ALBUM REVIEW: Low Spokes by Lucas Van Lenten

Released two and a half years ago, Lucas Van Lenten’s Low Spokes espouses a particular brand of triteness that has since faded from favor. Nonetheless, the album succeeds in it’s appeal to late-indie’s most relatable brand of irony.

The 11-song LP is not dissimilar from a young child that knows how to use her cuteness to gain advantage– you know they know what their doing, but your cultural and neurological predispositions prevent you from doing anything but saying “aww, how cute!”  When Van Lenten sings “and they all come down like rain into us/ we’re born of stardust and luck” I would strongly prefer to not feel the affect of goosebumps down my neck. And yet here we all are. Plenty of Van Lenten’s lyrics fall short of the mark (“there’s no clock to strike the hour/ just the creep of deadly flowers on the stairs”, “a baker’s dozen/ snow-white roses/ picked for no one”), and yet his delivery and evocative structures manage to carry a sufficient number through to the heart-strung finish line.

Low Spokes opens with the bouncy “San Sebastian”, a sign of all the Cloud Cult derivations and emotional manipulations to come. Utilizing lush backing harmonies, an accordion, and a sleigh bell, Van Lenten settles back into his wheelhouse on “Pocketful of Blackbirds.” As a general rule, Van Lenten is less successful when he picks up the electric guitar– exemplified dully on “Black Veruza”. Aside from forgettable tone choices, guitar driven tracks on this album leave behind the dynamics and ambiance that make other selections so successful. By the time we hit “Speak of the Devil”, the first notes of mandolin appear to be god-sent. The light-hearted “Out in the Streets” stands out from the album, as it shirks the oh-so-of-it’s-time signals and instead blends Queen-esque guitar harmonies with Your Favorite Weapon-era Brand New vocal patterns. Unfortunately, it is followed up by the utterly skippable “Toledo Facedown” before Van Lenten finds his natural resting point to end the album in the serenely triumphant “Shake the Bells Down”.

The songs are littered with radio-signal-space-flanger sound interludes that I have no idea what to do with, especially in light of the album’s excusable over-sentimentality. My only other reference point for this strange intersection is the Sagen-influenced 90’s film Contact— and yet I somehow don’t believe this is the intended reference. Even when ignoring the extraneous, however, listeners can look to Low Spokes as an album that clearly knows it’s strengths, audience, and intended effect.

 

ALBUM REVIEW: In Transit by The Bonds

By: Derek Spencer

Ironically pluralized, The Bonds are the solo project of one Massachusetts-based Benjamin Finn. Charged with compositional theatricality, Finn’s 2014 debut In Transit takes the classic theme of external-change-causing-internal-strife to task with minimalist acoustic expertise.

A naturalized musical theater quality permeates the album, most evidently observed on tracks like “Collect Call” and “Overtime” in which clearly defined metaphors and demonstrative lyrics mingle with signal-oriented songwriting. I believe I’m supposed to use the word rock opera here, but this project feels more natural and less forced than that phrase might imply. A transitional period is conveyed, given movement by atmospherics and experienced slowly over the course of the album.

On opening track “Into the House”, Finn’s maddening repetition of the line “I think I’m going crazy” utilizes an experiential approach, allowing the audience to imbibe of the referenced status quo insanity. Directly following, “Freight Moves Fast” leads us through a landscape of chorus and tremolo effects, implying blurred movement and creating the sonic equivalent of the albums blurred cover art. The combination of “Fetch” and “Under” mark perhaps the most exciting segment of the album, establishing a soft underhanded depression before exploding into destructive dissonance. The 7-minute title track serves well as the slow-burning climax it was meant to be.

The Bonds’ musical touchstones are clear. The vocal delivery and poignant drama of The Antlers are referenced on tracks “Too Far Gone”, “In Transit”, and “Housekeeping”, while Sujan Stevens can be felt throughout. Though “derivative” is technically a complaint that could be levied here, In Transit is too raw to be a total imitation, too personal to feel stale. Amateur production stands to be the biggest enemy to Finn’s work, though the imbalances and uneven mixes add charm far more often than they detract or distract.

At its core, the album exudes a coldness– a distinct lack of warm bass frequencies, neatly rounded tracks, or relatable hooks. Practically penning his own tagline, Finn sings on “Sun Shine Away”: “I miss the warmth”.  Exciting, nerve-wracking, and elusive, In Transit evokes the melancholy of transition and invites listeners down its winding winter path. I suspect many listeners will be unable to refuse.

