Pop 'stache

Rhye is a collaboration between Toronto native Milosh and Robin Hannibal of Danish electro-soul outfit Quadron, who both now live in L.A. The pair linked up two years ago when Milosh was commissioned to remix a Quadron song. Woman debuts the duo in an awe-inspiring rush of creativity. The mellow electro-soul reduces the listener to a state of ethereal vulnerability, convincingly drowning reality in a pool of harmony. Woman takes you out onto the classy night scene of the cityscape with richly soft piano chords, the classy sparkle of the brass, the whisper of the winds, the wistful seduction of the strings and the starlight of the electronic.

“Open” unveils what’s behind the curtain. The strings capitivatingly expose the sensuality of sound. Soft-sung vocals are the quaking voice of every longing lover. Love is a universal language, and Desire is what is said inbetween the lines. The night is a mistress who makes a fool out of everyone, but the finger-snapping beat is a reminder to what she has to offer. “The Fall” makes the night air sexy, timid, and coy.  It’s something that could turn Steve Urkel to Stefan Urquelle in a heartbeat. “Don’t run away. Don’t slink away, my dear.” It’s so smooth, the grooves are more like curves.

“Last Dance” is aptly named. It captures the anticipation of the lovers enjoying the last bars of the house orchestra. Muted heartbeats are the sound of the blush. “Verse” is the poetry of sex. “Oh my song says it all, do you hear it in the verse?” The lyrics echo the beckoning of desire. It creates the scene simply. There are no complexities musically or lyrically, proving that love doesn’t always have to be so complicated, if the soul doesn’t wish it.

So far, subtle beauty has dominated the lime light, while “Shed Some Blood” doesn’t stray to far from the central idea it, a heavy, lust-filled tint hangs on every chord. “3 Days” is plunked out by a beautiful harp that enchants the listener into wakeful clarity. As the last harp chord falls down gently the synth takes over and we can dance again. Apprehensively nostalgic, the soul influence is thick and churning. The joy of the day has to be recognized if the night can ever be fully appreciated. Maybe the most joyful moments are not the ones spent in a seductive fantasy, but rather the ones spent in the warm sunshine of the love the day has to give to you.

Alas, the sun must set everyday and bow to the majesty of the night. Primarily instumental,  “One of Those Summer Days” sets the sun with the hot and heavy song of the saxophone. Rhye showed a glimpse of the day, but ultimately love is left in the dark. “Minor Major Love” brings the love to it’s most natural state. “Ooohs” and sustained string notes set the mood for the night. Longing for the embrace of the lover, the soulful plodding of the track entice and challenge love to groove to a new pace.

“Hunger” keeps the dance going with a synth beat and a seductive chorus. “Woman”, however, is a real show-stopper. A perfect finale. The synth arpeggios, weighed down by electro-bass chords, vividly creates a picture of the object of desire for many; women. Rhye has created a work that casts love and sexuality in a subtle shade of blue, with splashes of lustful red and violet, love floats on top of the falsetto vocals. The night is the  stage for the soul, and love is the song for every soul.

Rhye – Woman tracklist:

1. “Open”
2. “The Fall”
3. “Last Dance”
4. “Verse”
5. “Shed Some Blood”
6. “3 Days”
7. “One of Those Summer Days”
8. “Major Minor Love”
9. “Hunger”
10. “Woman”

“Forever your girl,” went Annie Hardy’s quirky sign-off on Giant Drag’s latest blog update. It felt especially poignant as she announced the new album, Waking Up is Hard to Do, two days before release, along with the bomb that it would likely be her last under the Giant Drag name. It was like seeing your childhood friend for the first time in ages only to learn they’re moving to Singapore for work. A drag? Sure, but it’s clear she couldn’t be happier.

Waking Up comes nearly eight (!!) years after Giant Drag’s wonderfully subversive debut, Hearts and Unicorns. Aside from a cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” and a decent stopgap EP (2010’s Swan Song), it was too quiet for too long, especially for an artist with the potential to provoke like Hardy. The new record’s title could be referring to the difficulty of arousing from a creative slumber, but it’s not like Hardy was keeping her thumbs warm: Giant Drag’s other half, drummer/keyboardist Micah Calabrese, quit twice and Hardy ran into financial difficulties getting these songs officially recorded (the five demos on Waking Up’s deluxe edition stretch back to 2007).

When she vocalized last August how she was “thinking of taking this old horse to the glue factory,” it was easy to empathize. But her one-hot-album-every-ten-year-average ends with Waking Up, which hits harder having been dubbed a “bittersweet goodbye.”

Waking Up shows off the new tricks in Hardy’s oeuvre, but longtime fans shouldn’t tune out. “Firestorm” is classic ’Drag: insistent, fizzy guitars under Hardy’s arching daddy’s-little-monster vocals. “Dennis the Pennis” has a loping, nonchalant beat that sounds like it evolved from a particularly flannel-heavy Nada Surf jam, Hardy warbling “another one down the drain” like a kids’ playground game. And then there’s “Garbage Heart,” a straight up nasty non-apology over the album’s ugliest guitars and topped with the cherry of Hardy’s ending “hee-hee!,” a throwback to the playful psycho-girl persona she crafted on the debut. Off-kilter titles like “Dennis the Pennis,” “Messif My Face” and “Meowch” show that character is still there, the problem child her parents pray doesn’t come downstairs during the dinner party to do a reading from her journal and flirt with daddy’s business partner.

