The Amino Acids
Destroy the Warming Sun!
Bowl-o-phonic/Self-release
A2P rating: 4.0
If hyperactivity were communicated in sound wave, the result would be The Amino Acids’ sophomore release, Destroy the Warming Sun! Classified as both “surf punk” and “space rock” this follow up to 2002’s Man…in the Universe? could share the same curious genetic code as a love child from Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh and an alien. A hip, punk alien.

This album is a satirical, retrospective nod to 1960’s B movies with UFOs floating via visible fishing wire. In fact, it sounds like the short one-liners woven through the intros were actually extracted from a cheesy, sock-hop, date movie: “Hey, doll. Is this guy boring you? Why don’t you come and talk to me? I’m from another planet.” The lameness of such hokey pick-up lines adds to the atmosphere of the music. It’s funny because it’s intentional and it’s interesting because it’s accompanied by good music.
Through his mastering of the theremin (an instrument that is played without being touched that is very tricky to learn), “Ambassador” Chuck Bronson contributes all of the eerie, intergalactic sound effects with precision and drives the album from weird for the sake of weird to addicting. The first track, “Dunked in the Think Tank,” serves as the preview of the intensity, instrumental arrangement, and flavor that permeates the entire album. “Like Sheep to the Moon” could serve as the theme song for a punk James Bond on speed. The track could be the soundtrack to any chase sequence, in any Hollywood spoof.

The songs are similar, but the music is fascinating enough that you won’t mind not noticing when one song ends and the other begins. And even though the entire album totals less than 25 minutes, it’s worth your money. The target demographic won’t have an attention span much longer— it’s marketing genius on the part of the Amino Acids to release something absorbable, even if you skip your Adderall.—Lisabeth Posthuma

Anders Ek
The Phenol Red Solution
Self-released EP
A2P Rating: 3.5
The Phenol Red Solution is a strong six-song EP recorded between 2002 and 2003 by the Wayne County Sorrow Commission. It’s safe to say that local whiz kid Nick Brandon, a.k.a. Anders Ek, is raising eyebrows in the underground with this release, a low-budget (with high sound quality) romp along the dotted lines of Ride the Fader-era Chavez, Bakesale-era Sebadoh, Ten Spot-era Shudder to Think, 90125-era Yes, and even some live-on-stage Dykehouse. Brandon plays all of the instruments on this album; electric guitars, synthesizers, and various (re)percussions included. With the exception of maracas. And no cowbell, either.

All six tracks are definitely worth listening to, especially on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps in your favorite easy chair with an iced chai latté in one hand and an unfiltered Lucky Strike in the other: most notable are the first track, “My God! It’s Full of Stars,” and the fourth, “Anders,” which sounds a lot like a semi-friendly jam session between Kraftwerk and Tubeway Army with a soulful Gary Newman using his voice as an additional apparatus of change.

By the fifth track, “Feel,” Anders comes down hard, like all of those beautiful October leaves, making for sexy, civilized love ‘er or leave ‘er music. (Unless of course, she already left you, then it makes for great denial music.) The final track, “Left,” (“I don’t know and I don’t care/What it is that’s in your hand”) will leave you with a sinking feeling in your chest and stomach, hoping, just hoping, that these songs will soon cleanse you of whatever or whoever it is that’s been dragging you down for so damn long.

But what is it that’s in her hand? A diamond ring? A four-leaf clover? A heart-shaped pendant? A lucky seashell? A one-way ticket to oblivion? I’m sure I don’t know and I’m sure I never will, because I don’t even know her, and I never really did. In other words, buy this EP if you can find it. It’s good. I like it. And you know what? I like you. And that’s the truth.—Jack Doline

Oren Ambarchi
Triste
Southern Lord
A2P rating: 4.0

In the 17th century, people weren’t quite ready to buy into Galileo’s claim that the earth revolved around the sun. Likewise, the masses won’t be clamoring to purchase the reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s Triste. You won’t hear it blaring from a sorority girl’s SUV at a red light or on the latest episode of The OC, but just wait a couple centuries or so and it will probably sound contemporary. Previously only available on a long out-of-print vinyl LP, Southern Lord records has reissued it in CD form and sweetened the pot with some new remixes.

