ALTER.NATION #103
Hen Ogledd, Sleeper & Snake, Sylvan Esso, Sad13, Marie Davidson, L'Œil Nu, Los Blenders, Mint Field,Thurston Moore, Wax Chattels, The Ocean, Will Butler, Makaya McCraven
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"Time Party"
With their 2018 album Mogic, Hen Ogledd evolved from the amorphous improvisations of their earliest phases into something resembling a more traditionally molded pop band. They didn't completely shake the wooly weirdness that initially defined the project, but incorporated it into structured songs that pitted hopeful melodies against noisy electronics and heady lyrical themes. If Mogic was Hen Ogledd dipping their toes into pop, its successor Free Humans is the band diving in headlong. The ambitious double album finds Hen Ogledd further refining their take on pop sounds, presenting neatly produced tunes that offer straightforward hooks, anthemic choruses, and a generally less cluttered rendering of the band's maximal aesthetic...Both precisely calculated and boundlessly imaginative, Free Humans creates an expansive world in which Hen Ogledd can continue to sculpt their bizarre brand of pop music.
Sleeper & Snake combine the talents of Al Monfort and Amy Hill, multi-instrumentalists who played in multiple Australian indie rock bands of note (including Dick Diver, Primo, and Total Control) and worked together in TERRY. This project leans toward the more avant-garde side of the indie pop equation; the duo sprinkle their jaggedly melodic songs with saxophone bleats, found sounds, squiggly keyboards, and sawing strings. Their debut album, 2019's Junction and High, worked as a fine introduction to the band, while 2020's Fresco Shed is more focused and tuneful. The sparse nature of the recording brings to mind classic groups like Young Marble Giants, the experimental approach has the lo-fi appeal of Tall Dwarfs, and the pair's homey vocal harmonies fit into the Flying Nun continuum nicely...
The follow-up to 2017's Grammy-nominated What Now, Free Love sees Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn deliver another compelling collection of sweetly fractured electronic indie pop... Detractors will rightfully point out that Free Love utilizes the same sonic architecture as its predecessors, but it's a fairly idiosyncratic template and one that Meath and Sanborn have shown great skill with over three albums now. Besides, the world always needs more dance music for introverts.
With Haunted Painting, Sadie Dupuis may have outgrown the confines of what her solo project Sad13 was originally designed to do -- and that's a good thing. Dupuis made most of her debut album Slugger's subversions of mainstream pop in her bedroom and they (proudly) sounded like it. This time, she tops her homemade recordings with additional tracking at studios such as Elliott Smith's former haunt, New Monkey, and with instrumentation that ranges from trash to an eight-piece orchestra...
...Having already named an album Adieux au Dancefloor, Davidson announced her absolute retirement from club music in 2019. She formed the trio L'Œil Nu with frequent collaborators Pierre Guerineau (her husband and partner in the duo Essaie Pas) and Asaël R. Robitaille (aka Bataille Solaire) with the intention of writing pop-inspired songs, drawing from formative influences like Fleetwood Mac, Billie Holiday, and French soundtracks... Even though Renegade Breakdown intentionally lacks the club energy that drove much of Davidson's best-known material, it's at least as inventive and exploratory.
Mexico City's Los Blenders lashed down a firm spot in the garage rock underground with their early noise-damaged singles and gradually more mature albums. 2017's Ha Sido showed the group starting to give their raucously bouncy sound some depth by slowing down the tempos and recording everything with some clarity. 2020's Mazunte 2016 furthers the maturation process, taking the band another step or two away from the garage by upping the production values, experimenting with sound, and writing some seriously hooky pop songs... Mazunte 2016 is modern garage rock at its best, and Los Blenders have firmly established themselves as leaders of the pack.