Still, the new sounds are even more exciting: “Won’t Come Around” starts with a thudding disco-strut groove and throws in ghostly backing vocals from three Annies; it’s like the high school of your nightmares, with a Ronettes-loving biker gang cornering you under the bleachers. The spacey lounge-cheese of “Messif My Face” lets Waking Up feel cohesive but not monochrome, and the stomping “Sobriety is a Sobering Experience” finds Hardy getting her Marc Bolan on (it’s a dead ringer for T. Rex circa Electric Warrior, down to the skid row women’s choir backing vocals).

The heartbreaking “Heart Carl” made its way onto Swan Song as a “Wish You Were Here”-style goodbye, but this new version spins it into an organ-fueled slow dance, complete with lend-me-your-ears preacher intro (“Brothers and sisters!”), aching slide guitar and a last request from Hardy. “Don’t let the goodbyes get too good tonight / don’t let the ‘goodbyes’ turn into ‘good night’.” It’s her farewell letter to Giant Drag, an idea that overstayed its welcome but still has the allure of an old flame (she’s compared it to an “abscessed tooth”).

Despite those bittersweet moments, Waking Up is a brighter album than its predecessors as it greets a new phase of Hardy’s career. Opener “90210” barely takes a minute for the endorphin shot of a chorus to kick in, and on the other side of the tracklist, “Heart Carl”’s auf wiedersehen is followed with the “hello, world!” of the uncharacteristically soulful “Seen the Light.”

Katie Crutchfield, the woman behind Waxahatchee, would seem to illumine the paradox  stated by Michael Azerrad in his seminal Our Band Could Be Your Life; namely, punk is many things to many people, but only one specific things to an individual. Crutchfield’s history, a buzzy talking point picked up by both Pitchfork and The New York Times, lists a youth rife with cleverly named punk bands alongside her twin sister Allison. Yet now that both have moved on to separate projects (Katie to Waxahatchee, Allison to the fuzzy pop-punk all-stars in training Swearin’), Katie has somewhat unwillingly taken up a mantle of graduated punk. Her first album, American Weekend, was lo-fi, folk-driven and built around broken relationships, an anti-punk statement as much as Crutchfield didn’t mean for it to be.

Cerulean Salt, Crutchfield’s second record in as many years under the Waxahatchee moniker, draws a clearer line from her former oeuvre, thus might be attributed as her return to the fold. Yet such descriptors would miss the point of the powerful bloodletting Cerulean Salt doles out; Crutchfield may sonically beef up her surroundings, but her heart is still stapled solidly to her sleeve.

“In our darkened bedroom, I can’t breathe behind this curtain that we keep” goes a line from the palm-muted “Blue pt. 2.” It’s a throwaway line, forgotten the moment Crutchfield drops her devastating bar at the song’s close. But Cerulean Salt trades heavily on such under the covers intimacy, eschewing archaic points of reference for dropped in stolen moments from Crutchfield’s past lives. Or as she puts it on “Lively,” “I had a dream last night / we had hit separate bottoms / you yelled right in my face / and I poisoned myself, numb it.”

But as potentially poisonous as this emotional intimacy may indicate, Crutchfield makes the majority of Cerulean Salt work the opposite way for her. Her spate of performances at South By Southwest this year give away that Crutchfield still has punky tendencies – most of the American Weekend tracks she played were pumped full of bass and drums that heretofore had not been heard. Those performances were among the festivals highlights, with many of the rooms Crutchfield played in barely able to hold the people coming to watch her excise demons. Cerulean Salt operates similar to these SXSW showcases, with Crutchfield able to just barely mask the raw emotiveness with punchier sonics.

Yet these sonics do little to detract from the overall singular aesthetic of Waxahatchee. Cerulean Salt doesn’t feel like the work of a band, even on the noodling buzz of “Coast to Coast.” Instead Crutchfield manages to keep the emotional intimacy close enough that it never feels like anything other than she and the listener, swapping harrowing stories.

Cerulean Blue’s thirteen tracks pass quickly at manic sequence – one minute Crutchfield is cooing softly on the American Weekend-esque “Tangled Envisioning,” the next she is wailing above dirge-ridden “Misery Over Dispute.” While that might seem at points like muscle flexing, the lyrical subjects almost all perfectly fit their accompanied guitar tone.

Katie Crutchfield would scoff at being called a “punk” for a legitimate reason – she doesn’t want to be pigeonholed into something which she doesn’t necessarily belong. Whatever her past affiliations with the Alabama punk scene, Cerulean Salt largely seeks to pave its own road apart from any pedigree the Crutchfield sisters have worked to achieve in order to establish its own readily apparent greatness. Which, of course, is exactly what punk is all about.

