Pop 'stache

Texas, for all its country-western red statery or blue-blood Austin indie rock, has put together arguably the most comprehensive state-centric résumé for avant garde music. While Explosions in the Sky don’t really count, the state also spawned the decades-old and scene-defining weirdo group The Red Krayola, a band so far off base they were the odd ones on a double bill with Joanna Newsom. In a similar style, yet not as completely off-the-wall, are Charalambides, a divorced couple making avant-folk for almost the past 20 years. Their discography is something to be taught in music myth (10 full-length LPs, along with dozens of compilations, EPs, and yes, CD-Rs), and approaching such a thing is a fool’s errand; one can only hope to make up the difference by picking up where the band is now. To that end, the band’s new LP, Exile, works as decent primer: frequent moments of atmospheric beauty, just as many of astounding weirdness, and a smattering of things (including two entire tracks) that fall spectacularly flat.

On an immediately positive note, the record starts out without requiring much of the listener. Opener “Autumn Leaves” is plaintive, trembling acoustic guitar and nary anything else. It’s an inviting, if static, introduction to a record that has no intention of being either. From there the record splits into two distinct sides: when Charalambides wax toward Explosions in the Sky-style atmospherisms, and when they dive a little bit too far toward compatriots Red Krayola. Christina Taylor, one half of the core members of the band, contributes verses that are only confounding in their variety. On songs such as “Immovable” or “Desecrated,” she sings nonrhyming poems, content to let words fall with barely melodic ties. Her verse, when interpretable, trends toward unsettling views of human guilt and emotion. “There is no way to be brought back to life,” or so she says in “Desecrated.” Most of the tracks take this dark, hallucinatory tone, accentuated by deep baritone guitar, spindly lead guitar, and reverberating rhythms of distortion. This formula, if you could call it that, yields the most fruit.

The strongest two tracks, “Before You Go” and “Into the Earth” build off of this mantra, utilizing Taylor’s dextrous voice to achieve a level of intimacy that the other tracks don’t share.

The times the group veers off the well-worn path of moderate accessibility are the times Exile feels too difficult to access. Closer “Pity Pity Me” is a repetitive mess, stripping away what makes the group great (Taylor’s vocal histrionics, the echoing guitar work) for dinky piano and two-bar verses in creep mode. “Words Inside,” the weakest of the bunch, descends into an almost interminable mass of incoherent chanting, something akin to a relaxation tape soundtrack or the slightly overbearing music you hear in a holistic doctor’s office. While both have their unique pleasures, and arguably work better as standalone pieces, their sheer size interrupts any positive momentum generated by the record’s more religiously structured elements.

This weight hefted on Exile by the two 14-minute set pieces, in a neat bit of contradiction, expresses the limit of Charalambides’ avant garde abilities as presently constituted. Much like Krayola, their past exploits don’t necessarily fade in the light of Exile’s not-quite excellence, so the legacy they’ve cultivated doesn’t disappear. But Exile as a standalone piece of avant-folk falls a bit short of the lofty goals its centerpieces set it up for.

Charalambides – Exile tracklist:

1. “Autumn Leaves”
2. “Desecrated”
3. “Words Inside”
4. “Immovable”
5. “Before You Go”
6. “Into the Earth”
7. “Wanted to Talk”
8. “Pity Pity Me”

High Places, the do-it-yourself duo consisting of Rob Barber and Mary Pearson, has returned. Once lauded as the feel-good indie group of the year, the band has taken to exploring some, shall we say, lower ground with its latest release. The familiar formula continues in Original Colors: Pearson pontificating poetically over Barber’s deft percussion stylings, with a host of bent dance riffs and dreamy keyboards serving as the cream filling.

It’s immediately apparent that two things are lacking in this release. First, Pearson seems to be getting complacent. Her ghosted wordplay used to cut stones and burn in memory. Now, on tracks such as “Year Off,” she can’t manage to string together anything meaningful, even when the imagery is arresting, “The blackish water/Swirling around/In a basin I left in the yard.”  The effect is always sweet, if not a little unnerving to hear her voice shudder over the bare-bones arrangements. However, the suspension of disbelief breaks, and listeners might find themselves falling through. The second matter is that Barber’s electro, jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, salsa, (please chime in with more here) drum contributions are killing it here. They are eons more infectious, informed and danceable than previous efforts. The drumming is so pitch-perfect, though, that it only calls attention to the vacuity of the vocal track. Case in point: bongo banger “The Pull.”

