Recording review, Ozric Tentacles, Technicians of the Sacred (2015)

Contemplate the infinite through electronica and progressive guitar shred

^4.5/5.0

It’s a short attention span musical world,where the emphasis is usually on tight pop expressions. But while mere gestures are enough to satisfy most consumers, there are still some genres that need the maneuvering room of a full album to develop their ideas. In the four years since Paper Monkeys came out, space rock stalwarts Ozric Tentacles apparently had so many inviting trails to explore that even that was too confining . Their latest release, Technicians of the Sacred, sprawls out over two full CDs. Despite the obvious excess, there's not much in the way of fluff: while the songs take their time to find their target trancelike moods, they never fall into monotony. Longtime fans will find plenty of familiar ground, but the emphasis is on electronica punctuated by Ed Wynn’s shred-tastic guitar.

Disc 1 leads off with “The High Pass”, which takes an eight and a half minute nomadic trek through many of the sonic environments that the Ozrics enjoy the most: underwater dives, expansive vistas, evocative action zones, and spelunking trips deep down into the heart of the machine. The dynamic flow accommodates both incremental transitions and freefall plunges that reset the context. The tune wanders from chill electronic grooves to mind-warpingly intense prog-rock guitar, but the anxious rhythm and pensive funk bass line remain more or less constant. The restless electro energy may form the foundation, but there are plenty of distractions that provide ear-catching details that vie for the listener's attention, from blooming synth melodies that shift and grow to a robotic interlude that would be perfect for popping.

The music that follows could be soundtrack excerpts from a randomized set of dreamscapes. The Krautrock infused “Far Memory” seems fit for an underwater world, full of echo and frequency shifted shimmers, while the electro-pop “Changa Masala” has an infectious syncopated rhythm that suggests sleepwalking through a Bollywood set as it melts away into space. The imagination can run wild in these intriguing snow-globe worlds. The band dives into each with enthusiasm and little worry for how the songs might evolve. So a cheery electronic piece like “Zingbong” might start with an uptempo New Age feel, propelled by a busy gamelan synth run and terse bass line, but the Ozrics are content to let a Zappa-esque guitar periodically warp the piece into an off-kilter jumble, knowing that they can always nonchalantly slip back into the clarity of the main riff.

The second half of the album gives freer rein to the band’s progressive rock side, with plenty of energetic guitar mutation and distortion. This disc begins with my favorite track on the album, “Epiphlioy”. The Beats Antique style world-tronica groove is built on a galloping Middle Eastern dervish rhythm that’s intricately tied to a synthesized sonic palette. Like the evocative pieces on the first CD, the song suggests a series of images: a tense chase with an undercurrent of excitement, a visit to a nomadic camp in the desert, a spaced-out psychedelic trip in the middle of an oasis. It’s easy to get lost in the drawn out narrative of the piece, but the exotic tone, along with the touchstone rhythm guitar part, provide grounding enough for the extensive 12 minute sojourn.

By the time we reach the final cut, “Zenlike Creature”, it’s been a long disorienting trip. We’re ready for the centering focus of looped interlocking patterns, but even here, the meditative flow gives way to a more progressive groove. The track see-saws from thoughtful to assertive, eventually picking up an Alan Parsons style momentum. Despite the dynamic give and take, though, there is still a kind of imperturbability at the root of the song. It's as though the band is saying, "Ignore the illusion (māyā) and just settle into the moment." The macrocosm of Technicians of the Sacred reflects this message as well. It never delivers a clear mythology or answers. Instead, it just offers a hypnotic zone to contemplate the infinite. Or not, as you see fit.

Recording review - Chui Wan, Chui Wan (2015)

Fringe music from the Middle Kingdom

^3.75/5.0

From skewed savants like Roky Erickson and Syd Barrett to modern mystics like Jim James and Wayne Coyne, psychedelic artists thrive out in the borderlands where the rules are flexibly vague and no one expects explanations. Beijing's Chui Wan has set up their own camp out in the fringes and, listening to their latest self-titled release, they've been raiding the ruins and scavenging from a host of influences to create their unique blend of experimental, new wave neo-psychedelia. Call it crypto-psych, where bits of avant garde Pere Ubu coexist with the Velvet Underground and Beatlesque musing drifts past Gothic new wave moodiness. Like steampunk fashion, it’s intriguing to encounter familiar things in unusual settings, but this album digs deeper than mere aesthetics. Psychedelic music is often invested in capturing a mood and Chui Wan’s music seems to reflect the uneasiness of change in their native country.

At its most positive, that nervous energy can be tied to opportunity and the most upbeat track, “Vision”, seems intent on grasping the chance even as it continually mutates and slips away. The tight rhythm and jungle beat drums are fixtures, along with the guitar pushing simple melodies to the forefront, but the song evolves in several directions. Initially, despite the guitar, it has an electronic feel that reminds me of the programmed rhythm on the.Clash’s "Overpowered By Funk". By the time the vocals come in, the tone has shifted into a Bauhaus cum Krautrock groove. Chameleon-like, the focal riffs come and go in waves, until the piece transcends the relentless reinvention to reveal that the true answer can be found in the hypnotically syncopated drum jam. It seems to say that, faced with constant change, the best thing to do is move with it. It would be easy to imagine a 20 minute extended version rattling the walls in a dark, trippy basement club, but the four minutes on Chui Wan is merely a tease.

After this restless drive of “Vision”, the band shifts gears for “On the Other Ocean”. If the former was strongly directed, the latter offers fun house reflections of a hallucinogenic expedition. The jangling new age start suggests a spacy milieu somewhere between Star Trek and music from the “Hearts of Space”. Once the vocals come in, the context becomes more overtly psychedelic but retains the unanchored feel. Chiming melodic harmonies suggest a more traditional Chinese influence, but the detuned and watery, off-kilter vibe adds a spacious decadence. If this is the start of a journey, it’s hard to tell what it might be in search of. Ultimately, the track slips into an even looser jazz interlude before faltering and melting into a puddle. That ending isn't a disappointment, though. Rather, it’s just a natural waking from the dream.

The rest of the tracks on Chui Wan find still stranger worlds to visit, from the off-balanced Pere Ubu carnival of “Seven Chances” to the nervous new wave tension of “Only” or the Velvet Underground folk-psych pop of “Silence” (think of Nico singing, “I’ll Be Your Mirror”). The weirdest is the hot mess that closes out the album, “Beijing is Sinking”. The metal flake guitar intro gives way to an odd poppish bounce. Imagine bits of Pink Floyd's "San Tropez", John Lennon's "Number 9 Dream ", and maybe a touch of OK Go coming together in a mulligatawny stew. Some three minutes in, there’s a solo section that develops a nice meandering riff. Enjoy it while it lasts, because, all too soon, it’s overwhelmed by chaotic guitar and transitions into an extended psychedelic outro that’s longer than the initial structured interval.

But the stylistic mashups and nomadic song development are hardly detrimental to Chui Wan’s mission. Out where they play, landmarks shift -- Beijing is still sinking, after all -- and the point is to step beyond the maps.

Here's a taste from the album:

Recording review - Föllakzoid, III (2015)

Sink into hypnotic rhythms and dark echoes

^4.0/5.0

World music -- that vague catch-all label -- largely falls into two flavors, neither of which reflect too well on the Westerners who coined the term. The bulk of it is “delightfully exotic” or “strange but cool”, showcasing some culture’s musical heritage, but repackaged in easy to digest servings to appeal to the jaded palate. Worse than that are the half breed mutants that hover between appropriation and cargo-cult aspiration, sometimes with rock artists harnessing foreign musicians without understanding their cultural context, other times with those musicians trying with mild success to emulate Western pop. Even so, I’ll confess that I’ve enjoyed my share of all of these, sometimes with a frisson of guilt.

Föllakzoid’s sophomore album, III, neatly sidesteps this minefield by focusing on their creative vision and building rich, long-form trance excursions. The Chilean trio taps into a hypnotic flow that has served numerous traditions from Indian ragas and Sufi dervishes to Krautrock drives and dancehouse electronica. Their music may draw somewhat on South American rhythms, but those influences don’t stick out as much as the motorik percussion, Indian polyrhythms, trance psychedelia, and Goth rock moodiness. Why waste time pedantically analyzing the cultural referents or feeling hiply superior when you can surrender to the swirling syncopation and trippy echoes?

III is a full length album split into four tracks, but the songs seem to share thematic elements even as they change up their production. In particular, the first two tracks, “Electric” and “Earth” have a lot in common: each begins with syncopated beats built from echoed percussion, they build into trancy electronica, and they feature heavily reverbed vocals. But the two songs develop completely different moods. “Electric” latches on to a slinky bass groove that pushes into Ozric Tentacles territory. Electronic washes and a deep, pensive throb create a beautiful tension that complements the crystalline bite of guitar and gives a surreal edge to the faint vocals that sounds like distant PA announcements. The song wraps up with a sci-fi flavored interlude featuring robotic sound effects and shimmering static.

“Earth” rises from this sonic soundscape with a metallic percussion that develops into a deep tribal rhythm. The bass is strong here, too, but now it’s heavy and impassive, reminding me a bit of Joy Division. The effect is much darker than the first track, suggesting shadowy hallways where barely noticeable electronic grinding suggests alien threats lurking just out of sight. Despite that undercurrent of danger, there’s also a thoughtful element as the piece hypnotically wraps in on itself, occasionally running into dead ends and moving on while the echoes hang on a little bit.

The shortest piece, “Feuerzeug”, closes out the album with an intense nine minutes of pensive Krautrock that ambraces the Gothic sounds of Joy Division and Bauhaus. The main theme is thick with tension and has me expecting to hear Ian Curtis break in with the vocals for “Transmission”. Then some heavier flashes of guitar against the steady beat suggest Bauhaus’ “Terror Couple Kill Colonel”. At the same time, Föllakzoid aren’t aping those bands. They make their own statement by playing with the sonic palette to blend in harsher, low-fi tones that contrast against the softening echoes and electronic touches. They fill in a host of disjointed details that drift in and out before the song gradually deconstructs itself.

If III has a weakness, it’s one that many trance-oriented projects share: it’s too easy for a casual listener to dismiss the whole collection as repetitive and miss the nuances between the songs.“Feuerzeug” may stand as the best argument against that criticism, but I think that Föllakzoid could have varied the tempos a little more to create more differentiation. Ultimately, those are minor issues that won’t distract as you sink under the album’s spell. Best of all, it’s not “world music”; it’s just music, perfect for an early Spring bike ride or as a soul-refreshing barrier against workday monotony .

Recording review - The Myrrors, Arena Negra (2015)

Rich psychedelic details lurk below the desert surface

^4.0/5.0

The desert is a potent symbol. It can be unwelcoming and dangerous even as its solitude can be cleansing. In Michelangelo Antonioni’s jaundiced commentary on late 1960’s counterculture, Zabriskie Point (1970), the desert was a haven offering the possibility of a new start. The Myrrors may be from Arizona, not Death Valley, but their desert psychedelia reflects Antonioni’s sense, taking inspiration from the beauty and surreal feelings found in such a stark environment. Their new release, Arena Negra, captures those facets along with the majesty of wide open spaces and vivid backdrops. The music itself is timeless; free jazz and avant garde contributions keep it from being strictly anchored in the retro golden age of head music, but it avoids the intellectual gamesmanship that often accompanies those approaches.

The album opens with the expansive title track. The twelve minute run time gives The Myrrors plenty of room to slowly ease into the song and develop the feel. It’s fitting that the pensive bass motif at the start evokes Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”, which turned up in Zabriskie Point, albeit under a different name. This intro section, with the bassline supporting the sun glare shimmer of violin and flute drone, taps into the mystery of the desert, especially when the unintelligible chanted vocals join in. The dreamy haze slips away when the drums finally punch their way to the front to drive up the intensity. The band slips into a Velvet Underground guitar raga mode, where they tread the same ground repeatedly, layering in all kinds of noise and subtleties without really moving very far from the initial groove. Guitar dominates as the music turns in on itself, but the flute adds a chaotic flutter, like lizards gazing impassively through heat waves of distortion. The song hangs in that dervish whirl without respite until the last minute and a half, when it gradually retreats from the climax to fall back to the sleepy sway that still lies at the root. Then, it fades like consciousness surrendering to anesthesia before finally winking out.

Just as their music wanders without getting completely lost, The Myrrors have passed through their own twists and eddies. They started during high school, recording a 2008 demo that would take another five years to find a wider audience. By that point, the band had drifted apart with college plans and finding their way into adulthood. Against expectations, they’ve come back together, comfortably falling into old habits but their scope has grown to incorporate world music and a mix of other influences.

“Dome House Music” shows off that maturity. Like “Arena Negra”, it starts slow with a meditative repetition, but there’s also a rhythmic complexity that drives the song. The piece is in nine, but the emphasis on the last two beats pulls it off balance, always lurching forward. The track builds inexorably, collecting a buzz of horns that swirl in free jazz riffing and smear together to create a thick wall of tone. When the drums and horns drop away near the end, it’s relief. Nothing of the relentless chaos and tension is left but the resonant hum of guitar, which slowly fades away before the remaining twenty-odd seconds has fully elapsed. Even though “Dome House Music” doesn't conjure a direct set of images, its oppressive sound taps into the darker danger of the badlands, suggesting disorientation and dehydration.

Arena Negra packs a lot into a mere four tunes, but it's a full length release, not an EP. Just as the expanse of the great outdoors is impossible to capture with point and click camera, pop length songs are too short for The Myrrors to paint some of the sonic pictures they want to convey. Instead, they give long play pieces like "The Forward Path" space to evolve and find their way forward. Dewey Bunnell (America) may have said, "In the desert, you can remember your name," in "A Horse With No Name", but The Myrrors don't just find themselves, they discover all kinds of hidden dimensions.

Recording review - Treasure Fleet, The Sun Machine (2015)

Better the first time I heard it

^2.5/5.0

Treasure Fleet's The Sun Machine sees them trying on their grandparent's paisley and, like many retro acts, earnestly pretending that it’s a natural fit. That said, there’s nothing wrong with their idealized immersion in the past. Heck, on any given weekend, the Society for Creative Anachronism exults in chivalry and sword fights without worrying themselves about the Plague, so this is just some more harmless fun. Like the knights of the SCA and their armor, Isaac Thotz and his band have studied the old masters of forging psychedelic grooves. The Sun Machine has plenty of moments that are a treat to settle into, but the fundamental problem is that many of those parts are overwhelmingly derivative or, to be charitable, they are unsubtle homages. Assembling chain mail requires skill and the band demonstrates their own musical talent, but it’s more artisinal than artful. They could have redeemed this with a bit of irony or acknowledgment of their sources. Better yet, they could have added more of their own creative character. Instead, the record devolves into a pastiche of classic rock and psychedelia.

The core idea is quite interesting. The Sun Machine has a grander scope than just an album, as it serves as the score to a short film also written by Thotz. Fittingly, this evokes Pink Floyd’s soundtrack work like More, rather than a concept album. But without context of the movie, it’s hard to draw any kind of coherent story from these songs. The lyrics ramble from stoned bicycling to seeking mental balance in a free form association. Still, that's hardly a detriment for this kind of music where clarity is rarely expected.

The first track, “The View  From Mt Olympus”, blends bits of “Roundabout” by Yes with The Who’s Tommy (especially “Sparks”) along with some Moody Blues. It’s packed with a host of retro touchstones, with the trippy vibe accentuated by mutated guitar distortion, draped in washes of echo and wah, all compressed into a little more than three minutes. What’s not to love? Treasure Fleet still had me, even as they seemed to be trying to win a bar bet on how many allusions they could cram in.

Unfortunately, they lost me two songs later with “Max Consumption”. The cool motorik beat and obsessive drive remind me of Brian Eno’s “Third Uncle”. It's a phenomenally catchy song, but as much as I enjoy the music, the lack of original lyrical content kills it. Aside from the opening verses, the bulk of the song is a warped medley of unrelated tunes, from Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and Queens of the Stone Age’s “Feel Good Hit of the Summer" to Harry Nilsson’s “Lime in the Coconut”, all shoehorned into the same relatively tuneless chant. The Kinks, Simon and Garfunkel, the Dead Boys, and a line from “Heroin” by the Velvet Underground join the party as well. It's surprising that they left out “Mother’s Little Helper” and “White Rabbit” to round out the loose theme of food and drugs. There's a long history of appropriating pieces of other songs, from jazz musicians quoting pop melodies during their solos to hip hop sampling. A reference can become a building block to extend the piece, a recognition of a similar theme, or a way to comment on the material. It can even be a little in-joke for those paying attention. In this case, though, the borrowed lyrics don’t mesh or build on the original words and it feels like Treasure Fleet is either lazy or have little regard for their audience. They even lifted the title from The Kinks' "Maximum Consumption". It's frustrating because, without the distraction of the purloined lines, they could have expanded their own words into a great piece. Instead, this cheap imitation sabotages a good song and makes it impossible to listen to the rest of the album’s musical allusions without a jaded ear.

That hurts because there’s plenty of good material on The Sun Machine and Treasure Fleet even came up with some of it on their own. Honestly, if I weren't already so familiar with their sources, I could have easily added another star to my score. Other listeners might not be so picky. But I’d still recommend bands like The Men, The Electric Mess, or even Acid Baby Jesus, if you want to hear a good blend of retro and neo psych jams.

What's cool - Beech Creeps, "Sun of Sud"

Mood music for garage rockers

Some times call for contemplation and calm. Other times, what you really need is intellectual stimulation. "Sun of Sud" won't help in either of those situations. Instead, it's a prescription for the flip-side, when gut churning physicality is necessary to quiet down the monkey brain. It's an adolescent sound, full of throbbing tension, angst, and frustration. It's primitive, riff-driven rock and roll at it's purest. Beech Creeps tap into a timeless vein of visceral punch -- Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath before they grew old, Iggy Pop rolling around in broken glass, and Kurt Cobain screaming his transcendent self-doubt.



Okay, maybe that's overselling it a bit, but this song reminds me of garage jams, where the rumbling bass, screeching distortion, and pounding drums weave together in a thick psychedelic swirl and become a mantra that holds the outside world at bay. More importantly, it makes me want to pull out my Les Paul right now and set my ears ringing with the warm wash of overdriven tubes.

Beech Creeps eponymous debut album comes out on March 3. The only other sample I've found is "Times Be Short", another fun track that's similarly noisy with guitar grind and sneered vocals. While that song doesn't have the same intensity of "Sun of Sud", I'm looking forward to hearing more of what these masters of meditative mayhem have to offer.

Recording Review - Dengue Fever, The Deepest Lake (2015)

Retro mod, moody, and hypnotic -- take a sonic dip in exotic waters
^4.75/5.0 

Cosmically speaking, three and half years is the tiniest of intervals. Halley’s Comet takes around 75 years to swing by, so a three to four year pause between Dengue Fever releases should be bearable. But given the hothouse worlds that bands live in, the anticipation can be challenging. Last time around, 2011’s Cannibal Courtship (review) reassured fans that the group hadn't turned away from their Khmer rock foundation, even if they had added bits of funk, ska, and soul. Now Dengue Fever is back with The Deepest Lake, and they continue to refine their playing, this time emphasizing the spy music and cocktail aspects of their sound.

Of course, any time you run into old friends again, you compare them against your memory for changes, and the band takes advantage of that to prank their fans a bit. The opening track, “Tokay”, kicks off with a drum machine and synths laying down a Latin dance vamp. The ten measures intro is long enough that I started to wonder if the band had reinvented themselves. But when Chhom Nimol started singing, the keyboards tag-teamed out to let Zak Holtzman’s tremolo heavy guitar come in, connecting with the group's canonical style. Senon Williams still revels in his Latin-flavored bassline and the percussion includes cuíca accents, but that all fits perfectly with the familiar sounds of Nimol’s haunting voice, echo laden guitars, and Ethan Holtzman’s moody organ solo.

After “Tokay” teases, “No Sudden Moves” offers a strong taste of what The Deepest Lake is all about. The mod, mid ‘60s cocktail vibe is Dengue Fever a go go. Tight horns harmonize the twisting guitar riff and a bass sax blatts out the punches. The chorus softens the edges with sweet pulsing guitar winding around the vocals. The bridge interlude veers forward in time, kicking off with an angular new wave guitar pattern, setting up a slinky bassline to accompany Nimol’s staccato Khmer rap. Then the band drifts into a spy soundtrack interlude to recapture the mod flow of the song and take it home.

