"The Day The Politicians Died" > 085 ALTER.NATION weekly favtraX 10-05-2020

ALTER.NATION #85

The Magnetic Fields, Puscifer, Beauty Pill, Fiona Apple, Jehnny Beth, Aaron Parks, Chip Wickham, El Michels Affair, Modern Studies, Cass McCombs, Mark Lanegan, Masaki Batoh

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"The Day The Politicians Died"

Cabaret meets indie rock in the one-man-band known as singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt. The Magnetic Fields may be a bona fide band, but in most essential respects they are the project of studio wunderkind Stephin Merritt, who writes, produces, and (generally) sings all of the material. Merritt also plays many of the instruments, concocting a sort of indie pop-synth rock.
The Magnetic Fields - The Day The Politicians Died
As Pitchfork reports, Merritt recorded Quickies with all of his longtime Magnetic Fields bandmates — Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, John Woo — as well as regular collaborators Daniel Handler, Chris Ewen, and Pinky Weitzman.
Lead single “The Day The Politicians Died” is a lovely and plangent two-minute piano ballad with a Claudia Gonson vocal. It imagines a hypothetical day in which all of our lawmakers suddenly left this mortal plane: “Billions laughed and no one cried the day the politicians died/ Celebrations spread worldwide the day the politicians died. Its video sets the song to ancient footage of victory celebrations.

While one might imagine Maynard James Keenan would have enough going on to keep him busy as a frontman with the groups Tool and A Perfect Circle, in 2007 he decided to record an album under yet another name: Puscifer.
Puscifer - Apocalyptical
Keenan’s Puscifer project has a new single called “Apocalyptical” out in the world, and they’re promising a new album, the follow-up to 2015’s Money Shot, coming this fall.
“Apocalyptical” is a tense, shivery synth-rocker that just sort of eats away at you over five and a half minutes. Over chilly bleeps and barely-there guitar, Keenan sings at the very top of his register, sharing vocals with bandmate Carina Round. The two of them deliver timely lyrics about watching the world end in front of you: “Go on, moron, ignore the evidence/ skid in to armageddon/ Tango apocalyptical.”

Genre-defying experimental pop band centered around songwriter and recording engineer Chad Clark. Originally formed from the ashes of angular D.C. punk band Smart Went Crazy, Beauty Pill transformed over the years from a post-rock band with unconventional instrumentation into a genre-defying project shaped around the songwriting and conceptual ideas of founding member Chad Clark. 
Beauty Pill - Please Advise / Pardon Our Dust
...One of the first noticeable changes is the addition of new singer Erin Nelson, whose laser-guided vocals open the album's first song, "Pardon Our Dust." It's a jittery and nervous-feeling tune, and the combination of Nelson's bright vocals and steady horn lines provide a foil for the claustrophobic drums and electronics that make up the song's rhythmic core. It's the kind of contradictory arrangement that Beauty Pill have been perfecting since their earliest days, and Nelson's monotone vocal delivery is appropriately at odds with the paranoid lyrical content...

Acclaimed performer whose angst-ridden, piano-based songs represented a new stage in the female singer/songwriter movement.
Fiona Apple - Cosmonauts
The refrain that grounds her, ironically, is one that envisions the greatest of heights. “You and I will be like a couple of cosmonauts/Except with way more gravity than when we started off,” she murmurs, her intonation rising innocently at the end of each line. As the song charges towards its conclusion, Apple uses this chorus as a launchpad for a scorched-earth outpouring of emotion. Her repetition of the final refrain—“started off!”—builds to a throat-shredding scream before sinking to a hushed whisper and a contemplative hum. What’s left is the impression that she has pushed every fiber of her being through a juicer, gathered the shredded pulp into her hands, and offered it to the world. And that is a real gesture of love.

Best known as the compelling vocalist for Savages, Jehnny Beth is the performing name of French musician Camille Berthomier.
Jehnny Beth - Heroine
Savages frontwoman Jehnny Beth was supposed to release her debut solo album on Friday. That’s not happening anymore. Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, To Love Is To Live has been delayed until June.
"When I think of this song, I think of Romy from the xx strangling my neck with her hands in the studio. She was trying to get me out of my shell lyrically, and there was so much resistance in me she lost her patience. The song was originally called “Heroism,” but I wasn’t happy because it was too generic. Flood was the first one to suggest to say “Heroine” instead of “Heroism.” Then I remember Johnny Hostile late at night in my hotel room in London saying “I don’t understand who you are singing about. Who is the Heroine? You ARE the Heroine.” The next morning, I arrived early in the studio and recorded my vocals adding “to be” to the chorus line: “All I want is TO BE a heroine.” Flood entered the studio at that moment and jumped in the air giving me the thumbs up through the window. I guess I’m telling this story because sometimes we look around for role models, and examples to follow, without realising that the answer can be hidden inside of us. I was afraid to be the Heroine of the song, but it took all the people around me to get me there."

