Robert Pollard - Jack Sells the Cow LP (GBV Inc.)

This is a Robert Pollard solo album—12 songs, 32 minutes—hovering around the 80th percentile on a sliding scale of his own design, methinks. With this number, I aim to fold the extent of my critique, as it is all I see fit to impart on a Robert Pollard solo album in 2012, the fourth record he has been a part of this year and the googleth of his career. His net has been cast, with a fanbase like a block of granite and a persistence equally resolute. If ceaselessness panders to futility, here it is the writer’s burden to bear. The same agent that puts a damper on criticism’s utility is an accelerant to the torch of a relic. 


Dan Deacon - America LP (Domino)

At any point prior to America, mentioning Dan Deacon to this reviewer could evoke the following associations: 

1.) The guy that brought a loaf of homemade bread backstage for Bradford when my band played with Deerhunter in 2008.
2.) This:    

                                Q. "Can It Get Eddie Veddar?"         
                                A. "You bet your Dan Deacon it can!"

3.) That brassy ring-leader of the opposition in dogs vs. cats.
4.) "Who's chair is that? Not my chair. Not my chair, not my problem that's what I say..."

How is it that the public can be both paranoid and complacent about the apocalypse? Perhaps because, as philosopher Slavoj Zizek says, it is easier for people to imagine the world ending than what it would take to stop it. Although it is nothing if not narcissistic to suppose the rapture will happen in our lifetime, this possibility, with its various seductive entry points, flickers across the minds of the best of us. As a hypothetical, it is the great perspective-inducer, socioeconomic leveler and priority adjustment bureau, becoming ever more mercurial as it slouches toward reality. In such a case, sheer terror would eclipse any sense of beauty.

But the theoretical apocalypse?

Bailterspace - Strobosphere LP (Fire)

Strobosphere, Bailterspace’s first studio album since 1999, wastes no time in assuring us of its formidability. Whipfast, the first breach from silence to song in “Things That We Found” is merciless in its arrest. It is primarily the guitar melody that baits, hooks, and demands a replay, a replay that is permitted by the song’s fadeout, and with which the vocals, low and along for the ride, aren’t at odds. All of this has been standard critical issue for Bailterspace in the past, but here it’s on its head, servicing the song impressively.

Lorelei - Enterprising Sidewalks LP (Slumberland)

It has been nearly a quarter of a century since distortion, feedback and volume joined to form an unremitting flesh. It jostled the  pedantry of post-punk and offered a backbone to sentimental pop across the Atlantic. At once a warm blanket and fierce intimidator, shoegaze liberated the twee literati. At the helm was Washington DC’s Slumberland Records, an imprint that established lines for these transatlantic sentiments and then some. As important as it was to introduce Stereolab to America, it was the nurture and support to bands like The Lilys, The Swirlies and Lorelei that cultivated the American underground pop aesthetic as we know it. 

Samothrace - Reverence to Stone

At first, it was just an island. Later, in pre-Hellenic Greece, it was a place where you could sacrifice pig’s blood to chthonic deities and join a mystery cult. And in 1884, when an acephalous female in white marble appeared frozen atop a staircase at the Louvre to a stunned crowd, she presented her placard with a set of wings and no arms: The Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Purity Ring - Shrines

An electric guitar riff, middle C, reverb—no genre holds propriety on these building blocks of sound. But as radio-friendly R&B becomes increasingly minimal and weird and art students are encouraged to experiment with hip-hop beats, there is a swath of music being produced today that hovers in a nondescript void. The artist’s voice, and its carotid attachment to biography, becomes the ultimate decider insofar as how a particular work is compartmentalized. Prior to the vocal track, such gonadal pop sounds could birth either R&B or indie-bound electro-pop. The splintering of genres, a homogenized generational sound, the democracy of production—are these good problems? Probably too soon to tell, but Purity Ring’s Shrines is a timely case-study.

