Bright Eyes - Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

“This album was recorded for the most part in the final month of the twentieth century…”

                                                    - Fevers and Mirrors liner notes

I have only one memory of the year 2000. I was five years old, sitting in the back of my father’s grey Volkswagen as he drove down Edgewood Avenue, talking to my mother about the Bush v. Gore election. My parents tell me that I said something sweetly naive, having overheard their conversation from the backseat, but I can’t remember what it was. It’s a fleeting thing, memory. We immediately remember the things we sense, in varying degrees of vividness, and we also remember what we feel; however, as time passes, the crispness fades, and we are left with mere vestiges of thoughts once clear and nearly tangible. I remember the scene — the summer’s day, the warm, sticky air, the wind blowing through my darkening hair — but the feelings of that day some twelve years ago are less clear. There is, for lack of a more lucid term, a darkness that pervades that particular memory, as if my brain wishes to swallow it up the way it has swallowed so many forgotten others. 

Still, I know there was something there. In the past few years, I’ve discovered a singular theme that binds numerous records released on the cusp of the new millenium — a theme that resonates with what I now believe I felt as a five year old in 2000. Radiohead explored it, frantically and with wary self-doubt, on Kid A, Grandaddy tapped into it with aplomb on The Sophtware Slump, and, quite by accident, a teenaged kid named Conor Oberst uncovered it in a basement in Omaha, Nebraska, and accidentally set it loose onto the world.

Although young by everyone else’s standards, Oberst was no stranger to the game by the end of the 20th century. He had already released two albums under his Bright Eyes moniker, the introductory Collection Of Songs… and the stellar, if primordial, Letting Off The Happiness, in addition to casette releases under his own name and with various other bands. By the onset of the new millenium, Oberst had bigger ambitions, but he wasn’t ready for them yet. Before he could come to terms with the world, he still had to come to terms with his existence in Omaha, the sleepy Western town that gave him both his gift and the curse that has always spurred that gift on.

Someone should have told him to stay home for a little longer. Released in 2000, Fevers and Mirrors is appropriately tied to Omaha, but it constantly bucks at its leash, yearning to burst forth into the world. This uncontainable fear of stagnation, along with the reactive fear of drastic change, is the fuel that gives this record its spirit and its shocking sense of urgency. Throughout the album, Oberst struggles with admirable conviction to restrain these twin fears, using imagery of scales, measurements, and dichotomies (most notably on “Sunrise, Sunset”), but he only partially succeeds. “Don’t destroy yourself like those cowards do,” he urges to himself on the opening track. And yet, that’s exactly what he does on this album, whether he intended to or not.

Listening to Fevers and Mirrors is enjoyable in the same way that watching a train veer off the rails on a steep cliff might be. It is only when Oberst reaches his most exasperated and hopeless that his creative potential begins to reveal itself, as on the manic “The Calendar Hung Itself,” a stomping electronic paean to frenetic desperation. “Calendar” opens a Pandora’s box that much of the record’s struggles to keep shut, as he sings of “dragging your ghost across the country” before transforming the nursery-song “You Are My Sunshine” into something much more dire. Oberst’s backing band works hard to sooth the album’s harsh emotions with mellotron, dulcimer, and pedal steel guitar, but Oberst’s mania arises again on the sparse, Gothic folk song “Arienette” and, most effectively, on “Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh,” perhaps the first song in the Bright Eyes discography on which Oberst managed to match his reckless self-directed aggression with musical brilliance.

The vinyl edition of this record, which I purchased recently at Cutler’s in New Haven, features a slide in the middle of the cover that reflects light like the actual mirror depicted in the artwork. This always struck me as strange — although people like me have always seen themselves in Oberst’s work, supplanting his neuroses and fears for their own, Fevers and Mirrors felt too personal — too innately Oberst — to actually be identified with in this way. At its cold, empty heart, this record was too real. The characters were too animated to have been entirely imagined, and Oberst’s voice — that distinctively cracked wail — was too chilling to not have been truly inspired. “Stay with me, Arienette, until the wolves are away,” Oberst begs of the titular character in “Arienette.” Perhaps she is real, perhaps not; either way, I’m willing to bet that the average listener will never know the desperation expressed in that song, or on this record as a whole. Imagined, contrived, or otherwise, Fevers and Mirrors is a record that Conor Oberst made for himself and himself alone, and one that feels starkly exclusionary when compared to his greater body of work. 

Believe it or not, Oberst was aware of this at the time of recording, although I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t realize it. Slyly and cleverly, the Bright Eyes mastermind gives away the game in the second half of “An Attempt To Tip The Scales,” which transforms from a middling mid-tempo folk song into an absurd, staged radio interview between “Oberst” and a DJ. In the interview, Oberst is impersonated by Todd Fink of The Faint, who directly pokes fun at the record’s dark tones and self-deprecating lyrics, all the while conveying every imaginable cliche of Oberst’s personality. “This could be vanity or self-loathing,” Fink says, emulating the Bright Eyes frontman, “I don’t know, I’m guilty of both.”

Oberst’s smirking meta-self-deprecation is enough to save Fevers and Mirrors from sinking too deep into its own despair, but it can’t effectively cover up the record’s real problem — a lack of consistently good material. Lyrics, personality, and swooping brown locks aside, great songs have always been what attracted listeners to Bright Eyes, and although this record has its share of them, the standouts are too few and far between to hold its less stellar moments up. I’ve written at length in the past about Fevers and Mirrors’ placein the context of Oberst’s larger body of work, and I still stand by my frustrating belief that Fevers and Mirrors is too ambitious for its own good. Within a matter of years, Oberst would come pretty close to perfecting the more ambitious themes of isolation and alienation explored on this album, and I’ll always prefer records like Lifted for that reason. That said, nowhere else in Oberst’s discography to this day was the feeling of fear expressed in such a thoroughly overwhelming way, despite the thin guise of stability that veils Fevers and Mirrors. Although the contrast is interesting, I’ll always wonder what this album would have been like without the attempted balance that Oberst continuously strives to achieve throughout it. Cut out the Mirrors; sometimes, I just want Fevers. 

6/10

Key Tracks: “The Calendar Hung Itself…”, “Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh”

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The 2012 vinyl reissue of Fevers and Mirrors is available for purchase from the Saddle Creek website.

Japandroids - Celebration Rock (2012)

I’ve purposefully avoided reviewing this album for some time now. When it leaked back in April, I felt a fervent desire to review it immediately. I’ve felt passionate about this record ever since I first heard it, and that passion has not diminished in the month since that first listen. Although I immediately wanted to get my thoughts about it out onto my blog and into the world, I knew it was not yet time. I was still in school, and even by the end of April, I still had five weeks of APs, SATs, final exams, and other standardized tests looming ahead of me. I wasn’t free yet, and I knew that the time for wild escapism — the kind that this album incites and encourages — was still ahead.

Well, a month has passed, and I still haven’t finished all of the work that my education requires me to complete, but I can’t take it any longer. It’s been nagging at my conscience for too long. This album begs to be written about, and absolutely needs to be heard.

At face value, Celebration Rock, the new album by the Vancouver punk duo Japandroids, is a summer record. It demands to be played at the beach, on your front porch at sunset, or in a car as you drive into the sun with your three best friends. Throughout the record, frontman Brian King crafts lush, escapist images that evoke these settings while retaining a feeling of urgency at all times. “Hearts from hell collide on Fire’s Highway tonight,” King shouts on “Fire’s Highway,” and for the duration of the song, you feel like you’re there, even though neither you nor I have much of a clue as to what a “fire’s highway” is in the first place. Similarly, on the song-of-the-year contender “The House That Heaven Built,” King describes coming upon “a house built of living light / where everything evil disappears and dies.” The beauty of Japandroids’ music is that they actually manage to sell these half ridiculous/wholly sincere lyrics with as much grit, glamor, and guitar riffage as they can muster. 

But Celebration Rock does not concern itself solely with escaping the realities of life. Unlike the Post-Nothing standout “Young Hearts Spark Fire”, on which King radically declared, “I don’t want to worry about dying / I just want to worry about those sunshine girls,” this record actively yearns for meaning from the very beginning. “Long lit up tonight, and still drinking,” King admits on the opening track, “Don’t we have anything to live for?” Ironically, by conveying this desire for existential significance in such an immediate, accessible, and lovable manner, Japandroids have actually created profound meaning with this record and effectively answered their own question. 

