Built To Spill & Meat Puppets @ The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA, 02/25/08

At first glance, the godfathers of 80's underground cow-punk and the godfathers of 90's indie guitar rock don't have much in common, besides their title. The relatively unknown opener from Seattle, Helvetia, worked to bridge the gap between the two bands with a sound that fused the best of both styles: Anthemic songwriting, J. Mascis-esque vocals, Sonic Youth style noise solos, and a penchant for jamming out. But even their fairly impressive attempt (which encouraged me to check out their myspace, something that I encourage any Dinosaur Jr fan to do as well) couldn't make the two bands' performances feel any closer to one another.

Meat Puppets took the stage and exhibited an energy and excitement that you wouldn't expect from a bunch of gray haired middle aged men going on their 28'th year as a band together. The Bassist in particular, Cris Kirkwood, overflowed with enough glee and playfulness to fill a giddy schoolgirl at her first high school dance. However, their age revealed itself in the extremely dull moments that they decided to play any of their recent work. Thankfully, the extended jam sessions that tied each song together made up for such mistakes, and fan-favorites like "Up On The Sun" and "Plateau" were instilled with enough improvisation and twists to feel completely new.

Sadly, Built To Spill was in direct contrast with Meat Puppets' enthusiasm (which surprised me, since the first time I witnessed them, on the You In Reverse tour, they were spectacular). Their stage presence was just what you would expect from one of the spokes-bands of the slacker generation. Whether staring solemnly at their shoes or pensively fixated on their guitars, they barely changed their facial expressions and stage positions for the entire show. Other bands may have been able to put up a show without much movement, but Built To Spill's best songs vary between ecstatic joy and soaring chaos, so by all rights, their physical manifestation should be appropriate. Instead, I got the impression that they were going through the motions, completely unmoved by their own stellar compositions. But the even bigger issue was the poor sound-mixing, which effectively eliminated the best parts of each song (dense layers of supplementary riffs, slide guitars, and Doug's wonderfully whiny voice) in favor of the rhythm guitar's overloud chunky monster riffage. Still, unmoved by their most recent work, it was nice to see that they hadn't abandoned their classic albums, crafting a set that took all the best tracks from their trio of greatness (There's Nothing Wrong With Love, Perfect From Now On and Keep It Like A Secret).

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Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (2008)

4.5 ★/9.0 - 9.9

Anyone who finds themselves indifferent to this album and only liking the obligatory single "River Cards" (Or, more justifiably, the excellent "Bite Marks", which sounds like Aphex Twins doing Weezer's "Only In Dreams"), may want to reconsider their approach. Bradford Cox's solo experiment should not be taken in anywhere near the same vein as his other band, Deerhunter. Ultimately, that band is about pop-rock. Atlas Sound may be under the guise of a dreamier version of the same thing, but these songs are above and beyond such restricting structures. Instead, Cox crafts a full-blooded ambient album, layering his walls of sound to create a 50 minute transportation to another world that is weightless, transcendent, and above all, gorgeous.

Like most ambient music, enjoyment develops out of repeated listens. Only then do otherwise bland songs reveal the subtle elements that make them interesting and engaging. "On Guard" would be a bore if not for the way hand claps, disembodied voices and a keyboard scale enhance it so effectively. The laser beam phasers of "Scraping Past" begin to fufill as a guitar solo would. The Blade Runner-esque synth pads of "Winter Vacation" add a heavenly quality to an otherwise simple drum machine. The slowly mounting white noise on "Recent Bedroom" make a fascinating tension between beauty and abrasiveness. But the best parts are instrumental tracks like "Ready Set Glow", "After Class" and the title track, which become otherworldly in their simplicity, matching the dreamy aura of similar minded experimentalists (Brian Eno, Panda Bear). It's individual highlights are so good that they almost overshadow the fact that Let The Blind Lead... achieves a certain coherence that very few singer-songwriters seem capable of. It begins with a ghost story, and the rest of the album follows suit, settling into a spectral groove of relentless supernaturalism and beauty. This kind of intimacy and ethereal pulse gets attempted all the time, but not enough of those attempts really get down the single-minded perfection that My Bloody Valentine's masterpiece, Loveless, so stunningly exhibited 17 years ago. This is perhaps the closest anyone will ever get. Read more...

Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster (2008)

4.0 ★/8.0 - 8.9

With Hold On Now, Youngster, I will never judge a book by it's cover again. Los Campesinos! is a band that's made themselves known through Myspace. They're a band that, when described, sounds completely void of anything new or original. They're a band who, being on the same label as Stars and Broken Social Scene, have a lot to live up to, and at the offset, very little suggests that they can. And yet somehow, they succeed where so many other generic, quirky , "up-and-coming" indie rock bands fail. Or maybe their followers are just too busy dancing their asses off to see otherwise.

Hold On Now, Youngster mostly stays in one mode: spastic, wired and zany. One can imagine the band composed of a bunch of melodramatic 9 year olds, stuffed with a day's worth of sugar and let loose. Occasionally, a J Mascis-esque guitar lead will surface, but otherwise, sounds buzz and bounce off the walls in a speed-induced rush, supporting the anything-goes, shout-as-much-as-you-can-NOW vocals (What do you expect from a band with a song titled "You!Me!Dancing!"). But wedged between lightning charged keyboards and glockenspiels, is a startlingly sincere and poetic core. As a matter of fact, you can approach the album as a touching and emotional masterpiece just as much as you can approach it as a fun joyride. "My Year In Lists" is a 2 minute lesson in advanced poetry that every Dashboard Confessional in the world would benefit from. It's companion piece, "Knee Deep In ATP" gets a little sappy, but makes up for it with brilliant structure that switches from high-octane spazz-pop to tenderly epic and back again. And speaking of tender epics, the closer, "The Year Punk Rock Broke My Heart" pulls a move that's typical of an Arts & Crafts band and builds beautifully driving, hair-standing tension for 3 minutes, that, every single time it's played, hits just as hard as the first time you heard it.

I've developed an extremely close relationship to Hold On Now Youngster, and I'm sure I won't be the last person to do so.. Its nearly limitless youthful exuberance and affecting nostalgia means it's an album made to be loved and cherished. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea comes to mind, and not just because we've reached a 10 year anniversary for the cult classic (nor is it because the whole album is also done in a single key). It's just the intimacy I feel listening to it. Now, I'm not suggesting that it has even half the depth of that masterpiece (well, maybe at least half), but it is capable of affecting someone in the same way. Now, I'm not suggesting that it has even half the depth of that masterpiece, but it's certainly capable of affecting someone in the same way. When I first obsessed over In The Aeroplane in my teenage years, it was a snapshot of my childhood. Now, a few years later, Hold On Now Youngster takes me back to high school - the haze of discovering Pavement and Sonic Youth, dancing alone in my room, racing shopping carts and blowing fireworks to escape the seemingly all-enveloping confusion of puberty, angst and drama. Read more...

Have A Nice Life - Deathconsciousness (2008)

4.5 ★/9.0 - 9.9

The 2000's are coming to a close and for a long time, it appeared this decade's crowning lo-fi achievement would be The Glow Pt. 2. But for every Pavement, there's bound to be a Guided By Voices, and it looks like The Microphones are finally gonna have to share their throne with Have A Nice Life because their debut, Deathconsciousness is a sprawling double album that emerges as a transcendent, emotional masterpiece. And this much is clear even before listening to the damn thing. It's plastic case is twice as big as a normal cd jewel case and will stick out like a sore thumb in your collection. It was composed over the course of nearly six years and is supplemented with a 75 page booklet that's filled with history lessons and theories that strengthen it's enormous themes of death and religion. But it's epic scope isn't just on the surface; every repeat listen further reveals it's ambitions to be bigger than anything released this decade. This is all the more striking considering the fact that it's an mail-order-only release, from a completely unknown duo that is essentially a personal bedroom recording project, based in Connecticut of all places. But we get the sense that Tim and Dan aren't trying to become successful musicians, or even musicians at all. They're simply obscure philosophers and this is the soundtrack to their byzantine ideas.

Despite such complex conceptual motives, the musical ideas on Deathconsciousness are strikingly bare. Unlike Phil Elvrum who tended to show off his dynamic range, Have A Nice Life let their somber progressions sit, gaining resonance and power with droning repetition while they layer it with swirling patterns of emotive vocals. Every moment of vulnerability is expanded like taffy to it's breaking point, drenched in a subterranean, lo-fi mist and driven by industrial drum machines that make it sound like it's been recorded in a boiler room. The result is a mix of Post Punk, Shoegaze and Post Rock, but what Deathconsciousness accomplishes is beyond genre. "A Quick One Before The Eternal Worm..." is stunningly spacious and formless whereas the furious punk of "Waiting For Black Metal Records..." and "The Future" are condensed blasts of rage. The heartbreaking depths of "Who Would Leave Their Son...", "The Big Gloom" and "I Don't Love" are bottomless while the mind-shattering "Earthmover" rises past heaven in true GY!BE fashion. And interludes like "There Is No Food" and "Deep Deep" exhibit barricades of impenetrable sound and texture.

