Pop 'stache

Taking a small turn from the heavy desert mysticism of Humbug, Arctic Monkeys’ fourth release is a move toward the comprehensible. It’s been an incredibly dynamic journey for the Sheffieldians, who still hold the title of the fastest selling album in the UK by a band. Through three number-one albums, they’ve captured the hearts of music critics and fans alike, guaranteeing watchful eyes on their every step. From their short-hair days of dance riffs proclaiming the death of romance to now, an album cheekily titled Suck It and See, the lightning foursome have returned with something mean. Lead singer and songwriter Alex Turner’s superstardom hit all-time highs with his project The Last Shadow Puppets and more recently for his scoring of the film Submarine.

To their credit, the boys have a totally distinct sound—they could play Bach’s cantatas and still sound like Arctic Monkeys—and Turner knows it.

Recorded in Sound Studios, Los Angeles—Suck it and See continues an American binge for the Brits—a joint that’s hosted rock legends the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Strokes. Band standby James Ford’s loving production is written all over the album, which carries that West coast sadness like a smoggy but pretty sunset has. Through the process, they’ve continued to garner that classic image of rough-hewn, ashtray rock and rollers. “Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” is a halfway point between Humbug and Suck It; a compromise between former Producer Josh Homme’s numinous peyote thrash with the songmanship we know Turner to be capable of. “I took the batteries out of my mysticism and put ‘em in my thinking cap,” he sings on “The Hellcat Spangled Shalala.”

But it’s not always the sharp-tongued Turner fans came to love over Fluorsecent Adolescent and Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. By all accounts it seems to be the focus, “I poured my aching heart into a pop song/I couldn’t get the hang of poetry/That’s not a skirt girl, that’s a sawed off shotgun,” (“Suck It and See”) but fairly often, it’s those sharp fourth and chromatic descents in Jamie Cook’s guitar work that seem more familiar. It is a guitar band and with the rare exceptions of organs, they stick to their guns. The warm space in production, the occasional atonal hit and hearing each note on the bass picked keep it authentic sounding, like a live-take. There are some major references, “Reckless Serenade” sounds more like a reckless “Sweet Jane.” “That’s Where You’re Wrong” has the glow of vintage New Order.

The album is structured in a way that begins sensibly with sweet (albeit toe-tapping) tunes like “She’s Thunderstorms,” and the gorgeous “Black Treacle,” songs that rely on Turner’s heart-on-sleeve honesty and charm before flying into slicing guitars-lines and roaring drums by single “Brick by Brick” before winding down into woeful sing-song again. There’s no doubt that the Arctics carry shades of sixties Invasion rock—but it can never be the only thing. They are undeniably “Rock” whilst remaining unafraid to push their periphery, secure in a sound that’s all their own. Suck It And See gets better with every listen but its simplicity in scope makes it easy to appreciate from the first.

Arctic Monkeys – Suck it and See – Tracklist:

1. “She’s Thunderstorms”
2. “Black Treacle”
3. “Brick by Brick”
4. “The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala”
5. “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair”
6. “Library Pictures”
7. “All My Own Stunts”
8. “Reckless Serenade”
9. “Piledriver Waltz”
10. “Love Is a Laserquest”
11. “Suck It and See”
12. “That’s Where You’re Wrong”

Foster the People’s debut album is a disappointing walk through an indie pop world where the main theme throughout is more background noise than excellently prepared synth tunes. Compared to a more definable and cause-worthy sound from the likes of MGMT or LCD Soundsystem, Foster’s Torches lacks real girth and toys more with the idea of a dreamy and whimsical sound. Having dropped a rather popular self-titled EP last year, the follow-up should have been more impressive.

Lead vocalist Mark Foster does manage quick-witted and poignant lyrics. Backed with a wide variety of drums and synthesized sounds, though, it blends easily into the backdrop and as the album progresses, carries little weight. Tracks suck with “Pumped Up Kicks” and “Helena Beat,” having the only real stopping power on the entire collection. With a mixture of moving beats and a peppy tempo, they take off and never really return. This yields the only real success on the album.

“Color On the Walls (Don’t Stop)” and “Call It What You Want” are kitschy.  “Don’t Stop” has some hand claps and bouncy beats but sounds more like it should be a jingle for a car commercial more than a show-stopping tune. “Waste” echoes a watered down Matt and Kim track with slight piano hooks and “oohs and ahhs” reverberating through the chorus. There is a moment during the bridge where the song starts to build, but a boy’s choir chiming in at the last minute shoots this down.

The album would make a great soundtrack for tanning alone on a rooftop deck. Foster’s vocals are easygoing and lackadaisical.