ALBUM REVIEW: The Infinite Fire by The Frame

By: Leli Albert

the opening track of The Infinite Fire has a nice cinematic feel to it
like scrolling your smartphone’s camera gallery while eating jelly donuts
that is to say
not quite too sweet, not quite too nostalgic, gone before you know it

but suddenly the first full length track (hazy today) slides in, with a bunch of yelling and gooey mushy vocals
like a jelly donut smothered in pineapple
“it’s like, the mall” says this intrepid reviewer’s younger sister.
maybe it’s just the neil youngy piano on repeat
and guitar riffs resurrected from the semisonic / incubus cutting floor
but somehow scratching my ears out with my own toenails just seems too good for this track. check out 5:52 for a surprise super high pitched yell! on second thought i’ll just use the toenails.

an existential crisis:
maybe hating shlocky cheesy 80s/90s throwback poprock anthems that sound like every bad radio station i’ve ever scanned past is a rare condition?
maybe the average human would love this?
it’s certainly polished as shit!! the sound/recording quality is excellent.
my friend used to say “you can’t polish a turd”
but who decides turditude? and wouldn’t you want a shiny, smooth well-made turd over a regular old chunky one?

these guitar solos are blistering, for some definition of blistering circa a million years ago. it’s like the members of black sabbath all swore off their evil ways and joined the latter day saints, went door to door for a few years, then released a mormon comeback album. come back to jesus! almost every song fades out to the sounds of a slow guitar solo and the lead singer crooning the track’s title, often multiple times. at this point my existential crisis is over. this album would be boring 25 years ago, but if that’s what you’re into then give The Infinite Fire a listen.

ALBUM REVIEW: The Future Will Kill You by Walkingshoe

By: Derek Spencer

[Note: I apologize for the lack of content recently.  Sometimes the world asks you to spend your time doing things that are not writing music reviews of amateur bands for free. I obliged these demands– please do not hold it against me.  I will literally just review everything you send me, it is true.  But with over 500 albums sitting in my inbox currently, it will take some time.]

Cutting his way through swirling chords with a steady stream of layered vocals, hip-hop artist Walkingshoe emulates the work of Flying Lotus, A$AP Rocky, and trip-hop producers aplenty on his 2015 LP The Future Will Kill You.

With a series of clear assertions concerning the ephemeral nature of being human, The Future Will Kill You captures an all-too-pertinent digital age fear of what technology might bring to its creators. From referencing the mythical city of Atlantis on “Nora” to bluntly declaring “the body is a temporary state” on stand-out track “No One There”, Walkingshoe clarifies that the world he exists in is one in which only blurred lines and grey space stand between the perceived and the imagined. This doctrine is supported by a musical palette that draws on many sounds but uses a singular veneer to tie them all together. While the future may entail technological dread and death for the listener, Walkingshoe is committed to making society’s eminent destruction crystal clear.

PS- Great album cover. A+

ALBUM REVIEW: The Burning Bush by Moses Nose

By: Derek Spencer

It is the merry morning time. I am traipsing into my office and now I am sipping my coffee and reading messages left by other people who traipsed into their offices and sipped their coffee before me. Do I suspect, here in my morning state, that within the next hour, I will hear the line “We are the kings of Nova Scotia” sung over-upon-over in a bossa nova-esque melody, laying over harmonize-matched guitar riffages, creating for me some wry international pun and an internal, yet mild, sense of disquiet?  (What is nova, anyways, other than the obvious “nuclear explosion caused by a dying dead star”? I mean in the Brazilian and Canadian sense, what is nova?) No, dear reader, no. I do not expect this, but it is what has happened this morning.  The ceaselessly punny 80’s apologists known to over 2,000 facebook users as Moses Nose are responsible for this disruption to my life of expected occasions, and whether or not I’m happy about it is none of your business.

“Oh man, oh man. You’ve gotta check out ‘The Burning Bush‘!” reads the email I received from Mister Vincent Randazzo on March the 10th. He is a master of viral marketing, because indeed, upon reading this short message over 2 months past due, I knew that yes, I gotta check this out, this album, The Burning Bush. This Mr. Vincent is the vocalist and guitarist of the band aforementioned– again here in print for the second time, Moses Nose– and yet also he is clearly the mouthpiece of the band, using tongue and finger to spread word of his groups artistic pursuits to the world wide world.

