25th Oct2011

Album Reviews: Stephen Gordon – So Young Now

by nickwan

Sometimes I completely forget that radio friendly music exists. That’s not to say I don’t listen to the radio (I think I might be one of the last out of my friends to listen to the radio) but the world of radio music and the music I usually write about never seems to mingle. That’s usually because a good chunk of music written for radio is written by someone that isn’t the artist playing it. In reality, artists are much more creative and daring — unlike much of the music over the radio. However, there are a select few who still hold on to that flavor in their own spare time…

Enter Stephen Gordon, a Bowling Green, KY self-described singer/songwriter and folk artist. He draws very strongly upon what most would consider radio-friendly folk/country music. It’s definitely no pop-country, but it’s not too far off.

Listen to the entire thing below!


The Pros

I mean, let’s be honest… this guy is sitting and waiting for someone to pick him up. This music is just what most radio folk and radio country stations are looking for. I have such little experience with mainstream folk and country that I can’t even name an artist that Gordon sounds like. However, he definitely resonates something familiar. I can’t really pin point it. But at times, it is refreshing that this is still under that “indie” umbrella.

It wouldn’t be a complete surprise if you found Gordon opening for a bigger act, like Ryan Adams. However, I wouldn’t lump him anywhere near the indie folk stylings of Kevin Devine. That’s just too far from what Gordon really is.

Breaking down the innards of this album, Stephen Gordon is a great singer. The vocals will really be the driving point for this guy if he can break through to the next level. Instrumentally, it’s solid. It’s not unpleasant. However, it’s a bit… “stock”. Production wise, this is one of the best quality indie albums I’ve received. It’s super polished. No harsh clipping or any of that lo-fi crap that comes through my inbox some times. There’s a lot of pride in this album, and you can definitely hear it and feel it.

The Cons

I might be just misinformed, but this isn’t necessarily what indie music is heading towards when we think about indie folk. Indie folk itself is going further back into even more bluegrass and roots styles. I mean, if you take Mumford & Sons, the most mainstream “indie” folk out there, they have twisted it into this rockish banjo-twanging roots kind of sound. I don’t know what to even think of that style, but I do believe that Mumford & Sons is the coming of a saturated genre. With that being said, Gordon isn’t even near that and his sound is sort of tainted by so many other country acts. With the right mindset, this guy could turn it into some sort of Bon Iver act. I mean, you can hear that vibe from the song “Chemical”, arguably his best song off the album. However, that one song is surrounded by this extremely static sound of radio friendly country.

And to pick on Gordon himself a little, this album really does feel stock. I have no inclination to listen to this again. As a musician, Gordon is fantastic. As an artist, I have no feelings for him. Every song is consistent with his own tone and style, but that’s just not me. I really wanted to believe in this, but from the beginning to end “Chemical” was the only song I would even consider to put on a playlist… and even then, that’s a far stretch. It isn’t smashing down any doors. It isn’t twisting my arm. It’s just there. In a really sad sense, it’s a rain drop in an ocean. The world of country has a million Gordons. I hope this Gordon doesn’t get lost in a very large crowd.

The Verdict

It’s not really a bad album, all things considered. I personally wouldn’t listen to it again, but that doesn’t make it unlistenable. It’s still a decent album for the avid and hardcore country lover. I would recommend it to those fans. It’s also the first that has crossed my inbox that has been so… pop sounding. It’s not pop. It’s no where near the soccer mom country out on the radio now, which is a great thing. However, it is near what all those other hopeful-mainstream-country artists perceive themselves to be… and that is not good. I hope Gordon can reach into his bag of tricks and find something more unique to include, because the uniqueness is definitely the faltering factor in this equation.

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24th Oct2011

Album Reviews: M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

by Blake

M83 (Anthony Gonzalez, more or less) have been around since 2001. I remember listening to Saturdays=Youth my freshman year in college and loved the dreamy “Kim & Jessie”. The album was pretty damn good, but I have to admit, I forgot about the band a few months later and didn’t care to revisit their discography. That is, until their newest album caught my attention and I decided to give it another try. All I can preface this review with is a feeling I felt while listening to the album: I was so emotionally overwhelmed and covered in goose bumps that I could barely function while listening. To call this album a masterpiece is an understatement. Well, look what I just did – my preface gave away my entire review. You really don’t have to read anymore, really, but I want you to because this is some key info on THE album of 2011, period. Sorry Radiohead :(

Oh, Please Listen, Friend.