This point is prominent in the track “I Would Do Anything For You,” where he’s backed with “ooh la las” while going on about falling in love. The flip side to that coin is a punchy track called “Houdini.”  Though the “oohs and aahs” are back in this song, the beat coupled with some excellent synth hooks makes this one of only a few standouts on the record. The toppling piano and spacey sound throughout the background help the tune along and give it some staying power.

Being a band from L.A., one would think there would be some definite stage presence detected in each of Foster’s tracks. Ultimately, the debut album is diluted.  Though there are a handful of interesting songs on the album and the band did break into the Billboard’s Alternative Songs Chart at number four, they continue to hang back with the uninteresting. The group’s played South By Southwest in Austin, Texas and has a significant following, but in the grand scheme of things there is much still left to be said and done by Foster the People.

With room opening up in the indie pop world and this being their first real crack at filling it, Foster has plenty of room to grow. As the old saying goes: “You have to crawl before you can walk.” Foster the People are in the couch-cruising stage, where the youngster is on the brink of walking on his own but has to hold on to something solid. Hold on to your fans, Foster, and keep on trucking.

Foster the People – Torches Tracklist:

1. “Helena Beat”
2. “Pumped Up Kicks”
3. “Call It What You Want”
4. “Don’t Stop (Color On The Walls)”
5. “Waste”
6. “I Would Do Anything For You”
7. “Houdini”
8. “Life On The Nickel”
9. “Miss You”
10. “Warrant”

Don’t say Eddie Vedder didn’t warn you.

By explicitly calling his second solo effort Ukulele Songs, Vedder proudly flashes his cards, relieving himself of all blame if you’re pouting 34 minutes later. There’s even a front-and-center olive branch to starving devotees of his band.

“Can’t Keep,” the smoldering opener from Pearl Jam’s underrated Riot Act, is unearthed to set the story again, this time propelled only by Vedder’s brisk strumming. There really is no other place for it in a running order, and the song’s introductory statement—”I wanna shake/I wanna wind out”—sounds even more appropriate since Pearl Jam followed Riot Act with two stripped down “return to rock” albums. One was political, the other personal, both more than competent but forgetting the dynamics that make American acts like Pearl Jam worth following. Not long after 9/11, Vedder would impale a George Bush mask on a microphone stand night after night, and it’s good to see he still embraces the unpopular. Instead of making this a brief PJ detour—imagine Dave Abbruzzese’s potential reaction back in the day—Vedder took it upon himself to put out a full album with his cheery little companion.

Somehow, it’s not boring as sin. It’s too easy to write off ukuleles as pitiful, would-be guitars only good for beach settings, but the instrument manages to give weight to Vedder’s words, although those were never particularly whimsical.

When properly presented, it displays surprising versatility, sounding stately and harp-like on “Broken Heart.” While a ukulele-based album reeks of try-and-stop-me aging rocker luxury, it also reveals itself to be a necessity. Songs such as the haunting “Light Today” simply couldn’t have worked in the context of Vedder’s traditional five-against-one lineup. That song consists of four notes, maybe five, and acts as a flip-side to the vague revelation in R.E.M.’s recent Vedder-assisted “It Happened Today.”

The man and his uke aren’t alone here. There’s beautiful cello drone on “Longing to Belong,” an ocean’s undertow pulling at “Light Today,” and backing vocals from Cat Power and The Swell Season’s Glen Hansard. Nevertheless, that voice dominates, and Vedder sounds positively liberated on “You’re True,” where he lets out falsetto yelps to complement his patented woolly moan.

That bronzed voice seals these songs of bittersweet renewal, sung by someone longing for a fresh start. If the singer in Ukulele Songs isn’t overwhelmed by Washington’s antics, he’s at least longing for a simpler time—and the person he once shared it with. “I need you so/More than you know,” Vedder sings on an original that sounds like a cover (and without liner notes, it’s near impossible to distinguish). “More Than You Know” recalls a pre-rock era where music was, for better or worse, pure of heart and mind, free of controversy and seemingly existing in a vacuum untouched by everyday problems.

Irony was a favorite crutch of the ’90s rock scene that gave Pearl Jam a stage, but it has unintentionally carried over to Ukulele Songs—when Vedder shakes his day job and produces a full-length ukulele windout, it still falters from the uniform color sported by its predecessor.

Some humor breaks that up: there are fuckups left intact that hint at the happier, warts-and-all record that could have been. He flicks a lighter before saying “Goodbye,” answers a ringing phone before “Longing To Belong,” and even gives a false start its own spotlight in the track listing (“Hey Fahkah”).

