Vol. 7 Issue 79 May 2012
MAY DAY MAY DAY! If you thought May Day was just some wimpy holiday to celebrate Spring, well you my web page intro reader are wrong! In fact, it started out as a protest day to show the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class. Well that is a bummer, I just wanted to see how bad my tomato plants are doing...In the meantime to either celebrate the death of the bourgeosie or at least my tomato plants, why don't we check out some new releases from Ramona Falls, Here We Go Magic, Turing Machine, Cold Specks, Lucero, Dope Body, Aaron Freeman, Now, Now etc etc! Up with the tomatoes! Up with Spring!
See News Archives
That's so LA
Posted by Sarah On May 14, 2012
Sorry to anyone (everyone) who looks forward to the BRM blog as an essential part of... Read More
Current Releases
- Click to see:
- Barsuk
- Secretely Canadian
- Team Love
- Temporary Residence
- Ernest Jenning
Barsuk
www.barsuk.com
Ramona Falls
"Prophet"
Brent Knopf excused himself from all other projects (re: Menomena) so he could focus his sights on the more personal work he does with his band Ramona Falls. His inspiration? YouTube videos of homemade perpetual motion machines. The singular purpose of those homegrown scientists inspired him to do the same musically. What has resulted is Prophet (Barsuk), Ramona Falls’ most focused statement to date. Prophet is 11 intricately layered songs that combine catchy melodies with fragile turns of phrase and wistful sonic tendencies. As always, it’s difficult to compare the music that he makes to anything else (but you know we’re gonna try… somewhere between The Polyphonic Spree and The National). Top to bottom, the whole affair moves along with an optimistic footnote that will leave you feeling fulfilled with a smile on your face, without sacrificing an ounce of artistic integrity or straying from the sound that we’ve always loved him for. Check out the spaced-out, hook-riddled paranoia of “Spore.”
Secretely Canadian
www.secretlycanadian.com
Here We Go Magic
"A Different Ship"
What if you played a show and no one liked it? (Boo!) What if only two people liked it? (Meh…) What if those two people are Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich? (Sweet merciful crap!) This is what happened to Here We Go Magic during their noon performance at the 2010 Glastonbury Festival. Thom and Nigel, right in front of the stage, dancing their butts off. So enamored with their live sound was Godrich that he followed the band around until they agreed to let him produce their next album. What Godrich did was help HWGM recreate their hypnotic live sound in the studio. What HWGM did was write and record A Different Ship (Secretly Canadian), the best thing they have ever done in the young careers. It’s their OK Computer, the point where their playing, writing and recording all click at the same time and they sound like the band they were always supposed to sound like. The album is haunting, modern and gets under your skin the first time you listen to it and refuses to leave (thank you very much!). Check out the bouncy haze of “How Do I Know.”
Team Love
www.team-love.com
Sea Of Bees
"Orangefarben"
Anybody remember, back in the days when MTV used to play videos, the concept of buzz bands? You know the ones – smack in the middle of the day you’d get treated to Tanya Donnelly’s Belly or Juliana Hatfield? Well, in a leap through time and logic, you can now add Sea Of Bees to that list of projects fronted by strong female vocalists that resemble each other stylistically, in some way! Sea of Bees, the musical iteration of Julie Ann Bee (you see), might actually have more akin to the sweetness of Azure Ray, if we want to stay within the Team Love family tree. (Whoa, holy Dr. Seuss there.) Bee’s honeyed voice and deft arrangements are perfect complements to each other, and each single-word-titled song on Orangefarben, Bee’s second full-length, is a paean to heartbreak and maturity, love and life, and the discoveries and decisions that get us to where we are. There’s even a cover of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane”! Titled simply “Leaving” of course. So no matter who you are, whether you’re a queen or simply a toiling worker, Orangefarben is for you. (I’m a tool.) Sea of Bees everybody! “Broke” is the jam!
Temporary Residence
www.temporaryresidence.com
Turing Machine
"What Is The Meaning Of What"
No one in the office wanted to talk about it, but it was eventual. Ever since a 2009 accident claimed his life all too early, we knew someday we would hold in our sad little hands Jerry Fuchs’ last recorded drumming. That beauty of a man lent his relentless drumming style to everyone from Maserati and Massive Attack to LCD Soundsystem and Holy Ghost! In the late ‘90s he formed Turing Machine with Justin Chearno and Scott DeSimon. It was always something of a back burner band for the boys, who always had a million projects, which means What Is The Meaning Of What (Temporary Residence) is only their third album together, and the very last recording of Mr. Fuchs laying wood to skin. It is a fitting swan song, as this collection of psychedelic, neo-Krautrock is definitely led by the hard-driving beats laid down by Jerry. Riffs upon riffs (both the guitar kind and the synth kind) hypnotize as the drums take center stage, the high-energy beats exuding joy. I can picture a huge mustachioed grin on Jerry’s face as he laid them down. Celebrate his neverending-awesomeness with the title track, "What Is The Meaning Of What."
