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Fruit Bats
Spelled in Bones
Sub Pop Records
A2P rating: 3.0
Take one part children’s lullaby and a pinch
of Sgt. Pepper’s, then stir in a few dashes of smart piano,
and you’ve got the sophomore release from Sub Pop Records’s
Chicago-born Fruit Bats, Spelled in Bones. This latest
offering of hypnotic harmonies from Eric Johnson and company would
make a fantastic soundtrack to a laser-light extravaganza.
Slow and grooving, much of the album seems like one long song broken
up by short fits of sporadic frenzy. One highlight, “Canyon
Girl,” begins with promise; the piano emanating a trippy,
rag-time-on-morphine sound, only later to drop in an unexpected
banjo mini-solo. The title track also offers a smorgasbord of instruments,
their collisions softly subtle, both the synthetic and genuine sounds
working for the common masterpiece rather than screaming for individual
attention. However, the track to acclaim is the album’s finale,
“Every Day That We Wake Up It’s A Beautiful Day.”
The shortest and simplest, this tune is melodic and bold in its
drowsy instrumental which slowly fades from heavy keying and plucking
to the static of vinyl and song of dawn, then to nothingness. It’s
like the slow crescendo of a Ritalin trip.
Some tracks are imagery-rich—withdrawals from Johnson’s
personal memory bank. One such Kodachromatic track, “The Earthquake
of ‘73,” details an inimitable experience in its opening
lines, “You hurt your foot roller skating down by the bay/
And you lost your voice singing to ‘Raspberry Beret’”
(a mysterious reference, considering Prince didn’t profess
about the accessory until the next decade). The image is simple,
vivid, and somehow familiar, yet pure Johnson.
“Born in the ’70’s” is a cross between an
accusation and explanation for what seems to be the ennui of burnout
as the lyrics both question and declare, “Whatever happened
to you? You were born in the ‘70’s.”
The only problem with this album, which for some will be minor and
others monumental, is that applying the lyrics with the music is
like putting a square peg through a round hole. This proves most
true in “Traveler’s Song” where the music says
psychedelic enlightenment, yet the folksy words could have been
composed by Janis Joplin’s estranged Bobby McGee, “When
your time and your money and your best girl are gone/ Can’t
go back if the road keeps movin’ along.” And if that’s
not confusing enough, it ends with a intrepid and misplaced proclamation,
“God’s no better than you, just bigger is all.”
Huh?
The decaffeinated album is easy on the ears. Digestible, and worth
a sampling. —Lisabeth Postuma
The Fruit Bats play the Blind Pig with Rogue Wave and Chad VanGaalen
Sept. 14. See What's Going On for details.
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Lungfish
Feral Hymns
Dischord
A2P rating: 3.5
Feral Hymns marks the return of the untouchable
disappearing, reappearing leviathan known as Lungfish, its eleventh
release on the illustrious Dischord Records. Hailing from Baltimore,
Maryland, vocalist/poet/illustrated man, Daniel Higgs, flanked by
hypnotist/guitarist Asa Osborne, bassist Sean Meadows, and drummer/poet
Mitchell Feldstein, have created a juggernaut in Feral Hymns to
follow up 2003’s seamless Love is Love.
With each new record, Lungfish remain true to their time-honored
reverberations, filled with visions of Heaven, Hell, and The Unknown,
sweethearts and friends of past, present, and future, Huxley’s
The Doors of Perception, repeating patterns, and premonitions of
the apocalypse. Discord and Concord, if you will. Division versus
Unity. And when these two inevitables collide, we are given the
space in between, better known as The Crease, as in the space between
two pages in a book; a void; a vortex; a vanishing point; an interzone
of disappearances and reappearances.
To experience this album to the highest degree of levitation, tune
in, turn on, and close your eyes. Volume cranked to the gills. Press
play or gently place the needle to the vinyl and prepare yourself
for elucidation. We enter the labyrinth on “All Creation Bows,”
a story of amalgamation, backed with one of the tightest musical
accompaniments known to mankind, flowing with repeating bass-heavy
patterns of arrangement and lightness, lifting the listener closer
and closer to the cosmos with each screaming, crooning breath; all
sounds, echoes, and syllables becoming one with one another.
Daniel Higgs’ lyrics are the most powerful on songs like “Time
is a Weapon of Time” (“I see you were removed from me/I
see my sight relayed from you/You must return before you leave/Hand
in hand we precisely greet”), “Wailing Like Dragons”
(“Come along/An ocean of liquid life-song/Come and see/The
word aflame in a nest of names”), and “You are the War”
(“You are the way without direction/You are a window on the
abyss/You are the power of vision and all that is seen”).
On Feral Hymns, Lungfish remain close to their roots of
that familiar tree, yet their holy branches continue to spread their
wavering wings; ever-changing, ever-expanding, ever-collapsing,
and ever-returning to avenge, to avow, to enlighten, and to redeem.
