ALTER.NATION #75
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The Proper Ornaments, Waco Brothers, Real Estate, Soccer Mommy, The Secret Sisters, Pictish Trail, Cold Beat, Caribou, Wrangler, Tycho, Sunny Jain, Mhysa
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L E A P - D A Y
"Music of the Traffic"
The Proper Ornaments - Mission Bells / Music of the Traffic
Released less than a year after their 2019 album 6 Lenins, Mission Bells finds the Proper Ornaments in the middle of a creative burst. Most of the songs came together during soundchecks while the band was touring Europe. Once back in James Hoare's home studio, the quartet set to work getting the songs on tape quickly, without a lot of fuss or overdubbing. It makes for an immediate, intimate sound that creeps and crawls like a melancholy spider...
Waco Brothers - Resist / I Fought the Law
On Resist!, Chicago's original punk cowboys The Waco Brothers play protest songs about the folks getting shoved down and songs about the system that's doing the shoving. They can be political, they can be personal, and sometimes there is no difference. Their shout-along manifestos and strident tomfoolery make for a potent elixir in times when reason and humour are at odds. With a hardy cackle and righteous rant, they're down for the siege, as long as there's enough beer to make it to last call. Includes all the songs that have never been available on vinyl in the US before.
Real Estate - The Main Thing / Also a But
With their 2017 album In Mind, New Jersey indie drifters Real Estate began a very slow evolutionary process, changing up their time-honored formula of laid-back, jangly pop by gently introducing new sounds and ideas. A change in their long-running membership brought in new guitarist Julian Lynch, who carried over some of the world music-influenced sensibilities that marked his excellent solo work and his new gig. Fifth album The Main Thing continues the band's one-step-at-a-time stylistic development while underpinning their ever sunny tunes with unlikely themes of anxiety for future generations and apocalyptic dread... Particularly toward the end of "Also a But," the band breaks their warm, tuneful sound down with some ungrounded jamming that sounds like an excerpt from a particularly spacy Dead set circa 1974...
Soccer Mommy - color theory / crawling in my skin
Though Soccer Mommy's Sophie Allison generated buzz as early as 2015 with her introspective, then-self-recorded tracks, the project made its official debut three years later with Clean, a critically lauded set of hooky, heartbroken songs with lyrics that were notably vulnerable and relatable. That more hi-fi release was produced by Gabe Wax, known for his work in the studio with acts like the War on Drugs, Cass McCombs, and Frankie Cosmos. The pair reunited for the follow-up, color theory, Soccer Mommy's Loma Vista debut. The title comes with a thematic key code; the album is divided into three sections represented by blue, yellow, and gray, each with its own associated topics and emotions (sadness, mental and physical sickness, and darkness)...
The Secret Sisters - Saturn Return / Water Witch
The Secret Sisters Find Their Voice on ‘Saturn Return’
The fourth album from Alabama sibling duo the Secret Sisters is the stunning country-soul opus their talent has always promised. Laura and Lydia Rogers have been at it since 2010, making solid LPs with high-profile producers (T Bone Burnett, Dave Cobb) while lending their Southern church harmonies to legends like Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello. In 2017, the pair enlisted singer-songwriter Brandi -Carlile to co-produce their third LP, You Don’t Own Me Anymore, helping them up their game in a set of songs about piloting life’s hardships, delivered with tender -intimacy. Carlile is back for Saturn Return, a spare, -gorgeous, relatably realistic set...
Pictish Trail - Thumb World / Double Sided
Named with both a defining characteristic of homo sapiens and the proliferation of handheld devices in mind, Thumb World is the fourth officially sanctioned album from Johnny Lynch's long-running solo project, Pictish Trail. The founder and operator of Lost Map Records (Rozi Plain, Seamus Fogarty, Tuff Love), Lynch offers his usual eclectic blend of psychedelic folk, fuzz, electronic whimsy, and contemplative and clever singer/songwriter fare here, though the recording quality and performance takes have gradually improved with each release, making the lo-fi label apply more in spirit than sound. Issued on Fire Records, Thumb World was produced and mixed by prior collaborator Rob Jones...