Waxahatchee – Cerulean Salt tracklist:

1. “Hollow Bedroom”
2. “Dixie Cup and Jars”
3. “Lips and Limbs”
4. “Blue, Pt. II”
5. “Brother Bryan”
6. “Coast to Coast”
7. “Tangled Envisioning”
8. “Misery Over Dispute”
9. “Lively”
10. “Waiting”
11. “Swan Dive”
12. “Peace and Quiet”
13. “You’re Damaged”

In 2009, lo-fi Indie rock group Mazes formed among Jack Cooper, Conan Roberts, and Neil Robinson. The band formed in Manchester, UK as part of a music subculture drawing on sounds heard most prominently in 90’s American indie music. The scene was short lived however, as it had virtually no interest in success over camaraderie. Mazes are among a few notable bands that survived the subculture’s end. Their newest release, Ores and Minerals, is a follow up to their debut album, A Thousand Heys, released 2011 on Fat Cat. The music is simple, direct, but has a garage rock charm that keeps it engaging from start to finish.

The opener, “Bodies,” jumps into the fray with smooth guitar melodies, a driving rock beat, and a thrumming bass line. Jack Cooper’s vocals are whiny but defiant, “Bodies colliding/wrapping around us/and the night will go out.” The last half is a tasteful guitar solo, followed by a warm noise collage, touches of synth coloring the atmosphere.

Right off the bat, I’d call this music refreshing. Many bands today want to be larger than life, are pushing the envelope in terms of sound experimentation and song structure, and this can be great and wonderful thing, but when compared to “Bodies,” a song without over-the-top-in-your-face pretention, Mazes come off as more sincere; three guys with instruments, writing simple, decent songs and recording them live.

Track three, “Significant Bullet,” manages to stand on its own even if only a minute in length. Here we see the band divert from crunchy guitars, writing hazy synth melodies over a looped beat. Once again, they could have overdone it, could’ve overused technology to create something bigger, cleaner, and more impressive, but the music remains exposed, vulnerable, and fuzzy around the edges.

“Ores and Minerals” is equally as enjoyable but for different reasons. This track has a killer guitar line reminiscent of the Violent Femmes. Harmonized vocals hover above, full and joyous in that imperfect, basement-rock fashion. There are two guitar solos, and although less than impressive, I was happy to know there’s a band still using them on a regular basis.

We approach the middle of the album, the most difficult section to pull off successfully. It tests listener’s commitment to the music and can make or break the work as a whole. Did Mazes pull it off? Yes and no. There are tracks like “Sucker Pucnhed” and “Delancey Essex” that are great in their own right, but fail to fall into context with the rest of the album. They don’t stick out or bring about a new sound, and thus are forgettable.

Then there’s track seven, “Bite,” which revives the album with its palm muted guitars, airy vocals, subtle synth drones, and tasteful lack of percussion. It has a mounting tension behind it that makes you want to re-listen and discover what it’s hiding. This is a track with a spine, and it seems to be stating, “Stick around, there’s more.”

We reach the back half of the album and come across track ten, “Skulking.” I have mixed feelings on this track. On one hand, it has a raw, punk energy heard in the messy guitars that strain to mirror the vocal melody. On the other hand, the song’s structure comes off as cliché. Compile fast verses, an abrupt chorus, and a few guitar solos and you’ve got a Mazes song. In the end, this one slips through the cracks, but only when placed into context with the rest of the album.

The closer, “Slice,” is another track without any percussion. Tempo is marked by a steady synth metronome. The guitars are more subdued, playing quiet reflective melodies. The lyrics are honest in their disappointment and frustration, “The USA isn’t great/it’s just okay/we can go.” There’s a bratty charm to this track that’s usually hidden in the earlier, harder songs, and I thought it to be a moving closer.

“Ores and Minerals,” by Mazes, is an album I didn’t realize I needed to hear until after listening. It’s got an indie/punk charm that brings us back to the days of 90’s alternative with Pavement, Violent Femmes, and Blind Melon. We’re thrown back into a world where young people wrote songs and played instruments and recorded on what could be found laying around. It’s a simple album, it’s an easy listener, but it’s a genuine piece of work. It has heart and imperfection behind it, when so much music today becomes destroyed by its own technology and image. This album will not stand the test of time. It will be swept under the rug eventually, but it is a quiet reminder that music doesn’t need to be bigger to be more enjoyable. Less is more in “Ores and Minerals,” and I think it deserves a good listen.

Mazes – Ores and Minerals tracklist:

1. “Bodies”
2. “Dan Higgs Particle”
3. “Significant Bullet”
4. “Ores & Minerals”
5. “Sucker Punched”
6. “Delancey Essex”
7. “Bite”
8. “Jaki”
9. “Leominster”
10. “Skulking”
11. “Slice”

Johnny Marr has certainly played well with others in his musical sandbox since leaving the Smiths in 1987. Just check out any number of his collaborations with artists ranging from THE THE to Bernard Sumner to Modest Mouse to composer Hans Zimmer on the “Inception” soundtrack.

And for that body of work, NME recently bestowed the Manchester-based songwriter with its Godlike Genius award. Quite an honor for an artist whose economical and restrained guitar style is imprinted on songwriters from Noel Gallagher to John Squire.

With his first proper solo record, The Messenger, Marr steps forward as a singer and sole songwriter with a collection of bright and fun pop songs. In turn, he makes amends for the sluggish Boomslang (2003), his first full-length debut leading the trio, Johnny Marr and the Healers.