For me anyway, Celebration Rock is a reason to live in and of itself, but I’m not sure if the band is quite so easily persuaded. ”Still waiting for a generation’s bonfire to begin,” King sings impatiently on “Adrenaline Nightshift.” With Celebration Rock, he and drummer David Prowse seem intent on lighting that fire, even if it means getting burned. Indeed, Celebration Rock bears numerous lyrical references to fire, both as a symbol for love and for the energy of life — energy which, the band acknowledges, could die out at any moment. In order to keep it alive, the band turns the amps up and rocks out with unrivaled intensity, resulting in six of 2012’s most urgent punk rock anthems.

“The Nights Of Wine And Roses” opens with fireworks and builds with a steady floor tom beat before exploding into a blaze of distorted guitar. From then on through the next six tracks, the energy never lets up. “Evil’s Sway” overlays guitar feedback with monstrous riffs and drum fills punctuated by brief “Oh yeah, oh yeah!s” from Prowse. Similarly cathartic shout/sung choruses pop up on nearly every track, with particularly strong effect on “Adrenaline Nightshift”, “The House That Heaven Built,” and “Younger Us.” In context, the inclusion of “Younger Us,” which was released as a single back in 2010, feels like a victory lap around the record, indicating not only how far they’ve come as a band since then, but how great they’ve always been in the first place.

By the record’s end, the band does eventually approach the uncomfortable subject of what would happen when the “fire” dies out. On the tender album closer “Continuous Thunder,” King assures the listener that his sincerity extends not only to his comrades and friends, but to a lover as well. “If I had all the answers and you had the body you wanted,” he sings, “Would we love with a legendary fire?” To King, as to us, the answer to that question is less important than what comes after — “And if the cold, pissing rain flooded that fire, would you still take my hand tonight?” All I can say is that I hope she would. With this album, he’s earned it. They both have.

Celebration Rock is not just an album that would sound great soundtracking your next party; it is a sincere, thoroughly realized exultation of the glory of rock music itself. From the wordless rallying calls that permeate nearly every track, to the starry-eyed lyrics and even the cover of The Gun Club’s “For The Love Of Ivy,” Celebration Rock is truly a celebration of the myth-laced history of rock music, and one that has earned a place in the books by its own rite.

When asked about the album’s relatively short tracklist by Rolling Stone, frontman Brian King rattled off a series of records which, like Celebration Rock, feature only eight songs, including Led Zeppelin IV, The Stooges’ Raw Power, and Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen. It was only an offhand comment on King’s part, but I can’t help but think about those ‘classic’ records whenever I listen to Celebration Rock now. Of course, I still fucking love Born To Run, but I’d take this over a Led Zeppelin record any day.

9/10

Key Tracks: “The Nights Of Wine And Roses”, “Adrenaline Nightshift”, “The House That Heaven Built”

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Celebration Rock is out tomorrow on Polyvinyl Records. It is available for pre-order now from the Polyvinyl website.

Spirit Night - One Man Houses (2012)

Earlier this year, Derrick Shanholtzer from The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die unveiled Broken World Media, his boldly named new record label, and announced ambitious plans to release new music from his various bands in addition to other budding independent artists. Among the label’s very first releases comes One Man Houses, the new LP from the West Virginia/Brooklyn group Spirit Nights. 

A project fronted by singer/songwriter Dylan Balliett, Spirit Nights has been kicking around for a while, but they’ve never made a record quite like this before. After releasing the moody, sonically disparate record What We Will Be in 2010, the group sought to craft a more focused and refined rock record. That’s exactly what they’ve done with One Man Houses, a visceral and direct punk album with forceful lyrics and an intensely coherent musical framework.

In a way, One Man Houses is reminiscent of Mountain Smashers, the 2011 record from New Jersey’s By Surprise — Both are jangly, straightforward, emo-tinged indie rock records, and both come from relatively unknown bands with heavily undervalued talent. The lyrical connections are pretty hard to deny as well — Try to find another pair of albums as sonically similar as these two that also bear explicitly stated references to the same American writers. For Spirit Night, it’s “Kerouac.” For By Surprise, it was Thoreau… and also Kerouac.

Like any great lo-fi indie rock record, One Man Houses boasts its share of ironic slacker sentiments. “I’m too busy reading Kerouac to drive my car cross country,” Balliett sings on one track. Overall though, One Man Houses leans more towards Pinkerton than Pavement on the indie rock lyrical spectrum. Balliett spends a great deal of his time oversharing about self-loathing and heartbreak, extolling the virtues of jerking off and taking pills to cope with “real pain” on “Better Off.” Elsewhere on “Living Room,” he reminds the lister that “[his] heart still breaks every month or so over little things.” You’ve heard this all before, of course, and many of the lyrics on this record unfortunately lack the individuality to separate Spirit Nights from their emotive peers.

Every once in a while, however, Balliett strikes a lyrical vein that indicates his true creative potential and sets a high standard for lyrical excellence that the rest of the album can’t quite measure up to. On the chilling penultimate track “The Last Time,” the album’s best and longest song, the band slows things down musically, allowing Balliett to explore disturbing and ambiguous lyrical territory to great effect. “I know where you keep your letters / And I know where you keep the bullets to your gun,” he sings with cold certainty, “I don’t want to have to kill you / I don’t want to have to kill anyone.” Although he offers hints throughout the song’s six minute length, its subject remains open to the listener’s interpretation. This kind of ‘anti-oversharing’ suits Balliett’s lyrical pen much better than the opposite style, which he stubbornly employs throughout most of the album.

The lyrics may be a little lacking in luster overall, but that shouldn’t discount the quality of the songwriting and musicianship throughout the record. One Man Houses shines with lo-fi luminescence and just enough grit to justify tagging this as “punk” in your iTunes. Tracks like the opener “Goodbye Jones” don’t straddle the line between indie rock and emo so much as they veer wildly and erratically between the two, taking the listener on a sonic joyride that’s actually a lot of fun, considering the singer is shouting about being along and miserable most of the time.

Among the highlights is the band’s version of “Rubberneck,” a cover of one of my favorite songs by David Bello, an enigmatic fellow West Virginian with a seemingly bottomless discography. They wrench the song out of its original acoustic context and mold it into a cathartic punk anthem, demonstrating not only the impressive malleability of Bello’s material but also the band’s remarkable talent as arrangers and interpreters. This is how covers should be done. After the “Rubberneck” cover, which comes in the middle of the record, Spirit Night goes on something of an experimental tear, flirting with earworm garage rock and even breaking out an acoustic guitar on “Living Room” before unveiling the previously mentioned masterpiece “The Last Time,” the second to last track.

The album ends on a less breathtaking note with a song called “Grasshoppers,” a straight up ripoff of Weezer’s beloved “Surf Wax America” from their 1994 debut — enjoyable, but frustrating nevertheless. In its least interesting form, revivalist indie rock is appealing only in its similarity to the music of past indie rock records. At its best, it reminds the listener of why people continue to rip off bands like Weezer, Sebadoh, and Pavement in the first place. On One Man Houses, Spirit Night falls into the latter camp most of the time, but not as consistently as they ought to.

7/10

Key Tracks: “Kerouac”, “Rubberneck”, “The Last Time”

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Stream Spirit Night’s One Man Houses below, and download the record for free at their bandcamp page. One Man Houses is out now on cassette via Broken World Media.

El-P - Cancer For Cure (2012)

As far as blogging goes, one of my biggest regrets of last year was that I didn’t cover more hip-hop on here. Although I’ve listened to quite a lot of hip-hop in the past two or three years since I got over the rockist stigma against it, I didn’t make nearly enough of an effort to actively seek out new releases last year, and I seriously wish I had. I’ve spent a good portion of my music listening time in the past few months catching up on what I missed in 2011, and now I feel like I’m finally in a good place to start focusing on new music again. Since El-P’s highly anticipated new album Cancer For Cure leaked over the weekend, I figure that this presents as good an opportunity as any to get back on that hip-hop blogging curve.

