WOOP WOOP IT'S SOME FRIENDS OF THE BLOG

OUTER SPACE HEATERS- "Desolate Surf" EP

Local Vantucky artists Outer Space Heaters have just dropped their debut EP and I would like to share it with you.  As usual, it's disclosure time.  I did attempt to be their keyboard player, but as I'm sure Adrienne Hatkin would be glad to tell you, I am a soulless critic and I could not hack it.  So I was satisfied with writing a zeerust-y narration for them and remaining friend of the band.

OSH specializes in a very specific blend of space rock and instrumental surf.  No Jan-and-Dean-esque harmonies here- instead just blissfully reverbed ambient spaces and old school proggy surf shredding.  It's easy to lose the concept of groove when dipping into that well- but I am pleased to say that guitarist Chad Van Dyke et al do not ever do so.  Hooray for them, and hooray for us.



ZYGOTE- "00/10"

Okay, well maybe it's not that big a secret.  Zygote is the "abstract, IDM, chillwave... dub/minimal" persona of our dear friend DJStephenR, also known as Architects+Heroes label head Stephen Ruiz.  This sharp gentleman actually looks like this:

And rips shit up like this.  I'll let the music speak for itself, but let's just say you should sit down and find some big ol' piano-painted cans and LISTEN.  Ambient it is not.  Definitely a change from his more uptempo stuff as DJStephenR, but just as welcome.

Architects + Heroes should also have some news about some upcoming shows here in town, and maybe... dare I say it... a LAPTOP BATTLE??!?!?!

TYLER SJOLANDER- "totally not Conway anymore or some shit"

Geez, look at this guy.  So I just met Tyler down in the blighted wasteland known as Redding, California, and he is a pretty cool dude.  I knew by his v-neck shirt that he was a musician, and as it turns out, he plays alt-country.  A lot of people like that sort of music, don't you know?  As it turns out, not only is there a burgeoning indie music scene down in Redding, but also my man Tyler's music is pretty darn good.  He's not with his previous project Conway, but is now striking out on his own and hopefully will be my man in Redding as far as the music skinny goes.


Well ladies and germs, that's it for the moment, but remember- I'm no tease.  So here's your obligatory title-invoked video, so crank your piano-painted cans up!!!

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It's hard to refuse the offer of makeup sex. A review of Burning Hank.

There is a large space in my music collection for music that makes me smile. Burning Hank makes me smile. They've got an approach to songwriting that is round, friendly and welcome at your dinner table.

"This song was the first one that we wrote together after Roger had joined us. It is about the common fear that your pet dog or cat will be abducted and used for cosmetic testing."

You see, this is what songs need to be written about. I have so many songs in my collection about the burning passion in my heart, the burning passion in my mind and the burning sensation in my pants. Bagh, I say. Give me songs about mild and rather forgettable earthquakes, socks, bisexuality and cats. I have filed these fine folks under "Awesome" genre tag. It's the same reason I am such a fan of Doctor Something. Maybe Burning Hank should write a tune about their own favorite Transit Center on a split 7"? I'd buy that to listen to on the Max.

"How many hospitals have your body parts? you are incomplete. Got your tonsils out in Tokyo and your head kicked in in Greece."

I think these people have been on tour.

"And Norma Jennings makes a damn fine cup of coffee
Take off those 3D glasses please Doctor Jacobi
And what the hell does Harry see in Josie?
And what the hell does Shelly see in Bobbie?"

A song about Twin Peaks pointed at this blog is just not fair. What's next Burning Hank? Are you going to send me a song about Bikes, Coffee Shops and Being Snooty? Alright fine, you can come play in Portland. We love you.

Musically this record is a mixed drink of jangle, rock, a touch of folk swing topped with synth trumpets on a swizzle stick. Much like their lyrics, it is simple and approachable. You could drink this record all night and not get too drunk. I keep wanting to hear more extensive instrumentation in these tunes though; that touch of swing just screams out for a lap steel. Seriously, if you guys read this review think of "Keep Digging" with a bouncy steel solo somewhere in there. It's pretty obvious that they can play their instruments but I feel like they're holding back a bit in this record. I bet their live act kicks fucking ass though. I'll put my $5 down on that.

On the balance I'll give it a 12.876 out of π. Which is pretty good. Verging on rad. I don't do numbers. Listen to their record on Bandcamp and make up your own damn mind.

