Reviewer Spotlight: Calexico – Spoke

Originally published in Punk Planet May/June 2007

Knowing that this Tucson ensemble’s loyal following tend to break into fits of breathless poetry about desert horizons or sand-choked nights could lead the uninitiated to believe Joey Burns and John Convertino stepped fully formed out of some Arizona mirage one summer afternoon.

Spoke, released before the incredible The Black Light, proves that assumption incorrect, offering a richer, more nuanced storyline. Recorded when Burns and Convertino’s collaboration was a Giant Sand side project in the truest sense of the word, this 19-song disc finds the group’s core members offering raw, understated songs as they work to find a sound distinct from Howe Gelb. They do not wander long.

All the later templates are here: the acoustic border ballad (“Point Vicente,” “Sanchez”), the open-road driving song (“Glimpse”), the European polka-hall exercise (“Mazurra”).

We also get some of the group’s most heart-wrenching work (the spare “Stinging Nettle,” the cello-assisted “Removed”), as well as odd outtakes like the Friends of Dean Martinez-tinged surf romp “Scout.”

The record can feel casual and slightly off-hand (only four songs break three minutes; three don’t reach 60 seconds) but it’s also amazingly complete. At roughly 44 minutes, Spoke doesn’t waste a moment and few tracks – even interludes – could have been cut from the mix.

It’s a record that demonstrates why Calexico deserves the audience it amassed through later successes, and one that still resonates, even as Burns and Convertino continue to evolve.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be:: Music from the Motion Picture The Map of Sex and Love; Richard Buckner, Since; Seam, The Pace Is Glacial; June of 44, Engine Takes to the Water; Low, Things We Lost In The Fire

Review: Tuxedomoon – Bardo Hotel Soundtrack

Originally published in Punk Planet May/June 2007

This is a soundtrack less in the sense of Ennio Morricone, perhaps, than Rachel’s Systems/Layers or Gastr del Sol’s Harp Factory on Lake Street, where bridges create phantom-images and the space between the notes provides its own imagined narratives.

You don’t need to see Bardo Hotel, the Tuxedomoon/George Kahanakis film these four musicians scored in 2005 and 2006 in San Francisco, to truly envision the film. And that’s a testament to the effectiveness of this bizarrely enveloping 20-song offering.

The music, for the most part, slinks along in the shadows: a bassy lurch and smoky jazzy interlude here, a clip of narration and feedback or a repeating guitar figure there.

The group occasionally unmasks larger intentions, offering grandiose centerpieces like the menacing strings of “Triptych,” the drunken burlesque of the “Prometheus Bound” sequence or the breathtaking “Vulcanic, Combustible.” It’s here that listeners might find themselves most disarmed, and rightfully so.

Review: The Stay Lows – The Red Budget

Originally published in Punk Planet May/June 2007

It figures I’d find a record like this only after compiling all those obligatory year-ending top 10 lists. Where have these guys been hiding?

This majestic seven-song EP is everything you could ask for from a young post-rock quintet and then some. The album-opening “We’ll Give Them Their Shoes Back at The End,” where the glassy notes of a slowly accelerating crescendo begin to swell together like tides, is as captivating as most of what Godspeed You! Black Emperor put to magnetic tape. The moody epic “Requiem for Ventura Boulevard,” all emotive cello and roaring guitars, does Mogwai proud.

But, this Buffalo group’s also sharp enough to offset the sweeping and ambitious pieces with more accessible fare that’s just as riveting and carefully sculpted.

Case in point: the shoe-gazing pop rock of “That’s What You Get for Talking About Science,” the stitched-together playfulness of “The Zombies Have Laptops,” or the adrenaline-pumping refrains of “Shooting the Breeze With an Air Rifle.”

The closing “The Twin Peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro” aims to tear down the roof and, at times, feels like it’s close to succeeding.

High praise, indeed, for a quietly released EP. Now, if only I could edit those top 10 lists.