Baroness - Yellow & Green LP (relapse)

Yellow & Green has taken the form of a coming-out party for the band’s departure from “heavy,” and is sure to become part of a larger conversation regarding how American metal bands are evolving. The motives for such evolution are admirable: everyone in the old guard wants to save rock from obscurity as well as sustain metal’s legacy of consistent evolution. More and more cues have been taken from previously isolated metal landscapes, as evident by the recent sundering of Black Metal (Liturgy, etc). In the other direction, where we find Baroness, bands like Mastodon, Kylesa and Torche are spiraling out from the confines of any sub-genre to produce simply good guitar-based music.

The Clean / Times New Viking Tour

The arrival of Timmy Hefner's 540 Records package to the house served as the necessary perspective inducing delivery to give TNV's tour with The Clean a deserving re-cap. As increasingly apparent by Hefner's Chaos in Tejas line-up, 504 records is refreshingly unfettered by any genre solidarity. The package included an archived post-punk recording from 1981 (The Kick's "The Secret"), a Diplo 7" co-released with Mad Decent, a pressing of Axeman's Arrive from Darkest Heavy Records, and the first vinyl pressing of The Clean's Odditties - a collection of songs that introduced Times New Viking to the band, on CD format, aught-3. 

I had been pleased to see this double album on the merch table at The Great Scott in Boston on the first night of our tour. In turn, this may have provided some extra encouragement as Andy and I commenced to sell The Clean's merchandise; they were wrapping up their set and a daunting amount of fans weighed heavy on their side of the table. We sold a decent amount of LPs and t-shirts, fielded inquiries on paintings, and secured a verbal agreement to a record. Whether because they only had a hundred or I never followed through, by the end of our short week on tour, it was only a 1" x 2" painting of the sea, a gratuity from Hamish to Andy, that made it back home to Memphis. 

Enter 504 Records, a few weeks after we arrived home. Now I had figured the Chaos in Tejas invitation had served as the impetus for The Clean to get over to the states in the first place, but I had not realized that also came tied with a vinyl release. Odditties contains songs like "Getting Older" and "Hold Onto the Rail" that placed The Clean in step with Guided By Voices and The Fall as important to TNV. Having already toured with GBV and not quite possessing the necessary dose of masochism needed to dream of touring with The Fall, these actions set in motion by Hefner/504/Chaos in Tejas can be seen as a kind of inadvertent Make A Wish Foundation / economic stimulator for the TNV franchise. 

Here is a review of the New York show, by fellow Columbus native Stephen Slaybaugh, as posted on Agit Reader : 

The Clean
Le Poisson Rouge, New York, June 5
by Stephen Slaybaugh

The dangers for any band that once made its name on the kinetic energy of youthful exuberance is that the onslaught of accumulated years will sap that essential essence like some pet leach of Father Time. Tis better to burn out than to fade away, of course, but until that comes to pass no one wants to get caught with a case of rock & roll impotence.

The Clean began in New Zealand in the late ’70s and have gone through intermittent spurts of activity, disbanding only to reunite once again. In the 21st century, the trio of middle-aged men has seemingly settled into a permanent flux, with records coming down the pipeline when the band fancies and short tours of the States made in an equally sporadic fashion. Indeed, there was no rhyme or reason to the latest handful of American dates—no new album or greatest hits package to promote.

Openers Times New Viking, who’ve played the bulk of The Clean’s recent US dates, similarly wasn’t onboard for promotional obligations, but simply because they’re friendly with their heroes. While the Columbus trio (which includes new Agit writer Elizabeth Murphy), was the younger portion of this equation, with five albums and lots of touring, they too have obviously grown up a lot since I first laid ears on the band eight years ago. Still, it seemed as if the trio had aged more than the year that had passed since I last saw them. There was a cohesion and force that pervaded the entire set, and aside from one instance when guitarist Jared Phillips needed to tune his instrument, they ripped into it with a rejuvenated sense of purpose. Mainstays like “Devo and Wine” and “Love Your Daughters” kept a taut balance of frenzy and control, with Phillips’ guitar leading the charge. They saved the best for last, though, when they trotted out “Lion & Oil,” one of the first songs TNV ever put to tape. While still possessing all the energy of youth, the song had morphed into something more accomplished and self-possessed, in a way representational of the band’s own transformation.

