New Lost Souls - Unwanted Gold (local release)

The New Lost Souls are indeed a family band. Guitarist Chris Teasley met wife Sara, the band’s drummer, when they both exhibited paintings at a local gallery opening. Sara studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute. After travels that included a five-year residence in Boston (where Chris studied art), the couple returned to Kansas City. They wooed Sara’s brother, bassist Andy Jordan, from New York to play in the group.

What started as a few friends blasting old Kinks songs gradually became a band devoted to writing and arranging original material. Unwanted Gold, the New Lost Souls’ debut, isn’t a knock your socks off at first listen record. Sometimes, frankly, those records fade quickly. Unwanted Gold is a grower, an album whose modest charms grow on you as you gradually appreciate what a steady, smart, rocking piece of work it is.

EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints (Souterrain Transmissions)

 I paid limited attention to Erika M. Anderson’s passage through the ensembles Amps for Christ andGowns. I’m not even sure I know what AFC tracks she contributed to. Their stuff only engages me a little. I couldn’t call myself a fan. And while I enjoyed part of Red State, the album Anderson and her collaborator Ezra Buchla recorded as Gowns in 2008, I wasn’t, you know, transformed. With Past Life of Martyred Saints I surrender.

As EMA (Erika M. Anderson), Anderson takes all the archetypal, iconic female artist references, puts them in a bag, shakes them up and out spills something that’s sounds influenced, for sure, but finally unique. Let’s name them: you know, get it out of the way (we’ll return to the relevant ones where necessary) – Patti  Smith, PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Cat Power, Courtney Love (nah, sorry, don’t hear it – although I do hear Kurt). Forget about that, though. Past Life Martyred Saints is a cogent, compelling work and a doozy of a solo debut from EMA. Anderson has a sympathetic supporting cast, but she’s responsible for the songs, lead vocals and plenty of guitars. Buchla remains as a central contributor on this record, spreading plenty of John Cale magic (keys and viola) that occasionally evokes the sound of vintage Nico.

Alex Turner - Submarine (Domino)

Alex Turner always impressed me as a guy who could be a character in a Nick Hornby novel, a highly individual, but still archetypal wounded post-adolescent observer - the best narrators often the ones observing the committed missteps of others.

Turner’s no rube. His parents were teachers, his dad Music, his mom German. Turner himself has said that he’d have pursued studies in English at the University of Manchester had his year off to take a shot at playing music not paid off. Of course it did pay off. The Arctic Monkeys are as big as it gets in the U.K and have made serious commercial inroads in the States. Their fourth studio album Suck it and See is out soon, their fourth in five years. The band tours relentlessly.

None of this has kept Turner busy enough it seems. His collaboration with Miles Kane and James Ford in the Last of the Shadow Puppets struck a bittersweet Sixties/Seventies obsessed tone with Beatles, Bowie and Scott Walker inspirations. Compared to the blazing guitar intensity of the Monkeys, Age of the Understatement was by turns a wistful and rueful set, an urchin’s take on beau monde. More stripped down in arrangement than Understatement, Turner’s songs for the film Submarine feature two guitars, a dash of keyboards and the rare drum track. Not having seen the film (the tale of an alienated teenage boy in Swansea who is romancing a troubled young girl and whose parents are in marital disarray) I can’t really comment on how the songs work in the film. But they stand by themselves splendidly.

Bambi Kino - s/t (Tapete)

 Bambi Kino was the name of the theater that provided exceedingly modest accommodations for the young Liverpudlians (George Harrison was an “illegal” seventeen years of age) known as the Beatles when they began their legendary tenure in Hamburg, Germany. They first played the Indra club, later the Kaiserkeller, Top Ten, and Star Club, as they worked their way up the rough and rowdy Hamburg club circuit.

Bambi Kino is also the name of a band of American rock veterans (members of Guided by Voices, Nada Surf, Cat Power, and Maplewood) obsessed with recreating the sound that a formative Fab Four blasted out of the Indra club. For the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles Indra/Hamburg debut, Bambi Kino (the band) played several dates at the Indra with a repertoire comprised entirely of songs that the Beatles played from that period.