Oh, and this from their Bandcamp page made me smile. I'll bet it makes you happy too.

"It was nice to see Dick Cheney in ill health and we wanted to keep the memory of that evil prick in his wheelchair alive for the next time we felt down."


Me too Burning Hank, me too.

-Eriq

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Album Review - The Typing Pool : Let This Be Your Lesson

I was intrigued to listen to East Tennessee’s “The Typing Pool”, a three piece composed of members Melissa Bright, Don Wilson, and Watson, mainly because I think their band name is adorable. However, I wasn’t at all disappointed – their music is lovely, too.
“Let This Be Your Lesson” is gentle, liquid and atmospheric. Musically, the beats are laid back, slightly shuffly; quiet, reverb drenched guitars interwoven with piano, strings, organ, and synth, always topped off by Bright’s smooth clear voice.
The whole album has a very unified sound, with just enough variety. “Carnival Ride” is one of the most upbeat ; “The Noise” and “Alter Altar” feature a deep, almost-bluesy piano riffs; “Wire” reminds me of a hip-hop track gone gentle, with melodic vocals on top. “Mandolin”, the only instrumental track, features a playful exchange of melody between the guitar and piano.
“Let This Be Your Lesson” is a great antidote to a bad day at work or being stuck in rush hour traffic. Every time I put this on, the world seems just a little bit nicer.

(photo of Wilson and Bright stolen from the band's Facebook page. Hopefully they don't mind.)

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National Solo Album Month : Dusty Grimm "Senseless Bliss"

So, as you may know, November was National Solo Album Month. And, it has just drawn to a close.
I myself would much rather let other people tell me what to play than try to write a song, but I have the utmost respect for those brave souls who chose to give it a go, and would like to provide for you the results of one of these efforts,
Senseless Bliss by Portland local Dusty Grimm. I know the "point" of Solo Album Month wasn't necessarily to turn out a great album, but Senseless Bliss is pretty damn good, and probably going to enter regular rotation in my personal listening. Delightfully random, it contains elements of pop, electronica, samples, metal, country, and hip hop. Each song is in a bit of a different style, all with a lavish helping of fun. "The Unicorn" is probably my favorite. And you can hear it all for free right here :

http://www.archive.org/details/DustyGrimm_senselessBliss

And finally, I'd really like to hear what other people worked on... bloggers and otherwise.. maybe y'all could share some links right here in the comments section? :D

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Excellent is not good enough! The Autopilot Is For Lovers album review.

From the title of Morrissey's album Vauxhall and I and the lyrics to his track "Reader Meets Author", some drew the conclusion that he was firing a musical shot across the bow of his almost supernaturally gifted biographer Johnny Rogan, with whom he'd had a love/(mostly)hate relationship over the years. Now, I'm no Mr. Rogan to Autopilot For Lovers' Moz, potential wishes for me to die in a fire aside, but there is a tempting parallel to draw. The title of their new album from Bladen County Records is To The Wolves. As in their band being thrown? Just who are these wolves? The listening public? Pompadoured critics? Literal lupines? I've 'reassured' Adrienne, AIFL's frontwoman, that with their brand of folk/pop/whatever she has nothing to fear in this town, and with this great new disc I think I will be proved right. But will cutting a really good album be enough? Let's take a look.

In my assessment of AIFL's previous album, I expressed a thought that perhaps they were needing a little road grime, something to add depth to their sound. Maybe I was hoping that this album meant that they were going to grow a pelt, heft some rough-hewn axe and devolve To The Wolves. So to speak. They've actually gone the other way- TTW is a very polished album. It sounds great, sophisticated and professional, befitting a band beginning to seize the zeitgizzle in our hot little hamlet.

For me personally, this is the reason that I don't think the album will mean much to me. Portland is crowded with this type of folky stuff, and it certainly seems to be many people's cups of tea. It's great, but not Tony the Tiger grrrreat, and I think it comes back to what I've posited before. There are no risks being taken here. All this 'noir-pop' stuff is territory that has been well-covered and is well-liked here and now. Adding a studio gloss without big-time artistic gravitas, as on To The Wolves, serves only in some cases to steer Autopilot Is For Lovers in the direction of emotive nineties girlie alternative. We don't need any more Heather Novas or Tracy Bonhams, so I'm just warning you kids that it is a slippery slope.