At 16 tracks, Ukulele Songs is generous in quantity, and it soon feels like one long Side C interlude. But when the main instrument is, for many, a late-night drunken joke prop, what’s an earnest left-leaning rocker to do? If Vedder took the best six ukulele songs, this would be seen a toss-off barely worth a listen.

Only time will tell whether anything here becomes a fan favorite. But after years of oil spills, boos and backhanded criticisms, Vedder sounds like he got the change he wanted. Where Pearl Jam’s Backspacer hinted at calm waters, Ukulele Songs sounds as if it were written under the Bodhi Tree by an enlightened Vedder. In that case, maybe we should all start chilling out a little more.

Eddie Vedder – Ukulele Songs

1. “Can’t Keep”
2. “Sleeping by Myself”
3. “Without You”
4. “More Than You Know”
5. “Goodbye”
6. “Broken Heart”
7. “Satellite”
8. “Longing to Belong”
9. “Hey Fahkah”
10. “You’re True”
11. “Light Today”
12. “Sleepless Nights”
13. “Once in a While”
14. “Waving Palms”
15. “Tonight You Belong to Me”
16. “Dream a Little Dream”

To the disappointment of pamphlet-waving radicals and nihilist Twitter hounds alike, the apocalypse never happened. It’s a good thing: the year just got its first great summer album in Amor de Días’ Street of the Love of Days.

“The face of God appears,” Alasdair MacLean (of The Clientele) purrs on the candlelit “House of Flint.” That’s it for end-of-the-Earth imagery—with trees in full bloom, the Spanish-influenced Street of the Love of Days is the stuff of 85-degree heat, little clothing and lots of cold cerveza. Starting with a plaintive guitar strum and icy piano stabs, it’s a summer vacation album for adults without a summer vacation. The songs often fly by, but MacLean and vocalist Lupe Nuñez-Fernández see no need to rush things; in the album’s first song, vocals don’t even materialize for more than two minutes.

A humid air permeates Street‘s 15 songs. For “House of Flint,” a horn section, toasty guitar and whispery drums riff on one another like friends without secrets. “Late Mornings” has swarming finger-picked guitar with Nuñez-Fernández whispering cosas buenas in the ear, the music hovering just a little longer than necessary for effect.

While the title track sports lyrics like “the elephant is in the room,” there is little awkwardness here. For embracing such a mélange of influences, Street of the Love of Days never sounds jumbled or clumsy (even if its title does). It effortlessly snakes from one song to the next. Bands try damn hard—and many fail—to make it look this easy. On the sauntering, sun-kissed title track, MacLean sings about “days and nights and nights and days,” as if he can’t tell which is which anymore.

By and large, the stories of Street seep into the veins like vodka lemonade.

But for those who like their summer a little more, um, altered, the beat poetry exorcism “Birds” is a head trip. Street‘s faint psych-noir subplot suggested by the darker entries is never clearer than on this piece, disturbingly dense despite the open space. Nuñez-Fernández’s vocals are in tune, as if this is a dub mix of a far more accessible pop song. The rest is chilling and scattered: fluttered wings, ghostly whistles and the lubb-lubbing of the bass make for the album’s most discomforting addition. “Your hair is floating over the river,” she sings before repeatedly asking “what’s wrong?” It’s a terrifically scary moment in an otherwise tranquil set.

Underneath, Street is all about those dynamics. Built on drum machine pitter-patter (and a melody akin to a sunburned Magnetic Fields), “Bunhill Fields” wears its lyrical weirdness like “You provoked me to be lonely/Words are geographical” with both confidence and humility, its circular guitar line underscored by frowning cello. “I’d bumped into a man quite broken/He’d been cruelly beaten up,” Nuñez-Fernández sings but with a mere turn of the head instead of tears. Despite the apparent aloofness, the narrator clearly doesn’t want to let something go.

But letting go is the theme here, and the one-two ending of “Wild Winter Trees” and the “Foxes’ Song” reprise sends it home. “I see you sleep next to me and it fills my heart with joy/But it’s time to go, all the way back home,” MacLean sings on the former, which takes its cue from Dylan’s “Fourth Time Around” for a sobering realization after the shuffling malaise of what precedes it.

With “Foxes’ Song” bookending the album, Street of the Love of Days begins and ends the same way youthful summers did: with great anticipation. The duo urges us to love these days—they’re fleeting. On the reprise, Nuñez-Fernández’ wordless vocals fade inevitably, just as memories will. Although it boasts few instant gratification moments, this album shouldn’t be forgotten so easily.