Recorded in Manchester and Berlin, The Messenger sounds like a road record charged with big riffs and funky solos wrapped around Marr’s narratives on city living and making connections in a digital world. “Love fights love/invading my zero gravity/the crowd grows/and grows illusions/down on quality street” Marr sings on “The Right Thing Right” as he unleashes a flood of guitars and pounding drums before relenting to a soaring  chorus.

The album offers more of a punk edge as compared to Marr’s work with the Smiths and the dance-pop records he crafted with Sumner in Electronic. Marr offers some Iggy Pop attitude and buzzing guitar work on “Word Starts Attack” and “Sun and Moon”, the latter sounding like a song Oasis should have recorded for Be Here Now.

Marr certainly had some fun writing and recording the album. He delves into New Wave territory with a Moog synthesizer in hand on “The Crack Up” and his daughter, Sonny, offers background support on four songs.

Marr said he fancies vocal melodies and hammering out fast songs. To that end, he’s succeeded, but his voice is thin and nondescript as he narrates more than sings. Still, try to resist the wistful charm of “New Town Velocity”, the most personal song on the album and whose chord progression resembles New Order’s “Ruined in a Day”.

“Left home a mystery/leave school for poetry/I said goodbye to them and me” Marr sings about leaving school as a teen for a perceived better life in music. When Marr later boasts how “it turned out like I said it would/can I get the world right here?” it doesn’t take a genius to believe he already knows the answer.

Johnny Marr – The Messenger tracklist:

1. “The Right Thing Right”
2. “I Want the Heartbeat”
3. “European Me”
4. “Upstarts”
5. “Lockdown”
6. “The Messenger”
7. “Generate! Generate!”
8. “Say Demesne”
9. “Sun and Moon”
10. “The Crack Up”
11. “New Town Velocity”
12. “Word Starts Attack”

Much the same as digital has done for the world of photography, the power of technology in music has broadened the base of creators. It has democratized the art form. This has lead to an onslaught of “artists” who fancy themselves the next Ansel Adams adding their filtered black and whites to an Instagram feed and two-bit producers believing themselves the next Mozart whilst uploading their tracks to a newly minted Bandcamp profile. With all this subpar work being added to the noise out their it is easy to get lost in the sea of crap and start to believe there’s not much worthwhile.

Then something like Mowgli by up and coming Chicago producer Mister Lies comes around, and you realize that maybe everyone having the ability to create isn’t such a bad thing after all. While by no means perfect, there’s a lot to enjoy here. This isn’t the electronic music you may be used to or that which has invaded the popular conscience. Nothing here would be found on a commercial. Nothing here is going to be blared in a club. Yet, like both those genres, dubstep and EDM, this creates an atmosphere. In fact that’s basically all this music is about, atmosphere. It is dreamscapes and floating and ether filing through your ears and around your head. Working much closer along the lines tread by the likes of Portishead, these are the type of songs you close your eyes to and they take you places.

It’s hard to pick out favorite songs because the album feels so cohesive and together. Most of the album lies in the lines laid out by opener, “Ashore.”

Random vocal samples that add color or a flash of story and some building block drips, claps, and beats that go up nicely just like a new LEGO® kit.

Every track builds upon the next to create a journey you really want to see through, at least for the first six songs. “Hounded,” the seventh track on the album, while by no means unenjoyable, just feels jarring from the subtle dream that the first six songs seem to put you on. It doesn’t feel like a nightmare, but more like an alarm clock when it kicks on and the sampled, distorted vocals start repeating. The discord of the song is definitely an atmosphere change that feels apart from the journey we’ve come through. If there were more songs after it to continue some new journey it would feel more in place, but the next song “Trustfalls” is slower, smoother, and subtler which feels more in line with the first six and makes me question the track order somewhat.

This album is interesting and fresh, and it is work like this that signifies the greatness of the era we live in both technologically and musically. It is our modern computer systems which make this collection of sounds possible, both its creation and distribution. The democracy of art, while providing more muck to rake through, really shines when work like this falls in your lap.

Mister Lies – Mowgli tracklist:

1. “Ashore”
2. “Dionysian”
3. “Align”
4. “Lupine”
5. “Canaan”
6. “Ludlow”
7. “Despair”
8. “Hounded” (Feat. Exitmusic)
9. “Trustfalls”

Kate Nash seemed to have fallen off her hand-carved, acid-tongued map, driving hard into obscurity. Nash distinguished herself as reigning melodic smartass with her unforgiving lyrical quips and dolled-up hooks; but after spending some quality time with Le Tigre’s JD Samson marinating in a pot of feminism and Hole riffs, the British songstress has returned with a fierce sound and a flexed riot grrrl muscle. Girl Talk, Nash’s third album, deliberately shoves cock pop in a corner with ring-adorned fists flying.

“Part Heart” is a mellow start to the incredibly hypertensive record Girl Talk amounts to be. Nash’s vocals flourish with a Mazzy Star mellow and shine in productive restraint with simple backdrops, letting her unloved laments take center stage. Known for her eye-rolling delivery and quick-witted rhymes, Nash takes a step in a more emotionally rooted direction by showing some vulnerability and hopelessness with the lyrics. The final third of the song finds the trademark strength and masculine banishment that has forged Kate Nash into a feminist voyeur.

