The Storm Before the Quiet
Danish noise–pop quartet Pinkunoizu, returning nearly a year to the day from their debut LP, hits with front-loaded abandon on their six-track EP, Second Amendment. Between the opening two songs’ 14-minute decathlon of sensational hammer blows and the EP’s less manic—and, indeed, more patient—remainder, one wonders whether this Amendment was ratified with either a vague and ramshackle balance in mind, or perhaps a deliberate cut-and-run strategy to beguile, mystify and overwhelm first, then proceed to a sensible warm-down regimen of light yoga poses for the final 18 minutes. Whatever the band’s aim, the results are uneven and, at the same time, interesting but forgettable.
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By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews Pinkunoizu
Get Yer Yagas Out
Drowsing from the scraggly brush of Athens, Ga., country–rock sextet Futurebirds ascend leafy peaks, drink from placid (and likely mind-altering) waters and occasionally flirt with redundancy in their sophomore LP, Baba Yaga.
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By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews Futurebirds
Free-range and Carefree
After the more production-heavy graces of Lollipop, the Meat Puppets’ brothers Kirkwood reel it in a bit for their fourteenth studio effort, Rat Farm, an often rustic folk–country set completely assured in its off-beat humor and subdued delivery. The guitars of Curt and recent addition Elmo—Curt’s son, incidentally—only rarely spit with electric force (“One More Drop,” “Original One”), finding their mean, instead, somewhere between jangle-pop sincerity and herbed-up hippie skronk. The songs’ copacetic flow and outdoorsy lyrics induce a certain carefree emotion: This is music for the scenic route—patient as it is humorous and winding around at the clip of an old VW Bus.
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By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews Meat Puppets, Rat Farm
Welcome Fuss and Frustration
Comically listing Al Stewart as the band’s one and only influence on their Facebook page—and if you don’t know soft-rock legend Al “Time Passages” Stewart, the greatest of all shames on you—Rival Schools’ brand of post-hardcore is something of a “for richer or poorer,” 50–50 split ’tween the taught, steely rhythms of a Gang of Four or Mission to Burma and the distressed, gale-wind force of ’90s grunge. It’s a bit medical to dissect their sound as such, and, thankfully, to the group’s credit there’s a good deal more nuance to it than that. But still, the thrust and parry from these two poles is quite tangible. Now on their third studio release following the 2011 LP, Pedals, Rival Schools has capably re-upped their edgy, disquieted formula in Found. Read more…
By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews Found, Rival Schools
Southern Discomfort
Cutting loose as the band’s mastermind, vocalist and primary songwriter, Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino serves up a feral but often mottled animal as the frontman of EmptyMansions, a noise rock outfit bolstered by guitarist Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk) and producer–musician Brandon Curtis (Cosmicide, Interpol), who, besides manning the mixing boards for the session, sings backup and plays bass.
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By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews EmptyMansions
Flavor Country
It’s hard to define the music of And So I Watch You From Afar, a mostly instrumental rock act out of Belfast, Northern Ireland. The group happily, and almost defiantly, weaves a stubborn knot of diverging genres, all with the vim and mischief of a bopping Fraggle Rock character. Their lithiated third LP, All Hail Bright Futures, makes no apologies: Within 43 minutes you’ll hear dubstep dropouts, lo-fi flute solos, joyful indie-rock chanting, marimba breaks and ear-splitting surf lines. Oftentimes in the same song. Read more…
By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews And So I Watch You From Afar
Golden Mercury
In 1985, when Bob Geldof organized Live Aid, the historic duel-venue charity event held at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia and Wembly Stadium in London, his intentions were simple: to put on a talent-packed, 16-hour rock concert aimed to benefit the debt-ridden nations of Africa, as well as—maybe, possibly—pat himself on the back at the same time. (He wasn’t the only one patting for long, however. A 34-year-old Geldof was knighted for his efforts shortly thereafter.)
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By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews Freddie Mercury, Queen
‘Chelsea’ Lately
OK, first things first: As you may or may not know, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, the peas and carrots of Sonic Youth, parted ways after 27 years of marriage in late 2011. This, of course, cast doubt on their band’s future and provoked a worldwide chain of hand-over-mouth whispers. A spate of quiet descended for some time. Then, Thurston rolled out of bed one morning—which may or may not have been a “Chelsea Morning,” according to Joni Mitchell—and, despite having lost his indie queen in Kim, felt the sudden need to move on and get his Chelsea Light Moving. The results? A sturdy, straight-ahead song set with nary a word of his relatively recent turn for singledom. Despite it being an albino, pink-thong-wearing elephant in a 12′ x 12′ room.
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By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews Chelsea Light Moving
Sleepwalking the Streets
The famous mid-century poet, John Ciardi, once said, “Poetry lies its way to the truth,” and the pen behind The Maximus Poems, Charles Olson, once said of his own approach, “The basic understanding is that you don’t understand.” In the tool belt of a genuine artist, you’ll find the standards: ethos, pathos and lust, even. But of equal importance are awe, ambiguity and a sense of the author’s own wrestling to understand.
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By Owen Schumacher Posted in High Fidelity, Reviews Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Who May Enter?
In the Blue-eyed Blues Pantheon, you’ll find arrayed along its marble floors many bleached-white gods of stone. Some come from the intermediate brightness of the Silver Age, as Stevie Ray Vaughan, who stands tall in a gold-lined niche beside George Thorogood. Others more praised, those of the Golden Age, stand bathed in the rays of Sol, whose glory descends from the temple’s high-vaulted oculus—leaving just three to blaze like a Spartan helmet: Beck, Page and Clapton. Read more…
By Owen Schumacher Posted in Reviews Small Fires, the stone foxes