Download M83 OK Pal

Pros

The “Intro” song to the album begins with a chilling voice over and a brooding electronic beat. At about a minute in, Gonzalez breaks into wrenching vocals that let you know what you’re in for in the next 1.2 hours (thanks iTunes).  “Midnight City” breaks out with a massive dreamy beat that conjures up feelings of 80s nostalgia and neon strobe lights. “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire” is a very simple tune that is spoken over by a young girl telling a story about being a frog. At first, it is really cute, and then you realize what is happening – you have just been suckered into revisiting the innocence of your childhood and contrast it with you current life. It is a surreal song. I suppose the meaning will differ from person to person, and I would like to hear about the different reactions, but this one had me floored with emotion.

As soon as I began listening to disc 2, the first few tracks crept up on me almost preparing me for the best song M83 has ever made: “OK Pal”. What is part 80s jive and part lathered up with the best vocals Gonzalez has ever recorded. Toward the midpoint of the song, there is a break-off where the same female voice from the intro track gives us a hyper-sensual trip into an empty neon city where two lovers embrace each other. It is really stunning and beautiful. I won’t admit how many times I had this track on repeat (maybe 15-20…). Toward the end of the album, “Echoes of Mine” breaks down the doors with a sharp electronic track with choirboys in falsetto. It was at this point I realized that the entire album is really a spiritual successor to Mew’s And The Glass Handed Kites. The dark dream-pop of Mew can segway into this album’s more optimistic (but still gut-wrenching) atmosphere. Think Wizard of Oz and Dark Side Of The Moon.

Cons

Have I turned into a softie recently? I was fortunate enough to hear some great music in the past month. Most of the 402 staff knows me for the scathing reviews I write, and tearing down 90% of the albums I hear. This album is an example of why I hold bands to such high standards. For every uninspired shoegazing indie band out there, I remember that this music exists – there are bands pushing genres to the max and creating something that evokes a true limbic response. This album is why I love music. Look at that, I just turned the “Cons” into more “Pros”.

Verdict

I am nominating this record for “Album of the Year”. However, I am not only putting in a nomination, I am sending out a challenge to all readers, all writers, and even Nick Wan, my editor and inspiration – find me an album that is better than M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming that came out in 2011 and you will have done the impossible. This is the alpha and the omega of the year, and I have had it on repeat for about a week now. Dedicate your ears, put your headphones on, lie down, and let the dream wash over you. When you wake up, you won’t know what hit you.

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21st Oct2011

Album Reviews: O’Brother – Garden Window

by Ryan

O’Brother is hitting the road to tour with Thrice, and fittingly so. Much like Thrice, O’Brother is a band that exercises their sound in anywhere from borderline screamo to fast, alternative rock. They are a five piece group featuring three guitarists, and thusly foster a pretty heavy and thick presence. Apart from releasing an EP in 2009, there is not much else to say about these fellows, other than that their debut full length Garden Window will be seeing its official release in November.

The Pros:

For an album that is so shrouded in doom and gloom, there are some real moments of beauty on this record. “Easy Talk (Open Your Mouth)” is the pretty cornerstone here, for anyone’s money. The focal point to O’Brother is guitarist/singer Tanner Merritt’s vocal range. At his most timid, he can come off as a Ben Gibbard of the British persuasion. Most of the time, he is unfortunately preoccupied with the screaming and hollering aspect of the group’s aesthetic. When they calm it down, that’s when they truly shine.

Another great cut from Garden Window is “Bear.” Once again, it’s a slowed down affair that showcases the band’s instrumental talent, and is much more melodic than anything else featured throughout this album. It’s the juxtapositions that work best. Generally, anything that doesn’t fall under the category of harsh vociferating will illuminate the finer traits of O’Brother. This is quite a shame, because they have chosen to plod in that territory for the bulk of this LP.

The Cons:

As I’ve mentioned in the above section, the downfall lies in their self-effacing display of anger. They’re such an instrumentally and vocally capable band, and they throw everything away by divulging in song after song of histrionic angst, which is putting it lightly. There’s something really conceptual about Garden Window, too. However, Merritt’s lyrics are far too confusingly specific and contrived to make any sense, on any level. Whether it’s a boiling dirge about “laying down” or an exhausted epilogue spouting off about “god being an acronym for giver of damnation,” it is impossible to decipher who or what O’Brother means and why.

For being such a musically heavy group, they do a perfectly frustrating job of not putting their talents on full display. More times than necessary, while the epicenter of every song is Merritt’s voice, the backing will be a thick, scummy, sludgy marsh of unnervingly distorted guitars lost in the mire of palm-muting and down-tuning. It all just sounds comparatively disgusting to the ephemeral tones of beauty that peak through the pervasive smog.