Well, all this and that the album is not lighthearted. No, no, no. After a nonchalant attitude toward songwriting, championing teenage angst, dripping in awkward sexuality, High Places want you to know just how serious they are, whether it’s Pearson milking a Dryad-like persona or Barber dwelling on an atonal, seething electro chord for just a moment too long. They are High Places, and if their first record lacked any real gumption, well, this one is back with a vengeance. That doesn’t mean it’s without moments. “Morning Ritual,” a little elegiac piece where the two interplay over heavy dubbing, is a standout if only for its deep reggae feel. Likewise, the luminous chorale “Twenty Seven” deftly loops Pearson’s voice over itself, eventually cutting out all accompaniment, absolving the tension momentarily. The words are indecipherable, but the harmonies are gorgeous.

What’s so annoying about Original Colors is you can see the band trying to be different for different’s sake; the members are trying to consciously separate themselves from their contemporaries and doff historical precedent (at times, it seems as though they’re playing a Depeche Mode pad) or at least get away enough that a comparison is only a key-in and not a foregone conclusion.

But they did move to Brooklyn from Los Angeles, so what can one expect? Phantagram, Cults, Yacht and even Crystal Castles are all running on similar concepts, so it could be seen as a survival tactic rather than an abandonment of roots.

All said, Original Colors is not a bad album, not by any means. It’s even got some muscle. The problem is, there are plenty of “decent” albums out there from a slew of like-minded electro-indie bands. So why High Places? Maybe, just maybe, the band is correct in trying to divert from their contemporaries.

High Places – Original Colors tracklist:

1. “Year Off”
2. “The Pull”
3. “Sonora”
4. “Ahead Stop”
5. “Sophia”
6. “Dry Lake”
7. “Morning Ritual”
8. “Banksia”
9. “Twenty Seven”
10. “Altos Lugares”

Listening to Saves the Day’s third post-In Reverie album, Daybreak, feels a little bit like intruding on the saddest case of domestic co-dependency ever.  The last in a stunted trilogy that finds frontman Chris Conley “confronting” his emotional and psychiatric issues through tired pop-punk, Daybreak is a classic example of the one-step-back formula in the phrase, “Two steps forward, one step back.” While Saves the Day has made great strides after In Reverie (2003) to prove the band isn’t one of the dozens of emo-punk also-rans, Daybreak is a classic also-ran album. It strains for what once was grand about the band while at the same time diving down new pathways that, unlike the welcome changes of Under the Boards (2007), bear little to no fruit.

Part of the reason Daybreak doesn’t resemble other Saves the Day albums lies in the total lineup refresh the band went through in 2009. Conley stands now as the only Saves the Day member who had anything to do with Under the Boards, or any album before it. This isn’t your Saves the Day, unless your Saves the Day is merely Conley’s magically still-rising vocal pitch. Tracks such as “Chameleon” make this abundantly clear. Proggy, acoustic guitar and cymbal pangs give way to a U2 guitar chorus tied together with Conley’s pleading, unsure lyrics.

The musical changes are easier to stomach, even if they barely resemble old Saves the Day. “Let It All Go” is chugging number that gets to a not-altogether-great conclusion. Singles “1984” and “Deranged and Desperate” achieve that big chorus that old-school Saves the Day seemed to have in spades. If in the market for an oddball, 10-minute, half-emo experiment that has no other layers other than the overt ones, the title (and opening) track does just fine.

None of the tunes (with the possible exception of “Living Without Love”) hold muster against any of Saves the Day’s previous efforts, but the band’s constant reinvention of itself is at least interesting.

The same can’t be said for Conley. Where his peers have failed lyrically by running out of flavor (Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazarra) or obsessively confounding an audience with meaningless verse (Brand New’s Jesse Lacey), Conley seems to have dropped all pretense of artistic distance and begun treating his lyrics (and by extension Saves the Day itself) as his one true love. It’s not hard to see the reasoning in this: when an individual is the last remaining original member of a band many call “seminal,” it’s probably very easy to become emotionally, even somewhat romantically, attached to the idea of a band.

Conley has taken the whole thing a step too far. With the exception of the title track, all of the songs on Daybreak have Conley begging for the rekindling of a spark that has apparently long since gone out. While he might be able to personally say that he’s singing to a woman, or a significant other, we don’t know this person. In a listener’s ear, Conley is either singing to us or himself, both markedly co-dependent, dangerous choices. Daybreak is marketed as the turn toward health, the breaking of a dam of self-destruction and letting a wellspring of positivity flow. Instead, we get Conley wailing every possible iteration of, “I love you; come back.” The lyrical deficiencies are tiring and slightly offensive–Conley is implying that he’s better, yet still weakly cloying to a subject that doesn’t love him anymore. From an armchair psychological standpoint, a song such as “O” says it all. “Sitting here all along, waiting for you to come home to yourself,” laid over the sappiest emo ballad the band have ever written, is proof that despite claims of health, Conley is still the same emo-punk boy he used to be. This time, the narrative is just a little too familiar.

