ALTER.NATiON #022
Allison
Miller’s Boom Tic Boom, Claypool Lennon Delirium, Good Fuck, Beirut,
Methyl Ethel, Seth Walker, Abjects, Du Blonde, Adia Victoria, Spellling,
Sunwatchers, Yann Tiersen
weekly favtraX
23-02-2019
Following two years of extensive touring, drummer Allison Miller brings a sense of road-tested swagger and global inspiration to her fourth Boom Tic Boom album, 2019's vibrant Glitter Wolf. Recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California with producer and longtime friend Julie Wolf, Glitter Wolf finds Miller further coalescing many of the cross-pollinated rhythms and harmonic ideas that have informed her and the band's music since their eponymous 2010 debut. Once again joining the drummer are bandmates bassist Todd Sickafoose, pianist Myra Melford, violinist Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, and cornetist Kirk Knuffke. Together, they play an investigative style of modern creative jazz that touches upon a bevy of stylistic influences and allows for plenty of improvisation and group interplay... The boundary-crossing identity of "Congratulations and Condolences," with its rolling desert caravan groove, open piano chords, and klezmer-sounding melody perfectly sets the tone for what's to come.
On paper, the pairing of Les Claypool and Sean Lennon doesn't quite fit. From inside and outside Primus, Claypool has specialized in technically exacting rock, while Lennon favors a fuzzier approach, leaning on vibe and soft-focus melodies. The two approaches appear to be contradictory, but the Claypool Lennon Delirium proves they're complementary: Claypool sharpens Lennon's trippier elements, while the guitarist pushes the bassist toward melody. South of Reality, the duo's second album, crystallizes the benefits of this collaboration...
Armed with music-creation software and high-concept inspiration from a selection of books, the duo of Jenny Pulse and Tim Kinsella dove headfirst into the creation of a twisted, meditative, and unexpectedly slinky debut album for their project Good Fuck. Pulse was already well familiar with programming minimal electronic tracks, while Kinsella has become a decorated art rock veteran and core songwriter for fringe bands like Joan of Arc, Owls, Make Believe, and others. The pair retreated from their home in Chicago to an artists' colony in upstate New York to begin from square one on the music that ultimately became this eponymous debut. Good Fuck sounds very much like the product of a highly focused mission, with songs and sounds blending into each other. The tone is set on album opener "We Keep It Light," where looming, distorted kick drums, noisy synth buzzes, and slithering electronics twist around chopped-up fragments of unison spoken word and other vocalizations. The energy of the song, and much of the album, is heavy without being aggressive, leaning more into an omnipresent eeriness and sense of anxiety that simmers but never blows up. Undercurrents of dread, sex, and derangement run through all the songs, sometimes all happening at once...
Beirut’s Zach Condon came up in the tender landscape of mid-aughts indie rock and has been chilling there ever since. After nearly four years freewheeling throughout both New York and Europe, he is back with Gallipoli, which is neither named after the World War I battle nor a reference to the terrible Mel Gibson movie (also about the World War I battle). On Gallipoli, Condon is still doing the same exact thing he’s been doing the past 13 years—creating roomy, Elephant 6-indebted indie pop that sounds more or less like a readymade soundtrack for a young film student trying to front as an auteur... Gallipoli can be best summed up as the Beirut album where the organ is king. The record’s backstory is extremely in line with Condon’s ethos: Basically, he had this Farfisa sitting in his parents’ house in Santa Fe. He decided he needed said organ back in his life. He obtained the organ. Around that time he started sketching out Gallipoli... The ambient track “Corfu” is a surprising highlight. It is tinged with Balearic rhythms and includes one of Gallipoli’s most compelling uses of organ stoking. One of the shortest songs on the album, it sounds like the kind of sun-kissed psych that would be paired nicely with an activity like drinking a tallboy while someone rubs sunscreen on your back.
With a title that's a play on words, Methyl Ethel's third album of a self-described trilogy, Triage, was produced, performed, and recorded by Jake Webb at his home studio, though its lush, lopsided textures hardly sound like what was a solo effort until the mixing stage. Parts melancholy, trippy, and dancy, he combined programmed and traditional instruments, including his own synth timbres, layering them in ways that sound more like atmospheric arena fare than what was essentially a one-man recording project. (At this point, Webb continues to perform live with bandmates.) Having said that, Triage sounds a little older and wiser than Methyl Ethel's first two albums without relinquishing the project's psychedelic quality and dissatisfied demeanor... Elsewhere, the giddy, operatic "Post-Blue" takes a more dramatic turn as it travels through sections that vary in tempo, rhythm, instrumentation, and key. It's reflective of an album that's part catchy song, part shimmering atmosphere, and part fractured rumination.