The Verdict:

The problem here is nothing new. All too often, the talent is present, but not expressed appropriately. If anything positive can be said about O’Brother’s appearance, it’s that they are rather undefinable. Their take on “metal,” (if you wish to be so indefinite), is much more dramatic and drawn out than most. Individuality is not always a good thing though, and Garden Window is excessively drenched in their unique, yet unappealing sense of cataclysmic and cathartic screamo.

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20th Oct2011

Album Reviews: Warren Teagarden and The Good Grief – S/T

by nickwan

Something I’ve been lacking has been the home towners. The Bay Area is vastly underrepresented on this website, which is completely bogus seeing how 1) the headquarters is here in SF, 2) the majority of us grew up in the Bay Area music scene and 3) we all still live here. Aside from Finley (Seattle), Ryan Gabos and Nate (Pittsburgh, PA), the San Francisco’s rep on this site goes as far as the venues we do live interviews at and not much more. So, when Warren Teagarden dropped this one in my inbox I was elated.

Warren Teagarden and The Good Grief (WTaTGG) is a self-described punk act wrapped in indie rock inside of a singer/songwriter. The music itself ranges from the strange and absurd to the reflective and intricate. There is a vast array of sounds coming from this self-titled album that a brief synopsis can’t really do Warren and the guys justice so we’ll jump into it after the samples.

 Listen to “Urethane Mile” below!

The Pros

This album resonates many different flavors and profiles from previous bands and artists. Initially there is that B-52‘s “Rock Lobster” kind of vibe, which sort of plays into the whole indie surf revival that’s been happening over the past two years. There are slight remnants of At The Drive-In a la Acrobatic Tenament sprinkled throughout, especially on the track “Quite the Tiger!” (my personal favorite). The band obviously doesn’t front punk like post-hardcore punk but rather a Talking Heads or The Clash mid 80s type punk. There is some rude boy attitude laced throughout, including a skank instrumental “Country Livin’”. Not to take away from the DIY attitude of this album, the last four or so tracks tone the punk down and turn up the slowcore vibe, at times reminiscent of early Pedro the Lion.

Something WTaTGG does well is the minimal style and filling out each song. Lately, many bands have sent me what would normally be considered minimal or lo-fi, but that usually wasn’t by design… rather because of amateur production quality. There is no debate that the production quality of this album is lacking, but the raw playing power of this band does a lot to carry their sound through from beginning to end. Usually, a track won’t exceed a single tracking of vocals with single tracks for all the instruments. No overlays or doubling of anything here. This could be due to cash-out-of-pocket expenses were too much for everything they wanted to do in the studio… or because they were all jacked up in their garage or living room when they were recording this on Audacity or something and wanted to press the album ASAP. Whatever the reasoning, the quality of the record seems like the Best Coast EP and 7″s prior Crazy For You.

Something that also works to their advantage is that 90% of it is care-free and supposed to be silly and fun. The majority of the lyrics are about relatively mundane topics (i.e. “Typewriter” being about trying to find a typewriter) that seem to try to expose the instrumentation as more of a vehicle of the dance pit than to be reflected on deeply. That cognition allows for some cushion when noticing the somewhat absent production quality and lack of multitracking. Much more to WTaTGG, the quality might be because they are recording analog… but that’s just a guess and a hopeful assumption. If so, more to you guys.

The Cons

I would rather not admit punk is dead, but I wouldn’t be outside of the box when I say this kind of punk is dead. Each song offers something to chew on but there are only a handful that hold me the entire length. Many songs seem to have parts that are either unnecessary or too repetitive. But… I would be lying if I didn’t think a lot of this type of punk holds unnecessary or repetitive ideologies. During lulls on the album, I find myself itching to hit the next button. And when I find myself hovering over it, some intense burst of amazing comes through that holds me long enough to stay on the once-unwanted track.

The lead guitar riffs that lay over many of the tracks at first were really cute (“Urethan Mile”, the video above, is a good example), however on second and third listen they became fairly boring or unnecessary. The lead guitar is relatively simple in melody, and not in an interesting way. Rather, it’s sort of like excessive frosting on something already too sweet. The music itself already is this simple, no need to add something just as simple for people to overlook. Either more interesting riffs, maybe effect pedals, or a completely different instrument altogether might freshen that lead up. Your “sound” is one thing but it shouldn’t impede the quality you want to attain.

With all of these cons, it really boils down to better production. A third party away from this band could have tightened up many of these songs. Granted, the album duration may be cut in half due to the amount of lulls throughout, but 15 minutes of great music would be much more to chew on than 30 minutes of mediocre or bland music (just ask matt pond PA). I would assume that if WTaTGG get into the studio for an LP again, they’ll bring along a friend from a different band to try to tighten some odds and ends up. In my opinion, a handful of these songs fit a completely different theme (“Quite the Tiger!”, “Run Away”, “Best Thing”, “On the Walk to Crissy Field”) and would work either as a completely different project or a very different EP of some sort.