Amor De Dias – Street of the Love of Days Tracklist:

1. “Foxes’ Song”
2. “House of Flint”
3. “Bunhill Fields”
4. “Season of Light”
5. “Late Mornings”
6. “Harvest Time”
7. “Dream (Dead Hands)”
8. “I See Your Face”
9. “Stone”
10. “Street of the Love of Days”
11. “Birds”
12. “Touchstone”
13. “Wandering”
14. “Wild Winter Trees”
15. “Foxes’ Song (reprise)”

13 & God represents the combined efforts of two different acts: hip-hop artists Themselves and electronic indie rockers The Notwist. So it’s a shame their unique approaches don’t make for especially intriguing music. Throughout Own Your Ghost, the collaborators favor a relaxed approach that occasionally borders on hypnotic. The arrangements, lush with a well-executed blend of conventional instruments and electronics, don’t leave much of an impression on the listener, functioning instead as an unassuming backdrop for vocals that alternate between tedious and irritating.

Although the sung melodies veer toward cloying now and again, as they do on “Old Age,” Doseone’s rapping is consistently grating throughout most of Own Your Ghost. His complex, wordy verses are impressive, but the unassuming instrumentation doesn’t support his theatrically postured, reedy delivery. Granted, the music becomes appropriately bleak when Doseone raps, but his stylizations aren’t exactly accessible to all tastes, and the production isn’t commanding enough to divert the skeptic from his decidedly difficult verses. Still, it’s hard to deny his evident talent. Doseone shines on “Sure as Debt,” where he sounds more urgent and in-step with the sinister production.

“Armored Scarves” sounds the most sure-footed in providing a successful instance of the group’s repetitive compositions. The anthemic refrain (“These are troubled times and so you dip your scarves in iron”) is rousing, perhaps more so because of the sheer absurdity of the declaration. Beneath this, the music builds with the addition of looping percussion. Here, 13 & God achieve a dynamism they’re unable to sustain on lesser tracks.

Oddly, the album sounds as if it were sequenced to highlight the juxtaposition between the sung and rapped verses, alternating pop-oriented tracks with moodier ones.

Rather than lending credibility to the marriage of disparate styles, 13 & God inadvertently derails the proceedings, as the album frequently stutters, only indicating the group’s full potential in snatches.

“Sure as debt, dust collects,” the repeated line that leads off the previously mentioned track, touches on 13 & God’s existential preoccupation with aging and death. Again, there’s an issue of mismatched pairs. The low-key instrumentation and overly poised vocals don’t carry the weighty subject matter. When big questions are raised, isn’t it better to confront them head-on rather than with cool detachment? Maybe not, but in this case, 13 & God’s inconspicuous approach fails to provoke much more than a lukewarm response.

13 & God – Own Your Ghost Tracklist:

1. “Its Own Sun”
2. “Death Major”
3. “Armored Scarves”
4. “Janu Are”
5. “Old Age”
6. “Et Tu”
7. “Death Minor”
8. “Sure As Debt”
9. “Beat On Us’
10. “Unyoung”

Following the band’s rejuvenation in 2009 with their Embryonic album, The Flaming Lips have been experimenting with release formats as well as collaborations. The gummy skull with a USB drive embedded inside—something only The Lips would think of—was outlandishly awesome. The collaboration with Neon Indian was an exciting prospect with beautifully colored vinyl. Unfortunately, in both cases listeners were left with little else to talk about besides the packaging. The tunes weren’t memorable (if they were even considered tunes). In the case of the Neon Indian collabo, listening ears weren’t even able to spot the guest’s contributions.

With The Lips’ next collaborative effort comes an equally neatly colored vinyl record and equally average music.

This time the invisible guest is glitch-hop producer Guillermo Scott Herren AKA Prefuse 73. Though, like The Lips, he has proven to be somewhat of a musical chameleon, he is most noted for his jazzy, glitchy hip-hop-influenced beats. There is nary a glitch nor a hip-hop vibe to be found on this EP’s four tracks. Even on “Guillermo’s Bolero” Scott Herren is unnoticeable. Perhaps he’s sampling the band and making ambience out of it, but regardless, it’s not particularly enchanting.

This EP is predominantly ambient material not unlike sections of Embryonic. Sometimes fuzzy and dissonant, sometimes bright and clear. Again, nearly all of it passes by with little effect on its audience. Embryonic was an artistic breakthrough, totally shifting the band’s gears from their work in the preceding decade. While it’s easy to accept that works following will be similar, it’s not easy to accept that the band seems to be giving little effort. Maybe after the major shift and huge scope of Embryonic the band is in a bit of a haze, biding their time until the follow-up with something to keep fans entertained. The releases themselves do make for excellent collector’s items, but one has to hope that The Flaming Lips’ next full-length doesn’t disappoint like this recent string of EPs.