“Death Proof” marches to an elastic bass line with pulsating guitar trimmings channeling the buzzing scores of old-school spy movies. The melody seems a bit forced, but its intricacies can’t be ignored. The track immediately spirals into a clever and drilling commentary on the physicality of love. “Are You There Sweetheart?” a cavity drilling tale of a helicoptering lover that overstays his welcome. Just when it’s about to wind down around three minutes, it self-resurrects in an unnecessary cavalcade of overdubs and guitar hammers

Marking the apex of the album, “Sister” perfectly balances the feverish riot grrrl and piano-pounding songstress tussling within Nash. She cracks with enraged squeaks and guttural roars, somehow both unexpected yet apt from the pin-curled babe. Nash’s Le Tigre mentorship is overbearing in the frenzied delivery and groaning vocals. “Oh my god, I’m so funny HAHA” is the most teasing, satisfying lyric of the track—and possibly the album—proving that a frisky vein still winds around Nash’s hardened heart.

Youth Lagoon creates a neo-psychedelic paradise on his 2013 record Wondrous Bughouse. Trevor Powers, the man behind it all, explores the place where mind, body, heart and spirit meet.  The album retains the lo-fi  vibes that made Youth Lagoon so tantalizingly endearing to listeners, but the neo-psychedelia dominates the record. In essence, Powers tries to bring “Strawberry Fields” into the “bughouse”.  The concept is genius, but it’s execution has flaws. In an attempt to let listeners experience music, Youth Lagoon burdens tracks with too much “trippin’ out”. What could have been an atrium of soothing spiritual sounds becomes a swamp of nonsense.

“Through Mind and Back” kicks-off the album and acts like an overture to an opera of the metaphysical. The electronic prelude paints a picture of a colorful verdant rain forest of the mind, and no lack of figurative psychological disfigurement exists. The track covers the whole album thematically and musically, even highlighting some of the major flaws that are throughout. For example, the last minute ends up sounding like a random configuration of  electronic insect noises and the sounds one might hear in an opium den.

“Mute” and “Attic Doctor” blend together into hallucinogenic serenades that take you down a river that is both lazy and rapid. The dissonance in “Mute” expresses the difficulty of the journey trying to be conveyed, while “Attic Doctor” features use of a piercing acoustic guitar and spicy castanets. Lyrically the two tracks are extremely disappointing and long instrumental phases become overbearing very quickly.

The first wave of psychedelia is a hot mess, but “The Bath” cleans it up (pun intended). The electro is lo-fi and the piano makes it feel almost natural, as if you really are spending the night in a humid rain forest. The melody is soothing, as if a storm is just briefly passing over to moisturize and cleanse.

“Pelican Man” takes a turn into a soaring daze. Youth Lagoon captures the intended concept well, which is refreshing to know that the whole album isn’t completely lost. It’s an escape of the temporal. A flight to the netherworld of the spirit, and the wind under the wings is the masterly crafted electronic synchronization of sound. However the flight must come to an end, and the minds eye slowly shuts on the flight of the spirit.

“Dropla” has been making splashes in anticipation of the album’s release. The twang of insects is artificially created, and the echo of “You’ll never die” builds up for a climatic flight of a butterfly, or other colorful insect. Playing on the imagery of the title, the tracks repetition and lush ornamentation gives the visual of the seemingly never-ending life cycle of the insect.

“Sleep Paralysis” goes off the deep end. Named after a distressing sleep disorder where the individual is “awake”, cannot move and is subject to horrific hallucinations. The track is eerie, and makes you feel paralyzed by the noise of a perplexing wall of sound.

“Third Dystopia” runs with almost a clockwork rhythm underneath a lunatic lullaby. It’s interesting in it’s own way, but fails to capture the imagination or set itself apart. “Raspberry Cane” also melts in the array of psychedelia. Sickly sweet in sound and incomprehensible in lyric, the track is the worst offender of the long instrumental break.

“Daisyphobia” begins with a grumbling of something fearsome. Powers’ vocals cut in unexpectedly and clearly. The static and the effervescence dies underneath the increasingly more natural influences of the track. An organ ushers the listener out of the metaphysical world. The melting world of the Wondrous Bughouse is disappearing. The dream is over and we may have got some good out of it, but maybe the journey was meant to be a little nightmarish. In any case, the potential is bogged down and never fully realized. The album is lost to the listener, leaving the bitter taste of disappointment with it.

Youth Lagoon – Wondrous Bughouse tracklist:

1. “Through Mind and Back”
2. “Mute”
3. “Attic Doctor”
4. “The Bath”
5. “Pelican Man”
6. “Dropla”
7. “Sleep Paralysis”
8. “Third Dystopia”
9. “Raspberry Cane”
10. “Daisyphobia”

Describing what The Men have accomplished over the past four years defies quite a bit of reason. While most rockers are out relentlessly touring, only pausing for the briefest of moments every eighteen months to put out a record, The Men align themselves most closely with West Coast garage rock song factory Ty Segall. New Moon marks The Men’s fourth LP in as many years. While it may not top the blistering mastery of last year’s Open Your Heart, New Moon offers new and exciting spectra for The Men to occupy, ranging from prog-punk to fuzzy alt-country, nary a breath in between it all.