A major figure in the alternative hip-hop scene for over a decade, the Brooklyn-based rapper El-P is something of a jack of all trades. Like a younger, more experimental, white version of Dr. Dre, El-P (aka Jamie Meline) is not only a rapper, but also a producer and the founder of the well known alt hip-hop record label Definitive Jux. Because of some uncertainty regarding the future of the label and of his own musical output over the past five years since his last album was released, his new record is meant to be something of a comeback for him.

Coming on the heels of some high profile collaborations with burgeoning artists such as Das Racist and Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, Cancer For Cure positions El-P in something of an elder statesman’s role, while retaining the energy of his earlier work. He’s described it in interviews as a “fight record,” and although that description is rather cliche, the album’s pugnacious spirit is made very clear from the get-go. After just under a minute of slowly building drones and introductory vocal samples, the opening track “Request Denied” unleashes itself with heavy, cyclical breakbeats and ominous synths, building up to a dramatic instrumental crescendo. El-P doesn’t even start rapping until the three minute mark, but once he begins, he immediately exerts the fullest extent of his lyrical and vocal abilities. El-P has always been known equally for his skills as a producer and for his impenetrably quick flow, and he displays both quite thoroughly on “Request Denied.” 

Elsewhere on the record, he demonstrates a production style that manages to sound just as playful as it is aggressive. On some tracks, such as the synth-heavy “True Story,” the beats crash and burn in explosive succession, sounding like a train reeling around a track at high speeds. On others, such as “Works Every Time,” the contrast between extremely minimalist beats and layered synth saws produces a palpable rawness. My favorite production moment on the record comes in the lengthy highlight “Drones Over Bklyn,” when El-P begins rapping over a classic New York boom bap beat through a distorted vocal filter immediately after a telephone rings, giving the effect that he’s angrily rapping through the phone. It’s an alarming effect that definitely supports the anger expressed in El-P’s lyrics, but I can’t help but smile from the catharsis that such creative production provides. 

Lyrically, El-P is in attack mode throughout the majority of the record, dropping battle rap style lines from “Request Denied” onward and never resorting to cheap tactics of self-aggrandizement. On “Tougher Colder” (feat. Killer Mike and Despot), he chillingly spits, “To the mother of my enemy: I just killed your son / He died with his face to the sky and it cannot be undone.” He seems to be targeting that same enemy on “Oh Hail No,” which features Danny Brown and Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, when he raps, “I loved the part where you cried / I like nothing else.” Although he appears to revel in his sheer skill, and it’s hard to fault him for that; however, the most interesting lyrical moments on Cancer For Cure come when El-P retreats from the front lines and examines himself at face value. “I’m too detached from my white noise planet,” he admits on “Stay Down.” Perhaps after such a relatively long break from releasing a major solo album, El-P is taking the opportunity with Cancer For Cure to reattach himself to hip-hop and to the world itself. In that sense, he’s entirely succeeded; Cancer For Cure is not only a thoroughly consistent and powerful record — it’s also surprisingly relevant, coming from someone who’s been in the game since the 90s. 

Cancer For Cure’s incendiary lead single “The Full Retard” certainly made an impact when it was released back in March, but it hits even harder in the context of the album, where its rallying opening lines speak for the whole record rather than just the one song. El-P’s particular brand of alt rap has been touted as the hip-hop of the future for long enough that the label is starting to get old, but when El-P is shouting at the listener to “pump this shit like they do in the future,” it’s hard not to believe that maybe he was right all along. With another high profile solo release from El-P’s partner in crime Aesop Rock just around the corner, maybe 2012 is poised to experience an alt hip-hop revival. If that’s the case, then Cancer For Cure will be the album that leads the charge, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

8/10

Key tracks: “The Full Retard”, “Drones Over Bklyn”, “Oh Hail No”

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Cancer For Cure is out May 22nd on Fat Possum Records.

ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD live at The Webster Underground. Hartford CT. 4.21.12

I’d like to begin this review by offering my sincere congratulations and thanks to all the other great shows I’ve seen this year. Dum Dum Girls, Alcest, Pianos Become The Teeth… you had a good run. Titus Andronicus, it was great seeing you again on Friday. With that having been said, not one of these shows can hold a candle to the one I saw last night. Andrew Jackson Jihad’s performance at The Webster Underground yesterday was simply the most revelatory and thoroughly expressive demonstration of creativity that I’ve seen since Sufjan Stevens’ two night stint at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last year. 

Although I couldn’t have possibly predicted just how great a show it would be, I had a feeling fairly early on that it would be a good one. I arrived in Hartford early enough to catch some young local punk band who wasn’t listed on the bill, and soon made my way to the front of the venue and met up with some friends of mine whom I had seen the previous night at the Titus Andronicus show. As we waited for the opening act to go on, a touring band by the name of The Treasure Fleet, I spied Andrew Jackson Jihad frontman Sean Bonnette emerging from the backstage room on the other side of the venue. When he caught my eye, Sean cracked a big smile and waved at me, indicating that he remembered me from the time that I interviewed him and bassist Ben Gallaty last September. I remembered asking the two of them during that interview if they would return to Connecticut soon, and realized that they had made good on their promise to come back. I was filled with pride, and I knew that I was in for something special. 

But first, the opening bands: The Treasure Fleet began promptly and played a half hour set, bursting with ebullient energy that almost made their musical aesthetic not seem out of place. With a frontman decked out in facepaint and wearing a big Wayne Coyne smile on his face, The Treasure Fleet delivered a rousing set of guitar-based psychedelic pop, rife with lyrics about doing drugs (one song was unsubtly entitled “High on a Bicycle”) and sunny harmonies. It didn’t exactly fit in with the other two bands, but they didn’t seem to care too much.

Afterwards, the Cali punk band Joyce Manor took the stage, eliciting an impressive response from the crowd within mere seconds of the beginning of their set. They opened with “Beach Community” — one of exactly two songs I wanted to hear them play — and by the halfway point of that song’s <2 minute duration, at least ten people had already stage dove, including myself and a perpetually giddy-looking Greg Horbal of The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die. During their set, the audience members (and the band as well) demonstrated a complete lack of regard for human safety, reinforcing my belief that serious Joyce Manor fans are kind of obnoxious. The sheer number of people stagediving during each song even resulted in an altercation between one particularly aggressive fan and a man in a wheel chair, who was sadly forced to move to the back of the venue. Even though it left a sour taste in my mouth, Joyce Manor’s set was certainly enjoyable. Amidst a selection of songs heavy on material from their self-titled album, “Constant Headache” provided a great cathartic release.

Sweaty, battered, and still reeling from the previous night’s show, I was greatly appreciative of the break time after Joyce Manor’s set. Although the string of shows that last night’s was a part of was being billed as a full band tour, Andrew Jackson Jihad gave the audience a much-needed breather by opening their set as an acoustic two piece. The material from their acoustic set was almost entirely culled from the beloved 2007 album People That Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World, eliciting singalongs that filled the entire cramped venue to the rafters. Between classics like the opening one-two punch of “Brave as a Noun” and “Survival Song,” and deeper cuts like “Personal Space Invader” and the murder ballad “Bad Bad Things,” Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty cracked jokes, gave thanks, and talked about their longstanding history with Connecticut. The communal vibe during those first few songs was beautiful, and for the more restless attendees, the promise of the coming electric release was insatiable. 

Soon, the band began adding more members to their onstage setup, gradually building up to the full band that was promised. Knife Man contributor Preston Bryant joined the duo on banjo for the harrowing “People II: The Reckoning,” and switched between electric guitar and synthesizer for the rest of the set. Soon after Bryant joined the group, none other than Bomb The Music Industry! frontman Jeff Rosenstock showed up, playing synths on “If You Have Love In Your Heart” and delivering a heavy, emotive guitar solo during the orchestral section of Can’t Maintain’s “White Face, Black Eyes” before ducking off to the side to watch the rest of the show.

While Rosenstock exited the stage, the band added a drummer and Bonnette picked up an electric guitar. The energy inside the Webster Underground was almost as palpable as the unbearable heat. After a quick reintroduction, the punk rock portion of the set began, as the invigorated four piece group busted open Knife Man’s restless “Gift Of the Magi 2: Return Of The Magi.” In addition to performing their more aggressive electric material the way that it sounds on record, they also took the opportunity to add a different dimension to some of their more traditionally acoustic music, playing sped up electric versions of “You Don’t Deserve Yourself” and “Little Prince (El Principito).” I had resisted stage diving for a while, but once they began to play their self-hate anthem “Heartilation,” I couldn’t resist launching myself into the crowd. A few people got the chance to stagedive during that song before Bonnette kindly asked everybody to not do that. Afterwards, the band played a fast-paced new song that they dedicated to Ryan Gosling (apparently the song is about the movie Half Nelson) and brought out Joyce Manor’s Barry Johnson to sing on a deep cut called “Hate And Kill.”

