ALTER.NATiON
Big Thief, Brutus, Chasms, Control Top, Feels, Hatchie, Helado Negro, Julian Lage, Le SuperHomard, Lily & Madeleine, Martin Frawley, Palehound, R. Stevie Moore
Big Thief, Brutus, Chasms, Control Top, Feels, Hatchie, Helado Negro, Julian Lage, Le SuperHomard, Lily & Madeleine, Martin Frawley, Palehound, R. Stevie Moore
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| Control Top photo by Vince Guglielmo @vincegphoto |
weekly favtraX
02-03-2019
02-03-2019
The new track they’re sharing from it today, “Chain Reaction,” is all fiery rage and crawling fury, bashing drums cut through with peeling guitars. “No one likes to take the blame/ In the end, we’re all the same,” Carter screams. “Light the wick, pull the trigger/ What started small is getting bigger.”
“The song takes place in the middle of an argument,” Carter explains in a press release. “Vitriol is flying and emotions are running high. With our culture’s growing appetite for anger and conflict, a petty disagreement can easily escalate into a full-out shouting match.”
R. Stevie Moore is a pioneer of home recording, a do-it-yourself musical aesthetic that took root and blossomed in the 1970s. RSM was an early adopter — since 1968 he's cranked out hundreds of album-length recordings as a growing cult discovered him over the decades. He's a pop craftsman who never feared cheap technology. In the 2000s his catalog exploded across the internet, and while he remains a cultural outlier, future generations will discover him as well. Every once in a while Stevie enters a pro recording studio and produces tracks with better fidelity. Afterlife is RSM's A-game collection. Some recent songs, some reimagined nuggets, all polished to pop perfection.
Over the course of three albums with slightly different production philosophies, singing and songwriting sisters Lily & Madeleine have established a distinctive style that's rooted in patient, thoughtful melodies and elegant harmonies. That distinctiveness has transcended shifts from quiet acoustic arrangements to more expansive, part-electronic accompaniment, and it does so again on their fourth album...
Australian singer and guitarist Martin Frawley first broke onto the global indie radar as one of the co-frontpeople of Melbourne jangle pop quartet Twerps. The band's melodic and slightly ramshackle Flying Nun-inspired indie pop won over both fans and critics, leading to international tours and a 2015 sophomore LP released by established American imprint Merge Records. When the romantic side of Frawley's creative partnership with Twerps bandmate Julia McFarlane hit the rocks, their ensuing breakup also ended the band. On Undone at 31, Frawley's first outing as a solo artist, he sorts through the wreckage and manages to spin his personal upheaval into a rather charming collection of low-key pop gems. With the help of producer Stewart Bronaugh (Angel Olsen, Lionlimb), he constructs an appealingly minimalist home around 12 searching missives that play out the various stages of heartbreak, melancholia, and acceptance...
If you're an indie rock band and you want to play up the garage punk influences in your music, you would think having Ty Segall as producer would be the way to go. But a listen to 2019's Post Earth, the second album from Feels, suggests maybe the formula is more complicated than that. Segall produced Feels' self-titled 2016 debut album, which was a likable bit of pop-leaning indie rock with a seriously garage-centric undertow. But Tim Green was in the producer's chair for Post Earth, and this music sounds sharper, tighter, and distinctly punkier than the debut, with the garage moves more natural and the guitar crosstalk more expressive in round two...
Just a couple of months after Chasms' Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden released their accomplished debut album, On the Legs of Love Purified, the unthinkable happened: On the night of December 2, 2016, a fire swept through the underground warehouse venue Ghost Ship that took a huge artistic and personal toll on the Bay Area indie music scene. Among the fire's 36 victims were Chasms' close friend and frequent collaborator Cash Askew of Them Are Us Too and Madden's brother Griffin, who was just 23. Chasms dealt with their loss the only way they could -- through their music. They played dates just days after the tragedy, and ultimately moved to Los Angeles for a fresh start to their music and lives. This sense of transformation permeates The Mirage.
Musically, “Killer” is suggestive, quietly cinematic; it sounds like the smoke drifting upwards as a film character who’s seen some shit takes a drag mid-monologue. Kempner, too, sounds like she’s seen some shit here. “I wanna be the one who kills the man who hurt you, darling,” she sings on the chorus, her voice full of weight and curling itself around the word “darling” as if to conjure the violent cowboy mythology to which the song’s vaguely Western aesthetic and revenge narrative nod. In the end, we never get the explosion, that moment of vicious justice. Loose guitar lines tumble along, searching. And in a way all of this is more satisfying than volcanic distortion or cathartic screams. Instead, “Killer” lingers in the air, a whisper of furious resolve.
