Last November, I reviewed Del Bel, a Toronto-based electro-acoustic indie collective led by multi-instrumentalist Tyler Belluz, defined by the memorable voice of Lisa Conway, and supported by some dozen talented musicians.

Those who enjoyed Del Bel the first time around will be happy to hear that the collective is about to release a remix album of Oneiric, the album from which the two previous tracks were drawn.  When?  Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait!  The album will be released today at the Kazoo! Festival in Guelph, Ontario.  Each remix was produced by a different DJ from Guelph in a different style in honor of the festival.

For those who can’t bear to wait a few more hours, check out the streamable/downloadable remix of “No Reservation.” You may remember the composition from AEM137.  To appreciate the remix, we recommend that you listen to both versions side-by-side.  While the original is rooted around a heavy bass groove, the remix unfolds at a slower pace, leaving the listener in anticipation of that magic moment when the beat drops and the crowd goes wild.

The remix was produced by Live Action Fezz, a multimedia artist and designer best known as a member of the popular indie dance-rock band Green Go.

Those who want to hear more can purchase the full remix album through Del Bel’s Bandcamp page.  In addition to the digital version, the collective is offering a ‘semi-physical’ version of the release with small versions of the poster attached here (with the download code behind it), accompanied by a Kareem Abdul Jabbar basketball card.

Why Kareem Abdul Jabbar?  Well, why not!  He seems like a safer choice of basketball hero than Bill Lambeer, the legendary fouler commemorated in my recent review of Clear Plastic Masks.

Also, when you take a close look at the event poster, you’ll notice that his name makes a nice allusion to remixes, Del Bel, and the Kazoo! Festival.

Nate Greenberg

[[[Download the Remix]]]

Clear Plastic Masks delivers familiar rock essentials with an extra thick coat of grit and grime, and that’s precisely what separates the Brooklyn-based artist from the scores of imposters in the same zip code.

These guys are a bit dirtier than the rest, and it’s not just the press photo—a hauntingly accurate prediction of what my apartment would devolve into if my girlfriend ceased to visit and demand a socially-acceptable minimum of hygiene and socially-acceptable maximum of substance abuse. In the Pulitzer-worthy shot, we get the obligatory group of mostly-bearded dudes who, let’s face it, are obviously musicians, seated around a table about to collapse under the weight of several handles of booze, cans of red bull, and cups filled to various degrees with unknown liquids that could have been left out for days and, odds are, were used as ashtrays at some point or another, although they don’t appear to have done much good because most of the ash ended up on the table anyway. Upon closer examination, we wonder why the top half of a water bottle is just sitting out there and for what sketchy purpose it was sawed off at the middle—perhaps an improvised smoking device, although there’s certainly enough rolling papers around that it wouldn’t have been necessary, even if it would have been possible thanks to the requisite roll of duct tape. In the background, we notice bookshelves crammed with impressive tomes that appear to have received a lot of love, of which by far the most visible title reads, New York City. How perfect.

Yes, Clear Plastic Masks is a bit dirtier than the rest, and it’s not just the name, which frontman Andrew Katz explains was inspired by a male friend he watched perform under the female alter-ego Anita Fix and who, dressed in a slutty miniskirt and a flimsy blouse unbuttoned to the navel, wore a clear plastic mask layered thick with lipstick and mascara. “It was fucking mesmerizing,” Katz recalls, and I don’t doubt him at all. To top it off, apparently, the name was also chosen to evoke the “the great” Bill Lambeer, who twice led the Detroit Pistons to the NBA Championships, but is best remembered as one of the most notorious foulers to ever set foot on the court. That’s certainly not the most palatable set of influences, and begs the question of just what kind of image the band hopes to conjure. I should probably add that the name Clear Plastic Masks was only decided upon after careful deliberation. “We were trying to find something hip and catchy that the kids would like like The Dongs or The Biscuit Fuckers but got sick of the search and decided to go full weirdo instead,” Katz elaborates, and I can’t quite tell whether he’s sincere, sarcastic, or somewhere in between.

With the music itself, the focal point becomes not so much the inherent grit but the deceptively clean façade. There are plenty of bands that sound a lot filthier than Clear Plastic Masks. We’ve probably even reviewed a few of them on Ampeater. What makes this artist special is how the grime is hidden behind the proverbial clear plastic mask. And, the important thing to remember about this plastic mask is that it’s clear, so you can still see what’s on the other side.

Take A-Side “Working Girl,” for instance, which conjures a false sense of comfort rooted in familiar archetypes—a timeless chord progression, a sensual soul groove, smooth electronic organ, etc. However, the astute listener will sense from the start that the mix is a bit off. The murky outline of some deviant madness taints the music and, as the composition unfolds, peels away at the re-appropriated façade. Lo-fi production is one obvious culprit. The huge dynamic range and natural delivery of Katz’s vocals is accentuated every time he overdrives the mic. The grungy distortion also makes the whole mix seem much louder, favorably evoking a bootleg 8-track aesthetic. That said, Clear Plastic Masks is definitely a band that excels in the live setting and, let’s face it, the kind of venue where this music would feel most at home is a place where the sound is inevitably terrible but the volume is so high you don’t notice—the kind of place that smells like Bill Lambeer’s old locker and where you leave with a lingering ringing in your ears.

These endearingly off-putting qualities have earned Clear Plastic Masks a number of comparisons to the Black Keys. However, to me, it seems a lot less premeditated. Plenty of bands embrace the do-it-yourself craze as a way to grow themselves a fake set of balls—to feign the grit of authenticity—but Clear Plastic Masks employs it so convincingly that it seems essential rather than superficial. You won’t be fooled by (nor does the band hope to fool you with) the sleek Motown vibe which obscures the true grime like a blast of Ferbreze might obscure the stench of sex and cigarettes in a cheap motel room. If Marvin Gaye is the kinda music that makes you wanna turn the lights down low and get it on, this music is about getting laid and, if you happen to turn the lights down low, it’s just so you don’t notice the bedbugs and bloodstains on the mattress.

If production alone is not enough to ripple the conventional gloss, we get the lyrics, which are refreshingly honest and rife with sexual innuendo. I can’t help but respect Katz’s plea to the working girl: “if all my morning daydreams came true, I just might spend my day working on you!” Yet some of lyrics are less metaphorical than one might expect. For instance, the line about being distracted by the beautiful girl on the freeway and driving out of the lanes is straightforward narration. “We all used to work as movers together, Matt and Charlie still do, riding around in a box truck all day carrying peoples shit and watching the world go by and I guess this song just came out of all of that, all the incredible girls you see cruising around this town.” Sure, you can joke that these guys have earned the right to wear the trucker hats that so many hip indie rockers wear ironically, but I think we’d be missing the more important point. These straightforward and uncontrived references endow the music with an authentic or deep seeded sense of the blues, a term I use not as a genre but as a state of mind.

B-Side “Pegasus in Glue” is a lot louder and heavier than “Working Girl”, but seems to stem from the same general philosophy. Here, the clear plastic mask that the artist dons appears to come from the classic punk rock tradition, an influence we hear most clearly in the half-sung/half-chanted chorus, and in the enormous drum fills. Yet, after the second verse, the composition spirals into a loud but vaguely psychedelic melee of sounds. Even though it only lasts for minute, it creates the impression of being stuck in a never-ending trip, and debunks all attempts to pigeonhole the artist within a particular norm. The digression evokes the unsettling soundtrack to a broken merry-go-round, sometimes dragging at half-speed, other times spinning faster and faster.

Clear Plastic Masks is pretty unabashed about its influences. The artist makes no pretentious claims to be original or unprecedented. Katz explains that the impetus for “Working Girl” came from a lick stolen from an Otis Redding tune—which he promptly adds was also used by the Beatles and a million other song writers—and which he crafted into his own composition with the guidance of guitarist and keyboardist Matt Menold. With “Pegasus in Glue”, the influences are even more specific and, to an extent, absurd. Katz recounts how the heavy bass and drums remind him of a “funk version of the theme from Space Odessy 2001 in the movie Being There in the scene when Chauncey Gardner first leaves the confines of his father’s house and hits the rough streets of D.C. for the first time.” Call it a delusion of grandeur, call it genius, but these confessions also tap into an important recognition that most music amounts to little more than a combination of all the weird shit we’ve soaked in over our lives and all the weird shit floating around in our minds.

On that note, I feel that Clear Plastic Masks ought to be viewed as a found artist. The band takes disperse elements that have been cast out on the sidewalk and rearranges them in a way that their former owners would probably not approve of but—lo and behold—work a lot better than the rejected originals. And, as a pleasant byproduct, the result has the feel of an instant classic. When I hear Clear Plastic Masks, I hear an old hit played back on a transistor radio in a post apocalyptic future on the heap of junk and ruins that used to be Manhattan. Maybe you’ll hear something different, but I encourage you to let your imagination run wild. Just remember to wash your hands afterwards.

Nate Greenberg

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

A-Side “Alma Rose” was the track that convinced me. I first heard it several months ago and it’s floated in my head ever since. “Alma Rose” is packed with hooks so memorable that each one could merit a hit and, in sum, they amount to an epic hit. It begins with an ephemeral and melodic guitar riff that soars when the full band kicks in behind it. From here the band sinks into a more subdued verse, fueled by a drum and bass groove reminiscent of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, circa 1999. That comparison is no doubt bolstered by the voice of Alex Hall, whose extensive dynamic phrasing and subtle drawl hint at the power hidden behind the smooth poise. When the chorus finally hits, it delivers all we could hope for, melodic and powerful.

“Alma Rose” derives its unique (oxymoronic?) polished power in part from expert production. Slow Motion Centerfold’s debut album, Rock the Body Language, bears the mark of producer Brian Virtue, whose résumé includes work with main-stream rock icons like Jane’s Addiction, 30 Seconds to Mars, Audioslave, Deftones, etc.
The album is a bit of a throwback to these commercially successful rockers—the crunch of power chords and crash of symbols come across as heavy yet accessible.

Commercial may seem like the antithesis of indie, but it doesn’t have to be. To be commercial, an artist must be popular. An artist cannot be popular unless it appeals to the listener. When you tweak that notion, the rejection of popular music signifies the rejection of the listener. We must then be suspicious of the artist that claims to not give a shit about the public, then, for such claims are inherently paradoxical. An artist with a true distain for the public wouldn’t bother to release an album or perform a show. To do so engages the listener and invites feedback, whether positive or negative. So, in a sense, doesn’t all music seek to be popular?

“Alma Rose” contains much more than the fluff we’d expect from a track with such immediate appeal. The title lyric is a reference to a violinist who was deported to a concentration camp, where he was forced to lead an orchestra of prisoners as they played for their lives. B-Side “Super Grand Master” reveals a similar hidden weight. On first glance, it seems like a textbook pop-rock anthem with so many memorable sections that it’s hard to determine which one is the real chorus. (Is it the vocal harmonies at 43-seconds? The hits at 49-seconds? The unexpected heartbreak chord and reggae backbeat at 53 seconds?) Hidden behind these immediate pleasures, however, the lyrics reveal a mix of highbrow geekdom and punk attitude. The title is a reference to chess, and the verses were conceived as a “string of couplets.” Meanwhile, guitarist Chris Smith describes the principle theme as a “rally cry against narrow minded anti-visionaries who sleep in silk pajamas and are scared of people with Mohawks.”