I listen and I say “this is not what I thought I would hear this morning,” with all the 80’s coming all over the place like my ears, gushing some might even say. Headphones overflow with the 80’s. I hear a man, formerly known to me as Vincent but now known to me as the man who just spake: “rock or be rocked upon”, he says now, he says: “I’m a sad man…. i’ll tell you straight up I don’t give a shit.” Oh no!  This is a frightening time, that 80’s rockers such as Vincent and the Moses Noses crew might think so little of themselves.  they have so much to offer! So much music, so much yelling, so much good emails!  For what cause is this self-deprecation perpetrated and to what end? Shall I fear for the well-being of Vincent? What of Josh, Joey, and Trevor (if Vincent is the septum of the Moses Nose, then these thrice men-o-men are the duel nostrils and bridge, in turn)?

And then the bossa nova hits me and I am a new man. Please, lay more on me! Lay it on Thick! I will stop drinking this coffee and start drinking a new cup of coffee. This merry morning is merry in a new way, a way that only things that have been sitting in/on the backs of record stores for 30 years can be merry, pools of recycled slugde for me to drink out of my coffee pot with a smile on my face.  We are the kings of Nova Scotia indeed.  Please, by means of all to and from the people, continue to make rock which sometimes includes rapping. Please, for to all the folks who need it and you, never stop the pun!  Be well, Vincent and the Nose parts, continue on with music and your ways of living little by little.  You are adored.

ALBUM REVIEW: The Other Master by Andrew Reddy

By: Derek Spencer

“I’m da bad man.  I’m da bad man.  You fuck with me? I’ll make you sad, man.”

We sat down with Andrew Reddy, aka Ireland-based music producer Andrew Reddy, to talk about his 2014 full-length release: “The Other Master”.

I will literally just review whatever music you send me: Give us a brief bio of yourself.  Where do you come from?

Andrew Reddy, aka music producer Andrew Reddy: Shall I compare myself to a universe?  Posture as to the origin, the moment where timelessness turned into timeliness?  Shall I sweep all the chaotic particle and metaphysical elements surrounding my existence into a concise idea, strictly bound between heavy letters and cumbersome words?
I will begin with birth, as it is the rational place to start to answer such a question, even if it is an entirely dishonest answer.  I was birthed, as many have been, from a canal, riding down a landslide of viscera and amniotic fluid.  It was this trauma that first taught me that pain is real.  I oft think back to this moment when composing sick tunes.
My mother was a dairy maid, my father the CEO of a modest tech start-up.  When I was 5 I saw them in coitus through a cracked door, one hand on the udder, the other on the mouse. When I was 10 I had an existential crisis involving a Halloween decoration and an overwhelming sensation that things had to come out of me so that I may feel complete.  when I was 12, I sat on the pavement through a monsoon, praying that I would be bludgeoned to death with the flying wicker-corpse of a small island community.
Throughout my years, I have always smelled things that weren’t there: rotting raccoon fur at mother’s Thanksgiving dinner table, gas leaks in the Everglades.  I have always loved inanimate objects while men and women pinned away for my affection, grasped at my feet as I walk over them to embrace a lovely pile of bricks.

I will literally just review whatever music you send me: I like your album art.  Is it supposed to make people happy, sad, or both?

Andrew Reddy, aka music producer Andrew Reddy: I think when I drew it I wanted people to feel pretty sad, but then I feel like it made me kind of happy when it was done.

I will literally just review whatever music you send me: What is music?

Andrew Reddy, aka music producer Andrew Reddy: Music is the collection of melody, rhythm, tempo, harmony, beat, feel, water, tune, and soul. The more important question is ‘what is music for?’  In that regard, I have fewer answers.  My friend says that music is for baiting comets into greet us and warm our homes.  I sometimes wonder if music is the mind’s response to the body’s aimless dance.  This might be a question that the scientists never figure out, I’m afraid.

I will literally just review whatever music you send me: Can you hum one of your tunes for us?

Andrew Reddy, aka music producer Andrew Reddy: Yeah.
One man alone a push a hump inna yuh (Hum Hum)
Nuh bag a man nah jump inna yuh (Hum Hum)
Gynecologist nuh find nuh lump inna yuh (Hmm Hmm)
Nuh man neva bruk off nuh stump inna yuh (Hum Hum)
Or Trump Tower Donald him a reel fi yuh (Hum Hum)
And surgeons dem all a cling fi yuh (Hum Hum)
Man all a tek poison pill fi yuh (Hum Hum)
Congress a pass a bill fi yuh (Hum Hum)

I will literally just review whatever music you send me: Who is the bad man?

Andrew Reddy, aka music producer Andrew Reddy: “I’m da bad man.  I’m da bad man.  You fuck with me? I’ll make you sad, man.”

I will literally just review whatever music you send me: Thanks, Andrew.