Such stylistic variety could have been expected from the band. Open Your Heart was rife with adventures in sonic expansion, just like band breakout Leave Home before it. There was the mystic-psych freakout “Presence” or AM radio staple “Candy” on Open Your Heart, the techy-rock “Night Landing” on Leave Home.

The formula, if one were to reduce such arm reaching sonic ambition to a specific noun, holds on New Moon, with even more movement out to the fringes. Instead of healthy doses of the unrelenting garage ragers that made the band famous to buoy the more esoteric experiments in form, New Moon enjoys fucking with listeners ears as to where if might go next.

Noise-y rockers that might recall former apexes instead two step subtly toward pop-rock, whether it be the psych-y “Half Angel” or the penultimate “Freaky.” Blasts of squawking overdrive get a chain-then-release meter from pulsating punk bass on “Without a Face.” Then, just when “High and Lonesome” lulls the listener into believing that this country-fried version of The Men might be what they’re getting this time around, “The Brass” and “Electric” mutilate the calmed ear into a bloody Leave Home-era pulp. It might be easy for most bands to say “we don’t care what everyone thinks of us,” but very few prove it as solidly in their album sequencing as The Men.

With this driving out to the edges of its creative landmass, The Men also discover just how it feels to be on both sides of the rock spectrum, nowhere more apparent than on the album’s opener, “Open the Door,” and its closer, “Supermoon.” “Open the Door” sports a gorgeous organ and piano section, accompanied by slide and acoustic guitar, nary an ounce of fuzz to be had. Hell, the song very nearly treads into sing-songiness through its middle half. One might expect The Men to go back to the easy listening well to palate cleanse after the onslaught of dissonant sequencing that is New Moon, their sure to be divisive newest record. But “Supermoon” is the heaviest The Men have sounded yet, riff-stacked and armed to the teeth with blistering solos to careen the album off a cliff to close. Listening to just those two songs represents exactly the synthesis that The Men have brought to punk rock, yet it would be a minor miracle for an uninformed observer to guess that both songs were by the same band. Not inconsequently The Men is a much bigger beast this time around, having added a mandolin and piano to their mix.

This unrelenting cognitive dissonance makes it slightly difficult to interpret exactly what the members of The Men want the band to be. Open Your Heart was a clear evocation of thematic purpose, tied together, albeit loosely, under the umbrella of ambitious garage rock. While New Moon still might fit this moniker, the umbrella is expanding to slightly unwieldy proportions. New Moon has some of the best music The Men have ever produced, yet it feels just slightly divorced from the band’s already manic aesthetic. While the lyrical and thematic purposes are clear enough (this is the band’s psych-themed record), the reason for such auditory mania remains undiscovered.

Yet when the cards are on the table, The Men arms New Moon with more powerful guitar based rock flavor than anything outside of Ty Segall, who really appears now to be the band’s only qualitative and quantitative challenger. New Moon may not be stronger, or even equal to, last year’s Open Your Heart, yet it’s auditory ADD is more pleasing than almost anything The Men’s peers are putting out today.

The Men – New Moon tracklist:

1. “Open the Door”
2. “Half Angel Half Light”
3. “Without a Face”
4. “The Seeds”
5. “I Saw Her Face”
6. “High and Lonesome”
7. “The Brass”
8. “Electric”
9. “I See No One”
10. “Bird Song”
11. “Freaky”
12. “Supermoon”

Just in time for late February are the disembodied electronics of Lesser Evil. This is the first full-length release from Montreal–based artist, Airick Woodhead, better known as Doldrums. The album was recorded over an eighteen-month period on friend Clair Boucher’s (Grimes) laptop, and was released on Arbutus this past week. The resulting music lies somewhere between blissful and terrifying. Its nightmarish textures and fractured beats create a style that is consistently confusing, yet strangely fulfilling.

“Fantasia Intro,” is a solemn dirge. Distant synths and vocal blips texture the edges of the soundscape. The vocals are centered, drenched in reverb, moaning, “I still feel like a child.” The grim ambience reaches a peak threatened by thick, dissonant chords, then plunges into a furnace fueled by harsh electronic wails. The wreckage is met by a strangely poppy drum beat. Hovering above is what sounds to be a chorus of ghosts singing out of tune, while below is a gently pulsing bass. The vocals are taken up by Woodhead singing in a pained falsetto, “Whatever that’s supposed to mean!” And the song drifts back and forth, verse chorus verse, lulling listeners into a numbed, dreamlike trance.

I found the track’s use of textures to be its strongest quality, weaving an intricate tapestry of disparate ideas. On the other hand, the music wasn’t fast enough in developing new ideas and often recycled previously explored sounds, melodies, and even lyrics. I found myself interested in the density of the music but was worried I’d end up bored.

The third track, “She is the Wave,” manages to pick up the pace. The textures are harsher this time around; a frenzied mélange of synth noises, met by a dubstep bass line, and colored by ambient vocal harmonies. The track tests listeners with piercing melodies and guttural bass tones, creating something between noisy incoherence and manic spiritual bliss.