Open this book and you will experience the effervescent thought
transfer that is Lungfish.—Jack Doline
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Daniel Lanois
Belladonna
Anti
A2P rating: 4.0
Daniel Lanois is jack-of-all-trades in the music
business. He made a name for himself by composing and playing music
on Brian Eno’s groundbreaking ambient albums On Land and
Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. Rolling Stone
magazine hailed Lanois as “the most important record producer
to emerge in the ‘80s,” most notably for his work on
U2’s legendary The Joshua Tree and Peter Gabriel’s
So. Upon my first listen to Belladonna, the latest
in a series of releases on the Anti label, the album struck me as
unremarkable. I liked it enough for the echoes of his collaborations
with Eno, and I found it pleasant enough as background listening.
But an underhanded brilliance slowly burns throughout Belladonna.
It wasn’t until a late night drive through the streets of
downtown Detroit that I finally crossed the invisible line from
listening to hearing. Focused on nothing but the road, I let the
dulcet tones of Lanois’ pedal steel guitar envelope me. This
is the soundtrack to one of those dreams in which you’re in
a place that you recognize but somehow everything is different.
The lurid light from street lamps shining through the steam billowing
from sewer grates combined with the music to transform my short
drive home to an ethereal interplanetary voyage.
Once home I went straight to my room and started Belladonna
from the beginning, fully immersing myself in this parallel sonic
dimension via my headphones. It’s almost a shame that Lanois
even bothered separating this album into 13 individual tracks; it’d
be better enjoyed from start to finish with no interruptions. Each
track builds on the one preceding it like chapters in a book. Let
“Sketches” take you to the bright side of the moon,
where the keyboard notes fall like silvery raindrops, the whisper-like
drums just barely audible. Listen closely to the eerie approximation
of vocals on “Oaxaca” and try to figure out if they
were generated by man or machine. Drop in on the mariachi fiesta
of “Agave,” a bit of a nod to Morricone with its horn
arrangements and militaristic marching drums, evoking images of
spaghetti westerns with cowboys in space suits, finding out who
has the fastest gun on Mars. Linger on the impressive finale of
“Todos Santos” where the washes of sound are not unlike
the colors of a Rothko painting. The landscape of this album flows
so seamlessly from lush, densely layered compositions to spacious,
airy sections that it never becomes tedious. It’s the perfect
antidote to the short-attention-span sickness that infects our society.—Antal
Zambo
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Mice Parade
Bem-Vinda Vontade
Bubble Core
A2P rating: 4.0
Adam Pierce, the mastermind behind Mice Parade, is back with another
brilliant release on his own exquisite Bubble Core label, headquarters
to such stellar acts as Mum, Animal Collective, and The Dylan Group.
The Brooklyn-based twelve-piece ensemble, which stars Pierce at
the helm, in addition to Dylan Christy, Josh Larue, Kristin Anna
Valtysdottir, Ikuko Harada, and the rest, have created a nearly
perfect nine-track full-length follow-up to 2003’s ethereal
desert island time-stopper, Obrigado Saudade. Bem-Vinda Vontade
begins on a mellow note with “Warm Hand in Farmland,”
the ideal companion to the beginning of a night of solitude or perhaps
a balmy bubble bath with a chilled glass of Pinot Noir and an unfiltered
Djarum clove. The warm tones of Pierce’s voice careen throughout
the wafting smoke and Indian summer wind as it wafts in through
the open windows, creating a mood reminiscent of the anticipation
of a first kiss.
We are then treated to “Night’s Wave,” a story
of, yes, lost lust, love, or what have you, while attempting to
make sense of the how, when, where, why, and because. Pierce sings
alongside Valtsysdottir, “Don’t you know/We could have
mixed up lots of things/It would have worked out fine,” without
losing the splendor of the memory of such a day, a week, a month,
or year beneath dorm room ceilings and wavering green trees. The
next track, “Passing and Galloping,” brings us back
to our present state, or better put, new love or just our newfound
freedom as the leaves change color before our eyes. This is the
obligatory trademark Mice Parade shoegazer song, with respective
salutes to My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Mahogany, Dykehouse, and Astrobrite.
The following six tracks move forward in a corresponding progression,
including “The Days Before Fiction” and “Waterslide,”
both suggestive of a tremulous ride through white water rapids,
in addition to “The Best Room” and “Ground As
Cold As Common,” leaving the listener wet and exhausted through
and through, just waiting to relight that clove cigarette as his
or her long lost love waits smiling on the shoreline, no matter
if he or she is merely a hallucination at this point in the album.
We end on “Ende,” a solemn testament to what we have
just experienced in the rapids as the tide brings us in to shore.