Saves the Day – Daybreak tracklist:

1. “Daybreak”
2. “Let It All Go”
3. “1984”
4. “E”
5. “Z”
6. “Deranged and Desperate”
7. “Chameleon”
8. “Living Without Love”
9. “U”
10. “O”
11. “Undress Me”

Everyone seems to think “Scottish Emo” is breaking news. And maybe it is. But then, how did we not see it coming after Franz Ferdinand’s teenage dance floor, Mogwai’s brooding hypnosis, Belle and Sebastian’s lovelorn whine or The Cinematics in general? It’s a genre that seems to have emerged holistically out of an already fertile scene. We Were Promised Jetpacks, along with FatCat labelmates Frightened Rabbit, appear to be the self-appointed marshals. The trouble is—if Scotch Emotional does exist—almost all of the aforementioned bands do it more tastefully than We Were Promised Jetpacks.

In the Pit of the Stomach winds on like an incomplete thought, bleeding the listener of patience while refusing to give them that all-coveted catharsis. Everything from the album’s lettering to the band’s stage aesthetic to their name points to the worst clichés of your best friend’s-boyfriend’s emo band; to that end—the shows are apparently killer.  What’s recorded on tape may not be quite what you expect, but it’s close enough to fit a working definition of the stereotype.

There are tall walls of guitar sound, endless clean riffing, distorted drums, waxy vocals from frontman Adam Thompson and a lyric sheet worthy of preteen Tumblr feeds. OK, maybe that’s too harsh. The voice of the album alternates between foolhardy naivety and experience, so much so that it becomes difficult to believe either. Lines such as, “I’m soaring through the occasions of all the years that I’ve wasted,” are almost too self-indulgent to really care a lick for.

WWPJ rarely manages to shave a number below four minutes, and while we are shortchanged on the totally indulgent, shoegazing instrumentals, it’s probably because the boys don’t want to preclude radio airplay.

There’s incredible repetition of melody (the vocal-line often mirrors the guitars) and insistence on lyrical hooks to the extent that sometimes what seems juvenile is given weight and, too suddenly, significance.

What’s to note? Thompson’s vocals, for one. While the performance itself is bland and unconvincing, it belies versatility, a noxious character intrinsic in the sound of his voice, not to mention the woeful words it pronounces. There’s standout (get this) “Sore Thumb,” which uses a trilled rubato lead and an epic buildup from hallway singing to get an ear-bleeding, anthemic finale. “Act on Impulse” has some of the most fetching production work in the album—reversed violins, rollicking floor toms and an endless distorted drone beneath a voice full of happy regrets.

Those pining for emotional sing-alongs—a gushing energy from the gut—will be sated, but to those hoping this would be the We Were Promised Jetpacks album where the band bridled their considerable talent and energy into a disciplined art to be reckoned with: Well, it might be another year.

We Were Promised Jetpacks – In the Pit of the Stomach tracklist:

1. “Circles and Squares”
2. “Medicine”
3. “Through the Dirt and the Gravel”
4. “Act on Impulse”
5. “Hard to Remember”
6. “Picture of Health”
7. “Sore Thumb”
8. “Boy in the Backseat”
9. “Human Error”
10. “Pear Tree”

For a 41-year-old R&B musician, Van Hunt is pretty remarkable. In a day when people consider 32-year-old Usher to be a grandpa, it must be difficult to find the courage to put out any music at all. It’s a quite brilliant approach to take if musicians wish to pay their bills.

Hunt uses a multitude of musical tactics to tell his story. A heavily distorted guitar in his background always seems to paint the right picture for whatever angle he chooses. It’s also rare for audiences to hear a legitimate drum kit on audio pieces from an R&B vocalist. Many choose synthetic beats as the scene-setter for their work, but Hunt remains organic with his percussion. It sounds right for him, oddly enough. It’s a neat effect to hear original beats against his vocals because it goes as rock ‘n’ roll as an R&B song can go.

Jams such as “North Hollywood,” “What Were You Hoping For?” and “Moving Targets” will have people pressing repeat. Although each works cleverly in its own way, their mixing work is all something new. They’re harmless in the way that they create something of their own, but also have a white-light quality that are difficult to find an argument against. They’re just good.

Although it doesn’t start well, the album soon turns to greatness. Let it be known that choosing to begin the album with the thrasher “Watching You Go Crazy Is Driving Me Insane” might not have been the best idea. Once that was out of the way, though, real stuff begins to happen.

What’s easily recognized is how this dude’s take on absurdism is one of a kind. “Plum” falls on the halfway point in the lineup and is a psychedelic trip after the second chorus. When listeners get past the bulk of the song, they’ll hear an audio-collage of quotes spoken by different voices (this also happens later in “What Were You Hoping For?”). The track leads into an explosive finish that’s all too experimental for the ears to handle at his point, but the risk is at least admirable.