Bottom Line: Andrew Reddy’s psych-ambient collection offers listeners an ever-expanding array of distant noises and disassembled melodies.  Summoning images of expansive plains under night sky, The Other Master’s atmospheric landscape is both affecting and tedious, disconcerting and comfortably experimental.  Outstanding tracks include Urizen Wept, with its gratifying bass harmonic-, synth-, and woodwind-centric crawl, and Ossuary, an ephemeral near-20-minute-track pieced together from feedback, acoustic plucking, and mediated electronic noise.

ALBUM REVIEW: Gamut by Mugga

By: Derek Spencer

SEO-Optimization:

spanish james bond spy music pink panther mysterious  ambient space spacetime spacerock einstein einstien e=mc2 math help calculus help do-my-math-homework-for-money soaring guitars pictures of soaring eagles reverb guitar solos hair metal bon jovi bon-jovi-sex-tape polyrhythms spanglish saxophone saxophone lessons cheap saxophoneman viral video 1 billion views justin beiber desecrates temple jam free jam space jelly wikihow how to make jelly wikipedia wikileaks NSA thanks obama noboma obama-buzzfeed obama-mean-tweets obama-sex-tape noboma-sex-tape

Review:

Madrid-based shoegazers Mugga unleash a dynamic selection of noises, ranging from spaced-out guitar solos and polyrhythmic latin percussion to radio-friendly hooks and cleanly arpeggiated basslines underneath heavily harmonized vocal melodies.  Gamut, the band’s 2014 junior LP, shifts between rock sub-genres with limited friction, taking listeners by surprise and demonstrating themselves as a band with true professional potential.

ALBUM REVIEW: Island Man by Brandon Spaulding

By: Derek Spencer

Abbreviated psychedelia with a Midwestern warmth: a world where tripping lasts half an hour and ambiance is antiquated (but still nice to have around once in a while because antiques are nice things).  2001: A Space Odyssey is the length of a commercial and The Odyssey itself is a pocket Spanish-English dictionary.  This is the established world of Indianapolis-based Brandon Spaulding’s first release: “Island Man” (2015), a record that yearns for the dissociated or introspective experience, and yet does little work in the way of carrying the listener along to its intended destination.

One might be tempted to compare the rock’n’roll brevity and high-overdriven sound of Spaulding’s work to The Coachwhips; and yet it seems that John Dwyer never aspired to the sort of youthful idealism and middle-of-America warmth that Spaulding grasps at.  There is something immediately Buffet-esque  at the line “I don’t want to have a plan/I just want to be an island man”.  In fact, at this moment, I truly believe the ‘Island Man’ to be a 21st-century, Indiana-specific adaptation of Camus‘ “Absurd Man”, demonstrating a lazily-heated, Franco-Algerian existentialism (I’ll consult a grad student and get back to you on this one).  Unfortunately, at first consideration of the lyrics, listeners find themselves at an impasse: absorbing some of the droopy-surreal lyrics on this album is necessary to follow the standard psch-noise themes sprinkled through these snippets of sound, and yet, to listen to the lyrics closely is to drag oneself through lines like “you make me want to get hit by a car” and “on this cold winter night, I know it ain’t right”.

While lyrics both colorful and overlookable shine through at times, the vocals sit in the mix very differently across the album.  Perhaps this is because Island Man was recorded on a 4-track in Spaulding’s bedroom, or perhaps Spaulding is highlighting the fractal, disjointed nature of our own voice turned inward, meditating on the very idea of self-critique itself.  In either case, Island Man is an earnest, if not respectable, first attempt, manifested in a collection of songs that may or may not entice the psychedelic inner-self, may or may not connect with one’s longing for a solitary existential existence, but will almost certainly find a home in the basement venues of central Indiana.

Pitchfork Rating: 6.2

Arbitrary Rating: 10,011 grains of sand on an island only you understand

My rating: I might throw it on a playlist alongside The Coachwhips, Pink & Brown, Frankie Cosmos, The Agrarians, Inspector 22, & Henry Rollin’s spoken word material to be listened to while I clean my apartment.

Stray Observations:
– My favorite track actually might be the brief dark-ambient track: “At the Bottom of the Ocean”. It (jokingly) sounds like the score to a movie in which an army of sentient basketballs declare war on the ocean and (seriously) might be a good tone to work more organically into other songs on future releases.
– Spaulding seems like he’s still deciding what vocal style works for him.  While the vocals could never be described as less than average, I personally prefer his “stoned Connor Oberst” style over his “Bob Dylan” moments.