Pop 'stache

When asked a few years ago what his favorite emerging bands were, Keith Richards claimed that he couldn’t name any in particular, “Because it wouldn’t be fair on the others” but did grant, “The less manufactured it is, the more I like it.” That cloudy blanket statement leaves much to be desired but suffice to say, Zeus stands a chance. Busting Visions is a collection of songs palatable upon first listen—but get better successively just to spite. There are riffs fuzzier than sasquatch, hooks catchy to a fault and (sorry, just too tempting) punishingly thunderous grooves. The Toronto quartet, guided by Mike O’Brien and Carlin Nicholson have been around for some time, first as the backing band to Jason Collett, now to Bahamas as well. This marks the Arts and Craftsmen’s second full-length and already they’ve come out from moonlighting, guns blazing.

The band combines a delightful ear for melodies and songmanship with a playfulness and charisma that is hard to come by in today’s industry. The term Beatlesque has been thrown around quite a lot and that’s a tricky classification because it’s hard to separate when that means “multi-layered, harmonious, tastefully experimental” album and when it means “great rock record that sounds like something the Beatles would do.” What’s the difference? Busting Visions is just enough like a lost Beatles album to be unoriginal, it’s got quite a bit of old rock and roll in it. If that sounds terribly unfair, it is, because this is a great record. A few of the great albums of the modern age have garnished the title, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and OK Computer—but for very different reasons, each accomplishing enough on its own terms to be dangerous, to be exciting and to keep listeners coming back to it.

Lest Busting Visions be lumped in with one group of Liverpudlians, know that it carries the greater sound of the British Invasion, you can spot-reference The Kinks, Hollies and Zombies throughout—splayed in a modern context. There are elements of doo-wop on “Love In A Game,” right down to the tape-delayed microphone. “Anything You Want Dear” with its gyrating guitar line and tongue-in-cheek lyricism “Like a hand that’s strapped with leather/ Holding on the tether” sounds like a T. rex homage. One detractor, given the diverse scope of the album, is that it ends up a tad on the long side, with fourteen tracks combining for forty-four minutes. Not to say it’s a waste of time because it’s a swingin’ forty-four—just a big one.

There’s another dichotomy that’s painful/awesome. One: singer Neil Quinn has a phenomenal set of frontman’s pipes, melding passion, bravado and a keen ear. The let down is that, despite having three songwriters in the band (not to mention three superb musicians), they can’t seem to write a lyric that’s anything more than goofy or singalongable. So you have songs that could be huge, emotionally-charged rockers and instead you have ornamentation, a near parody of a classic rock song, sung with all the same conviction! Opener “Are You Gonna Waste My Time?” is the prime example of this. It’s still early on in the game though, folks. Remember that not only is this a collection of musicians accustomed to a support role but a group of musicians on their second album. And what a luminous effort it makes in and of itself. There can be no question whether or not this record lets the good times roll.

Zeus – Busting Visions tracklist:

1. “Are You Gonna Waste My Time?”
2. “Love/Pain”
3. “Anything You Want Dear”
4. “Let It Go, Don’t Let It Go”
5. “Strong Mind”
6. “Bright Brown Opus”
7. “Love in a Game”
8. “With Eyes Closed”
9. “Hello Tender Love”
10. “Messenger’s Way”
11. “Proud and Beautiful”
12. “Stop the Train”
13.  “Cool Blue (And the Things You Do)”
14. “Now That I’ve Got You

Hip-hop artists try to become brands, and while some get branded as lyricists, others transcend labels and become unique artists. Chancellor Warhol is the latter. Part lyricist, part song-maker, all creator, Warhol is able to blur standard hip-hop lines on his latest mix-tape, Playlist For Edie. Honing his sounds in the music mecca of Nashville, Warhol has been able to incorporate more than just hip-hop influences into this music, which is a big reason why he is poised to breakout beyond his genre. Shout outs to Jack White and Gotye steer CW toward indie rockers and hipsters, respectively. But no matter what the musical influence on any given song, the strength of Chancellor Warhol’s music is his ability to lyrically adapt to any given situation.

