CD review - Warm Ghost, Claws Overhead (2010)

Take a dreamy, low fi trip to the undersea world of Warm Ghost. The Brooklyn based duo is perfectly named -- the music on the Claws Overhead EP is dreamy, detached, and hard to focus on. It's dream pop with a synth pop spine.

Other electronic bands might create layers of sound, allowing complexity to arise from the interactions. In contrast, Warm Ghost defocuses a world of sonic elements into a fuzzy smear of sound. It's slow motion, underwater music that slips past the rational mind to touch the emotional. Their path is unique: more song focused than Brian Eno, less frantic than Pere Ubu, and not making a statement like U2. Still, the ambient quality, experimentalism, and lush sound evoke each of those acts.

The title cut sets the mood with a skewed take on synth pop. Heavily detuned notes and a looming bass synth work with the stead beat to build tension. The sound is thick and echoed. The vocal is detached. The music feels like the moments just before sleep comes: everything is distant, the edges are going dark, and a vague sense of paralysis.

Resignation Rights starts out like a cross between Julee Cruise (Floating from Twin Peaks) and Tears for Fears. The heavily processed vocals contribute to the thick smear of sound. So much is going on, but it's all jumbled together in a dreamy mix, like a grab bag of subconscious images. A low fi rasp grows throughout the course of the song. Then it continues into the next song, Open the Wormhole in Your Heart. Here, the lead vocal is a bit like Bono, but the wavery distorted notes are worlds away from U2.

Claws Overhead wraps up with the psychedelic So Sick of the Sun. It's a hazy shimmer, a billowing fog. The echoes refuse to decay, creating a Frippertronic wall of sound that is wispy thin as it enfolds the song. An acoustic guitar provides a basic rhythm that emphasizes the hypnotic clouds of echo. A good strong golden ale from Belgium is the right partner for this music.

CD review - Emil & Friends, Downed Economy (2010)

Emil Yves Hewitt records under the name Emil & Friends. His friends step up to support touring. On Downed Economy, Hewitt straddles the old and new, capturing the low-fi, compressed, AM radio sound of '70 pop soul and merging it with a modern electronic sound. It's pop, soul, disco, and club all stirred together. That retro compressed audio sounds like a 1974 road trip. Hewitt also has a nice touch for bringing in string synth highlights to create his disco feel.

Josephine nails the era. It's got the production of a hundred period disco pop tunes. The groove is solid and the whole song holds together well. The only contemporary touch is that the lyrics have a more modern sensibility.

Other songs more to the retro side include Short Order Cooks and The Shrine which both have elements of what Beck was reaching for on Debra (Midnight Vultures). The falsetto vocal, old school groove, and more modern song structure come together to make an interesting mix.

On the other hand, the title track, Downed Economy stays more firmly in the present. It tosses in some older elements, like the wah-wah guitar and the disco string synths, but the focus is on an experimental electro pop sound. The snaky bass synth, drum machine groove, and layered complexity build an interesting vibe over a rythmically heavy groove.

Fans of the '70s pop sounds will find a welcoming home on Downed Economy. Disco haters and soul pop cynics shouldn't waste their time. A slightly diluted screwdriver (like the bars used to serve) will pair nicely.

CD review - Juliette Commagere, The Procession (2010)

For all of its pop touches, The Procession is a surprisingly deep album. Juliette Commagere melds pop, new wave, and electronic elements with subtle, slightly dark lyrics. She also meddles with formulaic pop structure to create a sense of orchestration. Through all of the this, Commagere's voice is the anchor. Her clear enunciation and smooth tone suggest training. She sings deliberately, without surrendering to emotion or losing herself in the song. She's not cold, though. Sometimes, you can hear a knowing wink or a breathy joy. Impact shares that joy against a bouncy Blondie-style pop beat, serving as one of the cheery moments on the album.

But it's songs like Hovering in the Wings that show off Commagere's complexity. The simple piano intro sets the hook. Then the music veers between new wave verses filled with tightly reined tension and a chorus that casually surrenders concern and control. The lyrics are oblique and conflicting, alluding to some kind of inner demon. Here's the second verse and chorus:

I let it hunt for me harvesting my dreams
(It's down, down where you want to go)
Tangled in a jumble of my needs
(It's down, down where the water flows)
Buying a way, I try to break
...
From a corner of the bedroom
I can hear it breathe, hovering in the wings
Every time that I turn around,
Red, gold, up and come out - the light is changing
And all my fears are taking form
Move right in and make yourselves at home
It's comforting to be alone - laughing while the light is changing

Until you follow the words, the chorus sounds cheery, but the lyrics show she's giving in to the darkness of the verse. Commagere's voice also shifts with the mood, going from a darker version of Blondie to a lush Karen Carpenter on the chorus. The arrangement is masterful, with the verse coming to a precipice and falling suddenly into the release of the chorus.