Track five, “Egypt” eases the emotional weight of the album. This track stands out with its lively dance beat drawing on traditional samba. The vocals are also intriguing in that they rarely rely on a consistent melody. The strongest portion of the track is the break at three minutes in which Woodhead stages what sounds to be an argument between glitch beats and electronic screams.

The album enters a lull of three monotonous tracks, but is revived by track eight, “Lesser Evil.” This song is by far the most accessible on the album, sporting a fast pop beat and glossy synth chords. The vocals are both sinister and celebratory, “If I don’t see it it’s not there/ you want to live forever but only in thin air.” And while the song is easier on the ears, it’s no less intricate in its diversity of sounds and its ability to keep listener’s guessing.

The album dips again into a haze of forgettable tracks, some more driven and poppy than others, but always feeling half-realized and occasionally over-executed. The album’s closer, “Painted Black,” however, displays a genuine simplicity The bass line and drum beat sound like they were pulled from an R&B track then warped beyond recognition, and the light, descending synth line is something that will stay looping in listener’s heads long after the track ends. The vocals are dreamy but forgettable, blending nicely with the rest of the music, but failing to establish a unique melody or tone. Overall, I appreciate an artist whose willing to close an album in a calmer, more reflective fashion.

Lesser Evil, by Doldrums, is a fascinating album. Much of the music incorporates tones and textures I have yet to hear elsewhere, and in this way Woodhead has created something unique and original. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the result, as the album definitely has its throwaway tracks, but the tracks that did come together hit hard both emotionally and intellectually. At points, I was confused as to how to engage with the music. In many instances, it felt the music was happening to me rather than allowing me space to be an active listener, and that sensation was actually somewhat unsettling. On the whole however, the music left me with a lot to think about, and it merits a good few listens, especially on a cold, gray February afternoon.

Doldrums – Lesser Evil tracklist:

1. “Fantasia Intro”
2. “Anomaly”
3. “She is the Wave”
4. “Sunsrise”
5. “Egypt”
6. “Holographic Sand Castles”
7. “Singularity Acid Face”
8. “Lesser Evil”
9. “Golden Calf”
10. “Lost in Everyone”
11. “Painted Black”

Usually hip-hopping hand-in-hand alongside age is wisdom, along all that introspective crap that seems to drive many rockers into a state of maturity that just doesn’t make for a tongue-tied, eardrum-pounding earful. The tales of debauchery and madness are what keeps us crawling back for a sonic brawl that leaves us all bruised and heaving…but still somehow begging for more. Pissed Jeans haven’t backed out of the ring after nearly a decade together and are bludgeoning forth with full force on their fourth studio release, Honeys. Don’t be fooled by the title—this album is anything but sweet.

It’s hard to believe that this band of punk rockers emerged from the same concrete muse that inspired Billy Joel to pen the hyper-romantic sugar cube “Allentown.” It wasn’t long, though, before the quartet was forced to migrate outside of their tiny orb of a punk scene to Philadelphia seven years ago. Still clinging onto their smoggy, proletariat roots, Pissed Jeans still took a shining to Boston’s well-poised carelessness and yard thrashing brutality, and it shows in the thudding drop of Honeys. While they still house the same boiling intensity, Pissed Jeans have governed their focus. Still unrestricted by the notion of a full-fledged concept, the band is rather harnessed by a grand scheme—a really fucking loud one.

“Bathroom Laughter,” a fitting lead single, jumpstarts the insanity with a swift kick to the gut with Matt Korvette’s guttural rips accompanied by guitar riffs boasting the viscosity of crude oil. The track unfolds into a visceral tale of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting an unwelcome eyeful of the underbelly of strangers’ lives, those little snippets that we like to repress into some Freudian stew to either be left untouched, or self-combust at any inopportune moment. Korvette rips into his lower register, growling each line and shrieking in terror, as he goes toe-to-toe with the terror of impending adulthood.

Sliding in for a high-energy follow-up is “Chain Worker,” a short-circuiting lament of dissatisfaction with the precincts of the blue-collar brotherhood. Tension steadily climbs to discomforting altitudes with wheezing guitars punctuated with brutal surges of electrified angst. The song vigorously ebbs and flows from dark metal influences to sarcastic, spoken sarcastic jibes at capitalistic strongholds with lyrics like “I am a chain worker caught in an infinite loop, like a skipping compact disc. My chain provides me with safety.” Korvette stands acutely at a prophet of the people angle without preaching down to his factory-beaten camarades.

Proving that you can still be a gang of badass thrashers while still flaunting that fur-trimmed, funky backbone, “You’re Different (In Person)” begins with an unexpected funk flare and a joyfully syncopated drum fill; but the dark clouds quickly wrinkle the technicolored sky. Bradley Fry rolls out some dynamic guitar chops, working his way across the fret board with confident buoyancy. “Cafeteria Food” cuts in as a starkly divergent follow-up, with bombastic discord and prophet of doom vocals. Bassist Randy Huth doesn’t miss a vein-tugging beat throughout the vicious spiral allows for some hard-fought recovery time from the intense brain volley that preceded.