On the heels of Japanese Lunchbox and The Silver Factory, Chancellor Warhol released Playlist for Edie in the midst of a media buzz, finding him in the pages of Rolling Stone and in the snowy confines of Sundance. Riding that wave, Edie gives us the most in-depth imagery of Warhol yet.

Adapting to something Childish Gambino made semi-famous, Chancellor hijacks a few indie songs and crafts them into his own works of art. M83’s “Midnight City” is the first—”MDNT CTY” lets CW do what any good architect does: rip out the middle and create a completely new environment within the existing foundation. Anthony Gonzales’ breakout track is given new life as Warhol breezes through tales of late night escapades and ex-girlfriend tirades. “Wayfares and Tylenol, last night we did it all, and even though we had a ball, only thing that’s on your mind are reasons that I didn’t call” opens this electro hip-hop romp, laying the groundwork for its recreation, ending with “The best text of your life is telling your ex you’re leaving for the rest of the night.”

The aforementioned Gotye is up next as its “Used To Know” is given the Warhol treatment. A tongue-twisting club trip in itself, CW again leaves his fingerprints on the track to the point where you know he’s definitely there. Coldplay’s “Paradise” also falls at the hands of Chancellor as he exclaims “they say the weak shall inherit the Earth, that’s cool I’ll fly to Mars…” and never looks back.

And while he may leave his mark on others’ tracks, he shines on the album’s original material just as brightly. Whether it be the party-inducing “McFearless”, the introspective “Wait It Out,” “Games” and “Heaven or Hell,” or the screwed up “LoftiCries”, Chancellor Warhol shows nothing but progression on Playlist For Edie and makes those who have already showed him love look like trendsetters in their own right.

BBU uses the word “cracker”… a lot. (They also manage to slip in a “honky” toward the end of the tape). Although some of their content may catch the average hip-hop listener by surprise, the group—that is either known as “Bin Laden Blowing Up” or “Black, Brown and Ugly” depending on the day—offers educated and thought-out views that come across in an authoritative way without sounding dictatorial. The job of a writer is not to profess his or her views as gospel, but to express a well-rounded opinion, and this is something BBU does throughout bell hooks. Agree or disagree, one can’t argue the validity of these Chi-town natives who might “hate the ‘Go’ for what it is but know that bastard made” them.

While bell hooks is a far cry from the anthemic “Chi Don’t Dance” track BBU released a couple of years ago, it still manages to entice “juking” while discussing the young African-American plight. The collective of Illekt, Epic and Jasson Perez come off as a young, impressionable and modern version of Public Enemy, only with a little less bass in their voices and a little more emphasis on blending lyrics and beats.

The mixtape kicks off with a spoken-word intro that leads into an aggressive statement in “Outlaw Culture.” A self-proclaimed soundtrack to Malcom’s “By Any Means,” it searches for answers while hoping for change. The underlying theme seems to focus on the stereotypical views of African-Americans but, in reality, it is for everyone who grew up not fitting in.

“Jumpers” is a cry for everyone to get on the same page in the short time they are here on earth. The Tony Baines-produced track lets the collective wax philosophical on reverse racism and Repbulicans. “Kurt De La Rocha” intertwines a sample of Nirvana’s “Polly” with a bass-heavy bounce track setting the stage for a rebellious chant where BBU continues to voice its displeasure with the status quo.

The somewhat star-studded collaboration with the Hood Internet and Das Racist called “Please, No Pictures” proves to be the album’s stand-out. Not only do the guests serve as a nice change of pace from BBU’s own status quo (with an Arrested Development reference thrown in for good measure), the synth- and clap-heavy beat allow the guys to let their guard down a bit, and a throw in a little wit to help welcome their Brooklyn comrades.

Maybe a less militant Dead Prez, maybe a more militant collection of Commons, the consciousness of bell hooks is well-spoken and will hopefully be heard by the audience it’s addressing.