On a more subjective note, “Flesh, Blood, and Bone” was just completely confusing. I like the idea, sort of like an inspired version of “I’m So Tired” by Fugazi. The problem here is that “I’m So Tired” wasn’t awkwardly strange as a part of Instrument Soundtrack since this album was a descent from the Fugazi stylings heard on other more popular albums such as 13 Songs. “Flesh, Blood, and Bone” seems to come out of the left field of a completely different stadium. It is a definite descent from what the brash, raw, punkish underpinnings offer — but even more so, it is a definite descent from even the slower “singer/songwriter” labeled songs. Because of this, I feel like the direction of this band is much confused. If this is really a band, and not the musical scribbling of Warren Teagarden himself, I believe they would be most influenced by not just the power of a studio producer but the power of concept. The creativity is wonderful, but streamlining it towards an ultimate goal might be much more interesting than splattering this talent willy-nilly.

The Verdict

I went to try to find “I’m So Tired” and ended up coming back to 13 Chambers by Wugazi. This mash up actually provides a fairly important commentary to the likes of Warren Teagarden and The Good Grief. When I first started to blast Wugazi, I was sort of sad that only a handful of Fugazi hits were represented on this mash up, whereas a good amount of Wu-Tang Clan‘s hits were all over the album. On my reflection of this, there was almost an infinite possibilities to attack a Fu + Wu mash up. You could have been Wu heavy or Fu heavy. Then, you could have been representing the popular tracks from either band. Then, you would have to find the creative way to mash selected songs together without tampering with the tracks so much that they become indistinguishable. And then all of these other possibilities became apparent when thinking about how I would do it. What ended up happening is that Wugazi did it right when prioritizing The Wu as the lyrical bed and Fugazi as the instrumental bed. Select only a handful of very strong and seemingly classic beds from Fugazi and properly assess the vocal melodies from Wu-Tang Clan to match those beds. Other combinations could work, but not as well.

With that analogy, Warren Teagarden and The Good Grief’s self-titled release is one of the many possibilities this band could exist as. In some iteration, they exist as the best this combination of minds and creativity will allow… but this time is not this album. Unless their fan base is already galvanized as a crazy party anytime they play, I wouldn’t expect these guys to be selling out Bottom of the Hill anytime soon. If they do want to sell out The Hill soon, they might have to rethink what the band is truly all about. Either way, there is a lot of potential to be had but also a lot of work to be done. Hope to see the next iteration of these guys soon.

Category : Record Reviews
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19th Oct2011

Album Reviews: M+A – Things.Yes

by Blake

M+A is an electronic duo from Italy who are an average of 20 years old between the two (19 & 22) – 20.5 if you’re an asshole. Things.Yes is part ambient and part electronic. If it was a noun, which it is, I would say it is a place. The place? Remember that episode of Twin Peaks with the midget in the red room who speaks backwards with that delightful lisp? These fellas’ are his surrogate musicians – vocally, anyway.

A Sample For Your Ears

Pros

I really enjoyed listening to this album. How much? Well, as much as you can enjoy an album that equates with taking a bottle of muscle relaxers without the risk of overdosing. The album begins with a little edge and rounds off into fairly fast-paced tuneage, but relaxed all the way through. “Yes.Pop” is something I would hear from a DJ like Helios mixed with a bit of the Sigur Ros/mysterious midget lyricism. This is what you can expect from most of the album, and it is enjoyable. As soon as “Liko Lene Lisa” picks up at about 1 minute, the hook is smooth like sleeping in silk boxers. Not arousing, mind you, but definitely soothing. “Bam” is a little more straightforward in its approach to structure. In fact, the tune is really reminiscent of “Over the Pond” by The Album Leaf. There is that ever-so-slight chipmunk whisper that makes you want to cry. Why? I don’t fucking know – because it sounds helpless, that’s why. Later on we get hit with some dreamy pop with “(We)”. It definitely reminds me of M83 a bit, maybe because I’ve been binging on them as of late.

Cons

None that I could find or even care to point out.

Verdict

There isn’t necessarily anything bad to say about this album. The fact that they recorded it in home and it sounds this good, coupled with the fact that I will keep it in my music library for future use means I really liked what I heard. These guys might not be reinventing the wheel, but as a genre piece, it is definitely expertly crafted and thoroughly enjoyable. The only thing left is trying to decipher the ID3 tags on this puppy. It looks like Pasolini covered them in the circle of shit.