The latter portion of the set was loaded with material from Knife Man, my 7th favorite album of 2011. In addition to the aforementioned “Magi,” the group also played their long distance relationship song “Distance” (which used to resonate with me pretty deeply), as well as their country rock jam “Sad Songs” and “Hate, Rain On Me,” my second favorite track on the record. It was a great validation of all the time I spent listening to that record last year, and it was wonderful to hear all those songs so fully realized in the live full band context; however, the best moment of the show didn’t come until the very end. I had been preparing myself to hear the Knife Man closer “Big Bird” live ever since I heard about Andrew Jackson Jihad doing this full band tour, but nothing I could have done would have ever truly prepared me to hear that song being played in front of me. In order to match the level of grandeur achieved by the studio recording, the band brought out two additional members to supplement their lineup even more, and Bonnette ditched his guitar to focus only on the song’s demanding vocal part. As I stood there in the front row, listening intently as Bonnette laid out his deepest fears for everyone to hear, I was overcome with emotion and arrested by the song’s sheer resonance. When Bonnette kneeled into the crowd and offered me the mic to sing along with him, I almost couldn’t do it. As he stood there, literally bowled over and forced to his knees by the power of his own music, I felt connected to him in a way that I had never felt connected to anyone before. Connections like that never go away, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way I felt just then, witnessing one of my favorite songs ever come to life.

10/10

Andrew Jackson Jihad Setlist - 4/21/12

• 1. ”Brave As A Noun”
• 2. “Survival Song”
• 3. “People II 2: Still Peoplin’”
• 4. “Personal Space Invader”
• 5. “Bad Bad Things”
• 6. “People II: The Reckoning”
• 7. “If You Have Love In Your Heart” (featuring Jeff Rosenstock)
• 8. “Fucc The Devil”
• 9. “White Face, Black Eyes” (featuring Jeff Rosenstock)
• 10. “Gift Of The Magi 2: Return Of The Magi”
• 11. “Distance”
• 12. “You Don’t Deserve Yourself”
• 13. “Heartilation”
• 14. “Sad Songs (Intermission)”
• 15. “Hate, Rain On Me”
• 16. “Inner City Basehead History Teacher” (NEW SONG)
• 17. “Hate And Kill” (featuring Barry Johnson)
• 18. “Little Prince (El Principito)”
• 19. “Big Bird”

TITUS ANDRONICUS live at Quinnipiac Festapalooza. Hamden CT. 4.20.12

July 10th 2010 may have been the first truly beautiful day of my life. If the previous March was the watershed month that set my life on the course that it’s been on for the past two years, then July 10th was the first real manifestation of that change. That night, Titus Andronicus played a packed show in New Haven, Connecticut with Hallelujah The Hills and Bomb The Music Industry!. That night I found out what it was like to be thoroughly engaged with music on both a physical and mental level. Much like TItus Andronicus’ record The Monitor, released earlier that year, had made me experience recorded music in a different way, that show at Lilly’s Pad made me appreciate live music more than I ever had before. 

Needless to say, when I found out that the dynamic pairing of Titus Andronicus and Bomb The Music Industry! would be returning to Connecticut, I was excited. I had seen Titus Andronicus twice since that show two years ago, and had seen Bomb The Music Industry! once more as well. My friend Ben Goodheart tipped me off that he was trying to get the two to headline a day-long festival he was putting together at Quinnipiac, and I waited with baited breath for the official announcement. As it turned out, the lineup was even better than I could have expected. In addition to two Quinnipiac-affiliated acts, the festival (dubbed Festapalooza) boasted The Front Bottoms and my good friends in The Guru. 

When I arrived at the Quinnipiac campus yesterday, I immediately spotted the members of The Guru looking out from a bay window on the second floor of the athletic center where the show was being held. They waved down to me, and I entered the building and ascended the stairs in an attempt to track them down. Soon enough, I found myself backstage, quite accidentally. As I hobnobbed with The Guru, I realized that the members of Titus Andronicus and The Front Bottoms were lounging around in the very same room. I quickly re-introduced myself to Patrick Stickles (whom I had met three times before) before being called downstairs to do an impromptu video interview with The Guru. Soon enough, it was time to start the show.

I didn’t pay much attention to the opening act The Midnighters, but I found myself drawn to their followup act Great Caesar, a local group whom I had previously seen at The Space last year. I didn’t remember much about them from that show, but they quickly won me over last night with their power pop guitar licks and jazz sensibilities. Their frontman sang like a cross between Paul Westerberg and a 1950s crooner, and the combination of shoegazy guitars and tenor saxophone was exciting and unique. The Guru came on next, and within seconds of their first song I was brought back to this past summer, when going to a Guru show was practically a weekly activity for me. Their set was just as fun and as engaging as any I’ve seen, and the growing crowd seemed to really enjoy their frenetic psych-rock vibe. 

Afterwards, The Front Bottoms took the stage, supplementing their traditional guitar/drums duo formula with a bassist/keyboardist. I had never given much serious listening to this band before, but from what I could tell, their bolstered sound really helped their performance. I was also amazed and surprised by what a draw they had, and how active their fans were during the show. For an acoustic guitar-led band that doesn’t really qualify as ‘folk punk,’ they maintained an incredibly high level of energy and crowd participation throughout. They also established a level of fun that topped even The Guru that night — a hard task to accomplish. 

Although it actually seemed like The Front Bottoms had the most devoted fans of the night, my level of excitement last night only began to truly peak with Bomb The Music Industry!’s set. When I saw them the previous two times, I had only been a passive fan of their music, but ever since Vacation came out last year, I’ve gotten much more invested in them. Thankfully for me, their set was just about as perfectly aligned with my tastes as it possibly could have been. They played a whole lot of Vacation material, opening with “Campaign For A Better Next Weekend” and moving right into “Everybody That Loves You,” “Everybody That You Love,” and the album highlight “Hurricane Waves,” which elicited two impassioned stage dives from me. Other highlights included the sped up version of the breezy “Can’t Complain,” which was transformed into a high energy punk song with distorted guitars, and the pining, emotional slow jam “The Shit That You Hate,” which became an impressive singalong lovefest. They only played a few tracks that weren’t on Vacation, but the songs that they chose were among their best. “Side Projects Are Never Successful” sounded as much like an apocalyptic party as it possibly could, and their penultimate song “25” served as a great lead in to their very last, the Vacation closer “Felt Just Like Vacation.” Throughout their entire set, I couldn’t help but feel that this band (especially Jeff Rosenstock) was at their creative peak, despite having been around for nearly a decade. Plus, the abundance of beach balls everywhere was a fitting touch.

Although Bomb The Music Industry!’s set last night vastly outshone their previous performances that I’ve seen, Titus Andronicus’ headlining set did not. That certainly doesn’t mean it wasn’t great though; it’s just that the July 2010 show still stands as one of my top two or three favorite shows ever. Titus Andronicus took the opportunity afforded to them by this show to perform a lot of new material, much of which will probably appear on their currently untitled third full length album, supposedly due out at the beginning of next year or the end of this year. The new material was a little hard to get into, but from what I could tell, the studio versions will probably sound great. Among the new songs played were a lengthy jam called “Ecce Homo” and an even lengthier, multi-part epic called “My Eating Disorder.”

In between new songs, Titus Andronicus played some great older material as well. Working with a more streamlined punk rock lineup, featuring only three guitars, bass, and drums, the band cut away the instrumental fat from some of their tracks from The Monitor and did justice to the noisy and aggressive material on The Airing Of Grievances, their 2008 debut. Early on in the set, they played the vintage Airing Of Grievances track “Upon Viewing Breughel’s Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus,” which appropriately led into their new non-album single “Upon Viewing Oregon’s Landscape With The Flood Of Detritus.” On “Titus Andronicus,” Patrick Stickles busted out a harmonica and began wailing on it in between verses, and eventually passed me the mic as I crowdsurfed during the “your life is over” breakdown part. Ironically, I don’t think I had ever felt more alive. Patrick seemed a little worn out at points, but he and the other band members demonstrated impressive resilience during the lengthy The Monitor battle hymns “A More Perfect Union,” “No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future,” and the closer “Four Score And Seven.” By the time they began their last song, only a fraction of the crowd that was there at the beginning remained, but those of us who were still standing managed to give it our all, singing along with gusto and finally reveling in one last high-energy push in “Four Score And Seven’s” final half.