After some repeat listens, the album did grow on me overall, but I did notice something. The lead vocal cadences tend to sound the same, and I think that gets its root in Adrienne Hatkin's lead instrument, the accordion, which also finds its way onto most of the songs on TTW. Now, there is nothing wrong with this instrument- it has graced many fine metal albums such as Voivod's Angel Rat or The Hills Fell Silent by Portland's own Paranaut. Its omnipresence here, and the sameness of its rhythms does nothing to help break Autopilot out of the throng.

So what's the final assessment? Despite my personal disagreements with the band and general level of disinterest in the genre, I find that Autopilot Is For Lovers' To The Wolves is a top notch album of Portland folk pop, one that will appeal greatly not only to the highly attuned audience here in PDX, but people all over as the world's ears get less and less tinny. It's also a sophomore sign that this a band that needs to dig way deeper and get way riskier in order to produce something truly captivating.

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TURN MY HEADPHONES UP!!! Volume 1

"You can't just put velvet in the shit and think they're nice headphones!"

This is the first installment of my new column of mini music reviews, intended to be briefer and breezier, with a slightly smaller chance of critical douchiness than normal.

"Put some treble in it... put some treble in it... that's my word!!!"

Pikara- PIKARA

When I was a wee lad eating cream of rice on a Sunday morning, reading Kipling, my mother's go-to album was "The Hissing of Summer Lawns." I've since used that one as well as a Sunday morning pancake music, and when I first ran through Pikara's self-titled album, I had high hopes that it would belong in the same sort of classic emotional bracket. On repeated listens, that hasn't been the case. Pikara frontwoman Sara Dryberg is, while immensely talented, perhaps too aware of her own confidence, and to create an album like this one, of beauty that is almost haunting is a pretty sure sign that any promised mystery will not be that deep. Nevertheless, PIKARA is cinematic and intense, and I would recommend the listener experiment with it to see exactly where it resonates with them. CD release party August 25th at Valentine's.

Secrets In The Salt- KRILL THROUGH BALEEN


I don't just write blogs for my health. One of the great things that I get to do is have abuse heaped upon me by mouth-breathing numbskulls who are defending some crap band of the week in lieu of maintaining their own dignity. Another great thing is that I get a chance to get intimate with cool bands, people from labels, talk to them about how they do their thing, and tell them how I do my thing. It's not a fan thing, necessarily, as technically I'm in the biz, and have been, but hell... it makes me feel good. Makes the old self feel young.

And sometimes, the latter comes from the former. One of the members of SITS contacted me after my vicious 'review' of Cage The Elephant, which he agreed with. We started shooting the shit about recording techniques, etc., and one thing led to another. He offered to send me a demo. Hey, why not? The song of theirs I had listened to on myspace was pretty cool.

Now, just to throw this in here, lest you out in Blogreadistan think we're complete idiots, Secrets In The Salt were talking up multiple bloggers from Crappy Indie Music and sending them review material. Now, while that might make me feel less special, you have to give the boys credit for hustle. Amber Dawn should be doing a more in-depth review of this album soon.

My main thought about Krill Through Baleen is that it was a world away from the demo song I'd heard on myspace, and overall a bit of a disappointment. It's well-produced, jangly, fun bouncy pop, but didn't strike me as a very mature work overall. This gives me high hope for their next disc, which sounds as if it's going for a grittier new wave feel with some '60s type vocal harmonies. I've heard elsewhere that this is a band to see live, so go check them out. They've got hustle!


Tobacco- FUCKED UP FRIENDS

Yeah... so this one is not new, and has been out a while, but is new to me. My little bro- of the record label and friends with WIBG fame- gave it to me to listen to. Thanks, Draeger. You were spot on with this one.

Tobacco- who needs to pick a new nom de plume- is the singer from Black Moth Super Rainbow, who I happened to be familiar with because last.fm puked them up as a similar artist to my band. Tobacco's solo efforts' are strictly analog synth and tape loop affairs, and it shows. The thing about Fucked Up Friends that surprised me was HOW FUCKING BADASS IT WAS. This disc goes all over the place, and rips and tears and never once bores. To me it is the modern stoner/glitch equivalent of Vernon Reid's Mistaken Identity. While it may lack the visionary power of that album, it is certainly its equal in energy. My only qualms are the gratuitous flute parts, and Aesop Rock's appearance on one track, while competent, seemed forced and pandering. Otherwise, pow!


Well, that's it for the first installment of TURN MY HEADPHONES UP. I'll be back soon with more.

