i hate the sound of guitars » power pop

quick take : mixtapes : hope is for people

guitarlover — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 11:40:37 +0000

Holy crap, I haven’t written about Mixtapes before? Really!? I have literally listened to this band more than any other artist this year.

Mixtapes live in a weird intersection between well-produced pop-punk and lo-fi indie pop. On the one hand they have a fatter drum sound than I expect from low-budget indies; on the other, the co-ed vocals sometimes have just enough unsteadiness to be endearing (not grating). They write insanely hooky tunes about stuff like sexual frustration, classic Metallica, coping with life, feeling sour grapes-y about an ex, and guilt over not wanting to go to a party. They tackle these subjects with keen observation and sharp humor. If they have a flaw it might be a little too much self-awareness; I could give them a song-about-writing-songs penalty flag, but it’s waived on account of general awesomeness. So far they favor frequent, short releases, which I am totally down with. The recent “Hope is For People,” is as a fine starting place; the title track is for sure on my year’s best shortlist. mixtapesohio will help get you hooked up with almost the whole enchilada. You’ll need to hit up Death to False Hope records to score the “Castle Songs” single (while you’re at DtFH, check out the Candy Hearts release, too). Most of Mixtapes’ releases are Creative Commons licensed, so you can download ‘em legit for free, then kick a donation to the band if you love their music like I do, and want more, more, more.

quick take : lemuria/cheap girls : split single

guitarlover — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:18:00 +0000

On the A-side, Lemuria offer two more examples of the smart, catchy, indie rock that’s made Pebble one of my most-played albums of the year so far. I expected their side to be swell, and it delivers. But the revelation here for me is Cheap Girls’ “Pure Hate.” I’m not quite sure what “And I/Keep breathing pure hate into ever’thing/I only wanna stare you down,” means, but I am sure it rides a mighty, indelible hook, setting up and releasing tension in the space of a few bars. I wouldn’t exactly say that Cheap Girls sound like the Lemonheads; Ian Graham’s voice is gruffer, and this band as a whole is heftier. But there’s still something about Graham’s relaxed phrasing and the way the vocal melody sits above the fragmented-arpeggio style riff that reminds me of Dando’s outfit circa It’s a Shame About Ray. I am now A Fan.

quick take : the rationales : the distance in between

guitarlover — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:36:53 +0000

Somewhere between roots-rock and power pop, with some swell vocal harmonies. Veteran producer Ed Valausksas stitches it all together nicely. If I were in a quibbling mood I’d say some of these songs are stretched out a tiny bit more than might be optimal, but the under-two-minute “Braedon” certainly isn’t; it’s my fave. Other highlights include the very solidly catchy “Another Moon” and “Tongue Tied,” which feels like a classic AOR summertime radio hit that I somehow never heard before. Overall this is a consistently solid effort.

update : mars classroom : the new theory of everything

guitarlover — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:39:01 +0000

One disadvantage of my “quick take” approach to album reviews is that sometimes my response to a record changes significantly over time. Fortunately on the internets I can amend earlier commentary when I think it’s necessary.
I’ve been feeling bad about my initial response to Mars Classroom’s The New Theory of Everything almost since I posted it. I do still think it’s true that it sounds less like Big Dipper than the Pollard/McCaughan collaboration Go Back Snowball sounded like Superchunk — but I no longer think that’s a useful insight. And, anyway, it’s not a qualitative judgment. (Also, the almost-title-track? Pretty Big Dipper-y.)
I further suggested that maybe the basic parts for The New Theory of Everything had been left on the cutting room floor of the alleged new Big Dipper album* — which now strikes me as unfounded and unfair.
I was also remiss in not mentioning Robert Beerman’s presence — he was in Pell Mell, which, at least in my book, qualifies Mars Classroom as a bonafide supergroup. (You might remember Pell Mell as one of the more inside artists on the seminal SST instrumental rock No Age compilation.)
The bottom line here is that I gave a so-so review to a record that has really grown on me. Sorry, Mars Classroom. You can stick me in the dunce corner if you want.