An Australian native who has collaborated with a diverse cross section of musicians including avant garde jazz artists John Zorn and Otomo Yoshihide, as well as the drone metal band sunnO))), Ambarchi seems to reinvent himself on every solo release. Triste is a two-part minimalist composition made with a heavily electronically processed guitar. Part One is the slower of the two, familiarizing us with the handful of guitar notes that will comprise the bulk of the music. Each one is sustained at length, savored like a mouthful of vintage wine. As the piece moves on, these same notes are played in quicker succession in a seemingly random order. This is perfect for those nights when you can’t sleep. When every sound outside your window makes you jump and you’re just staring at the weird patterns of diffused light and shadow on the walls, listen to this piece and revel in the strangeness of the moment instead of closing your eyes to make it go away.

As the first segment draws to an end, the individual guitar notes give way to a spooky, almost subsonic droning, punctuated by erratic popping sounds not unlike a guitar being plugged in and out of an amplifier, which is then topped by a wavering shrill tone. If you could physically see music, this is what it would look like in the reflection of a fun-house mirror. The guitar tones are folded, spindled, mutilated, mutated, and layered until they resemble a digital swamp populated by frogs, birds, and crickets. This segment comes to an end in a cacophony which I can only describe as what it might sound like if a robot were to disgorge its electronic innards. Following the original two sections of Triste are remixes of each track by tape loop artiste and founding member of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, Tom Recchion. Recchion fleshes out the abbreviated, stark compositions with hints of percussion, keyboard flourishes, and more droning.
This piece is definitely not for everyone, but anyone who enjoys music from the deepest sectors of left field is sure to enjoy this.—Antal Zambo

Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks
Face the Truth
Matador
A2P Rating: 4.5

From Los Angeles to New York to Portland, Stephen Malkmus has returned to true form with a beauty of an album in Face the Truth, and it’s ripe for the season. The autumn air never felt so quirky-good; this is take-a-trip-to-the-cider-mill-in-an-’82-Volvo-station-wagon-with-the-windows-rolled-down-on-a-Saturday-afternoon music if I’ve ever heard it, right up there with classic Yo La Tengo, Bettie Serveert, Spoon, and Run On.

Malkmus tells it like it is from the get-go with the cheery-strange, School House Rock-ish, “Pencil Rot” (“There’s a villain in my head/And he’s giving me shocks”), the perfect anticipation music for an afternoon of cider-sippin’. “It Kills” follows suit, and if you drink too much of that apple cider, it could very well be the death of you, even though it’s only cider. From here, we slip out of our momentary nightmarish daydream while keeping our eyes on the road, as the album morphs to more down-to-earth tunes like “Freeze the Saints” (“We meet again/Riding our divisible bodies”), “Loud Cloud Crowd” (“Front and center/We all sit in stadia of our own devising/Don’t let reputation/ Pre-deceive you’), and “No More Shoes” (“Came from the top of the deck/Warm and direct”).
And now that we have arrived at the cider mill (it’s only a few miles away), look at all the people. Park the car. It’s a lovely day. Enjoy some cider and donuts, maybe even a luscious caramel apple or some tasty toasted almonds. Pet the dogs. Avoid the vicious bumblebees. Hold hands with your sweetheart. Make out for awhile under an apple tree. Head back to the car. Now you can play the rest of the album, picking up where you left off with a soulful jingle in the vein of Big Star or Teenage Fanclub entitled “Mama” and as you let the wheels of that Volvo guide you back to the sanctuary of your secluded homestead, take pleasure in heading-into-the-sunset songs like the goofy-glad, lucky-to-be-alive “Kindling for the Master,” and don’t forget to wave hello to the homemade-Pavement-S-and-E-t-shirt-wearin’ deer along the side of the road as they wiggle and shake their antlers to “Post-Paint Boy” and “Baby Come On,” pursued by the album’s quasi-conundrum closer, “Malediction” (“The road to rejection is better than no road at all”).