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Album Review: Blindfold - Faking Dreams

Icelandic music makes me want to go to Iceland. It must be a landscape of endless ice castles and sparkling sunlight. Around every corner is some mythic beauty that causes you to weep on your knees for the ruined fate of our species. They know with a certainty that the world is beautiful and we are only getting in the way of this. Blindfold wraps this ethereal image in pop music and sends it running over an endless field of compositions that fill the entire room with their sound.

This is a rich, layered, spectral and occasionally melancholy pop music that makes me smile and cry at the same time. I am a sucker for reverb and the production value on this record sets the level just right, neither blurring out the structure or letting you back down out of the clouds for too long. It is deft and classy arrangement showing a long familiarity with the band and what they're going for. I've spent some time looking for production credits out there on the tubes and I can't find any. If you know who produced this, I'd love to hear from you.

There is an element that I find lacking in a lot of music that I get in spades here. Dynamic range. I like the big, swelling crescendos, the long build up and the feeling like a wave of music just took your feet out from underneath you. Quiet moments in the record where all the clouds part and you can watch a single bird fly across the sunlight. Loud, angry thrashing guitars that threaten to break down the walls of your mind. I like range and Blindfold has delivered it to me.

Caffeine and Sleeping Pills is my favorite track so far, though I think that had more to do with my intimate familiarity with that particular sense of surreality than anything else. They do a great job lyrically and tonally bringing me to those horrible and glorious 5 AM moments where you don't know if it's more coffee or more drugs that you really want.

I am an admitted fan of music that sounds like its name. Their songs are descriptive tone poems that are drawing out a long night spent watching the river flow by and wondering why you haven't slept in a week. There is a constant sense of the distant horizon always beckoning as an escape from whatever nightmare has you in its clutches and you want to go there. It is potential, it is potent and it is persistent. It is worth listening to, preferably alone during that mysterious hour of 4 AM, watching mists and drinking something unbelievably alcoholic.

Faking Dreams will be released on August 1st, 2009 directly from the band.

Check out Blindfold on Myspace or Last.fm.

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EP Review- "L.A.B."- Lose the acronym, chegados.

No, seriously. I've never quite understood how successful and/or otherwise competent bands think that it's okay to have a name that is an acronym. I'm not talking about abbreviations- ELP and PIL are safe here. Really, though, there are enough ridiculous band names out there that there's not a single reason to think that it would be cool to make your band name the acronym of a ridiculous phrase. Therefore we have POD ("payable on death"), HIM ("his infernal majesty"), NERD ("noone ever really dies"), and the execrable local NIAYH ("now is all you have"). This last is a humbling example... my teenaged sister-in-law had a visit from NIAYH at her California school, and promptly became obsessed with them, to the point of naming her cat Niayh. What are they teaching in schools these days? I must admit I've experienced this thing too, though, my TAG camp getting not only a musical visit but also a later namecheck in song by Plunky Branch and the Oneness of Juju.

And don't think songs or albums are exempt either. Everyone loves Incubus, right? Your mom even likes Incubus. So why would they be so douche-y as to name an album "S.C.I.E.N.C.E"? Let's ask them! Or rather, let's let wikipedia do it for us:

S.C.I.E.N.C.E. was titled as such because the band felt like they were working on a science project whilst creating the album, as such the acronym has no real meaning. Instead the band has chosen to let people interpret the title as they see fit. The acronym S.C.I.E.N.C.E. is as enigmatic as the moustachioed man on the cover.

Anyway, I will give the benefit of the doubt to our review subject LAB ("Less A Bullshit") because they are from Brazil and that nation is full of surprises.

One such surprise is how despite the increasing production values on new or independent bands' demos, that a demo can still sound like a demo. This one certainly does, and I like the energy. Be warned- as good as it is, this is not anything you haven't heard before from other modern interpreters of New Order/Depeche Mode-influenced synth rock. Though there is something about the Portuguese lyrics that make them seem vastly less pretentious than English-speaking bands (T.H.E. K.I.L.L.E.R.S., I'm talking to you. Check your shit before you wreck your shit. Oops, too late.)

There is something about these kids... did I hear a little Joe Jackson in their song "Uma Vida em 8 bits"? It's good timing with this review because I've been delving into a little more of this style and can appreciate it. You should too. Check out L.A.B. before they get big.