Pianist Aaron Parks established himself as a presence on the American jazz scene via his membership in Terrence Blanchard's band. Eastern modalities, and atmospheric indie rock. Comfortable with the pyrotechnics of post-bop as well as sparse, sculpted, questioning tone poems and lithe melodies both minimal and maximal,
Aaron Parks - Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man / My Mistake
...Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man, though also a sequel to its immediate predecessor, opens up the group's intimate, synergistic communication to reflect the multi-lingual persona of a band making music in the moment... The quartet -- Parks on piano and keys, Greg Tuohey on guitar, David Ginyard on bass, and Tommy Crane on drums -- explore and cultivate a musical aesthetic. Little Big marry creative and improvised music to the groove-centered elements of electronica, indie pop, neo-psychedelia, and prog, but avoid the "fusion" trap entirely by weaving the various textures, influences, and colors into an original, holistic musical language... Their music comfortably transcends genre boundaries, and the quartet's sovereignty has been developed to the point where they can break the confines of primacy in any composition to discover its identity. When all is said and done, the album is simply an accurate reflection of the band's own persona.

Jazz saxophonist, flutist, producer, and composer who made his solo debut at 42 after his previous career in Manchester house and hip-hop scenes. Roger "Chip" Wickham is a saxophonist/flutist producer/composer who resides in Madrid, Doha in Qatar, and the U.K. His vintage-influenced, open, warm brand of modal jazz weaves together the great expansive traditions of the '60s and '70s...
Chip Wickham - Blue to Red / Double Cross
The title of British jazzman Chip Wickham's third long-player refers to one of his greatest fears: That climate change will cause our blue and verdant earth to become a red desert like the planet Mars... Wickham leaves his saxophones in their cases in favor of his flutes. The Coltrane reference may be sketched into his compositions, but it takes on physical characteristics through the playing of harpist Amanda Whiting who, like Wickham, is an alumnus of Matthew Halsall's Gondwana Orchestra. The other sidemen include session boss Dan Goldman on keys, drummer Jon Scott (Sons of Kemet), bassist Simon Houghton (Fingathing), and percussionist Rick Weedon (Mr. Scruff)... "Double Cross" is gritty and fast, with Goldman's Rhodes and synths both soloing and painting a fat, heavy, funky backdrop. Scott's snare and hi-hat breaks, and a propulsive shuffle delivers a dramatic Headhunters vibe in the backbeat. Wickham's solo sounds filthy, visceral, swinging, and soulful (think Jeremy Steig)...

Led by Leon Michels, a flexible R&B-rooted band mixing groove-oriented jazz, soul, funk, rocksteady, Afrobeat, and hip-hop.
El Michels Affair - Adult Themes / Kill The Lights
Big Crown Records is proud to present Adult Themes, the latest full length offering from El Michels Affair. This album takes the band’s “Cinematic Soul” aesthetic literally and sends the listener on a journey through a whirlwind of moods and energies... Adult Themes marks the long awaited, highly anticipated return to an album of original compositions from El Michels Affair.

Scottish quartet Modern Studies unite pastoral chamber pop and folk with a gently experimental approach. Incorporating lush harmonies, jazz-tinged rhythms, and subtle electronics...
Modern Studies - The Weight of the Sun / Back to the City
...Toning down both their folk roots and orchestral ambitions, Modern Studies' third set, Weight of the Sun, fuses a gentle rock mystique with burbling synth flourishes and a touch of light psychedelia. That the band originally coalesced around an antique harmonium and other eclectic folk instrumentation makes their journey toward a more common rock format somewhat ironic, though, as on each of their releases, they bring something special to the table... Emily Scott (vocals, keys) and Rob St. John (vocals, guitar) weave their peculiar tandem vocals around a slow-building wash of electric guitars, synths, and a warm rhythmic pulse...