With some unfamiliar material and poor sound mixing, it wasn’t a perfect set, but perfection wasn’t what I wanted. What this show left me was an idea — an idea that being part of something even as seemingly temporary or superficial as a punk rock show is just as real and important as anything else. Titus Andronicus could have played anything last night and I probably would have liked it, but I really did need this to happen. Forget September 2011. Forget my ex-girlfriend. Last night was the first time I’ve been truly happy in what feels like a lifetime. My life isn’t over yet, but if it had to end right now, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. 

8/10

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Check out more photos from this show over at the Lewis and his Blog facebook page!

How Connecticut Saved Connecticut (With Some Help)

An account of Into It. Over It. live at The Space w/ TWIABP, Two Humans, Chris Cappello & Lifelines - 4/18/12

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Last night, I played the highest-profile show that I’ve ever been a part of. I was privileged to be counted among an esteemed lineup of artists, some of whom I consider high on my list of my favorite bands and musicians. It was a show that I had been incredibly excited to play for quite some time, but it almost didn’t happen.

A number of months ago, Jeff Menig and his out of state booking company Killer Cool Productions announced that Into It. Over It. would be coming to The Space, a Connecticut all ages venue that I frequently attend. Taking a suggestion from a friend of mine, I emailed Killer Cool asking if I could play the show, since Evan Weiss’ work has been a big influence on my own music for some time. They accepted on the condition that I would sell a certain number of tickets — a practice known in the booking industry as “pay to play.” The other opening acts were selected under similar conditions.

When Evan Weiss was made aware of this, he took to the Into It. Over It. facebook page and offered a hearty “fuck you” to Menig and the pay to play system, which was echoed once more in his headlining set last night. For a while, the likelihood of the show actually happening seemed slight; however, Connecticut proved to be resilient on its own. Chris Szczerba and his local booking company The Arc Agency stepped in and took the reins on this show, preserving the fundamental integrity of the lineup without implementing pay to play. Chris got the word out about the show and everybody involved did a great job of promoting it in the weeks prior.

Although I maintained a high level of excitement throughout the weeks leading up to the show, the days immediately prior to it bred a sense of uneasiness for many. One of the bands who had been added to the lineup, a local group called Two Humans, had recently released a song called “Rooftops” that featured a controversial and offensive phrase spoken at the end. The wave of backlash against the group from people inside the Connecticut scene and beyond came swiftly and without hesitation, and although Two Humans apologized sincerely beforehand (albeit after a couple of failed apology attempts), it was clear that the show last night was going to be the event at which they would either retain their integrity or lose it completely.

Despite this uneasiness, the show began with relative ease as people started filling into the venue around 7:30. The opening band Lifelines played an angsty and raw brand of Balance and Composure-style punk that was surprisingly well-executed, prompting Greg Horbal to cheekily exclaim, “I want to hate this but I really don’t.” My set followed theirs, and although I’m a notoriously critical judge of my own work, I felt as though I carried out my performance with confidence, as I received quite a few compliments about my set afterwards. On a personal level, perhaps the best moment from the entire night occurred at the very end, when Tom Diaz, the endearingly shy and incredibly soft-spoken frontman for The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die came up to me and thanked me for playing with his band. As someone who loves The World Is… more than just about any other band active today, this meant a lot to me, especially coming from him.

When Two Humans took the stage after me, some uncertainty was definitely brooding amongst some of the crowd members, but their performance actually proved to be quite enjoyable, despite the somewhat suspect decision to include “Rooftops” in their set. For the duration of their set, the band briefly reminded me and others just why they had been added to the lineup in the first place: They’re a really dynamic, tight indie rock band with a lot of character and a fun, excitable energy that is tough to suppress.

However, after they concluded their portion of the show, that energy was suppressed very quickly. In correspondance with Chris Szczerba, the band had agreed to allow Chris Zizzamia host an open dialogue about the oppressive power of language and our responsibility to help make our musical community safe for everyone involved. Rather than the public Two Humans shaming session that I half expected it to be, Chris’ dialogue was just that: an articulate and cogent discussion that was not focused on chastising but rather on learning. Along with Chris Z., Elise Granata, Jack Tomascak and others, I spoke during the discussion. Overall, I was very proud of how it turned out, and I highly suggest watching a video that Rider Doolittle filmed of it below.

language workshop at The Space from Rider Doolittle on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, the people who orchestrated the discussion failed to correspond with The Space about it beforehand, and although it did not interrupt any schedules or set times, this disconnect between the Space establishment and the members of the punk community led to some antagonism. This antagonism, which manifested itself in the form of some nasty comments from two of The Space’s employees, stifled the positive, healing mood that the discussion fostered and led to an palpably uncomfortable atmosphere at the venue. Everyone seemed incredibly on edge throughout after the discussion and throughout the penultimate set by The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die. Ironically, TWIABP’s performance was probably the tightest and technically the best I’ve ever seen by them. In addition to playing in a tense setting, the band also appeared to be suffering from their bassist’s broken leg (he had to sit down throughout their set), their frontman having been in and out of the hospital last month, and their drummer doing sessions playing for another band. Self Defense Family’s Alan Huck filled in on drums instead. Somehow, despite all of these unusual circumstances, the band sounded incredible last night, playing with a necessary intensity that I had never seen from them before. Anticipating that crowd participation would not be very high, Greg Horbal sang and played with a particularly special aggression and energy, screaming well known songs like “I Will Be Okay. Everything” and “Gordon Paul” as if he were playing them for the first time. It was a remarkable thing to witness, but unfortunate because everybody was so on-edge.

When not even a set by an atmospheric emo band like The World Is… could improve the soured atmosphere at the show, I was beginning to feel pretty bad. Thankfully, as it turned out, the only person who could possibly have made this show good again happened to be playing next. With two guitar cases at his sides and an affable smile on his face, Evan Weiss took the stage around 10:15.

Evan Weiss has a calm, confident manner of speaking and exudes charisma as a performer. Although he’s only 27, he plays like a sort of punk elder statesman, well versed in the ins and outs of punk culture. Evan’s songs are all engaging stories in and of themselves, but he supplemented them with additional information, giving me new insight into the meanings of some of my favorite Into It. Over It. songs. As I lost myself in Evan’s too-good-to-not-be-true tales of sucker punches, best friends, and punks turned cops, I could feel the antagonism and uneasiness fading away from the room. By the time he started to play “Pontiac, MI,” my favorite IIOI song and one that he rarely plays live, I was nearly in tears. In between songs, Evan was also gracious enough to offer his opinion on the Two Humans issue, complimenting the Connecticut scene for approaching it in such a mature manner and shooting sly remarks at The Space for not taking the serious nature of the issue to heart. After closing out his set with a series of requests (including an Iron Chic cover that he played for Mitch Dubey, the subject of his song “Connecticut Steps”), Evan left the stage a lot warmer than it was when he first stepped up onto it.

At the show last night, we as a community managed to heal and begin rebuilding the bridges that were burned regarding Two Humans, and showed Killer Cool and other out of state companies that Connecticut does not need their influence or marketing tactics. Most importantly, we proved that our scene is self-sufficient, and that we are capable of adapting and restructuring as the need arises. But none of the lessons that we learned last night would have had as much of an impact if the show had not been a good time, and for that, Evan Weiss deserves a lot of credit.

In the midst of his set, Evan remarked that although he was not technically part of the Connecticut punk community, he often wishes he were. I think I can speak for many of the attendees of the show last night in saying that he has rightfully earned his place here in the Nutmeg State. Together, we showed that being a part of this community is something of which we should all be proud.