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Album Review: Tortoise- "Beacons of Ancestorship"

As I get older and the engine that powers my raw cognitive skills goes into decline, I've noticed a certain mental artifact increase in frequency. I often immediately misread items to humorous effect. My Facebook friends will probably attest to this. So if you are like me, please be advised that Tortoise's new album is not called "Bacon of Ancestorship."

I have to preface this with the fact that I don't really know much about Tortoise, and have not kept up on them as a band. To the best of my recollection I had heard a few of their tracks years ago but could not remember that bit distinctly. Here and there, though, I kept coming across references to them. People mention them in craigslist musicians wanted ads, they are a supposedly meaningful benchmark in music reviews, and a friend of mine said that some of my band's instrumentals sounded like "Tortoise through a beat box." I've since learned that that was quite the compliment, and all in all I have been very excited to check the real deal out. So, after my review of "More" (by Thrill Jockey labelmates Double Dagger) when I was informed that the next release down the pike from TJ would be the new Tortoise, I had to snap it up.

Now, there is something to be said for caution in expecting too much. You don't want to get disappointed, and with Tortoise you're also dealing with a band that has been liberally tarred with the 'post-rock' brush. Gentleman blogger Eriq Nelson and I had a discussion on this very topic, and I can think of no better way to express the low-down than to quote his very own eloquence: "...it's strange that any term so broad in it's scope has become familiar and formulaic as "post-rock". It defied conception. The term itself allows for limitless possibility, but ends up being applied more like post-Mogwai. It saddens me greatly." So with that in mind I jumped right in...

...and found to my great surprise that Tortoise was not even close to what I would describe as 'post-anything' at all, but rather, straight up PROG ROCK. Good old fashioned Weather Report meets Gabriel-era Genesis meets who knows. I don't believe this is just a result of the vintage synths present, either. It's the consummate musicianship, the rich variety of sound textures and dynamics, and the deep reverence for their source music, in this case rhythmic jazz. Then of course there is the esoteric, and it's right from the get-go. The title of the lead track "High Class Slim Came Floatin In" namechecks an obscure Billy Gibbons composition, which I was proud to be able to indentify sans Intarweb. Much like ZZ Top, a band vastly underrated for their progressive contributions to the blues rock genre, this song careens all over the place in a savage and exuberant manner, setting the tone for an album of great inventiveness. Again, the playing is top knotch, and that's good. Tortoise seems to be known for their experiments with rhythm, and for a band without any vocals to speak of, a listener might become bored hearing hackneyed attempts to 'experiment' where so many visionaries have already gone before. Tortoise has no such problem.

Indeed, with such captivating music, the average person's only complaint might be that the album passes too quickly, which is certainly no complaint at all. My one quibble was that there was a noticeable amount of distortion when all the instruments started really going for it at once. If this were an intentional insertion of some modern lo-fi, it really clashes with the prog aesthetic that seems to be the dominant one. If it's unintentional, well, that's a stumper with all the talent (and recording expertise) involved. This did nothing to decrease my enjoyment of the album as soon as I was out of reviewer mode, though, and I would highly recommend this album to anyone. It aspires to the same sort of genre-spanning tentacular greatness of albums like "Heavy Weather," "Aja," and "Selling England By The Pound." Whether Tortoise's modern spin lands their disc in with these, only time will tell.

"Beacons of Ancestorship" is out June 23rd on Thrill Jockey.

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Album Review: Aids Wolf - Cities Of Glass

I am uncertain of how to describe Aids Wolf. I could agree with their surmise that they have embraced an intentionally ugly aesthetic in a sort of post-modern ironic statement and are pursuing pure art through pure trash. Then I would simply laugh at my pretentious art analysis, go with my gut feelings (which generally serve me well) and just call it like I see it. This music is fucking terrible, and I don't feel compelled to justify my reactions. I will however, in the interest of true critique, qualify it.

1. Oh God, My Fucking Head
Even if I accept the high brow answer (ironic statements about modern culture and a dangerous aesthetic) I am left with a splitting headache and sour expression on my face after panning through this record. I can't get around it. It's a physical reaction. Was Aids Wolf going for this when they brought this concept to the studio? Are they in league with a manufacturer of anti-inflammatories? The motivation behind this is unclear to me, but one thing is clear to me. My fucking head hurts.