The Flaming Lips with Prefuse 73 Tracklist:

1. “The Super Moon Made Me Want to Pee”
2. “Heavy Star Movin'”
3. “Be Like That That”
4. “Guillermo’s Bolero”

Do something differently or improve on a design. That seems to be the modus operandi of artists, especially indie artists these days, sometimes to the extent that it overwhelms the final product. Colorfeels is a band entering the scene still a little unsure of their footing. Their album, conspicuously titled Syzygy, at best bears a gentle, lilting energy and a boundless scope of ambition but rarely delivers on its promises.

Sure footing is a fair metaphor—even the band admits they lack it at times. In the album opener, “Mirrored Walls,” frontman Parker Cason sings, “The river shoots out onto the open sea/I turned around, there’s nothing behind me,” over ascending guitars and keyboards. There are several moments where a listener will “look back” and see nothing. For all its steadiness and lurid soundscapes—its waxing poetic—almost nothing is memorable.

Being memorable is one criteria and maybe an unfair one to judge an album on alone but this one doesn’t seem able to decide on a direction. It’s a sound that’s electric and eclectic. The guitar work on the bouncing “Unplanned Holiday” is unmistakably West African in influence.

Colorfeels is heedless in instrumentation: bells, artificial strings, banjo and even what would seem to be a clarinet. It not atypical to hear a space-organ drifting off followed immediately by a cutesy melodious verse fueled by guitars and banjos.

Syzygy was recorded at Cason’s ancestral home, Forge Seat: an 18-acre estate in Brentwood, Tennessee. The album is laced with bird, wind and water noises. It’s funny but even an attempt as strange as this one doesn’t manage to transcend Nashville sound entirely. The wailing lap steel guitar on “Fun Machine” lends a bit of down-home twang. It’s as if, in an attempt to keep it palatable, the band tried to anchor down its twirling, drifting sounds with pop-sensible elements as an afterthought or vice versa.

There can be a creeping menace to Colorfeels—piano dribbles, winding clarinets and crass, lethargic vocal stylings, but despite it astral tendencies it’s never quite enough to convince you of its means. It is bizarre but lest too much credit be given where its undue—the work falls into that cliché of “unclassifiable”—know that there is far more familiarity than experimentation. Syzygy can’t decide if it wants to be either, so it does both, and neither well.

Colorfeel’s premier is a stilted attempt at otherworldliness, which, if it isn’t obvious from the gratuitously psychedelic artwork, song titles like “Zenzizenzizenic” or the album title itself—listening will prove quickly. It’s not that this is Colorfeels’ natural sound but you can tear through the rhetoric and realize just how hard they’re trying to seem trippy. This is an hour and six minute crawl through middling compositions, trite sound-scaping and two-bit lyricism. Really, when you realize the quantifiable length of an album, it’s a pretty good indicator of the quality of this album.

Colorfeels – Syzygy Tracklist:

1. “Mirrored Walls”
2. “Pretty Walk”
3. “Keeping Me Alive”
4. “Unplanned Holiday”
5. “You Know”
6. “Genealogy”
7. “Zenzizenzizenzic”
8. “Be There”
9. “Insufferably”
10. “Fun Machine”
11. “Glimmer”
12. “Your High-Fidelity Train Ride”

As something of an elder statesman in the growingly popular movement of digital-bedroom pop aesthetics, John Dwyer has become nothing less than prolific in his 15-odd years as the mastermind behind Thee Oh Sees, a poppy garage/punk project that can’t seem to go two weeks without releasing another album.

The latest go ‘round for Dwyer is Castlemania, an easily listenable and perfectly enjoyable album that nonetheless carries a hindering sense of familiarity. This problem likely lies in Dwyer’s own idiosyncratic preoccupations.

Though the music may not be groundbreaking or advanced in any aspect, there’s no denying that it’s thoughtfully crafted and almost always infused with a sense of caprice. It’s nice to picture Dwyer sitting in a basement somewhere, surrounded by analog recording equipment and making dopey but enjoyable tunes.

And for all intents and purposes, it’s precisely what he’s done. Dwyer has the reputation of being a marathon man, playing show after show in a myriad of bands and projects. Not only has Thee Oh Sees experienced its own sense of evolution—having operated under previous monikers of The Oh Sees, OCS, Orange County Sound and Orinoka Crash Suite—but Dwyer continues to start and join other bands seemingly at whimsy. In total, he’s been a member of at least eight different bands, including the noise-rock outfit Coachwhips.

Suffice it to say, the guy’s as absorbent as a sponge. Thee Oh Sees is at its best when it reflects Dwyer’s permeable attitude toward music.

Enter Castlemania, which manages to blend the band’s most infectious moments with its most perplexing. Falling in step with 2010’s Warm Slime, the album boasts a psych-folk vibe, fitted with cheeky melodicism and a penchant for playfulness. Songs like “AA Warm Breeze” and “I Need Seed” sound like the kind of songs Raffi might write if he took LSD.