Cold Beat - Mother / Double Sided Mirror
San Francisco band Cold Beat make their DFA debut with Mother, a collection of ten pop transmissions from Earth, 2020.
Wound tight with an energy that ricochets from one song into the next, Mother was made while frontperson Hannah Lew (formerly of indie trio Grass Widow) was pregnant and considering the chaotic conditions of the world she was bringing a new human into. If we consider Mother an artistic style guide through space and time, the framework Cold Beat provide is overcast by design but focused in execution; locked-in drums and synths with choir-like melodies high above it all.
Caribou - Suddenly / Like I Loved You
Over a long career arc, electronic producer Dan Snaith took his Caribou project from sunny sample-core to more organic, psyche-tinged creations and beyond. His 2010 album Swim filtered his unique musical perspectives through a fascination with deep house music, and four years later Our Love delivered some of his more intimate and minimal sounds. Sixth studio album Suddenly picks up threads from both of these, pushing the dancefloor-ready style of Swim as well as Snaith's more softly drawn songwriting into colorful and fun new places...
Wrangler - A Situation / How to Start a Revolution
Electro trio Wrangler, consisting of Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire), Ben Edwards (Benge), and Phil Winter (Tunng), harness old technology in order to create futuristic music, playing vintage synths and sequencers in a loose, improvisational way. A Situation, the group's third album, sounds similar to the first two, except this time there's a greater presence of lyrics, and the songs sound more urgent... While it's hard to even process everything that's going on, let alone attempt to find a solution, Mallinder at least encourages listeners to take action and make a difference, particularly on the commanding "How to Start a Revolution." Even though the underlying message of the album is quite serious, the music itself is playful rather than bleak or cathartic... The situation of the world might be increasingly dire, but Wrangler aren't entering panic mode just yet. They still feel that something can be done about all of this, and being able to have fun, dance, and create music helps immensely.
Tycho - Simulcast / Weather
Weather was Tycho's first album to be centered around lyrics, with guest vocalist Hannah Cottrell (Saint Sinner) adding a more relatable touch to the group's already accessible brand of atmospheric electronic pop. Simulcast takes the same material and makes it more open to interpretation, removing the lead vocals and expanding on the instrumental ideas of the album. Three of the songs on Weather were already instrumentals (with just a few vocal traces by Cottrell), and they reappear on Simulcast without alteration... Simulcast could be thought of as the more "background music" version of Weather, but even without lyrics, it's still meant to put your mind in motion. Both versions are equally worth the roughly half-hour it takes to listen to each.
Sunny Jain - Wild Wild East / Immigrant Warrior
An explosive jazz drummer and master of the Indian double-sided drum the dhol, Sunny Jain is known for mixing post-bop jazz, psych-rock, and funk with the vibrant Indian musical traditions he grew up with as the child of Punjabi immigrants. He brings all of these influences to bear on his fourth solo album, 2020's potently realized Wild Wild East. Drawing inspiration from Bollywood and Spaghetti Western soundtracks, surf rock, hip-hop, and avant-garde improvisation, Jain paints a vivid, cross-cultural musical portrait. It's a sound that has specific roots in '70s Bollywood "curry westerns" like Sholay and Khote-Sikkay, where directors brought American cowboy archetypes and themes to stories set in India...
Mhysa - Nevaeh / when the saints (reprise)
The New York City-based conceptual and visual artist’s experimental club tracks channel the legacies of black women icons into visions of utopias... When it comes to reinterpreting songs, how you sing matters just as much as what you’re singing. Louis Armstrong turned an apocalyptic dirge into a celebration of new life and a New Orleans jazz funeral standard with his recording of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Whitney Houston transformed a limping nationalist anthem into a tear-jerking ballad of resilience with her 1991 performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at that year’s Super Bowl. Excavating new meanings from old work and stirring new emotions: This is the talent electronic artist Mhysa brings to her latest album, Nevaeh, as she plants seeds of R&B, pop, and spiritual hits and allows them to bloom over crashing beats, twinkling chimes, and playful synths.
The Proper Ornaments, Waco Brothers, Real Estate, Soccer Mommy, The Secret Sisters, Pictish Trail, Cold Beat, Caribou, Wrangler, Tycho, Sunny Jain, Mhysa
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