Simply stated, Face the Truth is time well spent with the may-you-live-forever Mensa melodies of Stephen Malkmus. And to top it all off, there are still some cider mill goodies left over in the back seat. Save the caramel apple for me.—Jack Doline

Amy Rigby
Little Fugitive
Signature Sounds
A2P Rating: 3.0

Singer-songwriter Amy Rigby is back with Little Fugitive, and while the album is wildly uneven (the first half sparks, while the second half fizzles), the good is so good that the bad seems like nothing more than minor transgressions.

With 1996’s Diary of a Mod Housewife, Rigby began her solo recording career with witty, tuneful melodies about 30-something life as a single mother, but a decade later her songs have made a natural progression into witty, tuneful melodies about fortysomething life as a remarried mother. Each are aural documentaries of the mundane intricacies of the working class woman’s life, told with goofball humor, poetic wordplay, and a sincerity that makes her misfired lyrics forgivable.

“Like Rasputin” starts things off with the punchy chorus, “I’m like Rasputin/I get back up again,” delivering the anthem of a chick who’s been knocked down so many times, she takes pride in her ability to get back up again. Track two, “The Trouble With Jeanie,” begins with one of the album’s most memorable lines, if only because of its social relevance: “Jeanie is my new husband’s ex-wife.” Follow that up with “It looks like she’s gonna be a part of my life/Cause there’s a couple of kids and/twenty some years they share” and for 3’04” you know what it’s like to be in Amy Rigby’s shoes. If you’re a large chunk of married women out there, you are in her shoes. “Dancing with Joey Ramone” is a love song to one dance with Joey Ramone, featuring a frenetic punk breakdown makes it all the more fun. “That’s The Time” is a slow ballad to how thoroughly she is loved by another, presumably her husband. It’s also the last of the album’s most stellar tracks, complimented again only by “Girls Got It Bad” near the end of it all. It’s not that the other tracks are lackluster compared to most of what’s out there—it’s lackluster compared to most of Amy Rigby. Then again, even when she’s bad—and “Year of the Fling” is just bad—she’s better than the “most” she’s competing against.—Cole Haddon

Jess Rowland
Scenes from the Silent Revolution
Pax
A2P Rating: 3.0

Scenes from the Silent Revolution is a collection of spoken word pieces set to ambient filibuster music recorded by San Francisco’s Jess Rowland. The cover art says it all. Winston Smith, eat your heart out. A McDonald’s manager hypnotizing an unsuspecting couple as they fall asleep during their meal of Big Macs and fries. And you can be sure that The Hamburgler is waiting in the wings, along with the maniacal French Fry Guys and that abominable purple blob known as Grimace. (What is he, anyway? A gigantic magic mushroom or an extra from Kroft Superstars?)
This two-disc counter-brainwashing set is nothing short of conspiratorial, although it has been said and done a thousand times before by Jello Biafra and the good people at Alternative Tentacles. If the cover art doesn’t make the sale, then the titles of “songs,” like “The Barbie Explosion,” “Ashcroft vs. The Space Librarians,” “Bird Signs,” “Self-Adhesive Office Cubes,” “Vendicam” and “Happy Flowers” are sure to win you over.

Fast Food Nation changed the way a great deal of Americans viewed the lifestyles of the poor and hungry, just as Super Size Me showed just how bad this shit can be for your health. Sure, fast food is evil. In a way, I suppose. But who doesn’t like a good old-fashioned White Castle slyder every now and then, that is, besides vegans and vegetarians. (No offense to vegans and vegetarians.)
What bothers me about Scenes is that this type of humor is somewhat stale. (Give me Late Night with Conan O’Brien or give me death.) Don’t we have enough paranoia in the world right now, what with natural disasters and the never-ending story called The War on Terror? (I’m still convinced that Osama Bin Laden is actually Cat Stevens in disguise.) And if the cover images and ditties herein don’t make you want to firebomb a McDonald’s (which is more trouble than it’s worth), the images on the DVD probably will. Unless, of course, you’re fresh out of firebombs, upon which you’ll have no other choice but to get completely wasted instead.