“Loubs” steers the could-have-been romantic monologue into an eerie exposition of dissatisfaction. Korvette takes sputtering lines of blues-inspired vocals for a spin as he continues to gnaw through a hefty mouthful of cathartic gristle. After nearly five minutes of the defiant elopement of thrasher punk and Springsteen social consciousness, listeners are left nursing a bourbon-soaked head spin.

Inching toward the twelve-track record’s close, “Health Plan” is reminiscent of Black Flag’s gear grinding metal velocity, incorporating a bass-heavy Rollins growl. Sean McGuiness stabs into his drum kit with splintering fury as a hovering black balloon bursting with hardcore nectar looms above. Despite its heavy topic matter, the track is disturbingly catchy—not in the typical singsong hook fever, but in a gnawing persistence that is simply impossible to ignore.

Not nearly as opaque as their past releases of blunt-edged grindcore cocktails, Pissed Jeans seem to have reached a point of convergence with the old, new and unexpected. Matt Korvette’s vocals are much more scathing and harken back to the original punk sentiments and scowls set by the likes of Ian MacKaye while delving into issues as browbeaten as sexual dejection and factory fever. Honeys isn’t an instant classic, but rather a slow rolling champion, like a nagging thought just decaying at your composure until it reigns supreme. Honeys is just one brain stew you’ll just have to try for yourself.

Pissed Jeans – Honeys tracklist:

1. “Bathroom Laughter”
2. “Chain Worker”
3. “Romanticize Me”
4. “Vain In Costume”
5. “You’re Different (In Person)”
6. “Cafeteria Food”
7. “Something About Mrs. Johnson”
8. “Male Gaze”
9. “Cat House”
10. ” Loubs”
11. “Health Plan”
12. “Teenage Adult”

Making a living in Americana has to be difficult in the post-Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom universe. The fearless freaks of the San Francisco folk scene, and to a lesser extent the ascent of poet of the back porch, Sam Beam, have delineated a clear marker between what could reductively be titled “retro folk” and the eccentric “freak folk,” saying nothing of the tremendous gray area between.

Samantha Crain should know about this gulf; she exists in it, after all. A Choctaw Oklahoman residing on North Carolina label Ramseur Records, Crain is a neat fit between the worlds of traditional guitar-based folk and the freaky experimentation of her contemporaries. Her second album, Kid Face, straddles this line as well, although not as well as some of her more glowing supporters may suggest.

While Crain has an impressive voice and a songsmith’s wit, her reticence to fully embrace eccentricity leaves Kid Face slightly blunted and dull.

Kid Face is a frequently gorgeous and intimate album, though. Crain’s voice immediately darts out from the opening salvos of “Never Going Back” and “Taught to Lie.” She gets somewhat rightly compared to Newsom in her intonation: simultaneously lilting and perfectly pitched, with moments of winsome squelch.

Yet songs like the title track reveal Crain’s alto to be swaddled in a sweeter depth, something the frequently piquant Newsom could only hope for when reaching into her low register. A more apt comparison might be the more pop-oriented dulcet tones of Rachel Yamagata, who frequently rose above her more modest sonic surroundings to plumb more intimate details of songs with her voice.

Crain does her best to dig into these moments of poignancy, but often falls short of the mark due to one safe turn after another. The country two-step of “Somewhere All the Time” turns into a messy Sheryl Crow impersonation because Crain can’t manage to force anything original from the basic guitar/drum framework. It’s one thing to appear to be self-sufficient, but another to make something personal from that individuality.

The album’s best track, the effortless, whispering “Churchill” takes one of Crain’s most powerful laments (“So blame me for what I cannot finish/my whole life I thought I was an opportunist/but I’m not”) and builds resignation through undercurrents of bass and only momentary bursts of slide. Similarly well done cuts cop a bit too much from other artists. “Paint” could very easily be a Marissa Nadler B-side, and “The Pattern Has Changed” comes straight from the basic female singer-songwriter piano ballad manual.

Thankfully, one thing Crain avoids more often than not is the need to ground all of her narratives in a romantic other. It’s clear that she wants to be a more individual lyrical voice; “The Pattern Has Changed” and its last verse gives this away a bit too bluntly. Self-discovery is well trodden ground, and again Crain sets aside large portions of the trite indie-isms or ironic damsel-in-distress tunes that can cause a lesser artist to falter. “I’m not mad/I’m conflicted,” from the plaintive finale “We’ve Been Found,” hints that Crain wants more from her narratives. She just might not be there yet.

Because of how difficult the folk scene can be for women, Samantha Crain is in a bit of a rough spot in terms of finding a cache.

Technically speaking, she is immensely talented, with a sorrowful, classic voice that most of her contemporaries, Newsom included, could only dream of having intrinsically.

She may yet find her footing in some of the more stellar, idiosyncratic, or original ideas on Kid Face like “Churchill” or “Ax,” but for the time being, Samantha Crain remains an interesting folk prospect, capable of taking a giant qualitative leap with just a few slight tweaks.

Samantha Crain – Kid Face Tracklist

1. Never Going Back
2. “Taught to Lie”
3. “Paint”
4. “For the Miner”
5. “The Pattern Has Changed”
6. “Churchill”
7. “Kid Face”
8. “Somewhere All the Time”
9. “Ax”
10. “Sand Paintings”
11. “We’ve Been Found”