After this is “Falls (Violet),” which is a charming track unlike the rest. The slow guitar sounds very southern as it chimes, “Give them all they want/And all they want is more/Read between the lines and you miss the point.”

His tunes are legitimized not only by his crazy-spectacular musicianship, but also by his exciting lyricism. “Moving Targets” takes the listeners through a difficult but fascinating timeline of metaphors: “Fraction but not broken/Still out in the open,” “Wounded but not through yet/Still determined not to lose yet.”

It’s like Lenny Kravitz had a mid-life crisis and suddenly decided to switch genres, but he didn’t ultimately decide on a genre; he just made music.

What’s funny is that if Kravitz had indeed gone crazy and made this kind of music, people would’ve laughed at it. Somehow Hunt gets away with this style of art.

Even today, it’s hard to find a musician who produces good music and has both the edge of someone who’s been around the block once already and the freshness of a certain relation to contemporary music. Hunt is almost a veteran of R&B, but he still gets the big picture and what he needs to do to stay afloat in today’s make-it-or-break-it music scene. This fearless approach will ultimately bring him gold, even if it’s measured in personal accomplishment. It doesn’t matter much either way because his work here is definitely worth some pride.

Van Hunt – What Were You Hoping For? tracklist:

1. “North Hollywood”
2. “Watching You Go Crazy Is Driving Me Insane”
3. “Designer Jeans”
4. “Plum”
5. “Falls (Violet)”
6. “Moving Target”
7. “Eyes Like Pearls”
8. “A Time Machine Is My New Girlfriend”
9. “What Were You Hoping For?”
10. “Cross Dresser”
11. “It’s a Mysterious Hustle”

If there’s nothing original left to say, is there really a point to saying it?

The New Division obviously owes a debt to New Order and its predecessor, Joy Division, but on Shadows, the band sounds more like The New Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Here’s another group for whom the 1990s never happened, with a synthy, boppy bed and glitchy electronic drums to dance upon and echoey tenor vocals laid across the top. In short, director John Hughes (Pretty In Pink, Sixteen Candles, etc.) may be dead, but music inspired by soundtracks to his films is definitely not.

In fact, “post-new-wave” music is a relatively recent development. From the dance party craziness of Chromeo and Black Kids to the mournful faux-goth electro leanings of Washed Out and Besnard Lakes, inspirations have been drawn from the electronic approach of synth provocateurs such as Depeche Mode, Erasure and even ’80s pretty boys Duran Duran.

The New Division clearly has never met a music trope from the 1980s that it didn’t like, so, on “shallow play” one can hear the electropop sound of Tears For Fears in the milieu of the space-rock ambiance of A Flock of Seagulls. “Violent” begins with such a Yaz moment that one half-expects to bump into Alison Moyet Upstairs at Eric’s, but it clearly reduces its aspirations to The Fixx doing soundtrack music.  Where is Michael Pare to save the day when this post-apocalyptic soundstage needs a hero?

The opening cut sounds like it could have been a New Order b-side or a Camouflage cut lost in the annals of time.

“Hearts For Sale” even introduces some screamadelica-licious back-beat-addicted rhythms a la Primal Scream or their Madchester homies The Stone Roses, along with crafting an atmosphere reminiscent of the latter’s “I Wanna Be Adored.”

“True Lies” provides a basis for connecting 80s ethereal guitar/synthpop auteurs Cocteau Twins to today’s Besnard Lakes, with the electronic rhythmic intricacy of the former and the soaring, falsetto Beach Boys-like vocals of the latter.  Regrettably, the song only appears to relate thematically to the James Cameron-Arnold Schwarzenegger spend-athon.

“Munich” might as well be set in “China” for all of its similarity to the Red Rockers’ song of that name, although a certain sonic similarity to Norwegian songsmiths of the ’80s A-Ha can’t be denied either (this is also noticeable toward the end of the song “Sense”).

One can actually picture The Breakfast Club dancing across high school desks to “Sense,” or a dream sequence between Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan. Or maybe she just wants to run downtown to meet Ducky at the record store. The compellingly jangly guitar line that kicks in with some 90 seconds to go comes close to redeeming it, but it quickly comes back to its “senses” and introduces a synthesizer bed, programmed drums and whooping falsetto vox.

Curiously enough, the title track is little more than an instrumental transition, but perhaps members of The New Division selected this name as their title to indicate the ambient through-line they are trying to project.  Despite the lyrics of “Soft,” it’s clear that what they have “all figured out” is OMD’s “Enola Gay.”

At the end of these 14 synthpop confections, The New Division bring to mind a line from Detective Frank Drebin (as played by Leslie Nielsen) in The Naked Gun: “It’s like eating a spoonful of Drano. Sure, it’ll clean you out, but it’ll leave you hollow inside.”  Shadows is merely a collection of shadows from the past, a clearinghouse of the synthesized past that only can result in a future of hollowness.

