9 minute read
Staff...................New Music Reviews
R E V I E W S
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by Paco “Cougar” Alvarez
There are only so many ways to say that Courtney Barnett is awesome. and there are only so many words I can include in this review so I’ll let this sentence suffice: She’s fucking awesome, and if you haven’t listened to Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, please do yourself a favor, go online, and play it on repeat for about three weeks straight because that’s the only way you can have any real appreciation for this great, great album. Okay, now that I got that out of the way, onto the actual music part. If you haven’t heard A Sea of Split Peas (an EP released in 2013), Barnett’s style can be best described as mundane feel rock. That is, she can make the most boring things on the planet, like tending a garden or staring at a wall or moving to a dumb suburb, into huge fucking feel fests where you’re pretending to play left-handed guitar instead of doing homework (not based on a true story). She doesn’t just stick to one style to cut through your feelings either. She will have you crying, whether it’s through super catchy, loud, distortion filled guitars or relatively quiet, folksier ballads. Listen to “Pedestrian At Best” and “Depreston,” both singles off this album, and you’ll see how two very different songs can come from one very awesome lady. Also, can I talk about her lyrics for a second? They’re 100% the high point of this already high-point-filled album: “I stare at the lawn; it’s Wednesday morning / It needs a cut, but I leave it growing / All different sizes and all shades of green / Slashing it down just seems kind of mean.” Like, c’mon that’s fucking genius. In conclusion, listen to this album because it’s definitely one of the best of the year so far, and it will have you begging to see Courtney in concert before she gets too famous and tickets stop being weirdly cheap.
Modest Mouse – Strangers to Ourselves
by Sam Watson
You guys, I think Isaac Brock is getting old. Modest Mouse is a storied band. Since their debut in the ’90s, they’ve evolved from a too-weird-to-beknown indie band from Issaquah, WA to a chart topping alt rock act. One thing that’s always impressed me about Modest Mouse is that even their slickly produced pop hits (“Float On,” “Dashboard,” etc., etc.) seem to hold true in some small way to their early garage-style recordings. Maybe it’s Isaac’s manic vocals, maybe it’s his unique talent on the guitar. Maybe it’s his lisp. I don’t know. But man, this album… it’s just hard to hear that original spark that hooked me on Modest Mouse as a kid. Don’t get me wrong, there are some solid tracks. “Lampshades On Fire,” “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box,” and “The Best Room” are thumpy, danceable numbers that characterize the poppiness of Modest Mouse’s more recent albums. Those are fun. “Sugar Boats” is frenetic and makes you want to jerk around in a pretty good way. In this reviewer’s opinion, “God is an Indian and You’re an Asshole” is by far the best track on the album, and sounds like it could be straight off of The Lonesome Crowded West (1997). Unfortunately, there are some real stinkers. “Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996)” is a bizarre aberration that I can only assume is some attempt to stay experimental and relevant. It involves a drum machine, some type of…rapping? and some cringe inducing faux gangster lyrics. Not only does it not sound like Modest Mouse, it is straight up bad. “Coyotes,” although more conventional, is nearly as lousy. The lyrics don’t even rhyme, which I could easily forgive if they weren’t also uninspired and overly sentimental. The real problem with Strangers to Ourselves though is that most tracks are simply forgettable. They’re not bad, but they lack the originality and timelessness that most fans have come to expect from Modest Mouse. The album is slow paced and tragically conventional. There’s no edge. It makes sense, I guess, this album. It’s that stage in the band’s career. Most of the original members are gone. Modest Mouse is no longer fashionable, their days of pop hits are done. Isaack Brock is slowing down. He is old and kinda fat. His music reflects that. What can you do? At least the album art is good. 2
O F M U S I C
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
by Ian Mercer
GY!BE released 3 albums and an EP between 1997 and 2002 before going silent for an entire decade. That’s why I was so happy to see that the gap between the two most recent albums is only 3 years! They seem to have gotten back into the groove of a regular release schedule, which is fantastic news for us: the disciples of Transcendental Post Rock. Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is GY!BE’s most distinctive album to date, but that doesn’t mean it’s their best. What makes this LP stand out is that it is composed of a single forty minute piece that flows continuously between each of the fourtracks. The two exterior tracks are each ten+ minute monsters, while the interior section is a shifting and evolving twelve-minute drone. Yes, the continuity of the album is a satisfying detail, but it’s not done in an especially impressive way. It seems to me that GY!BE wrote two normal tracks, stuck a long, boring drone in between them (don’t get me wrong, I love drones, but this one isn’t expertly crafted), and then thought they’d end up with the next Dark Side of the Moon. I’m not trying to say it’s bad music at all; it’s just not as cohesive as I thought it would be when I first heard it was going to be one continuous piece of music. Lack of cohesion and shoddy droning aside, this is a great project, and certainly worth your time. The lineup of the band has evolved slightly, and now features three guitarists, two bassists, two drummers, and a violinist. When these elements all rip into high gear, it sounds like a factory during the industrial revolution (especially during the buildup on the banging closer “Piss Crowns Are Trebled.” The two outer tracks feature GY!BE at their best, but also in their usual mode. There’s no surprises here, except for the fact that the album starts all the way turnt up, instead of starting from nothing and crescendoing for twenty minutes. You won’t hear anything mind-blowing or inspirational on this record, but hey, not every record needs to transcend the boundaries of time and space, right? If you’ve never listened to GY!BE before, I recommend you check out Allelujah over this, simply because they’ve never ever written a track as phenomenal as “Mladic.” this album certainly tries, but falls just a little short of my (very high) expectations, meaning that it is simply a great album rather than a classic one.
