PeeP on PoP- Brown Recluse

Brown Recluse- Evening Tapestry (Slumberland- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

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The Brown Recluse spider is primarily native to the American South and Southwest, but you would never know it talking to the methamphetamine users of the Pacific Northwest, something my day job allows me to do much more frequently than I would prefer. When people use meth, they often get sores on different part s of their bodies, primarily due to picking at themselves during the jittery hours (known as tweaking) after the 30 odd minute long high and also frequently getting infections at injection sites from using dirty needles to “slam” the crank directly into their veins. The reason I bring this up here, is that it has become sort of a joke in the drug and alcohol treatment community when tweakers say the ugly, scabbed over sores on their faces and arms are from Brown Recluse spider bites, a spider that doesn’t even live in this part of the country. Plus, a real Brown Recluse bite looks like (please do not click here, really) this. Which is ironic, to me at least, because Brown Recluse (the band) could not seem more removed from the high pitched, scabs, dirt, and Mountain Dew world of your average meth-head. 

What Brown Recluse (the band) are, is a tastefully spaced out indie pop band, more than twee but less than bombastic. Evening Tapestry owes much of its success to the band’s take on 60’s pop, literate, labyrinthine lyrics, and… game show organ music. On more than one album track, the band combines bits of chintzy (in a good way) synth-pop and breezy folk guitar for an interesting, appropriately cheesy 70’s afternoon TV game show vibe (Card Sharks and Let’s Make a Deal are for some reason, eerily specific images that recur in my mind while listening to Evening Tapestry). I realize that this all sounds overly critical, but I really don’t mean for it to, because Brown Recluse are an obviously ambitious band. They manage to be mature and adolescent, experimental, but very formal. And Evening Tapestry is a truly fun listen.  

For Fans of: Beulah, Quasi

PeeP on PoP- True Widow

True Widow- As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth (Kemado Records- 2011)
~by Gabe McBride

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It falls somewhere between a guilty pleasure and deep, dark secret, but I used to be a little bit of a metalhead. A very specific, particular kind of metalhead, which I suppose makes it a little more bearable to talk about now that my tastes are a little more *sniff* discerning. I was a Melvins freak, I saw them half a dozen times in the space of a few years, and sought out anything I could get my hands on by them, including side projects and bootlegs. I spent an afternoon in Joe Preston’s apartment recording an hours-long interview with him for a fanzine called “Cranky Messiah”, which I made maybe 25 of and never kept a copy for myself. Joe Preston was super nice, talked for hours about his dream job of playing in the Melvins (on one album, Lysol and also making one solo album, a la KISS, before being kicked, like so many bass players before him, unceremoniously out of the band). He even talked a little about his new project, Thrones, who are still a going concern to this day. So, as I was saying, I was a gloom and doom sludge-drone fan, and still think back on those more innocent days with some fondness, and True Widow do a good job of straddling that time and this one, with a sound not too far removed from my hesher past and my shoegaze-loving present.

True Widow are on Kemado Records, home to contemporary metallurgists like The Sword and Xasthur, but also to indie rockers The Soft Pack. It’s a good fit, as True Widow could easily play metal clubs and indie bars without much of a problem. The album gets a long way on attitude and atmosphere and is filled top to bottom with lilting dirge-rock tunes that simultaneously thud, buzz, and soar. AHatHHaftCttCotE is a mixed bag for me. It’s a fine record when put in the context of my headbanger past, but is a little “one note” too, as you can count on airy vocals, heavy (HEAVY) guitar and bass, and slower than molasses in February time signatures on all the songs aside from acoustic blues break ‘Interlude’. I enjoy the band for what they are, with a lot of nostalgia and admiration, even if that ain’t me no more.

For Fans of: Lower Dens, Earth

PeeP on PoP- Times New Viking

Times New Viking- Dancer Equired (Merge- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

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Dear skronk, noise, fuzz, scuzz , and feedback, your departure from Dancer Equired has been greatly exaggerated. You are the new Times New Viking record, and no one would mistake you for anything else.  

Now that that’s out of the way, yes, this is the most recent offering from TNV, and it’s pretty damn good.

 What’s been easy to miss in the Times New Viking’s four previous records is the songwriting and tuneage, a cool mix of punked out, drowsy pandemonium, pleasingly amateurish off-key singing, and Robert Pollard indebted melodies (Like Guided by Voices, Times New Viking is from Ohio). All of that remains intact here, but is just slightly more comfortable to listen to. And by comfortable, I mean literally that it is just easier enough on my ears to put Dancer Equired into my regular playlist on my iPod, because it doesn’t ambush my ears with a significantly higher decibel level than ALL THE OTHER MUSIC on my player, sending me scrambling into my pocket to turn that shit down when a TNV song off of Dig Yourself (2005), Paisley Reich (2007), Rip it Off (2008), or Born Again Revisited (2009) comes up on shuffle. And for that I thank you. 

So all the clatter and racket remain, and the white noise is still there, just kept at a more tasteful level for these old ears to ingest. I missed these guys drinking some beers in the bar downstairs when they opened for Guided by Voices last fall in Portland, which is something I regret. I would stop short of calling this the band’s best album, but it is solid, it is punk, and it is just quieter enough. Just quieter enough to go on shuffle. 

