Grouper - Ruins

Grouper

Ruins

31 October 2014

Kranky

 

3.5 stars out of 5

 

 

Ruins is the tenth LP by Oregon-based Liz Harris, who records ambient music under the moniker of Grouper. The record sees Harris stripping away her usual layers of tape loops and delays, leaving just the piano and her voice on most tracks. Her songs seem to hang like dust caught in the sunlight cutting through the empty rooms of an abandoned house. It’s difficult to imagine music that could be more desolate and distant while still being produced by such organic and human origins.

 

This isn’t ambient in the sense of the abstraction of Music for Airports, and it’s about as far from Lifeforms as one could imagine while still technically being in the same genre. This is ambient music that makes no immediate demands of your attention, instead lurking in the background and oozing into your skull without you realizing it, changing everything you think and feel without you being conscious of it. Ruins is constructed of proper songs, with very non-abstract, structured piano parts and recognizable vocal refrains, but played in such a way as to seem like an almost inaudible hum. This is the sound of frost forming on the windows of your life.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger

The Twilight Sad - Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave

The Twilight Sad

Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave

27 October 2014

FatCat

 

2.5 stars out of 5

 

 

Yawn. Oh, umm, excuse me. It’s just my normal reaction when a record is just sort of there, neither good nor bad. Nobody Wants to Be Here and Listen to This Incredibly Dull Record is a good case in point. It’s frustrating because it’s so completely lacking in character that you can’t even complain about how bad it is, because it doesn’t even have bad qualities. It has no qualities at all. None. You know Robert Musil’s modernist masterpiece of German literature, The Album Without Qualities? It’s about this thing.

 

A couple of weeks ago I bashed the new Foxygen record for being a complete mess. And, seriously, it’s a disaster. It’s pure agony. But this new Twilight Sad record? It’s not a mess at all. A mess implies that something happened and left behind an unpleasant result. Like a small scattering of dirt, or a dent, or even just a minor scuff. This record leaves behind nothing. The Foxygen record was memorable for how fucking awful it was. This record ended about thirty seconds ago and, seriously, I can’t remember a single melodic refrain or line of lyric. And I’ve listened to it three fucking times. I have zero recollection of what any of the songs could have been like, apart from that there were guitars, drums, and bass involved. It’s the Bermuda Triangle of rock music, where your body is permitted to leave but your memories are not. Probably aliens are involved, and this record is their way of hijacking your brain for forty-three and a half minutes. You’d be wise to avoid, unless you really want to believe.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger

Ought - Once More with Feeling EP

Ought

Once More with Feeling EP

28 October (18 September) 2014

Constellation

 

3.5 stars out of 5

 

 

Montreal’s indie rock quartet Ought launched the Once More with Feeling EP at their Pop Montreal show on September 18^th, though it wasn’t officially released until yesterday. Passing the guitar over to guest Charlotte Cornfield for “New Calm, Pt. 2,” leader Tim Beeler let loose and busted a move David Byrne-style for the song’s seven-minute duration. (Insert sample of James Murphy insisting, “But I was there!”) It was a good example of the inclusiveness Ought foster with their music, and also of how much the band rely on dynamics and Beeler’s presence. The same four chords over seven minutes should get a little old after the first two or three minutes, right? Not at all in the case of “New Calm, Pt. 2.” Plus, any lyrics that include, “Who invited Paul Simon? I didn’t invite him! Here we go!” are winning on many different levels.

 

The three other tracks are of varying quality. “New Calm, Pt. 3” is an interesting, seemingly improv piece that approaches free jazz at points. “Waiting,” an outtake from the More Than Any Other Day sessions, is more straight rock, tumbling along as Beeler’s singing pushes and kicks it wherever he desires. “Pill” is the slightest track here, much more effective in a live setting than it is in this particular take. As a whole, the EP is uneven and feels cobbled together from random parts, as EPs often do and are. As an addendum to their LP released earlier in the year, it offers insight into other facets of the band.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger

We Were Promised Jetpacks - Unravelling

We Were Promised Jetpacks

Unravelling

6 October 2014

FatCat

 

3.5 stars out of 5

 

 

Scottish indie rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks have recently issued their third LP, Unravelling. Occupying musical terrain somewhere between Frightened Rabbit and British Sea Power, the WeeWeePJs peddle an emotional indie rock that harkens back to the glory days of the post-punk revival of the early ‘00s.