waxahatchee – Ivy Tripp
by Josie Naron
Katie Crutchfield, otherwise known as alt-folk goddess Waxahatchee, rose to fame on the strength of her first two albums’ stripped-down vocals and the raw, sometimes dissonant, interplay of her distinctively nasal voice with simple guitar strumming. Her debut album, American Weekend, as well as her sophomore effort, Cerulean Blue, are poetry, filled with whispery tales of failed loves and lost memories. In her first two albums, Crutchfield invites the listener into her world as a companion to her sadness. Ivy Tripp, Waxahatchee’s latest album, doesn’t just change this dynamic; it completely throws out the image of a meek Crutchfield, waiting around for someone who should care literally way more than they do. Ivy Tripp’s opener, “Breathless,” begins with twelve seconds of a single, feedback-drenched note – a jolt for the listener accustomed to Crutchfield staying firmly within the boundaries of alt-folk. Ivy Tripp doesn’t stray too far away from Crutchfield’s lyrical comfort zone, but what makes the album such a killer change for her is the new cleanness and power in her vocals. Gone is the whispery, deliberately underproduced sound of Waxahatchee’s earlier albums – instead, more layered instrumentals and a new finesse to the way Katie Crutchfield uses her distinctive vocal pitch take center stage. Songs such as “La Loose,” “Under A Rock,” “The Dirt,” and “Poison” at times sound like a slightly-folked-up-but-mostly-just-alt-rock Sleater-Kinney or St. Vincent, a far cry from Crutchfield’s folk roots. Sure, Ivy Tripp is still fundamentally about love and heartbreak, memories and losses. But Waxahatchee’s new assertiveness on Ivy Tripp highlights the fact that at the end of the day, Katie Crutchfield is a self-sufficient badass who knows how to deal with heartbreak better than you ever could.
C O N T ’ D
Laura Marling – Short Movie
by Lucy Papachristou
I am in love with Laura Marling. For real. My love is so real, in fact, that I cannot possibly express it in the few hundred words allotted to me. But I’ll sure as hell try!… Short Movie, released by Virgin Records on March 23rd, is Marling’s fifth studio album, a stupendous feat considering the British singer-songwriter is only twenty-five. She was only seventeen when she recorded her first album, 2008’s Alas, I Cannot Swim. (When I was seventeen, I was too busy wallowing in self-pity and self-loathing to worry about creating great art. Marling deserves all our kudos.) Each one of Marling’s albums—she’s churned one consistently every two years—are, in my humble opinion, fucking solid gold. Short Movie, although deviating from her previous efforts in its heavy use of electric guitar, is no different than its siblings in terms of quality. In “Easy”, Marling’s understated vocals are accompanied by beautifully simple acoustic picking, lending the song an otherworldly, ethereal quality that sharply contrasts the song’s lyrics. I hesitate to say this song is autobiographical (she flatly denies such claims in interviews), but Marling seems to be singing from memory here, from life. Over and over she sings, “When we were young, when we were young,” allowing the words to unconsciously leave her body, as if she were merely breathing. “How Can I” hits me on a whole different level. While “Easy” makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, this song brings me to my knees. When she sings, “I wrote you a letter / Posted out of central L.A.,” an electric guitar joins in to play a single lonesome, heartbreakingly melancholic note. And when Marling ends the song with, “But how will I live without you / How can I live,” my heart tears into a tiny million pieces. I listen to this song when I make the long walk from Goodhue to Sayles (fuck dat shit). It’s best when the sun is setting and there’s a light wind blowing and there are no other people on the paths. Sometimes I just give up and let the tears flow. Oh Laura Marling, woman of my heart!