BBU – bell hooks tracklist:

So maybe it’s raining out, maybe you’re suffering from an existential crisis, or maybe you just want to feel deep in a sort of art-school way. Memoryhouse has you covered. An unlikely team of a photographer and musician who teamed up to make minimalist soundtracks and metamorphosed into a pop band, they specialize in dreamy, nostalgic soundscapes.

They’ve moved leaps and bounds in a very short amount of time. Since their first full length, they’ve cut out almost all of the chaff present on 2010’s The Years EP, and the result is a tighter, more focused, and moderately more poppy sound that’s as good for the casual listener as well as art students with perpetual clouds over their heads.

For a band distinguished by a sort of meandering, dreamy style, there’s an impressive amount of clarity and articulation on display here. Vocals that used to be muted and misty are surprisingly sharp, and there’s some strong lyrical work. The best songs here, like “Walk With Me” manage to be a sort of multidimensional poem, with simple but very vivid lyrics delivered in Denise Nouvion’s dreamy drawl.

Rather than the deluge that was The Years, this Sub Pop debut is the musical equivalent of a Vulcan neck pinch: they’re not expending much energy, but the effect on the listener is impressive. They’ve even managed to work in a nice driving groove on “The Kids Were Wrong,” which is as surprising as it is pleasant, even as Nouvion overlays it with a gripping delivery of, “Go to sleep, nothing’s changing/I’ll be right here by your side.” Dream fufillment? Self delusion? The ambiguous delivery leaves it wonderfully open for interpretation.

If the song suggests a possible direction from the band where their dream pop collides with the more honest, intimate and danceable contributions that twee-pop can offer (think Camera Obscura’s peppier singles), then they are certainly going to be worth watching. “Walk With Me” is another winner: not a song that looks to a future for the band, but one that seems to represent a culmination of the work that lead up to it. It’s a song so well-paced that four minutes and 21 seconds seems far too short a time to spend in the vivid imagery and precise musical territory that Memoryhouse is exploring.

Of course, even with their strides in the direction of pop, there are still traces of occasional excess. “Punctum” is just not interesting enough to keep a listeners attention, despite some promising use of banjo, and its placement after the similarly slow “All Our Wonder” is quite simply not ideal. “Pale Blue” has good bits and dull bits—in fact, it seems disconcertingly like two unrelated songs stitched together.

Overall, this is an album that maintains its experimental cred while venturing leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor both in listenability and construction. For instance, take the line, “This life could be/graced with symmetry,” which is surely one of the more headscratchingly intriguing rhymes to grace any album this month.

Memoryhouse – The Slideshow Effect tracklist:

1. “Little Expressionless Animals”
2. “The Kids Were Wrong”
3. “All Our Wonder”
4. “Punctum”
5. “Heirloom”
6. “Bonfire”
7. “Pale Blue”
8. “Walk With Me”
9. “Kinds of Light”
10. “Old Haunts”

Instead of listing Dirty Three’s score of possible genres, influences and sound-alikes, let’s approach the Australian post-rockers on their own terms. The free, often-improvised sounds that emanate from a guitar, a violin and a drum set are furiously forward and yet warmly backward. They are the kind of outfit that’s timeless—if not for persistent relevancy than for the plain-dumb oneness of their sound. While it is often thrown under the blanket of “post-rock,” much of the band’s aesthetic predates rock ‘n’ roll. To view its work through any lens is almost inevitably a dissapointment. It’s been six years since the Three’s last album, Cinder, broke new turf by featuring vocal collaborations from Cat Power and Sally Timms. From the broader perspective, Mick Turner, Warren Ellis and Jim White have been making music together for two decades.

So here too, expect the deft, wide strains of Turner’s guitar; White’s big, swilling drums; and of course, Ellis’ inimitable, down-home violin strains. These elements alone, in some combination or another make up The Dirty Three. Given the seven-year tacit, this isn’t just rustiness; it’s a band rediscovering its own sound. The album was recorded in parts, the longest of those gaps stretching over a year. From numerous accounts, the band’s process in the studio is very rigorous—not toward “correctness” but feeling. From serene meditations (“Ashen Snow”) to swirling sonic storms (opener “Furnace Skies”), spin a wheel and that’s likely where you’ll end up feeling.