The New Division – Shadows tracklist:

1. “Opium”
2. “Shallow Play”
3. “Sense”
4. “Shadows”
5. “Violent”
6. “Soft”
7. “Munich”
8. “True Lies”
9. “LA Noire”
10. “Hearts for Sale”
11. “Special”
12. “Memento”
13. “Shadows II”
14. “Saturday Night”

From the dark and eerie depths of experimental, indie goth electronica comes Zola Jesus—aka Nika Roza Danilova—here releasing her third studio album, Conatus. Zola Jesus has come to resent the idea of her music being coined as “goth rock,” but because of the creepy tension between languid string instruments, straight industrial percussion, and Danilova’s haunted vocals within each and every song on this extremely cohesive album, the continued application of that term in describing her music is pretty inevitable.

Constantly teetering just on the edge of approachability, Danilova toys with the notion of pop music by spreading strange details throughout Conatus. There is constant warping and pitch-bending in all of the strings, while Zola Jesus’ voice anchors the melodic element of her songwriting with her strong, throaty, Florence Welch-like singing. In fact, she seems to have adopted that strength within the density of the vocals behind Florence and the Machine, but she added her own unique darkness to the sound that has led to a style that is very much her own. She will dwell on one melody for the length of a song, but the melody tends to push the boundaries of what pop music would consider comfortable.

As lush as it is, the voice of Zola Jesus does not seem important to her as a songwriter—not so much as the experience of an entire song in all of its unsettling contradictions and differences in texture. Take the steady vocals on “Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake” in comparison to the ghostly harmonica that wails in the background. Through this simple willingness for her voice to take part in the song as opposed to soaring on top and in front of it, Danilova creates an entirely new atmosphere. The song seems less like a separate song in the album than it does a crucial element to a larger, darker idea.

While this gothic sound is maintained impressively throughout Conatus, the consistency of the ghostly melodies, after a while, forces them to approach predictability.

This, again, makes for a worthwhile listening experience, but it is more a larger experience of a dark, electro drama than a traditional listening experience in which listeners will return to individual songs that tugged at very specific strings within their hearts. This is not a collection of confessions or remembrances; the album itself is the remembrance.

On songs such as “Seekir” and “Shivers,” slightly stronger melodies emerge, allowing her voice to come farther forward in the mix and convey some individuality within the album. But these hints of uniqueness are very slight, not pushing the boundaries of Zola Jesus so much as the boundaries of genre itself.

Danilova has said that she aims for mammoth, sweeping sounds in her music so her listeners might enjoy being enraptured in it. She certainly has achieved this goal in the project of Zola Jesus. Trickier answers come into play, however, when the question arises of just how far—and for how long—this type of hypnotization can travel in the realm of music.

Zola Jesus – Conatus tracklist:

1. “Swords”
2. “Avalanche”
3. “Vessel”
4. “Hikikomori”
5. “Ixode”
6. “Seekir”
7. “In Your Nature”
8. “Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake”
9. “Shivers”
10. “Skin”
11. “Collapse”

Ambition is fascinating to encounter. It seems the most ambitious projects are taken upon by the most free-spirited beings among us, those who have the ability to allow their inherent personal mysteries to flourish and discover, acknowledge and somehow surpass the limits of the self. It will not take much bending of arms to get music lovers to agree that Björk qualifies as one of these beings.

Four years since her last album release, Björk has returned with her unmistakably brutal force on Biophilia. Featuring numerous specialized instruments, high drama, complex harmonies and time signatures, a Tesla coil, a fusion of science and art, and Björk’s heady lioness voice, the album is nothing if not a work of purely grand art. And oh, yeah, it’s also the world’s first iPad application album, meaning the fusion of science and art is so central to the album’s guts that Björk created 10 apps (one for each track) alongside interactive artist, Scott Snibbe, to further enhance the album’s overall concept and allow listeners to contribute to the creative process.

Take “Virus,” for example, one of the album’s more melodically approachable masterpieces. Featuring the crystal-like clinking of a gameleste, a harp- and xylophonelike instrument specifically created for Biophilia, the piece describes the fatal love story between cell and virus. App users will try to stop the virus’s attack, but this will stop the song from ever finishing; the virus must be allowed to ride out its destiny as the lyrics narrate it. “Like a virus/patient hunter/I’m waiting for you/I’m starving for you … My sweet adversary.”

