Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory Review

You Mad?

New Yuck vid.

Glad to see this new video by PoP faves Yuck. Happily, I got to see the band play 'Milkshake' live earler this year!

PeeP on PoP- The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs- Slave Ambient (Secretly Canadian- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

91_______________________ 

No disrespect meant to Kurt Vile, but if Adam Granduciel and The War on Drugs get remembered as ‘The Band Kurt Vile Used to Play in’, it would be a shame. Like Vile, The War on Drugs trade in easy-going, breathy psych pop, a natural expansion and easy-to-swallow extension of the late 90’s psychedelphia scene, as both KV and TWoD got started in eastern Pennsylvania. Think Bardo Pond, without the patchouli stank, raised on Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons.

Slave Ambient is The War on Drugs second full length, following 2008’s Wagonwheel Blues (also on Secretly Canadian) and it is the band’s best release so far. My initial worry about there being  two cuts on this most recent full length off of last year’s Future Weather EP, and the highpoints at that, ‘Brothers’ and ‘Baby Missiles’, were completely unfounded, as it turns out. TWoD has added a lightly chugging vitality to both songs on Slave Ambient, and, improbably, improves both. More is more, I guess.

The War on Drugs’ Lee Ranaldo meets the The Boss blueprint is in high gear here, as the band cuts back on the (ironically) ambient guitar interludes and reprises, concentrating on their unabashed pop compositions. The swirling guitars, bass, harmonica, and organ mesmerize with the sweetness of a heady, soothing drunken buzz. Slave Ambient is the sound of one of the great contemporary American bands ambling into its prime.  

For Fans of: Sonic Youth, Kurt Vile

PeeP on PoP- Jacob Faurholt

Jacob Faurholt- Dark Hours (Raw Onion- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

71_______________________

Jacob Faurholt is a European singer songwriter whose chilly, bittersweet, plodding, southern gothic death ballads are both simultaneously hefty and ethereal all at once.

Dark Hours treads ground fans of Will Oldham and Joe Pernice’s lonelier, acoustic moments will appreciate. Faurholt, born in Denmark and living in Germany, sounds on the album like a man not only out of place but out of time, leaving the listener with a sense that these songs could have been written in the 1920’s just as much as they are contemoporary. The album is stark and raw, and Faurholt’s subdued accent (the album is all sung in English) adds a strange, alien ether to the proceedings. Faurholt’s melancholy county-ish guitar playing is surprisingly heartfelt, and is both warm and sparse, and when he employs female backing vocals as on ‘Creatures in the Sea’ and ‘Untitled’, the songs, despite remaining simple, resonate that much more. If there is any real complaint about Dark Hours, it is that it never really seems to expand on its purposeful reticence. Admittedly, this is not necessarily a deficit, but the album would likely benefit some sonic diversity. Clearly, Dark Hours is meant to evoke an emotional response, most of those emotions being of the somber variety, but there is no denying Faurholt’s talent. Now please excuse me while I call the suicide hotline.  

For Fans of: The Antlers, Red House Painters

PeeP on PoP- Gold-Bears

Gold-Bears- Are You Falling in Love? (Slumberland- 2011)

~by Gabe McBride

60______________________

I want to like this so much more than I do. Early preview listens at Are You.. had me salivating, and that the album was being released on Slumberland made it a no-brainer, that I would be picking it up the day it came out. All the parts are in place to make this an album for me: noisy distorted guitars, bubblegum hooks, and DIY ethos all wrapped up in a ‘twee as fuck’ package. But for some reason, I have not been able to get on board with Gold-Bears, for reasons that STILL are not completely apparent after a solid 20 listens (no lie).

The lyrics are a little too emo, at times, and a certain amount of off putting earnestness and humorlessness comes through at times. But even that is not what completely puts me off Gold-Bears. It can be a fine line between bands taking the torch from their forebears (no pun intended) and another when it comes across as hackneyed and rote. Which is probably too harsh for this obviously talented band, who haven’t gotten the gist of the difference between timeless and timeworn.

For Fans of: Jawbreaker, The Wedding Present

PeeP on PoP- Seabright

Seabright- Feel Good (self released- 2011)
~by Gabe McBride

86___________________________

One of my favorite things about laptop music is that it’s so damned democratic. A guy with a Mac, a dream, and a pirated copy of Garage Band can throw together some samples, slap a beat under ‘em, and have an album available for download before dinner. Well, maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but in the case of San Jose’s Justin Morales, AKA Seabright, democratic creativity is the name of the game, in that there is no musical stone left unturned. Feel Good really does make me, feel, well… good, with its nods to dance, classical, indiepop, hip-hop, experimental electronic, psych, traditional pop, smooth jazz,  shoegaze, dreampop, and pretty much any musical microgenre you could think of.

Feel Good is more than just democratic too, as its liberal use of styles and musical confabulations across the sound spectrum elicits a kind of ‘aw shucks’ populism, in that the album doesn’t have a mean bone in its body. Not to say there’s no edge on Feel Good’s 11 tracks, just that it is so lovingly blended into a dreamy amalgamation of groovy beats and textures that are just… happy. Amazingly, all of Seabright’s music is available for free on his Bandcamp page. It’s a no-brainer here, folks.

For Fans of: Small Black, Ducktails

PeeP on PoP- Chrome Sparks

Chrome Sparks- My <3 (self released-2011)

~by Gabe McBride

85________________________

Weird thing about the internet. A tossed of label like “chillwave”, or even worse, “hypnagogic pop” (barf) becomes so instantly irritating it sends up-to-the-minute music geeks like myself (sniff) into conniptions no sooner than a couple of similar sounding bands release like-minded tracks or albums, and a backlash has begun before a knob twiddling, laptop wielding depressive even knows what had hit him (them? I lost track of subject/verb/object/syntax about 50 characters ago). So, long story short- I had discovered Neon Indian and Washed out when there were maybe two or three taste making bloggers left who hadn’t traded in their cassette only releases by these wet-behind-the-ears-composers-busy-making-the-80’s-mysterious, in for crack money. And, honestly, I think missing out on the retroactive resentment and just letting myself enjoy the music (well, Neon Indian not so much) wound up being a net positive, all said. Which leads me to Chrome Sparks’ new EP, My<3, which on initial listen bears some of the markers associated with the movement of bands playing music that sounds like the stuff their mom was listening to while they were gestating in the womb, exactly as they remember it: pulsing synth wash, programmed hand clap drum beats, and processed, reorganized vocals.

Where My <3 differs from the class of 2009 (2008?) is that it’s a little more up front and demystified. Like Ford and Lopatin, this is mostly unironic electro, with the Reagan/Thatcher era used as a stepping off point. It’s not a reimagining of New Wave so much as it is an update of it, with nods to hip hop and indie, R&B and lo-fi electro. Highly recommended.

Available for ‘name your price’ over at Bandcamp. Which means fork over five bucks, cheapskate! C’mon, starving musicians gotta eat too.

For Fans of: Games, Toro y Moi