Review: Skyscraper Frontier – Moonlit Behavior

Originally published in Punk Planet May/June 2007

The first track from this LA quintet’s debut might be the most deceiving introduction to a record you’ll hear this year.

Held together with a canned sample of electronic percussion, the album-opening “I Just Need You” revolves around swirling electronics, soaring guitar leads, and studio-scrubbed vocal – precisely the sort of predictable dance-floor pop you’d expect to hear in a club circa 1989.

But the EP that follows that odd salutation feels like’s it’s practically set in a different universe.

The acoustic shuffle of “Your Hazy Mind,” complete with weepy pedal-steel, conjures up Bob Dylan. Singer/guitarist Rus Martin pulls off an almost devastating Jeff Buckley/Jimmy Gnecco-style wail on the addictive rock hooks of “Catatonic Citizens” and the more atmospheric “I Know/You Know.”

The disc closes not with boilerplate pop but with the lonely moan of a piano in the hidden track “Alone at the Hospital.” It’s a truly impressive disc that leaves you waiting for more, if you don’t judge the book by its first chapter.

Review: At Dusk – You Can Know Danger

Originally published in Punk Planet May/June 2007

The third record from this Portland trio aims for the stars but, ultimately, the whole package comes off more as a series of passing curiosities than a cohesifve collection of carefully crafted songs.

That’s a shame, because these childhood friends clearly share an interesting musical language – one that blurs the lines between poppy ear candy and time-shifting math-rock.

The jazzy first section of “Say That You’ll Do It” is almost mesmerizing and the textured, Chavez-style guitar attack of tracks like “Forever Ago” works well.

Elsewhere, radio-hungry vocals turn ambitious songs into pop-rock templates or the trio means so much it’s hard to grab onto a melody worth humming or a refrain worth repeating.

Reviewer Spotlight: The Melvins – Gluey Porch Treatments

Originally published in Punk Planet March/April 2007

I was, admittedly, in grade school in 1986 when Buzz Osborne, Dale Crover and Matt Lukin drove from Washington to California to record their first full-length record.

By the time I did hear it, some five or six years later, the group was being courted by the majors (thank you, Kurt Cobain) but Gluey Porch Treatments had not achieved the sacred status of a founding document. Instead, it languished in bizarre anonymity at the end of a Boner Records pressing of 1989’s Ozma.

Though Ipecac has since championed The Melvins’ early work, Gluey Porch Treatments still doesn’t get the respect it’s due. Why?

Well, you could chalk it up, some might argue, to the fact that few of these songs ever surface at live shows (“I couldn’t tell you what’s even on this thing if I had a gun to my head,” Osborne wrote in the 1999 reissue.)

The record, though, introduces listeners to parts of why The Melvins’ two-decade run has been worth following. There’s the menacing lurch of “Eye Flys,” the stop-and-start wallop of “Echo Head/Don’t Piece Me” and “Flex With You,” sludgy punk-metal hybrids like “Big as a Mountain.” “Exact Paperbacks,” a precursor to “Honey Bucket,” could have served as a grunge template back in the day.

Even songs whose running time doesn’t break 60 seconds – the classic title track or the blistering “Glow God” – are tough to shake from memory. So, why try to forget?

And ever the infinite loop: Tom Waits, Orphans; Lesser Birds of Paradise, Space Between; Calexico, The Black Light; Do Make Say Think, Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn; Vexed, The Good Fight.

Review: Vopat – Sometimes It Will

Originally published in Punk Planet March/April 2007

This somewhat-anonymous act shows no love for boundaries on a 10-song outing that refuses to adhere to genre formulas or even the conventional borders of a CD track.

Spare ambient asides bleed into soaring, Mogwai-inspired refrains before reverting to quiet, shimmering bits of pop rock. And none of this seems to bother containing itself to a single track.

Sings begin and end in silence, or sprout suddenly from some half-ominous found sound, making the record’s best passages difficult to pinpoint.