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18th Oct2011

Bright Eyes @ The Paramount Theater (9/28/11)

by Adam Finley

Bright Eyes is winding down. Conor Oberst is retiring the moniker and a small piece of everyone in my age bracket’s adolescence is dying with it. I very clearly remember the day I first heard Lifted; it was a gateway drug into the twisted boy genius world of Bright Eyes that has resulted in a decade of fandom. In that time I’ve seen Conor live three times, once as part of Monsters of Folk and (now) twice as Bright Eyes. The MoF show and the first Bright Eyes show (2004 and 2005 respectively if I’m not mistaken) were good in their own way, but neither of them prepared me for the 2011 incarnation of Bright Eyes live.

One thing I can say for certain is that Conor is a consummate performer. He’s continually improving, and the difference between a Digital Ash-era Bright Eyes show and the one I saw a couple weeks ago is striking. The set was tight, driven, and sounded amazing beginning to end, despite some exceptionally shitty sound engineering during opener “Four Winds”. The pacing was perfect; Conor blasted through 22 or so songs in a 140 minute set that didn’t feel half as long as any of the ~90 minute shows I’ve seen this year. The breadth of material was staggering too, pulling from the Cartoon Blues EP, that 2004 split with Neva Dinova, and every album between Fevers & Mirrors and The People’s Key with a striking bias away from that newest release. They only dipped into The People’s Key three times, two of which (“Shell Games” and “Approximate Sunlight”) came back to back and were followed by “Something Vague”, an 11-year old song that I haven’t even thought about in half that time but remember every word to. It was a reminder of what this tour really was– a goodbye to a significant part of his career, not an attempt to move a new record.

Conor looked the part of the retiree, spinning triumphantly, smiling regularly, climbing into the audience, calling out Rick Rubin and Dr. Dre during the encore, and hamming it up in a way that both shocked and pleased me. My other two live experiences were of a distinctly different nature– an awkward man standing center stage angrily whispering acoustic songs– and I’ll take the self-confident man with the childish grin and custom Mike Mogis t-shirt any day.

I can see, though, why he’s retiring the moniker. That persona worked, and that music worked best, when he was fully invested in the character of Bright Eyes– the sulking, self-loathing, uncertain kid who obsessively scribbled dark poetry and felt weird in public places. But watching Conor strut around the stage, downright cocky, it’s clear that he’s outgrown Bright Eyes. He’s taken that train to the end of line, and he summed it up perfectly with an extra tidbit thrown into closer “Road To Joy”: “My mind races with all my longings/but can’t keep up with what I’ve got”. He let those words hang in the air for just a second and then, with a grin, added “which is so fucking much it’s ridiculous”.

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17th Oct2011

Album Reviews: The Mommyheads – Delicate Friction

by nickwan

The Mommyheads have been a band longer than you’ve been alive. I mean, I’m assuming most of our demographic are college undergrads who were born at the very earliest 1987 and onward. Some other things The Mommyheads have seen since they’ve been a band: two generations of Bush as president, the use of the internet, cellular phones being a necessity rather than a luxury class symbol, the beginning and end of the show Northern Exposure, Arli$$, Newsradio, and Moesha… the list goes on. Something The Mommyheads might not have figured out back in Brooklyn in 1987 would probably be outlasting some of these niche things as well as many musical fads throughout the years: grunge, nu-metal, that weird fascination of the coffee house acoustic singer, shitty whiny high school pop punk meets hardcore music, and countless waves of weird popular electronica (that weird feeling you get when you realize Darude – Sandstorm was a huge top 10 hit before). The Mommyheads haven’t sold their sound out over the past 24 years. That alone, no matter what kind of band you are, is insanely impressive. Let alone, still producing a sound that is musically relevant to the scene to day… that’s just something above and beyond any logic or reason.

The Mommyheads’ latest release, Delicate Friction, is not a sort of jalopy. I mean, I’ve been playing music with a friend for just about 10 years and we’ll go into the studio just to sit and go through the process of writing songs… nothing to jump out of our seats for. Delicate Friction is no exercise. This is definite the real deal here.

Check out “Another Crowded House” and “Hello Friends” below!

To stream the entire album, visit MAGNET here!! (I highly recommend it)

The Pros

The Mommyheads have obviously been doing this for a long time, so it should be no surprise that all of the instrumentation is extremely tight. It’s something very easy to look over, but Delicate Friction would be the prototypical “perfect chemistry” that artists should strive for when composing instrumentation for songs, let alone an album. Every instrument, including vocals, are all extremely well-balanced. I can’t find the liner notes for who did production on this album, but rest assured many a credit goes to that man or woman.