Slow Motion Centerfold manages to weave these seemingly disparate elements together with ease. That stems in part from the fact that the band is comprised of childhood friends and includes a pair of brothers. Smith notes that “longterm friendship and brotherhood make the songwriting process more challenging but more rewarding. There is a great deal of trust and awareness of what we are all capable of contributing to a song, so if someone’s slacking, they aren’t going to get away with it.” It may be a mixed blessing, but I feel as if the bond between members is a significant element in the equation—it endows the music with added personality and comfort. Process may also factor into it. Slow Motion Centerfold’s compositions all stem from instrumental hooks but were developed piece by piece, as the band members were once scattered across different states. Hall observes that, “We used to write songs by sending pieces of demos through email. Then we’d put everything together during live rehearsals. We still work in this way even though we live in the same zip code.” In the process, we see an inherent balance between the immediate that the reflective—creation and revision.

We can all rattle off a short list of artists that have managed to appeal to the public and the critics alike. However, we tend to view these artists as an exception to the rule, and marvel at how they’ve struck a balance. Slow Motion Centerfold has carved a much more holistic path. Where other artists have seen inherent conflict and struggled for compromise, Slow Motion Centerfold has found the potential for symbiosis. Popular and immediate appeal serves as a gateway to the heavier stuff. It does not detract from the more enduring qualities of the music but, rather, allows the impatient easy access to those qualities.

I’ve been meaning to write up Slow Motion Centerfold for several months. Instead I procrastinated. With each month, I was afraid that I’d miss my window, and that the band would make it big before I got to it. Lucky for me, that hasn’t happened yet, but I’m certain it’s just a matter of time. Now and then a hit comes along that deserves the heavy rotation it gets. The two tracks featured in this review could be those hits. I wouldn’t mind hearing them in car commercials or piped into the aisles at CVS. For now, though, let’s enjoy them from the comfort of our home stereos.

Nate Greenberg

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

I work at a desk. It’s a big long desk, and most of the time I have it all to myself. So, I listen to music all day long. Sometimes I go on shuffle adventures, sometimes I let whole albums or compilations play through, but more often than not I get stuck on a song that becomes an anthem of sorts for the day. I get so hooked, so intensely enthused about a single musical event that I seldom make it all the way through on the first attempt. After several repetitions of the first verse and chorus I finally let it play to completion, and then again, and again. When I find a gem like this, it goes in a special playlist. The whole process repeats until the playlist swells to over an hour, at which point I send the whole damn thing out to friends as Force Music On You (FMOU) volume X. It’s tough to send folks music without overtones of pretension, so I eschew any greater sense of order and present the whole thing alphabetically by artist, with little to no context or explanation. Of the hundred or so people who subscribe, about 17 download the mix, I would guess maybe 10 actually listen to it, and 2 or 3 send me a note explaining why they loved or hated a particular song. On the week I included All Fox’s “Fit To Advise”, I received 9 e-mails asking if I could send over the complete album, and 7 follow-up emails asking if I had any more All Fox albums. It’s fairly rare for me to include an Ampeater band in an FMOU, let alone one that’s still pending consideration for a review. And yet, All Fox defied precedence and spread like wildfire from the Ampeater submissions box to my personal favorites playlist, to the “most played” section of my closest friends’ iTunes. We do a lot of explaining here on Ampeater, in an attempt to justify exactly why a certain artist merits such a bright spotlight of intellectual scrutiny, but All Fox needs no coaxing to break through the shell of relative obscurity. The music catapults itself across whatever divide supposedly exists between artists and listeners, and once it’s playing you have little choice left but to move and be moved by it.

All Fox is primarily Alex Fox Tschan, a 25 year old from Deltaville, VA who cites his father as his greatest hero, and was very nearly Dr. Alex Tschan, but for a bold decision to redirect his sights towards Brooklyn and a subsequent renaissance in his creative faculties. He left Virginia Tech in 2008 with a degree in Biochemistry, but with a penchant for deep thought and a sense that there remained something unfulfilled in his musical potential. Tschan has been taking tentative stabs at music making for the last ten years, but only saw his talent develop during college, as he found confidence in his once timid voice and realized that he would only (and could only) full explore the range possibilities available to him if he focused solely on his craft. Medical school isn’t exactly known for the range of diversions available during one’s free time, so he put his foot down and kicked a hitch in the hitherto straight-arrow path his life had taken to date. Working crap jobs for crap pay, Tschan made use of the time afforded to him by a flexible schedule to make music. In an interview with Sweet Tea Pumpkin Pie, he reflected, “For me, despite being broke, it has given me more energy and happiness to put towards my friendships, ideas, poems, songs, etc. than I could have ever dreamed. It has been the most rewarding and prolific time of my life, and it feels like it’s just starting.”

Leaving Alex Tschan at home in Virginia, it was All Fox that made the migration to Brooklyn, and he made it with an astonishing purity of intent. Long since a mecca for rising stars, New York has a tendency to attract the kind of assholes who buy guitars to “hit it big”, “make bank”, and “get laid”. All Fox came to our fair town with the hope of growing his art, escaping parental and societal expectations, and discovering what it is that makes music a successful medium for the transmission of ideas and emotions. Whether it’s work on his latest LP, screenplay, poem, or community project, All Fox has the insight of a genuine artist, and the dedication to produce work at a prolific rate. When I last wrote him about his Ampeater submission, he had not one, not two, but several albums worth of material for my perusal that had been completed in the months since his original submission. The songs on this 7-inch are culled from his first full-length solo album Peaceful Heart. Performed with a coterie of musicians on a huge variety of instruments, the album lands somewhere between Sufjan Stevens circa 2005 and Animal Collective arranged for chamber orchestra. Influences range from Sam Cooke to Walt Whitman, and seep out into the music as it skirts the edges of one’s expectations. All Fox’s songs assume a kind of crystalline structure, darting here and there with the confidence that its message can be conveyed in a more sophisticated manner than most pop songs presume. He goes so far as to assume an intelligent listener, or at the very least one that leaves a channel open for suggestion. Songs can take a number of approaches to satisfying listeners. Sometimes they’re linear, moving from Point A to Point B in a swell that peaks and then recedes; sometimes they’re circular, progressing in closed sequential loops of verse, pre chorus, and chorus; but sometimes they’re a wonderful pastiche of influences, attitudes, and impulses that suggest more than define the final destination of a particular songspace. It’s this latter mode that represents the predominant approach used by All Fox, and it’s indicative of a genuinely great mind at work, crafting something potent on a higher order than the blues and folk based idioms that are mixed so thoroughly with American soil you can practically taste them in a McDonalds hamburger. All Fox makes music that’s ever so slightly foreign to the average Joe, but that nevertheless resonates deeply with something fundamental in the human spirit.

In his Ampeater submission, All Fox included a link to download the full album, complete with lyric sheets for each song. Tschan’s words are poetic, and it’s but a small stretch to assume that many of them might have begun as actual poems. I had the chance to speak with Alex on the phone, and he came across as part scholar, part artist, and part philosopher, dispensing wisdom on music (both his own and other people’s) with a kind of insight and reflection that’s rare in young musicians. He explained, “a poem, and a song, and a story, a piece of art, a movie, they’re all the same thing–they could all be called ‘Fit to Advise’”. It’s the notion of transferral across media, that a song possesses an essence that can be conveyed in another form. It’s a more extreme version of the reduction that happens between record and stage; a great symphonic epic performed on solo acoustic guitar is still that same song, its essence is just captured using a different set of tools. I get the sense that All Fox would make music with the world if he could wrap his hands around mountains and smash them together. He explained, “Melodies happen in my head, and it’s my job to make sure I get them down. Sometimes I hear whole songs, fully orchestrated, but I don’t always have the tools to make them a reality.” The success of A-side “Fit To Advise” is in joining together odd rhythmic fragments into a song structure that’s wholly unorthodox and yet captures listeners in an organic flow from section to section. It’s almost classical in its motif-oriented composition, introducing sound objects or textures that grow, evolve, and re-appear at various points throughout the song. Every word, every sound is intentional. When you listen, focus not only on the music or lyrics, but on the intersection of the two. Pay attention to how the soundscape colors the text, and whether it remains constant or fluctuates across multiple repetitions. There’s meaning stuffed into every crevice of this song, and I question whether I’m “Fit to Advise” (har har) on the author’s primary intent, or whether there even exists such a thing in the complicated brain of Alex Tschan, but I nevertheless present the lyrics here for your consideration as you listen:

Hey little brother! Let’s go for a ride!
But clean that look off your eyes first.
Man, I told you before! … if i’m fit to drive, then I am sure as hell fit to advise you.

Hey little brother, whatcha got on your mind???
I guarantee you I’ve been below that line.
So I wouldn’t worry!
Between drugs & women… you’ll be doin’ alright if at least one ain’t hard to find.

I know you burn with desire, but easy tiger, she’s so lovely & complex.
Please, take my advice before you start…

I know you’re dying to try it, but easy tiger… have you researched its full effects?
Please, take my advice before you start…

And if you’re ever feeling expired! Well, easy tiger, it goes one right through the head!
Please, take my advice before you start…

B-Side “Engelhard Grocery 1997: Mama’s Outta Stamps” is a beautiful ascent to an extended instrumental outro. After a single verse we’re lifted up by layered guitars, strings,  and scattered percussion. It’s a cathartic release after the relative chaos of “Fit to Advise”. I was recently asked by a music loving friend if electronic instruments were now the predominant method of creating music. The answer is certainly “no”, but that’s almost beside the point. That some people even consider this a binary question is my main concern, and a continued source of bewilderment to me. Most of All Fox’s songs exist in a realm that pull heavily from both sides of this spectrum–acoustic banjos mingle with heavily processed electric guitars, digital production, orchestral strings (sometimes electrified), and even oboe. Most people develop proficiency with a tool and then only later discover the creative possibilities made possible by the skills they’ve acquired. All Fox turns this paradigm on its head and brings artifacts into being almost as an act of immaculate creation, inspired by nothing more than some whisper in the back of his thoughts that he’s then able to harness and make real. The result is not only praiseworthy but almost enviable. He’s currently working as part of a collective, inspired by the psychology of Jung and the poetry of Rumi. I’ve been sworn to secrecy on the details of the operation, but there are exciting things coming our way from All Fox, so stay tuned while he learns to move mountains. In the interim, you can download the complete album at BandCamp for $8, or save some dough and steal it from this artist-endorsed MediaFire link.

Ben Heller

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

Rocketship Park draws its name from a playground in the hometown of creator Josh Kaufman.  It’s an appropriate metaphor for an artist whose music balances bittersweet reflection with a hopeful childlike wonder.   At some point we realize that we’re too big to fit through the mouth of the rocket shaped slide but, with luck, we never forget how much fun it used to be.  Kaufman remembers and conveys that in the music on his new album, Cakes & Cookies.  Here too, we get a convenient metaphor.  The album entices the sweet-toothed listener with a cover illustration of the eponymous delectables and a unique promotional offer—each copy purchased comes with a free homemade cookie! While one must never judge an album on the dessert, here it provides a taste of the contents.  Rocketship Park’s original blend of symphonic folk-pop is rich, immediate, and above all, homemade.  NPR noted that it offers “a sense of peace and nostalgia that grounds even the most anxious of listeners.”