Originally a duo consisting of Estrella del Sol Sánchez and Amor Amezcua, Mexico City-based dream pop group Mint Field made their full-length debut with 2018's Pasar de las Luces, a remarkable record that artfully expressed the tumultuous emotions of one's young adult years. After making the album, Mint Field toured throughout North America and Europe, released an EP (Mientras Esperas), and shifted their lineup, losing Amezcua and gaining bassist Sebastian Neyra and drummer Callum Brown (Ulrika Spacek). Second album Sentimiento Mundial was recorded in London with producer Syd Kemp (also of Ulrika Spacek), and it finds the band stretching their sound in a few different directions, dialing down the shoegaze elements a bit and trying out new textures and ideas...
One of the things that made Sonic Youth such a powerful entity was the supernatural chemistry of the bandmembers. At various peaks of their collective powers, each player brought a distinctive voice that rose to an even more elevated form when combined with the others. Extracted from that chemistry, Thurston Moore's solo material gives a better view of his conflicting tendencies, with seventh proper solo album By the Fire embracing both noisy, chaotic tangents and the blurry impressionistic poetry that has long been the core of his songs. The record begins with the kind of layered, intricate guitar figures and steady rock rhythms that have been Moore's calling card since the early '90s... By the Fire isn't a drastic shift, but as Moore goes deeper into the sounds he's been exploring for decades, he uncovers new magic.
On their self-titled debut, Wax Chattels put their own stamp on the lineage of arty yet rough-edged post-punk, touching on Suicide and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as well as the darker side of New Zealand's musical legacy along the way. To follow it up, the Auckland trio bring the different strands of their style together for an even bigger impact on Clot. Working with producer James Goldsmith and engineer Ben Greenberg -- who knows a thing or two about making noise from his work with the Men, Uniform, and Destruction Unit -- Wax Chattels give their second album a sound that's cleaner but also heavier. Where their debut felt like a recording of a particularly inspired practice session, Clot's sonic precision lets Wax Chattels target their onslaughts with better aim and bridge the gaps between post-punk, industrial, and noise seamlessly...
In 2018, European progressive extreme music outfit the Ocean Collective released Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic, the first half of a sprawling concept offering based on paleontology. Its companion, Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic, closes the evolutionary cycle that spans all periods during the Phanerozoic Eon. The first album documented the Cambrian explosion that ended with the pre-Triassic extinction event. This chronological sequel begins at the dawn of the dinosaurs, then continues in the present epoch. Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic garnered acclaim for its relentless heaviness and straightforward musical progression. Phanerozoic II is far more experimental and eclectic. Its sounds, words, and atmospheres are pursued in ever-expanding circles, employing varied tempos, abundant electronic textures, melodic compositional frames, and selective orchestration to create something that borders on the exotic, yet remains heavy as hell... The cinematic instrumental "Oligocene" offers organic drums atop treated, electronic beats, gated synths, and majestic, ringing guitars -- it doesn't remotely sound like the Ocean, but it works as a bridge between the album's thematic halves...
With his first solo album, 2015's Policy, Arcade Fire member Will Butler reawakened some of the electricity and chaos that defined his well-loved band in their earliest days. The rawness and spontaneity that the Arcade Fire lost on more neatly primped later records surfaced on some of Butler's solo songs while others were softly rendered. Five years after Policy, second solo album Generations finds Butler offering up another set of passionate songs rich with complex but understated arrangements...
On the most basic level, Universal Beings E&F Sides is the soundtrack for Pallman's film. But nothing in McCraven's world is basic. This music, performed and recorded during the tour, was left off the original album. Upon revisiting it for the film, McCraven registered surprise at the leftover material's quality. He dug in and constructed a fresh score from the remnants. But this is not merely a set of extras; it's an ear-opening, first-rate companion offering... McCraven calls it "organic beat music." As is now de rigueur on his outings, the music -- though diverse in harmonic, dynamic, and tonal articulation -- still grooves... Universal Beings E&F Sides is, therefore, not only a fine follow-up, but a visionary outing of its own that also stands as required listening for post-millennial jazz fans.
Hen Ogledd, Sleeper & Snake, Sylvan Esso, Sad13, Marie Davidson, L'Œil Nu, Los Blenders, Mint Field,Thurston Moore, Wax Chattels, The Ocean, Will Butler, Night Shop, Makaya McCraven
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