And while this is all well and good, these aren’t the kind of songs that earn repeat listens. Once or twice, they’re great. Soon, they border on novelty. “Spider Cider,” for example, has no redeeming qualities aside from its silly title.

The album takes a turn for the worse when things get overly indulgent. “The Horse was Lost” is a needless instrumental track that concludes with a full minute of silence (for whatever reason).

What Castlemania seems to be striving for is a sense of structure. The album has a haphazard flow, with each track seemingly bouncing into the other with a reckless sense of abandon. This punk rock ethos might appeal to Dwyer’s affinity for all things catawampus, but for the listener, such a lack of cohesion borders on laborious.

It’s a good thing he’s in to having fun. If he wasn’t, Castlemania would be borderline unlistenable. As it stands, it’s a decent collection of songs from one of pop’s more whimsical songsmiths. We’ll see what else he’s got in another three months or so.

Thee Oh Sees – Castlemania Tracklist:

1. “I Need Seed”
2. “Corprophagist (A Bath Perhaps)”
3. “Stinking Cloud”
4. “Corrupted Coffin”
5. “Pleasure Blimps”
6. “A Wall, A Century 2”
7. “Spider Cider”
8. “The Whipping Continues”
9. “Blood On the Deck”
10. “Castlemania”
11. “AA Warm Breeze”
12. “Idea for Rubber Dog”
13. “The Horse Was Lost”
14. “I Won’t Hurt You”
15. “If I Stay Too Long”
16. “What Are We Craving?”

If the Los Angeles-based Touché Amoré is anything, it’s concise. Clocking in at just more than 20 minutes, the band’s sophomore album Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me makes every second of that runtime precious.

Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me sees the quintet producing some of the most refreshing screamo in recent memory by expertly integrating hardcore influence with heart-on-sleeve lyricism. Ed Rose’s production helps the group’s superb songwriting shine, making a clean recording that never feels slick. Rose’s production gives the band a natural feel, one of raw emotion and uncompromising intensity.

Guitarists Clayton Stevens and Nick Steinhardt utilize guitar tones that are uncharacteristically crisp for screamo. Many similar acts would switch between heavy distortion and soft clarity to create a disjointed nature, but Touché Amoré keeps the guitar tones bright throughout. In doing so, it hides the tonal shifts that lay ahead in each song, never giving indications of when a track may explode. It leaves room for drummer Elliot Babin and bassist Tyler Kirby to make an impact by diversifying their approaches in each song.

Parting the Sea not only displays Touché Amoré’s progressive songwriting, but it brings vocalist Jeremy Bolm to the forefront. Bolm’s performance on the band’s debut, …To the Beat of a Dead Horse, was rife with vulnerability; at times crossing into a territory similar to Jeff Eaton from Modern Life is War. On Parting the Sea, Bolm appears even more desperate because of his performance as well as his powerful lyricism.

“~” opens with album with a burst of energy and sees Bolm’s lyrical themes shifting inward, “If actions speak louder than words/I’m the most deafening noise you’ve heard.” As the album progresses, Bolm continues looking to himself for inspiration. While a good chunk of the band’s early work saw Bolm addressing outward concerns, Parting the Sea is improved by this personal connection.

The biggest risk the band takes comes late in the album. “Condolences” starts with an ominous piano intro before Bolm enters the fold. He holds nothing back as he screams, “If you fantasize about your funeral/I understand, I’ve been there before/If there’s more importance in the music played than who’d attend/We are the same.”

The track ratchets the tension and the aggressive explosion that is expected never comes. Instead, the track fades out, introducing “Home Away From Here,” a song with an extra dose of melody and a huge sing-along chorus. It’s the lone track to feature a traditional verse-chorus structure, but Touché Amoré never lessens their attack, creating an anthem out of chaos.

Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me is, from top to bottom, one of the most refreshing screamo records in recent memory. It takes the genre’s guidelines, twists them, and brings in new influences along the way. Instead of trying to rehash the successes of Orchid or Pg. 99, Touché Amoré is showing that screamo can evolve into something beautiful, just like it did more than a decade ago.