Ernest Jenning
www.ernestjenning.com
Still Flyin'
"On A Bedroom Wall"
Why didn’t we ever move to San Francisco? Sean Rawls did just that last decade and struck it big with his new project, Still Flyin’ (same initials as San Fran!). In fact, they’ve purportedly been “redefining indie-pop” in the Bay Area since ’04. The collective’s second album, On a Bedroom Wall, is a set of ten unfussy, fairly mellow party songs for a 1987-style dance party. Opener “Elsie Dormer” is reminiscent of a Hal Hartley film score with help from New Order, and a bunch of the other songs feel like if Arthur Russell were still alive and got together with some dudes and had themselves a fun little side-project. According to the trustworthy internet, SF’s sound is “generally classified as reggae or rocksteady.” Hmmm, okay, but the band has a better description: “hammjamm: loosely defined as ‘when a good time gets better.’” Can’t beat that!
Mute
www.mute.com
Cold Specks
"I Predict A Graceful Expulsion"
“Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in the darkness.” That’s James Joyce for you. All melodramatic with his vivid wordplay. Al Spx, who conceived and fronts Cold Specks, gets it. She co-opted her band’s name from Ulysses, for cryin’ out loud, and finds her inspiration in the music of the common folk, those of the Deep South, much as Joyce mined the psyche of the Irish. The Alan Lomax Field Recordings, as well as Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, figure as major points of reference for Spx, not to mention Tom Waits’s idiosyncratic stylings. But all that doesn’t matter at all when Al Spx actually sings – her voice is a singular instrument, a smoky, earthy, real expression, far warmer than her Canadian roots or the climes of London where she currently resides. It’s a powerful and moving voice, and you won’t forget it when you hear it on I Predict A Graceful Expulsion (Mute). Take, for example, how she fills in the spaces between the sparse instrumentation of “Winter Solstice,” warming it with a gospel glow. Or how “Steady” builds from an acoustic hymn to a triumphant battle cry – “We have caught fire, and the night is ours.” I feel better about myself already.
ATO
www.atorecords.com
Lucero
"Women & Work"
Women and Work, the eighth Lucero album in fourteen years, is officially a country/soul/rock record, and their first for ATO Records (home of My Morning Jacket and Drive-By Truckers), which seems just about the perfect fit. These Tennessee boys have grown up, the beer stains have dried and now they even have a full-time horn section. From mood-setting opener “On My Way Downtown” to the gospel call-and-response of album-closing “Go Easy,” Women and Work is what happens between getting off work on Friday evening and waking up hungover for church on Sunday morning. The record is a “love letter” from the band to their hometown, and I’m sure if cities could hold pens or write emails, Memphis would respond with something pretty touching in return.
Drag City
www.dragcity.com/
Dope Body
"Natural History"
The first thing that occurred to me while listening to Dope Body was that I would never let my girlfriend hang out with these guys. This record kind of scares me. I mean, who really knows what’s going on in Baltimore these days? This record is more on the U.S. Maple-Royal Trux divide of Drag City, if you know what I mean. Natural History, the band’s first for the label, is dark, sludgy, pick-scrapin’ guitar madness—“primal hardcore trash vibes,” if you will—yet these songs are sneakily catchy. I don’t even know what to say about their band name—as a wise trucker cap once read, Beauty lies in the eye of the beer holder. Drag City is just about the only label left in America where, if they say something is cool, then it pretty definitely is. Trust them and take a ride with “Road Dog.”
Partisan
www.partisanrecords.com
Aaron Freeman
"Marvelous Clouds"
In 1983, MTV pulled their first major coup by persuading KISS to appear on their relatively new airwaves sans makeup. Not sure what everyone expected, because it was essentially just KISS without makeup. In 2012, Gene Ween has done the same sort of thing, stepping out from behind his pseudonym and long-lasting band Ween, and given us the very first album by Aaron Freeman. Unlike the disquieting boredom of having to look at a flesh-colored Ace Frehley, Mr. Freeman has dazzled us with his most personal work to date. That fact is surprising, as the entire album consists of covers of soft rock songwriter/poet Rod McKuen. But given Gene’s...sorry, Aaron’s easily discernible love of all things schmaltz, it makes perfect sense. Marvelous Clouds (Partisan) is quite the afternoon delight (get it?), as lite FM touches of Gordon Lightfoot, Paul Williams and Bacharach are copiously sprinkled over this project. Check out the Kermit-esque jazzy standout “Lonesome Cities”.
Trans-
www.trans-records.com
Now, Now
"Threads"
One of the first signings to (Death Cab for Cutie guitarist/producer) Chris Walla’s Trans- Records, Minneapolis trio Now, Now’s second album, Threads, is intimate music made for big stages, big speakers and maybe even big headphones. Threads is reminiscent of yesteryear bands like Rilo Kiley and even Death Cab themselves, and it’s MP3ing itself somewhere at the intersection of indie pop, college rock, indie rock, power pop, and several other micro-genres that are being invented right now. (Album centerpiece “Prehistoric” is kind of like Wye Oak for the teenage set.) Start with “But I Do” and work your way out from there.