Recording review - KDH, Piedmont Rose (2015)

Kaleidoscopic swirl of psych pop, rich bass, and acid etched guitars

^4.25/5.0

Bands don’t form in a vacuum; the best ones build on their inspirations and find their own signature voice. KDH (AKA Kill Devil Hill) come to the table with a distinctive mix of ‘60s psychedelic pop, sharp power pop, and a strong current of alternative rock. The songs on Piedmont Rose feature all of those influences, but jiggered together in a constantly shifting balance. The kaleidoscopic swirl.of styles tosses out one intriguing surprise after another, but the changes are rarely jarring. In large part, that’s due to Alex Smith’s rich bass work, which stands forward in the mix, leading the way. Smith is a relatively busy player, but his lines are tightly woven with the guitars.

It only takes four and a half minutes to become a true believer. “Beloved Devote” leads off the album and it shows just what kind of ride KDH can offer. The opening guitar strum sets up a riff lifted from The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There For You” (AKA the Friends theme), along with a hyperactive tom tom pulse. The bass jumps in with earnest and kicks Friends to the curb in favor of a mod power pop drive with the classic rock posturing of The Guess Who’s “American Woman”. Smith’s bass alternates between steady simplicity and looser excursions. The song drops back into the chorus with the title tag, “Beloved devote, Beloved devotion,” which boomerangs off into a new wave bridge that sounds like The Pretenders crossed with The White Stripes. After locking into a series of staccato chord jabs, the song cycles back into the opening riff. After all of the quick tempo punch of the first three minutes, the band finally relaxes into trippy freefall to catch their breath, but it’s a modest pause as they dive into a couple of hard rocking guitar solos to push to the end. There’s a natural flow from one moment to the next and familiar sections flash back, but the evolution of the song is more in keeping with a longer, more expansive piece.

“Time to Die” follows up with a similarly novel arrangement. It starts with some country-tinged rock guitar playing that would be right at home on The Rolling Stones’ "It’s Only Rock n Roll (But I Like It)", but soon enough it falls into a hard rocking avalanche and Smith’s bass slips into a Krautrock throb. The song will eventually run through psychedelic folk, moody rock, and acid etched guitar rock before crashing into a speedy ramp up ending. Where “Beloved Devote” had a plastic sense of genre, this tune ups the ante with strong tempo changes.

The sweetest track on Piedmont Rose is the instrumental, “Lettuce Rest (Appalachian Spring)”, which starts out with a mellow, jazzy vibe. The slow fade in wash intro reminds me a little of Copeland's piece, but that doesn't really justify the sub-title. Instead, it references other more modern songs like Supertramp’s “Goodbye Stranger” and Alice Cooper's "Only Women Bleed". Once again, the bass is stunning with warm, open ended lines. In contrast to the earlier song arrangements, the course here is to ramp up the tempo and reiterate through the changes until it snowballs. At peak intensity, the tune falls into a repeated descending bass riff that's ornamented with broken shards of shadowy guitar klaxon. which eventually subsides into a disjointed, restive finish.

Aside from Smith’s stellar bass work, the band’s new guitarist, Ian Lockey, invigorates the album with strong contributions on the thrashing centerpiece, “Ratchets”. Long time members Drew Taylor (guitar) and Leen Hinshaw (drums) round out the group. Piedmont Rose is a testament to how well all of these guys have collaborated to create an album that never rests on a single point, but still maintains a consistent energy and tone. What pushes this up a notch is how well they transcend the scattered musical allusions they casually drop.

Recording review - Wunder Wunder, Everything Infinite (2014)

Retro rehash, with occasional glints of interest

Is anyone else getting tired of the glut of twee retro bands? Sure, jangle and reverb are cool, but there’s got to be a limit. Wunder Wunder’s spin on this old game is to aim for the sound of a pop psychedelic band plucked from 1967 and whisked forward to the present, where a modern producer introduces them to electronic tones and helps them make a record that bridges the decades. If they had succeeded at this, it would have been great. Unfortunately, they don’t achieve that degree of originality or excitement. Instead, they’re just another band obsessed with the past that can’t quite let go of their modern instruments and sensibility. Ironically, they produce their strongest material when they fully indulge their craving for headier times, but Everything Infinite hits the wall on the tunes where they break character and slip into more recent pop fluff. Since their two extremes can’t quite meet, the album is disappointingly uneven.