Into It. Over It. Setlist - 4/18/12

• 1. “Humboldt”
• 2. “An Evening With Ramsey Beyer”
• 3. “The Frames That Used To Greet Me”
• 4. “Raw Bar OBX 2002” (Everyone Everywhere cover)
• 5. “Pontiac, MI”
• 6. “P R O P E R”
• 7. “Embracing Facts”
• 8. “Connecticut Steps”
• 9. “Ravenswood”
• 10. “Write It Right”
• 11. “No Sleep Til Humboldt” (Stay Ahead Of The Weather cover)
• 12. “Logan Square”
• 13. “22 Syllables”
• 14. “The Bullied Becomes The Bully”
• 15. “Bustin’” (Iron Chic cover)
• 16. “No Good Before Noon”
• 17. “Anchor”

The Act Of Estimating As Worthless - Amongst These Splintered Minds//Leaden Thoughts Sing Softly (2012)

“It’s funny, the things we remember”

I think that in general, people tend to get hung up on what they forget rather than what they remember. The misplaced keys, forgotten anniversaries, and unremembered combinations to the high school lockers of our daily lives impact our existence in an immediate sense. We forget because we don’t care — Not about keys, anniversaries, or locker combinations — about the mundanities of the human world. But our world is not exclusively ordinary, and sometimes our minds surprise us with the familiar beauty of even the simplest memories. 

The New York-based folk group The Act of Estimating As Worthless thrive in this memory-space. Just as much as they make music with guitars, horns, and sweeping strings, Michael Van Asselt and Zoe Grant make music with memories, drawing inspiration from the potent and universal themes of relationships, aging, and childhood. Theirs is a world of constellations in the night sky, long drives home from the house of your grandparents years ago, and fallen trees in the backyard of your childhood home — And that’s all within just one song. Throughout their new record Amongst These Splintered Minds//Leaden Thoughts Sing Softly, The Act of Estimating As Worthless opens up and explores this world, illuminating the world of the rest of us along the way.

Memory is certainly a major subject of the album, most notably of course on “The Things We Remember,” but also more subtly on tracks like “My Left Thumb,” a quiet piece in which Van Asselt pines about holding hands with a former lover. ”My left thumb goes on top when I weave my fingers together,” he sings, “and I can’t remember whose thumb went on top when our hands were together.” Coupled with occasional bursts of nostalgic imagery, this kind of quaintly simple poetry constitutes most of the album’s lyrics. The lyrics themselves are conveyed by either Van Asselt or Grant, or the combination of the two of them, who often sing in unison on the album. Collectively, they sing in murmuring, deadpan tones, producing an effect somewhere between a less depressing Carissa’s Wierd and a less insipid Moldy Peaches. When they sing together, as on the lilting waltz “A Few Paces Behind,” their voices strike a balance between childlike whimsy and the bittersweet feeling of retrospection, just as their lyrics do. 

This intimate and unhinged vocal style creates a curious contrast with the music. The majority of the songs on Amongst These Splintered Minds… begin rather humbly with a verse or two of simple guitar picking, but almost all of them soon build up into something more expansive. The opening track “Bones” and “No One On The Road” create especially powerful crescendos — grand, sweeping instrumental movements with bowed bass, violins, and multi-part horn arrangements that lift the listener off his feet and up into the ether. Other tracks utilize toy pianos to great effect, while “Massive Windows” and “The Things We Remember” feature distorted guitar leads that sit perfectly above the lush acoustic mix below them. For a group of college kids making folk music, the production on this album is really excellent, and demonstrates an impressive awareness of space and dynamics.

Like a dusty old photo album in the attic of your parents’ house, Amongst These Splintered Minds//Leaden Thoughts Sing Softly is an album that will make you laugh, smile, reflect, and maybe even cry a little. But even though it is a deliberately nostalgic album rooted in musical traditions of the past, it presents itself as one of the boldest and most exciting folk records I’ve heard this year. I don’t think I’ll ever cease to be impressed with what young college kids can accomplish, and this record validates that.

8/10

Key Tracks: “Bones”, “The Things We Remember”

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Download the embedded record below and download it for whatever you want to pay over at The Act Of Estimating As Worthless’ bandcamp page. Feel free to follow them on tumblr as well HERE.

Suns - The Engine Room (2012)

In the realm of local music, there are two kinds of bands: those that will always be local bands until they break up or dissolve, and those that will somehow transcend the limitations of the local scene and become something more. The Connecticut punk scene has had its fair share of both, and has produced numerous groups from the latter camp in recent years. Some, like The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, have made the leap through rigorous touring schedules and extensive self-promotion. Others, like Hostage Calm, have done so thanks to a singular, definitive release that established them as a musical force to be reckoned with. With their new LP The Engine Room, the Fairfield County four-piece Suns now have the potential to reach the same level of recognition and influence as those bands and others. They’re in the right place to do so, but does this record properly realize the opportunity that their position has granted them?

To answer such a question, one needs to look at the band’s roots, and examine how they’ve progressed since those formative days. Suns began as a trio in 2008, and released a 3 song demo (fittingly called Three Songs) two years later. Their EP Be Good Boy, released last year, was the first high profile release for the band, and although I criticized it in my original review for bearing too much similarity to the trio’s parent band Midi & The Modern Dance, I recognized their talent and songcrafting ability. 

At face value, The Engine Room is not exactly a logical stylistic progression from the EP, but the differences in song structure and aesthetic between this and Be Good Boy are understandable in context. Since the release of the EP, the three Wills (Rutledge, Ponturo, and Indelicato) of Suns have added a new guitarist to their fold, the fleet-fingered math rock wizard Peter Katz, whose former band Fugue crafted a distinctive blend of rhythmically complex instrumental post-rock before disbanding last year. Katz’ influence permeates nearly every musical aspect of The Engine Room, from the jarring, occasionally dissonant bursts of guitar noise on “I Could Have Made Time” to the spindly riffs that underpin tracks like “Happy Sounds” and “Whippoorwill Lane.” More than any other singular instrumental moment, the lightning-fast downstroke’d riff that appears about 30 seconds into the aggressive “Lover, Lover” is a particular highlight. Throughout The Engine Room, Katz’ lead guitar playing and knack for curious rhythms are undoubtedly what set this LP apart from Suns’ earlier, more basic punk rock material. 

Even though the addition of a supremely talented new guitar player is the most immediate difference between The Engine Room and the older material, it’s not the only thing that’s changed. Although it’s fairly safe to say that Katz’ math rock background was the primary influence on The Engine Room’s more complicated musical foundations, frontman Will Rutledge has clearly made strides as a songwriter on this record. Instead of relying on literal declarations of self-hate and angrily chastising former girlfriends, Rutledge displays a more refined and eloquent lyrical pen here. He’s still bitter as hell and clearly upset about the same things, but it’s a lot easier to get through this record without wincing at awkward lyrical jumbles than on the EP. Furthermore, his lack of reliance on cheap, repetitive lyrical crescendos demonstrates a more mature songwriting ability and allows for more interesting songs overall. 

The combination of Rutledge’s improved songwriting and the reinforced instrumental backing yields some pretty wonderful results on The Engine Room, particularly in the form of the single “Crocodile” and the closing title track. With its soothing, mulitracked vocals and arpeggiated guitar riffs, “Crocodile” builds up to a warning call chorus that intensifies with each post-verse repetition. By the time the song reaches its final minute, it explodes into a rage-filled surprise of razor-sharp guitars and screamed vocals evoking the early work of Tim Kasher in Cursive. The Cursive influence appears again in the bitter chorus of the title track, and throughout “I Could Have Made Time,” which plays out like a 3 minute version of “Crocodile’s” brief ending. Unfortunately, like much of Cursive’s early material, The Engine Room occasionally suffers from the band getting lost in their blind aggression and forgetting to make distinguishable, memorable songs. Thankfully, they balance that rage with some relatively subdued tracks such as the Pedro The Lion-influenced opener and the lovely acoustic piece “Machine Steam.”

So to finally answer that question that I posed at the beginning of this review, I can only definitively say that this record should give Suns the necessary gravitas to transcend local band status. If The Engine Room itself doesn’t, then I genuinely hope that at some point soon this band manages to do that through some other means. This is a band that  deserves to be heard outside of Connecticut and its affiliated scene, and hopefully this record will make that possible.