This album, unlike many other albums lately, doesn’t race through at warp speeds. That happens usually when there are many small, nitty-gritty parts, making up a single song. The sort of ADD musical culture we exist in now fails to try to flesh out a legitimate chorus or verse section that many artists of the past fleshed out completely. The Mommyheads being one of those bands who flesh out practically all parts in a song. There are no slouches here — whether it’s Adam Elk belting out some great vocal melodies or overlaying some tasteful riffs, or may it be Jason McNair’s perfectly blended bass riffs, Michael Holt’s sprinkling of keys or Dan Fisherman’s perfectly executed beats, every portion of every song is seemingly fractal in it’s make up — complex, intricate, relentless.

Something this album does very well is the fact that the band practically stands alone a part from any other band in the current music scene. It may draw similarities to Spoon at best, but a far cry from bands like Death Cab for Cutie and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (the latter two bands claiming influence from The Mommyheads). You can taste strongly the ties to the 90s rock era, but it doesn’t their choice to create this sort of music. Rather, their twist on this music has transcended the 90s and 00s — in my opinion, better than some early 90s then-indie rockers Weezer, The Get Up Kids, and (dare I say) The Pixies. These other bands have either evolved into something different than what they initially were or, in the case of The Pixies, pigeonholed themselves into re-living only a particular set of songs, regardless of any new music they come out with. The Mommyheads need not to do any of this because they really haven’t had a need to change what they create so well. With a little YouTube luck, below are some songs from previous Mommyhead eras. Sorry about the random cover, couldn’t find legit streams for any of the older stuff.



If these videos are any indication, The Mommyheads may have been ahead of their time back in 1987… to the chagrin of nu-metal and grunge.

Maybe the most important part about this album is the fact that aside from all of the history, this is just a good album. As a first time Mommyhead listener, I had no idea about how they formed, or when they formed, or that someone in Death Cab loves them, or that they were once a roll-of-the-dice for Dave Geffen. The album itself really stood out from the others, without the hype from their past. With that, this album in the context of other albums this year should definitely be looked at as something worth while to listen to — not because of the hype but because it is just good music.

The Cons

As mentioned before, this really is the ADD music era. This band seems to offer everything a prototypical band should offer… and that’s amazing. But as much as they can do within their instrumentation realm, I don’t personally feel challenged by anything “new”. Maybe the best example for that “new” feel would be Minus the Bear‘s album Omni.  Classically, Dave Knudson, a tapping-guitarist and shredder extraordinaire, can be heard and seen playing his guitar in a very unique and amazing fashion, including both finger tapping skills and a signature self-sampling of his own intricate riffs on both studio and live performances. He threw a curveball in when the album Omni came out, as a healthy chunk of the album featured Knudson playing the Suzuki Omnichord, a very weird analog 80s synth that produces a very original, almost video game/8-bit sound. The fact that the man who is known for shredding on the guitar is stepping away from the guitar to play a synthesizer probably scared a heavy dose of fans, but the outcome was actually really good (good enough to earn Omni an album of the year award last year). For The Mommyheads, weirdness shouldn’t be out of their range. And being together since 1987 should sort of nudge some songwriters in the direction of trying out some new things, whether that’s post-production stuff or weird instruments or something of that sort.

The Verdict

The Mommyheads are definitely back. This album is definitely a great phoenix for them, as it is their first LP in over a decade. With that, their past history led them to deliver an album that appears as if they never took a break at all. Everything about it is very well thought out, produced very well, and performed wonderfully. This sort of musical explosion from The Mommyheads might have been at the chagrin of new directions, as Delicate Friction is relatively similar to past Mommyheads stylings. Nonetheless, this album doesn’t just stand out as a star of The Mommyheads’ discography, but as a star in the music scene as a whole. If only all bands could sound as tight as this band.

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14th Oct2011

FXdoctor: To Infinity and Beyond

by nickwan

 

The scope at 402 has always been to promote the relatively unseen and the relatively unheard people in the music industry. FXdoctor is no exception. I was probably most infatuated with the earlier model of the pedal above after my first encounters with Ratatat, known 8-bit Fuzz users. Not too long after did my former roommate Matt Jehly, known as cr33P0ch in the 8-bit world, brought the same pedal to my attention. Years after, when interviewing Fang Island in San Francisco, an 8-bit Fuzz was just hanging out on the table. We got to talking about how cool the pedal was and how we came about obtaining our own FXdoctor pedals. Since then, many different and interesting encounters with FXdoctor pedal owners have came up. All of them fairly interesting and unique. All of them sort of ending in the same way… with the question, why aren’t these guys huge yet?

Joshua, the FXdoctor, is planning on being huge. His plan, outlined in the video below, is to get into trade shows and start marketing his line of products to the mass market — not just the passersby of the internet. He just needs a little help from his current and prospective FXdoctor fans.