Little can stop the haphazard jolt of the songs—not so much one instrument playing a melody, as all of them at once. “The Pier” especially is pleasantly chaotic—the drums leaping forward then falling back on themselves, jolty like an ocean breeze—before falling out altogether while the violin emotes longingly and the guitar arpeggiates imaginary chords. Yeah, some of the songs are devoid of time altogether. But it never comes off as an art-for-art’s sake ploy, rather that these three are sitting in a room together, making sounds freed from the limits of wordplay and time. Who would expect anything but chaos—much less tragic beauty.

What the three have going for them is a keen eye for drama and story. Many of the band’s first gigs included scoring for plays, installations and films. Ellis especially, with his oldtime collaborator Nick Cave, has taken his signature brand haunting accompaniments to the big screen with films like The Road, The Assasination of Jesse James and The Proposition. In this sense, the band functions like a Greek chorus, bewailing and commenting but never interfering with what they chronicle. If they’re not responding to a literal story, they’re imitating—each strophe of a melody made to stir up the residue of a feeling. “Rain” pitters and patters while “Ashen Snow” swirls and stupefies. In concert, Ellis will often introduce songs with a bizarre backstory, which adds to the emotion but also risks contextualizing the sounds in an adverse way to the listener.

For some, Toward the Low Sun could be taken as a palette cleanser. After a lifetime of listening to easily digestible music, where the next change becomes apparent, you’ve never heard the song before and yet you’re completing the next lyric—listening to vocal music in general—here’s something briskly refreshing. While it’s tempting to get underneath the band’s process and find out whether title came first or last, or what the “hook” really was, it’s almost more fulfilling to just let it play, listening with open ears. It can take a little dissection to get under its skin—or not—the great thing about this album is a listener can discover their place in it.

Dirty Three – Toward the Low Sun tracklist:

1. “Furnace Skies”
2. “Sometimes I Forget You’ve Gone”
3. “Moon on the Land”
4. “Rising Below”
5. “The Pier”
6. “Rain Song”
7. “That Was Was”
8. “Ashen Snow”
9. “You Greet Her Ghost”

The amorphous “they” say that it’s all about pacing yourself. Start too quickly, burn too bright and fall off too soon. Laze out of the gate, get left behind and never catch up. The search, then, is for that perfect medium, the point where bursting off the starting line still looks awesome, yet hasn’t sapped all your energy.

One would be remiss in thinking that Brooklyn, N.Y., garage-rock group The Men’s sophomore album, Open Your Heart, rages a bit too quickly at the outset. Sure, “Turn It Around” and “Animal” represent some of the most jaw-droppingly visceral and punchy rock ‘n’ roll released in the past few years, but Open Your Heart doesn’t remotely allow for an exhausted feeling throughout its blistering 45-minute run time. Using a breadth of rock literacy as a foundation, The Men gestate and fly through tempo, mood and production value to create an unrelenting joy of a record.

But perhaps it was best that The Men opened what will undoubtedly be their breakout record with such ribald intensity, as the next two tracks are all confidence and trust in the payoff. “Country Song” is a study in layering, a steady pile-up from one wobbly, minor-key riff to a track awash in undulating guitar noise, completely wordless the whole time. “Oscillating” stays mostly silent itself, building an out of control freight train of a track into Nick Chiericozzi moaning, “Please take the stand/I have a couple of things I’d like to ask.” Most of the first half of Open Your Heart feels unencumbered by the need for rock ‘n’ roll to have vocal narrative, instead letting impressive and singing in their own way guitars cry out for them.