2. When would I actually want to listen to this?
As a listener of music I have to wonder, "When would I want to put this on?" and the only answer I can come up with is coming home from a spectacularly successful and fulfilling day and feeling some sort of guilt at my excellent mood. I would think to myself guiltily, "I haven't suffered nearly enough today. I should give myself a really good splitting headache to be miserable and angry about." I can honestly say I've never felt this way so I'm uncertain about when I'd really ever pick this up out of my musical collection as "what I need right now'. Perhaps there is a listener out there who can enlighten me as to another compelling reason to want to listen to this screeching nightmare.

3. Seriously? This is serious? Is it?
If you checked out the PDF I linked to before, you can surmise that these guys are serious about what they do.....maybe. It's a diatribe about the nature of badassery through history. Is this tongue and cheek? Is this serious work? They skirt the line between pretension and absurdity, a concept that while laudable in it's intent fails to impress with it's aesthetic. I like structure, I like melody and I like harmony. I don't think I'm alone in this and this recording lacks any sense of any of these things. This is a Dadaist interpretation of music and as much as I appreciate what the finger pointing and laughing did for the field of visual art, I don't follow any Dadaist work past the first glance because it bears no repeated interpretation. Dadaist art is much like this album, it is a one note joke pointed at modern culture. I am reminded of the Downtown Music scene pioneered by Yoko Ono/Fluxus and frankly, when Yoko Ono starts popping up in my analysis, I run the other way.

4. What's the point?
Anti-art is boring. There, I said it. I think anyone who has traveled around the art and music world enough gets to a point where they are disillusioned with the surface level, meaningless pretension and fevered egos tainting the collective unconscious. I know that I have. The way I see it is if you're sick to death of the entire bullshit, fake-ass, over commercialized hype machine that is modern culture; quit bitching about it and make something honest. Hijack the machine and bring culture back down to the ground where it belongs. Make a record that makes me stand up and pay attention. An album that makes me angry, sad, sexy, happy, wistful or fuck; anything but confused. Make me think, make me feel dammit. Don't stand in the corner laughing at the makeup ridden overproduced people chattering mindlessly at the party. Come join the real conversation over here and contribute to it.

I suppose there's people out there who like Aids Wolf and their kin. If their wasn't then their career would be short lived and from the looks of it they're actually doing pretty well. I'd love to hear from someone who's a fan and give me some context to work from. Especially if you go to this show at The Aristery. All I can say is that it was a unique experience and one I don't care to repeat. Oh yeah, and this album is fucking terrible.

Aids Wolf plays live in Portland April 2nd, 2009 at The Aristery.
$6.00 7:30 PM
4315 SE Division St
Portland, OR 97206

Eriq Nelson.

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Album Review: Pontiak - Maker

It's pretty rare that an album lands in my lap for review that I get totally obsessed with. Thank you Thrill Jockey. Thank you so fucking much. The arrival of this album in my record collection has given the Black Keys a scare, pushing in on their listening time to an almost dangerous degree. This is heavy rock. Meaning that the promo album was carved out of a three ton slab of granite. After I offloaded this massive platter from the flatbed truck at my apartment and had the forklift operator put it up on my two story record player I used a crane to start it spinning. An expensive proposition to be certain but the earthquake that ensued was well worth the effort.

I was greeted with a swaggering deep rock track that blew half the cars in my neighborhood up into the air. "Laywayed" does not fuck around people. You can almost feel the power and resistance of the music, it's so thick it takes a few seconds for it to come out of the speakers. This gives way to the body of the album which feels like I'm sitting at the crossroads drinking bourbon and dropping acid with Morphine, Alice In Chains and Pink Floyd. "Maker", the title track for the record, is a haunting and intensely cerebral song that fills the space in your heart that used to hold your fear of the dark. Clocking in at damn near 13 minutes, I feel like this could go on for another half an hour and I'd still be listening. I like a band that says "fuck you" to radio friendly formatting and goes all out. The extended length makes the song, no doubt about it.

The solo work on this album pierces the gloom of this southern Gothic acid trip like the headlights of a car on a dark country night. Reading the copy from Thrill Jockey I learn that guitarist Van Carney blew out two amps during the recording session that gave us this album. This makes perfect sense as I'm watching the Richmond Fire Department try and battle the sexual blazes erupting all around my ruined neighborhood and my friends are all stripping their clothes off and getting down to "Honey". He bleeds into his guitar in every track, you can feel the sweat dripping down his chin in the tiny 12x12 studio they built to get this monster on tape and the smell of fried electronics wafting through the air. This track could seduce Leonard Cohen, it could burn a hole through your bed and make a Tibetan monk chuck the saffron and join the orgy. If you're ever feeling sexually repressed, I prescribe a healthy dose of Pontiak to get you through the night.