* & I still get chills up and down my spine typing that.

quick take : i was totally destroying it : preludes

guitarlover — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:26:42 +0000

Preludes makes me think of Metric, not because I Was Totally Destroying It sound like Metric — they mostly don’t, although “Fight/Flight” does a bit — but because Preludes feels like the kind of leap that Metric made between Grow Up And Blow Away and Fantasies: the elements are the same, but everything is in sharper focus; particularly, both Rachel Hirsh and John Booker’s vocals are even more confident. The cover of Preludes seems perfect to me: this is big music to fill big spaces. There’s a lot of 80s in IWTDI’s mix — bright, ringing guitars à la The Edge and (especially) Big Country’s Stuart Adamson, but this is tempered by a much more contemporary approach to low end and drum sounds — they put the power in the pop.
Check out Control at the Greyday Records site.

quick take : mars classroom : the new theory of everything

guitarlover — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:01:53 +0000

Longtime readers will know that my love for all things Big Dipper-related is even more boundless and unconditional than my love for most things GBV-related, so maybe it’s inevitable that my (stratospheric) expectations for this project weren’t quite met by the first listen. The Bob Pollard/Gary Waleik balance seems a bit more skewed toward the Pollard side of things than, say, the Bob Pollard/Mac McCaughan balance of Go Back Snowball. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some of the riffs/chords progressions over which Pollard spins his melodies and lyrics were bits left on the editing floor of the rumored new Dipper album. But if you think of this more as a Pollard solo album that happens to feature Gary Waleik, it’s a pretty awesome Pollard solo album. It’s the least proggy and most power-poppish of Pollard’s 2011 releases so far, too. Which I’m predictably okay with.

quick take : yep : once

guitarlover — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:59:53 +0000

Yep is Al Chan (of The Rubinoos) and Mark Caputo (of Belleville, who I vow to investigate) singing extremely tasteful, alt-country-flavored arrangements of a bunch of covers they like (and one Caputo original) with a large (but cohesive) cast of supporting musicians. The centerpiece here is Chan and Caputo’s vocal performances, which are impeccable. They even do justice to a tune (”Crestfallen”) originally sung by Joe Pernice — an intimidating gold standard for rock vocal excellence if ever there was one. John Cuniberti’s production/engineering is likewise excellent; he leaves in just a little grit and bite to keep things well out of “easy listening” territory (his treatment of electric guitar tone seems particularly deft) .
Samples and such at Yepsongs.

quick take: Katie Crutchfield’s discography so far, so far as I know

guitarlover — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 13:13:51 +0000

with The Ackleys:

The Ackleys (2005); Forget Forget, Derive Derive (EP, 2006)
Indie-power-pop. Splashy drums, some keyboards give it a slightly new-wave sheen.

as King Everything:

The Drought (2008)
Mostly acoustic guitar/vocal

with P.S. Eliot:

The Bike Wreck Demo (2008, read about Bike Wreck demo here), Introverted Romance in Our Troubled Minds (2009), Living in Squalor (EP, 2010, pay-what-you-want download), Sadie (2011)

Except for the demo, which is crazy blissed out fuzzerific, this is straight up pop-punk. If you have to play the sounds-like game, maybe try Sarge, but since you can at least sample some guilt-free, don’t bother playing sounds-like; just listen & decide for yerself.

with Bad Banana:

Crushfield (2010; artist-approved download (mediafire))

Treble and sugar overdose low-fi buzz saw pop-punk. Yum.

as Waxahatchee:

Split release with Operation Cliff Clavin (2010)

Severely-traumatized-microphone-style acoustic guitar/vocal record. If not for the Internets, I’d still be wondering if “Clumsy” was a tune on one of the KRS Elliott Smith albums that I’d somehow overlooked due to its proximity to all the other awesome songs on those records. A thing about Crutchfield’s singing and production: it hasn’t, ’specially lately, fetishized clarity or anything, so a thing that happens a lot is I’ll be digging a tune basically just because it’s catchy and a really good lyric line will just jump out and floor me. So it’s helpful that the lyrics for the Waxahatchee split are available.

(Also on the read-the-words tip: Introverted Romance in Our Troubled Minds)

Except for Sadie, which is not out yet and now near the top of my “most anticipated releases” list, I think I listened to everything on this list as least twice this week. So, yeah, I endorse this.

h/t I Could Die Tomorrow, without whom my week woulda been a little duller

Song of the Month: Hussalonia, “For Those About to Rock, I Ignore You”

guitarlover — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:00:02 +0000

It was just about a month ago that I became aware of the self-described “pop music cult” Hussalonia, and since then I’ve listened to Hussalonia songs about 350 times. Even more surprising, I’m showing no signs of getting sick of them.