An eclectic singer/songwriter with a haunting voice who balances emotional richness, awareness, and wry demeanor in his lyrics, Cass McCombs negotiates styles including Americana, Baroque pop, psychedelia, and sprawling jam band folk-rock, among others, in his music.
Cass McCombs - The Wine Of Lebanon
Cass McCombs, one of our greatest songwriters, likes to move in mystery. McCombs stays off of social media and generally seems to shy away from any and all spotlights, so whenever he pops up with anything new, it’s a surprise. Last year, McCombs released Tip Of The Sphere, his most recent album.
“The Wine Of Lebanon,” McCombs’ new song, is a supremely relaxed and breezy number. It’s full of strings and hazy guitars, and it unfolds at a lazy, unhurried pace. McCombs sings in mythic terms in his usual bemused croon, and it’s hard to say, after the first few listens, what he’s talking about.

The frontman for Screaming Trees who went on to a fascinating solo career marked by an acoustic tone and dark, folk- and blues-inspired songwriting.
Mark Lanegan - Straight Songs of Sorrow / Ballad of a Dying Rover
...As befits a largely autobiographical collection of songs that looks back over his whole life, the music shifts through the variety of genres Lanegan has experimented with... Sometimes memories and myth get tangled up together. The dark-as-midnight ‘Ballad of a Dying Rover’, which features Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones on Mellotron, eerily recalls Lead Belly’s ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’. Cobain and Lanegan recorded the song together, and Lanegan included it on his first solo album ‘The Winding Sheet’...

Masaki Batoh was both a founding member and spiritual leader of the experimental Japanese band Ghost, and a provocative solo artist.
Masaki Batoh - Smile Jesus Loves You! / Speculum
Batoh is back! Solo again after last fall’s new Silence album, the Japanese psychedelic guru makes some solo cuts, with others featuring Ghost and Silence family members, including free drumming legend of Fushitsusha and early Ghost, Hiroyuki Usui. In all-analog production, Batoh decries the existential opacity of our latter-day faith, drawing from the traditions of all countries, fused into new music for this century.

The Magnetic Fields, Puscifer, Beauty Pill, Fiona Apple, Jehnny Beth, Aaron Parks, Chip Wickham, El Michels Affair, Modern Studies, Cass McCombs, Mark Lanegan, Masaki Batoh

019 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX 03-02-2019

ALTER.NATiON #019

Le Butcherettes, Strand Of Oaks, Gauche, Hand Habits, Better Oblivion Community Center, Brutus, Vampire Weekend, Makthaverskan, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Masaki Batoh, Unloved, Cherry Glazerr

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03-02-2019

Le Butcherettes - nothing/BUT TROUBLE from bi/MENTAL
Le Butcherettes is a band out of Guadalajara, Mexico, and are currently based in El Paso, Texas. The band consists of: Riko Rodriguez-Lopez (guitar), Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez (bass) and Alejandra Robles Luna (drums). Le Butcherettes are lead by their firebrand lead singer, Teri Gender Bender (Teresa Suarez Coscio). Gender Bender is the center of the hurricane, and she keeps everything around her swirling with chaotic precision. Her voice is a work of art. When she sings, she sounds like a revolution.
Le Butcherettes’ last three albums were produced by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (At The Drive-In, The Mars Volta) on his own record label. Now with a new home, Rise Records, Le Butcherettes have brought in legend and icon Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) to draw out a new and creative sound. Harrison both tightens and stretches out the guitar runs, and emphasizes the thump/thump/thump rhythm that Robles-Luna delivers—providing the intense immediacy needed for each track. Harrison handles Gender Bender in the most effective way possible – he stays out of her way. Harrison allows Gender Bender to tap in and bleed out her soul like an open vein...

Strand Of Oaks - Weird Ways
My Morning Jacket backing up Tim Showalter on a Strand Of Oaks record is such an inspired idea that I almost can’t believe it really happened, and the first song from that album lives up to all that promise. “Weird Ways” showcases so much of what makes both these bands special. Showalter has a gift for melodies that soar like wounded birds triumphantly returning to the sky; his hooks worked wonders when Strand Of Oaks was still a humble folk-rock project, and they sound even more spectacular in the context of ragged-glory arena rock... Showalter has talked about how he almost quit music before MMJ’s Carl Broemel coaxed him back into the game. Throughout “Weird Ways,” he reckons with that turnaround. “I don’t feel it anymore,” he laments at the start. As the music begins to swell up around him, he remembers the value of “what you make and the people you’ve loved,” and soon he’s facing down the prospect of getting back to work: “Grind your teeth and cut off all your sleeves/ A few good riffs and a sticky bag of green/ You said before, ‘It’s not as bad as it seems/ A grownup kid gets to live out all his dreams.'” By the end, a melancholy euphoria comes roaring across the ceiling, and he’s successfully converted his own redemption arc into the stuff of legend.

Gauche - Conspiracy Theories
The best punk songs can be built out of almost nothing: a singular feeling, a seething and focused rage. “Conspiracy Theories” is that kind of song. There are only a handful of words to it, but each time they’re uttered you can taste the bile behind it.
The track comes from a source of frustration in the DC music community — namely, that pizza place and venue Comet Ping Pong has become the center of a fringe theory that has resulted in a constant state of anxiety and fear for those that work or go there. “Conspiracy Theories” is an effort to shake all of that tension off, a wriggling wave of a song centered around a universal fuck you. Gauche has a strong pedigree — its members include Priests’ Daniele Yandel, Downtown Boys’ Mary Jane Regalado, and Jason P Barnett — and that means the song is tight and controlled, a circle of anger that invites you in, that cannot be silenced.

Hand Habits - can’t calm down
“What if I can’t calm down, and I don’t have that in my bloodline?” Meg Duffy worries on “can’t calm down,” the newest song from the upcoming Hand Habits album placeholder. Just as they pose the question, the anxious riff that snakes through the song’s verses breaks into a jangling sigh, Duffy’s voice intertwining in lovely harmony with Land Of Talk frontwoman Elizabeth Powell’s. Hand Habits’ music takes friction and pain and doubt and turns it into something profoundly comforting. And here, they contemplate the toll of “ancestral damage,” ingrained patterns of learned behavior that cast a long shadow over all of our future relationships. Can we ever break free of the cycles of trauma that shape us? There are no easy answers, and they don’t pretend there are. But on “can’t calm down,” the very act of trying becomes a thing of great beauty.

Better Oblivion Community Center - Dylan Thomas
Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers’ new collaborative project Better Oblivion Community Center is a gift endowed to a very specific kind of music fan. It’s a sick but welcome joke. Though they’re from different generations, the two songwriters mostly traffic in music that is depressing bordering on existential, funny and sad at the same time. Both craft lyrics that are hyper-specific streams of consciousness, and the best songs on Better Oblivion Community Center sound like two people jumping down one another’s throats — urgent and unkempt, totally in the moment.
“Dylan Thomas” best exemplifies that collision of ideas and energy. It’s named for the Welsh poet who died at 39 and was a legendary alcoholic. The protagonist they’ve developed is an alienated individual exhausted by the play-by-play headlines of today’s age and seeks out escapism in all of the wrong places: the bar, a pricey silent retreat, other people. In this song, everything is a stand-in for a certain truth, one that is just beyond the protagonist’s grasp. “The ghost is just a kid in a sheet,” Oberst and Bridgers sing, alluding to the cover of her breakout album Stranger In The Alps...

Brutus - War
Brutus’ new LP, Nest, opens with a song called — for real — “Fire.” Nest’s album-announcing advance single is called “War.” Now, if you’re gonna lead with shit like that? If that is how you are introducing yourself to the world? Man, you better be 100% ready to back it. To bring it. You cannot be fucking around. The first words out of Stefanie Mannaerts’ mouth on “War” are “Our world/ It’s gone.” She sings the line with enough focus and force to shatter glaciers, asserting in no uncertain terms: Brutus are not fucking around...The whole thing just gets heavier. It’s a breathtaking, heart-stopping, truly visceral piece of music. The song’s title comes in when Mannaerts sings the line, “Unleash your war.” Hear that? It is a challenge. If you want war? Baby, you got it. Brutus are ready. If you want fire? Man, it’s already lit. Brutus are bringing it. Right fucking here.

Vampire Weekend - Harmony Hall
“Some songs are essays, other songs are haikus,” Ezra Koenig told Rolling Stone in an interview previewing Vampire Weekend’s new 18-track opus Father Of The Bride... Whereas the five-minute “Harmony Hall” reads as a statement of purpose for a songwriter who’s been silent for the better part of a decade.
Vampire Weekend songs tend to be multilayered creations: refusing to be confined by genre, refracting big-picture epiphanies through personal experience. Thus “Harmony Hall,” a lament about the resurgence of anti-semitism in America’s “dignified” power centers, finds its shape through links to Koenig’s own life. The title refers to a dorm at Columbia, the Petri dish in which this band was cultured. The chorus repurposes a lyric from one of Koenig’s old songs (you call it lazy, I call it intertextual). The music calls back to his old affection for Paul Simon and ornate instrumental flourishes. You could not mistake this song for anyone else...