All in all, I say hell yes. Pick this thing up and grab a glass of bourbon, get your earthquake kit in order and crank it up.

"Maker " comes out on April 7th on Thrill Jockey Records. Be an anachronist! Buy it on the limited release (1000) vinyl! Remember kids, limited edition vinyl is worth 14 Indie Points a copy.

UPDATE: It's up for listening on Last.fm

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Record Review: Starfucker

Starfucker: Starfucker


Since an early incarnation of Starfucker played with us a year and a half ago at Towne Lounge, their song "German Love" has been playing non-stop on some microscopic tape player in some out-of-the-way corner of my brain. It's not that the song is "stuck in my head", at least not in the way you usually think of things being stuck in your head. It's just always playing. Very quietly. At any time I can turn up the volume and my world is a little sunnier, a little more filled with bubbles and rainbows. This song, and this band, has been the soundtrack to a lot of the last year of my life.

Last October I went out east to visit friends in New York. When I stepped off the plane in Newark (I know, fucking Jersey) and turned on my phone, I was greeted with a text message informing me that Starfucker was playing that very night at the East River Bar in Williamsburg. It took some cajoling (apparently the East River Bar is known for being a terrible place) but I managed to convince a few friends to come along. It was awesome, of course, and afterwards I bought a stack of 7 song demos for the friends I had dragged out, and one for myself.

"She won't have a thing to do with me" whispers singer Josh Hodges. But the way it comes out, reverb-laden and shiny with high-end, you can't imagine why.

But I didn't intend to write about my history with the band. That just happened. I didn't even really intend to write about the music, which speaks for itself. Although to not mention the incredible work Josh did in recording this in his home studio would be uncivil. And to neglect a nod to Dylan Magierek, who, with a few tasteful additions in mixing at Type Foundry, added unbelievable punch and shimmer (not easy, adding both) would be downright criminal.

But really, I didn't want to write about that. See, really, I wanted to write about the package. I wanted to write about the unbelievably beautiful creamy white vinyl. I wanted to write about the the gaudy, Tron-meets-Saturday-Night-Fever artwork. I wanted to write about the mish-mash of cheese ball fonts on the sleeve, and about the Adobe-Illustrator-For-Dummies gradient rainbow on the reverse.

I wanted to write about these things because this record -- from the surreal, Paint By Numbers cover, to the disco ball label, to the vinyl-only bonus track -- is made for people who love records. Sohale Kevin Darouian has crafted a masterpiece of album art. It's corny as fuck. It's bright. It's alternatingly head-scratching and simple. In other words, it's perfectly Starfucker.

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Fensepost.com Album Reviews of Portland Bands

****REPUBLISHED -- LINKS TO FENSEPOST ARE WORKING****


Andy of FensePost Record Reviews went through his archives for me and gave me a wonderful list of links to the reviews of Portland bands. Andy rules it! I love making list's and I love even more sharing with you a music review site that "is a music website for fans obsessed with discovering new music brought to you by fanatics obsessed with everything music."

ARISTEIA: A LIGHT THAT PLUGS INTO THE SUN
ARISTEIA: YOU GIVE ME STRENGTH, YOU GIVE ME PATIENCE
THE BLOW: PAPER TELEVISION
THE DIMES: SILENT GENERATION
EUX AUTRES: COLD CITY
EUX AUTRES: HELL IS EUX AUTRES
EUX AUTRES: PATRICK NIL
THE GOLDEN HOURS: THE MYSTERY & HER CREW
THE HELIO SEQUENCE: KEEP YOUR EYES AHEAD
JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER: VALLEY OF FIRE
THE LYMBYC SYSTYM: LOVE YOUR ABUSER
MENOMENA: FRIEND AND FOE
NIRE: VESPERS
NORFOLK AND WESTERN: THE UNSUNG COLONY
PSEUDOSIX: PSEUDOSIX
JAMES SASSER: THE MELCLIFF
THE SHAKY HANDS: THE SHAKY HANDS
THE THERMALS: THE BODY THE BLOOD THE MACHINE
A WEATHER: THE FEATHER TEST
WET CONFETTI: LAUGHING, GASPING

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