ALTER.NATION #99
Secret Machines, Blues Pills, Orville Peck, No Joy, Bully, Sneaks, The Killers, Guided by Voices, Bright Eyes,The Waterboys, Bebel Gilberto, Cut Copy
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Secret Machines - Awake in the Brain Chamber / Everything Starts
On Secret Machines' fourth album and first since the death of original guitarist Benjamin Curtis, 2020's Awake in the Brain Chamber, co-founding members singer/keyboardist Brandon Curtis and drummer Josh Garza return to the infectious, sonically expansive brand of space rock that marked their first two albums... The result is a deeply felt production informed by the group's long-standing love of ambient music, psych-pop, and kinetic, '70s-style Krautrock. Poignantly, at the core of the album is the shimmering "Everything Starts," featuring production and guitar work from Benjamin Curtis recorded prior to his death. A moody anthem rife with warm vocal harmonies, it brings to mind the sound of the first two Secret Machines' albums while also revealing a more mature, emotionally grounded sophistication... There's a palpably textured quality to the group's sound, as if everything from the vocals and brightly wound guitars to the glassy keyboards and refracting basslines has been filtered through a giant NASA satellite. It's a fitting aesthetic for a band that has returned to earth after a long journey through their inner emotional cosmos.
Blues Pills - Holy Moly! / Low Road
...More rootsy than anything on 2016's neo-psych breakthrough Lady in Gold, the track signified a back-to-basics approach, one that Blues Pills engages through most of these 11 tracks. When guitarist Dorian Sorriaux amiably left the band in 2018, founder/bassist Zack Anderson moved over into his role and it made sense to reconsider their roots. They hired bassist André Kvarnström as drummer Kristoffer Schander's rhythm section partner. Holy Moly! was cut at the band's countryside recording studio in Närke, Sweden with Larsson, Anderson, and Kvarnström all co-producing. The set was mixed by veteran engineer Andrew Scheps.
More than previous studio outings, Holy Moly! comes closest to resembling Blues Pills' live attack. It is greasy, loose, and immediate; it's fiery and tuneful, blazing with searing guitar solos, thudding kick drums, and filthy bass throb. There is a profoundly musical finesse offered here that comes from working stages large and small. "Low Road" is a furious exercise in blues-rock, with Anderson's potent riff delivered by an overdriven wah-wah pedal. Larsson soars above the low-end power of the rhythm section...
Orville Peck - Show Pony / Summertime
As good as Orville Peck's 2019 debut album, Pony, was, no one was expecting it would push him into something close to mainstream success, probably not even Peck himself. Between the queer subtext that was very close to the surface on many of the tunes and the fact it evoked a sort of country music that hadn't been a presence on C&W radio in decades, who would have guessed that he would break out of the alt-country underground in record time?... When Pony came out, it seemed an open question if country music was ready for someone like Orville Peck. Show Pony is his declaration that if he's offered the spotlight, he'll claim it as the place he deserves to be, and on the basis of the talent and audacity shown here, only a narrow-minded fool would bet against him.
No Joy - Motherhood / Nothing Will Hurt
Montreal's No Joy spent the first decade of their existence slowly expanding their doomy shoegaze template with increasingly adventurous production and songwriting. They'd grown from reverb-masked, guitar-heavy dream pop to the headphone-listening masterpiece that was their third album, 2015's More Faithful. Several EPs released in the years between More Faithful and proper follow-up Motherhood hinted at even deeper experimentation... From one song to the next, No Joy's vocalist/songwriter/producer/central member Jasamine White-Gluz dips into everything from trip-hop grooves to metalcore screaming without ever abandoning the atmospheric dreaminess that has defined the project from the beginning...
Bully - SUGAREGG / Like Fire
... When she was ready to prepare material for Bully's third long-player, she also felt ready to relinquish control in the studio and work with an outside producer for the first time. The resulting SUGAREGG was recorded with the first-time backing lineup of bass player Zach Dawes (Lana Del Rey, Sharon Van Etten) and touring drummer Wesley Mitchell, with Grammy winner John Congleton overseeing production alongside Bognanno on all but two tracks... With its protagonist in distress but getting over it, SUGAREGG is a cathartic work that contains Bognanno's strongest group of songs to this point.
Sneaks - Happy Birthday / Slightly Sophisticated
...Compared to her first two outings, Gymnastics and It's a Myth, 2020's Happy Birthday is far richer in both production value and complexity, but it's still her repetitive half-spoken incantations and wry observations that hold the attention. Working again with engineer Carlos Hernadez, her collaborator from 2019's excellent Highway Hypnosis, as well as producer Jacknife Lee, Happy Birthday feels like a continuation of that album's more experimental tone .. Neither rap nor pop, punk, or rock in any traditional sense, Sneaks continues to keep it fresh and original on another strong outing.