Partly this is because Hussalonia is really good*, partly it’s because they (mostly just he — Jesse Mank basically is Hussalonia, although he has some collaborators on some tracks) is strikingly diverse, encompassing minimalist folk, musique concrète, power pop, heavy metal — too many genres to list. Like the work of many of my favorite songwriters, Mank’s songs are frequently funny and serious simultaneously; they’re seldom straightforwardly jokey. (His track-by-track re-invention of Billy Joel’s 1980 new-wave cash-in album Glass Houses is no joke; it’s a revelation.**)

“For Those About to Rock, We Ignore You,” is one of those tunes that makes me smile and wince at the same time and it melds a couple of Mank’s aesthetic directions. It’s about how unpleasant it can sometimes be to make it through a local band’s set to hear the band you came to see (or are in). This is certainly familiar territory for me.*** Mank approaches it with delicate picked acoustic guitar and a hushed, appropriately world-weary vocal. But what lifts it into the realm of the extraordinary are the underlying layers of guitar feedback — noisy, but melodically smart, and at least partly belying the sentiment of the lyric. (Another of Mank’s projects, Satan Among the Sofa Cushions, is a heavy metal EP that is too successful as metal to be dismissed as parody, even if Mank’s tongue is clearly in his cheek.)

Jesse Mank is manifestly uninterested in participating in the industry part of the music industry; his recent catalogue is only distributed digitally, and he gives the vast bulk of it away free on the entertaining and informative Hussalonia website.

*Triple-threat good: he’s an outstanding songwriter, a gifted multi-instrumentalist, and displays much more solid recording chops than I expect from indie home-recordists.

**Glass Houses was one of the first three LPs I ever bought, but while I still like Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 74-78 and even some of Foreigner’s self-titled album, Glass Houses was the first record I disowned. I used an exacto to cut up the cover so it said “Mr. Shit” instead of “Billy Joel.” I hadn’t thought of that in years, and certainly never regretted it until Mank’s amazing renditions made me want to A-B against the original.

***For a couple years I’ve been trying to finish writing a song that starts “There’s not enough booze in this bar/To get me through another set by your band/And there’s not enough beer in my glass/To get me through one more song/But I’m too cheap to waste half a drink/So I guess I’ll buy another round.” Mank’s lyric is much better than mine; also, he finished his.

Various Artists – I Hate CD’s: Norton Records 45 RPM Singles Collection Vol. 1

guitarlover — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:47:09 +0000

And now for something completely different. I Hate CD’s offers a whopping 45 cuts from the vaults of “Wild Rock” specialists Norton Records. The selections span 5 decades or so of garage, rockabilly, psychobilly, power-pop, and other flavors of rock’n'roll. (Norton Records celebrated their 20th anniversary last year, but they’ve unearthed and reissued many obscure classics — starting with Hasil Adkins — from the ’50s through right now.)

There are plenty of legendary names scattered through this set, like ? and the Mysterians, Big Star, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Ramones, Doug Sahm, and Link Wray. But even the familiar names offer some surprises. The versions of Big Star’s “September Gurls?” and Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”? Completely different recording from those on Radio City and Ramones. Better yet, there’s tons of artists and songs you’ve probably never heard unless you’re already an obsessive devotee of Norton.

I usually feel kind of itchy if I spend too much time listening to music that’s not new, but I made it all the way through this set with ease. The sequencing could be based on Norton’s release dates (not sure), but it’s not at all related to recording dates, so the discs skip around in time. It was cool that I couldn’t always tell if I was listening to an obscure vintage classic (Yo La Tengo really should tackle Shades of Night’s “Fluctuation” if they haven’t already) or a more recent act (The Hentchmen don’t sound very 90’s).

This collection is only available as a digital download. I wish I could pore over extensive liner notes on the sessions and reproductions of the original sleeves and such, but good golly, it’s cheap. You can get it from eMusic, Amazon, or iTunes Music Store (I can’t figure out how to link directly to ITMS).

I can hardly wait for Volume II. I can’t wait … hardly wa-it. I can’t wait, hardly wait.