For Fans of: Comet Gain, The Mantles, Royal Trux

PeeP on PoP- The Raveonettes

The Raveonettes- Raven in the Grave (Vice Music-2011)

~by Gabe McBride

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Denmark’s The Raveonettes have been carrying their oddly familiar flag for the better part of ten years now. During that time, listeners have been able to count on a few different things: the spirit of Jesus and Mary Chain is always close by, dreamy sheets of guitar noise and feedback, sideways nods to the 50’s, and the drummer will be playing standing up. If you know what all of those things mean, then let me introduce you to the Raveonettes, your new favorite band, who will never, ever change. Ever. 

Now before anyone assumes that I am complaining, I want to assure that I am not. I have liked every album that Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo have made, and definitely count myself as a fan. And Raven in the Grave might just be their best yet. Previous efforts have been steady, if sometimes inconsistent, which is something that the band has addressed  on here, wittingly or not. The Raveonettes’ newest platter is a fat free affair, with all excess trimmed to a neat, clean nine songs, making a mini LP sorts, a trend (see Radiohead’s newest too) I totally approve of  . Some press has made hay about the album’s supposed goth-y nuances, but album cover art aside, this is still The Raveonettes, and Raven in the Grave has some of their prettiest moments yet. Please don’t ever change.  

For Fans of: Manhattan Love Suicides, Ceremony, Weekend 

PeeP on PoP- Panda Bear

Panda Bear- Tomboy (Paw Tracks- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

58 

Ever feel like you’ve missed the boat? I have a lot of respect for what Noah Lennox and his bros in Animal Collective have achieved, taking their weird psych-rhythmic-pop-chant somnambulism and turning it into a small cottage industry that has given them critical and commercial success. More power to ‘em!; but I have pretty much had it all fly right over my head, aside from 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, which was a tremendous success because AC let pop sensibilities power through the dense, unexpected instrumentation and (purposely) repetitive vocals. 

It’s not to say there isn’t some of that on Tomboy as well, but it takes a bit longer to expand beyond its dangerously-close-to-New Age-noodling , and it’s not until tracks three and four, ‘Surfer’s Hymn’ and ‘Last Night at the Jetty’ that the songs bloom into full-blown set pieces that have more than just one or two notes repeated over hip-hop or electro beats and Panda Bear’s often indecipherable, shamanistic, reverb-y vocals. I struggle with not "getting” Panda Bear and the rest of Animal Collective, as my anxiety tells me it’s due to not taking drugs (an asset, in my opinion) or maybe a lack of some sort of intellectual rigor on my part (an unfortunate possibility). What I really think it boils down to, though, is that music being challenging does not necessarily equal art any more than it being accessible means it isn’t. Also, I keep expecting Leonard Nimoy to chime in while listening to Tomboy with, “This is…. ‘In Search Of’….”

For Fans of:  Mercury Rev, uh.. Animal Collective

PeeP on PoP- The Horror The Horror

The Horror The Horror- Wilderness (2011- Tapete Records)

~by Gabe McBride

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It would be pretty easy to make the argument that indie rock can be broken up into pre and post Strokes periods. Like The Velvet Underground and The Ramones, The Strokes are a band that launched a thousand others and wound up having a bigger impact on other musicians than the culture as a whole. With their groovy dance oriented guitar thrum and elastic spastic rhythm section, The Horror The Horror have fit quite nicely into that post Is This It timeframe. 

Wilderness is album number three for Sweden’s The Horror The Horror, all of which have been released on Germany’s Tapete Records, and the band continues to barrel forward, if with a somewhat softened-around-the-edges sound. Where The Horror The Horror had previously bounced  around the room, they now traipse just a little more thoughtfully through the abode, which has its pluses and minuses. Lead singer Joel's(only bandmember’s first names are listed on their MySpace and Facebook pages, and Tapete Records website is all in German, so…) bemused, sardonic vocals may be the The Horror The Horror’s biggest asset, which is saying something , given the strength of the band’s output so far. The pace is more leisurely, the guitars are jazzier and the band expands the sound to include more keyboards on Wilderness, and while  doesn’t quite have the immediacy and snap of their self titled 2006 debut, it's hard to argue with the results here.

For Fans of: Phoenix, Field Music, Interpol

PeeP on PoP- Radiohead

Radiohead- The King of Limbs (Ticker Tape Ltd- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

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I have to admit that I have been putting off reviewing The King of Limbs for a few different reasons. I sometimes feel like I’ve missed the boat on Radiohead; I appreciate the idea of the band more than I really listen to them, and, more importantly, I just don’t really know what to think about The King of Limbs in particular, because sometimes it plays in the background without me really noticing it, and at other times I catch a blip or a beat or a discreet shift in tone, and I take notice. I would estimate I’ve listened to The King of Limbs at least a dozen times, and haven’t been able to form a strong opinion about it. 

While I have been ambivalent over the years about Radiohead, there is no doubting how powerful and innovative the band’s work has been. I liked OK Computer, and unabashedly love Kid A, but I think The King of Limbs compares most favorably with Amnesiac’s sense of isolation and detachment, which seem to be Thom Yorke and company’s overriding emotional state. For some reason, I allow Radiohead, despite my ambivalence, to be a little more overly-serious, and somewhat humorless, traits that completely turn me off to other bands (I’m looking at you, Arcade Fire), because their songs seem to be coming from a point of intellectualized adult thinking about emotions, and not some sort of convoluted, overly romanticized adolescent view on emotional life. So, what I’m saying is, inside all the icy synths, glitchy beats, and, yes, even in Thom Yorke’s mournful wailing, there’s some soul, even though it takes a while to find it. 

For Fans of: Pink Floyd, Massive Attack