But interactive app-play apparently was not enough for Björk, a lady who rests on exactly zero laurels. Beyond the apps, each song’s musical structure or theme also corresponds to its title, a scientific phenomenon in some capacity. The album’s mystifying opening track, “Moon,” for example—reminiscent of a slightly more languid Joanna Newsom—operates musically based on cycles and sequences, à la—yep, you got it—Lunar cycles. “Crystalline,” released as the album’s first single, is based on structure itself, featuring dense chords (again on the gameleste) that change frequently as Björk narrates: “Listen how they grow.” “Dark Matter” plays with musical particles via scales, resulting in gothic and bafflingly complex melodies that vibrate over low, muted, and quaky organ tones. “Thunderbolt” is where the Tesla coil comes into play with real captured lightning.

Produced entirely by Björk herself (minus one collaboration with 16bit on “Crystalline”), Biophilia is not so much an entirely listenable album as it is a hallmark of gall and the type of creativity that only can be harvested by the most brave, intelligent and wonderfully childlike among us.

The woman deserves to be praised relentlessly for these qualities, and she has been thus far in her career. In an era that bullies technology for destroying the album as a conceptual work of art, Björk marches on full-steam ahead whether you’re with her or not.

Since the woman is nuts enough to take on a 17/8 time signature on this album more than once, maybe give in to her just a little bit and see what you discover. Her Biophilia virus must be allowed to ride out its destiny, right? Just try to leave the swan dress behind for now. You can at least try.

Björk – Biophilia tracklist:

1. “Moon”
2. “Thunderbolt”
3. “Crystalline”
4. “Cosmogony”
5. “Dark Matter”
6. “Hollow”
7. “Virus”
8. “Sacrifice”
9. “Mutual Core”
10. “Solstice”

It’s not often that one can go into an album with a blind listen. It’s extremely rare, yet it can be incredibly exciting for the listener. In the case of Wise Blood’s EP, These Wings, many have no expectations or preconceived notions, so it’s safe to say it will live up to all of them.

After a few listens, it’s still difficult to have a firm grasp on how to classify Christopher Laufman’s soulful sampling and head-nodding music. He declared himself a “sample warlock.” Initial impressions might be that if The Weeknd were a 21-year-old white kid from Pittsburgh who, instead of slyly seducing every woman from here to Canada, had indie-sensibilities and wore his heart on his sleeve, all while harboring deep, dark aspirations of something more, this is the kind of music he would make.

Whatever the comparison may be, These Wings is dope.

The samples, claps and horns mixed with the falsetto shouldn’t work, but they more than do. The hypnotizing beats and thought-provoking lyrics combine for an interesting seven-track, 17-minute journey.

The EP kicks off with “Fantasize,” a short prelude for what’s to come. Laufman doesn’t waste any of the one minute and 40 seconds allotted for the track, as he goes right for the lyrical jugular. “I guess I’m looking at the sky waiting for stars to align/It gets harder to sleep when you start losing your mind … You should never trust a kid that acts like me,” is a bold opening statement. Bordering the fine line between optimism and self-deprecation, it hints to this young man’s lyrical capabilities.

On “Darlin’ You’re Sweet,” Wise Blood slows things down a little with a reversed organ sample and jagged piano keys. This sets the backdrop for a heart-breaking anthem where Laufman takes the blame for the follies of the relationship, while clearly fighting the desire to hold on and wanting to do right for the both of them. “You need someone secure, who can give you more than I know that I can. I need someone who won’t fade when I go insane and I can’t stand, don’t think that you can.”

When he gets to the “The Lion,” Laufman surprises the listener yet again. After almost convincing ears that they’ve got him pegged, he breaks out a tuba sample that accompanies a poppy, soul-clapping beat. It’s a short trip into his egotistical side, where he talks about taking over the world in a prideful manner.

“I’m shooting for the moon,” he shyly says on the last track, “Penthouse Suites,” where it’s shown, once again, that Laufman has the highest aspirations but is not sure if he can reach them. “Just let me know this life is what I deserve.”

These Wings is a solid introduction to anyone not familiar with Wise Blood and clearly enough to cleanse the palate for those fans anticipating a full-length release.  None will have him pegged 100 percent, but Laufman definitely has found a home on many iPods for the foreseeable future.

Wise Blood – These Wings tracklist:

1. “Fantasize”
2. “Darlin’ You’re Sweet”
3. “Loud Mouths”
4. “I’m Losing My Mind”
5. “Nosferatu”
6. “The Lion”
7. “Penthouse Suites”

Modeselektor’s persistence on refuting generic labels reaches full force in its latest album, Monkeytown. The collection pulls together sonic resources within the dance music realm, however, its content exceeds simply electronic and techno vibes. Fusing hip-hop rhymes, soothing R&B, punk-rap and fanciful quirks into respective tracks makes for a unique, although not entirely cohesive, album. Despite the eclectic nature of Monkeytown as a whole, Modeselektor’s varied approach lends itself to an immense construction of tension, whether that tension is welcomed or not.