The opening run of songs shows most of what the band has on offer. They lead off with the title track, a beautiful Beatlesque bit of psychedelia. The intro is starker than the Fab Four would do it, suggesting a power pop setup, but it quickly finds its footing with echoing vocals and a strong McCartney style bass line. While they decorate the tune with occasional fountains of anachronistic synth arpeggios, this is as close as they come to any kind of time traveling ideal. “Coastline” gamely throws in some old school flanger and the same echoed singing, this time summoning more of a sunny ’70s sound. Unfortunately, the skinny keyboard tone and flat mix feel cheesy after the richer sound of “Everything Infinite”. As they continue, they completely lose their mojo early into the third song, “Hail the Madmen”. The track is a muddled mess of random ideas, executed as an animatronic interpretation of danceable ’80s music. The chorus celebrates a mundane mindlessness with inane lyrics, “Hail the madmen/ Help me get you off the street/ Hey, you madmen/ You need some time off your feet.“

Then, Wunder Wunder pulls it together for another gem, “Trouble in Utopia”. They can’t resist some programmed percussion, but the trippy radiance overwhelms the cross-time distractions. Meditative repetition and bubbling tones create a wonderfully skewed sense of surrealism, which is propelled forward by the steady pacing of the arrangement. The tune peaks with a chaotic jam that feels like they’re self-consciously sifting for the perfect frequency combination to blow our minds. The lyrics declare trouble, but Utopia trumps. Still, as nice as this is, it definitely whets my appetite for the real thing, like The Moody Blues or Strawberry Alarm Clock. This only grows stronger by the time that “Sure Stuck” kicks in. The verses borrow heavily from The Bangles’ “Walk Like An Egyptian” and while the other sections turn up the paisley, they still can’t make it sound original.

Wunder Wunder is certainly adept at harnessing sunshine spaciness on Everything Infinite, but that’s hardly a unique skill. Their compatriots, Tame Impalas, have that ground well covered and have done a better job of updating the ideas beyond their nostalgic value. To break out ahead of the retro pack, Wunder Wunder will need to find their voice and work out a better melding between the Summer of Love and the summer of 2014.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Boogarins, As Plantas Que Curam (2013)

Sunny psychedelic pop owes a debt to 1960s Tropicáli

I like to imagine pockets in the world where time stands still or even regresses occasionally. Places surrounded by mountain fog and wrapped in their own echoes.  That's the kind of place in Brazil that I picture for Boogarins. The band seems caught in a warp where 1960s Tropicália is vibrant and it's okay to be earnest and awkward as long as the music can wrap around your mind and provide a cocoon. With a lighter tone than their countrymen Os Mutantes, the band fills As Plantas Que Curam with a sunny psychedelia that is one step removed from Beatlesque exploration.

The opening track, "Lucifernandis", tosses out a brief teaser of studio pre-taping before jumping into the insistent guitar riff and rolling drum beat. The guitar twists in on itself with a lightly fuzzed trail and the subtly echoed vocals begin chanting through the opening verse. The joyous sound reminds me of Roky Erickson, but with much sweeter singing. The chorus turns up the sunshine with a harmonized melody that has passed through several hands since its origins on Magical Mystery Tour. It's not so much that the song is derivative, but more that Boogarins have a talent for creating songs that sound instantly recognizable. Throughout As Plantas Que Curam, I felt more like I was returning to an old favorite, rather than meeting a mysterious stranger.

The second track, "Erre", shifts the roots from Lennon and McCartney to Pink Floyd circa The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The production has the same hollow quality on the opening guitars and a familiar sounding, hypnotic bass line. The singing even suggest Syd Barrett's phrasing. It's a rich, spacy ride, spurred on by persistent flanged cymbal work that fills the track with a constant rattle that dazes and bewilders. While I don't speak Portuguese, the vocals feel like I'm getting advice from an older brother. The guitar solo wanders in, as if by accident and leads the song to resolution.

Along with these retro flourishes, Boogarins evoke some more modern comparisons. Songs like "Despreocupor" and "Hoje APrendi de Verdade" are filled with groovy good cheer rooted in a naivaté that suggests artists like Devendra Banhart and Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices). The latter track captures a taste of Jimi Hendrix guitar tone, but eschews fireworks for a solid supportive role. The vocals eddy around in a mind-twisting whirlpool. It's disorienting, but there's no chance of a bad trip because we're safe among friends.