That hip retro feel continues through The Deepest Lake, meshing well with the reflective tone of reverb-soaked guitar and hypnotic bass. Nimol’s voice is born for this milieu, sexy and seductive, somehow creating understanding, even if most of the lyrics are in Cambodian. While these songs share DNA with earlier tunes, the group seems to be branching out a bit to explore other cultures. “Ghost Voice” features a distinctly Nigerian guitar, even though the other instruments are anchored in Asian tonality and “Still Waters Run Deep” has an infectious upbeat rhythm that blends Bollywood with “Spy Who Loved Me” chic.

Not all of these tunes are completely new; two were featured on the Girl From the North EP that came out just over a year ago (review). “Taxi Dancer” and “The Deepest Lake on the Planet” are just as good here, but The Deepest Lake is full of great tracks. Probably the best one is “Rom Say Sok”, which features Zac and Nimol’s vocal chemistry and draws on the psychedelic soul the band toyed with on Cannibal Courtship. I can’t help but picture “it” girls doing the frug as the tune spins out. Although this is one of the few songs here with mostly English lyrics, they're trippy and oblique, “French boyfriend will never be wed / Alligator's dried up and now it's dead.” The lines may not form a coherent narrative, but the heady music plays along, with tweedly organ and cool little feedback echoes in the margins. A little over halfway through the tune, the horns come in and pump up the soul to lay down the groundwork for David Ralicke’s raging sax solo.

The Deepest Lake proves that Dengue Fever still have their fingers on the exotic, cross-cultural pulse that has inspired them since the beginning. There are precious few truly original bands out there, and I’m glad to hear that one of my favorites is keeping the faith. We may need to wait another three years for the next album, but this one will tide us over till the comet swings by again.

Recording review - Buffalo Killers, Fireball of Sulk (2014)

Who do Buffalo Killers they think they are?
^2.75/5.0 

On the one hand, it's good that Buffalo Killers are so full of ideas that they're compelled to drop a second release within the same year. It's a bonus for their fans and it generates a fresh round of attention. For the most part, reviewers have been kind, so it's paid off, but I can't help but feel let down. To be fair, these six songs aren't bad at all. Instead, the problem is that they're so disjoint. EPs are usually a grab bag, but Fireball of Sulk comes across as an insecure demo for a less competent band trying to find something that will stick.

On a full length album, Buffalo Killers might have been able to create enough context where the playlist could flow more smoothly, but Fireball of Sulk never finds a center. Despite the consistency of their guitar tone, bass grind, and laid back rhythms, they set up two cross currents that break up any momentum that might develop. In particular, the slogging classic metal sound of "Marshmallow Mouth" is optimally placed to break the EP's stride. Its closest sonic cousin on the album is the angst-free grunge of the opening track, "Blankets on the Sun", but rather than accentuating that connection, they crammed it in between a twangy bit of psychedelia ("Weird One") and a '70s style folk rock tune ("Something Else"). This gives it a jarring impact but doesn't serve any of the songs well. To further muddy the water, they double down on the country rock vibe with "Don't Cry to Me", whose choppy cut-time beat recalls Mike Nesmith and the Monkees novelty country work like "Your Auntie Grizelda".

Understand, neither the grunge nor the country rock sounds are objectionable; in fact there's plenty to like about each. Despite being the pitfall of the playlist, "Marshmallow Mouth" is probably my favorite track here. The headbanging snarl of bass and guitar sets up a trudging grind that sways through some two-chord changes to lay the perfect foundation for the flailing guitar solos. It's a thick morass of garage metal, but it's so easy to surrender to the inevitability of the rhythmic tide. The lyrics don't make a lot of sense beyond the accusatory tone of the vocals, but they avoid easy parody, unlike a lot other bands working the same vein.

By contrast, "Something Else" could have easily fit on 2012's Dig. Sow. Love. Grow., with the same unselfconscious retro aesthetic and vocal harmonies that would be at home in the James Gang. In contrast to "Marchmallow Mouth", the autobiographical feel of the lyrics offer a sincere sense of where the band is at. More importantly, Buffalo Killers show an intuition for flow that is missing from the larger picture. The verses settle into a solid wall of guitar, punctuated by the tom hits, but they throw in rhythmic breaks on the lines, "If this life's a game, then have I lost?/ Do I have to dance to pay the cost?" that match the questioning mood and disrupt the sing-song feel of the earlier lines. Later, they use a repeated guitar figure to build up momentum for the Joe Walsh style solo.

In a shuffled iTunes-driven world, it may not really matter. People can pick and choose what they like from Fireball of Sulk and be perfectly happy. For that matter, it's easy enough to jiggle the playlist for some improvement. I'd rather hold out for their next full-length, though, in hopes of a more coherent sense of the band.

Recording review - The Electric Mess, House on Fire (2014)

Vivid performances and smoldering personality will take you back
Browsing through retro-inspired rock band offerings is like picking your favorite movie franchise reboot. Occasionally, an album strikes a nerve, but nothing can really replace dropping the needle on The Velvet Underground and Nico, sinking back into thrashy joy of The Pretenders, or sampling the cream of late '60s psychedelic pop bands from Northern California on a Rhino collection. It's hard for younger bands to slide in deeply enough to get past the simple surface characteristics, and those that come closest to the elusive feel rarely have enough personality to be memorable. The Electric Mess beats those odds and adroitly covers the musical dive while lead singer Esther Crow and her drag alter ego, Chip Fontaine, provide the personality to close the deal. Their last album, Falling Off the Face of the Earth (review), was notable because the band's clear love of primitive rock came through in beautiful fidelity . On House on Fire, they capture the raw energy of the garage more strongly than ever, with emphasis on raw. Although these tracks never devolve into muddiness, the engineering isn't quite as crisp and nuanced as Falling. But The Electric Mess makes up for it by bringing a vivid spark to their performance that puts the listener right at the edge of the stage, looking up in wonder.

I've already talked about the lead single, "Better to be Lucky Than Good", with its Lou Reed characters and story line propelled by Patti Smith proto-punk. Fontaine's smoldering voice scratches like a warm woolen blanket, selling the song with jaded nonchalance. It's a strong piece to lead off the album, but it also turns out to be fairly representative. Its big finish barely leaves time to catch your breath before they launch into the tight power pop rock of the title track. This time, Dan Crow's guitar paces restlessly within a cage of organ fills and vocals. In constant motion, Crow occasionally lets it loose enough to wail or throw itself against the bars, but when the solo comes around, it's clear that he hasn't run out of ideas as tears his way across the fretboard.

Later, on "Get Me Outta the Country", Crow's guitar slips off the leash and romps its way to Shredsville. This would be a great tune to catch live, to feel the primitive rite intensity and just hang on for the ride. But even while the lead slips out into the weeds, the rock steady drum work and anchoring bass hold it together. The Electric Mess wraps up the tune with a fade-out ending, a technique that's fallen out fashion, but this captures the loose unwinding that a live version would expand upon.