Affectionately advertised by it's creators as "the most depressing album ever made" and running past 85 minutes, a full listen to Deathconsciousness can be exhausting. But anyone who meets it halfway will likely have a religious experience. With the exception of the tired "Telephony", Deathconsciousness is nearly perfect. It plays not like an album, but like a powerful film. Unfortunately, getting a hold of this little-known gem can be a pain, but I can't stress enough that Deathconsciousness should not be missed by anyone. Read more...

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (2008)

4.5 ★/9.0 - 9.9

Vampire Weekend couldn't have picked a better name for themselves. Vampires are an inherently serious species, championing their purity and inhuman superiority above all other creatures. Their humor is dry and their pride is unmatched. Actually, their similarity to stereotypical hipsters in today's indie subculture is uncanny. But even Vampires need to take a break from all that strict doom and gloom sometimes and have some fun. Hopefully Vampire Weekend's joyful self titled LP will also be a wake up call for all indie snobs to just turn off their brain and enjoy themselves. You see, Vampire Weekend contains all the regal conventions of a pitchfork-darling debut: originated from New York City, slurred vocals ala Arctic Monkeys, obscure influences (Afro-Pop, David Byrne, Paul Simon) and a quirky, "cleverer-than-thou" approach. But the music doesn't dare take itself any more seriously than a tip-toe-through-the-tulips, fun-in-the-sun, dance on the beach. I suppose that's why the band has been called The Strokes of 2008. In terms of sound, they're pretty far apart, but both of their debuts feel so simple, effortless and well...fun. Remember when music was just fun? Take apart their background and what you have should be high-art. But look at the result and what you have is simply a good time. Perhaps that's where all the backlash for these NME cover bands comes from. When music this simple and carefree gets big, people just tend to over-think it. Or maybe they're just angry that they didn't think of it first. Whatever the reason is behind hating them, let this be a plea to everyone to let go of their suspicions, because without it, Vampire Weekend will bring joy to your life like no other. Read more...

The Magnetic Fields - Distortion (2008)

3.5 ★/7.0 - 7.9

By now, we should be keenly aware of Stephen Merritt's laziness when it comes to album titles. 69 Love Songs was literally 69 songs about love, i was a bunch of songs starting with the letter I, and Distortion is...well...distorted...for the entirety of the album. Think Jesus And Mary Chain style screeching noise and reverb drums blanketing syrupy pop hooks and you've pretty much heard this album. But as generic as some of these songs are ("Till The Bitter End", "Mr. Misletoe" and "California Girls" could've been cut), it's still nice to see Magnetic Fields forge an actual album. Their last two works supposedly had concepts behind them, but musically there was absolutely no connection between any of their songs. i hardly had an identity in and of itself; it might as well have been called 14 More Love Songs. Distortion at least benefits from having a recognizable sound and unity amongst it's tracks. Oh and also from the catchy melodies, as usual. "Three Way" sounds like a shoegazer update to the opener of David Bowie's Low. The quirky "Xavier Says" and kinky "The Nun's Litany" are beaming with exuberance. "Old Fools" is just plain gorgeous, nearly rivaling the heartbreaking closer, "Courtesans", while "Drive On Driver" is a festive square dance slowed down and led by a whirlwind of guitar and synths.

From Santa Clause and Miseltoe mentions to it's romantically twinkling haze, Distortion is a traditionally dull Christmas album at heart. Most of the songs' whimsy and even some of the melodies fit in comfortably right next to well known carols. But what makes it worthwhile is how Stephen Merrit, with his cynical whiskey soaked approach to otherwise joyful pop anthems, refuses to conform to the cliche heartwarming standards of most winter jingles. When you hear him morosely hollering on the acapella intro of "Too Drunk to Dream", "sober life is a prison, shit faced it is a blessing," you know this isn't quite the holiday cd of choice for family gatherings (unless your family contains alcoholics and a nun who's aspiring to be a topless waitress). It's quintessentially Magnetic Fields, and well, that's saying something. Read more...