For the pop-rock enthusiast in The Men’s audience, the group turns the volume right back up with the cooing-while-raging “Please Don’t Go Away,” and the closest thing to a single the band could muster up, the title track. Both of these more pop-oriented turns speak to The Men’s intelligence in dealing with rock as a whole. They could be messy garage advocates (largely evidenced by their debut, Leave Home), but instead, The Men come off as students of how to load the breadth of rock history into their magazine.

Nowhere is this academia more evident than the country-fried Allman Brothers romp “Candy,” the most narratively driven tune on the record. It’s fitting that it’s about quitting a job and relaxing. While “Candy” won’t make anyone pine for a jammier third album from the group, the song acts almost as a middle finger to the idea that garage rock, or punk, has to be stupid. It can bloody well sound stupid or thrown together, but close inspection reveals near pitch-perfect song craft.

The record lags a bit toward its conclusion, with “Cube” trending a bit too messy for the album’s mission statement. “Presence” lingers for a bit too long in its 13th Floor Elevators in Seattle vibe, even if the caterwauling vocals from Chiercozzi and Mark Pezzo prove that The Men are vastly well-served still including vocals in their mix. Thankfully, “Ex-Dreams” is a callback to what The Men have done best through their short but illustrious history: a song combining a murderer’s row of seminal 1980s hardcore bands, ranging from Hüsker Dü to Sonic Youth. It’s a two-sided jackhammer of a song, and it closes the album on the only note that it knows, a high one. In the span of four short years, The Men have gone from messy punk revivalists, reveling in the mystique of their own guitar prowess, to a formidable band, poised to make their takeover of the rock world. Open Your Heart is a startlingly propulsive statement to their close-at-hand greatness.

The Men – Open Your Heart tracklist:

1. “Turn It Around”
2. “Animal”
3. “Country Song”
4. “Oscillation”
5. “Please Don’t Go Away”
6. “Open Your Heart”
7. “Candy”
8. “Cube”
9. “Presence”
10. “Ex-Dreams”

White Rabbits are curious animals; they seem to be hopping all over the indie-pop map, but the way they’ve gilded their cage since their inception has been an enjoyable, if confusing, experience. They seem to enjoy confounding expectations and covering all the bases at the same time, like an octopus playing Twister or a parrot playing Password. The net result is somehow a smooth, enjoyable listen; it’s almost as if they have arrived at a holistically solid pop product in spite of themselves. Rather than refusing to be pigeon-holed, White Rabbits just avoid the topic entirely and do their thing.

And what an enjoyable thing it is. Despite the winsome and understated tenor vocals, there’s a lot of musical magic going on throughout the third full-length from the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based ensemble. They pick up the dynamic garbage-can accoutrements of their earlier single “Percussion Gun” and intersperse lots of organic and electronic experimental inflections throughout these 11 tracks.

The record kicks off with “Heavy Metal,” which might be an ironic statement, for it’s clearly neither. The only metal that can be heard seems to be the coin-dropping percussion reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s tired “Money.” Thankfully, they live up to that tried dictum of modern poetry to make it new. The vocals make the case for their unique brand of blue-eyed soul, but the music is presented in an experimental fashion, albeit within a conventional framework.

In other words, the sound of White Rabbits is difficult to describe. Imagine Prince fronting The Doors on pep pills and that might not be far from the mark, although on “I’m Not Me,” they sound more like Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra than on any of the other tracks.

The acid-drenched “Everyone Can’t Be Confused” showcases their keyboard-heavy talent with 21^st century psychedelia, but with such rhythmic intricacy that the cut fairly shakes apart like milk spiraling from a centrifuge.

The song called “Danny Come Inside” oozes sexy charm in such a way that one can’t help but understand what it’s really about, but then again, they convey the same slinky sexiness throughout, so maybe that’s a big clue to where the band’s brain is at. Few animals reproduce as rapidly as rabbits, after all.

After repeated listens, Milk Famous is almost too smooth for its own good—there’s not the grit and bite that can be heard from the Spoon boys (whose Britt Daniel produced their last outing, It’s Frightening), for example, and the lack of tension makes it not as interesting. In the case of White Rabbits, it’s a case of choosing to bubble under constantly where they should be breaking out. The first single, “Temporary,” with its rumbling bassline and angular electric guitar intrusions hint at the potential the group has to blow listeners away when they pull out all the stops, but they never quite take the leap over that ledge.