Lead singer Esther Crow spends most of House on Fire in her Chip Fontaine drag persona, with his hoarse growl and macho attitude giving the songs an earthy grounding. On "She Got Fangs", Fontaine's rough huskiness is the focal point against the moody psychedelic sway. His tale of seductive entrapment and then becoming the hunter himself is a simple enough story, but his swagger recalls Van Morrison fronting Them on "Gloria". While he hits his strongest stride on the thrashy blues sprint of "Beat Skipping Heart", my favorite Fontaine moment is the campy and theatrical spoken word section on the "Leavin' Me Hangin'", where he calls out his quarry, "Girl, I wandered the streets looking for you. Saw a couple of your friends, all tarted up. They lied and said they didn't know where you were . Girl,you ain't no Queen of Sheba and I ain't no piece of liver. But you never deliver." It's another case that calls for the live experience to see how far he'd push it.

Esther Crow takes her first real break from Fontaine on "There's Nothing You Can Do", which features keyboard player Oweinama Biu on lead vocals while she drops into a supporting role. Biu summons a good sense of desperation that fits the mood of the piece and it's a nice change to hear the two of them singing together.

House on Fire wraps up with a little bit of a bait and switch. "Every Girl Deserves a Song" initially sounds like a wild instrumental coda to the previous tune, but the minute long vamping builds to a climax only to fall into a delightful Mod pop song. Esther Crow summons her inner Cher (a la "The Beat Goes On") and brings a touch of hippy girl soul to her singing. Her laid back vocals gloss over the jarring disconnect between the frantic intro and the opiated groove, providing a warm embrace of lotus-eating bliss. Her lyrics bridge Summer of Love pop and its hidden underground scene, "Why don't you bring some Percocets / To help me cool my jets / Why don't you bring an unapproachable vamp / Just to round up the tone of my amp." Dan Crow's wah-wah guitar and Biu's ringing organ tone complement the song with their own patchouli-scented textures. Along the way, the tune also conjures the perfect psychedelic descriptor in the phrase, "Fizzy Bacchanal", which is begging to become a band name at some point. After the amphetamine immediacy of the other tracks, this gentle letdown is a sweet closing note from whatever alternate past that The Electric Mess is channeling. Rather than conflict, it recharges the listener enough to tackle "Better to be Lucky Than Good" all over again to ride that tiger one more time.

Recording review - King Tuff, Black Moon Spell (2014)

Arch humor from a garage glam creepster

Here’s the pitch: We’ll raise T. Rex’s Marc Bolan from the dead and partner him up with the Cramps, then polish the act to create the perfect bubblegum pop band for a Saturday morning kids’ cartoon series. Call it “So King Tuff!” What makes the act so irresistible is that Kyle Thomas, King Tuff’s alter ego, has found an ideal balance point between tongue in cheek irony, lo-fi garage glam, and creep-show trappings. Thickly distorted guitars and pounding drums provide a battle-axe edge to Black Moon Spell that grounds his lilting vocals and occasional forays into psychedelic excess. Or maybe it’s the other way around and arch humor and goofy lyrics keep the walls of noisy rock jams from sinking into the sludge. Either way, the combination results in an intense but fun listening experience, where the songs themselves aren’t necessarily that impressive, but they’re thoroughly entertaining. For example, “Headbanger” follows its croaking, demonic intro with tight, eighth note chunks of guitar just to set up the poppy, teenage love song lyrics, “Me and you, we got a true connection/ I knew it when I saw your record collection.” A shared love of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest is the only sign King Tuff needs to recognize his soulmate. The smooth, pop hook chorus repetition, “Bang your little head,” is propelled by a metalloid guitar riff that summons a sweet tang of cognitive dissonance. It’s simultaneously fluffy and visceral, and it’s also completely silly. With lines like,”Shaking off our clothes on the grave, where rock and roll was buried/ Making out to ‘Make Me Shout,’ in the back of a cemetery,” it’s impossible to take it seriously. Except the music is so compelling…

Of course, King Tuff doesn’t jump straight to the punch line. Black Moon Spell opens with a run of less campy tracks. First, the title tune includes a solid instrumental section that establishes his hard rock credentials. Then he tosses out a low budget, entry level rocker and some acid-soaked garage psychedelia to soften the listeners so “Headbangers” will hit all the harder. That sensibility rescues the album from pure parody; King Tuff has the discipline to tone down the wink and nod for enough of the songs so that when he drops the subtlety, the listener is primed for it. It also helps that the oddball songs don’t follow a strict formula. On the one hand, “I Love You Ugly” sounds like a T. Rex interpretation of Tuff Darts’ “(Your Love Is Like) Nuclear Waste” that bleeds off all of the bile to leave behind a residue of simple non-judgmental love and left-handed compliments. By contrast, the raw rocker “Madness” leads with a ridiculous boast, “King Tuff is my name/ I got madness in my brain/ Pleased to meet ya/ I’m gonna eat ya/ Cause I’m batshit insane,” which turns out to be his idea of a pickup line.

While the humor forms the core of Black Moon Spell‘s attraction, the camouflage tunes have their appeal as well. Probably the best track on the album is “Black Holes In Stereo”, which cleverly repurposes record album spindle holes as a pathway to transcendence. The verses are wordy, backed with a poppy, up-tempo beat, but the chorus kicks it into overdrive with a single line mission statement, “There’s a black hole on your stereo/ And all you gotta do is go, go, go…” The echoed mayhem of that last word repeats like stars slipping away from a rocket hitting warp speed.

Near the end of the album, King Tuff loses some of his focus with a couple of sun-dappled psychedelic tunes that call back to his earlier releases, but don’t quite fit here, despite being quite pleasant. He also chose to close out the record with a straight ahead retro rocker rather than going for the laugh one last time. Regardless, the essentially weird mix on the album isn’t diminished by either of these decisions. If this were a cartoon, I’d be tuning in just to see where King Tuff would go next.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Alain Johannes, Fragments & Wholes, Vol. 1 (2014)

Time-boxed creativity yields pearls of improvisation

Sometimes, it can be be excruciating to bring all the pieces together. Scattered and disjoint, they may not quite fit together into a coherent whole, but leave some out and some important facet is glossed over and missed. Fragments and Wholes, Volume 1, the latest solo project by multi-instrumentalist and producer Alain Johannes deals with this explicitly, drawing on roughed out sketches and nicely framed pieces alike. Where his 2010 release, Spark, sculpted the dynamic tension between genres and tone to create a beautiful love letter/eulogy to his late wife, Natasha Schneider, Fragments and Wholes sacrifices coherency in the interest of jump-starting creativity. Each of the 12 tracks rose out of small pearls of improvisation, fleshed out as much as possible in the short amount of time Johannes allowed himself to record the album. Like Jonathan Coulton’s Thing A Week series, the tight time constraint means that not every piece achieves the same impact, but the trade-off is that the momentum demands a quick, instinctive approach to writing and supports a feeling of immediacy.

Given Johannes’ work with Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, and Eleven, along with his studio work with Chris Cornell and Soundgarden, it’s not surprising that several of these songs serve up some heavy drive and grungy darkness, but the twist is that he channels his other big influence, The Beatles, through a chain of psychedelic touchstones shared with Lenny Kravitz, Eric McFadden and Robyn Hitchcock. In fact, his vocals and arrangements often seem modeled on Kravitz, down to the DIY multi-track construction of auteur clones recording each instrumental nuance.