When taking in a single sitting, though, the disc’s instinctive sequencing suggests and instrumental narrative: the booming title track yields to the morning-after pop-sunshine of “Soldier On,” then a succession of remorseful acoustics (“Pause”), frustrated stomping (“Winter Nails”), and white noise (“Substitute Smile”).

It’s a surprisingly engaging story that ends well, if not happily, with the melancholy reprise of “Sometimes It Won’t.”

Even then, Vopat refuses to close the proceedings, as one might anticipate, with the delicate repetition of paper-thin guitars that swim through the middle of the song. Instead, we get a quiet drone – a swelling of sound so low in the mix it’s nearly imperceptible – and then nothing but a curious desire to follow the story through again.

Review: The Sea, Like Lead/Belegost – S/T

Originally published in Punk Planet March/April 2007

So, guess who’s been holed up in basements studying old Godspped You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion records?

Two guitar-driven East Coast acts split a three-song set by crafting sometimes-mournful, sometimes-furious prog-rock epics worth of their forebears.

Pittsburgh’s The Sea, Like Lead follows up its recently released self-titled EP with two songs worth all the same accolades. But, here, the fragile, post-rock guitars and A Minor Forest mannerisms from the trio’s debut lean more toward the eruptive, with glassy guitars trembling as the group works itself into a carefully plotted road.

Belegost, a sextet whose “Nightwalker/Deergod” passes the 22-minute mark, shows equal passion and precision but also demands patience.

If you give the group’s meandering and volatile instrumental time to unfold, it pays off dividends and then some.

When the curtain finally drops, if your ears haven’t given way to the volume, the clattering of buzz saw guitars and cymbal crashes feels like Armageddon.

Worth the investment.

Review: Modwheelmod – Enemies & Immigrants

Originally published in Punk Planet March/April 2007

The packaging for this six-song disc provides an image familiar to many aspiring home-recorded acts: a God’s-eye-view photo of the duo, apparently mid-recording, surrounded by a gaggle of wired gadgets, guitar effects pedals, and waiting synthesizers. What’s surprising is how the resulting records sounds little like a basement-captured affair.

The production – from electronic-assisted beats and soaring guitars to the slick, multi-tracked vocals – is borderline-pristine and the group’s songwriting doesn’t seem to line up with the makeshift “studio” they’re showing us.
Oddly enough, that pretty much summarizes the disc, which hooks listeners on the quirky indie-rock details –  a patchwork of danceable glitch-beats, a wavering falsetto, a quirky bass line – but really is peddling textbook, chart-ready pop rock.

Most of these four-minute offerings, which grow more conventional as the EP progresses, cater to fans of Coldplay and the like, but you’ve got to give these guys credit for building such commercially accessible fare without immediately announcing any stadium-rock ambitions.

Review: Knurl – Scyamine

Originally published in Punk Planet Marc/April 2007

The latest offering from noisemaker Alan Bloor takes an interesting premise – that an instrument forged from found stainless steel can shatter eardrums as readily as amp-fueled hardcore – beyond its logical conclusions.

So, alongside the highly distorted but still percussive claptrap of metal-on-metal, we get the buzz and wail of aching speakers and the endless reverberations of a scrap yard being hauled three-quarters of the way to hell.

This is a vicious, relentless record.

On “Exteroceptor,” the pounding transcends into a seven-minute cacophony of white noise and battlefield chaos.

On the album-closing “Panasomiasis,” the machinery almost sounds like it’s shrieking in agony.

It’s a fascinating, experimental exercise – industrial-metal in the truest senses of the word – but a lack of variation keeps this 46-minute disc from sounding genuinely inspired.

It’s on tracks where listeners sometimes can isolate the shifting spaces between Bloor’s metallic tools and the environmental noise they breed (as on “Perparaphy,” a horror-film score just waiting for a murder sequence) that the premise works best.