The Mars Volta - The Bedlam In Goliath (2008)

2.5 ★/5.0 - 5.9

There is a lot to love about The Mars Volta: their sound, their style, their insane live shows and stage antics, their goofy afros, their drive to integrate prog, electronica and dissonance into punk, their knack for grasping Can-like grooves and bringing epic intensity to the forefront. The only thing that's frustrating about them is actually listening to them. Or at least on The Bedlam In Goliath it is. There definitely once was a time when they were the aural equivalent of ice cream for many (or, as on Amputechture, a tasty pastry). Unfortunately, Frances The Mute was around the time that half of those people decided that they tasted and looked more like broccoli. It's an interesting thing, how little kids interact with the strange-looking vegetable. A common reaction is to only eat the flower heads of broccoli and throw away the stalk. Similarly, Frances The Mute gave fans enough to bite into, but half the people who tried to get full stomach from it, just ended up with a nasty taste in their mouth.

The Bedlam In Goliath may sound close to Amputechture, but it's disappointment is closer to Frances The Mute. It has it's share of heart-pumping peaks, but also too many dull valleys, plagued with angst-ridden, mind numbing sameness. Omar is still constantly dry humping his guitar, the band is still on a needlessly twisting, high speed chase to nowhere in particular and Cedric's lyrics are still poetic nonsense. "I've got a penis that could rip through the very fabric of time," is one of the few lines on the whole album that stands out from his usual projectile vomiting and it sadly illustrates just how striking The Mars Volta could be if they just put a little more of their power into actually engaging their listeners. De-Loused In The Comatorium took no prisoners and went straight for the throat, something that slithering tracks such as "Wax Simulacra", "Ouroborous" and "Goliath", do with ferocious results. But too often on this overlong mess, the band is overlooking their strengths in favor of a towering wall of auditory masturbation. Read more...

El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead (2007)

4.0 ★/8.0 - 8.9

For all it's paranoia driven anxieties, dark subject matter and terrifying atmosphere, El-P's second solo album feels, oddly enough, like a comedy. Check out "Smithereens (Stop Crying)," which opens with a playful children's theme song for the first ten seconds, before El-P demands the music to bring him "the dramatic intro...machine." Suddenly the song is abused by an exaggeratedly brooding synth march before transforming into a militaristic horror-groove. If that's not enough to get you chuckling, try listening to a line like, "why should I be sober when god is so clearly dusted out his mind" with a straight face. And there's a reason why "Habeas Corpses," the disturbing story of a futuristic forbidden love between soldier and prisoner, is delivered with laughter at the end of the track. El-P certainly has a sense of humor about his cynical views, which is why I'll Sleep When You're Dead is so successful. Like on Eminem's early albums, everything is delivered tongue-in-cheek so that when he really goes off the deep end into despair and desperation, you never get too overwhelmed. Still, that's not to say that you shouldn't take this album seriously. If I'll Sleep When You're Dead had to be classified as a single sub-genre of comedy, it would probably be Satire, the most serious-minded of all the styles. You can hear El-P dripping with contempt and sarcasm when he litters stripped down club tracks like "E.T.M." and "No Kings" with hellish dance-chants and cynical-minded observations of corrupt cops and drug addictions. The Hyphy and Crunk movements are at the peak of their popularity and to this rapper, the connections between the downfall of serious hip hop and the downfall of society is worth laughing about. It may be easy to regard his Bukowskian outlook as a little excessive, but he addresses all possible criticisms appropriately on "Drive": "I'm not depressed, man. I'm just a fucking New Yorker who knows that sittin' in traffic with these bastards is torture." In every respect, once you wade through the layers of scornful muck on I'll Sleep When You're Dead, you'll find this producer's latest to be one of his most pointed, playful and effective works to date. Read more...

Quasimoto - The Unseen (2000)

4.0 ★/8.0 - 8.9

It's a shame that your imagination never really matches the rampant power it contains when you're a kid. Before you've learned everything you can about the world and before you develop any clear definition of reality, your hyper-sensitive mind is capable of running wild with creativity. That's why so many toddlers have imaginary friends. Most will decry it as an adolescent obsession with fantasy, but I see it as more of an exhibition of the true creativity kids have before they grow old, mature and lose that essential spark of inventiveness.