Rocketship Park is the main creative outlet for Kaufman, a Brooklyn-based instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, producer, and pâtissier. Kaufman has been an invisible force in the scene for several years.  His talents as a side-man and producer have brought him to the stage and the studio with the likes of Dawn Landes, Caithlin de Marrais, The National, Josh Ritter, Yellowbirds, Balthrop Alabama, and Higgins.  He has also collaborated with previously featured artists Benji Cossa and the Unsacred Hearts.  Kaufman seems at ease in the limelight, though, and the new album reveals that his most impressive talents may be compositional.

A-Side “Swan” is a small masterpiece—a warm and comfortable track with the potential to provoke a profound emotional response.  One would not often use the term epic to describe a two-minute composition but it’s the only appropriate term here.  The track begins with a simple but powerful chord progression that swells with each successive repetition.  “Swan” reaches phenomenal heights, but it never loses the stable foundation on which it is based.   With the heart of a folk ballad, it remains sincere and straightforward.  Acoustic guitar and banjo dominate the mix, while innumerable textures flesh out the rough edges with a lush background ambiance.  The brass arrangements, subtle and beautiful, are responsible for much of the effect, with contributions to harmonic depth that makes the simple composition glow.   Lyrics prove to be another focal point.  The track revolves around a single phrase:

I tried to see him,
but he was halfway gone.
Just a battered bird now,
he used to be a strong, strong swan.

The sentimental image evokes a sense of loss that darkens the euphoria of the instrumentals.  The words don’t sink in when they are first stated, but they become more and more powerful with each repetition.  On one level, they suggest a cynical reversal of the ugly duckling’s maturation into an elegant swan.  But I suspect that the message is not just cynicism.  Kaufman’s choice to ruminate on the line—rather than to bury it behind more words—emphasizes its emotional weight.  When I reflect upon the image, I do not feel duped by an empty metaphor but, rather, privy to an intimate and heartfelt confession.

B-Side “See You” takes the same essential ingredients and draws them out over a much longer span.  Kaufman delights us again with a simple chord progression full of harmonic momentum.  The dominant hook is the falsetto vocal line that delineates verses as an interlude.   However, Kaufman remains a compositional minimalist, and lets the track unfold at a leisurely pace.  When the layers of horns, washed out guitars, and noises finally escalate, they seem like a meditation on the words themselves.  Although the song clocks in at nearly five minutes, it seems to bypass time altogether. The loops continue to weave on in our sub subconscious even after the music itself has faded out.

Cakes & Cookies marks a slight shift in process since Off & Away, the artist’s debut album released in 2007.  Rocketship Park has downsized from a band to a solo initiative.  In some senses, the shift is just semantic.  Kaufman has always been the main impetus behind the project, and even the material on the new album includes important contributions from guests—most notably, Dawn Landes, Bryan Devendorf, Travis Harrison, and Nate Martinez.  Some of these musicians also appeared on the artist’s debut.  However, Rocketship Park has coalesced primarily around the visions and efforts of Kaufman.  In another recent review, I noted the Toronto-based artist Del Bel’s evolution from a one-man studio project to a twelve-member collective posed to take the stage.  Rocketship Park has headed in the reverse direction.  Kaufman never lost his original vision of a grand, symphonic sound, with rich layers and textures.  Nevertheless, the intimate atmosphere of the studio seems to have meshed well with the individual and reflective nature of the music.  Kaufman uses a lot of overdubs, but it’s not about the overdubs.   He employs them as a means rather than an end, to emphasize compositions that remain simple and personal at the core.  Even when I listen to these multilayered recordings, I can’t shake the feeling that Kaufman is seated over in the corner of the room, strumming a battered acoustic and singing his lyrics directly at me.

A homemade cookie has universal appeal.  However, it’s also a nice gesture that illustrates the very essence of Rocketship Park.  In an age where most people get their music on the internet, the artist becomes distanced from the listener.  This is true of double-platinum mainstream artists and obscure independent artists alike.  But the cookie is a solution—it’s a warm personal touch in a cold digital era.  I feel pretty much the same way about RocketshipPark. Kaufman’s music doesn’t merely satisfy your sweet-tooth, but also resonates on a deeper level.  You’ll find yourself drawn to it for the same reasons you favor your grandmother’s recipe over the store-bought brand.  The ingredients are preservative free, and they’re baked with undeniable love.

Nate Greenberg

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

Issued almost two years ago on November 30th 2009, AEM029 introduced The Unsacred Hearts as a band in the midst of a sea change, caught between their early roots as a firebrand post-punk outfit from Blue Point Long Island and an uncertain future as a group of poetically inclined and musically intelligent adults with jobs, law degrees, wives, and children. For the last five years The Unsacred Hearts have been working towards their latest album, fixing on it like a distant star that’s always visible but just barely out of reach. Instrumental versions of the songs have been floating around for years, serving as the soundtrack to band members’ lives, both informing and being informed by this great transition. Drummer Travis Harrison even walked down the aisle to an early version of B-Side “Flesh and Bone”. Working off and on at Serious Business Music with a coterie of friends, the album began to take shape, and at last The Unsacred Hearts completed and released The Honor Bar. We’re thrilled to follow up on our original 7-inch with two tracks from this release, which is available now on CD and Cassette from Serious Business Records.

I spoke with drummer, producer, and engineer Travis Harrison about the new record and the impetus behind The Unsacred Hearts’ change in musical direction. It was, he explained, an attempt to make music that was more accessible, and that he could put on at home without being asked to turn it down or off. The band simply wanted to make the kind of music that they themselves wished to listen to. After years of punk-inspired invective, The Hearts wanted to recast themselves in a mold that spoke more directly to their current situation. When their self-titled debut was released in 2004 they didn’t have families or careers. There’s a reason that the music-to-beverage-matching website drinkify.org lists “The Unsacred Hearts” recipe as 4 oz. Marijuana, 4 oz. Ginger Ale, and 1 oz. Macallan Scotch. They were once young dudes making loud music. Now they’re medium-young dudes making listenable music. It’s a change that makes most musicians uncomfortable, like they’re giving up some essential part of their being by sacrificing the attitudes they developed as teenagers. But what The Unsacred Hearts understand is that their energy and enthusiasm isn’t gone, but rather rechanneled into creating a lush musical territory they were once too drunk or nearsighted to fully render. Singer and lyricist Joe Willie sums this up wonderfully, “While we made our bones on ultra-distilled rock and roll, weird chords and wild live sets, we always led with the heart. Loud and fast, yes, but the sonic boom was just the straightest line to the truth.”

If “the truth” is something that can be distilled into a song (and I believe it is), then Joe Willie is a kind of musical oracle. In his earlier days he came across as a frenzied beat poet frontman, as if someone had given Jim Morrison the stage at an open mic and handed him an eight ball of cocaine. On The Unsacred Hearts’ latest material he comes off as sage-like, split somewhere between Tom Waits, Lou Reed, and Gil Scott-Heron. The acoustic landscape of this album is less jagged than in past attempts, and Joe Willie’s spoken vocals float atop a more serene trajectory, allowing for greater focus on a blended aesthetic and lyrical turns of phrase. In his summary of the album, which is itself a masterful bit of prose, he turns back to New York as a cyclical influence on The Honor Bar. He explains, “The Honor Bar evokes the city of New York itself or, rather, the city resounds in The Honor Bar. The maelstrom and beauty of the city comes across in the sparse, unerring beats, the stark instrumental phrases, the myriad voices in whispers and shouts. Webs of sounds, words and images — all traffic on the Bowery and midtown sky scrapers — juxtapose with the sweet intimacy of the fire escape and 2AM walks down solitary side-streets.” It’s a soundtrack not for New York City, but an abstraction of New York City, for those precious few moments when you lose yourself completely in the web of monolithic architecture and compact humanity.

A-Side and title track “The Honor Bar” fades in to a tumble of percussive thunder and giving way to hand drum percussion and a driving figure on acoustic guitar set to the walking pace of your average long-legged New Yorker. The instrumentation is lush, with glockenspiel, bass, piano, accordion, electric guitar, and a compressed drum set added to the mix at the chorus. There’s an electronic vibe to this track that’s unheard on previous recordings–the tinkered drum sound and distorted melodic figure on the outro all hint at an extended sonic palette for The Unsacred Hearts. It all serves as a backdrop for Joe Willie’s baritone musings, which are heard with a new depth and resonance thanks to the relative tranquility of the musical accompaniment. This was the last song completed for The Honor Bar, and best encapsulates the attitudes driving the band’s project in self-reinvention. This is music I could read to, music I could work to, music I could put on and ignore, but what makes it special is that I wouldn’t actually want to do any of those things. Something about it continues to command listeners’ full attention, and it does so through a great depth of musical vision rather than pure volume. This more than anything is a sign that The Unsacred Hearts aren’t just growing up and continuing to make records–they’re maturing.

B-Side “Flesh & Bone” is a lyrical pastiche of musical and literary references. Some are undoubtedly intentional and some maybe incidental, but none come off as heavy-handed. Rather, they succeed in evoking the spirit and ambiance of entire songs and imparting some part of their essence and meaning on “Flesh & Bone”. The complete lyrics are below, with footnotes:

Picture me, picture you, in a picture book(1) we’re paging through
Picture me with the slings and the arrows(2), picture me when the dirt road narrows
On a hill, far from home, straits of Gibraltar, streets of Rome(3)
Mississippi River rolling slow, lost in the rain, Juarez, Mexico(4)

When you’re tired, when you’re on your own
I’ll be there, flesh and bone
I miss you, baby, when the river bends(5), I miss you, baby, when the dirt road ends
Picture me, picture you
Picture me, perchance to dream(6), picture you, beside the stream

When you’re weary, when you’re on your own
I’ll be there, flesh and bone

1.) The Kinks — Picture Book: “Picture book, pictures of your mama, taken by your papa a long time ago. // Picture book, of people with each other, to prove they love each other a long time ago.”

2.) Shakespeare — Hamlet: “To be, or not to be, that is the question: // Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer // The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, // Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, // And by opposing end them?”

3.) Bob Dylan — When I Paint My Masterpiece: “Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble / Ancient footprints are everywhere / You can almost think that you’re seein’ double / On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs”

4.) Bob Dylan — Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues: “When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez // And it’s Eastertime too // And your gravity fails // And negativity don’t pull you through // Don’t put on any airs // When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue // They got some hungry women there // And they really make a mess outta you”

5.) The Country Gentlemen — Down Where: “Down where the river bends // With God’s help we’ll meet again // Under the same old sycamore tree // Proud of each other in the land of the free // I’ll go down to the ocean blue // Just as close as I can to you // This old ocean might keep us apart // But it won’t keep you dear from out of my heart”

6.) Shakespeare — Hamlet: “To die, to sleep // To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub! // For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, // When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, // Must give us pause—there’s the respect // That makes calamity of so long life.”

