiece is that everything that follows is going to be a disappointment, regardless of its merits as a stand-alone piece.

In the case of The Hold Steady’s new LP, it would have been a disappointment even if it were the band’s debut. Unlike the band’s critically-lauded Boys and Girls or Separation Sunday, there’s not really much to differentiate the songs from each other on Teeth Dreams. The departure of keyboardist Franz Nicolay before 2010’s Heaven Is Whenever has had a homogenizing effect on the band’s sound—even the tracks on Boys and Girls which didn’t feature much in the way of keys were still distinct and memorable. Not here. The songs which comprise Teeth Dreams are solid enough alternative rock tunes, but the album goes by with little to hold onto except for Finn’s adept storytelling skills. But even while Finn still delivers the goods, his delivery seems a little tired, and the goods sparkle a little less than they once did.

While there are some satisfying rockers on this record, there’s little incentive to return to them again and again like the band’s earlier work. Because The Hold Steady remains faithful to their basic template, this album would probably work very well in a live setting, but Teeth Dreams likely will never make it into your List of the Top Three Hold Steady Records. For long time fans, check out the epic album closer “Oaks.” It’s a keeper. For the rest of you, check out their earlier material, specifically their first three LPs. You won’t be disappointed.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

Liars - Mess

Liars
Mess
24 March 2014
Mute

3.5 stars out of 5

 

Mess is the seventh LP by Liars, and it sees the band playing with EBM themes that would have been fresh in 1990, but which in 2014 are more nostalgic than cutting edge. That’s not to say that Mess sounds stale or derivative—it's neither. It’s a fun record that has both danceable and head-nodding moments.

“Mask Maker” begins in a late-‘80s industrial groove, somewhat like Nitzer Ebb or Front Line Assembly. It runs seamlessly into the next track, “Vox Tuned D.E.D.,” which continues the same theme. The first half of “I’m No Gold” could pass for FLA circa Tactical Neural Implant if it wasn’t for Angus Andrew’s vocals, which don’t resemble Bill Leeb’s in the slightest; however, the second half of the song is more disco-meets-funky house. “Pro Anti Anti” is dance floor-ready industrial in the vein of KMFDM or late-‘90s FLA. It’s an appealing, accessible, and fun dance track despite its dark sounds and almost menacing vocals. The sci-fi lyrical slant of “Mess on a Mission” only enhances its silly but quite fun robot bleep-filled groove. “Darkslide” could be by another Vancouver industrial outfit, platEAU. It’s an instrumental track that plays with minimalist refrains and subtle atmospherics and ends up being one of the more satisfying songs on the record. “Perpetual Village” is the album’s centrepiece: nine minutes of a brooding, bass-anchored groove, sprinkled with feedback and angst.

The final track, “Left Speaker Blown,” is a slow dirge that, combined with “Perpetual Village,” forms a coda to the album that charts an entirely different course from that of the preceding music. The sombre and mournful tones unfold in stark relief to the playful beats of “Mess on a Mission” or “Pro Anti Anti.” While this isn’t Liars’ best work, Mess has its moments and ends strongly.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

La Dispute - Rooms of the House

La Dispute
Rooms of the House
18 March 2014
Better Living

4.5 stars out of 5

 

Grand Rapids, Michigan’s post-hardcore combo La Dispute’s third LP, Rooms of the House, is a concept album centered on the contents—photos and other artifacts—that lead vocalist Jordan Dreyer—or a character played by him—finds in a(n abandoned?) house. Musically, the album is a hybrid of Tortoise-like math rock grooves and At the Drive-in-style post-hardcore energy, mood, and textures. The listener is immersed in a nostalgic world of car accidents and snow storms through Dreyer’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics. The album is presented in what seem to be three chapters: “HUDSONVILLE MI 1956,” “SCENES FROM HIGHWAYS 1981-2009,” and “THE CHILD WE LOST 1963,” each chapter introduced by a song of the same title.

“First Reactions After Falling Through the Ice” is an impressionist retelling of a near drowning, presented in disjointed frames cut from a frantic home movie. “Woman (In Mirror)” sees the band taking a break from post-hardcore intensity and settling into a groove reminiscent of The War on Drugs (see Friday’s review). On “SCENES FROM…” Dreyer sings, “I think history’s a system of roads and there’s nowhere it doesn’t go.” The lyric reveals a lot about his ideas of storytelling and about the concepts he’s manipulating within the scope of this album. “35” describes the collapsing of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge during the Minneapolis evening rush hour of 1 August 2007, and the struggles of the drivers and passengers to free themselves from their vehicles as they fill up with water and sink into the unforgiving river. Did Dreyer witness the collapse first-hand as his lyrics would suggest, or is he placing himself at the scene to better understand the character he may or may not be playing?

Rooms of the House closes with “Objects in Space,” a description of Dreyer’s surroundings—objects, artifacts, photographs—as he finishes writing the album and packs everything away. While there may be a few red flags raised when one reads “post-hardcore concept album” and “At the Drive-in” in the same review, rest assured that the pretentiousness is kept to a minimum here. Dreyer is at times a sound-alike for Cedric Bixler, but La Dispute leans far more towards the math rock end of the spectrum (think Slint deciding to rock out) than the prog rock end. Highly recommended.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream

The War on Drugs
Lost in the Dream
18 March 2014
Secretly Canadian

4 stars out of 5

 

Adam Granduciel’s band The War on Drugs has made a couple of very good records since the departure of Kurt Vile (not to slight Vile at all—his solo stuff is great): 2011’s Slave Ambient and now Lost in the Dream. The new LP is a lovely piece of work, full of relaxed but vital mid-length songs that unfold naturally into abstract guitar paintings. It’s definitely music you can zone out to—it can have the same sort of mesmerizing effect as a good dub album—but it has enough interesting details that a close listening is equally rewarding.

The opening track, “Under the Pressure,” is almost nine minutes of pure bliss: one gets the feeling that if Don Henley could have ever done anything worthwhile in his career, it would have been but a feeble imitation of this song. Its mid-‘80s vibe works seamlessly with its mid-‘00s instrumentation—layers of delays on both guitar and piano, a near ambient drone of an ending—to form something very mid-‘10s. “Suffering” slows things down to a funeral march, but one that shimmers with cathartic guitar release and an affirmative, steady groove. “An Ocean Between the Waves” and “Disappearing” keep up the extended ambient-ish rock explorations, while “The Haunting Idle” is an exercise in full-on beatless ambient guitar textures. “In Reverse” successfully merges the ‘70s American rock anthem à la Bruce Springsteen with some sounds that could be made by a guitar version of Autechre. (Hold on, I just have to think about that for a moment, because it’s so bizarre. But it’s true.)

This is a very good record, alllllllmost as good as Kurt Vile’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze. Sorry for making the comparison, but it’s what I’m forced to do in this business: compare things, decide which one is better than the other. You, gentle and forgiving reader, may have the freedom to be as heedlessly subjective as you desire, but I, alas, have no such right or privilege. I’m forced to assign an abstract number (in this case a 4, meaning “very good”) to these things, and that’s never easy. Listening to and enjoying this record is incredibly easy, however, and I recommend that you do that at your earliest convenience.

reviewed by Richard Krueger