The first couple of tracks on Fragments and Wholes, “All the Way Down” and “Whispering Fields”, work that softer side with an airy folk-pop and a simple, late night acoustic moodiness. Like most of these tunes, they’re both relatively tiny morsels, but each packs a lot of flavor into the small space, with plenty of layers to support repeated listenings. While these two pieces show off Johannes’ lush side, he follows up with “Saturn Wheel”, which dives deeply into the shadows. Ending all too soon without real resolution, this is one of the “fragments”, but the brooding tension evokes Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath” as interpreted by Soundgarden. The thick guitar and restless bass snake together, allowing glimpses of Dick Dale surf guitar fills to add some sinister glints. Even when the song slips into a dreamier interval, the relentless drive never sleeps. The solo is brief to help keep the song under three minutes, but it offers a hint of wicked depravity, barely contained within the pentagon that Johannes summoned it in.

In general, Johannes does a good job of filling out the smaller sketches, often creating miniaturized versions of the song ideas that trade off running time for packed plies of detail. Of these, the best may well be "Petal's Wish", which reminds me of Elvis Costello's classic jazz experiments blended with a taste of "Shipbuilding". Still, it’s the longer running tunes offer the most satisfaction. “Kaleidoscope” is a rich Beatlesque pastiche that manages to cross-pollinate elements of “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” with Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”. The reedy melodies meander against a solid drone. At the same time, Johannes is able to bridge his influences here, bringing in grungy processional feel borrowed from “Black Hole Sun” and then dipping deeper into darkness with the chorus. The vocals are detached and dreamy, but the music has an obsessive immediacy that made it my favorite track on the album. The dynamic drop for the close is just icing to seal the deal. Later, the four minute “Jack of Wands” offers a sense of Queens of the Stone Age trying to tap into the disquiet of Jethro Tull’s "Aqualung", The bridge slides into a Lennonesque disorientation and the lyrics remain oblique and poetic, leaving little more to grasp than the dark mood and the threatening sense of totality, "From stick to leaves."

Spark was one of my favorite albums back in 2010, and while Fragments and Wholes doesn't achieve the same heights, it's clear that Johannes is working to push his creativity to its limits. Time-boxing his work on this project forced him to make tough artistic decisions and live with them, and I think the experiment was a success.

Recording review - Mazes, Wooden Aquarium (2014)

Energetic buzz and saturated colo(u)rs

Just as LSD differs from peyote, psychedelic bands each offer their own kind of trip. Syd Barrett’s earnest naïveté is worlds away from Thee Oh Sees’ sweaty swirl of garage echo and grind, and neither has much in common with the exotic sound of Dengue Fever’s Khmer-flavored surf. On Wooden Aquarium, Mazes goes for an upbeat, energetic buzz. More ecstatic dance than disoriented drifting, they keep the rhythm tight, but they never let their motorik focus become oppressive. The band’s post-punk drive infuses most of these tunes with a nervous energy, but it’s a sweet, anticipatory feeling.

Wooden Aquariums sets the pace early on with the paired opening tracks, “Astigmatism” and “Salford.” A brief, distracted guitar riff tosses out a chain of notes before dissolving into an insistent groove piloted by a steady-handed drummer and a nodding, hypnotic bass line. The guitar locks into place and Jack Cooper’s lyrical flow catches the mood, with a rolling cadence and ornate phrasing: “Oh, I want to see but I don’t know why/ But my optic nerve would lie/ It fades and blurs at the edges.” “Astigmatism” streams forward, zipping through a delightful back-masked guitar solo before reaching its finish line and stumbling to a halt. But there’s no real respite as “Salford” rises from the ashes and resurrects the first song’s rhythm line. This time around, out of sync vocals push the feeling into a spacier direction. The loose singing and clockwork beat play off each other and culminate in a thrashy punk ending, implying that détente has ended and it’s time to come to blows.

Mazes takes that cheery, altered-perception vibe and finds different forms of expression to get there again and again. They branch out from the initial restless-leg new wave beat to explore Supertramp-inspired pop-psych ( “Explode Into Colo(u)rs”), sunlight dappled trails (“It Is What It Is”), and detached but fraught alt-rock (“Universal Me”). The change-ups keep Wooden Aquarium from devolving into a navel gazing exercise. Instead, the experience turns outward, embracing a world of experience where colors are super-saturated and vivid.

Even through rose-colored glasses, a few tunes shine a little brighter. “Vapour Trails” offers a particularly nice mix. The calculated pace of the verses, accented by angular guitar grind, suggests Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. This alternates with the looser bloom of the chorus, creating a balance between pensive thought and renewed resolution. The song is hardly sparse, but it has an innate simplicity, each part fulfilling its purpose without excess baggage or production trickery. Too often, heady groups get caught up in a “more is more” aesthetic, erecting rococo layers of detail to bedazzle the listener. Mazes rejects that formula, trusting that a mere pair of dependent guitar lines can create a sufficiently rich context. They avoid the sin of self-indulgence, refusing to surrender to fears that their tunes aren’t shiny enough.

If there’s a downside to this album, it’s that Mazes have assembled a motley mix of inspirations. Krautrock rubs elbows with Pavement and Guided By Voices, but even if the influences seem a bit obvious, the full impact carries the project. It comes back to the album’s pervasive upbeat feel. Each listen sets up the same openness and sense of conscious acceptance. The irony is that Mazes has every right to sound introspective on this record. Their recording sessions in upstate New York were snowed in, leaving them pretty well isolated as they pieced it together. Instead of succumbing to cabin fever, they launched out with a firm sense of direction.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Israel Nash, Israel Nash's Rain Plans (2014)

Retro roots, but real and original

The overused shorthand, “retro,” can mean that a group short on their own ideas has repackaged the past. Although Israel Nash Gripka’s country-rock/Americana infused music raises immediate comparisons to a host of classic folk-rock acts, Israel Nash’s Rain Plans is hardly a slavish (or lazy) re-creation of history. Instead, he’s applied a master craftsman’s aesthetic to expanding what might have started as simple singer-songwriter tunes. The resulting album features richly layered instrumentation that draws on acoustic and electric sounds, soft-diffusion reverb to cosset the mix and, above all, a worshipful appreciation for warm analog tone. Casual listeners may hear it as a pastiche of The Band or early Neil Young, but the details reveal Gripka’s original perspective, driven by some of the same values.

Rain Plans begins with “Woman at the Well”. While the initial intro recalls John Fogarty and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the melody on the first line comes straight from “The Weight” by The Band. Instead of pulling into Nazareth, he calls, “Swing low, Laura/ I’m up to no good.” The oblique lyrics that follow suggest a man reminiscing from the end of his life’s road, with the calm delivery and steady pace signaling an acceptance. The song’s familiar elements are on the surface, but the texture of the piece demonstrates Gripka’s unique voice. He uses acoustic guitar as a canvas for the overdriven guitar to splatter trails of warmly fuzzed fills. Meanwhile a thin haze of shimmering synth wash fills up the background. The last minute and a half or two become an extended fade, where the fog of distortion rises like an inevitable tide, obliterating everything. By the end, it owes as much to My Morning Jacket as it does to those earlier bands.