These references weave an intricate subtext to the song, evoking numerous depictions of death and forcing us to consider the nature of human memories and interactions. The Picture Book reference suggests that we document our own lives only to convince ourselves that we’ve had substantial experiences once we can no longer feel them so acutely. And yet, though memories fade, some experiences persist across time, and there’s an element of humanity’s presence that we can seemingly access through locality or state of mind, as indicated by the reference to When I Paint My Masterpiece. But through all this, through hardships and struggle, what should be our relationship with death? Is it an escape or a demise? Joe Willie engages this conversation with a text of his own, profoundly contemplating man’s position on this earth and our relationship to a hazy past and a precarious future. This interaction is realized musically as an acoustic ballad, giving way to vocal counterpoint between Joe Willie and guest vocalist Jaymay, in an exchange that grapples with the eternal nature of true love, which is wholly supported by Willie’s lyrics and simultaneously problematized by the various references sprinkled throughout the song. Once fully teased out, it’s a brilliant polemic that’s typical of Joe Willie’s remarkable insight as a lyricist.

To round out his description of The Honor Bar, Joe Willie writes, “The Honor Bar is certainly not for everyone and neither are The Unsacred Hearts. When we formed, our only goal was to make rock n roll. We did not ask, what is cool, what do people want to hear, or what should we wear. The only question was, how do we keep playing rock n roll? And, over the years, we kept asking that question with each new song, each live set bringing a response. When we last asked, the answer was The Honor Bar.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Ben Heller

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

Del Bel began in the studio as an outlet for the compositions of Tyler Belluz, a Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist.  The talents of Belluz must run deep, since to list them all on the Del Bel press-kit required the liberal adjustment of the page layout.  He is the principal compositional force behind the collective, and plays double-bass, electric-bass, drums, guitar, accordion, organ, and, musical saw on the artist’s forthcoming debut, Oneiric.  From what I gather, the final instrument on the list is not some sort of saw-toothed synthesizer but a very real and very sharp handsaw played with a bow, much like a violin.

Belluz has the credentials to be a one man band, but he’s also recruited ample assistance since he began work on Oneiric in 2010.  Del Bel has evolved into a collective effort, and the album credits reveal—when you make it past the surprise mention of the musical saw—that Belluz is supported by an ensemble of epic scale and experience.  To list all the projects in which the collective’s dozen members have been involved would require a veritable retrospective of Toronto indie-rock since the turn of the millennium.  Members of the collective hail from Broken Social Scene, Do Make Say Think, Bry Webb Band, Happiness Project, Ohbijou, Flowers of Hell, Sun Parlour Players, and countless other bands that I haven’t bothered to list, but which are probably worthy of mention.  The link between Del Bel and these illustrious acts, however, is cemented by more than shared members.  Del Bel is a child of the creative orgy that spawned super-groups like Broken Social Scene in the first place.  These artists share a collective heritage in an era of free love and free downloads, where a band does not represent an exclusive relationship, and where the amount of projects a respectable musician may be involved in is limited only by the number of accounts he or she can bother to register on Facebook and MySpace.  The inherent philosophical framework seems exemplified by the scene in Toronto, although Belluz insists that it’s become a worldwide phenomenon.  “I don’t think Toronto has more collectives then other cities,” he explains.  “In our case, we don’t want to be confined to playing the same stuff, day in and day out. It’s quite exciting trying to remember the songs in the middle of concerts.”

Del Bel plans to perform with a (marginally) stripped-down ensemble of nine. “I still have other people that recorded on the album that want to join live” Belluz jokes, “but I think I gotta keep this band smaller than a hockey team.” Already, the collective is so large that transportation to shows requires a caravan of automobiles.  Nevertheless, with nearly all nine members involved in three or four additional active projects, I wondered whether logistics might prove problematic. “I haven’t run into too many problems trying to organize this 9 person band,” Belluz explains, “but by all means, I need to book these people way in advance.” With regard to creative process, Del Bel seems to have happened upon a functional dynamic rare for bands of such size.  Belluz oversees the artistic direction of the collective, but encourages other members to contribute to the compositional process, with the observation that, “it would seem a bit controlling to direct someone on how to cry into their instrument for desired effect.” Thus, Del Bel has coalesced into a more permanent fixture, poised to step from the shadow of the prolific resumes of its membership.

Oneiris, a term that signifies a surreal state, is an apt title for the album—slated to be released on Friday, November 11th in CD, vinyl, and mp3 format—which evokes a thick dreamlike atmosphere.  Like a dream, its full of unexpected twists and turns.  The eleven tracks on the album all sound very different.   A-Side “No Reservation” and B-Side “Invisible” give a pretty accurate indication of the vast range of styles represented.  Nevertheless, the tracks seem united by a common bond that is difficult to pinpoint.

A significant part of the bond is Lisa Conway, whose dynamic vocals and fresh lyrics mark the Del Bel aesthetic.  Belluz describes Conway as a major creative force behind the project, and frames her role in the band as all but crucial.  Therefore, I was surprised to learn that Oneiris was initially recorded as an instrumental album.  Belluz hints that it took a bit of coercion to get long-term co-collaborator Conway on board with the project at first. “She only quit three—maybe four—times,” he jokes.  “Technically the songs were conceived as weird little instrumentals. But I knew in my heart she would be the (only) one to sing on them.” Upon further listens, however, we may notice the mark Conway’s indecision has left on the music.  Del Bel seems to draw its unique personality from the uncertain maturation process.  To imagine how it might have sounded otherwise would be to imagine Harry Potter without the scar, or to imagine the Canadian topology unmarred by glaciers that carved it’s lakes and mountains.  “I still can’t imagine anyone else’s reaction to trying to fit vocals lines to the instrumental tracks, confesses Belluz. Conway’s additions are shaped by the unique demands she faced in fitting vocal parts to compositions that had developed without them.  She has taken great care not to intrude upon the music’s instrumental core.  The tracks unfold at a leisurely rate, and Oneiris includes several instrumental interludes. For instance,“Invisible” forces the listener to wait nearly a third of the track time for vocals to drop.  When they finally do, Conway’s line maintains a tasteful deference to the ensemble, buried behind wispy synths and a persistent piano drone.

In general, Del Bel devotes a lot more attention to instrumental detail than the typical indie band—even the typical twelve member indie band, if such an archetype exists.  This comes across not only in the shape of each composition, but also in the intriguing arrangement of acoustic and electric elements. The whispers of keyboards wash over earthy drum grooves and the unpredictable slaps and creaks of a double bass.  Ample credit is also owed to Heather Kirby, who mixed the tracks.  All tracks on Oneiris suggest a focus on timbre over melody or harmony. “No Reservation”, for instance, builds toward a chorus unusual for its stark lack of harmonic movement, anchored by a memorable riff forcefully delivered in unison by vocals and instruments.  The tune evokes the cabaret-jazz of a bygone era, but it does so with deceptive minimalism, capturing the vibe but rejecting the details.  I recalled a memorable trumpet solo on the track but upon repeat listens, I suddenly realized that there is no trumpet solo whatsoever.  A few growls and single-note burst evoke the sensation as convincingly all the borrowed notes of a Dizzie Gillespie solo.  In that respect, Oneiric seems philosophically a closer relative to a film score than any album by the indie-rock collectives from which it draws members.  And indeed, Del Bel has contributed to numerous film scores, which is a nice accomplishment if you remember that the group has yet to play its first show or release its first album.

In short, the ingenuity of Del Bel shines through in the grand scale of the vision, and in the tactful precision with which it has been realized. Listeners will be seduced by the top-notch production and arrangement, while the emotional weight of the composition and nuanced musicianship will keep them hooked.  This music has a lot of layers, and it’s bound to resonate with most audiences.

Nate Greenberg

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A couple weeks ago I revisited The Mighty Boosh episode “Searching for the New Sound”, in which the famous Bongo Brothers Rudi & Spider enter into a psychedelic journey through time and space to find their band’s “new sound”. As I sat there watching, I knew on some level that it was hilarious, but I was nevertheless paralyzed by the realization that this parody spoke to me on a level that it perhaps shouldn’t. My bandmate and I seem to reinvent our sound every gig, veering wildly from country to electronic, from rockabilly to black metal, and back again. And I don’t think we’re the only ones. There are hordes of reasonably competent musicians searching for their “new sound”, while going great lengths to avoid the common tropes of rock and roll, like a virus that might spread to consume everything in sight, leaving them left with nothing but pentatonic scales and skinny jeans. What they fail to realize is that these bits of musical kitsch are the proverbial building blocks of civilization, and when used in interesting new ways with a bit of creative enthusiasm are infinitely more compelling than whatever noise we might conjure in our attempts to eschew convention. In other words, there’s a reason we love pop music–it draws on its own past successes and expands upon them while culling inspiration from an increasingly large and varied pool of influences. We recognize something familiar and comforting in every pop song, even as it pushes the fold of our expectations. At exactly 22 seconds into Santah’s magnificent A-Side “No Other Women,” I saw with perfect clarity how decades of rock and roll can ferment into something powerful. This shit’s 110 proof, and it blew me clean off my feet.

I don’t know much about Midwestern songsmiths Santah, but their 7-inch landed with a splash in the Ampeater submissions box, and I’ve been entranced by its mix of hook-laden vocal lines and layers of controlled fuzz. Stanton and Vivian McConnell double on guitar and vox, with Tommy Trafton on keys, Otto Stuparitz on bass/vox, and Steve Plock on skins. There’s a brand of upbeat pop music breaking through the surface of indie gloom, like a gentle hand on the shoulder of the genre, saying “Hey man, it’s gonna be ok. Just dance,” and Santah’s the best of the bunch. I could write an entire review about the first 22 seconds of A-side “No Other Women”. It’s not so much an introduction as a launch mechanism, an entry into the song that proclaims excellence and follows through in bold strides. The predominant sound of this sequence is an ever so slightly distorted guitar tone, supported chordally by the piano and with a percussive emphasis on each downbeat. The main melody is repeated twice, with the last note held, repeated twice more, and then held again while building in preparation for the vocal entrance. The track kicks off with a “Whoa!” and proceeds in what’s either 12/8 time, 3/4 time with 4 bar groupings, or a very slow 4/4. Hey, it’s rock music, who the fuck really cares, but this rhythmic change-up ends up being the predominant feature of the song, and might go largely unnoticed by most listeners. Most really really catchy songs have a single lynchpin decision that makes them so infectious. It’s the difference between a great song and one that takes residence in your skull, bouncing around in short little snippets while you go about your business. Truth be told, I’ve had the Macarena stuck in my head for 17 years. Whether I really want to admit it or not, that’s a damn catchy song, but I digress. What carries “No Other Women” past the first half minute is Stanton McConnell’s resplendent voice. It’s young and vibrant in a way that eschews any accusations of frivolity and instead conjures imagery of a life waiting to be lived, with open roads stretching in every direction, tempting you to shoot away for an adventure, leaving gas bills unopened, house abandoned, and pets unfed. I have a tendency to ignore lyrics in songs, half because I can never understand them, and half because I’d rather find my own context. I generally turn to lyrical content when I run out of musical fuel, so it’s a compliment of the highest order that I have no idea what McConnell is saying, and don’t particularly care. What interests me is the impression a song gives as a whole, and whether that impression is but a sketch of something interesting or an immersive world I can crawl inside for three minutes. Songs like “No Other Women” are why iTunes added a repeat-one button–I could leave it on all day, and I actually have on several occasions. When a song starts out with such tremendous momentum, it’s always tempting to listen for echoes of the opening in subsequent sections. I’m often tortured by songs that bust out a killer lick just once and then refuse to repeat it in any form, but Santah kindly treats us to a refrain of the intro melody in the vocal line, including the fantastic moment of “Whoa!”, this time shouted repeatedly and extended to “Whaowhoaoooo” and supported in lush harmonies. It’s a merciful template for a song, giving us the right hooks in the right proportions, using a composite of familiar recipes to make something new and arguably superior to any of its ingredients.