Seth Walker - No Bird from Are You Open? Seth Walker answers the question he poses with the title of his tenth studio album through its music. The one-time blues specialist has widened his palette so his fleet single-string leads are a mere coloring on a collection of well-crafted songs that draw upon a variety of roots sounds. Walker doesn't limit himself to Southern sounds... Instead, Walker is deft and elegant, weaving together sounds and stories in a way that has a quiet, lasting impact.
London-based garage rock band Abjects have members who hail from Spain (vocalist/guitarist Noemi), Japan (bassist Yuki), and Italy (drummer Alice), but from the sound of their debut album, Never Give Up, it would be no shock to learn that the band split time between living in Billy Childish's guest room and Thee Oh Sees' basement... The gritty "Surf," which works as a showcase for Noemi's six-string mastery... Mostly, though, this is the kind of record to put on when it's time to go a little wild or for use as a soundtrack while breaking stuff with glee. A couple more records this good, and when the band is mentioned in the same breath as their inspirations, no one will bat an eye.
Whether working as Du Blonde or under her given name, Beth Jeans Houghton pours all of herself into her music, and never more so than on Lung Bread for Daddy. On Du Blonde's second album, Houghton takes full creative control -- from songwriting to production to the self-portrait that graces the cover -- on a set of songs about losing control and getting it back. Written and recorded after she sought help for her lifelong anxiety and depression in early 2018, Lung Bread for Daddy finds her crawling back from the bottom, leaving behind old lovers, old worries, and old identities (Houghton is non-binary). Her hard-earned victories are reflected in the album's world-weary yet liberated vibe and, especially, in the roughness of her voice... and crows about the end of a bad relationship on "Angel," where her elation is echoed by a heroic guitar solo.
In following up 2016's excellent Beyond the Bloodhounds, Adia Victoria both deepens her arresting Southern poeticism and takes a significant sonic leap beyond her indie blues origins. On Silences, the singer/songwriter's sophomore set, the melting pot of swampy blues, folk, and garage punk that marked her debut has given way to a more exploratory and layered approach. Recording in Upstate New York with co-producer Aaron Dessner (the National), Victoria frames her 12 varied missives against a backdrop of subtle electronic noise, austere string and brass orchestrations, and tensely cinematic indie rock. While the blues are not absent from this set, they are transmuted to something more ephemeral and adapted to whatever climate or situation suits the artist's needs.
California-based artist Tia Cabral is the individual behind the brilliant moniker Spellling, which aside from being a funny grammar joke, appropriately nods to the bewitching qualities of her music. Pantheon of Me, her first album, was justifiably one of the most buzzed-about self-released debuts of 2017, blurring lines between minimal synth pop, wispy freak-folk, and hazy soul. Follow-up Mazy Fly arrives on Sacred Bones, an established home for otherworldly pop and experimental sounds. While her first effort was a raw, sometimes skeletal collection that heavily utilized looping pedals, Mazy Fly is a much more developed studio creation, with more fleshed-out arrangements incorporating violin, saxophone, percussion, and other instruments... The album's other big standout is "Under the Sun," a space-carnival disco track with a refreshing amount of hope for the future.
New York quartet Sunwatchers make instrumental music that exists where the spiritual reach of free jazz and the screaming chaos of psychedelia intersect. Bandleader Jim McHugh was a founding member of the late-2000s freaked sounds collective Dark Meat, and he carried on their deep-fried blend of structure and skronk when he uprooted from Athens, Georgia, to New York City in 2010 and began working towards what would become Sunwatchers. Wildly prolific, the band quickly established their untethered sound over the course of multiple releases captured both in the studio and in live performances. Illegal Moves is their third studio album, and its seven selections capture the group at their tightest and most electric state of sonic and psychic connectivity yet. Album opener "New Dad Blues" charges out of the gates with a high-energy riff in a twisting time signature. The entire band is locked in and playing at full force, with McHugh's wah-wah guitar lines interlocking with Jeff Tobias' blasts of saxophone. The rhythm section is part of this telekinetic playing as well, with drummer Jason Robira and bassist Peter Kerlin pushing the song to its edges but never faltering in their airtight syncronycity with the rest of the band. Much of Illegal Moves keeps up this incredible display of exuberance and stamina.
With ALL, Yann Tiersen continues the celebration of special places and the feelings they evoke that was the focus of 2014's ∞ (Infinity) and 2016's Eusa. On the former album, he explored Iceland and the Faroe Islands; on the latter, he paid tribute to his home base of Ushant, an island between Brittany and Cornwall. This time, Tiersen explores the beauty of the world around us -- and humanity's inescapable connection to it -- with results that blend ∞ (Infinity)'s epic beauty with Eusa's intimacy. ALL's creative process was a similar combination of grand and small... An uplifting, planet-sized embrace, ALL is another triumph for Tiersen.
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| Emilie Quinquis and Yann Tiersen |