Still, there hasn’t been a more pleasant sonic surprise in recent memory (not since the last Soviet League record, perhaps), and there’s no doubt that more spins of Milk Famous at full blast and with a headphone on each ear will yield yet more tricks. After all, this release is just the latest magic hat from White Rabbits.

Don’t be alarmed that Poliça’s debut album cover recycles a font similar to that of the poster for the movie Drive. The fact that Give You the Ghost coasts like a car on the highway and might very well provide a really fitting soundtrack to a night joyride is purely a coincidence. Maybe it’s strategy.

Listeners are treated to a distorted noise to lead right into an experimental conglomeration in Poliça’s new album, which was released on Valentine’s Day. The vocal work is what hit us next.

From early on, it’s easy to determine how Poliça works with an emphasis on electronic, saturated with heavy guitar and drums that cloud the audio canvas. The beats are fresh and the intentions are clear, especially the way they work with distortion on voice. Unlike top-40 artists of the contemporary scene, Poliça uses its auto-tuning to layer voices instead of correct pitch. These effects add depth to the musical surface.

By track No. 3, listeners might start to notice a trend in the styling of Give You the Ghost, and soon after, you might crave something a little more substantial. The lyrics are difficult to decipher, though the vocal effects are interesting. It’s just that the anti-traditional ways of the band make it stressful to take any deeper meaning from it. It’s also the beauty in what makes the band so mysterious.

“Dark Star” chants between implementations of horns, which weren’t expected but are almost always welcome. Here, they heighten the strength of the song still early in the album, which subsequently strengthens the album as a whole.

Tying in extra instruments is always a risk, but when it pays off, the effort pays off. Poliça is ballsy and smart.

“Form” keeps the pace steady halfway through the album, where many albums start to lag. The synthesizer is funky and cool. Much of the four- to five-minute-long tunes like this one are left to instrumentals to carry them through. This strategy strays away from the common verse-chorus-verse-bridge-etc. form and tosses aside the aspect of traditional construction.

“Wandering Star” possesses a healthy and rich sound that encompasses each theme heard previously along the album. Listeners should be advised to be prepared for this trancelike vacation before closes out. It’s best experienced by itself, free of distraction and with a clear mind. You’ll understand why once it’s over. Poliça reaches its peak, meanwhile nullifying any doubts of the band’s infant success here.

Did we mention that Bon Iver really digs Poliça? Justin Vernon even said they were, “the best band [he’s] ever heard.” We can see why he would fuss about the new sound, though. Backup vocalist Mike Noyce even lent his vocals for a few tracks on the album. There’s no better endorsement in the indie community right now. And Vernon’s infamous attitude doesn’t give way to much enthusiasm it seems. So, if Vernon was really jazzed up about Poliça, then shouldn’t we be, too?

Poliça – Give You the Ghost tracklist:

1. “Amongster”
2. “I See My Mother”
3. “Violent Games”
4. “Dark Star”
5. “Form”
6. “The Maker”
7. “Lay Your Cards Out”
8. “Fist, Teeth, Money”
9. “Happy Be Fine”
10. “Wandering Star”
11. “Listening to Death”

Trust is an electronic goth band from Toronto, Canada. If you were to listen to this album and look at the album cover without any outside information you would most certainly believe that the band consisted of one overweight, white face makeup abusing, black hair dyed Goth freak that could be both male, female, or both.

However, Trust is a boy/girl two piece. They’ve been associated with acts like Crystal Castles and Death From Above 1979 but don’t have as much energy as either of them and it’s actually not the worst thing. Trust isn’t minimalist in their songwriting having only two members, but they certainly take it slow.

Every song on their debut LP, TRST, is built with essentially all the same building blocks. Each song has a simple beat, then some very simplistic synths appear during the verse that are looped until the chorus, then the vocals come in and bleed out some lines and then it all happens over again.