White Fence - White Fence is Growing Faith (Woodsist)

 

He is White Fence. He’s the first among equals in Darker My Love. And he’s just hired on as a gun with the Strange Boys. Tim Presley is a busy guy. Compared to Darker My Love, Presley’s day job, the music on White Fence Is Growing Faith sounds pretty mid-fi and slap-dash. What it shares with DML is an almost encyclopedic appreciation for late Sixties rock sounds and styles – that and a song conscious sensibility. Listen closer, it’s clear that however home studio sounding White Fence’s music is, Presley puts a lot of love into the playing and presentation of the sixteen pop nuggets on Is Growing Faith. What at first reminds of Alex Chilton’s Like Flies on Sherbert (yeah, Alex used an ‘r’) is, in fact, not bashed out, but a meticulous one-man band studio concoction, rough edges retained for sheer verve.

Robert Scott - Ends Run Together (Flying Nun/New Zealand)

Ends Run Together by Robert Scott is a really terrific record. You probably haven’t heard it. You probably won’t, unless I encourage you sufficiently to pursue it. I hope I do.

The third release from New Zealand’s rejuvenated Flying Nun (Bats, Clean, Chills, Verlaines, etc.) imprint, it should be a release that puts the label back in the forefront of indie-rock perception, whether the mechanics of media and distribution allow for that is another thing. The music Robert Scott makes isn’t the issue. It’s there.

Scott has an extensive alternative pedigree. As the on again, off again bassist for the Clean, a Kiwi band with a fractured career trajectory who played the recent Scion Garage Fest in Lawrence (Oct. 2010), but primarily as the main singer-songwriter-guitarist in the Bats. The Bats, given Scott’s restless ways, have recorded intermittently since 1982, taking the decade between 1995 and 2005, for instance, off. Perhaps this contributes to their lack of career momentum, but the deeper truth is that they make music that’s too subtle, whose melancholy and grace is a bit too elusive for a mass audience in any event. It’s great stuff, though. Check out Daddy’s Highway from 1987 or At the National Grid (2005) to hear fine examples of their sound, and to hear how slightly, gradually they’ve morphed from their aesthetic. In a sense they share a jangly, folk-rock sensibility with contemporaries like Robyn Hitchcock, even R.E.M. Their melodic drone was an inspiration to bands like Yo La Tengo and Pavement; there’s something at once listless and forceful about the band’s energy, narcotic and seductive.

Me, the Black Angels at the Bottleneck, in Back to Rockville, KC Star music blog, thanks to Tim Finn

Review: The Black Angels

Alex Maas of the Black Angels. Photo courtesy of Nate Fors.
Before the Black Angels performance on Saturday night at the Bottleneck in Lawrence they treated an unsuspecting capacity crowd to a rocking history lesson, playing a lengthy set of Bo Diddley sides over the public address system.

Sure, much has been made of the Angels’ Velvet Underground inspirations. They took their name from a track off of the “Velvet Underground and Nico” album, and their logo incorporates an image of Nico. But blasting Diddley was their way of saying that the great drone they so expertly extend predates Lou Reed and company, and where there’s sonic hypnosis, Bo is in the house. 

 

The Black Angels took the stage to a recording of an address by President John F. Kennedy, speaking before Congress in 1961 and setting forth the goal of placing an American on the moon.

There are many ghosts in the Black Angels music, but none bigger than the decade of the 60s itself. Opening with two tracks from the band‘s debut “Passover”  -- “Bloodhounds on My Trail and “The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven” -- the band established a relentless throb that evoked the Velvets, Doors and the 13^th Floor Elevators.

Their third selection, “Sniper” (noted as “new sniper” in their set list), and two more songs from their newest release “Phosphene Dream,” maintained the hypnotic pace while introducing the rich melodic pop vein developed on their third album.  “Haunting at 1300 McKinley" was especially impressive, the band getting on it’s Music Machine/Seeds groove.

The Black Angels swap instruments (guitar, 12-string, bass, various electric keyboards) frequently and with intuitive skill; Nate Ryan’s 12-string work furnished that “All Tomorrow’s Parties” glimmer on certain songs, while Christian Bland’s piercing leads combined Mike Bloomfield blues bite (including some nifty slide work) with Jason Pierce’s (Spaceman 3) searing neo-psychedelia. He drove home the “Lucifer Sam” inspired riff from ”Bad Vibrations” with touch and authority.