“Woman at the Well” is a fine start, providing a good lead-in for the distorted steel guitar on the country rock of “Through the Door”. The arrangement on this one is perfectly constructed, with each element seamlessly in place. The verses are country while the chorus has more of a blues rock feel. The balance is a little psychedelic. This intensifies as things get interesting about half way through the piece. It breaks down to a thoughtful interlude, centered on the simple repeated guitar riff from the verse. The other instruments layer in with each repetition, and once they’re all on board, the song restarts, but in a spacier mood that turns soulful and intense.

It’s not until “Who in Time” that the Neil Young spirit begins to infuse the album in earnest. The trippy intro groove has a twangy psychedelic feel, but the transition into the verse sets up a “Down by the River” sway, and then a touch of harmonica adds its contribution. The backing harmonies, along with the light pedal steel, cement the mood. Eventually, Gripka’s vocals slide into Young’s slightly nasal falsetto, first on occasional lines, and then more strongly on “Rain Plans” and “Iron of the Mountain”, finally hitting a peak on “Mansions”, which crosses Young’s “Southern Man” with “Cowgirl in the Sand” and “Like a Hurricane.” But for all those allusions, Gripka’s song makes its own statement about hollow excess as it swells into a hypnotic swirl of crackling sparks of chaotic sound.

It’s easy to imagine these songs shrunk down to solo arrangements; Gripka’s voice and personality could handily carry them. Still, there’s a joy to soaking in the sound of a group as they pick up on each other’s nuanced playing, each finding the ideal addition. Bottom line, the real surprise is that Israel Nash Gripka hasn’t hit it bigger here in the U.S. We’re arriving late to this party; Rain Plans initially came out last year in Europe and is only now releasing in North America. It’s obvious to hear why he’s been embraced overseas. His sound is completely American in the best possible sense; its folk, blues and country rock sound are expansive but not excessive. Stick this one on repeat and play catch up with the rest of the world.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Fresh single - The Electric Mess, Better to be Lucky Than Good

Hi-fidelity thrash

There's retro and then there's living  in the past. On first listen, The Electric Mess' old school roots are obvious: Velvet Underground, Radio Birdman, Patty Smith, and early Pretenders. But where most bands just settle for low-fi derivation and the occasional homage to lost gods, The Electric Mess are vibrant throwbacks to back when the raw energy of those bands was fresh. It's like the difference between sepia toned photos or saturated Polaroids and a crisp digital photo; when we think of the past, we confuse our perspective with how it really was. So, it's easy to think that the world was more monochrome 75 years ago, because we're used to black and white pictures. But life was just a colorful then. A chunk of the fascination with low-fi, muddy sound is that those old records were over-saturated and never captured the crisp edge.

Two years ago, I locked onto Falling Off the Face of the Earth by The Electric Mess, in part for the clean fidelity they brought to garage rock. It's been a long wait, but this year, they've followed up with a new album, House on Fire. I haven't heard it yet, but the first taste is definitely more-ish.



Their latest video (written and directed by bass player Derek Davidson) is Warhol-esque mini-film with broad stroke characters, graphic novel jump cuts, and stylized violence. As a film, it's entertaining, although I would have liked an instrumental intro behind the first fifty-odd seconds of scene setting. Once the first thrashy chords slap your face, though, the frantic energy kicks in like shot of adrenaline. Lead singer Chip Fontaine/Esther Crow summons Patti Smith's hoarse sneer, but the lyrics could easily be a lost Lou Reed classic.

Bands constantly reinvent themselves or get caught up in new shiny sounds, so it's refreshing to hear The Electric Mess digging deeper into their core strengths. Craig Rogers' rapid-fire drum work is still solid and his fills slip into overdrive for the chorus bumps. The bass is just as relentless as it slips between throbbing root notes and snaking melodic riff. Both instruments stand out clearly, without being eclipsed by Dan Crow's speedball lead guitar. His ragged tone matches Crow's rough singing like a jab paired with an uppercut. The clarity of the mix is key. Instead of a cheap sonic Instagram filter providing the illusion of rawness, it's easy to abandon your ears to the driving energy of the music.

What do they say, "The first taste is free?" Well, I'm hooked and now I've got to hear the rest of  House on Fire.

Recording review - Cymbals Eat Guitars, LOSE (2014)

Growing up is serious work

Cymbals Eat Guitars filled their 2009 debut Why There Are Mountains with a tangled jumble of musical interests. Despite the roller coaster ride, the album worked, maybe because of how the shorter tunes broke up the more sweeping tracks. Since then, the band has tried to tame their urge to run off in a hundred different directions and LOSE generally provides something closer to pop structure than they’ve managed before. That said, the opening track, “Jackson”, is a callback to their debut even as it attempts to reach a wider audience. It’s catchy, with soaring pop vocals, but it also juxtaposes a grab bag of ideas into its sprawling six and a quarter minutes.

Initially, it sounds like a big Trail of Dead setup: a dreamy opening dissolves into a circling wave of loudness. Percussion drives the tension while tiers of guitar infuse it with epic intent. But where Lenses Alien (2011) would have milked that into a full-blown exploration, “Jackson” intentionally lets the power slip away, leaving behind a thoughtful post-punk progression. Frontman Joe D’Agostino sounds calm but strained as he starts, “You’re taking two Klonopin/ So you can quit flippin’ and face our friends.” His voice is a bit ragged, which fits the sense of loss that permeates this whole project. The new wave simplicity of this section is eventually buried under thicker walls of indie pop guitar. He catalogs a headful of experiences with wistful poignancy as his falsetto is backed with guitar jangle, but before it tips into maudlin self-pity, clashing discord reveals the underlying angst with fluttering horns and waves of distortion. The meandering lead jam resurrects the original Trail of Dead feel to close out the piece.

The backstory is that LOSE is effectively D’Agostino’s music therapy for working through his grief of a good friend’s untimely death. Looming larger than that, though, is a more universal theme of growing up. Like the rest of the album, ”Jackson” wrestles with nostalgia, mortality and the painful clarity that comes with adulthood. Some tracks may explicitly refer to D’Agostino’s friend, Benjamin High, but that loss is really just the trigger for trying to make sense of a long overdue post-adolescence. From song to song, the lyrics vary in their degree of obliqueness – Cymbals Eat Guitars have always held their cards close to their chests – but they all circle around random recollections, tales of self and substance abuse and the niggling survivor’s guilt that can kick in as the years pile on and the friends slip away.

