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.

What's cool? No Valentine, "Bowl of Cherries"

In praise of simplicity

When Link Wray played "Rumble", it was never about capturing a virtuoso performance. Ray Davies didn't set out to make a poetic masterpiece with "You Really Got Me". "I Want to be Sedated" didn't arise from the Ramones agonizing over an aesthetic ideal. All of these powerful songs were based on artists tapping into what they could play and how they felt. They're simple songs, but their no-frills approach makes them universal.

Like the long chain of garage and punk rockers before them, No Valentine locks into that same mindset. Cindy Pack's simple pentatonic riff on "Bowl of Cherries" is instantly familiar and gives the track a perfect serving of distorted guitar jangle. Mike Linn on drums and bassist Laura Sativa provide a pounding accompaniment that only pauses periodically to give that riff room to ring out again. Pack's lyrics are full of dead simple truisms about life sucking, but the tune never sinks into nihilistic surrender. Instead, Pack settles for detached annoyance and takes a couple of shortish solos that echo the song's small scale frustration.



It's easy enough to imagine that every teenager with a guitar has written a version of this song at one time or another and there are plenty of well-known examples on this theme. It's also true that No Valentine isn't breaking new sonic ground like Wray or the Kinks did. But it doesn't matter if you've heard this sort of song before; the punch lands because you already know it in your gut. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, it just lowers your defenses, letting the band waltz in with swagger and just the right amount of sneer.

It's a good lead-off track for No Valentine's new EP, Can't Sleep, which is chock full of cathartic rockers. Drop by their Bandcamp site and give them a listen. Aside from "Bowl of Cherries", I also really liked the closer, "You Don't Care". 

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.

What's cool? Amanda Palmer, "Bigger on the Inside"

A poignant sense of perspective

The haters aren't all wrong about Amanda Palmer. Of course they're suspicious of her near constant attempts to be outrageous and provoke reaction; Palmer herself drives most of the controversy and her innocent surprise at the fallout seems a bit disingenuous. The Dresden Dolls gave her a theatrical platform and, with the help of her fans, she's erected that into a ziggurat of overwrought emotion. While she sometimes plays the martyr, she is certainly no saint.

But -- and this is the key -- as much as she courts indignation, her image is more grounded in her personal truth than any other pop performer I can think of, especially the queens of shock facade, Madonna and Lady Gaga. I believe that most of the time, Palmer knows exactly what kind of response she'll get and she embraces that. But it's also clear that her own expressions of outrage, pain, and childlike joy are truly sincere reflections of her inner life. That's what makes a song like "The Killing Type" so powerful: she's not afraid to face the contradiction of her pacifist front and her sublimated anger. and the juxtaposition gives both sides equal weight.



Palmer's latest piece, "Bigger on the Inside" has a very similar sound to "The Killing Type" and it also crosses her higher ideals against the reality of her feelings. This time, though, instead of fury, the track is grounded in heartbreak. Her voice skips right along the edge of falling apart as she chides herself for her own bitterness and frustration in the face of real pain, like dying friends and abused children. A big part of the impact is that those examples are specifically grounded rather than generalities. It's particularly poignant that Zoë Keating plays cello on this piece, which was recorded during her late husband's illness.

The song starts out a bit defiant, with the hook admonishing Palmer's critics that she is "bigger on the inside" and they're "only hating other people's low-res copies," but by the end, she's comforting us and herself that everyone is deeper than their surface looks from outside. A resonant discord of string buzz builds for the final line, but drops away on the last word to punch the resolution. "Bigger on the Inside" is maudlin and a bit melodramatic, but it touched me because it captures an emotional truth.

Drop by her page on Patreon to download your own copy.