The Clean reared their heads soon after, beginning with “Point That Thing Somewhere Else.” The track, which comes from 1982’s Boodle Boodle Boodle EP, was indicative of the direction the night was headed. With their most recent album, Mister Pop, several years behind them, the Kiwi three-piece stuck to the body of songs that first earned them their reputation for great pop jangle. The years could be seen on their faces, but not in the music they created, and subsequent cuts like “Secret Place,” which featured bassist Robert Scott’s plaintive vocals, and “Someone,” on which drummer Hamish Kilgour took the lead, were bursting at the seams with energy. They also ventured into The Great Unwashed’s “Born in the Wrong Time,” a track from The Clean’s downtime in the ’80s. Other highlights included runs through “Drawing to a Hole” and “Anything Could Happen,” on which guitarist David Kilgour delivered Cartesian lines over his own propulsive licks. They finished out the evening with “Tally Ho” and “Oddity,” both of which were full of the kind of freneticism they possessed when first cut to wax. My only complaint was the same as when The Clean came to promote Mister Pop in 2010, that their set was too short. It seems a waste to travel halfway around the world (well, at least two of the three of them did), only to play for an hour and neglect such a large portion of their songbook. But then with age comes wisdom, so maybe they know better than I. 

Kimbra - Vows LP (Warner Bros.)

Literally the interpretive dance of music, and the metaphor is implied. Which is confusing, yet a pointed confusion. Like two ships meant to pass in the night, the space that doesn't connect is exactly where sense rests, pure and perfect. Leave it alone. Don't even touch it with your mind - that would be salt to slug.

or

IT'S LIKE A METAPHOR.

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If indie labels are the new majors, one must assume major labels have now been usurped by even more almighty power structures, operating in cahoots with organizations that go as far into the Earth’s crust as you can fathom. These projectionists are so skilled at crafting reality, you might think the words you are reading are actually real and possibly that I am really fucking crazy. Still, imagine what they are manufacturing beyond a thousand Linda Perry clones on steroids: the synthetic opiate of the masses, popular music. It is for this reason that when questions of authenticity are raised by dubious journalists, albeit cast from a reactionary embrace, the answer seems obvious. Of course, they wrote this music—it is horrible. Unfortunately, with Kimbra’s Vows, released on Warner Bros, nothing is that tidy.

Royal Headache - s/t (What's Your Rupture?)

Punk broke rock. It also gave us a way to put it back together. In the aftermath, rock & roll has consisted of experiments in assemblage. We amalgamate the past with the tools and license punk rock repurposed from the poor and uncool, a.k.a. DIY.

Screaming Females - Ugly LP (Don Giovanni)

Ahhh, blog post avoidance snowball....you are powerless over me now.

I am reminded of the old job at Dairy Queen. My resignation, met with blessings, was sealed with promises to visit as I pursued my dreams of not working. But my heavy heart grew light - a week passed and soon another, quicker yet another, and before long free ice cream sounded like an anxiety attack on a cone.

Time to face the music.

Below is something I have done in the meantime.
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Marissa Paternoster’s reputation as “one of the female shredders” proceeds her, but this fact is usually followed by a couple unnecessary details (her diminutive stature and lesbianism). The info makes for interesting copy and gender intrigue is only natural, but it all seems remiss upon hearing Ugly, the fifth album from Paternoster’s Jersey based trio, Screaming Females. The soundbite should be, “She is one of the female shredders—and she can write a song too,” as such a trait is increasingly rare, regardless of gender.