When I’m met with an A-side that blows me away, I immediately assume the B-side will temper my wildly positive expectations and prove the artist in question to have little or no depth of talent. I begin formulating paragraphs as to how I might excuse the oddball B-side in light of the A-side’s marvelous qualities. So, when the B-side turns out to be terrific, I have to step back and revise my game plan. Santah’s B-side “Neighbors & Cousins” is one such shining example. The song unfolds into a vamp at walking speed, powered by a fuzzed guitar strumming eighth notes and an almost tropical bass line set high in the mix. I’m trying to avoid using the word “sunny” to describe this song, as it’s plastered all over Santah’s press material, but there’s something about it that’s inarguably…sigh…“sunny”. Whether it’s the bass hook or the vibrato in the lead guitar tone, something about this song invokes a beach weather mentality that gives this 7-inch a particularly uplifting quality. It’s also refreshing to hear a real (or close facsimile of a real) piano tone. In a world in which most anybody can play a few chords on synthesizer and loop it in Ableton, it’s nice to hear the percussive thump of piano keys being used to good effect. I feel like I’ve maybe harped a bit on how conventional and sunny Santah’s music might seem, but there’s weirdness here too, which is what separates their intelligent song craft from (and elevates it above) the uninspired masses. Take a listen to the breakdown at about 3 minutes in–it’s a pretty ballsy move to interrupt a song with so much momentum to introduce a spoken word section over bass, drums, and a dissonant little piano figure. But it works, and instead of killing the song’s meticulously crafted vibe, it builds tension leading into the coda and snaps the listener back into the song as it builds to its grand conclusion. I don’t mean to infer that this was some careful formula, mapped out on paper long before the song even existed, and that’s the danger of writing about music–it’s so easy to strip a song down to its bones, and by the time you’re done imposing methodologies you’ve killed whatever magic once existed. I’m sure the origin of the ending tag to “Neighbors & Cousins” sounded more like “Bro, bro, listen, let’s just like, do the thing we do earlier, but kinda crazier here, bro” and less like Adorno dissecting Mozart, but my editors only allow me to say “bro” six times per article, and I’d probably exceed my quota if I went this route. In any case, my point is that it’s easy to kill good pop music with criticism. It’s something that’s fundamentally meant to be felt and understood without the need to articulate its various nuances. If it had to be explained, it wouldn’t be popular, now would it? Needless to say, this 7-inch requires no explication for maximal enjoyment, so you might want to skip all this drivel, crank your speakers, and hit play on Santah’s wonderful 7-inch.

Ben Heller

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

The Monks, The Gories, and The Detroit Cobras are staples in the litany of hip influences on modern music. For those of you who keep copies of this list in triplicate on your desks, just go right ahead and add Boston’s Thick Shakes to the top. Though they cruise on a road paved with discarded Nuggets compilations, they approach the mess of American garage rock with a remarkably refined aesthetic that brings a measure of control and sanity to a style of music that otherwise tends to run completely off the rails. At their core, these are songs made for dingy basement clubs, by dudes who don’t own cases for their instruments and drummers who make do with two broken floor toms and a cymbal made from soup cans and duct tape. The standard of musicianship is traditionally low, dominated by repetitive four chord riffs, half-sung/half-shouted unison vocal lines, and endless moments of disjointed slop. But that’s more a personal impression than a real assessment, and each band has its own particular swagger. The Monks tend to be on the experimental side, The Gories on the punk/slop side, and The Detroit Cobras on the motown/soul side. That said, the Venn diagram of their respective approaches to music is almost all overlap, and Thick Shakes are right smack dab in the middle. To anyone who’s spent weeks in their underwear listening to the Nuggets and Pebbles discs on repeat: Thick Shakes will be your new favorite band.

There’s something about organ (and I mean real organ, not this silly synth shit), that gets me off my ass in an instant. It’s like an invisible call to arms, a post-hypnotic suggestion that I must immediately rock the fuck out. Combined with driving snare hits on 2+4, some seriously blown-out guitar, and infallibly punchy vocals, this is music to dance to, to sweat to, to take amphetamines and freak out to. As Thick Shakes guitarist Tim Scholl explains, it’s “American R&B and blues, filtered through young British kids back into young Americans.” Generations of disaffected youth channeling each others’ music across the pond and claiming it as their own. To that I’d add that it’s also been filtered up a generation, to musicians who have varied tastes in (and unrestricted access to) the full spectrum of American popular music, from folk and country to blues and soul. But this panoramic view of musical history doesn’t always produce the best bands. There’s a tendency to reach for the stars and try something “new”, which almost inevitably results in something “terrible”. When the Rolling Stones set out to make music, their only goal was to be the best blues band in town. They didn’t see Exile on Main Street coming down the road, not even close, but as we all know, they eventually grew into something much more than an American blues cover band. It’s because that growth happened naturally that they made such a phenomenal contribution to rock and roll.

Thick Shakes has a similar approach to music-making, and it’s what distinguishes them from the mass of psychedelically inclined proto-punk garage bands that never quite made it. I get the sense that Thick Shakes isn’t trying to do anything special, but that’s exactly the attitude that makes them such a treasure. In his thoughts on Thick Shakes, Scholl went on to explain that “‘Musicians’ (his quotes) have a tendency to add this and that to songs, which can make them interesting, but a lot of times just sort of amounts to wankery. We write the songs, and then work on the proficiency of playing what we’ve written. We aren’t a ‘jam band’ (again, his quotes)”. I love that quote. Back when radio hits and 78RPM records demanded a crisp 2:30 per track, concision was a valuable asset in songwriting. We’ve since conquered the technical limitations that once constrained popular song form, and with an ever-expanding subset of artists who indulge in endless wankery, it’s refreshing to hear a band that says what it needs to say and gets the fuck out.

Lindsay Crudele, Tim Scholl, Matt Mafera, and Jerry MacDonald are the brains, voices, and fuzz behind Thick Shakes. MacDonald pretty much summed up the band dynamic with one word: fun. “It’s fun to get together and do what we want. It’s fun to do that in front of people. It’s fun when people like it. Ultimately we were going to have fun anyway.” Crudele corroborates, “Our dynamic feels easy for me because I feel close to the others, insofar as I’m marrying one of them (Tim) and the others are close friends. Learning to play and sing, and do it in front of people all seemed like an insurmountable mystery, so to be able to pull it off to whatever degree is a lot of fun, and then to do it with people I enjoy. The songs are like the intersection of nonsense party music with a bunch of vexation.” As much as I appreciate the barely-of-this-world-tortured-artist, I’m infinitely more impressed when seemingly stable, functioning human beings enjoy life so fully that their cup spills over and floods their music with a genuine passion.

As a native Bostonian living in enemy territory, I’m naturally fond of songs that shit on Boston’s numerous detractors. A-Side “Go Back to New York” is a playful jab at transplant Bostonians who bitch about America’s finest city. Sure, the bars close at 1am when the trains stop running, the winters are cold and bitter, cars aim to kill pedestrians rather than avoid them, and the entire city possesses an almost cultish enthusiasm for the Red Sox (so sue me, I bought a Sox license plate), but Thick Shakes make a good point: You live here, right? Stop complaining, or leave. Go back to New York, asshole.

The musical recipe is simple to describe but tough to follow:
1) Find a hook
2) Build a song around the hook
3) Pick an uncomplicated topic or situation, and describe it
4) Make music

Of course, there are other essential ingredients to this mix (I already mentioned the ass-thumping organ), and the first that comes to mind is the phenomenal voice of Lindsay Crudele. Fans of Erika Wennerstrom and the Heartless Bastards or Rachel Nagy and The Detroit Cobras will feel right at home with Crudele’s assertive alto. Maybe it’s that I’m somewhat used to hearing female lead singers, but it didn’t even occur to me until I spoke with Crudele that there are more Mick Jaggers in the world than Poly Styrenes, and that rock music isn’t exactly an encouraged career path for talented young women. Crudele recalls, “I went to shows all the time throughout high school and college in addition to dabbling in instruments. After I graduated, my coworker in radio, an engineer and musician named Bob C., asked me why I didn’t play in a band myself, told me that I should and that I could, and I didn’t have a good answer. I felt like there was a wall between the stage and me, I thought playing in a band was some magical privilege and it didn’t occur to me to try it for myself. I also didn’t see very many female faces up there or at shows in general, where I was used to watching from the back of the club because the front was too violent. In 2011, I don’t think much has changed. At a recent show, the only time I got up to the front was when I was performing onstage. A sound guy recently tried to show me how to turn on my own amp. I spoke up about how a lot of my music scene peers were supporting some really misogynistic music and I was told to get a sense of humor. We played a show where I was the only woman onstage all night and Tim pointed out that wasn’t entirely true — there were naked women painted on the drum kit. Anyone can start a band but it took a while to open my eyes to that I think in part due to the climate. A few years later, I emailed Bob our recordings and was like, ‘This is your fault!’ That kind of encouragement should not be understated.”

Thick Shakes strike a careful balance between a fullness of sound and a minimalistic approach to music making. The natural distortion in the recordings on this 7-inch is the result of meticulous planning — both tracks were recorded with vintage mics and preamps to 16 track tape with hot levels and some tape delay and reverb added to the mix. It’s an analog approach to recording that we’re sending to shit with a digital 7-inch, so do yourselves a favor and pick up the real thing at Aurora7. It’s just $6 and goes to support some great music. B-side “Neighbor’s Goods” has the percussive groove of The Monks’ “Boys are Boys” but with the tempo set to stun. Musically, everything slots in perfectly here–memorable hooks and clean fills that don’t seek to impress but instead focus on keeping everything rock solid as the song moves forward. The success of Thick Shakes is in the clarity of execution, and the distinction of individual sounds. The vocals, bass, guitar, drums, and organ each inhabit their own space, and have a well defined role within the group dynamic. Sometimes the organ and guitar blend together as a single sound, sometimes the bass and organ do the same, but I get the impression that the group sound at a given moment isn’t the result of some happy accident, but rather a rehearsed decision with an effect on listeners that’s known and understood by every member of the band. In other words, these guys are really, really tight, and in that respect, they’re a world apart from most other bands with a similar sound. Moreover, there’s something pejorative about the label of “Nuggets redux” that’s oh so tempting to slap on Thick Shakes. Nuggets or Pebbles or whatever implies that the artist in question is somehow a shining musical beacon amongst a sea of dreadful schlock. But it’s the other way around, really. Blues, punk, rock, and Americana are lost influences these days. It’s rare to find a band that’s willing to embrace a raw aesthetic and make music that’s authentic to their own experiences. So much is lost when creation becomes this distant and cerebral process, but Thick Shakes keep it real. I noticed that almost every member of the band is eager to dismiss his or her own musical talent and training:

Lindsay: I’m not under any illusion that our band is a means to a living. Music isn’t about business for us.