The moodiest moment on As Plantas Que Curam comes on "Eu Vou", a mostly acapella tune thick with resonant echoes. The song is ornamented with delicate swells and bubbles popping for a touch of backing music, but they remain understated behind the vocal and its reverberations. The title translates as "I go" or "I will go", which fits the lonely feel of the piece. But, in keeping with the general optimism of the album, the isolation is not crippling; there's a core of resilience in the singer's voice to take comfort from.

Boogarins have made a beautiful album, full of life-affirming psychedelic pop. Sometimes, a foreign language can add an exotic element, but As Plantas Que Curam defuses that with its friendly manner and relaxing vibe. Exotica can be intriguing, but this time, it's nice to surrender myself to such inviting musical surroundings.

Recording review: Portugal. The Man, Evil Friends (2013)

Worlds of possibility grow out of a partnership with Danger Mouse

It’s all about trust. Portugal. The Man spent years developing their iconic mix of retro psychedelic rock, soul and pop. Then, when they first signed with Atlantic Records, fans had to trust that the band could maintain their outsider edge. In The Mountain, In The Cloud (2011) proved that a big label meant a better studio budget but it didn’t compromise their stylistic integrity. Their latest album takes the band a step further: could they partner with famed producer Danger Mouse (Brian Joseph Burton), taking advantage of his assertive aesthetic, and still preserve their sonic personality? Portugal. The Man have been bringing pop elements into their recent music, but Danger Mouse’s production and recording work are anchored in a pop milieu well outside the band’s home base. Bands he’s worked with — Gorillaz, the Black Keys, and Norah Jones, not to mention his own Gnarls Barkley — come from a completely different musical mindset.

Evil Friends is clearly a collaborative effort, with Danger Mouse bringing in synth treatments and pop vocal production, but the band’s gutsy move has paid off. They’ve surrendered some of their epic, open jams in exchange for a new set of textures. Under Danger Mouse’s influence, they’ve also threaded the songs together with a selection of integrated references. Sometimes those connections are overtly obvious, like the bridge from “Creep In A T-Shirt” returning as a verse in “Evil Friends”: “It’s not because the light here is brighter/ And it’s not that I’m evil/ I just don’t like to pretend/ That I could ever be your friend.” Other times, it’s just a familiar snatch of melody or repetition of phrase between tracks. This structural reinforcement is mirrored in the album’s running theme of anti-religious secularism with a cast of outsiders.

The opening track, “Plastic Soldiers”, eases into the band’s new sound. Danger Mouse works some slick transitions between song sections, like pairing an EQ shift with a building tempo to pull the song forward. John Gourley’s diffident falsetto rests on a bed of acoustic guitar and synthesizer. “Creep In A T-Shirt” follows and, while it also relies on Danger Mouse’s production and rhythm treatment, it feels more like the band’s older material. The piano and bass team up to lay down a moody funk vibe as Gourley plays a loner sociopath, “I’m just a creep in a T-shirt, jeans, I don’t fucking care.”

While the first three tracks sounded great, it was “Modern Jesus” that locked me into the album and Danger Mouse’s role. If this song had been on their last album, the chorus would have grown into a heavy-handed anthem. Instead, the production wraps that chorus in synth strings, blunting the impact. But this creates a tension that gives Gourley’s lines a stronger sense of resolve. His secular message, “The only faith we have is faith in us,” is not so different from Aleister Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt,” a strong statement that doesn’t require bluster. The reflective mix of electronic and acoustic instruments also recalls older Radiohead songs; some of the phrases that recalls Thom Yorke, “You don’t need sympathy/ They’ve got a pill for everything.” Repeated listening cements “Modern Jesus” as the centerpiece for Evil Friends, suggesting that evil is the eye of the beholder.

At the other extreme, “Sea of Air” is pure Portugal. The Man. The song feels like an outtake from In The Mountain, In The Cloud as it opens with a Fleetwood Mac acoustic rock groove. One set of lines even seems to be a message to the character in that album’s closing track, “Sleep Forever”, “When you talked to God about suicide/ When you never came back, I hope you’re still alive.” A brief Beatlesque crescendo, full of horns, punctuates the song before it drops into a sing-along chorus that sets up the elegiac “Waves”. Danger Mouse’s main contribution to “Sea of Air” — a strange, run-on bass riff tacked onto the end of the tune — is fairly superfluous.