Every song on this album is very good at making the same sort of sound for each song and it works. Each song builds up into a dance-y sort of track that makes you want to move your body. However, mainstream audiences will most likely be turned off by the vocals on this album. It almost sounds like the character Marilyn Manson played in Party Monster is singing every single one of these songs, barely sober enough to remember the lyrics and have the strength to keep pushing air out of their lungs.

It’s this sort of distance in the vocals and lyrics that make this music so appealing. The vocals being almost forced out of the singer gives an added dissonance to the album that most electronic music can’t reach.

Most of the time over electronic beats you hear a sexy girl saying something totally irrelevant or redundant over and over again like, “I love to fly” and this album is far from that. This incredible disconnect is what makes lines like “You can’t believe in nothing, we believe in nothing” in “This Ready Flesh” stick out and make you think for a second.

For what it’s worth, this album is a collection of songs that all sound relatively the same. None of them break out of the verse, chorus, verse format in the least. This isn’t to their disadvantage for the most part. Most of these songs are very groovy and appetizing electronic tracks, but there are also some filler tracks that get lost in the mix.

Trust – TRST tracklist:

1. “Shoom”
2. “Dressed for Space”
3. “Bulbform”
4. “The Last Dregs”
5. “Candy Walls”
6. “Gloryhole”
7. “This Ready Flesh”
8. “F.T.F.”
9. “Heaven”
10. “Chrissy E”
11. “Sulk”

Hailing from Chicago, American Wolf is setting itself up to stand out in a competitive musical climate. Tales of Kamanakera is, among many things, an ambitious record that tries to please everyone–and like most projects that have their feet in too many places at once–it tends to trip up. But like most overly dedicated interns, there’s no question in what the group has to offer. The question is, are they themselves aware of their own potential?

They put their best foot forward with opening track “House of Zyer”. This is a song that uses some of the most interesting sound-collage work to come up yet this year: little snippets of found sound blend perfectly together.

Structurally, American Wolf have a lot going for them. Tracks such as “El Cielo es Azul” all but beg to be noticed. A wonderfully understated song, it’s gentle enough to be a lullaby but compelling enough to be an anthem for those wee, wasted hours of the morning.

Closer “Don’t Shake Your Head” is something of a magnificent accident. Restrained and intimate, the song transcends the otherwise juvenile lyricism of the rest of the record. Lines such as “We’re all doomed/ leave us here to rot” come across as oddly profound and cathartic. It’s a fleeting moment, and a glimmer of what American Wolf could be a with a couple of years on the road and a trustworthy producer in the studio.

As is the case with many young bands, American Wolf go for broke. So when they miss the mark, they do so by miles: throughout the entirety of Kamanakera they seem to misread where their own strengths are. This occurs on a fairly grand scale; several tracks aim for anthemic heights that fall flat where they should soar.

The devil, as they say, is in the details: minor quibbles nearly sink the Kamanakera ship–a lead singer who tries to sell emotional climaxes with a wispy voice, and inconsistent songwriting are among many things to blame. Hearing the group whimpering the sentiment “never again, never again” over an endless loop on “Muted Colors” isn’t sad or even remotely interesting. It’s just weird. Elsewhere, “Respect Your Idols” throws the masterful subtlety of “Don’t Shake Your Head” out the window and reaches for the heartstrings.

That’s not to say the band can’t produce some nice ambient arrangements. The lush guitar on “El Cielo es Azul” has more than a cameo appearance on Kamanakera. American Wolf conjure up tunes that, on their own, would be perfectly moving as instrumentals. Sadly, these instrumentals aren’t left alone; they are tinkered with and thrown together with songwriting that simply doesn’t fit; blunting the overall impact of the music. Where the album should be understated, it is instead overwrought and gushy.