Tim: I’ve been involved in music one way or another since childhood. If not playing or writing, then actively listening, always. I’ve never played guitar, or really written songs before.

Matt: I grew up playing percussion in school bands, I taught myself to play a kit in junior high. I never took either very seriously. Thick Shakes is my first band, and I’m not really sure I would have joined a band under many other circumstances, it was the right mix of good friends with similar abilities.

There are no delusions of grandeur here, no lifelong aspirations to play Shea Stadium, just some folks who love music, can play a few instruments, and decided to give it a go. Consider that none of it would have happened if Bob (remember Bob?) hadn’t given Lindsay just a little push towards the stage, and it becomes kind of a heartwarming story. And so, we have Bob to thank for the sounds of Thick Shakes, and Thick Shakes to thank for the sounds on this 7-inch. Give it a listen, but you might want to stretch beforehand, as dancing is required.

Ben Heller

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

This is a followup single. Interested readers are encouraged to check out AEM095 for more free music and information.

Last year, The Powder Kegs earned our attention with their catchy and energetic cuts “La Mariposa” and “Shake Me Down” on AEM095. Since then, they’ve refined their sound and have a new album, The Amanicans.

Historically, the sophomore album is a litmus test. It requires the artist to strike an appropriate balance between old and new and, no matter how artfully he succeeds, the he can expect a certain degree of shit from fans who think he leaned too far in one direction. Indeed, sophomore albums invite criticism. However, if an artist can make it past the sophomore album hurdle without receiving too much shit, we must view this as a mark of considerable success. Indeed, the sophomore album is the key measure by which we may distinguish the bands we really like from the bands we only think we like.

The Amanicans offers much to enjoy and leaves very little to wish for. Moreover, it marks a major step in the artistic development of the band. The new material is darker, heavier, and considerably more substantive than the material on the debut EP, and it draws upon more diverse influences.

With pronounced shades of Punk and Brit-Pop, A-Side “Broke Time” has the requisite punch to capture the attention of any listener sedated by the previous album’s laid-back vibe. Yet these new influences do not seem incongruous;the music retains the salient features that drew us to The Powder Kegs in the first place. The tune commences with the artists’ characteristic lush falsettos, accompanied by a twangy guitar lick. After a few cycles, the beat drops, satisfying the listener’s more visceral audio-needs with a solid foundation upon which the composition unfolds. The crisp bass and drum groove persists throughout several refrains (repetitions of the title lyrics) and verses, offset now and then by a chorus. The mellow half-time feel of the chorus does not threaten to undermine the escalation of the composition, but rather serves as a respite, and each time the verse/refrain reappears, it’s rehashed with heightened intensity. The build culminates with a heavy pentatonic riff accentuated by a strong back-beat—an ending that fans of The Powder Kegs’ previous material might find abrasive, had we not been eased into it so gradually.

Like so much of The Powder Kegs’ material, both new and old, B-Side “The Sea” is marked by falsetto and harmony. This time, however, those characteristics are re-contextualized against the backdrop of eerie drugged-out lullaby reminiscent of the Beatles during the height of their LSD years. The composition’s loping three-beat pulse, occasionally shaken by isolated five-beat measures, adds to the general sense of uneasiness. As the composition builds, the many distinct voices (instruments) within the dystopian dreamscape appear ready to coalesce. And yet, our expectations are never satisfied—which is precisely what makes this track so satisfying. The triumphant horns that so hopefully buoy the end up from the depths of delusion are ultimately tethered to the seafloor, and leave the listener tantalizingly close to the surface, inches short of harmonic salvation. Cheesy ocean metaphors aside, “The Sea” represents a bold departure for a band I so recently praised—but nearly wrote off—as accessible.

In fact, the Powder Kegs do remain accessible, but The Amanicans demonstrates a slight penchant for the experimental that I wouldn’t have necessarily anticipated from the band I wrote up just last year. They’ve taken a few risks—enough to maintain our interest without fucking up the original recipe—and it really shows.

If you like what you hear, The Amanicans may be purchased at music.thepowderkegs.com.  Now you can pat yourself on the back for supporting starving independent artists and also for having impeccable taste!

Nate Greenberg

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Imagine that the members of an iconic rock band suddenly grow tired of their work.  They still know how to write a hit, but they’re sick of hits.  It’s almost too easy, and they see through all the tricks they once employed in blissful ignorance.  Unanimously, they decide that they don’t want to be in a rock band any more.  But under contract, they’ve agreed to release one more album under their label.  They propose an experimental final album, but the label rejects it.  The fans demand rock.  Consequently, the band decides to trick the label and fans, and disguise the avant garde behind a thick cloak of the usual tricks.  At first, they view the album as a parody of their former work.

However, in the creation of this parody, the jaded musicians—now freed of past pretensions—discover that they still love to make music.  The problem had not been the tricks themselves, but rather their uninspired implementation.   Suddenly, the band feels compelled to parody the parody, and revel excessively—if furtively—in the excess.  And, when the new album drops, fans, critics, and band concur that it’s a hell of a lot better than anything released before.

Biographically, Quiet Loudly shares little in common with the aforementioned hypothetical rock band.  Certainly, these guys aren’t burnt out stars, and they’re not under contract to a corporate label.  From what I gather, they’re just a bunch of normal dudes.  However, I feel that the metaphor is a useful way to approach the final product—the music.  When I listen to Quiet Loudly, I sense the spirit of renaissance.  Quiet Loudly rehashes old ideas in ways that surprise and invigorate.  Despite the considerable competence and perspective demonstrated throughout their epic album Soulgazer, the band manages to tap into the euphoric eureka of the middle-school rock-star wannabe who has just discovered an awesome new chord.  And perhaps they also smile knowingly at his dejection when he learns that it’s only an A7.  The result is not strictly satirical, but perhaps we may understand it as the parody of parody.  We may wonder whether duplicity in parody signifies negation or exponential multiplication.  In the case of Quiet Loudly, it seems to be a little bit of both simultaneously.  These guys definitely don’t take themselves too seriously, but they also seem to poke fun at bands that degrade the craft by not taking music seriously and whose appreciation of the artform does not extend beyond the ironic.

Max Goransson (guitar, vocals) explains that the inspiration for the name Quiet Loudly came from his exploration of extreme dynamics. “I was trying to explore regarding the impact and significance of breaks or ambiance in what would be considered otherwise loud, epic music,” he elaborates.  Yet he also admits that the name was a joke at first.  It stuck because the band liked it… and because they had already created the MySpace page.  True, the contradiction posed by multiple layers of intention and chance seems a tumultuous vantage point from which to understand a band.  Yet I challenge you to ask yourself, how else could we approach a band with a name as paradoxical as Quiet Loudly?

Quiet Loudly pays due homage to its roots.  Soul is clearly a major influence—hence the name, Soulgazer.  The band also embraces rock-n-roll, in its countless permutations—classic-rock, punk-rock, grunge-rock, alt-rock, indie-rock, post-rock, insertprefixhere-rock. Yet, even in direct allusion to these numerous traditions, the band refuses to buy into any one of them wholesale.  Always, I sense a process that involves the extraction of the best features from these genres and their rearrangement into new shapes.

A-Side “Be My Baby Mama” challenges the conventions of pop composition, but rests upon such stable foundations that a casual listener might not even notice that anything is amiss.  Harmonic and melodic simplicity obscure the underlying innovation.   The tune begins with a three-chord progression which seems bound to spark a sense of deja ecouté.  The first two chords are rock staples, while the third chord is the predictably-unpredictable heartbreak chord.  The rhythm hints at R&B a bit too obviously.  When the vocals enter, we perceive a verse.  When the drums kick into full throttle and the distortion thickens, we perceive a chorus.  A catchy vocal hook—accentuated by all the right harmonies—confirms our suspicions.  But all the evidence proves deceptive.

“Be My Baby Mama” does not return to the sections we instinctively perceive as verse and chorus and, thus, we can not appropriately label them as such, though still we cannot conceive them in any other way.  The tune veers into an extended outro full of compositional twists that, cumulatively, reveal epic grandeur.  The momentum builds as harmonies are layered below the lead vocal line.  It continues to mount with the auxiliary support of a soaring electric guitar solo.  Finally the parts converge on the refrain, of which the climax is marked by piercing falsettos.  However, having reached this mighty summit, Quiet Loudly refuses to take the scenic route back to base.  Instead they skydive—forgive the continuation of this cheesy metaphor—with an unexpected a capella breakdown that proves to be the coup-de-grace to our cliché expectations.  As with most of the tricks in Quiet Loudly’s arsenal, the a capella breakdown is not inherently unprecedented.  However, it is completely re-contextualized and rarely—I feel compelled to add—has it been implemented to such delightful effect in any context.

Breakdowns of this sort are a risky venture.  At their best, they may leave the listener awestruck.  “How the fuck did they think of that?” More often, however, they undermine the whole composition and leave the listener confused and disappointed.  “What the fuck were they thinking?” The line between these diametrically opposed outcomes is actually vaguer than one might suspect, but it seems indisputable that Quiet Loudly falls on the correct side.  To begin with, the breakdown strikes a healthy balance between unexpected and incongruous.  I did not anticipate it but, in retrospect, it seems to have been foreshadowed by the layered harmonies which preceded it.  Moreover, it lifts the lyrics of the refrain—“you could rescue my bloodline”—to our attention.  The plea casts an additional layer of irony over the satire posed by the raunchy pickup line that the title so convincingly insinuates.  For these reasons—in addition to the sheer precision of its execution—the tune lingered in my memory after a single listen.

“I Would Be Your Man” may seem an unusual choice for a B-Side.  From the start, I appreciated the poetic logic of the progression between a tune called “Be My Baby Mama” and a tune called “I Would Be Your Man.”  However, I couldn’t dismiss the itty-bitty technicality that Quiet Loudly neither wrote the track nor received principle performance credit.  The song was written by Gunfight, another Brooklynite outfit whose sound falls within the expansive umbrella of rock but occasionally tests these limits.  Quiet Loudly is featured on the track but, on the mp3 they submitted to Ampeater, the id3 tag reads Gunfight.  No mention of a feature.  I liked the music, but I was a bit perplexed.

The missing link proved to be “Brooklyn Heat,” a compilation curated, engineered, and mixed by Shane O’Connor.  Through this initiative, a handful of underappreciated local bands—whose ranks include both Quiet Loudly and Gunfight, in addition to previous Ampeater featured artists Shark? and Quilty—were given the opportunity to cut track at Monsterland Recording Studio.  (At this point, I can’t resist the urge to give a shoutout for the upcoming MMNY Festival at which all these bands are slated to perform on June 21^st).  In fact, Quiet Loudly did lend a hand (several hands?) to the version of “I Would Be Your Man” featured on this digital 7-inch.  The original recording of “I Would Be Your Man” has a prominent folk vibe, with slide guitar and sound effects that seem like they may have come from a spaghetti western.  But, in the studio, Gunfight decided that their track would benefit from a large ensemble and turned to Quiet Loudly—a decision probably influenced in part by the fact that they share a bassist, Anthony Aquilino.  The result is a rowdy rendition which portrays the energy and urgency of the live show in convenient mp3 format.