Joshua very optimistically believes he’ll reach his current benchmark, set at $1000, without a problem. This project has only be up for a few days (it’s October 14th, today). His big dream, as it says on the Kickstarter page, is to get up to $10,000 in order to invest in some production equipment to cut costs further for both him and the consumers.

It’s quite rare 402 features these sort of pleas outside of the Twittersphere, but I feel interest pieces for non-musician-yet-independents is definitely within the range… especially music equipment. If you have supported FXdoctor before, try pitching in again for a shirt or something! If you haven’t yet and would like to, then click on friends. Click on.

Category : Complete Miscellany
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13th Oct2011

Album Reviews: Owen – Ghost Town

by nickwan

It’s no surprise Owen is one of the most anticipated releases for us here at 402. I literally had to pull out the “I’m the boss” card to get to review this. I mean… who wouldn’t? Mike Kinsella, the brains and brawn behind Owen, has been steadily putting out some of the best releases of the decade. It’s hard to say what really makes up the magic that exists from the start of an album to the end of it… it’s sort of like what makes up a movie you can watch over and over again. You know what’s coming, but because it’s done so well it’s too good to not watch. Or in this case, listen to.

Ghost Town, Owen’s sixth release in a decade, is yet another spell cast from what only could be wizardry. And how, as this is rumored to be the last Owen release…

Listen to a few tracks below!


The Pros

Something you’ll notice extremely early on is the larger band feel of this album. There seems to be much more instrumentation laced throughout the entire album than previous albums. Kinsella, a guitar vishnu and multi-instrumental paragon, normally fronts his singing and acoustic guitar as the stars of most arrangements, with minimal accompanying instrumentation surrounding a thick core. This album seems to go all out on a complete sound, with many songs including very strong drum and bass presence. Unlike other albums, it’s hard to imagine many of these songs translating to anything similar live. The drumming and layering of lead guitar seems very intricate, maybe more intricate than Kinsella can get away with live.

Ghost Town is undoubtedly the most rock sounding album of the entire discography. Compared to I do perceive. (arguably Owen’s most rock album), this album would be a notch down on the catchy riffs and plenty of notches up on the rock sound. Don’t come expecting I do perceive. part II here — Ghost Town really is it’s own beast.

Some new things that aren’t necessarily completely new to the Owen repertoire is the use of the stringed instruments other than guitar. There seems to be a much stronger presence of cello and violin on this than previous albums. The lends yet another layer of complexity to the entire album. And maybe most importantly, the amount of production that went into this album didn’t overshadow the core essence of what Owen is all about. Like always, the subtle weaving of all instrumentation and vocals are both exciting and haunting.

The Cons

Unlike previous efforts, it was hard to pinpoint that hooky song Owen albums usually include. Everything seemed to go by so fast that there wasn’t really one extremely catchy vocal melody or guitar riff or chorus that sucked me in the first time. After three listens, “I Believe” and “No Language” have ended up being my two favorites. This shouldn’t be a complete surprise, as both tracks feature some of the most complex and beautiful arrangements on the album.

I’m also never a complete fan of including tracks from an EP unless they are drastically different. “O, Evelyn…” is the title track from the EP with the same name, released during Record Store Day this past year. As much as I loved the teaser-EP, I would have been more in love with Ghost Town had it featured something other than “O, Evelyn…” or at the very least, a different arrangement of the song.

My last con, which is a very personal one, is the fact that I’ll probably never see Owen play in San Francisco again. I went through high school and all of college, basing much of my musical inspiration around Mike Kinsella projects. Having the ability to see him live three times was nice, but nowhere near enough. To this day, I’ve never flown further for a show (or flown for any show) than when Owen played with Andy Hull and Kevin Devine during CMJ a few years ago. So, hearing that this may be Mike Kinsella’s last hurrah actually makes me feel kind of ugly inside. Maybe that really is the whole idea behind Ghost Town, though. This feeling I get is truly, in all sense of the stupid word, emo.

The Verdict

Owen’s latest album would normally be good enough to jump into the album of the year nominee boat, but this time around is a bit different. The album actually plays really fast. I find myself having to keep repeating this album before it goes into the next album I have to review, and it’s more because I feel like I’ve barely breathed by the time it’s over. With the inclusion of “O, Evelyn…” and the lack of a snapper-hand-clapper, I feel like this album might be more of a slow growing force than a bullet train of awe. I’ve had two days with the album so far and it definitely will be a mainstay on my playlist for a very long time. It just didn’t feel that way initially. Come November and we’ll see if Owen’s Ghost Town can stand with the rest of them.