Alex Maas, the bearded and capped front man, sang like Roky Erickson wrestling Ozzy to the ground for peeing on the Alamo. His stage presence is commanding without shedding his ‘one of the band’ solidarity. Stephanie Bailey’s drumming drives the band – isolate on her and you can hear how studiously arranged is the band’s menace.

The predominance of songs from “Phosphene Dream,” with their heavier emphasis on pop thrills, provided just the right balance of relief from the dark, two-chord vibe of the band’s early material. “Yellow Elevator” reminded that the Sixties featured sunshine along with apocalypse, that the Doors, no strangers to the dark side, also churned out agreeable ditties like “Take it as it Comes” and “Twentieth Century Fox.”
At the conclusion of the band’s hour-plus set the capacity crowd demanded an encore. The Black Angels obliged with a mini-set, including “Telephone,” perhaps the giddiest number from “Phosphene Dream,” a stone charmer of lysergic dimensions, but jubilantly rooted in jug band music. Throughout the show, Maas and Bland addressed the crowd occasionally, and with a sweetness that humanized their highly stylized dark themes ("Gimme Shelter" on overdrive) the band specializes in.

The Black Angels understand that there’s a balance to be struck between entertainment and what Jim Morrison called “an hour for magic” – an opportunity for both artist and audience to be transported to alternate, even sacred spaces, then brought back drained and satisfied. It’s a neat trick, but one that the Black Angels pull of brilliantly.

Lawrence’s L5 opened the show, showing that plundering the post-Velvet Underground style-book is collegiate sport; referencing VU and “Nuggets” are this generation’s version of the Harry Smith anthology. Evoking the Fall, Orange Juice, and Dream Syndicate (the gamut of post-VU sounds), L5 played with panache; their songs exhibiting real structure and melodic interest.

The Suuns followed them with a set that was long on intros, and short on songs. With singer Brian Shemie sounding like a tune-challenged version of Placebo’s Brian Molko, their Battles-cum-Krautrock ditties mostly demonstrated that “Sister Ray” (oh, those inevitable Velvets references) minus narrative and release is just tension, and that tension without release is dull.

In any event the evening was about the Black Angels. The full house (heavy on dudes) that packed the Bottleneck left buzzing and satisfied.
| Steve Wilson, Special to The Star

Hunx and his Punx - Too Young to Fall in Love (Hardly Art)

At Kief’s in the late Seventies we had this regular customer named Reza who bought tons of dance records – club remixes on twelve-inch, that sort of stuff. We got used to anticipating his visits and would point out new arrivals in the idiom when he came to the store. One day he arrived; there we were all poised to show him the latest cool dance mix. With a dismissive wave of the hand he said “no more disco, new wave.” Thus converted, Reza began buying everything he could get his hands on that screamed 100 Club and CBGB’s.

Perhaps Seth Bogart had such a conversion experience. The shift from Gravy Train’s charged homoerotic electro-anthems to the girl group-punk of Hunx and his Punx seems pronounced. Or is it? The puke-pink cover and the torso shot of some hunk (Hunx?) in Freddie Mercury leather suggest that it’s all just the same party with a new soundtrack, as does the stylized shot of bassist Shannon Shaw on the disc itself – pure John Waters after Andy Warhol. And to be sure, there’s an decided element of classic camp involved with both bands. Still, sonically Bogart’s definitely moved from Le Tigre territory to Black Lips go Shangri-La’s turf.

The responsoria of the Punx are central to the “is (s) he really going out with him?” affect of Too Young to Be in Love (sassy vocal retorts and echoes to Bogart’s declarations); the Punx are in fact Punxettes, if you will, who complete Hunx’s girl-group fantasia. Shaw on bass, Erin Emslie on drums, Michelle Santamaria on lead guitar and Amy Blandstein on guitar and organ blast out the somewhat generic, yet convincing cross between jangle-pop and the Ramones that supports the idiomatic, but charming tunes on Too Young.

Bogart co-writes and sings most of the material. While he gets the songs across, he’s not a pre-possessing vocal talent. His approach will be familiar to fans of the Black Lips or the late Jay Reatard  – nonchalant, pitchy, mock-earnest. There was something in Reatard’s work, though, that suggested a poetic dimension and emotional depth that Bogart simply skirts in favor of fun, fun, fun. It doesn’t diminish the enjoyment of Too Young, but it does diminish the band's potential for what the British press used to call ‘staying power.” The band’s performances are captured nicely by producer Ivan Julian (guitarist with Richard Hell, Matthew Sweet, etc.). His production keeps things focused, simple and direct – basically the record sounds like a polished up version of a live show, which is spot-on for this material.