Makthaverskan - Onkel
At this point, you pretty much know what you’re going to get from a Makthaverskan song when you hit play. The Swedish crew has been pumping out towering dream-pop songs for a decade (!) now, but they consistently work at such an elevated level that they can pull from the same bag of tricks over and over again and still deliver. “Onkel,” the B-side to their latest 7″, has everything you’d want and expect from Makthaverskan — a soaring vocal melody, a jangly intensity, a crystalline finish. And here Maja Miller uses those sunny components to scrape at the confusion and darkness of loneliness and uncertainty: “I’ve had too much to drink/ And no one’s here with me,” she wails. “Where can I go?/ I just don’t know/ I’m so alone.”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Cyboogie
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have always known how to boogie. They already have a song called “Cut Throat Boogie” and another called “The Bitter Boogie.” But now, they’re doing a different kind of boogie. They’re doing the “Cyboogie.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have never known how to sit still. The Australian goon squad released a ridiculous five albums in 2017, ranging from freaked-out prog-psych to pastoral jazz-folk to hard-charging garage-rock. And yet “Cyboogie,” with its tongue-in-cheek novelty sci-fi flair, still feels different from anything they’ve done before.
For one thing, there are no guitars. Five of the band’s seven members play synth on the track. The result is a monstrous seven-minute electro-glam groove that sounds a little bit like Daft Punk singing about a depressed robot over Tame Impala’s “Elephant.” If you’re not sold by the 50th vocodered “BOOGIE!,” I just don’t know what to tell you.

Masaki Batoh - Devil Got Me from Nowhere
After three albums in two years with his psych quintet the Silence, ex-Ghost musical guru Masaki Batoh returns to his solo roots for Nowhere, an album on which he wrote all songs and played all instruments...  "Devil Got Me," is a wonky, psychedelic, slide-guitar blues in Japanese; the Skip James and Robert Johnson feel here is unmistakable...  Nowhere is Batoh's most provocative yet accessible solo album; its otherworldly strangeness is uncompromising, but somehow welcoming because of its deep focus. Its many textured ripples, fissures and psychic pathways resonate long after its playing timer expires.

Unloved - Devils Angels from Heartbreak
As striking as Unloved's mix of '60s pop and cinematic mystique was on Guilty of Love, at times their debut album felt like a soundtrack in search of a story -- which isn't surprising, considering that two-thirds of the band are respected composers for film and television. In BBC's spy thriller Killing Eve -- to which they contributed Guilty of Love tracks as well as a virtual album's worth of previously unreleased music -- David Holmes, Keefus Ciancia, and singer/songwriter Jade Vincent found their perfect project. The show and its brilliantly unhinged hitwoman Villanelle reflected Unloved's postmodern femme fatale vibe perfectly, and allowed them to push their boundaries with mercurial tracks that made the most of their seductive, dangerous sound. Unloved's evolution continues on Heartbreak, an album that presents the most skillful balance of their pop and experimental sides to date. With savvy, they kick things off with some of their catchiest songs.

Cherry Glazerr - Daddi from Stuffed & Ready
The winding path of Cherry Glazerr's evolution began with bandleader Clementine Creevy writing strange and often juvenile songs as a teenager and just several years later had moved through phases of quirky garage grunge to arrive at the cold, polished sheen of third album Stuffed & Ready. Always centered around Creevy's increasingly dark musings, each album has upped production and more accurately dialed in a re-creation of '90s grunge angst. The muscular power chords and hyperconfident thrust of 2017's Apocalipstick were a far cry from the spooky songs about grilled cheese sandwiches and house pets that the band started out with, and Stuffed & Ready pushes further in the direction of '90s-modelled loud-soft alt-rock. Nowhere near the garage punk outbursts or naïve pondering that earlier versions of Cherry Glazerr reveled in, the ten songs here use gloomy guitar blasts and mid-tempo rhythmic attacks as a steady framework for the distant, angular moods of Creevy's songs. The tracks that stray most from this formula are the most interesting. "Daddi" laces its eerie verses with synth arpeggios, ticking drum machine hi-hats, and manipulated vocal samples, with Creevy's ghostly vocals recalling early Blonde Redhead before exploding into huge choruses...

Le Butcherettes, Strand Of Oaks, Gauche, Hand Habits, Better Oblivion Community Center, Brutus, Vampire Weekend, Makthaverskan, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Masaki Batoh, Unloved, Cherry Glazerr