The title cut, The Procession, shows a different flavor of complexity. Here, the opening is soft, creating a sense of open space. Sparse parts slowly fit together in layers. After the chorus, a fluid keyboard line like a slide guitar signals an uptempo shift to a more majestic sound. This deflates slightly as it returns to the chorus.

As a whole, The Procession has an interesting arrangement as well. The songs progress from pop oriented, keyboard tunes to more complex and harder-to-classify tracks, and last few songs are more experimental, with some forays into electronic pop. This makes The Procession an engaging listening experience with some surprises. Think cinnamon spiced coffee.

CD review - The Antlers, Hospice (2009)

Imagine a sound, actually just the echo of a sound. It decays a little into the background of other echoed sounds, but instead of fading away, it grows into an ethereal baseline of sound. Little bits of complexity sparkle, but it's hard to isolate any piece of that.

This is the soundtrack that the Antlers have created to support their concept album, Hospice. It's a painful personal-feeling story of a hospice worker caring for and falling in love with a terminal woman. It's a heavy subject, that deals with the stages of grief and feelings of self-recrimination. The music is detached and somewhat melancholy, befitting the theme. But there are other elements and moods that make it compelling and more than a simple downer.

Sylvia starts with a flangy, detuned synthesizer and heartbeat. The verses are low key with hard to discern lyrics. Then the chorus hits with a big wall of sound, filled with layer after layer, like the old Phil Spector sound. It's a little overwrought, but it hits hard.

This is followed by Atrophy, which contrasts sharply by being bleaker and more detached. The vocals quaver with frustration over the unfairness of trying to help and failing. There's a nice piano that is eventually buried under the wave of low level noise that builds like the pain of a migraine. This refines into a machinelike sound before resolving and reprising the last verse.

Someone, oh anyone, tell me how to stop this
She's screaming, expiring, and I'm her only witness.

This hits home as the theme of Hospice as a whole.

Two is my favorite track. The music is almost joyful, yet darkly weary, with the singer starting to come to grips with the woman's impending death. The lyrics here have a wonderful flow:

There's two people living in one small room
From your two half families tearing at you
Two ways to tell the story, no one worries
Two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry
Two people talking inside your brain
Two people believing that I'm the one to blame
Two different voices coming out of your mouth
While I'm too cold to care and too sick to shout

Eventually, the woman dies, and the singer has to deal with that, with the sense of being haunted by her and the knowledge that his live is going on. A powerful album.

Pour a glass of Pinot Grigio while you listen and let the wave of echoes rise over you.

CD review - VNV Nation, Empires

"Victory, not vengeance." A friend recommended VNV Nation to me and I tracked down Empires, which is considered their breakthrough album. (Thanks, Constance, for the tip.)

VNV Nation is really just two guys, Ronan Harris and Mark Jackson. They play a mix of dance style music crossed with industrial. There are elements of New Order and Depeche Mode, but also a fair amount of Front 242 and more modern trance and electronica. Empires is based largely on an Electro-Industrial approach. Throbbing synth beats with layers of sounds and an energetic, relentless feel are typical. The album as a whole is driven and focusing. There are also a number of interesting lyrical themes that run through the songs: the search for meaning, the need to be understood, unclear paths, and redemption of a sort. While these are big ideas, the sum total is coherent, moving, and satisfying.

The album leads off and closes with the same musical theme in the form of firstlight and arclight. The songs start out with synth "boop" sounds and a beat. Pads and washes layer in complexity, but they stay in balance. This produces a pensive feel of reaching for majesty, but sensing something darker.

The first song with lyrics is kingdom, which paints an image of an evil, spent world. Rather than submitting to this, the song dedicates itself to a higher ideal. There are some elements of progressive rock here (and throughout the album). If the beats were toned down and some guitar were added, these songs could fit in on a Porcupine Tree album. Of course, those beats are a fundamental part of the song, with ratcheting relentlessness that set the mood to match the lyrics.

The mood shifts with a more orchestral sound on distant (rubicon II). The beginning is sad and moving, with a sense of loss and ruin. The lyrics are assertive and uncompromising, almost embracing ruin.

the solitude and anger that do battle inside me
will always guide me to the answers that I know I may not see
they are the bonds that hold me tighter
they are the chains that weigh on me
one day, I know they will be gone

This introspective shift from the drive of the previous song provides a nice interlude. It also leads into standing, which begins with an Alan Parsons Project feel. Echoed synthesizer notes push the song forward as the beat builds into a full dance groove. This is where a ghost of New Order is evoked. standing balances the loss of distant with a sense of deep significance of the moment.

The next to last song, darkangel starts with an organic groove, then picks up drive. When the full dance beat of the verse comes in, there's a sense of inevitable determination. The interaction between the synth groove and the percussion sounds is intricate and interesting. There's some deep orchestration here that reveals more detail with repeated listenings.

Even people that aren't really into "dance music" can dig some value in Empires. The lyrics and prog-rock aesthetic propel this out of the dance club and make it a satisfying bit of mind candy. At first I was thinking some flavor of martini, but there's something here that a blended Irish whisky would complement.