Touché Amoré – Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me Tracklist:

1. “~”
2. “Pathfinder”
3. “The Great Repetition”
4. “Art Official”
5. “Uppers / Downers”
6. “Crutch”
7. “Method Act”
8. “Face Ghost”
9. “Sesame”
10. “Wants / Needs”
11. “Condolences”
12. “Home Away from Here”
13. “Amends”

To get the cat out of the bag and spill the beans right out of the clichéd gate: The new Paul Simon album sounds like what most people would expect the new Paul Simon album to sound like. He’s not trying to be someone he’s not, and to be frank, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, to engage yet another tired cliché. God only knows the record-buying public has suffered enough tired rocker reinventions, from Pat Boone’s attempt to be a heavy metal also-ran to Paul McCartney’s Fireman escapades, to whatever Neil Young’s latest experimental project is that isn’t Harvest. In short, this is the Paul Simon from Simon & Garfunkel, “The Boxer,” One-Trick Pony, and Graceland.

His mellow tenor conveys his brilliant lyrics across 10 cuts that are substantial yet never bogged down in too much contemplation, despite the weighty subject matter. Simon tackles topics like love and loss, marriage and regret, and how he imagines “The Afterlife (“You got to fill out a form first, then you wait in the line,” he sings with a reggae-like lilt) with songs backed by his shimmering acoustic guitar and tasteful instrumentation that always fits the piece. Whether it’s the auto-harp accents in “Questions for the Angels,” some subtle cowbell clangs, the intricate, rolling guitar interplay of “Rewrite” and its playful whistling or the flute and strings in the background of “Love and Hard Times.”

Throughout, the record is dominated by Simon’s knack for bringing slide guitar blues to propel his clever (but never precious) narratives of midlife crises and ponderings of mortality. So Beautiful or So What starts in media res with an invigorating slide guitar bit and adds layers as if he’s adding dishes to the table of the family feast on “Getting Ready For Christmas Day.”

The off kilter “grooving with a pict” Popeye-like word jazz scat punctuates the smooth lushness of the origin of love (and marriage) tale on “Dazzling Blue.” Simon sings:  “I loved her the first time I saw her/I know that’s an old songwriting cliché/Loved you the first time I saw you/Can’t describe it any other way” and yet later in the same song, “clouds of antelope” roll by, with swelling orchestration beneath it.

On “Rewrite” he imagines playfully what it would be like if only he could rewrite his (or his character’s) life, in case suggesting he would substitute the scene where the father walks out on his family for a car chase or something that would be more cinematically engaging.  Here he uses the dynamics of the multiple voices and threads within his band to convey the internal conversation that takes place.

The instrumental “Amulet” takes a few minutes between songs for Simon to wax poetic on his acoustic guitar, and serves as a meditative introduction to his lovely “Questions for the Angels.”

Notwithstanding the inventive and intricate instrumentation throughout, Simon’s lyrics are his greatest strength, exhibiting his cynical but never sarcastic approach to life, and name-checking everything from Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lu-La” to Jay-Z. He adheres to the philosophy of furniture espoused by poet Maxine Kumin and her objectivist predecessors like William Carlos Williams, so the homeless wake up and remove their cardboard blankets, he lives on Weed Street across from a vacant lot, and he wonders if humans ceased to exist, would the zebras notice? He’s earned the right to engage in the occasional songwriting cliché by this point for sure, with his word paintings such a rewarding mixture of the real and surreal.

Simon concludes the running order by bookending the record with another pulsing blues riff that serves as the foundation for his declaration that: “You know that life is what we make of it, so beautiful, so what?” In the end, it fades away, as if to say: “What have we learned here?” So what? aul Simon has crafted an understated modern masterpiece in his own unassuming way, and the album gets richer and deeper with each listen.

Paul Simon – So Beautiful or So What Tracklist:

1. “Getting Ready For Christmas Day”
2. “The Afterlife”
3. “Dazzling Blue”
4. “Rewrite”
5. “Love And Hard Times”
6. “Love Is Eternal Sacred Light”
7. “Amulet”
8. “Questions For The Angels”
9. “Love And Blessings”
10. “So Beautiful or So What”

An Horse has created an album that will be in heavy rotation for many indie fans this summer. Walls is a sharp record that doesn’t let the listener down for a moment, starting when “Dressed Sharply” kicks off the album.

The first thing listeners will notice is this male/female duo sounds a bit like other Australian female-fronted indie band, Life Without Buildings. Kate Cooper sings throughout the entire album and the listener will not grow tired of it. Many indie boys will probably develop indie-crushes on her. Walls will be dissected and taken apart and put onto many mixtapes this summer, without a doubt.

Instrumentally, Walls is very simple, but each guitar strum is chosen delicately. There isn’t any wasted space on this album sonically, but there also isn’t any movement to the album.

Walls is begging to tell the story of these estranged lovers in either a long distance or struggling relationship, but there is no clear narrative in the music. If you were to look at this album without the lyrics, the songs would look like they were all written separately and just put next to one another without any structure.

The most interesting part of this album is that even though it does lack a clear beginning, middle and end, if you look at each song on its own, the album isn’t far from being almost perfect. Each one of these songs is good on its own and has its own place.