7/10

Key Tracks: “Crocodile”, “The Engine Room”

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The Engine Room is available to download for whatever you want to pay on Suns’ bandcamp page. Stream the embedded album in full below.

fun. - Some Nights (2012)

In 2009, I discovered fun. by accident. Somehow I had come into the possession of exactly two .mp3’s by The Format, the former band of frontman Nate Ruess, which I enjoyed passively but didn’t think much of. Soon thereafter, due to a recommendation from a friend on last.fm, I found myself listening to a song from fun.’s first LP Aim and Ignite, which had been released about a month prior. As I later learned, Ruess fronted both bands, a fact which I had not realized upon hearing the song for the first time. I downloaded Aim and Ignite and, like those Format songs, I enjoyed it rather passively.

In the subsequent couple years, as I listened to that album more frequently, I started to enjoy it more because I started to understand it more. My favorite band as a 12 year old was Queen, and for a long time Queen was the only band I listened to. By the time I made the connection that fun.’s music was fundamentally indebted to Queen, I was at least three years outside of my Queen phase, but nonetheless found myself overcome by a warm feeling of nostalgia. Some phases never truly die.

Either way, I never really felt that fun. was ‘my band,’ but I always held some respect for them. Their musical theatricality and affinity for wide-eyed, hyper-emotive pop music should have been off-putting to me, but it wasn’t. I understood it and I learned to accept it, but I maintained the stance of an observant, passive fan. Yet due to the intrinsically dramatic nature of their music, it made sense to me that a lot of their fans were more engaged to fun.’s music. Throughout 2010 and 2011, I witnessed numerous fun. fans pining for more music like that of their favorite band. The main complaint seemed to be with the level of acceptance that fun. was receiving. Sure, they were well known in independent music circles, but their music was so grandiose and ambitious that it seemed to demand a bigger audience. 

“Why can’t music on the radio be more like fun.?” they asked. For a long time, that seemed like a rhetorical question. Fun.’s music was big, pompous and emotional, and radio was stale, cold, and emotionless. They had no place in real, ‘popular’ pop music.

Or so it seemed. In September 2011, fun. released “We Are Young,” the lead single for their forthcoming album Some Nights. With an endlessly soaring chorus, typically heady lyrics evoking a kind of idealistic youthful vigor, and a guest vocal spot from up-and-comer Janelle Monáe, the song was (for better or worse) the most immediately catchy and distinctly fun. song that the band had ever released. Thanks in no small part to the group recently signing with the major label subsidiary Fueled By Ramen, the single rocketed to the top of the Billboard charts. Yeah, I was pretty shocked too.

To me, the passive fan, it seemed that this kind of ubiquitous success would be exactly what fun. fans wanted. As it turned out, this couldn’t have been farther from the truth. The backlash from fun. fans against “We Are Fine,” was only matched by the backlash against the full record Some Nights when it eventually leaked soon thereafter. The people who hated Some Nights the most were, incidentally, the same people who loved Aim and Ignite the most. After listening to both records from an objective, observant standpoint, I have to conclude that this backlash was warranted not by any inherent fault of Some Nights, but rather by the circumstances surround it — The major label signing, the ubiquity of the hit single, the (ugh) Glee cover… The two record’s just aren’t different enough to warrant that kind of hate on their own. From my perspective, they’re actually rather similar: both share theatrical overtones, overtly emotional lyrical themes, and intricate arrangements. The differences are, for me, what actually make Some Nights more interesting and adventurous, if not ‘better,’ than its predecessor. 

The primary differences between Aim and Ignite and Some Nights are the production and the arrangements, both of which are essentially peripheral to the actual songs. Production on Some Nights was handled by Jeff Bhasker, who is best known for his production work on none other than Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a record which appropriately bears a remarkably similar production style to Some Nights. Nate Ruess has discussed at length the influence that West’s album had on his own band’s record, and that influence audibly permeates the arrangements and production on Some Nights. Throbbing, adventurous synth melodies thrive under the bouncy “Why Am I The One,” while headphone-expanding hip-hop beats coexist with live drums on the title track and “All Alright.” “All Alright” and “One Foot” also feature their own version of the distinctive distorted vocal filter that West employed frequently on Fantasy. Fans of Aim and Ignite’s fundamentally ‘natural’ analog arrangements might miss that record’s liberal use of horns, but the band has clearly not lost their affinity for intricate string arrangements, which continue to appear on numerous tracks on the new album. Ultimately, the stadium-worthy scope and ambition present in the arrangements of Aim and Ignite have not been lost, but have rather just been translated into a more vivid, adventurous hybrid of electronic and ‘traditional’ music. 

Some Nights is certainly not without its faults, but such sonic missteps are understandable given the ambitious nature of the record. For one thing, the synth horns present in the chorus of “One Foot” and in “Stars” are really grating, and their presence is especially frustrating given the fact that they could have been easily replaced with live horns to greater effect. And even with all its radio-ready catchiness and anthemic vigor, “We Are Young” features a remarkably awkward and forced transition from the first verse to the chorus, which of course contains all of the song’s appeal. Although the album has a few unmemorable, lackluster songs, it only features one real failure, even though it’s an admirable one. The (for lack of a better term) gay pride anthem “It Gets Better” is the fastest and most excitable track on the record, but its combination of machine gun breakbeats, buzzy synths, and a chorus that manages to convey just about the worst possible combination of catchiness and annoyance adds up to quite a grating 3 minutes and 36 seconds.

Lots of people have also criticized fun.’s use of autotune on this record (particularly on the title track and on “Stars”), but I actually think that it’s used rather tastefully. Once again, I can’t help but point out the double standard that this backlash indicates. We live in a world where Sufjan Stevens, an independent musician known for his intricately-arranged indie pop music, can release an electronic, hip-hop influenced album replete with autotune use and receive near-universal acclaim for doing so. Similarly, new independent artists like Poliça have gained hype on the buzz cycle this year for using autotune and other forms of vocal manipulation. Why is it unacceptable for fun. to do so as well? As openminded music fans, we need to move beyond the stigma against autotune and accept that it can be used effectively for purposes beyond simply improving a vocal performance. Using autotune on the record was a choice that the band made themselves along with their production team — not their evil new major label, and not for ‘inauthentic’ purposes.

I’m willing to give fun. the benefit of the doubt and accept that this record was made because Nate Ruess and co. had a genuine creative idea that they wanted to realize, and not just to attain broader popularity or commercial acceptance. But to be honest, this ‘anti-sellout’ mentality has no place in a discussion of music in 2012. Regardless of the intentions behind it, Some Nights presents a bold new vision for pop music in 2012 that, unlike its 2009 predecessor, actually stands a chance of impacting the pop radio landscape. Set down your prejudices and have some fun. 

7/10

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Some Nights is available for purchase on vinyl now from fun.’s webstore.

5 Things I Learned About Metal From Alcest live w/ Vaura & De Omega

Two nights ago I saw the French black metal band Alcest perform live in New Haven, Connecticut as part of their tour with Vaura. Connecticut’s own De Omega opened as well. I don’t usually attend metal shows, and even though Alcest isn’t what some might consider a ‘traditional’ metal band, it was nonetheless a unique experience. Here’s what I learned.

1. Metal is hard to play. Really, really hard. 

Perhaps this was something that I already knew to be true in some capacity, but I didn’t really grasp just how technically challenging it is to play music of this genre. From the moment that the opening act De Omega began to play, my eyes affixed their gaze upon the guitarist’s fingers, watching them as they flitted about the neck with tenacious speed and dexterity. Although he flubbed a few notes here and there during the set, it was particularly impressive because of his ability to create such overpowering melodic sounds within just a three piece band. Both Vaura and Alcest demonstrated incredible technical precision and skill as well, but with significantly more members. I actually used to deride a lot of metal for being needlessly technical — to the point that the emotion behind the music was lost. However, the show on Sunday night showed me that technical skill can be melded with genuine emotion to produce moving, soulful music. 

2. Metal fans get really specific about sub-genre names for a reason.

Death metal, thrash metal, black metal, progressive metal… What’s the difference? I used to think that all the specificity regarding sub-grenres within the metal community was a little ridiculous, even though I hadn’t actually listened to very much metal. Now, after seeing this show, I think I’m starting to get a bigger grasp on just how diverse metal is, and how much of an umbrella term the word itself is. Most of the metal that I’ve been exploring recently can be categorized as black metal, but even within that subset I’m finding an incredible amount of diversity. Between Alcest and Deafheaven, two bands who toured together in the weeks leading up to this show, there is not much detectable musical or vocal similarity, despite them both falling under the “black metal” tag. I’m sure it will still be fun to poke fun at metal kids for getting all serious about their genre tags, but at least I understand why they do it now. 