“Lover’s Lane” sets the tone for Too Young to Be in Love from note one. Basically ‘Last Kiss’ without the narrative specificity, “Lane” establishes Bogart as the new Lance Loud. While victim themes prevail here, “Keep Away From Johnny” is self-assertion set to a surf-Ramones backbeat. The title song proves that camp loves doom, Bogart slipping into recitative mode. “If You’re Not There” offers a change of pace, loping along like something Dave Edmunds might have cooked up. “Tonite Tonite” traffics in the ubiquitous Spector-beat thump, punk style. You’ve heard it all before, I suppose, but it’s fun to hear it again.

If my enthusiasm for Too Young is real, it’s not complete or unqualified. It’s wholly entertaining stuff, and best consumed with a feast of friends and a few tall ones. To matter after the hangover, Bogart is going to have to find some little something, something that makes his delivery and his songs stand out. Too Young to Be in Love is good enough to keep me interested and facile enough to bait my breath.

Reverberating: 7.7

Lloyd Cole - Broken Record (Tapete)

 Born in Derbyshire, Lloyd Cole met the gents who became the Rattlesnakes in his abbreviated stint at Glasgow University. Their self-titled debut in 1984 was a breath of fresh air in the sometimes polluted atmosphere of post-punk and dance-whatever. Cole’s literate lyrics, dotted with pop cultural references (he dropped names like no one since Elliott Murphy), walked the line between sentiment and cynicism in endearing fashion;  his sweet, dry talk-sing borrowed heavily from Lou Reed, and the Rattlesnakes combined new wave energy with a cool classicism. Easy Pieces in 1985 was an impressive follow-up, but after Mainstream in 1987 the band was no more and Cole went solo.

He’s made records for a long list of labels – Geffen, Capitol, Rykodisc, What Are, etc. – some of them, like The Negatives from 2004, served as reminders of his talent, but honestly all but a few fans ceased paying attention. Some time ago he moved from his native Britain to Massachusetts. I caught him playing solo at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan a few years back. He’s not a pre-possessing performer, but between his good humor and smart, wryly observed songs he provides a delightful evening’s entertainment. Sure, he once had videos on MTV in the Eighties and looked poised for commercial success, while today he’s a journeyman.

His last several recording projects have been autonomous affairs, and he’s toured with a suitcase and a guitar for several years. Broken Record is the result of his determination that this batch of songs needed a bit of rocking up. At fifty, Cole is on yet another label, this time Tapete, a German imprint with limited American distribution. They gave the green light to these sessions which were also financed at least in part by a thousand or so fans who coughed up $45.00, mostly as patrons of the art, partly to ensure receiving a deluxe edition of the album upon release. Ah, the vicissitudes at the intersection of art and commerce in 2011. But don’t cry for Lloyd. He must treat his fellow musicians like a gentleman. He called some musician pals, including Fred Maher on drums and Joan (the Policewoman) Wasser on several instruments, and assembled a really fine band. The resulting album Broken Record finds him at (or at least near) the top of his game.

The razor sharp guitars of the Rattlesnakes era are replaced in large part by Americana sounding instrumentation, often featuring banjo, pedal steel and mandolin players, although the guitars get cranked up occasionally (as on the pleasantly twisted solo for “Double Happiness”). As ever with Cole, the arrangements and musicianship are in service to the songs. And the songs are good. “Like a Broken Record” chronicles the denouement of a love affair. Always deft with the wink and nod to his mentors, Cole employs the repetitive “broken” conceit from Dylan’s “Everything is Broken” in the song’s catchy bridge. Self-effacement going hand in hand with craft, Cole begins and ends the tune with the line “not that I have that much dignity left anyway.”

 “Writers Retreat!” humorously addresses the clichéd anxieties and entreaties of the professionally creative. Mark Schwaber’s mandolin part is a gift from Mott the Hoople’s “I Wish I Was Your Mother.” Lloyd must have been listening to the Mott record; for “That’s Alright” (itself a Dylan nod) he takes Mick Ralph verbatim (“loving you is hard enough”) - the song, a kiss-off to a grasping, entitled neurotic, has the gentle sting that Cole specializes in.