Love Hurts marks guitarist Julian Lage's third trio date for Mack Avenue. The previous two, Arclight (2016) and Modern Lore (2018), were with bassist Scott Colley and drummer/vibraphonist Kenny Wollesen. The Love Hurts sessions were inspired by some live dates where Lage and bassist Jorge Roeder (who worked with Lage on 2009's Sounding Point) were joined by Bad Plus drummer Dave King. The trio recorded at the Loft (Wilco's recording studio in Chicago). Lage set down his trademark Telecaster for this date and picked up Jeff Tweedy's Gretsch Duo Jet instead. Cut live from the floor in mostly first takes, these ten tracks -- produced by Lage -- were completed in a day and a half.
Hariette Pillbeam crafts hook-heavy, retro-tinged dream-pop as Hatchie. The Brisbane singer-songwriter debuted her project last year with one of the best EPs of 2018, Sugar & Spice. Its quick, sparkling tracklist gave us a few scenes from Hatchie’s cinematic universe — tender and nostalgic, fit for a ‘90s romcom soundtrack. “Without A Blush,” the lead single from her forthcoming debut album, takes us deeper as Pillbeam mourns the end of a relationship.
The song conjures a montage of memories, or a flashback to a meet cute. The synth tones sound borrowed and remixed from an ’80s high school slow dance song. The guitars are enveloped in a cloud of reverb, fading into her regretful sighs: “If I could kiss you one more time / Would it make everything alright? / Or would it just make me a liar? / I didn’t wanna end tonight, the dream.”
The alien abduction that happens in the lyrics of Big Thief’s new song “UFOF” is nearly as strange and beautiful as the one that happens in the music... From the start, Big Thief have excelled at finding new lenses for familiar scenes, and “UFOF” extends their scope to science fiction. The sweep of fingerpicked acoustic guitars and airtight rhythm forms a new type of groove for the band—their version, maybe, of an arpeggiated synth and a drum loop. “I imagine you taking me out of here,” Adrianne Lenker sings, gazing heavenward as the music tumbles in anticipation. And when nothing comes to save her, she has no choice but to do it herself.
Roberto Carlos Lange’s music as Helado Negro thrives on meeting listeners halfway wherever they may be in life. “Running,” the latest from Lange’s forthcoming sixth album, This Is How You Smile, fits snugly within that calm and comforting mold... “Running” takes on a circular shape, levitating on its refrains and instrumental cues. But Lange’s verses here are spiked with an illusory, personal sense of nostalgia: “I feel you/In my mind/All the time,” he sings placidly, before admitting, “’Cause I see you/In my hands/Every day/You got me running...” The song abides by Lange’s mission of crafting music that not only addresses intimacy frankly in lyrics but also sounds intimate, especially in its pop-minded yet free-floating structure and cooed melodies. Limned with vibraphone and gently plucked guitar, “Running” is a balmy, nourishing listen, inviting everyone to join step with its easy gait toward a better tomorrow.
...“Cemetery” is the most exciting, ferocious, kinetic track on an album that consistently goes to 11 in categories like “Excitment,” “Ferocity,” and “Kinetic Energy.” “Cemetery” opens with a blistering burst of neck-snapping sludge — a bedrock provided by Brutus’ godlike rhythm section of drummer/singer Stefanie Mannaerts and bassist Peter Mulders — over which guitarist Stijn Vanhoegaerden stunts as if he were in Alcest or Explosions In The Sky, and Mannaerts snarls, howls, and roars as if she were a tornado. The track transforms, though, just after the two-minute mark. It transcends. All the furious, jagged metallic clamor is broken down and somehow rebuilt as a jet engine. The thing doesn’t just roar; it takes flight. Climbing, climbing … and then, as the piece heads into its final half-minute, it fires full-blast and jumps into goddamn orbit. This is the apex.
Big Thief, Brutus, Chasms, Control Top, Feels, Hatchie, Helado Negro, Julian Lage, Le SuperHomard, Lily & Madeleine, Martin Frawley, Palehound, R. Stevie Moore