The origin of Madlib's imaginary friend and moniker, a pig nosed yellow hippo named Quasimoto, is probably attributed to the fact that he (supposedly) recorded this album in the midst of a week-long binge on shrooms. But the true drug of choice is weed; The Unseen is the most blunted haze of an album since Cypress Hill's glory days. The lyrical content is abundant with stoner jargon and sentiments while Quasimoto's helium-induced delivery is as bored and listless as potheads get. Plus the lines themselves are pretty sluggish and weak on their own - it sounds like one too many spliffs have been smoked. Meanwhile, Madlib's beats are deliberately subdued and disorienting, filled with faint loops and understated touches that usually reveal themselves when listened to in altered states of mind, and the nature of the tracks cater directly to ADD patients, running extremely short and abruptly cutting out or changing completely. All cannabis culture nods aside though, Madlib and his demented alter ego have crafted a twinkling collection of smooth jazz-rap beats; sort of a twisted update of A Tribe Called Quest. Yes, there's plenty of druggy "what-the-fuck?" excursions ("Astro Travellin" and "Come On Feet", which has Madlib and Quas lazily struggling to encourage their feet to not fall asleep), but there's also sublimely soulful ballads ("MHBs"), chill elevator music grooves ("Axe Puzzles", "The Unseen"), tributes to Madlib's obscure Jazz record collection ("Jazz Cats Pt.1", "Return Of The Loop Digga"), hard hitting faux-battle raps ("Put A Curse On You", "Boom Music") and, in true Q-Tip and Phife Dawg fashion, countless down to earth criticisms of accepted hip hop stereotypes ("Real Eyes", "Bluffin").

The Unseen is so impressive because by reverting to his inner-childish self, Madlib has released a plethora of surging creativity; a collage of ideas spanning in all sorts of directions, overlapping and colliding with the attention span of gas molecules. For that same reason it can be a strange listen, with nothing really pulling the jarring samples, off-kilter rhymes and fragments together into a cohesive whole. However, the best way to understand Quasimoto is to listen to him through the perception of his creator. In other words, as Madlib kindly suggests on "Return Of The Loop Digga," "Throw this record on, pack a bowl, take a hit." Read more...

Battles - Mirrored (2007)

4.0 ★/8.0 - 8.9

When trying to describe Battles, I've been driven towards all sorts of interesting analogies I thought I'd never in my life be able to use. A high speed scooter joyride through an industrial nuclear power plant. Alvin and the chipmunks trapped in a strobe-lit high-tech laboratory with King Crimson's Discipline playing on repeat. A carnival freakshow goes post rock. Transformers. Glitch rock. Saturday morning cartoons with steroids. These descriptions alone are going to get a lot of people giving the album a listen, but are they enough to establish Mirrored as album of the year? No, even though everyone will undoubtedly cite it's uniqueness as an attraction point. The first song they'll let all their friends listen to is the alien-like single, "Atlas" where Marilyn Manson style industrial filth is married to a club friendly beat, circus music guitars and the vocal stylings of hundreds of hardworking underground dwarves. Or they might point to the first half of "Rainbows," a teetering prog-rock implosion waiting to happen Animaniacs style - hammer bonks and goofy cartoon chases through rabbit holes and winding tunnels. These are spectacular songs, but what makes Mirrored one of the best albums of 2007, is when you can sense that the band is doing so much more than novelty. It's revolutionary. They're not just messing around; the constructs of this music is a complex fusion of man and machine and the end product is serious driving rock. The impenetrable King Crimson influenced jam sessions are invigorating enough, but when the band is also tinkering and experimenting with computers and loops as if they were simply another instrument, the process is refreshing in ways that haven't been done by any rock band yet. "Tonto" has a somber progression that's driven by a restless guitar line and cpu induced voices that resemble wild forest animals. "Bad Trails" is a tense tribal soundscape cluttered with dense digital effects and "Tij" takes off from samples of wheezes and heaves into a sinister slice of chaos with ricochet guitars and kinetic keyboards.

The majority of people who go into Battles unprepared could very well reduce them to the kind of thing you let your friends listen to almost as a joke. When I heard the head scratching "Ddiamondd," composed of whistles, techno breakdowns, and Mickey Mouse on speed, I thought the same thing. But it would be one of this decade's greatest tragedies if that's all Mirrored was known for. Sit through the off-kilter oddities and you'll find at the end of the day that Battles are not fucking around. You'll have your ass kicked in every direction at once and then served to you on a platter. And you'll see that this band has delivered the future of rock music, whether or not we're able to comprehend it as such. Read more...