More influence spotting? Well, “Why in the World?” not only could have been sonically lifted from Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby, Cole also alludes to the Velvet’s “Beginning to See the Light” (“when did I cease to see the light”), and resonantly refers to the Beach Boys’ “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” (“maybe I’m not built for these times”).

That’s no slight on Cole, though. He just wears his influences on his sleeve, like a man who knows where he comes from. And he comes from a tradition of songwriting that honors craft in an age of loops and chanting. A creeping autumnal sense is at the heart of many of these songs. Heck, the reference to a broken record on the title cut is reinforced by “The Flip Side” -  first by title, second its “And Then He Kissed Me” intro, and finally  in sensibility; it captures the musings of a literate fellow confronting a post-literate world.“Rhinestones” is enigmatic by Cole standards with references to “dancing on the White House lawn” and an inability to “go back to K Street.”

What if Lou Reed recorded in Nashville? It might sound like “If I Were a Song,” which also skirts Leonard Cohen territory respectably. Both Cole and Cohen know when to switch from earnest poetics to pop “la la las.” Only “Oh, Genevieve,” catchy enough for what it’s worth, sounds like a song written as exercise.

The economics of this business being what they are it’s hard to say whether Cole can take this band on the road. Beyond considerations of expense, many of them have other bands and commitments. But if he could they’d undoubtedly grace these songs, and Cole’s older material (including the classic Rattlesnakes songs ‘Perfect Skin,” “Are You Ready to be Heartbroken” – ever hear Sandie Shaw’s version … awesome, and “Brand New Friend”) with their musicianship and superior song sense. Whatever is down that road, Lloyd Cole fans can celebrate Broken Record, one of the artist’s finest records.

Reverberating: 8.8

La Sera - s/t (Hardly Art)

Katy Goodman played bass with the Vivian Girls.  Her new band La Sera (their debut is self-titled) is a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and producer Brady Hall, which tones down the VG’s noise-gunk pop and emphasizes melody and more sophisticated arrangement textures. There’ still a patina of distortion, but it is soft focus rather than spread thick. Goodman has some of the same girl group influences that every third band recording today (Dum Dum Girls, Frankie Rose and the Outs, Hunx & His Punx, blah blah blah) seems to have, but in truth many of her inspirations pre and post-date those Sixties sounds.  You can hear the gossamer Fifties pop vocals of the McGuire Sisters and the Chordettes in Goodman’s singing, only processed through successive generations of Jesus and Mary Chain and Enya influences. Go ahead, laugh; Enya was really popular – somebody listened to those sweet, amniotic, singing-with-myself harmonies. Elvis loved Dean Martin. Get over it.

The lyrics are hard to decipher sometimes, given the mixes that predominate on La Sera; dig a little harder and underneath the sweet, soothing singing are songs about heartache and death. They sure are pretty, though, it’s an intriguing form/content mismatch that works. Goodman’s pretty one-woman girl group vocals are the center of this recording, but they certainly profit from Brad Hall’s uncannily appropriate instrumental backings. Supposedly, he heard Goodman’s own guitar and tambourine demos of these songs and decided to trick them out, recording Goodman’s vocals afterward.

Hall’s guitar work ranges from Reid Brothers rough to guitar solos that combine Carl Wilson’s tone with George Harrison’s melodicicsm. Tracks like ‘You’re Going to Cry” and “Under the Tree” are reminiscent of David Roback’s work with Mazzy Star. Hall’s also a terrific bass player; his lines are subtle, melodic and propulsive in the right places, especially on the Paisley Underground tinged “Hold.” The prom balladry of “Dove Into Love” fuses the Smith and the Ramones sonically. “Been Here Before” chugs along like an old Kinks track and features an oh-so Johnny Marr-ish solo from Hall.

Okay, I’m making it sound like Hall’s record. And in some ways it is. But the tunes (and the demos) and the vocals are Goodman’s, and finally it’s her vision. It reflects a generation spanning (from Fifties female pop singers up through the Ramones, Smiths, and Jesus and Mary Chain) sound and an aesthetic of sweet, sometimes doomed, romanticism that represents a lovely Liebestraume for a new century.

Reverberating: 8.2