Walls has a great start and grabs your attention, but it doesn’t end the way that it should. The last three songs seem a bit out of sync with each other. “Windows in the City,” the third to last track, is a very quiet song that, for the first half, is just whispering and single plucked guitar notes with heavy reverb until it builds a little into a bittersweet letdown: “Swallow the Sea.” The full-band sound and faster tempo of this track disrupts the mood An Horse created through the entire album.

However, “Tiny Skeletons” is a great closing track; its lyrics are up to par with the extremely personal story of these two lovers. The starting line being “Our favorite game was to count the eyelashes/That fell on my cheeks whenever you got a little anxious/You said it seemed it so strange that you could feel all my pain.” It makes the listener feel the dynamic of the relationship in the song.

An Horse has a strong sound of their own. The energy of their vocalist is complemented well with other member Damon Cox on instrumentals.

However, like new and old fans will agree, An Horse should push further out of their comfort zone. It’s a tricky decision to know when to do that as a band. In this case, An Horse didn’t deviate too much from their other material, but Walls is still an album worth checking out, especially for those still unfamiliar.

The best thing about Walls is each listener will find a personal experience listening to the album. This album is an intimate experience that will be unique for each person who connects to the lyrics. Walls will also be an album that will probably grow with time; some teenager who finds Walls years after it’s time has passed will consider it a gem.

An Horse – Walls Tracklisting:

1. “Dressed Sharply”
2. “Not Mine”
3. “Airport Death”
4. “Know This, We’ve Noticed”
5. “Trains and Tracks”
6. “Walls”
7. “Brains on a Table”
8. “100 Whales”
9. “Leave Me”
10. “Windows in the City”
11. “Shallow the Sea”
12. “Tiny Skeletons”

Look how much fun the two are having on the cover of this record. Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion are dancing, whipping hair and letting go with reckless abandon on this, their self-titled debut for Columbia. The band knew what they were doing with the timing of this record. The beginning of summer is the perfect time for a simple, sweet, melodic and overall very fun record. Cults is all of those things, and reveals itself as being a record you can put on when getting together with friends for a barbecue or laying in bed at night staring up at the stars.

Cults is a nostalgic throwback to oldies pop radio, but with the knowledge of modern indie pop informing the songwriting. Although maybe unintentional, the beginnings of “Abducted,” “Go Outside” and “Oh My God” have somewhat muffled words spoken underneath the opening chords; it’s almost as if people are sitting around a record player, holding discussions. It’s these types of anachronisms that make this seem like more than just a simple pop record.

Tonally, however, the record is pretty simple. The timbre and range of the songs is not that wide. Yes, each song is distinct with its own hook—the syncopation of “Never Saw The Point,” the shuffling piano of “Bad Things” but to look at the sonic structure of these songs graphed out, you would probably see a fairly straight line. Take, for example, “Most Wanted” compared to “Bumper.” From the get-go the two are almost indistinguishable: simple pop drumming and sweetly cooed lyrical delivery at about the same tempo and cadence.

“Oh My God,” which was released as a single last summer, remains the strongest songs on Cults. Follin’s declaration of “Please don’t tell me you know the rules to my life/I can run away and leave you anytime” rings so true and offers empowerment on every repeated listen.

The moments on the record that really stand out are when the songs begin to pick up a little more momentum and the line of the graph spikes and falls.

Times like when Oblivion steps on the distortion pedal and really starts to chug out a driving riff. Or when everything fades except an echoing vocal line and then the full band comes crashing back together. Or when Follin really opens up her vocal chords to belt out a chorus.

The record ends with “Rave On,” which begins with an acoustic guitar and then busts out in a group singalong with the refrain “Rave on! Rave on!” Again, this is a throwback to a music as a more social structure. Whereas earlier on the album there are people talking around a record player, here everyone is out at the bar, celebrating a hard day’s work, arms slung around one another’s shoulders and using music as a cathartic release and a reason to keep partying.

This is a fun romp., like a summer romance. But for as much as Cults hearken classic pop tropes and synthesize them into an indie voice, it may not be something that will stick around. People may look back fondly on this, and it will hopefully be a great launch pad for Cults to do bigger and better things on future releases. For now, though, it’s just something simple record made by people who are just interested in having fun and paying tribute to the things they like.

Cults Tracklist:

1. “Abducted”
2. “Go Outside”
3. “You Know What I Mean”
4. “Most Wanted”
5. “Walk At Night”
6. “Never Heal Myself”
7. “Oh My God”
8. “Never Saw The Point”
9. “Bad Things”
10. “Bumper”
11. “Rave On”