 

Unravelling is a very serviceable selection of introspective, angst-ridden songs. It never reaches any sort of great heights, but it will do in a pinch. Rock music in general has long run its course, and a revival of a revival is definitely going to elicit some tired sighs, but WWPJ were there at the time of the first revival, although in unknown, teenaged form. So as a rather uncritical, unself-aware outing in the rock music park, Unravelling does nothing to offend. It rocks no boats and breaks down no fourth walls. Bland? No. This is good rock music, and Unravelling is right up there with The Afghan Whigs’ Do to the Beast as one of the best rock albums of the year. So take that for what it’s worth, and investigate if you feel that a tired and used up art form might still have some nuggets waiting to be discovered.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger

A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Atomos

A Winged Victory for the Sullen

Atomos

6 October 2014

Kranky/Erased Tapes

 

4 stars out of 5

 

 

Self-taught post-classical pianist and film scorer Dustin O’Halloran; sound engineer and ambient musician Adam Wiltzie: together, A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Wiltzie, perhaps best known as half of drone/ambient duo Stars of the Lid; O’Halloran, from the band Dévics and film scores. Atomos, the second album, the original score for the dance piece of the same name by Wayne McGregor, which premiered 9 October 2013.

 

The music: strings and piano, also synthesizer and sampled voice collage. Long, sustained notes, slowly combined into chords, subtly shifting as elements of each chord are removed, others added to create new chords. Songs titled “Atomos I” until “Atomos XII,” skipping “Atomos IV.” The more structured pieces, like “Atomos VIII,” recalling the work of Glass. On the whole, a feeling of “modern” in the proper sense, with structures and assumptions given importance, and little or no questioning of such structures and assumptions.

 

“Atomos XI,” the penultimate track, a waltz for the doomed and dispossessed: the rules of ambient music broken, the melody strong and the rhythm insistent. Emotional impact, deep; images formed by “Atomos XII,” haunting. This review, over.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger

Thurston Moore - The Best Day

Thurston Moore

The Best Day

20 October 2014

Matador

 

3.5 stars out of 5

 

 

Once upon a time there was a band called Sonic Youth, and music was never the same for ever after. Thurston Moore was one of that band’s trio of extraordinary songwriters, and perhaps the most widely known to the general public (though, in all honesty, if you are with-it enough to know the name of one member of Sonic Youth, chances are you know them all). The Best Day is Moore’s fourth solo LP, and his first since 2011’s acoustic album Demolished Thoughts. Joining Moore this time around are Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe, and guitar-genius-at-large James Sedwards. Despite the presence of two of the finest axemen on the planet, The Best Day is refreshingly devoid of any pyrotechnical fretwork. Instead aiming for repetition and textures, the songs (with only a couple of exceptions) let Moore’s vocals do the majority of the work in carrying the melody.

 

To paint in broad strokes, The Best Day seems like an attempt by Moore to be Sonic Youth again without Gordon and Ranaldo to distract the audience’s attention. Shelley’s distinctive drumming underpins the feeling that this is an attempt to regain old glories, though, to be fair, those glories were often Moore’s to begin with. “Detonation” echoes “Silver Rocket,” while “Speak to the Wild” could be an outtake from Washing Machine. There’s no “rock and roll” on The Best Day, at least as “rock and roll” was approximated by SY on Goo or Dirty; instead, Moore’s compositions are extended mood pieces, though all very band-centric (ain’t no avant-garde noodlings within a few hundred kilometres of this thing). If you’re a long-time fan, you’re likely to be waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for Moore to break the dam and let the experimentation flood through. And you’ll be mostly disappointed. But if you approach The Best Day as a quiet, restrained album of singer-songwriter fare, you’ll find adequate satisfaction.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger

Scott Walker + Sunn O))) - Soused

Scott Walker + Sunn O)))

Soused

21 October 2014

4AD

 

4.5 stars out of 5

 

 

It just figures that one of the most intense and challenging records of the year would be the result of a collaboration between a 71-year-old singer and a band that has as many unpronounced characters in its name as pronounced ones. Scott Walker has just released his second record in two years, a feat that he hasn’t pulled off since 1974. Since then, decade-long gaps between records have been the norm, with the mere six-year gap between 2006’s The Drift and 2012’s Bish Bosch coming as close to a flourish of productivity as it gets for Walker. In the other corner is be-robed experimental metal band Sunn O))), providing the cinematic soundscape to Walker’s avant-garde utterances. And you know you’re in for a ride when Sunn can be reasonably described as the more conventional half of the collaboration.

 

The fact that Soused sound exactly what you’d expect from these two enigmatic acts is the best part of the deal. They nailed it. Walker’s uncompromising vision and seemingly effortless oddness are a perfect match for the metal drones and occasional industrial-noise-meets-show-tunes punctuations of Sunn. Soused finds both artists meshing at such a deep level that the results feel both blissfully real and dangerously explosive. Every second is worth it.

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger