Esperanza Spalding - Your read it here first (or before the Grammys), if you read it.

 This review ran in the KC Free Press a few months ago. I hit refresh when Ms. Spalding won the Grammy for Best New Artist and everyone started asking "who's Esperanza Spalding?"

This is who ...

 

Esperanza Spalding – Chamber Music Society (Heads Up)

“An accomplished, fully realized vision from a special young artist”

It sounds like hyperbole, but I’ll say it anyway; Esperanza Spalding is a special, perhaps a once in a generation, talent. A musical prodigy from a rough neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, Spalding has earned the attention of jazz mentors like Pat Metheny and Gary Burton and the respect of her peers. Her new release Chamber Music Society combines string quartet arrangements with jazz piano trio improvisations, Spalding anchoring both ensembles with her agile bass work. Her musicality on the upright bass reminds me of the great Ron Carter. There’s something of George Duvivier in her touch and her compositional approach to the instrument, as well. Spalding’s music blends jazz, classical and Brazilian elements in a personal, seamless and beautiful way.

Her musicianship alone would make her a formidable new figure in jazz, but Spalding is also an impressive singer. She has Ella’s articulation, and a timbre recalling the gossamer soprano of Blossom Dearie. Her lyrics are poetic and her “covers” (including a poem by William Blake, “I am the Fly,” Dimitri Tomkin’s “Wild is the Wind,” and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s ‘Inutil Paisagem”) are inspired - integrating beautifully with Spalding’s own works. Her themes are elemental, embracing a feminine (and feminist) perspective, but bypassing earth Mother clichés. “Apple Blossom” is a lovely evocation of the life cycle - of loss and rebirth sung as a duet with one of Spaulding’s inspirations, Milton Nascimento. On several songs Spalding sticks to scat singing and in such a purely expressive idiom her real identity and charm as a singer is clearer still.

Attempts to combine chamber string arrangements with the improvisatory basis of jazz musicianship have produced mixed results. Early versions of such fusion like Gunther Schulller’s “Third Stream Music” often sounded academic - well intentioned, but stiff. Spalding’ s music brings out the best in both. While less improvised, it even has a soul stirring sweetness that evokes Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. Her pianist Leo Genovese, while very much a singular talent, can recall Mc Coy Tyner one moment, Herbie Hancock or Horace Silver the next. Drummer Teri Lyne Carrington, a veteran of several Hancock ensembles, is an unusually sensitive drummer, approaching the kit compositionally, not unlike Jack DeJohnette.  Sometimes her sound reminds me of Connie Kay (Modern Jazz Quartet … and drummer on Van Morrison’s’ Tupelo Honey).

Gil Goldstein, who has worked with the likes of Gil Evans and Pat Martino, co-arranges the strings with Spalding. Together they’ve fashioned parts for cello, viola and violin that complement and converse with Spalding and her jazz trio.

Do find the opportunity to experience Chamber Music Society. Spalding’s music has a generous spirit that combines civilized grace and the sheer release of great jazz improvisation. 

Reverberating: 9.1

New York Dolls - 09 - I Sold My Heart To The Junkman

Just because. I will be reviewing their new album at length closer to the release date, March 15th.

Zola Jesus - Valusia

Zola Jesus - Valusia (Sacred Bones)


Nika Rosa Danilova haunts me. Maybe it's some lingering thing for Goth chicks. Hell, I'm as big a schlub for cultivated mystery, ethereal images, and soft focus photography as the next guy. But it has to be something else. Something more.

Oh, it's the voice. It has to be - because the lyrics, while they serve the melodies, and Danilova's angst and alienation, are unremarkable. The instrumental settings are affecting, but not extraordinary. Yeah, got to be the voice. The twenty-one year old Danilova (Zola Jesus the band includes others’ instrumental contributions, but its definitely Danilova’s show) is reputedly classical trained. Maybe so, she certainly has a powerful set of pipes and shows some range on Valusia (her latest recording, a 19-minute extended play). But she’s certainly shed the baggage that typically comes with such experience. Sure, her phrasing can be stentorian, and her tone chilly. But Danilova unmistakably gives in to the pop subtexts of the material and lets the ragged emotional edges emerge when the moment’s right.

And while everyone is quick to acknowledge influences like Siouxsie and Kate Bush, my hunch is that she’s also absorbed a little Bruce Springsteen and Christina Aguilera. Oh, get over it. It always kills me how reviewers try to cite inspirations that will impress one another, rather than actually telling it straight. Besides, I like Springsteen (even Christina ... some). Shoot me.

Valusia’s point of entry “Poor Animal” is about the shocks natural to the human animal; I’m pretty sure. While the electro-synth sounds suggest Eighties electro-pop, I can also hear something in Danilova’s phrasing that makes me think she’d do a bang-up job interpreting the Replacement’s “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

On “Tower” Danilova asserts that she’s “not alone in the tower,” yet the emotional release in the performance comes with the line “and it feels like I’m the only one” (onomatopoetically, it’s a cappella). But Goth-pop poetics needn’t be rationally consistent. Nope, not at all.

On the cryptically entitled “Sea Talk,” Danilova’s alto sheds the cold electro-chanteuse business and goes husky. The arc of the melody evokes the timeless teenage heartache of Dolores “La La” Brooks, immortalized with such Phil Spector produced hits as “Da Doo Ron Ron” and  “Then He Kissed Me” singing lead (along with Darlene Love) in the Crystals. Danilova pleads “I can’t afford you," and you get the feeling that it ain’t money she’s singing about. The rhythm is somewhere between Teutonic march and dance music. You can almost Madonna sounding like this if her voice was more prepossessing and her phrasing more elegant. Okay, it’s a stretch.

Valusia closes with the throbbing piano ballad “Lightsick.” When Danilova sings the words “starry end” there’s something in that emotional space – both sensual and chaste – that suggests Laura Nyro, especially the lyric resemblance to Nyro’s “Stony End.” As Danilova ponders what happens “when the lights go out on us” I flash on the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and wonder if love’s just a kiss away or something foreboding awaits in the dark. Like much of Valusia, there's something both thrilling and chilling about it.

Producer Chris Coady keeps things simple and spacious, spotlighting Danilova’s extraordinary voice. The only performance other than hers that draws attention is Christiana Key’s violin playing on “Poor Animal’s” stirring coda.

I’m only marginally familiar with Danilova’s work prior to Valusia. I may have to get better acquainted with it. Or maybe not. Somehow, Valusia feels like the perfect introduction to Zola Jesus and the haunting, beautiful voice of Nika Rosa Danilova.

Reverberating: 8.5

Glorious Pop Noise: Smith Westerns and Frankie Rose and the Outs

Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde (Fat Possum)

Frankie Rose and the Outs – s/t (Slumberland)

In my recent review of No Age’s Everything in Between I suggested that the band was part of a generation “brought up to fear silence.” And that their sound embodied a “dynamic based on the epic swell of obligatory sonic overload, rising and falling with each song’s emotional nuances. Not space exactly, but an approximation.” Well, okay – I can stick with that. Young bands can almost be divided between those who almost scrupulously avoid noise and distortion and those who soak in it.

Kids these days. For many young musicians less is nothing and more is never enough when it comes to noise. What’s an old fart to do? Well, when the old fart in question was a fan of everything from the Stooges to John Coltrane’s Ascension he reaps just what he’s sown. Because while I may quarrel with the apparent default setting for distortion that seems to have become the mien of young musicians, I can sure surrender the top end of my hearing with the best of them.

The inevitability of noise is central to the aesthetic of two distorto-pop outfits with recent records out. For the Smith Westerns and their second album Dye it Blonde distortion is the icing on a cake of musical influences that embraces everything from Cream’s “Badge” to the Smashing Pumpkins, but which seems tiered on the at once dour and ecstatic sound of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. Imagine, if you will, guitar leads that replace the mystical Beatles’ weeping slide with bruising, but beautiful single note lickery that sounds like Marc Bolan on Olympus. Max Kakacek plays with a gorgeous, distorted tone that for all its ferocity is unfailingly melodic, sounding like nothing so much as the string arrangement for John Lennon’s “Mind Games” – but on a single, loud ass guitar. He winds “Still New” down with a fantasia of phased, backward guitar sounds. The “Layla”-esque dueling leads on “End of the Night” are sweet and seductive; while the arpeggiated intro to “Only One” proffers the sound of the Flamin’ Groovies for a new over-driven generation. Kakacek can shift between folk-rock and “Heatwave” Motown rhythms on a dime, as he does on “Dance Away.” All of, I dunno – twenty years old (?), he makes a beautiful noise throughout Dye it Blonde. 

Cool as Kakacek’s playing is, the Omori Brothers, Cameron (bass) and Cullen (rhythm, lead vocals) are equal contributors. Their performances, plus the (unattributed) supersonic synthesizers and pumping rock piano are the bones on which Smith Westerns rock monster is built. And their songs are both naively fetching and altogether sophisticated for their age (they too are but twenty-ish). From the T.Rex acoustic jangle of “Still New” to the Hunky Dory vibe of “All Die Young,” with its queerly celebratory chorus; from the ELO interpreted by the Flaming Lips charms of “Fallen in Love” to the gorgeous coda of the title tune’s serenade to the sweet disorientations of love and youth, the Smith Westerns know how to rock out the monster pop moves. Producer Chris Coady superbly realizes the band’s fresh ideas. His considerable resume includes the recent Beach House record Teen Dream.

On the heels of their first album, a brash, punkier affair that reminded a little of the late, great (pretty great, anyway) Exploding Hearts, Dye It Blonde is that sound blown up into a kaleidoscopic pan-generational pop vision. It’s got smarts, heart and miles of youthful insouciance. If you’re into that kind of thing. Me, I think it’s pretty sweet.

Frankie Rose and the Outs, on the other hand, are at least superficially more in line with the aesthetic of the current crop of Girl-noise-pop bands, a sound derived from the synthesis of Sixties girl-group stylings and the post-punk racket of everyone from the Jesus and Mary Chain to immediate prototypes of the genre like the Shop Assistants and Dolly Mixture. This genre includes the lovely, but leaden pop swoon of Best Coast, as well as the Spector-punk concrete of the Dum Dum Girls. Rose played in the road version of the DDG. She also served time with another genre progenitor, the Vivian Girls. Frankie Rose and the Outs, on their debut album) are superior to anything the VG ever did and the equal of the Dum Dums. Where Kristen Gundred (Dee Dee of the Dum Dum Girls) uses sheer (literally) noise as a cubist element in her reconstruction of Spector’s Wall of Sound, Rose employs noise as though it were part of the chiaroscuro of her version of pop-punk impressionism. Impressionism? Allow me to explain. For music as saturated in noise as this is it’s also full of soft, blended edges. Nothing really jumps out of the mix. The band’s harmonies are lovely, but lead vocals and specific lyrics rarely engage you. The harmonies are part of the impressionistic (uh huh) blend, just like My Bloody Valentine’s guitar layering.

‘Hollow Life’s” dearly beloved style organ introduction is the perfect beginning for a song that sounds like a benediction - the ladies of Frankie Rose and the Outs (Frankie, Margot Bianca, Kate Ryan and Caroline Yes! … Get it, as in the Beach Boys’ “Caroline No?”) vocal blend beautifully, like a tattooed Chordettes or Paris Sisters. The Outs love guitar licks that reflect the love of both Dick Dale and the Cramps. Such voodoo-surf riffs saturate songs like “Candy” and “Don’t Tred,” often occurring as guitarcapella breaks.  Rose’s production exhibits all sorts of interesting subtleties, like “That’s What People Told Me’s” slow dissolve into single note guitar sustain and handclaps, or the way the angelic and aggressive are combined on ‘Must Be Nice” with its’ alluring mixture of “Gloria” chords and the atmosphere of the Mamas and Papas “12:30.” “Girlfriend Island” rocks to a Ramones beat with the vocals slightly forward in the mix, while there’s a Springsteen/Spector swoon to “Little Brown Haired Girls.”

It would be easy, and wrong, to lump the recent rash of noise-pop bands together. Frankie Rose and the Outs brings a singular vision to the idiom. Again, compared to the noisy, jagged, yup – Cubist qualities of the Dum Dum Girls (they’re good, too), Frankie Rose and the Outs create impressionist cathedrals of calm in the eye of their storm of distorted guitars. Theirs may be a late entry to the noise-pop girl genre, but it’s an individual and glorious statement.

Reverberating: 8.6 (yeah, both of them)

A tale of two singles with Gentleman Jesse and His Men

Gentleman Jesse and His Men -

(“She’s a Trap”/”I Won’t Say Goodbye” – Douchemaster & “You’ve Got the Wrong Man”/”Stubborn Ghost” – Hozac)

Last October a slew of bands loosely fitting the ‘garage-rock’ tag descended upon Lawrence for a one-day, multi-club event called “Garage Fest.” The first band I heard that evening was Atlanta’s Gentleman Jesse and His Men. It was among the best performances of the night. Jesse and his band offered pure pop pleasure that neither neglected nor exaggerated the power part of the ‘power-pop’ proposition. Their playing and singing was skilled, tight, convincing and miles apart from some folks' notion of what constitutes garage-rock, but for me it qualified. After all, the performers on Nuggets, the quintessential primer of the genre, were American bands who by and large imitated British rockers like the Kinks, Stones, Yardbirds and Them, but certainly among them (the Knickerbockers and Beau Brummels come quickly to mind)  were artists whose chief inspiration was the Beatles. The music of Gentleman Jesse is derived from those Beatle obsessed outfits from the mid-Sixties.

Jesse’s debut album, on the unfortunately named Douchemaster label, was a latter day power-pop treasure. Two recent singles, one on Douchemaster, the other on Chicago’s Hozac label, are the first new music from Jesse and His Men since that 2008 debut album. Between the two singles, four songs delivered in scarcely ten minutes, Jesse proves there’s plenty more in his bag of pop-rock tricks.

“She’s a Trap” is two minutes of pop nirvana, a cross between the pop side of “Nuggets” and the Undertones. Jesse’s vocals have a distinctly trans-Atlantic quality. He doesn’t sound particularly affected; it’s more that he betrays his influences without reservations, and some of those inspirations are British. Figure too, that between his Mick Jones-ish lead vocals and the Clash inspired harmonies on certain songs, Jesse and the band remind of American outfits like the Dils and Channel Three, bands whose pop-punk sounds were equal parts American and British. On the flip side, “I Won’t Say Goodbye” is a mid-tempo charmer that shows Jesse and His Men aren’t reliant on thrash-pop tempos (Jesse Smith also plays bass in Atlanta’s loud, fast punk band the Carbonas).

“You’ve Got the Wrong Man’s” bridge features the sort of compressed wordplay that Nick Lowe mastered so well on albums like Pure Pop for Now People and Labour of Lust.  The b-side “Stubborn Ghost” has a Lennonesque melody and busy, propulsive McCartney inspired bass lines. The spiffy twelve string figure that bridges each chorus and verse evokes the Rickenbacker sound featured on the Hard Day’s Night album.

None of these four songs are epochal or ground breaking. All of them are full of pop charm and performed exuberantly. As lovely filler between albums they are hard to fault, and any fan of power-pop would do well to seek out the singles, available from the Hozac and Douchemaster labels, as well as digitally from iTunes.

Reverberating: 8.7 (cumulative)

Billy Belzer - You Shouldn't Have - But you should ... hear it, that is.

Welcome. I hope you caught my review last week in the Star and on Back To Rockville of the fine new Wire release "Red Barked Tree." This week 'Reverberations' shines its tiny spotlight on a most enjoyable piece of work from local hero Billy Belzer.

His new ep "You Shouldn't Have" is available as a download from bancamp.com (http://billybelzer.bandcamp.com/album/you-shouldnt-have). I suspect it may start showing up at selected local, indie record retailers soon, too.

Billy Belzer – You Shouldn’t Have  (local/indie release)

 "Pop (power ... and not) masterwork from hometown lad."

Those who haunt the Kansas City music scene know Bill Belzer. They know him as one of the city's best drummers, whether it’s from his work (back in the day) with Mongol Beach Party or his recent playing with the New Amsterdams or his own bands Mary Fortune and the Sleazebeats. Bill played on my friend Todd Newman's pretty darn brilliant Temporary Setback. As a drummer Bill is rock solid; he can play in a variety of styles, he even knows how to let up on the 2 and 4 on the hi-hat to visit Charlie Watts town (something you can hardly get a young rock drummer to do). Beyond chops, he's always been a song conscious player. It was only a matter of time before he turned that superb song sense to writing his own material. Actually, he's done so for some time, but You Shouldn’t Have is the first release featuring Bill's songs, singing, and guitar playing as well as drumming. Wow, what took him so long? YSH borders on pop perfection, more because it pushes the boundaries of power-pop than adheres to them. Belzer's songs reflect his service with Mr. Newman as well as a studious absorption of writers like Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Marshall Crenshaw, and Matthew Sweet. Whether it's influence or affinity I also hear something in Belzer’s music that reminds me of Mac McCaughan's work with Portastatic.

YSH contains five songs, each distinct, characterized by wit, heart and brevity. Belzer has a concise sense of what makes a great pop song work and he demonstrates it with tunes that embrace a wide variety of moods, personae and tempi.

"Devil Girl," clocking in at a thrifty 2:14, is a corker. Framed by a nifty guitar lick, the lyric describes a wallflower who turns seductive and voluptuous in costume for an office Halloween party. Or as Belzer recounts: the girl "was chubby and lacked style and was very nervous. At the company Halloween party, however, she came dressed as an exceedingly sexy, well put together devil." There's a pregnant pause between the words devil and girl, a little hiccup that works beautifully both melodically and as a lyric conceit. Brisk, frisky and sweet, “Devil Girl” kicks things off beautifully.

"Good Clown" provides excellent personal and professional advice to a rock 'n' roll burnout. Belzer's subtle, half-whispered, sotto voce delivery makes his withering contempt darker, proving that restraint can be deadlier than excess. There's no vinegar in "Concessionaire," a song that Belzer describes being about gay romance and self-acceptance, but frankly it's universal ("What you have in your heart, is it anything to give it all away?"), being about the courage it takes to put your self on the line for love. Its setting is basically folk-rock with a touch of Big Star.

YSH concludes with "Rose of the Rockies," a heartbreakingly beautiful ballad. Belzer says it's "about a couple of friends I knew who had two incredible girls and whose marriage disintegrated." The casual listener might not catch all that; what anyone with a heart will hear is a beautiful song about longing and loss. It’s a conventional and annoying cliché that a given part (instrumental embellishment, for instance) 'makes' a song. My first thought always is that without a good song, nothing added to a song 'makes' it. That said, sometimes something in an arrangement can be so right, so affecting that it can amplify the soul of a song. Such is the case with Betse Ellis's violin work on "Rose of the Rockies;" her playing serves Belzer much like David Swarbrick's nuanced work complemented Sandy Denny's singing with Fairport Convention.

Five songs, right? And I've discussed four. Okay, it's tough. When an album has thirteen songs you don't feel compelled to discuss them all in a review. And honestly, "Someone You Trust" doesn't move me the way the other songs do. It's a fine song really, and it's positioned perfectly in the middle slot (3rd of 5 for you mathematically challenged ... like me), letting the more prepossessing songs stand out.

Belzer play drums, guitar and sings all lead vocals. In addition to Ms. Ellis, Belzer gets empathetic support from Jeff Freling (guitar, bass), Eric McCann (bass), Andrew Connor (bass), Mark Greenberg (keyboards), and Kristin May (backing vocals on 'Devil Girl'). YSH was engineered and mixed ably by Mike Nolte, Andrew Connor's band mate in Ghosty. Kudos to everyone - YSH is a practically flawless short program of power pop and balladry.

Reverberating: 8.8

Wire - Red Barked Tree (Pink Flag), from Back to Rockville, the Music Blog of the Kansas City Star, January 13, 2011

Dear readers: Not, I repeat not, a repetition of the post from the Kansas City Star. For reasons of space my review of Wire's new album Red Barked Tree appeared in an edited form in the Star. However, in the Star's rock blog (Back to Rockville) it appears in its unexpurgated, original form. Oh, and for those of you who would like to see the album artwork - here you go:

The link: http://backtorockville.typepad.com/back_to_rockville/2011/01/new-music-alert-reliable-wire-and-more.html
takes you to the review in its original form.








Again, had the review appeared in "Reverberations" it would have a ...

Reverberating: 8.9

Wire - Red Barked Tree (Pink Flag), from the Kansas City Star, Jan. 13, 2011

I reviewed the new Wire album Red Barked Tree for the Kansas City Star. The review appeared today.

Gee, here's a link to the review:  http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/12/2577460/new-audio-releases.html

I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with Tim Finn and the Star. For purposes of "Reverberations": consistency I will add a little information. Red Barked Tree is released on the Pink Flag label (I always give label information - labels love to see their names in print). Also, had it originated here on "Reverberations" the album would have been given a ...

Reverberating: 8.9

Sleigh Bells (from Hell): Or Overrated Monstrosities of 2010, pt. 1

 As this silly junk ends up on all sorts of "Best of" lists for 2010 ... I just gotta say ...

Sleigh Bells – Treats (Mom & Pop)

“Umm, Treats … bet ya I can eat just one”

Sleigh Bells. The guy in Pitchfork gave it an 8.7, and metacritic.com, an aggregator of reviews, suggests “Universal Acclaim,” and indicates an average score of 87.

Consider this the con of the year. Sleigh Bells debut full-length Treats is aptly titled, save for the fact that this is penny candy sold as Chocolate gateau. Three bites and you have a sugar headache.  Sleigh Bells serve up mediocre songs combining lame, mid-tempo post-Dre beats borrowed from Nineties hip-hop (and not especially good Nineties hip-hop) with bland distorto-guitar crap and synth bleeps. Less ugly than what used to be called rap-metal, but just as stupid.

Back story: Some dude (Derek Miller, who was in a hardcore band called Poison the Well) runs into a girl at a Brooklyn coffee shop. Collaboration ensues. Miller cranks out generic, crap pop metal riffage (the cute trick being that it’s ultra-distorted) and Alexis Krauss chirp-chants about nothing much. Williamsburg fawns. Files and clips saturate the net. Sleigh Bells mania follows. Now I know why they call it viral.

Simple lyrics, I have no problem with. Bring’em on; I’m a child of Little Richard and the Ramones. But these songs cloy where they should captivate.  Alexis Krauss’s singing shoots for the post-My Bloody Valentine cool of Kirstin Gundred’s Dum Dum Girls, but she’s a one trick filly; every song features vocals with so much echo, delay, and reverb that the effect is sheer aural fatigue.

Critics are tripping all over themselves to tell us how novel Sleigh Bells are. Well, freakin’ nonsense. Loud ass guitars over dope(y) beats - That’s new! This is A.R.E. Weapons meets Chemical Brothers with sugary female vocals. Sometimes I hear Le Tigre with less interesting songs. Anybody remember Electroclash? Didn’t think so. Well, trust me, this crap is close.

It’s not just that Sleigh Bells is undoubtedly a flash in the pan one-joke band that galls me. It’s that they’re not very good even given that. Depressing especially is the herd mentality that prevails among easily duped, ahistorical rock “critics” who fawn at any half-ass hipster thesis that allows them to drop Santogold or M.I.A.’s name. It must be sad to live in fear of being odd man (or woman) out.

Go ahead. Enjoy your Treats kids. But brush your mind after each listening to prevent decay.

Reverberating: 4.4

originally appeared in the KC Free Press

Black Angels - Phosphene Dream is Reverberations No. 1 for 2010!

Welcome to the top 25 for 2010 Countdown! Each day we'll countdown; today we culminate with our (okay, my) Number One album of the year. This review first appeared in the KC Free Press.

When this release was announced I hadn't the highest hopes. I'd found the sound of the Black Angels earlier records impressive, but the songwriting was mediocre. The songs on Phosphene Dream don't necessarily compare to the best work of their inspirations (Beatles, Doors, Velvets, Elevators, etc.), but they're good, and good enough that taken as a body of work they impress with their craft, consistency, and vision.  Producer Dave Sardy, whose credits read like a name check of alternative rock artists, undoubtedly tightened up the band's arrangements. And having signed to Blue Horizon, the new (actually revived) imprint from Sire's Seymour Stein and famed producer Richard Gottehrer, the Black Angels were ready to make a RECORD, not just a recording. Phosphene Dream is just that a RECORD, an album that coheres from start to finish. Like all great records it's comprised of good songs that cumulatively comprise an even greater work. 

Critics seem bent on celebrating Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. Hey, I'm not a hater, but for me the Black Angels vision of what happens when the kids leave the suburbs and move into a college town crash pad with a bunch of questionable characters is just more compelling.

 

25. Jon Langford - Old Devils (Bloodshot)
24. Vaselines - Sex with an X (Sub Pop)
23. Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do (ATO)
22. Magnetic Fields - Realism (Nonesuch)
21. Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be (Sub Pop)
20. Peter Case - Wig! (Yep Roc) 

19. Bettye Lavette - Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook (Anti-Epitaph) 

18. Super Wild Horses - Fifteen (Hovac) 

17. Parting Gifts - Strychnine Dandelion (In the Red) 

16. No Age - Everything In Between (Sub Pop)

15. The Fall - Your Future Our Clutter (Domino) 

14. First Aid Kit - The Big Black and the Blue (Wichita Recordings) 

13. Owen Pallett - Heartland (Domino)

12. Mavis Staples - You Are Not Alone (Anti-Epitaph)

10 (tie). J. Roddy Walston and the Business - s/t (Vagrant)
10 (tie). Aloe Blacc - Good Things (Stones Throw)
  9. Roky Erickson & Okkervil River - True Love Cast Out All Evil (Anti-Epitaph)
  8. Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (4AD)
  7. Wounded Lion - s/t (In the Red)
  6. Diamond Rings - Special Affections (Secret City Records)
  5. Bleach Bloodz - Pure Rock N Roll / Live and Raw / Devil Magick (local
      releases)
  4. Jesse Malin and the St. Mark's Social - Love it to Life (SideOneDummy)
  3. Manic Street Preachers – Postcards From a Young Man (import)
  2. Mystery Jets – Serotonin (Rough Trade)

1. Black Angels – Phosphene Dream (Blue Horizon)

“Austin’s dark troubadours streamline their sound with sharp results”

Naming themselves after the most stridently dissonant song from the
Velvet Underground and Nico album, the Black Angels pledged themselves to menace and drone. They pursued it with vigor and fury on their previous records, sometimes giving too much of a good thing. Their new album Phosphene Dream features shorter, more succinct songs and more detailedperformances without sacrificing any of the band’s maniacal intensity. I think it’s the best distillation to date of their dope-deal-gone-bad and love at the edge visions.


Phosphene Dream is the first release for Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer’s revived Blue Horizon imprint. It’s an interesting and complicated saga, perhaps best accounted in my friend Mark Cope’s article (http://www.examiner.com/music-industry-in-national/the-blue-horizon-records-label-is-reactivated-by-the-orchard-and-the-warner-music-group). With that legacy, however convoluted, Phosphene
had to be good. And it is.

“Bad Vibrations” kicks things off in fine fashion, the Angel’s debts to the 13th Floor Elevators and Spaceman 3 quickly in evidence. Amid a swirl of tremolo and Vox Continental organ emanations singer Alex Maas proffers one of the band’s customary tales of lust, love, confusion and destruction’s eve. The Angels are Austinites, but much of Phosphene Dream is suggestive of the curdling of the California dream, a sort of the edge/end of the world sensibility saturates the album. 

“Haunting at 1300 McKinley” sounds like the Mamas and Papas if the Elevators had kicked Lou Alder out of the studio and let the acid flow. Echoes of Sixties classics permeate Phosphene Dream, from the “Season of the Witch” rhythms of “Yellow Elevator # 2” to the “Born the Be Wild” kick start of “River of Blood.” The former takes the Moody Blues on a terror ride up Cielo Drive; the latter echoes such Sixties acid-pop as Bubble Puppy and Southwest F.O.B. (their regional hit “Smell of Incense” sounds like a model for “River.”)

“Entrance Song’s” mutated Hooker boogie delivers a post-apocalyptic take on Chuck Berry’s driving songs, combining the druggy drive of Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult into one seductive whole. “Telephone” sounds like a one-off jam between the Yardbirds and Velvets with Paul McCartney in the vocal booth.

Alex Maas has matured as a singer. He’s sorted out that there’s as much terror lurking in the quiet as the maelstrom. Stephanie Bailey’s drumming powers the band like a cross between Mo Tucker and Nick Mason. Multi-instrumentalist Christian Bland is responsible for the album’s graphic package, a psychedelic and blood red metaphor for the music inside.

The Black Angels are a brutally honed doom rock machine, each member contributing on several instruments and chipping in on vocals.The band’s hippie nihilism gets a little thick, but Phosphene Dream kicks butt. It’s a bad trip you just can’t resist. 

Say this, the Black Angels stick to their aesthetic guns. And this time out I’m a willing hostage.

Reverberating: 8.5 (original), upgraded to 9.4