So, some great songwriting on the subdued end of the scale, and some great sounds on the lavish end of the scale: how to place these two extremes together? It’s a puzzle, and one that American Wolf will figure out in time. Like most prog rock acts that struggle to find their footing at first, these Chicago musicians need to discover when enough is enough. In crafting one’s own aesthetic, it helps to understand when and where one has found too much of a good thing.

American Wolf – Tales of Kamanakera tracklist:

1. “House of Zyer”

2. “Brave New Machine”

3. “El Cielo es Azul”

4. “See Ya In L.A., America”

5. “Muted Colors”

6. “Respect Your Idols”

7. “Tales of Kamanakera”

8. “Don’t Shake Your Head”

Experimental guitarist Dustin Wong was born in Hawaii and grew up in Japan before coming back to the U.S., but his music doesn’t sound like anything else on earth. Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads is one of the most challenging, intriguing pop albums to grace this still-fresh year.

Wong has branched out impressively from the surf-rock influence of his previous releases, and even in a music scene that has more than a few other masters of the dense sonic landscapes and loop-pedal kung fu, this album stands out.

Even though Wong is a guitarist making use of a loop pedal and heavy production, his stuff brings to mind the electronic experimentation of the late 1970s. There’s a pure joy on display in Wong’s playing with tones and notes and slotting them into incredibly complicated, clockwork compositions.

“Purple Slipped Right” is a great example: whatever the opposite of minimalism is, that’s what this song is. Clicks, beeps and every possible sound that a person can get out of a guitar is conjured up into space one by one and conscripted into service. It’s too busy and demanding to be truly ambient, and more mechanical and technical than Zoe Keating or Owen Pallet, who also like to build up songs using loop pedals and single instruments.

Other numbers, such as “Pencil Drove Hill Moon,” are so statico that they sound like the soundtracks to the marvelous, experimental Nintendo games that you never played. The way simple melodies loop in on themselves, gaining in complexity each time is something of an acquired taste, but it has a profoundly hypnotic fractal quality.

Of course, like any really good experiment, sometimes it goes a bit far. “Space Tunnel Grafitti“ starts with a piercing sound like a fire alarm that takes a solid minute to even start evolving into something you might loosely call “pleasant to listen to.” It’s the same principle that drives the pleasantly wind-chime waterfall sounds that open “Diagonally Talking Echo,” but it’s been stretched to the point that it’s just broken.

Tracks like “Tea Tree Leaves Retreat” which seem like they’re trying to be soothing never really are, either: there’s just too much finicky stuff going on absolutely all the time. The only real emotion this album seems to be able to convey is a kind of playful glee, and it’s the tracks that bask most blatantly in it, like “Pink Diamond,” that are the high points.

Still, there’s a pure joy of watching somebody drive across the music map, hit the bit marked, “Here there be dragons,” and keep going at full speed. That makes this album a worthwhile listen.

Dustin Wong – Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads tracklist:

1. “Ice Sheets on Feet Prints”
2. “Feet Prints on Flower Dreads”
3. “Abstract Horse Slow Motion”
4. “Tea Tree Leaves Retreat”
5. “Triangle Train Stop”
6. “To Tore Oh”
7. “On/In the Way”
8. “Pink Diamond”
9. “Purple Slipped Right”
10. “Route Through Eyebrow”
11. “Sprinkle Wet Toes”
12. “Pencil Drove Hili Moon”
13. “Evening Curves Straight”
14. “Back Towards Night”
15. “Space Tunnel Grafitti”
16. “Diagonally Talking Echo”

First things first: yes, the synths are back.

On The Magnetic Fields’ new album, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, there’s no hunting for them, either. Opener “Your Girlfriend’s Face” kicks off with a bitch-slap of synthesizers signaling the band means business. But like so many in an economy where flat is the new up, this business still needs recovery.

After three albums with a common theme of zero synthesizers, Magnetic Fields ringleader Stephen Merritt brings that beat back with swirling, dense electro-pop that comes off simultaneously delicate and belabored. Still, simply a return to the sound (synth pop) and record label (Merge) that spawned their unqualified masterpiece (1999’s 69 Love Songs) doesn’t guarantee a win.