Although genre bending seems suitable for the Berlin duo’s style, Monkeytown’s playful energy is, in part, the result of unique collaborations with outside vocalists and rappers. Originally, Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary planned for a purely instrumental album. However, their decision to include a third element, the voice, expanded Modeselektor’s potential to chop, screw, and layer vocal tracks in appropriate places, thus developing their diverse sound further.

Thom Yorke’s appearance on “Shipwrecked” and “This” is unmistakable since Radiohead’s output is easy to detect, but through the segmentation of Yorke’s vocals, Modeselektor gives his softhearted lyrics greater emotional depth. “Shipwrecked” is immensely hypnotic, largely because of its ambient undertones, while the latter track relies on echoed swells and Yorke’s rolling lyrics to saturate the listener.

Among the 11-song feat, “Pretentious Friends” stands out for its heavy rap orientation, kinky basslines, and squiggly synths. L.A. native Busdriver provides his egotistical rhymes on the track, and the sonic filters, squeaks and warps that Modeselektor applies to his lyrics carry the output onto the dance floor. “Humanized” is a rather horrifying take on the rap game as it utilizes eerie vibrations that sound as though they are emitted from space, while Anti Pop Consortium’s blank, straightforward chorus depicts unsettling imagery.

Another track that maintains a cohesive motive is Miss Platinum’s appearance on “Berlin,” where her soulful, natural voice is melded against chopped harmonies in the hook. The gravity of songs such as “German Clap” and “Evil Twin” differ from the aforementioned singles because within each, genre diversity and experimentation take a front seat. ”German Twin,” in particular, flirts with funky U.K. rhythms but adds its own twist with ascending synth chords contradicting descending, bubbly bass.

Overall, Monkeytown is an extensive, almost overreaching collection that isn’t as accessible as many of its contemporaries.

As a whole, the album comes off rather scattered in its attempts to reach a particular audience, and it might be received as experimentation that has gone a bit too far. Nonetheless, although its disorientation has the potential to confuse and sour some listeners’ appreciation, the mixture of Modeselektor’s approach and its playful nature as a party disc renders it worth a listen—especially if that listen is under bright, flashing lights on the dance floor.

Modeskeletor – Monkeytown tracklist:

1. “Blue Clouds”
2. “Pretentious Friends”
3. “Shipwreck”
4. “Evil Twin”
5. “German Clap”
6. “Berlin”
7. “Grillwalker”
8. “Green Light Go”
9. “Humanized”
10. “This”
11. “War Cry”

There are some bands that rip one’s heart into pieces and leave a person inwardly sobbing, thanking the unknowable forces above and below for allowing humans to revel in the experience of listening. And there are other bands that are great for, say, Sofia Coppola films.

Long Island-based Twin Sister has been getting some good buzz as of late, which is slightly disconcerting. Based on their latest release, In Heaven, it seems as though they belong more in the latter category—certainly not the first.

Coppola’s films are wonderful. They’re dreamy, lush, other-worldly, highly self-contained and slightly repressed in an exciting way, with just the perfect amounts of silence and oddness. Her music choices add a significant amount to the aura of her films; the subdued shoegaze quality of her soundtracks have helped to solidify her highly specific tone as auteur. Twin Sister has a lot of those same good qualities—they, too, are dreamy, lush, repressed and ripe for cultivating dazes—but the extent of their simplicity is, frankly, a little boring.

In Heaven is nothing if not simple. The percussion is straight and on-the-beat in every single song, and the instrumental details are sparse and small-sounding. The vocals (from both lead singer Andrea Estella and singer/guitarist Eric Cardona) are ­equally small and close to us and have the quality that is the exact opposite of vibrato. Not that they don’t do this well—Twin Sister sounds confident in their pillowy basicness, à la Sneaker Pimps, The Radio Dept. or Cocteau Twins. There are some lovely moments on this album, such as the sustained soft vocals, inward intensity and ethereal harmonies on “Kimmi in a Rice Field,” a song that sounds a bit like Sigur Ros’ more structurally basic moments.

One element that sets In Heaven apart—and not in a great way—is the addition of camp on top of this sleepy, kewpie-doll rock.

Twin Sister has some kitschy disco that shows up relatively often on this album, which is presumably meant to be endearing in a hip and/or conscious way, but instead leads to some flat, sometimes lackluster territory. Paired with its own restraint, the kitsch often forces Twin Sister to sound like an opening jam band in a jazz funk club on a slow Monday night. This feeling is most recognizable in a piece such as “Bad Street,” which features such static lyrics as “Bad house/Bad street/Big hands/Big feet/Got a car/Big big/Bad boy/Bad streak.”