After consuming this album, don’t be surprised if you begin to believe that everyone is plotting against everyone, including you. But then again, that’s why they make alcohol. Would someone please pour me a glass of grape Mad Dog?
Robble, robble. Fill ‘er up.—Jack Doline

Square Root Catalog
(compilation)
Square Root
A2P Rating: 3.5

This emotive, minimalist compilation from Square Root Records features fourteen tracks from seven compelling artists, including The Chauceworth Aif, Centre, Spectral Mornings, Thirty (Over) Thousand, Cantilever, A Ferret Named Polo, and Padreg Jageillon. These tracks would make a great original motion picture soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been made yet, something like Blade Runner meets Ghost in the Shell or Apocalypse Now meets Gattaca. They’re also good for devising a plan of attack for your future, no matter where you’re headed. The Square Root catalog might also remind you of where you’ve been (and where you need to go); your travels, your triumphs, your travails, your mistakes; your failures; sometimes they seem so close that you could almost touch them with your hand.

But about the artists. The Chauceworth Aif’s “Semblance” and “Alltec V2.0” sound a lot like Radiohead’s Kid A dark, brooding, introspective, desperate, beautiful, and damned. Kind of like a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. You might return one day and you might not. Then there’s Centre’s “Last Impression” and “Undoing,” which sound like a truly distressed Depeche Mode with a monotone Dave Gahan singing about losing everything, including his mind. This brings us to Spectral Mornings’ “Robot Group” and “Gridlock.” These two tracks sound like someone you don’t want to talk to who keeps knocking at your door, each knock harder and louder than the one before it. This brings us to Thirty (Over) Thousand’s “32” and “No One Likes Feet.” You could dance to these, although they do sound like a remixed Olivia Newton-John gone wild, while Cantilever’s “Disclosure” and “Pillars” could very well be the soundtrack to another night in a dark room of everyday people who somehow seem extremely sinister, but only because of the high-decibel music.

A Ferret Named Polo’s “Inside with Snow” and “The Turn and Tides” are the highest points of this CD and would make outstanding additions to David McKenzie’s Young Adam or The Last Great Wilderness soundtracks. And last but not least, Padreg Jageillon’s “Stereo Phase” and “Beats” have a deranged Bach-meets-Erik Friedlander-meets-nterstellar Space-era-Coltrane feel to them, making them practically perfect. Michigan’s own reclusive Square Root record label has released a compilation for beautiful minds everywhere. Create to it. Dance to it. Live around it. Revolve around it. It’s yours for the taking. Carpe Diem.—Jack Doline

Stromba
Tales from the Sitting Room
Fat Cat
A2P Rating: 4.5

Tales from the Sitting Room is the brilliant full-length debut LP from England’s Stromba. James Dyer, Tom Tyler, and James McKechan make up the core of this all-instrumental desert jazz outfit, and the 12 tracks herein are nothing short of mysterious, exotic, soothing, and at times, sinister. This is music for the noir lounge set: a black-tie affair, to say the very least. Hints of Tortoise, HiM, and Brokeback are all relaxing in this room on velvet couches and ottomans, Turkish Ovals and cognac optional. Oddly enough, John McEntire is nowhere to be seen.

Tales from the Sitting Room begins on a pervasive note with “Camel Spit” and soon blends into the heavenly “Septic Skank,” followed by the astute “Manphibian,” each track escalating upon from the previous tracks’ mystifying acquiescence. The billowing smoke begins to create a warm atmospheric haze throughout the dimly lit room. We feel as if we recognize the people in this room from somewhere or sometime, yet we cannot discern who they really are or if we have ever met them before. Nevertheless, they are all dressed to kill.

We are then greeted with “Blue Skin,” an awe-inspiring instrumental that, once again, begins on an enveloping note, morphing into a gorgeous, cataclysmic orchestration of the mind’s eye, reminiscent of classic David Axelrod. The final eight tracks transpire in a corresponding fashion, exchanging lightness for weight with each melodramatic tone, including the death-defying “Perculator,” the breathtaking “Invisible Stink,” and the inexhaustible “Swamp Donkey.”

In the midst of our abstraction, we glance towards the neon glow of the exit sign as a slender blonde enters the room wearing a shimmering red dress and high heels. She looks familiar, but once again, we cannot distinguish who she is. She scans the room for one man in particular. He is nowhere to be found. Disappointed, she leaves without saying a word, swaying her hips back and forth as she struts, displaying her power and utter disinterest in the situation at hand like a supermodel without a mirror in sight.

The men in the room pay no attention while they continue to sip their cognac as the album’s closer, “Jewell,” graces the speakers like a quelling dream. The night moves on as one man in particular checks his watch. It is stopped at 1:11 am. There is no last call tonight.—Jack Doline

Waco Brothers
Freedom and Weep
Bloodshot Records
A2P Rating: 3.5

The Waco Brothers are an alt-country super-group comprised of punk rockers and other non-countrified types. Also, non-American types, since only one of the six members is a Yank (Dean “Deano” Schlabowske). The rest of the mob are Brits, including faces from Jesus Jones, Revolting Cocks, and Graham Parker’s Rumour as well as Big Chief Jon Langford, who used to head up the Mekons and still runs with the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. A Welshman like him might seem like an odd choice to co-front a band like Waco, but it’s the fusion of his punk-up politics with the band’s punk-rock rhythm section, and three-guitar section with honky-tonk, rockabilly, a whole lot of Bakersfield that make their offerings so consistently remarkable. In today’s market of Nashville pop, their sound and, more importantly, their punk spirit is a much-needed shot of hope in the arm of a flailing genre.
Waco’s latest Freedom and Weep is another rock-solid bomb to drop on conservative America, and no track better exemplifies that than “Chosen One.” Langford, in his twanged-up Welsh accent, sings, “Loaves and Fishes, drugs and guns – One for all and all for one/Dumb boy the Patriot/One day you’ll run out of luck.” The knife breaks through the sternum and strikes the heart when he accuses, “Daddy says I was the chosen one/Slay the dragon, make a buck.” Schlabowske goes at it again on “The Rest of the World”—“The champagne’s still on ice/Might as well down it tonight/It ain’t gonna wait four more years/Nor will your rights.” “Missing Link” takes more potshots at “America’s heartland.”
It’s “Drinkin’ and Cheatin’ and Death,” though, that delivers the most subtle attack on the changing face of American culture—in particular, country music. “’Cos Country radio lost its bottle/Started selling a fantasy/No drink’, no killin’ and the only D.I.V.O.R.C.E./Is from reality, from history.” It’s funny in an entirely non-funny way that a bunch of Brits are the ones who need to point that out to the rest of us.—Cole Haddon

Columns
Deep Background Return to Fantasy Island: American delusions.
by Drew Franklin
Single Serving Dumpster diving: A romp through the trash produces food for thought
by Jennifer Bagwell
When the Party Ends A new local music column
by Dustin Krcatovich
My Life in Ypsi
by Anonymous

Books

Fiction excerpt "The Faery Handbag," a short story from the collection Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

Movies
Watch Me Now
Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins
by Jason Gibner

October Movie Preview
by Jason Gibner

Music
Interviews
Death Cab for Cutie
by Dave Kargol
Lou Barlow
by Jason Gibner
Audion
by Jonathan Irwin
The Ragbirds
by Dave Kargol

Reviews
The Amino Acids Destroy the Warming Sun!
Anders EK The Phenol Red Solution
Oren Armbachi Triste
Stephen Malkmus Face the Truth
Square Root Records compilation
Stromba Tales from the Sitting Room
Amy Rigby Little Fugitive
Jess Rowland Scenes from the Silent Revolution
Waco Brothers Freedom and Weep

PLUS:
A2 Astrology by Emily Baker
What's Going On
A2P's selected events of the month
PublicEye
Snapshots from Ann Arbor, Ypsi and Detroit