I once believed that I had outgrown my love for scorching guitar solos when I graduated from high-school but “I Would Be Your Man” forces me to question my assumptions.  I now suspect my soft spot did not diminish but was simply shrouded by a thick cloud of skepticism.  Actually, the guitar solo is only the tip of the iceberg.  The cut is an unabashed rock anthem.  Yet it is full of tasteful subtleties that become more evident with repeat listens and which shed a new light on the boisterous excess.  Perhaps this is why it penetrates the cloud of skepticism, and calls to me.  I also suspect that a healthy dose of excess is prerequisite to the party vibe so convincingly evoked.

Some music is inherently loud.  Some music is not.  Heavy metal was made to be blasted.  Antonio Carlos Jobim was not.  Quiet Loudly seems to realize this.  The band demonstrates a rare ability to make the calm moments boom, and can find tranquility in the midst of the thickest distortion.  Check them out.  I hope that you—like the hypothetical iconic rock band, and like me—will find your love for the classic rekindled by their astute and fresh perspective.

Nate Greenberg

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

The relationship between rock music and straight up terrible noise is a long and complicated one, punctuated equally by periods of domestic tranquility (Sonic Youth’s easy-listening records), malicious abuse (Metal Machine Music and its descendants), and toothless hypocrisy (remember Test Icicles?). Like in any lovers’ quarrel, outsiders tend to draw lines in the sand: some people like their chord changes neatly separated from their feedback freakouts (sometimes even, they like feedback freakouts over chord changes), while others come to realize that they never liked the noisier stuff to begin with, even though they feel guilty enough about their tenuous allegiances to talk up the experimental tendencies of bands like Animal Collective with something approaching seriousness. Finally, there are people who felt that rock music had become bloated and disingenuous with its increasing lip service to the avant-garde, a mongrel artistic commodity aimed at weekend warriors and self-hating yuppies who claimed to love the Velvet Underground but invariably left the room about four minutes into “Sister Ray.” These people, to borrow a term from Lester Bangs, albeit in a slightly different context, could be called “White Noise Supremacists.” These were individuals who, on the one hand, had developed over the course of decades exposed to pop radio and concept albums an ideological revulsion to all things melodic, rhythmic, and marketable, and, on the other, had suffered enough actual brain damage in the process to enjoy aesthetically the sound of vacuum cleaners and police sirens howling in the dark, wet urban night. Somewhere along the line, this group’s wiring had gotten disconnected from the mass-cultural mainframe and found itself channeling the random and nihilistic ambience of real life.

Listening to A-side “come home eccentric” off peopling’s self-titled EP is a bit like receiving a stray transmission from the ambivalent midpoint of this self-alienating process, its origin about equidistant from the poles of “fun” and “not fun.” There’s a confessional quality to the track’s stylistic indecisiveness, a kind of emo music for people with no feelings whatsoever. Let’s describe the thing: what we hear first is the static blast of a shortwave radio between signals, reaching out hopefully to the shadow-world of long-haul truckers and emergency responders. Then we get a two note bassline burbling up like primordial tar underneath the whole thing. If this was a Spaceman 3 record, all you’d need to add at this point would be some stiff-lipped Brit moaning about Jesus and hey, six minutes later, you’ve got your single in the bag. But peopling isn’t really about tribute in any normal sense, and so, about one and a half minutes into the jam there’s an abrupt switch into blurt-y, shout-along synth-pop not completely unlike an under-circulated Screamer’s bootleg. The effect of this transition is comparable to stabbing an RCA cable repeatedly into the broken input on your iPod, only to have the thing connect half-way through the song and at way to high too high a volume. It’s really pretty awesome, not only because of the visceral thrill of hearing drums and bass and synthesizers and human voices after all that hissing, but also because of the crippling sense of shame you feel for having secretly wanted this kind of thing to happen all along. “Please, turn into an actual song,” whispers your lizard brain, while the higher cortexes that control things like art appreciation and pretentiousness shake their heads like a disappointed girlfriend. The song part of the song continues for about two minutes more before being enveloped once more in crackle and hum. As far as outbursts go, it’s up there with screaming “Freebird!” at a Merzbow performance.

The kind of raw self-consciousness at work on this track is rare in any genre, especially one as dehumanizing and purist as power electronics. Since it’s impossible to listen to Whitehouse albums for actual enjoyment, those who find themselves attracted to noise for whatever reason have to develop rock-solid ideologies to support their counterintuitive fandom. These beliefs run the gamut from garden variety suburban listlessness to an extreme willingness to ingest psychedelic drugs. Whatever the pretext, the point is that the genre always operates in relation to some kind of contrarian rationale, feeding the listener’s urge to become more and more like the non-person he or she wishes so hard to be. Cueing up noise is probably the closest music nerds get to self-actualization, scarifying themselves into iconoclastic ubermenschen through a pair of headphones and the comfort of a bean bag chair. peopling latches onto the latent hypocrisy of these self-flagellating gestures with a unique courage, twisting the deadened headspace of their target audience into something that is equal parts satire and introspection. It has the same humor as a soul-shattering gulag joke.

“summer such and such,” the slighter, shorter B-side to “come home eccentric” works along similarly critical lines, opting to dispense with the cathartic midsection of its sister track in favor of sheer anxiety. A pretty bedroom pop song buried within an echo chamber of squeaks and burps, the piece ends before any resolution can take place. At one minute and fifty four seconds, about the length of time “come home” takes before shooting its payload, you can read the cutoff as an intentional blue-balling. In the notes peopling contributed to us with his music, he calls this track “heartbreaking.” I’d call it simply cruel.

Being a white noise ideologue is admirable, in some sense, but also myopic. Back in the half-formed prehistory of garage rock, bands made noisy recordings filled with feedback and garbage acoustics by accident. Eventually, some people began to find these technological imperfections more interesting than the three-chord bash-alongs they helped preserve. Noise, at a certain point, became an intentional choice rather than an understandable mistake. Now a symbolic referent to the conditions that created rock music rather than the crap side-effects that prevented an ideal incarnation of “Louie Louie” ever being produced, noise became more than an instrument like a guitar or a saxophone; it became an idea, something to believe in. What came next is well-preserved in record store geology: no-wave, Japanoise, Throbbing Gristle, Darkthrone, glitch. Subgenres became defined by their level of audio fidelity, the amount of time on a record dedicated exclusively to found sounds and ring modulators, the degree to which static blasts of varying textures and pitches could be constructed into recognizable verses and choruses. peopling looks at this contrived landscape and hold up the mirror, documentary-style, crafting two-to-five-minute studies into the personal effects of prolonged exposure to stuff most sane people would never want to understand. Even psychopaths need to be analyzed every now and again. All you goners, it’s time to meet your shrinks.

peopling is the solo noise project of Ronnie Gonzalez. He records and lives in NYC. These tracks are from his self-released six-song EP, available for sale now through Ampeater Music, and coming soon on iTunes.

Ben Lasman

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In what now seems like another life, I used to manage the Postcrypt Coffeehouse in the basement of St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University. The venue has a storied history of performers, including Simon & Garfunkel, Suzanne Vega, and Jeff Buckley, but its real flair is making the everyday singer-songwriters that drift in and out seem as magical as these legendary musicians. Its bare rock walls, peeling wooden tables, and sturdy candelabras dripping with wax create an atmosphere of intense intimacy. No amplification or electricity of any kind is allowed. A small plaque on the wall reads “Maximum Capacity: 35,” which may have even been an optimistic assessment. It was, and remains, a truly special place, one of those increasingly rare nooks that provide New Yorkers with a complete escape from the chaos of upper Manhattan. It’s there that I first met Zeb Gould.

When you’ve spent the last two years listening to folk music every Friday and Saturday, you come to expect that a certain percentage of the performances are fueled largely by strong emotions and good intentions. Every once in a while someone arrives with decent chops, but by and large it’s a silent competition to see who can make the most of three chords and recycled folk motifs. Then one evening Zeb Gould showed up with his 12 string guitar, and changed my perception of what I even thought possible for a performance of this magnitude. I felt as though John Fahey and Neil Young, in an effort to simultaneously squeeze through the door of our minuscule club, had somehow fused into a single inimitable force of virtuosic playing and nuanced composition. Zeb Gould seemed to have come from nowhere, and I was completely floored. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Years later, his albums are still in regular rotation at Ampeater HQ, and I’m only now unraveling the mystery of what’s gone into Gould’s development as a musician. Mostly self taught, he apparently honed his chops in college on Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, and the aforementioned John Fahey, and went on to work as an archivist for Philip Glass. If I were making a musical recipe for Zeb Gould, I might have forgot to add a dash of Philip Glass, but it now seems to obvious and so essential to Gould’s approach to composition, that I’m almost embarrassed to have missed it. His explorations in Glass’s studio produced his solo album “All of the Morningbirds,” and earned Gould opening spots with Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Kim Ritchie, and Sue Garner. His follow-up album “Stalk That Myth” was released under the name Bowery Boy Blue, and this became Gould’s permanent vessel for touring and further releases. His side projects include work with the Monika Jalili Persian music ensemble, and compositions for the White Wave Dance Company in Brooklyn, New York.

I’m not one to argue for the purity of folk music–it’s supposed to represent the confluence of influences in any given culture, and the American mixing pot provides an incredible range of inspiration. It’s not surprising to learn that Gould has collaborated on projects with choreographers–his sense of soundscape, of creating a self-contained emotional space within each song, is extraordinary, and recommends itself in combination with other media, be it dance, cinema or visual art. I’m reminded of Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters) and Neil Halstead (Mojave 3) in his delicate approach to songwriting. A-Side “A Day at the Firelakes” is a magnificent introduction Gould’s art. There’s a space to it, even an emptiness. Originally written as the title track for an unpublished album, this is its first official release. Sam Crawford and Megan Gould join Zeb on piano and violin, and float atop the song with restrained melodic figures that quietly enforce harmonic ideas outlined by Gould’s vocals. His style of singing is characteristically fragile, and its pleasantly nasal tone achieves in a single voice the kind of balance between strength and quietude that’s normally achieved by a male/female duo singing in harmony. I’ve been told that music has the ability to “transport” the listener in an almost literal sense, but I’ve never fully felt this to be true until I heard “A Day at the Firelakes”. It’s impossible for me to get past the first piano note without being sucked into the world of song that Gould’s meticulously constructed. I find myself going back, again and again, just to enter this space and revel in it. It gives me a kind of peace above and beyond any rational musical explanation.