She’s waiting with open arms. Would someone hit the “repeat”
button for me? I’m soaked clean through.—Jack Doline
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Various Artists
Spectral Sound Volume 1
Ghostly International
A2P rating: 3.0
Spectral Sound Volume One is a slick sampling of both old
and new tracks from Sam Valenti’s sleek Ghostly International
record label. You won’t find any Dykehouse, Midwest Product,
or Kill Memory Crash on this two-disc package, but you will find
the lucid tracks herein mesmerizing, hypnotic, panic-inducing, and
danceable, yes, danceable, yes, danceable, yes, danceable. The fan
favorites and a few newcomers are all here, including (roll call)
Osborne
James T. Cotton
Lawrence
Lusine
Kenneth Graham
TNT
Matthew Dear
Solvent
Ryan Elliot
Geoff White
The Vanisher
Hieroglyphic Being
Peter Grummich
Jeff Samuel
Audio
We begin disc one with a static emancipation of the senses from
Osborne, all blip- and bloopfree. This is the factual deal, serving
as a prelude to a night of vampires and scantily clad 6-foot-tall
temptresses, all hidden beneath flashing lights as they soothe listener
like a glass of chilled Veuve Clicquot in a 100-degree room. Next
up is the heart of the matter, with crushed crimson ass-dance from
The Vanisher, morphing to Matt Dear’s (with Peter Grummich)
“It’s Over Now,” although the hours of darkness
have just begun, as Geoff White takes it from here with the shimmering
“Nintendisco.” While the days of Metroid have long since
vanished into the ether, the show must go on. Enter the mother brain,
aka James T. Cotton, who steals back the baton and sprints around
the corner, splicing and dicing the track like a man on the run
with a stolen boom box.
The angelic upstart rotation continues with Hieroglyphic Being’s
jealousy-inducing “Je Suis Musique,” Matthew Dear’s
ingenious “Juice” and highly danceable “Dog Days,”
Audion’s controlled chaos theorem, “Raw Dog,”
Osborne’s cruise-control (with sharp turns) “Daylight,”
and Cotton’s margin-walking “T-Y-O-C Painkillers.”
While each artist takes his own turn stealing from the previous
artist’s craftwork, each song holds an original idea all its
own; art inspires art, song inspires song, life inspires death,
and more often than not, death inspires life, just as music inspires
revolution.
And if you like the first disc in this set (which you very well
might), the second, containing 33 tracks in all, with compelling
dark wave, new world order beats from Lawrence, Hieroglyphic Being,
Lusine, and Solvent, will elevate you to up-to-the-minute levels
of dance-perception that only the good fellows at Ghostly International
can provide. (Comfortable shoes and moderately priced champagne
sold separately.)—Jack Doline
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Chad VanGaalen
Infiniheart
Sub Pop
A2P rating: 4.0
If Will Oldham, Carl Newman, and Neil Young somehow managed to give
birth to a brainchild and gave him up for adoption to The Shins’
James Mercer, we would have Calgary, Alberta’s 20-something
wonder boy Chad VanGaalen whose songs on Infiniheart range from
classic electric Sub Pop rabble-rousers to slow burning introspective
staring-at-the-ceiling heartbreakers. But if you happen to be looking
for a good old-fashioned mosh pit, look elsewhere campers, because
the heartbreakers definitely outweigh the rabble-rousers on this
16-track treasure chest, making more for an evening of watching
the sun set from the front (or back) porch with a few friends, or
if you happen to be alone again (which very well might be the case),
you could always spend the night with a beloved 12-pack of Corona
before collapsing in your favorite high-back chair for a good night’s
rest until, well, the next night.
Ahem. From the can-I-get-a-hell-yeah opening track, “Clinically
Dead,” VanGaalen gets the ball rolling and then some with
fist-pumping, stage-diving early ‘90s nostalgic college dormitory
bedlam, and as you begin that night of drinking, only two minutes
later, the album flows into the sweet and mellow “After the
Afterlife” (“Where is my heart/After the afterlife”),
the Postal Servicesque “Kill Me in My Sleep” (“You’re
going to kill me in my sleep/You’ll hold me down so I can’t
move/You’ll press the pillow to my face/And hold it down so
I can’t breathe”), and “J. C.’s Head On
The Cross,” which would make an appropriate opening theme
song to an ultracool modern-day indie rock Sanford and Son.
Infiniheart (originally recorded between 2001 and 2003
in VanGaalen’s bedroom), never ceases to please, focusing
on the tender moments of all-but-failed relationships in songs like
“I Miss You Like I Miss You,” while poking fun at the
doldrums and mundanity of everyday white vs. blue collar working
class life and all its heroes and zeroes in “Blood Machine”
(“Please, please, please/Help us escape/From the Blood Machine”),
the simply beautiful “Somewhere I Know There’s Nothing,”
the Zumpano-meets-Earlimart, get-the-shit-offa-my-cloud “Echo
Train,” (“Stop dragging us down”) without losing
his sense of humor; which is sometimes melancholy, sometimes self-effacing,
and always equal parts sensitive and capricious.
To put it simply, Infiniheart is as timeless as time as we know
it. So buy this, you bastids. And for god’s sake, whatever
you do, don’t stop drinking. But please, please, please, try
to stop thinking.—Jack Doline
Chad VanGaalen play the Blind Pig with Rogue Wave and the Fruit
Bats Sept. 14. See What's Going On for details.
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