The album closes out with a matched pair of songs. Each embraces a different flavor of willful ignorance and denial. The super-poppy “Purple Yellow Red and Blue” lays down a trippy funk groove as Gourley asserts his entitlement to an easy life of leisure, “All I want to do is/ Live in ecstasy/ I know what’s best for me.” In contrast, “Smile” would prefer to pretend that the sadness in the world doesn’t exist, “I don’t need to talk about the world, all right/ I just want to sleep with a smile tonight.” The stark piano accompaniment foreshadows a rude awakening sometime in the future because reality always finds a way to intrude. The bridge slides into a retro, psychedelic soul revue, name-checking the opening track:

I’d like to try to forget the times
Have changed and we all live and die
Plastic soldiers
Slowly growing older

As the guitar thrashes its way into a “Hey Jude”-style jam ending, the lyrical callback makes one message absolutely clear: it’s time to start Evil Friends over again for yet another listen.

Portugal. The Man has faced numerous challenges recently, such as upheavals in the band personnel and swelling popularity. Partnering with Danger Mouse could be seen as a desperate move to reinvent themselves or as caving to record label pressure, but it’s neither of those things. Gourley and his group have consistently evolved their sound over their recording career and this is just the latest step. Given their open minds and open ears, expect to hear Danger Mouse’s production influence flavoring their next project, which will offer up its own surprises.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Robyn Hitchcock, Love From London (2013)

Surrealistic pop and unforced eccentricity

Robyn Hitchcock is like a lost uncle who wanders by every now and then on a cometary path. As uncles go, he’s a little dotty, but that’s part of his charm. Even turning 60, he has a childlike wonder that resonates. Sometimes, it seems like he’s starting one of the same old stories from an earlier visit, but they always drift sideways and turn out to be more interesting than expected. After all these years, his eccentricity hasn’t worn thin. His latest release, Love From London proves both familiar and unexpected, with a heady mix of surrealistic pop and unaffected psychedelia. While any of these songs could fit on his earlier albums, his lyrical turns are still full of powerful imagery and his perspective is always fresh. On “Be Still”, he captures a static moment of observation and spins it out into full reverie: “What is swimming through her mind as she sits alone?/ As beautiful as silence and as quiet as a stone.” The pop simplicity and steady bowing on the strings frame the frozen tableau as each detail crystallizes into place. “Her eyes are a dark as berries and her skin is charcoal brown/ She gazes to the future, out to where the sun goes down.”


This combination of honed lyrics and intriguing music has been Hitchcock’s stock in trade for decades since he started fronting his psychedelically-slanted punk band The Soft Boys in the mid-‘70s. After the band fell apart in 1981, he slid into a steady solo career that wafted through MTV popularity and eventually picked up occasional partnerships with R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows. Like Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and 13th Floor Elevators’ Roky Erickson, his natural quirkiness gave his music an off-kilter edge and an outsider appeal. But grounded in a way that Barrett and Erickson never were, his musical output has been much more consistent. Over the years, his catalog has evolved into a sweet and sour mix of tunes that meld whimsical non sequiturs, off-beat subjects and pop aesthetics. While his songs are instantly recognizable, they have an artisanal quality that renders each one distinct.


The tracks on Love From London are little musical islands, each with a self-contained eco-system of pacing and mood. Heartbeat percussion drives the pensive melancholy of “Harry’s Song”. Despair builds as the piano repetition erodes any sense of well-being. On another corner of the archipelago, “Fix You” revives Beatlesque psychedelia with shades of “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” backed with motorik Krautrock drumming. The elliptical social commentary demands to know, “Now that you’re broke/ Who’s gonna fix you?/ Fix you up?” But the most disorienting corner of his map is found in the innocently named “I Love You”. Insistently trippy, the groove circles and reverberates, creating an inescapable mental cage. If this were the indoctrination song for a radical cult, no amount of deprogramming would obliterate the trance-like echoes. The first verse warns of assimilation as he gleefully sings, “Tendrils grow between us/ Tendrils you can’t see/ I’m dissolving into you/ You’re growing into me,” which casts the droning mantra of the title in an ominous light. The robotic bass line and descending scratch of violin intensify the uneasy feeling, but he somehow makes paranoid surrender sound appealing.

As Hitchcock regales us with tales from this foreign land, it’s nice to relax into the rhythm of his songs. Quaintly quirky but unforced, Love From London flows like a dream. Like the rest of his oeuvre, it serves as another set of his “paintings you can listen to."

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Helvetia, Nothing In Rambling (2012)

Outsider simplicity finds its own path

Helvetia's music comes from a nexus point of Syd Barrett, Robyn Hitchcock, and Stephen Malkmus. Like those artists, Helvetia delivers their songs with a matter-of-fact simplicity coupled with an outsider musical aesthetic. In a kind of savant approach, they know where they want the songs to go, but they don't always take a familiar path to get there. That odd perspective is a large part of Nothing In Rambling's charm.