Side B “The Theft of Light” was written specifically for this 7-inch, with the thought in mind that it should both contrast with and compliment “A Day at the Firelakes”. Gould pulled the title from a Tsimshian Indian tale explaining the origins of daylight. He recalls, “I was struck by the phrase and it seemed, in some intangible way, to fit with the music, so I put the two together.” As much as Gould owes a debt of influence to the various fingerstyle guitarsmiths that have come before him, his approach to the genre is entirely refreshing. Though he’s kind enough to orient listeners with an open bass note every 8 beats or so, his picking pattern on “The Theft of Light” is deftly syncopated, and gives one the feeling of being propelled through the song, carried atop a wave of sound. While his predecessors have drawn largely on the American tradition of blues and folk for compositional inspiration, Gould’s songs are inflected with an almost Balkan harmonic influence, which I suspect might actually be Persian, drawn from his work with the Monika Jalili ensemble. The syncopation reminds me of an Irish reel that’s been cut adrift without its foor-on-the-floor backbeat, and there are undoubtedly further global influences at work here that I can’t even begin to grasp. Meanwhile, the 12 string guitar is producing so much sound, and with such a rich intensity, that as a listener I’m inclined to ignore the usual considerations of melody, harmony, and rhythm in favor of a broad appreciation of the song’s intricate texture.

Gould’s music has universal appeal. That’s not to say that it’s universally liked, but rather that it’s universally likable. There’s something about it that wholly transcends its roots in American traditional genres and communicates successfully in a language that need not be translated into any other for one to immediately grasp its poignant and beautiful essence. Ampeater’s readers include citizens of Iran, New Zealand, Malaysia, Albania, Iceland, Estonia, and Turkey. To all of you around the globe, I’m honored to serve as the musical ambassador to Zeb Gould. I hope his music works its way into your thoughts the way it did mine, and brings you the same lasting joy.

Ben Heller

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Those of us over here in the tiny corner of America known as Brooklyn tend to forget that we are in a tiny corner of America. Not that Brooklyn doesn’t have all sorts of cultural weight. When I first moved here, a Finnish girl I’d just met asked me if Roberta’s was really as good as everyone said. At the time I didn’t even know what Roberta’s was, and I was amazed to find out it was…a pizza place in Bushwick (Granted, it’s an amazing one, and calling it a pizza place doesn’t really do justice to how nice it is, but still). Because NYC is home to so many writers and publicists and videographers, and because everyone loves to publicize their friends, bands from Brooklyn, like pizza places, tend to take on cultural significance all out of proportion to their skill.

But while teenagers the world over thrill to the thought of Williamsburg, there is a quiet, steady stream of good music coming from the substantially larger Rest Of America (it’s true! Look at a map!) . Places such as Cincinnati, whence we have The Seedy Seeds, a duo-turned-trio currently composed of Margaret Darling, Mike Ingram, and Brian Penick. Their PR material is blessedly brief (we’re talking two sentences, one of which is about their dietary preferences), but I can tell you that what The Seedy Seeds do best, aside from write cheery pop songs with thoughtful lyrics and dreamy vocal harmonies, is swirl electronic and acoustic elements together in such a way as to make them sound like parts of a whole. The roles of the two types of instrument aren’t segregated at all. Live drums lock into drum machines to form a percussion section, as if the drummer had one arm in each world; banjo and Korg share the stage at live shows; synth bass bubbles under acoustic guitar strums; human grunts become sampled percussive sounds, landing squarely in the territory between acoustic and electronic sound; accordion and violin surge in to replace synth pads; Casio handclaps abound. This whole complicated balancing act is then laid at the feet of songs that are unapologetically hooky and fun, with lyrics that at first appear planted squarely in the heart-on-sleeve world of boy girl synth pop, but which reveal layers of ambiguity on further listens.

Ampeater A-Side “Verb Noun,” drawn from the band’s hot off the presses Verb Noun LP, contains a moment that perfectly captures this acoustic/electronic melting pot. At 3:23, the drums drop out, leaving the vocals to rise above a pointillist forest of pizzicato violin, banjo plucks, and staccato synthesizer notes. The three sounds, spread across the stereo spectrum, mimic and mirror one another so closely that I’m still not actually sure which notes come from which instrument, and whether what I’m hearing as a synth is really a synth or whether it’s another violin track or even some speedy, clean picking on the banjo. Of course, the beauty of the moment is just that: it doesn’t even matter which sounds are acoustic in nature and which electronic. They all twine together so perfectly that they become one instrument, an instrument we’ve never heard before. The song itself goes through a number of phases of instrumentation, but wastes no time in snagging your ear on suspended bass and violin lines, light hearted acoustic guitar, expansive drums propelled along by the propulsive kick drum on the upbeats, and Darling and Ingram’s voices woven together in pristine harmony. The Seedy Seeds are not fucking around: this is a pop song.

“Verb Noun” is such a pop song that it doesn’t even really seem to have verses, leaping from one soaring chorus-like melody to another for its entire duration. Along the way there are gushes of harmonized violins (note the way they move parallel to the vocals in the just verb noun you’ll agree section, serving almost as a chorus of vocal harmonies), assorted unidentifiable percussion (cowbell?), a banjo breakdown, lush call and response vocals, and a half-time drum machine beat laid over a full drum kit (which creates a strange slow-motion effect during the fade).

B-side “Telephone the Constrictor,” from 2010’s Roll Deep EP makes heavier use of electronics, with the whole song built around a thumping disco-derived chorus and an oscillating organ sound that calls to mind a ringing phone. Most of the percussion in the first verse is derived from voices (appropriate to the title/theme), whether they be Ingram’s chopped up vocals or some Graceland-style grunts, which fit into the song as snug as a puzzle piece despite being, on the surface of things, a totally bizarre choice. Like so much of what The Seedy Seeds do (see: banjo breakdowns), it is somewhat counterintuitive, yet it’s pulled off with enormous enthusiasm and energy, as if it never occurred to the band that most synth-pop eschews appalachian instruments for a reason. And the charm of the band, which is winning and substantial, derives directly from that surefooted fearlessness.

It would be a fallacy to claim at this point a really substantial disconnect between bands from Cincinnati and bands from Brooklyn. All of us who are online are part of the same community and we mostly hear the same music from some combination of the same sources. Still, there is something so unselfconsciously nerdy and fun about The Seedy Seeds that feels like it probably never would have coalesced in the style-obsessed northeast. They like hooks and choruses and sus chords and accordions and banjos and cuteness (not for nothing is their label called Eurodorable) and drum machines and  why on earth would they not put all of those things together? Listening to this single, I think we can safely say that there’s no reason at all why not.

And finally, for those of you who, like me, might read about this particular combination of instruments and attitudes and react with jokes about Hey can I get more iPod in my monitor and what might politely be called skepticism, let me hit you with a quote from Sean Cannon of Buzzgrinder, on the Seeds live show: I assumed that a band using an iPod, accordion, kazoo, guitar and banjo had to be kitschy and, well, not too great. I was humbled. They tore it up.

Catch the Seeds on the next leg of their Verb Noun tour:
March 4^th, North Star Bar, Philadelphia, PA
March 5^th, Union Hall, Brooklyn, NY
March 7^th, Great Scott, Boston, MA
March 8^th, Pianos, New York, NY

Gabe Birnbaum

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]

Some music lolls gently in the background. Some music sits still. Some music serves to bring a degree of class to the social calendar of the captains of High Culture and High Finance. Shapers make none of that music. The Chicago four piece are gleeful collagists, roping in everything within their reach: improvised music; gleeful math rock; softly glowing, ambient synth jams; somber, sparse psych tunes laden with vocal harmonies; rolling afro-cuban percussion; David Byrne-style shout vocals. And none of these things are segregated neatly into their own tracks. They’re combined with a free and generous hand, mixing and overlapping so much that you forget they wouldn’t ordinarily share a record label, let alone a song. Shapers bandcamp page tags them as post-genre, which in most cases would be either dry irony or unwarranted cockiness, but the slurry of influences on the band’s debut full-length Little, Big makes one of the strongest cases for that particular phrase I’ve yet heard.

More impressive yet, the band, composed of guitarist Zaid Maxwell, synth player Amelia Styer, bassist/guitarist Steve Reidell, and drummer Todd Waters, manages to escape the trap that so many genre-hopping, odd-meter-loving bands fall into. Shapers aren’t weird for weird’s sake. They use their sharp left turns in service of their songs, turning stylistic fragments into coherent pieces with a solid sense of form that feels both natural and surprising. Though you never know quite where the band is going, you never doubt that they know. Because of how integrated their influences are, they also manage to control and vary the tone of their songs perfectly. The songs aren’t merely exercises in complexity, they range from ecstatic to grave (in spite of titles like “Hot Gravy Available” and “When I Was A Zygote,” Shapers is not one of those emotionless proggy bands who ignore mood-setting altogether, usually with tiresome results) and they never put you down in the same place they picked you up.

The two songs on their Ampeater single land on the thrashier end of the Shapers spectrum. A-side “Virginia Reel” starts high and climbs higher. The song finds the band launching into a minute of some of their poppiest material, the juxtaposition of Maxwell & Styer’s gentle, high vocals and the barreling bass & drums sounding almost like Yo La Tengo. As the chorus kicks in, Styer’s multitracked voice provides a lovely cushion for Maxwell’s falsetto. As soon as the chorus fades, just as our Pop Pavlov Instinct kicks in and we start drooling in anticipation of another verse, a synth gradually wanders away from the western scale and then gradually multiplies into a dense thicket of atonal keyboards and riotous guitars. Waters bursts into a series of acrobatic fills and cymbal-smashing as the guitar/synth cloud gets louder and denser, louder and denser, and the whole thing lasts about as long as the entire verse-chorus structure that kicks the song off. Finally, just as the song is about to snap, it bursts into a new section, arcing even higher in energy with another wordless melody from Styer floating over the boiling rhythm section. The song never pauses to catch its breath. It must be tremendous fun live.

B-side “Happy Birthday Polliwog” finds Maxwell shouting rather than cooing, and the band wasting no time in slamming through a 7/4 chorus with ferocious energy. The time disintegrates and reforms at a dizzying pace, and the second chorus is over before we even hit the minute mark. Listening to the beginning of “Polliwog” feels like riding a bucking bull, exhilarating, disorienting, and somewhat terrifying. The song then pares itself down to a tense eighth note pulse of floor toms and guitar clicks that rise and fall like deep breaths. Again, the climax comes from a long, dissonant instrumental, here created by the superimposition of several rising chromatic lines of different length, mostly fives, which overlap and shift against one another to form a sort of musical moire pattern, where the change occurs in how the parts line up rather than in the notes themselves. Again, just at the moment of collapse, there’s an echo of the intro and it’s over, leaving you to your own devices to stop your head from spinning. Songs like this are too compacted with material to be absorbed fully the first time; they demand and reward repeat listening.

Surely Shapers won’t appeal to everyone. Some people want music to murmur sweet nothings in their ear after work while they’re cooking dinner. Still, there is something to commend music that demands attention, that doesn’t sit back and allow itself to become background, especially in the age of the mp3, where music is playing around us more often than ever before and yet listened to less. Because these songs repeat themselves so little, they require constant attention. It’s almost like listening to a conversation, where if you lose the narrative, you have to ask for it to be repeated. Coming straight into the middle of either “Virginia Reel” or “Happy Birthday Polliwog” would drastically alter the song, something that is also becoming less common at a time when form is increasingly determined by the limited capacities of looping and sampling. Sit and let the shapes of these songs hold your complete attention for a full six minutes. Let them work on you. You won’t be quite the same afterwards.

Gabe Birnbaum

[[[Download the 7-inch]]]