3. Metal guys are just regular people. 

I’m not sure what I expected them to be like, but it turns out that metal fans and metal musicians are pretty normal in person. Despite their foreboding, anthemic instrumental music and Medieval-looking facial hair, the members of De Omega seemed like affable, happy people. With the exception of the headbanging, long-haired lead guitarist, the members of Vaura all looked and acted practically like indie rockers, which might have been a little more predictable since their music was clearly experimental and influenced greatly by post-rock. When his band took the stage at the end, Alcest mastermind Neige was affable and even shyly sweet, thanking the crowd for coming out and expressing his happiness that the crowd was so large. It wasn’t particularly packed at Lilly’s Pad that night, but he seemed genuinely sincere, probably due to the fact that since Alcest is from France, he doesn’t necessarily expect foreign crowds to turn out.

After the show, a couple of fans were chatting with Alcest’s drummer and lead guitarists, talking about upcoming tourdates, records, and the various metal scenes in France and the United States. It was a remarkably human interaction that revealed a lot to me as an outsider about what the metal community is like. To be honest, these guys actually seemed a little more human than the punk kids I’m used to hanging around. Ha!

4. Metal can be beautiful just as much as it can be ugly. 

One of the things that attracted me to Alcest in the first place was how little their music sounded like my preconceived notions of metal music. It was melodic, fluid, and lush, and although it was certainly heavy, that heaviness manifested itself as a dense sonic wave of guitars and drumbeats, much like the most cathartic moments of a post-rock crescendo, but sustained over multiple minutes. When I first listened to Alcest’s recorded material I was just focusing on what I was familiar with, the musical textures and the organic song structures, but after the show on Sunday, I realize that there is a lot more depth to their music and to metal in general. One of the things that particularly struck me about the show was how all three bands but especially Alcest managed to create a sonic dichotomy with their music between beauty and ugliness, and how the lines between the two seemed to blur with each passing song. It was as thought I could feel my preconceptions being torn down, with each successive blast beat and burst of Neige’s effects-laden Jazzmaster. Neige didn’t even raise his voice out of his wispy melodic register until at least 20 minutes into the show, but once that searing scream hit, the contrast between the symphonic instrumentation and his cord-shredding vocals produced a powerful emotional reaction within me. It was at once beautiful and ugly, in the best sense of each word. 

….Which brings me to my last and most important realization, which is that:

5. Metal can be really, truly great. 

There was a time not so long ago when I didn’t even think that metal could be good. Ironically, I was probably listening to a lot of Wavves at the time. Since then, I’ve educated myself a fair bit and learned what some different kinds of metal are really about, and found some bands that I really like. Up until the show on Sunday, however, I could never feel confident in saying that I loved any particular metal bands. This show proved to me that metal could astound me, excite me, and entertain me in a way that I had not previously been entertained. From the swelling instrumental works of De Omega, to the experimental, aggressive atmospheres of Vaura, to Alcest’s crushing soundscapes, I was consistently overwhelmed and moved throughout the night. More than anything, I felt like I had entered a new world of music that I had always been aware of but had never truly explored. I suppose they don’t call it “transcendental black metal” for nothing…

Whatever that means.

9/10

De Omega

Vaura

Alcest

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View more photos from the show over at the Lewis and his Blog facebook page. 

s / s / s - Beak & Claw (2012)

When the indie pop wunderkind Sufjan Stevens announced last month that he had teamed up with electronic music producer Son Lux and Anticon rapper Serengeti for his new s / s / s project, it was almost guaranteed that a few eyebrows would be raised. I’ll admit that I was a little surprised too; not only did this seem like a rather unusual pairing, but the project also seemed to arrive out of nowhere, with little advance press or promotion. But honestly, should anyone really be surprised by what Sufjan Stevens does anymore? It seems as though the artist has hardly released a single piece of music that wasn’t at least in some way designed to turn heads. In the past decade alone, Stevens has released not one but two lengthy conceptual albums about individual midwestern states, a neoclassical multimedia project about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and a 42 song Christmas album, among numerous other releases. In 2010, in addition to releasing a 60 minute “EP,” Stevens released the highly conceptual The Age Of Adz, a soul-searching existential odyssey that featured pummeling electronic beats and heavy use of autotune and other vocal manipulation. To be honest, we probably could have predicted that the next thing he’d do would be to collaborate with an experimental hip-hop artist. 

Anyway, whether you’re surprised or not, that’s exactly what he’s done here with Beak & Claw, the debut EP from s / s / s. With four songs coming in at exactly 18 minutes total, this obviously wasn’t meant to be a particularly high profile release, which definitely works in its favor. Even in the context of Sufjan’s large body of experimental work, this is still a strange album, and given his knack for elevated concepts and lengthy works, it’s refreshing to see him displaying some sense for brevity. Mostly, it’s just nice to see him not taking himself so seriously, even though some of his recent work as a ‘serious’ artist has been quite excellent. 

But by letting go of the creative reigns somewhat and apparently not exerting the full extent of his musical capabilities, Sufjan’s contributions on Beak & Claw often fade into the background. His most prominent vocal contribution comes at the very beginning, on the opening track “Museum Day,” which begins with an extended intro featuring Stevens singing once again through an autotune filter and dropping lyrics about energy and fire. The whole thing rings of Age of Adz influence, but with the experienced beatsmith Son Lux handling production instead of Stevens himself, the execution feels more refined. As jittery and glitched out as “Museum Day” is, the song hangs together enough to produce a tenuous sense of cohesion that the other three tracks do not have. Thanks to its six minute duration, it also feels like there’s enough time for all three artists to contribute their parts equally.

Unfortunately, the other songs do not fair nearly as well. Without Stevens as the creative centerpiece, the resulting tracks feel disjointed and alienating. It doesn’t help that two of the three other songs feature additional contributions — art pop act My Brightest Diamond’s Sharon Worden provides airy whooping vocals on the skittering “If This Is Real,” while the Anticon label founder himself Doseone contributes to the utterly bizarre closer “Octomom.” The contributions of these two pull the listener in opposite directions, and with such a short running time, the EP never has a chance to establish its own tone. 

With Stevens playing the role of an occasionally active overseer and Son Lux taking a mostly instrumental role, the task falls to Serengeti to really sell this EP. Although he doesn’t manage to completely tie together this incredibly contrived work, his raps definitely are the highlight of Beak & Claw. Working in largely the same creative mode as he did on last year’s underrated Family & Friends LP, Serengeti spits downcast, lyrically vivid lines in his distinctive monotone voice. He drops verses about high school, family, and relationships, painting a stark and moving vignette portrait of American life. “Sneaking in my sister’s purse / That was money for the water bill,” he raps in his standout verse on “Museum Day.” His distinctly bitter lyrical pen can perhaps be best summed up by one line on “Beyond Any Doubt” — “Reality bites.”

Serengeti’s raps don’t save Beak & Claw though. On Family & Friends, his verses were tempered by hooks just as they are on here, but the hooks on Beak & Claw are too abrasive and complicated to not distract from the central verses. Serengeti kills it on the depressing “Beyond Any Doubt,” but Sufjan’s sung hook towards the end diminishes the verses’ impact with its needlessly complicated time signature and disjointed rhythm. Similarly, although Serengeti sounds great rapping aggressively over the breakcore-influenced beat of “If This Is Real,” Sharon Worden’s vocals are abrasive and distracting to the point of annoyance. Lastly, the closing track “Octomom” (which is literally about the ‘Octomom’) aims high for absurdist realism and cultural relevance but feels about three years too late. 

As confusingly and frustratingly bad as this EP might be, it shouldn’t be enough to tarnish your opinions of any of the three collaborators as individuals. Beak & Claw was probably well-intentioned, and it was certainly an interesting idea, but some ideas truly are better left on the drawing board. 

3/10

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Beak & Claw is available for purchase now from Anticon Records, the label that collaborators Son Lux and Serengeti are on. It can be streamed in full for free or downloaded for under $4 at the Anticon bandcamp page.