As for more on the album, Ghost Town has seemed to benefit from the production team of Brian Deck (Iron & Wine) and Neil Strauch (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy). The full sound gives Owen that band vibe it once hinted at with I do perceive. Those who are looking for an American Football revival might be mistaken — Ghost Town is far from American Football and that style of rock. It’s hard to exactly tell where this one will rank amongst the other Owen LPs, but for right now it’s definitely #1.

Category : Record Reviews
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12th Oct2011

Album Reviews: Hey OK Fantastic – S/T

by nickwan

That band you saw in some bar? Yeah, they put out albums. Some bar bands are definitely better than others. I remember once I saw this guy Alexis Harte and his band play at Aroma Roaster’s in Santa Rosa, California once (coffee shops count too, right?) and he blew me away. Ended up buying his then-recent album Sunlight Loping, which is a somewhat consistent playlist mainstay. Other bands I’ve ran into are just… it’s something wrong. Like, sometimes I wonder if this is a joke and they aren’t getting an actual cut from the bar. There was a band from my home town that I recall that was just horri-bad. They would play this bar I went to all the time… at the time, it was the only place in town with cask ale, so I was sort of limited on options of available cask releases. This house band would just destroy any passerby’s ideas of walking through the door. Just horrid music.

Hey OK Fantastic has that bar-band vibe. Maybe it’s the mastering and production? They seem to be very active in the live local circuit of Knoxville, Tennessee, citing a hundred or so gigs they’ve locally played. That murky, dark feeling you get from entering a bar and hearing a band fill out the room is definitely how this album starts out for me.

Listen to most of the album below!


The Pros

The album has this sort of western/folk feel mixed in with a rock twang. They are really consistent with that sound, actually. One thing that sort of reminds me of a bar band is the whole tone of the band. It’s really straight-forward: acoustic guitar with a backing band, the distorted guitar lead every so often, an “in-the-background” vocal arrangement. After the layers start peeling back, you can really tell this is a crew of battle-tested pros. They’ve been together for three years but they sound like they’ve all been playing music together in various forms for the past decade or so. It’s a sort of chemistry that isn’t necessarily picked out of the album as an instrument or a track or a certain part of a song but rather the entire culmination of all the songs together. The real bottom line at this point: this album is just fun.

Many of the songs are nonsensical or silly, based around unreal or unusual stories.  They range from childish (“Tale of the Turning Tide”) to weird (“Lookin’ for a Lizard”). Sprinkled throughout are some songs that are lyrically vague but err on the side of serious (“Something New”, “Headin’ South”). In a weird way, the seriousness does flavor the band as something that is a little more complete than just some rip-off of Tenacious D, which you might easily mistake them for. Rather, Hey OK Fantastic is more of a mix between The D and Umphrey’s McGee.

The Cons

The bar schema isn’t necessarily the thing most bands want to hear they sound like when they get a review written for them. The major driving force there is the production value of the album. The vocals literally sound like they are coming out of a karaoke play-and-sing speaker that is positioned behind all the other amps with all the reverb settings at max. It’s as if someone was screaming lyrics about some dream they had to me from an auditorium, and I’m located in the parking lot. And it’s not like Alex Minard, the vocals and guitar for the group, is a bad singer… he is actually a great singer. Which is why this strikes me so hard… why would you master your album like this? The scene I get throughout the album is me walking into a bar with that band in the corner of the room, crappy PA and a low ceiling, with the vocals muddy from poor leveling, and barely anyone paying attention. The murky mix of the vocals bleeding into the guitar and bass gives that cool effect of the vocals as an instrument, but if the album’s crux is the lyrical content then this does a pretty horrible job at spotlighting the most important part of the album.

Another con would be the context of this band in general. Is it that fun, happy-go-lucky joke-song band or is it something else? Am I missing the point? I don’t feel alone if I am. It doesn’t seem like a concept-y album. It doesn’t seem like their gimmick is one-dimensional either. But to their chagrin, it’s sort of like wearing too many hats. One song is some heart-felt road tripping song… one song is about how you’re pissed off at some lizard… you got that Office Space look for your promo image, but you also have this zoot-suit set up as well in this video. If you could pull it all off really well, I don’t think I would have a problem with it. But as of right now, it’s mediocre. If these guys streamlined an album around a big concept, I bet it’d be amazing.

The Verdict

There’s a lot left on the plate after listening to Hey OK Fantastic’s self-titled album. They do a great job in showing their range but they don’t do a great job in showing what they are great at. If the muddy sound is what they are going for, then they definitely nailed it… but I have a feeling that they want a bigger sound than that. The potential for greatness is a few notches higher than the potential for disaster, as all of the members of this band sound like well-oiled machines. I would only hope that they piece themselves together like a well-built machine.

 

Category : Record Reviews
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