Bandleader Jason Albertini used to play with the spaced out jam band Duster. As Helvetia, he and fellow ex-Duster Canaan Dove Amber have collaborated with outside musicians, including members of Built To Spill and Dinosaur Jr.

Compared to Duster's defocused space, Nothing in Rambling is more directed, but the music is still dreamy and suffused with a drifting languor. The pop length tunes are soft-focused snapshots of a strange, psychedelic prog world that Helvetia knows well. The band is adept at creating rich, surrealistic collages. Where other bands can be self-indulgent or theatrical, Helvetia remains understated and natural.

On RyBro, the vocal has a touch of Stephen Malkmus' detachment, which works well with the Pavement style guitar grind scattered throughout the tune. The pop psychedelic sound edges more towards Guided By Voices. The lyrics are directed, yet skewed. They could have sprung from Robert Pollard's feverish mind:

Most erratic traps
Now you're talkin'
I bet you drove all night (oh yeah)
Just to show that you don't really care
What you really could be.

The offbeat groove limps forward with a practiced ease and a steady acoustic strum. Nicely paired electric guitars provide some sweet, meandering fills. The bridge, with its underwater organ caresses, is just a brief pause before the closing solo. The tune sounds like Albertini is a little smug at figuring out a difficult equation, so now he can understand someone's motivation. The lyrics reveal enough of his underlying logic to hint at a kind of Asperger's, but that perspective makes the song work.

Don't mistake detached and dreamy for cheery, though. The album captures a range of moods. A Mirror, for example begins with an anxious, staccato beat accompanied by sharp fills from a single coil guitar cloaked in an ominous, thick reverb. Moody and insistent, the sound is detuned and blurry, like old, over-saturated Polaroids. The tension reminds me of the lack of control during an episode of sleep paralysis. It's the space between dreaming and waking, where the rational world is drifting away. Conscious enough to recognize this, the listener is powerless to affect it. The musical sections of the song flip past in a progressive rock flow.

The lazy vibe seems to break with Nettles, where a spiky, speed-picked guitar and rolling snare offer an appropriately prickly intro. But this quickly collapses into a wide open sound, like one of Robyn Hitchcock's musing compositions. The song lingers in this spacy reverie long enough to set the psychedelic hook. Then, like a skittish school of fish, it veers off in new directions. One moment it's Beatlesque, then it twists to provide a moment of Syd Barrett naïveté. The blend of songlets shuffles through mood and tempo shifts before eventually winding back to the track's frenetic beginning.

Like the obsessive geek kids I grew up around, Helvetia aren't socialized to worry about their facade; they're just making music the only way that makes sense to them. Despite the mood shifts and experimental approach, that approach drives an artistic consistency on Nothing in Rambling.

(This review first appeared in Spectrum Culture) 

CD review - Softspot, NOUS (2011)

Psych pop reveries hint at deeper possibilities

Brooklyn trio Softspot has its origins as a duo between childhood friends Bryan Keller and Sarah Kinlaw. Bringing drummer Andrew Spaulding into their mix adds a touch of drive and structure to their psychedelic tinted dream pop. NOUS is a mere three songs, but they're enough to demonstrate how Softspot excels at creating textures and mood with a dense sonic mix.

Each song offers its own sensibility. Holy Father uses insistent percussion to build tension while sparse instruments add accents. The vocals provide the real balance; they're strong, but the softened attack and echoes give them a detached feel. Slight Pink Floyd psychedelic vibes creep in, but the overall sound is more like Bjork. I can just make out the words, but they don't seem to matter to the psycho-sonic sense of the song.

Next up, Slack Tide's dreamy indie pop is full of muted jangle and flickering candle-light vocals. The tight drum groove anchors the dream. Once again, the track creates a strong feeling, like the sound of sitting in the dark with someone who might become your love, communicating with light touches and whispers. The sense that things are waiting in store for you. The song's climax hints at illumination, but only reveals more possibilities.

The final track Notorious Debris starts by recalling Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, but the richly reverbed guitar ignores that to explore a dreamy, late night vibe. The textures of the music create a mix of Callers and pop psychedelia. The vocals add a birdlike quality. Then the song expands into an intense noise pop swirl of sound.

Most importantly, NOUS has an innate quality of more-ness. I want more than this short EP so my dreamy reverie can continue.

Drop by Softspot's Bandcamp page to listen and buy the tracks.