If that seems to hit harder than you’re ready for, that’s okay, because the band has worked out the math so that listeners can choose how deeply to immerse themselves. Tease out the words from D’Agostino’s raw vocals or visit the lyrics link on their website and you can soak in all the darkness you can handle. But plenty of the songs juxtapose music that contrasts with the cathartic lines, from the mellow wistfulness of “Child Bride” to the cool Berlin-style new wave pop of “Chambers”. A shallow ear will still catch ominous phrases – “‘Til your dad slapped the living shit out of you,” or “The panic sets in, cause nothing’s happening,” – but it’s easy to surrender to the rhythmic drive and interlocked layers of guitar so they glance off.

It’s hard to pick a favorite track, but it comes down to “Place Names” or “Laramie”. The former is a moody Jane’s Addiction set piece. D’Agostino’s swooping proclamations capture Perry Farrell’s lazy falsetto and the song is filled with shimmering swirls of feedback static. Cymbals Eat Guitars have had this sound in their arsenal since the beginning, but the frayed thread of lyrical logic fills it with sacred poetry and profane pronouncements. “Laramie”, on the other hand, is another nomadic journey across genres, like “Jackson”. It starts with a dreamy glam glory, but manages to blend in a weird post-rock experimentalism. The latter half heads off into other directions, turning from driving rocker to indie acid rock meltdown. Despite the gear-stripping changes, there’s an internal logic that keeps the piece on track.

Cymbals Eat Guitars have come a long way since their debut and LOSE is certainly their strongest release yet. The challenge will come with their next album. Now that they’ve confronted adulthood, will they actually grow up or will they linger in this shadowy twilight? If they do step forward, will they find something interesting and new to say? Based on their growth to date, I’m betting that they will.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Concert review - Punch Drunk Munky Funk with Miscomunicado

28 August 2014 (Hodi's Half Note, Ft. Collins CO)

In recent years, the "Phish pre-show party" has become a thing. In the days before Phish is due to play, bars in nearby towns throw some jam bands onstage and try to capitalize on the fans' excitement. Without naming names, I've been to a few of these and generally found them to be disappointing because the bands aren't a good fit or they just don't have the chops. This show at Hodi's served up a strong counterargument to my lack of enthusiasm. Both Punch Drunk Munky Funk and their opener, Miscomunicado, put on strong shows and made it a great summer evening of music, regardless of the space-time proximity of Phish's tour schedule.

Miscomunicado

As much as I enjoy catching bands I love, one of the best thing about writing these reviews is that I am exposed to music I might never have otherwise come across. Opening acts can make or break the total show experience, so some people play it safe and show up fashionably late, just in time for the headliner. Anybody running that strategy for this show missed a very interesting band. Miscomunicado juxtaposed a few standard ideas into a strange, but cool band configuration. Drawing from electronic acts and hip hop, they relied on laptop driven tracks for the foundation beats and bass. But instead of MCs or turntablists filling out the group, they had a two-pronged guitar attack that expanded the sound into deep-space funk. Rounding out the performance, their live projection artist, skEYEfi, provided a psychedelic visual accompaniment.


Luke Barone jump started the show with a solid funk groove. Dan Scott Forreal and James Hodgkins quickly joined in with their guitars, pushing the tune into trippier dimensions. The music had a strong improvisational looseness, but the backing rhythm maintained the structure. From song to song, Barone controlled the main mood via his pre-recorded chunklets. The guitars added riff-driven, heady accents for the jam. Barone had the flexibility to extend and mutate the backing, so they could milk the pieces for maximum effect. While several of the songs were instrumentals, Forreal and Hodgkins sang some of the time. For the most part, these were funk style sloganeering -- repetitive vocal accents that could provide a bit of context for the song -- but they also had some lyrics that rose above that simple role.


While Miscomunicado's music was anchored in improvisational funk, it was usually cross-pollinated with dance pop, electronica, uptempo rock, or psychedelic fringes. This meant that each song had its own character. The projection work adapted to the mood, taking advantage of found footage and movie clips or abstract kaleidoscopic patterns and animations. Given that the art was the primary source of stage lighting, that made it a supreme challenge to get good pictures, but the live experience is pretty fun.

Punch Drunk Munky Funk

My introduction to Punch Drunk Munky Funk was the "Funk Your Face Off" show earlier this summer at The Mishiwaka. Their set impressed me then because they were undeniably capable of launching out into creative musical sojourns, but their impressively focused rhythm section anchored the songs. That tight-loose dichotomy lies at the heart of the best jam bands and this made PDMF a good fit for the whole Phish pre-show theme. But from the beginning of this show, the band wasn't going to leave any doubt. An amorphous lead-in created a trippy mood that opened the door for Chris Robbiano's bass heavy funk groove, and it quickly became clear that this was their version of Phish's "Down With Disease".


Keyboard player Mike Givens handled the vocal duties, doing a passable job of sounding like Trey Anastasio, while Alex Boivin showed that he had the guitar part well in hand. Switching adeptly between sharp funk chordlets and more flowing jazz melodies, he held court at center stage. While Phish can easily make the tune last a good 20 to 30 minutes, PDMF didn't drag it out as long, but it was a solid jam that pumped up the crowd.


The band went on to play some of their own music, including one of my favorite tunes, "Double Richard". "Double Richard, you found your twin/ A dose of Siamese peace within," the oblique lyrics became a mantra, backed by a cheerful march beat before the band sprang off into well-paced melodic exploration. They'd go on to round out the set with servings of disco funk, jazz (both spacey and cool), and even a bit of folky jam. This stylistic meandering let the band demonstrate their versatility between getting down and dirty on the beat and leaving more breathing room in the mix.


After a brief intermission, they came out for the second set, where they pretty much became a Phish tribute band. "Down With Disease" had gone so well, but let's face it, Phish is not an easy band to imitate in longer form. Most aspirants don't have the technical skills to sustain a full set, and those that do, often get there by slavishly recreating the originals. Either way, tribute bands usually leave me pining for the real thing rather than satisfied. Punch Drunk Munky Funk's second set broke that pattern about the time they slipped into their cover of "Stash". Boivin casually tossed off the trademark opening guitar riff and the rest of the band joined in, staying fairly true to the original: the tight percussion fills and electric piano vamps perfectly hit their marks as they supported the guitar line. The crowd loved it, providing the staccato claps on cue to help out the percussion. The band went on to make the tune their own, with the band members showing off their abilities without merely imitating Trey and company.


Michelle Pietrafitta's drumming, which blew me away at The Mish, was equally amazing here. She could find space to nestle some impressive open fills within her tight snare and high hat work. This relaxed the beat just enough to create both tension and a sense of inevitability as the beat, never lost, reasserted itself. Similarly, while the mix didn't always accentuate his contribution, Robbiano's bass playing helped drive the dynamics of the songs, drifting between flashy punch and bubbling melodic lines.


The set was packed with classic Phish tunes, with "Punch You In The Eye" and "Mike's Song" being standout moments. By the time it was done, I was flying with their versions of the songs, feeling little need to listen to the real band on the ride home. The encore performance of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (AKA "2001") was just icing on the cake. This was a different side of the band compared to their Funk Your Face Off performance, but I'm eager now to hear what else they can do.


More photos on my Flickr.