The one song that even slightly approached a little much-needed chaos is “Spain,” the middle of which features some dysfunction, raw melodic emotion and—finally—lack of restraint. That’s good news for a song that would otherwise have remained all too reminiscent of a James Bond theme song—female kitten voice and all—minus the arousal.

Again, aura of dazed simplicity is one Twin Sister does pretty well. The slow, peaceful ending to “Eastern Green”—and thus the entire album—is gorgeous, featuring whispers of vocals, piano, bass, guitar and quiet windy effects. It seems very likely, though, that Twin Sister will turn out to be a band we’ll admit to knowing and liking while we confidently nod and shrug to one another. We might even go to a show of theirs and say it was a solid one, but our hearts, our lives, and our feelings will remain unharmed, and thus ultimately unfixed. In other words, In Heaven is put together well and definitely is what it set out to be, but if you’re seeking out sounds to feel and react to viscerally, do not be surprised when not much of anything happens at all.

Twin Sister – In Heaven tracklist:

1. “Daniel”
2. “Stop”
3. “Bad Street”
4. “Space Babe”
5. “Kimmi in a Rice Field”
6. “Luna’s Theme”
7. “Spain”
8. “Gene Ciampi”
9. “Saturday Sunday”
10. “Eastern Green”

Every once in a while, one stumbles across a record that is totally unheralded and yet somehow hits all the listener’s sweet spots. With the caveat that those “sweet spots” are highly subjective, this is such an album. The 12 songs here have sprung forth so fully formed and self-assured that one could mistake them for a veteran act lost in the wrinkles of time and tinnitus. And yet, their approach is so meek, so unassuming, so effortlessly twee, yet brimming with hushed intensity, that it’s clear one could pass them on a Milwaukee street corner and not even bat an eye. What a shame that would be.

The record starts strong and only gets better.  Thankfully, New York’s Captured Tracks label didn’t pass them up on the cyber-street-corner, as they signed Veronica Falls to release their first single 10 minutes after the band launched their Myspace page. That first single, “Found Love in a Graveyard,” could in one sense serve as Veronica Falls’ manifesto and kicks off the London quartet’s first long-player. Given the opening notes, it would be easy to mistake them for retro-goth cellar-dwellers, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Rather, their winsome melodies sparkle and shine like a silver stream sparkling on a sunny, crisp autumn day. Sure, there’s a ghostly chill and a sense that winter is soon coming, but for now, all is lovely, if spooky.

Could “The Fountain” be a female-framed response to The Smiths’ “Reel Around The Fountain,” or is it an argument to refuse The Wedding Present’s Take Fountain? The plea to “Stephen” is girded by a Nirvana-like bassline, but it has Helium highs built upon it, whereas its successor, “Beachy Head,” sounds like Beat Happening’s  “Bad Seeds” on meth. Veronica Falls are bold, too—they don’t have to bring on Peter Buck as a contributor (like The Decemberists did) to borrow a page from R.E.M.’s “Talk About The Passion” on the track they name for themselves (although they end up sounding like a less-strident version of The Shangri-Las filtered through The Primitives). Nor do they apologize for sounding like Galaxie 500 doing R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” at the beginning of the next cut, the closer “Come On Over.” Once it gets going, they break into a jangly distort-gallop a la The Raveonettes with Beach Boys-like backing vocals. There could not be more perfect (and seasonally fitting) prequel to the lounging wintry cheesiness of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” than this, and throughout, it’s clear thematically that there could not be a better soundtrack to fall than Veronica Falls.

Simply put, the pace is sometimes shambling, the backbeats pulsate, the soprano vocals with tenor backing enunciate and swoon, and this is perfect power pop for today’s “now” indie-rock kid.

There are antecedents, without question. Imagine if the Cannanes had made the record everyone always hoped for, if Lush had done Spooky with acoustic guitars, or if The Pains of Being Pure At Heart did an MTV Unplugged, if Black Tambourine hadn’t been relegated to the “influence” bin, or if Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Frankie Rose and the Outs all made their best records. What if The Pastels were still around, The Bangles were still on a tiny indie label, or if The Velvet Underground had decided to continue and had somehow magically morphed into Camera Obscura?

That such an unknown ensemble could assemble such a sweet relish tray of succulent delights with a traditional guitar-bass-drums lineup, using Beach Boys harmonies and the sonic structures first erected by auteurs such as Phil Spector, more than 10 years into the 21st century is a testament to the strength of their sterling songwriting and wholly remarkable, hook-laden melodies.

Veronica Falls – Veronica Falls tracklist:

1. “Found Love in a Graveyard”
2. “Right Side of My Brain”
3. “The Fountain”
4. “Misery”
5. “Bad Feeling”
6. “Stephen”
7. “Beachy Head”
8. “All Eyes on You”
9. “The Box”
10. “Wedding Day”
11. “Veronica Falls”
12. “Come on Over”