The Killers - Imploding the Mirage / Fire in Bone
Arriving on the heels of an uneven decade -- when a pair of high-charting releases failed to match the sales of their early albums and their founding lineup was effectively reduced to a duo -- Nevada's most successful musical export roared back with their triumphant sixth set, Imploding the Mirage. Balancing their core synths-and-Springsteen sound with stadium-sized pop bombast, the Killers strike gold, dispensing with the clumsy missteps heard on the bloated Battle Born and weary Wonderful Wonderful and delivering their most focused offering since their 2000s heyday...
Guided by Voices - Mirrored Aztec / Please Don't Be Honest
...Right out of the gate, Mirrored Aztec takes a different path completely, embracing songwriter Bob Pollard's power pop side along with the hard rock sauntering that's made up the entirety of some of their recent output... High-energy and high-strung, Mirrored Aztec is a cut above the usual set of fresh Pollard tunes. The memorable, high-octane, and outright strange moments all sit nicely together in a way that GBV's best albums perfected, but the band don't always achieve.
Bright Eyes - Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was / To Death's Heart (In Three Parts)
After the release of their 2011 album The People's Key, Bright Eyes disappeared. The Omaha, Nebraska band had grown from their start as an outlet for teenage songwriter Conor Oberst into a genre-defining institution of angsty, emotive indie folk that could take experimental turns without warning. Oberst's wavering vocals and high-drama lyricism were eventually joined by contributions from official bandmates Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. All three continued various creative endeavors after 2011, but it had been decided at some point that Bright Eyes was done until the trio reconvened. That reconvening comes with Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was, the group's tenth studio and first new material in nine years. What's most striking about the 14 tracks that make up Down in the Weeds is how in line they are with Bright Eyes albums past. Returning after almost a decade off to a project known for bold left turns and unexpected shifts in approach could have more likely resulted in a brand new sound, but instead elements from most of Bright Eyes' best-loved phases show up in updated forms...
The Waterboys - Good Luck, Seeker / My Wanderings in the Weary Land
... The Scottish songwriter has always been a seeker and in that sense, the band's 14th album makes perfect sense. Dreamed up, written, and recorded at his home studio and reshaped via shared audio files by his bandmates at their own studios, Good Luck, Seeker holds together better than expected and in its way logically follows 2017's ambitious Out of All This Blue and 2019's sprightly Where the Action Is, melding together bits of soul, rock swagger, spoken word, hip-hop rhythms, and dreamy folk into what has more or less become the Waterboys' signature melting pot...
Bebel Gilberto - Agora / Deixa
As the daughter of João Gilberto and Miúcha, singer/songwriter Bebel Gilberto was born into Brazilian music royalty. Hers has been a nomadic life. Born in New York City, she was raised in Brazil, Mexico, and the U.S.; she left school at 14 and has lived all over the world. That wandering spirit has informed her musical life from the beginning. Early on, she added global club and dance music into MPB and vice-versa. Her restlessness is also reflected in Agora, her first album in six years... First single "Deixa" commences with shifting Afro-Brazilian rhythms and dark, multi-tracked, and dubby horns before Gilberto unfolds its sensual melody around the bassline as harp and marimba paint the backdrop... With a laid-back pace, the album's slipstream sonic quality may require a couple of listens to fully absorb, but it's well worth the effort. Gilberto has made a career of seeking adventure in her music, but her partnership with Bartlett on Agora surpasses all expectations and creative limits.
Cut Copy - Freeze, Melt / Stop, Horizon
Initially crafted during a cold winter spent in Copenhagen by Cut Copy's driving force Dan Whitford, the band's 2020 album Freeze, Melt is their most inward looking and sparsely constructed work to date. Inspired by the chilly sleekness of classic techno and the warm embrace of ambient music, the sound is a drastic left turn from the stadium-friendly sound of Haiku from Zero. Where that album was like a clarion call for listeners to lose their stuff on the dancefloor while surrounded by the sweaty masses, this is a record made for listening to alone with a warm mug of something comforting in hand. Whitford and the band strip away almost everything apart from simple drum machines and gleaming synths, leaving ample space for simple melodies and quietly aching vocals. It's nothing like the previous album, and not much like anything they've done before. Songs like "Stop, Horizon," with its long, complicated instrumental buildup that bleeds into a lightly pulsing late-night disco ballad...
Secret Machines, Blues Pills, Orville Peck, No Joy, Bully, Sneaks, The Killers, Guided by Voices, Bright Eyes,The Waterboys, Bebel Gilberto, Cut Copy
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